Category Archives: About the Writer Mom

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Story Trumps Writer

Dumbledore as portrayed by the late Richard Ha...

Dumbledore as portrayed by the late Richard Harris in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While waiting for my latest round of literary agent rejections to come in, I haven’t just been twiddling my thumbs, wondering what to do. I’ve been working on other writing projects, such as short stories. One is getting close to being publishable, and while I was wondering what in the world I would write next, a new one popped into my head. But, as usually happens with a little idea, it turned into a big one. A really big one. From March to June, I wrote close to thirty-three thousand words, mostly backstory. When I weave all that in with the present-day, how long is this thing going to be?

I was talking to my mom about how happy I’ve been writing this story – sometimes three thousand words in a day – except for that I don’t know exactly where it’s going. That’s kind of a problem when it comes to publishing. But I’m good at having epiphanies. Sometimes it takes two or four or seven years to get one, so this is most likely a long-term project, but I’ll get there. The funny thing is, the end scene is already done. It pretty much came fully blown into my head while driving home one night. I was frantic to write as much of it as I could remember when I finally sat down with my laptop. It’s a good scene, but a tragic one, one that I’d like to be able to change in an epilogue, although I can’t imagine how I would.

When I told my mom that I don’t really want to end my book like this, she said, “Well, you are the writer.”

“Yes,” I said, “but it’s the story. Story trumps writer.”

I know people think I’m being all mystical and strange when I say things like this. And I’m such a practical person that it seems uncharacteristic for me. But it’s so true. In 2007, when it seemed that everyone who had a life was waiting with bated breath for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) to be published, I checked J.K. Rowling’s website all the time for possible insights and updates. And I remember her saying at one point that Dumbledore wasn’t cooperating. [Spoiler Alert] Nevermind that he was already dead, it intrigued me that her character was giving her trouble. None of my characters had done that to me. Yet.

Or maybe they had. Maybe that’s why I have so many broken-down manuscripts littering my hard drive. Maybe there’s an event that I don’t want to happen, so by not writing it, I delay the pain. Or there’s a character that I know needs to – gulp – die, but I can’t bear to kill.

I blogged last week about communication and when it breaks down between people (read it here). The same can happen between writers and their stories. It’s really obvious sometimes when a story desperately needs to go one way, but the writer just can’t do it – can’t kill the dashing suitor or separate the twins at birth or let the sickly-sweet heroine have a bad day for once. These stories suffer, I believe, because they are subverted from their true purpose. They’re stunted and can’t grow as they need to.

So when I was thinking about communication breakdowns, about the sad end to my new story, I remembered that pesky novel that I’m trying to get represented. I’ve revised it ten times over a period of ten years. And when I say “revised,” I don’t mean “proofread.” I mean top-to-bottom, scenes cut and added all over the place, names changed multiple times. And those epiphanies I mentioned? Yeah, they’ve caused a revision or four, as well. But is it done yet? Has it really had its say?

I’m having doubts about this book, which has been well-received by other writers. But is it because they’ve seen multiple versions, and my latest revision is so much better that they’re just glad to see improvement? Or are they complimenting it because they know me and don’t want to hurt my feelings? While doing some soul-searching, I’ve realized that some of the parts that I believe necessary to the story might need to go, which is tough. Even parts that get a lot of praise may not belong, like a silk ball gown on a trip to the beach.

One of the questions I’ve had to pose to myself is: do I know my story? I mean, do I truly, bone-deep know it? To the point that I could spell out the most important aspect in one sentence. And maybe I don’t. Maybe, if agents don’t accept it, it’s not ready to be accepted. Maybe I’m not ready for it to be accepted. Or it could be that I’m full of doubts because I really do know it, and they’re all just looking for the biggest sell, and my story isn’t “it.” And the struggle continues.

So while I should be writing, I’ve done a lot of stewing instead. You know, I prefer to let my favorite tomato sauce simmer on the back burner for hours before I eat it. Sure, it’s “ready” in twenty minutes or so, but it’s not nearly as good. Maybe that’s what my story needs to do. I think about it, mull it over, jot a few notes. . . and listen. Whenever it’s ready to give up the goods, I hope I hear it this time. Then, I’ll settle into revision number eleven.

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Communication Is More Than Maintenance Talk

Communication

Communication (Photo credit: P Shanks)

Talking to my husband has always been easy. As his side of the story goes, he “fell” for me on a high school chorus trip to New York City. On the bus ride home to Florida, we sat together and talked almost all night. It had never been so natural for him to talk to a girl before. I certainly didn’t think at the time that I was making waves, but I guess my conversational charms won him over. I have my parents to thank, who work together and communicate very well, and who also have always treated me like I deserve respect for what I say. Even when I was a child, they conversed with me like I was a human being, not a sweet little darling who says cute stuff. That means that they’ve listened to a lot of dreams and ideas that they knew were naive or unrealistic. It also means they’ve had to set me straight a time or two. Although I didn’t particularly appreciate my dad telling me, when I was an adolescent, that pursuing a career in acting was not the way to go, I’m glad for the candor and that we shared the kind of trust that allowed me to lay out my dreams.

I look at my own kids and hope that the lines will be open for us as well. Communication truly starts in the womb, which is why I listened to music that I wanted my babies to hear and talked to my pregnant belly. When I was expecting baby number two, I encouraged Peter to talk to him. He would put his mouth up to my belly and say, “I love you, Baby Ian. I can’t wait to see you. I’m your big brother.” I think that has a lot to do with why Peter is Ian’s absolute favorite person in the world. It’s also sweet to me that Peter often says he can’t wait until Ian can talk (more than the baby talk he is capable of now).

