Even In The Hardest Circumstances

 

It is 1952, and nearly all the girls 16-year-old Bertha Harding knows dream of getting married, keeping house, and raising children in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Bertha dreams of baseball. She reads every story in the sports section, she plays ball with the neighborhood boys--she even writes letters to the pitcher for the Workington Sweet Peas, part of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

When Bertha's father is accused of being part of the Communist Party by the House Un-American Activities Committee, life comes crashing down on them. Disgraced and shunned, the Hardings move to a small town to start over where the only one who knows them is shy Uncle Matthew. But dreams are hard to kill, and when Bertha gets a chance to try out for the Workington Sweet Peas, she packs her bags for an adventure she'll never forget.

Susie Finkbeiner is the CBA bestselling author of The Nature of Small Birds, All Manner of Things — which was selected as a 2020 Michigan Notable Book — and Stories That Bind Us, as well as A Cup of Dust, A Trail of Crumbs, and A Song of Home.

She serves on the Fiction Readers Summit planning committee, volunteers her time at Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and speaks at retreats and women’s events across the country. Susie and her husband have three children and live in West Michigan.

Visit her website: https://susiefinkbeiner.com/

Dead Zone Days

Susie Finkbeiner

For several years a group of friends and I rented a cottage on Lake Michigan for a weekend writers retreat. We’d take our journals out to the beach or plug laptops into outlets in the dining area. We’d sit in the screened porch to read or daydream while lounging in lawn chairs.

All while being utterly disconnected from the outside world.

That cottage was in a cell phone dead zone and wasn’t wired for Wi-Fi. No matter where I went on that property, I couldn’t manage to check Facebook or Twitter or my email. No one could text me or message me or even call.

Can I tell you; it was glorious.

Well, that was until I needed to look up a bit of research. Or when I wanted to check in with things back at home. Or when I took a picture of a gorgeous sunset and wanted to share it on Instagram.

It was glorious until it wasn’t. Then it was maddening.

Being in a dead zone can be such a frustration.

For a little over a year I’ve felt as though I’ve hit more than a few creative dead zones. I’ve struggled to focus and to get my thoughts organized and onto the page. I’ve spent days feeling completely paralyzed, unable to think clearly enough to work. All while the deadlines inch closer and closer.

And at the end of those days I feel guilty, frustrated, and anxious. I worry that I’d never be able to write again like I used to.

On those days I feel despair creeping up along the margins. And on those days I feel isolated and ashamed.

But recently I read an article that said that what I’ve been experiencing is normal. That living though a pandemic alters our ability to function, to focus, to produce. I read Tweets from writer friends, many saying that they’re experiencing the same fog as I am.

This dead zone is hampering a lot of us.

But knowing that it’s not just me gives me a lot of hope. Hope that, together, we’ll make it through. This isn’t going to last forever.

In the meantime, though, I need to practice compassion.

You too?

I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to have compassion for others. What’s hard is having it for myself.

And so, I’m going to make a habit of the following self-compassion practices. Please, feel free to join me and to add your own. I’d love to hear what might work for you!

First, I have to release the expectation of perfection. There is no way that I’m always going to write the perfect scene, chapter, or even sentence. So, I just need to get over it. My task is to do the best I can in the moment. What I have in front of me is a draft that can be edited — and edited again — later on. It will be okay.

Second, I resolve to be as kind to myself as I would be to a friend. There can be no more tearing myself down or beating myself up. If I wouldn’t say it to a cherished friend, I won’t say it — or think it — about me.

Third, I acknowledge that I absolutely cannot survive the dead zone days alone. And in order to have support, I need to be honest about my struggles. I am a fortunate woman to have a handful of trusted friends — my sweet husband among them — to check in on me. But it’s not enough for me to take support and mercy from them. I need to be willing to give it lavishly as well. And in doing so, I contribute to diminishing the fog that hangs over both of us.

The past few months I’ve had more clear headed days than foggy. I’ve felt more life in the work than drudgery. It gives me hope. It keeps me going.

Outside my window is the full growth of a coming summer. And I get back to writing.

