Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 66

Change is Scary and Necessary

This morning Howard and I made an executive decision, The Body Politic will not have a bonus story in the printed book. Howard has been wrestling with this story for six months, but it still is not working and we can’t afford the three more months that are necessary for the story to sort itself out. We have to have a new book for the summer conventions. So instead of Howard slogging through despair with this intractable story, we’re going to fill the extra space with interesting new footnotes and marginalia. Making the decision lifted a weight from us. Suddenly we are in the last rush to get the book done, which is always a fun part for me. It is the part where every day I can see us get closer to sending the book away for print. So we are relieved, but we feel guilty for being relieved because we know that there are fans out there who love the bonus stories. They will be sad and disappointed. Also Howard spent some time being sad because he hates to break the bonus story tradition even if it is just for this book. There is also some measure of fear, what if this decision is the breaking point where fans decide we’ve sold out and they all go do something else? Happiness, relief, sadness, excitement, worry, and fear fill our heads this morning.

It has me thinking about businesses, creative projects, and change. Schlock Mercenary will be thirteen years old in June. In the course of those years the strip has seen changes in artwork and story telling with Howard’s growing skill. We left Keenspot, joined Blank Label Comics, then struck out solo a few years later. Switching to the new website was a fearful change, as was hiring Travis to be our colorist, and ending the Schlocktoberfest tradition. We knew that each of these decisions was right, but we worried that our fans would not agree with us. People do not like their beloved things to change. Except things must change. Howard and I have to change. Both the Schlock Mercenary strip and our business need to change and grow or else they will go stale. I’m hoping that some of the time freed up by shelving this bonus story can go into the creation of more electronic editions. Even better would be to launch into production on Longshoreman of the Apocalypse so we could put out two books this year and finally be making steps to catch up with the online archive. Funny how a change can be obvious and necessary, but still feel risky.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

As Effective as a Jellyfish Swimming Against the Current

My front room is a jumble of boxes which stocked our LTUE tables with merchandise, but which now need to be sorted and put away. My inbox is full of emails all of which deserve considered replies. My to do list is full of things I want to get done. Any time I pull one of these things into my brain thinking that I will focus on it, I instead find myself checking twitter or wandering around the kitchen in search of some unspecified food which will make me happier. I have to face the fact that today is not going to be my most effective day. I did manage to write up my presentation notes. I also got dressed for the day just after lunch. Then I tackled the problem of convincing Amazon.com that we should be allowed to accept payments through Kickstarter, the fact that this required me to put on clothes and drive to a location with a fax machine did not thrill me. The fact that it is all still pending thrills me even less. Howard’s Kickstarter is ready to go, now we just have to wait in administrative limbo. Not a great place when I’m still tired enough that any small obstacle feels like the great wall of China. For the rest of the day I will feel accomplished if I manage to fix dinner, not eat a million cookies, and make everyone go to bed on time.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Structuring Life to Make Room for Creativity

This blog post is a write-up from my presentation notes. I’ve given this presentation at LTUE. I’ll be giving it again at LDS Storymakers in May. As I wrote this from my notes, I noticed a major difference in the flow of a presentation and of a blog post. Speaking to a group is more conversational and I included anecdotes and examples that I’m leaving out of this post, because if I were to include them this post would be 15,000 words long. I’ve chosen not to break the presentation into 10 separate posts because I feel like having these abbreviated notes all in one place will be more useful than a blog series. Not included in this post is the discussion that resulted from the question and answer session at the end of the presentation. A recording was made of my LTUE presentation. I’ll link it when it is available on the internet.

I am a busy person. I have four children who attend three schools, all of which feel like they can email me. The schools have attached PTAs who want pieces of my time. I also share a business with my husband where I do the accounting, order management, shipping, customer support, layout work, art direction, and a host of smaller tasks. I have a house which gets disheveled if I don’t pay attention. I have to eat on a daily basis as do my people and the cat. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am busy. I’m busy even though I am constantly trying to be less busy. In this I’m not unique, because everyone is busy. Life fills to overflowing with things to do. Yet, last year I wrote a novel’s worth of blog entries. I wrote a picture book, Strength of Wild Horses, which I’ll be Kickstarting in a couple of months. I remodeled sections of my house, wrote letters, sewed. The remainder of this presentation gives some principles which allowed me to make space for these creative things. Not included is the advice to set aside time for creative things, which is good advice, however I feel it important to discuss how to structure life so that the time can be made available.

