A Little This, A Little That

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

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!

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

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

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!

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.