My Inner Critic

“When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.” ~Isak Dinesen

Inertia: the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. Oh how my inner critic works to keep me in a state of inertia when it comes to writing. I'll work on that book/novella, a blog entry even, and my inner critic starts working it over in my mind, saying, "Crap! This is just crap!" 

Someone said writers like to have written; they don't like to write. They'll find any excuse not to face the awful white page that is waiting to be filled. Excuses abound. Having spent the better part of my undergrad and grad school years lamenting the writing process, even though I can't NOT write, I find myself at the other end of both, still lamenting my habit to rewrite as I write and to be over-critical in the process. I write a little. Then I read, re-read, then edit, edit, edit, then write some more, re-read, edit, write....ad nauseam, until I can't stand to read it again. Then I'll send it off to the universe of unknown readers, just so that I can quit rewriting and editing and critiquing. 


My habit worked fairly well in school, working on those papers. At least, I managed to get good grades on any paper I wrote, but my habitual critiquing interrupts the creative process when telling a STORY. Rewriting in the process can be death to creative writing.
Get it written first, then go back and fine tune. Look for those grammar and spelling mistakes AFTER it is written. Find those places that don't work, have holes, need data, and flesh it out after, not during. I have read this repeatedly when reading about creative writing, BUT, how do I turn off the inner critic to get it written first? 

Apparently, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck all used alcohol excessively when writing. Did alcohol somehow get their creative juices flowing? A perusal of the top ten drunk American writers (see link below) listed only males. What does that say? Anything? It may just be the bias of the writer, but what about Gertrude Stein, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joyce Carol Oats? I have no idea if they used alcohol excessively, let alone when writing. Is the writer saying women don't drink excessively when writing? True or not, it's beside the point. I'm not sure I want to use it as a means to an end, to overcome my inner critic. Curiously, a professor once did recommend it. Nevertheless, the thought of becoming a raging alcoholic just to be a better writer does not appeal. Oh, my mind leans toward exaggeration doesn't it. 


Other writers have mentioned free-writing as a means to get the creative juices flowing. Just write something. Write whatever comes to mind. Doesn't matter what it is. Don't stop to try to create, just write. Someone, can't remember who, said they would free-write for 10-30 minutes before getting started on whatever current project occupied their thoughts. That sounds like sounder advice then getting drunk, although, a little wine wouldn't hurt...still trying to justify a little wine to get the juices flowing. 


Truthfully, this blog serves a purpose along these lines. It's a place I can come and babble, give myself permission to use sentence fragments, not worry too much about the use of contractions, and if I mess up a little grammar now and then, so be it. I do come back and revisit, find mistakes, or add thoughts, but as I say in the heading, it's a work in progress. 

To be sure, my inner voice keeps shouting resist, resist, resist, the temptation to be critical IN THE PROCESS. Let the process flow. Once  I overcome inertia, momentum will carry me. Then I can let the critic in me mercilessly do her work. Writing down the story as it comes to mind, as Denison remarks in the quote above, a little at a time, everyday a little, before I know it, the story will be written. Here's to writing it down...
What about you? Any writers out there? How do YOU overcome your inner critic? 

http://www.alternativereel.com/includes/top-ten/display_review.php?id=00075

The Choices We Make As Women

The women of my life occupy my thoughts these days, for obvious reasons. Mom lives with me because of memory issues (Vascular dementia and Alzheimer's) and my days are filled with laughter, sadness, aggravation, but also observation and reflection. She fills my life now and I'm recognizing among many things, how her prejudices about "women" in general have filtered into and shaped my life. 

Mom believes women should stay home, take care of their families and that men should be the breadwinners. She laments whenever the subject of women and work comes up, "This country started to deteriorate when women left their duties and went out into the work force." Unfortunately, inwardly, for years, I harbored a similar prejudice toward women with children who worked outside the home. It wasn't overt, or in your face, just a slight superiority, actually born of my own insecurities. 


