Travel Writing in Your Own Backyard

This week, I’m prepping to teach a free workshop on travel writing for the Eugene Public Library–Thursday, May 24th, at 6 PM.  My family and I have lately returned from 10 weeks in Costa Rica, and another 5 spent bopping around the United States.  I’ve amassed more stories than I can ever hope to have time to write; however, I’ll be telling workshop participants on Thursday that you don’t necessarily have to wade in a crocodile-filled river or share dining space with White-faced Capuchins in order to get a good travel article, profile, or essay.  Sometimes, compelling stories appear in your own backyard.

Our backyard in Eugene has Cooper’s hawks, not gators.

On sunny weekend mornings when we’re not off to Portland, or the Oregon coast or desert, we like to kayak Coyote Creek right outside of Eugene.  Sure, it’s not exotic to us, but smart travel writers know that describing a familiar locale with an eye for evocative sensory details can bring a place to life for readers both regional and national.  This month in Horizon Air Magazine, you can read my essay about getting my five-year old daughter to enjoy kayaking on Coyote Creek.

Read the whole magazine at http://horizonair.journalgraphicsdigital.com/may12/

This Thursday, I’ll be encouraging workshop participants to think about the intriguing stories in their own hometown.  Busy magazine and newspaper editors in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other large cities don’t have time to kayak Coyote Creek.  They look to freelance travel writers to bring a little-known region to life with narratives about our waterways, our mountains, our public markets and festivals and quirky events such as Eugene’s annual ZombieWalk, captured in multimedia by UO Journalism students for KVAL.

This seems like a good time to mention one of my favorite travel writers, Diane Daniel, whom I talked with last year for an article on interviewing tips from successful journalists.  I love her blog, “Places we go, people we see,” which gives background information for her published articles frequently published in The Boston Globe.

Playa Samara, Costa Rica

But what if you’re bored with your own backyard? 

Interested in learning more about travel writing and photography, as well as exploring the stunning beaches and jungles and waterfalls and wildlife of Costa Rica?  My husband, Jonathan B. Smith, and I will lead a week-long workshop–”Costa Rica Creative”–next February, in the mountainous region of Rincon de la Vieja and then in Playa Samara where we lived for several weeks.  Interested?  Feel free to send me an e-mail and I’ll give you the details!

Not Your Mama’s Literature–Happy Mothers’ Day!

Back when my mother’s partner, Annie, came of age, a lesbian protagonist in most novels had two choices.  “She could either convert to heterosexuality,” Annie tells me, “or she could die.”

When I began studying LGBTQ young adult literature in graduate school at Goddard College, I found that the main characters in newer novels had slightly more leeway . . . but not much.  Amelia, in Christina Salat’s excellent novel, Living in Secret (Doubleday, 1993), has to escape from her father’s house in the middle of the night to live with her beloved mother and her lesbian partner.  In Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind (FSG, 1982), teens Liza and Annie begin a relationship which almost gets one girl expelled from her private school and leads to the firing of two lesbian teachers. 

Gradually, LGBTQ literature for both young and older readers has evolved into a more balanced, nuanced genre.  Even if authors have difficult stories to tell, they do so with a refreshing objectivity and humor.  Consider Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Mariner, 2007), which chronicles in graphic novel form her own coming-of-age as a lesbian while her father struggles with the repercussions of his closeted bisexuality.  Consider David Levithan’s jubilant novel, Boy Meets Boy (Knopf, 2005), with its gay protagonist who has homosexual and heterosexual friends in a happily-evolved high school that wouldn’t dream of expelling same-sex couples for a kiss.

Still, when I decided to write my own piece of LGBTQ literature, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Seal, 2009), I ran into issues about how to tell the story.  No, my lesbian mom and her partner didn’t convert to heterosexuality or die; nor did either get fired from a job.  Still, they did lose custody of me and my two siblings while we were still young, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn the courtroom’s homophobia into comedy.  There’s a lot of humor in Gringa, but–much as I’d like to say otherwise–lesbian moms in the 1970s and early 1980s had a difficult time.  If they didn’t lose custody of their children, they and their kids often experienced discrimination and alienation.  I worked with three Seattle filmmakers on the documentary, Mom’s Apple Pie: The Heart of the Lesbian Mothers’ Custody Movement  (Frameline, 2006) and heard stories more heart-breaking than mine.

