Remind Me to Stick to Writing by Jenny Gardiner

        hi! I have limited internet access right now so don't have time to post something on theme this time around so I'm posting a column from my newspaper column!   

 I hate that I'm an arts ignoramus. I wish I were that person who could steep myself in a classical music concert and not want to flee for the exit doors (although in truth, I get tired of even a normal concert after an hour or so and want to be done with that as well).  Or trot out to the ballet and really absorb the beauty before my eyes, rather than fidgeting or clock-watching. But try as I might, I just don't tend to gravitate toward fine art. I guess I'm a déclassé slob.

            I'm ashamed to admit the extent of my fine arts education (or at least that which imprinted in the haze of my brain) sprung from dubious sources. For painting, the board game Masterpiece was my instructor. Yep, my grasp of the Dutch Masters ran to the famed Rembrandt rendering of an old man who looks like an old woman with a feather in his/her cap. American classics? That celebrated all-night diner oil painting by Edward Hopper. I was particularly proud of myself when I recently recognized a spoof of Hopper's painting in the window of an alternative art gallery in Philadelphia. And to think I owe it all to Masterpiece creators, Parker Brothers!

            My appreciation of classical music and opera begins and ends pretty much at the Barber of Seville (make that Rabbit of Seville; thanks, Bugs Bunny). To be fair, I could throw in Elmer Fudd's Wagnerian masterpiece, "Kill the Wabbit!", just to put a finer point on that bonanza of childhood musical education. Likely my aversion toward classical music was further enhanced by my mother and her husband bombarding us with Pachebel's Canon till our ears practically bled. Gimme Bugs Bunny any day over that! In the immortal words of boxer Roberto Durán, no mas!

            The first time I traveled to Italy we hired a tour guide to show us around Florence for a few hours. The guide, an American ex-pat, had majored in Art History during college in the States, and immersed herself in glorious Renaissance art while studying abroad, loving the culture so much she stayed. I was amazed at the breadth of her knowledge and even more so the depth of her passion for the subject matter — a double whammy of art and history zeal. Damn! When I was 18 years old, it would not have dawned on me to consider studying art. I thought I needed to pursue an area of study that would lead to a steady income (though recognize in hindsight that journalism didn't made so much sense in that endeavor). But art? I can't even doodle well! Why would I bother?

            Yes, I admit it: I'm a cultural troglodyte.

            I don't doubt that the manner in which history and art are taught contribute to one's ability to ingest it. I had a peculiar professor in a mandatory European history class during college who felt compelled to act out the high (or low) points of a thousand years of Europe, taking on often many roles in each class. I suppose there are those who were on board with it; I just thought it was a weird distraction.

            Yet when I've toured historical venues over the years, I find it most interesting to learn about day-to-day life from so long ago — in some way I can better relate to that versus what Charlemagne was up to on his horse. Perhaps if I had approached the study of history and art from a plebian perspective, it would have struck a more familiar nerve, instead of merely ringing hollow. Better yet, perhaps an historical People Magazine-style education would have done it: celebrity gossip from the Middle Ages! Who's cheating on whom! What's popular this week in illuminated manuscripts and Gregorian Chants!

            Drats. Where my interest thrives in useless pop culture, it plummets when it comes to cultured culture.

            One thing I think would have helped immensely is emphasizing the whole notion of history being doomed to repeat itself. The older I get the more I see this again and again, and from this perspective it is ingrained into my brain more readily. It seems not a day goes by when that adage isn't reinforced in the news (Soviets invade Afghanistan; Soviets fail in Afghanistan. America invades Iraq; well, you know the drill.)

            Perhaps I'm taking baby steps toward acquiring some cultural enlightenment. Ish. Making a foray into a classier classicism, if you could dare call it that (granted it was by accident, but whatever works). Several weeks ago we purchased tickets to see Ben Folds in concert at Wolf Trap Farm Park. Folds is a musical genius whose earlier foray into contemporary music featured profanity-laced lyrics that are largely unprintable. He's since evolved, even launching the popular a capella show Sing Off, with nary an f-bomb.

            Too late I realized Folds was performing with the National Symphony Orchestra, which I figured meant I'd be asleep in ten minutes once under the influence of the dulcet strains of the violin section. One person in our group — perhaps influenced by an upbringing devoid of musical culture (my bad!) — didn't care for the symphonic component of the program, But most unexpectedly, I was quite mesmerized by the merging of disparate musical genres in such a beautiful way. And when he impulsively composed an orchestral piece on the spot, teaching each part section by section, well, wow. It helped me to really appreciate how disparate instruments (and their masters) get along for the greater good of the group. It gives you a sense of comfort in this sometimes very dark world that ultimately people can work together to achieve something bigger than themselves as individuals.

            Maybe it's never too late to start with this newfound appreciation for the arts. Perhaps in addition to doing a bike or walking tour in the next city I visit, I'll venture into the museum as well. Certainly if they have air conditioning. And maybe a lovely little café. Baby steps, people.

  Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Anywhere But Here

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)

And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F's Rhymes with Duck

Naked Man On Main Street

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Art and Commerce by Melissa Clark

The marriage of art and commerce has always been such a complex conversation, and I don't claim to have any answers... just lots of questions. 

