The Fine Example of Lord Keillor of Wobegon

Last night Husband Bob and I went to see a live TV showing of Prairie Home Companion at a local movie theatre: a perfect celebration of Bob's 68th birthday yesterday.

It was sublimely good and completely heart-warming: a winning combo that Garrison Keillor produces weekly without fail.

Here's why I mention him again on a blog broadly devoted to boldness and marching to your own drummer, artistic and otherwise. GK has made an immense success and ongoing contribution based on an idea that at first probably didn't sound like a sure-fire national hit. Think about it: a two hour radio show about an imaginary Minnesota town, two cowboys, a lovelorn private eye, ketchup, duct tape, and hopeful gospel music. A show based on one sorta odd guy being relentlessly himself. I'd hate to have to pitch it in a meeting.

And I'm continuously inspired as well as delighted by both the show and the example.

Encore performance of the HDTV showing: Feb. 9 at a theatre reasonably near you.

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Callings

A lot of books arrived at my house last week after psychologist husband Bob's office reorganization. Picking through the boxes, I discovered a few selections that I'd recommended to him because I'd found them outstandingly useful, actually practical and effective in improving my life navigation skills.

So I decided to glance at these books again and bring here a few pithy items from each.

Today, from the splendid Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy, some quotes and, of course, my comments.


*"Calls are essentially questions....What question were you put here to understand?"

My question is: What is God? This is the subject of all my books.



* "If you were to retell your own life story as a myth....you would become the hero or the heroine, and your earthly struggles, rather than being taken so personally, would become mythic in scope, recast as plot twists in an epic adventure. The calling you seek becomes the treasure, the obstacles to your path become the tests of initiation you must endure, and friends become the hero's guardians. You would see the Big Picture...."

I find this helpful--when I remember to think of it--particularly in dealing with annoyances, setbacks, losses and damages. In fiction, it's the obstacles that make the story.



* Quoting Deena Metzger, "Keep away from saying 'I will do X so that Y will happen,...So that I'll be happy, or make money, or be recognized. Cause-and-effect is the narrowest way of seeing the world....Don't negotiate with the gods. Just offer yourself, 'Thy will be done,' without knowing the outcome."

This is pretty much my approach to writing novels.



* From Bharati Mukherjee, whom I once had the delight of introducing to writing classes at Duke, "Let me treat every moment with reverence...because I don't know what the mission of any of my moments in life is."

I tend to have a clear idea of what I mean to do in a given moment, but Mukherjee reminds me here, via Levoy, that there may be another and grander project I'm working on unwittingly at the same time. For example, I sometimes wonder if the real point of the writing group I've been in for 26 years is the books or the connections between the band of us.

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Courage Quote

Offered by Mamie, the Quote Queen:

The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is.
- John Lancaster Spalding, First Bishop of Peoria, 1840-1916.

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"Painting into Light"

"Painting into Light" is an art exhibition at Guilford College in Greensboro, a one-man show by my friend George Wingate.

Thursday night Bob and I went to the campus to hear the artist talk about his work. George was his intriguingly digressive, imaginative, thoughtful self, before a packed SRO house. I didn't take notes and couldn't begin to quote from his outpourings.

But there was a line on the wall in his artist's statement that is well worth passing on:

"It took a long time to discover that one can't make a career out of being somebody else. I still have to fight being somebody else. The artist even has to fight to not be what he/she was yesterday."

George was in high school with Husband Bob, which would make him approximately 67 years old. And he has been a full-time artist for decades, with his work on the cover of American Artist and well and lengthily reviewed in the New York Times. He's still engaged in a daily wrestle.

If you are too, you're in good company.





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Not Bold: Identity Theft

Someone extremely close to me just had his identity stolen, his email hacked into, and his address list dunned for money. The message that went out to his whole list claimed he was stranded in London and so please wire $4,000 immediately.

One good clue: The letter-writer clearly wasn't entirely at home in English.

Then a second identity theft message said: this is not a scam, I'm seriously in trouble, send the money.

Well, I can't imagine anyone did--though he did get thoughtful responses from his friends, patients, children, ex-wife, and someone he hadn't seen since high school.

Turns out that the creative letter-writer is in Nigeria with a bank account at the ready in London. (Why is Nigeria the world scamming-business headquarters, when there are a number of other places with some dishonest people who need money? See L.A. Times profile "Nigerian Cyber Scammers." For a non-cyber view: a friend of mine grew up in Nigeria and still misses the country. see her wonderful book: The Gods of Noonday, which is one of the most beautiful tributes to a river I've ever read.)

