Jennifer Lauck's Blog, page 32
December 30, 2010
Book Talk: Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
I did not read this book. I might.
But I didn't.
I did watch the movie and I think that is a good thing because very likely I wouldn't like the movie had I read the book. Or if the book had been dreadful, perhaps I would have never given the movie a chance. But I digress.
I'm writing about this movie because it was about a writer, a struggling writer and a struggling writer who came up with a very, very clever idea that gave her a career as well as a movie and likely a nice chunk of change! Smart girl, Julie Powell. Very smart indeed.
And, I really liked the movie which was a surprise because the reviews were dreadful and had kept me away from watching it. Even from my friends. Most people were tepid, at best, about the movie and it's tandem story-lines and even the acting.
But in watching Julie & Julia, I was delighted. It had a solid beginning, middle and end. The movie also had depth. The main character had a mother she spoke to and was exasperated by and was also supported by. She dealt with marital issues that were realistic and relatable and the story line spoke deeply to the lost quality of womanhood in this era (despite our many opportunities, freedom and education). How trying to watch the "successful women" on their cell phones, being rude to the main character and to each other, as they acted like men. How rewarding to watch Julie struggle to be a heartfelt person, lost. A true artist.
And I had no idea Julia Child struggled with childlessness. I must admit, I knew nearly nothing about Child in fact but via this movie learned that she was valiant and true, as portrayed by Meryl Streep, in her suffering around this loss and so courageous to fill the void with artistic pursuits (cooking/writing) rather than dashing off to adopt a child. I think this choice was stunning to witness and the creativity that resulted in her life stood as a kind of testimony about the possibility that comes from allowing a sorrow in your life verses rushing to fill it up with what you think you want.
Having been a child who was used to fill the void--I can say that approach didn't work out so well for any of us.
But I digress again.
This was such a lovely film. A delight. There were no dropped loose ends. The stories were seamlessly woven together and it was all very real and interesting and feminine. This was a movie about women--a true story of women.
I recommend this movie and perhaps one of you might tell me--should I read the book?
December 29, 2010
Count Down to Publication IV
What is a blurb?
First, look at the word. It's about as attractive on the page as the word "blog".
Blurb.
You want to say, "excuse me," as soon as you see it hanging out there.
Blurb.
Excuse me. Which is really the true definition of a blurb. You, as a writer, are saying, "excuse me" to other writers (of high reputation and visibility) and asking them to read and hopefully comment on your book.
The first blurb for Blackbird came from the amazing and generous Hope Edelman. This comment really mattered to me because I adore and admire Hope. Her work in Motherless Daughters changed my life. The second blurb came from Frank McCourt and was courtesy of my then agent Molly Freidrich, who also represented McCourt and strong-armed him into making a comment (although I am sure she would deny this).
And this is actually a very important distinction. What is important to a writer is hardly important to a publisher (or an agent). Marketing isn't about who or what I like. Marketing is about visibility and while Hope Edelman was certainly high profile (and in my view, a more important writer), she wasn't Frank McCourt and thus, McCourt's blurb went on the front cover of Blackbird.
When you are working with Simon & Schuster, they have a lot of pull when it comes to blurbs. When you are working with a boutique press like Seal, well, you might have to do this work yourself. And in the case of Found, I did have to go out and stump for my own blurbs.
I made a list, checked it twice and went to work. Hope Edelman, Cheryl Strayed (author of Torch and soon to be released Wild, Karen Karbo (a local prima author), Adam Pertman (head of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute), Dr. Nancy Verrier (Primal Wound and B.J. Lifton (grand dame of adoption advocacy and healing reform).
I also had a hold out secret hope that Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map would blurb me. Hall's book so influenced me, I would stare at the wall for hours in the middle of the night. Her prose was stunning. Her heart ache complete. I was flayed by that book.
Everyone in my original list came back with a YES. Yes is a lovely and memorable word. With each "yes" I cheered in my quiet little office and did a little victory dance. Who doesn't love "YES." Even Meredith Hall had initially said yes, until she got the book and then came back with a decisive "NO."
This was, of course, devastating personally because I so adored her writing. Hall was my personal Pièce de résistance, my pearl. I immediately wanted to demand "WHY? WHY? WHY??"
Had I offened her in some way with the writing?
Did she hate it?
Was it just horribly written?
Talk about being triggered. (In case you don't know, Hall is a birthmother and of course, I am an adoptee). I was racked with doubt because Hall didn't reject it before I sent it to her and then she had it, in her hands and presto-chango. What had I done?
Writers!
My agent said to forget it, Hall wasn't a coup and to move on.
Agents!
The marketing mentality and the creator mentality are so different. A stunning abyss exists between the two. Still, I did what my agent suggested, set my insecurity aside and savored the other blurbs as they came in:
"I just finished Found, and I'm speechless. The child from Blackbird has grown up into an enormously wise, insightful, and honest woman. But that's all I'm saying. You'll want to discover the rest for yourself."
-- Hope Edelman, The Possibility of Everything
[image error] Jennifer Lauck's memoir FOUND is a powerful story about the most primal love and loss. In prose that is as clear-eyed as it is beautiful, riveting as it is wise, Lauck shattered my heart and then put it back together again. I'll never forget this book.
--Cheryl Strayed, Torch & Wild (to be released Fall 2011).
There are many ways of losing and being lost, and many ways of finding and being found when you are an adoptee. Jennifer Lauck has experienced most of them. We share her heroic and spiritual journey as a displaced child who has lost both her birth and adoptive mothers and suffers from a series of abusive would- be-mothers but finds herself on becoming a mother, being mothered by a meditation teacher, and forgiving those who failed her, including her birth mother, who cannot be the mother she needs. A compelling and uplifting memoir.
--Betty Jean Lifton, Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience
[image error] "In Found, Jennifer Lauck provides an articulate voice for the questions and complexities that so often come up for adoptees, but too often are left unspoken. Other adopted people -- and their families -- would do well to listen."
-- Adam Pertman, Executive Dir. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute & Author of Adoption Nation
Jennifer Lauck is a writer who happens to be adopted, rather than an adoptee who writes her story.
This means that this book reads like a novel and is a story that will resonate with anyone who has felt loss...loss of
family, loss of self, loss of hope. The lesson here is resilience, keeping the hope alive and knowing that no matter how desperate things are, they will get better. Finding oneself is the key. Jennifer is unlocking all those doors to her Self.
--Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound & Coming Home to Self
Karen Karbo is still working on her blurb, we're exchanging emails and I have to say I tried to get comments from Ann Fessler (author of The Girls Who Went Away) but Ann wasn't biting. She never even answered my email. Oh well!
We have our blurbs and I feel blessed. Particularly blessed by the inclusion of B.J. Lifton who died just after submitting her blurb, of pneumonia. What are the chances of that? How lucky was I to reach her and receive such caring words of praise? That is me, luck with an A. Lauck.
I feel like blurbs are a bit of magic, fate and The Rolling Stones: You can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.
First, look at the word. It's about as attractive on the page as the word "blog".
Blurb.
You want to say, "excuse me," as soon as you see it hanging out there.
Blurb.
Excuse me. Which is really the true definition of a blurb. You, as a writer, are saying, "excuse me" to other writers (of high reputation and visibility) and asking them to read and hopefully comment on your book.
The first blurb for Blackbird came from the amazing and generous Hope Edelman. This comment really mattered to me because I adore and admire Hope. Her work in Motherless Daughters changed my life. The second blurb came from Frank McCourt and was courtesy of my then agent Molly Freidrich, who also represented McCourt and strong-armed him into making a comment (although I am sure she would deny this). And this is actually a very important distinction. What is important to a writer is hardly important to a publisher (or an agent). Marketing isn't about who or what I like. Marketing is about visibility and while Hope Edelman was certainly high profile (and in my view, a more important writer), she wasn't Frank McCourt and thus, McCourt's blurb went on the front cover of Blackbird.
When you are working with Simon & Schuster, they have a lot of pull when it comes to blurbs. When you are working with a boutique press like Seal, well, you might have to do this work yourself. And in the case of Found, I did have to go out and stump for my own blurbs.
I made a list, checked it twice and went to work. Hope Edelman, Cheryl Strayed (author of Torch and soon to be released Wild, Karen Karbo (a local prima author), Adam Pertman (head of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute), Dr. Nancy Verrier (Primal Wound and B.J. Lifton (grand dame of adoption advocacy and healing reform).
I also had a hold out secret hope that Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map would blurb me. Hall's book so influenced me, I would stare at the wall for hours in the middle of the night. Her prose was stunning. Her heart ache complete. I was flayed by that book. Everyone in my original list came back with a YES. Yes is a lovely and memorable word. With each "yes" I cheered in my quiet little office and did a little victory dance. Who doesn't love "YES." Even Meredith Hall had initially said yes, until she got the book and then came back with a decisive "NO."
