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

Flee for the Weekend

At the AWP conference in Chicago, I was lucky to attend the panel on pregnancy called Writing Motherhood. I was surprised by a few things 1) how many of the people in the audience were not pregnant, and 2) how many of them were men. It was standing room only in a rather large room (more than a hundred attended) – and the Q&A ran so long the next panel was hovering impatiently at the door.

This is clearly an issue, people.

At the panel, one of the writers admitted that her means of securing real mental space to write is to leave her daughter with her husband for the weekend, every other weekend, while she was working on a book. In case of emergency, mommy was a phone call and a ten-minute drive away, but otherwise, someone else was cleaning, cooking, hugging, reading bedtime stories, curing boredom, shopping and schlepping, and mommy was working her fucking ass off. Again, the guilt-factor was at work. She knew she was 1) spending family money on a hotel. Parents don’t take large expenses lightly. 2) incurring spousal debt. Believe me all favors this big get paid off. 3) only allowed to do this if she really did produce great work.

The power of guilt. It’s astonishing. The writer, by the way, is Hope Edelman and she is the author of 5 books and two memoirs and has a lovely happy daughter.

She is not the only writer to check into a hotel for the weekend. There were lots of parents in the audience nodding in empathy as she discussed her method. Even more writers, particularly, those that are urban-based, pay to use a writing center. Easily 2/3 of the writers we have presented on the Pen Parentis stage are or have been members of an offsite office space. Some have chosen writing centers for the flexible hours, but others have signed up for rental workspace or even leased small offices away from the home.

I myself did the best writing I have ever done when I won a fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg Russia. There's nothing like leaving all your responsibilities behind, immersing yourself in art and thoughtful seeing and just living a writer's life. I came back with a rewritten opening to a novel and a short story that will be published this coming March - after making the short list on three different contests. It's great writing - and it reminds me how high the bar has to be set...even if I have to pick up the kids after school in the middle of writing the best paragraph ever.

I hear all you single parents – I agree it’s not fair to hear solutions that require not only dual incomes but also free babysitting. Next time I’ll talk about what two successful single moms said at our Salons.

Escape to Nirvana

Wow. Sorry that took so long - I didn't mean to leave you hanging in the middle of a blog post, but I was combing hair. Boy hair. Girl hair. My hair. And doing laundry. Some sixty-five dollars worth of it. It's insane how quickly time flies when your kid comes home with...lice.

Yes. Thanks to the vagaries of a boys-only sleepover. I was briefly transported to the middle ages. Horrific. And definitely on the top-ten things I never even briefly thought could keep me from writing until I had kids....ooh. That's for sure going to be a later post.

For now, here's the continuation of my thoughts on creating mental space.

So: 

Who among us hasn’t dreamed of six weeks as a resident in an artist colony, far away from real life, surrounded by genius writers who only want to inspire other writers?  Oh the bliss of waking naturally, refreshed and ready, having breakfast served to you as you sit quietly over coffee thinking about the work you will continue today. The characters are fresh in your mind, and last night, you dreamed of a new plot twist, one that will work admirably to get the Jamaican maid into the room where she will witness the downfall of the young man she must serve but secretly loves. You are excited. You leave the dishes on a sideboard and dash off to your private cabin, where your printout is plastered all over the floor. You snatch up chapter 12 and start to scribble in the margins. Before you know it, it’s lunch time, and someone has left you a basket of fruit, cheese and bread by the door. You go for a solitary walk along a winding forest path and the birds remind you that you haven’t put enough nature imagery into chapter 3. You return to your cabin, brew a fresh pot of coffee, and get back to work. You’re so into it, so inspired, that you skip the dinner as well as the lecture on first person vs. third person by a Nobel Prize winning poet, and you hunker down well past midnight, eating protein bars whenever your stomach growls. 

Sigh. It sounds amazing.

But the reality? It’s damned expensive and your kid's orthodontist just told you he'll need headgear as well as braces. Which means you better also save for therapy. And yes, there are many scholarships for worthy applicants, but let’s just say that you won a full residency with airfare. What parent can actually get away for that long? Six weeks? That’s like military rotation. (ok, military is longer and the consequences are more far-reaching, but give me the metaphor for just a minute).  Six weeks is enough time for a newborn to have a first tooth, take a first step, say a first word, and grow two clothing sizes. Tell me that’s something you'd like to hear about over email with a video attachment.

Nonetheless: people do it. For parents who want to go to residencies, timing is everything. Some residencies, like Yaddo, are good for parents who need to get away because they do pay allow for shorter stays and for brief family visits. And they pay for everything. That’s a serious bonus.

As a parent, you’re already super-focused and working in whatever time is allotted. A parent who takes two weeks away from his kids is going to damn straight get to work. There won’t be any navel-gazing at all, because the minute his mind strays from his novel, he will be faced with a wall of guilt. And believe me, guilt is a fantastic motivator to keep you on track. Parents who attend colonies feel they have to make the time away worthwhile—so let me tell you—that time is productive. There are pages to show for it. It’s not just a resume booster. It’s real working time.

It's definitely worth it, if you can get away. But can you?

Next week: Family Friendly Residencies.

Writing as a Parent

So I'm often asked whether Pen Parentis is for people who write about parenting.  Our mission is quite the opposite: we want to encourage writers to continue on the creative track they were on before they had kids.   That said, parents need to build college funds - or just pay rent! - and in a world where it is increasingly difficult to get paid for your typed strings of excellent thoughts, writing about parenting is definitely still a lucrative market.

So here are a few articles I've collected to guide you if you do decide to (or can't possibly help) writing about the experience of having kids:

Pros & Cons (from WoW)

List of Markets (from FreelanceWriting)

How to Begin (from AbsoluteWrite)

More Markets (from WritersWeekly)

You don't have to play the guilt game (from Babble)

It's overwhelming to be a parent and the idea of monetizing what you are stuck thinking about all the time anyway is a compelling idea. But when have you ever been thrilled to turn a joyous hobby into a paid endeavor? It can strip all the fun out of the fun.

Remember - writing "for money" about your experiences as a parent is going to be just as much work as writing your novel--so you're still not paying attention to your kids while you're doing it -- and what's worse, it's no escape from the 24/7 of parenting, like writing fiction can be.

But if you must, you must. Let me leave you with a word of advice.

If you choose this route, ensure you leave room to nurture your creative non-parent self. Cash the paycheck and spend it on a babysitter so you can go to your local library and write a few pages of your very own. Or if you haven't got any juice left, then by all means: read a book.