Traveling: a poem

Traveling

By: Anna C. Urquhart

Droves of geese, headed south,

The noise—such hernk-ing!—

builds ‘til I no longer hear

the traffic nor whir of machines.

The sound pulls me to the garden

where I look up, dizzied,

the sky full of undulating “V”s.

(My, there are so many.)

Songbirds in tree boughs

notice the noisy travelers

overhead.

The robin and chickadee are not geese,

but don’t mind the difference—

They look up, see feather and beak,

and know each other for kin.

The air fills with bird noise—

SquawkCheepWarbleChirpScree—

And it is as it is meant to be

when we encounter those traveling.

We cannot shorten the road, but

our song tells them: I see you

have made it this far.

Such a journey to undertake.

Yes, carry on; better lands await.

Persist.

Be brave.

Do all the birds along the path call out?

So it seems,

and with such song

we carry

each other

home.

As Promised . . . .

As I promised yesterday, here is the link for the Bob Neff Tours Christmas Giveaway. You could win 1 of 2 Christmas Book Bundles

1. A Pioneer Christmas Collection (signed by me) and A Log Cabin Christmas Collection
2. A Pioneer Christmas Collection (again, signed by me) and a Prairie Christmas Collection

Good luck! Oh, and again, Merry Christmas!!

Finding The Oasis

I have never before considered slowing down in life. Let me rephrase, I have never before found it necessary to slow down in life. I was always a fast walker, a fast thinker. I was fast on the sports field, fast to speak my mind. This speed served me well at times, yet not so much at others. I learned eventually to recognize the moments when fast was best, and when fast would land me in trouble. But my tendency has always been to push faster, work harder, and outpace everyone around me.

And now my pace is outstripping my enjoyment of many things. I eat fast, so I haven't learned to savor. I move fast, so I pass by many moments of beauty or intimacy. I think fast, so the span of my ponderings are an inch deep and a mile wide. I react fast, so I easily wound those who are closest to me.

Society values speed and efficiency. Just look at the premium we place on speed for cell phones and internet. If a web page takes longer than 2.3 seconds to load, I groan, complain, move on to the next. I want my devices and technology to move as fast as I do. If you don't believe me, just watch this AT&T commercial:

(I'm not gonna lie, these commercials make me laugh every single time.)

But with all the speed and constant movement, I am starting to feel thin. In the words of Bilbo Baggins, "like butter scraped over too much bread." I am growing to resent my chosen pace of life. Yet, I'm finding that it's not necessarily the pace that wears me thin, but the relentlessness of the pace.

A communications professor I had once said that, in public speaking, a speaker needs to periodically offer his or her audience an oasis. A moment of calm amidst the message for that message to have time to seep in. He gave the examples of anecdotes or jokes that speakers use, not just to add levity and be more engaging, but to allow for the marination of ideas. The mind can only process so much information at once.

My new practice amidst my frenetic pace of life is finding the oasis. Allowing myself to cease striving, take a minute, be still. I have claimed 15 minutes of my morning routine as an oasis. I sit at my desk. I sip coffee. I listen to music. I read blogs. I think.

I found an oasis last Sunday when speaking with a friend. I stopped sprinting from my kids' sunday school classes to the church service to the bathroom to  . . . and I sat with her and we laughed. It was a 10 minute oasis.

I found an oasis on Monday when I traveled with a group of students to Washington, D.C. We were in Ford's Theater, wandering around the museum of artifacts and information about the assassination of Lincoln. (I know, of all places for an oasis to surface, right?) I sat down on a bench, alone in front of a TV monitor that displayed a video of all living presidents reading passages of the Gettysburg Address. After a few minutes I stopped listening to the screen and just sat thinking, pondering, musing. I felt a settling in my chest, a calm. It lasted only a few moments, but it was enough.

These pockets of peace, these oases, can be spontaneous or intentional. But those of the spontaneous nature are so easily missed. Yet once you start looking for them, you start to learn their tells, their calling cards, so that next time you can find or create them more easily.

For example, I find an oasis any time I read poetry. Maybe it's the cadence of the words, or the silky sinew of the line, but it brings such calm to me. Now, even when reading a poem amidst a classroom full of squirrelly students, I can still find the oasis (fleeting though it might be).

Have you found an oasis, a pocket of calm in life's whorl? I'd love to hear about it, maybe even be on the lookout for it along with you!

Have a happy Wednesday, friends!

PS: You may have noticed an update to my website with regards to the pictures. (In particular the "About Anna" page. Go check it out!) I recently had a photo shoot with an amazingly gifted photographer and friend. While I was reminded why I write (so as to hide behind my pen and page and NOT in front of a camera) I was also reminded of how differently we each see the world. Joyous captures so much with her lens--snippets of laughter or a glint of sunlight--that so many of us miss. Thank you, Joyous. You are so precious to me.

