An ode to Poet Mom

I had the pleasure and honor of attending the book party for Underlife, the first book by Poet Mom (aka January Gill O'Neill). I am finding it hard to describe how wonderful it was. In fact I'm getting teary even trying to. It felt like a dream, and it wasn't even my book party! I can only imagine how much January was/is floating after wards.

The first part of the event--the reading--was held in Jan's hometown library, a historic building that set the scene beautifully.



I got lost getting there, and arrived just in time to hear Erin give a polished and proud introduction of her friend. It was a bitterly cold evening, and I brought a rush of cold air in with me as I quickly found a seat among the 40 or so people gathered. My eyes were wet from the biting wind, but they overflowed with happy tears when Jan took the microphone and did a wonderful job of thanking the friends and family who supported her, and then reading several brave, funny poems.

Jan looked GORGEOUS and read beautifully and confidently (click here for a short video of her reading). Everyone hung on her every word, and she got a standing ovation when she finished. AND, the bookstore selling copies of her book sold out almost immediately after the reading, and had to dip into Jan's own stash to fulfill the customers.


After the reading, I chatted with a number of the interesting people at the party. I was nervous going in since I really only knew the star of the show and the emcee (Erin), who I knew would be busy. But everyone was warm and welcoming, and just as quickly as my cold toes defrosted in the warm air of the library, my nerves melted. And best of all, since the audience was filled with many of Jan's writer friends, I got to talk writing! One of my all time favorite subjects. :)

Since I know January in real life, I know how much work she puts into her art, and that knowledge made being part of the fruition of that work all the more sweet. She signed my copy of Underlife, and pointed out that I even got a shout out in the acknowledgments, since I had read and commented on the manuscript.

One of my favorite touches from the party was that she had a copy of Underlife for all of us to sign, a guest book for her to remember all of us who were there for what must be one of the highlights of her life--the party really was one of the highlights of mine!

Dear Friends: The low-lights of the year

As promised, here is my sarcastic, always-look-on-the-dull side anti-Christmas letter.

I'm finding this letter hard to write, not because I had a perfect year filled only with happy, pride-inducing moments, but because it's part of my flawed psychological make up to bury the less-than-happy memories in hopes that I can pretend they never happened. Hence the years and years of therapy.

From said therapy, I can tell you this flaw is all my parents' fault. In fact, one of the low-lights of the year came in the days after Thanksgiving, when my family stayed with us. In true Bug-family style, no one talked about anything that was bothering them until my parents decided to leave early, giving no reason why (and of course I didn't ask for one, not only because that would truly go against our nature, but also because I didn't want to make them thing I didn't want them to go).

So now B and I are very much looking forward to spending Christmas with them! B is especially excited about the fights being with them will bring up between the two of us, because you know it's awesome to have to pretend you're totally happy with one another because your in-laws are watching your every move.

Speaking of in-laws, B's family has had a spate of bad luck this year: two elderly grandparents are hospitalized and don't seem to be getting any better, a middle-aged uncle got diagnosed with cancer and died about 2 weeks later, and my step-father also just received a cancer diagnosis. The guilt we felt about not spending Christmas with B's family? Now quadrupled.

On my own health front, I spent all of November and part of October battling a bug that made me exhausted and achy. Then, just as that cleared, I got a bout of chronic headaches that strike everyday between 1 and 2 p.m. They're so precise I don't even need a watch! Talking with my doctor to figure out if they're migraine or tension headaches, but either way, headaches are one of those poorly understood conditions that call for lots of trial and error. So I see lots of doctor's appointments in my future. It'll be a good excuse to get to know my doctor better.

B has also had a list of illnesses (chronic and acute) that I won't go into here lest I breach his privacy. But let's just say it's a long and varied list, much longer say, than the list of things I want for Christmas. Fun!

Now that health and the families are covered, we can move on to the low-lights of my writing life. They mostly consist of the pile of rejection letters housed in my desk drawer--a new one just added to the pile days ago! What a nice surprise to see a SASE in my handwriting amidst the cheery green and red envelopes in my mailbox. I couldn't wait to open it to find out who had rejected me now. (An anthology of stories about baseball, if you must know.)

We also added an insanely difficult-to-train dog to our little family. Nothing like a dog that constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, needs attention/reassurance to annoy the crap out of you. And speaking of crap--he's also been difficult to potty train! And our other dog has developed the wonderful ability to grab food off of the counter no matter how far back you place it/what kind of security system you set up. Say bye-bye to lots of "cooling" Christmas cookies...

