Lin Wilder's Blog, page 57

The Value of Critics

In a recent post, I talked about  the cost of a scathing review I received from an anonymous reviewer. I did not mention that this was a review I solicited as in paid for. The cost I spoke about wasn’t the money, it was the denunciation, the rebukes…the heat in my cheeks caused by reading words that scald.   Now, I realize the value of that critic.

When we write, speak, take a position of leadership in any group, or take any type of risk, we’ll be criticized. We know this. And we do it anyway. We do it because we believe we have something to offer others.

But the reality is that criticism  hurts. I had forgotten just how much.

But what’s intriguing to me was what happened after the third time I read the reviewer’s critique- or maybe it was the fourth. It took that long for the reviewer’s words to stop burning.

I realized that he or she was mostly right.

Due to a number of factors irrelevant for this post,  my first published novel was rife with typos and editing flaws. But I moved on to the second and the third books in what has become a series based on this first book, because as one friend recently worded it, ‘I just cannot wait to see what these characters will do next.” For these new books, I have assured that the proofing and editing errors will not recur due to a completely new publishing system.

And I had planned to continue moving forward without correcting the glaring flaws pointed out by the review.

Once I had the capacity to read the review with an open mind, only then was I able to think. Think thoughts like, “Wait a minute, the reporter’s (one of my characters) writing was good, not ‘outlandish’ at all as claimed here.”  Once I took the time to compare certain sections of my original manuscript with the edited published book, I realized that important sections had been deleted by the team of editors working hard to reduce the word count. Sections which, when read by a discerning reader,  left holes in the coherence of the major pillars of my plot.

For the last several months, I had planned to do a second edition of the first book but because of a valuable albeit painful review, the editing and proofing flaws will be corrected as well. Another important lesson: some critics deserve to be listened to.

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Life Isn’t Fair-Even For Lebron

Watching the unfair calls on Lebron James during the second game of the final NBA playoffs helped when I received a scathing review of my first novel. A little anyway. We’ve been told that life isn’t fair since we were small tykes. But does it help when  three flagrant fouls in front of the referee are ignored or you receive your first scorching review for the novel that cost everything to write? Not really.

The camera focused on James after each of the three poor calls; he was furious. And powerless. Within seconds, we could see him reign it in, regain control, accept the biased judgments of the Oakland referees and get back to playing, despite the absence of Kyrie  Irving and the dismal projections of the talking heads.  And win the game.

Whether I’m caught up in the NFL playoffs or in the NBA, I find instructive parallels between excellent athletes and my daily struggle to write better today than yesterday. Many of my friends claim that the reason James plays excellent basketball or Brady is an exceptional quarterback or that I am a good perhaps excellent writer (according to some reviewers, anyway) is due to our genes. Perhaps.

But that’s only part of the story, isn’t it? Watching Brady during ‘Deflategate’ and James last night after the third lousy call, there is something else that comes into play and excellence can’t be achieved without it. Due to the extensive media coverage of these men, we can sometimes see it caught on camera. The facial expression switches from anger to determination. We can almost read the words, “I am going to give this everything I have…and then just a little more.”

Following the surprising win by Cleveland, the sports interviewer asked James what this game had cost him. “Everything, it cost me everything.” In reply to her questions about the unfairness of the calls by the referees, James merely repeated what he had said about his team, the deep loyalty he felt for them and never discussed the referees.

There will be another opportunity for a new review and soon because I will give this next book everything I have…and then just a little bit more. Thanks for the great lesson, Lebron.

 

