Aubergine

Aubergine was featured on SecondAct.com yesterday!

I'm so excited that my recent post "Give Up the Life You Had Planned" was featured on SecondAct.com yesterday.  SecondAct.com is Entrepreneur Magazine's website for people over 40 and includes articles and advice on careers, money, and living well.

Last week, SecondAct.com challenged the Blogathon participants to write about the second acts in their lives and my post was in response to that challenge.  

I'm honored to be included among the other inspiring stories, including a woman who rode a bike through her heartbreak and into recovery, a man who returned to team sports after almost 30 years, a single woman who adopted her daughter at 40, and more than one person who traded in an established career to become a writer.

I encourage you to go read all of the posts linked in the article.  Every single one is fascinating.

My 10 Favorite Writing Books

Image by Brenda Clarke via Creative Commons

I've been reading about writing a lot latey.  Some writers joke that this is their favorite procrastination technique and I can't say I'm always entirely innocent of that.  

But also I am the kind of learner who reads everything I can get my hands on when I want to know about something. I want to know about writing.  

I've found a lot of great books, and a few ho hum ones.  The most useful ones are the ones that give me a little information and then encourage me to go write.  Because that's the best way to be a better writer - just write.  A lot.

Here are my 10 favorite writing books I've found so far.  I hope there are some that you will enjoy, too!

Naked, Drunk and Writing, by Adair Lara

One of my writing teachers, Laura Davis, recommended this book to me recently.  She said she assigned it to her From Memory to Memoir workshop students. Lara writes about the importance of building a writing practice (and you already know how I feel about that), how to face down fear and "apply butt to chair," and also offers a lot of tips on craft (ie, not just writing, but writing well).  Throughout, she is friendly, warm and funny.  If you want to write personal essays, memoir, or a deep and compelling blog, read this book.

Anything by Natalie Goldberg

I can't pick just one book by this author, because she has written so much and so much of it is amazing.  Check out Writing Down The Bones for building your skill as a writer,  Wild Mind for finding time and your voice, and Old Friend From Far Away for writing memoir and personal stories. Throughout her books, Goldberg advocates cultivation of a writing practice - writing by hand from a evocative prompt for a timed period.  I have been using this method off and on for a while and I know it to be the very best way to get to the root of a scene, a memory, or an emotion.  It takes bravery and commitment, but is absolutely worth the effort.

Take Ten For Writers: 1,000 writing exercises to build momentum in just 10 minutes a day, by Bonnie Neubauer

As I've said, I believe in having a writing practice.  And I've listed books above that advocate it also.  If you are searching for what to write about, this book will keep you going for a long, long time.  There are 100 exercises, and each of them pairs a variable (you pick 1-10 and then flip the page to find out which one to use) with a set-up or a basic scenario. Most of the promts would work equally well for fiction or non fiction. The idea is to be quick - just write for 10 minutes.  Get your brain going and your creative juices flowing!

Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White

If you want to write better, read this book.  It is a classic for good reason. It is also kind of funny. 

Writing Motherhood, by Lisa Garrigues

I have a few books in the category of writing instruction specifically for mothers, but this is the one I come back to most often. Like Goldberg, Garrigues encourages writers to keep a longhand notebook and to to freewrite daily if possible. Her book is ful of evocative prompts and starters, examples by other writers who are mothers, and is organized into 

Crafting the Personal Essay, Dinty W. Moore

Moore teaches writing at the Universiy of Ohio, and his book is closer to a textbook than other books in this list.  And like a textbook, chockablock full of information. But unlike most textbooks I've read it is not at all dry.  I found myself wishing I could sit in his classes and soak up his lectures live.  I also found myself putting down the book every couple of pages to jot down notes to myself about ideas for pieces to write.  And that, really, is the best recommendation for a writing book right there.  

Full-Time Income in Part-Time Hours: 22 Secrets to Writing Success in Under 40 Hours a Week, by Gretchen Roberts

This ebook was by someone who manages to publish articles on food, wine, home and gardens for top national magazines and do marketing development and copywriting for companies like Lowe's and Costco - all while only working 20 hours a week and raising three young kids. I think there are a few things she can teach us!  It is short (67 pages) and a quick read.  The author focuses on management - of your time, your money, and your clients - as the method to get more done, more efficiently, and make more money doing it.  

