Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you

Seems like there are always so many books I want to read. Ever feel that way? I always have two or three beside me, one in the car, a few beside the bed, etc. My purse is too heavy because there’s a book in it, or an iPad with a hundred books and the potential for more. And those are just the ones I want to read, not the books I must read for literature class or book club. Those are always on top of the pile and usually keep me from what I really want to read.

Then there’s work and life, yes those pesky obligations that keep us from our daily reading. But ahhh, when that glass of single-malt is poured, and the lamp is clicked on and the book is opened, I am at peace.

But for now, there will always be more and more books, and yes, I still scour used-book stores for more. I can’t pass up a bargain for something I would want in the future, something that will keep me company with my glass of amber liquid and softly glowing light in an otherwise dark room.

So here I sit, in a small office as I work, with many books keeping me company. “We’ll be here when you’re ready,” they seem to say. “Take your time.”

Making Time vs. Wasting Time

Take time to see the beauty in life

I had a very wise teenager in my car recently. I was driving my daughter and her friend somewhere and as they chatted, I listened and drove. (I think that’s my job now-driver and listener, at this stage of the game.) At one point, my daughter’s friend said, “I keep saying I don’t have time to do things, but the fact is that I just don’t make time for them. I have lots of time in my day and I waste way too much of it. Then I don’t have time for the things I have to do, or want to do. So I’m not saying, ‘I don’t have time,’ anymore. I will be honest and say, ‘I can’t make time for that.’”

Wow, pretty insightful for a teenager. Not that teenagers are not smart and clever, but it usually takes years and years for us to recognize how much time we waste on stupid things and how many things we miss by doing that. Even I had to sit back and think about all the time I waste on the Internet or watching TV. When I tell people I don’t have time to get to something, just what did I do all day that made me so late?

Of course, I do love TV, I admit it. There’s nothing wrong with watching some Walking Dead (which returns Feb. 10, yipee!) or Downton Abbey. Both offer a grand escape and are highly entertaining. But the channel surfing has to stop. The mornings I wake up and tell myself I will just watch a little TV with my tea and two hours later, cold tea at my side, I have watched nothing but crap. Seriously. So I move on to checking my email and two hours later I’ve looked at crap video clips and checked out a few websites that may be helpful in a work-related way (if I convince myself of it.) Luckily, this doesn’t happen every day or I would never leave the house. I do have responsibilities and a job, but on those rare days when I don’t have somewhere to go or something to do, I am quite disappointed in myself for not making better use of all that free time.

What is your major time waster and how can you get hold of it and wrestle it to the ground? Control it before it controls you, right? I’ve downloaded iTV on my iPad and I now only look for the TV shows I want to watch and keep the TV off all other times. I head into my office as soon as possible in the morning, where there is no television. Yes, there is a computer, but once I start working, it usually takes care of itself.

My last guilty pleasure is Facebook. I post every day and interact with friends and I love that. I read author FB posts and publishers, I check out what’s for sale at my favorite resale store. But mostly, I browse. Well, we all need some kind of vice, right?

 

Dying to look like Laurie Partridge

Ever since I can remember, reading was a wonderful escape for me. Not fitting in with my peers was a given, but I always seem to fit in when I was reading a book. I never worried that the characters in the book would care that I didn’t have the latest Jordache jeans or didn’t have the money to travel to a resort in Upstate New York for the summer like everyone else. One book in particular, The Velvet Room, took me to a place that I have never forgotten.

In the book, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Robin and her family are migrant workers and land in California. While trying to hide from her siblings, Robin finds a tunnel leading to an empty mansion on the hill. But one room is not empty. It is filled with ceiling-high bookshelves and tall windows with red velvet drapes and window seats. Robin finds herself returning day after day to the room, reading and exploring. She begins to wonder why just one room in this large empty house is furnished. I was engrossed in this book for many reasons, but mainly I wanted to find a room like that. I wanted to get away from my family and our dysfunctional drama into a room with tall windows and red-velvet curtains drawn tight against the sun. I wanted to wander and read all the leather-bound books on the shelves without fear of interruption or ridicule. It didn’t matter what you wore in the Velvet Room. Even Robin, in her worn clothes from the fields, didn’t have to worry in there. She could escape the hard life she lived at the bottom of the hill by curling up on the window seat with the curtains drawn and her feet up under her while she read a book.