 

How joyful, then, how encouraging to turn on The Daily Show the other day to find Jon Stewart interviewing 20-year old Zach Wahls, author of My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family (Gotham, 2012).  With wit and candor, Wahls, an LGBTQ activist, fielded questions about growing up with lesbian moms, as well as issues surrounding same-sex marriage, medical care, and how to build tolerance for all  families through his innovative program, Out to Dinner.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all types of moms.  As one myself–equal parts exhausted and exhilarated from the role–I thank you!

Self-Publishing and Suicide

On April 1st, The New York Times ran a heart-breaking story–a profile of therapist and would-be author, Bob Bergeron, which appeared on the front page of the “Sunday Styles” section.  Though I’d never heard of Bergeron, I read to the end to find out whether anyone knew why, at age 49, he’d put a plastic bag over his head and committed suicide.  Friends and family varied in their opinions, of course–no one can ever truly know why someone chooses to take his own life.  What struck me as most powerful in this story was Bergeron’s reaction to the idea that his first book, The Right Side of Forty: Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond, would be published not 100,000 copies strong with a six-figure advance, but quietly, garnering just a few thousand dollars up front.

His first long-term partner speculated that perhaps Bergeron planned on a publishing success significant enough to land him on talk shows.  “And I think he was coming to realize,” he told The Times, “that all of that might not happen.”

I think most emerging writers dream–upon publication of a first book–of traveling the talk show circuit, selling the film rights, quitting that distracting full-time job.  They haunt Amazon.com, monitoring their book’s sales ranking by the hour.  They troll Goodreads, rejoicing over a five-star review and despairing over the one-star.   Eventually, we realize that most of us won’t get to chat up Jon Stewart on The Daily Show; we won’t see our book jacket replicated inside The New Yorker, and maybe not even in our local newspaper.  The revelation’s disappointing, to be sure, but it’s not a measure of self-worth or even of writing prowess.  Maybe the trick is, as the Tao Te Ching suggests, to “Do your work and move on.”

My favorite translation . . .

I’ve been listening to a podcast by a Franciscan monk, Richard Rohr, for a month now.  Titled “The Art of Letting Go,” the six-part lecture reminds listeners that we are not our accomplishments, our job titles, our book sales.  We may take pleasure in these, but there’s doom in identifying solely with your latest review (or lack, thereof) in Publisher’s Weekly.

Rohr counts as his major inspiration the teachings of Francis of Assisi, and points out that man’s joyful approach to life.  He reminds me of another story in the April 1 issue of The Times–this one below the fold on the front page, titled “Young Writers Find a Loving Publisher: Thanks, Mom and Dad!”  This article profiles 14-year old Ben Heckmann, who’s self-published two novels and sold 700 copies.  “You can basically do anything,” he says, “if you put your mind to it.”

Heckmann’s euphoria at holding his published book in his hands mirrors that of my high school students who’ve been finishing up manuscripts this year with the goal of self-publishing.  Dutifully, I’ve offered to help them write a synopsis and a cover letter to submit to agents and editors.  “No thanks,” all three of them replied.  “I want to self-publish.”  Their goal–not to sell millions, but to simply get their story into the hands of anyone who might want to read it bound and professionally printed.

I have no real point to this post, except to meditate for a moment on the death of an earnest mid-life author possibly devastated by his own definition of accomplishment, juxtaposed with the pure joy of a younger generation open to the humble literary pleasures available to them right now.  They haven’t had to learn the art of letting go because they haven’t yet built up grand expectations. 

Still, I hold on tight to those e-mails from individual readers inspired by my memoir, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, and by my essays.  Individual readers . . . not numbers on a best-seller list.  We are human, after all; as writers, most of us hope to connect with readers on a deep, personal level.  How I wish I could share the pleasure of that connection with Bob Bergeron, and with those writers who–paralyzed by preconceived notions of publishing success–never even pick up a pen.

The Writing Workshop: You’ll Laugh. You’ll Cry. You Might Even Write!

