vacation coma

Haven't been writing much. Or thinking much. Mostly, just gazing out at the view beyond my knees. Tough life, right? Decisions are all made in accordance with the heat, wind and direction of the sun. How divinely retro, to depend on nothing but nature, yes?

This week, Kirk and I have been holed up in the piney woods-framed Mediterranean sea town of Castiglione della Pescaia, in the mostly Swedish-run resort Riva del Sole. Like much of our trip, Riva is fairly free of the American tourist scene, and because my iPhone's "translator" isn't all that quick in the spotty wi-fi zone here, I mostly communicate by pointing and gesturing when I need, say, a glass of wine or a scoop of gelati.

Holidays in Europe emphasize downtime, I've noticed. People here are very good at relaxing whilst looking beautiful. Me, I have to say, it's all a little strange, this beach vacation thing. First of all, there's my fair skin and dry, curly hair. Like bratty toddlers, they're constantly whining at me: Do you even know the damage seawater does to me? What do you mean we're going to the pool again? I miss the slimy wetness of Portland! 


So there's that.

But also, even more akin to my feeling of disconnection, the beach, as our pal Anne Morrow Lindbergh pointed out so many moons ago, "is not the place to work; to read, write, or think."

At least at first, she admits before launching into her oft-quoted book. Lindbergh continues, "And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense – no—but beach-wise."


Unfortunately, I'll never know if that's true for me, as we're packing tonight and bee-lining to Salzburg (where I hear it's 60 degrees and raining). We're leaving the Italian vacation pace behind and plunging back into the land where Internet is never spotty, and clocks are obeyed.

Thinking more about Lindbergh's assessment of the first week on the beach, and my own sense of flaccidity these six days, I suppose I could liken it to a form of detox from the workaholic agenda-driven life I lead at home (and even the aspects of vacation which are destination-driven). The compulsion is still there, just under the surface--the first two days I had to slap my hand away from the potted geraniums on the resort patio, so badly did I want to deadhead them! Allowing a rhythm other than the one churning with intent is really, really hard. The day the server went down here at the resort, I about lost it. So dependent am I on modern lines of communication. (But I have to post on Facebook for the crouton company! Yikes!)

Oddly, too, my usual ingestion of intoxicants is all out of whack. Instead of a pot of coffee interspersed throughout the day, I have one or two shots of espresso. Wine every night, of course, but a couple of glasses spread out over hours. It's pretty much been the Mediterranean diet by default here. No butter, no heavy meats. Lots of fresh veggies and fruit and olive oil and fish. A little chocolate. Those Italian cookies, of course. And cheese. Which seems to like my better here than it does in the U.S. Go figure.

As far as the beach-reads go, Kirk and I just dovetail read GONE GIRL, which was great fun. Though he seems to be looking at me askance lately. (He thought the initial "cool girl" self-description of the Amy character was totally me, then freaked out with the * SPOILER ALERT* way she emerges as a psychopath.)

I've caught up on some YA reading, and when the Internet works, I check in with the "world" via Facebook and so forth--managed to "WhatsApp" my kids, and that's always reassuring. Back home our chickens are fine, I'm told, and our kitchen remodel seems to be on track.

So why am I waiting for the shoe to drop? Some disaster to tumble out of the sky? Is it part of the workaholic detox thing? Or the getting ready for reentry thing?

Let me ask you this: in the midst of a fabulous time, a relaxing vacation where all is well, do you obsess?

under the tuscan sunset

So Kirk, Wanda and I are driving the back roads of Tuscany, zipping along the one-lane zero visibility bridges from Etruscan village to Medieval mine town, and we're thinking up best-seller ideas (we've reached that point in the vacation where Visa bills are factoring in), and we thought up a pretty good conceit. Sort of "Under the Tuscan Sun" meets "Golden Girls."

Here's the pitch:

Four middle-aged women (friends of long-standing), swear off men, sell all their worldly goods, and buy a villa in Tuscany. One by one they fall off the man-swearing-off wagon (insert beefcake cougar-hunting, Vespa-zooming hunk, or some recently widowed secret millionaire), but they can't let the others know they're indulging in boy. Madcap adventures ensue as they try to hide their trysts from one another.

What do you think? Got any other trope-meets-trope ideas? Let 'em fly!

In yet another cable car-type vehicle  

Hi kids. I'm in Tuscany. Fucking Tuscany!! Where all the schmaltzy feel good movies with happy endings that star Diane Lane are filmed. I know... this reportage from the earth's sexiest locales is starting to piss you off. And yet, you want the details. Right?

Spent the last two nights in the spa town of Montecatini Terme, where they name the water as well as diagram a sort of mix-and-match with the ailments the various springs are supposed to cure. Needless to say, my constipation is over. (But I think it was the gelati rather than the mineral water that did the trick.)

