Moments in Montclair: The Land of Docken Part 1

 

When I turned seven I was informed by adults of all sorts that I was now the Age of Reason.  Supposedly, I could discern right from wrong. I took this very seriously and thought through the morality involved in everything.  Rules became complicated, reasons for decisions became layered, black and white became gray.

My parents were patient and talked important things through with me, the reasons why we needed clean rooms, why green beans were more important than jelly beans, why David’s bed time was nine o’clock and mine was seven-thirty.  Generally, I found peace with all of these decisions. But there was one reason that I could not come to terms with:  the reason why Mrs. Docken was employed as the second grade teacher at school.

The night before second grade began, I lined up my extensive collection of holy statues and prayer cards on my bed side table in the shape of a cross. I laid in bed with my glow-in-the-dark rosary and prayed as hard as I could that I would be placed in 2-A the next morning. I longed to be among the chosen who would spend their year with Miss Faith Daley.  Not only was her name a fitting Catholic teacher name, she was perfect. And lovely. And soft-spoken.

In the weak morning light, I donned my plaid jumper, smoothed my blonde hair into place with matching blue plastic barrettes, and climbed into our white station wagon with my three older brothers and traveled the short distance to school in a mild panic. David, Timmy and Todd all joked about my upcoming incarceration to 2-B. They had all traveled through the land of Mrs. Docken, why shouldn’t I? I had heard the stories ad nauseam over the years, how she made Todd sit in the waste can one afternoon, how Timmy had to stand with his nose to the black board. How she would ask her students to tattle on older boys who had bullied them at lunchtime and then send for them to be yelled out in front of the room. But surely, my brothers hadn’t bothered to pray so fervently in their rooms the night before the school year began.

We arrived at Immaculate Conception Elementary and my brothers dispersed in a burst of jagged laughter. I took my mother’s hand and walked, with my new book bag, past first grade to the end of the hall where the two second grade classrooms sat on either side. The class lists were typed on crisp white paper taped to each door.

A happy gaggle of smiling faces stood in a straight line outside of 2-A. Surely I would be among them.  We walked over and scanned the list.  I took my chubby index finger and pointed to each name listed in alphabetical order…  Anderson, Billings, Carson… and so on until I got to the H’s.  What??   No H’s???  I looked into my mother’s horrified face and then together we looked across the hallway to a quivering pack of students with glazed eyes and knocking knees.

The bell rang as I took my place at the end of the line outside of 2-B.  The door swung open and there she stood, a mighty block of woman in black orthopedic shoes and a patterned dress the mottled colors of a bruise.

“Straighten that line!” she bellowed. “You’re in second grade now. Act like it.”

I glanced over my shoulder at my mother’s grimace and returned her final wave. Off we shuffled in absolute silence to The Land of Docken.

Transformational Travel and Writing Retreats

Transformational Travel is a gift that we give ourselves!

I am delighted to be teaming up with various experts to create a variety of travel experiences within the US and abroad.

 Transformational Travel – Tucson!

Yoga + Writing

The next retreat will be a Writing and Yoga Retreat held at the Historic Hacienda Del Sol Guest Ranch and Resort in Tucson, AZ  5/30 – 6/2 2013.  I will be working with Yoga Master Karen Kalil Callan.  

Go to www.yogaandwriting.weebly.com  for details.  We are accepting registration now!  Space is limited so don’t delay!!  Early bird pricing through March 1st~

 Transformational Travel – Italia!

The second opportunity is a seven day transformational travel experience with travel expert Lynn O’Rourke Hayes on the Italian Riviera. It is an amazing journey of the heart and soul.  For info and photos go to www.italyretreat.weebly.com  

We will be unrolling the 2013 Italy Adventure on March 1.  Mark your calendars and check back then!

“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world”

~Mary Anne Radmacher

It would be my honor and pleasure to meet you at one of these.

Take a chance…do what you love with your one precious life!

