A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, March 18, 2011

Friday Challenge - like a teenager telling you a movie plot

For those of you who have or have had teenagers this will be a familiar scenario. Your teen gets back from the movies and if you are still awake you ask, in all innocence "what was the movie like?" at least the first time. After that first time, if you ask again, it is because you are sleepy or believe that an occasional dash of psychological torture is good for one.
Why? (ask the folks who have never had or been near a teenager)
Because they will tell you the plot and it will be a dreadful series of the most boring sentences starting with 'and then'. You will want to rip your own head off and fling it at them but you won't because you are a nice person. You will smile and nod while thinking about a recipe for Charlotte Russe or Creme de Brule. And they will go on and on and on. The Ancient Mariner has nothing on the tediousness of a teenager telling you a movie plot. Nothing.

Which brings us to this week's challenge. Because I am mid-query and mid-synopsis and because I've been here before and know the intense difficulty of writing a good one and the immense importance of doing so - well I'm going to do what suffering folk like to - bring you along on the ride!

The Challenge: wherever you are on your writing path I want you to practice telling the story to someone or someones. Not writing, telling. Ask people that perhaps already love you, if you can tell them the story of your story. And then pay attention while you do it. Pay attention to signs of imminent head throwing, genuine amusement, concern about your mental health and so on. I'll be doing it too. The thing is that before you are allowed to put pen to paper and write your synopsis you must tell the story FIVE times. It could be five times to the same person, I'll leave that up to you. But at least tell the person you told the story to the first time - an improved telling! It is only fair.
Good luck and report back!

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, September 10, 2010

Friday Challenge

Are those of you with kids tuckered right out? Did you long for the little buggers to go back to school only to remember that it means you will be working your tush right off its frame organizing lunch and soccer practice and violin lessons and helping them with their trigonometry? Are you like me and feel the great good desire to make buckets of granola and proper yoghurt and maybe even give home-made health bars a try? 
And perhaps even if you don't have any kids you have noticed a general 'pitter patter let's fly atter' sort of  feeling around the town. Only if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, of course, and a bit north of the equator. A proper four season kind of place that has a built-in 'let us gather nuts for the winter' vibe.  For unlike the Caribbean - one day is not the same as another.  If you don't phone up the garage to get in line for a fall tune-up and a time to put your winter tires on - if god forbid you don't have any winter tires at all - well me ducky - you're in for a nasty surprise, wha?!
In honour of this winding down of the sweet halcyon days of summer, the autumnal slide into the frozen muck of the mean November streets, I offer a bizarre and wonderful Friday Challenge for you all.
I want you to go for a walk. And not think of what you have to, should, might, or can't do. No doing at all. Just a walk to remind yourself of the most important thing. Ah, come on, you know what it is - don't make Crazy Jane spell it out for you. All you need to do is breathe in and out and notice the colours, the smells, the sounds and the feelings in your body as it moves through space. When you begin to fret and moan about the deadlines, the demands, the pressures of being on the planet at this time, just shake those thoughts out of your noggin and remember what is important. 
What. Is. Important.

note: you're allowed to take a dog but not a human unless it is a baby and a very lullable baby at that...no talking, no thinking. Lose your mind and come to your senses.

There. Done.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, November 26, 2010 - AGAIN, PLEASE NOTE THE DATE - THIS IS A RECYCLED CHALLENGE!

Friday Challenge - redux

All my Friday Challenges are redux actually. They are all recycled because fundamentally they all say the same thing. So now in a an effort to be concise and straight-forward I am just going to tell you the pith instructions:

WAKE UP!

But how do we wake up? That's the tricky part. No, it's worse - it's why should I wake up? The world isn't all that pleasant out there - people are throwing nuclear shit around in Korea and kids are killing other kids everywhere and there doesn't seem to be enough of anything - clean water, good food, love - to go around. This is all a delusion though. There is plenty but we have to be awake to help everyone else wake up and see it. So the why is - because it is the dark age of materialism and awakeness is the antidote and the how is by not turning away and trying to distract ourselves by imagining the world we wish were in its place. The beautiful wounded world like our beautiful wounded selves is what it is and needs to be appreciated with our senses and celebrated with our art - and not just the pretty stuff either.

Here's how I wake up when I manage it - I walk in the woods or in nature and every time I notice I've veered off on my discursive thinking loop that takes me out of my body and the presence of the trees I catch myself and come back to my senses.
I write about things that matter to me - both in my blogs and in my creative work.

