Writing – Jolene's Life in Focus

Capturing Iceland

December 19, 2016March 30, 2017Posted in Featured, Travel, WritingTagged Blue Lagoon, Featured, Iceland, Iceland Writers Retreat, Keflavik, layover, Nikon, photography, Reykyanes, travel, writing14 Comments

This is my Iceland Writers Retreat writing competition submission. While I didn’t win this year, I was one of the finalists. I’m including the photos I took during the 2014 layover that inspired this piece.

The rules:
Iceland – Regard the Moon! Many authors have drawn parallels between Iceland and the moon. Write a max 500-word essay, story or poem on this theme.

Capturing Iceland

Stop One.
I’m completely alone. While evidence of human life surrounds me in the form of a lighthouse, a shipwreck, and a church of carved stone, I haven’t actually seen anyone in miles. The wind sandblasts my face raw as I step away from my rental car, and I wish for a scarf or a thicker jacket than what I’ve chosen to wear during my layover in Iceland. But this is okay. I’m on an exploratory mission, and thoughts of what I might find eclipse the desire for warmer outerwear.

Pictures are what I’m after. As a travel photographer, sitting in Keflavik International Airport and waiting six long hours for the next flight to Seattle isn’t an option. I never reject an opportunity to experience new places, and this layover affords me just enough time to circle the Reykjanes Peninsula with my camera. So I challenge the April winds, pushing ahead for the sake of art. A few clicks of the shutter later and I’m off again with a piece of Iceland safe in my memory card.

Stop Two.
A strip of faded asphalt cuts through a lunar plain. Down that road, the Eurasian and North American plates diverge in a tectonic rift. On a footbridge that crosses between the two sides, tourists have fastened padlocks to the chain links of the handrails. The love locks are red, purple, and gold—inscribed with names like Katja and Eros, couples who hope to stay together, even as the continents slowly drift apart. I raise my camera. Click.
Stop Three.
Beneath my feet, subterranean sea waters encounter cooling magma, and steam curls skyward from the earth’s crust—a thousand souls rising from sulfurous graves. A part of me thinks I should be afraid. This mysterious land could open up and cast me into its molten core. But, the explorer in me sees the beauty in it, recognizes her own insignificance and feels nothing but awe. Click.
Stop Four.
I follow a sign that points to the Blue Lagoon. It’s a rapturous blue heart in the middle of a lava field in which—ah-ha!—every Reykjanes visitor has congregated! I want to stay, commune with fellow travelers. Dozens of heads bob up and down in the geothermal spa, and I envy them their cotton bathrobes and more time than myself. But, the layover hours have ticked away, and I must return to Keflavik. I aim my lens at the lagoon before departing. Click.
Stop Five.
Reluctantly, I surrender my keys to the rental car company and pack up my camera. As I do, a thought strikes me—I have captured nothing. Iceland, in all of her tumultuous splendor, has captured me instead! How can I leave when there’s still so much left to see, things that don’t fit on a square inch of digital memory? As I head towards my gate, face thawing and hair a tangled mane, I’m already planning a solo mission to explore the rest.

Adventures in Self-Publishing with Lilly Maendel

September 2, 2013November 13, 2014Posted in WritingTagged 35mm, adventures in self-publishing, bestofjolene, Nikon, Nikon D7000, self-publishing, writing, young author18 Comments

While many of you are slogging through years of classes in pursuit of your MFAs and sketching outlines of your first novels, my 6-year-old niece Lilly is already one step ahead of you. With only a kindergarten education, she has penned numerous short stories and is well-known in her North St. Paul neighborhood. Lilly travels door to door, selling her work for 50 cents, which everyone knows is minimum wage for authors.

I was honored to receive a first edition copy of her novel, The Missing Pig, while visiting her last week. She wrote, illustrated, and self-published it. The Missing Pig is the first book in her Pig Trilogy. The second one, The Pig Knocking Food Down, was also recently released and gifted to her Grandpa Hanson. Rumor has it, the third and final installment, yet to be named, will be on the shelves around the Christmas holiday.

