Category: observations/thoughts (Page 2 of 13)

Goal Update: November 2024

November 25, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It’s been five months since I posted my ridiculously long list of goals, and I figured it was time to do an update. Mostly for my own reflection. Maybe this is the teacher side of me, but reflecting on my work helps me see where to go next. It’s a taking-stock process. Let’s me know what steps to take next.

I set a huge number of goals in the hopes of “failing to success,” figuring that if I kept working at a bunch of different things, I’d make more progress than if I limited myself to only a few. Does this make any sense? Who knows, but it makes sense in my own head. I tend to do better and feel better when I have lots of creative projects going on that I can toggle between and work on bit by bit. Sometimes a particular thing takes over and I obsess over it, but other times I flit back and forth like a butterfly.

So, how is my flitting these days?

Hm.

That’s the short answer. Here is the longer answer:

Finish writing Norse City Limits (urban fantasy novel): I am not finished but this is the goal I’ve probably made the most progress on. As of right now, I’m roughly 40k into the story (maybe 45k… not sure because I handwrote a bunch of it and am now typing it up). I’m a bit stalled, however, so I’ve decided to go back to the last moment in the story when I was still really excited and start redrafting from there. That means that my most recent three chapters will be entirely new material as I scrap the old and start again. I’m not too upset by this because it means I’m getting excited about the story again and seeing where it heads next. I’m still hopeful I can finish this before 2024 kicks it.

Finish writing Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess (second book in Merlin series): Haven’t done anything with this one yet. I’m focused on finishing NCL. I have a bad habit of losing steam in the middle of a novel and jumping to other things, and I don’t want that to happen with NCL, so I’m holding off on another big project until that one is finished. NCL is where my energy and imagination are at the moment too. Not that I won’t get to Ysbaddaden in 2024, but it’s probable that 2025 will be the year of Merlin’s Last Magic.

Finish a short story set in my sword and sorcery world: Not yet.

Finish a short story about a mother who learns a terrible secret about her son: Not yet.

Finish a short story set in my Children of Valesh universe: Not yet.

Publish my short story collection: Embarrassingly not yet. I have the cover art, I have the stories, I have them mostly copy edited, and now it’s just a matter of finishing layout and proofing. Getting those ISBNs assigned and uploading to markets.

Why have I stalled on this project? I think because when I have time for creative things, I tend to put my energies into writing and creating and not into the publishing. Publishing feels too much like “work,” and when I have free time, I don’t want to work, I want to play. This is good for my writing but bad (obviously) for my publishing. I should make a more concerted effort to get my writing out to readers, but in order to do so, I must steal time from my writing sessions, and I’m loathe to do that.

If there’s one goal on this list I really want to achieve before the year is out, it’s this one, so I MUST block time into my schedule and get this book out to market. I haven’t felt much urgency until now, but the pressure is starting to mount. Hopefully, I have a short story collection to announce in the coming weeks.

Finish a novella in my City of Ashes series: Not yet. Still focused on NCL and don’t want to switch to any other bigger projects.

Blog everyday (this one again!! LOL!): I am not blogging everyday… but I am trying to blog more and seeing some improvement on this measure.

Send out Substack newsletter every two weeks: Ugh. This is the one that hurts. I just haven’t been able to get into a rhythm. Since I’m really trying to finish NCL, I don’t devote much time to other writing pursuits. It should be obvious, then, that the Substack will suffer. But I hate that it’s being neglected. I don’t want to neglect it, but non-fiction takes longer (at least the kind I do on Substack), partly because it takes me longer to generate ideas and evaluate whether they’d be good enough for a newsletter essay.

I can write shorter thoughts and musings, and those tend to go on the blog, but for my Substack readers, I feel like if I’m sending something to their inboxes, it needs to be more substantial. That desire for a more in-depth and lengthy piece of writing puts the pressure on, and I shut down when there’s too much pressure. My ideas dry up. My fears and critical voice rear their heads.

The answer, such as it is, is to devote more time during my writing sessions to working on the Substack: generating ideas, drafting, researching, etc. This is a process that requires a good chunk of time. If I don’t schedule that time, it ain’t happening.

But to block time for the Substack means to lessen time for my fiction. This is the Sophie’s Choice I’m loathe to make.

Anyway, the Substack goal is a conundrum. Not sure how this is going to go other than maybe reassessing my goals and making a few hard choices.

