The Resurrection Season

The first daffodils
The first daffodils

Wow, this is a strange feeling. Me sitting before a blank WordPress page, attempting a resurrection of sorts. My life as a blogger went down hill around 2009, when I hit the skids with my fiction and my livelihood and my attitude. The blog archive tells a sad story of a blogger who had spurts of activity in 2010, 2011, and 2012, only to fizzle out repeatedly.

Shite happens, most definitely.

I watch my mom grow dim with dementia. I work a day-job that pays the bills and provides health benefits, but doesn’t fulfill me. I plug away too slowly at my fiction, trying to rally my optimism and faith back to their pre-economic-downturn heights.

But it’s spring, right? The first daffodils are blooming, and a Northern flicker returned to tippity-tap against the wall outside my bedroom. The cat carouses outside all night, and the dog takes her time sniffing every new leaf and blade of grass.

Best of all, even though I knew we were still in for crap-cold and dismally wet weather, there was that one evening last week when the air smelled green and my skin tasted warmth. I breathed, and breathed again.

Spring like a soul’s sigh.

It may be that the long winter of my discontent is lifting. Or maybe not. Not sure. Never am sure.

The daffodils are blooming, and I’m writing this blog post. That’s all that matters.

Author Ann Littlewood’s Advice on Fear

After Ann’s book party, a bunch of us local writers (including Ann) convened for literary libations.

I’m going through, let’s call it, a phase with my writing. I call it my fear phase. It’s not writer’s block. Writer’s block I could handle. Last week I read the perfect explanation for my funkitude on Nova Ren Suma’s blog. As quoted from her guest blogger, debuting YA novelist Meagan Spooner: But sometimes the fear is all too possible—what if I send this out and it gets rejected, and the experience is so terrible that it kills my love of writing? What if by trying to reach for this dream, I destroy it?

I’ve been getting rejected for years, right? Right. Handling rejection is a job requirement for writers. Somehow, though, the agent rejections of the past year have been breathtaking, spectacular, crushing. Perhaps my ego isn’t as strong as it used to be — I don’t know — but it feels like something has withered. Picture a dessicated corpse, a tender fledgling that crash-landed during its maiden voyage from the nest. That’s why the quote above caught my attention: I’ve been grasping so hard that I fear I’ve destroyed my writing dream.

Last weekend I was pondering this fear crap as I drove to author Ann Littlewood’s book launch. She’s touring with the third novel in her zoo-dunnit mystery series. It’s called ENDANGERED. If you’re an animal lover and you care about conservancy, check out her books. Even if animals aren’t your thing, check out her books because you’ll dig her zoo-keeper protagonist, Iris. She’s just the right amount of feisty without being annoying.

I had a chance to ask Ann about fear, and here’s what she had to say:

Winston Churchill defined success as “the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” That’s hard to pull off. Failure is debilitating, sucking out energy and leaving nothing much behind. But it can be thwarted if you see the possibility of non-success. Here’s some strategies I’ve used, with varying results.

1. Acknowledge that only a certain percentage of new ventures will succeed, whether they are possible friendships, sales calls, new plants in the garden, or whatever. And that’s OK. To paraphrase what a friend once said, “Of course I fail more than other people. I do more than other people.”  This leads to ….

2. Have more than one growth point to your life. If one wilts, focus on another for awhile. Then maybe come back to the first with renewed energy. And…

3. Have the next step in mind. If this round of agents all reject the manuscript, my next step will be to…write a different book, try short stories, submit directly to publishers, self-publish, and so on. Always know what you will do next if the current strategy does not pan out.

I was one of the last to leave…:-)

4. Look for benefits that you weren’t expecting, that aren’t your primary goal, and savor them. Met new people? Learned something interesting? Had to try something scary and felt good about that?

This stuff isn’t easy. It takes all your self-knowledge and self-discipline to decide whether and how to stay in the game. The alternative of inaction and depression is, however, not the least appealing.

