edges

One of the top benefits of living a pastiche work life is that it lends itself to the unexpected. Now, granted, that's not everyone's cup of tea, but I'm all about the surprises. A couple of years ago one such serendipitous adventure flew into my window. An artist by the name of Ted Katz, whose art is featured to the left.

Ted was writing a book, and he was looking for an editor to help him organize his "are they essays? Stories? Where do I go with them?"

"Let me see what you've got," I said.

Ted loaded me up with his binders: pieces he'd written over the years, sketches, interspersed with his fabulous pictures. We met, mapped, meandered. He had a title: The Studio Within.

Ted has been painting and teaching in one form or another for 50 years or so, and in that time he'd amassed a portfolio and a vita that would be a lot for five men. The first time we met, he spoke about students who would be awe-struck upon seeing his current studio: a clean-well-lit, glorious space built onto the mid-century house he shares with his partner. This frustrated him. "Most of my work was created on a card table sectioned from my living space by a shower curtain," he said. And then, emphatically, pointing to his solar plexus: "It comes from here. This is where the studio is."

Now, nearly two years later, Ted has finished and published his book. The Studio Within is a collection of 40 lyrical pieces-- personal essays that venture into the heart of the artist's journey. It's funny, heartbreaking, full of voice and life, and most importantly, the essence of Ted.

Today, Ted invited me on his collector's tour--a preview of his upcoming show at Butters Gallery. The paintings he unveiled (the one pictured above is part of it), celebrate the theme "edges," and by way of introduction, Ted wrote a new essay that explores the relationship between a painting and its viewer. In the same way that his paintings "are responses to forms created by light and energy, and the edges formed by their noises and silences," the relationship formed between audience and picture is a response to a particular exchange of energy, much of it silent. Personal.

I love that Ted is acknowledging and calling out this temple within. It's one of the most wondrous qualities of humanity, the occasion to linger in the space where one thing meets another. Like the happy accident of meeting and working with Ted, the edge between the "you" and the "me" of art is as mysterious as is it mercurial, and summed up well by the conclusion of Ted's "edges" essay, a lovely quotation by William Carlos Williams:

"Unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness: without invention nothing lies under the witch-hazel bush."

writing in the "new world"

I'm a little late to pipe in on the Amanda Hocking buzz, but I really like what she has to say in this post (thank you, Erin Reel, for directing my scattered attention to it!)

What I like in particular is the demonstration of how a "lowly" writer now has the power to set the record straight with nary a phone call or magazine interface. Hocking has a half-million page views and nearly 1,000 followers on her blog, and a choir of tweeters crowing in her behalf. She's honed her audience through sheer will, hard work, and savvy.

That she's the latest poster child for self-pub success not-withstanding, Hocking isn't all that different than other women who set their sites on a goal and exploited their natural sourcing ability and intuition, backed up with a solid strategy. Mrs. Fields and her chocolate chip cookies, remember her? Mary Kay and her drive to turn housewives into entrepreneurs. Amanda Hocking had a vision, a skillset, and the drive to see it through, and while her nay-sayers are pounding out cautionary missives throughout the blogosphere, she's parlaying her success while being careful not to kill the kernel of passion that fuels it.

It's easy to get side-tracked with all the media at our fingertips. Easy to get sucked in to burning cycles and spending our writing energy in secondary pursuits. Talking about writing instead of writing. Ahem. I have well-published friends who never read their reviews because of the derailing factor. I have writer buddies who don't tweet, or facebook or blog, deciding instead to use their time at the keyboard to enter the alternate universe. Other friends of mine are good at compartmentalization, and segment their day and exposure to Internet noise judiciously.

As for me, I'm a binge type. I use the energy of distraction to propel me into my line of flight, and then, when it works the way I like, I can glide in the zone for hours. This tiny talent is what keeps me from being truly ADD, I think. It's a state of hyper-daydream. A high. But, alas, it's not available to me every day, I have to carve space for it. Put it on my Outlook calendar.

What about you? Are you a multi-tasker (have your creative writing doc open while attending to e-mail and social media), or do you do one thing at a time?

chelsea cain launches the night season

Last night my family and I popped over to Powell's Books to hear Chelsea Cain read from her newly released "The Night Season." Like any proud extended family midwife type, I marveled at her ability to convey the mixture of emotions, excitement, exhaustion and presence that accompanies the launch of a book. (Here she is signing the umpteenth book of the night with her daughter dutifully handing out the swag.)

This is the fourth book in the Gretchen Lowell-Archie Sheridan-Susan Ward series (formerly known as the "Heartsick" series), and oddly, it seems like just three weeks ago that Chelsea announced to our writing group, "I'm thinking of writing a cheesy thriller."

In a world overflowing with would-be novelists and cliches of folks who dream of best-selling authordom, her claim never left a doubt in our minds. Like many of the writers in our group, Chelsea has that extraordinary combination of intelligence, tenacity, talent and will. The quadruple storm of qualities that allows the publishing industry to persevere in the face of economic ruin, technological explosion and a generation of kids who often won't read anything longer than a tweet.

As she said on the podium last night when asked how long she planned on doing this, "Until nobody shows up at Powell's." In other words, forever.

cool distraction of the day!

I word-clouded my manuscript with Wordle and "like" wins, "one" is in second place, followed by most of the characters' names.

rereading your work via a new medium

I know that agents and editors have been reading manuscripts (or fulls, as they're now called, apparently) on some sort of e-reader for years, but writers? Not so much. That's all changing, of course, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of tablets, Nooks and Kindles. So, not wanting to be left in the electronic dust, I bellied up to my own Amazon email and sent myself my manuscript, pdf'd and formatted to single space.

This was a leap of faith for me, I must confess. My wafer-thin Kindle, whilst much easier to tote on the plane to Arizona yesterday, seems to resemble a "book" as much as does a stone tablet, or a message-in-a-bottle, even. But when I slipped it out of a slim pocket of my satchel and slid the power button to on, and saw my pages illuminated in front of me, I have to admit, I felt somewhat delighted.

