Writing | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Writing

2May

Sanity at its Handiest

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Here is my mantra for the day: “I am going to blog today, dangit, I AM GOING TO BLOG.”

Principalities and powers and double-part-time* working hours have conspired to keep me away from the blank page lately, and they probably would have continued unabated had my husband not looked straight into my crazed eyes over the weekend and reminded me that some cultures value sanity. The man makes a convincing argument, and not just because he accompanies it with freshly-brewed espresso. I mean, I’ve gone so long now without catching you up on our Easter camping trip that both it and Princess Beatrice’s hat are old news. (But will that keep me from doing so anyway?)**

* Doesn’t count as full-time because I’m a freelancer and also like deluding myself.
** No.

Two Easters ago, we went on an impromptu camping trip that was so magical and life-infusing that we dubbed it a new family tradition and went back the next year. This Easter, we decided to expand our horizons a bit and head north to Lake Como from whence not even a rainy forecast could deter us. What did deter us, however, was our car, which fainted rather suddenly in the middle of a roundabout mere hours before our scheduled departure. It was Friday evening; the holiday weekend had already begun. No mechanic shop would be open until Tuesday, and even that was doubtful as traditional Italian Easter feasts require several days of recovery. Como would have to wait.

Just in case you ever find yourself in this situation, I’ve put together a handy guide gleaned from our experience – What to do when your car breaks down in Italy negating your anticipated Easter camping trip:

Set up the tent on your balcony, avoiding eye contact with the neighbors. Stock it with My Little Ponies. When your preschoolers ask if they can sleep out there by themselves in the rain, shrug and answer, “Eh, why not?”

Ride the bus downtown to chase pigeons. Purchase giant parmesan pretzels from an Austrian entrepreneur. Chase pigeons with giant parmesan pretzels. Sample every single shade flavor of lip gloss at The Body Shop. Invent the extremely safe and socially acceptable sport of escalator racing.

Have a pizza picnic on the floor. Have a strawberry picnic on the floor. Have a banana split picnic, not on the floor. Discover that your children do not like banana splits (“My ice cream and bananas are touching!”) and ease their distress by eating the rest for them.

Hurl football-sized chocolate eggs at your unsuspecting spouse and complete a nutritious breakfast with the fragments. Host an Easter egg hunt in the backyard so as to have enough candy on hand for a nutritious supper as well. If running out of chocolate, dine on green eggs and ham—just so long as eggs are somewhere on the menu.

Sleep in until noon, build nerdy Lego contraptions, watch music videos and talent shows and hilariously awful infomercials, impersonate cows, play a very pink version of kickball, and if you hit a lull, go with the failproof Granny Pants Dance.

There you go. Sanity has been restored, my blog is marginally more up to date, and a new wisdom-packed vacation guide is out in the world. And who knows? One of us might even get a new Easter tradition out of it.

21Feb

Prompt Delay

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 7 Comments

Sunday Scribblings used to post writing prompts on Thursday so participants could have the whole weekend to wade in words and come up on Sunday clutching a fresh story. At least that’s how I saw it from my sporadic spot at the computer. But then Thursday turned into Friday and Friday to Saturday and Saturday to so late on Sunday that Italian calendars had already flipped to Monday… and nobody wants to read Sunday Scribblings on a Monday. However, when this week’s prompt nodded its tardy hello from my feed reader, I knew exactly what I wanted to post.

The prompt was food; the essay I had in mind was written two years ago and never published, though not for lack of trying. In fact, it won me my first honest-to-goodness rejection letter. “Thanks so much,” the magazine editor wrote, “but we don’t have a spot for this.” Cordial and blessedly succinct but rejection all the same. I’ve since realized that I employ two different ways of coping with rejection: one is to cry while plunging into a creative funk and the other is to repress while plunging into a creative funk. In this instance, I repressed. I buried the letter, typed “Rejected” at the top of my essay, and then got busy forgetting either one ever existed.

Today’s Sunday Scribblings’ prompt brought the essay back to mind though, and I decided hey, if it’s not good enough for publication, I can at least use it on my blog. No rejection letters this time, guaranteed. However, as I read over my concoction of words I had shoved to the back of the fridge two years ago, I realized it was good. Age hadn’t diluted any of its original flavor. It still brimmed with the succulence that had inspired me to submit it in the first place, and the corresponding rejection note felt as insignificant as a fly to be brushed away.

