Getting personal....and liking it

Personal essays.
I battled my mixed feelings about them the entire time I worked as an editor for skirt! magazine. Nikki Hardin, the magazine's founder, is superb at writing them. It was one of the reasons she created a magazine that featured personal essays. But I worried that some essays we published from other writers might sound like whining by people with more good fortune than they deserved.

That began to be all I could think about when I'd write my monthly editor's letter. Don't let me be guilty. Please don't let me sound like a spoiled brat.

Fast forward. It's Valentine's Day 2017.
I'm huddled around the table with my classmates in The Nickelodeon's podcasting class. Friends wondered why I was taking it. I'd been writing, producing and editing projects since before I was in college.

Those projects, though, didn't have the feel of This American Life. I wanted to see if I could write a personal story and bring it to life with sound.

That's not a heartbeat on Valentine's Day but a soundwave: Our teacher, Cooper McKim, giving us some tips for putting our stories together.

On that night, we were reading our scripts. And when it was my turn, I was incredibly nervous. Alone in front of my laptop, I thought I'd written something funny.  

But you never know.

My topic was my basketball fandom.
I follow the University of South Carolina's women's basketball team. I'm more than a fan, even. At the time, I was mentoring one of the players.

So when I watched my team play the invincible women of the University of Connecticut, it was nerve wracking.

That was the personal story I had decided to tell.

My voice cracked as I read the first lines. My hands shook. I was breathless, going too fast. 

I teach public speaking and present in front of huge groups of people, but all that experience--apparently--was worthless at the moment.

Then my classmates laughed. I started to relax.

They laughed some more. 

They liked my personal angle.

So, with a few minor copy changes, I went for it.
Being able to use my voice--my actual voice as well as my writing voice--to create a finished product was new for me. I liked it.

Taking the class helped me think about new ways for telling my stories. It reminded me of what I've always liked about personal essays, the vulnerability that the writer risks and the way it makes me feel connected to the writer.

Here's the end result on SoundCloud.
If it sounds a little "rustic," I hope you'll forgive that: All the audio was recorded on my cell phone, edited with free software downloaded from Hindenburg:

The joy of a live audience and collaboration

When musician Ayala Asherov first approached me about creating a work for children, I was excited but not sure how it would come together.

It turns out that working with Ayala and our other partner in crime, composer Dick Goodwin, has been one of the most delightful creative projects of my life.

Story and Chamber Music Concert
As Ayala described it, she wanted us to create something like Peter and the Wolf--a story with music--only a) shorter and b) written for a chamber group--so that schools could incorporate it more easily into classes and afford to host a performance.

So that is how I wound up imagining a story about a creature who might have trouble finding a dance partner. Porcupine. And how together, we created Porcupine Saves the Dance.

Dick Goodwin in the background on the left, Ayala Asherov in the foreground at the far right--the two composers preparing for our performance of Porcupine Saves the Dance.

Writing With Music in Mind
Collaborating with Ayala and Dick gave me some new perspectives as we worked out the story. Themes and ways to distinguish characters were important to the music.

At one point, I had written "Porcupine was discouraged." Dick asked if I could show what that looked like, so he could use music to illustrate it. Of course. It's what I should've done anyway.

But the music pushed me to get there.

"His shoulders slumped." Cue the oboe. 

"His needles drooped." A run of notes on the cello.

Then, "Porcupine sat down." Percussion.

The music, like images in a picture book, could also take the place of words. That was fun to work out. And to hear your story set to music is exciting.

Getting Story and Score to the Stage
We used an actor to read for our first few performances and I sat in the back of theaters, listening, thinking of ways to make it better.

I thought the actor was good. But Ayala believed, strongly, that I should read the story. "It's just different when you read it," she kept telling me. "You draw the kids in."

I wasn't so sure about that, but it's hard to say no to Ayala. That's why I'd gotten involved in this project in the first place. Ayala, the irresistible force. (Also needs to be said: Dick Goodwin is one of the most supportive and insightful people you could ever hope to work with.)

I had to admit, I sort of wanted to get in on the act.

In some ways, the music works the way illustrations do in a picture book.

Getting to Know Your Audience
Now, a great occasional treat for me is to read Porcupine Saves the Dance to a crowd of elementary-aged kids. They like the story and the music and the musicians. And then when they find out their narrator is the writer, they have so many questions for me. They seem genuinely excited to see a writer in person. How about that?

We had the old gang together this month to perform for around 150 kids.

And I got at least 140 hugs after.

Pretty incredible.

And not something you think about when you're scratching out lines and wondering if you'll ever get the words right.

A Project for 2016

When the end of 2015 rolled around, I realized it had been more than a year since I'd been selected to attend the Rutgers One-on-One conference, more than a year since I'd been told that I had a middle grade novel worth publishing.

And had I completed the suggested changes and submitted that novel? Had I walked through that open door?

No, I had not. It was easy to blame my busy work schedule, the many assignments I'd been juggling, family demands. Those things might have been part of it. But blaming them didn't solve the problem.

I have a lot of writing that hasn't quite made it across the finish line, despite good reviews, despite encouragement from professionals who know what they're talking about.

So at the end of 2015, I persuaded my fellow writer and dear friend Caroline Lord to join me in an experiment we're calling The Year of Submission.

Since January 1 of this year, we've been meeting regularly to plan ways to get our work finished and submitted. It still hasn't been a snap. But we're making progress. We nudge each other along. We hold each other accountable. And by posting about our year on a blog, that somehow is making us feel accountable, too. Stay tuned.