My Zero Moment

The moment I decided I wanted to be a writer happened by accident two years ago when people responded to my blog from Spain. It was my zero moment. For four years, an audience was building as I wrote about the work we accomplished in Kenya. When I wrote from Spain, my stories morphed into funny insights or miserable mishaps stumbling along the Camino de Santiago, an ancient 500-mile path. Raw emotions skidded into the posts, my voice emerged, and the positive feedback startled me. I had asked my readers to join me on my journey, and there they were.

When the hike was over I stopped the blog. The issues I had run from when I left for Spain jumped back in my lap when I returned home. When the steam train halts at the depot there is a moment when a long shhhhhhhhhhhh erupts from the engine. I needed two years of shhhhhhhhhh time.

Slowly, I’m returning. My writing is beginning to creep out of its hiding place. I’ve enrolled in writing courses, and I’m reading myriad books on the craft. I slip posts onto an online site I don’t promote. I’m getting more comfortable with exposing myself.

I want to write. I want to be a writer. I want to bring to life all the tens of thousands of pages I have written since I was 12-years-old before I knew anything about a zero moment.

My time will come.

Post #11 DIY MFA : Hidden Staircases

When I’m serious about putting words to paper, I move from the red sofa to the dining room table. When I’m truly serious, I travel down hidden staircases.

My New Year’s resolution began with a commitment to write two hours a day. Period. My brain muscles fought, and frustration turned to anger at the end of each two-hour session. Every word coaxed onto the blank page was crap. Horrible, boring, and flat.

I decided I should write when inspiration struck. I began missing days, and my ability to fill my time with reading about writing took a front seat. I faced the fact that I couldn’t grow as a writer unless I wrote consistently without fail.  I returned to writing crap two hours a day.

Sometime last week, however, the magic began. It reminded me of the times I sat beside my son during homework hours and we pretended to fasten our seatbelts. Once he succumbed to the new world order, the homework completed itself. So too for me. Once I quit the fight and succumbed to my new uncomfortable habit, the words began to flow.

The maxim, ‘habits die hard,’ was overshadowed by a new maxim for me: ‘hard it is for habits to blossom.’ When I began training for triathlons, the 5 a.m. push to bike, hike or swim left me in tears. My psyche kicked and screamed, and my committed mileage took forever to complete. But my brain rewired itself, succumbed to the inevitable, and soon the routine flowed.

DIYMFA writing prompts inspire me. Words jump from my head whenever a new project arrives. Right now, my laptop rests on my thighs deep in the cushions of the big red sofa. But once Fedex arrives, I will leave my comfortable abode and head to work. Consistently producing pages demands toil and trouble.

My commute to work requires two feet and an imagination. Depending on my mood, the route takes me through the Secret Garden or to the grounds of Mandalay.

Six secret staircases hide in my neighborhood, and two provide a century-old path to my coffee shop. The numbing iron rail steadies any misstep down the moss-covered steps, and water drips from towering conifers. As I come closer to my destination, my words itch to jump to white space. They anticipate the next two hours, now knowing it represents an uninterrupted opportunity for them to shine.

Because familiarity breeds intimacy, everyone knows my name when I order my 12-ounce latte, extra hot. They also know I won’t be coming up for air for quite some time.

Post #7 DIY MFA: Favorite Supporting Character Archetype

The villain! When I was eight-years-old, I threw my hairbrush at the television screen. How could Mr. Smith even think to do such a thing?  I bristled with childhood rage.

The antagonist invites me to join the story. My emotions ignite, and I become one with the protagonist. We’ll solve the injustice together and save the world!

We suffer along with Lisbeth Salander when she believes justice is unobtainable through the courts. The rapist in Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson ignites anger. I stood cheering beside Lisbeth when she took matters into her own hands and used the tattoo machine to right the wrong.

What about the first scene in Mr. Robot? Elliot robbed a child pornographer his façade as a respectable businessman. Villains touch raw nerves, but the reward when the protagonist wins is more satisfying than if I had donned a shield and sword myself.

Villains provide fodder that lets the story sizzle. Energy ignites, and we are off to right the wrongs of the world. 

Post #8 for DIY MFA: My Favorite Story Type

The underdog! The underdog! My favorite protagonist hides grit, drive, and determination under a coat of grace and femininity. 

 “Girl Waits with Gun” by Amy Stewart introduces us to Constance Kopp, the first female deputy sheriff in the U.S. We have a single woman (and two sisters) in the early 20th century whom the bad guys intimidate and harass. I like the way she keeps her focus on solving the injustice, never buying into being the victim. Guess who wins.

Isabel Dalhousie from the Sunday Philosophy Club series by Alexander McCall Smith appears to live a tranquil life in Edinburgh as editor of a philosophical journal she runs from her home. But when new conundrums arrive she locks in with quiet doggedness. Someone arrives to request help in solving a mystery, correcting an injustice or righting an awkward social mishap. Her sleuthing takes center stage until it is complete and triumphant. She returns home to suffer digs by her loving but petty housekeeper. Isabel takes life in stride. 

