from my most recent newsletter…

Are you still writing when you show up and nothing happens? You know, those times when you are all prepared to write and your fingers are on the keyboard and you are staring at the blank screen, and nothing happens?

The other day in class, one student was berating herself during check in. “I sat there for a whole hour and didn’t get anything done.” I hear this a lot during check ins. “I showed up but I just struggled.” “I showed up but only wrote one paragraph.” “I showed up and all I got was one sentence.” In all these cases, the tone is one of failure. They didn’t fulfill their commitment. They didn’t actually write.

I disagree. The reason I always suggest starting with a time commitment rather than a word commitment each week is because in the creative process, the only thing we can commit to with any certainty is to show up. Creativity is like the tide. Sometimes it’s high, sometimes it’s low, and sometimes it’s in between. There are times when you are in the flow and may easily and effortlessly write five pages, or ten. Another day you may struggle to put together a few good sentences or a paragraph. And, as in the example above, sometimes you may have nothing to show for your time. Here’s the secret. This is what writing is. You may think nothing is happening, because you are looking at that blank page. But inside you, underneath, in the way back of your subconscious maybe, a lot is going on. Showing up in the ebb tide is the most important part of writing. Learning to trust it is essential. Struggling with the unknown is the deepest part of writing. I sometimes suggest you get up and take a walk rather than stare at the page or shuffle papers around on your desk (although that can be necessary too). Studies have shown that walking helps integrate the two sides of your brain. Pacing in your room can also work, by the way, if you can’t get out. I also suggest no matter how difficult it is, to come back for the last five minutes of your time and just jot something down. I often find that then I manage to eek out something that will be useable to me in my next session.

Can you begin to trust your writing process today?

When I was young and I would ask my mom what she wanted for Mother’s Day, the answer was almost always a disappointment. “For you to clean your room without asking,” or “to be on time for church,” or “help setting the table.” These to me didn’t count. I was supposed to be doing those anyway. I needed to give something real, something tangible. So there were a lot of cheap crystal knickknacks on my mom’s shelves. Now, having my sixth Mother’s Day with Mia, I can say with certainty when people ask me what I want: To be on time for church; for Mia to pick up her things without my asking; and for help setting the table.

Someone at Mia’s school must get this because for the first time my Mother’s Day gift is in fact a gift of chores: 

Another big transition for this five- almost six-year-old. She is willing to help me now. Oh, and late in the day that we spent together doing almost absolutely nothing, quite luxuriously, she gave me another unexpected gift. “You’re the best mom ever on Mother’s Day!”

So belated Happy Mother’s Day all you mom’s out there. You’re the best Mom ever!

Yesterday, in an effort to get Mia quickly into the car, I grabbed a drawing pad and all her markers. As we were heading out, instead of hearing the sounds of happy drawing, I heard Mia throw a marker in frustration. “I’m no good at drawing!” she cried. This had been a theme for a few months now. No longer content to just draw from within her imagination, Mia has become more aware of standards. Sofia is the one who’s good at drawing at school (and she’s really good). I heard her flipping through the pages of the pad. “See! I’m no good!” She was using her younger self as evidence against her. Kindergarten seems to be the world of comparisons, and shaming. I knew this was coming—I teach people how to get past this in my writing classes for goodness sake, I know it happens—but still my heart broke to see a five-year-old already with a strongly developed critic, beating herself up for not immediately being able to draw perfectly. Every time she walks past the real canvas painting she did in preschool at 3, the one that was my present for Christmas that year—she claims she doesn’t like it. It’s too babyish. I miss the self-assurance of the three-year-old who saw no problems in scribbling outside of the lines, and who was happy to explain that this scribble was the sky, and that scribble was the horse. Who was proud, not ashamed, of her drawings.

What to do? Another unexpected parenting dilemma. I don’t want to be one of those parents who pretends everything is equal, or that their kid is good at everything. It’s true that Sofia is better at drawing than her. I reached. “Mia, how did you get to be so good at the monkey bars?” A short pause. “I practiced.” “Right. So you can practice and get better at drawing too.” This seemed to calm her, for now. It was Picasso who said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up.”

Mia was crying again.

I’d promised her she could have my old eye shadows to play with when I’d gotten my new eye shadow. I gave them to her. So why was she crying?
“Only two? That’s it?” She was not faking this cry. She was distraught.

I have been noticing this tendency of hers to want more and more, the early stages of serious materialism that will not serve her at all. I knew I needed to nip it in the bud. But that didn’t seem to be what was going on here, was it? So I looked through my make up bag, which unfortunately I had cleaned out very thoroughly not so long before. I came up with a few more items that were safe for her to play with.