I show up for the people who depend on me to. I try not to turn my gaze away from the woman with a burn disfigurement on her face or the child who needs something extra or the old person looking bewildered at the bus stop.

I meet the faces of the beggars on the street even if I can't or won't always give them money.
I don't listen to the news because I think that is a step away from being awake to the world and it isn't good for my driving.

I  fill my heart and soul by reading good books by authentic people whether it is dharma or amusement - you can still tell the truth.

I hang around people who want what I want - an enlightened awake community who all know that love is the difference no matter who rolls their eyes when they hear you say it.
I always vote because I know how precious that is -
I remember the ones who served  in the military but also in so many ways - as volunteers at hospitals and daycares, as the ones who make pots of tea for grieving folks or put up hundreds of posters when a good teacher comes to town.
I celebrate birthdays and weddings and successes and sit in silence or tears when someone dies or is lost in other ways.

It is like taking care of a garden - it is always hard paying attention to every little green thing as it arises- it is like tending a song line in Australia - and the best way to do it is to find others who want to and remind each other that it is worthy and not to get discouraged or down-hearted which is really what discouragement means. To shout hooray when anyone of us stays awake for any period of time so that those times become more and more continuous and the islands of clarity that we all experience join to become continents of awareness.

So join me whatever your faith or non-faith is - breathe in this sweet sweet world and open your eyes.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, December 31, 2010

Friday Challenge - New Year's Eve style

I cannot believe it. The sweet patootie and I have a new year's party to go to. yeehaw. Good thing we finished the third season of The Wire last night or we'd be bailing I'm sure. Nah, this is a great group of people that we truly love so we're happy to go into town.
I have a couple of clients today and my weekly visit to Arlo will happen. Then I meet up with SP at Gwen's old house - she moved yesterday. We're getting a daybed from her to replace the one that moved up to my office - oh don't worry about it - it is all too complicated. We need a daybed or sofa for our rec room - she has one - good.
Then mad dash back here - whoop up something for the buffet dinner - grab some hooch  - put on my new party frock (a Gomish thingy) and out we go. It will be an affair with not too many folks, tonnes of good food, a roaring fire, and all the Canadian Babes and their appendages.
Usually SP goes to bed by ten and I sit up alone like the cheese. He doesn't like any sort of forced gaiety - he's allergic to celebrating quite frankly - so why pick me? I would celebrate a chicken crossing a road, a leaf falling, the successful or tragic outcome of a new pair of skates - you know I like to kick it up! And if he chose me, I also chose him - knowing pretty quickly that celebrating was nothing he was into. So why hook my wagon to his stay-at-home star? Because he is the mountain and I am the hurricane (hi Sue! hi Soph! hi Susanne!) I need his solid immovability and he needs me to toss things up around here.

This week's challenge to be taken at any time in this first week of the new year - is to look at your characters - the ones in the most presently engaging of your works in progress and ask them how they got together in this one book? Why do people end up together? Why - in a dream say - might you have Elizabeth Taylor and your third grade teacher and your car mechanic? Huh? Why?

Me - I would do this by interviewing a few of my main characters - like this:
Libby, you have this very strange sort of interaction with a bartender in True. Why did he need to be in your life or my book?
Well, Jan, funny you should ask me that. I wondered why this schlemiel showed up in the fictive dream as well. The thing is that he is a necessary angel. He is the one, who in a very short amount of time, tells me that I have to relate to my family of origin. And I have to hear him SIMPLY because he is really not important to me and therefore impartial. I meet him when I am most frustrated with my situation and he just cuts through the bullshit and lets me know what needs to be done. 

If you aren't writing a book then apply this to your own life - how did I end up with this partner, these children, this choir, this group of pals. Believe there is a reason for it and then ferret out the reason.
Have a great New Year's Eve and I'll talk to ya this weekend.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, January 7, 2011 - Please note date - this, like most posts until Sept. 10th, will be recycled as I continue to try and finish the current revision. - Hey! I was working on it back in January too. Yikes.

Friday Challenge

You can't imagine how quickly and how nicely I have gotten my room together! It is really pleasant. My desk is clean and my copy of True sits in two piles as I enter my revision changes. I have my white cup with blue letters spelling CHAP on one side and a pennant with the number 5 on the other. it   Rod MacLean, the complicated, difficult and lovely guy who taught me and many others how to be gestalt therapists, gave it to me many years ago. In a former life, Rod was a Navy Chaplain. Rod died a few years ago and so this is even more of keepsake and I wouldn't have a desk without it full of pens that don't write, etc... Also there is another container for pens, an old sugar bowl with the loveliest shape and flowers on it - flowers the colours of this office, rusty orange and golden yellow.