But here's the real take-away. Reading my book in its e-form, brought a whole new layer of intake. Like a former mentor had suggested in his counsel to read a manuscript in a new environment to take advantage of the sensual stimulation that ensues and sharpens the editorial muscle, viewing THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES through the interface of an e-reader filtered my "seeing" of it through a slightly alternate neural pathway.

My notes revealed new edits, and my overall impression of the book took on a larger context somehow--one separated a tad more from that of the creator.

And another cool function--because the Kindle offers a percentage read, I can more easily diagnose structure and plot points. Pretty cool, actually.

plotting like you mean it

So tonight at workshop, after everyone was settled in with their whiskey and Xanax and whatnot, I passed out my pages. It was a troublesome plot-filled chapter of Empress, one that never quite did its job and I was open, really open, to having it eviscerated and fixed. A tummy tuck, maybe. A little light brain surgery.

My group came through, as they always do, with aces. Money stuff. A slew of concrete solutions. And then it was Chuck's turn, and he asked, "Why do we put dogs in a story?" (I had two in this particular chapter.)

I stumbled through some lame possibilities:

Because they're cute?

Comic relief?

Emotional fodder?

Wrong. Wrong and wrong.

"So we can kill them," he said.

Ah, (palm-to-forehead smack), of course! And in my particular case, by poisoning the spaniels, I'd be killing two dogs with one stone: raising the stakes by foreshadowing a bigger death, and ending the scene on action rather than conjecture. Always a better choice.

Can't wait to wake up tomorrow and poison the pooches!

homage to men. Yup, men.

Men. can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Actually, I can more than live with men. Good men make it possible for me to do what I do best and know that the leaves will be raked, the oven fixed, the bathroom wallpaper scraped off and my car kept in good running order. Oh, and it was men who bailed me out of my pc virus debacle last week, and more men who introduced me to the wonders of Mac as backup. There's even a man doing my laundry right this very minute!

I love men! Here I am, scything through my social media obligations, my research, my e-missives and my work orders--none of which would be possible without the good old y chromosome.

Just thought I needed to get that off my br...um...chest.

will digital surpass print by 2014?

I read a report today claiming that by 2014 e-books would surpass print books. The numbers and stats and newsy-news about digital media is coming in faster that warp speed. If the typos and grammatical errors in the aforementioned piece are an indication of what might happen when the speed of publication becomes more important than the craft behind the content, we readers and writers are in for a cold water dunk.

I've been most interested in e-book outfits that seem to walk the careful road when it comes to digital pub, and I really like Jane Friedman's approach at Open Road. Open Road is creating a bridge between old sensibilities and new form, which I think is important for old-schoolers like myself. Now that some 10.5 m folks have e-readers, the door is open to a variety of approaches to get those readers' attention.

I also like the speculation that indie bookstores are getting a leg up as the big box guys go down, mostly because indies have always nurtured community and the digital landscape of social media has given them more tools, more ways to get the word out.

I still wish my Kindle weren't so freakin' ugly though.

chop kale, filter water: the midterm report

I'm more than halfway through. I have eight more days, to be exact. I'm already fantasizing the perfect post-cleanse first meal (like the Last Supper, but in reverse). Bagels and lox will be involved.

I've learned a bunch of crap about myself during this process, but the number one thing I learned? I have a facility for shortcuts. Okay, I'm lazy. If I have one fabulous talent, it's figuring out how to crawl really close to the edge of not doing something but still do it. If I were a Nike tagline I'd be, "Just fudge it."

Thank God I live in Portland, is all I have to say. The land of myriad health food stores, gluten-free start-ups, carts that serve raw food. I discovered a frozen bread yesterday that's made from rice flour and sunflower oil and sea salt. A salad dressing that's olive oil and organic blueberries and balsamic vinegar. A cafe with non-soy vegan soup. But still, I'm cleaning out the juicer, chopping the fennel, and soaking the raw cashews. In filtered water. For two hours.

Ok, the deets since last we spoke. Still the same on the tmi front. Mucus and other bodily unpleasantries continue to diminish. I feel lighter. I am lighter (7 or 8 pounds). And I no longer have the caffeine withdrawal headaches. And about four days ago my energy came back. Finally! Oh, and my blood pressure went down 10 diastolic points (and 20 systolic). I'm now "normal." Yay!

But I miss eating like a normal person. There, I said it. I miss stuffing chocolate in my face, sipping an espresso tinged with brown sugar, the chili-cheese fries at Meadows after a morning on the slopes. And don't get me started on how much I miss cocktails!

Okay, do get me started, because I need to confess my one big, fat "off the wagon" moment last Friday.

I had a glass of cabernet. One glass. And I stretched it out for 45 minutes, lingering in its warmth and embrace like a starved sailor does a whore. I noted all those hifalutin descriptors on fancy bottles of wine: crisp, earthy, fleshy, varietal, herbaceous, oaky, nervy, mid-palate, peak.

All was well until I started eyeing my son's hamburger. And his potato chips. And his Shirley Temple.

And the next morning I felt like total shit. Bloaty, head-achy, lardassy, all of that. I punished myself by cramming an entire bundle of lacinato kale down the juicer chute, and following it with a chaser of bok choy.

Yes, I know. This sounds very eating disorderish. I admit, I wonder about the psychological jostling that occurs with "cleanses" generally. Viewing most Western food as poison. The eschewing of this, that and the other. My husband keeps asking what I'm going to continue to avoid once I'm "clean." Probably dairy, if I had to pick one thing (there goes the bagel/lox thing, 'cause I'm not spreading hummus on it). I'll try to limit coffee. Less booze. Less bread. Less bacon. I've developed a fondness for fennel. I'm way more into carrots than ever before. But please, don't take away my chocolate on a permanent basis. I think a life without chocolate would be like walking around in a burlap sack.

