Reason #4638 to hire a copywriter: Upcycling

My dear, adorable friend, Jenni Avins just astounds me. I may have mentioned her to you before. She has a blog called, Closettour, and she is, in the true flavor of a Gen Y’er (I think she’s in Gen Y—regardless, she’s younger than me), turning the world upside down and doing it her own way. She has boundless energy and she…well…she just makes the coolest shit happen.

Her ‘genre’, if you will, is a mash of fashion, sustainability, history/origin/storytelling and journalism (read: new media).

I wanted to share one of her webisodes with you so that 1) you could get a hit of her—the enthuse will stick with you all day, and b) because its concept, I think, is spillable to our focus here. (That would be, in case you got lost, ‘writing where you want to go’—’writing’ being code for ‘however you create’, of course.)

In this webisode, Jenni is trying to clean out her closet. Which is exactly like me trying to clean out my writingroads.com cache of posts and drafts. I mean, how can I throw any of it away? As for the completed posts, each word has meaning and memory. As for the hundreds of drafts I have, ummm…I might use them someday. Those of you wondering, ‘Why would you want to throw any of it away?’ I love you.

Alas, in the midst of her heart-wrenching struggle to closet-thin, Jenni heard about these extraordinarily magnificent English women that call themselves Junky Styling. Kerry and Annika take your old clothes, the ones that you just can’t let go of, the ones that might still serve some sort of critical purpose…and make them new again.

They don’t call it recycling, they call it—upcycling. Because they are making your items better. They are bringing them up—to now. To what you want now, to what you need now. And they do it in a way that lets you hang on to the past, the what if, the hope, the thread.

For all intents and purposes, if you are someone that likes to hold on to things, the women of Junky Styling are actualizing our deep belief that all of those items—be they skirts, one line random thoughts, sweaters, poems, scarves, postless titles or whatever—were purchased or devised and then held on to for a real reason.

So I started thinking about how amazing it would be to have Junky Styling for words and ideas. People that take ideas, scraps of words, worn out prose, random concepts, hopes, futures, bits of brilliance that just didn’t match the rest of your message or ad or article—and upcycle them. Turn them into clear, concise, wordy perfection–exactly what you need now.

And then I remembered that we already have people that do just that.

Oh, how I love my job.

Behold Jenni Avins below in all of her Closettour glory:

CLOSETTOUR: Wardrobe Surgery with Junky Styling from Jenni Avins on Vimeo.

I wonder what I’ll think…

…when they make my blog into a movie.

Because I just got back from seeing Eat, Pray, Love and—besides the panic attacks I’m having over such trivial things as being terrified to love again, what’s going to happen next in my career and how I’ve been flying a lot, but don’t quite think I’m ready to hop a plane all the way to Bali—I’m very busy wondering what Elizabeth Gilbert thinks.

About what they did to her book.

I mean, the movie was good. I catharted (that thumping you hear is my pulse). Julia is very, very good. Javier is salivatory.

But there was so much missing.

Yes, it was a 2.5 hour movie. Yes, they couldn’t possibly fit it all in. No, they couldn’t really make her look fat and then thin (though they did make Brad Pitt age backwards, so…). No, she never sat in the palm of God’s hand.

All of these things and about a hundred more are making me wonder what E.G. really thinks. Not what she said on Oprah. But what she says to Felipe. And to her writer friends. Does each and every speck of criticism make her want to grab the megaphone and holler, “Well, of course you didn’t see my transformation! They left 70% of it out of the movie!”

They really did. They left a massive portion of the meat and the guts of the story where it originally belonged—on the word-ridden floor of Gilbert’s book. Because how do you capture thought processes, that are so voluptuous and intricate, on screen?

I mean, I travel through 100s of miles of convoluted mazes of complexity and land on epiphany every morning. But to the passersby, I simply look like I’m running down the street.

Which is why, when Hollywood (or Diablo Cody, if I were to really have my way), comes to me and begs for my movie rights, I might sell out for millions and just pray that people also do the reading. Or I might demand the best screenwriter and a co-screenwriting gig. Or I might say, “Hmmm… It’s just that, oftentimes, words really do tell the best stories.”

