My First Story: The Turtle That Got Too Close To The Sun

I wrote my first book when I was 5. It was titled The Turtle That Got Too Close To The Sun.

Here’s my 5-year-old author picture (aka my kindergarten school picture):

Katherine Cowley Author Picture Age 5

I wrote the story, and then my mom helped me lay it out in multi-page form. I drew the illustrations in black ink, and then my mom copied them, so I could send a copy of the story to all my relatives. After my mom sewed the book together on her sewing machine, I colored in the pictures.

And now, without further ado, the story:

The Turtle That Got Too Close to the Sun

Turtle Page 1

Turtle Page 2

Turtle Page 3

Turtle Page 4

Turtle Page 5

Turtle Page 6

Turtle Page 7

 

I still feel that this story may be the best thing I’ve ever written.

Story Influences

Near the beginning of kindergarten we watched a movie about the Icarus myth. To escape from their island prison, Icarus’ father, Daedalus, builds them wings. As they’re escaping, Icarus flies too close to the sun. Apparently this myth bothered me, because a few months later I wrote this story. I reflect more on the process of writing this story in my personal essay, “I Am Not a Writer.”

Letting Go of Cynicism

I attended the same religious theater event two years in a row. The first time I found it lacking and dull; the second time I loved it. Yet nothing changed about the event itself: the costumes, acting, singing, dancing, and special effects were exactly the same. The only thing that changed was me.

The event in question was the Mesa Arizona Easter Pageant: Jesus the Christ. It’s held outside the Mesa Arizona Temple each year. In the weeks leading up to Easter, between 5,000 and 13,000 people attend the event each night. It’s been held almost every year since 1928, except for a few years during World War II.

Mesa Easter Pageant

Last year I went with my younger sister. I couldn’t get into the pageant. I mentioned to my sister that I was having trouble suspending disbelief. The prerecorded music and audio parts bothered me; the actors moved their mouths to the parts, and at times it felt like a badly dubbed film. I kept noticing the airplanes as they flew towards the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. It’s a big airport, so there were a lot of distracting airplanes. There were constant noises, people getting up to go to the bathroom, and babies crying. And once you’ve been to a ballet in St. Petersburg, any dancing looks, well, bad in comparison. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the artificial nature of spectacle.

The problem wasn’t a disconnect with the subject material. I am a believer. I love the Christ story. I love Easter, and the chance it gives to celebrate Christ’s resurrection—that He died for us, and that He lives.

Last year I went to the pageant with a cynical attitude. And so while I had fun doing something with my sister and appreciated the pageant on some levels, I did not get much out of it.

I’d like to point out that a cynical attitude is not the same as an analytical one. At this point, I can’t turn off the analytical. After four years of studying humanities and film as an undergrad, two years of studying English and rhetoric as a grad student, and years since then analyzing art, I can’t turn off the analysis. I watched Gravity last weekend and I was salivating over some of those beautiful long takes that never seemed to end. If I’m really into something I can tone down my analysis, but I can’t turn it off. This year when I went to the Easter pageant I still was my normal analytical self, but I wasn’t cynical.

This year I went as an adult leader of my church’s youth group. I’m responsible for the 14-15 year old girls, but we went as a larger group, with all the 12-18 year old girls and guys in our congregation. When we got to downtown Mesa, we drove around side streets for a while until we found a place to park. Then we walked with hundreds of others to the field next to the beautiful white temple where the pageant is held.

We found the seats, about a third the way back, that some of the other leaders had saved. We ate Costco pizza and passed around a mix of homemade and store bought cookies. There were also some token carrots that almost no one touched. As we waited for the production to begin, a few of the guys played a game of Magic. One girl played on her cell phone. A guy and a girl shared headphones to listen to music. I sat next to one of the girls that no one was talking to, and I listened as she told me about school, her family, her worries and her fears. “I wish I could solve your problems,” I thought. But there was not a single one of them I could fix. I could only listen.