The Renegade Writer, by Linda Formichelli

The idea behind this book is that you should question the "rules" of marketing, writing, and interacting with publishers.  The format of the book is a list of the presumed rules (like "you should always send an SASE") and then discusses why you should break the rule and when you should follow it.  What I like about the book, beyond the useful tips, is that it advocates freelancers to take responsibility for their business.  Stop following the rules, question the status quo, and figure out what works best for you, with your clients and your business.  Good advice, no matter what business you are in.

The Well-Fed Writer, by Peter Bowerman

This book is based on the premise that the basis of a thriving freelance business is not writing articles for magazines but instead writing copy for businesses.  My experience so far tells me this premise is exactly right.  Althought the author comes from a background in marketing and sales, he breaks down the process of marketing and selling yourself to write marketing and sales copy (among other things) to a level that even me, with my liberal arts, decidedly not marketing-savvy background, can manage.  If you want to make real money as a freelance, or even just build a stable base of steady clients to allow you to do the writing you are passionate about, you need this book.  The author also offers supporting tools and coaching packages via his web page.

Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success, by Kelly James-Enger

One of my frustrations with other "How-To Freelance" books I've seen is that I come away from them feeling like I have to be anexperienced freelancer to get work as a freelancer. Sample queries all list years of publishing experience over hundrends of publications, and sections on networking seem to assume you already have a network of editors at your fingertips. I'm not an editor leaving a print publication and striking out on my own - I'm starting from scratch.  

This book addresses that.  I have to be honest here - I've only read the first chapter so far, but that's enough to put this book in my top 10 list.  I have already implemented several of the suggestions from that chapter and I'm eager to start on the next batch.  I'm sure that if I implement only half of the actions suggested by James-Enger, I will be seeing a rapid growth in my business.  Even if you aren't a rank beginner like me, there are good tips in here for presenting yourself professionally, time management, and organization that will hep you push your business to the next level.  

What books are you reading about writing?  I'd love to hear your reccomendations!

Growing Good Eaters: a guest post on Green Child Magazine's Blog

I'm very excited to have an article on the Green Child Magazine's blog today.  It is about growing a vegetable garden with your kids and I'm really proud of it.  

While you are there, check out the rest of the magazine's offerings.  It is a great publication. 

And then come on back and tell me about how you garden with your kids.  Do you grow veggies? Flowers? How old were your children when they started helping in the garden?

Ordinary Life in Photos: Mother's Day

For him, coffee.  For her, a sippy cup of water. 

For me, a Kir Royale.

My baby doesn't have a baby book

There, I've said it.

I think I do a lot of things right as a mom, but I've totally TOTALLY failed on this front.  I have blank baby books (two or three of them!) but none that have anything in them.

I feel terrible about this.  My own baby book is a treasured posession.  I love reading my mom's notes about what gifts people brought me as a newborn, and each of my firsts.  I love the lock of hair she saved (almost the same color as my daughter's!).  I love my mom's tiny tiny neat handwriting, which has changed so much over the length of my life.  I love looking at my old report cards and school pictures.  

It isn't that I haven't marked down any memories or milestones; I have.  I also have stacks of important saved items, like the impossibly small hospital anklet with "Baby Girl Bumgarner" printed on it, the extra copy of her first passport photo, and a large stack of cards from her first birthday. I also have thousands of photos on my computer and almost-monthly letters that I wrote to her during the first year, and a digital calendar where I took note of all sorts of firsts. 

But none of this stuff is in a book.

I don't know, maybe it doesn't need to be.  There are so many ways of capturing memories these days.  I think part of what's holding me back from starting an actual baby book is just not knowing what to put in and what to leave out.  Do I print out all of my Facebook status updates from the first several months of her life?  How do I wittle down the thousands of photos to one for each month?  How do I include the letters, or do I want to keep those separate until she is older? What about all the precious videos of her from my iPhone? Should I include a DVD?

I'd love to hear from some of you other busy mamas.  Do you have baby books for your babies?  What form do they take?  Do they have digital as well as physical components?

And those of you with older kids, what did you do?  How do your kids feel about their books, or the lack thereof, as the case may be?

