TiGi's Windfalls for Writers

Sculpting Characters

2012-01-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

As I retype/rewrite the first book in my Heart’s seriesduring the morning hours, the characters for the last book are beginning toform. After a morning of rewriting, I work on character sketches and plot forthat fourth book. Something about doing that is giving depth and clarity to thefirst book.

I’ve been delving into my tear sheets and workshop notes,compiling them into one document of concentrated notes and information about characterdevelopment, mostly as reminders. Truth is I know most of it by heart and onlyneed a nudge or two to implement it. I have five different character worksheetsfrom the workshops and conferences. Each similar, each with one or two smartitems the others didn’t have. I consolidated the whole of them into my ownworksheet and deep-sixed the lot of them.

I had to take a deep breath, exhale and close my eyes to doit, but I never really used them anyway. I held on to them though, as if thatwould be the secret to wonderful character development. But really, what worksfor me is what’s best, right? I did the same with the character interview. Isorted and shifted through the stack of them I had, wrote my own with some ofthe questions on the worksheets and some of my own, then tossed the old ones.

It has been liberating and frightening. I’m so worried I’llforget something and yet, I did this once before on setting a scene. I read andstudied everything I had gathered in all the workshops, classes and conferencepertaining to setting struggling to write perfect settings for the scenes of mybook, only to realize I was perfecting the heart and soul and me out of thescene, so I tossed everything and made my own checklist. Sure, some of thesuggestions were there, some of my own ideas were, too, and that made all thedifference in the way I felt about my story.

It’s time. Time to trust what I’ve learned and now, I mustlet it spin out from me. All right, I’m a little insecure—a lot insecure. Afterall, I have not published in novel form. Maybe, trust is the secret.

On that note: Several years ago, I read an essay printed inthe paper. It changed the way I sculpt character more than anything else I’veever heard, better than the best writer’s workshop or lecture, better thanevery book I’ve ever read on character development. The title: Take Time Todayto Reflect upon Best Memories by Bob Swift. It was a Christmas essay, just alist of Swift’s best memories. It tugged at my heart, took me back, made mesmile and cry. It was perfect. It was amazing at just what it was, but it gotme thinking. I knew this man. I had some of the same memories.

With that one essay,I knew Swift’s history, age, attitude, loves, childhood, and heartbreak. I knewhe liked Louis Armstrong’s horn, dogs, mountain mornings, walking in the rain,New York delis, and the color red.

Had he written a sister essay of his dislikes, I would haveknown him even better. That beautiful, simple essay, written as if I wassitting across from him, (though Swift even added rhyme and rhythm, bless him) inhis words was the perfect character sketch. It was so simple in form andintention.

It’s my gold standard, my blueprint for character sketch.Two essays written from a character’s voice about best and worse memories. Itworks better, for me, than the interview, although the interview as a guide canhelp you remember all you need to include, if you tend to forgetfulness.

I read an article many years ago, can’t remember from whichmagazine, but the article talked about getting addicted to books on writing. Readingthem rather than writing. Trying everything in every one. It is tempting. I’veeven tried; think it would spell success for me. I always go back to the way Ithink and work, no matter my determination to be ‘better’. I likely alwayswill. So, along with cleaning out of my files, I’m taking hard looks at many ofmy writing books. I must admit, I love reading them. The writing and the passionin some of them gets my juices flowing, gives me that kick in the pants everyoneneeds, but they don’t get the words down, do they?

All I am doing is pointing. You must find it true yourself. —The Buddha

Epiphany

2012-01-16T09:41:00.000-08:00

For me, building a story starts with character and I lovebuilding new characters. Figuring how they look, feel, react. Seeing theirbackstory, feel it from their point of view. I, even, love how the idea of thecharacter, the first beginning seed, nags and tickles and seeps into my mindand just won’t let me go. I love the way it makes me feel that I’m in my worldand theirs, too, for long periods of my day.

I love that tension, that urgency I feel as thecharacter/story grows, has needs and wants that I have to fulfill. That I haveto research, find, makeup. Only it doesn’t really feel like making things up.It feels like uncovering or excavating this hidden story. And there is alwaysthis intensity, this craving to find it all, right now.

Since I began rewriting the first book in my Hearts series,I’ve been in that state and it took me by surprise. When I began the seriesmany years ago, I knew there were four brothers and I knew three of theirstories, but the fourth eluded me. Most because I had a hard time visualizingthe fourth brother, Gallagher. He was there, but his face was blotted out andevery time he was in a scene, I struggled with his actions and motives. Who washe? What did he want?

But as I do, I just kept stepping forward; driven by theother stories I thought I knew. There was so much I loved about this series andthe three books I finally finished, yet when I sent them out, I didn’t havegreat luck. At the time, Western Historicals had fallen out of favor, too, but Ijust kept writing.

It wasn’t until I started rewriting that I finally saw thefourth story, the fourth brother and that the stories, though separate, intertwined,and of course they did. Lives are like that, though each brother’s story washis own, it couldn’t really be told completely until I knew Gallagher’s. Itdidn’t matter that none of them happen simultaneously, that Gallagher’s storywas the last chronologically. What mattered was they were family and whathappened to one affected all.

An epiphany.

Plot springs from character…I’ve always sort of believedthat these people inside of me—these characters—know who they are and what they’reabout and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper becausethey don’t type. —Anne Lamott, novelist and essayist

Now, Break It

2012-01-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

So, after all that planning for the New Year and the writingin my planner a loose schedule, all that hope for weight loss and writinggains, I’m into this New Year life one week and I’ve ditched it all. Well, notreally, but sort of.

See, I did all the planning for a reason and that was topush it aside and instead—don’t plan but do. The plan showed me what I want,but all the pieces of papers and calendars and planners can’t make me do athing. Only I can. I wanted to see my plan and I wanted to break it. Break itinto little pieces I could swallow up with determination and hope.

And then I started. I dusted off the old Western HistoricalRomance Series I wrote many years ago, the one I mentioned last week, all right.As I said, I read the three books I’d written, jotted down a ton of notes, foundthe gold mine of editors comments, I made notes and started an outline for thefourth book, but best of all, I started rewriting the first book in the series.

At first, I stumbled, undecided. Did I copy, correct andwork over, or did I start over? Open a new document and start typing? Therewere advantages either way and the idea of completely rewriting a 100,000-wordmanuscript was daunting and yet….

The idea of starting fresh wouldn’t let me go and so, disregardingmy carefully noted schedule, I opened a new document, typed in Virginia City,NV, October 1875. From that moment, my fingers have galloped away with thestory. I know it. I know it better. I know where it’s going, all of it,including the last story.

I was so afraid it would be a little same old, same oldstory new year. I didn’t want that. I don’t think my writing could stand that.I think I had a little of that editing Ella and the Tie-down Man at the last.While I love the story, it had been with me too much through a bad time in mylife and I needed it finished. I worry that will come across in the finishedproduct, but for now, I must move on. I’ve sent it out in the world. I have tosee how it is received. If not well, I may have to begin again or leave it.

For now, I move forward with this series. Like so many longdistance races, it’s the finishing that’s important, but you can’t finish ifyou never start.

New Year, New Resovle

2012-01-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

Everywhere there is a reminder that with the New Year thereare certain expectations of self-improvements. Television and newspaper ads,internet popups and your own mind all nip at you. And we all expect that ofourselves, for now, but it’s hard to stick with any of it—the weight loss, exercise,saving money, time management, organization and purging clutter. The yearbegins with the hope and thoughts, with those goals.

And maybe, it is all doomed for failure, but even a little,tiny, smidgen of a change for the better is good. And so I begin and with thefirst thing, the fun thing, the hopeful thing: My yearly planner—A newone—pretty, smart, well suited to me. This year it’s purple—for no other reasonthan it caught my eye and it’s different from the hundreds of others I’ve hadover the years. There are big splashy tulips across the front and randomlythrough the pages. It makes me smile.

First order of business: My quote from Josey Wales (TheOutlaw Josey Wales) taped to the inside: Now remember, when things look bad andit looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean, plumb,mad-dog mean. “Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neitherlive nor win. That’s just the way it is. A good quote for any circumstance, don’tyou think?

Then, a quote from me, just below that: Be a differentwriter, just for a moment and surprise even yourself. And finally a quote byBernie S. Siegel, M.D.: In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong withhope.

On the title page, up in the left-hand corner: You can bebitter or better, and on the right-hand upper corner: Writing begets writing.

Next, I read last year’s goals and give myself credit forall that I did accomplish—No, I celebrate. Never do I let myself dwell too longon those things I didn’t get done. Last year is over and done. I wait to writedown my goals for this year. Time enough for that tomorrow or next week. If Ido it too soon, I’ll put too much on the list, things that might not be bestfor me, but in the heat of the moment and to fit into the rest of the world, I’lllisten to the hype and ads.

Instead, I read myplanner and write down those things that still have a meaning for me. Like the messageon the last page. I know it’s from three planners ago and yet the bullet pointsapply to every difficult situation, even, especially, writing:

(MPGN) For Chronic Illness:

Getsupport

Don’tforget to breathe

Getan advocate

Geta second opinion

Becomean expert

I enter anything the needs to be done regularly during theyear: computer cleaning and tune-up, file purge, yearly contests. And I figureout a loose weekly plan.

Once my book is exactly how I want it I sit back and smilebecause I’ve begun and that’s the hardest part.

Baby Name Books? Really.

2011-12-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

“Are you trying to tell me something?” His expression is justa little panicky.

I just wanted to put my feet up after a day of bakingChristmas pies and bury myself in the Baby Name Book and mindless TV. “No,why?”

“Well, uh, Baby Name Books scattered around are a littleconcerning.”

I sink into the love seat and twist around to look at him. “Whatyou’re thinking is impossible, you know.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Double impossible.”

“Yeah, but…”

I look at the stack of books next to me, the scratch paper,clipboard, and pen. “You’ve never really been around when I’ve been building acharacter, have you?”

“I heard you talk about it, I think.” I always figured hewasn’t really listening, just sort of politely letting me yammer on and on. Youknow, husband and wife speak. I was impressed, he’d heard that much. “Build?And Baby Name Books figure into it?”

“Yes, for me, that’s first, along with the phone book.”

“You call them up?”

“No.” I smile. Wouldn’t that be great? Call the characterand ask him/her about them self.

“Then what’s the phone book for?”

“Last names.”

His frown deepens. “Huh. Then what.”

“My cattle call binder and the horoscope book.” I point tothe two five-inch wide binders and my dog-eared Linda Goodman’s Love Signshoroscope book.

“Do I want to know what you use them for? Cattle callbinder?”

“I do try outs.”

“Try outs.” I get a blank stare.

“I go through pictures…of actors, magazine ads, what haveyou, until I find my character.”

“But now, it’s baby names. How do you decide on a name?”

A good question, but I don’t know how to answer, but I try.“There’s this shadow person, somewhere in my mind. Maybe, better called, a seedperson. Once I learn their name, the details start coming to me. Until then,they kind of stay in the shadows.”

“I thought you were rewriting your Heart’s series.”

“I am.”

“Then aren’t the characters already…built?”

And he’s hit the nail on the head. When I started theseries—I don’t even like to say how long ago…let’s put it this way, 3 computersago…with all the information on floppies. My new computer doesn’t have one andthank goodness, for my computer guru—I started with the youngest brother andthat is how it must progress, but I knew little about the others and it showedwhen they appear in the book.

Anyway, I’ve rereading everything—all of the first threebooks, found the gift of an editor’s notes all through the first three chaptersof the first book when something happened. And then the dreams-day and nightreturned. Finally.

These last three years have been absent of the dreams ormuse or whatever you want to say. I’ve worked along, writing or rewriting offthe cuff, so to speak, figuring that was going to be the way I had to work fromnow on. It wasn’t as easy or as fun, and maybe, it would have been a blessingif I could have just stopped writing. I couldn’t. It just wasn’t going to belike before. It also left me a little disoriented. It just no longer feltcompletely like my way of writing, like there was this other layer orsomething. I didn’t dwell on it any more than I had to, but it did sadden me. I’vealways lived with that feeling of living two lives’s —mine, and the story lifein my head. Hard, but familiar. I’ve been doing it all my life. Like a littletwist to one of my favorite t-shirt quotes: I live in my own little two worldsbut that’s ok, I know me there.

Recently there’s been a return of those day and night dreaminterruptions but gentle, vague proddings, not the vivid, attention-demandinginterruptions I’m used to. Until I reread the series. As I said, as I wrotethis series I worked away on the books, each one after the other, knowing whereI was going, knowing the characters when I got to their book, but that fourthbook—I couldn’t see any part of it. Could barely see Gallagher, the fourthbrother, the brother everyone else looked up to. I tried. I did, but it justdidn’t seem to happen.

Someone, I can’t remember who, told me not to worry, thestory would get here when I was ready. But I was just blank about Gallaher’sstory and worse, Gallagher. It was one of the reasons I stopped submitting theseries. I think of it as abandoning it. I just kind of left it in mid-stride.Or it felt like that anyway. There was the rest of the story and I just didn’tknow where or what it was. I felt certain it was there. I just didn’t trust itwould arrive when I needed it. I find that a lot. The not trusting myself.

Last week, as I started the rewrite for the first book inthe Heart’s Series, I bumped right into Gallagher and his romance. More thanthat, I realized what was wrong with the whole series. What was a missing piece,what was always missing? The series would never work, if I didn’t know, atleast some of Gallagher’s story. Know his character, know the character of thewoman he falls in love with. I couldn’t do a quality rewrite until I had atleast a vague outline of his story and a great character sketch of him and hisheroine.

Though the books needed to stand alone, they need to mesh,too. How else do you show a family of four boys and their love stories? Ineeded a name to go forward. And a woman. I needed a better character sketchfor Gallagher. And just when I realized I needed it, it arrived.

Sometimes a name comes to you, but other times its gutknowledge, a recognition of a person. We know them, the characters in ourbooks, like old acquaintances.

During this short week between holiday family get-togethers,I’ll be getting to know Gallagher and his lady. Finally.

2011-12-22T08:44:00.001-08:00

A Gift

Amidst the files, old manuscripts, contest results from the Heart’s Series I’d stored away many years ago, I’ve found a…gift, a treasure, something so rare and wonderful, I was speechless and so very grateful. A rejection, but not just any rejection; a rejection dotted with edits from a very kind-heart, generous editor—Caroline Tolley, while she worked for Pocket Books.

Here is a case where better notations and explanations would answer questions. Why did I squirrel this treasure away? Why didn’t I grab up the gift given me and run with it? I don’t know. I can’t remember. It was at a time when life around here was having seismic changes—children marrying, first grandbabies, necessary kitchen and home office redo.

I know I would have been very aware of the kindness, the rare gift of time from a very busy person. Was I too overwhelmed, too insecure? Was the timing just wrong? I don’t remember that. I wished I did. I only know that sometimes the best gifts percolate and become much greater down the road.

The reason I went back to see how viable the series was, was the stories, three of them anyway, had been nagging me all these years, along with this niggling thought that the books and writing was worthy. Maybe, it was that little pluck of a memory of this kindness, this knowledge that someone took the time to give me some much needed help. This editor wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t something redeemable about the story, would she?

And then the fourth and last of the series, showed up and grew.

The End of the Year; New Beginnings

2011-12-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

The end of the year and I’m beginning rewrites on another book. It’s the first of a series. I’m really excited about it for all kinds of reasons. First, I love the story, not just of this story but the whole series. I think that’s important—to love what you’re writing. Second, I see so many possibilities for the story, ways to improve the good ideas and fix the bad; make the writing better, tighter, more who I am.

I think I was afraid to do that, then. I still am, but I’ve learned it’s Ok to be afraid, but do it anyway. And the best thing I’m finding is that the struggle, the difficulties I had with Tie-down Man (from writing to editing and everything in-between) has served me well going forward. I’m not going to waste a detail of what I’ve learned. Anyway, that’s what I’m determined to do.

I’m feeling positive and excited for the rewrites and the new year is the perfect timing, I think. Nothing to distract me like gardens calling or vacation on the horizon. Better yet, an article on the internet from TIME.com, titled Galley Girl: Linda Lael Miller and the Rise of the Cowboy Romance Novel, declares Alpha men are back with cowboys help to lead the way.

Sarah Wendell, author of Everything I know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels and cofounder of SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com says the cowboy has inherent nobility. I agree, besides there are the horses, too. (I haven’t yet outgrown my horse crazy past.) Past that draw is the nobility of those that people the West. I admire their strength and courage, the inventiveness, the landscape, the history. Maybe, because it is, in a small part, my history.

In the same article, Linda Lael Miller mentions authenticity and integrity. I think these two qualities are very compelling now. In an interview with Anson Mount, who plays Cullen Bohannon on the AMC series Hell on Wheels, (By the way, I’m loving this series) Mount explains that he sees Cullen as led by his gut—making choices on right or wrong, ideas of justice and vengeance gut calls. There is something very authentic about living that way and maybe, there is, also, the sense we’ve come too far from that. We don’t always trust our gut instincts or the idea of doing the right thing because it’s right.

So, I’m beginning the new year with high energy and hope. The best way to start.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

Quotes for the year:

So many of our dreams, at first, seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and…soon, they become inevitable. Christopher Reeve

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer would be, “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning it?” My answer to that would be, “No.” Aaron Copland

Fools may laugh at me, but the wise understand.” Lin-chi

Always stay in your own movie. Ken Kesey
Go—not knowing where.
Bring—not knowing what. The path is long, the way unknown. Russian Fairy Tale

Each day a day goes by. Carlo Goldoni

Remember: information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love; love is not music; music is the best. Frank Zappa
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Robert M. Pirsig

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can thing, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one. John Ruskin

Be grateful for every detail because tenacity will get you there and gratitude will not allow you to be angry when you’ve arrived. Henry Winkler

Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm’s length. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.
The thing to do when you’re impatient is…to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch the feeling that your companion is there watching you. Carlos Castaneda

Just A Note

2011-12-12T09:38:00.000-08:00

I’ve been going through blog file, looking for something to write about today that wasn’t just a rehash of what I’ve written before. I’ve been bored with my blog writings(so I know anyone reading them must be bored, too. There aren’t that many, but I really don’t want to bore them. After all, a reader is dear.) feeling a little like I’ve been on a déjà vu train. You know, a vehicle without steering—willy-nillying along over the same old track.

I am ready to move on while my baby (Ella and the Tie-down Man) goes out in the world and finds a place. I’ve been poking around in my previously written Western Historicals: a series and several stand-alone books in various stages of completion. I abandoned the series when Western Historicals fell out of favor, but western are my love-to read and write. It’s the direction my heart and voice wants to go. I don’t know much, but I know there lays my strength.

I think of it a bit like a plant. I take pride and joy in my gardening, but of special joy is my inside gardening. A houseplant has needs to be met: the right soil, the right sunlight and the right amount of water. Given those things plants thrive, without, they may live, look all right but they never really take off.

I think writers are a lot like that. Some writers can write everything and thrive. I think I could do well enough in any kind of writing, but to thrive I need my westerns and my poetry. So if I know that, why not do that. It is my best bet to doing my best writing.

But where to start? A fresh story or finish one of those already in the works. It’s a dilemma for me. But as I was flipping through the blog file, I found a few sentences writing on a torn piece of paper. No attribution, which in itself is very strange. I’m obsessive about making sure the author of every pithy, smart or funny sentence is noted.

This is what was written on the note:

Thought you could use a thought or two. You cannot abandon what you do not know, to go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. Remember a voyage of discovery doesn’t begin with new lands, it begins with new eyes. Stay in touch.

I don’t know who wrote those words or whom they were for. Maybe to me, from someone who knew my oftentimes dilemmas. It doesn’t really matter, for they spoke to me when I needed them. So I’ve been rereading my old work, assessing what I’ve done, what I need to do next. And as I do, that spark of excitement has begun simmering. I feel it. I reach for it. All the scales of my illness, the frustrations of caregiving seem to slip away into I don’t-care-I’m-going-to do-this-for-me knot in my gut. A knot that’s been muffled too long.

Wished I could tell the author of that note: Thank you, I needed that.

Of Two Worlds

2011-12-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

What is the matter with you people? Don’t you know whom you’re dealing with? What you’re dealing with? Doesn’t my history tell you what I’m like? You people are seriously leaving me in charge? With all these other….these other things…these lives, people, worlds I must, need, do deal with? Really?

You’re all depending on me? When half my brain is…working out other problems, for other people, in other places and…times? I wonder if you know what this ‘conflict’ is doing to me. —My Inner Voice

The first line of a poem by poet/mother, Laura Apol, to another poet and mother, Lucille Clifton says it best: Tell me again about the poems you lost and the babies you saved. I have lost poems and stories in the forests of motherhood and now, I’m surely losing them again in the wilderness of caring for my mother. Both, countries of my choosing.

And I knew going in with both I would lose poems and stories, but I would save children and my mother’s quality of life. (to paraphrase Apol) I never believed the lie that I could replace the writing lost. I only hoped the best would hang on, somehow.

I don’t know that that happened. What I do know, is sometimes, I’m completely disoriented, no matter what I’m doing. Writing and suddenly the panicked thought intrudes about mom’s medicine or an appointment I might have forgotten. Or I get a distressed phone call. Sometimes delegated help falls through or a sick day happens. Sometimes, I’m driving mom around and a scene rises up, clear, clean, and perfect for the story I’m working or a line for a poem. I’m never really completely here or there.

My kids knew. They labeled me eccentric, weird…just working in her head again. (This accompanied with a roll of their eyes and a long-suffering sigh) But how do you explain a sudden distraction in the middle of a shopping trip when for my mom remembering to buy OJ is the task for the day?

And the writing isn’t vital; no worlds hang on the work getting done. (Only the worlds I’ve made up and worrying too much about that can get a little hinky, if a writer gets too serious about it, right? I mean, this world only exists in my mind and …well, you see what I mean. Hinky. Going there could put into question the state of my mind, right?)

I’m clear on what’s truly important, I am, but that doesn’t stop the voices, the people, the scenes that co-occupy my mind, distract me and vie for attention. And sometimes, I feel like a computer asked to do too many tasks at once—frozen screen head.
Worse, writers need to silence their minds. It’s vital, but most often I’m of two minds, two trains of thoughts, two time periods. Silence is…impossible.

My prayer: I was writing—learning and growing along with the children—until eventually I was writing fiction worthy of publication. It might have happened sooner had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say. —Katherine Paterson, novelist

Plans, Goals and Motivations. Oh, My!

2011-11-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

I feel somewhat at a loss, aimless and foolishly sentimental, and disconnected, when I’ve finished one work and haven’t yet become absorbed in another. —Marianne Moore, poet

The end of this year, the beginning of a new year is coming—faster than I’d like. The most labor-intensive holiday is finished and cleaned up. Every other Thanksgiving my family comes home for a home cooked Thanksgiving and I go all out, reproducing, as close as possible, the Thanksgivings we had when the boys were small. I made the memories and now, I want to pluck at them. Maybe, it’s just for me and my memories, but I hope it’s for them and theirs, also.

And now the Christmas season is in full bloom, but I’ve got most of the shopping done—only odds and ends to still pick up and Christmas dinner is simpler, more buffet, less sit down dinner. I don’t do as much homemade, going with deli salads, veg. and fruit trays with only a rib roast to rotisserie. My husband handles that, so I can enjoy the company a little more.

With most of December opened to some well-deserved fun and plenty of writing, with Ella and the Tie-down Man finished again, I’m ready to work. As I said before here, I pulled back on submissions after some critiques pointed out a few things that would make the reading flow better and did a quick edit for the problem. The book is done and ready for submission. That’s the plan.

The goal is to work on something else, right? I have mixed feelings about what. I have a series ready for submission mostly. I say mostly because there are four books in the series, two complete except for a final edit. The third book is roughly two-thirds done and the fourth kind of dead in the water. I worked on the three books over several years, but that fourth book has eluded me, for some reason. I, also, have two stand-alone books, each more than half-finished. I have a chapbook of poetry I’ve been working on for some time, but I really need a few more poems to complete it. Of course, there are always new story ideas nibbling at my mind, too.

The editing for Ella and the Tie-down Man was arduous, mostly because of the illness that sidetracked me and slowed me down even once I got back on track. I had so many starts and stops, frustrations and disappointments. It’s made me a bit gun shy to tackle editing again and yet, that’s what seems to float to the top of my what-to-do-next list.

And there’s motivation. You’re better off going with the thing that excites you, right? So, last week before I buried myself in stuffing, candied yams and pies, I dug out my old series (It took both me and my husband to excavate the file box. The research files, the printed up copies ready for the last edits, all put away when western historicals fell out of favor were too heavy for me), brushed off the dust and opened the lid.

I was a little afraid to look inside, fearful it would be too much like the last time I opened a file box. There was such a sorrow, of sorts, of a work interrupted. Not this time, thank goodness. This time felt less like being lost and coming back to a place I didn’t remember and more like coming home. Proof of how sick I was, testament to my complete recovery. (Yes!)

I made the right choice to start editing my Teardrop Ranch series. Wish me luck.

What Has Music Got To Do With It

2011-11-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

For me, the act of writing is oftentimes more juggling family needs with my writing, then anything. It is a marathon of interruptions of other obligations and necessary chores, but a writer observes and records life’s little vignettes and stories and writer mind never really quits. That can be bane or boon. Necessary , but often, in the midst of the good and bad of life, there is this removed part of your mind, analyzing, sorting, observing a ‘story.’

Often I’ve wished I could silent it because it interrupts much like a neighbor calling just as your writing starts to flow. It distracts from both crises and joys, taking away a part, somehow. It seems I’m always either in the middle of writing a scene, writing wildly, afraid to lose the words, the momentum, that joy of flow when the phone rings, my mother needs something, or the toilet overflows and silently screaming, “no, no, I’ll lose this. I’ll lose the words, the scene…” Or I’m enjoying time with my husband, in the garden and the perfect word, scene or story pops into my mind…the one I’d been trying to find all morning, but now, now I’m busy with not writing and…

It is so much of the time an uncomfortable existence, being not fully…any one, anywhere. So in the midst of helping my son, during a sale at his music store http://musicvillageusa.com, dozens of vignette’s played across my writer’s mind: The little girl going out the door with her new purple and pink paisley ukulele, the young mother with her teenage son, looking at electric guitars, then guitar straps with skeletons marching across the black leather (was she praying this was not a mistake?), the teenage girl telling her mom: ‘this was my best day ever. I’ve got to update my facebook’, the jumble of music notes-my dog has fleas, or the first notes of The House of The Rising Sun all jumbled up together. That softly spoken, thank you, dad, from a young teen boy, that brought tears in my eyes, for some reason.

The little germs of stories bombarded me all day and I had not one minute to write them down. All I can hope is the cream rises to the top and and have faith that my mind would remember those that connect with something in me that could use it.

And isn’t that the blessing of changing up your normal routine once in a while. Do something different. A story is sure to follow.

Mourning Loss

2011-11-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

No damage to the house, no one got hurt, but my heart is so heavy and achy. More than once I thought how loved it was this summer, how grateful I was. I’m trying to remember how nice it was, not that it’s gone.

The early winter storm had us worried, but even when I saw the few broken branches I thought we’d weathered the storm well. I trudged out to the little Japanese maples and shook the icey snow from their branches, but could do nothing for the locust. It wasn’t until we started cleaning up and cutting the broken branches from the roof we saw the real damage. Fractures ran through most of the main limbs and ultimately we had to cut the branches off. Even at the last, we hoped to save it, but the wood was too brittle and the main limbs fractured deep into the trunk.

