Tag: Agency

Posted in adventure, Adventure Fiction, Coming-of-Agency Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

DEMYSTIFYING THE CREATION OF A NOVEL

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

IDEA CREATION

Idea creation is often mysterious and vague. But I can recount the two specific events that led to the creation of my protagonist, Fiona Weston, Song of Herself.

The first. I took a walk in Spirit Lake, Iowa, after conducting a workshop in the early 1990s. I meandered down a lane of houses built on the lake. One house had a large letter, F, encircled on the side of the garage—like you see on ranches in Texas.

My imagination leapt to the attic of that garage with an old trunk and a woman named, Fiona, who was going through the trunk with a young girl at her side. They were reliving Fiona’s life.

The second. Several weeks later, I woke up from a dream in which my fantasy Iowa woman, Fiona, stood dressed in an outfit that looked like it was from India. I didn’t know what it was until weeks later when I described it to a Pakistani friend, who said it was a salwar kameez.

The morning I awoke from that dream, it continued to unfold in my mind during the next several waking hours. The skeleton of a story. It clung to me as a baby monkey clings to its mother.

A NOVEL IN THE MAKING

In the coming weeks, I wrote a three-page story for my writing group. They informed me that it was definitely a novel. There was too much there for a short story.

I balked and brought them an expanded ten pages and later twenty-five pages to show them I could tell the tale in short form. They insisted it was a novel and Fiona was begging me to tell her story.

In coming years, I took a novel writing class at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Wayne Johnson’s class. During my one-on-one with him, he informed me I didn’t have a 300-word novel, but a saga, one that could yield 600 pages. I won’t print my reply.

THE CURRENT BOOK, SONG OF HERSELF

In the end, the book turned into a 480-page book. If you have the book and are reading it, you may be interested to know the story took new twists and turns in the writing process. New characters and events beyond the skeleton grew out of the writing process.

My dream life set Fiona on a journey of a lifetime.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM NOVELS?

Journeys of this importance create chances to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts. They show us what we can become.

We can build confidence (self-assurance and the ability to make decisions for ourselves), resilience (adaptability and flexibility, the ability to the bend and sway as life throws obstacles), and agency (the ability to organize our lives around what is best for us, choose who and what we take with us, and take action to make these things happen).

These are things all individual need to learn for themselves as they mature. But it is especially critical for women (in our culture, which makes them second guess themselves too often) to take the reins of their lives to give the world the best they have to offer.

Fiona’s journey opened her eyes to different ways to live, seized her mind to realize she could think with an open mind, and captured her heart to know she could be who she is and to live openly and unafraid.

HERE’S HOW TO ORDER, SONG OF HERSELF

The novel’s protagonist, Fiona Weston, an Iowa horsewoman in work boots and trousers, sails to India in 1906 from San Francisco to discover her journey is not the quest for which she had yearned, nor the escape from those at home who ridiculed her unconventional ways. Fiona’s journey is fraught with obstacles that create a sturdy sense of self.

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1639885501

Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDK7Q54J/

If you read the book, please leave a short review of two or three sentences on Amazon, what you liked, what you found intriguing, or what you discovered about yourself in reading the book. Thanks, so much!!!

Posted in adventure, paying attention, Travel

How Do You Define Travel Adventure

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

How do you define adventure, escapade, exploration, quest, or venture?

An adventure can be the outdoor, physically demanding kind. Like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, mountain biking, or canoeing the North Woods. But not all of us are that physically fit or daring. Many of us travel for other kinds of adventures. One of mine is to learn to pay attention to what I experience.

How do you define travel adventure for yourself?

Chiapas from the back of a van

One year, at the invitation of two other women, I went along from Isla Mujeres to practice paying attention while seeing another part of Mexico, the southernmost state of Mexico, Chiapas. Once there we decided to take a tour to three different scenic and historical sites in a single day. What we did not calculate was the amount of time we would be in the van.

Jenn, Rhonda, Cathy

We left at 4:30 a.m., got home at midnight, spent 3 hours at three sites total, hurried through meals to ensure a potty stop, and bounced on the back axle of the van the rest of the trip.

My biggest surprise was not the beauty, or the history learned at the three sites, but what I gleaned from the back window of the bus about the way people lived in Chiapas.

Each household had cleared a spot in the tropical forest and built a house on an earthen plot with no vegetation. The houses, painted or not, sat enclosed by jungle. Most yards accommodated a large, non-specific breed of dog, some on a chain, others not. Yet they all barked at whatever passed by and barked with the children who played in the dusty yards. Even at a distance I could see happy kids in tattered clothing. Occasional goats, chickens, or other farm animals roamed free, well-fed and housed in an open shed or simply in the yard.

