In Praise of Technology

I recently spent a month in Todos Santos, Baja Sur. In exchange for house/pet sitting, I got four weeks of solitude in a casita, during which I was able to work on a book project about Dr. Warren Borgquist. The prospect of leaving California for an extended time to write was exciting, but I also hated the thought of missing out on the active lives of my family, all of whom live nearby. Close proximity to my fifteen grandkids is a blessing I’m grateful for everyday, especially when I talk with friends whose families are scattered all over the world.

I had no idea the degree to which I’d be singing the praises of technology while on this trip, but I found that there were a gazillion ways to stay in touch while also working faithfully on my project.

I tutored and responded to the essays of two grandsons and two granddaughters, via Facetime and Google Docs. I watched videos of two granddaughters in their dance classes and viewed pictures of my swiftly growing 15-month old grandson. Toward the end of the trip, two videos arrived in iMessage of him learning to stand and then learning to walk while pushing a rolling toy. I watched my brother walk the Camino de Santiago compliments of a photo album on iCloud. I texted and emailed with family and friends, staying abreast of their exciting lives. I chatted on Facetime with Cindy several times a week and we texted one another all day long. I also consulted with my daughter-in-law via Facetime to get clarification on a medical procedure about which I was writing. And I remotely promoted a Writers Workshop that was scheduled to take place several days after I returned home.

At the same time I was writing my third book in Baja, the Kindle version of my first book, BetweenTwo Women, was published on Amazon. And of course, the work I was doing on the book could not have been accomplished without a computer and word processing while listening to MP3 files of some of the interviews I've conducted.

Though I’m a happy and relatively competent user of technology, this experience of maintaining wholesome communication with my loved ones while far away was new to me. I feel gratified to be a writer working in the 21 Century—one who can have her solitude and community too.

Second Book

My second book is out: The Right Sisters: Women Inventors Tell Their Stories. This was a collaborative project with my friend, inventor Julia Rhodes.

For me, it was tremendously satisfying to work on a project that celebrates women's ingenuity with a dear friend. Julia and I have a long history of supporting one another, helping each other to the next step . . . and the next. It also feels pretty wonderful to have in my hands two books that I authored.

If you'd like to buy the book, it is available online at Amazon or Barnes & Nobel or you can contact Julia through her KleenSlate Concepts website or give me a ring and I'll get you a copy.

Two Yellow Things and a Red One

Last night I dreamed about two yellow things and a red one.

I was busy in March, my life full of blog material though I wrote none. Actually I wrote many blogs in my head while driving, walking, washing dishes, going to sleep, and waking up. I still intend to publish them-- HERE-- right after . . .

. . . I finish a freelance project, plant strawberries in the Waldorf Kinder-Garden, go to a Sierra Hope Board Meeting, mow the lawn, fry chicken, pack for Disneyland, enjoy the Waldorf Rites of Spring Wild West Auction, attend an exclusive shopping event at Staples where I'll spend my gift cards and rewards card, and drive to Orange County to play with the Tippetts at Disneyland.

As soon as I get home I'll write those blogs and more.

Two nights ago, I dreamed that a large, joyful German Shepard demolished my computer as I slept.

Last night, I was an insomniac. When I finally fell asleep past 4am, I dreamed about two yellow things and a red one.

Writing a Book

I spent the last month finishing a book project. Twelve hours a day, day after day. I loved it! My back ached from sitting; my wrist ached from typing. My nights were filled with thoughts about the book to the point that I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or thinking. I'd wake at 3am or 4am and wish that 5am would come so I could get up (at a reasonable hour) and get back to work. Thirty marvelous days of writing. What a gift; what a privilege. This was the end of the project, during which I completed the last 75 pages or so.

But the project actually started years before when I had lunch with my friend Julia. The idea for The Right Sisters was hers. She came up with the title and she did tons of research before I ever got invovled. At lunch that day, I absorbed her enthusiasm like a plant collecting energy from the sun. The photosynthesis took eight years before that energy was fully transformed into a book.

When I think about it, the book project really started years before that lunch date, back when Julia and I first met and I reveled in her smile, in her joy of life, in her swinging blond hair and willingness to jump when I was merely tiptoeing . Way back in 1977, we started the partnership that would make a book thirty-three years later. We were the right sisters!