Play more role-playing games with my kids, my husband, family, and friends: Have played more with the kids, but not where I’d like to be. We’ve played two sessions of Hero Kids RPG, but I’m itching to play more. The kids like it, but it’s hard for me to muster the energy some evenings, so we end up not finding time to play.

I need to block time for playing into my schedule (this is a recurring theme, isn’t it?). I want to try playing solo as well, and I’m currently reading the Emirates of Ylaruam gazetteer from the old Basic D&D TSR stuff. I’m planning to use the rules for Cairn and run a little solo campaign to explore the setting and get my role-playing fix.

I’m not sure I’ll get to play more with family and friends. No one seems particularly interested; I’m by far the most enthusiastic of the group. So perhaps solo gaming is the way to go.

Create some RPG modules for Norse City Limits and Merlin’s Last Magic: Not yet.

Make a “Saturday Morning” zine series and publish an issue every month: Not yet.

Make other zines: Not yet.

(Zine-making still excites me, but like with my other pursuits, I feel like all my focus should be on finishing NCL and writing fiction. If I had all the time in the world, I would do more with these side projects, but when my time is limited, I feel like I have to make the choice to write fiction. Can I find more time in my day? Can I schedule more time for these pursuits? I suppose I can, but what will be sacrificed to get this time? My walking? My reading? Time spent with my kids?

Maybe I try to fold my zine-making into time spent with my kids… we can all make zines together. This is worth a try…

Of course, I’m doing this to myself by having so many flipping goals! I realize that there’s simply not enough time in the day to do all these things to their fullest. But the seed of desire is still there, so for the moment, I’m going to continue looking for ways to do all my goals.)

Read more books with my kids (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Half-Magic, James and the Giant Peach, the Hobbit, the Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician’s Nephew, Last Battle, more Little House books, How to Train Your Dragon series, Harry Potter): Yes, a little. We are reading The Hobbit, and we’ll be starting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone soon.

Start naalbinding again (finish the hat I started for my son and make another one for my other son): Not yet, but I’m going to try committing to doing this in the evenings. Christmas is coming up and winter too, so now is the time to get it done.

Practice my cartooning/comics drawing (for the zines): I did practice drawing cartoon owls (to turn into an Isabel-story zine…?), but that’s all. I have some drawing books for as sources, but despite identifying them around the house, I haven’t gathered them to use. As a family, we sometimes spend Saturday morning drawing, so maybe I can make that a more regular and deliberate thing.

Write essays, poems, and fiction that will serve as models for my students next school year: I’ve started a long-form essay about decluttering to share with my students, but it’s in very rough draft form. I wrote a couple of models earlier this school year, but not nearly as many as I had planned. This goal sounds good in my head, but when it comes time to actually do it, I find that I resist. Just as my students resist assignments because they are assignments, I resist writing that feels like an obligation. I know I need to work on the mental attitude here and see these as fun and practice and a chance to try something new. But I’m still battling a lot of critical voice in my fiction and for-fun writing, so doing writing that’s more obligatory is an even harder hurdle to jump.

So much of writing is a mental challenge. Yes, craft matters, and learning how to do different techniques is important, but the real challenge (at least for me) is battling the ennui and the critical voice and the lack of confidence. I’m forever fighting the fear that I’ll make a mistake or write something bad.

My goal of writing more model texts for my students is no different. I’m afraid I’ll fail, so I resist doing it in the first place. After all, what if I’m trying to model a certain technique and I do a bad job of it? I’ll embarrass myself in front of my students. What if I set a goal to write a certain kind of essay and it turns out all wrong? The students will see I’m a fraud.

And on and on the negative thoughts spiral.

I know that I need to treat every creative act as an experiment, but this requires a mental shift that I’m still working on making. To see everything as an experiment means to have a certain kind of fearlessness and courage that isn’t always readily available. To be okay with failure.

This is perhaps the overarching goal for everything: to break through mental fear and go into every enterprise with an attitude of experimentation. All my 2024 goals are really the same goal, then. To experiment freely. To cease hesitating and go for it.

Bonus achievement: I wrote a short story about walking and bird-watching that came out of nowhere. It wasn’t planned, but I got excited about it and rode the wave until it was done. So despite not making progress on planned short stories, I spontaneously wrote one anyway. This is a good example of “failing to success.” I ended up writing something even though I failed to write something else. Having lots of irons in the fire, so to speak, meant that I was ready for when a new, unexpected iron needed shaping.

“Rule 3: General Duties of a Teacher: Pull Everything Out of Your Students”

November 9, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It’s not that I don’t try. I just can’t achieve it.

