A little bit of literature in your news feed

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook; I suspect most people do.  On the one hand, I love keeping up with friends who would, in a non-Facebook world, get lost in the distance and time separating us.  On the other hand, my news feed is often so clogged with reports of the games my friends play, political rants, pseudo-inspirational forwards, and pictures of dogs and cats looking cute that I log out of it before I can read the stuff I like to hear about.

I think the technological revolution has had the unexpected byproduct of an increase in literacy.  We read much more than we ever did in the past, partly because the written word is that much more accessible than it ever was.  The down side to this, as I see it, is what we read -- Charlotte Mason called it twaddle.  You know what I'm talking about.  But it doesn't have to be this way, and I've been thinking of a better way...

People post photos on Facebook all the time.  I have friends who are blessed in the visual arts.  They post photos of their paintings and drawings (and photos, of course).  Some of my friends post songs they like for other people to listen to, or youtube videos of great musicians playing wonderful music.  Lots of my friends forward inspirational thoughts or famous quotes they like and agree with.  But, at least in my news feed, there is a shocking absence of the literary arts.  And I've decided to try and remedy that.

I'm not a photographer or a painter.  I am a musician, but I don't really have the time or inclination to record musician and share it on Facebook.  I hope someday.  What I really am is a writer.  I craft poetry and prose.  Some of it is good; some not so much.  Either way, I'm practicing my art, keeping it alive as well as I can, amid the chaos of four children and a mostly-absent husband.

So I am proposing the following: I am going to write something literary every day.  It might be a poem. It might be a very short story.  It won't be a cute aphorism or a diatribe against the evils of sugar, GMOs, the current political debates, the rise of autism, or anything else serious and concerning.  It'll be fiction in all its delightful, instructional glory.  It won't be short enough for a tweet (because I don't), nor will it be long enough for a blog (because nobody else does anymore).  It will be perfect for a Facebook post, though.

If you want to receive a bit of literature (high or low remains to be seen) in your news feed every day (or as often as I can), friend my author page, linked somewhere on this blog (as soon as I figure out how to add it).  Tell your friends.  Feel free to forward anything you like or repost it.  It's not much, but it's what I have to give to the world, so if you want it, it's yours for the taking.  If not, I understand.  Some people just really like pictures of dogs with funny expressions on their faces and cute captions.  That's cool, too.  I'm just saying...

On Running

My dear friend, Fiona Ostler, recently posted a question on Facebook asking friends what helps them find peace and balance in their lives.  Up until the last year of my life, I would not have answered, "running."  I always thought runners were a little crazy.  Running was boring and hard and I never enjoyed it.  I don't know what changed.  All of the planets must have aligned perfectly at the exact moment to tip me into this new world, but, because I am me, I have to write about it.

Running helps me find peace and balance because it is boring.  And I don't get enough of that kind of simplicity in my life very often.  So here's a list of reasons I run:

1) It's me time.  I don't take the kids running with me.  I have a double jogging stroller, but I rarely use it to train, except in the most dire of circumstances.  When I run, nobody needs anything from me, and I love that.  It's rare and precious and not to be discounted.

2) I get to take a break from thinking about things too much.  Once I get my body in motion, my legs keep up the running on their own.  For some reason, that continuous movement settles my brain and quiets that voice in my head that is, otherwise, almost constantly churning thoughts.  Funny, though, how much more I sense when I'm running.  I hear insects, birds, wind, traffic, leaves rustling, water flowing, sirens, people talking.  I feel the pavement or dirt beneath my feet, the sun on my back, the wind on my face.  I smell the most delicious flowers, fresh-cut grass, car exhaust, dust, but only when I'm running.  I am part of the outside world almost without being sentient, and I love losing myself in it.

3) I need the daily sense of accomplishment when I finish the run.  It's not just an endorphin rush, although it is that.  I feel like I've done something worth doing.  I've used my time well.

4) Sometimes it hurts and it's hard.  I plan a run that's too far or I get tired halfway through.  Sometimes my clothes chaff and I have to pee and I can't swallow because my throat is so dry from running.  I still get side aches occasionally, although my friend, Kristy, told me they would go away if I kept at it, and she was right 99% of the time.  Sometimes it's too hot or too cold, the wind stings my face and makes my eyes tear up and my nose run.  Sometimes I use up all my energy on the way down and then I really struggle to get back up the hill.  But just because something is hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.  Running is a good reminder that the good things in life require a lot of sweat and tears.  Well, I sweat a lot.  And I cry some, too.  And all of that brings me peace.