I’ve been thinking this week about writing workshops, because of two recent publications.  The first is a book I just reviewed for The Writer Magazine, titled Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers.  Author Kate Hopper, who teaches “Motherhood & Words™ both online and at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, reflects on the literary and emotional work done by participants in her writing workshops.  Her generosity and insight make me wish I lived closer to The Loft, so I could sit around the table with her and the other mom writers pondering the ethics of writing about our kids’ preschool crushes and swapping stories about how our little darling dressed up the cat so it looked just like Lady Gaga.

Hopper reminds me that a workshop can offer much more than just literary practice and feedback . . . when it’s full of earnest, respectful writers, it provides camaraderie and fun.

And something else.  Author Steve Almond has a lovely and thought-provoking essay in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about workshops.  Titled, “Why Talk Therapy is on the Wane, and Writing Workshops Are on the Rise,” the piece examines the reasons we gravitate toward these workshops, as well as the role of the leader.  “What they really want,” he writes of participants in his own groups, “isn’t fame or fortune but permission to articulate feelings that were somehow off limits within the fragile habitat of their families. They are hoping to find, by means of literary art, braver and more-forgiving versions of themselves.”

Almond's book, "Candy Freak." You'll love it.

The last writing workshop I attended took place in a little art studio in downtown Eugene, where participants sat in a circle of folding chairs and drank wine out of plastic cups while we dissected each other’s memoir.  The marvelous Oregon author John Daniel facilitated with a gentle and mindful and very honest attention to the critiquing process.  I know he was called upon, as Steve Almond describes, to play therapist as well as workshop leader . . . because I remember asking him whether I myself dared articulate my feelings about a rather challenging childhood.  Daniel fostered such a sense of community that ten years later (yesterday, in fact), I saw one of my fellow workshop participants in the downtown library and waved, feeling a flood of goodwill and an instant camaraderie born of late nights spent talking about writing, but also about life.

My favorite book by John Daniel . . .

Tell people you’re thinking of attending a writing workshop, and they may freak out.  “Too intense,” they might caution.  “It’ll make you cry.”  I admit there are workshops poorly facilitated, which can cause harm to a writer and his/her work. Talk to the leader in person or on the phone.  Ask to sit in on one meeting.  Speak with a few of the participants and make sure you’re a good fit.  You can find information on workshops through your local writers’ group, or ask at the library, or look on bookstore bulletin boards, or visit the excellent website, ShawGuides.

Hey, I’d love to know your experiences with writing workshops: feel free to comment, below!

Stuck Like a Wooly Mammoth in the Tar Pits of the Mind

Confession: I have not written in three weeks.  We left Costa Rica in mid-February after 10 weeks of exploring and researching, then traveled to see our families–first in New York and Boston, and then in California.  I barely had time to grade lessons for the distance-learning school at which I teach, much less craft a decent essay or article.  Right now, I feel stuck  . . . mired in a sort of mental muck from neglecting to put pen to paper every day.  I’m a professional writer.  I should know better, right?  Not so much.

This is what I did instead of writing in Boston.

Last week, we visited the La Brea Tar Pits with its museum which I’ve been frequenting since I turned five.  With almost as much fascination and fear as I felt all those years ago, I pointed out to my daughter the statues of the Wooly mammoth family–one parent and child frozen in mid-trumpet on the bank while one parent stood immobile in the tar.  “Is that the mother or the father who’s stuck?” Maia wanted to know.

“The mother,” I said automatically, without bothering to bend and check gender.   The mother, who’d been so concerned with getting her kid fed, watered, and home-schooled on their journey that she neglected to carve out an hour for herself.  Poor Mammoth Mom–this was probably the first time she’d been out alone in ages, just trying to do a little foraging and maybe enjoy a little tete-a-tete with a Giant ground sloth, when suddenly she found herself surrounded by sticky black goo.

I’m reading a book for review in The Writer Magazine right now–Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers, by Kate Hopper.  Halfway through it, I’m struck by the courage of the authors she’s excerpted.  Not only do they make time to write–they leap into the murky waters of writing about their child’s disabilities, their birth traumas, the sweet and excruciating memories of their own mothers.

The mom-writers in Hopper’s book remind me, in the midst of this fallow period, that I’ve spend 15 years cultivating effective writing habits that I can return to as soon as we settle down again in two weeks.  I’m not truly stuck.  Rather, I’m like the plastic figures that Maia’s been dropping into the pretend tar we bought her at the museum gift shop . . . momentarily stymied, but able to be plucked from the muck and cleansed and set on my path once more.

