CR considerately shared his flu with me, so I spent my Sunday in my little den down in the basement, curled up with comforter, tea, and one very happy dog, two cats, and plenty of oranges. We watched many, many episodes of Six Feet Under, Season Four.
HB is redesigning the look of the blog. I really loved hers so asked her to give me one like it. We are almost finished. Check back soon.
In college, I had a deep and abiding crush on my friend Jan. I'd just limped to Pueblo after a disastrous series of reckless adventures. I was twenty two and gawky and a little bruised by life. Jan was few years older, and everything about her was quirky and cool and interesting. She was tall and wore her hair short when everyone else wore theirs long. Her lipstick was bright (as I came of age in the "long and silky" era, I didn't even know how to wear lipstick!) and she drove a Karmann Ghia. Her apartment was on the second floor of an old building in downtown Pueblo, with long windows and wallpaper with cabbage roses and a huge, sunny kitchen where she had pinned postcards and quotes in odd spot. By the sink: "I have too many fantasies to be a housewife."
She was also a mothering sort, and took me under her wing. She cooked for me and invited me to sit in that beautiful kitchen and lay down all the sad stories I was carrying around. She had come from some grimy city just over the river from St.Louis, and had made her escape to Colorado, but now the horizon was calling her and she thought she would go to San Francisco. It sounded like a dream, so I didn't think a lot about it.
When the spring semester finished, however, it turned out that she was serious. She was leaving. She packed her belongings into that little yellow Karmann Ghia and headed out for the glamor of San Francisco. It was the early 80s, before the Great Darkness there, and as she drove away, looking like one of her own vintage postcards, a scarf flying around her neck, I envied her the adventure.
But I got her apartment. And her fern.
Which sits now by my front door. Lately, it astonishes me that it's so old. It's older than my children! It outlasted my marriage! Ian once gave it a radical haircut when he was two or three, right down to the dirt, but it came right back and grew more hair to thrive at nine addresses. And often, when I water it, I think of Jan and her bright lipstick and her kindness to a lost young woman. I'm pretty sure she knows what she gave, but if not, I'm sending a thank you out in the ether.
Do you have a memento (living or not) that reminds you of someone you lost touch with?
The dogs woke me up well before the sun this morning, and once I let them out, I crawled back into bed to doze for a little while. (Is there anything so luxurious as that half hour in the gloaming, curled in the warmth and the quiet?) Without distractions, my sleep-fresh brain spun out the answers to 4 of 5 nagging plot snags I've been dealing with, plus offered a good solid skeleton for a new book.
All in about twenty minutes. Still not sure about one plot point, but it's very small, so it doesn't matter.
This is why I personally should never, ever get on the internet or check email or turn on television news before I do my pages for the day. I once wrote an entire book on spec by setting the alarm at 5:30 so I could write on it before my boys woke up for school. Then I'd cook their breakfast, send them off, and go to work on the book that was under deadline.
Not everyone likes early morning. My mother says it makes her sick to her stomach to be awake before the sun, and stays up very late at night. So do my children. Have you ever experimented with your most productive times? Do you know when your brain is most alert?
Magazines are so luscious. I spend far too much money on them (especially as I am required to get rid of them after two months, no exceptions) but nothing quite equals the pleasure of that Friday afternoon perusal of the endless miles of glossy covers, with their tantalizing promises. Tantalizing Garlic Soup for Cold Winter Evenings! or Ten Steps to a Remarkable Life (only available here, in our magazine!). Training tips and life tips and cooking tips, all promising a better tomorrow.
And
that's only the taglines. Often, the photos are ever so much more alluring, like 
this cover of feet and flowers on Body and Soul, or photos of still lavender gardens on the upcoming spring garden magazines. I fall in love, fall inside, and I'm lost to the promises.
Every week, I bring home two or three or four magazines. I don't like to subscribe because that takes away some of the pleasure of going to the store and realizing the new issue of Saveur or Yoga Journal is on the shelves. (How could anyone not like Saveur, I ask you?) They fall into categories. The food magazines--Saveur and Gourmet, mainly, though I get some great recipes out of Oprah. The women's magazines, Oprah and Body and Soul and sometimes Martha Stewart Living (for the photos of flowers. And tables.) Finally, so many fitness or spiritual magazines, like Yoga Journal and Self and Shape and Runner and Women's Adventure, plus about two dozen others I cycle through according to what looks good that week. I take them home and sit in my big gold art deco chair with a cup of strong tea, and leaf through, tearing out photos for collages and recipes. I get my advice for the day, on skin care or meditation techniques or exercise, read some essays and mull them over, and then it's time for next week and the new crop.
It's relaxing. It's like television, only a little quieter and more specific to me and my own tastes.
How about you? Are you a magazine person? What magazines are you favorites and why? I might have missed one (oh the horror!). Do you read specific features or the whole thing, front to back?
My passport is going to expire in a couple of months, and I have to mail it away to get a new one. It's been feeling a little like retiring my battered hiking boots. So many adventures we had together!
When I first applied for this passport, I had never been anywhere out of the country. I had traveled a fair amount around the US, which is a very big and varied land, but never even as far as Canada. It seems impossible that was only ten years ago, and slightly astonishing to realize that once I got that passport in my hand, baby, I was gone, gone, gone!
As a young girl, my only desires were to write books, see the world, and be happy. It's hard to grasp now how impossible it seemed to say those things--write books! See the world (the world?!) because we're a much more sophisticated population these days. At the time, at 14 or 15, I didn't know anyone who wrote anything, and the only person I knew who had traveled anywhere was my uncle, who had lived in Spain when I was a child.
By the time I finally got the passport, I'd sold a lot of books, and was fairly on fire to start travel, but I still had young teens in my house. So when I won a literary prize and knew I was going to spend it on travel, I took the boys with me. Ian was 15, I think, and Miles a couple of years younger. My mother went with us, too, also her first trip abroad, and we traipsed around England and Ireland for two weeks, a trip I planned entirely on my own with the nascent Internet, emailing with the owner of the flat we rented in Ealing, not far from the train which took us into London proper. We visited Bath and Ightham Mote, site of my beloved Green Darkness, and crossed the Irish sea to visit Cork and Dingle. Miles, a very picky eater, practically starved to death and lived on pastries, but his innate sense of direction kept us from gettin
g lost countless times. Ian charmed the old men in Ireland, who spoke to him in Gaelic, and he kissed the Blarney Stone, which might have had something to do with all those debate wins, but maybe he was just born a clever Irish talker.
