the plot thickened...

but, really, I'm hoping for a quick denouement.

Here's what the book jacket might read, if my recent life were a novel:

After much soul-searching, Kirk and Suzy decide that they should buy their own home, rather than to continue chipping away at the home that once belonged to Suzy and her former husband. They interview a couple of realtors, and decide on an energetic, "get her done," type, even though they realize that their comfort zone, on every level, will be stretched.

It's just after the Christmas holidays when they sign on and agree to a February 15th on market date, and they dive into the mess of dismantling, decluttering, and stripping their bungalow bare. Seven contractors, each one touting a specialty, and many with colorful personalities, dovetail their tasks. The next four weeks will involve myriad chicken-or-egg chronology to arrive at an overall outcome with such a delicate time line.

Things go mildly awry: a deluge floods the basement due to a broken drain pipe; Kirk and Suzy break a window in the front door while moving a sofa; backs go out; temperatures rise; noses run (it's winter after all!); after the floors are scraped the dust is so thick that the shop vac goes on strike and a mucusy cough infiltrates the lungs of everyone involved. Finally, though, on schedule, the house has been transformed, lightened, brightened and divested of all of its crap. A spate of unseasonably mild weather hits just in time for the opening weekend and an SRO open house.

Before the end of February, an offer comes in. "What?!" say Kirk and Suzy, we haven't even identified a house to buy yet! Things proceed quickly. Kirk and Suzy and Carson go house-shopping. They find the perfect counter to the hundred year old house they're leaving: a modern three-story house on a cul-de-sac that has been meticulously maintained. The house is light, bright and new! They are all set to make an offer, when...

the would-be buyers have a change of heart. They hadn't realized in their four visits that one of the bedrooms didn't have a heat source. They question the square footage. They bring in an alarmist inspector who points out potential issues--none of which bear out--but, hey, the would-be buyers wanted an adorable vintage bungalow that was buttoned up like a contemporary townhome, so they pull their offer.

After a week off the market, the bungalow is BOM. Which is sort of poison. As a result of this new twist of events, Kirk and Suzy did not make an offer on the light and bright house. But, another possibility has emerged. A long shot, their realistic, energetic realtor cautions, but the proverbial "tip" has been whispered in her ear. A house in a really hot neighborhood is "not quite on the market." "Let's go see it," invites the realtor.

See it, they do. The house is an "original owner" mid-century and it backs up to a hidden neighborhood park. It has three fireplaces, which, since 1964, have been used a handful of times. Oak floors that were immediately covered by carpet. A family room. A shop. A two-car garage. An office! The house is on the market for exactly the same price Kirk and Suzy are asking for their house. Not only is the house is in the school district that allows Carson to go to the middle school that all his friends will attend, but it's also in the best high school district in the state. The current owner is a lovely 92-year old woman who immediately connects with the energetic realtor, and decides that Kirk and Suzy are ones who will buy her house. If they can sell their house. In two weeks.

The energetic (and realistic) realtor convinces Kirk and Suzy to drop the price of their house. By 20K! This is a leap of faith. If the price is dropped in order to sell in two weeks, but it doesn't, then Kirk and Suzy lose the mid-century, and then have a reduced price house that will impact their ability to buy the next house--which they'd hoped would be a step up.

The energetic realtor has a plan though. She's putting her efforts on all burners. She'll have another open. She'll bake cookies! Two hours before the open house, people are lined up. It's a fire sale, after all! By the end of the day, there are two offers on the table. A tiny bidding war ensues. Initially, there is cash involved in this bidding war. The house is sold to the highest, most "in love with the house" bidder. Kirk and Suzy have a cocktail and pass out.

I know the deal ain't done. The fat lady is warming up her pipes, but she's still in the green room. But this deal will go through. I feel it and know it. It's going to be a happy ending!

on working the soul in revision

One of my most splendid and brilliant writing teachers was a man named Jim Heynan. He taught me, by way of an exercise, that being creative and prolific often happens when you're busy living, rather than retreating from, your life.

I was thrilled to see a recent essay of his in Brevity on the soul work of revision. Read it--especially if you didn't catch the "Lincoln" piece in the January 2009 New Yorker. The difference in the two drafts of Lincoln's second inaugural address are profound.

As for Heynan, as usual, his insight is one I take with me for ever more, as he counsels: "Even in the honing and pruning stage, when you spot language that doesn’t measure up to the sentiment you intended, don’t desert the sentiment too quickly in pursuit of fashion or conformity; stay with the sentiment until you find the words that are both true to the sentiment and satisfying for you."

selling the dollhouse

Christmas of third grade, my grandfather made my sister and me an elaborate dollhouse. My grandmother sewed outfits for the dolls and tiny cushions for the homemade chairs and couches. The dollhouse had to stay at my grandparent's house (I think Oma thought us too reckless, my mother too aloof, to be awarded custody), and for the next several years, the dollhouse was the centerpiece of our visits.

