Do You Love it? You Know You Looooooove it....

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In high school my friends and I made fun of a girl with a molasses Southern accent and very few thoughts rattling around in her head, or so it seemed. Perhaps we felt superior because she would hold forth in the bathroom with a can of hairspray and a pound of make-up, cooing at her equally air-headed-acting BFF (only we didn't call 'em BFFs or besties then). "Do you love it?" she'd coo. "You know you loooooove it."

I never learned the meaning of those words, but I recall feeling a heck of a lot smarter. Never in my nerd history would I speak such fluff. It's probably no surprise this girl was popular, very popular. She was easy on the eyes and ears. And always nice to me.

Of course none of us should ever feel superior: that's the kindergarten lesson we all were supposed to get. I find that every lesson unlearned comes back to haunt or at the very least tease me. Because now, wouldn'tcha know, I ask myself this very question every day:

Do you love it, Lyn? You know you love it.

Writing? I love it so very much, and even when it's not going well, I get kind of crazy when I don't make time for it.

My husband called me out on my irritability recently. "When you don't get writing time, you get really grumpy," he observed. Then he pointed out all the choices I've been making that take me away from writing--some of which I don't have to make, he said.

With age comes wisdom and the confidence to trust your wiser choices. If you love something, give it your best attention and the best part of your day. In a recent blog post, author Hope Clark recommends that we "Eat Dessert First" and note where we give our best energy in our days.

Today I worked somewhere in the vicinity of page 57 of the new version, the overhaul of HOW WENDY REDBIRD DANCING SURVIVED THE DARK AGES OF NOUGHT. How much further I thought I'd be by now. But I do every day what Doris Betts recommended--start a few pages back before where I left off, and get back into the rhythm and the flow of my prose. I go over things painstakingly, lovingly, and slowly. That's the only way this is going to get done--with the TLC you give a growing child.

There's one other point to this--the why behind me loving it. Sure, writing is my vocation, it's in my genes, but I love it because I get to choose what I write and how I write. For years, I told my students what, when, and how to write. Some of them still thank me for it, but here's the rub: the only way our kids are going to looooove it is when they have more choice.

Professional writers get to choose, and they choose often. The journalist racing after that scoop; the marketer choosing the best diction to get the buyer following a call to action; the grant writer culling facts and pitching a mission so funders will come calling with funds: no matter what the writing prompt, most professionals get a big say in the what and how of their writing. If not, they have choice to leave that gig. Even when writing for a client, your talent and expertise always have a say, because you're the boss of the words.

How can teachers make more room for choice in the English classroom? I believe our opportunities to do so increase with the recent advent of the Common Core Standards. But that's a post for another day.

And how can writers make more time to do what they love? Find when you're at your best each day and make that 15, 25, or 50 minutes to give writing your all.

Note I didn't say a full hour. I'm realistic about this love affair. Time must be snatched when it can. If you love it, really love it, you know you can make something of the very few minutes. There's as much choice there, making the most of every moment, as anything else.

Writing Prompts:

• What do you love most about writing? What gives you the biggest thrill? Make a date with yourself to find this joy, either today or tomorrow--but no more postponement than that!
• Do you get nasty when you don't write? After apologizing to whomever you mistreated, write a manifesto, directed at yourself, claiming your writing time.
• Go read something that gives you joy, and have scribbling paper close by. Steal a favorite line to start your next poem or story.
• Because you love it so much, your writing must get the attention it deserves. If you don't have a writing partner or group or a contest to enter or any other impetus or deadline, do something about the situation, now. Write some goals and frame them with something artistic. Make these goals visible and prominent.
• If you are a writing teacher, make a commitment to providing student choice in writing prompts. Go design some. 

What We're Hungry For

What a stupid decade we live in. How bad is it that I came into consciousness at a time when nothing good happens and nothing matters? 2000 through 2008: Fake celebrities on reality shows. Fake talents doing glorified karaoke on Idol. Fake money in banks. Fake President. Like the Emperor’s New Clothes, it’s been basically a bunch of naked people running around thinking they’ve got burqas on. 

-- Wendy Redbird Dancing, in Draft #7 of HOW WENDY REDBIRD DANCING SURVIVED THE DARK AGES OF NOUGHT

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If you see the movie of The Hunger Games for no other reason, see it to watch Stanley Tucci in action. His performance, like the story of The Hunger Games, feeds a human need for truth and revelation.

He plays Caesar Flickerman, the host of a 24-7 TV infotainment experience tracking the Hunger Games. [The Games are a Survivor-like show where teen tributes from a futuristic, dystopian United States battle to the death.] With great delight, his character interviews each tribute, fascinated by their personal stories, intent on reeling the audience into the drama. He laughs, he mugs, he chokes up for the camera, and everywhere his face repeats on massive screens. The tributes play along, glamorous and glib themselves, hoping for sponsors who will send gifts and aid during the most harrowing part of the Games. In other words, some help before they die.

