Out Loud and Visible: Not a Target But a Light

When I was a girl, starting around the age of seven or so, I wanted my clothing to say nothing – to make no statement, to remain a silent participant in my presentation. I preferred dark greens, navy blues, and anything muted. I remember once trying on shoes and feeling uncomfortable with an inch-high heel, which made me feel as though I were looming and conspicuous. In no way was it my desire to arouse the impulse in others to notice me.

This fashion sensibility maintained its grip for many years, loosening now and again for special occasions, and relaxing slightly in high school. I wanted to express something more but feared I would be trying to be something I was not, and that humiliation would follow. Without realizing it, I feared that free expression would make me a target.

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Jennifer Paros Comments
Why Write What You Know?

Over ten years ago my elderly dad, suffering from dementia, moved in with us, which changed all my everyday routines. It took away my independence and my discretionary time for shoe shopping or gossipy, prolonged brunches with pals. I stayed home. Dad watched countless DVDs of Gunsmoke or other shows he’d loved once-upon-a-time while I pondered: “What’s next?”

A light bulb went off. I’ll write. Ergo, I started the great American novel, and somewhere in the muddle middle of it, I decided I needed to attend a writing conference. Because we regularly visited my widowed mother-in-law in Georgia, I decided on a side trip to the Harriett Austin Writers Conference at UGA.

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William Kenower Comments
It’s All Here if You Are: Discovering Everything We Want in Disorder and Change

Recently I took to playing a game with myself; I tried answering all of what seemed to be my unproductive thinking with, “You don’t have to worry about that.” The first time I thought it, I was surprised at how receptive I was to my own advice. And the more I employed the phrase, the more aware I became of what a high percentage of my thinking orbits around some form of fretting. I worry a lot, over the smallest of things – the minutiae of how to do, what to do, whether I should do, what I did. Tending the micromanagement of my fearful projections depresses my energy, so when I stopped, if only for a few minutes, I started feeling small surges of freed energy and my mood rose.

A couple days into my experiment, it was my turn to do our family’s weekly shopping. The grocery store where we shop is currently undergoing a complete redo. Almost everything is being moved: shelves dismantled; items relocated. The employees and patrons are often understandably fatigued and frustrated with the disorder. As I proceeded with my shopping, I quickly understood I could no longer rely upon my years-old mental map of the store to help me find what I was looking for.

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Jennifer ParosComment
Resting

When it comes to my writing life, I believe in positive affirmations, visualizations, and declarations: I write consistently; I write effortlessly; I’m in the flow; I get invitations to speak and teach; I write; I publish; I write; I publish.

All of these are good, fine, and necessary. They make me feel better. They renew my self-confidence as I picture perfect writing days, multiple invitations, successive book covers, and proliferating credits.

But sometimes I tire. I reach to grab and harness those affirmations from the galaxies, press them through the masses of gases, and pull them through the cloud covers, ozone layers, and down, down, a movie lens zooming in, to settle magically on my little corner office desk and keyboard, and transform my writing life. They often slip away, and yet I keep trying.

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William KenowerComment
In Our Own Way: Questions, Rules, & How We Make Ourselves Crazy

The other day I wanted to exchange a piece of jewelry, and it had to be done by mail. I wanted to package it properly, spend the least amount of money possible on shipping, and be able to track its arrival. Those were my rules – all seemingly easy to follow. Yet my mind proceeded to engage in a remarkably convoluted and demanding thought process. I had in my possession a used small, bubble envelope, which had been cut off at one end. Would that be all right to reseal with tape? Would it leave enough space on the envelop for the address and for the post office to process? Should I buy a new envelope? Where would I get said envelope? Do they have them at the post office? Would I be better off buying it at the grocery store? During the pandemic, do I really want to spend extra time at the post office buying an envelope and addressing it there? Can I really get tracking with first class or will I have to send it priority? How long will this outing take?

