One of my readers and a dear friend, John Ostrem, gifted me this beautiful painting inspired by his reading of Canopy. According to John: “I picked up my artist’s brushes and painted a tribute to Ostrya with boots on the ground after fleeing the Canopy …”
Blowing Leaves and Words Into the Wind
This morning, after Nora (my muse of No, No, Nora! fame) knocked all my books and my eyeglasses off the bedside table before biting me on every single exposed finger and marking her grand finale by pulling the mattress sheet off the bed, I fed her and my other two cats. It was still dark outside, about quarter to seven on the last day of November.
The moon was full and shining through a huge maple tree in a nearby yard—a tree that drops leaves all over my next door neighbor’s roof. Every autumn, this neighbor, a lovely man who embodies all the best characteristics of that word, climbs daily to the top of his roof with his leaf blower.
This is not the photo I took on my iPhone.
After dispatching the offending leaves from his asphalt shingles, he walks to the far edge of his roof and points his leaf blower as far as he can reach toward the tree across the property line, trying valiantly to loosen the hanging leaves and send them straight down before the wind blows them onto his roof. A manic and heroic act that is, of course, doomed to failure. I do so enjoy my neighbor.
Anyway, the huge round moon behind the leaf-bare limbs was a gorgeous sight, the kind of image that a professional photographer would snap and sell to a software company for a screensaver. And I tried to capture the image on my iPhone camera, and of course it turned out a gray blurry mess with a tiny white dot at the top. Disappointing.
That’s like a lot of things in life, I suppose. So picturesque, perfect, exhilarating in your imagination, but in trying to communicate it to others through words or photos or pictures, it loses something. As far as photography or drawing or painting go, I gratefully admire the abilities of others, but I don’t choose to spend my own time improving my skills. But writing? I guess that’s the one craft/art that I do care about.
I keep trying to communicate what I see in my mind and what I feel in my heart, and the harder I work at it, I realize how much more there is to learn. It is difficult and takes a good deal of willpower to keep at it when I know how far I still am from my ideal. I’ll probably never get there in my lifetime, yet the pursuit seems heroic though it’s ultimately never achievable, like my neighbor standing on his roof attempting to keep nature from raining leaves on his roof.
And I realize that as soon as I write the words down, the experience ceases being mine alone and becomes a reader’s adventure. So it is when we put things out in the world and share ourselves with others. Our inner worlds can be vibrant and enthralling and sharing them with others comes with a good deal of risk. Will they judge us and deem us unworthy? It is a scary, anxiety-provoking thing, to expose ourselves in that way. But if there’s one other person, only one, who sees the picture we paint or the photo we take or the joke we tell or the story we write and experiences joy by it, that one person is worth the risk, isn’t she-he-they?
This is what I’m thinking of this morning as I contemplate the completion of the first draft of my new novel. Showing up at the page every morning and fighting back the procrastination monster has been a daily battle. I’m close to winning the war though, hopefully by the end of this week. And if you’ve made it this far, I will have something new for you to read, something longer than a blog post, something shall we say, novel-length, out very soon in the new year. Until then, I’m off to battle.
Surviving Imposter Syndrome
Stuart Smalley images are copyrighted, so I present to you: cat in mirror.
Remember Al Franken's Stuart Smalley character on SNL in the early 90's? "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." It was funny because it was true. Franken's self-help guru was suffering from the disorder most of us know only too well--Imposter Syndrome.
This disorder is in no medical journal, doctors don't treat for it, but it is one of the most debilitating ailments known to wo/man. There is no genetic marker to warn us it's coming, no vaccine to ward off its effects, and no easy way to heal it once it's well and truly become part of us.
(The term "imposter syndrome" is, itself, suffering from the same disorder--it is sometimes defined as a "term" or a "phrase" or, most grandly, a "concept"--but never, exactly, a real "syndrome." And certainly not a "disorder." But please allow me the artistic license to call it a disorder--none of the other nouns truly resonate, and it *is* my blog, after all. The poor thing can't even decide if it wants to be spelled with an "er" or an "or", so I'm going with "er.")
None of us is born with Imposter Syndrome. Our youngest, most pure selves knew who we were and what we needed. Food. Water. Love. As we grew, each of us had a core sense of self. Everything was ours: all the toys, all the love, all the everything. We were selfish as young children must be and our parents taught us to share the world as adults must do. And still, we retained that tiny voice inside our tiny bodies that told us who we were, how important we were, how talented and special and one-of-a-kind we were.
And then. When did it happen? I'm of the mind it was middle school--junior high as we called it then. But perhaps it began even earlier. We started looking for love in all the wrong places (Jonny Lee song, that). We tried to please the teachers, our friends, the cool kids at the park or in the classroom. Our parents seemed to require ever increasing proof of our worthiness in exchange for the love we once got for free--not true, certainly, but so it felt. The tiny voice of self grew quieter, drowned out finally by the booming roar of the world.