Give up the life you planned

"You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you." – Joseph Campbell

Up until two years ago, I thought I knew where my life was heading.  I was about to take a big leap into something unfamiliar to me, but not entirely unknown.  I had given notice at my job, and I had been accepted into grad school.  I thought I knew what my next two years would be like, at least, though I didn't know what would happen after that.  I thought maybe I'd even come back to Apple.  

But then I discovered I was pregnant.  And in the next few months, all of the plans I had been so sure about unraveled.  

I am a planner by nature.  I am anxious when I don't have a plan.   I definitely have had moments of anxiety in the last couple of years.  But I have been surprised more by feelings I never expected: Peace. Trust.

Six months before I left Apple, before I was even sure I was going to leave, I had an interview with a financial planner.  We had the most surprising conversation. She looked over my papers, then sat back in her big black leather chair and looked at me.  Just looked at me for a long minute.  Then she said, “I’m not going to work with you.”  I'm sure I looked at her like she had lost her mind. “I don’t think you want to go to business school.  I think you just need some rest. I think you need someone to give you permission to quit your job so you can rest.”

I remember tears coming to my eyes.  I was so relieved that someone recognized how tired I was, but also I didn’t know what to do with her words.  I was there to get her help and she was saying she wasn’t going to help me!

She didn’t comment on my tears.  She just gently said, “I give you permission to rest for a while. You will be just fine.”

If I believed in angels, I would say she was a guardian sent to give me a message.  I had never met her before and that was some pretty heavy advice to offer someone who doesn't know you.  But somewhere deep inside I trusted her.  It took me a while - I did go to the first semester of the MBA program - but when it came time to decide if I was going to go back or resign from school that conversation came back to me. I felt the trust again.  Not just trusting her, this time, but trusting myself.  Trusting myself to find a new path in my life, even though I didn't know what it was going to look like.

Most days I still don’t know what that’s going to look like, but I’m learning to be OK with that. For the first time in my life I have clear goals but not a specific plan for attaining them.  I want to be home with my daughter until she goes to school.  I want to do work that feeds my brain and my heart, that allows me the financial flexibility to work at home part time.  I want to see my words in print.  I want to tell stories that touch other people, and I want to be a part of a community of mothers and writers, and writers who are mothers, and mothers who do other things, but all of us doing what we do intentionally. I want to encourage mothers to nurther themselves, alongside their children.

I have a turquoise blue, fat-bellied mug that my love makes my morning coffee in every day.  It says, "be like water" on the side.  I bought it for that saying, because I value my ability to flow with whatever is going on around me.  Adjust, adapt, flow around.  

I am slowly, slowly, building a writing business. I am forming the habit of writing.  I am getting braver at marketing myself (though I have a long way to go yet!).  I am learning to say, "I am a writer." I’m learning how to interview, how to craft an essay, how to edit away the excess words to find the pure thread of what I’m trying to say.  I’m learning to cut words I love too much that don’t further my point (I just cut a whole paragraph about my daughter that was right here).

I'm learning to flow around self-doubt and my inner critic.  I'm learning to flow through the process of learning the craft of writing.  I'm learning to flow past unanswered queries and rejected submissions.

Be like water.

It is a reminder I appreciate every morning, as I slowly come to consciousness and think about the day ahead of me. Flow through, around, over.  Never stop.  If I am clear about what I want, and persistent, it will happen. Water can wear down mountains, cut massive canyons through the earth.  Patiently, but persistently. And also water can collect in deep, rejuvenating pools.  Resting before flowing on.

 

Where I write about building a writing habit

I have a guest post up on Heather Craik's blog about how important it is to build a writing habit.  I hope you will visit there and let me know what you think of the article.

 

The Writing Habit, by Doña Bumgarner

Guest Post: Writer's Block - The Cause and The Cure

I am delighted to share with you a guest post written by Heather Craik, a fellow participant in the Wordcount Blogathon 2012. She has some suggestions for dealing with something anyone who writes has encountered - writer's block. 

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I’m not a unique little snowflake in a blizzard.  I run a business with many facets, I write, I even have the obligatory half finished novel sitting in notebooks and on my hard drive. Like every other creative writer in existence - I get writers block.

Photo by Ravages, via Creative Commons.

