Purple Houses

Waukesha, WI

2011-12-29T09:36:00.000-06:00

It's a biz (Foxie's Hair Salon) but it still counts.

Here's my heart

2011-12-22T09:03:00.001-06:00

A week for finding treasures: Giorgio Moroder's restored version of the silent film "Metropolis," originally released in 1927, available again. Morodor released his version in 1984, with a different, contemporary soundtrack. I first saw it with a bunch of my high school friends in someone's dark rec room and have been looking for it since. When I got my first DVD player I ordered the film online and was disappointed to discover it wasn't the one with the Pat Benatar soundtrack. (Also features Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Loverboy, et al.) Like I told my (one) film student: It's weird, but it works. This is why I think it does: The 1980s and the 1920s have stylistic and economic parallels. Art deco design, big rhinestone jewelry, etc. The overmade actors in the silent Metropolis resemble 80s glam rockers. Their exaggerated expressions wouldn't seem out of place in the early years of MTV, and, in fact, this is what the film plays like -- an extended music video, complete with Devo-like workmen on "the machine." The story is a commentary on the decadence of the rich and exploitation of the working class (cough, cough). It's Working Girl meets Mr. Roboto. The crazy inventor looks a little like Judd Nelson. I'd go on, but I'm gonna go watch it again.

Dreamscape

2011-12-21T14:36:00.000-06:00

Drove up north this week to look for snowy owls, a rarity here. Sometimes they show up, though, depending on what's happening with the lemming population in the Arctic (either not enough or too many, depending on who you talk to). Indeed they were hanging out, these treasure birds with haunting yellow eyes. Sometimes they roost in my dreams. Never saw one in the wild, until Sunday. They're elusive and my little Fuji didn't have the zoom to pull them in close enough. But this is frigid Green Bay, which maybe for the owls looks a little like home.

The Butt (erfly) Effect

2011-12-19T19:33:00.000-06:00

I found this non-fiction piece while looking for a story to share with my friends over at Black Coffee Fiction.... thought I'd share, finally. (I wrote it, planned to look at it again later and edit, and then forgot about it...) Anyway, it was written last year during the AWP conference in Denver. Been planning my trip to next year's conference in Chicago so I guess it's still somewhat timely. So it goes:

I didn’t notice until I leaned over to pull something out of my backpack and there it was, squeezing out of the seat in front of me. We’re not talking about a coin slot. This was beyond clever euphemism, it was beyond plumber jokes, it was simply a surprisingly lengthy and hairy butt crack. Whatever the latest conference speaker was saying was gone, lost in the dark caverns of this untamed crevasse.

I wondered how far down in there my pen would stick if I let it drop, or how quickly he would notice, and whether the pen would catch on the back of the seat if he stood up suddenly, and what kind of damage that would do. Couldn’t he feel the air down there? Couldn’t he feel his boxer shorts – and yes, indeed, they were boxers, red and blue plaid, to be exact – resting at some point far below the threshold of good taste? What did you do in a situation like this? It wasn’t like seeing someone with spinach caught in their teeth. What do you say: Excuse me, sir, but your pants seem to be elastically challenged? Excuse me, sir, but I didn’t realize it was already time for the quarter moon. Excuse me, sir, it’s not that your barn door is open, but I’m afraid that someone has knocked out the back wall with a bulldozer.

While gazing at the floor to avoid the view in front of me I noticed under the seat, on the floor, looking lost – a cell phone. Was it his? It would make sense that this slippery tool had lost its grip inside uberhorizontal pockets. The phone lit up briefly, possibly a text message from his mother reminding him to please pull up his pants, there were ladies present. Would he notice his phone missing? Should I tap him on his shoulder and ask him if the phone was his? If he bent to reach for it I feared we’d not only have a quarter moon but a full one. If I bent to reach for it I might be sucked into the cavern. My proximity to the void was already unbearable and possibly unhealthy.

Why was it my week to sit next to the freaks? I’d already had one guy who spent an entire session running his fingers through his thin hair and flicking his fingers in my direction. I’m wearing black, you dolt, I wanted to say, your dandruff will show. At another session a young girl came late, asked me to repeat everything the speaker just said, and, not hearing, asked me to repeat it again, and then reverted to reading my notebook and copying everything down.

And now Mr. Butt Crack.

I really needed to get out of there but couldn’t do so without causing a major disturbance. In the absence of flight I needed – what? Altoids? Lip gloss? With gymnastic care, I carefully lifted my backpack to my lap, rooted around for I don’t know what.

My fingers bumped against my digital camera. I glanced again at the crack. Back at my camera.

Tempting, to document this monstrosity to prove to my friends that I was there and that it was as bad as I said. A better idea, I decided, would be to pick up the phone from the floor and use his own phone to take a picture of his own butt crack. Wouldn’t that be a stitch? And then program the phone to show the crack picture every time he got a call from his girlfriend. But really I only like to think that I’m that clever and mean and of course wouldn’t do it, and didn’t even think of what my friends later suggested, which was to send the photo to everyone in his phone book. And of course I worried that he’d get up and leave without his phone, with or without the crack picture, and then I got annoyed and debated whether or not it was really my responsibility to tell him his phone was on the floor just because I happened to see it, and why did I always have to be the frigging hero. Especially when I had to endure his paragon of human ugliness, this blunt symbol of vulnerability and filth and juvenile humor, and was distracted from the conference for which I had paid and traveled and suffered insomnia, and now this image will be my memory instead of whatever stunning morsels of insight and advice that I had just missed and might very well have made the difference between my own success and failure. Thank you, Mr. Butt Crack, for destroying my future.

In the end (so to speak) the man eventually pulled up his pants and found his phone, leaving the room happily with no notion of the drama he’d induced. It wasn’t exactly like an insect flapping its wings and changing the course of history, but you get the idea.

Has The Future Arrived?

2011-12-06T15:06:00.000-06:00

... Title of a message in my Inbox this morning, courtesy of Netflix, checking to see whether I've received the indy drama "The Future." (I don't know, Netflix, I suppose it arrives every moment...I can't answer these kinds of questions before I've had my coffee.)

The late show

2011-11-27T16:52:00.000-06:00

For the Twihards

2011-11-18T11:05:00.000-06:00

Undoubtedly by this morning lots of devoted twihards have already seen some midnight showing of "Breaking Dawn: Part I." Completed my MFA program at a small college on the Olympic Peninsula, home of the world's most popular vampires and werewolves. Last year I took a graduation trip up the coast with a good friend, who dragged me (yep, that's my story) to the real-life town depicted in the books. The savvy business and community leaders in Forks have capitalized on the series' popularity, so much so that the remote small town has become something of a Twilight vortex. A Twilight Twilight Zone. (Seriously, it's a little weird. There are only so many Edward cutouts a person can handle.) The Quileute Nation down the road in La Push is also in on the fun but has taken a decidedly more low-key approach -- a sign that reads "No Vampires Beyond This Point," a coffee hut named after Jacob, and, on one convenience store cash register -- two bags of "werewolf hair," one marked "Jacob" and the other "Jacob's Cousin." The beaches are among the most beautiful in the world. (Below, top photo). But it's still an odd phenomenon, this worldwide mass pilgrimage to these tiny towns -- what do they hope to see, really? But I guess people want to feel closer to something that's touched them somehow. I get that. The woods and the bottom two photographs are on Makah tribal land north of La Push at Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point of the contiguous United States.