This was, of course, devastating personally because I so adored her writing. Hall was my personal Pièce de résistance, my pearl. I immediately wanted to demand "WHY? WHY? WHY??"
Had I offened her in some way with the writing?
Did she hate it?
Was it just horribly written?
Talk about being triggered. (In case you don't know, Hall is a birthmother and of course, I am an adoptee). I was racked with doubt because Hall didn't reject it before I sent it to her and then she had it, in her hands and presto-chango. What had I done?
Writers!
My agent said to forget it, Hall wasn't a coup and to move on.
Agents!
The marketing mentality and the creator mentality are so different. A stunning abyss exists between the two. Still, I did what my agent suggested, set my insecurity aside and savored the other blurbs as they came in:
"I just finished Found, and I'm speechless. The child from Blackbird has grown up into an enormously wise, insightful, and honest woman. But that's all I'm saying. You'll want to discover the rest for yourself." -- Hope Edelman, The Possibility of Everything
[image error] Jennifer Lauck's memoir FOUND is a powerful story about the most primal love and loss. In prose that is as clear-eyed as it is beautiful, riveting as it is wise, Lauck shattered my heart and then put it back together again. I'll never forget this book.
--Cheryl Strayed, Torch & Wild (to be released Fall 2011).
There are many ways of losing and being lost, and many ways of finding and being found when you are an adoptee. Jennifer Lauck has experienced most of them. We share her heroic and spiritual journey as a displaced child who has lost both her birth and adoptive mothers and suffers from a series of abusive would- be-mothers but finds herself on becoming a mother, being mothered by a meditation teacher, and forgiving those who failed her, including her birth mother, who cannot be the mother she needs. A compelling and uplifting memoir. --Betty Jean Lifton, Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience
[image error] "In Found, Jennifer Lauck provides an articulate voice for the questions and complexities that so often come up for adoptees, but too often are left unspoken. Other adopted people -- and their families -- would do well to listen."
-- Adam Pertman, Executive Dir. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute & Author of Adoption Nation
Jennifer Lauck is a writer who happens to be adopted, rather than an adoptee who writes her story.This means that this book reads like a novel and is a story that will resonate with anyone who has felt loss...loss of
family, loss of self, loss of hope. The lesson here is resilience, keeping the hope alive and knowing that no matter how desperate things are, they will get better. Finding oneself is the key. Jennifer is unlocking all those doors to her Self.
--Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound & Coming Home to Self
Karen Karbo is still working on her blurb, we're exchanging emails and I have to say I tried to get comments from Ann Fessler (author of The Girls Who Went Away) but Ann wasn't biting. She never even answered my email. Oh well!
We have our blurbs and I feel blessed. Particularly blessed by the inclusion of B.J. Lifton who died just after submitting her blurb, of pneumonia. What are the chances of that? How lucky was I to reach her and receive such caring words of praise? That is me, luck with an A. Lauck.
I feel like blurbs are a bit of magic, fate and The Rolling Stones: You can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.
December 27, 2010
Fresh Writing: Has Anyone Died From Looking?
I pedal to the nine thirty meeting on a Monday morning, one week before Christmas, and the sky is a complexity of gray clouds and cuts of blue.
Another bike is already chained to the light pole and I puzzle my own bike to fit in. Across the plaza, Rose's bakery is a wide yawn of dark emptiness—out of business—which isn't a bad thing. Who needs a bakery three steps away from Weight Watchers? That's just bad planning.
Inside Weight Watchers, florescent lights blaze down from the particleboard ceiling and tight bound carpet meets my feet. On the walls are glossy posters of men and women in various poses of confidence and enthusiasm —some are off to work out, others stand with a hand on the hip in confident ease and still others are surrounded by plates of inviting food.
The actual meeting has already started and at least thirty people—all women—are in their seats with eyes dutifully trained on the team leader.
At the front desk, I hand over my Pocket Guide, which dates back to June 2009. A year and a half has passed since I've been to a meeting but some things never change. The scale is still here, waiting for me to step up.
I tug off my shoes, the top layer of my black waterproof pants (another layer is underneath) and my goldenrod jacket along with the fleece sweatshirt. Every ounce counts.
"You know we have a whole new plan?" the woman says, her voice low.
"I heard," I whisper back.
"It's Points Plus now. Fruit is free."
"Fruit is free?"
She waves me to the scale.
"Plus you get more bonus points," she whispers.
"Why?"
"New system," she says.
The woman's dark brown eyes are trained on the computer screen, where my weight is being tallied and I'm ready for the bad news. I must be at least one seventy by now.
"Just up six ounces from your last visit," she says. "Does that seem right?"
"Ounces?"
"That's right," she says, "you are doing great on the plan."
I want to laugh out loud. I haven't been following the plan. I just eat what I eat and exercise when I exercise. I do my best to keep it all in tow but the other night I got a back end view of myself and almost had a heart attack. I remembered a poem I heard Sharon Olds read about her examining her own naked behind in the mirror. It started: Has anyone died from looking? That's exactly how I felt. I wanted to die from the sight of my own renaissance ass.
"Just six ounces? Are you sure?"
An automatic sticker prints out with my new weight and the woman nods as she affixes it to the back of my brand new Points Plus Pocket Guide. The new book is thicker and has a bunch of plastic tabs. Bright blue is for Stay on Target! Bright green is for Power up! Bright orange is for Treat Yourself! And hot pink is for Get Up & Go!
"Stay after the meeting to learn Points Plus, it takes about fifteen minutes to explain," she whispers, "and you can toss that old book."
I hold fast to my old book, a streamlined silver folder that doesn't have any brilliant colored tabs or exclamation points. I can already tell I like the old plan better.
With my shoes, pants and coats on again, I sit in the back row and study the new plan.
Up front, the team leader is a high-energy sort in a yellow, white and black patchwork sweater that fits snug over her athletic arms and she has a shock of short blond gray hair that shoots straight up and back from her forehead, mad scientist. or more like that comedian Kramer on the old Jerry Seinfeld show. Her outfit, hair and general jocular vibe is like you might expect from a ski race champion who zipped in for this inspirational speech and has plans to spend the rest of the day on the slopes.
"Looks like Doris has dropped five pounds," the leader announces and this generates a round of tired applause.
The leader passes a star sticker to Doris, a heavyset woman in a gray parka. "Give us some advice, Doris!"
Doris puts her sticker into her book with total concentration.
"A little tip for the rest of us!" the leader prompts again.
"Well," Doris finally says. She looks up at the ceiling, considering her words with care and compared to our peppy leader, Doris is practically comatose.
"I just make sure to get my walk in," Doris finally says with a shrug. "That's about all."
"Get up and go!" the leader shouts and punches at the air. "Like it says in your book, exercise is key."
And on it goes. More stickers are passed out for those who have dropped five and ten pounds and each recipient takes their little star sticker with the shyness of a second grader. Into each book the stars go.
Conversation unwinds about how to eat over the Christmas holiday. "Just how do we avoid those cookies? Those glasses of wine? Those whipped potatoes and gravy?" our team leader asks. "Turn to a friend and talk strategy."
Next thing I know I am knee to knee with a woman named Helen who plans to use all her bonus points for Christmas dinner. "I'm saving up," she smiles. "What about you?"
"Oh," I say, "I'm just trying to figure out the new plan." I wiggle the new Pocket Guide between us.
"You'll love it," Helen says. "Fruit is free."
"I heard."
"And you get more points, did you see that? More points and more bonus points too."
Our team leader claps to pull our attention forward before Helen can continue. She then reads a clever Christmas story about walking instead of eating and everyone laughs. Applause goes up again, another meeting done and purses are tugged on shoulders and jackets are zipped against the cold.
As everyone files out, I stay put and flip through the booklet and discover I'm indeed I'm allowed more points (I used to get just twenty three per day) and fruit is free. It seems refined carbs and sugars have gone up. Four ounces of wine used to be two points. Now it's four. A slice of cheese pizza used to be six points, now it's fourteen.
Pretty soon it is just me and another woman, both of us Lifetime Members, which means we met our goal, long ago, and our own books have been maxed out with little star stickers. We say polite hellos.
The team leader zips over with her shock of wild hair and asks if we are here to learn about the great new plan—Points Plus? Before we can do more than nod, she drops her trim behind to the edge of a chair, balances a flip chart on her knees and is off on her presentation that matches all the tabs in the pocket guide. Stay on Target! Power up! Treat Yourself! Get Up & Go!
"Throw out that old book and start fresh. Don't look back, that's what I say."
As she talks, she spies my old book on the chair next to my purse and looks like she might just snatch it away. I ease it under my leg, safe and sound.
"I just have a couple questions…" I begin.
"Me too," the other Life Timer adds.
"Are you skimmers?" the leader asks. Her eyes dart from me to the other woman and back to me again. I'm not sure if she sees us as much as she scans us. She has the electric eyes of someone who spends a lot of time on a computer or texting.
