But in a sense, that’s what metaphorically happened. Far before September 11, 2001, we somehow lost our way. And September 11 was like the definitive wrong turn, enabling us to further divide the world into good and evil, terrorist and freedom-lover, left wing and right wing, Republican and Democrat, Christian and atheist, the dichotomies giving us carte blanche to strip each other of our humanity.

I saw this at play in President Obama’s speech about health care a couple of nights ago—the shots of Republican Senators smirking, the cat calls. Tragic, when whatever one might think of Obama’s policies, one thing continues to stand out that has earned my utmost respect. He is a uniter, rather than a divider. Continually, he rises above these arbitrary dichotomies, trying to find common ground. It’s admirable, and it’s where we need to go as global society if we want to have any hope of saving the planet, if we want to find our way home.

My daughter is taking a class in conflict resolution and peace studies. She told me last night that the reading has been focusing on whether violence is innate or learned. “It doesn’t matter,” she claims, because there have been studies that show that people can resist these urges toward violence, the urges to make someone or something “other.” This is what we need to do, to stop thinking of those who are different, or who believe different things as other, to find the common threads that link us, even if they are as simple as the need for food and water, for love and for a healthy body. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as competitors and start thinking of ourselves as collaborators. It’s the only way we’re going to survive.

This is not what I intended to write about today. I intended to shamelessly promote my 9/11-themed children’s book, Playing Dad’s Song, about a boy in Brooklyn who lost his dad on 9/11 and how learning music helped him heal from his grief. I wanted to write about my trip to New York, my childhood home, shortly after 9/11. My friend, Greg, and I walked through the streets of Brooklyn and saw posters of the missing, “altars” dedicated to heroes at the local police and fire stations, and Greg recounted story after story of people helping each other, bonding together; yet, I could tell he was suffering from a malaise that seemed to hang over the entire psyche of the city, thick as the soot that rained down after the towers crumbled.

I wanted to write about these things, because, as I said on my Facebook status today, New York is the home of my bones. My friend Lew, a fellow New Yorker transplanted like me to western Massachusetts, corroborated that feeling with the words “deep home.” If the lessons of the decade have taught us anything, it is that need to find depth in a culture that shuns it. And in that depth we need to find home, the home of humanity, of bonding together. It’s why I write and read fiction. I’m searching for depth, for the connections that bind us together, rather than the dichotomies that force us apart.

After the rush of finishing a first draft, it’s so tempting to rush back in and tie up the loose threads, but I’ve learned from experience that I have to let things simmer. What does this mean for me? No writing!

At least, no writing on the WIP for at least a week—two or three is probably better, in order to really get some distance to see both the flaws in what I currently have and the opportunities to make it better. Sometimes this is a welcome relief, as pulling the book in first draft stage feels about as satisfying as pulling out my own teeth. But this book seemed to just fly. Not that it was effortless, but I found that when I could get into the characters’ heads, it felt almost like channeling.

All the more reason to wait—to bring my reasoned, critical voice **after** the elation has subsided, to transform that giddy, falling-in-love feeling into a more mature long-lasting love, which is what I need for my long-term relationship with the book, and what the book needs to develop a long-term relationship with its readers.

But, I am impatient and will need to distract myself with other tasks—hopefully more productive than my latest time wasting addiction—4 X 4 Sudoku. At least it’s another beautiful day in Massachusetts, a day for harvesting and bicycling, and a couple more marketing tasks, and who knows, maybe I’ll even get back into blogging!

]]> http://ddinafriedman.com/first-draft-purples/2009/06/feed/ 0 http://ddinafriedman.com/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/2009/06/ http://ddinafriedman.com/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/2009/06/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:26:16 +0000 Dina http://ddinafriedman.com/blog/?p=86

I feel a bit as if I should come up with a host of “dog-ate-my-homework” excuses around not blogging for four months. Though all I’m going to offer is that I’d rather be writing and blogging, and time being what it has been with my teaching job at the university this semester, it’s been all I can do to keep working on my fiction.

Still, I’d love to hear from others on what you get out of blogging. I’ve been advised that it’s one of those necessary activities authors need to do to fulfill the requirements of that nasty “M” word—Marketing. I’m married to someone who does marketing for a living. He likes to blog. It gives him a forum to share his political views and promote his thinking about business and ethics and how it relates to his vision for a better world.

I think that as a fiction writer, my vision is more metaphorical, or, at least, I’m more comfortable expressing it that way. I am one of those writers who don’t keep a journal—oh, occasionally I scribble some words to work out a feeling, or explore an issue through poetry, but I have no great need to create a chronicle of my mundane thoughts and activities. And not surprisingly, when we travel, it is my husband who takes all the pictures. I’m happy to have them, but don’t feel the need for something that tangible, preferring instead to remember the fragments as they reappear in my brain from time to time, often transformed into something I can use in my fiction.

