Ninja Writing Practice

When I worked as a preschool teacher there were a couple of different ways you could approach making art with little kids. The first way--the only way for a very long time--was to have a project that focused on the end result. A teacher would spend hours cutting out hearts or pumpkins, or long, long ago Christmas tree shapes and making all these uniform pieces that could be easily assembled by a four-year old child with minimal mess and uniform results for all children. There weren't choices about color, shape or size. There was a wrong way and a right way to make the project and it was obvious to everyone. A child who ventured to make something different by choice or chance weren't called creative by lots of the teachers I worked with--they were just plain naughty and probably not allowed to have extra supplies.
The other way to do art with kids is all about enjoying the making and doing. It's much messier than the other way. Paint will be spilled, glue, too. Supplies will be decimated. Pumpkins may end up triangular and not the standard orange circle. Odd (to the adult eye, anyway) color combinations will probably arise. Children encouraged to experiment and take risks regardless of the mess involved will discover things about the materials and themselves that are more important than the product at the end of the line. I'd like to suggest that not much changes as we get older.
Writing is kind of like a messy art project for me. I don't know where I'm going when I start. Something shiny grabs me and won't leave me alone. An image, a sentence fragment I overhear at a coffee shop, some little piece of conversation I can't quit thinking about. I start wondering why a sad brown-eyed woman is moving her family in the rain on the bus and what her oldest kid is thinking about during the long ride across town, each kid carrying a box or garbage bag stuffed with clothes. I don't have an outline for the story because I'm writing to find out what happens next and it will take some time to figure it out. Of course, I can't really know what anyone else experiences except in my imagination. That's the beauty in this whole "process" approach to writing, and to life. Writing a story is like playing make believe when you're about seven-years old. You can lose yourself in time and space. It's magic when you're doing it and thankfully it doesn't require any special skill set to do it.
Writing is just writing--a practice, if you like, or a discipline, an art, a craft. We sit down with our tools and quiet up. We pay attention and soon enough we're writing and the time melts away. Later there will be revision and maybe soup if I get off my ass and make it but not until later.

Read You A Novel

On Sunday, in the New York Times Book Review, I was delighted to find a full page review of Gina Ochsner's latest book, The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight. It's a book I'm recommending to everyone I know and not just because the woman wrote a lovely blurb for my own little book. I'm telling people to read it because I haven't had such great luck with my adventures in reading lately.

I use the Sunday Times to give me guidance about books. I make a list in the back of my journal titled "Books To Read", but so many of those books fail to keep me in their stories and that, my friends, is what I want--to be kept like a mistress in the tight box of a good story. I've given up on famous books by famous writers who need better editing. I'm not naming names here. Suffice to say of the NY Times book list, I've started many and finished few. I've been aching for a story--a good, well-told story about characters I wanted to live with and cozy up tight with while my spring allergies rage. I wanted a book that could withstand a heavy dose of Benadryl and weepy red-rimmed eyes. A book that could keep me awake in bed and make me want to return to its unturned pages first thing in the morning.
When I saw that Gina Ochsner was about to publish her first novel, I was excited. I like her short stories a lot. She's won just about every literary award and grant for the quality of her amazing little stories, and she lives in Salem, Oregon, for chrissakes, so of course I've got to love her work, but novels are what I love best. And finally she has one!
I won't say too much about plot. I won't use words like magic realism or post modernity. I will say there's a place you've never been "The All-Russian All-Cosmopolitan Museum". There is grinding, horrific poverty.There are latrines and street kids and much to do about toaster ovens and icons. There is a character who dreams of being a fish and a dead man who refuses to be buried. And there is a woman who should be hopeless but isn't. Read this book. Read it now.