When Your Book Is Late, and Other Thursday Musings

--For those of you who are saying, "It's August; where is Kristin's book?":  there's been a delay at the printer's.  Hopefully, it will be on its way to you in 2 or 3 weeks.

--I had hoped to have new books for this Saturday's reading (4 p.m. at the Books and Books location at the Museum of Art Ft. Lauderdale--I'm reading with Shefali Choksi and Marissa Cohen).  Oh well.  This one is out of my control.  We also have a reading at the Sol Children's Theatre on Oct. 20, so maybe by then, I can reward our faithful public with a new book to buy.

--For those of us thinking about print vs. electronic publication, here's an area where we might favor electronic books.  Of course, I'm sure publishing electronically comes with its own share of delays and headaches.  Does electronic publishing come with the same sort of events-outside-of-our-control feeling?  For me, probably.  I haven't done computer programming since the olden days of BASIC, so I imagine the electronic publishing process might feel just as mystical.  I might feel uncoordinated and helpless.

--I've been feeling uncoordinated in real life (as opposed to electronic life) too.  I'm in the last few weeks of the weight loss challenge program at my little gym, and I'm trying all sorts of new classes.  I've been doing weight lifting too, and between the weight lifting and the new classes, I'm feeling muscles that I've never felt, like the ones on my side.

--Yesterday, I tried cardio kickboxing for the first time, which for the most part, made me feel very uncoordinated.  But for part of the class, we did a shuffle step in a circle while doing boxing moves with our arms.  I almost felt like I was levitating.  It took me back to elementary school, where we altered our consciousnesses in similar ways.  I don't think I've twirled in a circle for a very long time.  It felt good.

--It's hard for me to hold my body in plank shape.  I was not born to be a plank.

--At least my body isn't allergic to many things.  Sandra Beasley will be on the Diane Rehm show today.  You can listen to it later if you miss the 11:00 a.m. airing.  Have you read Don't Kill the Birthday Girl yet?  It's next on my pile of books to read.

--Right now I'm reading Albert Brooks 2030:  The Real Story of What Happens to America.  It's been interesting reading this book during the run-up to the debt ceiling vote.  You'd think my inner apocalypse gal would like this book.  I'm still deciding.  I'm having trouble keeping the characters straight--I'm not sure they're real relevant to the plot, so it may not matter.

--Does it matter that the characters aren't relevant to the plot?

--Am I having trouble with this book because I don't have long enough stretches of reading time to immerse myself or is there something wrong with the book?  Is it the book or is it me?

--I'm also having trouble reading/listening/researching/focusing on all this political debt ceiling and deficit reduction talk.  Once I would have been enraged, but now I'm simply weary.  And I'm also tired of all the rage expressed by others.  This anger doesn't serve us well at this point.  We can't afford it.

--Where are the visionaries who could inspire us to dream of a better world?  Are they out there, and I'm just not seeing them? 

--Should we aspire to being the visionaries?  Could poets emerge to save us all? 

--It's the birthday of Shelley, the one who wrote "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."  Can an unacknowledged legislator make a difference?

--What kinds of differences would you most like to see in the world?  Dream big.  Shelley dreamed big, and was mocked and persecuted for it.  But what a thrilling life he had.

--And yes, lots of human wreckage in his wake, not all of it his fault.

--But let's not let the human wreckage angle topple our appreciation of Shelley, who tried to live life on his own terms, who was warm and generous and tried to end poverty and tried to support his poet friends.  Yes, he really did have a fierce sense of social justice, and he really tried to live a life in synch with his ideals.  He succeeded magnificently on some levels and failed miserably on others.  But he tried.

--May we all be similarly blessed.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl--Very Young

My parents are moving in a few weeks.  They've lived in their house since 1984, and I would have thought there would be no more of my stuff left in their house.  Through the years, we've sorted through my stuff several times, so imagine my surprise when two boxes showed up yesterday.