An Open Letter to the Mother-Artist

A stunning painting by Katie M. Berggren entitled "Where We Are"

You are an artist. You are a mother. And, as a result, you are now many, many more things than you ever thought yourself capable. You may have been a mother before feeling the call of artistry. You may have recognized yourself as an artist before ever feeling that nudge toward maternity. Your artist's arrival may have been a surprise, just as your child or children may have been. Regardless, you now live in the world of the precarious. The world where enough of you never feels like enough.

Your children laugh, call out, cry, question. They run and play and require your eye that craves to watch them grow and learn, all the while craving to turn to the artist and allow her eye to rove, to capture, to create. Yet both eyes cannot be active at once. It becomes a daily struggle, a daily decision of being wholly mother or wholly artist--or, the ultimate sacrifice, wholly neither. You divide your attention, your time, your inner energy to both. Yet the division results in your efforts feeling lackluster and feeble and sub-par. By dividing yourself you feel as though everything suffers.

The only alternative to dividing yourself is to quit mothering or quiet your inner artist--neither a viable option. Both alternatives would leave you hollow; a warped, cracked window that doesn't fit its frame and through which the wind whistles a low, sad song.

Yet, while you battle for balance--the dividing line of mother and artist fluid and unfixed--one unexpected day your children let go of your hand, stop requiring your adoring eye to watch. This release is both painful and freeing. You feel a wider range of motion and that is as painful as the limited range of motion you once had, as painful as the guilt you once felt over the time spent filling your canvas rather than with your children, as painful as the resentment you felt over the time asked of you by your children when your page stood empty.

To every freedom there is a season. That freedom so often seems paired with its own unique pain. This pain is what you chose when you divided yourself, and it is a pain of growth rather than of confinement. By choosing to be both mother and artist you have grown beyond boundaries, stretched beyond perceived limitations. By simply making that choice to play both roles you have conquered what many do not.

Mother-Artist, fight away the feelings of doubt and guilt. Resist that venomous voice in your head that says you aren't enough. Turn away from those who push on the pain you already feel in an attempt to make you leave your art behind. Erase the word "indulgence" that keeps appearing each time you shut the door to the sounds of childhood and allow your artist to breathe. 

Close your eyes and listen to the quiet song that sings of the legacy you are creating.

By your life you are teaching your children to dream. To work hard. To believe in their own God-given abilities. To trust that tug within that pulls them toward the blank page, the empty canvas, the resonant chords, or whatever direction that innate aesthetic gravitational pull leads. To be brave in the face of uncertainty and insecurity. To wrestle into balance both work and play, personal and professional, mother and artist. And one day they will understand the battle you fought, and they will choose to follow. You are creating the Mother-Artists of tomorrow because today you chose to be one.

You are a mother. You are an artist. You are a multi-faceted woman of vision and hope and strength. Don't give up. Your work is beyond important, it is essential. Hold tight to that.

                                                                                              From your fellow Mother-Artist,
                                                                                                  Anna

Two Lessons Learned (and Last Day of the Pioneer Christmas Countdown!)

One more day til Launch Day! And this is the song running through my head....

Yesterday I shared some insider info about things that happened during my writing of A Silent Night. Today I would like to share a couple lessons I learned through the process. Here's my 2 lessons learned:

1. Choose carefully your 1st readers: I'm constantly seeing loads of invitations on Twitter and Goodreads to read and respond to a writer's work--writers trying to get "objective" feedback on their early drafts. (I put "objective" in quotes because no feedback is ever objective.) I will never send my work out in that fashion. I'm particular about who sees my early drafts--and later drafts--because I need to know my words and characters are in safe hands. My mom is one of my 1 readers, not just because she's my mom and massively supportive, but because she's an avid reader and has a sharp eye and a keen sense of what works in a story and what doesn't. (I think, in another life, she would have been a writer herself.) It was Mom who first started the ball rolling toward the new ending that is now part of the finished story, and I took her suggestion because I trusted her instincts. Another 1st reader of mine is my BFF Hannah (who was a guest writer for my blog series). Hannah teaches English  and is a fabulous writer herself. She also has fantastic instincts when it comes to structure, plotting, story cohesion, and character development. Early on, when I wasn't sure Lorna's story (as opposed to the widower's story) was the one that I should run with, Hannah read the early draft and said, "Yes, this is the story you need to write." She saw the potential even before I did. 
2. Trust yourself: I know you hear this all the time on those "feel-good" memes plastered on Pinterest and Facebook, so let me give you a very practical example of what I mean: I overhauled  the opening to chapter 2--where Lorna is no longer in Edinburgh, but in Michigan Territory--and received 2 categorically opposing pieces of advice; one from my agent and another from John Pipkin--my professor who graciously walked through this novella writing process with me.  John suggested one thing, my agent suggested another. I implicitly trust and respect them both, and was conflicted about who to listen to. But at the end of the day, I was the author of Lorna's story. My name was going beneath the title, and I needed to decide what chapter 2 needed to accomplish. I made a choice, and I think I made the right choice in this instance (though I know that won't always be the case.) I think it was A. J. Verdelle who said If you can't make decisions, don't be a writer. True story. And it was another of my professors, Roy Kauffman, who said that the writers who "make it" are the ones who make the most "right decisions" most often. Again, true story.