Any of you have fucked up fad diet stories to share? Or even successful fad diet ones?

the life of a treasure hunter

In Erin Reel's Lit Coach blog today, there is a terrific interview with author Paula Reed. The theme is "artistic integrity" and the take-away from this post is: write what you love, and don't let predetermined ideas about displeasing editors and readers that may be beholden to your previous books interfere with writing the book that's calling out to you.

I love this advice, and I especially loved when Reed, who built her reputation on romance novels, says:
In the romance genre the main story must be a love story, and happily-ever-after is a non-negotiable element. Sometimes, though, it seems to me that happily-ever-after can be walking away when a romantic relationship ends and keeping a true friend, so when I wrote Hester I chose a different path—straight historical fiction based upon a previous literary work.

One of the perks of living as a writer is that, more than most people, you get to follow your passion, in Reed's case, the desire to explore the "what abouts" in The Scarlet Letter. You get to go on a treasure hunt every single day. And sometimes, you actually do uncover gems. Those are the days that make it all worth while.

on loving one's own story

It's been incredibly rainy this weekend. Even for the Pacific Northwest. For the first time ever, I called the Oregonian and had them redeliver the Sunday paper. Even though the thing was double-bagged it was soaked through by daylight!

But, now that I've devoured the dry replacement, and tuned in to the playoffs to find Seattle getting anhialated by Chicago, and have administered an herbal remedy to my ailing child, I am finally at my desk. The Empress awaits. Or rather, her contemporary counterpart, Liz, whose storyline needs a little bit more of a kick in the ass.

I have to say, on re-reading the manuscript, I rather love Sisi and Liz. I love their quirkiness, their spunkiness, their views of the world. Sure, there are a few plot points that need a little extra tension, a bit more breadcrumbing with the diary and all, but on the whole, this book I've written is exactly the sort of book I sought when I was a bookish youngster. Novels that featured girls, at their most vulnerable ages, with the reality of adulthood around the corner--the expectations, the lack of control over one's body and mind. The hormones!

I have no idea if anyone will ever publish this thing, of course. There's no explosions, no ghosts, no vampires. The magic is a bit more complicated than typical YA, and I linger in certain aspects of character longer than many readers have patience for, but if you write a book, invest in characters, a story, a world, shouldn't your main audience be yourself? I ask this in all sincerity.

Would you write a book you wouldn't read if that book went on to be a bestseller? Or would you rather write the best possible book you could, that pleases you, and have it go nowhere? Well, which one would you choose?

writer at work

Husband heading out of town, so starting tomorrow, I'm burying myself in finishing up the revision of Empress Chronicles. Four days of immersion. Heaven!

chop kale, filter water, week one

It's the weekend most people dismantle all signs of the holiday. The Christmas tree comes down; the greeting cards get recycled. Any uneaten fruitcake goes in the trash.

Fitting for me that it's also the end of my first week on the cleanse. Eight days to be exact. All the excess of December brought to an abrupt halt (I decided against the "elimination week" and just plunged headlong into the liquid meals and raw foods portion of the deal.)

That rusty recycling bin? Well, that would be the perfect metaphor for my body as it processes the detritus from my holiday of overindulgence.

I've de-tinseled, unstrung, and otherwise shed the fun and glitter from my daily regime. Sigh.

But, there's nothing more obscene than a diet Nazi: a prostheletizing faster who goes on like the parents in a Peanuts cartoon: blah, blah, blah, toxins, blah, blah, chemicals, blah, blah, carbs, fat, processed food. Gluten. Red meat. Blah, blah, this-is-your-body-on-sugar.

It's been hard, really hard, and I'm only a quarter of the way through. I now completely understand why Women's Lib corresponded to the invention of the microwave and McDonalds. Who, other than a designated-stay-at-home, has the time to prepare fresh, raw food? The planning, procuring and unpacking of the ingredients alone takes a fucking half-a-day. Friday? It took me an hour to make my lunch. Ten minutes to eat it. And then another 45 minutes to clean up afterwards.

So, why am I continuing on? Is it some early Lent? Am I atoning? Well, of course I am. But that's really not the main reason I'm moving into week two weilding my produce knife like Sinbad the Sailor.

Here's the scoop (and I'll warn you before it gets into tmi, which it will).

1. I feel a lot lighter.
2. Complete absence of the "bloated feeling."
3. Lost 5 pounds just like that (which was the weight that I gained in 2010).
4. No morning runny nose.
5. After the first four days, diminished aches and pains in joints.
6. Dark circles and bags under my eyes less noticeable.

(Here's the tmi part--so don't read this if you don't want the purient deets)

7. I smell better (everywhere)
8. Even my shit doesn't stink. (Okay, maybe a little, but what Junger goes on at length about in his book is that normal elimination should not be foul--as it is when it's gunked up in there with the paste of the Western diet)
9. The usual mucusy stuff that tries to find a way out wherever it can has become almost non-existent.

Okay, and this last one? If you're my kids or my dad or something, you MAY NOT read it. Others, use your discretion. It's highly tmi.

10. I have it on good authority that I, uh, taste really good.

My energy is not consistent though. Sometimes, I'm incredibly tired, and gross motor stuff (like elliptical at the gym, for instance) is exhausting. Today, day eight, I cheated. I had a double espresso (but I used agave as sweetener instead of the usual 2 packets of Sugar in the Raw). I wanted to see what my body would feel like with a caffeine jolt on the cusp of yet another pilgrimage to Whole Foods for basics. I felt that familiar engagement: instant alertness. Which I liked. But I also felt like someone with a lead foot invaded my body and pressed down. My heart rate increased. I'm sure my blood pressure rose. It was an interesting experiment. Next week, I may have a glass of wine. I haven't decided yet.

But here's the biggest takeaway so far. I've been forced, through the sheer mechanical requirements of this cleanse, to live scrupulously in the moment. I have had to slow down and live at a different pace than the one I've become accustomed to. And I'm going with it. Today, the Whole Foods thing took over an hour, and I immersed myself in the shopping. Typically, I resent shopping, and try to fit in as many multi-tasks as possible: the post office, the bookstore, the gym. Checking my email while in line. Texting while ambling down the aisles. Today, when the checker asked his boilerplate, "Did you find everything you were looking for?" I said, "No, actually. There's this hair product made from quinoa that I couldn't find today," thus causing a b-and-f that must have enraged the shoppers in line behind me for the extra minute it added to the transaction. Something that, in my normal state as the next-in-queue, would totally piss me off.

