I Won the Oregon Quarterly Essay Contest

I won the Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives essay contest.

I had to write that twice because I still can’t quite believe it.

Yesterday I received a very unusual phone call, especially in these days of ubiquitous electronic conversation.

“This is my favorite phone call of the year,” said the magazine’s editor. “You won the essay contest.”

In response, I said nothing. I was too shocked.

I’ve entered this annual literary contest maybe seven times and never even been a finalist. And I won! Hot damn.

My essay is titled “The Friday’s Trilogy” and it’s an excerpt from my book, Chance of Sun: An Oregon Memoir, to be released this summer. It’s about one of the worst periods of my life, when I bottomed out in Portland 16 years ago.

Here’s what judge Debra Gwartney of Pacific University’s MFA program said:

"(I chose) The Friday's Trilogy, which I found to be fresh, alive, exciting and bold writing. I had some trouble following the first few sentences, but once I was in, I was in. A compelling piece of writing, heartbreaking and redemptive. Hard to pull off without being sappy, and yet she does."

“I’ll come back to earth soon,” I said to Guy Maynard at the end of our conversation.

“Well, don’t come back down too soon,” he said. “Moments like these are too few in our world.”

There will be a public reading of winning essays on the University of Oregon campus, May 4, 7 p.m.

The Unparalleled Allure of an Imaginary Brother

Chicken Noodle: Mom, we’re playing princess castle and Little won’t be the prince and I want her to be the prince.

Me: I’m sorry, baby. But she gets to be what she wants.

Noodle: If our brother were alive, he’d be the prince.

Me: Yeah, maybe.

Noodle: And there would be more of us to play when we play Crazy 8’s.

Me: Yes.

Noodle: It’s not fair.

Me: (Thinking a: big brother might actually be more inclined to make her be the slave in the dungeon in his own masochistic play than be her prince, and b: if he was alive, she would never have been born, instead I simply say…)
Nope.
(Because it isn’t, really)

----

In related news, at the Christmas dinner table…

Chicken Little to Grandpa (sadly): Our brother died.

Grandpa: I heard.

Little: He was born too late.

Grandpa (lovingly): I know, I heard.



…and here all along I’d been thinking that I was the one born too late. Am I the only child of the 70s who wished she was born in time to enjoy the freewheeling 60s?

I always wanted a big brother, too.

Anyway.

This all makes me think about how pining away for the impossible brings with it a powerful element of fantasy. You can project whatever you want onto that blank slate. Kind of like writing a novel. Hmmm….

Phoenix Rising

I suppose it’s about time to tell you all I got another book deal.

I know, huh?

Three weeks ago, I received an e-mail from an acquisitions editor at a press back east. He’d been searching for someone to write a travel guidebook about Oregon for one of their series. He came across my bio on the Willamette Writer’s website. Then he “followed me around the internet.” He read various essays and articles posted on my website, my Travel Oregon blog postings, and this blog. He thought I’d be perfect. He thought I was funny. He’d like to talk to me about offering me a contract.

I sat there in front of the screen for a long, stunned, surreal moment. Then I forwarded the e-mail to Capt. Daddy, adding a few excitable expletives. Capt. responded instantly and wisely—“call him.”

A week later I traded my signature on a contract for an advance. Now I have to write the book by Nov. 15. Not even kidding. But never mind about that. I’ve been writing professionally for ten years. Surely I can churn out 65,000 words in eight weeks. No problem.

The amazing part is that for years all I’ve been told is that to get a book deal, writers have to burn up the keyboard relentlessly pitching agents, chase after editors with finely-tuned elevator pitch in pocket, be willing to offer publishers one’s first-born child and grandma’s gold coins. I did all of that. For years. It didn’t work. (I even sacrificed the first-born child—ha, and ouch). But something must have worked. Because ten years into this little song-and-dance, two publishers in a year came to me.

Because of the tight turnaround on the travel book, both it and my memoir (about growing up in Oregon—how coincidental) will be out at the same time—next spring.

Far out.

This photo is of a painting my dear friend and fellow writer Suzanne Burns made for me three years ago, after I set fire to my first memoir and pretty much figured my dreams of publishing a book were dead. It’s been hanging in my office since, guiding me to places I couldn’t see coming. Suzanne saw what I couldn’t yet—with work and faith, something new would come along.