Some people’s idea of “quality time” with their kids is to hover and be overprotective. Others feel guilty for not being able to spend as much time as they would like and create events that are supposed to equal that imagined quality. But do whirlwind trips to amusement parks, occasional weeknight baseball games, or other activities that wear us out and wear us thin make up for the everyday interactions that should be natural and lead to life-long trust and closeness? I’m not saying that doing those things is bad, but they don’t make up for lack of communication. A good friend once observed that every time she saw a marriage deteriorate to the point that maintenance talk was the only communication between husband and wife, divorce was usually around the corner. It happens to parents and children, too, who find they have no reason to talk after the nest is empty.

But maintenance talk is necessary, isn’t it? Thomas and I keep very busy schedules and are often like ships passing in the night. “What time is your meeting?” “Will you be able to watch the kids?” “I need more creamer when you go to the store.” “We need to run by Target to pick up school supplies.” When the necessary becomes the only conversation in a household, however, relationships become fragmented. My favorite parenting book, On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the GIFT of Nighttime Sleep, recommends that parents have “couch time.” (Read more about my Babywise experience here.) If there is no other time in their busy day when parents can talk, at least they’ll have fifteen precious minutes to catch upon more than the grocery list. And the key is to have couch time around the kids, so they can see that their parents are important to each other.

I remember my college days, when I thought my life couldn’t get any busier (ha). I always took five courses at a time, and I attended summer semesters, too. I worked twenty to thirty hours a week, sang in the church choir, sang with a community chorus, helped found and edited the journal Fiction Fix, attended numerous workshops and events for that same journal, and drove almost thirty minutes one-way to Thomas’s house four or five times a week. It was all a part of my plan to get my degree as quickly as possible while continuing to stay active in all the activities that were important in my life. I could have made things much easier on myself if I hadn’t gone to school over the summer, if I’d taken four classes instead of five. What was the big hurry to graduate, anyway? Well, Thomas and I were getting married, and we knew that one of us had to be out of college and working to support the other. Since I started a year before him, the pressure was on me: the sooner I finished, the sooner we could move on to the next stage of our life together. We planned a summer wedding, so he could continue to go to school without interrupting his spring or fall semesters.

Except that things didn’t turn out that way. Although I adored a few professors and enjoy some of my classes, I had no great love of college; it was an obstacle, something I had to conquer. But Thomas absolutely loathed it. College was something he could barely stomach, especially when a professor showed up and told his class to dress professionally – all while she was wearing sweats. I don’t know if that was the last straw, but it was certainly bad timing on that professor’s part. It was during that first week in the fall of 2003 that he met me after an evening class, and he just had that look. I took a deep breath, knowing what was coming. He had spent all evening thinking about what he was going to do and how in the world he was going to break it to me and his parents. I knew he was miserable in his classes, and I also knew that it in no way helped that it was my last semester, and he still had two years to go. I listened and tried to be sympathetic, encouraging. And then we moved on because talking through problems is what we do. And although we were creating a future together, he had to be at peace with his half of the deal. Fortunately, his chosen career wasn’t dependent on a four-year degree, and he did eventually (very eventually) graduate.

But there are couples out there who are sorely disappointed – even surprised – when they find out their relationships can’t survive on date nights and diamond rings alone. There are parents who think they can keep their kids busy with sports and camps and buy them cars, and those same kids will, in return, go to the colleges and pick the careers their parents prefer. And it’s not just parents and children. Everywhere you find relationships, you find people who expect things from others that are unrealistic, unfair even; you’ll find little respect for each other’s time and thoughts; you’ll find misunderstandings that could have been easily fixed. You’ll find broken communication. But when you see people really talking to each other – and listening – you witness a truly beautiful thing.

Sometimes our family has to drive somewhere in separate vehicles, and on those occasions, when Thomas can drive home and have Peter with him, I know he cherishes those rides. With the radio off and phones put away, they just talk. Peter asks questions, and Thomas answers. And Peter tells what he thinks about the world, and those are priceless (and often hilarious) moments. Thomas always seems to glow afterward, as if our five-year-old has just recharged him.

I watch parents who seem to care more about their phones or cars or any number of other distractions than their kids. Perhaps a big reason that young people have an increasing disrespect for their elders has a lot to do with the way we treat them, and often, I am convicted. I have to remember that I was once their age, too, yearning for answers, for information, for attention. And when I spend the time with my kids that they desire and deserve, I not only have hope for surviving the distant teenage years, but turning two men out into the world who will make it a better place.

I hope, if I have the chance to look back over my parenting experience some day in the distant future, I will see much improvement on my part and be proud of myself for hanging in there. And I hope that my kids will still want to talk to me then, to ask questions, to share their joys and concerns. But it won’t happen on its own; I have to work on it today – and always – to create that kind of a future.

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If I Die Before I Wake

English: Sloughan Glen A great place to spend ...

A quiet Sunday afternoon with the family (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seems that I’ve read more and more posts and memes lately about people—artists and innovators, particularly—pursuing their dreams so they won’t have any regrets at the ends of their lives. One was from Anne Lammot, and I gave her a resounding, “Yes!” After all, I was raised by parents who believe that it is more important to do something fulfilling than pocket-filling. My father has always been baffled by people who suffer through a miserable work week to make it to a weekend during which they will spend half their time bemoaning that it’s almost over. It is a wonderful ideal, to wake up excited about work every day. But what if it doesn’t pay the bills? There is a reason we’re called “starving artists.”

The question for the artist in me is: If I give up on a writing career, will I regret it when I’m eighty? But an even more important question is: If I die tomorrow, what regrets will I have? Put another way, if I knew I only had twenty-four hours left to live, what would I do?

