Write Through Doors

I post.  But I am still in many ways a blogging/twittering/social media moron.

I am technically aware enough to be dangerous. I have taught technical writing at the college level, have documented software for the Navy, and have blogs at debbiemerion.com and essaycoaching.com.

Still, I was inspired yesterday to be a little less blogorific moronic when I listened to President Obama give a speech at UM commencement. He said he reads 10 letters every night. He also recommended reading blogs of opposing views.  I thought –if he can do that, I can read a new blog every day, and write about the blog and or my technical difficulties in doing so.

My goals is to bring my two lives together:  my real life (give me a non-fat latte please) and my virtual life (what’s happening with my friends and the world?—I have to often read it online to find out).

I’m starting with friend’s blogs. Send me yours, I want to read it and follow it!

Dining at Random

Today I decided to start with my friend Elizabeth Sikkenga.  She is my also my friend on Facebook, so I went and got her latest blog information from there.  It is called Dining at Random.  She had told me about this adventure when we were, coincidentally, dining—if you can call having lunch at Café Verde that.

I love her idea of picking a different country to cook a recipe from each week or month.  I want to hear more about this.

I clicked on “subscribe to this blog’s feed” next to her blog and then I was asked which application to use to subscribe to the feed.  I clicked “Google”.  (My daughter Sarah Merion had helped me set up Google Reader as an RSS feed six months ago or so.  A few magic keystrokes of her nimble fingers and she was done.  I had approximately a 10% comprehension rate of what she had done—but it was done!)  Then I saw a screen that asked me “Add to Google Reader or Google Homepage” and I clicked Google Reader.

WOW! Now when I look at Google Reader, I not only see Elizabeth’s “What’s on the Menu?” entry of April 20, but I also see earlier entries, with recipes, starting Jan. 2.  But if I just look at Dining at Random, I don’t see any of those earlier entries.  Maybe Elizabeth or her brilliant computery husband  Henry Velick (who is also an awesome tenor) can enlighten me about why this is.

Do you have a blog that you think I should read?  Tell me about it!

For three years I have wondered who has been drawing the 6 feet long phantasmagorical chalk creatures on the path near Las Vegas Park in the Dicken School area.  I run through that park weekly in the warmer months.   The creatures have captions like “joint eater” and “spooky floating human/vampire hybrid,” but the artwork is never signed.

Last month I finally had an incentive to find the artist and write about him.  I had a deadline!

joint eater

spooky floating human vampire hybrid

Here’s how it all happened:  In March, Kathy Robenalt, director of the Ann Arbor Book Festival Writer’s Conference, asked me to speak at a session at conference on May 15.  Also speaking:  John Hilton, Editor of the Ann Arbor Observer.   I had suggested his name to Kathy– I always found him to be such a precise and helpful editor, ever since he published my first Observer story ( “The Fish Doctor”) in 1994.

Soon I received an email from John asking me if he could interview me about how he helps writers select a focus for a story. Of course, I said, and brought with me an example to work with–the chalk drawing idea to pitch, with photos.

John studied the pictures, and googled their captions to hypothesize about the artist.  Where did he (or she) get his inspiration, John wondered.  Was he into video games?  Could he explain his art as well as he creates it?  John and I discussed where such a story might go in the issue.  My Town seemed the best alternative, so that I could use a more personal voice in the writing, but John had a stack of My Town stories waiting to be published.  Inside Ann Arbor seemed like the most likely place in the magazine.

John encouraged me to write the story, saying it seemed like a good possibility for the May issue. That was all I needed to hear.

The next day was sunny and warm, perfect for a chalk artist to be outside.  I drove over to the park and taped a note on the path asking the artist to call me.  Then I had another idea.  I asked a neighbor hanging outside near the park with her son if they knew the artist, and they did.  “It’s Duncan,” they said.  They pointed to his house down the street.  I knocked on the door,  Duncan’s  mother Melissa came out, and welcomed me to stay and interview Duncan on their porch.  It was as though she had been waiting for me.  And in a sense she had.  She told me she and her husband had asked someone two years ago to write about Duncan’s art!

Duncan came out two minutes later, with a 20 piece box of unused Meijers chalk under his arm.

His mother says she buys  him 10 boxes at a time. In some way Duncan was exceptionally poised and genteel even by adult standards,  pointing to two wooden chairs on the porch, and saying ‘please sit down, I’ll sit in the uncomfortable one”.

