Sage Woman Chronicles

Emotions, Strong or Weak?

“A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist’s world.” ~ Hans Hofmann

Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.” ~ Gretchen Rubin

I’ve been thinking about emotions or the lack thereof a great deal lately because of all the things going on in the world. There are so many people who seem to be completely disconnected from empathy and compassion that it’s distressing to me. On the other hand people are emerging who are just the opposite. It’s as if we’re having actual battles between good and evil, just as is reflected in our popular entertainment.

Where did that notion come from that showing our emotions is weakness I wonder? If a person being interviewed on TV cries, or if someone shows emotion in real life, they say “I’m sorry” as if showing their true feelings is bad. That makes me sad. I know showing vulnerability is difficult. But think of the alternative. Would you rather have relationships with people who are in touch with their emotions, or with people who are emotionally absent?

This spring Barry and I have been watching the third season of Masterpiece Mystery’s Unforgotten. It’s about a team of detectives in London who investigate crimes from the past. A body that has been long buried is found and the team must try to find the murderer. This season was quite chilling. When the team discovered who the murderer was, it turned out he was a psychopathic psychiatrist. He bragged about being a serial killer of young teenage girls. The actor playing the psychopath gave a chilling performance countered by the emotional performance by the actress playing DCI Stuart. Which character was stronger? The one with no emotions at all, or the one so connected to the dead girls and their families that she could barely stand to be in the same room with the killer? I go with DCI Stuart. Her compassion for the families helped them heal years of uncertainty and pain.

As a writer I struggle with writing emotions. It’s so much easier to reproduce them as an actor because replicating body language and facial expressions help me connect with the character and audience. But when I write character emotions, I must think of how my body feels when I’m experiencing various emotions. Where does fear reside in my body, or grief, anger, or joy? And then how do I write those physiological responses so the reader feels those emotions with my characters?

Of course, what happens in the real world influences my writing. I’m nearly finished with the rough draft of Morgan’s timeline in, Time’s Echo. And all of my thoughts about emotions made me notice the holes in my character’s emotional lives. I’m going to have to do a better job of describing their emotional states. A year or so ago, I might have been tempted to rush through this book, but it feels too important to get the emotional component right. Not that I did a terrible job on the first book, but the stakes are much higher for my two main characters in this one. I want to take greater care with writing what they’re going through and how they feel about it.

Being able to write what I’ve been contemplating has done one thing for me. I’m not as ashamed to show my true emotions as I used to be. I used to be an observer. A fly on the wall rarely interacting with people I didn’t know. But over the years of acting, teaching and writing, I’ve learned to make deeper connections with those around me. That’s a good thing I think. I’d rather risk making emotional connections than be completely alone. That’s extremely sad and stressful and it doesn’t help anyone, especially me.

So, now that my teaching semester is over, I’ve got more time to do a better job of writing the emotional lives of my characters. Oh, and finally get back to recording the audio version of my first book.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. Welcome new to my new followers. I hope you have a fabulous weekend.

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Only Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, instead of traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.

The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news on the audiobook version Lucinda is working on. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.

Reading Lessons

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” ~ Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ~ Charles W. Eliot

Reading grasped me when I was a senior in high school. We studied British Literature that year. I was enamored with A Tale of Two Cities, Jane Eyre, and Shakespeare. Everything we read opened up my perspective on history, and how the different characters lived. I knew I didn’t want to be like Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. On the other hand I very much liked Jane Eyre’s self-confidence, and A Tale of Two Cities immersed me in the horrors of The French Revolution.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been a reader before, but we didn’t have access to libraries, except for the school libraries, in the small towns in which I grew up. The Scholastic Book Fair was always a treat and I did buy books that I enjoyed reading. But those were held only once or twice a year, and so it was often months between reading the books I wanted to read, and the ones I had to read for school.

But senior year I became a real reader. What I mean by that is that a real reader is always on the lookout for the next book they are going to read. And now that I’m semi-retired, and have more time for reading, I feel uneasy if I have to wait even a day to find the next book to sink into. That rarely happens, though, because most of the time, I have a list of two or three possibilities waiting in line.

The advent of social media groups like Goodreads has helped me up my reading game with their yearly reading challenge. For the last few years I’ve pledged to read 50 books a year. I know for some people that’s not a lot, but I like to read a book slowly, savoring and living within the lives of the characters.

I’ve tried to understand why I feel this need to sink into other people’s lives. I do it with movies and TV too. Maybe I’m a voyeur, but I think it’s because I’m just one person and I can’t possibly experience every aspect of life. Yet I have this need to understand the world from different perspectives. And when I talk or listen to other readers, they say similar things about why they read.