From there, it was a leap to hike in France with my buddy Sonia, right before 9/11. A trip that changed my life in profound ways, ways that I'm still uncovering, years later. It was the trip that turned me into my fully hiking self and shook me loose of my old life and dumped me, unceremoniously, into the new one.
Which h
as actually turned out to be quite fine, and full of wanderings. Scotland and New Zealand one year (the lochs and mists and Wallace's sword, his very, very sword that he held once in his own hand; the Bay of Islands and that long, empty,
spectacular
beach in NZ, where a gang of wild horses trotted up to a ridge and scornfully looked down upon us, their wild manes blowing in the breeze). Canada, Vancouver and Victoria. And then England again, and Scotland, and Normandy's beaches and Paris. And then, the last one on this passport, Naples and Matera and Bari and Kent again last year.
So much! Such a blessing to have the freedom to travel.
What new stamps do I want to see in the new one? Australia will be there, and New Zealand. But also, I want to see those India stamps and perhaps Morrocco and Ireland again. Spain would be very nice, and Mexico. No doubt there will be plenty of England, to see CR's mother. And...I'll leave some surprises up to the Universe. It seems to sometimes have the most delightful things up its sleeves!
What stamps do you want to add to your passport?
I'm blogging about Soul Mates at Romancing the Blog today. This should be a little less controversial than my last post there.
Do you believe in soul mates? Come on over and chat.
For the past few days, I've been hammering out the details of my travels this year. I'll be teaching at The Santa Barbara Writer's Conference again in June, and Australia in August, and San Diego in October. I'm also going to play in New Zealand with CR's brother & family, and in NYC with my boy who is (seriously, I'm so not as old as this makes me sound) graduating from law school.
I promised to post great conference links for you and never got to it, but here are some to think about for this year. It's not cheap to attend conferences, but once in awhile, it's worth it to splurge.
First up, the Magazine Conference in Boulder, which I attended last fall and enjoyed very much. This is the least expensive of the lot, and they're going to offer several focused versions this year, from travel writing to the nuts and bolts of magazines. At $350 and in the stunningly beautiful city of Boulder, it's hard to go wrong with this.
I love the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference, June 21-26 this year. I'll be teaching a lot of voice and creativity along with the usual Iowa-style readings that feature so prominently at this conference. This one is pricier, but it is set right on the beach in a stunning hotel, and Ray Bradbury will be speaking Saturday night. Enormous variety in faculty and speakers.
The Women's Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy. One of the most delightful experiences I've had. The conference is intriguing, the parties delightful (Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene acted out on the square while we drank wine in the soft evening breeze), and the company varied and intriguing. You will never be sorry you went to this one. But yes, the price tag is...a teeny bit painful.
And of course, there is the big Romance Writers of America bash in San Francisco this year. I'm quite torn over whether to attend this year, and doubt very much I can squeeze it in, but I am mourning the possibilities (French Laundry! Chez Panisse!). This is one of the most complete, most intense, most vivid writing conference experiences out there, so if you have never attended, even if you are not strictly a romance writer, I guarantee you will learn a lot.
There are hundreds of others, of course. I've heard the Surrey Conference is a treat. There are some retreats in Barcelona I wouldn't mind attending someday, and really, I just think I must find one in Ireland one of these days. I could visit my friends Tom and Emer and explore Ireland for real.
What are some of the conferences you know about that we should consider? What's the best conference you've ever attended and why?
It would be very nice to say I know exactly where books come from, that one does this, slides that over, arranges the plotting blocks just so and...voila! A book arrives, like a baby being born after a requisite nine months.
Instead, it's more like casting spells or gardening or building a relationship. Or maybe it's not like any of those things. Inspiration is magic, and it depends on nothing so much as just stuffing it full of whatever it thinks it wants, and even then, there you are sitting at your desk and you pick up a pearlie marble, a very small irridescent crystal ball that used to sit atop a smoky purple bottle your friend Jaye gave you a long time ago. The bottle was broken in some tragic business involving cats or moving, you can't remember which, but the irridescent pearlie rolls around on a little lip beneath the computer screen, and sometimes you pick it up to peer through it at the mountains, liking the look of the upside down world. And although you have done this a million times, or at least 150, inspiration blazes right out of it and lands on the page with a funny little chuckle. The work was moving pretty well before, but there is suddenly something much better there, and who knows how long it had been lurking in some drawer in your imagination.
Trust it. That's what you remember you have to do with books and making up magic things like books and essays and poems, you have to sit back and let the girls (or maybe they are elves, after all) weave some magic with the cloth you left lying around.
This morning on my walk, in heavy coat and shredding gloves and a hat that always gets too hot, what I thought about was how much I love walking. It's so simple. So clean. So unassuming. You don't need special equipment. Almost anyone can do it, and over and over and over again, they show that it is one of the single best things you can do for your health. Walk a half hour a day, eat an apple, and love somebody a lot, and you've got it covered.
I also bought some very beautiful apples today. Ambrosias. Very crisp and sweet and pretty to look at it.
What simple things do you love?
A friend of mine is sponsoring this raffle for a great prize, and I suspect there are readers here who would find this helpful:
Now that the prices for San Francisco are out, it might be a good time to enter the Valley Forge Romance Writers Rafflemania (yes, we do have a license for this, and it's RWA approved):
Valley Forge Romance Writers Presents The 1st Annual VFRW Writer's Rafflemania!
The Prize
$ 1,500.00 Check
To Defray Your Costs For 2008 RWA
National Conference Fee!
Held In San Francisco, CA
July 30 - August 2,
2008
4 Nights Hotel Accommodations!
Roundtrip Airfare To San
Francisco!
Raffle tickets cost $5.00 each or (3) for $10.00.
Go to
Valley Forge Romance Writers' website www.vfrw.com for
information or send a
self-addressed stamped envelope to VFRW Rafflemania,
PO Box 248, Lenni, PA
19052.
Grand Prize drawn on March 28, 2008.
Any checks received after
March 1, 2008 will be returned.
Prize is non-transferable.
All entries
must be postmarked by February 29, 2008.
Valley Forge Romance Writers'
Rafflemania Rules:
The Prize: Winner will receive a check in the amount
of $1,500.00 to be
used for one 2008 RWA National conference registration
fee, one single room,
including tax, single room rate for July 30 through
August 2nd, 2008 at the
San Francisco Marriot, the conference location, and
one round trip coach
class airfare. Winner is responsible for making their
own reservations and
itinerary. The total amount awarded will be $1,500.00
regardless of total
cost of conference, hotel and flights to winner. No
amount over $1,500.00
will be reimbursed and any extra monies due are the
sole responsibility of
the winner. Prize package is non-transferable for any
reason and
non-refundable.
To Enter: All raffle sales are final.
