Leta Blake's Blog, page 82

How to Talk With Your Sons About Robin Thicke

Reblogged from Eric Clapp 3.0:

If you have ears, you've heard Robin Thicke's hit "Blurred Lines." If you've had any amount of spare time in the past few days and have access to the internets, you've heard about Thicke's performance at the VMA's with Miley Cyrus. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, congratulations! You must have looked past the headlines on CNN's main page in order to read about "secondary" news like Egypt or Syria.

Read more… 676 more words

Really great blog post that makes me wish there were fifty more like it out there.

How I Know I’m a Writer Despite Failure #amwriting #navelgazing

This will be a ramble that is mainly about me trying to remind myself that I am a writer.

How is it that we can deny who we are for such a long time? How is it that people who love us can actually assist in that denial? Is it a mid-life crises when you are turning thirty-nine and you see that most of your twenties and a lot of your thirties were spent in missteps and the consequences thereof? What about when you look at the world and realize that at least part of the reason for those missteps was, of all things, because you’re part of that group known as GenX, and you were, as ever, stuck between generations and facing limited opportunities?

I’m a writer. I should have figured that out as quite a young child. It should never have been a mystery at all. Massive amounts of evidence piled up over the years pointing to this truth and yet the acceptance of that identity only happened within the last six to eight years of my life.

1. My mother is a pragmatic  and somewhat suspicious person. She’s not sentimental at all, either, and when it came to keeping items from my childhood for nostalgic purposes, she literally collected only four items. Two of which were the first stories I ever wrote. Clearly some part of her recognized that writing was something that was intrinsic to me.

2. In third grade, I won a school-wide essay contest with a little piece I wrote in half an hour after school when my English teacher held me after class and insisted I participate because the quality of my writing was impressive to her.

3. In fifth grade, I won a school-wide poetry contest rather handily, as well.

4. Somewhere in the dark mess of my elementary school years–which were a dark and harrowing time in my life, by the way, because of the dyscalculia–I told my mother that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. She told me that was a good hobby but that no one made enough money to live on as a writer, so I should be something else instead. I believed her. I had no idea what I would be when I grew up, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a writer, because my mom had told me it wasn’t possible. Moms are always right, you know?

5. I wrote my first book in sixth grade. It was about an orphan who lived in an attic room with secret tunnels in the walls. I’m pretty sure it was liberally inspired by Emily of New Moon, Mandie & the Secret Tunnel, and some other book that I can’t remember the title of. I wrote hundreds of pages of it. My mother typed it up for me.

6. By high school, I’d decided to be a psychologist. I thought I could help people and, besides, I’d hear a lot of interesting stories. I’d given up the idea of writing novels.

7. I hadn’t given up writing poetry, though, but was too shy to publish it in the school literary magazine with my name attached, so I published it as Anonymous. I was the only one to do so. I don’t think I was fooling anyone, since the editors of the literary magazine approached me and told me my work was the best in the magazine, and the principal of the school stood up during a school assembly, praised the works by Anonymous in the school magazine, and said, “I hope that whoever wrote these works will continue to write because they have a gift and should never forget that.

I never write poetry now. I have no idea if I even could. I doubt it. My brain doesn’t seem to run in those ways.

8. I didn’t study Creative Writing in college. I studied Psychology. Though my English Literature professors and many of my Psych professors would pull me aside and say that my essays were so creative and so well done that I should consider writing as a career. I told them I wasn’t interested in writing.

9. Things happened as they happened, and I graduated college and took up a career in…wait for it…no, really wait for it….finance. Yes, really. I know, right? What happened to Psychology? It’s a very long story that mainly involves being young, stupid, afraid, and being young, stupid, and in love, and being insecure, and thinking that I had to live my life in a certain way or else I’d never have the things that I was supposed to have, the things I’d been told my parents I should have, the things they’d led me to believe meant I’d been successful. I threw myself into finance like an escaped prisoner throws themselves into evading the authorities. I was on the run from my real self and I couldn’t afford to be caught!

10. A client of mine took a shine to me and asked me to go out to lunch with her. As we ate, I told her about a wedding I’d attended recently. It’d been in an old farmhouse and the bride wore jasmine in her hair. After I’d finished describing the night, my client took hold of my hand, looked at me intently and said, “Listen to me, this is important. You need to be a writer. Do you understand?” I laughed and said I did, but, of course, by that point in my life, I was married, with a house, and a mortgage, and wanted to have a baby. Writing wasn’t an option for me.

