Temptation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

Always Something

I read Kaki Warner’s blog entry, laughed, made a comment about Basenji’s. We raised them years ago and knew a few things about their personality quirks. Loved the dogs. They are really sweet, but as she said, hardheaded. Most hounds are because they were breed to think for their selves. Our two were great with our boys, too.

Never did I expect a bit of her holiday mishaps to bite me.

But I couldn’t quite deny the pain in my tooth. Not too bad, it could wait. Besides I couldn’t seem to tell which tooth actually hurt, if it was in the tooth or the gum.

1:30 in the morning my husband is called for work. I needed to fix coffee and his lunch. I ran downstairs to get a loaf of bread from the freeze and got half way back up the stairs before I realized that loaf wasn’t at all that it should be—such as, frozen. Back down I go, check things out. Puzzle over why some things seem to be thawing and some things remain frozen. Gasket seems fine, nothing keeping the door from closing, can hear the motor running, but some things have definitely begun to thaw out. It’s 1:30 in the morning. I’m not working on all cylinders.

Husband checks things out, says the door must have been left ajar. Ok, that happens. I’m vigilant about it because when the boys were at home, it happened a few times. An expensive accident at a time when money was ever tight.

Next day (Sunday) tooth is killing me. Pretty sure by now, it’s a broken tooth (the third this year.) I check the freezer, set a thermometer on the bottom shelf and wait thirty minutes. It reads 20°. Still, the stuff in the bottom bin is thawing out, no matter what the thing says.

Upsetting for several reasons. The stuff thawing out is things I have on hand for quick meals for when my husband is called at the last minute or I’m too tired to cook, or in a white heat of writing because even then, we have to eat. I have sliced turkey from Thanksgiving for divan or sandwiches, sliced standing rib from Christmas for French dips, Ham from New Year’s for casseroles, sandwiches, and frizzled ham dinners.

I called one of my sons and he helped move what was still frozen into my other freezer. (Yes, two freezers.)

The 4th falling on a Sunday, everyone seems to be celebrating a different day. I get the feeling my dentist is celebrating today. I’m waiting a call, debating whether they’re in the office and busy like their message says or if this qualifies as an emergency because they are out of the office for the holiday. And waiting for my husband to get home from his trip to pick out another freezer.

Holiday weekend cost: $400 for our portion of the crown (thank heavens for insurance), $600 or so for new freeze (that one was over 12 years old) and still nothing close to Kaki’s worst holiday.

What I’ve learned: It’s always something. Keep writing anyway.

Writing Anyway and Sending Out Hope

A soggy May and the cold, rainy June took its toll on my garden, delaying germination of my zucchini and beans. Still, I’ve had fresh greens, Swiss Chard, Spinach and my wonderful lettuce mix (Spring Mix by Cook’s Garden.) Yum!

Swiss Chard was introduced to me by my father-in-law in the first year my husband and I were married. I begged him for the beet greens he had thinned from his row of beets and he said if I loved them, I’d love Swiss Chard. He was right. By the way, my favorite way to cook Swiss Chard is simply sautéing it in a little olive oil and butter. Takes about 5 minutes and I only pepper it. No salt.

Not everyone likes Chard, but try it this way and see. I think you'll be surprised. Not at all what you think.

The end of June has turned hot. I never mind the heat, but I’ve decided the hot, dry wind is going to be my undoing. It wilts my plants, misdirects the water system, tosses windsocks into a tangle with its oppressive breath. It stifles and makes me frown. I’m not even aware that I am until I feel the muscles over my eyes start twitching.

I’m plugging away at Elsa and the Tie-down Man. It’s been an eye-opening experience. The last time I worked on this story, was two years ago. I remember struggling mightily with the editing, puzzling over several aspects of the story. Wishing I had a writer friend to help with the rewrites and editing, feeling insecure and more than a little clueless as to what I was doing. Each day seemed like trudging through mud.

Spiral forward many months to me with a very different perspective and that’s all changed. It seems I have a better grasp of the story than I did then for one thing. Seems strange, too, because I didn’t one time think about Elsa and the Tie-down Man while I was recouping, not after I had packed all the chapters and research away. I really thought I might never get back to writing novels. Seemed like writing anything was iffy.

Time and experience might be why. Another little blessing that’s come to me, I think.
The thing is, I think my subconscious was working on it the whole time, too. I don’t know, maybe my perspective is just clearer from here. I don’t really care. I’m just happy to be plugging away and feeling I’m improving the work. I love this story though I want it done, too. I’m feeling hopeful again, about my writing.

And just when I was feeling all that hope and good writing, I got a rejection letter in the mail today for a short story I sent out a few months ago. I wallowed in self-pity for about an hour, then another angle for the story whispered and a place to submit it and I let go of the sorrow. I’ll do my Scarlett O’Hara imitation and worry about the rejection tomorrow. I’ll rewrite today.

I remember reading somewhere that how you knew you were a ‘real’ writer was that when you got a rejection letter you rewrote the work and sent it out in the next day’s mail (after that moment of self-pity. After all, you just might need to write about that emotion one day) You keep something in the mail…it’s called hope.

I’ve decided it’s not how many times you fall off your horse; it’s how many times you get back on and I’m out to prove it.