Any day now...

...I'll be ready to sit and read, or enjoy a loaf of fresh bread, or settle down with one of the seven $1 DVDs I got at Harris Teeter, without doing mental wheelies and donuts about:

-teaching English in France (darn you, UNCW careers website, for raising long-dead possibilities!)
-the Sojourners internship
-what I would do with my couch, bed, books, &c in either of the above cases
-seminary/div school wheres and whens
-the one-hour Office that's coming on tomorrow. Holly's back!
-Christmas baking and how I can limit it to ingredients I have on hand and whether my modifications to an existing recipe will be successful
-whether it will still be this cold on Saturday when I cover a Christmas parade
-whether I should buy more socks or assume this cold snap will be over soon
-when I'm going to get my necklace fixed
-the yoga I should be doing
-the running that the cold keeps me from doing (oh, shucks)
-How I Met Your Mother season 4, which is seriously tempting me to drop the more grown-up and necessary work I've vowed to do
-this very blog
-the fatigue I've felt today and yesterday even though I got almost 8 hours of sleep each night and haven't exercised. I think cold is tiring, in part because I hunch and tense my shoulders and fists like crazy.
-plenty of other stuff on plenty of scales, from "where does that comma belong?" to "where do I belong?"

Bill said this morning that it's exciting, my having so many possibilities before me. I said I had hoped that would be over and I could sit back for a while. He said I guess God didn't have that in mind. While I have had a great few weeks at work, almost eerily so, it still doesn't feel like a long-term fit. There's too much tension in the rest of life, too many things changing course. And then this stupid France thing comes up (I'm talking thirty minutes ago) and muddies the waters even further. The deadline is January 1. The engagement would begin in October. I have no clue how many people apply or how hard it is to get, but I am demonstrably awesome at French. Unlike with seminary or some of the other possibilities, this feels pretty final, like if I don't do it this go-round I will not do it. The paperwork alone is enough to deter me if I don't feel a loud and clear call to go there. But my heart did truly leap within me when I saw the possibility, more than it has in a long time. Maybe that was the coffee.

Here I Am Again

Not exactly on my own, but back after such a glorious four days or so at Mom and Dad's house for Thanksgiving. I didn't do anything I didn't want to do! And I did a lot of stuff I did want to do, like watching Date Night and eating excellent food and walking around the neighborhood and reading old New York Timeses.

And then I came here. There were a lot of tears on the way back. It's the first time I've been upset to come back to Wilmington, and one of very few times I've not wanted to return to any place I've lived. It seems to mark the point where it's clear that a move is coming. Without Lyndsay here, and with Lindsey in an important relationship, with most of my school friends finna graduate and move on, with people talking about not having supper club and with too many other changes spinning me around, the town loses much of its sparkle. Sure, downtown is sweet, sure there's a selection of beaches, but with no one to enjoy them with, what's the point? Today, I'd rather rip off the band-aid and start over somewhere new than stay here and watch things deteriorate. Both options are pretty unpleasant, but the idea of something new has its familiar pull. So the relentless search continues, as the emotional and logistical sides of the problem take turns being front and center. Mostly I just want to lie down.

In Date Night, there's a scene where Tina Fey tells Steve Carell (her husband) how hard it is for her to handle everything, how exhausted she is with all of her responsibilities. You've seen twice how she asks him to do something and then decides it'd be easier to do it herself. So during this conversation, Steve says, "You know what would make some of those things a whole lot easier? Me." He says she doesn't trust him to do things right, so she takes everything on herself instead. And he may use too much jelly on the PB&J, or he may buy the wrong kind of toy, but he says he will surprise her. And he genuinely wants to do these things and anything else he can to help.

At the time, it was a sweet scene and a pointed observation about how many couples operate. But later, as I thought it over, I realized I'm just like Tina Fey's character in that way. There's a way things should be done, and I'm the one who has it figured out. Other people might mess things up, but more importantly, I am resistant to letting even God handle things for me. I'm so insistent on my system that I leave no room for any aid, even from the best helper in the universe. So now I'm at that wretched-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach point where I know what change I need to make but am not at all excited about making it. Because it involves change, not just changing circumstances which can sometimes be fun, but changing myself. Changing who I am and how I think and feel. It also requires trust, which I've almost given up on ever having or understanding. And humility. And a dozen other qualities I don't even know I need.

So here's to holidays like Thanksgiving where family and love and food and fun can help us forget how much work we have ahead of us. To quiet car rides that help us remember. To towns like Wilmington where the friend parade never stops, and to the future, where we'll at least have another day's worth of experience to help us figure things out.

Weekend Bonanza, part 5: Seagrove

I covered a sheriff's department meeting for work at 8 a.m. and wrote it up, then headed to the middle of the state for a weekend of relaxation. I had a grand vision of spending all of Saturday reading, maybe watching something on TV, and generally having nothing to worry about and nowhere to be. Friday night would be the opening gala for the Celebration of Seagrove Potters.

But first, I wanted to see a bookbinding exhibit at UNC-Greensboro. I called my friend Sims, who lives somewhat near there, after seeing a sign that I always see that said "Sims Pottery." Sims' first name is Margaret, and she hates it. Her middle name is Sims. So I called to see if she wanted to see this exhibit with me and have a cone at the Yum-Yum. Alas, she was at work, but she invited me to see Harry Potter with her on Saturday or have dinner. I squirmed at losing my grand vision of relaxation, but it's not every day that you get to see Philip and Sims (or anyone like them!), so we said we'd talk later.

The bookbinding exhibit was neat, but it was a much smaller deal than I thought it was. It was in a room where people were working, and it was sort of like, "Oh, that, yeah, that's over there." And they were all leather-bound for posterity, not handmade in the way I had expected. I was glad I went. Then I had my child-sized Yum-Yum cone, which was the perfect amount, and got on the road to the storied house on Badin Lake.

Mom had just gotten there and was turning on the water. I helped her unload some slate she'd bought at the slate mine on her way there, and then I swept the leaves off the dock and we talked about law enforcement and how I feel much more tender-hearted toward them and thankful for them than I did before starting at this job. Not that I was like, "cops suck," but I took a rather cynical view before.

We got to Luck's bean cannery for the gala (I love that word), and there were fewer cars in the parking lot, and the music inside was too loud at first. Someone told me later that the parking was freer because they hadn't let potters park there this time, which made me feel better because I was worried there were fewer folks. Mom bought a batter bowl by Vernon Owens and some tiny vases by Michael Mahan and probably some other things. I saw a lot that I liked but nothing I needed, and I was perfectly content to just soak up the beauty. I lined up a jeweler, Jennie Lorette Keats of JLK Jewelry, to make my wedding ring. Now just to nail down every other aspect of my wedding, including the dude....

We came back tired and happy and made tea and slept til 10 the next morning. We listened to Car Talk and Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me, then went for a walk and came back and had frozen pizzas for lunch. I read for a bit and then left to meet Sims and Philip in Asheboro, which was about 40 minutes for me and an hour for them. Clearly we were not as close as we thought. We talked about almost nothing but Harry Potter as they debriefed themselves from the latest film. The restaurant was Sagebrush, which was neat because they served the water in mason jars and gave you a bucket of peanuts as an appetizer. My food wasn't very good, but I was happy to be with them. We walked across the parking lot to the mall and got a dessert at the Books-a-Million cafe, which was surprisingly good. Then we walked around the mall a bit, going in the pet store and the toy store, and said goodnight. A very good time with very good friends.

Sunday broke my expectations in every way, most of it unpleasant. I meant to leave at 9 and got on the road at 10. I wanted to be back in time to have Zaxby's before Disciple because it was having a fundraiser for one of our ministries, but I had to go straight to church. I wanted to spend the afternoon reading there before youth group, but it there was a youth activity I didn't know about and a meeting I didn't know about, so I took part in those instead. Youth group was good and did not mess up my expectations for it. Then I thought we were going to have our not-small-group-anymore-just-hanging-out meeting at someone's house, but they had decided to go out to eat, which I did not have the money for and didn't want to do. So I was very grumpy for the start of that, and I think they could tell, but once I had resigned myself to sitting and watching them eat, I was happy to be with my friends. Until Lyndsay said she's moving to Colorado, but we agreed not to talk about that anymore beyond the basic announcement. 48 hours later, I have not let it sink in, nor do I want to. All I can say just now is, Colorado, you're in for a treat.

When I got home, hoping to sleep in the next morning, I had an email asking me to cover something at 9 a.m., meaning I had to leave the house at 7:30. God was definitely telling me to kiss expectations goodbye. Or it was just a kind of sucky day. Probably a bit of both. But the question is, without expectations, why do anything? And where's the line between healthy expectations that help you plan things, whether it's an evening or a life, and harmful ones that set you up for disappointment? I'm still smarting a little from the relentlessness of that day and trying to process what role expectations should play in life.