"Because you are going to have to read all the materials, I mean all the materials to understand the brilliance of this new plan. We just can't argue with Weight Watchers science, I can't, can you?"
"But, I…" I begin and hold up my new Pocket Plan.
"You're a skimmer," she says. "I can tell. Go home, read all the materials and then you'll understand."
The other woman has the good sense to zip her mouth closed and I do the same since I guess I'm a skimmer, which must mean that I don't read things as carefully as I should. As the leader flips through her presentation, I think about how I'm a writing teacher who sees about a hundred students a week, a mother who does homework with her two children each night and has to read piles of complex instructions and how I'm getting an MFA in creative writing which means a thesis, a critical paper and research. I never really thought of myself as a skimmer.
When the leader finally takes a breath, I try one more time.
"I'm just wondering…" I begin.
"I can tell, you have that look," the leader says, "you're one of those people who doesn't like to change. And you're a skimmer. You aren't taking in the information."
I lean forward, rest a gentle hand on her thigh and look into those electric eyes. I want to tell her that she has no idea who I am and frankly, I don't know who she is either. After all, we are strangers. She plays her part as the "high energy team leader who inspires woman and men to make healthy food choices and exercise more," and I am supposed to play mine as the doe-eyed follower here for her leadership but it's a lie because I'm not a passive follower who resists change and skims through. I'm myself, unique, one of a kind and I have a question already.
"I-will-read-the-material," I say, my voice measured out. "Believe me, I will read every word. I would just like to ask one question, please."
The woman opens her mouth, as if she might just tell me again that I am a skimmer, but instead she clamps her own jaw closed.
I sit back from her, remove my hand and take a deep breath. "How many points now, in this new system, for a yoga class?" I ask.
As if she has been short circuited, the woman's bright tech-tronic eyes blink with surprise and her mouth falls open. There is a sense of defeat in her that makes me almost sad. Just what is her sorrow anyway? Why is she trying so hard? What is she trying to prove?
"Oh," she finally says. "I really don't know."
"All righty then," I say. "That's all I wanted to know."
The woman next to me asks where I take yoga.
"Down the street," I say. "In Irvington."
"Do you sweat?" she asks.
"Yes, I do. In a power class."
"Maybe I'll try that too," she says.
"Oh, it's great," I say.
The silenced leader looks at us, unsure of what to say next and I close my new Pocket Guide, shove it into my purse, grab my things and say goodbye.
There is a meeting next week, same time but as I go out the door, I decide I'm not coming back—not to this time slot anyway. Heck, I might not be back for another year and a half. Who knows?
Another bike is already chained to the light pole and I puzzle my own bike to fit in. Across the plaza, Rose's bakery is a wide yawn of dark emptiness—out of business—which isn't a bad thing. Who needs a bakery three steps away from Weight Watchers? That's just bad planning.
Inside Weight Watchers, florescent lights blaze down from the particleboard ceiling and tight bound carpet meets my feet. On the walls are glossy posters of men and women in various poses of confidence and enthusiasm —some are off to work out, others stand with a hand on the hip in confident ease and still others are surrounded by plates of inviting food.
The actual meeting has already started and at least thirty people—all women—are in their seats with eyes dutifully trained on the team leader.
At the front desk, I hand over my Pocket Guide, which dates back to June 2009. A year and a half has passed since I've been to a meeting but some things never change. The scale is still here, waiting for me to step up.
I tug off my shoes, the top layer of my black waterproof pants (another layer is underneath) and my goldenrod jacket along with the fleece sweatshirt. Every ounce counts.
"You know we have a whole new plan?" the woman says, her voice low.
"I heard," I whisper back.
"It's Points Plus now. Fruit is free.""Fruit is free?"
She waves me to the scale.
"Plus you get more bonus points," she whispers.
"Why?"
"New system," she says.
The woman's dark brown eyes are trained on the computer screen, where my weight is being tallied and I'm ready for the bad news. I must be at least one seventy by now.
"Just up six ounces from your last visit," she says. "Does that seem right?"
"Ounces?"
"That's right," she says, "you are doing great on the plan."
I want to laugh out loud. I haven't been following the plan. I just eat what I eat and exercise when I exercise. I do my best to keep it all in tow but the other night I got a back end view of myself and almost had a heart attack. I remembered a poem I heard Sharon Olds read about her examining her own naked behind in the mirror. It started: Has anyone died from looking? That's exactly how I felt. I wanted to die from the sight of my own renaissance ass.
"Just six ounces? Are you sure?"
An automatic sticker prints out with my new weight and the woman nods as she affixes it to the back of my brand new Points Plus Pocket Guide. The new book is thicker and has a bunch of plastic tabs. Bright blue is for Stay on Target! Bright green is for Power up! Bright orange is for Treat Yourself! And hot pink is for Get Up & Go!
"Stay after the meeting to learn Points Plus, it takes about fifteen minutes to explain," she whispers, "and you can toss that old book."
I hold fast to my old book, a streamlined silver folder that doesn't have any brilliant colored tabs or exclamation points. I can already tell I like the old plan better.
With my shoes, pants and coats on again, I sit in the back row and study the new plan.
Up front, the team leader is a high-energy sort in a yellow, white and black patchwork sweater that fits snug over her athletic arms and she has a shock of short blond gray hair that shoots straight up and back from her forehead, mad scientist. or more like that comedian Kramer on the old Jerry Seinfeld show. Her outfit, hair and general jocular vibe is like you might expect from a ski race champion who zipped in for this inspirational speech and has plans to spend the rest of the day on the slopes. "Looks like Doris has dropped five pounds," the leader announces and this generates a round of tired applause.
The leader passes a star sticker to Doris, a heavyset woman in a gray parka. "Give us some advice, Doris!"
Doris puts her sticker into her book with total concentration.
"A little tip for the rest of us!" the leader prompts again.
"Well," Doris finally says. She looks up at the ceiling, considering her words with care and compared to our peppy leader, Doris is practically comatose.
"I just make sure to get my walk in," Doris finally says with a shrug. "That's about all."
"Get up and go!" the leader shouts and punches at the air. "Like it says in your book, exercise is key."
And on it goes. More stickers are passed out for those who have dropped five and ten pounds and each recipient takes their little star sticker with the shyness of a second grader. Into each book the stars go.
Conversation unwinds about how to eat over the Christmas holiday. "Just how do we avoid those cookies? Those glasses of wine? Those whipped potatoes and gravy?" our team leader asks. "Turn to a friend and talk strategy."
Next thing I know I am knee to knee with a woman named Helen who plans to use all her bonus points for Christmas dinner. "I'm saving up," she smiles. "What about you?"
"Oh," I say, "I'm just trying to figure out the new plan." I wiggle the new Pocket Guide between us.
"You'll love it," Helen says. "Fruit is free."
"I heard."
"And you get more points, did you see that? More points and more bonus points too."
Our team leader claps to pull our attention forward before Helen can continue. She then reads a clever Christmas story about walking instead of eating and everyone laughs. Applause goes up again, another meeting done and purses are tugged on shoulders and jackets are zipped against the cold.
As everyone files out, I stay put and flip through the booklet and discover I'm indeed I'm allowed more points (I used to get just twenty three per day) and fruit is free. It seems refined carbs and sugars have gone up. Four ounces of wine used to be two points. Now it's four. A slice of cheese pizza used to be six points, now it's fourteen.
Pretty soon it is just me and another woman, both of us Lifetime Members, which means we met our goal, long ago, and our own books have been maxed out with little star stickers. We say polite hellos.
The team leader zips over with her shock of wild hair and asks if we are here to learn about the great new plan—Points Plus? Before we can do more than nod, she drops her trim behind to the edge of a chair, balances a flip chart on her knees and is off on her presentation that matches all the tabs in the pocket guide. Stay on Target! Power up! Treat Yourself! Get Up & Go!
"Throw out that old book and start fresh. Don't look back, that's what I say."
As she talks, she spies my old book on the chair next to my purse and looks like she might just snatch it away. I ease it under my leg, safe and sound.
"I just have a couple questions…" I begin.
"Me too," the other Life Timer adds.
"Are you skimmers?" the leader asks. Her eyes dart from me to the other woman and back to me again. I'm not sure if she sees us as much as she scans us. She has the electric eyes of someone who spends a lot of time on a computer or texting.
"Because you are going to have to read all the materials, I mean all the materials to understand the brilliance of this new plan. We just can't argue with Weight Watchers science, I can't, can you?"
"But, I…" I begin and hold up my new Pocket Plan.
"You're a skimmer," she says. "I can tell. Go home, read all the materials and then you'll understand."
The other woman has the good sense to zip her mouth closed and I do the same since I guess I'm a skimmer, which must mean that I don't read things as carefully as I should. As the leader flips through her presentation, I think about how I'm a writing teacher who sees about a hundred students a week, a mother who does homework with her two children each night and has to read piles of complex instructions and how I'm getting an MFA in creative writing which means a thesis, a critical paper and research. I never really thought of myself as a skimmer.