The sun went down. There’s something beautiful about that, about the sun setting, the day closing the same way it has since creation. As the sun sets, it’s a natural dimming of the lights and opening of the curtains, in a way that’s happened since our ancestors told stories around campfires. “I am part of a group,” I thought. “A community. We’re all here for the same reason.” I felt connected, both to the people I knew directly around me, and the thousands of people there I did not know.

The program began with a prayer, and then the music started. Jesus the Christ uses a frame story—a Roman centurion who saw Christ killed wants to learn about his life, and one of Christ’s followers narrates the story, which we see acted out on the stage. There’s beautiful dance numbers as people share their joy through movement. I loved the bright colors of the costume, and the angels in brilliant white clothes above the stage. There was a real pool of water for Jesus’ baptism. “Is that a real bird?” the girl next to me asked, as they released a bird into the night. The production featured real sheep and a real donkey, which added authenticity.

There were plenty of distractions. A group of girls from our congregation headed in a pack to the bathroom. Pizza and water bottles were passed back and forth. People shared blankets and complained about the chill. There were plenty of airplanes and a cool helicopter. A baby a few rows ahead of us cried. Behind me, I heard one of the girls whisper that her mom had been one of the dancers in the Ten Virgins scenes a few years ago. “How cool is that?” I thought. A lot of the teenagers I was with had come to the pageant every single year with their families.

The pageant featured some of the most compelling scenes from Christ’s ministry. The many healings and miracles Christ performed are shown in the course of a single song. Even though it’s clear these are actors it’s still powerful. The most spectacular moments for me were when almost the entire 450 person cast was on stage at the same time. About ten years ago I saw the opera Turandot at the Finnish National Opera house, and it had a huge cast, with beautiful, high-value production numbers. But to have 450 people dancing and moving on stage, in perfect coordination, is astounding.

At the very end of the show the resurrected Christ rises in the air. If you looked closely you could see the machine that lifted Him up, but it did not matter. It was a perfect end to the night.

A pageant was never meant to be high art. Yet it’s a beautiful form that has been used to draw people together for thousands of years. And this year, I let myself be part of the tradition.

I want to more often let go of cynicism that grips me. I want to approach art, literature, and theater with a spirit of generosity, looking not for flaws but for meaning and beauty. I want to apply that same generosity to belief, and perhaps most importantly, to the people around me. We’re all striving, we’re all imperfect, and yet there is beauty in each of us.

 

(Image by midiman via flickr, Creative Commons license.)

I Am Not a Writer

I Am Not a Writer essayThis essay received second place in the BYU Studies 2013 Essay Contest. Original image of typewriter by Bernard Walker via flickr, Creative Commons license. 

I Am Not a Writer

“For when you become a writer!” read the note on the most expensive pen I had ever touched, a pen I would never consider buying for myself. The pen was a gift that I received on my seventeenth birthday.

A year and a half later, I decided that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed to write. I found a pretty notebook. I removed the pen from its soft, velvety case. I took off the cap. And I began to write, using the conveniently simple subject predicate structure I have so masterfully demonstrated in this paragraph.

Several hundred wretched words about a frozen woman later, the pen exploded like a piece of dynamite placed on the track of an enemy train—Lawrence of Arabia or The Bridge on the River Kwai, you take your pick.

This was figuratively, mind you. Explode might be the wrong verb.

What actually happened is the ink coming out of the nib began to congeal. Picture curdled milk, the kind you get at a cheese factory. At the same time, ink began seeping through every crevice in the pen and spurting out the back of the pen onto my hands (which were dyed blue for a week) and my shirt (which was fated, as the cliché says, to never again see the light of day).

I considered it a sign. Not, of course, that it might be a bad thing to take a pen on multiple international flights with varying air pressure. Not, of course, that it might be a bad thing to expose a pen to extremes in temperature (from 12 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, thank you very much). And not, of course, that the best way to maintain a pen is to use it. No, this was a sign that I am not a writer—I merely touch the writer’s pen and it explodes.

