Monday, December 05, 2005

Letting the Dust Settle

Recently, a sensitive, wonderful student sent an email to several folks in which he pondered the many questions that college often erupts into the life of a freshman.

When I read the email, I felt like I was in C-Dorm at Samford University trying to figure out if I mattered anymore. My mom and dad had just left me sitting on my mintish-green metal trunk and crying as they prepared to drive back to the life I had known--the life where I had been somebody--where I had been important.

These feelings invaded my thoughts as I read this student's letter. As I responded, I thought of how many of us struggle with the same issues of dark and light, the confusion about us. Sometimes we have to allow the dust to settle in order to be able to find our own way to believe.

I know when I entered college that I, too, stumbled across a doorway of light and dark, of answers of truth and answers that seemed evil, of what I thought was the right way and what everyone thought was the right way. I was amazed at what I was told in my classes, even at a Baptist school, about the flood being simply a folklore story found in various civilizations. Questions also arose about the truth of the Virgin Birth.

As a Southern Baptist preacher's kid, I struggled to mesh together the God of my First Baptist Church roots and the God conveyed in the college classroom. The hymns, prayer meetings, and scriptures which were the support beams of my upbringing began to crumble under this newfound knowledge. Religious dust scattered everywhere and with it my confusion.

Yet into that place of not knowing, God met me where I was--just as he is there to meet each of us. God doesn't change because people tell us different things. He is the same God, and will always be, and will always be there when we call.

I had to learn in my college days to let God be who he was for each person in the numerous ways he spoke to them. I had to realize I wasn't in charge of Religion of the World 101. It's a lesson that I'm still trying to learn at times.

During those days of questioning in college, a thought came to me: Why should we limit God to such small thinking? Are we the ones to say that God can only be God in a specific way? What I discovered then was that this God who knows our hearts and minds, our every need, the number of hairs on our head, can walk us through the confusion, and sometimes the confusion can make us stronger.

For me, once the dust had settled, I felt stronger about my belief in God. I felt if there was so much discussion and ongoing this and that about God, how more real could he be? If he wasn't real, then I didn't think people would care.

I was not in the manger with Mary and Joseph when Jesus was born. I was not with Noah during the flood. I cannot say first person what happened. But I trust by the grace of God that whatever happened and whatever way it happened and to however many cultures it happened and was told again and again, that it remains true in whatever sense I can hold it and grasp it. For what I'm holding is not a belief about a Virgin Birth or a flood story; I'm holding a belief in God's love, and that gift is universal and unending.

We are always on the journey God has set for us. Once we let the dust settle, he is still there.

ks

Sunday, November 20, 2005

How to Hunt Down a Writer

Yes. Let's learn how to argue better and more. Yes. Let's teach our composition students arguing for its own sake as the basis for their writing skills.

Keep in mind these students approach the English 1101 and 1102 classroom with the trepidation of those who have been sentenced to the gallows. As I write this, I can see their sallow faces on the first day of English 1101. I imagine the word "prey" taped over their eyes, as their eyes tell me they feel hunted in writing class, and we, the teachers, are the hunters.

During this first class, I ask the students if they are afraid of writing, if they have ever had a negative experience occur in a writing class. Hands rocket up, and at least the dreadful noise of the room's technology buzz is challenged momentarily by the sounds of human beings--of students--of students terrified of English Composition. Maybe these students aren't terrified of English Composition, itself, but of the hunters who they fear teach it.

Into this class environment of hunter and hunted, I quote Donald Murray and Peter Elbow. Murray says, “You don’t have to think you have talent to write. There is no secret society of writers you have to join,” and also, “All writers are self-taught. Your instructor can help, your classmates can help, this book can help, but you still have to learn how to write in your own way” (7).

I tell them that Peter Elbow, a pioneer of voice in writing, suggested to me once when I was stuck with my writing that I write as much bad writing as possible. Then I, too, add my comments to the students that writing can be an exhilarating act of discovery, writing can be their ally; this community of 1101 writers can be a support tool for them. I tell them how writing has saved my life. They stare at me like I am Bozo the Clown.

Yet at the end of a few classes, the students surround my desk with their stories of being hunted. I remember one young lady who was a freshman sat alongside me with her head hanging close to the fake wood desktop. She whispered how she'd failed 1101 last semester and how her professor had said in conference, "Your writing is terrible. You should not be in this class." Those remarks would certainly encourage me to write that next polished essay.

Another student who failed 1101 and felt berated by his professor, found upon taking the class again that he could write. In fact, the op-ed article he sent to the Atlanta Journal Constitution was selected for publication. Ironically, the subject of his op-ed piece was hunting. This student wasn't a failure as a writer when he took 1101 the first time. We failed in giving him the confidence to know he could write.

Stories like these are numerous and frightening. I've never found a student who has failed 1101 to be a student who cannot write. I've found students who have had the writer in them erased, but not one who wasn't a writer.

Now add to this a writing discipline focused on argument--let's argue. Let's teach the students how to defend their stance--let's be able to defend our policy on Iraq, our position on the Patriot Act. A world that argues more is assuredly a better world.

