Amy C Collins

when I grow up...

I have wanted to be and do many things in my short life, and many of them I have, or least given the idea a fair shake. It's either a burden or a blessing to have so many interests, depending on the view, which varies with the hour. My leanings tend to have a common thread though, especially the motivation for certain entertained ideas about what I will be when I grow up.

When I was four years old I told my mother I wanted to be a maid when grew up, because then I could ride the city bus to work. 

In the 9th grade I wanted to become a priest, so that I could write and deliver sermons every week. 

In college I was going to be a famous photographer-writer-writer-photographer and live, always and forever, in New York City, a romantic and awesome life. 

In New York, as a waitress, I thought I'd return to school and earn a P.h.d. so that I could wear blue jeans to work and have summers more or less off, living the romantic, intellectual life of the thinking, writing (publishing) professor. 

Then, selling wine for an importer/distributor in New York, I thought of starting up my own wine import/distribution company, so I could be in charge. And wear blue jeans. 

Once, very briefly, in a hired car traveling north from Salta to Cafayate in Argentina, I thought I might become a luxury/sport car reviewer for a women driver's magazine. I had a great idea for reviewing a vehicle by how it drove in four-inch heels. I believed in this path with every organ, until the obvious, and then the other obvious, slapped me hard in the face.

Today, I am a writer - a columnist - a sometime copy writer, a journalist, a short story enthusiast, and a cartoonist, readying her product line debut. 

And tomorrow I become a novelist, in blue jeans.

Ever heard of NaNoWriMo? It's the acronym for National Novel Writing Month and it's totally awesome and I'm going to do it for the first time ever starting bright and early tomorrow morning. Yowsers!

 

Here's the quick skinny:

NaNoWriMo is a non-profit organization that sponsors a world-wide novel writing event every November. "Thirty days of literary abandon!" They help aspiring writers get to work, to produce 50,000 words of a first draft. They also sponsor a young writers program to help adolescents follow a dream, create something amazing and accomplish an adult-sized practice in discipline, all through community sharing, organization-sponsored pep talks and writing encouragement.

And here's the pitch:

Because NaNoWriMo is a non-profit organization it runs on author-generated donations. I would love, love, looove it if you could reach deep down in your pockets and make a small donation to this awesome organization and help cheer me on during this very scary, crazy 30 days of November. I got us started with $10, which is kind of a lot for me right now, as you may know, so I challenge you to match my ten, or show me up with $25!

You can sponsor/donate Here:

 Donate, Feel Good, Foster a Writer Today!

I can't promise to hit 50,000 words by November 30th, but I'm damn sure going to try. And you can look forward to updates on that nail biting, blood letting process on this blog.  

 

OK, back to the column:

Aside from the clear presence of aspiring writer, blue jeans show up a lot on my career agenda. Is it wrong to want something so simple, to desire only to be comfortable and free in my work? The stark reality is I will likely end up in a job wearing slacks or a skirt, blouse and (God help us) short heels - but probably flats. I haven't worn stockings since junior high (and that was under forced mandate).

My reasons seem, I don't know, slightly off-reality? For example, I chose a college (in part) in the North Carolina mountains because my thick, curly hair looked so much better there than it did in hot, humid Florida. I also chose it because I spent summers up there hiking in the woods and rafting down the Nantahala. I didn't know that the sky remains grey for 6 months of the year, that snow and ice accumulate so as to trap you on the mountain.

Maybe I have some work to do in this area, a little broader thinking on the what-to-be front. Or maybe it doesn't matter and everything will work out fine just as it always has. (And by the way, I did take the city bus quite a bit while living in NYC, and I did once write and deliver a sermon from the pulpit.)But, in the meantime, I'm still writing and cartooning and you better believe, wearing blue jeans.

 

 

between the ears

A couple weeks ago Tim and I had a conversation while standing in two different rooms. I can't remember the subject matter or what I said before this exchange, but he paid me a lovely complement, impressed as he was with my solid, self-assured position. Flattered, I walked into the room from whence he spoke, and with a big smile I asked,

"Did you just say, I'm always self-confident?"

