Ups and Downs

What a beautiful morning sunrise! It lifted my spirit and besides, the end of January has arrived and for me, that means we are over the winter hump. It’s time to buy garden seeds, time to plan the garden, time to start looking for beginning shoots of crocus and daffodils. Time to think green. Each storm that comes is a bit warmer. Snow is slushier and likely to melt quickly. Hoorah, for the coming spring. I do love spring.

I have always kept mementos from life’s experiences. As I wrote a few blogs ago, ephemeral keepsakes connect me to past experiences. It’s as though letters, papers, ticket stubs carry in them all the senses and details I need to remember. Like most writers, I’m obsessive about saving my work, but as a teenager, I wasn’t so compulsive.

Yet, I always placed the piece of cardboard that backed the package of notebook paper in my binder for doodling on. (I doodled on everything—theme books, napkins, textbooks. As my mother can attest—ironing boards.??? ) I’ve kept most of the cardboard backings. What a perfect micro-picture of the times. Names of my latest crush, song lyrics, drawings of flowers and eyes, drawings of hairstyles, slang, class schedules, Beatles song lyrics. I love it. Just looking at it carries me back to that time and those feelings. And here on the one I keep with my high school poetry I’ve written: Spring has sprung, the grass is rise…I haven’t changed.

On my junior high and high school poems, I filled two 110-page theme books both pages with poetry. Classmates wrote a small portion of the poems. It made me smile to read these tiny ghosts of teenage angst. What made me search them out, in the first place? To write this blog. And the very emotions in these poems are the exact emotions I needed for the short story I’m working on. I never once thought about looking these up as I struggled to get the story right. And then, bit of information I really needed (and didn’t know it) to bead into the story was a trivia question on the morning news.

I’m amazed how often this happens. This serendipitous 'help.' I know if you’re looking for it, often you find it. I know the mind works on these problems even when we don’t realize it but every time this happens, it just fills me with such joy, awe, and certainty I’m on the right track. (The last piece of detail I need, I need to get by going to the Battle of the Bands 2010 held Feb. 26th. Part of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. This year I’m well enough to go. Now, am I brave enough to go into all that teenage energy?)

After the last two frustrating weeks, even a small snag with the gas fireplace didn’t keep me from my writing. I think my latest read is helping more than I could have hoped. (The Writer’s Portable Therapist; 25 sessions to a creativity cure by Rachael Ballon, Ph.D., “Doc Hollywood”) I replaced the batteries in the thermostat and bundled up. Blessed are foot-warmers.

And then as I read the morning paper, sad news. My first boss, dead, too soon. He was a good guy. Just a regular, all around nice guy who taught me much more about working and business that he ever imagined. That was many years ago, before equality was the norm and I was the first ‘girl” he’d hired or worked with. He wasn’t sure I was suited for work in the pet shop, but he gave me a chance, most likely because of my love of animals. As it turned out, I was much better at handling the large dogs than he was. And he acknowledged that.) It was, often, dirty, stinky, even sad, work. I had to prove myself, but he let me without throwing obstacles in my way or lowering expectations.

Needless to say, as memories scroll through my mind my heart hurts, but there is also thankfulness of knowing him, remembering those times. This too, will settle, erode, polish and show up in my work.

Break In

I was all set to start out today with a quick blog about avoidance activities that actually help me work. Arthur Plotnick has an article in the Writer (www.WriterMag.com) this month on the subject. It was a great article and at the end, he suggested taking a list to a meeting with my writing group or posting a list on a forum. This is my group. This is my forum and I had a pretty good list, too.

What was not on my list was a trip to my RV storage lot to check out my trailer that was broken into over the weekend. But reality stared me in the face as I stepped into my trashed trailer. Oh, this will end up in my writing. I have no doubt. Everything that happens ends up there. It never looks the same, but it’s there. What I live, what I feel, the emotions find their way into my writing.

But as I stared at the mess, I just felt creeped out. No other words for it. Someone pawing through my stupid, worn-out, worthless stuff. For what? Nothing of value there. The worst thing they took from me was my time and peace of mind.

It took a while for the anger to kick in, but it did. Ok, they broke into my trailer, but worst was they broke into my life and tossed it. Everyone is battling difficult fights, losing jobs, trying to follow an impossible dream, raising kids, caring for an aging parent. There are those who help with a smile or and helping hand and there are those that just make things worse. How can you make the choice to make things worse? What kind of person does that?

