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March, 2012

  1. A Risk Worth Taking

    March 29, 2012 by katemeadows

    A week ago, I was plagued by the ghost of loneliness that threatened to creep into a weekend I planned to spend alone on a writing project.

    The fear was real, to be sure, but I was forgetting one important thing:

    That I had 100 percent support from my family (who I would be leaving behind) to do this, and that my loved ones were thinking of me the entire weekend.

    Believe me, support is key when you plan a getaway with just yourself and your words.

    Because it can be a terrifying process.

    Joshua Tree National Park, Copyright 2011, Kate Meadows

    Doubts creep in: What if I can’t concentrate? What if I’m doing the wrong thing, choosing myself and my art over my family for two days? What if the muse fails to show?

    What if, what if, what if.

    The writing process is only intensified when your life revolves around your family. You find yourself embracing two fierce loves: that of your family, and that of your art. Betsy Andrews Etchart, in a recent blog post for Brevity, writes: “[I]t seems the only thing we love more than writing and parenting is talking about how to mix the two without blowing something up.”

    I have been a wife for five-and-a-half years, a parent for just two-and-a-half. Demands change, transitions occur, and all the while we as artists and family lovers have to re-examine and re-adjust our rhythms, so that both our families and our art are being fed by us.

    It’s a huge job.

    And one that, sometimes, requires a little risk.

    Joshua Tree National Park, copyright 2011, Kate Meadows.

    I took a risk last weekend, choosing my art over my family for a two-day getaway. I chose to give up a weekend with my husband and son, to return to a baby I started making before my son was even in the picture: my first book. I knew I would lose something in doing it: precious time with my family.

    But I also hoped I would gain something. I hoped I could return home with a manuscript that was darn near ready to be sent to the publisher, a piece of work I felt tremendously good about, a masterpiece that danced.

    I wrote in The Ghost of Loneliness that my husband and son would be “killing hours with each other” while I was away. He informed me when I returned that he took issue with that phrase.

    “I wasn’t killing hours with my son,” he said. “I was having a lot of fun with him.”

    That’s the kind of support that is vital in making your life as an artist work. When others believe in you, how much easier it is to believe in yourself. How much easier it is to spend time alone with your words, your creativity, and make something happen with them, when you know you are surrounded by 110 percent support.

    Who’s got your back?

    I took a risk last weekend, and it was scary at first. But I returned home with no regrets. Maybe it’s time for you to sink your teeth into something a little scary. It might just be a risk worth taking.

    Category Creativity, Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,, | 5 Comments

  2. Four Things I Learned on my Solo Writing Retreat

    March 26, 2012 by katemeadows

    I returned home yesterday in pouring rain from a self-imposed writer’s retreat two hours south of where I live. Perhaps rain was the symbolic gift to seal my time spent away; a renewal and a washing that makes things alive again.

    Leaves over water, Danbury, CT. Copyright 2008, Kate Meadows.

    The weekend, cozied up at the Hillcrest House Bed and Breakfast in San Diego’s Hillcrest district, was bliss. It wasn’t the kind of bliss that comes with non-stop pampering and feel-good ahs, but the kind of bliss that comes when you spend time doing something you love and doing it well.

    Here are four things I learned from my weekend away:

    1) I could rest in the knowledge that I had already produced good work. I had set out this weekend with a goal of revising for one final time my manuscript that will be published as a book of essays this coming fall. Having a full blown manuscript in hand was a reminder that I had already done the hard work. I was not dealing with a rough draft, or even a work in progress. This was already a solid manuscript. I allowed myself to feel good about that.

    Copyright 2008, Kate Meadows, Danbury, CT.

    2) It was okay to not work too hard. It’s no use fixing something that’s not broke, as they say. So rather than going into the weekend with an ambition to change and overhaul, I went in with the mindset of simply seeing my words in a fresh light. Rather than the hard, nitty gritty work of re-writing and re-vising, I took the weekend as an opportunity to play, to see what more I could do with my pieces to make the words dance – knowing that the words were in place and, to a good degree, dancing already. Know what? I kind of had fun.