I think that covers most of 2009. Looking forward to learning what will ail me, my family, and the world in the New Year.

Dear Friends

I know the Christmas Letter is the butt of many, many jokes. But truth be told, I like getting these letters tucked into holiday cards, especially when they're from friends and family I don't talk to all that often.

The letters provide a little peak into their world, kind of like Facebook status updates do. Of course, the letter (and Facebook) generally just highlights, well, the highlights of the year. Rarely do you hear about the minor and major heartbreaks that hit us all day to day. And rarely does a Facebook status update--or a week of status updates--really capture the gritty part of a person's life.

I understand why this is--people are much more comfortable sharing happy news with a large number of people who they don't talk to in their every day lives. Sharing miseries and misfortunes is much more intimate, and therefore shared for those friends and loved ones who are in our day-to-day lives, not those who are in our virtual world or on our Christmas card lists.

But something gets lost, too, when we share only the sweet things in life. We don't allow ourselves to be truly known, and we also perpetuate the myth that bad things don't happen to everyone. Then when we ourselves are going through a hard time, we look at all the "happy" people around us and feel that much more alone.

So wouldn't it be fun if we shared an anti-Christmas letter, featuring only the low-lights of the year? Me thinks it would. I'll post mine in the next day or so. If you're so inclined, please do the same.

A little bit of Hope

I subscribe to a wonderful e-newsletter for writers called Funds for Writers. The editor, Hope Clark, sends a weekly email with a list of publications calling for submissions, grants for writers, etc. Each newsletter opens with a letter written by Hope, and the most recent one really hit home, so I wanted to share it with you. Here are some excerpts from it:

I counsel writers who fear rejection. Some fear they waste
time writing when the piece might not be accepted. There are
two frictions going on here.

1. The fear of complete strangers.
2. The naivete that only published writing is worth the effort.

...

You determine your outlook, not the naysayers. In reality,
as you dwell on why someone rejected you, your competition
is querying, pitching and advancing their careers. Stewing
in your juices is self-deprecating.

Unfortunately, many folks get stuck in a personal-put-down
rut. It's more comfortable than the risk of putting themselves
out there for scrutiny again. They fuss about editors, agents
and publishers, when they'd be more successful if they sucked
it up and worked harder instead.

Move forward in your writing career. Write. Query. Take the
rejections on the chin and don't go down. Move past it. Don't
look back.

New Year's Resolutions

I think I've posted before about this 6 Word Memoir Project. Currently they have a 6 Word New Year's Resolution Project. I just posted a few on the site:

More: writing, kissing, dog walking, connecting

Will do more "wants," fewer "shoulds"

Remember: Where you are is OK

Listen to inner voice when deciding

What are your resolutions-in-6-words?

Amazingly, I think those few words about sum up my goals for the year, at least at the meta level. More specifically, I hope to:

Finish a draft of the novel by March, spend the spring revising, and then have writer-friends review it over the summer.

Publish a #*^&$% story already. (A few are out in the world, hopefully finding wonderful, loving homes as we speak.)

Really think about whether I want to say yes to something before doing so. I've found that I get really resentful when I say yes to things I don't really want to do, which isn't fair to myself or the person doing the inviting. After all, it's not her fault I overbooked myself instead of possibly disappointing her.

Put the time and effort necessary into my marriage to keep it strong. It is the most important relationship in my life, but nurturing it can fall by the wayside if I'm not careful, which is so silly because nurturing it is actually quite enjoyable!

Walk the dogs in the woods/dog park once a week, no matter the weather. I love getting out there with them, and so do they. Just have to make it a priority.

Continue my routines regarding: morning pages, meditation, exercising, and writing.

That's about it from me. I'd love to hear your resolutions, too!

Boston Book Festival

I attended a few of the events at the first annual Boston Book Festival, and really enjoyed them. The best part was seeing the hundreds of people who schlepped out on a very wet weekend to celebrate literature. For those of you who missed the event, the organizers just posted videos from some of the sessions on their web site. Enjoy!

Notebook: completed!

Remember the journal I made ? I used it all up! Every page is filled with either morning pages or chapters of my novel. It's a nice reminder of how much I've been writing lately, and how I finally seem to have found a system that works. I feel like I'm getting a lot of work done, I'm not stressing about it, and it seems to be an organic part of my life as opposed to something I'm constantly worrying about smushing in.

Here's my current system, FYI. If you don't have a routine that's working for you, I hope this inspires you. If you do have a routine that is working for you, please share it in the comments:

* I write morning pages (three, sometimes two, pages of journaling/brain-dumping) on the train ride into work in the morning.