Image credit: rauchdickson (and don’t judge me for putting needlepoint on my blog)

Word…to your mother

This post is entirely Andi Fisher’s fault. (I ‘spose I could give Elizabeth Gilbert some credit, too…but she gets enough as it is. So I’m giving it all to Andi.)

You see, Andi wrote this GENIUS post yesterday. About how every city has a Word. And so does every person.

My brain took off in a torrent of thought. Faster than I thought my synapses could fire, I thought, yesofcoursethat’sbrilliantwhat’smyword

firethatwasmyfirstthoughtbutthat

can’tbeititmustbesomethingelse

butwhatbutwhatbutwhat.

And then! There was brain silence. So much so that I could hear the air moving through my teeny, tiny ear tube fuzz.

And then, the questions came pouring in. Why was the first word that popped into my head ‘fire’? Who do I think I am that that would be my word? And why is it so hard for me to claim my word? Because that’s really the issue. It feels pompous and egoful. Though, oddly, on Andi it seemed nothing short of vibrant and lifeful. Hmmm…

And then, I thought: This whole discussion is egoful. So is this blog—because I’m writing about me and my life and my writing and my experiences. Which, I suppose, makes sense because it’s my blog.

But, luckily, because all of you are egoful as well, you take everything that I say and you try it on your own brains/hearts/bodies/desires. I’m just The Gap, but you’re in the dressing room trying it all on for size—and finding the pieces that fit, kicking the ones that don’t to the side, even picking out some items that aren’t your style…but you’d like to see if you can pull off. (Maybe in the dark, maybe somewhere no one knows you, maybe in your own kitchen, maybe on your keyboard.)

But, I digress. And I have a word to suss out. Why, when I’m so, so, so full of words…can’t I find the one that defines me?

I wondered, what if I’m not just one word? What if I’m a phrase? A sentence? A paragraph? A poem? A blog post? A short story? A novel?

I started making a list of words. I wrote about ten down, but I just couldn’t claim any of them. I felt like now I was the one dressing up…in the Big & Tall men’s store. They didn’t fit right and didn’t feel like they were mine. (Though they smelled nice.)

So, I stared at my computer screen trying to pull it to me, I want it, you know. I really want my Word. My ‘Julie’ Word. And then that was the only word I could hear. My name. My favorite name. I’ve never met a Julie that didn’t fit the bill. There’s a certain something to us Julies. Just ask us.

And when I say it, JULIE, out loud. I can claim it. I get it. It fits. I’d be proud to wear it around my neck, on a t-shirt, tattooed on the inside of my wrist…I mean, it already surrounds me like that fuzzy glow around streetlights on wet nights. An amorphous halo.

Most people fill up their names. They become synonymous with them. To the point where you can’t imagine them being called anything else—often by the time they’re a few months old. A person’s name isn’t just what you call them. When you hear the name, your mind/eyes/heart/hands fill up with a ten-dimensional image.

And so, I searched the Worddom, and this is where I landed. My Word is Julie.

I did, however, take a poll of those that I love and that love me back. I asked them for their thoughts on my Word, and here’s what they had to say: determined, creative, passionate, trouble, unpredictable, aggressive, independent, appetite, compelling, vivacious, glowing.

‘Trouble’, ‘unpredictable’ and ‘aggressive’. Those words came from the mouth of my very own Mother—interestingly enough—since she also and originally gave me the Word that, in the end, I feel defines me best.

She saved ‘Julie’, kept it close—on her way to motherhood, then through the two sons that came first. She knew I was coming. She knew I would be Julie.

She thought, I’m sure at the time, when I came out all small and pink and loud from the get-go, that it would be that simple. “Julie!” She proclaimed. Apparently, she got a little more than she bargained for.

Well, at least more than one word…

Image credit: biphop

NOTE: I did not search far for this image, it came straight to me. Not only is it cosmically in honor of Andi, my favorite Francophile, but the translation couldn’t be more fitting. I knew that ‘mot’ means ‘word’ in French which is why I thrilled to find the image, but (here’s the good part), according to Andi and her French hubbie (and my online french/english dictionary), the definition of ‘mot’ on this paper is: “fit, like a glove that is returned’. If that’s not poetic bamboozlement, I don’t know what is…

So…what’s your word???