There are differences because of having Felix live here for four months. I kept the bed as I like to have a retreat from certain snorers and it is nice not to be banished to the basement where it once was. It means the room can double as a guest room when needed - which won't be often - for we find more and more, like us, people want to sleep in their own dear beds! Yay getting old. I only have one desk and one bookcase here - before there were two of each. And I have slightly different things on the walls - less clutter so the treasures can be seen.
Don't think there isn't lots to be done - oh my goodness - I have all sorts of books to bring back up the stairs and files and stuff to sort. That seems endless.
But right now - when I am doing this last revision before the first readers it is a heavenly place to be. Calm, good.

My challenge, dear readers, is for you to make an oasis where you can create. Perhaps you are neatniks and already have a perfectly organized space - then you can spend a bit of time making sure that when your eyes leave the screen they have something pleasant to look at - a photo of a waterfall, an old mustard jar with classic proportions, a little white wooden rabbit that peeks at you encouragingly as you work. If you have too many thingys vying for your attention spend a bit of time figuring out how you might rotate them - not everything has to be out all the time. Clean your space, brighten it up. Even if your space is a corner of the dining room table - make a tray with the things on it you need and that inspire you.

In Buddhist lingo -  the drala - the helpful energy of where you are. Here is something from the Shambhala Training Glossary (that the lovely folks from the Seattle Shambhala Centre created )on external drala:

External Drala: "Invoking magic in your physical environment; how you organize and care for your space is creating harmony in your environment in order to encourage awareness and attention to detail, promoting the discipline of warriorship." (pg 109)

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, January 14, 2011 - Please, dear readers, note the date - these are ALL re-posts. I'm not in the stage of my novel that these might suggest - though, I suppose, I could be...

Friday Challenge - Write What You Know

Straight-forward huh? Very unlike me in fact but that is the mood I'm in. The challenge however is NOT to write what you know but to fully examine what this weird trope means. We just accept it like 'show not tell' and ''get rid of all your silly adverbs'. But what does 'write what you know' really mean?
One of my all-time favorite books is The Diamond Age- a Victorian Girls' Primer by Neal Stephenson. It is an amazing look at a future that few could imagine let alone 'know'. In this first steam-punk novel, a cyber-engineer creates an interactive book for a wealthy client's grand-daughter. It gets into the hands of a young girl who lives with her toxic mother and criminal brother in an industrial slum. The story follows three young girls and how the book changes their lives and the way the world works. Neal Stephenson does not live in the far far future. He is not, nor has he ever been, a 12 year old girl. Mark Twain was not a black slave and Shakespeare was not a magician living on an island with his daughter. Yet they all created believable consistent universes.
Perhaps it is in the word 'know'. I don't know what it is like to arrive on a planet not my own, and try to make my way, but I do remember moving every three or four years and having to figure out the school politics that I would be thrust into. I have never lived with a man who has become brain-damaged (as in my novel True) but I have struggled with being in relationship with someone who has altered their being considerably. I have never found a baby on the rocks at Peggy's Cove like my character Winn in The Rock Walker but I have had to make sudden decisions regarding strange happenstance.
Is it possible that we have a treasure chest of wisdom that we arent' aware of? A treasure chest that allows us to understand - to know - anything we might need to know - compassion for the basic human condition that allows us to know what it might be like to have nothing but a soccer ball to befriend on a lonely island, or what living in Biblical times as a woman might entail? I think we do.
Your challenge is to look at five novels or stories and decide what experiences you've had that might have prepared you to be able to write them. If you can't think of five I'll give them to you here:

Gone With the Wind
The Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird
The English Patient
Harry Potter and the ....(whichever you want)

is this my home?

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, January 21, 2011

Friday Challenge - not jumping the gun - or how I learned to receive feedback and do nothing for a bit...

