Are You Out There?

The other night, as Alicia Keys led Stephen Colbert through a brief meditation exercise on The Late Show, she told him to focus on something he wished for. "I want my studio audience back," he said and laughed. But you could tell he meant it.

How strange it must be to record the show in his own home, after years of doing shows with a live audience. I notice it too as I watch with my husband -- the empty silence after each punchline where the laughter should be. Quarantined in our living room, it's up to us to laugh. Or not.

Colbert's longing for an audience response? I totally get it. It's a familiar feeling for an aspiring writer. For any writer, really. We throw words onto a blank page, post them on a blog or publish them as articles or books, and HOPE they find a reader. Hope someone reads our words and feels better for having read them, or at least feels something. Anything.

When I decided to start blogging again, I told myself it was just for me. An outlet for the thoughts that parade through my head in every waking moment, occupying my writer's brain. Those thoughts that, if left unexpressed, set up camp and clog my creative channels. I told myself it didn't matter if anybody read or commented.

I lied. It does matter.

We all want -- need -- that connection to our readers. Even those of us who prefer to create in the quiet of a writing room or artist's studio. We want our art to resonate with someone. Anyone.

See me, writers and artists say in the subtext of every creation. This may not be my story, but it does reflect, on some deeper level, a part of who I am. Something I have felt, something you may have felt too. A piece of my soul reaching out to yours.

We count pageviews and look for comments. And we feel sad -- empty -- when our words seem to fall into a void. When our voice goes unheard. Unnoticed.

Still, writing is an act of faith. So we continue. We put words on the page and send them out into the world in search of an audience. In search of even one reader who will pause and read. In search of you.

Hearing Voices: Wisdom from a Weekend in the Company of Storytellers

I have been hearing voices.

Since coming home from the SCBWI MD/DE/WV regional conference March 28-29, I hear the voices of the illustrators, agents, editors, and authors I met there whispering in my ear each time I sit down to write and revise. It feels like I have a whole support team standing behind me as I write, which is probably the next best thing to having packed them in my suitcase and brought them home.

What are they saying? Read on for some words of wisdom that have been echoing in my brain.

From Illustrator and (visual) Storyteller E.B. Lewis's touching, entertaining, and inspiring keynote address and his session on Writing with Pictures:
1) "Leap."
     Why? Because the leapers make it.
     The longer version of the story is one familiar to all kinds of artists. A writer (illustrator, painter, etc.) stands at the edge of a cliff, looking across a seemingly bottomless chasm to a group of published authors and asks the question we all ask: "How did you get there?" The answer is simple: "I jumped."
     As important as it is to take the leap of faith, E.B. Lewis cautioned, success is also about timing -- about the universe recognizing that this is the time your work is ready to be seen -- and preparation. Which leads us to #2.

2) "They [the greats] won't let you on the stage until you've done the work."
     Success doesn't just happen. Put in the hours and the effort to learn and practice your craft. And don't be afraid to make mistakes. Which brings us to #3.

3) "Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes and art is knowing which ones to keep."
     Making mistakes is about being willing to fail. If you're not willing to fail, E.B. Lewis warned, you might not make it to the other side of the chasm. The best way to lose your fear of failure is to fall in love with the process. To love the journey rather than always racing to get to the finish line.
     How? See #4.

4) "Put yourself in a place of most potential, and by that I mean multiple right answers."
     The work of the storyteller -- writers and illustrators alike -- is to solve problems. Not by finding the right answer, but by exploring the unending possibilities, and by having the courage to take on the creative dragons we all face when we sit down to write or draw (some days with better results than others) day after day until a project is complete.
     Where do we find the energy to do that? In #5.

5) "As Mark Twain said, 'The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.'"
     We all have a chip, E.B. Lewis said, pointing to his head. And the chip has to get turned on in order to find out the why. But in order for the chip to be turned on, we must be exposed to the right conditions, people or experiences. Once we know why we were born, why we are here, that passion fuels the journey and keeps us facing our dragons. That passion also steels us in the face of resistance. Which brings us to #6.

