Versatile Is a Funny Word

Dear Reader:

What do you do when you are nominated for something like the Versatile Blogger Award?

You thank the person who nominated you, of course. So, I would like to thank The Beach Writer at http://thebeachwriter.com/ for nominating me for the
Versatile Blogger Award. What a surprise!

I enjoy Beach Writer’s posts about the writing life. If you are a writer (or a reader interested in peeking behind the scenes in order to see how books, essays, stories, and poems are created in the first place) check out this blog!

I’ve seen the green Versatile Blogger badge on various (versatile?) blogs here and there, but I had no idea what it was all about. Getting a notification that I’d been nominated was a bit of a surprise wrapped up in a mystery, so I searched for answers. Here’s the scoop:

The Versatile Blogger Award is given out by fellow bloggers and seems to be a way to spread the blogging love around a bit. The idea is to nominate fifteen inspiring, entertaining, informative bloggers who will in turn link back to your blog and will also nominate fifteen other bloggers. Like a chain letter.

Here’s the thing: I hate chain letters. They come to you uninvited, for one. For two, you are then obligated to DO something with them . . . either send out fifteen more letters to unsuspecting friends or else jot a hat-in-hands apology note to the person and tell them “sorry, not my thing; but thanks for thinking of me.”

People who know me have learned that I will not participate in sock clubs, recipe exchanges, panty pass-alongs, or any of the other virus-like entertainments that promise “thirty pairs of underpants if you send out ten.” Really? Thirty pairs of unmentionables from complete strangers. Ick!

So what’s a girl to do about this award? I mean, I feel honored to have been nominated. I think it is a good way to branch out into the blogmosphere. I’ve thanked my nominating blogger and will probably check out her other nominees because I like how she writes and what she has to say. However . . .

I won’t be nominating fifteen others. I DID begin that process. Before coming to my senses, I spent fifteen minutes writing up three nominations and adding links to this post.

But then I thought: what if they hate chain letters, even if it is an “award?” What if they don’t want to waste two and a half hours posting and linking to fifteen other bloggers? Who started this thing, anyway? Who starts all those sock clubs and other chain letters, in the first place? Where does it all begin?

A better question might be where does it all end? When everyone has a big green “Versatile Blogger Award” button on their site?

I have to admit that I depend mostly on Freshly Pressed here on WordPress.com to find new blogs I’d like to read and follow. Sometimes other bloggers find me, I check out their work, and then I subscribe to their blog because I see something in their writing that appeals. Once in awhile, I follow a link from an author bio or a Facebook post or some other marketing platform. When I really want quick and easy access to a favorite blog, I add a link to my bloglist over there in the right-hand column. Every once in awhile, I weed the list, pulling out scraggly ones or those that are no longer “in season.” Like a garden plot, new websites are planted, new varieties tried as my needs and tastes change.

So, if you want to know which blogs and websites I recommend, start there. And don’t send me any chain letters. Like my college poetry professor once said, “If you do, I’ll cloud up and rain on you.”

Your Soul On Paper

In her classic book about the scribbler’s craft, WRITING DOWN THE BONES, Natalie Goldberg shares her philosophy of writing and the practical applications she’s developed over the years for getting words on the page, ideas into sentences, life into print. “This book is about writing. It is also about using writing as your practice, as a way to help you penetrate your life and become sane” (3).

Sane? Is she serious? Some days I think true sanity would be giving up writing altogether. I know from past experience, however, that no sooner do I officially “quit” writing than I am hit with the irresistible urge to begin again.

A word to the wise. If you ever think, “I could write a book. I have this great story idea . . .” then squash that thought immediately or you, too, may find yourself hopelessly addicted to this drug we call writing. Obviously, it is too late for me. I’m already hooked. While I can’t cure myself of my addiction, I can attempt to manage it. Enter, Natalie Goldberg and timed writing exercises.