He smirked and replied, "I said, you always have a comment."  

Well I should hope so, wordsmith, am I!

That story found it's way into art class the next day, becoming, it would seem, the catalyst for a day of missed-connections comedy. Did you just say... was the catch phrase, followed by a definite mistake. Ha, ha. It was great fun. But I'm still thinking about how I inferred a compliment from a polite, please lay off, or just go ahead and stop talking for a while. 

We hear what we are prepared to hear, be it good or bad, and like anything else, what we absorb and what we expend, is a choice. I need to be confident more than I need encouragement these days. Starting a business from scratch, with a dream, some intuition and a whole lot of courage demands, I'm figuring out, a staid confidence to the core, regardless - especially regardless - of others opinions, doubts and indifference. I like to think I'm embarking on a new journey, yes, that of new business venture, but more importantly, one of total faith in myself. I like to think I'm leaving the dock of support-dependant-me and taking the wheel of believe-in-myself-me, moving away from the safe, complacent shore and out across uncertain territory, that I might just walk on water. And all this has something to do with becoming the woman I want to be. But enough about moi.

Do you believe, that at certain times in your life, your ideas and feelings for a person, an idea, an entity, were colored by your surrounding, peer crowd, maturity (or immaturity)? Can we agree that our emotional dispositions anchor how we understand the world and each other?

                      

Every day is different, both the events and our reactions to them. Today, for example, I hate writing. Because I've been submerged, blissfully, in learning new software, creating a new blog design and general product creation, et al, in preparation for my new business - the re-launch of Mable - I've had to rack my brain for something to write about. It's not just that. Focusing on the new project has made me want to hunker down and hibernate until everything is as I want it to be. I'm a horse in blinders driving through the thick woods of new frontier. (let's nickname this post, Bad Metaphor Monday)

Still, we hear what we want to hear, what we need to hear, what we have conditioned ourselves to hear. It's a gorgeous day out and while I've dragged the morning well into the afternoon, effectively spending an entire day on this wee and possibly totally insignificant post, I vow to land on the upside. Maybe it's enough just to recognize when I hear something I don't like, something that feels like a threat or an insult or a smothering of my excited ideas, I check my receiver for personal interference first. But if I can keep positive, then it will likely all sound good. And if it sounds like a compliment, you better believe I'm taking it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

book review: The Borrower

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

OK, so I admit I loved this book before I even read the first page. I've read several short stories by Rebecca Makkai in the last few years in various publications and on her website and, truth be told, I can't remember how I first discovered her, just that I fell instantly for her story lines, her prose, her startling truths about life (always my favorite!). And so it was that I had forgotten all about her forthcoming first novel and happened across it one day in the library, when I needed nothing to read, just to use the facilities and burn a few minutes before a job interview.

Thank you, Rebecca!

The Borrower is about a 26 year old children's librarian with a deep, Russian streak of self-righteousness and fight, which she inherited from her father and his illegal, illicit ways. She's also, like so many of us at that age, dissatisfied with her life, gently flailing, if you will, and unsure what to do next. Naturally, she follows the instructions of ten year old Ian Drake on a fictional grandmother goose chase from small town Hannibal, Missouri to the upper reaches of Vermont, along the Canadian border. Poor Ian has runaway from home, from his oppressive, narrowly religious parents who are sending him to gay rehab classes - all of this Lucy knows about and feels she must rescue him.

Makkai writes humor into this wonderfully fictional tale - I could never see it going down like this in real life but love the what if and why not of such a premise - and captures the silliness and energy of a ten year old boy with just enough cute to make you fall for him. Of course, there is the matter of Lucy's father and his heroic tales, a very literary horn reference to a facial imperfection, and an inner battle for good over evil, truth over lies, direction over running away.

I love this book for it's beautifully concise sentences - which I know Makkai spent hours combing through despite the ease with which they read, giving me the feeling that she knew exactly what she was doing when she wrote the first sentence - and it's humor, it's truths, it's fun. Bravo!

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which one's crazy?

