Teresa R. Funke's Blog: Bursts of Brilliance for a Creative Life, page 46

Like Halloween? Thank a Writer

Today is Halloween, which means you are no doubt getting ready for a party or filling your bowl with candy for the trick-or-treaters or, if you are the parent of a teenager, like me, cleaning your house before his/her friends arrive to mess it up again.

Though I don’t know your plans, there is one thing I am sure of. Tonight you will see numerous costumes inspired by the works of writers and artists. As you know, in this blog I love to celebrate the various ways that artists and creatives make our lives better, and truly, what would Halloween be without their influence?

Without writers and artists, many of our most popular and long-lasting costumes would not exist.

Thanks to comic book writers, we have Spiderman and Supergirl, Batman and Captain America.

Television creators gave us Mr. Spock and Doctor Who, Big Bird and The Cone Heads.

Children’s book authors provided Waldo and The Cat in the Hat, Hermione Granger and Peter Pan.

Thanks to movie creators, we have Princess Leia and Indiana Jones, Minnie Mouse and Beetlejuice.

But it’s the literary writers who have delivered our most enduring costumes, Frankenstein and Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and The Phantom of the Opera, and so many more.

Sometimes artists themselves are even celebrated in costume. Think Vincent Van Gogh and William Shakespeare, Lady Gaga and the band members from Kiss.

And costumes alone are not the only way artists have added to our enjoyment. What about all those horror movies we watch over and over, the Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin cartoon we still adore, the scary stories, like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” that we read to our children, the songs like, “The Monster Mash” or “Thriller” that we play over and over, not to mention dancing to “The Time Warp.”

Just try to imagine a Halloween without any of these beloved traditions. Now apply that thinking to your other favorite holidays and you’ll quickly see, we artists just make life more fun.

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Have You Dreamed a Dream Lately?

You know the clip on YouTube featuring Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent?  I’m sure you do. It has over 177 million views, and I think at least 50 of those are mine. This is my go-to video, the one I watch anytime I want a pick-me-up or I feel the need to believe anything is possible. It’s positively brilliant, as the Brits would say.

Here is this middle-aged woman who looks like your goofy neighbor, and she shocks the audience by nailing a very difficult Broadway ballad. It’s the ultimate underdog story starring an artist. And it’s full of wonderful clichés: don’t judge a book by its cover; it’s never too late to achieve your dreams; you can slay the dragon (Simon Cowell).  And then there’s the lovely irony of a woman whose dreams are coming true as she sings a song about dying dreams.  Perfect!

I recently read an interview with this year’s Caldecott winner, Dan Santat, in which he described always wanting to feel “as good as.”  If getting one of the highest honors in children’s literature doesn’t let you know you’ve arrived, nothing will.  Can you imagine his excitement as he accepted that award?

Frankly, I think that is what life is all about — those moments when our dreams come true; when our faces threaten to split because we are smiling so wide; when we shake our heads in utter disbelief; when we cry from sheer relief; when we laugh so hard we can’t stop; when we fall in love so deeply it dazzles.

And it doesn’t matter what those moments look like to you. Many of us felt them when our children arrived or the first time we flew solo or finished a marathon. Most of us recall a thrill when we kissed someone we thought might be “the one.”

No matter how old we get, we must never become so set in our ways, so tired and complacent, so overworked and cynical, that we stop reaching for our dreams. Strive for achieving those moments in your art and in your lives.  If you can’t do that for yourselves, do it for us. Because the best part of the Susan Boyle video isn’t her miraculous voice, it’s the reaction from an audience that is experiencing magic. Inspire us, please!

 

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The Folly of Failure

What if failure didn’t exist? No, I’m serious. What if it’s just a word someone invented because he was feeling down about his work and the word stuck.

It’s not hard to imagine a time when this word didn’t exist. There was a time when none of the words we use today existed. But at some point, we strung a few letters together to create words so we could express a feeling or share an experience. And from there, we used those words to cement the “rules” of our cultures. But just because a group of humans decided something was the rule, doesn’t mean that rule is an absolute.

So what if failure isn’t “real” then?  Not like air or water. Think about it, we have thousands of ways to define its opposite — success. We say to people, what does success look like to you?  Success is allowed to be fluid. You can’t pin it down. Not so with failure. Failure is universal. If you set out to achieve a specific goal and you didn’t, you failed. Plain and simple. Why the discrepancy? It makes no sense.

