December 10, 2012: I've moved

I've moved and morphed. You can find me now at http://www.mindfulmusement.blogspot.com/. See you there!

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The Energy Agreement: Becoming a Freelancer

Some of us at some point in our lives feel an inner pull to try making a partial or full living as a freelance writer, artist, musician, film creator, or some other kind of creative solo worker.

I am here to say it's possible.

You may have tried to disregard this little tug. Maybe, like me, you've spent considerable time in the 8-to-5 (or 6-to-6) workplace, toiling away for The Man. After all, freelancing is not for those who get the shakes just thinking about giving up their dental and vision insurance. It's entirely appropriate that "Precarity (Uncertainty of Work) is a "see also" entry at the end of the Wikipedia entry on "Freelancer."

In spite of precarity -- maybe even because of the allure of it -- some of us are simply called to venture into the territory of the freelancer. I believe that when freelancing is your right livelihood, the universe opens up the possibilities. Call it spiritual, or metaphysical, or mystical: something opens up for those who puruse the lives they're meant to lead. We may not get rich in the process, but we certainly lead very rich lives when we listen to our hearts.

Joseph Campbell, the late scholar who studied myths and religions across cultures, said, "I have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time -- namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a akind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one that you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and the doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be" (Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth).

I do believe there's an invisible-hand layer of freelancing. There's something about hanging out your shingle that triggers the work to start coming your way...work that's suited to you just when you need it, although sometimes not a minute before.

In fact, about every six months I make an agreement with the hidden hands. I call it "The Energy Agreement." I renew it every six months, and it goes like this:

"For the next year I will base my exchange with the world around me on energy, rather than money. I will give my best and most joyful, creative and playful energy, and I will trust that my needs for resources will be met. I won't worry about money or time. In exactly six months, I'll see how this trust experiment is going."

I put a time frame on my Energy Agreement because even with the best, most earnest Energy Agreement, freelancing isn't all about hidden hands opening doors and leading us to pots of gold. Otherwise everybody's brother would be doing it, right? There are plenty of downs with the ups -- maybe more than most jobs. You're working without a net, after all, and it's very easy to lose your balance -- if not financially, then mentally. It takes discipline and stamina to work instead of go hiking, to to deal with the solitude that at first seemed appealing but eventually can get overwhelmingly lonely.

Still, with current technology, it's never been easier to work from nearly anywhere with a laptop, printer, and cell phone. (I'm sitting in a coffee shop as we speak.) If you are disciplined, and if you are willing to trust the hidden hands for help, and if you have a partner who carries benefits or if you are willng to purchase benefits like many other self-employed people, and if you're willing to accept work that may feel "beneath" you or not as "creative" as you'd like, then freelancing can be a viable option for a livelihood.

Making your own Energy Agreement may be just the place to start. And you don't have to quit your day job just yet to get the cosmic ball rolling. My advice is this: go slow, but if you think freelancing is for you, give it a try -- even if it's just a few hours a week at the beginning -- and see if you notice invisible hands starting to help.

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Eastern Iowans' Portraits in DC Until July

I'm very excited to be heading to DC this week for the opening of "Portrait Of Maquoketa" at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Artist Rose Frantzen painted 180 portraits of her local townspeople in Maquoketa that will be on display through early July.

I met Rose and her artist husband Charles Morris about a year ago and had the pleasure of working with them over the spring and summer on their book, Portrait of Maquoketa, which is being sold online and will be sold at the Smithsonian gift shop while the exhibit runs in DC.

After I conducted a number of interviews with Rose last spring, I wrote an introductory essay for the book and helped her write and edit short reflections about the people, their portraits and her artistic process.

Later in the summer, I listened to Chuck read his essay aloud, which relates biographical information about Rose, discusses some of her other works besides Portrait of Maquoketa, and periodically reveals snapshots of what it must be like to be part of such an amazing marriage of two talented artists. Chuck not only wrote this marvelous essay that ends the book; he also labored on the layout design book all summer long. Then, together with Rose in the late summer and early fall, he saw the book through the many steps involved in the printing process.

The opportunity to work with these remarkable people was handed to me out of the blue from the Freelancing Gods via friend Al T., who thought my husband Chuck would enjoy Rose and Chuck. That's how freelancing can work sometimes -- opportunities sometimes just seem to fall from the sky.

