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-by Tracy Lucas

Parenthood takes a lot out of you. (Today, for example, it took most of my time today, so I’m just now writing this.)

Between cooking, feeding, the subsequent and never-ending cleaning, bathing, reading, Band-Aiding, diapering–and oh yeah, squeezing the suckers out in the first place–there’s not a lot left at the end of the evening for mom and dad, of energy, nookie, or anything else.

It’s rather all-consuming.

But in that consumption, those of us who were writers before engaging our wombs in the “on” position have found whole new worlds of emotional and personal pleasure and baggage (yes, both) to be blessed and/or plagued with.

Add to that, motherhood can be rather isolating. Very few moms ever say what they really feel, because quite a lot of it is frightening, truth be known. Commiseration is a beautiful thing; thus the major-dollar, let’s-parent-together, hive mind sites like BabyCenter and CafeMom.

It makes more than a little sense, then, that mama-magazines would pop up to publish the diatribes of those who feel a little more literary.

Here are some of those, for anyone inclined, and what they want:

First, my personal favorite, Literary Mama.

They’re not just my favorite because they’ve published some of my poetry, either. They rejected me many more times than they accepted, believe you me. This mag is highly selective, always incredibly gut-wrenching, and the strongest of the bunch, in my opinion. (This is a blog. I get to give opinions, right?)

From the site:

Literary Mama features writing by mother writers about the complexities and many faces of motherhood. We seek top-notch creative writing: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction. We also publish book reviews, and profiles of mother writers and artists.

Literary Mama submission guidelines are here.

Another contender for your parental rants and poetic waxing is Brain, Child, which caters intentionally to intellectual mothers and fathers.

I’m not as personally familiar with this one, but in digging out the link for this blog post, I had no choice but to read ten or eleven articles on the spot. The titles are just that good, and the piece beneath each title are equally worthy.

They say:

There were plenty of outlets for child-rearing tips and expert advice, but not a source of smart writing that delved into the meatier issues of that life-altering experience: motherhood.

and:

[Essays] are the signature pieces of the magazine, the heart and soul of our endeavor. We’re looking for essays that share certain qualities–specificity and insight primary among them. These pieces should employ illustrative anecdotes, a personal voice, and a down-to-earth tone. We will avoid essays that fall back on big concept words–“magic,” “joy,” “wonder”–to get across the transformative nature of motherhood. Poignancy is fine; sentimentality isn’t. Humor is a plus. Important points to remember: We aren’t looking for how-to articles or essays that focus more on the child than on the parent.

Submission guidelines for Brain, Child are here.

Another, though less my style, is The Motherhood Muse, which focuses on “natural” earth-mothers types and offers essays, tips, and more.

From the site:

The Motherhood Muse literary magazine and blog features original, brilliant creative writing that explores motherhood through the lens of nature, the female body, mind & spirit, and our children’s relationship with nature. We publish creative nonfiction essays, articles, fiction, poetry, columns and photos. The Motherhood Muse goes beyond a walk in the woods to rejuvenate our creative writing minds. We seek writing that explores the nature of motherhood on a deeper level to open our minds to the wonders of mother nature and our place in it.

Their submission guidelines esta aqui.

A fun one I’ve just seen for the first time today–but will certainly be visiting again–is errant parent. They go for the humor pieces, and apparently have just turned a year old. Go, them.

Check out this blurb:

Created in the spring of 2009, errant parent is devoted exclusively to irreverent parenting humor. We strive to be a welcome alternative to traditional parenting magazines (which usually aren’t funny) and online humor sites (which usually aren’t parenting-related). At errant parent, we know parenting is ridiculously hard. Or is it hardly ridiculous? Either way, most parents appreciate a good laugh.

Who is errant parent for? It’s for anyone who believes it’s barbaric to ask a toddler to whip up dinner — without first giving him a cookbook and a cute little butler’s outfit. It’s for anyone who dreads sitting next to a baby on a plane — especially if that baby belongs to you. It’s also for parents, or people who have parents, or people who once had parents. It is not, however, for pageant mothers or aardvarks or Nazis, as history has proven they typically have terrible senses of humor.

Submit to the funny gods here.

And of course, if you’re in it for money and not a Pushcart, you can always sell out to the national glossies and watch the dollars come rolling in.

I know I’d go yuppie in a heartbeat for the right chunk of change. Come on, try me. Please.

Oddly, fatherhood literary magazines seem to be missing from the picture entirely… but that’s another blog post for another day.

–by Tracy Lucas

I pulled out a grey hair today. It’s not my first, but it made me think.

(And yes, “grey” with an E. I just like it better.)

I was sitting in the bathroom sink (I do that, I’m weird) when I happened to notice the aforementioned grey hair, and I suddenly found myself wondering whether to feel old.