So, I'm writing off this trip, and one of the reasons I can do that (besides researching the novel I've already written and can't seem to sell), is that I work for a food company that just developed a line of croutons branded with a nod to "Old World Italy." All this week I'll be posting my culinary adventures on this particular Facebook Page, starting with yesterday's recon in the kitchens of the hotel/restaurant.

Gelati. That is all.

The write-off part of being a writer is pretty cool, but now with jobs in social media, you can pretty much write off your entire life. A tweet here, a blog post there, some Facebooking, and, et voila! work is life and life is work.

So Montecatini was fantastic. The Italian cultural norm of taking big-ass naps in the afternoon and staying out until 2:00 a.m. seemed to work well for me. As did the people-watching: old ladies strolling arm-in-arm, groups of boys playing street soccer, Tony Soprano types and their booming voices and ginormous stomachs holding court in the metal chairs of street-side cafes. The crazy drivers. The zippy motorbikes. Arias belted out in public spaces. And the shopping! Okay, I hate shopping, but I couldn't resist browsing through the street vendor wares, where tatted means lace, not body ink. Dresses come in three sizes: zero, two and matron--and the styles pretty much follow. Oh, and the aforementioned gelati--on every corner.

You dress to go out at night, and sashay down the cobblestones in your heels, then land at a cafe where you're expected to order a bottle (not a glass!) of wine, and linger until the wee hours. Was this country made for moi, or what?

There was some sort of beauty contest in the square the first night we were there. A throwback to overt sexism, where they skipped over the "talent" part, and the girls simply paraded around in bikinis -- and in the plot of street right beside it, you guessed it! A car show! Extra special sight-seeing for Kirk in this hopping town.

The right-leaning Tower in all its glory

So we motored away from the spa town this morning (Wanda, Kirk and I are now total BFFs, you'll be happy to hear. She seems to know a lot of shortcuts in Italy), and stopped in Pisa on the way to our current destination, the beach-in-the-piney-woods, otherwise known as Riva del Sole.

But first, Pisa. Let's take one of the world's biggest architectural fuck-ups and build a crappy little city around it and watch the Americans flock to it. Throngs of tourists all striking poses for posterity where they simulate propping the tower back to straight. Seriously, imagine 400 people all doing this, as if it's the most original idea ever. I envisioned all these people with copies of 50 Shades of Grey stuffed into their Leaning Tower tote bags. Ugh.

Anyway, kudos to Team Wanda:Kirk for negotiating various UTurns where seven streets came together and not getting us all killed on our way out of Pisa.

As of three hours ago, we're here in our piney woods bungalow, the cicadas are yammering away, and the beach beckons. See you soon, but before I go, let me ask you, what's the most outrageous thing you've ever written off on your taxes?

pilgrimage to bled

lots of cowbell up here in the Slovenian alpine  

No doubt about it, the Lake Bled region of Slovenia rivals any contender for "most beautiful place in the world." If you've ever had a cinematic dream with surreal colors and exaggerated wildflower meadows, they were based on this place, which is all very Hansel and Gretel-meets-Disney, even in the crazy downpour we're experiencing currently. 


This little 30 Euro-a-night cottage we're renting, all geraniums and dish tv, sits in the middle of a valley surrounded by the Julian Alps, and villages we can't figure out how to pronounce (the language lacks vowels and includes those interesting Eastern European letters with all the hieroglyphics above them). Accommodations abound here in Bohinjska Bistrica, and they're all neat as a pin and loaded with charm.

Sort of Wizard-of-Oz, yes?

When we arrived yesterday (after a somewhat harrowing hail storm on the mountain pass that flooded out the road and had us stopped on the Autobahn in pile-up fashion), we pulled up to one of the dozens of adorable houses that seemed to correspond to the info we had on our booking.com print out. On the porch was a legless lady in a wheelchair that looked to be about 105 years old. She smiled and nodded as I waved my paperwork in front of her face like a lunatic. "Ne Ne" she kept saying, and Kirk pulled out one of the volume of Rick Steve's books for the translation.

misty watercolor memories

Soon enough the son came over and somehow, with hand gestures and smiles, we made our way over to the modest unit where we were instructed to bunk. It's a lovely little place, with the usual feather bedroll and miniature refrigerator, bidet, and 1,000 channel flat screen dish television. No coffee maker, however, which, for a complete addict, was a bit troublesome (Kirk actually managed to make me coffee this morning though, using a dishtowel and a plastic funnel. The man is a genius!)


We popped into town for groceries and dinner last night, ordering "the special" -- which, near as I can tell, were scoops of paste, cat food and pickled organ meat. Now, I'm pretty experimental with my culinary adventures, but last night's dinner just lipped over the edge for me. I hit that wall of gross-out and there was no going back. You know what I'm talking about, right? Like you somehow imagine that you've just eaten shit and your brain goes into this fight or flight thing?

We climbed here in order to ring the bell. For luck.

