Light-skinned-ed Girl

A Much Needed Retreat

For the last couple of weeks I have had the great opportunity to write at an artists' retreat in remote Wyoming.  I had been saying to myself (and actually out loud to others) for the last few weeks of 2016 that I needed to get away from the busy-ness of my every day, from the work of festival planning, and from everything that was taking my attention away from the writing. 

This time has been life-saving. 

I was so out of balance in every way and this retreat has given me a chance to step back, slow down, and recalibrate.  And, let's not forget: WRITE! I didn't realize how much I missed writing on a daily basis.  It has been a struggle on many days even though I have all day and all the space to write.  And luckily I've been able to find fixes (even if short-term) for the blocks and the resistance.

1. Read.  I simply have not read enough.  Don't get me wrong. I have read a lot of great books in the last couple of years--many forthcoming that I blurbed and many that hit the shelves in bookstores and I had the pleasure of interviewing the authors.  But I haven't been reading writing that informs the work.  I have spent a lot of time doing that here in the last two weeks.  I worried at first I was spending too much time reading (a couple of days I didn't write anything but journal writing and read the rest of the day).  But I can see how necessary it is.  How I'm seeing the fault lines in my own writing as I read really great books that I admire.
2. Write anything.  The goal for this residency is still to have a shitty draft done by the time I leave in in just 7 days.  It's do-able, and yes, it will be a truly shitty draft.  So it's hard to write those dead sentences just to make sure I have a beginning, middle and end that I work on to REVISE.  So, yeah, I've taken some breaks from that writing and decided to write other things: journal writing; goal-setting brainstorming; brainstorming about the novel; snippets of possible essays; bad drafts of flash fiction stories; and yes, now this.  As long as I keep the writing in a separate compartment from everything else, it becomes too precious, too scary, too difficult to tackle or connect with.
3. Naps. Naps are a part of my weekend life.  Here they are a part of my everyday.  I wake up at 4:30pm so around 2pm or 3pm, I set an alarm for 30 to 45 minutes and try to dream up the next words I'm going to write.  That's worked just once so far, but I'll keep trying.

I've also found my way outside to enjoy the amazingly beautiful scenery.  The first two weeks were very cold with lots of snow (some 20 inches? over the course of the days.  But it has been a balmy 37 degrees and the sun is out.  I've snowshoed (once) --dang that is hard! I thought it was just walking.  It's walking plus--I definitely worked up a serious sweat.  And I've walked up to the lodge and back (a short walk but there's a nice hill to face).  I just cannot describe how beautiful and peaceful it is here.  But maybe you can see in these photos.

So, I'm 7 days away from heading back to civilization.  Wish me words!

 

Impersonators and Authenticity

Last year in the two weeks before Halloween I was dealing with a weird and frankly, scary situation. I had an on-line impersonator who had created a few different social media profiles with my name (and her photo) where she claimed my publications, credentials and credits. I only discovered it because I am (yes, I admit it) a self-Googler. I noticed my Wikipedia stats had changed--I was 20 years younger and I was African-American and Mexican. Well, that was the first iteration. Each time I tried to have the page changed or taken down, she'd change it to something even more defamatory. The whole thing took a strange turn when she responded to my email telling her that someone was impersonating me with her photo--I couldn't be sure that the joke wasn't also on her at that point. But her long and bizarre response began with "Forgive me if you are a real person and I have mistaken your information as my own. It's just that, I would testify under penalty of pergery [sic] that several of these things you have published in your name are my work. So either I am Heidi, [and] you should be sued for plagerism [sic], or we have some other connection I may not be remembering." Funny more now but at that point it was disturbing. After I finally got a couple of social media companies to take down her fake profile (BTW Facebook would not take it down), and Wikipedia editors restored the page, she gave up. She wrote on one of her profiles that she was glad she wasn't me because my "brother Jimmy" (I have no brother Jimmy--she was referencing a character in a story I wrote) had killed her entire family. Yup. So after two weeks of being terrorized by an online impersonator I went to a Halloween costume party as something I knew I could nail: I went as myself! Flash forward to this year and I am thinking about dealing with my impersonator but really I'm thinking about authenticity. What is really me? Am I living the life that serves me? I feel like I do a lot for others -- creating space for their stories. Am I creating that space for myself? I'm not sure that I am. And that has to change even if I can't be supportive of creating community as I have for the last many years. Stay tuned.

I made one change today . . .

