But It Really Happened

Jessica P. Morrell©

“With any kind of fiction, there are basically two ways to incorporate your real-life experiences. Either you write a story based on something that happened to you, or you write a largely imagined story, with snippets from your life woven into the fabric of the story.” Robin Hemley

Being a writer can be a wonderful excuse for our less-than-noble tendencies to snoop, eavesdrop, and stand on the sidelines and report on the fray. But all this curiosity and awareness can lead to a particular catch-22 that exists for many fiction writers: do you write a story based on real events and people, and if so, how much can you borrow from reality? The short answers are sometimes and as little as possible except for creating a believable sense of place.

The urge to write from the raw materials of our lives can be overwhelming. After all, we all had a unique upbringing and most of us have witnessed or starred in events that have Technicolor™ vibrancy. We’ve met lovely people and oddballs and sociopaths and losers. We’ve traveled, taken risks, and fallen in love and also had our hearts mangled, our trust betrayed, and our hopes smashed. In fact, many writers are downright fascinating and have had experiences that would make Dickens weep.

But none of that adds up to fiction nor does it mean that your life story should be shaped into autobiographical fiction. While real life seeps into fiction—and should—writing fiction brings life into sharper focus than reality. The fictional world and its inhabitants are more closely examined, more entwined, more enchanting, and in more trouble than in real life. So what’s a writer to do when he or she is convinced that his or her life story can be the basis for a novel?  Lately I keep meeting writers struggling with this dilemma and based on what I’ve observed, want to make a few suggestions.

First, it is entirely possible to write from life and that doing so doesn’t mean you have a limited imagination. Second, just because an event happened does not mean that it can be honed into interesting fiction. And interestingly, often bizarre real life happenings can seem too far out on the page. In fact the “ but it really happened” defense is one of the weakest in all of fiction writing.

What seems to work best, instead of trying to merge reality and fiction, is to allow life events to spark a story instead of struggling to capture the whole tapestry of a life or a situation. Since there are several pitfalls that arise when writing from life, let’s examine them. The biggest problem with writing based on real events is that it can be constraining. As a writer you’ll be struggling to report with accuracy on events, people and places and this sort of reportage squeezes out creativity and all the possibilities that can happen when your imagination is given free rein. When you write from real life you are often stringing together a series of anecdotes and moments instead of weaving themes and causality into a large and pulsating whole. Writing from real life can also lack focus since you’re trying to capture generalities and memories.

When you write about yourself or real people you also miss the magic that happens when a character takes shape in your day dreams and starts whispering her secrets, urges and fears. Fiction in essence is a record of threatening changes being inflicted on a character or group of characters at a particularly interesting or dangerous time. When we shape our own lives into fiction it’s often difficult to hone in on the most interesting segment, to know when exactly we changed, when the turning points occurred, and when we were most threatened. In fiction the stakes for the character are high and unless you’re an astronaut, brain surgeon, or top-level spy, it’s difficult to make the stakes from reality as compelling.

There are other dangers too—fiction readers simply don’t trust stories that stem from life as much as they trust stories born of creativity. Writing from real life also tempts us to seek revenge on people who wronged us and in this vengeance we might not be able to see the persons clearly or understand their motivations. Writing biographical fiction also tempts us to not reveal how lonely, depressed, broke, cynical, gullible, or desperate we were. It’s tough to admit to our weaknesses and foibles, all the more reason to create characters who make mega blunders and missteps while you duck for cover like the wizard behind the curtain.

Here’s another consideration: a storyline must be unified and balanced but life isn’t. Life is random and chaotic with moments of calm interspersed. Fiction is structured on ever-increasing threats and momentum with all the parts creating a unified reality.  Writing from life also risks that the writer will spend too much time ruminating, too much time looking back instead of forward. Another problem is that often our daily lives contain large swaths of boring or humdrum happenings. We spend a lot of time at our desks, or smothered by the demands of others, or watching television, or running errands or struggling to make a decision. Fiction leaves out the boring parts of life and when you write from facts, that can be difficult.

