Author name: Sayling@@Away

Below is an excerpt from a newsletter written by a Canadian plein air painter – Robert Genn.  He writes two letters a week and sends it to a vast subscriber list, among them a friend of mine who is a plein air painter and lives in California.  She finds people who talk constantly about their art in progress with me-me-me syndrome very annoying, and she found this letter right on topic. It also introduced me to a new concept: humblebragging. “Now that everyone’s blabbing, tweeting and Facebooking minor and major glories, there’s a new way to deliver your stuff. It’s called humblebragging.  This is where you lace your accomplishments with enough humility to get your stuff across and yet soften the blow to others. After all, it’s not nice to let people think your life is better than theirs. ‘That crummy painting I struggled with and almost threw out got sold to Lindsay Lohan.’ You get the idea?” As an artist, Genn doesn’t believe in any of this stuff.  He’s worried about what bragging does to art learning and art quality. “This is just another reason why I try to talk about you, not me. Oh dear, that sounded a bit like humblebragging. Here’s the rub: If you transpose your doing thing to a talking thing, you might just be changing the dynamics of your doing thing. And if you decide to add a shot of humility, especially false humility, that might just screw things up even further. We are our words. We are what we say. What we speak, we become.” “We all know of artists who constantly need to verbalize their weaknesses and failures. Is the lousy self-esteem they project because their work is actually lousy, or is their work lousy because they’re always saying how lousy it is?” While I agree with a lot of what Genn wrote in his newsletter, writers are artists who paint with words, and thus people who write, especially ones who find critique groups helpful to improving their writing, need to talk about their work in order to get feedback and to get across their ideas. We just have to try not to be humblebraggers. Genns definition (taken from Jen Doll, a blogger):  “The humblebrag is a way to brag while also seeming humble. It’s a subtle brag, a brag with a wink and a nod, the inside joke of bragging.” Examples from Genn’s letter:  “Full humblebragging baloney often comes with the well regarded institution of the Artist’s Statement: ‘My folks were very poor. I was born in an old paper bag in the middle of Highway 401.’  Truly noble heights are attained when artists write about themselves in the third person: ‘As a child Joe Bloggs was always interested in mud puddles, hence his current fascination with marine subjects.’ ‘Mary Pinnacle’s father was an undertaker–she grew up surrounded by flowers.’” Hmm, this concept could make for some interesting writing. 0 0

I’ve been walking back and forth in my pool to keep my body going while my little red blood cells regenerate after my recent shoulder surgery.  They actually made an appearance right on schedule: fourth week, lots more energy. Since walking is not so great at raising the heart rate, I decided to jog.  Good choice – 30 or so traverses pushing against the water and moving as fast as I can had me panting. Which made me think about resistance. What came to mind is the 1 lb weight my Dad put on the end of my tennis racket when I was seven or eight. He was a damned fine tennis player (New England singles champion, played at Wimbledon), and I think he was hoping for another champion in his family.  I complained loud and long at the extra weight, and my arm could barely hit a forehand, but he said my arm muscles would develop quickly against the resistance.  And he was right. When the weight came off the next year, I had a zinger of a forehand and backhand. Which made me think about writing.  I’ve run in to resistance this year. Resistance at finishing the final editing of my first book, resistance after the first two chapters of my second.  I had parents who drummed into me that there was nothing I couldn’t do if I tried, and if I ran into resistance, I just had to buckle down and work harder.  I took it to heart, and it helped my academic career.  Writing, not so much until just lately.  When I flagged with the book rewrite, I took time off and wrote a story about lobsters.  It was a breeze. I was reinvigorated.  I finished the book rewrite.   A sense of accomplishment and on to the new book and the next chapter.   Now I am bogged down in querying editors about the first book, but no matter, I’m flying with the second.  Soon I’ll be pushing on with querying. So resistance in writing, at least for me, seems to be a signal to try something new and creative for a while, get back the old enthusiasm and push forward.  Feels like the weight is off my racket. 0 0

Yes, you read that right. I’ve been walking in my pool. After my shoulder joint was rudely removed by a damned fine surgeon and replaced with a titanium replica that promises to outlast the rest of my body, I was told no swimming until the incision’s completely healed.  Bummer.  In addition, the machinations of the surgeon left me pretty anemic.  The thought of becoming a couch potato in a pool of blubber was not appealing, so I’ve taken to walking in the pool. Traversing the shallow end 50 or 60 times is absolutely mind-numbing, but it has the advantage of being close to home should I start to fade. This type of exercise has left me to my imagination and observation.  One of the things I’ve seen in the pool every day is a bird feather.  The adult wing feathers have a gray base and the loveliest pink-red tips, clearly from one of the cardinals living in the bushes near the house.  We feed them in the winter time, and to get to the food, the male meanly shoves aside any female on the tray. By spring, however, he has more urgent things on his mind and will delicately choose a seed to feed his mate.  Males of every species are clearly driven by their hormones! Each year a pair nest in the tree outside our family room window and raise a raucous brood which doesn’t want to leave.  But being territorial, by the time fall rolls around Mom and Dad have asserted themselves and we are back to one pair.  They apparently like to bathe in our pool, despite the fact that we have provided them with a fantastic bird bath. Occasionally, one or the other sheds a downy breast feather, totally pink, that floats gracefully on the water’s surface.  I do love seeing that fluff. I also use these walks to remove leaves from the pool, which are slowly taking over its surface.  I enjoy watching a sere and folded leaf land on the water and sail across the pool, pushed by the wind like a ship of state.  Makes me think of the Niña, Pinta, Santa Maria, Mayflower, Golden Hind, Trinidad and Santiago, ships that flew before the wind carrying explorers across the oceans and around the world.  But mostly I just scoop them up with a net, while walking mindlessly back and forth. 0 0