Years ago, we had a large sycamore tree in that spot. Our backyard was shady and cool all summer, but the leaves and balls were a nightmare to clean up and eventually, the tree grew too big for our tiny yard. After we removed the tree and bored out the stump, we planted a linden tree.

Two trees and three years later we still didn’t have a living tree in that spot and no shade in the future. So we changed our choice of tree and bought a locust. From the start, I loved that tree. It had such a Zen way of growing, not symmetrical, but graceful and pleasing. I talked to it as I gardened beneath it, planting hostas and daylilies, spring bulbs and Japanese Irises.

Then when I got sick, we took the garden out. I talked to the tree of my trouble and plans as we planted grass and the tree took command of the back yard. We put in a small piece of cement and a glider to while away a summer afternoon on. We sat there many an evening, relaxing and talking.

As we cleaned up and loaded the truck, I felt physically sick and sad. We are of the age we will likely never see the benefit of a new tree. We wondered if we should even replant. Anything we plant could just as easily be taken out after we no longer own the house. Was it worth the cost, the trouble, the time? We know our time in this house is short. Too many stairs for us to think we can stay here as we get older.

As we discussed all this, I thought of those similar thoughts I’ve had about this writing journey I’ve been on. Why still struggle and try? Am I wasting time better spent elsewhere? By the time I finally get a book published, if ever, I’ll be ?? years old. I’ll never have time to get all I want to write done. Any older writer out there likely thinks this, I imagine. Likely those thoughts are not so different for that new mom, or busy lawyer or whoever. Is there time? How can I write as long each day as a published writer needs to with all my other responsibilities?

But this rebellious, audacious voice comes to me, then and now. Why not? Who knows how it will turn out? Maybe, you will have only one book published, maybe you’ll never get everything you want to write written, maybe that tree will never be big enough for you to enjoy its shade. But maybe, you will. If you do what you can now.

In any case, you’ll be there as it grows, you’ll have some small little part in what it gives to the world through its life time. You might write something that touches just one person’s heart. You’ll write through your journey and maybe, that’s all. But that’s more than if you never tried.

I think…I know I’d rather my life end with me trying, looking and stepping forward. It’s enough.

More Abundance

2011-10-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

I shook my head. I mumbled under my breath…mostly, “why.” I worried it around in my head for days and finally, (I’m not known for ‘not’ speaking my mind) wondered out loud about all the cabbage my husband was planting. We usually planted eight cabbages and had more than enough to eat and give, give, give away. Ours is a small garden. We try to maximize every inch. It seemed such a waste of ground.

Cabbage isn’t for everyone, right? Myself, I didn’t like it as a child or a teen either, except as coleslaw, and only after learning the secret to cooking it, did I learn to love it.

And then, I had homegrown. Homegrown, cooked just right, is sweet and yummy. Smothered with black pepper and butter—heaven, but still, what were we going to do with twelve cabbages the size of an overweight basketball, heavier than a medicine ball. Even sharing it with family, that’s a lot of cabbage.

The late cabbage came on just as everything else in the garden was at peak production. We had chard, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, beans and cabbage. I juggled different vegetables every night, shuffled extra to sons, brother-in-laws and neighbors and finally, tucked a nice tight, heavy head of cabbage to the fridge downstairs.

It’s a sad thing to pull up the dying tomato vines, the dried up, battered bean plants and know fresh vegetables are gone for the year. Little did I know about the sweet rewards coming in the form of apples. Sweet, crisp apples. A wonderful quid per quo.

A large sack of red and yellow Delicious given to us by a brother-in-law and more…the culls—imperfect bruised, blemished apples. When my kids were small, and the place was my father-in-law’s, he’d let me gather all the culled apples from under the trees. My mom and I would wash them, cut the blemishes and bruises off and make apple juice. We didn’t even peel them, just tossed them into the juicer. What that mix of yellow and red Delicious produced was the most beautiful pink apple juice, so sweet all on its own that all these years later I still remember it.

I’m really not up to that anymore, but the culls do make wonderful apple pie filling for the freezer, tasty fried apples or rustic apple pie. And those beautiful, perfect apples? They're just right for snacking at the computer, juice running down my arm and all.
So, tonight there will be sautéed cabbage and Rustic apple pie. Talk about abundance. Next year, I will not shake my head, mumble, question or complain. I’ll dream about apple pie and abundance.

Sautéed Cabbage: Strip off outer leaves, wash, then cut in fourths and rinse the inside well. Slice very fine and place in a frying pan. Have a cup of water or chicken broth on the counter by the pan. Sauté on medium-low, turning often, so not to let any of the leaves burn. At first, there is enough moisture. Make sure there is always moisture in the bottom of the pan, but just a teaspoon or two using the water or chicken broth as needed until the cabbage is to your desired doneness. I like it tender-crisp.

When I have it, I’ll start out with a few teaspoons of olive oil and butter and slices of onion. I cook the onion until it’s translucent, then follow the recipe for the cabbage. Serve with black pepper and butter. It doesn’t need much. If you are using store bought cabbage, add a pinch of sugar to the liquid you are adding.

Rustic Apple Pie: 1 refrigerated piecrust, 3 Tbsp. sugar (I use brown sugar), ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg or cinnamon, I prefer cinnamon and I use just a touch more than called for-I love cinnamon, 3 golden Delicious apples-about 3 cups, give or take, 1 Tbsp. butter, cut into pieces.

Heat oven to 450º. Use an ungreased baking sheet. I put aluminum foil on the baking sheet. Easier clean up. Unroll the piecrust on baking sheet.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon. Peel and core the apples. Slice them ½ inch thick. I like the imperfect, rustic cut, but here you can arrange the slices prettily, if you’d like and sprinkle with the sugar mixture. I prefer to mix it into the apples, stirring until the juices start to flow and then let it sit for just a few minutes. Then I pour the mixture into the middle of the crust and fold the edges of the pastry over the apples, crimping the dough to fit. I like it to be rustic looking.

Bake 15 minutes, then reduce oven to 375º and bake 25 more minutes. I brush the crust with milk and sprinkle sugar on it for a pretty look before baking. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. My mother would serve with a slice of cheese, too.

Abundance and Enough

2011-10-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

A garden teaches. It teaches failure and patience. The asparagus failed—miserably. The few sprigs that survived weren’t enough to feed anyone…well; maybe, hope for next year, but there’s so much to consider about replanting what didn’t grow. It was an experiment. Cost, time, effort and the space must factor in. Our garden is limited and we try to get the most out each little inch. We feed many with our little 20 x 30-foot garden. Four families, plus neighbors.

Years ago, the garden was more than twice that size, but I canned and put by a lot more than I do now. Over fifty-two bottles each of beans, potatoes, carrots, grape, apple and apricot juice, bushels of pears, peaches and apple pie filling. We were younger and we had captive help. Nothing teaches life lessons better than a garden and I took full advantage with my kids. They helped.

But we had enough and abundance. We have it still. Nothing is quite like going to the garden for ingredients for your dinner.
So, it was with sadness we pulled the tattered tomato plants, dug the carrots and scallions, cut the lettuce, maybe, for the last time. And picked the sugar snap peas. None of those got to the table though. I popped each fat green pod straight into my greedy mouth. The next day we rototilled the garden and raked a patch for garlic.

Garlic is a crop of complete faith and hope. Planted at the changing season with the crisp air nipping at your heels, but done (anyway the way I find best) on bended knee, close to the dark, rich earth, the paper dry skins fluttering away in the wind, the dirt moist enough to cling to your gloves, the earthy smell drifting into your nose. Sixty-three cloves planted. Next year’s garden all ready begun and banked on: that next year they’ll emerge after the thaw, that you’ll be here to watch the first green shoots.

Out front is another lesson of abundance and enough. The thirty-five year old walnut trees are giving up their fruit, in abundance and more than enough. We share. The neighbors, magpies, crows, blue jays and raccoons feast on the leftovers. We don’t mind. We can only manage to crack and use one small twenty-five pound onion sack full and for most of the winter, our cats and we… have free entertainment. Plus, my husband might forbid me to feed the birds because of the mess, but I have found a way around him once more.

How does any of this relate to writing? I write as I plant garlic, with hope in my heart. Hope for each piece I write, for its future. Hope for my dream. That dream of being a writer. Abundance: I write every day. I am a writer living my dream and that is enough.

How Will You Live Your Writing Life?

2011-10-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

Are you like me? You know, even agonize over, the things you aren’t good at, don’t know or just cannot do.(you probably can) Now, I’m mainly talking about my writing, but it really pertains to anything we attempt to accomplish.

I’m not particularly good at grammar, I miss mistakes all the time, which just drive me crazy and I’m not much for the whole networking thing. I do this blog and I make fit and start entries in facebook, when I remember and when I really feel like I have something to say. I don’t feel compelled to do much more than that. For one, I’m just too busy.

Now, that’s not to say everyone else isn’t, it’s just that isn’t how I want to spend time usually. I’d rather go for a walk, work in the garden, read, fuss with my houseplants, do some baking or cooking, play with my pets, actually, almost anything else. It just seems more…active. Sometimes, especially after reading The Writer or Writer’s Digest, I feel a little guilty and a whole lot hopeless. It all has to do with your platform and getting it out there. That’s important in today’s publishing world. The common opinion is without a platform and a viable, accessible one, it’s going to be even harder to get published.

As usual, I seem to go at it the hard way. I guess my platform is: the only platform I have is writing. I love writing. I love rewriting. I love sitting at my desk and imagining invisible chains keeping me there, so I don’t figure out some stupid thing (like checking online, facebook, blog visits and all the other things around now that wastes time and that I really don’t get any joy out of. Something about all of those things feels a lot like a gun to the ribs. More so because we are told we must keep current, we want to be in the know, with it, in the digital age, in the loop.) I have to do, rather than sit and write.

I love banging my head against the desk trying to think of that darn word on the tip of my fingers that I cannot remember and realizing it was the, then wondering if that’s the first signs of Alzheimer’s or just some unknown writer’s condition. I love my thesaurus and I even love that word: thesaurus. It sounds positively Jurassic, dinasaurusic, prehistoric, solid and come-beforeic.

So I’m not good at networking and there is this touch of desperation that I really must do it if I want my writing to go anywhere. I do, but do I really need to do more than the best writing possible? That seems wrong. I keep hoping, but because everyone says different, I do the minimum I can. It’s probably not enough. I acknowledge that, but I feel I’ve made the compromise and I, sometimes, recent it. I wonder, am I alone?

I did something about my lack of grammar skills. I’ve taken a course, I’ve bought and read books, I keep some great references close at hand. Still, I’m uncertain, would never tell anyone not to or how to split an infinitive. (See, you’re not suppose to, are you?) I suspect I do it all the time with utter ignorance. Saying sorry doesn’t help a thing.

Mistakes are made. That’s my bitter truth.

I don’t network much, choosing to spend my time the way I must. Writing, carving out time for those things in my life I love as well: doing my daughterly due diligence, doing due diligence to my life, reading, distressing, staying well and remembering there is more to life than being published.

And I try to remember the things I can do:

I can write every day.

I can make sure I read often.

I can read my writer’s magazines, but not take to heart those suggestions that do not work for me.

I can work hard to remembering what is truly important to my happiness and life.

I can honor my love for writing by concentrating on the writing, by producing the best I can.

I can let go of the guilt about those time stealers I don’t enjoy. Maybe, I’ll be sorry I don’t spend more time blogging, facebook, networking. I don’t think so. Down the road, I could blame my failure on the fact I didn’t do enough of it, but I won’t.

I want a writing life on my terms. I can do that.

2011-10-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

Pink
It must have rained during the night. Not unexpected. It had been raining most of the last three day, but I had really hoped the rain, at least, would stop. It was cold. Clouds masked what little light false dawn provided. I pulled on bottom thermals, black running pants, black V-neck shirt with pink patch, black jacket, socks, walking shoes. I ate a yogurt, a cereal bar (homemade. To be honest, just a cookie, but it had peanut butter and Rice Krispies™ in it. That it, also, had butterscotch chips, chocolate chips and powdered sugar, was beside the point, don’t you think? Me, too.) I packed gloves, hat, pink hoodie, umbrella, water, tissue, antibacterial wipes, wallet with money, credit cards and ID, camera, notebook and determination. A good pair of walking feet, too and a goal.

Picked up a daughter-in-law and granddaughter and headed for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. If you know me, you know the challenge is the driving. Once driving to Salt Lake was second nature to me, but as my mother has aged I’ve found the distance I drive has narrowed, a little more each year and when you don’t do something, you don’t stay comfortable doing it. And I’ve never liked driving in the dark. My sense of direction is so bad when there are no landmarks. I am directionally challenged and always have been, but off we headed.

The drive was much easier than I worried about and thankfully, the rain had stopped. It warmed up, too. The crowded wasn’t quite as big, most likely due to the weather, but the experience was just as inspirational. I don’t know all the personal stories, but, with my writer’s mind, I imagine them. And it is not just the survivors, though their stories are the ones you see most clearly. The story, any one of the stories, is about the supporters, too.

And you see it there: The grandmother with the survivor sash across her chest being helped along the 5-mile walk by her granddaughter, the woman…no, the girl, really, with a survivor ribbon walking with a man wearing a shirt that said: I’m walking for my girlfriend. ( I say, hold on to that man) The ten women walking with shirts that said: for Amy. The tall, blonde in the middle with: for me on her shirt, surrounded by them, looking strong and healthy and protected.

It’s October. Save the ta-tas, Save second base, Save the breastesus. Get your mammograms, do self-exams (ignore the recommendations and take the battle into your own hands, so to speak) eat right, get out there and walk. Fight the battle. Fight like a girl.

A Blue Pencil Year

2011-10-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

I think I said it before. My goal for the year was editing and not just my writing. Truly, I have lived up to that goal. I have polished, modified, reworked and condensed little by little my garden, my office, the organization of my desk, including my computer. Right now, I’m in the middle of cleaning out my utility cabinet in my office. My office looks like a tornado hit.

I still have a long, long way to go, but I see how much the work has improved my writing and my life. I’ve worked hard on the edits to Ella and the Tie-down Man, even to the extent of sending it out and then, giving it another look. Something was bothering me, nagging at my sense of accomplishment.

That second look has proven such a good call; I’d almost like to say it was providence. It’s delayed me getting the novel back out there, but not by much. As I put in place the finishing, polishing changes I feel a ton better. Not to say I’m not still anxious and wary of the whole process, but whether it’s published or not, I can confidently say it was the best I could make it.

And that’s really the key, for me. I’m not stupid, blind, or unaware of the difficulties of being published in this day and climate. My chances suck. But, see, I can take suck, I can ‘fail’, if I’m certain I did all I could. Earlier this year, I just didn’t feel that. Something just kept nagging at me. Nothing concrete, nothing I could put my finger on, but, listen: the publishing world (really, a whole lot of ‘worlds’) are going through a kind of revolution. There is change afoot. The internet has changed everything, some in a big way, some small. And how I fit in is anyone’s guess.

The act of reading has changed. We’ve been hearing the doom drumbeat about the paperback books and just hearing it saddens me. I was reading paperbacks during the paperbacks hey days. I have a stored box of old paperbacks if I open and take a whiff of the dried-out, yellowing pages, it take me back to shopping trips with my dad when I was a teenager, shopping trips with my mom, my babies in tow, stay-up-all-night books (Thanks, Lavyrle Spencer)I just couldn’t put down, books that helped me stay awake while I put up the last batch of green beans, books that kept me company as my husband traveled on his job. I couldn’t have bought the books I did, if they hadn’t been in paperback.

And the act of writing has changed since I first started writing in earnest. I’m one of those writers who always knew I was born a writer. I have always written poems, stories. Always fed on words. But translating that or even keeping up with sending your work out and publishing—that’s another story. A challenge. First, after, raising my kids, (although I wrote every day as my kids came along and grew) I had to catch up with the new world and I had to do it by DIY. That was the only option at the time. The romance genre was in constant flux. It still is.

Truth of it is. I really just want to write. The idea of all the schmoozing, promoting, online presence overwhelms me. In fact, it scared the bejesus out of me for more reasons than I’m shy. It also scares, worries and overwhelms me when I think of actually selling one of my novels and dealing with my own life's little reality. Oh, believe me it is a reality not so different than anyone elses. I’m a mother with adult children struggling with the new economic world. I’m a grandmother, a sister, a friend and I’m the primary caregiver to a ninety-four year parent. Each year I’m spending more time caring for her needs and less time on my writing. No pity party, just the reality of what is right now. But, and this is a big but, the writing keeps me sane, less stressed, less bogged down in the caregiving. It’s the thing I do for me.

Like I've said so many times, I feel like the parts of my life are not compatible. Yet, I can’t stop any of it, nor do I want to. That reality has always caused me worry and no little bit of stress. I tell myself it will all work out. That it is really just me calling the shots. I write and I don’t have to do anything more than that, even if I’m eventually published.

So, editing is a bit of getting rid of the things that no longer work, isn’t it? Books you’ve read and won’t again, blank floppy disks, old cable cords and worries. Editing it all, make it what you want it to be, including your life.

Then, do it all again the next day.

Composting Poetry

2011-09-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

In the garden, compost is black gold. Since I started gardening, way back when…back when my kids were small and I was buried in diapers (cloth, this was the olden times), breast-feeding, (really olden times), canning, sewing, cleaning, cooking, I was gardening, too. It was necessary. Times were tough, the economy was tanking, lots of men out of jobs, (this was before most women worked…the real olden times), no one could afford to actually invest in stock. That was for the wealthy.

My husband took his lunch to work, including coffee. I cooked everything from scratch because there just weren’t packaged meals (aside from TV dinners). I even ground my own wheat and baked bread. Oh, but that was such a tactile experience that every now and then I still bake my own bread, only now I use a bread machine, thought I do like to get my hands in there. I love kneading bread. Somehow, trouble seems to get smaller and smaller until I can handle it. A lot like air bubbles in dough.

I extended the paycheck with coupons and by doing-it-myself. One of the best things I found to stretch my food allowance was growing a garden and putting by what I could. I grew green beans, carrots, peas, zucchini, sugar snap peas, corn, peaches, raspberries, tomatoes and peppers. I was given pears and apples. The challenge was time. Tending to the garden, peeling, slicing, pickling, water baths and pressure cookers took tons of time. The picking, the watering and even more, there was the kids, the house, the pets. I had to come up with shortcuts.

As always, I turned to books and when I fell into <em>Ruth Stout’s “How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back” I knew I fell into the answer. You can see how the name caught my attention. I had the aching back and no time. Ruth Stout (Rex Stout’s sister) mulched between and around her vegetables and flowers with straw, newspaper, grass clippings, coffee grounds, vegetable peels—whatever organic matter worked. This cut down on watering (a big money saver there because we had to use culinary water), weeding and fertilizing.

It turned out all this organic matter feed and improved the soil. I was amazed the next year the difference in the dirt I’d used mulch on and the dirt I didn’t. Now, Stout’s idea was to layer the organic matter where you need it first, without composting it in a pile or bin. This worked great, but it was sometimes hard to have enough mulch for all my gardens and often the vegetable garden didn’t always get the best layer of mulch.

Of course, through the years things changed: family grew up and away, I stopped canning, sewing and was able to bury myself in writing more and more. I started a compost pit for my flower garden. It just seemed to me to make so much sense. The leftovers, you know the carrot peels, the leafy tops, the bean snipping’s, the coffee grounds, the onionskins, the banana peels gathered together to make rich garden dirt. Every time we take something from the earth we put some part of it back—a tithe, of sorts.

That compost pile seemed like a miracle and a duty—put garbage in and receive this dark, rich, loam soil thick with worms that feeds my gardens with something akin to magic. Today I use both methods in combination, but more I’ve learned to use the same kind of thing with my poetry.

I gather, use, discard, reuse words, ideas and experience, but some don’t fit the poem I’m working on, so I put in a separate file titled: compose file. It might be a whole idea or just a word, phrase or sentence. It might be a whole stanza or just the end that didn’t work. It sits in that file until I begin work on another poem. Then I go to the file, sift and sort and read, let my mind get fertile, rich and loamy. It’s organic and real with hands on, just like the miracle of compost.

Sometimes It's Not the Writing, But the Living

2011-09-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

Arrr! It’s National Talk Like a Pirate Day, actually I think it might be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. In any case, we should be practicing our Pirate speak, if for no other reason than it’s supposed to be fun, but why not celebrate?

I’ve been on a vacation, of sorts. It was not restful, it was not perfect. I wouldn’t even say I completely enjoyed it. It was one of those vacations we’ve all had, where everything just goes south. Like seven days of rain on a vacation to the beach, but it’s the good you find. I guess that’s true of life too, isn’t it?

Vehicle trouble, forgotten needed items, a sick grandchild, bee stings and frustrating fishing. That was the bad, but the good outweighed all that. Marvelous sunsets, big, yellow moons in inky skies. You forget how distant and faded the stars have become until you get into the wilderness and see the unlit night. Then you just feel smaller and bigger than yourself.

There was helping two stranded boys on the archery hunt, one of which looked exactly like a fifteen-year-old Ricky Schroder. His companion looked about seventeen. Well, I couldn’t help thinking about my own sons, hoping they would find someone that would help them jump their battery, too, if they were ever in the need. It was so refreshing to see two super polite boys, so worried about worrying their dads. Sometimes we forget how great the younger generation is, but I have had several incidents that just make me have all kinds of faith in putting things in their hands.

There was the wind in the aspen. How I love that sound and the shiver of the leaves. And of course, the food: the best grilled pork chops I’ve had for ages, Catalina chicken, messy and sticky, just as it should be, fried filleted fish for breakfast, plus bacon and egg breakfast cooked by my son, watching my most miracle granddaughter introduced to camping, cold and all, hot chocolate, grilled steak and of course, s’mores.

Discoveries too, that fall begins at the bottom. The grasses have turned golden, the banded-winged grasshoppers make their short bursts of flight with a loud clicking ahead, the wild strawberries are beginning to turn scarlet and the willows, amber. Touches of golden quakies have just begun and when it rains the smell of dry grass and wet pine gives me all the aroma therapy I could ask for. And everyone looks beautiful by campfire.

Shiver me timbers, it sounds a bit like I'm a land lubber now, don't it, me hearties?

Rejection -The Least of My Worries

2011-09-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

This week is the end of a beautiful, productive poetry workshop: World into Word-Poetry Editing with Melanie Faith. As I scan my old rough drafts, I’m finding gems and new ways of looking at old ideas. My enjoyment of poetry writing has sparked again, which helps spark all my writing—couldn’t happen at a better time. I feel a little more confident in not only my editing but also my writing decisions.

Not really. My tenacity, my determination and even the reason to keep struggling to publish is flagging, big time. Oh, there is not one thought to stop writing. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, but I’m finding just the thought of dealing with the reality of my life as it is right now enough. Do you remember the scene in Regarding Henry when Henry (Harrison Ford) at the end of the show tells the secretary, “I’m saying when.”

I wonder, more and more often, if I need to say, “when.” It isn’t the writing and hasn’t been for a long time. I love the work, the writing. I have no trouble coming up with something the write about. In fact, I will never have enough time to get all the things already in mind to write actually written.

No, it’s my life. I’m blessed with a supportive family, a great life. At some point shouldn’t that be enough. Do I really need to keep reaching for impossible? Everything I truly care about is right here where I live. I’m lucky and blessed to be able to say that and what’s more, I know it.

Do I want to complicate what has become a very complicated time with another major wrinkle that publishing would be? I’m not alone in my feelings or realizing the impact being a caregiver has on one’s work. I just finished reading an article about the impact caregiving has on the workplace. How many workers are impacted and how it affects promotions, wages, and the wealth and health of the caregivers. Many workers are afraid to mention they are caregivers, afraid how their bosses will see it as affecting their work.

And the thing is I don’t think it would be fair of me to blame it all on being a caregiver. It’s often a struggle to keep the rest of my life on some kind of an even keel, too. And always has been. I have, technically been a widow all my husband’s career as he worked out of town, more than half the time, which gave me a unique view. I know what it’s like to be a single mom and a mom who has to learn to compromise with a husband who has different views on things. Neither is easy. Both have their difficulty and their blessings.

And now, since he’s been retired, it has been not only an adjustment to having him around all the time, but another complication. He’s spent his whole life working and has some things he’s been planning to do.

The fact is many people of my age, more every day, are struggling with the job of caregiver. It’s a strange place to be, caring for those who cared for you; making decisions for them while letting them keep as much independence as they can. It’s a lot like being a parent of a teenager—a grown-up, but not really. There isn’t an instruction manual and if there was, I’m afraid it wouldn’t have anything in it about my particular model.

I’m one of the lucky ones. My husband has taken on a lot of the chores involved and I know he does so because he loves my mom and because he loves me. While that makes things easier for me…it, also, makes it harder.

I’ve wondered if these feelings are just fear. You know there’s as much to fear about success as failure. And truthfully, I do fear. It’s not what you’d think. I can take rejection. I have had so many now, it is only a small blip and success isn’t one of those jump up and down things around here either. The best way to describe how I feel when something I’ve written is praised, accepted or wins a contest is stunned drunk. You know, a little slog, soggy, bewildered and gratefully the win, the good didn’t stumble up the not-so-well-oiled machine of my day to day.

Do I want to rock the boat? I’m scared to death, if I do, I might just drown. I’m taking on water as it is. So I sit here at my desk wondering if I ought to just work on my novels and poems and put them away. I lie awake at night worried that I’ll get the call that someone wants to see the whole manuscript of Ella and the Tie-down Man and then what? It’s ready, true, but then what? It seems the least of my worries is rejection.

Poetry

2011-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

It was late Saturday night, I’m in bed next to my sleeping husband watching TV, ( I know, to get the best sleep, no TV in the bedroom, but I spent so many nights alone while he was on the road (the railroad) that I depended on the TV those nights after getting him off to work where I was either scared or too wide awake.) and in my surfing I found the movie ‘Dangerous Minds.'

The movie is from a memoir ‘My Posse Don’t Do Homework’ by Lou Anne Johnson and I read the condensed version in Reader’s Digest a few months before the movie came out. I remember taking one of my sons to see this and loving the story. This time around I was surprised to find great writing wisdom.

Lou Anne Johnson tells her class: “If you can learn to read poetry, you can read anything.” It stands to reason then, that if you can learn to write poetry, you can probably write anything. I’ve heard many versions of this, too. One was a great article a few months ago in The Writer by Lisa Dale titled ‘What Poetry Can Do for Your Fiction Writing.’
I mention all this because I’m taking an online workshop: World into Word Poetry-Editing Course, Melanie Faith, instructor that’s just been great. A ton of work, a lot of reading, a lot of improvement to some poems, but the best, in my view has been the improvement in the way I look at editing my other writing, in particular, my novels. It has given me another layer of questions and decisions that will do nothing but improve my writing.

I think poetry hones my writing. When I write poetry I’m trying to write big meanings with few words—brush strokes weighted by meaning. Whether my poetry is publish-worthy or not has no bearing on whether the practice improves my writing. That’s kind of a nice thing in a practice that oftentimes has so little reward.

What I find poetry does for my writing:

.Tightens
.Learning word choice (oh, for the double-duty word)
.Brings serendipity to your writing
.Letting go of control
.Live in the meaning
.Writing for writing’s sake

Abundance

2011-08-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

I just have to mention my garden. In this time of tight money, where it seems to me everything and everyone is curling into little balls of fear, like armadillo’s, where instead of opening our hands so abundance can be poured, we are, with knee-jerk reactions, closing our fists around what we have. It’s natural given the news we are bombarded with. Am I the only one who wonders if we’d be better off not listen to so much bad news? For every little tidbit of good news, it seems there is a but.