~Susan

Next Big Thing

Last week, my friend Karen McCann tagged me to participate in the Next Big Thing online event. Of course, I am always up for some online fun. The Next Big Thing is a way for authors and bloggers to share the news about their most exciting upcoming projects.  Karen is the author of Dancing in the Fountain, a charming and inspiring book about her decision to move from Cleveland, Ohio to Seville, Spain.  She also writes a great blog called Enjoy Living Abroad that is chock full of information about the nuts and bolts of living the expat life.  She has a warm and honest approach, like an old friend letting you in on the secret to happiness. I can honestly say I am jealous of her Next Big Thing, a trip with her husband through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, maybe Albania and a few other countries.

So, what’s my next big thing?

I am quite full of news on many fronts as I have taken this year to start a business. I am happily teaching fiction/memoir to adults, hosting writing retreats (the first of which took place in Italy this past October 2012, the second will combine yoga/writing in Tucson’s famous Hacienda Del Sol in June), teaming up with a few dynamic women to start an Arizona Authors Series, and I am in the midst of rewrites for a second book. For the sake of brevity, however, I’ll focus on the book.

I am happy to answer a list of question from the NBT team:

What is the working title of your book?

Right now it is called Book 2.  I prefer an organic approach to writing and the title has yet to raise it’s hand and wave it in my face.  At some point, probably during draft #4 or so, a phrase will stand up and clear its throat.  I’ll let you know when that happens!

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Again, a story has a way of finding us when the time is right. On the eve of turning 50, I found myself emotionally wobbly and depressed. Here I thought I had already had my mid-life crisis, played out in our unplanned move to Italy, and now another was banging on my door. It just didn’t seem fair.

Feeling anxious, I sought out a few experts on midlife transition and began to read about menopause and how fifty is the new forty. The books were pleasant enough. I learned that my midsection was supposedly thickening due to some ancient pre-determined survival instinct (though I would suspect it had something to do with the huge bag of M&M’s sitting to my right).

There were a few moments of “Hell, yes, I am woman!” and the summoning of chutzpah to stand up for myself and tell people who I really am and how they needed to move over and give me elbow room so I could transform into all that I was meant to be. But honestly?  These books did not help much in the peace and happiness category. I felt manipulated by marketing. Fifty is not the new forty at all. There was a profound emotional shift going on for me, one for which I had no words.

I decided then and there to attack the other side of fifty by recommitting myself to the transformational power of surrender. The same philosophy I had come to love and understand years earlier when we lived in Liguria.  I would wait for moments to speak to me of life: where I had come from, who I was now, and where I might be going.  I would wander this unchartered territory without the rulebooks of experts in my hand.  What do they know of me?

So, with a sense of adventure, like that which had breathed new life into my soul long ago,  I headed back to Italy (I was gifted with an unexpected plane ticket… thank you God and the universe, once again.) and sought Travel as my guru and guide.  Travel and adventure are powerful teachers during times of transition. They allow us the emotional space to figure things out, to hear the whispers of our hearts, to claim our truths. Travel helps us slip out of cultural constraints for a time so we can regards ourselves in an honest way.

This book is a compilation of some of these moments abroad. How they taught me to navigate transition and feel inspired once again. They look backward, forward, and inward. They are the moments that have taught me to accept and love who I have become and look forward to the next chapter of my life with renewed vigor and sense of worth.

The process of this book has been so inspiring that I started a blog called ExPat Chat for people who have lived and traveled abroad to share their amazing stories of transformation. I love the joy that emanates from each post.

What genre does your book fall under?

Creative Non-fiction/Memoir

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have a great agent, Judith Riven, who will guide me, once again.  I wouldn’t do it without her!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

It took awhile because one can’t force inspiration. That’s the hitch with this whole surrender thing… the teacher comes when you are ready. It’s about listening and following rather than leading. Quite countercultural, but worth the wait.  I’m in the midst of rewriting at this time. It is my favorite part of the process.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The insights are wrapped around a girlfriend-y trip through Florence.  Who doesn’t want to go to Florence with her best friend?  I can’t say that the “research” for this book was torture.