This is what I've been doing instead of writing . . .

A few of my favorite habits:

• Carry a small notebook and pen whenever possible
• Write a little every day–doesn’t matter what genre–even a well-crafted Tweet can count!
• Read a little every day.  Don’t have time?  Keep a book on top of the toilet tank.  Really.
• Take several sensory breaks a day–no matter what you’re doing, ask yourself what you smell, hear, taste, touch, and see in one minute.
• Really listen to and look at people and animals.  Note inflection, body language, facial expression, accents, etc.  This is all potential research.
• Query an article, review, etc. and get yourself a deadline.  I have a colleague who sets up his author tours before he even writes the book!

Thank you, Canada!

Canada rocks.  While in Costa Rica with my family for the past two months, I’ve met so many Canadians who’ve impressed me with their kindness, humor, and generosity.  A lovely couple from Montreal babysat for Maia last night, so Jonathan and I could finally go and enjoy a margarita on the beach.

I like Ike!

They’re doing something right in that country, eh?  This past week, I finished a piece for The Writer on magazines that specialize in articles on current events and cultural issues, and I discovered one exciting Canadian publication, and renewed my relationship with another that published some of my essays a few years back.

Broken Pencil

Zines are alive and well, according to the editors at Broken Pencil.  Researching their publication, I recalled my teenage stint as a freelance writer for The Loon News, a long-running comic zine published out of Phoenix, Arizona.  (God forbid any of the articles I wrote actually surface—I do believe they were fairly naughty.)  Zines, for those not in the know, are independently published magazines that attract attention for their innovative, edgy content and design.  Powell’s Books in Portland has a shelf devoted to them (back of the magazine stacks, bottom shelves, last time I looked).  Editors at Broken Pencil publish news, reviews, and retrospectives on alternative and zine culture.  Check them out!

Adbusters

What a privilege to talk with Kalle Lasn, editor at Adbusters Magazine (published out of Vancouver, B.C.), about his plans for an upcoming double issue that supports the Occupy Movement—which he and his staff helped to found–with social and political commentary on economic issues.  Kalle’s the kind of person who, in a 20-minute conversation, leaves you feeling a little more hopeful, a little more energized than you were before you phoned.

I hung up and thought about what type of essay I might contribute to his next issue.  In the past, Adbusters published my humorous critique of the University of Oregon’s MFA in Photography program, and one of my short essays, “Art and Insanity,” inspired after I watched the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, Rivers and Tides, and then walked past some pretty incredible stone towers created by a homeless man on Ventura Beach . . . art which the city bulldozed the next day.

The pieces aren’t on the web anymore, but here are a couple of my lines from “Art and Insanity”:

“There’s a fine line between art and insanity. Could it be that the difference between divine inspiration and toppled rock towers on an abandoned beach lies in who can afford to have his teeth fixed? Perhaps the distinction between a person who inspires public support and one who crumbles under public condemnation is even simpler. One is an artist who makes transient images. The other is a transient who makes art.”

Great health care?  Little college debt?  Zines?  Economic revolution?  Kind-hearted babysitters?

O, Canada!

Writing in the Midst of Chaos

Yesterday morning, I had to finish writing a travel article on Costa Rica’s Playa Samara even though my husband and daughter were home.  Four little girls screamed and giggled from the pool below the terrace on which I’d sequestered myself.  Parents hollered back and forth across the patio.  Parakeets sailed across the sky squawking.  I didn’t have a source’s last name, couldn’t find a street address for the place on which I was trying to report (“walk up the dirt road and turn left at the gate” doesn’t work for most editors), my cell phone was dead, and Skype didn’t seem to recognize me as a real person.

Back in Oregon, I would’ve shut myself in our backyard studio for a couple of hours, read and revised the piece, then sent it off to editors.  But we’re still in Costa Rica, sharing a one-bedroom condo in a complex full of neighbors who potluck on the central patio and have long loud political conversations as their cigarette smoke drifts upward to where I hunch over my laptop with the sun beating down, trying to concentrate on a sentence at a time while my husband generously makes movies of Wizard of Oz action figures with our daughter down in the living room.