There will be no refund of
raffle chances for any reason. By entering the
raffle you acknowledge that
you have read and agree to the conditions and
rules as listed on the VFRW
website and/or VFRW Rafflemania flyer. Raffle
chances are valid only for the
San Francisco, 2008 RWA National Conference.
Contest is open only to residents of the United States and members in
good
standing of Romance Writers of America who are at least 18 years old as
of
February 29, 2008. All funds must be received in US currency drawn on a
US
bank or money order.
To enter USING WHITE 3"X5" CARD(s), Print The
Following:
Name, Address, Phone Number
RWA Number
Email
Address
Place your raffle cards in an envelope along with a check or
money order for the appropriate amount.
Make Check or Money Order payable
to: VFRW
Mail your 3"X 5" card(s) and check or money order to:
VFRW
Rafflemania
P.O. Box 248
Lenni, PA 19052
A confirmation of receipt
will be sent out via email but raffle chances will
not be valid until all
funds clear. If a check is returned for insufficient
funds, the entrant will
be notified by email that they are no longer
eligible and the check will be
shredded. It is up to the entrant to send
another check to re-enter the
contest (including any NSF fees incurred by
VFRW) postmarked by the deadline
of February 29, 2008.
Any raffle entries received that are not on white,
3"X5" cards will be
pulled, the entrant notified and given a chance to
correct the error before
the contest deadline. If the entrant does not
provide the correct 3"X5" card
entry postmarked by the February 29, 2008
deadline, the check will be
shredded and the entrant will not be
eligible
for the drawing.
The Drawing: All 3"X5" raffle tickets will be placed in
a large bin for a
random drawing on March 28, 2008. Winner will be notified
by phone on or
about March 28, 2008.
The Winner: For IRS tax
purposes, the winner must supply in writing his/her
social security number
before receiving the prize check. A
1099 form will be issued to the winner by
Valley Forge Romance Writers. If
the winner does not supply his/her social
security number in writing by
April 15, 2008 to the president, vice-president
or treasurer of VFRW, the
prize is forfeit. Any and all taxes are the
responsibility of the winner.
The winner agrees to allow VFRW to use his/her
name and/or likeness for
publicity purposes.
Winner agrees to hold
VFRW blameless for any credit card finance charges
incurred, and from
liability for events beyond control, including an act of
God, conference
cancellation and/or hotel overflow. If the official
conference hotel site
does not have any rooms available, the winner is
welcome to make reservations
at an overflow hotel; however, no amount above
the $1,500.00 will be
reimbursed.
Questions: may be directed to ask_vfrw@yahoo.
I mentioned yesterday that the book idea that's been brewing just didn't work for anyone. I threw it out there valiantly because it seemed like I might be able to get it there eventually, but agent didn't much love it, than editor (remember, I chose her because she is so smart) nixed it without much regret at all. And when she called to tell me to start over, what I felt was relieved.
Now, you may ask, if that was true, why did you send it to them in the first place? And the answer is, because I can't always judge my work clearly. Nor can you. No writer can. That's why we work with professionals like editors and agents who have the unenviable task of being clear-eyed when we are not. They alos have the pleasure of saying, "Wow, you outdid yourself this time," or "this is going to make us a lot of money, kiddo," or "this is the best thing you've ever written."
I know some of you think that a writer gets to a certain point in her career where everything she writes is gold. I wish it were true. It isn't. Some ideas never quite jell, and the reasons are as varied as the reasons any book doesn't quite work--characters, plot, tone, setting, execution. There were some intriguing things about this book, a setting I found compelling, and a single character action that called to me, which was the entire kernel of the idea in terms of my emotional resonance.
But it wasn't the main story, and there was no way to make it the main story, so I built a lot of other stuff around it and tried to make it work. It didn't.
There was another idea bubbling on a back burner, and I've been adding some spices and possibilities to it over the past couple of weeks. This morning, I'm going to sit down and let it reveal itself. Kind of juicy, this one.
So, if you've been discouraged by a rejection recently, or a book isn't working, just let go, toss it all on the compost heap (all that stuff gets recycled, you know. No idea is ever lost.) And begin again, with me.
How do you handle the news that a project didn't work?
Fridays, on the new, improved schedule, are for artist dates. This gloomy, crackling cold morning (it has been well below zero at night), I am going to go to yoga class, even though my muscles are still sore from Tuesday. Then out to find some new cooking tools: a zester, which I do not have and really want; a heavy, midsize saucepan, which I do have but want a better one; and a new grater. I gave one away in a fit of generosity, and it was the wrong.
Then Whole Foods. There were alluring recipes in Oprah this month--I want to try the clear broth with kaffir lime leaves and chiles, and some gingerbread cookies that look plainly sinful. I had to scrap the developing book (a blog for another day--trust me, it was the right decision) and am puttering around while the right one brews. Cooking seems to be absolutely required for that process somehow.
I might go see Juno, but honestly, I'm not much in the mood for passive watching. I want to DO something.
Any cooking going on in your world? Cooking up books? Artist date planned any time soon?
While watching television recently with Christopher Robin, we saw a commercial for a Manitou Springs perfume shop called Salus. It looked clean and elegant, and most surprising of all, it offered patrons the chance to make their own perfumes and add the fragrances to a wide variety of bath and body products.
CR and I looked at each other with our mouths open. "It's The Scent of Hours!"
Which is, for those in the know, the name of the perfumery in Madame Mirabou's School of Love (now also available for the Kindle, I just noticed!) which is the story of a woman who is searching for her place in life after a divorce. Her way of relating to the world has always been through scent, and each chapter begins with a recipe from her perfume journal. The shop she eventually opens is in Manitou Springs called the Scent of Hours.
Last Saturday, CR and I wandered over to Adam's Cafe for lunch, and I remembered the ad. We stopped in, and it is gorgeous, well appointed and clean. A lovely place to go play, if you are in the area (or visiting), especially with a friend or sister or mother. I think I could spend a couple of days mixing scents and creating my own signature scent!
What's funny is that I had never heard of such a shop, and it did not exist when I wrote the book. Now there is. You can visit in person, or on the Internet. Tell her I sent you.
PS. I'll be talking about the book with Eloisa James at the Barnes and Noble Review site one week from today, January 24. Please stop by if you can. This is a great new thing they're doing, and wouldn't we all love to see it be successful?
In yoga class last Friday, our teacher asked us to think of a word we'd like to use as a mantra or guiding principle over the course of 2008. The word that popped into my mind, and stuck there like an annoying burr no matter how I tried to dislodge it, was honor.