And now it’s my pleasure to pass the torch on to four of my favorite writer pals, so that they can tell us about their Next Big Thing.

Stephanie Elliot is a writer, editor, a book reviewer, and has been blogging since 2004. Her first two novels almost-but-not-quite made it to publication the traditional route via her agent. She will self-publish her third novel, What She Left Us via Kindle Direct Publishing in 2013. She lives in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband of almost 20 years and their three children. Find her at Manic Mommy, friend her on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter.

Lian Dolan is an award winning broadcaster and writer. She created Satellite Sisters, a nationally syndicated radio show that won nine Gracie Allen Awards for Excellence. She created and produces The Chaos Chronicles, a humor blog and podcast about modern motherhood. She wrote regular columns for O, The Oprah Magazine and Working Mother and is now the parenting expert atoprah.com. Helen of Pasadena is her first book.

Lynn O’Rourke Hayes For more than twenty-five years Lynn has been writing and speaking about travel, technology, and family issues. From the halls of Congress to the peaks of Peru, she has combined her passion for travel and adventure with her love of family to create a varied and meaningful career. Now through her writing, photography, and consulting, she relishes sharing strategies for balancing family, work, and exploration.

She is the owner and editor of FamilyTravel.com and a weekly travel columnist for the Dallas Morning News. She has worked for two hotel companies and consulted to numerous other organizations within the travel industry.

Laura Munson is the author of the New York Times and international best-seller This Is Not The Story You Think It Is.  She lives and writes in Montana where she leads year-round writing retreats to help people free themselves on the page, no matter where they are in their writing journey.  Spaces are still available for the February 27th- March 3rd retreat.  For more info, click here: http://lauramunson.com/retreats.php.

Laura’s website:

http://lauramunson.com/index.php

The Dragonflies

I just returned from four glorious days nestled deep in the evergreen woodlands of Northern Arizona.  Rim country they called it, referring to the Mogollon Rim. Two hundred miles of dramatic rock formations, deep canyons and more sky than you have ever seen at one time.  Three of my treasured writing pals and I gathered at a mountain cabin in Christopher Creek. Call it retreating, recharging, the rebirth of the muse, call it the long exhale.  Okay, call it heaven if you must.

I am well into a job transition, deciding to leave the classroom and develop a writing based business that encompasses all of my loves: writing, teaching, speaking, traveling, and more writing.  It has not been an easy road.  And though I knew, as I stepped in that direction, that few writers can make a living this way, I felt a pull toward it. A call. And if I have learned anything from writingHalfway to Each Other, it is to follow that call, no matter how absurd it may sound to you or those around you.  It is the call of your creative soul, the dwelling place of sanity, of peace. It will only call you, and if you don’t answer it…who will?

These past two months, particularly, I have been working furiously on a new book.  It has taken awhile to get started on it, but now I am in the thick of process, shaping and rewording and spilling blood. Recently the pieces were more difficult to birth. The muse was stingy, my well of words running dry.  Pulling the proper ones into place became arduous like lining up pebbles on a steep slant. They kept rolling, shifting, falling over edges. I didn’t realize that I was entering extreme fatigue, not the kind that sends you in search of a pillow, but the kind that sends you in search of a glass of wine hoping your muse is swimming in it.

When I was invited to join these writers, I left my computer at home. I found an old notebook and pen and off I went without expectation. I awoke the first morning, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, grabbed a mug of steaming coffee and ventured onto a wraparound deck that stood fifty feet from a creek, the border of the Tonto National Forest.  Surrounded by greens of every shade and texture, I felt immediately calmed. The sort of calm that comes from a mother’s hand on your shoulder. I could stand and stare into that green forever, watch the tall grasses gently bending with drops of dew, count and recount the species of trees and bushes and wildflowers that poked their heads up to greet the sun.