1. Identify Your Support Network

I could not accomplish what I do without the support of those who share my house. My husband could not accomplish what he does without my support. The first step in adjusting your life to make room for your creative pursuits is to talk to the people closest to you. You need to identify what sacrifices they may have to make and whether they are willing to make them. It has to be a conversation and the sacrificing needs to be reciprocal. Sometimes the people around you will not be allies, they will be obstacles or enemies. Then you have some hard decisions to make. You have to decide whether to value the relationships or your creative dream. The answers will be individual. Sometimes the creativity needs to be put down for a while, other times it is necessary to declare a creative space and let everyone be mad about it until they adjust. I recommend sitting down and making a list of who is affected by the creative space you need, how they are affected, what support you hope for from them, and what you might need to give in return to keep the relationship balanced. Making this list will require self awareness about your creative pursuit.

2. Arrange a Physical Space

You need to have a home for your creative pursuit, the space does not have to be large. For the longest time my space for my writing was contained inside my laptop. That worked really well for me because it was portable. I could take it anywhere, open it up and be in my writing space. Once I entered my writing space, the writing thoughts would unfold in my brain. When Howard began cartooning, we put all his cartooning things in a box on the kitchen counter. Then we shifted things around so he had a drawing table in our front room. Right now he has an office with a computer desk, a drawing table, a crafting table, and a second drawing desk at a local comics shop. Creating a physical space for your creative pursuit declares that it matters, it also provides a visual reminder that you might want to do your creative things. For more thoughts on spaces and how they affect us, I recommend reading The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka.

3. Understand Your Biorhythms

Everyone has alert times of day and low energy points. Learning when yours are can make a huge difference in your creative output. Ideally you will put your block of creative time at your most creative time of day. This is not always possible, but knowing when you are most creative gives you something to aim for. A common pattern is to be high energy first thing in the morning with an energy lull in the afternoon and another energy burst in the evening. Some creators are at their best late at night, others before dawn. Find your pattern.

4. Use Supports for Your Schedule

In general, creative people struggle with creating structure for their lives. Howard and I depend heavily on the imposed structure from our kids’ school schedules. It gives is a required time to be up in the morning. We know that we have to do kid stuff until they are out the door. Then we switch to work tasks. Willpower is a limited resource. This is why I try to set up my creative schedule to require as little willpower as possible. I train myself that right after lunch I write for awhile. That way I don’t have to think about if I feel like it. I don’t have to muster the energy to get moving. I’m already moving for lunch, I just let that motion carry me into doing something creative.

5. Master the Small Stretch

Humans have a tendency to get excited and try to overhaul their entire life at once. They want to put writing in the schedule, and start exercising every day, and always have the dishes done. They want to Do All The Things. Then they wear out very quickly. Don’t overhaul your life, make one small change. Give that change time to settle in and become a habit. Once it does, you’ll be able to see what the next small change needs to be. The accumulation of small adjustments will change life dramatically over time. It can also help unsupportive family and friends become accustomed to creative things when they see that supporting creativity does not require a complete overhaul of life.

6. Learn to Work in Fragments

Creative people tend to want to work in big bursts, to immerse themselves for hours, or days, only to emerge when they’ve exhausted their energy. This is extremely disruptive to a busy schedule. Learning how to open up your creative thing and work on it for ten minutes or an hour is an incredibly powerful capability. This is where having a physical space for your creativity can be so very useful. You can train your brain that when you enter your creative space all the thoughts are there waiting for you. Working in fragments is particularly important if you are a parent of young children, because they cut your time into itty bitty fragments.

7. Ponder the Tortoise and the Hare

I used to hate the Aesop fable about the tortoise and the hare. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized I hated it because I was a hare, and in the story the hare loses. My natural inclination is to tackle a project and not stop until it is done. Unfortunately most creative projects are too big to be managed in a huge burst of energy. You can write a novel during NaNoWriMo, but at the end you are exhausted and the work on that book has barely begun. But if you learn to work in fragments, you can teach yourself to be like the tortoise. You can just keep stepping forward. It feels like you’re not getting anywhere. You work endlessly for what feels like no result at all, but there will come a moment when you reach the top of a hill and can see how far all those little steps have taken you. I truly admire the natural tortoises of the world. They get stuff done.

8. Health and Spoon Theory.

I began with a brief description of spoon theory, which is that we only have limited amounts of energy available in a given day. For visualization purposes that energy is represented as spoons. Those who are healthy are allotted more spoons than those who struggle with illness. Each task of daily life uses up spoons. There is inherent unfairness in energy distribution and this is hard. Sometimes energy which you wanted to go into creative pursuits will have to be spent on other things. I don’t have good answers for this, but I don’t feel like this presentation is complete without acknowledging that health can be a major difficulty. Also I want those who have good health to be aware that not everyone does, and maybe sometimes they can share some of their energy with those who have much less.

