Strength is Overrated (Wyn Magazine)

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This is the story of my ending up in a very unexpected and deep depression.

It is a long story, and still not complete, even its indulgent length, but it is a start. And it says a lot about expectations and assumptions.

 

The short, bitter version is that I thought I could do it all, and I was wrong.

The longer, more compassionate version is that I never saw it as inappropriate to “do it all.” It didn’t seem like too much, at first.

Read the whole story at wynmag.com

Then you’ll understand why a camel is the featured image {wink}

 

Why Work?

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Becky Castle Miller initiated a good conversation at her blog the other day.

small melody I asked my three kids (a set older than Becky’s– her oldest is six-months behind my youngest) and they gave the same answers her kids gave: work is for money/food/good things (Daddy) or to make our lives better/healthier/more-comfortable (Mama).

 {I was delighted that they’ve internalized that I work here at home was both work and a benefit to them.}

Actually, that was the string of answers after Melody spouted the first answer to my question: Why do Mama and Daddy work so hard?

Because we don’t!

I hooted, laughed and banged the wall with my hand. I think that’s my griping lately coming back out her mouth. And it’s true.

But after several minutes and variations on the trios of meaning above, I said there was one more very. important. reason their parents work:

We both choose work that we love.Small grinding

I told them, because this is something I want planted deep and firm in their soft hearts, that what they enjoy doing can be a real path to God’s will for them. I asked them what they love, what makes them excited and energetic and ready to jump into a project.

My throat tightened at the explosion of delight in their bubbling descriptions.

“Keep watching those things,” I said. “Ask questions when you meet someone with that job. Try out play that matches what you enjoy.”

The moment passed and everyone returned to eating (or ignoring) their lunch, but the conversation has begun here.

Delight is an acceptable measure of direction.small Natasha

 

Wyn is Live!

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It is with great delight that I announce and present the first issue of a new online publication.From the About page:

Wyn is an online magazine focused on providing resources and hope for mental and emotional healing. Each month’s issue has a specific theme that runs through all the articles. Articles and columns are published every-other-day or so throughout the month. To receive one email a week with the latest stories and news, sign up for the Wyn Weekly Newsletter in the upper right corner of the site.

The name Wyn is from the Old English rune that later became “w.” The word “wyn” means “joy/delight/pleasure” in Old English. The goal of Wyn Magazine is to help bring joy to women who have lost hope.

After Managing Editor Becky Castle Miller and Associate Editor Amy Jane Helmericks went through different experiences with depression, they talked about the resources they wished they’d had for themselves…and decided to create those for other women. The idea (and name) for Wyn came together in December 2011, starting a two-year project assembling a global team of writers, designers, and photographers. Wyn officially launched in June 2013.

Becky emailed me with great intensity (if you can accept that as a combination) toward the end of November 2011. Four hours ahead on the East Coast, she wanted to set up a mutually kidless time to talk about an idea.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I’m all about talking ideas, but we’re talking the end of November (days away from my third win in NaNoWriMo). I hesitated just enough for her to remember my near-goal and reschedule for December 1.

During that phone conversation we entered into hope and delight and concrete planning that tied to our strengths in a way that the world of dirty dishes and dirty diapers just couldn’t touch.

I don’t know about Becky, but for me the fit and the energy seemed too deep to be real. But there’s something true about speaking reality into life.

Becky and I talked about creation and consistency and content and sparked this hunger that we might have an opportunity to spare other women the confusion and isolation we experienced as we struggled for language and right-response to this unfamiliar entity called depression.

Becky’s years of traveling as a military kid and facility on the internet made her the hub of our writing and photography pool. My intensity, love for words, and impulse for instant-feedback (or maybe Becky can say the real reasons?) combined with hers to move us forward.

All the delight and hope-of-purpose suggested by our initial conversation has persisted. There is something ineffably rich about participating in a project so perfectly aligned with one’s natural gifts and natural brokenness.