What if failure isn’t failure? What if failure isn’t even a setback? What if instead of saying to someone, “Well, that failed,” we said, “that almost worked.”

What if failure was a tool, not an outcome?  What if it enabled us simply to see what did or didn’t work so we could improve our effort?

What if it was a means to judge competence, and an F on a report card didn’t mean you were lazy or dumb or rebellious, it simply told the teacher that something wasn’t working for you.

Once we accept that failure is an opinion, not a fact, we no longer fear it. As humans we know better than to fear things that don’t exist.

Still, there’s that part of us that will always want to be afraid, even of things we know are not real. That’s why we seek out haunted houses, to test our bravery, to challenge ourselves, to feel the high that comes with overcoming fear.  But that’s a choice, see? We are choosing to scare ourselves. If you want to be afraid of failure, you can be, but that doesn’t make it real.

Here’s the thing about language, it’s living, it’s changing all the time. What if we took the word failure and made it a compliment? “Hey, dude, way to fail! Man, I would never have had the guts to try that.” Wouldn’t that just change everything?  Failure would no longer be a negative, it would be a positive.  We can do that, you know. We can change the word’s meaning. We could even move it out of existence if we chose to. We have that power.

 

 

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You Can’t Say That Word!

A couple of weeks ago, the sitcom Black-ish tackled a subject I’d been hoping they would address, the n-word. If you haven’t seen Black-ish, it’s a clever, funny, heartfelt take on a modern African-American family navigating the tricky waters of diversity. It quite often brings up important conversations, including this one . . . when and how can we or should we use the n-word?

I remember very clearly the one and only time I’ve ever said that word out loud. I was maybe six years old and sitting at the dinner table with my mom, dad, and brother. I was quoting a line from my Winnie-the-Pooh record, although instead of saying “nipper,” I mistakenly said the other thing. Simultaneously, my parents rose up in their chairs and said, “Don’t you ever, ever say that word again!”  And I haven’t.

The current rules defining “racist remarks” are challenging. Basically, it comes down to this . . . if you are of that race, you can sometimes refer to it in a self-deprecating or humorous manner. If you are not of that race, you cannot.  This applies even if the comment is positive, apparently. My Asian daughter told me she can call herself an “awesome Asian,” but I cannot.  Hmm.

When I was growing up, someone close to me sometimes called me “half-breed.” I’m half white and half Mexican. I think he meant it as a bit of a gibe, but I took it as a compliment. I’ve always been extremely proud of my heritage. Which goes to show that, to a certain extent, each person decides when and if they are offended by a word, which just makes things all that much harder.

I remember once hearing in an anti-bullying lecture when I was a kid these lines, “Words do not have power. They cannot hurt you unless you give them power.”  If that were true, though, we could all go around saying whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, and it would be up to the listener to decide if he or she felt slighted. There have to be some boundaries to language, right? There has to be a certain level of respect and civility.

The episode of Black-ish concluded in the only way it could . . . the dad told the son that once he understood the history of the n-word, he could decide if he wanted to use it or not. For me, as an historian, I cannot separate myself from the hateful history of this word, so my choice is not to use it. I will, however, write it if my story calls for that. And I will speak it as I read that story, because that is the only way to be true to my character, (though I may cringe while I’m doing so).

None of this makes me right, by the way. It’s just my own compromise with this tricky thing we call language.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Brilliance of Illness

It’s hard to be brilliant when you are sick. Remember when you were a kid and became ill, and your mother made a bed on the couch, turned on your favorite cartoons, made you chicken soup and told you everything was going to be better soon? Is it wrong that right now I wish I had a big lap to curl up in?

I just returned from a fabulous and much-needed vacation. I should be feeling rested and rejuvenated, instead, I came down with an eye infection and a cold just as the trip was ending.  I’m home trying to focus through blurry eyes and a foggy head on the hundreds of e-mails that demand my attention and the half-finished work I need to get back to.

See that’s the hard part about being an entrepreneur–there’s no one to hand the work off to when we are sick or hurt or sad or just plain tired. It’s all on us, all the time. And as professionals, we never want to let anyone down or do less than our best work. But my friend always tells me, we can’t take care of others, until we take care of ourselves. She’s right, of course, but that’s easier said than done, especially when there are deadlines to be met and bills to be paid.

It’s moments like this when I wish I had a coworker to give me a hug and tell me go home and get some rest, she’ll take over. But I don’t. So if my inner “little girl” is needing some TLC right now, I guess I’m the only one who can provide it. So maybe I’ll hit delete on a bunch of those e-mails that are really not that important and go take a nap.

