Tag: fiction

Letting Go of Adult Kids

by jcafesin, posted in parenting, parents, psychology, raising kids, writers, Writing

For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a mom. I was absolutely convinced I could parent better than my mother. My father was the breadwinner — king of our small kingdom — and more into himself than raising the two kids he produced and the one he adopted.

I became a mom at 40, after six pregnancy losses. I grieved every loss as my failing, since I was 37 when we started trying to have a child, but sperm degrades in men over 35. My husband was 40. Three years later, after another loss, I had our daughter. I’ve been a full-time mom since.

Along with being a mom, I’ve run a marketing consulting biz helping entrepreneurs launch ideas into startups. I taught at Cal and Stanford for close to a decade, wrote two marketing books, two novels, and two short story collections. And in all my career, I’ve never, ever, put in the amount of effort, time, money, and heart that it’s taken raising two children.

There are no words to describe the love I feel for my kids. Now in their mid-20s, they are kind people — my #1 goal raising them. They are thinkers. Productive. Grateful. Giving. Loving. I could not be prouder of them. Full stop. And while they are both at home this moment, they are moving on, as they should.

The issue: I am unclear how to let go.

Right now, I’m in my office trying to focus on writing fiction, but my mind keeps drifting to my son. He’s been with the same nonprofit for 4 yrs, and he’s been trying to find another job [on and off] almost as long. He had his first ever on-site interview last week and is waiting to hear back today. I keep listening for the back door of our house to open. He wouldn’t come out to my office a quarter acre from the house if he didn’t get the job. Since I’m not hearing the back door, I’m checking my email obsessively. He’ll email if he doesn’t get it.

Seems like I’m a bit over-invested in my son’s career, and I’ll walk that. But here’s a bit of my investment in this job he’s waiting to hear about:

  • I talked him into taking the in-person interview against his resistance since he’d be spending close to a grand to make it happen.
  • Talked him into flying instead of blowing 3 days driving and his other interviews set up for later in the week. Then I helped him set up a flight to get to his on-site interview.
  • I looked up BART times from SFO to be sure he’d get there on time with a short time frame from landing to getting there.
  • My husband drove him to the airport at 4:30a.m. to make his 7:15 flight, but I was his emotional support on the phone with him from 7:00a.m. until 10:20a.m. that morning. He called when all passengers were kicked off the first flight over an hour and a half delay. He’d be late for his interview if he waited so we worked to find another flight leaving sooner. He found one, got on it, and some guy the flight attendant didn’t like wouldn’t leave the plane when asked. My son, and all the other passengers, sat on that plane half an hour for security to come and escort the guy off. My son was now guaranteed to be late.
  • I dictated a text to send to the hiring manager that he’d be late for the interview, which was trickier than it sounds since he was flying in and they’d assumed he was local.

I won’t even go into the hundreds of hours I’ve spent editing our daughter’s school essays, to the tens of thousands of dollars already spent on her undergraduate degree, to emotionally and financially supporting her through college and four MCAT tests…etc.

I wonder if focusing on our son’s job prospect is an excuse to avoid writing fiction today…

Is my focus on this potential job of his justified by the hours of my life I’ve invested parenting him, and guiding his career?

  • Pushing him constantly to look for a new gig with every complaint about his current job.
  • Helping him write his LinkedIn profile, bio, and micro-messaging to potential hiring managers.
  • Edited his CV, including yr over yr updates.
  • Be his cheerleader to lift his depression with constant rejections.
  • Pushing him to network, go to uni and tech meetups. Socialize more!
  • Fully funding his master’s degree…etc.

I told myself I’d do better than my mother, and so I have. I’ve extended an open forum for our kids to share anything, and ask me anything that strikes them. I’ve challenged them to find their true feelings often masked as anger, or in defense of destructive behavior. By their measure, I am still their best friend. It’s easy to be with them back at home, sharing their day to day. But our daughter will be in med school soon. Whether this job or another, our son will be leaving soon too.

The virtually electric connection I feel with my kids will be lost with distance, and their shifting priorities. Family will take the background to their ‘real lives.’ As it should be, but nonetheless, their independence leaves me a bit lost. Our kids health and welfare have been my #1 priority from the day I knew I was pregnant. Made my body a temple of health before working at pregnancy — killed Diet Coke, all caffeine, weed, processed and fried foods, salty snacks, and passed on desserts. I also ran five miles five days a week. And in an effort to model healthy habits to our kids, I’ve continued working out daily.