It’s apparently THAT good.

The path to my favorite beach is rather long (made longer so when you have 2 small children walking with you). It’s not atypical for this part of the world, or the Vineyard in particular. I’ve never let it bother me, because it always seemed like an easy price to pay for the fruit at the end.

On this particular path, moments before you can see the water, the path takes a sharp turn up. One last challenge to beach goers, as if the sand, which is now pliable and deep and seems to have a higher gravitational pull than regular dirt, is asking, are you sure you want to go to our beach?” Are you worthy?”

If you make it, the hill crests and you’re greeted with an equally sharp downhill over light sand that steers you down easily into the water of Martha’s Vineyard Sound.

But before the water and the downhill and the uphill, there is a fence on one side of the path. And lined up at its base, is a row of shoes: flip flops, sneakers, sandals. Some just kicked off, some lined up neatly, some looking like they’ve sat there for years. The invitation is for all to drop their shoes and their off-beachness before entering—like you would before entering a home.

The beach, apparently, is that good.

This morning, as I was leaving the beach after a run, I passed a man and his Great Pyrenees as they walked past the shoe fence. The dog was sniffing along on the non-fence side of the path, when all of a sudden, his head shot up and he hurdled over to the shoes—actually, one pair of shoes, some Adidas flip flops—and started inhaling them with his nose and with his gusto. His tail went so ballistic it sent waves of undulation up the entirety of his massive body.

“Yep, those are Lisa’s shoes! Let’s go find her!” The man said to his dog (who he did not look like, by the way).

Oh…to be able to pick the ‘good’ ones out of the bunch. The good people, the people that are inherently ours. The good ideas, the good concepts, the good words. The good choices, the good paths, the good directions.

And, oh…to be able to have them pick us. To literally have them pull us to them, suck us up and into their eddy. Even when we’re busy on the other side of the path.

Image credit: I took this picture with my Blackberry, as made obvious from the poor quality, one morning last week at dawn—having just topped the hill.

Nota Bene: Lucky points

My lucky points have gone up recently. I’m not sure why and I’m not asking. As someone recently said to me, “Don’t worry about why someone likes your work, don’t ask why, just take it all in.” I’m applying that philosophy to my luckiness.

This particular streak is supported, buttressed and inspired by kindness. Kindness in the form of a mentor. An angel, if you will, who literally pointed his finger at me and said, “You are magnificent…wanna see how far we can take it?” The first stop has been into a realm of work that I had never done before. (Well, not literally because it is content creation and writing, but just in terms of the medium of video/directing/editing….)

Of course, I did what any normal person would do when faced with such praise and with such an offer. I stopped breathing. Then I panicked. Then I called an emergency meeting with my Brain Trust. Then I dove in and started doing the actual work and realized that I LOVE it…and, miraculously, I can do it, too.

But I can’t possibly gloss over the amazingness of having someone, who is brilliantly good at doing this work and more, standing behind me telling me that I CAN do it, that I AM doing it and, then, fiercely taking every little success and thrusting me into the next stage of NEW.

It’s been a thrill and fire in my brain and belly. And it’s been a win/win. I’m helping his company and he’s helping mine. And, the joy we’re both taking from the match is just, well, sublime.

And who doesn’t want more joy? And who doesn’t want to challenge themselves to be bigger, better and badder? And who would turn their nose up at lucky?

The answers to those questions are definitively: ‘lotsa people’. I should know—’cause for a while, I didn’t, I didn’t and I would. But survey says that it seems I’ve released a healthy portion of those nasty behaviors. How lovely.

So, no questions asked, just working my ass off and soaking it in, this lucky…(and maybe refusing to change my socks—you know, so I don’t break my streak.)

Image credit: Rob Warde

Writing her first symphonies

First, she wrote her name. Now, she’s writing symphonies. Okay, not really…but sorta.