Someone suggested that with two books coming out, I should change the name of my blog. Nah. Lots more blooming to do. I might have to update my bio again, though. That book fire really is starting to feel like it harbored the Phoenix instead of defeat.

Happy New You Part IV

Long overdue for an update to my blog profile. I've been confusing people with the whole book burning thing.

So here's me, modestly refreshed:

Me: mother, wife and writer watching 40 climb the front steps like a peddler pushing time and me with nowhere to hide. The writer part used to come first, the 40 used to be a 30, and marriage and motherhood were abstract activities I thought I’d try someday. Ah, growing up. If only it was the thrill promised when we were six.

I started this blog to chronicle my quest to publish a book. I’ve published all sorts of other things—articles, essays, even poetry. I wrote a first book. Then I set it on fire. I am now neck-deep in edits on a second book, and have a publisher interested. But as my mother says, “It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.”

So the question remains—will I bloom, eventually? Or will I ditch the whole writing thing, adopt a xanax habit, abandon my own identity and live the rest of my life vicariously through my children? Hmm, let’s find out.

Nuts

A couple of weeks ago while I was tutoring at the college, my blood sugar crashed. I emptied my wallet of quarters and headed for the vending machine, wondering if I would find any sugar-free, protein-laden options.

Yay—Smokehouse almonds. $1.25. I plunked my five quarters in and watched the little metal corkscrew arm make its slow rotation…and then stop. My almonds dangled there, caught on their own packaging. Then, strangely, a nickel dropped into the coin return.

I gazed at it in my palm for a moment, wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with it. Was five cents the returnable deposit on my risk? And how was it that I hadn’t realized that I was taking a risk in the first place?

Stubbornly, I went back to my bag and got more coins. I didn’t really want to pay $2.50 for almonds, but if I don’t eat, it’s possible that I’ll suddenly begin to stab my students with their own writing utensils. In went another $1.25 in quarters. This time, the twisty arm rotated, making its low whir, and two bags of almonds dropped to the bin.

Out of curiosity, I pressed the “coin return” button, and received two dimes and a nickel.

I scooped up my loot and headed back to my post, unable to shake the feeling that the whole experience was metaphorical somehow. Sometimes the world withholds your almonds. You do what you’ve been asked to do and get jack in return. Sometimes you get unexplained gifts that you’re not sure even you understand. Other times you get everything you’ve asked for and much more. And sometimes, you just get caught on your own packaging.

Vending machine as karma.

This week, the almonds are good and stuck. But I am waiting for the coins. I know they’re coming, sooner or later.

Glory

On Monday, I walked to a meeting. The route was a stretch of Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon. The destination was a local pub. The person I was meeting was my publisher. On my back, I carried 160 pages of paper—my book manuscript, completed last week and fresh from the printer.

The sun shone brilliantly, there was barely a breeze. I was all alone. Two miles of packed sand, open Oregon air and exercise lay between our rented beach house and my fate.

Of course, fate doesn’t work like that. There isn’t really one defining moment that sets a course of everlasting glory in a regular life. Glory comes and goes, is persistently fickle. Every happy ending is interwoven with the beginning of another new challenge.

I thought about a lot of things on that two-mile journey. How much outside validation I need from my writing, and if I can learn to just enjoy its creation and appreciate the successes that appear. My family, and what really matters. How rooting around in your past and trying to craft it into something salable is as dangerous and messy as my friend Jessica said it would be when I started this project. And, just what the heck might happen during the next two hours.

But when I quit thinking and looked up into the stunning sky, at the powerful surf, breathed the sea air, I thought about how lucky I am. How incredibly metaphorical this walk was! My story about growing up on the Oregon Coast was literally on my back as I marched down the Oregon Coast to deliver it to someone who would decide its worth. Sort of like the pearly gates, but with kites and sandcastles.

Judgment is still to come. But on the walk back, after a great discussion, with a pint of Oregon ale in my belly and my backpack much lighter, when the beach glowed even more marvelously and I felt like skipping over the sand, when I located my chickens chasing seagulls and Captain Daddy ready to hear my story, I simply chose to revel in the glory for however long it lasts.