The next and final installment in the Weekend Bonanza series is, of course, Thanksgiving! My expectations are already high and fully formed. ;)

Weekend Bonanza, part 4: Pilgrimage

Friday morning, I was going to pick up police reports (I realize this is the third mention of them in as many posts on this blog, but please don't think they're taking over my life. It's just that I do them at the end of the week, and the posts are always about the weekends) and I saw a car in front of me go off the road, like way off the road. I wasn't sure anyone else had seen it, so I stopped on the shoulder, grabbed my AAA card and phone, and stepped gingerly toward the ditch. The driver, still inside, asked how bad it was. Not very. The bumper was pretty much falling off, but it looked like it would still be very much driveable. The driver, a woman my age or younger, got out and tried to push the car out of the ditch, then decided to have it towed. She told me she'd been working 80-hour weeks in Jacksonville at a tattoo shop, living in Wilmington and driving back and forth, and she'd fallen asleep at the wheel. Poor thing. I told her not to work 80 hours anymore. She was physically unhurt and wasn't even crying. Five other people stopped, but the situation seemed pretty much under control. The woman had called her mom, who was looking up towing options, and there didn't seem to be much else we could do. I asked if her phone was fully charged, which it was, and she hugged me, and I went on.

The point of that story was, that's plenty of excitement for me in one day. On my way back, I got a call from my roommate, who was freaking out about something out of our control, and that added a lot to the day's excitement quota. We've dealt with it now, but it made me late for leaving for Pilgrimage, a conference-wide Methodist youth event in Fayetteville. Luckily I was only late by a few minutes. I jumped in the van with Jared (associate pastor) and three guys and tenth-grade girls, and we were off.

I couldn't have asked for a better van of folks for the weekend! They were always in the vehicle on time and never short on entertaining observations, and Jared is so dear and insightful, to the point that many of his questions and statements make me mad with their unnecessary insightfulness. I had a great time with those kids all weekend.

The speaker was Bart Campolo, Tony Campolo's son. He was very entertaining and thought-provoking, for the kids and for the adult leaders. He talked about loving people like Jesus loves, something we all need to hear.

Last year, they had some hip young pastors talk about their calling for a few minutes and say you could go to one of the tables if you might be called or interested in ministry. I remember it from last year because I wanted them to be quiet and let me go on my merry way. I was actually very curious, even semi-anxious, about whether they'd have something like that this year. Of course, they did, on Saturday morning. Different individuals, same setup. They told you to go to the Board of Ordained Ministry table to pursue those ideas of ministry, etc.

So I went to the Board of Ordained Ministry table, and I ended up talking to the guy who took Jared's place at his last church when Jared came to Pine Valley. So we talk a little about seminary and ministry and calling, and I cry a little and we pray and I cry more, and I don't remember a lot of the conversation but I do remember that Nathan said, "Just from talking to you right now, I think you're called."

Whoa. "Okay, thank you."

On the way back to my seat, I felt every possible emotion about that statement. It was the most clear-cut thing anyone had told me about the possibility of a call to ministry for me, which I've been exploring for a long time. I can resent it, enjoy it, be flattered, get excited, remain confused, go wide-eyed and dry-mouthed with fear, abhor the thought of so much change at once, or any number of other options. For a few minutes, I even rationalized it away with the idea that he probably says that to everyone, or thought I wanted to hear it, or had some reason other than truth for saying such a lovely and brutal thing. But the one thing I can't do is ignore it. You don't get a gift like that every day.

So I sort of dream-walked my way through the rest of the weekend as I processed that and cared for kids and kept things going. And I'm still dream-walking a bit. Still very confused about timing and specifics. But I know now that I am going to seminary someday, and I am leading God's people someday, and I'm not going to feel this tension between career and personal life someday, and someday I'm going to see how my little jigsaw-puzzle life fits together and how it joins at the edges with everyone else's, and I'm going to continue to know without a doubt, like I know now, that I'm in the right place, doing the right thing, following where God leads, letting the questions be questions and enjoying the rest while it lasts.

Weekend Bonanza, part 3: Asheville

I hustled on Monday through Wednesday to afford Thursday and Friday off (the 4th and 5th). Wednesday was especially jam-packed and fun because we went to the Little Dipper for fondue, then Dusty and Ace, then back to my house for a brief celebration of James Thurber and to enjoy his cake recipe. It was the first time I'd made a layer cake, and possibly the first time I'd made cake from scratch. It turned out very well! We also had some really good wine that Aunt Kim had given me. It was sparkling but red! Total pleasant shocker. I got to meet one of my friends' dad and grandmother, who were delightful. After everyone left, I worked on my articles until later than I'd like to admit.

Thursday morning, I stopped in Beulaville on the way out to take a few pictures, then I was on my way to the mountains! I hadn't really put two and two together and realized I was going to the mountains in the fall, which made the leaf colors all the more exciting. I met John at the pizza/brewing place and had a beer before dropping my car off at his house. It's an awesome house! Basically a large and inviting log cabin with plenty of room for everyone, including two dogs and two drum sets.

The percussion ensemble concert was fun, and they're very talented. We met up with a cousin and her wife for a late dinner, and almost everyone had pumpkin beer. John's girlfriend is delightful.

Friday morning, I went to Malaprop's (swoon) for a quick coffee and then we all went to Twelve Bones for lunch. Let me tell you about Twelve Bones. I had only had ribs at Medieval Times and at a home cookout, but now, now I understand what a rib is destined to be and why people want to eat them. 12 Bones has all sorts of sauces that remind me a bit of Flaming Amy's combinations, like blueberry chipotle and ginger something and you know, fruit + spicy. They had your basics too. On the side, I had jalapeno cheese grits and mac & cheese plus the standard cornbread. It was an outstanding meal.

I went back to Mom and Dad's house for the night to break up the trip. We watched the Thursday night shows while I typed up police reports. The next morning, we went to the Methodist church's fall bazaar for breakfast, and I saw some nice jewelry and they bought our holiday desserts to freeze. I left mid-morning and took some photos in Richlands for work on my way back. The weekend was a whirlwind but very much worth the trouble, and I was so glad to see my family as well as spend some time in Asheville. Every time I go there, I'm scheming to stay. Didn't come up with anything feasible this go-round, but I'll keep working on the plan.

Weekend Bonanza, part 2: Bible Study Training Workshop

I got home from a work meeting a little before (or after?) five on Friday and typed up an article and a police report real quick, then hopped over to Port City Community Church for a somewhat mysterious Bible study training workshop. It was Friday evening and all day Saturday. It turned out to be very fun and informative. A lot of work, but definitely the good kind. And it involved colored pencils! We learned how to observe, interpret, and apply the meaning of a biblical text.

First, we found out the hard facts of the book: who wrote it and for whom, why they wrote it, where it took place, when, etc. Then we went through and marked every instance of first-person pronouns or the author's name, and second-person pronouns or the recipient's name. (This was for a letter. I guess some of it would be different for history and other types of books.) Using those markings, we compiled lists of information about the author and the recipient, in this case Paul and Titus. So each time one of them was mentioned, we'd write down what it said about him. Pretty cool. We did the same thing later with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. We also used different colors to mark key words, time indicators, comparisons, contrasts, and more. The teacher was very enthusiastic, and the process is more fun than it sounds like. It was so different from the way I often read the Bible, which is much like the way I read other books but with more underlining. Reading with this new technique was like opening a jar with a rubber pancake thing to help you grip, while regular reading is like opening it with just your hands: it can be done either way, but one makes you feel stronger and gets the job done better. It is very time-consuming but very worth it.

So that's this weekend's bliss blitz installment. Up next: Asheville! Preceded by the Thurber bash and baking a cake which I don't think I've ever done from scratch, and Dusty & Ace and fondue and a whole lot of work in order to make Asheville happen. Bring it all on! I have a lot to look forward to.

Bonanza Blitz of Weekends, part 1: Lay Speaker Training

It was not at all what I expected. Perhaps in part because of my Creative Writing background (side note: I love using "background" in that way, perhaps in part because of my pretentious background), I thought I'd be gettin' with other wannabe preachers or confused folk who love God and read the same book I did that said do lay speaker training because it might help you discern some things. I thought we would make on-the-spot mini-sermons and get or give feedback on them, or maybe see some sample ones on video or read about them. Do's and don'ts of public speaking/preaching, combined with a workshop, is what I thought it was.

But no. It was more like a rundown of Methodists vs. the world, not a combative "vs." but one that points out how we, in our stated-and-written-down beliefs, are different from, say, Presbyterians, which made me none too comfortable, and surprise, made nothing any iota clearer. It was very educational and pretty fun. I met some cool people. But I did not learn anything about speaking or preaching. They ought to re-title it "Being a Good Methodist Training."