Susie Finkbeiner is the CBA bestselling author of All Manner of Things, which was selected as a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, and Stories That Bind Us, as well as A Cup of Dust, A Trail of Crumbs, and A Song of Home. She serves on the Fiction Readers Summit planning committee, volunteers her time at Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and speaks at retreats and women’s events across the
country. Susie and her husband have three children and live in West Michigan.

https://susiefinkbeiner.com/

The Gift of Redundancy

By Susie Finkbeiner

If Hollywood is to be believed, writers live fabulous lives. We write in the seclusion of our log cabin overlooking the Adirondacks only to jet to New York City for posh cocktail parties with our agents. Then we’re off to L.A. to discuss with directors who we’ll choose to will play the lead in the movie adaptation of our bestseller. Then, back to the cabin where we are met with mind-blowing inspiration.

Oh. And somewhere in all of that we find time to solve a murder mystery.

What glamor! What excitement! What an absolute hoot!

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t come close to describing my writing life. You know what the most exciting thing to happen to me last week was? Getting a fresh package of pens.

I am not kidding you.

Let’s face it. The writing life can be redundant, mundane.

We get up. We write a little, edit a little, agonize over commas a lot. We check our calendars to see how close we are to deadline and write some more. Then we go to bed. The next day is often the same.

Many of us work a day-job and family into the mix.

Same old, same old.

So, how do we keep it fresh? How do we keep ourselves from slogging through the day-to-day?

1. Get a change of scenery: Move to a different spot in the house to write. Go to a coffee shop for a few hours. Write outside! Sometimes all it takes to freshen things up is a little change in atmosphere.

2. Celebrate EVERY victory: Did you meet a word count goal? Celebrate. Write a killer scene? Celebrate. Signed a contract? Celebrate. Avoided Facebook for a full hour? CELEBRATE! Give yourself a high-five once in a while. Pat yourself on the back. After all, meeting goals gives your body a shot of dopamine (the “feel good” chemical). So, follow your body’s lead and celebrate each victory.

3. Keep some warm fuzzies: I have a file folder that is full of warm fuzzies. Emails from readers and reviews that made my day. Hand colored pictures from my kids and encouraging notes from friends. They remind me why I choose this writing life and how exciting it is, even if in a quiet way. They spur me on.

4. Remember that this is a gift: We get to write! This is the dream! What we’ve always wanted. When we remember that, we tend to fall in love with it all over again.

You know, there’s something nice about the familiar. There is something sweet about developing our talents daily.

As for me, I’ll leave the red carpet and flashing lights for someone else. I’ll take this gentle writing life any old day.

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Susie Finkbeiner is a story junkie. Always has been and always will be. It seems it's a congenital condition, one she's quite fond of. After decades of reading everything she could get her hands on (except for See the Eel, a book assigned to her while in first grade, a book she declared was unfit for her book-snob eyes), Susie realized that she wanted to write stories of her own. She began with epics about horses and kittens (but never, ever eels). It takes years to grow a writer and after decades of work, Susie realized (with much gnashing of teeth and tears) that she was a novelist. In order to learn how to write novels, she read eclectically and adventurously (she may never swim with sharks, but the lady will jump into nearly any story). After reading the work of Lisa Samson, Patti Hill, and Bonnie Grove she realized that there was room for a writer like her in Christian fiction. Her first novels Paint Chips (2013) and My Mother's Chamomile (2014) have contemporary settings. While she loved those stories and especially the characters, Susie felt the pull toward historical fiction. When she read Into the Free by Julie Cantrell she knew she wanted to write historical stories with a side of spunk, grit, and vulnerability. Susie is also greatly inspired by the work of Jocelyn Green, Rachel McMillan, and Tracy Groot. A Cup of Dust: A Novel of the Dust Bowl (2015), Finkbeiner's bestselling historical set in 1930s Oklahoma, has been compared to the work of John Steinbeck and Harper Lee (which flatters Susie's socks off). Pearl's story continues with A Trail of Crumbs: A Novel of the Great Depression (2017) and A Song of Home: A Novel of the Swing Era (2018).  What does she have planned after that? More stories, of course. She's a junkie. She couldn't quit if she wanted to.