I carried that book around with me everywhere when I was 11, to my mother’s dismay. I read passages about the room when I was alone, or wanted to be, which was most of the time. At one point my mother wanted me to come out of my shell and allowed me to put a sweater on layaway at K-Mart, a sweater that look so much like the kind everyone else was wearing I was giddy with excitement. It had a brown and yellow zig-zag pattern with a smart-looking tie at the waist. If I could talk her into a pair of wide bell-bottoms, I imagined I would look just like Laurie Partridge, although with my frizzy blonde hair and c-cups at age 11 there wasn’t much chance of that happening too soon. But I dreamed, and went to the store and put another $2 on the sweater each week. I patiently waited for cooler weather and the chance to wow everyone with how hip and groovy I looked in my sweater.

Needless to say, when I finally got the sweater I didn’t look anything like the incredibly thin, poker-straight-haired Laurie. I looked more like her little brother Danny (as in Bonaduce). I was wrong, that sweater didn’t change anything. I retreated back to my book after wearing the sweater for a full week, every day, with no ooohs and aaaahs from anyone.

Virginia Wolfe said every woman should have a room of her own. That might not always be possible, but a corner? How hard can that be? For the moment, I’ve got a large chair in my studio that faces my tiny bookcase and I’m content with that. I’ve got a room, and before that I had a corner. I’m going out to buy red velvet material to make curtains for the tiny windows in my studio this week because after all these years, I think I deserve them. Don’t you? Oh, and I found a copy of The Velvet Room on E-bay a few years ago, and I see it’s on Kindle now. It’s still a good book, and I still look a little like Danny Bonaduce. Some things never change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I did on my summer vacation

Taking a break from writing can be great. It can also be stressful if you feel like something is missing. So, I decided to take a break and work at a few art projects. These are a few things I’ve wanted to do, but thought I didn’t have the time. So, I took the time. Now don’t judge, it was just for my benefit and creative outlet. But I thought you might get a kick out of it.

Step One: Find a terrible painting at a thrift store or garage sale. Better yet, find something you painted during one of those wine & paint parties. (Yes, I know. Pretty bad, huh?)

Yeah, I did this. But there was wine involved…

Step Two: Lay out the stickers the way you want them and don’t be afraid to change it up.

Step Three: Paint over the stickers and canvas in any color you want. I chose black and brown. Cover till you get the desired color. Don’t worry about being perfect, it is art, remember? (I used acrylic paint, btw.)

Step Four: After it’s dried (took about 15 minutes), peel off the letters. I added a few 3-D stickers and a photo of my husband and daughter, as well as a set of beads.

Viola!

Steady hammering skills make for lovely jewelry, right?

I first saw something like this on Pinterest and it looked pretty easy. This project is simply washers (ok, I raided Husband’s toolbox) and a small letter kit I bought at Harbor Freight ($7). Choose words you want but make them short, then add beads or embellishments. Daughter is a big Sherlock fan, hence the 221B reference.

Heads up: Make sure you find a firm place to on which to hammer these. I actually split a concrete block while hammering. Good thing it was just used as a door stop in the back yard.
What do you do to give yourself a varied creative outlet?

 

 

 

A lost art of letter writing

Remember when you were young and you couldn’t wait for the mail to arrive? It was thrilling. My grandfather used to write a poem for each birthday and mail it to me. My friends wrote long letters about boyfriends and parties and I reread them over and over.

These days, most correspondence is done online. Letter writing has gone the way of the cassette tape, typewriter and phone cords. Some of these things can stay gone, no problem. Phone cords will not be missed. But I do miss the typewriter and its clack clack of the keys, and the letter in the mailbox is a tragic loss.

When was the last time you wrote someone a letter? I challenge you to write someone a letter this week. It could be a short, “Thanks for the great lunch and conversation,” or even, “I miss you. Let’s get together.” If you must, you can type it up and print it out. If you’re writing a long, drawn-out letter, by all means print it out. But hand write the envelope. It doesn’t take that much time and it gives the letter a special touch. You could even embellish the note or envelope with a drawing, stickers, etc. (OK, I’m pushing it here. Sorry)

I know this sounds very simple, but it isn’t, really. Our time is precious these days, yet we still have time to watch our favorite TV shows or movies, right? Take a moment during a commercial to write out a note. Address the envelope on the next commercial. See how quick that was?