How is it possible to write in the midst of chaos?  Some people simply can’t do it.  I have a friend who waits for that magic moment when her house is empty, and then she puts the cat out, turns off the radio and TV, sits down at the desk and invokes her muse.  As a travel writer and the mother of a young child, I seldom enjoy such a luxury.  Like other professional parent-writers, I write at odd hours–five AM, 11 PM–and in weird places, scribbling in a notebook outside the preschool, or keyboarding frantically during a couple of “Tumblebooks“.

To avoid "Monkey-Mind," write in a public place.

Though the previous paragraphs may sound like it, I’m not really complaining.  In her book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg inspired a whole generation of emerging wordsmiths to write in coffeehouses and bakeries, suggesting that background noise gives one part of the mind (the “monkey-mind” part) something to focus on so that the  creative part can get to work.  Though I used to be a solitary writer who needed absolute silence to work, I find now that I’m less lonely, and less tempted to surf the Web and check Facebook, when there’s a lot going on around me as I’m writing.

These days, I tell my coaching clients who feel daunted by the task of writing a short essay or article to take themselves to their favorite coffeehouse with a notebook and pen (I know, old school).  I ask them to order their signature drink, and–in homage to Natalie–a chocolate chip cookie, then to sit down in a booth and stay there until the rough draft of the piece is done.  More likely than not, the cappuccino machine’s whine begins to fade, the singular chatter of customers blends into a quiet rumble, and the music over the loudspeakers disappears.  The writing takes over.

On those days full of grace, I stumble out of the coffee house, just as I emerged yesterday from the Costa Rican terrace, blinking and rubbing my eyes and murmuring–like Fred Willard in A Mighty Wind–”Wha’ happened?”

Dude, you just wrote a rough draft in an hour.

What happens is that you honor what is, be it children or dogs or a business meeting at the table next to you or a parrot singing Spanish opera from its cage (no kidding) and you never let it stop you from writing.

And something else–internal chaos isn’t a reason to throw down the pen, either.  I penned some of my funniest essays in the midst of my beloved grandmother’s illness and death of cancer.  I wrote my memoir, Gringa, while I despaired over the two and a half year wait to adopt my daughter.  Regardless of what misfortune has befallen us, we find solace in opening the notebook and getting to work.

Readers, what does your particular chaos look like and sound like? How do you write in the midst of it?  Feel free to comment below.

Holiday Tamales with La Gringa

Dear Readers, 

I hope this finds you well!  As I’m still in Costa Rica, and dividing my time between writing, coaching other writers from a distance, and homeschooling Maia, in lieu of a new post I’m offering you a holiday excerpt from my memoir, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood, along with a link to a wonderful recipe for holiday tamales. 

Happy holidays, and best wishes for an eloquent and productive new year!

–Melissa

Gringa for the Kindle? Hey, makes a great holiday gift!

From the chapter “O, Christmas Tree,” from Gringa

Red-and-green streamers twisted across the vast room. At one end stood a 20-foot buffet table, its red plastic tablecloth crowded with platters and Crock-Pots and bowls. At the other end, dozens of people circled a man who strummed a nylon-stringed guitar.

From the doorway, I gazed out upon the unfamiliar scene. Old abuelos reclined on metal folding chairs in faded denim and ironed cowboy shirts. They nursed Budweisers as the older women buzzed around the buffet table in their red-and-green pantsuits and orthopedic shoes. Little girls in red velvet dresses and gleaming Mary Janes skittered across the polished hall floor with boys in tiny suits. As I watched, this last demographic loped over to the dessert end of the buffet and fixed predatory eyes on the dishes of flan and fudge and gingerbread men.

“Oh, Jesus,” Tony muttered. “Cousin Chico’s playing ‘De Colores.’”

“What’s ‘De Colores’?” I whispered.

“Some Mexican traditional crap.”

“I’ve gotta learn it!” From where I stood, I saw sheet music making the rounds. But my platter stymied me. The cheddar cheese, which had previously oozed from golden flour tortillas, now congealed into shiny orange rubber.

“Tony!” A flock of middle-aged women caught sight of my boyfriend and rushed over. “We haven’t seen you in years. Who’s this?”

Tamales are a traditional Christmastime treat.

Their eyes widened at me. I looked back at the women in their knitted reindeer and snowman sweaters, their brightly colored earrings shaped like Christmas-tree light bulbs, and shook hands all around.