This is a question that was posed to my mother’s Sunday school class twenty-nine or thirty years ago, when I was a baby. Her answer (in part, at least) was that she would still have the same number of diapers to change during that twenty-four hour period as during any other; even if she was leaving a number of unfulfilled dreams, she was still the mother of a dependent baby.

For myself, I would probably spend too much time writing instructions or creating spreadsheets of online usernames and passwords for my husband. What I cannot imagine saying is, “Gosh, I’m not published yet; I’d better get on it.” Mainly, I hope, I would want to be with my family. There are people every day who go home from hospitals, unable to be treated, and their only goal is to spend what time they have left with their families. Those who are left behind will have to survive on the memories made during that time.

As a healthy young woman, I could easily live another forty to fifty years. I could also easily pull out onto a busy street tomorrow and get hit by a careless driver. I apologize if this seems like a downer, and I certainly don’t want to live with my last will and testament in my back pocket, but I also don’t want to forget that life is so short and precious.

My husband and I pretty much follow Dave Ramsey’s guide to debt-free living (see The Total Money Makeover Workbook), and we’re well on our way. Ramsey promotes a lifestyle of delayed gratitude, which I think is healthy (the real world won’t give me a cookie just because I kick and scream for it), but in a way, it’s also sad that many people will never make it there. I don’t mean that a debt-free life is unattainable, just that it could possibly be attained and then not enjoyed. Several years ago, I met a woman who told me that she and her husband had everything they wanted after he retired. They finally had the means and time to travel, and they bought their dream house. It was there that he died, less than a year later, the victim of cancer. Sometimes, she said, they laughed hysterically at the irony of it all: they finally had the house in which they had always wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, yet the rest of their lives wasn’t long enough to enjoy everything for which they had saved.

I still follow the Dave Ramsey method to a point, but Thomas and I also decided that living on beans now so we can enjoy steak and lobster some thirty years down the road is not exactly how we want to live and raise our kids. If our vacations are modest road trips that only last a few days at a time, at least we hope to make good memories with our boys as long as we are able. And if we can achieve a more comfortable lifestyle in the future, so much the better.

With money and careers in mind, there is a part of me that has always said, “When I publish, I’ll finally prove that I’ve done something. The last piece of the puzzle will be in place.” But another part of me knows that I’ve already done a lot, and publishing does not guarantee authorial success, nor does it guarantee mansions or good health or unanimous acclaim.

About five years ago, I met an out-of-state friend for coffee. While we summarized everything we’d done and all we’d hoped we would do by that point in our lives, I lamented that a writing career seemed impossible to attain. I’d gone to a good school that turned out lawyers and doctors, and what was I doing? She pointed out that I was happily married and a mother. She couldn’t say either of those things for herself. Although she had achieved a level of success that I never hoped to claim for myself, she graded me according to different standards. I never thought someone would look at my life and think it enviable.

Similarly, in Bess Streeter Aldrich’s A Lantern in Her Hand, Abbie Deal gives up a possible musical career to marry the love of her life and raise a family. Her children never appreciate her true potential, how great she could have been. They don’t really understand her at all, in fact. Two of her daughters make conscious decisions to never have children and never marry, respectively, in order to pursue careers instead. Only the one who doesn’t marry regrets her decision later in life, when it’s too late to go back to the man who once loved her.

Abbie Deal made a choice that many people wouldn’t—and don’t—make. She chose something for herself—love—but something so much more than herself: she chose relationships, in this case, a relationship with her family. Abbie Deal lived a (fictional) life that I consider was without regret, even though it wasn’t what she initially wanted.

When I think about the people who are going home to spend their remaining time with their families, I realize how important yet how difficult it is to live in the present. What if the present is stressful? As much as I want to spend time with my little boys, my husband and I still have to earn enough money to keep them fed and clothed. And sometimes spending time with them isn’t what I want. I want something for me; I want to read or write or simply have a few moments’ peace.

There must be a balance. Whenever the end of my life is, if I have the luxury of any kind of reflection, I don’t want to wish that I’d spent more time with my family; I want to be thankful for all the time we did spend together. I don’t want them to say, “Well, we didn’t get to see her much, but thank goodness she had such a successful writing career.” (At this point, they won’t be saying that anyway, but they might lament that I spent too much time chasing said career.)

While I won’t for a minute say that I’m totally selfless, that I never make decisions based on what I want to make myself happy, I hope that I can share my life and my time with the people I love. Since I won’t be able to take anything with me anyway, I can leave a legacy of many meaningful memories. Besides, watching my two little boogers dive face-first into Nutella and recite Mother’s Day poems provide good fodder for creative writing, anyway.

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Good-Bye, Little Decade

English: Traditional Devil's Food Birthday Cake

Birthday Cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I write this, it is the last day I will ever be twenty-something, and while I would usually rather crawl under a rock than draw attention to my birthday, this one’s kind of a biggie. I could not wait to get out of my teens. I started college when I was seventeen, the youngest kid in my orientation class. I was always self-conscious about my age and went to great pains to stay inconspicuous. Every birthday, I thought, “Well, at least now I can say I’m in my twenties,” “Now maybe I’ll get some respect, since I’m past twenty-five,” and so on. But even now, I know that most of you are probably rolling your eyes, thinking I’m still a baby. I reach this age with mixed emotions because there were things I always assumed I would do before I hit thirty. But here I am, as unpublished and anonymous as ever, at least as far as the brick-and-mortar bookstores are concerned. But is that what life’s all about, anyway? I’ve thought a lot about what did happen in my twenties lately, and it’s been a pretty eventful ten years, even if I didn’t accomplish every single goal.

