Welcome to my blog titled ‘Five Things’ where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. I’ll also share a quote I find meaningful as a point of focus for the week. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.
So here are this week’s five things, starting with the quote of the week…
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” - Mary Oliver
As things around us feel like they’re on fire, I am reminded that art is resistance. The world needs its storytellers, singers, actors, dancers, sculptors, musicians, painters, (and anyone else I forgot to mention) to remind us of our humanity. Artists hold a mirror up to society. We question and dig. We bring injustice into sharp relief. We invite laughter. We provide entertainment, respite, relief. We provoke change. We ask our audience to look at the world from a different perspective. Art is resistance.
In honor of Black History Month, I’m highlighting an author I heard speak several years ago at a writers conference in NYC. Jacqueline Woodson’s resume includes the National Book Award, the Newbery Honor, and the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. She’s been on the NYT best-selling list, served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–19, and named a MacArthur Fellow. Her writing is hauntingly beautiful and heartbreakingly real. If you have an opportunity to read her stories, watch one of her TED talks, or introduce her books to the young people in your life, I highly recommend it.
I’m heading to Colorado Springs this week for a writer’s conference. I am so excited because more than half my cohort from grad school will be there. We’ve been online with each other several times a week since September, but we haven’t been together in person since July. Events like this one help to fill my creative well. There’s nothing like spending a few days with fellow creative types to stay motivated, and with my aggressive writing schedule this year, I really need the motivational support! Next post, I’ll share my favorite highlights from the conference.
Birthday season is underway, and last night we celebrated Noah’s 27th. This kid of ours is smart, creative, driven, and kind. Last summer, for one of my first school assignments, I had write about my ‘creative hero.’ This is an edited version of that post, which I think is a fitting tribute to the birthday boy!
All the kids are creative types, but our second son is a writer. He wrote his first ‘novel’ as an eighth-grade project, before I had the whiff of a first draft for my first novel in mind. His mentor, a traditionally published author, sang his praises for both completing the daunting project and for his fresh take on the story. He had the ‘chops’ she’d said. When he finished the draft, he said something like, “I’m not attached to that manuscript anymore. I used the project to learn about process, and my next book will be better.” I was like, “Dude, you’re thirteen. How do you have such perspective?”
He kept on writing. He went to film school, became a screenwriter and stand-up comedian. He writes more in a month than I do in a year, and he has an amazing attitude. Rarely is he discouraged. He loves to collaborate. He’s willing to pitch something, and then the next thing, and then the next. He has a wild imagination, he works hard, and he is now an extremely skilled writer. In fact, he’s top of my list of people to call when I’m stuck on a plot point, or I’ve written myself into a corner, or I can’t quite make a character land.
This kid had the courage to do at thirteen something that took me four decades to try! Bravo, Noah, for recognizing that sharing art with the world makes us vulnerable and doing it anyway.