It Might As Well Be Spring

The last arctic blast of the season sweeps through Northeast WA, but I remember the promise of prognosticator Punxsutawney Phil. I also favor The Law of Attraction and the power of positive thinking. So I've replaced the snowman I'd placed last November aside my front door with my chirpy spring ornament, even as the snow piles up. My crocus will be crunching up soon, followed by twirls of tulips and dazzles of daffodils. It won't be long now. It won't be long!

In the meantime, here's what I'm writing as February dissolves into March:

• A new holiday tale about how my late husband, Ken, carried on with Christmas preparations after I tripped over a cat on the stairs, and fractured my left shoulder.
• An essay about how baton twirling and psychologist Albert Ellis helped me overcome a longstanding anxiety disorder.
• A piece on common grammar, punctuation and language usage errors that even experienced writers and editors let slip by.
• A story about Grandma Gertie's Brown Betty, a baked pudding I adored as a child.,.and think I'll prepare this afternoon...nothing like a cinnamon scent to warm up a house on a bitterly cold last-gasp-of-winter afternoon.
  

Pink Teas, Travel Shares, Oscar Contenders...and Writing

After all, I have a choice. I can sit down at my laptop, toss the cats aside when they jump on the desk and curl their tails around the monitor, shove Natty's snout away when he tries to lift my wrist from the keyboard, and get my story about an anxiety disorder written.

Or I can:

• Don a hat that once was worn (not by me) in a local community theater production of The Music Man, and relive the days of the suffragettes at an AAUW "Pink Tea" in Spokane.
• See all five movies nominated for Academy Award Best Director.
• Browse Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites and order the books on the mandatory reading lists for my upcoming University of Cambridge history courses: The Triumphant Reign of Henry VIII, The Spanish Civil War, Napoleon and His Enemies.
• Write a tribute to Peter S. Beagle for the spring issue of Uncle Jam.
• Write a story about Ken's reluctance to read maps and submit it to Chicken Soup for the Soul.
• Edit some "side trip" copy for an upcoming Wine Wherever book on the wineries of California's Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Monterey Counties.
• Dust and vacuum my house and host a "travel share" party for Colville Branch AAUW.
• Attend a Horizons retreat to plan coming attractions.
• Go to two book group discussions...Kingsolver's The Lacuna and Wolfe's A Man in Full. Oh, and read both books, totaling 1500 pages.
  
• Review complaints and cases for the Medical Quality Assurance Commission.
• Read and answer e-mails.
• Watch the Lakers win some and lose some.
• Shop for reasonable airfares to Heathrow.
• Apply lemon oil to the bathroom cabinets and louvered doors.
• Watch DVDs starring William Hurt: "The Yellow Handkerchief" and "The History of Violence," with "Beautiful Ohio" to arrive Tuesday.
  
• Clean out an underwear drawer.
• Keep up my daily correspondence with my writing partner, Annie.
• Take Tsunami outdoors for combing since she's shedding yet again.
• Water the 25 house plants.

But now that I'm beginning to feel anxious about getting the anxiety disorder story written, I think I'd better write it.

Carpal Brain Syndrome?

For the past few days I've been plagued with writer's block. Each time I sit down at my laptop I'm distracted by how I can't stop shivering, how my fingers tingle with what my doc and I suspect might be the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, and how sick to death I am of this winter. While these cheerful thoughts invade my brain, my numb fingers have been trying to type away at a story I'm calling "Creature Comforts." But I haven't made much progress, flooded as I am with negativity.

Then this morning I read Wordstrumpet Charlotte Rains Dixon's column on clearing your mind for writing. It's easy, she claims. Just rage on for ten minutes and then shift gears. Now, refreshed, I'm back to finishing "Creature Comforts."