At the moment I’m in my 30s, and not far into them at all. I had my first biological kid a couple of years ago, but in these days of fifteen-year-olds popping them out left and right, I suppose I’m an older mother. Blech.

Gained too much weight to be a MILF, even. Dammit.

But all that aside… let’s talk just about the numbers.

Like I said, I’m in my 30s. And now I’ve got grey hair. Now my stepkids think I’m too old to know any decent music (somehow Jackson Browne and Bon Jovi can’t compete with The Bieber) or to be worth listening to about clothing issues. They hate that I decorate the house in beige; they react to it the same way I did to my mother’s avocado fridge and orange countertops.

The rub? Ten years ago, I was in my 20s, and no one thought I was worth listening to because I was too young. I was just a kid who didn’t know shit and hadn’t experienced enough yet in life to have any advice that could be proven.

Ten years? That’s the span from “you don’t know anything because you’re too young” to “you don’t know anything because you’re too old”?

That’s practically nothing.

I mean, think about your grandmother. Within her lifetime, chances are, she saw the Berlin Wall go up, and the Berlin Wall come down. She might have seen the birth of movies, then TV, then cable channels, then VCRs, then the Internet. Even the Civil War was only two lifetimes ago, if you really think about it. That’s one generation removed from us, exactly. That was practically yesterday in the grand, ten-million-year scheme of things. That just happened.

Chances are equally good, regardless of whether your personal grandmother was alive for bits of the stuff mentioned above, that during the different stages of her life, no one understood her, either.

When she was fifteen, other people thought she was melodramatic. When she was twenty, they probably thought she was naive and idealistic. When she was forty or fifty, they may have thought she was a passed-up parent who wasn’t in touch with the times anymore. Now that she’s your grandmother, well, she’s a grandmother and all that the stereotype implies.

She probably likes music that was popular when she was a young adult. Probably picked the clothing she liked from some era or another and stuck with it, because she thought it worked for her. Probably doesn’t have the time to keep up with changing trends every decade, every two years, every season.

But aren’t we already on the same path, too?

As Thoreau said:

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

I have discs and downloads of the same songs I’ve loved since I was a teenager, and I play them loudly when I clean the house. I have a favorite shirt from my (albeit brief) college life that’s existed for ten or twelve years, and I still wear it occasionally—in public, without embarrassment.

I didn’t run out to see Twilight: Eclipse—and I probably won’t—but I watched The Blues Brothers for the millionth time the other day. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is next in the Netflix queue because my kids have never heard of it. I can’t believe they’ve never seen it. They can’t believe I’m going to make them watch it.

Thanks to an offhand comment from a teenage cousin, I just realized last week that boys’ shorts are supposed to be cotton, plaid, and below the knee now, and that I’ve been dressing my tyke in ’80s garb up till now. Oops. (Sorry, kiddo. I’ll hide the photos.)

I am already irrelevant.

We all are. We always have been. We always will be.

Know why?

It’s because, generally speaking, we’re naturally selfish creatures, and we only truly care about the people who are at our own exact level in life, be that age, social status, geographic location or whatever else we secretly measure people by.

It’s okay that Random Relative X doesn’t grok what I do for a living (or that reference.) She’s not a writer or much of a reader, so her opinion on publishing doesn’t matter to me.

Maybe some guy in Iowa disagrees strongly with what I wrote on a motherhood board the other day. He’s obviously not a mother, so his opinion doesn’t apply.

That random swoop-haired emo kid in the line behind me at Wal-Mart is an idiot. Why should I care if he hates my shirt?

However unfair and politically incorrect it may be, we only value the opinions of those we either see ourselves like or hope to become. Everyone else need not apply.

When you’re thirty, those younger than you don’t care because you’re not young. Those older than you don’t care because you’re not old. Those you are thirty with are your closest allies, your commiserators, your siblings through life.

The cruel reality of it is that when you’re seventy, then eighty, then ninety, there will be increasingly fewer of them left. The generational conspirators will die off and leave you in a swelling world of new children and younger-than-you adults who make no sense and don’t remember anything you do.

Right now, judging by the folks who usually comment here, I could say, “Hey, remember when moonwalking was such a big deal?”, and I could probably get a glowing, nostalgic response or three along the lines of, “Yeah, I know, right? I remember that! We used to practice it in gym and land on our asses because we had non-slip shoes on…”

I’d bet it’d be different if I wrote, “Weren’t sock-hops just fab?”

Nobody cares about sock-hops anymore. We didn’t have them, don’t remember them, and they don’t matter.

We’re past that.

But that’s the whole thing: everybody, at all times, is going to be past everything.

That sounds so weird and nonsensical, but really, it’s what I’m getting at.

You’re only living as the one person you’ve ever been, and it’s a new world every ten years or so anyway, not to mention a whole new “they” to contend with. So how do you write for a crowd of changing, aging, widely-varying people, who come from different backgrounds and don’t necessarily match a single characteristic or viewpoint you have?

