Mother Knows Best (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Technology)

Kris and I recently gave a talk about how we write together. Like an old married couple (think the vignettes in When Harry Met Sally, finishing each other's sentences, saying the same thing at the same time), we told the story about how we met at the firm (a very pregnant Kris interviewed me), how we discovered we both loved writing (talking late one night while working at the firm, wine in hand), and the genesis of The Pecking Order (a particularly long, pointless, billable-hour-sucking meeting that ended in a decision to, yes, have another meeting). We praised the benefits of having a writing partner to share in the struggle, the disappointments, and the joys, and we also explained our process. And it goes a little something like this (hit it!): we loosely outline two chapters; Kris writes one chapter, I write the other; we switch and edit; we switch and edit again; and so on and so forth. And we do this all over email, putting our edits and thoughts in bolds and brackets, so our drafts end up looking like this (note, real live excerpt from early working draft of The Pecking Order): “You’re right. A little harmless flirting never hurt anyone. I should let myself have fun. I work hard and I deserve it,” I say [uncorking our first bottle of wine] [delete – we have a lot of champagne going on….popping the cork on our first bottle of champagne.]

Then we each put the latest version in our respective running documents (on our respective laptops), which may or may not match each other at any given point, depending on whether I remembered to email the most recent draft to my work account or Kris could access the document on vacation or the planets aligned and the heavens smiled on us, making all things domestic and career-related run smoothly. Goodness gracious, it's a lot of work just to type our process . . .

Some time back, my mom (who is ridiculously more technologically advanced than I am) questioned why we weren't using google docs. She might as well have asked why we didn't have the robot prepare dinner or why we didn't drive to work in a hovercraft. We ignored her. For years. Until we finally tried it last week. And people, let me tell you, google docs is all that. You can store documents online and choose who to share them with. Much like a yahoo or gmail email account, you can access your document from anywhere with internet access. Now, we have a single running document and anything we write, be it a single sentence or entire chapter, goes into that document. No more passing bolds and brackets back and forth through email - one of us can open the document and make edits that the other can see simply by logging in. It's genius, I tell you, and not just for writing teams--it's a good back up system for any writer, and ensures you have your manuscript at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.
So, yea, I guess I should have listened to my mother the first time.

A Haiku

Steady rain grey skys
Lovely Seattle hotel
I forgot to blog

Unplug

You know MTV Unplugged--that show where a major musical artist sits on a cozy stage with only a guitar or piano or ukulele (or whatever instrument he or she uses), plays, and sings without benefit of amplifiers, background tracks, or bubble machines? It's just an artist and his or her craft, and more often than not it is moving and raw and real. Well, guess what fellow writers? We need to unplug every now and then, too. Not from sound enhancers or the whammy bar (thank you, Guitar Hero, for my current state of musical literacy), but from all those things that are necessary and helpful, but often get in our way. I'm talking about you, Facebook and Twitter and Writing Blogs (but feel free to finish reading this blog before heeding my advice).

I don't know about you, but when I sit down to write, my process usually goes something like this: Make tea. Sit on chaise with laptop. Open manuscript. Read the last paragraph. Check email. Open Twitter. Log on to Facebook and read multiple status updates from friends stressing out about their NaNoWriMo word count. Open http://www.gofugyourself.com/ and wonder, once again, why these girls aren't my best friends. Read Inkygirl's latest blog and comic--if there's a new caption contest, spend the next few minutes trying vainly to come up with a witty caption (girlfriend is hilarious, btw . . . I know I'm telling you to go offline, but you really should check her out.). Maximize manuscript. Write a few lines. Send email to Kris telling her I'm writing. Refresh gofugyourself. Refresh Twitter. And so on and so forth . . .