So what do you do with the stuff from life? Obviously you don’t want to toss it out like dirty dishwater—you want to use it somehow. Real life events and people can imbue the fiction world with depth. If you live in New York and your story takes place there, you want all that honking vibrancy to show up on the page. The trick is to sort through it, searching for what to keep and what to discard. Just because an event happened doesn’t make it believable on the page or guarantee that it stirs emotions in the reader.  And while you’re sorting through the truth of a life, always handle life events and real people with extreme caution. You’re cautious because you don’t want to get sued for libel and because fiction writing is artifice and smoke and mirrors.

After all is said and done, if you still insist on writing from life experiences, here are a few tips for contorting the truth. If you’re writing a coming-of-age story based on your own experiences, make sure that enough time has based so that you can the past clearly and then twist the truth. If you want to write about real people it works best to create an agglomeration based on several people and to capture the flavor of their speech, gestures and mannerisms. If you have based a character solely and closely on a real person, inform your agent and publisher of this fact so that libel issues can be worked out before the book is in print. Or, if you use a real person, transform him or her into someone their mother would not recognize, remembering that you mostly want to capture his or her inner world. If your character is a celebrity you might want to research how other writers have handled this technique or consider writing about someone who is, uhm, no longer with us. Perhaps this one is obvious, but if you’re writing to avenge a wrong, rethink your strategy.

The bottom line is that when you write from life you’ll want to exaggerate, disguise or bend the truth. Create characters whose behaviors you can understand with the emotional truths your readers can relate to. And while behaviors and emotions in characters you write about can reflect some of your own past, vary their experiences from your own as much as possible.

Registration for Summer in Words  (June 15-17) will open in March, but you can already reserve your rooms (at a discounted rate) at the Hallmark Inn & Resort.

   Theme

Jessica P. Morrell €

 To write a plot  or story,   you have to be clear on what issues you want to present and then think of the events that will present those issues in action…I had to find that which was essential to the issue and then build an event around it. Ayn Rand

I don’t know about you, but during high school and college Lit courses I dreaded writing papers about the themes found in novels and short stories. Usually finishing the final labored sentence late Sunday night (it seems they were always due on Monday morning) I turned the paper in feeling like a fraud because it seemed written from both guesswork and arrogance. After all, Chaucer has been dead for centuries and did I really know what he was trying to convey in Canterbury Tales those many years ago?

Now that we’ve dredged up those assignments of yore, forget that tortured definition of theme, along with all its angst. In reality, theme is a fairly simple concept: it is what your story is about. This central idea serves as a unifying element and your characters’ actions and story world reflect it. Theme works as glue in the story, adds to the unity, and provides connecting threads that lend it significance and cohesion.

Theme is not the message, it is more like the soul of your story. But here’s the trick to theme that I want you to remember: It provides the boundaries for your story. You make decisions about your story based on your theme. It’s like when you are packing to move into a new house. As you sort through your belongings, you decide which objects to move, what to toss out, which items to sell at a yard sale.

Here’s a quick list of the benefits of working with theme:

• It lends the story emotional depth.
• Themes also add perspective to drama, especially tragedy, loss, death, grief, and sorrow.
• It gives cause-and-effect actions or results in stories meaning.
• It helps the writer explore his or her beliefs.
• Themes help the reader understanding the ramifications of the story events.
• Themes can focus and sharpen extended metaphors.
• Theme is one of the devices that breathes life into a story.

Here’s another trick for tracking down themes in your own work—it can be compared to the themes found in real life such as in holidays or cultural markers. The theme of Mardis Gras is merrymaking and outrageous celebration. The theme of Thanksgiving is gratitude, while the theme of Memorial Day is remembrance.

Likewise, in fiction and memoirs, theme can be stated in a single word or simple phrase. Novels always have a major theme and then often have one or two subsidiary themes. The themes in the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner are racism and intolerance. The premise, by the way, is “Love conquers all.” In To Kill A Mockingbird themes are about racial intolerance, injustice, and innocence lost. Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky is about the trauma involved with rape and her novel Lovely Bones is about regret (although both have subsidiary themes).

Theme is unavoidable if you want to tell an interesting tale. Jerome Stern in Writing Shapely Fiction explains: “Though many writers like to think of themselves primarily as storytellers, yarn spinners, and fabulists, themes and ideas are inevitable. Every work raises questions, examines possibilities, and imagines the consequences of actions. You can’t avoid making meaning if you want to.”