...I went there because of a post card.

Real life angry bird

2011-11-16T09:42:00.001-06:00

Terrible picture, but the bird deserves a shout-out for his sheer determination. Spent a lovely night in a B&B farm cottage in southwestern Wisconsin ... and a puzzling morning trying to find the source of a weird banging noise, which turned out to be this cardinal trying to bust through a window. When he saw me through the glass he looked at me like, "You're taking my picture? Open the #*&ing window!" I wrote a thank you email to the B&B and said I hoped the bird had given up by now. They said he'd been trying to break in for the past five years. Kind of sad and inspiring at the same time.

So it begins...

2011-11-10T07:57:00.000-06:00

Yesterday.

A place to pray for miracles

2011-11-08T08:17:00.000-06:00

A sunny post for a rainy day. A few weeks ago at the stunning Holy Hill, a historical basilica that stands -- well, on a hill. Overlooks the landscape like Switzerland. Love the guy at the bottom left on the cell phone: "Hello, God? Are you there? It's me, Stanley." Note the circular windows in the tower... no glass, no nothing... just a staircase with a railing. Holy vertigo, batman.

Night stop

2011-11-06T10:11:00.000-06:00

Big trees fall

2011-11-05T07:36:00.000-05:00

From Cathedral Pines, a stand of original hemlock and white/red pines in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Wisconsin. Felt like Little California. This what Wisconsin must've looked like a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, a patch of what was. Occupying my mind now: the twin trees that fell at Sequoia National Forest. I haven't been there but visited the redwoods along the coast, staring up the length of their trunks, trying to imagine how long they'd stood. Older than Jesus, some of them, a reference that's often employed but impossible to grasp. Practically immortal, supernatural. I tried to imagine standing there for thousands of years, quiet. Do they sense it, when one falls, after they've stood there so long together? Do they feel the vibration and know? What does it feel like to fall to the earth from that height, expanse, depth? What is it like when forever stops?

Reflecting pool

2011-11-04T09:52:00.000-05:00

Someone's prince charming?

2011-11-03T08:11:00.002-05:00

We'll never know...

Morning

2011-11-02T12:42:00.000-05:00

Fog cover on Saturday morning. Not great for driving but it makes everything softer, quieter.
The photo below is from last year; a similar morning with changing light -- as the sun rises everything is yellow until the fog eventually burns off. Demise of a fallen cloud.

Demon derby

2011-11-01T08:07:00.001-05:00

From Saturday night's "Monsterz Brawl". Last time I was there they tried to recruit me and my friends. I totally would do it but I have this thing about activities that could get my nose broken...

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T09:35:00.004-05:00

Fire dancer

2011-10-30T11:34:00.001-05:00

At Bay View's Pumpkin Pavilion last weekend... witchy, pagan fire dancers under an autumn tree ... I'm a little weirded out by the purple light in the scary dancer-immolation photo. It showed up in a few others. Probably a delayed effect from the moving fire and slow shutter speed. Or not...

Pumpkin pavilion

2011-10-30T10:31:00.000-05:00

From last weekend's Pumpkin Pavilion in Humboldt Park, Milwaukee. Residents of Bay View (the coolest, hippest neighborhood) carved hundreds of jack-o-lanterns for the event, which also included fire dancers (photos to come).

Some things stay the same

2011-10-28T12:53:00.002-05:00

Love the motion in this shot. Everything is in motion – my youngest cousin (swinging, yes, but also beginning the rapid change from childhood to adulthood). The season, the day. I was losing sun quickly, and I was losing battery power. Sometimes my camera gives me some interesting gifts when it’s running out of juice. Though things are in flux in this picture there are elements that remain the same: The cabin (in northern Wisconsin) has been there a long time – part of my aunt’s family history. The tree has been there a long time, as has the river directly behind me. The seasons will change – that’s a constant – and children will grow and maybe retain or regain their sense of joy in the moment. The memories will remain.

Transition

2011-10-28T11:52:00.001-05:00

A few changes. New look. Maybe a new focus. After all, Purple Houses has been my "journal of creative evolution" -- and, of course, evolution is a fundamental component of creativity. I preach to my beginning bloggers that regular posting is important -- clearly, I'm not following my own advice, and clearly, that's an indicator that something needs to change.

So what's the deal? I'm still writing and working on getting published and balancing the things I want to do with the things I have to do, blah blah blah. Not much else to say about that.

But I'm taking a whole lot of pictures. Maybe, I thought, I have more to say visually right now. I think the stories will come with the images...

Northwoods drive

2011-09-28T11:13:00.001-05:00

Not sure why it took me so long to take a drive up north ... and the weird vortex of weather circling over Wisconsin this weekend gave it the perfect rainy autumn gloom. It was a weekend of reunions -- with friends and with a place that I often longed to leave but also loved to explore on endless drives. I found stories in its dirt roads and expansive woods, cleared my head under the muted cover of impenetrable clouds.

Steamy without the romance

2011-08-03T11:39:00.005-05:00

Been trapped inside the house almost like winter -- stepping outside is like breathing soup. Glasses and camera lenses fog up immediately. Plus we've had a deer fly infestation for the past month -- they swarm, land in our hair and bite in the time it takes to walk from the house to the car. Both annoying and a danger -- they carry Tularemia, caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis, a potential bioterrorism agent, according to PubMed Health.

Miserable.

No more bull$%@#

2011-08-01T08:49:00.009-05:00

Wow, time flies. Mostly there's not much to report -- and not much writing done. Back to juggling and piecing together an income, including by unloading some stuff on Ebay. As a child I amassed a collection of Breyer horses -- inexplicably among the sleek and stately equine models, one anatomically correct Hereford bull. Maybe I liked his benign expression. Anyway, he was the first to go. I received a lovely follow-up note from his buyer, who says he is the biggest bull in her herd. Better than the inside of a dusty box. I'm keeping my favorites but so far have made $60 on three models.

And teaching. And editing. And writing for a magazine. And applying for jobs. I'm determined to keep one day a week completely open for writing; that's worked once in the past three weeks. At least I got ahead during my stay at the writers' colonies...

Do it for Johnny, man

2011-06-21T14:06:00.005-05:00

Was kept up late by Rob Lowe’s memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, a fascinating read full of celestial elbow-rubbing and incredible encounters, particularly engrossing for a film-loving Gen-Xer who grew up watching the Brat Pack. A favorite moment: Rob Lowe going over to his girlfriend Jennifer’s house to watch his first after-school special (“Schoolboy Father”) and ending up watching with his girlfriend’s father – Cary Grant.