I'm starting to get feed-back from my first readers. I have two manuscripts out there - The Rock Walker and True. I began True before The Rock Walker but I finished RW first. But not by much. Both of them are both neck and neck at this point - out to first readers.
The Rock Walker is with three readers, True is with four. I think that's right.  I live with one of my first readers and I came home the other day and saw that he'd begun True - I pretended I didn't notice the box of manuscript on the couch beside him. I did. I was that freaked out. I put my stuff away and then came and MOVED the box so I could sit next to him. He made the smallest of laughs, knowing my heart and mind that well. He told me he was loving the book, loving my writing and any quibbles he had so far were picayune and would be caught in the copy edit. I breathed out. My soul allowed itself to go to the edges of my physical body and a bit beyond it instead of huddling around my back-bone, shivering and shuddering away in the cold of self-abjection. Now it came out and stretched in the sunshine, made purring sounds, padded around the house. He hasn't finished it though so I will undoubtedly go through this a zillion times. The thing is that Ron is INCAPABLE of lying. Simply incapable. It took me a long time but I found a guy like my Dad who won't put frills on it despite loving the hell out of me. That is gold for me.

I went to town yesterday and my closest friend, Kerol, who is also reading True told me she was loving it and had TALKED to Ron about how much she was loving it with him.  My sister, Jude, had already dived in and given me some love about it. The fourth I haven't heard from but I will soon.
This morning I got an email from the Tartlette who is reading RW. It was immensely helpful and also full of positive strokes. I immediately wanted to dive back into the manuscript and start making changes. And so finally, dear readers, we come to this week's challenge.

Friday Challenge - At some point with any creative endeavor it is the exact time to do nothing. Yes. Do nothing. I need to hear from all my readers of the RW and True - I need to give them the second set of questions and wait until they answer those - I think the Tartlette actually already did that because she's a reader/writer so she knew what they might be and went ahead and addressed them.  This is the time to remember that I want to ACT when it is time and not REACT early. I want to absorb what people are saying and let it mull about in my brain pan.  I want to carefully consider everything that is said - see which things are being said by more than one reader - check out how I feel about each of the suggestions unless they belong in the no-brainer box in which case I still want to do nothing for a bit. NOTHING. Just be a rock in the stream.

a picture of rocks in a stream near here - don't you want a dress made of it?

I realize that this might not be the most timely of advice for you all - everyone is at different stages with their craft and projects...so the challenge is to contemplate the period of doing nothing and see how you typically act with it. If you've been through several of those - how were you? Could you do nothing better than you have? If you aren't at the do nothing stage yet what is your intuition on how well you will do nothing? For those of you who have given birth or attended births remember the stage called 'transition' where you are to do nothing even though you feel like doing everything - that is this stage. The thing isn't quite born but it is awfully close - pushing now is an intuitive feeling that needs to be calmed down with lots of panting. No exertion. Rock in stream.
Let me know what you think. Your comments help me shape my posts!

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, March 26, 2010

Friday Challenge!

Near Shelburne...

Dear Readers,
Most of scurry about being as busy as can be. Sometimes it is because we are truly busy - we have deadlines and obligations that insist on our attention. Perhaps we have young children or friends that are sick and need us. Some of us have livelihoods that demand our wakefulness - we might work in hospitals or be aircraft controllers (my idea of the scariest job ever!) Or we work for large corporations that seem to demand and ever increasing level of attention paying - 'we bought you a blackberry and we need to be able to get a hold of you at ANY time'. Maybe we own our own business, which requires steady attention in this economically unstable time. If we are artists - writers, painters, clowns, actors, weavers, potters, etc...then we are automatically also entrepreneurs. This is frightening to some artists as they would rather be 'x-ing' than following up leads, taking care of paper work or standing in galleries explaining what their vision is to tourists from Sudbury.
In North America, even after many retire - they find themselves busier than ever. They belong to the fantastic network of volunteers needed to keep our churches, our hospitals, our policing, our schools and so on - operating. They chip in with time for their grand kids or tend their own aging relatives. Perhaps they find themselves taking care of large gardens or running several choirs. Folks - we are busy!
Your CHALLENGE for today is in response to this busyness. I would like you to find time in the coming week to visit a cemetery. In Halifax, we are lucky - we have beautiful old cemeteries right downtown with big trees and miniature stories to plumb on many gravestones. I know lots of small towns with interesting cemeteries. Perhaps you aren't so lucky but for sure there are cemeteries everywhere. Take some time - go off in your lunch hour or if you knew someone that now resides in a cemetery you could visit their grave. Spend some time just sitting there. Contemplate for a moment that you will one day be just as busy as these people are. With gentleness towards yourself remind yourself about what is important.
If you are a photographer take your camera.
If you are a writer take a pen and your journal.
If you are in charge of kids - take your kids - it is great to take kids to the cemetery despite what many think.
If you are a visual artist take your sketchbook.
Take paper and make rubbings of gravestones if you are inspired to do so - this is great with kids. Like penny rubbings only better.
Take a pot of flowers or a bag to pick up debris - tend an area if you like.
Adopt one of the gravestones if it looks neglected.
Find the oldest grave you can and find out about the person buried there.
Go as far with you like with any of these suggestions or don't do any of them but no matter what - SIT QUIETLY FOR A FEW MINUTES AND PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT ARISES.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, June 25, 2010

Friday Challenge!