Theme in memoir keeps the work from rambling, or being a mere collection of memories instead of a richly explored life. Without a theme a memoir can be thin, or on the other hand, tedious, and strictly autobiographical,especially if the person tries to list every major life event.

Judith Barrington, in Writing the Memoir explains the importance of theme: “Memoir, on the other hand, makes no pretense of replicating a whole life. Indeed, one of the important skills of memoir writing is the selection of the theme or themes that will bind the work together. Thus we discover, on setting out to read Patricia Hampl’s Virgin Time, that her chosen theme is the Catholicism she grew up with and her later struggle to find a place for it in her adult spiritual life. With a theme such as this laid down, the author resists the temptation to digress into stories that have no immediate bearing on the subject….”

Two schools of thought exist about how theme works in the writing process. The first is that themes evolve naturally, emerging somewhat magically from the characters’ actions and story line, or perhaps the writer’s dream world. Or, in writing nonfiction, the tug of memory and passion will somehow provide the connections, which in turn will produce their offspring—theme.

The second approach to writing with theme postulates that since theme is the glue in a story, you need it as the starting point from which the story unfolds. However, this approach has its own set of problems. Working with a predetermined theme might close off options for your plot and constrain the story. You’ll be so busy trying to squeeze a story around a theme that it might not have the logic, flow and causal relationships necessary.

If the theme of your story nags at you from the beginning, don’t worry, but also don’t allow it to act as a cruel dictator. If it doesn’t, trust that your story and its characters will whisper to you, just as when you write memoir the past whispers low and insistently. Trust too that as you work on your later drafts and spend time mulling over story events that the theme will appear.

When it comes to themes to base stories around, you have so many choices, but an easy place to start is with human weakness, fallibility, vulnerability and imperfections . You might want to also explore the rich territories of base instincts such as fear, greed, as well as powerful traits like loyalty and patriotism.

If you’re feeling stuck about finding the theme for your story, don’t try to wrestle it to the ground. Instead, return to your characters and think about the truths they’re revealing in their actions and choices. Notice how your story reflects on your own life, how all you’ve learned about love or death or greed is coming through.

While theme can be implied or plainly stated, it is never heavy-handed, shrill or trite. Thus don’t editorialize, and don’t stage your characters giving speeches about the theme.

Subplots are another means to amplify themes, but again, make sure the reader doesn’t feel ganged up on with every aspect of the story pointing to themes. An example of this is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver is a gifted and thoughtful writer, but the themes in this book seem applied with cement.

If you focus too heavily on themes, then some of the capriciousness and chance of writing is lost. After all, you don’t want everything in the story preordained or outlined. Since your right brain functions are often associative, finding connections and harvesting inspirations, you want to grant this brain function room to roam. If you focus too hard on milking the theme, the magic that happens when writing might fail. You want to walk amid your story world with your characters winking at you, suggesting additions to your scenes. Or while writing nonfiction, letting the past and meanings you have discovered create a profound reality.

On the other hand, if you write without themes, you might end up with a mere pile of episodes. A few last tips: While the final chapters will emphasize theme more than earlier ones, be careful about trying to tack on themes onto your endings or forcing characters to clamor atop a soapbox to deliver lectures. Be careful also of shifting themes during the story unless the reader can instinctively follow your change and make sense of it.

It’s official–Chelsea Cain is going to our Keynote Speaker at Summer in Words 2012 .

Dates are June 15-17

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Stay tuned for more updates.

• What is your story’s main problem or conflict?
• What’s going to be the most dramatic event/moment in your protagonist’s arc? Have you staged it in act 2 or 3?
• Are other characters in the story going to have a character arc?
• How many subplots are in the story? All necessary? How many will be tied up by the ending?
• Create a cast list then next to each person’s name write down his or her agenda in the story. What or who will get in the way of that agenda?
• What will your readers learn about the world and human nature from your story?
• What will your protagonist learn from the story events?
• How many characters will appear in each scene? (Tip: Beware of crowding scenes.)
• What is your protagonist most afraid of?
• What is your protagonist emotional need or baggage which will interfere with his/her efforts in the story and need to be addressed somehow?
• What will be the major reversal (of fortune) in the story? Will it occur at about the midpoint in the story?
• Will there be a dark night of the soul—the crisis that ends act 2 when the protagonist feels defeated and alone? When all appears lost?
• After this crisis, how will your protagonist rise to face the final challenge that creates the climax?
• What is the theme of the story? This is a relatively simple concept: justice, self reliance, greed, guilt, loyalty,
• What archetypes do you use in your story: destroyer, mentor, ally, underdog,

Registrations are still being accepted for the Making It in Tough & Changing Times Conference on January 28th through the 27th.

