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Power of the Press

Power of the Press

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I saw the movie “Spotlight” with one of my favorite millennials. “It was a little slow,” she said as we walked out, providing the perfect opening for a (groan) story.

Not that things were wonderful back in the days when you looked at old newspaper articles on microfiche (mine inevitably got jammed) and did research by looking at actual physical books (sometimes they actually physically were not there).

But watching the movie reminded me of the excitement of reporting a long, complicated story, something you’d immerse yourself in for weeks or months, something you’d begin to dream about or wake up thinking about.

It reminded me of the power of the press and the great profession of journalism, from which not only I (doing media relations at a law school) — but the whole country — has drifted. Few news organizations have the time and resources to devote to long-form investigative pieces. It’s a sound-bite world, and we’re all the poorer for it.

(Web offset printer, courtesy Wikipedia)

Big Magic

Big Magic

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I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic at the library this weekend. It’s new enough that I was surprised to see it — and I snapped it up, even though it’s a 14-day-only, no-renewal book.

When it comes to books that suddenly appear on library shelves long before I would ever expect to see them (I just read a review a few weeks ago), I suspect providence at work. Why this book? Why now?

Big Magic is about the joys of living the creative life and the need to persist in it despite all obstacles. It’s not a perfect book — it’s more pep talk than anything else — but it’s honest and encouraging and bighearted. And it makes some important points about finishing projects (better to be a “deeply disciplined half-ass” than a lazy perfectionist) and why it’s unwise to give up the day job (it would put too great a burden on the writing, sculpting, cello-playing or other creative impulse that must be pursued with lightness).

As I struggle to balance family responsibilities with a new set of duties in my day job, as I think about what I can give up to make this all work, I realize one thing that can’t go is this blog.

It’s as close to “big magic” as I can get these days.

Pushing “Publish”

Pushing “Publish”

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You know you are busy when you haven’t heard that a hurricane is heading your way. And more to the point, you know you are busy when you fail to write a blog post two weekdays in a row.

But when one of those days consists of driving from Lexington, Kentucky, to Washington, D.C., working for five hours and then driving home in torrential rain — well, that doesn’t count. And when you start behind the next day because you had to get a little sleep — well, that doesn’t count either.

Not that any of this “counts,” of course. All of it is self-imposed. My own schedule, my own project. But it is a project of the heart, and as such must be given its due.

So today I’m taking no chances. It is barely 5:30 a.m. I’m pushing the “publish” key.

Time, Place and Prairie

Time, Place and Prairie

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Last weekend at the National Book Festival, author Marilynne Robinson said some things about time and place that I’m still thinking about.

On time: She sets her books 40 to 50 years in the past, she says, because she likes to write about a period when people had less access to each other, more privacy; when they couldn’t always be reached. “I think it made people think differently,” she said. “I like people who think long thoughts.”

On space: A native of the East, the Berkshires, Robinson had to learn to read the landscape of the Midwest. “I find the prairie very beautiful,” she said. But there was was not an automatic affinity. “I wanted my soul to love the landscape.”

In time, she said, it did.

Time for place. And a place that grants time.

Relic

Relic

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We used to search for glasses, keys and phone numbers. Now we also search for passwords.  And yesterday my password search took me here, to the most undigital of places, my old Rolodex, where I used to keep a card with those pesky open sesames.

I never found the card, but I did spend a few minutes flipping through the Rolodex. It’s dusty and neglected, poor thing. I haven’t touched it for months, haven’t used it for years. But oh, the memories it holds, the connections it made possible, the worlds it opened up.

There are editors’ phone numbers, the contact information of long-forgotten sources, strings of numbers I once knew as well as my own. Each card tells a story. There’s that infant sleep expert who took to calling me at all hours, including when I was in labor with my first child! There’s a phone number for the Population Reference Bureau, which I just Googled to find a ticking world population clock (7, 718, 240, 013 — I mean 014, 015, 016 …). 

Before we swiped and tapped, we paged through and wore out. Most of these cards are bent and softened from frequent touching, tangible proof that they were used and treasured.

No one I know uses a Rolodex anymore. Now our contacts are scattered on various media, social and personal. Are we more connected now than we were then? The funny thing is, I don’t think we are.

First Draft

First Draft

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Thinking of yesterday’s title, “First Walk,” and of the difficulty of pinning down the precise rush of feeling from Sunday’s stroll.

