Perspective

During the past two days I have not behaved nicely. I may have yelled at my husband and cussed mildly but loudly a few times during an afternoon phone conversation. I may have slammed down the phone receiver after speaking to my husband in the late morning the next day - and that after pronouncing that I loved him. I may have been a polite witch - but still somewhat of a witch - to the checker at the grocery store, because I was in a hurry, had to bag my own groceries and didn't get my coupons applied.

I call it Vincent Van Gogh syndrome. (I'm sorry, Vincent.) 

I threw a creativity tantrum.

Oh, my tantrum really wasn't creative. I didn't yell, complain and gesture wildly while standing on my head and juggling balls with my feet. I didn't write elegant couplets about my disappointments. And there was zero oil paint in this house with which to make a permanent statement - all in bold strokes and colors - about my raging discouragement to hang on the wall, reminding me of my artistic pain.

The tantrum was directly related to my creative endeavors, though. Here was the setup:

Last week I wrote a little post for this blog, just a little theme that had been percolating in my head and one I had been planning to expound here for some time. I didn't really think people would like it all that much, but it was from my heart.

When I saw the next day that it had gotten many hits quickly (very relative, I assure you), I was taken aback. The thought came to me again: I really have no clue what will engage people and entice them to like and share my work.

It was a pleasant and welcome surprise, mind you. I had not worked all that hard on the piece AND I had considered not finishing the post or ever publishing it, uncertain about its potential to say anything illuminating.

Then, this week, I had a post published at a wonderful site created in honor of the great humorist Erma Bombeck.

I had worked really hard on this second post periodically for two weeks: editing and revising, printing out in hard copy and reading silently and out loud, marking up, recycling old drafts and printing again in improved form. The idea was something I had written out a few years ago, but I thought it needed much polishing and there were new threads of experience to weave into the old idea, so I worked and worked and worked on this thing until I felt it was as good as I could make it.

Granted, I did wonder a few times whether it should take me that long to complete a work of such few words.

When the site published it, the lovely lady who founded and runs that site praised the post, telling me that it was very well written and right on the mark.

My hopes were high when I shared it on Facebook (Are there other forms of social media? I wish I cared.)

But this post over which I had labored so faithfully was not well-received at all. It got very few likes and only one share. (Thank you, Vinca. You support me a lot, and I appreciate it.)

Thus began the torture. Why didn't people like it? Was it too harsh? I'm just telling the truth with slight exaggeration, and I wouldn't really hit my kids with a rubber mallet, you know. Was it too similar to some of my other pieces? Is it that I selfishly utilize social media too rarely, usually only when dealing with aspects of my writing or posting pictures? Were people just sick of my writing, period, because that earlier post involving less effort had been shared and viewed just a few days previously?

But, then, if they liked that one, why wouldn't they want to read another from me? Why?

Well, that brought me back, you see, to the only answer: most people who read it just didn't like my newest humor post. I wish I knew why.

And so I came down from my creative high into the suffocating mud of self-doubt, discouragement and childish resentment.

Honestly, I am a writer. I'm not fooling here. (Never back down from proclaiming who you are, I say - even if you have no proof.) I know how to write. I just don't know how to be successful at it.

And the truth is, I may not be good enough to be successful.

And when I think of that, when I get into these foul moods, all I want to do - as I told my husband and kids yesterday evening - is crawl into a hole and carve wooden figures just so I can throw them at the wall.

I'm not going to lie here. I cried. I called out to God for direction in a silly manner. I drank wine and trembled. I made heartless jokes and comments at my own expense. Last night I threw a tantrum.

And I asked my husband some important stuff that's been bothering me. What if I never contribute financially to this family? What if I try and try and try for years, and I get nowhere; I never succeed in a worldly sense? What if he gets to retirement age, and I have not earned a single dime through my own efforts - won't he be disappointed in his wife, view her as a perpetual ball and chain around his ankles?

What if he continues to succeed and I'm just a big failure?

No.

He replied that he knew I would do anything to help our family monetarily if needed. I would work at McDonald's if necessary.

