One Day at a Time

Or maybe it should be "1000 words at a time," the amount I managed to write in about an hour yesterday at the Apple Box after some quality catch-up time with the Pointy Pals writerly friends. Still, if feels like a slow slog toward completion.

The protagonist is re-assessing all of her recent major life-changing decisions and second-guessing herself (write what you know). No, actually, she's more confused than I am - but then again, I have not had a scheming novelist throwing a bunch of stuff at me all at once to make things interesting. Note: this is not meant to be a fate-tempting statement! I am knocking on wood with my left hand and typing this single-handedly with my right.

Today I started the day writing a draft of a poem, but have not (yet) looked at the novel. However, the girls have just gone to bed for the night & D. is not yet due home for a while, and the glass of wine and red couch by the wood-burning stove beckons. So I am grateful for the poem draft and the blog post and being caught up in most of my personal email. For now.

A Novel Idea

I have nothing more witty than the title of this post to say. I'm just focusing on finishing the rough draft of my novel, and I've enlisted the support of my family but asking them to ask me every day, "Have you finished your novel yet?"

This is a lazy alternative to writing my goal and deadline on a 3x5 card and reading it every day, as any self-respecting self-help author would advise. But actually, I plan to do both. I just have to scratch out the current date on my "I will finish the rough draft of my novel by" card and put a new date in. How about March 31st? March 31st sounds good to me. Besides being the birthday of D's sister and my birth father, it's Easter. A holiday of hope, and the eve of National Poetry Month (the other project I have my sights on is assembling a book-length collection of poetry).

So even though there may be no one but me reading this blog at this point: There. I've put it in writing. "So say we all!"

St. David's Day 2013

Friday and St. David's day. I have a few daffodils in a vase at work, cut fresh in the back yard. When we moved into our house, 19 years ago, the front yard was a typical suburban expanse of lawn with a fruitless mulberry in the middle of it. I used to mow it with a manual mower, even when seven months pregnant with my first child (much to my macho neighbor's chagrin - why wasn't my husband doing that? He just didn't understand how much I enjoyed it!). We bought the house in December, and it wasn't until the following spring that we had the surprise of a daffodil coming up in the corner of the front lawn. Just a single plant and a single bloom, like a surprise present from the previous owners. 

The next year, there were two blooms, and then a few more each year - until we finally re-landscaped to remove the lawn and put in planter boxes and a combination of ornamental grasses and rampantly persistent poppies that do battle with weeds every year. Actually, I do battle with the weeds. I don't think the grasses or poppies - which really are like weeds, at this point, even care. I moved the daffodil bulbs to the back yard when we pulled out the lawn, and each year they've continued to spread, until now around mid-February I have an entire corner of yellow blooms heralding the coming of St. David's Day. They have grown without me doing anything about it, epitomizing grace and engendering my awe and gratitude. 

Daffodils are such happy flowers. This year for the first time I could actually smell them, too. I'd thought they had no smell at all - in fact, a coworker at the library 25 years ago had once famously said to me, "Daffodils smell disappointing." But these, this year, under my nose, are a light floral sweetness that lifts my spirits and makes me hope for the coming Spring.

Any Day that Starts With Writing is a Good Day

That's my new motto. Even if this morning's writing started 2 hours later than my best-intentions (damn them!) would have had me at my screen, creating. Working towards a wrap-up of the first ugly draft of "Hiraeth." Perhaps by March 1 (St. David's Day!) I'll have writing the ending and have started to take out and examine the whole ugly mess of a thing so I can rebuild it into something worthy of the time I've put into it.

Ash Wednesday, Valentine's Eve

This is the time of year when I reawaken with the daffodils and focus on writing and on the self-examination and internal life that are a part of that activity.

I am (again) back to trying to work a 40 hour week. I am (again) back to trying to write daily.