And who knows, if I ease up on myself a bit, maybe something interesting will happen. Maybe in my fevered state, I’ll have some bizarre dream that would make a great short story. Or my biggest stroke of genius will come from my addled mind. Or maybe not.

The point is, whether I’m being brilliant or not, the world will keep turning. We’re not as important as we think we are. And if it takes an illness to bring that point home, so be it.

 

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A Penny for Your Words

The Authors Guild recently released the results of their study on author incomes. They polled their nearly 1,700 members, most of whom are full-time or part-time authors. The results showed that 56% of respondents earn below the poverty level of $11,670 per year. And the medium income for authors has dropped 24% since 2009. They listed several reasons, the demise of brick and mortar stores, the rise of Amazon, piracy, publisher consolidation, etc.

Now remember, some of these people are full-time workers, not hobby writers, and they are not even making the equivalent of a full-time employee at McDonalds!

We writers hear these statistics and scoff. Tell us something we didn’t already know. The general public hears these numbers and shrugs. “No one is making you be an author,” they say, but that isn’t really the point. No one is making someone choose other low-earning jobs, either, but we’re awfully glad there are people to clean our hotel rooms and pick our strawberries, and when we want to sit down and relax or we need to learn something new, we are awfully glad that authors choose to write books.

It’s easy for someone who has never written a book to say, “Just write it on your spare time.”  Writing is not the same as learning to play bridge. It takes thousands of hours of practice and education to get good at writing. It takes far more time, focus, and concentration than taking a Bollywood dance class and the local Parks and Rec. It’s tempting to think we could all be hobby writers and still turn out good work, but if people want high-quality writing, if they want experts to teach them how to live and work better, if they want books that educate their children, we need to support people who take their writing more seriously than just a hobby.

These arguments usually fall on deaf ears, which is one reason you don’t see writers walking around looking for sympathy, but sometimes I wonder why? How is it that we became so complacent with our lot? It’s as if we believe we belong to some sort of class system and writers are the lowest class and, heck, that’s just the way it is. But class systems only change when the people at the bottom refuse to stay there any longer.

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29,000 Words

I’ve written just over 29,000 words on this blog since I started it a year and a half ago. That’s the same number as you’ll find in my Home-Front Heroes children’s books! I’ve written 83 posts, each ranging between 300 and 450 words, in about the same amount of time it takes me to research, write, and publish one of those kids’ books. Amazing!

We artists and entrepreneurs are a future-focused lot. As much as we love the daily creative aspects of our jobs, we also long to hold the completed product in our hand. And sometimes it seems to be taking forever to reach that point! Then when we finish one project, we have to draw a deep breath to summon the energy to embark on another long journey. We may be excited about the trip, but it’s still hard to take that first step.

It’s both thrilling and daunting to think of starting my next children’s book. To finish a novel seems like such a huge undertaking, and yet, it’s not. This blog has proven that. I never started it thinking, “Oh God, I have to write 29,000 words before September of 2015.” I started it thinking, “I have something to say, and this is how I want to say it.” There was no pressure, no view toward a “finished product,” no end goal. There was only adventure to be had.

This blog proves that progress is made through steady, regular efforts. It’s not about staying up all night hopped up on stimulants and creating in a frenzied, chaotic manner. That’s the Hollywood version of artists at work. It’s about recommitting to your art every day and loving it all the while, and then watching in awe and wonder as your body of work grows.

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Who Will Tell the Refugees’ Stories?

When I was in college, I befriended a girl whose family members were refugees from Laos. She went by the name of Jenny because her teachers had deemed her real name too hard to pronounce. I learned it, though, and called her by that. I can still remember how to say it, though I can’t recall how to spell it.

Jenny invited me to her home one day, a small duplex in a modest part of town. She shared a tiny bedroom with her two sisters, her parents and youngest brother occupied the other bedroom, and her teenage brother slept on the couch. Her parents didn’t speak much English, but they were welcoming to me. Her father was a janitor, I believe, and her mother took in sewing. Later, I learned their whole story.

Jenny’s family had escaped Laos in the dead of night by hiding in the bottom of a fishing boat. They left everything behind, save for a few pictures her mother managed to sneak out, but what shocked my naïve 18-year-old self was that in their home country, Jenny’s father had been a physician and her mother had been a teacher. They were educated, professional people who had once lived a more prosperous life. In America, they were just a few more “boat people.”

