Bev Jackson has awarded me the Shameless Lion Award. This award originated with Seamus Kearney of Shameless Words and the Shameless Lion Writing Circle, who wrote:

“Those people I’ve given this award to are encouraged to post it on their own blogs; list three things they believe are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs they want to honour, who in turn pass it on to five others, etc etc. Let’s send a roar through the blogosphere!” (read award details here)

I’m always happy to give a loud roar for good writing, and I agree with Seamus’ three things — innnovation, truth, and humanism — to which I’ll add three more things I think are necessary for good, powerful writing:

1) Love of learning. I’m not talking about the letters after your name. Love of learning (call it natural curiosity if you will) makes the writer a sponge for details from which to draw just the right ones. Love of learning makes us thorough researchers, who sometimes need a 12-step program to get us to stop researching and write. It keeps us open to new ways of telling a story and to experimentation and practice. One never finishes learning.

2) Awareness, including empathy. Awareness of the world around us helps a writer catch those fleeting details that make a story come to life. There’s a whole world inside a story, and the writer’s awareness of her outer world helps her select just the right details to make the world of the story seem real. A great writer also understands people and their feelings, and can stand in another’s shoes and experience their perspective. Of course we never do this perfectly, as each person’s experience is unique; but a powerful writer comes oh so close.

3) Courage. A powerful writer must be willing to take risks, to face conflict head on, to take up subjects others may be afraid to tackle. Sometimes the risk is writing about an issue personal to the writer, a past trauma, or something the people in her life may not be happy that she writes. Sometimes it’s a matter of getting a character to a conflict instead of writing circles around it. Sometimes it’s an artistic risk, writing in a style or form that’s new and untested, or on a topic that’s unpopular or politically charged. To illustrate this, I’ll quote yet another line from a movie, The Thomas Crown Affair (1999). (Warning, if you haven’t seen the movie this setup may be a spoiler.) Detective Michael McCann, played by Denis Leary, presses insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) for information about their art theft suspect, Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan), who’s also at this point Catherine’s lover. Catherine hesitates, and the detective says, “You know what? Life is full of shitty conflicts, okay? Give!” That line encapsulates for me the power of conflict and risk-taking in writing. It has to be there for writing to be powerful, and the writer has to face it head-on. Give!

Now for the people I want to award with a Roar. For starters, I wish I could pass this award right back to Bev for her poem, To My Young Husband, 1963.

Here’s my list:

1) Cate at Trailing Light
2) Susan at Spinning
3) Bruce Black at Wordswimmer
4) Eric Mayer at Byzantine Blog
5) Wayne at Nutty Steamers

There, five! I won’t have to cheat, in fact I could’ve gone on. In closing I want to point to Bev’s new art gallery website, Art Shack Studio.

Beverly Jackson recently honored me by including my name in her Thinking Bloggers Awards. She should be listed in mine, because she’s inspired me so much in the time I’ve known her, through her writing, painting, and poetry, as well as her perspectives on other poets and life. It’s Southern California’s loss that Bev recently moved to North Carolina, where she’s exploring her new home region and sharing her experiences via her blog.

I’ve chosen my five Thinking Bloggers with great difficulty, because I read many more than five blogs that deserve mention on a regular basis. All whose blogs I read are people who make me think on a regular basis. Many also share another special quality: In one of my favorite movies, Under The Tuscan Sun (a highly-fictionalized adaptation of the Frances Mayes memoir by talented screenwriter Audrey Wells, who also brought us Shall We Dance and The Kid), free-spirited Katherine (played by Lindsay Duncan) keeps reminding her American friend Frances (Diane Lane) of the advice she got from Federico Fellini, to never lose her childish enthusiasm. Good advice, in my opinion. Childish enthusiasm is a quality I greatly admire in people, maybe because mine is sometimes in short supply, so I need regular booster shots. It’s a trait that tends to be present in most of the people whose blogs I return to.

Now for Barbara’s Thinking Blogger Awards:

Eric Mayer at Byzantine Blog is co-author, with his wife Mary Reed, of the Byzantine era historical mysteries featuring John the Eunuch. I follow Eric’s blog for his witty observations and childhood reminiscences, and for the combined seriousness and humor, in just the right places, with which he views life and his part in it. Both his essays and his fiction are well worth reading.

Irene Fulton at Reenie’s Reach epitomizes to me the preservation of childish enthusiasm, especially in her artwork and writing, but in real life as well. She has apparently passed this effervescent trait on to her children, along with her good looks. Reenie used to live in my neighborhood, where I met her and Bev through the same local writer’s critique group. She now enthuses all the way from Tennessee. (Why is everyone migrating to the South? Do y’all know somethin’ I don’t?)

