Why? Er...

I wish I could say that I write for any remotely altruistic reason, but it's all selfish.

First and foremost, it's plain old fun. (Most of the time.) Since I'm happy to be a fiction writer, much of my time and imagination is spent trying to make the impossible sound believable - to myself and to my reader (which is why your input was so valuable last week, Lori). My husband likes Legos. Aeryn likes to draw. I like to scribble, because I get to think up strange and scary and sometimes wonderful things and make them happen in my own head.

The second reason is that I get to learn. Since I've started this project (and since I've been thinking about the next few), I've delved into odd and fascinating areas - psychological therapy, aikido, the study of angels and demonology (and oh dear God the awful movies I have subjected myself to in the name of research), New York City geography and history, dying, Catholic liturgy, book restoration... and that's only the beginning, I'm sure. Writing gives me an excuse to read voraciously, to Google incessantly, and to get my mind back to where it was so many years ago - open wide, like a baby's mouth waiting for mama's milk.

One last reason: I have a compulsion to communicate. Get me talking and I won't stop. If I'm stoned and caffeinated, you might as well put the phone down and go take a shit, because I'll still be talking when you get back, even though I will have changed the subject at least eight times. Get me writing about something that I love, and I won't stop until my forehead falls down and I start drooling on the keyboard, no matter how early I have to get up the next morning.

Nope, can't lie about it. All selfish reasons. But I do it anyway, because I have to be selfish about something. And this is it.

~Andi

a haiku!

Ponderosa Pines
glow red in morning's first light
Montana sunrise

Why do you write?

I asked myself this question this morning. I write because I want to share something important. Not because I have something unique and new to say, no, quite the opposite. Because I want to share this universal experience of life, because I want to point out these truths that we all experience and say, hey, you know what I'm talking about? And I know you do, you will. Because there are some basic universal truths in life that we all share. Birth, life, death, sickness, health, happiness, love, loss, desire, fury...I think we as humans have a need to share stories.

I'm getting ready to go for a run, listening to "Don't Fear the Reaper," my all-time favorite "get psyched to go out for a run in the cold woods" song. It reminds me of Stephen King's "The Stand," which I love. It also has a great beat to run to, so I like to get it into my head before I go out. But I also love the message: everybody dies, don't be afraid. It's a universal truth. Come on baby, take my hand. We'll be able to fly.

Why do you write?

Rain Haiku

The desert rain falls --
Creosote perfumes the air
and lifts me to dreams.

To Cee, On the Occasion of Your First Cycle

So as not to hog blog space, I've emailed this to you both in case you want to read it in another format. Thanks for the page limit suggestion for the next assignment, Lori.

~Andi

Sisters Haiku

Sisters at the zoo --
remember monkey mayhem?
We were so young, once.

You know its bad when

You know its bad when you sit at your computer organizing your favorites bar instead of writing. My brain isn't working right due to my illness - snot in my head clogging up the thinking process.

Thank you Kelly for the Haiku exercise, that was a great idea. You are the Haiku master and it is great to see pictures of you - you are even more lovely than I'd imagined. I saw one picture of you from years ago when you used to be on facebook but it was kind of a weird one, couldn't really see what you looked like. Of course I remember you from high school, but that was a long, long (thankfully) long time ago. Looking back at pictures of myself from that time, I think that we have both gotten more attractive, and not less as we aged like fine wine. And we've certainly drunk enough wine that if you are what you consume, well...

Thank you Andi for sending some of Sanctuary. I have enjoyed the first couple of pages so far that I managed to read in between kids' homework and doctor appointments, and I'm sure my time right now would be much better spent reading the rest of it than re-organizing my favorites list. Kelly were you going to send part of a work in progress?

Anyway, planning to complete the dreaded "assignment" - ha ha - today and looking forward to chatting about it tomorrow evening.

Myaikus

comfortable bed
kids are late for school again
early morning fog

running in the snow
click click click crunch crunch crunch crunch
echoes through the trees

all these things I do
to try to forget your name
yet still it whispers

V Haiku

Small, stolen moment,
Sweet and sassy little girl --
then the train rolls on.