By the time we reached college, got jobs, moved out on our own (any or all of the above), we'd forgotten that the tiny voice had ever existed. The world was so loud. The demands of everyone around us, the need to work to earn to be enough, made us forget who we were at our core, our most pure selves.
And sometimes that rare moment occurred when someone else's pure self recognized our pure self and said: "You know? You're pretty amazing. What you do, who you are? That's remarkable." And we were left with a sense that it was all wrong. We were all wrong. We didn't deserve the acclaim, the compliment, the recognition. We became imposters in our own lives.
Is there a cure for this disorder? Some miracle medicine we can dose to dispel the dreaded Imposter Syndrome? Mr. Franken's mirror mantra never seemed to help Stuart Smalley, so let's cross that one off the list right off.
Perhaps the Imposter Syndrome doesn't ever go away. Perhaps we always need some, shall we say, humility. But I'd like to think that the ill effects of the disorder become less bothersome as we age, as we begin to care less what we believe others expect of us. When we no longer do to satisfy or ingratiate ourselves to others, but rather do for the joy of doing regardless of the outcome.
And when we reach over to pull another along with us, to mentor or aid or support a fellow sufferer, our tiny voices grow louder, find a space in the noise of the world, and sing.
Walking with Mr. Dickens
Charles Dickens famously walked gobs of miles every single day: some sources claim as many as twenty a day, others a measly (?!) twelve--rain or shine. He claimed his daily walks were key to his ability to write the detailed sagas he's known for--though how he found the time and energy after logging twenty miles, I'd like to know.
Did he really do this? Every single day? I don't know, but there is genius to this, and if it worked for Dickens, one of the most prolific authors of his generation, I thought it might have a similar effect on me. Many years ago, I vowed to give it a try--the walking, not the total mileage.
All those years ago, I was an aspiring young writer, and as luck would have it, an aspiring young distance runner as well. Early morning, when the air was fresh and the traffic light, I tried to emulate Mr. Dickens. After the first mile, once my legs loosened and my breathing settled into a steady rhythm, my mind would float off into a waking dream, worries flitting through briefly as my feet pounded the pavement.
While my sneakers ate up the miles, the day's cares and life's anxieties would lessen and the big ideas would begin to break through, tiny crocuses poking through January snow. And as I neared the end of my run, gathering every remaining bit of strength into my rubbery thighs, I would sprint to my chosen finish line and the final idea, the strongest idea, would crush all the others beneath its strident blooms.
I'm not sure what was more addictive back then: the runner's high or the burst of creative energy.
At some point over the years the combined demand of home and work, family needs and job musts, took precedence. My runs stopped. Even if ideas bloomed, I had little time to water and tend them. I missed my early morning runs, my early morning ideas. I missed my creative high.
So. That had to change.
I'm no longer rising so early; marrying one night owl and parenting another will do that to a person. My knees no longer allow me to run on streets, but it turns out the soft trails of the forest by my house suit me far better. I've found that I don't need to run a sprint to rejuvenate my mind--a brisk walk will do, even later in the day.
I don't know if Mr. Dickens walked twenty miles every day or only twelve. I walk far fewer, but I walk. And I can tell you, he was on to something.
What ideas poke through your January mind? I'll see you on the trail.
The Fourth Set of Ears
In his book On Writing, Stephen King writes about the importance of having one ideal reader. It’s my favorite passage in a book full of hundreds of compelling passages about the craft, because I’m fortunate to have one such ideal reader.
My son.
His are the fourth set of ears to hear the rough draft of my work. The first time I read the draft aloud—to catch glaring errors my eyes don’t see, to listen to the cadence of the language, and to ensure that the dialogue rings true—three sets of ears hear it: my own and those of my cats, General and Olivia.
The cats’ critiques are useless, though.
Not my son’s. His fourth set of ears listens to my second draft. My son has no problem telling me straight that a chapter is boring, hilarious, or creepy. He is as honest and unflinching a critic as you’d be lucky to meet. If his eyes glaze over, my next few days are spent in rewrites. When he begs me for “Just one more chapter”, I know I’m on to something.
And when my book is finally ready for the eyes of my editor, the boy who owns those fourth set of ears gives me celebratory presents.
The fourth set of ears gave me this skull after I’d finished The Pirate’s Booty.
The fourth set of ears gave me this tiger after I’d finished The Crystal Lair.
The fourth set of ears has been listening to readings of the third book in the Inventor-in-Training series. A few rewrites are in order, but he’s been asking for “one more chapter of your creepy book”, so perhaps it’s nearly time to send it to the editor.
I’m hoping for another present soon.
Growing Up Snowy
When you grow up snowy in a place where it’s cold and blowy outside for months, you learn a few things.