I must tell you that I did advanced lay speaker training without having taken Basic, which everyone said was OK even without my asking them, probably because they could tell from my voice on the phone that I'm way too smart for Basic. That may have had something to do with my off-the-mark expectations; like, for instance, maybe basic lay speaker training covers some of the things I thought I'd learn. But we won't know that 'til the spring, if ever.

Nothing is OK with me lately. Too much is changing at once, and everyone else seems all but oblivious to it. Our small group is "ending," as one member so bluntly put it. Too many people are moving away, or getting ready to, or hoping to. Having roommates stresses me out, and my job is as bad as ever. I'm helplessly watching yet another once-hopeful romantic prospect fizzle and die. Basically, I can't name one part of my life that's not in flux, and it ain't no eustress either. I can handle some pain if I learn from it, but I don't feel like I'm learning. I can handle change in one or two sectors at a time, but I feel like I'm playing the least fun game of Whack-a-Mole ever. You get one crisis taken care of (or at least learn to live with it), and another comes up. You plug a hole in the stern, and another leak springs in the bow, and another, and another, and they're coming faster. Those games, they start out slow, but that's just a mean and deceptive trick. You always lose.

I know the right answer is to give the game over to God, or trade in your boat for his, whichever metaphor we're going with. But I'm so attached to my way of doing it, and I don't know enough about his way or what to expect. I'm pretty sure nothing is going to get better until I trust him enough to hand over something, anything. But that feels really far away. So here I am, going down with the boat, but isn't it a beauty? And I get to be the captain.

Bliss Blitz

The next six consecutive weekends are going to be filled with the best kind of busyness: travel, holidays, learning, and general breaking-of-routine. At first I was reluctant to fill in the last couple of spots, but then I thought, no way. These are all things I want to do, and as my new-mom friend Stacey pointed out, I may not be able to act this way if I ever have a kid, or even just a different kind of job.

Let's take a look:
October 23 (Saturday): Lay speaker training for the United Methodist Church district
October 29 and 30 (Saturday and Sunday): Bible study training workshop through Port City Community Church
November 4 (Thursday, but I will do my utmost to stay all weekend): my brother's percussion ensemble concert in Asheville. Both of my parents will be there, and I was just reminded that a cousin is in Asheville, too! This one depends on my ability to get all of my stories written by Wednesday so I can check out on Thursday morning. I am feeling not certain but very hopeful.
November 12-14 (Friday-Sunday): Pilgrimage with PVUMC youth
November 19-21 (Friday-Sunday): Celebration of Seagrove Potters
November 25 (Thursday, but again it will be a weekend-long affair): Thanksgiving

And that's just the weekends! I am also going to see Banksy's first movie, a Halloween puppet show at the art museum featuring a story from Ecotone, Dusty and Ace AKA Philip and Clyde, fondue, Writers' Week, my James Thurber party, a thesis reading by Erin Sroka and Laurin Penland, a reading by John Sullivan, and who knows what else is going to come up during that time! Sometimes it frustrates me that all the fun seems to happen at once. Then when it's going on, I sure don't mind.

And ideally, this will give my blog somethin' to talk about. So stay tuned to see just how blissfully exhausted I get, and how much I learn, and how much I enjoy my six-week powerhouse of fun.

My favorite?

I hesitate to use the word "favorite" in most circumstances, or else I water it down and change the literal meaning so that all I'm saying is I like whatever it is. When asked my favorite color, I say, "It depends on what's being colored." A wall favorite color is different from my car favorite color or a shirt favorite color. Same with food, movies, music; it all depends on my mood and the situation.

But I think I have a favorite writer. Reading James Thurber feels like sleeping in one's own bed, the smell of one's own home, something that sets things right, something comfortable but not in a complacent way. I feel so fully "me" when I'm reading him. I cannot put my finger on why.

We had a dry spell for a while, but a few days ago I started reading People Have More Fun than Anybody, a book of never-before-collected items to celebrate 100 years since Jim's birth (published in 1994). There's a cake recipe from him in it, which to me cries out for a party. And thus it is. I'm celebrating his birthday early because it's in December and no one wants an extra party then. Making the cake and giving everyone a chance to read their favorite things by him. I haven't had a party in a long time!

This particular book is all items that would otherwise be pretty much lost, things from magazines or papers that hadn't been put in book form ever before. And that may be why I'm so impressed: he wrote these things as little ephemera to make extra bucks, not to be literarily lasting or meaningful, but oh how he is! It's like if someone collected the articles I'm writing in 84 years, and they stood the test of time. One thing Michael J. Rosen's introduction points out is Thurber's ability to refer to his time--fads, celebrities we don't know about anymore, sundry pop culture items--and still be relevant today. He mentions these things, and they're confusing briefly or require an editor's note to explain them, but the way he talks about them and the things he says are still enjoyable to read. Basically, we don't have to know what he's talking about to get what he's talking about. That's pretty amazing to me.

Also, I may have known his eyesight failed as he aged, and I certainly knew he did sweet cartoons, but I never put the two together. Apparently he was drawing in the dark some of the time, which is not hard to believe when you look at the drawings but is nonetheless impressive. Oh, and Matisse called him the best artist in New York.

More

To continue the saying-nice-words thing, "extravaganza" is another of my favorites.

Our Nooma video today was about how death is the engine of life. I knew about the seed-has-to-die-to-become-the-plant thing, but I hadn't thought about how food must become dead before it can nourish us. Good stuff. We ended up talking more about image and ego and how much we try to be a certain way and why. One of my friends mentioned cleaning before people come over, and I started thinking about one of my best friends growing up. She had two sisters and a dog, and their house was always a gracious and fun mess. I don't remember ever seeing her kitchen counters because there were always stacks of dishes. It was one of my favorite places to be! Her dad had the first DVD I ever saw (Stigmata--didn't watch it, just looked at the disc itself), and he dreamed of having a motorcycle. One time, I went over there for New Year's, and we did snap-n-pops right on the kitchen floor! Inside! That was also the first time I saw What Not to Wear. And there was almost always something chocolate to enjoy at their house.

So the lesson (for me) is, cleanliness is overrated. I never went to someone's house and wanted to come back because it was so clean. I want to come back because I love them, enjoy their company, and feel at rest there. Personal hygeine is another story, but at least as far as spaces go, there's a lot to be said for a welcoming disarray. At the very least, your guests are never afraid of messing something up.

Excellent Day

This morning I slept about an hour later than usual and felt it pleasantly in my joints upon waking. I visited Karen at the Little Chapel to pick up a book I'd loaned her. She told me I'd lost weight! I always love seeing her.

I went to the Poplar Grove farmers' market to buy tomato juice from Alexis and Betsy, but they gave it to me for free because they liked the article I'd written about them. They had framed a copy! I also picked up a Pink Lady apple and two sweet chili peppers from a booth that had almost a whole table of just peppers and another of just apples, plus fragrant muscadines, blueberries, eggplant, and more. The peppers were individually priced, which pleased me for some reason (as in not by the pound or ounce).

I then stopped at a thrift store and, after much trying-on, bought only books: a Hafiz/Hafez volume and Miss Rumphius. There was a Little House on the Prairie cookbook, but I was happier to glance at it than I would be to own it.

My assignment for the day was to cover the United Methodist Women's Game-a-rama. They were so sweet and insisted that I eat from the buffet. Shockingly, I was happy to see the veggie plate and gleefully took carrots and broccoli to dip in the ranch dressing. I got three or four little desserts and after a couple of bites, thought, "I don't really want to finish this." Who am I? It was a great feeling, to eat good things and skip less-good things not because I felt obligated but because that was what I wanted. I never. (I didn't actually skip the desserts because I was worried about someone seeing me throw away their own creation. And because I was just so incredulous that I fell back on habit. Or something.)

I went in to the office after that and got some interesting work news about a possible change. I saw on email that Harris Teeter's baguettes were half off, so I went there after work to pick up one of those and a few other things. Came home and read, then I went to have FONDUE at the Little Dipper! I can hardly think of anything I'd rather do than dip things in chocolate and cheese, especially in such rich and relaxed company.

Now, to make some more days like it. Go!

Hundredth Post!

Sometimes when I'm by myself, I say nice words out loud. I usually start with "striations" and "cumulonimbus."

A Pretty Sweet Week

Here I am chillin' at Panera of a Saturday morning, on the first day in recent memory that I haven't had anything scheduled. I do have to write an article, but it's a fun one and doesn't feel burdensome. Later, I'm going to run and shower for the first time in at least a week (the run, not the shower) and make granola and green tea and stretch and maybe call Lyndsay for movie/show-on-DVD chill time. This is what Saturdays should be!

