Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

Liz Shine wrote and read her way out of small-minded, small-town doom. We’re not talking about riches here. We’re talking about how a practice like writing can save a person. How it can give hope, shape identity, and ignite purpose. She hopes to write stories and poems that move readers the way certain works have made all the difference to her. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.

Dear Paper and Pen,

Dear Pen and Paper,

I bought a manual typewriter from a junk shop downtown Aberdeen and typed my first short story on it. I was eighteen. I didn’t own a computer until college. My son was just learning to walk and he spoke only in the roundest sounds and brightest gestures. Before then, I composed in notebooks. I never went anywhere without a notebook in my hand or backpack. I often had several notebooks going a once.

Finding time to write then felt the most impossible it ever has, enrolled in eighteen credits as I was, tied as I was to my first responsibility–parenthood.

In ten years, I composed fifteen or so short stories on the computer and filled twice as many –more–notebooks with a disorganized collection of journal entries, quotes pulled from other writers, poems, and story ideas. On my computer now, I have hundreds of poems, more than fifty short stories, and four full-length novels in various stages of development. But, pen and paper, I always start with you. When I’m stuck, I fall back on your forgiving blank page, nothing like the cold white of the computer screen, cursor flashing.

Pen and paper, with you, I can write anywhere and recline while I write, and there is something about the hand’s grip, the way ink loops and scratches across the page with my whim or intent, something about the way I can scrawl out lines or words and draw arrows to move pieces of prose around on the page.

Pen and paper, I prefer you for starting anything and when I’m stuck. You are my choice for letters and love notes. Among all the remedies prescribed for writing emergencies–the software, the apps, the social networks–you emerge as that simple solution people sometimes talk about.

Love,

Buy my books here.

Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals?
Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

The Review I Promised You: The Chronology of Water

The reading didn’t happen. I went to my first Gray Skies Reading Series with a marked-up copy of The Chronology of Water in hand only to find that there had been a change in plans. Yuknavich would be rescheduling the reading due to a death in the family. Bummer. Understandable, but still a bummer. There was to be an open mic instead. I enjoyed the open mic and left impressed with the reading series and excited to return to their next and next events. I finished the book and will write the review I promised, though I was hoping that something she said at the reading would help me communicate the wounds and pathways opened by this book in language.

How to begin?

THE LANGUAGE:

A language bandit, she calls herself, and in many senses she is lawless and resourceful as a bandit must be. With the confidence of Cummings to flout convention and the tenacity of Faulkner to push language to the point where it approximates lifetruth, she tells the story of a woman whose love of language gave her the voice she needed to write her life as she could imagine it, literally and figuratively. She pushes words together, pulls them apart and stretches them wide. She makes up words, alludes to words that came before her, and places one word in place of another in a way that makes shocks logic but makes meaning-sense. She follows conventions of grammar, then breaks them. She lengthens or shortens sentences and paragraphs with courage, grace, and mad rhythm. Straight to the heart. Of the matter. Of feeling. Of memory. My attention to her story never once waned.

THE SUBJECT:

She tells us from the beginning that her story is not an addiction memoir, though addiction courses through it and nearly drowns her before the happy ending. It’s also not a story about sexual abuse or sexuality, though the pages throb with details of her scars and her sex. This is a story about a woman who has the strength of a swimmer and who made a “wordhouse” (191) of her life.

WHAT IT MEANT TO ME:

If you endeavor to write, you should read this book. Yuknavitch closes, “It’s a big deal to make a sentence. The line between life and death” (292).
I will admit that reading this book at times discouraged me, filled me with envy. I have tried to write a book something like this, something about how a woman pulls herself up through language and practice. I finished that book, tried to send out into the world and failed, then put it in the proverbial drawer. I have two other books I’m trying to write. Reading this book helped me come to a truth I had been at the edge of: I’m done with that book yet. I haven’t given it my best. I gave up too soon. I may not have the strength of a swimmer (I didn’t even learn until I was twelve), but I have my own strength and a wordhouse of my own.
Even if it’s the only book I ever finish. Even if the wounds if opens break me and my own dexterity with language falls short of success.

