Marcia Meier's Blog, page 14

Quote of the Day - Colette

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. - Colette

Inspiration Knocks

“Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It’s your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak. The muses or fairies – they’re trying to get your attention.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

When I read Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, I was going through a similar life transition and deeply resonated with the book, as did millions of others. Since then, I have been intrigued to see her interest in creativity become a passion, and I have learned a lot from her. (See her amazing TED talk.)

The quote above, from the October Oprah magazine article about Gilbert and her new novel, The Signature of All Things, is a great reminder to be aware as writers.

Prompts from the universe, your muse, fairies – whatever you want to call them – are real. But hearing them requires slowing down and listening, being receptive to the creative gifts that come to us. Several times I’ve had powerful experiences like this.

More than 20 years ago I wrote a scene in a creative writing class. I really liked it, but didn’t have a clue where to take it. So I put it away and only very occasionally looked at it. I just didn’t know how it would fit into a larger story.

Then, about three years ago, I was in a dream state in the early morning, barely awake, and the story came to me. I watched the entire novel unfold in my mind’s eye. The scene I had written was clearly a prologue, and I knew the entire narrative from that beginning. I woke up and went to my desk and wrote a brief synopsis and a chapter outline. I’ve been working on the novel ever since.

More recently, I needed to work out a problem with a new nonfiction book idea. Once again, the solution – vivid and detailed – came to me in an early morning dream state.
These moments of revelation, bursts of creative genius, happen all the time, perhaps in small ways we might not necessarily recognize as divinely inspired. But I know they are.

From the perfect word suddenly popping into one’s head, to the discovery of a title for that article or book that had remained elusive.

The muse exists. It works. But you have to let it in, be receptive, invite it to inhabit your creative space. Meditation works, so does journaling. I do both. Listening to music, walking on the beach or through the woods also is effective. Any immersion in Nature will invite your muse to visit. Thoreau went to Walden Pond. Wordsworth walked the English Lake District and gazed upon fields of daffodils.

Muses don’t like to be rushed and they don’t come on command. But with a little openness and invitation, they will come.

Review - City of Mirrors by Melodie Johnson Howe

Melodie Johnson Howe’s latest novel, the detective thriller City of Mirrors, is a fun romp through
Los Angeles with an unlikely heroine, the aging starlet Diana Poole.

When the novel opens, Poole is mourning the loss of her
screenwriter husband and the even more recent death of her movie star mother.
Poole is forced to go back to work and lands a part in a movie. But things
begin to go seriously awry when Poole agrees to visit the young star of the
film and discovers her body in a dumpster behind her apartment. Poole turns
detective, and the more she uncovers, the more things don’t add up, but bodies
do.

This is Johnson Howe’s second Diana Poole mystery (the first
was Shooting Hollywood, 2012), and
its considerable twists and turns will both amaze and delight readers.

Poole is a wonderfully complex character, and Johnson Howe
has masterfully captured the angst of an aging actress who’s suddenly alone.
She worries about how she’ll support herself without her husband, and frets
that the one job she’s been able to land will somehow disappear (it does).
Coming to terms with her contentious and tenuous relationship with her
narcissistic late mother is an underlying theme that will resonate with anyone
who has struggled with an overbearing parent.

Despite her very real fears, Poole is a fearless and smart
detective, and Johnson Howe’s brilliant plot keeps Poole – and readers –
guessing until the final page. If you love mysteries, this one belongs on your
books-to-read list.

 

Review - City of Mirrors

Melodie Johnson Howe’s latest novel, the detective thriller City of Mirrors, is a fun romp through
Los Angeles with an unlikely heroine, the aging starlet Diana Poole.

When the novel opens, Poole is mourning the loss of her
screenwriter husband and the even more recent death of her movie star mother.
Poole is forced to go back to work and lands a part in a movie. But things
begin to go seriously awry when Poole agrees to visit the young star of the
film and discovers her body in a dumpster behind her apartment. Poole turns
detective, and the more she uncovers, the more things don’t add up, but bodies
do.

This is Johnson Howe’s second Diana Poole mystery (the first
was Shooting Hollywood, 2012), and
its considerable twists and turns will both amaze and delight readers.

Poole is a wonderfully complex character, and Johnson Howe
has masterfully captured the angst of an aging actress who’s suddenly alone.
She worries about how she’ll support herself without her husband, and frets
that the one job she’s been able to land will somehow disappear (it does).
Coming to terms with her contentious and tenuous relationship with her
narcissistic late mother is an underlying theme that will resonate with anyone
who has struggled with an overbearing parent.

