A Brief Moment of Celebration between Showering and Scooping up Dustball Tumbleweeds

I finished writing a book this morning.

I've been working on the thing pretty much every day since September and when I haven't been working on it, it's been in my head, snippets of dialogue in the supermarket that I scratch out on the back of my grocery list, and sudden cold sweats in the middle of the night when I realize I've got a gaping plot hole, and moments of excitement when I snap together pieces that just might solve that gaping plot hole issue,

but mostly it's day after day of psychologically girding myself, gearing up to write, and fighting back the demons in my head that whisper why bother why are you doing this it's stupid and pointless and opening up my lap top and writing anyway.

You think when you come to the end of the book you've been writing for eight months, you'll want to whoop it up. Drink a bottle of champagne. Tear out of the house shouting I JUST FINISHED WRITING A BOOK!

The truth is nobody really cares.

Also, the house is a gigantic mess because you've been neglecting it for eight months and suddenly you can see the layer of dust on all of the furniture and the tumbleweed sized dog hair balls in the corners and the fact that you've been wearing the same clothes for possibly days? and when was the last time you showered?

(Don't answer that.)

So, there's tons of stuff to do and after you take a shower and put on some different clothes, it's time to get to it. Answering a bajillion emails and taking care of business-y stuff and never mind figuring out what to do with this Thing-- the inevitable revising once you get it back from your critique partners-- and Hey! It's time to query it! and what will you write next? yadda yadda ya...

One of my friends asked me the other day, when I told her I was getting closer to the end of this draft, how I was going to celebrate.

Confession: I'm not big on celebrations.

I'm not sure what it is exactly about celebrating that bugs me. The expense? The party-planning aspect? Anything to do with cake and glitter? Plus, it feels a little narcissistic to me. (See above: nobody really cares.)

I don't mind participating in other people's celebrations.

This weekend, for example, my son's graduating from college, and my husband and I are throwing him a party. A graduation is a Thing worthy of celebrating. The culmination of years of hard work and study. The marking of the movement from one life stage into another. An opportunity to hang together as a family, as friends, as a community to acknowledge the person you love who's done This Thing.

Writing a book, while it feels monumental at times, is so much more solitary. Especially when there's no guarantee that anyone will ever read it. It's like running a marathon in the dark. You don't get a certificate of completion. There's no stage to walk across. No graduation cap to throw into the air. No Congratulations to The Book Writer cards in the stationery aisle.

Ah well.

Cheers.

*throws all the glitter*

Everything but the Kitchen Sink-- Also known as Trying Every Trick in the Book... To Write a Book

It's weird to write a book.

I've done it more than ten times, and I still think it's weird. I know how it works, how to do it.

[NEWS FLASH: you sit on your butt and you pick up your writing implement of choice, and you write until the book is finished.]

I can give you all kinds of pointers about how to start, where to find ideas/use ideas/develop ideas, how to plug along through a first draft, (and a 2nd draft and a 10th draft), how to outline or not outline, how to reread what you have and reorganize it and revise it, how to plot and develop characters, how amp up conflict, how to edit and polish and blah bi di blah blah.

I can also give you strategies for working through Writer's Block.

[NEWS FLASH: you sit on your butt and you pick up your writing implement of choice and you write--even though you hate what you're writing and hate writing and probably hate yourself. Do that for 20, 30, maybe 56 days, and I promise, you'll break through Writer's Block.]

Yeah. So I KNOW ALL THAT. And yet, apparently, I must bow down humbly before the Muse and admit that I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING when it comes to writing a book, specifically, the book I am writing now, which is technically a revision, my fifth or sixth complete time through it.

It's a strange complicated dark expansive personal story that seems to get bigger and more complicated every time I pick my way through it.

I heard the brilliant writer and teacher Jane Resh Thomas speak at Hamline University when I visited the MFAC program in January and she said that when you write a book, you are not the same person you were when you started it. You're exploring parts of yourself--some parts, that maybe you would rather not explore. Because I have basically been writing this story for more that 12 years, let's just say that I am doing a lot of exploring of the dark and dusty recesses of myself.

And here's one thing I figured out:

All of my old strategies for writing a book-- the word counts and the daily goals and the typing on my lap top and the index cards-- none of that seems to be working with this one. So I decided-- what the hey?-- why not try something new?