I can hear others say as they read this that argument is a skill of scholars and all threads of knowledge can be traced back to argument, which may well be true. But is the place for this English Composition 1101 and 1102 where English class is a huge monster of essay and word that students would rather drop again and again than endure?

I say everything is not an argument. Donald Murray reveals in Write to Learn about persuasion, rather than argument, as he prefers to call it:

In fact, I believe academic argument is a term and a process left over from the days when the academic world was exclusively male . . . . Truth was found by two men taking completely opposite sides and each trying to destroy the other. . . . Persuasion is the basic form of intellectual discourse; it is the way that new ideas are introduced, that old ideas are discarded, and old ideas are adpated to new trains of thoughts. (313-314)

I believe it is okay, as does Murray, to teach these skills; however, to make this the basis of our discipline disturbs me. One might say I am simply an emotional rant of an instructor on this subject--that I'm too emotional to be objective. I would have to say that is true. I'm one of the students who had my essay-writing hand slapped by a college professor that wanted to make sure his students knew they couldn't write. I didn't fail the class. I made a B. The grade wasn't an issue. I made several Bs in college. The issue was I didn't write with a voice of my own for twenty years. And writing is my first love.

We have to be emotional when the writing lives of our students are at stake. Do we want students to feel like I did and many do when they leave 1101 and 1102 and they are afraid to put any word to paper, or do we want them to say as they leave 1101 and 1102, "I will never look at writing the same way. I am not afraid of it anymore. I know I can write"? Each semester we don’t want to say we have hunted down and crushed the potential of 100 writers, but want to say we've given 100 students the opportunity at writing brilliance.

I suggest let’s take off the camouflage outfit of the hunter seeking failed writers as their spoils. Let’s put down our guns, our rights and wrongs, our arguments. Yes. Let’s become who we truly are--teachers of writers instead.


Work Cited

Murray, Donald. Write to Learn. 8th Ed. Boston: Thomson, 2005.


Copyright 2005 Shelnutt

Saturday, November 12, 2005

The things we carry . . .

One of the journal exercises I do with my composition students involves taking prompts from Tim O'Brien's powerful short story "The Things They Carried" and having the class fill in the prompts according to what their lives have required them to carry.

Sometimes I will do the exercise with them, sometimes not. I did write along with them this past week. I am posting my entry which I read to the class when we shared.

Truthful, honest writing, I believe, is accomplished most readily by opening the words our souls have given us and sharing them with a community of fellow writers. This exercise always generates some amazing words from the students.

With a thanks to Tim O'Brien for the use of a few lines from his work.


The things we carry are largely determined by necessities. Among the necessities are a house that carries the spirit of the previous owners, Gary and Ronna Jordan, who hid the permanently foggy windows in the bedroom when they were trying to sell the place by pulling their green brocade curtains taut, who failed to tell us the house was falling apart because of the hate they carried for each other.

So now we carry a roof that leaks that the they said was new. We carry brown water spots creating a random design on our family room ceiling, the girls’ bathroom, and bedrooms. We carry the Jordans’ mold that continues to grow in our house because of their lies. We carry our own mold inside us because the weight of their dishonesty is too much to carry.

We had carried a hope people were honest when we first moved into this house. Now, even though Gary Jordan was a construction project supervisor, we carry the discovery of duct tape on anything that has ever been broken in this house that he tried to fix. They even duct taped their marriage together, but it didn’t last.

We carry the fear that the house remembers their duct-taped marriage. We carry the fear the duct tape of our own marriage won’t hold either. We have a fear what the Jordans carried at 2117 Breconridge Drive is catching. We carry no illusion about honesty anymore.

At night I carry peculiar little odds and ends. I carry ghosts. I carry sleeping in any other bed than with you because the beagle snores louder than a human. She gets to sleep next to you. I don't.

I carry the sounds of the day in my head, a pre-programmed litany that occurs whenever I close my eyes. The question“Is Christmas day still on the 25?” I asked my manager at the bookstore. The open dialogue my brain waves have with each other about how stupid I’ve been. During the dark, I carry the wide awakeness of a premenopausal woman—something I thought I’d never carry, not the premenopausal stuff, but the wide awakeness part. I slept for twelve hours a night as soon as I came home from the hospital after I was born. Now, being a hormonal ghost, walking my own halls is a haunting thing to carry.

Some things we carry are determined by superstition: For instance we believe if we carry the honor of treating others right, then they will treat us right in return.

Some things we carry in common—among those we carry a hope that will sustain us. We carry the fact that we were both preachers’ kids. We carry the junk that being preacher’s kids carries with it.

While we were dating, we carried Captain D’s as our favorite restaurant. We carried the knowledge that we were good people, that neither of us had much money growing up. You wore those corduroy tan pants for twenty years. I had to be told the clodhoppers I wore to the office weren’t appropriate. We bought our first Christmas tree for $9, and most of the needles fell off by the time we got it in the apartment. We carried no furniture into our first apartment. We sat on the orange shag carpet and ate meals in front of a black and white TV. We carried love then so we didn’t think it mattered all the things we didn’t carry.