Now, mind you, Mom started to work outside the home when I was about 12-years-old. It was not a career choice, but rather a reluctant choice based on perceived economic necessity. My parents divorced when I was 21. I know she partially blames herself that working outside the home somehow ruined her marriage, and negatively affected her children's lives. I saw my Mom work hard to provide a roof over our heads and put food on the table after the divorce. Coupled with the choices her children were making, life was not easy for her. I didn't blame her for the divorce, but I secretly felt life would had been better had she been home.


Once I had my own child, I wanted to stay home, even though I was single. In my twenties, in Omaha, Nebraska, I worked part-time at a doctor's office. My sister took good care of Charlie, but I missed him. I wanted to be the Mama. Of course, women who work outside the home are still the mama to their children, but it was my own emotional need to be "with" my child that was the bottom line that kept influencing the choices I made, along with, at the time, that unrecognized general prejudice about women and work. 


Having had enough of Omaha, and seeking a new and possibly better life for her children, my Mom decided to move to California to be near her sister and family. Despite my fears, California, after all was a dark, heathen place, and after struggling with my desire to be more independent (I was still living with Mom), we moved along with four of my siblings in 1973. 


There, I cleaned houses and a doctor's office; I also lived on welfare. I told people I cleaned toilets for a living. The money I earned had to be reported to the state, and was deducted from my next month's subsistence check. I didn't live high-on-the-hog as some people think about welfare recipients. I had to save money from my checks for the next month, and usually carried only a dime in my pocket after rent, utilities and food. I couldn't get ahead to get off the dole. I wanted desperately to get off of welfare, and desperately to be at home. I remember a friend told me, "Well, that's why God gives us husbands." Her implication being, husbands are there to take care of us so we don't have to work outside the home, or be on welfare. I didn't have one, husband that is. 


Nevertheless, those odd cleaning jobs allowed me to take my son with me to work. It was honest work. I rode a bike with Charlie on the back to each job; picture Rerun, of the Charlie Brown cartoon features on the back of his mom's bike. I'd sing to try to keep him awake (Sing, Charlie, Sing), because if he fell asleep, it would jerk my bike. In traffic, not a good idea. http://youtu.be/AlWI2JJ8l4Y


I hated standing in line to receive a welfare check and getting off the public dole was a major reason I moved to Tennessee in the mid 1970s.


An opportunity presented itself for me to live in a house in Farmer's Exchange and possibly care for an elderly couple for room and board, plus a small salary. If they liked me, if they decided to come home from the nursing home, and the family agreed, I would be their live-in caregiver. I could be a "work from home" mom. It felt like an answer to prayer. What would I have done if they decided not to come home or if they didn't like me? I had no clue and no back-up plan. After three years in Sunnyvale, on the San Francisco Peninsula, with $200 in my pocket and a 5-year-old in tow, I left California for the hills of Middle Tennessee. The average age of the residents in Farmer's Exchange was 80 years old. I imagined raising my child alone among them hills. 


Miss Annie and Mr. Lloyd did come home; I did take care of them. After two years I met Joe, their grandson and we were married. That's the short version. Our marriage was blessed with two children, Jennifer and David, and I spent the next twenty-four years being an at-home mom, as we lived in rural Tennessee, with a few breaks living in Kuwait and Cyprus. That "at-home" job description included teaching them at home. Joe worked overseas in the oil-field and was gone at least six months out of the year. We both felt my being at home was beneficial as I provided stability and continuity to our family life. Of course, he is very, ah, hum, how should I say it, traditional? He believes the man should bring home the bacon and the women should fry it. We clicked along those lines when the children were growing up.


That's another story for another day, but as you see, I kept making decisions, and was able to make choices that allowed me to be in the home. Even though it was hard living in Tennessee those first few years and then when I married (I don't know what made me think getting married to an oil-field worker would ease my loneliness as I often lamented Joe's absences), it all allowed me to follow my own inclinations. I had the opportunity to make the choices I made because of family and then friends. I wouldn't trade those years for anything in the world. Other mothers don't have the opportunity and/or the inclination.