6) "We are the documenters of the world. We are the feared ones in society. We cause the multitudes to think."
     They want sheep, not shepherds. We create the shepherds.
     (Personal aside: Good teachers also create shepherds. One more reason why teachers, writers, and artists make good allies. We're all on the same side.)

From freelance editor and author Kate Angelella's talk on Learning to Love Revision:
7) "Revision is where your novel comes from."
     Kate's detailed tips on revision merit a separate post. But I will say here that as she guided us through the hard questions to ask on a first and second pass, I realized that I don't hate the revision process at all. In fact, if anything, I love it too much. But then I heard E.B. Lewis whispering in my ear again, saying it's all part of learning the craft.

8) "Every writer must have a shard of ice in her heart."
     Without that, you'll be too easy on your characters. Be willing to make them struggle. Your readers will thank you.

9) Kate's favorite piece of revising advice from writer Neil Gaiman: "If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision."
     A terrific reminder that one key to revision is putting aside the writer's hat for long enough to see your work through the eyes of a reader. That's where the desk drawer comes in handy. Put the manuscript away until you can see it with fresh eyes before embarking on the next round of revisions.

(Sidebar: Kate also led a Sunday morning intensive workshop on the objective correlative, which sounds much more intimidating than it is. Best part? A series of writing exercises that allowed us to experience this tool of the writer's craft firsthand. Again, worthy of its own post.)

From author and Kid's Post columnist Fred Bowen's session Writing My Way to a Better Life:
10) "Have a way to write that isn't official."
     Why? Because writing unofficially is a great way to generate and capture ideas as well as a dependable way to clear the channels when writer's block rears its ugly head.

And from Agent Carrie Howland of Donadio & Olson: candid advice about traditional and not-so-traditional ways of querying. Carrie reminded us that Twitter contests like Pitch Wars and PitMad are good not only to get your name out there and practice your elevator pitch, but are also a great way to get to know something about agents and editors. A fun way to do your homework before submitting a traditional query. And also a way of finding mentors and a community of your peers. She suggested that we look for comps and cover copy in the things others say to us when we tell them about our books. (Great advice! This happened to me just the other morning in a writing session with an old buddy.)
     And one last comforting tidbit: "The number of followers you have on Twitter really doesn't matter." That said, you can follow her on Twitter.

     May these voices travel with you and echo in your head as you go about your daily work too. Happy creating!

What's Taking So Long?!?!

"What's taking you so long to finish writing that book?"
There, I said it. You know you've thought it.

Well, let's see. In the past ten days, I've rethought the first chapter, the first page, the first line, the first few chapters, the whole first quarter of the novel, the climax, and the ending, not necessarily in that order. And let's not even talk about the middle...

I've realized, among other things, that:

• The events of the novel start mid-school-year (January), not the previous September.
• My main character, Gabby, is a sophomore not a freshman -- about to turn 16.
• What Gabby is missing/lacks is as important to the story and to the reader's ability to connect with her as what she desires most. (Thank you, moodywriting.blogspot.com, for that insight.)
• Gabby has another flaw I hadn't quite discovered or consciously identified until last Thursday.
• The character who turns out to be one of Gabby's greatest allies is in her grade, not a year ahead.
• I was way too kind to and protective of Gabby in the first draft -- didn't make her squirm enough or at the right moments. (A common mistake of first-time novelists.)
• Certain characters know more (or less) than I thought they did about a certain main event.
• Something I thought was just a subplot is actually quite possibly the main plot. (Adverbs intentional.)
• I need to totally rewrite the scene in which the antagonist enters the story --and take her out of the one she originally showed up in -- to give her more power.
• The next three chapters up for revision -- or what were the next three in the first draft -- will most likely not make the final cut at all. (It's like they say: "Kill your darlings.")
• The climax I wrote for the first draft is not the real climax -- there is something even more powerful working its way to the surface.

Add to that a herd of smaller details that shifted or emerged in the past week or so, including what posters are on the walls of Coach's classroom, what speech or document they are discussing on Gabby's first day in  history class, how a certain note is discovered and by whom, what popular '80's song Gabby's friends dedicate to her at her roller-rink birthday party, Gabby's grandfather's favorite beverage, and the subject of the puzzle she and Grandad are putting together in the most recent version of chapter one. And so on.