Writing’s Most Famous Problem 

Since we all get it I don’t want to belabour the issue - we’ve all felt the blood pooling and dripping from our foreheads as we stare at a blank page. I’m sure you have experienced that gnawing in the pit of your stomach when you think about deadlines, the need to ‘escape’ and not do that writing thing - even if all you’re doing instead is organizing your files or cleaning the cupboards.

Some people say it’s not real, and it’s all in our heads. Some of those people have even done studies backing up those points, and still others are writers that have somehow conquered that particular dragon. They’re probably right.

My view is that even if it’s a construct we make up in our own minds it’s real to us, and as such we need a way of dealing with it.

After all - and I won’t belabour this either - we’ve all felt the holy grail of writing. Flow. The euphoria of picking up your pen and knowing that you can’t get the words out fast enough. And it doesn’t matter because it's all so... clear. 

More of that? Bliss.

 

What Causes Writer’s Block?

Assume for the moment that each block is caused by stress.

Stress at not knowing what to write next, or not feeling what you have is good enough. Deadlines creeping up and not having enough time. Characters doing the opposite of what you want them to do and mocking you all the way. Pressure, from yourself or from others or both.

The act of writing itself isn’t particularly hard. Wait, don’t throw the rotten fruit yet, hear out the theory!

The reason it isn’t hard is that when we know what we want to write, we’ve been doing it for years (you know that’s true), and we know the story better than we know what we’ll be doing with our own lives later it’s a simple matter of communicating all that to the outside world. Sure, you have style and all those other considerations too, but in its elemental form you’re telling a story using words and you already have the story.

And boy, do we care about our stories.

We care about them so much that we worry other people won’t ‘get’ it if we don’t tell it right. And attach a bunch of other baggage to the act of telling.

 

What if we removed the baggage?

Willing to bet it’d be much easier, and certainly preliminary results (entirely anecdotal) support this.

Here’s how I do it when I’m struggling;

1. Grab a piece of scrap paper and write down everything that’s stressing me out. The whole lot, related to writing or not.
2. Make a single action for each ‘stressor’ that can be resolved and isn’t just emotional. Something that would take the edge off and remove it from the equation (thus removing the emotional energy I expend on it).
3. For each action that I can deal with in under 15 minutes I just do it. If I’m having a really bad day and I’ve not done the exercise in a while it’ll take an hour or so.
4. The remaining stressor tasks get put into my calendar to be dealt with later and removed from active memory.
5. THEN I look at the direct writing stress, ask a bunch of whys, and fix the problem so I can continue.

Problems in that last step are usually to do with confidence (a dancing montage usually helps with this. I kid you not), deadlines (complete the most important, easy bit so it ‘feels’ more done), or not knowing where to go next (this is almost always solved by a death, an attack, or some form of prophecy).

Over time you’ll figure out the best actions for each of your writing stress sources - I don’t for a second believe everyone is with me on the dance montage thing - the important part is to figure out what the source is. Once you have that done the battle is 90% won and you have the option of deciding whether its worth your time.

 

Next Steps - Your Challenge

In the spirit of fixing things right now - take a look at your current blocked project (you know you have one). What is the cause?

Figure that out, batter it out into a comment, and then see if you can ‘solve’ it and get started again. I’ll be around to help with that step too. Let’s get this thing done!

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Heather is the founder of Writer, Compose Yourself! and has been flirting with the idea of blogging for years now. She’s half way through her first novel, setting up a writing resource (for the good of all), and has fingers in many cakes.

 

10 Things I Have Learned From My Daughter

A gorgeous smile will get you everywhere.

Adequate rest is essential.

Playing is the best way to learn.

If you need a little reassurance, bring a friend.

Be proud of your accomplishments. Even little ones.

Everything is entertaining if you want it to be.

Everybody is interesting

Life is AWESOME.

Books are endlessly entertaining. (I knew this already, but it bears repeating.)

It is important to go outside every day.

But most importantly, I have learned to believe that I am a good mama.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you Mothers, Grandmothers, and Aunties.

Read to me! The best board books (at 15 months)

I read a study recently that showed a correlation between young children being exposed to TV (even in the background) and poor performance in cognitive and reading related tasks.  The report said the researchers surveyed 1,450 households and found children between eight months and eight years old were exposed to an average of four hours of TV a day.  