So I'm feeling very lucky today as we prepare to head to DC tomorrow to see the exhibit at the Smithsonian, honor Rose, and celebrate the 180 Maquoketans whose faces will grace the halls of the National Portrait Gallery for the next 7.5 months.

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Art and Writing Matter

At my writing group last night, one member – I’ll call her Julia – said she was recovering from the flu. Possibly the dreaded H1N1, we decided after hearing about her symptoms. On one day, when she became dehydrated and nearly delirious, she said she kept torturing herself with the thought that her writing was worthless, that she should be spending her time doing something to “help people” instead. “I still am feeling that way a little bit,” she confessed. “It won’t quite go away.”

I know so well this tricky turn of mind, this saboteur, this ambivalence toward creating art that arrives with sickness or other vulnerabilities – an uncertain income, a move to a new city. The rest of us rallied for her, trying to dispel her grey sky that wouldn’t clear. “It helps people to write something that is cathartic for them to read.” “When we’re creating, we’re more alive, and when we’re more alive, we’re more useful to the world.” “Besides, we don’t choose our art; it chooses us. We create because we must.”

Someone asked Julia, “Is the act of writing important to you?” Suddenly our friend’s face shifted from worried to peaceful, residually sick to the picture of health, dark cloud to beaming light. “Of course,” she said, smiling.

When I took Eric Maisel’s class on creativity coaching, he asked us to begin each day by writing “I matter and my writing matters.”

Art does matter. Writing does matter. Of course.

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Take a Break

“In the relentless busyness of modern life,” Wayne Muller writes in Sabbath: Finding Rest and Renewal in Our Daily Lives (Bantam, 2000), “we have lost the rhythm between work and rest.” He explores the concept of “Sabbath” and its rituals and references in Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism. Muller says the Sabbath is celebrated in various forms because it is in our nature to need a day a week to rest, celebrate, delight in, and savor our lives. During the rest of the week we may be driven by work, tasks, and worries, but once a week we’re supposed to chill out.

A true Sabbath, he argues, is a day of reflection and a day of no activities done out of obligation. Whether your Sabbath is spent alone or with friends or family or the larger community, the only goal should be rest and renewal.

Which is why when my friend Sheri prefers to stay home from church on Sunday mornings to garden, I think she is taking a particularly special form of the Sabbath. And why this morning when I hiked along the Coralville Reservoir, thinking about John Muir’s enthusiasm for nature as the greatest of all temples, I too was “obeying” the Sabbath…as I was later this afternoon while working on my novel, feeling the warm sun coming in my office window, enjoying the rush of a scene coming alive on the page.

If you’re a creator – an artist, writer, gardener, musician – and if you’re looking for an excuse to work on that creative project you’ve shelved for awhile, just remember that you owe yourself – and life itself – a Sabbath at least once a week. If on that day you are creating with joy and peace and delight, you’re honoring the Sabbath.

On the other hand, sometimes we need a break from everything. Doing nothing is an option, too.

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Canna-tastic

All summer long our canna plants have vigorously grown broad leaves of light green or variegated burgundy and forest green. Now, finally, the plants have brought forth their flowers, which are bright red, but so disproportionately small that they look a little silly perched on top of those magnificent plants.

When I work on my novel, my creative process feels like the growing canna plant-in-progress – complex, broad, and expansive. I show up at the computer a little afraid of the blank page on the screen, yet something happens if I make myself sit there, even if just for a half hour. Miraculously, sometimes characters interact, plot develops, and the research I’ve been doing magically finds its way into the material. Once in awhile I’m so pleasantly surprised that I dance around the room, like Geoffrey Rush neurotic writer’s character in The Banger Sisters. Remember that scene? He’s all by himself in a hotel room; his words are flowing after a long period of writer’s block, and he’s absolutely full of joy.

But sometimes the next day, when I look at what I produced, it seems disproportionately small in comparison to the feelings of discovery I experienced the day before. Which begs the old question: do people who create like to create because of the feelings of limitless possibility that accompanies the creative process – the variegated leaves pushing toward the heavens – or because of the products we produce – those shy red flowers that don’t quite convey the heightened experience we had while creating them?

Maybe if the flowers were as large as the feelings the creator experienced while making them, it would just be too much excitement for the reader/viewer/listener to bear all at once.