R. is getting closer to graduation and the beginning of a whole new stage of her life.
D. is growing his business (The Works) and working only 20 hours a week at his "day job"
S. is still dancing almost daily, and playing in the Rep. Orchestra whenever possible. Her interest in ballet is waning, and her interest in acting and voice is waxing. She's now taller than R. and has started to share more and more of her thoughts and feelings with me, just at the age when children typically stop sharing such things. Go figure.

I'm well into the tail end of my Welsh novel, and plan to have the first messy error-riddled draft finished within the next couple of weeks, so I can start all over and make it right. And make it good.

And WALES!
I will be traveling there this summer for three weeks - for the first time in nearly 14 years. It's been far to great a hiatus, and I'm very, very excited about the trip.

Hello July

Blogspot warns me that the browser I'm using is not supported, and that I may experience "unexpected behavior" as a result.

I'm expecting the unexpected, but I doubt this post will jump up and start tap-dancing while you're reading it.

Lately I've been writing. Only a few sentences, and on a good day a poem draft. But daily, for many days now. (16, but who's counting?) And I've been reading. Poetry, for the most part. But also, I'm immersed in Lindbergh. First it was Anne Morrow, with A Gift From the Sea during vacation last month. And now, I'm enjoying Forward From Here by her daughter Reeve Lindbergh. That voice is so clear to me. Direct, and honest, and humble without being self-effacing. There's something about the perspective of both women that reminds me of Madeleine L'Engle. I've probably said this before. And there's something about all three of them that will forever remind me of my maternal grandmother, who introduced me to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, with whom she'd shared French class at Smith in the twenties. Is it a humanist quality? It's something beyond just feminist, beyond just New England prose (although there's that, too). But I find it expansive, inspirational and at the same time, so very comfortable and familiar - old friends from whom I've been parted for too long.

In addition to reading more in general, I've been listening to Pema Chodron and to Diane Ackerson's One Hundred Names for Love on CD.

For a few weeks there, too, I was reading The Success Principles. It was interesting being compelled equally by the exercises suggested by Canfield for visualizing everything you want to be and do and have, and by Chodron's instruction to learn about the traps and suffering that come from beliefs and thoughts. I felt a little schizophrenic! But then the Canfield book had to go back to the library (someone else pursuing success had put a hold on it), while I own the Chodron CDs. So I've traded in much of the index-card affirmation reading and visualization of my new home, slim self, and fat bank account for almost-daily meditation.

Today I moved the location of my iMac. R. was done with her desk and I took it in order to shift my writing perspective as I've wanted to for years. I'm no longer restricted by the limitations of the immovable cantilevered desk D. had put in the office so long ago, when he realized the wide spacing of the floor joists made the floor (and any tower on it) bounce under our weight. Now computers have come a long way, I have this desk, and I can write looking out the window rather than at the wall. My back is still more or less to the door, which isn't optimal - except insofar as it meets my maternal requirements to be able to walk past the room or peek in and immediately see what my youngest might have on the screen during the (increasingly less) rare time she's allowed there. Usually it's still Club Penguin, or possibly My Little Pony. There are worse evils.

The light is about done for the day, which is always depressing on a Sunday. But this time next week, I'll have two (count 'em, two!) teenagers in the house. Yikes!

Good Friday Eve

This high holiday season has meant so little to me. I feel like my family has become just so...secular.

Yes, we're particularly busy and preoccupied this year. And maybe this just proves somehow that it's only been my pushing and prodding and bringing out the little ceramic bunny decorations half-way through Lent that has ever meant Easter was coming in our home. Or maybe it's just the the girls are older. Or that, for the first time I can remember, we have no plans - AT ALL - for Sunday.

The lack of familial pressure to prepare or go to a breakfast or lunch is a relief (if I can stop myself from feeling any filial guilt about it). But I'm saddened by the loss of celebration and ritual all the same.

We plan to have young friends staying over tomorrow and I expect to have the girls decorate eggs. Maybe that, or reading some e.e.cummings, will help.