Contact me. Seriously helpful information to improve your craft and propel your career.

From Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands arc few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.”

Baby Steps = Big Changes
Ever since I started teaching and working with writers I’ve advocated the wisdom of baby steps. This means you don’t need to quit your job, dump your lifestyle, or get divorced in order to be a writer. Well, in my case, getting divorced was a big help in becoming a writer, but that’s a long story for another day.

Years ago, when her book Creating a Life Worth Living was published, I went to hear Carol Lloyd talk. And she said something like, “You don’t need to abandon your life and buy a black beret and go live in the gutters of Paris in order to be creative.” In a similar vein, you don’t need to toss out your life to be a writer, but you do need to commit and you do need to dig deeper into who you are, pay attention to how you think, and what you dream.

What you need, if you’re a beginner, or a person ready to take your avocation/vocation more seriously is figure out baby steps that will take you from where you are now (possibly not accomplishing much) to where you want to be (writing regularly or becoming a published author.)

So here are baby steps that just might help.

Awakening
When you get up the morning you need some signal to yourself and all your levels of consciousness that you’re a writer and you’re creative. Do not slog around muttering as the coffee perks and you imagine the commute to work or as you hustle the kids through their morning routine. Take a few minutes of calm, to accomplish something that signals that you’re going to spend the day thinking and acting like a writer. I like to read poems, write poems, write down my dreams—as I’ve said many times, to dip into the river of language and archetype and imagery. To put words first as the sun appears, as the world widens before me.

Write something every day.
I know, I know. Some days are crammed with too-much to do, too many demands. Saturdays are about washing the car and errands and taming the garden. But even ten or twenty minutes spent writing makes you feel more connected to your inner writer, more attuned, deeper. Writing daily signals your subconscious about the seriousness of your purpose and makes writing part of your daily routine. Your voice will strengthen and you will learn to tame your inner editor. It will also increase your creativity since you’ll notice more and more inspirations arriving, your confidence will expand, and you’ll think better. Now, if all these benefits were found in a drug, someone would be raking in huge profits from it.

Practice awareness.
Every day you can see life with new eyes, wherever you are. A few years ago I was in Eugene giving a talk and teaching a workshop and everywhere I went, I was noticing, paying attention. I saw so many things that make Eugene a lively and original city. So many things that contribute to its hippie reputation. A lot of women with long grey hair. Head shops. Vegan restaurants. Outrageous bumper stickers. Bicycles everywhere. People wearing gypsy garb. I ate lunch in a lovely downtown restaurant and kept listening in to the next table and the way-too-intimate conversation that was going on, while at another table, two men, the scruffiest in the joint, were sharing a bottle of expensive champagne. I almost went over and asked them about the champagne, but controlled myself. But I’m the sort of person when I notice something interesting, I walk up to people and ask them what or why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Change the way you talk to yourself
The inner voice that urges you onto greatness cannot sound like a headmaster, taskmaster, or dungeon operator. While the inner critic first began in childhood as a helper, over time it’s become so used to bossing us around that it doesn’t know when to stop. You need to listen in, then change the message if needed. You become what you think about all day, so make sure that this voice you’re listening to is kind, compassionate, understanding.

Steal Moments
All through your day. To jot down notes, sketch a scene, play with dialogue. Listen in. Conjure, with eyes closed everything you’re witnessing, noticing, wishing were true. Pretend that magic really exists. Whatever it takes. You’re a writer. Even if you’re an accountant or lawyer or mom to a passel of kids, you’re a writer. Your heart is expressed in words on a page, your longings come through in stories and poems.

Commit
To a daily or weekly word count. Goals are measurable. Plain and simple. If you want to write a novel, for example, most novels run in the 80,000-90,000 word range. By writing 250-350 words, a mere page, each day you will have written it AND had time for some editing.

