How to Train . . .

The dragons and monsters that are in our collective unconscious have been weighing on my mind as I take my beach vacation. Maybe it is the sun that is asking about the shadow parts of myself. Or maybe it is the fact that I just went to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D with five kids.

One of my dragons for sure is the creative/destructive impulse. My wild imagination, and yet my capacity for tearing myself down. I've dealt with my shadow self for a long time and have her somewhat trained, but not fully - in fact, she can run rampant in either direction unless I harness her with craft or close family and friends - or other writers.

The other day when I blogged about NOT writing, Writer and friend Elizabeth Winthrop psychically patted me on the back with her comment on Facebook,"Léna, leave it all behind and remember, a writer is never not writing."

Thank you Elizabeth! I took Elizabeth's words to heart today as I went to the grocery store, jumped in the surf on the beach with my kids, sang songs with my daughter and her BFF in the sun. (And getting a wicked sunburn I might add - I'm on of those mom's who make sure the kids are all slathered up, but can't be bothered when it comes to myself.) When we ran out of songs to sing, the girls started to make up their own songs which were far more interesting: all about stars, love, family, and of course, GLITTER. Such wonderful creativity bursting from their four-year-old hearts!

Beautiful, right? And then the shadow side reared it's head at bed-time, the girls over-tired, but wanting to make-up songs again instead of the usual "book" ritual. "Me first!" they both cried. A coin toss seemed reasonable in the moment - leave it up to fate. My daughter's BFF "won" the coin toss, and my daughter handled it extremely well until her BFF started singing, whereupon she flipped out, completely enraged, the green-eyed monster overtaking her little body, shaking her with sobs.

She was able to work it out with a lot of adult help, and is now fast asleep, friends again with her beloved BFF as I write this. And I'm thinking about the movie title, How to Train . . . rather than How to Tame . . . As a writer, I need "to train" by practicing and learning the discipline. To tame means to domesticate, and in creative terms, if something is tame, I might not take it seriously or get anything out of it.

So yes I want to TRAIN my dragon instead of TAME it. I definitely don't want her fire to be extinguished.

A Road Trip and Sense Memory

Two days road-tripping from NYC to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, have left me wondering how on earth I'm going to blog and tie everything back to something writerly. I didn't read or write anything, but I listened to A LOT of music, which brings me to tonight's topic: SENSE MEMORY.

In my acting days, Music served as a prop to get me into a certain emotional state of being. Music would help me "remember"; music was my madeleine, (the cookie that aroused Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past) and access the past to be used for the present.

Writing is no different. I am a fiction writer, and I have to put my heart and soul into my writing for there to be truth in it.

Our playlist and forward motion in the car opened an undulation of feeling: Glen's Danzig and Campbell, The White Stripes, Michelle Shocked, Prince, Lyle Lovett, the B52's, Everlast, Iggy Pop . . .

I thought about the other week when I was struggling to finish the first draft of WIP. I had been having such a hard time with the ending, and having my two protagonists realize their feelings for each other was like pulling teeth. On a beautiful sunny day in the city, I went for a walk with my I-POD and played LOVE SONG by The Cure, over and over again. I got into this state of first love. The song reminded me of my boyfriend in Italy when I was 19, and how intense it was. I felt like I was 19 again - the best part of 19. Over the next few days I finished my first draft. Which, as you know, will only be the first of many.

Here in South Carolina, I had fantasized about listening to LOVE SONG and dancing on the beach by myself, but the feeling of young, impassioned love has been replaced with the grounded joy I feel sharing a life with my husband and children: but I know that I have access to my adolescence with the click of a button.

Wierd Al . . . And Me.

Last night's bed-time story for the boys was another chapter of The Return of the King: The Ride of the Rohirrim. Tonight we needed something funny, so we eschewed Tolkien for Wierd Al Yankovic and Youtube. Yes, Weird Al, king of musical parody from the late '80's and early '90's slowly turned our giggles into hysterics as we first watched the original Michael Jackson's BEAT IT (hilarious in and of itself) followed by the timeless EAT IT.

"Can we watch more mom?" they pleaded, and I complied. (Yes it was a joy to share something from my youth, but it also helped me procrastinate from blogging!) We watched Nirvana's Smell's Like Teen Spirit, and then Wierd Al's Smells Like Nirvana. Kurt Cobain is known to have said that he knew they made it after hearing Wierd Al's satire.

Here is my thought for tonight: What constitutes my Wierd Al parody, and how do I not take myself too seriously?

