Writing With Abandon

Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.

Tag: writing

  • Earth School

    This week, I finished reading All the Way to the River, Liz Gilbert’s new memoir about love, grief, and addiction.

    Back in the spring, when I’d seen that she was coming to the Arsht Center for a “conversation,” I booked three tickets for Ana, Kim, and I to see her speak. Our tickets included a brief meet and greet as well as a signed copy of the book. I made a calendar event for the evening, November 3rd, and then promptly forgot about it until October or so.

    I wasn’t planning on reading the memoir ahead of the event, since we were going to receive a copy anyway, but Ana forgot that she’d pre-ordered it and read it, and then I figured I could at least listen to some of the audiobook with my Spotify premium membership. So I started it on my daily dog walks, but got a bit turned off by the music, and distracted by Phoebe, and ultimately decided to just wait until the event. I let some critics get in my head too, so headed into the night a bit skeptical, which, combined with work stress, didn’t make me the most receptive audience member.

    The conversation was supposed to begin at 7:30pm, but for the meet and greet, we were required to get there by 5:45pm at the latest, the email said. So we did, and lined up, and I ranted to two of my closest friends as we waited in line to meet Liz.

    When it was our turn, I hoped she would sign my copy of Big Magic (my favorite book of hers), but it wasn’t a signing kind of thing.

    “Have we met?” she asked me when we hugged.

    I told her we hadn’t.

    Me, Liz, and Kim

    They snapped our photo, and then we went to wait in the lobby for another hour or so before the event began.

    And once it began? Whoa.

    Liz is a public speaker like few I’ve ever seen. She absolutely knows how to tell a story and engage her audience, all while remaining one hundred percent authentic.

    It truly was like a conversation with her. The meet and greet was just a photo op, but this? This was an intimate conversation. There weren’t that many of us.

    Liz spoke about creativity and love and the process of writing this memoir. She spoke about getting to a point in your life where your past lives and loves are just a distant memory. She made us laugh, she made us tear up, and she made me nudge Ana for a stack of post-its I knew she’d have and Kim for a pen so I could take some notes.

    Some small nuggets of gold I was able to jot down (some from Liz, and some that Liz quoted from others — these are not necessarily exact words, but include some exact words!):

    • We have one planet, but 8 billion worlds. Art is: take me into your world.
    • In all art, you’re revealing yourself — you’re exposing yourself, but you’re on a nude beach! What a critic is is someone who goes to the nude beach, fully clothed a with a telephoto lens, and scrutinizes you, then decides what it is. They say, I’ll tell you what she looks like naked, without taking off a stitch of their own clothing! “Get off the beach!”
    • You only need to know what you think of your art. Criticism and flattery go down the same drain — both are destabilizing. (Credited to Georgia O’Keefe)
    • The universe hates secrets.
    • Rayya would always say, since the truth is where we’re gonna end up anyway, why don’t we just start there?
    • Grief is a bill that you have to pay eventually. You can pay it all at once or in installments, but you have to pay it.
    • Be vulnerable enough to do your learning in public.

    We left the evening absolutely inspired, and also exhausted from Daylight Savings Time.

    As soon as I finished my next book, I launched back into Liz’s new memoir, this time with the hard, signed copy. I started from the beginning. I finished it this past Sunday, a gorgeous day, sitting on my balcony with Phoebe at my feet.

    Something that has really been sitting with me is her notion that “Earth is nothing but a school for souls” (48). Liz writes:

    In my life, I have certainly found that the Earth School model is a useful thought exercise during times of darkness, pain, and betrayal—for it takes me out of a victim mentality and offers up a worldview that feels far more empowering and fascinating than the limiting, anguishing cry of “Why me?!”

    A more fruitful question than “Why me?” could be “How might this terrible situation be perfectly designed to help me to evolve?”

    Because what if that’s really what it’s all about?

    And what if we are all here to help each other evolve? (49)

    I’ve found this incredibly useful lately. So I leave it here with you.

    What is a terrible situation that was perfectly designed to help you evolve? And maybe, if you’re going through one now, you can reframe your “why me?” thoughts à la Liz.

  • On Letting Go and Watching Her Fly

    There’s something about teaching Writer’s Workshop that I feel oddly possessive about. It was something I grasped tightly to after meeting Ana, moving to Miami, and starting to work at KLA. It helped me through a tough couple of years in my personal life. It was something that I had control over, and which brought me and my students joy. It got me writing again, got me to see myself as a writer, just like I hope my students will see in themselves.

    So, letting go of it as a subject that I teach, that I plan, feels… scary, and uncomfortable, followed by guilt that I feel that way. It’s like a blanket being pulled off the bed that I’m still clutching to a corner of because I am desperate to stay snuggled up in it, even though I know the blanket is big enough for me and another.