We carry the land, the mold, the rotten roof, the brown spots on the ceiling, the duct-taped everything since we bought the Jordans’ house. Now, six years later, if we get along we carry the hope that we still love each other, the hope that if we hold onto the rope long enough, we can carry the possibility of someone seeing what a good job we’ve done of holding on and everything. We carry the hope that the other person will make sure we never completely fall.

We carry all we can bear, and then some, including the silent awe for the terrible power of the things we carry.
---------------------------

Shelnutt 2005 Copyright

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

How tempting the couch is to the frightened soul.

The soul invites us to come into our own. Often the problem we have is defining "our own." Am I an artist or a writer or a teacher or a bookseller? Am I supposed to give full attention to my novel or delve into realms of art where I'm not as accomplished or should I give in to the couch of doing nothing--the place of softness that calls me and says, "It's easier here on the foam and tapestry of our cushions. You don't have to work. You don't have to try. You don't have to risk. You are safe."

Ah, how tempting the couch is to the frightened soul. How much more decadent it seems than polishing off Chapter 32 of the novel revisions. When the soul is in the recline position, when we've wrapped it in our most comfy terrycloth robe and purple pjs with stars and moons dancing on them, when we tug the chenille throw far enough over our eyes that we don't have to see the decision we've made of not doing, there is a soul burial going on.

On that couch, our spirit conforms to the shape of thinking but not doing. It's almost like having a migraine except it occurs throughout the entire body. If we move, it hurts too badly. If we act, we might succeed. If we peek from behind the chenille throw, our own light might shine too brightly. Then what would we do?

I'm going to tell the truth here. Not because of anything, but because telling the truth is the only way I know how to live. I've suffered from this soul burial disease that couching causes for fifteen years. Some refer to it as depression. Even with medical interventions, this malady is unrelenting. Some days are better than others. Sometimes the couch is the best possible option and I'm thankful for it.

I'd like to tell you that I am Betty Crocker or June Cleaver or Ms. Perfect Something, but I'm not. I struggle each day to find meaning. I struggle each day to understand why I am on this earth for this lifetime. I struggle each day to believe the gifts I have can make a difference.

And what do I struggle against? In my head, there is a heavy syrup of doubt repeating, "You're not good enough and why do you think you can make something of yourself and did you see how you taught that class last night and, really, the couch is the optimum place for you in this life, sweetie."

Yet, the soul's call is persistent. Even when one is tagged with depression or tagged with grief and sorrow or tagged with illness, the soul in its all-knowing way pulls us from the comfort of couching and onto the two feet of our own competence. The soul's call, much like the voice of doubt, is determined. It becomes then a dance or a duel of sorts between the you cans and you can'ts minding the brain's store.

Whatever the journey offers from dawn to dusk, whether it is a couch-safe day or a soul-defining one, we are striving toward a more keen listening to the soul's call. We are striving to fold the chenille throw and let it rest on the arm of the couch. We are striving to adjust to the brightness of our very own light.

copyright 2005 shelnutt

Thursday, October 13, 2005

The only bad story is the untold one.

I have started reading a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luiz Zafon. What excites me most about beginning a book is when I have to get up from my comfy, overstuffed chair to find a pen so I can underline precious words found early on in the book's pages. I figure if there are treasures for the quotation trove on the first page of a novel or the second, then imagine the underlinings for 486 pages.

This book is translated from Spanish byLucia Graves and is being published in more than twenty countries. It has been on the New York Times Bestseller List. But these are not the reasons I'm reading The Shadow of the Wind. I'm reading this novel because a sweet woman at Barnes & Noble recommended it to me, and I like to read books that others have suggested.

The story is set in Barcelona and begins with the narrator's telling of his memory of the day his father took him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. When I read the words Cemetery of Forgotten Books, I fell into some spell of soul connection with the author or the narrator or somebody. I was hooked.

The following passage is where the father tells the main character (Daniel) about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books:

This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens . . . . when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands (Zafon 6-7).

Then again at the end of the first chapter on page 8:

Once in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget--we will return. For me those enchanted pages will always be the ones I found among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (8).


I think about the soul of books Zafon writes of here. I consider what the enchanted pages were for me that I will always return to. I think of a respite for the books that no longer have hands to caress them--sweaty hands of a butcher after a day of carving beef, powdered hands of the affluent matron, puffy hands of a small child.

In my house and probably in yours, each of us has our own Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I may have saved the tattered copy of that 1890s romance novel by the relatively unknown author when I paid six dollars for it and gave it prominence on my nightstand.

Each night before I click the lamp off, I brush my fingers across the worn white cover, the oval inset picture of the damsel in crimson, the edges of the cover that look like they've been chewed by a toddler. I slip it into my hands like it is too hot or too cold and I don't know what exactly to do with it. The pages that were once white have turned light brown. The smells of previous readers are held somewhere in the pages, in the lines, in the words. When I hold my 1890s romance novel, I say a prayer for all forgotten books.

I believe if I save forgotten books then some day maybe someone will save my words. Whether they are published or not, maybe some person will discover my notebook of pages and will pay for them because the pages are old and the notebook is old and the story is old.

A reverence exists in every story our hearts hold whether fiction or non-fiction. For that reason, I want all books, all stories to live forever. I want to volunteer at the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I want everyone to know that we can't let the stories die. We must save them. Book by book. Page by page. Word by word.