Great column, and here it is, with her permission:




Clear Your Mind for Writing
By Charlotte Rains Dixon

In the last issue of this newsletter, I talked about the importance of creating a regular writing practice. But what do you do if you carve out that time, sit down at your desk, and find your mind encumbered by so much crap you can't write? Happens all the time, the trick is to have a tool-kit of ways to deal with this problem handy. Here are some suggestions:

1. Clear it Out. It is really important to cultivate some way to clear your mind. Meditate, pray, write in your journal for a few minutes to get your yas-yas out, take a quick walk, whatever helps you to clear your brain. Even taking a few deep breaths when you sit down to write can really help.

2. Set an Intention. You probably have some sort of goals for your writing, such as, finish a novel, write a screenplay whatever. Take that goal, chunk it down into a doable task, and then set an intention. For instance, I am going to write 3 pages today. Or, I will finish the rewrite of chapter 10. Then, when you sit down to write, remind yourself of this intention by closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, and repeating it several times out loud.

3. Ask for Help. And I don't mean from your family. Ask whatever higher power you might believe in to guide you and help you to stay focused. If you don't believe in a higher power, ask your higher self. Because we all have one.

4. Use Your Subconscious. This falls into the Be Prepared category. Take the time to look at whatever it is you want to write about the day before. I know, I know, you don't have time. Listen, everyone has five minutes. Forget about the first five minutes of American Idol (it's just Ryan blabbering anyway), open your file, scan it quickly, ponder what you need to do next, close the file, go watch TV. This helps way more than the time it takes to do it. You'll get your brain engaged and ready to work and be focused, which makes it easier to turn off the worry faucet.

5. Keep a Notebook Handy. Keep a small notebook or scratch pad right next to your computer. If you get one of those distracting worry thoughts, pause for one minute and write it down. You need bread at the store? Write it down. You remembered an appointment? Write it down. Then make a habit of checking over these notes at the end of your writing session and dealing with them accordingly. Note the appointment on your calendar, make your grocery list, whatever.

6. Keep An Idea Notebook Nearby. Same theory as above, only for ideas. Many creative types start working on one project, only to think of 20 others. To control this, use an idea file as a way to harness all your brilliance without losing your train of thought. I used to keep an idea journal, but I'm so visual, if I don't see something, its gone from my mind, and all my ideas got buried. Now I use a cool open-topped wooden file box that came from my Dad's long-defunct printing plant. Added bonus is that I think of him every time I put in or pull out an idea.

7. Start With Negativity. I know, sounds counter-intuitive. But the idea is to just give into it. Rant and rave. Complain about how over-worked you are and how wretched your children are. Wail about how much you don't want to do everything on your to-do list. Write all your negative thoughts down, or think them, or shout them, whatever you want. Set a timer and limit it to five minutes. There. Now all the bad stuff is out of your brain, freeing you to write.

So there you have them, my best ideas to keep your brain clear while writing. Keep this list near your writing desk and add to it when you figure out more. Then remember to use them!


Want to Use This Article on Your Website, Blog, or Ezine?

Feel Free! Please, just be sure to include the following blurb with it:

Writer, mentor, and coach Charlotte Rains Dixon is passionate about helping writers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals succeed, achieve, and profit in their careers and lives through writing. Visit her for more tips and techniques on writing—and living—at www.charlotterainsdixon.com.


Ten-Minute Tip: Get Your Ya-Yas Out

Set a timer and write for 15 minutes about how awful the world is. It is unfair, stupid, upsetting crazy, violent, etc., etc. Go on, and on, and on about the horribleness of it all. Whatever you do, do not write anything positive, because that's cheating. Life's a bitch and then you die, so write it all out. When the timer goes off, go to your regular writing. See how much easier it all flows?

My Huckleberry Friend, Samuel Clemens, and Me

In the early 1960s I worked on my master's thesis in English at what then was called California State College at Long Beach. In my thesis I examined the novels of William Dean Howells, and through this very sane gentleman, then known as the Dean of American Letters, became more interested in Samuel Clemens, Howells' closest friend. Through reading their voluminous correspondence I grew to know a lot about attitudes about suitable topics for novels in the late nineteenth century in both America and in England.