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Two months after turning 20, I set my wedding date and started planning. I finished writing my first novel and started the long process of revising. I graduated with a BA (English/Philosophy) six months to the day before my wedding. I hardly noticed that I was finished with school, so immersed was in the editing and typesetting process of the second volume of Fiction Fix.

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Thomas and I got married two months after I turned 21. I was actually the breadwinner the first five months we were married (scary thought because my salary was not spectacular). We lived in a tiny apartment and loved it, although we were excited (and naive) about becoming homeowners in the near future. 2004 was also what I think of as the Year of the Hurricane. There were four big storms, at least for Northeast Florida, and we spent many a night playing Scrabble by candlelight. A couple months before my next birthday, Thomas and I put a deposit down on our condo.

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Not wanting to go month-to-month on our rent, Thomas and I moved in with his parents the weekend that I turned 22. Then our condo complex’s original builders went out of business, and it turned into a huge fiasco. We were assured our condo would be ready by September—November at the latest. We should have just walked away, but the $4000 we’d put down seemed like too much to lose. Oh well. One cool thing I did that year was to travel to New York with a group of choral friends, where we performed contemporary British composer John Rutter’s Requiem in a mass choir in Carnegie Hall. Even better than singing in Carnegie Hall was being directed by Rutter himself.

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In May of 2006, Thomas and I became homeowners. We tried to put the extra six months of waiting behind us, figuring that in a couple years, we’d make all our money back, plus some, then get a house where we could raise a family. Ha. Anyhow, we moved in and adopted our kitty Willow shortly afterward. That fall, I had gum surgery, in preparation for getting braces. But before filling my mouth with metal, I found out I was pregnant.

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It was mostly the year of the inflating, pregnant belly (and everything that goes with it). I cannot forget that this was also the year the last Harry Potter book came out. My parents, Thomas, and I went to Barnes and Noble for the midnight release. I read it aloud all the way home and much of the next day. (Thomas read ahead while I napped—hey, give me a break, I was pregnant.) Sad to think we’ll never go to a midnight Harry Potter book release again. Our first son Peter was born a few months later. The middle-of-the-night feedings, colic, and reflux were a pain, but his first few weeks are still magical to me. It’s a time I also associate with the movie The Departed, which we watched almost constantly for a month or two. When Peter was four months old, I got braces. At that point, the economy had already tanked, and my job at my family’s small business started to disappear. I transitioned to bookkeeper, which is much less than full-time. If I’d known, then, that we would have to survive on little more than Thomas’s salary, I probably wouldn’t have paid $6000+ to fix my bite, but it was money better spent than the $4000 we wasted on the condo’s deposit.

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For several months, my family focused on my maternal grandfather and his failing health. I’m so glad that he lived long enough to know Peter, whom he adored. We honored his 89 years with a beautiful memorial service. Just a few months after Grandaddy died, my church ordained me as a deacon (in the Presbyterian church, we’re the lay people who provide pastoral care for the congregation and staff), and I know he would have been proud. On the writing front, I took a break from Fiction Fix to concentrate on being a mom. And on the mommy front, Peter was more and better than I ever could have imagined. I worried I would never lose the baby weight, but constant exercise and an appliance installed in the roof of my mouth that made it almost impossible to eat helped me lose an extra 20 pounds. Never fear, my orthodontist fit me with a new appliance, and my appetite was back by the time we took Peter on his first trip to Disney World.

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On my 26th birthday, we went to Disney again, and I became extremely sick. When we got home, I was diagnosed with double ear infections and tonsillitis. But the fun was only starting; the antibiotic I took gave me hives that covered my entire body, including inside my mouth. Ugh. It was also the year when we realized that we had already lived in the condo three years and would continue to live there longer than expected. A lot longer. But we cringed at the idea of selling it and only breaking even or maybe even taking a couple-thousand dollar hit. I wish we had. But I had high hopes for making lots of money and paying off the balance because I finally landed a literary agent. That means publication, right? Wrong. It took the better part of two years to figure out that she didn’t care at all about selling my book to traditional publishers.

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We went to Universal Islands of Adventure the weekend that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened. (Very bad idea, especially when you have a toddler in diapers.) Later that week, Peter was ring bearer in my cousin’s wedding. The next month, Peter was potty trained, his incentive two more trips to Disney World. In between the trips, I finally got my braces off. By that point, people were bugging us about having another kid, and with the braces off, I was ready to entertain the idea. Less than two weeks before I turned 28, we found out we were expecting our second child. I was also in a writing funk. I was looking for a good reason to ditch my useless agent, so I told her I was pregnant and didn’t want to write anymore. That’s not exactly true, but I had given up on publishing. I’d thought about starting a website, but I was too depressed by the whole not-getting-anywhere thing to do much about it. When I found out I was pregnant, I spent my meager savings for my website on baby stuff.

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I spent most of the year tired. A few months before we welcomed baby Ian, Peter started three-year-old preschool at the same elementary school I attended. Thomas also went back to school to finish his bachelor’s. Due to laziness, tiredness, and being pregnant, Peter and I ate at Five Guys a lot, which was probably a big factor in gaining more weight with baby number two than baby number one. Ian was born two weeks before Christmas, and things weren’t quite as magical as when Peter was born. It took us a while to adjust to a very different little boy, but we love our baby just as much as his big brother.

