Bob Gillen

Healing through story

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Mannequin Monday – You Make the Rules

March 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – You Make the Rules

You decide what the mannequin wears. You dress the blank form. Your words. Your vision. Your rules.

Advice from a business writer and from a poet. You make the rules.

I mark one year of these Mannequin Monday posts today.

And I offer a brief story of my own. Enjoy your week.

What I’m Reading

This week marks post #52 in the Mannequin Monday blog series. I believe what so many say: 80% of success is showing up. And thanks to you for showing up to read my thoughts. You are always welcome here.

Yesterday I received a weekly newsletter from B2B writer Ed Gandia. Ed runs his own copywriting business. In this issue he offers advice about determining deposit amounts you can ask of a client. Ed says:

“Most good prospects are willing to comply with what YOU want. And once you understand this, you’ll get more confidence to make other improvements in your business standards.

Remember: YOU make the rules.

There’s no board of governors deciding what you must do. There’s no union. No upper management from which to get approval.

It’s up to you. You have full reign over how you operate your business.”

A good piece of advice I can see working in other walks of life. You make the rules. Segue! This reminds me of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem The Art of Disappearing. Here are a few lines. You can read the entire poem here.

When they say Don’t I know you?/ say no.

If they say We should get together/ say why?

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Mannequin Monday – “A lot of pain in that invisibility”

March 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – “A lot of pain in that invisibility”

“If you weren’t so quiet, you wouldn’t have searched so desperately for a way to speak.” Springsteen and Obama on the Renegade podcast.

A ten-year old girl in post Civil war Texas learns English to find her voice.

And a chapter from my book, A Twin Long Gone. Trying to re-create a voice.

What I’m Reading

I started this week listening to the first two episodes of the podcast Renegade on Spotify. Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama engage in a long conversation about music, America, their individual backgrounds.

Early in the first episode Obama mentions the shy quality he sees in Springsteen. That sparks a long comment from Springsteen about the shyness prevalent in so many entertainers and performers.

“If you weren’t so quiet,” Springsteen says, ” you wouldn’t have searched so desperately for a way to speak. The reason you desperately pursue your work and your language and your voice is because you haven’t had one. You realize that, and you feel the pain of being somewhat voiceless.”

Springsteen goes on: “The performance becomes the mechanism from which you express the entirety of your life. Previous to that I was pretty invisible. A lot of pain in that invisibility.”

It’s all about finding your voice, about desperately pursuing that voice. A matter of survival. Speak or die invisible.

Author and artist Austin Kleon says in his book Show Your Work the only way to find your voice is to use it. He goes so far as to say, if you’re not on the Internet, you don’t exist. Strong words, but they echo Springsteen. You express yourself because you feel the pain of being somewhat invisible.

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Mannequin Monday – Filling the Void

February 22, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – Filling the Void

What do I give myself to when faced with a wide open day? How do I fill the void? A life shift offers opportunity, unexplored space. What will my story be?

Storytelling makes the world go round. I’m reading News of the World.

And again, I offer you another story bite of my own for this week. “The Playlist.”

What I’m Reading/Working On

A friend, a writing coach, asked this week in a social media post: what is your writing goal for this year? I replied by saying, fill the void. A bit humorous, maybe. A touch enigmatic. I’ll explain. My life circumstances have changed dramatically in the last several months. There is now literally a void, a large open space, in my life. How to fill it? So easy to say, I have tons of time to write. Not so easy to actually write.

I need structure to write. I’m not referring exactly to a writing outline, a book plan. There is a blank page, an empty screen, waiting for my words. I re-energized my weekly blog about a year ago with the Mannequin Monday concept. Drape the blank form with thoughts and ideas. The structure I began with was one I borrowed from several online courses I had taken with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Listen to or read a transcript of an author talking about their approach to creative writing. Reply to a few discussion questions, and offer comments on the work of other participants. Read a writing lesson. Write an exercise inspired by the lesson.

The structure worked for me. I had a pattern. I was not creating entirely from scratch every week. And so Mannequin Monday came to be. I am now 50 weeks in. The structure has evolved somewhat. Simplified to What I Am Reading and What I Am Writing. But the focus remains the same. Fiction. Storytelling.

A brief mention of what I’m reading this week. Paulette Jiles’s book News of the World, on which is based the new Tom Hanks film. I like the main character’s occupation: a printer who also travels the country with current newspapers, charging a dime a head to read the news of the world to his audience. The story is set in the years following the Civil War.

