…Married Life-why i write… | “Antonya Nelson, Escapism, and The New Frontier…”

Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under …married life | why i write…

During a recent interview for The Writer Magazine, short story writer, Antonya Nelson, also dubbed, “…master of domestic drama…” received the received the statement, “...your work focuses on family-centered problems. Sue Miller has said men used to light out for the territories, but that ‘home’ is the new frontier.”

To the interviewer, Sarah Anne Johnson’s question, “Do you agree?” Nelson responded, “I write about families because that’s what I know. I’m very glad other writers are writing about other things and places, adventures abroad, wars and plagues and science and zombies. But what I know intimately, what I can report on honestly, what I think about endlessly, is the relations among people who are attached to one another helplessly by faithfulness and need, as well as wrestling a contrary urge to be individuals. Family dramas are always positing the self vs. community, private vs. the public, and most importantly, the head vs. the heart.”
–A Gift for the Short Form, by Sarah Anne Johnson, The Writer Magazine, September 2010

Reading this I knew immediately that Antonya Nelson was someone whose work I needed to start reading, not simply and so much from my perspective as a writer, but as a person who loves reading about families working it out, trying to work it out, sometimes, and oftentimes failing to work it out.

I am also a writer, who as a wife of 28 years and mother of 3, ages 11, 18, and 23, continually ponders and explores the nature of the marriage relationship, connections that spin and sprout from this union and how ripples in this union spread to those interactions of family members surrounding them. Read the rest of this entry…

Why Do I Write & What Is My Process? | What Makes Me Tick?–Fran Lewis

Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Articles and Essays, Why Do I Write & What Is My Process

Teaching in the NYC Public Schools was not only gratifying but also meaningful. Working with students in grades one through six for the first part of my career.

My Principal felt that I had a special talent and expertise when working with students in learning difficulties and encouraged me to get my second Master’s in Reading and Learning Disabilities. I am glad that I did. The next 19 years I worked as the Reading Specialist and then Staff Developer in both reading and writing.

The best part is I worked in the same school all of those years and the children and parents became part of my extended family.

I taught children from other countries and helped them learn to read, understand our language and excel in school. Before leaving, my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I was the Dean of Discipline and helped create a Peer Mediation Program in my school.

Freedom of expression is important, and after retiring from teaching, I realized that there were many new things I could learn to do. I love writing because it allows me to express my true feelings about any subject I choose. Read the rest of this entry…

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Why Do I Write & What Is My Process… | Breena Clarke

•August 8, 2010 • Leave a Comment (Edit)

Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Why Do I Write & What Is My Process

–by Breena Clarke

Breena at home in Jersey City with my bamboo plants

When I’m asked to answer the queries — what is your process? — why do you write? I begin by saying that I come to writing as a reader. I believe it is important for me to claim that because it does explain why and how I write. I also admit that I answer this way to reinforce the notion that I am studious, scholarly, serious.

I think writing long fiction is good for me because this is what I like to read. So– when I say I’m reading, seventy-five percent of the time I am reading a novel.
But you know what? There is another bit of it.

There is something I am less eager to mention — an aspect of my personality that isn’t always desirable. Read the rest of this entry…

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Loving, Impermanence and The Illusion of Self…

I recently read he 20th century Tibetan Buddhist master, Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s commentary on Lama Mipham’s The Wheel of Investigation and Meditation That Thoroughly Purifies Mental Activity.

Khyentse Rinpoche writes in the commentary, “Instead of being convinced that there is a self-entity, we realize that self is a mere concept.“

His words immediately drew me in.

A psychotherapist, I am forever pondering notions of self and other, phenomena, as Khyentse Rinpoche urges are but constructions of the mind in it, and our feeble efforts to understand and navigate the world, life and loving.
But there I go again, linking the mind, my thoughts and feelings to me, and who I really am.

Khyentse’s commentary, listed in the Summer 2010 Issue of the Buddhist Review, Tricycle, followed a brief article by Jakob Leschly, wherein Leschly describes his 16-year experience, starting in 1975, of studying with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche along with many others who were students of the meditation master.

Of Senior Pictures, Former Eastern Block Countries, and Forgotten Anniversary Cards…

The summer has whisked by.

One day it was May 31st and our middle was finishing what had been their eleventh grade year–they were a high school junior–and two days later we were listening to a message left by the school photographer stating that senior pictures would be made the following week and leaving the date and time our child was to be photographed in their cap and gown.

The previous week our eldest, a graduate student, had left for Brussels, Belgium three days after turning in spring semester papers.

They would be interning 8 weeks at the European Parliament as an assistant to a Member of Parliament from a former Eastern Block country.

Three weeks to the afternoon I stood watching the photographer snap senior pictures of our middle, I boarded a flight to Brussels with out youngest.

The previous school year had been crazy to say the least. I had not spent enough time with the baby of our family. I needed to get re-acquainted with our pre-adoloescent, soon to be teenager.

Time flies when you’re working for those you love.

Our Greatest Fear, Our Earnest Hope: To Love and Be Loved…

Love strengthens and transforms. It also frightens.

Experiencing love, unadulterated, unconditional, and freely given soothes us in places long hardened and crusted over time by insults and wounds inflicted in the flesh and to our character and emotions.

Love and acceptance despite and because of who we are, faults, shortcomings, warts and all exhumes not only our previous injuries, but lifts our vulnerabilities to the surface.

The frightened girls and boys that our hard exteriors have hidden over the years are summoned forth.

We descend to our knees in the face of an eternal truth.

Marriage, Terror, and Seeing into the Choreography of Souls…

So much of marriage is about seeing the other, your spouse, and allowing your true self to come through, i.e. being seen yourself.

My novel, “The House,” chronicles the experience of a woman, Anna Manning, during the last 3 months of her marriage wherein her husband, Edward, has withheld aspects of his true nature from. Throughout their nearly thirty-three years of marriage has been unfaithful Edward, involved in 3 longstanding affairs of which Anna knew.

These affairs, horrible as they were stemmed from vulnerabilities and emotional injuries rooted in Edward’s childhood, and of which he never discussed with Anna.

Of Cinco de Mayo, an iPad and Mothering…

Friday afternoon I felt as if I would crack. Each one of my children, ages, 11-years-old to 23 years needed me for emotional support as they struggled to attain their goals. My eldest was working hard on a paper search for a 15-page graduate research paper she must write.

Our 11th grader needed guidance on how to organize her study and tutoring sessions for her Chemistry and Algebra finals along with preparing an outline for her 3rd and thankfully, last term paper. And our youngest, having been home for the holiday in observance of honoring Cinco de Mayo, simply wanted to go out.

Having had a strenuous week of trying to play catch-up on my writing–I had spent last weekend helping our middle edit the first two term papers 12-15 pages each–I was scoured with fatigue.

Dinner with my husband at our favorite restaurant down by the water in Berkeley would have been a godsend.

Of Fear, La Petite Mort, and the Transforming Power of Love…

I named my publishing company, NOJ Publications, after my husband, his named turned backwards.

I write about love, committed and constant, persevering and sustaining, which he has given me.

My stories and novels express what I know and have learned in relationship with my husband.

Love holds a most transforming power.

It dispenses hope beyond our wildest dreams.

Of Marriage, Vulnerability and Knowing That I Was Lost…

I’ve been married for 28 years. I have 3 children.

Though I haven’t always felt this way, presently I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.

I like being married. I like being a mother.

It’s hard work both as a wife and as a mother.

The challenges of motherhood are pretty generic. The ones I encounter as a wife have less to do with my husband. He’s great, loving, loyal, more than I could have ever expected.