I used to try to qualitfy myself as good crazy, a justification really, a search for solid ground during my confused early twenties. One night over martinis I dropped this line, in the middle of some ridiculous anecdote, probably meant to showcase bravado or character, to my friend Joe, to which he responded, "crazy is measured by degree, not kind." I've held this bit of insight rather high in my life's philosophies, as it helps to avoid rationalizing the ugly over taking direct responsibility. Still, there remains the question of crazy; slippery and evasive, obvious and profound, both epheremal and perpetual, and as individual and unique as our own DNA. 

This is a true story.

Late in the 1940's Ned Stevenson, called 'Fat', worked for the Florence Lumber Company in Florence, Alabama, alongside Nobis Wiley, called 'Bear', and a man named Claude. They worked in the lumber yard, making deliveries, sorting orders and the like. One day, Bear, a big man, started to lose it. Whatever went on in Bear's head and manifested itself in outward expression, no one knows, but it was clear enough things weren't right and the men deferred to their boss, Mr. Uhland Redd, for direction. 

The idea of mental illness had years to go before an inkling of understanding and compassion would play on the lives of the afflicted. Later, Bear would be diagnosed paranoid-catatonic schizophrenic, but on that day, he just seemed to be out there, and enough so that Uhland Redd thought he needed to ride down to Tuscaloosa. A ride to Tuscaloosa had nothing to do with football back then; it meant you lost your marbles; it meant you were going to Bryce - Alabama State Hospital for the Insane.

Uhland elected Fat and Claude to make the trip, gave them a car, a flashlight and a gun, and off they went, Claude in the driver seat, Fat riding shotgun and Bear sitting, restlessly, I imagine, in the back. Bear had a twin brother, Otis, who was short and stocky and had a high, squeeky voice. On Sunday mornings Otis would stand in front of the courthouse with a tamborine and a bible and preach the holy gospel of Jesus Christ, which has nothing to do with this story but to add a little color, another degree. 

At some point on the trip Bear grew agitated and Fat offered to let him hold the flashlight, hoping it would calm him down. The details of the 120 mile trip are lost. At what point and why did they pull over, what negotiations went down, we can't know. But that evening Mr. Redd received a phone call from Bryce Hospital wanting to know which one was crazy. They'd arrived with Claude and Fat in the back seat. Bear was driving, and had posession of both the flashlight and the gun.

 

 

 

book review: The Last American Man

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you, Keely for introducing me to this book - a nonfiction account of Eustace Conway, founder and director of Turtle Island nature preserve outside Boone, North Carolina (where I went to college) and where my roommate learned, from Eustace, how to skin a goat, among other things, and subsequently left said goat head in our freezer for six months. The personal connection peaked my interest. And I've actually been to Turtle Island, seen "Everybody's", the communal sleeping barracks, and the outdoor kitchen, though I never slept there (too busy planning a move to NYC).

I was also interested in this book because it's the story of a contemporary man who lives completely off nature, wears buckskin clothing, which he makes, slept for seventeen years in a teepee, and eats only what he can grow, forage or hunt. That's impressive enough, but add a shrewd business sense, one that acquired 1,000 acres of prime mountain top real-estate in late 1980's North Carolina, by touring schools and selling nature as a way of life, and you've got a pretty complicated man.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, exercises her professional journalism skills and talks to everyone from Eustace's family and former Turtle Island apprentices (lots of them) and his many, many ex-girlfriends to paint a picture of what a passionate, enthusiastic, talented, egotistical, impossible man Eustace Conway is. Gilbert's frank and self-deprecating voice, as in Eat, Pray, Love, is endearing and conversational as she explores, above all, the dysfunctional relationship Eustace Conway has with his father, Eustace Conway. To be dismissive, they're both assholes. But life is never so simple and Gilbert demonstrates exactly that, in succinct, if not polished, prose.

Eustace Conway is an idealist, a dreamer, a believer with a partial blindness to his own faults, like so many of us, and an inability to get around himself. It was a roller coaster for me - I liked him, then I didn't like him. Gilbert spends a lot of time justifying Eustace's behavior because his father was such an asshole, to which I want shake them both (author & subject) and tell them, get over it, forgive the man and work on your own self! She also spends a lot of time delivering Eustace's sermons on the crisis we Americans are in, namely, that we've lost our common sense, that we are too emotional, too entitled, and have become something very close to milquetoast (agreed).