You learn the signs of frostbite. When you grow up snowy, you learn how to remove the white stuff from a driveway in the quickest way possible. You learn how to make hot cocoa and maybe, if you have a patient, knowledgeable adult by your side, you learn how to knit sweaters, wool socks, and mittens.
One of the most important skills my siblings and I learned growing up snowy in western New York was how to coexist peacefully in a home that grew smaller with each passing snow day.
People who grow up snowy instinctively begin squirrelling away essentials as the leaves turn. Every autumn, my mother stocked her pantry with nonperishable dried and canned goods. She knew winter would bring blizzards, and, sooner or later, our family would be housebound. My father stacked a large woodpile every fall and kept a store of batteries, candles, and oil for lanterns. My parents were nothing if not prepared for the inevitable bad weather.
Wise woman that she is, my mother also gathered a supply of crayons, paper, clay, puzzles, and board games. And books. A lot of books. Library books, hand-me-down books, thrift shop books, Weekly Reader books, store-bought books.
Mom knew that an engaged, reading child is a quiet, happy child. She had three children. Better to be stuck inside four shrinking walls with three quiet, happy children than with three bickering hellions. When we got tired of making crafts and assembling puzzles, and when the mere sight of one another’s faces raised our hackles, we clamored for books.
My brother pored over the Guinness Book of World Records and books about automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles. He read books that diagrammed the inner workings of toilets, engines, and light bulbs. He flipped through cookbooks and attempted several recipes in my mother’s spotless kitchen.
My sister enjoyed historical fiction and nonfiction as well as Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries. As she grew older, she reached for Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. The longer the book, the better she liked it.
My literary tastes were varied. I would read anything that found its way into my hands, but in the winter I was partial to fantasy, adventure, and science fiction. Fantastical worlds made easier my escape from the family togetherness forced upon us by the cold.
The winter that the boxed sets of both J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were deposited beneath our Christmas tree is the sparkliest in my memory. The anticipation of a book not yet read, the smell of the freshly printed page, the excitement of being the first reader to crease the binding—multiplied by eleven (the Tolkien set included The Hobbit)—returns to me whenever I look at the sets, now on my son’s bookshelf decades later.
Children who grow up snowy, who must shovel sidewalks and driveways every winter day, who survive long stretches of time cooped up with their siblings, and who have parents who surround them with stories and words and books, are among the luckiest kids in the world. I know. I was one of them.
Obligation 4: Daydream
Do you daydream? I do. I admit it. I was that kid with her head in the clouds, too wrapped up in her own imagination to see the giant mud puddle she was about to land face first in. I was able to focus in school—I always loved learning new things—but I lived for weekends and summers when I could read, write, and draw to my heart’s content.
I grew up, went to college and graduate school, landed one job and then another. To the naked eye, I look like your standard, no-nonsense, serious-minded adult. But that’s all a front. I’m really not. I’m a dreamer.
Dreamers get lost inside their own heads. We boil water on the stove, and then step outside for just one minute to look at a flower we want to paint, and return to the stench of melting Teflon. We file records or enter information into databases, then nearly die of fright when a coworker says, “Hello”, because we are secretly far away in an adventure story of our own creation. We miss due dates of assignments while we contemplate the Lego structure we are going to build after school.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, lecturer, and poet
Don’t get me wrong. We need to attend to today’s business. We must get the job done, complete our homework, meet the project deadline, and fulfill our commitments. And we will. But we dreamers need some quiet time tucked into our rush-rush lives. We don’t want to have every waking hour scheduled. We need time for our dreams to fill our heads with ideas, solutions, and characters. We need time to practice our knitting, guitar riffs, and paint strokes. We need time to try something new, fall on our faces, and then try something different.
Today’s dreamer may be tomorrow’s great inventor, sculptor, musician, painter, civil rights activist, or teacher. Do you think Thomas Edison, Alexander Calder, Scott Joplin, Grandma Moses, Susan B. Anthony, and Anne Sullivan dreamed? We all know Martin Luther King, Jr. did. The distracted child you are frustrated with today might be dreaming of a vaccine for cancer. She might be solving environmental problems that will save our Earth. He could be our next Ralph Lauren or Ralph Waldo Emerson.
We need to play hard, explore freely, and dream hugely. And we must encourage our kids to do so also.
Do you daydream? Feel free to admit it.
(This post was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s lecture at The Reading Agency.)
Obligation 2: Read For Pleasure
I am a glutton. I’ve never had much of a problem with my weight. I enjoy food, cookies especially, but I mostly know when to stop.
My great weakness, the thing I must have, the thing I sometimes sacrifice my family, my sleep, my sanity for, is a good book.
I’ve been known to burn dinner because I couldn’t put a book down long enough to pay attention. The timer is beeping away in the kitchen, but I can’t pull myself out of Narnia, Middle Earth, or Alagaesia. Potatoes boiling all over the stove, biscotti turning black, the smoke alarm wailing.