I knew the true worth of that paper-bound journey, and almost didn’t care what anyone else thought of it at all.

Missing: Life Force. Please Return. Reward: Chestnuts Roasted on an Open Fire

This whole book thing is sucking the life force out of me.

I know, I know. It’s what I’ve always wanted and I should be able to find the joy in it and by complaining I sound like a big fat whiner and nobody likes a whiner.

Captain Daddy and I got mired in a teeny, weeny Marital Moment about this the other night. Here’s what I said, roughly, over a beer at the local pub:

The bottomless soul-searching necessary to unearth the history and truth that will make these essays good is like letting 100 angry leeches feast on me from the inside out.

Sacrificing organic creation for “sit down and create something beautiful about Topic X—now GO!” is like the Bataan Death March for the fragile artistic soul.

When I sit down to write, it hurts. Metaphorically, but also physically. Like someone is taking bites out of my head.

Half of what I write is complete crap anyway and ends up in the file on my computer I named “shitcan”.

At the end of the day I want to slip into a coma and sleep for like 17 million hours.

When the chickens run past me screaming naked with peanut butter smeared on their bodies and hitting each other with sharp objects all I can manage is to stare at them blankly as if they are a bad television show that I would turn off if only I could muster the energy to locate the remote.

And I am feeling, well, just a little bit done. As in DONE. But I can’t be DONE, because I am not done. And there’s something to be said for showing up and persevering, but sometimes maybe there is wisdom in knowing that one is just DONE.

At which point, Captain Daddy gave me a rather bored look which implied that he’s heard this all before, and perhaps I was overreacting just a tiny bit, as well as maybe whining in that particularly irritating “my pain is bigger than your pain will ever be” melodramatic self-pitying shortsighted way.

And he mentioned gently that part about this being my long-lusted-after dream. And that lots of things in life are hard work, especially things that are worthwhile.

Which made me pout.

But I know he’s right. (Don’t tell him, because he’ll just do that “I was right” happy dance and I’ll have to throw spitballs at him made of tinsel.)

Do you think I just need a break, and beautiful things will bubble back up to the surface? Or is my coma permanent? Yesterday I took a rest by addressing 125 Christmas cards and holiday shopping for three hours in a 14-degree snowstorm, but the answer to this question did not become immediately apparent.

A Bloodcurdling Halloween Horror Story

Imagine a dark and blustery night, a room cast with shadows. A writer polishes her working manuscript. The publisher has asked to see what she has so far. (Plot Twist). She adds fancy words, changes the formatting, calls on the universe for extra powerful positive thinking. The wind blows like a demon out her office windows. Will this be the realization of a ten-year dream? Or just another disappointment? Zap – she hits the send button on Halloween night (well, not exactly. Three days later. But it makes a better story this way).

Then she waits.

The publisher receives the manuscript and reads 50 pages within 36 hours. He emails the writer, responding with words so enthusiastic some are unfit for print. He loves it. Really loves it. He fell in love with the character, her growth and setbacks and little triumphs. Thinks maybe his press can’t do this book justice.

It is the email she’s waited a decade to receive.

But she doesn’t receive it. Unbeknownst to her, it languishes in her junk mail alongside a sales pitch for Discovery Toys. She doesn’t want any Discovery Toys. She does desperately want a book published. She waits, biting her nails, cursing every doctor who never gave her xanax. Would the publisher have responded by now? Maybe not. Maybe she’s a terrible writer. Maybe he hates her. Maybe the universe hates her. Maybe she should sell Discovery Toys.

She waits.

The publisher waits.

The email waits.

The wind blows.

Finally, six days later, before she’s had her first cup of coffee on a Tuesday morning, she opens her junk email box. What is this? Could it be? Such amazing things said? About her work? But the date—last Wednesday? Dear God, no! The horror, the horror! Do emails expire? Has he changed his mind? Has he decided she’s ungrateful, crazy, delirious on xanax? She emails him back immediately.

She waits.

Shouldn’t she be celebrating? Not yet. Not until the junk mail universe has righted itself. Blasted junk mail universe! She spins in anxiety. She neglects her children. She forgets to take the trash out. She drinks just the tiniest bit of vodka.

Finally, the publisher emails her back. He wondered why she hadn’t responded. He hasn’t changed his mind. They have a lot to talk about. He’ll see her next week.