This mental storm continued until I felt paralyzed. I even cried out, “Why is this so COMPLICATED?” As I observed the battlefield of my overwrought mind, I had a new thought: that I should let myself figure it out as I go. I realized I didn’t need to be able to answer all the questions, nor follow any self-inflicted rules on how things had to be in order to go forward. I went with the inclination to pick up a new envelope at the store and reminded myself I would figure it out as I went. The jail door swung open. I suddenly felt free. I had stepped out of insanity.

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Jennifer Paros Comment
A Childhood May Be Stolen, But Can It Also Be Redeemed?

As children, most of us spent many of our days at play. We discovered magical worlds inside empty cardboard boxes, and imagined all manner of things in the shapes of the cumulonimbus clouds that passed overhead on a warm summer’s day. At play, we felt connected to that magic, and fantastical places were our constant abode. Set free in our minds, anything became possible, and the horizons appeared limitless – horizons filled with memorable experiences that can last a lifetime.

My early childhood was far from the place where magic existed, or where clouds became my playmates. Stress, anxiety and fear were my only constant companions. My horizon was not an open vista; it was like a pitch-dark theater scrim that I could not stop from setting on the most developmental stage in a young life.

A childhood stolen is one that can never be restored, but it can be redeemed. I know this is true, because it happened to me. It was manifested by the propitious appearance of my dear Aunt Marion and precipitated by the sudden death of my favorite uncle, her husband, Charles.

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William Kenower Comments
Use It: No More Feeling Bad About It

The other day I wanted to exchange a piece of jewelry, and it had to be done by mail. I wanted to package it properly, spend the least amount of money possible on shipping, and be able to track its arrival. Those were my rules – all seemingly easy to follow. Yet my mind proceeded to engage in a remarkably convoluted and demanding thought process. I had in my possession a used small, bubble envelope, which had been cut off at one end. Would that be all right to reseal with tape? Would it leave enough space on the envelop for the address and for the post office to process? Should I buy a new envelope? Where would I get said envelope? Do they have them at the post office? Would I be better off buying it at the grocery store? During the pandemic, do I really want to spend extra time at the post office buying an envelope and addressing it there? Can I really get tracking with first class or will I have to send it priority? How long will this outing take?

This mental storm continued until I felt paralyzed. I even cried out, “Why is this so COMPLICATED?” As I observed the battlefield of my overwrought mind, I had a new thought: that I should let myself figure it out as I go. I realized I didn’t need to be able to answer all the questions, nor follow any self-inflicted rules on how things had to be in order to go forward. I went with the inclination to pick up a new envelope at the store and reminded myself I would figure it out as I went. The jail door swung open. I suddenly felt free. I had stepped out of insanity.

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Jennifer ParosComment
Why We Should Keep Writing, Even When It Hurts

I am still relatively new to the world of freelance writing, but I am already seeing a pattern: the pieces of mine that tend to do well are pieces where I have been vulnerable. For example, I’ve written about forgetting my mother tongue, living with OCD, and being a late bloomer to dating.

I didn’t expect this as a nerdy ten-year-old who wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Back then, I saw writers as having the best jobs in the world, jobs where they could create fantastical worlds and go on adventures with wizards and dragons.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that there is definitely more to writing than wizards and dragons. Even J.K. Rowling has stated that the thematic motivation behind the Harry Potter series is death.

Some stories have yet to be told

Freelance writing has proved more emotionally tiring than expected. Case in point: I recently piqued the interest of an editor for a major publication and submitted an article that detailed my experience with OCD, only to have it rejected.

Having put 110% into something, only to be rejected – while revealing very personal details to an editor I’d never met in person – was a massive blow. But after this, I felt even more compelled to write about mental health. Despite recent progress in the de-stigmatization of mental health issues, OCD remains poorly understood and is still used as a playful adjective and the butt of jokes.

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Talking in My Sleep: How to Awaken By Listening

When I was a kid, I used to trail after my Mom while she did various tasks around the house. Sometimes, after a while of me talking steadily, she’d turn and say, “Enough.” It wasn’t said harshly – it was more of a plea of exhaustion followed by an endearment. I always felt ashamed at those moments, but if I’d been honest with myself I would have admitted that I too was exhausted. Often I was talking in my sleep. Leftover frustration and sadness were driving a somewhat unconscious me; I was distractedly trying to talk my way out of discomfort.

