Stranger than Fiction

Engraving of James Smithson as an adult, Smithsonian collection 

Stranger than fiction–it's a cliche for a reason. Tonight I take a break from fiction to share a bit of truth that came together like magic and has me geeking out. I set out to research a 16th-century earl with an intriguing moniker for my WIP. Not a fan of 'write what you know,' I'm telling a story far from my ol' Virginia home, or so I thought.


The more I researched, the more details pointed to a British colony with a queen's nickname. Along the way, I found the website for the earl's family home in England. Yes, the same family lives there over 400 years later, but that isn't the strange part. The strange part is the latest arrow pointing its way back to VA. A man who married into the family had an illegitimate son, a son named Smithson who made a strange bequest. Though he'd never been to the United States, his estate was “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” 

The bequest and a few tidbits from Smithson's bio made elements of the WIP snap into place and added possibilities better than fiction I could dream on my own. It's like the time I randomly picked a college for a character's mom to attend and said the mom assisted with an exhibition of Georgia O'Keefe's works while there. After the rough draft was done, I figured the years the mom would have been in college based on her age in the story and started to research. Yep, the randomly picked college has an art museum. And then, much to my disbelief, in the year my subconscious said, there was an exhibition of Georgia O'Keefe's works. I knew almost nothing about the school, let alone enough to make such a leap. It passed from nifty coincidence to magic. 


What magic have you experienced in your art? To paraphrase Madeleine L'Engle, when has the work known more than you? 

The Struggle

Jacques Lipchitz, Jacob and the Angel, 1939
Red, white, and black crayon on green paper

Manierre Dawson, The Struggle, 1912
Oil on canvas

Adam and I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts last week.  These pieces demanded our attention.  I am interested in depictions of biblical stories, but that's not the only reason Lipchitz's work spoke to me.  Even though we can't articulate what attracts us to these works, we're mesmerized by the struggle.  Maybe we can see ourselves in the depiction.  Who among us hasn't wrestled with beloved people, enemies, God, work, calling, and ourselves?  Some of us struggle with art and the artist's temperament.  Madeleine L'Engle said, "Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling."  (Thanks to LÉNA for reminding me of this quote.) 

Angel in the Stone

Michelangelo's Pietà. Photograph taken by Aurelio Amendola and featured in Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano.

Yesterday, my parents’ minister told a story: the great sculptor Michelangelo stood in front of a slab of marble, considering his work; when someone asked about his art, he replied, I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Often I look at my own half-formed attempts and see a rough, uncut mass but have no hope of finding the angel within.  I see the formlessness and emptiness present before creation, but do not feel the presence of the Spirit hovering at my side. 

But the Spirit is there.  For the Christian artist, it can be the Spirit of God, with whom we partner in the act of ordering and naming*.  The Spirit can be of art itself as Robert Henri explained:

  Art when really understood is the province of every human being.

  It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing. 

  When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better understanding….

 He does not have to be a painter or sculptor to be an artist. He can work in any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work itself, not outside it.

  Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is the art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums. Better still, there will be the happiness that is in the making. Art tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.

I’m struggling through rewrites now, trying to order the chaos on the page, and feeling as though I have to go it alone.  I don’t.  None of us do.  We all have the Spirit of art with us, however you interpret it.  As Henri says, it is alive in us.  We can see through our protective stone exterior and see the angel within.  We can carve into ourselves until we set it free, give it space to grow and silence where we can hear it speak.  

Michelangelo's Pietà

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* This sentiment is shared by many artists and elaborated on in far more eloquence than I can achieve by Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water.  

Quote: Madeleine L'engle

Books for Mom's Day

In honor of the great women in my life, I present a list of recent reads and long-time favorite books that feature moms or mother figures I love.  Some of these might make good gifts, while others are books I read to appreciate the sufferings and joys of motherhood.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak  

Long-time Favorite 

A classic kids' book, this story makes me thankful Mom loves me even when I'm a Wild Thing and shows her love with hot dinners. 

Stuart Little by E. B. White 

Long-time Favorite

True motherly affection is loving a child even when he's another species. 

Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman

Long-time Favorite

I remember Momma reading this story to me at bedtime.  No one fits and makes it all better like Momma. 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare 

Long-time Favorite

Aunt Rachel takes in main character Kit when she has nowhere to go.  Hannah, the solitary old woman beside the pond, gives me the feeling of soft protection, enveloping warmth, and supporting grace that comes from Mom.  

Milagros: Girl from Away by Meg Medina 

Recent Read 

Milagros learns to treasure her mother despite Rosa's odd ways, and Rosa goes to extraordinary and magical lengths to find and rescue her daughter. 

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Long-time Favorite

Mrs. Murry is a single mother of four when the story opens.  She is a scientist who still finds time for hot chocolate with her wayward teen.  You can see why Meg later becomes a great mother. 

My Name is Asher Lev and The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok 

Long-time Favorite and Recent Read 

Maybe you shouldn't give these to mom until after you've read them.  These books capture the sufferings and sacrifices of motherhood as Mrs. Lev loves and supports her son and husband who are often at odds. 

Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou

Recent Read

Maya Angelou's letters to the daughter she never had illuminate a sliver of what we can learn from all women, not just those who raise us or have children. 