Some of the stuff in the box is stuff that wasn't ever mine, like old pictures.  I feel kind of weird about having these, but I'm telling myself that my parents probably have other copies somewhere.  Maybe they gave me the baby pictures of me that weren't their favorites. 

But probably not.  They're moving to what will likely be their last house, unless they need assisted living or the nursing home.  They're doing the final sorting.  I appreciate it, on the one hand, because it means that my sister and I won't have as much to sort later.  But on the other hand, it makes me feel weird.

One of the boxes had file folders of my first writings in it.  I was really surprised to see this box.  I thought I had my earliest writings.  But there's a picture book I made, called Happiness Is . . .  And I drew pictures to illustrate what I thought happiness was.  And yes, it's likely inspired by a book series that came out in the 1970's, the Love Is books (which are still in print!--or back in print, more likely).

My "book" was made on the back of notecards.   They look like class notes, but they're not in my parents' handwriting.  Hmm.

I love the files that I made.  There's one called "articles and short stories."  Yes, even then I was thinking in terms of genres.  One file folder is labeled "Seasonal Plays," and contains just what you would think.  There's a file folder of old Berkey Bulletins.

When I was young, I loved putting together newsletters.  The Berkey Bulletin had crossword puzzles that I made up, recipes, articles.  I did this when I was 11 or so.  I wrote to family members to ask for contributions and subscriptions.

It's no wonder I became a college journalist and later a blogger.  They're all very similar writing disciplines.  I remember writing for my college newspaper about the death of Simone de Beauvoir and reviewing records and covering campus events.  Likewise, when I blog, I might offer a poem one day, a recipe the next, and reviews here and there.

As I looked through my old papers, I was reminded of the early, elemental joy that kept me writing.  It's the same joy that wakes me up early (what would be the middle of the night to most people) and drives me to my desk.  If I can get some writing in before work and then some exercise, then in many ways, I've done the most important work--and often, before the sun rises!

Beat Those August Doldrums: Prompts for Fiction and Poetry

Last week, I wrote this post about what to do if you're in need of Composition ideas or if you're a stymied creative nonfiction/memoir writer.  I wrote this post earlier with more general suggestions, but Composition teachers could find ideas here too.

Here are some ideas for stuck poets and fiction writers.  And again, many of these prompts could lead to interesting Composition assignments.  You could always have them attempt the prompt, then write the classic Process/How To composition or a reaction to having to write in response to a prompt.  It seems like a  much safer approach than having students write about any emotion they want to write about.

And don't forget that one of the classic ways to refill our writing wells is by reading and by going to readings.  If you're in the South Florida area, join me and two of my poet friends at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale at 4 p.m. this Saturday, August 6.  We'll be reading from our new work; I still have hopes that my new chapbook might arrive in time, but since there's been a delay at the printers, it may not.  Ah, well, one of the first lessons they teach you in drama class:  the show must go on!

Fiction:

--Are you feeling stymied because the thought of coming up with characters/plot/theme are just too overwhelming? Go to the work of others, work where a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done. Write a sequel or a prequel. Choose one of the characters and make that character the focus of a new story. Write about the landscape in the story, landscape inhabited by a new set of characters.

So, here’s an example. Let’s take Cinderella’s house. Tell the story of the previous owners—how did Cinderella’s dad come to have it. Or tell the story of the people who inherit the house several generations later. Is it a training house for women who want to leave their careers as housecleaners? An orphanage? Or tell the story of Cinderella’s wedding gown in later years. Does her daughter wear it and dream of a prince to call her own? Did Cinderella turn it into a quilt?

You'll find more ideas along these lines here.

--Revise one of your old short stories. Take out 1000 words. Or add 2000. If nothing else, this exercise teaches you the value of each word and forces you to analyze it. But you may find it sparks new ideas too.

--Take a minor character from one of your old short stories and make that character the focus of a new story. Do this enough times and you might find you have linked short stories.

--Take a main character from one of your old short stories and write a story about that character twenty years later—or 50 years later. Or x amount of time earlier. Again, do this exercise enough times and you might find you have a collection of linked stories.