Those who have conversed with me recently know how I've rededicated some of my time to rereading Charles Dickens, who tackled every social issue in England during the early and mid nineteenth century. In our country, in the last half of the nineteenth century only Samuel Clemens had the courage to address prevailing attitudes towards blacks. This was the post Civil War period when antagonism towards so-called carpetbaggers and liberated blacks ran high.

I don't usually get embroiled in impassioned discussions on Facebook...but this piece of news set me on fire.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110105/en_ac/7534342_new_sanitized_edition_of_huckleberry_finn_to_be_published

So today I posted this today on Facebook:

What the Huck...have we all lost our literary minds? You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger...and you don't mess around with Finn!!

I got responses...from my old friend, Chris, who runs a bookstore, Once Read Books, in Long Beach:

From Chris Statler:

They're ignorant swine and don't understand the irony of using a derogatory name to describe and dehumanize a character who in fact is smarter, more human and wiser then the Southern crackers whom he is able to evade. You can hear Twain chu...ckling to himself as you read the book and certainly Tom and Huck reorganize Jim's wisdom and understanding of the river (life) and its complexities. Who in modern times best resembles Nigger Jim? Obama, he's smarter then his detractors and they resent a black man who is more human then they are. "nuff said. Someone needs to write an article called IS Obama nigger Jim?!!!!!
----------

And another, from my professor at UCLA, who taught Group Conflict and Change, a class that students referred to as Race Relations:

Dr. Alex J. Norman:

When I was in high school in Durham, NC we read Twain's Huck and although polite, we all cringed evertime we had to read the "N" word. I got through it but never had the desire to read more of Twain (I thought the use of the word was excess...ive). I thought then, as I do now, that it was simply a manner in which the society was reminded of the racist underpinnings of the country, and was a means of passing on prejudices (I think the same of "Birth Of A Nation"). Still, I don't believe that it should be censured, it is what it is--American Literature.

That said, any wonder why Twain didn't want his biography delayed until 100 years after his death?

---------------------

And various other responses from all over the map. I finally commented on my own comment:

I have Twain's unBowdlerized recently released autobiography on my Kindle. Twain makes it clear that he wanted to speak openly about his views about people after their children and grandchildren were long gone. Huckleberry Finn satirizes th...e insensitivity and ignorance of southerners of that period and reflects how children who hear racist putdowns and derogatory words all the time have difficulty forming their own views...witness Huck's continual struggle, should he believe what he hears from the others or what he sees in his relationship with Jim? This was a brave attempt, given the era. When I taught high school English I drew a parallel for students about Huck on the river and Holden Caulfield on the streets of New York, and how youth try to deal with adults' hypocricy and meanspiritedness,

Have you read Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn? Several fascinating articles, mostly delineating how Twain, called by his friend, William Dean Howells, a "deSouthernized Southerner," struggled with his conscience in the same way that Huck does, and accepted personal responsibility for the American legacy of slavery, a practice that Samuel Clemens saw no use for or sense to and abhored.

Incidentally, I just read Sinclair Lewis' early novel, Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, set in the late 1910s in NYC, and the "N" word is used casually by insensitive people even then. And this by the man who later wrote Kingsblood Royal, which Ebony in 1947 named Best Novel of the Year.

The "N" word, unfortunately, is not limited to Americans. I heard it every day in Belize, used by Creoles, descendants of Scots and British pirates and their West African slaves, in reference to the Garifuna. And in India the officers of the British Raj used the term in reference to the Indians.

All said, though, I believe that banning, burning and Bowdlerizing books is never a good thing. The very idea makes me want to... light out for the territory ahead...the closing words of Huckleberry Finn

The Territory Ahead, by Wright Morris, though written in the '70s is still one of the best books on American lit that I know of. Wright criticizes American writers (with the exception of Henry James) who celebrate the theme of flight from civilization as a failure to address pressing socio-cultural issues in the art.

Ice Land

At 8 a.m. when I let the dogs back in after their morning frolic in the backyard I just stood in the doorway shivering uncontrollably. I scuttled to the computer and checked My Yahoo weather; it was exactly 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

I used to live on tropical islands, longing for air conditioning on sweltering southwest monsoon afternoons. Then I fell for a guy who insisted he could only be happy where there were four distinct and consecutive seasons. Ken really relished January, lolling on his recliner, watching his beloved westerns, exerting himself only to beam and announce, "I just love it here."