9. Get Outside Your Box

Creativity does not burst into spontaneous existence. I think of it as a deep subconscious aquifer full of all the stuff that accumulates from the places I go and people I talk to. I drill a well down into it and draw from it when I am writing. Sometimes when we are trying to organize life to maximize creative output we make the mistake of removing from the schedule all the things that fill us up. Playing video games or watching television may look like a waste of time, but for some people those things are essential to filling the creative aquifer. Each person will have different things that fill them up. I garden or visit new places. Howard paints and goes to movies. Both of us visit with friends. Find the things that fill you up and know that sometimes you’ll need to choose the filling activities instead of the creation activities.

10. Your System Will Break

You’ve followed all the steps outlined above, you’ve crafted the perfect schedule, everything falls into places and flows, but then suddenly it all falls apart. Something changed, things always change. My kids get older, their needs shift, I shift, we enter a different part of the business cycle, school gets out for the summer, school starts for the fall. The list of ways life can change is innumerable. When your system falls apart, just grab the best pieces from it and build a new schedule. In another few months that one will fall apart too. Having your schedule fall apart can actually be a gift because sometimes it forces us to really look at all the pieces and build something that works even better. When I was a young parent it felt like each overhaul of the schedule made something completely different. Now I can see that patterns emerge. These days I don’t have to overhaul very often, I just have to tweak.

This is when we moved into the Question and Answer portion of the presentation. I remember we talked a little bit about how to handle internet distraction and I recommended taking a break to see which parts of the internet you actually missed. Other excellent questions were asked, but I’m afraid that I can’t remember any more. This presentation was followed by two full days of conversations and they all blend together. Each of the points above could be expanded into a full discussion and blog post of its own. Perhaps someday I’ll do that. For now I hope that this set of notes gives people a place to start as they’re contemplating how to fit creativity in with everything else that they are already doing.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

After LTUE 2013 is Complete

The extent of my post-convention fatigue became apparent when I crouched down with a scoop of kibble to pour into the cat’s bowl. She was standing nearby, very intent on being there the moment the food hit the bowl, except I began to lose my balance. It was a slight bobble, the sort I usually correct without even noticing, but I couldn’t. I teetered and the cat startled, spinning to face me with wide eyes as her feet tried to bolt in three directions at once. I think it was the skitter noise of her claws on the hardwood floor that really undid me. I began to laugh. The laughing absorbed all of my remaining energy and balance abandoned me completely. A slow crumple landed me on the floor, head leaning on a nearby stool, my knees surrounded by all the food that had fallen when my limp fingers released the scoop. It was not that funny. I knew it wasn’t and that was part of the reason I could not stop laughing. I laughed because I was too tired to stand up again, because the cat sported a tail like a bottle brush, because kibble was everywhere, because it was so ridiculous for me to be laughing this much, because my children had accumulated in a hovering crowd wondering what on earth was wrong with their mother.

“Mom? Are you laughing or crying? Are you okay?” They asked.

Yes. I was both laughing and crying. Everything was fine, but I really needed to curl up into a ball until the twitching tension in my body calmed. I’d spent three really good days, filled to over flowing with good things. I’d just reached complete overload and required a complete system shutdown so that I could reboot and function again.

One of the greatest gifts given to me during this LTUE was parceled out in tiny pieces over all three days: I have a professional identity separate from Howard’s. It used to be that I was the business arm of Schlock Mercenary, Howard’s handler and support. It is an accurate description, because I do those things. I like being an integral part of Schlock. Yet I also wanted to be myself with my own things. It sometimes got frustrating to only ever be relevant as an appendage. “And this is Sandra who makes things run for Howard.” In the past three days I was only introduced that way once. All of the other times people mentioned my blog, my picture book, or my presentations. They might also mention my work for Schlock, but it became part of the picture rather than the whole of it. I saw it when people came to the table. They would talk to Howard and then they would come have a separate conversation with me because they had things to say about what I’ve created. For the past several years Howard and I have been working together to help me establish a separate professional identity. LTUE let me see that we’ve begun to succeed.

Another joy was setting up Kiki’s artwork on part of one table and having dozens of conversations with people who admired it. Kiki herself was able to have those conversations on Saturday when she sat next to her art and created something new. I love seeing her glow. It was not just the praise, but also the realization that the career she wants is actually possible, that there really are people out there who will buy her work because they love it. She sold three pieces, but the hope she brought home is far more valuable than the money.