Honor. No problem to think about that one, hmmm? Honor yourself, others, the world. Yes, yes, very good
idea. But as with all spiritual concepts, there is ever so much more to it when you start giving it real thought. And of course, I'm now tripping on ideas of honor at the click of every hour.
Reading a regular column called A Million Ways to Save the World in the new Oprah magazine, a line struck me like a thunderclap: Forget self-esteem...focus on self-respect, says Diana de Vegh, a psychotherapist.
Not self-esteem, self-respect. It made me hear my father's voice in my head, exhorting me to be responsible, to think about the consequences of my actions (and, thankfully, he never allowed me to slide--if consequences were not forthcoming from external sources, he imposed them from within the family structure).
Not self-esteem, self-respect. One implies unconditional love, which is fine in its place. The other encourages esteem born of action and responsibility to self, others, the community and world. Honor?
I have been thinking far too often of one of the incidents from last week, about a person I am fond of who took a dramatic and destructive turn. The consequences are terrible for her, and she was first in my prayers and sorrows, but as the days pass, I keep catching glimpses of the ripples that radiate outward from her, and how many different people are affected in small and large ways. She most of all, of course, but we all choose our paths, one way or another, and so did she. Those around her did not choose but will be forced to deal with the fall-out. Her actions have consequences.
I'm sure many of you have heard about the plagiarism discussion surrounding a historical romance writer, who was outed on an irreverent romance review website. (I am not going to contribute to the fire by adding links or names--that is not the point here.) There are dishonorable actions all around on this one--the plagiarism is wrong, and should rightfully have been reported. But with power comes responsibility, and the glee of the exposers is in poor taste. The body of journalism law and ethics has developed for a reason, out of trial and error. Plagiarism is a crime that must be reported whenever it is discovered. That is responsible. Continuing to hoot and holler over the crime after reporting makes it feel about as appealing as a couple of sixth graders kicking a dead deer on the side of the road.
Also, Madeline L'Engle says, "If you don't do your work, it might not ever get done." My minister (whom I seem to be quoting a lot here recently) says over and over, "Do what is yours to be done."
Simple, clear, straightforward, and like a powerful sword, the idea carries both redemption and crusade. If you do your work, it then goes into the world to heal or inspire or quiet or amuse or breathe life or excite or express. If you do it, things heal, get better. If you don't, the work goes unfinished, the holes remain, the ache stays aching.
It's almost impossible to imagine a world in which everyone is doing that, focusing on what is theirs to do. I can certainly see times in my life when simply focusing on my own stuff would have made a difference. I'm sure you can see incidents in your own, can't you? To earn self-respect, I must be responsible to the press of the work that is mine to do, and the consequences are toward healing. My acquaintance turned her back on what was hers to do, and the result is crushing. The reporters of the plagiarism were responsible and did what was theirs to do, but then allowed power to lead them into destructive action, and thereby possibly wound the work that is still theirs to do. They turned honorable action to dishonorable action. Sensationalism is never honorable. (Notice how sensationalism enters into the presidential race, for example.)
Hmm. I think this is going to be very interesting, exploring honor, as part of what is mine to do this year.
What is yours to honor this year? What does honor mean to you?
Last night, I made pizza from scratch. Roasted peppers, and garlic, tucked in a small steel dish and drizzled with olive oil and covered with foil, and the surprisingly delicious roasted fennel bulb leftover from a salad two days ago. Whole wheat dough, rolled thin, and smeared with olive oil, kosher salt, the smashed tender garlic. (Garlic, softly dripping, sliding out of its jacket like a hearty lover).
It's been a challenging week--nothing directly personal, impacting my life, but sad things swirled around and fell in lumps around us, and I felt them. The empathy that is such a friend to a writer is not such a friend at times like that, when there is nothing to be done and no way to fix anything, and just those simple, stark, sad things lying there. Writing is too much, too pointed and sharp, for times like that. It takes me closer, not farther away.
So I found myself in the kitchen, looking through ingredients, tossing through cookbooks, hunting for the actions that would soothe, satisfy. A can of pineapple, hiding at the back of the fridge, leftover mozzarella from a party last week, the garlic and onions and red peppers I keep in stock, and just enough white flour left to lighten up the whole wheat. Bread dough to knead and punch and leave to rise, coming back later to see the speckles of grain, two balls rolled out, one for me and one for CR, to create our own masterpieces. His was a some beef sausage and pineapple and lots of cheese and a base of red sauce. Mine was mainly the vegetables and garlic and pineapple wiht a little cheese.
Outside, the cold winter wind blowing. Inside, the smell of comfort and love and peace, all wrapped in a bit of dough and leftovers.
It is a vividly bright day this morning, sun shining on freshly fallen snow, the Peak crisply cocked against a balloon sky. The house is quiet. The tree has been dismantled, the beds stripped, the fridge and cupboards cleared of all dangerous treats (well, except that one bottle of rum. Oh, and the verpoorten advocaate which my friend Renate brought for a little New Year's Day party we had here. And three candy canes.)
Yesterday, I finally trundled my way back to the gym, with a new goal to learn how to swim more efficiently. It's good for the shoulders and neck, which get so tight during all those hours at the computer. I'll get back to yoga classes tomorrow, too. I've been hiking and walking the dogs, but that's a challenge with the icy paths and streets (especially since Jack is still in recovery from knee surgery), and it's not been enough. I like to be active. Not for health benefits, though that's a nice side effect. Not for weight loss, though it does mean I can eat more. Not for any reason except that it feels good. I was never an athletic child--I was particularly horrible at team sports involving balls--but I loved walking forever with my grandmother. I loved riding my bike all over the neighborhood and climbing ropes and spending as much of the day as possible at the local swimming pool and skating at Roller Rena with my dad, who as a beautiful skater and swimmer. It felt good, especially as the rest of the time, I was curled up in a chair, utterly still, reading. And reading. And reading.
The statistics are out again, about modest exercise and what it can do for you. Simple things. Walk a half hour. Swim a little while. A woman I know is losing weight like crazy by rollerblading, and I seriously want to get some outdoor skates (not rollerblades for me, thanks, but check these out) for spring. I've been swimming again because I did love it so much as a child.
And for the record, I am not particularly good at any of these things (well, skating. I am good at that.) I splash around the swimming pool like five little kids. I jog so slowly that turtles zip right by me. My hiking buddy, who is a decade older than I, routinely has to slow down while we are hiking.
But writers have a very, very, very sedentary job and we have to consciously add movement. It makes the work better. It keeps repetitive motion injuries to a minimum, and it allows time for ideas to percolate.