We must save them and we must tell the stories our own hearts hold. If we don't tell our stories, our readers won't have a chance to pull out of their comfy, overstuffed chairs and underline our pages. If we don't begin, then those things we always wanted to say will remain buried in the Cemetery of Untold Stories. If we don't begin, our words cannot be saved.


Work Cited

Zafon, Carlos Ruiz. The Shadow of the Wind. Penguin: New York, 2004.

ks

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Subject--let the writing pick one.

This is one of those days when so many thoughts are ricocheting in my head I can't single one out for my journaling. They're each screaming, thinking they are the cutest, and they want me to pick them to write about.

The thing is--I want to write about them all at once. I wish I had ten hands and I'd assigned each pair of hands a different topic. One pair of hands would write on the connection of the erotic to creativity, the second pair of hands would write about art--how cool it is, the third pair of hands would write about how I sometimes worry over what I say but when it's too late to take it back, the fourth pair of hands would write about the tons of dreams I have had about houses (had a new one last night), and the fifth pair of hands would write about how when I'm not writing my soul is a little down on the "if you're happy and you know it" meter.

I honestly believe I could be writing an essay to a tree (and I'm not putting down the importance of trees here, by all means) and I would be gleeful about tree essays. I mean if my audience happened to be trees, I wouldn't have to go far to look for them, they couldn't tell me they didn't like what I'd written, and I could always take those breezes that shake their limbs back and forth as the trees' nods of approval. My next question is--why have I been writing to people for so long?

Something about generating writing begins this gentle hum inside me. I truly believe it is addictive--this hum thing. The endorphins in there are having one rousing good time. Even though I can sense my heartbeat start to hurry to keep up with the words on the page, there is still a rhythm to the hurriedness, a rhythm that is soul soothing.

So why don't I do this writing thing for the entire day? Because there are budding freshman who I want to teach about the hum of writing, because there are bookstore customers who I want to put books into their hands that will start this hum inside them as they read the pages where someone else took time to tell a story. Because a lot of other reasons not nearly as lofty as those I just mentioned.

In the past, there have been days where I've written from the moment I wake through to suppertime. (Forget writing until bedtime; I'm never going to do that in my life.) I will stop for food, however. My muse gets word fatigue after about three to four hours of pen to page. It's unfortunate, but she doesn't experience the writing hum in the same way I do. She starts twisting this one strand of hair over and over on the back of her head, and I begin to worry that she's going to go bald, so I stop.

When I was writing my novel, I had many obligations at the time and figured there was no way I could get to Marjorie (my main character) as much as I wanted. And since I had set my goals to be a good writer and write long hours and long days and get done and prosper forever and ever amen, and since this goal was not obtainable, I let Marjorie's words slip into the background of my days instead of trying to negotiate a deal with her.

Well, when I had gone without the hum for long enough, I returned to the draft of the novel and dialogued with Marjorie about our predicament. Often as I wrote the novel I would dialogue with Marjorie as a way of processing what was going on with me, what was going on with the characters, what was going on with my muse and that hair-twisting thing. Marjorie was all wise and knowing. If you ever want a therapist who you don't have to pay but who is way smarter than you are, start a novel and dialogue with your main character. It will change your life and hair-twisting habit.

"I can't handle writing on this novel for periods of eight hours at a time." This was what I told Marjorie.

"Why?" She was alway curious like that. You couldn't get away with a simple answer and think it was going to get approval just because you had written it down.

"Well, I have two jobs, two children, three dogs, a husband, no housekeeper, no butler, and I'm not the Queen of Energy either."

"Hmmm." That meant she was thinking it over. You're always afraid that can't be good.
"How many pages do you think you can manage at one sitting?" she asked.

I thought about what she'd asked and the number seven popped in my head. "Seven."

"Okay, then. From now on I will only give you seven handwritten pages of my story at a time."

"Really?" I asked this like I had never considered the possibility of my character providing me a certain amount of her story for each writing session. Instantly, I felt delighted about writing again.

"It's a deal then." She wanted to make sure she had my promise. Sometimes she was kind of a baby like that. If we were in the room together as physical beings, she probably would have made us prick our fingers.

After that dialogue with Marjorie, she always gave me seven pages of handwirtten story each time I sat down to write--no more, no less. And I never felt overburdened by the time aspect of writing.

I guess what I'm saying is even a good hum can only last so long. Compare it, if you will, to any other good feelings you know and the length that they last. I enjoy the hum of writing whenever I get the chance. When there are ten hands' worth of subjects in my brain, I let the writing pick one and get on with the humming. It feels so good. You should try it.

ks
2005 Copyright Shelnutt

Friday, September 23, 2005

Eileen's Birthday

I NEED TO LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT EILEEN'S BIRTHDAY IS NOT ON SEPTEMBER 19 OR SEPTEMBER 21, BUT EILEEN'S BIRTHDAY IS ON SEPTEMBER 20. AND I LOVE EILEEN. SHE IS A GREAT FRIEND NO MATTER WHAT DAY SHE WAS BORN ON AND REGARDLESS OF THE FACT I TRY TO BIRTH HER ON THREE DAYS IN SEPTEMBER INSTEAD OF THE ONE SHE CAME TO THE EARTH ON.