A good friend of mine frequently rips out photos and ads from magazines, slaps a Post-it with a funny note on it and mails it out to me. I love getting these and it makes me smile. It doesn’t cost much, just a stamp and an envelope. If you have children, try writing them a letter or sending them a card. Tell Grandparents to drop them a card or letter.

Make someone smile this week. What have you got to lose?

What do you regret?

I have spent the past week going over everything in my life that I regret, why I regret it, and what I would do to change it. Why the hell am I doing that? I found a writing contest with the simple statement-Write an essay about a mistake or regret and what you would do to change it. Powerful, right?

The challenge, the way I see it, is to write something interesting, but not too deep and depressing. And of course, any of these regrets you have need to be usable in an essay that the entire world may just read (and I’m including my mother in that crowd). Ready for that, are you? Sure, I have major regrets, but not too many I want to tell the world about in 1,500 words or less. And I have regrets that I don’t feel I should change. They are what they are, and it’s that simple.

Then there are the regrets I think would have made a difference in someone else’s life more than mine. Those are the ones I think I would change. But which one of those is worth writing about?

So, my week has been quite depressing at times as I drive the kid around town, wash the dishes, and fold the laundry all the while reviewing all the shitty, stupid, or unkind things I think I’ve done and what I would do to change them. The more I review my life, the more I think I’m a bitch and that I have hurt people by the mere act of not paying attention. I think this comes from obsessing over my flaws for an entire week.

But seriously, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that my lack of attention may have been a factor in many of these instances that keep flashing before my eyes as I sit at the red light. I would like to think that I have learned as I grew, and I will admit I have a lot fewer to review in the past 10 years. But who knows what tomorrow brings? I have been distracted lately.

I finally came up with a mistake I would like to change, and hopefully it’s good enough to win a prize. But if not, at least this has given me a chance to think about my mistakes. I didn’t like that much, but maybe I’ll pay a little more attention to everyone else.

Oh, and if I didn’t get around to you yet, let this be an apology for that thing I said. I’m sure I didn’t mean it.

The trend toward one-word titles and what I think about how short they are and what they mean

Tucked away in my little studio, writing away at a book that may be published in the future (note the insecurity), I begin to contemplate the title of said book. Yes, I’m that far along with it. And even though I know that publishers usually end up scrapping the original title and stamping their own without a second thought, I want to make as little work as possible for them so they have more time to sell, sell, sell.

So while I rack my brain trying to think of titles, I do a little research and find a fascinating phenomenon. One word. That’s it. Just one word is all I need. How did this trend happen and more importantly, where was I when that memo came out? Did Twilight start this mess, I asked myself? No. You have to go back even further (said a strange, whispering voice) to Jane Austen’s miserly use of words for Persuasion, Stevenson’s Kidnapped, or even Benchley’s pint-sized title with a punch, Jaws. Who needs pesky details in a title, right?

So even though these types of titles have been around for a long time, no other time is it as obvious a trend as today. Just look at a few of the titles out now: Defiance, Slammed, Thoughtless, Wings, Rapture, Predestined, Insurgent, Divergent, Forbidden, Devour, Touch, Twilight, Outpost, Boneshaker, Hemlock, and Room. Lovely words, yes? I’m not sure I know what any of these books are about, except for the few that I have read.

My question, and excuse me if I’m just not seeing it, is the relevance of these titles to the book. Does the title (word) tell you enough about the book to make you want to read it? Is that one word sufficient? In most cases, unless the book takes off and it doesn’t matter what you call it (like Twilight or Jaws), most books will be seen online or a store shelf and have about 5 seconds to grab the reader, intrigue him enough to read the blurb on the back cover or description and then decide to buy. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one word, don’t you think?

The present-day trend of one-word titles brings to mind beloved classics, and just what word would be used if they were being published today.

Farenheit 451 – Banned

The Catcher in the Rye – Defiance

Little Women – Loyalty

The Count of Monte Cristo – Revenge

Great Expectations – Prospects

Gone with the Wind – Avarice

The Great Gatsby – Regrets

The Cat in the Hat – Disillusion

Green Eggs and Ham – Resistance

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It all comes down to having a good story behind the title. People don’t say, “You should read this, it has a great title.”

I’m still thinking of a title that will knock the pencil right out of the publisher’s hand. Oh yeah, and a story to go with it.