When the leader finally takes a breath, I try one more time.
"I'm just wondering…" I begin.
"I can tell, you have that look," the leader says, "you're one of those people who doesn't like to change. And you're a skimmer. You aren't taking in the information."
I lean forward, rest a gentle hand on her thigh and look into those electric eyes. I want to tell her that she has no idea who I am and frankly, I don't know who she is either. After all, we are strangers. She plays her part as the "high energy team leader who inspires woman and men to make healthy food choices and exercise more," and I am supposed to play mine as the doe-eyed follower here for her leadership but it's a lie because I'm not a passive follower who resists change and skims through. I'm myself, unique, one of a kind and I have a question already.
"I-will-read-the-material," I say, my voice measured out. "Believe me, I will read every word. I would just like to ask one question, please."
The woman opens her mouth, as if she might just tell me again that I am a skimmer, but instead she clamps her own jaw closed.
I sit back from her, remove my hand and take a deep breath. "How many points now, in this new system, for a yoga class?" I ask.
As if she has been short circuited, the woman's bright tech-tronic eyes blink with surprise and her mouth falls open. There is a sense of defeat in her that makes me almost sad. Just what is her sorrow anyway? Why is she trying so hard? What is she trying to prove?
"Oh," she finally says. "I really don't know."
"All righty then," I say. "That's all I wanted to know."
The woman next to me asks where I take yoga.
"Down the street," I say. "In Irvington."
"Do you sweat?" she asks.
"Yes, I do. In a power class."
"Maybe I'll try that too," she says.
"Oh, it's great," I say.
The silenced leader looks at us, unsure of what to say next and I close my new Pocket Guide, shove it into my purse, grab my things and say goodbye.
There is a meeting next week, same time but as I go out the door, I decide I'm not coming back—not to this time slot anyway. Heck, I might not be back for another year and a half. Who knows?
December 24, 2010
Book Talk: The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard
Jo Ann Beard in a remarkable writer, spare and clean. I had a chance to do a salon style conversation with her in New York and she is, in person, as she is in the page. Edgy and reserved as well. Her entire collection, The Boys of My Youth is remarkable but for this posting, I'd like to focus on the essay titled The Fourth State of Matter which is about a dying dog, a dying marriage and in the end, a terrorist shooting spree that leaves several people dead.
To me the story reads like a mix between parable and fable. A parable is defined as a short simple story intended to illustrate a moral. A fable is: 1) a short story about supernatural, mythological or legendary characters and events and 2) an improbable account.
In my view, the fable-like quality of this story comes from her reference to the stars and the mysteries of the universe. She works with physicists who study outer space, thus the title, which is a reference to her friend and employer's study of the plasma filled dust contained in the rings around Saturn. She writes: Plasma is the fourth state of matter. You've got your solid, your liquid, your gas, and then your plasma. In outer space there's the plasmasphere and the plasmapause. I avoid the math when I can and put a layperson's spin on these things.
Beard takes us to the stars at the beginning of the story too. The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. Over the neighbor's house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io.
And then there is the improbable part of the story that fits the fable definition—which isn't to say she isn't telling the truth but more refers to my response to the violent shooting. The plot twist got me right between the eyes, since at first the story appeared to be just a well told but monotonous story of a dying dog and a dying marriage. Beard cultivated this perception by loading up so much detail about the suffering of the dog, herself caring for the dog, the anguished husband and then she even tossed in a great amount of detail about a squirrel infestation in a back bedroom of her home. All of this information serves like a kind of backfill and occupies my attention to the point of distraction.
Examples: The collie wakes me up about three times a night, summoning me from a great distance as I row my boat through a dim, complicated dream. She's on the shoreline, barking. Wake up. She's staring at me with her head slightly tipped to the side, long nose, gazing eyes, toenails clenched to get a purchase on the wood floor. We used to call her the face of love.
She totters on her broomstick legs into the hallway and over the doorsill into the kitchen, makes a sharp left at the refrigerator -careful almost went down - then a straightaway to the door. I sleep on my feet in the cold of the doorway, waiting. Here she comes. Lift her down the two steps. She pees and then stands, Lassie in a ratty coat, gazing out at the yard
What I can't take is the squirrels. They come alive at night, throwing terrific parties in the spare bedroom, making thumps and crashes. Occasionally a high-pitched squeal is heard amid bumps and the sound of scrabbling toenails.
I have an ex-beauty queen coming over to get rid of the squirrels for me. She has long red hair and a smile that can stop trucks. I've seen her wrestle goats, scare off a giant snake, and express a dog's anal glands, all in one afternoon. I told her on the phone that a family of squirrels is living in the upstairs of my house.
All this detail, all this drama and then, pop, right between the eyes, the story makes a sharp left turn and we are at a shooting spree. The story created in me this response: "impossible. No WAY! That did not happen."
Beard did, in fact, go through this shooting and she has done an impressive amount of journalistic work here. In an interview she says the following to Michael Gardner:
[image error] JB: … I was writing this piece about that and the dog's death, which was just a few weeks after the events at Iowa. Writing about the dog I realized I had to write about the divorce because it all happened at the same time. Suddenly in the midst of the essay, I found myself writing about work, which was an important part of how I survived my divorce. I had to realize at some point that I was making my way toward November 1. Even realizing that, I kept thinking it was still a piece about my dog. Then I got to November 1 and it was the same way in the essay that it was in real life, which is that suddenly an explosion occurs and nothing is the same. I had to accept the fact that the essay wasn't going to be about the history of dogs. It was going to be about the other thing. I had backed into it because I didn't want to write about that, for a variety of reasons. Not just that I wasn't ready, but there are ethical issues involved when you write about an event like that.
And now back to the parable aspect of this story—or the moral. The tale and the way it's told— meandering, slow and distracting via the landslide of details around the dog/marriage/squirrels—parallels life as a series of events and distractions. We plod along in our predicable and tired patterns diagnosing ourselves (and each other) as depressed and apathetic, while not seeing the vast system of the universe. Death is the inevitable outcome of states such as plodding along and diagnosis's of depression. One might say these are warning signs and precursors. I recall, more than a year before my own marriage died a surprising and violent death, I felt stunning, debilitating and complete depression. An advisor told me, "depression isn't a destination, Jennifer, but a sign that something is about to change."
In the wisdom that comes the oldest and some say the wisest book of all time, the Dao De Jing, it is stated clearly that to know what is going to happen—look at what is. This means, see the system we live, love, fight and die in and how it is, at its essence a system of polarity. Then look at what is happening around you and become the fortuneteller of what is to come by merely following the science of opposites.
December 22, 2010
Count Down to Publication III
Gone Home?
My Name is Tara?
Bye Bye Blackbird?
With New Eyes?
All the way up to our sale to Seal Press in September 2010, I had no idea what to call the true sequel to Blackbird. In fact, I didn't even know if could include that part of the title in the title because technically Still Waters was the true sequel (according to Simon & Schuster).
By way of background, I wrote Still Waters under great duress. The success of Blackbird demanded a sequel and I jumped at the offer to write a follow up, likely even suggested it, not because I considered the follow up a "satisfying conclusion" but because there was more story to tell.
Somehow, along the line of negotiations, it was determined that I would create a "satisfying conclusion." Of course, I couldn't do such a thing because it didn't exist.
Still Waters became the hardest book to write because I felt I was being dishonest to myself and to my fans. I just didn't have the answers to questions that so many people were asking and I certainly didn't feel happy in the way that my publisher insisted I needed to feel at the end of the book. There were still so many questions.
In the end, I did my best for Simon & Schuster, for my then editor and for the fans but I did not write that "satisfying conclusion." Ironically, as I write this post and study the cover of Still Waters, I must note that is doesn't read "sequal" anywhere. Nor does it read "satisfying conclusion." In fact, it's Publishers Weekly that calls the book a "satisfying sequel," which is a real relief.
When I was finishing Found, I knew I had all the answers to the questions that fans had been asking ten years earlier. More important, I had my own answers and felt at peace in myself. I also knew I had my ending and the true sequel.
Miraculously this is how Seal saw this book too and were delighted to promote to booksellers in that way.
But what to call the darn thing?
Choosing a title was a lot harder than you might think. No one title seemed just right. The issue of mother was really important, as was my adoption at birth, as was the journey into Tibetan Buddhism, but to refer to mother or adoption or even Buddhism in the title felt odd and confusing.
So many title options flew around and then I suggested "Found." I don't know how it came out. I suppose I was thinking about my friend Cheryl Strayed, who has a new memoir with Knopf (which releases next year) and it's titled Wild. I liked the one word and I loved the "true sequel to Blackbird" subtitle. So I suggested Found and it clicked with Seal.
We did a title search and there were no books, like mine, with that title! In looking into the actual book, I discovered I had a chapter called Found as well. Just the one word and it had been there all along, like an overlooked pearl.