EILEEN, YOU'RE THE BEST!

LOVE,

K

And Another One Bites the Dust

And another one's gone, and another one's gone, and another one bites the dust. Yep. You know it's going to happen, but you're not prepared for it. A certain amount of glee and pride come with starting a blog. It doesn't matter so much that the world is looking on as much as it matters that you have a place to tell the world your story whether they choose to look or not.

So when I set up my blog the other day, at first I hesitated to send a notice to my friends. I figured I would wait and adjust to blogging before I invited the world in. After a few postings, however, I sent some emails letting folks know I was here. What I wished for in return--I guess was little blog cheerleaders shaking their blogger pom-poms screaming, "Good job, Karen. Good blog. We like your blog. We like you."

Sounds like a note a second grader would write. But isn't that what we all want--blog or not--love and acceptance? And isn't that why we share with our closest friends our small blips of accomplishment along the way? And isn't it true that we need all the encouragement we can get, all the cheerleaders we can find because we live in a global world that is connected in so many ways but disconnected and disgruntled in so many others?

That's why I sent my friends my email about this blog. And they've been so supportive and cheerleaderish that you'd think they were part of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. And I've felt warm and loved. I want to say thank you to my friends for their love and support. Thank you to the tribe cheerleaders--specifically--Antoinette, Chris, Denise, Eileen, Erika, Joyce, Linda, and Sheila. You guys are the best of the best of the best!

Some folks don't want me to tell my truth in this blog. Those folks are going to have to bite the dust. And I don't mean that in a terse way. I mean that in a way that says: I've lived for 48 years, many of those years spent having to hide dark secrets in pockets of skin and bone. Once those secrets escaped, the global world had nairn a thought what it was in for.

And I've made some mistakes telling the truth. I've told too much truth sometimes. I've told the truth in front of the wrong people and hurt those I hold the most dear to my heart and I'm not proud about that. And I've learned there are ways to tell the truth and ways not to, but this is my blog, and I don't intend to hurt anyone here because I'm just happy as a goldfinch to be typing and writing and typing and writing. But I intend to be truthful, even sometimes if that seems like I might not be perfect and whole all the time. Hey, I'm not a loaf of bread. I'm not perfectly shaped or browned or textured or anything. I'm irregular. And I like that. And I like the truth.

So I made the decision, within my promise to be truthful to myself and harbor no more dark pockets with secrets in my body, that truth rules. I'll try to honor others, but what is true for me will be on this page.

For any persons who happen upon this blog and think the truth is too much or too vivid or too whatever, then those are the folks that I've decided I can't please anymore. They have to bite the dust. It's difficult for me to say this and yet freeing as well. Why? Because it is the truth. I wish those souls light and love and peace and I understand their feelings about truth. But I cannot be them or be in their place. I can only be me. And that's exciting. And that's the truth.

kss

Hurricane of Words

A gifted writer and former student sent me an email recently. Part of it reads:

"Oh my goodness. The most basic advice you gave, to just write, is the most difficult part for me. I have all the writer's fears, nothing to say, nothing to write, nobody wants to hear, blah, blah, blah. But I am getting to the point where if I don't get the words, and I don't know which words they are, whatever they may be, out of my head it's going to start spinning on my shoulders. When you started writing . . . did you have that problem?"

My reply:

Writing involves a huge amount of trust--trust that the words already know what they want to say and how to say them and when to say them. The story is already inside of us. We are the ones who get in the way. We demand to have Cheerios when the writing says it wants Cream of Wheat for breakfast. In other words, we go by our plan and sometimes our plan isn't the plan that the story, the journal entry, the essay, the novel have in mind.

One of the most difficult things for writers to learn to do (and I know because I have a great deal of practice trying to learn this) is to let go of any preconceived ideas about what ends up on the blank page.

Let the writing tell us. Become a stenographer for the words. Take dictation. Oftentimes if I don't know what to write, I will literally start my journal entry with, "So what do the words want to say today?" That way it has less to do with me. And it should have less to do with me. When we are thinking the process too much, the words get lost in our thoughts. They need a clear path to the page. The best we can offer them is a streamline of pen in hand and letting them (the words) be in charge.

Many times I don't "receive" the stellar journal entry I had planned out in my head, but one of the problems with my receiving that entry is the audacity I had to plan it ahead of time.

Writing sometimes makes us pay the price for not letting the words be in control. I have a lot of bad writing as proof; however, I'm not saying that bad writing is a bad thing. Every word that spills from our pen is useful to our creative learning. The way it is useful may be simply in accepting we can have "average" journal days and "complaining" journal days and "naughty" journal days and whatever we want.

There are no damn rules with writing except to let the words be in charge. They are the master creators. We are merely the scribble-the-words-on-paper person. As writers, this is something we come up against repeatedly. It is a lesson that seems equally as hard to learn the first time as the umpteenth time. But it is an important one.

Another suggestion about allowing words to come has to do with letting up on the pressure. I've been around a couple of pressure cookers that lost their black rubber stoppers and silver rocking knobs and have plastered kitchens with vegetable soup and chili and steam. We have to turn down the pressure sometimes. Be still.