As for publishing, my take on it is that success requires a good manuscript, a ton of persistence, and a surprising amount of luck–a big random factor. The longer you stand out in the field, the better the chance that lightening will strike you. (And I really need to come up with a less  lethal metaphor!)

I’ll take some of that lightening, please. Thanks, Ann!

Toenails and Mindfulness

Pretty good for a first timer.

I promised myself I’d blog every week. So now I’m here, online, writing, and the only topic that pops up is the pedicure I gave myself last night. My toes look mighty pretty painted a Jordan-almond lilac, but so what?

<shrug>

I’m not sure, so I’m just going to write, right here and now, and see what my preening is really all about.

First off, it occurs to me that last night was my very first DIY, full-on pedicure. Make no mistakes, I’ve paid for pedicures, and I’ve slapped on the quick, last-minute coat of paint. Last night though, I soaked my feet, scraped my callouses, excavated the gunk around my nail beds, pushed back my cuticles, clipped and filed the nails, slathered on the foot creme, AND THEN applied the bottom coat and two coats of the childish lilac. (Forgot the top coat though…next time.)

I was proud of myself when I woke up this morning. I might as well have been a bride-to-be holding out her hand to gaze at her engagement ring. Admiring herself, admiring myself.

I’m astounded that I’d never given myself a pedicure before. And, even more astoundingly, I sat around with Angie, a fellow writer, watching old BBC episodes of “Absolutely Fabulous” and drinking red wine while I did it. I’d never before engaged in a girly evening like that either. I’m serious, never, not even as a teenager. My best girlfriend and I used to play chess. Either that, or we were drinking with our neer-do-well friends. Call us bad girls with nasty toenails.

Angie was surprised by my cluelessness. I had a mom, I had sisters, I had many best girlfriends growing up. How did I miss this girly right of passage (sans the red wine–or maybe not)? How could I not know why we use a bottom coat? No clue. For most of my life, I’ve treated my feet, well, like feet. I need them to transport myself, and to hopefully maintain my balance.

Here’s the thing: DIY pedicures require a quiet mind. Otherwise, what’s the point? To rush through the process, thinking ahead to the many other tasks I must cross off the to-do list, fretting about aspects of my life over which I have no control…Perhaps this is why I’ve never indulged in the DIY pedi before now: I tend to inhabit the land of the future, and this land is fraught with imagined obstacles and turmoil and conflict.

It’s quite exhausting.

So maybe I keep gazing at my confectionary toes because they return me to mindfulness. Simple pleasures in the here and now, you know? I could get used to girly frivolity; it might even be good for me. And even better, doing it with a friend! Angie taught me, for example, that two thin coats of paint are less likely to chip than one thick coat.

Who knew? (I certainly didn’t.)

The Fine Art of Letting Go

Sometimes there’s no answer but to breath deep.

Last time I wrote a blog post, over six months ago, the ramifications of my mother’s dementia hadn’t sunk in. My sisters and I thought she’d maintain her then level of dottiness for at least a few years. Talk about ignorance being bliss! There’s nothing like senile dementia to make me–the daughter who didn’t sail into adulthood gracefully, the daughter who longed to remain forever a pseudo-adult–to…well…grow up. I’ve had to let go of the notion that I’m fancy-free, that I can succumb to my wanderlust at anytime.

Might as well have told me that I’d have to chop off a leg.

In the last six months, I’ve also let go of the notion that I can continue on with no health insurance, working as little as I can get away with so that I can write fiction. Full-time job, here I come, and, believe me, I’m ambivalent.

And, last but not least, I’ve let go of the notion that I’ll land the perfect agent and land a fabulous publishing contract. Not saying that it couldn’t happen, only that it’s not a slam-dunk, and that given the new indie world of small presses and self-publishing, I can now do what I want. I know so many established novelists who are self-publishing, yet, it’s like cutting off the other leg to let go of my dream of the fancy New York agent and editor.

Make decisions about Mom’s care…Make decisions about my financial and physical wellbeing…Make decisions about how to achieve readership. Sounds like full-fledged adulthood to me.

Truth: I’ve been holding on so tight to my cherished notions about myself, my lifestyle, and my dreams that I’ve squeezed the life out of them.