Because the houses were built close to the road and there was nowhere else to play, homeowners had laid massive nautical ropes in front of their homes. Much higher than most speed bumps and without the merging incline and leaving decline on each side, they made for a torturous journey. Therefore, our ride took the rhythm of down-shift, slow down, (first axle) up and over, then (back axle) up and over again, shift, and speed away. Parents and extended family settled on protecting their children’s safety over the convenience of tourists or even other locals.

As we returned in the fading sunlight, a single light bulb lit the interior of homes. We could tell because they left the doors and windows open for air—their native air conditioning. Inhabitants circled a table under that light bulb for dinner, reading and/or homework, sewing, or other life requirements.

I could see bare necessities were all they had, but they looked cheerful and well-fed to me. They seemed determined to make a life with little at hand.

Americans often feel denied if we don’t have the right brand of clothing, the best margarita on vacation, or a bonus at the end of the year. Often we find it tough to be happy with blessed lives.

From the back of the bus, I could see their poverty, joy, and ability to make the most of what they had.

Is your adventure to try using your rusty French or German, or your newly acquired Japanese; eat different foods than you normally would; or simply to write about your experiences in your journal to turn them into stories later? Any of these and many more can lead you to discoveries you would not have imagined before.

How do you define adventure for yourself? Please send an answer to that question so others can consider it, too.

Posted in Growing Up, Spirituality, Travel

A Mother’s Guidance Affords Agency to a Young Daughter 

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

 

My mom is the mother; and I am the young daughter (many years ago).

I’m going to be self-indulgent in this post and selfishly promote my book. I may have been the protagonist in my story, but mother was the main character in my life, as well as the other main character in the coming-of-age memoir I published three years ago, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away (paperback version) or Kindle version.

As I have explored the concept of agency in human development here on my blog for several weeks and go further with an example from my own At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Awaylife. I know Mother provided the “curriculum” for me to grow assertive, self-reliant and unafraid—in other words, to develop a sense of agency, in order to be the CEO of my own life. Travel trips, living in other cultures, and being on my own all generated agency that has served me well into adulthood.

HER STORY

Mom propelled me into the world, where she had rarely gone herself. She married two weeks out of high school and had me 21 months later. By age twenty-three she had two baby boys in addition to me. She and Dad situated our family in Piggott, Arkansas (northeast Arkansas) on a plot of land and in a house they built and moved into the month before I was born. At age thirty-seven she became the administrator of the nursing home that she and dad built with another couple and opened in 1966. She became the second largest employer in town.

Mother’s domain extended to the First Baptist Church one mile from our house. She taught Sunday school forever. She held every position possible in the women’s missionary union (WMU). She was leader to different children’s programs. She sang in the choir. She served on many committees and chaired most at some time over the years. And she always showed at potlucks with tasty treats.

Our family did not travel much, took very vacations. Mom and Dad were busy working, raising us kids, and active in the life of our church.

MY STORY

In first grade, my teacher placed a seashell to my ear and I traveled to the ocean to hear the surf for the first time. My third grade teacher read the adventures of the Box Car Children that I relived each night before dropping off to sleep. I toured the world in fourth grade geography, where I learned Switzerland was a country without its own language and Japan, a country with a language of pictograms I could not read.

But moreover, I built a curiosity about the world at church, through mission studies and missionaries who visited our church. Sometimes religion can narrow our views of the world, but in my case the church expanded my outlook on the world, and in turn developed my worldview.

OUR STORY

Poignantly, my mother launched me into the world, discerning that travel is fundamental to exploring the world, though she had never done so herself. Mom, progressive and enabling by standards then and now, proved to be an instrument of me growing up strong, independent, and resilient. She trusted me, but more than that, she trusted the process of becoming an adult. And she entrusted me into the hands of Jesus Christ in her prayers.

Mother knew what Mark Twain expressed in the “Conclusion” of The Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of Men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Before I was twenty-one I took many imaginary trips, along with ones in real time. Travel became my herald, mentor, and shadow. I prized the strength and wisdom that travel offers. And now I relish life’s lessons, learned—those treasured, even those squandered.

I dedicated the book to my mother, Gaye Wiley, wise beyond her experience, who provided me the means to learn about how to make my own decisions; how to act and behave in ways that were caring, compassionate, and smart; as well as, providing a safety net until I had developed sufficient resilience to get up on my own and try again.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MOM!!!

