WordSisters

Tag: Writing

  • Saying Goodbye to My Books

    In preparation for a someday move, I’ve been parting with my books. Hundreds of them over the past three years. Most have been collecting dust for decades (I bought my house in 1989), while others are recent additions. Some are quick reads I started and finished while drinking a cup of coffee, while others took me more than a year to make my way through.

    Many are still on my “to read” list while others have been read and reread, by me and by the family and friends I’ve shared them with. Some were gifts, though most were bought by me at local bookstores or while traveling.

    One reason I have so many books is because the upstairs of my house, which once belonged to the owners of a local used bookstore, is a 45- by 15-foot half-story lined with—no surprise—bookshelves, 150 linear feet of them, plus three standalone bookcases.

    Although I’ve loved owning my books, some of which date back to my years as a college English major, now that I’m on Medicare and beginning to think of moving, it’s time to let them go.

    But parting isn’t easy, in large part because I still treasure the stories they told, the memories they hold and the lessons they taught. There are books about saints that I read while in Catholic grade school, and books about the sea I read while in Florida on family vacations. There are books I used to motivate myself, and others I turned to for solace after the deaths of my parents.

    There’s a shelf of books that include autographs from people I admire and heartfelt messages from people who love me. There’s even one shelf dedicated to books written by people I know, and whom you may know as well: Marly Cornell, Kate DiCamillo and Cathy Madison to name a few. Plus, books by Natalie Goldberg, Mary Carroll Moore and others from whom I’ve taken a Loft class or gotten to know because of a writing workshop.        

    Just seeing the books brings back a flood of memories of the books themselves—the characters, the settings, the twists and turns of their plots—as well as where I was when I read them: while packed in the car with my parents and four younger sisters on our way to Florida for a family vacation, while taking college English classes, while flying to China, while spending a month on a Panama beach, while sitting bedside during my father’s final hours.

    Others such as How to Forgive When You Don’t Know How and Living Proof: Telling Your Story to Make a Difference home in on my desire to be a better person and to advocate for causes I care about.

    And, no surprise to anyone who knows me, there are also dozens of self-help books, many of which inspired me to write my own book, What Do You Really Want? How to Set a Goal and Go for It, A Guide for Teens.

    While I’ve treasured all my books, I’ve recently begun sending them back out into the world. I’ve donated hundreds to Rain Taxi, a local non-profit that sponsors the annual Twin Cities Book Festival, which includes a book sale. I’ve also put dozens in the Little Free Library down the street.

    Still others I’ve passed on to family and friends whom I hope will enjoy them—or learn as much from them—as I have. They range from true crime to travel guides, from books by (and about) artists to how-to books on everything from fishing and stargazing to tying knots and learning Spanish.

    And because I now do most of my reading on my phone thanks to the Kindle and audiobooks I borrow from the Hennepin County Library, my shelves are becoming empty.

    Thankfully I have one thing that will keep my book memories alive: the annual “books I’ve read” lists. I truly treasure these lists and the many fond memories they prompt of the nearly 2,000 books I’ve read since I started keeping track back in 1982.

    As author Italo Calvino has written, “Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life.” And although there are now far fewer books in my house than there were in the past, I hope you will always be able to see the important place they hold in my life.

  • The Blue Notebook

    I wrote my first novel when I was 10, in a royal blue spiral notebook I’m sure was meant for my math homework. The story was what you might expect of someone that age. The protagonist was an angst-ridden fifth grader whose family didn’t understand her.

    I have other notebooks from those days, mostly filled with bad rhyming poetry and rants about my sisters. But the blue notebook is gone. I think, but I don’t know for certain, that I destroyed it in a fit of frustration. This was long before Anne Lamott wrote Bird by Bird, and I understood the value and necessity of a shitty first draft. I just thought I was a bad writer because I couldn’t resolve the plot in a meaningful way. I was 10.

    Since then, I’ve written pages and pages, too many words to count. More bad, unpublished poetry. An op-ed about athletes getting more recognition than scholars that was published in the Midland Daily News when I was in high school. A speech that won an award from Optimist International.

    After high school I channeled my writing energy into professional writing: news releases, promotional copy, employee newsletters. I don’t remember much creative prose in the early days of my career, but most of my jobs involved writing.

    Years later, driving home from a family reunion in Barnesville, Minnesota, my two kids and my mom strapped in the back of our minivan, I decided to go to graduate school for creative writing. There I became the writer I always dreamed I’d be.

    I spent the next seven years learning about the craft I’ve loved since I was 10. I was introduced to Anne Lamott, Joan Didion, Janet Burroway, and a host of others who helped me learn that writing is a process and a passion. Sometimes the words flow easily and land on the page perfectly formed. Most of the time, however, it’s a wrestling match, moving words around until they strike the perfect pose or are pinned to the page in beautiful submission.

    Now, two decades later, I turn to Julia Cameron, who encourages me more than any of the others to just write. Every day. In a notebook. Longhand.

    ***

    I go to my local office supply store (some still exist post-pandemic, although my favorite has closed) and shop for two notebooks. I pick a college-ruled notebook for my daily pages. I want a different color for the novel I’m going to write. This will be my third novel if you count the abandoned manuscript from childhood. I rifle through the messy piles in the bins of the store searching for the perfect one. I stack the notebooks neatly back on the shelves, turning them right side out until at the bottom of the bin I find it. I can’t say why it’s “the one,” but it is.

    I clutch the two notebooks to my chest and head to the cash register. I lay the two side-by-side on the counter, marveling at the possibilities. The black cover will be for my morning pages. And the other—the one with the vaguely familiar royal blue cover—will hold the novel I’m about to begin.

  • Squirrels and Party Dresses

    October has a predictable rhythm in our home centered around visits from out-of-town relatives and birthday celebrations with the quiet drumbeat of Halloween building under the other excitement. This year the family has a tiny new trick or treater to help greet neighborhood kids. Somewhere close to this week pumpkins appear on our porch or in the yard, hopefully to last through October 31.

    Oak trees have not unloaded acorns this year which may be why the squirrels are treating our first batch of pumpkins like a grand buffet, digging through the flesh and dragging seeds out every hour of day or night. The fluffy tailed evil ones demolish any fun had in mixing and matching ghost pumpkins with long necked gourds around the classic Jack-o-Lantern designee. Foul combinations of hot sauce and vinegar with a generous dusting of hot pepper flakes appears to extend the squirrel vs people struggle until dew or rain washes away pumpkin protection.

    Squirrel battles added to an already full month. The huge event squeezed into the calendar is October 15 when we head to the regional Emmy awards dinner at the invitation of Pioneer PBS Postcard production team whose episode on 40 Thieves on Saipan has been nominated for an award in the Historical/Cultural/Nostalgia–Long Form Content category. Joseph Tachovsky is having adjustments made to his tuxedo and a new black dress hangs in my closet waiting for a night in the media world. If like other award programs, we’ll people watch while eating, doing anything until we know how the Thieves’ story fares. Pioneer PBS Postcards crew did an amazingly creative job. And they have an enviable record of earning regional Emmys. Fingers crossed.

    Book award programs usually attract people in interesting artsy or nice dress clothes, but television people pull on the sparkles and sophistication when honoring their best programming. Shopping for a party outfit changed the nature of typical autumn shopping for new long-sleeve shirts, a sweater or two, and a new pair of jeans.

    Forgetting the squirrel pumpkin conflicts, October looks like a good month.