Ephemera

Subjects for my blog slip, slid, slam, whisper. This morning I have a heart full of humble. Putting out fires is sometimes what caring for an aging parent is. Today, there was the small fire of a leaking ten-year-old water heater and the need to have it replaced. The timing, right smack in the middle of the time set aside to write. I’m humbled at how quickly my husband offered to stand in for me so I could write. There were many more important things he was needed for, but knowing how important my writing is to me, he put himself out.

How lucky am I? Yet the loving act also makes me so aware of the tiny amount of success I’ve had and what each have cost everyone who loves me. It makes me want to do, be better and fear I’m not good enough. But…what can I do but be grateful to all those who believe in me and help me out and then do the best writing I can.

One of the gifts my brother gave me this year for Christmas was copies and originals of papers that were in a file of my father. Letters, pictures, old newspaper articles. Papers I haven’t seen for over forty years.

This is the second time I’ve been reminded how important some of these little memento can be, especially for a writer. I remember at a class reunion, our historian displayed our activity cards, flyers for stomps, hall passes, learner permits, ads for school plays, lunch tickets, the program for our graduation and Baccalaureate. Time travel. I don’t know why but this physical proof of my history speak to me the same way antiques do, as if the story is somehow embedded in the object. Ephemera, more so than other things does that. I find myself drawn to old papers, ledgers, journals and I know it’s the stories each represents.

Letters my father wrote me touched my heart most deeply. It had been so very long since I’d heard him, but there in the words of my letters was…me. Twice I mentioned how much I wanted to be a writer. I read a quote in The Writer in an interview (‘To Entertain and Educate’ by Mort Castle did on Ron Hansen.) It is advice Laurence Olivier liked to give want-to-be actors, It applies equally to writers, “If anything can keep you from acting, let it.”

Slow Down

Snow is falling lazily and I’m enveloped in a warm, scrap-yarn afghan, my feet encased in a fleece-lined foot warmer. Holidays are over, my tax file organized and just waiting for documents to arrive, the baby shower, for the most part, planned and ready and I’m eager to write. I’ve decided to slow down. Just slow down.

Slow down. Enjoy the process. Stop and savor the now of life. I, we tend to forget the joy of the process. We all forget that the joy of the journey is the journey.

I need to relish writing time, especially that time I’m not under deadline, the time when one of my novels is still unpublished.

Because when I do have a deadline I won’t have as much time to write poetry just because I feel it, or be able to try my hand at other kinds of writing because I want to. I can just bet most published writers would tell me to relish this time. This now.

I crochet afghans at night while I watch TV. It relaxes me, gives my hands a counter exercise to the typing. I crochet about an hour or so each night. I’ve finished over a hundred afghans, but sometimes I find myself hurrying through one so I can get started on the next one.

I have to remind myself why I crochet. I’m not crocheting to finish anything, I am simply crocheting to relax. It is not the end product that I am working toward, but the process. I really have all the afghans I’ll ever need, as do all my family and friends.

Parenthood, too, is often that way. Anxious for our child to take each new step in development. We forget that when they’ve taken all those steps they’ve walked right out of our lives.

Choose to slow down and savor. It takes discipline because our modern world evolves around multi-tasking, being super-efficient. But super-efficient at what? Living? We’re in the habit of doing two things at once so we have more time to do other things two at a time. Have we paid attention to either thing? Have we really paid attention?

As writer’s, we owe it to our writing to slow down. We hurry through life, missing 1000’s of stories, 100’s of incidents we could use in our work, details of life we miss. Life is the meat of writing; I don’t want to lose it, hurrying through it.

My garden teaches me patience, how to slow down, how to savor. You just can’t hurry the seasons. Come March I’d like to, so tired of snow and gray, but seasons take their own sweet time coming into full realization. I’ve planted 100’s of plants, but each spring I must wait until for the daffodils to flower on their own time. I have to wait for the soil to warm enough for planting.

Gardening is much more a process than a goal, for me anyway. It’s true the whole purpose is vegetables for my table and a beautiful garden, with lush flowers, but I would feel cheated if someone else planted, deadheaded, mulched. I went the route a few years ago and my fingers actually felt the withdrawal of the lack of dirt under my nails.

