Writing Workshops

I can't help myself. I'm starting another writing workshop here in Chico, nine hours from my home. And the people who are coming tonight are SO excited. Why? Because many people want to write, but they don't know where to start. I want to help them get started, because there is, in my world, just a handful of things that transcend the pleasure of writing. And so, we will draw from Janet Burroway's book Writing Fiction and throw out such subjects from her page 11, such as: from the first seven years of your life, make a list of events, people, your self, inner life, characteristic things. Or, Burroway tells us that a tenth century Japanese courtesan had the following list of Things that she used: Things I wish had never been said. Red things. Things more embarrassing than nudity. Things to put off as long as possible. Things to die for. Acid things. Things that last only a day. These subjects start the fire. Our imaginations can fan the flames and result in a wonderful story -- real or fiction. It doesn't matter, as long as we're dropping it on the page, word after word after word.

My Pushy Muse

Work is a four letter word and an excuse not to write, but it pays the bills. Not working is more fun, but is more the challenge, because my writing muse taps her foot, arms crossed, waiting in the corner, no make that, waiting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear: write, damn it, write.
She's not patient, my muse. She taketh away the right to procrastination and giveth harsh criticisms for all the many ways I can avoid the hard stuff: putting one word and then another and then another on the page, word by word, bird by bird, until the work is done and has to be redone and redone and redone (OY) until it's as right as it's going to get, and even then we want to fiddle with it some more, now don't we?
Enough. She's no longer whispering. She's shouting. IT'S TIME TO WRITE NOW!

Quotes of Note

I pulled these from Dennis Palumbo's website. These are some of his favorites Quotes for Writers.

"The best way out is always through." Robert Frost

"How do I work? I grope." Albert Einstein

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." John A. Shedd

OC Metro OA article

Check out www.ocmetro.com for my article on Osteoarthritis. Click on the Health and Fitness tab and voila--there I am.
Thanks for dropping in to my blog, by the way.

While

While I’m showering, I’m thinking about my workday.

While I’m working, I’m preoccupied with dinner.

While I’m eating dinner, I’m hoping to avoid doing dishes.

While I’m doing dishes, I ponder how I can escape the laundry.

While I’m folding laundry, I’m musing about shopping.

While shopping the next day, I review my to-do list for the weekend.

While shtupping on the weekend, I think about the movie I saw.

While watching the movie, I was comparing it to the book.

While reading the book I was thinking about dying

While I’m dying, I’ll be wondering what it was like to live.

I missed it.

Kathryn Atkins

© 2003

Riding Life

“In the end, we’re all just riding bicycles.” The buzz in the room stopped. We all knew we were in the presence of a deep philosophical certainty. We internalized the analogy, knowing that sometimes, the road of life is so steep that it is insurmountable. We may pump and strain, slipping into lower gears. We struggle to hang on. Some people can ride longer than others. Some people walk their bikes at the first tiny grade that impedes their progress, the first rotten apple that life throws at them. Others dig in, set their brains for the battle, every muscle straining, every bit of resolve steeled against the challenge. Some days, the roads are littered with abandoned bikes and broken dreams smashed in the little baskets that hang off the fenders. We loathe this ride we call life. The damn bike doesn’t have the decency to have a flat tire, so we cast it aside. Bike lock? Forget it. We hope someone will steal it. We want to walk all the way home, maybe even to die.

We like the ride when it goes down hill. We don’t have to pump. We don’t have to pedal. We can relax. Sometimes this ride lasts for days. Maybe weeks. It feels good. Too good. It has to end. The hill down is the back side of an up hill. There’s no slacking off without eventually paying the piper, right?

We ride different bikes. Some have ten-speeds. Some are road bikes. Some of us wear bike pants, prepared for the long haul. Others don’t know they make hand pads, soft seats, and toe holders, and we ride in pain the whole way, discomfort slowing us down as if we had sand bags on the back fender, or a two-ton gorilla breathing banana breath down our necks. Some people go through life with their own personal gorilla slobbering, leering, and slowing to depression the manic ride down hill.

Riding a bike upsets your crotch. Life attacks all our parts, eventually. Riding life is mostly uncomfortable. It’s a long haul, and there are high years and low years, high gears and low gears. Some of the best parts of life are in the low gears, when you think all is lost, that every intersection you come to has cross traffic, stoplights, and people who get in your way. As you look back, those years sometimes provided the map for the easier, higher gears ahead. How else can you learn? How else could you have known what it took to get what you wanted had it not been for the bumps, the curves, and the hills? Then, there are comfortable times—squishy, soft-seat, downhill times. They help us hang on when the crotch-grabbing times won’t go away.

I’m riding a bicycle with five gears today. It’s on flat ground. I have to pedal, but I am going somewhere. I don’t have to struggle today. I have to keep pedaling, sure. But I find routes that avoid the hills if I can. Sometimes, I can’t. The terrain is not always a choice. It lies before me, and I must take it to find the reason I am here. But ride, I will, for that is what we do. In the end, we are all just riding bicycles. What’re you riding?

© Kathryn Atkins

March 13, 2007

Mom

Being with my mom, 95, in Chico always makes me realize how lucky I am she's still here. And how lucky we all are that she's doing so well. Largely, her wit and personality more than make up for the body parts that fail her, and we wonder: will we be nearly as well preserved at her age?
Everything slows way down when I'm here. We do jigsaw puzzles together, we read together, we play dominoes. We watch "Millionaire" and "Wheel of Fortune" and yell out the answers when we know them, patting each other on the back for how smart we are. It's a quiet hoot.