Which explains why I spent the girls’ naptime researching literary journals and why, instead of an essay on food, you now get a photograph of a dark-chocolate-salted-caramel cupcake waiting to be devoured by an overly sensitive writer.

I call it Food for Rethought.

3Dec

NaNoWriMo – Day… Uh, About That…

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

I somehow got into my mind that while my husband was in the States fixing up our rental house, I would be here writing like mad. 7 days without our two-hour lunch breaks or our long evenings together = 7 days of 2 x the average writing time, right?

I’ve never been great at math.

The reality was that 7 days without him here to transport the girls to and from school, pick up groceries, straighten up the house, make me laugh, orchestrate the girls’ bedtime routine, make cocktails, or help me unwind = 0 usable hours to work on my book. In the short segment of time he was away, one thing after another went wrong including bronchitis popping in for a visit, and I collapsed in bed far too late every night without ever quite finishing everything that needed to be done. I haven’t worked on the novel since Day 23 when I wondered if I would even make it to 30,000 words. I didn’t.

I’m still weary and battling a throbbing prickle in my airways, and I know this isn’t the best time to evaluate how my first NaNoWriMo attempt went, but I still feel like I should give it some closure. Maybe I should acknowledge how amazing it is that I ended November with 27,435 more words than I started with, or maybe I should admit how disappointed I am in myself that I let the entire last week slip away. I could always wax poetic about that first day of writing when words flowed effortlessly and the whole endeavor felt like being at an all-night party. Alternately, I could express my relief that I can finally prioritize everything else I’ve been missing—catching up with you all, finishing the last chapter of our Highland Fling saga, sorting through this fall’s photos, channeling Mrs. Claus, playing piano, doing crafts with the girls, etc, etc, etc.

On the other hand, I might not need to bother with closure at all. The book and I are going to take a nice break from each other this month, but I fully intend to dive back into it come January. I’m unofficially extending my National Novel Writing Month for as long as it takes me to complete a full 80,00ish-page manuscript. A book. The idea has always seemed unattainable, but now I have a month—actually, let’s just count the first three weeks, shall we?—of proof that I can unwrap a story word by word and watch the pages accumulate. Even from my sluggish outlook right now, the possibility is thrilling.

No, I didn’t “win” NaNoWriMo.
Yes, I’m a little disappointed.
No, I don’t know if I’ll attempt it again in future years.
Yes, the experience was valuable regardless.
No, my book-writing adventure is not yet over.
Yes, I am excited to see how far I can take it.
No, that probably won’t be to the bestseller list.
Yes, that “probably” feels awfully presumptuous.
No, I’m not going to delete it.
Yes, I have a lot of hard work ahead… but now I know I have what it takes to write a book.

Just not in a month.

17Nov

(Un)Excused Absence

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Saturday is when I should have clued in.

November had stashed away one last jewel of an afternoon, and it glittered emerald and gold in an unexpected flood of sunlight. Some friends of ours were taking advantage of the gorgeous weather to harvest their olives—another regional tradition that I’ve wanted to participate in since we moved to Italy—and they invited us to join them. I couldn’t imagine a lovelier way to spend the afternoon… soaking up the beauty of our friends’ country home, teaching the girls how to climb trees, rolling smooth olives between my fingers, and connecting with nature and laughter again after a stressful week.

However, I could not go. Literally. I had been dragging myself out of bed before dawn for days and scraping out my brain until late at night for any bit of creative residue. My Saturday word quota was filled, but I was beyond exhausted. Over a late lunch, my mind ran frenzied laps around the manymany other things I needed to get done until it simply stopped. Total shutdown. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t respond to simple questions. I couldn’t hold my head up.

While the girls skipped out the door with their dad to enjoy the last perfect fall afternoon, I burrowed under piles of covers where I spent the next few hours shivering uncontrollably and dozing off only to snap back in a panic over everything I needed to do. That’s when I should have clued in that NaNoWriMo was costing us too dearly.

It didn’t sink in though until yesterday when I read this:

“Sometimes I think I can do this and do that and then do this after I do that. But the truth is, motherhood permeates everything. It trumps all. It’s the calling that interrupts this and cancels that and makes this look like it never mattered anyway.”