Well, there is no but in my garden. There is just abundance. We can’t eat the food fast enough and we’re giving it away as fast as we can. There’s been lettuce, best with homemade dressing. A great simple salad: lettuce onions, sliced hard-boiled eggs, dressed with mayonnaise thinned with a little cream and seasoned with salt, pepper and sugar.

Spinach or Chard, sautéed in a little olive oil and butter, add onions, garlic or lemon. Broccoli steamed, drained and served with brown butter; cabbage, sautéed in just a touch of water, served with butter, garnished with bacon or parsley. And then, the zucchini and summer squash—one of my favorites—is stir fried with corn and garlic. Green beans, I love these just steamed, but good with a cheese sauce too. I haven’t even mentioned the 46 bulbs of garlic, the carrots, green onions and all the herbs.

Oh, and the tomatoes. Buckets of tomatoes. The fruit is warm as we pick it and we feast on bacon and tomato sandwiches, tomatoes on burgers, fresh tomato sauce, (I hoped to do up some of Aunt Dot’s Chili Sauce, but time has been against me), tomato salad—One I love: tomatoes, usually our Juliet cut about an inch thick, string cheese, cut the same size, green onions, salt, pepper, basil, Italian dressing.

Such abundance in a little plot of ground and some hard work. Yet this feeling of abundance and wealth was so worth it, this year. We had a rough go in the spring. The weather was decidedly against us, we persevered and we are reaping the spoils. It makes me smile and send up all kinds of gratitude.

Tonight there will be grilled burgers with tomato and lettuce, beer-batter onion rings (onions courtesy of my son. This is what real sharing can be. Between the two families we have fed six families with extra for neighbors) Talk about abundance. Life is good.

Fixed

2011-08-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Yipee! I figured it out. I worked on my poem for the workshop and my blog. Not once did I bang my head on my desk. Though, I did think about it.

Instead, I did some thinking on the last little tweak I still need to do on my novel. The novel has given me another challenge. I found a little problem with the last chapter. A minor problem, but one I had to take care of before I sent out the submission again. So I reread the chapter and made notes.

I have a feeling this won’t be the last problem, but I’ve come to not care about that. I’m just going to push on ahead, not matter what’s there. And I’m going to learn something and damn it, I’m going to act like this is the only life I get. I’m going to be happy, damn it. And that is up to me.

Finally, and once I had that better outlook, I looked at my printer again. I stopped calling it names and apologized. After all, it’s helped me for some time and it was with me when I placed in a poetry contest, with me through umpteen versions of my novel, with me right after I started back to writing after that stupid MPGN tripped me up.

I took out the ink cartridges, held my breath and pulled out the printer heads. I’ve done this once before and had the instructions printed and placed—somewhere, but I couldn’t find them. I remembered, though. I figured—it’s not working now, if I make it worse—at least, I tried. This printer has actually lasted longer than my previous two, so I’ve actually been holding my breath, but really felt this was a printer head or ink problem. Besides, I’m just like everyone else, this economy has me being very careful with my money and I sure didn’t want to buy a new printer if I didn’t need to. (I’ve been holding my breath with my keyboard and mouse, too, for the same reason) I think, sometimes, I should get these repair when they break, but that costs so much, too, so I end up buying new. I think that’s where so many people end up.

Anyway, I cleaned the heads, replaced them, then had the printer go through a printer head cleaning again. After that, I had the printer do a printer head alignment. I think that’s what did it, but I really don’t know. I just know it works now. Yeh!

Still, I learned something—I’ll do each of these procedures, next time, before I panic. I guess it’s a little like Ella and the Tie-down Man. Sometimes, you just have to do some thinking and little tweaks.

Today’s going to be better. I’ll make it so.

Trust Your Journey II

2011-08-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve written before about trusting your journey. Each writer’s journey is her own, and quite different. Yep, challenges are individual and unique. Today, mine seems to be my printer. I spent precious time trying to get it working after replacing a print cartridge. The print cartridge alone is so dang expensive and while I love my printer and I’ve used this brand forever, the cartridges are too dang expensive. I’ve tried every which way to limit my printing, but the fact remains I see my own booboos better on the page, not on the screen.

Now, I have a page of notes under the heading of Trust Your Journey and not one item on the list mentions printer or what to do about a willful printer. It mentions knowing happiness, strength, says to remember what you think you become. You don’t want to know what I’m thinking, right now, about the printer and trouble shooting and the little bumps in the road to be published. You just don’t.

I usually approach a problem with the idea that with patience and a little research I can figure things out. Today, I’ve come to the end. I’ve done everything I can think of and what the help function has suggested. The printer is working, just not printing in black.
Notes in Trust Your Journey:

• Trust your journey, despite challenges. I’m not sure this meant printer problems, but I am not going to cry over this.

• Use peace, strength, courage, love and gratitude-How? I like that last word. Apparently, I was just as frustrated when I wrote those notes as I am today. Lousy way to start a Monday.

• What you think you become. As I said, I really need to censor my thinking right now and yet, is there a life limit to a printer? Or should I just make it so?

• Know happiness. I was so excited to get to work today. I had a blog to write, a small portion of the last chapter of my novel that has to have a rewrite. I found a problem with one tiny scene, but it is a crucial scene, but I figured it out with my husband’s assistance and I’m feeling good about the way it fits in now.

• Know strength. This one was a challenge. I know strength. I have it, sometimes. I know how I’d like to use it, too, but I really don’t think it would help the situation and a grown woman on the far side of middle age jumping up and down on a printer in the middle of the road just doesn’t sound smart. Someone might think I’ve rounded the bend, or take video and put it on You-Tube, or...I didn’t do it. I thought about it once as I was having the dang thing clean it print heads—if it’s so smart, why can’t it heal itself? I thought about it again when I read this item in my Trust Your Journey notes, but I reaching for that peace and love thing, too. The conflicting struggle messed with the whole anger and decided I’d try to turn it off, unplug it and you know, sort of reset it…and me. I got myself a stick of gum. That’s when you know I’m at the end of my rope.

• Cherish the journey. My indulgence—Extra Dessert Delight sugar free gum-mint chocolate chip. I sat back and decided I’d just move forward—step over the bump in the road, grab a stick of gum and write this blog.

• Free your spirit. Now, that’s the challenge, isn’t it? Writing demands a certain degree of free spirit. I’ve been called that more than once and sometimes, not in a complimentary way. And yet, I’m a worrier and obsessive compulsive. Can those all live in the same body/mind? Yes, but it gets crowded. You know, it really is the little things that can trip you up, if you let it. I’m just not going to…let it, I mean. I think I’m just going to take five, sit on the patio, watch the Swallowtail butterflies, humming birds and say a prayer of gratitude about the Monarch butterfly, I saw this morning. (It’s been some time since I’ve seen one and we wondered and worried where they’d gone.)

• Inhale hope. I’ll figure this out, eventually.

• Exhale determination. I won't cry. Crying won't fix it. Might feel good, but it wastes time. I will figure this out.

Delay

2011-08-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry about the delay of my blog post, but I've been having trouble getting it to load. I'm not computer savvy and busy getting things ready for submission. Also, I'm doing a workshop, having fun with the poetry I'm working on in it, getting my juicies flowing, getting excited about what's next in my novel writing. You know, on a roll.

I fiddled with the blog as much as I had knowledge about and that's about it.

I figured I'd work on what I could do something about. You know the move forward mentality. I got a lot done, and finally, I got the blog up.

It's been a real time of cleaning up, too. All good, but disrupting. And there's more to be done-a few more carpets to be cleaned, wood to be polished, things to be sorted and of course, dealing with this office. That means a computer tune-up. I've found I have a ton less problems with my computer if I do regular maintenience and have a tech guy tune my computer up once a year. It's a tool and it needs to be in working order, working at it's best, just like me.

I've been working in one small area of my office every week. It's a good thing to do. I've found so many forgotten things: writings, research material, misplaced files and I'm obsessive compulsive as far as filing and putting things back where I found them. I think it's just the way of things. Stuff happens, things get forgotten and misplaced.

So another list on my to do list: Spend time in your office going through things. That includes your computer and have it cleaned. It just makes sense.

FRONTLINE

2011-08-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

People will try to tell you that all the great opportunities have been snapped up. In reality, the world changes every second, blowing new opportunities in all directions, including yours. —Ken Hakuta

News from the publishing front is staggering. The war is lost before I begin. I know that going in. I go in anyway. Some days, I don’t care what the situation is. After all, all I ever wanted to do was write.

There are those other days. Those days with little hope, less encouragement. The news, RWA, writer’s magazines is full of rotten news about mergers, buy-outs, publishing houses folding or bookstores going under. And there certainly isn’t anything positive coming out of the financial news or Washington. Casualties litter the path. Just keeping track of where to send a manuscript is a daunting full time job.

I’ve trudged through the battlefield for many years, more years than I care to reflect on. The landscape, oftentimes, looks barren, scarred, even abandoned, but not but me.

There will be more wars, more scrimmages and all out battles. I’ll watch and listen to the news. Some writers will be wounded; some will be lost. A great many writers will give up—surrender.

I’ve felt like surrendering often, but— I won’t. I’ll struggle on. I’ll gather my weapons, sharpen my skills, firm my resolve. I’ll be a holdout. I’ll keep writing the books I was born to write.

It doesn’t seem fair. Celebrities get book deals; flavor of the month books top the New York Times bestseller list. Published seem unwilling or unable to take risk. The bottom line rules.

But—as much bad new I hear—there are war heroes—the author who keeps winning battles or new recruits who take the hill. They’re just like me, struggling through with hopes and dreams tucked close in their heart. They didn’t give up, not even when the struggle seemed hopeless. The cream does rise to the top. No amount of homogenizing will change that.

When the VCR’s first showed up, there were warnings and worries that they would bring the demise of movie theaters. Instead, there are more and bigger theaters than before. In my mother’s time, there were predictions that once movies became popular, reading would decrease sharply. That didn’t happen. The same prediction was bandied around with the advent of the TV. Yet, more people read than ever before.

We all hear what will happen as the e-reader becomes more popular—the end of hard-cop books. Change is simple that—change. Or what I like to think of as opportunities. I think it will be thus with the e-reader. I think content will become valuable. I write content. Writers write content.

The future is uncertain, simple that. It always has been. I think it means good things, opportunities. Do we lose things?—yes, but we gain far more. Would you really like to go back to outhouses? Not me. I think embracing the changes, figuring out how to work them to my advantage is what’s called for.

The future holds new inventions, things we can’t even imagine. There will be new directions, new fads. E-books today; who knows what tomorrow. I intend to keep reading, writing and growing. I intend to be ready.

Names and Summer

2011-08-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

The copies of the 6th annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Collection arrived, plain box, anticlimactic, really, but first thing I did, of course, was scan the contents page for my poems and my name. And what I noticed was my name, first and last, looked simple, ordinary, everyday.

Even my son said, “Mom, you should have used a middle initial or name or something.”

He was right; my plain, ordinary name looked out of place. Mine wasn’t the only name without a middle—something, name or initial, but, somehow, in print, my name looked sadly common. And I considered, strangely, for the first time, my name in print. How would I want my name to appear as author of a book, whether poetry or novel? Did I want to use my middle name, my maiden name, a pen name? I use a pseudonym for my blog. Should I use if for my other writing?

While I mulled this over I found my poems and read them—for the first time not hand-written or typed by me. All the words I so carefully chose, by sound and meaning, the exact order, line by line, in a font someone else picked, printed and sent out in the world.

I had several poems printed in my high school Pencraft (a literary book published each year) class, but I had a vote in everything from cover to paper to font and that was more years ago than I’ll say.

This time, with this book, I felt more detached, yet more invested. I, frankly, felt strange. Proud, but as if I relinquished—something. A lot like the minute your child says, I do, and you know your relationship with him has changed forever and maybe, you’re really not ready, but he is and so you open your hand—the one you had clutched in the folds of your dress.

I haven’t posted for two weeks and I would feel guilty, but I was—again—getting Tie-down Man ready to go out in the world. After sending it out to one agent, I got some feedback from a contest. Some of the comments rang true, of course, some didn’t, but I worked through the book to fix the minor problems and am getting it ready to go out again.

But that wasn’t all I was doing, of course. As I’ve said, I’m primary caregiver to an elderly parent and there’s been construction around her house which has given us a bit of a challenge, what with getting the garbage in and out, food in and out and the yard work.

Then, too, we tried to get our three boys together once before summer was over. We had hamburgers, potato salad, green salad and s’mores in the canyon one evening. Only two of our boys were able to get there, but we were grateful for that given all our schedules. My husband and I stayed overnight and had breakfast, too. It was a wonderful break in an, otherwise, frustrating and busy summer.

I needed the break, the cooler day, the sound of the breeze in the cottonwoods, the sound of the lake, the sandy beach, the smell of hamburgers cooking, the fire, the pine trees. And of course the s’mores. It is the absolute definition of summer, all packed full of memories and I don’t think a summer should go by without it.

Of Gardens and Metaphors

2011-07-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

The ragtag garden looks tattered and worn. The delphiniums have turned gray and seedy. Daisies, summer-sweet are fading. I’ve sheared back the shabby spent spring ground cover: rock cress, blue creeping veronica and phlox, but I’ve been a bit slow about the lamb’s ear—there’s a reason. The pale spikes like gray ghosts in the garden keep me company and I like to drag that particular chore out through the whole summer, if possible, just to get a dose of its fruity wonderful scent occasionally.

I spent my gardening time last week spiffing up flower beds from the ravages of time and season. I filled several bags with the garden debris: ground cover cuttings, deadheads and surrendered pansies. Ah, well…my heart always aches when I pull out a dying pansy, but I try to be philosophical about it though. I planted the pansies last fall; they’ve done their job and more.

Mid-summer gardens wan a bit, mine do, anyway. Most of my flower beds are perennial shade gardens and what does get plenty of sunlight. I make the most of by planting favorite sun-loving perennials. All but the roses are over by August. I should bring in late summer bloomers, but I’m alright with the absence, I have my few annuals and the vegetable garden. And always there is ‘Lady in Red’ salvia that I plant for the humming birds.

What has the condition of my garden got to do with writing? Maybe, nothing, but it got me thinking—about gathering metaphors. It’s a whole lot like gardening and a good place to find metaphors, too. Sometimes the places you look have an abundance of what could be used as a metaphor, sometimes you have to really look and consider before you find something that will work.

I think the more places you visit, the more experience you have, the easier you find them, think of them, use them. Visit your garden or your neighbors, visit a museum or aquarium, zoo. If you’re writing about another time period or place visit someplace that has some connection, however tenuous. Collect paint chips, just for the color names. Pick up magazines about the subject or time period (flea markets are great for this. The magazines are cheap and plentiful and you can just about find them on any subject.) Magazines are amazing for great detail and descriptive words condensed. Look for surprising names, traits—the perfect imagery-metaphors.

This type of research has an added benefit—it’s fun and it fills the well and what’s summer for?

And remember: it's not what you find, but how you use it.

Eco-friendly Writing

2011-07-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Eco-friendly writing has been covered by most of the writing magazines I subscribe to with the basic ideas of recycling such as using both sides of paper, using recycled paper, notebooks, etc., and e-mail for your business, as much as possible.

I love the planet earth. For over forty years I’ve recycled and put back. I’ve recycled aluminum cans since the ‘60s, and tried to pass that habit on to my boys. In fact, it was a daily chore to mash cans we used or found. We hunted discarded cans on our walks and my oldest son was able to put away $500.00 before he was two with the money we got from recycling cans. I also compost grass clippings, leaves and coffee grounds, turning what was heavy clay to rich, friable soil.

So, recycling paper and running a green office is second nature. All rough drafts are printed on the backside a previous draft, a slash of highlighter indicator to which is the old draft, I buy recycled paper, I use the backside of mailings for scratch paper and recycle my ink cartridges, as the articles suggest.

But I take things a step further: I’ve begged from or had given to me reams of used paper; a neighbor gave me a case of paper that had the heading printed on the top incorrectly. I refill ink cartridges, where possible, I use pens that use refills.
Then I turn up the recycling and have some fun. I love the swap meet or some call it the flea market. Every Sunday, my husband and I and often, one or more of my sons frequent the local flea market. It’s been going every Sunday since the ‘60s and every year it gets just a little bigger. With all the reality shows on now about the treasures you can find, more people hope it is their lottery. Me, I’m on the look-out for the useful.

What have I found? Staplers, one week, staples to fit them, the next, a sewing machine drawer, perfect for post-it notes, a wooden nail box, just the right size for scratch paper, an old wire desk file, an old wooden desk file, a perpetual desk calendar, a stack of 10 legal pads for 10¢, 10 composition notebooks for $1.00, old paper clips (very unusual looking, an old rolling library table used for a dictionary, a school bell (hey, I’ve used it) standing paper files (I think they’d make great weapons, toast holders (also great for currently in use files, old McCoy plant pots (great for holding paper clips and flash drives), a chamber pot (no, not for use, although I do wish I had a bathroom in my office. I could live there, if only, because I have an old office fridge for water and snacks. The pot is used for my lipstick plant).

I’ve found three ring binders, files, paper, bookends, frames (I never, ever buy new ones. There are just too many great ones for less than a quarter, mostly old and ornate but I don’t care what kind of metal, I just paint them to match.) I have old cowboy hats, spurs, a bridle, and boots, all for atmosphere. I’ve found a paper punch, a paint brush to clean my keyboard, lead for my mechanical pen, old striped wooden clip boards, ink stands (not particularly useful, but I collect them and old ink bottles.) I’ve found old ledgers for keeping track of submissions, old journals for daily writing exercises, an old staple remover, a map flashlight, a tambourine (don’t ask). I have an old music chair for extra seating with the advantage of storage in the seat. And best of all: research books, dirt cheap.

It’s not what you find, but how you use it.

It's Kaki's Fault

2011-07-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

I braided my hair today. So, what, you asked. Well, two years ago I had so little hair, I couldn’t. Last year, I had so much new growth sticking out; I looked a bit like a dandelion. Today, a real nice braid.

What has this to do with Kaki, you ask. Nothing, just a gratitude observation. I try to have one every day.

So, what did Kaki do? And Kaki who?

It all started when I went looking for her book, HEARTBREAK CREEK by Kaki Warner. I have loved every one of the books in her Blood Rose Trilogy. Such wonderful Old West stories, right up my alley, right between the general store and the saloon. As I mentioned, although, I figured it would be so; we had to travel a ways to find it. But, as I mentioned before, that is the state of affairs when it comes to bookstores around here. (It will only get worse, I’m sure.) My husband is not much of a reader and it took him a long time, a really long time to figure out how much a part of me reading was.

It was a case of, love me, love my cat. He did not like cats, but I came with one. One big, gorgeous white long-hair Manx, Tiffany, who thought she was queen of her world. They circled each other for a while, Tiffany tried to seduce his Uncle, which got him appreciating her, at least, and then, a few years later, me and my boys brought home another. That one bit him while he was sleeping. Right under his arm…I think she thought it was a mouse. He thought it was…well, I can’t exactly use the words here.

He’s come to like cats…or maybe, he’s just afraid not to…Anyway, it was love me, love my books. That’s been just as hard for him. I remember his mother once telling me she’d given up reading because every time she sat down to read, his father would find something for her to do. I doubt he even realized. Men can be such…as Edwina, in HEARTBREAK CREEK says, lumps. I think it was just seeing her sit down.

I wasn’t about to let that happen, books were too much a part of me and he sees how it mellows me out, fills me, he sees what writing does for me, he’s my number one fan, but still…

I rushed through Texas Blue by Jodi Thomas (I did like this book, too.) I was reading so I could get to HEARTBREAK CREEK, I opened the front cover. I always read the praises, the acknowledgements and then, finally the first page…

“Honey, where are you? I thought we needed to go to your mothers?”

Oh, oh. I forgot and darn, but I’ve just got to finish this page. “I’ll be right there.”

Much later after we return home, a shadow passes over. I hardly notice, but it doesn’t go away. I concentrate harder…I will not look up, I will not look up…He’s standing there watching me read. I feel my lips press together.

“What were you going to fix for dinner?”

“Of course, I was just going to finish this page.”

“It’s six. I’m kind of…”

Six o’clock, dang, I was only going to read a minute. “I’m right on it.”

That night, late: “Honey, where are you?”

“I’m washing my face.” A blatant lie.

Much later: “Are you all right?”

“Sure, why?”

“I just wondered if you were coming to bed, it’s midnight.”

Holy cow! I’ve got my mom’s hair to do in the morning and…what was I thinking.

I was thinking…It’s Kaki’s fault. The dishes not getting in the dish washer, (my husband did it) the laundry unfolded (my husband did it), the dishes put up. (my husband again)

Next afternoon, after the hair, before dinner as I close the book. “Are you done with that?”

“Yes.”

“Good, that means I have my wife back, right?”

“Well, until COLORADO DAWN is out.”

“When is that going to be?” he asked with no small amount of trepidation.

“Not soon enough.”

Uintah/Uinta

2011-07-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

You learn something every day. Sometimes, though, I wonder if that’s because you do something stupid every day. Not stupid exactly but…And sometimes, it takes so long to find out you’ve been doing something wrong/stupid and then when you do...

Anyway, we’re down at the Forest Service office looking at maps for my husband. He drew out a once in a lifetime big game tag for elk this year. Been trying forever or at least, a long time.

I’m a tree-huger (not my word for it), an animal lover…I love shooting a gun as long as it’s at a non-living target. To explain…I’ve gone deer hunting with my husband, helping him find deer…instead, secretly, I’ve been shooing them away. Hey, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him and I figure I’m evening the odds, such as I can, in favor of the animals. Besides, that’s just what you do when you love someone, right?
I get the whole thought process behind the hunting, and believe me, there are definite sides. Loud-voiced sides and it is an argument that we just don’t really get into in our house. Like the wolf issue. I love the wolf and around here, that’s not a popular position and I even get their (the opposition, not the wolf…although I get their point, too…the wolf, not the opposition. Oh, you know what I’m saying.)point. I don’t necessarily agree, but I get it. Ranchers, hunters…they have a history, livelihood and all that. I get it. There are just some things my husband and I decided not to argue about. We each have our opinions, respect each other’s and support each other’s but don’t agree.

Actually, our whole married life…well, it’s true, opposites often attract. Makes for an interesting life. I digress, as I seem want to do…anyway, as we’re looking at these maps, it hits me…I’ve been typing in Uintah where Uinta should be. Throughout my whole darn book. I knew better. A lapse, I guess, but, dang…why? I’m so careful about that sort of thing. Thank heaven for Replace in Word. I got it all changed throughout my book, in the nick of time, by the way.

I was ranting and raving about it, wondering why, when a friend said… stop beating yourself up. It’s a logical error. You live near Uintah, they sound the same, it’s just a loop hole in your thinking.

Anyone else out there got loop holes in their thinking?

Bagged It

2011-07-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

So, come afternoon I went in search of Kaki Warner’s book HEARTBREAK CREEK, just released yesterday. I could have downloaded it on my Kindle, but for this book, it had to be the real, solid, hands on thing. I planned an old-fashioned reading orgy as soon as I finished my current book, Texas Blue by Jodi Thomas, another favorite author in Western Historicals.

First stop, Wal-Mart. Not my favorite place for books and really, I was just hopin’ that as long as I had to run to the bank and they had a bank in Wal-Mart, I could combine errands. No luck.

Next, Target, pretty good around here for books, but no HEARTBREAK. Then, a phone call to the nearest Barnes and Nobles, not really that far, but compared to a few years ago, far. There were two great bookstores just two blocks from my house a few years ago. I hate to even say how much money I used to spend at the two stores. (Plus, a B Dalton at the mall not five miles from here. Now, a trip on the freeway many more miles away.) I can tell you this…it was every penny I saved clipping coupons for groceries. That was how I got the money for books when my boys were small. It was a challenge and the only way I could afford the tons of books I read, too.

My boys would wager on how much I could save and watch the receipts reach the floor, cheering me on. Of course, they got some of the money for their own reading. (I have good readers.) Actually, I still do it, even now, when I don’t really have to, I cut, sort and use coupons for book money. I buy fewer groceries, save less with coupons, but I use every penny on books. (And a bit more, too. Books are as important to me as food…all except, chocolate…oh, and as you know office supplies. But that’s just another addiction. I have so many.)

I digress…Anyway; I bagged a copy of HEARTBREAK CREEK before it was even out on the shelves. I was shocked that none of her other books were on the shelves and mentioned it to the clerk that checked me out.” Hey, Kaki Warner just won the RITA, maybe you ought to get some of her books on those shelves.” They looked at me like…Who is this?

I’m happy, too, and looking forward to a few evenings out on my patio with book, lemonade and quiet…Please.

Oh, by the way another addiction I just learned about, about myself: staplers. Yes, staplers. I’ll post some pictures of some great old staplers I found. For now, writing, reading and cutting coupons.

Make It So

2011-07-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

Beautiful day. Warm, muggy night. Dress, put on shoes, grab jacket, cell phone, I-pod and head out for my morning walk. Clouds to the northwest look ominous, dark and slung low, but it’s warm. I can smell rain, but I have time. The breeze is moist, but I have time.

The rain hit at the top of the hill as I touched the chain-link fence that surrounds the Air-force base. I’m sans umbrella, but the rain starts slow and smells clean. As I pass a patch of fresh mowed weeds the smell reminds me of the inside of a barn, all yeasty oat and straw, with manure and horse thrown in. I love that smell. It takes me back to the horse-crazy days of a younger me.

Still, every year I haunt the local county fair and the stables awash in that smell. Nothing better than to be able to stroke between the long ears of a mule, the velvet nose of a Tennessee Walker or the tall shoulders of a Clydesdale. That way the scent lingers on me for hours, which cause me to smile even after we leave the fair grounds.

Back in the early days of the seventies during another recession we gave up our horses. There was a baby on the way. But that smell takes me back, always, as now. I quicken my pace, hoping to get back home before I’m complete drenched.
The birds don’t care much about the rain. I hear quail in the brush and Mourning Doves taking off for the treetops. Somewhere, a peacock asks for help and the crackle of a pheasant floats up from the wooded grove below. I could curse the rain and how wet I’m getting but I don’t. I thank the memories that simple, earthy scent gives me.

Could just one paragraph of my writing do the same for someone? Could a smell, a sight, a memory turn into the best writing I do for the week? Make it so.

Rejection and Criticism

2011-06-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve had experience with rejection, harsh critiques and lost contests…years and years of it. When I send out a short story, I know odds are it will be rejected. I’ve sold, maybe, ten percent of the short stories I’ve sent out. But I tell myself the market for short stories like I write is small with few chances of success and that’s just the business.

Poetry is just as hard and paying markets are slim. As the economy goes on the way it is publishing house have to be more choosy and getting a book published is ever more competitive. Contest judges try to encourage and help and to do that it means sometimes being tough.

I’ve learned to like tough. Those critics and contests judges are being generous with their precious time and I have to at least listen with my heart open or I lose.

But a writer keeps writing and hoping. That novel is yours, came from your open heart, your one-of-a-kind heart. It feels like sending a child away to college when you sent it out, whether for publication or contest or to a critic partner. Inevitably you will get harsh critiques or rejections. A ‘thanks, but no thanks’, a ‘it didn’t work for them.’

Remember: You will not die. Then, find a way to distance yourself, however long it takes, so you can go back and read suggestions, criticisms, emotionless, if you were lucky enough to get them. Determine to learn something.