Life & Fiction: The Power of Naming

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Life & Fiction is my monthly column at Wyn Magazine where I apply my experience with Story, reading, and the writing life to the broader goal of mindful, healthy living.

Names have power.

It’s a consistent story element across cultures and epochs.

Possessing someone’s True Name gives you power over him or her.

Guarding your True Name, or sharing it, is an important part of either protecting yourself or expressing your trust in another person.

In the Bible, the first man, Adam, is told to name the creatures, and there are those who tie this naming to the position of authority he was given in the created order.

Real-world parallels I can imagine are all the TV shows, movies, and novels where protecting (or discovering) the cover identities of secret agents is the core goal.

The name for anything is a word, and words hold power as well.

Words are one of the few tools we humans have for imposing order on the world around us. (There are other tools of course, such as numbers, but I must leave the treatments of those to other types of souls.)

Once we’ve named something, we’ve put it in its place. We’ve laid the foundation for how we will interact with it, how we will treat it. A word gives shape to the liquid intangibility of feeling and experience. A word is a vessel for truth and connection.

Using words to describe an emotion (or jumble of emotions) moves our experience of that emotion from the reaction parts of the brain (amygdala and hippocampus) and into the part of the brain where all of our “grown up” thinking happens (the frontal cortex).  This is where we want to be making decisions from.

The emotions don’t completely migrate; you don’t necessarily stop feeling angry, afraid, or grief-stricken, but through naming, you enter a process that allows you to move from feeling helpless into a place where you might be able to take action.

(Read the rest at wynmag.com)

Staring Down the Dragon (Featured Article at Wyn Magazine)

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First, the bad news:

For some people, depression isn’t something you “get over,” and sometimes there really are things you can do that slow your recovery or make the depression worse.

The good news is that there are things you can do to help yourself get better and stay better.

(Read the rest at wynmag.com)

How do I Become a Better Writer?

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Image courtesy of Sias van Schalkwyk via stock.xchng

That wasn’t exactly the question she asked me.

More it was, “He was awesome. How did that happen?!”

I didn’t really have time to research an answer, and part of me felt, Hey, I‘m not a teacher, how do I know?

But thankfully I was stopped by a phrase that popped instantly into my head.

Tonguepolishing.

Or should that be two words?

Tongue Polished.

The designation refers to old, old stories that are elegant in their simplicity, and may even contain absurdities that are so entrenched that that they are simply accepted without any attempt at explanation.

Folktales. My little corner of enjoyment in the esoteric.

Image courtesy of Ove Tøpfer via stock.xchng

In our own, more prosaic, lives, we still experience the tongue-polished story.  These are the stories that make up the Family Lexicon.

A Lexicon is like a dictionary (a collection of words), but more specialized. Linguistically it’s a catalog of a given language’s words. The way I use it here is just to give a name to that collection every family grows as it creates its own culture with specialized language, stories and lessons learned.

The longer a story’s been around, the longer it’s been told and re-told, the more streamlined it gets. Often it loses some of the random, irrelevant facts. Frequently the teller is no longer recalling the event itself, but rather the best words with which to describe it.

But that’s not the case, at first.

Something happens (Baby born before we get to the hospital!) and you talk about it because it’s extraordinary, an adventure. But what do you tell? what part did you play in the story? What words you use are not usually the main thing you’re focused on. In those first days, you’re only remembering.

It’s at this point you may begin to see there’s more to storytelling– and, therefore, writing– than most of us think about at first.

There are four levels of work involved in writing, and this, I believe, is part of what complicates the process of learning how to write. It’s this 4-step process, unidentified, that I think gets people in trouble.

  1. Image courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt via stock.xchng

    Idea generation. You have to come up with something to write ABOUT.

  2. Translation from idea into language.
  3. Translation from head-language to language-on-the-page (this essentially means holding onto the words you’ve come up with long enough to get them onto the page).
  4. The physical act of recording the words.

Some people get stuck at step-1, and that has almost the easiest solution. Even if you never know what to write about, you might be awesome once you get started.