I took a workout class: Barre 3.  Have you tried it? I was so anxious about going, but my friend prodded me to attend with her.  Had she shown up a couple minutes later than she did, I was definitely going to flee.  But I stayed and I was a bundle of anxiety.  The other students were all young, lithe, flexible, and did I mention young?  I'm not at all flexible, or bendy, and on the scale of lithe to husky I'm definitely on the husky side at this point.  They all wore lovely (tight) leggings and tank tops (without bras).  I was in two shirts, a jacket, two sports bras and my lounge pants that have the perfect amount of stretch.  I knew I was out of my league.  But when the class started I took a breath.  Took a good look at myself in the mirror and thought: even if I do it all wrong, at least I will have tried.  And no matter how silly I look, I'll have given myself the best chance I can today to have a productive workout that makes a difference in how I feel about my body.

Lo and behold, I did make it through.  I struggled and I shook.  And at one point I was certain that I was involuntarily twerking (they are real big into shaky muscle failure which is kind of scary but also kind of cool).  But then the class was over and I was glad.  I was proud of myself that I made that change today.  I may even try another class there next week.  Who knows?

The Person Who I Hope is Listening is Me...

So the thing that has gotten in the way of me finishing book 2, or writing here, or writing anywhere for that matter is that I worry about who is listening and what they will think of these words. As a an "anonymous person" I had no such worry. I wondered why everyone wasn't listening. Well, not everyone, but at least a good number of the masses. I had new ideas and questions I wanted to share. Now, I worry about having answers. And the thing is: I have none. I remember when I first started dating my now-husband I told him quite matter-of-factly that I knew 80 percent of everything. I was 20 years old and very certain. I'm now 46 and very uncertain and would hazard to guess that I know maybe 5 percent of anything and have no idea what percentage of stuff I don't even know I should know about. All of that to say: these posts will be first drafts from now on. Like right now. I'm writing on the steps as I am about to walk out the door. There will be no considered ending like great essays. There will just be this: . . . gotta go. The uber is here. . .

Let's Begin!

The Journey

 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

What do you do when you feel stuck?

I'm learning to embrace stuckness these days.  This isn't the first time I've felt this way in my life so instead of panicking this time I have tried to look back on those periods of my life and be honest about what I did to get unstuck.

Here are some of those things:

1. Read a self-help book.  I love a good self-help book.  I have ever since I was a teenager and discovered How to Survive the Loss of a Love: 58 Things To Do When There Is Nothing To Be Done. The book became my bible at age 15 when I was re-buffed by my big crush.  Yes, I know the book was meant for people who were grieving a loved-one's death, or a divorce, but teenage love and angst was very real for me.  The bullet-point instructions and the accompanying poem for each step really spoke to my teenage-self:

i am missing you

far better than 

i ever loved you

BTW: I think I had talked to my crush once on the phone after the horrible "break-up."  Ah, teenage self, I wish I could have whispered in your ear: get over it!

Anyway, I digress, I still love self-help books. My go to now is any book by Pema Chodron.  I have downloaded them all from Audible and have listened to the books and lectures dozens of times.  Check out Pema Chodron's Getting Unstuck; it's one of my favorites.  I also love Wishcraft by Barbara Sher; The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. (Maybe I'll do a post with the whole long list soon.)

2. Exercise, exercise, exercise.  I was really stuck back in 2002 and struggling to figure out what the story of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky really was.  I decided to start running.  I hate running.  But I thought if I could run a marathon it would help me with my confidence and therefore would help me with my writing.  It worked.  I went from running a quarter of a mile to running 8 to 10 miles per day.  I did a run-walk interval: 3 minutes running, 1 minute walking.  When I was tired I would always think: "Well, I know I can run for 3 minutes. Let me just do that."  I ended up running 3 marathons in three years.  And I finally finished a first draft of my book!  What made it work?  Well, I could see how clearly that having a dedicated plan for running I was able to become a marathon runner (scratch that) --I became a marathon finisher in just a few months.  I started to apply the same principles to my writing. I also needed that time to meditate while I ran.  I spent time with my characters while I ran in a way that I never did if I was on an elliptical trainer catching up on The Bachelor or Project Runway (and yes, I still watch terrible reality TV!). 

3. Lower your standards.  This is so antithetical to my core way of being. I'm usually an unrelenting perfectionist.  But I read this advice from one of my favorite poets William Stafford and it really changed my world.  So when I'm stuck with my writing I write bad haiku until I can get back to the project I'm working on.  Or I write bad poetry "on spec" using poetry exercises from one of my favorite writing books.  The only requirement is that I make the poetry BAD.  It's amazing.  It's really hard to make something that really totally sucks.  That always helps me to recognize that sometimes I have to go through the awful bad sentences and paragraphs and even drafts before I can get to the good stuff.