"Yes, I would," I acknowledged. "I would convince someone to give me a job. I'd probably just clean other people's houses. A job for which I am the most qualified," I moaned, burying my face in a paper towel.

My husband Matthew pointed around at our children sitting nearby and watching Mama's come apart. It's not about jobs, about my career or yours, my husband chided me yesterday.

"This is good," he stated firmly. And his finger pointed around again to our beautiful children's serious faces. "This is all good. So I don't ever want to hear the word failure come from your lips. Because this is all that matters. This is a success. As long as this is good, we're all good."

Yes, thank God. I know true, lasting meaning is all about giving and receiving love. I do understand this.

Kerry Egan, a hospice chaplain, related in a CNN blog post just what people talk about before they die:

"...people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives."

If I found out I was going to die in a few weeks, I know my first thought would not be about what I did or did not accomplish with my writing. It would be about my incredible children and my loving, steady husband, about my mom and dad and siblings, about all the relatives and friends I didn't get to spend enough time with. That is who, not what, I would think about.

But I will continue writing. Matthew told me he wants me to do whatever will make me happy. Though sometimes I thank God for the desire and the gift and other times it makes me miserable to work for nothing, I can't stop doing it without some loss of identity.

So I'll keep writing, and maybe...just maybe...I'll start working on that mystery series I want so badly to create instead of waiting and longing for the perfect idea to come and perch on my brain in a supernatural way.

More importantly, I'll try. I will. I'll try very hard to keep my perspective.

Because my brilliant, kind husband, our four incredible children and all the love we have to give in this world is all that really, truly matters.

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop

Hello, strangers.

I say strangers, because I took an unplanned sabbatical last week while working through a little depression. 

Actually, it was more like a sharp descent into a steep, lonely canyon where I tended sheep and sang plaintive cowboy songs to myself in order to retain sanity, because the sheep weren't talking.

That whole steep-walled canyon wandering began when I returned from the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop all high on inspiration and then looked at this blog the next day and saw how few people actually read my stuff. 

Geronimo!

Stats are the devil.

I was so exhausted the Sunday I flew home that I didn't discover I was truly home until the next day when I realized I had no clue whether the kids had food for lunch, clothes to wear to school, or where my own comfy sandals could be found. I had to wear high heels to drop them off.

My intention was to write about the conference right away, believe me. And I would like to say that I learned a lot while there, and I did - if one is talking about learning to laugh continuously for three straight days. There were so many stand-up comedians and humor writers leading the sessions - Alan Zweibel (an original Saturday Night Live writer), Wendy Liebman, Kathy Kinney (Mimi from The Drew Carey Show), Gina Barreca, Elaine Ambrose - that I only got a break from working out my abs through laughter when it was time to eat. I laughed and then ate to build up strength for more hilarity, laughed and ate. By Saturday night, the last of the conference, I was clutching my belly during Leighann Lord's brilliant keynote and exclaiming to my new friends Jeanine and Lou, "I can't laugh anymore! It hurts!"

You know I must have had a great time watching and listening to all those comedy pros, because when my husband came to bed Sunday night, startling me awake, I sat up and demanded, "Who's on stage?"

Like every message in life, what I heard at this workshop about the creative process, particularly the comic creative process, was not new, but it was said in an engaging and often hilarious way. It was, as the writer Elizabeth Gilbert points out in her book Big Magic, authentic. So what did I hear? Important stuff. How do I know? Because I have heard it from many successful and diligent people before.

Just write - every day. A writer writes! "If you're a writer, you can't help writing - especially when you're depressed!" - Amy Ephron 

Writing is a lonely process. Collaborate when you can. Get together with other writers.

Success is in creating what wasn't there before, in the completion of the work. "As a writer what you remember is not the product but the process." - Alan Zweibel. Once your work leaves you, "it's in the hands of other gods", as Zweibel said. You can't predict the response once you put it out there. As Wendy Liebman said, all you can control is the jokes, how you present yourself, how you feel and how prepared you are.

Persevere, follow your passion, be prepared for your big break. Have whatever your 1100 jokes are. (When Lorne Michaels asked Zweibel for an example of his work, Zweibel handed him a book of 1100 jokes.)