And reading about The Outsiders – a film that launched the careers of pretty much everyone who starred, including a pre-Risky Business Tom Cruise and pre-Karate Kid Ralph Macchio. Lowe (who played the dashing Sodapop Curtis) was bitterly disappointed when his character’s key scenes were cut from the opening and close of the film; they were later restored in a new edition of the film. He was right – they made a good movie better and kept it truer to S.E. Hinton’s novel. Lowe’s book and rewatching The Outsiders resulted in a snowball of nostalgia and I’ve been rolling with it, absorbed in the new edition of the film and its special features (“Watch The Outsiders with the Greasers and a Soc!”). My Netflix list is crammed with 80s films – an ongoing obsession that seemed to kickstart while I was on retreat in Arkansas, diving into YA mode. I’m currently perusing the Matt Dillon repertoire, including a revisit of My Bodyguard, which also features a heartbreakingly adorable Joan Cusack.

Trying to remember when and under what circumstances I first read The Outsiders – I’m guessing Junior High English class. I’ve got a worn copy somewhere in my storage unit in California and I’m feeling lonely for it now. The film was pivotal and so was the book, offering a new definition of teen novels by venturing into territory usually reserved for gritty adult dramas. The book ends in hopefulness but not happiness. I’ve also rarely encountered another book that is so full of love – between the brothers, between Ponyboy and Johnny, between Johnny and Dallas – and that’s what made it so compelling for me. Rob Lowe got that about the story, about his character, and wrote in his book about developing those relationships on- and off-screen. It’s fascinating to read Lowe’s story from the perspective of a young man on the precipice of his future, something he shared with the characters of The Outsiders. Makes me wonder where they would have ended up, what twists and foibles they would have encountered. Lowe said in the film commentary that he asked S.E. Hinton what became of Sodapop, and she responded that Sodapop went to Vietnam and died there. The answer depressed me for the rest of the night. But it makes sense, and characters often dictate to authors what happens to them, not the other way around. I like that Lowe cared enough to ask, and that he shared his story about this transitional and significant moment in film history.

Demon seeking representation

2011-06-15T10:28:00.003-05:00

A friend shared this great link -- one of those things I wish I'd written myself, all about the frustrations of trying to get published.

Appleton, WI

2011-05-28T12:48:00.002-05:00

Concentration

2011-05-22T13:48:00.014-05:00

The combination of isolation and oceanscape at Centrum was a creative powderkeg -- about 100 pages written on a new novel. It's a total mess of course but now I have something solid to shape. A sandcastle to knock down, rebuild.

Sun halo: Friday, May 13, 2011

2011-05-18T17:16:00.015-05:00

The large photos are unaltered; smaller ones, played with color.

Space and time

2011-05-11T10:55:00.003-05:00

My writing room at Centrum.

The road

2011-05-07T11:08:00.000-05:00

The care and feeding of writers in captivity*

2011-05-03T19:44:00.006-05:00

*or Why Writers Colonies Are So Important

Once in a while I have a hard time explaining what the big deal is about writers colonies, why we need a special place to go to write. As one writer said one night during dinner at Dairy Hollow -- People say, can't you just sit down and write?

Sometimes. No. Maybe.

And then your mom calls or the dog needs walking or someone has Just One Question. And then what might have been an idea dissipates into nothing, or a character stops talking, and work is lost.

Writer's colonies give writers the psychic space and time needed to let things happen creatively. It's a mysterious process, no doubt. When people talk to writers they want to know where ideas come from. You can talk about sources of inspiration and how to develop characters and plot, but really, we don't know either. We just know it happens, and it often happens in the quiet. We get a lot of work done by staring out the window. In a way, writing is like trying to read the future -- to hear something that isn't there and hasn't happened yet. Quiet space to listen is vital.

At the same time, we need a certain kind of noise. We're shameless eavesdroppers, we writers. When we get out of our element, we hear different kinds of conversations. We meet new people and ask questions, too, and are given the gift of information. Each new piece is a seed.

We get visual noise, too, the details of somewhere else. We hear noises that aren't there, and if we listen hard enough sometimes we hear the voices of ghosts.

There's also this: We need the company of other writers, to be with others who understand the peculiar vulnerabilities, insecurities and joys of being a writer. To know sometimes we share artistic quirks. Isn't it funny, another writer said one night, how we meet these great people during dinner and then we all go back to our rooms to be alone? Yes. And we get that.

Writer's colonies get that, too. One afternoon I visited a big cat refuge near Eureka Springs, watching the biologists feeding pieces of chicken to the tigers and lions. One night at dinner another writer and I found a whole chicken waiting for us on the table.

Just feed us and let us do our thing. They know.

Why road trips are so great: A photo montage

2011-04-28T10:13:00.025-05:00

Sunset photos: Just ahead of the storm system that produced the St. Louis tornado. Lightning all around me until I reached the hotel, barely beat the rain. Power went out in my room briefly when the storms hit.
Purple Martin Inn: A random stop in Griggsville, Ill. which claims to be the purple martin capital of the world. The birds had just migrated back to town in the previous week.
Kitty photo and crepes: A visit to a new friend's home.
Zombie mannequin: Outside a junk shop in Arkansas.
Mark Twain Hotel: Hannibal, Mo, -- boyhood home of the famous author.
Butterfly/feet: A blue morpho at the Butterfly Palace in Branson, Mo.

Ghost hunting

2011-04-26T09:23:00.002-05:00

Experienced two hotel ghost tours during my stay in Arkansas, one at the Basin Park and another at the Crescent, which includes a trip to the basement morgue. Kept me awake with the lights on, haunted by stories of a sociopathic "doctor" who preyed on the sick and dying. The Basin Park's stories are less ominous though more weird -- the ghost of a talking lion (yep) and a cowboy who walks through walls searching for his horse. Some guests reported seeing an entire ballroom filled with dancers in the middle of the night. It's not just the hotels -- everyone seems to have a story here.

I love a book sale

2011-04-15T13:13:00.009-05:00

Perused a library book sale with a new writer friend from the colony and found some treasures -- mine included Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood and an encyclopedia of Golden Years movie stars. This grotesque YA book cover was worth a photo but I left the book behind -- don't need any help with nightmares. Still jittery from one involving the famed haunted Crescent Hotel, which is just a little too close to the colony. (Thank you very much, Stephen King and Ghost Hunters.) Good stuff for ghostie stories.

Hey, look what I found

2011-04-11T17:32:00.001-05:00

And bonus, it's a thrift shop.

Haunting town: A photo montage

2011-04-10T09:09:00.011-05:00

A Room of One's Own

2011-04-09T12:08:00.002-05:00

My writing space at the colony.

Crytoscopophilia

2011-04-03T11:23:00.003-05:00

As I'm revising my post-apocalyptic young adult novel (Again! Once more, with feeling...) I realize there's a lot of going-into-strangers'-houses-and-checking-out-what-they've-got. You can tell a lot about people from the stuff they have or don't have, what they want you to see and what they don't. When I walk or drive by houses at night, yeah, I like to look in the windows. I'm reading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue: English & How it Got That Way" and he noted that there's actually word for that (see title of post). I think most of us have it otherwise social networking sites wouldn't be so popular. Windows all over the place. But there, too, people mostly show you what they want you to see, the living room but not the crawlspace. Fiction lets you open the boxes hidden in dark corners.