I had a presentation and two panels, each of which went really well. I left feeling like there was lots more to discuss, but that we’d covered the truly essential pieces. Enough people came to tell me they enjoyed the presentations for me to know that I was part of something that was valuable to someone else. I also came away with new panel and presentation ideas. I’ll have to update my presentation list.

Then there were the conversations. I spoke with long-time friends who are in hard places right now. I rejoiced with friends who had good news. I joked with the pair of friends who traveled from Hawaii to stay in my house and help us with running our dealer room tables. I met people I’d only known online. I talked with fans who come back year after year to see what is new and who become friends. There were new people just discovering Schlock and my writing. Some came up simply because they’d been in a panel and wanted to talk further about the topic. We talked with long time business partners and new friends who needed advice. Often the conversations were short, like small gifts dropped off to be fully appreciated later. A few of the conversations ran across hours filled with topics both silly and important. Each was a gift of time and connection. I’m still turning them over in my head.

I frequently end up jellyfishing after conventions. I drift through my house like a jellyfish in a current. With the cat food incident I realized I’d pushed beyond drifting fatigue and into a realm of complete blitzed-out incapability. I lay in bed so exhausted and so wound up that I didn’t think sleep would ever come, but unable to muster the usual frustration I feel for insomnia. And it wasn’t insomnia really. Sleep arrived quite quickly, it was just that my body was informing me in no uncertain terms that we really should have rested long ago.

I woke Sunday morning with things still to do. Four children needed to eat breakfast and be herded into church clothes and off to the meetings. Our friends needed to be farewelled because they had a long drive ahead of them. I needed to figure out how to make myself suitably presentable for church while minimizing effort and maximizing comfort. My feet were not at all interested in wearing pretty shoes. Church was followed by a meeting during which I needed to be coherent and organized. I sat in corners at church, not asleep, but definitely conserving energy. After my meeting I came home and slept. This is all part of the convention recovery process. Tomorrow will be a day of re-establishing normal and clearing away the last of the convention thoughts and mess. I have follow up tasks for next week including writing up my presentation notes.

LTUE this year was an exceptionally good experience. I loved the Marriott venue and I hope they’ll make that into a permanent home.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Seven Paragraphs About LTUE

I came home to an explosion of valentines wrappers and cards strewn all over the kitchen table. All four kids were downstairs watching Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes, only Link felt the need to welcome me home with a hug. They were all fine and had been fine all afternoon while I was gone. I have reached the point where I do not need to obsessively plan contingencies and give detailed instructions when I’m going to be gone. The holiday also meant that the kids did not have a homework panic because none had been assigned. All was well at Chez Tayler.

People came up to me at the table, not to ask me questions about Howard, but to say hello and ask me about my writing and projects. This time I had answers for them, which is a huge improvement over last year when I stood behind a table of Howard’s things and only had one four-year-old book to show. The difference is in me, I have shifted inside, made space for my creative things, and bit by bit they accumulated over the course of a year. This year I can point to two books on the table. In a few months I hope to be able to point at four. I talk about those hopes and people are glad for me. Then they tell me about their hopes and I am glad for them.

Often it is the small conversations which stay with me, the seem inconsequential: talking about projects and events. But then one person will share some small piece of information which shifts the possibilities for someone else. I see it over and over as the people come to our table to talk to us and to each other. I love seeing that moment when a new future becomes visible or a solution is handed over. Sometimes I get to be part of that exchange, sometimes I am the recipient. At home I think of the faces I saw today, the conversations I had. I turn them over and examine them like a jeweler examines stones. Small moments shine, the people shine and I’m not even sure they realize it.

Publishing a book is often compared to giving birth with analogies drawn between pregnancy and writing. There is another similarity, authors share their publishing stories just as women will spontaneously tell labor horror stories to a pregnant woman. I hear stories that sound to me like glowing shining tales about the wonder and beauty of this process. Other tales clarify how badly this can all go wrong. I listen and I wish somehow the whole thing could be easier and less messy. The thing is that there are happy and horrible stories about every single available publishing path. Listening to some of these stories is educational so that pitfalls are identified: theoretically to be avoided. However listening to too many stories can leave me discouraged and wondering why I want to publish in the first place. Then I remember the people who come up to the table and tell me that my words made their lives better. I just need to keep on going and pray that I’ll muddle my way through some hybrid path that takes me to places where my words can continue to help.