Carol at Cassie-B for finding tidbits of information about the things that surround us or confront us each day that we don’t often stop and think about, and for adding her own uplifting insights. I especially like her monthly calendars that list all the bizarre and unique holidays in the coming month. I think it’s about time there was a National Rocky Road Day, don’t you? She also posts terrific recipes.

Diane at Violetismycolor for her whimsical artwork and for sharing her family life and travels in ways that anyone can relate to and appreciate. In following her and her family around the globe and home again, I feel as if I’ve been allowed to tag along for the best parts.

Kerrdelune (Cate) at Beyond the Fields We Know for her astounding, sometimes heart-stopping nature photographs of her part of eastern Ontario, Canada, and for her poetry, vision, and wisdom.

Big applause for these bloggers!

Awardees are invited to post your own Thinking Bloggers Awards on your blogs. I won’t hold you to it, but wouldn’t that be fun?

If you ask what my five favorite birds are, I may list the last five species that visited my yard and forget I’ve ever seen an osprey, a roadrunner, a California quail. I might forget the red-tailed hawk that dropped the pigeon it had just caught when it saw my van driving toward it, or the two times I came across a great blue heron standing beside my path while I walked.

But sometimes I come across a name, an image, a sound, and I think, “Oh, how I love that.”

Do you have favorites or memories you don’t recall when someone asks, that come in odd moments like patches sewn to older thoughts?

Just the other day, while thinking about peace, I remembered a favorite song. “From A Distance” is most famous because Bette Midler’s 1990 recording of it won a Grammy. It’s written by Julie Gold. Here’s the snippet of the lyrics that came to mind a few days ago:

“From a distance
You look like my friend
Even though we are at war
From a distance
I just cannot comprehend
What all this fighting’s for”

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Library Reference Room Page
2. Editorial Assistant
3. Technical Writer-Editor
4. Novelist

Four movies I can watch repeatedly
1. The Matchmaker (I can’t help myself)
2. Under the Tuscan Sun
3. Sleepless in Seattle
4. Dune (the original)

Four places I have lived:
1. San Diego, California (Kensington, Clairmont Mesa)
2. Drain, Oregon
3. Mesa, Arizona (for one month when I was 4 or 5)
4. Chula Vista, California

Four TV shows I like to watch:
1. Da Vinci’s Inquest (I am hopelessly HOOKED on this show)
2. The Closer (she’ll make you talk)
3. Stargate (SG-1 and Atlantis)
4. The Dead Zone (stop touching the poor guy—that’s just mean)

Four places I have been on vacation:
I haven’t been on vacation in so long, it’s depressing. The last proper one was in 1988 or 1989, but at least I’m conserving fossil fuels.
1. Sierra Nevada, California (various locations—ask me about Mosquito Flat)
2. Coastal California
3. Oregon
4. Sedona and Phoenix, Arizona

Four favorite dishes:
1. Brownies and ice cream
2. Roasted chicken
3. Salad with lots of bright greens and tomatoes and bleu cheese dressing
4. Pizza (homemade or from a very special place)

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Mystery of a Shrinking Violet (well—you know—I have to)
2. Blogs in my blog list—check them out!
3. Google Search
4. Amazon.com

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Redwoods
2. Sierra Nevada
3. Sedona
4. Ireland or Italy (never been)

I’m not tagging anyone, but I have many wonderful favorite blogs you really must try out. Read my blog list. In fact, I lied—you’re all tagged!

Five Weird Habits:

1. Doodles. Usually the doodle is something strange and nondescript and appears magically on the paper when I’m not paying attention. I’ve heard you can interpret these things the way you do handwriting. I’m afraid to. Sometimes I draw things on purpose. My current flower of choice is an iris. (Iris is the protagonist’s name in my current mystery.)

2. Hand Lotion. Even as a kid I didn’t like my hands to be sticky, dirty, or parched. I don’t wear my nails long, I don’t like nail polish, and I can barely stand to wear my wedding ring. I keep hand lotion beside every sink in the house, and in my purse.

3. “What did you dream?” The journeys our minds take while we sleep fascinate me. One of the first utterances to pass my lips on any given morning is, “Do you remember any dreams?” Or I tell one of mine.

4. Call pets by silly pet names. My cat Emily also goes by Emmylou, Auntie Em, and The Divine Miss Em.

5. Sort M&Ms by color before eating them. Eat the orange ones first, so I don’t have to look at them. (I’m not partial to that shade of orange.) I don’t feel a compulsion to sort anything else before I eat it, and I don’t care if different foods touch on my plate—in fact I like them that way. It’s just an M&M thing.

I’m supposed to tag five other blogging friends, but I’m breaking the rules and leaving this open. If you feel inspired, please continue the meme, and share with the rest of us. See the links in my blog list and comments for fun places this might appear next.

The Rules: Start with the topic “five weird habits.” People who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You have been tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.