Thanks Julia, for being a part of my life, for shining your light on my creative life.

My Writing Comrades

This wonderful group of women is having a glorious time in Mendocino at a sweet little writing conference. We are working with seasoned novelists and poets, discovering all kinds of new things about our craft. We are also talking non-stop at meal time and as we walk from our motel to the conference site. Last night, we read at the Open Mic, splashing Fort Bragg with a Sonora presence. We walked out of the reading, patting each other on the back and feeling quite accomplished. One more day of camaraderie, with a gala dinner and keynote speaker tonight at Hill Top Inn in Mendocino looking over the Pacific Ocean. I'm fortunate, indeed, to have these wonderful women as my comrades in writing.

Writing Retreat-Fort Bragg

I'm taking a break. I've been writing since 6:30 this morning. Actually, I've been writing for 3 days from 6:30am to 10pm. My back and shoulders will tell you this is a bad idea. My brain and imagination will say it is glorious.

Here are some pictures of my little retreat site:
The table with my laptop where I am working;
The window I peer out when I can't think of the right word (though sometimes I look up and truly can't remember where I am because I've been so lost in the lives of the inventors I'm writing about);
The garden at the center of the motel complex where I stroll when my back and shoulders scream so loudly my brain can't get a word in edgewise.

Tonight my writing group arrives for the conference which starts tomorrow, so I'll be switching gears in a few hours. But for now I'll take a loop around the garden then go back to writing.

(The date setting is wrong on the camera. These were taken today:)

NaNoWriMo--Year 2

Around the world, National Novel Writing Month begins on November 1. NaNoWriMo, as it is called for short, is 10 years old, and this is my second year in joining the madness.

The goal is to write 50,000 words of the first draft of a novel. Chris Baty, who is founder of the event, cautions writers not to have a goal of writing beautiful prose. The idea is simply to give yourself free rein to get words on the page--1667 words a day to be exact IF you want to make the 50,000 word mark by November 30.

It's a blast! It's insanity! It's an awesome commitment that feels wonderful in part because of the Internet which maintains a connection between the 125,000 writers who take part in this challenge. The NaNoWriMo web site has forums, radio programs, interviews, and pep talks. Each writer has his/her own page where counters tabulate the number of words accumulated each day.

Last year I "won" NaNoWriMo which means I wrote the 50,000 words. I wrote the worst mystery novel ever, but I learned a lot about the genre and about myself as a writer. Two local friends joined me in the event, Arlyn, who had been in my writing group for years, and Annie, who had never written a word in a creative genre before. We started meeting once a week at Starbucks to clack away together on our laptops for a couple of hours. Such events are called Write-Ins by participants. That's where Charlene found us. A 3-year WriMo veteran, she introduced herself and soon joined our weekly contingency. On the last day of the month, we had a party to celebrate our awesome accomplishment with ice cream cake and balloons.

This year, we had a kick off Write-In at Starbucks. Charlene had bumped into 2 more writers, Sherie and Phil, who were eagerly awaiting the November event, so we were 6 strong on Saturday (7 if you count Miles who is Charlene's consultant and readily provides answers to obscure questions that any of us ask while in the throes of creativity). Annie didn't join this year, but Shelley, another writing group friend, took her place. Here we are in the 2nd hour of Saturday's Write-in. We all made the requisite 1667 words and most of us surpassed that number on the first day out. Stay tuned for updates.

Happy Anniversary Twilightme

One year ago on October 9, 2007, I started this blog with a post called Shakespeare TaDum, describing what I'd learned during a trip to Ashland OR at the Shakespeare Festival.

Amazingly, yesterday I was offered a free trip to Ashland exactly one year after writing that description. I had decided that this year that I couldn't afford the annual trip offered by the college, but I guess the universe has something else in mind, for I happened to be in exactly the right place at the right time yesterday to receive this offer.