To purchase the paperback version of my book go to: https://www.createspace.com/4766298

To purchase the Kindle version go to:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JU4WITI

Posted in Growing Up

Madison Reveals “Agency” in her Life

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

Madison Winstead, my Cousin Keith’s daughter, signed on with her local university to swim with their team as a high school junior last year. This year as a senior she asked her future college coach and then the NCAA the unthinkable—permission to suit up and swim with the team in competition this year.

Why did she ask? Why did they say “yes” for the first time in NCAA history?

THE ANSWER TO WHY

Madison’s mother, Shane, has a terminal diagnosis of cancer. Her mother wanted to see Madison swim just once in college competition. So Madison after talking to her dad, but months later secretly went to her future coach and proposed an unlikely scenario. The coach and Madison took the request to the NCAA and got the answer everyone wanted.

She suited up and swam as a high school student with the college team, before entering college, Saturday, April 22, 2016.MadisonInSwimCap

CLASSIC EXAMPLE

This is a classic example of “agency” in the growing life of Madison. (See her story aired on NBC’s Today Show.)

Other sites tell the story from different viewpoints, if you are interested.

Madison decided her mother’s desire was worthy of pursuit. The family, which also includes her brother Clayton, has dealt openly and proactively with the outcome of this medical diagnosis. They are a remarkable family.

KeithWMadison
Her dad, Keith Winstead congratulates Madison

ShaneWMadison
Her mother, Shane Winstead and brother, Clayton Winstead share her joy

In researching the concept of agency, I found that there are three different angles on agency: business, philosophical, and sociological. As I have written before there is the business side of agency, in which one entity works on the behalf of another entity, like a health agency or advertising agency. This definition fits Madison, as well, because she became the agent of making her mother’s wish come true.

MADISON’S OWN STYLE OF AGENCY

On the other hand, Madison has learned to make decisions for her own life. She chose, using a careful and thoughtful selection process, the college-swim team she wanted. She knew the coming years would be difficult, some of which may be without her mother. She wanted a team that would support her during the anticipated loss.

Madison also had the courage and determination to ask the improbable question and enlist the appropriate assistance. She did this on her own without her dad’s knowledge at the time. She went prepared to her coach. She followed guidance of a mentor and helper, her coach. She did the follow-up work with the NCAA. She waited patiently and respectfully.

Agency as I use the word here is not a business term, but as Wikipedia says, “In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.” Wikipedia goes on to describe agency as “one’s independent capability or ability to act on one’s will.”

Some of us develop a sense of agency growing up and others of us after we are adults. Some of us develop it in one area of our lives and not others. Some of us develop agency for good outcomes and others of us for illegal, unethical or immoral outcomes.

Madison has developed a sound sense of agency at a young age in making things happen for herself and her family. May she learn to master the sense of agency in other areas of her life that prove as useful as it has in this part of her life.

Cheers to Madison who gets it—agency!

 

Posted in Growing Up

Brainstorm the word “agency”

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

I want to follow-up on the idea of “agency”–of bringing things about in one’s life that are positive, productive and energizing. We can tackle this exercise by brainstorming other words or phrases that mean something similar. Brainstorming is more fun with others, but I will go it alone for the moment. (Feel free to join me when you get this.)

  • Making something happen that you desire
  • Creating what you want
  • Manifesting (heard this word today — love it!)
  • Generating outcomes
  • Building an attitude that serves you
  • Finding ways to overcome obstacles
  • Seeking productive solutions
  • Expanding options
  • Discovering possibilities
  • Garnering assistance
  • Accepting champions
  • Utilizing mentors, experts, and others who can help

As you can see, I generated plenty of ways to articulate “agency.” Of course, I am looking for the positive side of agency.

We may want a million dollars and decide to rob a bank. That IS manifesting what you want in life, but it comes with negative consequences. So let’s be clear.

I’m talking about when a person displays “agency” that person is seeking legitimate ends through legitimate means. Am I splitting hairs?  I’m trying to be clear.

It is not me wanting to buy a Hummer, when I make $32,000 a year. It is not me desiring a pair of shoes that I will wear one to three times and pay $150 for them–especially if I’m making only $32,000. But agency could be me deciding to learn the piano at age 42 and making the required adjustments around family and work life to make it feasible to do.

Agency is a young woman wanting to study abroad as a junior in college and being willing to cover part of the cost by working; to apply for a scholarship, grant or loan; and ask mom and dad to help with part of the cost, if that is possible. It includes initiating and completing the application on time, even if she needs help. And if a young woman demonstrates agency she will do any other preparation necessary for the trip.

Does this short essay get us any closer to understanding the concept of agency? And why is it important for us to understand the concept?