Forget the damn laptop. I've been writing by hand. With a pencil. I'm filling up composition notebooks, something I haven't done since I was twelve.

(two of many notebooks. Plus a to-do list
with the first item:
NO INTERNET UNTIL 3) 

I hand write in the mornings and type and revise in the afternoon. I take a lot of breaks. When I'm stuck, I clean something in my house or throw something out or clean something and then throw it out.

This book takes place partly in a forest and every time I get to a place where I have no idea what the characters are doing or thinking, I start describing trees. I have hundreds of pictures stored on my computer. Types of trees and leaves and fruit and bark. I have pieces of bark on my desk.

(there are satyrs in my book too. Satyrs are from Greek
mythology and they have tails and they
like to chase nymphs. Look at the one I painted
with watercolors. Note: the privates are modestly
covered by leaves) 

I'm doing yoga again. (wearing yoga pants has inspired me.) I'm gathering stones and creating altars and burning candles and staying off social media and walking the dog multiple times and binge watching Supernatural and painting with water colors.

I'm terrible with water colors and I don't care. I also don't care about publication anymore. Or sales numbers or sequels or self promotion or marketing. I do some of those things, sure, but this book comes first. It may never be read by anyone except for a few close friends. And get this: I don't care. 

In the mornings I change out of my pajamas and into my yoga pants and I park my butt on the bed in my office/guest room where I've been working, and I pick up my pencil and write.

Excavating the Past --Also a word about 19th century outhouses in Cincinnati

The other day the guy at Goodwill scolded my husband and me. Apparently when you have a bunch of crap bigger items to drop off at one of their centers, the proper procedure is to park in the front, go inside and announce what you have, and then drive around to the back to unload.

My husband had done this the day before, but today we were trying to expedite the process and thought we'd just go directly to the back.

DO NOT DO THIS, PEOPLE. The guy expressed his annoyance with us several times, accompanied by weary sighs and exasperation at our not following the rules. The entire time we were unloading the back of a pickup truck-- a coffee table, a TV stand, a computer desk, five garbage bags of clothing and toys and games-- we apologized to him for his generosity.

"Okaaaaay," the guy said, as he helped us cart the stuff inside, "we'll take it this time, but next time..." his voice trailed off and husband and I apologized once more.

Then we got back into the truck and burst out laughing. Barred from donating to Goodwill. Is that a thing? Well, whatever. There are other Goodwills in this city, buddy.

What began as a half-day project to dust the book shelves in my office has turned into a complete excavation of every single item in our house. Do we WANT this thing? Do we LOVE it? Do we USE it? Maybe we liked it once but we can't remember why and now it's just taking up space... Maybe it was a gift we never liked but thought we should?

Absolutely everything is on the table both literally and figuratively--including the table.

We are ruthless. Pulling stuff out of a closet and chucking it into bags without a second thought except annoyance at ourselves for keeping these things.

OR

We are slow and weepy. Look. Our son made this when he was in kindergarten. Our daughter carried this little purse around when she was four. Oh!! My grandmother wrote me this letter. My aunt made me this doll when I was a child. My husband wore this shirt on our honeymoon. I used to love this dress so hard but couldn't fit into it now to save my life, also my daughter now informs me that it is hideous.

There are decisions to be made about every single thing: Trash? Recycle? Goodwill? Keep-- but if you keep it, where do you put it?

I read somewhere that these items are called touchstones. The moment you unearth them, the moment you turn them over in your hands, you have the story, the memory, the emotion. These items are haunted in a sense, by loss (my grandmother made this quilt!) by grief (my child chewed on this toy and now he is in college and that baby he was is lost forever) by love  and joy and weirdly, fear.

It's hard to let go of things. Take the computer desk dumped off at Goodwill the other day. To the objective eye, it is nothing but a piece of cheaply made furniture. Decent condition. Still has some use. But I know where we bought it (Target) and when-- two houses ago when we lived in Lexington, KY. I know that we had it set up in our den by the window and it held the only computer in our house. Our son played video games at that desk and our daughter typed out little stories. I wrote a book sitting at that desk.

When we hauled it up from the basement, where it was now gathering dust and half begged Goodwill to take it from us, we were cutting a small cord to the past.