The Chronology of Water succeeds on every possible level.
Read it. It quite possibly will change you.

Buy my books here.

A Room Of Your Own: Pick A Fight

You are a writer. Just consider it.

There is nothing that can get get you in the mood for sweeping or writing like a good fight.

I don’t care what they tell you, it’s healthy. And the make-up is oh-so-sweet, you know.

You know!

Sometimes in order to write you have to make some wrinkles, break things up, let words fly.

Come on, let it all hang out.

Buy my books here.

Dear Adulthood,

Why did I not hold you off a while longer?

I used to skip classes to spend hours penning ideas into notebooks–black coffee, toasted bagel to fuel my inspiration. I would stare out windows, at lovers walking down the street, and at old ladies on their raincoats on the transit bus that I took home for one shiny quarter. I would write and listen to music and daydream for hours.

“What will you do?” They asked.

“I’ll write,” I answered.

“What if your writing isn’t any good?” They replied.

“I’ll write better,” I stood my ground.

“Will you go to college?” They added.

“Why?” I asked.

Impassioned, impertinent, rebellious, alone against the world: Ah, that was me!

Eight years college. Twelve years high school teacher. Fourteen years wife. I learned to sacrifice writing for dollars and gold stars.

What if I let the house go? What if I stopped putting things back in their place? Started coming to work unprepared?

What if I got fired? If all I had to do was pen these lines?

I tell myself–being adult as I am–I don’t deserve to write at all until I’ve done my duty.

What you “do” if the first thing we ask a person we’ve just met.

I’m a teacher.

I’m a mother.

More meekly, I’m a writer.

When I tell people that they want to know if I’ve been published and whether I’ve written any books.

Adulthood,

These responsibilities are endless.

What if I refused? Made unreasonable demands? Used my charm to get my way?

Would you tell me to be more mature?

What if I stopped cooking dinner? What if I really wrote every day? Really put in the time and let the muse take me even if it meant I wasn’t pulling my weight, wasn’t being my best in every way? Meant I missed appointments and forgot to pay my bills?

What if I lost track of time?

Adulthood,

You tell me I must care, I must serve. I must work hard even if the reward is merely the satisfaction of having done my best work. I should put others before myself. I should volunteer more. Exercise more. Keep my house cleaner. Be a better parent. Stay in touch with old friends and make new ones if I can. Organize all the clutter. Be generous to my lover. Have a solution for every problem.

You make it so hard to write, sometimes.

Buy my books here.

A Room Of Your Own: Don’t Put The Groceries Away

It started with some wild honeysuckle on my way home from writer’s group. A deep red like I’d never seen growing right there at the edge of the parking lot. I picked one, then four more. Then, it was California poppies from the edge of someone’s yard. I felt rebellious. Did anyone see me pick them? I looked around. Then calendula, rhododendron, and some white decorative something–also from the edge of people’s lawns. When I reached my house, I added some fading forget-me-nots from my backyard. While I’m writing this blog, I am looking at the bouquet I made from them.

For the second week in a row, I didn’t bring any pages of my own to writer’s group. I didn’t have many and I’m feeling protective of the ones I have. On the walk home tonight I was listening to Stephen King’s On Writing. As always with audio books, I lost track of his narrative in parts, but I caught what he said about how a story should start inward, then move outward. Yes, I thought, this story is still inward.

When I came in the house tonight, my stomach growling, a bag of groceries I had stopped off to pick up on the way, I put the grocery bag on the counter and sat down to write. People are trying to talk to me (my son; my boyfriend) and I want to talk to them( I love talking to them), but I am mostly ignoring them so that I can write this blog. I’d rather be taking a shower–eating dinner–finding out how the evening went. I didn’t even put the groceries away and I’m not sure I’ve ever just left the groceries sitting out.

How did I get in the room tonight?