Here is my message to these multi-national Nigeria-based Keystone Krooks: Get your own identity and then maybe some money will follow. Be yourself. Long-term, it's a much better strategy.




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"Ordinary Courage"

A politician once told me, in talking about a panel he'd been on where some too-amazing stories were told, that he "hadn't had the opportunity to rescue any children from burning buildings lately."

Most of us haven't.

And yet, most of us do run into plenty of opportunities and needs for courage.

I just ran into a blog and website called "Ordinary Courage." I highly recommend it. Very different style than mine: Brené Brown, the head encourager there, writes with great warmth and at length, whereas I take a shorter and pithier approach to the some of the same subjects. But we share a philosophy.

From Ordinary Courage: "...speaking honestly and openly about who we and about our experiences (good and bad) is the ultimate act of courage. Heroics is often about putting your life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting your vulnerability on the line. In today's world, that's pretty extraordinary. For me, practicing ordinary courage means telling my story with all of my heart."

Me, too.

Brown is the author of I Thought It Was Just Me , which is about shame, which can seriously get in the way of boldness.




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Jump in Soul First

"The authentic self is the soul made visible."

Sarah Ban Breathnach

It does take courage to make one's soul visible. But why cover it up with something much less interesting and alive?



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Amy Poehler's Girl Power Adventure

Amy Poehler -- the Saturday Night Live star who played Hillary and Katie Couric to Tina Fey's Sarah Palin -- has launched a bold new venture. A web show called Smart Girls at the Party. It features young girls and aims to inspire young girls and is entertaining even if you, like myself, are not a young girl.

Poehler says the show is about "extraordinary individuals who are changing the world by being themselves."

The opening interview is with a ten-year old writer and "scooter enthusiast" named Cameron. A video clip shows Cameron doing her writing in a tiara.

I have seriously had in mind to get some sparkling headgear to wear while working on my fiction and once put a jewelled crown on my Christmas list of ideas for my husband; he said, "You'll have to get your own crown." I hadn't gotten around to it.

Amy and Cameron are encouraging me to get on with it.





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Authenticity and The Velveteen Rabbit

A charming and inspiring Youtube snippet from The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams Bianco, illustrated with watercolors, read by Meryl Streep, with music by George Winston: "he wished he could become real without these uncomfortable things happening to him."

A classic story--about love and authenticity and a little toy rabbit becoming real, "For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard...."

I'm guessing the author intended this story to be about love mainly--and the way appearances cease to matter. I think it also speaks strongly to anyone who ever lived in a psychic cupboard.




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Host/Hostess Anxiety

I find entertaining difficult, not while people are at my house, but in advance of the event. Has to do with cleaning up the house.

We live in a log house in the woods and have one large dog and one very-large dog with us in the house; both of them, bless their hearts, are shedders and one enjoys rubbing against furniture and appliances. And then my husband Bob --bless his heart too--uses the seats of chairs for storage areas.

I didn't suffer from hostess anxiety while I was single. And this is curious because I was and am what an English ex-boyfriend referred to as "a heap." If it was my junk, it was okay for people to see.

I opened a book this morning that has been useful for me: Daring to Be Yourself by Alexandra Stoddard. Saw a couple of things I'd underlined way back: "There is no need to be a nervous hostess. I feel comfortable when I entertain but only if I don't put on airs." and "Your guests want to experience your natural style."

But my natural style does not involve dog hair. But I've also come to realize: my heapish artist style did not produce the rustic house next to the pond, all of which I like very much. Bob (and his ex) were the creator of that. And I get more credit than is due. So maybe it all balances out. Or maybe none of that matters. (That's an idea I try on for size; actually I don't buy it.)

In any event, it seems to be my natural style to marry a guy who creates a wonderful woodland house where the leaves are now madly and brilliantly falling as well as the dog hair and piles of books. So that's the style that it's okay to show.



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Laptop Gone Wild

The mind of my laptop has taken off on its own. I don't favor this in a laptop. I want absolute fidelity from all my machines.

What's happened is that when I type "e," what shows up is both "e" and the letter next to it, so that I get "ew." Which is not always what I want to say.

And it's happening at scattered locations all over my keyboard.

(If anybody knows anything about this problem, I would love to hear from you!)

