tune in, step out, drop in

Writing has become challenging this past week. Or rather, finding time for meaningful writing has become challenging. However, my New Year's Commitment had to do with banishing excuses for not writing, and finding solutions when things get in my way, so here goes.

As a swerve to O'Leary's "turn on, tune in, drop out," my attempt at resolving the perennial no-time-to-write conundrum is "tune in, step out, drop in," and here's how it works:
1. Tune in: listen to what people are saying
2. Step out: of my comfort zone by questioning reflexive behavior
3. Drop in: Try doing things a new way, experiment in the name of efficiency or expansion.

Here's how I applied it today.
I listened to a conversation in the Post Office line and learned that in order to have your face on a stamp, you have to have been dead for 10 years. Unless you're a President, then you only have to wait one birthday after death. I'll use this eavesdrop in dialogue, I'm certain, (lest you think it'll find its final resting place here, in my blog). But I was so intrigued with the information, I didn't pay attention to what I was doing and I knocked my coffee off the counter that serves as a package rest in the waiting line.

Next, I stepped out of my comfort zone by not immediately and apoplectically freaking out and overcompensating for my clumsiness by trying to fix it. Instead, I called the clerk's attention to the mess I made, and, to the shock of the queue behind me, took my turn at the counter and let the only other clerk leave her post to clean my mess. Of course, I apologized. Both to the clerk and to the folks in line because mistakes were made.

Once at work, I engaged in tasks that I hate first, then taught myself how to use the screen extension function so I could utilize my monitor in the manner it was intended. This little bit of dropping in I'd resisted, because I knew it would take me at least a half-hour to figure it out, but long-term efficiency is the goal, said I, so I wrestled it to the mat.

Now that I'm supremely virtuous, I better get my fanny in gear with pages!

A heartfelt valentine wrapped up in stories and song

Laura and I saw Gershwin Alone at the Laguna Playhouse today. Researched, written and performed by Hershey Felder, this theatrical biography had me mesmerized.

The balance of fact and emotion is particularly well done in this show. The combination of passion, genius and history infuses the character of a legend whose life was cut short at 38 (what is it with these phenomenal composers and their truncated lives?). Through Felder's poignantly rendered lens, George Gershwin tells us who he was, what drove him and what it was like to plug tunes in the early part of the previous century. Along with his brother Ira and a few other collaborators, Gershwin wrote over one thousand songs for stage and screen. Over one thousand. Sadly, he died before he could see the extent of his legacy.

Here's to a glimpse of history. Let's hope Felder continues to develop these heartspun pieces (I understand his Chopin performance is equally stunning, and even more romantic) so we'll have a more intimate sense of the genius that informs our musical past.

January redux

Greetings from crazily rainy Southern California, where I'm ensconced in my business partner's lovely Pasadena bungalow.

Even though my days are packed with meetings and work, I almost feel like I'm taking a mini-vacation (it helps to know that at the moment my home to the North is topsy-turvy with workers and floor-sanders scurrying about in my absence). I've been churning out words and ideas at a feverish pace--epiphanies choke-holding me faster than I can absorb them. At the risk of sounding like a crazy, New Age weirdo, horoscopically speaking, the stars and planets are lined up favorably: Jupiter has moved into Pisces and this is a good thing, apparently. Luck abounds, and I could use a little.

Stairway of Love continues to revise itself. I'm really enjoying opening a draft chapter and tinkering with it, discovering places to tighten the language or concretize a scene. It's like when a marriage is going well. There's a warmth, texture. Discovery. It's all good.

Tomorrow I'll be heading South to visit my mother and her husband in Chula Vista, and the following day Laura and I will be engaged in more client business closer to Pasadena HQ before I head back to the "great white North" to resume the routine. Am pretty set on my goal of having Stairway completely done and ready to send out by February 6th.

unwavering focus

The last two weeks has brought a torrent of unwelcome news, crises and mayhem. On the heels of grieving Kirk's mother's death, some of our closest family members have been navigating the scary waters of disease and trauma.

My brother-in-law, a stroke survivor, recently tripped over something in his garage and incurred head trauma. After a 3-day stint at ICU he's home and improving.

My daughter had three scary, fat and nasty lymph nodes removed and biopsied. Thank God they passed the path report and her doctor gave her a clean bill of health (lymphoma and its young friend, Hodgkins were the diseases ruled out).