I made a few phone calls to rearrange my plans for the next few days and last night I packed to take off for 5 days. I'll be seeing three Shakespeare plays, "Othello," "Midsummer Night's Dream," and "Comedy of Errors" plus two additional contemporary plays: "Our Town" and "View from the Bridge." (There is a sixth play that I'll miss because I have a date for a radio interview about my book on Thursday afternoon.) Also included in the trip is an actor's workshop, conversations with actors, a lecture on design, and a backstage tour. It's a cram- packed 5 days that was simply incredible last year.

To top it off, I've arragned to have coffee with a cyber friend and fellow author who lives in Ashland. I've never met her face-to-face, but I've read two of her books and she's given me great assistance with suggestions for book promotion. Now we meet . . .

I just printed the blog post from last year to read on the bus on the way to Ashland. I remember the post included creative goals that I hoped to accomplish following the trip and in response to all that I had learned. It will be fun to read the post and reflect on last year's trip and how I anticipated stimulating my creative life.

Happy Anniversary Twilightme!

Simultaneity

In 1997, my friend Christine and I decided to form a writers' group of two. We were both fledgling writers who recognized our mutual need for support and encouragement. We met every other week at the Pie Tin, often at 7am but sometimes a little later in the morning. We would read each other's work, do free-writes together, share books, or try out writing prompts we'd found. We enrolled in a correspondence course in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and read each other's pieces before sending them off.

After several years of meeting, Christine was writing a novel and I'd enrolled in an MFA program. We decided that we needed to expand our network, and we each invited another writer and so become a group of 4. When Arlyn and Joan joined us, we got more focused and formalized a very effective critique group protocol. Christine's commitment to her book-length project provided the motivation that I needed to step away from writing personal essays and start my own book.

To gain momentum on our book projects, Christine and I went away for 7 days in 2002 and stayed in a cabin at a rustic resort in Philo, CA. For the entire 7 days, we invoked a no-talking rule, except for during an evening check-in and our mid-day walk. We wanted to get lots of work done and we did! Christine finished the first draft of her novel that week and I transcribed about 10 audio-tapes for my book and completed an outline for the rest of my project.

Sometime after this, Christine moved to San Francisco and Joan had health issues that forced her to drop out of our group. Arlyn and I invited two more writing friends to the group, and I forged ahead on my book. Christine and I stayed in contact, talking occasionally on the phone or meeting for tea when she was in town. She had put her novel aside after taking a playwriting class and had begun work on a script. I was working on the third, then fourth, and finally the fifth revision of my book.

Then this summer a remarkable thing happened. The publication of my book, Between Two Women, coincided with the production of her play "Unforgettable." The weekend of my book launch at the Opera Hall, Christine's play was being produced at Black Bart Players Theater in Murphys. This was not a planned occurrence, though the simultaneity was undoubtedly inevitable.

Our writers' journeys are entwined in time and space. On one marvelous weekend, we shared the fear and elation of making our work public. We smiled with joy and a deep sense of accomplishment. Today we have a tea date to consider the next steps in our writing adventures.

Baker Station

I'm heading to Baker Station to co-teach a yoga/creative writing workshop entitled "Embodying the Flow." The setting is rustic and refreshing with towering pines and granite backdrop. This is a picture of the dormitory cabin where many of the participants stay. This year, I'm opting to camp out in the woods behind the station.

My co-teacher Cherie leads the yoga part in a little cabin that we call the "Ripening Room," while my venue is outside in what we call the Gathering Circle.

Combining body work with writing is not something we invented, but we think the opportunity to do this work in the incomparable Sierra Nevada is unique. In addition to a yoga hike, one of the exercises is focused on mindfully cutting and eating fruit. Here is a creation from last year. After eating the fruit, the next step is to take the juicy experience to the page and try to make it as marvelous in writing as it was in the doing.

We have great fun-- stretching, journaling, hiking, breathing deeply and eating well. Watch for a full report upon my return.

Air Quality

The smoke from a large number of wildland fires is playing havoc with my ridiculously fragile lungs. Over 300 fires started a week ago when we had lightening storms all over northern California. Soon there was a cloud of ghastly yellow smoke hanging over the upper part of the state. One of the fires threatened the housing division where Cindy's sister Sandie lives. In fact, one week later that fire is only 35% contained, and any sudden wind change could put the homes in jeopardy. While Sandie attends meetings about the safety of her home and watches flames lick the sky at night, I must stay indoors if I want to breathe evenly.