It doesn’t always happen, but I sure love that rush that sometimes accompanies the creative process. Guess I’ll keep making stuff. It’s canna-tastic.

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Iowa Writing Coach: Poem in Your Pocket Day

Everyone should live near a resident poet. My husband, sons, and I were lucky to have that privilege from 1990-1996, when we lived across the street from Robert Dana and his equally wonderful wife, Peg.

Originally from Massachusetts, Robert attended Drake University and the Iowa Writers Workshop after serving in the South Pacific at the end of World War II. He taught 40 years as Poet-in-Residence at Cornell College. I didn’t realize until recently that he was the founding editor of the revived North American Review, one of my favorite literary journals. He’s published many books of poetry and has also has served two terms as Poet Laureate of Iowa.

Here’s what I learned from Robert during the six years we lived in his vicinity: Gardening is serious business, as is good food. Neighbors are to be greeted enthusiastically – and maybe worked into a poem now and then. Cats make good fodder for poetry, too, and can shade a poem with humor, or lightness, or darkness, or all three. It is an honor to be invited to help proof a poet’s galleys while he reads them out loud, but you’ll be nervous as hell and will wonder if you’re doing it right. And…you don’t have to be religious to see the miracle in the everyday. In fact, too much looking for God can mean missing “air raw with rain” or “the dead blue crab in all its electric raiment.”

Cheers to Robert Dana on Poem in Your Pocket Day. When he read at Cornell College two nights ago, he told the audience that of all his lines of poetry, the last line in the following poem is his wife Peg’s favorite. I think it’s mine now, too.

“Chimes”

Mid-August. Evening. Rain falling.

Cold, bright silk where the street fronts the house.

Out back, it laves and slicks the parched leaves of the trees.
Ragged hang of summer’s end.

I lean against the doorway of the poem,
listening to old patter.

My cat, Zeke, lays himself out imperially.
Eleven pounds of grey smoke
with tufted ears and a curved plume of tail.

Now, a slight wind,
and The Emperor of Heaven’s chimes intone like distant bells,
his court musician’s 4000-year-old pentatonic scales
pealing in slow, clear ripples.

Occasionally, a chord.

Every day I live I live forever.

--From The Morning of the Red Admirals (Anhinga Press, 2004) by Robert Dana

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Creating and Mate-ing

I’ve always known that my husband Chuck and I are at our best when we’re doing something creative together. We especially enjoyed the creative project of raising our two sons together. Since they’ve grown up, however, Chuck and I have struggled to find another way to collaborate. He likes to cook but I would rather eat his delicacies than make them together. I like to draw; he appreciates visual art but doesn’t create it. We’re both writers but we work in very different genres.

After a few years of looking for the right avenue of co-expression, I think we may have found it: making podcasts for a blog we’re calling “foragers on the edge.” We’re just getting it up and running, but so far we’ve had great fun creating two short podcasts: one on our dance lessons at an Arthur Murray studio in the Quad Cities, and the other on a recent trip to the Quad City Botanical Center.

Here are some of the new things I’m learning and relearning from and about my mate of 33 years: 1) our peculiar qualities that can sometimes be considered flaws quickly turn into assets when we create together, such as his way of plunging ahead and my way of doing and re-doing until it feels closer to right; 2) there are some pretty cool (and free) services out there for creating podcasts, including Audacity (free audio editor and recorder) and Clickcaster (podcast storage site); and 3) damn, we have fun when we make things together!

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Talking Yourself into Creating

What do you do when an idea for a novel (or painting or other creative work) drops out of the sky, but after the first few flushes of loving the work, you stop believing that the work is valuable? What you do is you talk yourself into creating.

Here’s how my own talk-on-paper went this morning:

Why am I stalled after the fourth chapter of this novel? Well, first, there’s the nagging doubt that it will amount to anything. Then there’s the feeling that working on the novel is just a big excuse not to be doing the long list of things I should be doing, like prospecting for “real” writing work that pays the bills (like marketing publications).

And yet at the same time, when I think about my real desire in life, isn’t it to write books? And aren’t I lucky to have this idea for a book, the writing of which could mean joy and respite from a long cold winter – not to mention a tax deduction for dancing lessons AND a few trips to California, since both are needed for research?

At the very least, couldn’t this novel be a practice ground for future novels to come? I have one bad novel under my belt; why not two? Isn’t this idea for the novel actually a total gift?