My wise friend Deb says that excavating our house as we have been doing, giving things away and throwing stuff out, making decisions about what to keep and what to cut loose-- is a way of accepting our own mortality. We hold onto things because they have become extensions of us. Parting with them is parting with pieces of ourselves.

We live with this illusion that we will live forever, that we can gather and collect and buy and take in households of things forever. We stuff things in our closets and our dresser drawers and cabinets and basements and attics. Some people rent storage lockers to hold the things that won't fit inside their homes because they can't bear to part from them. I have a relative who only gives friends her things so she can still visit them from time to time.

In the end, we can't take any of it with us. And those things that hold even the smallest hint of value, of memory, of emotion, return to merely being things.

Someone will buy that computer desk at Goodwill and will have no idea where it came from, who it came from. Someone will pick up the handmade doll. The lovingly sewn quilt. Old pictures still in their frames and say Who are these people? 

No.

If they say anything at all, it will be Who WERE these people?

There's an awesome exhibit in the Cincinnati Museum Center:the items found in an excavated outhouse from the 19th century. A team of anthropologists discovered the old privy and carefully dug into it, dusting off items in the careful way you imagine they'd dig up dinosaur bones or Native American pottery shards. There's a display at the museum of the items from the outhouse, organized by layer. Those found out at the bottom and preserved in --ugh, I guess, calcified human waste?--- are the oldest.

(Peeking into the Privy Hole) 

Weird things. Bits of china, children's toys, forks, medicine bottles, toothbrushes.

You look at the stuff and think: how the hell did that get thrown down into an outhouse hole? Kids playing with marbles while they did their business. People brushing their teeth and eating? Things accidentally dropped? Can't you imagine a kid dropping a toy and having a tantrum about it? Or maybe some of things were thrown in purposely. Damn it, Millie, I always hated this china from your mother!! Or, oh my GOD I broke Millie's mother's heirloom china saucer. Let me throw it down the toilet hole before she finds out.

There are stories behind these things. But we will never know the stories. People owned the dishes. Used the toothbrushes. Loved the toys. Hated the medicine bottles. Now none of it has any meaning at all except for anthropologists and museum goers.

Those 19th century people let go of their things.

And now it is our time to let go...


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the record, (and for tax purposes) the list so far of things Goodwill has graciously allowed us to give them, in no particular order:

20 pillows
2 chairs
1 set of Polly Pockets
11 pictures
1 pitcher
3 jewelry boxes
13 scarves
2 sets curtains
3 child's purses
assorted stuffed animals
6 hats
1 sweat jacket
1 woman's coat
1 lamp shade
6 wicker baskets
1 small refrigerator
1 mirror
1 radio/cd player
18 candle holders
2 sugar bowls
1 harmonica
25 games
2 baseball mitts
2 guitars from Guitar Hero game
1 queen-sized comforter set
1 double sized comforter
1 double sized sheet set
1 area rug and rug pad
2 computer keyboards
assorted jewelry
2 computer desks
3 hand towels
5 wash cloths
5 T-shirts
25 teen shirts
4 blouses
9 sweaters
1 dog sweater
2 dresses
1 pajamas
2 dolls
12 mugs
1 jump rope
1 TV stand
1 coffee table
1 tape recorder
1 pair of jeans
1 wine container
1 table runner
1 pair ski pants
1 tea towel
1 beer mug
8 pants
2 art supply sets
10 pairs of shorts
1 Barbie
104 books
9 candles
1 bowl of beaded fruit
2 watches
1 baseball hat
1 backpack
3 piano books
2 wallets
5 bracelets
3 headbands
4 canvas bags
1 bikini
5 pairs of socks
1 keychain
2 watches
2 calculators
14 knick knacks
12 puzzles
1 ten-foot computer cord
1 wooden plate
1 glass cheese plate
1 glass plate
2 trays
2 end tables
1 cd holder
1 electric mattress pad
1 shin splint
1 Vera Bradley bag
1 filing cabinet
1 sofa table
2 lamps
1 stapler
3 bathroom rugs
2 easter egg trees
1 baseball bat
1 baseball glove
1 deviled egg tray
1 rain poncho
12 pairs of shoes
5 videos
1 nightlight
2 soap dispensers
1 glass vase
1 silver thermos
4 fake plants
2 bookends
3 sculptures
1 tablecloth
7 cloth napkins
3 sweatshirt
2 bar stools
1 laundry sorter
1 bolt of material
1 cake stand
1 metal hot plate
1 nativity set
1 queen sized sheet set
3 blankets
1 quilt
3 twin sized sheet sets
1 graduation gown (sorry, Ben!)
11 pillow cases

In Which I Do a Social Media Detox, Quit Reading Books, and Rediscover My Loathing for My Dining Room Table

Week Four of The Artist's Way is a killer.