You write truth.

It’s all about the underlying emotional truth.

You don’t have to like Bon Jovi or Jackson Browne to have read that sentence earlier, nodded to yourself and said, “Yeah, my kids hate Nirvana, I totally get that.”

The details don’t have to match. Sometimes it’s more fun if they don’t; I like borrowing an 18^th century head to run around in when I’m reading a novel, or browsing a yellowed textbook that’s missing a few countries. But the spirit has to be there; the guts have to go in, or it’s all empty and wasted.

We all age yearly, and we’re moving in tandem, so we’ll never catch up with each other. Even so, we all have some of the same experiences, feelings and inadequacies as we move through. Bits of our lives have all been lived from start to finish before—just by other people.

If you write flashy, pop-culture stuff or humor that only one set of humans will find funny, more power to you, but it’s over as soon as that culture is, and it lasts for mere seconds.

But if you write The Great Gatsby, even despite all the highly-specific jazz age flavor, you’re writing the hard truth that sometimes the one you love wriggles permanently out of your grasp—and we’ve all been there, done that. That’s timeless.

It’s cotton candy versus steak.

Regardless of how cool of a parent I try to be or how many crazy “this one time” stories I can add up while I’m here, my kids are destined to think I’m a loser. Because they’re my kids. That’s what they do.

Right now, I am God to my son because I control the Cheerios and the Disney Channel. That’s a very limited gig, and I know it. Any day now, he’ll resent and/or be embarrassed of me for a good fifteen-year chunk, and sometime thereafter he’ll have a couple children or a grey hair of his own and realize the real scoop.

Does that mean I’ve changed in all the meantime?

Most likely, no. It’s only his perspective that’s changed—not the world itself. I’ve been sitting here happily listening to Sky Blue and Black and Bed of Roses in my beige room all along. After all, he’s just a twenty-something kid, what does he know?

So here’s my question:

How do you write to and for a world of readers who are not you, haven’t lived your life, and eventually will find you totally outdated? How do you matter when it’s all so impermanent?

I have my thoughts.

What are yours?

–by Tracy Lucas

My child learned how to swear a week or two ago.

He’s one and a half.

About a month ago, he dropped something accidentally and exclaimed, “Oh, SHIT!”

Of course, he’s still mostly baby and not so clear on enunciation just yet, so those particular syllables sound exactly like various other phrases he uses daily, namely “See it,” “Wassup”, and “Sit”. We chalked it up to that, figuring maybe he was asking to see (i/e/, be given) the thing he’d just dropped.

Sure. Whatever lets us sleep at night, right?

Well, yeah, not so much. The Saturday before last, all illusions were shattered.

My husband was doing some laundry down the hall from our living room, where the kiddo rediscovered a zippered bag of blocks he’d loved before but lost to the couch cushion abyss. He can’t open said zippered bag, and therefore has to get help.

He said, “Daddy, blocks.”
The daddy in question said, “Hold on a minute, buddy, Daddy’s gotta do some clothes first.”
Kiddo: “Daddy, blocks now.”
Daddy: “I heard you, I said hold on. Just a second, okay?”
Kiddo, slamming bag to his feet: “Daddy! Blocks, DAMN IT!”

Any pretense of moral integrity, gone. Whoosh. Watched it fly by past my hair…

But you know what you might have thought when you read that?

Not, “Oh, that kid should know better. “Probably not, “Wow, what a disobedient child that boy seems to be.”

Nope.

You probably thought, “Huh. They must curse in front of him. They should really try to watch that.”Possibly even, “Aww, that poor thing.”

I’ve thought it of others. In my less-parental days, I’ve judged them. I’ll admit it. At toddler age, nothing the son or daughter does is his or her own fault. The blame belongs to the parents, probably for a few more years, even. Everything is all my fault until he’s at least four or five. I see that coming. There will be school calls, I’m sure. (And given the other stories I’m not even going to tell you, it should be a hell of an adventure. But that’s not the point right now.)

You know what? Our characters are like that, too.

Anything we have our fictional folks say or perform is immediately ascribed to something that is in the author’s own realm of possibility. Anything we write is something we could do. Any opinion they express must be ours. We are exactly as evil as the people we manufacture out of thin air.

Aren’t we?

I think those of us who read enough fiction get it and can make the distinction, but the public at large? Nope. They see things as either autobiographical or flights of fancy which we wish we could live. (By the way, if you’re here and you know what a literary magazine is in the first place, you’re not among that category of readers. You’re safe.)

But say, for example, I write a hacksaw serial killer in as my protagonist, and even make you like and root for him. (Or her—wouldn’t that be cool? Jotting notes.) If I lend that story to a colleague at the office, she’s going to look at me differently for the rest of our professional relationship. She’s going to wonder—just wonder—whether she should be a little more careful around me and maybe not eat that last donut on the break room table.

