let's talk about amazing

My little girl, the amazing Maggie Vitello, future social worker and crusader and advocate for girls, women and the deaf community, has just graduated from college and is set to enter grad school in September.

On Thursday she was identified from a field of over one thousand graduates and awarded one of seven commendations for her outstanding service, scholarship and dedication. Though she laps me in so many ways, the one comment that touched her most was when the presenter of the award mentioned her strong writing skills.

Like many bright young people who later go on to make writing a definitive part of their lives, Maggie always thought of herself as a "struggling writer." She would never share a draft of anything she wrote until she'd gone over it seventeen times and had others edit it. Even then, she would rather read it aloud than have me read it to myself.

The last major piece of writing she shared with me was the essay she wrote for her grad school application. I was blown away. At 20, my daughter knows how to effectively communicate her passion, tenacity and hope with spirit and grace.

At the risk of appearing to be much too much of a doting mother--I am deeply in awe of my little girl, and I can't wait to see what she does next.

no is the new yes

Here is a little essay I wrote for a website today. I may actually start following some of my own advice!!

Has this ever happened to you? It’s late on a Sunday evening, your fourth-grader has a diorama titled “Inuit at Home” due the next morning and he’s just thrown a major tantrum and stormed into his room because the igloo he hastily glued together from sugar cubes has collapsed. There is a now pile of sticky confection on the floor. Your washing machine buzzes to alert you to move the wet clothes to the dryer. Oh, but wait! You promised to coordinate the soccer practice carpool this week. And, you need to prepare for a meeting at ten the next morning. Your child continues to wail from his room.

And yes, there’s more! On the work front a colleague has asked you to respond to her blog post. You’re behind on Twitter, Facebook and Email. Your iPhone beeps to remind you that you’ve double-booked a conference call with a client and a conference with your son’s teacher. Oops!

If you’re a working parent, this is an all too familiar scenario. Even if you’re not a parent, you can probably relate to much of the logjam described above.

When overwhelmed, my business partner used to say, “I’m running as fast as I can to stay in the same place.” Then, when things got worse, she changed it to, “I’m running as fast as I can to stay hopelessly behind!”

Let’s face it, we live in a time and in a world where multi-tasking is the default, and the expectation is that we’ll get it all done regardless of how much more gets put on the plate. We are over-committed. We’ve become a nation of work-bingers! Seriously, think of the tasks in your day as food items. Forget the three squares, we’ve got our hands in the bag of Cheetos, the box of Twinkies and wrapped around the Big Gulp. We’re constantly “eating” and getting limited nutrition.

Okay, enough with the metaphors. What I’m getting at is this. We’re organizing our days around quantity in favor of quality. We continue to say “yes” to everything because we think we’ll let someone down if we say “no.” I can handle it, says that little voice in our heads that doesn’t want to succumb to our limited capacity for quality production.

As co-owners of a communications company, BridgePoint Creative, my business partner and I were also guilty of this behavior. We’d say “yes” to every project, and many volunteer opportunities as well. One day, though, I accidentally said “no.” A graphic designer who often partners with me for Web work asked if I’d be interested in heading a PR campaign for a caterer on the East Coast (I live on the West Coast). For some reason, I hypotheticized the invitation, putting a client in my place, and realized, et voila! that the combination of skillset, location and other work made the likelihood of success a long shot.

“I don’t think I’m the right person for this,” I said, instantly feeling both guilt and relief as the words left my lips.

My business partner looked over at me in horror. As soon as I hung up the phone, I asked her, “What did I just do?”

“I think you said ‘no’,” she said, in awe.

Five minutes later, one of our favorite clients called offering us a huge e-mail marketing campaign. Just like that—no proposal, no bid, just “do it!”

It was one of the weirdest experiences because of the huge neon sign that flickered: When one door closes, another opens! Aha, but that door did not close on its own. When I began to chronicle the myriad ways in which opportunity knocks, I realized that often I’d prepared myself in some way to invite it. By shifting my consciousness to a place, or a space, away from chaos and obligation, I’d allowed more room for intention.

The thing about the hamster wheel, and why we often feel helplessly ambushed by the onslaught of external demands, is that we re-act instead of pro-act. Once we start “driving the bus” instead of being a passenger, we find that we’re less exhausted and often become the recipient of path-altering benefits.

Here are just a few gains we make when we become more discerning:

• The beginning of the end of “analysis paralysis” where a new energy can be harnessed and activated in a particular direction
• Clarity, resolve and peace of mind
• Concrete goals and steps toward those goals
• A strong idea of what needs to be excluded in order for goals to be obtained

So give it a try! Make like a two-year-old and start practicing the word “no”!

SUZY’S TOP TEN TIPS ON SAYING NO

1. When someone asks a favor, pause before responding.
2. Keep a small notebook and pen with you at all times.
3. Start your day writing down the three main things you wish to accomplish by day’s end.
4. Every time a new task is added to your day, write it on the same page as your top three, but underneath.
5. Practice these words: “I’d love to talk more about this, but I’m going to have to cut it short today. Let’s schedule another time to talk.”
6. Every month you should fill out a personal “intake” form. At the top of the form answer this question: “What do I never want to do again in my life.”
7. Remember this: the right thing and the familiar thing are often different.
8. Stretch out of your comfort zone at least once a week.
9. Think of your day in a big picture way, rather than in ten minute increments.
10. Stick to your guns! Don’t cave! Some people will make you repeat “no” several times before they get the message.

on transcending inertia

As I've posted many a time, I've always resisted staying in scene. I like to click along the horizontal--get my character out of there. Maybe, I'm beginning to think, it's a symptom of commitment phobia. Like--if I stay and explore, I might end up being beholden to something that'll make me have to give up my gadabout pace. My blithely swashbuckling through scene and into slick asides and away from trouble.

In this rewrite I'm doing of the first section of TSTL, I'm challenging my tendencies. I'm allowing myself to become bored in a scene. Staying there until I find something in the room, or in the air, or in one of the character's epiphanies that transcends the boredom. It's hard, but continues to reward me with the sort of prose that writes itself--eventually.

Patience is more than mere virtue. It's a fairy godmother.

pep talk

The rains of May have arrived, and with them, a reprieve from the distractions of sunnier days. Can't mow the lawn, don't want to trudge out into the park for a hike, the ski hill has shut down for the season.

So, write, then, writer. Write amid the gray, the damp, the damned. Finish what you set out to do.

on trusting the voice

I've made what I think of as a bold move with my main character, Fifi. In an effort to court her, to make her my bff, I'm pulling her in, upping the tempo of her voice. Her place at the table is across from you. She's demanding that you look in her eyes, feel her, understand her. In short, you, the reader, has been hired as her shrink--well, okay, maybe not shrink, but, companion.

Sure, she's going to tell you about her family, but her family isn't going to eclipse her as much as in the first draft. Her family is the supporting cast. Fifi is the one. Fifi is the diva. Fifi is the one on the quest for the Secret to Love.

In taking this move, I've upset the apple cart. My colleagues, there at the table, are bewildered. What's with the tone? They want to know. Truly, they are not used to this character being in-your-face. It seems wrong. It's as if she just got a personality transplant.

This is a test. A writer must trust her vision and the voice of her character, even when the character gets that personality transplant. Okay, so now, instead of my sweet girl, you're this snotty adolescent. Fine. I'm on your bus. Take me somewhere.

my new fan obsession: blazer radio

Here's Travis Outlaw being all pumped up in last night's clincher against Houston.

Great to see, but even better to hear. We're now in month two of our tv ousting, and really, the playoffs were my only regret. Until I started listening to Brian Wheeler and his trademark alliterative tagging of the opposing coach after significant Trailblazer runs. (E.g. After the Blazers 4th Quarter run, Adelman was characterized as "dejected, deflated and devastated!")

Wheeler's commentary is immediate, grabbing and entertaining. He doesn't miss a beat, and he takes in the whole picture, offering realtime tidbits from the bench, the court, the stands and the scoreboard. It sort of comes down to the power of storytelling, I think. The ability of a narrator to pan the landscape and zoom in on nuance and tension, without the aid of visuals. As Lorrie Moore once said in a lecture I attended, "the reason books are more powerful than tv, is that books cannot proceed without you." As a listener, your imagination, experience, emotional state and attention is called upon differently when you have to supply the picture.

