Art Department Rules

 

Sister Corita Kent and John Cage developed these rules. The list above was hand lettered by Lisa Congdon. Check out her post here.

I love this:  "The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something."

Wait Watchers

 

Aware that strangers often make fun of her, Haley Morris-Cafiero created a series of self-portraits shot in public in which people in the background are laughing, pointing, or staring. I heard about her work through this article. Here is how I interpret her project: she transformed painful scenarios into art. She made herself vulnerable. And she is definitely stimulating a dialogue about weight (check out the comments).

Joy

This scene is from an upcoming movie called Big Easy Express. The documentary follows several bands traveling by train from San Francisco to New Orleans. In this clip, Mumford and Sons are playing with the Austin High School marching band.

 

 

This is some joyous music. And someone said of Big Easy Express: this tour is bound for glory. What a great motto.

Ephemeral Beauty

 

The photo is “Nimbus” by Berndnaut Smilde. He sets up the perfect conditions to create clouds indoors. Love, love the idea of having a puffy cloud overhead. “I’m interested in the ephemeral aspect of the work,” he said. Check out more about his work here.

October Challenge Results

I realized I never reported back on my October challenge. I wrote almost every day, and that resulted in finishing a short story and my novella.

I also spoke with the editor about the original short story I submitted to her. I confessed that it had been so long since I’d worked on it that it was feeling lifeless to me. So she’s considering the new short story in its place.

Here are the openers for both of the projects.

Casa Soledad (novella)

“This house was in the middle of a reno before it was put on the market,” Lauren said, double-checking the street address on her navigation system. The two of them were driving around a huge lot—almost two acres, according to the sales flyer. A tall stucco fence, crumbling and exposing stone in some places, blocked the view of the house, which was almost dead center on the property according to the map on the flyer. This was a house Marcy had insisted on seeing. It hadn’t been on the list her mother had put together for her.

the end; the beginning (short story)

“My face felt raw, scratched. I struggled to open my eyes. I propped myself up on my forearms. Waves broke against the shore, sucked back, withdrew into the ocean’s depth, and returned full force. I sat up. I was wearing a skirt I hadn’t seen (or fit into) since college. My shirt—soft, faded, and transparently thin in some places—was an old favorite too. Where had they come from? Stranger still, where was I? I didn’t live near a beach. At least, I didn’t think so.”

Make Good Art

 

 

"You have no idea what you're doing. This is great. ... If you don't know what's impossible, it's easier to do."

"If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that. That's much harder than it sounds, and sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine."

"I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work."

"Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn't wind up getting the money either."

"If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something."

"When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art."

"The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself, that is the moment you may be starting to get it right."

"The old rules are crumbling, and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules."

"So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would."

"Make interesting mistakes. Break rules. Make the world more interesting for your being here."

 

October Challenge

October is going to be an incredibly busy month, both at work and at home. So of course I want to set a challenge for myself to work on my writing and creativity in general. There's a reason I'm doing this. It's easy for me to get caught up in the grind, focusing on all the items on my to-do list, and forget the reasons I do what I do. It's also easy to take what I love for granted when I get in this mode. So this creativity challenge is a way for me to connect with writing, making things (whatever they may be), and living a creative life.

So this month I will try to do something that feeds that creative impulse every day. It might be taking a picture, visiting a museum, writing, cooking, whatever seems like a good idea.

To start me off, I will write a little about my fiction works in progress. If I can sneak in some time over the month, I'll work on these stories.

DISOBEDIENCE

This is a short story about a teenage girl and her mother who have run away from an abusive father/husband. They flee to South Texas and they have to decide what to do when the father finds them and asks them to come home.

Status: I submitted this to a journal several months ago, and the editors have asked for a revision. I'm taking a look at it, and I have a call scheduled with the editor at the end of the month to discuss it. Amount of revision is currently unknown. Depending on our conversation, I will decide whether or not to rewrite and to what degree.

THE END; THE BEGINNING

A strange story about the afterlife, though it's no afterlife I've ever heard of or read about. My main character is an atheist who finds herself frustrated by the environment she finds herself in. She doesn't believe in God, but her story has not ended with her death so she has to reconsider what she believes. 

Status: I've done a few drafts. I've gotten some feedback from readers and need to incorporate the changes. My guess is that this would take an afternoon or less to get to the next draft. Not a ton of work that needs to happen on this one, just need to make the time. 

DREAM HOUSE

This is a ghost/haunted house story set in San Antonio. I say story, but it's really a novelette. It's about 17,000 words.

Status:  This is currently the project I'm most excited about, but it's a little lower in the queue due to the amount of revision that needs to happen. I let Nate, my mom, and my mother-in-law read it. Now I know what's confusing, what readers are likely to have questions about, and have figured out a couple of scenes I need to add.

Here's hoping this month is a productive one!