Unlike our real house, which was typically in a state of squalor, the dollhouse was kept pristine and orderly. The fake dollhouse family: mom, dad, brother, sister, infant, and maid, never interacted. Each occupied its own room, staged like the furnishings. The maid ironed outfits on the homemade ironing board in the penthouse section; the dad sat at an expansive desk in his study, a tiny cocktail sitting on the miniature ink blotter in front of him; the brother sat on the wooden toilet my Opa had fashioned from balsa and felt (poop and boys went together, somehow); and the sister frolicked in the play room amongst even tinier dolls, with the legless infant in its cradle down the hall. I don't remember where we propped up the mother.

Now, as a grown-up, week two of my real home having a "for sale" sign in front of it has proven to be a trip back in time. We've stashed, burned or given away all the clutter, and what remains is the scaffolding--the bare bones--of our bungalow. Every morning, like the dollhouse maid, I tuck, smooth, fold and neaten all evidence of life. I re-inflate the leaky Aerobed in the guest room, slip the toothbrush jar behind the molding in the open bathroom closet, replace the white bath mat so it adequately covers the cold tile and ugly-colored grout. I turn on the classical station, dial up the heat, rearrange the bowl of fake apples, and strategically turn on lights. I stop short of ironing our pillowcases, but just barely.

The weird thing is--I'm enjoying this ritual. I've timed it so I can leave the house with everything in place within 20 minutes of my little boy catching the school bus. Each day I've been fielding phone calls from eager real estate agents who are bustling to show the dollhouse to smiling families. There are two couples who've been do-si-doing each other in their follow-up visits to my perfectly staged abode.

What I remember most about my time with Opa's dollhouse is the feeling of satisfaction after leaving everything "just so." Though getting my house to this point was daunting and twitch-invoking, now that it's tidy, I feel calm, centered, grateful and relaxed when I go home at night and pour my goblet of Scotch. Just like the fake father in the dollhouse, I enjoy the quiet moments, surveying the lack of disorder around me.

ash wednesday

My dear friend, Laura, always sends out this poem on Ash Wednesday. And I always read it, Catholic that I am, with a new take-away.

Today it's patience.

Ash Wednesday
by T.S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each
other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.



III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

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.

so you want to be a writer

My friend and business partner, Laura, sent me a reminder today. A reminder of what's at the core of my affliction and in so doing, helped me get over myself and into the spirit of revisionless writing.

It's worth passing along.


so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.

if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.

if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.

the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.

unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.
and there never was.

the sun's out

...but I'm not in it, thanks to word count hell!

Yup, it's day 2 of NaNoWriMo, and I wish it would just bloody rain! Sun, rain, sleet, I'm determined to plow forward, regardless. The first page honeymoon is over, and now I must face wholesale invent--which vacillates between anticipation and excitement, and terror of flat prose.

I have two NaNoWriMo buddies--Patty Kinney and David Millstone, and I have to say--it's so much better to have company in this misery. (Ack! A silverfish pincher bug just crawled into bed with me. Yes, my laptop is in my bed too. Disgusting, I know.)

I suppose I should swap out my sidebar wordcount meter --still boasting the 100% done of my last effort, with this one--it's just freakin' scary to face the drop-in-the-bucketness of it all.

Alas!

NaNoWriMo day one

Okay, 1688 words done. The beginning has begun. Yikes. 29 more days of this. That's all I have the breath to say, at this point. Other than, writing without revising (a major "rule" of NaNoWriMo) is really, really hard for me. But then again, this is an experiment, right?

Onward!

Free Novel Copy for NaNoWriMo Writers

Free Novel Copy for NaNoWriMo Writers

gearing up for my line of flight

This is only a test. Really. Next week I'm diving into this NaNoWriMo thing with two fingers pinching either side of my nose, so this week I'm buying the life preserver and bathing cap.

Let's just say, I'm jumping into the deep end as prepared as I can be, and for that, on dry land, I have commissioned Excel. For this 50,000 word project, I've identified 26 chapters, and within those 26 chapters, I'm at work outlining the scenes, what happens in the scenes and the plot points. I've been taking notes recently when I overhear something interesting, and I'm slapping them into the spreadsheet as well--as prompts.

It was really hard to sit on my hands today, because I've been visualizing the opening scene for over a week. I really see it, and hear it and sense it as my, what Gordon Lish refers to as, line of flight.

So--next week I dive into the pool--or take off from the runway, depending. The fun part is holding myself back.

NaNoWriMo grumbles and confessions

There's just a little more than a week before the dawn of yet another National Novel Writing Month.

