A Caesura of Days

This weekend feels like a pause. An in-between time, a neither-here-nor-there time. This week between Christmas and the New Year, a caesura of days. Unwrapped gifts squat under the tree, dwindling plates of cookies still clutter the countertop, holiday dinner leftovers are tucked into the fridge. It feels like we're all recovering from December and holding our breath for the New Year – ending and beginning at the same time. (But isn't that always the way?)

I know not everyone celebrates Christmas. And I know some of us are working this weekend (such as my husband in retail and my creative entrepreneur cohorts, who are, in many ways, always working). I know life goes on as usual, at gas stations, at grocery stores, in bedrooms. There are always dishes to wash, toilets to clean, appointment to make and to keep. 

I'm here in my quiet house, wondering if I should cozy in with a book or tackle the studio reorganization project. I'm never quite sure what to do during such freefall days: leisure or responsibility? So I try to breathe deep, to inhabit this small space between the old and the new. After all, this small space is the only one we ever have. 

Gift Certificates Now Available!

If you need one of those pesky last-minute gifts for a creative person in your life, you can now purchase a gift certificate good toward any of my upcoming online classes, mentoring sessions, writing apprenticeships, and editing services. 

(Maybe the person needing one of those pesky last-minute gifts is you? A little something for your writing life in the new year? Such as a spot in the new One-Moment Memoir class?)

Choose from a wide range of gift certificate amounts, including $10, $25, $50, $100, and more. 

If you have any questions about gift certificates, upcoming classes, or my other services, please contact me. I'm always happy to answer questions and make recommendations based on your needs. Cheers! 

One-Moment Memoirs (new writing workshop)

I am so excited to tell you about my newest writing class, One-Moment Memoirs, which is a step-by-step process to help you take a relaxed, yet focused approach to telling life's big and small stories in bite-sized pieces. 

If I could give you just one thing to help you tell the stories of your life, it would be the process that I share in this class.

One-Moment Memoirs (OMM) is for you if....

...you want to write essays, a memoir, blog posts, flash nonfiction, or any kind of creative nonfiction.
...you've always wanted to write, but never could.
...you need a new way "in" to your stories.
...you can't figure out how to start writing.
...you can't figure out to keep writing.
...you are a linear thinker.
...you are an associative thinker.
...have a "small" story to tell.
...you have a "big" story to tell.

All stories from our lives are made up of moments. You can write that story (short or long), moment by moment. This workshop shows you how. 

Some experiences beg us to write about them, but we often feel overwhelmed when trying to capture the whole story at once. Life is comprised of moments: Big, showy ones, and small, quiet ones—many of them infused with deeper meaning, what Virginia Woolf called "moments of being."

Sometimes we can easily articulate a moment's meaning, but often we can only make sense of it peripherally. In a well-crafted short essay or blog post, the moment and the meaning must be distilled to their purest essence. It's a tall order for a short form. 

But this workshop isn't only about writing short pieces. It's also about writing the moments that make up longer pieces, such as a long-form essays and book-length memoirs. The beauty of these writing exercises and techniques is that you will be able to use them again and again for any length of creative nonfiction (stories from your life). 

I'm presenting OMM as a live, virtual 3-hour class on January 24. All you need to participate is an email address and a phone. (And if you can't make the live class, no worries. Everyone who registers gets a recording of the class, plus a workbook and worksheets.)

Here's the workshop schedule: 

(Times listed are Eastern Daylight Savings. Need a time zone converter?)

• First Call (12:00 - 1:15pm) - Writing Workshop (with guided writing exercises)
• Individual Writing Time (1:15 - 2:15pm:)
• Second Call (2:15 - 3:00pm) - Time to share, Q&A session

Can't make the live calls? No problem. Everyone who registers will receive recordings of the calls.

You will learn a process that will empower you to write more often, with more ease, and with more depth. It's going to be so very good! 

Learn more and register over here.

p.s. When you register, you can add personalized editorial feedback to the workshop. With this option, I'll read your one-moment memoir privately, plus review the material you create during the writing exercises, and give you written, in-depth feedback (always kind, always constructive) on what's working well and how to do more of those good things. 

Personal Ethics & Social Media (part 1)

Note: The blog post below was originally published in July 2013. Recent events have me pondering the same questions again. I hope to write more about this and realted topics in the coming weeks and months, so I thought it would be a good idea to start by revisiting the original post. 

** ** ** 

Here's the question: How do I apply my personal ethical code in the realm of social media?