Books are written a sentence at a time. According to Zweibel who wrote a book with Dave Barry, by the 20th page your characters will start telling you what they want to do and say.

"Comedy comes from the same place as pain, touch your soul," says Zweibel. Pain breeds humor. "There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt." - Erma Bombeck.  Humor is redemptive, makes stories ours, something we can control, Gina Barreca pointed out.

Be specific.

"Every story you tell has the same message." - Judy Carter, author of The Comedy Bible. You're saying it the way only you can say it.

Connect with others to get feedback and support. Have "agenda-free" friends. Friendships are work, too. Work at them; it's worth it.

How would I sum up what I took from the conference? Joy, the kind you find in a community, your tribe. Sure, there were some moments when I took risks that didn't work out, like reading one of my pieces in front of a workshop and hearing crickets instead of laughter, then sitting there with a dumb smile on my face while others found kind things to say about my story. Or telling Judy Carter, who has had a very successful career in comedy and has written several successful books on the subject, on the shuttle back to the hotel that she has "a gift". Well, I never have been intimidated by fame or felt that my lack of it should keep me from complimenting a talented speaker!

At any rate, I learned from this grand experience at Erma Bombeck's alma mater, The University of Dayton, that I need to find a tribe of creative types here at home in Arizona, because the energy I feel and absorb while around other writers is powerful and fortifying. With all my heart I thank every speaker, presenter, faculty member, comedian and fellow attendee who made the 2016 workshop so magical. A special thank you to Teri Rizvi who founded it and who supports many writers' efforts through its website, humorwriters.org.

And thank you to my husband Matthew who at this juncture in my journey is the one who pays me to write and who paid my way to this amazing conference without complaining even once about the cost or inconvenience.

I can't wait for Erma 2018!

The struggles of a humor writer

For a while there - not long ago at all - I felt like my creative aspirations were dust in the wind, at least where my humor writing was concerned. Primarily, my outlook was all wrong. I was attempting to take some real crises I was having and make them funny, but I wasn't in the mood.

I spent weeks working on and off on a few pieces, but I couldn't get the tone or flow right on any of them. They had no punch. It got to the point where I was chewing obsessively on petty words, paring paragraphs, and cutting and pasting content back and forth between posts.

Finally, I decided to write a little about my creative struggle here, and quite suddenly inspiration came back to roost. Not only was I able to finish pieces I had been working hard on with very little success, I wrote two more - one of which I thought needed very little editing.

Well, the one I thought needed little editing just got rejected. Such is life. Perhaps I should revisit my original judgment on its readiness for the online stage. And of course I will, because after asking for insight I received some constructive feedback on why the site declined to publish it. I'm grateful to know it was considered.

One of the former pieces I had been fiddling with for what seemed like far too long - perhaps a few months - I submitted this month to a prestigious humor contest. I was terrified that I would have nothing worth entering but was determined to jump in the pool. Whatever was least dreadful at deadline would simply have to be my submission. In the end - after inspiration found me again - it really only retained the bare bones of the original idea, but I was proud of and pleased with it. I believed I had finally made my crisis funny. My hopes? Very slim. But I'm not embarrassed. The past winners are hilarious and very talented.

A third piece just got published at Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. It was inspired by a visit from my sister Annie over my birthday weekend. With her permission - and giving her credit, of course - I ran with her idea of "anger pies", Extra inspiration was provided by a recent visit with my in-laws at Christmas.

That last post is called Family Pains. Let me know what you think of it here, if you like. Can you relate? If you enjoy it, any shares would be appreciated.

What's been going on: a mature room and a humor competition

After more than 14 years of marriage, my husband and I finally got a bedroom set.

Yeah, yeah. Big deal.

But, really, it is.

Before last week's delivery of our new furniture, our small dresser was one from my husband's childhood home. (And we thank you for giving it to us, Mom and Dad-in-law.) Our mattress sat on a box spring on the floor with not even a wall tapestry to offer it some dignity. Having our bed that humble way saved space, and for years it gave our nursing babies a safer place to rest by their mama in case of a roll off the bed (very rare!). Our other furniture was an old desk with silver sharpie and black marker embellishments, a file cabinet, and an old TV stand that held our shoes and discarded jeans.