“Five? That’s how old I am. I don’t want to have the number five!”

OK, now there was really nothing I could do, right?

“Mia, I gave you what you wanted. There’s nothing else here. I’m going to get us ready for the pool. You can cry if you want. That’s your choice.” And I walked out of the bathroom.

I gave it a few minutes, then went back to check on her. She had just tossed her favorite purse containing the five offending items into the trash. Then she cried some more and picked it back out. Now I found myself in that parenting dilemma. Should I hold the line? Be firm? Or was this something that wasn’t that important and I was creating a problem where there was none, just to show that I was the boss? I decided to get more information.

As gently as possible, I asked, “What is it you want, Mia?”

“I want one more thing.” She had calmed down a little, which was encouraging.

I picked up my make up bag again. “I’ll tell you what. I will give you this purple eye shadow.” It was my favorite eye shadow pencil, very good quality, but not an everyday color. “But I may occasionally borrow it back. OK?” I held it out to her.

She took it and said, “OK Mama.” She tucked it in her purse.

“Now,” I hoped to successfully move on this time. “Let’s pick the suit you will wear to the pool.” We went into her room and she happily looked through her bathing suits and we went on with our day.

Later, when we were back from the pool, I helped her move her Cinderella vanity closer to her bed so she could sit there and try on all her new make up. She played happily while I made dinner. A successful parenting balancing act.

There is new evidence in the ongoing debate about whether it’s better to go with a traditional publisher or self-publish.

I was excited a few months ago to see that one of my favorite bloggers, Alan Sepinwall, who is a television critic, had written a book (The Revolution Was Televised). I was also intrigued to see that he had self-published. I emailed him to ask why he had decided to go this route and not the traditional one. I assumed someone with his high profile would not have trouble finding a publisher. He directed me to an interview he did with Indie Reader wherein he explained that while he had initially attempted to go through traditional means, and had received a small offer, he decided he’d do better on his own. And then, apparently to his surprise as well as everyone else’s, Michiko Kakutani, the feared New York Times book reviewer, gave him a rave review (Dec. 6, 2012.)

Most of the time, even published books can’t get attention from her, so for her to review a self-published book was big news.  And his comment was telling: “there are tools for self-publishing — in terms of production, distribution and promotion — that didn’t used to exist. (One of the most frequent comments I got from people right after the paperback came out was, ‘It looks like a real book’ — by which they meant, it looked exactly like a book they would find on the shelf at Barnes & Noble.) And I suppose in that way, the rise of the cable networks — who, by the late ’90s, were able to make shows that looked like “real” TV shows — parallels what’s happening here.”

The story could end there, with a happy self-published author. But then, the first week of January, I noticed something on the Publishers Marketplace website—the record of a deal between Sepinwall and Touchstone Publishing. He sold the rights to his book (through an agency by the way)to a mainstream publisher!

The moral? There’s no clear-cut answer. Every situation is unique and you must consider all the variables. In his case, he had a strong following, and lots of connections in the blogosphere to build interest in the beginning, and then he decided to capitalize on the publicity and get out of the book publishing business all at once.

If you want to read it, the new version won’t be out until May 2013, but if you have an e-reader you can buy it from Alan’s site directly: http://www.alansepinwall.com/

“IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” Mia must say that to me about once a day, usually with complete sincerity and at the top of her lungs. I have trouble keeping a straight face, because it’s always completely ludicrous. Like two days ago when her lunchbox slipped off her lap in the car and she couldn’t reach it. “You drove crooked! It’s all your fault!” Or when she fell trying to open her toybox and came running clear across the room to shout at me that, yes, somehow, it was all my fault. I have learned the hard way that trying to be reasonable or logical—or even worse, laugh about it—is not helpful. In fact it usually escalates a shout into a crying jag or some other hysteria.

 
But the reason I want to laugh is that, as with so many things about raising a child, I find myself caught thinking how often I behave that way. It’s so tempting and easy to absolve ourselves of guilt when there’s a handy person close by we can pin it all on. I will never forget how, a few weeks into my marriage, I couldn’t find my car keys and I was certain, certain, my new husband had forgotten to put the keys on the pretty hooks we’d just put up for that purpose. That was the way my parents had solved the lost key problem and I’d been trained very well from my childhood to always put the keys back on the hook. Therefore, it MUST be my husband’s fault that I couldn’t find my keys. At that moment, I was able to locate my spare set and take off for wherever it was I needed to go. But chagrin, embarrassment, and horrible self-awareness were in store for me later that day when I went back to unpacking in the front hall and discovered my keys under a pile of empty boxes I’d been stacking.