4. Recognize that maybe you're not ready.  This was advice from Toni Morrison I took to heart after I read it.  This is what she said about writer's block in a 1994 interview:

"There are times when you don't
know what you're doing or when you don't have access to
the language or the event. So if you're sensitive, you
can't do it. When I wrote Beloved, I thought about it
for three years. I started writing the manuscript after
thinking about it, and getting to know the people and
getting over the fear of entering that arena, and it
took me three more years to write it. But those other
three years I was still at work, though I hadn't put a
word down."

So I've learned that even if I'm not involved in the "output" that I want (words on the page during butt-in-chair time), there is always a piece of me that is working and if I pay full attention to myself the answers will become clear to me.

* * *

So what do you do when you feel stuck?  And is it the same thing as feeling sad?  Or is it worse?  

I'm Teaching a Week-Long Writing Workshop for First-Time Novelists

I'm excited to announce that I'll teach a week-long writing workshop Writing the Debut Novel: Developing Your Craft & Your Career in January 2016 at Djerassi, an idyllic writer's retreat where I was in residence for 4 weeks in 2005 and 2013.

The workshop is geared to debut novelistsand is well-suited for those writing about difference, race, and social justice. The workshop will include workshop manuscript critiques, time for new writing as well as workshop writing prompts, a private consultation of 50 pages of your manuscript, and talks on actionable steps you can take to start your career as a published writer. Includes up to 50 pages manuscript consultation in private 1/2 hour session with me. Full novel review available for an additional fee. Applicants accepted pending review of writing samples.  Space is limited.  I hope you'll apply and make the promise you've made to yourself come true: finish that novel you've always wanted to write! Learn more here.

Statement:

"At age 29 I quit my job and set out to write the Great American Novel by age 30. After 6 years of feeling stuck, I realized I was only playing at writing a book while I waited for my muse to come and for someone to discover my talent. I had to treat my ambition to become a published novelist the same way that I had planned out my professional career. That’s when I started to see results the non-MFA way. I learned to grow my craft and my career and ended up with a New York Times best-selling novel that continues to grow a wide readership now internationally. This workshop is tailored for the person who has always wanted to write for a living, but doesn’t have an idea about how to start. I'm looking forward to sharing my process and helping other writers who are looking for a way to take tangible steps toward achieving their dreams."--Heidi

Testimonials: 

"Heidi herself was warm, generous, and gently constructive & gave attention to practical matters, e.g. how to give a great reading. She set a wonderful tone for workshop and critique to be directed at expanding work in progress, rather than attacking it."— Jenn R., workshop participant

"Heidi's candor was refreshing. She really emphasized how relentless debut authors need to be BEFORE being published and after publication. She shared some critical strategies and some of her mistakes so that we can avoid making them. I also liked her authenticity. She was not afraid to get emotional. She does not present a façade, she is refreshingly real and approachable. One story she told us about one of her young readers perfectly illustrated the power of being an author and it had nothing to do with fame, money or ego. The story she shared left me determined to create art with my novel. I never had that goal before the workshop because I did not consider myself an artist. Finally, I think Heidi is brilliant. She has keen insights and is a writer’s writer. She set a constructive tone for the workshop by emphasizing that we look for the energy in each other’s work and suggest ways to build on that. That was such a great approach and we all benefitted. I felt like I could share freely because I was in a safe place." — Robin Farmer, workshop participant

"Heidi provided extremely constructive, detailed manuscript critiques; extremely useful and practical information re the nuts and bolts of selling and promoting your work – and the practice doing readings was so helpful. Heidi is an engaging, energetic and masterful guide through the intricacies and necessary action steps to successfully complete, publish and promote your novel.

"The positive energy, support and enthusiasm from Heidi and the workshop attendees that renewed my spirit and revved me up with the energy and tools I need to complete my novel and get it out into the world." — Ginger McKnight-Chavers, workshop participant

"I loved the intimacy of the group—it was very supportive and generative. And I loved Heidi’s teaching/coaching style. She is a natural teacher and encourager. I enjoyed the pacing and the mix of sessions and events planned. I learned so much, and received so much encouragement from, the workshops, the one-on-one, the discussions and talks that Heidi gave on the other parts of the writerly life. I appreciate Heidi’s style and her genuineness. And I surely appreciated her generosity of spirit and heart."— Michele Beller, workshop participant