The other thing about listening to a sporting event instead of watching one is that the dynamics of a household change. For instance, while we had both upstairs and downstairs radios tuned to 95.5 fm, we were engaged in several other activities. Me: doing dishes and relaxing on the couch; Kirk and Carson: cleaning and organizing his room in anticipation of his big birthday bash coming up this weekend. It was a sort of social multi-tasking, where we converged every so often to comment on Roy's flu symptoms or Scola's foul, or that steal Fernandez made. We all brought more to our interaction this way, each of us interpreting the game with what we were seeing in our respective heads, rather than what may have been on a collective screen.

good stuff

We interrupt this economic downturn to point out a few exquisite pieces of terrific news:

1. Many of my writing colleagues have just, or are in the midst of, landing terrific book deals
2. My daughter has just been accepted to a master's program she has worked very hard to be in
3. The gallery where I work, after experiencing recent hardship, is facing brighter days
4. So many of my entrepreneurial colleagues and artist friends are venturing forth with exciting work and new business

In short, for folks who continue to work hard and think outside the box, the future is bright.

stepping back from the trees

Last week my very good and smart writer friend Cheryl, offered to examine the first part of my novel. She's seen much of the book in seven page increments (our page limit at workshop is seven, so we can get to everyone), but seeing the novel is a larger chunk gave her a whole other perspective.

We met at a tequila bar during happy hour, and for the next 90 minutes, over margaritas and tortilla chips, Cheryl and I talked about The Secret to Love. It was like meeting your child's teacher for a parent conference, when you know that the teacher loves your child, and that anything other than "Little Johnny is a talented, wonderful angel" was going to be constructive and offered in the spirit of: Now, what can we do to ensure that Little Johnny become president some day?

Seriously, having a trusted, smart colleague pore over your work and then offer a considered critique is far and away the best supplement you can add to your draft. In the case of TSTL, the upshot is, I need to restructure my conceit. When it comes to the "horizontal" of the book, instead of giving equal billing to backstory and ongoing narrative, I need to allow the backstory to inform the emotional drivers of the novel. The reader must become more rooted in Fifi's present world--more compellingly invited to the ongoing party. It all seemed so obvious, after two loaded margaritas!

Back to the drawing board with TSTL. Sort of. The good news is, pretty much everything I've written is keepable, I just need to build slower scenes around it. My opening prologue, a wholesale adjunct, is now a scene with Fifi, her husband and her dog at the Portland airport, as opposed to backstory about characters that are not as crucial to the trajectory of the narrative.

Now, on this sunny Monday morning, I must return to them, my little trio, and gear up the engines for this line of flight.

re-tweet

A few days into my Twitter experiment, I already want to quit. Or take a re-tweet (get it?). The feeling of being behind if I'm not checking my laptop or phone every five minutes is fracturing.

So I did, actually, take a re-tweet. Kirk and I played hooky yesterday afternoon and cruised up to our favorite off-the-grid destination: Mt. Hood Meadows--our skis in tow. On the way up, we both felt sort of out of our bodies: headachy, stomach-achy, general malaise. With his mother currently weighing 82 pounds--and lingering with this grim diagnosis of debility and decline--and my 71-year-old father and his rapid-fire matrimonial hyjinx, my ex-husband's lack of reliability regarding the fiscal and custodial terms of our divorce, the publishing crisis and my dwindling chances of finding an editor interested in my novels, the impending ax in Kirk's school district promising pink slips to 25% of the teachers come next month, the large-scale economic shadow of doom generally--all of this felt packed into our bodies, tamped down with the weight of another damp, gray day in the Pacific Northwest. So, on this IRS red-letter day, we went skiing.

Despite the parting clouds, the fresh snow and the calm winds, Meadows was a ghost town. A skeleton operation with only a handful of lifts operating. I had new equipment I was testing out for possible purchase, and Kirk had waxed his skis, so we went slow, took the easy runs: up and down, up and down.

By the fourth run, I felt terrific. The aches and pains had dissipated with the clouds, the new skis were amazing. Kirk was having a bit more trouble though. The uneven wax on his old skis were sticking in the slushy snow, and he actually fell a few times--a very rare thing for him.

We took a break, went to the lodge, and I ordered something with vodka--something I never do. I'm a sober skier--way too uptight to risk altered reflexes, but yesterday, all of the sudden, I felt in need of a stiff drink. Yes, in need of. (Cue the warning bells.)

So back up the mountain we went. And down. And up. And down. Kirk had a better experience, and my thimble full of vodka had absolutely no effect at all. Until we finished, and were heading back down to the valley, and the impending catch-up with work and Tweets and conference calls and absorbing news, and following up with stuff slammed into me and sent me scrambling for Excedrin.

But, I said I'd give it a month, and that's what I'm doing. Back to the fray. Follow me.

What song is running through your head right now?

All morning Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne" has been running through my head! What about you? (Answer is comment below)

twitter, tweater, twiddle, twerp

Okay, I've decided to completely embrace, figure out, dive in and otherwise become obsessed with all manner of online social media. For a month. I'm giving it a month. The back of my head and my neck already aches, and, hey, what about that Internet Sabbath I pledged. A month.

Here's why.

I write for a living. It isn't a hobby, it's not what I do on my time off, it's what I do. Period.

My concerns, projections, trepidations and misgivings are thus:

1. I'm contributing to the trend towards limited attention and shallow engagement
2. I'll have to give something else up, and I'm not sure what that will be
3. I worry that my tendency to feel like everything is only half done and that there's something I've forgotten will increase
4. I worry about being sucked into the land of endless trivia

My hopes, goals and optimisms are:

1. I'll get to know more cool people
2. I'll get to know about more cool things
3. I'll waste less time and improve my powers of concision
4. I'll be able to get more clients, and help more clients
5. I'll deliver my creative messages to more people
6. I'll be able to boil down my messages to their most salient points
7. I'll find more audience

Let the craziness begin!

unpacking Christmas

I find that Christmas works itself into my stories a lot. It's sort of like when I used to go house shopping and envision the placement of a Christmas tree before contemplating things like the price of the house, for instance. Does that make me sentimental, I asked myself the other day?

Why is the chronicling of ritual--the anticipation of gatherings--so important to me? In STL I've spent about 100 pages on various Christmas-time scenes with my little family, Messmeir. It's the distillation of family, I suppose, that I'm after with all this yuletide reportage. The pure drops of love, dysfunction, hierarchy, personality--all things that inform character development.

I read some "Christmas morning" pages at workshop last night. Three characters plus a dog assembled around the fake Costco tree, trying to create new ritual after the death of one of the character's mothers. Because this novel includes current day phenomena, I had Annika with her laptop, trying to evoke her missing father via Skype. A far cry from a traditional Christmas scene, and the culmination of the scenes before, where all ritual had been broken down due to various chaotic fiascoes.

I have to add another layer to the scene; tie it more tightly to the chapters that proceed it. The good news is, that I seem to have accomplished my main objective with this scene--to plant the seeds for a new alliance between Fifi and Annika--the first positive connection between two characters in my book.

scribbling witness

The last few days, giddy with sunshine, I've been steeped in collecting ephemera for use in my work. Eavesdrops, descriptions, scenarios, utterances.

Typically, when I'm gathering like this, I jot things down on scraps of paper: gasoline receipts, deposit slips, napkins. I reached for one of these today, wanting to record a potential exchange between Annika and Frances, a bit of b-and-f that had played out in my head, and, lo and behold, there was a note already scribbled upon the only square inch of blank paper in my purse. It was something my son had mused about months ago when we pulled out of the gas station, after the attendant had issued a receipt.

The note, in scratchy, cryptic handwriting had claimed that my son asked what would happen if I wanted to return the gas (in his world, that's the only reason you have a receipt--in order get your money back). "Would they suck the gas out of your car with a different kind of pump?"