Before Sleep
Now if I were advising you on a healthy life or restful sleep, I’d tell you to relax and breathe deep before you slip off to sleep. However, I want you to live like a writer, so before you go to bed, instead think about your writing projects for a bit. If you write fiction, place your protagonist or your short story or your current poem in your inner movie screen and mull them over for a bit. Imagine your ending, or imagine the worst thing that can happen to your protagonist. Or, you can tell yourself that your writing solutions lie in the land of sleep.

Submit
Babies are the most transformative and astonishing beings. One day they’re sleeping most of the day and only grinning at a few recognizable faces, and before you know it, they’re crawling across the living room, and then as toddlers are on a sort of suicide mission to explore the world, some of the exploration through their mouths. The point: most babies are fearless, always ready for their next step, venture, exploration. Similarly, you need totter onto your next step and put your words out into the world.

Send your stuff out. To a journal, an online forum, an editor, an agent. The worst than can happen is that they’ll send it back with a no thanks. Babies topple. Babies put nasty things in their mouths. They fail. But in our humanity, we persevere, we look forward. So it is with writing.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  ~William Wordsworth

I started teaching writers in 1991 and in these past years I’ve worked with and taught enough writers to fill a small town. Now, if all these writers would move together into this town (I imagine it in the foothills of an impossibly majestic mountain range and laced with rivers and with at least one lake nearby) I would guess that the town council might be fractious, the mayor could be a science fiction writer, laws might be not quite the norm, and although I’m a person of a large imagination, I can’t quite speculate on the murder rate.

I don’t imagine it would be a place of sedate luncheons and teas and fashion shows, beauty pageants, and Kiwanis meetings. But I would imagine a quiet place of gardens, and the click-clack of keyboards, where children’s art is hung everywhere, where there is a preponderance of coffee shops and book stores and theater groups and a well-used library. Maybe I’ll retract the part about the quiet because I also imagine townspeople gathering and chattering about ideas, events, and books instead of sports or weather. It’s a place of diversity and because writers read so much, the intolerance or narrow minded attitudes sometimes associated with small towns are not so much in evidence. And in my town, as dusk fall, things turn almost magical with fireflies flickering in the long twilight, with a low clink of glasses and laughter and children’s games—the old fashioned ones from my childhood— are murmuring in the background and someone with great finesse is practicing a cello or viola on her porch, the notes drifting on scented air.

I’m weaving this little fantasy because I’ve met and worked with so many writers that it adds up to a meaningful life. By now regular readers of this column know I’m not a mystic or a guru or a saint. Nor am I a flim-flam huckster or any kind of poseur. At times in this column I confess how I don’t have some things in life figured out. Some days I’ve lost my groove. Sometimes I’m more worried about my bank account, growing old, and my lower back than my current deadline.

But I’m surrounded by stories and fascinating people and in writing our stories my students and I try to make sense of life with all its perplexities, dangers, loss, and mundane happenings. We recognize the glorious, the silly, the odd, and through writing and noticing we find the humanity glimmering beneath it all.

Years ago I lived in a small cabin in the middle of a northern forest. The place was heated by a wood-burning stove and I always kept a pile of kindling ready for starting fires. These days, like that kindling at the ready, I always hold on to hope to start my inner fire. Even during hard times I keep hope at hand and am buoyed as every morning I’m pulled from my bed and settle into this seat at my keyboard.  And even when it’s been raining for weeks and I cannot make sense of the chapter I wrote six months ago, I still think this is one of the best lives possible. So I want to talk at least one more time about how when writing chooses us, that we’d be fools not to answer yes to the call and move into a writer’s town and say yes to expressing ideas and storytelling.

I suspect that like me, you’ve noticed that something mysterious happens when you’re writing and the depths you find within, the ideas and images and memories that erupt out of nowhere. You might also revel in the insights and revelations that come while walking, or talking to friends or dreaming. This wellspring appears when we stop fretting and worrying and instead surrender to the writing so that these hours spent are filled with everyday miracles.

And then as part of this meaningful life, something has been happening to me in the past few years. I’ve felt a deepening, a connection that keeps me afloat during the hard times. Writing has come to be my practice, my means for untangling emotions and finding myself and living peacefully in the present moment. Have you found this too? You see sometimes more writing can pull us from a slump, a rejection or heartbreak.

