G is for Gratitude, Girls, and GEMS

Gratitude, the act of being thankful. Noun. As in, she expressed her gratitude with a hand-written note.

No, "gratitude" wasn't one of the vocabulary words I gave to my adult students, though the first couple quarters we read an article about the benefits of writing "gratitude letters," letters thanking people in our lives who have helped us. The article was hokey but well-meaning. Kind of like me.

Most days I feel nothing but gratitude for my life and the people in it. That thankfulness only increases when I hear difficult stories. Yesterday morning, I listened to the Diane Rehm Show on NPR. Her guest was a young woman, Rachel Lloyd, who had previously been exploited in the commercial sex industry and now runs a foundation in New York City that supports teenage girls (some as young as eleven!) who have been similarly exploited. 75-90% of girls who enter the commercial sex industry (i.e. prostitution) have been abused in their life. The typical story (as described on the show): the girl runs away or is kicked out or discarded, and within the first 72 hours is approached by someone. In exchange for sex, she can receive shelter. Protection for the night. At first, the guy is kind, suave, boyfriend-like. Before she knows it, she's prostituting herself for money. And if she doesn't give this guy the money, he beats her up. Or maybe he beats her up anyway. He's her pimp, but because she doesn't know better, she loves him and trusts him. Lloyd has a book, "Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World in Which Girls are not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself."

Lloyd made clear that boys and transgender teens are victims of sex trafficking as well, though she focuses on girls. I felt sick listening to the show. I think about this subsection of society. Voiceless. Lloyd started out ministering to adult women in jail or half-way houses who had been involved in the sex industry, but by talking to them, she noticed a common thread: they entered this industry as children. She started her foundation, GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services), to address that. It helps victims and also performs outreach to girls who may be at risk (low-income, group homes).

Imagine, from the time you come out of the womb, being told you're worthless. Being victimized by someone who's supposed to love and protect you. Being sexualized before your first period. How jaded would your perspective be? What would you think about yourself? About men? About society? Nearly 300,000 American girls, according to Lloyd, are trapped in this industry, though it's hard to come up with an exact number. How difficult will it be for them to "reenter" society?

Without a lot of money, Lloyd is saving girls' lives. Contrast that with these CEOs, giving themselves millions of dollars in bonuses, even as their companies lose money, even as their companies lay of thousands of workers. I'm not sure how to wrap my mind around this. I don't even know if it's fair to link those ideas. But I know that I'm grateful for people like Lloyd who see a need and work hard to meet it. I have gratitude for my parents, my grandparents, who, from the time I came out of the womb, told me I'm worth something.

F is for Fun with (Ph)otos

Earlier this year I bought a fancy phone. It has a touch screen, full browser, and can tell me, pitch by pitch, how the Cincinnati Reds are doing (5-0 to start the year!!!) Yesterday, my boyfriend and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather and visited a local park, Voice of America. My super-doooper phone has a panorama function: in this mode, take one picture and slowly move the phone in a single direction; it will automatically take pictures and stitch them together.

The big landscape of the park was perfect for these types of shots. Tall objects, like telephone poles and water towers, also created a neat effect, appearing like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

Once home, we continued the fun.

Happy Thursday, everyone - we've finished 6 out of 26, 23% of our marathon :)

E is for Enunciate

When I was a child, I had a behaviors that my grandmother tried to help me "correct": she thought I walked on the inside of my feet, so she made me practice walking on the outside of my feet (it was as awkward as it sounds, but at age 8 or 9, it's a game); I tended (still tend) to furrow my brow, and she kindly yells at me to stop, else I'll have wrinkles when I'm old--stick tape on my forehead if I need to, she says; finally, I had a tendency to mumble, so she stated loudly, eNUNciate!

Whether her corrections or just confidence from age and education, I speak much more clearly now. Still, I'd much rather express my thoughts in writing than in speech. The words in print do the enunciating for me. On a related note, I love reading out loud, whether it's my own work or the work of other authors. I love giving voice to words that were previously dormant on a page. Even in school, when I was otherwise frightened about speaking aloud in class, I loved being called on to read.

Tonight for writing class, we're supposed to select 2 minutes (or less) of something we wrote to read out loud. This comes out to about two-hundred words; I hope to have something new, so I better get to work!

D is for Daydreamers

Would it be wrong to assume that most quiet kids are daydreamers? While everyone else is playing kickball or foursquare, the shy little boy or girl hovers at the edge of the playground, his mind on a story he read or an alternate world he envisioned. Or maybe she's found herself in a nearby field, tying together dandelions into a crown; she's imagined herself a princess or a fairy.

As a child, my daydreams were generally tethered to reality. I relived a snippet of conversation, though my responses were always funnier and more intelligent in my head. Or I imagined a future conversation: banter came so easily in these hypothetical future conversations!

