#amwriting – Page 6 – Anne McClane

2017 Look Back

The years teach much which the days never know. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I think back just twelve months ago, I remember a whole lot of uncertainty. We (the U.S.) had just completed one of the most surprising election cycles in recent history, and certainly in my history. My posts from a year ago reflect that state of uncertainty, to a degree. There was talk of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, some angst on my part over missing a #WritersResist event in New York.

I’m relieved to write that I feel a modest degree less uncertain now. The Republic still stands, the government still functions. (You can read into “functions” what you will, it’s a broad term.) On a personal level, I’m still employed, I still have some savings for the future, and I’m still writing.

This post completes the second full calendar year of this blog. On the “published writer” front, I signed a publishing contract with After Glows Publishing in the first quarter of 2017, and re-released The Incident Under the Overpass with them in September. I hope that the follow-up to TIUTO will release in the first half of 2018.

I had an essay published in OUTSIDE IN MAKES IT SO: 174 New Perspectives on 174 Star Trek TNG Stories by 174 Writers. I will have a short story appear in the sci-fi anthology Just a Minor Malfunction, issue #4, in late February 2018.

My progress in the published realm feels slow, but at least I can state that there is progress. And while I’m glad to be putting 2017 to bed, the year definitely had its highlights. I thought it would be nice to reflect on the new places I saw this past year:

Whitney Plantation: a sobering start to the new year, as I learned more about the role my ancestors played in the life of this once-successful sugar plantation. While not happy times for me, any occasion where my eyes are truly opened is worth remembering.
Düsseldorf: I saw a city in Germany I’d never seen before. Also of note, this is the only new place I encountered with my job—every other new place was of my own volition.
New Smyrna Beach: vacation with husband Tim on Florida’s Atlantic coast.
Murfreesboro, Tennessee: my first total solar eclipse!
Greece: a happier occasion to have my eyes opened, on vacation in one of the planet’s cradles of civilization.

So once again, Ralph Waldo Emerson states it best. The last days of 2016 certainly did not have places like Greece or things like a total solar eclipse in their sights. I’m grateful for the cumulative learning offered by this past year.

December 27, 2017 by Anne McClane

The Star

Our local star rises over City Park in New Orleans, December 3, 2017

I recently read about the 17th card of the Tarot deck, the Star. It’s a pretty hopeful one, coming after the Fool has emerged from his encounters with Death, the Devil, and a creepy Tower with people falling from it. I couldn’t help but draw the comparison between the Star being the 17th card in the Major Arcana, and this being 2017…

The book I was reading was Juliet Sharman-Burke’s The Complete Book of Tarot; I’ve had this book for decades, but have referenced it more and more these past few years as I focus on my writing. Regarding the Star, she writes: “The Star has always been an emblem of hope and promise; a light to steer by.” She goes on to reference the Magi following a star to Bethlehem. It seemed another interesting coincidence that I just happened to read about the Star on the first Sunday of Advent.

And I got to thinking, I realized I am personally feeling more hopeful in December 2017 than I was in December 2016, for several reasons. First, I feel a lot more confident about my fiction writing than I did a year ago. It seems I spent the better part of ’16 consumed with and worried about the publishing part of authorship. Truth be told, it felt like a distraction. I couldn’t see how I could keep all the plates spinning and finish the trilogy I had begun in anything resembling a timely manner.

Fast forward to now: book 2 is written, and I’m in the midst of editing and re-writes. Book 3 is outlined, and I’ve begun writing it. Working with After Glows Publishing has made a world of difference—they’re who I have to thank for the confidence boost.

Next, I start a new job next week as a Technical Writer. It’s with the same company I’ve been working for; but it’s outside of the marketing department. So, no more trade shows for me. Believe me, it’s a welcome change—I’ve been involved with trade shows or “experiential” promotions for roughly twenty years. I’m excited about taking on a new challenge, and having the chance to hone my word skills with a different type of writing.