Big and small

2011-04-02T09:59:00.000-05:00

The art show lit a fire and here are some of my latest. Tiny paintings -- 8 x 10 -- a departure from my 48 x 48 masonite behemoths. It's a challenge, painting small. Kind of like a writing prompt: Here are the parameters. You must be as impactful under these circumstances as you are with complete freedom. A few early attempts didn't work, but I think these do. Plus they'll be a lot easier to ship.

Retreating

2011-03-31T12:36:00.000-05:00

Going to be writing-in-residence at the The Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Ark., and then at Centrum, an arts organization in Port Townsend, Wash., the home of my alma mater. I've already been writing more in anticipation, kind of like when you start relaxing when you know you're getting a massage.

Fringe

2011-03-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

Zoiks! Where did the time go? ...

Participated in a local art show held last month -- garden themed, hence the tulip painting. It's an oldie, reminding me that the painting part of my artistic life has been neglected. For me the imprecise dance of color is a mind-clearing celebration. But the opening reception was less celebration, more shrinking violet.

The few abstract paintings were clustered together. In the back. In the shadows. (See above.) People had to make an effort to get back there. My painting was mislabeled "Tulips" instead of "Tulip." (Yes, it matters.) The judge, a watercolor painter, announced she didn't care for artists who used paint right from the tube. (But...what if those are the colors you need? Why is that a judgment on ability? Reminded me: I once heard a disgruntled art student complain that her professor told her she couldn't use purple. Huh?)

I started to feel like crabgrass in a perfectly pruned garden of meticulous, flawless flowers. Saving grace: Meeting another artist who paints to perfection but admires abstraction, who pointed out that during the day, when the reception was originally supposed to be held (snowed out), my painting held a prime spot for lighting. (See below.)

Hello, forgetting to look at things from another perspective? And my nametag said I was an artist.

Oh, purple-haters, color-from-the-tube haters: Keep your blue ribbons. Art is about love.

Banking on it

2011-02-12T19:52:00.002-06:00

Last week's refreshing reminder about priorities helped me to see I need to take the "savings account" approach to writing -- pay myself first. I managed an hour or two of writing most days this past week. Slow progress but hey, progress. Back to it.

Telling it like it is

2011-02-05T17:14:00.004-06:00

This small but straightforward notice on a workplace computer cracked me up today. Kind of goes back to what I was saying before, without the fuss and worry. So it might not all get done. Just so you know.

It doesn't solve the have-to-dos vs. the want-to-dos, but it's a nice little reminder that maybe those priorities can and should shift around a little.

Half and half

2011-01-24T08:03:00.003-06:00

Trying to figure out how to be a full-time writer while being a full-time something else. (While not earning full-time pay at either.) My books are in a perpetual holding pattern and characters are saying "Hel -- LLOO!" and tapping their feet at me. Taking the next quarter off to write regardless of the artist residencies; it's temporary solution. Part of it's probably that I'm trying to figure out a new career, the rhythm, the downtime. I'm getting better at writing a page here and a page there but sometimes days and now weeks go by and not a word.

Muse

2011-01-17T15:32:00.003-06:00

She doesn't like to be chased or cornered; she's feline in that way. But sometimes when it's quiet and dark she'll visit, bringing gifts. She was particularly generous the other night, giving me a storyline-intact dream, translatable to paper. And then in the foggy not-awake, the kind of dialogue only characters can create themselves. In my organizing process I find other dream stories scratched quickly on scraps of paper, sketches of a moving target. Sometimes she eludes us when we seek her, but our job is to clear the space and let her arrive.

Caught on film

2011-01-14T11:32:00.006-06:00

Been on a weird organizing kick, so unlike me. Part of it's been pulling photos out of boxes and making albums, an activity I enjoyed once but gave up and now have reclaimed with an odd fervor. A relative suggested I'm categorizing my life. Maybe I'm trying to make sense of the journey. One thing occurred to me clearly while picking through the images: I spent way too much time being unhappy. It's easier to see now with a little distance but I see it in my face and I looked older when I was younger. Spent too much time trying to get there instead of just being there. Common trap. I still get caught sometimes but less often. I see it in my face.

Motion

2011-01-05T10:45:00.000-06:00

New year passed without much hoopla, partially because my goals remain the same. Or the same, only more. Continuation, pursuit, artistry. Make a connection, try something new, do something better.

A friend's Christmas card told of an artist residency; now I'm applying for my own. Which is why artists need to hang out -- we motivate and inspire simply by example. Keeping the creative energy in motion. Motion leads to momentum.

Heard back from owl-delivery agent, who suggested revisions. So it's not a no. In the mean time another wants to see the book. So that's good too.

Forward.

Laws of attraction

2010-12-19T13:51:00.007-06:00

Lovely evening the other night with other writer-types, who seem to find each other even in the middle of nowhere, like iron shavings attracted to a central creative magnet. The kind of gathering powered by human interaction rather than electricity, entertainment without being bombarded by entertainment. Technology allowed guests to showcase their talents and a faraway friend to attend. But the focal point was people and their imaginations. I'd had a long week so I left early, but would have liked to stick around for more.

Feathers and feet

2010-12-08T19:11:00.006-06:00

Got a request for partial manuscript from one of the few literary agencies that doesn't accept submissions via e-mail. Unusual enough now that getting the letter was a tiny bit charming, like delivery by owl. Let's hope our feathered friend delivers more good news.

Also, ran a 5K last weekend...

The extra mile

2010-11-26T10:36:00.006-06:00

Not sure what's come over me but I've been a competitive fool lately. The last month spent in a workout competition at my gym, logging an insane amount of miles on the cardio equipment. Won a frozen turkey. Day after, the turkey trot, my first road event. Running is different than putting miles on cardio equipment but I talked myself through two miles, a first since I don't know when. Probably has something to do with needing minor victories. Teaching myself endurance, patience. Learning to push a little more. Can you do one more mile? Can you go twenty more steps?

Can you write another page? Can you send another query letter?

T

2010-11-24T12:57:00.006-06:00

A short piece for Three Word Wednesday. The words are advance, pander, shuffle.