The smoke settles across the valley meadow where we live and hovers over the nearby reservoir. Even a short stint outside to water potted plants and empty the compost leaves me wheezing. I can't leave the bedroom window open at night because there is no fresh air to blow in. These lungs that I stretched and exercised as a kid by swimming seem to have lost their elasticity with age. I've become a person who must pay head when newscasters warn those with respiratory ailments to stay indoors because of poor air quality, though I admit this is the first time that I recognized myself in those alerts.

The upside is that I'm getting a lot of writing done waiting for the air to clear and the baby to arrive. Maybe the child knows better than to show his or her head in the muck that currently floats around here. I certainly have discovered the ill effects of peeking my head out the door, and my forced incarceration has effectively thwarted the procrastinator who always finds tasks to do in the yard when a writing deadline looms.

So by Saturday afternoon, I had finished the play review of South Pacific that is due Monday morning. Then I finished the novel I was reading (The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult which was OK but not something I'd recommend. If you want to read her stuff, read My Sister's Keeper). And we watched a sweet movie last night, one that Netflix recommended on the page that says "Since you liked [this movie] you might like [this movie.]" The title grabbed me: Evelyn. That's my mother's name. The blurb sounded good too: based on a true story, Evelyn follows a father's fight with the Irish Supreme Court to regain custody of his kids after his wife has left the family. The movie (along with pizza) was just the right reward for getting the review done early and staying inside all day. It was funny, well acted, and a happy commentary on beating the system and getting to right action.

There are sun beams on my desk this morning and the sky is pale white if not blue. I think I'll go take a sip of air and see how it feels.

ph

Philomath

There is a little town in northwest Oregon called Philomath. The word means lover of learning and is an apt description of the attitude I embraced on a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest with my friend Kathy. I already considered myself a philomath though I did not have the word in my vocabulary, but what was different about this trip was that I was not the one to steer the learning. Instead, new information came opportunistically and unexpectedly.

Unlike other trips I've made, Kathy made all the travel plans for this one which set the stage for many unexpected occurrences and encounters. From the moment we left her small housing development and she turned left when I expected her to turn right, I was confronted with the opportunity to let go and see what happens. Cindy would be the first to confirm that this is not the easiest thing for me to do, especially when it comes to being a passenger in a car. However, our mini-vacation to Yosemite had prepared me to "follow the leader" rather than be the leader. In Yosemite, Cindy led us on quest that was wonderfully rewarding, and so when I headed off with Kathy, I was better prepared to put my "control freak" in the back seat and hope for the best.

Though it is not possible to list all the unique experiences of this trip, here are the highlights of one of the most diverse trips I've ever taken:

• The shift in perspective began with lunch at a funky Mexican restaurant called Mayas in downtown Portland where I enjoyed a superb burrito ordered without beans—something that never occurred to me before I heard our friend Larry ordered his this way. The seasoning on the burrito was the delightfully liberally conversation at the meal, initiated when Larry described Barak Obama's visit to Portland and which continued down many avenues until we were discussing the merits of socialized medicine.
  
• At Courthouse Square Park, the city of Portland was preparing for the Rose Festival and had created an incredible Urban Meadow all across the square. We inadvertently ran into one of the designers of the Meadow who was putting on the finishing touches, and we got to hear his enthusiastic and passionate words on the process of this inspired creation. There were thousands of pots of wildflowers and veggies and trees all over the square, and he was simply glowing when he spoke about the butterflies and humming birds that had already visited this greenery in downtown Portland.
  

[Food, gardening, and liberal conversation were now established as themes for the trip]

• Larry lives in Corvallis, so we hopped into his economical Mazda (33 miles to the gallon) and headed south down Highway 99 instead of I5 to view miles of land used for agricultural purpose: lots of grapes and the world's center for hazelnut production. Once in Corvallis, we walked the streets as Larry is want to do and oooh'd and aahhh'd the Rhodies, azaleas, chain fern, lilacs, irises, ad nauseum—unbelievable lushness for two California wannabe gardeners. The most surprising sight, however, were incredible vegetable gardens grown in the 4-5 foot parkways between the sidewalk and the street. No fences (translation: no deer or rabbits) and no irrigation (translation: rain, rain, rain). We learned about "lasagna" beds which are how these plots are created: starting with a layer of cardboard and building upward with compost, dirt, manure, etc., right on top of existing grass and weeds. What a concept.
  
