Dressing Up

Have you ever met someone, or gone somewhere, and felt that you had been missing him, her, it and that you are meant to be together? I felt that way about Italy when I was 15, then my BFF in college, moving on to my husband and Moab. And - I almost can't believe I'm saying this - but I feel the same way about The Renaissance Faire.

I only need to go once a year for one day, but I feel that it MUST be an annual event, it must be a ROY tradition.

I can't believe I missed out on the Renaissance Faire for most of my life, but better late than never. Saturday was only our second expedition to the festivities in Tuxedo Park, New York. It started 35 years ago, and I would have LOVED it as a child, a teen, a young adult, just as I love it now.

Last year I was in so in awe that I determined that it would only be better dressing up, so I lay down the big bucks and bought some Renaissance attire: a gold skirt, a long billowy periwinkle shirt, and a simple gold-ish bodice to go with it. See? Nothing too royal or peasant-ish or wenchy - a citizen's clothes.

Later, at home, I felt a little silly, and the clothes were thrown in a bag to be resuscitated this summer.

Now I am glad.  I imagine myself to be a rare breed of female merchant - in the silk trade of course.
My husband had the pleasure of sealing me into my bodice - so tightly that I could barely breathe. (You can't wear a bra with these things - the bodice acts as support.) We joked about me sporting a rated R look, but my kids would have been MORTIFIED, so we stuck to PG, knowing that we would see all sorts of versions and ratings at the fair.

It's the one place I've been too where 75% of the people were dressed up too. If people dressed up and played along at other places too, it would make our experience that more the richer. (Harry Potter World should have the Robes of Requirement. Each person who enters should have to wear school robes - that is part of the price of admission.)

But we do it already, don't we? We mold ourselves to the different environments we are in. We wouldn't wear our pajamas to a meeting at a corporate office, or a swimsuit to a PTA meeting, or sweat pants to the opera.

We want to play along to get along, which definitely has it's pros and cons. Conformity can lead to lack of personal identity. If we are just being like everybody else, who are we? Where are we?

But things like the Renaissance Faire bring out an aspect of communal fantasy that is just spectacular. Those of us dressing up are in the act of choosing to say "yes" to that part of our souls. I am celebrating a part of myself by entering the fantasy, by suspending my disbelief.

And this is also what we do when we read and write, yes?

Day 1: NaNoWriMo

Image by nuanc via Flickr

It's November first. You know what that means, don't you? Let me join the legions of blogs today about National Novel Writing Month and how us writer peeps are challenging ourselves to churn out 50,000 words by November 30th. Who qualifies? Everybody. You are a writer if you write. Period. (No publishing experience necessary - in fact, it's probably better.) I think that we all owe at the very least a perfunctory nod to Anne LaMott who writes about the importance of the "the shitty first draft" in her Writer's Handbook, Bird by Bird. (It's a handbook for me at any rate.)

The goal is quantity and not necessarily quality, a difficult thing for people so enamored of words.  We have to blindly jump in, and be fearless in our "shittiness".  I have never done this before, but have always been intrigued. Last year I signed up, but then was too worried about taking too much time away from my WIP. This year, I need a break from two WIP's and I also need the freedom to write something completely different as I wait for EDGES to be released into the world. I've always wanted to write fantasy, so why not use this month long event as an excuse to try, to take a risk?

Thank you, NaNoWriMo: my challenge is to write 50,000 words of a fantasy, or something fantastical at the very least. My husband gave me a prompt last night, so I put down the first half of a sentence in Scrivener to await me in the morning . . . and what fun I had! This was what I needed, to feel the thrill of the creative ride again.

Although right now I am frustrated, because I want to log my word count onto my profile page on the website, but it's not loading. So I'm forced to kvetch about that here and brag about the 2500 words I managed to bang out on my laptop this morning. If I can write 2500 words a day for 20 days, then I'm golden - my kids will still have a mother on the weekends! All joking aside, even if I'm only able to log in 25000 words it will be an accomplishment, because it will be a different genre. Whether it's any good is another question, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT! The point is that I'm doing it. Who's with me? (And is anybody else having problems with the website?)

Related articles

• Calling All Writers to NaNoWriMo (psychologytoday.com)
• NaNoWriMo: an excuse to write (bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com)
• "Writing the mad dash - National Novel Writing Month" and related posts (scholarsandrogues.com)
• NaNoWriMo and other Stuff (distractible.org)

Exit: Caution! Reality Ahead

A childhood fantasy came to life by going to the Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo Park, NY today. Why had I never been to this delightful wonderland before? (Save for once as a feckless youth in Northern California, accompanied by an even more feckless boyfriend - so, um, yeah - don't remember much!) I always wanted to go, but I either couldn't get anyone to go with me, or I didn't have a car, or had other obligations. I also didn't have the thing I wanted most: a costume.