Finally, I find the #metoo movement really hopeful. I try not to stray too much into political/societal musings in this space. My intent is keep it to things I have some authority over—mainly, my personal experiences and how they relate to my writing. Since I’m a woman who has worked in a corporate/business environment for many years, I definitely have authority over my own experiences in that sphere, and those experiences definitely influence my writing.

And I know this: it takes boatloads of courage to come forward and expose the bad behavior of someone who has power over you and your livelihood. Too often, I’ve seen that courage met with, at best, some temporary disciplinary action; at middling, indifference; and at worst, reprisals against the powerless. The fact that some perpetrators are now losing their jobs—their positions of power—feels like a sea change to me.

A quick aside: I’ve written here before about The Writer’s Almanac. I hear it has been canceled since Garrison Keillor was dismissed from Minnesota Public Radio. While I will miss hearing the content of that syndicated program, I was never particularly attached to Garrison Keillor’s hosting of it. I’m impressed that Minnesota Public Radio didn’t let his “brand name” outweigh the claims that were brought against him.

I’ll conclude with the December quote from my 2017 “First We Dream” calendar. It’s from Louisa May Alcott, and it seems fitting that it involves a star:

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

December 6, 2017 by Anne McClane

The Texas Renaissance Festival

So, I was in Houston this past weekend, visiting my sister Julie. Hurricane Harvey had something to do with this trip. After it dumped its biblical portions of rain on the Houston area, Julie and I carved out this time—a grateful acknowledgment of the fact that she and her husband were spared any flooding.

It took a little while for our schedules to coalesce. I had the trip to Greece last month, and Sister Julie had a bunch of work travel that just wrapped up. She flew to three continents over a four-week period, I think. One of her trips was supposed to commence the week Harvey hit, but airport closures pushed it forward.

As the fates would have it, I found myself in Texas during the Texas Renaissance Festival, for its Highland Fling-themed weekend. A note about this fair: Wikipedia tells me it began in 1974, on the location of an old strip mining site. Julie has lived in Houston for the past twenty-five years, and has been an avid fan of the TRF since she discovered it, shortly after her arrival in the Lone Star State.

Through the years, there’s been an assortment of our family that’s joined her on her annual trek to the festival, held every autumn, fifty-five miles northwest of Houston. I’ve been with her once before, five or six years ago, when I purchased a little owl figure at one of the shops.

There is a specific reason behind my relatively new fascination with owls. Shortly after I began this writing journey, I dreamt I had an owl as a pet. More a familiar than a pet. In the dream, the bird was trying to tell me in an owl-lie type way that I needed to adjust my focus, and pay more attention to writing. As motivation, it sorta backfired—while I definitely give writing more focus these days, I also get easily distracted by images or depictions of owls whenever I encounter them.

Original Owlie, plus a new sibling from Greece

Anyway, Sister Julie was in a reflective mood at this year’s festival. It might have been the effect of finally alighting at home after her round-the-world travels. Or maybe because her children are all grown now. Her daughter, Niece Emilie, would almost always join her for the Highland Fling weekend. Em just started a graduate program at Yale, so a trip back home to Texas just for the Fling was too hard to swing. 🙂

Julie pondered aloud about why she’s always loved the TRF. Was it the time of year, the South Texas air finally turning cooler? Was it the clothes and costumes? Was it Tartanic, the group that bills themselves as “Insane Bagpipe/Drum/Dance/Comedy” performers? Personally, I’d put in a vote for the scotch eggs and pear cider.

I reminded her that she’s always been drawn to that historical period:

“Remember the term paper you wrote in high school, ‘Was Medieval Woman Really…”

“Mid-Evil?” she finished my sentence. “Yeah,” she said, “How do you remember that?”

“I guess that’s the kind of stuff I remember.” Growing up the youngest of seven kids, with a nascent ambition to write, I paid attention to my older siblings’ term papers, short stories, plays, impromptu comedy skits…

Really, it’s enough for me that the Texas Renaissance Festival is just something my sister loves. As well as a lot of other people, apparently—it was packed this past Saturday. And I love seeing all the costumes, which span far beyond the Renaissance period. (For more casual togs, I was not the only one in a Star Wars t-shirt. And Astros fans were also out in force.)

