writing

Fertile Underground

Hi. According to my camera roll, for the past two weeks, I’ve only existed in the past. On Valentine’s Day, I took pictures of the three roses Husband brought home for me – without prompting or any sort of reminder – but didn’t post them. Before that? No pictures since the last blog post.

If I have been there, in the past, I’ve resurfaced in more ways than one. Floating on my back today, the wind and rain mimicked an ocean. I looked down at my feet and saw the swirly black sands of a place in the Adirondacks where I dared to go swimming – or at least I walked in up to my knees. W, Husband’s twin, in a blue cap, sat back near the trees. Husband stood between us on the dry rippled sand. I was back with Vonnie on a past perfect pre–Y2K February day at the Atlantic. Seashells near the pier were mostly shards. Walking alone for a stretch, I felt the surging power on my legs, the grip. I imagined other beaches, mostly tan, but some pink, some white, and then I think I worked on my chakras.

Anyway, I started a course of acupuncture when I could no longer carry the weight I had on my shoulders.

The first session, I was anxious and apprehensive, but so willing to try anything for relief that I was willing to pay in cash for it until the new insurance sent out a “wellness card.” [Why yes, I DID meditation and Pilates and Yoga and STOP. My body, my choices and it worked.]

Of course it could be a placebo effect, true, but I had listened to a segment of People’s Pharmacy on NPR where a – white, I assume – man had discovered this network of membranes connecting the organs and tissues that no one had ever noticed before (eye roll emoji) and had written a paper and was ready to go to a conference when he finally talked to somebody else and – surprise- the wise man said, “Yeah, that’s the chi. Been telling you nit wit westerners for how long? But sure, you discovered it.”

And then I heard that – what I assume was a white – man admit how damned dumb he – and countless others were by wasting research grant money all because they wouldn’t listen – or hear – or try to understand what acupuncture was all about. Boom. There. Click, click. The tension in my back was from a chi blockage. I knew it. My fear of needles fell away and I made an appointment.

Today was the fourth session, and the first on my back. (I asked for people with a larger bra size than mine about spending 50 minutes uncomfortably, and Dr. Cara assured me she has a pillowy solution, so don’t let that detour you.) The shoulder pain had nearly disappeared after the second session. I’m continuing to address other issues and I’m keeping notes on the experiences, but I do want to mention that a few hours after the first time, I felt an actual shift. It was brief and intense, but so real. As if to bolster the truth of the feeling, the universe rearranged people’s schedules so now I’m not going alone to the Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia. The Bitchy Cheerleaders – novel critique group of yore – are all going to be there – knock on wood and pray for good weather. So, that’s what is going on with me. I hope you’re doing this well, too. Thank you for stopping by and for the read. (Oh – and I hope to share things to read with you soon. I’m writing. I’m editing. I’m submitting. I’m all sorts of shiny happy for my beta rock goddess, Rina Fosati. I feel wonderful and really hope you do, too.) Cheers and good tidings!

January’s Out the Window

Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Those are the 5 P’s I remember from Due South. What I can’t seem to get through my head is that just because I can wait until the last minute to edit a story for a contest (which turned into a nearly complete rewrite) and scribble a blog, it’s better to leave myself some time in case things come up – and boy do they ever. My spirits and/or feelings are as high up as I can recall my January well-being ever being – including when I was a kid.

Part of it stems from a workshop I took recently. After attempting – yet failing— Nancy Stohlman’s Flash-A-Day challenge in November, she still graciously offered a discount on her class. I signed up for it and while some of the things I heard before, this time they clicked, and the one thing social media has taught us, clicks are good.

One major change is the quarters. I never thought to waver from the standard Jan-March, April-June, etc. separations but once I heard I could start in February – a whole lot made sense. I now have a notebook divided by goals by those quarters, by five years, by ten. It’s strange to thing how it has effected me – I feel alive.

Maybe it’s all about the control I feel in seeing where and when my time and energy gets divided. I’m currently setting up all the vet and doctor appointments so they are part of the plan. I’ve signed up for a conference and a seminar. Tomorrow begins the real test, but I feel both prepared and inspired.