If I show an abusive mom-and-daughter scene to my grandmother? She’ll say, “Oh, I didn’t know you felt that way about your mother. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

If I write erotica, people will assume I’m a slut. Yet in reality, I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 22. Obviously, I spent that time reading—but that’s not what anyone would assume.

The first impression, unless you are submerged in the literary world yourself, is that the writer writes life. That some shred of the story is based in fact. That the mind of the difficult protagonist lurks hungrily in some dark corner of the author’s psyche, waiting for the chance to spring forth into real existence.

It’s the same with my literary babies as it is with the person whose diapers I change.

Yes, I’ve tinged them both (the person, not the diapers. Ew.) Yes, they came directly from me. Okay, so I swear in/around them, and that seeps into the color of those worlds.

For the record, he picked up “shit” because that—my stubbed-toe word of choice. My favorite word is actually George Carlin’s, but I can prevent it from slipping, and usually do. However, “shit” is what comes out when something”‘ sudden on TV, or a plastic elephant salutes into my ass on a kitchen chair, or I drop a glass and it shatters. “Shit” is for an accident, and I’m an insanely clumsy person. Believe me, he’s heard it. A lot.

And see?  I felt the need to say that. To add a disclaimer explaining my choice, my words, my actions. To tell you that, “No, I’m really a good person. I mean, yes, that happened, but here’s all the backstory so you will still respect me…”

And I didn’t even say “shit”—I’m telling you this stuff because he did.

Too often we are forced to apologize for our characters’ choices, story themes, topics, or dialogue.

Why?

Shouldn’t it just be that if people don’t realize it’s fake, screw them?

Or is there an uncomfortable truth to that whole alter-ego corner-lurker theory after all?

What do you think?

When you write, are you always in the story?

I’ve written some dark shit. I’d hope I’m not as fundamentally deranged as every character I can imagine. But obviously I’m still the person who thought that stuff in the first place then, aren’t I? And I could have (theoretically) chosen not to write those more troubling thoughts down for preservation. Right?

Who’s at fault?

The twisted author?  The ignorant masses? The collective unconsciousness, the hive mind, the overextended self-help book section, the all day CNN reports of raped children and looted buildings? What makes dark things happen in a story, and are they real if they do?

Does fiction have a moral obligation to be responsible?

Or does it save us from everyday obligation and free our minds?

What say you?

–by Tracy Lucas

So here’s a question.

Why does having a vagina mean I have to love my work less?

Does the hard-wiring of labia production in a person’s DNA prevent the development of the gene that triggers professional satisfaction?

I know we’re years beyond the feminist movement (of which I’m not particularly fond, believe it or not, though I’ll never argue that it wasn’t needed or didn’t bring about some marvelous things.) I know women in the workplace are common now and that discrimination is mandated against and that it’s no longer P.C. to admit that you think a necktie could do a better job than a pair of heels.

I know all that.

But here I am, decades after this is all supposed to have been neatly solved, and I’m still catching flack for abandoning my family in pursuit of a career.

It’s more passive-aggressive than it was in olden days, to be sure. We’ve come a long way. But that mostly-unspoken bitterness is still there:

I thought you were a mother.

I’ve heard and seen it all. The forum flaming and name-calling when folks in the mommy chat site I visit realize that (gasp) I do more than make dinner, buy groceries and vacuum. The opinion a “friend” of mine holds that I’m a lazy and disinterested parent because I drop my child off at daycare through the week when I’m “only” working from home and can choose my own hours. The pitied looks my husband gets anytime he admits to someone older than twenty that he cooks our meals about half the time. The tongue clucks when someone overhears me tell my child to wait a minute so I can finish typing a thought. The haughtiness. The judgment.

Why is it so far from the realm of natural thought that I can be a mother and a writer?   A writer who loves expletives, erotica, and mindfuck stories, even?

Is that so much to ask?

Does performing my work on my own, without a boss hanging over me, make me somehow less of a contributor? Does it invalidate everything just because I’ve given birth?

People of all types breed and make more people. Then they raise them. Where do you think all the new wave hippies came from? Mostly from old wave hippies—and I think that’s a damn fine thing.

Fathers get lauded for playing with the kids after work. Mothers are chided for having gone to work in the first place.

I never meant to have a family. My plan from age fifteen on—I shit you not—was to be a crazy cat lady. That was my childhood aspiration when everyone else was going to be a vet or a teacher or a rock star. I fully intended to have a digital-ready, log cabin in the Smokies, a dozen cats, a hermit lifestyle and royalty checks landing in my mailbox. I had it all figured out, even down to the architectural layout for my one-bedroom, two-library home.

Actually, that’s still very much the plan, but my husband and son have turned out surprisingly cool enough that I’m going to let them come, too. Never thought I’d say that.   Son. I’m not a baby person. I’m not even that much of a girl person. I’ve always been a tomboy and felt more at home in an XY crowd than an XX.