In the past, I've looked skeptically at these novel-writing-as-a-community-of-declared-intention groups as hokey and ill-conceived. But why, exactly, I asked myself recently. Why do I cop such an attitude about novels approached with zeitgeist zeal? Is it because:
a. I'm hopelessly elitist
b. I like to do things in secret and not tell anyone I'm doing them due to fear of failure
c. I believe novel-writing to be a huge undertaking and making it a pep rally cheapens it
d. All of the above

It took me over two years to write my novel, and in the process of writing the "first draft" I revised, rewrote, deleted and un-deleted several drafts. Pretty much every page save the last 100 were vetted (and often re-vetted) through the brain trust otherwise known as my kickass writing workshop.

In approaching a long work, I'm pretty fussy. I tend to write the beginning of a long piece over and over and over again before, often, abandoning the idea--and the 100 or so pages generated in the process--altogether. Eventually, something sticks and I forge ahead, always circling back to shear up and tuck in and reformat. In short, I know how to write a novel MY way. I know the ebbs, flows, stutters and mis-leads that go along with poring over characters, arc, research, so, just for the hell of it, I'm now going to try the "reckless abandon" method of slamming out a first draft.

But first, I have to get a couple of things off my chest and declare my ambivalence and prejudices. I have to admit, I absolutely despise the not-quite-an-acronym NaNoWriMo (that would probably have to do with item "a" above). I don't like the cadence, the non-lyric sound and the clubbiness of it. I don't like that it ends in "mo" especially. WriMo sounds like rhymo which sounds lame-o. And then there's the audacity of the whole thing. I mean, why not NaNoReaMo? Let's spend a month READING all the novels we can get on our hands on. Maybe THAT should be the prerequisite? That seems somewhat fair, given the state of publishing today, doesn't it? Like, if you're going to be part of the problem, why not first first be part of the solution?

Another problem--online communities are wonderful supportive environments but they also can suck time and brainpower from the task at hand. Like this blog, for instance. Yup, I'm part of the problem too.

Okay. So I've owned up to my hesitancy, snottiness and foreboding. Now I'm going to play devil's advocate with myself, and admit that I was completely humbled after reading the "about" section on NaNoWriMo's website. Who am I, after all, to criticize such a guileless, worthwhile organization? So, in the spirit of suspending cynicism and crankiness, I offer the "What is NaNoWriMo" section in its entirety herewith:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!

why letstalkaboutwriting was broken

Let's Talk About Writing was broken for the last day-and-a-half. Had you noticed? I apologize for any convenience that this caused in my barely two-digit readership!

Seriously, I've had 24 hours of the craziest firestorm involved CNAMES and DNS and Round Robin A Names. It was like a scavenger hunt through cyber space. Every time I got a clue to a back end page or a strip of coding or some random numbers, I'd think, voila! Done. NOT!

The problem is too long and arduous to bore anyone with, but let's just say the reason for all of this had to do with an ill-conceived efficiency exercise, and it blew up in my face. There's a reason why Google is so all-powerful, and I now have first-hand experience of what happens when you try to fuck with the masters. It's a hand-slapping of the most insidious sort.

Hopefully I'm firmly on land at the other end of this debacle. Time will tell.

starting anew

It's Monday again finally. Moms who write and have kids in school love Mondays from September to June.

Let me qualify that. Moms who write and have kids in school and who have flexible enough jobs so that they can squeeze uninterrupted time with their projects love Mondays from September to June. The clock is always reset on Mondays. Unless your kids are sick. Over the weekend, mine has developed something of a phlegmy chest and the shadowy tint of under-eye circles. I hope the ten hours of sleep he's finishing up right now will be enough for me to feel good about pushing him out the door, backpack heavily clunking against his back, when the 7:15 school bus comes 'round the bend.

I haven't begun my new project in earnest yet--but I'm tackling this one differently than I did SOL. I'm heeding the advice of Ansen Dibell (who, I was shocked to find out, was a woman!) and paying close attention to the elements of plot before I even begin.

I've decided to harness the momentum that was byproduct of sprinting to the finish line with SOL and conduct a little experiment. If I can write 100 words in a month, why not 200? If I can finish a first draft in a month, why not an entire manuscript?

You guessed it, I'm signed up for NaNoWriMo with the handle gemini7 (if you want to look me up).

Besides the madcap adventure of writing forward really fast without revising, pondering and deleting, I'm putting this project in the way of temptation to revisit SOL without having let my mind and psyche rest. I have several readers poring over the manuscript, readers whose smart insights I trust (I'm so lucky!), and until they're done, and I've paused sufficiently enough to be able to absorb critique, I need to busy myself with something completely different. Thus, the novel in 30 days challenge.

