What I Don't Know

Taking the Emotion Out of Writing

I've recently started to write short how-to articles for freelancing website Demand Studios. I have a background in journalism, but I haven't written any fact-based articles for several years. Since I'm out of practice, my first three DS articles provided some difficulty in completing.

There's an expected word count for certain articles styles, and I've posted before about the challenge of sticking to a word count. I also have to back up my statements with references, which is a problem because I like to pick topics I feel I already know a lot about. Never one to do anything halfway, I've read all the guidelines Demand Studios provides for its new writers, and reference them frequently while writing, but the amount of research I do always seems to be too much to fit into one little 100-500 word piece.

So far, all but one article has been sent back for a rewrite. Today, I got my first rejection, just after a rewrite request for another article saying I didn't stick the article subject. Getting both notices in one morning made me a little defensive, and my first thought was "It's too difficult so I'll just stop doing it." Of course, the copy editors didn't understand my style or what I was trying to say, so they are stupid and I don't have to keep writing articles.

Then I remembered that these were only my 6th and 7th articles, and my first rejection. The copy editor for the rewrite took a different view of the topic than I did, and asked that I change the article accordingly. It's easy enough to fix, and I've browsed the forums enough to see that sometimes the topics provided are vague enough to be interpreted different ways, but I still felt frustrated that my copy editor didn't understand what I saw in the topic. Instead of giving up all together, though, I decided to close my work desk and walk away for a few hours. Now, I'm ready to get past my first rejection and work on the rewrite.

I've also decided that I'm not going to take it personally. The copy editors are faceless and nameless people who just see a user name and an article. They don't know that I'm a belly dancer, or that I keep rats, love reading everything, and enjoy programing (though I should probably add that to my bio, for the future). I'm still going to pick articles that I find interesting to write, which will follow along with my hobbies because those are what I have the most experience with, but I won't get so passionate about an article that I'll ignore the subject or get defensive when a copy editor requests a rewrite. After all, these are just 100-500 word how-to articles that I'm writing. It's not going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.

And, in the meantime, I'm practicing a skill I've forgotten. I've been writing solely fiction for so long now that I've forgotten how to write for journalism. I'm aiming on eventually making a living this way, and short stories, while fun to write, don't pay the rent. And I'm still at the point where it's satisfying to see that another one of my articles has been accepted--more so when I see the payment drop into my Paypal account.

What's Talent?

While I've probably always been a writer, anyone who's known me long enough will tell you that I have not always been a dancer. I used to hate to dance, and when I joined my high school's color guard, I was picked on the most by the coach because my hands were always wrong or I had a stiff way of moving.

Then I discovered belly dance in college. A consignment store down the street from where I lived gave classes, and I dropped into one. Sadly, I picked the advance class to drop into, and I struggled to keep up with the rest of the girls. My teacher at the time eventually moved me to a beginning class, and for some reason, I didn't give up.

I had to take about 4 months off when I moved back to Southern California, and when I was settled, I picked another teacher. Again, though, the only class I had time to take was an advanced class, where they were learning choreography for an upcoming performance. And, again, I wasn't discouraged, despite the fact that I hadn't been dancing regularly for 4 months now and this was the second teacher and style I had tried since moving.

I immediately started looking for a new teacher and found an American Tribal Style teacher in Long Beach. I asked her if I could drop in, and she told me that she was going to be starting up a beginning class after her holiday break, but I was welcome to jump in with the advanced girls for the next few weeks. Again, I had to struggle to keep up with girls who have been dancing years longer than I have, and, again, for some reason, I still didn't give up.

Since then, I started a new beginning class with that teacher, talked my friend into coming with me, and now, two years later, we've moved up to the intermediate class and are getting ready for two performances this summer. I've taken workshops with a few big-name belly dancers, and I've started doing flamenco. I've even started a second belly dance class with another teacher, and I'm drilling the basics every morning before I get ready for work. I'm even saving up for my teaching certification from the Fat Chance studio, so I can open my own studio one day.

Even I can't tell you what happened to change my mind, or why I never showed up to a dance class, failed to keep up, and never returned. But now dance is one of the most important things in my life. Even my family is surprised that this is something I've taken up, and actually became good at.