J Haiku

Train station goodbyes:
A small warm boy in my arms --
then the whistle keens.

Haiku

Kelly, the first thing that went through my head when you said "haiku" was "Oh fuck. Poetry." Then I started, asking Aeryn for help, of course, and it turned out to be fun. Who knew?

*******

Daughter golden-hair
Constantly surprising me
She really loves math.

*******

Red mud on my tire
A false thaw turns the world wet
Spinning wheels again.

******

Yellow raincoat in mist
Whirlpools in brown puddles
Are portals through time.

******

Mood shifts in mid-flight
Coming down from creation
Satisfied, and sane.

~Andi

Haiku: Short Sands, York, ME

Cold Maine water, fog
rolling in -- a soft embrace.
We are all children.

Haiku

I really like Lori's idea of short and/or quick assignments (apart from our larger fiction projects, obviously). Here's what I thought of: we are SO going to do some haiku!

I don't care what each haiku is about. Follow the traditional rules or not. Give me three, hopefully soon. And for fuck's sake, don't agonize over them. It's not worth stressing about 17 syllables.

Have a blast.

Plausible Impossibility

Okay, I'm totally going to fuck this up, but I sort of can't help it.

My mind ranged over a thousand things, and it slowly occurred to me that I, personally, have two definitions of impossible. First, truly impossible, like I can suddenly fly without any mechanical assistance; my body simply rises up and I soar through the air (but not too high, because I'm not that fond of heights). Second, effectively impossible, like I can't suddenly drop out of my own life, run away to the Kool-Aid blue lagoons of the South Pacific, and live on a beach for six months.

Is that second dream truly impossible? Of course not, because I could do it...if if if. If I didn't mind dropping out of my family's and friends' lives for half a year (I'm sure they could survive). If I could come up with the money (isn't that what a Visa card is for?). If I could feel comfortable about leaving my frail, elderly cat for that long (fuck no, realistically).

So I think when we, or at least I, think about things in terms of possibility, the second definition is the one that can trip us up. We call those something impossible because it's easier to label it as such than to admit we're making a choice or passing up an option.

That's impossible, we say.

Is it?

I guess if you're not willing to make the sacrifice(s) or create the environment where you feel comfortable with that choice or situation -- yeah, it's impossible. But be honest with yourself about why.

This is how I see it

OK, sounds like its time for us to clarify some things...or simplify. This is how I see it: There is no limit or deadline or specific amount of posts that we need to do here. Just put something up when you feel like it. Clearly I haven't been contributing very much and I don't think anyone else should feel any pressure to either.

As far as our "assignments" go, I just see them as exercises, as a way to sit down and write something, anything, to get the creative juices flowing. We're not going to publish that shit or anything, unless you happen to come up with something completely brilliant, which I don't expect to. Instead of giving ourselves more time to complete them, I would say less time would be better. For example: sit down right now and write one page about something you think is impossible becoming possible. You may come up with a page of complete shit that says "its fucking impossible for me to do this assignment." But at the end of the page, you will have done it.

Kelly and I have done a couple of really fun writing exercises where we took time out during an online chat and said, OK, for 1/2 hour write about such and such. It is surprising the things that pop out of your imagination that might not have if we had thought about it too much.

Andi - about Sanctuary, maybe it's time to step away from it for a bit instead of continuing to stress over it. Maybe it's time to share it with some other writers for a little feedback.

- Lori

Ain't Gonna Happen

A daily blog post. A writing assignment due by Friday. Revisions to the first chapter of Sanctuary sent out by Wednesday. And still, at least an hour a day on the RFH (Rewrite From Hell).

I think it’s too much. I’m sorry, ladies, I don’t have it in me. I think I can manage a daily blog post or a writing assignment, but not both. Or maybe we can extend the due dates for the assignments. Say, a month instead of a week so we can give ideas time to percolate? I may just be whining about it because I don’t want to do it – but I need to stay focused on the rewrite and it’s so, SO easy to get sidetracked.