I titled this post “The Fine Art of Letting Go,” but I don’t know if there’s a fine art to letting go. It’s effing demoralizing and frustrating and depressing. In my case, there’s been a lot of screaming while I drive (cathartic) and crying into my pillow (not so cathartic).

What I do know is this: holding tight is all about the ego, and my ego is the ultimate harridan. She’s a beady-eyed, shriveled thing who points her finger at me, sneers, and says, Choke down that humble pie, oh unpublished novelist. You’re a failure at the one dream you’ve ever had and now what will everyone on Facebook think of you?

Hard to ignore the ego sometimes, but the truth is that I’ve got to deal with what I’ve got to deal with: family, finances, health care…All that boring, unspecial stuff. I’m just like everyone else, after all.

I may not know squat about the fine art of letting go, but I gotta hope that there’s a fine art of letting IN new possibilities. That’s what I’m working on now.

Early Thanksgiving

My mother’s been calling more than usual. This morning she set aside her chirpy voice as she told me about another memory lapse, this time on the way to the Honda dealership. She’d started off in the right direction and then forgotten exactly where the dealership was located.

I’m thankful that she knew enough to turn around, go home, and call me. I tried to ease her anxiety by reminding her that she hadn’t taken the car to the dealership in years. Really, why would she remember that the dealership is located on the other side of the freeway?

Last week, I drove her to her CAT scan appointment. She hesitated with pen poised over the intake questionaire, her hand wavering as if she didn’t know how to fill in the blanks. She handed it over to me, and I walked her through the form. She couldn’t remember when she had her breast cancer lumpectomy, so I left a question mark.

I’m thankful her CAT scan returned normal for an 80-year-old woman. Whatever that means. Is there a bell curve for age-related brain atrophy?

After the CAT scan we went grocery shopping. She’d lost her appetite because of anxiety. In less than a week she gone from frail to barely there. “I go to the grocery store and just don’t know what to buy,” she said. So I walked the aisles with her. She forgot where to find the yogurt.

I’m thankful that with her usual depression-child obsessiveness, she nickeled and dimed every item she put in her grocery cart. For once, I wasn’t annoyed.

I’m also thankful that my mother doesn’t insist that she’s fine. She knows her mind is faltering. She can’t hide the desperation from her voice when she talks about it, which saddens me to no end. And scares me. But I’m glad she’s talking about it.

Most of all, I’m thankful for her sense of humor. On the way home from the grocery store, Mom mentioned a show she likes, “The Ghost Whisperer,” which is now rerunning over and over in syndication. “I think I’ve seen all the episodes,” she said. Pause. She laughed. “Well, with this short-term memory loss, I guess I’ll always enjoy them, won’t I?”

Stupid Human Trick of the Week

Oh how cute

Oh this is sweet, you think. Ms. Squirrel arriving for her almond bright and early on a Monday morning. You’ve got your coffee, and you’re ready to begin your work week with WIP development work. For once, the sun’s out, casting a burnished glow through turning leaves.

Ms. Squirrel takes her nut as usual, departs to store the nut for winter, reappears for another, departs, reappears, eats the third nut, and then sidles to the open screen door. What’s this, you think. You’re becoming quite friendly and tame indeed, Ms. Squirrel.

She’s just inside the house, standing up on her back legs, sniffing you. For a moment, sweet images of pet squirrels flit through your head.

The squirrel is insistent, and you’re thinking, how cute. And then you hear a crinkle of leaves, a scrabble, and a soft chitter. A head pops into view from the roof, checking you out. Then a second squirrel drops onto the balcony rail, and you realize that you have been feeding not one squirrel, but two.

Squirrelapalooza on my balcony

Double the fun, you think. What’s a few extra almonds?

But then, a strange thing happens: mother nature in action. How bizarre, you think. On MY balcony? You’re in denial as you watch the insistent squirrel chase away the newcomer. You realize that the newcomer is Ms. Squirrel, for real, and that the other one sports a big ol’ nut sack. You’re still holding out your hand, almond in place, when the nasty little effer bypasses the nut in favor of your finger.