It’s nearly impossible not to write about watching my 4-year-old discover writing. Because she’s my baby and because writing is my soul sister. To see the two of them combined is…well…beyond the beyond.

Here’s what she’s up to.

She’s mastered the letters. She can identify them in books, on t-shirts, on my computer—you name it, she’s calling them out like muggers in a precinct line-up. And, she can write them. Not just her five, S-O-P-H-I-E, but all 26. Which is where the composing comes in.

She spends hours (in 4-year-old years, which is like 20 minutes in grown-up years) arranging letters into magnificent combinations. With her pen and paper, with the alphabet magnets and the smooth surface of our fridge, she creates wordy masterpieces. Sometimes they are short: P-O-H-P. Sometimes they are long: S-O-P-H-I-E-J-A-C-K-D-P-E-X-I-Q-W-N. Sometimes they make sense: P-O-D.  Sometimes they don’t: G-H-N-O-O-F.

But they always end the same—with the question: “What does this say?”

We sound them out for her, of course, because the point is to help her learn phonics. But I long for her to tell us what they say, you know? What it means in her mind when she takes the notes she’s been given and arranges them just so. In that way that feels like the sweetest sort of mastery…and connection…and song.

Sitting on rapture

I just had a good long talk with myself. Because I was driving myself crazy.

• Staring at the screen.
• The blank one, that is.
• Not allowing myself to type even one word.
• Until I was positive it was The Perfect Word.
• Therefore, me = paralyzed, inactive, stymied.
• Not writing.
• Worrying.
• Ridiculous.

Just start, I told myself. Maybe not at the beginning…but somewhere in between, at some point along the way.

Because even those car ads that boast ’0 to 60′ admit that it happens over the course of X number of seconds. It is not instantaneous, it is a progression.

Albeit from static and silence to rapture.

Image credit: valkyrieh116

So in love

The summer after my senior year in high school sticks out in my mind. Prominently.

Not because there was a life changing event. Not because I was leaving high school and home and my friends. And not because I was getting ready to go off to college, the east coast and an unknown life.

It was because I was in love and in a deeply committed and satisfying relationship, the kind where you wake up in the morning and remember what you have and what you’re in—and it floods you with warmth and joy and YES! It was because it was one of those rare, extended periods—as in concentrated time, as opposed to 5 minutes bursts that occur every now and then—that I felt so sure, so committed, so ‘in it’.

It was because the relationship I was in was with me.

Not because someone broke up with me or because I couldn’t find anyone to love or to love me. And therein lies the rub. My high school boyfriend wanted to be with me, but I’d broken up with him when I left St. Louis for the summer. He eventually drove all the way to northern Minnesota to be with me, but I said no…again. There was a also a ceramics counselor who fancied himself in love with me, but I wasn’t having that either.

No brag, just fact. (Thanks for that one,  Joe.) My point is that the summer was so memorable because this ‘wanting to be on my own’ was purely voluntary. Chosen.

And I’ve been thinking about that summer. Remembering what it felt like—to be so happy…with just me. And, 19 years later, I’m seeing something I hadn’t noticed before, about why that time was so profound. The something is this: there’s a marked difference between reaching out. And reaching in.

Reaching out:

• Things are beyond your grasp, beyond your control.
• Essentially, they are other. Not you.
• And I don’t believe there can ever be total fusion of the two separate parts. But it’s what we spend endless effort trying to make happen.
• In a relationship, we’re trying to get others to say what we need them to say, to act like we need them to act, to read our minds.
• In the writing, well, it’s kinda the same. And the room for reader interpretation is pretty big, like the penthouse suite.
• I’ve seen too much now to believe that this complete fusion is possible. Cynical? Maybe, but I’m calling ‘em like I see ‘em. So often lately I’ve thought it would happen—with this group or these two people or maybe those three—but, nope.

Reaching in:

• Things are right there, available, customizable, known and understood even before you know and understand.
• Essentially, they are familiar. You.
• And the thought of fusion is actually redundant. We don’t need to spend time to make it happen, we just need to be. There is no separateness.
• In this relationship, it’s private, not on display. And you only have to answer to you. You get to see you.
• In the writing, well, it’s kinda the same. I mean, it’s ALL in there, inside.
• I’ve seen enough now to know that complete fusion exists. I’ve been lucky enough to feel it.