Speaking of the RFH. Several nights in a row, I’ve found myself nodding off with pen in hand. Is this a sign that the scene I’m writing is excruciatingly boring (there’s no sex or blood or severe emotional trauma), or that it’s difficult (see previous) or is it just a result of drinking chai at night instead of coffee? A bit of everything?

*****

I went to Buffy’s yesterday to interview her as a source for Sanctuary.* (Yes, I do enjoy writing it, and especially in italics; it makes it look so Official.) Afterwards, her husband Brett let me score some music off his external hard drive. It included the Brooklyn Funk Essentials, Prince, Sly and the Family Stone, Jamiroquai, and another band with a weird name I can’t think of just at the moment. I’m exploring funk as a way to make my main character a little more accessible – more like someone I’d like to hang out with instead of someone who would intimidate me and scare me off.

Sometimes I put on sacred choral music – different versions of the Ave Maria (not the Schubert; it’s too saccharine), some 12th century chant (Hildegard von Bingen was a friggin’ genius), and other classical pieces just to set the mood. Which may explain why I’m falling asleep writing this damned scene. I should switch to the Mozart Requiem or the Carmina Burana. That might do it.

Anyway, I’ve been very curious as to your musical tastes, ladies. Do you listen to music when you write, or do you need total silence? And if you do, what music do you prefer? What music do you like to listen to even when you’re not writing?

Dish.

*Lori, for background, Buffy is a friend who went to college with Kelly and me and ended up in the Asheville area. She’s been one of my best friends for … well, let’s not get into exactly how many years it’s been. Anyway.

Assignment - 1/22

The irony of me posting an assignment with a *vomit profusely* deadline is ... well, it's insane, if one can use that word to describe irony.

But since it's my paper with the assignment on it (at least until I get the scan to you) I thought I'd repost it because we were somewhat inebriated last night to one degree or another. And lest I be accused of plagiary, I'm referencing the source as well.

What do you believe is impossible? Write a scene or poem in which the impossible becomes possible.

~Writing Begins with the Breath, Laraine Hering

I would also love to get inside your heads and know a bit about the process you go through as you work on this. As for me, I thought this had great potential last night under the influence of Southern Comfort; this morning I'm less enthusiastic, if only because it may be harder than I originally thought. So let's just see what happens, shall we?

Happy writing.

~Andi

Define...

...self-indulgent.

In On Writing, Stephen King writes, "I am not being paid to be self-indulgent." Or something to that effect; I don't have the book in front of me because, you guessed it, it had to go back to the library.

Can someone please tell me what self-indulgent means in terms of writing? Is it becoming so enamored of your own words that you blather on and on at the expense of your plot and characters? I'd love to know your thoughts on this one.

I keep returning to my previous post about the dark side of imagination, and I wonder if that's also self-indulgent, or just self-pitying, or more evidence of smug superiority twisted into a turd of sentimental overblown sap? I think it might have been all three. But instead of taking it down, I think I'll leave it there. After all, it's a blog, and we all have bad days. At least I hope it's not just me. I encourage you both to put up shitty posts occasionally. That way I won't feel quite so alone.

Kiki, I'm also uncomfortable with the idea of having anything to be grateful for when others do not, although some might suggest that if you're even alive you have something to be grateful for. (I might beg to differ under certain circumstances but that's beside the point.) I have nowhere to go with this discomfort. Well, rather, I do, but some things need to stay in my private journal, so that when they come out into the world, they can do so through someone else's mouth - that way they can't be traced back to me. It's one of the many reasons I prefer to write fiction - plausable deniability.

It was slow going tonight. I thought to begin with that I would end up with two paragraphs after the required hour. I managed maybe a page. Excruciating. So I will comfort myself - and perhaps your own lovely selves - with another quote from the Man:

Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

And on that note, good night ladies. Hope to chat with you tomorrow, provided I haven't bashed in the screen of this laptop with the nearest empty wine bottle.

