Pirates

As I continue with The Courage to Write and struggle with some writing group issues, and as I read Marianne's blog today, writing is very much on my mind.

Not my writing, per se, although thanks to some encouragement from my friend Charity, I'm finally finishing revisions on a long dormant YA.

However, I really am thinking more about the process of writing. What it means to write. To critique. To support others in their acts of writing.

What writing means. Why do we write?

Okay, so these are the same topics that most writers grapple with.

So, why, suddenly, did I want to really get back to writing? Why did my excuses run out?

And even without writing, I was having a perfectly lovely summer. I love to cook, and I was doing a lot of that. I love to teach, and I was doing a lot of preparation for the fall. I love my family, and I was doing a lot for them.

But you know, you cook a meal, you eat it. People might praise your cooking. You make people happy. That's good. But it's gone, over, finis. That's it. Reliving the meal isn't going to bring you (or anyone else) the remotest bit of pleasure. You can cook the same thing again. People will enjoy it. But they'll consume the calories, many or few, and then it's over.

You can, however, read beloved stories over and over. The revisiting can be lovely. You'll get new things each time. I could read Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice every year and see new points. And learn new things. And grow from entering these favorite worlds again.

And writing, we're all pirates. We're all searching for treasure which we'll find by trying different angles. And we can live in fantastical worlds and have the most fascinating people (or creatures) for company. And if we don't like where we are, we can change it with a tap on the keyboard. We can leave fat bodies and become acrobats; leave skinny bodies and grow voluptuous curves, leave troubles and become adventurers, leave safe lives and fall into unimaginable dangers.

We can get inside your head.

How much more pirate is that?

So I realized that I've blocked this wanting, this longing that I've had by burying myself in the mundane. And yes, Charity was sooooo right to nudge me towards The Courage to Write. Because it's so much easier to bake a quiche than to be a pirate.

But it's a lot less fun.

Summer Reading

Much to my amazement, I'm really enjoying The Scarlet Letter.

It was the bane of my high school and then college years, and I fell asleep reading it to my Armenian daughter during our first year hosting. She was required to read it for her American Lit. class, but didn't have the English skills to conquer the language, so we spent night after night reading through it. And I'd doze every time, until I felt her gentle nudge on my knee or arm, at which point I'd startle and try again.

Did I really have to be forty-eight to finally "get" this story?

This time around, it's little Pearl who's caught my attention. I don't think I allowed myself the pleasure of delving into her surprisingly modern portrayal, or Hawthorne's allowing a more natural take on children than Hester would have probably assumed in her day. Pearl is not seen, as children typically were in Puritan times, as a little adult, but rather she is left to be a child, and an ill-behaved one, at that. Which also pulls me in as a mother. I'm looking at Hester in a new light.

But where are the beach books?

Of my current list, the only beach book type is Bangkok Haunts, and yet that, too, is complicated and dense in its own way. Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the Bangkok detective who is at the heart of Burdett's Bangkok series, makes the series for me. The subject matter is often more raw than I would normally read or enjoy. Yet the themes of cross-cultural misunderstanding, and Sonchai's take on the West versus Thai Buddhist culture has me fascinated. Hence The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism...

But that's not particularly light reading, either. So, through Sonchai, I've become fascinated with learning more about Buddhism. But I'm also trying not to get sucked into too many directions so I can focus on The Courage to Write, recommended by my friend Charity.

And then there are The Nick Adams Stories, which I'm still sorting through for American Lit.

Where are the hours in the day?