NaNoWriMo doesn't begin for another couple of weeks (actually, there's only one more Monday between now and the beginning of November), so I'm doing my warm-ups, taking notes, and plotting my course. Anticipating the fun of beginning anew is a huge part of this--which also has a lot to do with why I love Mondays from September to June. I sure do hope my kid is well enough to go to school--I have a lot to do today!

all of my children are not here and other lovely burnt eavesdrops

Tom Spanbauer calls it "burnt tongue" when you say it wrong on purpose, to bring the prose closer to the heart. The actual metaphor, burnt tongue, has something to do talking to the gods--and the punishment for the hubris. Or maybe I got that wrong. Maybe that's an example of burnt ear--or a similar post office type game gone awry.

Anyway, with SOL (not, sigh out loud, no, that would be Stairway of Love, of course) in the can, awaiting comments from my trusted writing group, I'm naturally consumed with the next thing. I have a few characters and a "situation" squirming around my brain--a most delicious time in the cycle of novel-writing. All the possibilities--none of the commitment. My ear is especially tuned for appropriation during this stage. I'm looking to steal a voice I can sustain. I want that lyrical sound in my head. I want a certain type of burnt tongue to guide me into this story, this new one. To actually chant the story to me--but lyrically. Of course.

The other evening during that bewitching 90 minutes of soccer mom-dom, my boy installed in the OES playing field under the watchful eye of his coach, I stole off to indulge in my usual double espresso with foam and one packet of turbinado sugar (which, btw, is only ONE DOLLAR at the otherwise pricey New Seasons Market). I had my notebook (well, okay, it was a parking receipt folded into a pocket), and Lorrie Moore's new book (more on that in another post), and I curled up in one of the comfy chairs and pretended to read (I'm getting more and more like my 10-yr-old boy each day).

In the New Seasons lounge and food-consuming section, there were a smattering of moms who knew one another, and they were engrossed in casual conversation. This one mom had a particularly fetching accent. She may have haled from New Zealand, or perhaps she was Scottish. At one point, her three children (one in a wheelchair even!) vanished. She was clearing the table post-snack, and sort of talking to one of the other mothers--a nurse, who was described her three 12's as they call it when they pull those shifts, and she suddenly jerked her head up and looked about and exclaimed, "All of my children are not here." And they weren't. Not one. But she said it in this musing, sort of ponderish tone that I tried to rehear and rehear for its musicality and wrongness.

I'm not sure if I can steal this stranger's voice and plunk it in as a main character, but she might be perfect in a supporting role--especially valuable is the covetous energy such a secondary character might generate in the protagonist. Whoever she will end up being.

red shoes and a croissant

These shoes and this bakery is the short answer to how I celebrated completing my novel.

I'm big on ritual--the idea of it--and not-so-big on the follow-through. Typically when I finish a project I don't even pause to breathe before charging onto the next thing. I suppose this is a by-product of the day. Never enough hours and all of that. But with Stairway of Love, I did, actually, pause, contemplate, de-compress and pull out the Visa.

it's finished.

All three parts, 44 chapters, 362 pages, and 78,377 words.

I'm going to sleep now, and I'm keeping all of my hair.

the finish tape is in view

I work best on deadline. People say that a lot, and when we hear it, we nod. Yeah, okay, who doesn't? If you really think about it though, there's always a deadline. Sometimes it's soft and squishy and semi-transparent, and other times it's in six inch block letters on a whiteboard.

External deadlines advertise their existence with a price tag: opprobrium, disappointment, money. In my case, hair.

In two days, I must deliver on the challenge to offer up a complete manuscript. I am pages away from this--have paced the ending to the hour. As though Thursday is the 26.2 mile mark. If that were true, I'm at 24.8 miles right now. Maybe 25.1. Anyway--I'm close enough to smell it. Additionally, though, I have a website to launch, myriad delineated milestones to accomplish, a sick kid upstairs and end-of-the-month billing to do. Without the indelible and consequential deadline, my novel would still be hovering around the 18.3 mile mark. Or maybe even 17.9. Competition for my attention is pretty dang fierce 'round here.

Okay then, it's 6:3o a.m., and I have client work lined up for most of the day--best get busy running that last mile.

stairway of love--the final pages

Here I am, a glass of rose by my right hand, next to my mouse. Yes, I'm writing under the influence. Can't help it. In the tradition of all drunken writers: Falkner, Carver (okay, he got sober), Yates, I'm resorting to alcohol to finish this fucker.

Reason why? It's headed into some scary, dark material. The realm of creepiness. It's hard to see Frances go through the revelations she must endure in these final chapters. Today I had to break it to my main character that her beloved had kept a life-long secret from her, as did her brother. She has been left to steer the family wreckage, her husband having long abandoned her, and her job on the line. It's all so very sad for poor Fifi. And there's no time to give her a lover or a great career. She's left sopping up the muck, and now I must prepare for the last scene. The scene I wrote and rewrote in my mind a hundred times--all the while trying to avoid the inevitable.

