Doing Work You Love

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."

— Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love the work they do and those who work to make a living.

In today's economy, it seems greedy and idealistic to talk about finding work you love when so many people are not able to find work at all. This recession has given me a whole new perspective on the importance of work — not just as a source of funding for our leisure activities, but as the basis of self-worth and the true strength behind a healthy family.

In case I haven't made it clear, the work I love is writing. I love everything about writing — reading about it, doing it, talking about it, working at it, teaching it. I'm energized by the burst of creativity that springs from a new idea or connection. Discovering new words makes me unreasonably happy (especially if I can remember them). Editing and rewriting are not burdensome chores, but a joyful honing and polishing of rough beginnings. 

I used to divide writing into that which I did for work and that which I did for fun. As a professional writer since college, for more than 20 years I've done all kinds of business writing. That was work. Then, several years ago I found myself thinking about a children's story. That was fun. When I started listening to the stories within me, it opened the floodgates to a reservoir of creativity that I didn't even know existed. It has completely changed the way I feel about all my writing. 

Now, each new assignment is divine challenge, a chance to practice my craft, to apply a new technique, to draw from my own deep well of inspiration to make the writing at hand the best it can be. My head spins with ideas — snippets of dialogue, themes for an essay, visions of characters. A writer friend and I recently discussed our dismay at the discovery that not everyone walks around with stories and characters buzzing in his or her ears, clamoring to be realized on the page. 

The two halves of me — the professional craftsperson and the creative artisan — are beginning to integrate into a productive whole. My husband wishes this merger would result in a little better return on our investment, but that's coming. I feel it. Or maybe it's just the caffeine.

If there is one rule of writing, it's that thou shalt not plagiarize, but you know what they say about rules. I have broken this commandment by stealing both the title and idea for this post from a new friend, Carolyn Brandt Broughton, who has started an entire blog called Doing Work You Love. For years, Carolyn has interviewed practitioners of all manner of work, the only connection among them being that they love what they do. It's an inspired idea and an inspiring series that she plans to share with us through her blog.

Carolyn and I connected through Off Campus Writers' Workshop, a group of Chicago-area writers who meet weekly during the school year to learn all about writing. Joining a community of people who share your passion is a great way to find inspiration. In real life, I have Off Campus and my critique group. Online, I've been lucky to join the Silicon Valley Moms Group, which operates 11 regional blogs featuring the words, wisdom and experiences of more than 350 writers. I have found gracious professionals in the notoriously stingy world of publishing — people like Lisa Romeo, Nathan Bransford and J.A. Konrath — who freely and willing share their hard-won wisdom with other writers.

Just today, I joined an exciting new online community called She Writes. It's literally emerging before my eyes, garnering 145 new members since I joined earlier today. It's a fascinating social networking experiment and I've already discovered some generous, dedicated writers. 

While doing work you love for a wage-earning living may be a luxury, you can still do work you love even if it isn't your job. This is a lesson I'm trying to teach my oldest boy, who will turn 18 in November. I truly believe if he could find his passion, he would be set and happy for life. Which leads me to my second plagiarism infraction of the day, stealing this cool video from Laura Didyk's blog, outloud. I found Laura over at She Writes, and we both found inspiration in The Beckoning of Lovely video. I hope you do, too.

What lovely have you beckoned into your life? What is the thing you most love to do and do you do it? Click here to let us in on your work loves (or hates).

"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."

— Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)

Nature Bats Last

"But make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last."

— Robert Michael Pyle

writer, naturalist, lepidopterist

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love to garden and those who don't. 

Let's be clear: I'm no garden ho'. I wish I loved gardening, I really do. I truly appreciate a beautiful garden, and I love the idea of gardening. But actual gardening — not so much. My perennials perennially perish, my vegetable garden is fruitless, and my annuals barely take root.