Two Challenges Today:

Writer's Challenge - I've been listening to an audio tape of Michael Ondaatje's Diviseradowhile in the car. It's nearly finished and like all good audio tapes of good books (note both must be good!) I have the cadence of his writing in my heart right now. His elegaic, sad and sexy voice. Listening to a book is so so different than reading one. I've listened to a number of books that I am very familiar with - books by Anne Tyler, Haruki Murikami, Annie Proulx, and what comes out beyond the plot, beyond the characters, beyond the story, is voice. Your challenge for the next week is to find a writer you like and read a page or two of their prose or poetry before beginning work on your own writing. Out loud.  Let it get right into you. It doesn't have to be anything like your writing - in fact it might be good if it isn't but you are not to worry that you will lose your voice and pick up this other one. It isn't so. I know that. Just give it a try and see what happens and I will too. I'm going to read poetry I think, or Huck Finn.

Other Challenge for non-writers or those who want something less directive - find someone - a sick person, a child, your partner, your cat, and ask them if you may read out loud to them. Find something both of you like. I highly recommend Earthly Paradise - an informal autobiography of Colette. Heaven!
This is tricky I know but really, give it a try. Do you know that hearing is the first and last of our sense perceptions? Reading is a very healing thing to do for both the listener and the reader..

A Month of Fridays continued...

Before I put in one of my old Friday challenges - I need to report on a couple of things.
The Elizabeth Bishop Arts Festival - what happens when you take a tiny village in rural Nova Scotia - a gloriously summery weekend and a whack-load of writers and readers, artists and enjoyers, musicians and ears? You get a very compelling and fun time. That is what happened in Great Village this last weekend. I couldn't go for the whole event but I set off at six-thirty, Saturday morning, as I was signed up for a workshop with the excellent writer, Joan Clark. Thirteen of us sat around in the dining room of Desiree's home as Joan held forth on writing what matters. We wrote, we shared and we talked. Then we wondered off back to the United Church which is smack-dab in the centre of the two roads that make up the town. Behind the church was a market going on. Across the street was the Legion where you could get crazy wonderful t-shirts with a Joy Laking design; or you could pick up books by the many authors who were reading and teaching over the weekend. I picked up said t-shirt and a book by Mary Rose Donnelly, Great Village. Mary Rose took the workshop I did and I liked her a bunch. And I am loving the book. It is such a great read and captivating story. Then I sauntered over to the fire-hall and ate pizza, sitting with a woman I last met at a workshop in Tatamagouche several years ago. The place was shock-a-block with the Atlantic literati. People were going on hay rides, kids were building cardboard boats with lots and lots of duct tape, and others were taking tours of Elizabeth Bishop's childhood home. I didn't as I did a writer's retreat there in the spring. That is where I took the photo of the typewriter for my masthead.

United Church across from Elizabeth Bishop house

picture on the wall inside Bishop house

sink!

After wandering for a bit and chatting to various folks I knew, I entered the church for the afternoon readings. I heard Anne Simpson read from her latest book of poetry and then be interviewed by Sheree Fitch. Anne writes both fiction and poetry - both skilfully. She is a wonderful reader too. Then Don McKay read his insanely wonderful poems about birds and rocks, and was interviewed by Joan Clark. Finally we heard strange and captivating stories read to us by novelist, Michael Crummey. He was interviewed by Sandra Barry, one of the geniuses behind the year-long celebration of Elizabeth Bishop.

It was a wonderful day and images of it kept coming to me as I meandered home. There is something to be said for a festival in a tiny village - there were workshops in folk's homes and readings in the church and well - the roads were FULL of people who love words. What isn't great about that?

And now for an old Friday Challenge:

Friday, April 9, 2010

Friday Challenge!

a painting I did of the sun setting over the St. Lawrence

my Dad at the helm

Bright and early this morning - today's challenge is cross-training. When you are getting ready for an important athletic event you are encouraged to cross-train. That is to work muscles and talents that aren't directly related to your sport. Wikipedia says this -

Cross-training (also known as conditioning) refers to training in different ways to improve overall performance. It takes advantage of the particular effectiveness of each training method, while at the same time attempting to neglect the shortcomings of that method by combining it with other methods that address its weaknesses.

