Tag Archives: inspiration

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline Arnold

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Did you set a resolution in January that has yet to pan out? Good news: you’re not alone. Great news: this book might help you get back on track.

Arnold, Caroline. Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently. New York: Viking, 2014. Print.

Summary: Arnold unpacks a methodology for setting teeny-tiny goals with itsy-bitsy implementation plans. Given time (a few weeks), those bits and pieces accumulate and transform into the behemoth we all crave: change for the better.

Critique: According to Arnold, 88% of all Americans fail on their resolutions and goal-setting. Part of the problem roots in how we state our goals.

I want to get…(fill in the blank: a novel published, buff, more organized, etc.).

Or, I want to be…(again fill in: a writer, rich, tidy, etc).

In order to get or be anything, one must first do. So, to set an attainable goal, start by rewording it with what you can do.

The next trick requires an understanding of how the brain does things, which is primarily by habit. Habits, or auto-pilot behaviors, form because the brain prefers speed and efficiency. Technically, so do most of us. Do you really want to stop and think about how to tie your shoes or brush your teeth every.single.time as if it was the first time you ever tied your shoes or brushed your teeth? Who’s got time for that? Not you, says your brain, so the neurons carve out some deep, habitual grooves which lead to rapid-fire auto-actions. But if you want to be/get something new, you must develop new habits, which means you must fill in those deep grooves and carve new ones.

To work with the brain’s neuroplastic abilities — that is, its ability to constantly rewire — Arnold maps out cunning ways to introduce tiny behavioral changes, one or two at a time. And when she says tiny, she means TINY. Rather than tackle your diet by ransacking all the junk from your kitchen cabinets, simply identify one problem food or eating behavior and work with it.

Set a time for that new action to occur (every Wednesday at 9 o’clock, for example.) Allow that time to trigger the behavior so that, eventually, you do it without thinking. Thus, it becomes a habit. Or, pin the new behavior on to an already established habit (ex: I will always consult my *new* to-do list before I check email.) Dress your new behaviors in positive language. In other words, rather than obsesses over limits or restrictions (I CAN’T eat junk or candy), emphasize new permissions, privileges, and rewards (I CAN enjoy a healthy snack).

Writers who struggle to get in a bit of writing (especially on days when they actually have time for it but don’t seem to be able to make it happen) are sure to take away from this book many useful tips and tricks. Plus, it’s printed in a really big font, which means it is a quick read. Big font, small time, you might say.

“Lego” by Judit Klein.

Having read this book a couple of months ago, I can firmly attest that the processes seem to work. Breaking down my big, vaguely stated goals and working at them one action at a time was a bit like dumping out the Lego bin of my life’s dreams. But bit by bit, the pieces are fitting together and a strange new landscape…or, erm…a jet plane is beginning to take shape.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

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abbey_desertsolitaireThe perfect book for anyone feeling, of late, as though the barbarian hordes are besieging all that is sacred and precious.

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. New York: Ballantine, 1968. Print.

Genre: nonfiction (nature/politics…enviropolitico?)

Summary: Edward Abbey, a rebel-rousing UNM graduate, goes to work for the National Parks Service. He endures a year in Arches, Utah, where he struggles with the merciless scrape of desert heat, as well as his swelling misanthropy for tourists and park administrators who seem to nimbly defile the sensuous landscape at every turn.

Critique: Like Abbey himself, the writing and narrative within this text are wayward, willful, fluid, stubborn, and unconventional. First and foremost, the book is an ode to the outdoors. A long, luxurious love poem honoring geology, praising desolation, and admiring stark vistas.

Second, the book may also serve as one of the most engrossing horticultural guides you’ll ever read.

Finally, Solitaire may be one of the timeliest treatises you could read this year, as the NPS picks up up the diapers and debris following the massive, record-busting influx of visitors during its 2016 centennial celebration, despite the endemic budgetary strangleholds imposed by Congress which have produced massive infrastructural failures. But will there be National Parks to flock to in the coming years? There is plenty of reason to worry and doubt, given the most recent White House Administration appointments, which have included powerful figures who oppose the fundamental premise of “public lands in public hands,” who ignore the studies linking spiritual and psychological healing with regular exposure to wild lands, who instead subscribe piously to a religion of nature as a source of untapped economic pulp.

