Learn to labor and to wait

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Though my words here become digital, I titled this blog “ink-stained life” because I have literally surrounded myself with words. Like most writers, my bookshelves overflow with work I admire and books I hope to eventually read. (I’m a book hoarder.) Magazines are piled in nooks throughout my house–on the coffee and end tables, yes, but also in drawers, nightstands and under a bookcase. Most of the art I own is letterpress, with messages I believe in: a line of poetry from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a message of hope for a recovering community, a simple reflection on good coffee. My bedside lamp is even topped with a shade covered in calligraphy (though I think it’s in French–I certainly can’t read it!).

My point is, I firmly believe in the value of communication. It’s not just a job, it’s life. But tonight, my challenge is to condense one form of that communication into a 50-minute presentation.

I’m speaking Friday to a group of high school students at a journalism conference. I love this kind of thing, partly because I wish I had sought out more opportunities when I was growing up. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was 10 years old, and I feel like I’m a lucky one: I make a living doing what I set out to do.

So I’m thrilled to teach these kids about feature writing. But tonight, I’ve lost myself in Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories and tried to avoid The Best American Magazine Writing 2002 (simply because there are too many tempting stories within, and I eventually need to go to bed). I’m overwhelmed by all there is to teach, and all I have still to learn by reading and studying work by people like Alice Steinbach, Chris Jones, Anna Quindlen.

Then, that’s exactly why I agree to speak at events like this. I want these kids to know the joy that comes from reporting, writing and improving.

Today’s subject line comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life.”

Makes me tired, and I want to go to bed

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I woke at 5:50 this morning, with little agenda for the day and few responsibilities beyond the care of two very playful cats. It’s a refreshing pace after several days in New York, where I spent nearly all my time talking–with friends, with friends of friends, with my sister, with her friends, with the occasional stranger on the street (because I’m Southern, and that’s how we do things). Being a visitor means staying in motion. It was exhilarating, as New York always is.

But I’m an introvert. I crave quiet moments in coffee shops (and I enjoyed a few of those in the City!), and my perfect Saturday morning involves waking too early, drinking multiple cups of coffee, finishing a book and talking only to my feline companions.

Later today I’ll head downtown for a picnic with friends, then perhaps I’ll pop by a used bookstore to sell some of my collection, then the library to shelve books in advance of next week’s sale. But for now, I’m grateful for this peaceful morning.

This morning’s subject line is from Ryan Adams’ “These Girls.”

I am only a caged bird singing

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

My final assignment as a journalism grad student was to write a series of articles of some length on some topic. At the time, that was an overwhelming charge: What can I write about? Anything? Really, anything? How many stories should I write? How long should they run? I had lots of questions. But in retrospect, I understand why the guidelines for the master’s project were so open ended. Those are the types of questions I answer every day. Reporting and the publication itself determine the answers. I just start with the topic.

My master’s project was a series of three articles about independent musicians. I was fascinated by these people who built careers apart from the music industry marketing machines, and some of my sources had experience both on major labels and off.

Six years after I walked across the stage at Coleman Coliseum, I’m still able to explore music and its industry changes, sometimes through reviewing new albums (self-released, indie releases, major label releases–there’s a lot of great stuff coming from all directions), sometimes through interviewing national and local musicians. On Friday, a couple of Birmingham musicians promoted their evening gig with surprise lunchtime performances at local restaurants. I was there with video camera in hand, and it was such an adrenaline rush to see music performed in an unexpected context. That master’s project was more than a semester-long assignment necessary for my degree; it was the first step toward writing about an art form and business that continues to move me every day.

Gum Creek Killers make two surprise appearances at Birmingham eateries, Birmingham Box Set

(The subject line comes from “The Glass Ceiling” by another Birmingham-based musician, Jon Black.)

Flying biscuits are not the way to a man’s heart.

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

As part of Food Summit 2010, held in November, FoodBlogSouth and Desert Island Supply Co. hosted a Food Stories storytelling event. Based on the Moth radio program, the event brought storytellers together to share food-oriented tales, told in an open-mic type setting. Since the inaugural FoodBlogSouth was held this weekend, I thought it time to share the tale I told during Birmingham’s first Food Stories event.

Though I don’t fit neatly as part of Gen X (I’m barely too young) or the Millennials (I’m too–well, too lots of things!), I’m comfortable as part of the instant generation. I grew up on instant oatmeal and mashed potatoes. I thought I hated grits until I was in my 20s, when I discovered that they’re excellent when cooked on a stove top instead of being served from a packet. My mom’s a great cook, but when you come home from work and have four kids and a husband to feed, you’ve just got to get food on the table.