Since this is January, the month we’ve designated as National Unreachable Goal-Setting Month, I went ahead and resolved to commit to daily timed writing practice, i.e. setting the timer on the stove and writing crap, er, thoughts in a journal for ten minutes every day.

Excuse me for being initially skeptical about the efficacy of this exercise. I’ve been a diarist since sixth grade, the year I filled a red, hard-bound book with adolescent gushings about one Patrick Tardy (not his real name). That particular journal went up in flames, literally, on New Year’s Day 1981 when I symbolically annihilated my love for dear Patrick by throwing the book into Dad’s Ashley wood stove down in the cellar and waiting for the pages to turn to ash. Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned my lesson and was already showing classic signs of writing-addiction (not to mention romance-addiction). That same day, I began writing in another diary, this one blue with a gold clasp and a key. This artifact from days-gone-by now sits on the top shelf here in my office along with its myriad companions–assorted spiral-bound notebooks, black and white marbled essay books, pretty padded cloth-covered journals, and even one hunk of white, lined loose pages stuck into a manila envelope from the year I decided I couldn’t be hemmed in by bindings of any sort.

As if that made any difference.

Thirty years of daily writing practice, and all I have to show for it is a collection of truly horrible entries. No, really. Some writers may sit down with their beautiful Cross pens and their leather-bound journals and compose the most wondrous prose. Not me. My journaling is the equivalent of psychological diarrhea. All my angst. All my anger. All my frustrations and illogical worry and obsessions. Endless probing of emotional baggage. Repetitive questioning of motives. Tiresome analysis of relationships past and present, punctuated occasionally with some recording of actual events like what I ate that morning, how much I weighed the night before, and what I plan on cooking for dinner later on. My journals make BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY look like a deep and insightful literary masterpiece rather than the delightful, campy chick-lit novel that it is.

(Need I mention my increasing paranoia that I will unexpectedly die and someone–my husband, a parent, my daughter–might actually decide to read my journals? Shudder. I may have to look into buying a safe and instructing my lawyer that the contents are to be destroyed immediately in the event of my departure from this earthly plane.)

I have to ask myself: If journaling hasn’t helped me become a better writer yet, why do I think it will help me become a better writer in the future?

Journaling can be used as a warm-up exercise, a way to get those words and sentences flowing. Daily journaling means showing up with your writer’s mind on a regular basis, not just when you feeling “inspired.” Journaling is a mining exercise, spelunking both near the surface and down in the depths of the writer’s psyche. It provides raw material for future projects. It is also a record of the writer’s journey, regardless of where the writer ends up. It is a place to try on various voices without someone overhearing. It is a place to explore ideas, paste observations, create a mood, or paint a scene to use in a later piece of writing. In most cases, a journal of this type isn’t for public viewing. A journal is private. A journal is your mind, your heart, your soul . . . on paper.

The journal is what we make of it. At least, that’s what I’m gonna tell my students when I start up a teen writing workshop next month. First assignment? Find a journal and a pen you like. Set the timer for ten minutes. Write until the buzzer goes off.

If writing is an addiction, does this mean I’m a drug pusher?

Stay tuned for next time when Yours Truly goes spelunking in her new journal for writing material . . . Outside the Box.

Dissappointment In A Bottle

Gotcha!

Dear Reader:

I have caught a cold. A doozy of a cold. My nose is dripping. My throat feels scorched and swollen. My head is heavy, like you could throw it down a bowling lane and knock down ten pins without even trying.

I suppose I should be grateful I made it all the way through the holiday season without getting sick. Instead, I am able to send the Teen off to school for the day while I spend seven quiet, solitary hours tucked into bed–sleeping, watching Sex and the City DVDs, sleeping, drinking mugs of herbal tea, reading, and, did I mention, sleeping? The sleeping part would have been easier ten years ago, back in the good old days when we still had what I call the Magic Nite-Time Cold Potion.