I can’t hurry the gardening and I wouldn’t want to try. There would be so much I’d miss. Rather, I like to savor every aspect. The sound of the hand spade scrapping into the dirt, the scent of the rich loam as I transplant pansies, the first blooms of my bleeding heart dangling from the arched stems, raindrops still glistening on the leaves.

I can do no less for my writing, for I love writing as much as I do gardening. Gardening, crocheting, and writing are part of me, something that helps define me. I owe it to myself to slow down and fully savor each part of the processes. My writing will be richer. I’ll be richer. That is my life I’m talking about, after all.

What You Do

The air, like over-creamed coffee has been thick enough to drink for the past several days. Honestly, the air has been bad for at least several days each week for over a month. Finally, yesterday, it seemed clearer. I’ve walked outside a few times in the past weeks, but the days of exercising inside have really been getting to me. Finally, yesterday, L.E. and I headed outside. It felt glorious, my mood immediately lifted. The sky above was morning glory blue, the sun jabbed at my eyes but I headed up the street full of hope.

It’s been a tough few weeks with several things putting a damper on my spirits, but the walk helped as did advice from several fronts, including my own. For the last little while, I’ve had this nagging pressure to find a story idea for a novel. On the one hand, that’s great. It’s been so long since I’ve had any desire to tackle anything as big and intense as a novel. On the other, I’m still not getting particularly excited about any of the ideas I had before I was sick or since. That’s unusual for me. I felt like I needed to hurry and search up something because of this nagging pressure.

And as I search, I start pushing. It came to me as I was e-mailing a friend that that was exactly the wrong approach. I know better, too. I talked it over with my husband. I talked about it to Maddie Rose and Zoie. L.E. and I talked about it as we walked. I know what you do when you’re blocked. I know ‘cause I’ve been here before. Every writer has.

You write what you love. You write what you must. You don’t search for it, but you look for it. You’re open to what comes to you. You back off and let it in when it comes. You go out into the world and get experiences, you wait, you listen, and watch, and wait. With patience, with knowing, it is coming and while you wait, you write, and edit, and work on what you have. That’s what you do.

Shotgun

It sits in the corner of my office, a relic. A Damascus twist double barrel glinting gunmetal old, the stock, hand-worn walnut filled and repaired. The etchings on the frame and hammer rubbed away in places speak of use and whisper history and stories I long to hear.

I’ve lusted after double-barrel shotguns at every antique fair I’ve ever gone to. I’ve always wanted one. But this, an early Valentine gift, is more than I’d ever hoped for. It’s not mint condition; rather, it’s charming in its imperfections.

I don’t know how old it is. Can’t find out anything about it on the internet, other than it was likely built before 1899, which is just another reason to love it. I love old things and nothing as much as old western things.

So, what stories could it tell me? What quirks would it have if it were safe to use? Who owned it? What were they like? What story will I grow from this unexpected gift? This seed.

Seeds:

Used to be they started trickling in after Christmas, after all the tinsel and pine boughs were cleared out, tax documents filled the mailbox and the darkest days of winter hung over my world. You know those days, where cold is deeper than bone, hazy, gray days are the norm and snow is almost a relief from the inversion.

Now, often as not, they come along with the Christmas cards and catalogs. They come when I’m too busy wrapping presents and making treats to enjoy. So, I put them aside with regret and don’t open them until after the madness of Christmas and New Years is over.

There’s a huge pile this year, two inches of seductive, lush seed catalogs. The color pictures more tempting than Godiva chocolate. That tomato on the cover dripping juice and sunshine. That hollyhock mix glowing yellow, copper, rose, red, burgundy-purple and white, as yummy looking as jellybeans.

I promised that this year I’d be reasonable. This year I’d be smart. I wouldn’t buy too many flower seeds for the flower gardens we condensed last year. I wouldn’t go overboard on the vegetable seeds. Not this year. But, oh, how to choose?

Seed catalogs remind me of my writing ideas. Too many. I write every idea that comes to me down in an idea file, but I can’t use all of them. I know that. So, how do I choose? I love them all. I must or I wouldn’t take the time to write them down. So, then it comes down to weeding out the impractical, the too hard, the too easy, the too-much research, the curious, the unexciting.