Or sometimes it’s just a matter of appreciation. For example, this past fall I was feeling discouraged and went for a long walk and asked for a sign that my life was meaningful and on track. As I returned home and walked in the door the phone was ringing. It was a writer (who else?). She had stories to tell and wanted to attend an upcoming workshop. And in the following month it seemed that daily in a workshop or critique group, at a book signing, at a conference, and in conversations writers were telling the most amazing stories and it was as if my heart doubled. There were the real stories about miracles and injured children and troubles and dying friends and falling in love. Then there were the made-up stories about adventurers and winos and virgin births and bear hunts and car bombs that shook my imagination.

As my community of writers has grown, I’ve looked around at how people in it and those living in other cities find meaning in their lives.  Meaning comes from so many places, our children, friendships and work. Years of research has shown that happiness and meaning come from feeling valued and believing that what you do is important. It stems from using your strengths for something beyond yourself and having some control over the choices you make. The more you believe you are driving your life, rather than the other way around, the greater the chance that you’ll see your life as meaningful. Researchers often call this sense of personal control self-efficacy. Dr. Martin Seligman the author of Learned Optimism and other books has made his life work finding what makes life worth living. He calls self-efficacy as “the opposite of what I call learned helplessness. It’s having confidence that your actions will directly affect an outcome and that you can shape that outcome positively. These types of people tend to hone their natural strengths and be good at getting themselves into situations where they can use those strengths to make a difference.”

Seligman also said “…there is one thing we know about meaning: that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are. The self is not a very good site for meaning, and the larger the thing that you can credibly attach yourself to, the more meaning you get out of life….. there’s no shortcut to that. That’s what life is about.”

As January looms we have a blank easel before us, large with promise. What colors will you paint on it?  The writing life is built from growth and enduring and commitment. It requires that you invest the most precious part of yourself—your essence. So what are your investment plans? Have you written them down? Bought a new notebook or journal? There are a lot of things that the writing life cannot deliver. It cannot be a refuge from loneliness or a sure path to fame and fortune. But in it you can find the heroic, compassionate, and transcendent part of yourself as you show up for the page again and again.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be realistic about my plans for the coming year. I probably won’t learn Italian or French or to play piano. I probably won’t get chosen for X Factor or any reality show. I likely will not paint a self portrait or finish a triathlon or whoosh down a mountain or score a touchdown. I will not become a vegan or move to L.A. or San Francisco or New York. Neither will I discover a cure although it’s likely I’ll lose my temper or say things I’ll regret.

But I will master new recipes and invent a few of my own.  I’m going to spend many hours sitting here, writing away, and I’ll weave this solitude with laughter and friends and long walks and sunsets and the sound of the ocean from time to time.

I’m going to sing and learn new songs and maybe even when the spirit stirs me, howl a bit. I’m going to look for happiness not in things but in friendships and connections. I’m going to marvel at the stars and take in the clouds and relish the wind.

I’m going to grow flowers. I’m going to read widely. I’m going to light candles. I’m going to write poems. I’m going to listen to children. I’m going to use stronger verbs and strive for fresh language. I’m going to wink at the ghosts from my past. I’m going to write in my journal. I’m going to dance. I’m going to work at being less jittery. I’m going to talk about global warming and my concerns about our government. I’m going to nurture proximity to people who make me laugh. I’m going to hoard smells and colors and textures. I am going to pay attention to my heart in all its seasons. I’m going to work at controlling my moods and training my mind so it’s less a goofy puppy yapping at everything that passes by.

I’m going to walk into my office every morning as if I’m sitting under a Venetian glass chandelier and its casting a pale ruby glow down on me. Warming the room. Stretching my heart.

In 2012 we can all be bold. Be true. Keep going. Be original. We have a new year before us and a chance to look deeply into ourselves to find a place of solidity and engagement, yet also a place where we can rest, and a place of quietude.

I’m looking forward to gathering with writers and helping them build skills or watch them break out of fears or insipid prose. But mostly I’ll be listening stories  about a mother’s death , broken bones, a husband’s Alzheimer’s, the dog attack when the writer was six, that long-ago arrest in Georgia, getting lost in Turkey and the never-forgotten soldier lying frozen in death at the side of the road during the Battle of the Bulge. This is why I teach and why I’m so grateful for this meaningful life.