Life Balance

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Yesterday was a life balance day. I worked intensely to meet a self-imposed deadline related to Christmas then kicked all the way back. First a birthday dinner with our son, then two wonderful hours spent reading while watching The Voice.  On my desktop a new project (“A Christmas Story”) has been untouched for two days. In the mess on my physical desktop two cover mockups for Leaving Ashwood screamed for attention. But my mind wasn’t willing and a whole lot of little aches from a good morning workout pushed me toward goofing off.

What I should call that is two hours of achieving balance which sounds a whole lot better than two hours goofing off. January’s Simple magazine arrived last week with the entire issue dedicated to the elusive topic of achieving balance. When I was a corporate manager I taught other corporate types all about setting priorities and living purposeful lives in Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I knew the tools and theory behind a life with balance, but had two kids, demanding parents, and a fledgling creative writing life. So in that era I kept three “To Do” lists, each on a different color paper, representing the different buckets of my world. No matter how much I wanted to begin with the end in mind, life balance remained another pressure without much pleasure.

Writing doesn’t forgive days spent away from task. Writing group gathers whether you met the Sunday deadline for circulating materials. Publications don’t flex on submission deadlines. If you don’t write, stories are as attractive as cars without tires. Writing is not unlike dragging around an unfinished graduate thesis while academic deadlines approach or disappear. Walking the stage is a personal goal and responsibility. Do it or don’t do it.

I still make weekly lists. One is for the stuff of life like buying my son a birthday card and is written on whatever notebook needs to be finished. One is for my work with lots of time for writing, less time for meetings, submissions, research and such. This one is written on specific legal pads.

Last night I goofed off. This morning I feel guilty (a little) and refreshed (a little). So at least my feelings are balanced. Cross off ‘write new blog’.

 

 

Two Priests, A Pregnant Woman and a Guy with a Big Hat

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It could have been a good joke. Did you hear the one about two priests, a pregnant woman and a guy in big hat? Wait for the punch line.

Another Tuesday morning at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Two young priests in full-length cassocks stand with arms outstretched as a TSA agent runs a wand over their bodies. The pregnant woman in front of me is called aside to remove lotion bottles from her carry on bag. A tall man with a tall ten gallon cowboy hat asks the agents to hand carry his new purchase through security. The security folks agree.

My ticket has “TSA PRECHK” on the top. I don’t have to remove my shoes. I’ve flown enough this year on one airline to earn this small special dispensation. The pregnant woman isn’t happy with differential treatment and grumbles as she eases out of her heels. On the other side we redress, reshuffle the things we carry, check our tickets and id are easily available, and disperse into the early business morning crowd.

There was a moment when we were a spontaneous community. Then the common experience is over and we are merely strangers who have successfully navigated a small challenge at seven thirty in the morning.

For some reason I need to write about these four people. On the tram to the concourse I consider taking out my laptop. I pass a collection of tables and think about stopping. Seasoned traveler, I get to the gate area and claim an end seat. The words haven’t disappeared, the sensation is still fresh, nothing else has distracted my thoughts.

Perhaps this small group stands out because each person so clearly carried unique identifiers into the homogenized crowd of dark-suited business travelers. The young priests proclaimed their faith, the pregnant woman could be called a mother, Mr. Cowboy carried his self-identity high above most of us. In a busy world where blending in is a valued skill, they were exceptional. Somehow they’ll find their way, as one grouping, into some future writing.

As for my Green Bay Packer logo jacket, well the insignia is tastefully embroidered on the left chest. Not really noticeable unless someone is looking closely at strangers in a crowd.

 

Second Child Syndrome

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My mother was a second child who got revenge for the order of her birth as an adult. She hadan obsession for making sure my brother and I knew that we each got exactly the same size piece of cake, same dollars spent on school clothes, same number of presents under the Christmas tree. Married to a quiet firstborn, she was a bossy extrovert who liked attention. In any group of people she could find the friction points. She was creative and daring as a young woman as if dancing faster in higher heels could attract approval. She taught her children to shine, just not too much.

Studies call we second kids people pleasers, watchers of the big stage of life, undemanding. Our naps weren’t as important as our older sibling’s school pick up time, our accomplishments not nearly exciting as our parents watching first steps for the first time. We were born into already defined families and had to fit in. Makes a second child kind of puff up their chest and look somewhere else for the limelight. Maybe become a writer.

Career experts say second children are drawn to writing as a safe, rational way to express emotions. Editors tend to be second kids who make their living offering corrections. A Google search of twenty authors uncovered just two second-born children and a whole lot of firstborns, much like other careers.  Interestingly my favorite author, Margaret Atwood, was one of those two.