Writing is a lot of work with no guarantee of a spit’s worth of minor acclaim or appreciation. Politics, baking, there are no sure bets on anything, but I now have a plan – and potential alternatives, and possibilities to pursue if those don’t pan out either.

I know – that’s a lot of optimism showing. Sorry. I can’t help it. I’ve gotten a lot of work done lately and it’s exciting. It probably sounds silly, but adding color has been extremely helpful; I am incentivized by pretty things and ease. Look at my new board. I’ll be pinning reminders for magazine openings to their proper months as reminders instead of using a desk calendar, you see.

Aren’t the lined up folders exciting? I’m telling you I know it might not last – but that’s the beauty of the new approach – every three months I’ll be checking in with the goals and adjusting as needed. Already it’s easing my stress. I wanted to finish the movie list. I knew it wouldn’t be finished by the end of this quarter, so I not only moved it, I gave myself 6 months to finish it because while I want it done, I also have other goals that matter more.

Like you. You matter more than a list.

In the flurry of all this rush to complete a bunch of tasks, I also took a class with Cheryl Pappas. Oh, it was good. Intense. I have three new ugly babies now. I’ll see them in a week. See that’s another goal I’m working on – patience. I don’t have a lot of hope for achieving that one, but it’s on the list, so I’ll give it a go.

Husband designed a better version of my favorite cutting board. Isn’t the new one pretty?

Well, I thank you for stopping by and for the read. I hope your January was at least half as good as mine if not three times better. Until next time, cheers!

Hocus Pocus now, The Addams Family later

Upstairs in the white room, the view shifts by the hour now. Leaves swell with color, wither, fall off in a symphony. Tomorrow is November. What a short year…which has dragged on forever. I started out the month strong in Kim Chinquee’s Zoetrope room. I managed three flash pieces that had a “there” there to them enough to post. I’m humbled and grateful to report Kim Chinquee accepted one of them, “No Object” for publication in Elm Leaves Journal’s upcoming Eclipse Issue. Thank you, Kim!

After that, the focus turned mainly to the approaching winter and accepting the reality that the modest list of projects we had every intention of getting done this summer would henceforth – most likely for the rest of winter – be abandoned. Obviously, that goes out the window with the next weather forecast, but the weather is unpredictable and my worry over not having the roof work done is growing. Why is insurance maddening? The claim is valid, it needs to be replaced, just pay for it like the sums of money flowed to you, let them flow back “good neighbor.” I may have the wrong jingle in my head, but still…

These were the decorations the cats and dog allowed to stay in place this year. Today, I pulled on a black sweater, dusted off the black witch hat, and wore my skeleton earrings to the library to pick up books. I haven’t finished Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel yet because I don’t want it to end. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang needs to be read in 7 days and Hilarie Burton Morgan’s Grimoire Girl looks promising. Reading blocks out the clatter of words in my head.

Most of the past few months, I’ve watched or heard battles. Characters speaking. Sometimes they insist I write it down, others scream and swear and vow to never talk to me ever ever again if I print the…Ow!

You see what I mean? The characters from the latest unfinished novel have been around, one quite surprising me by being alive as she was dead six months in the earlier draft. The sister I hadn’t gotten to yet has been quite vocal, too. I’ve signed up to start both NaNoWriMo and Nancy Stohlman’s Flash-A-Day. I hope to exhaust them and their stories, get them out of my head. So off I go to draw up a calendar to plot out the timeline and refresh myself on names in preparation for the part of being a writer I truly dread – the wring part.

Thank you for stopping by and for the read!

Bonus Content: My poem was in Artemis!

Greetings from the New Mailbox

Would you believe I have the bulk of a new essay written because I don’t. I should, as I haven’t been writing and when I don’t write, ugly or awkward slits of my past open up, entice me to remember the good that was mixed in the bad and otherwise. I hate these occasional bursts of cnf and should delete them, but I don’t.