So the article I'm (ostensibly) about to write: a response to Shadowlands, the play based on C. S. Lewis's late-in-life romance. I didn't know a dang thing about his life! And I learned it in the most enjoyable of ways. He met Joy Gresham when she was 41 and he was 58. He was a bachelor, and she got a divorce soon after they met but not because they met. They had corresponded by post for a long time. She came to visit from America, and then after her divorce she ended up moving to the same town as him, Oxford. I won't give anything else away, but I will tell you it's a great and unusual story. This is Big Dawg Productions' second time wowing me with atypical romance, which is the only kind I can really stomach in stories. A few weeks ago, I saw their production of Neil Simon's Chapter Two, a more light-hearted but still very affecting love story.

On Thursday night, I went to see the musical The Secret Garden, also for work. It was weird and artsy, like with ghost people showing up during regular scenes so you know they're remembering the past, and red cloths to represent cholera. But it's The Secret Garden, and by no means did they mess it up. I'm so ready to read it again!

Both plays made me feel kind of icky and eye-rolly, like "la la la, I'm not listening," because they were both about trust and loving people even though you know you're going to lose them. My deep dark side said, "Psshht. That's all well and good for other people, but I'm not capable of, or not interested in, that kind of love. I prefer the illusion that I and everyone I care about will live forever, and if maintaining that illusion means keeping everyone at arm's length, then that's what I will do." Not my best moments. Growing up is hard to do, especially when you keep thinking you're done. But Lewis's wife in the play said, "The pain then [later, when one person dies and the other has to handle it] is part of the happiness now. It's part of the deal."

Oh, and the actor who played Lewis was phenomenal. Real tears, I saw.

Speaking of illusions, it hit me a few weeks ago that disillusionment is a good thing. It doesn't feel good, and when I say I'm disillusioned I usually mean "I hated that." But when faced with a choice between illusion and reality, a choice we don't always have, you're not in your right mind if you consistently choose the illusion.

And I think I have some solid thoughts for my article! But before I go on to that, I'll leave on a lighter note.

The boss called my coworker at 8 a.m. the other day to tell her a plane had crashed on I-40. As she was getting ready, coworker thought to look it up and make sure it was true before getting all worked up over it. She found nothing online, so she called the county EMS. The desk worker who answered knew nothing about a plane, but coworker left a message for the director. He called her back much later, laughing hard, and said it was a crop duster. It happens pretty frequently, he said: people see the crop dusters flying very low and think they're planes in trouble. This one landed, on purpose, in a field, not by accident on I-40.
So coworker called boss to fill her in. During that same call, boss said, "Oh, and ask someone about the fire on Teachey Road on Wednesday."
I am so proud of coworker for thinking of it then and not after hanging up. She said, "Are you sure it wasn't a cookout?"

Also, I was really mad over food and drink being missing from the fridge, and then one roommate wrote me a note explaining that she'd been taking Ambien and it made her sleep-eat. The only explanation that makes me not mad! And the last one I would ever have come up with.

Oh, is God ever good.

New frontiers!

Woooo...I am blogging on my own computer at my parents' house! They have wireless now, and I got it to work all by myself.

Also, I just got a new phone with a keyboard for texting and the ability to take and send pictures. I love how if you just wait long enough, you can get up-to-date phones for free (with mail-in rebate). I would never have paid extra for such features, but since they were in the tier that I'm "due for," I'm like, why not? I love it already. And even though someone told me on the phone yesterday that the Verizon store was open at 10 and it really opened at 11 so I had to wait an hour at Waffle House, the service was very good and helpful. She didn't try to sell me anything extra or unnecessary. Then I had lunch with Keith, my parents' church's pastor, and brought home a whole bunch of pizza that I'll probably leave for Mom and Dad. A good day already, and I've got the whole church homecoming ahead of me still.

My Precious

And while I'm doing pictures, I decided to take some of my recent pottery purchases in Seagrove. In the group picture, the bowl is Chris Luther's, the teacup/teabowl/wine cup is Tom Gray's, and the light green mug is Travis Owens' from Jugtown. All three of those were part of the Seagrove Potters for Peace event, as well as the bird pendant at bottom by Jennie Lorette Keats at Jugtown. The plate is Tom Gray's, and the dark mug at right is Michael Mahan's of From the Ground Up Pottery. I call it my caveman mug because it's big and heavy. The others show some of the details.

This last is a group shot of some of the pieces I've had for a while. The wine goblet is part of a six-piece set my mom got in Scotland; the purple mug was a gift from Dr. Wills for graduation, bought at Summitt Coffee; the green mug I found at the Habitat for Humanity store in Cornelius; the blue bowl in the center is from Taize; the blue and green bowl is from Dirt Works Pottery in Seagrove, a gift from Mom; and the two small bowls in front, I made during my pottery class at the Icehouse in Davidson.

Hooray for pottery! Thanks for indulging my image fix.

Nest Analysis

I'm happy to present some pictures from my sea turtle nest analysis assignment.

Here are the two Sea Turtle Project area coordinators excavating the nest. Sea turtle nests are shaped like an upside-down lightbulb, large at the bottom and narrow near the surface. The left pile between them is hatched eggs; the right pile is unhatched ones.

Here is the baby turtle they found alive. They had to put him in a bucket and release him only after dark because baby turtles are too vulnerable and visible to predators when it is light.

Here they are using a flashlight to candle the unhatched eggs and tell if they are fertilized. If they had found any, they would have reburied them in anundisturbed nest.

Just a link for today

I've been reading my daily Sojourners emails much more attentively lately, because I may one day apply for their sweet internship. It's been extremely rewarding and enlightening, such that I mourn what I missed by deleting so many before.

Here's just one of the great articles they linked to.

http://blog.sojo.net/2010/08/19/football-and-ramadan

Very inspiring.

Driving along in the deluge today, just reciting the names of those I'm thankful for was such a powerful prayer that it brought me to tears. That includes my three devoted followers! Blog followers, that is. I don't have any personal followers. Yet.

Seagrove! Peace! Turtles!

I went to Seagrove this weekend for the second annual Potters for Peace event. It was great fun, especially since I didn't have any work or research to do at all. I bought a ton of great stuff that I will treasure for a long time.

Last night, I got to see my friend Stuart oh so briefly on Topsail Island. We got dinner and then went to a turtle nest analysis. 72 hours after the nest had hatched, they were counting the remaining eggs, seeing which might be fertilized (none), and helping the one baby who hadn't made it to the surface--the eggs are buried pretty deep. They put the baby in a bucket to release him after dark. In the daylight, he was too vulnerable to predators. It was sweet, and I got to take pictures so it counts as work, too. Times like that, I love my job.

Screwtape

I read The Screwtape Letters as a teenager, when I never thought about the devil or evil. Shows how very fortunate I was, and remain. I read it then as entertainment, because I liked the Narnia books and thought letters from a devil was a cool idea.

Now, I'm reading it again after realizing slowly that we really are exposed to bad, or evil, or Satan, or devils, or whatever you want to call it, ALL THE TIME. For serious. Otherwise, why would any of us think so negatively? I'm very lucky in that I have never had anyone tell me I'm fat or ugly or should really give up on dating or that I should be ashamed of myself or any of the wretched wrong things that occasionally enter my mind. So no person has given me those ideas. I certainly did not come up with them on my own. God does not plant them. "The media" and "society" do have some part in it, but I'm not convinced they're powerful enough to make me think such things. So I conclude that someone's out to get me. Thus, Screwtape revisited.

And dang. It is so good. I gave it three stars on Goodreads a couple years ago when I was entering books from the past, but I can already tell you it's going to get five this time around. Here's a sample:

"Humans are amphibians--half spirit and half animal....As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks."

And that's just leading up to the point! All hail Lewis. More to come.

Last night, I covered the queen's ball for the Sneads Ferry Shrimp Festival. I sat with Mrs. North Carolina and her husband, a delightful couple. The first thing they did was offer me a two-liter of Mountain Dew, saying, "There's no way we can finish this." This was one of those operations where, when you ask for water, they act like no one's ever wanted it before. It's sweet tea and soft drinks all the way. Even at its worst, my job never ceases to entertain me.

Self-indulgence

Yesterday, I bought Lucky Charms and milk at HT, along with lime beer for my one alcoholic drink per week, and Swiss cheese and Boursin and Chavrie and strawberries and Oats & More, which were all on sale (they always get me with the sales! Or do I get them? Chicken or egg?). I had been craving Lucky Charms for weeks and always denied myself but finally thought, hey, you only live once, and I had had a long day and needed to chill out with my Michael Mahan first-firing-of-new-kiln bowl/crock full of sugary empty calories.

