Lacey Louwagie's Blog, page 16

Beware the Unruly Catholic Woman on the Train

Last week, I traveled about 48 hours round-trip by train/bus/car, spent $300 on said transportation(s), and didn’t get a full-night’s rest for four nights to attend a reading of Unruly Catholic Women Writers in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday. Train and bus schedules were such that I could get out there for the reading on time, but I’d either have to leave again that same night or stick around until Saturday. So I blew in, read about being Catholic and bisexual, and disappeared as quickly as I came. We Catholic bisexuals have a reputation for being elusive to uphold, after all.

It was easy for me to ask myself why I was doing it at all, but asking that question is a little like asking why I write at all. When you line up the return on investment in neat little columns, it doesn’t seem like a very sound choice. After all, for all that travel and lost sleep, I wasn’t earning a hefty stipend, hob-nobbing with big wigs in the publishing world, or networking in hopes of grabbing that Next Big Opportunity. I wasn’t reading to a sold-out auditorium of three-thousand people, but rather an intimate classroom of about fifteen, including some very thoughtful and engaged college students and some feisty nuns.

It was perfect. The only thing that would have made it better would have been one night’s sleep in a real bed, a longer conversation with fellow contributors at dinner (I had to catch a cab shortly after I’d eaten), and the chance to see the Marian library at the University of Dayton (my body won out over my mind and I slept the afternoon away instead).

This is where I need to stop measuring experiences using a material measuring stick (opportunity, pay, prestige) and instead look at what my writer’s soul gets out of it. And what my writer’s soul got was divine — the opportunity to meet other women writing about the intersection of faith, gender, and experiences; the opportunity to hear poems and essays that I had already read in the voices of their creators; the chance to feel like a Real Writer hanging out with other Real Writers.

And that was just the reading. I also got the opportunity to write Morning Pages from the observation deck of the Amtrak as it rolled through Iowa, in Cincinnati’s desolate Union Station at 4 am, and in Chicago’s anything-but-desolate station on my return trip. It was in doing those Morning Pages that I saw the beauty of what Morning Pages could be — the opportunity to take a snapshot of my mind and my world wherever I ended up on a given morning, capturing memories and experiences I would have let slide away because of being too tired or too overstimulated if I hadn’t established the discipline of writing those pages regardless of whether I thought I had anything to say.

These opportunities to feel like a Real Writer can be all-too-rare, and they wear off much too quickly (although this great blog post about Rumpled that went up while I was away helped). I always have this elusive goal in mind, that I will feel like a Real Writer when … and each time I meet that goal, the feeling of Real Writer Euphoria lasts for about a week before it’s back to the same old insecurities. Still, because I love to travel by train and to wake up in new places, the experience was something of a smorgasborg for my writer’s soul, an opportunity to “fill up my well” with memories and connections that may come to fruition in surprising ways months or even years from now. I showed up, and I’m willing to let the universe do the rest.

Was it worth $300 and a few sleepless nights? Absolutely — and it was a bargain at that.

“If we are invested in a writing life—as opposed to a writing career—then we are in it for the process and not the product. We are in it for the body of work and not for the quick hit of one well-realized piece.” – Julia Cameron, “The Well”, The Right to Write

Rumpled Giveaways on Goodreads and Booklikes

I’m giving away ten copies of “Rumpled” on Booklikes (ebook) and Goodreads (paperback). You can enter both drawings until April 14!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway







Rumpled



by Lacey Louwagie

Giveaway ends April 14, 2014.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

A Grown-up Kind of Catholicism

My newest post, A Grown-up Kind of Catholicism, is up at Young Adult Catholics today. It’s a reflection from my journal about how I balance a lingering Catholic identity with the fact that I now belong to a non-Catholic church.

Rumpled – The Paperback

Rumpled is now available in paperback at the Create Space store. It will be on Amazon.com next week.

Rumpled Paperback by Lacey Louwagie

A Year in the Life, Week 45: Whistling (Saxophoning)

This week’s A Year in the Life exercise asked me to write about the role whistling, or humming, or playing an instrument, had played in my childhood. I wrote about my relationship with my saxophone, my first musical love.

I don’t remember ever liking to play piano, or even ever wanting to play piano. Perhaps it was only that my best friend played, and I wanted to be like her. But I was never as good as her, and piano was what convinced me I wasn’t good at music.