Somehow this final scene, in addition to destroying the sacred, must also point to redemption. To an unknown future of fulfillment and happiness. Not happily ever after, exactly, but risk and reward.

Ah--put the glass of rose down, Suzy. Go to bed. Wake up early and get it done. If you don't the natives are ready to scalp!

the final countdown

Last summer at Bread Loaf, Lynn Freed had us write last paragraphs to our novel. It was a grand exercise. Really hard.

From my position, still very much at the beginning stages of a first draft, I stuttered and stammered and wrote a horrible passage based on an inorganic ending that I hoped would fix itself when the time came.

Now, over a year later, the entire third act of the book is vastly different than originally conceived. My final scene is based upon another conceit entirely. What was I thinking?

The exercise itself was invaluable though. A way to jump start the plot muscle--force the writer to consider structure in the design of a novel. Now, a few chapters from the end, I am writing to that last scene--I see it clearly, and it is both compelling and daunting.

thursday night at the table

Here they are, two of the nine folks I gather round the table with every Thursday night. Every writer should have a support system --one that carefully considers her writing, while providing an opportunity for critical engagement.

These guys kick my ass! And they also encourage me and inspire me and promote me. Last night we celebrated a birthday, a manuscript completion and a NY Times best-seller inclusion. Not bad for one night, eh? Oh, and the cake was incredible!

i heart steve almond

A few years back I got to spend an entire week in a classroom with this guy at Writers at Work in Utah. He's awesome. Here's his message. Buy his books. Really.

a chapter a day keeps the scissors away

I've got a freakin' head cold! Now, on top of racing to finish my novel whilst bringing home bacon and the usual mom stuff, the threat of a bob on top of puffy eyes, red nose and achy joints joins the fun.

Not that I'm complaining.

Much.

The only way I'm getting this done, at this point, is to write a chapter every freakin' day. I have 15 days, and probably 12 chapters left. That leaves three days to edit roughly 350 pages.

The good news is: I'm almost at 300 pages of "mostly" usable content. Hope I don't run out of Kleenex!

the bob keeps bob, bob, bobbin' away!

Last night at workshop, we convened for the first time since the threat of "the bob."

I was pleased to deliver a semi-successful chapter, get great feedback and feel inspired to sprint to the end of the book.

That said, today's writing engagement has been less than stellar. The muse is off doing her laundry, and my attention has wandered to lives and projects of others. Nothing new. I must dig in deep, and carry on. Meanwhile, though, a buddy of mine sent this cartoon. Timely.

72% and tap, tap, tapping

I am disgusted to admit how externally motivated I am. With the threat of hair snippage, I've maintained a vigorous writing regime these last several days, blasting into the 70%+ wordmeter count.

It's sort of like the reunion I dreaded going to a couple of months back. I couldn't fathom the psychic, emotional and strategic energy required to fly East and undertake a room full of people whose names I'd long since dismissed. And that ice-breaker night--true to fear--was paralyzing. I stammered and guessed and whispered my way through the evening, embarrassing myself several times over by mis-remembering just about every detail about high school.

The next night, the fancy night, was much better. Classmates emerged from the pea-soup fog whole people, with names and relationships and memories. They jumped off of the two-dimensional facebook palette and into human form. This is becoming true of my merry troupe of characters as well. They're marching out of abstraction and becoming, once again, friends with whom to tip a pint and tell a joke. I like it.

hello, my name is suzy, and I'm a character protector

I'm closing in on the end of the second act here at novel-writing central. I'm frankly appalled by the behavior of some of my characters. They don't seem to want to learn from their mistakes!

At least Frances is beginning to cooperate. She finally left her crappy marriage and is starting to deal with her denial. Starting to. God, I need like an Alanon meeting for writers: coping with your character's addiction. Seriously... I need to kick Frances into the fire here. She needs a good dose of danger--I 've got to stop protecting her from herself! These next few chapters--it's tough love time.

an advent calendar--in reverse

So I went to a book launch party last night. All the usual suspects--the writers and their significant others and various Portland luminaries--were present. It was a great party, actually. One of the most fun evenings of the past year.

I found myself, once again, lamenting my lack of focus, and yammered on about not having, after two years, a complete manuscript. While my colleagues pound out the pages amid other work, raising kids and having packed lives with external commitments, I continue to fill my days up without tending to my novel. It's like my garden. I have all the intentions in the world--cultivating a weed-free paradise with dahlias and asters and roses and pruned trees and contained vegetables that bare spotless fruits. Alas, my actual garden is an over-grown squash factory with bolted stalks of aphid-crawling who-the-hell-knows-what-all.

