MARCH: Women's History Month

Every year, March is designated Women’s History Month by presidential proclamation. The month is set aside to honor women’s contributions in American history.

Women’s History Month began as a local celebration in Santa Rosa, California.

One of Ours

In 1978, The California Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women planned and executed a “Women’s History Week” celebration. The organizers selected the week of March 8 to correspond with International Women’s Day, and the movement spread across the country to other communities.

In 1980, the National Women’s History Project, a consortium of women’s groups and historians, which is now the National Women's History Alliance, lobbied for national recognition. In February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th 1980 as National Women’s History Week. In 1987, Congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as “Women’s History Month.”

The month-long event was created to shine the spotlight on the many women who have selflessly given of themselves to improve the lives of their families, communities, and the world-at-large in all areas.

Obviously, women writers of yesteryear come to mind who have led the way for female writers today. There are many who came before us. Six of my favorite writers both novelists and poets are: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Willa Cather, One of Ours; Alice Munro, Dear Life; Louisa May Alcott, Little Women; Emily Dickinson, Hope is the Thing with Feathers; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee?

I have a copy of  How Do I Love Thee on my living room wall. It was artfully crafted, starting outward in a circle and spiraling round and round, ending in the center. It is still my very favorite of all poems.

          How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Who do you think has helped shape women writers of today? Who do you admire? I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

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Judy Ann Davis

 

WHERE DO WRITERS GET IDEAS?

Everyone wants to know where writers get their ideas. It’s a question every author who has a book signing or who gives a presentation is asked. Many times, you will hear writers (myself included) admit that they “truly don’t know” where they get them.

For a writer, ideas are like the ocean waves—sometimes they come crashing into our minds; sometimes they roll quietly in and then slip away, receding like a calm ripple; and sometimes they tumble around like a sneaky undertow before they pop up, surface and become a viable thought.

However, there are some truths about all writers:

Good writers are voracious readers, devouring anything they can get their hands on—from the back of a cereal box to a placemat at the restaurant to the directions for the new coffeemaker.

Writers are often asked how do you manage to read and write at the same time? Simple--just like a chef eats, but creates and cooks for his vocation, we read and write. It’s part of the job. Good writers exchange and read works of their fellow writers who create in a similar format. The short story writer will read short stories of masters like Jack London, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Louis L’Amour, Kurt Vonnegut,  Eudora Welty, or Alice Munroe. . .and the list goes on. 

But don’t be fooled, good writers also read the masters and modern day writers of other genres as well. Why? To discover what is good and what is bad writing. To get ideas. To listen to new voices, to understand new styles, and to discover how characters, descriptions, setting, dialogue, and storylines are created by others.

I personally have found that most writers I know are receptive to new things, are often curious, and do not like to be idle.  They are observant of their environment, situationally aware of everything and everyone around them, and often embrace change, sometimes just for the newness of it. They are able to remember details and, like the cartoonist  who can capture the essence of person with a few  features unique to only that person, writers are also able to sort through detail and write images readers can see and relate to.

MENTAL HEALTH MONTH - Creativity Is Not Without Disappointments

Musicians, writers, painters, scientists, and many more people share a skill that many call creativity. Where does it come from besides the activated frontal lobe of the brain? It’s a tough question that has been explored for years and has often been linked with mood disorders. Many artists, when their brains or hands are busy, have learned to channel depression into some type of creation.

First Steps

March 30, 1953, was the birthday of well-known painter, Vincent Van Gogh, who lived to be only 37 years old. At the age of 27, he abandoned his unsuccessful careers as an art dealer and a missionary and concentrated on his painting and drawing. When he began painting, he used peasants and farmers as models and then flowers, landscapes and himself because he was too poor to pay his subjects.

Noon Rest

In less than ten years of his life, he painted almost 900 paintings. One of his best known works, Starry Night, was painted in in an asylum at Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France where he voluntarily admitted himself there to recover from his 1888 nervous breakdown and his ear-cutting incident. The painting depicts the view from his bedroom window.

The Pink Peach Tree

Ironically, he sold only one painting in his life time. The Red Vineyard which went for 400 francs in Belgium seven months before his death. His most expensive painting Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold for $148.6 million in 1990.

Why Vincent Van Gogh?  Because he’s just one of scores of visual artists, writers, musicians and other creative people, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Mark Rothko, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Irving Berlin, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway, who are known or believed to have suffered from mental illness. He was a prolific artist—not recognized until after his death. Yet, his paintings are marvelous. I particularly like many of his lesser known works.

I also mention Vincent Van Gogh because we celebrate Mental Health Month in May. We need to realize that mood disorders occur in all people in all walks of life, but more particularly in creative people. So, as a writer, if you’re feeling a little down and out with your current situation, please realize you are not alone. Everyone suffers mood disorders and feelings of failure, but the key to thwarting them is activity. So write gobble-gook, paint, ponder, hand wash the dishes, clean out a closet, try your hand at a knitting, take a walk, but stay active until those next brilliant thoughts pop up.

I have chosen some pictures by Vincent Van Gogh that are my favorites. Enjoy!

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