But first, a story....

When I was in seventh grade, I received a three-day out-of-school suspension for fighting. In gym class one morning, during a game of kickball, the class bully (a tough girl we'll call Veronica) began to berate and belittle a girl on our team who had mental and physical challenges (a sweet girl we'll call Sally). Sally had gotten the last out of the inning, and Veronica was pissed about it.

I hated gym class, but I hated cruelty and injustice more. So when Veronica started in on Sally and Sally looked like a deer in headlights, I spoke up without even thinking about it.

"Leave her alone, Veronica," I said.

"What the hell did you just say to me?"

What the hell, indeed? Here I was, a goody-two-shoes with pink glasses and a fluffy perm. And there was Veronica: wiry, scrappy, and probably twice as strong as me. I was booksmart. She was streetsmart. Even the boys were afraid of her, though most of them wouldn't admit it.

"I said leave her alone."

I think I started to walk away after that, but I must have turned around again because when she pushed me, I stumbled backward.

My father had taught me exactly one thing about fighting: Hit back. We had never gotten into the specifics of how to hit, but the message was clear: If someone else starts it, you defend yourself.

I pushed Veronica back.

I think she was as surprised as I was.

Then she shoved me so hard I flew into a wall.

In the second it took me to recover and start back at her, the gym teacher stepped between us. The fight was over before it really started, and I was secretly grateful. Veronica could have kicked my ass, no doubt. And no doubt, I would have gone down fighting.

Instead, we were dragged upstairs to the principal's office, and I spent the rest of the morning sitting there in my shorts and tee-shirt, waiting for him to decide on a punishment, and then waiting for my mom to come pick me up.

When the principal asked me privately if I understood why he had to suspend both of us -- even though I had been defending myself -- I said something like this: "I understand that you have to follow the rule of no fighting on school property. But I don't think it's right." 

I haven't been in a physical fight since seventh grade, but I've had plenty of verbal spars. I've challenged relatives who made derogatory statements about people who are homosexual. I've chastised family friends for making sweeping statements about people who are homeless. I've had calm debates and shouting matches with some of the people closest to me when conversations about race and nationality have gone awry. I've tried to correct co-workers' misconceptions about certain religious groups. I've argued politics with friends. I'm the one who speaks up in a group when someone tells a misogynist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise degrading joke. I'll tell a perfect stranger, "That's not cool," if they say such hateful nonsense to or near me.

I'm not pretending that I'm a perfect paragon of tolerance, acceptance, and love. God knows I have my own private prejudices and small-minded moments, no matter how much I strive not to.

All I'm saying is this: I'm generally not shy about speaking up if you slander a person or a whole group of people. 

In fact, I think silence can make you complicit with such slander.

So back to that question:

How do I apply my personal ethical code in the realm of social media?

The Internet is a vast and unruly beast of opinions. It's fantastic that anyone with a blog, Twitter, or Facebook account can share their thoughts. The power of being able to make your voice heard, and to find like-minded people, is great. The Internet is an amazing tool for learning new things and being exposed to different points of view, both of which are tremendously important to being a well-educated, broadminded, and kindhearted person. But the Internet, specifically social media, is also a minefield of ethical questions.

Last week, after the "not guilty" verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, I saw several Facebook posts that questioned why people and the media were making "such a big deal" about the jury's decision. The general feeling in these posts seemed to be that the media was "race baiting" and making a mountain out of a molehill. These Facebook posters couldn't understand why other people were upset enough to take to the streets in protest of the verdict. One person ranted against the "riots" taking place by "ANIMALS" across the country (this person's words and capitalization, not mine). When someone challenged this statement and pointed out that there were plenty of protests but no real riots happening, the original poster basically said, "Well, it's not over yet. We'll see." In that person's mind, the people protesting were "animals" who would no doubt resort to violence.

Okay. I need to take a deep breath.

I'm going to avoid getting into my specific opinions on the Trayvon Martin shooting and the Zimmerman verdict, because that's not really what this post is about. Suffice it to say that I disagree with the people who think that this case shouldn't be such a big deal, and I disagree with the implied statement that black people staging a protest makes them savages hell-bent on rioting. (Yes, non-black people protested too, and I suspect that the person who called the protestors "ANIMALS" would argue that this label applied to "rioters" of all races. But given this country's history of -- and current issues with -- non-white people being portrayed as less-than-human, the term "animals" is a loaded one, whether you mean it to be or not.)

