Lost a writing contest

Posting this as a "new thing" is kind of a joke, but it's true that I've never lost a writing contest before, because I'd never entered one. The winners of the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial competition were announced a few days ago, and alas, I was not among them. I'm definitely disappointed. But I remind myself: The winning entries were deemed better than mine, which doesn't necessarily mean my written piece was worthless. ... or does it?

Here's a quote from the book "Breathing On Your Own" Quotations from Independent Thinkers," compiled by Richard Kehl. There is no attribution:

"And I recall an account of Trollope going up to London to pick up a rejected manuscript from a publisher, getting on the train to return home, laying the bulky bundle on his lap face down, and beginning a new book on the back pages of the rejected one."

Music theory class

When you learn something and forget it, where does the knowledge go? Is is still in your brain, stored someplace that's inaccessible, kind of like a misplaced file? Or, if knowledge isn't used for a long time, does your brain erase it the way we do when we clean out our computers by deleting old documents? And if you re-learn something you previously knew, does that count as learning something new? For the purposes of my blog, I say it does.

Yestersday I began a "music theory" class with the director of the Jackson Hole Chorale. We're learning the very basics, like notes, measures, rests, etc. I know I learned all this 40 years ago when I took piano after school and learned to play the recorder in the fourth grade. But these days, as a tenor in the chorale, I find I can't hit notes or find beats without first hearing other tenors since the part. And while they're good, they don't always know what they're doing either.

Our first class started with basics: the clefs, notes, rests, ect. It was much more complex than I expected. My immediate aim is to just keep up with the class. My more ambitious goal is to be able to read music again. And I guess a really longterm goal is to not be 80 years old and blogging about taking a music theory class because I forgot what I learned 30 years ago.

Thoughts on Chris Crutcher

This morning I woke up thinking about a different kind of change, the kind that is imposed on us. Sometime's it's bad, sometime's it's good, and sometime's it's a bad thing that clears the way for something positive, or vice versa. Like when your husband leaves you and years later you fall in love with someone who's better for you in every way. Or when you're laid off from a job and, after a financial struggle, land a new one that's more creative and in a more nurturing environment that the position you lost.

Yesterday I interviewed teen-fiction author Chris Crutcher, who has many fans where I live, for a newspaper article, and we talked about empowerment. A few of Crutcher's readers here had mentioned to me that although his teen characters deal with very weighty issues like abuse, abandonment and cancer, there's always an element of hope in the story.

Crutcher related this to his work as a therapist. He said he hopes his books convey "some sense of the fact that we're all responsible for everything we do, not in the sense that we have to take blame but that we're here in the world and we have choices and we make them."

Crutcher said that when he worked as a therapist, "I felt that if someone walked away feeling empowered, they had a better chanced of making it in the real world. My job is to make them feel empowered."

Empowerment, he said, is "a true knowledge and some capability that you can impact your own life, that you can make things happen, that you can stack the deck in your favor by taking charge of your life."

Inspiring words, and timely advice. The country's, and world's, economic crises means less income and a smaller retirement pot for many people, including me. I hope all of us can react in an empowered way, whatever that means. Perhaps by being generous as well as thrifty, by finding joy in nonmaterial things and focusing on today rather than yesterday or tomorrow.

Thanks to Chris Crutcher for his thoughts.

Asked for a raise

This is fudging a bit. I've asked for rate increases in my freelance writing but never requested more money in any of my salaried jobs or, as the case is now, in my hourly-rate job as a newspaper copy editor. I don't know what the difference is, why it's possible for me to speak up for myself in one instance and not another. My boss gave me a grouchy look when I raised the subject, but too bad. It's been more than two years since my last raise. I've never called in sick or come in late without advance notice. I've learned new page layout skills and had my responsibilities increased. And the newspaper won a headline-writing award, for which I'm at least partially responsible.

The young people I work with not only know how to ask for what they want, but also consider it their right to always get more. Sometimes they strike me as being narcissists with a sense of entitlement, but other times I think "hey, way to go." But at the age of 50 I'm finally understanding that I have to ask for what I want and not let fear get in the way.

Maybe my next post will be about the experience of getting fired.

Knitting lessons

Purl one, knit two. Those terms actually mean something to me now, thanks to the very patient Lydia at Knit on Pearl in Jackson Hole. I'm halfway into a series of four lessons, and I've learned two methods of casting and two stitches, the knit and the purl. The first lesson was embarrassing as I fumbled with needles and yarn and forgot each instruction within seconds of hearing it. But at home, with a book I bought and videos I found on the Internet, I was able to figure out what to do at least some of the time. Now I'm actually knitting - not well, yet, but that will come. A new hobby. Yay!

This picture of four scarves I knitted was taken months after this original post.

Cleansing diet

Plain and simple, I like to eat. It's one of my great pleasures, and throughout my life people have often commented on how much I consume. But the concept of fasting has always intrigued me, so when my friend Cynthia decided to do a Ka Formulas clear-the-toxins program, I wanted in. It's not really a fast, just a very restricted diet with a "cleansing powder" that you mix with rice milk and fruit twice a day for a very bad-tasting smoothie. With the each smoothie you take a packet of capsules with all sorts of supplements inside.

For the first half of the program (Cynthia did 20 days, I did 10), you eat only fruits and vegetables, plus a prescribed amount of quinoa. Citrus fruits and tomatoes aren't allowed. ... apparently their acidity is bad. And, bad news for me, coffee and alcohol aren't allowed either. During the second half you can have brown rice and certain kinds of fish, like tilapia and salmon. You can also have a little bit of dark chocolate every day.

Coffee was the hardest thing to give up, but after a couple of days I didn't feel headachy, and green tea made a very satisfying substitute. Since I don't eat meat or chicken anymore, there was no feeling of deprivation on that end, but it was hard to go without cheese or bread. Since I had a big bag of frozen shrimp, that's what I used as my fish portion in the second half of the program, which was technically cheating, but in these economic times I don't want to spend any more money than I have to. For the same reason, I did not use all-organic produce as the the program requires. I figure foregoing my morning coffee and nightly wine was cleansing enough for my body.

After 10 days, my skin looks great, and I think I've dropped about five pounds. It was a good exercise in discipline and and a lesson in how to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into my diet. Ten days without a glass (or many glasses) of wine also makes me realize how easy it is to cut my consumption in that area.

Maybe my next venture will be to try an actual fast. But first I'm going to enjoy eating cheese and bread again.

Enter a contest

My list of new things to try - so far I've come up with only 30 or so - includes writing three chapters of a novel, showing my fiction writing to someone and entering a contest. Over the last couple of weeks, I did manage to write 3,500 words as a first chapter of a novel that I'd like to be sort of a middle-age version of Pride and Prejudice. It's one of my favorite novels of all times, and I've seen both the A&E production and the Keira Knightly movie probably about 15 to 20 times each. Obviously I love the story.

As for the contest, two days ago I printed out two copies of my first chapter and mailed them off to the Wyoming Arts Council with an application for the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial writing award, which always goes to a woman. The prize is $1,000, but more than the money I day dream about someone enjoying my writing. My fiction isn't literary, but that's only a secondary goal. What I'd like is to entertain people, the way Jane Austen, Susan Isaacs, Elizabeth George and P.D. James do.

So, I can cross "enter a contest" off my 365-new-things list. I won't count this as "show someone my writing," because what I have in mind there is a one-on-one critique. And since I wrote only one chapter, I can't say I've achieved the three-chapters goal.