I love the title Found, it's calming and grounding and provocative.
When I think about the title for Blackbird, the same thing happened. I had initially titled that book Jennifer Juniper but then the publisher and booksellers rejected it. Sent back to the drawing board, I realized that the song Blackbird was there in a chapter and I liked that title a lot. Could I use it? Afterall, it was a Beatles title and what if they owned it?
But, alas, I could use it! Voila. We had our name.
Next week: A New Publishing World!
My Name is Tara?
Bye Bye Blackbird?
With New Eyes?
All the way up to our sale to Seal Press in September 2010, I had no idea what to call the true sequel to Blackbird. In fact, I didn't even know if could include that part of the title in the title because technically Still Waters was the true sequel (according to Simon & Schuster).
By way of background, I wrote Still Waters under great duress. The success of Blackbird demanded a sequel and I jumped at the offer to write a follow up, likely even suggested it, not because I considered the follow up a "satisfying conclusion" but because there was more story to tell. Somehow, along the line of negotiations, it was determined that I would create a "satisfying conclusion." Of course, I couldn't do such a thing because it didn't exist.
Still Waters became the hardest book to write because I felt I was being dishonest to myself and to my fans. I just didn't have the answers to questions that so many people were asking and I certainly didn't feel happy in the way that my publisher insisted I needed to feel at the end of the book. There were still so many questions.
In the end, I did my best for Simon & Schuster, for my then editor and for the fans but I did not write that "satisfying conclusion." Ironically, as I write this post and study the cover of Still Waters, I must note that is doesn't read "sequal" anywhere. Nor does it read "satisfying conclusion." In fact, it's Publishers Weekly that calls the book a "satisfying sequel," which is a real relief.
When I was finishing Found, I knew I had all the answers to the questions that fans had been asking ten years earlier. More important, I had my own answers and felt at peace in myself. I also knew I had my ending and the true sequel.
Miraculously this is how Seal saw this book too and were delighted to promote to booksellers in that way.
But what to call the darn thing?
Choosing a title was a lot harder than you might think. No one title seemed just right. The issue of mother was really important, as was my adoption at birth, as was the journey into Tibetan Buddhism, but to refer to mother or adoption or even Buddhism in the title felt odd and confusing.
So many title options flew around and then I suggested "Found." I don't know how it came out. I suppose I was thinking about my friend Cheryl Strayed, who has a new memoir with Knopf (which releases next year) and it's titled Wild. I liked the one word and I loved the "true sequel to Blackbird" subtitle. So I suggested Found and it clicked with Seal. We did a title search and there were no books, like mine, with that title! In looking into the actual book, I discovered I had a chapter called Found as well. Just the one word and it had been there all along, like an overlooked pearl.
I love the title Found, it's calming and grounding and provocative.
When I think about the title for Blackbird, the same thing happened. I had initially titled that book Jennifer Juniper but then the publisher and booksellers rejected it. Sent back to the drawing board, I realized that the song Blackbird was there in a chapter and I liked that title a lot. Could I use it? Afterall, it was a Beatles title and what if they owned it?
But, alas, I could use it! Voila. We had our name.
Next week: A New Publishing World!
December 20, 2010
Fresh Writing: Stop Light
It's a Sunday in December and I'm on my bike. I pedal through a neighborhood called Irvington and Irvington is like it sounds, posh and upscale with houses big enough for four families to fit inside and fancy yards (even in the winter) landscaped as if they have been prepared for a photo layout. Several cars fill the driveways of Irvington homes. BMW, Mercedes, Land Rover, SAAB. Irvington means you've made it or are working damn hard to keep up on the bills.
I don't live in Irvington.
I live a mile or so away in a neighborhood called Kerns where the houses aren't so big and the yards are as mis-matched as the material you would find in an old patchwork quilt. In Kerns, the cars are Chevy trucks and Honda hybrids and the people who live there are young couples in their first homes or single people living in apartments. Or they are people like me, writers, teachers, artists and single moms in transition.
Take a walk in Irvington and you are going to notice the architecture of the homes, the elegance and the refinement.
Take a walk around Kerns and you'll notice wadded sandwich wrappers and potato chip in the gutter, a big open field where dogs run around and sniff at each other and blue plastic bags full of dog shit that have been tied to the chain link fence like some form of rebellion against the "scoop your poop" ordinance.
On my bike, I leave the prosperity of Irvington behind and head home after yoga class—ninety minutes where I attempt to be in my body while a young woman named Sarah talks non-stop. "Yoga is a breathing practice with movement," Sarah likes to say along with a hundred other things I tune out as I hang upside down, balance on one foot and try to get my knee to touch my nose.
What gets me about yoga, every time, is the pain. It hurts to move. It hurts to be in my body. It hurts to be. And that's weird. It shouldn't hurt to be alive, should it? Do the deer hurt as they walk along and munch on grass? Do trees ache? Or the clouds? Or the wind? Why is nature so seamless but being human is so painful?
These questions are total confusion to me.
With my yoga mat in a bag that I've slung over my back, I pedal across the freeway overpass and the roar of the cars is like the sound of the ocean. I make a left at the dairy where a giant carton of milk spins non-stop and then I go past the TV station where a news chopper has been parked on the roof.
I stop at the light and six lanes of traffic speed by.
Overhead the sky makes me think of Nevada, the place where I was born and lived a few years of my life. This morning sky is blue and wide and there are no clouds—none. It's a summer sky in winter. Vast.
My mother lives in Nevada and I wonder what her sky looks like today? Is it cloudy and dark for all the rain they've been having? Is she looking at an Oregon sky over Nevada right now while I look at a Nevada sky over Oregon?
Yesterday, my mother got the package I sent. Gag gift. It was one of those mechanical dogs that roll around on the floor thanks to a rotating tail and it has a recorded laugh that will not stop until you shut it off (or beat it to death with a hammer).
My mom has cats. Three. I thought it would be hilarious to give her the crazy dog, just for the fun her cats would have batting it about. When she got it, that's what she told me. "It was hilarious."
It makes me smile to think I could make my mother laugh. I wish I could have been there to hear the sound.
I have only known my mom, outside the womb, for two years now. I found her after forty-four years of silence on both our parts. My mother, seventeen when she had me, was told to forget I had been born of course I forgot her because all that happened before my memory set in.
Over time, we both became incredible actresses in our own lives, totally snowed ourselves and everyone else, but the truth is, I never forgot. Not really.
Now we know each other and it's slow going. We send cards and little gifts and we talk once in a while. I might have gone my whole life not knowing her and that would have been pretty sad.
As I wait for the light to change, I lean over my handlebars and maybe that's it. Maybe all the pain in me is from playing my part for all these years. Pretending to be one person when you are another, well, that just sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?
If I look inside the woman my adoptive parents named Jennifer, the one who goes to yoga a few days each week to wrestle with her pain, I have to admit that I have no idea who I am. Not really. Sure, I'm a writer, a mother and the one with a strange little house in the Kern's neighborhood but for the most part, I'm a total mystery to myself. I'm like the odd collection of trash on my street and the tiny bags of shit tied to chain link fence. I'm a little bit rebellion and a lot out of sorts and just trying to figure out who I am now. Who I really am. Sometimes, it is as hard as trying to breathe while touching my knee to my nose while balanced upside down.
Finally the light changes and it's a little green man on a bike, which means that I can go across the big intersection. I stand up on my pedals and motor my way through. A few more blocks and I make a left down my street. It's not perfect, it sure isn't Irvington, but this is where I am at. It's home.
I don't live in Irvington.
I live a mile or so away in a neighborhood called Kerns where the houses aren't so big and the yards are as mis-matched as the material you would find in an old patchwork quilt. In Kerns, the cars are Chevy trucks and Honda hybrids and the people who live there are young couples in their first homes or single people living in apartments. Or they are people like me, writers, teachers, artists and single moms in transition.
Take a walk in Irvington and you are going to notice the architecture of the homes, the elegance and the refinement.
Take a walk around Kerns and you'll notice wadded sandwich wrappers and potato chip in the gutter, a big open field where dogs run around and sniff at each other and blue plastic bags full of dog shit that have been tied to the chain link fence like some form of rebellion against the "scoop your poop" ordinance.
On my bike, I leave the prosperity of Irvington behind and head home after yoga class—ninety minutes where I attempt to be in my body while a young woman named Sarah talks non-stop. "Yoga is a breathing practice with movement," Sarah likes to say along with a hundred other things I tune out as I hang upside down, balance on one foot and try to get my knee to touch my nose.
What gets me about yoga, every time, is the pain. It hurts to move. It hurts to be in my body. It hurts to be. And that's weird. It shouldn't hurt to be alive, should it? Do the deer hurt as they walk along and munch on grass? Do trees ache? Or the clouds? Or the wind? Why is nature so seamless but being human is so painful?These questions are total confusion to me.