Mornings came earlier and night came sooner and people seemed more tired, hungry. Truckers wedged themselves into vinyl seats and made her feel important. She was the go-between, the pander for their addiction to coffee and stale danishes. Old men with crossword puzzles, young men with want ads. The old men wanted to chat, the young men didn’t. Times were tough but people still ate out. They saved money by not tipping. She saved money by not paying her bills. If her phone got turned off, so what? She only heard from creditors and her ex. They sounded the same. She’d pin the phone between her ear and her shoulder and say, yes, I know, and shuffle through her deck of dollar bills – once fifty-two of them, exactly – and think about how quickly they’d be dealt. Hospital, credit card, electric. Babysitter, phone, gas. Rent, groceries. Every month was a test: All of the above, none of the above, or choose A and B? Maybe she’d “borrow” another bag of bread, another giant can of vegetables from the diner. If Emil noticed he never said. Maybe he knew that the deck was stacked against her. Once he advanced her a check when her car wouldn’t start – something with the transmission, the mechanics told her, and then handed her an estimate for seven hundred and some. No car, can’t get to work. No work, no rent money. Pay for the car, rent goes unpaid anyway. Sleep in the car, lose the child. She smiled through it, smiled at work, because if you didn’t smile and pretend then you made even less money. She was an actress paid to perform. A tight-wire act.

Jobs for Haters

2010-11-22T09:23:00.002-06:00

Got a kick out of this Yahoo article, "Jobs For People who Don't Like People." Or, as the URL says, "Jobs for Haters." Funny because 'writer' is on the list. Also funny because introversion is invariably and erroneously equated with hating people. (Just because I don't care to yammer on endlessly about nothing...) Extraverts get their energy from being with people. Introverts get theirs from being alone. And honestly, I've got enough conversations going on inside my head...

Quote of the day

2010-11-20T07:32:00.002-06:00

"Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterwards summer may not come." --Rainer Maria Rilke

Faith and Love

2010-11-19T12:02:00.001-06:00

I’ve had two requests for full manuscript from literary agents …and two rejections. It feels as bad as you think – you finally break through the steel walls only to get tossed back over the side. You know you have to start over, if you can recover from the jolt. Four or five weeks of imagining that “maybe” might turn into paper and ink and glory and everything you’ve been working for. But instead it feels like everything is breaking.

Two choices: Give up or don’t. I don’t have the magic formula for getting through but so far this is what’s worked for me:

1. Wallow. Let yourself have the moment but put a time limit on it, as hard as that is. Stop thinking about what might have been and focus on what will be.

2. Contact friends and/or mentors and tell them the sky is falling. They’ll remind you that it isn’t. (One wise friend told me that if it’s too easy, people will hate me and I won’t have a good story to tell…)

3. Realize that if you got that far, your query letter must be pretty good. So that’s one less thing to worry about.

4. If you got feedback, accept it as a gift and say ‘thank you.’ Take another honest read of your manuscript. Do they have a point? Will integrating their suggestions or addressing their issues make the story stronger? Take what you can use. (I received feedback both times – the first made sense, the second maybe not as much.) Realize that agents have widely varying tastes and it could be simply a matter of finding the right person.

5. Revise. Going through your manuscript again can help remind you why you fell in love with this in the first place. Madly in love. That you and writing were made for each other.

6. Don’t lose the magic while pursuing the magic moment. Dive back into your novels where the magic lives.

7. Write. Write some more. Keep going. Are you writing?

8. Send out more queries. My advisor tells me about another student who sent out 99 query letters and struck on the 100th. (Which makes me wonder why it’s never the first or second? But he does have a good story to tell...)

Got some work to do.

Scavenger

2010-11-17T14:41:00.009-06:00

Sometimes the universe throws a bone. The free table at my tiny local library usually contains tattered remnants of mystery novels or the latest issues of a popular Lutheran publication. Happened to pass by on a day when the library was cleaning out its literary reference library. Why not just Google, you say? Reference books are an informational and inspirational minefield. Flipping through turns up information you wouldn't have thought to Google. Tidbits that can spark story ideas. Did you know, for instance, that people born on Saturday "have the gift for seeing and detecting vampires"? Straight from the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend (pictured). Yup. Useless information is the stuff novels are made of.

Recipe for frustration

2010-11-15T07:12:00.005-06:00

ME: (Returning Aimee Bender's fabulous literary novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake to the library, hoping to start a discussion about the book's magical realism.) This is a great book. It's about a girl who discovers that she can taste the emotions of whoever who made her food.

LIBRARIAN: Oh, does it have recipes in it?

ME: Um, nope. No, it doesn't. (End of conversation.)

I suppose I could have kept trying but had a moment of what's-the-pointism. Been walking around a bit stunned since I started teaching, wondering what kind of educational budget cuts or saturation of bubble gum culture have brought me students who have never heard of A Catcher in the Rye? Claude Monet?

How one of the most frustrating questions in the world has become "Do we have to take notes?" because what it really means is "Do we have to know this?"

Yes, dammit. Yes, you do.

Cause and effect

2010-10-27T09:53:00.002-05:00

Here's a story for Three Word Wednesday. The words are effect, immense and shimmer. These are actually last week's words... running late.

Taillights shimmer in the black wet road like Christmas and then I am alone on the highway, me and my rain-spotted windshield, my rain-spotted life. The road looks like Christmas and the stores too but it’s not even Halloween, but you wouldn’t know it because everyone acts like someone else, they wear their costumes year-round. I see no real people. Nobody sees me. Efforts produce only sameness, a cause produces the same effect. The road goes everywhere at once but people wear holes in small sections of it, confined by some invisible lines drawn by a notion of what they should. What I should, what you should. Complacency is the drug of choice; it kills the pain of desire. Seeing through the masks is another kind of death.
Windshield wipers. A miniscule twist of steering wheel. A low voice on the radio talking about health care. In the distance, headlights. Large globes aiming beams into the immense night, yellow running lights surrounding the tractor, a deluxe version, a rolling house. The road changes, illuminates, and I see how it could lead to a destination on no one’s map.

Class is in session

2010-10-19T18:27:00.002-05:00

I'm showing a blogging class how easy it is to post. I've also told them how important it is to post regularly (ahem).

Hard habit to break

2010-09-20T17:05:00.001-05:00

I finally replaced my missing library card (An exhaustive search turned up only my California card – the one picturing the adorable rodent Dewey Decimole. Get it? Deci-mole.) And then of course I found my local card in my wallet. Duh.
I take after my dad, who tends to purchase books, rather than my mom, who is a checker-outer. Even after I became a full-time student I got by with used books, gift cards and the occasional bag sale. (Or dumpster diving foray.) Once in a while I even said #!%* it, I want the new book. But necessity has made the public library long overdue. (Get it? Overdue.)
Hard to say no to free books.
It’s just so hard to give them back.

Close-minded

2010-09-07T19:14:00.005-05:00

Finally saw "Inception" and took my dad back for a second viewing. Enjoyed the multi-layered dreaming and the use of time within each element. A favorite line: When Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character says another character's "subconscious is militarized."

A psychotherapist's nightmare.

End of days

2010-09-06T09:13:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I watch televangelist Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella because I get a kick out of the crazy s&*# they say. (And isn't "Rexella" the best name ever? It sounds like she should be married to a dinosaur... I guess she is, kind of.) Anyway, Jack and Rexella say the current popularity of vampires and zombies in pop culture is a sign of the apocalypse.

Another good reason to stock up on books.