Despite her very real fears, Poole is a fearless and smart
detective, and Johnson Howe’s brilliant plot keeps Poole – and readers –
guessing until the final page. If you love mysteries, this one belongs on your
books-to-read list.

 

Lyric from a Dana Gioia Poem

This final stanza in Dana Gioia's poem "The Lost Garden" really spoke to me this morning. What a beautiful lyric.

The trick is making
memory a blessing,


To learn by loss the
cool subtraction of desire,


Of wanting nothing
more than what has been,


To know the past
forever lost, yet seeing


Behind the wall a
garden still in blossom.

(From his collection Interrogations at Noon, Graywolf Press, 2001.)

 

At Avila once again. And thoughts on writing.

It's hard to believe, but my writing buddies and I have been coming to Avila Beach to write every six months for nearly seven years. We are back this week, and it is a time I relish for the quiet, the serenity, the opportunity to get away from my office and client work for a few days and focus on my own writing projects.

It's beautiful up here, as usual. We always come up in April and October. Sometimes it's chilly and foggy; often it's sunny and warm. Today it has been both: chill fog this morning dissipating to warmth and sun this afternoon.

The hotel we stay in is on the ocean, so anytime a walk on the beach beckons, you can have your toes in the sand within minutes.

This is a time to breathe deeply, to ponder, to journal, to figure out a writing problem. I'm working on two book proposals, and also planning to write two book reviews and several blog posts. 

I've been reading Jon Katz's Bedlam Farm Journal recently. He posts several times a day, and even after only a few weeks I feel I know him and his artist wife, Maria. And I feel I am on a first-name basis with his dogs, Frieda, Red and Lenore, the three donkeys, the sheep, and the barn cats Flo and Minnie.

These past few weeks, Jon has shared the drama of Minnie's run-in with a wild animal of some kind.  Her leg was severely injured, broken and mutilated, and Jon and Maria had to decide whether to have Minnie euthanized or have her leg amputated. I've followed the story each day, from their decision to amputate the leg through the surgery and, now, Minnie's recovery back at home.

For the first time in her life, Minnie's in the house, and getting used to the luxuries there. They plan to return her to her life as a barn cat, once she's healed, but I'm wondering if Minnie will choose otherwise. 

Meanwhile, Jon writes about the dogs and the sheep, the donkeys and the vagaries of small-farm life, all the while documenting his posts with his photographs. 

Over the weekend he blogged about his visit to the University of Tulsa, where he taught a workshop on memoir. (He's the author of 12 books, most of them memoirs and most involving dogs.) 

The literary crowd didn't take much to his assertion that he is writing memoir now essentially through his blog. Agents and traditional publishing are things of the past, he told them. 

I can't say I disagree with him. I enjoy writing in my journal every day. From now on, I will share more of my thoughts in this space as well. If you're a writer, you have to write, even if the old formats fall away and a new world of online publishing takes its place. 

The old system of unfettered gatekeepers has crumbled in all genres, which may turn out to be a very good thing. I know it is for readers, who now have unlimited access to writing that previously might not have made the cut. Some of it may be awful, yes, but there will always also be those singular treasures that no one in traditional publishing was willing to take a risk on. I trust this will be as good for writers as it is for readers. I believe it will be. Time will be the judge. Meanwhile, I'm willing to take a chance on the new world order.  

A Dog's Life

My dog, Chevella, on the beach near Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. She blasted down the beach to where hundreds of birds were settled on the sand. The birds rose as one, swarmed her and circled around, cawing and crying. She was beside herself, jumping and racing into the waves. It's a dog's life.

An Artist's Prayer

Many of you have read Julia Cameron's wonderful book on creativity, The Artist's Way. I have had my copy since 1991, and while I've read it a number of times, it is only recently that I decided to work the book - do all the tasks and exercises.

It's been an interesting and in many ways surprising journey. I've journaled most of my life, so the morning pages aren't new. What is, though, is the shift I've experienced in my creativity. My writing comes more readily, more effortlessly. And my life seems to be shifting, as well. Julia tells us that will happen, and the skeptic in me kind of snorted. But she is right.

One of the tasks is to write An Artist's Prayer. She offers one as an example in the book. I actually like mine a lot better than hers. (No kidding.)  Have you written an artist's prayer? Feel free to use mine when you're sending entreaties heavenward.