I got over it, though. Had a little chocolate, some brandy. The usual cure-all.


So this morning we scurried off to the Vogel cable car, taking that up and up and up to an alpine vista where we climbed an additional mile or so to get the money view of the alps. We were on our way back to the lift when the thunder began, and thus began the downpour. Very dramatic, I must say.


I made us an arugula and some sort of cured meat salad. More brandy. More chocolate. The rain continues. We're watching some horse jumping competitions on the 1,000-channel television. I'm thinking of getting the dishtowel out again, and making another batch of coffee.


This is the life, I tell you.

What's the last thing you've had to improvise or jerry-rig on vacation?

like a fruit the stone

Death & Man, Egon style

Yesterday I took a break from my Habsburg-Wittelsbach obsession to check in some other Viennese icons. Turns out we inadvertently planned our trip during Klimt summer. It's Klimt, Klimt, Klmt, everywhere you look--him in his mental patient-looking smock holding a cat, him on a Saltzkammergut lake with his intrepid lover, Emilie. The Kiss, the pointillist landscapes, the bling-gold Bloch Bauer.

At the Leopold, the exhibit is based on postcards found in the closets and drawers of Emilie Floge, his long-term companion. I have to say, Klimt's people were a lot better at hiding scandal than were Egon Schiele's. Klimt basically had affairs and/or impregnated all of his models (several of his bastard kids ended up being named Gustav, after their randy daddy), but if there were any epistolary references to these torrid affairs, they were well hidden (burned).

Instead of declarations of love (or lust) the postcards are full of banal musings, such as: After breakfast, which I ate at 9, I painted a beech tree. Yawn.

Now, Klimt was one hell of an artist, but he just wasn't as interesting a person as that other dude--the young, crazed poster child for suffering, Egon Schiele. Egon, who admittedly died too young (28) to carry on decades of scandal, was sort of the inverse of his rival. Whereas Klimt was a generalist-and popular with collectors who liked a little Austrian sentimentality with their nudes, Schiele's work was deeply, profoundly personal. Take the brilliant Cardinal and Nun, for instance (Caress). Shame and sacred side-by-side. It's been called a paraphrase of The Kiss, Schiele's version of ecstasy. Now that's the real Austrian theme!

My favorite take-away from my non-Sisi day was the commentary on Self Seer, Schiele's Death and Man piece. It's an illustration of Rilke's notion that: "one carries one's death around like a fruit the stone." Love that!

So, what kind of fruit are you?

hallstatt

You'll be pleased to know that Kirk and I are not taking any more of Wanda's shit, and simply ignore her when she demands we U-Turn when it makes no sense what-so-ever. We talk back to her, even. We flip her the bird, and continue following our old-fashioned paper map. She's such an insistent bitch, that Wanda: "Make-a-u-turn-if-possible-make-a-u-turn-if-possible," she echoes in her robot German accent.

Shut the fuck up, Wanda.

Somehow, though, we can't bring ourselves to turn her off. It's like my son--he seems to need me to nag about not eating cereal in his room, so he can continue to ignore me and bring bowl after bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios in there (and probably, in his head, he's saying shut-the-fuck-up-mom, too).

Speaking of my son, I got like two-and-a-half hours of sleep last night worrying about whether he'd been dropped off at the right place, if he had all his equipment. I wondered if his leg had healed after the quad pull he got during his last tournament. Maybe he was sick. Maybe his dad decided he should go back to the hot springs with him instead of ODP camp. I haven't connected with him because we've put our phones in airplane mode for the trip (I just can't justify the expense, given my addictive phone use--even with the international package, it's truly ridiculously costly) - but, lo and behold, at 6:00 a.m., I got the a text from him on my WhatsApp app (which, is a must for wi-fi texting over seas).

It's us in our salt mine garb.

I was thrilled to find out that, indeed, all is well and he's having a great time. His roommate is cool and, best, he and a bunch of fellow-campers chipped in to have four pizzas delivered to their dorms at Linfield, where the camp is. For a 13-year-old, that's a pretty awesome thing, ordering a pizza and having it delivered to a college dorm. Carson is in heaven. So, for the moment, I can stop freaking out.

Sleep-dep and Wanda's attempts to derail us aside, the trip from Bad Ischl to Hallstatt took only a half-hour or so, and wended along a river through the usual adorable towns to arrive at a storybook village on a lake so clear and ancient and Euro-lovely we thought we were still asleep, having a dual dream or something. We thought Partenkirchen and Bad Ischl were picturesque ... this town (which dates back to 900 BC civilization-wise) outshines them. By far.

We'd decided to come here rather late in our planning -- it's the only place on our itinerary we hadn't pre-booked a zimmer, so, chunky library version of Rick Steves Germany and Austria in hand, we bumbled our way through the village in search of one-night accommodations (on a Saturday in summer, no less. Nervy us of, I know).

