What's Your Silver Lining?: on Finding Oneself through Reading

By Tanya Bouche, senior Business Management major at Silver Lake College

When I was younger, what seems like 100 years ago, I had a very short temper. I was frustrated by the smallest things- from how my shoes would be tied to someone teasing me about my looks or the way I talked. I started to develop what they now categorize as ADHD. People have seen my attitude as “Come on. Keep teasing me and I am gonna get you back.” Being that I was a child with wild, brunette tight little curls and a bad temper, the other kids in my small Bay View Milwaukee neighborhood (back in the late 80's and early 90's) would continuously pick on me.  Since I have grown up, for the most part, I have learned to handle my temper by talking to someone, doing arts and crafts, gardening, studying, cooking or baking, and reading. I have done a lot of soul searching on my own through reading and through writing short stories. These activities help me constantly make improvements within my life.

While I read or write, I reflect on how I feel and how I can change my situations. I read The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick a while back--a book clearly written about me. I sat at my dining room table reading, still in my pajamas, with my cup of coffee on the cup warmer. I realized that I also was thinking of different ways to handle my anger issues if they were to rise again. This book, for me, was a constant page-turner because of the situations presented. Patrick goes through a very hard break up with his wife, ends up checking into a psychiatric hospital, and meets new people. While Patrick is in the hospital, he begins to exercise to better his physical appearance and to become self-disciplined.  During his journey, he finds other ways of coping with his Bipolar disorder by reading, exercising, and dancing.  He meets another woman, Tiffany, while getting fit and learning how to control his behavior. I can relate to how Patrick feels, because when I read I feel a lot calmer, and it helps me put my life into perspective.

What Patrick does not realize is that while he is doing this “dance thing” he is also falling in love with his dance partner, Tiffany, and falling out of love with his ex-wife, Nikki.  Tiffany suggests that he could pass letters through her to give to his ex-wife Nikki, since Nikki is a friend of Tiffany’s sister. He thinks it's a good idea, because this way he is not going against the restraining order’s guidelines. What Patrick is not realizing is that Tiffany is helping him cope with the break up while feeding him with hope of reconnecting with his ex-wife. I relate to this scene when I am having a problem with things like writing papers or understanding what I read. I distract myself with something else and come back to the problem when I have had a chance to cool off.

While sitting in the back seat of his brother’s car with his broken leg propped up on the back of the front seat, Patrick comes to a conclusion. As Patrick watches Nikki, her new husband, and their two kids playing outside of his old house in the cold winter snow that has fallen in their big front yard, he realizes that he is content and ready to move on. When he sees that Nikki is smiling and having fun with her new family, he realizes that she has moved on and made a better life for herself.  All he really wants is for Nikki to be happy, whether it is with or without him in her life.  When he realizes that Tiffany has been the one writing the return letters he asks her to meet him on a bridge, which is in the park near his house.

 In a way I can relate to this story, because I feel this is similar to the way that my husband, Jesse, and I found each other. I was reckless in my earlier years, and didn’t feel like accepting what was happening to me. Then I met Jesse. We had our fun getting to know each other, while my problems and worries were starting to fade away. Then we fell in love and found our “silver linings,” started a family, worked through my postpartum depression after giving birth for the third time, and found our way again. We are now here and happier than ever, for the most part. We still have our triggers and anger management issues, but we find ways to work through them together, like Patrick and Tiffany did.

 I am not saying it is easy for anyone to find their way in today’s world. What I am trying to say is, that the answers are within our own selves and we have to find what makes us happy. In my case lately, it is waking up early, choosing a book from one of my many overflowing bookshelves, grabbing a cup of java, and wrapping myself in my red velvety blanket while sitting on my big, fluffy-pillowed couch and reading as much as I can before everyone else in the house wakes up. The advice I am offering for dealing with your frustrations is to find what makes you happy and go with it. Find a great book and read in comfort, or find a pen and paper and spill you guts. Reading might just put your situation into a different light and may even help you think of other ways to deal with certain frustrations.