Photo credit: Anil Mohabir: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anilmoha...

But then I got my saxophone–my first saxophone was used, a little dented, and some of the keys stuck. It traveled in an ugly burgundy case. After the way I disregarded piano, I don’t blame my parents for not getting me a new one. And I remember that I had a cold at my first lesson, and Hazel was planning to come to my house afterward. I could not get a sound out of that thing. I don’t know if I made a sound my whole first lesson. I went home, tried to stay awake to eat a fish sandwich and watch Stella (because I had a crush on Bette Midler) and ended up throwing up my Tylenol. I laid in Mom’s bed while Hazel played with Krystl until her mom picked her up. I threw up all through the next day, and then I started fifth grade.

I wasn’t as good at the saxophone as Hazel was, but nonetheless I came to love it. I loved the little sticky sounds the keys made when I pressed them, the way the brass shone, the taste of the wooden reed, just a little sour, and its weight against my neck. The way I had to haul it on and off the bus, down that long driveway–that part I did not love.

Loving the saxophone surprised me because I wasn’t particularly good at it. Still, when Hazel told me she was quitting band in high school, there was no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be joining her. It seemed one of life’s ironies, that the one who was talented with music wasn’t the one to enjoy that talent. I even somehow ended up joining jazz band. I remember Mr. Carlson, his kind, kind eyes, the way he would find me when I hid out in the band room during basketball games and how he asked me what I could be reading in that huge book–it was The Mists of Avalon. I told him it was about King Arthur and followed a group of characters through about fifty years of their lives, and he said, “Well, I guess a lot can happen in fifty years.”

I remember competing in band competitions at SMSU, and how I did so on almost no sleep at all because Hazel had come over the night before, and we talked until late at night, one of our moments of connection that were getting more and more rare. That’s when I was still steeped in the deepest days of depression, and I was trying to explain it to her, and I could see that she wanted to understand and, in truth, I realize that she did, that she struggled with her own demons, too. But somehow that chasm between us kept growing anyway, and we just couldn’t wrap our heads around our separate but oh-so-similar pains.

I did poorly at the competition the next day, but that didn’t bother me–I never identified with the role of musician, never felt I was any good because Hazel was so much better. I remember bursting into tears when I was still in fifth grade, my first year playing, and I was frustrated. And I cried to my mom about how I felt that I wasn’t good at anything, but what I really felt was that I didn’t have any talent as distinct as Hazel’s gift with music. And when I bemoaned to my mom, truly believing it, that I didn’t really have any talents all my own, my mom said, “That’s not true–you have a wonderful imagination.”

And I cried, “What good will that do me?”

Eight novels later …

I realize how now little perspective I had on it all. My best friend was a musical prodigy. I think of high school, and jazz band, and Mr. Carlson, and how I felt like an impostor in band after Hazel left. If she left and she was better than me, what right did I have to stay? Yet, I can now see that Mr. Carlson never saw a musical failure when I put together my saxophone before pep band or went into Cottonwood on cold winter nights for jazz band practice. He just saw a teenager who found some joy and connection through her instrument.

And I did find joy in it, in a way I never did with piano. That’s why I stayed. I remember the summer when Mom bought me three books of “fun” saxophone music–Disney tunes, songs from the fifties and sixties, and Aladdin. I already had The Little Mermaid. And I remember playing those songs at the kitchen table, in the sewing room, using the sewing machine as my music stand, or at grandma’s dining room table, and the way she said, “You sound real nice, Lacey.” And how there were no thoughts of not being good enough, just the joy of the music moving through me. I later found that same joy in my guitar, that same sense of discovery when I reached a point where what I played sounded like real music.

My mom bought me a Lisa Simpson “Queen of the Blues” sweatshirt when I first took up saxophone. In high school she gave me saxophone earrings–I still have them–and a black t-shirt with all the different saxophones on it that said, “Pick your axe.” She saw me as a saxophone player, as a musician. So did my grandma as she enjoyed my music on that hot summer afternoon. So did Mr. Carlson, when he asked me to join jazz band. I think the only one who didn’t see it was me.