I've gone on solo retreats and have used my journal only as a coaster until it was time to go--not a word written in it. Was that frustrating? Yes. But it was also the best thing for me--to be silent--to let the writing come back home.

I know I could go on and on about this topic and I know if you ask ten other writers what their thoughts are about this you'd get that many more answers and I know that is what I believe is so exciting about writing. Donald Murray says to "write about what makes you different." We are all so gloriously different in this quirky world; we might as well be able to get in our two-, four-, six- and eight-cents worth about it.

We must write about the marked differences that make us who we are. Sometimes I think of myself like a bad hair color I'd like to rinse out of my head, but for some reason, the color stays and stays and stays. I can't rinse out who I am. That is where we should write from. The things that won't rinse out.

My best advice to the writer is to trust their intuition. If they feel so many words spinning in their head that they fear it is about to rocket of their shoulders, then these word messages must be wanting to land somewhere. But they want to do it their way. Offer them a journal and a cup of tea. Take ten deep breaths and tell them, "Say whatever you want to say, and it doesn't even have to ever be good."

Don't ask them to write a novel if they are still a hurricane of words. That may mean their story is part of a huge storm churning inside--searching for the safest place to land.

kss
p.s. A great book about resistance and fear for writers and artists is The War of Art by
Stephen Pressfield, author of The Legend of Baggar Vance.
Copyright 2005 Shelnutt

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

The Nasty Pet/Critic Critter

This morning I've been looking at websites of artists who create altered books. Their websites are so creative; their art is so creative. Why does viewing other people's beautiful gifts make my gifts to the world look like the dull penny no one wants to pick up off hot asphalt?

I've always had this persistent voice in my head that reiterates the "not goodness" of whatever I do. This voice has selected the wrong person to reside inside. It wants perfect. I am more of a mess. It wants instant--instant weight loss, instant novel publishing, instant Ponder Design marketing. It wants instant and perfect. That makes me sigh and resign myself instead to never and not good enough.

I wonder whether during this lifetime I will be able to override this voice inside that comments on everything I do. I'm on constant alert of possible failure--of not teaching my class well enough last night, of not making everyone like me at the bookstore yesterday, of never turning out to be what I thought I'd be.

There's no way to live a life of freedom with a damn critic in your head. No way. There are not enough drugs in the world to drown out that nagging, penetrating chatter.

Why can't I have the voice of a fairy or a gypsy instead--voices that cheer all efforts, that believe magic is born with our first footfall from the bed each morning, the first breath our lungs take as we walk upright into a new day? Why can't I have those positive voices who pat me on the back, even when my back is covered with twenty pounds of extra fat?

Fairies and gypsies don't care how much fat is on someone's back. They care about someone's spirit--their pizazz inside. Why hasn't anyone ever noticed my inside pizazz? Whenever I show that around the pesty internal critic, he begins a soliloquy on why I don't have pizazz, have never had pizazz, and then points out all the specific times in my life when I didn't have pizazz. After that, I'm pretty sure I never had any pizazz too.

I'm sitting here at the computer wondering how to smush the vile critter in my brain, eradicate him. He is slowly depleting me of any gumption I had to carry on toward the prize. It's difficult to want to do anything when you know it won't be good enough for the critic critter inside your head. So I dread doing anything. Things I might normally love become something else to wish I didn't have to do--because what if someone finds out that I am no good just like the critic critter keeps saying--what if someone finds out I'm not qualified, or I don't know the definition of every word in Webster's dictionary, or where every comma is supposed to go on the page, or how to make it through the day without dragging the blanket of being wrong with me.

Some days I come close to warding off the critic, but then he returns pumped with venom and ready to have at me again. I stand at the mirror and try telling myself how much I love me, and I hear bounce back off the mirrored reflection, "No you don't. No you don't. No you don't."

Hey, and you might think I'm crazy because I have to deal with this offensive voice terrorizing me. It's like having bad body odor or something. I'm one person trying to live from day to day just like you. I'm one person trying to turn down the volume of the voices that violate my head. I'm one person putting one foot on the floor first thing in the morning just like you. The only difference is the voice tells me every time that I didn't do it right.

kss

Friday, September 09, 2005

plot (plot), n., v., plot-ted, plot-ting.

plot (plot), n., v., plot-ted, plot-ting.
n. 1. a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.
2. the main story of a literary or dramatic work.
3. a small piece of ground.
-v.t. 4. to plan secretly or conspiratorially.



I think about plot but I don't do any plotting. I look up the definition of plot in my Webster's and copy it into my journal. That doesn't make me feel more like writing about plot.

I light a candle where I can see its low lights flickering across the room and believe calling in the sacred will make me write about plot. It doesn't. I've started the pen's movement on the journal page, but my stomach is plotting a rebellion of sorts. It feels like there is an anvil inside me that is weighted with sadness.

Yuck. I hate this writing. I'm plotting this writing.

The first definition of plot reads--a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.

I sit here on my 20-year-old Herculon sofa with my white fluffy mutt by my side. He is as close to me as the fluff on him will allow. Sunny, that's his name, is terrified of thunder and it's thundering. We are best buds at the moment.