So I hope these 2 little nuggets haven't bored you, even though I'm sure they are things you already know. But, as I've said before, reminders are always helpful. And here's one more reminder for the road:

Tomorrow is Launch Day!!!!

Tomorrow is also the last day to enter the
Pioneer Christmas Giveaway!
You can choose any of the options below to enter (tweet, make a comment, "like" my FB page, follow me on Twitter) or you can do them all! The more you do, the more times you're entered into the Giveaway. Just follow the prompts below. 

Giveaway Prize: 
Copy of A Pioneer Christmas Collection signed by all 9 authors!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Winner will be announced on September 3. See you tomorrow!

Day 2: The Making of A Silent Night (and incidentally my 100th Post!!)

Today's post is the equivalent to "The Making of" bonus features often found on a DVD menu. I'm divulging a few interesting (and/or quirky) happenings from my process of writing my novella. So here we have "The Making of A Silent Night":

• My original protagonist was a man...widower and a father of a young girl, aged about 6 or 7. I wanted a different approach to the story than the female protagonist left alone on the frontier. However, I just couldn't make the story work, no matter how hard I tried. Some may call it Writer's Block. I simply believe that a different story wanted to be told and I needed only to find it. (Plus, I was on a tight deadline, so if one approach wasn't cooperating, I couldn't waste time trying to force-feed it.)

• My protagonist is Lorna Findlay. She wasn't Lorna to begin with, and I cannot for the life of me remember the name I originally gave her. But when my agent read through one of the early drafts she recommended changing the name to something a bit more "scottish" sounding. So I did. And now I cannot remember what her original name was because I cannot imagine her being named anything other than Lorna. Just as I cannot imagine any of my children being called anything apart from the names my husband and I chose. 

• A secondary character and friend to Lorna is Sissy Cousins. Sissy started out as a "filler" character (I think I just made that term up)--she was a character to fill the space needing filled for Lorna's story to progress. However, I started to care about Sissy. I didn't want her to be a "filler", I wanted to give her a story all of her own. When I made this decision, I didn't know what kind of story to give her nor how to round out her character a bit more. Much of Sissy's character developed out of my research of the area and the times. Because Michigan is so near French-speaking Canada, I thought it might be interesting to give Sissy a French-Canadian husband who taught her to speak French. What seems like such a minor detail (along with many others) made her such an intriguing juxtaposition to me: a hard-nosed, gruff frontierswoman with the ability to speak what I believe is one of the most beautiful languages in the world.  

• Of course, having Sissy speak French opened the research can-of-worms a bit wider as I had to make sure that any French Sissy spoke needed to be accurate. (I am currently trying to learn French. Before now all my language training has been in Spanish, so French--whose speakers have decided somewhere along the line to not pronounce anything as it's actually written--is, um, difficult.) I started off using the lame Google Translator and wasn't convinced of its accuracy, so I started hitting up people who I knew actually spoke French. I also thought this detail about Sissy was fun considering I was in Paris when the novella adventure first began.

• I am a massive nerd. I love history. I love to research. And I did much more research than I probably needed to do for this story. I even researched the type of broom used in America during the 1830s, but then had to check to make sure that those brooms would have been accessible to residents of Michigan Territory during this time. All to make sure that 1 sentence in the novella where a broom is mentioned is 100% accurate. Like I said, I love to research.

I hope you enjoyed these little tidbits and, if I have time, I will have a few more behind-the-scenes moments tomorrow. Hope your week is winding up well! And if you haven't gotten your copy of A Pioneer Christmas Collection yet, go get one! You have an extra long weekend to do some reading!

2 more days to enter the Pioneer Christmas Giveaway!
You can choose any of the options below to enter (tweet, make a comment, "like" my FB page, follow me on Twitter) or you can do them all! The more you do, the more times you're entered into the Giveaway. Just follow the prompts below. 

Giveaway Prize: 
Copy of A Pioneer Christmas Collection signed by all 9 authors!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Last day to enter is September 1--winner will be announced on September 3. See you tomorrow!