I secretly wanted to be a writer for many years. When I finally acknowledged that fact, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to write effectively. After all my degrees are not in English. But when I read a quote I believe was by Stephen King, “You can’t be a good writer if you don’t read,” that made me feel better. I am learning how to be a good writer by reading both good and bad books. A poorly written book can sometimes teach me more than great ones because they show me in glaring detail the mistakes I make, or ones I need to avoid.

On the other hand there are great books that I still think about many years after I first read them. And maybe that’s the highest praise I can give an author, to continue to contemplate their work and how it affected me. And then try to write as powerfully as they did, only using my personal experiences and point of view.

I’m grateful to be a reader. It’s hard for me to imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t read. I think it would be lots smaller and maybe even sadder. Reading about characters who experience terrible things, then grow, and even flourish as a result, gives me great hope.

Welcome to my new followers. Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. Have a fabulous weekend.

Star Wars Day – Life Choices

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” ~ Carol Burnett

“Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” ~ Alfred North Whitehead

I love the Star Wars series. I love it because to me it’s one example of our modern mythology. The way I see mythology, the stories are created to help us understand who we are, where we came from, and why we’re here. And the Star Wars series is just one group of modern tales that attempt to do that.

If nothing else, what the popularity of the Star Wars franchise teaches us is that if we’re not open to change, we can get caught up in destructive thought patterns. Literature and movies are filled with characters who latch onto something they desperately want but can’t have, or that they fear will happen to them. Darth Vader is so afraid of losing first his mother, then Padme, that his fear left him vulnerable to the dark side. And we all know where that leads him. He’s miserable and because of that he leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, especially for those he professes to love. He’s a very sad figure. His teachers try to help him let go of his fear, but for some reason, he is unable to do so.

In a book I’m currently reading, Sidroc: The Dane, a side book in Circle of Ceridwin series by Octavia Randolph, Ingirith, Sidroc’s step mother, is so angry that she was not free to choose her own husband that it sucks not only her happiness, but that of the entire family. Hrald, her husband is a good, kind, honorable man. But she’s too filled with resentment. She can’t let go of the dreams she built up in her head. The result is that she is unable to open her heart. She can’t see that she chooses not to allow herself to be happy.

I’ve been thinking of lots of other stories with characters who blame their lot in life, or what they think is wrong in the world/universe, on outside circumstances because I’m preparing the dramatic structure class that I will be teaching next fall. Each movie I watch has characters who hold fast to their view of the world and then cause pain for themselves and others. I love teaching this class because I’m enough of a nerd to enjoy diving deep into the stories and characters to see if I can learn anything new about my own life.

Last weekend, Barry and I went to see Avengers: Endgame. (Don’t worry, no spoilers here.) Thanos, the villain, is convinced that there are not enough resources to go around for all the gazillions of people in the universe, so he devises a plan to eliminate half of all living things to right this imbalance. He sees the problem as outside himself. He’s not willing to entertain the idea that perhaps there are other solutions to the problems faced by the populations on each planet. Nope, he’s convinced he’s got the solution and nothing is going to stop him from fulfilling his plan. As a result, he wreaks havoc. He’s the only one who appears to be happier as a result of his actions. But as a spiritual teacher I follow says, “Darkness always serves the light.” And in the case of Thanos, and other fictional arch villains, that is the case. Maybe it’s the case in real life too.

I’ve got a character in Time’s Echo that is caught in a loop of destructive thinking. At first I created Morgan’s daughter, Georgiana, to show the stresses women face trying to balance care of home and family with work and involvement in worthy causes. Thanos, and Ingirith made me think about Georgiana in a new way. She was born with a chip on her shoulder and nothing Morgan and Seth do helps. In fact, their efforts to help her, cause her to dig in her heels even deeper.

I have to admit, I don’t understand people like that, however, we all know those kinds of people. Nothing is ever their fault and the world is out to get them. On the other hand, we all know people who bring joy to everything they do. When they enter a room, it feels lighter and even when these happy people are faced with extreme challenges, they manage to find the bright side of the situation.

It’s my opinion that we choose what Caroline Myss calls our “sacred contract”, before we’re born. Even though I don’t fully understand it, I think we do choose who we’re going to be in any given incarnation. And to me that indicates that there must be a reason we do this.

There is a theological system called Process Theology, developed from Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Philosophy that might explain what I’m trying to say. The main idea is that in part God grows and learns from what we experience. Which makes me think that we may be part of a huge experiment to see if we can grow as a species, or if we’ll crash and burn.