Stay Tuned for A Terrifying Tale of Gut Wrenching Distress!: Getting What You’ve Always Wanted

The Emphasis is on Eventually

“You hear what you need to hear, when you need it,” said Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author, at the Hawaii Writer’s Conference last weekend.

So much wisdom and advice was delivered at the conference. It was fabulous—better than I’d hoped. I absorbed as much information as I could, but the message that kept hitting home—the message I needed to hear—was about patience.

Nine years at this game and I am losing patience. The threat of a “real job” looms. I have two days a week to write if I’m lucky. I spent six years writing a book that will never be published. Rumors floated from the industry warn that if you don’t publish a book by the time you’re 40, you never will. An interested publisher just makes me worry that if I don’t give him something really soon he’ll forget about me or move on. Lately, I sit at my computer and feel pressured. I am losing patience.

But in Hawaii so many smart people reminded me that good writing doesn’t come in a hurry.

“Make haste slowly,” said Patricia Wood, who published her first book to wide acclaim in her 50s.

Michael Arndt, screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, spoke of the 10,000 hour rule of mastery described in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (which I wrote about here in January—from Hawaii, no less—and then promptly forgot about: Thanks, Fred). It was true for him. Ten years of really hard work until he made it.

“Your job is to enjoy the process as much as possible,” said bestselling author Dan Millman, just to drive the point home that writing is a PROCESS.

Of course I knew all of this already, even if I sometimes wish it weren’t true. My best essays have taken months—even years—to write. It takes time for the good stuff to bubble to the top. It takes thinking and breathing and playing and changing. It takes living.

I am grateful to have been reminded of this now, with two good projects in the wings. I shouldn’t expect myself to create anything of substance in a big fat hurry, nor to settle for publishing anything that’s not slow-cooked to perfection.

Nine Lives?

Nine years ago I got married, turned 30, quit my job and decided to take my writing seriously. I wanted to write professionally but had no idea how to do it. So I flew to Maui with my mother for the Maui Writer’s Conference.

For four days I absorbed everything I could about magazine writing. I learned about writer’s guidelines, queries, breaking in with front-of-book stories, features, essays. I learned about the Writer’s Market and how to track down contacts and market research and how to pique an editor’s interest. I took notes and avoided the pool and the mai tais and learned so much I thought my head was going to explode.

But I took it all home and worked like hell and within a few months, I was writing for magazines.

Tomorrow I fly to Hawaii to attend the conference for a second time. (It’s now the Hawaii Writer’s Conference and held in Honolulu, because who can afford four days at a Maui resort on top of conference fees these days? I can only pull Honolulu off because, lucky me, my mom lives there.)

It makes me feel retrospective to go back. Makes me think about that naïve, hopeful, determined girl. To just go for it like that—was that really me? And have it work out. Wow.

I’ve been to smaller conferences since. I’ve learned oceans more. Published lots, not published lots. Found out how hard this writing business really is. Gotten wiser. Made choices, made sacrifices, made compromises. Part of me thinks; I’ve heard it all, I know all there is, what more could I learn?

But there’s always more to learn. Right now I think part of why I need to go back to Hawaii is to figure out how much of that girl from nine years ago is still in me.

Spin

I returned on Monday from a long weekend writing retreat to a kind-but-definitive email releasing me from the duties of one of my regular paid writing gigs. Nothing to do with my performance, etc., etc., it’s just that they found someone cheaper and more geographically convenient to do the work.

This sort of thing used to completely freak me out. I’d spin off into anxious hyperbole, convinced that this writing thing was never going to work out and I should give up now and get a job cleaning motel rooms or being someone’s secretary.

As is always the case, anxious hyperbole was a waste of time. Something new would always pop up.

That might happen this time. Or it might not. Ever since the first of the year, my clients have been evaporating.

But I refuse to I slit my wrists over it. Okay, so my income is starting to resemble that of a sweatshop worker in the Philippines. All right, so I just put the Chickens’ gymnastic classes on my credit card. But what’s money in the grand scheme of things (she says confidently, knowing full well that Captain Daddy will buy her toothpaste and wine)?

My goal is to remain calm and see this shift of fortune as an opportunity.