My mom had a magnificent garden at her last house in Michigan, complete with herbs, flowering trees, bordering perennials, and even a koi pond (thanks to my husband) teeming with colorful fish and water plants. She assured me that gardening when you have young children is too much to ask of anyone, but that once my children were grown and gone, I, too, would love to garden. That was right before she and my dad moved to Florida — primarily to get away from any form of garden or lawn care.

I've been doing a lot of walking in my neighborhood this spring and summer (trying to convince myself that exercise, like gardening, is good for me — but that's another post). What passes for spring in Chicago came late this year, but by now the gardens have been painted into the landscape. While bulbs and lilacs may have faded, roses are gushing and peonies are panting to break loose from their confining rings.

Even the annuals are filling in nicely — in other people's gardens, thank you very much. My daughter and I planted a flat and a half of begonia's around the base of our "small" tree, and they still look puny and separated, not the lush pink area rug of blossoms I had envisioned.

Last summer, I ventured one cherry tomato plant in a pot. It cost me $2.48 and yielded about nine edible fruits, which would probably have run me about $2.48 at Dominick's, so it was basically a wash. This year, we tried two tomato plants (one has since passed away); herbs, including basil, rosemary and lemon balm (all doing quite nicely in their containers); and, at my daughter's insistence, a bell pepper plant. I have no idea how to grow peppers. Do I need to pinch? Prune? Deadhead? Oh, well, we bought the $1.98 version, so we won't be out that much when it bites the dust.

I kind of like the "container garden" thing. They're easy to plant, require little maintenance and look lovely on the porch steps. It almost appears as if a real gardener lives in our house — until you see my neighbor's garden, two doors north. 

Can you say obsessive-compulsive? The guy (and his gardener) are always tinkering (or is it puttering when you are in the garden?) — planting something new here, moving this plant over there. Sure it's beautiful, but who has that kind of time and energy? Self-employed people with no kids, who have enough money to hire a gardener, that's who.

I would garden if you could do it only three times a year: 

1. that first perfect day in March, when you are so happy to be outside after the long winter that you kill yourself doing yard work and can't move for the next week; 
   
2. one planting session sometime after Mother's day, when you are finally sure the last frost has passed, and you feel supremely satisfied about getting everything in the ground that you were tempted into buying at the local garden center;
   
3. a single 1-to-2-hour weeding session in mid-to-late July, after you have sufficiently recovered from the May planting session, but while it still seems worthwhile to spend time on plants that are just going to die in the fall anyway.
   

I know to many of you this kind of thinking verges on sacrilege. I know I'm supposed to care about the inextricable relationship between humans and plants. I know this because I read Michael Pollan's fabulous treatise, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. I know I'm supposed to want to grow and eat my own vegetables, because Barbara Kingsolver made me feel guilty about it in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

But here's the thing — I'm allergic to insect bites. I've tried to find passion in the rich, brown soil of the garden, but all I've found is dirt under my fingernails. I've searched for satisfaction in a good day's worth of gardening, but all I have discovered are sore knees and screeching lower back pain.

Isn't it enough that I can appreciate the beauty and bounty that a well-tended garden yields — preferably through my picture window, or in a vase on my coffee table, or overflowing from the rich, brown depths of my wooden salad bowl? 

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

— Charles Baudelaire, French Poet (1821-1867)

What's your gardening story — death or glory? Click here to tell us about it. And if you find your vegetable garden overfloweth, we will gratefully accept any and all surpluses.

See my latest Chicago Moms Blog post on the recent spate of celebrity deaths by clicking here. 

Photos: Tulips in Chicago and Pot Garden in Florida; 2kop.

Constructive Criticism

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can accept constructive criticism and those who throw a screaming tantrum at the slightest suggestion can't. 

For some time now, my brother has been concerned that the brilliant content of Two Kinds of People has been obscured by the faded newsprint background (see photo). I believe his exact words were: "I can't read the damn thing."

read•a•bil•i•ty (noun) — accessibility of text: a measure of the ease with which a passage or text may be read.