Lately, as an adult, my daydreams tend to focus on what I've written most recently. I'll replay a scene in my head and feel the same tension the characters feel. Sometimes, though, I'll drift to a conversation, real or imagined. I feel cozy, for lack of a better word, when the world is quiet except for my thoughts.

I wonder: Are loud kids daydreamers too? Can you be extroverted and still get lost in your thoughts?

C is for Craft

Writing is a craft. The more you do it, the better you get at it. As one of my writing friends wrote, "I understand that my next novel will be better, and then the one after that will be better than the last." This is one of the things that excites me about writing: it is--and I am--a perpetual work-in-progress. We have room to grow and improve and develop new techniques.

Acknowledging that we have room to grow--that not every sentence, every paragraph, every page will be perfect--allows us to continue this crazy task of making stuff up and putting it down on paper (or screen). An article at Salon.com discusses writer's block (and Hollywood's fascination with it). Its author, Laura Miller, quotes a study that suggests that "beyond a certain point, the more difficult a writing task, and the more you think it matters, the more likely you are to become blocked." Writer's block, therefore, is "more likely rooted in fear."

Getting over that fear, getting over that desire for perfection, is what finally allowed me to start and continue my writing projects. My creative writing teacher freshman year used to say, "Kill your darlings" (and he was quoting another giant, Mark Twain or William Faulkner). If there's something that you've written that you love, it's probably out of place; there's a good chance it interrupts the flow of your writing. Get rid of it, these men suggest. (Of course, like any rule, there are exceptions. Sometimes I like ending a chapter on a "darling." Sometimes I want a sentence to linger in the reader's head, echoing like a ghost.) But, more importantly, they imply that writing isn't sacred. Until a reader comes along to bring meaning to these squiggly symbols, there is no story; there is no novel.

So practice your craft. Experiment with point-of-view and narrative voice. Create characters you don't like. Be a better writer today than you were yesterday, and be a better writer tomorrow than you are today.

B is for Breakthrough

Because I started writing my novel with a general outline, I knew exactly what would happen. The book is a mystery but, more than that, it's a story about how grief, guilt, and regret affects us; I thought I had the mystery solved and plotted. But Thursday, as I was editing a scene, adding details and dialogue, I had a breakthrough: by tweaking the plot and resolution, my characters become so much more dynamic. And now I can't wait to write it and have people read it.

In writing class last week, we discussed process. What gets you going as a writer? Do you have a routine? A ritual? Do you write at home or a coffee shop? I mentioned that, for me, it depends on the type of writing. I write a blog post when I have something to write about (or if I've committed to writing one every day but Sunday for the A to Z Challenge); I write in my journal when I need to write but can't share it with anyone.

But for my larger projects, like the novel, I set weekly goals. That gives me some flexibility--maybe I write a lot Tuesday and none Wednesday--and it also allows me to have small victories along the way, like crossing the 20,000 word mark; like figuring out a major plot point.

I've enjoyed meeting so many dedicated writers in real life and online the past couple years. It's interesting to see how we each go about creating our fictional worlds--luckily, I've discovered, there's not one right way. Each of us figures out what works best for us.

A is for Alacrity

Alacrity, a cheerful eagerness. Noun. As in, the dog ran with alacrity. As in, the man demonstrated great alacrity, even on his first day.

I gave my students--back when I had students--a list of vocabulary words each week. Students defined the word and used it in a sentence. (I started out calling them "SAT words" until an end-of-quarter evaluation pointed out that none of them were in high school anymore.) One student combined all sentences in one unified paragraph, beginning something like this: "My girlfriend opened the door with alacrity, but I quickly saw that the situation was anything but mundane..." I also received sentences that indicated the student had no idea what the word meant or how it should be used: "She felt ostensibly about hurting him"; "He will extricate in the morning." What??? But for the most part, sentences were correct and well-conceived; it wasn't a difficult exercise.

There are things I miss about teaching: those rare moments when all the students are engaged or when a student asks a difficult question that I know how to answer; the knowledge that I am constantly accountable to thirty, fifty, or seventy students; being able to discuss literary works that I love (Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Hemingway's "Soldier's Home," Amy Bloom's "By and By") and hear new interpretations, new connections. And I miss many of the students. They could be hilarious, intelligent, and resourceful in ways that constantly surprised me.

Of course, there are many things I don't miss: for every eager student in the front, taking notes, raising hands, there were three in the back, their bags perched on the table blocking the view of a cell phone or a textbook from another, harder class. For every student who read the assigned story was another who didn't. And even though I knew better, I took much of that personally.

So it is with alacrity that I've tackled this new phase of my life. It is with alacrity that I approach this A to Z April Challenge. And it is with alacrity that I become a writer.