Sound familiar? Sure, I've read all about how we need to cut the electronic leash--heck, my pastor literally wrote the book on simplifying our lives, on saying yes to the important things and no to meaningless distractions. And yet, I rarely put it into practice. But this past week was different. I attended a legal conference at a lovely hotel with lovely, child-free rooms and lovely, squishy, crumb-free beds . . . and wireless internet access priced at $9.95/day. I've mentioned I'm a public sector lawyer in California, right? And you've heard of a little thing we like to call CALIFORNIA'S MASSIVE BUDGET CRISIS, right? So, yea, I can't rationalize ten bucks for internet access when words like furlough and pay cut and phasing out are bandied about my office the way we used to talk about American Idol contestants and how Jon and Kate seemed like a cute couple. (Of course, I tried every unsecured network that showed up on my laptop to no avail. . .curse you kittyboy17 and your weak signal). So I sat in bed, ate a $3.00 bag of cheese crackers for dinner, and wrote. I wrote 500 words in about 40 minutes. I nearly finished an entire chapter in one evening. I unplugged and, oh my gosh, it worked.

And then in the morning (after discovering the lobby has free internet) I read a tweet from @inkyelbows (InkyGirl's twitter alter ego) announcing, "when you're reading about writing, you're not writing." Amen, sister.

The Red Baron Lives.

I really like champagne. Okay, that has nothing to do with this blog, other than that its Friday night, I should have written this post this morning, and now I'm reveling in a lovely bottle of bubbly supplied by my parents who, fortunately for me, happen to have fantastic taste in champagne. The apple doesn't fall far and all that . . .

Anyhoo, its Halloween. The time for trick or treat, candy and costumes, ghouls and goblins. As I dressed my son in his store-bought "Golden Dragon Ninja" costume today (an early victim of precisely targeted marketing, my son. He has two other very viable ninja costumes), I felt sad I hadn't made his costume, that we hadn't culled together random pieces of fabric, poster board, old jewelry, and make-up to come up with some fabulous iteration of Sponge Bob, Anakin Skywalker, or Caillou (yeah, I know I could just shave his head and call it good on that one. . . .what's with that kid having no hair?). But, for better or worse, that's not how we roll in the Blanco house. A homemade meal, for sure. Homemade costumes, never going to happen. But does that mean I have to forsake all sense of tradition and authenticity? Well, perhaps. On Tuesday night, when I cleared my schedule and set the whole house up for an Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown viewing, they just wanted to watch Goosebumps and then the Monsters vs. Alien Halloween special. They begged, they pleaded, but I made them sit and watch Its the Great Pumpkin and I'm not ashamed to say I issued several threats during that half hour. I repeated Lucy's jokes, highlighted Schroeder's talent, but you know what? They didn't care. I guess I can only hope that one day my son will fake complain that his mother made him watch The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown every year and that he'll meet people later in life who have the exact same story.

So I'll ask the same question I always do. What does this have to do with writing? Well, not much. But it has something to do with reading. My book club has recently read some great new books - The Selected Works of T.S Spivet being one of them. What a book, what a character. I would recommend it to anyone. But now we're reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I can't help but think of Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin and Snoopy as the Red Baron lost in France during WWI, and ask where would we be, who would be, without the classics.

And the Student Becomes the Teacher...

I had the pleasure of helping edit some short stories today for a writing class. The assignment was to write a story in 10 minutes or less, in the spirit of a Native American legend, explaining something we take for granted in our modern world. The stories had titles like, "Why the Sun is in the Sky," "How Snakes and Legless Lizards Came to Be," and, my personal favorite, "Why Women Talk So Much." (In case you're wondering, a lovely, handsome man wooed a young maiden and they would have lived happily ever after, except she ran around the woods and proclaimed her love to all who would listen and he was hounded day and night by curious and annoying woodland creatures until he had enough and sailed away, leaving the maiden with only her own voice for company. I probably would have titled it, "Why Women are Better Off Alone Than With Some Tool Who Can't Express His Feelings," but that's just me...)