* Two nights a week I either come home or go to a coffee shop and write my novel, longhand in my notebook, for about an hour.

* One of the weekend days, I also devote an hour or two to the novel.

* In these three focused times, I usually get a rough draft of one chapter done. Once it's done, I'll spend another hour or two typing it up, editing as I go.

Assuming I can stick with this routine, I should be able to have a draft done by March--just in time to celebrate during my 10-day trip to Costa Rica!

Artist's Date

I am a big fan of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Even though the book is a little too hippy-dippy spiritual for my personal taste at times, I think it offers amazing insights into artists' minds and hearts, and the many things that derail us from getting our work done.

One of the concepts Cameron suggests for remaining creatively productive is a once a week artist date, where you go somewhere by yourself with the sole purpose of getting in touch with your creativity/giving your creative brain a chance to come out and play.

I'm not all that great about making time for these dates, but I came across information about an interesting-sounding multimedia exhibit at a gallery in East Boston. Even though this is a crazy time of year, I am committing myself to taking a few hours of vacation time, leaving work early one day, and heading down to the gallery and then out for a nice dinner all by my lonesone.

Books, books, books

I recently read an amazing review of Alice Munro's latest collection. As I've mentioned here before, I heart Alice Munro. But I want to share this review because it itself is a work of art--it basically serves as a short guide as to how to read, think about, and write stories.

I also loved this review on Salon.com of a book about Christmas, called Tinsel: A search for America's Christmas present. The last lines of the review are so poetic:
Without belaboring any of his points, Stuever gently unveils a place where, in celebrating their most iconic holiday, people long for a past that never existed, beguile each other with bogus sentimental yarns, scare themselves with the imaginary menaces lurking "outside" their sanctuary and try to retreat further into a safety that actually bores them stiff. That's Christmas, American style: a gingerbread house too small and sweet to move into, but we keep trying all the same.

Lastly, I was excited to see the New York Times top ten books of 2009 list. I plan to use the list as a reading guide for my first books of 2010.

Have you read any great books or book reviews recently? Suggestions welcome!

Writing about NaNo

Check it out! I published a column in the Easton Journal on my NaNoWriMo experience--namely about how trying to write a novel in a month can be about community-building as much as it is about novel-building.

Thanks-giving

Thanksgiving is about two things: Food and being grateful. (Football probably makes the list for lots of people, but not this non-sports fan!) So I thought I'd make this Thanksgiving-eve post about both.

First, the food. I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, and I thought I'd share some of my new favorite vegetarian recipes:

These spicy sweet potato patties are a delicious side dish, or, if you eat enough of them (and you'll want to!), they're a filling meal.

Here's an easy-peasy brocolli dish that's a little more intersting than the typical brocolli fare.

My mom's Italian, and so I was raised to love love love Italian food. Since my husband doesn't eat cheese, I rarely make the dairy-heavy dishes, but I made these cheese-stuffed eggplant roll-ups recently, and boy was I glad I did. Yum, yum, yum.

And lastly, here's my favorite Thankgiving recipe of all time--acorn squash stuffed with wild rice, cranberries, and hazelnuts. Even the turkey eaters who bless my table on Thanksgiving save a big spot on their plate for one of these babies. I've altered the recipe here and there since I've been making it for 5+ years now, but it's delicious as is, too.

****

Now onto the giving of thanks. Like most people I know, I've got a ton to be thankful for. Even as we all deal with life's little and big challenges (in my case, a nasty cold/flu virus that has been attacking my poor immune system for the last 4 weeks now!), there are so many things we take for granted, like clean water and warm homes and the internet (really! Think about how the internet has changed your life!).

But I'd like to list the things that are more personally meaningful to me this year:

*Finding--no MAKING--the time to nurture my budding novel and various other creative pursuits.

*The friends who encourage the above.

*The husband, who seems to truly get just how important writing is to me (even though he won't "let" me quit my job and write full time.)

*This blog's readers! It's been so much fun to "meet" new people and reconnect with old friends via this blog.

I could go on and on, but those are the blessings on my mind at the moment. How about you, what are your top 4 things to be thankful for this year?

Here are some pics from last Thanksgiving, enjoy!


My sister-in-law with my chicken chalkboard

My dad being silly while my mom smiles beautifully for the camera.

My mom and I getting down to work.

A Mayflower replica Brian made

The place cards I made

(I'm having some trouble alighning the captions with the photos...hope it's obvious which should go with which!)