Nothing one can do about when and how you came into the world. Some days it is just grand to have a rationale for why life has been frustrating that is out of your control. I wonder if literary agents are firstborns?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrate a New Writing Center

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(Reprinted from the website of Write On, Door County!)

Welcome to the first Write On, Door County! Blog. Over the next year, you’ll find poems, essays, memoirs, children’s writing and a lot more in this feature.

“Everyone has a story to tell” has become the mantra of Write On, Door County!. From the youngest child searching for Easter Bunny’s house under juniper branches to those who remember serving in World War II, stories bind us together. Our hope is to create an environment where that happens. You can learn more about the vision and initiative from exploring the website.

In the future this blog will be penned by the Write On, Door County! team, area writers, children from writing programs, guest authors. They will surprise and delight you.

I’d like to share my Write On, Door County! story. Hopefully you’ll have your own in the future.

Pumpkin Patch Festival 2012 weather was cold. Relatives from Florida joined us to enjoy the fall colors, didn’t complain as we huddled in lines for brats and funnel cakes, then wandered through artists’ displays.

On the way back to our Fish Creek home, we stopped at Edgewood Orchard Galleries. As my guests explored, I found a flyer for a Write On, Door County! initiative meeting that had been held hours earlier. Nell Jarosh told me about her mother’s involvement. We exchanged telephone numbers and email addresses. Jerod Santek from The Loft, a Minneapolis writers’ center, was in the county to talk about writing centers. A writer, I have worked with Jerod on projects.

I am a part-time resident of Door County and writing is a fairly solitary activity. In the Twin Cities I have a writing group for support. The possibility of building a center here that would attract people interested in the creation and enjoyment of literature felt like a gift.  After two emails with Anne Emerson, I volunteered my time, skills and support to make Write On, Door County! a reality.

Since October I have met amazing people, developed new friends, dreamed about creating the ultimate writing community and tested those thoughts in our founding crew. It is an awesome process that will continue for years. Some of you would enjoy working behind the scenes. Think about it. Send us an email at info@writeondoorcounty.org.

If you are fortunate to call Door County home, this initiative rounds out the arts community. If this is your second home, Write On, Door County! could become what draws you back for an extra week or two. If you are a writer or reader connecting from beyond the county, we want to invite you to experience a place where you can bury yourself in the quiet of the woods, the lapping shores of a Great Lake, or join in a lively arts community filled with song and theater and galleries.

There is room for everyone in the Write On, Door County! initiative. Our original team is an eclectic team of uncommonly good people who didn’t have a lot in common last October except the love of Door County, the desire to make the world better, and the belief that everyone has a story to tell.

Welcome to the Write On, Door County! Blog. We’re looking forward to a future together.

 

 

Life According to Facebook

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A former classmate avoids the MFA program reunion. Her writing career isn’t developing like life according to Facebook. In the five years since graduating, others have published, found full-time academic positions, received recognition. Her achievements, while quite nice, feel small. She’s talented. Her peers and faculty think she will be successful.

The Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing of the University of Southern Maine is not a competitive hotbed. It is a rigorous, yet mellow, graduate school experience that supports each individual student. By graduation night, a quarter of my class of twenty had published a book-length work. A few were teachers who completed the degree with no intentions of publishing. Some only hoped to graduate.  We wouldn’t see half the class on Facebook. When we did see the other half, they would have BIG news of their achievements.

How to calibrate success in the arts is very personal. I assemble an annual plan and define why each activity supports my goals. If a year goes by with nothing to publicly recognize, I have a private sense of accomplishment. This year my plan is a mixture of wishes, hard facts and aggressive timelines.

In month seven I have blogged less than I intended, entered a novel into competition that was not planned, walked away from my teaching strategy, and am on track to get a fourth novel to my publisher in early November. I’ve also written three good short stories, became a board member for a new writing center opening in Door County, Wisconsin. The year feels okay. What does bother me is if I was relying on my creative writing to feed the family, we’d be hungry. I still earn more on one freelance project than royalties. That’s rough.

My son, a piano teacher and performer, works at a music school and as faculty at a summer musical theater camp, accepts a lot of  gigs, and collects handfuls of 1099s each year to live the artistic life he has designed. His definition of success is a blend of artistic recognition, creative freedom and financial independence. At his age I was climbing the corporate ladder while trying to ignore the need to create artistically. I’m not sure I could have faced the multiple insecurities of the writer’s life at his age. Not all reviews are good, a book can be well received and not sell big numbers, lots of publishing doesn’t pay. Gulp.

Being a writer, musician, or potter offers no guarantees except lots of work with the slim possibility of public recognition.  There is a definite element of luck in our success.  The Donal Ryan story of 47 rejections before being published, then making the Booker Prize long list, is not unusual. I am so grateful for my writing and artist friends who keep my dreams both realistic and aggressive.  Maybe next year I’ll have the breakthrough novel or publish a Pushcart nomination short story. If not, I’ll still be a published author with a plan to keep me pushing through the rough days. How to gather a bushel of good luck remains a mystery.

