Friend of the blog (and RL drinking/philosophy buddy) Doug “Wonderpants” Brown is blogging 2010 in books. I like books. I like Doug. This is going to be an excellent year.
Filed under: life | 4 Comments »
surprises
Posted on September 1, 2009 by Aly Hawkins
I finished a short story last week, a story I started writing two years ago. For the longest time, I didn’t know what it was about. All I knew was that two guys, bandmates disenchanted by their lack of opportunities to play, hang out at a dive bar and meet weird people. I thought for awhile that it was about unfulfilled artistic ambition, but apparently it’s about loneliness and belonging. Surprise! No wonder I couldn’t finish it.
It’s strange to work on a story whose theme escapes me. I’m obsessed with meaning in real life, so of course I’m obsessed with it in stories—but I recognize this obsession is a menace when it comes to storytelling. As Stephen King wrote in his memoir, “Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story” (208). I am rather a preachy sort of person, but not a preacher by trade; sermonizing makes for excellent sermons and terrible fiction. I guess I’m saying it’s not such a bad thing that I didn’t know for awhile what this particular story was about. Good practice.
When it was finished (okay, I’m still tinkering), I was taken aback by its crudity. My two main characters are guys, and my imagination seems to believe that when two guys get together to drink beer, vulgar things are said and sometimes done. The wacky part is that it felt completely natural when I was writing, not gratuitous at all. Surprise! Apparently, this pastor’s daughter’s id presides over deep-drilled wells of nasty. I’m not going to send it to my mother to post on the fridge, because I kiss her with this mouth.
I’m still processing the last surprise. I sent out my little baby to a couple of people whom I trust as readers, to get their feedback before I do whatever it is I think I’m going to do with it (not yet determined). And I am a mess. Surprise! I’m just as neurotic as I’ve always feared. It’s taken every ounce of mental discipline not to edit and re-edit and re-edit again, based on what I imagine their comments will be. Good grief. Anxiety is so pointless.
Filed under: writing | Tagged: neurotic writers, short stories, writing themes | 7 Comments »
for the love of words
Posted on August 19, 2009 by Aly Hawkins
I wrote not long ago about learning to read in a new way—learning to read with attention toward the craft of writing. This has put me recently in mind of learning to read the first time.
I don’t remember it. My parents swear, with the confidence of proud progenitors, that I had just turned three when I sat on Dad’s lap as he perused the newspaper, pointed to a headline and said, “Does this say [whatever the headline said]?” There was, I’ve heard, much amazement and rejoicing.
Apocryphal or not, I feel as though I’ve always known how to read—I don’t remember not knowing how. And from a very early age, words and stories were my dear friends, friends with whom I never not wanted to hang out, even if it meant ignoring actual human friends. Books were ever so much more understandable than people, especially little people like me who were somehow not like me because they didn’t read.
When I started school, they weren’t quite sure what to do with me. I recall sobbing every morning when my mom dropped me off, clinging to the chain-link fence as she walked away, begging her to take me with her, back to my books. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the other kids or my teacher, Mrs. Hollenbeck; it’s that I was so damn bored. “Reading time” meant tracing upper- and lower-case letters on what were, in those days, purple-stained papers called “dittos.” Sometime in November, as Mrs. Hollenbeck passed out dittos to the class so that we could practice drawing the letter “D,” I snapped. I stood up from my desk, put my hands on my chubby hips and announced, “If I have to do another one of these stupid dittos, I’m going to puke.”
And so began an era when I was allowed, during “reading time,” to read.
Which brings me to a story I loved so much back then that I can remember entire passages verbatim. I Googled it the other day, half out of desire to see if I really remember as much as I thought I did and half out of fear that I made the whole thing up. (Then, as now, I had a rather overactive imagination.) To my delight, I found the following video:
In contemplating my enduring affection for Tikki Tikki Tembo, I’ve come to the conclusion that it has little to do with the story itself (which, honestly, is not that interesting) and most everything to do with the sounds of the words—namely, Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo’s name. Such good rhythm! It’s like a dance that starts in your mouth, snakes its way to your booty and then to your feet. I could say Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo all darn day (and probably achieve some sort of trance state for my trouble).
