Oh, You’re a Writer?

“The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things.”

~ Mike Dooley

I just never get tired of this subject. (Not!)

Here’s how it goes:

Nice lady at the Avon Walk: What do you do?

Me: Oh, I’m a writer. And a health coach.

NLATAW: (Ignoring the health coach part.) You’re a writer? What books have you written that I can find on the shelves of Barnes and Noble?

Me: (Wondering how long Barnes and Noble will hang on…) Well, I have one, but it’s an anthology. (Like I somehow have to justify having at least one thing on the shelves of B&N and the library before I dare call myself a writer.)

You writers understand. I know you do. Because we’re all at different points of the journey, but we’ve all started at the same place.

My snarky side secretly hopes Avon lady says something like “I’m a runner” so I can say, “Oh? When was your last marathon?” which of course would only play out in my fantasy mind.

This idea that to call yourself a writer you have to have writer badges in the form of books hanging all over your Girl Scout writer sash is just plain silly. But it’s running rampant, I tell you. I think I get this response 75% of the time I call myself a writer. It didn’t happen when I was a teacher. It didn’t happen when I was a law firm marketing director. (That one was just a head cock because nobody understood what the heck that meant.) Nope. this response is particular to calling yourself a writer.

What is a writer anyway? A person (usually male according to Google Images) who smokes cigarettes and drinks hot drinks while running his fingers through his touseled waves while staring with puzzled red eyes at the blank white? Add location–usually a dark room with lots of crumpled paper surrounding the small desk–and there you have it. Right?

Um, no.

I’m sitting out in the teen center which my son’s friend Bailey (currently going by Russell which he likes better) wants to turn into the “Fortress of Solitude.” I’m on the couch with the printer a whole building away (no crumpled paper). Indeed, this writing won’t ever involve any printing at all unless at some point my mother requests a copy because one of her friends reads it and tells her about it and she asks. I’m drinking Smart Water with Strawberry Lemonade fat burner hoping to knock off that late night peanut butter from last night. I’m sweaty, having just finished my cross training stint while simultaneously watching an interview by Dr. Lissa Rankin on what really happened in the documentary film, “Sacred Science” from her perspective…and I’m not even thinking about smoking. I’m not staring at a blank screen or demanding perfection (if you are a regular reader, you know I have a game called ‘Find Jamie’s at-least-one-mistake in each entry’.) Instead, I’m typing as fast as I can (think Joycian stream of consciousness with punctuation) so I can shower, go get my car from the mechanic, pick up my kids from swim practice, make dinner, and schedule this to go out tomorrow.)

Does this mean I’m not a writer? Must I write about character, or voice, or setting, or other writers, or other books, or metaphor, or ____________ (fill in a writerly word) to call myself a writer? And, when I do, must I have a book on the shelf in B&N to prove it?

Nah. I’m calling bullshit on that.

Summer writing

I have the hardest time keeping up a regular writing rhythm in the summer. I could do that thing that moms do where they tell you how full their dance card is and how they have to take everybody here and there and the other place, meeting the needs of the world, but before I even get started with that long boring conversation, I’ll recap. I have the hardest time keeping up a regular writing rhythm in the summer. It really all comes down to that.

It’s by choice. I love the shift in schedule that I feel and being self-employed, I can flow along with the change just like in school when finals meant summer had arrived. That really pertained mostly to grammar school since I started working alongside school at 15 and never stopped. But that feeling…when you knew, after all the field trips to ranches (yeah, I grew up in Cottonwood–what of it?) and days on the green were done, you’d have pure open time to do whatever the heck you wanted. I like to pretend I’m still doing that.

Just putting myself at the keyboard to type my three weekly blogs challenges me in the summer. I’ll keep doing it for that reason. But the main summer writing I get done is the “pre-writing” as Ray Bradbury called it once when I spoke with him at the Torrance Civic Center. What he said stuck and was in essence this: just because you’re not sitting alone in a room at a table banging away on a typewriter (he was old school) doesn’t mean you’re not writing. You’re doing that which informs your writing by living in the world, by looking at the grand oak outside your window and imagining it comes to life at night, covered in fairies. (I ad-libbed there–he actually said the roller coaster down on the beach in Santa Monica and how it looked like a dinosaur in the dusk.)

 

By smelling the summer rain across the meadow. By walking through the forest, and listening to the stories from the towering redwoods in the Quail Hollow Reserve.

 

 

 

From watching your almost 11 year old dog play with the froth of the ocean for the first time on Dog Beach. Through sipping a regional zin in a barn filled with stories with my husband and listening to an old winemaker fill the air with stories while your dog listens at your feet.

I may not excel at summer writing, but I’m good at summer living…

I ask myself three questions every day. I think I got these from Brendon Burchard. I actually put them on my Google Calendar so they pop up on my phone each morning. Here they are:

• Did I live?
• Did I love?
• Did I matter?

I have the hardest time keeping up a regular writing rhythm in the summer.

And that’s okay.

Wednesday Writes #1

A quick study of the dates since my last dip into the vortex of word fun tells the tale.

Theme #1: This girl needs some writing Metamucil. Or some word juicing. Something to get her moving the keys more regularly.

Theme #2: She likes to write about conferences. Not so much about writing. Or anything else. Just conferences.

There is some truth to both these themes, but as with all things, there’s more when you dig deeper. So I’ve dug, and have uncovered this truth: no time like the almost-end-of-the-world (I know–so 2012) to turn over a more regular leaf. And this is a good thing. Perhaps it will eliminate cliches about foliage from my writing.

What really spurred me on was my commitment to my health coaching clients and to my personal health. I set a goal to write daily through the 2012  holidays and completed that recently. Heck, doing anything every day during the holidays besides wrapping presents is a challenge. Celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas (we like to be safe) makes December a full-time job at my house so just getting through on a regular year is iffy. This year I had an additional four trips to weave through that tapestry.

Still, by keeping this commitment, I realized the value of daily writing outside my normal  writing. I fell back in love with that which had become trudgery. (Don’t go looking it up. the Merriams haven’t learned the word yet, but once they stop being trudgerous, they will.)

I reignited with that part of me that got so excited when I saw my first poem, “Red,” published in the Redding Record Searchlight back in 1971 or so. (Oh, to find that piece of work sent in by my first grade teacher, Mrs. Pope.) I’ve always felt I was put on this planet to write, and when I do it regularly, I’m reminded of that.

Balance is key, though, and I’m working on many projects. I need to organize my time. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Look for thoughts on writing each Wednesday. If you’re into healthy living, you can find me Mondays here  (www.getstrongblog.com). They go together in my mind since I gained 85 pounds drafting my first novel (too many peanut butter M&Ms–you’ve been warned) and I had to learn how to draft novels without that crutch, a secret of the universe I like to call decaf tea.

I hope you’ll join me through the process, the trudgerous and glorious roller coaster we call writing.