With my yoga mat in a bag that I've slung over my back, I pedal across the freeway overpass and the roar of the cars is like the sound of the ocean. I make a left at the dairy where a giant carton of milk spins non-stop and then I go past the TV station where a news chopper has been parked on the roof.
I stop at the light and six lanes of traffic speed by.
Overhead the sky makes me think of Nevada, the place where I was born and lived a few years of my life. This morning sky is blue and wide and there are no clouds—none. It's a summer sky in winter. Vast.
My mother lives in Nevada and I wonder what her sky looks like today? Is it cloudy and dark for all the rain they've been having? Is she looking at an Oregon sky over Nevada right now while I look at a Nevada sky over Oregon?
Yesterday, my mother got the package I sent. Gag gift. It was one of those mechanical dogs that roll around on the floor thanks to a rotating tail and it has a recorded laugh that will not stop until you shut it off (or beat it to death with a hammer). My mom has cats. Three. I thought it would be hilarious to give her the crazy dog, just for the fun her cats would have batting it about. When she got it, that's what she told me. "It was hilarious."
It makes me smile to think I could make my mother laugh. I wish I could have been there to hear the sound.
I have only known my mom, outside the womb, for two years now. I found her after forty-four years of silence on both our parts. My mother, seventeen when she had me, was told to forget I had been born of course I forgot her because all that happened before my memory set in.
Over time, we both became incredible actresses in our own lives, totally snowed ourselves and everyone else, but the truth is, I never forgot. Not really.
Now we know each other and it's slow going. We send cards and little gifts and we talk once in a while. I might have gone my whole life not knowing her and that would have been pretty sad.
As I wait for the light to change, I lean over my handlebars and maybe that's it. Maybe all the pain in me is from playing my part for all these years. Pretending to be one person when you are another, well, that just sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?
If I look inside the woman my adoptive parents named Jennifer, the one who goes to yoga a few days each week to wrestle with her pain, I have to admit that I have no idea who I am. Not really. Sure, I'm a writer, a mother and the one with a strange little house in the Kern's neighborhood but for the most part, I'm a total mystery to myself. I'm like the odd collection of trash on my street and the tiny bags of shit tied to chain link fence. I'm a little bit rebellion and a lot out of sorts and just trying to figure out who I am now. Who I really am. Sometimes, it is as hard as trying to breathe while touching my knee to my nose while balanced upside down.
Finally the light changes and it's a little green man on a bike, which means that I can go across the big intersection. I stand up on my pedals and motor my way through. A few more blocks and I make a left down my street. It's not perfect, it sure isn't Irvington, but this is where I am at. It's home.
December 16, 2010
Virtual Writing Classes - January 2011
WHEN?Group I: Sunday's-- January 2, 16, 23, 30, Feb. 6, 20, 27, March 6, 13. 2-4:30 (alternative time is 12:00-2:30)
Group II: Monday's--Jan. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, & Feb 7, 14, 21, 28. 10-12:30
DETAILS:
Each group will be made up of five to six writers. You will write, submit ten pages (double spaced, 12pt. font, with page numbers in a .doc format) each week (to me and the others in our group). We will meet and workshop the pages.
A: We will meet via telephone conference call and once our groups are set, I will provide instructions.
B: You will submit 10 pages each week, which I will read and make edits on via "track changes" on Mircosoft Word.
C: Each writer will read a section from their work when we are meeting and I will teach from your pages.
D; Each writer will send their pages to the members of the group for the general work-shopping discussion.
How Do You Teach Writing, Jennifer?
Reading Aloud: Memoir is driven by "voice," thus writers read from their own work and in a workshop setting, they will listen to other writers read from their work too. The audio pathways are a sensory connection to your creation. The "sound" in writing, ie: the beat, the tone, the melody, can only be heard when you read out loud. By listening to yourself read, you begin to understand what to alter in your writing in order to meet the goals you have in your story telling.
Scene Development: There are two forms used in memoir and fiction—summary and scene. Most writers produce summary which is, most often, a form of "telling" the story verses showing. Scene is a "showing" device that develops voice via the ability to witness experience through the senses. Scene is also action oriented and presses the writer into a wider view of the memory or a moment, which allows them to find deeper meaning from their experiences.
First Person Present Tense: I press writers to create early work in this format in order to get to the essence faster. First person present tense is, stated simply, easy. Most writers try too hard to be "writerly" verses honest. First person present tense is a stripped down form of story telling that gets to the truth in a fast, efficient and interesting way.
Example: I read from my own work and the work of other writers. This is done to provide writers with a comparison or an example of how to structure their own work.
Editing: I edit passages in order to show, within sentence structures, where a writer is bogged down.
COST:
A nine week session is $500.00. I allow writers to pay in 1/2 or even 1/3rd increments but you are required to pay for the entire session, even if you miss a class.
Your deposit of $150.00 is required ASAP to secure your spot.
HOW MANY SPOTS ARE OPEN
Sunday Class: Three spots remain open.
Monday Class: Three spots remain open.
Contact me, via this site, to sign up!
December 14, 2010
Count Down to Publication II
It's December 14th, the night before my birthday. I lie in bed, next to my eight-year-old daughter who is falling asleep after a long day of practicing her spelling, reading books and learning her times tables. Between is one of her teddy bears with a heart built inside. Jo has one hand on my arm and the other around her bear. She is tired tonight but not so tired to ask me questions about tomorrow. "What kind of cake do you want?" "What do you want for your birthday dinner?" "Are you excited to open presents?" For most people, a birthday is fun and a time to celebrate. I am the first person to make a very big deal of birthdays—for other people. But when it comes to my own birthday, a storm of melancholy takes over and I just feel tired.
I used to tell myself that I felt so lost this time of year because my father, Bud Lauck, had a heart attack on December 4th, 1973 (eleven days before my birthday). In fact, I told myself this story for a long time, hoping I could just "snap" out of it but the sadness never went away.
It took years to realize my sadness comes from a much deeper place.
On my birthday, I lost the love of my birth mother and all connection to my ancestry. I was relinquished—against my mother's will—and forced against my own will to enter a new family that was wholly unfamiliar to me. The transition from the mother who carried me to the mother who would adopt me took several horrible days. I lay in a plastic bassinette, crying non-stop. A bastard. Unwanted. Unnamed.
That's a pretty bad birthday, if you ask me.
Found, my fourth memoir, details the depths of how it felt to live apart from my original family—depths that were largely unknown even to me until I was forty years old. In due time, I learned the truth though and of course, went out and found that mother who had given me my life. We are now at the point in the process of bringing the book to press where we have gone through all the edits. There have been first pass pages, second pass and even third. At the third pass, there is little more that can be done to the book. The pages have been designed and type set. Only the smallest changes are allowed.
I decide it is important to let one of the people, featured in my book, take a look. It's a last minute decision and a complicated one because this person isn't pivotal to the story but I just get a feeling that I must let the person take a look. Just in case. It's a gut sense, I suppose. Within a few days, my intuition is rewarded. The person I have written about, as truthfully as I know how, is furious. Changes are demanded. This person is sure I don't have my own story right and goes ahead to make pages worth of edits including dialogue. My story is now the property of another person's agenda. They feel they have the right, no the duty, to tell my story. For the good of all involved, this person explains.
At the final hour of possible change, a scramble takes place. My agent, my editor and I try to figure out what to do and how to do it. Decisions are made, I arrange childcare and set myself down for hours and hours of precision editing.
Do I incorporate the changes this person demands?
Of course not.
Rather, I remove this person, in total, from the pages of my book.
This is one of the hardest (and most interesting) aspects of writing memoir. The people in our lives, who are inevitably going to end up in the lines, will a different view of the experiences we write about. Depending how evolved people are, they will react strongly or not at all. Some will care. Other's will not. Most often, if a person is positively portrayed in a book, they are delighted. If they are complex on the page, the reaction is usually very strong and quite negative.
Still, no one has the right to rewrite a memoirist's book. Memoir is about the writers experience and her point of view. Her truth is her truth. To allow others to alter your truth for the sake of their continued friendship or even love is no friendship and no love. That is not relationship. That is occupation.
Having been an adopted child, required to adapt to circumstances out of my control since the day I was born, I have no interest in compromises of the soul. To bend my truth to fit the view of another is a compromise of the Self and thus the soul. I won't have it.
Thankfully, Seal Press was in agreement and the changes were made in time.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I read the revised pages and found no evidence of this person in my manuscript. Not one.
Will the story suffer? No. Not at all.
This is the process of writing memoir. Rewriting never seems to end.
Jo is asleep, finally. She has rolled to her side, leaving me the bear with the heart on the inside. I kiss against her cheek and press the bear close to her side--just in case she needs some comfort in the night.
I make my way to my own bed, done with another day. Tomorrow I will wake up to be 47-years-old and one day closer to the publication of this book.
December 13, 2010
Monday: Fresh Writing
We look back, this week, at a fall story written and submitted for publication. This story was actually accepted by a magazine and we are in revision.