Hello readers! Chapters 3-5 have now been added. Read on as Rhe delves deeper into the mystery of the body found on the soccer field. Enjoy! Read Chapter 3 now!  0 0

Autumn is here. I can tell from the spider webs. Going out onto our back deck each morning is now an adventure because their silky nets have been spun overnight and hang from our sun umbrellas.  Spider silk is mainly composed of a protein similar to that in insect silk, the kind that the Japanese have for years used to make silk cloth.  It’s similar in tensile strength to nylon but is much more elastic, so it can stretch much further before breaking or losing shape.  Which is why it stretches when it catches you.  Definitely a biological wonder. I don’t mind running into the webs, but I do worry about is having the spider actually on me. I respect spiders, largely because they help reduce the insect population, but North Carolina is also home to both the brown recluse and the black widow, both of which deserve a wide berth. Our pool seems to be a spider attractant. I have never seen so many different species as I’ve seen while swimming this year, from tiny almost transparent ones to huge black and yellow garden spiders 2-3 inches across.  No matter the size, shape or color, they all have the same eight legs.  No, spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs and are on the spider menu. The webs are a marvel of engineering and design and I think everyone should take the time to admire the work and try to avoid running into them, if possible.   In the last few days I’ve seen the egg balls in the center of the webs, the mother’s promise of a new generation.  Autumn is definitely here. 0 0

I don’t know how many people reading this have written something, anything, that requires rewrites. I am personally on my fourth or fifth (and hopefully the last) of Sudden Death and am finding the work very hard going. Sort of like slogging through mud.  My beta readers did a fantastic job finding errors, crumbs misplaced in the story line or even not developed sufficiently, and things left out.  While this has led to the inevitable chapter by chapter fixin’, it has also led to backtracking and more rewriting.  Slogging.  I find myself wanting to write something, anything, for fun. To create, not recreate. Trying to stay on task is a constant effort. I’d love to know how other people handle this. What tricks do you use to keep yourself interested and excited about the rewrite? Solutions, anyone? 0 0

My left shoulder finally got to the point where the pain was occasionally unbearable, and my PA at the orthopedist’s office said it was time for an MRI (magnetic resonance image) to see what was going on.  So at 9:00 sharp I showed up at the radiologist’s.  It first had to be determined if any of the metal bits in my knee, abdomen and neck might somehow interfere with the MRI.  I was thinking of their red hot heating and internal combustion, but they assured me this wouldn’t happen.  I was asked if I was claustrophobic, which I’m not.  Then I had to get rid of any clothing with more metal bits, and finally I was ready. The MRI machine looks like a lunar landing module with a white tube inside, and to start, I was asked to stand on a platform (the better to take off from, I guessed) and turn sideways. Then my left arm was placed in a padded tube and the wall I was leaning against rotated so that I was lying on my left side.  I was handed a rubber bulb to squeeze if something went wrong (so something could go wrong?), then the bed I was lying on glided slowly into the white tube.  The technician put a blanket on me because it was like Antarctica in there, and I was told not to move for the next 25-30 minutes.  This may sound like a minor request, but have you ever been completely still for that length of time – not a wiggle, not a shift?  It would have been easier if I had been comfortable, but my neck was bent at a contortionist’s angle and I felt like a pretzel. Things soon became painful and I had to figure out how not to move for 30 minutes and block out the discomfort and the noise.  Yes, MRIs are noisy, emitting a variety of clicks, grinds, buzzes, and whirrs, which to the uninitiated might sound like a meat processing machine.  I practiced slow breathing for a minute or so, which really calmed me, and then focused on a place where I’d been truly happy: sitting high on some rocks overlooking the ocean in Acadia National Park in Maine.  Visualizing the panoramic view of the ocean, Otter cliff, the waves crashing on the shore, the distant islands, and sailboats gliding by kept me occupied for about 15 minutes.  When I could no longer focus on the view, I decided to create dinner menus and had at least three when I was informed that I only needed to hold still for three more 3 minutes bursts.  What to do now?  I decided to concentrate on scenes and characters for the book I am writing, and that kept me pretty busy for two of the three minute sessions.  By the third, I was sure my head would soon explode, so I just did a mental countdown: one thousand, two thousand… Finally the noise stopped, and bed slid out of the tube and I was returned to an upright position, sort of like an airplane seat.  I realized I had had my eyes closed for the entire time and opening them took me from the life of the mind to the lights of the MRI room, so it was a minute or so before I could descend from my inner trip. My advice if you have to have an MRI: have a mental list of things to think about! And oh, yes, bring ear plugs, but not metal ones. 0 0