My kids have been great motivators for me to model the best of myself — disciplined, motivated, creative, caring, loving freely, fully, without reservation as I do our kids. I will miss talking to them daily, keeping abreast of their lives in real time, hugging them, being their greatest advocate as they find partners to stand beside them.

The hiring manager texted my son early today they’d have a decision about the on-site job he’d interviewed for by 4:00p.m. It’s minutes away and he’s yet to hear anything. Is that bad? Or maybe he’s talking to them now and I don’t know in my office a good distance from his. I keep checking my email and listening for the back door to open. My heart is beating so hard I hear it.

I’m proud of my son for flying down to the interview, staying chill during a nightmare flight, and managing to get to the interview only a few minutes late. I passionately want him to get the job offer! A deserved win after much effort. Great life lesson. If he gets it, he’ll move out, down to the Bay, close to a thousand miles away.

Waiting to hear if he got the job, I’m battling my desire to hang on to the last of these moments we have together. He’ll be upset if he doesn’t get it, and I’ll be here to help pick him up and dust him off and push him to keep looking and applying.

Ultimately, no matter how much I help my kids, or am there for them along the way, I cannot protect them from heartbreak. And as they move on, I am too. I’ll have to find my value, the best of me beyond being their mother. I’d likely be doing just that — engaged in writing fiction right now — if I wasn’t so focused on hearing about our son’s job opp…

The Price of Brilliance

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

How do you get good at anything?

Practice.

How do you get great?

Obsession — Practice most all the time.

Pick any famous author, artist, or musician, and they’ll all have obsession in common. And while we, the public, enjoy the fruits of their creative labors, those closest to these individuals were/are generally left wanting more of them, more from them.

Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, “was an indifferent and often inattentive father and husband.”

Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, “worked 12 hours a day seven days a week, [and] his wife, Carol, tended to their daughters, Jodi and Anne.”

Adrienne Armstrong, wife of Billy Joe Armstrong of Greenday, said of her husband after the release of the album American Idiot, “I think it challenged us to a new level, pushed us pretty far, the farthest I ever want to go.”

The creatives above are all men. All married and all had/have children.

Now let’s explore a few famous women.

The romance novelist Jane Austen never married. She was, in fact, ‘relieved in later life to have avoided the pitfalls of married life, not least the huge risks of childbirth, “all the business of Mothering.’”

Georgia O’Keeffe, the surrealist painter, “wanted to have children but agreed with him [her husband, Alfred Steiglitz] that motherhood was incompatible with her art. She needed to focus all of her attention on her painting.”

Oprah Winfrey, the media mogul has never married. “The very idea of what it means to be a wife and the responsibility and sacrifice that carries — I wouldn’t have held that very well.” And she never had children. “If I had kids, my kids would hate me. They would have ended up on the equivalent of the “Oprah” show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would’ve probably been them.”

Ms. Winfrey had the guts to address the unvarnished, unspoken truth when she referred to the “responsibility and sacrifice,” in being a partner and mother. She understood the investment of time, physical and mental energy it takes to be a conscientious parent would have interfered, even waylaid immersion with her siren to grow a multi-billion-dollar empire.

Men have historically been the breadwinners of the family. And while this trend is slowly changing, the fact is women who seek personal excellence, especially in the arts, often have to choose between pursuing greatness and being, at least, an available partner and parent. Even today, men rarely have to make this choice.

Regardless of this sexist disparity, anyone, man or woman, obsessed with becoming great [at anything] should recognize the sacrifice and cost of pursuing brilliance.

As a wife, mother, and writer, my creative muse is constantly vying for prominence in my hierarchy of desires. When my kids were babies, my creative process encountered fewer distractions. I could stay rapt in storytelling, run dialog in my head while watching them play at the park or practice Lil’ Kicker’s soccer. Small kids, small problems. Now the parent of two young adults, my muse is often drowned out by the very real traumas and trials of adulting my children face every day. To help them navigate these tumultuous times, I question, probe, and even invade their space to stay connected, be there for them as a sounding board, a trusted confidant, be their ground when they’re falling, or envelop them in a hug.

I chose to marry and have kids. And while I am present, available for my family, forfeiting the hours I could have been making it with my muse writing was a battle I engaged in daily. Much of my fiction focuses on this internal war. My novel, Reverb, illustrates the cost of a guitarist’s obsession with creating music. Disconnected confronts the reality that women can’t ‘have it all’ — be everything we want to be, and still be there for our kids and family.