 
Mia can’t understand it now, but this is why I always want to laugh. I’m laughing at all our humanness, and…I’m just hoping that maybe now I am a little less likely to act like a five-year-old and try to pin all my problems on the person nearest me.

We’d had a great day, spent completely with one of my best friends and her three-year-old—whom we hardly ever get to see. We ended the day at the park and had just said goodbye to Chloe, who would be asleep the minute she got home although it was only 5.

Mia hates goodbyes and she hates leaving the park.  So after the usual five minute warnings she was very unco-operative. “I’m leaving,” she threatened. “I’m going somewhere where no one will tell me what to do.” And then when I was insistent, she shouted, “I hate you! You’re the worst mom ever!” Then she kicked me.  Drastic actions ensued involving getting into the car and having a “car time out.”

Mia hates this. It’s simply that I don’t talk or respond to her for the designated period, starting at one minute and doubling with every continued infraction. She also knew the cookies she’d been promised for the car ride would not now be given. She cried, begged, and pleaded. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t kick you! It was my imaginary friend!” When I wouldn’t relent, she continued, “It’s not fair! It wasn’t me! And I’m so huuuu-ng-rrrrrry! I’l starve!” I was unmoved. Then, quietly, “Actually, it wasn’t my imaginary friend. I just made that up so I wouldn’t get punished.” That got me.

For being honest, I told her, I’d agree to a compromise. If she could be nice for the remainder of the drive to Target, I would give her one cookie when we arrived. Just one. She was so happy, and grateful. Then as we turned the corner, she slipped. “I hate you!” But stopped almost mid-sentence to insist, “I didn’t say that to you, I said that to the tree!” I let it slide.

Gratified by the cookies, she deemed me the best mom ever.

The other night I picked Mia up from the next-door neighbor’s, we went home and she had a snack and we brushed her teeth and read her three stories, and it wasn’t until then that we realized: no blankies.

I’m not one of those parents who ever restricts anything that helps the child calm down. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s Mia’s volatile emotions, but I let her have her pacifier way too long, and a bottle, and as far as I’m concerned she can take these blankies with her to college if it helps.

She can give Linus a run for his money: she has two, the white blankie for coziness and the purple blankie to run her fingers over and over against the bumps as she falls asleep. She’s been doing this since she was a year old.

Mia was alarmed. “My blankies! I can’t sleep without my blankies!” Her voice pitched higher and higher, on the verge of breakdown. “OK, calm down,” I said in my calmest voice. “But my blankies help me calm down! I can’t calm down without them!” She had a point. “I’ll text Misa to see if they are still up.” It was 10:00 p.m. now. I would not just knock on the door. I texted. No response. Mia’s eyes widened. “I can’t sleep without them!” She cried again, near hysteria. “Well, Mia,” I tried reason. “I know that’s not true because one time, you did.” Of course that was when she was 3, and still sometimes just conked out. “How about your other blankies?” I went across to her room and found her soft bunny and blanket she’d gotten for Easter. “How about these?” I offered. She grabbed them from me and threw them off the bed. “No!” She screamed. “I NEED MY BLANKIES!”

“Let me just go check to make sure I didn’t overlook them,” I said, stalling for time as I walked to the living room. But I knew the moment she asked for them that we’d left them behind. As we’d walked out of the other house I’d had that nagging feeling we’d left something.

I walked back in to the room, still putting on a good face. “Well they aren’t there but maybe Misa will text back.” Mia wasn’t fooled. She went off like a siren, letting go into total hysteria. I decided it was time for some tough love. I tried to remember what her Montessori preschool teacher had done in these situations. “Mia, I know it’s very upsetting. I will let you cry for five minutes, but after that, you have to calm down or you will need to go into your own room by yourself.” I set the timer on the phone. “By myself? But I’m afraid!” That set off more tears and hysteria. I remained calm. “Mia I know you can calm down. It will be OK. I’m going to get ready for bed.” I left her crying and walked into the bathroom to change and brush my teeth. Not for the first time I thought, motherhood is not for the faint of heart.