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Our Three Person God

    Today is the Solemnity for the Holy Trinity in the Christian Liturgy. And I realize that this concept of our Three Person God foils me. Close to nineteen years ago, the man who would become my husband explained his experience of the journey to God. It begins, he said, with Our Lady, Mary, the Mother of God. Mary shows us the way to her son and then she recedes back into the background; her preferred place in the shadow of her Son. Only much later does the Person of God the Father reveal Himself. John was clear when he explained the three persons of God, the distinct natures each possessed; later when I began to study Catholicism I learned much more from the Monks at the Benedictine Abbey where I became a Christian Catholic on an early September Saturday evening. A few months after I joined the Church, during my first silent retreat, the Legionnaire priest ended his welcome address with his prayer for each of us. “I pray,” he said, “that by the end of this weekend, you will know Jesus Christ as your best friend.” Those words struck terror in my heart and soul.  Over the years when I have shared my terror of Him to another person of faith, almost always their reaction has been one of surprise. Why would you fear Christ? What’s not to fear? The pain anguish and suffering that He embraces?  Being asked to leave everyone and everything that I loved to do something that terrified me? Like go to a fourth world country to work with the poor? A claim I made back in the days when it was safe, there would be no chance of doing anything like that; they were easy words to say. Until I met John who told me he would go with me, go to Haiti or go to Karachi if I got the Hospital Director job there. Over time, I learned my own truth of John’s experience of the journey to God. Our Lady in those beginning years was a tangible presence to me and then over the years, she faded and yes, I did quite miraculously develop a friendship with Jesus. Learning enough about Him to know that He would never lead me to a place of terror; that the joys I experience are joys that have been placed in my heart, by Him and God the Father. During the years I did not consider myself Christian, I encountered the Holy Spirit, always as a blinding light, so bright that I could not keep my eyes on the brilliance. Always at times of profound crisis. Only in retrospect have I realized what the light was, or been grateful for the Grace and Mercy of the God who sent me the Spirit of Consolation. I have realized on this Solemnity of the Holy Trinity that when I pray, I pray to Jesus, He whom I was once terrified of in ignorance of the Reality: […]

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The Lure of Giving Up

I realized that I never got to the fundamental reason that I so liked  the filmTomorrowland in a recent post. And decided that it had to do with giving up, or rather the lure of giving up. Due to some recent conversations with a dear friend, I began to think about the reality my friend lives […]

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Tomorrowland and Critics

 

Tomorrowland the movie opened yesterday. You know those days when the ‘to do’ list is lengthy but somehow you cannot focus? Cannot seem to beat the distractions or stop the futile jumping from one thing to another? Friday morning was one of those days. So when my husband John appeared with the suggestion to leave in ten minutes to see the new George Clooney film , I jumped at the chance.

I knew I’d like it from the previews but did not expect to love it…I mean love it! When I told a couple of people in the checkout line at the feed store that I thought it should be mandatory viewing for everyone on the planet, John’s wry observation was something like, ‘You know when you get wildly enthusiastic like that with people, their reaction is often the opposite of what you want, like mandatory viewing…’ Left unsaid, ‘Who are you to decide what people need to see?’

OK, fair enough but here the reasons for my ‘wild enthusiasm.’

In addition to being visually and emotionally captivating, the story has meat on its bones. There is more here than another apocalyptic doomsday story here. Far more than a simple and mawkish exercise in optimism, the conclusion of the only review I took the time to read, the screen writers actors and screenwriters have assembled an excursion into a reality many of us are immersed in; one which assaults us in a daily barrage, affecting us in insidious and toxic ways . In a fascinating series of scenes played by Hugh Laurie as David Nix ( remember House?) Clooney and young Britt Robertson about the ‘bridge’ between Tomorrowland and earth, a monitor which is counting down the seconds until the destruction of earth, Nix explains his decision to detach from the rest of humanity in language that only critics can overlook. Casey, the teenage character played by Robertson cries out “There is no hope here-you’ve lost all hope.” Indeed. What can so easily be missed and the reason for my wild enthusiasm is simple. Too simple: what we think, we become, what we conceive of we create and what we fear, we make happen. The notion of the objective observer in the classic scientific experiments has been completely discounted by recent quantum and string theorists. The interaction of an observer, the very thought process of the observer affects the observed. However, exactly as David Nix explains, our need to accept the reality as it is constantly spewed at us by those we empower as expert so frequently overrides our native common sense. It’s easier to accept our individual powerlessness than to consider that we are responsible for more than just our own choices.

I expected the critics to dislike this movie. But that the NY Times, Variety, Rolling Stone and Roger Ebert all decried it and for many of the same reasons was interesting. Perhaps because the metaphor for the inimical power of the media medium was too disturbing to admit.

Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.

Dostoevsky

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Authority of Heaven

In the suggested prayers of the faithful for today, Ascension Sunday, we are asked to pray that the ‘authority of heaven will inform and guide those who govern on earth.’ It’s a concept we love to hate; authority.