And so I began college with little kitchen know-how. That translated into many meals of Pasta Roni, cooked in my dorm room microwave, and the occasional splurge on George Foreman Grill-cooked steak. We didn’t even have a kitchen on our floor, so cooking on a stove top was nearly unheard of.

But I’d heard that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. And so, when my crush and his roommate came to visit, I decided it was a good excuse to venture down to the basement’s kitchen. I rushed to pretty myself up, leaving little time to bake Pillsbury biscuits (which I thought were surely the way to impress an 18-year-old boy. I don’t know what got into me). So I prematurely pulled the biscuits from the oven, then rushed to the dorm’s lobby to meet my friends. “No one will notice if they’re not quite ready,” I thought.

I thought wrong.

Teenage boys aren’t the most gracious people, and the undercooked biscuits became a game instead of a snack. The dorm’s elevator doors opened every time the elevator returned to the first floor, as though a phantom Dorman Hall resident were waiting for a ride to her room. The guys decided to take aim as the doors opened, and my undercooked biscuits became flying biscuits as they sailed into the waiting elevator.

We joked about elevator food for years, but as college progressed my culinary skills improved. My roommates and I hosted many dinner parties where we tested out recipes we found in Southern Living and Better Homes and Gardens, sometimes inviting the same two guys to taste how far our cooking had come. I baked, decorated and hand-delivered Christmas cookies to everyone I knew (leading me to swear off making 300-plus cookies in a single night ever again). I exchanged food for labor every time I moved, and I was still determined that my cooking would eventually snag the attention of whichever boy I was currently interested in. (Because teenage and 20-something boys are just out to date their moms, right?)

When Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell visited my college campus, a friend was responsible for showing Bushnell around. Talk inevitably turned to relationships, and mine in particular. Bushnell’s advice: Tell her to stop cooking for men. She’s never going to get one that way. I laughed off that advice, but I did become more sensitive about my maternal instincts.

Nearly a decade later, I’m still single and still cooking. My kitchen is no longer filled with jarred pasta sauces and frozen meals, but instead canned tomatoes and loads of vegetables. And though I’m reluctant to cook for a man besides my best guy friend, I’m confident about one thing: Despite Candace Bushnell’s advice, my friends and I surely are eating well.

The sails of memory rip open in silence

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Songbook, Nick Hornby’s collection of essays about music, is one of my favorite books. But I disagree with him on one thing: I don’t think associating favorite songs with a specific memory weakens the song’s power. “Life is Beautiful” takes me to fall 2008 (even though, yes, it came out years earlier) and the months I spent listening to little besides Ryan Adams’ Cold Roses. It still elicits a certain emotional response that’s difficult to describe, or explain, because I think it’s far from Ryan’s best work but it still gets me every time. “Raining at Sunset” reminds me most strongly of the day I decided not to go on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, but it is also a song I turn to when I need to calm down. “The End” now takes me back to seeing Paul McCartney play in Nashville earlier this year, but it’s also my favorite song from my favorite album, and it captures my attention to the point that I can’t accomplish much when it’s playing. It demands my everything.

Maybe age is a factor; Hornby mentions songs that carry you through different stages of life, and he’s experienced more of those than I have. (As I near 30, I think I can look back and reflect on all I’ve learned during my adulthood. But I’m not so naive that I don’t realize there’s so much left to experience.)

For now, at least, songs take me back to the time when I initially heard them, and the events for which they served as soundtrack. Because my work allows me to spend so much time acquiring and listening to new music, each year develops a soundtrack of its own. Check back with me in 10 years and we’ll see if these songs have endured. My guess is that even as these songs become associated with different events, they’ll still bring me back to 2010.

Five from 10: Carla Jean Whitley (from Birmingham Box Set, the Birmingham magazine music blog)

And when I thought about why this should be so, why so few of the songs that are important to me come burdened with associative feelings or sensations, it occurred to me that the answer was obvious: If you love a song, love it enough for it to accompany you throughout the different stages of your life, then any specific memory is rubbed away by use. … One can only presume that the people who say that their very favorite record of all time reminds them of their honeymoon in Corsica, or of their family Chihuahua, don’t actually like music very much. –Nick Hornby, Songbook, “Your Love is the Place Where I Come From”

I closed my eyes, I kept on swimming

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

My reading habits are a reflection of my interior life. An average year sees 80-plus books pass through it. But the past few years have been busier, more exhausting than usual. Where I normally begin reading as soon as I get home, and spend an hour or so with a book before sleep, I’ve found myself returning home later and too often so exhausted that I need someone to tell me a story rather than engaging it myself. (Thank God for This American Life and The Moth.)