Poetry

--The suggestions offered first in the fiction section can also lead to great poems.

--A variety of poetry prompts can be found at these blog posts:

http://kristinberkey-abbott.blogspot.com/2010/04/30-prompts-for-national-poetry-month.html

http://ofkells.blogspot.com/2011/03/napowrimo-30-new-writing-prompts-for.html

http://ofkells.blogspot.com/2010/03/napowrimo-30-new-poetry-prompts-for.html

http://ofkells.blogspot.com/2008/04/30-writing-prompts-for-national-poetry.html

Some Weeks We Weave a Tapestry, Other Weeks We Unweave

Last night we watched parts of the PBS special on the Freedom Riders, which I first wrote about here.  It's the kind of show that makes me say, "I have done nothing with my life."  Later, I tried to console myself:  "Well, at least I haven't been a Bull Connor."

My hyper-critical self, whom I call my inner 19 year old, is especially judgmental.  She does not think about all the students, thousands of them, whom I've helped through my teaching.  She does not care about faculty members who live better lives because I'm the head of a department.  She dismisses my charitable giving of money and time and possessions.

My inner 19 year old says, "What exactly have you done to bring racial justice to the world?"

And even if I could offer something, she'd say, "I'm still noticing a lot of world hunger.  What are you doing about that?"

I'm more susceptible to this kind of despair during a work week like the past one.  I've had to redo the Fall schedule, a schedule that I turned in months ago.  And I had 48 hours to do that.  I wanted to stomp my feet and say, "You mean you've had this schedule for months, and you're only just now thinking about these changes?"  I wanted to weep at the thought of the part-timers who would bear the burden of the schedule reductions required.

Unlike our leaders in Washington, I did not throw a hissy fit.  I did not stomp away and refuse to get the work done.  I have accepted that to be an administrator is to embrace the Penelope aspect of existence:  some days we weave a tapestry, and some days we unweave the work we've done.

I'm trying to remember the good work of the week.  I'm trying to remember the gifts.  For example, we've been weeding out the bookcases of old textbooks, which are not worth money and libraries don't want them.  What to do with them? 

I put them in boxes and put them in a lobby with a sign that told people to help themselves to free books.  And in three days, most of them were gone.  In fact, the only remains in the box were videotapes, which I can throw away without feeling bad.

I had many gifts of literacy this week.  My campus book club met yesterday, and some part of me feels sad as I hear book club members enthusiastically talking about what they're reading--in the past few weeks, I've barely managed to read at all.  But more, I feel happy about this book club, where we make time for each other and bring each other treats and enjoy a good chat about books.

I've tried to focus on the good aspects of my job, of the good that I can do in my position.  I've tried to convince myself that making faculty lives easier (and protecting full-time jobs) enough.  My inner 19 year old is not convinced. 

I think back to when I was really 19.  I remember being disgusted with my parents' suburban church.  I went into downtown DC on a regular basis to do all sorts of social justice work.  I longed to belong to a church like Luther Place, right in the heart of downtown D.C., a church which transformed itself into a shelter for homeless women each and every night.  They had a strip of row houses, which they could have sold.  Instead they transformed them into a medical clinic, a thrift store, and low-cost housing.

At a workshop for church people who worked with illegal immigrants, I marched up to the pastor of Luther Place and announced my intentions to join his church.  He said, "Where do you worship now?"

With shame, I told him the name of my parents' suburban church.

He said, "You know, we wouldn't be able to run any of the programs that we run without the financial help that they give us." And then, in that precise moment, my perspective shifted. I started to move away from being a self-righteous, know-it-all 19 year old towards being someone who sees life as more complex.

My inner 19 year old will never go away completely, and I don't want her to disappear.  She keeps me honest.  She tries to help me make sure that the life I'm living is in synch with my values.

During weeks like the past one, she's got a lot to reconcile.