Have we been through territory like this before? Yes, says Abbey. And we survived with our Parks–a unique notion in the world when they were first protected for the enjoyment of all people now and in the future, regardless of income, gender, religion, political leaning. Will we, and our Parks, survive this unfolding predicament? On that, Abbey cannot rightly say (and not just because he died in 1989). Since Abbey’s time, the Parks have come to face a truly dire duo of fresh challenges: appealing to minorities and Generation App.

What Edward Abbey might say is that the disconnects these populations experience when they visit a National Park links to the very infrastructure designed to attract them–an infrastructure he vehemently opposed and actively obstructed. Roads. Scenic pull-overs. Clean, running water. Flushing toilets. In Abbey’s view, these conveniences prevent people from breaking past the surface of what it is to be in the wild and witness its jaw-dropping miracles and horrors. Our predilection with comfort inhibits our chance to be and feel exposed…at risk…immersed…swallowed…challenged…basically, alive.

Read this book and take from Abbey a view of what the Parks are and were; what they’ve lost and what they could be. Glean from his feral trompings through the needling canyons what it is to be an animal outdoors, your civilized skin eroding like the stone arches, your spirit expanding, fed fat on the eternal nutrients of sun and space. Read this book and take heart; the revolution will, at least, have campfires!

(Photo credit for the teetering rock: NPS/Neal Herbert.)

The Water-Wise Home by Laura Allen

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Can you guess America’s largest irrigated, non-food producing crop?? Hint: It covers 63,000 square miles, according to NASA satellite imagery. Hint hint: It swallows 19 trillion gallons per year. The answer is grass. Ordinary front-lawn grass.

Now, it may not seem like an atrocity to soak our lawns with freshwater. After all, 326 quintillion gallons are available on Earth. I suppose I should mention only 3% of all those gallons is fresh (without poisonous quantities of oceanic salt). About 2/3 of that freshwater is locked up in ice and glaciers. Of the rest freely flowing, only .007% is clean and drinkable. Oh, and did I mention that .007% must be shared among the world’s 7 billion people…and a shitload of dumb grass?!

Where did I learn all this craziness?

allen_waterwiseAllen, Laura. The Water-Wise Home: How to Conserve, Capture, and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2015. Print.

Genre: eco-how-to

Summary: This very practical how-to guide shares useful diagrams and step-by-step instructions for DIY water projects, ranging from the simple to the complex.

Critique: Allen succinctly and startlingly explains the water shortage in her home state of California. She expands the conversation to the wider water crisis currently haunting the Southwest, and she concludes with an overview of the water catastrophe preying on the rest of the world. And that’s just the first chapter!

The liquid resources of the American West and Southwest are not enough to meet growing demands. Much of the precious supply of drinkable water is wasted in the average home. Meanwhile, clean, uncontaminated, unpolluted, drinkable water elsewhere around the world is in woefully short supply–getting shorter all the time. These facts are shocking. No, they are demoralizing! What’s to be done? All hope is lost!

Luckily, the rest of Allen’s text is devoted to uncovering cunning methods for conserving and recycling the water that gushes from our faucets or patters on the rooftop. As a scrappy DIY-er, Allen pestered Home Depot until she was able to re-plumb her showers and sinks so the gray water gets filtered and fed to the plants outside. She studied with horticulturalists and landscape architects to learn how to to build her own rain gardens–which sink rain runoff deep into currently dwindling groundwater supplies. She has worked long and hard to become an expert. She has worked with cities and towns to revamp their water usage. She will work with you, too!

By the time you finish this book, your entire outlook on the world and its water cycle will have altered for the better. You will look at the grass in your lawn and question why it gets more water than a child living in Africa. You will criticize all the concrete around your house as it sluices precious water down the street and storm drains rather than linger and quench your flowerbeds.