Everything out there is telling you to lose weight for the new year. I don't care how much you weigh. I do care about how healthy you are. If you are not moving, what is stopping you? Do you feel embarrassed to do something badly? Take a lesson or two. Is it too cold/hot where you are? Find something you can do indoors. What kind of exercise feels like play to you? Did you, like me, swim and roller skate? Did you love to play softball at the corner lot? Did you ride your bike forever and ever and ever?
What are some ideas for exercise that is PLAY? What do you love to do? (And if you like something hard, that's great. I want to test myself hiking some more 14ers this summer.)
This week between between Christmas and New Year's Day is one of my favorites in all the year. It seems stolen out of regular time, when the glass on the windows is steamy with cooking and the breath of bodies, when there is a chance to take stock and think about possibilities and imagine with joy what fresh things might be waiting in the wings.
One thing I'm working on this week is the new schedule for Voice and Girls in the Basement classes this year. I hope to have the new website up for the classes by the end of this week, so if that's your pleasure, do check back. In response to repeated requests, I'm adding two workshops to the schedule this year: Voice II and a special, fully anonymous workshop for published writers.
I'm organizing my travel schedule, as well, and I do believe I'm going to spend a fair amount of time in Australia and New Zealand when I go over for the Romance Writers of Australia conference in August. I'm thinking strongly of renting a place in Melbourne for a month and exploring from there. Maybe go to Tasmania, which has intrigued me for a long time. Any suggestions are very welcome.
Of course, I have writing goals, too, and lots and lots of work, which I love.
Do you have rituals of contemplation at this time? What do you want to leave behind in 2007 and what new thing would you like to pick up in 2008? I don't mean the idea of New Year's Resolution (I will lose 20 lbs, I will quit smoking, I will look younger, better, whateverish). I mean, what would you like to LOVE more next year? What would bring you more joy?
A couple of links for you today:
The Orange County Chapter of RWA is holding an ebay auction for a quilt signed by 100 romance and women's fiction writers (including me). Might be a fun gift for a passionate fan.
And for lots of writing advice from many different fiction writers, poets, non-fiction and children's writers, check out the new Santa Barbara Writers Conference website. Highly interactive and full of information. This is a long-term, highly respected conference and Marcia Meier is doing a great job moving it into the modern market. Check out my page while you're there. (I am teaching there again this summer, focusing on voice and creativity for fiction writers. The setting for this conference is unbeatable, so if you're in the mood for something a little different, I'd LOVE to see you there.)
Now I'm off to finish some shopping. (Already did my pages this morning--am I the most devoted writer ever or what? :) )
The New York Times Books section posted a list of six travel books for holiday gift giving ideas. All six are by guys, and most of them are in the gonzo realm of bad boys going really far away places doing pretty extreme things. There's a nod to traveling women in the opening paragraph, but not a single book.
Travel writing sometimes seems to be all about rough and tumble tough guys going to out of the way places (the more inaccessible the better) and having extremely grimy adventures. While I have nothing against a good adventure, or even against bad boys eating snake innards and bugs, it really isn't about travel as much as the Young Man Testing Himself in Extreme Ways. Which is fine, too. It's just not really travel for the masses. There is one on the list about a quest: MISHIMA’S SWORD: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend (Da Capo, paper, $15.95), which looks a bit different, but it's still about a man's view of the world.
The other craze in travel writing is the "I moved to Tuscany/Provence for a year and this is what I learned," and there is one of those books on this list, too. The best one was Frances Mayes's Under The Tuscan Sun, and all the rest are doomed to fall short, I'm afraid.
There are some travel books by women, but often, they're doing the literary equivalent of women wearing power suits in the 80's--women doing male things in the travel world to prove that they can. Adventure rafting on the amazon or running 100 miles in the Grand Canyon. (Why?)
And maybe I'm just a bourgeois thing, wanting to read a different sort of adventure, but maybe I'm just more interested in the internal journey. A trip doesn't have to take me far away or into an exotic realm to be fascinating--it is the journey itself that fascinates. It is the observation of the traveler, her connection to what she sees and how that shifts her internal landscape. What do you learn when you stand on a beach in Florida where the signs are all missing, and there are no traffic lights because there have been three hurricanes this season? What do you see when you walk on a busy street in an ordinary Midwestern city on a Saturday in September?
My suggestions for travel books that will thrill the women on your list (and a good many of the men), are three: EAT PRAY LOVE, by Elizabeth Gilbert is so madly, intensely, wildly successful because it is a travel book about the internal spiritual journey of a single woman who recounts her journey with honesty and insight. UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, Mayes's book, is slightly different, but also evocative and quietly observed. Another of my favorites is Rosemary Mahoney's A SINGULAR PILGRIM. (And I know I've talked about all of those books before, but I'm offering a counter to bad boys eating bugs. )
What travel memoirs or essays or books would you recommend?
(PS Someday, I'd would sincerely love to write a book that was so beloved that it gathered 731 reviews on Amazon. That is truly a book touched by grace.)
Technically, I should post a food blog today. But I suspect we're all fooded-out after the feasts yesterday and we can wait until next week.
My Thanksgiving weekend gift to you is this: all of you, writers or not, go find an hour of your own this weekend to do something to make you feel refreshed and renewed and filled with beauty. Maybe that's going to a fabric shop to finger the silks and paisleys. Maybe you'll watch a movie nobody else wants to see. Maybe you'll have a facial or a pedicure or go for a long walk with crunchy leaves or buy some new music and listen to it.
Here are a couple of things that make me happy: going to Whole Foods to look around at things I might cook extravagantly. Last week, I was looking for the ingredients for a cereal I want to try, made with barley and almond milk and dried cherries. I found loose barley and pearl barley and bags of barley, but no quick-cooking, which is what this recipe requires. So I found a clerk, a young man with dark eyes and great hair who lit up at my request. Together we went to one aisle and then another, and then when we couldn't find it, we stood before the rices and he told me about eating eating barley bread in in his native Morrocco, and how much he likes it and how he cooks it, and how he had not had any in four years. (Hmm. Just realized there's Morrocco again.)
That counts as an artist date. Cooking counts as long as it's something that's involved and lovely and you aren't doing it out of obligation. I cooked a turkey for my youngest to take home with him yesterday (he is young and poor) and experimented with apple-blackberry crumble and--oh, host of the gods--the absolutely fantastic banoffee pudding (which said son adored. "What is this called again?"), and all the while, the girls in the basement were very busy and working hard on the pages I hope to capture today.
That counts as an artist date, too.
Do whatever you like most, for at least an hour. Nurture yourself this holiday weekend with beauty, color, music, crafts, whatever you enjoy.
And I'd love to hear what you do. Maybe I'll get some new ideas, or somebody else reading here will.