I narrow it down until I'm left with only those things (ideas or seeds) I just can’t stop thinking about. Then, I narrow it down even more. To the one or two ideas (seeds) that I just can’t shake, that I know exactly what to do with. And I tell myself that next year, I'll make different choices.

As hard as it is, that's better than no ideas, (or no seed catalogs)?

December Reads and Movies:

The Christmas Dog by Melody Carlson: A predictable story, but the writing and characters make it a perfect story for Christmas. I saw the book at a Sam’s Club and needing a little Christmas spirit, I bought it. It’s a story of a widow having a tough time getting her own Christmas spirit up to snuff. She has no giant problem. She’s just lonely, put out by what she views as a collapse of the neighborhood’s friendship and closeness. And it doesn’t when someone moves into the house directly behind her who does seem to care if he’s contributing to the change. It takes a little stray dog to show that things aren’t always what they seem.

This was a quiet, sweet book. I can see it made into a Hallmark program. Has a good message and worth my time.

Lavender Morning by Jude Deveraux: I’ve read Deveraux for years. She always does a great job with her characters. In Lavender Morning, Edilean Harcourt wills all her possessions to Jocelyn Minton, a young neighbor she befriended. One of the possessions was an eighteenth-century house in the small Virginia town of Edilean. That the town has the same name as her friend; is only one of the mysteries Jocelyn uncovers when she moves into the old house. As Jocelyn pieces together Miss Edi’s past, she finds her own history, future, and love.

In general, I enjoyed this read, owing much to the writing of Deveraux, but truthfully, none of them hold a candle to her earliest work, in my opinion. That may be due to my preference for historical, rather than contemporary. In any case, a decent read.

Slow Burn by Julie Garwood: Bombs keep going off around Kate MacKenna and Dylan Buchanan, her best friend, Jordan’s brother, wants to get to the bottom of why. He can’t admit he has noticed her for years and she is in no position for romance. This makes for a great story with a lot of great dialogue. I love good dialogue. It can make a so-so book, great in my opinion. But this book is better than so-so to begin with.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Advised by a New York editor to ‘hone your writing by writing what disturbs you,’ Skeeter Phelan begins a daring project during the earliest rumblings of the civil rights movement. In the early 1960’s there was a line between the black women the country club set hires to clean and help raise their children. Skeeter Phelan starts collecting the stories of those black women. Stories that are sad, shocking and sometimes cruel but that give the black community pride and the small glimmer of hope. Skeeter has to cross life-long held rules to follow her dream.


I loved this book. It was so far outside what I know, but I watched during the civil rights movement with horror and yet, I know nothing of what it was to be black in the south. Do I know now, after reading this book? I doubt it. There are too many little tiny nuances I will never understand. I only know I understand a very tiny bit better. I don’t live in the south; I know only a handful of black women or men. I just know that I was proud of the black women that peopled this book, and Skeeter, who took a stand in the only way she saw clear to do. I was moved. I think that’s a great quality for a book. I was changed.

Above all, I loved the characters. They seemed so true, their voices so clear, it was as if I met them. I think that is the greatest quality for a writer to have. A true, clear voice. There were many voices in The Help, all different, all very real to me.

Movies:
The Road: I read the book quite some time ago, but it haunted me for weeks after. Some of it haunted me because it seemed so close to a reoccurring dream I had right after my mother’s diagnosis with breast cancer. The scenes in my dreams were right out of the book, though I had the dreams two years before I read the book. And, as a parent, the emotions tied up with trying to keep your child alive haunted me. I beg my kids to read it, to help me understand some of it. Only one took me up on it. He had to see the film. We went together.

It is not a feel good film. Out during the holidays, I’m not sure how good it will do, but it is just as haunting. Cormac McCarthy’s writing was wonderful and I wondered how that would translate to film. The images burned into my mind as strongly as those in the book. The film haunted me, too. I cannot forget the story, the emotions. Every parent can relate to this desperate man. In the end, he had taught his child what he thought would prepare him for the world and then, in the end, it is in the child’s hands. A thought-provoking movie. I’m glad I didn’t miss it, even if it was sometimes hard to watch.

Avatar: Yes, everything you’ve heard about this movie is true. It is visually stunning, there was a message but not overly done. I think I fell a little in love with these big blue people. In fact, they seemed so ‘real’ that it was almost disorienting when the movie was finished that we wouldn’t be meeting them around some corner.