How are you? Is your writing/teaching/roofing/that thing you do like no one else going swimmingly well? The smoked up killer air returned to the area just after the rain. My week was all planned out with easily achievable goals to prep for completing a few projects over the holiday weekend that is upon us, but those plans were abandoned. I went to a table read in East Aurora though. I’m thrilled to have my ten-minute play be in the line up chosen by the young adults who will be doing the acting and directing. The summer theater program in East Aurora is called ProjectSTAGE and is preforming next weekend in the Roycroft campus. I’ll be there. Many thanks to Matt Boyle who is the saint running the program.

I have a poem coming out in Artemis in August, and last weekend, I had a flash included in the FlashFlood. The Lost and Found of Other Places had been tented out long ago – perhaps as a response to a prompt – but it lacked…something. I’d go back to it on occasion – as I do to other attempts – until I could give to it the hook, shine, and ending it needed. I rather like this one – the empathy at the end especially.

The puppy is still a puppy, but larger.

Though she could be a unicorn if she’d try a little harder.

And we’re getting a “new” mailbox soon.

It needs feet. I will post when it is installed. Until then, I thank you by for stopping by and for the read. Cheers!

There Be A Dragon’s Watchful Eye

I’ve been in the garden early this year. Today, the 29^thof April as I write, Husband was able to fix the push mower’s cable and start it up. He mowed the small triangle patch near the road. The milkweed grows on one end. We checked; it hasn’t come up as of yet. When it does, we’ll fence it off.

The corner neighbors are on at least their second mow; we’re trying the “tickle method” of gardening this year. I have found great satisfaction in using the new claw tool to pull out roots that measure two feet or more. If they were deeper, I might resort to a pickax and use it as a Moby Dick metaphor in an essay, but I start those, let them peter out, stop writing my truth by starting to consider an audience. So how are you? Have you pulled weeds recently? Gotten dirt under your fingernails?

Another reason my essays wait to be written is because things come up – or in this instance, down. I went shopping on Friday with goals: Barnes and Noble to buy Alice Hoffman’s “Practical Magic” and cancel my “new and improved” membership before it began. Wegman’s for food, to check certain garden centers for flowers and Roma tomato plants, stop in at the leather shop. I did those things and came home to this:

It’s 7 feet 8 inches around to the left, 5 ft. 10 near the eye.

The way it came down was miraculous. The damage was limited. Since it happened when we were not here, we wonder if Whitney – a woodworker even in another realm – guided it down. We thank all the friends, relatives, spirits and deities involved in this predicament which isn’t exactly the greatest news, but also not the worst.

Reality has jarringly changed though. There’s a dragon eye staring at me as I prepare food in the kitchen. It distracts every time I see it. I sometimes thought spider webs would be reminders to get back to work on the Lettie novel. Before I left that afternoon, I was thinking of giving up on the current thing I’ve been working on. A reptilian tree knot stares at me in repudiation or encouragement – I can’t decide which and it never blinks as a tell, so I flounder for an answer.

What difference does what – or if – I write matter? At the end of the world or one’s life, is it more important to have read and learned, or produced? Are a million flashes the equivalent of one novel or three? If a poem by a no-name goes viral, does it cheapen an MFA degree? At what point do you write to the New Yorker inquiring about a story you sent in at the end of November? Yes, the auto-response says declare it dead after 90 days, but according to Duotrope it has taken longer. What is the point of the dream of being a writer if you don’t kid yourself into thinking fairy tales can come true and sometimes its in the form of how cottonwoods fall down with the maple tree working in tandem with the other smaller trees and roots to soften the blow to the roof which is a real life happily ever after story and that happened, so why not my story appearing in The New Yorker?

I blinked, losing the staring contest, but not the argument. So say I.

I’m on the cusp of having a print publication being launched soon and I am thrilled to be a part of The Jarnal. (Go to this link to listen to me read “The Thinnest of Veneers” which appeared in Milk Candy Review. MANY thanks to Jim Tuttle for doing an amazing job with the audio!)) And surprise of all surprises – I have an acceptance for a poem – during poetry month, which is quite cool. Thank you to Donnie Secreast & Adam Gnuse at Artemis Journal for accepting “The Rushed Meditation”

~ It’s a drizzly Sunday here and the roof isn’t leaking. The tree services have arrived and given us quotes. We’re off to the world of dealing with an insurance company and contractors. I should write a story where the experience is quick and painless and people smile the whole time work is being done on a house. It’d be fiction, of course. I haven’t read many people being happy about renovations and it’ll be years before it will be funny, or maybe that’s just my way of avoiding another novel being written in vain, one where butterflies turn into whales and burn up while sailing into the sun.

