MENTAL STROLL

"When you practice walking meditation, you go for a stroll." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

This quote was also be said about keeping a journal. When you write in your journal, you go for a stroll, without purpose or direction, without a travel plan. You start now, and you walk for a while, write for a while, then you stop. You have fragments. The next day you do it again. And some of what you write in your journal will be whole, make sense, and some other things will still only be fragments.

My journals have been all sorts of things in the past and will take all forms in the future. I've done many writing types, filled with tidbits, quotes, titles, bits and pieces of story ideas. A journal can be any of these, and more. They may be experimental, a path for women's healing, a nature lover's field guide notes. I have done daily meditations, long spiritual quests, and searches for the right path to publication. They are all worth keeping--though I doubt anyone will read them when I am gone.

"The purpose of walking meditation is walking medication himself. Going is important, not arriving. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

NEW ORLEANS COMING BACK

I graduated from High School in Houma, Louisiana, about sixty miles from New Orleans. New Orleans was the city where you went to soak up the city's history, to enjoy zydeco and jazz music on Bourbon Street, to watch the artists around Jackson Square, and to sit on the levee, watching the traffic on the mighty Mississippi. Though I left there two years after graduation, I have never left the area in my heart, still have good friends there, and love to visit. It was a nightmare to see what damage Katrina did to my city, and now what BP had done to the Gulf.

Tonight on television, I watched a program entitled "New Orleans Rising" about a section of New Orleans I must admit I knew nothing about. Ponchartrain Park, with a view of the Lake from second stories, had been established in 1951 and middle-class African-Americans grew with the community, raised children to become doctors, layers, contractors, and actors. It was not crime ridden because the residents were law-abiding citizens who wanted a good place to rear their children. And those children, no matter to what heights they had risen in the world, still called this community home. It was heartbreaking to see it virtually destroyed by that hurricane, and ignored when the officials, federal, city and state, began to rebuild the commercial and more affluent white neighborhoods.

This show will be repeated on CNN several times this week--and hopefully beyond--and I'm urging you to view it. It is a story of family, community, determination, hard work, and the true American courage and faith to never give up.

SHORT STORY ANECDOTE

If short story writers would analyze the structure of an effectively told anecdote, they would clearly understand the traditional story form. Read anecdotes in as many articles as you can, and you will see that they are basically little stories used to emphasize the theme of the piece you are reading.

It is an idea that has become a story developed through a plot line. There is narrative, foreshadowing, dialogue, motivation characterization, description, suspense, crisis, and a conclusive end.

Inside a lean anecdote is a fat story ready to be written.

Quote (Author Unknown): There are no "one-novel" writers. There are only novelists who have stopped writing.

ROADS

Do you have a favorite road to take drives on? This is brought to mind because the weather has finally turned lovely around here and we are thinking of getting out of "Dodge" for a drive this weekend--maybe a sort of delayed anniversary gift to each other. Our 33rd anniversary is Friday, the 13th. And, yes, we got married on a Friday, too. No bad luck here.

When thinking of roads, I remember one that I love and hated years ago. It was a beautiful winding mountain road in all seasons, and I always wanted to drive it at a slower pace, maybe even the 35 MPH speed limit; drivers behind me hated that leisurely drive I insisted on doing. Lights flashed, horns honked, and tempers flared as other drivers insisted I speed up. When available I pulled into a pull-out created for just this reason, but they were few and far between.

I lived at the end of the winding road for five years. It was bordered with tall pins and oaks, large boulders, and sheltered by an immense blue sky. Quaint village, ski resorts so active in winter, and a few scattered businesses appeared on the drive. It was beautiful in all seasons, a place that whetted the muse and made a writer's figures long for pen or computer to capture the varied thoughts.

In summer it was cool, in autumn the leaves on oaks changed colors, in winter it was a fairy tale world of white. In most seasons, it was a sweet-smelling, fresh-air, sort of drive. But any season of the year, you'll have those fast boogers on your tail attempting to hurry you past it all.

REPETITION

Although we are creatures of habit, many of us become bored very easily. I have heard people complain because their bus or train or automobile follows the same route to work each day. How could they be bored?

How can any new or known path, a routine way, be any less new and full of possibility than a route traveled on any day? I like to believe that I would see something unique each time I passed along the way. Haven't you looked at paintings a second time, or sat gazing at it for a long time, and seen more and more as time passes? The same happens each day as you move through your routine.

There is constant change everywhere in everything. There is a new experience to collect every day. For writers, each new experience, or a repeat of the pattern, offers new ideas, new descriptions, new characters to use in our work. Just walking in your own neighborhood will bring something different to the eye.

Repeat your route of travel. Repeat your daily walk. Look at the same paintings or photographs again and again, waiting for the multitude of stories or ideas to appear. I guarantee you won't be bored.

HAVE BIOGRAPHIES GROWN UP?

When it comes to writing biographies it seems we have come full circle. Years ago the stories people's lives were enhanced with the authors creativity--in other words, the writer wrote the character to read, for good or bad, like a character in fiction. Then along came the era of "nothing but the facts, ma'am" and writers could not embellish anything no matter how dull the whole book or article was. Now, we are seeing a leaning toward creative nonfiction, even in "true" life stories, and it seems no one is going to be exposed on Oprah as long as the readers buy those books.

"We want biographies that show all sides of a character, humor as well as the ugly, or saintly, side. No more heavy-handed moralistic biographies. These books must be based on solid research but you may tweak the characterization a bit, let us hear the voice even though the author never heard the real person speak, but we should not sanitize the facts."

What double-speak is that? How can a writer write to those guidelines--or were they guidelines? Is this what they call creative nonfiction? And, if this is the definition, are we allowed to use this tool to write the story of someone's life? And if I was writing a biography, how would I handle it?

I've added writing for children to my mix of genre; it's actually not anything new as I have been doing this for years. Maybe I should say that I have come back to it after a long rest. Should I write about my many-times removed cousin, Jessee James, the outlaw from the late 1800's? I don't think young readers today would be interested and certainly not if I couldn't fictionalize the dialogue. Plus, today's youthful readers are much more interested in reading about a sports figure, a rapper, or someone who has overcome great odds--Jim Abbott, a pitcher with one hand, is a good example. I don't think Cousin Jesse has too many redeeming qualities.

Scholastic Books publishes the most biographies for children, mainly because they are used by teacheers who order for their own classes. This thing has been around so long I remember asking my parents for money for Scholastic books in the early 1950's. Who can compete with them? How do we get a book accepted by them?

What sells most? Heroes. But who are heroes today? We've lost Tiger, and Dennis Rodman,with green hair and nose rings, already has his biography for young readers. Astronauts used to be high on the list and scientists--they seem to be passe now. Books about minority women are popular. So shall I write about the woman in our western history who passed herself off as a man in order to live an exciting life as a stagecoach driver? She also became the first woman to legally vote in this country. Would Scholastic, or anyone, purchase such a book? The answer is no. Why? Because today's kids never heard about her. You know, when I had to read Shakespeare, he was long dead and I had never heard of him either.

If we are lucky, we will find a publisher willing to read our biographies--ones of women minorities and people who are not super famous. We might be able to sell them on historical figures no longer living--so they don't have to be revised and have a longer shelf life--or the biography of someone who just lived a fun life. We know they will never become bestsellers but they are in constant demand.

Biographies are a lot of research, aren't that easy to write, and are difficult to sell. But I remember how much I enjoyed reading them as a child and feeling I knew this people from reading about their lives.

I think it's worth writing a biography.