Girls are too much drama. We’re too high-maintenance. For that reason alone, more than any other, I could never be a lesbian. I don’t have the patience.

(And yes, I’m aware that I have just stereotyped my own gender unfairly. That’s called a double-standard. Women can create those, too.)

Male relationships just make more sense to me across the board. The rules are simpler. My guy friends have never been mad at me for not calling for a month. (Nor vice versa.) My boys have never whispered behind my back when I went to the bathroom, tried to steal my clothes or rolled their eyes at my lame humor. They just go with it or don’t. There are no emotional games.

I hoped, once I made peace with the fact that yes, I really, really, really, really was pregnant and there was no going back, that I would have a boy. Not for one minute did I feel like it would be a girl. I didn’t look at frilly things, or yearn for hair-bows, or even pick a girl name. I dreamed at twelve weeks gestation that a boy it would be; and a boy it certainly was. (Granted, I also dreamed it was twins the week before that, but we dodged that bullet somehow!)

I would have loved a little girl. Of course I would have. She would have been mine and I’d have probably bought into all the pinkness and lace eventually. I’m even leaning that way for next time, if there’s in fact a next time and we do all that baby-making stuff again. I think I’m ready for that. I think I’d like to meet her.

But I’ve gotta tell you, I was nothing short of absolutely thrilled when the ultrasound tech squirted that cold-ass jelly on my belly and announced that I was having a boy.

My dreams weren’t Barbies and My Little Pony dolls. They were tee-ball coaching, and Hot Wheels, and denim and rocks and mud and worms and toothless grins under mottled hair.

Though it didn’t figure into my own reasoning for desiring a son, one of my father—s favorite things to say has always been that boys were far easier to raise than girls—and this was coming from a man who had six kids, so I suppose he should know. “You can’t yell at girls,”he said. “Boys, you can tell to sit down and shut up and they’re fine with it. Girls will cry and make you feel bad and ask you why you don’t love them anymore.”

Females tend to be catty and vindictive. (Me, too, so don’t get huffy. We just are.)

Guys don’t judge each other that way.

Women, why do we? Why aren’t we kinder to each other?

Why the hell do you care whether I breast-feed or buy bottles? Why does it matter if my son, a random child who you don’t know, colors happily with some other kids while I bring home some bacon myself? Why does it personally offend everyone if I’m my own damn kind of mother?

I’ve never gotten it, and I doubt I ever will.

But one thing I do know… I’m whoever the hell I want to be, regardless of whether a mini-person once burst forth from my loins. You choose your own mantle. You pick your own path. If nothing else, I hope the one human I’m in charge of raising for a while learns that for himself and has the courage to live it.

Even if his mama’s a little off her rocker.

And even if she’s more “person” than “girl.”

–by Tracy Lucas

As a parent, I worry for the future. Not my own so much; I have my life arranged the way I want it, and I’ve made my choices. But what is the world going to look like by the time my toddler is paying a mortgage? What will have changed by the time I’m a hundred years posthumously famous? (Yeah, well, a girl can dream.)

What happens if the foil-wearing pyramid people are right, and something drastic happens in 2012, leaving all of our technology obliterated? Who would we be?

Say we all survive and start over. Could you help your kid with a science project without Google? Stand reading a single newspaper once a day, or worse, once a week? Could you permanently remember how your favorite songs go, even without being able to listen to your iPod for the rest of your life?

I’m a little weird, spiritually speaking. Let’s just get that out of the way now so you’ll humor me. But one of my core beliefs is that we’ve all done this before. The whole thing.

Ancient people were smart. They had the same genes we have and their entire lives to mull over ways to make things easier. We aren’t any more advanced than they were mentally, we’ve just gotten better at respecting the need for preservation of ideas. We pass things down on paper more often; that’s about it.

Sure it sounds moronic that they didn’t know how to solve the problem of the plague by using clean water. That’s hindsight for you. Do we know how to solve cancer? It’s probably some little stupid thing we’re doing and just don’t realize yet. We’re tomorrow’s idiots, make no mistake.

We’ve learned important things and lost them many times before.

There was the library at Alexandria that’s now been shown to have had blueprints for computer-style calculation machines, modern medical inventions and best practices, and steam-powered toys. In the third century B.C.

We just forgot.

The Native American Hopi nation is said to believe the world has been destroyed four times, and that we’re working on the fifth. The legend tells that the earth was ruined once by fire, once by ice, once by water, and is next going to bite it by weather and human violence. In light of, respectively, the fireball death of the dinos, the Ice Age, the Great Flood talked about in every major religion, and any given headline in the New York Times, I can buy it. It’s at least as plausible as global warming.