Last but not least, my dear sister-in-law from marriage number one, Lisa, got the worst news a person can get. A scant couple of days before Christmas she learned she has Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer.

Somehow, finishing my novel doesn't seem all that important any more. And extremely important all at the same time. When you get sobering news about the probable length of a life, words like "dabble" and "ambivalence" and "maybe" feel puny and unworthy. Taking good health for granted, almost shameful. Perhaps the luxury of perceiving that I have all the time in the world to finish my book has, in the face of all this scary stuff, begun to feel like unbridled hubris.

Fueled by gratitude for today, I'm tracking a shorter, more determined path to what it is I say I want. What it is I stand for. What it is I've claimed I won't put up with. I'm selling my house. I'm finishing my book. I'm embracing my husband with as much of my real self as I know how to give.

The other day at the gym I popped into the hoops room--a place I usually don't venture unless Kirk drags me, but this particular day I went solo. Just my iPod shoved clumsily into my shirt, a ball, and my intention, and I practiced unwavering focus. The ball, my hands, the net. A little Springsteen in my ears for attitude. Swish, swish, brick. It's all about focus. It's all about presence. In writing, as in life.

writing resolutions 2010

Our annual workshop get-together where we announce our writing resolutions was supposed to happen last night. We had a freak snow storm a few hours before the appointed gathering, so our intentions fizzled with the melting snow. Or at least the spoken declaration of them.

Given the reprieve, I'm putting mine back in the slow-cooker. There are the concrete production goals: finish a novel, sell a screenplay, etc... those are no problem. It's the process oriented resolutions I have a harder time with. The "eat healthier" as opposed to "lose 10 pounds" type promises. For years I have vowed to write first thing in the morning, before the soil of the day seeps into my psyche. I talked about this with my client Ted today. The beauty of attending to the writing, even if it means simply sitting in a room as the light changes out the window. Slow. Down. Listen.

So much of what ends up on the page is dependent upon psychic stance. Tone, character, dialogue. When we attend instead of barge forth, we are operationally at an advantage. Attending gets harder as the day grinds on.

So, in deference to the muse, in 2010, I will pledge, once again, to write before my monkey mind has a foothold. There. I said it.

revising during "the season"

December is galloping along the way it always does. Candles, boughs of holly, ornaments, gingerbread creatures and their lairs. Who put all of these props on the stage? And then there's the concerts, plays, parties and festivals. Wassail? Why not! It's been a while since I had night free of alcohol.

I am a big fan of the seasonal hyperbole. As long as I stay clear of malls, I'm not unduly affected by the stress of too many people, spending too much money and the ennui that comes with abject commercialism.

My biggest complaint about December is that it's really hard to hunker down with the pages. Especially revision. Writing new stuff aligns with the mania of December. Sober judgment of existing work--not so much.

This Sunday afternoon, I've sequestered myself at the office, where there is nary a soul, save the cleaning lady. I've come here to tweak sentences, gain clarity on voice consistency, make back-story pacing decisions and to hopefully solve a host of other second draft problems, but my brain is not wanting to go there. It doesn't want to engage in work at all! Instead, my heart is leading my brain off in search of whimsy and baubles and the desire for rum balls.

Oh bother.

Stairway of Love gets reviewed by the briliantist writers in Portland!

Last night my writing group came over, manuscripts in hand, sat in a circle in my living room and opined on Stairway. Jim said I should have been wearing a crown. Seriously, all that was missing was a cake with candles in it and a wish before I blew them out. The Stairways lay about, each decorated with the pen colors and handwriting of my various workshop mates. Chelsea (blue marker) said she was proud of me. Cheryl (red pen) said I was one draft away from a book deal.

Everyone who writes a novel-length manuscript should have access to this--a circle of trusted advisers--smart writers all--who want you to succeed.

We're a big group. In size, in psyche, in personality, in success, in every way, we're big. And we come from disparate writing traditions. Some of us have MFAs, some literature and journalism degrees, some, none of the above. We write memoirs, thrillers, popular fiction, high lit. Poetry, reviews, screenplays and short stories. We blog, avoid the Internet, write until 3 a.m. or only in manic bursts.