Cute??? Yes?

The lady at the TI made a call, and then scribbled something on our map, and I navigated Kirk there with only one (okay, two) wrong turns. A charming Austrian man flagged us down, directed us to park, and then took us to this 900 square foot immaculate knotty pine cottage. With breakfast, it'll cost us 60 Euro. The place is total Hansel and Gretel, without the witch (we left Wanda in the car, still pissed off that we didn't take the U-turn).

After a hard day at the salt mines ...

After unpacking our overnight bags and plotting the rest of our day, we trotted down the little lane to a funicular that cranked us up a mountain to tour the Hallstatt salt mines--which was a blast. The german tour was led by a woman who supplemented her spiel with bits of broken English--telling us, at one point, that the wild enemas led the villagers to the salt. (Since I haven't taken a crap in three days, that sounded pretty good to me.) Really though, the main takeaway at the salt mines (which included a dark walk through uneven ground, sliding down a couple rails, and straddling a wooden beam that chugged us to the exit of the mine) was confirmation that in the U S of A,  our fear of impending litigation has turned us into fear-driven, over-cautious cretins, who are being systematically fleeced of our innate survival skills. There are no caution signs and warnings and diatribes and wavers in Europe as prelude to every conceivable experience. You simply hand over the dough and do the thing, using your wits, experience and common sense to keep you from stepping off cliffs and so forth.

heading back to our zimmer.
Note the unlegislated need to move out of the way of traffic.

After the salt mines, we meandered through the breathtakingly charming village, fed the swans, and plopped our butts down at a lakeside table for our Radler and Würstel. 

A perfect day. Well, almost perfect. I need to sign off now and power down a third packet of Metamucil.

Tomorrow, Vienna. Where we'll be for a while.

What's app with y'all? Staying regular?

wicked wanda and bad ischl

Wanda didn't know about this, apparently

Lesson of the day: just because you punch the name of a town into your high-tech, German-engineered GPS system, doesn’t mean you can relax and follow directions and expect to get there.

Our plan was to leave Partenkirchen first thing after our morning muesli, and head to the fairy-tale castles by 8:50 to get our reserved tickets. The hostess of the Fraundorfer assured us that no matter which way we went, we’d end up at Neuschwanstein in an hour and five minutes.

Two hours later, we were hopelessly lost somewhere Southeast of Munich, three maps and a Rick Steves book all unfolded and bookmarked and crumpled on my lap, while Kirk, whose scratchy throat has turned into a full-blown cold, was nervously negotiating the single lanes through black forest and green glen.

At one point, after our GPS Lady (Wicked Wanda, we’ve decided to call her) commanded us to make a U-Turn, leading us the wrong way down a one-way street the width of dental floss, we frantically punched in some alternate towns—getting us even more lost. Here’s something we learned: “fastest” and “shortest” are very different options. Here's what we also learned: do your homework the night before. Foreign travel by the seat of the pants is stupid, risky, and likely to bring out Mrs. Crabby Seat-of-the-Pants.

Of course we missed our ticket time, and with a three-hour drive ahead of us into Austria, southeast of Salzburg, we scrapped our castle plans in favor of the Autobahn. Wicked Wanda recalculating our route periodically so we could avoid “traffic hazards” that magically cropped up every twenty kilometers or so, sending us off the A-route and onto various B-routes. Her circuitous plans for us took us through some incredible scenery as well as a few less stellar burgs whose prominent features included abandoned overhead electric lines.

Our trip continued to Bad Ischl, the Imperial mountain burg where the fated Franz Joseph-Sisi engagement took place. I'd booked us a cheap room in a pension on the far end of town, and Googled up some directions before leaving the States. Stupidly, though, instead of following my printed directions, I convinced Kirk to give Wanda one more shot, and when she ordered us off the main road, and onto an assortment of charming goat paths, there I was, like the girlfriend of a notorious womanizer, believing the curt, no-nonsense voice as she weaved us along precarious roads, around haystacks, and down more skinny lanes. She promised that our "destination will be on the right," but all that was on the right, before the road block, was a rusty fence, where we parked, got out, and wandered around heavy machinery for the next hour, hoping that our Pimsleur German and frantically waving map-wielding hands would lead us to a person who'd point to our destination.

Meanwhile, Wanda was back in the car, telling all her GPS robot buddies what a pair of idiots we were.

Eventually, we found our digs, retraced our steps and negotiated the rental Ford "Kuga" around several detours, narrowly missing a tour bus and a Mercedes cement truck going about 60.

I’m also happy to report that Kirk and I have not quite killed each other yet, though testier words between us have never been sprechen. 

I promise to post some pretty pictures soon--and report on the more lush, lavish and lovely aspects of this spa town that has haunted me since I started my Empress Elisabeth obsession. First, though, I have to convince my travel partner to get back on that horse. So to speak.

how not to get killed by a bicycle in Munich

One of the mighty demon-fighting cherubs in Marienplatz  

We're on day two of our European Adventure, and I'm pleased to report that we're still alive, in spite of several stupid mistakes.