• The cultural part of the trip came next: including a big dose of literary delight. Larry took me to the Calyx offices where I had an eye-opening tour and visit with the editors and saw boxes of rejected submissions, knowing that my poems were in there somewhere. After that we went to Newport to visit my writing mentor, Lois Bunse, once a poet now transformed into the painter called Loie. The afternoon there was filled with an yummy backyard picnic, art galleries, a walk to the beach, a visit to the Sylvia Hotel (must see to appreciate), and a strange moment when refracted light from the glass middle of a metal sculpture flew upward into the clouds over the ocean to shine a triangular rainbow. WOW!! We had dinner near the beach in a strange little enclave that defies succinct description. The culminating cultural experience was a visit to the Oregon State University library near Larry's home where we visited the Linus Pauling special collection and saw many artifacts from his work including a chalkboard with his formulas still scrawled across the green space.
  
• Amtrack took us to Olympia where we arrived just in time to participate in friend Cy's weekly discussion group on the topic of "Menu for the Future." In two short hours, my head was filled with the possibilities of how to eat better and more simply out of our garden and from our immediate locality. If I could just put 2 of these ideas into action, I would be making progress toward reducing our carbon imprint (admittedly a concept that took on greater meaning for me during this trip). We shopped at the Farmer's Market the next day and bought greens and asparagus and local mushrooms and pork chops (locally raised and slaughtered and all those other good words about meat that I can't remember) and came home to communally prepare a marvelous dinner.
  
• Sightseeing on this trip was up Highway 101 with Puget Sound on one side and the Olympic Forest on the other—lots of rain and dark clouds and many stops at quaint little places, including a feed store where I talked to a self-published author who was promoting his novel about the Pacific Northwest. Great tips from this guy about book promotion. The final stop was at a roadside restaurant—one of those non-descript places with great food--for a lunch of fish and chips
• On the last day of our trip, we rode to Seattle in friend Noah's 1964 (or was it '68) Cadillac to go to a beauty show. There were 5 of us in the car and the two in the front were stylists whose commentary about hair products and hair color and tools like flat irons totally changed my understanding and appreciation of the cosmetology profession AND the cost of my haircuts. Kathy and I did a short stint at the hair show, compliments of Noah and Gina, which further expanded my perception of the industry and its complexity.
  
• Of course, one can't go to Seattle without going to Pike Street Market, but Kathy and I were tired and the Sunday crowd was too much, so we didn't last long but headed back to our fabulous digs at the Fairmont (compliments of Cy) for a nap before the dinner finale at the Red Fin—one of the best sushi dinners of my life.
  

We traveled all day Monday to get home, leaving the 58 degree temp in Seattle to arrive at 95 degrees in Sacramento. I was happy to shed the sweaters and coat I'd been wearing for 7 days, glad to be home from my philomathic vacation.

The Visit

About 15 years ago, I discovered the value of having a site where one could acknowledge and visit one's ancestors. I was at a week-long Writing Conference in Iowa, and mid-week we were given the afternoon off to do as we please. A fellow participant who had a car asked if I wanted to go with him to check out the surrounding country. We drove on back roads for several hours, stopping to look at various sites and that's how we discovered a very old and overgrown cemetery. We stayed there for a couple of hours, wading through knee high wildflowers and studying headstones. We sat beneath a giant old tree with dripping Spanish moss and wrote in our journals for a long time. That's when the desire hatched to have a place where I could visit my parents who had both passed on.

At the time, my dad's ashes were sitting on the shelf in my closet. I wrote in my journal that I wanted to put those ashes in a cemetery like the one in which I was sitting. It took some planning and help from my siblings, but we purchased a plot at Carter's Cemetery in Tuolumne and had two headstones made: one for my mom and one for my dad.