I know that I lack the inherent talent at dancing--my experience in color guard has taught me that much. But I work at dancing almost every day, and I get better every day. I started my flamenco class months behind the other girls, and now I'm the best in the class, and it's not because I'm talented. It's because I never gave up trying to improve my skill.

How to Look Forward

I'm preparing to do a couple of dance performances this summer. Two for flamenco, and two for belly dance. Since I've been belly dancing longer, and I've performed it before, I'm more comfortable on the stage and with my skill. I've only been dancing flamenco for about 6 months, though, so there's still a lot I have to learn by August.

One of the things my teacher has commented on is my lack of style. I can generally follow the basic moves, and look like I know what I'm doing, but I tend to look at the floor when I'm dancing, rather than at my audience. Since we're starting to train for our first performance in August, we're now getting into the little things that make our dance look polished, and of course, mine is looking at the audience. Or rather, the fact that I'm not looking at the audience.

Luckily, I've started reading a little bit about Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and I know why I'm looking at the floor, and how to make myself look towards the audience. Looking at the floor means I'm trying to access a kinesthetic memory. I'm trying to remember or construct how the move feels.

If I want to look up or straight ahead, I need to change the way I think about the moves. Rather than remember how they feel, I need to start thinking about how the dance looks, and think about the sound of my teacher counting off, or the beats of her palmas. Auditory memory access has us looking straight, to the right or left depending on whether it's an auditory constructed experience or an auditory remembered experience, where looking up is a either a visually constructed experience or a visually remembered experience.

Hopefully, if I practice this enough, the dance will be well ingrained into my muscle memory and I won't have to think about the way the dance looks or sounds to perform!

Mindfulness in Dancing and Writing

Like most people, I love getting praise for my dancing or writing. I'm nearing the end of Toasted Cheese's Engage With the Snark workshop, and as the number of participants has dwindled down, the critiques have been a little bit meatier, and I've been getting a lot of good comments about my writing.

The last piece that I posted actually had quite a few comments about my ability to weave in subtle nuances and show a lot of about a character and setting without shoving it in everyone's face. This was pleasing to hear, since I didn't know I actually had this talent, but what will inevitably happen is that I will try to replicate this in my next assignment and fail miserably.

The same thing happens in my dance class. I'm going along, doing my drills, and the instructor will wander over and tell me that my timing is really great today, or my shimmies are really sharp, and then the next time we do a casual turn, I'm off count with sloppy hip work.

Though I'm not a student of meditation, I've done a little research here and there. I've found a basic principles shared by most how-tos for beginning meditation: mindfulness, or being in the moment.

I've tried to apply this to my dancing and writing. When someone compliments either, I always try harder to replicate what I did before, but then I think too much and go overboard. What I've found that works to prevent this is mindfulness. Rather than try to concentrate solely on what my feet and body are doing when I dance, I just feel the moves. Or, if I'm writing, I just concentrate on filling the page (much like Julia Cameron's Morning Pages from The Artist's Way). Once I get my first draft done, I can go back and clean it up. What's important is that the basic structure, where whatever talent I possess expresses itself, remains.

One of the best ways I've seen to describe is to pretend that my brain is located somewhere near my chest or my stomach. This seems to pull me into the moment, rather than watching myself in the mirror or trying to keep count, or thinking about the best way to describe a character to my audience.

With dancing, this only carries me so far. Writing alone in a room I don't have to worry about how I look, but when it comes to dancing, I eventually need to develop a style--or at least look like I'm enjoying myself. By the time I begin performing this summer, though, I hope to have developed my mindfulness to the point where I can smile at my audience and dance without worrying about what count I'm on.

What's Normal?

In a Dear Prudence column today I found a link to an article about Dr. Kakfa at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, who has the ability to "cure" sex addicts.

Articles about fetishes and psychology always interest me because I enjoy seeing the back-end programming of our brains, particularly when it comes to what are considered culturally unnatural topics, like fetishes or alternate relationships. The article was very interesting, but by the time I got to the end of it, I felt uncomfortable.

It was the cured cases that did it. While these men were suffering from sexual addiction that made their every day life nearly impossible to live, it was the interviews with them describing their life after they were cured that bothered me, particularly in the case of the former transvestite. He talks about no longer desiring to wear women's clothing, how he's packed away all his feminine clothing and has regular vanilla sex with his wife (yes, they actually use the term "vanilla"). To me, it felt like the description of those programs that claim to cure homosexuality.

