Don’t Pity Your Story | Guest Post : This Is Me Thinking

October 12, 2011 in guest post, life, story with 3 Comments

Hey, friends! Today I’ve guest-posted over at Darrell Vesterfelt’s This Is Me Thinking about story, grief, and living a legacy. Check it out, leave a comment, share it if you feel so inclined. I’d love to hear your thoughts about how you choose to live your story and share it with others.

A Room, A Conversation.

October 11, 2011 in life, poetry, writing with 3 Comments

Me: “Do you ever have those moments when you can’t stand to be alone in a room with yourself?”
You: “There’s always the spirit you leave a filled room with. In addition to the silent dark room where you can hear your own verb.”
Never underestimate conversation as poetry. 
You’re better at it than you believe. 

[Image via]

This Little Idea I Have.

October 10, 2011 in art, creativity with 5 Comments

Instead of my regular bookish post on this Monday, we’re going to have a little heart-to-heart.
You see, I was busy this weekend… But I wasn’t busy with housework. I wasn’t busy with office work. I wasn’t busy hanging out with friends and celebrating my birthday for 3 days in a row.
I was busy with art.
And this art that I’ve been making is for something really important and potentially life-altering. It is deeply tied to my personal experiences – the people I love, the things that I think, the way that I process the world around me.
And I’m excited to share that with you when the time comes, but for now, let me just say,
Producing art allows for a lot of time to think.
And not having produced a significant volume of work in a long time, especially for the purpose of sharing it with others, I kind of forgot about that. And once I started in again,
I became so. 
incredibly. 
nervous.
Like, the palm-sweating, heart-racing kind of nervous every time I think about how much work it’s going to take to make this idea fruitful. I’m torn between complete excitement and joy for this new possibility, and utter misery.
And it’s silly when I think about the nuts and bolts of it, the simple and small gesture that I am actually doing as I create this. People do this all the time. And they’re successful at it.

But what if I’m not?
My friend tweeted this link today, and I think it’s exactly what I needed to read at this juncture in my life. Because I don’t want to make myself so miserable that I sabotage my own ability to pursue this and do it well.

1. Constantly compare yourself to other artists.

2. Talk to your family about what you do and expect them to cheer you on.
3. Base the success of your entire career on one project.
4. Stick with what you know.
5. Undervalue your expertise.
6. Let money dictate what you do.
7. Bow to societal pressures.
8. Only do work that your family would love.
9. Do whatever the client/customer/gallery owner/patron/investor asks.
10. Set unachievable or overwhelming goals to be accomplished by tomorrow.

Slowly, I’ve been telling a person at a time. The safe ones – my husband, my sister-in-law, my coworker. They’re the ones who will tell me it’s possible, tell me if my art is good or needs more work, tell me the mechanics of making this little idea that I have lucrative. No pressure.
And now I’m telling you, although I’m waiting until I can make it all official and professional and whatnot. That’s how it’s done.
But I share the beginning of this journey, in case maybe you’re thinking about doing something like this, too.
We’re in this together. So let’s get started.

The Age Issue.

October 8, 2011 in birthday, inspired by with 9 Comments

It’s funny. I don’t feel 24. And perhaps that’s because I’ve never been 24 and the feeling of it will settle into my skin as the next 365 days wear on. Sometimes, I feel older. The kind of older that comes with experiencing life at a faster pace than a lot of people my age. Sometimes, I feel way too young for the things I’m doing, especially when people have the habit of telling me so. Sometimes I feel far removed from the younger me, the adolescent me that felt quiet and sensitive and frizzy-haired. Sometimes I am her again, and the present feels like an alternate universe I stepped into, unknowingly, as I opened my closet to get dressed for school.
So what advice can I give myself as I step into a new year?
I think,
given the unpredictability of the present,
given the patience required in this stage of waiting and growing,
given the fact that I am now officially 24 years old and I do not have things figured out as 14-year-old me might have expected,
the thing I must do is learn.
I don’t want to have things figured out. I want to stay curious and hungry and restless enough to want to learn. I want to read and reflect and write and ask questions and search and pray so that the ideas and the answers and the possibilities keep coming. I want to begin each day with anticipation for what I will discover that day, understanding that whatever it is will not be the whole puzzle, but merely one more piece.
Learning is my motivation to live.
~
Here are a few posts that taught me something this week:
“I wonder if I’m still a writer or a content creator.” And 4 other things that I wish I didn’t have in common with every other writer/blogger on the planet.
Remember this post? Here’s another beautiful essay about the Fading Art of Letter Writing.
We’ve sheared the textile of our own lives. And it’s time to put down the scissors.
[Thanks Tyler for the great links yesterday!]
[Image via]

Inspired By.