I'm sure I'll use that someday, somewhere...

good news gone south

The other day I accidentally unearthed a file folder full of correspondence. Much of it, rejection letters. The notes in this folder were largely anachronistic. Most publishers, presses and agents say "no" via email these days, thus disallowing the fantasy of papering a bathroom with rejections on letterhead after landing the "bit fat deal."

Once I found this file, paged through it, and dumped it into the rolling recycle bin in my driveway, I realized that somewhere else in the deep, dark recesses of my bungalow, dwells a file with the tabbed notation: Good News. Frantically, I went in search of it, only to get sand-trapped in old manuscripts, tax files and mortgage records of houses I no longer own. Alas, my "Good News" file seems to have vanished. Which really sucks, because in it are some fabulous letters, including the one from C. Michael Curtis telling me I was a prizewinner in the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Competition, and an agent green-lighting my story collection, with a list of places she planned to send , and a few literary presses responding favorably to my quest for publication, and a couple of REALLY AWESOME letters of recommendation.

After wasting several hours on my hunt, though, I was resigned face the sad truth that Good News is gone. Just like my custom-made watermelon tourmaline earring and my spare set of car keys.

Often, I have this St. Anthony type thing I do when I can't find something. I give the missing thing over to the invisible elves. Usually my missing item only shows up when I'm actively hunting for something else, though, and perhaps this will be the case with Good News.

4G 3G wtf?

If you're a modern-type, and by modern I mean you e-mail more than you fax, you probably have been scratching your head lately about the choices in communicating via phone, Internet, skype and VoIP. And for entertainment, should you continue with cable? Try dish or direct tv? Watch everything via your computer screen? Or should you just Netflix what you want, or download it via youtube or iTunes or whatever else comes out of the digital birth canal?

Ah, the choices. All this G stuff. iphones are 3G, wi-fi is 4G. It's all so confusing, eh? As are the consolidation/bundle/cancel options.

My husband and I are still in the throes of merge, and discussions on what to consolidate, what to keep separate, what to banish entirely fill the allotted pragmatic plate. A few weeks ago we pondered the latest "bundle" offer from Comcast. $114.95 for basic cable, land line and Internet. Since I was currently paying Comcast $120 for just Internet and tv, I thought that by eliminating Qwest and Sprint, we'd be saving $80, so I called for a disconnect and had my brand new husband call for installation under the new service price.

Of course, I knew it wouldn't be that simple.

So the installer shows up on appointed day (after a snafu which included an inadvertent cancellation of my cancellation, thus generating a new invoice, leading me to suspect that I'd be paying double for the next month) and right away, he pronounces amazement and surprise when I query him about the wireless component to the order. "Wireless," says he. "Ain't gat no order for wireless. Don't even have a modem with me in the truck."

"No problem, I have the modem and the router already."

"Oh, well, this here is a differnt type of hook-up. They'd charge you an additional $100 for the wireless hook up."

"What hook up?" I vehemently protested. "It's already hooked up. All you have to do is hook up the phone."

So, with the impatient installer standing in the doorway, I dialed up Comcast on my iphone (dialed isn't right with the iphone, I know. We need to invent some new phone-calling verbs. For now, let's say smeared. I smeared my fingers over the screen), and after the queue of mirrors, was told I was shit out of luck. I'd have to reschedule my hook up, and my installation would be $100 instead of $45, and then there was a sur-charge for this and a tax on that. I hung up the iphone. No, make that tapped END CALL, or whatever it says in that red rectangle.

Long story short, I decided, Who the hell needs a zillion sports channels and a landline that seems to serve only to usher forth phone calls from solicitors? All I really need is Internet. Fast, furious, Internet.

Luckily, Portland is a test market for a great new Wi-Max service (4G) called clear. They have mobile Internet, home Internet and phone services all compartmentalized with gradient pricing. After a little investigation, I found out that I could get exactly what I needed for $35 a month (and five of that is modem rental). The best part was, I simply took the modem out of the box, plugged it in, and voila!

If you live in the Portland area and you're sick of Qwest and/or Comcast and their big box bullshit, call my guy, Simon Benz: (503) 875-4709. Or email him at simonbenz@clear.net . He'll come to your house with the goods and determine whether your location is in the clear zone, and hook you up! Tell him Suzy Soule sent you :)

there is a season

I've reached the point in my novel where I have to very, very quiet in order to hear the heartbeats of my characters. Discern the strength of pulse, of intent, of sorrow and redemption.

Ideally, this is when I'd go hide out in a hole somewhere and banish all manner of monkey mind from my day.

Instead, I'm doing what I typically do on Monday mornings: making a list, attending to the queue of inbox tasks that I envision are starting to grow microscopic flora. Mondays are always "too much with me," and I think it has something to do with locating myself in the world.

This is a particularly onerous Monday because it is the Monday after Spring Holiday. Can you see the circles under my little boy's eyes? He spent the week with his father, sick and in bed. Came home with a rattly cough and diminished energy, but his usual strong will to go to school today (he can't stand the thought of being out of the loop--what a Type A!); and there's his older brother, Sam--my first baby. Spring break for a college boy is all about beer, video games, laundry and, in the case of my son, voicing all the things he's going to do when he wins the lottery.

Yesterday was quite fun though. Sam, Carson and I played miniature golf in one of those blacklight basement venues that are cropping up. Sam, who takes all games seriously, kept the scorecard, announcing at each hole how much over or under par he was. I loved how we matched pace-wise: we're efficient when it comes to putt-putt, taking our turns in the middle of each other's turn, leap-frogging over slower families. None of us cares to dilly-dally.

Next on the list was a trip to Home Depot for a dehumidifier for Sam's soggy basement apartment, and then a stock-up trip to the Japanese market for staples. Sam is an aficionado of Asian cuisine, and he trotted me around to the various shaker spices for sushi rice, a particular type of Nori that he likes, and a quest for fresh uni. We rounded out the chores with the acquisition of more duct tape to hold Sam's headlights in place.

In other news, my mother-in-law continues to fade. All the Soules were up for another good-bye session round the bedside. Dorothy is in her final furlong, offering gaspy witness to a collapsing temporal reality: her parents, her children, her childhood, her wishes for the near future. "I love you," she whispers. Then: "I want to go home."

We're entering the second month of hospice, and Kirk and his sister are taking turns spending the night with her in her assisted living apartment, the oxygen machine as metronome in the background, its bellows like the blow hole of a whale. It's peaceful, scary, large and human: all of those things and many more. Her imminent death greets us every morning, and each of her children must go through the dance of letting go anew. The exhaustion of that is taking its toll on some more than others. As she shrinks from us, both physically and psychically, we are reminded of the miracle of the body: the tenacity of will and spirit. Myself, I think she has another week in her. She'll hold on until the month of her birth, which is fitting.

So, today is Monday. The holiday week is over. The kids are back in school. My checklist is moderate, and my heart and mind are open to the next thing. I'm trying to purge the jangly sounds in order to hear the voices of my other family: the Messmeirs, and for that, I may need to walk in the woods.

self worth: the never-ending pursuit

Last night, after workshop, I came home to my sleeping husband and I was in the mood to share. Workshop had been full of emotion. With ten of us, it happens sometimes that there's a leak in the boat. Someone feels dissed, or insulted or threatened. I wanted to download all of this with Kirk, the way he does with me sometimes after basketball when a fight breaks out on the court amongst his long-time hoopster friends.

I yakked on about how much I love my writer friends, and what had transpired during the evening's session. I offered the anecdote that one member gave as a way to help the other member who felt shut down. I don't think I was very articulate. It was the red wine mush-brain syndrome. The, "I've been up since 5:30 a.m. and now it's 11, and we have to get up at 5:30 again" thing going on there in the bed. I was trying to convey the relationship between language and emotion, and it was late. Too late.

"That's nice, Honey," said my husband, whose sleep I had interrupted.

This morning though, at o'dark-thirty, as he bounded out of bed to grab his basketball knee guards the way you only do when it's the Friday launch pad day of spring break, he'd thought over the broohaha I had assumed he'd not absorbed.

"I guess I just don't understand the creative process," he said. "What writers go through. Seems there's a lot of suffering."