What helped was scribbling a few phrases in my journal as soon as I came in. Those crabbed words led me back to the feelings of that walk. They were the rushed but essential first draft.

It’s the perennial problem, letting the words flow enough in the beginning to get you (more or less) where you want to go. Care too little about the final destination and you’ll muddle yourself from the start. Care too much and you won’t be able to put one syllable in front of the other.

Word processing has made the first draft a rare document indeed. How difficult it is to push forward without using the delete key; to hold in mind the perfect image while valuing the imperfect one that materializes in its place.

In so many ways, a first draft is more precious than the final draft it makes possible: rare, ephemeral, a product of struggle, a product of doubt.

Silent Cheer

Silent Cheer

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I write a blog post almost every day, and I write plenty on the job. Subtract time for things like eating and sleeping and commuting, for buying groceries and cleaning the kitchen, for pulling weeds and returning books to the library.

And then take away the time for exercise, for running and walking, for bouncing on the trampoline, for tapping on Wednesday nights, for taking torturous classes on my lunch hour. All of this necessary for the health of the mind as well as the body.

And then there are the hours spent with friends and family, precious time in person or on the phone or the computer, keeping up with the people I love. And time to entertain, to meet friends for lunch or dinner. The wine of life!

All of which is to say how hard I struggle to find the time to do what I really must be doing — which is writing the other stuff, essays, perhaps even another book someday.

Every week I vow to make more time. Most weeks I come up short. But this week I’ve made it happen. I’m exhausted — and behind in other ways. But I carved out the hours.

Which is why this blog post consists of one long, sustained (but silent) cheer! Why silent? I don’t want to raise too much racket, you know. That might jinx it!

Writing About the Kids Again

Writing About the Kids Again

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“What will your children think of this,” she asked me, this jolly woman who pens lovely essays and is one of the writers who meets a few Monday evenings a year. We were sitting in a large corner booth at a down-on-its-heels pizza place where the waitress never forgets your name or your order.

“I haven’t asked them,” I said, the words sounding more clipped than I intended.

After sharing anecdotes about my children early and often — making a living from writing parenting magazine articles and a book — I stopped this practice cold turkey after the book came out. Not because I wouldn’t share the stories but because I stopped writing the articles.

And then there were the years of teenage angst. Those stories may never be told.

But my youngest child is 20 now. I thought I was in the clear.  Am I really?

So I fretted and rearranged words — I even considered removing the stories entirely. But in the end I kept them in. And yesterday, just for the heck of it, I told my youngest what I was doing. “That’s OK, Mom — just as long as you don’t use my name.”

I didn’t. I won’t. But I’m sending the piece out today. It’s time.

Of Birds and Words

Of Birds and Words

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The office is closed, magazine proofs stuffed in my bag. For now it’s just me and the laptop and the words that won’t come. It’s so easy to sidle over to the kitchen for another cup of tea. Or watch the birds fight over suet. Just now a pair of young bluejays sparring in the air.

But the empty page won’t go away, so I come back, pull the words from wherever it is they like to hide. They are fickle and stubborn. They won’t be willed into existence.

The thing is, sometimes they hang out with the birds or the cup of tea. That’s where they hide when they should be on the page.

Nothing to do but find them and bring them home.

Millennials and Books

Millennials and Books

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Talk about surprises, I almost missed one, tucked as it was beneath the Oscar photo. But the headline in yesterday’s Washington Post was unmistakable: “Wired millennials still prefer the printed word.” This according to textbook publishers, bookstore owners and the people themselves, those born 1980 and afterward — my kids, in other words.

They may text and snap-chat and send pictures by Instagram, but turns out they also like to read books. They learn better, they say, because there are fewer distractions. (Those who multitask while reading a printed book: 1 percent. Those who multitask while reading an e-book: 90 percent.)

A pilot study at the University of Washington found a quarter of students who were given e-textbooks for free still opted to buy the print version. Pew studies show the highest print readership rates among 18- to 29-year-olds.

That last statistic is hard to believe, but even if the data is slightly stretched, it’s still heartening to think that those who come after us will thrill to the smell of a new book, will feel the heft of one in the hand, will appreciate its superior knowledge delivery system! Maybe the sky is not falling; maybe the good old codex will be around a bit longer after all.