As I talked to myself on paper, it became increasingly clear that with my drive to write the novel, I was being gifted with a classic “meaning adventure,” a phrase coined by Eric Maisel in The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path through Depression (New World Library, 2002). In this book, Maisel argues that creators tend to deal more often with existential questions about meaning because we are individualists who doubt traditional wisdom and insist on providing our own answers to questions of meaning. This quality, of course, leaves us vulnerable to meaning crises – even depression. However, because we are creative, we also have amazing opportunities for meaning adventures – such as I am experiencing by talking myself into continuing to work on the novel.

Sometimes you just have to remind yourself how lucky you are to be driven to create, and to have something in mind to create. Indeed, ideas for new projects are both a gift and an adventure.

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I Miss You, Office

Virginia Woolf told us that writers need a room of their own, but she didn't tell us what to do if we lost the perfect room. For five years because of my husband's job I lived in Ames, Iowa, in an older two-story house with perfect space for a writer: a room with two large windows and even a door to a second-floor deck that extended my work space in the summer. I loved this writing space. Large oak, basswood, and maple trees filtered the sun's glare in the summer and invited the warm rays in the winter.

And talk about room. There was space for my desk AND bookcases AND filing cabinets AND a large storage closet.

It was a writer's paradise. It was my first official room-of-my-own writing space. It was the place where I decided to throw out my shingle as a full-time freelance writer and editor, after keeping a day job in higher education for many years.

The office even became a metaphor for the idea that life might pleasantly surprise me even though I may not want go where it wants to take me.

Now I'm in another house, in another town, again courtesy of my husband's job. I am not so friendly with my office, here. It is dark and cold, especially in the winter, and the windows are small and high. I don't yet know what this office has to teach me, don't yet know to fully trigger the muse. I'm trying hard to listen.

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When Writing Fails, Try Rocking

Don't call me Ishmael. Call me Nana Sue. Call me Happy Nana who has just spent eight lovely days with her new grandson who came to visit from half-way across the country. Call me a cliche of a grandmother who wonders how to describe in a new, fresh way this full feeling of love. How does a writer avoid cliches at a time like this?

Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she just enjoys without trying to describe. Maybe she takes off her writer's hat and puts it on the chair next to the baby blue fleece blanket and the tattered Dr. Seuss books, worn out from reading to her two sons a couple decades-and-a-half earlier. Maybe she just rocks a baby in a soft chair and pats his diapered bottom softly while he sleeps. Maybe she closes her eyes and savors the heft of a sleeping baby on her chest. Maybe some things are just beyond language.

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For Creative Energy, Get Moving

I’m guessing I’m not the only one right now who struggles this time of year with shorter days, lack of sunlight, and the impending cold. Every year I have to remind myself that to keep my creative spirit alive in November, I have to face the bogeyman. I’m talking about literally facing the monster by getting out into the cold, rain, and slush.

I’m talking about getting outside and moving around – vigorously, as in a half-hour jog or fast hike. And not just once in awhile. I’m talking six days a week. Getting outdoors, year round but especially in the winter, is my best protection against creative doldrums and the self-doubt that can accompany them.

For me, it’s not if I’ll exercise today; it’s when. Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD, argue in Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond that as we hit middle age, our bodies will start to decay. Basically, our bodies start to go into hibernation unless we signal to them to keep growing. The signal? Vigorous exercise, six days a week. Exercising tells our bodies to keep repairing and renewing. It also releases chemicals that bathe our brains in positive feelings.

“Being sedentary is the most important signal for decay,” say Crowley and Lodge. Thus, “Decay is optional.” And since aging is largely about decaying, we can slow our aging process by being physically active. That’s why, as they say, “Exercise is magic.”

And as I have discovered, going outdoors for exercise is part of the magic – even in the cold, rain, slush, and snow. Getting out into the elements causes nature’s beauty to trump the cold, taming the face of the winter monster and minimizing self-doubt about creativity in the process. Plus there’s all that Vitamin D to soak up during the daylight.

“Exercise is the opposite of crazy. It is the thing you use to drive craziness away,” write Crowley and Lodge. I agree. And for extra protection from the creativity crazies, bundle up and get outside while you move your beautiful body.

Need extra motivation to get moving outdoors? Try listening to music on an Ipod. And check out my essay, "Running through Life," about the joys of jogging to music.