Really in love with the new material, which is seducing me back to the other computer, so just a little bit of fun for you this morning.
An excellent writer blog:
Tess Gerritsen keeps an insightful and honest blog about the writing life, and a post this week was particularly honest in a way you don't often see from writers, many of whom are always worried about keeping up appearances. A snippet:
Over the past twenty years, I’ve had twenty books published. My career has been a see-saw ride, and there’ve been times when I thought my career was, if not dead, then headed for oblivion. My first nine books were paperback romantic thrillers, eight published by Harlequin, one by Harper. None of them earned out more than $12,000 in their first printings. Since I’m a slow writer, and couldn’t turn out a book any faster than every eight months, I knew I’d never get rich as a writer.
And then a little later....
By the time GRAVITY was released, it was clear that my sales were in a downward spiral. Despite publisher enthusiasm and rave reviews, GRAVITY could not find an audience among women readers. That doomed it in the marketplace. And once your sales start to slip, the pre-orders for your next book, and your next, begin to plummet. Just as depressing were my foreign sales, which had been so bad that I was having trouble finding anyone to publish me in the UK. I took off a year to re-group. I wrote my next book entirely on spec, without a contract. This time, I was writing just for myself. Read the whole piece.
I have written whole books several times for various reasons, most often because I was frustrated by the external market and needed to connect back to myself and my own body of work. It has always been a Very Good Thing. One was In the Midnight Rain, which has become one of the most beloved of my romances. Another was Heart of a Knight, a medieval romance that won the RITA. The most recent is Elena's story, working title Cooking for the Dead. (We're all batting around title ideas still.)
It's also something I highly recommend to my students. Often. Published even more than unpublished, and especially if they've hit a wall--internal burn out or publisher disinterest or a need to change direction. Have you ever done it?
Cooking and travel
I've been thinking it might be fun to go on a cooking holiday, and what popped up in my email this morning? A link to a travel-cooking site that has some lovely, lovely trips. Wouldn't it be cool to go to Morocco and cook? Of course, the coming year is already packed with travel, so it will have to go on the back burner, but I really think I'd have a blast.....
Vegetarian week
I
'm sure I've mentioned that my eldest son, his girlfriend, and virtually all of their entire circle of close friends, are vegetarians. This happened one week when Ian and his former debate partner did research for a case and read about the meat industry in the US. The both became vegetarians overnight. I kept thinking they'd go back, but it's been years now, so I think the change is complete.
And while none of them proselytize, their commitment intrigues and impresses me. I'm also working on deepening my yoga practice, and often vegetarian eating is a part of that.
So I've been keeping a vegetarian kitchen this week. Experimented yesterday with a lower fat, healthier version of that wintertime comfort food fav, macaroni and cheese. Turned out spectacularly well, enough that Christopher Robin gave it the British stamp of approval. I'll post the recipe Friday. If I can read all my notes.
I spent t
he weekend at the most mundane of tasks. Drank wine with my friends on Friday night and hiked a little while on Saturday afternoon and swept long fronds of glittery red dog hair off my sofa. Sunday was
breakfast out with CR and I took my notebook to the new Starbucks to write by hand looking at my home mountain, then shopped for groceries and put them all neatly away, taking comfort in a blue glass bowl of lemons and the crisper full of watercress and lettuces, and a basket of tiny red tomatoes. I went to a movie (Martian Child--I do so love John Cusak) and remembered that it's more interesting to write about men who are smart than perfectly good-looking.
It's good to travel. It's equally good to come home and take up the threads of ordinary life again.
I have been fretting that my process is annoyingly different every time, and as this book is brewing, I've torn out pictures from magazines, but haven't felt even the slightest desire to brainstorm with a collage. (Yet.)
Then, yesterday in the mail, I had a package from my ex, who sent me his copy of Sonny & Brownie because I couldn't find this one, and remembered he had it, so I asked if he'd copy it for me. He couldn't get copies made for some reason or another (well, I do know why--a little late to computers, this one, and the process flummoxes him).
Oh, seeing that cover.....! I rushed upstairs and put it into the computer to copy and blasted "God and Man," which is one of the best songs EVER. I played it five times in a row, swaying and singing along and letting those voices echo in my chest. Once it was safely copied, I moved a copy into the soundtrack file for the new book, which so far looks like this:
Are You Alright? Lucinda Williams
Still I Long For your Kiss, Lucinda Williams
God and Man, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee
The Wind, Cat Stevens
My Lover's Gone, Dido
Not Alone, Patty Griffin
What a Dream I Had, Simon and Garfunkel (which is not the name of the song, but I'm lazy and don't feel like looking it up)
Every Morning, Keb Mo
Let Him Fly, Patty Griffin
Moses, Patty Griffin
Home, Marc Broussard
Now, it might seem an odd list, but often it is as much about the tone of the music and the emotions it stirs up as it is about genre or artist or even tone. This is a pretty bluesy list, but there are some other things, too, and it is not yet complete, and I'm listening to tons of music, listening and listening as I do other things. Wash clothes, drive around town. New things, old things, I don't care. I know a song is right when one of the characters starts to move around.
This is morning, it occurred to me that this is just a different way to collage. I'm listening to this collage instead of looking at it. That has often happened in the past, too. Every book-child has its own requirements.
Looking at that list, is there something you think might add some nice flavor? Do you do soundtracks or collages? Just curious.
Thanks to some fortuitous circumstances, I found myself yesterday morning walking through a pouring rain on famous streets in Harlem. We--son, girlfriend, and I--were there to hear Hillary Clinton give a stump speech at the Abyssinian Baptist Church (you would know it if you saw it, from thousands of clips and photos). Thanks to those circumstances, we had a great seat, only a few rows from the front.
But what I loved was walking on Lennox Avenue, looking at the brownstones, thinking about the depth and weight and breadth of history on that neighborhood. I wondered where James Baldwin had grown up. Where the theaters were where so much music was made. We passed the mother church for the AME.
Afterward, we took the subway down to 14th street and found brunch in a little cafe. Eggs florentine and unlimited mimosas and young woman serving briskly and efficiently wearing a stunning yellow scarf over her head and chest and a strong Brooklyn accent.
I'm headed home this afternoon. It's been a lovely series of trips, but I haven't been in the same place for two weeks since the end of August, and I need to go home and download all this mental material and plunge into the new novel, which has strong characters but an elusive secret at the moment.
Meanwhile....I had a blast exploring new neighborhoods in NYC this time. Park Slope and the upper westside and the little sojourn into Harlem. Cool.
Typing this from a cozy Brooklyn apartment. A cat paw keeps reaching beneath the screen to help me type.