For instance, who knew that the smooth sidewalk-looking ribbons of asphalt that skirt the streets of Munich are bike lanes? Not us! The first rule of walking in Munich, it turns out, is sticking to the cobblestone sections of thoroughfare. The second rule is: when crossing at intersections, stay in the fatter of two crosswalks or you'll get mowed down by a cruiser. The third rule is, this is Germany--so you'd better pay attention!

But seriously, we're having a blast. Last night, whilst negotiating the traffic and trying to get our bearings (both Kirk and I are maptards with crappy senses of direction, so it took three times as long to figure out where we were and which way to turn next as it would have taken if we weren't so stoopid), we stumbled into the infamous Hofbrauhaus for a meal (though I think it was breakfast time by our jet-lagged internal clocks). Amid the oompah and dirndls and the lederhosen and the huge liter pitcher-steins of beer, we hungrily slurped onion soup and inhaled dumplings. Not to mention a dunkle and a Radler--which led to a hunt for WC on the circuitous route back to the hotel.

Today's journeys included a walking tour of Marienplatz and the Residenz, the latter taking most of the morning since the Wittelsbach's Bavarian family palace is featured prominently in the Empress Chronicles.  Those Bavarian royals liked their rococo!

After the Residenz, we hopped on the U briefly, popping up after a couple of stops to stroll through the English Garden (another stop on the Sisi trail for me). I am pleased to report that the Garden in my mind (and on the page) is eerily close in landscape to actual "Central Park" of Munich. Here, Kirk and I had a "when in Munich" afternoon and gulped down an ein Mass in the centrally located Chinese Tower Beer Garden (while watching a 10-year-old girl at the picnic table next to us do the same) before stumbling out of the way of more zooming bikes.

Tomorrow we'll tour the Nymphenburg with its Gallery of Beauties, before heading off to Garmiche mountains and points South.

Heaven help us, the Autobahn awaits!

take off

kirk. after 2.5 hours of sleep.

We're leaving. On a jet plane. And we're missing SO MUCH SOCCER! Can goals be scored if we're not there in the cheering squad? I guess we'll soon find out.

It's a little surreal, all the things we had to do in the last week. I'm frankly shocked that we've kept track of passports and documents and phones and what not. Last night, after two FC tourney matches and nursing Carson's sore quad, we had to move all our living/dining room furniture to the various outposts in preparation for the remodel. It was a Grinch night--getting every last fucking plastic cup out of the soon-to-be-demolished cupboards and unearthing relics for the Goodwill pile (who knew we had 3 hideous candy dishes. Who actually uses candy dishes?)

It took hours.

After the last crumbs even too small for a Who-Mouse were scraped up, last thing we did before turning in was to sit in our shell of a dining room, butts against the wall, legs splayed out. We stared at the drab green walls and swigged from a Gatorade bottle of Scotch. (Whisky doesn't taste so great when it sits in a plastic sports bottle for a few weeks.) Fist bumps were executed. We crawled to bed. Tried to sleep. Got up, got Carson ready for his match, picked up Kirk's son, dropped Carson off at the field, and here we are. At PDX. Hub of all fun adventures.

First stop: Chicago--where we'll be dashing madly for our connecting flight to Munich, Ambien in hand.

See you in Deutschland!

once. again.

June. Memory Lane month. The month of my birth. The month I'm most likely to move. And I mean "move" in the metaphoric sense--capital M.

I'm here at the hot springs on my birthday weekend sucking up the sun, the music, the mineral water (and yes, the wi-fi), and all around me is the three-d version of the ghost of birthdays past. Once upon a time I owned this place with my then-husband. We were mostly living in Portland, operating "the springs" from afar, and trying to navigate a tense marriage. Raise a few kids. You know the story.

One of the stressors in our marriage involved a disparate relationship with stuff. My ex is a man whose affinity for space and form boarders on the sacred. Well, no, not boarders, actually. Is. Me? Stuff is stuff. The objects in my life I consider sacred can be counted on one hand. My relationships to things are aesthetic nods. I love beauty and form, but after I've registered this allegiance, I happily move on to what I really love. Psychological puzzles. The stories behind the stuff.

The marriage though. Alas, his vision and his ability to concretize vision within the financial, temporal and cultural constraints of reality were at odds. Abjectly, at odds. And me? I grew bitter and impatient. I was on a hag trajectory. Another few years riding shotgun to the effluence and detritus that tailed out of his love for possibility never-quite manifest, and the ridges in my downturned mouth and the slump in my shoulders and the martyry resignation in my brow would have brewed a fullon Queen Hag.

And being here this weekend, walking into and around the objects that were once an everyday part of my life, invites a new understanding of the hows and whys of the way people connect and disconnect from one another.