Though we've been meeting weekly in one configuration or another for, in some cases, two decades, this is the first time we've ever critiqued a manuscript in this fashion. None of us was sure it would go well, in fact some of us had serious doubts it would work at all. One of the great things about our workshop, we've all said at one time or another, is that there's no homework. We show up, pass out pages, and get feedback chapter-by-chapter. Until now.

We decided to add this once-a-month whole-work review to our weekly workshop because although feedback on granular sections is undeniably useful, and has a cumulative quality as we venture further into our books, occasionally the critique veers toward the pedantic as we examine sentences and declare, on a micro-level, what works or doesn't. At a certain point, it's crucial to examine work from a big-picture stance, the way the ultimate agent, editor and reader will. For me, and for my next draft of Stairway, this was imperative.

Typical of the workshop model, the group started large and positive, and then moved into particular concerns, holes and problem areas. Having set the work aside for a month made me pretty open to hearing the negatives, and when there was disagreement about what should be done about the bumps, I felt relaxed enough to push further to get to the heart of the problem so I could determine whether the issue was universal or an individual reader's taste.

At some point, we stopped offering opinions on problem areas, and began to come up with solutions. The evening swerved into brain-storm mode. "What about" became "what if" and, in the course of two-and-a-half hours (and a few glasses of wine), MAJOR areas of my book got fixed. It was magic.

All that remains is two months of disciplined focus as I pore over my notes, re-engage my intuition, and dive into my book. Happy birthday, SOL, it's time to get you out of the womb.

some contemporary characters redux

The 3-day Twitter-thon is over, and, frankly, I'm glad.

Moody's "Some Contemporary Characters" told via Twitter in 10-minute increments during three work days in a row proved to be somewhat like a sexy character sketch with a smart first act arc, and an ennui-riddled ending.

The characters themselves were not contemporary, really, but the modes surrounding their "hook-up" and the props and, of course, the medium of the message were all very modern.

What worked terrifically well were the tweet-to-tweet POV shifts. Better than white space on a page, the temporal cadence of 10 minute pauses between micro-narratives had an interactive component. The "reader" had time to imagine the retort of the other party, and more frequently than not, Moody thwarted that expectation with the lyrical interjection of enjambment. Not always, but enough to get your attention.

I have to admit though, I felt like a misbehaving high school student when meeting with a client with my phone blurping out the announcement of a new message continually. And if a half-hour or, God forbid, 45 minutes went by without me checking for recent installments, I felt behind--which is my big argument in opposition to Twitter generally.

The big question is, is this prelude to more of the same, or simply a passing fad.

moody ambrosia

Rick Moody is tweeting in my pocket. Okay, it's not REALLY him--it's processed him, but the effect is the same if I suspend disbelief.

The innovative folks at Electric Lit engaged Moody for this particular experiment in micro-serialization via Twitter, and I'm enjoying the output immensely. To the reader (or audience, or viewer, depending how you experience it), it feels like being in on a secret- a fly on the wall in your favorite writer's writing room. Or maybe like being a bobblehead doll pasted next to his computer screen. Or the recipient of an epistolary manic episode.

This is the opening of the micro-piece:
"There are things in this taxable and careworn world that can only be said in a restrictive interface with a minimum of characters:"

Of course Moody would employ the colon at the beginning of this thing. The king of appropriative literature (read Hermit Crab) Moody has always been my favorite genre-bender. Twitter seems to be a terrific medium for the way he writes. The piece is dense and lyrical, utilizing repetition and enjambment innovatively and effectively.

Check it out--command it to inhabit your iPhone. You'll be hooked!

NaNoWriMo day last

I made it! Nope, I'm not a "winner" in NaNoWriMo parlance--I did not make it to 50K--but I did manage to crank out just a smidge more than 23,000 words and create a narrative hitherto nonexistent. I also managed to wreck my "t" key and build a chronic ache into my shoulders.

Nevertheless, the impetus behind signing up for this ludicrous marathon of wordspill was the carrot of unexpected reward. Unexpected because I couldn't predict whence my swerves and epiphanies and happy accidents would spring. And where they would go. And a lot of that happened--just not 50,000 words worth of that.