And finally, I like to think of the “reawakening” meaning of renaissance. Here is an old strip mine, reborn as a verdant, pastoral, place. And what a lovely venue, and event, for the people of Houston to return to each year.

Admiring Julie’s new hair clip while waiting for the swings

November 22, 2017 by Anne McClane

Poetry Insurance

I’ve been thinking a lot about balance, lately. About how I can devote the time necessary to writing, and still go to work, earn a living…essentially, how to “pursue my passion” without abandoning adulthood entirely.

Which brings me to Ted Kooser and Wallace Stevens. I’ll start with Ted Kooser: he’s a former VP at an insurance company called Lincoln Bankers Life. He was also the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. He managed the job/passion balance for a long while—by the time he retired from the insurance industry, he had published seven books of poetry.

Wallace Stevens was another poet insurer, but from a different age. He was born in 1879, and died in 1955. And, apparently, he never retired. He worked as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut for most of his life. He was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955. That same year, Harvard offered him a faculty position, but according to Wikipedia, he declined it “since it would have required him to give up his vice-presidency of The Hartford.”

Speaking of working in a different era, regarding the insurance industry connection, Ted Kooser reportedly quipped: “Stevens had far more time to write at work than I ever did.”

Kooser would write in the morning before going to work (like me. Or like I’m supposed to be doing). Writing time of day aside, I certainly find more in Ted Kooser’s profile to identify with than Wallace Stevens’s. Stevens traveled to Key West quite a bit, where he’d tussle with the likes of Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. And when I say tussle, I mean it in the corporeal sense—he evidently had several arguments with Frost, and at least one physical altercation with Hemingway.

If I were to dust up with current literary giants while on vacation, I’m pretty sure it would be all over social media. I’m also 100% certain I’d lose my job.

So I’m back to identifying with Ted Kooser. His Wikipedia page is pretty light on famous fights. He’s now 78-years-old, and still working that balance. While he’s retired from insurance, he’s the editor of a national newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry.” His poetry seems really accessible, and he also seems like someone you wouldn’t mind knowing in person.

This poem from Ted Kooser struck several emotional chords with me, so I thought I’d share it. Maybe one day my early morning writing sessions will yield something half as poignant:

Father

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004

You can find out more about Ted Kooser here: www.tedkooser.net

November 15, 2017 by Anne McClane

Louisiana Book Festival

Each autumn, the State Library of Louisiana puts on the Louisiana Book Festival at the State Capitol grounds in Baton Rouge. Weather in Southern Louisiana can go one of two ways in October—unseasonably warm and muggy; or, what most people down here look forward to each fall—seasonably cool, moderate temperatures. We were fortunate to have the latter this past Saturday. It was a blustery day and I don’t think it got above 60 degrees, one of the first really cool days of this 2017 fall season.

I made the seventy-six mile trek up to Baton Rouge with my writing friend Samantha (she drove). For me, some highlights of the day were:

William Joyce: He’s primarily a children’s book writer, but I know him as the artist behind The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. This incredibly moving short film won an Academy Award in 2011. We heard him speak in the House Chamber of the State Capitol building, which is a really cool thing about this book festival—the venue.
Michael Farris Smith: He spoke in the Senate Chamber, and I bought his book Rivers. It’s a dystopian story I’ve heard a lot about. From the back jacket copy: “Due to years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast has been sealed off by a government-drawn boundary called the Line. Those who remain below the Line live hand-to-mouth in this lawless, unforgiving land.”
Karen L. Cox: A professor of history at UNC Charlotte, she just released a book entitled Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South. It’s about a notorious murder that took place in Natchez, Mississippi in 1932. The only person to go to prison for this murder has been largely forgotten by history. She was overshadowed by some whacked-out characters (who didn’t go to prison, despite their guilt), who captured the nation’s attention at the time and capitalized on their notoriety. Karen Cox gives some dimension to poor Emily Burns, the woman who was convicted as an accomplice and who did go to prison. The context is that this woman was hanging out with the wrong person, at definitely the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Hidden Figures: speaking of speaking up about the things history forgets…I received a free copy of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. The book by Margot Lee Shetterly (that inspired the movie of the same name) is the 2018 “One Book, One Community” selection for Baton Rouge. The East Baton Rouge Parish Library was giving away copies!
The pecan pie cupcake I got from a food truck. I think the purveyor was Cupcake Allie out of Baton Rouge. Delicious.

