Zebra Sounds

If I Were Neo

November 10, 2009 · 15 Comments

I read this yesterday in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

We deny that in order to do something well we must first be willing to do it badly. Instead we opt for setting our limits at the point where we feel assured of success. Living within these bounds, we may feel stifled, smothered, despairing, bored. But, yes, we do feel safe. And safety is a very expensive illusion.

Yep.

Not too long ago, I suddenly got tired of being safe and decided I’d rather be scared. It’s been a bit of a ride for me ever since, and I think it’s only going to get crazier (and more fun, and more fulfilling) in the future. But the one thing I’m having to learn is that it’s okay to suck at first. That’s hard. I want that crazy “hat” that Neo wore in the Matrix so I can just download what I need to know and kick ass at whatever I decide to do.

In the absence of the hat, I’m adopting an attitude. Or, for me, it’s less attitude and more sequencing. It goes like this: Say yes first, and then figure out the how part later. It means I’m stumbling more often, making mistakes, looking more dorky than usual (and trust me, that’s not easy to do). But I am also broadening the definition of me. The more I do, the more I want to do. The opportunities seem endless, as long as I’m willing to be (decidedly) less than perfect at the things I try.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron asks you to complete this sentence. “If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would try… ” So, of course, I made a list! Here it is.

Ten Things I Should Just Go Ahead And Try Already

  1. Salsa dancing
  2. Acting
  3. Writing a mystery
  4. Belly dancing
  5. Swimming (for reals, not the thing I do)
  6. Driving a motorcycle
  7. Hiking the Grand Canyon
  8. Going on safari
  9. Writing a play
  10. Learning to play the piano

It’s a pretty good list. Just writing them down makes me want to take some action. (After NaNoWriMo.)

So, what’s on your list?

→ 15 CommentsCategories: j's lists
Tagged: , , , ,

5 Things I’ve Learned From NaNoWriMo

November 9, 2009 · 10 Comments

All right, so it’s Monday; time for a NaNoWriMo update. But don’t stop reading if you’re not a writer, because I’m going to use my super blogging powers to make my NaNoWriMo experience universally applicable. Ready? Okay, let’s go.

Five Things I’ve learned from NaNoWriMo so far…

  1. It is really, really hard to pump out 1,667 words a day, every day, for 30 days. (For non-writers, imagine yourself trying to pump out 1,667 words a day, every day, for 30 days.)  What? It’s hard. No matter who you are.
  2. It is exhilarating to attempt the ludicrous. Writing a novel in 30 days is nuts. It just is. No right-minded author would attempt such a thing. Yet thousands of authors around the world are attempting it right now with me. We are ranting, raging, celebrating, exaggerating, encouraging… we are writing, right now, this month, all of us, together. That’s amazing. (Non-writers… become writers. Do NaNoWriMo next year. Become a novelist. It is cool to say at parties – “Yes, I am a novelist” – and it only takes a month! No messy degree required.)
  3. Leap and the net will appear. I signed up for NaNoWriMo on a whim, or, more accurately, on a hope that it might shake loose my creative impulse which had become hesitant and kind of frozen inside me. Based on past experience, I did not think for a minute that I could write a novel (even just the first draft) in 30 days. But in the act of doing it (or at least attempting it), something a bit magical is happening. Words are getting onto the page – a lot of words, in fact, 13,356! – a story is taking shape, and I’m getting excited about being the one who gets to tell it. I’m remembering why I fell in love with writing in the first place. (For non-writers… it works the same. Just leap.)
  4. No matter how I try, I can not play music with lyrics while I write. Unless they aren’t in English, or are utterly unintelligible. Enya works, for example, because I can’t understand anything they say. (This is just a j-thing. Plenty of writers can write while listening to lyrics. My limitations are probably not worth mentioning. You know what? Let’s just move on…)
  5. Friends are good. I’ve had some rough nano days this week. I post my frustrations on Facebook. I tweet them. I talk about them here on Zebra Sounds. I can’t count how many times my friends’ reminders (and admonitions) have kept me in the game. Thank you! You know who you are!

Okay, so the first week is done, and according to Chris Baty, it’s the second week that’s going to be hard. (I’m trying not to let that intimidate me considering I wanted to quit 117 times during this first week.) Keep your poms-poms out. I’ll need you now more than ever!