He wasn't being dismissive, he was just stating a fact: artistic angst just isn't in his frame of reference. He views writing as a pragmatic endeavor. "You have an idea, you outline it, you write it, the end," he said.

"Well, yeah, if you're writing for the intellect, I guess," I said. Then, I went into the whole Dangerous Writing paradigm. "When you go for the heart, you actually have to open yours," I told him. "You have to get vulnerable, and sometimes that's messy."

"You know what I think," he said, "I think there may be too many girls in your writers' group." With that, my lover gave me a kiss and then bounded off in his basketball outfit to get in a little chipping, pushing, shoving and dunking in before work.

Power Play

The other day, after spending some time on my pages, the balance of power between my characters loomed large. Starting with the grandmother character, trickling down through my narrator, via her mother, and then onto my narrator’s niece. My novel is a study in matriarchy. The men in my novel are “shadowy extras on the set” which is the actual descriptor early on. This is a family where the men lope behind the women like pets. They are expendable and mostly badly behaved. This is exemplified in the opening scene, in which a male forebear commits a murder/suicide—a definitive statement from which the tale unfurls.

Dizzy with words and characters and plot points, off I went to the gym, headphones in pocket. On the elliptical machine, there in front of me on telly one, was Tony and gang. Commensurate with my state of mind, this was one of the quintessential power-shift episodes, the one where Little Anthony gets in trouble for being drunk in gym class and is consigned to the school counselor to rule out ADD.

The undercurrent is in backstory, where we learn the root of Tony’s ensuing existential crisis: his first awareness of the family “business.” This is juxtaposed with his own decision to reveal or not reveal the nature of his livelihood to his own kids, and the confession of his philandering ways to his shrink.

The one scene in Melfi’s office unveils, in my mind, the core of the success of this show. There is this stunning confrontation between Melfi and Tony, a standoff of psyches, on the heels of a session where Tony revealed his “love” read: transference, for his therapist. Tony’s need to balm his vulnerability with face-saving machismo is so wonderfully, classically, hyperbolically male. Melfi’s retreat into professional stance when she is clearly intrigued by her patient, is played on the edge. The chemistry between these two characters comes up against their sense of control and power and hunger for winning. It’s everything I want to explore in my work, and left me feeling drained and excited all at the same time.

lost in translation

This week, we have a lovely young girl from Toyamaken, Japan visiting our home. She's a 16-yr-old high school student here on an exchange through the high school where my husband works.

She speaks a bit of English. We here at our house speak zero Japanese. Hand gestures abound. I didn't know I could move my eyebrows up and down that energetically!

I haven't been a host to someone from another culture in a very long time, and this exercise is teaching me a lot about communication, presumption, non-verbal cues, etc... It's making me realize that a lot of my day--really, a lot--is about anticipating disaster and managing expectation. Having a non-English speaker in the house has magnified this. It has magnified my ineptitudes as well. For instance. I'm a really shitty folder. Sheets, towels, Origami, you name it, if the goal is to make something look like it just spent a week in the hamper, I'm a pro. Our house guest is an expert folder. She handed me her dirty laundry and it was presented in this beautiful shape, as though it were a bouquet she was offering. I'm going to labor over the folding of this laundry when I hand it back to her. Or maybe I won't actually hand it to her. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to stack it by her bedroom door. Maybe she'll think my nine-year-old did it that way and I can save face.

So, I'm a terrible folder, BUT, I'm good at flinging things. And the hip check? I have that down pat. Plus, I can scramble through a Safeway, get everything on my list and into my car in less time than it takes to, uh, fold a load of towels.

In order to give our guest an adventure, today we took her skiing. The mountain was more blizzardy than I've ever seen it. My ass was literally lifted off of the ski lift during one gust. Our Japanese girl was quite amazed, though certainly polite, as horizontal ice pelted the few exposed areas of her cheeks. She had enough after three runs down the bunny slope. And who could blame her? I tried to joke in that way that you do when you speak a different language than the person you're joking with.

"Bet you wish you were on a nice beach, eh? Well, we're tough here in Oregon. Very tough. This is what we do for fun!" I said, emphasizing the joke words by saying them way too loud, Trying out hyperbole with my cheek muscles, though, my voice was muffled and my jaw was enshrouded by the neck warmer I'd pulled up to my goggles.

She's off to slumber land now, our guest. The trepidation she carried in her body the last two days (she was very nervous about this impending ski trip, I think), has melted, if, indeed, the ice on the mountain has not. She's relieved and looking forward to the next few days, where she'll attend American high school with the other Japanese students, and as far as "home stay" activities--I think we'll take in a movie tomorrow night. I'm thinking Coraline.

David Foster Wallace

Interesting article on David Foster Wallace in this week's New Yorker. The newest issue isn't online yet, or I'd link to it. If you're a fan of Wallace, or even if you're not, it's an important read. Also in the issue is an excerpt of his soon-to-be posthumously published novel, THE PALE KING-- a book which seeks to argue for the transcendence that comes through abject boredom.

I never could sit still long enough to get through Wallace's verbal hyjinks in INFINITE JEST, but I admire the intensity and energy of Wallace's writing--his unapologetic wrestle with language. His ambitious and arrogant approach to the relationship between thought and word, image and concept, idea and paradigm.

And I say "arrogant" partly to stir the bee's nest, and partly to elevate the notion of arrogance, because, let's face it, writers are a study in chutzpah. Who else would deign to invent a human, give him language and hire him to carry out the stray thoughts and conundrums of wholesale invention other than a writer? Well, maybe George Double-ya, but he's old news.

Wallace suffered. Geniuses tend to suffer. Do you know any geniuses who don't suffer? The New Yorker piece digs into the pain of Wallace's inability to accept praise of his various efforts. He always fell short, in his opinion. Writing drove him mad. It was his salvation. And it drove him mad again.

When I was younger, I was afraid I might also be swept into madness exacerbated by creative endeavors. Fortunately, it was only youthful craziness in my case--being blessed by overall favorable bio-chemistry, my pendulum won't let me swing too far one side or the other. Nevertheless, I find the connection between madness and creativity both scary and fascinating. The piece on Wallace was a reminder of the fragility of the psyche. It left me feeling extremely sad. The despair and hopelessness that squeezes in on incredible artists, like Wallace, like Cobain, like Sexton--stemming their gifts to the generations who might have otherwise experienced transcendence from their art.

dining continental

Last night, at workshop, I brought in a piece where my characters were assembled at the grand family dining table, and I offered a tidbit on dining "Continental Style." Here's the passage I had:
Ursula and I drank goblets of Hawaiian Punch, careful to wipe any telltale stain from our top lips. Now, after a few bites of carefully cut, fussily delivered meat—Grandmother eschewed the trend toward American dining, so we had to put down the knife and transfer the fork to the knife hand after every painstaking Continental bite—it was time to begin the ritual Ursula and I longed for—the supper gossip.

Chuck told me that I had it wrong. That "Continental Style" necessitated keeping the fork and knife in hand at all times, and eating with the "tines down."

My information was incorrect? How could that be!? So I checked it out with the "expert," Ms. Brouwer, and found out that, et voila, Chuck's right and I'm wrong.

Check out this "expert" video below (you'll have to sit through a 15 second commercial on Swifter or something equally stimulating--but it's worth it just to watch Brouwer's etiquette lesson).

Proper Etiquette for Using a Knife Continental Style -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Ms. Brouwer is the expert, I suppose, but I found this "comment" on the "expert village" website even more helpful to my story, as I believe it embodies my matriarch character's feeling on the matter:

The problem is that the Continental style of eating is rather barbaric, so talking about its "etiquette" is silly. The Continental style suggests that you have to gobble your food down so quickly that you cannot take a split-second to change hands. This lack of pause for switching hands also results in the tendency of the diner to bend over more and more until his head is nearly to the plate and he is just shoveling food into his mouth. In the United States, it's also an affectation --in essence announcing, "I've been to Europe." Therefore, although, as Ms. Brouwer says, it "is what you will find all over the world" (I guess like spitting or flatulence), it is generally not appropriate in the United States and it is offensive for her (from her accent, apparently a European ) to come here to advise us that we are eating improperly and that her way is what is done "all over" the world. In addition, it looks silly to hold the fork upside-down, especially when one must mash peas onto the fork to be able to pick them up, looking like a slob and destroying the fun of eating peas, which is to pop them between the teeth.

on becoming a writer

In October, I will be celebrating my 20th Anniversary of moving to Portland--and, my 20th Anniversary of defining myself as a writer.