Yesterday, before clicking closed my laptop and heading to the dentist for a couple hours of rubber dam torture, I knew I'd failed, and I was sad. So sad, that I haven't yet logged on to the NaNoWriMo site to view the percentage of winners, because who wants to start a new month feeling like a loser?

But I did leave the contest on a high note. I added a significant lover to my narrator's cache, and in so doing found what amounts to a plot-driving grail object--the quintessential tragedy that informs my character's broken heart. So hurray for me! Not only that, but for the first time ever in my non-memoir writing career, I've appropriated an historical event for narrative catalyst. So hurray for me again.

I do plan on continuing along at less than break-neck pace with ALL OF MY CHILDREN ARE NOT HERE, but the fish fry that awaits at week's end is my writing group coming over this Sunday w/ skewers and STAIRWAY OF LOVE under their respective arms. Anyone for novel-kabob?

erin reel the lit coach

My first and only literary agent, Erin Reel, left agenting a while back to pursue other endeavors, and has created a dream career as a lit coach. It's a terrific niche market, in my humble opinion, and a perfect complement to the rapidly evolving, frenetic world of today's publishing marketplace.

With so many distractions and expectations for writers today, it's helpful to have an advocate and a guide, who's familiar with the way the publishing world works, offer a recipes for success.

Check out Erin's new blog frequently for tips on how to develop the virtues associated with literary success!

unwelcome information

My last couple of chapters of my NaNoWriMo novel have been difficult to push out. I find myself wandering around in a wasteland of confusion, annoyance and failure of spirit.

It's hard to write this way...really hard. My mind wanders, I check facebook, I move money around on my online bank accounts, and then, just for the hell of it, move it back again.

My character--and the book--is getting way more sexual than I'd intended. Yesterday, there was a surprising revelation with her, and I reacted the same way I would had I just found out about a friend's unsavory secret. Sort of tmi, sort of "I wish I didn't know that."

Shit.

Because I'm writing blindly forward in this exercise of word-count-as-grail-object, I now must digest this information, and move ahead with it and see where it all leads. Never-the-less, I feel somewhat betrayed.

keeping the momentum up

Life is full. Adding a 50,000 words in one month project to a full life can be harrowing, if not detrimental, to the delicate balance of family, fitness, fun, or yeah, and work. And don't even get me started on sleep.

When I started grad school lo these many years ago, the then-director of the program, Eloise Klein Healey, cautioned that something would have to give. That we could not expect to add 20 hours of committed work a week to an already packed life and expect that the other things would simply shove their fat butts over to make room. Like 12 tits and 13 puppies, someone wasn't gonna get fed.

And so it goes with NaNoWriMo. Producing 1,667 words per day is only possible when I take three hours to do just that and only that. So far I've been able to steal those hours two days out of the twelve. If I'm going to benefit from this experiment, I have to do better than that. Today, I'm giving up working out. I'm going to paste my rear to the chair, and maybe do some tummy tightening, glut clenching, but I shan't take the foray into the gym and all that goes along with getting my stuff together, finding a place to park, fussing with my iPod earbuds, etc... Nope, today I'm sitting here until I do my word count!

another day, another less-than-stellar word count

I wrote less that 600 words today. That's the bad news. The good news is that I think I've found a certain comfort, here in chapter four, with my character's voice, and the characters with whom she interacts have begun to feel fleshy to me. Substantive, even.

So, with pounding head (I had major dental work today), and resolve, I'm heading back in before I sleep, see if I can knock out just a few more sentences.

Perhaps a glass of Clear Creek apple brandy might help? Medicinal, of course.

r and r. sort of.

Yes, I'm getting into the word count frenzy. Just shoot me. I'm relaxing at the Oregon coast with my darling husband (who has grades due at school Monday--so also has a hunker-down deadline), and the weather cooperated magnificently with a full on thunder and lightning hail storm this morning.

I wrote about 2,000 words, then took a break. Kirk and I walked into town via the beach and it seriously looked like a ginormous bubble bath gone awry. Bubbles of foam had churned up and were rolling all over the sand like tumbleweeds.

Got my dopio macchiato at the Manzanita News & Espresso, and headed back to the beach house, totally getting caught in a second downpour on the way home.

Unfortunately, my afternoon of writing was fragmented by the need to watch a couple of college football games on FSN, and a rousing game of dirty word Scrabble with hubby. I lost, btw.