Even the Christian Bible talks about a “Tower of Babel” which men built to raise their knowledge to the heavens, only to be struck down and scattered into different nations who could no longer collaborate. (Pangaea, anyone?) The funny thing to me there is that they must have been dangerously close to getting it right–you know, to threaten God and all. Must be reachable, then, yeah? Maybe they had the Internet, too.

Anyhow, I digress. The point is this: assume for just a moment that if something catastrophic did happen and there were human remnants left of us, we’d rebuild.

What the hell would our kids know of the real world?

Which pasty techno-geek teenagers would survive hard labor in a universe that suddenly lacked a Home Depot or plastic bins or bottled water?

What if they couldn’t call the electric company for service, or reach their government in any way but by two-week-delivery letter–if that?

There are articles everywhere on parenting skills getting totally screwed over by Internet addiction. Kids who never go outside. Text speak being allowed in the classroom–on final exams, no less. Social habits we have totally, irrevocably lost. (That last link is actually really funny. You should click it.)

Yet the Internet, the holy bank of our collective knowledge, has doubled every five years since it started. We’re supposed to be smarter now, aren’t we? More information, I’d think, has got to be a good thing. We swap ideas now regardless of geographical boundaries, we can look up the already-discovered solution for any problem we’ll ever have. Some guy in China can tell you why your bread won’t rise, a lady in India might know the best way to fix your bike. Pictures of anything you’ve ever seen are on the ‘Net. That’s pretty much a given. Everything is there. That is beyond cool to try to comprehend. It’s so futuristic it sometimes still baffles me.

So what kind of generation are we? Are we getting better, or worse?

I say this not as any kind of high-and-mighty call to action to become Amish or bust. (I’m writing this on a blog, aren’t I?)

I love being online. I work exclusively from home on my computer so that I can spend more time with my family and manage my own employment. And then, hypocritically, I take my son to daycare in the mornings so I have time to make business calls and finish my work sans background Elmo-music. Have I really made any extra time? If I had a regular day job building whatsits, the kid would spend the same number of hours at daycare, and I’d be less mentally drained by the time he got me on the living room rug with the Legos. I could leave work at work and not feel the need to check my email on the hour. Am I just kidding myself by thinking our setup is good? Am I selfish?

I cuddle up, when I can, on the couch with my kids–but to watch a movie on Netflix, not to take them on a nature walk or tell them a handed-down story. I do that, too, but not nearly often enough. Even our quality time is ornamented by the Playstation, or talking board games, or Youtube videos of funny cats.

My step-daughter is on Facebook. I chat with her there more through the week than I do when she’s in my house every other weekend. Is that better to have the online time, then, or worse? Does it leave us without anything new to say?

“Hey, I went to [this place] and did [this thing] yesterday.”

“I know, I saw your wall post.”

“Oh.”

There’s nothing left to talk about. I’ve spilled it all. She knows everything I ate, she’s seen all the new family pictures, and she has already visited all the websites it occurred to me she’d like. It’s all done instantly, and our one-on-one time is left a little lacking. There isn’t much more to share when it’s all been visible so fast.

It’s play-by-play life. Not living.

I think maybe Alain de Botton recently said it best. From his City Journal article:

We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows.

and

To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.

And if we feel that way, a generation who does remember what it was really like without the Internet–or, gasp, even cable TV!–and instant access to everything everyone has ever known, what kind of minds will our kids have?

I’d like to think that writing will save us. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. It’s naively idealistic, yeah, but that’s what I’m in it for. I read the ideas of those I agree with, those whom I hate, those I don’t understand, and those I wish I were more like. I read everything I can get my hands on. You probably do, too.

I write what I believe. I hope someday someone cares. Not in that woe-is-me, shitty emo way… I mean in the way we pore over Samuel Clemens or Saint Augustine, and marvel at what they were probably like to have coffee with. I want somebody to know what I thought. I want what I’ve had to learn the hard way not to be in vain, or be lost as soon as I am. I think each and every one of us deserves that; my gadgety grandfather, who never wrote down schematics for his many inventions; the gas station guy who composes songs in between cigarette sales; the frazzled mom collapsed in the bathtub during her one free hour to herself; the man chosen as the new leader of the free world. We’re all equally worthy of being remembered.

But in our new society, remembering only happens for a split second. I think it’s because we feel like we have to remember everything, at all times, with no exception. Sure, we’re all more interconnected. But how long do the hard-won emotions last?

Like a great example from the article quoted above, we leave the movie theater vowing to let the new, warm values learned change our lives and become lifelong watchwords–but then we’ve forgotten about them by the next night, a hundred loud commercials and meaningful blog posts later. All thought is now temporary and had behind closed doors as individuals instead of within a flesh-and-blood community.

We hear more. Of course we do, there’s no way to argue that. But I can’t remember whether we listen. What happened last Wednesday?  I have no idea. I’d have to check my Twitter feed to see what I posted. It’s all in and out, and nothing seems to stick.