Cartwheel Friday

Two years ago I went to my first Spin class.  I joined the Wellness Center at a hospital near my job; it had a manageable gym, plus a lot of classes.  I wanted more yoga in my life.  I wanted Tai Chi.  It was a fairly cheap rate. 

When I signed up, I got two weeks of free spin class--a $7/class value!  I didn't really think I could do it; I had heard horror stories about people throwing up, that kind of thing.  But I wanted to try, mainly because I knew how much the classes would cost me out of pocket.

Little did I know I would fall in love with Spin class.  I loved that someone else chose the music, and I was lucky because it was music I liked (later I would  have Spin teachers that chose horrible techno dance music, so I know how lucky I was and still am).  I loved having someone else decide when we would push hard and when we would back off.  I loved the variety.  I liked all the people I was meeting.  I had wonderful, supportive, encouraging instructors.

I felt like a kid again, tearing through the neighborhood on my bike.  I felt like I was reconnecting with essential parts of myself.

Yesterday I talked to my first Spin instructor, who was in the gym doing some training for beach volleyball, one of her passions.  It was strange to see her in a different setting when I'm so used to seeing her on a spin bike in the front of the room.

My spin instructor was standing on one leg while moving the volleyball around her waist.  I congratulated her on her agility and balance.  My spin instructor told me about her friend who has resolved to do a cartwheel every week.

It sounds like such a simple thing:  do a cartwheel every week.

The woman has loved gymnastics since she was a child, and she doesn't want to lose that.  My spin instructor and I talked about how long it had been since we had done a cartwheel and how hard it would be to do one now.

To be honest, I have never been good at cartwheels.  I remember in the 8th grade, when in P.E. class we had to create a gymnastics routine.  I was that tall girl, the one uncomfortable in her slightly bulky, always changing body.  And I had to create a gymnastics routine?

When I started thinking about it, I practiced all the things I couldn't do.  Then I realized that a smarter thing to do would be to devise a routine around what I could do:  somersaults and round offs and such.

It reminds me of my approach to Ph.D. Comprehensive Exams.  I spent the summer of 1991 trying to get my head around T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," the gaping hole in my graduate education in twentieth century British Lit.  By the end of the summer, my strategy was to write my exams without ever mentioning the poem in much detail.

In both cases, my strategy of focusing on what I could do and avoiding what I couldn't master worked.

But back to cartwheels and the friend of my Spin instructor.  My Spin instructor and I both loved the idea of doing something on a weekly basis that takes us back to what we loved in childhood.  We also loved the idea of a simple activity that keeps us flexible and strong.

Will that friend of my Spin instructor still be able to do a cartwheel when she's 80?  One thing is for sure:  if she doesn't keep doing cartwheels now, she will certainly not be able to do cartwheels when she's 80.

Think back to childhood:  what brought you joy?  Are you doing that now?  If not, why not?  Can you reclaim that joy?

Cartwheel Friday--reclaim the joy!

When You're Feeling Like a Detroit Auto Worker circa 1978

I'm a worker in the higher education industrial complex.  In 1992, I finished my Ph.D. and during my grad school years, I started teaching college level English.  Until a few years ago when I began moving into administration, I taught section after section after section of a variety of English, Literature, and Creative Writing classes.  I thought I had found a job that couldn't be offshored.  I bragged that the world would always need English teachers.

Now I'm feeling like a Detroit auto worker in the late 1970's.  I'm feeling like a newspaper writer in the early 2000s.  I'm watching my industry shift under my feet, and I'm not sure where it will all end up.  I no longer brag--I'm not that confident.

I have colleagues who believe that the U.S. system of higher education could never go the way of newspapers.  But until recently, we wouldn't have believed that newspapers would go the way of newspapers.

Let's play with this metaphor.  Obviously the Harvards and the Yales of the educational world are the newspapers that will survive, The New York Times and The Washington Post.  Is the for-profit educational sector the local paper?  How about liberal arts colleges?  State Universities?  These institutions fill a need, just like a wide variety of newspapers once filled a need.