April and the Wood Burning Stove is Still My BFF

What's better than curling up in the red couch next to the fire at the end of a hard day?
Um...nothing.

I May Be Slow, But At Least I'm Expensive

...it's kind of like that. Except that I'm impatient. So impatient, in so many ways. I don't wait for people to finish their sentences. I don't wait for people to catch up. I don't like waiting at all. I've often joked that patience is one of the big lessons I'm supposed to learn during this lifetime. My mother always ran late, my husband used to always leave me waiting. My second child is very, very slow. And I slam instead of sipping. I walk fast. I'm not good with just letting time pass.

Except that I remember being something very like patient when it came to petting zoos as a child. I would wait for a fawn to approach me. Pointlessly, for minutes, while my mother suggested we move on to the next thing. Or (we have video footage of this), I would follow a peacock all over, hoping it would be so kind as to drop a tail feather for me to collect.

But this wasn't patience, really. It was stubbornness. Or perhaps pride. Or some combination of the two.

You see? One character flaw masking another. Might come in handy to remember and instill on some unsuspecting fictional player in a novel.

Advancing at the Retreat

Just arrived home from spending about 8 hours writing and dining with fellow writers at Julia's parent's Stinson Beach house. I progressed further than I have in months (years, even) with my old Welsh novel. It was a productive time following a busy morning at work, and sandwiched between long drives: on the way out, in Mill Valley, I was rear-ended, but it seems that the cars and I sustained no damage (except a bit of a headache for me), and on the way back, it was a long and windy road in the dark.

But I'm home safe, and sound, having heard a very important quote on the way back from Diane Ackerman. Michael Krasny quoted her from her NY Times column as saying, "In the end, what we pay the most attention the most defines us, and how we choose to spend our lives transforms us." To which she replied:

It does. So you need to ask yourself, "With what do you want to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life?" Because paying attention programs the brain, and makes it easier and easier and easier to slip into those little habits, those palatial ruts, that we love so much. And they can be good or bad, depending."

I somehow didn't know of this woman before tonight. How is that? I think I have a new hero.

April Again

National Poetry month. Again. And Spring. Today, no rain.

I'm grateful for the renewal of energy that comes for me each Spring. Just when I thought the drive to accomplish anything beyond mere survival was gone for good, I have a day like this, where I am able to focus on some things that have long awaited my attention.

It felt satisfying to get a few things done: dog to dog park then to pet store for a thorough bath, pet food purchasing, squaring away travel plans, working on the Human Race campaign for S., exploring the purchase of a url for D's new business, a long run at the gym (6 miles, only .5 of which was walked), returning of video, mailing of letter, bargain grocery shopping - so important to check those expiration dates! - a little weeding, a little laundry, dishes, re-laying the butcher paper in the hallway which now constitutes our flooring, down time with the girls watching a movie, fire starting, blogging.

And I feel the day was about 5 hours too short, and that just one more weekend day at home would be lovely. Serves me right for working 4 hours yesterday.

But tomorrow promises more time to write, at least. I'll go to bed tonight thinking about my "Welsh novel" so that by the time I get to writer pal Julia's retreat in Stinson, I'll be focused and can join the group of novelists hitting the ground running, as it were. I could be working on a book of poetry too, but I think for a long period of time, the novel would be good. Although I may work on poetry here & there too.

But if I don't go to bed now, it'll mean too little sleep for the long day ahead. Forcing myself to wrap it up and call it done.

Slow To Post

Who remembers when POST meant power-on-self-test? For those who do, you also know that a system that took a very long time to POST was a potentially failing system. So am I failing? Nope. Fortunately, the long delay before posting for me only represents priorities that have been elsewhere.

Since last I blogged, D. has recovered from pneumonia (mostly), and R. and I have spent a week looking at colleges in Northern California and Oregon. She's a great traveling companion, and apart from a stressful hour in Portland trying unsuccessfully to find the Old Spaghetti Factory in the rain, I would consider the trip a very positive experience.