Tanya lives in Manitowoc, WI with her husband and three children. In her spare time she likes to read to her kids and work in her gardens.

A Week of Writing Fearlessly: 7 Prompts from the Staff of The Novice

By the staff of The Novice, Silver Lake College's literary and visual arts journal

Crunchy fallen leaves in scarlet, orange, and gold are permeating the air on campus with that earthy-festive leaf smell.  Weekend trips to pumpkin patches and cafes with family and friends are flecked with cinnamon, swatches of Instagram-worthy gourds, and flannel. As writers, we're supposed to be inspired this time of year. We're supposed to be filling composition notebooks, scribbling away as if energized and moved by each sip of our harvest-themed beverages.

If the words aren't exactly flowing for you, here are a few prompts from the staff of The Novice to get you through the week. We challenge you to submit your favorite piece to thenovice.slc@gmail.com.  We’ll consider all submissions for publication in our spring issue of Silver Lake College's literary and arts journal. 

Happy writing!

1.       Write a break up letter to something that you can’t stand (pumpkin spice lattes, writer’s block, Mondays, mornings, etc.).

2.       Write about “the one that got away” (it can be a person, an opportunity, a lost object, etc.).

3.       Imagine that you walk into your room one day and a strange box/package/item is on your bed.

4.       Write a letter to a famous historical figure or celebrity you love.

5.       Write a letter to a famous historical figure or celebrity you can’t stand.

6.   Write about a night at a haunted house or an afternoon at a pumpkin patch. Let that night or afternoon be full of drama. 

7.   Write about a favorite/least favorite Halloween costume from childhood or adulthood. Who did you become? How did the costume transform you?

No Bad Habits Here!

By Shaughn VanGinkel, Communications major at Silver Lake College

            Well, here I am writing my first blog post ever. A blog? You might as well just call it an online paper. Now that I’m in that mindset, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be facing writer’s block at some point, burning through draft after draft with phrases and sentences leaking from the deeper corridors of my brain.
             Writer’s block, how that pair of words so deeply etches itself into my writing habits. It forces me to halt what I’m doing as my thoughts accidentally get their shoe laces tied together and crash on their face, being unable to continue any further. Some people would call me lazy, and think that I am simply making excuses for myself. Others would call me inept, doubting my ability to scribble anything on paper worth reading. While I respect such opinions because of how often the cases arise (writer's block, brain lock whatever you want to name it), the reality is that many writers such as myself have our moments of struggle. Thankfully, however, a great many of us have adopted some rather interesting methods to continue our writing and to sidestep the constant accusations of laziness against us.

            Let’s face it, people. Writing is simpler than we think. We experience it each day through our various means of technology. We flow from one text message to the next and pound the keyboard with one Facebook message to another. Why then is writing professionally such a difficult task? Whether it’s an English assignment or even a novel, many of us have faced these struggles one right after the other, trying to think beyond our slanged and twisted language that we communicate with each day.
             I remember back in the 8^th grade when I used to write descriptive book reports from the various stories I was pretty much forced to read despite my lack of topic interest. It wasn’t necessarily the story itself that disinterested me, but the idea of trying to manifest the story into my own words on to paper. THAT by itself was a nightmare to me in my young age. Hearing the teacher’s words “write a paper” was equivalent to getting smacked across the face by a red dodge ball on the four square court outside, the words themselves leaving behind a burning sting. The same thing occurred every time I would attempt to write out a paper. I would deliver an okay intro, and then immediately lock up the moment I tried to form a body. My mind would blank and my hand would tremble as I would sit with the paper lying before me, unfinished and mediocre. Eventually, I would simply give in and walk back to my bedroom, knowing that I would have to explain to the teacher that somehow this was not due to my laziness. But, I decided that after so many repeated attempts and blanks, maybe my mind just needed to see things other than wooden pencils and blank pieces of white paper.  

