plea to Dumbledore

In case you are not au fait with first grade writing, it says “Dear Dumbledore, I’m stuck at a school for Muggles. I need your help. Send me an owl when you get this. Thanks, Helena.”

This resonated with me because I used to feel like that all the time. Like I was stuck at a school, in a house, in a world for Muggles and that I just wasn’t one of them and some day I would find out what made me different and then I would go off and be different and everything would be much much better.

Thing is, I was kinda right. That’s what growing up has given me — passage out of a school overrun by deeply muggle-ish Muggles and into a world where I fit in. No more must I lie and say that yes, I was allowed to stay up and watch SNL when I really wasn’t and even if I had been allowed, I’d have fallen asleep long before it was on and I probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway.  No more do I have to feel wrong and out of place because I don’t wear designer jeans or day-glo socks. (Yes I was at middle school in the early 80’s; how did you guess?) No more do I have to pretend that I’m not that smart really and no, I don’t really like to read. Bah.

Now I watch what I like (GLEE!) and read what I want (just read a whole bunch of Andrew Clement taken from Daniel’s bookshelf) and go to bed when I want (now) and eat what I want (mostly) and wear what I want (pajamas! and Doc Martens!) and no one looks down her nose at me and tells me “That’s just not cool.” Or if someone does, I don’t care. Who cares about being cool? I care about being kind and interesting and interested and fed in body and mind and heart.

And not about doing or being or saying what anyone else thinks I ought to.

When I finished writing Fairysitting, I was ecstatic. When I sent it off to a lovely editor who had massively boosted my self-esteem and writerly hopes by requesting a full, I was over the moon.

As soon as it had left my email, though, I was seized with dread. What if it wasn’t as good as it might be? What if it really needed another month or two of editing? What if I had left a typo in? What if it was in fact a steaming pile of poo?

I therefore refused to look at the book while I waited to hear back from the lovely editor. I didn’t want to see anything that I couldn’t fix. It’s not like I could send her another copy with a sheepish email saying “Oh sorry! I really didn’t like that adverb half-way down page 124 and come on, what was I thinking on page 76?” Better that I just didn’t know that I had sent something seriously flawed. I simply pretended that this book did not exist and got working on another book. Well, several other books. I’m a bit of project floozy.

But things didn’t seem to work out with lovely editor so now I am taking my book back. I am reading it again. I am opening myself up to critical readers and sharp eyes. I have spent the morning with a printed copy and a pen, scrawling all over the damn thing because you know what? It really could have been better. Much better. Oh, the flaws! The inconsistencies! That darn Renaissance Fayre father figure with a pipe! As Charlie Brown so eloquently said, “AAAAUGH!”

I am taking some comfort that in 45000 words I have only noticed two actual typos. But honestly. Is anything ever ready? Is it ever done? I certainly felt a sense of satisfaction when I had “finished.” I mean, I was satisfied enough to let an editor actually read the darn thing. Now I blush to think of it. Oh where can I put my face!

I can see a load of minor things to fix — several sort of middling things that need tweaking — and one whole character who needs to be kicked in his woodsy arse. (Yes, Renaissance Fayre intruder, I mean YOU! Take your stinky pipe and beat it!) And it’s rather exciting. The book is done — which means I don’t have to wonder whether I will ever actually reach the end, which is my usual fear. My trap is not slapdash first drafts: it’s first drafts that never get finished because I’m so busy worrying and editing and worrying and fretting about the first half that I give up in exhaustion before I get to the second half. So this will be a whole new kind of work. Like, oh I don’t know, planting flowers after you’ve dug and weeded and edged the bed. The really tough slog is done. This is about turning it from a piece of ground with a few flowers into a proper garden, everything in place, each plant leading the eye to the next, making a satisfying whole out of the many disparate parts.

This book is going to bloom. It is going to be the damn Longwood Gardens of books. I am going to weed it ruthlessly. Dig whole bits under if necessary. I am going to transplant and fertilize and lots of other good gardening metaphors!

And then I’m going to let it go again and eat ice cream. Actually, if I’m honest, there will be lots of ice cream all the way along. But there will be ice cream then too.

Would you like a little death with your coffee, sir? And you sir, cake or death?

Actually, I’m referring to sleep, which is a like a little death and boy do I adore it — more so during the night than during the day. I’m not really all that keen on naps. One, they take up time that I could profitably be using to DO something in, even if that something is reading, thinking or eating bagels. Two, I always wake up disoriented and crabby as all heck.

But I positively love getting into bed at night, pulling up the covers and knowing that soon I will sink into that lovely sea of sleep, warm as toast, soft as butter.  In fact, I often try NOT to fall asleep right away so that I can wallow in the awareness that sleep is pulling me down. I used to think everyone slept like this — I now know it’s a bit of a gift, one I’m very grateful for. I’m not looking forward to the apparent wakefulness of menopause. What DO people do when they can’t sleep? I have no idea. It was one of the single most disturbing things about having a newborn — that I simply forgot how people go to sleep. Clearly, this baby had no idea and wasn’t taking any hints. How is it that people sleep?

