Category Archives: Books

They Live (30)

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This morning I wake up thinking about my novel. I lie there drifting in that delicious in between, fuzzy with sleep, still soft around the edges. I realize Seph always dreamed of moving his wife and daughter to California, how he imagined they would stay in the cottage at the ranch when they came back to visit his family, but he never wanted to spend his life there. I wander about in Seph’s thoughts, still not fully awake. I haven’t touched my novel in long months, but I’m working on the third round of my book manuscript almost every day now. Not long hours immersed in it, as I always hope for, but good steady effort, writing in my notebook or typing up the pages, not letting myself linger much in judgment, just building page after quiet page. I think this work has woken up the characters of my novel, has them wanting my attention, too. It makes my heart happy, makes me believe in the depths of my writer self, how much this work means to me in spite of all my resistance. I let myself float where this new information about Seph leads me, and I know what happens to Molly before she dies. The knowledge just comes, all of a piece, like mist parting to reveal a mountain you didn’t know was there. And I revel in it, reassured at my core, grateful and glad. My characters are alive in me again and busy making magic.

Starting Over Again (19)

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I’ve decided to rewrite my book. This will be the third time I’ve begun again from scratch, or almost scratch. (Might it be a charm?) This is the manuscript that was one of nine finalists for the New Rivers Press Many Voices Project award a couple of years ago. (The winner receives $1000 and publication by their university press.) I submitted it earlier this summer to New Rivers, as well, for their general submissions, and I’m still hopeful to hear good news. But I always come back to feeling like it isn’t quite right. A fellow writer read the manuscript, and he thought it may be “droning.” (Eee gads. How do you not cringe to hear that?) Because I wrote it over such a long period of time, I’ve always wondered if the voice was not consistent (in spite of all revising). And I’ve always wanted there to be more lightness in the book. I think it leans toward the hopeful and the healed, but maybe not enough to satisfy me? This is the story of my lost love. My big love. I began writing it much too soon—I know that now. I wanted it to be a book when it needed to be only one of the ways I moved through my grief, came back from despair, put my heart together again, just pages shoved in a drawer somewhere until a later time. I know now to write like mad through something like this but not try to shape it into anything when it’s still raw, has not had time to sift through me, time to drift down to bedrock.

On Tuesday I closed my laptop from a round of work and set it aside. I sat on the edge of my bed spacing out before I got up to take a shower, to toss the cabbage salad I made for lunch. And I fell into a newer, deeper sense of how to approach rewriting the book. It isn’t new for me to envision including more in the story about my life today, but sitting on the bed I felt it more fully in my body. I saw into it, felt into it more fully than I have before. The book is written in second person, me talking to him. Even though I wonder if I need to just let this manuscript go, to finish my now ancient novel and let myself finally move on to new projects, I still resist. This pile of pages has some of my best “material” in it, so I become stubborn. And enough time has passed that I can return to that material without reliving it, can picture the new retelling from a place of joy. It seems the perfect thing to “use” this framework of me talking to him as a kind of scaffolding for writing what might become a “real” memoir, one that goes beyond my story of having loved and lost. The timing couldn’t be better, too, because I’ve been flailing about a bit, not sure what I wanted to focus on at the August writing workshop I get to go to. I’m pretty excited about it now (both the book and the workshop), so I wanted to let you know. I can feel you wishing me well even as I write. Thank you for that, now and always.

The Luxury of Time (53)

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I love being in bed like this, all the windows and the sliding glass door open, my birds busy at their morning feeding, the mountains close and comforting, my tea warm beside me, sunlight on the blankets, knowing my writing time and my sitting practice lie before me. It makes me think maybe I could use this as a lure, as a reward, a way to become more productive in my day. If you get the essays graded, you can have a second set of writing and sitting practice today. A bribe, really. I moved these two to the very beginning of my day to mark their priority and to be certain they didn’t go undone in the course of endless busy weeks. It began as a commitment, an effort, and now it is a pleasure, a gift, even. It makes me wonder what other things might transform themselves. Dishes, sweeping, making the bed, taking out the trash, cooking–when I don’t feel the need to rush through them I don’t mind them at all, can even enjoy them. In fact, that may be the secret to this morning time, too. It is not that I didn’t already like writing, like sitting practice, but they didn’t have the pull of pure pleasure, like the appeal of reading a novel. So even though I enjoyed them, I didn’t long for them, didn’t reach for them in a busy busy day, didn’t always manage to carve out an hour or so for them like I would for a meal and a good book. But now that I’ve provided this time at the beginning of each day, there is all this room in them. Sometimes I have to be somewhere early in the morning, so I set my alarm. I might have less than an hour, their time curtailed. But most days, like not rushing through sweeping the courtyard or feeding the birds, I can take an hour, even a little longer, before I need to move on to my paid work. So I can let the writing come as it will, allow the sitting practice to unfold. And there is luxury in that. So these two things I know I want to do, these two things that are good for me, that might otherwise be “shoulds” smooshed into a too busy day, instead each morning before the busy-ness they beckon, lull, invite me to open my selves to them, filled with ease and promise.