The Problem with the Canon

So I've been thinking a lot about literary fiction lately. It shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, what with my Master's degree in English Literature and all. I guess the surprise comes from my writing genre fiction after having studied literary fiction for that many years. The thing is, I don't want to write literary fiction because I don't think people like to read it.

That's no big insult to the millions of novel readers who keep the publishing industry in business. On the contrary, I don't think the people buying romances and thrillers and young adult novels are less intelligent or less educated than those who buy and read literary fiction -- I think they just like the other stuff better. And I don't blame them. I'm going off that old premise (from my theory class many years ago) that literature is meant to delight and instruct. And I'm further insisting that literature which does not delight cannot possibly instruct.

So here's the problem I see with the canon: it is no longer delightful. Honestly. Maybe it used to be. It seems like, before the rise of the novel, and even during its early romantic period, it was possible to write delightful, entertaining poetry and prose and still find a place in the hallowed halls of revered literary giants. Not that I always found joy in "Paradise Lost," but with the right instruction...anyway, then the novel came along, with the realists and the modernists and the post-modernists and, honestly, it seems like a lot of writers, whether out of snobbery or just fear of selling out, decided to dispense with the time-honored tradition of making their writing delightful altogether.

Take James Joyce, for example. I read every word of Ulysses when I was an undergrad. Every word. I'm lucky I didn't commit suicide at some point during that semester, too. Had I possessed health insurance, I probably would have started on Prozac to help me cope with the mess my life had become just from reading that book.

This is not a tirade against Joyce, however, or any writer in particular, although he does make an easy target, doesn't he? It's just that he's a good example of how many literary writers, in my opinion, try so hard to write something worthy of the canon that they forget what I think is the entire point of writing: so somebody -- hopefully lots of somebodies -- will read their work.

Now I'm sure there must be a balance. We don't all have to write about vampires just because vampires are popular. But can we not, as a collective group of writers, include some happiness in what we write about? some comedy, some good endings, some hope?

I'll be the first to admit that I don't read much literary fiction anymore these days, so I'm not an expert on contemporary trends. But I'm guessing, from having spent more than a decade (as a student and a teacher) in academia, that the canon is not going to be adopting J.K. Rowling's works anytime soon.

And that's too bad, because I don't think we're doing our students or ourselves any favors by creating two mutually exclusive circles of writers and works of fiction. Just because a book sells millions of copies doesn't mean it has no literary value. And just because everyone in the novel battles against and fails to overcome their own particular neuroses doesn't mean we should force freshmen everywhere to read it and write essays on it.

I'm not renouncing my education, and I still love teaching literature (even though I haven't and probably won't for some time, given the four young children and all), but when I grab a precious hour or two here and there throughout the week, I'm definitely going to use it to write something delightful. Chances are, it won't be literary.

All Saints' Day

I am throwing away the Halloween candy, feeling, to borrow a well-worn phrase, grim but determined. Grim because I realize, with each step I take toward the garbage can, that I have, once and for all, become my mother. Determined because I now know that she is, and has always been, right.

My children will wake up in the morning and hurry downstairs in anticipation, hoping against hope that some remnant has missed my vendetta against refined sugar, that I will not have discovered all their secret hiding places. But I have. I always do.

It was bad enough that Halloween fell on a Sunday this year. They will never believe that they ate just as much candy and may have had more fun handing it out to underaged beggars than if they had been with the scores of other ninjas, witches and princesses trolling for sugar among the neighbors. And it certainly wouldn't have helped if I had told them that my mother sometimes forbid trick-or-treating when Halloween didn't even fall on a Sunday! I doubt they'd believe me anyway.

Then again, maybe I am worse than my mother. On those years when she did allow us to carry a small pillowcase door to door down our street and around the corner, she always confiscated our loot at the end of the night. It was then combined with everyone else's candy and hidden in a "safe place," to reappear as Christmas approached and she needed something with which to decorate gingerbread houses.