I'm not so sure I'd agree today. I'm too cold to think, let alone write, so I'll soon swaddle myself with quilts and finish T. R. Reid's "The Healing on America," for one book group and begin Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" for another. It should be warmer, albeit snowier, tomorrow. At least My Yahoo tells me so.

If my fingers thaw, over the next couple of weeks I plan to write:

1. A tribute to Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, for Uncle Jam.
2. A story about what makes me happy...two possible markets in mind.
3. A memoir about son Steve's wedding...and how I nearly missed it.
4. The aforementioned essay on happiness.

These trees in today's posted photo are in my side yard. They are what I gaze at when I'm working on the laptop in the backroom. Tomorrow their branches will be laden with snow once again. And it will be warmer.

Immortality and The Note Project

“I understand [Willy Loman's] longing for immortality. Willy's writing his name in a cake of ice on a hot day, but he wishes he were writing in stone.” -- Arthur Miller


In earlier days I liked to haunt cemeteries. I never passed up a chance to roam and read the epitaphs. I paid my respects to my favorite writer, Charles Dickens, at the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. I pondered the terrifying fate of all those anonymous laborers who drowned off the California coast in the Chinese cemetery in Mendocino. One rainy afternoon I spent half an hour paying homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald in the tiny St. Mary's churchyard on Rockville Pike in Maryland. Now I reflect on how all these people have been remembered.

Christmas Week when I visited Tombstone, Arizona, my perspective about cemeteries shifted. The neat piles of rocks on more than 250 graves on the hill overlooking the old Western town commemorate brevity and brutality...women perishing in childbirth, gunslingers cut down in their twenties, hangings, drownings, massacres, stabbings, consumption, poisoning, suicides. Aside from a Confederate flag on Old Man Clanton's grave, I saw no tokens of remembrance such as I witnessed festooning Fitzgerald's final resting place, no flowers, no notes, no crosses. Just piles of stones.

All New Year's weekend I've been reflecting on how we live out our lives, and how we may or may not be remembered. On New Year's morning when Paula Deen waved to the crowds as Rose Parade Grand Master, my thoughts drifted towards those who rode in that position before. I looked up the list of previous Grand Masters for the Tournament of Roses. We may well remember Edgar Bergen, Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd, because their work is preserved for us on tape. But who, aside from family perhaps, remembers the doctors and colonels who dominated the early years of the event? Fame indeed can be fleeting.

Like Willie Loman, I'd like to write my name on something more substantial than a cake of ice on a hot day. My resolution for 2011 is to write more, if not on stone, at least on my laptop...more stories, more articles, and especially more notes to friends.

The Note Project, developed by Mike O'Mary of Dream of Things, invites everybody to participate by writing notes of appreciation. Mike's website says:

Become part of the ripple effect that will transform into a tsunami of good will in 2011!

WRITE A NOTE to someone you love today, and SHARE YOUR STORY with us here, so others will be inspired to do the same.

Check out the site and add your note here:

http://noteproject.com/

And, if you're ever in the Washington DC area, visit Fitzgerald's grave, which he shares with his wife, Zelda. The tombstone carries the final words from The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Pure Gold

Since this has been my Dickens year, I've neglected to mention that "the man who invented Christmas" is not my only literary love. In the past I've devoted years to writers as diverse as D.H. Lawrence and William Dean Howells. And decades to Herbert Gold, the "elder statesman of the beat generation."

I first met the latter at novelist Carolyn See's Symposium of California Writers at Loyala Marymount in 1979. In those days I lived in Long Beach, CA, and wrote for an arts magazine, Uncle Jam. See pointed Gold out at an evening reception and said, "Go say hello to that handsome man. He's Herb Gold."