“¡Hola!” I cried. “¡Buenos días! ¡Con mucho gusto!”

“It’s nice to meet you too, honey.” Tony’s four-foot-nine mother patted my hand and peered up into my face. “I don’t know why you put up with my son, but we’re glad you could be here.”

“Nice to see you too, Mom.” Tony stalked across the hall to join a group of men gathered like elk around the watering hole of a giant silver keg.

The other women regarded me warily. “So how long have you been dating Tony?” one asked.

“Where’s your family?” questioned another.

“A year,” I replied to the first woman. The second question I let go, unsure of the reception my mother and her girlfriend, my disabled brother, and my oversexed great-grandmother might receive from this crowd.

“So you’re Tony’s homegirl.” A man walked up to me, looking like an older version of my boyfriend with his red eyes and lopsided smile. I recognized him from the framed photo in his parents’ trailer. He shook my hand and grinned down at my wrist peeking out from under my buttoned black sleeve. “Damn, chica. You’re white.”

The men trailing him erupted with laughter. The women hid smiles behind genteel hands. Red-faced, I focused on the man’s T-shirt. It read, I’M THE REASON SANTA HAS A NAUGHTY LIST.

“No offense.” The guy socked me in the shoulder. “I’m Tony’s big brother.”

The laughter trickled off as a tall young woman walked up. “I’m Laura.” She shoved the man out of the way. “It’s good to meet you.” She took the platter from my hands. “These look delicious. Let’s put them on the buffet.”

I followed her through a throng of family members, who parted respectfully. Laura wore snug Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and a knit sweater in a blue-and-white snowflake pattern. Her light-brown hair fell across her shoulders in a gentle, perfumed perm. None of this by itself struck me as remarkable. But as she set my platter between dishes of homemade enchiladas and tamales, I stared at her.

Laura was white.

“Are you . . . are you a member of the family?” I stammered.

She rolled her eyes and nodded at Tony’s brother across the room. “That tonto’s my boyfriend for the last 10 years.”

She lifted a framed photo of a sober, fat-faced woman from an overturned ramekin in the center of a 9-by-13-inch pan of tamales. “Welcome to the Nana Canché clan. Nana died five years ago, but ay dios, her spirit lives on. Her favorite food was tamales.” Laura lowered her voice. “Better learn to make ’em in a hurry.”

Yeah, mine are never that neat, either.

I peered into Nana Canché’s grim eyes and vowed to be worthy of her family. All that afternoon, I watched Laura as an anthropologist might study a particularly self-assured native. Her skin was as pale as mine, her foundation at least a shade lighter, and yet she chatted with Tony’s elderly uncle in flawless Spanish and copied a recipe for what I learned was her famed chicken mole onto a napkin for one of the aunts. She leaned in close to the woman, who listened intently. “The secret’s in buying the best dark chocolate you can afford,” she revealed.

“Do Laura and your son have children?” I asked Tony’s mother as she heaped food onto my plate.

“They’ve got two little boys.” She pointed at a couple of youngsters who’d shed their coats and were busy covering mouths and starched white shirts with taquitos in red sauce.

No more information forthcoming from Tony’s mother, I plied his aunts and girl cousins with questions about Laura. I learned that the women gathered at her house each Christmas Eve to make roast-beef tamales because she knew which panaderías sold the fluffiest masa and where to find the widest corn husks.

“She can down a Tecate in less than a minute.” Tony’s sister gazed at Laura with admiration. “And she knows the words to every Santana song.”

That afternoon, Laura became my role model and my nemesis. She’d bushwhacked her way through the jungle of her own unfortunate ethnicity and emerged into cultural clarity. I wanted to be just like her.

After the reunion, we washed dishes in the kitchen and put away leftovers. My Tortilla Flats had plastered themselves to my platter. Laura chipped them off with a spatula and moved toward the garbage can, then caught my eye. “Hey, mind if I wrap these up for my boys?” she asked. “They’ll love them for lunch with guacamole.”

Related recipe: Roast-Beef Tamales–note that vegetarians can make these with green chilies and cheese!

Away from Your Comfort Zone, What Happens to Your Writing?