The Louisiana Book Festival’s website says this was their 14th edition. I first found out about the festival just five years ago, in 2012. It was the early days of my writing journey, and I made the trek up to Baton Rouge alone to attend one of the “Word Shops” held in conjunction with the festival. Those four hours spent listening to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler turned out to be a seminal moment in my writing career. Because it was then that I discovered what my writing lacked.

It was commitment.

If I truly wanted to put my work out in the world, and “go public” as a writer, I would need to find a way to put in the necessary hours. To negotiate the demands of job, family, life on Earth—and find a way, carve out the time needed to answer the call. The call to write had been a whisper for most of my life, but it began to shout insistently, smack-dab in mid-life.

While I’d love to say it’s been five years of consistent, steady effort ever since—I can’t. I still get derailed, it’s still a daily negotiation between the demands of job, family, life on Earth. But I’m not forgetting how far I’ve come in those five years: I’ve been published. I have writing friends. I have this blog. I even have an Amazon Author Page.

All these treasures felt like pipe dreams five years ago. I am exceedingly grateful to count them as part of my reality now.

November 1, 2017 by Anne McClane

Transformation: Yoga, Vodou, and Mass

Some elements from my writing desk, including the new Ametrine stone. Hey, just thought of something: Ametrine, Ambrose the Writing Mouse, Anne McClane?

I’ve been thinking a lot about transformation lately. Like the caterpillar-to-butterfly kind of transformation, the kind that transitions a creature from crawling to flying.

The “lately” qualifier needs a disclaimer. Truth is, I’ve spent a good bit of my life thinking about that kind of transformation. I’ve had an affinity for butterflies since I was very small—back then it was because they were pretty and delicate and seemed gentle. It wasn’t too long before I caught on to the symbolism of butterflies, and then I was set. Butterflies were going to be a thing for me for life.

Thoughts of transformation were somewhat inescapable this past Saturday.* I went to the New Orleans Healing Center for a yoga class. First aside: the New Orleans Healing Center is a location in both novels I’ve written so far—just seemed like a natural fit for a protagonist who discovers she has a supernatural healing ability. Second aside: I’ve been practicing more yoga as my body transforms (with age). I can no longer run as often as I might like, ever since my legs and lower back decided to shout out their displeasure over the prolonged pounding. The meditative aspects of yoga have helped fill one of the voids I’ve felt from running less.

After class, I asked the instructor to clarify one of the words he had used as part of an incantation. It was prana, the breath—the “life force” or “vital principle” in Hindu philosophy (it didn’t sound like prana to me). We chatted for a little bit, and he mentioned the particular Upanishad where I could find the incantation. But here’s the thing I found remarkable: how quickly I offered up the fact that I’m a writer. I said something like “I’m a writer, so words matter to me.”

There’s definitely some transformation at work. Even just a few short months ago, I’m not so sure I would offer up that facet of my life so quickly. Yeah, so, I’ve had this blog for two years; but bringing up my writing in this safe space is an entirely different matter than talking about it in public.

And I did it again; just moments later at the “Island of Salvation Botanica” shop on the first floor of the Healing Center. Third aside: a renowned Vodou priestess runs this shop. (She is ordained into the Haitian voodoo tradition, or “Vodou,” which is why I’m using that spelling.)