"Can I buy a costume here?" Is the first thing I asked a buxom young woman after she welcomes us to Sterling Forest in an English accent and refers to me as "m'lady". She giggles, the aggressiveness of my question catching her off guard. It is obvious that this is my first time.

We walk into a fantasy where at least two thirds of all folks are ambling about various forms of Elizabethan or Tudor dress. It makes suspending disbelief a lot easier if the majority of people are all buying into the same illusion. This year's theme is Robin Hood, and the park is heavily peppered with performances involving himself. Everywhere you look there is entertainment - jugglers, singers, musicians, storytellers, acrobats, knife throwers - even the shops (excuse me, SHOPPES) themselves are a feast for the eyes.

The wanting of a costume becomes primal. The daughter's desire is palpable too - even the boys, after seeing men carrying swords and axes, start frothing at the mouth. In my youth, we always came up with our own costumes - by raiding our mother's closets. (The only "princess" dress I had was a Colonial style one that my grandmother kept for my sister and me up in Crosswicks.)

I start to think about how I can possibly justify buying one. Who could I be on Halloween wearing this kind of dress? My thoughts immediately go to Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing, but the role of Benedick doesn't quite make my husband's heart pound. Maid Marian and Robin Hood sound more like it.

We watch a live chess game where the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood fight for Marian, and we see him woo her on a bridge. We have some time before going to see bellydancers perform with a medieval German band so my daughter pulls me into a shop where I try on dresses and get tied up into a corset, but they are SO expensive, and the colors aren't quite right for me . . . and I think, oh well, it's not meant to be. Then my husband points at an outfit hanging outside of a shop - it has a long golden skirt, a long periwinkle blouse and a golden bodice-like vest. I march over and try it on. Hmmm, I think. 3 pieces . . . maybe some of these would work outside of Halloween or the Renaissance Faire . . . and I buy the clothes on my back. I know that if I take them off, I'll chicken out, and I'll be really disappointed if I don't let myself live in this fantasy.

SO, here I am: tired, windblown and happy in my new and ridiculously expensive Elizabethan garb - the G version. (Outfit is capable of presenting neckline in PG, PG-13, and R styles.

I'm certainly glad to be in the reality of my pyjamas right now, but I am overjoyed to finally be able treat myself (dare I say inner child?) to a large serving of fantasy.

WRITOPIA

"Julia Child cut off one of her fingers while she was cooking," one of my Writopia students exclaimed gleefully during class today. We were having a conversation about the blogger Julie Powell, and her success eventuating with the movie Julie and Julia.

"Okay, put a cut off finger in each of your stories!" I said, wanting to get them back on track, back into the world of imagination. There are five fifth grade girls in this class, two writing realistic fiction, another two writing fantasy, and the last working with both satire and mystery.

"Really?" They say gleefully.

"Yeah - have fun with it - you can always cut it out later."

These kids are amazing. Last night three of them made their debut at a WRITOPIA reading at the Barnes and Noble on 66th Street. They spoke well, made eye contact, and were confident. They blew me away. And the thirteen other kids in different classes had the same level of passion.

It was luck and a snowstorm that brought me to this event - I had a previous commitment with Girls Write Now (see other posts!) and was at first very disappointed when I found out that it had been canceled. Yet it quickly dawned on me that I would be able to hear my student Writopians, and i adjusted my feelings.

I've been trying to wait to post about Writopia until I could find the time to interview my exceptional boss, Rebecca Wallace-Segall, but it has so seeped it's way into the fabric of my being, that I find myself mentioning it all of the time!

Rebecca founded Writopia in April of 2007, and I will shamelessly lift her bio from the writopialab website to brag about her. "Previously, Rebecca established the creative writing program at the Abraham Joshua Heschel Middle School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a consultant. While she was there, the program outperformed every other school in the city (including every elite public and private institution) in Scholastic's prestigious Art & Writing Awards competition. She was awarded recognition from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as an "outstanding educator" in 2006, 2007, and 2008. (Writopia won Scholastic's official endorsement in 2007.) Rebecca was also nominated by students and selected to be entered into the 11th Edition of Who's Who Among American Teachers."

I am incredibly honored to be a part of of Rebecca's team and am thrilled to help execute her vision of creating thriving communities of young writers. As with Girls Write NOw, I wish that I had something like this when I was growing up!