Category: feelings

feelings

i’m multicultural

abby mumford

my blonde hair and blue/green eyes may fool you, but don’t let them. i’m really very multicultural. i speak pig latin. i eat pasta. i dance the jig. i drink sangria. i put my left shoe on first.

okay, so truthfully, my multicultural roots take the form of a bulgarian tradition mingled into the soil of friendship. (you know what i mean! the nice soil. the enriching kind.) ahem, so, this is the third year i’ve had a martenitza tied on my wrist to celebrate the beginning of spring. (year one is documented here and year two, here.) this one started off yesterday when adriana dashed into my office in between meetings with a handful of red and white yarn bracelets and a “hi how are you i only have two minutes take your pick and i’ll tie it on and cut it to size and yes sorry my hands are cold and doesn’t this rainy day look so much like spring so cheers and happy spring and okay bye.”

you could say this spring is off to a whirlwind start!

and it’s only going to get more whirlwindy as i prepare for one stint as professional snowboarder and another as a nanny. it’s that second job that very well may give me a view of my first stork because bubba mac (the soon to be born brother of baby mac) is due right around the time of my arrival in NJ. *dances jig of excitement*

but back to point, the details are here for those not thricely immersed in this holiday. there’s a specific day to put on the bracelet (march 1) and a specific time to cut it off (whenever you see a stork, a swallow, or a budding tree), so like the good little bulgarian i am, i’m going to keep my eyes peeled for those things.

my fingers are crossed for that stork. (you hear me, bubba mac?!?)

happy spring everyone! may you celebrate it in any fashion you desire.

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feelings

progress report

abby mumford

there are zillions of pieces of advice out there on how to write, but the most logical ones boil down to two points.

(1) put your butt in the chair and write.
(2) in order to get better at writing, you have to WRITE.

sure, reading and living a full life are also keys to becoming a better writer (and a better human), but the practicality of practicing writing is too true to ignore, as @fakeeditor (#2) so helpfully explains.

i thought i’d been doing that. i have one completed manuscript under my belt not to mention an MFA degree, and yet, i kept coming up with doubt about the state of my current (finished but unedited) WIP. i wondered why my writing wasn’t getting better. i thought taking some time away from it would help. i thought diving in and doing more research would help. i thought reading it over and over would help. i thought doing some character interviews would help.

it didn’t.

in a fit of distraction, i started to peruse my old blog postings because i couldn’t remember when i had changed from diaryland.com to wordpress.com. that switch, from casual musings to carefully thought out postings, marked the beginning of my attempts to become a writer and i was curious what that actual date was. (7.21.09 for inquiring minds.)  it took longer than i anticipated to find the beginning  and i couldn’t help but read a bunch of the posts as i scrolled my way through. after reading through some highly embarrassing and super revealing and poorly crafted posts, i realized something.

i HAVE made progress. it’s just not the progress i was expecting.

the progress i’ve made has been in the form of emails and blogs because that’s what i’ve been doing daily for years now. sure, it may have been a thing necessitated through work or a premature attempt at building a brand, but it’s been the most consistent form of writing that i’ve been practicing and THAT’S why those types of words come more easily to me.

now hold up, i’m not saying when i open an email or fresh post, the right words march out and lay down in the proper formation, but it’s much easier to twist those words into the desired shape whereas the words in my novel look a bit more like this:

so the point of this was not to direct you to my most remedial writings, but as a note to myself to lighten up in the areas of my manuscripts because i’m still new to the game and my talent still needs time to be cultivated.

now, how to work on being more patient?

how do YOU work at getting better at what you do — whether it’s a hobby, a job, or a career?

 

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feelings

water vs. fine literature

abby mumford

water

“High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water;

but everybody likes water.”

Mark Twain

(please excuse this interruption, but before i go any further, i must admit that i blatantly stole the image and the quote from Aidan Donnelley Rowley’s blog. go ahead, click on the image or the words and it’ll take you to her beautiful website.)

but back to my regularly scheduled post: when i read this quote by mark twain, it triggered a physical response.

i went and got a drink of water.