I sat on the porch for the first time in a while and finished a book, then came inside hoping to catch What Not to Wear, but as usual of late, it wasn't on. So I read Real Simple until The Soup came on. It was a perfect night for the sole soul. Real Simple had inspiring three-ingredient recipes. I'm inching toward clarity on some questions about my future and calling. (Inching forward and footing back, it seems sometimes, but on the whole, progress is progress and not to be pooh-poohed.) Now, here I am at PCJ, having fortuitously escaped Saturday assignments, bit by bit working on my pottery articles. Wishing there were a bike lock-esque thing for laptops for when you're in public and want to go to the bathroom and are tired of asking strangers to keep an eye on your computer while you're away. Glorying in the realization that I don't have to go for a run after this if I don't want to. About to get a free refill. Life is good.

The New Busy

I knocked off work early today for a dental cleaning. After having my teeth and dental hygeine praised, I came home, read a bit, and had plenty of time to run and shower before supper, a rare occasion. Now I'm watching MythBusters and letting it get dark, checking other people's blogs and finishing a Googlechat. Free time is so much dearer now, in every sense of the word. Something to savor.

Can't wait for Seagrove in August. It will be different because I'm not actively (or passively) working on the book, but probably better for that, more carefree. Plus I now have a bit of disposable income to support Potters for Peace.

I'm off to do some information-gathering. More later.

Weekend Update

Hi there,

I'm sitting at the one wi-fi hotspot in Kenansville, North Carolina, killing time (hours! five hours!) between assignments. They close in thirty minutes and I'll have three hours left after that. Very glad to have found it, though; A&M cafe. I would never have checked it out had not an acquaintance recommended it, because from the outside it looks pretty sketch, but inside it's nice. I'm sitting next to a print of ivory-billed woodpeckers, in a comfortable chair with a table at a great height for typing, looking out the windows at green trees and blue sky.

I just did the questions for chapter 11 in Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. My small group is reading it and loving it, but there are 12 chapters, so we're almost out. Luckily, the same author, Joanna Weaver, has another book, Having a Mary Spirit, so we're going with that next. But after that we will be back to square one in the Salt Shaker (Christian bookstore), wandering around being indecisive and feeling blind. We've picked some terrible books--we all agree on this, it's not just me and my snobbery--so I tense up as we near that time again. The reason for my saying this is, does anyone have good ideas for books for Christian small groups to read? Even though we have all of Having a Mary Spirit before next time, I would feel good if we had a few titles up our sleeves. Maybe I'll turn them onto Adam Hamilton.

I'm going to see a movie this evening (for work) that was written, produced, and directed by a local 17-year-old. I was dismayed this morning to find out it's a scary movie, because I hate being scared (come on, the world is scary enough already, people) but I'm thinking it might be bad enough to be funny instead. Which puts me in a bind: do I want a sweet lil' earnest teenager to make a good movie if it means I'll be scared on the long drive home? Or do I want his heartfelt work to be low quality just for the sake of my peace of mind? Not too much longer until we know, confreres. Either way it's part bad, part good, in keeping with the pattern of life in general. I'm slowly learning that it's all about the ratios.

A quick post before buckling down

I sometimes get frantic for NPR talky-talk when it's classical for too long. Did you know that WHQR stands for "Wilmington's High-Quality Radio?" I think Bill Radke and the other Marketplace guy (Ari...?) are my faves, even though I'm close friends with Neil Conan after my stint on Talk of the Nation.

Heat index 106 today. About the same yesterday. Let's hope tomorrow is a bit more tolerable for the U2 cover band! It makes everything about ten times more difficult and me about ten times more irritable. What if I just walked into the ocean fully clothed?

The Life

Working at home in my pajamas today. I'm about to go for a run after way too long without, and then I'm going to a concert at Topsail Beach and getting paid for it. Sweet!

The Good with the Bad

I found out yesterday that we sometimes get paid with live checks (just learned that neat and apt term) and sometimes with direct deposit. We never know which until it happens. Peggy said, "It's hit or miss." People shrug this stuff off! I don't think it's OK! Seems like it's asking for someone's check to be missed someday. This workplace gets more Twilight-Zone-y every day.

But I got to watch a search-and-dive team train by retrieving a dummy from a pond, touch a (disembodied) baleen, and interview four magicians for three stories. I'm very lucky in very many ways. I meet the neatest and sweetest people. And readers seem to respond well, which is the whole point.

Plus, I'm awesome at "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me," because I listen to NPR all the time. Fret not, WHQR, I didn't pledge during the drive, but you will get your recompense yet, dear friend. Just you wait.

Enter the mini

Hiya,

I'm going to try some mini-blogging, like a couple of sentences at a time. I believe it will make me more likely to post regularly rather than lapsing. And of course, once I'm logged on I'll probably spill at least a paragraph or two, so the idea is to trick myself into thinking I'm only writing a bit, which seems so much less daunting than having to deliver some insightful, decisive thing.

Thus:

I found the way to keep lettuce crisp and delish for a week or even more! Rinse (in a bowl if the breed has a lot of sand in it), drain, pat/shake dry, and then put in an airtight container with paper towels to wick away the excess moisture.
Also learned that my bread freezes quite well and thaws just fine in the microwave.

I finished Devil in the White City in a record four days or something. What a thrill! I recommend it to everyone. It's about the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and a serial killer who lived in Chicago at that time. As a nonfic writer, I found the notes almost as intriguing as the book. Larson was so thorough and so detailed in his research. Definitely a new role model for me. Now I'm on another book by Erik Larson, Thunderstruck. A bit less ferociously all-consuming but well above other books. This one's about Marconi, the beginning of wireless telegraphy, and also a murder but I don't think it's a serial killer like in the last one. Larson writes history really accessibly because he focuses on people. I want to implore him to write textbooks, or just adapt his existing books slightly for a student audience. I'd devour a history class if it was structured like his books.

That's all. I've an early morning tomorrow. Stay tuned for mini-posts.

A Good Day

Yesterday, I went to the office to upload my week's articles, then left on assignment. I covered art camp at Art Exposure in Hampstead, a really great place with wonderful people. Then I visited the Sea Salt Bakery, which was recently started by the same people who opened my beloved Sweet 'N' Savory in 1992. Their display trays are made of bread.

I left early because I had an oil-change appointment, and rather than go all the way to Wrightsville Beach for one hour, I decided to sit in Port City Java in the Harris Teeter across the street from the Honda place. I ran into a couple of friends from school, one of whom had just returned from Japan. Also saw some of the familiar faces from Flaming Amy's Bowl. At the Honda place, I ran into another friend from school and had a wonderful long conversation with her while waiting for our cars. She's hilarious and insightful. I was very happy to skip my reading session.

On the way to dinner, I saw someone who used to go to my church, then at the restaurant a couple the wife of which is in the MFA program, then at the concert, two friends from high school. That makes eight people I randomly ran into in one day! I wonder why that always happens in clusters and then not for weeks. But I love when it does. I also finished Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, a wonderful and surprising and educational and funny book I'm intensely glad to have read, and then started in on Devil in the White City, which it hurt to tear myself away from at 1:30 a.m. to go to sleep. I wish I could read it while working out so I wouldn't have to choose between the two later today. So everything added up to a wonderful, fun day, and here I am on the other side of it still riding the wave and enjoying my first fully unscheduled day in a long time. Let's keep it up, okay?

The state of things

It's been a long time since I posted, and for excellent reason, though I say so myself. I have a full-time job now! I'm a newspaper reporter, which is delightful since I actually (gasp!) get to work in my chosen and studied field of writing. Despite the hour-or-so drive to work and the sometimes-several-hours of driving to and from assignments, I very much enjoy the work. Someone asked me the other day what exactly I do. I said, "Well. I decide what is newsworthy. I go to the news. I interview people and take pictures. I write the stories in InDesign and deal with the photos in PhotoShop, and I upload them to a server." It's much more manageable than it sounds, mostly because the crew is quite laid back and gives reporters some hard-core freedom to cover whatever we find interesting, on our own timetable. I'm very lucky to be working in this setting as opposed to a traditional daily paper. Of the four papers owned by the company, three come out once a week and one comes out twice a week. It's a good pace: always enough work, rarely too much for sanity. Also, I love interacting with all the different people I write about: professional magicians, children taking art lessons, librarians, owners of art centers and bakeries, businesspeople, politicians. Even town council meetings are surprisingly eventful and easy to find the story in. I've gotten a lot more comfortable making cold calls on the phone to find out when an event is or some other tidbit of information. We crack ourselves up at the office, and I should soon get a computer with all the right software so I can do some composing at home. NPR/WHQR is my new best friend, with all the driving I do, so I'm always learning something illuminating. It's a sweet deal overall. Since I write so much for work, posts here might become more sparse and will probably include some links to pieces I've written for the papers. But do keep checking, and I will do my utmost not to let this blog lapse.