The time away gave me an opportunity for a little perspective, and I'd like to think I've come back with more balance. I worked only a hair over forty hours last week, and got home with a touch of light still in the sky more than once.

The longer days are such a blessing; I dread the time change coming later this week because of how difficult it may make mornings, but I welcome the ability to come home and accomplish domestic chores before sunset - sunset, which heralds the complete waning of my energy.
There may be no activity that gives me more satisfaction after a hard day than weeding the yard.

I realize that I'll never make my house feel like a HOME until I spend more time there, getting rid of things that hold me back and building the things that help me grow. Watching an episode of Hoarders in the hotel room with R. was at once a traumatizing and inspiring experience. And yes, R., I'm scarred for life.

Often when Lent comes along, I use it as an opportunity to commit to some kind of discipline. This year, in addition to avoiding alcohol during Lent (so far, so good!), I'm writing notes toward a poem - if not the actual first draft of a poem - every day.

11 entries for the 11 days. I had to go back and fill in a couple of blanks, but I'm on track and am grateful for the magic that happens when I show up to write. I may start thinking I have nothing but mundane grocery lists or reviews of the say to scribble, but end up with a metaphor that has made a guest appearance or (in some cases) shoved its unexpected way into the poem and transformed it. I am grateful for the appearance of the poetic mindset whenever it comes.

As I have before, I wonder what it would be like to live more than a few minutes every day as a poet. The upside is that I feel I could produce truly valuable work. The downside is that I don't think I'd be very capable of meeting normal obligations, like feeding the family, for example. Thus the crazy balancing act implied by giving myself the handle "Practical Poet."

I'm trying to do both here, people. Fold the laundry and compose the sonnet. Dishes and villanelles. Driving children while scanning a line, my fingers tapping on the steering wheel to count the feet in a phrase.

And I know I can't be the only working middle-aged mom doing this. Not all poets are either drifters or doctors, after all.

Eight

Eventually, naming posts after the date will wear thin. And by "eventually," I most likely mean tomorrow.

Had the pleasure of meeting with the writer pals, J&S today, and although I actually got little actual writing down, I did re-read some chapters of my "Welsh novel" that I hadn't read in two years, thus reminding me of whole subplots and characters I'd forgotten about completely. It helps me settle back into it, as did watching "Framed" (the BBC film that takes place in North Wales) over the weekend.

Managed to make short trips to the gym both yesterday and today. D. is better, although not yet ready to go back to work. I'm shooting for a week of NOT working 10 hour days. Goals are so important. My goal is to do less. Ironic, isn't it?

Seven retro

Teenagers hanging out in the livingroom until late, watching D. play his video game. It's beyond me how they can spend two hours watching someone else explore a gaming world. So I took a short trip to the gym while they hung out. After a day of office-cleaning and a few errands with S. - by the time the guests left and we settled down to a movie (just the family), I was ready for sleep. And missed, for the first time this year - ha! - the chance to write. But it was a good day. No complaints here.

Six

Cutting it close to midnight once again but this is the force of stubborn habit that builds a body of work. Or at least a body of blog entries. Brutal day, the end of a brutal week. But it really is first world problems. How can I possibly complain when there is more than enough food to drink, a roof over my head, and my family safe and sound? Some more challenging things have happened to family members this week - one threatened with losing a house, another in a bad car accident from which, thank God, he walked away relatively unharmed. D's pneumonia is not much better, and his doctor has prescribed prednisone, which does not make me happy. But apparently it's a short course. We'll see how it goes and hope it will help sooner rather than later...I'm fighting off something tonight myself, and I just hope that a good night's sleep is all it will take to shake it.

Five

The best thing about waking up at midnight with what I think I should call "angry insomnia" is that it can lead to lovely fruitful conversations with the senior night owl of the family. So D. and I talked, and that's a god thing.