In short, you will be inspired and equipped to take action. No more apathetic moping. To Home Depot! Huzzah!

Chef’s Table (hint: look under the table)

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chefs-tableChef’s Table. Produced by David Gelb, Andrew Fried, et al. Boardwalk Pictures, City Room Creative, FINCH, 2015.

Genre: docuseries (cooking…and so much more)

Summary:The promoters and producers would have you believe that every episode of Chef’s Table profiles one of the world’s leading chefs for 45-55 minutes accompanied with pleasurably slow, sensuous, sumptuous shots of gourmet cuisine. And on the surface (dare I say, on the tabletop), that is entirely true. The other crucial aspect featured in every show exists under that surface and feeds a powerful extension of creation, much as nitrogen, roots, humus, and earthworms feed the organic bounty of the globe!

Critique: This show boasts a quiver of assets. Its tone is elegant, backed by sexy food montages soundtracked with classical music. Its cast of top chefs truly are geniuses and savants. Its topics are sophisticated at intelligent: ethical food supply, cultural restoration through food diplomacy, food as interpretive music, dance, even fairy tale! In short, this is not a show for folks who want to just “Netflix and chill.” It is too compelling to just be background ambiance.

nature-as-artist

“Nature as an artist-2” by zeeveez.

Also, I’d wager there are few amorous partners out there brash enough to compete with the sinful delectables served up on the show!

The core ingredient that really sizzles across every episode — and the reason why I am featuring it in the place of a recommended book — is its subtext. That which is happening under the tablecloth.

Writing students would do well to study how most of the episodes talk on the blatant surface about one thing, while showing, hinting at, suggesting, enlightening another message deeper down. Many budding writers have a hard time with subtext. They struggle to notice it, let alone reproduce it. But subtext is essential to good storytelling because it invites the reader (or viewer) to participate with the text, rather than passively witness.

In a quickndirty example of subtext, I always point to the glorious scene in The Incredibles (2004), when the AI monster ball is shredding through the city. Frozone is ready for action, opens the secret compartment where he keeps his super suit only to find it missing….


On the surface, the conversation that follows between Frozone and his wife is all about the suit’s location, but underneath that, this couple is really squabbling over the power dynamic of their relationship. Who’s the boss, or who wears the (super) pants? That element is made clear in the subtext, or in what is not being openly said. Frozone does NOT say: Honey, you are always undermining me. You never take my job as a super hero seriously.

Nonetheless, that is exactly what gets communicated to viewers who are actively piecing together these details.

So what is Chef’s Table putting in its subtext? The treacherous, arduous, daunting path of the artist or creator. The process by which one learns to trust in his or her own creative spark and allows it to burn wild. The armor one puts on to protect the feral soul from the slings and arrows of doubters and skeptics.

broken-window

“Soul” by Marcell Schwarz

It quietly illustrates how creators must apprentice to a master, copy technique until skills are perfected and ingrained, and finally break free from instruction in order to forge what is new, unique, and true to the self. And most importantly, the subtext illuminates how to attain resiliency — that seemingly magical ability to weather downturns, to grin and bear it, to turn failure into success.

((Now, after you’ve watched a few episodes, you may say, “Hey, these elements can’t be subtext because the chef’s are talking about them in their interview narratives.” I will concede that the chef’s are uttering these insights and truths; however, the directors have arranged these statements to take a backseat to the stunning food cotillions and the shimmering musical fanfares. Thus, the “message” of the show is embedded. It is arranged underneath its more primary elements. And, I further argue these themes are subtext because so many other reviews completely overlooked them and knocked the show for lacking anything deeper and being little more than foodie porn.))

Finally, I recommend this show not only to budding writers in need of a subtext booster shot, but also to writers and creators going through a moment of crisis with their work. Those who have suffered a dent in self-confidence and ability. I give you permission: take a night off to “Netflix and fulfill.” Trust me when I say you’ll hunger for more than food.