All of a sudden a large dragonfly with bulging iridescent blue green eyes stopped about twenty feet from me and hovered as if he was surprised that a human had appeared.  I stood still and held his gaze to see what he might do. He continued to hover, did not go about his merry dragonfly way.  Then he slowly advanced toward me, inch by steady inch, until I could hear the beating of his wings.

“Hello there, my friend,” I whispered thinking my words would scare him off. “Good morning to you, too!”  The sound did not scare him at all, he only moved closer.  And when it became uncomfortable I waved him off until he buzzed above my head and over the roof of the cabin.

I was intrigued by our greeting of each other and chewed on it all day as I went for a hike through the forest and then sat with my friends as we shared meals and writing prompts and picked apart shorts stories written by the masters of our time.  The memory of him perched on my shoulder as I fixed an early afternoon gin and tonic, that we all agreed was medicinal, for one of us who had received a deflating rejection letter that very noon. And he haunted my dreams, in a good way, as I slept the deep restorative sleep that comes when you find the courage to break open the shell of your heart and share your fears with like minded comrades around a campfire that sends red sparks to meet the full moon.

The next day, he returned, but it was not for a morning greeting and it was not alone.  The four of us were seated in folding chairs, in the shade of the bordering forest, working silently on the art of imagery. We were, if I may speak for all of us, happily lost in creative wonderfulness. The way it feels when your words are pulsing upwards like geysers and soothing hot springs. As we painted metaphors and placed poetic phrases in our notebooks and wrapped these images around our hearts, the dragonflies appeared. As we answered the knocking doors of our souls, walked toward that voice that has called us, quietly and persistently, all of our lives, to write and claim our places as true artists, they swarmed in gentle circles over our heads.

We looked up from our notebooks and remarked about the magic of that particular moment. Indeed it was. The dragonflies never landed, never bothered us in any way. They did, however, perform a dragonfly ballet to the music that only a writer can hear as he/she creates. Their dance, a visual response to our collective song of joy.

Upon my return home, yesterday, I looked up the meaning of the dragonfly and was not surprised at what I found.  A powerful symbol in many cultures it represents a number of things.  It stands for renewal, positive force and the power of life.  Because it has wings sensitive to even the slightest breezes, it represents change. Also a creature of water, it is symbolic of the subconscious, the dreaming mind, a reminder to pay attention to our deeper thoughts and desires. Lastly, because it has such a short life it reminds us of the value of living in the moment. Living life to the fullest by heeding the call of our souls and making choices to connect and give birth to that which we are called to create, whatever that means and however that looks.

Those moments with the dragonflies will inspire me the rest of my life. Those four days were vital ones that have restored me on many levels.  I share this story, this moment in my writer’s journey, as encouragement to others who may feel stuck or unsure. For those who have written themselves dry, or have piled manuscripts into a drawer afraid to share them with the light of day.

Seek renewal from those who share your creative journey. Find the courage to stand before the dragonfly and bid him a fine morning then welcome him to begin his pirouettes as you let your soul free.

The Power of Your Story Writing Retreats

The Power of Your Story Retreats 

I am happy to announce the launch of a great new Writer’s Retreat Series!  I have teamed up with renowned veteran Life Coach, Carlette Patterson to create a unique program that blends life coaching and writing instruction.  

The first one is a seven-day adventure/writing retreat on the Italian Riviera!  

We are accepting registration now.  Just click on the brochure for more detailed information.

Capacity is limited to ensure personal attention!  

Hope to see you there~

Learning Ally

A few weeks ago I was sent an email informing me that Halfway to Each Other was chosen as one of the books that would be added to the Learning Ally library during Phoenix’s  annual Record-a-Thon.  I was honored and excited at the opportunity.

I have been aware of Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic) for many years through my teaching profession.  It is a godsend for students and their families.  This national non-profit, offers an online catalog of the best audiobook and audio learning opportunities on the internet.  I have referred them to families of struggling students and have watched these children take charge of their learning and glow with the pride of achievement.