Her words thudded into my chest and jolted my eyes back into focus. I hadn’t actually played with my girls since, oh… Day 3. The priority of writing a book in thirty days had edged them out, labeled them as threats to my agenda, marginalized their need for a happy, attentive mother. I had told myself we could survive anything for a month, but that simply wasn’t true. The crusty dishes could survive. The unsorted laundry could survive. But we, with our beating hearts and fragile skins, were not surviving my absence from life, no matter how excused.

I parked myself on the girls’ rug yesterday evening to play Legos with them and practically had to glue myself in place. I wanted to be there, to be a mother again, but my mind was lost in a maze of Christmas lists, insurance policies, and an ever-looming storyline while a disembodied voice over the loudspeakers reminded me that I was still 3,000 words behind. I told it to shut up. It boomed an accusation of laziness. I asked it what could be more important than my family. It answered, “NOT FAILING.”

Wrong answer.

I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to understand that that voice over the loudspeakers, the voice of achievement no matter the cost, didn’t have any more control over me than I gave it… but I would rather clue in late than not at all. Before going to bed, I reset the alarm to give myself an extra hour of dearly-needed sleep, and I woke up smiling for the first morning this month. Throughout today, I’ve worked on extra-bookular activities and spent time with my family without guilt. I worked on the novel too, but I let myself feel proud for adding 500 words rather than despondent over not completing 2,000.

I’m not quitting NaNoWriMo, and I’m certainly not giving up on my strapping kindergartener of a book. However, one month is too long to devote myself to literary abandon. I have a worthier calling that interrupts plots and cancels characters and makes an impressive 50,000-word goal look like it never mattered anyway. My new goal for November is to make sure my girls know that I know this… and if I manage to write a large chunk of book in the process, well, that will just be olive oil on my bruschetta.

16Nov

NaNoWriMo – Day 16

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

I’ve heard of writers who immerse themselves in the act of creating and find themselves springing to life. The mindfulness, the focus, and the giddy joy of prioritizing art infuse their lives with a kind of magic, and they luxuriate in it. I’m finding out that I am not one of those writers.

My usual motivation for writing—the sheer love of it—faded within the first few days of NaNoWriMo, and I’ve been slogging through it since with varying degrees of satisfaction and frustration. I’m still forging ahead because this book dearly wants to be written; it’s been telling me so for years. I’m using my faint competitive streak to my advantage here, using a word count goal to keep me writing when I would otherwise quit after 300 words a day, and the thrill when (if?) I finish is going to be incredible. However, the process is just … not fun.

I’m not sharing this to be a downer or to complain about this opportunity in which I am voluntarily (and gratefully) participating. Rather, I just wanted to preserve an honest glimpse of my month as a novelist while I’m here in the muck of it. And now that I’ve done so… ::cue cracking whip:: …back to work!

11Nov

NaNoWriMo – Day 11

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

I don’t have any good blog entries in me right now, but I wanted to say hi, to share a quick snapshot of my month as a manic writer.

Every day this week, I’ve run face-first into my perceived failure and thought I cannot do this and choked on the frustration of being such a slow writer in a daily race against my expectations.

Every day this week, I’ve done it anyway. I’m not behind (yet). However, the load of other responsibilities stacked unevenly on my head is growing heavier, and the weekend looms like a low doorway just ahead.

My brain feels fragmented, picked over, deflated drop by drop like the foam balancing on my vanilla bean cappuccino.

I love writing, but I can’t explain why—even to myself—when I’m in the thick of it, unable to see the forest for the words.

The process feels a little like this: standing in a room of sunbeams grasping for them one at a time, never sure if I’ve caught the right one or snagged a different one by mistake or simply grabbed a handful of air.

Air and light and particles of gleaming dust and failure and triumph and coffee… and now, sleep.

8Nov

NaNoWriMo – Day 8

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Today, writing a book felt exhilarating, overwhelming, possible, and im. Watching the word count inch upward felt empowering, frustrating, satisfying, and un. Reviewing thirty pages of completed text felt gratifying, depressing, heartening, and dis. And posting about my progress now feels rewarding, presumptuous, so very normal, and so very ab.

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