I recovered from that lapse in my love-affair with sleep. Now my problem is that I simply do not have enough time during the hours that I am voluntarily awake to get everything done. I thought maybe I would try getting up earlier (since staying up later just means I watch more Doctor Who and don’t get anything done). But oh my sainted aunt Penelope and her little dog Foofoo, it’s hard hard hard.

Then I read this article from Discovery and realized that it’s not my fault at all. It’s my darn genes. I don’t have the Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill gene that allows me to get five hours of sleep and still be all right. I need something closer to nine. Eight, I can cope with, but seven? Six and a half?

Bring on gene replacement therapy. I’m going to be first in line for the I-need-less-sleep gene as well as the grow-taller-than-a-measly-fivetwo gene and perhaps the when-stressed-refuse-to-eat-and-thus-lose-weight-rather-than-gorge-on-chocolate gene.  Failing that, I’m going to have to start going to bed before nine just so I can get up early enough to exercise, write, complain, meditate, work, parent, eat, worry, call my sisters and blog before tumbling back into bed at nine with a little shawl and a cup of herbal tea.

Today, Daniel got so angry that he decided to run away. He packed:

• one book of Garfield cartoons
• one pair of shorts
• one pair of sweatpants
• two pairs of underpants
• one pair of socks
• two t-shirts and a long-sleeved shirt
• a pair of swim goggles
• two dollars and a large handful of change (his entire life’s savings)
• Gussie and Dog (his two oldest and most important sleep friends)
• a flashlight
• a colored pencil
• a tiny blue stretchy frog.

All of this was gathered up into his baby blanket.*  He lugged it downstairs, opened the front door and stood looking at the world. I sat in the dining room, pretending to write. Then he announced, as if to himself but loud enough to wake the neighbors: “I have decided not to run away today” and shut the door.

I found his choice of necessities very interesting.  Despite his current obsession with Uglydolls, he left behind the few he has managed to acquire. He left behind all his most favorite books (wise, I suppose, since books are heavy to carry around and he, like me, is a library fanatic). But he brought swim goggles. And a pencil but no paper. Why? I wish I knew.

But if I were going to run away, I bet my list would look equally odd to him. It would probably have more underwear but it would also have strange things like a half-melted candle that my grandfather made or a taped up bundle of the letters Ed wrote to me over the years we were together but in different continents, both useless on the open road.

If you were going to run away and had to fit your necessities into a baby blanket, what would you take?

*I know this because I helped him unpack at bedtime.

There’s no way, really, for someone who is generally cagey about her literary ambitions and output, to casually mention that after a million years of saying that she would and hoping that she might and dreaming of the day when she would be, she is officially published.

So to hell with casual!

HEY YOU GUYS!

Crow Toes Quarterly describes itself as “filled to the gills with ‘playfully dark’ short stories, poetry and artwork for children nine and up” and their latest issue includes a story by me! It’s called Broken Glass and to say that I am excited would not be the half of it. I’m really really really excited. And happy. And a lot of other slightly more complex stuff (including snackish for something but I can’t figure out what).

Subscribe! Buy the reasonably priced special print edition! Buy the even more reasonably (verging on ridiculously low) priced PDF! At the very least, check out their website and support their efforts to bring more deliciously shivery moments to young readers.

Hmmm. Maybe I’m snackish for raspberries. Or maybe I want to find raspberries at the bottom of a large glass of champagne…

My sister is a massage therapist — a really good one — and is with us here at the beach. She (kindly or sadistically, depending on whose arm you’re attached to) offered to do some physical therapy on my flaming tendinitis.

One thinks of massage as soothing, healing, relaxing. Mwa ha ha. Despite my screams of agony, my sister pressed on — and demanded that I participate (by moving my hand from the wrist) in my own torture.

I’m thinking that this is exactly what happened to Edvard Munch before he painted this:

I think from now on I’ll stick to drugs, thank you.

(p.s. You know I really appreciated it, sis. Mwah!)

That time between day and dusk when the breeze and the water are still warm and the sun has mellowed…

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about online/offline living (cf. rantings of 8 August below). Michael Stearns of Upstart Crow Literary has too. In this post, he writes about lacking the time to read as many blogs as he once did, or perhaps would like to.  Yet he still encourages writers to contribute their voices to the resounding choir (or less charitably, cacophony) that is the interwebs.  (You can also read my rambling response here.)

It seems contradictory. Why throw more wood onto a fire that is already burning merrily? Why add another blog post, another website, another comment when there is already too much to read?

This is a bit like asking, why should I write a book when there are so many good ones out there already? Yes, there are. But YOUR book isn’t out there yet. And your (my) book is an utterly unique expression of your (my) utterly unique perspective, experience, life. And the miracle of that is that although we are all utterly unique, when we write from our most truthful selves, the world nods and murmurs, “That’s right. That’s exactly how it feels.” That is connection of the most profound sort.