Clear enough?
Your challenge is to look at whatever you feel you're getting ready for - to be published, to have a gallery show, to have twelve people over for a wonderful meal, to leave your job, take up farming or become a renown tango dancer and find some other discipline that does not 'seem' related and practice it.
Example - for a few years, I took painting lessons. I found that it was quite helpful to my writing in a number of ways. It was pointed out to our class that it is best to keep working all over the canvas - that if you focus on one part of it and don't bring the other parts of it up - you will have a distorted picture. This was completely analogous to reworking that first chapter to death while neglecting the rest of my manuscript. I also learned to trust my right brain and to give my left brain busy work so my right brain could get on with the important intuitive and somewhat irrational tasks that needed to be done.
So - find your cross-training discipline and give it a try. I guarantee it will be enlightening.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, May 7, 2010

Friday Challenge!

the photo is of dear Hoagy, scritching his face on the wonderful spring grass.

Oh the weeks just fly by, don't they? And to what end? Indeed. Yesterday was a weird and not totally awful day. I know, I know - why should it have been any part of awful - but ya know! I was dreading it because I had an appointment with a tax person to resolve the big ball of bits of paper that has become. I have to get it in order and it is the bane of my life. I won't go into details because I was brought up to talk about sex but not money! Hey Dad, that was a joke! Come back, Dad! Really, I'll be good. While I was getting ready to confess my evilness I thought about all the lovely clients I have and how everyone of them had to come and see for the first time - cold and feeling weird. I felt so tender towards them and then I felt tender towards myself and the whole thing softened up a bit.
Later, after several hours of bliss - eating, yacking and REALLY looking at new clothes in the stores, my best pal and I went to a book launch. It was incredible. The book, The Healing Circle was written by a friend of ours - Tim Walker, a psychotherapist and teacher and an oncologist, Rob Rutledge. It was edited by another pal - Liz Crocker and the design done by a third friend of mine - Kathy Kaulbach. I thought it would be a typical book launch - a few people, some wine and nibblies. Man oh man was I wrong. There must have been three hundred people there! We heard talks and saw a most wonderful video on what they've been up to. And our friend, Tim, well let me tell you - it is nothing but good what he's gotten involved with and he has become a most compelling teacher! Here is the website http://www.healingandcancer.org/ - the videos are there. Bring kleenex...you've been warned. Buy the book and support this anyway you can. We all have had friends and family with cancer and this program is phenomenal.
So the challenge, dear readers. Go to the places that scare you. Whatever your medium -whether you are scared of writing that most important part of your book - the one you keep putting off (either a section or indeed THE whole book), whether you are terrified to paint an image which has been burning into your soul, whether you have someone you have to talk to and clear up a misunderstanding or make amends, whether you need to haul your sorry paperwork to someone to actually look at, whatever it is you are scared to do - go tenderly and do it. Maybe you want to connect with someone and you've been frightened they won't be interested. Try it - no worries about the outcome. Either way, you win. Take the chance and see how it goes when you do it with kindness for yourself and the world. This is, I know, akin to the heart work posting I made a few weeks ago. They all are

A Month of Fridays continued...

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Friday Challenge!

Summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping
And the cotton is high
Your Daddy's rich, and your Mama's good lookin'
So hush little baby do-wo-on't you cry

One of these mornings, you're gonna rise up singing 
You're gonna spread your wings and take the sky 
But till that morning, there is nothing can harm you 

With your daddy and mommy standing by.

Where are you right now? I mean right now - the first or most important time you heard that song? Where are you? How big are you? What's happening around you? Is it hot out? Are you outside? Are you in someone's arms?
Are you a little one having a lullabye sung to you

or are you trying to stay inconspicuous as the adults drink their drinks and chat their chat - the hifi riffing this summer song?


Are you a teenager listening to Janis Joplin belt it out with Big Brother and the Holding Company - her impossible perfectly heartbreaking voice making you wish you were lying somewhere strung out and longing even if it scares the beejezus out of you?

Are you thinking of this song historically when you hear it in your mind - a world where cotton is high and mamas are physical beings not just purveyers of kool-aid and fish are jumping - yes jumping for the sheer joy of it?

Are you wondering where those days are?