(I was going to snap a shot of the paw reaching for my typing fingers, but ever so like a cat, he refuses documentation.)
Landed here late morning, after two days in Manhattan. Some business meetings, then I spent yesterday walking the upper west side. A few hours, nothing much. My agent said I'd like Zabar's the famous deli/grocery, so I headed up Broadway to check it out. Bought a bagel next door, too, and walked over to the park and south. Enjoyable and unremarkable. I am really ready to be home for awhile.
But first a visit with Boy #1 and his girlfriend and their menagerie of cats (who are still sticking paws out to catch my typing fingers) because I've missed them madly. On the way here, I took a taxi and had to look up my son's address in the back-up notebook I carried through Italy (I know, I know--why did I bring it with me??) and LEFT IT IN THE CAB.
I shrugged it off the first time, but this one has left a big hole in the middle of my chest. I seriously, seriously hate that I've lost two notebooks in a month. Important notebooks, packed with observations and sketches and details of my travels.
I do have to ask what I am meant to learn from these two, back-to-back losses. Am I meant to live more in the moment? To rely on memory (sensation, a mood, a taste, a sense of things) instead of documents when thinking about my travels? Is the universe trying to tell me to stay home and just write? Or am I just scattered and need a better system?
Again, my address is inside the notebook, along with two others. Perhaps the notebook will show up at one of them. I fervently hope so. I'm visualizing the BOTH showing up.
And if the God is trying to tell me something, perhaps she will write in down and tuck it inside the notebook.
Do any of you lose things? Or have you gone through stages when you lost important things?
On this first snowy day of the year in Colorado Springs, I managed to get to church for the first time in nearly two months. The year's theme is Wisdom, and today's topic was the wisdom of your intellectual ancestors. Rev. Lawrence used Isaac Asimov as one of his most influential intellectual ancestors and told us why. He encouraged all of us to think about our own. I'm passing that along to you.
And thinking aloud about my own, thinking of the influences on my world view, but also those who have influenced me as a writer. Obviously, Ray Bradbury. Shakespeare. James Daphne Du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Anya Seton, all those who collected fairy tales and legends and folk songs, which form such a thick web of my ideas about living and books. In college, I fell in love with James Baldwin and studied everything he wrote.
But also the bible, which my grandmother read with such dedication. And Edgar Cayce, who told his amazing story in a dozen paperback books on her shelves. I very much believe that the world we see is only a tiny tip of what really IS, and that's reflected in all of the writings and thinkings of the above "ancestors."
I'm sure more will bubble up over the week. Certainly, I've more recently been inspired and coached along by the writings and teachings and ideas of Julia Cameron. Also, Vita Sackville West, and Annie Lammott (quite disparate people, those two. Amusing to imagine them sitting down together, Annie with her wild hair, Vita with her cigarettes and crisp blouses--but who knows, maybe they would have found much to talk about).
Who are some of yours?
Thinking tonight of enthusiasms. The woman at Paris Breakfasts is back in Paris, shooting deliriously colorful photos of the shop windows and foods she will paint on some future day. I love her photos even more than her watercolors (which I keep telling myself I'm going to buy, someday). I'm attending a conference for magazine writers, because I'm interested in the subject and it is being held in Boulder, so I could attend without much effort, and it's been amazing. I love being a beginner, listening with this entirely different part of my brain. I love the learning and the possibilities presented and the stories (always stories, stories), but most of all, I love being in the midst of people who are so passionate. The photo editor of National Geographic is here, leggy and slim and smart, a woman who has dodged bullets and given birth to daughters and loves photojournalism so much it's like sparks come from her when she speaks of it. She made me want to write about her. Two young women next to me were in thrall, nearly speechless with the idea that it would ever be possible to shoot photos for the venerable National Geographic, and on the other side, a woman spoke of beginning her first novel, and a newspaper reporter yearned to leave the paper and write full-time. A writer of story lines for computer games (how cool is that job??) wants to write articles about history. I felt quiet and lucky.
It's also always good to be in a college town, where hope and expectation are basic molecules in the daily air, right alongside oxygen. There is happiness in hope, in believing in the next thing, whatever it might be. A friend of mine said that people only need two things to be happy--something to look forward to and a dream to believe in. Here in this hotel this weekend, the air feels quite thick with those two things.
So, what little gratitudes can you come up with? And what little (or big) thing are you looking foward to?
Ambling because that is what one does here, at least on foot. Amble through the streets, through meals, through tiny cups of impossibly strong coffee, through lazy glasses of wine. Not much time, since there is an American man waiting rather pointedly for this computer (and funny how much pressure his tidy shoes makes me feel) , but a few notes to keep you current....
---Bari is a small city on the east coast, decidedly un-touristy, though it appears there is a large port from which ferries and cruise ships sail. We arrived by train (Eurostar, not the locals, which would have meant changing three times). I felt quite cheered by navigating the purchase of tickets and accomplishing our transfer and the comfortable ease of the train itself, a chance to read and rest and observe the endless miles of valley through which we traveled, mountains to the north and to the south, and between, vast vineyards and olive orchards, with hilltop towns in the hazy distance like watercolors of wine labels.
--we spent Tuesday meandering around Bari's old town in the gentle rain. We had good umbrellas and
decent shoes and the clerk at the hotel said there had been no rain for 150 days, to it was hard to mind it. In truth, it lent the day a certain moody grace. We ambled around the warren of medieval streets in the walled old city (which was notorious for pick pockets and petty crime until recently, when it has been cleaned up). There is an enormous old castle, remarkably well preserved, which delighted me for the dual wall construction (curtain wall and inner courtyard) plus the Norman keep. It was not possible to see a lot of the inside, nor climb the tower, but it is remarkable nonetheless, with a now grassy and enormous moat.
--Tuesday night (the man has left, exasperated that his sighs did not make me type any faster), we went to th
e book event at Feltrinelli, and that was quite an adventure. A crowd gathered for
the discussion of Il profumo delle Oro (Madame Mirabouàs School of Love here), where I met several gracious and interesting readers. One in particular, a beautiful woman with a cloud of silvery hair and the elegance of a model, asked most intriguing questions. An interpreter translated for us. I signed
some books and we drank some
coffee, then a driver picked us up in the now pouring rain, and drove us south in the dark and we to Matera. My first glimpse of the sassi will stay with me, as we rounded a narrow, twisting road and suddenly, there were the tumbles of pale yellow stone studded with lights, as fantastical as something from a half-remembered dream or a book read long ago, and across the ravine, a black darkness, vast and impenetrable. T We lugged our suitcases up a series of steps and across a cobblestone courtyard, getting soaked, and tumbled into bed in our long, churchlike cave....