→ 10 CommentsCategories: j's lists · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: , , ,

Caption This!

November 6, 2009 · 15 Comments

A friend sent me this one… how could I not love it?

It’s Friday, and j is posting zebras. Does it get any better than this? (Okay, it does, but my almost all-powerful blog cannot – yet! – serve you pizza and wine while you ponder the endless caption possibilities. Oh, but it’s coming. Mark my words… Zebras Sounds 2.0. Resistance is futile.)

In the meantime, have fun y’all, and caption this!

zebras!

———————————————————————————————

And now for something completely different… Guess who’s coming to an indie bookstore near me tonight? Yes! Michael Chabon. I’m all a quiver! Last time I saw him, he signed my copy of Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I have a picture of us together. He is beautiful; I’m ridiculous and star-struck, as anyone who reads this blog would expect. THIS time, I’m so going to say… well, something when he says hello. Hi, for instance. That would be good. (Continuous improvement is all I can really hope for.) Wish me luck!

→ 15 CommentsCategories: caption this
Tagged: , , ,

I’ve got good news and bad news…

November 5, 2009 · 17 Comments

First, the good news…

I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be a regular contributing super guest blogger to isca media, a UK-based publishing collective of independent, freelance journalists, writers, photographers and filmmakers. (I made up my title. I haven’t run it by them yet. In my shitty first draft of the title I included the words “amazing,” “guru” and “erudite” but thought better of those upon revision.)

This week, I wrote my first post for them, The What Monologues? I hope you’ll go check it out. I think working with isca media is going to be great fun and will result, hopefully, in outlandish and wonderful stuff. Stay tuned…

In the meantime, an update in j-world. My son who is not The Boy (we’ll call him D, because, in fact, we do call him D) may have swine flu. I have no reason to believe the illness which came upon him suddenly this morning is swine flu other than the fact that it (swine flu) is going around, and according to my favorite Knower Of All Things, Craig Wieczorkiewicz, “more than 99 percent of circulating influenza viruses in the United States right now likely are 2009 H1N1.” So if it’s the flu he’s got, there is a less-than-1 percent chance it isn’t swine flu.

I am, of course, watching D like a (motherly) hawk, checking his temperature every few minutes, feeding him homemade chicken soup, wiping his clammy brow, fluffing his pillow. (Too much, right? I sensed I was going overboard. Was it the homemade chicken soup that strained my credibility? The part about being motherly?) In any case, I’m keeping a watchful eye on the situation and I will be right here complaining bitterly (but quite possibly in a metered and rhyming sort of way) if I catch the flu.

And also, totally using swine flu as my NaNoWriMo word count excuse. Think good, healing thoughts, people!

→ 17 CommentsCategories: on my mind - NOW · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: , , , , , ,

Exuberant Imperfection

November 4, 2009 · 12 Comments

Here is what Chris Baty (original National Novel Writing Month instigator) has to say about it.

The first law of exuberant imperfection is essentially this: The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy.

I love that, and not just as a reminder to let my imagination fly during NaNoWriMo. I like it because it gets at the reason we are often afraid to try new things (or push ourselves to new heights on the things we already do): We don’t want to suck. Especially publicly.

Little kids don’t worry about that. They just do. I wonder sometimes when it was that I became aware of (and unduly concerned about) what people would think of me. Second grade, probably… when I found out I had cooties.

So, I like the idea of exuberant imperfection, and I LOVE the notion that beauty may very well come from the messes we create when we are awkward and learning, or playing, or stretching ourselves beyond boundaries we’ve too readily imposed. It reminds me of the famous quote from French novelist, Colette: “You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”

That sounds right to me. I’m going for it. Feel free to provide positive reinforcement in the form of irrational compliments. Like this: “J, you look stunning in your exuberant imperfection. Have you been working out?”