11. At my 10 year high school reunion, I sat down next to an old friend I hadn’t seen since graduation. I said, “You’ll never guess what I do for a living.” Her eyes lit up and she took my hand, saying with complete certainty, “You’re a writer!” I laughed and said, “Well, no. That would probably make a lot more sense than what I actually do.” When I told her that I was in finance, she visibly wilted and looked completely disappointed in me. It wasn’t because of the nature of my work, after all she was in finance, too. It was because it was wrong for me and she knew it. She knew what my client knew, what the principal had known, what my mother had instinctively known when I was a child. I was a writer. Being something else was wrong and rather stupid.

12. By this time I’d found fandom. My school of writing. I’m sure I could learn a lot from some creative writing classes, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. I learned everything I currently know about writing from fandom. It held my hand and taught me lessons and banged my head against the wall for doing it wrong. I still do it wrong, but I work to get better. That’s something.

At this point in my life, I’m a writer. I look back at all these instances (and many more I didn’t mention) of the world screaming in my face YOU ARE A WRITER and how hard I didn’t listen. I would like to say that I think I missed out on opportunities by not being a writer sooner. But I’m not sure that I did. The publishing world even ten years ago was a different place altogether. Getting the kind of thing I want to write published was unheard of? Frankly, I still write stuff that people won’t want to publish. The difference is that with self-publishing tools, I can still put my books out there, and I can write what I want to write.

I still work in finance, though as an assistant. I have the mortgage, the kid, the husband, and I’m happy. I still wake up every morning and wish that I was a full-time writer. I still resent the hours I spend sitting behind a desk not doing what I made to do. (Here’s the thing: I was made to write, whether I’m good at it or not? Well, that’s another question.)

The problems with it all lately is:

1) I’m turning 39, which isn’t a big deal, but it is. I’m starting to feel the first press of walls closing in, of limitations of what I can reasonably expect to do and accomplish. This is complicated by my health issues which leave me with a sense that I really could keel over any minute. I feel a lot of pressure to finally make this writing thing fly.

2) To make the writing thing fly, you have to have finished products. To have finished products you have to have time to write them. To have time to write them….well, we see where this is going.

So, I do the best I can. But in some ways I feel like I came through at the wrong time. I was just about twenty years too early to take full advantage of the technology we have today. But where does that sort of thought get me? This entire post has been a shit-storm of first world problems, now that I look it over. I’ve got a good life. Better than most. Why all the whining, Leta? Get it together, girl.

I suppose I just needed to get this out there. To ask myself, why did you ignore that call for so long? To remind myself, see this was always part of you, the world was always telling you that this is who you are. It’s going to take a long time, but don’t give up. Move on. Press forward. Don’t do something stupid, like psychology or finance, because you’re afraid you’re wrong and wasting your time. The only way to waste your time is to not write and to not publish. So go on. Those people who told you that you were a writer weren’t just blowing smoke up your ass. They had no reason to say those things. So, yes, Leta…you’re a writer. Let’s write something.

Music for Love’s Nest: Episode Three #music #soundtrack

In this third and final episode of Music for Love’s Nest, the following set of songs helped to inspire the world building and sense of place, pacing, etc.

1.

Μέχρι να βρούμε ουρανό – Γλυκερία

2.

Charles Vaughn, Tango Espanol (Tarrega)

3.

This Was Nearly Mine performed by Lindsay Buckingham

And that’s it for this installment of Book Soundtracks. I should do this for the last two books and get a few more books published so I can do it for them! Chop-chop, write faster, Writer Girl!

Idyllic #lake

Stiles Doesn’t Want to be Robin to His Bestie’s Batman All the Time #teenwolf

Stiles Doesn’t Want to be Robin to His Bestie’s Batman All the Time #teenwolf.

Over at Darker Temptations, I talked about Stiles, Teen Wolf, and sidekicks. Click above to read. In the meantime, yay Stiles!

The Search for Treasure #allegory

 

I was looking for something altogether different when I found this link:

The Search for Treasure.

It contains an allegory that was just what I needed to read at just the right moment. It’s absolutely beautiful. See if it touches you, too.

 

To quote:

The deeper she would dig, the easier it became to see the treasure, and the more detailed her perspective of its infinite beauty grew. In the early years, she had no idea there was so much treasure to find. With the new knowledge of abundance, she no longer felt an urgency to dig so quickly. Instead, she chose to enjoy each new nugget as it surfaced. She was pleased to find less dirt under her nails, and fewer scrapes and scratches on her arms and hands, although the scars from past wounds reminded her to dig carefully and to try not to throw dirt at people.