I was relieved to read that this is completely normal for writers like me. Author and head of the literary agency bearing his name, Donald Maass explains it this way in his book Writing 21st Century Fiction:

"Organic and intuitive writers tend to need more drafts, which are often radically different, and may wind up with a manuscript more original and unexpected in its form, but also less tight, sharply focused, or smartly marching." (45)

This is not the revision process I applied to high school or college essays. You know the one -- rearrange a couple of words or sentences, check for punctuation and spelling errors and call it done. No, this revision process feels like mini-earthquakes shifting the ground beneath my writing feet on an almost daily basis. A bit unsettling. And a good sign, I think.

What's taking so long? All of the above and more. For me, this is about more than writing a book. Or becoming a published author. Once again, Donald Maass says it beautifully:

"To write high-impact 21st century fiction, you must start by becoming highly personal. Find your voice, yes, but more than that, challenge yourself to be unafraid, independent, open, aware, and true to your own heart. You must become your most authentic self." (4)

And that, dear readers, is a journey that cannot be rushed.

From the Writer's Confessional

I have a confession to make.

As a fiction writer, I struggle to create detailed characters and settings -- at least in a physical sense. Sometimes I forget that the reader can't see what's in my head as I write -- what the girls seated around the cafeteria table are wearing or what posters are hanging on the wall of the main character's bedroom. And sometimes, I can't see the finer details clearly enough to write them in. Or, if I can, I can't translate those images into words that give the figures who haunt the shadows of my mind life on the page. Yet.

Maybe this is because of something in my creative DNA. Choreographer Twyla Tharp calls it "focal length." In her book The Creative Habit (a staple on my writing reference and inspiration shelf), she proposes that "All of us find comfort in seeing the world either from a great distance, at arm's length, or in close-up." According to her classification system, I am a great-distance person. Or at best, on good days, an arm's-length person.

What does this mean to my writing? It means that the close-up, make-you-feel-like-you're-right-there sensory details don't come easily, or naturally, to me. This is something my critique group finds incredibly (or at least somewhat) annoying, even though they don't put it that way exactly. But they do beg and plead -- persistently -- for more visual and tactile and gustatory and olfactory (love that word) cues so they aren't left guessing.

It means, that at least in early drafts, my characters are doomed to float around in a vast, empty, undefined space. They are stranded in the middle of a big white room or left standing aimlessly in front of a blank green screen. After all, it's hard to tell what kind of sneakers a character is wearing or how she eats an Oreo when you're seeing the fictional world she lives in as a pea-sized blue-green orb floating in a vast universe.

It means silencing my inner critic long enough to get a first draft on paper, knowing that I'll have to work at adding arm's-length and close-up sensory details to future drafts in order to bring the story's fictional world into clear enough focus for my readers to inhabit. Not sure yet if that will happen in draft 2 or draft 92 (Jack Gantos swears he writes everything 100 times), just that it will.

Seems that the great-distance perspective creeps into my real life too, like the way I view the community of professional, published authors. I know it exists, have orbited it for a number of years now, and have even been lucky (or proactive) enough to visit it and get within arm's- (or even pen's-) length at writing conferences and book-signings. But for now it remains an elusive, shadowy world built on shifting sands of creativity, hard work, and inspiration.

For now, I content myself by keeping that distant marbled orb in my sights, knowing that my writing journey is bringing me closer every day. And that one day, I fully intend to inhabit that world just the way my characters will inhabit theirs.

From Failure to Farewell

Still feeling inspired by a weekend spent with my tribe -- the 1,000+ writers and illustrators who gathered in New York City for SCBWI's annual winter conference. The story echoing in my mind this morning is one that award-winning author Kate Messner told in her hugely successful keynote address on the "spectacular power of failure." It went roughly like this [the original anecdote can be found in David Bayles's and Ted Orland's book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking]:

Two groups of potters were given the following instructions: one group was told they could earn an A by creating just one fantastic pot while the other group was instructed to make as many pots as they could (the more pots, the higher the grade). When the researchers went back and looked at the results, they found that the group instructed to focus on quantity were more likely to have made a high quality pot than the group that tried to make just one work of art.