Even cultural milestones and major events are becoming as temporary as newscasts. What happens if and when our digital-only archive crashes? How would we know where we’ve been, what we’ve learned? Would we all be lost again?

Maybe the Internet will never die. Maybe technology is safe from that giant blue screen in the sky. But who are we becoming? After only fifteen years of web life, is this really who we are? What happens after fifty, or two hundred?

If we don’t care about each other anymore, really care, what have we got? If you choose to believe current trends, our kids will care even less…

Is anyone else scared shitless of where we’re heading?

–by Tracy Lucas

Last Thursday, I found out a close relative has cancer. Friday, I found out it is advanced, has been deemed inoperable, and will probably be fatal.

The stricken person is someone I deeply admire and dearly love. I’ve been crying off and on ever since and trying to come to terms with the news.

It isn’t working.

Lots of people have cancer. Many of them die. (Some don’t, of course, let’s say that.) I’d venture a bet that everyone reading this either knows someone who has had cancer or has battled it firsthand. I’ve lost several other relatives to it before; we’ve all been down this road, and way too often.

But what is tearing me up in particular this time is not only my affection for the woman it’s happening to, though of course that plays a part—it’s that I’m not ready to lose her.

This woman is young. She is healthy (or so we thought), works out daily, eats mostly farm-raised meat and fresh vegetables, doesn’t smoke, and is insanely capable of hard, grueling work. She is strong. She is alive.

And now she may have mere weeks until she’s not.

It’s not just that I’m going to miss the hell out of her. It’s not just that it’s unfair, or that it was unlikely. All that’s true, but it isn’t what’s knocked the wind out of me.

It’s that I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready when I had a child, either.

The thought of having a baby was so far from the realm of possibility that I was convinced I had the flu four weeks in a row… until I realized something else that hadn’t happened in a month either. (Oops.)

The day I found out I was pregnant, I bawled my eyes out. I threw up, over and over, and it wasn’t due to morning sickness. I bundled up in bed and turned off the lights. I didn’t move for days.

Here I was, happily married, living with a roof over my head and food in my kitchen. I love being around kids, and had no doubt that this little person would kick ass and be an awesome adventure to raise. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him. Not even for a second.

But I didn’t know how I was going to pay for anything. I didn’t know how I’d manage work when I couldn’t stand up without feeling dizzy, or eat and keep anything down. I didn’t know if I was risking my life by having a baby, since my mother had complications with me that almost took her out. Most horrifying was that I didn’t know how a seven-pound anything was going to come out of something the size of a half-dollar.

I was terrified. I wanted to wait; I wanted to think about it first; I wanted a time-out.

And that’s how it is again, now, in the face of a heartbreaking death.

I don’t want her to die yet. I want another Christmas. I want family pictures, and her attendance at my son’s graduation in seventeen years, and her hair to have the chance to turn grey. I need it all to stop for a minute and let me catch up, let me breathe.

We don’t get that chance in the writing world, either.

Opportunities to write and create come by frequently, but we’re too afraid. I know I was, early on, and I chickened out of trying for things that could have turned out well and changed my life.

My husband tells the story of when he worked at Taco Bell as a high-school kid, and someone told him over the drive-thru speaker that he had a great voice and should be in radio. He laughed it off, said, “Yeah, right,” and watched in surprise as a well-established radio personality took her hot sauce, shrugged, and left him behind in the window.

What if he’d said yes? What if he’d driven to the station on his next day off and mentioned the exchange, or asked to speak to the woman about a job?

What if he’d believed in himself enough to give it a shot?

Google any celebrity who didn’t come from Daddy’s money, and you’re likely to find a wholly bizarre rags-to-riches story.

Bill freakin’ Gates started with equipment bought from rummage sale money and dropped out of college. Donald Trump filed bankruptcy. Repeatedly. Harrison Ford met George Lucas because he was hired to build cabinets in Lucas’s home. Justin Beiber became an overnight sensation when, well—that’s just it.

You never know what’s around the corner. Amazing things could be lying in wait, or devastating events could be just about to drop.

What matters is that you trust yourself enough to take those chances. Have the confidence to step up and give it a crack. Do the best you can and don’t be afraid to offer it.

There are a million writers in the world. You may never be the best one. (I know I’m not.) But the beauty of it is, you don’t have to be. You just have to be in the right place at the right time, and willing to work hard to grow and better yourself.

You just have to show up. Be the best writer in your hometown, in your office, in your county, on your social network. The world is made up of small ponds; you don’t always have to be the big fish. If you sit around and try to wait until you’re a hundred percent ready for launch and you know everyone and everything you’ll need to, you will fail. You will never take the first step, and you’ll languish and die in your dreams instead of reaching them.

I’m convinced that’s the hardest part of being a writer: showing up and announcing yourself. It’s claiming the title, voicing the opinions, doing the legwork, resolving to take both the credit and the blame. It’s ignoring the fear and jumping anyway.