However, one of the things I have liked about blogging is the community—the people I’ve met through LJ and Facebook, MyNESCBWI and other sites. And I’ve missed that, so rather than kvetching, I’m going to try blogging one more time. And I’d like to intersperse my own musings with interviews of other YA and middle grade authors, particularly if you have a book coming out—so please do contact me.

First, there was the warm welcome from Rebecca, the children’s book manager at the Odyssey Bookshop. Second, I got to hang out with a wealth of friendly, talented and interesting authors. I met author/illustrator Diane de Groat for the first time. I’ve admired her work for years, since first reading Lois Lowry’s Anastasia and Sam books to my kids when they were little. I also enjoyed meeting and chatting with Crissa-Jean Chappell, who made the trip all the way from Miami, combining an author event with the opportunity to visit her extended family in New England. Then there was Rich Michelson, whose warmth, generosity, and wit have always impressed me, and who connects me back to my New York Jewish roots whenever I hear him speak. And finally, I got to spend time with my dear friend, Jeannine Atkins, member of my writing group extraordinaire, without whose eighteen years of gentle but on-the-mark criticism, I would have never found myself at this place at this time.

At ten o’clock, as we were happily ensconced at the signing table—in alphabetical order, nonetheless, the children began to come in. Not a mob, but a good handful. But they were young. Really young. Pre-schoolers, mostly. Maybe a few in the K-2 range. Great for Diane deGroat, whose Valentine’s Day book, Roses are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink was the perfect match for the day and the audience. Jeannine read next from her award-winning picture book, Aani and the Tree Huggers about a community in India who saves the trees in their village from developers. It’s a wonderful book to inspire budding environmentalists—get them while they’re young. Much as I loved the event and loved the Odyssey, at this point, I did begin to wonder what I could offer these children who had trekked out in the cold. Playing Dad’s Song the “younger” of my two books, is really for ages eight and up, ten being about right. But serendipitously, my 16-year old, Raf, just happened to be home that Saturday—he’s usually taking music classes at New England Conservatory, and even more miraculously, happened to be awake. A quick call on my cell phone, and he was there, pulling off a short performance scene in my book, where my protagonist, Gus, plays the oboe with a blanket over his head because he’s too scared to speak in front of the class. By this time, the crowd had dwindled to just a few kids, but quality made up for quantity, as I (really Raf) had them entranced as he played the oboe, Jeannine’s sari, substituting as a blanket.

We wrapped up the event with Rich entertaining us with a delightful set of poems from Animals Anonymous, set to music composed and performed by his daughter, Marissa. Rich recently won the Sidney Taylor Gold Medal for As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom. Wow! Crissa, whose book Total Constant Order was aimed at even older kids, chose not to read, but I bought a copy of her book for Raf who’s already reading it and says it’s awesome. He’s supposed to be reading The Dispossessed for school this week, but oh well.

Dina will be attending Kids Heart Authors Day at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA from 10-12 am, along with the following picturebook, middle grade and young adult authors and illustrators: Jeannine Atkins, Diane deGroat, Rich Michelson, Crissa-Jean Chappell and Ellen Wittlinger. Please try to come and spread the word to your friends in western Massachusetts–this event is for children and families of all ages!

It’s been fun having both kids home for the five nights of Chanukah so far, though today they took off for New York. So it will be just my husband me trouncing around the house in a little while. I wonder if it will feel silly, as I don’t think we’ve ever done it without at least our son being there. Our daughter has missed a bunch of Chanukahs, since the holiday’s been earlier the last two years and she was in college, though last year we Skyped her so she could participate virtually. Amazing–the power of technology.

A Chanukah tradition we started this year each night as we opened our presents, was Tzedakah, which means giving to charity. Each night we pick an organization to give money to, and we all contribute. So far, we’ve picked refugee relief in Darfur, Heifer International, a local shelter, an organization where Veterans go into schools to talk about the horrors of war, and Neve Shalom, an organization that brings Jewish and Arab kids and teenagers together for peace programs. We’ll pick the other three when the kids get back on Monday. It will be the end of Chanukah, but there will probably also be a stray present or two to open. I’m delighted with my lined mittens and silk underwear and warm socks–as well as opportunities to connect back with my own teenage years with a DVD of Get Smart and a CD of Cat Stevens–now Yusuf. I wonder if they’ll pack the same umph. I wonder what tradition-laden things my kids will want to remember when they’re my age. I’m hoping that at least one night per year, they’ll circle the house with us, so we can all look at the light.

Happy holidays, everyone!