She learned to take breaks when the digging got really hard. She knew she could rest because she was confident that the treasure wasn’t going anywhere — no one could possibly steal it. So she sat back next to the hole, breathing and taking in the view around her. It turned out she had chosen an amazing digging site: there was a stunning landscape of trees and mountains and birds and beautiful, beautiful people all around her. She suddenly realized that all of these things had always been there; she just hadn’t taken the time notice them when she had been solely focused on her own digging. It also became apparent that her treasure was connected underground to the treasure of all of the people who were digging around her. There was no need to grab at it or try to stuff it in her pockets – its beauty was much more staggering when it remained connected to everyone else’s. Her job was simply to uncover her piece for everyone else to see.

Twelve Dancing Princesses #nails #polish

Twelve Dancing Princesses inspired nails by fishing4beauty.

I love how many people are inspired in so many different ways by fairy tales. This could probably be a Fanworks Friday installment, but I decided to put it up separately.

From fishing4beauty’s website:

This challenge was basically to recreate a manicure of another participant. This was such a difficult challenge. The manicures were all so amazing and well executed that I was intimidated to recreate any of them. However, when I saw the manicure created for Day 4 (Lights, Camera, Action!) by The Polished Squirrel I new that this was the one I wanted to attempt. Stephanie was inspired by the classic fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

The trees of silver, gold, and diamond are definitely one of my favorite aspects of the tale, so Keira and I kept that part of the story true to form in our retelling, Love’s Nest, despite the many other changes we made to the book.

Once Upon a Time: Exploring the Creative Life #fairytale #allegory

The other week, I was over at Skylar M. Cate’s blog talking about The Twelve Dancing Princesses talking about my and Keira Andrews’s new book, Love’s Nest, but also babbling about the allegory of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and the creative life, and the door to a magic kingdom in our bedrooms, and I WASN’T EVEN DRUNK! Check it out!

Once Upon a Time: Exploring the Creative Life

Fanworks Friday: Ramona’s Law of Reciprocal Actions #fanfiction #ramona

In today’s world, somewhere between 50 Shades and Twilight and One Direction and Teen Wolf, almost everyone has at least heard of fanfiction. The consensus opinion on fanfiction still seems like a hung jury with many thinking that fanfiction is drivel, brainless, idiotic, a waste of time and potential, and many other things. Others point out that fanfiction is not only okay but that many works of literature qualify as fanfiction. Just like any other kind of writing, some fanfiction is awful and some is okay and some is sublime.

Today, I’m not offering up a slice of sublime, but I think that this story by fairy_tale_echo is definitely not drivel. Over the last few years, I’ve been reading all of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby books to my daughter, and when I saw this offering back in 2010, I made note of it. Having read it a few times now, I feel like it is a fitting tribute to the Ramona Series and I recommend it to those who might be interested or simply curious.

***

Ramona’s Law of Reciprocal Actions

Summary:

There is nothing Ramona Quimby hates more than doing what is expected of her. (Ramona Quimby, Age 17)

Ramona Quimby is seventeen years old, a graffiti artist who tags the streets of Portland as “Q” and idolizes Banksy, an honor student secretly crushing on the captain of the football team who also happens to be her current tutee, and she is standing over one of her best friends and holding a pair of scissors. 

Oh, how long she has dreamed of this, this exact moment.  She never thought it would happen, but here she is, standing over Susan with a pair of scissors, about to take one of Susan’s fat curls in her hand and snip it off.

The sound “Boing-boing-boing!” rings out in her head like it has since that first day of kindergarten so many years ago when she had seen Susan for the first time.

She picks up a curl and before Susan can even whisper, “I don’t think my mother…” Ramona snips it off.  She hears Daisy’s indrawn gasp and Davy’s small clap a split second later.

“It’s your hair, Susan, not your mother’s.  And you’re seventeen, not seven.  She can’t boss everything you do,” Ramona says firmly, grabbing another curl and clipping again.

It is better than the boings.

***

Finish reading the story HERE.

And while we’re at it, here, have this great song by the band Vandaveer, also inspired by Ramona Quimby.

I’m Not Stupid: Dyscalculia – Mathematics Disability #dyscalculia

Thank God for Degrassi: The Next Generation. Because of that show, I now understand that I’m not stupid or lazy. I have Dyscalculia.

Dyscalculia is difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic, such as difficulty in understanding numbers, learning how to manipulate numbers, and learning math facts.

Unfortunately, back when I was in school, this diagnosis didn’t exist, so I had to endure humiliations like my 4th Grade teacher standing me up in front of the whole class and shaming me by calling me stupid because I didn’t know my multiplication tables. (Thanks, Mrs. Black. You induced some good childhood trauma with that one.)