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Without a doubt, this has been the busiest year of my life thus far. I kind of got my writing mojo back and started this blog and discovered Smashwords. I started working with Fiction Fix again, after a four year hiatus. I also started getting up at 4:30 every day to exercise; it’s the only time I can do it now that Peter’s in school five days a week. I joined three different committees at my church and also started taking Sewanee’s Education for Ministry four-year course. We took the boys to Legoland to celebrate their birthdays, then Disney World at the beginning of this year. We put the condo on the market in January, figuring no one would ever want to buy it, and within 24 hours, we had an offer (although for much less than we originally paid). It was a whirlwind, finding a place to live and moving so quickly. The condo days are finally behind us; we actually have a house big enough for all of our stuff, although we weren’t brave enough to actually buy again. Since I’m not publishing bestsellers yet, I decided to start substitute teaching at Peter’s school, and I’m earning an income, while still not having to work full-time. I’m once again searching for an agent. Maybe I’ll actually get published one day. And if not by a traditional publisher, I’m determined to make my book the best it can be and publish it as an ebook, if nothing else. I always thought, Well, if I’m not published by the time I’m thirty, I’ll just save a chunk of money and self-publish. When you start writing a book at nineteen, you think that ten-plus years is more than sufficient for perfecting it and going through the entire publication process. Well, guess what, thirty is here, although a hardback copy of my book is not, it’s not the end of the world. Instead of giving myself a timeline, I have a list of prospective agents, and once they’re exhausted, I’ll go to plan B.

As for my thirties, my boys will be adolescents by the end of this decade. I’m sad, on the one hand, that I won’t have cuddly infants anymore, but I love watching them grow and learn. Maybe during this decade, we’ll plunge into the housing market again, maybe not. At least now we’re much better informed. And maybe that miracle of publication will happen for me. My dream, one that I have every time I volunteer in Peter’s school library, is for a child to come in one day and ask for my book. Wouldn’t that be cool? But if not, the best thing about being forced into some semblance of patience is that I’ve discovered how many other joys there are in life.

Now, bring it on, thirties!

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A Book Affair

Books

Books (Photo credit: henry)

I’ve never been one to blow through my paycheck on a shopping spree. I do buy clothes more often than my husband but not nearly as often as most women. I never buy jewelry. I don’t have a lot of knickknacks or art, although, with a mother who is an artist, I certainly appreciate great artistic talent. I don’t care about TVs, home theatres, or electronics gadgets. I am only occasionally tempted by purses or things with multiple pockets and compartments (and the bigger the better). Really, the only item in existence that is a potential budget buster for this girl is a book.

This past week I helped set up the Scholastic book fair at my son’s school. Book lovers can imagine my agony as I unpacked and shelved all sorts of treasures. The few books whose covers were torn during transport went back into the original boxes, never to be displayed; every time I found one, I wanted to offer it a home, even if I’d never heard of it before. And every time I found one I had already read, I wanted to say, “Oh, oh! I read this—has anyone else? You have to read this!”

I often avoid bookstores if I don’t have extra spending money because the temptation to buy is so great. At the end of 2012, I wrote a post about the books I hoped to read this year. Of course, I haven’t yet been able to read nearly as much as I hoped, but I’ve already gone through several that I adore and can see myself going back to again and again (including one title that was at the book fair, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus). But within days of publishing that list, what do you think I did? I went out and bought more books. Now, I know there’s no way in the world that I’ll be able to read all of those books this year. I suppose I could shut myself in my room with a box of tissues (just in case), but it’s not like I have a maid to take care of the house, a nanny to watch my kids, or a trust fund to pay for it all.

Why do I keep plaguing myself with these books? Why can’t I stop? There are much more harmful vices, I know, but even if I’m not destroying my relationships or running up credit card debt with my habit, I’m certainly running out of places to put each new purchase. I converted my china cabinet into a bookcase, and now I’ve taken over most of the top of my spinet piano, as well. Whenever I want to have fun and internet browse for my dream home, houses with built-in bookshelves automatically jump to the top of my list.

Part of me wonders why I never became a librarian. I didn’t want to spend any more time in college than I absolutely had to, however, so forget the master’s in library science. But I could still work in a school library somewhere. Whenever I volunteer in my son’s school’s media center, I bask in the atmosphere of so many well-loved published works. And since I went to school there, too, and received much joy browsing those shelves as a girl, it’s even more of a magical experience. I listen in wonder as kids come in, excited to find a new book, and the media specialist rattles off titles that she thinks will interest boys and girls of all different ages. She’s my hero.

My husband has always been a great gift giver. At birthdays and Christmas, he’ll ask what I want, and often I list a number of books that I’d like or say, “You know what I like to read. Just surprise me.” He’s responsible for many of the tomes that crowd our shelves and spill over into the rest of our house, including the Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, and The Hunger Games series. He discovered early on that I couldn’t care less about jewelry, perfumes, flowers, spa days—in other words, things that would delight most other women. The first gift he ever bought for me (and the only piece of jewelry he’s given me, except for the wedding rings we exchanged) was a watch. I’d been going on for a while about how I needed a new one, and I still wear it today, almost fourteen years later. My mom jokes that it’s my engagement watch. But what she forgets is that Thomas followed the watch with a book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by one of my favorite authors, Stephen King. I think I know which gift really won my heart.

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Are You Listening?

A near-ending game board, tiles and racks of t...

Scrabble (International, Mattel, Inc.,photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently, someone asked my father for a favor. Daddy, being the dependable guy he is, immediately complied. He then sent a rather long follow-up e-mail to the person in question, detailing what he did and what needed to happen next. But the person didn’t read the whole e-mail, didn’t act on my father’s instructions, and when Daddy finally took matters into his own hands, the person wondered why my dad was exasperated—he didn’t even remember making the original request to begin with. The problem, Daddy concluded, is that all people do anymore is listen (or read) in sound bites.

I hate to say that, fight it as I do, I too easily fall into the same pattern. Here I write what I would consider lengthy posts if I had to read them, yet I watch the scroll bar and groan if a blog that I normally read takes me more than a couple minutes.