In addition to butterflies, I also dig rocks and stones, and I was perusing the nice selection of crystals and stones for sale. I picked out a piece of Ametrine, which the helpful card describing all the stones told me is “a very rare quartz based crystal in which Amethyst and Citrine have formed within the same crystalline structure allowing them to amplify and augment each other; bringing strength and luck in equal measure.”

I asked the Vodou priestess about the Ametrine and one other stone, I don’t remember which one now, but yet again, I volunteered something like “I’m a writer on the verge of publication, so the transformative properties of the Ametrine sound pretty good to me.” She agreed, and I am now the proud owner of a lovely piece of opaque lavender-hued Ametrine. (A bargain at $5)

Finally, late Saturday afternoon found me at Vigil Mass (the Catholic Church offers a Saturday church-going option). And wouldn’t you know it, it just happened to be the Feast of Transfiguration. I’m by no means an expert on these matters, but my understanding of the Transfiguration is that it was when Jesus’s divinity was revealed to the apostles.

I’m also by no means comparing my transformation into confessed writer with any kind of divine event whatsoever. I just thought it was interesting that Little Rabbit Foo Foo kept bopping this field mouse over the head with transformation stuff.

And finally finally, back to the beginning, what did I notice fluttering above me as I entered the New Orleans Healing Center? You guessed it—a butterfly. 🦋 🦋 🦋

* I can’t mention this past Saturday in New Orleans without mentioning the transformation of our roads into rivers on the very same day. A deluge was beginning just as I was leaving my neighborhood to go to Mass. While I was away, streets in my area of the city became impassable, and many businesses (and parked cars) flooded. In my neighborhood, several cars were totaled by the flood water and the sunken areas of a few homes took on inches of water. I hung out at my brother Jerry’s house, in an unaffected neighborhood, until I was able to return home late, late, in the evening. Thing is, this was not a hundred-year-event. A similar, though less severe “rain event” occurred just two weeks prior. Have you ever heard the song “New Orleans is Sinking”? Well, it’s true.

August 9, 2017 by Anne McClane

A Good Writing Day

Sunset, the day before my good writing day

So, Thursday of last week was a good writing day. A successful day in the calendar of Anne McClane, fiction writer. There are two bits of irony here, in that I don’t think I actually wrote much of anything on Thursday; and one of the things I’m about to share isn’t about my fiction writing. But it concerns an essay I wrote about fiction, so I’ll claim it falls under that umbrella.

Here’s what I have to share, in chronological order. I’ve included a header indicating what part of my writing life it bolstered:

Community: I met a New Orleans-based writer who just published a set of joke books for kids. He’s makes his living in PR (public relations), and I met him at a luncheon for PR professionals. (I don’t do a lot of PR work in my current job, but it’s something I have a fair amount of past experience with. I still go to the lunches when the topic sounds interesting). His name is Michael Strecker, and his books are: Young Comic’s Guide to Telling Jokes, Books 1 & 2. Basically, it was really cool to meet another writer, who devotes the time to writing on top of / in addition to other commitments. And I thought it was great that a publisher had picked up his work.
Development: I had a call with the editor I hired to do a developmental critique of my second novel. I really can’t place a value on that one hour spent hashing out plot holes, discussing character motivation, and just talking about the struggles I’m facing with the story, and how they might be fixed. After her line edits and that phone call, I have a pretty good sense of the work that needs to be done—a road map. Now, I just need to make the time to get behind the wheel…
Publication! I received the final proofread of an essay I wrote last fall, for an anthology commemorating the 30^th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The title of the anthology is Outside In Makes It So: 174 New Perspectives on 174 Star Trek: TNG Stories by 174 Writers. It should release September 28. And the proofreader was complimentary of my essay, which I thought was really nice, considering there were 173 other pieces to proofread.

With July behind us now, I’ll conclude by sharing July’s quote from my “First We Dream” calendar:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” –Henry David Thoreau

I’ll see what I can do to make it so.