I have two big, potentially cool writing projects in the works (see A Puzzled Thanks and Plot Twist). Yes, these projects are speculative. Yes, I may never make a dime off of them. But by removing more remunerative projects from my path, the universe seems to be telling me to devote myself to my own stuff.

Or maybe it’s just the economy telling me it sucks. But I prefer to think it’s the universe, telling me that this slack time isn’t for whining, it’s for writing.

Plot Twist

As those of you following along know, I began writing a novel a couple of months ago. It’s my first attempt at fiction. The process started off with a gleeful bang (see A Puzzled Thanks), a phenomenon all the more personally delightful because of the fact that I was suffering through what seemed to be the death of hopes to publish a book of narrative non-fiction ever in this lifetime.

So I threw myself wholeheartedly into fiction; forgot all about essay, for the time being anyway. And what should happen? I came across a publisher who is interested in publishing a book of my essays.

I know! Can you believe it?

Two major thoughts about this fascinating turn of events, from a meta perspective. First, the universe has a funny way of handing over the goods as soon as the protagonist finally begins to work on letting go of her need to acquire them.

And secondly, words of wisdom from so many mentors over the years are absolutely true: keep writing. No matter if you can see where you are going, no matter if it looks as if you won’t ever get there, keep writing. Because: when ten years into your writing career you quite out of the blue happen across a publisher, and he just happens to ask you a question you thought you’d never hear, maybe something like “do you have a book-length collection of essays?”, you want to be darn skippy sure you can answer, “Heck yes I do.”

No guarantees on this one, I should note. I have a lot of work to do and it must please. But I am very hopeful. And no matter what, I will remember this moment as a big fat reminder that dreams should be stuck to, but never clung to. No matter which way the winds blow, you will be fine; but never stop working for the thing that will make you leap around in your very own kitchen.

I am quite certain I will complete that novel, by the way. The whole thing is there in my head just waiting to come out. But I shall be a bit distracted for a bit working on that which I’ve always loved: writing essays.

My Name is Kim and I am Writing a Novel

When I started this blog six months ago, I didn’t put my name on it. I didn’t tell anyone I was writing it. I didn’t announce it anywhere.

When it comes to new things, I tend to put a toe in the water completely privately. Or maybe even just a toenail. I try it out in secret, I don’t talk about it. This caution is true about new writing projects as well as other pursuits, like guitar playing or pie baking. By not calling attention to my endeavors (I seem to figure) if the whole thing explodes before takeoff no one will notice the massive detonating wreckage.

Oh, fear, fear—why must you stalk me so determinedly?

In an effort to be a little bit braver about my ambitions, I have an announcement to make.

I AM WRITING A NOVEL.

I began brainstorming it a couple of months ago, outlined it a few weeks ago, and started writing last week.

Yep. It’s true. I have never written even a paragraph of fiction in my entire writing life. I have always said that I could not write fiction. And here I am, doing so. I am acutely aware of the fact that I have no idea what I am doing, and yet, I am doing it.

What’s funny is I do actually seem to know what I am doing. Ten years of writing conferences and critique groups (not to mention over three decades of rabid reading) seems to have seeped the tenets of good fiction into my blood. That does not mean that I automatically know how to create it. But nevertheless, I am excited to try. As many of you know, I desperately needed a new project to attend to whilst percolating the memoir debacle (see Book Burning Take Two). This is it.

All of you novelists out there: advice for the first timer welcome here!

And in case anyone was wondering, I bake a mean pie.

WWMD?

Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the May 11 New Yorker is titled “How David Beats Goliath.” The topic is how underdogs win by breaking the rules and supplanting ability with effort.

“We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity,” he writes. “It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than ability.”

This is what one hears at writer’s conferences all of the time. Don’t give up. Keep writing, keep submitting.

A good friend (one with an agent and a book coming out, incidentally) told me the other day that she thinks I got bad advice from my marketing consult (see Book Burning Take 2). If I truly believe in my project, she said, I should keep submitting. She sent out her stories 200 times before she got a book deal.

Actually, her exact words were: “Tell everyone who doesn’t believe in your book to suck it.”

What will happen next? Stay tuned for the next installment of “As the Memoir Turns.”

Staying On The Train

I noticed the other day that the job that I quit nine years ago in order to start freelancing is available. I was hit with this unexpected twinge. Would they hire me back, if I applied?