Otherwise, I'll be writing at a public computer in the Chapel Hill Library, as I am now. Or I'll be writing items like this:

It'sd sdomewtimnewsd vewry sdifficult to dsesal ewith thew inmdsewpewnmdsewnmcew of othewrsd.

Translation: It's sometimes very difficult to deal with the independence of others.

Especially those as close as one's computer.






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Writing: Bold Characterization

When I teach character development in fiction writing, I rely on an exceedingly clever (personally assembled) acronym, TOADS.

To show what a character is experiencing from the inside, use that person's:
*Thoughts, in the ragged language of thought
*Observation, what the person notices
*Action
*Dialogue
*Sensation

What not to do: explain and summarize the person's personality.

I like to make the TOADS point clear in the most vivid, bold, and tangible way. I've done this before by bringing a live toad to class and setting the little fellow loose.

Lately I've been gathering a collection of thrift-shop toy toads, to give students or clients as memory devices.

Here are a few of them on my arts-and-crafts spot at home, irresistibly colorful and distinct, every one of them a real character.

In addiion to offering writing advice, any one of them can be a desk toy reminder to be one's own vivid self.




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Letting Your Freak Flag Fly

"Dare to Be Yourself", says the cover of the current issue of Psychology Today.

"A sense of authenticity is one of our deepest psychological needs, and people are more hungry for it than ever. Even so, being true to oneself is not for the faint of heart."

Aristotle suggested that authenticity is going after the highest good, not simply "letting your freak flag fly." (The flag phrase is from Karen Wright, author of the article, not Aristotle.)

By this definition, authenticity can have its costs, Wright points out, especially in the short term. For example, writing for the market can produce money and recognition; writing according to your own highest standards is likely to be more satisfying, and (perhaps arguably) more toward the highest good.

Showing one's quirky colors--the freak flag--is for me, not only fun, but helps in the larger effort for highest good and most profound satisfaction.

In my early twenties, just out of school, I seemed to be a bit like a color you could wear with anything. And in fact both Democrats and Republicans asked me out. Within a few years, as I became more myself, only Democrats called. Which created a smaller pool in the short-term, but led to a happy marriage.

So I think there's no either/or decision on these two approaches. I favor flying one's flag, whatever it looks like, as we each sail, with zigs and zags, toward our best selves.

(If you go looking for the article, check out the hard copy. It has a useful how-to sidebar.)




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Sweet and Sassy

A picture of a coiled rattlesnake lying in straw is on the back cover of the May issue of Wildlife in North Carolina magazine.

The image is eye-catching enough in itself. Then I was startled by the caption: "What the pigmy rattlesnake lacks in size, it makes up for in looks, rarity and bold yet endearing attitude."

Bold yet endearing? A rattler?

I studied the picture carefully and still didn't understand.

What I do like, though, is the idea of bold and endearing describing the same personality. The words bold, outspoken, etc. often get a bad rap, being considered euphemisms for obnoxious.

But they're not the same thing at all. In fact, it sometimes takes more boldness to say something nice, to say something so authentic and tender that it feels dangerous.

That willingness to be vulnerable is bold and endearing.

But I'm just not seeing it in that rattlesnake. I'll have to check out the full article on the "petite viper" in next month's issue of the magazine.



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Holy Boldness

Googling for blogs on the subject of boldness, I discovered that the huge majority that came up first were religious, Christian in particular. I was surprised, but then I was made to realize that I was falling into a kind of stereotyping.

Here's the quote that set me straight, from Black Fire, White Fire, a blog aimed at African-American women:

"What is holy boldness? And why is it that anyone folks want to portray as goodly has to be small, weak-ish, scrawny, lowly, and lamb-y? Can there be no fierceness in goodness? ... Was Moses being 'scrawny' when he stood before the super power of his time, Egypt, and requested the freedom of his people?"

Note to self: there's nothing namby-pamby about taking a passionate and principled stand.





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A Religious Basis for Being Yourself

"God speaks to you not only through His supernatural grace, but also through the individual nature which He fashioned into the person you are today. He would have you make an intelligent, reasonable use of the gift that is 'you'."

From, Anthony J. Paone, S.J.
Confraternity Of The Precious Blood
(an order of cloistered contemplatives)

This appeared yesterday on Scott Burkhead 's Daily Spiritual Guide, a wildly eclectic daily mix of genuinely uplifting tidbits.

And now for my commentary on this text:

"Reasonable" worries me a little, because it's easy to view something difficult as impossible, and therefore unreasonable. The use of the male pronoun bothers me too. But with those caveats, I love this idea.