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Ode to Friendship

Five years have past; five summers with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.—Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

--from “Tintern Abbey,” by William Wordsworth

Yes, we were playing hooky on Monday when Wordsworth came to mind. My husband and I had made the two-hour drive to Pike’s Peak State Park in northeast Iowa. We knew the fall colors would be past their peak. It wasn’t really the color that we craved, anyway; it was the rolling terrain. Geologist Jean Prior wrote that “if you had to divide Iowa into two different regions, one would be the extreme northeast corner and the other would be the rest of the state.”

Pike’s Peak State Park is named for the same Lieutenant Zebulon Pike as the 14,110-foot peak in Colorado. Iowa’s Pike’s Peak, just 500 feet above the Mississippi River floodplain, happens to be the tallest bluff overlooking the entire length of the Mississippi. We drove into the park around 3:00 p.m. It was 70 degrees and sunny, with plenty of time to hike before an early sunset.

Unlike Wordsworth's poem, more than five years had passed since our prior trip to Pike’s Peak. But we too heard the inland waters rolling -- at Bridal Veil Falls, where a creek flows over a dolomite shelf and drops to the Mississippi -- and we saw the steep cliffs that connected the landscape with “the quiet of the sky.”

Except it wasn’t entirely quiet as we walked. In between the swishing of the dry leaves, I heard echoes of a friendship. About twenty-six years ago we’d hiked here with our young son and our friends Deb and Craig and their son.

I heard the chipmunk chatter of our two little boys – both three, one blonde, one dark-haired – while we hiked the bluffs and gazed at the panoramic view of the Mississippi. And I heard laughter, because that’s what inevitably happens when we’re with Deb and Craig.

And so it was Monday that while we listened to the murmur of the water fall, I had the pleasure of the present and the past – and not only the past, but also the sense of “life and food for future years,” as Wordsworth puts it later in “Tintern”:

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.

As if I’d stepped into a time machine, other memories of times with Deb and Craig rose up and carried me to other natural places – camping at Yellow River Forest and Backbone State Park, not far north of here; canoeing the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, a long way from here – and camping at Pine Lake State Park in central Iowa, three hours away.

After leaving Pike’s Peak we drove north into McGregor and wound up at Old Man River, a new brewery in town. We ordered beers and toasted to our long-time friendship with Craig, our master storyteller, and Deb, our generous friend with the tinkling laughter. All friendships ebb and flow, and ours is no exception; still, time has brought a depth to this good friendship that is not easily duplicated.

Here’s to nature, and to Deb and Craig, and to memories that have provided sustenance for yesterday, today, and tomorrow

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Got 15 Minutes? Make Something.

I took an online course from creativity guru Eric Maisel last year. The focus of the course was coaching other writers, but I was so in need of a motivational kick in the pants as a writer/artist that I elected to coach myself while I took the course. For me, the most useful exercise during the twelve-week course was developing the practice of devoting fifteen minutes to a creative project, several times a day -- in and around the other responsibilities I had at the time.

What I learned during this exercise is that even when you're half-mad at your partner because his job means a move you don't want to make, and even when you have work to do to pay the bills that isn't all that engaging at the time, it turns out that if you can devote at least two or three fifteen-minute sessions a day to your own creative projects, you will find the energy you need to move forward.

During this time of relative chaos I was able to make amazing progress on a book proposal about the freelancing life (okay, it got shelved but I plan to reignite the project this winter) and I was able to sketch the sweet view out of our upstairs bathroom window in Ames, Iowa -- a view that I had savored for the five years we lived there. I was so pleased to be able to capture the essence of that view that I forgot to be sad about moving that day.

Fifteen minutes can do wonders. Try it: make something.

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Mobile Office Report from Eastern Iowa

Since moving to small town in Eastern Iowa a year ago, my husband and I have adopted a mobile-office Friday routine that wraps up our work week and gets a jump on the weekend. Dubuque has become one of our favorite destinations. Not only Iowa’s oldest city, Dubuque is possibly also one of its most beautiful – and arguably one of its most genuinely creative.

