48 days, day 15-16: issuing invitations

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

After some family time yesterday, I came home and kept my head down in 1969. Reading, listening, making notes, inviting my story to find me. Inviting. That's a huge part of what I do as a writer. I invite story in. My son Zach, former D.J., says, "Everything is a remix," and I know he's right. A little from here, a little from there, and voila, you've got a story. It's impossible to explain how it works.

This morning I woke up at 5am with this song in my head:

By the time I'd scrambled out of bed and made the coffee, I had seventeen different directions I could go with this 1969 song. Thanks for answering the invitation, Neil.

I have been making notes and gathering resources all morning. I have some direction -- some remixed direction -- for Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. Let's see if it sticks (that's another discussion for another day). Jim gigs this morning -- a Sunday brunch -- and I'm going to hunker down with these 17 directions and see if I can't get an opening -- another beginning for Book 3.

Plus, we got some rain yesterday. Halleluia, Mississippi.

I woke up with all kinds of ideas this morning. One was to write something about the Supreme Court, not just because of their landmark rulings this week, but because I've been reading about the justices and they fascinate me. I started at Wikipedia and read about Justice Scalia, then Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, Justice Ginsberg, and then started going back, started reading about the political intrigue of appointments and the history of the court -- part of this was Book 3 research (everything is a remix).

I've been reading and asking questions, curious, wanting answers -- who is this Scalia, who wrote such a scathing dissent? Who is this Kennedy, who wrote such an eloquent decision? What is Thomas up to these days? Whatever happened to Anita Hill? Is Ginsburg still a bad-ass? How many women are on the Court now? I should know these things... let me see... 

The Court is sexy again, suddenly, and I thought, Debbie, you should write a book about the Supreme Court justices and call it THE SUPREMES. hahahaha.

This is also an answered invitation, do you see? So I looked up that title and found a BBC article published June 26: "Meet the Supremes: Who are the U.S. Supreme Court Justices?" ha! Scooped! It's a great look at the current justices, though. I'd add the Wikipedia jumping-off places, too, for more.
Stories, stories, stories. I'm wrestling and remixing today. And inviting. Come on in, Book 3. Come on in... what else? What else? Who's out there? Let me go find you... or you find me. I'm right here, working away -- my door is open.

 Brother Love's Travelin' Salvation Show by Neil Diamond

Brothers, you got yourself two good hands, ain't it right?
And when your brother is travelin', he ain't got what to eat
When he's tired and he ain't got where to sleep
When his heart is filled with an ache and a pain and he ain't got who to cry along with him,
I want you to take your hand and put it out to him -- that's what it's there for

Hot August night
And the leaves hanging down
And the grass on the ground smellin' sweet
Move up the road to the outside of town
And the sound of that good gospel beat
Sits a ragged tent
Where there ain't no trees
And that gospel group tellin' you and me
It's Love, Brother Love, say
Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies
And ev'ryone goes, 'cause everyone knows
Brother Love's show

48 days, day 14: stray thoughts collected

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

 Stray thoughts:

1. 1969 it is. I spent the day there yesterday, and I made some decisions about construction of Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. I'm going to try third person vignettes next week for several characters I have in mind.

2. Quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "I don't worry about periods of not doing anything; I know my subconscious is busy." Exactly. I had enough energy yesterday to update my manifesto for the Year of Exploration. I am three months in. I've done a lot more than it looks like from the outside. What COUNTS, when you are measuring your progress? That is one of my eternal questions.

3. This piece, "The Middle of Things:Advice for Young Writers" by Andrew Solomon in the NYer, is great. Good writing, which I am always looking for. I am tempted to quote great swaths of it but will content myself with one of the many lines that resonated: "Your work is not opposed to your life; you do not have to choose between them. It is only by living in the world that you acquire the ability to represent it." Do read it if you are struggling in the middle... of anything, including your writing.

4. I'm thinking about Leo Buscaglia these days and Love 1A. I can't find my old copy of LIVING, LOVING, AND LEARNING, so I ordered one from abebooks. And I see there is a whole lot of Leo on YouTube. I might give him a new listen and see what I think, with, oh, 20 years of experience living in the world since I last listened to dear Leo.

5. I'm thinking a whole lot about love lately... period.

6. And time. My essay "On Being a Late Bloomer" is here.

Happy Weekend, friends. Live in the world. Love one another. Bloom, bloom, bloom. xo Debbie

48 days, day 12-13 making meaning

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

Yesterday (day 12) was such a low day that I didn't even try to look at Rachel or book 3 or anything else I have on my writing plate -- platter. I worked outside in the yard in 95-degree heat, I went to the dentist, I hung out with folks on social media and email, joining in the conversations or seeing what my peeps were up to in the world.

I hung out with the wonderful Penny Kittle for close to an hour, as we Skyped about REVOLUTION and the Sixties Trilogy and my writing process, as well as the way we write with young people. Thank you, Penny.

 It helped to connect, it always does. I decided to feel whatever I felt and see where that took me, instead of pushing away the low feelings.


As a writer who writes often about social justice issues, there is no way that what's happening in America today won't find its way into a book about America in the late sixties. After a couple of days at a standstill with writing work, I woke up at 6am with three songs in my head, one after the other -- boom-boom-boom.

I scrambled out of bed to write them down, to listen to them on YouTube, to research them, to read the lyrics (instead of rattling them off in my head) and see when they were released. YES. I can use these. I've put them on my Pinterest board of song possibilities for Book 3.

Human beings are meaning making machines. We are the only species to take what happens to us and try to form a narrative around it, try to make sense of it, try to understand how it informs our lives, try to make change.

So I'm going to take the confusion of my own personal stuff (once again; it seems this is what I'm always doing in my fiction) and the inconceivable horror of how we visit violence on one another in this country and can't seem to change it -- as well as the hope that we one day might -- and weave them into what I'm writing.

Book 3 of the Sixties Project asks for attention today, so that's where I'm going. Here are the songs I woke up with, in the order they appeared.

I consider them a gift to get me going again. Maybe today will be a scrapbook day, building some of the infrastructure for Book 3. I need seven scrapbooks to help me tell the story of 1968/9... to help me draw parallels to today.

Abraham, Martin, and John:

What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love:

For What It's Worth:

I'll be working with these songs this morning, seeing how they play with the stills I'm collecting for various scrapbooks. I'll be making meaning, as much as I can. Hoping to make change.