Changes by Jim Butcher

Recent Read

I'm waiting for "one of these things isn't like the others" to start playing, but this book shows how a mother's selfless fight for her child can transform her from a character I loathed since page fifty, book one to a sympathetic character whose actions moved me to tears. 

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 

Long-time Favorite

Mrs. Bennet is the picture of batty devotion and I-know-what's-best, which is why she's endured as one of literature's most lovable moms. 

And in a tie for my favorite mom book....

The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother  by James McBride 

Long-time Favorite

This book changed me.  It helped shape me into who I am.  I think that is mom-worthy. 

A Live Coal in the Sea by Madeleine L’Engle 

Long-time Favorite 

Three contrasting mothers and embodiments of motherhood form the heart of the novel.  It starts off with the question, "Are you my grandmother," and becomes an emotional, paradigm-changing search for how to define a mother. 

What about you?  Who are your favorite literary moms? What books changed, expanded, or shaped your thoughts on motherhood?

 

 

Impediments, Part V: Fear and Self-Doubt

I put off writing this post. Fear and self-doubt are at the heart of the funks, the distractions, the comparisons, and the deflated egos we talked about this month. I hoped to cure my rampant insecurity so I could share the process with you (not that you need it), and we’d never again have impediments to our magic. I’m nervous writing this paragraph, which I’m taking as a sign I’m not cured.

Fear and self-doubt keep me from socializing with people of creativity and accepting the help they provide. Fear and self-doubt gum up the writing. I stare at the page, delete the work, decide my creativity flatlined during second grade, and google the Hemlock Society.

There are times (read: every stinking day) when I think my pages of writing will be useful for nothing but wiping dog poop from my shoe treads. I’m so afraid of failure that I don’t want to start. Remember I told you the husband called me out on this self-sabotage?

There’s also fear of success. Fear of losing relationships because of all the time devoted to magic. Fear of “making it” by other people’s standards but not my own or at the expense of my standards. Fear of losing the passion. Fear of others’ judgments. Fear of achieving my dreams only to realize they aren’t what I imagined….

I could go on all day, which would be easier than writing the meat of the post since I have no advice I can verify from experience.

Except one thing. Everyone needs a support system. My husband invented something he calls Exorcising the Inner-Editor. He does a laying on of hands Baptist-style and pantomimes removing the editor, beating it, stomping it, and throwing it out. His antics break the morose shell and I move on. You might consider recruiting a few lovable lunatics to break the enticing spell of self pity.

Lucy loaned me a copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and I’m forever grateful. Anne’s humor, honesty, and suggestions saved the tattered shreds of my sanity on numerous occasions. She outlines how she overcomes the doubt that greets her at the computer every day:

• Close your eyes.
• Breathe.
• Call a friend.
• Use that fear, paranoia, and doubt in your creativity; express it.
• Kill perfectionism. She writes, “I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
• Write a letter to yourself, a loved one, anyone at all.
• Fill yourself back up with the memories, flavors, ideas, visions, and observations that give life its zest.
• Find those filling things by asking what you’d do if you knew you’d die tomorrow.
• Realize that all of life is recycling the ideas that came before, but you have your own sensibility, pathos, and meaning to add.
• Make a present for someone else.

Elizabeth George exercises.

Madeleine L’Engle said we have to find satisfaction in who we are, the work we produce: “We are never satisfied with what we have done. We know that our best is never adequate. If I had to be satisfied with what I have written I’d still be on my first novel. But I wrote what was for me the best book I could write at that moment in time.”

Make magic the best you can. That is enough.

What do you do to overcome fear and self-doubt?

Impediments, Part IV: Canoodle Your Ego

Who hasn’t been deflated by a harsh word or review? If you know someone who hasn’t, let me know, because I want to start taking classes from her. Everyone I know has, at some point, heard the pointed statement that eviscerates without breaking the skin. Then we pick up our stomachs, our hearts, our livers, and our gallbladders and limp away to catalog the injuries.

Instead of letting those statements dominate our self-perception and taint our magic, we need to canoodle our self-esteem. We need to take a break from the negativity marching band in our head and listen to the single woodwind of self confidence playing away behind the bleachers.

(Think I use enough metaphors today?)So how do I canoodle my self-esteem when I’m down?

• I give myself permission to grieve.
• I remind myself that while my emotions are valid, I still choose what I say and how I react outwardly.
• I work on another project or trait. The hiatus gives me time to be more objective.
• When something I feel is crucial to my identity is criticized, it is easy to believe I’m a rotten person all around. I tell myself that I’m more than one thing.
• I remember the offending criticizer had something worthwhile to say, but his rhetoric hindered the reception. Miscommunications remind me that we all have our flaws. I try to forgive him for his.
• Then I try to forgive myself. I try to forgive myself for the nasty things I mutter under my breath, the I’ll-show-yous, the two hours I spend curled up on the couch staring into space, the hiatus, and the way I weep to my husband.
• I express gratitude to the people who are there for me, especially my husband.
• I let people know the positive I see in them and their work.

Getting a critique can be a productive and empowering experience. Check out how Slushbusters build up contributors.

Remember, even the great magic-makers have bad days. Madeleine L’Engle even had rough times: “If you’re going to write and be published, you’ve got to expect to have a few arrows thrown at you. They’re going to hurt, and you’re going to bleed. You’re probably going to cry if you’re like me. But that’s just part of it and you have to learn.”

We learn who we are and how to canoodle our fragile egos.