Category Archives: Life

by | June 21, 2011 · 5:10 pm

getting back into “writerly” gear


i burned out this past semester. while revising my manuscript and creating a 25+ page literary craft paper. i hit rock bottom, writerly-speaking. my writing made no sense to me and neither did the books i was reading. i had to take a timeout. for about a week. no reading research, no writing the reviews, paper or revisions. just lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, trying to quiet my whirling thoughts…well…that’s what i WANTED to do. in reality, i still had a kiddo to care for & a job to show up for. but i was a train-wreck. in my mind i was screaming for relief. and there really wasn’t any. so i got it in gear. cried myself to sleep a few times, ranted to a few close friends who understood what i was going through, wrote rambling lines of nonsense and got back in the groove. but half-heartedly. i just wasn’t feeling it anymore…

being back together with my “community of writers” here at wilkes u in wilkes-barre, pa, is like being home away from home. i was both looking forward to and dreading the return. the first day or so, i was exhausted from driving straight through from south florida, stressing about my not-quite-finished craft project, manuscript revisions and paper presentation (i don’t have a problem with public speaking, just being unprepared), having forgotten to pack a few essentials, and the fact that internet access at the dorm was non-existent. i really wasn’t feeling like much of a writer.

after attending a few of the presentations on saturday, still had the blahs. spent hours in the computer lab polishing my presentation for sunday morning. because the internet STILL wasn’t working in the dorm. and the university “help desk” was an oxymoron.

paper presentation was successful. people complimented me on an interesting topic ( “Compliant and Defiant: How fictional authors use the craft elements of image, character and setting to successfully portray female Jewish protagonists” – just in case you were curious) and i got a few laughs at my initial attempt to pronounce “apocalyptic” – i always try to stress the wrong syllable & my tongue doesn’t want to wrap itself around the word.

catching up with old friends, orientation for the coming week, and attending the first night of readings helped me to feel more writerly. now that i’ve been immersed in classes for two days, building upon skills already learned in the ma portion of the program, i’m back! NOW the writer has returned. that thrum of excitement that comes with creating something from one’s own imagination is returning. excited about class projects and i expect the rest of the week to continue raising my energy level for the final stretch of the road ahead: internship (probably in publishing) and final (hopefully) revisions of my manuscript.

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by | June 13, 2011 · 11:39 am

hope


what is hope? from whence comes this word, this feeling? is it truly “hopeful” or does it sink us deeper into depression when that for which we “hope” doesn’t come to pass? and if we talk about what it is we’re hoping for (sometimes ad nauseam), does it jinx us; put a wrench in the fulfillment of said hope? or is that just me?

maybe the hope of something should be kept a well-guarded secret. but if that hope involves another person, group of people, etc, if we keep what we wish for secret, how will said person(s) know how to respond? or even that they’re supposed to respond? bah. it’s enough to make you tired.

according to dictionary.com, hope is defined as “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best; to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.”

synonyms of “hope” include: faith, expectation, dream, desire, goal, prospect, promise, anticipate, acceptance, assurance. the list is (probably literally) a mile long, and consists of both nouns and verbs.

hope has been around for a long time, and is of unknown origin. it occurs hundreds of times in the Bible. some of my favorite verses include:

  • Romans 8:25 “but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (still trying to wrap my head around that one);
  • Proverbs 13:12 “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
  • Proverbs 23:18 “surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”
  • Hebrews 11:1 “now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

many businesses, especially churches, utilize “hope” as part of their name: hope college, hope cleaners, house of hope, new hope baptist church. and let’s not forget about people who bear either the first or surname of “hope.”

then there are “hope quotes.” here are a few:

  • “to love is to risk not being loved in return. to hope is to risk pain. to try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”
  • “love comes to those who still hope even though they’ve been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they’ve been betrayed, to those who still love even though they’ve been hurt before.”
  • “hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.”
  • “learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

there’s even a short page on hope at wikipedia. okay… maybe i’m analyzing this just a little too much…

i think you get the point. it appears that hope is not just a word, it’s part of our essence, one of the things that makes us human. so nope, sorry. don’t think it’s possible to live without hope and still retain our humanity.

even when unrequited hope slams into you with an unyielding fist, making you stagger, breathless with anguish, a kernel remains. as you recover from that soul-wrenching, hope quietly grows. and one day when you least expect it, it’ll peer up at you, like the first flower of spring; it will rise anew, strong and confident, ready to once more reach for that expectation, hoping that this time, it will see fulfillment.

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by | May 25, 2011 · 12:27 pm

deal with it


i used to take everything personally. easily offended, i would cry if someone looked at me cross-eyed. even at work. it was embarrassing having to excuse myself in a choked voice, hurry to the ladies’ room, lock myself in a stall and muffle my sobs at this or that look someone gave me or something they said about my personality, my height, my tone of voice, my naivety, my family… it was exhausting.

relief came when i was about 21. during one of these “choking on my tears” sessions, a co-worker told me, “wendy, you better learn to develop a thick skin, or you won’t make it very far in this business.” of course at the time i was working for an a/c company, where most of my co-workers were men, and while they were usually respectful, several had criminal records and the personalities to match, all were hard-drinking, and as salty as sailors. but i took that advice to heart.

i slowly learned that most people aren’t out to offend me, the world DOESN’T revolve around me, most people DON’T care about my feelings, and i CAN ignore the cussing and swearing. i developed a thick-skin, learned to assert myself, and when i stopped to think about it, realized that my offense meter is actually pretty high – i’m not easily offended…unless i choose to be – usually when people misuse proper grammer and spelling.

what freedom! of course, along with this realization i learned that many other people have low offense meters…and my straight-forward, assertive personality lays them out like swatted flies.

i do believe that growing up means things like developing a thicker skin, understanding that the world doesn’t revolve around you, and realizing that most people (myself included) do not (well, not usually, anyway) sit around dreaming up ways to offend others. most of us have better things to do with our time. such as hold down a job, raise a family, attempt to find our way out of the maze of consumer debt, and debate politics and religion.

while i try to employ a certain amount of tact (within reason – MY reason) in my own speech, i refuse to try intuiting what’s going to offend others, apologize for my own thick-skin, or my “call ’em as i sees ’em” approach.

so grow up, get a life of your own, develop some common sense and a thicker skin, act like the adult your birth certificate alleges you are, and quit trying to make everyone around you as miserable as you seem to be.

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