Early in our marriage, my husband described that kind of talking as “searching”; he said it seemed as though I was just talking in search of relief with no real direction. This analysis wasn’t a big hit with me; I felt guilty and defensive. My unhappiness seemed important; my need for comfort, relevant. But he too was exhausted, and though I could not defend this kind of talking, I knew there was something worth defending. I was hoping to hear my own voice, not the scared, negative, reactive one, but the one that knew I was going to be okay, that I was good and valuable, and that my natural state was happy. Little did I know you have to be awake to hear that voice.

I’ve learned that when I feel unhappy, I’m not all the way here. I’ve vacated; now is a stranger to me whether or not I believe I’m in it. I’m standing on the head of the present moment attempting to reach for something else, looking to get to the next thing or just out of where I am. It seems like being unhappy is a sure sign of being where I am and not liking it, but it turns out that is incorrect. What’s happening is that my thinking (and talking) is, at the moment, out of accord with who I really am and what I really want.

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Sez Who?

A play or movie makes it easy to identify the characters who are speaking. When you read the work, each speech is labeled by name, and in performance you see and hear the actor. Fiction poses a unique challenge because it lacks those cues of sight and sound. For your short story or novel, consider these techniques to ensure your reader doesn’t have to guess who’s talking.

Tag, You’re It

Don’t overthink it. The simplest tool is the straightforward speaker tag. While he said or she said may appear monotonous on the page, these humble markers fade into oblivion as the reader focuses on what the characters are saying. For a two-person back and forth, you may need only an occasional reminder of whose turn it is to talk; if the two people are different genders, pronouns become even less conspicuous than names.

The nature of the conversation itself, such as explanation or interrogation, may also reduce the need for tags. At the extreme, Marc Connelly’s nine-page story, “Coroner’s Inquest,” uses no tags at all, because its question/answer format makes the distinction between speakers obvious.

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Where are the Snows of Yesteryear?

“Mais, ou sont les neiges d’antan?” wrote Francois Villon in a poem about beautiful women long gone. Villon was a colorful character in France’s 15th century past who was a thief and perhaps hanged by the government. I wonder if he composed his poetry after having just awakened from a dream and maybe he wondered what had happened to the pleasant part of his past. Was he in the prison at Meung-sur -Loire when these thoughts about life raced through his mind?

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I find when I dream now, I don’t conjure up the future or nightmarish scenarios stoked by anxiety or caused by a late-night spicy snack. What comes to me as I doze, at this stage in life, are nostalgic memories. I dream of my maternal grandma chuckling at something I said while she sips tea. I dream of my mom taking us to the large white hill in the next town to zoom down on metal saucers in the snow. I dream of my dad, attired in his business suit waiting in the foyer of the department store to pick up 17-year-old me after my first day at my first summer job—a Bamburger’s clerk. Sometimes, I dream of past pets— a long parade of loving dogs and affectionate cats— never the hamsters, parakeets, or tropical fish.

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Underneath It All: Learning to Look in the Right Place

We’ve lived in our house for twenty-one years but only recently did we see our first bunny. It arrived with no fanfare, just fur and long ears – so still – a fixture in the grass. Never having seen a rabbit in our backyard before, we experienced the moment as a special occasion and stared at it much the way it seemed to be looking both into and out at life. People can do this kind of seeing too, one with the moment; it’s just that our thinking sometimes gets in the way of us taking in what’s right before us, and what’s actually in us.

My grown son was talking in depressing depth the other day – doubting his ability to go forward with his education, feeling stuck, panicked, and regretting decisions he’d made in the past. At first, I was compelled to argue him point-for-point, trying to disprove his hopelessness. But everything I said just made him argue his position more. Then I started talking about who he is underneath the story he was telling. I spoke of his calm, steady, intelligent self. I talked about how that self is always right here, how it doesn’t go away, regardless of our current narrative.