Ancient history

2010-09-01T09:58:00.001-05:00

Another entry for Three Word Wednesday: The words are break, negative and surface.

She brushed the dirt from the bubbled surface of the box and blew the remaining dust away. Opened it. A break in the stone wall between then and now. A flash of items, evidence of a past she only partially believed. A tiny resin figure of a fantastical character, a child’s toy. Coins with dates from forever ago, never spent. Some kind of ticket covered with the writing that she’d never learned to read. A miniature, conical shell from a place far away. And a treasure – a piece of amber cellophane, the kind of thing she knew about because her grandfather had collected them. She held the color negative to the light and reversed the image in her mind. People, a family. Gathered around a table filled with food.
She dropped the negative back in the box.

Maintenance

2010-08-27T09:01:00.002-05:00

You might have noticed in recent posts several comments are deleted... it's not that I don't like what you have to say, it's just that this blog has been bombarded with international spammers who want you to look at naked pictures of young Asian women. I figure that's something you can find yourself if you really want to see it. I've set the comment filter now, so unless your comment is obscene, threatening or otherwise offensive, you'll likely see it posted soon after you leave it. That is all.

Sorrow

2010-08-26T19:39:00.002-05:00

Another entry for Three Word Wednesday. The words are abstain, halo, and prayer.

Darkness comforted her, the quiet of it, especially now. She stepped outside in cool air, marveling that people refused to abstain from chaos. She looked up. Bathed in the illuminated sky, the crystalline moon halo. Spoke a prayer that was simple and not. Let everything be okay. Let this pass.

Trashy books

2010-08-23T17:18:00.003-05:00

So, I happened to be driving behind a Half Price Books on Sunday afternoon and noticed this horror... a dumpster full of books. That's right, you guessed it: I went dumpster diving. Snagged about a dozen titles before they politely told me to move along (for liability reasons).

What about donating to a library sale? Or the local American Association of University Women, which has a major book sale to fund scholarships? What a big, frigging waste. Among the dumped: A biography of Amelia Earhart. Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina. Seriously... Dorothy Allison in a dumpster.

And this hard-boiled crime gem from 1936: Confidential, by Donald Henderson Clarke, complete with a Mary Astor lookalike pouting on the cover. A blurb from the jacket:

Barry Ross was a newspaper reporter who would cheerfully have confessed that he was a worthless scamp, far too fond of women, far too lax about money, far too indulgent in liquor. But he had human decency and he responded to the dark loveliness of Rhoda Field, and these traits started him on a campaign to "get" the biggest big shot of New York crime -- Steinhart.

To quote a line from the novel: You look too nice to be in a dump like this.

Life imitates art

2010-08-22T19:44:00.000-05:00

Belated entry for Three Word Wednesday. Trying something a little different, a stream-of-consciousness, word-painting kind of thing. The words are grimace, stumble and phase.

Paint cool paint fingers slide through slide through slide through gelatinous cool paint. Color and life and places and faces grimace. One phase to the next. One ends one begins. New places emerge in smooth streams. Rumbling stones stepping stones we stumble. We rise. Sun rise mountains. Cool stream cool stream of paint of thought of life.

Memory lane

2010-08-09T18:54:00.000-05:00

Drove through a town where I used to live today and pulled into the junior high parking lot and asked at the front office if I could look around the school. The principal said I couldn't do that but he'd be happy to give me a tour, and he spent nearly an hour with me showing me the additions, changes, and things that hadn't changed.

Visiting my old school has been on my list since I started an exploration of my past for a new YA novel, which has so far remained in the idea stage. A drive-by of my old house a few months back told me that maybe this one needs to simmer for a while, that maybe walking around in the hallways of my school was something to save for later. I stopped on a whim today and it turned out to be a good thing.

I wondered if forgotten memories would surface with visual cues. But instead existing memories were bolstered, validated, strengthened. The rooms were locked and hallways silent. I asked to see rooms that had long ago changed purpose. I expected things to look smaller but instead they looked bigger. The corridors and stairwells remained familiar, maybe because they still sometimes show up in dreams.

I don't know how this visit will process, surface or manifest in the story, but I sense it was a necessary step toward the novel's creation.

Incognito

2010-07-31T12:59:00.000-05:00

About 86 pounds yesterday (in disguise). Today about 104. Tape measure won't fit around it tomorrow.

Purple garden

2010-07-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

It's alive

2010-07-27T12:12:00.000-05:00

Today: 48" circumference, approximate weight, 52 pounds. Gained 12 pounds since yesterday. I bet if we put a webcam on it you could see it grow.

Growth rate

2010-07-25T14:13:00.000-05:00

It's been more than a month since my last post and I guess that's mostly because things are the same... agent searching, job searching, working on the next book, revising the previous one, doing a little freelancing and part-time editing to pay bills. Still contemplating the big questions (such as what's next). Some of those questions can't be answered right now. So I'm enjoying the summer (as much as that's been possible with the humidity, rain, storms and bugs).

Part of the fun: Dad and I are growing a giant pumpkin. Last year's attempt failed to germinate. This year's popped out of the soil at the beginning of May (pictured). Last week the pumpkin measured 20" in circumference (also pictured), yesterday 39", today 42". My practical father constructed an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the pumpkin's growth rate and figured it had gained 7.6 pounds overnight based on its dimensions. Growers in the film Lords of the Gourd say these things can gain 40 pounds a day. The vine is incredibly long and headed toward the house. I'm a little scared.

Summer dawn

2010-06-22T07:59:00.000-05:00

An unusual occurrance yesterday -- awake before sunrise. Makes me wonder what else I've been missing.

One of Those Places

2010-06-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

Maybe it’s the Earth-old granite or the glacial lake. American Indians called it Spirit Lake but it was erroneously translated to Devil’s Lake in the mid-1800s, according to the park’s Official 2010 Visitor Guide. The sensational name attracted visitors, which pleased the railroad, hotel and tourism officials. It remains an attraction, complete with tie-dyed t-shirts and cheesy beaded belts, but yards from the visitor center are ancient effigy mounds in the shape of a bear, a lynx, a bird. Rocky trails lead away from the beach crowds. Dense hot forests where trees vibrate in the rain. Turkey vultures soar on thermals and somehow you’re above them, watching the quiet lake. Heavier rain sounding like tearing paper. In the moisture each step is deliberate, life-giving, bone versus rock. The biggest daddy-longlegs I’ve ever seen, a delicate creature hugging a boulder as old as time. Ripples of prehistoric lakes. I am one thing, one blink.

Straight and narrow

2010-06-09T10:22:00.000-05:00

Been a while since I've written anything for Three Word Wednesday, so here we go. The words are hidden, noble and roam.

The world’s largest ball of yarn (the one that’s usually in the midwest somewhere) is hanging over my head but as I drive it begins to unravel. There are always lines. The ones we cross, the ones we don’t. The ones we roam. A line drawn on the internet between my house and yours. The ball unwinds. It becomes flexible, pliable, my thoughts of you unjumbling and pulling tighter, clearer. I drive over other lines, squiggly black lines, repair cracks on the interstate. Lyrical lines that resemble Arabic text. Maybe unsuspecting motorists are driving over sacred poetry and don’t even realize. Mystic tomes about noble dervishes spinning in circles instead of going from point A to point B. Hidden words that people drive straight over, hidden songs that offer a wish for shapes.