    3) I would benefit most from having no concrete expectations. Sound lazy? It was perhaps the most beneficial insight I had all weekend. I knew that by imposing some strict deadline on myself or expecting to, say, cover the entire manuscript in the course of 48 hours (16 of which I would hopefully be sleeping) would cause nothing but stress. Stress was not welcome this weekend. End of story. What’s more, having no expectations meant that whatever I accomplished would be, well, an accomplishment. I accomplished a lot. Guess how that made me feel?

    Copyright 2009, Kate Meadows, Sublette County, WY.

    4) It is okay to be a little pampered and live it up a bit. In my house these days, it seems like we are living on generic macaroni and cheese and hotdogs, whatever laundry soap is on sale, and very few opportunities to eat out. On this retreat, I sprang for 5,000-thread-count sheets, gourmet coffee and fresh food from local markets. I put bean sprouts on my salad, munched on blood oranges, paid $5 for half a loaded baked potato. It was a splurge, yes, but not an all-out splurge. I still opted for an economical bed and breakfast. Most of my meals came from the Whole Foods Market down the street, rather than trendy cafes. But allowing for a few extras was a simple way of reminding myself that I and my work were worth it, a way I could say to myself, “I love you.” You work so much better when your head and heart are in a happy mindset.

    I returned home with a renewed vision of my book, a fresh excitement about it, and even a new fan from the UK who promises she’ll buy it when it comes out. The only thing that was missing? A good glass of wine at the end of the day. But that’s only because I’m pregnant. I’ll treat myself to that glass of wine, as soon as the second little mister decides to make his entrance into the world.

    *If you could design a getaway for yourself, what would it look like? What is holding you back?

     

    Category Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, Place, Writing | Tags: , | 2 Comments

  3. The Ghost of Loneliness

    March 22, 2012 by katemeadows

    I am going away this weekend.

    It is no ordinary get-away. It is a self-imposed writer’s retreat, a solo stay at a quaint B&B.

    A one-on-one date with my manuscript of essays that will, barring any setbacks, be published by a small traditional press this coming fall.

    But I have a confession to make. If I really think about it, I am terrified to spend a weekend alone with my words.

    Leaf, Laguna Niguel, CA. Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    Being alone is scary. What if I get sidetracked? What if I can’t shake the penetrating loneliness that threatens to grip me, knowing my husband and son are killing hours with each other two hours away? What if I’m not putting first things first, choosing to spend the weekend with my family rather than by myself lost in the work I have created?

    Media marketing guru Dan Blank, founder of We Grow Media, addressed loneliness in a recent newsletter this way:

    “You are creating something from nothing. You are trying desperately for an idea to be born, to grow, to spread. I often look at writers as entrepreneurs because of this. Most businesses fail. Most writers’ work goes unpublished, or worse yet: unread.”

    And yet here we are, chasing those ideas down, believing in them enough to pursue them and make art out of them, hoping against hope that someone else will see the merit in our work, our toil.

    I once attended a writer’s workshop in which writer and teacher Heather Sellers talked about the fear that comes when we sit down to face our own work. It’s terrifying, that act of putting your butt in your chair and facing a blank document – or, in this case, an already-existing work that needs some tweaking.

    Sellers’ solution to combatting that dread?

    Play.

    Visit or re-visit your writing as an act of play. Tell yourself you are going to sit there for two hours to play – play around with words, with ideas, see what comes.

    How freeing that thought was, a little mind trick to shift your mindset from one that is stone-cold serious to one that’s a little more lighthearted.

    I hate to admit it, that I struggle with the fear and insecurity that comes with an opportunity to spend some quality alone time with my work. Because really, this weekend getaway should be a rocking adventure.

    When it comes right down to it, I know that. This weekend is a small piece of gold I am giving to myself. More importantly, it is a selfless gift my family is giving to me. Quiet, uninterrupted time to work.

    I will go, and I will face my work with confidence and authority. I will put my butt in a chair, and start to play.

    And with any luck, I will be able to make words dance.

     

    Category Family, Inspiration, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,, | 6 Comments

  4. Journaling – For Those Who Don’t Have Time To Do It

    March 19, 2012 by katemeadows

    On the coffee table at my parents’ house sits a blue leather one-line-a-day journal.