    But that fear and discomfort gets replaced by awe and pride each time I watch Kim lean in and open up to the students, whose eyes light up with her stories. Every time I watch her implement all that she’s learned in just one year. There’s no doubt in my mind she will teach them so wonderfully. And I’ll be right beside her to support, to model conferencing, to be her mentor.

    “Writers, today I want to teach you,” she says, using that predictable language. And teach them she does.

    I can’t wait to watch her fly.

    Kim reading one of our student’s stories out loud, just like Georgia Heard did for us at the Quoddy writing retreat.

  • Day 31: Taps

    It’s Saturday evening and I’m watching the sun set behind the buildings across from mine. I was thinking about what to write for my last slice of the Slice of Life Story Challenge 2024, feeling both a sense of accomplishment/relief (one less item on the daily to-do list!) and also sadness, as slicing has become an activity that I have found so rejuvenating this month.

    Last night, Ana and I were sharing with Gi how fun this challenge has been for us. I think particularly about how much more I enjoyed it this year, how I built a stronger sense of community with fellow slicers, how I found blogs that I subscribed to and thoroughly enjoyed reading, and how I felt an inspiration for writing that I haven’t felt in a long time (“big magic,” Liz Gilbert might say).

    “You should definitely do it with us next year,” Ana encouraged Gi. “It’s so freaking fun.”

    As I look out the window, watching the sky change colors, I find myself thinking of the song we used to sing at camp at the end of each evening, Taps:

    Day is done. Gone the sun. From the hills, from the lakes, from the skies. All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.

    We would play around with harmonies each time, my friends Alice and Claire and I especially. Then off to our cabins to wash up and get ready for bed, have cabin chat, and go to sleep. Every evening ended the same way, and there was a sense of peace knowing that the next morning, after waking up at 7:30, after the day passed with its activities and meals, we’d end it again with some goodnight circle songs, and always, Taps.

    Last year, on the 31st day of the challenge, I reflected on who I was as a writer. I considered blogging more often, writing for the very small audience I’d built, but never managed to do it. I think I wrote one post between then and now. Perhaps it was the focus of my blog that kept me from it (teacher-facing solely), or my imposter syndrome, or the who-cares-what-I’ve-got-to-say, or any of the various life-gets-in-the-way excuses.

    This year, I pushed past the discomfort and just wrote. I learned that a simple post about banana bread can remind someone else of their own recipe, have them grabbing the ingredients from their pantry and baking for the loved ones in their lives. I saw how my friends who followed along enjoyed the stories I told, how they were “insiders” knowing the characters I wrote about. This year, I really felt — feel — like a writer again, in a way I haven’t in years.

    And then magically, serendipitously, the evening that Ana wrote her slice about whether or not she’d go to Ralph Fletcher’s Quoddy Writing Retreat for teachers this summer, I received an email from him letting me know a spot had opened up and was I still interested?

    HECK! YES!

    So, a promise to myself: to keep at it. A weekly slice. Because there is comfort in writing regularly, like the comfort of singing Taps on a summer evening in the Berkshires.

    Thanks, fellow slicers, thanks, Two Writing Teachers, for hosting, thanks to my readers who encourage me, and thanks to my writing partner (she knows who she is).

  • Sundays in Madrid

    I lived in Madrid for two years in my early twenties, working four days a week at an elementary school as an English language and culture assistant. That first year, I rented a room in an apartment with 5 other girls that became known to us as “el piso paraíso.”

    The other girls were there on Erasmus, Europe’s study abroad program, completing a year of either their bachelor’s or master’s degrees. We were new to Madrid and excited to explore all it had to offer.

    And Sundays were the best.

    Usually nursing a resaca from a fun night out, we’d slowly greet the day in the kitchen with an espresso and some eggs or cereal. Then we’d shower, get dressed, and get ready for a slow walk through el Rastro, Madrid’s huge open-air flea market in the La Latina barrio.

    We’d grab a tapa and a caña (a little hair of the dog always helped) from Calle Cava Baja, then stroll down the hill of the main street of the market. El Rastro had everything — from cheap sunglasses and leather belts, to vintage dresses and Levi’s jeans. We’d walk the side streets and find shops with antique trinkets and used books. A few times, we’d wander into Mercado San Fernando for lunch, some groceries, and a little bit of salsa. Other times we’d find a plaza and sit in the sun for a while.

    Sun-kissed and tired after an afternoon of walking and shopping, we’d eventually meander home, where we would spend hours in the kitchen talking as we cooked and ate dinner, until finally it was time for us each to go to bed.

    “Buenas noches, chicas,” my friend Giada would call out before she FaceTimed her mom and sister back home.

    I’d fall into bed full and warm without a care in the world, catch the moon glinting off the window of my balcony, and drift swiftly off to sleep.

  • Burbujas

    A veces, no me gusta vivir en Miami.

    La humedad molesta, tener que manejar a todos lados es pesadísimo, y ser residente de la Florida puede ser… complicado.