Here’s a blurb about them from their webpage:

“Founded in 1948 as Recording for the Blind, Learning Ally serves more than 300,000 K-12, college and graduate students, veterans and lifelong learners – all of whom cannot read standard print due to blindness, visual impairment, dyslexia, or other learning disabilities. Learning Ally’s collection of more than 70,000 digitally recorded textbooks and literature titles – downloadable and accessible on mainstream as well as specialized assistive technology devices – is the largest of its kind in the world. More than 6,000 volunteers across the U.S. help to record and process the educational materials, which students rely on to achieve academic and professional success.”

Though headquartered in Princeton, NJ, they have recording studios and offices all over the country.  Pam Bork runs the studio here in Phoenix with a staff of generous volunteers.  Dorothy Burns and I had a lot of fun recording Halfway to Each Other together, or at the very least I had fun and she was tearing her hair out with all of our re-do’s whenever I would flub a word or phrase.

Dorothy and I after our recording session.

If your family has a need for this organization, don’t hesitate!  If you can’t find the title of the book or textbook you need, they will record it for you.

If you would like to voluteer to read/record books,  all it takes is a short demo in the recording booth and you’ll be on your way to helping people of all ages enjoy reading and experience the wealth that printed material provides.

Click here to browse the titles in their catalog!

The Commonwealth Club

Please enjoy this recent presentation at The Commonwealth Club of California.  Thank you to Laura Fraser for moderating~

Susan Pohlman at the Commonwealth Club of California

Be Inspired!

I was honored to be interviewed by the inspiring Erica Jefferson of  Be Inspired!   It is my pleasure to share this podcast.

Thank you, Erica~

 

Interview with Erica Jefferson

How I Found My Agent

If you don’t already know Chuck Sambuchino, let me introduce you!

Chuck is a writer and editor of The Guide to Literary Agents, a writers resource for finding a literary agent who can represent their work to publishing houses. The GLA includes more than 90 pages of original articles on finding the best agent to represent your work and how to seal the deal. From identifying your genre to writing query letters to avoiding agent pet peeves, GLA will help writers deal with agents every step of the way.

He also puts together a great blog that I check every day.  Guidetoliteraryagents.com is filled with information, agent introductions, and writer inspiration.  I urge all writers to add it to their list of must see blogs.

And, most importantly, Chuck is an approachable, all-around nice guy.  I have been honored to be asked to guest blog for him on two occasions. A few months back I did a piece on travel memoir, and today I am back with a contribution to his recurring topic “How I Got My Agent“.

I am giving away a free copy of Halfway to Each Other to one lucky commenter (random drawing!) so stop by to see us.

Have a great day~

Susan

ps.  Chuck is also the author of  How to Survive a Gnome Attack if you are one of the millions of homeowners who deal with this growing suburban issue!

The Sunny Room Studio

Some people in the world  are born to inspire others.  Daisy Hickman is one of those women.

I met Daisy one day online via author Laura Munson.  We clicked on each other’s blogs and a fast friendship was formed.  I was immediately drawn to her spirit.  A writer, a poet, and student of sociology she has created a beautiful space called The Sunny Room Studio where she reminds us that it is important to “Live in Rooms Filled with Light” (Aulus Cornelius Celsus).

She invites a variety of interesting writers to her blog as she believes that “there is much to be gained by addressing intriguing topics in a conversational setting.”  When I am feeling a bit low, I know that I can always head there for inspiration and food for thought.

A few weeks ago, I was flattered when Daisy invited me to be a guest.  After much thought and hand wringing, trying to figure out something worthy to say, I decided to share some of my writer’s journey.  I have always been intrigued by the  backstories of books.  Most of us toil for years before we can claim publishing credit and there were many tales and confessions from authors along the way that kept me moving forward, kept me grounded and able to put my own difficulties in perspective.  It is my hope to be able to do the same for others.

Come on over to The Sunny Room Studio, pull up a chair by clicking HERE, and let me share a few thoughts with you!