Like all magic potions, the Magic Nite-Time Cold Potion was foul on the tongue. Syrupy and black with a super-concentrated flavor of licorice, this stuff tasted like the Witches of Eastwick brewed it up in their Crock-Pot slow cookers and passed it through rotting compost before bottling; however, to the sufferer of the common cold or not-so-common flu, this stuff was liquid salvation. Two tablespoons of the potion and boom! You were out cold for the night.

A few years ago, the Magic Potion lost its magic. The mighty hand of government had reached down and snatched it away, i.e. passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005. Seems that the Magic Potion contained a vital ingredient used to make a nasty illicit drug. Skanky drug producers were setting up labs in their kitchens and using these over-the-counter medications as primary ingredients for production of crystal meth. In order to curtail production, the government decided to cut off the supply of pseudoephedrine that the users (losers) had been purchasing over-the-counter down at the local drug store. Good-bye nasal decongestant.

Hello sleepless nights for the rest of us.

When my cold hit two days ago, I stumbled to the bathroom linen closet and found the new formula on my top shelf. The pain reliever worked, but my nose remained clogged and runny. I got maybe two hours of solid sleep. Alas, the Magic potion was no longer magic. It was simply Disappointment In A Bottle.

So, thank you all you meth addicts and producers out there with your miserable, stinky “labs” and teeth falling out and shakes and shivers and dirty needles. Do not expect pity from me when I am miserable with a nasty cold. And thank you, Big Government, for making each and every cold since 2005 one-hundred percent more miserable than it needed to be. Thank you very, very much.

As for natural, local remedies, I have been drinking a tea called Respiratory Tonic from a local herbalist– Greenwood Herbals in Parsonsfield. It doesn’t knock me out, of course, but sipping the tonic seems to relieve chest congestion and it opens the nasal passages a bit. The flavor is sweet, not nasty like the Magic Potion, and I can sleep a little easier knowing the ingredients are organically and locally grown.

Drinking hot liquids makes sense when you have a winter cold. Homemade chicken soup with lots of garlic thrown can’t hurt, either. Here is the soup I threw together last night:

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme Chicken Soup

1 chicken carcass with most meat pulled from it and meat set aside
3 carrots
2 celery stalks
Two onions
Garlic cloves, to taste
chicken bouillon cubes to taste
pepper (about 1/8 tsp)
(sea vegetable flakes optional)
dried parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (1 tsp each or so
1 cup or so of dried pasta

Put chicken carcass in big pot and cover with water. Add 1 cut up carrot, 1 quartered onion, and 1 cut up celery stalk into pot. Bring to boil. Boil for one hour. Strain out broth.

Add chicken meat, bouillon cubes, sliced carrots, sliced celery, chopped onion and remaining ingredients except pasta. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until veggies are soft, about 20 minutes. Add pasta. Boil until al dente, about 12 minutes. Eat steaming hot.

Be well . . . Outside the Box.

PS: In researching this post, I came across the surprising and welcome information that my Magic Nite-Time Cold Potion is now available BEHIND the pharmaceutical counter. Next time Mr. Upper Respiratory Infection comes to call, I will make a trip to see the man behind the curtain, uh, RX counter. Coin will pass palm. The Magic will be back!

A Girl Who Wears Glasses

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
–Dorothy Parker

glasses/pen/journal/book

In fifth grade I thought glasses were cool.

I told my mom I was having trouble reading the green and white exit signs on I-95 as we drove each day to Bangor for school. I may or may not have been exaggerating, but when she took me to the eye doctor, I did, indeed need corrective lenses for my near-sightedness. I loved my glasses.

For about a day and a half.

This was the eighties. My glasses had over-sized, pinkish-brown rims. They would quickly become smeared with fingerprints as I couldn’t stop touching them, pushing them up the bridge of my nose, just making sure they were still there. I don’t remember testing my newly clear vision on the exit signs. My glasses became a part of me, another thing to keep track of along with my school books, homework papers, and various Bonney Bell Lipsmackers.

