Getting in the Conversation

I love Ted talks. I watch them in airports, while waiting for my son’s practice that are supposed to be over but aren’t, wherever I have my phone and an extra 18 minutes. So when I saw the format was coming to the fairly rural community where we live, I high-tailed it down to the box office for tickets.

I was not disappointed.

I live in a rural community where often people lose their vision to the daily grind. They sacrifice new ideas, learning, and vision to the comfort of the way it’s always been, even if that way is unhappy and uninspiring. Conversations revolve around the weather and whatever lines up with a particular world view that dominates a mental landscape. There’s not a great deal of diversity which often means not much diverse thinking. It can feel stale at times. It can rub off on you if you spend too much time rubbing up against it.

However, this past Saturday night there was energy in the air that was motivating and anything but stale. Eight speakers were launched by Shasta Taiko, a drumming group that originated as a group of friends and now performs in Mt. Shasta annually. The performance set the tone: this would be an evening of listening to someone moving to their own passionate beat.

One speaker, Jason Roberts, inspired listeners to make a difference in their communities just by doing things. He pulled off neighborhood restoration projects in Texas, breaking all the rules of what “could” be done, to create lively centers where families came out and brought the cities to life. He had been motivated by a trip to Europe where he saw that people of all ages were out in the streets unlike the “bad” areas near his home in Dallas. The takeaway? Just follow your crazy ideas. Just do something.

Matthew Diffee, a New Yorker cartoonist, talked about his process which starts each day with a whole pot of coffee and a blank sheet of paper. He explained how he comes up with his winners, and promoted “quantity over quality.” As a writer, I did so appreciate this. Gives credence to Lamott’s “shitty first drafts.” (seconds, thirds…) Just hearing how a cartoonist creates inspires me. It all comes back to showing up with the blank page on a regular basis.

One speaker from Cedar Rapids, Iowa was named Andy Stoll. His talk was on “Startup Alchemy and Rural Places.” He said that when he graduated, he wanted to understand how all kinds of people do things, so committed to travelling the world–with no money. My husband and I talked to him after he spoke and asked him how he did that. Bottom line? He just got really good at making friends. He’d tell them the truth–he just wanted to learn more about their culture and how they thought.

What kind of ideas could we manifest if we all entered into this larger conversation with such an attitude? How would this reflect in our systems and structures, in our art and our writings?

After the event we talked to people we don’t usually talk to. We listened to what they were doing, thinking about, excited about. Threaded through those conversations (with various people of all ages) was such possibility and promise. My husband and I even skipped our traditional Saturday night movie (Woody Allen, at that) to continue talking to a young archaeologist and her partner, a young man ready to embark on a micro-biology Masters’ Degree in Scotland. After they left, high school classmate Bill Jostock stopped by the Grape Escape, a small wine bar in downtown he told us about, and we continued the conversation.

The whole night reminded me of the importance of talking to new people about things that matter and old friends about new things. To listen, without agenda. To approach humanity with the idea of being a student of the University of the Universe. It’s no coincidence that the words are so similar.

The Speaking Part of Writing

Used to be writers could sit in a cabin Thoreau-style and just write. Not so much anymore.

After the long hours in the cave, where often the writer’s best friends are the characters in her novel, it’s time to emerge and share those characters with the world. That involves the real people.

When I first started attending Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators events about eight years ago, I marveled at the skill of the authors who got up to speak in the keynotes or in workshops. Public speaking seemed counterintuitive to a writer’s sensibilities for some reason. Did Hemingway get up and speak on stage? Or wasn’t he usually in a pub or coffee shop somewhere chatting with other writer friends? In my mind, it was always the latter.

I knew I would have to work on that part of writing–the speaking part. I knew it was important to learn how to tell stories on stage just like I had shared Mr. Greenskin stories with my second graders on the carpet in a circle after lunch. I wondered how I could transport that joy my 8 year olds felt, and the comfort level I had making up those stories on the fly, to the stage. I wondered if I could.

But like much rest of the population, I’d rather be burnt alive by fire then get on a stage and speak. I joined Toastmasters several years ago to get over that. At a speaking conference several weeks ago, the guy putting it on said he still gets nervous every time he starts even though he has spoken on thousands of occasions at this point. Some do, some don’t. Some writers I know write their acceptance speeches for their Pulitzer Prize winners before they ever write the books and can’t wait to have the stage.

For me, it was a challenge I would face. I set a goal to let go of the resistance because I knew what I had to say was important. I knew I was put on this earth to share stories that would help others along their path, and that sharing would inevitably involve speaking in front of large groups of people.

For the past week, in my dreams I have been speaking at conferences, in classrooms, in corporations. When this happens while I sleep, I know what’s coming.

And it’s not the cave.