Amou a Haiti

I am sitting in my quiet house, late at night, sipping rum on ice with a bit of lime. I complain about winter a lot, but the fact is that in southern New Mexico, there isn't actually much to complain about (if you can deal with a brutally hot, dry, six-month-long summer, anyway). We don't have "weather events" here. We barely have weather as the word is understood in four-season climates. We certainly don't have earthquakes.

But, like Andi, my mind is on Haiti and its recent, horribly devastating earthquake. She's right to point out that writers can't turn their imaginations off. It's a blessing, and sometimes it's a curse, a lot like excessive amounts of empathy. So I'm thinking of Haiti, and I feel sick.

I got online a little while ago and donated to a national animal charity that is coordinating with an international one to do what they can for the suffering animals and humans in Haiti. It wasn't a big donation, but it was what I could do at the moment. As with any of my regular donations, I know that some people wonder why I choose to donate to animals when so many people suffer. The answer is, I believe in compassion for all living beings (okay, most of them, anyway, most days). More people donate to other humans, though, so I focus my giving on animals. I hope that I can make even a small difference -- today, tomorrow, over the course of my life.

Ironically, I had dinner tonight with a friend who had been out of town for several weeks. Kerry is a wonderful person in many ways, not the least of which is her very generous personality. She's more involved in charitable work than I will ever be. So it seemed kind of...weird...that we were celebrating a get-together when a whole nation is suffering.

We did what we could. We spared a moment to think of the people of Haiti. We researched the most efficient charities so that we could help financially. Then we made a fabulous meal focused on African and African-American themes -- spicy collard greens soup served over rice; baked sweet potato; and a bananas au rhum dessert that I found under the Haiti section of an ancient international cookbook. We sat with my boyfriend and shared the delicious food.

I debated whether I would write about that dinner, because there is something distasteful about describing a meal when fellow creatures are trying to simply survive. But people are always suffering, and I wouldn't be any use to anyone if I drowned in that wonderful-awful emotion, empathy.

So I did what I could. I donated. I remembered to appreciate my own life, both the things that I have earned and those that I have received simply by accident (country of birth, parents, genetics, whatever). I tried to pay tribute in my own small way.


Oh, and Pat Robertson? You can fuck off and die, you ignorant, half-witted, abominable, pathetic waste of oxygen. Die, motherfucker.

Imagine This

The post I was thinking about all morning will have to wait. Today, death, suffering, and survival are on my mind, and I need to talk about it. As always, feel free to skip this if you’re not in a morbid mood and don’t want to get into one, or if you’re already in a morbid mood and don’t want to go any further down the rabbit-hole.

If I hear “an unimaginable tragedy” or “unimaginable suffering” or “unimaginable loss of life” one more time today, I think I may have to bash in the face of the television with the Christmas tree that’s still hanging out in the lunchroom, just to shut the fuckers up. Getting up and turning it off won’t make the same statement and won’t be nearly as satisfying, although it would certainly keep me from being written up. Or sent to a psych ward.

Is it really unimaginable, or is it that the general population doesn’t want to imagine it? I suspect the latter. And that’s only natural – painful situations of our own are difficult enough without having to create images our heads of the horror suffered by other human beings. But we’re writers, and there are few things that we cannot imagine.

For me, making the mistake of clicking on a picture or watching a video of a person (or animal, for that matter) in terrible pain is only the beginning of the process. Once the picture is there, I can’t help but want to go behind the eyes, to come closer to knowing the victim and touching his or her pain with the hands of my heart and soul, making it my own for long enough to understand, just for a moment, what it might be like to be there.

Recoiling from pain, whether it’s your own, or someone else’s, is usually the first, sensible response a person can make. Unless you’re a writer. This is why I make a point not to read certain types of news stories; I’m plenty obsessed with death, suffering, and the aftermath without feeding the monster, thanks very much.

Sometimes it’s all over the place, though; when an apocalyptic disaster strikes, the world likes to watch – at a distance.

I can’t keep my distance.