I can’t pull everything out of my students. I can sometimes barely pull anything out of my students.

This is one of the anxieties I have always had about myself as a teacher: that I’m rubbish. I don’t think I’m a complacent or “going-through-the-motions” type, but despite my attempts, my enthusiasms, my professional development, I can’t fulfill Rule 3. I simply don’t know how or don’t have the ability.

I’ve been putting off writing about this Rule because doing so would mean admitting failure. (Perhaps I should glance down at Rule 6 for some perspective…)

If I wondered what Rule 2 means, I really struggle to understand what it takes to achieve Rule 3. How does one “pull”? Is it my style of teaching? Is it the work I assign? Is it the reading list, the pedagogy, the grading system, the relationships I try to form? What is it that pulls everything out?

It sounds coercive. It’s not “coaxing everything out,” it’s not “inviting everything out,” and it’s not just “some things,” it’s EVERYTHING. How does one person pull anything out of another person let alone everything?

I used to do this thing called “ungrading” or a grades-less classroom. I couldn’t completely abandon grades because our school still uses a GPA system and no other teachers joined me in the grades-less revolution, so at the end of the term, students still got grades. But we made the grades a collaborative thing where I sat down with each student and we talked about the work they did for the term, we looked over their portfolios, and they wrote reflections describing what they learned and what they could have done better.

When this system worked–when the students bought into it–it worked great. But most students did not buy into it. They saw it simply as a way to get an easy A. Sure, they did the work, but they still did the work as a means to an end, as a way to get a good grade. I didn’t pull anything new out of these students. And frankly, I don’t blame them for it. Why should they approach their education as anything other than a series of hoops to jump through to get a grade and move on to the next hoop-jumping season and the next grade and so on, until they get a job, I guess. We MADE this system for them, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they do their best to succeed in it.

So inviting students to learn for learning sake didn’t work, at least not when I tried it. Again, maybe that’s on me. I have anxiety about my ineffectual teaching skills. Maybe I just didn’t do a good job. Again, not able to “pull everything out.”

But when I went back to a traditional grading approach, I still couldn’t follow Rule 3. I still had no clue how to do this pulling and have it work. I could pull for them to work hard for good grades, but that didn’t feel like “pulling everything out.” That simply felt like getting them to go through the motions to achieve the external outcome they wanted.

I can pull hard work from the students, and maybe that’s enough–maybe my “hard” grading pushes them to strive for more–but it doesn’t feel like enough. I feel like there’s some secret here that I don’t understand, some qualities I don’t possess. I try to be enthusiastic. I absolutely love reading, writing, and communicating, and I believe these things are worth doing for their own sake; they make us more fully human. I try to communicate this love to my students. Is that what it means to “pull everything out”?

I give them space and opportunities to write and discover and read cool stuff. Is that what it means to “pull everything out”?

And even though I don’t do the “ungrading” thing anymore, I still try to impart a philosophy that says, “Grades aren’t the be-all, end-all. Learning and growth are the lasting rewards.” Is this “pulling everything out”?

I struggle with this Rule because I have no way to measure it. I have my efforts; I know what I’m trying to do. But do I do it? That’s what I don’t know. And that’s why I’ve struggled to write about Rule 3.

Perhaps the struggle to achieve the Rule is what fulfills the Rule. Perhaps this hope is the real duty of the teacher.

Caesar’s Triumph

November 6, 2024 / / 0 Comments

We started watching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar today in my AP Lang class.

I didn’t feel like teaching. Thinking about the play, the class, being around other people, all of it made me sick. I wanted to crawl into my Bandcamp app and listen to midwestern alternative rock for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to teach. Not today. Not today of all days, and definitely not this play with all that it is.

But as the opening scene started–Act 1, Scene 1– and “Oh Caesar, Caesar! Caesar, Caesar, Caesar!” and the drumbeat and the triumph of the plebes started, I was struck in a way I did not expect.

I always knew art could be a balm. It could be an escape.

But this was different. It was clarity. A startling truth, and with that truth some measure of consolation.

We are in a cycle. This pattern–the pattern of human behavior, of politics, of leadership, of self-interest, of anxiety, of helplessness, of being seen, of needing to be seen, of finding champions who will mirror your desires back to you, of allegiances that shift like quicksilver, of worry, of glories long-past, of the need for some cash, of the need for some scapegoats–all of it is a wheel, turning and turning, each spoke of the circle destined to repeat.