First remember, you didn’t write it for them. They didn’t see what you envisioned. Then, remember, critics can be wrong. Look honestly and deeply into your heart and trust your gut, as Obi Won told Luke: feel the force. Only you know what you’re trying to say. Did you say what you wanted to clearly or do they have a point that you can see now that there is distance and the very real thought that someone else actually read it.

I try to remember that my happiness will never depend on being published, neither will my wealth. Writing rarely leads to mansions on a hill and sports cars.
Are the editors/judges/critics saying the same thing about your book? Do they echo what someone else has said? You’ve got to take a second look, then. Or at least look at what they said in common.

Each page we perfect moves us farther along in our journey, giving us miles under our belt. Experience and learned tools. This is good.

Providence

2011-06-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

Just back from our annual vacation to the Uintah mountains in Northeastern Utah. Beautiful country. Country very dear to my husband. I have learned to love it. Learned because, at first, I was so out of my element, what I knew, my comfort zone. Now, it refreshes me.

For my husband, it’s all about the fishing. For me, it is the scenery, the quiet, the research. It is an old land, the aspen trees marked with dates and history and old gold mines and ghost tales and folk lore. A writer’s treasure, really, but it took me a long time to see it that way and take advantage.

On evening, a storm began behind us as we sat on the shore and fished. Thunder began as just rumblings, but soon into much more. When the lightning got too close I ran for the truck. Everything is more up at that altitude and lightning stands the hair up on my neck, no matter how far away.

Squalls moved through the canyon every night. We had rainbows two nights and skies that grabbed my heart. So much snow still clings to the mountain they look ghostly as the sun disappears for the day.

I spent one raining evening stealing words from the hand-outs they passed out in the campground. I love stealing words, finding words. I run a list of words that catch my eye and then write poetry or descriptions using them. It makes for a good way to stretch writing muscle.

A page is a page and nothing is ever wasted. Old writing can be revisited, old and new pieces mooshed together. I love doing that and I think, sometimes, it is providence.

My Writer's Retreat

2011-06-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

There is more than one meaning to retreat: An act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous or disagreeable, to withdraw or a place of privacy or safety, refuge. Maybe, this time, for me, it is both.

Just back from back of the beyond—we headed for the mountains or…retreated might be the better word. Things have been…complicated. And we needed to retreat…rest and I needed a writer’s retreat. That’s impossible for many reasons, but I made do with what was possible.

Still, I needed a refuge. I needed to recharge, refresh, reboot. What better place than mountain air and quiet breezes, lapping water and the smell of pine.

I took my laptop, a handful of writer’s magazines, such as The Writer, Writer’s Digest, RWR and Writer’s Journal and Barbara Abercrombie’s Courage & Craft, Writing Your Life into Story. That last was heaven-sent, I do believe.

Enough to say, I flagged, underlined or both, every page. Reading this book, I felt like I was attending the best workshop in the most relaxing place, a perfect one on one. I found gems on every page, great advice and encouragement. And somehow, I felt Abercrombie knew me and was directing the lessons to me.

The book has been sitting on my shelf for some time and I’ve looked at it longingly wishing for more time. I took the time and it was so worth it. I highly recommend this book to writers but also, to anyone working in art, writing or even anything that needs to tap into creativity would gain something from it.

Books

2011-06-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

I grew up kissing books and bread. —Salman Rushdie

I am a book junkie. All sorts of books—poem, short story, novel, nonfiction, cereal boxes. Yes, I love to read. Reading is good, but it goes way beyond just reading. Oh, I’ll read anything, if my particular fix isn’t available, I resort to reading the backs of cereal boxes, flyers, match covers. It doesn’t matter. Books are my drug of choice.

Reading has saved me more than once, but it is the book, the physical, solid familiar book. And it doesn’t matter what book. Old musty books draw me like a kid to water. The smell, the feel of old leather covers, the dark mysterious covers, but best of all are old books with margin writing or writing on the blank pages in the front or back.

Bookstores hold me gripped by want and need. Old books, new books, paperback books, it doesn’t matter. I love snorting the musky scent of old books and touching the fragile pages. I love thumbing through new crisp paged books with the bright colors and paperbacks are like penny candy to me.

Worse, give me an hour and I will find, at least, five books I simply must have, no matter where I happen to be. Boxes of old books at the flea market can make my day. I don’t need any more books, I don’t have room for them, but they call me like little orphaned kittens. And I am caught. I cannot say no.

I was in junior high when I started writing in margins and front and end pages. I think it was the idea of ‘being published’ that did it. Knowing the words I wrote would be seen by some new seventh grader the next year.

I’ve tried to save me from myself. It doesn’t matter. I cannot deny my addiction.

A Few Random Thoughts

2011-06-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

Perception and POV Again:

On the subject of perception and point of view, they are not always accurate. It’s hard to remember what we think is going on isn’t always the truth. We can’t know someone else’s heart. This false truth, this perception or point of view is often a point of contention or conflict. It is where the story is.

As a writer, it’s good to notice these situations as we go about our lives. It makes for great ideas for the scenes of our stories, but it also lets us step outside the problem, just a bit, and maybe see that we do not know someone else’s heart, so we don’t really know what that other person is thinking, why they are doing what they do.

**

Reassess:

It’s mid-year. I like to take a look at my goals and resolutions about now and see where I am. I reassess and sometimes, I see I need to adjust goals to the reality of what else is going on in my life. As the primary-care giver to an aging parent, very often…most of the times, really, things just don’t go according to plan. That can send my writing off-kilter, too. And as much as I want to dedicate every spare moment to my writing, that is not the reality of my life or what is very most important.

That is the one thing I’m determined to remember in everything I do—what is truly important. People before things, accomplishments before money, writing what I want to, to the very best of my ability and time before publishing.

Anyway, every once in a while I need reminding of some little thing I’m determined to accomplish. For instance, I’ve been going through old files, deleting duplicates, mooshing documents about the same story or subject so ideas are hanging out together, both irritating habits of mine. Some mornings I forget I planned to spend ten minutes on that and another ten minutes going through the books, files and junk that I’ve used already or has just accumulated in my office. That small block of time I spend has already helped so much in my organization and helped get a few stories and essays done or at least, farther along.

Oh, and that last ten minutes of the first half hour of my writing hours, my house plants on Mondays, tidying up or reading writing magazines or books the rest of the week. The Monday house plant care is for my soul, I guess. Plants fill my house and yard, but the house plants keep me sane through the winter. I value them, so the few minutes it takes to groom and water them is like a hedge fund. The tidying up and ‘assigned’ reading is my way of keeping my head in it, so to speak.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he be at peace with himself. —Abraham Maslow

Point of View

2011-05-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Perspective is everything, isn’t it? As a writer I ought to remember that. While I was crying in my soup…well, garden, really, others are trying to save their homes and farms. Calls for volunteers has gone out for today. The rain, the snowpack has been unbelievable and the reservoirs are predicted to spill over tomorrow to add even more water to the waterlogged downstream.

Me, I’m on high ground, my garden and flowers and vegetables small potatoes. We took a drive to look at the river last night. There are two days to prepare for the run-off due to the high temperatures from today and tomorrow. Yesterday, it struggled to reach 50°, there was frost and today it will near 80°. Spring here.

I lost way less than I feared and so many aren’t so lucky. Family farms underwater, homes flooded. I feel ashamed and very blessed. And in the writing lessons of life, I see clearly today what point of view truly means.

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. -Marshall McLuhan

Heart Breaks

2011-05-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

“Honey, the two things you love to do most will break your heart,” my husband once said. And he’s right. Last night’s devastation to my garden has cracked my heart, it is true. Snow covers impatiens, tomato plants, weighs down my snowball bush, tree peonies and Japanese maples and I’m left wondering what will survive and why didn’t the weather man warns us.

There’s nothing really left to do, but step back, regroup, replace the tomatoes and hope the rest of the vegetables will survive. The garden money has been spent—what is, is. And right now, I wished I had simple replaced the fall pansies with new, younger ones and have done with it. I appreciate pansies when the spring has been like this year’s.

Pansies are brave-faced, sturdy, beautiful and colorful. What more can I ask for? Pansies remind me of my grandma. She depended on them, too, and planted them beneath the fir trees in her front yard in the fall. Some winters they would bloom in the shelter of the branches even at Christmas. Remembering that, I started planting pansies every fall like hope.

Still, there is heartbreak in gardening. I fling myself into it every year, much as I do my writing.

I stood looking over the flower beds blanketed with the slushy white snow and thought how I’d just quit, stop garden plans and hopes, stop getting my heart broke, but I know that’s all frustration and lie. I’ll make do, make changes to those winter garden plans. I’ll edit out the dead; fill in with poppies or nasturtiums. Lo, and behold, come summer the garden will be no worse for the spring struggle and maybe, just maybe, something accidentally wonderful will happen.

This morning I can’t help but think how much in common writing and gardening have. There is the planning and the hope, the research and time put in. There is fitting the plants with the climate, sun and personal taste. There is the work, worry and tears, the back-pedaling, editing out what just doesn’t work or dies a slow death. There is the just perfect, most often from serendipity and there are the failures. Failures teach and break hearts. We start over, redo, rethink and …that is a better thing than one thinks.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough. —Bovee

No Regrets

2011-05-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

Accept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best benedictions—“If I had my life to live over again, I’d do it all the same.”

The last few weeks, actually, the whole of May had been a series of missteps, oops, weather and disappointments…oh, and doctor appointments, which is kind of like all of those rolled into one. I don’t do doctor appointments well. You’d think I would be so use to them, what with my mother’s long list of appointments and my own while I was sick that I’d take them in stride. You’d think, but, no.

And the weather/gardening has just plain been frustrating, but finally, I have the vegetable garden in and my lettuce, chard and spinach sprouting. That makes me smile and gets me anxious for some fresh produce. Not that I’ve been without completely. I’ve been enjoying my chives and parsley for about a month. The asparagus has been a big disappointment. Only about two feet of my twelve foot row of the vegetable has come up. But then, the weather hasn’t really been very sunny or warm.

I did finally get my annuals planted. I had to do it in bits and pieces, between rain storms and cold. Frankly, not exactly the way I enjoy planting. No marathon day of planting tons of flowers. I’ve had to scale back over the last few years, eliminating many flower beds and pots. While scaling back there was a huge sense of loss and sorrow, but that loss has turned out to be the best thing for me. I think, sometimes, a forced hand is actually wisdom catching up with you.

It seems this month had been particularly difficult in the caregiving area, too. My cold turned everything so topsy-turvy that my poor mother is a bit out of step. I feel bad about it, but I’m doing the best I can and thank goodness, for my husband. There’s road construction near her house and it is bringing another challenge into the mix, for both of us.

I read an article in the Reader’s Digest, My Daughter, Myself, about caring for a disabled child. There was a lot of information about the caregiver. Though this article addressed caring for a disabled adult child, it really doesn’t matter who you are caring for, so much of the difficulty is the same. The writer, Sallie Tisdale, writes that caregiving is not just another job. I tend to look at it that way, as another item in my long list of to dos.

But there is objective burden—the physical labor— and subjective burden—emotional burden (often negative) like stress, tension, worry, guilt.

I’ve written all my life. I let so much of that go when my kids were small. You lose words, plots, ideas in the minefield of motherhood. Interruptions are a way of life and you simply pray you do not lose too much. When the kids grow and leave home you think you can devote yourself to this work of yours that does not let you go. You don’t expect to be faced with another, different role as caregiver.

It’s not as if I didn’t know there was an emotional cost, but seeing the words, reading about this mother struggling to care for her adult child, does put my situation in perspective. There is much to be grateful for.

Sometimes I’ve thought that this is what I should be writing about, though my heart wasn’t in that. This…my life as a writer, and wife, and mother, and daughter, this journey that I’ve found myself on. I wished I kept notes, thoughts, writings about each detail of this journey. It might help someone else going through this. It might help me. To see the struggles, the heartache, the decisions I’ve made that have impacted my writing. All of it.

Because now, if I was to write a memoir, I’m afraid I’d leave out the best and worst and yet….This was much the same decision I made when I was a young mother. I didn’t write my novel waiting in the bleachers while my oldest son played soccer, I didn’t craft poems while my youngest took drum lessons. I didn’t write essays while my middle son added to his insect collection. I helped catch bugs and know how to spread a Monarch’s wings for display. I saw when my oldest son made a goal or lost the game. I know just how long it took my youngest to learn paradiddles.

So, while we sit in the waiting room for another doctor appointment, my mother and I talk. There are hundreds of words I haven’t written, the book I’ve just finished took longer than it should have, I’ve written fewer poems, to be sure. And I pray I’m making the best life and writing life I can, with the fewest regrets.

I’ve written about this before, but when I have a month like May has been I need reminders of why I do what and how I do. I need hope that I’m not going to lose too much.

Hopefully: There is something in us that is wiser than our heads. —Arthur Schopenhauer

Lilacs and Lilies-Of-The-Valleys

2011-05-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

My office is filled with the scent of lilacs. I couldn’t resist bringing in the dark purple and snowy white pinnacles even though it’s a mite too soon and they’re not fully open. Lilacs and my mother seem intertwined. I can’t think of one without the other. There has always been a lilac bouquet on my mother’s kitchen table in May.

It’s nice to remember my mother in earlier days. Remember she has not always been confused, confusing, frustrating or distracted. Nice to remember I haven’t always been balanced on this delicate, sharp edge of wife/caregiver/writer/daughter/grandma/mother. Remember a time when I didn’t have to consider how to spend those few spare moments.

Nice to remember a time when the idea of pursuing my dream did not involve so much juggling of time and mind. ‘Mothering’ my mother is…uncomfortable, complicated, taxing. Finding the boundaries of caring-giving has been challenging and I do so many things wrong. And all the while I’m caring for her there is my writing nagging me, as well as my responsibilities as a wife, mother and grandmother.

In all that mix, I have to find a way to take care of myself. That’s hard. For me, writing and the garden is my best source of caring for myself, bringing peace and calm to my mind, but both comes with their own stress.

What I do in all these cases is ask myself who I am. I often wonder if I can continue to write while caring for my mother and all these other pulls. And it always comes down to this: I am a writer. Always have been, always will be. When I was sick and I couldn’t write…that was the biggest ache, the one that made me question who I was, if I could no longer write. That is not to say it didn’t hurt to let my mother down. It is to say, you are who you are. You cannot fight that and I don’t think you should.

Hummm…I’ll pick a big mug of lilies-of-the-valleys too. I don’t think it would be too much. Would it?

Plan B and School Bells

2011-05-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

Disappointment, changed plans, frustration. That about describes the last several years. You’d think I would get used to it. It really is the norm, isn’t it? I’ve said it before, life is plan B.

I was all set to trot on over to the hospital today with my mom and get our annual breast exam. Fun times, to be sure, but I really did want it done and over. You know, that checked of the list of things to do. But I’ve been fighting a little cold that just keeps giving and giving. The cold never really put me completely under the weather. I haven’t yet felt really bad, but Saturday and Sunday night I ended up awake most of the night, coughing and sometime around Thursday I lost my voice.

Talk about frustrating. No, I’m not talking. That’s just the problem. Or one of them. I just didn’t want to get around my mom with this cold or anyone up at the hospital that had to be around me. I get into these coughing jags and…I wouldn’t be able to talk to the people helping us anyway. I sound like a sick squeak toy. I can’t help my mom know what’s going on. No, I just cancelled.

I worried about doing that. It will make later this month even crazier and I’m not looking forward to that. The weather is just plain, the pits. I’m so behind in my gardening that…, but you know what? I’m reminded of an epiphany I had many years ago.

I try to accommodate the other guy. I always have. When I was a stay-at-home mom, I adjusted my schedule for everyone else because in my head I always thought: I’m just a mom, this or that person’s time is so much more important. I devalued myself. When I started writing I had to try to learn to put myself and my writing, at least, equal to everyone else.

It has been a tough lesson. I still find myself going back to that other thinking. Only this time it goes like this: I’m just a struggling writer. It’s not like I’m making tons of money here, or anyone’s waiting for me to finish. It’s not like it’s the next greatest novel, I’m writing. It’s….

I have to give myself a good mental shake. Tell myself that what I do and my time is every bit as important as anyone’s.

Ordinarily I would have broken my neck to get me and my mom to the appointment, because I made the appointment, therefore I must drag myself there and not inconvenience anyone. There was just no excuse for being sick on the day this or that was schedule. What is wrong with me…? And on and on…But I learned, in a not so good way, that you just don’t get to schedule sick days. You can say all day long you don’t have time to be sick, but sick has other ideas. And has sway, too.

On another note: Do you know how hard it is to get along without your voice? Every cold or throat problem I have goes straight to my voice. We now have great technology that can take the place of it, but it doesn’t work for every circumstance and I’m not much of a texter. So, I’ve struggled not to talk so not to damage my voice. But…how do you get someone (or your dog and cat) to listen to you when you can’t call their name or get their attention? I’m a writer, I can write notes to my husband, but the dog is not impressed and quite frankly, the cats ignore me. Well, actually, the cats ignore me anyway.

By the way, that old school bell my husband thought I was crazy to buy at the flea market last year ( What in _ _ _ _ are you getting that for) has come in real handy. Bless my heart.

Trying

2011-05-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

If you don’t enter the lion’s den, you will never capture the lion. Seung Sahn

Finally, a sunny day with rumors of warmth and sunshine for the whole rest of the week. It feels like a huge weight lifted from my shoulders and mood. It was a long, gray winter and spring. And truthfully, I’m not sure I should believe those rumors either, but I am going to bask in a bit of sunshine.

I’ve made huge progress on Tie-down. After the critiques from the last contest I studied the comments, decided what rang true for me and what didn’t. Then I fixed a few things and started getting it ready to send out. The query letter and synopsis are nearly finished, too, which is the hardest thing to do. I think about the journey the book and I have made and I’m very proud. If nothing else happens but that I get it to the best work I can do and if I’m proud of it, it will be so much more than I thought I could do a few years ago. Tie-down may end up in a box beneath my bed, I don’t know, but I’ll still be proud.

There have been so many times I almost gave up on this, times I actually did: packing it away for over a year, the fear or heart ache of unpacking it again and the faith I had to find to do it, all taught me more than any workshop could.

I remember how overwhelmed I felt when I opened the box with all the research, notes and the manuscript of Tie-down. I stared at the stuffed full box for a long time, searching my heart and I knew I would be overwhelmed. I had to begin with something small and concise, something that went to the heart of my writing and myself.

But I couldn’t not write and I had to finish this book to ever move on to all the other writing still in me. Somehow, I had to find a way to slip into the lion’s den. Poetry helped more than I thought it would. I’m so glad I took the chance that it would and so glad the idea came to me in that moment of despair.

If I hadn’t taken the chance on the poetry helping me write and begin again with Ella and the Tie-down Man, I wouldn’t have entered the Writer’s Digest Poetry Contest either.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

A Little This, A Little That

2011-04-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

I had my doctor’s visit this week. I’ve been worrying. Not because I wasn’t feeling disgustingly good physically. A bit gray around the edges and funky because of the on-going gray, funky weather. Where is spring, after all? My eyes itch for color, flowers and my hands are need of dirt, rich, loamy dirt. And that smell, you know the one of greening and blooms and… I digress…as usual this time of year into gardening talk, walk and shop.

Anyway, I’ve been worrying, so afraid the rug would get pulled out from under me again. But, no! All my labs were even better this time. My protein levels: my creatine levels normal, my kidney function, all normal. The only sign of MPGN is a trace of blood in my urine. This is all good. Better than good. Still, there is that tiny, little smidge whispering in my head that my kidneys have been damaged 30%. I slapped that thought silly. I’m going with better than good.

I’ll imagine my kidney girls on guard. (I know, I know, but it’s worked. That image of kidney girls fighting this fight, wearing red ribbons, being strong, fighting women has help me and I like to think it helped fight this disease. I draw little drawings depicting just that and keep it near my desk, just to keep a strong mindset.) I’ll watch my salt and my diet, walk, lift weights, crochet, garden, smile, laugh and write.

♥♥♥

As I’ve written about before, I’m de-cluttering, cleaning and organizing my whole house, but particularly my office. I’m actually obsessive compulsive, too neat until it comes to paper, notebooks, books, pens, office supplies, my writing. While I was sick and recovering I really let things go to heck and gone. I wrote notes on anything that was handy, never transcribed any of them into the computer. Then I first started on the prednisone ideas were synapsing through my head at the speed of light and I couldn’t catch them fast enough to make sense. Well, I’ve been wading through all that. One thing I can say is I kept it all, every blessed thing. I think I was afraid not to. Who knew what might be the gem from that experience?

Now I’m trying to get all those things transcribed into the computer, judging what can be salvaged and what is just plain gibberish and can I really tell the difference? It has been enlightening. It has showed me another facet of this illness or probably, of any illness. A side you don’t know when you are taking care of a loved one, or trying to support a friend. Unless you’ve been there, you don’t know about all the ragged edges of illness. The little things you lose and fear, the crumble of the comforting routine of your life, the loss of autonomy. I think for me that was the hardest thing.

Through all this going through, organizing and transcribing, I’ve been determined to keep with editing and polishing Tie-down, along with the gardening and my mom and the duties of day to day. It’s been a challenge. The bad weather has actually helped. (For now, but I just know once the weather turns I’m in for some mighty long days.)

But, quite by accident I found a great way to get some of this done and the plus side is, it really has helped with production and keeping my focus on my writing and Tie-down man. Even better yet, the trick will serve me well for some time because there is sooooo much writing, notes and etc. to go through.

When I first sit down at my desk, I start transcribing; I spend about fifteen minutes doing that and then move right into my writing. It’s amazing how that quick and certain start flows right into a great work session. No hemming and hawing, no looking at e-mail or trying to figure out what to work on. Just start transcribing. For some reason, I just move on to what I need to do.

A great way to hit the road running.

By the way, Happy Birthday, Rod McKuen. He made me think my poetry, mostly free verse, worth sharing. Without that, I would never have entered, even one poetry contest.

Keep Writing

2011-04-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

Sunshine yesterday and I put the tomatoes and geraniums I’m babying in a little patio hot house out on the retaining wall to bask. I know how they feel, being cooped up inside with nothing but gray skies, cold and wind. That’s the way Mother Nature rolls around here, this year. I’ve tried talking to her. She’s not listening. Not even to desperate pleas.

I drove past a neighbor, sprawled spread-eagle on his lawn in the sunshine and knew exactly how he felt. (After making certain he was alive and well and doing what I, so envied him doing. Why didn’t I think of that, anyway? Too much impulse control, I suspect. Well, dang it, stop it, right?)

Today, the morning is bright with sunshine and I’m inside typing this blog, but it’s so cold and the wind takes all the heat from the sun. This has been a harsh spring with the lack of sunshine and warmth. It makes me appreciate my foresight in planting daffodils, hyacinths and pansies.

Maddie Rose, too, has been feeling the effects of the gray, cold spring, resorting to stealing pens, paper clips and anything else I use for writing, in hopes of a chase to break up boredom.

The garden’s tilled and ready for planting. I am, too. Poetry month is almost over and though I’ve read a poem every day, that’s about it. I meant to do more. So, a few more writing contest deadlines are around the corner. I think I’ll plant a few poems in lieu of flowers and see what comes up. That’s the plan.

Keep on writing, living and trying.

Winning!

2011-04-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

The need for snorkel and webbed feet is nigh. Another rainy, gray day. My garden has been neglected and time pressures seem to close in. The only thing working is my writing and even that schedule has been pushed back.

A result from a writing competition was less than I hoped and yet, I can’t really feel too badly. Some wonderful critic comments brought to light some things with my manuscript I sensed was wrong, yet I still hadn’t completely narrowed it down.

Though I must go back and fine tune, I actually feel more optimistic than I have for a while. This isn’t the first delay on Tie-down. I’ve talked about all the ups and downs, the stops and starts, the derails and mud bogs. This little minor hiccup is nothing.

I rarely enter contests for my novels anymore and never enter writing contest with the goal to win. Winning (Is it me or has Charlie Sheen made that word, not so good?) is relative anyway.

Truth is there are so many entries in these contests that I think you must keep perspective when you do enter. Perspective is a tricky thing. You can have it all day long until you get the bad news. A funk usually follows, no matter how philosophical you are.

I’ve decided that funk is ok, for about a day, then, you just have to look at the comments, if you were lucky enough to get them. I was. Read them through once to take the hit, the second time to soak it up. The third time and after another day has past…that’s when you get the real prize.

That judge who didn’t put you in the winning circle for the contest, did one better. He or she put you on the tract of improvement. That next step to the success. That’s what you’re really after.

I figure, though I’m set back about ten days, I can go back and look at the judges suggestions, take them under advisement and change what ‘I’ think needs changing, improve my novel and then slog forward.

Winning!

Poems and Books

2011-04-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

My love affair with books began early. Sometimes I wonder if I was born loving books and the written word. In any case, I don’t think I could have escaped it in my family. My parents valued books. I don’t remember a time my mother and father weren’t reading books, magazines and the paper. Poems were, more often than not, our bedtime stories.

I learned very young that there was a world in books, a world where I not only belonged, but thrived. I was lucky enough to have teachers who not only taught the value of reading, but books. I remember the excitement of a new text book and how my teachers guided us through the first opening of those books. Carefully opening the front cover, turning a few pages and sliding my hand over the crisp page, the smell of new and ink and paper, repeating the action until the whole book had been seasoned for use.

I’ve never gotten over that experience. I love new books and find myself repeating the same careful ritual. You can’t do that with a Kindle or Nook. That’s not to say I don’t use those devices, just that the experience is…different. Still pleasing, but doesn’t quite touch the same memory buttons.

Books are very tactile for me. There is something tangible and real to the feel of a book in hand. Books are my obsession. I can’t pass a bookstore without taking, at least, one peek inside and then, like a drug, I end up buying and using. I love to read the blurbs and the first page to see if it interests me. I love the idea of being told a story. Frankly, it’s the same as finding a story in my writing. I can’t walk by old books at antique stores or flea markets, either.

Oh, now, there’s obsession. I could, if left on my own, riffle through every old box of books I see at the outdoor flea market here, spend hours in ideal book leafing, smelling, searching. The very best books are the ones I find that a previous reader wrote in the margins. Then, I have two stories in one book.

I’m so amazed at what I find, being sold for a song. I tote home (to my husband’s dismay) worn musty books to treasure. At his expected question, why? I answer with my thin, shabby answers: It’s Bambi, I loved it as a girl and now I have a copy. I’ve wanted to find this, I grew up on it. It goes with one I found last year and I must have the whole set.

I got the affliction from my father and I blame him, too. What can my husband say? He knows the soft achy part of my heart that’s missed my father, too long. There was always a second hand book place on my bed. Some book I fell in love with from the library, a poem book he thought I’d love. He haunted used book stores on his lunch hours.

When I was crazy about Rod McKuen and everything he wrote, he brought home Sonnets from the Portuguese and Emily Dickinson Love Poems. I never figured out if he was trying to pull me away from what he considered bad choices with ‘newfangled thinking or poetry style. He was from the school of Victorian poetry and did not appreciate free verse too much.

Whereas, though I studied and wrote traditional poetry, I embraced free verse, simply loved it. Even now that is my favorite, especially free verse that rhymes in unexpected places and ways.

Which brings me to a reminder: It is poetry month and Thursday is Poem in your Pocket Day. Celebrate National Poem in Your Pocket Day if you celebrate National Poetry Month no other way. Pick a poem, pocket it and carry it around with you all day, reread it or share it with others. Put a poem somewhere to be found.