    I admit, it’s a strange artifact to occupy that space. One, neither of my parents is a writer or journal-keeper. Two, so many other things would seem to be more appropriate for that space: day-old newspapers, decorations commemorating whatever the season is, a dog toy, maybe.

    Tree in bloom, Omaha, NE. Copyright 2009 by Kate Meadows

    At first, I thought the journal didn’t even belong to my mom or dad. A left-over Christmas gift, perhaps, forgotten by some out-of-town family member who had long since left? A gift for someone else that Mom was keeping out so she would remember to give it to whomever it was intended?

    But I was wrong. On multiple counts.

    My mom, it turns out, is a journal keeper. That journal is hers. It does belong on the coffee table in the living room, as a constant reminder for her to write just that one line each day.

    And perhaps the biggest shocker for me?

    She bought it for herself.

    My mom is a woman who hardly has time to sit down and watch a 30-minute news segment. She has a small stack of paperback books on her nightstand, books she has been reading for months and months because she’s not one of those types who will just sit and read for hours.

    She is a woman who is short on time.

    Sunday afternoon pelican, Laguna Niguel, CA. Copyright 2012 Kate Meadows.

    Yet, this pocket-sized one-line-a-day journal is her ticket into becoming a journal keeper. It contains five years’ worth of lines, marking one line for each day. If she writes one line on March 18, 2012 and another line on March 18, 2013, she will easily be able to compare what she said in one year with what she said in the next. Maybe for her this month work is stressful. Next March, she might be planning a trip around this time and write about that, able to smile back on March 2012 and all that has changed since then. Or, maybe spring came too soon this year. When she writes about the sun melting the snow on April 1, 2012, she could be recording a raging blizzard on April 1, 2013.

    Journals give us records of our lives. And not just our lives, but everything that celestially spins to influence our lives and define who we are. Keeping a journal is important. And I say, if my mom can do it, anyone can.

    What would your one line be today? “Threw the ball with [insert child’s name here] and he caught it for the first time?” “Work too much. Crave more time with my family?” “Dinner out a BBQ joint tonight with relatives?”

    A line a day is easy. Sometimes, I would think, the hardest part is how to narrow down just what to say, just how to choose to remember this day.

    Category Books, Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, Life Stories, Writing Process | Tags: ,,, | 11 Comments

  5. Why Preserving Life Stories is Important – Now

    March 15, 2012 by katemeadows

    On Monday, I wrote about mining some less than glamorous memories of my grandparents.

    But there is another side to the story.

    waterfall, Sublette County, Wyoming. Copyright Kate Meadows 2009.

    Aside from hidden cigarette butts, a lack of love for each other and an ugly divorce after 51 years of marriage, my grandparents were a wealth of information about the town and county in which I grew up. This place happens to be – or at least used to be – the least populated county in the least populated state of the nation.

    My Grandma and Grandpa were raised just over the hill from each other. Their parents’ generation had homesteaded in Sublette County, Wyoming, chiseling out roots and lives in a land so sparse and barren that hardly anything grew. My grandparents learned to work this land, to own it rather than fear it. They started a family, launched business ventures in town (which included live-trapping and raising and breeding wild bobcats) and got to know people whose own families had similar stories of trial and triumph when it came to making life work in western Wyoming.

    In short, my grandparents were sources of stories – stories that painted a history so rich it would be a crying shame to see that history dissolve with their deaths.

    Winter leaves in Missouri. Copyright Kate Meadows, 2009.

    I knew this. I knew they were a wealth of information about my home. I knew they each had valuable knowledge that could preserve the value of this place for generations and generations to come. How often had I heard them spit out those wild and unbelievable tales of old-timers working in the moonshine business, or tricks guys played on each other in the old tie-hack camps as they prepared to float logs down waterways for the country’s major railroad construction?

    I knew they would gladly tease out these stories and memories, if only someone took the time to listen to their stories and, somehow, save them.

    My grandpa died too young, of suicide in 2003. I was knee-deep in an English degree at Gustavus Adolphus College two states away. Fortunately, he recorded some of his own hair-raising stories and memories via a weekly column in the local newspaper.