August 2, 2017 by Anne McClane

Resistance

Last week, I mentioned how I was reading Steven Pressfield’s DO THE WORK! Overcome Resistance and get out of your own way. I finished it a few nights ago—it’s a quick read and pretty entertaining. I’ve been pondering the lessons therein and what they might mean for me.

Resistance is the big, bad dragon in Pressfield’s book. Resistance is all the stuff that keeps us from pursuing what we truly long for. In my case, what I truly long for is a career as a fiction writer.

Some helpful advice from the book I plan to take seriously:

About the actual work of writing: “One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP. Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.” I think resistance is the devil Pressfield infers.
About finishing and actually putting your stuff out there—he borrows Seth Godin’s term “shipping”: “Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing. When we ship, we declare our stuff ready for prime time.”
And finally, an anecdote about the lengths Michael Crichton would go to when he was nearing the end of a novel (he’d check into a hotel and work non-stop till he was done): “He knew that Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship.”

I’m fairly certain staying in a hotel and just writing is not an option for me; even if it was, I’m not sure that would work for me. But I get the gist of it—do what’s necessary (as long as it’s within my moral, ethical and economic boundaries) to “get ‘er done.”

But there are a couple of things about resistance that Pressfield doesn’t address. Number one, having subsisted on a steady diet of Star Trek: The Next Generation in my early twenties, I couldn’t help but think of the Borg, with all the mention of resistance. For those of you unfamiliar, the Borg are a massive collection of cybernetic organisms linked via a hive mind. Their insidious goal is “the forcible assimilation of diverse sentient species, technologies, and knowledge.” (Thanks, Memory Alpha.) Pretty much the scariest threat humans ever faced.

The Borg’s mantra? “Resistance is futile.”

Taken in context of DO THE WORK, it sort of makes resistance a little less scary. Like, all the resistance you face in trying to complete something might be futile in the end. If you stick with the project (for me, a series of stories featuring Lacey Becnel, a protagonist of my creation) and don’t let obstacles derail you completely.

HA! Take that, Borg!

So, I recognize that might be a bit of a stretch. I know myself—I’m not that optimistic, to think that I can consistently face down resistance by cheerily turning one of the scariest-ever lines of dialogue on its head.

My number two point feels a little more thought out. And it’s this: Resistance makes you stronger. I know this from my two favorite forms of exercise—running and swimming. Running wouldn’t offer all the same benefits if there was no pavement to offer resistance. Swimming would just be kicking and flailing about if there was no water (bet it would look pretty funny, too).

It never feels good when I’m “doing the work.” Struggling for breath, or feeling the impact on my aging bones. Or suffering through crippling self-doubt while writing. While that pain may be necessary, it’s also of limited duration. And ultimately, worth it. I’m a healthier human from the running and swimming, and (hopefully) a better writer from the work of producing manuscripts.

July 26, 2017 by Anne McClane

New Smyrna, Part 2

This post was supposed to contain some deeper musings about my time in New Smyrna Beach. About how Tim and I wound up there because of a successful silent auction bid last fall. We bid on a week’s stay on a condo during the Deo Gratias fundraiser I wrote about last November. Or how I finished Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 during vacation (it’s one of those books I never read during my school years—a deficit I’ve been seeking to correct for some time.)

I could have written something about time and the seasons linking up, how Deo Gratias led to another type of journey. Or something about how the lessons in Fahrenheit 451 still resonate today—how a majority can be persuaded to choose ignorance over the wisdom that comes through experience.

But, no. In a “vacation’s truly over now” kind of moment, I’m having some work done at the house and find myself without wi-fi. I got rid of an old modem as part of the whole process, but I can’t install the new one yet. Because I can’t get the old cable out of the wall. My finger and thumb are pretty raw from trying to get the nut to budge (and yes, I know which direction it’s supposed to turn: lefty-loosey).

So whereas I endeavored to unplug last week with limited success, here I am now left with no choice.

Resistance is pervasive.