With this in mind, in Noah Lukeman’s A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation, one of the first things he talks about is the use of the period and the stylistic differences between writing short and long sentences. Granted, I do ramble, but I try not to write run-on sentences that lose the original thread from beginning to end. In reading many of Lukeman’s examples, I realized why I write the way I do. Considering some of the books I had to read in college and absolutely hated (or classics I forced myself to read because I knew they would be worth it if only I made it to the end), I realized that one of my problems was this whole long, circuitous sentence thing. And you know what Lukeman points out? Long sentences can be risky because of the less-than-adequate attention span of the modern reader. Writers beware! Too-long sentences could very well cause readers to put your books down for good.

Blaming society’s shortened attentions spans on modern media is a nice distraction—and a lot easier than examining myself and asking how I’ve let it happen to me, too. Ugh. Does this mean that I’m going to embrace the half-a-page sentence and start rambling worse than ever in self defense? Never fear; it’s not my style. Besides, I don’t think forcing people to read longer streams of drivel solves the problem. What I must do, however, is pay attention, focus on this fault of mine and try my hardest to remedy it.

There must be a happy medium between jumping from topic to topic as soon as interest fades and becoming focused to the exclusion of everything else in the world. If you’ve ever watched cooking competitions, the people who can’t multi-task in the kitchen are usually the first to go, so it’s got its advantages. But I don’t want to be so busy that I ignore a long e-mail that has some very important information. I don’t want to be in too much of a hurry to communicate properly (and politely).

I know that I’m not the only person plagued by this impatience. It just gets worse with every succeeding generation, I’m afraid. When my kids are old enough to text (or whatever the craze is, at that time), will they even know what OMG means? Will they translate it to “oh my gosh” every time they see it or just think that OMG is some normal (albeit meaningless) exclamation?

And since we’re on the topic, do you remember the “reality” show “Survivor”? I’m proud to say that I’ve only ever seen one partial episode. I thought it was pretty stupid because the show in no way puts the contestants in situations in which they would actually have to adapt to survive. But if you consider a true survival situation, would the people of today be able to do it? Survive without cell phones, GPS, Kindles, computers, processed food? I know moms who get fed up with their kids being absorbed in the TV, so they go cold turkey, and the kids have the hardest time figuring out how to be kids—and in homes full of toys, no less.

The first autumn that Thomas and I were married, we went through more than a week, combined, with no electricity because of the number of hurricanes and tropical storms that hit Florida. We spent many a night playing Scrabble (yes, an actual board game) by candlelight, eating the “comfort” (junk) food that we’d stockpiled for just that kind of situation. And you know what? Except for the stifling heat, I remember those stormy stretches of no electricity with fondness.

I suggest, to cultivate this elusive patience, to help new generations of techno-children, who learn immediate gratification but have little concept of the delayed kind, going out of your way to do things the so-called dinosaur way. Show someone you care enough to snail mail a “thinking of you” card once in a while. What does it cost you—a few minutes of your time and a stamp? Turn off the TV and play board games with your kids. Try to sit with a lengthy article or a book for more than five minutes at a time. Cook a meal from scratch. If you’re really brave and aren’t afraid of failure, start a garden.

I’m just as guilty of loving technology as the next person, but I don’t want to depend on it to the exclusion of my intellect. And, although I know it sounds extreme, that’s a lot of what’s at stake here. If we count on technology and short cuts to do everything for us, forget losing deep thinkers, we’re losing thinkers, period. Instead of spoon-feeding people bites of information—the least amount they need to get by—why not try provoking some actual thought processes? Are we so lazy that we can’t do a little mental work anymore? (And don’t even get me started on the physical kind.) If I want people to read long blogs like this one, I need to be able to do so myself. So I’m going to start with me and branch out to my kids. And my audience, all three of you.

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Write Like It’s Your Job

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

 

Someone asked me recently if I always knew I wanted to be a writer. My answer: “Always. I was going to make millions of dollars as an author, and I would never need a regular job.” I assumed that something magical would happen in college, and by the time everyone else was finishing internships and putting out job applications, I would be retiring to my bedroom with stacks of college-ruled notebook paper (yes, I prefer to write longhand), where I would churn out bestsellers eight hours a day.

Ha. It’s been years since I’ve been so delusional.

The tough thing about freelancing—or even tougher, doing something for which I have a passion but may never get paid—is making the time for it. That whole writing for eight hours a day thing was shot when I needed to actually make an income. Fresh out of high school, I figured that bookstores would be the perfect venue for me to work through college, and then I would turn around and sell my own books there.

Not only did I not get a job at a bookstore, but the job I did get was the last one on Earth I ever wanted: working for my parents’ small business. My job description had more to do with dealing with people (an introvert’s nightmare) and accounting than writing, although I did eventually become an in-house editor and writer for the company newsletter. I did what I had to do to keep from being a starving artist, and I wrote when I could. Sometimes that meant finding inspiration and writing every spare minute. Other times, I just didn’t feel like writing, couldn’t get motivated, so I didn’t. When I returned from my first maternity leave five years ago, I traded my forty-plus-hour work week and sporadic writing for a shorter work week and a load of responsibilities that left me with less time to write than ever.

Recently, I decided I’d had it. I’m not quite sure what made me fed up enough with myself to change–maybe the dissatisfaction of looking back on an afternoon when I had time to write but piddled around the house, made a shopping list, and spent too long looking at my budget instead. I realized that no one’s going to publish a book that’s not finished. No one will even know about it because I won’t send it out until I feel that it’s the best it can possibly be. And it won’t attain that level of perfection until I actually sit down and work on it. So I sat down and worked on it. Whereas most days I’m lucky to read through a few pages (and maybe fix a typo or three), I actually sat down and read more than two chapters aloud, added a scene, cut a bunch of extraneous fat. . . and I still had time to read the mail and clean up the stuff my kids dumped all over the place when we walked in the door.