The story/plot was simple and probably a little predictable but that didn’t distract at all. My one complaint was about dialogue. It was a break-through in so many areas, special effects, set design, the way it was filmed; it deserves to be in the same class as Star Wars and Aliens, but for dialogue. I don’t see any of the dialogue being part of our cultural literacy. Too bad, too. I think there was plenty of chance for that.

January Godsends:

• Office supply sales. Office Max has the paper bag to fill for 15% off and Staples has a 10% off, plus they sent me some really cool NoteTabs. I have always loved office supplies and I can never have enough blank notebooks. I love blank notebooks: love the feel of the blank paper, the smell of newness and possibilities but I loved to fill them, too. When they’re finally used up to the last page, I love the feel of the paper with all my writing on it. Even better are old diaries, ledgers or notebooks found in antique stores full of other people’s stories. Treasures.

• January thaw: The dripping of melting snow, the splatter-splash of the drips hitting puddles, the phony warmth, the little peek of grass around the edges of the lawns, the mud showing here and there in my flowerbeds.
  Knowing it’s all downhill to spring now: The days get longer after the 21st of December. Isn’t that a great thought?

• Bouquet of flowers from the grocery, just because: I’m so flower starved by now, except for my hardy, dependable, sweet African Violets, I cannot resist just one bouquet after Christmas.

• My January purge: I always purge my cupboards and shelves this time of year and promise to do better next year. But this year particularly, I can’t wait to do some cleaning out. I wasn’t up to it the last two years and I swear some of the disorganization I’ve been having since I was sick is just that. I feel up to it. Now isn’t that a Godsend.

• Birds: I spend a few minutes every morning with Maddie Rose looking out the big picture window in my dining room, watching the birds in my walnut trees. Robins, common sparrows, house sparrows, black-capped chickadees, magpies, crows, blue jays, sapsuckers, juncos visit to feed on the fallen nuts. I love watching them, but watching Maddie Rose is even better. That window is her big-screen TV and she never misses her morning show.

• Sewing: I haven’t done a lot of sewing since my children left home. The desperation to cloth growing children is long gone, but I’ve been trying my hand again on a few things for a new granddaughter. There is a pleasure in making burp towels and bibs again. Though not as relaxing as my crocheting (I’ve been crocheting every day since junior high. It helped with stress and helped form wonderful friendships with various ages of women. Sadly, most have gone from my life one way or other.) It’s still relaxing.

• Seed Catalogs: Years ago the seed catalogs never showed up until after the New Year. Not anymore. Now they’re in the mailbox early December, but I don’t have time to look at them. I stockpile them for after the Christmas Crazy is over. Well, there they are waiting for me, all luscious pictures and all. Nothing better than spending a cold day in front of the fire surrounded by seed catalogs.

• Getting my little work/desk planner up to date and set for the year: This is where I write down my writing goals: daily, monthly and for the year, where I want to submit and what, encouragements, what I actually get accomplished and how to improve my output. My planner is my writing partner, my coach, a part of My Own Writing Club (I’ll tell you all about that soon).

• Organizing my writing and setting goals: For the better part of the first half of January, I spend a large part of my writing time going through my work figuring out what needs to be submitted right away, what needs more work, which ideas still seem sound from last year, listing new ideas or changed ideas. I try to organize things so it’s easy to sit down at my desk and pick up what’s next to do.

Well, for two years I didn’t do anything about all the work I already had in various states of progress. A ton of stuff just stagnated, some things were just lost. Things were kind of left in mid-write and when I got feeling better, my mind was just not ready to tackle anything much more than this blog. I kinda took up something I heard from Christopher Reeve-Go Forward. I just moved forward and a lot of good stuff got left behind.

For instance, I was editing a Western Historical that I’d been working on for some time that was nearly finished. I haven’t opened it since. I need to decide what is best to do with that. I’m determined to finish a chapbook or poem book this year before December. It’s mostly done. I’m very proud of the poems I’ve been working on. I have several more near completion, many more ideas to work on.

My feeling is I need to focus some attention on all this and I’m actually looking forward to it. I’m excited again about my work. Story ideas have been forming again in my head, which is a relief because for so long it was as if that part of me had died. Now, I think, maybe, the energy for that was needed elsewhere.

An extra Godsend, isn’t it?