    Pero una tarde como hoy, después de un día agotador, pasando el atardecer con amigas en el jacuzzi de una de ellas, pienso: “Esto sí me gusta. Esto hace que todo lo demás vale la pena.”

    Mi cuerpo se relaja, y como las burbujas en el agua caliente bajo mis dedos, las preocupaciones del día se van evaporando una tras otra.

    Contenta estoy.

    Una chica de Miami.

    Bubbles

    Sometimes, I don’t like living in Miami.

    The humidity is annoying, driving everywhere is tiresome, and being a Florida resident can be… complicated.

    But on an afternoon like this, after an exhausting day, as I spend the evening with friends in one of their jacuzzis, I think: “This, I like. This makes the rest worth it.”

    My body relaxes, and just like the bubbles in the hot water under my fingertips, the worries of the day evaporate one after the other.

    I’m at ease.

    A Miami girl.

    I’m participating in the March Slice of Life challenge from twowritingteachers.org!

  • Poets

    Today one of my students brought his writer’s notebook with him to our social studies lesson, sneaking poetic lines in between notes taken on his classmates’ presentations. Yesterday, he asked if he could bring it down to music, because he thought he might get distracted, and knew having the notebook there to write in would help him. Later, he asked if he could take it home.

    “Of course,” I replied.

    Because isn’t this what we as writing teachers hope for?

    That a child will want to bring that notebook with them everywhere, to catch thoughts before they disappear from their minds? To capture vivid images and fierce wonderings?

    Today he left his notebook at school, and he won’t be back tomorrow. As I got home, I saw an email from him saying that he left the notebook at school, asking if his sister could get it for him tomorrow morning, because he really wants to share the poems he wrote today with his mother.

    “Of course,” I replied.

    Of course.

    This unexpected enthusiasm for our new poetry unit is magic.

    Students reading their poems out loud at the end of workshop today, smiling as they read, sharing their inner worlds with their peers, receiving snaps at the end.

    Oh! Let me be like my student who can’t wait to bring his notebook home, who can’t wait to put pencil to page, to put mind to words.

    “Can this be a poem?”

    “Can I write this in my poem?”

    Of course.

  • Remembering My Love of Memoir

    It’s 7:29 am and I’m waiting for Ana to pick me up to take us to school. I also just finished Marshfield Dreams by Ralph Fletcher and I feel like I’m floating.

    What a fantastic book. I read it quickly, within a couple of nights curled up in bed and this morning while eating my yogurt with fruit and homemade granola. Ralph’s stories of his childhood in Marshfield made me laugh, smile, and gasp from sudden surprise. He writes in such a clear, easy way, that you almost don’t realize when you’ve gotten to a poignant moment until you’re in it, and then — shuuup — quick inhale of breath, and a slow breathing out as you savor the mixture of beauty and sadness.

    Something else this book did was make me feel that I can write anything. I can’t wait to share this book (and any writing inspired by it!) with the world.

    So, thank you, Ralph.

  • When Writers Grow

    This morning we held our essay writing celebration. I gifted students their typed final drafts in plastic report covers, their letters to the reader pasted on patterned cardstock. They set up their writing displays, encircling their essays with all the work that went into them: the ideas in their notebooks, their plans, their revised (and revised again!) drafts, the tools and strategies they used to help them. Some students grabbed post-its to label each page. Some flocked excitedly to their classmates’ areas, peeking at what they had put out.

    At 10:30 on the dot, Isa squealed, “They’re here!” and opened the door to a group of parents streaming out of the elevator.

    Each student greeted their parent warmly and guided them towards their writing display. And then the work of celebrating truly began.

    What I’ve loved so much about Writer’s Workshop this year is the emphasis on the writing process — on all of the work that goes into a published piece, rather than just focusing on the product. Publishing takes one day, whereas all the work before that — generating ideas, choosing one to plan and develop, drafting fast and furious, revising, and editing — takes up to 4 weeks. In one unit, writers generally cycle through two pieces, deciding in the final days which they will commit to publishing.

    The heart of writing lies in the mess, the struggle to find an idea, the conferences with a mentor or partner, the beautiful sessions where time flies without you realizing it, so focused you are on getting down the words in your head. The heart of writing lies in revision, in realizing your first draft isn’t your best. The heart of writing lies in looking at your writing as a reader, examining it from different angles and through different lenses.

    There is much this year that I have learned and that I still struggle with as a writer. I went to college for creative writing, and sort of fell out of it for a variety of reasons, only now starting to pick it back up again. I let the magic lie dormant for a long while, but these 5th grade writers have sparked that big magic in me again.

    Today I celebrate the writers in my classroom and their phenomenal growth. I celebrate myself, knowing that their growth is a reflection of my teaching. And I celebrate the possibilities ahead, for my classroom, for my own writing life, and for the future writing lives of these students.

    Brava.