It was somewhat of an epiphany (forgive me for being so dense) when I realized that, for someone who wants desperately to write and no longer works full-time, I have no excuse for not writing. Oh, I do plenty of writer things–volunteering for a literary mag and editing among them–but what about that career as a novelist I dreamed about? One of my problems is that I don’t know how to say no, so I fill my schedule with things that I may or may not need to do. And I do have my children to consider, but they nap every day. Why don’t I use those precious minutes to write?

I am not the first writer in the world with this issue. Stephen King, before he published Carrie, was a high school English teacher who typed something ridiculous like two thousand words every night after his wife and kids went to bed. Madeleine L’Engle, after having initial publishing success, went through a decade of rejection, during which she felt useless as a writer and contributor to the family budget. She almost gave up. Almost.

The last thing I want is to look back on my life and see that I gave up. Do I expect to be Stephen King or Madeleine L’Engle? Of course not. I just want to have no regrets. I don’t want to say, Well, fitness was important enough for me to get up early and exercise five days a week, but I just couldn’t ever find extra time to write. I never dreamed of being a workout nut; I dreamed about being an author. No more excuses, no more feeling sorry for myself. I am going to write, to show that I care enough to be serious, and then maybe I will actually be taken seriously. Maybe if I work hard enough, as if there’s actually someone out there who is paying me to do it, I will write something worth paying for. Maybe if someone says, “I’d really like to read the rest of your manuscript,” I’ll feel like I did my best and be proud of what I have to hand over.

Decision made. Mind-set changed. I’m the one in my way, and I’m stepping aside.

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Ah, the Infamous To-Do List

list

list (Photo credit: macwagen)

I have a love/hate relationship with to-do lists. As an organized, goal-oriented person, there is little more satisfying than checking off item after item: Done! Done! Done! But, on the other hand, as an extremely busy person, there is little more frustrating than looking at my list of goals and realizing that I’m not going to finish nearly all of what I need to do, and just forget what I want to do. Then I feel worthless. I mean, how hard is it to wash a load of towels, scrub a couple toilets, and unload the dishwasher? And if I can’t take care of my home, then why should I get to indulge in my favorite vice–a good book? Those items that aren’t checked off mock me; they nag. So I get discouraged and quit making lists. But then I forget about the toilets. I know there’s something I needed to do. . . what was it? Okay, make a list again. Just a little reminder–no pressure. Then I end up with sticky notes all over the place and scraps of paper–reminders to check my reminders. And don’t forget the alarm on my iPhone. I have a series of alarms that go off during the day, telling me to wake up, pick up my son from school, go to the doctor, and so on. (But just in case I can’t remember why the alarm is going off, there still might be a little slip of paper with early dismissal 11:00 A.M. written on it).

Are all my lists and reminders and alarms just bits of refuse that get in the way of actual living? Are they wasting the time I’m supposed to be saving by making them to begin with?

Recently, I got fed up with all the work with comes with. . . you know. . . being an adult. Worn out from going to bed too late and getting up at 4:30, one bit of advice I get quite often is to get a nap when the boys do. But that’s usually not an option. Naptime is when I do all the things I can’t do when they’re awake. I mean, I guess I don’t have to change the cat’s litter box. . . but ignoring it for too many days in a row is just plain gross, and cleaning it when my touch-everything-and-put-it-in-his-mouth toddler is up and about qualifies as both gross and unhygienic.

My pattern was to come home, put the boys down, then get to work. I had a mental list, even if I didn’t have a written one. With so much to do, I often ended up frustrated; if I was able to sit down at all, there was little to no time left to write. Yes, I realize I sound selfish. But there remains the fact that, if I’m going to make a living writing, I have to be able to actually write and not just complain about never having the time to do it. (Although I probably could make a living complaining if I dressed like trash and let a camera crew follow me around all day; it seems to work for enough other people.)

So over the past couple weeks, I’ve changed my methods slightly. That handy little timer on my iPhone became my friend in a new way; it saved me from completely frustrating myself with chores. Whether it’s true or not, I believe there’s something to working in concentrated increments. If I know I only have ten minutes or thirty minutes or whatever it is, I become more focused. So I allowed myself half an hour to write, then half an hour to do chores. Or if I had a specific goal, like editing a chapter, I made myself do a chore as soon as I was done with that chapter. Done and done.

This weekend is the big test because we’re moving. The condo that we never thought we would leave—they would have to bury us under the patio, and we would haunt the residents who came after us—is about to be a part of Cotchaleovitch family lore. We put it on the market, figuring why not? No one’s going to want it, anyway, not in this market. We knew we would have plenty of time to save money for a new place, look for said new place, and continue to regret buying the condo almost seven years ago while we waited. But twenty-one hours after we put a sign in our window, we got an offer. Not just a bite, a real offer. Thomas and I walked around in disbelief for the rest of the day. Talk about wrecking an organized person’s day. But it’s a good kind of wreckage.

Now, weeks later, we have a house. Less than a week after seeing it for the first time, we were in a property manager’s office, signing papers. Thomas and I really never thought this would happen. We dreamed about it, sure, but we couldn’t actually imagine moving. Nor did we want to face the amount of work it takes to move.

It’s overwhelming to look around and not know where to start. This is where a to-do list comes in handy. I only wish the list would do the hard stuff for me. It doesn’t go to work or exercise or take care of the kids, after all. I still have to do those things, plus pack, too. Oh, and change our address, get the power turned on—all those little things that people would rather forget about but cannot, ultimately, ignore. Fortunately, when I moved in 2004, then again in 2005, and finally in 2006, I got fed up with trying to remember all the places I had to inform and call that I made a list and squirreled it away, finding it again a week or so ago—a to-do list that is actually worth something, and that something is my time. I’m sure I would have thought of everything on that list eventually, but each item would have come to me in the middle of the night, stealing my sleep and making me paranoid about forgetting before morning.

