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“The Artist’s Way” Hits Close to Home

Friday, October 26, 2007

Last week I heard someone talking about a book called The Artist’s Way, and how it had helped them reconnect with their creative side. Kind of a course you could take yourself, complete with daily/weekly exercises. It sounded interesting to me, so I ordered it and today I’ve been reading the book.

It’s weird how I can read things sometimes and feel like the author is really speaking to me; like they understand me a deep level. Imagine my reaction upon reading the following passage near the beginning of the book. The author (Julia Cameron) is discussing how some people deny their artistic side but gravitate toward it anyway, becoming what she calls “shadow artists”:

Shadow artists often choose shadow careers - those close to the desired art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself. Intended fiction writers often go into newspapering or advertising, where they can use their gift without taking the plunge into their dreamed-of fiction-writing career.

Yow. That got me right where I live.

In my opening post to this blog I talked about how I’d been killing my own dream of being a fiction writer. To read these words a few days later gave me a wonderful sense of encouragement.

The exercises in the book seem both fun and challenging, and I’m looking forward to going through the whole thing (12 weeks). Hopefully, this will help me take my craft to the next level. I’ll keep you posted.

  

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Fires, Day 4: And Now, For Something Completely Different

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Today a lot of people are being allowed back into their homes - or what’s left of them. But we are just beginning to get a handle on what has been lost this week.

A good friend e-mailed me yesterday saying that his home was probably lost. He also has a large business, which he closed down on Monday to let his employees take care of their homes and families as best they could. Looters broke in Monday night and stole $300,000 worth of equipment from the business. Amidst all the stories of how people have been working together and helping each other through this crisis, you have to imagine that things like that are happening too. Still, the news left me speechless.

Cooking with PoohAll that said, the tension that has been hanging over us this week is lifting, and things are starting to seem funny to me again. I exchanged an e-mail yesterday with my favorite comic strip cartoonist, Stephan Pastis, who draws Pearls Before Swine. The strip features a fraternity of crocodiles who can’t seem to figure out how to catch and eat their neighbor, a zebra. The strip is also known for sending its characters into other well-known comic strips for adventures. I suggested that Mr. Pastis send the crocs over to Mary Worth for advice on the predator/prey relationship. He suggested I not quit my day job.

Then, this morning, I saw this cookbook cover, which made me laugh out loud. What, exactly, is that stuff Winnie is stirring? The humidity is rising, the air is smelling better. Hopefully, “normal” isn’t too far away.

Late Update: Spoke to my friend, who was just allowed back in to his house. The house survived; only the landscaping was lost. Great news.

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Fires, Day 2: The Visibilty of “Stuff”

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The fires continue to rage. I know of at least four people who have lost their homes. Two more who have evacuated and are awaiting the verdict of the wind.  Our house continues to be out of the path of the fires, but the air is smoky, there is a burning smell, and a covering of ash is beginning to settle over everything. Can it really be two more days before this is over?

In a story that I’m working on right now, a character tries very hard to erase himself from the world around him.  He gives up everything — even his name. He thinks of possessions, emotions and relationships as things that wrap themselves around us, tie us down, and make us visible to others – like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, who wrapped bandages around his head in order to be seen and pass through the “normal” world. To this character, it is only the things we have which make us visible.I’m thinking about this now because half a million people in San Diego County have been forced to leave so many of those things behind and seek shelter from the fire.  None of them know if their things will still be there when they return. 

The good news, of course, is that my character is wrong.  We don’t need stuff in order to be visible.  Even if we must leave everything behind, as the people of San Diego are doing - and as the people of New Orleans did in 2005 — we cannot lose ourselves, except by choice.

On the news yesterday, I watched a man and his young son return to their neighborhood to find that their house had been destroyed.  The son, who was about 11, was lamenting the loss of his computer and drum set.  His father, smoke from his ruined house still swirling around his head, put his arm around his son’s shoulder, smiled and said “It’s only a house. We can rebuild.”

How many of us could be as sanguine under the same circumstances?

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San Diego is Burning

Monday, October 22, 2007

I just heard on TV that more than 250,000 people in San Diego have been ordered to evacuate their homes because of the wildfires. The pictures are simply incredible - hot winds from the east are blowing the flames and smoke almost sideways, and the valiant firefighters can’t seem to stay ahead of them. Neighborhoods are being destroyed, the roads are clogged with evacuees’ cars, the air smells like ash, and our sinuses are irritated with all the stuff in the air.

We’ve been fortunate so far; our home isn’t being threatened. The danger is that some new fire will start closer to home - the humidity is about 10% and the trees in our canyon are dry from years of drought. They say it will be Wednesday before things get better.

Watching televsion and seeing the whole thing unfold for hours on end, I’ve been almost overwhelmed today with this feeling of helplessness in the face of the forces of nature. What else could you feel under the circumstances?  We’ve thought through our plans should we have to evacuate, discussed where we might go, and prepared as much as seems wise.

What remains, then, is this strange in-between state. Nothing to do but watch the inferno around us and think about all those people who have had the gut-wrenching experience of driving away from their homes with whatever small thngs they could pack - not knowing what, if anything, they might come back to.

Watching, you have to ask yourself: how will I feel if this happens to me?

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Welcome

Friday, October 19, 2007

Hi Everybody!Welcome to the new site and the new blog. What I’m hoping to accomplish here is to start a conversation about things that interest me - things I’m reading about, thinking about, and writing about.

The publication of Nub: Story of an Ex-Cripple is the realization of one of my life’s greatest dreams. One of those fantasies you turn over in your mind late at night just before you fall asleep. “I can write that book. I know I can write that book.” I remember so many nights imagining the moment when I would hold the book in my hands and see my words made real. I would be humble, yet proud. Believe me, I had it all worked out.

In between the late night fantasy and the holding of the finished product, of course, was a lot of writing. But I discovered along the way that I loved the writing, and that, like so many other things in my life, I had talked myself out of trying it for many, many years. I had been killing my own dream.

Now, with the book finished, a new chapter of my life is opening up. I continue to work at the craft of writing, and the deeper I go into it, the more satisfying and exciting it becomes. Right now I’m collecting a lot of rejection letters, but as Stephen King says, they are badges of honor along the road to becoming a better writer. Selling my work is a great goal (hey, did I mention that you can buy my book at Amazon?), but I’m finding that the act of creation itself is the most seductive thing.

So please let me know what you think: about the blog, the book, life in general. I’m looking forward to what happens next.

By the way, on the day my publisher presented me with the first galley copy of Nub, I gasped, laughed, fell back into my chair, and started to cry. So much for humble, yet proud.

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