Real Magic

This is about writing and magic.  Wait for it.

A good friend and wise teacher of mine recently said someone asked her if she believes in magic.  My friend said, "Of course I do.  Have you ever looked at a baby?  Have you ever noticed how the baby changes from an infant into a baby, into a pre-toddler, into a toddler, into a child?  That's magic.  LIFE is magical."

Our capacity to learn language as children, simply by hearing others speak, is part of that magic.  Today I accompanied my sister, my brother-in-law and my two little nieces to Greta Jo, the two year old's second riding lesson.  Greta Jo very clearly communicated her feelings and needs during our time in the barn and her time in the saddle.  Every new word was a discovery, from "Bridle" to "Bit!" and "Saddle!"  She conveyed he excitement with, "Up?  Pony.  Saddle!" 

On the drive home, Greta Jo's little sister munched on a teething cracker.  Scrunched up next to the girls in their car seats, I grinned into Clara's blue eyes.  "You like your cracker? 

She straightened up a little, looked straight at me.  Thinking before she said, "Cwacker."  She studied me another moment, as if to make sure I understood, and then laughed.  She knew the name of something.  She said the name, and she knew I understood her.  A magical moment in both our lives.

It still awes me that writers receive the divine gift of taking words, putting them on paper, and creating a story.  That's magical, too.

Marketing

I listened to a delightful teleseminar the other night about marketing for authors.  The speakers, a famous author and well-known promoter, described me to a T, even though we've never met.  (Yet, anyway.)  Most authors are introverted and spend most of their time alone with a keyboard and the people who exist inside them, head to soul.  To succeed as an author,the speakers said, a writer needs to tap into the extrovert part of him or herself.

I have always been very close to the mid-line when it comes to introvert/extrovert tendencies.  For several years now, I've recognized that I'm about 51% introvert and 49% extrovert.  Though I've been shaking the trees about Love is the Thread, organizing readings and signings, the teleconference made me consider how my personality relates to the life I am creating for myself AND for my work.

I'll be thinking about this for a long time.  But I'll be acting on it even longer.  It's time for that 51% -- 49% introvert/extrovert proportion of my personality to flip flop.

Stormy Weather

As the weather makes one of its muscular leaps away from summer and into fall, with a drop in the temperatures and the wind whining around the eaves, I've had a writer day that reflects the tempestuous skies.  Lots of backing and forthing as the publisher and I work with the lovely woman who is working on a blurb for the back cover, under an ever tightening deadline.

All that happened before I sat down with the edits for a client's self-help manuscript, took another run through the beginning of Part II of Judith (I'm about a third of the way through the fine tuning) and also did some shamanic journeying work for another client.

Also completed the nineth issue of my zine, Memory Stick, which is appropriately enough about the weather.  Feeling a little storm tossed tonight, but I've always enjoyed a good storm.

Nearsightedness and Nature

Such a splendid, sparkling morning yesterday.  I've been building up the distance I walk a day, and yesterday it was easy to stay outside.  Sunlight glinted on the grass.  The sycamore leaves applauded as Gizmo and I strolled past.  I could watch long coils of wind toss through the trees the entire length of the ten acre farm.

I realized I've spent a good bit of time lately with my nearsighted eyes less than a foot away from the computer screen, or nearly that close to my manuscript or that of a client.  Characters live in one world, and we live in this one.  In my drive to help bring my characters' world to life (ditto for my clients' characters) I've forgotten the need to replenish myself out in the real world beyond the computer.

Today and yesterday have offered ideal opportunities to do that. 

Author Appearances (Readings, Signings,and Virtual Tour)

Last night someone approached me to ask if I would be willing to give a reading and talk about Love is the Thread.  (Guess what?  The answer was Yes!)  Tonight at a business dinner, someone else began to hammer out the details of an appearance I'll be giving as part of the virtual, online tour for the memoir.  

I've spoken with the staff of a local bookstore about readings.  Several people have asked me to give talks to their clubs.  As specific dates get booked, they will appear on this site's calendar.  But as I prepare to dive into the ocean of author appearances and promotion for Love is the Thread, the book I never planned to write, a story that is as close to my heart as the friendship that inspired it, I have to tell you:  the water's fine!

I'm also reminded of how much Kristine loved "her sister the ocean."

Walking After Midnight: Writers who have influenced me

Gizmo and I usually take our last walk sometime around 11 p.m.  Last night I appreciated the cool autumn night, the growing fullness of the moon . . . but I was also thinking about all the writers whose books have influenced me.  A couple of times I stepped on Gizmo's leash.  An interesting blend of being present and wandering through my past.

