Category: Writing

Here in the Middle is out!

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I always thought middle age would be softer.

I thought my hair would be poofy, my body would be poofy, everything would have an easy-to-sink-into quality to it, like an overstuffed chair.

With the exception of my body, I’m finding middle age to be hard and sometimes sharp – and that’s when I acknowledge that I’m in middle age in the first place. I am edgier. My opinions are strong. Getting through the day can be hard. I feel increasingly unsure about the world as I grow surer of who I am. It is a great reversal, as I used to be confident about what the world was all about and have a tenuous sense of self.

That crisscrossing of certainty and uncertainty, of confidence and grasping, of hard and soft runs throughout the new anthology Here in the Middle, which was released yesterday and to which I am a proud contributor.

A mishmash of emotions always accompanies releases of new art. Pride and excitement, certainly. There is also worry that it won’t be received as it was intended, that the circle of audience and performer will not be closed. That worry is unfounded with Here in the Middle. This collection of stories already resonates with many people who are in the so-called sandwich generation. And while it’s not necessarily a bad place to be (who doesn’t like sandwiches?), it can be tough. It’s surprising to find yourself in a time when we all watch our children venture out into the world to various degrees, and then need to turn a watchful, caring eye to our parents.

It is a book of transitions, of moments where time stands still just long enough for us to realize not only how fast it’s all going but how much we change. How much we need to change. That we sometimes are forced to change be it under volcanic pressure or gentle yet persistent buffing.

My story, “Grandparent Privilege,” is a humorous look at one of these moments in my life. My role as “caregiver” is tenuous at best: my parents are healthy and active, my children run away from any of my attempts at caregiving, which mostly involves my asking if they washed their hands with soap. I wrote about being the odd man out in the relationship between my children and my parents. It is a love note to my parents, my children, and my steadfast husband who wishes we would drop them off at my parents much more often than we do.

You can read my story and many other beautiful, heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, always lovely stories by purchasing the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the book!

Here in the Middle

NaNoWriMo: 50,000 Words and Change

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I finished.

For the second year in a row I NaNoed, I finished, and I finished early. To be fair, I am a self-described NaNo rebel; I didn’t write a novel. I wrote 25 essays (!) and worked on one short story which still remains largely unfinished. That short story is a disaster, more so than the essays. I have tasked myself with writing more short stories this year. Learning through doing.

I didn’t write a novel during NaNoWriMo because I don’t have an idea for a novel. I write essays because I have lots of ideas for those. I’ll keep waiting for the novel to come. It may not. I may not actually be a novelist. That’s ok.

But 50,000 words. 50,000 and change. Emphasis on change.

50,000 words don’t scare me. I am competitive, so I try to aim for more than the recommended daily 1667 words that it would take to achieve the goal by November 30. But also I don’t stop and I don’t edit. I don’t worry. The crafting of the story – the magic, the making it into something good – that comes from the hard work of editing and rewriting. This, this 50K hustle, is the childlike creative piece. This is where you just allow. This is where you dust those corners of your brain, releasing all the weird images and combinations of words. My job is just to capture them.

Sometimes I dictate into the phone, not always to great effect. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from improvisation, it’s to pay attention. With this are sister lessons of: go weird, trust, and sometimes you’re going to be terrible and it’s ok. The nice thing about writing is that it’s not like improv scene work. I get to go back, trim, add, subtract, and sometimes cringe looking at the nonsense of verbiage on the page. Sometimes my first drafts come across as the ramblings of a mad woman. And I’m learning that’s not always terrible.

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NaNo stokes the creative fires forcing dark hunts for inspiration, especially after those ideas I’ve been saving up have been exhausted (usually around Day 10). Anything can be written about. And anything has been written about.

November is tough. November rips me open and yanks out the sinewy remains of whatever energy and motivation was stockpiled over the summer. Not only are there the icy claws of the election, but I’m coming off a month of my husband’s birthday, our anniversary, and Halloween launching immediately into November’s gray work, my own birthday, Thanksgiving, teacher conferences, volunteer responsibilities, and life in general. This is compounded at least for the last two years by the fact that my children seem to get sick the week before Halloween and stay sick through at least mid-January. Germs do-si-do around my house, mutating enough to get re-caught and re-shared. I am never as exhausted as I am during their sick times. All the coughing, all the sneezing, the headaches, the tired eyes.

I pay attention now and connections are made that haven’t been made in months because I have not made this commitment to myself. And that’s really what NaNo is. It is a commitment to myself costumed in self-abuse. It is waking up early or staying up late or squeezing writing in the middle of the day when all I want to do is close my eyes and not think.

It’s the push.

It’s the hunger to continue it is a hope for more time. It’s the sense that I’ve got to get it out, leave it on the stage because I just don’t know what life will bring me in the next moment.

It’s because it mattered.

Because I mattered.