Keep writing. Surround yourself with those who understand. Go to your reunion. Carry a good luck charm. When you have good news, brag it up on Facebook. We’ll all cheer.

 

 

America’s Kids

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Kids are everywhere on the Fourth of July 2013 in the Village of Egg Harbor, Wisconsin. Babies hang in pouches on their parents’ chests, strollers and wagons dot the crowd, the majority walk on their own or run.  Some multiplier swells the regular population of approximately 200 as friends, family, vacationers, and visitors gather for an old-fashion national celebration.

The day is made for kids. There are booths with face painting, glitter tattoos, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, flags. The harbor is beautiful and adults are willing to linger on a park bench to watch the activities on Lake Michigan as kids play tag, turn cartwheels, pick on each other. Multiple generation families give kids the opportunity to escape stricter parental expectations for the more gentle indulgence of grandparents.

Some kids wear patriotic clothing. A few have their hair dyed red, white and blue. They might not understand how very fortunate they are to live in this country. Not all of them are from financially stable families, but most have an adult who can spend a buck on a hot dog. Not all of them are from families where English is the primary language, but they have come to share the U.S. birthday party. When candy is thrown from simple floats, every kid is an equal with a plastic bag and grabbing hands. They all squeal, they all jostle for a small Tootsie Roll or Jolly Rancher. They sing with the floats that have music playing, duck when teenagers squirt water from a flatbed. In this small town they can be less encumbered by adults’ concern about security. For the city kid visitors Egg Harbor’s Fourth of July bash and parade may be as unsupervised a day as they’ll ever experience.

Sons and daughters who ran after Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Rangers fifteen or twenty years ago and now serve in the armed services deserve recognition for keeping the United States intact so this day can be celebrated so freely. America’s kids who have returned to danger, frequently carrying physical or emotional damage from prior deployments, are in our hearts on the Fourth of July. To the gentle giant who left the fireworks because it reminded him of the war, and all his peers, may 2014 bring more peaceful times.

 

 

The Kroner Transfer

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Amsterdam is a large airport, busy even at six thirty Sunday morning. Like many European airports it has transfer centers where passengers can check on their next flight or make changes to their reservations. It’s a good idea that would make more airports in the Untied States friendlier to visitors.

The KLM 330 empties hundreds of people journeying from Minneapolis to the cities and countryside’s of Scandinavia, Europe or beyond. Young people with more dreams than goods, parents nervous about shepherding kids through other countries with limited language skills, business people carrying the universal black packs stuffed with laptops and binders. I might be one of the older people on the flight making my way to Copenhagen where I’ll meet my niece for days of sightseeing.

Traveling out of my comfort zone triggers creativity and words– a small poem in a notebook carried in my purse, a short story about my grandfather on a legal pad, a character sketch on the iPad. Each sense is tuned to unknown stimulus. How to create a character from the Frenchman next to me in economy seats who devoured Dan Brown’s latest book during the eight-hour flight then left it on the seat. He offered it to me, but I am already traveling with more luggage than I want to carry including a book in hand and two ebooks. Wondering what language the man three rows back mutters during numerous visits from the crew that earned him a new seat mate for the second half of the trip, a tall man in a dark sport jacket and khaki slacks who said nothing. Trying to decipher the smells along the canals outside the hotel. Enjoying the undertones in the ice cream bought from a vendor along the walk.

The cabbie, a recent Turkish immigrant, spoke little English. The hotel staff moves from English to Danish and French or German. I listen for the little French or German I remember from relatives. The Danish words are difficult to tackle and I want to be independent, not so American. But then the glorious Sunday afternoon sun makes the waterways sparkle, people move along with weekend laziness, the server tells a small joke about the man playing violin for spare change and I am a world away from home in a good way.

Truly transferred to the land of natural blondes, thousands of kroners, and dozens of hours of sun.

Of Puppies and Revisions

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Rocky recently joined our household. He is a fur ball of energy. We’ve laughed over his insane play, grown tired of his sharp teeth testing toes, rewarded outside pooping, and begun teaching the many lessons a puppy needs to co-exist with humans. (I promise this will turn to writing strategy and not be a gushing puppy love piece.)

The puppy training bible recommends owners remember that everything done in these early months establish the rhythms and rules of a dog’s entire life. The writer, probably sitting next to a calm adult dog, encourages patient and thoughtful responses to cute, but crazy, puppy actions. Rocky is our fifth consecutive furry family member so we’re not strangers to this process. Patience and thoughtfulness can be tough challenges at five in the morning or after the third accident of the day.