When I was growing up, my worst fears were about dangers on a scale that were much larger than I was. A murderous swarm of bees. Nuclear war. Earthquakes, although I doubt anything I saw in the 1980s begins to compare with the Haiti quake in terms of sheer size and damage. Volcanoes – that sort of thing. Now, I’ve learned to love disaster movies – the bigger the better, as far as I’m concerned, and let the good times roll. Yes, despite 9/11, despite the tsunami and Katrina and even this earthquake, I love a good disaster flick, and you know why? Because the shit ain’t real. It’s a story, and it’s not necessary for me to dive in and surround myself with the misery – although it’s happened to me inadvertently in a couple of cases.

What scares me now happens on a smaller, more personal scale. Cells growing too fast in a body, hiding until it’s too late to stop them. The slow progress of starvation. Isolation. Physical pain. Individual grief. Feeling powerless to stop the suffering of one you love. The big stuff doesn’t freak me out like it used to – but show me an x-ray of a lung with a dark patch on it and my legs won’t hold me up.

Here’s the thing, though. When I look at a disaster like the one we’re witnessing in Haiti, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Darfur genocide (these are just a few unfolding as we speak, never mind the ones in the past or the ones to come), all it takes is a short leap of imagination to go from my own fear of small things to everyone’s fear – of loss, of pain, of hunger, disconnection, grief, all the things that you can only feel if you’re a survivor. If you don’t feel them, you’re either heavily medicated or you’re dead. Then it becomes a matter of multiplication, to an infinite power – because we’re a gregarious society, and for the most part, we don’t just feel things for ourselves, we feel them for each other, too.

So the newscasters may prattle on endlessly about unimaginable suffering. Let them. It’s safer for them that way, anyway. But we’re writers. And, like children, there is nothing we cannot imagine. Whether we want to or not.

~a.

I have a box

I have nothing earth-shattering to say. What's bothering me most today is not having a desk, and having to sleep. Both of these issues annoy the fuck out of me.

I have a lovely kitchen table that my father made for us two years ago; it's 4 foot square, bordered in a light oak, with a cherrywood center. The damned thing even slides open to 8 X 4, it's fantastic. I'm terrified of scratching it, but I can't bear to use a tablecloth, it's just too beautiful to cover up. And it calms me just to look at it. It clears my head. Providing, of course, that all the miscellanea has been moved to... well, somewhere else.

I've set up shop here at the table over the last week. I haven't done much work on my own stuff for the last few days (the sickness and fatigue have just been too much) but still, it's been heartening to have a place I can call my own. But Brian comes back tomorrow night. And my evenings will once again be shared between my husband, my writing, and my need for sleep.

Remember in college when you could go for days without sleep? And when it finally caught up with you, sleeping for forty-eight hours was really no big deal? I miss the hell out of that. About a month ago, Aeryn asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told her I wanted a superpower - the ability to function effectively on four hours of sleep a night. She looked at me kinda funny. "But Mom, you have to sleep!" she protested. "I know, sweetie," I said, "it's just that I wish I didn't have to."

So no, I don't have a desk. What I have is a cardboard box. It contains the Sanctuary ms, folders for different subjects (research, reading lists, one I call the editing-room floor), my journal, a few of my favorite pens, a highlighter, a pad of sticky notes and a box of paper clips. I include my mp3 player in my box although it's not usually kept there. It's critical, though, for blocking everything else out around me. Currently I'm listening to a lot of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century abbess who wrote chant mostly for women. Gorgeous stuff, really. Occasionally I'll throw in the Mozart Requiem just to wake up or freak myself out. The Dies Irae is spine-chilling no matter how many times I hear it.

Over winter break, I asked Aeryn to decorate the box for me. She got one side done - she and Brian pulled out old animal magazines and cut and pasted particularly cute ones on the box. It looks great. My favorite picture is the two baby mountain lions, but number two is a toss-up between the white sloth and the cat drinking coffee - both unnervingly apt, all things considered.