The room was full when I walked in, I’d not really expected that. On other occasions when I’ve taught solo presentations I had between five and twelve people for an audience. The room was full and I walked to the front to lay out my presentation props: books that I might want to hold up as examples. In the end I forgot to hold them up. I forgot to mention several other things as well. This did not matter because somehow as I followed the bread crumbs of my presentation notes I was able to say the right things. I did not say all of the right things, but sometimes the whole room laughed, which is a pretty good sign of a presentation going well. I was also able to see moments when an audience member nodded or a head dipped to scribble a note. These are also good signs. Probably the most important thing I said was that some of what I said is the wrong advice for some of the audience because everyone has to find their own ways to build creativity into their lives. Sitting here and thinking about it, I keep thinking about additional things to say. Some of those will end up in the presentation notes I type up here for the blog next week. Others will wait until I give the presentation again at LDS Storymakers. Mostly I don’t know exactly what I said or how I said it, but people came to thank me afterward which means that for some of my audience I said exactly the right thing. There was a recording device in front of me I wonder if I will continue to think I did well when I listen to the recording. Yes it will be available on the internet. I’ll link it when it is.

Howard and I had solo presentations at the exact same hour. We made jokes about how our friends would have to pick which Tayler they liked best. I pictured myself with a mostly empty room next door to Howard’s full room while he made the audience laugh. Both of us had full audiences, which felt very happy to me. Howard’s presentation/workshop also went really well. I hope he gets a chance to give it again.

I was not sure if I should go out to dinner or rush home to the kids. I sort of split the difference, staying to eat for awhile then ducking out to go home. Partly I needed to make sure that all was well. (It was, even with valentines detritus strewn everywhere.) The other part was my need for the quiet of my house after the sociability of the convention. I needed to hug my children and be here for bedtime. The routine comforts us all and grounds me. I have to sit in my house with my fingers on the keyboard to unspool my thoughts, tucking them away for the night too. Tomorrow will be another full day. It begins early as I have a panel starting at 9 am.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

My Life in Lists Today

Things I want to do today:

Soak up the quiet in my house so that I can enter three days of intense convention socializing feeling rested.

Write 2000 words of blog posts and fiction.

Think long, slow thoughts to help me sort all the kid emotional shifts of the past week.

Nap enough to catch up on sleep.

Finish re-reading The Help.

Have dinner at a restaurant with out of town friends.

Prepare for tomorrow’s solo presentation and write notes for the other two panels.

Write a letter.

Exercise.

Things I’m going to do today:

Locate and stack all the booth dressing supplies so they’re ready for transport to LTUE.

Assemble bundles.

Pack up merchandise for LTUE.

Make new price lists and signs for the booth.

Deliver a child to school late because he panicked about incomplete homework this morning even though I asked him multiple times last night and this morning if he had homework to do.

Tell a story in the car on the way over to the school which hopefully cements this as a learning experience which will help the child remember that “Do you have homework” means “Go check your backpack and planner” not “Think about it for two seconds and declare that you don’t.”

Double check all the accounting and sales supplies for the booth.

Wash all the clothes so we have clean things to wear for the next five days.

Fold some of the clothes.

Deliver a forgotten item to a child at school.

Clean the house so it is not embarrassing for guests to stay here.

Hem pants for Kiki.

Slim pants waistband for Gleek.

Put away sewing machine so it is out of the way for guests.

Buy foods that the kids can forage through while their parents are not home to supply meals.

Prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.

Fill orders, mail packages.

Write a quick note instead of a letter.

Wish I’d done more in advance so that the day before the convention is not always a mad scramble.

Make sure my kids get to their afternoon and evening activities.

Supervise homework time, with additional attention paid to making sure that we’re in a good position for the likely neglect of homework on Thursday and Friday while Mom is too busy/exhausted to pay attention.

Scramble to help my two elementary school kids have Valentines to hand out at school tomorrow.

Things I did in the past two days instead of the things I now have to do today:

Accounting and bill paying.

Shipping customer orders.

Customer support.

Took Link to take his driver’s permit test, which he’ll need to re-take next week.

Took three kids to Trafalga in an effort to put things that are important to them on the schedule.

Took care of a teenager with a head cold.

Visited a neighbor.

Stopped by again at neighbor’s to deliver a tool which will hopefully make her life easier.

Attended a committee meeting.

Fielded emails regarding scouts and an upcoming Board of Review.

Answered all the urgent and overdue emails. (I hope.)

Blogged.

Wrote some fiction words.

Wrote some letters.

Began re-reading The Help because it is a good book and because Kiki is reading it for school, so I want to be able to remember the story. Talking books with my daughter is fun.