Are you sitting quietly thinking - oh, I best not stroke that nostalgic old beast that can live quite quietly thank you very much. I don't need to think about hot sultry nights when we'd all gather in the hotel and one of the women would start to sing summmer summmmmmmer tiiiiiiiiime and we'd be sort of boozily freaked maybe but still all was forgiveable wasn't it? And maybe we'd worked that day and maybe we'd wobbled instead because there wasn't any apple pie in the cook hall and anyway fire season was nearly upon us and we'd be out of work soon enough. The geo-duckers were due in town shortly with their great amounts of money and good dope and cool good looks - clean to the loggers' patina of sweat and dirt and tan. Then we'd all party. We'd all party at the hotel and play the jukebox and then wander down to someone's house and keep on partying. Someone would start some drama - some gal would kiss some other gal's fella and then the shit would fly. Or someone would dis some guy for not climbing the seniority ladder fast enough. But then we'd hear that song, 'and the living is eaaaaaasy' and we'd remember that these are the days, yes these are the days.

assignment: grab an old song out of the air and free fall with it - let yourself go for the pure joy of it - riff until you're quite done. There. Good.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Friday Challenge

Psychological Feng Shui for ya all!*

Today's challenge is simple and difficult. It is easy to do - really it is - as in not complicated - but it is one of those things we resist as being possibly too painful.

We are going to look under the bed to see what's there.  And in the closet.

And under the couch (or as we say in Canada - chesterfield) cushions.

And even, yes, don't shudder - in the cupboard under the sink.

Only not in our real houses or apartments but in our mental homes.

Here's how you do it:

Get several nice sheets of clean paper (good one side is great).
Get your favourite pens or pencils.
Write on the top of each paper these headings:

1. Family

2. Livelihood

3. Spiritual path

4. Health

5. Heart-work

6. Money Matters

7. Friends

Now take a few moments with each of these topics and ask yourself these questions:

What three actions could I take to improve on this area of my life?

What deadline can I give myself with each of these actions? (Be practical here not crazy hard on yourself)

That's it - 3 actions times 7 and deadlines for all.

Once you've made this sheet or sheets - put it somewhere you can see it or find it - put the deadline dates in your date book or tech reminder system and then look around your inner home. Yes, it is cleaned up. It is dealt with even though there are tasks to accomplish.

If we were really smart we'd do this once a week. Yes we would. Just like we'd dust under the bed once a week. (Perhaps you do. I have no idea and I certainly don't wish to know.) Because it isn't just the dust under the bed - it is the thought of the dust under the bed and the junk under the cushions etc...which wears away at out creative selves. The belief that we are bad people with dirty houses and maybe there might be worse than just the dust there - there might be bogeymen or pinkos or ??? Best not look we think. So this is the looking and the intentions set.

Purpose of this Challenge: this challenge will give you lots of energy if you really do it. You won't believe how much more time you have. Time to write for you writers, paint for you painters, love for you lovers etc...

Now get to work and let me know how it goes.  I will post the less personal parts of mine if you would like. Just let me know...I'm off to do it.

And a note on the deadlines: if you get to the deadline and you still haven't accomplished the action ask yourself if you really, really want to do this thing you've set or if you just think it is the 'right thing to do'.

*this challenge was definitely inspired by Chip Taylor's Church of The Train Wreck Motion Chart although there are obvious differences. If you don't know Chip Taylor's music - well you oughta! He and Carrie Rodriguez have some of the best Cd's out. Chips story about how got his life on track with some questions he heard on the radio is a wonderful one - check it out!

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, August 20, 2010

Friday Challenge!

Going to the places you don't wish to go is the theme of today's challenge. What do I mean by this?  I want us all to look at whatever writing or creating we are doing and see if there is a blind spot we're ignoring. Of course there will be for most of us. I think mine might be parenting and while my books are unfailingly about being a parent I think I'm not reaching the very bottom of the mean pit that lives in my heart about what being a parent is. Oh, don't get me wrong - I have a talent for spinning positive AND I want my writing to reflect the whole of it - not just the shiny bits.

So - big challenge - any ideas how to do this, Jan?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

I want you to take your protagonist and put her in a circle of people that she knows - that live perhaps in the story you are telling. It doesn't have to be a circle of the closest people to her but it could include some of them. It could also include the bit players in her life - the bar tender in chapter four, the Lebanese guy at the corner store, a teacher she dreams about in chapter 18 - you get the idea.  So, you've got your protagonist in a group of about seven people and you imagine that she thanks them for showing up and she asks them to tell her what she's been ignoring about her story that is crucial. And then you have each of them hold the talking stick or the eagle feather or any symbol you like and tell her their truth about her.