The small differences between Stephen King and me

Living in Arizona means there are many more hot days than cold days, no big secret there. And it’s not so bad in the long run, but for someone who loves writing when it’s cold outside, that’s a bummer. I love it when there’s a fire in the hearth or even a heater running, warm tea by my side (or a glass of good single malt Scotch). The words seem to flow and the energy that comes in through the window with the chill air is electric.

Now, as I sit here my mind wanders to great writers, prolific writers and I come to the conclusion that there are only a few small differences between Stephen King and me. (Just a few, you say? Yes, follow along.) First, his fiction has been published. Yes, I know this is a big one. And although I have been published in plenty of nonfiction, I haven’t sent my fiction out there just yet, but I intend to remedy this difference very soon. Then there will be even less difference between me and Stephen, J.K., Ernest and more.

Third, and this is a bigger one…he lives in Maine. It’s cold there and it even snows, and he’s got the fire going, a glass of Scotch, pine trees outside the window, etc. Now, of course I’m only imagining this since Stephen hasn’t yet invited me to his place in Maine (Notice I said yet. I’m keeping the door open on that one). But in my head, that’s what it looks like. And in my head, that’s why he writes so much and so well. The energy of the cool air and the sound of the wind through the trees, even the crackling of the fire behind him in the hearth only add to his creativity. (OK, I know his history and he wrote at a desk between the washer and dryer in a small apartment, but I like to believe that’s all made up. I need a fantasy, so shut up!)

It’s a cool, breezy day here in Arizona, one of the last of the season and I’m taking full advantage of it. I have my tea (it’s still early), the windows are open and the breeze is chilly and crisp. There’s even a chance of rain, which makes me giddy with anticipation. So I close off this blog post in order to use the rest of this splendid weather and write. Hmm, I wonder if there’s room near the washer and dryer for my desk…

 

Do we really hate other writers?

Along with reading a novel from an aspiring writer as a favor, I’ve been watching one of my favorite movies a lot lately. Midnight in Paris, one of Woody Allen’s best in my opinion, has some great dialogue and a beautiful plot line. I love the characters, and the dream-like romp in 1920s Paris, complete with Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and of course, Hemingway.

One scene in particular stands out for me. The main character, strangely transported to Paris in the 1920s, has a chance to meet Hemingway in a bar. After a little small talk, he asked Papa if he’ll take a look at his novel and give him his opinion. Hemingway’s response?

“My opinion is I hate it,” he says.

“But you haven’t even read it yet,” Gil says.

“If it’s bad, I’ll hate it because I hate bad writing,” Hemingway explains. “If it’s good, I’ll be envious and hate it all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.”

This quote really made me think. Is this true? As writers, we always seek feedback from other writers, we want insights, criticism and tips, right? I’ve had great feedback from friends who were writers, but we were also good friends way before the reading began. I admit I do feel a little apprehensive about sending my work out there for writers to comment if I don’t know them well.

Now, as I read the novel of a newly acquainted writer, I’m thinking how great his book is, and how jealous I am. Yes, I admit it, I’m jealous because it is pretty good. But, I don’t think I hate it because it’s good. I just wish I’d written something this good, although it’s not my genre so there’s no way I would have.

Confusing enough? My question is this…do we hate other writers who are successful? Do we secretly envy their success? Or does it make us just that much more determined to go out and do the same thing? I’ve heard other writers say, “If Stephanie Meyer can do it with that, I can certainly do better.” Well, what are you waiting for? Sometimes the difference between the published writer and the unpublished writer is not the quality of their writing but their determination to get it out there.

The studio built by love

Finding joy in the process is half the fun

This is the studio that love built.

The writing studio (I’m calling it a studio now instead of a shed, which sounds too much like a storage room) is coming along amazingly well. Husband has been working his ass off these past few days and put a big window in yesterday and the wood floor went in today. Floor trim tomorrow, then window trim, and then we’re done. Did I mention he painted it last weekend and cleaned it out every night after work? He won’t let me help, says I can decorate but this is his gift to me. How awesome is that?

I thought of the foundation that went into the room today and realized that the foundation to my writing must also be as strong. Husband wore the skin off both knees laying that foundation today, which means that I can’t screw around after this studio is ready. I must be serious. I’ve been thinking about what this studio means to me, why I write and when I write. I can write anywhere, anytime, that’s true. But now I have a serious, dedicated space to hide… I mean retreat to… and write. No excuses, no procrastination. It’s been a dream for so long and it’s finally coming true. I love him for loving me. Thank you, my love!