Years ago, when increasing levels of authority were conferred on me, I began to study the idea of it. Initially because my experience with the people in charge of anything was either disappointing or in a few cases intolerable, I had no interest in joining the ranks. But like many of us found that the only way to change anything while working in and for institutions was to ‘move up.’

The study brought me to a group of scholars who had been studying and researching just these kinds of things since the industrial revolution and the worldwide rise of organizations: Organizational theorists. I found many ‘friends‘ along those years because I worked in a field where external authority was not supposed to exist and with people who had been trained to believe they required no outside sanctions. Physicians in the twentieth century were considered the model professional; meaning that their decisions required the oversight of only other doctors. The rules and behaviors of the organizations did not apply in my world because the battles for authority were waged on a daily basis among the different groups of people with claims to authority. The hierarchy on paper did not reflect reality: Those with titles may or may not have been recognized as legitimate by others within the organization. Like me.

As a kid critical care nurse in the early days of critical care,  I experienced the heady sense of possessing knowledge that was presumably accessible only to doctors and made decisions that were not mine to make. These were chaotic times. Everything was new: The technology, the boundaries were loose. I learned first-hand that knowledge is power.

There are few highs more intoxicating than power.  Because once we have it, we experience the truth that power is ceded. No one is seen as powerful because of their title or their armies or might. Powerful people become powerful because others place them in positions of power. But once we reflect on this idea of power, stop to see its influence inside ourselves and observe its effects on others, we understand Lord Acton’s mid-nineteenth century axiom.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In this 21st century where so many of us cede power to celebrities, politicians, unknowingly diverting us from our true dignity may we share in the prayer of the church. May we share in the joy of our brother trusting that on this Ascension Sunday, he carries us on the journey. May we cede power and authority to Heaven, all of us. May we sympathize with those perceived as powerful in this world,  even pray for them.

 

 

 

 

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Late Spring in High Desert

Anyone living in the west is well acquainted with drought, wildfires and extreme battles over water. This past winter was dry, snow was scarce  therefore worsening the fears about drought but several storms this late spring have brought welcome water and snow to the high Sierra mountains and California coast. Perhaps because of the turbulent weather, we have seen a profusion of spectacular birds unlike other years.

Each spring, I work to attract the Orioles with special food. Remarkably these birds migrate from the southern tip of Mexico to breed here in the Sierra mountains each year. Always, I am awed when they arrive filling the trees and bushes with golden magnificence. Since we were on vacation and did not return until early May, I worried that my splendid friends would renounce our yard and grace others with their presence this year.

                       

One would think that as spectacular as these birds are, that their song would fit their splendor. Not so. I have heard several melodic calls when I research Bullock Orioles online but the day we returned from vacation I heard the familiar caw that is halfway between the raucous croak of a crow and a staccato coarse chirp. The call is about as ugly as it sounds but music to my ears because they were here ! Despite the absence of their favorite meal of grape jelly mixed with meal worms and orange slices.

More snow at high altitudes and rain is forecasted over the next couple of days, perhaps this is why we are seeing this beauty that I have seen here only one other year. He is a western tanager and loves the tall Alpine forests of Tahoe. For some reason, he and his mate have joined the Orioles for a little while. And he looks exactly like this photo.

 

And then as if another reminder of the profligacy and imagination of our God is needed, three of these birds showed up fighting and squawking at one another and at everyone else at the feeders. Yellow headed black birds- what a mind it took to create these birds.

Spring in the high desert, more than astounding.

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Fighting Adam- A 21st Century Look

In the preface to his new book, The Road to Character, author David Brooks states that he wrote this book in order ‘to save his soul.’ Now that is a phrase that one seldom reads from the pen of a New York Times journalist or any other writers for that matter in this media saturated ocean we swim in. It got my attention.

Employing the Genesis account employed in a 1965 book called The Lonely Man of Faith, Brooks writes of  Adam 1 as the man who wants to conquer the world versus Adam 11 who wishes to serve the world. Or Adam 1 with the single goal of success opposing Adam 11 who experiences life as “moral drama” whose “motto is “Charity, love and redemption.” His book could be called, Fighting Adam.