And in the end, I like Eustace Conway. I like what he represents. I like that he makes me want to learn to hunt and skin a deer, to be completely self-sustaining, that I could survive if I needed to, without the burdens of material things. I like that he's trying to figure out how to be truly happy.

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typing for Steve

It may be coincidence that the week Steve Jobs dies I happen to be obsessing over fonts and typeface. I'm working on the re-launch of Mable and Cartoon Fridays (please feel free to leave supportive comments below). Mable will have a new title, something catchy and fun to say, and her very own blog with her very own typeface. She'll have her own Etsy shop, too! Mable has garnered an awful lot of positive feedback in her short existence and, demanding a good bit of my attention, I thought it high time she earn her keep. All of this - my ideas of success for her, both monetary and creative expectations and hopes - is a shot in the proverbial dark. The outcome is unknown. This new endeavor is not a sure thing. No, I know, nothing is. But creativity lives alongside the abyss of uncertain outcomes; it's a constant; they're siamese twins.  There is never a guarantee. 

A letter arrived in my email inbox last week from Typekit, a company that provides web fonts through subscription rather than the traditional route of licensing each font with the font's developer.  Typekit provides the unique font on this blog (and the two you will find on the forth coming new project), announcing their sale to Adobe. They are thrilled and feel the move will allow them to grow in new ways, to provide more unique fonts across the web. But it's this brief paragraph that caught my attention:

Not very long ago, web fonts were a curious and controversial debate. When the four of usfounded this company, nobody knew if it would even work. We set up shop in a former morgue, sketched out a plan, and nervously published our first blog post. The response was immediate and not completely positive, but we’d fired the starter’s pistol. The race was on.

Also last week in my inbox was a newsletter from Behance, an online platform where creatives can showcase their work and editors and recruiters can discover fresh talent. I use a simple publishing app through  Behance on my LinkedIn page to present some of my visual work. In the newsletter was an article about the unknown factor in creativity, the necessity of braving, and loving, the unforeseeable outcome. Creativity is a risky business and Jonathan Fields, with a new book, Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance addresses the neuroscience behind creativity and decision making in this article:

"Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Alchemy of Fear" by Jonathan Fields 

What the two aforementioned companies have built their foundation on is online creative expression, graphic arts, digital arts, social media innovations, all of which would not be possible if it weren't for a hungry genius who built a computer in his garage forty years ago, a computer designed specifically for creativity. My progress with Apple products and creative expression over the years has been slow and largely self taught, which is to say, I know just enough about it to make me think I know what I'm doing, (which is usually when it's time to admit we don't). I'm a die hard Apple fan - the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the MacBook. I fear the possibility of landing a job where I'd have to use a PC - something akin to fingernails on a chalkboard. But I'm just an amateur. And that is what Steve Jobs has done for us. He pushed innovation into the hands of laymen and gave everyone the opportunity to be an amateur creator in their own homes and without the classifications of Can Do and Can Not, with intuitive programs and open exchange of information, unlike the separatist, aggravating, (unattractive) monolith, Microsoft.

When the first Apple computer came out in early 1984 it was equipped with beautiful fonts based on the ancient invention of typography. Ten years ago those typefaces were limited to just a few. Today there are thousands of unique, beautiful fonts available (even to amateurs) across the internet. It's amazing, if you stop to think about it. And all because Jobs took a non-matriculated calligraphy class in college, as he explains in this 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. This video was all over Facebook last week, but if you haven't seen it, watch it. Then watch it again. 

While I build my new blog and prepare my work to share online, I'm thankful for the opportunity to take on this challenge, with the hope, and faith, that some good will come of it. I'm indebted to a tireless innovator who's life work has undoubtedly changed the landscape of how we, how I, think about creative expression and the exchange of ideas. A true originator, Steve Jobs, faced uncertainty again and again, chased it, demanded optimal outcomes, and achieved them. I could easily find peace and sanity with a pencil and sheet of paper, but I much prefer the tap-tap of the MacBook beneath my fingers and the sleek graphics before my eyes, and so with due reverence, I'm typing for Steve. 

