Taxes

For the first time ever, this year I sorted out my taxes as best I could, then handed over the paperwork to an accountant. She's a lovely person, recommended by two different people I know, one of them another writer.

Only when we sat down with spreadsheets, last year's return and my W2s did I realize that the grant money I received last year is income earned for, at least because of, my novel Judith. It came out to about a third of my income for the year, maybe more.

Because I wrote a big chunk of fiction, though it isn't complete yet. Still have to do the research trip. Still, as the accountant said, "You need to frame a copy of that W2!"

I went into the meeting knowing that this kind of fact and number based work is vital to my life as a writer, ghostwriter and editor. I never expected to weep tears of joy in the middle of all the grunt work!

Research

I'll be going on a research trip for Judith in the next month or so. Now that I'm recovered from my stomach flu of last week--on my birthday no less--I'm going through the novel and finalizing my list of questions to be answered. I have a general list/outline already; now I'm breaking it down by the page.

On any given page, sometimes in any given paragraph I'll have one question and sometimes more. They range from details of Assyrian armor to women's hairstyles from the period. I don't expect (or need) to answer every question, but I'm looking forward to learning more about my characters' world.

I plan to work through the novel and gather information, make lots of notes and photocopies and bring the data home from my week at the library. The integration of that information? That will take place at home over many weeks, probably months. I once said I never expected to write a memoir. I never expected to write an historical novel, either! This will be a very different way to revise for me. I'm looking forward to it.

More on how that works as it unfolds.

Hearts

Children and Memory

I never expected to write memoir, but that's a good bit of what I now do. Not only is my memoir Love is the Thread on its way to publication, I also publish the zine Memory Stick. With Issue 7 in the works, I've got memories on the mind today.

Memory Stick includes personal narratives, family narratives and ancestral stories. I started the zine more than a year ago around the time I hit menopause. (Or it hit me.) Friends assure me that the colander-like holes in my memory will mend once my body chemistry stabilizes. In the meantime, I want not only to recall stories from all the layers of my past, personal and familial, I realized how important it is for me to share those tales with others.

Each issue centers on a theme. The upcoming Memory Stick includes stories about the children in my life, from nephews and nieces to some little people I worked with at the kindergarden center where I worked many years ago, and one or two who, despite the decades of difference in our ages, I count as friends.

Many years ago when he was four, my eldest nephew told me, "You're a tall child with car keys." (Tall? Well, to a four year old, I suppose so!) Issue 7 celebrates the child in all of us.

Changing Times

Recently a friend sent me an email about 2012. In essence, the message relayed how several expert astrologers compared the Mayan and Gregorian calendars, with special attention to all the changes that have put the Gregorian calendar out of sync. The result of the astrologers' cogitations? It seems the pivot point of the Mayan predictions may have already happened on the Winter Solstice, 2010.

Remember, calendars are how we measure time, they're not time itself.

As a writer I have often set deadlines for myself, as well as dealt with deadlines set by editors and publishers. For example, I write for two different magazines on a regular basis. And in my forty years of writing, I have made so many goals for myself: to have an agent by thus and such age, or have a book published by the year Whatever. Goals are good. They keep us motivated. If we don't become more involved with the goal or date than we are with our work (or life) they keep us involved and focused.

On the other hand, I've received a lot of guidance lately that sounds something like this: "Leslie, you need to take the long view--and stay present in this moment." That is, keep my eye on the long range unfolding of my time, my personal goals as a writer and a human being, while savoring where I am in this instant. I struggled with how to take that long view and stay present for quite a while, just as many people have struggled with, feared or looked forward to the big moment of dramatic change scheduled to take place in 2012.

When I heard the theory that 2012 had already happened in 2010, the challenge of taking both the long view and staying present snapped into focus for me. Big changes are and have been already happening here on earth--big weather in Australia, in Chicago and the Mid-West and elsewhere. Yet here we are, still living our lives. With one eye on the long range unfolding of events within time--shifts in weather and cultural changes, or a book in the pipeline, for instance--and the other on the task for the present: cuddling a baby; giving a toddler her lunch; writing or reading a blog.