Several weeks ago on a sunny early-fall day we loaded our laptops and bikes into our van and trekked the 45 miles to Dubuque, population 57,000. Coming into the city from the south on Highway 61, the majestic cliffs on the left and the river valley announce the geological shift from the gently-rolling terrain of eastern Iowa to the more dramatic, deeply carved river valleys, known as the Driftless Area of northeastern Iowa and northwest Illinois. Factories along the river give the city a rough edge, but there’s also a wabi sabi charm as you move beyond the smoke stacks to the gold-dome of the Dubuque Country Courthouse and the many old-fashioned church spires of this historically Catholic area.

We set up our mobile offices at Jitterz, a downtown coffee shop where three 20-something male customers sang in gusty falsettos to “We Built this City,” coming over on the speaker system. I began sketching out a plot for a novel whose idea had come to me the week before. When I worked myself into the corner of an illogical plot thread, I took a walk-n-stretch break and meandered to the news rack at Jitterz, where a free copy of Dubuque365 beckoned. This weekly report on the area’s artistic and cultural events has caught my eyes before with its snappy feature articles and colorful ads.

Just a quick perusal of 365 confirmed that the creative class is alive and well in Dubuque, as evidenced by an ad for an art exhibit being offered by Voices from the Warehouse District, as well as mention of such organizations and events as the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society, the Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque Fest (an art festival held every May), Riverfest (a fall festival), Brick Oven Studio (art center and gallery), and 5 Flags Civic Center.

After a couple hours of work, we walked out to our van and pulled out the bikes. Destination: Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens on the northwest side of town – about 30 minutes by bike and very uphill. Once there I sat in front of a prairie stand and sketched some Black-eyed Susans, while Chuck headed for the Japanese gardens.

While I sketched, I thought about this city of which I am growing so fond. The creativity here is organic – wild – with studios growing in the cracks of old warehouses and tucked in crumbling brownstones. I’d guess that more residents of Dubuque are engaged in more creative enterprises than residents of most cities this size. The two artists I’ve met from this area – poet/printer Peter Fraterdeus and painter Wendy Rolfe – certainly embody the spirit of which I speak. I’m guessing that the grass-roots creative vibe evidenced by so many in Dubuque is part of the reason that this Mississippi river town was voted the “Most Livable Small City” by the United States Conference of Mayors.

I thought too about the wonderful freedom I enjoy as a freelancer writer and editor to take my office on the road like this – and to enjoy the company of my mate on Fridays. He’s not a writer, but his job also allows him a certain degree of flexibility. Our income isn’t as high as some, but with a life this that allows us to combine with and play so seamlessly, who cares?

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Has Mother Nature Caused the Crash?

Could it be that Mother Earth has somehow willed the economic crash? Maybe this ground zero financial disaster is nature’s offering – a golden, just-before-the-tipping-point opportunity for us to align our consumption toward preserving nature more and despoiling her less. We all know that Nature needs fewer plasma screens and more vegetables grown without chemicals, but now maybe we’re going to have to really listen. Maybe she’s asking us to simplify a la the Voluntary Simplicity movement even if it’s not quite voluntary, and embrace the Slow Movement even though we love the Fast Track. Maybe Creation wants us to reconnect with our creative selves (write a song, draw a picture, dust off the guitar) more often and rely on adrenaline rushes and shiny new toys less often for that sense of being alive.

Okay, maybe it’s naïve to suggest that the earth is metaphysically causing us to base our existence on creativity over material consumption. Still, trusting in the earth’s wisdom to right itself shines a little hope on the situation.

I heard Sandra Steingraber speak last week at the University of Iowa. Steingraber holds a Ph.D. in biology and a master’s in English and is the author of a book of poetry (Post-Diagnosis) and two acclaimed books on the environment (Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood). She told the audience that when she was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1980s, she made a bet with a graduate student in economics on which system would crash first – the economic system or the environment. Each chose his/her own area of study, the economist because of the deregulation going on, and Steingraber because of the lack of teeth in environmental regulations.

They were both wrong, she told us: it turns out the systems are crashing at the same time.

Steingraber went on to explore some of the elements common to both systems. Both are large and complex, with far-reaching causes and effects. (An example in the ecosystem is the proliferation of large plasma TVs that require as much electricity as an average fridge. More electricity means more coal being burned, which causes more ocean acidification, which causes the collapse of coral systems.) Another element common to both systems is that with less diversity comes more danger. (Mergers in financing mean more catastrophic losses; agricultural monocultures mean potentially larger outbreaks of pests.) Both systems have an underlying addiction to oil. Both tend to be dominated by positive feedback loops. (Economic panic and fear create more panic and fear. Melting permafrost releases methane, which causes more melting permafrost.) Finally, in both systems, regulatory apparatuses have been dismantled – or never existed in the first place.

