Guest Blogger: Birgitte Rasine, Preparing for Colombia

Hope everyone has their tickets or reservations to Tuesday's Andaz Pen Parentis Authorfest!  It's going to be a great time! If you haven't yet reserved: click here and please note, it's standing room only at this point!  In the meantime, please read on for the first guest blog from Pen Parentis member Birgitte Rasine who is leaving today for a writing trip to South America with her toddler in tow:

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First things first: a big warm thanks to Milda De Voe for enthusiastically embracing the idea of blogging from the field as my family and I embark on a 2-month-long trip in Colombia.

Yes, we’re about to ship off to one of the world’s most beautiful, exotic, and in some minds, dangerous countries.

It’s not the first trip—I’ve been to Colombia a number of times, and loved it more each time.  But it was never a writing-retreat-slash-black-piranha-wrestling-in-ancient-rivers-slash-Caribbean-island-vacation-turned-potential-international-conflict.  With a toddler.

It’s the end of the year, and three years since my husband and I were able to have a real vacation (get-togethers for weddings and Christmas in Florida don’t count!).  So we decided to take two months in South America.  For him, it’s a chance to soak up several weeks of extreme fishing in the Orinoco river, for me it’s a long-deserved break from clients to do nothing but write, and for our daughter, it’s everything she has only seen in books—and the iPad.

(I’ll reveal what the Caribbean island is and why it’s involved in an international conflict in a future post.)

As any parent knows, the B.C. (“Before Children”) era simply does not compare with the A.B. (“After Birth”) period.  One is freedom, tranquility, restaurants and romantic evenings out.  The other is sleepless nights, food-strewn carpets, and classes in advanced psychology and negotiation skills.  And yet, somehow, nothing but nothing compares with being able to give your child the experience of a lifetime, many times over.  This trip is one of many that I want my daughter to experience, to open up her already inquisitive, nimble mind.  Discovery of the world simply cannot wait.

A little about me before we head off.  I’m a Czech-American author descended from a loooong family line that apparently goes back to the eleventh century.  I write shorter fiction (short stories and novellas) inspired by the painful romance of real life.  And the occasional non fiction work, like “The Serpent and the Jaguar”, a book about the Mayan Calendar and sacred time. 

As I sit here writing, my 2-year-old tucked in next to me on my usually ample executive chair, wriggling all over my lap while I endeavor to hit the right keys, I reflect on how stable and safe everything here in Northern California is (generally).  In Colombia, life is intense.  A kiss from a beetle can give you Chagas disease. Untold parasites in standing water everywhere.  Paramilitary trucks just around the bend of a rural road.  But the light is brighter, the air cleaner, the food richer and tastier, and the people are some of the most social, warm, hospitable on the planet.  Your senses sharpen, your memory is young again, and you forget where you came from.

I can’t wait to share it all with you.

Birgitte Rasine

Author

http://birgitte.lucita.net

www.facebook.com/birgitterasine

https://twitter.com/birgitte_rasine

fifteen minutes of euphoric play

Is there ever a time when we writers are working on only one thing at a time? Yes, of course, there's the big piece-- amassing a collection of stories, hammering outlines to a novel-- but somehow, creatively speaking, that big piece becomes "work" and you seem to lose (or I do, anyway) the fun of creativity.

When you come across a writing prompt "Win $2000 for a sentence that describes eating bacon!" Doesn't your mind just explode with ideas? If you're like me, there is no writing surface that is safe at that moment. Not that I plan to actually sign up for the bacons-r-us mailing list and enter the sweepstakes (it's never merit-based, it's always a random drawing, sorry) -- but the idea that words are valuable, that I can think of them quickly and it can be FUN. Well, that's why I got into writing in the first place.

because I love words.

but let's get back to the subject: buried. Of course we all have personal responsibility (sometimes, you just gotta shower) and we have interpersonal responsibilities (you also have to ensure that your kids sometimes shower) and we likely have financial responsibilities (running away from the mail man takes precious second of every day, and even then, those bills keep coming--darn federal agencies and their persistence) ... and all those take time.

But let's not complain about our awesome lives.

Instead: let's look at how buried we are in our creative work. Have any of you got only one creative project? Do you devote yourself wholeheartedly to it--treating it like a job, getting it done in manageable chunks, checking off boxes on a to-do list? Do you have an end goal like you would in an office (you can go home, Mr. Smith, when the flowchart is on my desk)?

It's certainly possible to write that way. Am I for it? I don't know. It seems that it would be "taking writing seriously" -- which is important.  But goal-oriented writing often has a lot of the magic crushed out of it. There has to be a session, somewhere, when you get inspired and it's FUN. There has to be at least a moment here or there where you aren't a slave to your flow-chart and instead your work comes easily. Doesn't there?

And we have to have playtime with our kids as well as make them take showers. And what's hard hard hard not to do as parents is cutting playtime. After all, the shower-fight is more important, right? And the writing is obviously important.

Here's my radical idea: cut the boring, slave-driven part of writing instead. Are you totally jacked on a scene that isn't working, and you have got to think about it? Instead of staying holed-up in the coffee shop while your sitter plays with your three-year old, make an unscheduled visit to the little tyke. Pop in and play a game. Find your kid's euphoria and try to recall your own. We've all been there. Then, before the tears begin, vanish back to your office-of-choice. Helga can deal with the tears (it's her job) and you might be able to ride the wave of happy-place back to working on that scene.

Worst case, you've spent fifteen minutes of actual quality time with your kid and you're still as stuck as you were before. Best case, you've spent fifteen minutes of actual quality time with your kid and while playing, you came up with the idea that broke the wall. Either way: it's fifteen minutes.

And even the New York Times agrees with me. Well, one crazy writer does, anyway. Do you?