Four hours!

I find that slightly horrifying.

We err way in the other direction.  I'm not sure I watch even four hours of TV in a week myself (and by TV I mean movies, because we don't have cable), and most weeks all of that is after Bean is in bed.

That isn't to say we don't have screen time, so don't think I'm getting all preachy Waldorf here.  We love our computers and iDevices.  Bean even has her own iPhone (without a service plan!) on which she plays Peekaboo Barn.  Over and over.

But the biggest entertainment for the kid in this house is books.  You know when your kid is quiet for just a beat too long and you have to go check to see what they have gotten into?  Nine times out of ten I round the corner and find her with a book on her lap, flipping the pages and studying the pictures.  

Here are her current favorites, at 15 months.  Almost all of them I've read so often I have memorized them. And most of them I still like!

Everywhere Babies, by Susan Meyers.  Illustrated by Marla Frazee.

This story has simple, rhyming text and beautiful, detailed illustrations. This one has been a favorite for many months - what baby doesn't love looking at other babies?  Recently we've been talking more about what's going on in the drawings.  There are cats, dogs, balloons, and lots of colors to look for and talk about.  

10 Minutes Until Bedtime, by Peggy Rathmann.

With similarly detailed drawings but very few words, this is a really fun bedtime book.  It shows a little boy getting ready for bed with the help and accompanyment of a host of hamsters, who are doing all kinds of interesting things on each page.  I love that on the storytime page, the kid is reading a copy of 10 Mintues Until Bedtime.

Jamberry, by Bruce Degen.

This book originally came into the house as a hand-me-down from Bean's babysitter's kids, inspired because Bean loves her blueberries. The story is singsong, with made-up berry words and fun illustrations.  Iread this book every day at least once. I love that the illustration on each page hints at the story on the next page - it took me a while to notice that!  There is a lot going on in each drawing and lots to talk about and point out.  I've given this book as a gift already several times.

Moo, Baa, La La La, But Not The Hippopotamus, Snuggle Puppy, and Barnyard Dance, by Sandra Boynton

If you don't know Sandra Boynton's books, run, do not walk, to the bookstore and check her out.  Her board books are fantastic for toddlers.  Simple, silly stories, illustrated with funny animals (and not just the usual farm animals!).  Several of her books are available in an interactive, narrated format in the iTunes store.  Snuggle Puppy and Barnyard Dance require you, the reader, to be willing to sing a little, but your kid's grin will make the awkwardness of that totally worth it. Hearing my guy bust out his full-on southern twang for Barnyard Dance is awesome.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, by Bill Martin, Jr.  Illustrated by Eric Carle.

I've seen this book at all of my friend's houses recently.  It is a classic, and a great showcase for Eric Carle's style. Very simple story, very repetitive.  Bean tends to turn the pages faster than I can read so she can see each animal.  She loves the page at the end that shows them all in one place and we have been practicing the signs for each animal as we look at that page together.  I was delighted to find that the teacher in the story sports classes in a color very close to the color of Bean's frames.

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, by Al Perkins.  Illustrated by Eric Gurney

This book is a recent addition.  I found it before Easter and put it in Bean's basket.  Although it always leaves me slightly out of breath to read it at her preferred speed, I love that the rhythm of the text makes her dance. yesterday she was drumming on the toilet lid while I was brushing my hair and I sang, "Dum ditty, dum ditty, dum dum dum!" to her.  She rushed out of the room, pulled all the books off of the shelf until she found this one, and brought it over to me with a big grin on her face.

Go, Dog, Go, by PD Eastman.

This book has a Seussian quality about it, so I always confuse it with Dr. Seuss books.  It was a very early favorite, and has held its place in the lineup for many months.  It is a nice small size, easy for her to hold and turn the pages herself.  The last illustration, the dog party which is the destination of all the going, can hold her attention for a long time.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Williams

 This one is not a board book, but Bean is surprisingly gentle with it.  It is part of a series of books about a pigeon, in this case with aspirations to be a bus driver.  The illustrations are graphic, large, with muted colors.  It is really fun to read and would make a great story circle book.  It can be really interactive if the reader asks the kids what they think: "Should we let the pigeon drive the bus?"  Bean is a sweetie, though. She always says yes, we should.