I've got a box because it's portable. I don't have the latest technology (to put it nicely; I don't want to anger the technology I do have) to use a laptop, and my old desk is in Brian's den which simply isn't conducive to writing paranormal romance.

I have a box; the box is what I've got. Other writers have done with much less. J.K. Rowling wrote most of The Sorcerer's Stone on legal pads wandering from coffee shop to coffee shop because her flat didn't have heat (or that's the story anyway and even if it's not true it's still inspiring). Thanks, Virginia, but I can do this with or without a room of my own.

So I suppose I'd better post this and get down to it. It's getting late, and it sure would be nice to finish this chapter before I totter off to bed.

~Andi

On Writing...

"When you start to see colored footprints on the sidewalk, it's time to quit fucking around and call the doctor." - Stephen King

I write this not because it is some deep, philosophical quote, but because it's just a great example of what I love about SK's writing, and I kind of picked it at random. I'm sure we could all come up with much better, and many more, quotes from the master, but that's not my point here. My point is, he manages to write like real people think and talk and see the world and he does it so well and so prolifically, and I wish that I could do that.

I'm always amazed at just how much he has written and I think that is part of the reason he is so good. Because he writes a lot. And of course he is incredibly talented. But, say you have some talent, and you sit around thinking "I sure could be a great writer," but you just write a little bit here and there...you are never going to be a great writer. I think especially with the way that information travels and is shared in our world today, you have to be incredibly prolific to be noticed at all.

Last summer I decided to try out a novel writing workshop. I had a novel I'd been working on but put on the back burner, and wanted to see what I could do with it. The workshop was good and bad, and sometimes just plain weird, and everyone else quit before it was over, leaving me with this partially completed novel that I was really really sick of looking at and thinking about, so I just stopped writing altogether. I thought I'd take a week or so off. That turned into months. I think in a way the workshop really stunted my progress - we had to come up with around 10 pages a month and share it with the group. So I'd obsess over ten measly freaking pages for 30 days, then get all of these comments and want to change everything, and did not get very far with the thing, but just felt disgusted with it. It really broke up the flow of writing to such a degree that I didn't even feel like writing anymore.

But I learned a lot through that process. For example, I learned that I need to write more: more often, more words, more different kinds of writing. One good thing about it was that I was writing everyday. The bad thing was that I wasn't just letting it flow and going with it, but I was trying so hard to do it right or do a certain thing, that I fucked it all up.

One of the reasons I took the workshop was because I wanted to talk to other writers about the writing process, how does it go for them? What works? What doesn't? Because writing is as much about the process as it is the product. Some people like to stay up all night after their families have gone to bed, writing alone in the darkness. Me, I like to write first thing in the morning with buckets of coffee, and after running or walking. Usually by night time I'm brain dead. What works for you?

Whole Lotta Smug, etc.

Reading Andi's last post, I laughed out loud at this line:

I can be smug and watch myself be smug and be disgusted by it all at the same time.

I should have this tattooed on my fucking forehead. So true! I'm sure we're all like that sometimes, though. I was reading an interview with a CEO recently, and I was struck by one question he said that he asked potential employees -- roughly, what is the biggest misconception that people have about you?

So I started thinking about how the hell I would answer that. I decided that (some) people hear my loud opinions, and assume that I am judging them if they don't agree. In reality, it took me many years to become comfortable voicing my opinions, but I'm well aware that I haven't had my current opinions or views for my whole life. They change. And I like to think that I'm open to new ideas and will continue to evolve for the rest of my life.

The real kicker: is that true? Because sometimes I am a seriously judgmental bitch. Now I have to engage in a whole lot of self-reflection.

Or not.

What about you two?

Casey Strikes Out

Casey lit a match and touched the miniature flame to the end of her poorly rolled joint, inhaling deeply. She squinted her eyes against the acrid smoke and stared at Ian. "Let's do it."

"Do what?"

Ian, bless him, looked confused. He was a fifteen-year-old geek, let's face it, but he was also Casey's best friend, and her only current option.