Re-stocked my shipping room with mailing supplies.

Rearranged all the furniture in my boys’ room to un-bunk their beds, thus letting them know that I’m willing to perform physical labor and rearrange my schedule because sometimes they are more important than other stuff.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Too Many Parenting Things for One Day

Funny how I can come to the end of a day knowing I filled it with important things and yet still be buried under thoughts of how I could do better. Last weekend was one in which all my children burst open and the emotional issues which have been brewing burst forth where they must be addressed. It is actually a good process, that is how healing begins and it is much better than an extended brewing and festering. With the troubles out in the open, the problem solving portions of my brain begin to supply solutions. Most of these solutions involve me stepping up my game, doing more, being better. I’m trying to pause before implementing these solutions, because I am ever so slowly learning that I am not the sole provider of life fixes, that sometimes my proper role is to stay out of the way. Other times stepping up my game is exactly what I should do. I wish the troubles would come color coded so I could easily discern which approach to take.

An effort to step up my game is how I found myself on a Tuesday afternoon at an arcade / laser tag arena with four of my children. Link wanted to go and his trouble had to do with his wishes often being overlooked. I’ve been wanting to see the effects of exercise on Patch’s insomnia, which also seemed a good argument for making the trip. We might as well bring along Gleek, who can always use some time outside the house running around. Unfortunately what I really needed was a quiet afternoon where not much was required of me. I was worn out from un-bunking the boy’s beds and completely rearranging their bedroom (an action also sparked by emotional needs). Along with that massive effort was calling the orthodontist to commit to braces for Gleek, taking Link for his driver’s permit test, helping Kiki weather yet another head cold, fielding nine different communications from various schools regarding Valentine’s day*, realizing that I am going to miss parent teacher conferences at the high school tomorrow afternoon, and arranging for child transportation while I’m at LTUE. Yet to come are even more parenting task which lurk in the corners of my brain and will continue to do so until I can finally get them done. They are: massive reorganization of the boy’s closet so that things can be found when they are needed, cleaning the house for company, getting braces put on Gleek’s teeth, determining the progress and fate of Kiki’s wisdom teeth, having Kiki tested for allergies, a meeting with Link’s English teacher to make sure that everyone is clear about requirements, and supporting all the make up work because days where I don’t have a kid home sick have been fewer than those when I have.

My head was not exactly empty and an arcade is not exactly the sort of quiet place I prefer when I need to sort the contents of my brain. I wanted to be the drop-everything-and-play-with-the-kids mom. There were moments where I almost was her. Then I had to default into observer-mom mode, standing off to the side in a place I’d rather not be so that my kids could enjoy being there. Sadly this effort was paid for by crankiness later. At least I was able to aim my crankiness at a hapless bowl of spilled ramen rather than at any of the children.

Long day. I am tired now, which is why I’m doing my best to not listen to any of the voices in my head who are trying to give me parenting scores for today. I’ll be better able to evaluate after a full night’s sleep.

*I wish I were exaggerating about the number of Valentine’s emails, but I am not.

1 email from the Junior High asking parents to please not have Valentines sent to kids in class as it disrupts education.

3 emails of increasing urgency asking for volunteers for a medieval feast on Valentine’s day.

1 email stating that there are now enough volunteers, but donations of apple juice would be appreciated.

1 email saying they have enough juice now, thanks.

1 email asking for volunteers to help with either an activity or treats for a class Valentine’s party.

1 General email to all students at the elementary school that if they are going to bring valentines, they should bring one for every student in their class.

1 email to all high school parents asking that we not send gifts to students in their classrooms as it disrupts instructional time, also to remind us about parent teacher conferences.

I responded to none of these emails, because I’m at LTUE and unavailable to help with anything. Considering that school party planning is not my favorite thing, I’m not being able to dig up much regret except when I occasionally feel guilty that perhaps my kids would like me to be involved more.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

The Value of Ordinary Stories

I’ve been sending out queries for Stepping Stones, my memoir/essay book where I tell the stories having to do with my transformation into a working mother, the onset of anxiety as an issue in my life, and parenting four children while managing these other things. In response to those queries I’ve been getting a lot of rejections. Most of them are form rejections, often they are addressed to “author.” I can mostly shrug at those, but other rejections are personal. The agent or editor took time to speak particularly to me about the work I submitted. Such responses are a gift of time and caring. I know this. I try to treat the gift with respect even when the accumulation begins to feel discouraging. The personal responses all say things like:

I am just not seeing how I can break this out to a trade readership.

while I think that you have a compelling voice, I don’t completely trust that this is something that I could sell into the mainstream trade market—memoirs are very tough to sell if they’re not overly sexy or high-concept.