I am a glutton.
I remember discovering Diana Gabaldon’s Scottish time-travel saga. I began devouring her words with Outlander, continued on to Dragonfly in Amber, and became very nasty for several weeks until my library finally had Voyager in stock. Don’t even get me started about having to wait until she wrote the next installment.
I have sacrificed my sleep more often than I care to recall. Dragging myself through a day, trying not to be cranky with my family, waiting for the night so I can do it all over again.
I am a glutton.
When my son was a wee one, completely dependent on me, requiring my constant attention every moment of the day and much of the night as well, I looked forward to the weekends. My husband was at home, on duty with baby, and I could disappear mentally for a few hours to read. The first four books of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire were my constant companions for one long, rainy winter. Monday through Friday: doting, completely aware mother. Saturday and Sunday: book glutton.
Mea culpa family. This is the true confession of a glutton.
As my son grew older, we’d share afternoons full of books. We’d curl up on the same sofa and read a book together, or sit on neighboring chairs and read our separate books. We’d share funny or exciting passages from the books we were enjoying. We’d replenish our supply before it got too low. When you’re a glutton, you prepare for famine.
Now, my son is seldom without a book. He drops them in the bathtub, forgets them in the backyard, litters the floor of our family car with them. He reads them over, and over, and over again.
Parents, be careful what you model. Your children may become book gluttons too.
(This post was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s lecture at The Reading Agency.)
Obligation 1: Read Aloud To Your Kids
My son is growing up, and I don’t always handle it well. I look back on his early years with rose-colored glasses, I’m sure. Time has a marvelous way of erasing memories of tantrums and replacing them with images of familial perfection.
One of my perfect, rosy memories is the quiet time I spent reading to my son. In the beginning I’d read to him before settling him down for a nap or bedtime. He was always a busy, physical, moving boy, and reading books together calmed his active muscles. He would stop moving to focus on the sound of my voice, the words I was reading, the story I was telling. Often I’d read aloud a book I was enjoying, not a children’s book, and his eyes would drop closed as I softly crooned the writer’s prose.
As he grew older, we began reading in the late morning after my chores were done. We would read in the late afternoon when he’d just woken from a nap. We’d read after a warm bath, right before bedtime. He munched his way through board books, and I rejoiced when he graduated to ripping the pages of only every third picture book. Gifts of books from family and friends were essential in those days, as were large quantities of scotch tape.
He began requesting personal favorites. We memorized Golden Books about bulldozers and backhoes. His favorites were different from mine. I never got tired of Ox-Cart Man, Make Way for Ducklings, or The Big Snow. He wanted to hear all about the latest exploits of Rosemary Wells’s McDuff and laughed uncontrollably at the antics of Alexandra Day’s Carl. We shared affection for Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.
I owe Ms. Wells and Ms. Day, Virginia Lee Burton, Donald Hall, Robert McCloskey, Berta and Elmer Hader, and so many other children’s book authors such gratitude. They brought laughter and excitement to my son’s eyes. They were his first excursion into the vast, exciting world of words. They sparked his imagination and instilled in him a love of reading. And they gave me such wonderful, rosy memories of quiet mornings, afternoons, and evenings cuddled together with my son and a pile of books.
(This post was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s lecture at The Reading Agency.)
The Obligations
Author Neil Gaiman recently gave a lecture at The Reading Agency. He spoke about the importance of libraries and reading, and specifically how essential to our human society it is to foster the love of reading in our children. You can read his lecture here. As often happens to me when I read something powerful, Mr. Gaiman’s lecture got me to thinking about my own experience. I agree wholeheartedly with him that we need to preserve and support our public libraries.
I visit my local library several times a month to prevent withdrawal symptoms. They have what I need and a steady supply of it: books.
During the years I homeschooled my son, our favorite excursion was our weekly trip to the library. It beat out park days, museum visits, even a day at the zoo. Our book bag was never large enough to carry all the treasures we discovered. At first all of our books were borrowed on my library card. But at the tender age of six, my son insisted he have his own card. From then on, he had no difficulty approaching the librarian with a request for a specific book.
These days he mostly asks his school librarian for suggestions, but on the occasional lazy Saturday he’ll ask me to take him to our local public library. He browses the stacks for books his school doesn’t have and considers himself a renegade if he borrows a (gasp) book for adults.
Back to Mr. Gaiman’s lecture. He spoke about the “obligations all of us—as readers, as writers, as citizens” have. He says we are obligated to read for pleasure, in both public and private places. He says we must read aloud to our kids and use our language. He says we have an obligation to use our imaginations. And here’s me again, thinking about my own experience. Do I agree that these are meaningful responsibilities? Yes, I do. And I’ll reflect on them in upcoming posts.