This practice turned the month and a half between Halloween and Christmas into a daily treasure hunt, as her children banded together in search of the hidden candy. The moment she left the house unaccompanied (not often) or turned her back on a room, my older brother deployed teams to distract, stand watch, and search. We knew that if we took too much, she would notice. But even when we were careful and frugal, she always knew. Every day following a successful reconnaissance mission, the candy would disappear again, and the quest would begin anew.

The problem was that by the time Christmas arrived, the good stuff had been devoured, most of the remaining candy was stale (or would be once it had sat on a gingerbread house for a week), and none of it was the kind of candy that looks good on a gingerbread house in the first place. It stretched out the process, but the end result was always the same; the majority of the candy ended up in the trash.

I'm saving my kids the heartache of hoping, of searching all the desperate corners of the house when my back is turned and coming up, most of the time, hungry and empty-handed. I'm pulling off the band-aid in one quick motion rather than dragging it out so the agony lasts that much longer. It isn't fair, and it isn't nice, but I didn't make up Halloween, so it's not really my fault.

I will not say to them, however, when they turn their little, crestfallen faces toward me, that someday they will thank me for it. I know they won't. I have never thanked my mom for taking away my Halloween candy, and I never will. She may be right--I can acknowledge that much--and I am doing the same thing to my kids because it's the right thing to do. But the most I can ever expect from them, now or twenty years from now when they have their own children, is the admission that I was--that we have all been--right.

The Halloween candy has to go. Happy All Saints' Day!

Published

I've been blogsurfing lately, and it's making my head hurt. By blogsurfing, I don't mean clicking the links on our family's blog to read our friends' updates and see the pictures of their kids. I mean, I start at QueryShark and read the latest query that has been (artfully and usually rightfully) ripped to shreds, then sort through the comments about it to see if I can glean something useful. After that, I usually make my way over to the blogs of a couple of literary agents (Janet Reid and Nathan Bransford are some of my favorites lately) to see what they've said recently. Their posts usually have hyperlinks to enough other blogs to keep me busy until the sun goes down, the baby goes to the sleep, and the house is dark enough that I can't see the mess I've left until morning. And then I think I ought to start writing.

You see, ever since I started writing my first novel, over a year and a half ago, I've become obsessed with getting published. It's not vanity, really. At least, I don't think so. It takes so much more time to write a novel than other stuff I've written; the only way I can justify this selfishness is to actually see it in print. A poem dashed off here or a short story there is no big deal. But a novel is page after page of husband and kids pulling the house apart in my absence, dishes piling up in the sink, laundry growing moldy in the baskets, and toilets growing a fungus that I never knew existed before I started writing novels because I used to clean them every week.

I've gained a whole new vocabulary, diving headfirst into this market of agents, publishers, queries, synopses, partials, fulls, and weblogs. I don't know how much of it I would have learned, had I opted for the MFA instead of the MA, but if that's what it takes, then bring it on, by gum.

But...I am also coming to realize, as I blogsurf on my iPad while I nurse the baby and the toddler watches Go Diego Go!, that I'm going to have to get into the conversation if I want to make a presence for myself as an author. And I'm not sure how that's supposed to happen the way things are now. WHEN I have a few minutes, I sit down at the computer and dash off a page or two. This blog consists mostly of posts written at very odd hours of the day or (usually) night, and certainly isn't one that would consistently jump to the top of people's lists of blogs ordered according to most recent posts. (Ack. That's a very awkward way to state it, but thereagain, it's so late, and I'm too tired to revise.)

It's just that I want to say something. I want to contribute to these discussions, to be out and about electronically, even while I am sitting at home, talking about body functions with a two-year-old, and listening to my seven-year-old read from the Monster Book of Jokes (who wrote that anyway and did they realize what it would do to me?). Because even though I spend my days with these sweet, little terrors whose collective knowledge base does not extend beyond animals found in Florida and singing the months of the year to the tune of "O My Darling Clementine," I still have my own thoughts. And they're good thoughts. Grown-up thoughts. Thoughts worth listening to. I think.

the sweet shoppe (another story idea)

So this story idea concerns a sweets shop in a small village in Switzerland or somewhere else European and slightly medieval. The shop produces excellent sweets and candies of all kinds, and is a favorite of children for miles around, not only because it sells good things to eat, but because the sweets are magic. Each candy, depending on its type, bestows a kind of magical power on the child who eats it. Swedish fish, for example, allow a child to breathe underwater for about an hour or so after eating one. Lollipops, when successfully licked, grow larger rather than smaller, until they reach the size of a large balloon, whereupon, if the child holds tight to the stick, he is lifted up into the air where he floats around for an hour or so until the balloon pops and he is let down.