You are a compelling writer, with a clear perspective, and a wonderful sense of humor about your circumstances. As a working mother of four (though my kids are now all grown up!), I certainly empathized with the struggle you portrayed in these pages. However, while your story resonated personally, I’m not convinced that the central conflict is compelling enough to distinguish itself in the saturated memoir genre. While the struggle to be a good mother and wife and still pay the bills on time is a difficult one, it is certainly not a unique circumstance. I’ve found that memoir readers generally gravitate towards stories of incredible trauma or tragedy, or of overcoming enormous hurdles: largely circumstances that are outside of their own frame of reference.

And most recently:

What makes your story of motherhood and anxiety and so on different from other’s story?

My answer: nothing.

The stories told in my essays are stories of an ordinary life. Yet “ordinary” is not the same as “mediocre.” There is excellence to be found in ordinary things. This excellence is worth pursuing, but people will not see it nor attempt it if they are constantly told that only spectacular efforts and events are newsworthy. The world is full of amazing people who will never be newsworthy, but without whom our society would collapse.

American society seeks spectacle. The explosions in this year’s movie must be more fantastic than the ones last year. If it bleeds it leads is a guiding principle of most news sources. We watch the Olympics to see the far reaches of human capability and be inspired by them. We read stories of severe mental illness, or horrific abuse, or tantalizing bedroom play. The subtext in all of this is that if we want to matter, we must transform ourselves into something different from the rest of society. We must do something extraordinary to leave a permanent mark on the world. When we don’t, we feel boring.

I had a neighbor once, the mother of my friend, who gave the best hugs in the whole world. She was big, warm, and soft. A hug from her was like being wrapped in a warm blanket. She listened to me. She recommended books. She functioned as an auxiliary mother. Her name was Marilyn and she is the reason that I associate the name with motherliness instead of the blonde actress. I remember Marilyn warning me once—speaking from her position in a deeply unhappy marriage, a position I only learned about years later–not to get married too early. I assured her I would wait until at least eighteen. She laughed and I realized that eighteen still sounded young to her. After Marilyn moved away with her family, I felt her absence. I’ve kept many of the books she gave me. Sometimes I hold them in my hand, running my fingers lightly over the inscriptions, and I wonder how many thoughts and opinions I have because of conversations with her. How was my life shaped by her influence? It is impossible for me to know. I can’t trace back and separate out years of conversations and interactions which altered the trajectory of my young life. Was she ordinary? Yes. Put in a crowd of people she would not stand out, yet she was excellent. She wrapped her life around helping two severely allergic children survive into adulthood. She helped teach me to read. In hundreds of quiet ways she went above and beyond what was expected of a neighbor and friend. She was not newsworthy, but her story matters. She matters.

Why do we wait for eulogies and funerals to fully appreciate the excellence in ordinary lives? We are surrounded by people who have lived tragedies and triumphs. Whatever personal trial you are currently experiencing someone has already walked that path and can help you see the way through, but you’ll only be able to find that person if she has shared her story somewhere. Sometimes these connections are made through mutual friends. Lately they are often made via the internet and support groups. These ordinary stories of excellence and survival are one of the reasons I love to read blogs. It is a major reason why I write my blog, because if one of my ordinary stories can be inspiration or hope to another person then the world is made into a better place. My struggles start being useful instead of just me thrashing around in the dark trying to get by.

These rejection letters are trying to tell me that I have to write a sensational story to be published. This saddens me. It sometimes sends me a few steps down the path of despair, because I don’t think I can write a sensational story. That is not the sort of writing I do. I want to write the story of Marilyn. I want to write about a summer afternoon. I want to share the beauty I see in my four kids playing a video game together. I don’t write self-help or how-to either, which is another suggestion I’ve received. No piece of advice is right for every person, no way of approaching a problem will work for everyone. I don’t feel comfortable saying “this is what you should learn and do” because often the most touching responses I receive are unexpected. The reader pulled something from my words which I’d never seen in them. My stories enter the mind of the reader and combine with everything that is already in there to spark something new. It is a form of magic and it works even when the stories are ordinary.

I’d really hoped that some publisher somewhere would see the value in ordinary stories excellently told. I’m sad because I know these publishing professionals are right, extraordinary stories sell, ordinary stories don’t. Even if some publisher does step up what I’ve written is a niche book that will only be loved by people who find beauty in the ordinary. They are a small market segment. I’ll just keep telling the stories here and turn to fiction as a path to national publication. I’m not giving up on Stepping Stones. It may someday find a home, but it has to be the right home and that may be a very long time in coming.