A bumblebee lifts from a hole in the ground. It rises in an unsteady fashion, as if tethered by an invisible wire. The wings move so fast, the motion cannot be seen but is rather heard as a humming buzz. The creature makes an adjustment and wobble-flies past my shoulder.
I lean back as it gathers direction and speed. Four year old Josephine screams and runs to the back porch and then into the house. She slams the back door so hard the house quivers. Nine-year-old Spencer hides behind me and grips my arm with such intensity, the circulation is cut to my hand.
"Sweetie, my arm," I say.
"Sorry, Mom," Spencer says, easing up his grip.
Another bee lifts out of the hole, the same routine all over again and right behind is another.
We stand on wet grass that is overgrown and lush. I don't mow. Mowing is a man's job but Spencer is too young. Pretty soon, I tell myself, I'll have to get a man or a mower or a gardner.
I shake my arm to get the feeling back and Spencer stands on his toes in order to peak over my shoulder.
"Will they sting us?" Spencer asks.
"Are you covered with pollen?" I ask.
"Mom!" he says.
I cup the back of his head with my palm the way I do—a habit that started when he was baby. His head fits my hand perfect and he wiggles a little as if to nestle in. It's our mother-son habit. Our little peculiarity.
"Sweets," I say, "bee's are not interested in you unless you are a flower."
"That's not true," Spencer counters. "Yellow jackets sting."
"Yellow jackets eat meat. Bubble bees collect pollen. Not the same."
Two bumblebees return to the hole—lowering their pollen loaded legs to the ground. Spencer hides his face against my arm and I decide to try humor.
"It's like some kind of bee convention," I say. "Grand Central Bee Terminal. A super power pollen highway."
Spencer laughs which is nice because his father—my ex—says I don't have a sense of humor. I wish he were here to see how it's not true. I'm funny. I'm hilarious to a nine year old.
"I mean, they don't even knock on the door and ask before they take up residence here. There is no lease and they don't pay rent. What is the deal?"
Spencer laughs harder still and I roll my eyes with a great show of being outraged.
Spencer eases from around my side and goes down on one knee to get a closer look at the bee entry and departure point. The hole, if you weren't looking for it, would be impossible to find. It is no more than the size of a dime with a small rise under the gravel.
"How many live down there?" he asks.
I lift my hands and let them drop my sides. Bee infestation is a man job—like mowing and car maintenance and taking out the trash.
"I have no idea."
Jo sneaks up behind us and like her brother a moment ago, she hides behind me.
"Are they gone?" she asks.
"No honey," I say, "but they aren't going to bother you. They want flowers not little girls."
I put my arm around Jo and she wears a silky pink dress over a yellow silk dress over a neon green silk dress. She simply cannot bear to leave one of her princess dresses on a hanger so they are all on her body in layers. Under the dresses, she wears every pair of underwear too. I am thinking she might have been a refugee in a past life.
Two more bumblebees hover around the trunk of the red oak tree—unsure about a small boy so close to their landing strip. I tap Spencer and point up towards the incoming bees.
On his knees, Spencer isn't sure what I'm trying to say and he moves his head all around on his neck. He looks like a dog down there on all fours. When he spots the hovering bees, which are lowering themselves to their home, he makes a yelp sound. In a flash, both kids run back to the house and it's just me, on the wet grass.
~
I've been on my own for nearly a year. Fall, winter, spring and now summer. It's good, it's right, it's the best thing for me, for my former husband and for the kids—who didn't deserve to grow up in a home where the big people argued all the time but it's surprising how many things I delegated to my husband. I just didn't have time or interest in infrastructure. If a wire shorted out or a pipe got clogged or the car needed oil—he was the Go-To guy.
If he were here now, he would, without question, have a solution. He would just kill them by dousing the nest with a hose. That's how his own father, a Nebraska man with a cattle ranching legacy, would have managed such a pesky situation. Heck, I wouldn't even have been consulted.
But here I am, single—a single mother—and this is what I would call an "infrastructure" issue. I am now the Go-To Girl.
~
One of my friends, married to an abusive man, suggests I put a bucket over the hole. She says the bees will likely just move on or die. When things get bad in her marriage, she takes to her bed and hides under the covers for days. She tells her kids that she is sick but she's not. She's just depressed.
Another one of my friends, more like an acquaintance, says I should just get some bug spray and let the bees have it. That's what she would do. I have no idea how her marriage is going. We aren't that close.
I have another friend, married to a cop who works the swing shift (meaning she never sees him), and she says that the best way to remove the bees is to go out—late at night—and simply ask them in a firm and yet loving voice.
"I do this all the time with sugar ants," she says. "And you know what, they just skitter away."
This woman has recently launched a practice as a clairvoyant. She says she can see your aura.
~
For the next few days, I make it a daily practice to study the industry of the bumblebees. After the kids are fed and taken to school, I sit on the bottom step of the back porch, just a few feet south of the nest in the earth and with my elbows on my knees, watch bees lift off, fly over to the hydrangea and beyond and then return.
Bumblebees, according to the law of aerodynamics, are not supposed to fly. The body is the issue—it's just too big for those tiny wings. And yet, there they go—over and over again. Apparently this is about wing speed. They are the hummingbirds of the insect kingdom. A bumblebee, therefore, defies logic and science.
~
The new man in my life doesn't mow, or fix pipes or change the oil. He is Buddha. I have become a student of Tibetan Buddhist studies and I even meditate every day. There is a hum sound to my quiet time—rocking forward and back—accumulating mantra for the benefit of all (which includes bees).
In early Christian traditions, monks lived in beehive shaped huts, which represented the aim of a harmonious community.
While my former husband mocks my interest in spirit, reminding me I have never been spiritual in all the angry years we spent together, I remain focused. Without the constraints of our marriage tethering me to tradition, I absorb all there is to know about these pre-Christ mysteries. I am specifically intrigued by entire sector devoted to the enlightened feminine. Single and artistic women, in eleventh century Buddhism, apparently carried all the mystic teachings of transformation. As patriarchy took over the texts, these women were purged from the re-write of history but I have heard—from gurus who live in Tibet—that women are very easy to enlighten. This has something to do with the cyclical nature of the feminine body. I've also read that it used to be believed that women—all women—were considered so sacred that they were enlightened even without being taught or practicing meditation.
Perhaps I am something like the bumblebee. Meditation, which is—in part—an effort to transcend the human condition of suffering, defies reason and aerodynamics. According to a book I read, Power verses Force by David Hawkins, less than half a percent of the human population will achieve transcendent states like pure love. Hawkins also writes that we, as a species, are stuck in the age of reason meaning that every problem can be rationalized or explained via the mind. Yet, when one transcends to higher states like love, joy and enlightenment, reason and logic no longer apply.
~
"Whatcha doing?" Spencer asks.
He stands at the threshold of the back door and holds a mug in his hand. Hot chocolate. The mug reads I Love You.
I'm on the bottom step of the back porch with my coffee. There is no message on my mug.
"Just watching the bees," I say.
Spencer pads across the porch and down the steps. He sits on the bottom step and sips at his cocoa. His bare toes move in the overgrown grass. Over the rim of the mug, Spence eyes the hole in the ground. Several bees lift off and fly away.
"They are still here," he says.
"Indeed," I say.
A gray squirrel jumps from the roof of the garage and into the red oak tree—this breath holding leap. Spencer points.
"A squirrel is just a rat with a good PR campaign," he says, a joke he's heard from his dad and which is actually pretty funny.
"A squirrel is just a rat with a better outfit," I counter and Spencer sputters chocolate in a dramatic spray.
"Oh that's good," he says using the back of his hand to wipe is mouth.
The squirrel disappears on the other side of the fence and a few bees land on the ground and drop out of sight. I have no idea how many bees live there, how deep their nest goes or what they are creating in their dark world but I like to imagine them down there—humming around—following their ancient code.
"Have you decided what to do about them?" Spencer asks. He sets the mug on the step and leans into my side. I put my arm around his lean little boy body. He smells like chocolate and shampoo.
"Obviously not," I say. "They are still with us."
"Well, that's a decision," Spencer says.
My son has a narrow face with dark eyes that are so open and trusting. His dark shining hair is thick and shaped in that popular bowl cut style.
"I guess you're right," I say. "It's the decision to do nothing."
He leans against my shoulder again.
"That's probably fine," he says, "they aren't bothering us."
I move my hand over the back of his head to find that place where my palm fits so well. He moves his head a little in my hand, as if to nestle in.
A bumblebee lifts from a hole in the ground. It rises in an unsteady fashion, as if tethered by an invisible wire. The wings move so fast, the motion cannot be seen but is rather heard as a humming buzz. The creature makes an adjustment and wobble-flies past my shoulder. I lean back as it gathers direction and speed. Four year old Josephine screams and runs to the back porch and then into the house. She slams the back door so hard the house quivers. Nine-year-old Spencer hides behind me and grips my arm with such intensity, the circulation is cut to my hand.