But to neutralize the karmic impact, I held the elevator to the parking garage open for others, and allowed them to disembark before me, and I even returned my shopping cart after unloading it, instead of ramming it into a nearby wall as is my usual wont.

I'm rolling up my sleeves for week two, but I have to admit, I do miss happy hour. A lot.

clowns to the left of me jokers to the right

I don't think I've ever had to leap out of the holidays and into real life quite as abruptly as I have this year.  Clients, projects, creative juices and ambition are propelling me, and, as you all know, I must don the yoke and pull the cart without the aid of coffee!

Okay, so I'm like six days into this cleanse, and yesterday was a sort of turning point where I could actually hear my body talking to me.  It said, "So, this is a real thing you're doing?  Really?" 

I could actually feel the little cells rearranging, as though tired ladies on public transportation resigned to allowing the homeless guy to sit in the seat next to them.  It's foreign, it has to happen, we're dealing.

So amid all of my solipsistic hyper-attention to my body, I've had some terrific, expansive meetings with clients--all of whom have indicated that they wish to move forward.  With me!  I know how "The Secret" this is going to sound, but the woo-woo thing here is that the forces (yes, forces) around me seem to be parroting my push for change and risk.  It's all very mysterious.  Or maybe I'm just having visions from my cleanse.  I do feel somewhat walk-about today.  I think it's time to squeeze my morning kale-and-apple juice.

chop kale, filter water

This is my fourth morning without coffee. My headache has moved to my neck, where it's simmering angrily, its petulant wave of pain gnawing at me like a nasty field mouse.

This is also day 4 without booze, bread and bacon. Without sugar. Without noodles. Without anything even remotely conveying comfort.

But why? ask my friends and colleagues in their best Cindy-Lou Who. Those with whom I party and sip and knock back a few.

Why indeed, I ask myself as I get increasingly stoopider, slower and phlegmatic. But really, I do know why I'm doing this. After a blessedly celebratory year that culminated in a month of parties, hedonism and pure fun, my body looks and acts like someone from an insane asylum. I'd become so "Go ask Alice" with the drug to get me going, the drug to mellow me out, the drug to make me happy. All legal, by the way, but potent just the same.

God, I love whiskey. Sigh.

I'm doing the Junger cleanse, and I"m following the program like a monk. I even bought a Jack LaLanne Juicer from Costco and watched the instructional video on my husband's laptop (at his insistence). Imagine uncaffeinated me at the helm of this buff machine cramming in fennel, kale, green apples and carrots--my detoxing slumped posture, and the "Please Sir, may I have some more?" look on my face after downing what is now breakfast.

And right be-next to the juicer sits the "bullet" and next to that the blender, the knife, the chopping block and a variety of leafy green things that are poised to eradicate my digestive system of toxins and sludge. Yummy!

But deprivation ain't the only thing with the Junger cleanse. It states quite emphatically that the cleanser must undergo weekly massages (the first of which I've scheduled for just two hours from now!), and then there's skin brushing, hot/cold plunging, yoga and meditation. Really, it's about way more than food.

It's about writing this blog entry without letting my mind leaf through the other items in my inbox. It's about sitting down with my kale shake while my husband and son devour their pork chops and feeling grateful, blessed, whole. It's about trying not to count the days (that would be 24) until I can, once again, litter my body with poisons and meet my friends for lunch!

happy end of 2010

This year I moved out of a house I'd lived in more than twice as long as any other.  I finished drafts of two books. I got chickens.  I tweeted.  I facebooked. I wrote lots of email, ads, taglines, blog posts.  I wrote some press releases, newsletters, web content.  I skied.  I swam in the ocean. I did lots of loving, cooking and drinking.  I celebrated, serenaded, said good-bye.  I traveled, tantrumed, took my kids' dogs for walks.  I watched things bloom and fade.  I de-cluttered and re-cluttered.  I impersonated a princess, spouted off imperatives, and got be called the best writer in Portland without a book.

So, 2011, whatcha got for me?  I'm ready.

Writers and Twitter

Today, a colleague of mine asked how writers use Twitter--an EXCELLENT question, and one that, obviously, has myriad answers.

Let me tell you about my own little love-hate thing with the micro-media medium. I currently have three profiles that I tweet under: @suzy_vitello; @princess_sisi; @BPC360. Under my namesake profile I'm pretty much myself: quirky, curious, sometimes crotchety.  My tweets range from attempts at concise poetry to "alerts" to RTs (that's, retweets) of other "tweeps." Sometimes (okay, mostly) I'm just talking to myself.  Which is what writers do a lot, I think--audibly and embarrassedly.

Occasionally, like when I post some "profound" rumination in this very blog, I link to it from Twitter (and Facebook, for that matter), thus inviting, in a tagline way, others to read my lengthier diatribe on this or that.  This is mostly the reason for @princess_sisi.  With the Princess, I'm trying to build a readership to The Empress Chronicles--though, in truth, I haven't been trying REALLY hard, since I haven't nailed the voice/mission 100% yet.  But once I have, I'm certain to be as obnoxious as can be about "driving traffic" to the site.

And speaking of traffic-driving maneuvers, that brings me to my business profile, @BPC360, which I share with Laura McCulloch, my business partner at BridgePoint Creative.  The purpose of Twitter for BPC is to get in on the conversation and love-fest with other communications companies, clients, artists, um, okay, I'm gonna say it: thoughtleaders in the industry.  It's an echo chamber like no other. But occasionally, you find yourself cozied up to the watercooler with the latest industry gossip--which is, I think, the reason for Twitter's success.  If you want to be the first on the block (along with other Twitter addicts) to know the details of the latest Google merger or smart phone technology, you can't beat the medium.  Yeah, it's a love-hate, for sure.