Because of math, I spent twelve years in school miserable every single day. The amount of miserable that amounts to is a dang lot. The way I got by was to avoid being shamed. I perfected something that I had already learned from my family system, hiding in plain sight, and was pretty successful at avoiding the excruciating embarrassment of being called up to the board to work a problem in front of everyone. The times I didn’t avoid it, though, are burned into me like scars that still hurt.

My earliest memory of math is of making up a story about the numbers. I told my daughter about this story today as I drove her to school while explaining to her why my favorite number is four.

Me: Well, I had a really hard time with math when I was in kindergarten, so I tried to make it more understandable by making a story about the numbers. It went like, this: the numbers one through four were battling against the numbers five through night, because they were trying to recapture their kidnapped friend, number ten. Four was the best of the good guys because he went head-to-head with five.

Bird: Why did five through nine kidnap ten?

Me: Because they were mean numbers that wanted to separate him from his friends.

Bird: Why did you think five through nine were mean, though?

Me: Probably because I really struggled to understand those numbers. I did okay through four. and I did okay with the number ten ,but I really struggled with any math that included five through nine.

Bird: How did the story end?

Me: It didn’t. One through four fought with five through nine forever.

Now, looking at this story, I see that I never did find a way to have five through nine make peace in my life. They are still numbers that make me pause before I work with them.

The other day, I revealed via Twitter that I have Dyscalculia, and someone responded with a question as to whether or not I know my multiplication tables. CONFESSION: I do not know them all. Yes, I’m 39 years old, earning a decent living, and I don’t know my multiplication tables. I have a calculator, though, and I know how to sit down with paper and pencil and work out problems, so it’s not as though I can’t do any math. There are just certain aspects of math that don’t come easy and never will. And memorizing numbers? Impossible for me. Even rote memory of something like a phone number is very hard. The numbers just slide out of my brain after about two minutes if I don’t chant them constantly.

The person who asked about multiplication tables and why I don’t have them memorized asked, “But why? They are JUST WORDS!”

I replied poorly at the time. The real response is this: Yes, they are just words. Words that have very little meaning. The number eight for example means eight things. That’s all it means. There’s no story to that number, no narrative. My brain latches on to narratives very well, but not to numbers, not to rules involving numbers outside a narrative. That’s why it was when I finally started to study Statistics in college that math suddenly snapped into place for me. Here was a narrative I could understand, here was a map, and the numbers had motivations and movement. It was such an a-ha moment for me that I nearly burst into tears in the middle of my class. Suddenly everything from basic arithmetic to algebra made sense in one sweeping moment of a teacher explaining math because it MEANT SOMETHING. It wasn’t just numbers, it wasn’t just words, and I UNDERSTOOD.

Believe it or not, I work as an assistant in the financial world in my day job. The person asking about multiplication tables said, “Uhh…don’t you work in finance? Remind me to never ask your advice on finances.”

Suddenly, I was in 4th Grade again and my teacher had just stood me up in front of the whole class and called me stupid. Suddenly, I was remembering my writer friend with dyslexia who had told me she was ashamed to tell people about it for fear they wouldn’t buy her books. (“Uhh, you have dyslexia? Don’t you write books? Remind me to never read them!”) It was a moment of immense triggering rage and shame and humiliation and I was very upset.

For what it’s worth, unless you’re a CPA, knowing one’s multiplication tables or being able to memorize numbers has nearly nothing to do with the fascinating narrative of the stock market, the bond market, tax law, insurance regulations, and the movement of money through estates and products. Yes, you have to be able to grasp the concept of mathematics enough to know if the calculations are off when looking at various output from computer modules, but that is not a problem for me and never has been.

I had to pass many exams (and did so with flying colors) in order to earn my licenses to practice in the financial world. I would be willing to bet a great deal that despite not knowing all of my multiplication tables or being able to tell you exactly how much I paid for milk when I last bought it, I know more about the reality of finance than someone who thinks that multiplication memorization is important to the work I do daily.

Obviously, this encounter hurt my feelings deeply. It left me feeling ashamed and reminded of all the episodes of humiliation in my life because of my inability to remember numbers. (Hello, is the lock on my locker a number combination? FML!)

Also, let’s all remember that just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean they can’t do something. It means it’s harder for them, and they might have to come at it from a different angle, or they might need some help from time to time. But it doesn’t mean they are stupid or that they are incapable of doing an excellent job at any work that involves the problem area, given the right support systems.

This morning, Bird ended my story for me. She said, “Mom, let me help you write the end to your number story.”

I agreed.

She smiled at me and said, “Mom, eventually one through four defeated five through nine and got their old friend ten back, and five through nine reformed and became friends with one through four again.”

I smiled and thought about all that I’d done to try to make peace with numbers and I said, “I like that. Thank you.”