With snow, however, comes ice. Glossy, crisp, and flat. I like to think of ice as the stuff bad writing is made of, though who am I to decide what writing is good and what is bad? I will therefore revise that statement. I like to think of ice as the stuff my bad writing is made of, a substance intensely beautiful but with no permanence. A substance that depends on surfaces. I have been struggling with this surface idea of writing, struggling with plummeting depths, worried that the constant call of my life’s other surfaces, the teacher, mom, house caretaker surfaces will make it impossible to get through that ice.

So, I am going to go back to journaling, to sitting quietly, to worrying less about projects and more about process. I am going to be a loafer snowflake for a while, and I am going to relegate my “ice-life” to afternoons and evenings, claiming the mornings to take that brave plunge into the depths of white out. I am hoping that something will germinate out of this process, though the scariest thing is that it may not. Still, if I learn a tiny bit of patience, it will be well worth it.

If there are cheating allegations this time, I kept telling myself and anyone who happen to cross my path, there should be people in the streets–massive protests. Because this time cheating would really go against the will of a clear majority of the people. Everytime I heard about the latest dirty trick–the flyer in Virginia that said Democrats vote on November 5, the robocalls in Pennsylvania saying Obama would cause a second Holocaust, I felt sick, angry. This stuff should be illegal, and campaigns that engage in it should be fined heavily, or even disqualified. This is beyond negative campaigning; it’s cheating, and it’s slander. It wouldn’t be tolerated in sports, which has a far less  important outcome than the leadership of the country.

But I am so thrilled that democracy has prevailed. That people’s votes can actually count.

My students at the university where I teach were all excited yesterday, so many of them voting in their first presidential election. Several were absent, but with good cause, needing to drive two hours or more to their polling places in their home towns. I’ve been teaching there for eight years and I’ve never seen this before–the intensity of their interest was stunning and inspiring.

And I’m proud of daughter for getting up early on a Saturday morning to cast her vote a few weeks ago in Ohio, where she re-registered once she started college in order to vote in a swing state. She called right after they announced the winner. “Is it really true?” she asked, and I realized how much she’d been imbued with her parents’ cynicism about stolen elections and power interests dictating American politics rather than the people’s will. And I’m proud of my son’s friends in high school, who spent their study hall time calling voters in Pennyslvania on their cell phones. After all the rhetoric about “The Me Generation” our hope rests with these young voters and soon -to-be voters who are actively participating in building a better world.

While I may have political differences with Obama, (I often vote for Green Party candidates or independents) I was proud to cast my vote for him, because over and over during the course of the campaign, he impressed me with his leadership, pragmatism, and most importantly his message of unity.  I believe his willingness to listen, collaborate and engage in meaningful dialogue with those who agree with his positions and those who don’t will make him a profound leader who has the ability to change the face of the country and the face of the world. And I was also impressed with McCain’s concession speech as reflective of the “real maverick” McCain we knew in 2000. I may disagree with his approach, but I believe that before his campaign spun out of control, the policies he offered were sincerely based on his beliefs and values.

Obama’s got a hard job ahead of him, perhaps an impossible job, but I hope that now that the election is over we can put differences aside and work together toward our common goals. Viva America!

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Yesterday, I went with my family on our ritual New Year’s hike along one of the less-used trails on the Mt. Holyoke Range in western Massachusetts. The mosquitoes were out full-force, but we managed to find a quiet few minutes to sit by our favorite stream and meditate on the year that passed, and the year to come.

Even for a day, it’s hard to break with routine, and the pressing feeling of all the goals I should be accomplishing: writing, marketing my work, preparing my classes, grading my papers, dealing with the messy house. It’s hard not to turn on the computer and let myself be lulled by the distractions of e-mail, and blogs, and spider solitaire. But I didn’t turn on the computer yesterday, and my goal was to make myself not work, not even think about work.

It was hard. I am addicted to work. In any 15-minute block that looms before me, I think, “what can I accomplish?” Can I make headway with the junk mail on this messy table? Start another batch of pesto from the forest of basil that sits on the counter? Dice up more of the tomato harvest for salsa or sauce? Check my e-mail one more time, in hopes that there might be a message that isn’t a joke, a you-tube link, or political junk mail? Sweep dog hair off the floor?

What is it with Americans and our addiction to productivity?

Today, even though I’d intended another computer-free day, since it is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I succumbed when my husband said he was going to try to whittle down his e-mail box. But I tried to do it mindfully. I read blogs from my live-journal children’s lit friends, and thought about how so many of us are in similar positions: super-mom writers with outside jobs, always beating ourselves up for not writing, always setting the next set of goals.

But I’m going to turn off the computer now, and walk in the woods with my dog. And later, I’m going to go bicycling with friends. Because personally, I am never going to get out of this current phase of writers’ block if I keep thinking of my next book as one more piece of work to accomplish. I’ve got to get to the point where it’s as appealing as the fall light.