I'll admit that I was anxiously avoiding the blog because I thought I had nothing to write about - especially since I had been so effervescent in my last blog about finishing the first draft of my WIP, and that I was going to start revising and ripping it to shreds. I printed it out, but haven't had time to even look at more than the first scene. I could write a long list of all of my other obligations, but I won't bother, because I know that you have them too, I am not alone in this balancing act.

I have to take my writing seriously, otherwise no-one else will, but I also need to keep a sense of humor, and wear life like a loose garment.

So thank you Wierd Al, for inspiring this blog and for reminding me not to stress out about blogging, that it is meant to be a fun, social networking, spiritual exercise. (Now can you help me find time to work on my novel's next draft?)

In the Words of Miss Piggy: Go Moi!

Feeling Miss Piggy-ish today and full of moi, lit-life-speaking. Why? I finished a first draft of my Work In Progress this morning. I know, I've been saying that a lot, but this time it's TRUE. Now I get to my favorite part of this process: revision! This is what always makes me feel like a real writer. I have something tangible in my hands, and now I can get down to the bones of craft.

Yes, lots going on in my lit life today . . . After typing in my last word on WIP, I hopped on the subway to go downtown to meet my editor on EDGES for lunch. Margaret Ferguson and I hadn't seen each other in the flesh for a year. (The life of a writer is not constant contact with their editors (or agents), no matter how beloved they are. Unless everyone else is lying). She had suggested a restaurant called ALMOND, and I love getting out of my neighborhood and trying new things. I arrived on the early side, scooping a corner booth at this swank restaurant kitty-corner to the FlatIron Building where Margaret works.

It was dark. "Very romantic choice," I joked with Margaret when she came.

"Well," she sighed. "We all need a little romance." And we proceeded to have a wonderful time, talking about the ups and downs of the year, and dreams for the future.

Next up was meeting my Girls Write Now mentee Meg, at a Starbucks near you. We had said that we were going to work on our anthology pieces, but weren't in the mood. We promised each other we would get it done by Thursday, before Spring Break. I had my laptop with me, and the "bright" idea that since she's my mentee, I would subject her to my first draft, in all of its awfulness, so that she could see the first stage of a novel. I'm glad that we spent some time reading a few scenes together, because I realized that I didn't want to do that to her, no matter how flattering she was about my writing. I haven't even read it all through to see if it makes sense! I didn't want to burn her out, so I promised I would clean it up and show her more when it came to the second draft.

You would think that would be enough in the lit-life-day, wouldn't you? But capped it off by making my way up to Writopia to meet with a high school junior to work on her college essay. In the words of Miss Piggy: Go moi!

Short, Short Story . . . with a Twist

I had the pleasure of representing Writopia this morning with my talented and dedicated boss, Rebecca Wallace-Segall, at a Young Writer's Workshop in Scarsdale, New York. Scarsdale - famous not only for the diet, but for being one of the toniest suburbs in the world, and a place where education is revered (as it should be everywhere) at the top of its industry.

This was an impressive event: The Scarsdale parents had encouraged 500 of their 3rd, 4th and 5th graders, to sign up for a Saturday morning of creative writing workshops with 47 different teaching artists! Rebecca had signed us up to teach two consecutive workshops of 9 kids each, and to have each child create a "short, short story with a twist" in 45 minutes. Yes, a daunting task for anyone, but Rebecca and I have experienced firsthand the creative capabilities of children if in the right environment. We weren't going to give these kids blank paper and pens and tell them to write willy-nilly, oh no.

Rebecca and I were shown to our separate classrooms, and immediately rearranged the rows of desks into a circle. At Writopia, we are kid-centered and collaborative. We were each assigned a "mom" volunteer, (wearing a fetching green Young Writers Workshop tee-shirt) to take attendance, and the kids began to file in. I greeted them enthusiastically, introducing myself and Writopia, and laying the groundwork for the next forty-five minutes.

We all know about characters and objective, and the very basic elements of "story", so we don't need to go into that here. But how do you explain a plot twist to an eight year old? Simple stories end with the character either getting what they want, or not - a twist ending is that character meeting that objective in an unexpected way. When Rebecca and I had brainstormed, we came up with giving the kids a structure of a beginning and a surprise ending, and they could have twenty minutes to fill in the middle.

"It's Alice's birthday and she wants to have a sleepover, but her parents say no," I told them. How does she behave? What choices does she make in order to get what she wants? Does she give up? "We end with Alice getting what she wants, but her parents had planned the sleepover all along."

