Tag: brother

Dinner with the Fam in 20 Stages

1. Plan trip to LA for SCBWI conference. Believe I will have loads of time to see family. Ask Sister and Brother #1 in separate conversations to meet for dinner.
2. Panic when realizing I only have one night free. What to do? Well, I guess we could have dinner together. That wouldn’t be weird, right?
3. Brother #1 and Sister are on board. Sounds like fun. Yay!
4. Whoops! You can’t NOT invite Brother #2. His feelings would be hurt if he hears about all the fun had by the rest of us. Immediately call Brother #2 to rectify mistake. He lives three hours away and will not come, but it’s the thought that counts.
5. Brother #2 shocks you by immediately agreeing. Ok, wow. The four of us are going to dinner. No spouses. No kids.
6. Day before Dinner: Sister and Brother #2 are at baby shower with the Mother Figure. Her feelings are hurt a wee bit that we didn’t invite her. (Geez, Mom, we’re flying by the seat of our pants here. Besides, you don’t like driving to LA. Or visiting.)
7. Crisis avoided when Sister and Brother #2 tell Mother Figure she wasn’t invited because we are deciding what home to put her in. She is bitter but resigned. Tells Brother #2 she hopes we all get diarrhea. Nice, Mom.
8. Day of Dinner: Brother #1 drives three hours  to meet up at Sister’s house. Everyone is shockingly pleasant.
9. Mother Figure calls Sister and hangs up.
10. Mother Figure calls Brother #2. He warns her the quality of the home we put her in is going down. She hangs up.
11. Siblings eye each other. *snickers*
12. Brother #1 finally arrives after three hours in traffic. Pile into Sister’s SUV to go to dinner at the Elephant Bar.
13. While waiting for a table, Mother Figure calls Brother #1. He is confused by her snarky comments, but bravely listens when we tell him to hang up on her.
14. More *snickers*
15. Brother #1 calls Mother Figure and asks if she’s ready to “act like an adult.” She tells him she’s not going to a home and we’re not taking her driver’s license either. Hangs up.
16. Seriously, my stomach hurts from laughing. *puffs on asthma inhaler*
17. Finally get a table and our food. Never a dull moment in the conversation. Funny enough, the boys dominate the conversations. When did they turn into such talkers who bare their souls to their sisters? *warm fuzzies*
18. Brother #1  looks around table and asks, “When was the last time that just the four of us went out together?”
19. Pause. Sad to realize the answer is NEVER. Promises all around to make a better effort.
20. Mother Figure sends text with this picture.  First response: shock she knows how to text a picture. Second response: *snickers*. Third response: Smiles when we realize Mother Figure managed to invite herself to dinner anyway.

I guess by now you’ve figured out that my family shows love with sarcasm and hang ups. What others consider mean, we consider a valentine. Honestly, this was the most fun we’ve all had together in pretty much…ever.

Looking Up Instead of Through

You know I said I was taking a sabbatical, but you also know that when something is demanding to be written, there is nothing for a writer to do except sit down and write it. Bear with me because this is a long post.

I’ve been at war with my current WIP. The words are not coming as easy as I’d like, and I am acting like a spoiled child, stamping my foot to get my way. I’m demanding the characters do this or that, and the rebellious jerks are giving me the finger. Quite rightly, too. Because I’m not listening. Not to them and not to what’s happening in my life.

These past months since I moved to San Francisco, my world has been changing. Not the way I usually force change into my life with a flick of my fingers or a blink of my eyes. (A bad habit I picked up along the way so I don’t have to face my ghosts.) This change feels slow and whispery, something beyond my control. I don’t know where it’s taking me, but I can sense it in the air. My priorities are shifting in this immutable way, and it’s like water beating a rock to submission. At first, I kept trying to dodge change by staying in motion. Let me tell you – it doesn’t work. Something so inevitable can take its time coming. Like Rocky, it can wait for you to tire yourself and stop swinging away at the wind. You’d think I’d know this after years of trying to run my life like everything from birth to death can fit on a page in your planner, but obviously it’s a lesson that needs relearning.