So I looked at my list and figured out which things were most important, like forwarding the mail and turning on the electricity and water. I’ve gotten through maybe half the list, which is slow-going for me, but I think it’s actually an improvement over what I think of as my natural Martha-ness. And I’m not stressing, either; I won’t allow it. It’s all spelled out, and I’ll get to everything on there in the next week or so. As for the packing, that has more of a deadline. But as with splitting my time between household chores and writing, I’m spending tiny bites of time for me (like this blog) and then spending a little more time packing. (When crunch time comes, I’ll be all about packing and moving, of course.)

This week’s chapel leader at my son’s school quoted the Bible verse below, and it was just what I needed to hear when I felt particularly bogged down by thirty hours of things to do in a twenty-four hour day. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul wrote, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10) How refreshing to think that there’s a plan for me, and I’m not required to check anything off on a list to follow it—or to be a worthwhile person.

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Apparently There’s an Award for Blogs with ADD

The Versatile Blogger Award

I was pleased and surprised last week to receive a message from fellow blogger, Christi Gerstle of Novel Conclusions, awarding me the Versatile Blogger Award. That’s awesome–there’s a blog for people like me, who can’t seem to stay on topic. I appreciate Christi for enjoying my blog enough to think of me. In return, please click on her link, and you can read her blog, too.

There are a few requirements for this award. First, display the award certificate on your website. Then, announce your win with a post and a link to whoever presented your award. In return, present this award to fifteen deserving bloggers, and drop them a comment to tip them off after you’ve linked them in the post. Lastly, post seven interesting things about yourself.

I am really going to break the rules here and only award three bloggers the Versatile Blogger Award. It’s not that others don’t deserve it, just that I don’t get to invest as much time as I would like reading other blogs, so I feel unqualified in choosing one over another. But the following bloggers, I promise, deserve it and are worth checking out.

1. Amy Quincy’s Writerly Musings

Do yourself a favor, and check out Amy’s blog, if you don’t look at any others. I knew Amy before she became disabled. I admired her then, as a writer and a woman, and since she became wheelchair bound a few years ago, she’s only grown in my eyes as a human being. I am inspired every time I read her blog, and I usually end up giggling quite a bit, too.

2. The Oregon Pilgrim, Danielle Harris

I look forward to reading Danielle’s posts. She is extremely thoughtful and a busy mom, just like me. (I think she’s actually busier—wow.) This year, she’s striving toward simplicity, and I really appreciate following her weekly progress, even if I don’t strive quite as well as she does.

3. Ari and his Ari Files

Friend, fellow writer, and musician, Mark Ari (only don’t call him Mark because he probably won’t know who you’re talking to) helped me to become the writer I am today. I don’t know how to thank this guy enough. He is awesomeness on a stick, and I also credit him with founding the University of North Florida’s literary journal, Fiction Fix.

Okay, so the seven things about me:

1. As much as I love to write, music is just as important to me, even though I don’t talk about it much here. (I guess because writing about music doesn’t do it justice; it’s very experiential and subjective.) I get it honestly, with two grandparents who were church organists and a father who was very close to going into the music ministry. If I were to list everyone in my family who is musical and all the things we do, this would turn into an e-book. Let’s leave it at this: I cannot imagine my life without song.

2. I used to hate to read. In fact, when I had to do summer reading as a kid, I would pull all my Dr. Seuss books out and go through them as quickly as possible, just so I could fill all the blanks on the sheet that my teacher sent home. (It never occurred to me to cheat.) I loved it when my mom read to me, but otherwise, I didn’t want to waste my time. And the really unfortunate part is that I can’t remember the title of the book that changed it all. It was a book my mom loved as a kid, which she encouraged me to read. I can picture the pastel blue and pink cover art, but the title escapes both her and me. (I think “Sally” was part of it? Maybe?) Oh well. I think I was about ten or so when she coaxed me into reading it, and I’ve been an avid reader ever since.

3. I used to collect teddy bears. Every Christmas until I was in my mid-twenties, my parents gave me a bear, and I still have most of them (along with a number of other stuffed animals).

4. My first car blew a gasket on the way to school one day, filled the whole thing with smoke—and on the expressway, too. It was my first semester in college, about a week before finals. Ah, good times.

5. I am a cat person. I guess my parents and I were the crazy cat people, always attracting strays to our porch. We finally adopted two newborn kittens when their mother was killed by a neighbor’s dogs. I had to beg my parents because they didn’t want to deal with bottle feeding and raising kittens. But I succeeded, and those two boys, Greysox and Cuddlebug were a part of the family for the next sixteen and seventeen years, respectively. My parents no longer have any pets, but my husband and I adopted our fat cat, Willow, when she was about three months old, and she’ll be seven in March.

6. My favorite movie is Aliens. Not Alien, Aliens plural. There’s nothing wrong with the first one; it’s just not as awesome as the second. (I like to ignore that the other sequels even exist, although I thought Prometheus, a prequel of sorts, was pretty cool.)

7. I thought about talking about my favorite author, but it’s too hard to choose, and besides, I’d rather talk about my three favorite boys. They are my husband of going-on nine years, Thomas, and our sons, Peter and Ian. Thomas and I enjoy nothing more than spending time with our little guys, watching them learn, grow, and play together. We also really love going to Disney World! (Yes, Mama and Daddy are big kids, too.)