I am five chapters in. Perhaps a bit too much backstory for a short book, but a great read so far. More comments next week.

What I’m Writing

Once again, I used Ray Bradbury’s writing guideline: nouns and titles. Make a list of words, titles, phrases. Let a story emerge from the words. Here’s my latest effort.

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Mannequin Monday – No Car Chase Without a Driver

February 16, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Mannequin Monday – No Car Chase Without a Driver

No story without a character. This week I talk about the people who inhabit a story. The mannequin itself, before it’s dressed. So many memorable characters in fiction.

And I offer you a short piece inspired by a Rodin sculpture.

Enjoy!

What I’m Reading

I remember the driver, not the car chase. No story comes to life without good characters. Their efforts to survive, to conquer, to love, to find a place in the world. 

I remember the detective, not the crime. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch lives, grows, through dozens of crime novels. Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache commands our attention through all of her crime novels.

I remember Hemingway’s Santiago, the fisherman, not the great marlin he caught in The Old Man and the Sea.

While I never finished re-reading Moby-Dick, I do remember Ishmael and Ahab, not so much the white whale.

his fierce determination to survive

I remember Gary Paulsen’s Brian Robeson, the thirteen-year old boy in Hatchet. I recall his fierce determination to survive. Memories of the environment he found himself in are secondary.

I remember this week’s read: Elizabeth in Raymond Fleischmann’s How Quickly She Disappears. Her engrossing adventure, much of it emotionally wrenching, dealing with a psychotic man who claims to know where her missing sister is. I won’t recall the details of her search. I will remember her. Her strength, her resolve. 

I remember Kieran Elliott in Jane Harper’s The Survivors. Kieran heads an ensemble cast of characters, carrying guilt over the deaths of two men in his small town, now dealing with a missing girl and a murdered woman.

I remember U. S. Marshall John Whicher in John Stonehouse’s Whicher series. Breathless adventures, thrillers. True page-turners. Yet nothing without the MC, the main character.

Needless to say, story and plot, setting, are important. Those are the world the characters live in. But it will always be the characters who live on in my mind.

What I’m Writing

This week I used one of Rodin’s sculptures for inspiration in a writing exercise. Here’s the photo. I focused on the hand on the left.

The Hand

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Mannequin Monday – Easy for Some

February 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – Easy for Some

What’s the street credibility of writers who offer advice on the craft of writing? This week published authors guide us in finding the words to drape our bare mannequin. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth George, Natalie Goldberg.

And I offer a chapter, a character study, from a novel I’m working on.

What I’m Reading

As I bounce between a couple of books this week, I can’t stop thinking about how fiction authors extend a hand to inspire other writers.

I’m thinking in particular about the street cred of fiction authors who write about the craft of writing.

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Mannequin Monday – If people don’t die right, they haunt

January 25, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – If people don’t die right, they haunt

Our mannequin, our framework, will perhaps remain unclothed this week. It’s all about not dying right, about absence. Haunting.

Quotes from Wynton Marsalis and Eddie Glaude.

And a story of mine, inspired by the quotes.

What I’m Reading This Week

I came across this quote from Wynton Marsalis this week. “So many of us have lost loved ones to Covid-19 and didn’t have that last chance to say goodbye in-person. Your dearly departed is forced to come to you from the spirit world and sit with you. Their presence allows you to grieve slowly, to mourn completely. So many people say they just can’t sleep. It is a profound, holistic pain that can only be assuaged in a realm that is deeper than dreams.”

The quote refers to his new musical work, The Democrarcy! Suite.

In the same vein, I heard an impactful comment from cable news commentator Eddie Glaude. Glaude was speaking of the effects of the COVID explosion on many of us when he said, “If people don’t die right, they haunt.” He is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Also the Chair of the Center for African American Studies and the Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton. His quote inspired my own writing this week.

The 400,000-plus deaths from COVID are compounded by the knowledge that most, if not all, of those 400,000 died alone, apart from family, friends, loved ones. They died alone.

What I’m Writing This Week

Here’s what I’m writing, what I’m feeling, this week.

A Whisper of Breath

If people don’t die right, they haunt.

The comment jumped from the TV,  framed by a jumble of unheard words. It hit Elizabeth McLane between the eyes.

Yes. That’s it.

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