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starfish

Arrived!

Like an expectant mother, I planned for this website. But things didn’t go as planned. Initially a DIY project, I asked friends for web development advice, perused the World Wide Web, drew my vision on scraps of paper, picked colors, then followed 29 step-by-step instructions by an online instructor. Sometimes—Bingo!—I’d figure out how to add a header, change a type face, or upload a program or photo. Not as amazing as feeling a baby kick from the inside, but magical in a technological way.

Too many times, I’d follow an instruction again and again, only to wind up in the same techno-muck. After hours with my computer, I’d frequently end up cross-eyed and frustrated.

Eventually, the lightbulb above my head matched my computer screen, with a flashing message: “YOU ARE NO #@*&% WEB DEVELOPER!”

With this profound (though obvious) message, I set aside my website in its primitive state, hoping no one would stumble upon it while wandering the web universe.

A techno-eternity later (maybe a month), in an unexpected and spectacular place on the Oregon coast, Jonell Alvi and Jamil Alvi–treasures across the tide pool last fall–generously nudged me. I branded the site with the logo and  portraits Rimona Law created. And the team at Hashtag Systems carried me across the abyss. Thanks to all of you for your talents, patience and generosity. I’m excited to finally have a website—a place where I can post writing prompts, opportunities, and inspirational tidbits.

I hope you’ll let me know what works for you, what doesn’t and what you’d like to see on the website. Maybe you’d like to write a guest blog, tell me about a cool book or website, or post a story.

The beauty of a website—and life itself—is that it keeps changing. I will learn to change it, just as I once changed the diapers of my living, breathing babies. And when I’m over my head, I’ll look for help and inspiration in unexpected places. 

Writing Spark: Consider a time when your best-laid plans went awry. What projects—large or small—pushed you beyond your skills or aptitudes? What happened? What helped you? What did you learn? 

Rule of Three: Write, Right?, Right!

I want to write. I check the news, learn about rising Covid-19 cases and falling markets. My inbox is teeming: solicitations, jokes, musical scores, and four chain letters, each asking me to send a poem or recipe to the first of two names, add my name, and forward the letter to 20 others. I’ll get to that after I finish USA Today’s “100 Things to Do While Stuck Inside Due to a Pandemic.” Learn a new language, organize your junk drawer, tackle a puzzle, binge-watch old movies. The plethora of suggestions exhaust me. I want to climb back into bed, but can’t even muster the energy for that. I sit at my desk in a Covid Coma, wanting to write. 

I’m not the only person distracted these days. Students tell me they often draw a blank when they sit in front of their notebooks—if they have the focus to sit. Neighbors, friends and family members complain of similar maladies. So today, in an effort to cure a specific strain of writer’s block, I harken back to the Rule of Three, a writing principle that, contrary to Google’s Rule of Everything-and-Then-Some, suggests you stick to three words, three events, or three characters to optimize humor, satisfaction or effectiveness. 

Stop, look, and listen to threes you have known: Three Little Pigs; Three Musketeers; Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; jokes that begin, “Three men walk into a bar…”

Naturally, none of the websites follows the Rule of Three because that just isn’t how websites work. “The more the merrier,” saith the spider and other web weavers.

I’ve chosen and modified one prompt from each of three websites. I refer to writing prompts as “sparks.” Three sparks to light your fire. Pick one and write three words, three sentences, three stanzas, or three paragraphs. Or pursue The Artist’s Way and write three pages. Do that every morning. Move your pen and make writing guru Natalie Goldberg proud. Keep that pen moving. Build up your writing muscles.

Tomorrow, try another spark, and a third the following day. After three sparks, your writing practice may be on fire. Or you may decide to look into your liquid crystal screen and click for more sparks, writings, and resources that may help you shake your Covid Coma.

  • The Attic Institute’s newsletter sends five sparks a week, a practice they started when Oregon’s stay-at-home order was issued. Here’s one: 

   Write a letter from your current self in your current situation to your future self – five, ten, or twenty years from now.

  • Long before the coronavirus, NaPoWriMo (short for National Poetry Writing Month) challenged writers to craft a poem a day every April. The website offers, not only a prompt for each day, but also a resource. And if the 30 prompts for 2020 aren’t enough, you can scroll back to any April since 2013 and find something that may spark your interest: 

  Gather things on a socially-distanced walk: a flower, strange bark, a rock, whatever you find. Then, display your items like museum pieces and write about one of them, link them together, or channel their message to you.

  Write a piece that joins what is most difficult in the world with what is most beautiful…terror, honey, pestilence, child… (Kim Stafford)

Each of these three sites just might be an antidote for your Covid Coma. Check out one….or three and keep going. On your mark, get set, write!

power of stories

Power of Story Collides with Story of Power

Samson Syharath dances gracefully across the stage, donning the baggy silk pants of his ancestors as he tells his story 8-24-9 (Secret Asian Man). The son of Laotian immigrants, he strives first to blend into our grand melting pot, then takes a pilgrimage to understand his ancestral homeland.

His story, like many children of immigrants, is filled with holes. His parents never mentioned that the US dropped what amounted to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years, starting in 1964—more per capita bombing than anywhere ever. Ergo, the title 8-24-9. The unleashed power that shook the world of Samson’s ancestors, propelled his parents to leave it. And they came here to the U.S. of A.

Samson’s story, a work in progress presented through the 2020 Fertile Ground Festival, evokes laughter, tears, empathy, and rage. It begs the question: Who are we? How do we speak to that kind of power? How do we tell the secret stories that make us who we are?

I’m struck not only by Samson’s story as I watch him perform it but also by the power of story in all of us. How do we speak the unspeakable? What stories do our ancestors hide, do we hide, while striving to achieve the American dream?

Once, my Nana told me her story about escaping pogroms in Odessa. Once, and only once, when I asked a quiet question while learning the family recipe for blintzes. After telling some of her story, she rolled it up like a blintz and smothered it with sweet berries.

Nana’s blintzes are my family history. Her stories are mine. My stories are Samson’s. Samson’s stories are Nana’s. All of our stories connect us to each other, to our past. To things we wished never happened on either side of either ocean. And now, we are here on a precious planet we share.

After his performance, the courageous Samson listens to audience reactions, considers how we experience his story and how he can further polish it. I take the story home with me, sleep on it like a pillow, comforted, not by the atrocities performed by our government, but by the powerful voice of one man in a room of rapt listeners.

Samson, the “Secret Asian Man,” continues to polish his story and plans to share it with the world through his aptly named company, Getting Lao’d. I plan to fully attend.

Writing Spark: What secrets does your family hold? How did you unravel the secrets? Why are they secrets? What would it feel like to write your story or tell it to someone you trust?