I cannot hate the plebes (of which I am one and not one all at once), as I cannot condone the condescension of the patricians, even if my head agrees. Once we get to Caesar’s triumph into Rome, it’s too late. Brutus never had a choice. Conspire, don’t conspire. None of it mattered. Rome was going to fall to Caesarism no matter what.

The play is incredibly dark, but not untrue. Watching that opening, as the tribunes chastise the plebes, as the plebes want nothing so much as a holiday, as we await the ominous fate of Flavius and Marullus (“they are put to silence”), we know where the train is headed and that it can’t be stopped. Once the triumph starts, the play is on its way. It can only end with Octavian’s raised fist and “this happy day.”

I don’t know why, but watching it unfold on the screen–a dramatization of the pattern we simply cannot escape–was strangely comforting. There are artists, writers, poets who have seen what we have seen and they have responded to it–not with despair, but with creation. Not much can be done, in the immediate, but art can be done, and it can last, and generations hence shall act this lofty scene “in states unborn and accents yet unknown!” and that’s more than a comfort.

It’s a call, a voice out of time, a reminder that poetry still stirs the heart. That theater and performance and art and imagination are not dead. They are part of the cycle too, and they are destined to keep turning.

Dear Mom, the mother in the story is not you (but maybe…)

July 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Avalon Summer is somewhat based on my real childhood, especially in the details of the setting, which is basically my grandparents’ home in Michigan.

And yes, the main character, Sarah, is similar to ten-year-old me.

And yes, there are other characters who have some basis in real people from my childhood.

But no, it’s not an “autobiographical” novel. I made up a lot of stuff. It’s fiction. It borrows from my real life, but it’s not real.

Every story I write borrows from my real life. That’s how writing works, at least for me. Fiction is a stew made from real life experiences, art/literature/music, and imagination. We mix all the things we’ve ever read, seen, and heard with all the things we’ve ever lived through, and we add our own imagination and dreams to the pot, and that’s what we draw from, that’s the elixir we drink when we conjure up these tales.

The mom in Avalon Summer is an actress who is getting divorced from Sarah and Jay’s dad. My mom and dad are so far from this picture as to be ludicrous. The parents in Avalon Summer are total fictions.

But I wanted some conflict between Sarah and her mom, and I wanted a reason for Sarah and Jay to be staying at their grandparents’ in a different state (mom’s shooting a film, so they’ve been shipped off to Michigan), and I wanted to explore the inter-generational conflict between the grandmother and the mom, since the grandmother is super-practical and the mom is a flighty dreamer, and Sarah takes after her mom in some ways, so I decided to create a character who is an independent actress with a penchant for self-absorption.

My real mother is NOTHING like this.

It’s fiction. Make-believe.

And yet–

I do draw from my real life. There are aspects of Jay (the brother in the novel) that are like my real brother. The grandparents are like my real grandparents (and also different). I’ve written stories in which there are husbands and sons and daughters and parents and friends, and these characters do, in fact, share similarities to my own family and friends. How could they not?

When inventing worlds and plots and characters, a writer must draw from somewhere. She must pull from her real, lived experiences in order to make the stories feel real.

And yet, when I’m inventing these characters, when I’m drawing from my own life to give these character depth and authenticity, I’m not thinking about how one day, the people in my life will read these stories and wonder, perhaps, if I am writing about them.

I’m not, of course. I’m writing fiction.

But then again, I am. I’m stealing from my own life. It’s all I know, this life of mine. How could I not use it as fodder for my stories?

I get nervous, when I think about my brother or my husband or my children reading my stories. Not because I’m spilling secrets or whatever, but because they might wonder, “Is that me? Am I like that? Is that what she really thinks?”

It’s not, and no, it isn’t. I’m not writing autobiography.

But I can’t deny that the people in my life are in my stories in small ways. In little details. In mannerisms and aspects of personality. As inspiration and jumping off points.

I don’t want my fiction to fray any relationships, but I also feel compelled to be honest. To write the world as I see it. I have to draw from somewhere, and so I draw from my experiences, from my life.

And the person who is most often in my stories, the person I draw the most from, is, of course, me.

If the mother in Avalon Summer is anyone, she is the part of me that worries that I’m not a very attentive mom. That I’m wrapped up in my own career and not focused enough on my children. That I’m dreamy and flighty and forgetful.

I steal from my own life, from the people in it, but most of all, I steal from myself. The experiences, the relationships, the memories, they are all filtered through me, the writer. If anything is revealed in my fiction, it’s my own heart. My own fears. My own flaws.