I nearly spilled my Pinot Noir. Gold's Salt: A Novel so moved me when it first appeared in 1963 that I made a diary entry: "Gold's writing is so electrifying that I'm convinced he'll one day win the Nobel Prize for Literature." Alas, he never did...but his close friend, Saul Bellow, did.

So I walked over to Gold and said, "I'd like to give you a hug to thank you for Salt." And always a gentleman, Gold hugged me in return.

Now Dickens, Howells or Lawrence never hugged me. And none of those writers phoned me up yesterday, either. But Herbert Gold did.

Throughout the '80s Gold and I kept in touch. Every time I'd visit my father in San Francisco, I'd give him a call. Once he took me to the San Francisco Press Club, and kissed me goodbye while we waited for the Market Street cable car to return me to Twin Peaks. Another time he came to the house on State Street to exchange stories about the Tenderloin with my dad who had operated night clubs there.

I sent Gold a copy of Uncle Jam with my tale of meeting Henry Miller at his 80th birthday party at a UCLA shebang. Gold sent me autographed copies of his books to offer at a Womenshelter auction. Every time he published a new book, I'd send a fan letter...even confessing that I was so irritated at the conclusion of Swiftie the Magician, that I flung the book across the room.

A quirky correspondent, Gold sent his notes on an assortment of postcards, some depicting the famed Haitian hangout of Graham Greene, The Hotel Oloffson, sometimes known as the Greenwich Village of Haiti. When I finally got to Port-au-Prince in 2001, where I was conducting a Peace Corps HIV/AIDS and Youth training on September 11, I stayed a night at the Oloffson, and bought a copy of the house band's latest cassette.

This past spring I read Gold's latest memoir, Still Alive!: A Feisty Bohemian Explores the Art of Growing Old. Though it had been a dozen years since I last contacted him, I wrote Gold a note and sent the RAM cassette to him. He responded, irreverent as ever.

When the earthquake hit Haiti earlier this year, I called Gold right away. He assured me that he had planned to return to Haiti sometime this year. It was still his favorite haunt. His Haiti: The Best Nightmare on Earth, details his love of the place. At one time Bill Clinton had offered him the ambassadorship there. He declined.

When I visited my son in Southern California this past summer I finally boxed up my hard-to-find these days Herbert Gold books that had been stored in his garage since I first went overseas with Peace Corps in 1987. I think they're worth something these days, as collector's items. But I intend to reread them all.

So why did Gold call me yesterday? I'd sent him a holiday card with a story about my late husband that will be published next year in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for the Young at Heart. "Our Great Expectations" relates the final trip to UK that Ken and I took when he still could negotiate airports, and my Dickensian summer at Cambridge. Gold wanted to tell me that he was touched by the piece. Imagine! A man I consider the greatest living American male writer, bothered to call up an old acquaintance.

"Terri? It's Herb. I guess it's not necessary to say Gold, since nobody since 1929 has been named Herb. It would be like naming your son Adolph in the early '40s."

I wanted to know about Haiti. Gold did go, and his article will appear in The Hudson Review's upcoming issue. I intend to read it. And I'll send another fan note. I have a collection of notes and letters from Herbert. He told me to hold on to them, and maybe I could sell them someday. He confessed he's sold some letters from his correspondents. But he was quick with a disclaimer: "I don't do it while they're still alive."

I asked if he'd sold his letters from Bellow. "Nearly did, but the dealer wanted to barter and nickle-and-dime and it wasn't worth it."

Gold's leaving his own papers and correspondence to the Bancroft Library at Stanford. I plan to copy his notes and the photo or two I have, and mail them to Gold soon...I like the idea of being archived.

Talking yesterday with Herbert Gold, who will turn 87 in March, certainly brightened my day. Especially when Gold responded to my comment that I intended to return to Cambridge this next summer.

"Just make certain you don't fall for some tall, good-looking 23-year-old British undergrad who will offer to marry you for your money."

Here's links to commentary about Gold and to his piece about Allen Ginsberg, written for Salon not long after the poet's death.

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4362/Gold-Herbert.html

http://www.salon.com/april97/ginsberg970416.html