Most young writers (and old ones too) worry about copying and plagiarism: being original. This is a wonderful exercise to show how unique "voice" is, even when having the same framework of story. I guaranteed them that each would have a different story and that it would be fascinating.

A few of the third graders weren't able to start right away.

"I think they're too young," my classroom mom whispered.

I nodded to show that I understood her concern. "They can do it," I whispered back. "Give them a chance." I gave one boy a different objective of going to the zoo to get him started. Another boy spent five minutes looking to his upper left side, insisting that he was okay: "He's accessing the right part of his brain," I explained to the mom, and then he spent the next twenty minutes writing furiously.

All of them did, and all of them took pride in sharing their unique voices, with texture and depth, dialogue and detail. Of course some were more sophisticated, but that's beside the point. I loved this mom, who voiced my fears from a place of the best intention. I loved how it was proved again how children are capable of so much more creativity than we adults can fathom.

Bacchus, The Green Man and St. Patrick

Happy St. Patrick's day. Are you wearing green? Everybody in my family is wearing green today. Ah! - you say - the Roys must have all kinds of Irish going on. We do have a lot of British Isles in us: Scotland, Wales and England, and a bit of Ireland too. But we wear green especially because March 17th is also my son's birthday. He is eight today, and he loves green and clovers (and no, he does not use them to pontificate on Christianity's Trinity as St. Patrick did).

My friend Dorothy Papadakos has written a wonderful musical called Bacchus, and yesterday I received an e-card from her wishing me a happy holiday, in honor of Bacchus. From the card I learned that March 17th (and 16th) is not only St. Patrick's Day, but also the ancient Roman festival of Bacchus, Roman god of wine, madness and ecstasy (he is also the god of theater and agriculture, but of course my thoughts go straight to the divinity in madness and ecstasy.)

There is a god from the British Isles called The Green Man, similar to the Roman Bacchus in that he is an ecstatic fertility god, bringing new life at the spring equinox. Are these two related to St. Patrick? Why are we wearing green? Why are the streets filled with drunks on this particular day? These questions thrill me. My father, an Episcopal priest, always said that a second hand religion was no religion, and I learned to search for answers myself. My grandmother encouraged me to ask bigger and bigger questions. Reading Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth as an older teen began a journey of finding my own spirituality and constantly looking at different points of view, a quest that continues in my writing, as I find myself drawn to making otherworldly connections with my very real characters.

After Joseph Campbell I moved on to Carl Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which brings me back to my son and his almost primal urge to identify with the symbols of this season. When I was pregnant, his "due" date was March 28th, but I knew he'd be born sooner. "Any day but March 17th, any day but March 17th" I chanted. "Why?" my family asked. "Everybody will be drunk and I won't be able to get a taxi!" was my hormonal, irrational (Bacchanalian?) response, ignoring the possibilities that Campbell and Jung had shown me.

Eventually, I will share these books with my son and he can unravel the mysteries of Bacchus, the Green Man, St. Patrick, spring equinox and Easter too, and why it is he likes clovers and the color green.

Forgive me Father, For I Have Multi-Tasked

Multi-tasking is not something I am proud of, but is what I find myself constantly doing to keep my life organized and on track. For instance, at present I am sitting in on my son's violin lesson while I answer emails and attempt to blog, whilst thoughts of making school lunches and my daughter's readiness for bed invade my concentration.

I go back and forth between taking notes for my son's violin lesson and this blog, making a concerted effort to stay in one tense: the present. (A couple of days ago I wrote about my propensity for writing in a myriad of time zones. There. I just used the past tense. Oh well!)

Time! I can't seem to get enough of it: I'm fascinated by it, enslaved by it, just like everybody else in this perpetual-motion-forward, results-oriented world. No wonder I love reading books where my sense of time can be "lost", or that I confuse my tenses in my writing, and that I am drawn to writing as a means of making sense of the past, exploring the future, and finding out what I believe in the present.

Here's a cliché for you: If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, then you are pissing on the present. But writing teaches me that everything informs and builds on everything else! Why must I beat up on myself for multi-tasking and mixing up tenses? If I truly want to appreciate the moments I am really present, I need to give myself a break for being only human.

Let's make a pact: Let's celebrate all of it together, all of the moments of messy multi-tasking as well as the purely present moments. Let's go hog wild and forgive ourselves and each other for past mistakes.

Now, if that could only translate to finishing my novel . . .