 

Utopia, Texas

We took a little time off this past week to relax and spend time together as a family. We had talked about going somewhere cooler—Seattle or Colorado, maybe—but in the end I didn’t feel like getting on a plane with Liam yet. He’s at a difficult age for traveling in confined spaces. He’s old enough to be mobile and vocal and loud, but not yet old enough to understand that he has to stay put for a flight. Also he’s not old enough to be distracted by movies or books. He probably would have been okay, but in the end we decided to keep things easy and headed down to Utopia, Texas, about a three-hour drive south of Austin.

We stayed at Utopia on the River and it was pretty ideal for small children. We had a very short walk down to the river, where we explored rocks and fallen trees and water. Zoe loved to “go on adventures,” and Liam enjoyed throwing rocks into the river. For hours. We also had access to the pool and hot tub, and we alternated between the river and the pool almost every day.

There was a lot of “wildlife”—some domesticated and some wild—that the kids enjoyed seeing. Tons of hummingbirds, a flock of turkeys, horses, deer, Monarch butterflies (I think they’re about to start migrating south), and bats. The kids loved watching the hummingbirds and deer eat right outside our door.

We also took a day trip to Garner State Park. We started off the morning with a hike and probably chose a trail that was too ambitious for Liam. Many parts of the Crystal Cave trail were steep and challenging for us, and we had to carry Liam at the same time. We ran into two different families with older kids who said the trail was too much for them, so next time we’ll probably pick one of the easier ones. At least until Liam is a little surer on his feet. (It was challenging for Zoe, but she loved it.) We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in the Frio River, and we had a hard time pulling Zoe away.

One night we headed to the Frio Bat Flight where you can see the second-largest bat colony in the world. It was strangely calming to hear their wings and chirps coming out of the cave in waves. Similar to waves on the ocean (as strange as that might sound).

 

We had some debate about whether we stayed one day too long. But I’m off the opinion that you should get a little bit bored on your vacation. That means you’ve truly had time to relax and unwind.

And now, back to the real world.

 

Length and genre: what the heck is going on with my fiction?

I've written long and short; fiction and non; for publication/pay and for personal pleasure. Before kids, almost all of my fiction ideas were novel length. Before Zoe, I wrote a novel that I ended up shelving. After she was born and while she was an infant, I focused on short freelance work. Between Zoe and Liam I wrote the first draft of a second novel. But since his birth, I haven't been able to pick it back up. These work patterns are all very much tied to sleep.

Liam was born almost 18 months ago now (sheesh). Since then, I have written a few shorter pieces. Funny, because I hadn't written short stories since college. But at this stage in life (read: sleep deprivation), I don't have the attention span to hold all of the narrative threads of a novel in my brain. 

Some people have kids who sleep through the night consistently at six or eight weeks. I do not have this mythical kind of child. My kids start sleeping through the night more around 18-24 months. I wasn't a great sleeper either. My parents had to drive me around to get me to fall asleep until I was four or five years old, so relatively speaking, things could be worse. This isn't me whining about my kids' sleeping patterns. It just is what it is. My kids don't sleep, which means I don't either, at least not while they're infants/toddlers. There's a reason I wrote a draft of a novel after Zoe was two, and I haven't been able to pick it back up since her brother was born.

So I adapt and look for ways to keep writing. Not as frequently or as steadily as I'd like, but I'll take what I can get. I've written a flash fiction piece about the last two speakers of a dying language who refuse to speak to each other (around 300 words); a story about Santa Claus that was published last year (around 5,500 words); a short story about the afterlife (about 5,300 words); and an essay about art and writing (2,000 words). 

My short fiction tends toward the longer side. Many writer-types put the upper limit of a story at about 7,500 words. Recently, I got an idea about a haunted house, and I figured it would become one of my typical 5,000 words or so pieces. Longish, but still in the realm of the short story. So I started writing. And now the story is pulling a Jack and the bean stalk on me and sprouting. I'm at 10,500 words with about two scenes left to write. I say that, but I've thought I have only two scenes left to write a few times, and then I keep thinking of something else to add. This word count puts me firmly into novelette territory (the strange and interesting land between a short story and a novella).

The length started scaring me a little, and then I got excited. My stories are growing again! Maybe this means I will have the brain power to work on the novel soon. So my goal is to wrap up a draft or a few of this novelette (or whatever it ends up being), and then I'll dip my toes back into my second novel and see what happens. 

The other interesting factor (to me and probably only to other writers, if then) is that for most of my writing life, I considered myself a "mainstream" or a "literary" writer. My novel/stories were realistic and about things like relationships, life decisions, conflict, etc. However, my recent ideas are all genre-oriented. I guess they'd be considered speculative fiction. In the past couple of years (which coincides with my time as a mom), I've tackled Santa, the afterlife, and now a haunted house. The novel I want to pick up again is horror-ish. I have no idea what this means, but I'm having fun with the change.