A little horse abstracted from its carousel. A plywood cutout of a genderless deity once lifted from the maw of a dumpster. The propeller that once sat sentinel in my driveway. A taxidermied nun. A rusty red wagon decorated with a South of the Border bumpersticker procured on a drive from Virginia to Florida. A weary appliance dolly once employed for moving the Wedgewood stove I cooked our wedding soup upon. All these objects. All this time.

Seeing all of this, you'd think I'd be sad. Wistful. Why didn't I just buck up and choose to grow old with that rusty red wagon (in which my daughter once tipped, splitting her head open on another relic--some bisected metal boiler which, one day, could have made an excellent planter)?

Enough time (six years) has elapsed. Whereas earlier I may have been melancholy and regretful visiting the springs, seeing all the new iterations of my former life, now its a somewhat elegiac experience. I'm separate but equal, let's say. Live and let live. Appreciative and grateful.

It's been a fun weekend. The playa is kicking up now, though, which happens, out here. Thirty-mile-an-hour winds are gusting, and it's time, once again, to move on. With love.

And you? Any peace with the past moments you'd like to share?

writers and relocation

When I was thirteen, my parents moved us from San Diego to a small town in New York State. Gone were the canyons, sea water, static sun and lemon trees. Instead, rumbling thunderstorms, leafy elms and hungry mosquitoes set up shop in my psyche. Dusty lanes and horse farms. Air so humid wood floors buckled. Sure, there were cultural shifts. Different kids. Accents. But my particular brand of shock was more rooted in the aesthetic whiplash of the move than social displacement. I'm an outlier that way. (Or, it seems so, when I observe my own kids and their hyper-social orientation.)

I'm really curious about the chicken-egg relationship here. Are writers wired for environmental sensitivity, or does the act of writing (which I engaged in constantly as a kid), nurture a tendency toward place-alignment over people?

What's your experience?

who do you love

Okay folks, summer reading list time. Top five? Shout them out.


Here's mine:
MAINE by J. Courtney Sullivan
LITTLE CHILDREN by Tom Perrotta
THE TEN-YEAR NAP by Meg Wolitzer
WINTERGIRLS by Laurie Halse Anderson
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott WhatsHisFace 


runner up:
THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides

give me a cigarette. right now.

I'm exhausted. Shouldn't I be cheering? I just finished writing a book called RAISING CHEER! For fuck's sake. The initial draft blasted out of me. And I got immediate feedback from five trusted readers, including my agent, Melissa. I consolidated the notes, burrowed back in, and rewrote the 250ish pages. Then, printed them out and reread, and reworkshopped and, again, rewrote. All in less than two weeks.

Who knew I would fuck up "towards" and "toward" repeatedly? Write numerals instead of spelling out the numbers? Rename minor characters mid-manuscript. I think rereading a zipped out draft can be among the most humbling of all activities. Ugh.

And now all I want to do is sleep.

Funnily enough, I just read a similar blog entry over in Averilville.

And, copycat that I am, I'm gonna ask the same question of you all. How are you after being rode hard and put away wet? Exhilarated? Exhausted? Horny? Sad?

on rating ya books for mature content

Now that Carson's 13, I can officially claim to be raising my second batch of teenager(s), and, consequently, I'm feeling a little cocky and veteran-like. On the soccer sidelines, when moms going through it the first time wring their hands about homework and curfew and first-person-shooter games, I'm the old hag, er, sage, wistfully gazing off in the middle distance before spouting off my advice.

And now that I seem to be writing for teenagers as well as raising them, my opinions are not merely confined to the sidelines. Especially when it comes to articles like this one, in US News, regarding rating YA books for mature content.

Yep, a rant is coming.

We love numbers in this country. Love them. Scales, rankings, acronyms, all these shortcuts that are supposed to seamlessly quantify our potential experience. Whether it's the level of spice in our salsa or the amount of lycra in our Spandex, we want to have some third party to translate our expectations before we fork over the dough.

But here's the thing. Saucy, juicy edgy young adult books are largely passed from kid to kid via word of mouth. It's always been that way. When I was in 7th grade, Judy Blume's Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret was the cutting edge adult subject matter book that made the underground circuit. And, it was at the center of controversy -- yanked off shelves and banned from schools. But still, all the twelve and thirteen-year-old girls I knew found a way to read it. Putting a number that connotes "mature content" on a young adult book will be like locking a hungry bear in a room with a platter of salmon. So, there's that.

The other thing, the more egregious piece of this cloaked move towards censorship, is that it's one more feather in the cap of the freaked out helicopter parent brigade who believe that the secret to keeping their children pure and sweet is to erect barriers to their curiosity rather than meeting it.