Of course, beyond me and my reasons for tweeting, you can't discuss the viability of the thing without getting into the phenomenon of @shitmydadsays, right?  As one of the early followers of Jason's "dad," I witnessed firsthand the "if you build it they will come" Zeitgeist that can happen under perfect storm conditions.

I am curious though, how other artists use the medium, beyond the obvious and already stated.  Anyone have some input?

writing into your deepest fantasy

The coronation of Chelsea's Barbie

This year I wrote two books.  STAIRWAY OF LOVE and THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES. What they have in common is that they both were fueled by an interest in actual, historical people, scandal, and big, dysfunctional families.  As a writer, if I have a niche, I suppose it's the "what if" in the "what about"--taking history and revisioning it. But this year, I discovered a micro-niche as well--and it was propelled by a blossoming self-indulgent urge to imagine what it would be like to be-er, well-a princess!

The coronation of Lidia's chimp

Although SOL has a sort of blue-blood wealth kind of royalty theme, TEC goes right for the traditional fairy tale version of kings and queens--specifically, 19th century Bavarian-Austrian royalty.  And I know I'm not alone. After all, don't we all have a latent fascination with kings, queens and all things courtly? I mean, don't we just pore over the daily developments of the royal romance of William and Kate?

"Hayshrope" gets a crown too!

I must say, the process of flinging myself into "what iffing" the character of Sisi (or the Empress Elisabeth of Austria), led me down a most fantastical rabbit hole, and, indeed, she's become quite the alter-ego in my fantasy life. I've appropriated her likeness on Twitter. She has her own pretty little blog, and when I was recently down in Old Pasadena, I came across this fascinating Steam Punkish store, Gold Bug, where I swooped up the featured crowns you see sitting atop doll heads belonging to my workshop mates. What fun!

So, dear readers and writers, I leave it to you.  What interesting rabbit holes did you stumble into this year?

pass the prose-ack

One of my very favorite blogs is Betsy Lerner's. 

On my daily fave blog recon today I saw this post, in which Betsy expounds on an article which rates writing (and they lump entertainer and artist in there as well) as one of the ten most depression-inducing jobs.  

My husband's profession (teacher) made the cut, as did my daughter's (social work).  Egad, thank God for pharmies.

Here's what the article in Health.com says about our ilk, specifically:

These jobs can bring irregular paychecks, uncertain hours, and isolation.

Creative people may also have higher rates of mood disorders; about 9% reported an episode of major depression in the previous year.

In men, it’s the job category most likely to be associated with an episode of major depression (nearly 7% in full-time workers).

“One thing I see a lot in entertainers and artists is bipolar illness,” says Legge. “There could be undiagnosed or untreated mood disorders in people who are artistic…. Depression is not uncommon to those who are drawn to work in the arts, and then the lifestyle contributes to it.”

But that was before Twitter took the "i" out of isolation, yeah?  Y'all have anything to add?

Elizabeth's red dress

I read RESILIENCE last summer, on the way back from the deathbed of my sister-in-law who slipped away from pancreatic cancer on July 2. That Elizabeth Edwards wrote such an unflinching, heartfelt book while battling for her life, enduring myriad domestic atrocities, and trying to cope with the accidental death of her teenage son just, well, it blew me away.

Here's to resting in peace. Whatever that means. And here's to her children, the little ones and the grown daughter. I hope the media has the good grace to leave them alone, and let them grieve, thrive, and become amazing adults. Their mother left them quite a legacy.

Here's a Dorothy Parker poem Elizabeth favored, as she claimed that it captured the flow of her life. Enjoy.

The Red Dress by Dorothy Parker

I always saw, I always said
If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red
As fine as you could see,

To wear out walking, sleek and slow,
Upon a Summer day,
And there'd be one to see me so
And flip the world away.

And he would be a gallant one,
With stars behind his eyes,
And hair like metal in the sun,
And lips too warm for lies.

I always saw us, gay and good,
High honored in the town.
Now I am grown to womanhood....
I have the silly gown.

It's cool to mess with Jane

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, parody must be the higher highest form. An Austen scholar, an Austen imitator, and a humorist are judging the "Write Like Jane" contest, where aspiring Jane Austen acolytes can submit 800 Austenesque words and stand a chance of inclusion in a Bad Jane Writings anthology.  Plus, there's prize money.

What is it about Jane Austen that sends readers and writers into Steampunk paroxysms?  Certainly we've all guffawed to Jane Austen's Fight Club (see video above), but did you know that there's a Jane Austen drinking game? It involves watching Austen-inspired chick flick--guaranteed blotto for the frat set.

And don't even get me started on social media profiles. Facebook and Twitter are replete with Janefaces of one sort or another.

And then there's the Zombie books. It's sort of like a Saturday Night Live skit, the zombified "Pride and Prejudice."  Perhaps engineered by an app that just searches and replaces various words with "zombie."  But terribly fun to read:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.  Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead."

Let's see Keira Knightley say that with a straight face!

So all you idolatrous Janeites, I challenge you, amidst your tea-cozy crochet sessions, crank out a pre-Victorian romantic gentry scene set in some cold London manse where bosoms heave and corsets pinch, and ladies are ladies, unless they are gents.

brave new book

For publishers and authors aching to get their work into the hands, in front of the eyes, and on top of the minds of readers, Electric Publisher, an app-building company niched in the literary world, is making quite a splash.

Apps have the potential for making the reading experience more dynamic, evolution-driven and, well, fun--not to mention how they can offer authors and publishers marketing tools never before imagined. I was pretty excited, actually, watching this video-interview on Galleycat with Andy Hunter, and for some very selfish reasons.