My Mom's negative attitude about women and work, I now recognize, did filter into my decisions on some subconscious level to please. Distance helped me over the years, to recognize how much I wanted to please my Mom, and certainly, now that the tables are turned and she lives with me, I deal with that every day. To please her is just not possible any more, if it ever was.


Looking back, and considering my prejudices, I know that for most of my life, I'd rather listen to a male preacher then a female one. Until recently, I'd rather go to a male doctor then a female one, but I'm changing. I guess you'd call me a late feminist bloomer, or possibly a convert. Oh, how parents' attitudes can trickle down to their children. I listen to Mom now, carry on about women and work, and I argue with her on behalf of women having the right to decide whether or not to work away from home without being made to feel like they are somehow shirking their duties. 

I remind her others don't have the luxury of staying home, either because they are raising a family on their own, or because economic times are tough. There just isn't any other way. We have gone around and around talking about shared duties, not based on gender, and the fact that men can be nurturing as well as women. If Mr. Mom chooses to stay home, while his partner works, that's their choice. Nurturing is not gender specific. 


It's pointless to argue, I know, I keep saying that to myself. But I find myself reacting, seething, and arguing just the same, which is strange, since my lifestyle agrees with her. I'm still making the choice to work from home as a caregiver and writer even though over the past eight years I've acquired those missing marketable skills. If there was ever any doubt in my mind, that the only reason I wasn't seeking a career outside the home was because I couldn't do anything else, it's gone.


I do believe our choices should not be based on gender stereotypes. I believe that, because I have a daughter. If my sons can take advantage of opportunities, she should be able to as well. Though I made my choices along traditional lines, well, for the most part, I'd argue from the depths of who I am, that she should have the opportunity to pursue whatever path she is inclined to choose, especially as a human being with free will. 


My daughter has had more opportunities then I had, more then my mother had, and certainly more then my grandmothers had. As I think of my grandmothers' influence on my life, particularly the circumstances that were thrust upon them and out of them the choices they made, well, that will have to wait for another blog. 
To be continued....

Walking Barefoot in the Grass

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=149

Life as a kid was simple. Maybe it just seemed simple in hind-sight, but really, what did we have to worry about except the atomic bomb in the 1950s? Summer's were spent riding bikes to the corner grocery store to buy penny candy, playing kick-the-can in the alley with the neighbor kids until the street lights came on, playing hop-scotch, flying kites, catching fireflies, hanging upside down on the jungle gym, and sitting in the grass picking dandelions with one or two of my six siblings.

Lying on the grass, looking at billowy clouds as they changed shapes drifting high above us, suggested, even represented, change. Life itself can seem as nebulous.

I can't bring back those years. They are gone. I can't even recreate them. The closest I get to the ground is walking around in my bare feet watering the lawn, or sitting outside on my lawn chair with my bare feet on the ground, soaking up those free electrons the earth gives us. Hop-scotch, forget it. To lay on the grass would be a major effort, not so much getting down there, but getting back up would be a chore (although, I might just try it, when no one is looking and I have a back-up I can call). Siblings all have their own families and we no longer live in the same household, although, we have mentioned that when we get older, older then we are now, we should buy a big house together and live in it. I'm not sure that would work very well, it would have to be a BIG house. I can see the seven of us playing bumper cars with our scooter chairs on the lawn, saying, as we run into one another, "Who the Hell are you!" Life has sure changed since those days of dandelion picking. 

It's always changing, taking on new shapes, with new possibilities. My life has changed many times since those days. I've lived several different kinds of lives, and yet, I'm still me, just more so (and I'll leave it to your imagination what that means). Now is different too. To long for what was would keep me from finding new ways to live now, for instance seeking new groups to enjoy like-minded activities, or walking barefoot instead of lying on the grass.