    Grandma lasted longer. I was planning in the spring of 2010 to fly to Wyoming with a tape recorder and a notebook, and put in some long hours with her, hearing her stories of growing up and learning the history that she knew.

    She died on Feb. 7 of that year. Super Bowl Sunday. My plans were a couple of months to late.

    Why am I telling you this? Because it is my testimony of why your own life stories are important to preserve now. NOW. We all think we have a lot of time left. We can always do x, y and z tomorrow.

    But what if we can’t?

    So many of us have ambitions to get down and do that hard work – to sit with a relative and probe them about their lives, to sit with ourselves and journal a myriad thoughts about our experiences, to take the time to get to know a place or a person in a deep and distinct way and to preserve that knowledge for others.

    Dry winter forest, Danbury, CT. Copyright Kate Meadows 2009.

    But life – our own – gets in the way.

    To preserve the life stories that are important to us, we need to make it a priority. We have to recognize the urgency in listening and taking action. If researching the history of a special place or of someone’s memory is important to you, you need to make it priority.

    I can help.

    In the coming months, I will be hosting a series of Life Stories workshops to help people launch projects that are important to them. As someone who has been hired to write full length biographies and scores of personal profiles, I know what it takes to invest in people, get information, and turn it into a format that is cohesive and worth preserving. I can help you sort through questions and insecurities about tackling such a project. I can help you write – or, on another level, write for you. I can help you forever save those stories and memories that are important to you.

    If you’re interested or you want to know more, get in touch or leave me a comment. If you’re interested in attending a workshop, or want to host my workshop at your place of work, your church, community center, etc., I am happy to discuss details.

    I am here, and hoping that you recognize the importance of preserving those life histories that are important to you, before it’s too late.

     

    Category Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life Stories, Place, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  6. How Safe is Your Family From Your Art?

    March 12, 2012 by katemeadows

    What do you do if, say, you want to write about your Great Aunt Mabel and how she was the first homecoming queen of the town of Xelops, but your Great Aunt Mabel is a) a very private person and b) rather cantankerous?

    What if you have written a piece that centers on a family drama (a divorce, say) and you know your own perspective of how that drama played out would offend the people on which it is centered?

    Desert hike, Anaheim Hills, CA. Copyright 2012 Kate Meadows

    Do you write? Do you share?

    Or do you wait?

    Well, it depends on what matters more to you: getting the story told or preserving particular relationships.

    A few years ago, I wrote a series of essays that largely centered on my grandparents – two people who were never in love and who, after 51 years of marriage, broke it off with a bitter divorce. As I was writing about my upbringing, my work at my grandparents’ tree nursery, memories drifted back to me, but not all of them were happy.

    I remembered the way my grandma always tried to hide her cigarette smoking and how I’d find cigarette butts under gardening gloves in the spare bedroom. I remembered the smell of the iced tea glasses, how I always wondered if they had been washed. I remembered my grandparents’ blank stares into the back yard, the way they always sat on opposite ends of the table, never held hands, slept in separate bedrooms.

    I wanted to submit some of these essays for publication, but I wasn’t sure I was entirely comfortable doing it. My grandfather had passed, but my grandma was still alive. I knew if any of the essays got published, she would know or find out. How would she respond? I didn’t think it would be good.

    Was it worth it to me? To pursue publication at the expense of jeopardizing a relationship? I talked about it with my mom (this particular set of grandparents were her in-laws) and she said, very bluntly, “You’re going to have to wait until Grandma dies to do anything with those.”

    I couldn’t tell if she was being serious.

    But she is always about preserving relationships over everything else, so after thinking about it, I knew she meant it.

    About a year later, rather unexpectedly, my grandma did die. I hadn’t pursued publication of the essays as fervently as I had initially imagined. I had submitted a few pieces here and there, and the rejections had trickled in. But I realized I had been submitting those pieces ignorantly, with my eye solely on the prize. If publication had happened, I would figure out a way to deal with the grandma issue.

    It wasn’t the right way to go about it. After talking to my mom and some other trusted writer friends, I knew my relationship with my grandma was worth more than an early recognition in some top literary magazine.

