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Cultivate Your Story

Last Thursday marked a historical moment for me.

I picked up my daughter, for the final time, from a daycare center that has cared for both my kids for the past nine years. As much as my kids, I’ve grown up at that center, and it felt strange to walk away.

I honored the day as most moms do: I brought cupcakes, and I bought a new book as a gift for her classroom. Decorating the cupcakes was easy; choosing the book was difficult.

But, the one I found bestows a message that’s been sitting with me for days.

In The Curious Garden, Peter Brown writes a beautiful story about a boy who discovers a treasure, a tiny garden in an otherwise barren piece of land. With little knowledge about gardening, but a passion to grow something new, this young boy weeds and trims and waters and sings to his little patch of green. The plants come to life, and they begin take root in new places.

Then, winter sets in, and the boy can no longer get to the garden. He doesn’t despair, though. He turns to books on gardening, and, by spring, he is ready: armed with more knowledge and better tools and an even stronger drive to foster his plot into something bigger and more beautiful.

By the book’s end, the small patch of green has flourished and spread, and the boy’s spirit is contagious. I love this book, for everything it represents: nature’s resilience, the fruits of our labor, the persistence of a young boy who knew nothing in the beginning but did the work anyway.

You can see where this is going, right? Walking away from one phase in my daughter’s life pains me, but the message I discovered in the process was worth it. Not only am I extremely grateful for the gifts of knowledge this daycare center, and the teachers, have given me and my kids. But now, I leave there with yet another lesson: cultivate that which you love.

Here I am, trudging my way through this novel writing business, perseverating (some days) on the fact that I have so much to learn about the craft of writing and story structure. But, the passion is there, and my story is taking root and flourishing, little  by little.

What about you? Are you fostering something new today?

* Read the New York Times Review of Peter Brown’s book here.

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Said the phlebotomist to the writer, “Too much fear stops the flow.”

This weekend, I gave blood. This wasn’t my first time, but let me say that (in my case anyway) it never gets easier.

Photo credit: rvoegtli on www.flicker.com

I know the routine: the check-in, the donor questionnaire, the finger stick. I know exactly what to expect, which is the whole reason I break out into a sweat and forget how to breathe the second the phlebotomist cracks the cover on the needle. And, that cheesy sitcom playing on the television across the room does nothing to distract me from the snaking tube sticking out of my arm for a solid ten minutes — or more, depending on whether or not my vein cooperates.

I am mess from the minute I walk into the Blood Center to the second I hear the beep from the machine that announces my pint-size bag is full up.

It’s the anticipation of discomfort that gets to me, and the worry that I might not make my quota. What if I didn’t drink enough water? What if something goes wrong and she has to re-insert the needle? What if I pass out and never make it to the sugary treats at the end of Donor’s Row?

Oddly enough (or maybe not so much), a recent sit down with my work in progress felt a lot like this blood-letting. The same anxiety crept up on me seconds before I opened the file. I started to sweat as I scrolled down to my page mark. And, the initial string of words I typed out cut across the page and sounded choppy and slow. Then, all of the “what if’s” flooded my mind.

What if this scene doesn’t come together?
What if the story falls apart, right here, right now?
What if…I.Never. Finish.

I can’t avoid that anxiety, really. It’s genetic, and it’s part of my writing process. In many ways, dealing with it helps move me forward. I could give in to those fears, but that would mean I quit, and I’ve come too far to quit.

So, just like I squeezed that little stress ball and survived my stint at the Blood Center (once again), I’ll write through my fears as best I can on a given day. I’ll hold on to what phlebotomist told me this weekend, in between her constant chatter that she hoped would settle my nerves: the more you relax, the better your blood flows, and – before you know it – you’re at the end!

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. ~Ernest Hemingway

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Flash Fiction on Wednesday: Cold

There’s a new website in my Google Reader: Fiction Writers Review. Writers can find a plethora of information, stories, and great blog posts there. Plus, they have a blog series by Celeste Ng called “Get Writing,” where she posts an exercise to get your muse off the couch and back to some serious calisthenics. This week, Celeste suggests writers turn to the tabloids.

Looking through the tabloids is a lot like waiting for Wordsmith.org’s Word of the Day – you never know what you’ll get – and, seeing as it’s Wednesday, the timing was perfect to use the tabloids as a spark for a little flash fiction.

*****

Cold
(Based on this post, called “Magnetic Boy,” from Weekly World News)

Standing outside, Nicholas Baker – even at ten years old – could see that his mother had lost it. She used to get mad if he ran outside without a jacket, when the air was just a little bit cool. But now, she was insisting that he stand in the front yard, naked from the waist up, in the middle of winter.

“She’s looney,” his older sister, Emily, had said about their mother just a few days before. “Mental.”

“You are what you say!” Nicholas yelled back at first, because he didn’t want to hear her call his mother crazy. Though, he figured she might be right.

“Mom, Nicholas is shivering,” Emily said now. “He’s freezing.”

His mother adjusted his arms up and out to his sides and then stood back to look at him.

“Mom!” Emily shouted.

“Shhh,” she said. “Hold still, Nicky,” his mother told him. “I have to get this picture just right, otherwise we won’t win.” Then, she wiggled her hand toward, Emily. “Hand me some tablespoons,” she said.

Emily rolled her eyes and bent down to grab a handful from the silverware tray that sat on the ground. The wind kicked up. Nicholas’s teeth started to chatter.

“At least let me get him a coat, Mom.”

“No. If his skin is warm, the metal won’t stick. You know that. Now just be quiet and let me work.” His mother’s hands moved in swift diagonals across his chest. She shifted spoons around into various shapes. Her eyes flashed and she was breathing hard.

This wasn’t the first time he stood out in the cold while she lined him with kitchen utensils. Ever since they found out he was attracted to metal, or that metal was attracted to him, his mother had glued herself to the internet in search of contests on sites like Ripley’s Believe It or Not. She took picture after picture and drove to the post office every weekend. Nothing ever came of the pictures, so Nicholas started to wonder if it was really such a big deal that a set of keys sitting on a  table would jump into his palm if he held his hand over them.

“You’re like  Jedi Knight!” His mother had told him. “Like Luke Skywalker living in Cleveland, Ohio,” she’d grinned.

“Worth money,” he’d overheard her tell his Aunt Judy on the phone.

His stomach felt sick, and his head was frozen like a giant ice cube. He told his mother that his fingers were numb. She cupped each of his hands and blew on them, promising that in two more minutes she’d make him the biggest cup of hot chocolate he’d ever seen.

He didn’t like being a Jedi so much anymore, and he wondered if Luke Skywalker ever felt this bad. But, he did his best to smile for the camera, thinking maybe this would be the last time.