On the appointed day, Andy and I went to the place on his property where we had buried our mom's ashes. We wanted to transport what remained of her ashes to the cemetery. We dug in the dirt beneath the rhododendren bushes and found the metal piece that was placed in her casket before it was put in the crematorium, so we knew we had what we wanted. Then we went to the cemetery and settled our parents in their new resting places.

Each year on my birthday, I visit the memorial markers for my parents at Carter's Cemetery. It's the sweetest cemetery, and I like telling my parents about all that has happened in my life since I last visited.

2 More Movies

Late last year, I found a list of movies that every writer should see in The Writer magazine. They were each about writers and their creative process and how their personal situations influenced their craft. Some were about real people and others were fictional. We rented most of those movies and I wrote about them here and here and here. I'm expanding that list with two movies we just saw: Starting out in the Evening and Nim's Island.

Starting Out in Evening is an Independent film about Leonard Schiller, an aging novelist (Frank Langella), who has been working on his 4^th novel for 10 years. He's basically blocked, stuck in more ways than just as a writer. Enter Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) a graduate student who is writing her thesis about him. The meeting/collision of generations and genders rendered by these two actors is terrific. I want Heather Wolfe's insightfulness and forthrightness. I want Schiller's commitment and fortitude. A parallel story about Schiller's daughter Ariel played by one of my favorite actors Lili Taylor adds dimension to the story.

Nim's Island is mainstream with Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin. Cindy loves Foster and I'm a fan of Breslin who is a great child actor (Little Miss Sunshine and the Ultimate Gift are examples of other films she's done). I saw the previews of this movie and was attracted by the fluff. I admit to enjoying light comedy with silly adventure and a sappy ending. But I didn't know the movie was about a writer. In a very playful way it explores a conundrum of fiction writing, i.e. the way characters and life braid until what's real and what is imagination get tangled in fantastic ways. I doubt if some of my more highbrow friends would care for this movie, but I love the fantasy and the way it took me out of myself into the giggles. (Aside: Cindy and I used a Christmas gift certificate to see this movie last night. We were the only ones in the theater, a unique experience we took full advantage of by talking out loud and putting our feet up on the chairs in front of us.)

Both movies contrast youthful exuberance with the stickiness, when growing older, to things that inhibit joy.

ph

Write Work

This week I've been focused on my writing work. The variety is great but as with everything, I bump into annoying parts of myself. Like the journalistic work I'm doing right now requires that I conduct a lot of phone interviews. I intensely dislike making phone calls. I feel like the phone is the most intrusive invention ever made. You never know what is happening in the life of the person whom you are calling. I actually breathe a sigh of relief when I get an answering machine because then I can state my business and the person can call me back at his/her convenience. The only problem is that much of the time I don't get a call back which means I have to call again. SIGH . . . and I'm back to dread of dialing. So I've told Cindy to shoot me if I ever accept another assignment like this one that requires beaucoup calls.

Another annoying thing about me is procrastination. Sure, I do reasonably good work under pressure but wouldn't it be easier if I did the work according to a schedule? Oh, I plan out the work in nice tidy increments. I just don't stick to the plan, so that means that when I finally get to work, time is short and the task becomes all-consuming.

Then there is the fact that I think I can do things I'm untrained for and have no experience with. That ups the ante considerably as I scramble to research and learn while trying to complete a project on time. The part of me that is SO certain she "knows" simply does not show up when it's time to do the job, and so the worker bee loses sleep over how to get the job done, all the while thinking up creative excuses for why something is taking longer than expected.

Come to think of it, all three jobs I'm working on this week fit into that category. Who is it who thinks she knows? Will she please step off the bus and let me ride leisurely to the beach or somewhere else relaxing?

ph

My Writing Group

In 1990, I overheard a colleague at work refer to himself as a poet. It was one of those earthshaking moments for me. I knew this fellow well and I knew that he wrote poetry-- good poetry-- for fun. When I heard him call himself a poet, I understood that I could call myself a writer. I think at that moment, I birthed not only the writer part of me, but I also established that I need a community to support my writing. I needed to regularly associate with others who were also writing in order to validate my efforts.