He’s grabbed on good and tight, and at first you don’t know what’s happening. Then, the telltale jab of pain. Mother-effing-little-effer! You shake him loose, thinking, What is it about testosterone anyhow? Thinking, Dude, there’s plenty of almonds; you don’t need to go all Hannibal on my ass, and with a little bit of Cujo thrown in for good measure.

Bad squirrel

Finger throbbing, blood welling from the wound, you run to the sink. You’ve got the tap turned on high, and the water hits the blood, splattering it all over the sink and even onto your bathrobe. In your shock, you squeeze your index finger over and over in what you think is a snake-bite strategy — to squeeze out the squirrely toxins before they shoot through your bloodstream, latch onto your healthy blood cells, multiply, and turn into a nasty, infectious, frothy outbreak of something.

You can’t help but think of a few Stephen-King-esque story ideas. For example: What if Mr. Nut Sack liked the taste of human blood?

Mr. Nut Sack — that would be squirrel non grata to you, buddy.

Hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and a Band-Aid later, I’m fine. I’m wondering what the week has in store for me though. As I write this the female — doublecheck, yes, no nut sack — just ventured back and picked up the almond the male so rudely shunned.

Isn’t that typical — the female tidying up after the male!

Bookshelf Porn and Winter’s Little Pleasures

This is my kind of porn!

Lately, I’ve been thinking alot about pleasuring myself. And not in a “Debbie Does Dallas” kind of way. I’m talking about porn in the bigger sense of anything that revs up your pleasure centers.

Winter is coming, and I’m planning ahead to beat the blues with my own brand of porn. For example, bookshelves at right? I plan to add books to the colorful display. Books as art installation–love it!

The truth is, I’m prone to depression, so S.A.D. is about the last thing I need. To this end, I’m preparing like the squirrels who gather nuts for the winter. I’m gathering my nuts: my little pleasures for the cold weather. These include flannel sheets and Mexican sipping chocolate with cinnamon.

And prowling around with my new DSLR camera. Writing is what I do. Photography is my hobby, and I’ve neglected it for the past few years.

And finding new cafes in which to people watch and write. It also includes visiting my usual haunts and chatting with my coffeehouse friends.

And festooning my place with seasonal decorations — grinning jack-o-lantern gourds and spider candles at the moment — from now through the New Year.

And experimenting with new ways to wake up my creativity because winter can wreak havoc on my writing. For example, I bought a gynormous roll of signage paper. This morning I unrolled a section and went crazy clustering a short story idea. It was, simply put, fun.

And keeping a steady supply of (organic!) almonds for the squirrel that visits me each morning. She now takes them directly from my hand. She’s incredibly gentle about it too.

And coordinating new outfits with which I can wear my brightly colored knee-high and thigh-high socks.

And stocking up on red wine. I rarely drink alone, which is why I don’t keep much alcohol in the house, but seeing the bottles comforts me. Like that song by UB40, a holdover from my bad-ass partying days. (Yes, I had them: New York friends, you reading this?)

And buying L’Occitane lavender foaming bath and verbena foaming bath.

And many obvious things like maintaining an exercise routine and my social life…but, hey, on the grayest days it’s sometimes the tiniest pleasures that elevate a so-so day to a good day.

So, what little pleasures help you get through the winter?

If you’re interested in bookshelf porn, check out http://bookshelfporn.com/. I loves me some books on shelves, all kinds of shelves!

(And if you like my bookshelves, check out Design Within Reach at http://www.dwr.com/.)

View From the Writer’s Desk

I didn't stare out the window too much today.

Getting out of the house helped today. I’ve been moldering within the first 50 pages of a revision for a few weeks now.

Let me clear: This isn’t a revision of the genteel sort. This is a massive overhaul. This is a rewrite, a restructuring, an upheaval.

Just now I cleared my way through the first 50, and through the next ten pages. I realized that I was stuck-ish (I never admit to writer’s block) because I’d softened my protagonist too much. We’re irrational creatures, we humans, with contradictory impulses and emotions that coexist especially in times of stress and grief. Anger and sadness, resentment and guilt. Inner conflict, need I say more?

