The Vision Thing

Some people look at a field of rubble and see the end of civilization, while others say, "Hmm, nice spot for a garden." One of the perks of my writing business is that I often work with visionary people. It's exciting to help someone massage an idea until it's got the right shape and dimensions. My job is getting that vision on paper so we can transform it into reality.

The "visionary" trait is not universally distributed. People who have it are often very creative and most are a bit headstrong. Stubbornness is an important quality when you're trying to launch a new project -- whether it's a book or a skyscraper. Many obstacles can arise when moving an idea from the stage of foggy inception to real life. The architect of a good idea has to be at least a little pushy to move things from phase to phase.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to chat over coffee with a long-time client who has founded several organizations and created some gorgeous city parks and buildings. We both agreed that you can usually sense when some innovative idea will work or not. If your vision has true value, pieces start to come together in ways you hadn't anticipated to make it even more interesting than you originally thought. Doomed ideas seem to keep getting hung up on the rapids. No matter how hard you work to solve problems, no amount of effort can revive them. This guideline is one I use to help decide whether to keep writing something or look for a new angle that finds traction in my imagination and allies in the real world.

This week, while working on a new book project, even the research process really fascinated me. As lists of facts coalesced, I began to see more value and complexity in the concept. When momentum grows, so does commitment. This is what makes writing a true adventure. It's like living in an Eden of ideas.

The photo here, by the way, is not a picture of our Pocono garden. It's a shot of the Libertylands garden in Philadelphia. Those gorgeous flowers were planted on the site of an abandoned tannery where roses were once just a dream. Moral of the story is: plant a paragraph today if you want a bouquet of chapters tomorrow.

War and Memory

Even in the tiny hamlet of Albrightsville, we have an annual ceremony of rifles and Taps to honor deceased local veterans. The cemetery at the top of our hill is half the size of a soccer field but it serves as the final resting place for veterans from every war from Abe Lincoln's to Vietnam. There are no graves for soldiers who fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, but the solemn gunshots force you remember the people still fighting wars for which there is no true end in sight.

It's a mistake to believe that wars ever end. So many soldiers bring home harrowing memories that haunt them their entire lives. My dad was a Korean War veteran and, although he would never admit it, it scarred him in ways that undermined his efforts to be a good husband and father. He spent a lot of time celebrating his military experience but never took the time to disarm the ticking bomb of distress inside him. He suffered from endless nightmares and recurring heart problems. When Marines fresh from active duty would visit him at our house, we always had to leave the room. He did not want us to know the gory details of wartime, preferring to wrap them in a flag.

A few weeks ago, I also lost a long time friend who received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and two Purple Heart medals after extensive tours of duty in Vietnam. Luis Munoz, Sr., was my advocate and protector when I first started working in a dangerous North Philly neighborhood. He helped me run programs that sent young Latinos go to college and he personally raised many scholarship dollars for kids who often couldn't afford to buy their college textbooks. Lots of the students who won those scholarships were from Edison High School which, at that time, was the high school that had produced the greatest number of veterans who had been killed in the Vietnam war. He never mentioned any connection between his own battle scars and his efforts to help young people find a path away from military service. But on many occasions, he shared heartbreaking stories of things he'd seen and done in the war. Despite the wounds he carried, he was a friend and hero to many, many people.

Writers from Ernie Pyle to James Jones and Tim O'Brien have used the printed page to make us examine the truth of war and its human costs. If you have a war memory or are a second hand veteran, like so many children of soldiers, today is a good day to put some of that truth on paper and make those memories count in new ways.

Did the French Invent Everything?

Shrinks have lots of theories about how and why we create, but anthropologists now think they've dug up the roots of modern creativity. One-upping psychologists and poets, the rock hounds excavating Chauvet Cave in Southern France, have uncovered stone rooms filled with detailed paintings made more than 31,000 years ago.

Werner Herzog, one of the world's great storytellers, has made the Chauvet cave paintings the focus of his documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which was a big hit at the Toronto Film Festival. Last week in Philadelphia, I had a chance to watch the film and reflect on its message in the context of Philly's lush creative community. While the city is known for great baseball (GO PHILS!) and cheesesteaks, for me it's always been a hive of creative communities, bursting with artistic expression.

Philly is dense with gorgeous murals, hidden gardens, and every form of poetry known to man and thug. The city also has links to France -- Ben Franklin's gang loved Paris! -- that help me accept the Chauvet anthropologists' theory that their cave paintings may be the first art that used modern techniques of shading and perspective. It's okay with me if the French take credit for inventing modern art since they've done so much to refine it during the intervening centuries.

For a writer, however, the most interesting part of Herzog's story comes at the end of his film during a discussion of how aboriginal people explain the source of their creative impulse. When the Chauvet scientists talked about worldwide cave art discoveries, one man mentioned a story about an aboriginal cave artist in Australia. An ethnographer asked the aboriginal man to explain why he would go the caves to touch up ancient paintings. The aboriginal artist protested that he did not paint -- it was the Great Spirit doing the painting. For me, this explanation also describes the most profound writing experiences. It is not Ego Me that writes good stuff. It is that strange visitor who steps in from the underground cave to leave inspired work on my page.

