Sandra Johnson – A Woman Inspired

Tags

inspiration, Reading List, women, writing

Sandra Johnson

Sandra Johnson’s book Flowers for the Living comes with a warning from a reader “the author is going to stab you in the heart with her garden shovel,” but, the warning continues: “and when the last drop of blood is shed, you will find a seed planted there that will blossom…” And with that you have your first kernel of understanding who Sandra Johnson is.

We met at a book event in Atlanta, where I had the great fortune to share the stage with Sandra, the event’s featured author. While I began the day knowing little more than what her website disclosed, I left feeling as if I had known her my whole life.

Shortly after the event, I returned to the Internet to read more about Sandra and then, even more intrigued, shortly after that I read Flowers for the Living in a single sitting. Only then did I come away with the sense of having peeled back one layer of a rosebud. Sandra is a multi-layered person, and one who draws from a place deep inside to write. A place filled with inspiration and worldly experience.

Because I believe my own writing is born of imagination rather than the more profound gift of inspiration, I have a fondness for people who can grab something from their core, their past, their heart, and bring it into the light to examine and write through their struggles, producing something that as Sandra says is “beautiful and true.”

This philosophy is central to Sandra’s approach and one she is documenting in a new self-help book that is a guide for people to journal their way to wellness.  She says, we need to examine where we came from and where we are headed to know who we are.  The approach is something Sandra has used in counseling inmates with severe psychiatric illness in a South Carolina correctional facility. The working title for the book is Finding Peace Within:  A 365-Day Journal for Balance, Clarity, and Serenity.

Sandra has been rewarded for tackling tough subjects—in the most recent case advocacy for those who need psychiatric treatment while incarcerated, and earlier for Standing on Holy Ground the story of the rebuilding of a South Carolina church firebombed in a racially motivated incident. She realized an author’s dream, reviews and mentions in O:  The Oprah Magazine, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and Southern Living and invitations to speak across the country.

Somehow, though, I suspect having satisfied her own quest to create something “beautiful and true” was the greater reward.

Of course, all this is in the past.  And, as anyone who strives to better themselves knows, Sandra is moving on. She’s writing historical fiction set in the south in the 1700s. It’s no surprise that the protagonist of Luna is a fierce, strong willed woman who perseveres though enslavement and separation from everything she loves during the Civil War to return to her family.

Another heady and inspirational topic and one that deserves Sandra’s keen eye and big heart.

Read more about Sandra on her website: sandraejohnson.net

 

Reading Different and Widely (First Half 2015)

Tags

#wsjbookclub, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Alice Sebold, Anna Quindlen, Annabel, Annie Proulx, Gravity, Jennifer Egan, Karen Hillenbrand, Karen Russell, Kathleen Winter, One True Thing, postcards from wonderland, Reading List, Swamplandia, Tess Gerritsen, The Lovely Bones, The Quiet Room, The Shipping News, To Be Read, Unbroken

I spent the first half of 2015, when not behind a book signing table or at the podium during a book festival, reading a variety of books, some outside my comfort zone, some way outside.  And yes, to be fair, my reading included a number by male authors — but as we all know life is not fair.  This being a blog about women and words, the works included here are the eight pictured above, all penned by women.

While the list may appear random, there was some method to my reading madness.

• What I did (read) on my summer vacation:
  This summer, I traveled aboard Adventure Canada’s Ocean Endeavor to Newfoundland and Labrador.  As background reading for the trip, AC recommended Annie Proulx’ The Shipping News and Annabel (by Kathleen Winter who was aboard the ship’s floating book club).  Newfoundland and Labrador at times a bleak and unforgiving land, was the setting for both novels.  I’d tried Proulx’ Postcards but couldn’t make my way through the book.  The Shipping News however, was a delight.  Proulx writes with gripping, painstakingly chosen words, her sentences and paragraphs aren’t written as much as architected.  Her voice is unvarnished and as unique as I’ve read.  Reading her work is like learning a whole new syntax.  Sentences that run on or are truncated and would never pass for sentences yet give you the feel of that half-broken land.
• What I’m reading to stimulate thinking about my new novel:  
  Also, I embarked on a journey of my own of sorts.  I’ve started a new novel, this time a thriller, or at least I hope it will be a thriller but can’t say until I’m further along.  So, I experimented a bit with crime novels and thus my choice of Gravity and The Lovely Bones.  Two types of mystery or suspense novels, the first a medical thriller and pure escapism and the second a very disturbing, tension packed story that could have happened next door to anyone of us.
• What I checked off my TBR list:
  Given that I’m still working my way through my long, long list of books I’ve committed to read, I checked off A Visit from the Goon Squad and One True Thing. Egan’s book is as far from my own reality as it could be (including a whole chapter written in PowerPoint) while Quindlen’s hits very close to home as a woman discovers long forgotten aspects of her relationship with her mother.
• What everyone was reading and I had to read too:
  I read Unbroken after seeing the block buster movie, something I hate to do as it is so difficult to ignore the big screen scenes playing in your head and enjoy the writing, and this was no exception.  If you don’t know the story you owe it to yourself to read the book or see the movie.
• What I read for simple pleasure:
  Finally, there was Swamplandia, perhaps my favorite.  There’s no way to accurately describe the innovative novel from Karen Russell who intrigued me years ago when I read her short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.”  If you read and loved that story, you’ll find Swamplandia a must read.  So many great lines, including:  “I watched as one sentence after another exited my mouth like those knotted magician’s scarves.”

Care to share your 2015 reading list?  Reading tips from like minded women (and men) always find their way to my always growing TBR list.  They’ve been some of my favorite in the past and I trust they’ll be favorites in the future.

And, of course, I hope you’ll put The Quiet Room and Postcards from Wonderland on your TBR list!