You're not allowed to read. 

No books. No newspapers. No magazines. No backs of cereal boxes. Nothing. For someone who is pretty much a reading addict, this particular assignment fills me with horror. I make a living --(and I use the word "living" in a metaphorical sense) by writing books. So, reading books is my job. And telling me not to read books is like telling me not to breathe air. 

Side note: I am doing this course called The Artist's Way, a twelve week set of exercises that is supposed to help you rediscover your creative self. I went through the course seven years ago and as loony-tunes as it seemed to me at the time, IT WORKED. See here. 

The first time I went through Week Four, I thought I was going to die not being allowed to read for a week. But funny thing: back then I was not on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram. I did not spend hours answering emails and reading blog posts and scrolling around online. Social media did not exist when Julia Cameron designed the exercises for The Artist's Way, but I have to think that when she says No Reading, she also means No Tweeting or Facebooking or emailing. 

The whole point of Reading Deprivation is to take a break from consuming other people's words, to control what we allow in. "Our reward," Julia Cameron says, "will be a new outflow. Our own art, our own thoughts and feelings will begin to nudge aside the sludge of blockage, to loosen it and move it upward and outward until once again our well is running freely."

Yeah yeah, whatever, Julia. Bring it. 

Last Sunday night I signed off all of my accounts. Goodbye Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Instagram. Adios blog posts and Yahoo news. So long BOOKS.  My husband was out of town. When I talked to him on the phone, I told him I was ready for my week of reading deprivation. My prediction was that without my constant farting around online, I'd get a ton of work done on my latest writing project, which honestly, I had been slogging through and not enjoying all that much anymore.   

Also, I would clean the house.

Day One: 

Because I don't check email or read the crap news of the day, I feel peaceful and happy and oblivious. I clean the breakfast dishes directly after breakfast. I walk the dog. I write for most of the day. When my daughter gets home from school, she is greeted by the enticing smell of freshly baked chocolate chip scones. Yay! This is fun! I am Miss Productivity! 

I don't miss reading until I get into bed. It's my habit to read a book at night and to scroll once more through all of my various forms of social media. I am stricken. What do I do? 

I solve this problem by rereading the chapter about Not Reading in The Artist's Way and go to sleep happily. 

Day Two:

I have no idea what's going on in the world or what my friends on Facebook or on Twitter are doing and I am okay with that because after I finish my day's writing, I'll be busy cleaning my office. 

Later, as I am taking books off the bookshelves, I realize that I don't want all of these books. Some are books that I read and didn't like and never plan to read again. Some are books that I haven't read and admit I never will. 

And come to think of it, what about the books on the bookshelves in other parts of my house? The ones gathering dust in my bedroom? The ones on the shelves in the living room? The ones piled in the bathrooms and next to my bed?

I don't want some of those either. 

I make a vat of homemade lentil soup. My daughter informs me that she does not like lentil soup.

The aromatic sofrito base of my lentil soup

Day Three:

My dining table is covered with books.

My office is a disaster area. Thinking about what books I really want and don't really want has made me question everything in the room. Why do I have these curtains? These beads hanging in the closet that my daughter hung when this was her bedroom annoy the hell out of me. And I never liked this rug. It's ugly. 

Day Four:

I sneak a peek at email and realize that I am not as important as I thought I was. I suspect the worlds of Twitter and Facebook are rolling along just fine without me too. I am both saddened and relieved. 

My daughter's home sick from school. She's watching a Dance Moms Marathon. I have never watched this show and immediately begin to mock it. Three hours later I am still mocking it, while my ailing daughter snoozes on the couch beside me. 

I pull down the curtains in my office. I throw out the closet beads. I roll up the rug. I eat the hell out of leftover lentil soup.

I write my ass off. 

Day Five:

Daughter's home sick again and I am secretly happy so I can watch Dance Moms with her. I eye the cluttered dining room table with despair. In addition to books, I've now added pictures I've always hated, clunky bookends that I refuse to put back on my pristine organized bookshelves, various ceramic cats from that time in my life when I thought it would be fun to collect ceramic cats, stupid plastic plants that exist only to gather dust, and a bunch of shoes I haven't worn in years.

