A Brave Writer's Life in Brief - Page 561 of 754 - Thoughts from my home to yours A Brave Writer's Life in Brief
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A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Thoughts from my home to yours

Poetry Teatime: bring out the China!

Heatherteatime

Our first Brave Writer tea ended up late in the evening. We enjoyed lemon tea, cookies and fruit as well as a lot of Shel Silverstein’s poems. Both kids and I read aloud and we talked. Thanks for reminding me to bring out the bone China…..

Heather
—

April and May bring lots of rain so here are some rainy day poems you might share with your kids:

Rain

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

– Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1895).
Scottish essayist, novelist and poet

Rain In Summer

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Rain Poem

The rain was like a little mouse,
Quiet, small, and gray,
It pattered all around the house
And then it went away.
It did not come, I understand,
Indoors at all, until,
It found an open window and
Left tracks across the sill.

– Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893-1986)

Set the table for tea – and bring out the bone China, as Heather recommends!

Posted in Poetry Teatime | Comments Off on Poetry Teatime: bring out the China!


What I hate about writing

DSCN8039.JPGI wrote in my journal this morning. Not a handwritten flower-covered lined paper book. No, I opened a Word doc and started typing. I find handwriting too slow and too painful, like many of your kids. Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I used handwriting for journaling.

Anyway, I was reading someone else’s blog this morning—a published someone, a someone with a book that’s popular right now, but who is also in my Facebook feed (I had to ask myself, “Are we friends? Have I met her?” I couldn’t remember). In any case, she’s clearly a writer. She has that “thing” that I associate with writerly writers—the cleverness, the snark, the sharing of personal experience in that candid, use-the-“f”-word-because-I’m-irreverent-and-it’s-2012 way. I do understand this.

I feel like I’ve been versions of that person. I remember taking breaks from journaling (I’ve kept a journal/diary since 4th grade). I would stop when my own writing nauseated me. I’d notice that I was more interested in the sound of my own voice than in the ideas. Or I’d notice that I was literally reading my writing back as I wrote, imagining how it would sound once I was dead and my fan-following had discovered this one unwritten journal and they were poring over my last insightful words. As those embarrassing images would slip into view, I’d clap the book closed and go on a journaling fast. It was a true fast—hard to stay with it, sneaking chances to write anyway (letters were always a great “diet cheat”).

This morning I felt fed up—with words, with thoughts, with being pushed to have new ideas or insights that pinged off someone else’s personal journey. So I wrote about it. Hypocrite. Here I am, doing the same danged thing. Writing about writing.

It’s like my number one pet peeve: song lyrics about songs. “I have to say I love you, in a song” or “This song’s for you,” or “So I wrote it down in a song.” Seriously. Sing a song… Don’t sing about singing a song.

Yet I’m writing about writing this morning.

And I just wanted to say that it’s okay with me if you’re not insightful when you write. I’d rather be bored than manipulated. I’d rather read about your day than about your cosmic revelation. In fact, I really really like reading about someone’s day and finding the take away for myself (you don’t need to tell me what I should take away). Sometimes it’s enough to sit next to someone else’s life around the Internet campfire and just be with it. Not every experience has to drip with meaning.

Sometimes there is no meaning. Sometimes one word in back of the other is all there is to write. Sometimes you don’t know what you mean until years later when you reread your old journals with horror and realize that you “knew” all along you were supposed to leave, but made excuses using contrived insight to make you stay.

What I hate about writing is that it teases you into believing your thoughts are important. They are. I say that to you every day here in Brave Writer. But they’re also astonishingly mundane… because we’re all the same essentially. Getting by on one word, one idea, one over-wrought insight at a time.

Have a good day. 🙂 (I included a photo with this post to cheer it up.)

Posted in Writing about Writing | 2 Comments »


Friday Freewrite: Photograph

Friday Freewrite: Pick a photograph (from a family album or an ad or a photo in a magazine). Write about what happened before the photo was taken. Go!

Posted in Friday Freewrite | Comments Off on Friday Freewrite: Photograph


Podcast: Manage the Damage

Manage the Damage podcast

In our second podcast Noah and I look at how a parent can help a child understand the value of writing in his or her life rather than resenting or resisting it.

Noah shares memories from when we worked on writing together when he was young.

And we added intro music. This is too fun!

—Julie

P.S. Listened to it just now and we lost a 30 second bit where Noah signs off.