As a professional writer, I maintain a schedule.  Wake up, feed five cats, eat oatmeal with my daughter, wave her off to preschool with my husband, then apply butt to chair in my little home office and start typing.   Out the window, the strangest thing I see is my cat, Eeyore, dragging home the neighbors’ socks and workgloves in his teeth.  It’s a fine workday, productive and predictable and–after several years–boring.  Lately, I’ve felt myself dangerously close to formulaic in my essays, casting desperately about for material in what seems to me a less-than-noteworthy life.

And so I’ve packed up and moved to Costa Rica for several months.  Lest that sound cavalier, Jonathan and I have been working toward this leave of absence from our regular lives since last March.  We’re continuing our work remotely while we’re here, and living on a pretty tight budget with our daughter, but the change of scenery after only a week is invigorating . . . and terrifying.

Horse and Razor Wire

One of my heroes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote, “Always do what you’re afraid to do.”  Easier said than done in my sweet little suburban town, but here in Costa Rica, even a trip to the bank or roadside fruit stand becomes unnerving.  How, in my limited Spanish, do I deposit the rent into our landlord’s account when I’m still struggling to convert dollars into colones beside a uniformed guard toting a gun?  And how do I juggle ten pounds of fresh produce in a tiny dirt-floor market, navigating a couple of dogs and a couple of toddlers while I attempt to pay and bag the stuff and not spear myself with my pineapple?  What do I do if I run across the tarantulas that apparently live in the condo complex with us, and what if the ancient Ford Bronco loaned to us by our landlord breaks down on the side of a country road stranding my brave little family under a monkey-filled tree?

Emerson would likely tell me to immerse myself in each experience, soaking up sensory details, and then get the stories down on paper.  And he’s right.  Getting out of our comfort zone forces creativity, and demands that we live in the present, engaged with the world.

It’s the holiday season, and most of us will be traveling somewhere which provides us with rich opportunities to vacate our comfort zone.  Looking for something bizarre to see and do while you’re back in your childhood town?  Check out Atlas Obscura, where I once found a museum devoted to a collection of sticks–each shaped like a letter of the alphabet.  (Okay, so the sticks weren’t scary, but just plain weird.)  Search on A Day’s Outing, which clues you in to festivals and hikes and historical places.  And for heaven’s sake, look at the “Activities” section of Craigslist, where you’ll find all sorts of weird events.

Staying home this year?   Go to your local mall and visit Santa Claus.  Immerse yourself in observation.  Eat a candy cane.  Sing along with “Jingle Bells.”  (Okay, maybe don’t sit on the big guy’s lap, but you get the idea.)  Remember that David Sedaris launched his career with his story of working the Santa line, in “SantaLand Diaries,” and discover what personal spin you can put the experience.

Costa Rican House

 

Far away from your schedule and your comfort zone, what happens to your writing?  If you let it, it pirouettes off the page, gathering energy from fear and excitement and offering the gift of a fresh new perspective to readers.  Where do you go to get out of your comfort zone, and how does it affect your writing?  Feel free to comment below!

Guest Post by Christina Katz, author of The Writer’s Workout

Christina Katz.  Say her name around Pacific Northwest writers and you’ll get nods of recognition, smiles of appreciation.  She’s a dynamic woman–an author, coach and speaker who’s built her career around the concept of literary citizenship, using her own talents as a writer to help others along their literary path.

Her newest book is The Writer’s Workout, 366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques From Your Writing Career Coach (Writer’s Digest, 2011).  For years, I searched for one book to offer my students—a book that would walk them with kindness and respect through the maze of learning to live as a working writer.  The Writer’s Workout is that book.

Christina kindly agreed to write a guest post for my blog.  Enjoy!

Embrace The Reasons You Write

There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of reasons to write. Therefore this list only scratches the surface.

Whatever motivates you to write is important on good writing days and bad writing days.

I used to think I wrote for only one reason on this list. Come to find out, I write for almost every reason on this list and probably more I have yet to uncover.

So don’t feel like you have to wax poetic about why you write, or make it sound really noble, or try to justify why you write. Some people like to write. This is just the way it is, like some people like to paint or sing or act.

But it’s a good idea to know why you write, for your own benefit. Understanding your motivations can be powerful. If you know why you write, you can call on that power if you hit a snag or stall out.

Check off all the reasons that suit you. Expand on the list, if you like.