Killing Critical Voice: A Re-watch

July 2, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Last November I took the WMG Publishing workshop called “Killing the Critical Voice” with author Dean Wesley Smith. At the end of the workshop, he told us to put a reminder in our calendars to re-watch the workshop in six months. That reminder popped up for me the other day, so I’m going to attempt a re-watch of the workshop.

The first time around, “Killing the Critical Voice” was a HUGE help to my productivity. It gave me a lot more confidence as a writer. Paired with another WMG workshop called “Speed,” I was able to get back into a groove with my fiction that had been previously stalled since my return to teaching last August.

At this point, in June 2024, I’m not quite sure I need to re-kill my Critical Voice — I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the ways Critical Voice often tries to shut me down and make me doubt my work, and I’ve got systems and habits of mind to help battle that doubt — but maybe a little extra boost of confidence will do me good.

As I read and study what other writers and artists say about their creative practice and mindsets, the more it becomes clear that the prolific artists understand that Creative Voice wants to make things, whereas Critical Voice wants to stop things. “Fix” is Critical Voice talking. “Create More” is Creative Voice talking. It’s interesting that the Matthew Dicks book I just finished also emphasized how important it is to create as much as possible. Dicks’s message was that making things leads to making more things. Smith’s Critical Voice workshop has a similar message. Critical Voice exists to stop you. Creative voice is abundant. It wants you to make MORE.

I will say, my fiction writing has been going slowly lately. Feels like Critical Voice is sneaking in. One of my biggest frustrations as a writer is that I can’t seem to produce words as quickly as I’d like. I want SO BADLY to be highly prolific, but I can’t seem to get it going. Every year, I wish I could write four or five novels, and every year, I’m disappointed. I know this is Critical Voice stopping me. Yes, there are days when I don’t have a lot of time, but honestly, I can find the time if I wanted to. But instead, when I have pockets of time, I tell myself, “I don’t have enough time to really get started.” It’s that phrase, “really get started,” that’s a killer.

I am afraid to start. That’s ultimately what’s stopping me. My Critical Voice is whispering negative thoughts all the time: “Why bother starting. It won’t be good enough.”

Good enough for whom?

Well, that’s my problem right there. I want my writing to be judged well. I want to be lauded. And it’s that desire for accolades, for atta girls, that stops me.

If there were no standards to measure up to, I could write more and faster and not let the “lack of sufficient time” stop me from getting a few sentences or paragraphs down.

If I wrote some fiction in all the little pockets of time I had throughout the day, I could probably write 2,000 words per day easily.

IF.

If I used those pockets of time to write. If I followed Bradbury’s advice: “Don’t think.” If I wasn’t afraid of being judged badly.

So maybe I DO need this re-watch of the Killing Critical Voice workshop.

I’m still blocked. I’m still operating from a fear mindset.

Thinking about my goal-setting for 2024, what if I went really big? What if I said, “My goal is to write FOUR novels in the remainder of this year”?

That seems like an impossible goal at the moment, but what if it isn’t? What if I could write 2,000 words per day just by writing whenever I get the chance and not being afraid to write badly? What if I made sure to do the best I could every time I wrote a sentence but not WORRYING if others think my best is “good enough”?

If I could write 2,000 words per day, starting now, I could write four novels this year. That’s crazy. But not crazy if I stop operating by fear and start operating with joy.

Bradbury calls it “gusto.” It’s the Creative Voice wanting to play. What would my writing life look like if I called my Creative Voice to come over and play?

Looking at my kids, they pretty much play every second of their lives. It’s us, the parents, who are trying to shut down the games for five freaking seconds so we can finish a meal or brush some teeth in a reasonable amount of time. But the kids? They are ALWAYS PLAYING. Everything is a game to them.

This play-based mindset is what I must cultivate in my writing practice. Every free moment must be for playing in my creative worlds. If I can make that switch, I really can write four novels this year. If I can make that switch, I can write so much more than I ever thought possible.

I was skeptical that I needed this re-watch of the workshop, but jokes on me. I needed it.

Kill the Critical Voice. Set the Creative Voice free.

Isabel Stories

July 1, 2024 / / 0 Comments

“Once upon a time there was an owl named Isabel, and she lived in a willow tree in the backyard of a little girl named Natalie.”

opening line of every isabel story

I don’t remember when I started telling Isabel stories to my daughter. She was little, maybe two or three. We got the name from a Natalie Merchant song called “The Adventures of Isabel,” and I got the owl because owls are my favorite type of bird, and the adventures I invented happened mostly at night (these being bedtime stories), so it felt only natural that Isabel should be an owl.