And so it goes with The Secret to Love (or Stairway of Love--I'm still on the fence about that). Weeds have thrust themselves up in the white space of time. I have to reacquaint myself with the texture and tone each time I sit down because of the passage of days, and sometimes even weeks.

At the party, I was tired of hearing myself whine about my lack of commitment, and so were, I'm guessing, my writer friends. "You know what?" said my industrious Virgo friend Cheryl, "There's going to be a consequence if you don't get this done by October 1st."

"A consequence," muttered the chorus of others in earshot. "Yes, a bad consequence."

Cheryl gleefully offered: "We're going to cut off your hair!" And Lidia said, "Into a bob."

Me with a bob would look like Bozo the Clown, except maybe without the bald part in the middle. "That's horrible," I said.

The writers made fake hair-cutting motions with their fingers. "A bob," they said. "Unless it's finished."

And then Cheryl, who immediately realized that I might be moved to cheat, said, "And you can't just slap anything into the manuscript and say that it's done. I'm going to read it, and if you put like, copied and pasted words from somewhere, you're still getting a bob."

According to the notes I scribbled in the tent last month, I have eight significant chunks of things to have happen. Eight as-of-yet-unwritten chapters. Meaty chapters. What am doing writing about writing instead of writing? I have 24 days until the dreaded bob. It's like a reverse advent calendar--with the big "Christmas" window in the middle being either a bob or a finished book.

evil at heart

Chelsea Cain was terrific at Powell's last night, reading her third "Gretchen Lowell" thriller in the series. "Evil at Heart" is the funniest, gruesomest one yet, and Cain has become quite a book tour pro. (She even brought Voodoo Doughnuts for the audience to snack on during Q & A).

Look how big her name is on the book! She's a superstar!

summer's repose

Oh, the long and lovely days of the fair season. With one more day of August left on the calendar, my melancholy is already ramping up. The light, which just gets more beautiful in fall, still heralds the cold dark days to come.

I feel, often, greedy and selfish this time of year. I don't want it to end. I want a rewind button. So, in service to closure (with grace, if that's possible), I am going to list my blessings right here, right now.

I have a wonderful family, and it's growing. My husband and his kids, sibs and mother have added to my joy more than I can say. My own children have all grown enormously this summer. The sum total of their adventures: exploratory veganism, travels to Europe, getting and keeping "real" jobs, adding variety and balance to their lives, working hard at and succeeding at various athletic pursuits, not to mention the many, many small ways in which this family loves and tries and works together has given me, for the first time in my life, a feeling of permanence.

The trips, oh the trips! Across the country and up the coast, riding the tide with Orcas and waking up in a tent to the sound of rain softly falling in the forest.

And our garden, and our new windows, and our terrific neighbors with whom we shared gin and tonics last night, and the wonderful team I work with at BridgePoint, and... beginning next week, a brand new web site for BridgePoint Creative (that will, of course, deserve its very own blog post).

Yes, it's all very good. Summer will come again.

The Valetudinarian and POV

Check out this Joshua Ferris piece a few New Yorkers ago (a damp evening last week had me in the bathtub with a stack of back issues. Bliss!).

I loved this story, but if Joshua was sitting at the table with us on Thursday nights, we'd rake him over the coals for breaking a whole bunch of rules. For instance, at one point in the story Ferris inexplicably shifts to the POV of a character on the other end of the phone in a speculative scene hours later, then there's a space break and then we're back to the main character. Some would call this a leap. Some would call this presumptuous. Me, I just had to reread a couple of time to get it, and after I did I enjoyed the irony and appreciated the reasons why Ferris slipped that in.

The ending, however, left me mid-stream in a way I'm not fond of. The story opens with a head on collision involving a character we never meet, and extenuating circumstances that never bear out in the rest of the story. The ending is similar. There are three characters in the scene, and the motivations and passions of each of them are knotted in a convoluted mess. What will happen next is horribly unclear in a way that makes me mad. Broken contract with the reader mad.

But the story as a whole explored the underbelly of reality so well, I couldn't, at the end, hate Ferris. I started this story in the tub, but had to leap out of the tub and rush to the bedroom in order to read the story aloud to my husband, and he loved it, in a way he rarely does a New Yorker tale. We also did quite a lot of smooching afterwards--and I know that tmi, but there was something startling, sexy and profoundly sad about this obsessive character. The title, which means "someone obsessed with his own health" is much meatier and odder than "hypochondriac" which would have been a lesser-writer's choice for this story.

All in all, the story has been living in me for several days, and I'm a little obsessed with it myself. Is there a word for someone who obsesses over a story? Bibliodinarian, or something?

And here it is

vandals

This was my friendly little wake up call this morning. Nothing pisses me off more than willful destruction of property. Really. It brings out the redneck in me. I think pistol. I think waterboarding. I mire in fantasies of choke chains and 47 years of community service and repeated kicks in the behind.