Each year, the candy maker creates a new sweet, and the children who know about the shop line up for blocks to try it out. But one year, the new item--peppermint sticks--go dreadfully wrong. The sticks make the child who eats them invisible, just as planned. Unfortunately, the effect does not wear off after an hour or so. Furthermore, not only can the children not be seen by their parents or others who have not eaten the candy, they cannot be heard either. In trying to make their parents understand what has happened to them, they only succeed in spreading the rumor that ghosts have descended upon the little town.

Finally, the children approach the candy maker, who is, after all, a sort of magician. They write him a letter and he dusts them with confectioner's sugar so that he can see if they are telling the truth. When he consults his recipe book for an antidote, he finds the recipe for a stick of chewing gum that will make the children visible again. The ingredients in the recipe, however, would take years for him to collect, for they are nearly all difficult to find and in remote areas of the globe. The children decide to divide into groups and assign a different ingredient to each group. They scatter across the globe in search of the item on their lists, encountering all sorts of adventures along the way. The details of their adventures comprises the subsequent books of the series, which end only with the last one in which the children finally come together to create the gum that will render them visible again.

This I Believe

* * * SPOILER * * *
I guess I'm an unorthodox mother. Surprise. I keep adding to the list of things that somehow end up getting confessed in an underhanded whisper, like it's something to be ashamed of or to keep secret: I have my babies at home; I don't immunize them for the first year; I put them to sleep on their stomachs; I homeschool; I don't think doctors know everything. And this Thanksgiving, as I sat around the table chatting with the other mothers present, I added another. I don't lie to my children about Santa Claus. *Gasp.*

But let's be real. What does Santa Claus have to do with Christmas, anyway? Some die-hards will say that he embodies the spirit of giving and that our children can learn to be generous by following his example. But doesn't Christ embody the spirit of giving, and shouldn't our children learn to be generous by following His example?

Others tell me that I am taking away the magic of Christmas for my children by not allowing them to believe that one saintly man can pack a sleigh full of toys for every child in the world and visit them all and give them all exactly what they wanted on the same night each year. But I never remember believing in Santa Claus, and my childhood memories are replete with magical Christmases and sweet surprises.

It's not as though I pulled my son aside one day and whispered in his ear, "Guess what, Joe? There's no such thing as Santa Claus." But he is a curious little boy and he wants to know the truth about everything. So when he asked me, point blank, "Mom, is the tooth fairy real?" I said, "No." When he followed that up with, "What about Santa Claus?" I couldn't look at his innocent face and lie to him. I don't lie to my kids. Not about anything.

That way, when he comes to me one day and says, "Mom, is God real?" I can tell him that God is real, and he doesn't have to wonder if I'm lying to him like I lied about Santa Claus. Because there are so many wonderful, awesome, magical, and completely real things and people to believe in. Like God, and angels, and the miracle of a Savior being born in a stable in Bethlehem so long ago. And I don't want to take the chance that the real meaning of Christmas is superceded by a lie, no matter how sweet and magical Hollywood and tradition and commercialism make it out to be.

But why does it seem like I'm the bad guy? Other mothers tell me they don't mind if I tell my son the truth, but I should teach him not to tell other kids. Because if other mothers wish to lie to their children, they should be allowed to do it without fear that someone will spoil it for them. As if that belief is built on such a shaky foundation that one little, five-year-old boy who likes to tell people what he knows can totally destroy it.

I'm sure that, as he gets older, people will often tell my son, "There is no God." I certainly don't intend to pull them aside and ask them not to. If I haven't taught him well enough up to that point that he can think about it and decide for himself whether or not he believes, then what kind of mother am I?

So this Christmas season, in our unorthodox household, we will not open any presents labeled "From: Santa." If we leave any cookies out on a plate, my children will know, in the morning, that Dad ate them. All givers of gifts will receive their proper acknowledgement. And my son, who knows that there is no Santa Claus, will know that Jesus was born for us and died for us all so that He could give us the gift of eternal life. As unorthodox as it is, this I believe.