I wish I could go back and really own that title of musician, to feel confident when I had my instrument hanging from my neck and my sheet music spread out before me. I wasn’t the best, but I was competent. I stuck with it from the time I was ten to when I left high school at age 17, when I put it in my closet and never thought much about it again. Until now, when I can really acknowledge the joy it brought me during those years, how it might have played its own part in saving me from loneliness and despair, even as my guitar would five years later. Perhaps I wasn’t the most technically proficient musician, but I loved that feeling of disappearing into the music–and that, I realize now, is what it was really all about.

 

The Broth of Our Experience

“Writing is what we make from the broth of our experiences. If we lead a rich and varied life, we will have a rich and varied stock of ingredients from which to draw on. If we lead a life that is too narrow, too focused, too oriented toward our goals, we will find our writing lacks flavor, is thin on the nutrients that make it both savory and sustaining.” – Julia Cameron, “The Well,” The Right to Write

Happy Rumpled Release Day!

Rumpled

It’s here! Today is the day I release my first independent work, “Rumpled.” You can buy the ebook exclusively on Amazon.com, and the paperback will be released next week.

I’ve set the price point intentionally low at just 99 cents. This is for three reasons.

I know that I’m relatively unknown, and I want to make it easy for people to “take a chance on me” (cue ABBA song).
The book isn’t very long. It doesn’t seem fair to charge novel-length prices for a novella-length story
My goal with this project isn’t to make money (If I wrote to make money, I would have given up long ago!), but to build a stronger readership. I read a great post last summer in which an author talked about how often she gave away copies of her first book. I’m on board with her philosophy. I’m not even close to the only game in town, and the hundreds of books on my shelves prove that the world isn’t lacking in reading material.

So, if you like fairy tales, retellings, or fantasy stories, give it a try. From a few early reviews:

“Louwagie’s fairytale for adults fills in what the traditional tale has always neglected: motive, heart, moral ambiguity, unrequited love, betrayal. Extremely skilled with discourse (a talent I’ve always admired), Louwagie gives this flat (and eerie) old tale several twists that, after reading, seem like they should have been there all along. I have nearly forgotten the bizarre dancing-in-the-woods-for-no-reason creepy little man: this is the story the Grimms should have written.” – Read the full review at Ever Tales

From Amazon.com reviews:

“I was hooked from the first page, and didn’t want to put it down. This retelling takes a story that is as unsettling as it is familiar, and completely transforms it as is sheds light on the universality of the character’s struggles.” – Read the full review.

“Louwagie weaves a tale that intelligently dismantles stereotypes and gets inside the human heart of the characters and the reader. In ‘Rumpled,’ she does not disappoint in her ability to retain a fairytalesque world while breaking down stereotypes within that genre and challenging the reader’s perceptions along the way.” – Read the full review.

From Goodreads reviews:

“This is a telling of an old tale that’s better than the original. Lacey’s character development of Rumplestiltskin and Emily – the girl who spins the gold — gives readers a window into the complicated motivations that drive each of them.” – Marie Zhuikov, author of Eye of the Wolf. Read the full review.

“‘Rumpled’ is an intriguing retelling of the Rumplestiltskin fairy tale, illuminating just how compelling delving into a story we think we already know can be. Louwagie has crafted a story in which readers are constantly questioning motivations behind actions, providing much food for thought on the complexities lying within a well known story.” – Read the full review.

To learn more about this project, visit my Rumpled page.

 

Love Everything You Write

“Love everything you write. Accept your writing as permanent, a person you are in love with who has good days and bad days, cranky days and euphoric ones. Let your writing be itself. Give it love and it will surprise you.”- Julia Cameron, “Mood,” The Right to Write

Writing as Nourishment

“My friend thinks of writing as digestion. For me, it is that and more. For me, writing is food itself. I need a certain amount of writing to stay healthy.” – Julia Cameron, “This Writing Life,” The Right to Write.

And this reminds me of something Jacqueline West said earlier this week in her chat with New Moon Girls.

“I do like writing (or LOVE it, really), but often I write because I just can’t help it. It’s kind of like saying ‘Do you like food?’ Yes, I like food — and I really, really like chocolate and raspberries and pizza — but I also NEED it. And there are some kinds of food I don’t like as much, just like there are some difficult things about writing. But there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do.”

Amen to that, Julia and Jacqueline. And yum!

The Power of Imagination

“Is it possible that imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can!” – Henri J.M. Nouwen, Here and Now