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A Quick Thought on Family Relationships

Much mention is made of the “family unit” which usually means two parents and a number of children. This grouping is then treated as a single entity. There is truth in this, particularly in the early childhood years much time is spent forming a group identity. We are a family, we do this, we don’t do that. Yet as my kids enter their teens I see them beginning to take flight. They are going to be adults and form family identities of their own. What happens to the unit then? I’ve begun to think of my family as a mesh of interconnected individuals. Yes we have a group identity, but that identity is only as strong as the threads between individuals. Ultimately I can not dictate the relationship between two of my children. I can not guarantee that they will continue to have a relationship once they are no longer living where I can insist they spend time together. What I can do is try to give them tools to understand each other. I can encourage, not just the group identity, but the formation of individual relationships.

It is a lot of work. Lots and lots of work. I feel like I’ve been helping work on threads all weekend long, but the mesh is stronger than it was two days ago and that is a good thing.

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On The Day Snow Falls

A storm blew in only a day after the last of the snow melted on our front lawn. The back lawn, shaded by the house, was still a blanket of white when the first flakes of new snow landed on it. At first the storm was interesting, it blew lingering seed pods from our mimosa tree, blasting them upward with sudden gusts only to drop them spinning to the ground. The snow started falling and for half an hour it felt cozy, the quiet hush of falling snow while I was safe indoors. Then the ground was white and cold. The sky was gray and it began to feel like every day in January. I wrapped my arms around myself and promised I’d by a potted hyacinth the minute I saw one at the grocery store. I needed a reminder that spring does come.

While the snow fell outside, two sisters faced off after an argument over a video game. I’d spoken to each of them separately. Kiki lamented to me that she always got frustrated with Gleek, that every overture of kindness was rebuffed, every interaction ended in yelling. Kiki did not want this. She felt like a horrible person when she yelled at her sister, so she avoided contact. It was easier. Gleek lamented that Kiki did nice things for her, but that Gleek was mean in return. Gleek said there was a huge rift and it was impossible to bridge it. My suggestions about apologies were met with a declaration that Kiki would yell and Gleek didn’t want any more yelling. They both loved each other. They both wanted to be closer, happier together. Yet they stood far apart, each an armed fortress defending herself against the hurt she felt was inevitable. I pleaded with them to talk, to open up. They didn’t. They didn’t. And then, when I would not let them retreat in anger, suddenly they did.

“I don’t want you to go away to college.” Gleek said as she hugged her sister tight. “I won’t have anyone to look up to.” Tears fell, far from the first of the day, but these were the first that did not drip anger. Kiki hugged Gleek in return.

The snow fell outside as Link sat on the couch expressing feelings of loneliness. He used examples to explain what was going on with him. I listened and knew that my son needed our relationship to shift. He needed me to stop assuming that he would not be interested in my activities. I needed to start inviting him along and letting him choose whether to participate. We ventured together out into the snow on a shopping trip. Link likes coming shopping for groceries. He doesn’t even mind being along when I look at some clothes so long as we don’t linger in the girly stuff for very long. He told me about the game he was playing, giving details for every jump and button press. I do not play this game, nor understand half of what he was telling me, but I listened because it is important to him and I need to understand the things that matter to him so that I can understand him better. I need to be part of his things and he needs to be part of mine. He came home smiling and I knew I’d taken a step in the right direction to be better at relating to my son.

The snow had turned to tiny flakes when Patch’s friend came over. It was a visit planned days in advance including games and dinner. The games came first, of course. Then Patch began cooking. He has one dinner that he can make all by himself: cream of chicken soup over rice. He cooked the rice and the soup, then served it for his friend saying proudly “I made this all by myself with no help at all.” And he is right.

Darkness arrived and the snow still drifted down onto wet pavements and white lawns. The air had been warm enough to melt the snow from sidewalks and driveway. No shoveling required on this day, despite the constant fall of moisture from the sky. I looked out the window and sighed a bit for the spring which has not yet arrived. I was perhaps more tired than the day called for. Looking at my task list I had nothing that I could check off. The day’s progress was immeasurable by checklist. It was fraught with the potential to go very badly, but somehow we navigated storms of emotions into a place where we’ve learned and are stronger. This is good, but I’m ready for the snow to stop falling. I’m ready for the potted hyacinth–bought on my shopping trip with Link–to bloom. It will, and spring will come. All will be well.

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