Now, being the flexible, mature, stable adult that I am, I have completely ignored his comments in the months since the blog's redesign. Recently, however, he has become more persuasive ("I mean it. I can't read it at all."), so I have modified the design just a bit to accommodate his failing vision. (I'll let you in on a little family secret: he used to be younger than I am, but now he is older.)

As always, I'm interested in most all of your comments and feedback. Please vote in the poll below or leave a comment by clicking here. 

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. 

Design is how it works."

— Steve Jobs

Most of Us Have Gears We Never Use*

*"Life is like a 10-speed bicycle. 

Most of us have gears we never use."

— Charles M. Schulz

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who know how to ride a bike and those who don't.

I learned to ride my mom's bike when I was four. This is the single athletic feat of my life that I can claim as purely my own. I wanted it bad, so I taught myself. Standing on the pedals because I couldn't reach the seat, I pedaled and fell until I didn't fall anymore.

Riding a bike meant freedom. It also meant not having to walk every where. I come from the same genetic stock as Lech Walesa who once said: "I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things." (Hey, don't knock his philosophy of life; after all, he did win the Nobel Peace Prize.)

Lately, I'm a little freaked out by the wild packs of bikers that seem to be taking over the streets in their obscenely tight padded shorts and moisture-wicking jerseys. These Lance Armstrong wannabees are in a fight-to-the-death struggle with the internal-combustion engine. I was taught that cyclists are have the same rights and responsibilities as motorists when on public thoroughfares, but these road warriors are heedless of the rules. They know that when push comes to shove, the motorist will be blamed for any accident, so between March and November I live in fear that one of these whack-jobs avid cyclists is going to jut in front of my car and be squashed like a bug.

Given the tension between bikers and drivers, it's no surprise that the history of the bicycle roughly parallels the development of the automobile. This may also explain why my love affair with the bike came to an abrupt halt on my sixteenth birthday, when I got my driver's license. (Now would be a good time to refer back to the Walesa quote.) Even so, I have never truly lost the joy of biking, although helmets have put a real damper on that whole wind in your hair thing.

Several years ago, my mother-in-law gave me her old bicycle, a comfort bike that lives up to its name, complete with a bell and the modern equivalent of a basket. Through no fault of her own, my bike and I have a fickle relationship. Sometimes she and I go steady, and other times I'll take her on a date and not call again until the next summer. 

Part of the problem is my kids. Only half of them know how to ride, so when it comes to getting the family from Point A to Point B, we've mostly relied on the minivan. 

At six, my daughter decided to learn to ride her bike, and after hours of tears and yelling, succeeded in forcing her body to master the machine — in one day. Her twin brother is still a non rider at 17. My middle boy is a cautious, by-the-book kind of guy who approached learning to ride a bike like a military general plans and executes a week-long siege. He strapped on all his safety gear every day, practiced for a reasonable length of time, then put the bike away, only to make a fresh start each morning until he had won the war.

My youngest, the "me too" of our family, really wanted to follow in By-the-book's footsteps, but wasn't quite ready. He gave up out of frustration or humiliation or both and hasn't wanted to try again for three summers. Yesterday he announced he was ready, so tonight after dinner, we gave it a shot. He has matured both physically and mentally over these three years, and after just a half hour or so of trying, he is so close he can practically taste it. He started getting skittish, though, so rather than risk another (perceived) failure, I told him he was doing great and that we would try again tomorrow. He was simultaneously a little proud of himself and relieved to pause his efforts. As he closed the shed, his parting shot echoed Mark Twain, who said:

"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live."

This summer, we (and by we, I mean me) are trying to be a little leaner and greener. We are trying to fool our bodies into fitness by doing "fun" physical activities without referring to them as exercise. The old minivan is less than 25 miles away from hitting the 100K-mile mark. The mom is less than 18 months away from hitting the big 5-0. We all have to make some sacrifices to keep things running. I'm hoping we'll find a few answers in our two wheelers.

When did you learn to ride a bike? Did it come naturally, or only after a struggle? Click here to tell me your story or to speak your peace about the Critical Mass movement.

