Reading and Knitting

When my friend Kristine gathered her friends at the Delaware Beach, she always brought plenty of craft items for us to play with.  Markers and paper, beads and cord or wire.  At the end of each visit, we often had hand made art that needed careful removing from the walls.  And those who knitted brought their yarn, needles, knitting bags.

Until I joined Those Who Knitted, I brought the tools of my particular craft:  paper, pens and works in progress.  While the knitters knitted, seated on the colorful sofa or sprawled on the floor, I read a chapter or two aloud to them.  Kristine and the rest offered, not just feedback, but response.  When my voice failed, a spontaneous moan when I had to finish reading for the day filled me with joy.

We all love for our work to be loved, whether the work is a story or a just-completed scarf.

What's next?

When asked, "What's next?  What will your next manuscript be?"

"I'll find a home for Selkie Song."  I started that YA novel a number of years ago.  It has undergone many perumutations, including a shift from one protagonist to another, point of view change, and in fact was originally an adult novel, not a young adult story at all.  (Or so I thought.)

"Yes, but that's not the same as writing.  What will you do once Selkie's off into the world?"

This time I gave my friend's question such a long stretch of thought, he asked if I was still there.  "Oh, I"m here.  I'm just turning over possibilities.  There's the Fairy Gate (another YA I started before Judith grabbed me and would not let go) . . . but it's tempting to go back and really revise one of the children's stories I wrote when I was in my thirties." 

The Forest Witch actually came to me in a series of dreams.  I've always loved Kierka, the witch who lives in a tree.  And the main character in another tale, Maura, discovers a young dragon lost in the woods behind her house . . . 

Yes, it's good to start turning over which characters, what conflict I'll focus on, live and dream in once Judith is complete.  Once Selkie is on her way through the publishing pipeline, and Love is the Thread launched and out in the world.  In some ways writing and gardening share this key similarity.  Before the writer or the gardener begins, we need to turn over the ground. 

But what's next for right now, for today, is Judith.  My heroine waits for me right now, with a whole day to survive at the center of an Assyrian military camp.

Slowing down (at least for the day)

At the most recent meeting of my writers group, I shared one of the first chapters that is not in the heroine's point of view.  Instead, the reader spends some time viewing the world from the perspective of Holofernes, the Assyrian general and Judith's antagonist.

The group made some strong suggestions to amp up the sense of what I'll call the general's "evil quotient."  While that does not materially change the manuscript, I need to spend some time today in his head and heart.  Afterward, I always feel like I need to take a shower. 

It also requires that I slow down, sit quietly with paper and pen to hand, and jot down what Holofernes sees, believes, thinks and (ick) feels.  I've actually done something I don't usually do today:  put off my writing time by writing emails, washing dishes, etc.  But the novel will be all the better for the progression of my sister writers' feedback, the consult with my character (little though I like him) and the eventual revision. 

Two sides of the story

Since I signed my book contract with Pearlsong Press, I have been learning the truth of something Sharyn McCrumb wrote in Writers Digest more than a decade ago.  There are now two sides to the story of my writing life.

In one version of the story, I am the solitary writer at my desk, fingers speeding (or taking a slow stroll . . . or hopping in place) across the keyboard.  It's just me and my characters.  I listen to them, listen for them and do my best to express how they feel by way of dialogue, action and interaction.  That story of my life is familiar from many years of experience. 

Recently my father started cleaning out the garage.  While I burrowed through some of my own boxes, left and long forgotten on the shelves at the back, I discovered a manuscript I wrote and revised nearly two decades ago.  Cross legged on the dining room floor, I looked over the first page, only to find myself a chapter into the story ten minutes later.  Though I remembered the manuscript, I had forgotten many of the details.  Those opening pages, about a young female horse dealer examining a broken down race horse, startled me.  When I wrote that scene all those years ago, I clearly tuned in to the character's expertise as well as her compassion toward the lovely, lame horse.  What would she do, decide to rescue him or walk away from the ongoing expense his healing required?

I write very different stories now, but that process remains a constant in my life.  The other side of the story of a writer's life is still new.  Contacting likely venues for booksignings.  Investigating groups who would enjoy readings.  (For Love is the Thread, that ranges from women's groups, cancer support groups, andknitting circles as well as the more traditional option of bookstores.)  The public face of my writing life continues to develop, stretch and evolve. 

Bonus

I experienced an unexpected boon the other day.  Big chunk of the morning-into-the-afternoon scheduled with a client who needed to postpone.  That left me with a full day to spend with my keyboard, back in 650 B.C.E. with my character Judith, just as she is making the transition from the safety of her village into meeting her enemy face to face.

Judith was not happy that day but I was and am.  Six hours and two chapters of revision instead of less than half that much.

First Reading!

The title refers to my first official reading and book signing as a published author, not to my first attempts to link my ABCs into words like dog, cat, up and down.  (Though I played with my nine-month-old niece, Clara Lou this morning, swinging her up and down in my arms to the accompaniment of the words "Up!" and "Down!" She gave me that amazing wide eyed baby, loose mouthed giggle-grin, and said progressively, "D!" and "Doh!" and "Dow!" as I started to swing her down.  There's something magical about the more than fifty years age difference between us, and that far flung parallel . . .)

No back to the music, as a friend of mine kept saying the other day each time I drifted off the subject.

I'm making arrangements for a reading/signing event for Love is the Thread at a wonderful, independently owned yarn store outside Louisville.  The event will probably take place during the shop's weekly knitting circle, either the first or second week of December.  Not coincidentally, the memoir's pub date is December 1, 2011.  I will also be the featured author on December's Pearlsong Conversation.  More details about both events as plans get confirmed!

Reading Galleys

I had the weirdest experience as I read the galleys for Love is the Thread, my memoir with a publishing date of December 1, 2011.  Every word was familiar to me, but at the same time certain events, selected phrasings and many insights stunned me.

Did I really write this?  I know I did.  But a larger voice peeks through the words, one far wiser (and in places, funnier) than I could ever be. 

Oh yeah, it's beautiful, too.  And there were only a handful of typos.  Great design and layout, Pearlsong Press!

A Change in the Weather

Last week a friend of mine spent three days in the hay field, baling 1000 bales in 100 degree weather.  She ended the task sunburnt and coughing from the motes of dried grass.  We laughed together this week over the shift in the weather, with a temperature drop of forty degrees, the cool rain.

Today I realized a similar shift is happening inside me.  I did not recognize that part of my self felt ashamed of my work history, career choices . . . call it what you will.  Though I have known from the time I was nine years old that I was a writer and that I intended to become an author as my full time job, I have also integrated some cultural, ancestral and familial attitudes toward creativity as a career.

One example:  In my twenties, the man I married used to tell our friends (in front of me, I might add) "Leslie writes, but anyone can write if they have time to waste."  I could give many more examples from other voices in my life, who up 'til now have lived in my head without my knowledge.  But that one is enough.

Now, as Love is the Thread becomes a physical reality, I am growing aware that everything I did, everything I planned and intended, has indeed brought me to this moment when I am becoming an author, as opposed to someone who, shhh, writes.  I feel, not the weight of wasted years, but the depth of experience gained from all those years. Experience on the page, yes, but of equal importance, if not more, is the experience off it.

I am grateful for all I have learned and am learning, and happy that what I have struggled with and toward, authorship, is both the gift I possess and the gift I have to share.  The word "authority" has at its root the word "author."  Think I'll ponder that for a while.