I'm not advocating taking your grade-schooler to a sexy, violent R-rated film, but I am all for encouraging conversation surrounding adult themes when it's clear that your child's radar is tuned to them. If I thought slapping a number on a young adult book would encourage a proactive approach to those parent-child conversations, I would be for it. Clearly, though, this is about categorizing books in terms of the number of "fucks" or "blowjobs" that appear on the page, and will amount to the usual parental avoidance regarding uncomfortable subject matter--and, worse yet, will be one more invitation to publishers to make editorial suggestions based upon abstract marketing decisions.

Any thoughts?

cheering by the numbers

RAISING CHEER, draft one. Check.

Here it is, folks. The quantitative breakdown of the past two months.

NUMBER OF DAYS PUSHING THIS BABY THROUGH        70

NUMBER OF WORDS IN THIS DRAFT                     58,022

NUMBER OF PAGES IN THIS DRAFT                           236

POUNDS OF CHOCOLATE CONSUMED                         10

GALLONS OF COFFEE DRUNK                                    20

MILES OF HILLS WALKED WHILE RUMINATING              56

DOLLARS OF COPYWRITING WORK FORGONE         2,000

HOURS OF WRITING/RESEARCH/THINKING/DELETING 350

And, because I'm such a hopeless nerd, I had to "Wordle" my manuscript!

step it up

Alright you guys. I'm on the home stretch. The plot-board driven YA experiment with the working title RAISING CHEER is about 30 pages from finished. Draft one, anyway. How do I know this? Because of the plot board! It's all mathematical and exact, like a science lab. I have five small scenes and a grand finale to left to write. I can see that yellow tape and I'm gonna throw my hands up and break it with my belly when I barge through.

What's with the exercise metaphor? Well, I'll tell you. As a nice Mother's Day gift, my husband dragged me to an 8:30 aerobics class at the gym today. Something called Sweat Like a Pig Plus Abs. Or maybe it was Simulate Labor and Delivery Plus Abs. Anyway, the Mother's Day correlative was apt--the lunges and the quad stuff in particular resembled that 8-centimeters dilated portion of labor. Transition, I think it's called. When you call your husband a lot of really mean names and he disappears out of the labor room under the pretense of having to go to the bathroom? Girls, you know what I'm talking about, right?

I guess I'm sort of at the transition stage of RAISING CHEER, too. Rising action, shit hitting the fan, and one last BIG EVENT before all is mostly well, and my beloved characters are out of danger. The proverbial infant safely delivered and suckling at the breast.

And speaking of breasts, got any good sports bra recommendations?

breaking bad(ish)

There's this speed trap nearby. One of those places where, on a four-lane road with the suffix "Highway,"  the posted speed abruptly changes from 40 to 30. Over the past six months the photo radar folk have sporadically set up shop, and issued, what I think of as, "pussy tickets" -- because they arrive by mail a week or so later. An envelope with a low-rez picture of the driver looking very deer-in-the-headlights as the flash of the camera catches them in a sort of Cops rendition of their malfeasance.

How do I know this?

Don't be coy. You know I got one of these fuckers. $168 for going 41 mph in a 30.

I'm no anarchist. Yes, I was traveling at the upper end of the continuum for "appropriate" - Yes, I disobeyed the law. Guilty. And pissed off--more because I was "called out" than for the actual penalty. I scribbled off a "but...but..." sort of letter, shoved my check in an envelope, and, as they are wont to do when a driver pleads for mercy, the ODOT folk reduced my fine and sent half my money back to me.

Where am I going with this? Yep, this is a correlative for the plot board post, and my personal relationship with rules. Particularly rules I set up for myself. So. Update. I'm about two-thirds through the first draft of my excellent new adventure, and the sticky notes, try as they might, are getting dissed left and right. I'm peeling them off like scabs, and slapping new ones down in their place. I'll write up to a plot point, all good intentions (seatbelt fastened, not on my cell phone), and then the character will say something that's not on the map. And, I have to say, my reaction to this is, well, nothing short of joy.

Of course, this makes things complicated.

There's a bit of undo-undo-undo that ensues. And some replotting moving forward. Which leads to further replotting. All because my antagonist decides to give the middle finger to God. And by God, I mean me.

That old saw about the headlights and driving only as far as they illuminate the path ahead, but making the whole trip that way? All my fancy GPS equipment is recalculating. It's terrifying, really, but so much fun. Foot on the pedal and all that.

What rules do you like breaking most?

a pantser turns plotter?

Preamble: First, I'm posting this while watching Austin Powers with the family (remember that flick? still uncomfortably funny after all these years), so imagine the title of this post posed in a Dr. Evil voice.

Second, yeah, playing around with the new Blogger templates again. Like? Hate? Feedback appreciated.

Okay, so the science fair-looking set up to your left is my very first ever plot board for a new WIP. Understand, I have never been a fan of the outline. As I explained to a writer friend the other day, the 3-Act structure feels very contrived to me. The literary equivalent of a Spanx garment--you know, squeezing the goodies into a shape deemed commercially viable? And, you know, having spent the last 22 years in Portland, I'm a free-flowing type. A wither-thou-goest with the goodies.