October 7, 2011 in birthday with 3 Comments

Guess what, guys?

It’s my birthday! 

And what a good birthday it’s been. Hubs surprised me with a HUGE book – a complete collection of e.e. cummings. Does he know me well or what? Anyway, I’m going out for dinner with my closest loves tonight [at least my off-line ones, because I really do love all of you a whole lot], and I can hardly wait. But first, I wanted to wish you all a happy weekend, and ask for a wee little birthday present in return. Instead of me giving you a list of love-links today, can you give me a link in the comments to the best article or blog post you’ve read this week? I’ll share my own list of weekly favorites tomorrow, but for today, I’d love to see a few of yours.

Have a wonderful weekend – one full of life, full of color, full of wishes come true.

xo,
B.

Guest Post | Why I Write.

October 5, 2011 in guest post, story, writing with 11 Comments

Friends, today’s amazing guest post is brought to you by the lovely Rachel McGowan. Please read, please share, please comment. Please tell me I’m not the only one that cried while reading this. Thanks, Rachel! 
~
I sat down to write today in my favorite coffee shop, like I usually do. I was rushed, like I usually am.  I plugged in my headphones, found my favorite writing music, and opened up a blank page. Next to me sat two women, in their mid-thirties. This is not an uncommon sight to see, especially at a coffee shop. We women love our coffee dates with our heart friends.
Because I’m a curious person [and an avid people-watcher], I positioned my computer so that the pair was in my direct line of vision. Their mannerisms were fascinating; their laughter was like a magnet. I knew these women had a special connection, though I couldn’t figure it out.
Then one of the women opened a journal. It was a simple blue spiral bound notebook, probably found on a sale at a grocery store. She began to read.
As soon as I heard the word “addiction”, I turned off my music.
[And yes, I sat with my headphones still in my ear, with no music playing. A good creep learns this trick early on.]
I stopped was I was originally writing, and just listened. I was stunned by what I heard.
The woman sat in the middle of this coffee shop, and read the story of her struggle with an addiction to alcohol. She sat with her friend and simply spoke the cursive words written on those pages of that journal. She read the words that described the pain she felt when her own mother was diagnosed with cancer, and how that pain led her to strong vodka. She described the moment where she was so drunk she missed her mother’s funeral. She said she was “crushed by a self-imposed crisis” and was “so unaware of God’s presence because of the way alcohol made her feel.”
She said she had gotten more DUI’s than she thought possible, and that she never had enough self-control to give up her keys when she was inebriated.
She described the way it felt to be in jail for manslaughter.  She said that you don’t know pain until you know what it’s like to kill the innocent little girl in the other car. When she got to the part about the father of the little girl reading a letter to her in the courtroom, I got chills.
Page by page, she described her nightmare of a life to her friend across the table. There were tears and laughter and an appropriate use of air quotes. Her friend cried with her, laughed with her, and listened to every word she spoke. The pen marks were sharp knives in the air, clawing at every piece of flesh they came into contact with. My heart was shivering.
When she finished, the friend who had been listening the entire time had tears in her eyes. She looked this woman in her eyes, and she said, “Oh girl. You are reading my story exactly.”
And then the friend told this woman about hope.
This friend spoke of truth, of freedom, of sobriety. She sang over this woman the melody of a life un-bound by chains, un-clouded by addiction.
The bond these women shared was based on nothing that could be seen on the surface. It wasn’t that they worked together, or shared the same love for Thai food. They had both drank the poison of substance abuse, and had both seen the ramifications of letting that addiction take over their life. They knew what it felt like to choose alcohol over literally anything else, no matter the cost.
This friend helped the woman take a step out of the darkness. She spoke life.
And I think this is why I write.
Our stories have more power than we will ever be able to understand. It is a level of power that is frightening.
It’s chilling to think of the lives we can affect by writing down our histories and reading them to the world. It is terrifying to share our pasts, to write them out, to bare our souls.
There is so much depth to our imperfect cursive handwriting, or the periods at the ends of sentences, and the world is desperate for that depth.
It is an unexplainably beautiful thing to let down that wall, to expose our insides part by part., and the world is desperate for that beauty.
It is a disservice to humanity if we silence our own stories, even when they are ugly. To speak them is to speak life, and the world is desperate for that life.
To let people see our soul comes with a crippling wave of emotion. Even though it means we might change a life, it is still the scariest thing in the world.
But it is tragically scarier not to.