The lesson? If you want to create art (of any kind), create lots, and you are more likely to succeed. The message for me as a writer? If I want to write something good, I'm going to have to write a lot of bad stuff along the way. Hard news for a perfectionist to swallow.

For the last few years, as I have dived into re-inventing myself as a writer, I have been a potter in the one-pot-of-highest-quality group. Most of my energy has been devoted to writing my first young adult novel. And to show for my efforts, I have, as Anne Lamott would say, a "shitty rough draft" that I am now working to revise. Progress has come in waves. Periods of productivity followed by periods of stuckness. Through it all, I keep writing in my notebook, whatever words come, along with snippets of ideas that may eventually give birth to another novel or story or poem. I keep practicing my craft. Keep reading other writers to learn from their successes.

Lately, the question "What's taking so long?" has become more and more insistent. I used to think it was fear of failure. And then an insatiable drive for perfection that fueled that fear. And it was. But as I listened to Kate Messner talk about her own experiences of failure, I realized that the emotional roots reach even deeper. What slows me down is a wall (or a well, take your pick) of shame. A subconscious but oh-so-powerful avoidance of experiencing or feeling shame. The shame that might come from writing, sharing, posting or publishing something that is less than perfect.

Well, Shame, I write this entry to tell you that I'm not going to let you push me around any more. I know what it's going to take to get to where I want to go. Write. Write lots. Then write even more. Sometimes my aspirations and ambition will outshine my abilities, but that's okay. That's what's supposed to happen. And I will choose not to feel you when it does.

Yes, Shame, I am going to write you right out of existence.

Now Leaving Texas...

Remember that journey through "the big Middle" I started a while back? The part a fellow writer (Laraine Herring) compared to driving through the state of Texas? The part I thought could take several months? I believe that I crossed the border today!

Sure, I may have to drive back through a few of the smaller towns, get a closer look at the scenery, and explore a few more side roads to fill in any remaining gaps. And yes, the bridge was out in Crisis City (not quite ready to write that scene yet), so I took a detour for now and vowed to come back in a few days or weeks. But I have officially passed from writing the middle section of the book into writing the final quarter.

In writer's terms, there is a threshold that happens after a major energy marker in the plot. One such threshold occurs after the crisis happens. It marks the end of the middle -- or the beginning of the end. Over the past couple of days, I wrote several of those threshold scenes in which Gabby reflects on what has happened, evaluates her choices, and gathers the resources she will need to make it to the climax and successfully transform. In other words, she has to take everything apart in order to put the pieces of herself back together again.

I suspected it was time to go there when I hit a pocket of resistance on Thursday night and had to fight for every word that made it on to the page. So on Friday morning, I reassessed my own situation and realized that yes, it was time to take another leap -- right into the novel's crisis. Or maybe directly to the resulting fallout.

Strangely, in the midst of all this, I couldn't help but notice the parallels between where Gabby is finding herself at this point in the novel and where the Republican party found itself after the election (a crisis of sorts for them) this week. And of course, what do they (Gabby and the Republicans) do first? Blame everyone but themeselves for what has happened...

The difference is, I get to have some say in Gabby's ultimate transformation. Too bad real life narratives are a bit harder to influence.

So long, for now, Texas!

(NaNoWriMo word count at the end of day 10? 19,607 words.  Yee-haw!)

Feedback

The proverbial shoe was on the other foot last Friday. After years of critiquing my students' writing, I decided it was time to put myself on the hotseat. I took a chapter of my novel-in-progress to the Baltimore Book Festival for a free one-on-one feedback session sponsored by the CityLit Project.

I have a couple of what Julia Cameron calls "friendly readers" who have read several scenes from the novel. Their feedback is always constructive and encouraging, and their enthusiasm about the story and the characters gives me the energy to keep writing. But asking for a critique from an experienced writer who knew nothing about me felt like a bigger risk.

Was I doubtful/nervous/terrified beforehand? Yes.
Did I go for it anyway? Yes.
And I'm glad I did.