I think Tikki Tikki Tembo has stuck with me all these years because my discovery of it marked a dawning pleasure in words for themselves, even nonsense words. As I’ve gotten older, my passion for words has broadened to include the ways they fit together to form lovely, coherent sentences with their own more complex rhythms, and sweeping paragraphs that flow one after the other to tell stories that somehow transcend the sum of their parts. But down deep, I still get a thrill from the littlest building blocks of stories: words.
Filed under: life, writing | Tagged: children's books, learning to read, reading, Tikki Tikki Tembo, words | 7 Comments »
stories I don’t like to tell: healthcare edition
Posted on July 20, 2009 by Aly Hawkins
[Previous "Stories I Like to Tell" posts here.]
There are stories I like to tell, and there are stories I don’t like to tell but that need telling. This is one of the latter. I’ll try to make it interesting.
I got laid off last October, by a publishing company for which I worked for almost five years. The industry as a whole has been hard-hit by the economic downturn, and nearly every publisher has had to make drastic cuts. Of course, getting laid off was a shock, and I was sad and disoriented for awhile. But I had been thinking about striking out on my own as a freelancer for more than a year, and it turned out that losing my job was exactly the kick in the pants I needed. I’m happy to report that I’ve been working steadily and bringing in a livable income for about eight months. (More work is always welcome, nudge-nudge!)
There was (and is) a problem, however. We had terrific health insurance through my employer, and continuing that coverage through COBRA would have cost nearly $800 a month (for two people!). This we could not afford—it was more than our rent! “Not to worry,” we said to each other. “We’ll apply for an individual policy—a bare-bones, catastrophic-care, astronomically high-deductible policy that will be a stop-gap for emergencies until such a time as we can afford more comprehensive coverage.” Paying for health insurance—just like paying for car or renter’s insurance—is part of being responsible adults, and going without on faith that we’d never need to see the doctor was not an option.
We got turned down flat by every private insurer to which we applied—and we applied to a great many. I have Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (whew!), a genetic disorder that, in my family, results in occasional gastro-intestinal bleeding. (I tell my mom, “At least I got your brains and good looks, too.”) As you might imagine, HHT is considered a pre-existing condition—it being all genetic and whatnot—and we found out right swiftly that no insurance company would touch me.
In the middle of all that drama, my kidneys went all wonky (because random G.I. bleeding and starting a new business and trying to find health insurance were not enough to keep me occupied). When the problem could no longer be ignored, we discovered that our county has a healthcare program for low-income families—which, at that time, we were. I have received outstanding, affordable care since we were accepted into the program, and am incredibly thankful for the last resort offered by our local government.
But . . . the program is offered for 12 months at a time, and at the end of December we will lose our last resort. We’ve worked our way out of low-income-ness and will no longer qualify by the end of the year. We will renew our quest for healthcare coverage at square one.
I know there are people who are worried at the prospect of a public health plan. They’re worried that a “public option” will hurt private industry or that healthcare will be “rationed” (take it from me—it already is!) or that the costs will far outstrip the benefits. These seem like legitimate concerns, and honestly, I’m not far enough down in the healthcare policy weeds to give an adequate answer to them.
But outside a public plan, I come up with only one option: Get a job with health benefits. I am open to this option—not thrilled with; open to—but am almost certain it would mean a complete career change, given the current condition of the publishing industry. (It occurs to me that I must write a post about the state and future of publishing. Stay tuned.)
I love what I do. I want to keep doing it. If possible, I’d like to keep doing it without a boss. I have time to go to my many doctors’ appointments, to garden, to cook, to hang out with my husband and other resident mammals, and to (occasionally) tinker with my own writing projects—and still get my clients’ work done. I don’t savor the idea of trading all that work-life balance away to punch the clock at a job that’s likely outside my training, expertise and satisfaction.
Bring on the government-funded healthcare, I say. But maybe you have other ideas . . . ?
