Monthly Archives: December 2021

What’s Your Theme for 2022?

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By Barbara Schiffman

In “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” novelist Zora Neale Hurston wrote: ”There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

For some of us, 2021 was a year that asked many questions. I hope to get answers to at least some of those questions in 2022.

Actor John Wayne said: “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life… It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” I also believe we learn from our experiences and life lessons, if we’re paying attention.

Writing down my unanswered Questions and last year’s Lessons helps me notice the unifying thread or pattern that’s unfolding through my life. It often lets me determine a THEME for the past year which puts what occurred in a clearer perspective

As we move from 2021 to 2022, I invite you to do this as well. Notice whether your lingering Questions &/or recent Life Lessons reflect a Theme permeating 2021. Write down whatever comes to mind. Consider this the “working title” for the chapter you’ve just written in your personal Book of Life. Know that you can refine this Theme as the pattern of your 2021 experiences becomes even clearer in hindsight.

Since each new year gives us a fresh start and opportunities to do things differently, you can also consider how you want 2022 to feel as it begins and as it unfolds. Write down whatever phrase comes to mind as your “first draft” of 2022’s Theme.

My Year Themes often come from song or book titles. In 2011, my Year Theme was the Beach Boys song “Good Vibrations.” It lifted my spirits, so I played it whenever I needed an energy boost or a reminder to stay positive no matter what was happening around me.

Themes can also be a blend of words embodying the feeling, energy, or “flavor” you’d like your year to contain. I prefer to create two or three-word phrases for this, choosing words that start with the same letter or have a similar sound, giving my Theme some rhythm or rhyme and making it easier to remember.

My 2012 Theme was “Delighted and Delicious!” When decisions, actions or opportunities arose for me that year, I’d notice if they made me feel “delighted” or “delicious” or both, and choose to take them — or not — accordingly.

At the beginning of 2013, the song “The Time of My Life” from the movie ‘Dirty Dancing’ suddenly began playing in my mind as I thought about the year ahead of me. I realized that was how I wanted to feel every day — like I’m having the Time of My Life. So it became my Theme Song for that year. I listened to several versions of it on iTunes and downloaded the Broadway show version because I could sing along to it easily. I played it in my car whenever I felt stuck. Just thinking of the song reminded me to notice how I was having the time of my life, and that my life was getting better all the time. (Another Theme Song for that year could also have been “It’s Getting Better All the Time” – thank you, Beatles!)

As I think about 2022, “(I’ll Get By) With a Little Help From My Friends” comes to mind – another Beatles classic. Maybe that can be my Theme for 2022?

Let your “inner muse” guide you to create the right Theme or Theme Song for your 2022. Feel free to share it with me at literasee@gmail.com.

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This was adapted from my Kindle Vella “Ready Set Next: Embracing Your Past to Empower Your Future” – you can read the whole Vella at https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09BF1PMWT

Politics in Fiction

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By Janice McCaffrey

I attended the Virtual National Historical Novel Society Conference in June 2021 and had an Ah-ha! moment in the workshop given by Samantha Rajaram and Carrie Callaghan which they called Identifying the Politics in Your Writing. I’ve added and in your reading.

What are the politics they refer to? The online Oxford Dictionary says: Politics are the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. (I added the bold). With that in mind the presenters asked, Who has the power? How did they get the power? How do they keep the power? Do they share it with anyone? If so, who? How do the people with power feel?

And on the other side of the coin. Who doesn’t have the power? Why don’t they have it? What can they do to get it? Why do they want it? How do they feel about not having it? If you can’t identify the person or group with the power, pay attention to the important resource they jealously guard—money, control, love, magic—and you’ll find that whoever owns that holds the power.

Power and who has it can be looked at from a macro perspective, for example who rules a country, society, organization. As well as, from a micro perspective between fewer people, clubs, congregations, families, and couples.

These concepts show up in all areas of our lives in all societies and groups. When you’re in a group of two or more sit back and observe how they interact. See if you can identify the power struggle(s) going on. Do the same when reading or writing a novel. To quote Rajaram and Callaghan, “Acknowledge and utilize the power dynamics [we see or live, and subtlety include them] in our writing.”

Another interesting workshop was called Sharpening the Blade with Julianne Douglas, Mariah Fredricks, and Karen Odden. Their handout asks, “What are the big events that all the characters will have in their collective consciousness that could cause widespread anxiety or excitement?” A couple examples would be a world war or New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Readers will be able to identify the emotions of the characters because we’ve all been introduced to wars and the big party. I recently read a novel that took place in 1941 Europe that had one Jewish character in it. As soon as I understood those three facts, I automatically became anxious and worried about the character, fearing, from my knowledge of that time and place, what the future might be for that person. It kept me reading.

These authors also asked us to perceive what political, economic, legal, educational, and social conditions would create or limit possibilities for our characters. As we write, but again, also as readers, look for these influences. And remember good writers don’t spell it out, they leave it for us readers to figure out. Which we’ll usually do through our emotional reactions that mirror those of the characters.

Both workshops gave me insight to put into action as a reader and a writer. To all five of you presenters, Thank you!

Why Is Reality So Dull…After Writing Fiction?

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By Marsha Sultz

For NanoWrimo this year, I decided to write a memoir of my mother, my aunt and me. These two women were instrumental in forming my opinion of womanhood and of how a woman should behave. Were they extraordinary examples in the canon of female wisdom? No. Well, perhaps only to me.

They were normal women of their period and place in society. Lower middle-class roots, rising marginally to respectable middle class. They grew up during the Depression of the nineteen-thirties and experienced World War II from their homes in Nashville, Tennessee.

I decided to include family history – facts uncluttered by flowery prose. I thought I’d add that in revision. But midway through the month, it came as a thunderbolt that the reality of my entire family was unutterably dull. At least from the perspective of a shareable memoir.

How do memoirists charm us into their intimate world? How do they take a mundane life (sorry, but most of our lives include the mundane) and turn it into a fascinating look at a unique human being?

I realize any first attempt at a new genre is a long uphill slog but, like any saggy middle, I was struck by the fact that reality – even my reality – is often quite dull. Did I have the stamina and the imagination to pursue my initial vision of these women? Was I a good enough writer to turn their lives into a meaningful treatise on how our mothers and other elders can influence a young life?

So many questions.

At one point in my life, I was interested in family genealogy and shared with my brother my attempts to find the hidden mysteries of our heritage. He scoffed, he sneered, he thought I was searching for royal connections.

As if.

“All our relatives were poor dirt farmers in rural Tennessee,” he said. “You won’t find anything interesting.”

As in many conversations with my brother, I came away angry but determined to continue. He didn’t understand that I wasn’t searching for notable connections, I was trying to understand how my forebears lived their daily lives. How they got to market or raised their children. Where they lived and why they chose to settle in a backwoods county in the rural South.

Maybe the germ of my memoir started there. Trying to understand the meaning of a life, no matter how humble. I’ll try to hold that in my thoughts as I turn my memories of two women I loved into a testimonial of their generosity toward a young, impressionable girl.

At the end of November, I think I’ll return to my novel revisions with a lighter heart and a renewed sense of purpose. And with gratitude that I can breathe a sigh of relief and create a new reality not dependent on pesky facts.