One difference between the two crashes, Steingraber asserted, was that business writers have “made the economy visible” in a way that environmental writers still have not made as environmental issues visible. “We don’t have a steady stream of data like the Wall Street ticker,” she lamented. She wondered who would become the ecological equivalents of Paulson and Bernanke. Who will rally the world into an integrated set of policies that will help decrease pollution and the use of fossil fuels that are clearly warming the planet? (She was too humble to name herself but did mention Bill McKibben and Paul Ehrlich – names familiar to environmentalists but still unknown in many households.)

I don’t have the credentials to rally the world about the environment, but I do hope that the silver lining in the economic uncertainty is that as a society we’ll shift away from currency to creativity as our raison d’etre.

And in the spirit of making the environment visible on this day in Eastern Iowa, I offer these observations of Mother Nature: Okra plants are still blooming even though the leaves are beginning to yellow. There may be a few more of these lovely little vegetables to pick and eat. Purple ashes are not native to Iowa but they’re everywhere in the towns and cities and they’re at their peak in the southern tier of Iowa, all luminescent yellow, peach, orange, and plum. Some of the early-turning maples are beginning to fire yellow, orange, and red. Geese can be seen flying overhead and on the ground, combing harvested soybean fields that look like the naps of tightly woven, grey and brown sweaters.

And big blue stem grasses are waving purple arms in prairie patches across the state, unbothered by the Dow Industrial Average.

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What Makes a Good Writing Group?

Sitting with my writing group in the Iowa City ped mall last month at an outdoor cafe under a locust tree, watching the sky turn pink at the gloaming, I was thinking that the craic was good, to use a line from Van Morrison's song, "Coney Island." ("Craic as in the Irish term for "fun or abandonment, often in the context of drinking or music.")

After we discussed the piece for the night,we branched off into a more general discussion of why we write (to make order out of chaos, for catharsis, for understanding), why we blog (to reach out and connect from our writers’ solitude; to write something more focused for an audience than journal entries; to build a platform for the eyes of agents and editors; and maybe above all, to build/assert/confirm our identities as writers), why My Space appeals to some and blogs to others (MySpace for extroverts, blogs for introverts?) and, finally, how to live (Hope: move to England to write and house-sit for B&B owners; Jennifer: manage her way through a separation and single-parenting; Marji: watch her nest partially empty; Kate: indulge in her love of herding-dog tournaments; me: make the freelancing life work at least another year, to retain flexibility for the arrival of our first grandchild).

The conversation ebbed, the sun receded, the sky turned indigo, and I kept thinking of another Van Morrison line from the same song: “Wouldn’t be great if life was like this all the time?”

What makes a good writing group? Maybe it’s about strong, opinionated people who occasionally get touchy with each other (we’re all sensitive writers, after all) but know how to make it right. Maybe it’s about time – we’re seven years and counting. Maybe it’s about the glass of wine we enjoy when we’re together, or the great café food or the dishes we bring when we meet in one of our homes. Maybe it’s about meeting in Iowa City and walking the same streets as Flannery O’Connor once did, or Kurt Vonnegut, or Jane Smiley. Maybe it’s about honesty in criticism, generosity in praise, celebration in publication.

Whatever the reason, the craic is good with my writing tribe.

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Sometimes It Works Like It Should

Getting published doesn't have to be so difficult

"New Lives" is a recently published essay of mine that has kind of a sweet little history to it. For one thing, writing it was cathartic as I came to terms with the empty-nest sadness I experienced after our sons left home for college. For another, it was relatively easy to find a publishing home for the essay. Just a couple of days after I submitted it, the editor emailed a warm note of acceptance and appreciation. Once in awhile, getting published seems almost effortless.

As a freelance writer I'm becoming more savvy about where to submit my article ideas and finished essays. In the beginning I was unrealistic, submitting my material to magazines without scrutinizing their pieces for styles, content, and intended audience. Like many beginning writers I thought that if I could just get one break in a well-regarded publication, I'd be on my way. But it doesn't work that way for most of us.