What is normal? Clearly, these men were suffering from their addictions, but is it right to take away any and every vestige of what our culture deems sexually abnormal? They're not turned on by furniture of having sex with underage prostitutes anymore, but do we have to keep going the other direction? The men are given SSRIs (anti-depressants like Prozac--though Celexa seems to be popular with Dr. Kafka) to calm their urges.The former transvestite can track his fetish back to the days of watching his grandmother sew women's garments, but does that mean he's abnormal?

I'm worried about where we draw the line. My mind is filled with homosexuality cures and the origin of graham crackers and while I'm just an amateur armchair psychologist, something doesn't seem right to me. I guess I should have known from the first page, where Dr. Kafka states that more than three orgasms per week for a man is treading into the sexual addiction territory.

Ned

I try to limit my soapboxes to just a few issues, because otherwise I overreach myself. One of the top news stories for today is the trainer killed at Sea World. I've watched some of the video, and the killer whale responsible was shown isolated in a tank barely deep enough to be fully submerged. While the death is tragic, one has to wonder how this didn't happen sooner. Animal are not meant to be kept in a cage the size of a prison cell.

I developed a fondness for elephants after discovering that they have an ability to feel grief, and will travel hundreds of miles to visit the graves of loved ones, ritually caressing bones, or even visiting long after there is nothing left. However, my fondness turned into a soapbox when I first saw Ned.

Ned was an Asian elephant who was seized by the USDA in 2008. He was a captive-born elephant, sold from circus to circus, until someone reported that his owners were starving him. In November of 2008, he was seized from the circus and trucked to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee for temporary placement until he was well enough to move to a permanent home. You see, Ned, at 7260 pounds, was nearly a ton underweight.

I have watched the video of him first stepping off the truck and slowly lumbering to his new barn over and over again, and each time I am aghast at how thin he is. You should not be able to see an elephant's shoulder blades. I immediately gave as much as I could afford to the sanctuary, specifically to help pay his caregivers' salaries, and every week or so, I checked the Sanctuary diary to watch his progress.

Sadly, hope and prayer cannot cure everything, especially an underweight elephant. Ned would make some progress, gain a little bit of weight, have a good day wandering around his yard, trumpeting to the resident females on the other side of the fence and playing with his caregivers, only to turn his nose up at food the next day as Sanctuary vets struggled to find out what was wrong with him.

One day in May of 2009, Ned's caregivers entered his barn to find him lying down. They did everything they could, sitting with him around the clock, giving him anything that would ease his pain and discomfort, and on May 15th, Ned transitioned from this world, on the heels of one of his sister elephants at the Sanctuary. He was only 21 years old.

His necropsy showed that he was suffering from an incurable illness at the time of his seizure, due to his life in captivity. 

Studies on elephants, particularly in captivity as well as in the wild, have proven their ability to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Baby elephants who have seen their families killed have woken up screaming from nightmares, and elephants in captivity who move constantly, separated from what few friends they can make, develop foot problems, can lash out at trainers, and are often seen displaying rocking behavior. An elephant at the Sanctuary, named Winkie, accidentally killed her caregiver in a PTSD episode, and displayed remorseful behavior immediately following. The family of the caregiver and the Sanctuary were adamant that Winkie should continue life at the Sanctuary, and the caregiver was buried on the Sanctuary grounds.

Knowing what I know about elephants and other animals in captivity, I cannot in good faith support any wild animal, particularly elephants, in captivity. I am by no means a card-carrying member of PETA, but I know why animals shouldn't be kept in a cage.  I am sorry for the family of the trainer who was killed, and I hope that those who can make these decisions realize that maybe they should change the way they do things at zoos, circuses, and theme parks.

Why I Write (and Dance) Part Deux

My father and I were discussing all the projects I'm involved in a few weeks ago (I have quite a few going on right now), and he somehow got it into his head that I should build a server and rent space to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

A faulous idea, with one problem. I am more software girl then hardware girl, so doing this would require me to do a little research and finance juggling. And I'd have to drop one of my other projects. When I brought this up and started listing all my projects, my father suggested I drop the writing.