Photo: Sherri Seals via Pinterest

            I pushed myself away from the table and strolled outside for a fall nature walk. As I stepped outside amongst the dancing red and orange leaves, I began to feel a sensation like no other. I was fascinated by the colorful artwork that was moving before my eyes and my brain began to trigger something rather amazing. It’s as if at that moment, information began to overflow, words and colorful sentences appeared and vanished before my eyes as if my paper was being written without me lifting a finger. Fascinated, I hastily returned home, flying through the leaves fearing the sensation would soon leave my presence. I immediately jumped to my chair and wielded my pencil as I burned through each word, each sentence and every line filling like a glass of water and the paper itself was my resulting pitcher. What a rush! I had never experienced an information flow like that. That was when I first discovered the term “gateway." To me, a gateway is a means of being able to trigger my thought process when I seem to have run out of steam or to put it simply, refueling.

            From there on, these gateway methods have been present through my life to this very day, and as I have gotten older I found these interesting writings habits out of the blue. From the nature walks to more simple methods of just having a glass of water to refuel my system, whatever little triggers helped me to wash away writer's block, I would be more than willing to use. Many of my puzzled friends would always ask why exactly these methods worked for me when suffering from writer's block, and honestly, I can’t give anyone a straight answer.
             Many of the “professionals” would say that the explanations of these methods could simply be broken down by science. But why make an effective method of writing be so complexly explained, especially when nearly every one I have academically been involved with has their own tendency, such as twirling a pen or drawing a picture to illustrate the words in front of them? 

            Truthfully many of the “experts” (I’m really stretching that term) will say something along the lines of “These actions/habits are due to certain brain wave patterns or certain synapse triggers etc. etc.” Heck, all you really have to do is Google “writing habits” or “good and bad writing habits” and then count how many times you see the words “studies show…” Scientists are struggling way too often to explain simple matters that don’t actually need some pseudo-intellectual textbook explanation. The way I like to express my own writing habits or what the experts call “nervous tendencies” is that it’s something that calms me down. It helps my papers get back on their feet, it relaxes. That’s all the explanation one ever needs whenever you twirl your pen or drop everything and go for a short nature walk. IT REFRESHENS YOU.

            All the same can even be said for myself as a novice lyricist/poet. Music writing is pretty much the same as fictional writing except there are some extra elements that one must think about. While the words themselves are important, you must also think about whether or not you actually want your song to rhyme, the structure of the beat of the song as well as the melody, and what kind of attitude you want the piece to project as your pen or pencil etches the story in front of you.

            “When the glimmer of her eyes

Captivates me from across the street,
The beauty of her full gaze

Shall stay the movement of my feet.”

Just the beginning scratches!

This is just a taste of some of the lyrical complexity I try to develop as I come up with new song lyrics. These four lines alone took me quite a while to develop in the sense that I needed to not only split it up into four phrases to make it melodically captivating, but so it also makes some lick of sense to the listeners and performers! The amount of writer's block intensifies when it comes to all these different elements that must be intertwined. To compensate, I intensify the amount of study habits that I have at my disposal! Sometimes I will go on an extended nature walk while carrying a bottle of water with me in order to sustain my energy. I have learned that using multiple different habits is actually useful for more difficult projects. It’s as if my own mind automatically projects the amount of habit usage I need in order to complete my assignment or writing project, whatever allows the words to glide across my sheet to form the final piece of story I so desperately desire.

I honestly enjoy the many different study habits that I have developed throughout my many years of writing and I am unashamed of the power and influence they have given me over my writing to this very day. Of course, I’m not saying to go out and smoke 20 packs of cigs a day seeing as those have clearly awful side effects, but there are many alternative means of allowing one’s writing to flow. You don’t need some crazy intellectual who thinks he/she knows all to explain it to you nor do you need to completely destroy yourself, but to find your happy medium. Your writing must be fluently expressed from your heart and through your own mind. I encourage everyone to try different writing habits and see what will actually trigger you to become a more fluent writer. It’s never a weakness to stop your writing to go out for a nature walk or to have a glass of water by you at all times to get the ol fleshy word processor going!