Why do you write? The truth. Mark the ways:

__ To express

__ To tell

Christina Katz

__ To heal

__ To listen

__ To share

__ To connect

__ To respond

__ To participate

__ To inspire

__ To explore

__ To grow

__ To discover

__ To transcend

__ To play

__ To report

__ To inform

__ To persuade

__ To rant

__ To ramble

__ To advocate

__ To individuate

__ To leave a legacy

__ To become known

__ For love

__ Because you can’t not write

__ For pleasure

__ For revenge

__ To avoid housework

__ To make money

__ To create tax write-offs

__ To establish a career

__ To remember

__ To meditate

__ To process

__ To stop the voices in your head

__ To channel your ideas

__ More:

__ More:

__ More:

Cultivate A Body of Work

You won’t get a big payoff as a writer until you accumulate a body of work. So instead of imagining some future greatness, imagine the kinds of results that are going to get you there: the books read, the piles of paper collected, the journals filled up, the boxes of notes poured over, the tax forms you submitted to report the money you made, the ephemera, the personal notes from people you met, the photographs of happy meetings, the conference lanyards dangling from a hook.

A writer’s progress is measured in the completion of project after project. If you are experiencing serial rejection, are you sure you are not aiming for targets that are over your head?

Embarking on a short-term goal and taking care of the next steps is the best way to nurture your brightest future. Writers sometimes think if they are not entertaining some larger-than-life vision of their writing career they are not doing something right.

But you have no idea what you are going to be writing in twelve years, so how are you supposed to get started on it? Don’t obsess so much about some huge future fantasy and miss the power of this moment. A writer’s day-to-day existence is composed of a million right-now moments.

When we focus too much on an image of where we think we are going, we miss out on the opportunities right in front of us. We don’t learn what we need to learn to get from where we are to the next level. We cut off the legs that are going to walk us to where we could be in twelve years when we try to leap there prematurely.

Embrace the idea that what writers do over the course of a lifetime is cultivate a body of work one project at a time. Writers write, one day at a time, toward a destination that will eventually become something that can be viewed retrospectively but typically cannot be perceived in advance.

Create the artifacts of a well-written life. Set one short-term goal you can accomplish this week, and start walking bravely toward it. Forget the future; leave behind evidence that you hit your short-term goal this week instead.

Create Results

Creativity is powerful. It can grow from something small into something very big. But don’t be in a big rush to get there. Don’t try to skip steps. Don’t constantly try to be ahead of wherever you actually are.

If you get in your writing process and stay in your writing process, you will grow creatively. If you are willing to learn from your mistakes, you can become a more empowered person by learning from the ways you fail or flail.

But if you are constantly off and running, chasing down the latest “how to get rich writing info product,” your head is going to constantly swim and your creativity is going to become tainted by other people’s desire to turn you into sheep for their flock.

Focus on your writing, not on the ego benefits of writing. Create a body of work that others can appreciate. Get published as you go along so that your growing body of work will gain exposure to potential readers. If you want fans, act like a writer with a high quality of work and a strong work ethic who deserves fans.

As Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly Media says, “Make good things happen.” This simple phrase can apply to life in so many ways. You can make good things happen in your writing, or even when you are not writing. Try it out and see.

Make good things happen in your career, certainly make good things happen in the lives of those who are closest to you, and make good things happen to help others you meet.

Hopefully your work will also make good things happen in the world.

Will my work make good things happen? is a good touchstone question for writers.

If whatever you are devoted to will make good things happen, go forward and prosper with it as best you can.

If your work does not make good things happen in a win-win-win kind of way, you may wish to choose a different course.

Christina Katz is the author of three books from Writer’s Digest: The Writer’s Workout, Get Known Before the Book Deal, and Writer Mama. Her writing career tips and parenting advice appear regularly in national, regional, and online publications. A “gentle taskmaster” over the past decade to hundreds of writers, Christina’s students go from unpublished to published, build professional writing career skills, and increase their creative confidence over time. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in English from Dartmouth College. A popular speaker on creative career growth, Christina presents for writing conferences, literary events, MFA writing programs, and libraries. She is the creator and host of the Northwest Author Series in Wilsonville, Oregon, where she lives with her husband, her daughter, and far too many pets. Learn more at ChristinaKatz.com.