I picked a bouquet of flowers and sat it next to my writing desk.

I did not put the groceries away.

What are your tricks, writer friends?

Buy my books here.

Sunday Book Review…Well, sort of…

The book I want to review is The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, but I haven’t finished it yet. I know I want to write a review on this book because since I bought it a week ago it has never been far from sight. I carry it in my handbag when I go for walks (in case I find a nice bench to sit on, I guess). I put it on the counter when I clean the kitchen. I take it to school with me and read it whenever I ask my students to quietly read. I am likely to finish it tonight (50 pages to go!).

This Thursday, Yuknavitch is coming to Olympia as a featured reader in the Gray Skies Reading Series. I will be there and I promise you, dear blog readers (who are you out there? what are you writing now?) I’ll write this review then.

We post the Sunday Book Review in the spirit of Hart Crane: “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones appear in the proper pattern at the right moment.” I was delighted when one of my students (senior; high school) explained to me the topic for her personal narrative on how reading challenging books has changed her. She’s going to talk about how she has a deeper appreciation of craft, how she is a better writer for reading.

Hallelujah!

Sometimes I think I should just give up writing for a year or ten and read good books. Jane Smiley did this and wrote about it in her wonderful book 13 Ways of Looking At The Novel.

I am in a book group for writers and we read one book a month together and then meet to talk about it. If I had to choose between my writing groups (the other being a critique group), I have have to pick the reading group.

Thankfully, I don’t have to choose. 🙂

I am one of those people who believes ALL the answers can be found in b0oks. I buy more books in a month than I could possibly read and blame the fact that I haven’t found all the answers mainly on the fact that I have yet to read all the books. Sometimes, feeling bad about my rate of purchase compared to my rate of consumption, I will buy a book that catches my eye for someone else rather than not buy it at all.

I don’t check books out or borrow them because I have to write in them. When I read without a pencil in my hand, I feel helpless and unprepared.

There are plenty of books I could write a review for instead of Yuknavitch’s memoir and I suppose that would have been the sensible thing to do here.

It’s Sunday. It’s your turn. You have a blog to write.

I can’t.

It has to be that one. So look for it here Thursday night. I promise to write it after the reading.

Buy my books here.

Dear Premature Feedback,

I knew the story wasn’t finished. It stank, in fact, in at least five places. The bones were there, but not the flesh. The ending dropped like an egg onto the kitchen floor when I read it aloud.

It was cruel the way I asked for you and then picked apart how my lover gave you exactly as I asked. It must be his fault, I thought, for not saying you clear enough, for padding you with “I like” on all sides.

I ask for you because I want someone else to tell me what only I can tell myself: the work you are doing is good–press on.

Ignoring you,

Buy my books here.

A Room Of Your Own: Reward Yourself

Disregard the myth that the writing should be its own reward. You don’t have that kind of time. You’ve been working at writing since your teens and you have gotten a lot better over the years.

You need only crane your neck to take a good look at your twenties to to see the result of that elitism: Writing in creative bursts with heaps of I-haven’t-been-writing melancholy in between. You had more time then, but you wrote less. You wrote less because you believed writing either happened or it didn’t. When it happened, you called it inspiration. When it didn’t, you called it “writer’s block”.

As you’ve gotten closer to death, you’ve realized that perhaps writing requires more initiative than that from you. You’ve realized that setting small and large goals helps make the writing happen. You’ve realized there is no shame in setting a timer and competing for word count against your writer friends. You’ve realized that rewarding yourself with shoes or chocolate works and nobody cares how you got the writing done (exception: plagiarism).

You have to be tirelessly optimistic and willing to try anything that will keep your butt in the darn chair if you’re going to be a writer.

You’ve got to call yourself a writer and make writer friends. You’ve got to write your goals down. When you achieve a goal, you’ve got to celebrate it. Your work is a big deal. Don’t waste another day thinking that you don’t deserve any encouragement that works.

Buy my books here.