Cheers and Salute. Thanks for stopping by and for the read

Crazy about time, springtime in particular

On the recent nights of tolerable temps, winter damage is assessed while admiring the early flowers. The winds have been fancy terrible, and we’re thanking the ghost of Whitney that the damage was minimal. A huge chunk fell near the kitchen door, a pine cracked while the vehicle it would have hit wasn’t there. Once the worst was over, the blue ladder on the stack under the windows flipped over which is a puzzlement since there was no reason for it to and the ones beneath are not askew. Since it was his ladder, we attribute those nice saves to him and offer a clamor of applause. Thank you Whitney

Many congrats and thanks to Andrew Stancek. He’s written a lovely book which I intend to post about on Goodreads when I finish it. (Reviews are hard to write because they bring up anxiety not only from school but from the psycho hippo ballerina episode of Gilmore Girls.)

I’m still on pace with my submission total goals. Sending packets of five poems to four places that take over a year for the average response according to Duotrope does a lot of the heavy lifting for keeping 25 things out at all times. And soon, I’m freaking going see my story in print! Many thanks to Jim Tuttle for recording my micro that will be included in the roll out to The Jarnal. Some of you may even get a copy though I am behind on birthday cards and the newborn I bought a book for will probably be walking soon.

What I have been working on is the first few pages of new thing in order to enter competitions calling for the first 5000 words. I entered the two that close on the 31^st of March and the 1^st of April respectively. I believe the next one closes on the 6^th of April which gives me plenty of time to polish the called for first 40 to 50 pages. The pages are written, but they do not shine like the first 20. The last call I’m interested in answering asks for the first 1250 words and those are honed so well, I’m happy to call them mine. I even have a synopsis done proving once again that every book I write is written a different way.

I’m sad to report that the whole mind/body/work output seems to be tied together. This morning I let Jillian Michaels torture me, then I did some ab work. Even as I was in the shower reminding myself that I could take today off and pull away from the story for a while, I came up with clever scenes.

Still, I’ll persist in this quest for rest. I’ve intentionally structured things to ease my stress and today’s dinner is warm-ups that will take 5 minutes. The laundry is done, so are the dishes. The floors are tolerable – new cat sheds more than I’m used to – so I have had to adjust to seeing some fur, otherwise I’d go mad hunting down and vacuuming up every tuft. Perhaps I’ll read, or stare at the wall, but it will start soon, and include this:

This tiny window of ease won’t last of course, and that’s okay because neither do the spring flowers, so I might as well enjoy them before the winter slinks back to cover them.

Thank you for stopping by and for the read. It is appreciated.

Plotting to Plot…or not

Exhausted by our weekend chore list before it has even been written, I walked out to the overflow woodpile for the picture before sitting down to write this. Inspired, I know. There are pictures on the camera of a tree that was obliterated by lightening. Last Monday I’d heard the tremendous crack and waited, but nothing fell and the electric stayed on. After our neighbor returned from a trip, he found parts of an 80-foot pine on his hill. Some chunks were longer and thicker than humans, strewn all over up there. Something ripped through a piece of ¾ inch plywood. I did consider downloading the pictures I took up there when he showed us, but the dishes needed to be done.

Not much later, I noticed the fluorescent orange sky, finished up, and stepped outside. I leaned back against the church door and took in the pleasant crisp air, the beauty, and I wept with gratitude instead of running for my phone or the camera. It’s weird to be swept up by natural beauty in that it isn’t weird at all.

The furniture is arranged in an unusual pattern and a generalized straightening up is in progress. Somewhere I started an essay about how reading “How to Keep House While Drowning” by K C Davis awakened other self-help books I’ve read about tidying and organized and unleashed a monster of neat in me, but I’ve been too busy rearranging Husband’s workshop to finish it. I did finish Sheila Heiti’s, “How Should a Person Be?” but it took forever because I loved it and did not want it to end. I’m currently enjoying Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi’s, “Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions.”