Happy Thanksgiving all!

New blog element

Check out the left hand column for my list of "desert island books," aka books I could read over and over and over again. I'm sure there are some I've forgotten, and hopefully I'll come across many more in my reading path...I was happily surprised to see how many short story collections are on there. I tend to plow through novels, but savor short stories, so maybe that's why. I'm still contemplating a book of poetry that should go on there. Will fill you in when I decide...

How about you, what are your desert island books?

Wednesday Wild Card

A few random writing-related things on my mind today:


A teacher at Lesley University (the amazing place where I did my MFA) has come out with a new book I want to read, Yarn: Remembering the Way Home. I didn't work with Kyoko Mori much, but she seemed like a lovely, thoughtful person, so I'm guessing her writing will be, too. Also, Kyoko is giving a reading tomorrow night near Boston. I can't go, unfortunately, but thought I would spread the word...


The lovely and talented Erin Dionne is giving away swag with a phrase from Shakespeare's plays to promote Erin's YA book: Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet. One of the pieces of merch is a mug with this quote from Mid Summer Night's Dream: And though she be but little, she is fierce. As a petite, 5'2" woman, that quote sang to me. My next random purchase will be a t-shirt with that quote on it.



Speaking of lovely and talented writers I know, Ms. January Gill's first collection of poetry is about to come out! I can't wait to attend her book party and celebrate this awesome accomplishment. Now go buy her book. :)



And lastly, there's an interesting talk going on at Harvard Book Store on Dec. 2 that I plan on going to. Author Steve Almond will discuss his new book, This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey. The interesting thing about this book is that he self-published it, using an on-demand printer located in Harvard Book Store. I'm curious as to why an established author would go the self publishing route.

Things I've said no to

* Going on a Halloween bike ride (which sounded really, really awesome)

* Joining the Lion's Club

* Going to my mother-in-law's for dessert on Thanksgiving

* Tutoring an extra evening with the ESL volunteer work I do

* Extending my family Christmas trip to Arizona so that it would take up all of my holiday time off

Which isn't to say that I didn't want to say yes to all of these things (OK, I didn't want to say yes to the Lions Club--being on one town committee, the cultural council, is more than enough). But I am learning my limits. Learning to listen to my instincts about how much I can actually do. Learning to honor the part of me that needs down time, and needs writing time. Learning that if I don't fiercely protect that time, it will get taken up and taken over faster than you can say "Sure I'd love to."

Glee!

I was home sick AGAIN today, but instead of complaining about my coughing and sneezing, I instead will tell you about my new favorite show, which I discovered during my hours of convalescence: Glee! It's about a high school glee club, and the humor is ironic, the characters are well defined, and the musical numbers are uplifting.

It's just about the only thing in the world that has made me nostalgic for high school. It even made me ask myself the question that sometimes bounces around in my head, Do I want to teach high school? Obviously it'd be a major career change, but it's something I think about from time to time, and this delightful show brought up those thoughts once again.

You can watch most of the episodes on through Fox's website (link above). Check it out. Let me know what you think.

NaNo, MeMo, and Cold-Mo

A brief check in to let you all know that I'm still alive, still writing and still meditating, and STILL SICK (ugh, more on that below).

NaNo looks very different for me this year than it did last year--instead of writing like a madwoman every day on my laptop to get my word counts up, I'm taking a more sane approach of writing in my notebook three or more times a week. Then when I finish a chapter, I take some time to type it up, doing a small editing job along the way.

I've finished both steps of chapter 2 thus far. I finished chapter 3 on paper, but need to get it typed up still. I will be starting chapter 4 by hand tonight, at one of our twice-weekly meetings at Easton's Ames Free Public Library cottage. I must remember to take pictures soon. It's a lovely space, and being there really does get me in the mood to write.

So, about this damn cold/cough. It. Will Not. Go. Away. It's like one of those burrs that gets stuck to your clothing when you're walking outside. When you notice it, you pull it off and think it's gone, but then for weeks afterwards you find little spikes embedded in your jacket fibers.

I thought this cold was a goner after I spent a ton of time resting and relaxing this weekend. I was still coughing on Monday and Tuesday, but my energy was back and I felt mostly normal. Then yesterday, I wake up with a headache, and promptly go back to sleep. I slept for hours and still felt exhausted. Today, I dragged my achy butt out of bed and to work, but I am not happy about it. Contemplating staying home tomorrow, though I'm a wee bit embarrassed to take off more time to nurse the same damn cold!