Sensory Perceptions

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass."

— Anton Chekov, 1860-1904

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are visual thinkers and those who are not.

As writers, we are taught to use all our senses to describe the worlds we create. Show, don't tell. Readers want to see, hear, smell, taste and touch everything our characters experience, but how do we convey those rich sensory details with mere words?

In early critiques of the manuscript for my children's novel, readers commented that they liked my main character, but couldn't see him. I knew everything about this third grader — his thoughts, feelings, friends, passions, parents, siblings, and even his pet — but I had no idea what he looked like.

In my mind, he was an average-sized third grade boy with a pixellated face, like the blurred mugs of the world's dumbest criminals in those reality cop shows. But my readers would fill in the visage that I couldn't envision, right? Wrong. "What does he look like?" one young reader asked. Good question. 

We live in a visual world and the human eye is an astounding organ, processing up to 36,000 bits of information per hour and nearly 24 million images in a normal lifetime. We see as many 10 million colors and can distinguish 500 different shades of gray.  (On the other hand, the octopus does not have a blind spot, so maybe we should leave parallel parking to the cephalopods.)

But among humans, some of us are more visually oriented than others. I've started carrying my camera around to train my eye to capture visual details and then translate them to the written page. To keep from becoming distracted, I've focused mainly on color and have been pleased enough with my amateur efforts to have a little flickr set on the subject. Just when I was feeling good about these optical exercises, I clicked on a link to my friend Matt Dinnerstein's magnificent professional photos and was vividly reminded that my visual skills are rudimentary at best. 

Time for a new exercise. I stand in awe of visual artists, and thought maybe I could steal borrow some of their work to help me "see" my character. One of the instructors at Off Campus Writers Workshop advised us to "create a visual map — a poster with images of our characters and settings," so I took to perusing magazines. I tried, I really did, to find a photograph that would bring my character to life, but instead of pictures, I found myself cutting out descriptive words in interesting fonts. 

That's when I realized that I'm not a visual thinker. I rely on a sixth sense — my sense of language — to interpret my world. It all comes down to the meaning, rhythm, subtext, context and order of the words — and there is nothing "mere" about them. 

The roughly quarter million distinct words of the English language can be combined and recombined to create meaning, nuance, irony, description, poetry, humor, tragedy, drama, fantasy, romance … in other words, all the sights, sounds, scents, tastes and feelings our physical, emotional and imaginary worlds can generate. 

I recently sat down and removed the mask that was hiding my main character so I could take a good, long look at him. Turns out he's a real person after all, and it only took a couple dozen words to paint his picture:

• wavy, chocolate brown hair
  
• freckles sprinkled across a perfectly ordinary nose
  
• long, thin fingers
  
• hooded blue eyes
  
• a shy, wide, close-lipped smile
  
• and a mouthful of shiny new adult teeth, still a little too big for his face
  

Well, can you see him? Click here to let me know what's missing, or to discuss which sense you count on most navigate your world.

_________

Ed. Note: 6/5/09 8:18 p.m. — I just found these great tidbits in some correspondence between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor, Max Perkins, on an early draft of The Great Gatsby.  Perkins wrote:

"Among a set of characters marvelously palpable and vital — I would know Tom Buchanan if I met him on the street and would avoid him — Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader's eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim."

After first claiming the vagueness was intentional, Fitzgerald responded:

"I myself didn't know what Gatsby looked like or was engaged in and you felt it."

It's nice to know that my initial vagueness about my main character puts me in good company. Read more about this fascinating relationship between author and editor here.

Photo credit: The Five Senses by Rob Nunn aka scalespeeder.

Prom Season: Is it 2009 or 1909?

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe that in 2009 it's OK to have racially segregated proms and those who don't.

I was shocked to read a recent NY Times story about a high school in Montgomery County Georgia that held separate proms for its white and African American students. I was at least as shocked that this story was a magazine section photo essay, rather than a hard-hitting expose´ or editorial. Perhaps the fact that we're not shocked is the most shocking aspect of this story. You can read my take on it in my new post on the Chicago Moms Blog.