Now our room is all grown up, hardly recognizable. "Whose room is this anyway?" Matthew and I ask each other. Beautiful. For a whole week I have been unable to stay away from this regal furniture. I stand or sit and simply stare in blatant admiration. I stroke its smooth finish. I admire its reflection in the large dresser mirror. I brush off the insolent dust. I am in love with this dark bedroom furniture.

We had waited so long - because of our wee ones - and my expectations had grown so high in that time, I was certain we would have to get rare and unusual bedroom furniture from some renowned antiques dealer or some artist in Jerome, Arizona who constructs things out of abandoned barns and mine frames. But we did the American thing and found our set at a furniture warehouse. Since its purchase I have scoured the furniture ads and sneered at their offerings; our bedroom set is surely the most beautiful of them all, even if it is mass produced.

So, you can understand now. This was a big deal for me. Not a necessity, but a big and beautiful deal.

Moving on to important things in an entirely different sense, I have been struggling for two weeks now - perhaps more - to write a humor entry for the Erma Bombeck writing competition that accompanies the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop I'm going to attend.

It has not gone well. Things are certainly not flowing. I am stuck in the detangling stage of my writing and, for the life of me, cannot find a cohesive or funny thing in the crazy, knotted threads of my thoughts. I wish that I could enter something I have already written. There are quite a few that I like a lot, and some that came quite easily. Inspiration was my friend then! But the entry must be pristine, unseen, a newborn babe not yet known to man. So here I am. Where are you now, o inspiration? It's a slog, believe me.

But I do recognize that any challenge, even this frustrating, is good for my craft. So whether my entry is worthy of a humor competition or not, I'm going to enter something.

Meanwhile, I have to tell you that, for my own good or ruin, I have checked out the past winners of this competition. I kid you not, they are hilarious. I laughed out loud at several of the pieces. I highly recommend checking them out if you need to lighten your load today. Here are some of my favorites:

Legacy

The Kotex Kid Strikes Again

Appreciating a Depreciating State of Things

Republican Hair

And you can find all the winners of past years HERE and determine your own favorites after a couple hours of laughter or smirks.

Well, now I must leave you, because after his papa stayed home last Friday from work and his oldest sister home from school and church with an entirely different but quite nasty virus, my youngest son has been throwing up all morning. No joke.

My poor little fella. I don't think Mama's sorry humor essays would cheer him up. I'd better work on that.

Happily Published Elsewhere

On this blog I have not done a very good job of sharing when my pieces are published elsewhere. I need to get better about that and start supporting more fully those who publish my work, because I appreciate their support.

So a huge shout out goes to Teri Rizvi who founded a website in honor of the late, great Erma Bombeck at the University of Dayton: Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. Teri has accepted many of my posts for publication, and I am very grateful to have my work appear on such a wonderful, humorous, Erma-honoring site where many accomplished writers appear regularly. Sometimes I feel intimidated, because, really, I am being published alongside these talented people in a place dedicated to one of the greatest humor writers of all time, but I am supremely grateful for the opportunity to be in their company.

My latest post to be featured there actually explains how I got the title for this blog from something my dad uttered nearly every day to his kids for years while we were growing up. You can read all about it HERE. Please share!

The latest post of mine to be published is quite the opposite of a humor post. It is an exceptionally personal faith post. In fact it is so personal that sometimes I groan to think that people I don't know or barely know are reading it. Goodness, people I love madly who may have trouble understanding it, because it is from a decidedly Catholic perspective, are reading it. Nevertheless, it was such a profound experience that I needed to write about it, and my husband suggested I submit it for publication. In it I confess wholeheartedly that I am a sinner, one who often battles discouragement, and that it is by the grace of God that I stand. That post appears at CatholicMom.com and is called Jesus Always Has Our Back.

Thank you, readers and friends, for supporting my endeavors to become a better writer. I am always grateful for your readership and comments. God bless!