This past week was a hard one. We had to have one of our dogs put down, a lovely, smiley, gentle soul named Rock (although she was a girl).  She came to us as a puppy, an adorable little German Shepherd mix, and she quickly became the boon companion of our older dog, Sampson.  Sampson became a puppy again with her around and I think those were the best years of his life.  About four years after Rock arrived on the scene, we acquired another dog, Angel, a Jack Russell – rat terrier mix who has bounced through life for the last eleven years. After Sampson died, Angel was Rock’s companion, often sitting with her rear end on her prostrate friend.   They went everywhere together, whether it was to determine who was encroaching on our yard or on wild romps through the woods on their occasional escapes from our pool enclosure.  Rock had not been eating for a while and was losing weight, and even though we suspected the diagnosis would not be good, it was heart-rending to learn she had cancer, a type from which she could not recover and which could cause her to stroke out at any time. We buried her in our back yard, where Sampson and the cats with which we have been blessed share her resting place.  She was so much in our lives that we still think we see her here and there, and it has been hard to watch Angel looking for her everywhere. Here’s to all dogs and the people who say they are their owners,  but who are really family.  My one regret is that dogs have shorter lifetimes than we do, so when we have a dog, it is with the realization that sooner or later we will be losing a part of our hearts. 0 0

I’ve been largely missing out on time for serious writing lately. That worries me. The rule of thumb is to write every day.  I wonder if critiquing the work of the other authors in my two writers’ groups and revising their stories to submit for publication really counts.  I also know that I have to be ‘in the mood’ to write de novo, something that Elizabeth Hein in her blog, Scribbling in the Storage Room, calls a ‘luminal state’.  For me, being in the mood means I have an inspiration and am so eager to get it down, that I can sit at the computer for several hours without even noticing the time. In any event, I’m reinvigorated and have completed the second chapter of my new book and am researching an idea for a piece about the Pilgrims, which I hope might be published around Thanksgiving. I grew up in Plymouth, MA, in the 50s and 60s, during what I think was a special time, after WWII and before the social changes and upheavals of the mid-60s and 70s roiled the country.  Because my father was anxious for his children to fit in, I was enrolled in a course given each summer at the Harlow Old Fort House.  The house was a small story and a half dwelling with graying shingles, gambrel roof, and a large central chimney, built in 1677 by William Harlow, a cooper or barrel maker.  There I learned something of Pilgrim life.  We, all young girls, learned to cook in the fireplace; make candles and soap; and to wash, card, spin, dye, and weave wool—all in that wonderful, old house.  It enchanted me with its creaking floors, the smell of nearly three hundred years in its wood, and a sun-dappled, peaceful garden with rows of corn and vegetables growing at the rear.  When I was in high school, I was asked to become a tour guide at Plimoth Plantation, which was opening the following year.  In preparation for the Plantation’s visitors, I took Saturday classes to learn more about the Pilgrims.  At that time British accents were not required.  The garb I wore had not been thoroughly researched and wasn’t accurate, but I nevertheless felt a kinship with these doughty people who crossed the ocean in a small, leaky boat and risked their lives for freedom.  I’m looking forward to writing this piece. To all of you who have posted comments, thanks for your support. I can be contacted more directly on my Facebook page! 0 0

I’d like to tell you about a book I just finished reading, called Escape from Camp 14.  It is written by Blaine Harden,  who is an author and journalist for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist.  I read about the book in a Wall Street Journal report and had to give it a read. The book recounts the story of Shin In Geun (now Shin Dong-hyuk ), who is the only person to have been born in a North Korean prison camp and escaped.  Shin is the child of a man and woman who were awarded a gift of having a night with each other, and he grew up chronically malnourished and unloved in a place of brutality, torture, paranoia and fear. When he was 13, he reported to camp authorities that his mother and brother were planning to escape. He was tortured just for knowing about it and then had to watch their executions.  He felt no remorse.  Surprisingly, Shin’s desire to escape from the camp was not based on a desire for freedom, but simply because he wanted food, in particular meat!  How he managed to get out required an inordinate amount of luck and incredible perseverance, and is fascinating in the telling, but the real story is his struggle to adjust to the modern world, first in South Korea and later in California.  This is a powerful memoir, written from interviews with Shin over the course of several years.  I recommend it not because of its sensationalism, but because it reveals the truth about North Korea’s prison camps and also explains why South Korea, and indeed the world, has shown little interest in reunification, the human rights violations of North Korean, and the abolition of the camps.  It is also a testament to the power of the human spirit in the face of unfathomable cruelty and deprivation. 0 0