Even though I've been writing stories since third grade, it's only after moving to a city where I did not know one person that I formalized this reinvention of myself as a writer. Until then I was a mom. A dietitian. A widow. A young lady. All vague designations that had much more to do with my reflection to the world than my self-concept.

The first Monday after I moved into my one-bedroom apt in NW Portland, two babies in tow, I rented an electric typewriter--a cumbersome machine that weighed about the same as the microwave ovens of the era. The Willy Loman-type salesman who delivered it stayed for an hour or two, while I made him tea, and my babies crawled around and climbed all over him like puppies. He asked me why I was renting this state-of-the-art typewriter, and, just like that, it came tumbling out of my mouth: "I'm a writer."

"Oh," he said. "I thought maybe you were a student."

It didn't take longer than a heartbeat in those days for me to question myself. "Well," I said, "I'll probably need to take a writing class..."

"So, are you published?" he said.

There it was--the need for proof that I was, indeed, a writer, and not a wanna be.

"Not yet," I said, peeling my one-year old daughter off of his pant's leg.

"So, what do you write?"

I had notebooks filled with the answer to that question. But all I did was shrug my shoulders.

A couple of days ago, I was reminded of that exchange when I spoke to a creative nonfiction class at PCC, where my friend Rodger Larson teaches. After I gave my spiel--chatting up the local magazines where I've penned several articles, offering publishing advice and plugging the lo-residency school where I got my MFA, it occured to me that maybe these students just wanted to learn how to write. So I asked them: Why this class?

The mostly 20-somethings in the room, it turned out, were not there to find out more about publishing their work--they were there to learn how to write. Or write better. They came alive during a discourse on electronic media and computer vs notebook. These students were a tribute to the anachronistic medium--they pretty much all were appalled at the demise of the "book" as the main conduit to narrative engagement. It was heartening. Young people who don't blog! I, who just invested in an iphone mostly due to peer pressure and the expectation of immediate response--after all I own a communications business--was humbled.

I passed out a sign-up sheet to snag the students' email addresses, and I had two sections: "I'm interested in workshops on the craft of writing," and "I'm interested in workshops on the business of writing." Business got only two interested parties, and both of those had also signed under craft.

That same lust that I had that first Monday after moving to Portland: to write! Was alive in that Community College group. And about what happens after that? Not so much.

Life. And death.

Much of the marketing copy I write these days includes a directive to find unique ways of saying: "In these tough economic times."

With AIG needing yet another bailout, the schools at risk of early closure, record-breaking unemployment, foundations and philanthropic organizations scrambling, "tough times," hardly covers it. I like the word "crisis" better, actually--but, like single-word sentences, "crisis" has also been used to death. To death? Is that what this is all about? Good old fear of mortality rising up around us like the stink off of a stiff?

All around us, tried and true economic fixes are failing. Zapping the economy with low interest, incentives, stimulus, recovery dollars--none of these infusions has positively impacted the stock market--which just today celebrated its lowest opening bell since the 70's. My husband, a schoolteacher with more than 20 years in the public school sector, was asked to fill out a survey over the weekend. The Beaverton school district stoked the survey with disclaimers, and basically, the query had the tenor of: We have no intention of doing this AT THIS TIME, but, would you leap at the chance to put enough dough in your pocket to buy health insurance for five years if we squeezed your ass out the door next year so we could hire newbies at less than half your salary? Oh, and, by the way, would you commit to being on the substitute teacher roll for X years as part of this deal?

Perhaps the district is worried about culling all the fresh-out-of-school teachers from the sub pool, and wants to cover their butts with the veterans. Hard to say. But one thing is certain, the air is full of people scrambling. Holding on. Not wanting to let go. Fear.

So long, Rocky Mountain News. Bye-bye rising GNP. Fresh out of college, needing to pay off staggering student loans? Hope you like yanking espresso machines. No, wait, Starbucks is closing stores! There goes the neighborhood.

I always get a pit in my gut when I pass by a newly shuttered store or restaurant. It hits me like the dissolution of long-time couples I always thought were still madly in love. Failure is so easily internalized. And yet, I can't seem to keep death out of my writing. Pretty much everything I write involves loss. Love and loss: my two great obsessions.

And now, in my real life, I am facing the imminent death of my mother-in-law, who is literally shrinking from our sight. Witnessing this human downsizing over the last three months has been a compressed version of solid companies collapsing and quickly placed "for lease" signs pasted on to merchant windows. It's a one-way ticket. There won't be anyone new occupying Dorothy's body. She's leaving us bit by bit, forever.

And meanwhile, daffodils poke up. All of the perennial hallmarks: greener grass, longer days, the occasional warm burst of air. Dorothy's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue to live and grow and work and play and love.

Our infinite capacity to create and continue is our only salvation with so much death around us. We will find new ways to do business. To read the news. To ensure education for our next generation. To keep the dying safe and comfortable while we say good bye.

reconstructive surgery

A few weeks ago, as prelude to reading the pages I'd ponied up for workshop, I realized that I'd reached that point where the information I now have about my characters needs to be woven into the earlier chapters.

Typically, we wait until completing an entire first draft before attempting this, lest we act out of premature assumption. I get this, truly I do. But for me, it's like reaching a plateau on a climb up a steep mountain. You know all about false summits, but still, you stop and admire the landscape beneath and retool for the rest of the climb. Perspectives shift, periodically, and imho it's never a bad time to align oneself with this dynamic, shifting perspective.

Not everyone can or should honor this process, I understand, but I know enough about the peaks and valleys of my own creative sensibilities to listen to this whisper in my ear. I'm at the print-out and rewrite stage, and so my forward progress will come from the center, rather than the end for this next little while. As for the word count? It may shrink. But then again, maybe not.

leftovers, anyone?

Disgusting, right? Far more easier to tolerate when the noodles you throw at the wall haven't been steeped in sauce.

In the world of selling writing, strategizing a home for your pages, then following that up with cover letters and evidence and sparkling opening paragraphs is a bit more complex than hurling pasta against the wall, but the outcome is the same. If it's done, it sticks; if it's not, it slides to the floor.

But the "doneness," well, the criteria for that involves many more factors than the level of durum saturation. First and foremost is a keen sense of who your audience is...what they're reading, what they can't put down. You have to play to that. If everyone's on the South Beach Diet, your pasta's going to wind up in your basement, under your Rubbermaid tub of teenage diaries and art projects. Hypothetically speaking.

The market is fickle. More fickle than ever. Tastes have changed, but the impulse to get lost in story has not. The same themes that have always tantalize, continue to do so.

I wrote a novel several years ago. The character was wrestling with mortality, and the decision whether or not to bear a child. It was birth:death, death:birth, side-by-each, with other Maslow's hierarchy considerations sprinkled about for good measure.

The novel remains unpublished, but recently, whilst cleaning the funnel webs from my basement, there it was! A dampened, mildew-infested manuscript daring me to open it up and re-engage. Oddly, upon reading, I wasn't disgusted. It was relatively serviceable spaghetti, there on the page. Ingestible, even.

I've decided to throw it against a few more walls before tossing it into the dumpster entirely. As a timeless, nourishing read, it deserves at least that.

virally we roll along

A short and rather marginally informative piece appeared in publisher's weekly today about social networking and selling books. The article skimmed the relationship between sites like facebook with POD companies like lulu and Scribd.

The upshot? Book peddlers of the old school, beware! You want to create a buzz, you're going to have to embrace the new way of getting the word out. Whether by twitter, by writing on virtual "walls" or by befriending the entire state of Arkansas via a revved up Internet connection, reaching your audience involves more than just writing a damn good book.

the hospital

The other day, as dusk fell on an unexpectedly mild and sunny day in the Pacific Northwest, I felt eager to get back to work, to sink my teeth into something transformative. I wanted to find out what happened to Frances, and her sister, who I've just left in the ICU, in a coma. I was itching to return to Messmeier clan and all of their conundrums and escapades. Alas, I've been buried with work and a few real-life wrinkles, so Frances is frozen on my hard drive. Her poor sister, still in the coma.