    Another way to tackle this problem comes from writer Martha Sherrill, who ditched a promising memoir about her father because a family secret she was not willing to expose had surfaced during her writing. Her solution?

    Turn it into fiction.

    According to an article in Writer’s Digest, Sherrill made the decision to repay a sizable advance for the memoir to keep that family secret safe. Her family was too important to her, she said. Her novel, The Ruins of California, was later published. You can read the story here.

    What about you? When your art collides against your family or other loved ones, what do you do? What will you do? What is the most important thing? Is your family safe, or not?

    Category Creativity, Home, Life Stories, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  7. The (Un?)Truth about Regional Stereotypes

    March 8, 2012 by katemeadows

    Every time I return to my home state, Wyoming, I am knocked over by the forceful shock of how much I miss it. The ash blue-grey mountains that show themselves from a safe distance at first along Highway 191 and then loom larger and larger the closer we get to my hometown of Pinedale. The way the mountains stretch toward the sky in all their towering majesty, encasing a rugged landscape in which brittle sagebrush and dark green pine produce scents that, in every season, can knock you off your feet. The way spring rushes in with fury, as if waiting for the slightest permission of the hard winters, and icy runoff rushes down the mountain slopes with threatening force.

    Sawtooth Mountains, Wyoming.

    I miss the unspoken pride that comes with being tough, a toughness that comes with living in a place where harsh winters mean people gather firewood and build fires in wood stoves and rise before the sun to shovel sidewalks, feed cows, perhaps even make a 100-mile trek to the nearest Wal Mart.

    I miss all of that. And yet, as proud as I am to assert I am from that place, to say I grew up there, I have never felt entirely comfortable or worthy to claim the tough spirit that is required to make a life there.

    I have never felt that I completely fit with that region of the country.

    I have lived outside of Wyoming for ten years now, moving from state to state first because of college, then because of marriage, then because of a job’s demands.

    Joshua Tree National Park, California. Copyright 2011 Kate Meadows

    I have lived in Minnesota, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska and California.

    I have studied regions, heard the stereotypes, tried to fit in.

    And I think, when it comes right down to it, I much better fit the stereotype of a Midwestern girl than a rough-and-tumble mountain girl.

    The niceness, the easygoing way of making friends, the dozens of smaller communities sandwiched between spaced-apart cities that each have their own identity: Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha. Peacoats and casseroles and frequent small group get-togethers.

    Indian Caves State Park, Nebraska. Copyright 2009, Bryan Meadows

    Or am I trying too hard to classify?

    Because dang, as much as I love all of those things, I still miss the jagged mountain peaks and the tough winters and the smell of cows.

    What do you think? Do you feel a certain sense of belonging to any particular region of the country? Do you notice differences, give in to regional stereotypes, set yourself apart from others based on what state you live or grew up in?

    Or is it all a wash? Are we all just people, trying to find our way in a world that is growing more diverse every day?

    Where, if anywhere, do you fit?

    *PS – Check out the “Events” paged for some new listings!

    Category Home, Place | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 8 Comments

  8. How to Live a Moment-by-Moment Life (A Perspective from One Who’s Still Working on it)

    March 5, 2012 by katemeadows

    I mentioned to my husband as we’re going into church yesterday that it’s getting harder and harder to get up in the morning. I am four-and-a-half months pregnant.

     

    Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows

    He asked: Is it harder to get up because of energy, or due to the task of moving that gigantic belly into a vertical position?

     

    I elbowed him in the ribs, of course. It’s a good thing I can take “Shamu” jokes with my head held high.

     

    But this trouble moving out of bed in the morning (which is, by the way, for both those reasons above) produces other anxieties: namely, where is the time and need to write going to fit as I make yet another adjustment to parenthood in the coming months?

     

    It used to fit neatly between 4:30 and 6 a.m. every day. Husband was getting ready for work and then out the door, and the two-year-old Little Man was still sleeping. I am a morning person, so rising early was no big deal.

     

    Was.

    Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows

    Now, I am lucky to roll myself and my bulging belly out of bed by 6:30 every day (even though my alarm goes off at 5:45 – even then, at 5:45, I thought I was allowing myself some wiggle room). My son is often awake by 6:30. If he’s not, it’s not long before he is.

     

    It’s hard not to get panicky about this. But when it comes right down to it, I know I just have to trust.

     

    Trust what, you say?

     

    I have to trust that all the things that are important to me will happen in due time. (Pardon the pun.) I know that those things that are priorities in my life will take place – kid time, writing, family time – even if I can’t immediately see where it all fits.

     

    I am living a moment-by-moment life. And that’s just as it should be. Because if we focus too far out on the journey, we risk missing what’s right before our eyes, whether it’s our own child pointing to a beautiful ray of sunlight, or a quiet moment to put pen to paper.

     

    How do you prioritize your tasks?

    Category Ideas, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: | 4 Comments

  9. The Bucky’s Book Project

    March 1, 2012 by katemeadows

    Last April, I spent a week in my hometown, Pinedale, Wyoming, helping my dad organize photo albums and memorabilia for his business’ 50thanniversary open house. The business, which began in 1961 as a small engine repair shop and has since evolved into one of the most successful Polaris dealerships and recreational vehicle retailers in the country, had endured a wild rollercoaster of ups and downs, successes and failures. I knew this, but as I worked with photos on a folding table set up in the retail showroom, an entirely deeper, more meaningful picture began to take shape before my eyes.

    copyright 2012, Kate Meadows

    Here were photos of my short, chubby grandfather, grinning next to a horde of fresh beaver skins. (He and my dad trapped animals in the mountains and sold hides and furs to stay afloat in the early days.) Here was my dad, still with his moustache and young, serious face, standing on a mountain top with my mom and the snowmobiles with which they had climbed to that scenery. Here was my dad in a hospital bed, his leg in traction after a snowmobile wreck on a drag race track nearly killed him. And there I was, in the crooked notch of a mountain pass, my hair gauzy and flat from the helmet I’d been wearing, the champion of yet another mountain thanks to my dad’s patient prodding.

    Stories were beginning to emerge as I pieced photos together. Some of the stories I knew – or was even a part of – but many stories I didn’t know. Customers walked into the shop for oil, belts, snowmobile repairs, snow boots – and saw me at work at my little makeshift station. They paid me many visits.

    photo courtesy of John Linn

    “I remember that,” they would begin, or, “I recognize that mountain.” And more stories would tumble out.

    I realized then that I was sitting on a goldmine.

    A goldmine of a history yet to be preserved, of stories so hair-raising, ridiculous, tear-jerking and triumphant that to lose them … well, would be one of the biggest shames of small-town history.

    I realized something very quickly: I was the one to ensure that these memories, this history, was somehow preserved. Soon my dad would be selling the business – the business that had been in the family for 50 years. I was no mechanic. Talking repairs and small engine parts were not and never would be me. The business would be leaving the family.

    This, I realized, could be my contribution to keeping the legacy alive.

    copyright Kate Meadows, 2012

    I am a cautious person with most things in life, weighing every decision with painful analysis before I make any move.

    With this, I jumped in without thinking twice. I snatched my dad’s extensive list of customers. I wrote letters. I made phone calls. I set up a Web site. I booked interviews.

    I set the ball rolling on what would be one of the most important projects of my life.

    Bucky’s: Stories and Memories from 50 Years in Business is the history – that compilation of stories and memories that customers, friends and family members have shared with me – that resulted. It will be published in June. It is my free-fall into the world of storytelling and history preserving, my way of giving back to the place and people that constituted my family’s bread and butter as I was growing up.

    More information on the project, as well as a link to order a copy of the book, is at www.buckysstory.com.

    And now? I hope this is only the beginning of carving out my niche as a writer. Soon I will be hosting a FREE “Telling Your Life Stories” workshop in Orange County, CA (where I now live). My hope is to help people dig up and share their own life stories, with audiences who would give their eye-teeth to hear them.

    If you’re interested in working with me, let me know. I am preparing here to open big doors.

    Category Books, Home, Ideas, Place, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,, | 8 Comments