I’m fascinated by the mystery of life, the fact that we each have unique personalities, perspectives, and roles to play in each lifetime. I have to admit that if we were all the same, life would be extremely boring.

Thanks for reading my current musings. Writing fiction makes me examine almost everything that happens to me personally, and in the greater world. And then it all becomes compost for what I’m working on.

Welcome to my new followers. Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I hope you have a fabulous weekend.

Pick a Little, Talk a Little

“Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of Gossip.” ~ Richard Steele

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” ~ Will Rogers

A couple of nights ago The Music Man was on TCM. We tuned into it just as one of my favorite songs “Pick a Little, Talk a Little” started. Professor Harold Hill is trying to get some information about Marion the librarian. He’s a con man, and she’s a target who can help him achieve his goal. The song is so great because Meredith Wilson makes the women dishing dirt on Marion sound like a flock of chickens; “Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep, cheep cheep, talk a lot pick a little more.” The thing about the women is that they think they know all about who Marion is and what she’d done, but, of course, they’re wrong. And their gossip is potentially destructive. But it’s a musical comedy, so everything turns out right in the end.

That song was just another example of things I’d been thinking about, how negative attacks, particularly in all kinds of media, erode society. It prompted me to write this post.

I’ve never liked gossip. I can’t say that I’ve never done it. I’ve said my fair share of negative things to and about people. After all, I’m human. However, acknowledging that fact does not make me proud, nor does it make me feel good when I’ve done it. In fact, it feels corrosive to my soul when I say nasty things about people. If it makes me feel bad, I wonder what is going through the heads of people who troll public figures and spew nasty comments about them as if it’s their life’s work. Do they think it will make them feel superior, or good about themselves? If my father was right, that is exactly what they think. But they’re wrong. If I attack another person, it damages me as much as it does them, maybe more.

Since the advent of social media, gossip seems to have become more prevalent. We’re no longer gossiping across the backyard fence. Nope, we can now throw nasty comments at people we don’t even know while we think we’re remaining anonymous. Some people wear their corrosive opinions like a badge. All the hate language online shows me that self-hatred is an epidemic that we need to address. It’s as damaging as any virulent disease that attacks the body.

I often ask myself what can I do about this epidemic? The only true cure that I know of is for each person to clean out their own dark corners. I know from personal experience that it’s scary to look into those dark places. I’ve been attempting to love myself for fifty plus years and though I’ve come a long way, there are still times when that ugly self-hate demon rears its ugly head. When my self-hatred is triggered I’ve learned to take a deep breath and ask myself, “What am I supposed to be learning from this?” Then I get out my journal and write. Writing helps me figure out what is truly going on inside my head and heart.

This may sound naïve, but to stem the tide of hatred in the media, I ignore the articles or string of nasty comments that come through my feed. Oh, man sometimes I’m almost drawn in by those tantalizing headlines. I know, I’m just one potential consumer, however, if enough people get fed up with all the negativity, we will make an impact.

Part of the reason I decided to stop reading stories aimed at ripping someone apart is that I want to preserve the ground I’ve gained to become a happier person. Reading negative stuff makes me feel out of sorts. In fact, the other day after consuming lots of news, I yelled at Barry for some innocent remark he made. I knew immediately that I wasn’t angry with Barry. Nope, it was misplaced aggression. I’d fallen into the trap of consuming negative news.

Gregg Braden, an author and scientist I follow, marries science with spirituality. In a recent interview he said that scientific studies have shown that when we observe something happening, our brain thinks it’s happening to us in real time. So, if we’re watching movies containing brutal violence, it’s as if we’re either the perpetrator or victim of the violence. If we’re watching a sporting event, it’s as if we’re running on the court, or the field with the other athletes. Conversely, if we observe someone doing kind and loving things for others, it’s as if we are the beneficiaries of those kind deeds. Our brains and hearts are sponges. They take in everything that goes on around us. Knowing that makes me much more careful about the media I consume.

Sometimes when I’m writing this blog I feel like I get really preachy. I don’t want to do that but I do want to share what I’m thinking, because maybe I’m not the only one who’s questioning the situation I’m focused on that week. And as I learned from my father, asking questions is the beginning of learning something really important.

Truthfully, I don’t have any blanket answers about how to stop the hatred that seems so prevalent right now, except to keep working on being as loving as I can be. Maybe I’ll help someone absorb the kindness I’m dishing out.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I hope it’s spring where you are and you can enjoy the flowers and warm weather. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, I hope you get to see a splash of fall colors to dazzle your senses.

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Only Jenna joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, instead of traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.