That I would even consider this is directly related to my current state of disillusionment with freelancing. This particular ennui is nothing new—it comes around regularly. I tire of constantly trolling for work, writing on speculation, submitting, inching along from project to publication, wondering where all of this is going, putting myself out there constantly, in hopes of approval.

(A friend pointed out that I shouldn't add “begging people to love me” to this list, as I did to her; that I should believe in my inherent lovability and put myself out there as a gift to others. She may be right, but when the demon strikes he takes my favorite wrapping paper).

But, no, I don't want my old job back. Asking for that is attempting to rewrite history—like wishing to be pregnant again, which I do occasionally in moments of temporary insanity. This time, I dream, I wouldn't vomit my guts out for six straight months. This time, I wouldn't be a terrified, angry pain in the ass.

But I would. The same way I'd hate my old job back. This is the road I have taken. I am a freelance writer. All fantasies of some other less crazy-making, more stable job with an easily definable future—like nursing, or accounting—aside, this is what I chose, and this is what I am.

What it all comes down to (naturally) is fear; in this case, of failure. “OMG, I can’t see the train tracks! I’ve got to jump off of the train!”

But I’d just have to get on some other train, right? The trick is clinging confidently to the one you are on.

How Many Words in Your Pocket?

Today at Blooming Eventually our subject is Ray Bradbury’s Writing Theory. Write three million words, he proclaims, and you automatically achieve mastery of the craft.

What does that look like? Let’s see if we can take a stab at how many words I have written.

Where to begin: Does school writing count? Let’s say that it doesn’t. We’ll start with writing I did just for me. So…a few essays in college at 1500 words each, many more in the decade after college; that brings us to maybe 50,000.

Next: the nine years I’ve written professionally, during which there have been another many essays for myself and for publication as well as a several hundred magazine and newspaper articles. We’ll say another 50,000 for essays and 400,000 for articles.

Do you think e-mail counts? Probably not: Even for freaks like me who are compelled to edit even the most innocuous email before sending. All of those angsty teenaged diaries? Who knows. Blogging? Probably counts, but I am fairly new at it: we’ll give me 15,000 words. Newsletters, annual reports, brochures, exhibit copy, web copy, ugh, blah, blah: 50,000.

Then there is that book I wrote. And rewrote. And rewrote. We’ll give it a probably-underestimated 100,000.

That’s it? My grand total life words tally comes to 665,000 words. Wow. Maybe I should have counted the diaries.

But that kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? I’ve been writing professionally for nine years and still am not even close to three million.

I’ll admit I could have employed more focus than I have. Distractions have included beach vacations, small screaming humans, The New Yorker and cream cheese yearning to be scraped out of the DVD player.

(As I write this: “Mom! Boo Boo peed in her pajamas! Mom! A spider! Mom! The head broke off my princess!).

Will I get there? Sure. Eventually. But for now, gotta go...(Mom! My goldfish got out!)

Too Old For The Party?

“No one is going to publish a first novel by a 45-year-old.”

This little curse was spoken recently by one of the members of my writing group. Today it reverberates around my skull. So many of my cohorts seem to lately feel our age like an ankle shackle, while still recognizing that in the grand scheme of things these are the glory days we will lament in another twenty years.

Writing group ranges in age from 35-41; none of us (obviously) has been on Oprah and each of us wonder if we ever will. Two of us don’t seem to care. The other two pretend not to care but really do. One of the first category uttered the curse, perhaps as a way of shrugging off his own fear, perhaps as a way of taking the reins of his own destiny (announce that failure is already yours and you are probably right).

Another member said, yes, her agent asked her age when he took her on. “It matters,” he reportedly said. “Publishers want to know how long their investment might pay off.”

Is this true? I have been to a lot of writing conferences at which I’ve learned a litany of limiting factors that affect the publishing business, but never has anyone said, “Old people don’t get book contracts.”

And yet, we are nothing if not an ageist society. The biological clock ticks for much more than the ability to child bear. We love the young genius. We worship the freshness and vitality of youth; we desperately fear its fading.