Brooks uses a compilation of famous voices examining the Allied victory at the end of the second world war as the platform for his conviction that collective and individual morality in this 21st century has devolved, that it is more difficult to reach humility in our culture than in prior ones. Command Performance was a variety show played to the US wartime troops and is replayed on NPR where the author heard it one evening while driving home. Celebrities from Marlene Dietrich to Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Burgess Meredith and many others  who ‘intuitively resisted the natural human tendency toward excessive self love’, they were unfailingly self -effacing and humble.

In his desire to understand the virtue of humility, Brooks’ book examines the lives of people throughout the centuries who successfully defeated Adam 1 in order to let flourish Adam 11; people like Augustine, Dorothy Day, MacArthur,  Marshall, George Eliot and Johnny Unitas. The journalist ends his book with a list of attributes he has distilled from his exhaustive study of these lives of men and women who successfully sublimated the selfish, sinful and flawed characteristics of Adam 1. He calls this ‘The Humility Code.”

Benedict, a layman, wrote his  rule in the sixth century in a world where chaos and anarchy were rampant due to the collapse of the Roman Empire. The old order was dissolving, the new an unknown. As a Benedictine Oblate, I am obligated to read sections of the rule on a daily basis. Today we completed the Prologue, my favorite section of the Rule. Containing some of the most lyrical, loving and compelling words ever written by a spiritual master, Benedict begins with an admonition to Listen! And shortly thereafter addresses only those of us willing to enter into battle for the King, Jesus Christ. Military metaphors for spiritual growth are not popular and I doubt that Brooks could see why the notion of war resounded so forcefully to me when I converted to Christianity but there is no better metaphor.

I sympathize with Brooks. I can stand under his desire to assert a methodology for defeating the hateful parts of ourselves because I lived a majority of my life attempting to do just that without any notion of a Christ, any desire or interest in him. True because religion and church were  concepts and institutions I had rejected long ago; exactly like Jesus did, I have learned.

“The Church is far stronger now than it was when I was a kid…back then, we went to confession because that’s what everyone did…the trials of the last twenty years…these are all good…all collaborating to make a stronger, more vibrant faith.” I am paraphrasing the reply made by my spiritual director when I told him of the completely empty churches in Paris, Rome and Florence. As if he were saying that culture is only that, merely a collection of attitudes and behaviors that may never touch the human heart.

 

 

 

 

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Remember Big Hairy Audacious Goals?

Remember the acronym BHAG? Made famous a couple of decades ago by management and leadership gurus like Tom Peters, BHAG stands for big, hairy, audacious goals.

I was reminded of my love hate relationship with goals  by Dan Pink while listening to a podcast of his speech to the 2014 graduating class of Northwestern University. His comments during his thirteen minutes talk are funny, smart and mostly counter-cultural. Pink reminded me of a story and also some things I think are axiomatic about life.

First the story.

A few years ago, my husband and I met a man who was working to get into Hollywood, as an actor. Not all that uncommon an ambition in California, but at that time, Duane was in his mid-seventies. His wife had died, he was filled with regrets for time he spent on his job ignoring his wife and family. Sad and lonely with only his little dog for company Duane focused on a dream he had had as a young man, become an actor to get to the academy award ceremony.

Duane was ridiculed, berated, rejected and humiliated by every individual  he was able to reach when he explained he wanted to interview for an acting part. Without exception, letters emails and calls went  unanswered; those he reached had the same reaction of ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, you’re way too old.’ To date, Duane has landed parts in five movies over the last several years and has appeared at Hollywood Comedy Club, live. Check him out here.

The first axiom: When you dream, dream big. Big hairy audacious goals, like Duane. Despite countless reasons to quit, he didn’t. Who knows, we may see him at an upcoming academy awards ceremony.

The second axiom: Make sure your goals have plenty of room for surprises and maybe accidents.

Last summer and fall I did a marathon series of book signing events following the release of my first novel. Sometimes for large crowds, more often, for small or no crowds. During the events in which there were a few or a lot of people, the most fun for me was when I stopped speaking and opened up the room to  questions, questions about anything at all.

One of the questions I was asked most frequently was some variation of this one: How do you get to be a writer? Sometimes the question had to do with  characters in the novel; like ‘are they based on you and your life?’ At other times, the questioner wanted to understand the technical aspects of writing or ‘where do you find the courage to write about things that are obviously private and personal?’