By the time I entered seventh-grade, I hated the way I looked. Skinny, no curves. Crooked teeth, no braces. I’d had my long, dark hair chopped off for some reason, and the cowlick which had stopped sticking up when I grew my hair long and heavy now created a natural part which left a big, open expanse of oily, pimply adolescent forehead shining beneath a boyish cap of feathered, eighties hair. Pretty picture, huh?

Junior high was an awkward and ugly time for me. As Dorothy Parker wrote, girls with glasses don’t get much male attention. So I stared at boys across the classroom, daydreamed while gazing out the window of the car on our daily commute to town, and began to keep a journal, write stories, and wait for the day when I’d grow out of my awkward stage. It took a long time. Years, really, but I learned to make the best of things and kept on writing in those journals and writing those stories and daydreaming. My skin cleared up a bit. I got some curves. A boyfriend, even. I took my glasses off for pictures and for playing sports (looking back, I wonder if I might not have made a few more baskets if I’d worn those specs. Sorry, Coach Frost!)

By the time my senior year in high school rolled around, I acquired contact lenses, soft ones that were supposed to work for a week without cleaning. Soon my eyes were gunky, runny, sore, and red. I was allergic to my own eye secretions. Lovely, right? So began a span of years when part of my daily routine included putting in my contacts in the morning and taking them out for a good cleaning with Bausch & Lomb solution every night. I grew my hair out. My braces came off. I gained confidence, and a little bit of style. Off to college I went, hiding my “girl with glasses” persona.

Well, sorta. By then, I knew something about myself. I knew I liked to read, to write, to learn. I knew I didn’t want to be much of a party girl. I made friends with people who were interested in theater and writing and education and movies (and watching reruns of MACGYVER whenever possible). I wanted to find true love, and I did. I gave up sports and embraced poetry and prose. I traveled. I ate an incredible number of times at the Farmington Diner, usually accompanied by my future Hubby. Glasses made appearances. They never held me back.

When I sat down for my yearbook photo my senior year of college, you know what I did? I ditched the contacts and wore my glasses . . . really over-sized, dark-rimmed glasses.

I continued to put up with contacts for years, spending a fortune on yearly exams, prescriptions, gallons of saline solution, and tiny, over-priced bottles of lubricating drops. One year quite a long while ago, I decided I’d had enough. I would go back to glasses full-time.

And I’ve never looked back.

Do I like the way I look in my specs? Not really. I keep hoping one day I’ll find the perfect pair that makes me look like a sexy librarian. I’m also having trouble seeing up close with my glasses on, so they spend a fair amount of time perched on top of my head. Soon, I suppose, I’ll succumb to bi-focals, and won’t that be a trip?

And what of that Dorothy Parker line about men seldom making passes? Doesn’t bother me in the least. Hubby seems to like me just the way I am, bespectacled and all. Plus, this year he acquired his own pair of reading glasses. We match. He still makes passes now and again. Take that, Dorothy Parker!

See You in 2012

Shirt found at Goodwill store

Dear Reader:

Outside the Box has been a fun and productive and creative place to be in 2011. I may have strayed from the original path a bit . . . but isn’t that what being Outside the Box (like coloring outside the lines) is all about?

Meat and Butter from Local Butcher Shop

This year I’ve joined a buying co-op, found a few new local places for meat and other Maine-produced goods, bought jeans and shirts at consignment shops and Goodwill stores, traveled to D.C., continued to knit, wrote some poems, read some great books . . .

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to more adventures in 2012, trying to support all things “local” while continuing to be aware of national and global trends.

If you’ve been reading my Christmas story, Unlikely Objects, the final installment can be found in the Fiction Corner. As always, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in 2012 . . . Outside the Box.