I'm about to do this so let me know how it works with you.  What I'll do is imagine it and then write in long hand in the book I keep for all things about 'True' my work in progress.

A Month of Fridays continued...

Friday, August 6, 2010

Friday Challenge - to reap and glean

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) 

Reap \Reap\, v. i.
To perform the act or operation of reaping; to gather a harvest.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. --Ps. cxxvi.5.
1. To cut with a sickle, scythe, or reaping machine, as grain; to gather, as a harvest, by cutting. When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field. --Lev.???.
2. To gather; to obtain; to receive as a reward or harvest, or as the fruit of labor or of works; -- in a good or a bad sense; as, to reap a benefit from exertions.
Why do I humble thus myself, and, suing For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate? --Milton.
3. To clear or a crop by reaping; as, to reap a field.

glean \Glean\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gleaned; p. pr. & vb. n. Gleaning.] [OE. glenen, OF. glener, glaner, F. glaner, fr.LL. glenare; cf. W. glan clean, glanh?u to clean, purify, or AS. gelm, gilm, a hand?ul.]
1. To gather after a reaper; to collect in scattered or fragmentary parcels, as the grain left by a reaper, or grapes left after the gathering. To glean the broken ears after the man That the main harvest reaps. --Shak.
2. To gather from (a field or vineyard) what is left.
3. To collect with patient and minute labor; to pick out; to obtain.

So, to my dictionary I went. What is to reap and glean? I think I know but I want further clarity. And why? Dear reader, I want to give you an exciting challenge today. It is, like my plots and stories - atmospheric and wandering in my mind. I think I know what it is and yet, it alludes me. I want to understand something in the process that I'm involved in (revising for plot, structure and mostly clarity) that is almost seen with my naked eye but needs go deeper to really see. If I know that I'm looking at a boat on the horizon I can pick out its mast, sails and perhaps even prow. But if I'm unsure what I am seeing it could as easily be a gull riding a wave, or a bit of trash tossed overboard by those who don't seem to ken that this is their place.

Reap would be the first action we have to take. We have written a wonderfully shitty first draft in a mad passion OR we have overheard a snippet of conversation which has caused our narrative compelled mind to think 'aha - there's a book in there' or we've had a dream. So we have something to harvest, to reap. If we are at the beginning - the raw beginning having had the dream or heard the snippet - we reap that source for all that it is harvest in it. We go behind it, as it were, and follow the lines of our thoughts and find what is to be pulled out of the ground and brought in to the harvesting shed. All the fragments of thought, of the knowing we might have about this story, all that is obvious. In revising our first draft we will make a good clean sweep of the field of our manuscript - we will - like the Bible tells us - not go into each corner of the field?

The Reaper by Vincent Van Gogh

Then we might put the manuscript or the idea aside for a bit - let the field rest for a day or two and we will rest too. We will rest as we think though - our minds will not rest from wondering 'is this all that I can get from that idea, that first run through?' When we cannot bear the torture of our forced confinement for one more moment we will run down to the field and begin the process of gleaning.

Now a word on this - this is too different processes. In days of old it was often the men who reaped and the women who gleaned. From what we now know about the differences in the minds of men and women this has a perfect logic. Reaping is 'good enough', it is very energetic and uses the big muscles and the grand gestures. Gleaning is persnickety - it is with extreme attention to detail that we glean. So our reaping mind and our gleaning mind must be different. We can do this! We have both of these abilities and if one is stronger than the other, well then we must exercise the weaker of the two. The gleaner will go to the dream, the snippet, the first draft after the reaping has been done and notice the bits that were dropped by the heavier machinery of the reapers. This is meticulous work and you might think as you do it - oh, who cares if this is the exact word I need - this one is close enough. That is the mindset of the reaper and must be firmly shown the gate at that point. Every cut down bit on the field must be examined for its usefulness. Every seed must be closely looked at - is this a weed seed or something for the mill?

The Last Gleanings by Breton Jules

The Challenge - The challenge is to go to a project or part of a project and decide what is needed at this moment - do we need to reap or glean? Or do we need to rest so that the unsettled can settle and the workable may sit on top of the torn ground for us to see easily? I will give you an example. In my wip I keep coming to the same spot and churning around. I'm going to go to it today and see if I can discern what the correct action might be. If I've done the wrong thing - gleaned before I properly reaped - well then I have to go back to an earlier draft of the chapter and go at it again.

Please let me know if this metaphor is helpful to you in any part of your work. It sprung free of other sources in my mind and I am in the testing stages!