As far as the nature of the aforementioned "wrinkles," in an odd art-and-life coincidence, this past week two people in my circle have been or are in the hospital. One good friend had a hip replacement, and now she's recovering at home, looking forward to increased mobility and lessening pain. The other real person in the hospital is my elderly mother-in-law. LOLFDGB is how irreverent doctors refer to her: Little Old Lady Fall Down Go Boom. Luckily, her children have been by her side every waking minute to advocate in her behalf.

Hospitals have largely become warehouses in situations like this. People, reduced to cruel acronyms and sporadic notes on charts. My mother-in-law's clinical profile has rendered her medication-dependent, and her meds have been given late or not at all. Her assessment by a physical therapist was delayed, and her food also delivered haphazardly.

My hip replacement friend had a similar experience. A candy striper answered her call to use the bathroom after 45 minutes, and then proceeded to assist her while conversing on her cell phone, and in the process ignored the fact that she was an orthopedic patient and swung my friend's leg off of the bed as though it was a door she was slamming.

The system, in a word, sucks. Nurses and doctors as individuals can be amazing, caring people, but the economics of our medical system are so grossly unbalanced and dictated by insurance companies, that "care" has been reduced to insurance codes, billing statements and pressure to free up beds for the next LOLFDGB.

Since TSTL has more than a few hospital scenes, and my main character is a med-student-turned-research-scientist who's husband is the senior cost analyst for a major teaching hospital, this ever-saddening reality of acute treatment is something I need to embrace, penetrate and make issue of within the novel.

It's heavy stuff, and universal. I am very eager to sink into the fictionalization of it all, for it is there, as it always is, that the undercurrent of humanity will begin to bubble up for me.

the Internet Sabbath

Amongst the modern, creative, super-busy folk of my acquaintance, the Sabbath has gone the way of fish on Fridays and cloth scapulars. The separation of life and work for a freelancer is particularly vexing. I turn on my machine, and, voila, my inbox cometh.

A week or so ago I made a decision to mitigate the constant flow of incoming by leaving my laptop off on Sundays. Not just turned off, but off of the dining room table, where it is normally stationed, back-to-back with my husband's laptop.

Today, Monday, I'm happy to report that I resisted the "on" button for the most part. I did sneak a peek at the details of a Super Bowl Party evite (I'd forgotten what we were supposed to bring), but turned the machine off right after that. Put the sucker back in its little black tote.

A few times during the day, and a bunch of times during the evening, I had occasion to be bowled over by the familiar craving: the Facebook posts, the blogs I follow, the fat and sassy inbox! But the day felt, well, saner. Much saner, actually. I've resisted the iPhone, BlackBerry thing for good reason. With my obsessive tendencies, I need built-in respite. Constantly communicating, posting, twittering without boundary, for me, is a ticket to psychic mayhem.

In the interest of reportage, here are the things I did instead of being online:
Wrote a thank you note (on old fashioned notepaper)
Sat with my son while he wrote thank you notes
Took a bath
Took my son to the skate park
Went to the book store
Went to a birthday party
Went to a wedding reception
Went to a Super Bowl party until half time and was mesmerized by Bruce's bouncy joints and energy
Came home for the second half and watched, in disappointment, as the underdogs lost in the last minute
Hung out with Kirk and Carson all evening
Read Carson a really cool book on the French Revolution
Ate a lot of food (too much, truth be told)
Snuggled on the couch with Kirk after Carson went to bed
Went to bed before 10 p.m.

In between, of course, I had to quell the pangs of my addiction, but, on the whole, my day was calmer and more centered than any other that week. I guess that's the point. I'll let you know after I answer or corral the eighty emails in my box.

do Web sites sell books?

Unlike many writers who lament the fact that their work-a-day lives steal time from their novel, poetry and short story writing, I love what I do. Extracting the essence of a person, a service, a product, and being part of a team that comes up with a Web presence for that entity is at least as fun as concocting fake people and perplexing conundrums. That is why I was thrilled to run across this New York Times article on Web sites for authors in my due-diligence perusal this afternoon.

(image is from "Sign Language for Infidels" from Sloan Crosley's Web site)
Seems that the verdict is still out on whether Web sites positively impact book sales, but, more and more, they're becoming a vehicle for setting the tone (or brand, if I may be so brash) that surrounds the gestalt of the book and/or the author. As Internet interactivity becomes increasingly a consumer expectation (and, I think we're just grazing the iceberg on this one), the original object associated with prose will need to evolve in order to compete.

Last week Time Magazine offered some food for thought on the digital age impact on books. It's not just about audience preference. As publishers fight to keep their doors open, they are considering revamping the age-old system of the "author advance," as well as the consignment arrangement publishers have with booksellers, where they finance shipping and overstock. Kindle is gaining traction, as more and more readers opt for immediacy, less bulk and greener ways to receive inspiration and entertainment.

Here's the most frightening (to this writer, anyway), development, the Time article points to ways that novels are being separated from the dollar, meaning, everyone's a novelist! Even if the medium is an iPhone, and even if the price is free. Yikes!

To sum up my thoughts on this, taking into consideration the following (from the Time article):"The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name," and understanding that if it's a choice between commodifying the novel (or short story, or poem etc...) via a stunning and creative Web interface, or just declaring the whole damn channel "open source," and, at the risk of sounding like I'm buttering both sides of my bread, I'm all for sexing up our marketing efforts to ensure that writers aren't forever relegated to the exit ramps of Interstates with their proverbial cardboard signs.

more! more! more!

Five more notable blogs. And, I must warn you, these blogs are included purely for their entertainment value rather than the gravity of their prose or elegance of design.

The criteria here being: voice, humor, originality and reprieve from the doldrums of winter.

In no particular order, five fun blogs:

Chelsea talks smack.

Misconnecting in the city.

Post Secret.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

and my all-time favorite funny blogger, Jennifer Weiner (who, btw, has been blogging longer than almost anyone).

That's all for now!

10 blogs of note

Here are 10 blogs worth following, imho:

Seattle a la mode

Book Square

Ms. Zig Zag

Laila Lalami

Pub Rants

The Gospel According to Marc

cake wrecks

Blue Mouse Monkey

Powell's Blog

Sara Nelson (Publisher's Weekly)

I've been challenged to come up with 15 blogs, actually, but will, for now, leave it at these 10 that I read with relative frequency. I will accept the challenge to find an additional five worthy of note (and time), but for now, above are 10 that I find diverse, entertaining, instructive and full of personality! (And good writing.)

the 44th president takes office

In an hour and a half, we'll all be watching our new president take his oath of office and give his inaugural address. There is a feeling of being on the lip of something—like watching the lunar landing in the late '60's. I was a few years younger than my son, Carson, when we took "one giant step for mankind," but I absorbed the multitude of adult expectation and enthusiasm that filled the air around me, and it is with me still.

Kennedy's assassination and September 11^th were other occasions where the collective consciousness of a people permeated my sensibilities as an isolated figure. Well, maybe not Kennedy's killing, as I was an infant living in a foreign country—but certainly my frame of reference was influenced by that day.

What's different about this event today—than any event I can remember—is that unity has crossed the color barrier. As a six-year-old I joined my mother and younger sister, celebrating the life of a black man who had changed the lives of the people with whom we marched. The people in that marching mass were "colored," according to my father. He did not take part. Having just moved to this country from a very white, albeit internationally so, part of Europe, it was curious to me how people found their way in the pecking order of things. As a foreigner, complete with a Mary Poppins accent, I was keenly tuned to social stratification. Who was "better" than whom? Clearly, the demonstrators were "worse" than the onlookers.

"We shall overcome," we sang along with the colored people. Overcome what? I thought. My accent? My short hair? My smallness? (Having started school a year earlier than my American counterparts, my mother had enrolled me in the second grade, making my scrawniness all the more so.) The blackness of the marchers' skin unsettled me. They, like me, were "different," but I knew that I could lose my accent and grow my hair and get taller. All the things that made me "different" could and would change. I would overcome.