Shelley 2011

Christmas With Kings

11/22/63

Dear Reader:

I woke up this morning to see snow falling outside, just a few light shards of sleety stuff at first but gradually expanding to big, fluffy flakes gently blurring the landscape and coating the dead leaves and still-greenish grass on my front yard. I plodded downstairs and turned on the coffeepot, wrapped a soft blanket around my shoulders, plugged in the Christmas tree lights, and curled into my favorite corner of the couch to read Stephen King’s new book–11/22/63–a time-travel tome, satisfyingly long and hefty. Reading King’s latest book has become a Christmas tradition for me. (When you are a Really Famous Author, your books get released just in time for the shopping season.)

My mother, God-bless-her, buys the latest Stephen King for me every year there is one, sometimes even stands in line at the bookstore in downtown Bangor to get me an autographed copy. When Joe Hill, King’s son, published his first book, she gifted me with HEART-SHAPED BOX. Another year, she bought Tabitha King’s BOOK OF REUBEN because I absolutely adored her novel of high-school hoops and adolescent angst, ONE-ON-ONE.

For my part, I used to buy Hubby the latest book in King’s DARK TOWER series for Christmas, and last year I found a published collection of “superhero” stories, WHO CAN SAVE US NOW?, to give to The Teen . . . edited by one Owen King (he also has a story in the collection), Stephen and Tabitha’s youngest son.

I guess in our house, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a King-family book under the tree.

I love Stephen King’s later novels. The earlier works were a bit gory and gross for me (but I read them anyway because once you start reading one of King’s stories, you really cannot put them down). My first was SALEM’S LOT. I borrowed it from my friend, Kara, down the road when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Because I suspected my parents might, for the first time, begin to limit my reading choices if they found out their young, impressionable, Christian-schoolgirl daughter was about to read a horror novel with lots of “swears” in it, I decided the most prudent course of action was to read it at night, in bed, under the covers with a flashlight.

I also had hanging on my wall a black and white poster of Scott Baio in his JOANIE LOVES CHACHI days. He’s not smiling, and he’s wearing a sexy leather jacket, be still my heart. (Kara also had a subscription to Teen Beat, and she liked Ralph Macchio so giving me the Scott Baio centerfold poster was fine with her). Needless to say, I loved Scott Baio, but by the time I was halfway through SALEM’S LOT, I had to take that poster off my wall because he looked like a vampire looming over my bed.

That book scared the bejeezus out of me! Last year I decided to read it again, to see if it really was that freaky or if I’d become hardened over the past thirty years. Guess what? It scared the bejeezus out of me again!

The newer King novels, though with their share of gross and gore and thrills and chills, are more meaty. None have outdone THE STAND, of course, but this new one promises to catapult the reader back to the “earlier, gentler” America of the late 1950′s, early 1960′s. Were things really so great back then, I wonder? I suspect King might put a different twist on it than, say, JOANIE LOVES CHACHI or HAPPY DAYS.

While I’m reading about time travel and JFK and Brill Scream (pun intended), you can catch page 7 of my humble Christmas story under the Fiction Corner tab.

Five Golden Pages . . .

Snowy Country Road

Dear Reader:

I have posted page five of “Unlikely Objects” under the Fiction Corner tab, and we are more than halfway through the story. I’m not sure I like my main character all that much. I pity him. I want him to grow up and stop feeling sorry for himself. I love his wife, Sarah. She is stubborn, but kind, creative . . . and she refuses to let Jonathan ruin her Christmas spirit. Jonathan is a bit more sensitive, a bit more dark, gloomy and depressed.

These characters are composites, bits and pieces of people I knew, including myself. Probably more like two sides of myself warring it out on paper.

Who are you more like? Jonathan or Sarah? How would you feel if you truly could not afford to buy a present for the person you loved the most? Would you be cranky or would you make the best of things? Or cranky AND make the best of things?

If you want, drop me a note about it . . . Outside the Box.

On the Fourth Day of (My) Christmas (Story)

This gallery contains 1 photos.

