And Then One Day…

My girl loves stories. Not just before bed, but any time of day, all day. As we march up the stairs for breakfast each morning she usually says “momma, will you tell me a story?”

I usually respond that I need coffee first, but she will eye me like a hawk, and as soon as I’ve got that mug in hand she will repeat the request (and repeat, and repeat), until I start spinning the morning’s yarn.

Lately, my stories have all been about carrot and sandwich. They have had some great adventures. They hitch-hiked across country to visit our friend Jacqui in Virgina, they opened a dry cleaning shop, and fought pirates for treasure on Carrot’s private island (that he bought with his riches earned through dry cleaning).

It’s a fun ritual, even if sometimes I don’t feel up for it first thing in the morning, but the thing I love the most is what I’ve learned about my girl’s sense of story. When I’m setting up the story sometimes I get to rambling. I’ll tell what carrot is wearing, or what trouble sandwich is having with his wife, or whatever, and when it’s gone on too long my girl will say in a loud voice “and then one day…”

Brilliant.

I know she’s just bored and wants me to get on with it, but really, she is illustrating one of the core principals of story telling. You open on a world with a status quo, and then one day something upsets that status quo and viola – you’ve got a story.

Even kids get this, and yet, I feel like a lot of writers struggle with it. I’ve heard young writers talking about telling a “true” story where nothing contrived happens, or worse yet, where nothing at all happens because that’s life, man.

Bah, I say. If that’s life, then my four year old is living it better than you.

Maurice Sendak is Cool

As I’m busy today with some freelance work I’m just going to share this and say how very cool I think Maurice Sendak is. Sometimes I wish I were a cranky, old, (highly successful) writer. It’s good to have goals.

All Weeks Should Be Like Last Week

It was a great week. If you follow my Facebook page you were privy to the final count down as I wrote the last pages of my Northern California book. I finished up the first draft on Wednesday night and celebrated with my guy over a dinner of take out burritos and champagne. Ahhhh, victory.

As I was toasting, an email arrived asking me to write a piece for Yes! Magazine. It’s just a few hundred word assignment, but it’s on a topic I’m passionate about (organic farmers battling Monsanto), and I was just really psyched to have and editor contact me about writing a (paid) piece.

Then Thursday night I met with my writing group. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – they’re awesome. There were two big take aways that night. One was the idea of Admin Mondays. One of my group members more or less devotes Mondays to taking care of crap that builds up (like scheduling appointments or following up on that credit card fraud thing, or blah blah blah). That way when those things come at you during your writing week you can just put them aside until Monday. Love it.

The other inspiration was a member of our group who is working on her first novel (as most of us are). Her new years resolution is to write every day, even if it’s just a little. Her book is really coming along, and talking with her just reminded me that it’s so important to keep moving on big projects. So Friday I pulled out my own novel and read it front to back. It’s at about 190 pages now, but I haven’t touched it since August.

Even though reading it was encouraging (it’s not half bad), I’m finding it so hard to get back into it writing it. Like so many times before I’m reminded how writing is like exercise and if you don’t do it for a long time, it’s really hard to get back to it. But it’s not like I haven’t been writing. I just haven’t been writing on that project.

It was an awesome week, and I’m way ahead of my new years goal of finishing the Nor Cal book by the end of January!

Now if I could just get back into the novel…

Back In the States

We’re back.

Actually, we (the kids and I) got back from Indonesia on the 13th. I took a couple days to unpack, wash everything and repack for a trip to my dad’s in Northern Idaho. We spent a week there, came back home on the 23rd, did some crazy last minute Christmas shopping, and bam – Christmas. Daniel made it home around noon on the 25th (direct from Batam and jetlagged all to hell), but we were all here (including his folks, my sister-in-law, her guy, his parents and my mom) for a lovely day together.

I felt like I was holding up pretty well, given everything I juggled over the course of a month, but as the craziness wound down I started picking fights with Daniel. I was feeling anxious about the fact that I hadn’t written anything in weeks. Five weeks, actually. FAR too long.

Turned out, all I really needed to do was ask Daniel for  day to catch up on some writing. After a stupid fight this morning he graciously took over all the kid duties (and doodies) so I could lock myself in my office and do some writing.

It took about an hour to get back in the swing of things, but now it’s flowing. So far I’ve written three pages in my Northern California book. I had originally hoped to finish it by now, but set aside that goal when we got on the plane to Indonesia. Still, I only have 25 pages to go. I’m seriously thinking about staying up late the next few nights and writing my ass off to see how close I can get to finished before the 1st. I doubt I could get 25 pages done in four days, but maybe…?

I also caught up on my Digging Deep blog. My partner in crime on that one was understandably a little miffed when I told her, out of the blue, that I just wouldn’t have time to post, so it feels good to get back on that horse too.

And then, of course there’s the novel, and oh, yeah, a screenplay I’m thinking about all the time lately. Sometimes I just feel like I’ll never reach the finish line on anything ever again. Which is why it would be nice to finish up the Northern California book as planned.

Oh well. In any case, it’s good to be back.

Here are a few photos, just for fun.

The view from our hotel in Batam

Monkey in Singapore

Visiting the set with Daniel

Snowball fight with Grandpa and Nana in Idaho

Sleigh ride in Idaho

Now back to the writing.

The Vegetables

As has become my Thanksgiving tradition on this blog, I’d like to share a poem by Hafiz.

The Vegetables

Today

The vegetables would like to be cut

By someone who is singing God’s Name.

How could Hafiz know

Such top secret information?

Because

Once we were all tomatoes,

Potatoes, onions or

Zucchini

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Women in Media

Something has been bugging me, and it’s not Gina Davis’s lack of stage presence.

She right. I watch some of the (forgive me) shit available for kids and I am shocked. I had to stop a video of “Hercules” a while back because the female character broke into a song about how she was just a weak girl, and wasn’t it a good thing there was such a strong man around to take care of her. Excuse me? What? Since then I’ve been seeing more things like Gina Davis’s talk here, and noticing more and more the representation of girls in entertainment in general. While some kid’s shows (“Olivia” is a personal favorite), do okay, others have a long way to .

My husband told me about a conversation he had on the topic lately and related something fascinating. Turns out that years ago some feminist group sat down to craft guidelines for what constituted a feminist film. Here are the three things a story must have to be considered feminist. Ready? It’s pretty extensive…

1. Have two female characters with names

2. Those two characters have a conversation at some point

3. That conversation is NOT about a guy

That’s it. And you know what, it SHOCKING how many films can’t do it.

Well I for one will be doing my part to put some entertaining media out there where two named women have a conversation that isn’t about a guy. It honestly shouldn’t be so hard.

I know a lot of you who read my blog are in the entertainment industry in one way or another. I challenge you to think about this the next time you see a movie, and consider how your own projects measure up. Those of us telling the stories are in the unique position of being able to influence how they are told.

Power to the storytellers. Bring it.