Don’t want to be a writer. Be one.

If you have the guts to do that, you just might be ready.

Yes, even if you don’t know what to expect. Especially then, actually—admitting you’re not always in control frees you to look around and see things for how they really are. You can only grab the opportunities you are open enough to notice. Be open.

Life isn’t later. There is no later. There is only now.

Life never waits for “ready.”

–by Tracy Lucas

The media likes to throw around the idea that we are living in a “new generation” as if that weren’t true of every generation that’s ever come down the pike.

So, disclaimers first: I hate that phrase. It’s pretentious and pious, and a little too self-congratulatory for me. Yeah, yeah, we’re great. We didn’t build the pyramids or the Great Wall of China, we didn’t invent written language or steam power, but whatever. We’re awesomeness in a bag.

But as much as I detest the groupthink, demographic marketing labels (which is all they are), I’ve got to admit we’re dealing with some brand new stuff this time around.

I’m an Internet junkie. So are you if you’re reading this. There don’t seem to be too many folks left who need an explanation of how email works, or why it’s somehow okay that your paycheck lands as intangible numbers connected directly to a little piece of plastic now instead of as cash in your hands. We get it.

As a writer, though, it’s throwing off my game. I’ve had great opportunities through the Internet and platforms thereof which I would never have had a chance at gaining access to in a paper world, especially since culturally, I live about as far from New York and L.A. as you can get.

But as much as it’s enhanced my ride, the instant access to anything and everything has screwed me over.

My father is in his late seventies. My step-daughter is thirteen. They are both on Facebook, and can read every word I write. Before my now-toddler son is in junior high, he’s likely to have one, too.

They see my entire virtual life go by. If I repost a link to funny missing cat signs, they’re on it. If I give a shout-out to a snuff story with surprisingly poetic language, they’re off to read that, too. There is no division, despite the fact that anyone who knows me in real life each sees a drastically different mask and not the melded wad of personality traits that show in my online profile. No one sees the whole package in person; yet I’m totally exposed on the Internet, where even strangers can find out too much.

There’s always the option, I can hear you thinking, to choose not to post certain things. Of course there is.

But the more I’ve spread my wings in the writing world, the more I’ve come to realize that nobody wants to read stuffy third-person crap that I’ve carefully polished. It’s fake, and there’s enough instantly-available, killer writing in the world that everyone knows it. People come now for a person-to-person experience, and expect to get to know each other. They want flavor, and if you don’t have it, they move on. There are too many other blogs, too many other friends of friends of friends to visit. The network doesn’t have boundaries; there’s nothing to keep a pet reader other than wit and talent.

The problem is that suddenly, everyone you’ve ever known is in that reader pool.

Years ago, you could sit with your family at Thanksgiving and gloss over the fact that you changed a few names and published the tale your mother told you about all of her sexual fantasies. You could completely pretend it hadn’t happened because really, what were the chances that word would get back?

Not now. Nope.

Some co-worker of yours probably knows someone who went to high school with someone else who goes to church with your mother and has added her on MySpace, Twitter, or any of a thousand other websites.

So what do we do?

Case in point: I’m enough of a chickenshit that I almost struck the “mother’s sexual fantasies” bit above, and there’s not any personal truth in that in the slightest. My mother’s very conservative, and wouldn’t get anywhere close to having that conversation with me, even as an adult with three kids of my own and a rock-solid marriage.

I write whatever I want. I don’t edit myself to please anyone, be that family, friends, or even myself. I spill it all on the page and go. It’s all left there.

But when I’m looking at a batch of stories ready for submission out into the world, I can’t sit here and tell you that this whole issue isn’t something that figures in to which pieces leave the roost and which get thrown back in the shoebox. I wonder sometimes whether anyone will find those stories after I’m dead, and how wonderfully that will go over if they do. I almost wish I could see that.

Many writers are braver than me. They’ll throw those pieces to editors first, because they recognize that passion is born of reality, and reality is violently messy. And those writers are dead right.

If you’re comfortable with something you’ve written, it probably sucks.

Yet no one can make us as uncomfortable as our families. That’s what they’re for. Watch any Thanksgiving episode of any sitcom. It happens.

That’s the real question I’m asking. As a parent, as a sibling, as the adult child of someone else who will likely be hurt by your actions—how do you marry the two worlds?

Can you rant angrily about a personal family battle and then brag that it sold to Publication X in your profile, knowing it’s going to devastate a full quarter of the relatives that read it?

Or do you keep that story for a later date when everyone’s dead and miss some possibly fantastic career moves and friendships, all under the banner of emotional safety?

Or, and in my head, this is worse, do you submit and publish the piece, but tell no one?

I’m not blogging about this because I pretend to have any sort of answer. I have no clue.

I want to know: what do you do?