AWP 7: To Publish or Self-Publish?

The main guy who talked at this panel was Will Harris.

Self-publishing has a bad name, but if you're an indie filmmaker or musician, that's cool. So think of self-publishing as being an indie publisher.

If you're going to self-publish, you'll probably have some control over the cover. People always judge books by their covers, so be sure to make something great. Here are some things to keep in mind with covers.
1. Distill the book's theme and tone.
2. Be clear, even obvious.
3. Be bold, with no boxed-in tiny images. Let the image fill the field! Type in it, not next to it.
4. Be open to the unexpected.
5. Trust your designers. Don't be married to a specific concept. It's OK to argue with the designer, but if you do, have a reason that's related to the book.

Which leads us to the next list, Working with a Designer.
1. Brief them in one page about the project.
2. Be clear about themes.
3. Show covers you like, but...
4. ...no expectations.
5. Feel first--don't overthink.
6. Don't tell them how to design! You can share ideas, but don't say, "Put a cat in the corner."

Don't use timid type. Put nudity on the cover if possible (subtle nudity, to make sure it stays on shelves).
Pitfalls of design:
weak type
anonymity
too much going on
image or type too small in relation to cover

Pictures or people are very effective--people look at people--but not too specific, just a suggestion. You don't want to nail down how the reader can imagine a certain character.

All the major self-publishers are fine, there are no glaring differences or problems with any. The question is what you are going to do, how you are oging to separate writing from editing and designing.

Find your tribe. There are probably ten million people for each author who already love you, agree with you, and want to be your friend. You have friends, a family, colleagues. List fifty people in real life who really like you. Build from there, and that's your tribe. Also go after your mentors and heroes and say you love them. Most of them will honestly and sincerely relate to you if you do so with them. Concentric circles will grow outward from who's already in your life. All of the platforms (Facebook, etc.) are what you make of them. Make sure the relationships on there are actual ones that will help, not just friends for the sake of having a lot of friends.

The two types of people most preyed on are actors and authors. "They'll buy anything if they think it's magic." Don't be in that group. Think about what you're paying for, what you'll get out of it.

Make sure you get an ISBN and a listing in the Ingram catalog. That's how you get on Amazon and stuff.

Readers don't distinguish between self-published authors and traditional publishing. Virginia Woolf, Joyce, Poe, and a long list of others self-published. If it's good, it'll fly. Yes, a lot of self-published books are bad. The founder of lulu.com said, "We specialize in bad poetry that sells six copies to the friends of the author." But remember there are also a lot of terrible books that were published traditionally. The majority of music is bad, but if you make your own CD, nobody cares that it's not produced by a house.

Think about why you're not publishing traditionally. Are you ignoring feedback? You can overcome the bad-book stigma with self-awareness, confidence, and credibility. Time will also help cure the stigma.

Finally, "Technology doesn't make a good book. You make a good book."

Some of the resources he and others mentioned:
http://www.360digitalbooks.com- printers, will ship anywhere
http://www.iuniverse.com
http://www.lightningsource.com- discount for stores, returnable books, but less simple--you have to have a fully formatted PDF for the whole book and the cover.
http://www.lulu.com
http://www.authorhouse.com, consolidating several sites
http://www.redroom.com

The next post will be about Digital Publishing and cover some of the same ground as this one. See you next time! Thanks for reading.

AWP 6: Chabon and journalism

Michael Chabon's keynote address was so freakin' good. Here are just a few things I jotted down:
"It may be that all morality rests on our ability to see the likeness in unlike things: I and thou."

"Ideas are the easiest and perhaps the least interesting parts of the job...Ideas are swarming, ubiquitous, chronic. Ideas are a plague....There are five novels in every newspaper, ten in every work of history, one in every unhappy family." Ideas are everywhere--the trick is sticking with them.

"I gave off the moral equivalent of that new car smell."

"the pile of well-typed crap"

Life is not a story, at least not a very good story. Life is just a bunch of middle.

"I got down to the work because the serious and diligent people around me were getting down to theirs."

"If your students are lucky enough to not know everything...."

"challenging each word to defend its presence in the sentence"

"No sentence was so fine that it could not be improved upon the ninth time through."

"I believe that writers ought regularly to read the dictionary" in order to discover the musculoskeletal system, the genome, of our language.

Novelists have two obligations:
1. Bringing the dish. "They bring the news, the gossipy gospel." The author is our friend, showing us the map of a life.
2. Keeping it entertaining. Sometimes using artifice, "all the thrilling sense of deliverance that only a great lie can." Pure autobiography is the last thing we want. When you're vanishing an elephant onstage, you don't tell about the half hour you spent reading up on mirror optics in a chophouse on Wabash Avenue, sitting on a donut cushion for your hemorrhoids.

Chabon did the talk in a Q&A style, asking his own questions and doing voices and impressions of question-askers one might find in an audience, which I thought was pretty genius. He said he'd been very disappointed when he learned we couldn't have a Q&A because the space (a large ballroom) wouldn't allow it. This disappointment again drove home, like almost every panel, the point that writing and reading are all about connecting with other people.

Here are some books Chabon mentioned as having influenced him:
Oakley Hall- Warlock
Jorge Luis Borges- Labyrinths
Edith Wharton- The Age of Innocence
Vladimir Nabokov- "I admire him for Lolita and Pale Fire, but I love him for Pnin."
Love in the Time of Cholera, 100 Years of Solitude
Moby-Dick
Portrait of a Lady

Next, I went to a panel called "It's Not Just About You: Solidifying Journalism's Role in Creative Writing Programs." The panelists were Patrick Walters, Jim Sheeler, Philip Gerard, John Calderazzo, and Rebecca Skloot. Here are my notes.

There's not necessarily any difference between journalism and creative writing. It's important for people who identify as either to learn about and embrace the other.

Reporting is simply defined as looking for facts, about your own life or others'. Reporting makes possible the effects we usually think of as literary--the meaningfulness. "Collect all the dots and connect them." Think of lives not as biographies but as stories. Research is not just looking at a photo; it's wondering what's not in the picture. The best pictures are a gift from the subject to the photographer, and it's the same way when you write about people. They're giving you a gift.

When you raise big problems and issues, you have to put them in context, try to turn it toward resolution. Writing about others forces you to observe and imagine what it's like to be someone who's not you. You take on a huge responsibility to be true to their story. The msot important thing you can say is "I don't know." Don't trust memory, no matter how sure it seems.

When Rebecca Skloot wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (for ten years!), she fact-checked absolutely everything. Even dialogue! When you show that you're trying to get everything right, people will give you a lot. They will help you.

Learn about research methods used by anthropologists and oral historians. Make the writers you read show how they know what they know.

Storytelling isn't going anywhere. People want to read stories, not strands of fact.

Here are some resources they mentioned:
Norman Sims, ed.- The Literary Journalists: the New Art of Personal Reportage
Norman Sims and Mark Kramer, ed.- Literary Journalism
Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, ed.- Telling True Stories
James B. Stewart- Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction
At http://www.newsu.org/courses, you can find tons of free tutorials, self-directed courses, webinars, broadcasts, and other resources designed by successful journalists to help you learn some of the skills. It's part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Sounds legit.

In non-AWP news, I'm still waiting to hear about a few jobs that seem promising, and I have an interview on Tuesday to work as a typesetter! Typesetting is by far my favorite part of the publishing practicum. The woman I talked to on the phone said the interview will be more practical, not just talking. They'll actually give me some text and say, "Make a wedding invitation," or, "Make a business card." Very different from typesetting in a book interior, but using many of the same skills and techniques. The job is in a rural area about an hour away from where I am now, which means it would be a hassle in some ways. But my dad commutes about an hour each way, and it's worked for him for years. If I get the job, I'll just get me some books on CD or awesome podcasts (once I get a pod) and learn my way to work. And we never know whom else I'm going to hear from. There's no telling how God is going to work in my life in the next few weeks as we iron all of this out. I'll keep you posted!

Next up: To Publish or Self-Publish?

AWP 5: The Limit—or Light—of Spiritual Belief: Across Genres.

Hi all, thanks for being patient as I put off blogging in favor of other pursuits.

This panel included Emily Louise Zimbrick, Scott Cairns, Janet Peery, Nicole Mazzarella, Farideh Goldin, and Josh Allen.

When we encounter inconsistences in scripture and religion, we can ignore them, discard them as irrelevant, or acknowledge and study the complexities. If they're in God's word, maybe God wants us to consider these things, difficult questions, moral complexity. Real faith confronts the trouble and the troubling head-on. Bad literature, religious or not, avoids it. Dickinson wrote, "On subjects of which we know nothing, we both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble."