If this is you, there are all sorts of books for sale and even free options on the internet to get you started: just Google writing prompts.

For step-2 (image into language), assume that time will be involved. Give yourself permission to make a few running jumps.  Throw some words at the idea (like spaghetti at a wall) and see what sticks. If you’re a natural talker, use that facility with language that you already have. Talk to a friend, talk to yourself or your pet. Talk into a recorder of some kind, and see if you like what it sounds like later.

This is what you do in that early stage of storytelling. You say what you remember. Other people remember it differently, or your listener has a question. The next time you tell the story you shape the transmission differently, based on what you learned from your earlier audiences.

You’re half-way through the process, and it’s something you’ve done all your life!

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Courage– Revisted

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Image courtesy of Colin Brough via stock.xchng

It takes one kind of courage to look straight at  your life, compare where you are to where you want to be, and then dive into making your life the one you want to live.

It is another kind of courage (more in line with General Sherman’s definition) that has us look straight at the cost of something, and choose it anyway.

Both have been coming into play in this “year of courage” (as I labeled 2013).

I have had a string of successes and delights this spring.

  1. I adopted a dog that was just what I wanted (still learning how to train him ;])
  2. We had a family vacation in Hawaii that was almost completely stress-free and got me far enough into my novel that the momentum meant something.
  3. I finished my first 10 speeches to achieve my “competent communicator” award in Toastmasters
  4. I finished my novel last week, and am now letting my story-brain rest, working on non-fiction writing instead (blog, WynMag).
  5. I’m wrapping up a last few editing of WynMag projects and the first issue will go live soon. (And I’m ahead on my submissions for the next issue).
  6. I’ve got the children signed up in a homeschooling program for next year (that we will actually start this summer), so that we have more financial flexibility to explore and experiment with curricula to find what will work best for our family.
  7. We’ve sold the rabbits (most of them, anyway), bringing us down to pet-levels.
  8. Our second round of baby goats is due this week (and we know better what to DO this time, so the enjoyment level will be even higher).
  9. The children will complete their first year of “away school” next week, and I won’t have to be the bad-guy, sending them on with empty hopes that people might change, and the slightly less-empty hope that there’s not many days left.

These are all tied, in my mind, to the first type of courage.

Now comes the second kind.

Image courtesy of Sarah Peller via stock.xchng

In the process of getting healthy on a mental/emotional level, I’ve come to recognize a series of needs that I must not just balance or juggle, but meet.

  • Writing
  • Exercise
  • Right eating
  • Sleep

These are the non-negotiable for internal stability.

But having those covered allows me to see there’s a second tier that really enhances the first tier.

  • Clean Space
  • Calm companions
  • Achievable, completable goals
  • Spiritual pursuit (singular)

I suppose having spiritual pursuit in the second category is going to look bad to some people, but it’s true. Until I am stable physically and mentally, asking the hard questions and pushing in any realm that has Deep Meaning is simply asking too much.

One of my biggest problems, all through my mothering journey (I can’t remember much thinking about it before then), was an image of a robot changing its own batteries. That’s how I saw “self-care”.

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Making Characters interesting — Before they do anything.

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image courtesy of Sias van Schalkwyk via stock.xchng

Lindorm, Part One, is essentially a Beauty-and-the-Beast story, where the beauty is teenage single mom, and the beast is a dragon.

Short story writer Kurt Vonnegut says that every character needs to want something, “Even if it is only a glass of water.”

In a novel, that wanting, the characters’ goals, usually corresponds to the plot of the book, and those goals are what make the action happen, but in this series of lectures (sorry, I don’t remember which one) the teacher urged pre-existing goals for your characters.

This concept brought a much-needed life into my main characters.

For one thing, pre-existing goals let them be proactive, interesting, believably awesome people before they get yanked into Story-Action. They act instead of (just) reacting.

If the original goals conflict with the (newer, more-compelling/unavoidable) Story-Goals, there’s bonus points in terms of conflict.

My main characters are Linnea (the beauty) and the Lindorm (the beast).