Human nature is a vast and surprising swamp, is it not?

Okay, that's out of my system.... thanks for indulging me.

fragmentation and throughline

In less than 12 days, I hope to broadcast the launch of my company's new website. My partner Laura and I began this company in April of 2006, after several years working as independent contractors in the broadly enigmatic vertical known as communications.

What's gratifying to us about our delinquency is building out our own web presence (a shoemaker's children example bar none) is that in the last six months emerging communications technologies have largely changed the businesses-to-customer landscape. Micro-blogging and transmitting information in real-time has become the new "over the back fence" way of creating an intimacy with a person or a group of people.

Case in point: I'm writing an article about defender Scot Thompson and the vociferous fanbase of the Portland Timbers soccer team. I attended a match on Saturday, and in my recon, hooked myself into the Timbers Army twitter-loop. Via ongoing tweets, I got more material, insider language, and post-game analysis than I could have had I shoved my DVR into the faces of several screaming fans.

Of course, there's a bit of a downside to all of this. I was so busy tweeting and tweet-hunting during the game that I missed a few key plays on the field. In other words, there is a learning curve with micro-blogging as well as a note-to-self about cutting up a good through-line by obsessive fragmentation and multi-tasking.

Somewhere in all of this we must strike a balance. As business owners or managers, we mustn't ignore social media platforms and shrug them off, but neither should we embrace them to the detriment of deep concentration and resounding insight.

Since our niche, at BridgePoint, is the "mature" client--we are mindful of striking that balance between hip, slick and new and sensible, human and timeless. It's an interesting juxtaposition. Stay tuned for further reportage--which may come to you via twitter, facebook, newsletter, this blog or good old-fashioned face-to-face.

the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat

Okay, I admit it. I'm a soccer mom. A 15+-year veteran soccer mom. I can't help it--nothing makes me more vicariously thrilled than watching my kids on a field with a bunch of other kids and a soccer ball.

Carson's team, Barca, participated in a tournament this weekend. For the most part, they played well, and there were some stunning moments--saves, goals, all price-of-admission highlights. But, alas, they did not do too well in the standings. They won a match and lost two. My son--running his heart out as sweeper, saved the day several times, but mis-kicked at the end resulting in a cross and a goal by the other team. So hard to watch your child weep. There's a part of you that wants them to just hang up their cleats and quit when you witness that brutalizing failure of spirit.

But the good news is--the young are resilient about these things. Carson got home, took a nap and woke up with the request to go to a local park and whap some in. Indomitable, I'd say!

Not only do I watch soccer, this week I'm going to be writing about it. Stay tuned for the highlights of my night with the Portland Timbers!

a tail is a tale

Up there in the remotest of the remote--no phone /computer or obligations -- time grows big. Things fall away and some things don't. The stuff that sticks is the stuff deepest in.

I thought a lot about my book. One particularly rainy afternoon I holed up in the tent with a mechanical pencil and a scrap of paper and amid the moist, pungent salt air, to the sound of dripping raindrops and slapping tide, I outlined the ending for my book. I came up with, at long last, the central problem for Frances: the thing that propels her to constantly move in the wrong direction. So that left me with the question of redemption.

I stumbled out of my tent and went off in search of Kirk. I found him on the Orca rock: see photo. We brainstormed the finale. It's so wonderful to have an invested party in whom you can entrust all your stoopid ideas, yeah? Amid the whales and the weather and the fabulous food that was prepared for us by our guides, I indulged in the luxury of talking through the final chapter of my book with my husband and trusted adviser.

Blasting back to Portland yesterday I had these lovely scenes blossoming in my brain. I had workshop to look forward to. My house. My wonderful business partner, Laura--who's been tirelessly rain-making exciting opportunities for us. My kids. Kirk's kids. The man who sits beside me, guiding the helm: my life-mate, lover and best friend. There are many stories. I choose the ones that stick. Life is abundant, is it not?

on the way north

Here we are, sleepy and "before-like." Awaiting transformation in the rough and cold waters of the Johnstone Strait.

So we're off to the races!

has it really been a whole month?

...since I last posted a blog entry? I'm embarrassed and ashamed.

Where do I start? Odd, I feel compelled to catch my very few readers up on all the goings on of the past month, but will resist that urge in favor of the proverbial blank slate.

Without further ado...

I have printed out my novel, read it, made notes and outlined the ending. The final push begins, with a few huge changes.

1. LOCATION: Instead of setting Part III in Paris as originally planned, I'm going back to the setting of Part I. Watch Hill. In service to tightening, compressing and distilling the myriad storylines, there is no better choice than returning the reader to the place where "it all happened."