So on Friday afternoon, after much fretting about what scene to bring and whether it was really ready for an objective pair of eyes (ask my husband, he'll tell you), I sat down with Gregg Wilhelm, the Executive Director of the CityLit Project, who has worked in various aspects of publishing for several different publishing houses. He read quietly, scribbling notes on the pages as he went, and I watched, fidgeting with my pen and reminding myself to stay detached from the outcome and open to his suggestions.

I was pleasantly surprised when he came back with largely positive comments. He said the scene as a whole was well constructed and complimented me on capturing the personalities of the characters in dialogue as well as through their actions. He suggested that I add a bit more exposition -- some details of the room and of the characters' appearances, things that the point-of-view character would notice -- to set the scene more clearly for the reader. We also talked about some specific instances of word choice that will add polish.

What else did I learn Friday? That I can afford to go a lot easier on myself when I am drafting new scenes. That it's okay to let my characters ramble and to use too many adverbs and adjectives and to let some cliches creep in here and there (kind of like that!). And that for now, I can give the madman more room to create and imagine and breathe life into the characters and the story without worrying about how it sounds or whether it will be good enough. That's what the revision process is for.

Trimming

This week's challenge? An exercise from Louise Doughty's A Novel in a Year: Choose a scene, do a word count, and cut the words by a quarter. Repeat with next scene. After a few days, read the new and old versions to see which sounds better.

Cutting out whole paragraphs, Doughty says, is cheating. Instead, she says to consider each sentence, each word, and ruthlessly eliminate anything that is not absoutely necessary (case in point, there are a couple of adverbs that last sentence could do without).

At first, I thought this exercise was getting too specific too soon, but I tried it anyway with three scenes of different length (from 1 to 3 pages). Turned out that in the process of doing such mindful trimming, all kinds of other useful things popped up. Things like places or characters that need more description, parts that might be better off somewhere else in the story, questions about how a character feels/reacts in a particular moment, bits that need to be added for clarity, moments that beg for more/less tension. Things that will help me make more substantial revisions when I get around to serious rewriting.

What sounded like a task that was all about the word count turned out to be about something quite different. While my left brain was busy counting words, my right brain snuck in and put its creativity to work, re-seeing the scene. And, after spending ten weeks cranking out new material, it felt good to revisit some scenes that I hadn't looked at for a while.

Truth is, I think I like this part of the writing process better than coming up with new material. Or maybe it is just more in my comfort zone after years spent evaluating my students' creative writing.

Just one more reason to keep exercising the madman daily...

Coming Soon...in Black and White!

There was an article in The Baltimore Sun's commentary section last week titled "Teaching to the test: Good teachers do it" which, as you might have guessed, caught my eye. My husband braced himself for my reaction as I read through the piece, and was surprised when I didn't blow up or start spouting expletives. I handed him the front page section so he could read it for himself and went on to the comics.

Turned out he was the one who was not fully satisfied with Walt Gardner's defense of teaching to the test. The discussion that followed reminded me that although Gardner (a former teacher himself) had made some valid points, he had also made some statements that got my teacher hackles up. I made a mental note to dedicate some of my morning's writing time to drafting a letter to the editor.

The draft incubated over the long holiday weekend, and I looked at it with fresh eyes this morning. At 337 words, it was a bit longer than the usual letter to the editor, but after a few revision passes, it was holding steady at 301 words and there was nothing more I could cut without compromising my message.

I copied it into an email and sent it on its way. No more than five minutes later, the phone rang and the voice on the machine was saying he would like to use my letter. I grabbed the phone and verified that it was indeed my letter and that I had sent it in, and the person on the other end told me it would appear later this week! How's that for instant results?! Would that every acceptance (or even rejection) came so quickly....

I hung up the phone and did some celebratory jumping around the kitchen before calling my husband to tell him the news. "They're going to publish my letter to the editor in the Sun!" While there are some who would say it's just an editorial, I have long been a believer in taking baby steps to make your dreams come true.

It may not be the novel, but it's a step in the right direction!

