.........counting down to 2010

Looking back, I didn’t have any epic fails concerning my resolutions for 2009 except for leaving the country. Didn’t make it out of the States. Hmmmm, maybe I’m more of a homebody than I thought! The writing went well, though I didn't finish the new mystery. I entered a writing contest, worked hard and polished several short stories as well as having a good outline for the new mystery. We did a lot more entertaining than in years past and loved it. I worked on my own hooked rug patterns and found that doing so frees the mind to think and juggle ideas and find better ways to express what I want in my writing. Still, the biggest thing to happen this year was the change in my thinking because of my emergency appendectomy. I might not have done the writing or anything else if I hadn’t finally realized how much I want to do and how little freaking time there might be in which to do it. I’m not in a position to give up work, and I actually love what I do, but I did turn down additional work at the end of the year. I made the decision to work less and write more, work less and entertain more, work less and live more.

For 2010, I’m going to blend resolutions with the determination to take the time to do what I need to do. Not make the time or find the time, but take it.

Finish the new mystery
Send out the old mystery (thanks, Em, for the kick in the pants about this).
Create a new hooked rug to enter into the 2011 KIA community art show.
Actually use the Wii fitness stuff.
Send out the short stories to find their way and place in the world.
Entertain more.
Go to a writers’ conference.

To quote Rainer Maria Rilke, “And now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been.”

Thankful

For friends, for family and for the fact that the family, young and old, is better after needing various surgeries this past year. I’m thankful for our pets. I’m thankful for a lovely Thanksgiving when we had a new voice in our home. I’m also thankful I took the advice in my last post. I have nearly 16,000 words on the mystery, a short story polished until it is gleaming, plus serious work on a second short story.

Lots for which to be thankful!

Musings on musings

I had an amazing conversation with the amazing Em the other night. We talked of writing and of motivation, what works, what doesn’t and what we do or don’t do to get our butts in the chair to write. Our conversation touched on some BIG THINGS, namely how creativity begets creativity and how sitting on the sofa mindlessly watching television that is not well written enough to justify our attention ain’t getting it done. I’m so much better than I used to be, but....

I’m one of the world’s great dreamers. I talking epic dreams here. Dreams I’ve decided must come true. Ah, there’s the rub. I’ve focused on the DECIDING they must come true without putting focus on the doing what needs to be done for them to come true.

I’m also a doer, but not one of the world’s great ones. Part of the problem, maybe the biggest part, is one of lack of desperation. I like my house, my husband, my family, my friends, my work and my income. I’ve become complacent.

So, it comes down to finding where desperation lives inside me. Where’s the big terror? And when I examine this thought, I know exactly where terror and desperation live. For me, they live in that horrible place of passing time. Passing, passing, passing. Every day, every hour, every moment passing.

There’s an old saying, Five frogs were sitting on a log. Two decided to jump off. How many were left? Five. This is the difference between deciding and doing.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go do.

The Long and the Short of it

The long of it is the mystery novel, a decent first draft of which I’m still hoping to have completed before the end of the year. This year. Yikes. Considering that the noise I keep hearing is not the wind wuthering around the house, but time howling hysterically as it zips past, I’d better get moving.

The short of it is several short stories, one of which, I hope, is very close to being sent out into the world. I also have a one page flash fiction piece that I should be sending out this week. Then there are three other short stories that I need to polish and revise. Then rewrite. Then polish and revise. And then, maybe, if they don’t need another rewrite, they’ll be heading out into the world, too.

I'm wishing myself luck.

Anniversary

Whoa! It’s been two years since I started this blog. Two years that have gone by in the blink of an eye. Time is swift. I haven’t been a total slacker, though, thank goodness, and I’ve made steps lately to get closer to my goals. In my work, I have a big job that I complete over the summer. (This is my excuse for not blogging over the last two months) Once this is done, I’m going to write and create on Fridays. If I’m lucky, also on Saturdays.