*****

A doctor doctors. An accountant counts. A cook cooks. A plumber plumbs. A teacher teaches. A seller sells. A detective detects. A joker jokes. A driver drives. An owner owns.

This is all very clear to me. Change an occupation noun into a verb, and you not only have alliteration, but you have direction, meaning, purpose for those seconds that turn into minutes that turn into hours that turn into days.

So it should be clear to me that a writer writes. But it is not.

Saying a writer writes is like saying a lady-in-waiting waits. A pianist pians. A surgeon surges. A cobbler cobbs (or cobbles?). A physicist physics. A psychic psyches. A pastor pastes.

If I happen to paste one thing to another, I am not a pastor. If I happen to write a word, a phrase, a sentence, I am not a writer.

After all, an accountant takes a test. A certification. He gets paid for what he does. Others entrust him with money—before he has even performed a task. He goes to work for eight hours—or perhaps for ten or twelve, if he is young and inexperienced or seeks a promotion or is unattached to his wife or finds a thrill in the long hours.

There are no promotions for writers. No movement from assistant writer to writer to special writer to official and true writer. Yes, traditionally poet laureates and others received patronage—a place in the royal household, money, food, and wine—as long as they turned out the proper poems for the proper occasions, they could write as they liked. Universities provide a similar patronage today: teach our students, publish in these journals, fulfill other commitments to the university, and you’ll probably have time to write at least a little of what you want. At least you won’t have to take a second day job.

But having a bit of time and energy to devote to writing just never feels like enough.

To say, “I am a writer,” is to invite the gnawing worm of self doubt. I picture the squirming creature from Star Trek’s The Wrath of Khan: placed in the ear, the eel drills into the skull, controlling and feeding off of the brain, ultimately leading to the death of the individual. This parasitic invertebrate whispers, you are not a writer. That’s a bad idea. You don’t have anything worth saying. No one cares what you have to say—no one even read what you wrote. You don’t have a divine Muse tucked in your pocket or sitting on your shawl, and if you ever did see one of those nine Greek goddesses you probably wouldn’t recognize her.

While having a self doubt parasite nest in your brain is bad enough, perhaps the most trying part is the sense that you have not arrived. You are not truly a writer until you can quit your day job. Until you finish or publish or find an agent or sell that next novel. Until that revision squeezes every last bit of pulp out of your ideas and makes it palpable in words. Until you master the sonnet, the villanelle, the essay, the memoir, the revolutionary war fiction, the picture book, and, of course, the paranormal romance. Until you write that work of creative nonfiction that not only makes the New York Times bestseller list but can make your readers laugh and cry at your profound themes and clever sentences. Until you, like Walt Whitman, revise Leaves of Grass “just one more time”—for surely this publication you will get it right.

To win $200 in a contest is not enough. To write and revise a hundred page honors thesis—and then to fruitlessly check, every six months, to see if someone, anyone, has checked it out from the university library—is clearly not enough. To tell the 60 college students who signed up for my writing classes that they were writers and to teach them rhetoric and MLA and structure and transitions and style was not enough. I always believed that my students were writers—that they could write with power and purpose and make a difference in the world. But for some reason, I can never believe that for myself.

Yet surely it is sitting in an ivory tower to say, “I have not written everything I want to write, or had my writing do everything I would like it to do. Thus, I am not a writer.”

After all, it would be strange to hear a chef exclaim, “I am not a cook! I have not yet cooked a Turkducken.” (I have never seen a Turkducken, so I am assuming—perhaps fallaciously—that most chefs have never attempted stuffing a chicken into a duck and then stuffing that duck into a turkey.) Or perhaps our chef has cooked a Turkducken, but something went wrong. Perhaps she ended up with turkey skin, duck wings, chicken breasts, and stuffing splattered, unceremoniously, all over the wall. Perhaps she will not admit that she has cooked—using the concept liberally—a Turkducken. But she is still a chef. I would not take that title from her.