Photo credit: Mirror Ball Amsterdam by yozza/Ewan Topping 

Confused by the Muse

Muse (myooz) — n.

1. GR. MYTH. any of the nine goddesses who preside over literature and the arts and sciences.
2. the spirit that is thought to inspire a poet or other artist; the source of genius or inspiration.
   
3. RARE a poet.
   
4. a musing; deep meditation.

muse (myooz) — v.

1. to think deeply and at length; meditate.
   
2. to think or say meditatively.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have a muse and those who are still searching for one. 

I'm a writer, right? An artist. So I'm supposed to have a muse, right? So, where is she — or he — or it? Where's my muse?

In my search, I looked back to high school humanities class and the nine classical Greek Muses of Hesiod's poem Thoegony. You know, those chicks with funny names, who are dressed for a toga party:

• Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry — cool name, but not my muse.
  
• Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry — somehow, Calliope sounds more lyrical to me, but maybe something gets lost in translation.
  
• Erato, the Muse of erotic poetry — um, yeah, not my genre.
  
• Urania, the Muse of astronomy — with Chicago's light pollution, I can barely see the stars.
  
• Clio, the Muse of history — who needs all those dates?
  
• Terpsichore, the Muse of dance — too hard to pronounce; besides I'm a klutz.
  
• Polyhymnia, the Muse of sacred song — I'm pretty sure she's busy inspiring our angel-voiced (sadly, outgoing) cantor Erin Frankel.
  
• Mepomene, the Muse of tragedy — life's tough enough without her.
  
• Thalia, the Muse of comedy — now that's a muse I could use.

Even before the big nine came along, a guy named Pausanias talked about three other muses:

• Melete — the muse of practice;
  
• Mneme — the muse of memory; and
  
• Aeode – the muse of song.

While practice, memory and song seem more directly related to the kind of writing I do, these ladies still leave me cold. Maybe if they were half-naked Greek gods instead of goddess, I'd find them more attractive, but I doubt it. They would still be nothing but a bunch of marble stiffs.

So, what is it that inspires me? I could say my kids, which is sometimes true; but more often than not, it's the words themselves that get me going. I love to play with words. Just thinking about Muses led me to amused and bemused and museology, which I was disappointed to discover is not, in fact, the study of Muses, but rather the science or profession of museum organization and management. You have to admit, museology a pretty succulent word for such a dusty (albeit noble) profession. 

I've been reading Courage & Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story by Barbara Abercrombie, who tackles the Muse on the first page of chapter 1:  "Make up a new voice that will inspire you, a voice that will say whatever you need to hear and will drown out all the other, negative voices, both real and imaginary." That's when I realized I already have a Muse: Me. Well, the voice in my head, anyway, who sounds like me, only idealized in every way. 

The Me in my head is fabulously beautiful (thin, of course) and smarter than smart, with an IQ hovering around 200.  This Me speaks seven languages in addition to English, meets the world's most interesting and famous people (but graciously treats them like regular folk), and can sing and play a variety of instruments by ear. Did I mention ice skating (Olympic level) and dancing (practically professional)? More than smart, though, this Me is quick and witty, a brilliant conversationalist who always says just the right thing at just the right time. She's also charmingly, disarmingly modest — the kind of person you want to hate, but can't because she's just so darn nice.

It was about this time in my musings about Muses that I realized I have more in common with my literary hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald, than I ever imagined. Good old Scott once said: "Writers aren't exactly people … they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person."

And there you have it. A Muse is really nothing more than schizophrenia put to good use.

Click here to let us know how the muse inspires you. If you are a clinical psychiatric professional, don't worry, I'm mostly harmless. If you want proof, you can check out my much more grounded post on the Chicago Moms Blog called Set Summer Free. 

Photo credit: The Muse by Evil Patrick Shannon