Yard Transformation

When we bought our house, we had a 150-year-old (or so) oak tree that provided shade for most of our cul-de-sac. This is what our side yard looked like when we bought our house.

 

 

Our neighborhood has been hit hard by oak wilt, and the previous owners treated our oak for it. Sadly, it didn't work. The tree died and we had to have it cut down. As a result, that area was in full sun and the ground cover got fried over the long, hot summer. So then we had an ugly dead zone.

 

We called Zach from Yard Farm Austin, and this is what he and his crew did.

 

We're facing the opposite direction now, but I think you can tell what an awesome transofrmation it is. I'm looking for cobalt blue bottles to go on my new bottle tree.

 

Here's a close up of the circle.

 

I'm also looking for some awesome chairs and maybe a small glider to go in the circle for seating. I would love to find some like these (photo borrowed from Design Sponge's sneak peak of Penny de los Santos's house in Austin).

 

 

Hopefully I'll be successful on my treasure hunt. I can't wait to put the finishing touches on the awesome work Zach and his crew have already done.

 

Life Wisdom from People over 70

"I try to live life as it lives itself, rather than agonizing over making it more to my liking. Like the Stoics, I believe there’s a grand design for each of us; we simply have to let it take us along."

New York Times reporter David Brooks asked readers over 70 to send in essays evaluating their lives. These Life Reports are fascinating.

A Holiday Story from Me to You

Dear_Santa.pdf Download this file

 

In the spirit of the holidays, I'm sharing a story called "Dear Santa” with you. I wrote it a couple of years ago right after Christmas when I struggled with telling my daughter about Santa. I have no moral qualms about the idea; I like fables and myths and traditions. I just couldn't get the words out of my mouth when talking to my daughter. So I wrote about believing in something when you struggle with feeling ambivalent about it.

This story was the winner of a contest and is found in the On the Brink, Volume 2 anthology. If you want to support an indie press, buy the anthology here.

So here you go--a Santa story for adults. Hope you enjoy.

 

Refilling the Writing Well

 I’m reading “A Moveable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway and he talks about his writing routine, including how he would stop writing when he knew what was going to happen next so that the following day he could easily pick up where he had left off. He also said this:

“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

To get to that deep level of writing Hemingway is talking about, you need to spend sufficient time to drop down into the writing, to enter a state similar to meditation. I’ve been writing for a long time; I wrote my first story was when I was seven years old. But I have seldom had long periods in which all I did was write; I’ve almost always also been in school or working, which meant my natural writing flow and routine were interrupted and had to fit in around my life.

But there have been two periods when I was between jobs and able to focus solely on my writing. Both lasted about six-eight weeks. This was before I had children, so I was able to wake up, go to my desk, and work whenever and however I wanted. And this is what I learned about my “writing well.”

Other writers have used the well as a metaphor for where the stories and images and words come from. Because these things often feel submerged and brought forth or dug up in some way. But writing also feels like a muscle to me. During both of these concentrated writing periods, when I started out I produced less (four-five pages) than I did toward the end of those times (eight-ten pages). My endurance built up until I reached my natural, comfortable rate of production, which seemed to be in the eight-ten pages range.

Unlike Hemingway, I did not stop when I knew what was going to happen next, or not exactly. I would write an entire chapter/section during each sitting. I often knew what the next chapter/section was going to be, so in that sense I knew what was going to happen next, but I also liked the feeling of completion before I stood up from my desk. Eight-ten pages, in addition to being a comfortable amount of pages to produce, also corresponded to roughly a chapter for me.

There were a few chapters/sections that were longer than the others, 18-20 pages or thereabouts. And on those days I would push through to complete the writing, because for me it’s always better to get through a whole first draft and fix it later. If I stop part of the way through, as it seems Hemingway did, it is harder for me to reenter that dreamy/zone-like state.

Those few times when I wrote past my natural limits, it was fatiguing, the way running too long and pushing your body too far are fatiguing, only the exhaustion was in my mind and somewhere else. I guess that place was the well. I would feel empty for two-three days after a big push, and despite any will or discipline or intention on my part, I could not produce until I was filled up again. It felt a lot like muscle fatigue. And during those times I would read, work out, watch movies. Sometimes I could make notes, but I just could not write. I had nothing left in me.

So I think Hemingway is probably right that it’s smart to not empty the well, although I was always too scared to risk losing the thread of the chapter to stop partway. Maybe if I get another concentrated writing time I will experiment and see what it’s like to try his method.

One other thing I found interesting…once I was done with my day’s writing, and that usually was sometime between 12-3 p.m., depending on when I had started and how well the writing had gone, I would then go work out, shower, eat lunch, etc. And I would try to turn off my writing brain, think about other things. It was always when I was distracted (and most often when I was showering) that the perfect idea or solution to a problem I had encountered in the book would come to me. Maybe showers help refill the well too.

