Give a Woman a Loan and Watch Out!

Light streams through the windows in an upstairs Seattle office building and shines down on rows of brightly colored shoes. Clogs, flats, heels, and stilettos–all hand-painted in styles ranging from bright and floral to intricate geometric shapes to simple and elegant patterns.   A new business in the making.

Hourglass Footwear Founders Lisa Strom and Kira Bundlie, both professional artists, love shoes.  Those interesting, one-of-a-kind styles that are so hard to find.  Which is why they started painting designs on their own shoes.  Kira says, “The first time we wore our painted shoes, people came up to us and asked where we got them. Soon we were getting requests to paint pairs for friends.”

 Friends and family. . .  like me!  Lisa is my daughter.  I got my first pair for Mother’s Day three years ago, and I wear them all the time.  And, yes, everywhere I go, people comment on them.

Clearly, Lisa and Kira had a great idea.  So they crunched numbers, met with an attorney and advisors, tested paints, developed prototypes and explored deals with shoe suppliers. They also hired ten local artists who are already busily developing their own collections.  “Business-minded artists do exist,” the two say. “We’re proof!”

Yes, but even business-minded artists need funding.

Over the years, I have written about the exciting concept of global micro-finance.  You know: Give a woman a loan and it changes a village. Micro-loans provide eager women in struggling countries access to the finanacing they require–money they could never get from a traditional bank.  A woman might use her loan to buy a cow, for instance, and start a dairy.  Or to open a tiny store.  Or to buy supplies to make handicrafts to sell.

Great concept, and most successful.  But what about in our own country?  Could the same concept be used to fund new businesses here?  The developers of Kickstarter  say, “Absolutely!”

Kickstarter is essentially a route to help fund creative start-ups like Hourglass Footwear. Kira and Lisa put together an informational video, and are offering rewards–hand-painted shoes, original artwork and portraits—as pledge incentives.  All pledges are processed through Amazon.com.  If the start-up doesn’t attract enough potential investors in a specified period of time, no one pays and no one receives.  But if it does, the pledges are collected and a new business begins.

“It’s a win/win!” Lisa says. “A chance to support local artists and get some great rewards in the process.”

Don’t you love it when you set out to help others and you gain in return?

 

 To see the Hourglass Kickstarter video, visit:

http://kck.st/J0iag1 

“Blessed is he who has found his work.”

Thomas Carlyle

So You’re Writing a Novel

Common Question:  You’re writing a novel?  What genre is it?

Common Answer:  Well, it’s hard to say because there is so much in it.  Maybe a mystery romance, but with lots of suspense.  Oh, and horror, too.  Something for everyone.

Most helpful Response: Uh, no.  Each genre marches to its own rules.  Which means that to be successful, you need to first know the rules.  (I know, I know, you can point out published books that stomp all over the rules and are still successful.  That’s a risky route for a new writer.  Save that until you have a good sales track record, and proof that you know the rules from which you are stomping away.)

It is important to be able to pinpoint the genre of your novel, and to know why it fits there.  To help you, here are the most common genres:

• Suspense.  These are stories of extraordinary situations, tales with thrilling action. They can be set in the past, present, or future as long as characters are forced out of their everyday lives and into a situation of danger. In the end, the hero wins.
• Fantasy. Just as the name implies, these are tales outside “real” experience.  The setting may be in an imaginary realm (Lord of the Rings middle earth, for instance) or right here at home (Twilight) or a combination of both (Harry Potter). Characters may or may not be human, and often have other-worldly attributes and abilities.  Good usually overcomes evil—but not necessarily in the way readers expect.
• Romance.  Whether placed in the past or present, these are stories of a man and a woman who find happiness together.  The intensity varies from safe and chaste to explosive.
• Horror. Pretty much self-explanatory.  The story provokes… well… horror. Evil is at work, and sometimes it wins.
• Mystery.  Whether a murder or some other mysterious happening, these stories present readers with a puzzle they can try to solve along with the main character.  Give clues, but don’t make the plot too easy to figure out.  Best if readers do figure it out, but not too completely, and not too far before the main character. The solution will come through point-by-point deduction. The protagonist almost always figures out the mystery. 
• Science Fiction.  This is a huge and diverse genre, often futuristic.  It can take place on earth or anywhere else. The temptation here is to write something similar to a story you already know.  Don’t.  Dig for a unique plot, yet one that rings a scientific note of plausibility.