Reinforcement is Good

“Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.” ~ B. F. Skinner

As I wrote in the post last week, I attended a writer’s celebration sponsored in part by the local community college where I teach. It was a fun event. The guest authors were amazing. I enjoyed Ann Garvin’s workshop so much that I attended two sessions even though they contained the same information.

Ann was engaging and funny. I’m assuming her books are too given the title of her most recent book, I Like You Just Fine When You’re Not Around. She’s written several books and the thing I loved right off the bat was her willingness to tell us that she didn’t really know how to write a good book until after she finished her fourth. It was then she realized the things she was going to teach us.

Much of what Ann and the other writers taught was information I already knew. For example, even if you’re writing nonfiction, you have to tell a story, otherwise, as Ann puts it, you’re reading the manual to your newest household appliance. Even though I already understood that, it was great to be reminded to engage my readers with stories. I’m working on doing that here more and more.

Another reminder was, when writing fiction, you have to figure out what your character wants and let them fail, and fail, and fail, until eventually they get what they want, or what they want changes and they get that instead. But the most important thing is your characters need to be flawed. That’s one of the hardest things for me to do. I want to think of myself, and by extension by characters as perfect, enlightened beings. Of course, none of us is perfect. So, that reminder was something I needed to hear to help me as I write my current novel.

Ann’s method of writing a novel is almost the same method actors use to create their characters. Actors and directors have to figure out what the characters want, and the tactics they use to try to accomplish their goal. That was a big relief to me, because I don’t have an MFA in creative writing. I was happy to learn that neither does Ann.

Even though I don’t have degrees in English, I am a big story nerd. I love listening to people tell about their personal triumphs and tragedies. I love analyzing books, documentaries, and movies. I learn something when I pay attention to how the people or characters are affected by the things that happen to them and what they learn along the way.

Sometimes I wonder what the purpose of my passion for story telling might be. I mean, I’m not saving someone’s life. And yet, maybe storytellers do save lives in a way. We can help change the world by examining how characters react to what happens to them.

Alan Alda expressed exactly how I feel about story telling during his acceptance speech for the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year. “I see more than ever now how proud I am to be a member of our brotherhood and sisterhood of actors. When we get a chance to act, it’s our job, at least in part, to get inside a characters head and to search for a way to see life from that person’s point of view, another person’s vision of the world. And then to let an audience experience that. It may never have been more urgent to see the world through another person’s eyes than when the culture is divided so sharply. Actors can help at least a little, just by doing what we do. And the nice thing is, it’s fun to do it.”

I think storytellers of all kinds do that same thing. We try to get into other people’s heads and hearts and share their stories. Consuming those stories gives us a chance to expand our world view just a little bit. And I don’t know about you, but I need to see the world from different perspectives so I can contribute to positive change.

I want to suggest one example of a series that has changed my perspective about relations between blacks and whites in this country. Barry and I have been watching the PBS series, Reconstruction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Reconstruction period in U.S. history is one not covered very extensively in school. I certainly didn’t know much about it. The Civil War ended, there was Reconstruction to help rebuild the South and then we had the Civil Right’s Movement. That’s all I remember from my school history lessons. The history books didn’t cover all the years in between Reconstruction and the Civil Right’s Movement. Something must have happened, but I didn’t even question the fact that there had to be more to the story than that.

The stories of how many former slaves became politicians, business and land owners, and journalists is inspiring. And then to have their gains slowly chipped away by whites who didn’t believe blacks were real human beings, is heartbreaking. The story of Reconstruction shows me that our problems over race in this country are much more complicated than I ever imagined. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn about this crucial time in history, and how the attempts to equalize the black and white races succeeded at first and then, for the most part, failed. This documentary series showed me that we have a lot of work to do yet before we can truly call our country a melting pot. And the sad thing is that what happened with the former slaves is repeated over and over when people from other countries immigrate here. It’s difficult to acknowledge that many white people fear losing their dominant position and that is one of the biggest things that drives discrimination.

It might not seem like the story of the Reconstruction era relates to the book I’m writing now about the Suffrage and current women’s movements, but discrimination plays out the same way no matter which group is being oppressed. The dominant group do everything they can to hold on to their power.

Ann Garvin says, “Write ‘in scene’ so your readers can feel the emotions of your characters.” That’s one of the most important things writers can do, help the audience empathize with their characters. My readers and I can’t change unless we open ourselves up to new experiences, even if it’s only by reading a book or watching a movie.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. And welcome to my new followers. If you celebrate Passover or Easter, I hope you discover new and inspiring things in those historical stories.

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Only Jenna joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, instead of traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.