---In the morning, emerging like children from ensorcellment, we came into the bright blue morning, and the ruined and renewing tumbles of the town of sassis, stairs trailing hither and yon, climbing into dark passages, emerging into dazzling sunlight, and churches upon churche upon churches. A cathedral whose roof fell down last summer, cave curches carved into the mountains, and across the river rushing through the valley far below, an austere bluff with tiny ant figures on the top, staring back at us.
I have eaten amazing food. Orchiette (sp) with spinach and butter and tomatoes. Rabiit (rabbit! me!) roasted to such savory tenderness it melted on my tongue, served with potatoes cooked to buttery perfection. CR had lamb and sausages today, while I feasted on mashed fava beans and roasted cheese and drank a big hearty glass of red wine (which we shared) and came back to nap in the hot of the afternoon.
Oh, and one final note: last night, the cocktail party was held at a small cafe on minor piazza, facing a larger piazza (that backs up to another piazza). Handsome waiters served white wine and proscuitto and two beautiful young creatures enacted the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in Italian, she curving over the edge of the balcony above, he earnestly looking up to her from the square. Old men leaned on the walls to watch, and the evening shoppers paused to smile tenderly, and it was piercingly, wildly beautiful, so much so that I had to look away and recite the words under my breath, for I memorized it entirely at the age of thirteen and still can whisper every word....But soft? What light from yonder window breaks?
Ciao!
Last weekend, I traveled to Indianapolis to give a talk to the RWA chapter there. Also, there are people there from my oldest writing group, the former Genie RomEx, which was a brutally difficult place to sign online, way back in the day before you could send email between services. (It's bizarre to think about that now, that I'd sit on my text-based service, writing emails to only the members of that service, wishing I could send one to someone on AOL, or Prodigy or....well, you get the picture. It's rather astonishing how far we've come in not very many years.)
Anyway. In Indy, I connected with Alicia Rasley and Brenda Barber and her daughter Bethany (a lovely tall lean girl with an airy grace, who wants to be an opera singer. How cool is that?). One of Christopher Robin's friends also lives there. So I had a writerly meal with Alica and Co at Agio's an Italian restaurant downtown, one I will remember for the incredible Baked Apple and Gorgonzola Empanada, garlic puree, tomato-raisin chutney. Bethany chose the wine, a great chianti, and I was paying attention to my diet, so ate "only" the vegetable plate for my meal. Spectacular. If more restaurants cooked vegetables like this, it would be no trouble to be vegetarian. The surroundings are hip and colorful, and the neighborhood obviously gentrified in the most elegantly funky sort of way.
I was surprised to like the city as much as I did. I suppose I was expecting a weary post-industrial, post-family-farmland county seat, with grimy streets and lots of poverty. All those cliches. (Maybe I was imagining St. Louis, now that I think about it. There are humans I adore in St. Louis, but not so much the city, which always strikes me as slightly hostile and difficult to navigate.) Indianapolis was not difficult or prickly. I liked the orderly layout of the downtown, which was clean and tidy for the most part, with whimsical light sculptures at the street crossings. CR and I walked down to the river, seeing first the tail end of what must have been a 5 or 10K by the look of the not-demolished runners who were finishing and walking away, drinking water. Then we crossed a bridge and looped around the zoo and ended up going against an enormous wave of walkers engaged in a charity event. Maybe diabetes. Walked back to our hotel, skirting the university, had a coffee and showered before my talk. Where I also heard the news that my eldest landed a position he most desperately wanted for next year. (Hooray, Ian!)
I liked the graceful stone buildings downtown, the energy of the campuses right on the edge of the river, the
old neighborhoods that are still incredibly affordable. I snapped this photo of a doorway because there were so many attractive doors like this, and the most beautiful Borders store I've ever seen, occupying an old bank. The clerk was tidy mid
dle aged man with a snappy white goatee, a refugee from Colorado, who said he liked Indy because it was like Denver in the mid-sixties.
In the evening, we met CR's longtime friends for a meal at Palomino's, which lasted nearly four hours. We imbibed and
ate and talked and talked and talked. Delightful evening, full of laughter and good company. The next day, we met Alicia's husband, who will be leading a trek to Nepal next month, and I was fascinated by how one could manage walking for days at 24,000 feet. He said it isn't easy. CR, who loves altitude, was enchanted by the idea.
In all, a lovely city. I could live there, and I don't say that often. Everyone was outside, riding bikes and running and walking. It was easy to move around in, and had plenty of universities to provide intriguing humans.
Now, I'm getting ready for Italy (four days and counting). I'll try to find some photos of the cocktail dresses I found. Yummy!
Melanie Scott, an Australian writer who finaled twice in the Golden Hearts this year, posted something terrific to our voice class yesterday and I asked her to post it to her blog.
One of the exercises we do is to picture your 80th birthday party and how you want it to be and what your 80 year old self would tell you to do. Which all the fabulously talented gals in my course have duly done and I was trying to come up with some comments but really, they all sounded fantastic, and all our 80 year old selves are brilliant and wise and I really want to get to go to some of those parties, so all I could come up with was this, which is my distillation of what everyone said and a reminder of what we have to do if we want to live to be grand old broads at 80. And with apologies to SARK, who's 'How to be' posters are fabulous and kind of inspired me.
Check it out--it's luscious. And if you want to have some fun, try the exercise:
In a timed writing (ten minutes, pen to the page, write fast, no editing) imagine you are at your 80th birthday party. What are you wearing? Who is there? What's going on in your life? Now, let your 80 year old self give the self you are now some advice. What will she say to you?
This is not just for writers, by the way. Readers can have fun with it, too. Our 80 year old self is the one who has a lot of answers for how to live our lives today. Have fun with it, and let me know if you did it.
A new book is brewing. Rather dramatically at times, as will sometimes happen. My office is scattered with magazines and new CDs and paintbrushes. I've scotch-taped a bunch of photos to the closet door while I'm letting it all brew. To the outside view, this doesn't much look like work, honestly, and I can fall prey to the "just get busy" syndrome that can be so devastating to an idea that's winding its way through my imagination, sending out runners of silk to anchor itself here, there, all sorts of odd places. This makes me think of the first trimester of pregnancy, when you're so tired and when you close your eyes for three minutes, you fall into that other world, the dreamer world, and it's hard to tell which is the real world. There's a lot going on below the surface. Hidden. Quiet. Gossamer.
I walked home from the YMCA this morning, listening through my left ear to my Ipod Shuffle (which is one of the great inventions of all time). The Jethro Tull CD