Decide on your genre?  Great!  Give it a unique twist, and let your creative juices flow.  Now you are ready to write!

“Everyone who works in the domain of fiction is a bit crazy.  The problem is to render this craziness interesting.”

Francois Truffaut

Turning off the “Wanter”

A minister I once knew talked about the ads at Christmas and how they never failed to turn on his “wanter.”  I laughed.  How well I remember watching the mailbox for the Sears Christmas catalog so that I could snatch it up before my brothers and sisters got hold of it.  Skimming through those pages switched on my “wanter” and sent it soaring into high gear.  I would grab up my mother’s red pen and circle every toy I wanted—which was many.

Guess what?  “Wanters” also get turned on in May.  Yesterday a friend showed me her top-of-the line iPad, and I was hooked.  I wanted one!  Never mind that I got a new iPhone last Christmas and still can only do the basics.  Never mind that it more than meets my needs.  Never mind! I want an iPad!

Believe it or not, I truly am satisfied, happy, and blessed.  So how come I feel I just have to own all the cool toys that yesterday I didn’t even know existed?

When I was in India visiting a school for abandoned girls, I snapped this picture.  She could eat for the greater part of a year for the price of a new iPad. 

Thank you, young one, for doing what I can’t seem to manage.  Thank you for turning off my “wanter.”

“Own only what you can carry with you:  know languages, know countries, know people.  That is all you need.”

 Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Farewell, Maurice Sendak

When I worked as a substitute teacher, I kept two bags of can’t-lose teaching stuff  by the door: one for little kids and another for big kids.  One day I was called to teach a first grade class, so I grabbed up my little kids bag.  But when I got to the school, I was sent to a sixth grade class instead.

Great.  Just great. Obviously bunny worksheets were not going to cut it.  And the book I brought to read was Maurice Sendak’s picture book, Where the Wild Things Are.

As I scrambled to collect myself, a kid named Jason–who was already sprouting the shadow of a moustache–pulled the book out of my bag and exclaimed, “Oh!  Oh! I love this book!”  The whole class joined in and insisted I read it to them.  “And be sure to show us the pictures,” Jason added.

I must admit, as a writer, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with books that provoke so faithful a following.  While I do savor the imaginative story and marvel over the way the words wind together in so unforgettable a way, a bit of envy does creeps in.  If only those words were mine! I think.  And those wonderful pictures… If only I had been the one to paint them.  

Together those sixth graders and I “gnashed our terrible teeth and rolled our terrible eyes and showed our terrible claws” as we joined Max as the “wild rumpus began.”

I am no Maurice Sendak.  I know that.  I’ve never written a best-loved classic. I’ve not crafted a children’s picture book that moves an adolescent tough boy to unashamedly announce to the class, “I have a wolf suit, but it doesn’t fit me anymore.” Maybe I will someday, but I doubt it.

We will miss you, Maurice Sendak, little kids and big kids and grown up kids, too.  You did good.

 “I have a sadness shield that keeps out all the sadness, and it’s big enough for all of us.” 

Max, in Where the Wild Things Are

Sari Blues to Sari Joy

Have you ever put on an Indian sari?  It’s tricky.  If you don’t have the proper paraphernalia, it’s nigh unto impossible.  The sari itself is just a 6-foot or so length of beautiful fabric—often decorated along one edge.  You do need a blouse top, or it will get mighty drafty, and if you are in India, you may be thrown off the local bus.  You also need a petticoat with a drawstring waist.  (Don’t be tricked into thinking an elastic waisted slip will do, because it definitely will not.  The weight of the tucked-in sari will stretch out the elastic and pull both the slip and the sari right off you!)

I have one simple sari petticoat, but it’s blue, which means I can’t use it under my red sari or my yellow one.  Which means whenever I have occasion to wear a sari, I just wear my red one.  Always.