"You know. Do it. Have sex." Casey pushed her hair back rather sexily, she thought, and took another drag off the joint.

Ian recoiled. "God, Casey! What's wrong with you? Getting high all of a sudden, and just like that you want to..." He was slowly turning pink, even his ears.

Casey sighed. This was not going at all as she had imagined it would. "We can't be virgins forever, Ian. Don't you just want to get it over with?"

"I want --" Ian's blush deepened. "I want to be in love." His tone was half embarrassed, half defiant.

I am screwed, Casey thought, and not at all in the way she'd wanted to be. "Okay. Okay, whatever. Forget I asked." Because she felt a little embarrassed now too, through the haze of marijuana she'd stolen from her brother's stash.

Ian mumbled something about getting a Pepsi and ducked off the back porch into the empty house.

Shit. Casey stubbed out the joint and stared up at the huge, empty Arizona sky. So who can I do it with, then?

Bird by Bird

Several weeks ago I finished the monstrosity of schlock that is the Twilight series. I refuse to call it a saga. No freaking way am I putting that silliness up there with Roots. Afterwards I needed something to get the saccharine taste out of my mouth.

So I picked up Dante's Inferno and a collection of T.S. Eliot. The Dante was specifically related to Sanctuary (sort of - I can justify a lot in the name of research); I haven't a clue where I got the idea to pick up Eliot. I returned the Dante unread. I've really enjoyed the Eliot, even the Choruses from the Rock, which were written after he had some kind of Christian conversion experience. I think my Dad would really enjoy it. I hadn't realized he'd written Murder in the Cathedral. I wish the library had a platinum plan, where you could check out books for six months at a time. I'm getting attached to the damned things and it's getting harder and harder to send them back.

I started from the beginning, with the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I'm not a poetry kind of person, because I sometimes feel that I'm an idiot because I don't often understand what the fuck the poet is really trying to express, and I really hate feeling stupid. But with Prufrock I decided to step away from left-brain understanding and just be aware of the words, how they relate to each other, and the odd currents they made in my head. Kinda fun to just play with it. So I'm plugging along and I hit a verse set apart from the rest:

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I stopped there and repeated it to myself, fascinated by the desolation of the image (at least it was to me) and trying to figure out exactly how it evoked that desolation with just a few simple words. Nothing fancy, really. But there's just something about Eliot that gets to me.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

(The Waste Land)

That line produces such cold dread in my gut that I am tempted to read Stephen King just to lighten the mood.

I've just talked myself into buying the book tomorrow. Crap.

*****

I liked Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird after the first page - probably after the first sentence. But I fell head over heels when I got to page xiii of the Introduction, where she's talking about a home video that was made of a birthday party she attended as a child, "with all these cute little boys and girls playing together like puppies, and all of a sudden I scuttled across the screen like Prufrock's crab."

That sounds familiar, I thought. Who's Prufrock? Didn't I just read something about -- Then I remembered, and was so fucking pleased with myself for actually getting a literary reference, and for an insight into how someone else reads it, and to realize that we were kind of on the same page, that I couldn't stand myself for at least five minutes. I can be smug and watch myself be smug and be disgusted by it all at the same time.

So after that I was ready to fall into bed with Lamott no matter what she wrote for the rest of the book. I was hers.

The books I seem to enjoy the most, the ones that I like enough to want to buy and somehow find room for, usually offer up ideas and phrases that I want to write down and spout to strangers. It turns out that one of my favorites, one that I almost used in our company newsletter, was also written by Anne Lamott:

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work; you don't give up.

At the time I first read it, I didn't know it applied to writing. I thought it was just something I could put in the newsletter as a little gift to the people who were paying attention to the fine print. 2009 has not been an easy year, and I was trying to share the piece of myself that has been putting one foot in front of the other, trudging along, sometimes so weighed down by troubles that I wasn't able to look up and around me, but doing it all the same. I wanted the people who read it to know that if they stopped at least trying to do the right thing, they were pussies. Or at least that I thought so.