I don’t agree with all of the decisions Queen Elizabeth’s addresses in The Crown, but I admire her dogged determination to do what she believes she must do for the monarchy, and remain graceful and composed while doing it. Her feminine veneer is the counterpoint to her dogged rigidity to do what she believes is right.

My underdogs grow into their skin. They recognize that while they are perceived to be the ‘weaker sex,’ this isn’t the battle they choose to fight. Ironically, her antagonists believe they hold the cards while she slowly advances her agenda. Once she accomplishes her goal, life continues.  

Maybe my southern upbringing influences my characters. When you match good manners with unbridled drive, the good gals win without the bad guys knowing what hit them. 

Post #5 for DIY MFA: What's one "best practice" that didn't work for you?

Write first thing in the morning? Nope. Not good. Doesn’t work for me. 

Mornings start slowly. Sip my latte. Meander. Read from my stack of books. Later, emails awaken my creativity. My pace quickens with prompts or assignments. Once I arrive at the café and have my second latte, my fingers are flying off the keyboard. I have all the answers to every question proposed  (the caffeine is in high gear). And once I hit my stride, I can continue until well past dark.

My writing journey is a new career. I’m offering it six-plus hours a day. My first two careers were successful, although they each began with trepidation and fear and a conviction that I would never accomplish anything. That’s how I feel today about my writing. I’m floundering. But I’m a happy flounder-er. I love what I’m doing.

Two days ago, my post on DIY MFA received a comment.

My. First. Ever.

I don’t know Samantha, but she will forever hold a spot in my heart because she read something I wrote.

Don’t get me wrong. Writing isn’t a novice affair for me. Thousands of pages marinate in my basement in notebooks and hard drives. Hundreds of work-related blog posts rest entombed online. Many applaud my rewrites of their work.

Today, I’m writing to find my voice and share my thoughts and find my community and take readers on global journeys.

Each book and podcast and prompt and course and writing group and critique group take me one step closer. I’m not sure where these steps are leading, but the journey has begun.

Just don’t ask me to write in the morning.

Post #4 for DIY MFA: What Feeds Your Creativity?

In response to DIY MFA prompt #4: What Feeds Your Creativity?

My mind bursts with ideas. I capture them in bits and pieces and bemoan those I forget to record. My Trello app overflows. My laptop offers a sea of fodder. I dive in, and new bookmarks multiply during my fragmented wanderings. I read Memoir Monday, and new book ideas proliferate. DIYMFA keeps me scurrying with posts. Reedsy Writing Prompts posts a picture that prompts a story. I tackle two to three writing contests a quarter. Climbing into seat 21A on an airplane creates a myriad of stories in my head.

Here’s the issue. When does the creativity settle into a focused direction? I’m all over the board ricocheting from one topic to another. I’m looking for my passion, but I am someone with too many passions.

Do I blog about living a new life in love, or creating an NGO and having the board dissolve it, or starting a writing career, or tackling new athletic adventures, or sharing humorous travel mishaps?

Where do I get my creativity? In the air I breathe.

Where do I get the focus to channel this creativity into the blog or the book or the article or the essay to publish? I’m searching.

Post #2 for the DIY MFA Book Club.

Today prompt: Tell about a time you had to honor your reality.
Has there ever been a moment when writing felt completely incompatible with your real life–when it felt like there was just no way you could make the two exist together?

Summer, 2015:  Life can stop you in your tracks just when it’s time to hit the restart button. I walked 500-miles along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I was celebrating the completion of two years of self-imposed mourning for the demise of a decades-long marriage. It was also the end of a two-year moratorium on any form of dating. My arrival in Santiago would kick-start life fresh and renewed: new loves, new home, new challenges.

But along that route, a voice crackled into my iPhone that the true love of my life, the NGO I founded to support Kenyan girls through college, would close before I returned. My whole reason for being was that NGO. My Camino walk wrapped around a crowdfunding campaign that raised $50k so that 25 more girls could begin college. My NGO was the place I hid when the pain of my reality overflowed. My NGO was the place I spent 15 hours a day. My NGO had become my husband, my best friend, my adventure buddy, my lifeline.

So began my swim through molasses. And it was through this molasses that writing saved me. I could pour out the anger, or the hurt, or the injustice, or the panic that I faced each morning. I could turn to the page when there was no office to drive to when the sun came up. Oh, if only the sun wouldn’t come up. There were young women in Kenya who had depended on me for the last ten years.

There was a time during this period that I quit writing. But to be alive, I knew I had to put pen to paper. I wasn’t ready to give up on life even if many around me were worried that I would. Writing let me create a temporary world where everything is okay. It gave me time to regroup so I could face the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. It let me jot down escape routes.  And then it held me accountable to those routes. My writing told me I had to leave the old behind. It delivered a schedule for me to follow, and three months later I packed up my Jeep and drove 1000 miles north and started all over again.

There’s a happy ending to my story. It ‘s one of survival and dogged determination and the ability to find positives no matter how dismal life becomes.

It wasn’t me who reclaimed my life, though. It was my writing.