His inspiration comes from mythology (he just bought A Wizard’s  Bestiary at Crazy Wisdom) and animatronics that he sees on Youtube or in Halloween stores.  What’s an animatronic?  “It’s something they use in haunted houses—a robot they make to look like a monster.  They move stiffly, so most people don’t care about them. “ To clarify, Duncan acted out the stiff movement, his face frozen in a silent shriek, moving his arms up and down like a robotic monster animal, with herky-jerky repetitive movements.

Don’t mistake his characters as being inspired by the gaming world.  “I despise video games,” said Duncan.  “If someone brings a video game to my house, I ask them sternly to turn it off and make something better with their time,” he said.

Each creature emerges from Duncan’s chalk-covered left hand in about five minutes, without sketches or erasure.   He moves through a mental list of undrawn creatures that have caught his fancy.

Check out the drawings! Here is the location:

http://www.google.com/maps?q=Runnymede+Blvd+%26+Las+Vegas+Dr,+Ann+Arbor,+MI+48103,+USA&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Runnymede+Blvd+%26+Las+Vegas+Dr,+Ann+Arbor,+Washtenaw,+Michigan+48103&t=h&z=16

Read the published story about Duncan and his chalk drawings.

My writing projects are usually smooth sailing except for two tiny glitches:  getting started, and finishing.

Everyone has their own tricks  to get unstuck (shake the dust off your ideas and get started) and stick to it (get finished).  What are yours?  How do we support ourselves to sit in a dark room with just our mind and a computer and create?

I’ll be leading a teleseminar to share these writing secrets. Come to listen and contribute what works for you.

Conference Dial-in Number: (605) 477-2100
Participant Access Code: 945074#

January 20, 2010 6:30 PM – 7:30

Sign up for this teleseminar if you need to :

• Learn tricks for getting your ideas unstuck–out of your head and onto paper

• Get creative

• Stick with a writing schedule

• Get and give feedback and encouragement

• Establish a structure for fulfilling your goals

• Inspiration

I know one writer who puts on his writing hat.  This says to his family:  “Don’t bother me now, I’m creating!” I know another who recommends putting a little model of a train on the table in front of you, with the engine and cars disconnected. The message: let go of your baggage and write.

What do I need to write regularly? This is what I came up with about squeezing the tube (me) and having the paste (writing) come out.  I need to do at least one of the following:

1.  Hold the space time-wise (like Eckhart Tolle says–9-2PM was the space for his book)

2.  Hold the space place-wise (a clean desk, office, use the same place  if possible)

3.  Compelling idea to write about (some ideas simply appear, usually I have to go find them)

4.  A deadline (my biggest motivator)

5.  An audience–This might be just one person–Stephen King’s audience is his wife.

What gets you unstuck and sticking to it?  Share with others on Wednedsay, January 20.

Biggby Coffee and the

Professional Coaches Association of Michigan (PCAM)

Present:

Conversations for Possibility

Drop by to experience an inspiring conversation with a professional coach!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Biggby Coffee

1667 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, MI

(734) 222-7030‎

To serve the community this holiday season, Professional Coaches Association of Michigan (PCAM) members are offering an unusual opportunity:
professional life coaching at Biggby coffeehouses throughout Michigan on December 9.

Experience a 30-minute conversation that will make a huge difference for you today and for your upcoming 2010. A sign-up sheet will be available at the coffeehouse beginning at 10 AM on December 9.

Cost = Suggested $5 donation to American Red Cross.

Participating Coaches in Ann Arbor:

The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The Professional Coaches Association of Michigan (PCAM) is a chapter of the International Coach Federation
(ICF).

“I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the eject button in his F-111,” writes Stephen King about reading short stories.

When Stephen King walked in my door last week, on the cover of the Nov. 22, 2009 New York Times Book Review, he pushed my eject button. But not immediately.  It was Raymond Carver’s 7″ x 9” image that the New York Times displayed besides King’s words.  So I twice read “Strong Poison,” King’s  review of two books by and about Raymond Carver, Raymond Carver, Collected Stories, edited by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll, and Raymond Carver, A Writer’s Life by Carol Sklenicka, before I realized the excellence I was drawn to was King’s voice.