So, I’ve been doing these things that I normally wouldn’t. Taking the long way to get places because I like the drive. Sitting in a park to stare at the clouds and dreaming up three absurd things they resemble. Visiting a farmer’s market to buy fresh flowers and taking time to admire them in the window. Growing herbs on my windowsill and being pleasantly surprised by their scent in my kitchen. Laying in the middle of my living room floor and listening to music while a breeze blows.

Stopping. Slowing. Breathing things in. Enjoying the stillness.

My perspective is changing. Rather, I’m doing what writers should do. I’m enjoying the different perspective I bring to life. As people and writers, we get so caught up in trends. The dos and don’ts. The next big werewolf/vampire/angel/dystopian craze. We forget that the writers we remember are the ones who broke the rules first. As writers, it is our job to notice the things most people don’t. We try to say it in a new way that feels familiar at the same time. We help people find the stillness in their busy lives.

Here are some things I’m noticing these days.

This tree looks completely different

when I stand under it and look up

This door is a boring closet door

Except it has this amazing keyhole

And this cool brass plate that reeks of history.

This framed poster and lamp are imperfect

But the scratched, glassless poster reminds me of my brother who drove me to SF to hang it (and break it in the process)

And the milk glass lamp was a gift from my sister who drove to SF to help me place it under this poster.

This cedar chest takes up my dining area so my guests have to eat sitting on my living floor

My brother bought it beat up at an estate sale during a time when he was heavily using drugs. When he showed me the ugly, beat up box, I wanted to cry at how far my brother was gone. A year later, he cleaned up and showed me the beauty he’d seen in this broken thing I’d had no use for. This is carved in the lid that he pieced back together.

And here is my messy refrigerator

With a note from my agent requesting my full, my asthma action plan, magnets from cities I’ve visited, and this note my mom wrote me on her waitressing order pad when I was 14 and nervous for my first day of cheerleading. (She has no idea I would value this, and there is a story in that, too.)

And what about these shelves of frames I’ve had up for nine months – without pictures in them?

And then there are the pictures that speak to me…like this empty chair at a table

or this whimsical, slightly sad girl

Or this whimsical,slightly sad girl (me at 20 with my mom)

The things we carry with us from place to place. The way we see things. They help us to tell our stories. They help us to find the stories in our lives and the lives of others. We forget that when we get caught up in forcing things into our boxes. Try changing your perspective. Be still and look around your life. Lay on your floor to see things in a new way. Hang upside down, if that’s what it takes.

Shh… Wait for it. Do you hear a story forming that’s all your own?

Underpainting Yourself into Your Work

We can’t escape it. Somehow bits of ourselves worm and wheedle themselves into everything we write, even without our knowledge. Our opinions and views, our history, our emotional hang ups. The boy we pined for. (You know who you are, Zach.) The sibling who drove us crazy. (My brother loved to take my book and throw it across a room, thereby losing my page. Awesome.) That embarrassing moment in high school that we never quite got over. (Mind your own business.) All of who we are becomes fodder for our writing.

The most invasive example I have is revealed when I write about family dynamics. My father walked away when I was a child, and I went through a series of stepfathers in his wake. My mother – a hardworking waitress – worked long hours on her feet to keep the four of us kids with a roof over our head. My siblings and I have a kind of bond like soldiers who’ve been through war together – few can relate to a house like the one we grew up in. What is the impact of this on my writing?

Hardworking waitresses appear in my stories frequently. The bond I had with my siblings – we raised each other – appears in the siblings I write. As for fathers? At first, they were always absent with no redeeming qualities at all. Then, I wrote my Master’s Project about a dying father trying to connect with the daughter he abandoned. I dug up all those ugly emotions and put them to page. To rave reviews, I might add. (I received Honors on my project.)

My latest work features a father who abandoned his daughter, but is trying to repair the relationship. He becomes a good father, but it’s not an easy path for him or the daughter. What can I say? I’m evolving.

What parts of you make it into your writing with the highest frequency?