Visitor

2010-06-04T09:41:00.000-05:00

A backyard surprise last week, coming in for a landing on some nearby property.

Cliffhanger

2010-05-19T15:37:00.000-05:00

Been preoccupied lately with the big questions, and trying to cobble together some kind of income and figure out how I'm supposed to start paying for student loans that are coming due much faster than I can deal with them coming due.

Enough worry that the previous rush of creativity on New Novel has slowed to almost nothing. A weekend of frivolity and unworrying helped. Last night I realized I should've been asking my characters the very question that's been keeping my undies in a bunch: What happens next?

Favorite purple

2010-05-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

Painted lady: Anita, Iowa

2010-05-02T09:21:00.000-05:00

Not a completely purple house but loved the purple layers. Stopped at this small town on my way home from Denver and had a slice of raisin cream pie at the cafe where the screen door sticks and picked up a copy of the Anita Tribune in which the spaghetti dinner is front page news. My favorite item was in the lost-and-found section:

"LOST: Men's reading glasses, Fri., March 26 in the afternoon, around 3 miles east of Lincoln Center on G-35. If found, please call (x)."

I picture a frustrated spouse winging the glasses out the car window. And probably for the cost of the ad the guy could run down to Walgreens and get himself a new pair...?

Opportunity

2010-04-21T10:52:00.000-05:00

One of the other great things I pulled from the AWP Conference, another thing I already knew: There are all sorts of literary journals and magazines looking for submissions. Somehow it helped this visual thinker, though, to see hundreds of them all spread out in one place and to talk to the faces behind faceless submission guidelines. Sent a few short stories to one already and heard back already: No, thanks. And the guy accidentally hit "send" a bunch of times so I got like seven or eight rejections at once. Seven or eight reminders to try again.

More purple: Denver, Colorado

2010-04-19T12:05:00.001-05:00

Unravel

2010-04-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

Went to the AWP Conference in Denver last week, a jam-packed, everything-you-can-possibly-think-of-related-to-writing event. Added joys: Seeing school friends and staying with another wonderful friend and her delightful 5-year-old daughter, who wanted to take me with her to show and tell (she was supposed to bring “something found in nature.”) Alas, I had to turn her invitation down. Some of the sessions at the non-stop conference schedule:

Reading, Writing and Teaching the Literary Fantastic
Ellipsis as Art: Crafting Omission of Information in a Text
Tribute to Mahmoud Darwish
Byronic Vampires and Melancholy Green Men: Harnessing Genre for Literary Use
That’s Private! Using Personal Details About Others’ Lives in Fiction
Young Adult Fiction: The New Literary Voice

That was just the first day. It’s good to have a two-day drive after an information overload. Some of it’s beginning to unravel for me. The basic take-away: Stop worrying so much, sit down and write.

Notions

2010-04-07T13:12:00.000-05:00

From "The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton" by Jane Smiley:

“One thing I’ve noticed is that when a particular notion enters your head, then its very particularity makes everything tend toward it, and the tending goes faster and faster. One day you will have barely thought of something, and that little thought inspires such excitement and fear that you don’t want to think of it again, but some few days later, maybe three or four, the thing you could hardly think of is now done, and you are embarked upon a new life.”

The air we breathe

2010-04-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

It’s been kind of a theme lately to delve into my past. I went by another old house of ours, one that figures strongly into a period of time I’m revisiting for another novel. This story, unexpected and close, requires journeying to places that are harder for me to go. I had ideas of stopping by my old place some weekend, maybe even knocking on the door to ask if I could wander around the yard, if not intrude completely and ask to come in.

I didn’t need to.

Driving by was enough, at least for the time being. Sometimes the past is best revisited gradually.

People talk about places being vortices of energy and when it comes to new age theories and paranormal speculation I keep a skeptical open mind, if the contradiction makes sense. I don’t know what’s true or not and it’s wild arrogance to assume we know everything about everything, but I also think things like “energies” are subjective and largely based on our own moods and experiences.

But I do know that for me some places feel like the air is charged and other places feel like the air is dead.

My old neighborhood is one of those places where the air has drained out.

I needed to get out of there, to take a deep breath.

I passed a little girl on my road and I wondered if she lived in my old house, if she tried to sleep now in my old bedroom, and whether it still had the wallpaper with the blue flowers that looked deceptively cheery in the daytime. At night the dark parts of the design stood out like demon eyes.

I don’t know if it was my own volatile mix of preteen energy and unhappiness alone or if something else was there. But I was afraid at night and afraid to go to school during the day and hated coming home and hated going to school and if whatever was there fed off negative energy then it had itself a feast.

The air hasn’t moved.

Truth or dare?

2010-03-29T09:37:00.000-05:00

The things we keep

2010-03-28T08:52:00.000-05:00

Lately I’ve gotten into the habit of recycling drafts of my novels when I’m finished revising, and this is good; I haven’t missed them.

I’ve started doing this because I’ve dragged around about seven different versions of my first novel, the one I’ve put in a box, my troubled literary offspring that tried to grow up too fast.

I’m still holding on to original notes, original versions that are terrible and wouldn’t want anyone to see. But it’s kind of like a journal for me, an interesting study of how my story/writing developed. Still, I’m trying to pare down, keep just interesting pages of notes or beginnings or certain scenes. I like seeing how far I’ve come but I also hate seeing how bad it was. I haven’t given up on it; it just needs to hibernate for a while. Incubate. Immolate.

When I do resurrect it, it won’t be the same book, nor should it be. I’m not the same person or the same writer.

That’s part of why origins are so interesting.

Vote of confidence

2010-03-22T16:16:00.000-05:00

The note mom left me after reading the first few pages of my new novel. She's already thinking ahead to film rights but I think we should team on a graphic novel instead.

Summer Nights

2010-03-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

We stopped in a smallish city where we lived when I was nine and ten, decided to have a look at our old house. My parents were unsure of the direction but I knew those streets, having traced them into my brain summer day by summer day, bicycling back and forth to the fairgrounds swimming pool on my mother’s old one-speed. The blue one with the basket. I once tried to steer it while also holding a snow cone, which ended up in the street when I came to a quick stop. Beautiful red ice and my last fifty cents. I picked off the stones and put it back in the paper cone.

Most of the houses still looked the same. If anyone repainted their house then they had chosen the same mustard yellow or olive brown. Bigger trucks parked in tiny driveways. Our house now had a connected garage but was otherwise unchanged. The biggest difference was the height of the trees and the size of the sled hill at the park across from my school, which had seemed so looming. Especially because the older boy across the street had shattered his leg there one winter, failing to navigate around a pine. His little sister was my age and we used to play but she threatened during one ill-fated game of something to never speak to me again and made good on her threat.