Scott Cairns started by talking about the ressourcement movement, a French Catholic movement to recover patristic wisdom that had been excised from writings. He used the phrase "squandering tradition" to describe what the people were doing when they originally cut out parts of those religious writings. Cairns introduced (to me) the terms cataphatic, for a theology of attributes in which we say things about God as if he were a person and we knew him, and apophatic, the via negativa, the theology of unsaying and the way of unknowing, in which we think and speak of God in terms of what he is not. The two traditions usually balance each other out. For example, many people think of God as a king, but acknowledge that he is not king in the way we normally think of human kings. Cairns talked about Gregory of Nyssa (or someone else) meeting God in light, then in cloud, then in darkness. He said poetry is not a matter of waying what we think or want readers to think, or redacting experience, but an experience of trusting language and the words on the page. "If I only wrote what I know, I wouldn't have ever made tenure. So what I do is write in order to know."

Josh Allen talked about his fiction in which a husband notices his wife coming home later than usual from work and finds that she is stopping at a Mormon church to pray. He discussed the importance of multiple valid points of view and quoted John Garder, who, in On Moral Fiction, said "True art is too complex to reflect the party line." Allen quoted someone else who said, "We have to safely leave evangelism to the evangelist....Art transcends its boundaries by staying within them."

To an extent, all literature is about a spiritual journey.
Examine truth without examining dogma.
A happy ending, like any ending, has to be earned. The character has to make choices to resolve the story, not just feel despair and go up on the roof and have a transcendent experience. It must stem from choices the characters have made, not grace we don't understand. Offering readers only one emotional response means the piece will tend toward sentimentality.

Things they mentioned in the panel:
Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
David Kurzon, ed., Modern Poems on the Bible
The Classic Midrash from Paulist Press
E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel talks about the difference between preaching and prophecy. Music critic and writer Greil Marcus, talking about Van Morrison on NPR, says that Van Morrison breaks through his own defenses and thus breaks through his listeners'.

Thanks for reading! The next post will be about the keynote address by Michael Chabon and, possibly in the same post, a panel on journalism and CNF. Good stuff.

In other news, I've just taught my last class, and had my last class as a student last week. It's a very weird feeling, like I'm losing part of who I am. Only part, though, and I can be a student of life whatever my career turns out to be.

I set the inside of my oven on fire the other night. I preheated the oven to make sweet potato fries, and the bottom of the oven had some butter-and-sugar residue from pecan rolls which had overflowed a little (or perhaps more than I thought). Funnily, I was more upset about not being able to bake the sweet potato fries than I was about the actual presence of a small fire in my house. Go figure. I've bought a new drip pan and am now about to install it and retry those fries. Nothing if not adventurous, this life.

AWP 4: "What's Your Platform? What Agents & Editors Are Looking For in Writers

This panel was more Q&A than planned little speeches. I'll mimic the structure by introducing everyone and then diving into what they said.

Christina Katz- This panel is about how to be an empowered artist. We're all responsible for our careers, not just putting them in the hands of agents or publicists. Becoming visible, getting known.

Robin Mizell, literary agent.
Venn diagram--one group that has studied craft and is talented, one group that has studied how to promote and sell. The sweet spot where they intersect could be "larger and more dangerous." We can cross-pollinate. Jane Friedman says the challenge is writers who are very talented but don't have a mindset for the business.

David Sanders- Ohio University Press and Swallow Press.
Connection between how much of a presence a writer has in the world and how they succeed.

Jane Friedman, Publisher and Editorial Director of Writer's Digest.

Sage Cohen, founder of Sage Communications. Not sure she was actually at the panel--I rarely take notes on who said what--but her sites are cool, so here they are.

When creating your platform, think about what else you do besides writing. How are you going to become visible and rise above the crowd? Our job as writers is to stand out. It can be fun and exhilarating and creative. When you think your writing career is fun and exciting and interesting, it will become that way to others and draw people. Your platform is not your CV. It's an ongoing effort to connect with your readers and others who want to know about you and what you're doing. It takes years of work--it's never too soon to start. It's a journey, a lifelong process, part of your growth as a writer with a career.

Your platform includes:
1. The authority or credentials you bring to the table. It's a presence. Ezra Pound had the best platform of the 20th century.
2. Visibility. Antyhing that was available, Pound would exploit it, advertise his cause (not himself). This is your life. Get your friends to tell you the truth, not stroke your ego.

That was the opening remarks. Here begins the panel discussion proper.
Question 1: How can writers build a platform and gain visibility? It's not what you did, it's what you do and what you're going to do.

Answers:
Build!:
websites,
blogs,
e-zines,
e-classes,
real classes.

Write.
Get published,
give talks,
readings,
workshops,
keynotes,
panels.
Host or organize author visits and reading series.
Coaching, training. (These are all things Christina Katz does.)

Facebook,
Twitter,
LinkedIn,
YouTube.
HARO- Help A Reporter Out- requests for experts, you can answer and get media coverage. Vlogging.
del.icio.us or delicious.com, social bookmarking.
Embrace all the opportunities that exist to help writers become authors. You already have a network in the real world. Guest blogging opportunities, interviews, reviews. You should say yes to anything you're invited to until you're so overbooked that you can afford someone to say no for you.
Create an online presence. It makes you discoverable 24/7, even when you're asleep or unavailable.
Brian Solis has a graphic called The Conversation Prism that shows all of the possibilities for online connectivity, all the different sites. There's a version 2.0 but I'm linking to the older one because 2.0 made my computer not only say "error on site" but make an unprecedented beeping noise.
With all this online stuff, you don't have to be where everyone else is--don't join a site just because other authors are. You can choose what's comfortable for you and what makes sense in relation to your intended audience.
The BBC has a list of the top 100 websites, in a graphic showing proportional traffic. (Just rollover the blocks to see what they are.) You can't spread yourself among all the networks. Once you're inactive on a site, it's not effective. (my addition: probably less effective than not being on it in the first place.) You make a long to-do list and do just a little of it each day. Use what fits not just you but your audience. Where they work, live, where they go, use the tools they are using. Twitter is very effective for writers. People spend more time on Facebook than on Google! Your platform often builds with what and who you already know, where you already are. Reinforce the personal aspect of it. Extend the reach. Communicating and connecting are why we read and write. Being a big fish in a small pond is good. Oprah took away from us the idea of baby steps--we now think we can just write a really good book and then suddenly be famous. She made us think we can put all of our energy into the book and all we have to to is go on Oprah. But our career is 100% our responsibility, even if we land our dream deal with our dream publisher. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dorothy Parker all had really messed up relationships with their publishers--they were parent figures in a way, or saviors who were supposed to deliver them. We don't want that! We're going to deliver ourselves.

Question 2: What are the challenges in building platforms for writers?

Answers:
1.Time. The most important thing you have to do is write. But you can't write 50 hours a week unless you're Balzac. You're the expert! Be the expert! Let the world know what you know. If you're not writing nonfiction, write about the process, write about writing, learn what the tools are. That requires some time-budgeting to pay attention to what's happening and your contribution, to further your career. For a writer, your career is something that you don't put down.
2. Getting comfortable with technology and tools. Get comfortable with slow growth--don't ask someone to review your book the minute they friend you. It may feel at first like no one's paying attention. You have to move through the feeling of meaninglessness--give it time to develop, just like any other relationship, to grow before you ask for huge favors.
3. Overcoming the attitude that self-promotion is vulgar or an admission that you're not talented. Remain other-focused. Chris Brogan's book Trust Agents embraces being present in other communities and focused on them for a long time before you even mention your writing or projects. Comment on other people's sites. Attitude is the most important thing. A bad one is the biggest obstacle. Also, clarify who you are, what you do, why you matter, why you're relevant, from the standpoint of common ground with others, through their eyes.
4. Confusing platform development with socializing. Not zooming in on what you can offer.
5. Thinking too much about yourself and not enough about others.
6. Not having a plan. Hope is not a method. Being overconfident, thinking you have more of a platform than you do.
7. Burnout.

Find three role models who are not necessarily largely famous, but whose techniques have brought them success. Quality resources are key. Quiet time thinking about your platform will help. Libel, copyright infringement, privacy violations, and similar issues will get you automatic rejections from publishers.

Well, that's a sweet note to end on. Sorry these notes are quite scattered--I didn't realize blogger wouldn't let me cut and paste, so I couldn't re-order some of the info. Next up: Spirituality and Writing! Woo hoo! Quite a departure from the nitty-gritty practical panels of the first morning.

Does anyone know how to email or otherwise send a comment to the postsecret blog? I have some mind to speak.