Better yet, celebrate the month, buy a poem book and open it carefully, smell the newness, turn a few pages, slid your hand over the page crease, season that book, then enjoy

2011-04-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve mentioned several times that I’ve been reading Writer’s Digest for years. Since the 1960’s, actually. Back then, my dad bought them for me, setting them on the bed before I got home from school. Sometimes though, he would take me to a tiny magazine and book store on Washington Blvd called Shirley’s, so I could browse.

I still remember the rows of magazines and books, the candy and gum tucked into cubbies in front of the cash register and the gold ornate cash register. I bought Writer’s Digest, the Writer and Seventeen magazine (Hey, I was a bit of a blue stocking, but I liked to be in style while I was doing it. Actually, I think my middle son pegged me right when he called me eccentric, but as a teen I don’t think that was the word used to describe me. Unique? Bohemian? Hippy?) along with a pack of Doublemint gum.

I’m a gum chewer, especially when I’m nervous, so as a teen I was always chewing gum. I still chew it when I’m driving or trying to pass on the candy, cookies, etc. That’s my diet-The Gum Diet.

It works, mostly, when there isn’t a chocolate chip cookie calling my name. So, as I was saying, I’ve been reading Writer’s Digest forever. There has always been something between the covers that speaks to me, helps me with some writing problem I’m struggling with. I’ve torn out articles for all these years and still have many of my favorites. A great many are being reprinted in the archived articles, too.

And I love old things, even, old magazines. If I find an old magazine at an antique store, from the period I’m writing about, I buy it and call it, research. Magazines are so revealing to time periods, clothing styles and descriptions, prices, attitudes and beliefs. Imagine how I felt when rifling through a stack of magazines at a recent antique fair finding an old May 1978 Writer’s Digest. I had to buy it. Then, with one thing and another, tucked it into my magazine rack in my office and forgot about it.

Well, I’m going through my files, magazines, books, and eliminating what I’m finished with or no longer need and came across the tattered Writer’s Digest. I spent an hour thumbing through it and reading several articles. How much has changed, how much hasn’t.

From the magazine: Quote: I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I’m one of the world’s great rewriters. —James Michener

Stamps were 13¢

Writer’s Bookshelf: Letters of E. B. White, edited by Dorothy L. Guth (Harper & Row), The Typwriter Guerrillas, by John C. Behrens (Nelson-Hall)

Lawrence Block wrote the Fiction column. It’s full of useful advice that still works.

Art Spikol wrote the Nonfiction column. Part of his article was telling the reader how to figure out word count an article, which cassette mini-recorder to buy, (the new Sony TC-56, $160-$175) and a discussion about using Mrs., Ms. or whether to reveal your gender when writing an editor.

Ads: Smith-Corona offering Correction Cartridge typing, The Institute of Children’s Literature was looking for people who want to earn money writing children’s stories, Vera Henry was one of 33 Writer’s Digest School instructors, you could save 10% on ribbons for IBM and other typewriters.

The Markets: Magazines: Cycle Times, Family Life Today, Southern Outdoors. Books: Aero Publishing, Avon Books, Harper and Row.

The back page announced: We type manuscripts, beneath some 35 addresses of typists for hire.

The trip back in time put a smile on my face and gave me a moment of reflection, too. The process hasn’t changed, not really. Back then, writers were looking for help getting an agent, finding ideas and inspiration, research advice and how-to books. Just like I am now.

The internet, writer’s magazines and writer’s workshops are full of talk about how difficult it is to get published these days, but getting that book from idea to novel is so much easier than it was. We have the help of the computer to get the writing down, edited and word count, we have the internet to keep us in touch with other writers so we are not so isolated (this is the double edge of too much temptation to waste valuable time, but in this case, dial back your attitude to 1978 for x-amount of hours. Use interruptions wisely, like wishes)

Writer’s Digest helps me, even 33 years later.

April is Poetry Month. Celebrate!

2011-04-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

April is Poetry Month. Celebrate! Hey, it’s April. That means it’s Poetry Month. Isn’t that as good as a field of crocuses? Read a poem every day. It’s amazing what it can do for your writing, your mood and your soul.

Check out Academy of American Poets. Sign up for their Poem-a-Day. You can do that just for April is you want. And there’s an app for that. Check it all out here.

For today, the first day of Poem-A-Day. I got The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop and in the mail yesterday I received the National Poetry Month Poster. I hung it in my office to inspire me.

To Celebrate write just one haiku a day. Here's mine:
Wooden time-worn fence
turned silver.
Spring begins its echo.

2011-03-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

Spring is really struggling to break through around here. I could let it pull me down—the snowy, gray days. By now, I’m just sick of the gray, blah days more than anything and the cold. Worse are those days when it’s impossible to walk outside. This spring has actually been worse for that than the whole of this winter.

The snow is a relief, in a way, at least compared to those sunless days and this morning, it was accompanied with thunder and lightning. Now, that’s more like it. As long as we have to suffer the snow, let’s have a little drama. Snowdrops, after struggling mightily the last few years have multiplied and made their show a few weeks ago, but they’re hanging in there. Kind of like scouts for the crocus, just now trying to brave the snow and wind.

At the start of last week my tiny mini Japanese iris made their quiet appearance, and as luck would have it, I actually got to catch them at their best. They are the sweetest flower, but so fleeting. I love the dark purple with their dots of yellow. More often than not though, I miss them. They are so early in the year I’m not even walking around my yard looking for spring yet, but this year, I picked a few and they lasted in my office several days.

The garlic is up. I’ve worried over them all winter. We tried a different location this year, of course, and I wasn’t at all certain they’d like it. This will be the third year I’ve planted garlic. Last year was such a success and a hoot. I planted Elephant garlic, the bulbs as big as softballs, but so easy to use I really wanted to plant more, but I also planted two other varieties—54 bulbs, in all.

But it’s the pansies and violas that lift my heart and mood. They make me smile. All winter long if the snow melts off of the lilac or Japanese maple garden, they’re ready and willing. They thrive with adversity. All I have to do is pinch off the snow-burned leaves or blooms and they send out new, eager sun-facing blossoms.

Last fall I picked the simple violas I remember from my childhood to plant there. We called them Johnny Jump-ups when we were kids, those common little purple and yellow blossoms.

I’ve had at least a few Johnny Jump-ups in my backyard every year, for much the same reason as my mother. A friend of my youngest son brought me a two-inch plant many, many years ago on Mother’s Day. They were giving the plants to the mother’s at church, but I wasn’t there. He thought I ought to have one.

Though I’m usually compulsive about dead-heading, I make sure I never pinch back all the seed-pods on these. I’ve put chicken noodle soup in the crockpot and last fall, I decided nothing would bring a smile faster than seeing Johnnie-Jump-Ups blooming in the front gardens.

Today as I watch fat, lazy snowflakes fall, smell the aroma of chicken broth and thyme, I’m so glad I filled my garden with those brave, sturdy flowers. They set a great example. The chicken soup won’t hurt, either.

Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin….

What’s he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on. —

The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 1939

Nothing is Wasted

2011-03-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

It’s easy, after all, not to be a writer.
Most people aren’t writers, and
very little harm comes to them.
-Julian Barnes

As you know, I’ve been editing. Not just my novel but my house. Particularly, my office. It’s been an enlightening, sad, frustrating work. Suffice to say, while I was working on getting better, a lot of things were forgotten, set aside, pushed aside, stuffed somewhere to deal with later and stacked.

As I mentioned before, in fact I’m afraid I’ve mentioned it ad nauseaum, one of the worst problems when my disease was raging was exhaustion, along with swollen, painful joints. I could barely tolerate food, which didn’t help my energy level, but does take off the weight. I don’t recommend that diet.

Getting dressed, taking care of my pets and plants (my babies) was as far as my energy went and because of the drugs I was on, my mind, once I was on the road to recovery, just didn’t track well. (You would not believe where I found what and some of my notes from that time…Yikes!)

Anyway, it’s taken two years to get to where I could—slowly—get through the tons of neglected papers and magazines. Then, there was all the short-circuited work I did before the illness. That was the tough part. To see work I had ready or almost ready to go out into the world is mentally discouraging. I know how hard it was to steal, squeeze, squirrel away the time to do the work and to see the plans I had ended prematurely, just felt like the last straw. Sometimes, it seemed such a waste.

But nothing is a waste. I truly believe that, but the purpose might have to change. It might end up being a learning piece of work, instead of a winning or earning thing, but my time will not be wasted. I will not let it. And it is up to me. First of all and most important, when I did the work I was doing something I love. That won’t change, no matter the outcome. Secondly, it may well still be used or turned into something else. That’s up to me, too.

That’s what happened with an essay I wrote before my illness. It was an essay very close to my heart, about an incident with my father. I submitted it to a few places with no success, but in my heart I knew it was meant for something, yet, my heart was so tied up in it. Still, I just felt it was good and needed to be out in the world, but I never got the chance to resubmit.

When I finally started writing again, the essay haunted me. I really needed to send it out, but just didn’t feel I could edit and improve it, yet. Then I started the poetry workshops. The subject of the essay was perfect for one of the assignments. I worked this new angle, with new perspective, new form, new frame of mine. Vintage Dust was written.

One could say, my goodness, it only got 15th place, but I say someone else related to it, took meaning from it. Who knows how many others tried and didn’t get 15th place. I imagine if my father knew (and I think he does) he’d be proud of me and proud to be a part of my tiny success, too.

Color me, Pink

2011-03-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent the last 18 hours

doing the Snoopy dance.

First, I was able to work for a while in the yard. The sun, so warm I didn’t need my garden jacket. I feel much like a bear, coming out of the cave after a long hibernation.

And then, I was informed yesterday that I won 15th place in the 6th annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards for Vintage Dust. At first I thought, 15th? Then I got thinking that there were a lot of entries that didn’t win. I would be tickled, if not pink, purple, and not so much pat myself on the back but say to me, good job.

So I e-mailed a copy to Writer’s Digest, as they told me to do, so they could publish it in the Competition Collection, which is better than the letter, certificate and $50 in Writer Digest Books. When I checked back later to see if I sent it correctly, (I’m notorious at doing dumb things when I e-mail) there was another e-mail informing me, I also, won 4th place for Spider Silk.

Well, tickle me pink, all right. Fourth, almost in the running. A$25 dollar check, the Poet Market 2011 and another poem published. Even, my name in the July/Aug Writer’s Digest.

Be it jewel or toy,
Not the prize gives the joy,
But the striving to win the prize.
Pisistratus Caxton, The Boatman

My Day Job

2011-03-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Why I won’t/wouldn’t, can’t/couldn’t give up my day job. It is my life. My real life. It is not a nine to five. It is 24/7.

Sometimes it’s hard to take me seriously, as a writer—even for me. That becomes a huge problem. It is a huge problem. How can anyone else take you seriously if you don’t? Why should they?

I mean, take priorities—there is just no contest between getting mother’s medication snafu’s straightened out, ordered, delivered—last minute, because she failed to tell me she used her last blood pressure medicine and besides, it only takes one day to be delivered by mail order,(You don’t know you’ve stepped over that demarcation line, the one between care receiver to care giver, until it rises up and slaps you down.) and where to put that comma or get character worksheets down or plot points worked out.

Taking my writing seriously has always been a struggle anyway, with financial struggles, time crunches, and the unique life of a ‘railroad widow’ raising three boys. There were never two of us to drive three boys to soccer, T-ball, music lessons. There was me and in a real pinch, my mom. (I insert here that I called on her as little as possible because she had enough to do as a widow with a job and a yard to care for.)

Well, now there’s another little guilt stab, isn’t there? She helped me out, and though I don’t feel obligated, I do owe her. From the time I was eighteen, she stood in as my mom and my dad, plus, caregiver to her parents. She stepped up to the plate for her parents, without the support of a husband. (How blessed am I?)

Anyway, it took me forever to figure out how to carve time for my own dreams. I was a stay at home mom back in the day. I was busy trying to give my boys wings, as best I could. Besides it took me a long time (it wasn’t even mentioned back then for a housewife to dream dreams) to learn I needed to dream my dreams and follow them. To learn it was as much for my children and grandchildren as me. If I give my grandkids only that one thing—that it is never too late to follow dreams—that will be everything.

My day job means I am a part-time writer, with a full time guilt. Guilt follows you through raising your family, but it peaks when you’re doing caregiving. You see, the help you give is never enough and those needs keep growing. You end up fearing you’ll be sucked into the tsunami and you’ve seen those who were.

You feel like you’re just waiting for the next disaster, that next one thing that will put you under. You wait for the one thing that breaks the camel’s back—yours. You want to do all you can for your parent, but in the back of your mind, you think about the writing you are not doing and feel guilty about thinking about it. Every day there is a feeling of being torn. In addition, there is more than just caregiving that tears at you. You have your family, your husband. Sometimes to write you give up time with them and is that worth it? You may never reach your goal, but you have all these blessings. Don’t you owe them your time?

I’ve been a caregiver all my life, really. From the fluffy little black kitten with the white bib, I had at six, to pet store animals, babies, boys, husbands and now, my mom. It is something I know how to do. What I don’t know is if I can also write enough, well enough to publish a book.

But it isn’t as if I can quit either.

My day job is my life and my writing holds me up.

2011-03-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Be grateful

for every detail because

tenacity

will get you there and

gratitude

will not allow you

to be angry

when you’ve arrived. —Henry Winkler

I’m not always honest. Quite a few years ago, I did a sneaky thing with my local RWA group. I wrote inspirational essays every month. It looked a lot as if I was helping all the members of that group, cheering them on, giving those pep talks, but all the while, secretly, like a little evil sneak I was really helping myself. I should have been ashamed of myself. I wasn’t. I used them.

I use this blog the same way. I tell all who read my blog the story of my writing struggle. I give details about writer’s block, feeling low; I give pep talks and tell about things that work for me. I want to show, as do many writers, by the way. (There are a million writer blogs-amazing numbers of good ones, too)my journey. I don’t have a ton of followers, hardly any, in fact. Still, I make myself post regularly. All right, this too, is as much (more) for me as my readers. A terrible confession. Worse is, I have purposely left out, for the most part, the biggest challenge of my writing life.

I’ve left it out for good reason, for personal and family reason, but left it out, I have. I probably would keep leave it out, too, except, last week I went in search for blogs that might address the challenge. I didn’t want to feel so alone. I am caregiver to my 93 (almost 94) year-old mother and a writer. I question, often, if I can face all the pitfalls of publishing as I navigate this jungle of elderly care giving. I wonder if there are others in the same boat. I know there are and wanted to find a few, read how it goes with them, read about another like me.

I found a ton of blogs, but none with the same challenges and I wondered if I wasn’t leaving out one of the most important details of my writing life.

I do not want to spend too much time letting myself feel sorry for myself. I was afraid if I looked too hard at those challenges, I just might. I feel, sometimes, I’ve done that with my illness and think it is better, to just move on as much as possible, other than the history of it as it applies to my writing.

Since my internet search, I’ve thought that, maybe, I might say something that might help someone going through the same thing I am, with similar problems and challenges. I thought how nice it would be if there was a blog that talked honestly about trying to get published while caring for an elderly parent.

I’m trying to be a loving caregiver and every day is a challenge. There isn’t enough time, money, patience and always I must fight against being swamped by frustration, exhaustion and guilt. I have to find a way to take care of my mother with kindness, grace and a kind of Zen attitude.

Mostly, that is a whole lot like accepting my illness. A, it is what it is, acceptance. I have to say to myself, the same words I say when I submit a piece of writing. I did the best I could. It’s not perfect, and that’s all right.

A Writer's Impatience

2011-02-28T09:17:00.001-08:00

Sunlight, finally, after so long. For many years, February has been the beginning to the end of winter. The first snowmelt, the first all day, truly sunshine day, the sounds of peacocks calling, ‘Help!’ behind our house.

Yesterday, we drove to the mountains where the sunlight was magnified by fresh snow, where snow laced dark, mysterious pines, piled high on abandoned picnic benches and slid from steep-pitched roofs. Where the ski resort was over-packed, the ski runs scattered with ant-size skiers from our perspective and every dog was laughing.

The sun beat against the car window heated us until we were too warm and hungry. All there was to do, then, was stop at a little convenience store for chicken strips and potato logs and douse them with ranch dressing, while we ate in the car like hooky playing teens. Very reminiscent of my teen years, going off the grid, so to speak, on that first good day in February.

Still, spring is coming. I feel it in the back of my neck where something—some tiny muscle finally unwinds, relaxes, whispers—‘you made it through another winter and this time…with flying colors. You’re learning; you are finally learning how to love winter, too.’ And so I am.

Oh, no doubt, I feel rusty. I think that’s normal for anyone. Maybe, hints of hibernation tendencies. I’m growing impatient for bright colors, fresh vegetables and activities without heavy coats and gloves and boots.

Better yet, it feels as though the winter mulch has been brushed away from my writer’s mind. I’m wanting more than editing, blogging. Maybe, it’s because I’ve finished my goal, but I’m starting to want to look for something new and fresh. I’m getting the urge for poetry and researching and planning a new novel and…I’ve waited so long to feel this—renewal.
Ah, ha…spring has been whispering in my muse’s ear.

Promise Kept

2011-02-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

Monday morning, sunlight on new snow, the fifteen minutes of purging and organizing my office done and the blank screen reminding me I have a blog to write. That blog, this blog, is really not important to anyone, but me. It is only a commitment I made to myself some two years ago.

It’s done its job. I’ve had a purpose, however unimportant, a deadline, though there is only me to answer to. Still, the promises to yourself you keep have a lot to do with how you keep promises to others.

The promise was to write at least one blog a week, Monday preferably. There were other promises, too. And last week I accomplished another one of those promises.

This promise was made just after the lowest time in my illness. I was starting to feel better. At least, I was eating and doing a little more than sleeping or watching TV. I tried to write, but, as I've written about before, strong medicine with its confusion and muddled mind and weakness only left me panicky and depressed. I cried a lot. Maybe, there was anger, too, but the primary emotion was fear.

I tried to crochet—something I always found comfort and peace in—but I couldn’t keep track of the simplest pattern. At the time, I wasn’t at all certain whether this was a permanent thing or a side-affect to the strong drug I was on. There was nothing in the two-page paperwork that came with the drug about it affecting mind, memory, emotion, writing.

As my husband said, it is what it is -the only answer we had. I started doing cross-stitch. Oh, not the counting the little weave of cross-stitch material thing. No, this was the old-fashioned stamped cross-stitching I learned back in grade school. Very repetitious and simple, but therapeutic in some very elemental way.

The pieces I did turned out beautiful. They are charming additions to my décor, but better still, I like seeing them on my walls. Actually, I cherish them…for so many reasons. I accomplished something as I got better, something very tangible. I like that it was words stitched into linen. Somehow, that soothed over the fact I wasn’t writing.

I had the samplers framed and placed where I would see them every day and send up gratitude prayers when I did.

It was right before I hit on the idea of doing the samplers that I’d tucked my most recent novel—Ellie and the Tie-down Man—away in to a storage box. As I’ve written before, I wasn’t sure I would ever open that box again, let alone edit and complete the book. I cried some more and sank into a funk. I felt guilt about the funk, because I was getting better. That was what we had prayed and hoped and worked so hard for. It was why I became obsessive about taking my meds and watching every grain of salt.

I just didn’t think getting better might mean giving up writing. With a lot of help and support from family and friends, I did start writing again and I’m actually very glad everything happened exactly as it did. I came back to the writing slowly but finally, I opened that storage box. When I did, I promised myself I’d get Ellie and the Tie-down Man ready for submission.

I finished edited the book last week, polished the first three chapters, even more, wrote a synopsis, query letter and sent Ella and the Tie-down Man with all its changes (character name change the most evident) into two contests.

I’m not going to say that winning wouldn’t be a hoot, it would, but me keeping this promise is the main reward. Writing this book from the beginning to now was a journey, with more snake pits than I’ve mentioned to anyone. It has earned itself and I’d love to see this book published but if that never happens, (and that’s the most likely scenario) I’ll always be proud of it.

Books, Bookstores and Pat Conroy

2011-02-14T09:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve truly been blessed lately with some wonderful books. Not so long ago, I was complaining about the condition of my reading material. Oh, I’ll say I still miss having more Western Historical to read, but I’ve found some great books to fill in with. Last week I read an exceptional book: Pat Conroy’s My Reading Life.

The subject fit right into my last blog. Tastes in books are so personal and it was fascinating to hear about another voracious reader and bibliomaniac. It isn’t well enough for me to just read a book. For me, it is a much more tactile than that. Nothing is as compelling as the smell of an old bookstore, heaped with dusty books. Old books are best, with turned down pages and scribbling in the margins, yellowed paper and dark library-colored covers. Then, there are the paperbacks.
I blame my father, I do. He brought home old books he found at Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. Books such as King of the Wind, Old Bones, and all of Thornton Burgess’ books. At the time, I was horse crazy and I never met an animal I didn’t like. Later, it was poetry: Emily Dickerson and Sonnets From the Portuguese, incidentally, one of my most prized books because he died soon after he gave it to me and it was the only book he ever inscribed.

Conroy writes of libraries, bookstores, and books with such love and passion. He writes those emotions beautifully, too, his writing style like blue silk velvet. And while his reading was much more diligent and formidable than mine, the sentiment was so like mine when he spoke of what he read. He talked as if reading was a feast, and it is. The best.

I would say I’m much more inclined to read the popular stuff than the classics, but I read what I read with as much zeal and enjoyment. The only classics I’ve read were assigned in school. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy them; I just had to read them. In my off time, I did a lot of reading, unlike most of my friends, but my reading material was most often genre fiction.

My reading material doesn’t shame me though, because I think there is a lot of great writing in all those ‘dime novels.’ Yet, reading Conroy’s book gave me the desire to read a few classics on my own, with no gun in my ribs.

As I use to tell my boys, I don’t care what you read, just read.

The Children's Library

2011-02-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

The children’s section of our city library was in the basement with its own entrance, down gray cement stairs and through a wooden door. When I opened that heavy door, a little bell jangled a warning for the children’s librarian, Mrs. Peterson, nested behind the desk, directing eager, respectful kids to their chosen fantasies. As I remember, she was mostly round and soft, white and gray. Her face pleated when she smiled and she smiled most of the time, unless you disturbed the hushed quiet of her kingdom.

The children’s library was dark, low ceilinged with that musty, rich smell of crowded books and oak bookcases stuffed with mellow-colored covers in dark burgundy, navy, moss green. Oak card files, chest high tops, covered with heavy glass, outfitted with pencil holder, library stamp and return cards, low tables with ladder-back chairs, dark patterned carpet and Mrs. Peterson’s executive desk, in the place of command.

Once a year she brought in her dolls, displaying the extensive collection around the shadowy interior. Many years later when I visited the library, long after I quit the children’s section and there was a new library building, the dolls were on display. She had bequeathed the collection to the library in a very generous gift, but nothing like the gift of reading she fostered in so many children.

My mother had three voracious readers and she sought help from an expert. Mrs. Peterson always knew exactly where to find the books that would suit each of our interests. Even mine.
Reading was important to my parents, though they never said so in so many words. Not like I did and still do with my own children and grandchildren, but they read to us every night and made a trip to the library every two weeks to check out books for their own pleasure. Often there wasn’t enough money for luxuries, but there were always books, borrowed, bought second-hand, or given as gifts. How lucky I was.

By the time I was eight, I was reading just about everything. If I found a subject I liked, I’d read through ever book I could find. I remember reading through the whole shelf and a half of horse stories the summer I was twelve and horse-crazy. The next year it was boy/girl stories and Mrs. Peterson knew exactly what I was looking for and where to find them.

The year after that, when my mother asked for advice on books for me, Mrs. Peterson stood up and folded her hands over her soft belly. “I think she’s ready to go upstairs.”

As simple as that. I never thought much about Mrs. Peterson, after that, or what she meant in my life. She, most likely, didn’t think much of that shy, dish-water blonde girl who went from horse-crazy to boy-crazy in one short year either, but that little girl wonders now, about her dedication to books and reading and children. That small way she gave so much. Not a bad legacy. Not a bad thing to remember and honor in some way.

Godsends for Febraury 2011

2011-02-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

Wow, it’s been months since I’ve done a Godsend blog. That’s the thing, isn’t it? You just get so busy you fail to notice all those wonderful joys and graces that make life great. You’re so busy living you don’t take the time to have a small gratitude moment.

And it’s true, I’ve really been head-down focused on finishing the editing on Tie-down Man along with Christmas, the New Year and all the family, cooking, gifting that comes with that. There have been two family funerals, which should remind a person how fleeting life is, but doesn’t always and of course, my mother’s needs to manage. Still, I know there have been some Godsends. This morning sunrise, for one.

I did mention a few wonderful books I’ve read, Godsends for me. But the one thing I promised I would do with each good book I read was write the author and let them know. I haven’t done that. And I promised myself when I was sick that when I got better I would take note of those Godsends. It’s important. Here I am months since I’ve done it and I feel a bit disappointed in myself. Not for all I’ve accomplished. I have done well, but for things I let slip by without taking a moment to appreciate.

So, for this February Godsend:

• Discovering a ledger with my entries from 1983-1985. A small revealing glimpse inside my
family from that time.
• The rereading of an old manuscript I should never have given up on.
• The kindness of Kaki Warner’s encouragement and information.
• Help around the house.
• A good movie, popcorn included.
• A bouquet of tulips, yellow, of course.
• Decluttering my office. Oh, what I’ve found.
• Stories about loved ones I’ve never heard before.
• I can almost see spring, honest.
• Pink and red and hearts taking over the stores color scheme.

Odds

2011-01-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

What are our chances of becoming a best-selling novelist? About 11,600 hardcover fiction books are published a year. Only about 90 sold 100,00 copies or more, less than 10 sold over 1 million. Odds, then, are around 1 in 125. That's if you find someone willing to publish your book, in the first place.

Long odds. Something else has to make it worth it. Make buying and learning how to work a computer and all the problems that brings, worth it. Something that makes the workshops, critic sessions, the rejections, worth it. If you ask, most writers say there was never a choice. It isn't that they want to write, it is that they must.

For every writer who must write and was published, there are over 125 writers, most of which are must writers, who have failed. So be it.

Frank Lloyd Wright said, the truth is more important than the facts. The truth, the truth I will listen to, is that if Dianne Wilson Elliott or Kaki Warner hadn't ignored the facts and gone ahead to write, anyway, there would be no chance that I would read Forever and Beyond or Pieces of Sky.

I think the truth here; my truth is I must write, I must try, today, despite fear. Fear of failure or fear of success. Oh, yes, always both fears. Fear of failure and the mirrored fear of succeeding. That nagging worry of success and its impact. For a writer who wants nothing more than to work away in the office without thought or worry about those other things that publishing brings: deadlines, promotion, networking, social obligations, the thought of success can be overwhelming.

I get panicky when I think that way. Silly, but I do. Another truth is, I have to do, try. I have to let go of what will happen or not happen and let it. Difficult to do when so much is riding on that. Difficult to do when so much is already beyond my control.

Again, truth is, I must.

Misc. Zen Thoughts

2011-01-24T09:11:00.001-08:00

Misc. Zen Thoughts

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor. —D. H. Lawrence

The standard advice when the publishing/writing blues hit is to write. I prescribe to that advice 90% of the time, too, but…when you've bowed your head and forged ahead, you've kept at the page, writing even when you don't feel like it and what you've written just plain stinks, you have to try something else. You know: shred oranges or scrub floors or both.