I’m thinking about rekindling this old flame.

Though there are moments when I think that will be impossible. Those are the moments when I’m standing alone in big, flat, open spaces with nowhere to hide. When there is a blank screen in front of me. When the idea of writing a book is dangled. When I feel like being loud, out loud, aloud and allowed. When I don’t want to be alone. When I want someone to read and love what I’ve written. When I’m looking out.

But, I gotta say, this remembered love affair has been peeking at me lately, from around random corners. It’s most abundantly felt when I’m writing, or in a groove with my work in general. It’s certainly there when I’m running et al. Sometimes it just appears and fills me up and says, “Remember how good this feels? How whole? How peaceful? How utterly painless?”

And I remember how alive I was during the relationship, over the course of that summer. By no means a hermit, hiding, sad or scared—but a good friend, an adventurer, a happy spirit, a big punch of delight, a live-er. Because I had everything I needed.

It’s that remembering that makes me want it back. Makes me want to call it and say, ‘Hey, it’s me…I was thinking we should see each other, even if it’s just for lunch.” Even though I know we’re going to end up in bed together.

And even though I’m still, out of habit, looking out—I’m clearly thinking, Nah, I’d rather stay in.

Image: Tony the Misfit

So frickin’ predictable: The creative process

Let’s get it out on the table now. In this post, I talk about the female reproductive system. It’s an exquisite, natural and magical process that I beg you not to be squeamish about. That said, men, there are things here for you too, on several levels. Even if you spend most or all of your time on Man Island (which, from what I can tell, sounds very, very boring). If girly, reproductive things didn’t exist, you wouldn’t be here, after all. Word to your mother.

I generally consider myself to be a smart person. but every 28 days or so, something happens that makes me doubt this. And I mean really doubt this.

It starts physically.

I wake up one morning and I’ve apparently gained 20 lbs. while I was sleeping. It makes no sense. I haven‘t been eating more than usual. I have been sweating profusely for at least an hour every morning on running shoes, blades or bike wheels. But my clothes now resemble the casing of a sausage, several parts of my body suddenly favor the contents of an overstuffed sandwich.

About 30 seconds later, I come to the only logical answer: I’m old and I’ve reached that point in my life where no matter what I do, it’s a downhill slide to old, out-of-shape and ugly.

I get pissed. Why today? I ask, shaking my hands at the sky. It’s been going so well. I’m not ready! NOT YET!

The next thing that happens is equally as startling.

One minute I’m happily typing away thinking about how great life is and then—BOOM. It all sucks. And I mean to tell you that the suckage is hoover-sized, black and sticky. I can’t find one thing that’s good. I’m irrationally angry at everyone. It’s like road-rage without the road or the cars, but with everything else within spitting distance. And beyond.

I call my beloveds and cry and bemoan the fact that this is all for shit. That I don’t even think my dog loves me anymore. That I don’t even want to write. Just cry and sleep. And sit on someone’s big, warm, comforting lap.

It always ends the same way.

(By the way, if you didn’t see this coming and you’re a woman, then ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’ If you didn’t see this coming and you’re a man, you will never, ever be my boyfriend.)

Yes. A few days later, I inexplicably get my period. And it’s the ‘inexplicable’ part that really gets me and makes me doubt my intelligence. Because here’s the thing: this brilliant reproductive phenomenon has rained down upon me an estimated 301 times, thus far. THREE HUNDRED AND ONE TIMES.

That’s a lot, wouldn’t you say? And you would think, then, that I would get it, that when my entire body bloats up like a dead frog in a pond and I’m more irritated than a teenager at a family picnic, I would calmly think to myself, ‘Oh! It’s just my period, this too shall pass!’, take a deep breath and go about my day.

But nope. Every time, every single time, I’m shocked. And, because I love to be validated and surrounded, I will share that I’ve been told by several other brilliant women, that this happens to them too. I wonder if it’s because we’re so busy living fabulous lives, that we just don’t hold this nastiness front and center. Yes, yes—that must be it.