Sally joins the family

Zoe has made a new friend. We adopted this puppy today. She's 10 weeks old and probably a Schnauzer mix. She was found with her siblings in a box on the side of a road.

She and Zoe bonded right away. We thought about naming her Frida but Zoe says her name is Sally. I guess that's how these things happen.

So far Sally has shown a lot of patience and calm. We keep encouraging Zoe to put her down but so far it's a losing battle.

Best seat in the house

Zoe liked Foster the People and grooved on dad's shoulders.

This morning we are all tired. We'll see how much energy we have for the rest of the ACL weekend. Tonight has some of the best acts but I don't know if the munchkins can handle two days in a row.

It was our first outdoor festival with kids and we definitely learned a lot. And there were about 100 things that went well, better than we could have expected. But we were also plain lucky that the kids and fate conspired with us so we all had a good time. Nate and I are both a little bit nervous about our luck holding for another jaunt out to Zilker Park.

Ready for Halloween

She is ready!

Temporary Obsessions and Inspiration

I Tweeted about two recent temporary obsessions today and I wanted to write more about them. I go through these phases. I get enthralled with someone or something for a few days and then move on to something else. F. Scott Fitzerald, Anna Wintour, Shirley Maclaine, and Andy Warhol are some recent examples. These interests don’t make any logical sense. I will happen upon something and it catches my attention for a little while, that’s all. Some people would call that Something Shiny Disorder.

My most recent T.O.s are Jean-Michele Basquiat and Bill Cunningham. I was watching an Andy Warhol documentary and that led me to Basquiat. I then watched Julian Schnabel’s movie, Basquiat, and a documentary about Jean-Michel (both available on instant Netflix streaming and probably a few other places). I was intrigued by how he was plugged in to so many different communities in New York: visual arts, music, filmmaking. He ran with a crew who all seemed to believe that whatever they wanted to do, they could do. (Which also reminded me of Patti Smith’s memoir, Kids—is this disjointed enough for you yet?)

Earlier today at work, I was listening to some Ted Talks. This is one of my favorite things to do, to have something inspirational on in the background when I’m writing or editing. You get some pretty amazing cross-pollination that way.

I wish I could travel to New York and buy Bill a cup of coffee. But he seems pretty shy and would probably turn me down. I love how he has followed his obsession—fashion, beauty—and has given himself permission to document all the people and things he’s seen. (He calls it record keeping.) He doesn’t do this to get rich and he is not a celebrity whore. One of his favorite people to photograph is an executive assistant. He’s just doing his thing. He focuses on what draws his eye, whatever and whoever that is. And he said something that really resonated with me, along the lines of "If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do.”

All of the people I’ve mentioned in this post have inspired me. Will these people or ideas come through in my work some way? Maybe. Sometimes inspiration is just that—a breath of fresh air. I admire that all three of these people tried/are trying to follow their own paths in making their art.

(Another random aside: Sugar’s column is about this same topic this week: “You’re asking me if it’s okay to be you. You want me to give you permission to write your truth with honesty and heart because doing so scares the living crap out of you. I’m here not only to give you permission, but also to say that you must. There is no other way.”)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do for a living, because I write for work, but I also write other things that I do not get paid for. And I will continue to create those things, regardless of whether or not I ever make money from them. And inspiration for that work comes from all sorts of places, from Sugar, from Bill, from Basquiat, from life. For instance:

·         Years ago a friend told me about her father, who would go for walks in his neighborhood with a rolled up dishtowel around his head as a sweatband and a pack of smokes rolled into his t-shirt. I didn’t know what I would do with this, but I knew I would use this image somewhere, someday.

·         I felt conflicted telling my daughter about Santa Claus. No matter how harmless I thought the tradition, no matter how much I actually enjoy the holiday, I just could not get the story out of my mouth. It wouldn’t come.

·         I saw a guy who looks like Santa Claus here in Austin and someone told me he works at Rockefeller Center during the holiday.

All three of these things came together in a short story. You never know where the temporary obsessions and random bits will turn up in your work, but if you give them time and space, they can grow.

I have the Santa story out on submission to a few literary journals. I hope it finds a home. Yesterday I saw Santa again, at the grocery store. I’m taking this as a sign that it will.

Wagon Fun

It's interesting...in many ways I'm now living the life I wanted when I was younger. Two kids, girl and boy. Husband, house, dog. It's good to remember to be grateful when you've been lucky and gotten what you've asked for. 

 

Recent Reading

Not my favorite in the series.

 

A little light on details and gossip. Actually Clementine and this memoir both seemed a bit thin to me, and I'm not referring to the length.

Art fun

A little messy but I like the end result.