I just finished writing a young adult novel called THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES, and while it was coming together, I began to have these pretty fantastic notions of how, ultimately, the book could be constructed and experienced in electronic form.  Given the right coding, the conceit of my book--intention as the driving force behind rewriting history--could be experienced firsthand by the reader in a digitally-based medium.  For instance, the climax chapters present three divergent outcomes, all predicated on revision that works retroactively.  The app I have in mind would allow the e-audience to experience, as the character does, the evaporating prose in the Empress's diary which comes to be replaced with the edited version.  Links can bring the reader to companion web pages, designed for interaction.  And don't even get me started on the possibilities with historical sidelines!

All self-serving glee aside--it's an exciting time to consider the possibilities of story, and the myriad forms it will take.

how zen kept us from killing each other

My family and I spent Thanksgiving in San Diego with my mother and Kirk's daughter who both, coincidentally, happen to live there. There's 1100 miles between my door and my mother's. That's a lot of time in a confined space with an 11-year old.

I've made this trip before. Several times in fact. The first time, I was actually living in San Diego, and several friends had assessed my Birkenstockishness and hippie outfits claiming me perfect for the Pacific Northwest. At the time, my older kids were babies, so on a lark (truly, it was...I didn't even have Triple A!) I packed the wee kids up and headed north.

At some point I thought to look at a map and, lo and behold, discovered that Oregon (which I then pronounced the you-ain't-from-around-here way, emphasizing the GHAN syllable) lay between California and Washington, instead of next to Canada. Really, I was that stoopid!

On that adventure, I fell in love with Portland, and promptly U-Hauled my crap up here.  I've never looked back. Except during Thanksgivings, summers and the occasional Spring Break, where occasionally I'll be moved to get an oil change and I-5 my way down the road.

1100 miles is sixteen hours of driving. Kids, even good ones, get whiny and bratty after about two. That's my experience anyway. But this trip was different, and I owe it all to Jordan Sonnenblick.

Before we discovered this amazing writer, the only use my son had for books was to include them in the creation of make-shift bowling alleys. As a person whose life turns on the printed word, I tried to disguise my disappointment in his disdain for reading. I tried to introduce him to graphic novels, sports figure books, skater magazines. No go.

So, one day, on yet another one of my famous larks, I perused the YA section of our neighborhood library and, judging one after another book by its cover, stumbled upon  Zen and the Art of Faking it . It grabbed me. It had all the elements: an upside down boy who looked about my son's age. Basketballs. Oregonesque sandals. I checked it out, took it home, and my son actually began to read it. And not put it down. (Until his myriad sports practices required it).

I promptly ordered up the book-on-tape version for our trip. By the time we climbed into the car, my son was a good three quarters of the way through the book, but was delighted to hear it read to him, and to have us brought up to speed so we could have a little mini book group whilst crawling up the I-5 post-Thanksgiving.

Some of the unexpected takeaways included my son divulging long-held secrets from grade school, feelings about bravado, teasing, crushes, sports acumen. In short, the trip was delightful, entertaining, informative and easier than ever. So. This summer? Maybe the canyon lands and more excellent spoken YA coming out of the dashboard.

Any recommendations?

a thanksgiving wish

Here's to books. That they may continue to deliver their magic, that they may continue to be loved. That they may reach into they hearts that cry out for them.

Rock on, Patti!

Congratulations to rocker-writer Patti Smith for her National Book Award winning JUST KIDS. Like Dylan, she can now claim to be embraced cross-genre--loved for words as well as music. In her acceptance speech she said, "writing is like exercise; you have to commit to doing it and you have to do it every day."

Time for some crunches!  And after that, I'm getting Patti's book.

If you're curious, here's the list of winners.  And best of all?  They're mostly chicks!

schadenfoer!

He's young, he's brilliant, he's rich and he's a writer.  No fair!  There's a certain jealousy writers feel when they ponder the life of a seemingly golden child of art.  Jonathan Safran Foer has all the makings of the iconic object of disdain.  A target for good old fashioned avarice--the sort that drives artists to wish bad things, disastrous calamities, even. That's all pretext to the latest Vanity Fair piece on Foer, who is in the process of launching his latest book, Tree of Codes.

The stir on this book isn't as much about content as form.  Foer sliced up (literally) a book by Bruno Schulz called Street of Crocodiles, and put it back together Humpty-Dumpty style, creating an homage and a new tale all at once.

Part of the buzz (positive and negative) no doubt has to do with this blurb by spacial artist, Olafur Eliasson:
[A]n extraordinary journey that activates the layers of time and space involved in the handling of a book and its heap of words. Jonathan Safran Foer deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story. In our world of screens, he welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers it actually has a body.

What!  Eliasson isn't an author! Such cross-pollination is confounding! 

That Safran Foer.  What an upstart.

I remember first paging through Everything is Illuminated and feeling that I was viewing the inside of someone's brain. Clearly, his debut novel was fueled by his passion for discovery--that is, his interest in his Holocaust-escaping Jewish grandfather's plight--and it tumbles forth from there. He was 22 when he wrote that book.  22!  And now, several books later, he's flying in the face of the e-book, kindle dictate by creating a fiction that must be experienced sensually, in three dimensions.  The Schadenfoers are gleefully wringing their hands with this one: it won't sell!  It'll fail!  It's counter-intuitive!

My hunch, having heard and read interviews with the boy genius, is that his anachronistic urges, his need to constantly fuck with form, is not intentional.  Rather, it's a genuine by-product of his crazy-busy brain and the way he, as an artist, synthesizes the world.  In fact, I wish there were more Safran Foer types who were successful.  It might restore my faith in this largely pablum-sucking world.

notes from childhood

I'm in the itchy red tights and witch shoes.

One of my earliest memories was my dad teaching me how to curtsy in preparation for a trip to some big, important building in Vienna.  He was a med student, so it could have been the well-known University, but the only thing that seared itself into my brain matter about the actual day of the curtsy was itchy tights and the walk next to my father through a large, fancy hall, and up a grand staircase of some sort.  The actual curtsy I've re-formed in my mind, but knowing me, it probably came off as more of a bow.