I am now able to say that I am a mother, something my running, talking daughters can attest to. Whether I’m terrible or great, as soon as my first child emerged from my womb, I officially donned that title. I want to be a great mother. I want to be always loving and always caring and always cheerful and always giving good advice. Whether or not I always succeed—as long as I don’t fail miserably, to the despair of local social workers—I will still deserve the title of mother.

So perhaps I am a writer. I have good intentions. I give birth to ideas. I try to nurture them, help them grow and develop. And then I dress them and send them out the door and into the world. Is that not what writing is?

*****

When a doctor errs, a patient dies, takes a while to heal, or goes to a different doctor to get the prescription she really wants. A pianist misses a crucial chord at her concerto or doesn’t sell enough CDs and has to teach rich, uninterested children to play. The cobbler misplaces an important stitch on a shoe or loses a button, realizing later that night he has not truly sold the service his customer paid for. Or his profession slowly disappears because no one in their right mind would pay to repair cheap, mass-produced, 12-sizes-fit-all Payless shoes. The detective leaves yet another murder unsolved, knowing her adventures will never be featured on a TV crime show.

What happens when a writer errs? A manuscript collects dust. An idea fails. Or perhaps your writing hurts someone or has unforeseen repercussions, sending a reader into depression or straining a relationship with a family member. Perhaps you sell out on yourself or your masterpiece of words becomes the propaganda tool of a future political tyrant. Or you die lonely and alone. The consequences seem dire. Yet still doctors doctor, pianists pian, cobblers cobble, and detectives detect. Writers write. We all dream, we all live, we all die, and perhaps our dreams aren’t fully realized. But they’re still worth dreaming.

In a sense, no matter what we do or how we define ourselves, we are essayists. For an essayist assays—attempts. Attempts to make meaning, attempts to find answers. Attempts to lift up a stone and look at it anew.

In third grade I learned a game from my red-haired teacher Mrs. Spritzer (who reminded me of Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus).  Mrs. Spritzer had a bucket of random items—often broken parts of toys or scraps of things, perhaps recognizable for their origins, but not always. We would sit in a large circle, and some lucky person (I’m sure I would remember if it had ever been me) would get to pull an item from the bucket. Then, the item would be passed around the circle, and each person would be required to transform it. You could make it bigger or smaller, change the color, add something to it. You could also piggyback off of someone else’s idea, as long as the result was not exactly the same.

A pen cap might be enlarged into a giant rolling pipe for the playground, or be stretched into a powerful telescope that can see across the galaxy. A paper clip becomes a fishhook, a nose-picker, a modern metallic picture frame. A fuzzy piece of fabric transforms and we discover an Eskimo’s blanket, a pouch for mama’s wedding ring, soft padding for an old-fashioned, jingle-bell sleigh ride. There was no final answer, no final conclusion: simply a sharing of the journey your mind took from object A to object B.

It seems to me that this is the attitude of the writer. To read the world, as Roland Barthes would say, in a writerly way, as a text that is not complete, requiring my contributions, my interpretation, my meaning-making, my pen to be made whole. A writerly person gets up in the morning ready and willing to act: she isn’t simply acted upon.

In kindergarten I was disturbed by the story of Icarus. A little boy dies, after all—and simply for doing something that seems so wonderful: flying freely through the air. Perhaps the lesson is a good one for a child. Taken to an extreme, any action or desire can be a bad thing. Fly too high, and you will die. Ride your bicycle too fast, and you will fall and scrape your knee. Get too close to the stove, and you’ll get burnt. Eat too loudly, play too wildly, act too freely, and there will be consequences. These might, as was the case for our mechanically-feathered friend, be irreversible.

