{"id":17530,"date":"2014-04-03T00:30:18","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T07:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=17530"},"modified":"2014-04-03T00:30:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T07:30:18","slug":"tulips-and-sex-writing-as-if-everyone-i-know-were-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/tulips-and-sex-writing-as-if-everyone-i-know-were-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulips and Sex — Writing as If Everyone I Know Were Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"writing<\/a>
Deep pink tulips at their peak — just opening. Writing as if everyone I know were dead. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to write about tulips today. I don\u2019t want to write about sex. The trouble is, for me, writing about tulips means writing about sex: something about their juicy curves brings erotic metaphors to my particular mind.<\/p>\n

I thought that once my mother — and father — were no longer alive and reading over my shoulder, I\u2019d be able to write my heart out. I\u2019d get merrily, carried-away passionate about the curve of my husband\u2019s chin, the stars on a summer night, God in God\u2019s heaven, and . . . tulips.<\/p>\n

\"Yellow<\/a>
My faorite tulip moment — just before the petals open. Photo by Bf Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My mother\u2019s gone now and so is my father. The trouble is, my kids are still alive. Very much so. And they read this blog.<\/p>\n

Back in the olden days of print journalism, when I wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Oakland Tribune and its tens of thousands of readers, I felt free to spill my guts about my children, my husband, my job, the Meaning of Life. Total strangers \u2013 thousands and thousands of them \u2013 read weekly about my every misstep and self-doubt.<\/p>\n

But they didn\u2019t count; they were total strangers.<\/p>\n

The people who really mattered? Not a problem. Jon, himself an old news hand, didn\u2019t care what I wrote as long as it sold newspapers. My mother and father lived thousands of miles away; they saw only the columns I chose to clip and mail to them. As for the kids, they read Roald Dahl; but newspapers, not so much.<\/p>\n

Writing as If Everyone I Know Were Dead<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Anne Lamott, I think it was, once advised memoirists and novelists to \u201cwrite as if everyone you know is dead.\u201d It\u2019s a great writing tip, but one I\u2019ve never mastered. Probably because most of the people I know just aren\u2019t dead yet.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to tulips. Tulips are my favorite flower, and right now they\u2019re blooming like mad over at a local cemetery. They were planted in January to bloom in late March, so yesterday<\/p>\n

\"writing<\/a>
Tulips are planted in January to bloom late in March at Mountain View Cemetery.\u00a0Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I grabbed my trusty point-and-shoot and headed over to the graveyard, drove through the cemetery\u2019s wrought iron gate, and parked my car . . .<\/p>\n

Anyone who knows me can stop reading right now.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Purple<\/a>
Not Curves. Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

. . . Sure enough. There they were \u2013 tulips and tulips and tulips in all their lusty glory. Pink, red, purple, orange, yellow — all voluptuous and phallic with their ovoid curves and upright stems.<\/p>\n

I had planned to spend an hour here. I spent two. I bent over. I squatted. I kneeled in the wet grass. I propped my elbows on my muddy knees. I took 267 pictures. I went home happy.<\/p>\n

Ha! You cheated. You read this through to the end. But I cheated too. I wrote a first draft as if everyone I know were dead. But, then, since you\u2019re not dead, I toned it down. A lot.<\/p>\n

Note to self: Next week write a post that doesn’t have the word dead in it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note to readers: For more stories about the writing life, go to: “The Trouble With Daffodils,”<\/a> \u00a0 “Writing Tips From Jasmin Darznik”\u00a0<\/a> and “Splitting the Infinitive — How to Boldly Go There.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

If you’d like to get regular email updates you can subscribe by clicking on the box at the top of the right hand column.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A blousy, fully opened tulip — complete with insect nibbles. Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"looking<\/a><\/p>\n

I want to write about tulips today. I don\u2019t want to write about sex. The trouble is, for me, writing about tulips means writing about sex: something about their juicy curves brings erotic metaphors to my particular mind. I had thought that once my mother — and father — were no longer alive and reading over my shoulder, I\u2019d be able to write my heart out, but . . . Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[525,34,54,559,706,55,82,1187,488,959,69],"class_list":["post-17530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-anne-lamott","tag-dont-miss","tag-grown-up-kids","tag-memoir","tag-mountain-view-cemetery","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-sex","tag-the-writing-life","tag-tulips","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}