2. TITLE: Working title is now "The Stairway to Love" instead of "The Secret to Love"

3. ARCS: Instead of huge shifts and leaps, I'm squeezing the redemptive moments down to small, palatable shifts. I'm attempting to reduce the absurdities which abound in the book in order to finesse the tone somewhat.

Hope to post more tomorrow before heading into the wilds of BC!

when the kid's away...

Carson's away at camp this week, so Kirk and I are indulging in nightly episodes of NetFlixed Weeds!

A Cube of One's Own

The new digs. I've just signed a 6-month lease to rent a micro-office nestled in an Eastside advertising agency. Despite the blue, blue, blue of the picture, the space is light and bright and filled with warmth and free bullets of espresso. (Not to mention feminine protection products in a tasteful box in the Ladies'.)

This is the third space I've occupied since officially hanging a shingle as a freelancer, and the first space that is truly my very own. Really! This is my first unshared piece of real estate in my entire life. I'm sitting here, alone, feeling the warmth of a hot summer sun setting through the window to my left, and typing slightly self-consciously--unsure, exactly, how to bask in this good fortune. I feel somewhat giddy. A bit unworthy. Though mostly gleeful.

mixing it up

  I slept with my computer last night. I dared not sully the integrity of the marital bed, so I slept in the guest room, indulging in NETFLIX, a couple of New Yorker's, Fran's salt caramels (a favorite with Obama, I hear), and The Secret to Love.

It was an unparalleled chick night, I must admit. Me and the sensory stim. My book, the inspiring prose of others, the conundrums of Paul Weston. All this on the heels of an evening visit to my gym, where I worked out on the eliptical, swam in the saline pool and hot-tubbed my stiff joints.

I must report that I am at last satisfied with my chapter one rewrite of TSTL, and I am channeling that voice throughout the 265 pages I've written. No easy task, but I will stay in the moment of victory a bit longer before the hand slaps the forehead.

Still miss my husband and the kids, but am glorying in the good fortune of solitude.

no more excuses

Last night I bid my husband farewell for the week, and sent him on his way down the road, where he will spend five days in the woods teaching teachers how to teach ecology.

My young son is with his dad.

My two older kids are busy moving from their respective apartments to new apartments.

In short, except for Opal, my very independent cat, my house is mine and mine alone.

My ambitious goal this week is to finish my damn book. Okay, I shouldn't say damn. But I will, because I'm angry with it. As if its a lover who has betrayed me--even though I'm the one who keeps cheating on it with other projects. It's as if my novel has let itself go, and I've used that as an excuse to keep my distance. "Yeah, well," I say to it, boldly avoiding "I" statements or other forms of psychological diplomacy, "You haven't been pretty enough lately. You've waned from my lust. You just can't compete with the more outgoing, expansive, daring things on my plate. It's all your fault."

Ah, but.

If only.

Yeah, right.

The truth is--and I'm reminded of this every Thursday when I sit at the table with my more dedicated colleagues--I'm the one who is straying. Call it lack of confidence. Accuse me of lack of ambition. Turn the finger of blame to me, and me alone, for I'm the one who engaged in benign neglect, who allowed TSTL to lapse off of the queue of "recent documents."

Oh sure, there's work and obligation etc, etc, etc... BUT, I am now feeding Carson's pet snakes before writing. I am sorting boxes of rubbish before writing. I'm obsessing over a slightly odd sound in my transmission and thinking about repainting my perfectly serviceable living room. Not to mention that the flat, red NetFlix envelopes filled with "In Treatment" episodes stare at me each time I pass the inbox.

Enough.

I shall report daily on my actions to correct my bad behavior. I only hope my novel will have me back.

summertime schedule

The solstice arrived Saturday in its typical Pacific Northwest fashion. Cold, rainy and gray. But the dreariness didn't eclipse the spirit that gets unleashed every June 20th--a feeling of amorphous boundaries, day bleeding into night in long, subtle strokes.

Like most Geminis, I love summer. The month of my birth heralds mercurial sprites, new ideas, life-changing conversations in the Jacuzzi. Since I married a fellow Gemini, that particular energy has quadrupled around our house--putting the active 10-yr-old to shame almost. Oh, you should see us frolic in the garden at 10 p.m.--gathering ripe berries and weed-whacking the tall grass and watering the basil while we plan the next great escape, remodel or potluck.

Work gets done, too. In jaggedy fits and starts, stuttering to an end by midnight, my laptop blinking low-battery caution as I've unplugged it to free myself from the typical sit-down workstation drudgery.

It's all so lovingly chaotic, life in the summertime. And The Secret to Love looms ever more clearly in my head, notes on scraps of paper, tidbits of dialog. Ah--but to sit in my seat for hours to get it all out in a cohesive chunk--there in lies the rub!

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.