My Artist's Prayer

O, great Creator

Guide my hand

Open my heart

Quiet my mind

Allow your inspiration to flow to and through me

Make me your instrument for creativity

Allow my words to move and touch others

To soothe, to bring awareness, to make life easier for
others

To bring about justice and foment peace

May I always work in a way that brings your holy spirit and
love to others

May your vast love hold me safe and keep me whole as I
create and write in service to you and the world

Quote of the Day - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was strolling through the Old Mission rose garden a couple of weeks
ago, and photographed this rose. It reminded me of how much we miss by worrying about things we can't do anything about: This moment is all that matters; do not
let it go to waste with thoughts of past transgressions or frets about the future.

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you
could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as
you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a
spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." -

















Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Trust

We have a blind cat. She’s just out of the terrorism of
kitten-hood, fifteen months old.  When my daughter called me from Chico last
fall and said, “I’m thinking of adopting a blind kitty,” I said, “No, don’t do
it!” Those of you who know Kendall will not be surprised to hear that when she
came home at Thanksgiving, it was with the blind kitten.

Maya-Roo, the blind kitten. 

Her name is Maya-Roo. The Roo was my contribution, si nce she
leaps into the air like a kangaroo anytime someone walks past her, launching
herself into the unknown. I think it’s a self-protective thing, since she
doesn’t have a clue what might be approaching.

When the dog comes close,
she leaps into the air and comes down on the dog’s shoulders or back. The
dog is always game, and soon there’s a tussle, a back and forth between them of
paw bats and guttural sounds and pouncing that at first made me fear for the
cat, since the dog outweighs her by at least forty-five pounds. Over time, they have
become fast friends and playmates, and an endless source of laughter in the house. 

I have watched Maya-Roo a lot these past months. Adjusting
to the house, figuring out where things are, and boldly trusting that objects will
stay where she remembers they are. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes a chair
will be moved, or she’ll misjudge the distance to the arm of the couch and
launch herself into the air, only to fall short or hit another piece of
furniture. Sometimes she runs headlong into a doorway or a wall. Then she sits
for a minute, almost as if she’s shaking it off, and then she’s off and running
at full speed in the other direction.

She is teaching me much about trust. Several times she’s
gotten lost outside. She wants to be outdoors in the worst way, and our yard
isn’t fenced. So several times whoever is supposedly watching her (Kendall and
I have both been guilty of this) has forgotten long enough for her to wander
away from the house and out into the parking lot, or worse, down the driveway
toward the street. Then there’s a panicked frenzy between us, frantically
searching, calling her name and hoping she hasn’t gotten into the road. We’ve
found her as far as a block from here, always appearing out of nowhere, it seems,
as we're racing around the neighborhood. She comes to us willingly, as if to
say, “Hey, I’m right here! Where have you been?”

It’s hard to fathom what it would be like to go through life
without the gift of vision. Her other senses are acute. Her hearing is
extraordinary. I have watched her in the garden detect a bug flying past, jump
at it and almost catch it. Her sense of smell is impeccable, as well, and she
uses it to find her way about the house and yard, sniffing the air and
following her nose.

Again I think, How
would my life be if I couldn’t see? It is hard enough to trust that a
certain chair will be where you left it when you are sighted. What if you
couldn’t depend on that? What if you couldn’t depend on anything being the way you remember it? What if everything you knew
was subject to change? I sometimes watch Maya-Roo race through the house. She
is still so kitten-like, and will suddenly bounce up and run through the room,
leaping into the air where she thinks the couch should be, where the bookshelf
was yesterday, where the dog seems to be given the jingle of her collar. She
just assumes it will be where it was the last time. And if it isn’t, that
doesn’t seem to faze her. She doesn’t become cautious. It doesn't keep her from
blasting into space once again, trusting that the couch pillows will be there
to grab with her claws, or the books on the shelf will still be a wall she can
leap over and hide behind.

She has never been fearful. And that makes me wonder if she
is fearless by nature. Are other blind cats and dogs naturally cautious? Since
she was blind at birth, does that make it “easier” for her in the sense that
she’s doesn’t know what she’s missing?

I try to emulate her sense of adventure and belief in what
exists. I try to trust that life will always be something new, and that sometimes
what I expect will shift and change, and I will have to adjust. It’s a powerful
lesson from a small creature that delights in the world around her. She’s not
missing a thing.