Today, millions of schoolchildren will be watching the Black Obamas as they move into the White House. I doubt that kids are going to feel a sense that the Obamas "overcame." If they feel anything, it'll be good old fashioned envy—like I had for the guy with the giant boots as he placed the American flag in a moon crater. "How cool," I thought—now that my rapid assimilation had allowed me that piece of slang. "How cool would it be to be that guy."

revolutionary road

Since my friend David left for Houston, I'd gotten out of the habit of sneaking off to opening day matinees. Probably a good idea, actually, because Friday is, after all, a WORK day. Well, with the opening of Mendes' version of Revolutionary Road, one of my all time favorite novels, I clocked myself out at lunch time and zoomed off to the downtown theater.

The opening scene was lovely. DiCaprio and Winslet finding each other in a crowded room and connecting deeply, immediately. Perhaps that was the best scene in the film. From there, the movie roared through passionate bursts of emotion and passivity in turn, as the actors wrinkled their foreheads, chain-smoked, drank and generally behaved badly for what was, to me, completely undeveloped and clichéd reasons. Thing was, when Yates wrote the novel in 1961 (the year of my birth btw), questioning the normative world was outré, not cliché. Yates, who suffered from depression and alcoholism, wrote first hand of abject discontent and illusive dreams. DiCaprio, though pretty and functional on the screen, really didn't embody Frank Wheeler the way I'd envisioned the character. And Winslet may have overplayed April, who as I recall, was a bit mousier in the novel.

As I sat there watching the arc play out, I grew anxious. I felt like smoking and sipping a martini and expressing my own angst—which is not where I want to be with my art. Not by a long shot. In the end, I left the theater before the final scene—something I never do. I could guess at the ending having read the book and all, and just talked myself out of enduring it just because I'd paid the $8+ (when did matinees lurch into near double-digits?), and I strode through the clearing, very cool air of January, wishing I could recapture that hour and twenty minutes.

David, when and if the film gets to Houston, give it a look-see and tell me what you think.

aim high

After a tumultuous couple of weather and holiday-challenged weeks, most of us gathered at my house for workshop last night. Because it was the January 1st, the proverbial day of best intentions, we set aside some time to discuss our “writing resolutions.”

Around the table we went, declaring our writing and publishing goals and imperatives for 2009.

Cheryl, Jim, Diana, Chuck, myself, Lidia, Chelsea and Monica all resolved to finish various projects. And, for the most part, sell ‘em.

After our brain dump, Chuck brought up something very important. It’s his opinion that if a resolution doesn’t scare or embarrass you to some degree, you haven’t aimed high enough. You have to open the door to, “Who the hell are you to deign to declare such a thing?”, if you really want to push the boundaries.

I’ve been in workshop with some of these folks for 15–16 years now. Chuck recalled the resolution that precipitated “Fight Club,” when we were sitting around the table at Tom Spanbauer’s house. He was still unpublished, having had “Invisible Monsters” rejected, and he was fueled, rather than discouraged, by a publishing world that declared him too “outre” for the common market. He’d resolved to write and sell a book by year’s end. He claims that his declaration was met by rolled eyes. But then, during the course of conversation, I remember the other thing he resolved all those years ago. It had to do with the meta world of publishing: readers and writers and the power of language.

“I will write something that will change the book industry. I’m going to re-invent language,” he stated. “I want to bring books to a population that isn’t reading.” In retrospect, I think THAT was the object of scoffs all around. The brave statement he made that flew in the face of humility.

But, we all know how that story came out, right? Not only did Fight Club get written and published, but in the year’s that followed, due in large part to Chuck’s hard work and prescience, and a Zeitgeist that formed around his ability to speak to a demographic of non-readers, he set in motion the energy that created a meteoric cult following, and the market for the umpteen books published since.

So. My resolutions: In 2009, I will finish The Secret to Love. I will finish Sustainable Romance. I will build my platform and establish myself as an indefatigable explorer of love on the page.

Happy New Year.

looking into the crackly fire

Ah, the crackle of the fire, the click of the keyboard, the shush of skis on a snowy glade, the fire of whiskey down the throat. It's all good.

Kirk and I have been holed up in Central Oregon, thanks to some very generous folks who loaned us their cabin. We've been skiing, walking, napping. We've made some fabulous meals, relaxed and played and worked a little too. (Where there's wi-fi, there's billable hours).

Last night I dreamt a little bit about my novel. Which is always a good sign, right? When your imagined world enters your nighttime fairy walk? There were vehicles involved, and I think they were driving off of cliffs. Or snow banks.

For years and years, I've wanted and resisted to throw a character into fatal peril via a Christmas tree truck. Seriously, way back in the early nineties, I had this scene all written out. It was near the end of a story, and I'd taken the Christmas holiday and twisted it up with a fatal collision. I deleted the scene, not wanting to tempt fate. After all, I'd foretold several disasters by writing about them: backed up septic systems, marital divide. I wasn't about to ring the dinner bell on a head-on collision with a Christmas tree truck.

But. I must write that very scene. My character who has seizures because of that scene needs her fifteen minutes in ICU. I know all the words, even: she'll have sustained a skull fracture with traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhages, which just so happens to be the cause of death listed on my first husband's death certificate.

My husband wasn't hit by a Christmas tree truck, btw. It was a teenager who'd fallen asleep at the wheel. Decades later, I've still not written a successful scene that captures the mood and the tone and emotion of extreme trauma. I want to do it with this novel. But at the same time, I'm chicken. I don't want the gods to punish me for looking into the fire, y'know? So far in this book there has been a suicide, cancer, stroke, marital infidelity, teenage pregnancy.. oh yeah, and homicide.

One tiny head trauma shouldn't be such a bump in the road with this clan, right? Well, in my novel, the last chapter I wrote ends with "that" phone call. Actually, the phone has merely rung. Nobody's picked up yet. Tomorrow's challenge: the news must be delivered, the siblings must react, the ICU must be visited.

I'll let you know how it goes.

time: quantity, quality and reality

STL update: I'm rounding the corner on 200 pages completed. Which means, I'm about half-done with the third revision of my first draft. (I daisy stitch when I write, always looping back and filling in).

I wish I were further than that, of course. I wish I had completed the third version of my first draft. Alas, it is not so. And tonight, with a prompt from my beloved, I see why. Adding up all the hours in a given week that are "givens": i.e. parenting, income-producing work, bare essential household tasks, all the hours between 6:45 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., Monday thru Friday, are taken up already. And this is without fun stuff or big projects added in. No going to the movies, hiking in the woods, cleaning out the basement.

Thanks to some very generous holiday benefactors, I'm enjoying a rare few days in a cabin. Just Kirk, me and my computer. The kids are elsewhere, and I've reduced my work load to a minimum for this traditional slow down Christmas through New Years, in hopes that I'll produce pages and pages and pages. So far, I've written six. But, the good news is that during the writing of those six pages, I had enough uninterrupted, no distractions time to uncover a big reveal which will tighten the book and meld the characters together in an unexpected and very welcome way. At least that's how it looks at the end of this very relaxed and productive day.

If your Christmas tree lights are on a timer and nobody's there to see them, are they really lit?

Christmas is a stone's throw away, temporally speaking, and we're holed up in Manzanita still, feeling pretty lucky but at the same time, off our pablum in that way that you get when you suddenly find yourself gutted of your routine.

I actually had plenty of time to work and write today, but it came in fits and starts. Most of the day I was being serenaded by my energetic nine-year-old and his friend: toy gun wars, inane sit-coms and action movies, the occasional squabble.

Then there's the food: breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, snack, snack, dinner, snack. Clean-up around each. The origami attempt (who knew making an iris would be so hard?) The attempt to play Cranium with the youngsters: how could they not know how to make the anagram "Iron Curtain" out of "torn CIA ruin"? C'mon, don't they teach them anything in the 4th grade? (Cranium was the final straw for the husband, whose patience finally ran dry and he disappeared up into the ether of naps and Ann Rice books).