Image by Randen Pederson (cc cropped, tinted, text added)

Posted in Podcasts | 5 Comments »


Professional Mom

I never liked the terms “homemaker” or “housewife” or even “stay-at-home” mom (as if any of us actually stay at home, in this age of driving everywhere!). Each term implied to me that the choice to spend 24/7 with my kids had more to do with the house than the people in it.

Today, I read an incidental comment in a blog from 2009 that referred to a woman as a “Professional Mom.” The words shimmered on the screen for a moment and then I heard a small boy band of angels harmonizing: “Ahhhhhh.” That’s it. That’s the term for what we do.

Not ‘Home Sweet Home’ for Me
The inclusion of the word “home” or “house” in defining women who choose to make careers out of educating their kids and/or managing the details of their family’s life together, shrinks the scope of what “mothering” and “educating” imply. Home is a great word—when referring to flopping on the couch, watching TV, getting away from “out there.” Home can be the place where memories are housed (groan). Home is either a respite from the world away or a mini-prison, depending on who you live with.

But when the words “home” or “house” are attached to the work I do every day, I feel diminished. My work is suddenly the ill-fitting homemade prom dress, not the sparkly, elegance of Vera Wang!

Professh, baby!
“Professional” on the other hand, implies trained, skilled, qualified—a certification that elevates you to the level of expert in your field. Silk stockings, a wide desk, business lunches over cocktails—”glam cool smart” life.

Now I know realistically, “mocktails” are more likely to appear in sippy cups at your lunches. Stockings? Do you mean soup stock? A wide desk buried in paperwork and Cheerios, strangely resembling the kitchen table, more like.

Our profession is a down-and-dirty one, but it IS a profession. The oldest one. Training comes through immersion—a blind leap into the ocean of parenthood, where we juggle the manual in one hand and the crying baby in the other, while hanging onto the life raft during a rip tide.

10,000 Miles Hours
Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, asserts that expertise in any field is created through practice. 10 hours a week for 20 years gives you 10,000 hours. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. As though you only spend 10 hours a week on this job! I figure if you calculated your time investment using 40 hours per week (which is still on the low end, if you’ve had babies and toddlers), you would have hit 10,000 hours in less than 5 years.

Let me repeat that: By the time your oldest child is 5, you are an expert—a professional mom. Your “certification” may still not know how to tie his shoes, but proof of your expertise hangs round your ankles and tugs on your shirt tail for more juice, all the live-long day.

Your multi-tasking lifestyle may not draw a paycheck in cash (though it certainly does in hugs), but it is no less significant to the well-being of society than Oreo cookies, for heaven’s sake (celebrating its 100th birthday as a tribute to the achievement of factory produced food items). I’d argue professional mothering is a lot more significant—yet at a dinner party, you probably would get more accolades for being the marketing director of Oreo than the cookie-baking mom of your neighborhood.

Schmart & Schmexy
I own a business. This one. And when I go to business networking events, it always stumps me when people ask what I do. I tell them I own a company. Then I explain that it teaches language arts and writing to homeschooling families. Nearly every person in these business contexts has said to me: “What an interesting idea for a business. How did you think of that?” as though I sat down one day and decided to be an entrepreneur.

Not on your life!

  • I’m an expert mother.
  • I’m a specialized educator.
  • I’m a freelance writer.
  • I’m a dedicated family facilitator and home provider.

In short,

  • I’m a professional mom

…who happens to own a business that provides training and support for our profession. I give the equivalent of in-services, courses, manuals, workshops, and consulting to expand the expertise of my highly trained and dedicated community of colleagues in the profession of motherhood (and education).

And I’m proud of it! At a lawyer’s open house last fall, I stopped saying I owned a business after the third lawyer asked if I was a lawyer. I simply replied: “I’m a mother to five kids. Best career decision ever.” I wish I had known about the “professional mom” moniker! Would have loved saying that.

Priceless
Want to know how much you’re worth (what your paycheck should be)? Take this quiz and then print the paycheck at the end and frame it.

Salary.com’s 12th Annual Salary Survey

Ours is the oldest, and (dare I say it? Yes, I dare) most important profession of all. Well done, Professional Moms. Whether you live in a hut, a house, a condo, or a McMansion, you’re a pro.

Buy some silk stockings and take a lunch downtown this month. Put it on the business card. After all, it’s a business expense and you deserve it.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, On Being a Mother | 2 Comments »


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