To read Gardner's piece, click on the link (underlined words). And of course, there will be a link to the printed version of my letter as soon as it appears in print! (I'll figure out how to do it by then.)

The Poem Lady

Sorry I've been away, neglecting my bloggerly duties. It's not that I've given up hope on finding an audience or that I've decided that maintaining a blog AND a notebook are mutually exclusive, as some earlier entries may have implied. No, that's not what's kept me away. So where have I been?

I went back to school. Back to the high school I taught at for seven years, that is. But not as a full-time teacher. (I sent in my official resignation a few weeks ago.) For the past two weeks, I played the role of poet-in-residence at Montgomery Blair High School. April being National Poetry Month, it seemed a fitting thing to do.

Last spring, when I announced that I was leaving Blair to concentrate on my writing, one of the librarians approached me to ask if I would be at all interested in coming back to do a guest stint teaching poetry to students for two weeks in April. The poet who had done such a good job for the past two years (Carol Peck), would not be available, and they needed someone to take her place. Much to the librarian's surprise, I jumped at the chance. After all, I'd been telling everyone that my dream job would be doing creative writing with students without all of the grading that came with teaching it full time.

I'll admit I was more than a little nervous as the time drew near. The librarian sent me a class list that included everything from ESOL 4 to 12th grade Honors students. As I made my plans, two voices competed in my head: Poetry with high school students? What makes you think you can make them enjoy poetry? VS. You can do this in your sleep. Your creative writing students always loved what you did with poetry -- even the reluctant poets. I blocked them out as I planned four different activities to generate poems with the students, and I hoped for the best.

By the end of week one, I had worked with 10 different classes in 16 sessions, and I was more than satisfied with the quality of the poems the students were producing. The second week brought 10 new classes and 16 more sessions, which resulted in more than a few terrific poems. Even the class of 13 freshman boys and 1 girl -- the one I was most worried about -- seemed to be engaged. (I would post some of my favorites so you could see their creativity, but I have to get their permission first.)

I was pretty sure the students were enjoying our time together as much as I was, but it was something I overheard at lunchtime of week two that confirmed my suspicions. I was walking down the hall to return a stack of poems to one of the teachers, when I heard a student interrupt a conversation with his friend to say, "Hey, that's the poem lady!"

The poem lady!?! I could get used to that...

On Inspiration

From a Wired article about where certain people got their inspiration from...

#4 was J.K. Rowling on how she got the idea for her wildly successful series of Harry Potter books. She says it came to her as she was riding in a train car between Manchester and London.

It was extraordinary, because I had never planned to write for children. Harry came to me immediately, as did the school and a few of the other characters such as Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost whose head is not quite cut off. The train was delayed, and for hours I sat there thinking and thinking and thinking... The irony is I almost always have pen and paper; I write all the time. And on this one occasion when I had the idea of my life, I didn't have a pen. For four hours my head was buzzing. It was probably the best thing, because I ednded up working the whole thing out before I got off the train.

Crazy! But I really do believe that there are stories out there, floating somewhere in the energy of the universe -- that want to be written. And that if you can keep your channels open (as Georgia Heard says), one of them might find you and speak through you. Which is why it is so important to follow the advice of Julia Cameron (or was it Natalaie Goldberg -- sorry if I've got the wrong person) who says it is vital for writers to spend time each morning writing what she calls "Morning pages." Three pages (or was it three hours?) of writing every day about anything so long as you are putting words on the page.

I was doing it religiously last fall, until I got discouraged by people (mostly non-writers) who would ask, "So, what are you working on?" and when I didn't have a specific project to answer with, "Well, what's your genre then?" and wouldn't take "I'm just writing" for an answer. I know, it's a convenient excuse now that time is no longer an issue for me, and if it weren't that one, it would probably be another.

So it's time for me to get back to those morning pages in my notebook. To spend time each morning listening for those voices in the universe, the ones that want their stories to be told, the ones that want to be heard.

We Try...