But the fundamental question was actually, ‘How did you get here?’

My reply invariably began with a disclaimer. Exactly what I used to reply to very young star- struck-hospital- administrator- wannabe’s when they asked how I got to be a Hospital Director. Something like this: ‘It’s a long story but the brief answer is…’ The ellipsis never included that Hospital Director had always been my goal because it had not- it just happened while I was trying to fix the world.

During those events last year, it was the same thing. Exactly. ‘I’m here and delighted to be here but it isn’t something I planned, it’s something that happened.’

As a kid I never knew what I wanted to do-only that I wanted to do make a difference, a big difference in my life. My biggest fear, I would explain to my listener who was by now,sorry that he had asked the question, was that I would stand before the God I did not think I believed in only to realize that I had wasted my life, wasted what I had been given.

3. Don’t be surprised if you end up being someone you once disliked, with intensity.

The career in academic health care was an accident-I ended up there because the very few years I worked as a critical care nurse taught me that the system was broken and I wanted to fix it. Most of my colleagues were living out their goals- their career had planned from the very start. And so when I replied the way I did to those young master’s degree students, their jaws would drop, literally. ‘What?! You did not plan this, work for this from your first days in college?”

“No, I didn’t-as a matter of fact, I didn’t like managers, I thought most of my bosses were…well, suffice to say that I did not hold a great deal of respect for most people in management.”

 

 

 

 

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Pete Carroll and 5 Writing Lessons

Pete Carroll as a Coach of writers is not well known. For good reason because football coaches don’t teach others how to write, they teach others how to play football. And yet Carroll’s coaching philosophy, one which landed him and the Seattle Seahawks into two successive Super Bowls, is directly applicable to writers and probably to almost all other endeavors. Carroll’s philosophy and his route to its development was fraught with mistakes, failures and disappointment. Exactly the trajectory of any writing career- any career, in truth.

Finally, today, I read an article called The Game Changer , published in Mindful last December. The delay in the read was not due to lack of interest, merely the need to meet my deadline for completing my next book. Now that the manuscript is done, awaiting editorial suggestions, I can take time off to read and write about topics totally unrelated to the book.

At least that’s what I expected  when I read this article. Perhaps because my brain attempts to synthesize everything into one neat package, I found Carroll’s experience and the way he expresses it to be wholly relevant to the craft of being a writer.

Here are the five lessons I learned, some relearned while reading this intriguing piece.

Getting fired from the Patriots in 2002 was the catalyst for Pete Carroll’s decision to develop his own coaching philosophy. Crisis, whether losing our job, our health, a marriage or any of the tragedies that can befall us, can be interpreted as an opportunity or as an invitation to give up. If we look at the event as an opportunity, it can catapult us from mediocrity to excellence. Like Pete Carroll. Excellence requires that we step out of the herd. Whether the herd is other coaches, other writers or other volunteers, the decision to step away from the reassuring crowd is risky, is lonely, is frightening. But essential. Why? The nature of excellence is unique. Often misused, the word unique means ‘one of its kind’, like you and like me. The nature of excellence is unique, I’m repeating the simple declarative statement because we think too often that we can assimilate the skills, lessons and aptitudes of recognized experts. When we do this we become mediocre facsimiles of others. We miss the unique selves residing dormant within ourselves. Excellence requires competition but on a field where there is only one player, only one writer. Our goal? To dig down, more deeply with each game, each book so that we produce better and more uplifting versions of ourselves. Our focus must on our art. And it’s all art. Whether our art is quilting or basketball or teaching, we are given these days, these months and these years for the art of composing our life. Essential in keeping the focus is prayer, meditation, some method of getting out of our heads and into those other areas, heart, soul, psyche, where the best of ourselves resides.

One of the many reasons I enjoy sports and reading about the leaders in sports is the very clear reminder that it’s all the same. Whether our  field is athletics, the classroom or  the stock market, the principles are the same. In the end, our lives and our happiness are directly proportional to our thoughts. What we think, what we permit to reside in our psyches. When our focus is on those who have ‘made it’, or mimicking the experts, we are just wasting our time, precious time.

 

 

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