Someone, I believe it was the AF, once told me that I live in my head more than any other person he knew, and I will willingly attest to that fact. The last 7 weeks, I have been writing upwards of 2 short story drafts a week, due to my workshop at Toasted Cheese, and this is the calmest I've felt in a year. I told my father that I wasn't dropping the writing, because it keeps me sane.

Same goes for the dancing. You ever get out of the pool after swimming all day and you feel like you're still in the water? That's how I feel some days, but with dancing. If I heard some good music, I mentally start composing choreography, and I've started doing dance drills every morning.

I over think so much every day that writing and dancing are kind of my way of getting all that extra stuff out of my head. It leaves room for more important things, like "Which shirt can I wear with a full floor-length skirt without looking like I'm headed to Ren Faire?"

Audience Limitations

Yesterday I went to a benefit concert for Haiti at the Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Congregation. The show was mostly made up of belly dancers, and, well, belly dancers like to show off.  Unfortunately, the seating at the concert was just lines of chairs facing an open space. Any dancer attempting floor work was going to lose most of the audience past the first two rows.

I went primarily to see my teacher perform. She tried to do some floor work with a sword, but after her performance she told me she realized while she was dancing that most of the audience wouldn't see her and she'd have to alter her performance.

At least two of the other dancers either didn't realize this, or weren't able to make the last minute adjustments to their performances. We wound up losing a dancer for 30 seconds as she went to the floor and did...something. We couldn't see her, so I don't know what it was. I'm sure it was very impressive and beautiful, though.

That's what I like about ATS. It teaches you to think on your feet, so if you're not able to see your venue before you preform, you can at least improvise to match your audience and venue. And everyone thinks you planned it that way, which is probably the best part.

Interesting....

Penelope Trunk has a new post up about happy or interesting lives, with a little questionnaire. As most internet quizzes go, it's not to be taken completely serious, but it does show you a little bit more about your decision-making.

I scored right in the middle of wanting a happy or interesting life. I think this is because for the last 25-ish years or so (or maybe 20, if we're going with cognizant years) I have desired a happy life. I'm now coming to turns with the fact that I will probably never be completely satisfied with my life, but I would at least like it to be interesting. I think I scored in the middle because I'm still switching gears, dragging my feet, and throwing the occasional temper tantrum.

I would like to have an interesting life. I think if my brain is engaged more often, I won't worry so much about things not turning out the way I expected. I admit it, when I was 16, I was sure I'd be married to my high school boyfriend by now. In fact, when I was 19, I was sure I would have at least one child by now.

Looking back, I think I prefer it this way. I'm not completely happy, but how can you not at least be pleased to be an executive*-writing-bellydancing-computer geek who can find the answer to how Skynet knew Kyle Reese existed in under 30 seconds?

*I shamelessly stole this from Eddie Izzard.

Why I Write: Flash Fiction

My favorite writing genre us flash fiction. Psychologically speaking, it probably stems from the first grown-up story I wrote and showed to people. It was less then 1,000 words, and when I posted it, I didn't know what flash fiction was, and had to look it up when someone mentioned. Ever since then, I feel more comfortable in flash fiction.

It's funny to me that I like the constraints of telling a story in 500-1,000 words. In my everyday life, I am anything but brief. My favorite saying about my family is that none of them tells a short story, and this includes me. Ask me a simple question and you will get a long-winded answer, and a few extra answers if you didn't like the first one. Even my father, who I believe is the reining king of the too-long story, has asked me to be brief when telling him about something or answering a question, and I'm often told, after finishing a long answer, that I didn't actually answer the question.

So why do I like writing flash fiction? For one thing, it's easy to go over something after the fact and pare it down to its essentials. I love going over something I've written and stripping it of everything unnecessary but the bare story. I recently submitted a short story to a writing contest where the word limit was 4,000 words, not flash fiction, but I found myself 1/3 of the way through and fast approaching the word limit. I had five characters, and I knew one of them had to go. So I looked at what each one brought to my story (or didn't bring), and removed the least useful one. I would up placing third in the contest.

I also like the challenge of keeping to a word limit. It makes me a little bit more creative, and I like being challenged. I enjoy writing longer stories, too, and every year I write a 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month, but it's more fun to do the flash fiction pieces every day.