From that moment on, I sought a writing group. At first, I went to writing classes. Then I invited friends who were writers to meet regularly to share writing work. Over the years, I've been in many groups, some of which have last only 2 or 3 months and one that lasted almost 6 years. For 3 years, I was a member of a group of 2. At other times, I have been in groups of 4 to 7. While in graduate school, I worked in online groups of as many as 12. I have a new group that is only 2 months old. Some of the members I've worked with before and some are new writing friends.

The thing is this: the 7 women in this group are smart and generous. Time with them infuses me with delight and inspiration. Reading their work is awesome—the tender places they visit with words, the hilarious and poignant voices they record, the colorful scenes they paint. WOW! How lucky I feel to be among the first to read their work. Each of these writers shows me something new and marvelous about craft. Each gives me permission to stretch beyond where I currently sit as a writer.

And when they comment on my work, I am challenged to work harder to make my words say what I mean; I am thankful for their astute observations. I am a writer who needs a community to push and cajole me. I need my writing group's applause, and I need their wise nudges.

17 Syllables

I found this cool blog that has a page called sentences. The introduction to the page is a weird comment on the 17 syllable American sentence that I didn't really understand, but I love the sentences the blogger wrote. (The blog is called The Polka Dot Witch Blog if you want to go take a look.)

I want to write 17 syllable sentences. Here I go:

Weekend chores like car washing, laundry, and taxes are necessary.

Deer beware: 5 roses are transplanted behind a fence; 3 to go.

Ashley's cedar tree is mulched with leaf and bark; her headstone is in place.

Two ravens waddled and flirted in the parking lot at 6 am.

If the sentences sound Haiku-like, that's because haiku is also 17 syllables: 5+7+5=17.

ph

Gifts

As I mention in an earlier post, I have directed most of my pre-Christmas preparations to considering and planning my freelance business rather than shopping and baking. This past week, my mind has been overwhelmed with ideas I'm reading on freelance writers' blogs. I've spent several sleepless nights sitting before the blue glow of my computer screen, wrapped in my fuzzy cape with a steaming cup of licorice tea cupped in my hands. I have easily spent 2-3 hours of a dark winter night, perusing blog pages, clicking through back entries to follow particularly informative threads. Oblivious to the cold chill in the air, I was enthralled and happy. Of course by day I was depleted and fumbling when it came to assisting Cindy with the task list of holiday preparations. I asked for the list, and I've tried valiantly to work it, but my mind has been lost in day dreaming about my business.

One thing I realized was that my business needed a name. Each time I thought of a possibility, I would drop what I was doing and rush to the computer to Google it, checking to see if the name was in use elsewhere, and in most case, YES, some other brilliant mind had already grabbed the ideas that were popping into my head. So I wrote to family and friends, gave them a little background, and asked for their thoughts on business names. And in the spirit of the season, I have been gifted with some true gems. Among my favorites are "All Write" and "Write Brain." What's most amazing to me is that folks have taken my request to heart and sent many terrific possibilities. My writer friend Mic, however, is the wisest reindeer of them all in guiding my quest. Here is a piece of her message:

When Kath develops a concept for a commercial project (i.e. when someone is creating a business identity), she asks them to create a list of words that describe what they want people to know about them, without necessarily using those words, like "reliable" or "creative" or "incisive" for instance. When a person begins to create such a list, they begin to form a conceptual framework that helps them know the quality and parameters of the work they wish to advertise. Often out of that process comes a business name or shift in name, or mission statement, or images and colors, etc.

Mic followed this tantalizing tidbit with a list of questions for me to think about:

• What subjects do I want to research and write about?
  
• What subjects are not suitable for me?
  
• Who and what would I want my writing to support or not support?
  
• Who do I want to write for—audience and employer?
  
• How will the genre of creative nonfiction look for me?
  
• What are my intellectual, artistic, spiritual, and emotional interests?
  
• What intrigues me and will bring out the best in me as a writer and person?
  

Oh my goodness, such wonderful questions to feed my already overfull brain. I can't resist biting into this gift anymore than I can resist grabbing one of Cindy's warm chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven.