Dear Petunia,

I call you Petunia, though you are just an aspect of me. I call you this because the name reminds me of a girl from elementary school who never once talked to me without that look on her face–eyes narrowed, nose wrinkled in disgust. She was a pretty-faced girl who could be nice, but for some reason didn’t like me.

Petunia, you are just like that girl. No matter what I do, you are there ready to jab your stick pin in my balloon, push me in the lunch line. You tell me that if I think that just because I want to be a writer my writing deserves to be read by anyone else at all, I am delusional, at best a fool playing an elaborate game of pretend.

You tell me to work hard and keep my nose to the ground. You wonder why I waste my time solving problems that involve placing words in order on a page. If I like stories so much, you tell me, I should just read more. There are already more worthy stories out there than I could read in two life times, at least.

You add, in that snotty way you have, that I’m not very good at it anyway. Sure, I’ve struck creative gold a few times, but to a certain extent writing is like sex. If you do it often enough, you’re bound to create something better than yourself.

You don’t like the way I dress or laugh, and you certainly don’t like the way my conflicts aren’t resolved and my scenes too thinly sketched. If you can get my attention, you tell me all this in a steady stream, barely pausing for breath so that my pen stops mid-sentence and I exhale an exasperated sigh, then check my email or do the dishes because who the hell am I kidding anyway?

Petunia, I know this letter won’t bring an end to our relationship. You are an inextricable part of me, and in my optimism, I like to think, a strangely necessary part that keeps me working at becoming a better writer.

Petunia, there is something I want you to know. The most alive I ever feel comes always after writing something I believe is pretty good or maybe even better. That feeling comes from a desire to create far more powerful than your desire to destroy.

I’ve got you where I want you,

Liz

Buy my books here.

A Room Of Your Own: Speak-Write

You’ve heard of Freedom, right? Software you can pay for that shuts off your Internet for how ever many minutes of writing time you desire?

I won’t lie. When I head about it, I was more than intrigued. As I considered downloading it over the course of several days, I slipped the news of this new software into all sorts of social conversations. Other writers. Women in my running group. Strangers also waiting for their coffee beverage of choice. Everyone thought it was an excellent idea. I did too. So, why did I hesitate?

I hesitated because I have a tendency to throw money at my problems on a whim, only to face devastation when the problems don’t actually go away. The shoe organizer I bought didn’t keep me from buying too many shoes. The self-help book I bought with On-Click-Ordering didn’t cure my tendency to behave as if my boyfriend should know how I feel, what I want, without my having to tell him. I’m not any less pissed when he doesn’t read my mind.

Hours wasted checking email and browsing people’s status updates are symptoms of a larger problem. Freedom? The idea is absurd, if you think about it. Pay money to shut off Internet you pay money for because you don’t have the self control to open your browser instead of your document? And is there a program to turn off my phone? Keep my son from walking into the room even after I’ve told him I’m writing and need to concentrate? Turn the TV down in the other room? Make the rain start? Pick up the pen for me?

The larger problem?

Most of us live in environments unconducive to flow. Our society seems hell-bent against it. In our quest to avoid boredom, we have opened ourselves to a ceaseless chatter of information and stimulation. We cannot hear ourselves think.

One very concrete trick I have for inducing flow, wherever I am?

Speak-writing.

Speaking while I write and reading the words aloud after I’ve written them. There’s something about the physical act of writing combined with the sound of the words from my mouth that enables me to find that space where I am able to write despite distractions internal or external. Sure, people look at me funny when I do this in public, but who cares? I like to think the quirk just adds to my mystery.

Buy my books here.

Make Time.

Liz Shine: Author, Editor.

Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

Dear Paper and Pen,

The Review I Promised You: The Chronology of Water

A Room Of Your Own: Pick A Fight

Dear Adulthood,

A Room Of Your Own: Don’t Put The Groceries Away

Sunday Book Review…Well, sort of…

Dear Premature Feedback,

A Room Of Your Own: Reward Yourself

Dear Petunia,

A Room Of Your Own: Speak-Write