But my question goes beyond these specific Facebook posts and beyond the Trayvon Martin case. My question is how do I stay true to my moral and ethical standards in the world of Twitter and Facebook?

If these statements had taken place during a face-to-face encounter, I would have spoken up and engaged in conversation about them. If someone had posted them to my blog, I would have dealt with them directly, either by responding in the comments or deleting anything I considered to be over the line. Conversations that happen in-person and those that take place on my own website are part of my immediate sphere of ethical responsibility. 

On the other hand, conversations that take place on someone else's blog or another website are outside of that sphere. I usually walk away from those situations without commenting. After all, the Internet is a vast and unruly beast of opinions, and a bleeding-heart liberal like me can't spend all day sticking up for what she believes in. One could argue that my ethical responsibility extends to those other spheres, of course. But this is the general policy that I adhere to in order to keep me sane.

Social media sites are a strange, in-between space. What's my ethical responsibility to speak up when these situations show up on my Facebook feed? It's not as though those people were talking directly to me. And it's not as though they posted these things directly to just my Facebook page. But there they were, confronting me as I scrolled through the status updates.

So what were my choices here? 1) I could have chosen to unfriend them or hide their updates, but most of what they post isn't offensive to me. (In fact, I mostly believe that their offensive comments was born out of true ignorance and not malice.) 2) I could have chosen to engage in conversation with them via the comments. 3) I could have chosen to be silent.

In this case, I chose to be silent. I didn't think that I could have a meaningful conversation about the issue through the medium of Facebook, and they're not people that I would choose to email directly about such a thing. In these particular cases, I felt that saying nothing was a better option. I chose to let those situations fall outside of my sphere of ethical responsibility. 

But I'm conflicted about this choice.

Right now, I'm thinking about the different spheres of responsibility as though they're social gatherings, parties, perhaps.

• On my blog: I'm the host; it's my party. I'm responsible for what happens here.
• In-person conversations: I'm an active participant, a party guest with a right (duty?) to speak up. I'm responsible for my actions and interactions if I've chosen to attend the party.
• Other websites: These are like parties in other people's houses, and I know that some of them won't be my scene. Sometimes it makes sense to avoid those parties altogether or to hightail it outta there if I happen upon the wrong kind of party.
• Social media: Facebook and Twitter are like huge warehouses where everyone has their own little party room, and we each have keys to the rooms of our "friends" and people we "follow." If I wander down a corridor to another room and pop in to see how that party's going -- or if a promo flyer for that party lands on my doorstep -- and it turns out to be ugly, what do I do? Leave? Kick that party out of my warehouse altogether? Tell them that their party sucks? Offer tips to help improve the party?
  

It's not a perfect analogy, I know. And I'm not trying to incite anger with these questions. But I think this is an important conversation for all of us who interact with others online.

What do you think? How do you handle these situations? How do you apply your own ethical and moral code of responsibility in the murky realm of social media?

I welcome your comments below, and I hope you'll join this conversation in a spirit of respect and thoughtfulness.

"Playing in the Shadows" (Essay published in Mabel Magazine)

"Roller derby has taught me to be in my body without shame and to use it as a powerful force. I've learned that "athlete" and "artist" are not antithetical terms. I’ve learned to be brave and to take pride in bruises. I've learned how to fall down and how to get back up (every damn time). I've learned to recognize my limitations, and to push against them with determination instead of desperation.

"But mostly, I've learned the power of practice and play—on the track as a skater, on the page as a writer, and in my everyday life."

(excerpt from my essay "Playing in the Shadows," Mabel Magazine No. 2 "Own It")

I'm so pleased to have an essay in the latest issue of Mabel Magazine, a lovely print publication that is all about "making a living and creating a life." The theme for the second issue is "Owning It." My essay "Playing in the Shadows" explores how learning to own my identity as a roller derby player has helped me to stay committed to my work as a writer and creative entrepreneur.

Thank you to Stefanie Renée and Liz Kalloch, the co-founders and co-creators of Mabel, for including me in this issue. And a special thank you to Tabitha Bowman for the great photos she took for the article.

This issue features work by musician Jonatha Brooke, writer and teacher Laurie Wagner, artist Jennette Nielsen, and many more colorful, creative, and courageous women. You can order a copy of Mabel Magazine here.

(If you're interested in reading my other roller derby essays, check out my ongoing series, Roller Derby Makes Me Brave.)