We glorify the brilliant author, the renowned artist, the genius scientist, and successes in business, often secretly wish to be one of them. Entrepreneurs that have built global companies made their startups their newborns, investing their time and energy in growing the business. To become great at anything means obsessively working at that job or craft, honing a skill set with relentless practice, which is the fundamental reason why genius is so rarely achieved.

Google “Genius,” and “Einstein” is in the first several pages of search returns. Einstein had intellectually incoherent views on politics, economics, and psychology, and by most accounts from colleagues and family, he sucked at relationships. Focusing solely on math and physics, he neglected most everything else, but he was one hell of a physicist.

Obsessive practice, to the exclusion of most everything else, is a reliable indicator of achieving brilliance. And now that my kids are grown and on their own, I have more time to make it with my muse, and I do. But truth be told, while it used to matter to me to be someone, achieve ‘famous writer’ status, or at least a Wiki page, not so much anymore. I’d never have been a creative director, a founder and entrepreneurship educator. So absorbed in my own greatness, I’d never have cultivated the truly intimate relationships I now have, or earned the status of Partner and Mom if I’d chosen the road of pursuing the title of ‘brilliant.’ I’d miss too much living such a hyper-focused life. Besides, it’s so much more fun to hang at home with loved ones, watch Netflix and be entertained by those who’ve ‘made it.’ ;-}

Why Do You Write?

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Ray Bradbury reminded me why I write…

I sat on the floor in the back of a bookstore in old-town Pasadena perusing the selections. It was Saturday, late afternoon, another sunny day in L.A. I didn’t notice the store owners hustling everyone out the door and they didn’t see me in the back on the floor. After a while, I picked a book I liked, got up, and went to pay for it. The store was empty except for an old man sitting at a large desk awkwardly placed in the center of the main aisle. It blocked my way to the checkout so it was impossible to ignore him.

I greeted him with a quick ‘Hi,’ and smiled as I wriggled around the desk. He smiled back and asked me if I could get him a glass of water before the signing. I told him I didn’t work at the store. Then he asked me what I was still doing there. Buying a book, I told him. He took the book out of my hand and read the title, looked at me, and smiled. This is good, he assured me and handed the book back but kept staring at me with this funny grin on his face, like he had a secret.

He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. There was a tall stack of books on the desk next to him. The Martian Chronicles, one of my all-time favorites. Then I noticed the sign on the easel in front of the desk. Ray Bradbury Live! Today at 5:00.

I blushed. He smiled with my acknowledgment. Ray Bradbury was one of my few idols and he was sitting in front of me. I was speechless at first, which is rare for me. The man was what I aspired to be, a great writer. I picked up one of the ‘special addition’ hardcover books on the desk and held it up. This is really good, too, I assured him. He laughed. In the five years I’d been seriously writing I knew nothing I’d written touched his talent.

And then I got sad.

I felt the tears come. I couldn’t stop them. I smiled at him, put his book back in the stack, and turned away, started to walk to the checkout but he stopped me. He asked me what was up but I told him he couldn’t possibly understand, knowing who he was, what he was, and what I was not. Try me, he insisted.

So I did. I explained that I wrote too, but didn’t label myself a writer. Though it was easy for me to recognize talent when I read it, it was impossible for me to see it in my own work. Every time I put word to paper I questioned if it was any good.

Surprisingly, he laughed. Then he told me that he too had the same question running through his head with everything he wrote. More often than not when he read his own work he thought it was crap.

I was astonished. The man was a renowned novelist. How could he still question if he was any good? I had assumed once my work was recognized the uncertainty would never plague me again. The idea that I would have to battle my self-effacing ego the rest of my life, published or not was appalling, and I told him so.

His expression softened and he shook his head. Then he asked me why I write.

I’d never really considered the question before. I’d been writing for as long as I could remember, diaries and journals when I was younger, then stories and eventually novels. I assumed that once I got good enough someone would publish me and I could quit my day job and write full-time, but that hadn’t happened yet. Clearly, I wasn’t good enough. Perhaps I never would be. I constantly questioned when I should give it up, though the thought of not writing anymore was on par with going blind.

I write because I love to, I told him.

He smiled. Good answer, he said. The question is not if you’re any good, but if you love the process of writing. Published or not, keep writing as long as you love doing it.

And so I have. I still get disheartened, every other day it seems I’m back to black, trying to talk myself into making my day job my career. Even though I’m publishing now, there isn’t any money in it. Yet. Hope springs eternal. Good or not, published or not I keep writing though, because I love to write.

Thanks, Ray!