→ 12 CommentsCategories: j'epiphanies · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: , , , , , ,

Recapping the Lovely

November 3, 2009 · 9 Comments

Way back on August 1st, I posted a movie by Amy Krouse Rosenthal that I’d stumbled upon on YouTube. It was called The Beckoning of Lovely, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. The next day, August 2nd, I posted My Amazing, Wonderful, Big, Fat Fun Idea. I had decided to tackle Amy’s list of wonderful things by myself, in this blog. I had no idea how I was going to do it,  but for the next twelve Mondays, I fearlessly beckoned the lovely like an intrepid blogging explorer. (And by “fearlessly,” I mean “nervously and with a vague sense of dread.”)

There were some things I expected to happen. For instance, I knew I’d have to step away from my keyboard. From colorful Sharpie artwork, to musical wine glasses and artfully arranged cherry tomatoes, the lovely took on many forms. Getting away from my preferred medium was good for me – like suddenly getting an office with a view. It reminds you there’s a whole big world out there.

Another great thing to come out of this? I rediscovered a more playful j. For a lot of reasons, things had become very serious for me over the last couple of years. I had lost touch with my playful side. But, more than any writing project ever had, Beckoning the Lovely taught me the value of letting go. My self-imposed, publicly declared Monday deadlines made it necessary for me to simply leap, often without a plan or any clear destination. I never knew exactly what I’d have when I was through “beckoning,” and there is something wonderfully liberating in that.

Those are the things I expected. Here’s what I didn’t expect:

  1. Unwavering, unquestioning support. Not one of my lovely things was created by me alone. I needed help every single time, and when I asked for it, no matter how silly, or time consuming, or messy, people said yes. The sense of community I felt throughout the 12 weeks was amazing. My “Lovely” posts are among my most commented on.
  2. My own sense of daring. There were times when the items on the Lovely list would freeze me in my tracks. Make music? Make out? Make up? Make a movie? Just the thought of bringing those ideas to fruition on my blog made me panicky. How goofy was I willing to be? How blatantly imperfect? As it turned out, pretty damn goofy. In the end, it felt amazing to let go of the idea that I had to be good at everything I tried. I didn’t. The important part – the most exciting and rewarding part – was the trying. I became good at that.
  3. Fun. I had no idea how much fun this project would be. I mean, I wore face paint, hiked the SF shore, made a collage, drank a cucumber martinni (or two)!

And maybe the coolest thing of all is that Beckoning the Lovely made me want more – more creative silliness, more out-of-my-element adventures, more collaboration, more exploration, more daring… more fun.

I think you should try it: make something unexpected, do something out of character, try something that scares you. What can you beckon this week?

Oh, and starting in December, we need something new and fun for Mondays. Suggestions are welcome. I am on the look out for my “next big thing.”

→ 9 CommentsCategories: j's lovely things · writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: , , ,

It wasn’t pretty, but I launched.

November 2, 2009 · 18 Comments

For the last 13 weeks, we’ve been beckoning the lovely every Monday, and it’s been kind of wonderful for me in ways I hadn’t foreseen. I will write more about that tomorrow, because it’s cool. In the meantime, for the month of November, I’ll use Mondays to report on my crazy, ill-timed, poorly planned, probably ill-advised decision to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I (along with tens of thousands of others around the world) have now officially begun quests to complete our 50,000-word novels in 30 days.

Sunday, November 1st, was day 1, and it was, for me, absolutely horrible!

I decided to use an idea I already had for a novel. It’s a love story that isn’t a love story, a fragile, magical union that is doomed from the start. It’s a book about love, in all of its messy, wonderful, inconvenient, imperfect, brutal, breathtaking glory. (Makes you want to read it, right?) I even wrote a bit of it months ago, but I don’t have anything that even remotely resembles a plot. What I have is roughly the first four chapters and a premise.

Seemed perfect for NaNoWriMo.

But for all the reasons that Chris Baty (brainchild of NaNoWriMo) said it would be, coming into this quest with a partially completed novel is hard. Harder than starting fresh. My first day was spent trying to remember what the hell I thought this story was about, who, besides my two protagonists, were in it, what parts of what I’d already written I actually still liked. I started writing, then stopped, backed up, started over. I included old notes, then dumped them, then retrieved them again. At the end of nearly three hours, I had almost no new words to show for my effort.