The month has been filled with the normal abundance of things to do before winter as well as some much needed in person visits. Thank you all who I’ve seen and congrats to Kim Chinquee on her forthcoming book, Pipette. Online, I attended a reading and this Christmas gift from Nephew in Oregon (Thank you Michael!) has been deemed the bearer of workshop notes and exercises. The first entry is from Kathy Fish’s 3 in 90.

I was pleased to have a story of mine make the long list in Pigeon Review’s contest, but that’s as far as it went. Once the house is a bit more under control, I plan to tweak it with lines I’ve thought of since the last rewrite. And rewriting might be what I do forever because I can’t figure out a frame for another novel nor a reason to write one what with the way the world is falling apart at the seams. How else do you explain my face on local TV for no other reason than showing up at a meeting? And yes, I do have that segment DVRed and plan to transfer it to a jpeg to post online but, you know, time…

I was asked to look over a story for someone and they also sought writing advice to follow. I gave him the usual places to look:

‘Immediate Fiction” by Jerry Cleaver

“The Art of Fiction” by John Gardner

“Writing Down to the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg

“Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott

I have many others, but it’s these four that I gravitate to time and again. I also suggested picking up any of the “Best ______ of the Year.” Myself, I’ve delved into the angry-yelly, no nonsense, shut up and write book “Robert’s Rules of Writing,” by Robert Masello. Maybe it will spark something other than the urge to pick up a different book.

Well, it’s September’s end tonight. I have a fire to tend to, beasts to pick up after, and a chore list to construct. I hope you are well. I hope you are safe. Thank you for stopping by and for the read.

Slow gliding into the fall

Are you a bit edgy, excited but apprehensive, feeling yourself wanting to stand tall and say, “Let’s do this.” If so, it may be your season change alert signal going off. Loud little sucker, isn’t it?

Every year I replenish my notebooks and consider adding new desk supplies to my already adequate supply. It takes a long time to realize it isn’t the cost of the equipment, but the dedication to use that should weigh on investments. I have enough beautiful, lush, gorgeous to touch notebooks I never write in – the 70 page college rule notebooks are my go to.

As I sit here in my extremely stripped down office space, I consider the tweaks I want to make for my comfort – and pet interference reduction capabilities. I don’t recall the impetus for the tear down of all the notes, pictures, postcards that had surrounded me, but the lack of clutter now is noticeable and appreciated. Is it affecting my writing? Perhaps. I recently took an old 1600 word story down to 890 words and sent it out. Before that, I expanded a less than 500 flash into a ten-minute play.

I’m looking around and finding it a bit hard to believe I’m as organized as I am now. I really wanted it to be this way, and I made it come true. It’s teeny tiny moments of forcing myself to stop and appreciate how my hard work has paid off that make me say “Yes, but.” It’s the same feeling when I’ve written, published, or won something. “Yes, but.” It’s hard to be alive when nothing is good enough.

No matter. We’re all on our own journeys and apparently this is mine. I meant to take more pictures, but I did the whole scrape, scrub, scour, and paint with the beautiful parlor stove…

… and Husband assembled it in time for our shindig.

Thank you amazing people for stopping by. It made my whole soul happy to share the evening with you…

and Coiletta.

It seems the end of summer rumbles have propelled me back to writing life. I’ve signed up for classes with Kathy Fish, am fairly certain I’ll be attending the Barrelhouse conference masked and in person in October and am mulling taking a Beth Gilstrap class. Plus Community Craft’s series is amaze balls and I want to attend more of those. As well as Hannah Grieco’s Readings on the Pike and Timothy Gager’s Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series. And there are more I’m forgetting

Adding to the abundance of those good things – my critique group exchanged emails this morning. So, as I’m saying goodbye to August, I want you to know that you are pretty great as is. Thank you for stopping by and for the read! You are awesome and you know it. Ciao!

Squirrels are chillin’ while we toil and other fun near the creek

I’ve decided to find it hilarious that I must have thought out 5 different blog posts this month – with interesting titles – but don’t remember one as I start this post, mid-summer afternoon on the last day of July.