Well, friends, I'm trying something new. I'm taking my high concept YA idea and plotting the fuck out of it. Every chapter, every scene, in service to rising action and carefully constructed reveal. Those hearts, the pink ones? That would be some sort of crucial interaction between the two main characters. The white hearts are crucial interaction between secondary characters. The stars? Reveals. The main plot point of the chapter. And the sticky notes indicate chapter synopses.

So I'm 100 pages in, which translates to the end of that left-most column under ACT II, and I have to say, I'm not hating it. In fact, I'm sort of like a newly reformed meat-eater with my "I've seen the light and I'm never going back to eating flesh" sort of sanctimonious superiority. Why? Well, to start, there are infinitely less choices, and so the writing goes faster. I'm moving toward something as I tap tap tap my sentences, one following the other in service of the next big thing. As opposed to my usual discovery process, where I wander down the dark hallways of my mind, a blind girl being led by the hand to ... what? A vampire? A witch? An evil stepmother?

It's like having GPS, you know? Those little stars and hearts (I had, in my hand at the store, pony-head post-its, but I put them back. I mean, I had to draw the line somewhere). There's less going on in my head: less chaos, less confusion. Which leads, I hope, to deeper focus in the scene itself.

But I admit, my loving this plot board method could be totally premature. Tap me on the shoulder a month from now, when I'm rereading these crafty passages. I might very well be in self-loathingville. I admit to often being prematurely zealous about this and that. But meanwhile, I've got the Nikes on. I'm just doing it. Fake 'til I make it. Running up that hill. You? Plotters? Pantsers? What say ye? (If you can figure out the comment functionality on this new Blogger template).

P.S. Austin Powers is over, and now it's Hangover on the TV. Disturbingly, my 13-yr-old knows it by heart because he's watched it eight times.

the metrics

My piles of tax detritus are spread out on the carpet downstairs. Our kitchen is in that temporary state while we work out post-disaster-possible-remodeling scenarios. Soccer tryouts loom, and that's always fun for a soccer mom. And by fun, I mean, bring on the Xanax.

And then there's the writing. I really should banish any activity until I work through this first draft of my new project. The momentum and enthusiasm is there. I'm officially in love with my narrator. I have an outline. I know where I'm going. Plot points, rising action, compelling romance with twists. But I need to figure out a pacing strategy. Not the pacing on the page, but the pacing on my ass. I'm good for 45 minutes at a crack. Just about enough time to render a scene. Then, I have to skedaddle. Get up and throw a load of laundry in the wash. Return emails. Go for a walk. Collect the eggs. Take out the trash. Go to a Pilates class. Re-microwave my mug of coffee. Oh yeah, and, then there's the paid work I need to do each day.

Do I sound like I'm whining? I am. But this is my blog, after all.

I'd like to figure out how to write 3,000 words a day. That's four or five hours of concentrated writing time. How best to break that up? I really want help here, guys... Any strategies, time-management techniques, ideas? Let's discuss.

spring cleaning

My kitchen on life support.    

Still in the green room with my manuscript (THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES) patiently waiting on editor response, and sinking my teeth into my next project because, that's what you have to do, right? And because I truly want to approach the Empress freshly when next I pop in (hopefully after an editor has fallen in love enough to bite, and sends me editorial notes OR, less hopefully, if the editors pass and I go back in for major overhaul), this new project is quite different than the fantastical historical retelling I've been writing over the past year-and-a-half. I shall leave it at that, for the moment, but suffice it to say, I'm quite engaged with a couple of new characters and am venturing into the world of, dare I say it, High Concept.

A novel that can be boiled down to a compelling sentence. A potboiler, if you will.

In concert with my new project enthusiasm is emergency kitchen surgery. We had a slowly leaking dishwasher which quietly squirted water under the floor which, over time, resulted in a swollen mess. My kitchen has spent the last two days in ICU, and this morning was prepped for asbestos abatement. The floor is being wrenched from the house as I type, and placed in a tube, piece by piece, by a brave crew bedecked in Hazmat couture.

The patient is ready...

If you feel a metaphor coming, you're ding, ding, ding, right! Like my kitchen, I'm aesthetically between one state and another. Ridding myself of vintage bits, in preparation for the latest in market appeal. Think of my next project in terms of sustainable. LEED-cert, even. Travertine tile, bamboo cabinets. Energy wise appliances. New and spare and exciting.

But, unlike my kitchen, I'm not tossing my last project into a toxic waste dumpster. Far from it. No, if anything, when next I return to the Empress, she will be upcycled and glorious. Destined for new life. And I'll be re-engaging with her sitting at a granite counter top, gazing out at the late spring flowers, through tempered accordion glass.