Sunday afternoon, I was at my friend Bethel’s house. She brought out several suitcases filled with heirlooms handed down through generations of her family.  One piece was an intricately sewn petticoat from the late 1800s, with beautiful details and delicate lace, hand-stitched with loving care.  

“Oh,” I blurted.  “Just the thing to go under my saris!”

“You can have it,” Bethel said as she handed me the petticoat.  “I will never use it.”   

Today I carefully hand-washed the lovely garment and hung it out to dry, and to sun bleach the stains. Tonight I stitched up the rips and mended worn seams.  Tomorrow I will try it on with my yellow silk sari.

Don’t you love it when joy comes in a totally unexpected package?

“True happiness brings more richness than all the money in the world.”

Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi

Blessings in Small Places

While in India researching my Blessings in India fiction trilogy, I was asked to teach a writing class.  Sekaran, a small dark man, crept in and sat in the back corner. “He is extremely poor,” the leader whispered. “He comes from the lowest part of the caste we used to call untouchables.”

My first assignment was that everyone write a detailed outline of their proposed work. Sekaran turned in a sheet of paper with nothing but these words:        

God’s love brooms all the rooms of our house which is full of dirt, ugliness, grubby bugs and muddy brutes.  It cleans up the filth of idol festivals and makes us holy.

I told Sekaran his writing was lovely, but we were talking about writing articles and books. He bowed and stared at the floor. Obviously, he had misunderstood, poor fellow. But the next day, when everyone else turned in the assigned synopsis, Sekaran handed me another single page:

God’s love is the light of the world that fights darkness. Victory is always His.  Let us shine.

“Sekaran,” I gently explained, “you need to write more than this.”

“I can only write short, Miss,” Sekaran murmured. “I have no computer. At the internet café, I must pay for every word and I only have a few coins left.”

What others in that class wrote, I can no longer remember.  But I often recall Sekaran’s “short writing,” and I am blessed all over again.

God’s love follows all the days of our life.  It neither leaves us nor forsakes us.  Let us remain in God’s love.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight,

O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.”

Psalm 19:14

New Cliches?

Cliché:  A trite, stereotyped expression that has lost its originality and impact by long  overuse.

An eager young woman I’ll call Jane handed me the first chapter of her book manuscript and waited expectantly for me to read.  It began something like this:

Anna stood dripping in her soaking clothes.  Rain was coming down in buckets, and she had no umbrella.  

That’s all the further I needed to read.  It was apparent that clichés would do Jane in.

“But aren’t clichés clichés because they are the best possible word pictures?” Jane asked.

No.  Maybe at one time, but that picture has grown too worn and tattered with use.  My challenge to Jane was to paint a new word picture.  A fresh ones so good others would want to copy her.

Perhaps this assortment of colorful wording will move us all to fresh thinking:

• Abandoned as a drive-in theater at noon.  – Dan Rather
• Absurd as using a guillotine to cure dandruff.  – Clare Booth Luce
• About at much backbone as a chocolate éclair. – Theodore Roosevelt
• Bruised as a hockey goalie. – David Letterman, “Late Night”
• Clever as a dog reading Shakespeare on a high wire. – Dean R. Koontz
• Dark as the brooding thunderstorm. – John Greenleaf Whittier
• Face like pie out of the oven too soon.  – William Faulkner
• Heart as warm as a desert storm. –OgdenNash
• Irrevocable as a haircut. – Readers’ Digest
• Jumped like a popcorn kernel bursting from a heated pan. – Dean R. Koontz
• Lazy as a toad in a damp hole. – Owen Ulph
• Quick as a dart of flame. – Pearl Buck
• Rained like bath time on Noah’s ark. – Ivan Doig
• Speechless as a stone. – Elizabeth Browning
• Thin as boardinghouse soup. – Jack Buck
• Voiceless as the funeral train. – T. B. Reade
• Warm as moonlight.  – J.R.R. Tolkien

 All kinds of possibilities await us!  Just don’t use  “The rain drowned my boots.”  That was Jane’s invention.

“Avoid clichés like the plague!”