Revising the last book of the Ashwood trilogy, the puppy bible writer’s words come to mind.  Slow down, treat the manuscript carefully, be thoughtful, don’t let frustration push action.  That makes sense. Right?

Writers have their own revision processes. Boman Desai, the kind of writer who handles words like a musician searching for dynamics, shared one part of his process with a MFA literary fiction workshop group. He circulated copies of worksheets, each with a sentence on the top and lines and lines of subtle changes—maybe placing a comma in a different place, replacing a word, adding a single syllable adjective to create new rhythm. Some of the sentences went through more than a dozen changes, others a handful. The Memory of Elephants, the novel for which he is best known, is well-crafted literary fiction.

Jodi Picoult has four people reading her work as she writes then incorporates their recommendations in revisions. She says she writes until she is sick of the book and knows there will be more revisions as the books moves through her publisher.

Revision work is challenging. It is like cooking an incredible meal then not sharing it until each course  has been broken apart,  seasonings or baking times adjusted. Sometimes the entire order of the dishes must be changed; sometimes a favorite must be scrapped.  And what I want to do is set the table and invited my friends to sit down.

The puppy bible writer inspired a breakthrough moment: Is it possible to turn the concept of “working on revision” to patiently moving through the second creative phase of writing a book? With each book I am changing my revision style and understanding that if I push beyond looking at the mechanics of sentences and paragraphs, discovery is a delightful part of the process. Maybe Rocky’s training will mark a time of growth for me as well–from dutiful revising writer to author engaged in a continuous creative process.

 

 

 

 

Music and Writing

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Some nights, silence is the best music as words become sentences and paragraphs fill the page. Some nights the womanly voices of Adele or Bonnie Raitt lure creativity onto a blank page then another and another. Or maybe lost in the beat of Justin Timberlake or Dave Matthews or old Rolling Stones, a new chapter rolls to completion.

There was a time music was a required part of my writing routine. I had to be in a private place where I could listen to a specific CD without earphones. Unlike time at the gym when music improved my activity level, bringing the sound right into my head didn’t inspire. My feet might be tapping, but most likely my fingers weren’t doing the same on the keyboard.

Through a difficult revision of the last book of the Ashwood trilogy, George Winston was comforting. The piano reminded me that I needed to move toward a deadline even if winter sun on snow-covered trees could be stared at for hours.  Indie Crystals in the Deep was strangely the right backdrop for new work on a novel centering on conversations between an adult daughter and her father.

Writers tend to have strong feelings about writing in their version of silence, in the chatter of coffee shops, with public radio’s continuous soft voices, or accompanied by music. The challenge for any of us is truly writing through the many sounds of the world.

Winter Weight

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Attending literary events lately has led me to the non-scientific observation that writers in this part of the Midwest might eat too many calories per hour while sitting at their computers during extended cold weather. Pictures from a June book release party featured more people in loose fitting clothes in comparison to images from a similar September event. Add in the Minnesota writer living in Los Angeles since the holidays who announced on Facebook that he’s dropped so much weight his pants are falling to his knees.

My conclusion is simple: Writing, as a career in a state with long winters, can be hazardous to your health.

That carry-out lunch can’t be worked off in forty-five minutes at the gym and running on icy paths is plain dangerous.  Most of us indulge in far less sinful eating– rice crackers, a cookie in the afternoon, a handful of pretzels. But there’s not a whole lot of physical activity happening while the mind is wandering and fingers are hitting computer keys. Be honest, most days writing defines sedentary.

A friendly personal trainer pointed to a stability ball as a way to keep the metabolism running while tapping away on the keyboard. A friend in permanent weight watching mode sent a list of ‘healthy’ snacks consisting of a lot of green things. A person employed as a college athletic trainer claims drinking a gallon of water every day will produce a five pound weight loss in two weeks. Not coffee, tea, diet cola. Water. Boring, but possible without braving the elements.

In April winter weather has turned from a tolerated visitor to the equivalent of having Russell Brand as an uninvited houseguest for many, many months. But the need to shed jeans and t-shirts will arrive. I’ve pinned up pictures from our daughter’s September wedding, cleared the office of anything edible, unearthed a jug to tote water upstairs and am honestly tracking everything I eat. None of this helps my writing, but I am hydrated, slightly cranky, and losing weight.

Harvesting Ashwood: Minnesota 2037 will be free for Kindle download April 17 to 21, a writer ‘event’ which requires absolutely no physical visibility to readers. Best not think about how the disappearance of readings and tours could allow writers to stay hidden in their preferred corners with just one cookie or a handful of almonds or  anything that contains calories.

By the way, no fair reminding me that starvation has been a theme in all of my books. Not right now. I’ve got another glass of water to finish.