I must say, I was impressed. The stories were only a page or two in length, but fully formed. The students were instructed to use their senses, so the stories were engaging, but also to the point. There was no digression, no backstory, no sentences requiring more than one breath, no cramming of words where they don't fit just because they sound pretty. Sure, given more time the authors could have rounded out their stories, but the exercise reminded me that, at its core, writing is about the story. The plot. The point! So often, I find myself stumbling over my words, trying to craft something beautiful, publishable, worthy of a table at Barnes and Noble. I've stared at a blinking cursor, trying to sift literary gold from the muddy recesses of my brain for longer than the time it took these students to write an entire story. Maybe, in those instances, I should try to just write what happens. After all, once I lay the foundation, I can build upon it later. Like Maria von Trapp always said, the beginning (the very beginning) is a very good place to start. So, thank you, Mrs. Sloan's fourth grade class (yes, fourth graders!) for helping me get back to basics.

And, in that odd, inexplicable way that everything seems cosmically connected these days, I stumbled upon this link on InkyGirl's website (helpful blogger for writers, and ridiculously hilarious literary cartoonist). It's called "One Word," and each day it provides a different one-word prompt. Writers have 60 seconds to write about that word. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it would help those of us (you know who you are) with the tendency to look far too long before leaping.

10 Things I Hate . . .Not About You, I Promise

It's not cool to put negative energy out in the world. I try in earnest to live that each day so that's why I'm considering this more of an unsolicited, benign airing of pet peeves than a rant about things that bother me. And in any event, I'm hoping I have enough stored up in the karma bank should the universe take it a different way. What does it have to do with writing? Well, let's see.

10 Things I Hate . . .Not About You

1. Those things you often see on the roof at car dealerships that look like a large dancing person, but are really just heaps of plastic that move by the gale force of a large fan. I hate those.
2. Passive-aggressive communication. Hate that.
3. The sound and feel of styrofoam. Ick.
4. The fact that businesses employ people to stand on the road waving a sign. Bums me out.
5. Waiting in line for the car wash when the person in front of me does the super slow drive out under the dryer. Get a hand wash if you're that concerned, people. Its a drive-thru.
6. Kalamata olives. Gag.
7. All of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton. Sorry, that's kind of about them, I suppose.
8. When people take themeselves too seriously.
9. Being grabbed in that tickle spot around/just above the knee. And I don't fake-ha-ha-squeal-hate that. I hate that.
And what I hate most of all . . .David Lettermen (although maybe I shouldn't so easily invoke his name) drum roll here . . .

10. Writer's block.

My life story, Holden Caulfield, and a living saint

So, you know I planned to post a blog a day for Great Books Week. Well, I skipped the past two days - circumstances beyond my control, I tell you (and maybe, just maybe, some Chardonnay). But, never fear...here are posts for the last three days, all rolled up in one convenient, easy to use post:)

Topic: I'd write my autobiography, but I don't need to because my story has already been told in [what classic book].

This was supposed to post Wednesday, but when I divulge the name of the book that most resembles my life, you'll understand why. Okay, okay, so it doesn't track my entire life, but if I just take a snapshot of my life right at this moment (with one kid home sick with swine flu, important deadlines looming at work, successive dinners from a box or bag, and a stalled manuscript)...it's Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (I considered One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with an inmates-taking-over-the-asylum analogy, but thouight my family might take issue.). I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere between "we're not going to be too indulgent as parents" and "okay, boys, you string hammocks in the hallway and eat canned frosting for breakfast if you'll just settle down and let me finish my work/work-out/chapter/edit/glass of wine" I lost control of the little three bedroom, 2 bath island we call home. Rescue missions appreciated...bring chocolate.

Topic: I hated [book] when I had to read it in high school, but when I read it on my own later, I loved it because . . .

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. My impression in Senior AP English? Blech. It was about a boy. Bo-ring. And he was whining about college, of all things. I'd just sent off my applications, worried I'd be stuck in my no-movie-theatre, party-in-the-cow-pastures town forever, and Holden was complaining about college? Even the much-hyped "bad word" didn't save the book. I thought he was a whiny boy with no real problems and I didn't understand why I should care about him. I reread the book last summer, after having two boys of my own (and raising a husband). And, it just clicked. Maybe it's our culture, or the benefit of psych 101, but Holden came across as a depressed ADD-addled narcissist. And that, is actually interesting.