After some painful rejections I started submitting from the ground up -- from local and state newspapers, to regional publications, to specialized national publications, to more widely distributed publications. Now, before I submit anywhere, I do a careful analysis of the publication's content. Are the articles and essays personal or more journalistic? How much research seems to be required? How long are the pieces? What writing styles seem most prevalent?

I've also begun to acknowledge that some pieces belong in literary journals and magazines rather than commercial magazines. This can be a tough thing to admit to yourself as a freelancer. When you're trying to make your living this way, it's the commercial market that pays the bills; you can have a hundred essays published in that many literary journals and not make a cent on any of them. However, if you look at your published pieces as part of a portfolio that shows the range of your skills, the published-but-unpaid essays can play an important part in snagging future writing work, including book contracts.

After I finished "New Lives" several years ago, I promised it out loud that I would find a home for it. I knew this might be tough because the essay was long and didn't exactly fit the mission of most women's magazines, whose articles tend to me more factual or how-to oriented. When I read about Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, I knew that could be the perfect venue for my piece.

Luckily, the editor agreed. My mission is accomplished: the piece is out, my empty-nest sadness is gone, and I have another published piece in my portfolio.

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Why We Want to Create

Why do we want to make things, anyway?

“C.G. Jung once described creativity as an instinct. If I do something creative in a day, I can sleep well. I’m relaxed. But if the practical world of traveling and family and obligation prevents me from doing something creative – if I can’t make anything – I feel tired and sick and somewhat depressed.” –Thomas Moore in “Finding Life at Work” in Spirituality and Health, March/April ’08.

I came across this passage recently and it reminds me of what a friend who edits tests for a living once told me: “Writing fiction helps me stand things. If I write an hour in the morning before I come to work, it helps me cope with the rest of the day.”

In The Dynamics of Creation, British psychologist Anthony Storr says that artists create to arrive at a sense of order in a chaotic world, to keep depression at bay, to seek status and prestige, and other psychological reasons. But perhaps the best reason, he concludes, is that some of us are simply blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with a creative restlessness, or a “divine discontent” that makes us want to create something. This artistic discontent is useful to society because others need art, music, books, etc. for entertainment, comfort, and catharsis.

What a perfect equation: some needing to create, others needing the catharsis of the creation. If we’re resisting our own creative restlessness, maybe we should stop fighting within ourselves and do what we are programmed to do?

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Wildness in the City

Inviting Nature into Urban Areas

An Iowan named Roger Gipple, a retired farmer and environmentalist who lives in Des Moines, established “The Agrestal Fund” a few years ago. The fund is managed through the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and was created for purposes of instigating a conversation about wildness in Iowa. (“Agrestal” means “not domesticated or cultivated; growing wild in the field.”) Gipple’s seed money has sponsored essay contests about wildness and has co-sponsored interdisciplinary conferences on the wild at Iowa State and the University of Iowa.

I interviewed Gipple couple of years ago for an article I was working on; he told me that as our landscape continues the shift toward fewer large tracts of unspoiled nature and more urban areas, we will need to learn to value those small places of “wildness” in the city, like flowers growing between the cracks of sidewalks and raptors dwelling in urban trees.

Since that conversation I’ve become even more sensitized to intentional invitations from cities toward nature and even the stylized, artificial echoes of nature. For instance, I love the new Millenium Park in downtown Chicago – especially the concrete and steel stream meanderings through the park along a prairie stand of native plants. You could see this creation as almost a parody of the miles of tallgrass prairie that used to blanket the Midwest. I choose to see it as an homage to what once existed – and maybe a blueprint or archetype for nature, should she ever have the chance to prevail again. There’s a similar stream near the new Des Moines Public Library; it too touches my heart.

And then there are those larger, wilder areas within or close to cities, like the lovely Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and my most recent find: the pristine Crystal Springs Reservoir near San Mateo that my husband and I discovered while in California last November. Our trip to Yosemite during that trip west was fabulous and grand, but it’s those natural areas close to our urban areas that serve us on a more daily basis. They certainly feed my soul, anyway, as a writer. I try to get into some kind of natural space, however wild or tamed, on a daily basis because that’s where the muse visits me most often.

In Iowa, there are many spaces on the fringes of towns and cities. A couple of my favorites are the Woodpecker and Squire Point trails near the Coralville Reservoir in Iowa City and the River East trail on the eastern edge of Ames.

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