Writing for a Living

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

What it means to be a ‘successful’ writer…

There are bookstores around the country that will put an author on a bestsellers list if the store decides to carry their book, regardless of sales. One of these was Rakeshaw Books in Danville, CA. I’d finished my first novel, REVERB, and got a small publisher to pick it up, but as with most publishers, even famous ones, the author is still required to market their work.

I went to Rakeshaw Books, only a few miles from my home, to ask them to carry my book since I was a local writer. It was 10:10 in the morning, just after they opened. The salesclerk was the only one in the store, an older woman, gray hair, sagging face, crinkles around her blue eyes with her welcoming smile.

I asked her if Rakeshaw would carry my book. She told me NO. They only carried books from publishers like Random House. I felt like crying right then having hit this wall so often, and the clerk saw my expression and continued.

“I’ve been working here for 40 years,” she told me. “Part-time raising my kids. Full-time after that. You are one of the many writers I’ve had to turn away. But over the years I’ve noticed a pattern I’d like to share with you.” And she paused and stared at me, like asking for my permission to continue.

“Ok…” I said, but honestly, I really didn’t care at that point.

“There are writers, and there are authors,” she said. “The writers who come in here look a lot like you,” and her eyes walked over my leggings and ripped T, then to my mess of hair and my makeupless face. “Writers write. Most every day. They are recluses, absorbed by the process of writing itself. They aren’t genre-specific, but explore many and often integrate several into their work. They generally only get small publishers to pick them up, if they get one at all, which is a shame because they are usually great storytellers spending the bulk of their time writing — honing the craft.

“Authors write books for recognition. They typically write the same characters over and over, putting them through different paces. They build an audience that way, writing formula fiction, but their passion isn’t the writing itself. Authors adore the limelight. They typically enjoy public readings and gatherings that writers do not.” She examined me across the counter. “They are gregarious people, always selling — themselves and their work. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“That I’m screwed?”

She smiled but shook her head. “Take solace that your passion lies in the process of writing. You never need be bored. Whether you are widely read or not, your work will have an impact, likely a greater impact on those who read it than the work of most authors out there.” She bobbed her head up and down confirming her own rhetoric, but I was grateful for her kind sentiments.

I thanked her and left but her words have resonated. I’ve met many who write over the 20 years I’ve been writing to publish — to get read. Some are famous. You’d know them if I name-dropped. Most are not, even if in some distant past they were once a NYT Bestseller. Thing is, I too have noticed the pattern the clerk described. Whether they became famous and turned into authors, or they started as authors writing formula fiction, writing the same characters and basic narratives over and over sells books.

I am a genre-diverse writer, (which hasn’t helped my sales). I’m told by selling authors that I should pick a genre and write religiously to that genre to market myself more effectively. In fact, series are even better! Romantic detective series, or dystopian fantasies with a strong female lead.

Shoot me now if being a selling writer means traveling the formula road.

If I told you the truth of how few books I’ve sold, you’d call me out as crazy for continuing to write. I call myself out daily every morning I sit down at my laptop and start typing. Why am I still doing this!? Go back to marketing startups and make some real money! But I don’t. I write, and hope it will resonate with readers, thinking readers who love stories that spark self-reflection, and maybe even a new awareness.

Ray Bradbury once reminded me of why I write, and regardless of sales, I know I’ll never give it up. Writing fiction is intoxicating. Fully engaging. Hot. Sexual. Physical. Cerebral. Virtually touching real as I enter the scene. And I’m a million miles from Lonely.

Books: J. Cafesin on Amazon
Website Blog: jcafesin.com
Paywall Blog: Medium

New Book Review

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

New Book Review for A MARRIAGE FABLE:

Journey Toward Enlightenment
If you’re a fan of magical realism like I am, you will enjoy reading this mystical story. A quick read with plenty of drama kept me engaged. It’s a story filled with equal parts regret and redemption. It always feels good when a narcissist jerk gets a taste of his own medicine, and feels even better when this self-absorbed deplorable gets a chance to be a better man. Will he accept this new choice? I’ll never tell. Ask the genie. Do yourself a favor and read this well-written story and find out if there is hope for “this day and every day forward.”
–Ingrid Hart

A modern adaptation of A Christmas Carol, A MARRIAGE FABLE is a novella, another tall tale of the powerful genie Finnegus Boggs, and his lessons on love that inspires Andrew Wyman, a typical modern-day husband nearing his 25th wedding anniversary, to become a better man.

“A Marriage Fable does for Valentine’s Day what A Christmas Carol did for Christmas Day. A Must Read romantic fantasy!”
–BJ Fera, Goodreads