Laughter

September 1, 2017 / Lisa / 7 Comments

I know I need to do some posts about the craft of writing, but I heard some laughing yesterday. My son and I were grocery shopping. Oddly enough, this is something that he and I enjoy doing together. We have continuous debates as we shop. This one was a question a friend had posed – does silence equal consent? But I’m not thinking serious debates at the moment; I’m thinking about that laughter.

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As we came through the freezer section, I heard full-on, unrestrained belly laughter from a little boy. And I heard a man saying, in a thick Southern accent, ‘oh no, we’re gonna crash!’. Sure enough, here was a dad pushing a cart with a toddler in the seat. I had to laugh right along with them. I told the man that my son and I used to do the same thing, then pointed to my ‘little toddler’ who was hucking a heavy bag of dog food for me. The man said, in that lovely accent, ‘Big guy, helpin’ his mama’.

The brief episode, besides being fun, got me wondering when we lose that freedom to let loose with laughter out in public. Children seem so unrestrained in their joy. Do we laugh like that, even at home? Do we, as adults, find the same joy in little things?

Dad with duckling

Personally, my husband is the only one who can make me laugh until the tears come and the stomach muscles ache. Most people see the gruff, sometimes scruffy guy who doesn’t like being around people. But at home? He makes me laugh.

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I’m sure part of this lack of unrestrained happiness is training. As we get older we absorb all those messages to be quiet, to sit still, to not be disruptive out in public. Another part is that as we age, life is no longer full of new discoveries. I get all that. But I miss the free-flowing laughter.

The episode at the store also got me thinking about laughter in writing. The ways to describe laughing until you ache and can’t breathe versus softer giggles, or the smile on the outside when you’re laughing on the inside. I do that, by the way, when online. Something will be funny but I’ll only laugh on the inside. I have a co-worker that has no shame – who’ll laugh out loud at something she sees on Facebook. Do I get annoyed, feel interrupted, think she’s being disruptive? No. I get up, go see what she’s laughing at, and then laugh, too. Maybe not the cut-loose and let the laugh rip, but I’m still having fun.

The co-worker and her daughter meeting their first Irish Wolfhound

I want children to keep laughing and remind us to do the same. I want to remember how it was when everything was never-before-seen and still full of magic.

And by the way, my son laughed at the store, too. He told me he remembered those times in the shopping cart, and how his dad would make the cart wobble, or sometimes let the cart float free for a few seconds. So at least we keep the memories even when we have learned to be more restrained in public.

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I couldn’t, though, get my son to agree to get back in the cart to see if he still fit.

Arthur, Sorka Barclay Lake

Solitary Thoughts

August 18, 2017 / Lisa / 12 Comments

Some yearn for solitude and some don’t. I’m one who does.

For years I planned on being like a woman I knew. She was a hermit, out in the woods, that lived with her animals and her books. And her words; she wrote children’s stories. Her contact with the world was me, when I came once a week with her groceries.

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Except for the ‘hermit’ part, I reached that goal. Out in the woods with books and animals and writing. I didn’t think a man would sneak up on me. Luckily we prefer each other’s company over crowds.

Wow, we look young.

Then there’s the solitude writers need. Not just for writing, but also for moving through the story world. Of course, that quiet time needs to be balanced with being out in the world because how else will you create believable characters? Yet, even among people, there’s a sense of the solitary, of being the observer rather than the participant. Though, don’t get me wrong. I can talk to anyone, about anything, anywhere.

An inner solitude also exists. Sometimes it’s a place of refuge. Strength. Sadness. Melancholy. Recharging. Withdrawing.

I visited that inner solitude going through radiation treatments the first time. It was a place where I could encapsulate fears I didn’t put in words. Didn’t want to share. Some think of that inner place as a room with a door that can be shut when they leave. For me it’s a sanctuary. A clearing in the forest. I could go there and be allowed to grieve without having to worry friends and family. Oddly, I always left that place feeling as comforted as after a crying jag against the husband. I don’t cry often, but I did in those days.

Clearing with a granite erratic

Physical solitude is something I value. And it seems to be something many people don’t understand. Sometimes you can’t avoid hurting friends when they want to get together and all you want is quiet time with your solitary partner, in order to recover from all the chaos. It’s the need for quiet space in order to breathe.

I have memories of the first summer we moved to the mountains. I lived alone in the tiny cabin, a couple miles from a tiny town, and have posted those stories before. Those months were when I realized the absolute soul-filling need for quiet, for trees, for water, for granite.

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Of course that’s also the time I learned about fears that walk with solitude. It’s so black out there at night. When the sun sets behind the ridge and your kerosene lantern is just a tiny point of light, you realize you’re a solitary interloper.

But the value of solitude outweighs those faint fears, every time.

Do you find peace in solitude, or peace out in the world? What is your inner haven like?

I do love the rain

He likes water a bit more than me – he’s in the orange cat boat

In Need Of Something New

August 12, 2017 / Lisa / 21 Comments

In anticipation of an upcoming flight, I decided to load my Kindle with new books to read. After spending the past three hours scrolling, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know how to narrow searches.

First off, I want free, or under five dollars. If I’m going to spend more than that on an author I don’t know yet, I want a real book. I don’t understand high Kindle prices when there is so little cost to produce one. No printing, no distribution. You pay for the brand, not the content, with those higher prices. But if you type in ‘free Kindle books’ you get thousands to scroll through.

Then, on top of cheap, I want quality. But if you narrow the search to three stars and above, it still leaves thousands, including thousands that have a four-star review of one.

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And finally, I want books with strong settings. I want settings that provide conflict and depth for the characters. Settings that are so well written they become characters. I don’t necessarily mean settings like the wilderness where a character is pitted against rock falls and snow storms. It could be a city if it’s written strongly enough. Though I do prefer nature.

Books I’ve read that fit this, that come immediately to mind, are those like Ellie Griffith’s The Crossing Places. Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child. Mary Emerick’s The Geography of Water, which I absolutely loved. The non-fiction Coming Into the Country by John McPhee.

Then there are those series I loved that the authors seem to have walked away from as it’s been so long since anything new came out. PJ Parrish’s Louis Kincaid series. Jonathan King’s Max Freeman series. Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Sweeney series.

As a huge reader, I could spend the rest of the night listing books.

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The problem is, if I go to Kindle books, type in ‘fiction with strong settings’ I get lists of innocent Amish girls thrust into the world, or lusty lairds in highlands. Did I mention that while I have nothing against romance, I don’t personally read much in the genre? Oh, I used to. The gothics so popular in the 1970s – Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart and Barbara Michaels. But not so much now.

Maybe, looking over this post, my problem isn’t how to narrow searches. Maybe I’m too picky. Either way, it’s getting late and I have to get up early. So I’m walking away from Amazon and wandering over here. Any favorite books to share? Any favorite authors? And if you don’t mind, please share why you like those books. I’d love a long list of new reading material.

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