While from a logical perspective the Icarus myth is rather true to life, it continued to nag at my mind. Months later, without intentionally creating a palimpsest, a rewriting, I wrote my own story, “The Turtle That Got Too Close to the Sun.” Meet turtle, a standard green ectotherm. One day, he’s walking through the trees, and sees a pink balloon. He jumps (yes, jumps) on the pink balloon, and it carries him away. He floats upward, past trees, upward, past mountains. And then the unthinkable happens—he gets too close to the sun. The pink balloon pops, and the turtle falls, falls, falls into the ocean. Luckily, like most turtles, our turtle friend can swim. He has not encountered the sun unchanged though; with the profound wisdom of a 5 year old I wrote, “Then the turtle was yellow. Then the turtle felt different.”

I want to be like turtle, because feeling different is a good thing. If anyone feels different because of my words, even if it’s just me, then my writing is doing something right. I want to experience the world in a writerly way, as something unfixed and still open to meaning-making, because if I do then my assays, my attempts, can create transformation. I can rescue Icarus and paint him yellow.

 

How Do I Have So Much Time to Read?

Book Stack by ginnerobotLately I’ve been more vocal about my love for reading. On social media I’ve linked to my Goodreads page, touted new books I love, and posted about my reading goals and challenges. I also may have mentioned that in 2013 I read 75 books, not counting picture books (though that 75 does include fiction, nonfiction, young adult, middle grade, classics, and a handful of novellas).

A solid dozen of my friends have asked me the same question: How Do You Have So Much Time to Read?

It’s a good question, and I’ve decided to settle it once and for all with a blog post. There are four main things that get me through so many books:

1. I am a very fast reader.

Being a fast reader is my real-life superpower. If it’s a novel and I’m in my groove, I often read anywhere from 100 to 130 pages per hour. If it’s young adult or fantasy or a book that I’m just loving then I tend to be on the 130 pg/hr side of thing. This really helps me read lots of books.

2. I’ve simplified my life.

At this point I watch almost no TV and am selective about my movies (though I do love movies). Most of the time I even avoid 5 minute youtube clips. As a stay-at-home-mom, if I want to make progress on my goals, then I have to be focused with my spare time. And since I’ve focused myself on writing novels right now, then I spend my spare time reading novels, to feed my mind with words.

3. I have a strict bedtime for my children and a busy husband

My children go to bed at 7:30 every night, which gives me time to read even if I’m too exhausted to do anything else. My husband’s graduate program makes him super busy, so if I’m reading I’m not distracting him. If I’m really into a book I’ll also sneak in little pockets of reading time during the day.

4. Reading stories gives me pure joy.

BooksIn a way it’s self-medication, a coping mechanism to deal with all the challenges of life. In a novel, the characters go through such hardship, but often they make it through, triumphant and better than where they started. This hero’s journey is so empowering to me. And even when I read an anti-hero, like Dorian Gray, at the end of the novel I still feel this rush of empowerment, focus, and wonder at the world around me.

If I go 5 or 6 days without reading I start to feel depressed, burdened by my cares, unmotivated in my goals, lazy, and sometimes even worthless. When I read a good book, it solves about 70% of my problems, and then I have the energy to face the other 30%. If there was a magic cure that would make you happy again and again, without fail, then you would take it as often as you could. And so I do.

Stories speak to me. They make me fill alive, and that life is worth living. Stories are part of the fiber of my soul, and that is why I spend so much time reading.

 

Photos by Ginny (ginnerobot on flickr), Creative Commons license

The Most Expensive Kindle Books of 2014 (Nonfiction and Fiction)

Having wealth gives you privileges–including the ability to buy the most expensive Kindle books on the planet. If the highest price is your true goal, you should start by purchasing nonfiction:

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: $16,870 ($.97/page)

The most expensive Kindle book

At just under a dollar per page, this encyclopedia is a steal. While the hardback version costs $12,000 less, the Kindle version is infinitely superior, because it means you can have a lightweight-yet-comprehensive encyclopedia as your constant companion.

Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics: $11,850 ($1.32/page)

A breath-taking encyclopedia

According to editorial reviewers, this book is “breath-taking.” It is also the same price I paid for my first car.

Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations II: $10,070 ($1.57/page)

Comprehensive AND Organic

Written by 144 specialists, it’s possible this book may even contain the secret to understanding women. That in itself is worth reading 6000 pages for.

Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry II: From Biology to Nanotechnology: $7,823.99 ($.82/page)

Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry

This book was published in 2003. I’d like you to imagine how much this book would cost if the info on nanotechnology weren’t over a decade old.

Treatise on Geochemistry, Ten Volume Set: 10 Volume Set: $6,559.99 ($.84/page)

Treatise on Geochemistry

If you’re not sold on the fact that it’s a Ten Volume Set, maybe you’re sold on the fact that it’s a 10 Volume Set!

Collier on Bankruptcy: $6,399.20 or $6,212.80 per volume; or get all 28 volumes for $178,059.20 (mystery per page price)

Collier on Bankruptcy

My best guess is that the first line of every volume is “So, now that you’re bankrupt.” Even if you have millions to burn, I recommend sampling the one cheaper Collier on Bankruptcy volume before you buy the full set. You can purchase Collier on Bankruptcy Taxation for only $283.99.

 

Let’s shift to the most expensive fiction Kindle books of 2014:

Antología Poética de los Siglos XVI y XVII: $5,611.20 ($10.96/page)

Expensive Spanish Poetry

Obviously the 16th and 17th centuries were good for Spanish poetry—they’re charging $10.96 a page! Or if you’re completely old-fashioned you can buy the paperback for under $20 (though we will judge you for it).

Ma belle-mère et moi !: $606.64 ($13.19/page)

Ma Belle-mere et moi

If you don’t speak French, then what better way to learn than through reading a French comic? Surely it’s more effective than Rosetta Stone

The Crime Quintet: $200 ($2.63/page)

The Crime Quintet

 

Just think–you could be the very first person to review (or read) this book.

DETANRACNI: $200 ($1.60/page)

Detanracni

 

It’s a love story with a horror twist. And it features the Bermuda Triangle. Clearly no more needs to be said.

Sinderella: $200 ($100/page)

Sinderella

This book is only 2 pages long, but the cover is clearly worth $200 on its own.

 

Buy Kindle Book with One Click

Now if only someone would leave me an inheritance so I could start buying.

Adaptable New Year’s Resolutions

It’s January 23rd and I may have finalized my New Year’s resolutions. Maybe.

No, I’m not a slacker. True, I didn’t start thinking about my New Year’s goals until January 1st, when I jotted some thoughts down in a notebook. But those thoughts were were not etched in stone–on the contrary, they were illegibly penned onto partially recycled paper that will some day soon be recycled again.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve waited until the end of January to finalize my resolutions. I did it in both 2012 and 2013. And I rather like it.

January becomes my testing ground to try out my New Year’s goals. I experiment, and then ask, is this exercise goal realistic? Does implementing this writing goal make me happier? Does finishing a quilt help me achieve my big-picture goals?

I want to push myself with my goals, but I don’t want to be self-defeating. And so I experiment with my goals, toss some out, and choose a few more.

I won’t reach all of my 2014 goals. And I embrace that. I would like to finish the quilt that I said I would finish in 2013. But if it ends up on my 2015 goals list, so be it.

Quilt Blocks

To encourage myself to iron the quilt blocks, sew them together, and then finish the quilt, I’ve set the goal of finishing it in time to submit to the Arizona State Fair. Accountability and a deadline always help…

January may be my testing ground, but I like to make my resolutions adaptable enough that I can come back to them throughout the year, tweak them, modify them, make them better for me and where I’m at in life. Right now it’s realistic for me to take a long walk outside every day with my children–but in July, when it’s 110 degrees, I probably won’t be doing that, so I’ll revise my goal to keep myself active without dying of heat exhaustion.

Ultimately, my goals and resolutions exist to serve me, to make happier, healthier, more fulfilled, and moving towards becoming the person I’d really liked to be. For me, it’s impossible to truly fail at a New Year’s goal or resolution, as long as I’m able to learn from setbacks and willing to adapt for the future.