And so, recent years have been down years for reading. In 2009, I read 62 books. With seven days to go, I’m only at 50 books for this year.

As we enter the last week of 2010, I’m reflecting on the 12 months that are drawing to an end and dreaming about what I hope to accomplish in the 12 ahead. Invariably, that look back includes a variety of lists: the concerts I attended, the funniest things people said, the books I’ve read, my favorite albums of the year. And though earlier this week I spent two hours on a blog entry about those albums (to be posted Dec. 31 on Birmingham Box Set), I’ve never made a list of the books I most enjoyed.

I read fewer books this year, but I revisited some great ones. Songbook by Nick Hornby, Here is New York by E.B. White, Looking for Alaska by John Green, When Harry Met Sally by Nora Ephron and See You in a Hundred Years by Logan Ward kept me company this fall. (I can’t tell you why–because I don’t know–but I particularly craved the company of familiar pages during the autumn.)

Three of the best books I read for the first time in 2010 came with similarly strong recommendations, at the hands of friends and family. I deliberated over which Billy Collins collection to purchase when he read at Hoover Library’s Southern Voices conference in February. I’d just finished Ballistics and The Trouble with Poetry, both of which I’d borrowed from the library, but felt I needed to own one of his books as a memento of the reading. (If you don’t think a poetry reading can bring you near to tears and make you laugh, you haven’t heard Collins.) My friend and book columnist Susan Swagler recommended Sailing Alone Around the Room. Collins’ carefully worded observations on everyday life kept me company for the better part of the year. Several of my favorite poems filled the final pages, which made this especially satisfying to complete.

The problem with slim books is sometimes they’re finished all too quickly, and that was the case with How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen. I read this essay collection during the day after my birthday party, where I received it as a gift from the Donlon family. It immediately found a place on the shelf among my favorite, most-trusted books. It will be a book I turn to time and again, and I loved it so much that I gave my mother a copy for Christmas.

My sister gave me a copy of The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose, because she wanted to know what I thought of it. Roose left Brown University for a semester to attend Liberty University, one of America’s most conservative Christian colleges. Though my college experience was in many ways different from what Roose experienced at Liberty–I attended Florida State, after all–some of his encounters reminded me of my own campus ministry experiences. Roose’s conclusions weren’t revolutionary. He learned that Liberty kids struggle with many of the same challenges as his friends back at Brown, and Roose found himself enjoying prayer so much that he continued the ritual when he returned to Brown. But those lessons were revolutionary to him. I’ve often wished I could tell my college-age self to take a more complete view of herself (primarily) and those around her. It seems that’s exactly what Roose’s experiment taught him.

William Zinsser’s account of his writing life was a simple pleasure. But it affected me so strongly that as soon as I completed Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacher, I took out pen and paper and wrote him a thank-you note. (Perhaps because I hope to have so many stories to tell after a long career doing the same?) I was delighted, though not surprised, when a reply arrived in my mailbox weeks later.

I am surprised, however, to realize only one novel found its way to the books I most enjoyed in 2010. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin is a compelling depiction of New York’s art world, as seen through the experiences of a young art dealer and her art writer friend. Martin writes beautifully of the paintings and art objects that populate the story, and the plot itself was so engrossing that it made me late to work the morning I finished. I only had 20 pages to go, and I just had to complete them. It had been a long time since a book made me tardy.

Although the powers-that-be may prefer that I arrive at the office promptly at 8 a.m., I hope 2011 brings many more books that make me struggle to leave the house. I hope 2011 brings many more books, period. My to-read list grows and grows.

The title of this post is a lyric from “Change of Time” by Josh Ritter.

The weight of words

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Reading material is piled on my bed, and the stack seems to have grown each day this week. It’s that time of month, I suppose, as new magazines account for nearly half of my to-read-nowish list. Esquire arrived yesterday, I picked up New York magazine’s Reasons to Love New York issue earlier this week and the Oxford American’s Southern music issue takes time to digest. I’m also overwhelmed by books: a collection of essays sent by a friend, a chef’s memoir, Flannery O’Connor nonfiction that I have been dipping into at a leisurely pace.

