“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”

– Isaac Asimov

When I was a child I was a scavenger: pebbles, sticks, feathers, dead bugs, seed pods were the coin of my realm.  The natural world was my buffet plate and I scrounged through all kinds of treasures.  I once found a completely intact dried snake skin, (and cried when it crumbled in my over anxious hands).

After struggling through a season (or some) of despair, I’m finding my way to enjoying writing again.  Maybe its more accurate to say that I’m finding ways to enjoy parts of my life again and that’s reflected in my writing.

Now I find that my kind of inspiration needs to have the same kind of guilt free piracy:  the  gifts to be found in the natural world that I can bring with me to my writing are still around me, and I’m trying to awaken the same kind of wonder and appreciation.

I’m reading more; seeing more art work, trying to see more friends and get out of the smallness of the past few months.  I especially appreciate reading the LA FPI blogs – to know that there are like minded spirits and writers here is very comforting.

Here is a website I go to for an occasional jolt of positive thinking:

Here’s to finding the feathers and sticks needed for new ideas.

I’m at a business conference this week where I’m listening to speeches given by business executives.

Its remarkable to witness, that no matter how wonderful or awful the script is, if the speaker can’t use their own breathing when they’re talking – the words don’t really matter.

I know about breath control from being an actor, (and from the training in iambic pentameter), so I know about how breath illuminates spoken text (or not). But I was surprised to see how much nerves and tension and competiveness prevented a lot of today’s speakers from effectively using their words. They had some great phrases to use – but a lot of them just dumped their words out on the table like pieces from a puzzle.

One of the speakers, the CEO of the company, took his time to deliver his messages. Yes, he did seem a bit…ponderous…maybe even older in his vocal quality. But his messages had more weight and meaning because you could frame their connection to your understanding of where he was going in his speech.

I had the chance to go see THE KINGS SPEECH this past weekend, and there were some glorious moments, not just in story telling, but in the power of what words are, and how they can be used – and overcome.

I think I’ll be writing with more of a consciousness of the breathing between and in the words I write. At least for a little while.

This past week, I watched a friend’s dream come true. It was decades in the making and I was surprised at the emotions it evoked in me.
This seems important to remember when we’re writing plays. Or growing herbs. Or helping loved ones with illnesses.

A friend of mine has had her first book published (and yes, she already has her second book written and ready for publication) and she’s now on a publicity trail.
In our salad days we were acting students together, and she was funny, irreverent and spunky. She still is. Back then, we were cast in a rather awful play about Catholic School Girls in Trouble, and we did some Shakespeare (she played Pandarus in Troilus & Cressida). She ran a theatre company, did a lot of producing and directing.
We’ve kept in touch over the years, did a couple of shows together, and then she spent some time in London researching a book she was writing.

This past week, she gave a reading at a book store in Pasadena for the first leg of publicity for her book. I sat up close and watched her as she was introduced, and then read sections from her book. She took questions from the audience, and talked about what it took for her to begin, and more importantly, to finish this book.

This was a great experience to share – I saw her young face, her face when we were young actors together, and her face now as she read her book.
Her voice took on the characters in her book, much like a play. You could see how much she loved this book, these characters, this creation.
I was so proud of her, thrilled to hear how much the crowd wanted to be in her story, wanted to know what she had been through, wanted to live through this moment of hers.

Yes – in the car on the way home that night I did find my own monsters of jealousy, inferiority, and whatever self esteems issues I could muster up. But I also had these images of her face as she faced her audience, and that’s what really stayed with me afterwards: the wonder, the appreciation, the self awareness, that yes, here it is, the dream you’ve been chasing.

I know we all experienced that writing can be lonely business. But I did see this few hours of getting to read your work to an audience, getting to be asked what did it take, where did it come from, all that is a blip on the radar, after years of writing and writing and then the dice game of getting published. I did get to see what it feels like to have a dream take shape, and happen and go forward.

So that was a gift in the beginning of this new year. And I’ll take it, and cherish it.

I’ve noticed that women write about themselves in relationship to others, and men write about themselves in relationship to the world.

As a consequence it seems that women and children are often secondary in stories written by or about men because women and children are peripheral to the male experience.

I have a suspicion that the only reason women are included in plays written by or about men is because plays have to be transmitted verbally through language, and women are often a requirement when men wish to express their relationship with lust.

Am I way off?

I have striven for the last thirty years of my adult life to make worthwhile contributions to society and have for the most part supported myself and my interests financially. Certainly there have been times of illness when my family provided food and shelter above and beyond their obligation. Some generous organizations even allowed me use of their facilities to self-produce my own dramatic works, and in some cases actually partially participated in their financing.

However I have only recently discovered using the criteria set down by our multi-millennia-old patriarchical mythologies that I am actually a failure. I.e. I never had children, never married, and as was retold to me in October after my name was dropped in an argument to provide evidence of my lack of worth that “I will die alone.”

That came amidst several other major life disappointments. I promptly followed up by abusing myself with food and gained twenty pounds. The effect of which elicited words to the effect, “Go see a doctor; you don’t look good”. Not “What’s wrong? How can we help alleviate your stress?”

As I reflect back on the year’s events from my place of apparent worthlessness, I can’t help but wonder (with some amount of glee) what’s next for me? I mean to write, since I have realized that it doesn’t really matter what I do – outside of my reasonable obligation to my household and responsibility to continue to honor my employer’s requirements of me, of course – I throw off the shackles of the Judeo-Christian-Muslimologies and reject all gynocide. And with this I hope to honor the work of Mary Daly.

On January 3, 2010 Mary Daly died at the age of 81.

Ms. Daly strove from within her faith to find a place for herself. However ultimately “she gave up the futile project of criticizing and seeking reform of a fundamentally corrupt and corrosive institution. Her attention turned instead to the Spinning of new tales, new ideas.”

Here’s to new tales, new ideas, the New Year and freedom!