Today's interesting news is that a boy that R. has liked, and maybe even more than liked, for two or three years now has mustered the gumption to broach the subject with her. It would seem that the two of them agree that they fail miserably when they try to follow the social conventions, and they are better off forging their own reality of whatever their relationship is supposed to look like. And whatever that means in the long term, for now they are together. And I have to say that I do not recall ever ever seeing R. so happy. Just friggin' beaming.

Four

There are days, and this is one of them, when really there is nothing left of me by the time I finally come home. I left at 7:30am and I got home at nearly 10pm. Driving and work and driving. And more. D is sick but all I know is that he was home again (as he should be), but he has been on a video game since I dropped S. off at nine - three hours ago. And who knows, or cares, how many hours he was on it before that. Dishes undone, laundry undone, I am responsible for dinner and driving the kids home at night after working a 10 hour day. But he has been staring at a screen for hour after hour. I love him. I understand he is sick. But yes, I am bitter. Thanks for listening.

Three

010312 8:33pm

Well, I must say this for the iPad. It's silent. The keyboard in the text app couldn't be any more silent than this. It's just the soft pad of my fingers touching the screen. I can't quite decide if I love or fear the little auto-corrections, too. On the one hand it can allow me to forge on past little errors. On the other hand, this makes me concerned that I might become lazy in my old age.

So this is my second blog entry created on my new toy, and my third blog entry of the year. And yet, none of them have been posted yet. There's a bit of a disconnect because I don't have 10.5 loaded on my iMac (let alone 10.6).

And yes, the office is still cluttered and unorganized, and yes, I still come home at the end of a too-long workday and indulge in too much eating and relaxing in front of a fire, and too little gym or housework or cleaning. But the one half-spoken new years resolution I am keeping is that of writing/blogging/journalist daily.

Two

1/2/12 spells out a pretty little binary date.

Second day of the year, and although I “accomplished” less today than I had yesterday, I did still tackle the priorities: took Sophia to school, went to the gym, pruned the roses, got groceries. I don’t think it helps anything to list what I didn’t get done every day, so I’m not going to do it. Here. This is me, letting tomorrow’s worries be sufficient unto themselves.

And I wrote. Maybe not the four pages of novel I’ve been saying I must write (first a commitment to Suz and then one to S.) but I did get a couple more pages of the story down, and moved it along however little. Trying to let those characters reanimate in my mind. They have histories that help make them who they are. I think sometimes I just have to let them tell their histories so that I know what actions they’ll take in their “present,” which is the now of the story…

Tomorrow it’s back to work, and back to more of the routine that has been lacking the last two and a half weeks while D’s been sick and the girls have been out of school. S. is back. R’s not back yet. It’s a new year, with new challenges and new hope. Re-reading The Wrong Reflection has got Bradshaw’s voice influencing my own, and maybe even her characters influencing my own too. There are worse things…

New

New Year, new toy. Originally, I wrote these first few posts of the year on my new iPad. I'm transcribing them now (on the eighth!) but am honoring the original dates they were written, to reflect my commitment to writing daily - even if it's just a little bit - this year.

010112
Might as well get used to writing it now, this 2012 thing. And get used to typing on the ilPad, which I'm using for this first blog post of the year. R. Is writing her own blogs post at this moment, too. It's something she does far far more often than I do, but I still have hope that writing daily is a New Year's resolution I'll be able to keep, having done it before, and having profited from it, at least insofar as it has feed the creative part of my soul, which is usually gagged and shoved in a back broom closet to stay out of the way of More Important Things. So I write this now, knowing that I won't transfer it until tomorrow, most likely, but deeming it a compromise that is in keeping with another New Year's resolution of finding more balance in my life. And I must say, too, that the auto formatting and auto correcting that seems to come with Notes on the iPad definitely make things easier and will make them quicker too. And now on to some poetic scribbling, too, before I officially become too sleepy to do anything but curl up in front of the fireplace...