I know how I’ll spend my Christmas vacation.

I spent this morning discussing the value of words with a dear friend. Beginning next month, Cory and I will lead a writing and letterpress printing workshop, which we’ve titled The Weight of Words. The eighth-grade girls in the workshop will write essays of belief, and we’ll end the workshop by letterpressing small posters of their six-word thesis statements.

Cory and I are letterpress aficionados (she’s a printer, I’m a collector of sorts), and we were both drawn to the art form in part because of the literal weight it gives to words. Even if you don’t ink the press’ rollers, this form of relief printing leaves a mark on the paper. The care required to set the type and the impression it makes on the paper are an appropriate homage to the written word.

We left our planning session energized, eager to share our love of art and writing with these young girls. And as I continue to plow through my ever-growing stack of reading material, I’m grateful that others share their words with me.

Pour me a glass of wine, talk deep into the night

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

This is another entry I wrote and saved as a draft, at least a year ago. It seems appropriate to trot it back out now, during a season of particular introversion and reflection.

I’ve been interested in psychology since I knew what it was, or at least since I enrolled in AP Psych during my junior year of high school. I briefly attended grad school in school counseling, and I still think back to my emotional-social disorders and intro to counseling theories. I never could settle on a theory that I most favored, but given my obsession with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I think I might have tended toward Jungian thought.

I bring this up because I’ve been analyzing people constantly since last fall, when I read Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing. I took the MBTI years ago, so I’ve classified myself as an INFJ for ages. From what I’d read on the matter, I agreed with the type. But I had no idea how frighteningly accurate it is until I read more about the indicator. Some parts that struck me as particularly interesting:

Introverts characteristically pause before action (true of me!). Extroverts dominate Western civilization, and outnumber introverts three to one.

Introverts are inherently continuous because their being is based on inner stimuli.

In work, introverts are often slow to publish or proclaim it finished, but it gains depth. … less affected by lack of encouragement; value of work not determined by others.

Introverts are closer to eternal truths. Extroverts understand by experiencing.

“The extrovert’s wish for active sociability runs counter to the introvert’s wish for privacy, especially when the introvert’s work is socially demanding. The day’s work may use up all the extraversion available; home represents a chance for the peace and quiet needed to regain balance.”

You only give me your funny paper

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

During a “positive attributes” exercise at a staff retreat this summer, a coworker wrote about me, “Reading, writing and ‘rithmetic–well, two out of three ain’t bad!” And I jokingly took offense, because I always did pretty well in math, thank you very much. Still, there’s some truth to the stereotype that writers aren’t great with numbers–even when those numbers are monetary. Sometimes, a creative challenge can lead a writer to financial focus.

I’ve tested my self discipline before by taking a month off from eating out. I often default to “let’s do lunch!” when I need to get together with a friend or work contact. And I love eating out, but I also value cooking for myself and thoughtfully determining what I’ll consume that day or week. Taking a month away from restaurants saved money, I’m sure, but it also helped me focus on larger issues, like my morning time management or disregarding my advance planning and eating out with colleagues even when I brought lunch to work.

This week, I’ve challenged myself in another way. My roommate and I bought our Christmas tree on Sunday, with me putting it on my debit card and Holly repaying me in cash. The $20 bill she handed me served as inspiration: I decided to see if I could make it through the work week using only that bill.

Mind you, I did allow an exception, as rent was due yesterday. But otherwise, I’ve paid for everything with that $20. When I needed milk Monday, I avoided satisfying other cravings (steak and a bottle of Cabernet) because they weren’t within my week’s budget. I’ve also been mindful of how often I stop at the coffee shop, because I only had so much cash in my wallet.

This was an easy week for an experiment, I’ll admit. Rent was the only bill due, and I had a half-tank of gas to start the week.  But my little game has been useful even as I rationed what I already had, carefully contemplating my route from appointment to appointment and determining if I would have enough gas to make it through Friday.

Now I’m facing down tomorrow with about $7 left. I’ll spend more Saturday before we have friends over for dinner, and I’ll probably need to fill my gas tank. But I’m considering a $20 work week allowance. Even if I get a serious caffeine craving, that’s 10 cups of coffee (before tip) at my local coffee shop!

The week’s totals:

Monday, $1 on pita chips at lunch
$7 on an onion, three potatoes and milk

Tuesday, $0

Wednesday, $2.76 on a small coffee plus a refill

Thursday, $0.93 on a petite scone and $1.93 on a small coffee