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Posts by Cathy

Jul 8

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Cathy: Writer’s Stone Soup

Last week was a challenging one creatively since we had house guests, a big 4th party, lots of extraneous appointments, lots of back pain to heal and lots of sleep deprivation to go along with it all – thanks to baby C’s night nursing. After a recent burst of creativity, it was a bit of a let down for me, but I am aware that my creativity has a tendency to cycle like that. I think one of my major challenges in creativity is the fact that even if I try to schedule or plot myself or my writing, it ain’t gonna happen that way. My best laid plans often go to waste. The best response for me in that event, is to take a deep breath, exhale, and not give myself another reason to live in the land of stress and guilt. Sometimes, the worst thing I can do is sit down and “try” to write.

However, I still felt creative, because I stayed in touch with writing by – you guessed it – reading. When I don’t read on a regular basis, something besides all the articles on autism, aspergers, etc. every week, my brain starts to atrophy. I get really grumpy, too, and that’s bad for everyone around me. I think if I stay in touch with imagination by reading fiction or poetry, I can hear the voices in the back of my head rise to the surface. Instead of just picking up the cereal box in the cabinet, I am narrating the beginning of something that may never hit the page, but at least I’m having fun thinking, “As she removed the cereal box from the cupboard, she looked again at his body where it lay on the kitchen floor. Waiting for the police to arrive, she poured the corn flakes into the bowl then read the ingredients list slowly before looking once again, at the growing blossom of red around his head.”

Now, to be honest, most of these thoughts never make it to paper. If they do, I edit and re-edit and scribble it out and try it again, half a dozen times. These thoughts do not rise to the surface to make it even this far, unless I am enthralled in someone else’s writing. Right now, I am re-reading for the several-ith time Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which Lisa Damian would recommend right along with me, I’m sure. Anyway, because I am so excited by his writing, I find myself almost in competition with it. Now, I rarely write thrillers of any kind, but I love his language so much, that the thriller aspect of this book leaks out of my head as I entertain myself by swimming in the collective writer’s soup from which we all drink. If we just realize it and know that about each other and ourselves, even when it feels a little plagiaristic, I think we might all end up writing a little better or a little more often. If I can have fun wandering in my head in between moments of engaged writing, it leads me down better paths toward doing so in the moments when I am hit with inspiration like a truck and actually write.

Jun 26

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Cathy: Mothering & creativity put to test

After dropping 9.75-year-old S off at taekwondo camp, I got 13-year-old K into a salon to get the cockeyed layers fixed in his long hair. Warning to other moms: if your son wants long hair, stop taking him to the barber shop, take him to the salon at a few more dollars. Barbers don’t know how to deal with long hair. He’s still pretty, even after haircut. 😉 That’s what I was trying to fix. You know how baby boomers’ parents complained their hippie boys looked like girls? Well, mine really does. Mind you, it took 2 weeks to convince him, after I blurted out at last barber visit, “either grow it for Locks of Love over the summer or chop it off now.” Evidently, that was not my best parenting moment. Thank goodness, baby C slept through this morning’s ordeal after the talk down. I swear K gets suicidal over a haircut. Anyway, mission accomplished, his hair is more skater than girlie now.

I should have eaten more breakfast: by the time we got home, I had a blood sugar crash and nearly passed out. Had the shakes while heating up frozen burritos for a protein boost lunch. Earlier, I took K out to Starbucks (how I wish there were non chain cafes here). We had some good conversation, finally, over coffeecake. As a breakfast, not great, but I really need to make special separate time with him from S on a more regular basis. We had a very interesting discussion about OPEC, supply and demand vs spec issues; and world economies, particularly the rise of a middle class in India and China and how that’s affecting the oil prices, and the fact that the Middle East’s oil supply won’t last forever, as well as oil drilling’s destruction of the Delta in Gulf of Mexico as a contribution to Katrina damages, etc. He’s really a neat guy. If he weren’t so shy about public speaking, I can totally see him run for president. He sure has strong opinions about the one that “ruined his childhood.”

I pass along evidence that they don’t stay little forever. Sigh. Oh wait, thank goodness!

So, the creativity came to play in the above: 1. finding the words and approach to talk him into neatening the mane with scissors. 2. discussion of world economics with intelligent and concerned young citizen on less than 3 hours of consecutive sleep from nursing baby C last night.

Oh, and 3. the inspiration to find the words again, to write down everything that happened for this blog. Hey, it may not be great literature, but it’s a start, and keeps me dipping into the writing well. Besides, finding the right or best words is my business, whether writing them or speaking them. It is especially important, as a parent, to find them, since each kid we have has their own best mode of communication, and we have to be available to their way, not always ours alone. K has always been like speaking with another adult, even when he was 2. With his brother S, I have to be very particular about how I say what needs to be conveyed, and with their sister, baby C, there’s a whole lot of pattycake going on.

Whether I am conscious of it happening or not at the time, I can see how my creative side is more active than I may initially have been aware.

Jun 23

6 Comments

Cathy: Joining the blogosphere

Well, Miranda, you have done it. It’s all your fault.

You’ve inspired me to blog.

When my comments are longer than some blogs I’ve seen, I know you’ve gotten me back in the habit of writing. I am very grateful. I have had ideas coming out of my ears, and much to do with mothering and creativity. Also, I find the more I’m writing — or exorcising the daily drek — the closer I feel to coming back to the projects that need the dust blown off of them. Right now my creative attention span is too short for the novels or screenplays and I don’t feel like researching and organizing and editing forty gazillion old poems. But I know I can do this. And if I blog my way out of the day to day, maybe I can blog my way back into the bigger projects. And it beats sitting down to longhand journal three pages a day by a long shot. Hold a pen and a baby? Not able to read it later. Type one-handed while nursing? Time-consuming, but doable. And I do highly recommend Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for anyone who can get past chapter 7. Not me. Not yet anyway. Writing Down the Bones is much more my speed. I find it very inspiring, and can read it in snippets. Flip it open anywhere, read a page or two or three, and you’ll likely find exactly what you need to get your writing or other creative juices flowing. Natalie Goldberg rocks!

So, this may be it. The beginning of something new, and the pruning of the paths into my brain toward the neglected novels whose windows are a bit cracked and whose corners are a mite cobwebby.

Another metaphor: I’m at the end of the diving board, bouncing slightly and inhaling deeply, waiting for the splash of cold water in my face.

When I was younger, I had this Emily Dickensonian dream of writing away in my little room, and someone coming across the treasure trove of my words after I’m gone. I’m much more realistic — and less shy — now, with a 13 year old who, like his mother, is ‘too smart for his own good’, a 9.75 year old who is the funniest kid on the planet, but not without his challenges, and a nearly 3 month old, who, of course, is the most beautiful, smartest, strongest, etc. girl ever born. Considering this is what I have to work with, besides getting back into tutoring for viable income in the near future, I gotta start somewhere, catch as catch can. Maybe it’ll help others, like all these creative blogger moms have helped me know I could do it, too.

Besides, dear Miss E D didn’t have the internet, and was a tad weirder even, than I.

Splash! The water’s fine

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