I'd made money from my television writing, appreciating every penny and putting most of it away into retirement funds, but in my opinion books were different.

I always felt that writing a book was like an all encompassing psychology project. Now that I've written four I find that I grow and learn more from each one, and this experience has more value to me than money.

I'm well aware that not everybody feels this way. Take Elmore Leonard for example, who said the following:

"I always had that in mind: to write for money. You could make money, instead of trying to be literate about it." 

While I appreciate his clear point of view, this was always the exact OPPOSITE of how I felt about writing. I WANTED to be literate. The advance for my first novel was merely icing on the cake of a heartfelt endeavor.

Still, a writer has to pay the bills, and wouldn't it be nice to be able to do so from the thing you love doing most in the world?

Sigh.

No answers. Just lots of questions. 

Maybe I'll go work it out in a new novel.


------
Melissa Clark's television show, "Braceface" is now streaming on Amazon. Her two published novels are here and here. Her latest two are looking for a home.

If you didn't come to sweat--you need to leave right now!

by Michele Young-Stone

Roll!  Work!  Advice to all wannabe published novelists: SWEAT!  Don’t sell out!  SWEAT!  "Work!"  Don’t write something because you think it will make money.  This sounds like a no-brainer, right?  Not really.  Desperate times can call for desperate measures.  Be strong.   

After being rejected by every New York literary agent (accepting unsolicited queries) from A-W in The 2004 Writer’s Market, I tried to write a more “reader friendly novel.”  I tried to write linearly, which is all but impossible for me to manage because my brain simply does not work in a straight-line kind of way.  I can go back to a manuscript and move things around, but my mind translates to the page in images that connect, usually in subconscious ways.  The linear book SUCKED.  It is somewhere now, but I'm not sure where.  500 pages of "this is what I think people want to read..."  Not good.  

Whereas...

my latest novel, currently in the editorial process, the story of two women separated by oceans, generations and war, but connected by something much greater--the gift of wings, was not planned, not linear, not fathomed.  It is the tale of one woman born in 1925 in Lithuania, Europe, and the other woman born in 1973, northern Florida, in these United States.  This novel started with the image of a girl carrying handmade feather-pasted cardboard wings onto a bus, her boots on the black tread, the wings pressed against the metal bar, the bus driver telling her to hurry up, but she didn’t know where to sit. 

The question of where to sit and with whom is metaphorically at the core of this novel.

Excerpt:

My parents do not recall my birth as particularly pleasant.  As a matter of fact, I think that as a fetus and then a baby and then a human being, I came between them.  Before I emerged, they were in love, and they probably would’ve remained that way if it weren’t for me.  But it’s not my fault that they had unprotected sex.  It’s not my fault or my doing that they mixed this mad concoction that produced a Prudence Eleanor Vilkas.  That’s my name.  My father chose the first two and the last one is my surname, my Lithuanian birthright.  I am a Vilkas.

When I started, I imagined a sixteen year-old girl riding a bus.  Other factors at play, the death of two World War II survivors, one German and one Lithuanian, while I was pregnant with my son—factored into, and formed this novel.  Their voices spoke through me.  Strange coincidences kept happening.  For example, the German woman, Mac (Inge Rosemarie Kischel McGarrity) used to give me German marzipan every Christmas.  I was not particularly fond of marzipan, but she didn’t have to give me anything—so I bit my tongue.  Plus, my mother would’ve killed me if I was rude.  My mother and Mac were best friends. 

As an adult, I would give Mac jelly jars so that she would keep giving me some of her amazing blackberry preserves.  She was my surrogate grandmother, my oma.  Anyway, spinning round and round, while writing a scene in Germany for the novel, I wrote about a rose garden and marzipan.  I later found out that it is a custom to flavor marzipan/the almond paste with rose water.  Little things.  All the time.  Everywhere.  Things I couldn’t know about places I hadn’t been, but filled my head just the same.  And then, this year, just as I was finishing the novel, my pastry chef friend who made my son's birthday cake, made the decorations from marzipan.  I guess that when you are willing to see the incredible, it's there.  

I love this novel so much that even if no one buys it, I don’t care.  I am elated to have brought the characters and story into being.  It was a cathartic endeavor, a nearly three-year journey, excluding the life experiences that came to the forefront of the book.  I am grateful for the gift and pleasure of writing, and as one of my professors advised, “If you are writing to become rich or famous, stop now!"

As the rapper Lil' Jon would say (for all my Zumba buddies), “If you didn’t come to sweat, you need to leave right now!”  It’s true.  Like all great endeavors, writing is something that you have to do for the sheer joy of putting those words and ultimately that story on the page and into life.  If it’s good enough, someone will read it.  I promise you!

Michele Young-Stone is the author of the Target Book Club novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors.  Her next two novels are under contract with Simon and Schuster.  When Michele is not writing, she is volunteering in her community, Zumba-ing and paddling around in her pink kayak.  She likes to bird watch and color outside the lines.

www.micheleyoung-stone.com, www.micheleyoung-stone.blogspot.com www.obxbird.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/michele.youngstonefanpage https://www.twitter.com/micheleyosto