The Pinball Plot

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Let’s play a game! A what-if guessing game. What if all your dreams came true in the New Year? What if, instead, your worst nightmares actually happened? What is something you’d never imagine befalling you and what if that very thing occurred?

meditation

“Meditation” by Kah Wai Sin.

I know. I know. The zen-ists find it terribly unfashionable to play such games. Disconnects you from the lush and fertile present moment — that exhilarating continuum of now-right-now. Fine. I exempt the zen-ists, but not the writers, from playing.

Writers must often play at these guessing games in order to construct the authentic arc of a character’s life through story. They must molecularlize the tissues that bridge plot to person, event to emotion. They must knit time with insight, experience with catharsis.

The methods a writer might enlist to accomplish this feat are as limitless as they are unique to the user. Some writers employ complex character maps which catalog the myriad details and events of a character’s life before or “outside” the story. Favorite colors, worst fears, most memorables, etc. From these webs, the writers hope to spider out the juiciest themes which will feed the growing story events. Other writers immerse themselves in a character’s hobbies, jobs, and distractions. Ideally, the various sounds, textures, and flavors of these activities will season the metaphors that, in turn, build the broth of story. After all, as George Eliot notes, “we all of us […] get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act […] on the strength of them.”*

tadpoles

“Tadpoles” by Mark Robinson.

And still other writers play at simple what-if guessing games. What if this or that happens? What if the character chooses this, but not that? Engage with the what-ifs and the possibilities begin to tadpole in the pond of your imagination. A potentially overwhelming situation for the writer eager to nail down a sturdy plot, but an invigorating fertilizer for the imagination hoping to find the unexpected yet inevitable mysteries!

If we were to back into the past and ask me to guess what if my life unfolded exactly as I envisioned it just then, I would have said (with rambunctious certainty) that I would wind up the wife and devoted partner of my most treasured and beloved best friend. I could see nothing else. I could not imagine any other outcomes. Or maybe, I was too afraid to play with what-ifs.

What if that was not the outcome? What if, instead, tragedy pounced on me and spent the next year and half gnashing the bones of my broken heart between its sharp teeth? What if the most unthinkable thing I could not imagine actually happened?

extraball

“Extra Ball” by Shawn Clover.

Only in looking back can I trace the ricochet rebound boomerang skip wiggle weave jounce journey of my life. Not just recently, but going all the way back. Only while looking back can I see the restrictions fear placed on my imagination.

Conjuring pinball scenarios lends much to a person’s resilience, if not to a writer’s ability to plot surprising and fulfilling stories. Remember that your characters’ lives are not javelins. Dare to be erratic in your outlining. Dare to imagine the unimaginable.

In the midst of my bounce and bang off the rubber band bumpers — reams of unpublished writing, unanswered queries, blanket rejections, and that unexpected heartache as deep as the Grand Canyon — the most unimaginable thing gradually happened: I got published…in my chosen field of children’s writing, no less! And then, I got published again. Aaaand again. By the close of 2016, I will have produced a children’s magazine article, a short story, two science picture books, two middle grade civics/history books, and three mixed discipline books for young readers!

So, you tell me, 2017: what if? What if.

—

cobblestone_article

“Striking a Balance,” in Cobblestone. Ed. Meg Chorlian. May/June 2016.

muse-magazine-february-2016

“Body of Knowledge” in Muse. Ed. Johanna Arnone. February 2016.

Freedom of Speech. Our Basic Freedoms Series. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2017 (forthcoming).

Freedom to Petition. Our Basic Freedoms Series. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2017 (forthcoming).

 The Space Race. Greatest Races Series. New York: Rosen Publishing, 2017 (forthcoming).

The Nuclear Arms Race. Greatest Races Series. New York: Rosen Publishing, 2017 (forthcoming).

Crazy Road Races. Greatest Races Series. New York: Rosen Publishing, 2017 (forthcoming).

 

 

*p 85. Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1872. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.