So thank goodness (again) for Malcolm Gladwell’s “Late Bloomers” (see Late Bloomers), for pointing out the mature geniuses in cultural history. To believe him, success is still possible for us decidedly past the summer of our youth (Of course he's sitting comfy in the young genius group).

At the end of the day—call me a foolish optimist—I still believe that good writing matters more than the age of the person producing it. And I think it’s really dumb to quit at 38, so I won’t be, just in case you were wondering.

I’ll need a bigger advance, though, to pay for the airbrushing on my book jacket photo.

Yippee Ki Yi Yay

If writing were riding, I’d have fallen off the horse and landed in the ER more than once. I seem inclined to cling, stumble, plummet to the ground: Then get back up, like some sort of indomitable horse-loving fool. (Or head-injured, masochistic fool—you decide).

Here I am: back in the saddle.

In an effort to get back on the trail, this week I have:

• Submitted an essay to the NY Times’ Lives page


• Pulled out my children’s book manuscript and read it to the chickens (they love it. They giggle and ask for more. Too bad they aren’t publishers), identifying weak areas to work on.


• Brainstormed a YA novel idea. Do I know how to write YA? No. Do I even know how to write fiction? No. Does that matter right now? No.


• Sunk my teeth back into the paid work I neglected during book edits (newspaper article writing, magazine copyediting, exhibit copywriting)


• Blogged. (OK, I always blog. But it’s got to count for something)

So: enough with the life analysis and on with the living, already. I’ll keep you posted, unless the NY Times calls, in which case I’ll be doing cartwheels in the yard and drinking champagne. Possibly simultaneously.

Play Nice, Now

Yesterday at the park we ran into a classmate of Chicken Little’s and his mother. We got to talking about the preschool, how the kids like it, which days they attend. Hers—Monday through Thursday. Mine—Monday and Friday.

“How does that work?” she asked.

It took me a minute to figure out what she meant. I babbled about how some weeks it’s hard to get all of my work done with only two daycare days, but she just looked at me and then gestured at the chickens, capitulating, “Well, they seem perfectly well adjusted.”

What she’d actually been asking was if two day care days were enough to adequately socialize my chickens.

Ahh, the dangerous waters of early motherhood, where total strangers worry not whether their own 18-month-old is getting enough time with his mother but whether your children are turning into batty old hermits.

I don’t worry about that, by the way. If Chicken Little and Chicken Noodle turn into batty old hermits it will be family tradition more than conditioning and therefore, unavoidable.

I do worry that two daycare days a week will have serious impact on my dreams of publishing a book. Especially since I don’t even know what sort of book I want to write next and I realize how very much hard work and time it takes to get published. And, there is a deadline on even this two-day plan. Captain Daddy and I have a deal. In five years, he retires, and I get a job.

But none of that matters, really—because (the chickens’ socialization be damned) I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want those little demons home with me. So two days is what I have. The only choice is what I do with them.

Book Burning (Take Two)

I needed to dive into my book again. I thought that was because I believed the project had potential. Now I think maybe it was because I needed to be reminded of why I set fire to it in the first place.

Other things my consultant said:

Memoir is currently dead weight in the marketplace
Memoir is the hardest genre to write
Memoir is best written years after the events it discusses
Writing shouldn’t be this hard.
The book’s thesis is still unclear.
There is no obvious audience for this book. The topic is too hard.
I needed to write this for myself and my son, not because it’s a saleable memoir (ouch).
I am an essayist. I should write essays. For now.

OK, so. Add to that the reasons I burnt the thing last year, which have come rushing back to me like a back draft (ha ha). Here is what I read aloud on that occasion.

Because….
I am tired of trying to cram my life into the formal structure of the novel.
My life doesn’t have to be published for it to be a true story.
I am sick of seeing my life experience rejected by two sentence emails.
I don’t have to convince the world how much I loved Whunk. He knows. I know.
I am tired of searching for the happy ending instead of living the happy middle.
It’s time to set myself free.

Having had five days for this to sink in, I feel quite at peace. Letting go of a five-year project (again)? Sure, sounds great. Can we have cocktails, after?

It’s possible I am delusional about the peace part. But I did an awful lot of crying last week and I think this time, I’m just going to opt to keep the peace. I feel I've earned it.

Not sure what I’ll do next, besides essay. Maybe chick lit? Needlepoint? Stay tuned.