Dear Reader: The Christmas tree is decorated with red bows and white turtle-doves and red and white striped candy-canes and all the special ornaments we’ve collected over the almost twenty years of our marriage. I even started wrapping some presents. … Continue reading →

Bite-Sized Holiday Fiction

Coffee and Cookies

Dear Reader:

No one really needs Christmas cookies. Likewise, no one really needs holiday-themed fiction. According to one John Lane, a guest host on Bill & Dave’s Cocktail Hour (one of my fave writerly blogs), holiday-themed fiction tends to be disappointing. He’s probably right. Like the cookies, holiday stories are a little sugary, a little too sweet, and ultimately, they aren’t all that satisfying compared to, say, a good medium-rare steak. But they are fun, sparkly, something to make the season special. Or at least, different.

It’s fun to make cookies, especially around holiday time. It’s fun to write holiday stories, too. You can channel all that pent-up nostalgia into a sweet, powdery confection of a narrative. O’Henry did it. Dickens did it. Like chocolate no-bake cookies or iced sugar cookies or those wonderful little peanut butter jobbies with the chocolate candy drops pushed into the middle, Christmas tales can be delicious holiday treats you might not have the stomach for any other time of the year.

If you accept these stories for what they are . . . dessert or tea-time snack . . . if you don’t expect them to replace some heftier fare, perhaps you won’t be all that disappointed by a couple bites of a Christmas fable now and again.

So, Dear Readers, I give you a holiday story, presented in small, bite-sized servings like rum balls, to sweeten your holiday season. (Look for a new page every day.)

I wrote this one at least fifteen years ago, never made a copy, gave it to a friend who lost it for a few years, discovered it in one of her old VOGUE magazines last summer (a miracle!), and stuck it into my filing cabinet. It is the story of a recently married couple, fresh out of college, struggling with bills and part-time jobs and differing expectations and trying to catch a bit of that ol’ Christmas cheer.

You can read UNLIKELY OBJECTS by clicking on the title or by looking under my newly renovated Fiction Corner.

Enjoy!

Name Changer

A Rose By Any Other Name . . . Amaryllis?

Dear Reader:

My name is a teeter-totter. Hyphenated. Maiden Name-Married Name. Teeter-totter.

Just prior to getting married, my husband and I drove up to the town office and asked for a marriage license. We began to fill in the paperwork, and I realized I would have to make a decision regarding my name.

I’d just finished college, earned my degree in education, and was about to start applying for teaching positions. My advisers, my supervising teachers, my college profs all knew me by my “maiden” name. Wouldn’t things become complicated if I started requesting letters of recommendation with a new last name? Would they remember who I was? Would I be giving up my new and fragile adult identity?

I decided to hyphenate.

I began applying for jobs. No offers. Instead I took a job in a different field. Eventually, as the years went by, I began leaving off the maiden name and the hyphen and I “became” Shelley Burbank. Medical records. Employment records. Who knows what else records. All have plain old Shelley Burbank on them.

My driver’s license, however, still has the fancy-dancy hyphenated name, and a few years back I worried that this might cause me problems. I checked into legally changing my name to Shelley (no hyphen) Burbank. This meant a trip to the county courthouse, paperwork, and a fee. And contacting any business, organization, or entity with which I had done business in the last fifteen years and announcing my intention to change my name.

Did I mention the fee?

I gave it about two seconds’ worth of thought and muttered, “Uh, no thanks” before tossing the paperwork in the trash.

So, here I am, of a certain age, well out of college, using a name that is, well, not really mine. Legally, I do not share my husbands nor my daughter’s last name. And I have this silly hyphen. Does any of this mean anything?

Probably not. I just look at my driver’s license and ponder the fact that I am no longer the person I was twenty years ago. I’m older. Maybe a bit wiser (debatable). I’m not a teacher. My degree may have helped me get a few jobs over the years, but I’ve never needed those recommendations I was once so worried about that I decided to hyphenate my name.

If I had it to do all over again I would have made a firmer choice: maiden name or married name. No hyphen. No straddling of the fence. One or the other.

I suppose one of these days I’ll go back to the courthouse and pick up those papers and make things official.

Maybe.