"I was so impressed with Heidi’s organization and preparedness for the workshop. I wasn’t expecting anything more than a few workshops and time to write, but she provided so much more than that with super informative sessions on marketing, networking and getting published. I am always so focused on writing that I hadn’t even thought about all of the nuts and bolts that go along with creating art. She also managed to curate a group of writers who seemed to mesh perfectly together, as well as create a workshopping environment that managed to be both nurturing and constructive. I didn’t feel like my fellow workshoppers (or Heidi) were holding back, but at the same time I never felt attacked or defeated. Quite the opposite." — Jessica Haas, workshop participant

"It was, quite simply, a stupendous experience. Heidi packed so much into a few days: giving us advice; providing the opportunity to have our work read by others as well as by herself; and even “forcing” us to read our own work, out loud and in public. Her selection of other writers was spot-on, and she quickly created a safe space for us to bond and support each other. I don’t think anyone expected we’d become life-long friends, our own clan, within a few short days." — Romalyn Tilghman, workshop participant

Accolades or Affirmations: The Boost Needed to Get Back to Writing

I met a famous writer a few weeks ago who I admire greatly.  I was nervous for my friend to introduce me to her because well, . . . what if she wasn't like the person I knew from her writing?

But guess what? She was lovely.  She was warm and genuine and funny.  Before the party ended, I broke out my selfie-stick and we snapped a photo together.  And I walked away from the party just giddy.  

When I got home from the conference, I worked up the nerve to send a note to her and a copy of my book.  Truly, I had no expectation that she would read it.  But then . . . I got an email from her saying that she had just devoured the first 64 pages of my book but had to put it down only because grades were due the next day and she had work to do.  

Of course I was elated.  And I thought that was that.  Until . . . I received another email a few days later that read:

"Dear Heidi, Yes! You have restored my love of reading!  Thank you for this powerful novel." Signed Famous Writer.  

So, yeah. That happened.  And I'm not sure that I have totally processed it, or celebrated it, or took to heart what it means.

But for today at least, I'm sitting down with the manuscript again after another long hiatus and I'm keeping Famous Writer's words in front me so that I can keep reminding myself I can do this.  I can fill up that blank page.

 

Integrity: The Next Chapter

I started this blog on March 9 nine years ago today.  This was my first post:

The post title was just the word "integrity" and the post itself was the word's definition:

"the quality or state of being complete, unbroken condition, entirety."

I wish I could tell you why that was the first of close to 1000 posts that have been viewed almost half a million times since then.  I cannot.  I can tell you that I know I was decidedly not in an "unbroken" state at that point in my life.

I had just learned that after almost 2 years of shopping my novel manuscript to publishers, my agent had run out of options.  Everyone had said no.  The manuscript was dead.  When she told me the news, I wept as if someone had died.  My husband held me and then set me down in my favorite chair.  "I'll be right back," he said.  

Fifteen minutes later or so, he returned with a tray that held champagne, strawberries, olives and cheese.  I mustered a smile of gratitude as he sat down with me and enjoyed the treats.  We sat for a long time without words until I said: "You know I just can't get rid of the sadness."

And my wise husband replied: "Well, then we'll just have to keep it company."

And we did.

But in the morning I got up and I created a plan.  What most of the publishers had said was that they liked the book but there was no market for a story about a half-black/half-Danish girl.  Essentially, they were saying no one could relate to a story about a girl with that specific background; that there was no Afro-Viking demographic.  

I set out to prove them wrong.  So I started this blog to find the community that I knew was out there and would be interested in the story I had to tell.

In the years since, I have found more than community. I have found friends, and I have found my voice.  Well, let me say that again: I Had found my voice. 

After finally publishing that novel manuscript that would become The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books), I worried about what I should share.  I worried that my blog writing wasn't good enough. And then I didn't have the time to write because of my touring and speaking engagements and then I didn't have the time to listen to myself.

And then a couple of years ago I decided I didn't really want anyone to pay attention to me as I healed from a very difficult ending to a very important friendship in my life.

But now I'm done hiding.  And I'm done with worrying about "good enough".  And I'm done with worrying about those folks I've had to let go and what they say about me.

All of that to say: I'm back.  And I'm going to post regularly and it's often going to be floppy, or messy or down-right bad.  But I'm ready for that feeling I had when I started this blog nine years ago. Yes, I was struggling.  But I was unbroken.  I was complete.

A Great Family Visit

I was so lucky more Danish family visited this year.  First little cousin Magnus in May and then last week my aunt and two cousins who hadn't been to Southern California before.  We had the best time as you can see from the photos!  We talked, and walked, and laughed and ate.  Oh man, we ate a lot, but it was so good! And we had the very best weather that sunny California can offer.

But now it's back to real life and the words and the pages again.  I've got a deadline to meet in just a few days. Wish me words!