(ok, for serious now.)

his words eloquently and straightforwardedly (friday’s the day where you can make up new words) state something i’ve felt in varying degrees my whole life. if a stranger looked at my bookshelf, they might degree it full of “water” books and wonder why i’m not reading more “wine”. me and drinking wine are besties, so why don’t i read literature of the same sort? i say i love books and i say i read every day (i do!), so then why haven’t i or why don’t i read more serious literature more often?

probably because the main reason i read is for entertainment.

i want to be carted away from the doldrums of my life and placed in a world that’s shiny and silly and amazing and breathtaking and scary and vivid and different. high literature does have those things (and wine makes me feel those things), but it is too fancy. too convoluted. too proud. it feels like you have to walk on eggshells around big words and important political statements, and you know what? i’m not a big fan of reading delicately.

i like to gulp the words.

i want dive in and splash around in plot twists and sink underneath the surface and let the characters bubble up around me. i want to smash through realizations and bellow about relationships and make the wrong decisions and pick the right guy and figure out how the world around me works. i want to race through chapters so fast i can’t catch my breath and yet lay there quietly nodding in empathy. breathing and reading in and out. in and out. learning and growing and cheering and doing new things in fiction and real life (as a writer, a reader, and a human).

YA books do this for me. other books may do that for you and that’s why there are so many options out there in the world, so we can all be happy within the pages of a book.

so, while MY love goes out to books that may be considered more water than wine, it’s because these books make me laugh and grin and scream and shake my fist and wince and cry and learn and grow, but most importantly, they make me turn the page.

WHAT BOOKS DO THAT FOR YOU? OR IN OTHER QUESTIONS, DO YOU LIKE WATER? WINE? SOME OTHER BEVERAGE? WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO GET YOU TO COMMENT HERE. YES, YOU, ALL OF YOU!

p.s. the irony of the “underage” YA book being marked as water just hit me. even if it was high fa-luting literature, it probably shouldn’t ever be considered wine.

 

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family resemblance

abby mumford
exhibit A

my oldest niece, M (brother G’s daughter), is looks-wise the twin of sister E. it’s a little creepy sometimes how much they look alike because E and M are aunt and niece, not mother and daughter. and now, with M rocking longer hair (the above pic is two years old), the resemblance is striking.

it’s come to light that M mirrors another one of her aunts, specifically me, but also sisters E and J.

how does she resemble us? she’s a reader.

her mom reports: “the book fair was at their school this week. M announced she was so excited she couldn’t sleep that night.”

(is this not the cutest thing you’ve ever heard? a kid who’s so excited about the thought of buying books she can’t sleep. don’t i know that feeling.)

but then the report thickens: “BTW, M started a 4th grade girls book club. They meet once a month rotating hosts and who picks the next book. She went first last weekend. They read “BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE.” She researched questions to ask, led the discussion, planned a craft (they made a journal) & made a snack (funfetti cookies). There are 8 girls.”

(1) this sounds like book club extraordinaire. reading + snacks + a craft?!?! AM I TOO OLD TO JOIN? (book hungry ladies, we should take notes.)

(2) she researched discussion questions?!? now there’s a leader.

(3) i hope her passion for reading never dies (side note: i’ve just made it my auntly mission to see that it never does) and i hope her thoughtfulness and enthusiasm continue to inspire those around her. heck, it’s inspiring me and i’m all the way across the country, so i can only imagine what those 7 other girls are feeling being in the same room with her.

(4) i’m so glad this portion of the mumford genes entered her DNA. (i’m not so glad that she’s already my height and she’s only 9. dang it! why didn’t i get the tall genes? or the math genes?)

(5) one of the most amazing things to me about my nieces and nephews is how much family history is in them. it’s in their features AND their personalities. it’s in their hair color, teeth size, tongue rolling ability, height, weight, and eyelashes. it’s in what makes them laugh and cry and run and jump and read (or not).

they make the family feel bigger and at the same time closer because they show us how we’re all intertwined even when we don’t live in the same neighborhood.

 

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happy birthday, brother G

abby mumford

i mentioned january was a big month for us mumford kids and i wasn’t kidding.

TODAY is brother G’s birthday.

he’s the eldest of us and he’s forged the path to adulthood (all the way across the country!) with maturity and class.

brother G as the big bad wolf

and it’s that humor and grace i try to emulate on a daily basis, because, i mean he stole all the math genes and i have to work with what i’ve got. i can only hope that i’m 1/4 as successful as he is because every day, he charms a smile out of those he interacts with whether it’s coworkers, friends, his wife, or his kids. they’re all happier when he walks into a room.

and THAT is one of the most important successes in life.

happy birthday, G. here’s hoping i get more real life smiles instead of :) (digital ones) this year. (here’s to june!)

 

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