When I ran across that quote about a third of the way through Bird by Bird, I felt a shiver of recognition, then a surge of elation from making yet another true and honest connection to this writer. I think my mouth actually dropped open before I said out loud, "That's so fucking cool!" Luckily I was the only one in the lab at the time.

That's what I want people who read my stuff to feel. I want to tell a good story, and I want to tell it well enough that pages turn quickly, but I'd also like to give someone a moment or two where they might think, "Yes. Yes. That's exactly it." And maybe make someone feel a little less alone. Which is what Lamott has been giving me over the last week.

I switched to Misery last night. I think it's because I don't want Bird by Bird to end, because then I will have to give it back.

*****

Aeryn's still miserable. Her fever has been responding well to the (generic) Tylenol, but it comes right back after five hours. At least she's not hurting and achy like she was last night. But her eyes are starting to get glassy again and I think it's about time check her temperature and put her to bed. She's not even interested in hot chocolate - what the fuck is that about?

I'm going to slog through another few pages of Sanctuary tonight, but I've promised myself that I'll take tomorrow night off. I just can't go all week on five or six hours of sleep a night; it does really bad things to my moods and thus really bad things to my family.

That's ok, right? Please tell me that's ok. I'm so tired. I'm not even going to spell-check this bitch, and I don't even care that Blogger lost all my careful italics and formatting; I'm just going to post it and sign off.

I hope you're both doing well. I had a lovely time in our "conference" last night (I love that; it makes it sound so legitimate) and I look forward to the next one.

The Book

The book lay unopened on her father's desk for years, deliberately ignored and eventually forgotten, buried under a stack of ten others that appeared to be more important - although not by much, given the thick pall of dust that had always covered them. A month after he died from the oppressive late-summer heat, Marie covered her nose and mouth with her grandmother's flowered kerchief and went to retrieve it.

The door didn't want to open. Still swollen from the autumn rains, it fought her, and she wondered if it was a sign that the house and its questionable contents were best left alone. But it needed work. The property wouldn't sell in its current condition, which according to the inspector was uninhabitable at best. Two contractors and four realtors had advised her in no uncertain terms to raze it and sell the land, and one of the contractors had gone so far as to recommend a formal exorcism and cleansing of the entire twelve-acre plot after the demolition. His matter-of-fact tone made her fairly certain that he wasn't joking, although she couldn't be sure. The people in Ratchet were odd, even for deep-woods Appalachia, and they seemed to enjoy playing it up for outsiders.

The possibility of lighting a match to the place or planting a bomb therein was tempting, she had to admit. But before she caved to the locals or satisfied her own urge to blow the reeking mess sky-high, she was going to get her book back.

~Andi

Lori's random writing exercise

I looked into my steamer trunk and I found books; loads and loads of random books. They smelled musty. They felt good in my hands, something of real substance: the physical incarnation of ideas.

The other day I did a writing exercise using some of the books that are stacked around me. I started out by picking up a book at random, opening it and pointing. I used that idea to write from, until I got stuck then I'd pick up a different book and do the same thing.

The result was not fantastic writing, but it was fun and interesting. I think it would be fun to do this somehow in our group, maybe we could each choose a few random quotes from books then give them to each other to write about?

Steamer Trunks

So the other day I was thinking about this blog, setting it up with my good friends Andi and Lori to share our writing and musings and whatever the hell else might come up. At the same time, my boyfriend and I were drinking a really good wine (for a change), called 7 Deadly Zins. Wickedly delicious. And it made me think:

This wine smells like bacon and tastes like smoke. No, it tastes like an old leather trunk from the 1920s that has travelled all around the world and somehow ended up in my house, full of flavor and memory. I'm drinking the essence of an old steamer trunk. And I mean that in a good way.




So now I'm thinking of this blog as a collection of old steamer trunks from the attic of your crazy great-aunt -- you know the one; she hid in the kitchen and drank straight from the bottle of Southern Comfort when she thought no one was looking? Her. Anyway, the point is:

You never know what you might find.

My nephew Jules told me that, and it's true. You never know...