Happy endings

And this is the good news. Every month, after the disaster—comes a flood of relief. My body is beautiful and strong and my clothes do fit. My life is happy and sweet and I can see good coming at me from every view.

Just like the crap that hits with the certainty of taxes or, you know, death. So does the relief and reality of the fact that everything is really okay. That there was a reason. That it was just mother nature at work.

Now. How in the hell does this have anything to do with writing, arting and creating?

It applies to the moments when instead of your clothes not fitting, your chair doesn’t fit and neither do your fingers on your keyboard. The moments when you don’t know why you bother—because no one is reading, because you think your work sucks, because you won’t ever make a living from it.

I think there’s a writers equivalent of getting your period. It’s that aha! moment when we realize we were tired or needed an hour away from the computer or a good talk with a friend or a roll-around with a lover or a good meal or 12 hours of sleep. The writers’ equivalent is whatever it is that hits us with the realization that all is not lost, that this is the way it goes—that we stumble into holes on a regular basis and often sit at the bottom of them staring at the dark muck…before inevitably pulling ourselves up and out.

The writer’s equivalent of the period is that we always survive, we always find the strength to come back to center, back to good, back to okay. It may not be once a month, but it’s always there.

It’s that as uncomfortable and messy as it might be, it’s a vital part of the creation process. We have it in us. Period.

Even when we forget.

Image credit: dahlstroms

Writing with brains in our hearts, writing with brains in our guts

This, I’m guessing, is not news to you: When your heart breaks, you actually feel the pain in your chest. And when you are in love, your heart swells, pounds, aches…to burst—the physical sensation is acute. And when you’re nervous or excited or you just have a ‘feeling’ about something…you actually ‘feel it’ in your gut. And while any of those (and any number of other) scenarios are happening, your head churns—analyzing, dissecting, scrutinizing, breaking it down.

This, however might be news to you: Apparently, the heart has its own independent nervous system with at least forty thousand cells that are the same as the ones found in parts of the brain. (Though I think I’ve met a few people with far less.) And the gut has a brain, known as the enteric nervous system (ENS), that lives in the lining of the esophagus, stomach, small intestine and colon.

Yes, people, we have three brains.

A few years ago, I heard a lecture about this phenomenon. And I have to say, it blew my mind a little. Because, for the most part, I’d been encouraged to think things through logically (follow your head) and not rely so much on my feelings (not your heart). I’d rarely followed that advice, mind you (I think Cancers are incapable)—but now I was I learning that the source of these irresistible, and often overpowering, feelings of the heart and the gut are actually of the brain.

And while my brain was a little taken aback by the competition and the being-put-in-its-place-ness of this information, my heart and my gut sounded off a loud, ‘ah HA!’ They knew they’d been right and worthy and valuable all along. Of course.

Using all three brains

When we write, or create in any way, we access all three points. Though some more than others, right? It’s clear to me when I’m writing primarily with my head as opposed to my heart or as opposed to my gut—I can see pretty clearly how that collaborative scale is tips. Can you?

Because they’re all necessary. In their own ways, the head, heart and gut work together to help us birth ideas and form words. Perhaps our head brain gives us organization, spelling and analysis. Our heart brain coats and stuffs our writing with feeling and consciousness. And our gut brain gives us drive and serves as a compass, pointing us in the direction we need to go.

And so it is that our readers don’t just read our words. But they feel them too. We make them cry and fume and crack up. And we guide them to motivation and change, deep realization and action.

The connector

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but I’m very aware of how often I use the word ‘and’. I start sentences and paragraphs with it all the time, regardless of whether it’s ‘right’ or not. I pop it in often when I write here on this blog. Sometimes, my head brain wants me to simmer down and chides me for this conjunctive enthusiasm—but my heart brain tells me, passionately, that it feels right to use it and my gut brain tells me, pointedly, to go with it.

It’s how I talk, it’s how I write and, I think, it’s how I connect my three brains: head and heart and gut.

Image credit: helgasm