Vienna was my home the first six years of my life.  We lived in the 18th Bezirk, among all the foreigners: Indian diplomats, Hungarian dignitaries, British students.  The mid-sixties in Vienna were much less a clash than here.  For instance, hippies were non-existent. My parents attended actual balls.  My mother was chic and young and resourceful, and sewed her own ballgowns whilst wringing out our laundry in the hand-crank washer she had set up in the kitchen.

My best friends were an Indian brother and sister. In my memory, they were named Banti and Apu, respectively--which is odd, since Apu is a boy's name, but, whatever.  They hailed from New Delhi and had servants and great outfits.  Our families lived in a fancy apartment house which has since become Vienna's Indonesian Embassy.  Inside those wrought iron gates we tricycled and climbed a small tree.  Once, Banti took a crap in the ornate swimming pool in the backyard--his log of a turd floating by the concrete lions who seemed to avert their eyes at the sight.  I loved Banti. Together we terrorized my little sister, Patti, and threw her stuffed monkey in the well--also in the backyard. Banti's little sister was shy and mostly hid behind her governess's skirts watching her brother being scolded.

I've been back to Vienna only a couple of times since, and each time I've trollied out to District Eleven to press my face against the iron gates of my formative home.  My last trip, I snuck in with my son, Sam. We squeezed through the shutting gate just behind a Diplomat who'd been buzzed in, and scurried 'round the back, to the daylight basement windows at the rear of the house which had vented our small family way back when.

Disappointingly, the windows looked into office space.  Where memory recalled a small desk where my father sat typing out a paper, calling to my mother for spelling reassurance, now sat metal tables upon which reams of paper lay.

Out back, no stuffed monkey in the well, no swimming pool in which to poop, and everything so much smaller.  Sam, of course, was nonplussed, as he had been with all of Europe, counting the minutes until he was free from being dragged abroad, back to his eggs and bacon breakfasts, his marathon Friends reruns. His garage poker games and furtive PBR swilling.

What will Sam's sentimental salmon-like returns to childhood entail, I wonder. He's lived in Portland since the age of two, and currently resides less than ten miles from the bulk of his many formative homes.  But then, Sam is a much more pragmatic person than myself.  Even if he had been steeped in a somewhat exotic childhood landscape, with the children of dignitaries shitting up the Rococo garden features of his frame of reference, his notation of the act wouldn't be any larger than, say, his adolescent escapades where he and his buddies guzzled a gallon of milk in the park on a dare, just to see the color of their respective vomit.

But then, that's the beauty of half-remembered sentimental journeys.  One person's sacred construct is the next's person's shrugged shoulders.

Funny Tweeter

We interrupt the serious business of blogging about writing to lap over into the confoundingly, maddeningly, ever-evolving drain clog of social media.

This guy's funny, check him out!

F Twitter from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

much ado about...hair

In the midst of the midterm kerfuffle, I give you respite.  Hey, you voted, you voiced and maybe today you're happy?  But if you're reading this particular blog, probably not.

What's a citizen to do?  At least you can thank the stars that you're not burdened with the pomp and circumstance of the Viennese Court, yes?  Here's a little glimpse from the bowing and scraping world of Empress Elisabeth's retinue.  N'Joy.

okay, franzen 2

NOTE: this entry is full of Spoiler Alert passages.  If you haven't read the latest Franzen, and intend to, and don't want to know anything, don't read this.  You've been warned.

Two hours later, I am still savoring that last epiloguish chapter of FREEDOM. How I feel is the way a person feels after making up with a spouse or best friend post-huge fight. Salty afterglow of mixed emotions, and oddly, not as spent as I felt 90% of the way through this crazy book.

I realize I'm about to mix metaphors, leaving spouse/best friend and moving into bad boy teenaged boyfriend territory, but I'm having a "see how I am?" moment.  As a youngster, I tiptoed to the dark side just enough to glimpse danger, but not, thank God, enough to cause the need for a lifelong balming of scars.  I've always maintained a sort of arrogant anthropological distance from crazy and/or dangerous folk, finding them fascinating but always checking behind me for the quickest escape route as I was led down the dark tunnel. What I liked best and appreciated most about FREEDOM was sensing that same distance in the narrative. I realize that this eccentricity most likely casts me in a weird minority, and I would venture that the same distance is seen as a flaw of the book by many more astute readers than myself, but there you have it.  Ironic distance, done well, trumps all for this reader.

What I liked second best [remember, future readers of FREEDOM, you've been warned] was the Joey extracting his wedding ring from his feces scene.  Oh the scatological indulgence!  Every boy child's obsession, yeah?  To linger in the concrete description of poop for several pages?  Only to be outdone by the continual micromanaged sex deconstructions--which I personally found excessive after a while.

Now, about the bitter commentary that Franzen slathered the book with: although it served the historical landscape well enough, it seemed rather incidental (and somewhat contrived) to the development of some of the characters and their predicaments.  Not all the characters, merely some of them.  But maybe that was the point.  Lalitha felt vastly cypheristic to me--though the reference to her in the very last line of the book made me cry.  But, in the storyline itself, she was sadly so two-dimensional that her actual death, buried in the middle of a cryptic paragraph,  was a shoulder-shrugger.

The wrinkled chronology: I wanted to hit Franzen for it. Truly.  I wanted to throw his tome at the back of his head.  Why did he indulge himself so by bringing in that cumbersome backstory on Walter's grandparents so late in the book?  It was a very authorial, obnoxious move, like when a musician you pay $150 to see (let's say, hypothetically, Dylan), pumps you up with a passionate performance of his best work, and then turns his back to you and the rest of the audience and steers the concert into experimental, boring shit--or worse, retunes his guitar while you stand there in the rain, blowing hot air on your hands until he starts playing again.

But overall, you got to admit, the guy is an amazing writer.  His clarity, his perfect sentences, his incredibly well-developed irony, the juggling he had to do to pull off any sort of a halfway satisfying ending with all those damn characters he peppered into the prose.  The way he infused the freedom metaphor in myriad ways. Whew!  I bow to you, Jonathan Franzen, mostly I do. And, because I said I would, here are the remaining top five reasons I bow.