AWP 3: Squad 365 Continued

These notes are from the Q&A session following the Shameless Self-promotion panel.

Reading groups are often affiliated with local bookstores. Create a list of book club questions. There's a site, http://www.readinggroupchoices.com, where you can get your publisher to submit your book to it and then book clubs will see it.

Can you make your effort less time-consuming? Can you make it something that feeds your spirit? Find FUN ways to drive traffic to your blog, like Twitter.

Propose yourself as a writer/reader for reading series. Write to them nine months or so in advance of your publication date. Leave the crumbs through the forest--it might seem weird to take the initiative and invite yourself over, but they can't invite you if they don't know you.

My idea: have a petition for people to sign who want your book published.

Think of how you can be of service to your potential readers.

Pre-publication blog: countdown, contests, interactive stuff--make the publication a highly anticipated event. Don't post excerpts before selling the book because they may change a lot!

Make sure you editor/publicist knows some of the places that are personal to you where he should send press releases, places that wouldn't be on his normal list--your hometown paper, other places you've lived, places your family lives.

Before publication, don't tell too much of the story because then reporters and other media folks won't have anything new to tell. OR, the more you tell and share and offer, the more readers you'll get. Two schools of thought.

You learn from everything. At the very least, you learn what interests you, and a writer gets to use everything.

#1 way to get your book known: get in trouble.

Make promises you don't know if you can keep. Make mistakes. Be game all of the time. Have real conversations--people are more likely to read or buy it if they've spoken with you. Promotion is human connection, not entry into a great national machine called publicity. It is rendering service. When you render service, the ego's out of it and the fear's out of it. Big global plan. A little promotion each day (writing a fan letter counts!) Micromovements.

Sit down with a librarian to talk about how to promote your books to librarians. They might invite you back for a reading. Librarians will know about book clubs. Stores will send employees to readings with a portable credit card machine and books to sell. Mail copies with letters to your literary heroes. Or to your peers, equals. That's where collaboration might happen--collaborate with established artists in other media, and their platform can market you. Nonfiction and other writers have expertise. We are authorities about things. That's a platform too. Market with what you know, apart from the book as a product.

Here are some things they mentioned:
http://www.booksense.com
Drive by Daniel Pink
The Gift by Lewis Hyde
http://tribalauthor.com. They said the blog section of this site includes a post that helps you figure out Twitter.
http://www.4over4.com lets you print your own business cards, stationery, etc.

That's it for the Squad 365 panel, the first and perhaps best one I went to this year. Stay tuned for more AWP rehashing as I try to stretch the love out a little bit longer.

AWP 2

I'm going to do this in chronological order as closely as possible. So, the first panel I went to was about Shamelessly Promoting your Book. It was fun and really informative and practical. I'm just going to put my notes on here, incomplete sentences and inconsistencies and all.

Promotion is communal, fun, a lot of people involved. Twitter. "No sale yet but bravely planning for inevitable success." "Who's excited about what you can do on your own? Who feels beleaguered and confused?"

Jon Spayde- Living the Dream. book: How to Believe: portraits of Christian believers. Don't draw a foolish line between creation and commerce. "rapidly morphing and who-knows-what's-next publishing world" is more interesting and creative every day. Mini-connections instead of major outlets. Reaching out begins with idea and continues all the way to blog, blurb, podcast, reading, coffee house artist residency. Book morphs from static object into one stage of a complex process of communication. Communication and connection are the point. Better sales are a by-product.

Margaret Hasse- Premeditated Promotion. Freelance worker, consultant to nonprofits. Successful promotion requires a creative visionary thought-out tangible PLAN. Consult heart's desire and others.
1. Plan should have a context--statement--what you do as a writer and why. Mission--process, philosophy, passion, breadth, durability, challenge, distinction
2. picture of what will be different in community because of your writing.
3. PRODUCT--what you make and do that people might want to know about and make use of.
4. PEOPLE. Whom do you want to engage? Qualities of prospective readers who would like your book if only they knew about it.
5. PLACE. Where will you and readers find each other? How wide to cast net?
6. price. consider list price, advance. Charge for services like reading, etc., and think about what to volunteer your time toward. "Finance is a footnote to my story."
7. Promotion--how to reach and inform and inspire the people you've identified. Paid ads, profiles and interviews and reviews, website, email and direct mail, personal, trade shows, events
8. definite course of action--timetable, maybe budget. "You will hit some dead ends and turn to new adventures."
plan--from drawing on flat surface--also connected to Plant. Planting seeds.

Todd Boss. Get Committed. poet.
Poetry for popular audience. It should not be shameful for a writer to seek an audience--it's our privilege and duty, our contribution to the world. In other countries, poets are household names! It's perceived as belonging to all audiences, a public resource.
Let's commit to 2 assumptions:
1. The world is our audience.
2. It is our duty to give the world the poetry it craves.
How to act on it:
1. Commit to a public role. Become a poet laureate. Assert your leadership, assign yourself a role as a local public figure with a constituency.
2. Make a website. Make it yourself so that you can use it and update it easily, move with it nimbly. Use iWeb on a Mac.
3. Make audio. "Audience" comes from "audere--to hear." The world doesn't just crave poetry, it craves the sound. Without it, you're giving the world only half of the poetry it craves. When you sign a book contract, reserve electronic rights.
4. Encourage commissions. Offer on your site to write poems in praise or gratitude toward someone, from someone else. Create a new market based on emotional necessity, urgency, and deep artistic commitment.
5. Collaborate across media. Call for collaborators on your website. Think of yourself less as a writer and more as an artist. Chances are you're a filmmaker, librettist, and playwright too.
Commit to a poetry-craving public in as many ways as you can think of. It will make traditional promotion obsolete.

Marisha Chamberlain. The Good-Enough Book Tour.
Weariness and bitterness can seep through in readings, especially from the financially successful authors.
Touring may make you poorer--you will be paying your own travel expenses. Could be considered delusional.
Achieving profit goals makes people more tense and jittery, not less so.
Tour for reasons other than book sales. Not about me, not about my book, but about a few brave souls who celebrate literature. Sometimes bears no resemblance to the idea you have of a book tour. Your publisher might not send enough copies, or any!
It's not a do-or-die effort, it's good enough. To be all together and alive in the same room caring about literature.

That's the bulk of what Squad 365 said that morning. I have two more pages of notes from the Q and A portion, which I'll put in another post. I hope this is helpful for someone who's reading this. If nothing else, it's good for me to further digest it by typing it up. More to come; writers and non-writers alike, stay tuned!

AWP Denver!

Wow, I have so much to share. I had the most wonderful time in Colorado this weekend! The conference was amazing, more uplifting than the last two years, and shockingly educational. I picked up an armload of free journals and kept some of the best poems and pieces, which I might be sharing on here. I also thought I might post some of my notes from the best panels and, when possible, link to the folks who gave them. Is there anything wrong with putting a poem you love up on your blog, when it's been published in print? Maybe I'll try linking to them instead. I'll do these bit by bit, and that way I'll have material for quite a while. Non-writers, do stay tuned, because you never know what other awesomeness I'll come up with, and plenty of the conference material could apply to you in surprising ways.

The general overview is that I love writers and writing more than ever. Maybe I'm being preemptively nostalgic, knowing I'm about to leave the particular community of writers I'm part of and probably not be part of one at all for a while. Maybe I came into it at a sparkly-eyed time when I want to hug the world. Or maybe this conference was more full of joy and laughter than the 2008 and 2009 incarnations, not that those were dull or morose. But Michael Chabon did an amazing keynote address, which I hope I can get a copy of somehow, and George Saunders is much younger than I expected and peppy and does voices, which is perfect for settings like AWP where everyone is exhausted and prone to sleeping. Reading with him was Etgar Keret, who is new to me and whom I thought was Edgar Caret until just now. I'm definitely going to be reading him. One of his stories was about a beautiful woman who turns into a big fat hairy man at night, and her husband becomes friends with him. They go out on the town every night. He introduced it by saying something like, "My wife said, 'You write stories for all of your friends and family, but you've never written a story for me.' So I did, and I called it 'Fatso.'" Wow, did I have fun.

Outside the conference, I hit the Tattered Cover bookstore and yearned after almost everything there. I realized that it wasn't the books themselves I wanted so much as the time to read them. I also went to the Garden of the Gods and had a nice time exploring Manitou Springs, a very cute little town which, in the on-season, is probably overrun with tourists to the point of nausea. The Garden of the Gods is a series of rock formations that are indescribable. I get, a little bit, what people are talking about when they say Uluru/Ayers Rock in Australia has a primal pull. Felt it a little at the G of the G. Definitely recommend it if you're ever out that way.

Well, I plan to parcel out the AWP goodness for quite a while, so check back for more. Everything else is going great.