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Jennifer ParosComment
The Whole Story: Fear of Being Seen and How to Love Ourselves Better

The truth is, there is reason to love this story.

My character (me), though self-doubting and insecure regarding her ability to accomplish the task, ultimately does so. She keeps trying and, though she falls apart to some degree, never completely unravels. She perseveres and, whether she gives herself credit or not, shows up and accomplishes what she’d set out to do: pick up her damn husband at the damn airport. Plus, if viewed from the right angle, it’s funny.

I actually like quirky, wobbly characters – those who have some of their wires hanging out. I find them endearing. I appreciate stories in which those personalities manage to bloom. When I create characters, these are the types about whom I’m most excited – the awkwardly quiet or loud, the clinically negative or upbeat, the scared ones who still try – whether too hard or not hard enough.

I’ve hated the Picking My Husband Up at the Airport story because I didn’t want to be seen through its lens and didn’t yet understand how to tell the whole story. I am not an insecure, distressed, and disoriented person, but I do act like one sometimes. In order to be comfortable being seen (in the world, and through my work), I have to allow my authentic self to be made visible, and also the asymmetries of this unique vehicle for my expression: my personality. And when we write, it’s the same challenge. We have to appreciate the character’s personality stylings, which can be both endearing and problematic, while simultaneously knowing who they are in their integrity.

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To Wikipedia and Beyond

As a writer, the first thing I do when I encounter a question is Google it.

Ninety percent of the time, this leads me straight to Wikipedia.

As an instructor of college composition, one of the first things I teach my first-year composition students is to stay away from Wikipedia, especially when it comes to their academic research.

The writer in me is thankful for the straightforward information I receive the moment I open a Wikipedia article. The instructor in me cringes. Every. Single. Time.

Wikipedia isn’t an academic publishing website. As such, there is no review process for the information being published. Experts in this area of study have not reviewed or approved this information.

Many articles and texts have been written about the dangers of trusting the information found on Wikipedia, including articles published by The Guardian and the New Literacy Project. In fact, Wikipedia itself warns users not to use it as an academic source, because anyone has the ability to edit articles at any point in time.

So, as writers, we shouldn’t go to Wikipedia for our research, right?

The answer is this: Wikipedia can be the start of your research. Your research just can’t end there.

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The Blitz: On Feeling Overwhelmed, Seeking and Finding Safety

At 85, my father went through a brief period in which he was in and out of hospitals. There was a lot of communication between family members regarding what did – or didn’t – need to be done. I found myself mentally on call, though most of the time I was unneeded. The business of waiting for news that I would have to do something put me into a state of hyper alertness more stressful than any event that occurred during that time. I was in mental overdrive. My focus was fixated on a future over which I had no control and on living up to responsibilities I could not yet define. I was overwhelmed – not from what was happening, but by the idea of what might happen.

During World War II, the Nazis developed the Blitzkrieg – in which columns of tanks rushed into Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. As Ryan Holiday says in his book, The Obstacle Is the Way, the Blitzkrieg was constructed to capitalize on the enemy flinching when faced with what seemed to be an “overwhelming force.” The enemy had to fall apart, otherwise the Blitzkrieg strategy wouldn’t work. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who demanded his generals no longer see the situation as a disaster. He envisioned taking advantage of the onslaught of Germans, rather than recoiling. They would bend, not break, in the face of the upset. Holiday says the Allies were “. . . able to see the opportunity inside the obstacle rather than simply the obstacle that threatened them.” This new perception helped change the course of the battles to follow.

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The Gift of Vulnerability in Memoir Writing

It is often said that writing a memoir is like standing naked in a public place. If one is going to write a story that will connect with others on a personal level, then one must be willing to connect with fear and shame.