Stay tuned for the eventual unwrapping of my business identity. Meanwhile enjoy your holiday preparations in whatever shape or color or way they emerge.

ph

A Business Plan

Yesterday, I spent a good deal of time organizing a slew of material that I've been collecting related to developing a freelance writing business. I want to earn money with my writing, and Cindy (the household bookkeeper) tells me it would be terrific if I could plump up my retirement income. I have this gig with the local newspaper, writing play reviews and an occasional feature article. I think they would print more feature pieces if I submitted them, which reinforces the fact that I have to make writing the focus of each day, like I did with NaNoWriMo and when I was writing my book. To that end, my goal for the 2008 is to approach freelancing like a business with time dedicated to both development AND WRITING.

For the past several months, I've been researching and accumulating things related to freelancing, like notes from magazines, books, blogs, and radio programs as well as a good-sized stack of writer's guidelines from publications to which I'd like to submit my work. Organizing the guidelines was easy because they fell into neat categories of interest: teaching and learning, family, gardening, writing, book and theater reviews, gay and lesbian, interfaith/spirituality, and a category I called "off-the-wall." Organizing my notes was less easy. Though I have managed to collect my notes in the same general vicinity, their relevance to the project seems scattered. I needed to make sense of them and then to make it all useful.

And so the list-maker arrived to use the handy-dandy bullets of word-processing and this ready-made venue for positing the vagaries of my collected notes. I'm allowing myself one line summaries of each page or so of notes.

• Create a web page that is tightly organized and allows a potential editor to quickly discern that I'm well-established as a writer (in and out in 2 minutes).
  
• The pitch needs to be entertaining, enticing, descriptive, and succinct.
  
• Ghostwriting is lucrative if you have the ability to put your ego aside.
  
• Make a list of 12 subjects/topics about which I want to write.
  
• Create a schedule that divides time between writing and self-promotion.
  
• Make time for literary projects, especially if that is my source of writerly inspiration.
  
• Study the publications for which I want to write; listen for tone and discover idiosyncratic styles.
  
• A writer never retires.
  
• The road to hell is paved with unfinished manuscripts.
  
• Few writers have the appetite to be truly dangerous or daring.
  
• Spice up bland topics with humor, a current event hook, or a self-interest angle.
  
• The right market for my work may lie waiting in the library's collection of magazines.
  
• Keep a running list of ideas and don't save an idea for a better day or a better offer. Write it NOW!
  
• Recycle work—reframe pieces for different publications.
  
• Fail and fail and fail again but don't stop; a successful free-lancer perseveres.
  

Well there you go, Patricia. That all makes sense. Now just do it!!!

The Real Thing

In 1967 while in college, I spent a week babysitting for four kids. After putting the kids to bed the first night, I found a book on the couple's bookshelf that I'd heard about, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. For the next five evenings, I'd put the kids to bed and read until after midnight. I was so terrified reading this book that one night I locked myself in the upstairs bathroom after making sure that every door and window downstairs was locked first. I'd never read anything like In Cold Blood which was a non-fiction novel, one of the first or maybe the first.

Capote's book made him famous and some believe that in writing it, he "invented" a genre. Sometimes called literary journalism and at other times called creative non-fiction or the literature of reality, this genre combines heavy research with unapologetic subjectivity to create a powerful read. Other examples that fall into this category include: The Right Stuff, Hiroshima, Honor Thy Father, and Nine Parts of Desire. Since reading Capote's book I've been fascinated by non-fiction stories, so much so that when I did my MFA, I concentrated in the genre of creative non-fiction.

In the last 30 years, books and films about true events and real people have become popular. Last night, we watched Capote which is a film adaptation of a biography about Truman Capote. Actually the film is a slice of his life, concentrating on the four years during which he researched and wrote In Cold Blood. The film is a superb character study with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote. His portrayal is thought provoking, disturbing, funny, and finely wrought. In writing this screenplay, Dan Futterman has joined others in contributing to the genre Capote is said to have invented.

Capote was another one of the films I found listed in Writer Magazine as being among those every writer should watch. I'm sure glad I didn't miss it. After spending a month writing fiction in the NaNoWriMo event, this movie brought me back to my first love in writing—subjective authenticity—exploring a subject to connect with a strand of thinking that floats untethered in me like the silvery wisp of a spider's web. I suppose many writers find this wisp when writing fiction, but for me, it's the real thing that tickles my fancy.