Get out of your head, get off your butt, do something physical. Ideally, something with sounds and smells and feels. Marmalade or gardens, hikes or swims. Try that!

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. —Ray Bradbury

All you have to remember is being a teenager, walking into the hangout, worrying whether someone would notice you, or no one would and the certainty both were equally bad. There's a way you walk and scour the room, hold your body and focus your gaze. It's so obvious you're nervous. That's how your writing comes across when you think too much. Every word shows it. Don't do that!

What, then, is your duty? What the day demands. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What does your day demand to take that next step on your way to your writing goal? Is it edit? Brainstorm? Put in your word quota? Fill the well? Do it!

When you've got it, there's no place for it but a poem. —Wu Pen

Trying another genre from the one you normally write. It stirs your mind, bringing to the top fresh, new thoughts and ideas. No matter what you write or how well you write, every writer needs that stir once in a while. Stir that!

The Perfect Teachers

2011-01-17T08:56:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, you’re just lucky and sometimes the time’s just right. And as they say, sometimes, when the student is ready, the teacher will come. I’ve found in my life, and the way it plays out, I have to be satisfied with unique means and methods for teachers to come. It is very often not a person.

So, this beginning of the year, after all the chaos of the holidays, the cooking, wrapping, shopping, and company, I was ready for a little inspiration and encouragement. Besides, there were all those resolutions/goals I wanted to meet.

The diet/live-it thing, I’ve resigned myself to realize is not a resolution or goal but more a daily way of living, but the writing thing, why, that is my soul and self nourishment. A way of life, too, sure, but sometimes, hard to maintain the upbeat attitude. I can use some help with that and with the ways and means of making my dreams come true now and again. Can’t we all?

And along comes help. All three in the form of a book. But isn’t that just like a book? The first was a book I had in my TBR shelf. I’ve been meaning to read it for years and finally, because it looked small and easy to read, but was a writing book, which I resolved to read at least two this year, fit my needs: The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell. The perfect book for me, at the perfect time. I always love Bell’s writing books. He’s to the point, with explanations and descriptions that I completely get and he touches every aspect of writing with smart, doable things to move forward with a writing career.

The next book The Productive Writer by Sage Cohen was perfect for opening my eyes to so many small ways I can sneak, steal, manage my time for more writing times and opportunities. When I read her writing books I always feel like she’s a big sister encouraging me on, telling me I can, even when the world, sometimes, tells me I can’t. So many times I feel as if everyone else is telling me how to spend my time. Cohen, tells you how to put your writing first to be better for everyone in your life.

And finally, there was Chasing the Sun by Kaki Warner, the last in her Blood Rose Trilogy. It was so nice to know there was another great Western Historical out there to read, but everything ends. This trilogy ended perfectly and thankfully, Kaki is busy writing another series.

But for a writer, nothing brings a smile, tickles up admiration and gets the writing juices flowing the same way reading a great book does. Road-map, encouragement, inspiration and example- the perfect teachers.

Perfection

2011-01-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

I want perfection from myself. I don’t expect it from anyone else, but from me, I want it. I wonder why that is? Especially, with my writing. I want every word perfect.

I’ve been writing all my life with a few breaks of steady writing due to…life. You know, that vast, beautiful wilderness desert of babies, diapers, railroad widowhood and early marriage poverty. I spent hours upon hours relearning typing, learning computers (kids are the best teachers for that and I had to raise them up to the age where I could absorb it by osmosis, time being what it was.) I had so much to learn to right at the level I wanted. I bought and studied the 1983 edition of How to Write a Romance and Get It Published by Kathryn Falk and devoured it cover to cover. I learned formatting and plotting and new computers. I took grammar workshops, struggled with wrestling time to write from all my sweet, loving, needy family members. I cried, fought, struggled and…

I’ve written about ten Western Historicals. Most are complete with only one more pass through needed to be ready for submission. So, why aren’t they out in the world? Why haven’t I been published? Maybe they just don’t cut it? They aren’t perfect and… truth is it’s mostly because I’ve been afraid they are not perfect. The timing was not perfect, for me or the world of publishing.

After all, I can’t begin to compete with the latest writing darling. I’m not the next Lavyrle Spencer, Penelope Williams, Jodi Thomas. The trend is not toward the Western Historicals and has not been for many years, but it is my favorite.

So…the writing wasn’t right. The timing wasn’t right. I wasn’t right. Thank goodness there were writers who didn’t care about all that. Thank goodness, there were writers who put their work out there. Writers like Kaki Warner, Jodi Thomas and Linda Lael Miller.

Perfection paralyzes.

One of the definitions in the Franklin Merriam-Webster Dictionary really struck me: an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence. Unsurpassable. In other words, can’t be done.
What can be done is writing the best book I possibly can, taking a deep breath and sending it out in the world. I can work to improve, but realize I will never be perfect, but I’ll get better. And better is enough. Better is my personal best, at that time. Maybe, it will be enough to be published and maybe not, but it is certain not to be published if I don’t get the things out there.
As I wind down my final edit of Ellie and the Tie-down Man, and I listen to all the sobering news about the industry, I know my chances are slim, but I must try. For nothing more than myself. The goal has always been to get my work good enough to submit.

It’s a lot like fishing. My husband always wants to go fishing. When we do, he starts worrying about catching fish. I tell him, we were going fishing, not catching. That’s what I’m doing here. I’m casting the best bait I can write out there on the water and hope for a bit or two. But in the end it was really about the writing.

Goals or Resolutions

2011-01-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

New Years Day with family is just about perfect in my mind and this year was great. Best was all the discussions. Of course, resolutions came up. I brought it up. One daughter-in-law mentioned she didn’t do resolutions and instead, made goals. I liked that thought.

I have wonderful daughter-in-laws, intelligent and beautiful, but still, I wondered—what was it I was really trying to do? Goal or resolution? Was there really a difference? Maybe knowing would help succeeding.

Every year I do a jumpstart anyway. I get ready and decide what the next year will be like and what I want to accomplish, weeks before. I’ve learned this is one of the best ways I can fight winter blues, cabin fever and seasonal affective disorder. All of which plaque me.

It’s been several years since I’ve been really psyched to do goals or resolutions. All I wanted was to accomplish something, anything. So many things were pushed back as I dealt with MPGN and being a primary caregiver. This year I'd like to give myself and my goals more attention. I know it will be a challenge with these other things and a retired husband around. (Although, he supports my writing. Smart man, he knows it is not a matter of my wanting to write, but I need to write. If I could not write, I would.)

Still, there are so many critical pulls to my energy, things I cannot ignore or change. The best thing I can think to do is give myself a way and means to try to do them. I know…there is no try, there is only do.

So, I looked up the two words in question in the dictionary. What else would a writer do? Well, she would look the words up in a thesaurus, too. Wouldn’t she?

Goal: the end toward which effort is directed (INTENTION)
objective, aim, end, target, wish, dream

Resolution: the act or process of reducing to simpler form as a: the act of analyzing a complex notion into a simpler one. b: the act of answering: (SOLVING)
resolve, decision, commitment, pledge, promise

I realize I need both. I need a goal, but I, also, need a simpler way to reach it. I need resolve. I love that word. It sounds tough and strong. It’s me, with my chin sticking out with determination, my shoulders strong and firm, ready for a fight or a 5k walk.

And I know I can do that.

New Year and Resolutions

2010-12-27T09:55:00.000-08:00

The New Year and resolutions can’t be far behind. As always, there are those to lose weight and get more exercise. Work on health issues. I’m all over that, of course. It’s a daily, weekly, yearly battle or goal, depending on the successes.

Something else has come to my attention, though. Something that’s been nagging at me for some time. I neglected so much while I was sick. Nothing was filed, read or scanned. We kept the office clean and tidy, but when I got back to writing, that’s what I concentrated on. Organization suffered. Truth is it got out of hand and I’ve never dealt with it since. With good reason and decision, too, but now…Now, it’s time.

I’m like every writer I know, collecting articles and information, ideas and tickler snippets. I’m actually pretty good at filing all this mess of paper, but I’m in need of serious help now. The room is spilling out of its boundaries. I can’t always find what I’m looking for, which wastes too much time. I’m a tiny bit obsessive-compulsive, too, so the chaos shatters my concentration if I dwell too often or too much on all the things I haven’t done.

There’s no way around it. I need to do some sorting, organizing and eliminating. I’m smart enough to know it will be long-term work. Something that, a little at a time, will take many, many hours. There are writing books I’ve read I need to send to used books stores and magazines to toss. There are tokens and gifts and little things I’ve picked up to store. There are articles to scan, label and file for research.

Mostly, it’s time. That thing I never have enough of. I’ve begun this week between Christmas and New Years with the hope it will kick start the habit. The sad thing is I need to do the same in each room of the house and I plan to. I’ve come to realize it is a constant job—the sorting, storing, culling. Questions—Is this relevant in my life today and still? Do I still need or want this? Will I write about that? Do I need that nugget of information still? Have I used it and no longer need it?

Nothing earth shattering as far as resolutions go, but each little space I accomplish this with will pay me back and ease my mind.

And I begin today.

Opportunity

2010-12-20T09:06:00.000-08:00

I’ve been working hard on editing “Ellie and the Tie-down Man.” The work has been, for the most part, going very well. As I said before, I could clearly see where I stopped when I was hit with MPGN, surrendered to fighting that. That brought forward many memories. Of hopelessness and fear. And worse, the question, would I ever write again?

Sometimes, surrender is the only thing you have control of. So, you do it. It kind of goes against my nature. As I’ve said before, it broke my heart. At the time, it felt like failure. It wasn’t. I was choosing to concentrate on what needed doing.

That was a lesson, I needed to learn and it’s served me well, too. I’ve been plugging away at this novel. Improving, tightening the novel, enjoying the work, thrilled with getting back into the story. I’m just four chapters from the finish. I’m ready to celebrate when this nagging thought keeps wiggling in the back of my mind. Word count. Word count? Word count.

What was the word count? What would it be if I kept going on as I had been? What is the word count for Historical Romance? Now, today? Not when I put it away. Not with the rough edges. But now.

I did some research. I added up my word count. I’m thousands of words over, if I leave everything as it is, but I’m just four chapters from the finish line. I feel as if I’ve been on a marathon and I have to go back and start over.

I’ve been on a four-day funk, too. Thoughts of banging my head against my desk sound helpful. Giving up this book, sound reasonable. I’m not even sure the book has anything to recommend it. There are other things: other novels, poetry, memoirs clamoring to be told. I’m not getting any younger. My time is limited. I’ve wasted enough time. I lost so much time and I have to be reasonable. Blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada….

Well, la, la, la, la, la, with fingers in my ears. It came to me. This isn’t about Ellie and the Tie-down Man. It’s about me learning something. It isn’t about getting published. It’s about lessons in learning to do this thing I was born to do. It’s opportunity.

It’s the opportunity to get this book right. Right now. It’s about pulling up my big girl pants, getting busy, and cutting a whole bunch of my carefully written words. And that’s what I’m going to do.

Happy Holidays

Poetry, Gardens and Reflections

2010-12-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

I’m finally reading “The Wild Braid: A poet reflects on a century in the garden, by Stanley Kunitz. I was introduced to Kunitz through a poem by Mary Oliver about Kunitz in the last workshop I took. Oliver called Kunitz her Merlin. My instructor Melanie Faith mentioned The Wild Braid. The book is a wonderful mix of poetry and conversations about Kunitz gardens.

As you can see, I’ve come to Kunitz’ work by a braid of introductions. Kunitz, talks of the many forms of communications, aside and beyond words. This last week has brought this home to me through more than one source. Sometimes, the universe is determined to show us something it feels we need to know, isn’t it?

I learned at an early age that grief can be beyond words, beyond tears, but I never really thought too much about other emotions.

I listened to my son play an arrangement of Silent Night and O’Holy Night yesterday on the guitar. No words, no singing voice could have conveyed the love and sincere faith in the same way each tenderly plucked note did. A heart can break and heal hearing that.

And then, Kunitz reflections about walking through his garden, brushing his flowers to release their perfume touched me. I do the same thing. I’ve always called it my morning benediction, but I see now, it was a way I need to communicate beyond the human way of conversation and words.

You see, I am a gardener and poet, too, and reading this book was like meeting a friend who knew exactly what I feel as I work my garden, make a poem, write a novel. Poetry is cultivating words and composting them down to their most rich order and form. It is moving words around, taking out words, working the poem, sometimes for years. It is also, finding the silence, that thing beyond words, beyond years, beyond happy. It is listening, quietly, to unspoken whispers. To music and scents, textures and sounds. To nature and nurture. It is allowing yourself to crack open. Be vulnerable.

To garden, to write poetry, to write a novel is to live cracked open. (And yes, I know some will say—just cracked. I ignore them, with a smile. I am living a distilled life. I don’t think those who laugh know what they are missing.)

Listen.

Western Value

2010-12-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

I’ll admit it; I’m a sucker for a good Western—movie or book. I was raised on Westerns. Good old Westerns were the staple for movies. Every year I could expect a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movie (and they were good) and new Western Historical Romances came out at least once a month. TV was dotted with Western series—Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Alias Smith and Jones, even Kung Fu.

There’s not near enough of them anymore. I guess we’ve moved past them. The world is too fast, too connected, too far past those days, those old-fashioned values. I, for one, miss the Western and all it brought.

Even the music has changed. I’m a big fan of the new country music, but I do enjoy going back to its roots, now and again.

It comes down to what’s so often missing in the world today. There is less silence and while we’re more connected, that connection is so much less personal. Business is more about bottom line and less about customer satisfaction. How productive you are is more important than how well you do your job. How fast and cheap something can be made is more important than quality. The profit margin more important than the true value.

A writer’s platform is much more publishable than the writer’s writing. So many books are published, anymore, because of the author’s name and notoriety, instead of writing skills.

There’s not a lot we can do about all this. I’m afraid the change is permanent. Those growing up now, don’t know. They have no reason to mourn, but I keep searching for Western values, movies and books.

I’m hearing wonderful things about the remake of True Grit, this time with Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn. Though it’s hard to imagine anyone doing justice to Wayne’s Cogburn, if anyone can do it Bridges can.

Well, as John Wayne said in The Cowboys: “We’re burning daylight.” And, I figure if I can’t find it, I’ll write it myself. And that’s the best a writer can do, write the book she wants to read and hope someone else will love it.

Shop the Bookstores

2010-12-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

RWA is encouraging its’ members to support the bookstores in their communities this holiday season. I’m all for that. It’s broken my heart to watch the small bookstores around here struggle and go under. I see the chain stores struggle (Barnes and Nobles, for goodness sakes) and wonder what shopping for a book will be like in a few years.

For a lover of books in every form and condition, it breaks my heart at the prospect. No more quaint little stores with bells on the door, worn carpets and cubbies with chairs. The best books I’ve ever found, I wasn’t looking specifically for. I was book browsing, thumbing through pages and book covers hoping to find something that sparked my interest. I found Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton, that way. I’ve found new authors I might never have tried wondering the isles with nothing more on my mind than a good read. You don’t get that serendipity with the internet.

And it’s my belief you need a little of that once in a while. Serendipity brings joy, broadens your interests and mind, and keeps you from the same old, same old.

Now, I know the internet bookstores offer amazing benefits, benefits I’ve taken advantage of. I was able to find a set of The Junior Classics (copyright, 1912) and replace the set I grew up with that had gone to my sister. I tried for thirty years before using the internet and I’m tickled that I did. It is my childhood in a set of ten books and gosh, all lightening, I’m not sorry I have them.

Yes, I’m well aware of the advantages of online shopping, but I also think there is room for both kinds of stores and we need to support both. So while you’re out doing your Holiday shopping remember what a wonderful gift a book is and buy just one for someone on your list from a local bookstore. Buy one book for your granddaughter, or your mother, or sister. Just one.

You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many books. —Carter Burden

The End of End Pieces

2010-11-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

I’ve been going through my files, scanning tear pages into the computer. My file cabinets are stuffed. I have to make room. I keep articles from magazines and newspaper that spark something in me or in my memory, give me ideas, help my writing, gives me another take on a subject I’m interested in. And, of course, I save research material.

A wealth of information passes through my fingers, if I pay attention. I’m sure that’s true for anyone, but a writer never knows when that one tiny insignificant bit of information is just the thing for a scene in a novel, a line in a poem, a whole essay idea.

It amazes me the piles of tear outs I’ve kept from magazines and newspapers over the years. As I’ve been going through these I’ve noticed most of the tear pages have come from magazine end pieces. Every magazine had one, that last page essay. And I loved them. As I’ve been going through these files I’ve been amazed at the writing. Those end pieces are the best writing, I think. Emotional, witty, thoughtful, over the back fence conversations, that we get now only through blogs and internet noise.

It made me just a little sad. I know there is so much more access now, more opinions heard, too. Probably a good thing, that. Yes, the dialogue is bigger, more diverse and we most likely do a lot more thinking about someone else’s opinion, whether we agree or not.

Still, is it wrong of me? Does it reveal my age when I say how much I miss those end pieces in magazine? When I could read them over my toast and honey at breakfast, where the speed of the rebuttal didn’t exist and any answer to the essay took thought, editing and careful wording.
These archived essays were a strange illustration of my tastes, my views, disagreements with views and my life as a stay-at-home mom during a time not so different from now. It is a history, my history.

End pieces from Byline (how I miss that writer’s magazine), Garden Shed, Writer’s Digest, Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping. My life in end pieces.

The pile reminds me of a box my brother-in-law gave me from his Aunt Doris. He said I was the only one he could think would appreciate the contents of that boot box. The contents must have meant a great deal to Aunt Dernice, she kept it through every move she made, including the last. Inside the old boot box was a pile of papers with quotes. Luncheon napkins with quotes on the back, church programs, tear outs from the newspaper (1945-1956.) Of course I wanted it.

I collect every great quote I run into, too. What a treasure and a little bread crumb trail of Dernice’s life.

It’s kind of sad that there won’t be a lot of breadcrumbs left behind anymore.

Platform

2010-11-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

Writers are supposed to have a platform. Publishers are reluctant to take on writers without one.

The only platform I have is, I write. I want to write. I love it. I struggle with and for it. That passion is what has pulled me through illness, heartache, rejection, worry, happiness.

That is the only ‘plateform’ I can think applies to me. Blogs and social networking is necessary, but you need a platform for it to do its good. I can’t give advice on my blog or hints that I don’t think I qualify as knowing. I can’t go about giving advice to anyone unless I’m certain. I mean, I even second-guess me.

My policy as a mother, daughter, sister, friend and writer is to only give advice about the things I am certain of. Oh, I’ll give opinions, all right. I’m full of opinion, but I try to remember to preface anything like that with a reminder that it is only my opinion and I could be wrong. Because I am, often.

As to writing, any discussion is going to be a short one, because I’m just not certain of much when it comes to writing. Oh, I’ve been writing since the first grade, but do I qualify to give our advice? Besides, I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that, honestly, anything could work or nothing. In my opinion, of course.

But…one thing I know a whole lot about is struggling, floundering, and just doing the best I can as a writer. I know striving, grasping for positive reinforcement, studying, learning, failing, failing again, failing better, wrestling doubts, fighting the let down of rejection and pumping up my own confidence. I know about not wishing, but working, writing the best I can, even if it’s not ‘good enough.’

Now, if that’s ‘platform,’ I have one.

Godsends and Thanksgiving

2010-11-18T09:07:00.000-08:00

I feel as if I’ve been so busy, this whole year. Being busy is a double-edged sword. I like busy, especially if it’s because I have tons of ideas and projects in my writing—poetry, novels, my blog, several pressing goals or deadlines. The more I write, the more I write.

Besides, it keeps me involved. It ups my production, too, which is great. After my recovery, when I missed writing so much, there is such a joy, just to write.

I want to write even more. I forget there is this other life that calls me, needs me, is my heart. This other life I love, that I’m so lucky I have. My civilian life, so to speak.

Still I find being too busy is much preferred to boredom or illness.

I am never bored, but I certainly do forget things…like my Godsends. I only just realized it’s been months and so many Godsends, since I blogged about them. October’s colorful leaf display, Halloween, spook alleys.

Well, November won’t go by without me mention some:

Scattered brittle leaves in copper, old gold and bronze
Wood smoke curling welcome around my shoulders
Stormy scarlet sunrises and sunsets (check out this one http://http://ourstorydaybyday.blogspot.com/)
The first spit of snow
Magpies kibitzing about the free walnuts I donate to them
Poetry workshops stretching my poetic muscles
Homemade lavender soap
The extra hour sleep
Flannel sheets
Thanksgiving—in the heart, for the tradition, the dinner and oh, yes, for the writing.

Progress and Challenges

2010-11-15T10:21:00.000-08:00

Every Monday, early, I take care of my houseplants. While the computer boots up, I trim out dead leaves, look for bugs, insert the water meter and water the Boston ferns, the ZZ plants, the tri-color pothos, rubber plants, lipstick plant, philodendrons and violets.

There was a time when these plants became one of my tricks of salvation from the winter blues. Now, I simply love something green surrounding me. I’ve accumulated them slowly. They brighten my rooms and mood.

I had to learn to love the winter. November, my birth month, always seemed so gray and grim. Nothing to really recommend it. It has taken years for me to realize that isn’t true. The sun still has warmth in it as it streams through the windows and autumn color, though muted, still splashes old gold, here and there, through the silvered trees. As Dickens said, “each season has a beauty all its own.”

There was always my birthday and Thanksgiving school break going for it. Later, I was often buried beneath the preparations of the big feast. The turkey, potatoes, stuffing and pies. I took over the preparations of Thanksgiving the year after my father died.

He was in charge of getting the turkey ready to roast and carving the bird. Such simple tasks became huge holes. I was always a curious child, asking too many questions, why, where, when, how, what, can I help. I’m so glad of that now. I use to watch my father clean and truss the turkey, so there was no question that I take over and help my mother with the meal.

I kept at that until it became too much to drag my growing family to my mom’s house each holiday, so I began my own traditions, always including my mom. As my family grew and got married, knowing I had to share my married children, holidays became an every other year tradition.

This year it will be just my husband and I. I’m looking forward to the smaller, quieter meal. The time to read the fat sales ads, taking a nap with the smell of the turkey, and the fireplace to keep me company. No pressure. I might even get to read a book, or do some writing.

I’ve learned through the on and off years, a loveliness to November and the rest of the winter months. Even a gratitude for time spent closer to home and warmth.

Writing is a bit easier without the garden calling to me, whispering of neglect. The office like an isolated turret as snow falls and the fireplace blazes.

I’m at the end of a five-week poetry workshop. As I’ve been so determined to get the edits done on Ellie and the Tie-down Man, I planned to work on both. My time has been very compressed as I still have my day job: primary-care giver, chief cook and bottle washer, railroad widow around here.

The experience turned into quite a challenge in more ways than one. Is it the cosmos, chaos or me? It seems when I am most pressured for time that is just when the most, time-consuming, unable to be ignored interruptions take place. Still, I stuck with it. I pressed on.

It paid off. It really did. I don’t know if the poetry I wrote was the best, but I do know I stretched myself. I tried things I wasn’t sure I wanted to try and emotions I wasn’t sure I wanted to feel. There are five poems that need editing, but still, there are five poems.

Ellie and the Tie-down Man is on track. I’m on the downhill of that. Though once I got past the spot where I had to stop when I got sick, it’s been tougher going as that hadn’t been touched before.

Progress is sweet. Challenges make it even sweeter.

Thank Yous

2010-11-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

In the September issue of Writer’s Digest, Sherman Alexie suggests we thank an author when we read a piece of theirs that we love. In the Nov./Dec. issue, M. Claudette Sandecki mentions this, too and says she thinks of it as ‘insurance' that more of similar work from the author will make its way to her.

It’s a great idea. A writer’s life is isolating. All of us wonder, sometimes if we connect with our readers. A simple note, offered to the writer telling them what we enjoyed.

I think it can go deeper than that. Everyone likes to know they’re doing a good job. It gives a lift to the trudge of everyday and helps maintain the work. I’d do it to a great waiter, a thoughtful hairdresser. (And throw in a tip.) It’s a way to connect to the writer, expecting nothing but wanting only to show appreciation for the enjoyment I got.

It’s such a simple thing to do with e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook, so available.

Give a writer a gift this holiday.

Risks

2010-11-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

At one time, I had a relative tell me I needed to take more risks. It’s true I am a careful person. I wear my seatbelt, wash my hands constantly, use hand sanitizer, drive the speed limit, wash all the surfaces in my house with Clorox wipes, at least once a week, look both ways when I cross the street, wear the brightest clothes in my closet on my walk in which I, also, carry a can of mace. I lock my doors, I have virus protection, insurance. I don’t fly, speak in public, hang-glide, jump out of perfectly good planes, ‘cause you’re not going to get me in it anyway. I don’t gamble, get on ladders, mix chemicals, do wiring. (If you knew me, you would not want me to.)

Actually, I’m an obsessive-compulsive coward (This all made more so with the MPGN, ensuing prednisone treatment compromising my natural immunity, the flu scare of last year with the difficulty in getting the shots and the newfound vulnerability I now feel, in spades.) and I’m okay with that. Really, I am. But don’t tell me I don’t take risks. I risk every day. I risk my heart, my confidence, and who I am. I do sorties into hostile territories, every single day. I know, from the get-go, I’m going to be under fire, likely shot down, wounded and…and every once in a while…saved. Don’t tell me I need to take more risks. I write. I risk everything. Does that sound dramatic? It is, I suppose, but other writer’s know exactly what I’m talking about.

Writers hear it, it’s the common vernacular: Open a vein, sweat blood, tie your butt to the chair. Sounds a bit violent, doesn’t it? Non-writers wonder why the hell we do it. Every writer I know wonders, too, on those bad days, but the writers that stick with it know, without any doubt or reservation, it is worth it.

It is worth it!

Halloween Rainbow

2010-11-01T09:48:00.001-07:00

Ten Things That Keep Me Writing

2010-11-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

I stay in my office. I do the work. Fight the distractions, even if it feels like that’s all I’ve done that day. Even if it feels like I only got two words written, I don’t leave until my time’s up, then I start again tomorrow.

I let a lot of things go. I’ll never have everything done so I’ll have time to write, so I write first, then tackle the stuff.

I realize, I don’t need workshops as much as I need to just write.

I decide. I’m in charge of my time. I’m the one who decides what distractions and interruptions I allow to get through.

I know the odds are against me, so I enjoy the process, but…BUT…I know that with persistence the odds tip in my favor.

I never go anywhere without pen and paper. There’s no telling where I might find my next great idea or detail or gem word. I keep myself open and I’m always ready to capture the treasure the universe sends my way.

I try to ignore the bad news about publishing and be happy I’m doing what I love to do. I get as much joy as I can accomplishing what I set out to do.

I allow myself a half hour funk for rejection. Tell myself it wasn’t my turn and try again.

I take time for myself and my well-being. I exercise, eat right 80 % of the time, unplug, have fun, do something just for me.

2010-10-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

Not five days ago, the dribbles and drabs of fall: the gradual gilding of the walnut trees on my parkway, the sudden appearance of marauding magpies and squirrels as the few walnuts hit the ground. I was scrambling to get the perennials cut back and the garden harvested of the last of the tomatoes, zucchini and broccoli. And scrambling to eat all those fresh veggies. Such a bittersweet challenge.