Filed under: life, politics | Tagged: employee benefits, healthcare, public option, publishing industry, stories I like to tell | 8 Comments »
words I like: deadline
Posted on July 17, 2009 by Aly Hawkins
The great Douglas Adams once said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” I do not like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by, but I do love deadlines—I work best under the gun. If there’s no end in sight, I can find an infinite number of pointless activities to fill my time, all of them unrelated to whatever project is crying out for closure. Deadlines are my friend, the kind of friend who won’t let you off the hook because she knows you can do better.
But I also like the word “deadline.” It’s so dramatic! It’s the line behind which death resides, which is way more visceral a word picture than “due date” or “time limit.”
“Cross this line,” Deadline says, “and die.”
Deadline
Filed under: editing, life, writing | Tagged: deadlines, Douglas Adams, words I like | Leave a Comment »
sweet communion
Posted on July 16, 2009 by Aly Hawkins
I’m part of a church community that takes communion (that’s the Eucharist for all you Anglo-Catholics) on the first Sunday of every month. As I understand it, this is pretty common practice in American evangelical churches. Even though I love many other things about my church, most of them being the people, I wish it were different.
I think I understand, from a historical perspective, why the focus of “low-church” services shifted (starting about the time of the Second Great Awakening) from the Eucharist to preaching the Word: Saving souls was the goal, and everyone agreed that couldn’t happen through a sip of wine and a nibble of bread.
At the same time, there was a growing emphasis on individual, rather than communal, discipleship; every person was recognized to be individually accountable before God—you couldn’t be grandfathered in, so to speak. The practice of communion began to reflect this new understanding. Rather than sharing a common cup and loaf (as in intinction), some churches began to parcel out the communion elements into individual servings. Communion meditations and homilies also changed. Instead of emphasizing the shared Life of Christ present in or symbolized by the bread and wine, pastors challenged their parishioners to personal spiritual reflection—each person needed to “get right with God” before taking communion.
[This short lesson in history brought to you by Charles Finney: New Divinity at Its Finney-ist.]
I get why these shifts took place—in large measure, they were a needed corrective to a lifeless, cultural Christianity that was more about paying social dues than about spiritual renewal—but I think that something vital to the life of the Church got lost in the process. Whether or not one believes that the body and blood of Christ is, in some essential way, present in the Eucharist, I think believers can all agree that he is present in the collective Body of Christ, the Church. Taking the bread and wine—together—should be a celebration of that Presence.
And we should celebrate more often! I’d like to suggest that the guys (they were almost all guys) who thought that saving souls couldn’t happen through a sip of wine and a nibble of bread got it wrong. Any time we recognize and celebrate the Presence of God among us, salvation leaks out all over—it’s one thing to hear a preacher talk about the Life of Christ, and quite another to experience that Life lighting up the whole place.
Filed under: church, theology | Tagged: communion, consubstantiation, Eucharist, Second Great Awakening, transubstantiation | 4 Comments »
up with little people
Posted on July 13, 2009 by Aly Hawkins
Bryan and I finally went to see Up yesterday. Holy smokes, what a film: moving, hilarious, nuanced, gorgeous to look at (my only regret is not seeing it in 3-D).
We saw it with a friend and her two kids, who are three and nine. (I highly recommend seeing “kids’ movies” with kids.) I sat between Bryan and Zion, the nine-year-old. Zion did totally ordinary nine-year-old-boy things, such as burp after every slurp of Cherry Coke and “whisper” commentary to his mom. Yet I overheard some of his commentary, and it struck me as rather extra-ordinary for a nine-year-old.
Around the 15-minute mark, the main character, Carl, goes through a rough patch (this is a gross understatement, but I don’t want to spoil). Grief and regret lead Carl to become a crotchety old man, which we (the audience) already know is out of character. There’s not a lot of dialog to tell us that Carl has changed, but there are a ton of visual cues—and Zion was totally tuned in to these nuances. “Mom!” he hissed, in his not-so-subtle whisper. “Look how he’s so square and is always in the shadows! He’s boxed up and in the dark!”
Color me deeply impressed. I haven’t hung out with many nine-year-olds, so maybe someone can answer me this: Are powers of observation that acute common to kids of that age?
Filed under: life | Tagged: Pixar, seeing kid movies with kids, UP, visual storytelling | 4 Comments »