They've closed various highways between here and home. It's wet and cold here, at the coast, but icy, frigid and snow-slammed back in Portland. Our Christmas tree's timed lights are going on and off without us. Our neighbors are graciously filling our cat's food bowl. There's the weird feeling of unearned vacation. The scourge of the self-employed. And my novel not quite halfway done.

Kirk and I ventured into the night, which was actually somewhat starry and Wisemanish. We walked towards the beach, without the aid of the flashlights, which we stupidly left back at the house. Nobody else was out, of course. We stumbled about on the dark sand, narrowly missing the pools of ocean water. The slippery strands of kelp. But I loved the feeling of him right next to me while the enormity of the ocean roared and spit its waves our way. Nature's own timer: tide. Not bound by our work lives, or our prosaic response to the solstice, or the need to have every food group represented in order to call it a meal.

winter solstice treasure-hunting

I am in paradise. Kirk, Carson, a friend of his and myself are holed up at our good friend's beach house in Manzanita while 90 miles to the East ice and snow continue to torment the "so over it" city whence we hail. Even though we're above freezing out on the coast, it's a nasty, cold, wet winter day out here, so mostly, we're inside, nestled near the gas-powered fake fireplace. It's a sort of "I in my kerchief and mom in her hat," vacation. There are videos, puzzles, games and books in every nook and cranny. After dinner tonight we gathered up odd assorted objects and played a homemade version of "blockhead," trying to create precarious towers that wouldn't fall. Kirk and I played a "speed anagram" game called "My Word," which nearly resulted in fisticuffs!

There's lots of food here. And booze. We're set.

Our friends have appointed their house with many a book, and last night I pulled a random one out. A mystery type genre hardcover written by some well known author (well known enough to have her likeness encapsulate the entire back of the cover), and here's a sample of the language describing the main character's viewing of herself on the way to a party:

"As they descended to street level, she assessed her reflection in the metal elevator door and realized that her efforts hadn't been in vain."

It's not that that's a terrible sentence, it's just that it's not that interesting. If this person were in our workshop, we'd probably skewer her for a sentence like that. "Writerly language," we'd scribble on her pages. "Formal tropes."

But, hey, this gal has written, like, 60 books. Who am I to scold her for her received text? But, in my tragically elitist state, sentences like that can keep the lights on in bed for about 5 minutes, and then they begin to compete with other things I might be inclined to focus my attention on.

Ah, but all is not lost with regard to the literary possibilities therein, as we spent a bit of time today in what passes, in Manzanita, for a Goodwill. It's a place called Cart 'em, and it's a treasure hunting venue. Cart 'em is the receptacle for all things no longer desired; a place where locals dump their white elephants and the stuff that doesn't sell at their yard sales, and everything's organized in a 7,000 square foot pole barn. Treasures abound. Kirk gave each of the boys five bucks and turned them loose, giving them prompts to find Christmas gifts and art projects. They returned with armloads of stuff. As for me, I headed to the bookcases. Turns out there were two, count 'em, two copies of Irving's, "A Widow for One Year," a book I'd never read. I yanked it off the shelf, and it delightfully passed my opening sentence litmus test: "One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking—it was coming from her parent's bedroom."

Provocative, right? Well, it gets better:

"It was a totally unfamiliar sound to her. Ruth had recently been ill with the stomach flu; when she first heard her mother making love, Ruth thought that her mother was throwing up."

Now, how could you not peel off fifty cents after reading that; how could you not buy the book from the junk shop?

Kirk's in bed benext to me with the "Outliers" I gave him as an early Christmas present, and I'm about to find out what awaits Ruth Cole, and I'm hoping that we're settling in for, as they say, a long winter's nap.

take that amazon

Betwixt and between the snow storms, I drove into work today hoping to tip a few windmills, make a little dough and find some time for my novel and/or my nonfiction book.

I did knock some things off my list for sure, but I was quite preoccupied by a situation in the other room. Chuck Palahniuk had arranged to meet the manager of the St. Helen’s Book Shop at the gallery where I work, since it was a half point between the shop and his home, and with icy roads, they split the distance.

Amid several stacks of books, Chuck stood at a cafe table with rubber stamps, ink pads, paint, paint brushes and pens—oh, and sheets of wax paper so it all wouldn’t all smear into oblivion, because when you’re Chuck Palahniuk, and you’re signing stock, and the stock are dozens of hardback Fight Clubs, Rants, Snuffs, Survivors, Chokes etc…you want to make sure that the end recipient knows that purchasing books via an independent bookseller is a good thing.

Chuck was standing at that table for hours, as the book shop manager delivered stack after stack from box after box of his books. 

Chuck is the most disciplined person I know, and his resolve to connect with his readers has paid off.  Go to any country in the world, randomly yank a 25 year-old person off of the street and ask him who Chuck Palahniuk is.  They’ll know, and it’s not just because after he writes a book he throws it off the bridge of the publishing world and waits around to collect his royalty checks.  This writer engages with his fans through his website, where he offers craft classes, and through his readings, where he puts on shows that rival Robin Williams in spirit and energy, and Cirque du Soleil in props.  He sends packages of gifts to fans who write him letters, and he navigates icy roads at Christmas time so his readers can get books that have been signed, sealed and delivered with his very own brand of love—via an independent bookseller in a tiny town northwest of Portland, Oregon.

Avoiding Jacob Marley’s Chain

Looks like the spirit of the season won out after all! Not only that, but we're having a COOKIE MAKING party this evening. God bless us, every one.

grinch mom

As you all know, the holiday season is upon us. This makes it a bit more challenging to follow through on daily word count goals, but I'm determined not to let the distractions of holly and cookies and parties deter me from my plan. Well, most days, anyway.

I'm working on two chapters simultaneously. Chronologically, they dovetail, but in the real life of the characters, the scenes are separated by twenty years. But, as in real, real life, the scenes both take place during the holiday season. The centerpiece of each scene has to do with procuring and setting up a Christmas tree.

Kirk and I agreed that we wouldn't get a tree this year. Well, not a cut one, anyway. I brought home one of those potted numbers they sell at Trader Joe's. The ones small enough to fit in the plastic shopping bags they sell. My nine-year-old looked as though I'd (and I'm borrowing this line from something I read recently) just gave him raisins for Halloween.

"When are we getting the real one?" he wanted to know.

"Um, honey, we're not getting a dead tree this year," I said. I was hoping the word "dead" would conjur up a "green" context and he'd get that this gesture falls into the "recycle," "turn off the water while brushing your teeth," "bike to school instead of taking the car," messages.

But no. He said, his eyes nearly leaking tears, "But we always get a tree."

Not only am I wanting to skip the whole tree thing, but I don't intend on fulfilling his Christmas list, either. For instance, he's not getting an i-touch, nor is he getting a PSP. At least not from moi. Since he confessed to knowing the real deal about Santa, I figure, it's time to interject a bit more home and hearth into the holidays. We'll make cookies, watch old movies, go to the coast and to the mountains. Do things together instead of purchase and fuss and wrap and hustle.

"Well, honey," I said to my son, "You know, there's a recession. That means that we have to be careful about the money we spend. We have to make choices."

"I choose a Christmas tree," he said. "A real one." And by real, he meant cut.

This morning, before he woke up, I was eyeing the corner of the room, weakening my stance. The little Trader Joe's tree does look a little like a potted plant, even with the blue and white lights that weave around it.

Maybe a table top sized tree. One that will go from coffee table to ceiling. In the big picture, what's one more nod to normative tradition?

I wonder how this will play out in my novel.

busy busy busy busy busy busy

If you dialed my number right now, it would go right to voice mail.

Over the past two weeks I've picked up 3 new clients, several more projects from legacy clients, and am still determined to make time each day for my own writing. And then there was the November holiday. And the upcoming December one(s).

Last night, it felt like I ate a bowling ball. Seriously, there was this ache that felt like it had formed around something lead in my upper abdomen. But it went away by this morning, thank God.

Thing is, I thrive on work. The little queue you carry around with you that's filled up the tasks? I love that. Always knowing that there's a new piece of work in line behind what you're attending to at the moment--that's my sweet spot. Right now, that thing is a shower. Alrighty then!