Wood has been an interesting adventure this year. Normally, the last of the wood is being put up in September, just when we need to rearrange the house and stack a partial wall of wood near the stove. Instead, the woodshed is as full of wood as we usually have for a season and no end in sight to the pile. I am grateful for the dilemma.

I’m also incredibly grateful for the amazing generosity of fantastic friends. C and Nina Fosati dropped of a stove and this is the part that goes on top.

Isn’t it fancy? I’m a sanding fool, dancing between restoration and good enough. We’ll be painting it in a manner pleasing to the eye and the environment of the patio upon which it will stand. I’m excited and it’s a boring chore with a vast reward, so I really do find it a cheery endeavor.

Part of my quest to live in a better world involves more color. I painted the awful blue chair – loot a thief left behind – to something less ugly.

This is my first Thistle design and in person, it does not look this boring. (I was working with flaws in the wood to tell a tale of how I see plants not coping in the conditions they once thrived in.)

Work on the back of the house stalled as paint had to be hunted down and then someone sold one of the four we ordered so hopefully it will be enough.

Omg! The lack of intelligence like that in customer service has recently been wild. I’m especially singling out the “new” girl at Citizens Bank in the Springville Tops. Ffs, I was paying a little extra on two credit cards. She asked how I wanted my change. I was like what? She only applied the amount due to the account, not the amount I wrote on the slip I was playing with. I asked why she’d changed the amount and she snapped back that she had not changed it. She started over, finally got it right. As I was leaving, I said, “You did change the amount. At least own what you did.” I mean seriously, it was a mistake, but to be so snitty about it? Maybe she needs to explore a less public vocation. Tax preparer, maybe? Perhaps a mortician?

The computer problems I’m having are deflating my gusto toward the written word – reading, writing, editing. As with the wood, I will remind myself that I don’t need to fix everything all at once, just take one breathe at a time. I snagged this guy to help remind me.

Thank you for stopping by and for the read. I hope your home and world are stable. The weather I’ve heard about/seen clips of from where friends and family live overwhelms me. I am thinking about you and hoping to hear you’re safe. Sending love and comfort to those reading who need it. Take care of you!

Cheers!

Life Goes On Until It Doesn’t

The house is tidy, organized. It’s been a massive undertaking, this year’s “spring-cleaning.”

I no longer remember the specific impetus that led to the first bit of sorting. I know I was quite sick of the mess my office had become. We’d move things in here to get them out of the way when we had visitors, and not everything made its way back to where it had come from and so I was living in close proximity to a lot of clutter. I didn’t like it, but we were storing somethings and even when those things left, I didn’t immediately do a tear down/clean out.

I know an Apex discussion a few months ago made me consider the fact that I’ll probably never publish a book traditionally, and even if I did, well, what then? The “what then” was that I wanted to live in a cleaner and more organized house. I mean, if this is it – the best it will ever be and I never write or publish again – then I’m kind of okay with my life ending up here (except for the wasting of my whole life on literature.)

One of the silly little motivational quips I have taped to my office computer says, “What you are not changing, you are choosing,” so I’ve been choosing to improve my conditions.

Life doesn’t offer a lot of choice in some matters though. We had to say goodbye to Kobi and it sucked to lose my sidekick, but he had cancer in his lungs and even if I were able to afford chemo for him, I don’t think I could put him through that. I know – supposedly – there are new options for cancer treatments but…

I haven’t picked him up yet – his ashes. That seems too final yet.

Our remaining cat made it known that a pet sibling was important, so today – weirdly enough Cat Adoption Day – I went to the Ten Lives Club. (They are a no-kill shelter, so if you’re feeling generous, they have a wish list here.) “Freddy” is acclimating now – though we’re definitely changing that name. This is what he looks like:

It’s not the same as a dog, but I need time to mourn, too.

Creative writing hasn’t happened in a long while, though I have written letters. I’m sorry if I owe you one and you haven’t received it yet. You are very likely on the list.

Until next time (or your letter arrives) I want to thank you for stopping by and for reading.