I'm plotting an essay that will make the room dance when it's read, that will bring all eyes to attention, that will stop everyone else's plot and make them listen to mine.

There, I've said it.

I need my plot to be specialer, to be crispier, crunchier, flakier, more full-bodied, more endowed, new and improved over what everyone else has plotted.

That's sick. There's no sacred spirit in that. Maybe that's the heavy anvil feeling inside me--guilt for wanting recognition, for writing to want recognition. That’s the first definition of plot in Webster's after all--a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.

"Hello, my name is Karen. I plot secretly to write better than anyone else." Oh God, there's no hope for someone like me.

2. The second definition of plot reads--the main story in a literary or dramatic work.

Well, I think often about the plot of my novel, Marjorie's Rules of Order. I think about her main story, about what she is driving toward. I hear, the answer--search of self. Then I hear, "No one is going to read a novel about search of self.”

I think about the plot, the main story of my own life. It's been the same as Marjorie's--search of self. Maybe her plot is a way to help me discover more about my own story, what brought me to writing, what to do with depression, recovered memories of abuse and the disbelief that joins itself to that.

Maybe Marjorie’s plot is a way to allow me to accept my own.

3. The third definition of plot is--a small piece of ground.

As in a burial plot, I wonder. As in, all I want is a wife and kids and little plot of land. As in a small piece of ground to call one's own.

A small piece of ground--kind of an earthy room of one's own.

How much I long for my small piece of ground where I can say--in this square space of ground I am fine--the way I cook is fine, the way I clean is fine, the way I procrastinate is fine, the way I eat is fine, the way I look is fine, the way I write is fine. It's a fine piece of ground I'm standing on. No need for everybody to try to change it or criticize it or take their passive-aggressive anger out on it.

The other day I was telling my husband how my mom had said I used to come home from college in the summer and clean house from top to bottom for her.

My husband looked at my college-age daughter and laughed. "Now, it's hard to believe that ever happened isn't it?"

My own piece of ground where they don't make fun of how I clean or how often. If they had lived in a body worn down by cycles of depression, if they knew how hard it's been to accept that I'm never going to be the normal person I used to be, they wouldn't laugh.

But I'm fine. My plot of ground is fine.

It may not be as Windexed and Pledge-shined as their plot, but mine has smells of incense and wine, candle wax dripping warm down long stems of light. There are books open everywhere. Cushions abound in the deep red shades of Persian rugs. There are pages and pages to be written on my plot of fine ground. Some dust on a blank page never kept me from writing the next word.

4. The fourth definition of plot reads--v.t. (verb transitive), plot as a verb-to plan secretly or conspiratorially.

I plan to escape. I plan to plot freedom, to say, "For one year I'm moving out to see if the self hidden under everyone's objections still exists. To see whether underneath the adult me, the little girl who was always okay, whose eyes always opened huge as chocolate Tootsie Roll lollipops, the little girl who loved grape snow cones cold on her teeth, cool grass against her bare feet, Bazooka bubble gum and princess telephones, can come out to play again."

She is--I am--a verb transitive. I am action. I want to be action--my own action that takes on a direct object--me. Me. The object of me—now there’s a plot for you.

The fifth definition of plot reads-- to mark on a map or chart, as the course of a ship.

If I could plot my own course, writing or otherwise, I would tell everyone to leave me alone,and that I'm fine as I am. It took me 48 years to see it, but fine is looking back and smiling at me in the mirror.

I'd wake each morning to a lighted candle and writing words. I'd write through the early shift of sun across my window. I'd stop for lunch, walk in the afternoon, run errands, read and relax in the evenings. I'd extinguish the flame at night upon rest. I'd anticipate the possibility of the coming of the new day, the lighting of the candle in a way it has never been lit before. I would honor the plot of simplicity threaded into each moment.

kss

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Writing is the huge movie screen of your life.

Note to all--this journal entry was written in the classroom along with my English 1101 students.

I like writing when I can share with someone else how special it is, when I can let them know that reading their writing is like touching the smooth skin on their face.

I don't like what I'm writing here. Who am I trying to be? What am I trying to say?

I want people to know that words, written words, can do so much. They can heal us when we're trying to understand the devastating breakup. They can help us see how things didn't go so well while teaching English 1101 today, how sounding like a fool sometimes is okay.

Writing is like open arms of acceptance on paper. It never says--you are too dumb, you need to clean your room, you're too fat or too skinny, no one will ever love you.

Writing allows us to love ourselves even when it seems like no one else does--on the bad days when the dog dies or we have the horrific accident and our world tumbles over and over. Writing lets us have a space, a place for how that feels and how life can suck, how life can be beautiful, how sex last night was great or how I never want to talk to that guy/girl again.

Writing is the one place where we can look inside and whatever is showing on the screen is fine--if it is a horror movie of the times our parents screamed at us, then let it be that. If it is a musical of our favorite songs flitting across the page, then let them.

The words come to us for a reason.

