WordSisters

Category: Creative process

  • On Being A Role Model

    13355524[1]Recently, while Mark Anthony Rolo was visiting the Twin Cities he stayed at our house. Mark Anthony Rolo is the nonfiction mentor for the Loft Mentor Series and offered to devote a Saturday working with the nonfiction winners. Since he travels from northern Wisconsin, I extended an invitation to him and his dog. Our house would also serve as a meeting place the next day.

    I’m sure that I told Antonio and Crystel that Mark is one of the Loft Mentors who’s working with me, but Crystel didn’t really understand until I said, “He wrote a book. It’s in the living room. The one with a picture of him and his dog Rock on the back cover.”

    She got the book. At that very moment, Mark was sitting by a fire we had built in the backyard.

    “That’s him? And that’s Rock?”

    “Yes.”

    6815689230_1497703279[1]Crystel loves books. Finally, it clicked that she had an actual living author right in her backyard. That was almost too much for her eleven-year-old brain to grasp.

    I was hoping, as any mother might, that this also elevated me in her eyes.

    Antonio and Crystel spent a lot of time playing with Rock, tugging and pulling and throwing. And, even though they could have left during the adult chatter around the fire, they didn’t disappear. I hoped that it was because they found us interesting, but truth be told, their electronics were banned for the weekend. So what else is a kid to do?

    Later that evening, Crystel couldn’t contain herself any longer and told me, in the presence of Mark, that she was going to write a better book than me.

    Mark making his mother's bread.
    Mark making his mother’s bread.

    Around noon the next day, she pulled me to the side in the dining room and said, “Are those people in there famous?” She motioned to our living room.

    I thought of the four of us, all mentorship winners, all wanting to publish a book.

    “Yes, they are,” I said. “They’re authors. They’re going to publish their books.”

    That evening, long after everyone had gone, Crystel asked if she could read Mark’s book. “You’ll have to ask Mama Jody. I think she’s reading it.”

    “Sorry, I’m reading it, Crystel,” I heard from the other room.

    On Monday when she came home from school, she asked if she could take Mark’s book to school the next day. She had told people that a famous person had stayed at her house and she had the book to prove it.

    Lately, Crystel has begun to ask, “Can I work on my book now?” And then she brings her computer over to where I’m writing and she writes with me.

    This Saturday, she’ll meet another famous person, Ellen Shriner, my WordSister partner.

    9780985981822_p0_v2_s600[1]Ellen is reading at SubText Bookstore. Contributors will read from Holy Cow Press’s anthology The Heart of All That is: Reflections on Home.

    You’re all invited to the reading — 7p.m. on Saturday.

    I love being surrounded by famous people and that my daughter wants to be one too.

  • Where Are You Most Creative?

    Some writers may be able to write anywhere—but I’m not one of them. I have a few key requirements:

    I need to be assured that I’ll be left alone for a while.  If the house is full of family who might pop in at any time with a question or request, I have trouble focusing on the scene in my head that I’m already struggling to envision. I’m easily distracted and soon I’ll wonder about whatever I was asked—if they’re going to Target, will they remember to buy milk? Equally distracting is the peevishness I’m likely to feel—really? Can’t I even be left alone for an hour? That’s why writing before everyone is awake often works or writing when my husband is the only one in the house.

    The place doesn’t need to be perfectly quiet, but I can’t listen to music.  It’s too interesting and soon I can’t hear the words inside my head. Ambient noise is OK, though. The dull roar of a coffee shop is fine. The sound of my husband practicing guitar doesn’t bother me. People laughing or kids squabbling in the distance barely register.

    Physical comfort matters. If I feel a chilly draft or sweat trickles down my back, I’ll lose concentration. Similarly, if my chair is uncomfortable, a niggling twinge will gradually become an insistent backache. At that point, I’m done.

    But aside from these basic features, some places simply have a better vibe than others. Some times it’s history. If I’ve written well and easily one place, I’m apt to go back to it. And usually there’s some appealing quality of light—bright daylight that energizes and cheers me or cozy lamplight surrounds and comforts me.

    I’ve returned again and again to these places:

    P1030545Lebanon Hills Park, 15 minutes from home – Halfway down the hill overlooking the lake, I set up the lawn chair that lives in my trunk during the warm months. I bring my laptop, a bottle of iced tea and a snack, and I’m set for a few hours. When I need to stare into space, the lake shimmers before me. Sunlight filters through the trees, and periodically as partial shade turns into full sun, I slide my chair out of the sun. I’ve written and revised large chunks of my memoir here.

    My bright back porch in warm weather and my sunny family room in cold months.

    Most coffee shops  . . . as long as I won’t run into anyone I know!

    Where does the muse find you?

  • The Loft Mentor Series: Navigating the River Together

    Mark Anthony Rolo
    Mark Anthony Rolo

    I had competed to be a Loft Mentor Series participant for many years, but now that I had been selected as a 2013-2014 Mentor Series Winner, a ‘so what’ attitude misted over me. I hate to even admit it because it sounds as if I didn’t care that I’d won. I did care. That’s why I paddled like heck against the wind and upstream to reach my destination. Now, that I had won, I pulled my paddles into the canoe, and drifted into the eddy.

    Winning hadn’t changed me. My circumstances hadn’t changed. And, I had no idea if I would change during the Mentor Series. Nothing was promised.

    All I knew is that I didn’t have to paddle anymore. That was unbelievable to me.

    A potluck would be my introduction into the Mentor Series. I didn’t know any of the winners personally and I knew only one of the mentors, Mary Rockcastle.

    Mary greeted the others and me as if she were an ambassador to the program. She has a knack for making a person feel good. If her gig as Hamline’s MFA writing program director doesn’t work out, she could be an emissary. She’s comfortable discussing a wide range of topics from colonoscopies to colloquiums. How can you not feel at home? Whatever nervousness I had in joining this potluck dissipated quickly.

    Mark Anthony Rolo, nonfiction mentor, and Vanessa Ramos, Loft program manager, were the last to arrive.

    Vanessa’s smile and effervescent personality is visceral. I was drawn toward her.

    Waiting for Mark was nerve wracking. He was the person I would be working with for a year. I had read his book, felt as if I knew his past, which wasn’t that different from mine. But what if I didn’t like him? Do you like every writer you meet?

    Mark isn’t hard to miss. He looks like his book jacket cover. He’s big. And, his dog is big.

    What is it that some people possess that as soon as they walk into a room you feel at ease? It is almost as if their energy is forging the way and their physical self comes after. Mark has that characteristic.

    Right away, I could tell Mark was accessible.

    Mark Anthony Rolo and Rock
    Mark Anthony Rolo and Rock

    He didn’t put on airs that he was different from anyone in the room, and he had done his homework. He knew what piece of writing belonged to each of us. I made a quick note to myself to get my paddles in the water because I was about to be left in the eddy while he and others traveled on. I hadn’t read anyone’s work.

    All of a sudden, I knew what the Mentor Series was about. It was about learning, supporting, and paddling to the next marker. People who could help me get there surrounded me. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t going against the wind. I wasn’t going upstream. Instead, I was embraced by other canoeists and we could navigate the river together.