I think of Jenny every time I see news stories about the thousands of political and economic refugees streaming into Europe these days, and I wonder how many of them are doctors or teachers or engineers. How many were shop owners or tradesmen or students in their home countries? How many were writers or artists?

I watch the news reports and learn about their journeys and the implications of their arrival for the countries they enter, but I want to hear more of the stories. Because “refugee” was just a word to me until I met Jenny.

So I’m praying the artists among those masses of exiles will tell those stories, and soon. Because no one expects to be a refugee one day. It just happens. But artists can help us understand how it feels when it does. Artists can change the meaning of a word.

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You Gotta Know the Rules to Break ‘Em

Last week I put up a post, “The Foibles of Self-exploration,” knowing full well that I was using the word “foible” incorrectly.  It refers to a minor weakness in a person’s character, and cannot, therefore, apply to a practice. I knew some of my word-loving friends might call me on it, and one of them did.

I’d looked at other synonyms, though, and none of them had the rhythm or lightheartedness I was going for. When I mentioned this to my friend, she said, “Sometimes I think using a word that sounds good is better than one that conveys the exact meaning. And then the reader can be engaged as well, whether or not the word fits.”

Ordinarily, I’m going to be a stickler for the correct term, but in this case, it didn’t serve my art. And judging from the positive responses I’ve received to that post, you agree.

You’ll often hear me say, “You gotta know the rules to break ‘em.”  But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to use poor grammar just because you’re too lazy to look up the rule.  Or to change the lyrics to a song simply because you didn’t have time to memorize them. Or to improvise in the middle of a scene, without understanding why the scene was written that way in the first place.

But as artists, it’s our job to question the rules and ask if they are relevant or outdated, necessary or arbitrary, helpful or oppressive.

I remember when we were all reading Plainsong, by Kent Haruf, and there was endless discussion among the literary crowd as to whether his decision to omit quotation marks interfered with the story. But Kent was a master writer, and somehow it worked. I’ve seen other authors try to do it and wind up confusing the reader. Just because you can break a rule, doesn’t mean you should.

Breaking the rules isn’t about rebellion for the sake of rebellion, it’s about pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo, but more importantly, it’s about exploring something unique that only you may offer; something that may inspire others or bring them joy. It’s not about ego, it’s about engaging your audience and helping them to feel something.

As always with art, it comes down to connection. And though people may disagree with your decision, and though, technically, they may be right, if the overall response to your work drives people to experience something powerful, you probably did the right thing.

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The Foibles of Self-exploration

“Self-exploration is my favorite hobby,” my new friend said. And I nodded vigorously, glad to have found a kindred spirit.  In the past year, though, I’ve been trying to make some life decisions and finding that all of this personal study has left me a bit confused.

Is it the Leo in me that makes me so driven or my Type A personality?

Do I brim with new ideas because I’m a Creative or because my primary Strength is ideation?

Do I throw myself into those projects because I’m a Risk Taker or because my Enneagram is 7?

Do I crave new information because I’m Generation X or because I’m a Lifelong Learner?

Am I hyper aware because I’m an Intuitive or because I’m a Highly Sensitive Person?

Do I continue to do the things I don’t want to do out of Catholic Guilt or Firstborn Responsibility?

Are these irrational fears hangovers from my Past Lives or unresolved Trauma from my childhood?

Must I always go my own way because of my Entrepreneurial Spirit or my Rugged Western Individualism?

Do people see real value in my ideas or are they caught up in my Tiger form of communication or my “Rebellion” Fascination Trigger?

Do I long to be around people because I’m an Extrovert or because my Love Language is quality time?

Is it the Democrat or the Mother in me that wants to save the world?

How then do I reconcile my liberal politics with my conservative nature?

Do I manage so many things well because I’m an ENFJ or because I’m a Female?

And to whom should I turn for guidance?  Should I listen to my horoscope or watch for signs from my spirit guides?

Should I meditate or pray?

Do I need more vigorous exercise or more quiet walks in the woods?

If I can’t go more than 24 hours without chocolate, does that prove I have an addictive personality?

Should I drink that glass of wine to loosen me up or avoid it to keep me from saying too much?

Should I read another book on personality types or give it a rest? Oh, who am I kidding?  If a new study came out that linked personality to hair color, I’d read it. Or have they done that already? I’m a brunette . . .

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