Over on Murderati, Stephen Jay Schwartz discussed writing tight. Because, officially, the manuscript isn’t a first draft, I’ve been caught up in writing as lean as possible. Oddly enough, his post got me thinking that I need to liberate the manuscript, which is to say, treat it as a first draft all over again. The truth is that I still don’t feel sure enough about the upheaval to spend the extra time it takes to write tight.

I’ll write in all my wordy and expansive glory, and revise tight later.

Cover Art and Costco

Which book shall I buy?

Entering Costco, I felt like a real American, a bonafide overspending, gluttonous, credit-card-maxing member of my birth country, ready to pledge my allegiance to all that promises to raise my self-esteem and my sense of entitlement.

Be honest, doesn’t your common sense and fiscal rectitude recede when you enter a Costco warehouse? If you’re like me, a neural ball of me-wantsa-everything starts to pulse, and you find yourself strolling up and down the aisles with your oversized shopping cart, itching to oversize your life with five years worth of trash bags and enough wrapping paper to cover your walls. I often peruse other people’s carts, wondering what fabulous object I’ve missed. Could be the latest Keurig coffeemaker, or the fake-Ugg boots, or the cutesy tabbed-style chopping boards. I kid you not. Check them out right here.

After awhile the florescent lights coupled with quantitudinous excess send me into the consumer’s equivalent of insulin shock. Today was a prime example. Last night my nifty space heater almost fried the house down. Since I’d bought it at Costco many moons ago, I decided, Yes, I need this one thing, this is legit, this is okay. To further my needy resolve to partake of the — eh hem — American dream, I invited my 80-year-old mother to accompany me. This may seem strange, but getting her out of the house and walking around was a good deed. Really. (I am serious about that if nothing else in this post.) She doesn’t eat much anymore, so I also insisted that we stop at every, and mean every, food sampling.

I found a space heater, all right, but I also found a light box, a pound of shrimp (with cocktail sauce), a Brita water pitcher, a mongo-sized bottle of Neutrogena body bath, a — never mind — needless to say, I also found a book. While my mom jotted down the titles of books to check out of the library, I found my eye drawn to one book. This was a case of cover art successfully sucking me in. I’d never heard of CEMETERY GIRL’s author, but that stark white cover with the creepy, creeping branches about to take over the face? Love it! And the title too.

So hats off to the cover artist who managed to catch my glazed and by-then-headachy attention.

View From the Writer’s Desk

Kale: stir fry with ginger, soy, and garlic?

View: a little on the “meh” side this week.

I spent so much time staring out the window that I rearranged the physical view in hopes that my mental view would change. All week long I faced my laptop, but nothing much happened. I’m not sure why. No excuses here, but it got me wondering why it is that some weeks my output flows, and then others it fizzles to a barely discernable trickle.

It’s the weirdest thing. Nothing changed this week. No stressors. Ah, but perhaps that’s it. No stressors! Through last week I was gung-ho to finish a revision for an agent. I was PUMPED. The revision was a beautiful thing, and I knew to the core of my physical being that I was improving the manuscript. It just felt good, you know what I mean? I sent it off one week ago.

Then, this week — fizzle-city. I re-read where I’d left off on another revision, and after the headiness of my previous effort, this revision felt flat. Good news: I think I figured out what’s not right about it, thus far, which is a huge part of the battle. And I did get words down on paper — I did. Just not so much is all.

But, okay, in a fit of frustration I did buy the decorative kale you see in the image, and I did set piggy beside that sickly lily, poor thing. I kept pondering how to cook up kale, however. I like kale okay, but, come on now, not that much.

As a friend wrote in an email message this morning about her own window-staring: Taking a break, it seems.

Apparently, the brain wants what it wants at times, and no amount of striving and self-flaggelation on my part is going to change its stubborn mind. Hey, Brain, vacation’s over come Monday! Uhm, okay, pretty please?