The weatherman warned of cold and wet and maybe, even snow. Time to dig carrots. All summer I had barely looked at the row of carrots, except to thin them the first time. I never did get around to thinning them again, as I wanted, so I never did look too close at the row out of guilt of my neglect. Besides, we had all we could do to keep up with all the bounty of vegetables we had: broccoli, chard, lettuce, radishes, green onions, spinach, cabbage, tomatoes and zucchini.

My husband ended up doing the digging in the rain. After washing and sorting them, he left them on the lawn until I returned from taking my mother shopping. I was so surprised at the simple beauty of that pile of near perfect tangerine-colored carrots. We’ve planted carrots every year for decades and never have we had such straight, perfect carrots.

For years and years, we’ve gathered the rocks up from the soil hoping to eliminate all the crocked, deformed carrots. We’ve fought ants and bad germination and just not growing. (last year).

I could write an ode to the carrots. They are that beautiful but all I can think of is carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

I’ve been so busy the last couple of weeks working on my writing, half the time I feel out of breath. I’m doing another great workshop with Melanie Faith called Following the Golden Thread: A Tapestry of Poetry and it is marvelous. Deliciously inspiring and the book we’re using for our text just like my carrots. Simply perfection. Each chapter is a gem. The Try This sections giving me so many ideas I’ll never get to the all.

Poetry always kicks up my energy and my productivity in my writing. I need to remember that and always have a poem going.

The workshop opportunity didn’t come at the best of times, but I wanted to do it and my husband said something so smart. “You get feedback here, where you don’t get a lot of feedback from the novels and even when you do, it is so delayed that it almost doesn’t count. You need this to feed the rest.” Smart man.

Still, because I’m determined to finish, Ellie and the Tie-down Man and get it out there in the world, (It’s a principle or goal or…One more thing I promised I’d accomplish, if I got better. It near broke my heart when I packed all the research, drafts, notes and copies away. I wasn’t sure whether I would ever finish and the novel was right there at the spot of needing just a bit of tender care to finish.) I’m working on the novel, too. It means working on the novel in the mornings and the poetry in the afternoons and still doing my other jobs. (Those jobs don’t pay either—you know, chief cook and bottlewasher, caregiver, go-to person.)

And above all, don’t stress. Do I look stressed?

I feel—spun. Good, but dizzy. And that is seed of my poem for this week.

Interruptions and Distractions

2010-10-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

All writers deal with interruptions and distractions, but writers who write from home are in guerilla warfare.

It happens, sometimes once a week, sometimes many more. That interruption, the one that breaks your concentration and stops that flow, so hard-won.

Distractions are roadblocks, out to derail. They’re sly and chameleon-like, masquerading as something important or tantalizing. That e-mail could be important, that breaking news, significant. It’s true. The ‘just-one-game’ does sound fun, relaxing and harmless.

I’m not sure exactly what I battle most, myself or outside sabotage. I want to write. When I’m writing, I know I’m doing what I was born to do, what all my little cells came together to make: a writer. But I also know: that was not exclusive. It was never intended, that that was all I would be. I was supposed to be a mother, too. So, that sort of follows, I was supposed to be a wife. And when I came into this life, I was a daughter, a sister, an animal lover.

All these different roles I play are important to me. They are where my soul lives.

But that is what a writer is, isn’t it? Someone who is plopped down in this world to record. Whether fiction or fact. A writer observes and writes that observation down the way they see it—fiction or fact. That is the writer’s unique viewpoint. (and boy do all those roles give me golden grist.)

I usually know exactly what I intend to write, too. Finding a subject has never been the thing that keeps my fingers from flying across the keyboard. It’s more insidious that that.

Interruptions do come, sometimes once a day, sometimes they pile up. The phone calls, other’s thoughtlessness, others ‘emergencies.’ You know the ones I mean—Dear Abby, even got a letter about a writer’s husband calling from the office, asking this writer to bring him something he forgot from home. Abby had tough answers, too.

This is what I’ve figured out over the last thirty years of writing from home: It’s choice. The writer has full charge of what she/he lets into her job area. It’s about making boundaries, priorities and choices.

Life is a series of interruptions and distractions, especially now, with all the technology that also makes it so much easier on writers. (Can you imagine not being able to cut and paste, copy, and move about on the page at will?) So, the real trick is harnessing all the helpful stuff and putting all the distractions and interruptions in priority order.

You have to know and act on what you really want to do.

Interruptions use to make me angry, which like domino’s dropped minutes of productive writing one after another while I fumed. I was good at fuming. Had it down. Thing is, fuming did worse by my writing than any interruption.

Some interruptions are better dealt with immediately. Then, move on. Some interruptions are really an opportunity for a teaching session to the interrupter and some interruptions are best ignored. The writer has to figure out which is which, depending on their priorities.

Learning to accept interruptions, the ones that must be dealt with immediately, can get you back on track and focused. That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it?

Making firm written lists of priorities and goals helps with choices when tempted by time-wasting distractions.

Those who learn to focus, who honor their priorities have the edge.

Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true. Anon

Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it’s so hurtful to think about writing. —Heather Armstrong.

Walking for the Cure

2010-10-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

It looked like a flock of flamingos. A sea of pink headed for a pink and white balloon arch as the five-mile walk got started. I’ve wanted to join the walk for six years, since my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I thought it would be something I could do: walk, donate money, join others in the group.

I didn’t expect it to be emotional, still. I thought by now, emotions had burned away. The worse was behind us. My mom had won the battle, given her age. She will likely die of old age, not breast cancer. As Lynn Redgrave said in an old ad for breast cancer awareness, she wants to die of anything other than breast cancer. Me, too. Old age sounds good.

We got through surgery and recovery, drains and doctor visits and fear and worry. We’d come out on the other side, tattered, yet we’d done a good job darning the holes. They’re still there, but one would hardly notice.

As I looked at the faces of the other walkers—I already knew the faces of my loved one—it struck me. Mine and my daughter-in-laws stories were personal, but the walk put hundreds of faces to hundreds of stories as personal as ours.

The four sisters with a picture of their mom printed on the back of their pink shirts. The woman pushed in a wheelchair, her hair wrapped in a bright pink scarf. The four members of Creative Wigs walking in outrageous pink wigs, looking marvelous from behind until I realized they were, all four, bearded men supporting their clients. The women sporting bright pink feather boas. The woman who walked the whole way pushing a walker. The large group walking in memory of Gary. (Yes, men can die of breast cancer) Those who walked for their friend, for their co-workers, their teacher.

Even the team names tell stories: For the Girls, Cheering for a Cure, A Little Help From My Friends, Save the Ta Ta’s, Save the World, Fight Like a Girl, Doin’ the Walk for Dot!, Saving Second Base, Good Karma. (Their mom's name was Karma)

It was sobering. It was uplifting.

Such a huge crowd behind one enemy and this was just one of many walks or fundraisers going on around the country this month.

Best weapon is still getting checked. Do it. Tell your mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, best friend, neighbor to get checked. Remind them, offer to take them, go with them.

As my t-shirt said: I wear pink for the fighters, the survivors, and the taken.

Words are important to me. I’m a writer; I strive to use the exact right word. Taken is the right word.

As I was thinking about why I wanted to do the walk, I thought of the true reason, my true reason:

For the Warriors, the Survivors, the Taken. For Maude, Dona,
Valentine, Candi, Erin, Jen, Amanda, Alyssa, Talia, Dani,
Marilyn, Mary, Tami, Connie, Sherry and me.
For Women Writers and Readers. For Poets. For the Supporters and the Caregivers
and all those who love them.

Fleeting Glory

2010-10-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

Between posting my last blog and now, a mere twenty-two minutes later the rains came. A deluge, really, and the Morning Glory has melted in the rain like fine silk. I'm so glad I savored.

Savor More than Writing

2010-10-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

October and my Heavenly Blue Morning Glory is only now coming into its own. The cool spring and early summer delayed my Blue. Though all Morning Glories love heat and need nighttime temperatures of fifty degrees or more, Heavenly Blue and the Moonflower seem to be the sticklers. My Grandpa Ott Morning Glory thrives, cropping up just about anywhere. The purple flower vines through the tomatoes, up the old metal baby crib headboard leaning against the retaining wall and through the Rose of Sharon. I love its’ serendipitous nature. I do, but at times, it’s too much.

I was afraid I wouldn’t get even one start of my Heavenly Blue coming and until just a few weeks ago, I was certain the vine by the shed door would turn out to be another Grandpa Ott. Oh, I planted Heavenly Blue seed there, but far too often, I’ve ended up with dark purple flowers where I envisioned sky blue. And there really is nothing to compare the impact of those satin-blue palm-sized blossoms—like pieces of sky twining on the shed trellis.

The blooms are so fleeting. Each bloom only lasts a day and the plant flowers so late I always feel the need to capture the glory with a camera. I gaze at the silky flowers as storm winds toss their edges, knowing the coming rain will be their ruin.

I’ve tried to preserve the blossoms by pressing them in my flower press, but the results are disappointing. I’ve tried to plant seed indoors so the starts are ahead of the game by the time the night temperatures are to their liking. That, too, has had mixed results.

The Morning Glory show is so welcome, so worth the wait. The rest of the garden looks tattered and shabby. Mildew has muted the zinnias. Petunias are tired. The vegetable garden has wound down which makes for some interesting vegetable heavy meals. I don’t mind, at all. Well, a bit, as I’m an elk-hunting widow this week and I can’t possible eat all the vegetables the garden is still producing. Fall lettuce is coming on, late radishes and green onions make for a great salad when I add homegrown grape tomatoes and olives.

Zucchini is wonderful sautéed with garlic and olive oil. Broccoli is at its’ best, steamed with brown butter sauce drizzled on it. And my favorite lunches is tomato salad made with sliced grape tomatoes, sliced string cheese, green onions with Italian dressing and French bread. Sometimes, I add sliced olives to the salad and toast a slice of French bread under the broiler with any cheese I have on hand on the top. A simple feast that eaten at my desk as I take advantage of the quiet. I hope to get tons of writing done.

Yet, this morning Heavenly Blue Morning Glory pulled me outside, whispering of poems and coming rain. Worse, whispering of coming winter. So, I savored.

Writing Is Enough. Except When It's Not

2010-09-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

I tell myself: Less than one percent of material submitted is accepted. Only one can be the winner of a contest. Writing is subjective. Writing is enough. And it is.

Except, when it’s not.

Rejected. Winner-not. Two slap-downs to my writing ego within twenty-four hours. Again.
And I got past my allowed fifteen minutes of funk in good shape, I thought, but as I watched Maddie Rose smack-down Zoie with an ill-advised bid for play. I realized I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t stop crying. I’m relieved my husband was out of town. He doesn’t quite understand why I put myself through it. If I could stop, I would.

So, I took a bit longer feeling sorry for myself, than I usually allow. Maybe, a good half-hour longer, then I got busy. There is editing to do and I’ve signed up for another poetry class toward the middle of October. I need to do a bit of preparation for that because as I take the class I intend to continue with the edits as I am determined to finish this book to my satisfaction and send it out. I know it is taking on a lot, but I need this.

It’s that time of year. Oh, not of tangerine and burgundy leaves and slanted sunlight, not of fading gardens and harvest, although that is all true. Around this house, this time of year heralds a world gone mad, in my opinion. There is no account of why two people fall in love and autumn always brings this home.

End of September and first of October brings the loss of husband. Oh, he’s hanging around but mind, and attention, and brawn are all bent toward: HUNTING! Now, me? I’m on the deer and elk’s side, cheering for their team, making my own safety zone. If I’m recruited to beat the brush, I shoo anything I find in the opposite direction of the rifles. (You can see why I am no longer recruited. I am the odd one—That tree-hugger type.)

Hey, I make no sense, but I’m practical. I understand the theory behind hunting, I’ve eaten elk and venison, I love to shoot, but I can’t point a gun in the direction of anything living, except, on certain days, publishers, editors, and men in general, one specifically on certain days. That’s actually a lie. Four, on certain days. I raised three boys, but that’s another story all together, isn’t it? And am I wrong, don’t we women feel that way every once in a… all right…a lot?

Hunting in my husband’s family was the BIG EVENT, the traditional, the Christmas. It was planned for and reminisced about all year long. Male children (and later, female children) were pulled out of school, vacation days were used, gear was fixed, bought and packed. It was big. It is still big.

My contribution, then, is to help feed the bunch. Tradition now includes my mother’s chocolate chip cookies. These are one of the first things I cooked at home. The recipe originally was in a small Nestles Toll House recipe book that came with the chocolate chips many years ago. The book, the size of a recipe card is little more than a few pages bound together with two staples. It’s yellowed and stained but it makes me smile. My mother changed a few ingredients to please her tastes. She gave the recipe to her mother, who added cinnamon and cooked them a bit less, so they were softer. Both versions are childhood to me. I send these to the mountains with the guys.

Chocolate Chips with Oatmeal Cookies
4 eggs
3 cups flour
2 tsp. salt
2 cups shortening (must be Crisco)
11/2 cups brown sugar (dark)
11/2 cups sugar
2 tsp. soda
2 tsp. hot water
2 cups walnuts
1 lg. pkg. Nestles butterscotch chips (2 cups)
1 lg. pkg. Nestles semi-sweet chocolate chips (2 cups)
4 cups oats
2 tsp. vanilla
Sift together flour and salt. Cream shortening. Add sugars gradually, creaming until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Dissolve soda in hot water and add to creamed mixture alternately with sifted dry ingredients. Add nuts, chips and oats. Mix. Add vanilla. Drop by teaspoon onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375º for 10 to 12 minutes. Note: You must use Crisco, the butter flavor is best. You, also, must use Nestles chips for this recipe to turn out right. (Try it with white choc instead of butterscotch)

Of course, they have to eat more than cookies. The guys each take a dish. This is a favorite of mine to fix, but I use this recipe a lot. It’s tasty and so easy. I love the lemony flavor. I serve it with rice and a green vegetable.

I got this recipe out of a magazine years ago and use it pretty much as is, except, I’ll use canned chicken broth instead of the water and bouillon cube as I have that on hand. I add about 1 teas. grated lemon rind to the flour mixture. I do not use salt. Adding the lemon rind compensates for that.

Lemon Chicken
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
¼ cup flour
½ teas. salt
1/8 teas. pepper
Butter
1 cup water
1 chicken flavored bouillon cube
2 small lemons

Mix flour, salt, lemon rind and pepper. Coat chicken. Reserve flour mixture. In skillet over medium high heat, melt 3 Tbls. butter. Cook chicken until lightly brown on both sides. Add more butter, if necessary. (Use Teflon pan to reduce fat.) Remove chicken to plate. Reduce heat to low. Stir remaining flour mixture into drippings. Add water, bouillon cube and juice of ½ lemon. Stir to loosen brown bits. Return chicken to skillet. Thinly sliced lemons and arrange on top of chicken. Cover. Simmer 5 minutes.

Retreat, Recharge, Relax

2010-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

I’m back from a retreat, of sorts. A short four-day camping/fishing trip to the high Uintahs. Autumn was but a whisper, as we entered the mountains. Minor splashes of pale tangerine and amber among the willows marking the creek, hints of straw yellow scattered through the aspens, wine red and crimson in the maples. When we were there in June, the snow still capped the high peaks, but it was long gone and vegetation looked dry, but wild asters bloomed pale lavender and the wild roses sported poppy-colored hips as big as my thumb.

It had been a particular tough month and I looked forward to a rest, but I wanted to do some writing work of some kind. My thought was to work on hunting for poems. The camping trips feed the poetry and I needed a break from editing. I didn’t spend much time with that, but I came home feeling a bit rested, with photos and ideas. I consider that a success, given how I work a nd how this last few years have gone.

I do a lot of what I call paper thinking. Writing down doodle words, hunting up words that relate to a poem idea, or even a scene, that I’m not getting crisp enough. The paper thinking helps me. Gets my mind loosened up, my mind wandering, or maybe, analyzing. I’ve done this from the beginning, as a eight-year-old. Yet, all these years later, I forget and start writing like a person walking up hill with all the determination of a angry bear.

I have to remember to stop pushing so hard. Hanna Nyala said it best in Leave No Trace: Keep your nose over your toes. Don’t get your head to far out in front. It puts you out of balance and wears you down. But when I’m focused on the finish I tend to do that, forgetting to enjoy the work (‘cause I do). I forget and get too hard on myself.

I did a little paper thinking while there, along with extra sleep, a break from caring for an elderly parent, photos of wonderful scenery. Although with all the photos I took, I got nothing of the autumn color. Instead, I ended up with a lot of pictures of sunsets. The skies were overwhelming and for some reason spoke to me this trip. It seems so cliche, but I'm trying to trust that I have a reason that I needed pictures of skies at sunset.

We spent several hours one evening on a knoll in the middle of the forest, listening for elk. We were a bit too early in the season, but the silent hours, wind in the aspen (we could hear it coming from three canyons over), the distant thunder, the short bursts of rain fed me just what I needed.

We travel a seventeen-mile dirt (washboard) road to get to the campground. This year we were surprised. The first half of the road had been blacktopped. It made for a smoother, faster drive in. The downside may be more people in the campgrounds, less wildlife. We have enjoyed solitary camping in previous years. We’re not unfriendly, but we do like getting away.

I'm glad to be back and back to writing. I think I needed the break. I think I need to get back to work.

A Writer's Thoughts

2010-09-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

This week I persevered. Oh, that word. It is perfect for writers, isn’t it? It is what a writer must do for even the hope, the chance at publication. It makes me smile. It reminds me of the old Indian, Lone Watie in The Outlaw Josie Wales.

I persevere. I write every day. I submit, wait, resubmit. I wait on contest results and keep writing and editing. I observe with focused intent. I eavesdrop on conversations looking for authenticity in my dialogue. I read with my mind not on just the joy of reading, but always with an analytical eye toward the writing. 'I endeavor to persevere.'

The thing is, I do love to write. It seems a paradox that I’m so eager every day to get to my desk and begin. Yet, there, sitting in my nice comfy office chair with all my favorite things around me—books, pens, plants, ink bottles, paperweights, family pictures, cowboy stuff(hey, I’m a collector)— I sometimes begin with all the eagerness of going to my own hanging.

It’s the failure. Nobody wants failure. We’re all afraid of it, but writers kind end up with this expectance for it, this kind of conditioning. We will fail. (The unconscious thinks…so what’s the point) Don’t know any writer who hasn’t had a rejection or two. Mostly, many more than two. We even save the proof of failure, file it away, count each one.

On one hand we need to do that, on the other, it is killing our muse. So, we persevere, but we do persevere. The best of us do anyway.

So... as Josie Wales would ask, 'Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?'

Indiana Jonesing

2010-09-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

I don’t really know what I’m doing. This whole editing is a giant leap of faith in myself and—in some ways— the universe. I’m Indiana Jonesing it. Making it up as I go, using all the know-how I can, and right now, I feel like I’ve stepped into the snakes.

Every time Jones got out of a mess, just as he started smiling with satisfaction, something else, something far worse, happened and he ended up in a pit of snakes.

Don’t you just feel that way sometimes? Like you’re making it up as you go? Well, you are. Like you’ve dropped into the pit of snakes? You have.

That has really hit home this last few years and especially these last few months. We may have a lot of education, knowledge, practice and experience in a given situation, but really, it is all new. What once worked doesn’t always work again. What we know, changes. What we plan, falls through.

It’s been a challenge doing my writing in the three hours I have. ( I want more.) Lately, it’s been terrible and all the old problems, problems I thought I had conquered have been just like a dang big stone rolling after me. I’m running just as fast as I can, but that rock is gaining and of course, I know I’m going to trip.

I use to write four hours each weekday (and it wasn’t enough. I wanted more), but as my mother has aged, it seems I end up spending at least an hour each morning checking on her, managing meds, managing some other crisis, working on meals (that being more challenging each month as she steadily loses weight despite racking my brain to combat that. Now, I’m talking about a very vital, healthy ninety-something-year-old) And as frustrating as it may be, I cannot forget that the time and effort I spend caring for her is not infinite. I must cherish what I do have and always remember what is most important.

I just didn’t know that the whispers and demands, the stories that must get out, those ‘voices’, that inspirations will not stop. They will not leave me alone. They will peck and nag and ache, still. They will not be denied. Until put to paper they will not leave me alone, but they will be lost. That is the exquisite torture. And I live with it because I don’t know how not to.

Sometimes it pulls me down. Especially when all the rest of life is pulling, nagging, tripping me. When everywhere I turn, I am lassoed and dragged away. Sadly, I do a lot of kicking and scratching, complaining. What I need to do is hide out, but sometimes you just have to do life.

I didn’t know, I couldn’t know how much it would hurt to be in the constant need to steal a moment or two to write. I knew I was making a conscious decision to put my mother’s needs first, but I’d done it before when my boys were small. I read then, how much writing I could get done while the kids were playing their sports, doing recitals, school assemblies. I chose to be present. I chose to watch. I wanted to be able to talk about what they were doing, how they were doing and, aside for a few illegible notes, I didn’t write during that time. I knew my life with kids would be fleeting. And it was.

I have a similar choice now. I don’t regret the decision I made about my kids. I’m certain I won’t regret the time I’ve spent caring for my mom.

Still, that ache sometimes just hollows me out. I’ve felt stress before, every one of us has. A job that just must get done is interrupted constantly by another equally important thing. That anxiety of knowing you can’t get everything done.

This is worse, this has become painful—like guilt. As if I’m not honoring a gift. It nags and presses and demands. It nips at me worse than an angry spider.

Can I be published working just those three hours? I’m not sure. The only thing I know is that this will change, too. There will be new challenges in the future. Some days I feel like I’ve been dragged over a rough road underneath a speeding truck, but I galloped my horse after that truck and jumped on board, didn’t I? That’s how much I wanted to be a writer. How much I still do. (Remember what my sister told me? “Well, you write, don’t you? That means you’re a writer, doesn’t it?”)

Yes, it does. I’m a writer, therefore, I write.

Simple.

But I wonder if Indiana Jones really just wanted to dig????

Editing Refocus

2010-08-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, while I’ve been editing this book, I’ve wondered if I can still create a story from the blank screen. It’s been so long since I started a new novel, after all. I get hungry to begin, to start a new story, meet new characters, be in that world I make up, instead of the world I made up. I think it is a hunger for that other kind of creating.

Also, I worry and wonder if the last years have lost me more than I realize. And lost what I may never get back.

I know I am creating as I editing, sure, but it is different. It is a recreate, of sorts, a clearing up of a vision, many years old now.

I actually draw a lot of hope from feeling I want to begin, start, do something new, too. I don’t want to feel stagnant, dead in the water and just floating along. I want to write new, and I think writing something new keeps those muscles agile and strong. It also creates a different excitement.

But I have realized that if I am to finish this book, progress as a writer, reach my goal I must focus. Focus has been difficult these last few years. I felt so much as if I’ve been catching up, finding all I’ve lost, making up for lost time. I’ve felt a nagging to hurry, hurry, hurry. Some of that comes, I know, from wondering if I would every do…this. Write. Create. Do what I always felt was one of the things I was born to do. I was made to do.

So, as in so many times and troubles, I turn to poetry. After the morning hours of editing, I switch to writing poems and poem ideas. I don’t push or struggle, but wait, writing idle thoughts, doing thought maps, finding words. I let my mind go off on whatever tangent it wants.
I don’t often end up with any full-blown poem, ready for readers, but I end up with gems, in need of polishing. Perfect starting points for some in depth poetry retreat or session. I end up feeling as if I’ve created some small foundation to something wonderful and that eases the hunger for another day.

The novel comes back in focus, my goal doable.

Summer’s gone, with just a few more weeks of sunny days and warmth and the garden. Grasshoppers have grown lazy, the ‘Autumn Joy” sedum is turning pink, the hydrangea has gone brown and there is a hint of goodbye hovering near my pansies. I can’t truly blame them. I planted them last fall with all the hope that their brave faces would see me through to October, November and those first shaky beginning of spring. And they did.

I take the poem writing outside with me. Why not? Those days are not long mine to take. So I store them up like the hummingbirds hovering over the salvia garden up on the second tier of my garden stocking up on nectar. There are lessons there, I suppose, so I take poems, words, hopes with me on my morning walk, too, where the scent and chill has been decidedly autumny. It’s amazing how that morning walk and the poetic expressions and phrases gets me ready to knuckle under once I get home.

And so I will.

And so I do.

P.S. It means nothing big to anyone but me, but I braided my hair today. It’s been two and a half years since it was thick enough to do that and I smile happy tears.

Research

2010-08-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I’ve taken hundreds of pictures for my research files. I write mostly western historical, so I haunt museums. Nothing gets the details down quite like the actual item: studying it, imagining your character using it, feeling it. Many of my pictures are the old-fashioned film kind and admittedly, I never did find a good way to file them so they were easy to find.

Digital photos help with that, but replacing all my film photos with digital would mean revisiting a lot of museums. I wouldn’t mind. Virginia City Nevada was a step back in time, mysterious and haunting. I didn’t get enough of Cody, Wyoming, but the truth is, right where I live is rich with museums and western history.

My local amusement park has a pioneer village tucked in among water rides and carousel where homes and cabins, a livery, a church and furnishings can be studied and photographed. Wednesday I spent a few hours doing just that.

It’s not like I don’t have all the details, props and facts already researched and figured out for Ellie and the Tie-down Man, but I wanted to get the feel and reality of the times. It would have been even better if I could have touched the table worn smooth by scrubbing, run my hands over the quilt made with one inch squares from a family’s worn-out clothes, or felt the heat of the potbellied room stove.

Instead, I stood at the glass partition separating me from the relics and tried to erase all the other looky-loos and put myself into that cabin with the best of my imagination. It worked, too, for the most part, (aside from the smell of chlorine, hot dogs and fries.)

I came home with wonderful pictures, a sense of time and place I needed and notes for some poetry that’s been wanting out, wanting attention. You see, as hard as I’m working on my novel, I still sneak time for my poetry. I have to. The poetry demands it. And as I said, poetry has always lead me into my best writing, helped me find my voice and taught me about concise wording.

I have been gathering together poems I’ve written with the hopes they could become a chapbook. I’ve figured out the title and direction I want the book to go. And the two projects are keeping me focused. Better yet, the research was a boost to both and a good day spent out of the office.

Write What You Know

2010-08-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

One of the first instructions given to writers is to write what you know. Most of us know much more than we think. This is what I know:

I’ve spent the last two years thinking about my experiences. About what I’ve done, what I’ve learned. About my teachers.

I took my first writing class in the sixth grade from Mrs. Mildon. She taught me how to see things, she taught me empathy, she taught me another way to read and though I already loved books and reading, she taught me another dimension of reading. How to study a book. She taught courage and how to stand up to things that knock you down.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1963, in the middle of the school year. We had to cut the writing class short, but she kept on teaching for several years, missing few days, despite the cruelty of treatment back then. Teaching meant everything to her and she showed me just how to honor what you love.

She taught the students in her creative writing class many basic writing skills but first and foremost, she taught us to be true. True to our writing.

Her words:
· Beauty and sharpness of expression, yes, but sincerity first.
· We work for sincere, meaningful descriptive writing
· And her most repeated: Give your words wings—but remember: “I’ll never write a line I have not heard in my own heart. —Rostand

Reading and writing are cornerstones of who I am. My most lasting memories are of my parents reading to me—at bedtime, while braiding my hair, at lunchtime.

I talked early (according to my sister, I never shut up). Words are a security blanket comforting, real, understood. If I want to learn how to do something, I need the written instructions sets it in my head best.

I like words straightforward and simple. I like them turned on their ear and played with. I love playing word games. I love rolling words on my tongue just to try out their music. Words have lead me to and through many things. It is how I see the world. It’s how I navigate the potholes of my life.