In the twenty years of working on my second memoir, Just the Way He Walked: A Mother’s Story of Healing and Hope, I can attest to the fact that, if done right, writing a memoir can be terrifying. It means making a commitment to the raw, ugly truth that would much rather stay buried in my psyche – the poor choices, the lack of insight, the denial that kept me from dealing with an addicted child in a healthy, life-affirming way. I lived in constant fear that he would die from his drinking.

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William KenowerComment
I Started It: The Power of Taking Responsibility

Sometimes I watch a program called, Dr. Pimple Popper. For the uninitiated: this is a show about a dermatologist who attempts to resolve extreme skin conditions, including the removal of some dramatic, severe lumps and bumps. At first, based on both title and concept, I didn’t understand why anyone would ever want to watch it. I don’t recall what led me to sit through my first episode, but I am now up-to-date and have seen them all. I have discovered why I like to watch it. Most of the patients come in believing they are trapped and diminished by something beyond their control, and leave feeling freed of that sense of limitation. This kind of transformation makes for a satisfying story - though every happy ending marks a new beginning and not everyone is prepared to tend to that themselves.

A recent episode included a woman with lesions and scars, but her previous medical tests showed thickened skin from chronic scratching and rubbing, which meant the damage to her skin was self-created (factitial). There was no skin disease or underlying condition. But the woman didn’t believe she was creating the problem. The doctor told her she had the power to change the pattern. The patient seemed open to the idea at first, but then said, “It just puts the burden back on me.”

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How Rejection Strengthened My Writing

As a writer seeking traditional publication, I have a love-hate relationship with the querying process. It’s hard enough distilling a three-hundred-page manuscript into a couple enticing paragraphs, but then you have to leave it on a stranger’s virtual doorstep and wait as they sift through countless hopefuls just like you. Last November (2019), I got a form rejection from a query I sent in September… 2018. This agent took over a year to say, “Sorry, this isn’t right for me.” This points to a broader problem within publishing about everyone’s workload, but that’s a story for another post.

Like many writers, I could make a book out of the rejections I’ve received from literary agents, maybe two. Even though acknowledging the bravery in sending potentially-life-changing-emails to strangers has taken the claws out of those rejections, I could've seriously cut down on those rejections if I had waited to start querying.

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The Life Behind Things: Seeing More and Living Unexcused

Over six months ago, I was summoned for jury duty. As we all know, it’s a very good and noble thing to do one’s civic duty; however, I did not want to go. The other times I’ve been summoned, I was excused. So, with my dad having just died, and one or two other factors at play, I submitted my explanation and hoped to be excused again. This time, though, I was not. My summons was just delayed. During this period I was busy with executor duties, but still able to routinely find the time to dread going to jury duty.

I am a person who is often inclined to stay home. As a child, I remember looking at our pear-shaped, gray tabby, Muffy, wishing for her situation – the permanently excused life of a cat. Though she occasionally ventured out to the front steps of our house to observe life, once done, she could quickly return to the mother ship, something I often wished for at that time.

The first day of jury duty was spent in a very large, open room with floor-to-ceiling windows, a panoramic view of downtown, and lots of people. From 8:30 to 4:30 we waited to be called to a courtroom for voir dire – the jury selection process – but the majority of us were not called. Mostly I didn’t know or understand what was coming next, only that I couldn’t go home. By the end of the next day I was selected for a trial. For a time, my routine involved arriving early at the courthouse, going to the twelfth floor, putting my lunch in the refrigerator, chatting with fellow jurors, following the bailiff, lining up, being instructed, etc. 

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Jennifer Paros Comments
The Writer as Actor

One of the most difficult aspects of writing is creating rounded characters who seem real. How do you infuse your characters – and your story – with warmth and believability? You must crawl into your character’s skin. You must become an actor.

Actors start developing a character by asking three questions:

  • Who is this character?

  • What does he want?

  • What is he willing to do to get it?

Once you know the basics you can begin fine-tuning. There are many schools of thought in character-building for actors, but all rely in some way on exploring the actor’s personal memories and emotions (called “affective memory”) and infusing them into the character. As a writer, you can incorporate these techniques into your writing to create stronger characters. 

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William KenowerComment