Image courtesy of Lotus Head via stock.xchng

I found this one step– giving them preexisting goals– was huge for giving them depth and dimension.

All of my novels (so far) have been seeded by folk tales, which means I’m starting from archetypes, stereotypes and puppets.  People do things because they DO things. It’s not like they have a motivation all the time.

Now, I am particularly gifted in mind-reading, and I’ve said more than once that my super-power is Instant Extrapolation.

So this starting place really works for me.

I’m not so great at the what-if game out of reality (what if you were investigating a crime and found evidence your daughter might be guilty?), or out of the news (one of James Scott Bell’s suggestions for story mining is taking a headline/newspaper article and milking it 10 different ways). My main problem with this is that they’re all too close to home.

I could really imagine this stuff happening, completely wig myself out, and be useless the next few days till I got over it.

I’m still very tender in the depression department.

I have to be nice to myself, and recognize when to stop pushing or just take another road.

This is where having the solidity of old stories really anchors me.

This is a pattern. This isn’t anything that I could’ve foreseen and prevented, or anything that I made happen with my freakish brain-power.

It’s got magic and crazies and just enough underhanded predictability (GA! I should have known!) that I can just play and enjoy some blatant non-reality.

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Officially Sick of it {Just give me a day.}

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But it’s a celebration, too:

 

Image courtesy of Wong Mei Teng via stock.xchng

The Lindorm Novel is once again making its rounds in the real world of real readers.

How did this finally happen? (You should ask.)

The last time I released LINDORM to betas was June 26, 2010.

(I know because I was so ecstatic about being done I had to try to dig up guilt at having no party ideas for my middle girl’s birthday.)

God provided so perfectly for that event that I felt its success as an extension of His pleasure in me, that I’d persisted in what he designed me to do.

That would be both momming AND writing.

Here was one glorious example of how I didn’t have to do everything, and God supplied for my deficiencies. *happy sigh*

She had a lovely, lovely 6th-birthday party with way more of what she wanted than if I’d put it together.

That was version 8.7.

Yesterday I released version 13.1, one paper copy and three kindle mailings. After Jay converts it to PDF, I have another four friends on the internets who will receive it for review. A couple more friends at church will get paper copies. This is the largest pool of beta readers I’ve yet had, so I’m excited, even though it is unknown how many will actually Finish & Respond.

Jay just started reading it this morning and came running out from wherever he was reading with a rushed, “You ready for feedback?”

And my skin crawled, but I said yes, and he said something really relevant and meaningful (translation: embarrassing to have someone else notice before me), and I reluctantly asked, “Should I correct that before you PDF and print it?”

He instantly went from intense to bland.

“It’s your book. Do whatever you want.”

GRRRR.

This is what I call emotional whiplash.

ETA: Jay clarified later– it wasn’t meant as emotional whiplash. There were more words than just that, and it was him challenging my response: Did I really want to change bits and pieces as feedback came in, or did I want to wait for the weight of everybody and make my decisions/revisions at that point.

It isn’t deadly, but sure as rain & taxes it’s disorienting.

This is what I experience when I get in (say) a stylistic or story-question debate with someone about a movie/book/television show, and it gets a little intense, diffuses, and then the person I was just as loggerheads with shrugs and says, It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter?

What were we just arguing about then?!

And I’m reminded that some people really do argue recreationally

(Jay’s not one of them, thank God, but this exchange reminded me of similar, less peaceful interactions).

Now, I enjoy a good argument– if it’s clear, and I think I can win, and I think it’s worth the effort– but part of what makes it worth the effort is that I actually care about the thing we’re discussing.

Anyway.

Image courtesy of pixaio via stock.xchng

I proof-read the first 35 pages of LINDORM after I printed out the whole thing, and in the 2nd chapter I found a bunch of pronouns that needed correcting.

I tried to continue the read-through after Page 37, but didn’t get far. I was just tired.