Don't push them. Allow them a place. Allow them a voice. We need to tell ourselves that we are important enough to know how we felt throughout the day--not just give a reporting of what we ate or drank at Starbucks--whether we had venti or grande--but how we felt when our best friend lied to us, how we felt being in the classroom.

The page is the beginning of our stories. Aren't our stories worth the telling--the telling in written word? I think so.
------------------------
Copyright Shelnutt 2005

Monday, September 05, 2005

On leopard-print panties and word collapse . . .

Typing on this blank space and thinking that someone will read it (even if it is only shoppers I commandeer and pay one dollar to while browsing the Wal-Mart parking lot) causes me to "word collapse."

Word collapse is a simpler name for writer's block. Writer's block sounds so fatal that I like word collapse better. Plus, I made it up. I'm counting on the cute, made-up things I do to trap you and you and you into returning to a place where we can make up words and life and story and it will be so rich and true and real (how is that for a few abstracts in a row) that we will grow a huge community of us.

Right now, my definition of word collapse is as follows: All the words I know, all the words I have known, all the words I will know tumble into some center I call fear. Well, fear is too charged a topic to begin discussing on my first post. But you can bet that when "word collapse" happens to most writers, fear is standing behind the words (and sometimes the writer) pushing them over the edge.

When word collapse happens, I feel my toes cringe, my heart becomes arrhythmic (it believes this is a way to assure I will stop trying), and I smell the odor of every room where I blossomed as the fool. Those smells would include the greasy hamburger-and-fry smell of the Village Hut when I went on a date with Ken Hannah, my knight in shining Country Squire Station Wagon. JoAnn Ranck and I scurried to the bathroom which was about the size of the phone booth where Superman changes clothes. (Truly if he's Superman he should be able to get a better changing room in his contract.)

The two of us squished ourselves into this plywood potty room and checked in the mirror to make sure we matched, as closely as possible, those images of Cheryl Tiegs on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

Then, we urinated. That's the proper name for peeing as given to us by the beloved Mrs. Pasinger, our sixth-grade p.e. teacher, on one of those rainy days during the school year when you couldn't play kickball or badminton, but were stuck learning about menstrual flows and urination and having a talent show where girls took turns singing to a trapped dressing-room audience.

I always sang "Tammy's in Love," from the movie. I guess I finessed that song so much it became a regular request on rainy days when dressing rooms always got me down. Rhonda McMillan, who was a real gospel singer, who had a real album and who could really sing, would also tune up with a song that began, "I've been saved. I've been new born no-ow. All my life has been rearranged." Well, you get the idea. Rhonda had the best voice and musical prowess in all of Giles County maybe in all of middle Tennessee. I was jealous, but it didn't stop me from having my own mini-American Idol 35 years prior to that show's inception.

Oh my, I didn't want to ramble on this post. However, it is my posting so I can ramble if I want to. Isn't that what authenticity is about--that and finally telling the truth about my jealousy of Rhonda McMillan? I will ramble at will. I encourage you to do the same. There may be those fetid memories lurking from your sixth-grade-p.e.-dressing-room days that you've never shared. Send me your story. We could probably start a sixth-grade-p.e.-dressing-room anthology.

Now back to smells and fools. When JoAnn and I emerged from the restroom, I lounged on one of the twisting stools (not to be confused with "fools") at the counter while she and Jim, her boyfriend, and Ken stationed themselves in a booth. I was "feeling my oats" as my dad always reminded me, and was also "acting full of myself," as he always reminded me.

JoAnn's ivory-girl complexion, I noticed, turned redder and redder like she was a front burner on the stove that you just directed to high and then stared at it until the glowing coals were like a fiery bullseye.

I did not know what JoAnn was trying to tell me--maybe I was acting out too much even for her. So, I toned it down a bit. The color of her face remained turned to HIGH. She would also giggle and shake her head which perplexed me even more and she kept nodding to indicate something was wrong--maybe I had Bazooka Bubble gum stuck to my shoe.

I guess it was when I looked at my shoe for bubble gum verification that I saw my pants were unzipped and revealed my leopard-print nylon bikini panties to the Village Hut staff and patronage. Now every time I smell greasy burgers and fries, I think of the Village Hut and leopard-print panties and how I began an early pilgrimage into "acting the fool."

What you must notice here is that even though word collapse threatened this writing, I wrote anyway. Even though I remembered the greasy-hamburger smell of the location where girls go who don't zip up their panties on important dates, I wrote anyway. Even though I rambled, I wrote anyway. That's what makes my heart, right now, less arrhythmic and more smooth. Yes, the rhythm of my heart beating is smooth. I like that.

Honor the writer within, the fool within, the girl-who-forgot-to-zip-up-her-panties within, the dressing-room-singer-who-is-jealous-of-Rhonda-McMillen's-fame within. When you write past word collapse, or don't make word collapse win, you hear your favorite song in your ears cheering you to some level of writing victory. My song might be "Tammy." You know what song you'll hear.

Honor the word collapse within. It is sure to taunt you when you write. Honor it, but don't give into it. Tell it about the time you revealed your leopard-print nature to the teenage world at the Village Hut. Tell it a story. That always shuts it up. Word collapse is a sucker for a story.

kss

----------------------------------

Copyright 2005 Shelnutt