Topic: When I want to give someone a special gift, I give them [book] because...

Oh, there are soooo many! It depends on the person and where they are in life. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a favorite. (I tend to even urge strangers to buy it, and I've given it to many, many friends). Another favorite is Three Cups of Tea. In fact, I know someone who sent her copy to President Obama after she read it, because it moved her so much. I'm going to re-post here a blog I wrote earlier this year about the book - it will explain why it is a special gift, and hopefully inspire you to buy it for yourself, or someone you love.

Here's the thing about Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin . . . you just need to read it. No matter your political affiliation, religious beliefs, social status, gender, ethnicity, race, age, or favorite breakfast cereal (mine's Cheerios . . . I'm old school), it will speak to you. Within the pages of the book, "hope" and "change," which have saturated our airwaves the past two years, cease existing as words and take shape as tangible ideals.
The book is non-fiction - a true account of American Greg Mortenson's failed attempt to climb K2 and his subsequent recuperation in a remote mountain village in Pakistan, which spawned his promise to build a school for the village, and led to 15 years of single-minded devotion to educating the war-stricken and impoverished children of Pakistan and Afghanistan. I know, I know, it sounds kind of dry. But it is not. It reads less like a factual account and more like an action-packed novel with a daring protagonist who just happens to have integrity running through his veins. It's like the love-child of Into the Wild and a biography of Mother Teresa. There is enough action to induce stomach acid (falling down mountains, kidnapping by a radical sect of Pakistani militants) and sufficient facts, figures, and maps to appease a scholar. But above all, there is the story. The story of impoverished communities in the Middle East whose hospitality toward Greg made me examine my own notions of love and acceptance. The story of children, their villages and parents and siblings destroyed by years of civil conflict, foreign wars, and American missiles, who scratch figures in the dirt because they have no school but want to learn. The story of radical Madrassas sprouting up across Pakistan and Afghanistan, built with blood money, certain to educate generations in the art of terror and graduate scores of Jihadists who hate America, unless the children have the option of attending real schools. The story of Muslim leaders agreeing to educate girls, because they recognize the importance of education for the future of the individual, the nation, and the world. The story of a Pakistani girl (who, ten years ago, had never attended school) now studying to become a doctor for women. And the story of Greg Mortenson who, through sheer determination and love for humanity, began raising money, building schools, paying teachers, and otherwise attending to the real human needs of the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. While living out of his car. The story of hope. The story of change. The story of peace.
I don't presume to know how the book will affect you. For me, it engendered many feelings. I was embarrassed that I had to keep referring to the map at the beginning of the book because I never learned Middle Eastern geography. I was ashamed that in the days after 9/11, I was scared of the turbaned men on the BART train with me--that I considered myself progressive, and yet subconsciously equated Muslim with Terrorist. I was so incredibly thankful for my life in America, for my education and my opportunities, which I admit, I've taken for granted. The book talks about teachers and children climbing a ladder to reach the second story of their school, because the stairs were bombed out. I couldn't help but think about what would happen in America. Here, parents would be outraged if their child's school didn't meet each and every building standard. Here, most kids would be thrilled if they couldn't reach their classroom. I was inspired by Greg. I believe that one person can make a difference. I was frustrated at our government's lack of humanitarian aid, but simultaneously so proud to be an American, because, as citizens, we can be a beacon of light around the world.
It is so much more than a book about the Middle East. It challenges, educates, and inspires. For me, it shifted my perception. It clearly demarcated the notions of "want" and "need." It led me to pick up trash in my neighborhood and seriously consider whether I "needed" to add another pair of jeans to my closet. Given the result of the election, I think Americans are ready to embrace a spirit of volunteerism. Even if you think are not, please, read the book. It exemplifies pioneering spirit and perseverance at its best.
To learn more about Greg's foundation, the Central Asia Institute, or to make a donation, visit: http://www.ikat.org/ To learn more about Three Cups of Tea, visit: http://www.threecupsoftea.com/