A Pile and a Prayer (46)

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Off and on since the fall, in fits and starts, I return to working on the novel I began a decade ago. I am determined to finish it, still convinced I need to complete it before I can move on to embrace a new big writing project. Like pulling teeth, I revise and edit the existing typed pages. It seems important to bring the writing current. During November’s National Novel Writing Month I write new pages by hand and type them up then promptly lose them. I found them last week—they sit beside me now, await revising and editing. I cull three notebooks full of scribbles and scraps, recycling most of it. Two ancient loose sheets, folded, and two notebooks each open to a page I may want to save sit here, too, a worn red ribbon that held things together resting on top of the pile. I will type these last bits up next week. I want everything clean, no more mess for this next stretch, not knowing what I have, everything in one word document. The manuscript itself will be unwieldy enough, I think. I’m pretty sure I’m writing scenes that will never make it to the book itself. But that part I don’t worry about. I have faith in that part, certain there can be no wasted effort in this, only added depth if I am lucky. And it’s how I find out what’s going to happen—in the writing itself. Lately, I find myself daydreaming about the story. There is a sweetness in that, too. I stare at the pile and pray away my ambivalence, that my resistance might melt and undivided I immerse myself in the writing. And even as I send off that wisp of prayer I feel a gentle tug, a tiny, eager spark. I wonder what my characters are up to now.

January 2nd (44)

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I hear dove wings through the window, afternoon feeding. Earlier today they scattered, and the Cooper’s Hawk sat on the top of the front gate. I watched him through the branches of the guayaba tree from my cozy perch inside. Today is my last day off, the last in a long, luxurious chain of days. I treated most of them the way I used to treat my Sundays, only doing what I felt like doing, letting the day unfold. I wrote twice, did yoga four times, once yesterday before the sun sank behind our mountains, rare sun salutes, my eyes closed, rich deep orange behind my lids. I baked cookies, ate cheddar cheese, made soup on New Year’s Day. One day I even did the crossword puzzle. Mostly I have read, tucked up in the down blankets, first my worn copy of Tigana and then two books from the library. In between, I let the book close and gaze at the mountains. I relish the quiet and the gift of being able to let my mind wander, to drift in happy, lazy spirals wherever it will. I idly wonder how many students have enrolled in my classes, how many login help requests we’ll have tomorrow. I dream seven ways I might have money come to make up for the upcoming loss of one of my jobs. I remember Sable purring and rubbing his face against the corner of the open carrier in the vet’s office on the day he died. Sometimes I cry. But mostly I am just present, sitting in this glorious sun-filled room, the mountains spread before me. I listen to the cheaps of the house finch at their sunflower seed feeders, and I am so glad for their company and for the sleek dove sitting on the wooden fence right now, and I give thanks for this beauty and this peace and the rich fullness of my heart.

Raven’s Wings (33)

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I am sitting at the Amtrak station when I know I am only one of Sable’s sleek black whisker’s width away from fully committing myself to November’s national novel-writing month. My stomach clenches at the thought. It terrifies me. 50,000 words in 30 days means 1,666.66666 words per day and 6.66666667 pages (of 250 words per page). My quick work on the calculator hooks me in even more. No Satanic inklings here, only the magic of these sequences of sixes, of forward progress–and how, hmm? If I write 7 pages per day, I’ll have written 210 pages by the end of the month. And maybe I’ll throw my hat in the ring for that young adult novel contest, after all. Last week I entered a different book contest, and, counting this young adult contest, I plan now to enter three more this week. I keep the pen moving across the page and remember to pull in air. I can still feel the tightness in my belly, more thrill than fear now, though the balance is close. I feel it in my bones, in the sun on my back, in my pleasure in the conversation I am overhearing part in English and part in Spanish, the fluid back and forth, the “I love you” when they part, father and daughter, I think. I feel in my fear and my thrill I may be truly ready to have my work win one or more of these book contests. If I submit the different pieces I have in mind I could win three of the four contests. I want to laugh out loud, but I keep writing. I am ready to burst out into the literary world with these winnings and the published books. I am ready to take the world by storm or in a swirling rush of wings, the sudden whoosh of the slow, deep strokes of a raven overhead, the feathery brush of angels, my breath easy now in my chest, heart light with hope, mouth full of magic.

The Church of Writing (30)

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It isn’t fair. I try reading other books about writing from my odd “moving to Mexico” collection. But how can any book follow Natalie Goldberg’s? I give it almost two weeks, plodding through the pages, duty and stubbornness combined, hope dwindling. I give up, return to the Ray Bradbury. I’d only read it once years ago, but already, in the first chapter, it makes me cry. It seems unbelievable how lucky I am, to have these two writers who talk about the writing process, who both move me to tears. But it’s a mystery. The other three books don’t touch me, not even Annie Dillard’s whose prose is so lush. So I wonder what it is. Is it like acting? Does the actor need to feel the emotion he’s portraying in order to affect the audience? Is the emotion of the writer able to move into us when we read their work? Is there some mix of mind, heart, body, spirit, the writer’s integrated presence, that hugs their words? Are our words infused, like magic, with how or who we were when we wrote them? Are we transported by a writer who takes us to a world of their own making because the writer was wholly planted there when the words flowed through them, feet buried in the earth? I think so. And I love the idea that our own energy might travel unseen with our writing, ghosts on a night train, lighting people up all over the planet. No wonder libraries are sacred. Holy houses, resonant with this collected energy, like centuries-old cathedrals, dust swirling in the air, caught by the late afternoon sunlight, the smell of old paper, the feel of warm wood beneath your palm, like a prayer.