Which brings to my final vacation discovery. Sunday night, I was already back home, but had not yet returned to my job (so by my rules, technically still on vacation). I encountered Dee Todd’s post, a review of Steven Pressfield’s DO THE WORK! Overcome Resistance and get out of your own way. I was compelled enough to download the book, and am about a quarter of the way through.

Pressfield’s premise is that any activity “that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity will elicit Resistance.” He includes a number of endeavors in those activities: writing, painting, launching an entrepreneurial venture, a new health regimen, and more. Essentially: “the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

He writes: “Resistance is a force of nature. It acts objectively.” I’m thinking of that coaxial cable nut. I know it’s not out to get me as it resists all my efforts to dislodge it. Even though it feels like it. And since it’s forced me to unplug, it’s turned into something of a benefit.

Pressfield also writes: “Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use it as a compass.”

Hmmm. I already know that writing’s a pretty big deal to me. And when the time I set aside for it gets spent on something else—when I push back instead of going with the flow—it weighs heavily.

Right now, I have two pieces of writing that are so close to fruition. My first novel is set to republish in two months, after another round of editing. My second novel is in draft form, and it’s chock full of line edits, awaiting my review and revision. Maybe the lesson is this: when I say I’m going to unplug, I really should, so that I can get my butt in gear and Do the Work.

July 19, 2017 by Anne McClane

The Writer’s Almanac

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. ®

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch” is Garrison Keillor’s sign-off for each edition of The Writer’s Almanac. I assume it’s trademarked by either Minnesota Public Radio or American Public Media, who distributes the daily five-minute program.

I know of Garrison Keillor through The Writer’s Almanac. I’ve never listened to A Prairie Home Companion. I’ve never even seen the movie, which is my usual cheat to acquaint myself with things I feel I should know more about.

As it is, The Writer’s Almanac is such a rare treat for me. New Orleans’s public radio station, WWNO, plays it around 9am each morning, right at the end of their broadcast of NPR’s Morning Edition and right before On Point. I’m usually at my job by that time, and I don’t listen to radio (or anything else non-job related, really) when I’m at my desk.

I always get a little charge when I hear the opening piano notes for the program. (Wikipedia tells me it’s a version of a Swedish song, performed by Richard Dworsky). And it was rare indeed that I heard it twice in a week—last Friday and this Monday. I took the day off Friday, and was late into work on Monday because of an eye doctor’s appointment.

My mind always feels a little more expanded when I get to hear The Writer’s Almanac. I hear poems that I’m not likely to encounter anywhere else, and hear of fascinating people who would not otherwise cross my frame of reference. Unless they showed up in a Google Doodle.

One of my favorite poems—John Updike’s “December, Outdoors”—was first introduced to me via the program. And June 30—Friday—was the birthday of poet Czeslaw Milosz, someone I’d never heard of before. He was born in Lithuania in 1911, and raised in Poland. He moved to the United States around 1960, and wrote the following about this country:

“What splendor! What poverty! What humanity! What inhumanity! What mutual good will! What individual isolation! What loyalty to the ideal! What hypocrisy! What a triumph of conscience! What perversity!”

That kind of resonated with me. Especially considering the inhumanity Milosz witnessed in his lifetime.

Anyway, after hearing The Writer’s Almanac on Friday, I was inspired to do something a little off my routine. I went for a walk along the lakefront—that’s how New Orleanians refer to a certain section of Lake Pontchartrain’s shoreline. I could go on about this shallow, brackish, body of water; how it and the Mississippi River define the geography of New Orleans; how it pervaded the dreams of my youth. But maybe that’s a post for another time.

So, I’ll conclude with this: I always consider it a small success when I’m able to “be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” In the past week, I’ve gotten my eyes checked out (they’re healthy), I’ve written about some things I find inspirational, and I’ve posted here. If I can keep myself from worrying about either the magnitude or measurement of these actions, then I will have truly succeeded.

Here are some more pictures from Friday’s walk:

July 5, 2017 by Anne McClane