Isabel lived in the willow tree in our backyard (which I have very recently discovered is not a willow tree at all but a type of cherry tree… more on this later). Every story started with this fact, and every night (at least in the early days), my daughter would look out the window at the willow tree. Of course, Isabel was never seen because it was nighttime and Isabel would be off doing owl things, but we pretended she lived there. I pretended she lived there. My daughter often asked, “Does Isabel really live in the tree?”

“I think she does,” I would answer. It was, looking back, a cruel answer.

Isabel had a number of friends, from the fireflies that dotted the lawn at dusk, to a wolf named Wilbert and a beaver named Benny. The opening patter (after introducing Isabel and her tree) always included the line, “She had lots of adventures and lots of friends,” so naturally, I had to invent some friends for her to have.

Behind our house is a wetland, and we can’t really see much of it because of the aspens and pines that block our view, but we know it’s back there, and it became the perfect setting for all of Isabel’s animal friends to inhabit. Who knows, maybe a silly, slightly cowardly wolf really does live in that wetland. It’s quite possible a beaver lives there too. And deer. For sure there are deer. And snails and muskrats and all manner of creatures who showed up over the years to be Isabel’s friends.

Even the star bear must exist in the constellations. Isabel has flown into the heavens and met with the stars. She’s been a lot of places.

If only I could remember them all.

I’ve often told myself to write down the Isabel stories. It was always my plan. To preserve them. To remember them. Why else do I write down so much except to help myself remember?

But as the years go by, and my daughter is no longer as little as she once was, the Isabel stories have faded. I remember afterimages, little turns of phrase, a few rhymes and rhythms. But I don’t remember them all in their fullness. They are piecemeal stories now. And I reprimand myself for not writing them down when they were full and vital and alive.

I fear it may be too late. What if I can’t remember them all?

There’s a sense of desperate urgency to this because the Isabel tree must be cut down.

This is not a metaphor.

It really needs to be cut down. It’s four trunks all split off from each other, and one of those trunks is breaking away and rot is setting in, so the tree service guys have told us either we cut it down ourselves or nature will take it out for us. Storms have been bad lately. High winds. Random tornadoes out of nowhere. The tree wouldn’t fall on our house, but it may fall on our power lines and back fence. If nature takes it down, it will cause destruction.

That’s not what we want. Not for the tree. Not for us.

So we said, “Okay.” We told the tree guys to cut it down, to leave a bit of its trunks so we can try to grow button mushrooms, to stack the wood so we can use it for bonfires. We’ll remember the tree and try to honor it.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to see it go. It doesn’t mean I’m not crying as I type these words.

“What about Isabel?” my ten-year-old daughter asked me the other day when we told the kids about cutting down the tree.

What about Isabel? I thought.

“She’ll be alright,” I answered. “She’ll fly to a new tree.”

But I knew what my child was really asking. What about our stories? What about the opening to each of those tales? How can we tell another Isabel story without the willow tree?

Once upon a time there was an owl named Isabel who lived in a willow tree in the backyard of a little girl named Natalie…

Turns out it wasn’t a willow tree. The tree guys told us it was a cherry tree. We were wrong all these years.

Maybe that’s a metaphor. In my stories, Isabel always lived in a willow tree. We were wrong about the tree in our backyard, but we weren’t wrong about the story tree. The tree in our backyard was always more than just a tree. It was part of a story, and the story isn’t bound by what’s growing out of our yard, it isn’t bound by what is ephemeral, by what lives for a span and then dies. The story exists outside of that finite realm. It is more than a cherry tree succumbing to rot.

It is a love letter, a bond, a world created between me and my daughter that can never be cut down. It exists even if the real tree no longer stands. And it exists even if I have forgotten to write it down.

The Isabel story lives in my heart. In my daughter’s heart. Two trunks growing out of the same source.

I can hear the chainsaws cutting outside my window. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken.

I might not remember every word and jot of the old Isabel stories, but I remember enough. And I still have time to write down what I remember. As the tree is hewn into firewood, I can replant its stories into a new soil. I can do what I’d always planned on doing.

The old stories don’t have to be forgotten, even if what I remember is piecemeal. I can write them down, and Isabel can, indeed, fly to a new tree. The real willow tree. The tree my daughter and I both share. Two trunks, growing from one source.

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