Then I figured, you know, I’m not publishing-publishing now. I’m doubtless going to make corrections/revisions in response to my Betas’ responses. So enough with the line-editing. Put it away. Let the ashes fall where they will.

And that felt really good.

One of my efforts at present is to be content with less-than-perfect.

Not strictly to celebrate sloppy (I don’t see that as any sort of need), but to keep things moving by accepting limitations.

This novel is being released now because I let some stuff go.

The second part of the story, to be specific. The Huge Second Part that refused to be wrestled into submission or structure or anything like coherence within acceptable word-counts.

Version 13.1 is 74,000 words.

Compared to version 8.7, it stops at chapter 21 of 45. Version 8.7 was 88,000 words.

All along this journey I’ve had people tell me I needed to break up the story, that it was too big for one book.  And I agreed, but I couldn’t give you two *whole* books out of this story, either.

“Whole” being defined as at least 65,000 words–  and that seemed short anyway.  I knew my genre, or the closest thing to it, and few of those books are tiny. I imagined the challenge it would be to connect with that type of reader when my book looked different from what was familiar.

Image courtesy of Verzon via stock.xchng

Revision #13 was going really well, and at some point I realized I was well past the natural break between the “set up” story (Modified Beauty & the Beast, where the Beauty is a single mom and the Beast is a dragon-sized serpent) and the *BIG* story of the second part.

I had already decided to indulge myself and “just see how the story flows” with word-count not a factor. With all the scenes left in.

I’ve also been reading (even re-reading!) a lot this year, and that added to the amalgam that has been my intense life over the last year. I saw things in this story I had only sensed before. I had words for feelings I’d never recognized.

And I put everything I could think of into my work.

The effectiveness of this new vision yet to be tested (figuratively biting my nails, waiting on reader responses), but my favorite addition to bulk/meaning in the story is the addition of non-story goals. Or, put a different way, Pre-Story Goals.

More on that tomorrow.

Brokenness, Healing and Art

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I just got through The War of Art by Steven Pressfield last week.

My library had it on CD, which meant that my laundry finally got folded.

Pressfield starts out by defining resistance by its action and power, tying it to our main difficulty in writing (okay, he actually is very careful to keep the talk about ART and whatever one’s contribution to the world is. But for me, that’s writing).

Problem #1: Getting Started

He has a whole series of specific examples of delays to beginning the work, but especially because of my experience with depression, and the upcoming launch of Wyn Magazine, I was intrigued by Pressfield’s comments about (and waiting for) healing as a tool of Resistance, to prevent the beginning of a Great Work.

Image courtesy of Mihai Tamasila via stock.xchng

According to Pressfield there are whole communities of people investing such effort and resources into getting well that they aren’t doing much else.

In his book he says some people feel they need to be healthy before they can do, or make their art.

I have felt this way in a vague sense, thinking that what I wanted to say would have more legitimacy or authority if I’d passed some point of competency, but the idea of doing nothing until that point is a straightjacket of terror.

Why ‘terror’? (That is a rather melodramatic word, but it’s the best I have just now.)

Because without my art I am locked in the long white corridors or darkened rooms of myself. There is no escape. And that is terrifying.

Writing is the walking.

One foot in front of the other to travel these endless hallways, and slow familiarity teaches what direction could be more useful, and I eventually see a door, and my momentum feeds itself until I slam into that crashbar and break into the open air.

Image courtesy of Jenny Rollo via stock.xchng

I’ve had encounters with others, or their words, who feel that they cannot produce art without the brokenness inside them.  Elyn Saks, in her Ted Talk quoted poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said, “Don’t chase my devils away, because my angels may flee too.”

I have wobbled on both sides of that line, and the perspective I find most-comforting is what Pressfield expresses in his book. He insists that healing is not a prerequisite, because the part that needs healing is completely separate from the part that is creating.

The experience of brokenness can make the creating part of you more useful, but somehow, in this one-way economy, that brokenness can only add depth to what already is.

I like this model, this container of words, because it suggests that the reasoning of second quote—about needing to keep the demons around—is misplaced.

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