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. Out damn cold, out!

Hope you all are feeling better than I am, and writing just as much!

Some days off

We have Wednesday off in honor of Veteran's Day, and so I took tomorrow and Tuesday off too, just for fun. I have no real agenda for these days, though as anyone who knows me can predict, I do have a long list of things I'd like to get done. That said, in honor of MeMo (MeditationMonth), I am planning to play it by ear, just doing what I want to do when I want to do it. No pressure on myself to complete anything in particular.

Here are some of the things I think I'll feel like doing/hope to get done sometime relatively soon:

Write everyday
Meditate everyday
Make some cool napkin rings for Thanksgiving
Frame some photos to give as gifts
Alter a few pieces of clothing to make them more comfortable/useful
Continue knitting Baby Emma's sweater
Paint the stairs
Work on my Bug room (aka home office)
Rake leaves and winterize the backyard
Make my wedding photo album (5+ years after the fact!)
Try some new recipes
Watch artist-themed movies I have from Netflix (Pollack and Frida, at the moment)

Let's see what the spirit moves me to actually do!

Sunday Scribblings: Interview

My parents and me at my grad school graduation.

I don't know what prompted me to check out Sunday Scribblings just now, but I'm glad I did. The topic is interview, and immediately I thought of a project I have been meaning to do for ages, but that I keep backing away from. I want to interview my parents, on tape, about their childhoods. My dad grew up in Germany during WWII, so clearly he has a lot of important stories that should be recorded. My mom had a less historically significant childhood, but one that I am personally curious about none the less.

Also, I think back to these tapes my brothers and I made of my grandparents when we were kids. Sometimes we would press "record" without telling them, and capture snippits of fights or conversations about mundane details of life, like what's for dinner. After they died, being able to listen to their voices was such a gift for all of us.

I think I shy away from doing this because my family is not a particularly touchy feely one. We don't talk about emotions, or even what's important to us as much as I wish we did. So it's scary. It feels like I'm taking a sailboat into emotionally choppy waters with a crew that has never experiences those waves before.

But as scary as it is, I know it's something I will regret if I don't do. I promise, with this blog as my witness, to get recordings made over the holidays.

Ripped from the headlines....and NaNo update

In my writing classes, I often use news stories as writing prompts. When I read this news story about a murdered woman whose body was identified 55 years after she died, it grabbed my attention as something that could spark a number of fictional stories. (I post this with no disrespect to her family intended.) So if anyone's looking for a writing prompt, consider yourself served.

Yesterday, on day 3 of NaNo, I finished a draft of chapter 2 of my novel in progress. Today I'm going to type it up (I've been writing long hand) so I can send it to my critique group. Then tomorrow, I'll start on chapter 3, hopefully making up for today's lack of freshly written words.

I'm fairly amazed with myself for getting a whole chapter done already! It's challenging to move this quickly though, so I'm glad to take a night off from moving my characters forward. I need a little time to percolate.

And now I'm off to have some tea-- one of the plus sides of cold evenings is an intense craving for tea.

Music and writing

I had an annoying evening last night--my train was delayed because of wet leaves on the tracks (Really MBTA? Wet leaves? You didn't expect wet leaves on the tracks in the fall? Maybe you could, I don't know, CLEAR THE TRACKS OVER THE WEEKEND, LIKE I RAKE MY DAMN YARD?) and a dog that is willfully REFUSING to be trained. (Maybe his name, Rufus, comes from a play on refuse.)

So when I got to my NaNo time, I was not in the mood to write. But it was only day 2, and damn it if I'm giving up that easily. I started writing, and then found myself distracted by Facebook and the web in general. I turned off the computer and took my notebook to my bedroom, where I shut the door to get away from said annoying Rufus. But I could hear him pawing at the door to get in.

My Ipod happened to be nearby, so I plugged in the earbuds and tuned into one of my favorite bands, Iron and Wine. I usually can't write with music, but for whatever reason last night it helped me get in the zone. I think the choice of bands was important--I know Iron and Wine's songs so well that I can appreciate them without listening too hard. Plus, the feel of the music is what I'm trying to get across in my writing, so the tones matched.

I just tried listening to music while doing editing for my day job, but that didn't work. The stuff I'm editing is pretty scientific and complex, and the music was just distracting. My conclusion? Music is a good sometimes accompaniment for my writing.

How about you? Do you listen to music when you write?

(Oh, and I'm not sure who created the adorable image I posted here, so I can't give credit, but I do want to link to a place where you can buy shirts with the image on them.)