There are few things less attractive than writerly angst. I raged. I scared the dog. I cursed the heavens and Chris Baty. (Sorry Chris!) I paced and stomped and mowed both lawns. (I do that. I am inexplicably energetic in the face of failure.) I cried. I paced some more. Eventually I apologized to Lexi, found my way back to the laptop, where I forced myself to sit down, take a deep breath, and simply start typing. I clung to these words (about first drafts) from Baty:

It’s not just shit. It’s wonderful shit. A first draft is an anything-goes space for you to roll up your sleeves and make a terrific mess. It is a place where the writer’s battle plan is redrawn daily; a place where recklessness and risk-taking is rewarded, where half-assed planning and tangential writing can yield unexpectedly amazing results.

I wrote 1383 words. It was less than the goal of 1667 for Day 1, but given all the angst and writerly melodrama, I’m okay with that. In fact, my accomplishment for Day 1 lies not in the number of words I produced, but in the fact that I did, ultimately, produce words, however hackneyed they may be.

I love this tweet from one of my fellow NaNoWriMo participants (@chizeck): “You can make it good in December with a rewrite. My book is complete nonsense so far.”

Right.

Okay, j. You can do this. One day down, 29 more to go.

——————————————————————————

And now for something completely different… I had so much fun on the “Let them sing it for you” website, where you can type in lyrics and have your computer sing them back to you. I think you should stop everything, write me a quick song and send it to zebrasoundsj <at> gmail <dot> com. I will love you forever.

→ 18 CommentsCategories: writing, writers, and stuff we like
Tagged: , , , , , ,

Five Things That Trip Me Up

October 31, 2009 · 18 Comments

  1. Nonplussed. What is it with this word? I know the word means utterly perplexed, but that’s not what it sounds like it should mean and it’s not how people use it. Twice in the last week, I’ve heard people use the word “nonplussed” to mean “unconcerned” or “unaffected.” I didn’t correct them. I think that’s what it should mean, dammit. Who defined this one? (Bonus: While painstakingly researching this post in the same meticulous and methodical way I fact-check every single thing I ever write in Zebra Sounds, I stumbled upon this  article, 9 Words That Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean. It has vocabulary. It’s funny. It includes pictures of women in bathing suits. Something for everyone.)
  2. The spelling of “poignant.” (And in the interest of full disclosure, I misspelled it here, and just let spell check correct me. Which is what I do every time. You would think that eventually I would learn to spell the word, but I believe I’ve developed a sort of mental block.) Oh, and I consistently have trouble with “buoyed.” I  have so much trouble with “buoyed” that the previous sentence took me around five minutes to write. I could not even get close enough for spell check to hazard a guess. I had to go find an essay in which I knew I’d used the word, and then come back here and type it in. From now on, I’m using “heartened.” When you see the word “heartened” you’ll know I mean “buoyed.”
  3. Unanimous. I can write it, but I have trouble saying. Same with anemone and anonymous. I really don’t like my N’s and M’s too close together. Makes me sound like I’m four years old. I can only  hope people find it adorkable.
  4. Chartreuse. According to Wikipedia, it’s a color “precisely halfway between green and yellow,” but I always think of bright pink, a sort of vibrant magenta. It’s not a big deal. Chartreuse doesn’t come up a lot for me. I run with a crowd for whom the word chartreuse would seem pretentious and unnecessary. “Look at that chartreuse purse,” I might say, and they’d say, “Ooo, chartreuse aren’t you the little miss arty-high-fashion-highfalutin-vocabulary princess?” Or they’d probably say, “That would be very impressive, j, if only the purse weren’t pink.”
  5. “Turn left” (or “right”) as a command issued from the passenger seat of my car. I don’t know why it is that when I’m driving the words “left” and “right” become completely interchangeable and seem to have no bearing whatsoever on what I do at the moment of truth.

Okay, so… what trips you up?

→ 18 CommentsCategories: j's lists
Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Caption This (Halloween Style)

October 30, 2009 · 12 Comments

It’s not only Friday but Halloween Eve (insert ghost sounds and spooky music here). So, in honor of the occasion… caption this!

ScubaDog

For more pet costumes, check out Huffington Post’s “Funniest Pet Get-Ups Ever,” which is where I found this little guy.

→ 12 CommentsCategories: caption this
Tagged: , , , , ,