Rachel McGowan is a California-born 20-something writer, reader, dreamer, joke-teller, car-dancer and shower-singer. She loves learning from people and is passionate about the power of story and seeing good come from gross. Rachel works with college students and drinks diet cokes back to back to keep herself sane. She often writes about love, sex, singleness and relationships — and the awkward joys and struggles of them all. She tweets about her daily observations, and she blogs about everything else.

Poem: Since Feeling is First

October 4, 2011 in poetry with 0 Comments

Life is funny sometimes. We don’t realize that there are many people, some friends, some perfect strangers, that are living amazing, poignant, beautiful, brave stories… Maybe what I mean to say is that life is funny all of the time, but we’re blind to it.

But for today, open your eyes. Because life is funny, short and sweet, terrible and beautiful. And worth reveling in.

~

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;


wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world


my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says


we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph


And death i think is no parenthesis


- e. e. cummings

book·ish: Favorite Book of All Time.

October 3, 2011 in bookish, reading, The Time Traveler's Wife with 10 Comments

It’s the beginning of October. It’s a time for cider, bonfires, comfort food, sweaters and boots. And it’s time for The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’ve told you before about my obsession with this novel, but here I am. I’m about to pull it off my shelf, crack it open, fall in love with it all over again.

I can’t explain it, but something about fall reminds me of this book and makes me want to read it, so I’ve made a tradition of it. Perhaps it’s because the first time I read it, it was fall. Perhaps it’s because the novel begins with a beautiful October day in Chicago, much like the one I’m enjoying today. Perhaps it’s the symmetry bittersweetness of golden leaves as they fall to the ground and the colorful, heartrending love story of Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire that commands me: stop. read. relish.
So if you haven’t read it, now would be a wonderful time to start.

If you can narrow it down to just one, what is your favorite book? Do you have a book that you read over and over again? Do you reread a certain book at a certain time of year? Am I crazy?

~


book·ish/ˈbo͝okiSH/Adjective


1. (of a person or way of life) Devoted to reading and studying rather than worldly interests.
2. (of language or writing) Literary in style or allusion.
3. (of art and all manner of lovely things) devoted to the written word as a form of art and as a way of seeing the world.
4. (of SheWritesandRights.blogspot.com) anything of the aforementioned characteristics as they are found on the interwebs and reposted by Bethany, because bookish and writerly things always give reason for amusement.

Inspired By.

September 30, 2011 in inspired by, love letters, writing with 4 Comments

Guilty pleasure confession: I’ve seen it about a million times now, but I love the first Sex and the City movie. [The second movie was horrible - a floppy storyline that was thrown together as what I hope will be a last ditch effort for another $300,000,000.]
Now go ahead. I know you want to. 
Groan and roll your eyes and say, “Bethany, I thought you had better taste than to watch those heathens!” all you want, but I’m a sucker for a writerly heroine, any story line related to relationships and romance, and the fashion and glitz of a thriving metropolis like New York City. So, I watched the movie again last night, and googled “Love Letters of Great Men, Volume I.” Turns out, it was a fake book that Carrie was reading at the beginning of the film, until a Mr. John C. Kirkland realized that women round the world were now dying to get there hands on such a book, and so he compiled it. Genius. 
Amidst my googling I found this site, and couldn’t resist sharing this note from the lovely Man in Black, Johnny Cash. 

Transcribed: 
Hey June, 

That’s really nice June. You’ve got a way with words and a way with me as well. 

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don’t go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout. 

Love John

The beauty of a handwritten note cannot be denied. There’s just something about it that feels so raw and tangible in a way that digitized communication will never be able to emulate. I know that when I’m feeling stuck and disconnected to my writing self, the best thing I can do is close my laptop and grab a pen and my notebook. 
So my plea to you, instead of my usual Friday post of lovelinks, is short and simple and sappy to the core. 
Write  a letter. To yourself, to your love, to your friend, to your future, to anyone that might need it. Be poetic and passionate enough to scrawl your thoughts, messy and unhindered.
Leave something to be found when you’re gone. 

National Coffee Day!

September 29, 2011 in coffee, writing with 2 Comments

Let’s all take a moment and give thanks for this wonderful, legally addictive substance that has provided vitality and gumption to writers round the world for centuries, this blog included.

[Image via.]

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