I came out again and saw there was still one minute left. If you want five minutes to last long, listen to a desperate child cry at the top of their lungs. My entire body was tense. I sat down next to her and patted her a little. “OK Mia, crying time’s almost over.” “I – can’t—stop!” she gulped out through sobs. “Yes you can, Mia,” I made my voice as hypnotic as I could. “If you can’t you’ll have to go in your own room for awhile until you are done.” I saw her eyes widen and watched her make a supreme effort. She took a deep shaky breath. “There, see! I knew you could do it.” She actually stopped entirely. Took another breath. “But I miss my blankies!” she cried and was off again. I repeated my threat calmly. She stopped again. “OK Mia, I’m going to say our prayers OK? And then we’ll lie down.” Amazingly I watched her stay calm all through the prayers I had made as long and boring as possible to help her to relax.

Then the moment arrived. We lay down together in the bed, she curled around me. I remembered when she was an infant I learned that if you gave the baby a blanket they would bond with it as a substitute for the mother. They didn’t tell me that five years later the mother would be no substitute for the blankie! There was another despondent sigh. “I miss my blankies!” but no tears accompanied it. “I know honey,” I rubbed her back again. I was expecting a long night of restlessness, but I looked over and saw that she had actually fallen asleep! She had actually cried herself to sleep.

At 7 am Misa responded to the text. “I’m so sorry! I just saw this!” I texted back and she invited me over. I snuck out while Mia slept and into Misa’s living room, and there were the blankies on the floor just where Mia’d said they’d be. I snuck back in and brought them to Mia, waking her up by rubbing her face with them. “Look Mia! You did it!” She opened her eyes and smiled. “Blankies!” she said and rolled over into them gratefully.

This is a piece I wrote several years ago, and I still feel the same way.  What do you think?

Can Groundhog Day, that little made-up holiday that distracts us from the long haul of winter, become as big as Christmas? Okay, maybe not, but I’m making the case that Groundhog Day , the movie, should become the It’s a Wonderful Life of this generation. I want families to gather round on Groundhog Day and watch this movie together, just like It’s a Wonderful Life has become the Christmas tradition. This movie evokes the same deep feelings, shows the same possibility of transformation through love, only while Frank Capra did it with sincerity and angels, Harold Ramis does it with humor, cynicism and Bill Murray.

It was easy to dismiss this movie when it first came out in 1993 as just another in the long line of silly movies Ramis and Murray had done together (like Caddyshack and Ghostbusters). But the screenplay by Danny Rubin is actually addressing something much deeper. He does it so effectively, and addresses our modern, existential, God-suspicious existence so subtly that some might not even be aware of it. Those out on the spiritual frontlines have noticed though. Ramis says he’s gotten mail from “every known religious organization and discipline, from yogi’s, Hasidic Jews, Jesuits, psychoanaylsts” claiming this movie’s message “perfectly expresses our philosophy.” And the message holds up

No one embodies the modern I’m-smarter-than-you cynic who’s always out for himself better than Bill Murray. And it takes someone with his attitude and comic genius to make this premise work, and help us modern cynics find the meaning of life in our world today, by showing us how to literally live life “one day at a time.” Who would have thought that he would become the Jimmy Stewart of our time?

In It’s a Wonderful Life we got to see how one man’s dreams keep getting postponed but he naturally does good in spite of himself. In a crisis, he feels life is not worth living. He gets his wish. He sees what it would be like if he’d never been born. Only then can he see how many lives he’s touched, how many people he helped, all from his small home town. It never fails to make us cry, because we realize that our ordinary lives are worth living too.

Groundhog Day has a different premise. Here we see one guy who is stuck in what to him is the worst day of his life, putting up with stupid inferior people in a small town. He thinks it’s hoakey, and people who are optimists are stupid too. Phil is mean and cruel in a casually off-hand way, only thinking of himself and how he can get ahead. He’s a weatherman in Pittsburgh, who has to go make the trip to Punxsatawney to do the Groundhog Day footage. He’s mean to his cameraman (Chris Elliot is good as this nondescript, easy-to-overlook guy) and physically attracted but intellectually repelled by his producer, Rita (Andie McDowell, who’s great at playing the sweet optimist). After spending the night in the bed and breakfast (he refuses to stay in the local hotel), he ignores a homeless man and runs from the boring Ned Ryerson from high school who tries to sell him insurance. He goes through the motions of the broadcast, much to the disgust of his crew, but then they are snowed in by the blizzard he didn’t predict. This is the set up.