Carver’s story about a family who ordered a birthday cake for a son who was then hit by a car has stayed with me since I first read it five years ago. Yes, it helped that last year I tripped across “A Small Good Thing” being acted out in Robert Altman’s 1993 movie “Shortcuts” with Lyle Lovett playing the baker.  But it was the ending of the story—the message of the story– that I’ve thought about often when eating bread or sniffing bakeries. (warning, spoiler ahead…) A conflict between the baker and the family ended when they broke bread…literally– the boy’s bereaved parents eating warm rolls just out of the oven with the apologetic baker.

So I was shocked when King wrote in his New York Times review that Carver’s controversial editor Gordon Lish had edited out that fragrant ending in a version of the story now published in Raymond Carver, Collected Stories.

Not only does King know this because the edited version is available, but Carol Sklenicka’s biography Raymond Carver, A Writer’s Life describes the situation:

“Raymond Carver had urged Gordon Lish ‘to take a pencil to the stories.  He had not expected…a meat clever.’

It is a very lucky published writer who has not experienced the meat clever.  I know I have.  But I’ve been fortunate to experience the expert, light touch editor, including John Hilton from the Ann Arbor Observer.

I usually love being edited—it’s like getting your photo taken, but getting your hair and makeup done professionally first.  It’s you in the picture, but you’re looking better.

But according to King, even a good editor, nay, a famous editor, like Gordon Lish, can edit out something important.  Lish’s version of “A Small Good Thing” last shows the baker on the phone, sinister, still wanting to be paid for his cake. Carver’s version is much better, King says:

“Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” the baker says.  This version has a satisfying symmetry that the stripped-down Lish version lacks, but it has something more important:  heart.

I’ll take the warm bread, and the heart.

http://www.slideshare.net/secret/fnpmdM2YdIZ0h5

My brother, Gary Eisenberg, rocked the house with his lecture today 11/6/09 in Ann Arbor on “Complementary Interventions for Autism, Aspergers and Sensory Dysfunction In Children and Adolescents.”  He asked me to speak for ten minutes about how writing could help the attendees, and my slides are above. In keeping with Gary’s sense of humor that livened up his fact-filled talk, I included the photo on the left, saying it is a record from Philly in the early 60’s of the first time our parents sent us out on the lecture circuit.  His information is below,

http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=756250

I’m passionate about the value of college application essays.  I see time and time again how students grow by examining and writing about their strengths.

Now a study published in the April 17, 2009 issue of Science magazine is backing me up.

What’s more, this study, titled “Recursive Processes in Self-Affirmation: Intervening to Close the Minority Achievement Gap” holds the answer to reducing the achievement gap currently challenging our nation and our schools–a problem that has been very difficult to solve.

The solution?  Writing.   A student must think positively about himself and reflect on his strengths (“self-affirm”) in order to create an excellent college essay.

The study found that self-affirmation writing could improve student’s GPAs.

“Encouraging children to remember what they like about themselves could have a big impact on their academic achievement.  Self-affirmation exercises can have a significant and lasting impact on academic performance, especially among minority children, according to a new study.”

Are you listening Bill and Melinda Gates Educational Foundation? Your recent report on dropouts concluded…

Here’s a proposal to schools:  Embrace a curriculum that trains students to reach down and pull out the best of themselves for  a compelling college application essay. Middle school isn’t too early.

In this 1957 cousins photo, I'm on the far left, she's on the far right, our older brothers are in between

An essay about rekindling family connections

Finding Judy

Judy’s hair is straight and black and she lives in San Francisco.   Mine is curly and brown and I live in Ann Arbor. We grew up together in Philadelphia in the ’60s.

As a child, I was a tall geeky tomboy who coveted her brother’s worn leather baseball glove and loved walking three city blocks to the library.  In comparison, Judy always seemed perfectly dressed and remote, like the popular girls who sit together at school.

Continue reading at  http://www.crazywisdom.net/issue43pdf/findingjudy.pdf

Recently I visited my cousin Judy in Marin, near San Francisco.  Yes, the hiking was gorgeous, the shopping super trendy, the transvestites fun. But we Michiganders know we have more lakes than we can count, a summer we revere, wineries near Traverse City as beautiful as in southern France. 

In Marin I finally got to meet Judy’s friend, Maryanne Comaroto, who has a thought-provoking Internet radio show called “Maryanne Live” on HealthyLife.Net.  http://www.healthylife.net/RadioShow/archiveITR.htm Maryanne has interviewed Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight, one of the most significant books I’ve read in quite some time.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670020745/?tag=yahhyd-20&hvadid=42600513511&ref=pd_sl_13qmuv2s6r_e