This week I read another soul deep memoir by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann.  Traveling with Pomegranates weaves together Sue's internal struggle with turning fifty and Ann's struggle to discover who she really is after college graduation.  The mother-daughter story plays out against the myth of Demeter and Persephone (and that's a way too simple description.)  Kidd also unfolds how she came to create the amazing novel The Secret Life of Bees.

Being outside in nature while I contemplated this book I've only read once, but already love, led me to trace many of the books and authors that have influenced me as a writer, or whose work feels part of a stream similar to mine.  Once upon a time I would have started such a list off with the names Dorothy Parker and Anne Sexton.  Now Kidd and Elizabeth Berg and Jane Austen's names came to mind.

Not saying I write like any of the above.  But the quick and snappy one liner, or the dark confessional mode no longer accurately describe my work.  I've loved Jane Austen's description of her novels as her few square inches of ivory.  Her work deals with much more than that--the conflict and coalescence of masculine and feminine, for one.  Sue Monk Kidd and Elizabeth Berg explore similar worlds, with a rich awareness of the mythic depths beneath the surface of every day life. 

I seem to be swimming in the same stream, or at least paddling along the edge of the banks.  Will be thinking about this for a while, especially while Judith cools down for me to start rereading this latest draft.

The Last Chapter

This morning I've indulged in silence.  Phone unplugged.  No music playing while I practice yoga.  Except for the occasional remark to Gizmo, my whippet, when he got a little feisty on our walk this morning, I haven't opened my mouth.  Only part of that is due to my healing throat.

Today I'll revise the last chapter of Judith.  Chapter 45.  This revision percolated down into the depths of me, the way water soaks into dry ground and then deeper, through the massive stones into the water table.

I have not finished the revision process I plan to sit down with the manuscript in a few days and read it straight through as if it belongs to another writer.  After that I will take the pages (no doubt covered with proofreader's marks!) and make the corrections, start the further deepening or reorganization of paragraphs, possibly scenes.

But I needed to mark this stage in the process with a little quiet.  A quiet celebration. 

The Upward vs. The Downward Model of Reality

Yesterday afternoon, during a small, relatively burst of energy in the midst of Cold and Cough Mode, I sat down with the most recent four or five chapters I've revised of Judith.  Since I'd worked on several of those pages when I was coming down with the snurle, I wanted to double check for typos, word choice and more.  In other words, I was in a downward, fine tuning focus.

Big surprise.  Instead, I found myself reading those chapters as a whole.  They form part of the novel's final arc as events build to the crisis, Judith's confrontation with the general Holofernes.  At this later part of the novel, the chapters have grown shorter in reflection of the brisker, rising action.  I have worked on them chapter by chapter and scene by scene.  I did take notice of elements in need of finer tuning.

But I also had the opportunity, perhaps because fever had cooked and cleared out my brain, of recognizing how those chapters lead into each other.  Today I will take all my feverishly scribbled notes and start making sure the chapters form a sturdy unit.  I'm pretty excited and revived.

Mental health and sick days

A good friend of mine who has a daughter in her early teens allows her child one or two "mental health days" per school year.  She allows herself a few of those herself, as well.  Both she and the daughter always return to their daily routine refreshed and better prepared.

I've been needing a mental health day for quite a while, and not taking it.  Today my mind and body rebelled and staked their claim.  I woke up with a fever and a scratchy throat.

I sat down in front of the computer anyway.  (Obviously I'm here again.)  I have gone back and forth off and on all day.  A little time at the keyboard, with mixed or minimal results.  A little time with a cup of hot tea.  (Ginseng and peppermint.  Ginger and peppermint.  Green tea with goji berry.)  Another stint at the keyboard.  A brief lie down, until my dog Gizmo jumped on the bed and licked my chin. 

Finally I succumbed (or am succumbing) to the need for a mental if not a physical health day.  I'm shutting down the computer, making another cup of tea and taking it to bed with me.  This time I'm pulling the covers over my head so Giz can't kiss me.

Tomorrow we'll find out what has blossomed from this day in the dark, the quiet.  Greater health all around, I hope, physical, mental and creative.

Life happens

I prefer to look at unexpected events as life happening, rather than "shit happens."  So lots of life has happened over the last five days.  Judith has been in limbo, or at least halfway up the long slave road between her home and the center of the Assyrian encamment. 

Living people I love have needed my help more than my character, her friends and enemies. 

Today (I'm whispering this in case the universe decides to laugh)  I'm tiptoeing up to Judith, holding out my hand and saying, "Let's get back to work, shall we?" 

Though in truth, I've been at work.  There is an Emily Dickinson fantasy/nightmare that a writer's life as a life of isolation. Solitude, where I've retreated at least for this moment is not the same thing.  Like Judith my life touches many others.  Sometimes that means an uphill climb to give them a helping hand.  That helping hand gets extended to me at other times, too.