The next morning, he wakes up and has to relive the same day. It takes him awhile to realize what’s happening. When he wakes up again on the third day and it’s still the same day, he panics, and tries to get help, but no one else is having the same experience. For them it’s a new day. He thinks about all the really good days he’s had in the past. “Why couldn’t I get that day?” he wonders of a day on a tropical island with a beautiful woman. He sits in the coffee shop with two local yokels and asks without irony, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?” “That about sums it up for me,” one of the yokels replies. This is the situation most people are in today. If every day is the same, what choices do we make, what is our attitude? Are we cynical and smart, not giving money to homeless people, pushing away the obnoxious Ned Ryersons’ of the world, only out for ourselves, mad at God and feeling powerless? This is actually a serious philosophical question. How do you live life one day at a time? The humor and the pathos in this situation come from making it literally one day. Ramos and Rubin explore all sides of it (actually using Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of dying as the model).

First Phil realizes (as the yokels point out): no consequences! So he eats all he can, doesn’t floss. Tears the town up, has sex with a pretty girl by telling her everything she wants to hear because there is no tomorrow. But eventually even this gets tiring, and he decides to pursue what he really wants: Rita. But his tricks don’t work with her. After he meticulously plans a “perfect day” for her by finding out all her likes and dislikes, she sees through him. “Is this what love is for you?” she asks as he keeps plying her with more and more of her favorite things. “I could never love someone like you Phil, because you can never love anyone but yourself.” “That’s not true,” he responds. “I don’t even like myself.” He gives in to despair. In his next on camera report he says, “It’s going to be cold, it’s going to be gray, and last you for the rest of your life.” He decides to kill himself by stealing the Groundhog and running the truck over the cliff, then by putting a toaster in his bath, by walking in front of a truck, jumping off a building, and many more. But nothing works. Every morning, like clockwork the numbers turn over to 6 am again on his digital clock radio, he hears Sonny & Cher sing “I Got You Babe” again and the same inane chatter from the DJ’s on the radio.

After his suicides fail, he tries a new approach. He levels with Rita. He proves his story is true because he knows everything that will happen. She thinks it’s a trick. “Maybe the real God uses tricks,” he responds. “Maybe he’s not omnipotent, he’s just been around so long he knows everything.” She finally comes to believe him. They sit on the bed in his room flipping cards into a hat. “Is this what you do with eternity, Phil?” she asks him. She admits she’s always wished for a thousand lifetimes. “Maybe it’s not a curse. Maybe it depends on how you look at it.” He has a flip reply. “Gosh, you’re an upbeat lady,” but she’s struck a chord. As he watches her sleep, he admits to himself that he loves her kindness, how nice she is to people. And that although he doesn’t deserve her, he would like to and he would love her the rest of his life.

The next time the clock flips over, Phil’s attitude changes. He gives money to the homeless man. He brings coffee for his crew and asks their opinion. He finds the homeless man having a heart attack and tries to save him. The next (same) day he plies him with food and stays with him, but he still dies. Then he turns himself to doing good for the living and making more of himself. He reads. He learns to play the piano. He makes a magnificent speech out of his piece. And attracts Rita to him. That night he becomes the man of her dreams from the inside, and he has a revelation. “Whatever happens tomorrow, I’m happy now because I love you.” This is the message of Groundhog Day, just as “No man is a failure who has friends” is the message of It’s a Wonderful Life. He’s learned to live in the moment and be satisfied. And as a result, he gets his reward. The curse is ended, and Rita is his. He is so joyful, he decides he wants to stay in Punxsatawney. His first question to Rita is, “Is there anything I can do for you today?”

My daughter is afraid of goblins. I don’t want her to have to be afraid of an armed gunman entering her classroom. So I didn’t watch commercial television at all this weekend (thank God for streaming Netflix–$8 a month for all her favorite shows with no commercials or news briefs). I don’t know anything about gun control. I’m not an expert on psychology. But I’ve been in the media business since 1981. I do know that television is insidious, and can at times be harmful. At least one study has shown that the more coverage of 9/11 people watched, the more their stress increased.  And the more time was spent with family and friends, the more stress decreased. The only way I could be assured that Mia did not have any exposure (because kids can hear the tv when it’s on) was to not turn it on. (Read here about the effect of second hand tv exposure.)
I also did not want to participate in the glamourization of violence that tv almost always creates. In his great book, The Gift of Fear, Gavin deBecker talked about how assassins are always given three names (starting, I think, with John Wilkes Boothe) which has the effect of memorializing them. (His website has some great information about child safety too. Check it out here.)
I have read coverage. I know that reading something is much different than seeing visual images over and over. I know the information. I have read Obama’s speech. I believe I know all I need to know. I want to give peace to the families who are suffering, by not feeling compelled to know every detail of their children’s last moments. Instead, I want to be present with my daughter. To be in this moment with her. And let her be a normal kid.
This morning when I dropped her off at school she was still afraid only of goblins. I hope that it will stay that way.