1. unflinching ring-in-the-shit scene
2. finding a wonderful and heartfelt way to show Walter's complexities at the end of the book (he was annoyingly underdeveloped for me until then--then, suddenly, I got him)
3. pretty masterful redemption of the main characters given their shitty behavior throughout the book
4. reasonable attempt to tackle political shifts over time through interesting characters (though I have to let this percolate for a while, because I suspect I'll find this less successful upon reflection)
5. not one typo or out of place word in the whole 562 pages

okay, franzen...

Walter and Patty Berglund. And Richard Katz. Yup, I'm slogging through FREEDOM (about 2/5 of the way through) and I have to say. The book is ambitious. Not to be reductive, but here are the top ten things I like thus far:

1. Imagining Franzen poring over his sentences to make sure his semicolon use is correct and that he's been consistent with Katz's elitist self-deprecation.
2. As always, the unrelentingly effective use of ironic distance.
3. That crazy Eliza chick. (If not for her, Patty would be suffering even more from unlikeable main character syndrome.)
4. The passage shortly into 2004 where Katz gives the kid an interview and slathers himself with gracelessness right before the novel takes a huge swerve. Masterfully done!
5. The twisted, fucked up Patty-Walter-Richard thing. Nice tension.


Okay. I stopped at five. I'm going to save the next five for the next part of the book, which I hope to plunge into as soon as my chores and work and other crap are done. Now, onto the stuff that pisses me off.

1. Joey? I'm not buying any of the Joey set up. That chapter that worked as a stand alone in the New Yorker? Does not work in the novel at large. Yet. Maybe that'll change as the context of it morphs with the next half of the book.
2. Patty's parents. Huh? I'm missing something huge here. Seems that Franzen could have referenced them occasionally in the subsequent chapters, as her actions warrant some sort of backstory flashpoint. I'm talking about the slightest recall from Patty's weird upbringing brought to bear on some of her "autobiography" section. We don't want to dislike her so much!
3. Walter is an enigma. We are told too much about him and don't see him in action enough. I'd like to see Walter and Patty play hoops together. Will that ever happen?
4. Jessica? There is scant mention of her, then she pops up with scathing dialogue during the "parents weekend" thing, where it's clear that she's simply inserted to better pay off Patty's sink into poor choice-making.
5. Patty's self-satisfied sister whose name escapes me because, again, she was inserted, me suspects, merely to make a case for the shocking shittiness of Patty's family of origin. I'd like to see her come back and opine on the goings on at Ramsey Hill before the Berglunds up and move to DC.

crush of the month

Don't you just love having a crush on a book and its author? I'm not talking about creepy stalker sort of stuff. I mean, when a sentence stops you cold and you keep rereading it 'cause its beautiful, lyrical and new.

I felt this way about Michelle Huneven's BLAME a few months back, and I sort of fall in and out of crush with Franzen's FREEDOM (the density of his sentences alternately engages and annoys me), but my crush of the month is Laurie Halse Anderson's WINTERGIRLS.

Anderson is the writer whose selectively banned debut book SPEAK heralded the Speak Loudly campaign earlier this month. I'm reading SPEAK, like it pretty well, but WINTERGIRLS is so asskickingly good, it's a hard follow up. I was loath to get to the last page of it I liked it so much, but now, a week after finishing it, it lingers like a supremely satisfying meal at a five-star restaurant.

Perfectly paced, ingeniously conceived and written with startling authority in the first person voice of a seriously troubled 18-yr-old girl, the book takes wonderful risks, and seems to follow a vision that defies YA convention on all fronts: syntax, grammar, love interest (or lack thereof, for the only potential heartthrob turns out to be...*SPOILER* a jerk).

The thing I love most about WINTERGIRLS, however, is Anderson's lyricism. A quality I find lacking in many popular YA books. Often, language takes a back seat to plot and concept, and shortcuts abound on the sentence level. The musicality of WINTERGIRLS is phenomenal. Anderson channels the voice of her character, Lia, and never lets down. Not for a minute. The book soars with energy, from the opening line to the end. It's dangerous, delicious and dark, in a way that I find many YA books skirt in favor of the blockbuster moments: the dystopian constructs, the shape-shifting monsters, the big, bloody battles.

In WINTERGIRLS, I found a powerful, true, gorgeous arc, relateable and contemporary, yet uniquely voiced and constructed. A hard act to follow.

Now, back to the long-and-winding Franzen tome.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Redux

The writers' marathon month is upon us once again; the social media airwaves are all atwitter and abuzz. I shan't be taking part this year (I think instead I'll sign up for NaNoReMo, 'cause finally I'm top of list at the library for the Franzen), but last year, I plopped my tush on the 'rhoid pillow and dove in, and scrubbed out a good 40Kpages words

(I wrote only a half a novel, sigh).
A yearish later, here are my take-aways:

1. Characters CAN be forced into being
2. I'm sloppy when I'm fast
3. Plot is, and always will be, my downfall
4. Writers are obsessive. But in a good way.
5. All writers who spend more than 2 hours a day at their craft should invest in ergonomic set-ups.
6. The occasional "lost weekend" is reasonable for a writer; a "lost month" when you have a family--you gonna pay!
7. Community is important (so is nightly Scotch)
8. Consider inviting other WriMos in your "group" to post their last paras of the day in a FB message. I did this w/ my friends and it was incentivizing
9. Get your massages lined up. One per week. Seriously. Or trade bodywork w/ others.
10. Don't take the resulting output too seriously. It'll probably be mostly shit, but there will be several gems to glean from it.

I know #10 won't be a popular point, but, when I look back at the digital ink I spilled in Nov 2009, I see lots of cool parts, but the sum of them is head-scratchingly obtuse. I'm not saying that'll be true for everyone, but, as in the Perfect Storm, in order for a novel that's pooped out in a month to be draft-worthy, plot, passion, and people have to align in an enduring way. Just 'cause it's November doesn't mean they will.

Have fun kids!