They have yet to discover any books in Chauvet Cave. But I feel certain that one day they will stumble into the cavern library which is surely located just behind the cave's central fireplace. Unfortunately, the reading chair is made of stalagmites.

Good Mothers Publish their Children

Merriam-Webster offers this two-bit definition of the word "mother": a female parent. But if you have a mother, or are a mother, or have ever had the privilege of knowing one, you'll note the number of details this definition omits. Apart from the million tasks that go into caring for families, mothers are awfully creative people. Some have also been exceptional writers in their "spare" time.

Toni Morrison, for example, earned a master's degree, gave birth to two sons, and got divorced before she ever wrote her first book. She accomplished this while holding down a full time job and raising her kids, who have never written tell-alls to gripe about her parenting skills. In fact, one of her sons (Slade) has even collaborated with her on several children's books.

Somehow in the process of raising children, teaching, and writing books, Toni Morrison managed to win the following awards:

1977 National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon
1977 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award
1987-88 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
1988 American Book Award for Beloved
1988 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Beloved
1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved
1989 MLA Commonwealth Award in Literature
1993 Nobel Prize for Literature
1993 Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris
1994 Condorcet Medal, Paris
1994 Pearl Buck Award
1994 Rhegium Julii Prize for Literature
1996 Jefferson Lecture
1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2000 National Humanities Medal

Just pondering all that may lead to exhaustion. But her example also shows us that it is possible to be a good mother and a successful writer. Sometimes I think of my neglected manuscripts as abandoned children. I know in my heart that they deserve a better fate, yet I put off taking care of them. Today is a good day to revise the to-do list and become a better mother to works I still love.

Country Characters, City Plots

This week the first hummingbird arrived at Pennsyl Pointe and dandelions erupted across the lawn. Instead of sitting around admiring the spring, I propelled myself across the state into the roiling energy of New York City where I met with many writers and picked up a few urban plot points.

Life in the woods is full of beauty and quiet charm. But when I throw myself into the arms of a big city like New York, I always come home with a head full of new projects and hot ideas to nourish my writing. Fortunately, the big city stories I just added to my agenda are neatly tied to my blissful life in the woods. In the Big Apple, I had a chance to see the Oscar-nominated film Gasland. Anyone living in the Pennsylvania counties that sit upon Marcellus Shale must see this movie. It's time for people to educate themselves about the unpublicized environmental threats associated with the fracking process. At the screening, I had a chance to meet Josh Fox, the film's director, and talk with people in the publicity crew for his movie. Now I'm actively plotting to bring the film to Carbon County for a public screening and discussion. If you're interested in working with me on this project, please get in touch.

A second writing project grew out of the fun I had meeting writers at the annual conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with so many writers in different parts of the country. My Philly crew is very dear to me and I've enjoyed getting to know members of the Black Diamond Writers Network. Now, through my growing involvement with Gotham Ghostwriters and ASJA, I think it's time for ... a city-to-woods writers party at Pennsyl Pointe. Wanna help me plan it? Send me a note and let's talk before the dandelions take over the lawn in earnest.

Today the Associated Press reported that Hosni Mubarak, ousted president of Egypt, is not healthy enough to be moved to a military hospital. He will continue to be held in detention in a hospital at Sharm el-Sheikh until his condition is more stable. Here is a link to my recent article in Carbon County Magazine about the revolution in Egypt and some thoughts on freedom of expression.

The Triumph of Instinct

Time to tune in to the soundtrack of spring. Crows, robins, turbulent waters, wind, dogs -- there's sound everywhere silence once reigned. Instinct churns all of it. When writers listen to their instincts it will also tell them where to find the real story.

Some writers create characters that embody instinct. In great novels like The Girl Who Played with Fire, Lisbeth Salander is able to survive a million threats to her life because her instincts are as sharp as those of any animal. Rape, gunfire, police manhunts, technology -- nothing actually overpowers her highly developed gut knowledge of the true threats in life. She also has a well developed sense of morality that underlies her sometimes violent approach to justice.

E.M. Forster speaks to the alchemical process that pushes writers to hear their instinctive voices and incorporate them into great fiction. He says, "What can we say about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subcionsious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art...And when the process is over, when the novel is complete,....he will wonder how on earth he did it."

When your gut pushes you toward a story, follow it. For months, I had notes for a story on Egyptian filmmaking waiting for me to turn it into something. About two weeks ago, I was overcome with this idea that the time to write the story was on that day. I wrote it, found an interested publisher and wrote it out as fast as I could. The next day, Hosni Mubarak and his sons were taken into detention for questioning on charges of corruption and abuse of power. It gave me a lot of satisfaction to hear the story break on the news the day after I turned in my final draft. If only my instincts were that accurate for all aspects of life -- today I'd be writing from Paris instead of the Poconos.