I always thought I was destined to be a writer and have thought so since I first took up a pencil. Self-published (I was ahead of my time), at seven. I sold short stories, mostly western historical, (horses played a prominent role, of course), to my mother for a nickel. (A Butterfinger cost a nickel. See where I was going with my pricing? As you can see, I’m also an avid chocolaholic.) I tried selling stories door to door. That didn’t go over very well, but I could always count on my mom to buy my latest work.

More recently, I’ve had short stories and essays published in national magazines, wrote an inspirational column for URWA for four years, won several poetry contests. I also have a drawer full of unpublished work. Tons of poems, short stories, essays, plus nine novels. I admit, some probably shouldn’t see the light of day but some should.

I’m owned by two cats (Zoie and Maddie Rose) and master to no one but my dog. (and L.E. ( my dog) might dispute that) As of this moment, I have been owned by eleven cats and have owned nine dogs.

I’ve waited up all night, heart in my throat for a new teenager driver to come home and held many a dinner for a hard-working husband. I’ve been a grieving daughter, an angry wife, a frustrated mother.

I’ve been a baby, a fey child, a tomboy, a little sister, a daughter, a girlfriend. I was a daddy’s girl, a rebellious daughter, a flower child, a straight-A student. A high school newspaper reporter and a poet. I’ve been an introvert, an awkward daughter-in-law with her foot in her mouth. A carhop, a pet-shop worker, a dog groomer, a dog obedience instructor, a bookkeeper, a bride and pregnant.

I’ve been a vegetable gardener, flower gardener, home-canner, seamstress, crocheter, knitter, quilter, cross-stitcher, decorator. A movie-theater custodian, a PTA mom and the proud mother of graduates, grooms, and adult children. I’ve been a soccer mom, a t-ball mom, a neighborhood chauffeur and a salesperson. A supply clerk, building contractor, designer, cook, columnist, member of the RWA and URWA, grandma and the primary-care giver to an elder breast cancer survivor. And a friend to many, I hope.

I’ve survived childhood, the 60’s, Mr. Hansen’s current events class, dating, marriage, motherhood, sister-in-laws, mother-in-laws, daughter-in-laws, grandparenting, aging, illness, more than one recession, lost jobs, lost hope, downturns, upturns and everything in between. Survived three broken arms (not my own), chicken pox, measles (both kinds), mastitis, gout, anemia, rickets and MPGN. Survived childbirth, a D and C, a hysterectomy, a colonoscopy, an upper GI, a CAT scan, a cystoscope and a kidney biopsy. Car accidents, a broken tailbone, heartache, headache, laughter, tears, and despair. I’ve done emergency care for cuts, rebar speared through a child’s leg, more than one head trauma, blood infections, HS purpura, a Woolly monkey, and a hit-and-run cat. Lived through countless sleepless nights, police calls, loneliness, blame, abandonment, over-whelming chaos and peace.

I’ve been animal-crazy, horse-crazy, boy-crazy, baby-crazy, Beatles-crazy (watched ‘Help’ nine times in one day), Neil Diamond-crazy, Kojak-crazy (don’t ask), Magnum PI-crazy. And just plain crazy.

Been too thin, too fat, on a diet, off a diet, healthy, sick, and just right.

I’ve worn sun-dresses, poodle skirts, love beads, bell bottoms. Maternity smocks, pantsuits and holey Levis. Mommy jeans, mini-skirts, granny skirts, straight leg, peg leg, flare leg, tapered leg. Round toe, square toe, pointed toe. I’ve had curls, braids, ironed waist-long hair, bleached-out hair, ratted hair, neck-length hair, perms, balding hair and graying hair.

I’ve killed and dressed chicken, ducks and doves, helped cut up deer, elk and bear, watched cockfights, dogfights, girl fights and caught craw daddies, minnows, trout and worms. I’ve shot a rifle, revolver, Saturday Night Special, muzzleloader, slingshot, bow and arrow and the bull.

I’ve saved a hummingbird, a life, pennies, S & H green stamps, Gold Strike stamps, coupons, memories, books and I hope, my friends, and myself. I’ve fried and eaten grasshoppers; dug a hole to China (didn’t make it), raised puppies, guppies, angelfish, cat-faced spiders, ants and boys. Rode horses, been thrown. Got back on. Rescued ducks, dogs, cats, lost horses and lost wallets. Moved a mountain of mud with a shovel, a heart to tears, and three children out of the house.

I’ve been to court, to prison, to a mental hospital, seen the original Beach Boys in concert, hiked the high Uintahs, lived in small town USA all my life. I’ve shucked corn, snipped beans, dug potatoes, and picked peaches, raspberries, strawberries and a husband. I’ve cut asparagus, firewood, a path through a forest and a rug. I’ve made my own ice cream, root beer, pickles, Levi’s, sweaters, rugs, quilts, afghans, samplers, rules and way.

I’ve collected bugs, antiques, precious moments (figurines and minutes), old bottles, galvanized watering cans, aluminum cans (since the 70’s), newspapers, thimbles, all things Gone With The Wind, Rod McKuen poems, stamps, pictures, poems, ink bottles, paper weights, pens, blank notebooks, books, quotes, skeleton keys, milk glass salt and pepper shakers and random thoughts.

I’ve been loved, hated, praised, criticized, spit on, thrown up on, ignored, groped, pinched, broke, fixed, dropped, picked up, kissed, slapped, spoiled, scolded, heart-broke, adrift, depressed, exalted, forsaken and happy.

I’ve planted, sowed, buried, raked, mowed, leveled, tilled, shoveled, hoed, tamped. I’ve turned, fed and talked dirt.

I’ve loved and cared for fish, piranha, horses, dogs, cats, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, chipmunk, rabbits, chickens, ducks, tortoise, snakes, iguana, ant farms, sea monkeys, caterpillar, babies, friends, father, mother, grandmother, Woolly monkeys, squirrel monkeys, Capuchin monkeys, canaries, pigeons, parrots, mice, hamsters and tarantula’s. I’ve been dog bit, snake bit, horse bit, love bit, tick bit.

I’ve watched a man walk on the moon, the Challenger crash, 9/11, the Twin Towers fall, peace riots, race riots, my kids grow into adults right under my nose, pets live and die, money come and go.

I’ve fought global warming, gas shortages (more than once,) empty pockets and depression. Boycotted meat prices, the Vietnam War, and apartheid. I remember jacks, jump rope, Drive-in movies, I Love Lucy, the Mouseketeers, Spin and Marty, That Girl, Bewitched, pony-tail Barbie, Betsy McCall dolls, American Bandstand, leather jackets, duck tails, party lines, hula-hoops, mustang 64 ½ , a robin’s egg blue pink polka-dot beetle (it was the 60s), vinyl records, ’45’s, swine flu(twice), skate keys, skateboards(the first time around), Look and Life magazine, racial riots, Elvis and the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, the assignations of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King.

I’ve read, watched, wept, written, succeeded, failed, failed again, failed big, tried, given up, started over, started over again. I’ve fed the hungry, helped the illiterate, housed the homeless, been robbed, been helped. I’ve lived, thought I’d die. I am, in some way, like all of you.
These are the things I know. These are the things I write about. Make your own list. Update it as you go. It makes you think. It makes you sad, glad, mad and proud.

And remember this: Through it all, two things never failed me—reading and writing.

In other words—words.

Getting the Job Done

2010-08-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

That’s where I’m at right now with my edits: getting it done, doing what most writers call the ‘real’ writing. I tend to agree. Rewrites, editing is so much like panning for gold. Swirling what you have in the pan, looking for the nuggets of good. I truly love it when it’s going well, but when it isn’t; it feels a whole lot like trudging up a mountain trail.

You have a destination, you have great scenery, sometimes, you have great company, but after awhile you also have fatigue, sore feet and aching muscles. That’s when you have to reach inside and find what it takes to keep going.

Everyone has something that works:

When my husband and his brother went grouse hunting, they’d wear themselves getting to where they hunted. On their way back to their truck, tired, cold and wet, they would talk about the hamburger and chocolate malt they were going to buy on the way home. They would describe exactly what it would smell and taste like, the whole way to their truck.

Bikers pick a landmark and bike to it, then pick another and another. They go miles that way. Hikers use the same methods. Walkers put one foot in front of the other, their iPod blaring in their ear.

When you tell yourself you’re tired, you just can’t do this anymore, when your writing doesn’t work and you think you will never be published, you put one foot in front of you.

And while you’re putting that foot in front of the next you keep your head in the game. That isn’t always easy. There are other stories whispering in your ear, trying to seduce you. Telling you, they’ll be easier, better.

I have a mantra to fight that. Nose over the toes. I read that in Hannah Nyala’s Point Last Seen: Nose over the toes. It reminds me not get my mind too far ahead of my feet. My mind too far ahead of what I’m doing.

Take today. Do the edits the best you can. Do that tomorrow and tomorrow until you get through the book. And if it needs it again. You start again. There is no other way, but that’s ok, because that is how you learn to do it better for the next time.

Happy edits.

Seasoning

2010-08-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure why, but this pass through my novel has opened my eyes. Maybe, it was the long break between the last edit and this one. Maybe, that time gave me a better distance. I don’t know. It only seems I have a better grasp on what story I’m trying to tell.

It would be such a blessing if the two years I’ve spent not working on my novels, gave me something. I felt I lost so much. Time, mostly. It haunts me. Though I wasn’t working on my novel writing, I wasn’t idle. I read, a ton.

I took my trusty Writer’s Digest and the Writer with me to every damned doctors’ appointment. It was a way to cope with the whole situation. A situation I just hated. Oh, anyone would, but I have this terrible anxiety around doctors. I think it stems from childhood and when my Uncle Bruce (MD) visited. My family acted like the KING was coming.

Anyway, I kept my nose in the magazine and tried to concentrate only on the articles, instead of the worry that didn’t help at all anyway. Sometimes—often, I came away not remembering one darn word, but sometimes there was this glimmer of insight. I think it was because I was trying so hard to focus.

Truthfully, I had a whole lot less focus what with everything that was going on at the time. As I said many times (too many, in my opinion) my mind wasn’t working well, especially while I was sickest or on the biggest doses of the prednisone. And I wonder (hope), too, if the whole journey gave me a different perspective.

Perspective is good. Looking back can give insight. And certainly, when you go through something you learn what is most important. People tend to forget that too fast. But trouble makes you grow, and growing seems to me to be all good for a writer.

When I could write again, I spent a lot of time floundering. I tried to write a memoir about the illness. I was just too close and too grateful to be getting better. Going back over it seemed counter to my determination to take Christopher Reeves’ advice: Go forward. Maybe that time for that memoir will come, but it isn’t yet.

I worked on poetry, did a few workshops I’d been wanting to do. I think some of my best poetry came out of that, but that wasn’t all I gained. I think the time working on poetry gave my writing something that had been lacking for some time. A depth and a way of looking at each word. I got invaluable, insightful critiques from my instructor, too. Something I don’t have enough access to.

I have always gone back to poetry when I struggle with my writing. It has always helped. This time, I was more open to each lesson. A perfect case of: When the student is ready, the teacher will come. What’s more, each critique helped me analyze all my writing in a different way. That’s good for all my writing.

I have a theory: God or the Universe (or whatever you believe in,) gives you what you need. It’s the figuring out what that lesson is, that’s toughest.

Puts me in mind of a quote I’ve saved from years ago (I’m a quote collector, much like an inkbottle, paperweight, vase, pen collector) A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.

The ocean is a big dangerous place and, for certain, even if nothing bad happens, there is going to be some wear and tear. That ship won’t be as spiffy when it gets back from across the sea, as it was when it left. It will have tales to tell. It has been seasoned. It will never be pristine again, but it will be experienced.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather ride in a ship that’s crossed the ocean and come back safe, than a ship that’s stayed in the harbor.

August Godsends:

2010-08-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

· Summer thunderstorms
· Garden picked vegetables: sweet corn, zucchini, tomatoes
· Porch sitting in the evenings (with a good book)
· School supplies, obviously
· Knowing you must make the most of the remaining summer
· Picnics in the canyon
· The sound of the river (and smell)
· Bottles of green beans from your own garden
· Daisies
· Dragonfly evenings

Temptation

2010-07-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

Shocking…and ruinous. I wouldn’t have expected temptation from such an upstanding business, but there it was in my mailbox. All bright colors and clever details. Temptation. Irresistible temptation. A fine nationally known business, my enabler. I know, I will give in, but worse, there was with the temptation, encouragement to pressure someone else into this terrible, wonderful addiction, too.

A coupon from Office Max: $10.00 off any $30.00 purchase, plus a coupon for a friend. Huh, that’s how they get you.

Later today,( I’ll resist. I will get my edits done, first. I can control myself that long) I’m gone. I’m partaking of a whole store full of supplies. I’ll wander. I’ll touch, and I’ll find just $30.00 worth of happiness. That’s all. It will be enough…for now.

I hope.

And I’ll give that extra coupon to a child. It’s best to lure a child into this kind of lifelong addiction. I just can’t decide which of my grandchildren to tempt, but I will tempt one of them.

This Writer's Confession

2010-07-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

It starts with sweaty palms, dry mouth and butterflies deep in my stomach. That anxious stir of excitement, that desire. Of eyes too big for what’s good for me. Then, a slight twitch. Reaching out, but knowing, knowing…no, I don’t need. I can live without. Oh, but…I want. I want real bad. Maybe, just maybe, I do need just one, tiny little….just something.

It happens every time. I try to prepare myself. I do. I have long talks with myself. I try to be smart. I write out lengthy pros and cons. I try to close my eyes when I see ads, or store displays. I call my support group. Plead with my husband. Ask my sons to hold me back…Please!

And I’ve been so good…for so long. Darn near, ten months. I’ve walked away. Even at flea markets ground bottom prices. I know where to look. (Only one slip. Honest. The price was just unbelievable. Promise.)

This obsession, this…addiction has had me in its grip since I was in junior high and I fight it. I do. I fight it every day. But this time of year, it’s everywhere. And this year it’s all so delicious. Bright and fresh. Soooo luscious. Reminiscent of the 60s, really. Which was the best of years. Oh, yes! Yum!

School supplies: Notebooks, binders, pens, paper, appointment books, folders, files, paper clips, pencils, highlighters, filing tabs, Post-it Notes,® Post-it® anything. (Post-it® is my passion and where I ought to put my retirement investment.) Oh, and Avery’s new NoteTabs® with so many uses.

I admit it. I confess. I am a school supply junky. I love just haunting office stores…Trolling up and down the aisles for my next fix.

And yet, none are as intriguing as the old red brick Utah Office Supply with the sorrel colored notebooks with creamy paper, Peter Pans (for those who don’t remember or are too young. They were gummed cloth reinforcement circles in a slid-open box you used for loose-leaf paper or handouts. You had to lick and stick. And yes, we still have something like them. They are plastic now and you pull them off a small page and place. A different experience. For one, you never have them spill. Great, but do you know how many times I met a boy because he stopped to help me pick up spilled Peter Pans?) red pencils for highlighting, fountain pens, cloth tabs you had to lick and stick, too.

Ah, the good old days when I had an excuse for new supplies. When I didn’t have a stack of notebooks I just had to buy last year and the year before. When I didn’t have that push/pull conflict of loving new notebooks so much I don’t when to use this one or that one because…and the love of stuffed full with my writings, poems, essays, notes, ideas, etc, notebooks.

My family has strict orders: haul me away from temptation. I’m thinking of being fitted with an ankle bracelet, too, so if you see a wild-eyed (sweaty palms, breathing too hard) fifty-something woman in the school supply aisle intervene. Please!

Another Reason I Love the Writer and Writer's Digest

2010-07-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

When the Writer and Writer’s Digest arrive each month, I feel like a writer. A real writer, with magazines that address what I do, what I dream, what I struggle with. Those writers who write into the Letters to the Editors are my peers. They feel like friends, as do the writers of the articles. They advice me, encourage me, guide me on this journey.

It’s like the best of workshops or writing groups and I don’t even have to shave my legs or do up my hair. No, I can grab a lemonade or cold drink of water, slip out on my cool shady patio, put my feet up on the wrought iron rail and dive into writerliness.

I feel part of, not different from in the pages of those magazines. Often a writer doesn’t feel a part of. Writer’s (or is it just me?) get the feeling of being the watcher, the recorder, a reporter of life, not completely immersed into life. Just a tad, outside. Oh, the emotions are there (for myself, emotions seem intensified, deeper and they stay with me longer. My mother calls me too sensitive to life’s stimulus.) I tend to dissect life, search for reasons within others or myself. I’ve read of writers who do this dispassionately, as if observing, but I find I delve into things with my whole heart and mind, trying to puzzle out backstory, untangle motive and puzzle over whys.

I do this in secret, like another ‘document’ being written inside the computer screen of my mind.

Is it any wonder I sometimes feel torn, distracted, a bit crazy, or not all there. As I write this, it sounds cold or calculated, as if as something happens in my life, I simply see how I can use it for my writing. If that were the case, it might be easier. I’d be removed from heartache, depression, worry. That isn’t how it happens. I live it, feel it, go through it and the same time another part of my mind is recording it, as much as possible, with all the emotion involved. Then later, I relive it as I try to figure out all the spaces: the scene, the details, the emotions, where the emotions came from, the backstory, the whys.

It has been said, writers live twice. And in the pages of these magazines, I get support for both lives. I get company for that journey that chose me. See, I don’t think I did the choosing. It seems it was there, always. I can’t remember when I didn’t approach life just that way. As a watcher, a recorder, a reporter of life. It’s just the way I was made. And that is that voice I hear, sometimes late at night, asking, why am I not more successful.

For me, those magazines are a huge thing as I juggle time between an elderly parent, grandchildren, husband, household and my dreams. All those wonderful but trying blessings sometimes clash with the dreams. But support is just a page away.

I’ve clung to these two subscriptions (even when money was wolf-at-the-door tight) since my father introduced me to them over forty years ago. Much has changed over those passing years—in my life, in publishing, in the world. But the Writer and Writer’s Digest has been there and kept the dream alive.

Check them out.

Revising Revision

2010-07-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

For the last several months, I’ve been revising and editing my Western Historical, Elsa and the Tie-down Man. It was completed several years ago and I struggled with editing after completion. Mostly, I struggled because I didn’t really know how to go about it. So, true to form, I started reading any how-to book on the subject I could find.

Many helped, but I still felt lost. I had a friend who was kind enough to help at first, but as happens that didn’t last long. I knew it was something I had to do, so I kept struggling with the job. And I struggled for those first few months when there was the niggly hint of my illness, when nothing was really wrong, but things weren’t right.

You know the rest of the story and after I packed up not only this book, but also all the others I had been either submitting or working on, I really didn’t think about the book. That was the whole reason I packed it away. To get it out of my head and conscience. So it would stop nagging me. I couldn’t deal with that at the time.

I’ve been ready to work on the book for some time now and I procrastinated for an awful long time without really understanding why. Finally, I started the revision and editing again, but I dragged my feet a bit for reasons I couldn’t understand. I blamed it on fear that I’d get in the middle and the stupid MPGN would return. I blamed it on the thought that Western Historicals just aren’t being published. (Kaki, blew that out of the prairie (thank goodness, she proved that wrong.) I just didn’t understand my hesitation and jerky progress. I know why now and I think I found a cure.

I have found this to be true over and over. Maybe, it is the old saying—when the student is ready, the teacher will come. All I know is in all the editing and revising books I’ve read and there have been several good ones, I just didn’t get it. It didn’t clear up the path. And for me (obsessive-compulsive and a list maker (ad nauseam) I just couldn’t get a road map that made sense to me. I find this to be true with everyone at one time or another. I really think it just takes the right way of saying it for a person, and the right time, etc.

All the muddle and confusion I’ve felt, that lost I-don’t-know-what-to-do-or-where-to-go feeling is gone. That feeling of muddling along and confusion was so much a part of the MPGN and after effects and treatment. I wasn’t sure I would ever get some things (my mind or writing) back. I wondered (and worried) if the edit and revision dilemma was part of that.

Who knows? All I do know is I’m grateful I picked up James Scott Bell’s book, Revision & Self-Editing: Techniques for transforming your first draft into a finished novel. It is one of the Write Great Fiction series put out by Writer’s Digest Books. How can I ever thank someone who opened my eyes and gave me such a great road map? I don’t know if I was just ready to understand or if it was the way Bell explained things, (I think Bell has a very no-nonsense, everyman way of writing.) In either case, I wish I’d learned this, months ago.

I could kick myself, but I decided that would be a huge waste of time. I’ve wasted enough. My plan of attack is to finish out what I was doing. Then go back and do exactly what Bell advised.
What a wonderful book on revision and self-editing, such clear, concise explanations that made sense to me. A checklist in the back of the book fits right into my way of thinking and doing, but every chapter will make me a better writer, even with my first draft, I think. So I am rolling up my sleeves and better yet, I know where I’m going and how I’m going to get there.

And I think before I begin a new book I owe it to myself to read James Scott Bell’s book on Plot and Structure (another area I’ve had a hard time learning from the books I’ve read so far) If it helps as much as Revision & Self-editing did, my next book will writing with a lot less wrong turns.

Writing Victory

2010-07-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

January 2008 was the first sign of trouble. It took until May to narrow down the problem to my kidneys. A specialist and host of tests followed. By June, I was beginning to feel well enough to catch up on reading that I hadn’t been able to do for months.

Writing was out of the question. Not only did I not have the energy (I mostly slept), but the medication did some real strange things—bad dreams, many, many sleepless nights, a racing mind—that should have been wonderful because what was racing through my mind was ideas for stories, poems, songs, essays, novels, but it was a deluge, coming fast and furious. I couldn’t even begin to write it all down and worse, I would lose the thought before I could.

I was frustrated, but worse depression absolute leveled me. My worse fear had happened, I couldn’t write anymore. I was almost certain I never would again. As I laid on the loveseat, the summer sun warming me, I stared out the window wanting to do my two- mile walk again, wanting to be able to do the cooking, laundry, and all those other mundane chores that a few months ago I complained about. I remembered something a friend told me just before my hysterectomy when I told her how scared I was.

She told me to have something I wanted to do very badly on the other side. I remembered how much that helped, to just keep that goal in your focus when you go into the hospital, while they prep you, while you wait for the doctor pre-op, while you go through recovery. It worked. It pulled me through.

So, I made a goal. I had just finally read the March ’08 issue of Family Circle and the winning short story from the fiction contest. I was going to get well enough to enter it. I was going to write again. Something good enough to enter a national contest.

I may have mentioned all this before, but I wanted to share with readers of my blog my progress because doing the blog was probably the most important step to that goal. It gave me back my voice, gave me a hope that I really could still string words together. I have placed my entry in the mail today.

Victory. I might not win the contest, but victory is mine.

Thanks all.

Of Writing and Gardens

2010-07-12T09:56:00.001-07:00

The longer I garden and write the more I think the two are alike. From the first lines of a new piece to a new or redone garden plot. To rewrites and editing to tearing out gardens and eliminating difficult plants or plants that just don’t work.

Sometimes things take awhile to work out and, sometimes, you have to have patience. Sometimes, a ton of patience. The best things I’ve ever learned about editing I learned in my garden.

When spring comes and I set out to buy seeds or plants, I always end up with too many. I fill my gardens to bursting. The rock cress spilling over the edging until my husband cusses while he mows, the shade garden so full there’s not a patch of bare ground and sometimes O accidentally step on a garden snake. (Suggestion: don’t go out in the garden bare-footed) The daisy fight their way up through the roses and the roses have shoulder space from the Hibiscus.

I always forget how big the plants will be. I have the hardest time when I go into the garden centers picking just one flower. It’s like picking a word. I love them all and maybe, if I don’t get petunias this year, I’ll forget how their perfume rising in the evening, warm and haunting. Maybe, if I don’t plant ‘Lady in Red’ salvia this year, I won’t see any hummingbirds at all.

I tend to write that way, too. That’s all right, too, because I know I have to trim the excess. Once I have it in place, I can relax and see what’s really supposed to be there. It may not be the best way, but it seems to be my way.

This lily, named Elodie, is an example of a plant I had to wait awhile for. It was worth it. I bought the bulbs last and was very disappointed.

Another plant I had to wait a long while for and the redeeming took place in my mother’s yard, not mine. Years ago, more than ten, I found a picture of a Hydrangea bush I just fell in love with in the Wayside Garden catalog. I sent away for one for me and one for my mother. When they arrived, one had been damaged in shipping. I planted that one and gave the good one to my mother. Well, my died over the winter. Wayside replaced it with no problems, but my plant seemed to struggle at first.

My mother’s took off. There have been beautiful blooms over the years and the blooms are so versatile. Perfect to put in a vase on the table, white and creamy with a hint of scent and the blooms remaining on the bush turn green, then pink, and finally in the fall, this gorgeous bronzy brown. Best of all you can bring them inside, put them in a vase without water and they’re lovely all winter.

Very best in a vintage turquoise vase.

My mother’s plant has flourished; mine has grown steadily and bloomed but never with as much enthusiasm as my mom’s. I have a ton more shade and the bush has to compete with a huge snowball bush. And of course, my mother’s soil is much different.

This year, though, the plant has outdone itself and the scent. No hint of scent with all these blooms. Oh, no. It infuses her whole back yard and the bee’s tea party there, of an afternoon.

I’ve always thought of my writing as my work, my garden as my hobby. (Along with crocheting which teaches a lot about writing, too. The biggest lesson: do a little bit every day and before you know it you have something useful: an afghan or a first draft) A perfect day is spending a good long morning in a white heat of writing—when everything is just working along, the words are flowing and they make sense. (Even a bad day writing, though, is a good day) Then, spending the afternoon following the shade through the yard, deadheading spent flowers.

And the perfect end to that day would be a good book. Someday, it might be mine. If I’m patient.

July Windfalls and Then Some

2010-07-08T18:05:00.000-07:00

Freezer replaced. Waiting delivery. Temporary tooth in. Waiting permanent. And surprise, neither cost as much as expected. A tiny windfall.

The hardest part was losing the prepared meals, but I have a turkey thawing out in the fridge…so Thanksgiving in July. And broccoli growing. Turkey Divan.

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you’ll remember my basement flooding a year ago January. My husband has wanted to send a camera down our house pipes (kind of a house colonoscopy) ever since to see if my beautiful and ‘sentimental’ (When we first moved into the house, my grandfather lamented the lack of trees in my neighborhood. When he died, he bequeathed each of the grandkids $100 from his estate. I spent my money on trees: two walnut, four birches and one Sycamore. With one thing and another only the walnut trees remain) trees were causing blockages. We’ve argued over taking them out since the basement flooded. Well, they’ve been vindicated. No blockage, but…there is always a but, isn’t there? The pipes have joint damage. We need them relined. The tiny windfall gone.

I did enjoy finishing Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner in the shade of my beloved trees this afternoon though. A wonderful novel. A ton of wit and charm and truth. Loved it.

And finally, July Windfalls:
· Fourth of July parades and BBQs
· Time to read…finally
· Delphiniums blooming next to my windmill
· The sound and smell of Rainbirds® hitting hot pavement
· Afternoons naps
· Working on my novel on the patio on my laptop
· Yard sales
· Little girls in sundress (Oh, how I wish I could still wear them)
· Yellow Swallowtail butterflies on my daisies
· A handheld paddle fan and the memories it evokes (grandma sitting on a church bench in the airless meeting hall, her rhinestones glittering rainbows on the ceiling, and knowing she had five flavor Lifesavors© in her purse. I’d get them if I were good.)