Keep your eyes open for Lilly Maendel, publishing world!

Lilly3 — Everyone knows that all good novels starts with “Once upon a time…”

Lilly5 — Who needs a major publishing house when you have construction paper, a red pen, and three staples? Keep overhead down and bring your profits up.

Lilly6 — The hardest working self-publisher under the age of ten.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

March 5, 2013March 27, 2017Posted in WritingTagged creative writing, Dog, truth is stranger than fiction9 Comments

What was supposed to be a fun story for the Weekly Writing Challenge, turned into something a bit deeper. Maybe later this week I’ll write a second, happier story and actually follow the directions (there was supposed to be a picture of a genuinely happy person attached to this as well. In fact, this is pretty much the antithesis of the assignment). But, this is what came out. I witnessed this scene between my office and the super market last week:

A rusted, blue and white pick-up truck sat in the far end of the super market parking lot under the thrashing shadows of Cedar trees. An elderly man, clad in red checkered plaid and loose denim overalls, emerged from the driver’s side. He carried a poodle like a football underneath his left arm, and it squirmed for a few seconds before succumbing to his grip. The old man set the dog upon the square nose of the truck, and she shivered in the wind.

Rows away, women wriggled shopping carts into the market. Dour-faced adolescents trudged several paces behind their mothers. Couples chatted and loaded groceries into trunks of cars. A girl ran after a capering shopping list. And the old man gripped the poodle’s hind legs as the sunlight caught a glint of metal in his right hand. A yelp pierced the parking lot and bled into a steady whine, barely audible over the swishing cedar branches.

A small girl dropped her mother’s hand and picked up something, like the thick catsear seeds, blown from the fields in summer. The mother swatted it away and scolded her for touching things. The tuft of white fell to the ground, skipping across the pavement to join the accumulating masses of poodle hair.

Shocks of hair tumbled far away from the old pick-up truck – under wheels and feet, covering the parking lot for a few moments before cartwheeling past the gas station and then into the coffee stand across the street. The poodle whimpered, exposed and humiliated in her master’s arms, as he relieved her of the last of her beautiful white locks.

Someone’s grandmother hobbled inside the market on a cane. A ruddy face peered out of a beat up plumbing truck, thinking hard with each drag off a cigarette. Children begged for things not yet in sight. And the old man loaded up the dog and drove away with a sputter, the shorn evidence of his grooming rolling all across the city and into the air, where it would become less remarkable the further away the wind carried it.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward

February 23, 2013July 28, 2017Posted in WritingTagged black and white photography, boat, doubts, fog, forward, photography, postaday, weekly photo challenge, worry, writing, writing contest37 Comments

This past week was a difficult one for me. I am close to finishing my book and wondering how my Word Babies will be accepted by the world. Will people buy my book? If they do buy it, will they like it? What if it gets ripped apart in book clubs? What if it doesn’t get published at all?!

Part of my anxiety stems from the fact I just entered the first four chapters into the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. Contest finalists will be announced in June, and the winners will be announced at the writers conference in July. Finalists will receive ribbons to wear at the conference, and I find that quite glamorous – being marked for greatness by the literary powers that be, hobnobbing with agents and editors, and proudly discussing my written offspring. So now, of course, I’m worried about not being awarded a ribbon and am already fraught with jealousy over a yet to be determined list of winners. (insert loud, exasperated sigh.)

This morning I boarded a ferry to Lummi Island to spend part of the day writing at the Beach Store Cafe. It’s the perfect place to grab a chair by the window and let those worries recede into the waters of Hale Passage. Sitting here and reading over my manuscript, I am reminded that I write because I love writing, not because of finalist ribbons or promise of where my Word Babies will travel. Writing is like steering a boat through fog. I don’t know if the waters ahead are smooth or turbulent. I don’t know if I’ll even find the shore or how long I’ll be sailing. But, I keep moving forward.

What’s the alternative? To stay docked?

I am assured that all writers have doubts about their craft. Does anyone else out there worry so much about things that haven’t even happened?