"Sweetie, my arm," I say.
"Sorry, Mom," Spencer says, easing up his grip.
Another bee lifts out of the hole, the same routine all over again and right behind is another.
We stand on wet grass that is overgrown and lush. I don't mow. Mowing is a man's job but Spencer is too young. Pretty soon, I tell myself, I'll have to get a man or a mower or a gardner.
I shake my arm to get the feeling back and Spencer stands on his toes in order to peak over my shoulder.
"Will they sting us?" Spencer asks.
"Are you covered with pollen?" I ask.
"Mom!" he says.
I cup the back of his head with my palm the way I do—a habit that started when he was baby. His head fits my hand perfect and he wiggles a little as if to nestle in. It's our mother-son habit. Our little peculiarity.
"Sweets," I say, "bee's are not interested in you unless you are a flower."
"That's not true," Spencer counters. "Yellow jackets sting."
"Yellow jackets eat meat. Bubble bees collect pollen. Not the same."
Two bumblebees return to the hole—lowering their pollen loaded legs to the ground. Spencer hides his face against my arm and I decide to try humor.
"It's like some kind of bee convention," I say. "Grand Central Bee Terminal. A super power pollen highway."
Spencer laughs which is nice because his father—my ex—says I don't have a sense of humor. I wish he were here to see how it's not true. I'm funny. I'm hilarious to a nine year old.
"I mean, they don't even knock on the door and ask before they take up residence here. There is no lease and they don't pay rent. What is the deal?"
Spencer laughs harder still and I roll my eyes with a great show of being outraged.
Spencer eases from around my side and goes down on one knee to get a closer look at the bee entry and departure point. The hole, if you weren't looking for it, would be impossible to find. It is no more than the size of a dime with a small rise under the gravel.
"How many live down there?" he asks.
I lift my hands and let them drop my sides. Bee infestation is a man job—like mowing and car maintenance and taking out the trash.
"I have no idea."
Jo sneaks up behind us and like her brother a moment ago, she hides behind me.
"Are they gone?" she asks.
"No honey," I say, "but they aren't going to bother you. They want flowers not little girls."
I put my arm around Jo and she wears a silky pink dress over a yellow silk dress over a neon green silk dress. She simply cannot bear to leave one of her princess dresses on a hanger so they are all on her body in layers. Under the dresses, she wears every pair of underwear too. I am thinking she might have been a refugee in a past life.
Two more bumblebees hover around the trunk of the red oak tree—unsure about a small boy so close to their landing strip. I tap Spencer and point up towards the incoming bees.
On his knees, Spencer isn't sure what I'm trying to say and he moves his head all around on his neck. He looks like a dog down there on all fours. When he spots the hovering bees, which are lowering themselves to their home, he makes a yelp sound. In a flash, both kids run back to the house and it's just me, on the wet grass.
~
I've been on my own for nearly a year. Fall, winter, spring and now summer. It's good, it's right, it's the best thing for me, for my former husband and for the kids—who didn't deserve to grow up in a home where the big people argued all the time but it's surprising how many things I delegated to my husband. I just didn't have time or interest in infrastructure. If a wire shorted out or a pipe got clogged or the car needed oil—he was the Go-To guy.
If he were here now, he would, without question, have a solution. He would just kill them by dousing the nest with a hose. That's how his own father, a Nebraska man with a cattle ranching legacy, would have managed such a pesky situation. Heck, I wouldn't even have been consulted.
But here I am, single—a single mother—and this is what I would call an "infrastructure" issue. I am now the Go-To Girl.
~
One of my friends, married to an abusive man, suggests I put a bucket over the hole. She says the bees will likely just move on or die. When things get bad in her marriage, she takes to her bed and hides under the covers for days. She tells her kids that she is sick but she's not. She's just depressed.
Another one of my friends, more like an acquaintance, says I should just get some bug spray and let the bees have it. That's what she would do. I have no idea how her marriage is going. We aren't that close.
I have another friend, married to a cop who works the swing shift (meaning she never sees him), and she says that the best way to remove the bees is to go out—late at night—and simply ask them in a firm and yet loving voice.
"I do this all the time with sugar ants," she says. "And you know what, they just skitter away."
This woman has recently launched a practice as a clairvoyant. She says she can see your aura.
~
For the next few days, I make it a daily practice to study the industry of the bumblebees. After the kids are fed and taken to school, I sit on the bottom step of the back porch, just a few feet south of the nest in the earth and with my elbows on my knees, watch bees lift off, fly over to the hydrangea and beyond and then return.
Bumblebees, according to the law of aerodynamics, are not supposed to fly. The body is the issue—it's just too big for those tiny wings. And yet, there they go—over and over again. Apparently this is about wing speed. They are the hummingbirds of the insect kingdom. A bumblebee, therefore, defies logic and science.
~
The new man in my life doesn't mow, or fix pipes or change the oil. He is Buddha. I have become a student of Tibetan Buddhist studies and I even meditate every day. There is a hum sound to my quiet time—rocking forward and back—accumulating mantra for the benefit of all (which includes bees).
In early Christian traditions, monks lived in beehive shaped huts, which represented the aim of a harmonious community.
While my former husband mocks my interest in spirit, reminding me I have never been spiritual in all the angry years we spent together, I remain focused. Without the constraints of our marriage tethering me to tradition, I absorb all there is to know about these pre-Christ mysteries. I am specifically intrigued by entire sector devoted to the enlightened feminine. Single and artistic women, in eleventh century Buddhism, apparently carried all the mystic teachings of transformation. As patriarchy took over the texts, these women were purged from the re-write of history but I have heard—from gurus who live in Tibet—that women are very easy to enlighten. This has something to do with the cyclical nature of the feminine body. I've also read that it used to be believed that women—all women—were considered so sacred that they were enlightened even without being taught or practicing meditation.
Perhaps I am something like the bumblebee. Meditation, which is—in part—an effort to transcend the human condition of suffering, defies reason and aerodynamics. According to a book I read, Power verses Force by David Hawkins, less than half a percent of the human population will achieve transcendent states like pure love. Hawkins also writes that we, as a species, are stuck in the age of reason meaning that every problem can be rationalized or explained via the mind. Yet, when one transcends to higher states like love, joy and enlightenment, reason and logic no longer apply.
~
"Whatcha doing?" Spencer asks.
He stands at the threshold of the back door and holds a mug in his hand. Hot chocolate. The mug reads I Love You.
I'm on the bottom step of the back porch with my coffee. There is no message on my mug.
"Just watching the bees," I say.
Spencer pads across the porch and down the steps. He sits on the bottom step and sips at his cocoa. His bare toes move in the overgrown grass. Over the rim of the mug, Spence eyes the hole in the ground. Several bees lift off and fly away.
"They are still here," he says.
"Indeed," I say.
A gray squirrel jumps from the roof of the garage and into the red oak tree—this breath holding leap. Spencer points.
"A squirrel is just a rat with a good PR campaign," he says, a joke he's heard from his dad and which is actually pretty funny.
"A squirrel is just a rat with a better outfit," I counter and Spencer sputters chocolate in a dramatic spray.
"Oh that's good," he says using the back of his hand to wipe is mouth.
The squirrel disappears on the other side of the fence and a few bees land on the ground and drop out of sight. I have no idea how many bees live there, how deep their nest goes or what they are creating in their dark world but I like to imagine them down there—humming around—following their ancient code.
"Have you decided what to do about them?" Spencer asks. He sets the mug on the step and leans into my side. I put my arm around his lean little boy body. He smells like chocolate and shampoo.
"Obviously not," I say. "They are still with us."
"Well, that's a decision," Spencer says.
My son has a narrow face with dark eyes that are so open and trusting. His dark shining hair is thick and shaped in that popular bowl cut style.
"I guess you're right," I say. "It's the decision to do nothing."
He leans against my shoulder again.
"That's probably fine," he says, "they aren't bothering us."
I move my hand over the back of his head to find that place where my palm fits so well. He moves his head a little in my hand, as if to nestle in.
December 12, 2010
Announcement: The Virtual Classroom is Born
By popular demand, I have created two virtual workshop classes that will begin January 2011! Five students will be in each group, allowing for intimacy and deep teaching.
The dates are as follows:
Group I: Sunday
January 2, 16, 23, 30, Feb. 6, 20, 27, March 6, 13. 2-4:30 (alternative time is 12:00-2:30)
Group II: Monday
Jan. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, & Feb 7, 14, 21, 28. 10-12:30
Five students will be in each group and we'll be running the classes via conference call and computer (email). We will read each others work, read our own work out loud and will enjoy the camaraderie of a supportive, regular writing circle. Finally, and most important, there will be teaching on how to write active, alive, passionate and honest sentences that keep the reader riveted.
Contact me at Jennifer@jenniferlauck.com for more details.
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