I was reading the beginning of Julia Cameron's The Right to Write again this morning (thanks to my friend CF who reminded me that this book existed and that I already owned a copy of it), when I came across the following passage. Well, "came across" is putting it too lightly -- it was more like the words jumped off the page at me, waving white flags and shouting "hello" and "this means you" to get my attention. She writes:

...most of us try to write too carefully. We try to do it 'right.' We try to sound smart. We try, period. Writing goes much better when we don't work at it so much. When we give ourselves permission to just hang out on the page. (3)

It's what happens to me when I write entries for this blog vs. what happens when I write in the pages of my notebooks. Something happens and suddenly I'm trying too hard. Worrying about making sense and finding just the right word and whether to use a semicolon or a dash at a particular junction of thought instead of just letting the words and thoughts flow. Writing becomes work instead of play. Maybe I just need to try to impress less and "hang out" more in these entries.

Thank you, Julia, for helping me remember this!

What's in a Name?

When I set out to create a blog, I didn't realize that the hardest part would be coming up with a name. Actually, I needed three names to get started: my username for signing my posts, my url by which others would be able to find me on the web, and the title of the blog itself.

The first came fairly easily. I just shortened my first and last name, put them together, took a little poetic license with the last syllable, and voila! Valhellah, deliciously close to Valhalla. Not that I'm a fan of Norse mythology or of Richard Wagner (though the ride of the Valkyries as they escort the slain warriors into Valhalla is, to say the least, a catchy tune)...I just liked the way it sounded. Despite my past as an English teacher -- and all high school students will tell you that English teachers live for finding hidden meanings in things -- no symbolism intended.

Finding an unclaimed url proved a bit more challenging. I came up with a whole page of possibilities in my notebook, checking each for availability as I went. Among those already taken: WhatSheSaid, LivingOutLoud, ItsMyVoice, OnPurpose, SottoVoce, Valerieana (sorry, mom), and PenIsMightier (open to misinterpretation when written all lower case anyway). Among the finalists in the available column: OnceMoreWithVoice (just too long), Valerini (what my quartet-mates have dubbed me), ThoughtRamblings (the journal writing we used to do in elementary school), PurposeQueen (a nickname bestowed upon me by co-teachers of a summer workshop), BentPinkies (for those who have seen my hands), and the eventual winner, VIsForVoice (easy and memorable in an acrostic sort of way).

I returned to my list of possible url's as I searched for a name for the blog. In the end, it came down to two choices. The runner-up was It's a Passion, a tribute to my love of writing and the title of a favorite Luka Bloom song. But the winner (at least for now) was Herding Commas. Why? It's what writing feels like some days -- when the words all want to come out at once in a big uncontrolled stream (or spew if you want a more vulgar image), or when they don't want to fall in line in neatly organized sentences, or when they ramble on for half a page taking all sorts of detours and digressions (much like this one) before finally arriving at a point or at least coming to a full stop at a period.

Herding Commas seemed to me more memorable and eye-catching than the other possiblities. It struck me as more original, even though it's a variation on "herding cats" (an expression best illustrated by some company's Super Bowl commercial several years ago), an activity which is acknowledged by most to be a futile pursuit, or at least a highly challenging one, as cats are not, by personality, as agreeable as cows when it comes to doing anything on your schedule. It's a lot like writing that way -- the words don't necessarily come when you're sitting with notebook in lap, pen in hand, or in the case of a blog, with fingers poised over the keyboard and eyes fixed on the monitor. No, words usually come at a more inconvenient moment -- when you're driving down the interstate or in the middle of Sunday's sermon or halfway through a long, relaxing soak in the tub -- bad times for writing, all.

Commas, like cats, are notoriously evasive when it comes to following any sort of fixed rules. They never made sense to the majority of my students, and they only began to make sense to me after some sort of comma epiphany I had sometime during my eleventh grade year, no thanks to my tenth grade English teacher's propensity to read to us from the dreaded light blue Warriner's Grammar book every day.

In the throes of first love (or perhaps just good old teenaged infatuation), Juliet asks, "What's in a name?" (Can't help it...English teacher, remember?) And she goes on to propose that a rose by any other name "would smell as sweet." By her reasoning, I've given entirely too much thought and significance to the task of giving names to things which would exist just the same regardless of what I decided to call them. Maybe so, but at least I had some fun along the way.