My own religion is a patchwork; and this belief of the authentic self being a gift fits into it nicely. Moreover, I like a moral basis for something I'm working on talking myself into. We all hear a lot about being "selfless." I think we have to be ourselves before we have anything to offer anyone else, and before we have a self to transcend.



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A Mid-Atlantic Turning Point in My Writing

(This is the opening section of an essay I wrote a few years back about an Atlantic crossing on the QE2 that altered me and my writing, that gave me greater resolution and courage. The piece was published in The Spectator in Raleigh and won an honorable mention in literary magazine Rosebud's creative nonfiction contest. A Washington Post travel editor asked to publish it, but changed her mind when I told her it had come out in a local paper, and that I was writing about a subsidized press trip. I will be publishing this here as a serial. This is Part One.)






Even from the farthest reach of the dock on New York's 53rd Street, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was too long to photograph. I couldn't, with a wide-angle lens, get the whole ship into the frame at once. So I shot it by halves, the front and then the back, not sure what I'd do with two mismatched ship halves when I got home.

This ship, the QE2, is the last of the world's transatlantic liners. The Cunard brochure had described it as three football fields long. I don't measure things in football fields. I keep score in numbers of words, copy-inches, books. It's as a writer that I was heading to sea, and not only as a travel writer with a notebook, but as a novelist bringing along a manuscript that had been too long in progress. I was running late, by years, in getting another book out, felt pressed, frustrated, discouraged. I planned to look at the manuscript, away from my usual life, see where I stood with it. (Working aboard the QE2 was an idea that had also occurred to Francis Ford Coppola, Ray Bradbury, and other writers I would soon meet toting manuscripts on this voyage.)

But there was still another reason for my taking this trip: I am approaching the anniversary of my 25th year as a freelance writer, two and a half decades typing out of one little office or another in Raleigh, North Carolina. This crossing was to be both a celebration and, optimistically, the start of my career's second half, another 25 years. I wanted to spend a week living the writer's life the way it's supposed to be, working onboard ship in a grand, leisurely way ...And heading for new territory. My destination on this voyage was the country of Wales, a place I'd never been. One of my tasks there was to research an article on the struggle of the Welsh people to keep their language alive. I sympathized with their cause; after so many years of writing for publication, I'd come to wonder how much of my own voice was alive.

(Note: I'd love to hear from anyone who has had such a question about his or her voice...and how you've dealt with the issue. )

Dressing Bold

"Loud and Clear

The Message in Accessories? Go Bold or Go Home."

This is a message in the new issue of W, my favorite fashion magazine--and even with the fun of the Internet, I'm still a hard-copy-full-0f-perfume-ads-magazine junkie.

Now the truly self-expressive person certainly isn't ruled by fashion mavens or trends.

However, there's an advantage to each new turn of the fashion wheel. That is: for a few months, those of us who like feathered pocketbooks or other such conversation pieces will have them easily available and can stock up. And then they'll be drifting into the thrift shops for a few years. So if big color and strange clothing creations are your style of high glam, this is your heads-up.

Then too, I just sort of like the phrase: go bold or go home. I like it even better this way: go bold and go home. The real boldness is authenticity. And decorating one's self according to one's genuine taste is part of being authentic.

Approached that way the whole process is a joy, as it should be, rather than a social obligation.

And decoration is, I read, more and more of a guy thing. Note above the fine start on a decorated mailbox from RK, a novelist/teacher as well as a valued commenter here. He is continuing to work on this, with the addition of red paint, and some leaf prints. Definitely going to be a bold combo.

The Admirable Art of Self-Promotion

For anyone who is hesitant about promoting her or his own work: take a look at this piece of encouragement in the New York Times.



I am one who is blessed with what my politician brother calls microphone fever. I like promoting my work. I respect others' efforts to promote theirs.



The only time I ever cringe in embarrassment is when my husband leaves my business card, with book credits and contact info, etc, at a restaurant table for the waiter to pick up with the credit card. That's my limit. Maybe it's the fact that he's doing it and not me. I'm not sure. (I keep giving him cards, because he puts a lot of them to good use when I'm not around.)



In any event, I think most of us have some shaky moment about advancing our own passionately-held cause. I believe that, on the whole, holding back from telling people about our work is a bad idea. It leads to resentment and poor sales, and who knows what else.



You might also have a look at the book refered to in the article: Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It. One review says it defines bragging as an act of authenticity. Seems right to me.