Author Suzanne Collins takes the premise of our modern reality TV to its logical conclusion: if people--the average and ordinary--are willing to cheat, embarrass, breed, and commit crimes on TV--then why not kill? What Gary Ross, director, does in casting Tucci and dressing him like an 18th century peacock is show us how like vultures some media personalities feed off the desperation and pain of others' trauma to bring us "a very good show."

What we hunger for is truth. Art needs to hold the mirror up, and when it does, the reflection must not only look something like ourselves but also sound something like the nascent ideas rattling around our heads. It must feel something like that sensation deep in our guts--that sense of "Ech" when we watched Jon and Kate drag their eight children around like toys; when we watched a Jersey Shore partier debauch herself beyond disgust; when we see a bachelor fake a feeling for someone that might bring him further notoriety; when we watch a Kardashian pretend to have empathy for family they'll soon betray.

Based on the list of sins above, I must say of the last decade: What the hell have we been willing to watch all this time? I've been hungry for someone to point it out in bigger ways than a random punch line. What better way to call out this cultural phenomenon than with art?

Thank you, Suzanne Collins, for Caesar Flickerman and The Hunger Games.

No one likes a rant or polemic, especially if it's just words in the wind. A preacher's ire cools in the siesta of a Sunday afternoon, and politicians we ignore because we assume each has a scandal awaiting behind the curtain. We trust none of them to speak a word without hypocrisy. There must be action behind words. How to make a movement against the media? To control ourselves who consume it? That's the question for the everyday consumer of TV as much as those who create it.

Because I'll admit I'm no innocent in this. While I might pride myself on the best of TV-- my Mad Men, my Boardwalk Empire, my Whitney, even defend the sharp and nasty wit of Joan Rivers' Fashion Police...how to explain that I sometimes get sidetracked by what I will elegantly call Bottom-of-the-Barrel Crap? Yes, I turn to the Kardashians (are they never NOT on TV?)

Many things get me mad--racism, child abuse, hypocrisy--and when I remember my part in all these things--the compliance of silence, standing by, good people doing nothing, I make art. I sit on the sidelines and sketch what I see. Through Wendy Redbird Dancing's eyes, I see a Dark Age of Noughts--a superficial time of bad reality TV and political gamesmanship, of greed-is-good beyond anything we'd dreamed prior, and I let her rant. As she rages, and as artists like Suzanne Collins make their commentary, I wonder if our culture is awakening from something close to a nightmare. Watching the film yesterday, I thought, There's nothing like the art of film on the big screen to show us the trap and the lie of vanity and greed. 

If I'm hungry to speak truth and hear truth, what better way than through the eyes of a teen, a girl coming of age who has a lot of opinions and a lot of 'tude. Give her quirks and a sense of humor; make her not only obsessed with Michael Jackson but in love with words, with Anderson Cooper, and making sartorial statements. Her message will go down easier than in the mouth of Lyn Fairchild Hawks who's just another irritable citizen.

Particularly irritable since she started her story over. Draft #25. The final final, I call it. But it's okay. It's all okay. I got a good dose of Hunger Games, I'm inspired to keep writing, and I know the story will out.

When Flannery O'Connor was asked what one of her stories was about, she said something like, "Read it." We're hungry not for one-liners, sound bytes, and tweets, but experience. The whole story. The Hunger Games sweeps us away to a future that is dark, soulless, yet glimmering with hope. Some redemption is at hand. People do love. They will sacrifice for one another when all else fails. We want to be immersed in that kind of story and then have Mom tell us at the end, "Now go to sleep."

This tells me we are all hungry, at the end of the day, for peace.

Writing Prompts:

• Is there any reality TV you've seen that's "for real"? What does it tell you, teach you, inspire you to think about?
• What reality TV depresses you, and why? Frustrates or irritates you? 
• You are charged with pitching a concept of a reality show. What's the premise? Why do people need to see this slice of real?
• Make a list of reality shows you would ban. Then pit all the characters against one another in your own satirical Hunger Games scene--a script with a to-the-death extravaganza that mocks our era of reality TV, remembering that satire attacks human vice and folly. So choose your humans well, those you find most full of vice and folly.
• Which actor in the movie best captured your image of a character from the book? What "real" did the actor portray that you were hoping to see on the big screen?
• Why is the character called Caesar Flickerman? After you explain connotations and symbolism, create new names for hosts of reality shows you love and despise. These new names should be full of connotation and symbolism, too.