 

 

 

 

 

choking the muse

I love to read books about writing. They give a sense of both community and intimicy without personal commitment or getting out of bed. Every one is a favorite read and yesterday I added another - Ann Patchett's The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life - which I bought from byliner, an ingenious new source for digital publications where each work is short and easily read in one sitting. 

Every single writer's memoir I've read makes the same statement - that when it comes to sitting down and writing, almost anything sounds better than actually writing, that the act of doing writing skates on the thin edge of hate. It makes zero sense, to hate doing something you love, but the sentiment appears to be universal. Even Joyce Carol Oates, with over 50 published novels and countless plays, essay and poetry collections in her oeuvre, writes in The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art that whole mornings pass by and all she can show for it is a long day dream and a list of songbirds that have flown past the office window (and obviously that isn't true very often, but still, the point is made). Only Stephen King, in his writing memoir On Writing, denies any block or lag or distraction ever occurs in his writing process. He also vehemently warns against using adverbs, though he uses them frequently in his own work, unsparingly. Patchett, too, writes how difficult it is to sit down and write, that the distractions are plenty and (almost) unavoidable. Only when she was awarded a seven month residency with a small stipend in an artist colony was she free of ready diversion and so wrote her first novel. This morning I had nothing to say and little desire to write. I locked myself out of the house instead. 

 

Back Story

There's something in air lately. Goldenrod, me thinks, for the nasal passages are dryish and the sinuses tender. I awoke with a faint tension/migraine headache and took the prescribed medication to ward off a three day pain binge. As always, the medication makes me very, very sleepy, and at one o'clock had yet to produce a single word, having spent all morning cruising the internet, waiting for the muse to show up. I took the dogs out and lingered in the yard, bathing in sunlight in the garden, watched the hummingbirds and the last of the season's butterflies. This usually helps, but not today. Soda! We need a soda! my ego cried.  So I drove to the market and back (only a six minute detour), and that's when I couldn't get back in the house. No, there wasn't a window open and the front door key apparently doesn't work, which is weird, because it used  to work. The cell phone sat on the kitchen counter, unreachable. I ran over to my sister's place and she gave me a mystery key that doesn't fit any of our doors either. Mom is somewhere in Alabama but not within a hundred miles for another couple days. Hunger became a pressing issue and, wallet in hand, one I could solve with a delicious lunch out at my favorite local coffee spot, McGraw's. Lunch improved the situation, even I was in in public in my writing attire, which is to say, a step dressier than pj's. As I was leaving to head up the street to Tim's, because surely Tim could save me, I joked to April, who works the counter at said favorite coffee shop, that maybe I subconsciously locked myself out as an excuse not to meet the deadline. She suggested it was a pretty good topic to write about, our subconscious behaviors and misbehaviors, which got me thinking about this quote Tim wrote down for me from Quantum Physics for Poets:

Perhaps human consciousness may be explained as a quantum state phenomenon.

On returning to the house I jimmied a thin cheese cutter borrowed from the studio between the door and the jam to no avail. The dogs freaked out (good to know they're at attention when someone tries to break in). Checking the first floor windows again I discovered an unlocked one sealed shut from the paint job last winter. Finally, a chance to be clever! A paint scraper in the garage did just the trick and I was in through the dining room window in no time. (Note: window is now securely locked, so don't get any ideas).

Ah, now I could write. But wait! We need chocolate! And there's nothing sufficient in the house, my ego wailed, We must go for ice cream! Twenty minutes later: and one more cup of coffee!

 

Choking the Muse               

It's hard to say if I subconsciously rigged a ridiculous situation only to find something to write about today, or if my absent minded slipping the lock simply staved off another eventual rant. Am I choking her back or beating her into giving it up?  I don't think we have the science to explain this quantum conundrum. Nor time left in the day to chastise. It's done. And cocktail hour is upon us.