The visit made me dig out our VHS copy of Grease. My friends and I watched it back then as many times as their cable channel played it during waking hours, with no notion of its innuendo or generational significance. Or that the actors who played the Rydell High students were probably in their thirties, because that’s what high school kids looked like to us. We danced like maniacs to John Travolta singing “Greased Lightning” and begged our mothers to buy us rummage sale shoes that vaguely resembled the ones Sandy wore in the final number.

We measured and compared our wealth by our collection of Breyer horses. At twilight we clandestinely ran through our neighbors’ backyards instead of using the sidewalks, because that imaginary world where we were unseen and invincible belonged to us. That short time seems forever long and forever preserved somewhere, a section of memory hardwired. So powerful that I wondered aloud whether our sweet old neighbor still lived there, my mind tricked by her unchanged house and the plastic Easter eggs hanging in the window. But as soon as I said it I realized how ridiculous it was.

But in that time and place she’ll always live next door.

Charlene and the Chocolate Factory

2010-03-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

Here's a 3WW entry, a little belated. The words are pulse, shard and weary.

Another time or place she would’ve made other choices but she found herself chasing one weary day with another, stacking time and building hours while other people lived better lives.
The shakers continuously pulsed, ridding the chocolate pieces of excess covering. Perfect pieces for perfect people in perfect houses. Sweetness all around her but all for someone else.
She turned and felt her elbow bump something that shouldn’t have been there. The bottle hit the cement, broke into a couple of large pieces and a few chips, some of them sharp.
The chocolate skittered by on the shaker. Pieces of glass on the floor, dangerous.
She bent, touched the imperfect pieces.
One sliver, tiny but strong. A little pressure would break skin.
Just one shard, pressed hidden in a perfect piece. It traveled down the line on its way to a pretty box, to a lovely store, to some perfect someone.
Licked her fingers. Hummed.

Treasures

2010-03-17T10:42:00.000-05:00

Found a couple of treasures in my mailbox this week, words of encouragement among them. As always these things come at the right time. Reminded me that discussions of usefulness are largely useless. Planning is smart but knowing yourself is smarter. The real world isn’t real and to live life by someone else’s parameters is tragic.

My choices might mean there are things I won’t have. But there are things I don’t want.

Could we just ... not?

2010-03-16T12:15:00.000-05:00

This Yahoo article about Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe dealing with criticism about her weight just makes me crazy. Could we just please, please stop commenting on women's bodies being too large, too small, too whatever? I cringe every time a late-night talk show host recycles yet another joke about Kirstie Alley or Nicole Ritchie (or sometimes both within the same joke). It's ridiculous, pointless, cruel, childish and sexist. Let's grow up and move the f@*# on.

Go, girl

2010-03-15T09:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a networking site for women who write, as mentioned on Charlie Rose. There's an group within the site for just about any interest/genre, and if you don't see yours, you can create your own.

As an aside... an editing discussion. It's common to say "women writers" or "women aviators, etc...." (and I've used it myself out of laziness or because I'm following the crowd) but I actually kind of hate this because nobody would say "men writers." Better to say "women who write" or if you must differentiate, "female writers."

What time is noon, again?

2010-03-11T11:44:00.001-06:00

Creature from the fictional lagoon

2010-03-01T10:52:00.001-06:00

Filled out my forms at the eye doctor a while ago and put 'writer' as my occupation. (I've put myself in this mindset now, income be damned.)

Didn't think much about it but then the assistant got a hold of my forms.

Her: "You're a WRITER?!"

Me: "Um, yes."

Her: (Pause) "I never met a WRITER before."

She could've exchanged 'writer' for 'swamp monster.'

Grrraaaaauuuuuuurrrrrwwwwww!!!!

Looking glass

2010-02-25T12:05:00.000-06:00

So I had a little post-graduation depression. And I was freaking myself out thinking, all that money, time and effort can be wiped out by one lousy query paragraph.

I’m thrown back into this pocket of uncertainty. Searching for an agent, searching for a job at the same time. Rejection from two directions. Fear and discouragement. Fear of discouragement.

But there’s only one thing to do: Keep going. And try to look at things from a different perspective, one that will keep me from hiding under the covers and saying, ugh, forget it.

For one thing, I’ve got a damn good book. I am so frigging proud of this thing.

And for another: All that money, time and effort – of course I can write one lousy paragraph.

A little Eye of the Tiger and I’m ready to go.

Battle gear

2010-02-21T14:19:00.000-06:00

When I finished the bulk of my MFA work in November, a moment of relief and accomplishment quickly waned into the feeling that the training montage was over and oh, crap! Now I have to go fight the dragon. (Aka the publishing industry.)

So I've started the search for a literary agent. And I think it's going to take a while before I even get to the damned dragon.

Most of the submission guidelines sound like this:

"Dear 'Writer,'

If you MUST send us a query -- and we would rethink this if we were you -- we'll try to get back to you within six weeks, maybe, if we feel like it. We receive lots and lots of mail from everyone and their hamster, and considering how many hamsters think they can write books, that's a lot of mail. (Long, protracted, world-weary sigh....) But, if you have to. Whatever. We know you've worked hard on your manuscript (tee-hee-hee).

Sincerely, Not The Agent For You."

I was hoping for some kind of VIP room or something.

(Long, protracted, world-weary sigh...)

Purple birdhouse

2010-02-19T11:08:00.000-06:00

Graduated

2010-02-18T18:00:00.000-06:00

End of a journey, start of a new one. Still processing. Perhaps it was appropriate to celebrate at the end of the earth, or somewhere that felt like it.

Dinner’s ready

2010-02-10T09:16:00.000-06:00

More TV fragments; collected over several viewing sessions.

The gloves are off; the battle has begun
I’m sorry that you got jealous
What’s that like?
That was a tragic thing
Some people’s body image is out of whack
Yes, it’s hard to be the loving, sexy wife in the evening
Think color, then fabric, and then think texture
Hubba hubba ding ding woof woof
I’m not supposed to get you excited
Dinner’s ready
The truth? Why don’t you tell him it’s your fault?
Let me know how we’re doing
I still have an hour

System

2010-02-03T08:33:00.001-06:00

Another TV fragment poem. This time I combined two sessions of channel flipping.

I’m the guy with nothing to lose
I’m selling you a car that I know is faulty
If a business venture falls through we simply move on to the next one
The safest thing to do is remove it before the infection spreads
Big bank CEOs are admitting to screwing up
Leave your money at home
Is there a problem officer?
Is my cable TV tax deductable?
I can feel my stomach sucking up against my spine
I really care about you
She plays up the folksy image but she can be tough as nails if she needs to be
Purchase your tickets to win your $35,000 dream wedding
Looks like it’s another great room ready for the showhouse tour
What we mistakenly call our thoughts, our dreams, have actually been put there by a system
What do you want?
We’re all missing those contributing factors
Must be here someplace
Well, what about you?
Isn’t he getting any better, doctor?
It was a setup, a setup, I tell you!