I don't want these cats.

I eat leftover lentil soup.

I realize that I don't like a lot of the things I have in my house. Some stuff's kinda neutral and pointless. A gift that's not my style. A thing that has no meaning or purpose. Other stuff has a halo of negative connotation surrounding it. Gifts with strings attached. Or worse, guilt. Ugly things I used to like but can't remember what the hell I was thinking. Plastic fruit covered with beads? Why do I have these things? 

That's it. They're going on the dining room table. 

I write and write and write. 

Day Six:

I don't like the dining room table. Truth be told, I loathe it. There. I said it. 

I have an epiphany. What has been blocking me in my writing project is that I have been holding onto an earlier version of the story. Once I decide that I can let it go, I feel a surge of energy and excitement. I know what to do now. 

The entire dining room is filled with things to give away, including the dining room furniture. 

My daughter and I are watching Dance Moms when my husband calls from the airport on his way home. 

"How was your week?" he asks.

"Pretty good," I tell him. 

Day Seven:

My husband and I walk around the house together expressing our loathing and love for a quarter century's worth of accumulated stuff. I head up to my office to tackle a file cabinet. My husband begins to excavate the basement. 

I work a bit more on my book. I love it again. 

On the Book Tour Road: Confessions of an Anxious Traveler

Tomorrow I'm off to embark upon the second leg of the Thin Space Book Tour--otherwise known as the "The Tour through All the Places Where I've Lived slash Know People."

The first stop on this tour was Lexington Kentucky, my home for ten years, where I raised my kids through their pre-school/ elementary/some of middle school years, taught at an awesome creative and performing arts school, and experienced the hey day of my PTA-Carpooling-Uber Volunteer stage of life. (Update: I had a blast returning to my former school--where I did my first ever Power Point presentation. I loved catching up with old friends--my book club, PTA moms and dads, local writers and teachers and librarians and former students--and the signing at Morris Book Shop was so well-attended the store ran out of copies of my book. Woo!)

Stop Two is Nashville, and I must admit I am anxious for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the actual Book Signing/School Visiting/Public Speaking aspect of a book tour that might make other writers nervous.

The truth is I always get nervous before I travel. I love traveling but what I don't love is the actual getting to the new place part of the process.

I'm not thrilled with flying (the potential for missed connections/cancelled flights/lost baggage weighs on my mind. Also, plane crashes.) But I hate driving too. I think it's the combination of intense hyper-alertness intermingled with the mind-numbing boredom.

There's other stuff that goes along with gearing up for a trip that puts me over the edge, and usually I drive everyone my husband crazy in the days before we travel.

Example 1:

Packing. What do I pack? What will I wear? What is the weather like? What if I forget something important? My husband's answer to this rant is something along the lines of "I could be wrong, but I think they have stores where we are going."

Example 2:

Cleaning. Okay, this is totally my own weird idiosyncrasy, but every time I am about to leave on a trip, I feel compelled to clean my house. It's this thing where you know that when you come home you're going to have a bunch of dirty laundry and you're going to be tired from the trip and wouldn't it be nice to walk into a clean home? This compulsion manifests itself in scenarios like this: My husband is loading up the car and I am running around with a scrub brush scouring the toilets.

He yells at me to put the cleaning implement down and help him load the car and I yell at him to understand my mania and help me rearrange the silverware drawer. Big shocker: we don't always begin our vacations in the most chipper of moods.

Really, I am trying to work on my traveling anxiety. Especially today, the day before I leave on my Nashville solo road trip. It's hard though. I have a mile long list of things to do:

1. Revise a chapter in my WIP
2. change the cat litter
3. finish and post this blog
4. clean off the kitchen counter
5. Answer a bunch of emails
6. Vacuum the upstairs bedrooms

You get the picture.

And look at me, all efficient and productive and just about to finish number 3 on the list!

Readers, please say a quick prayer for me tomorrow as I set out on my 400+ mile drive, and if you happen to live in the Nashville metro area, pop into Parnassus Books to say hello, Saturday, Oct. 5 at 2:00. With any luck I will be dressed appropriately for the weather and the store will not run out of books.