So write on. Blog on. The world needs your book, the internet your voice. It will be richer for it.

(And, of course, people will be able to find you when they Google your name and not that wretched second cousin who shares your name but who moonlights as a bounty hunter and is a member of the NRA. Ick.)

I finally caved and went to the doctor. After all, it was only the last month or so that I had only been howling with pain every time my elbow brushed past something. And only a few weeks since I noticed that it wouldn’t straighten and hung at an odd angle, three inches from my body. And of course, the fact that I couldn’t knit for more then ten minutes without having to massage feeling back into my forearm, well, that’s not really any reason to rush off for medical advice, right? That’s just an inconvenience. Heck, I’m peasant stock. Pain? Ha! I chortle in the face of your stinkin’ pain. I can take it.

I thought it might be bursitis — I did give myself knitting/babyland bursitis once, right around when Helena was born and more or less immoblized my right arm. I finally went to the doctor then too and a month of massive doses of ibuprofen set me right. It took me longer to recover from the old-lady diagnosis though, as in:

Me:  But why did this happen?

Doctor: You’re getting older.

Me: AARARARARRRRRRRGH!

But this time it’s not bursitis. It’s tennis elbow. Except that I don’t play tennis, or haven’t for twenty years or so. I do knit. And type (on a laptop which is apparently a no-no). And heft massive slabs of concrete by myself because I decided to pull up and re-lay the patio. Still, the official diagnosis: I’m getting old.

I don’t feel old. My ELBOW feels old. I don’t. Which must mean that my elbow exists in some bizarre localized time warp where time is hurtling on so fast that my elbow is 78 while the rest of my body is only 40 and my maturity level is stuck at about 24. Of course, I think my butt has been sucked into that same time warp which means I don’t need medical attention. I need a physicist.

I also need go-go Gadget arms because it is damn hard to photograph your own elbow:

Sexy ace bondage.

Among my favorite writers is Robin Hobb,  whom I discovered entirely accidentally while trawling the shelves at the library looking for something — anything! — to read that wasn’t 1) something I had already read, 2) overly worthy and tome-like or 3) in rhyme. It took me three tries to get into the book I chose (Assassin’s Apprentice) but then once I had, I wandered around the house with the book in my hand and my nose in the book, ignoring most (all right, all) small cries for attention and cooking with the spare hand. And then, glory be! there were eight more books all set in the same world. Heaven, I tell you.

It was around this time that I managed to formulate what I dislike about short stories, that is, that they’re short. I invest in the world I’m reading into. I read to grow attached to the characters, to explore their world, inner and outer. I want to know more, sit by the fire with them and hear story after story. Short stories leave me cold because just as I am beginning to grow attached, just as I begin to feel the words fold over my head and that warm, welcome sense of vanishing entirely from this world into another begins to take hold — BOOM. It’s over and that world is closed to me. It’s like an unsatisfactory one night stand versus something that at least suggests future possibilities.

But I digress. The point I wanted to make about Robin Hobb is that she detests blogging as a distraction from writing: you can read her whole rant here. Indeed, it is called Rant. She pleads with writers to write, rather than to expend their energy in blogging, which she sees as a poor substitute for actually working on whatever project is at hand.

I have some sympathy with her point. When I was parenting 70 million hours out of every twenty-four, blogging that life was an utter relief — and provided me with an outlet for writing that I found undemanding and nonjudgmental. I had no word-count to reach, no great novel to expel. It was in and of itself, a perfect end. Now that I am parenting a more sensible twenty hours a day, I am writing again — and blogging markedly less. There is a terrible trick that blogging plays on me which is that, when I blog, I feel as if I have actually done my writing for the day and that now I’m off the hook, when of course, I’m not. But something in my head goes BING! and I suddenly find myself wandering off to get coffee in a smug haze of self-congratulatory achievement.

Yet I admire — and am amazed by — those writers who not only write every day but blog. And twitter. Lots. I honestly don’t know how they manage it. I am thinking of people like Elana Johnson, Johanna Harness, Julie Butcher, Inkygirl and AuthoressAnon and oh, I don’t know. A hundred others. These writers are good, working writers AND they manage wonderful web-presences and lively correspondence with others. Well, wow, is all I’m saying.

Perhaps the days of writing in a Parisian garret, alone with oneself and the scratch of pen on paper, are truly over.  The sticky, connecting, enticing world-wide web invites writing — or at least,  writers — into a lively, social whirl, warm, supportive and encouraging. A cocktail party of words and wordsmiths.

Yet, in the end, we write alone, fingers on keys, a hand moving pen across paper. Writing at its very core is the teasing out of woolly thought into long, smooth yarns — and too much distraction tangles the emerging thread. I am still working to find the balance in my own pen-in-hand life between garret skritching and virtual society.