But will they still fill a need as the demographics change?  We're nearing the end of the echo boom heading to college.  Who comes after them?  We're in an age of worsening economics and tightening credit, which means more and more students can't afford to go to college.  Which schools will survive?

Maybe we'll all reinvent ourselves and emerge from all these challenges in stronger shape.  Or maybe it's time to make alternate plans.

I have friends in their late 50's who are working with me in the higher education industrial complex.  They'll likely make it to retirement before major changes hit them.  I'm 46, and I'm not sure I'll be that lucky.

At the end of my summer trip, I dreamed that I was packing up my office because I was about to go on tour with my band.  I don't think that my subconscious was recommending that particular career switch--the music world isn't exactly unscathed these days either.

I do think that my subconscious was reminding me that although I may think that my options are ever narrowing, they really aren't.  I may need to imagine something new for myself and to reinvent myself, but as long as I can keep doing that, I'll be OK.

I hope my subconscious is correct.

When You're Stymied and/or When You're Planning Your Composition Classes

I know from reading blogs that lots of folks are starting to think about heading back to their classes.  My school is on a very different quarter system, set up so that we always end Fall quarter before Christmas, so we're in week 3 of our Summer quarter.  Still, I remember the end of July, August around the corner, the realization that soon Fall Semester would come crashing on our heads.  I always taught through the summer, but summer sessions always had such a different feel.

I was always on the lookout for good ideas for Composition classes, so on that note, I'll offer some.  These will also be useful for writers of Creative Non-Fiction and/or Memoir.  If you're feeling stymied by summer's heat, maybe these prompts will help.

One of my most successful innovations in the Composition classroom was to spend time talking about the ways that students thought life was different when their parents or grandparents were young.  I did this with a class of traditional 18 year olds, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  I had them write about how they thought life was different, and then I had them create a list of interview questions about life in the olden days. 

Their assignment when they were home for Thanksgiving was to interview a relative or someone at least 20 years older than they were.  They had to ask interview questions of their own and some that were on the list that others wanted to know.  You had a wide range of choices, from food to jobs to sexual practices.

They came back bubbling over with what they'd found.  In most cases, the conversations were very valuable.  Students had recorded all sorts of family memories.  And they discussed them with each other.  They were amazed at how different life was from what they thought it had been like, from what TV and movies told them it had been like.

They wrote the best comparison/contrast essays about what they'd learned that I had ever seen.  They wrote the best essays of the quarter.  They honed their interview skills.  They learned how to talk to family members.

Here are some other ideas (you can be you, the writer, or you, the student):

--Imagine a future researcher is writing an article about you. What will be the most remarkable incidents in your life? Write about one of them that’s already happened. Then write about it from a different angle.  For example, I have a friend whose father died and then less than a year later her mother died a rather gruesome death from cancer, and all by the time she was 27 or so. When she can bear to do it, that framework will make a remarkable story. Plus, she could approach it in so many ways for so many audiences: heartwarming story from a daughter’s view, dark humor, medical horror story, an article that tells what families should be doing now to get ready for these times.  For those of us teaching Composition or other types of writing classes, this exercise might be a good one in imagining different audiences and different approaches to the same story.

--Research a particular item or a color or a symbol. For example, choose an animal and find out everything you can about it, including how it’s functioned in mythology, and how humans have used it, and how we see it now. Can you turn your research into an essay of some sort? Maybe just a collage of what you’ve discovered.

--Interview someone. Some day, your older family members will be dead. What will you wish you had asked them? Can you conduct an interview in writing? Is there anyone else you can interview about them?

Another fun possibility: in this day and age, it can be fairly easy to find people (writers, artists, musicians, politicians, etc.) who have inspired you. Reach out to them. See if they’ll do an interview with you.

Don’t neglect the charm of interviewing the normal people whom you meet on a daily basis. Ask a key question every day. What’s a key question? Well, what interests you most? I’d ask people about their view of God, or what they most hope will have happened in 50 years or when they were seven years old, what they most wanted to be when they grew up. You, of course, have a different set of interests.