Please notice that I did not say, “I’m going to try to write and create on Fridays.” I’m going to do it. I’ve been so excited about writing lately, due in a large part to the time spent at Panera with Em the first Saturday morning of the month, laptops and coffee at hand as well as the once a month meeting of my writing group. Yippie!

So, Happy Anniversary and wish me luck!

Telling Stories

My husband and I have been spending a lot of time together in recent months due to a surgery apiece. This is great and I’m not complaining, but the problem with so much together time is that we have no new stories to share. Whatever adventures we’ve had, we’ve experienced together. No new stories! As a storyteller, this just about breaks my heart. Fortunately, things are back to “normal” now and the phrase “How was your day” is once again answered by twisting and distorting and downright lying about all the funny details that have made up our time apart.

Story telling. Sometimes the story is simply the retelling of a movie or book plot to someone who never saw or read it. Sometimes the story is a tweaking of everyday events tied to something completely unrelated, a leap that takes both the teller’s imagination and the listener’s willingness to play along. Sometimes the story is a “revitalized” family story that grows more outrageous with each telling. Sometimes the story is completely new, something I’ve made up that would not exist if I didn’t tell the tale. Sometimes it seems like lightning flashing in my head, the connections made, the normal turned inside out and a story blooms into being, a story I’m creating for myself at the same time I’m creating it for others.

My husband happens to be away this week and I have all sorts of stories to tell. So will he.

View from my window

Dust Bunnies Beware

I’m cleaning my office. The mass of papers, magazine cut outs and Equal packets have been filed or otherwise put in their place. I think the papers multiply behind my back, though, because I turned around and there was another pile to be sorted. Hmm. Anyway, I can see the top of both desks. Almost everything has been dusted. I’m working on that small pile of items with internet addresses that I had at one time or another wanted to check out. Not too surprisingly most of them are not worth while.

I still have to vacuum and there are a few short stacks of various writings to sort, but it is mostly done. Wow. I have so much space! It’s not a big room, but it seems immense right now. I strive to be one of those people who immediately deal with papers as they arrive, but sometimes the garden calls or there is a cup of coffee waiting in the other room. Those other souls must be robots to turn away from the peonies as they begin to open or to pass up coffee and conversation. Anyway, that's the story with which I'm sticking.

Have I finally gotten spring fever? Probably not. I know I just feel great being able to cross this chore off my list. Then, a cup of coffee and a wander through the garden.

Will you look at that!

Some of the lilacs are beginning to fade in my yard. I have several late blooming ones that are just opening so I’ll have that scent around for a while yet. The irises are beginning to bloom, some deep purple ones and some pink ones while the blue flowered irises are taking a later bus since they don't like to share the splendor. The poppies will open soon. I have a lot of peonies this year and they will show up in a few weeks, too. Then roses, clematis, hydrangeas and coreopsis. As one set of blooms gives up pride of place, the next yells “look at me, look at me!”

I don’t know all the lessons to be learned from a garden, but I have learned that everything has it’s time to be enjoyed before fading away. Once it’s gone, you might miss it and be sorry it has passed, but you can remember it was glorious. Then you look around and relish what else has come along. Everything, everyone, has a time to bloom and part of the joy is knowing memories linger long after the scent has faded. Even in the midst of late blooming hydrangeas, we recall the spring.

Living the imaginary life

There is a shop in a little town in California called Theatre of Dreams. The sign on the door reads, Theatre of Dreams - Objects for an IMAGINARY LIFE. I ask you, how cool is that? And the little town is a ghost town so there is a bit of mystery to add to the mix, too.

I live mostly an imaginary life because I live so much in my head. I walk through reality, but I don’t live there very much. Probably because I write fiction, there is always a story going on in my head or there are visions of whimsies I want to create and there are many quiet places or garden paths or corners where I can recharge. There are surprises tucked into old trunks, too, along with books never written by my favorite authors and old movies cast with actors and actresses that, in reality, have not been made. There are conjurers preforming magic tricks that are not explained just enjoyed and illusions I glimpse out of the corner of my eye. There are people dressed in old fashioned clothing wearing gloves and hats who applaud my smallest endeavor and murmur excitedly whenever it appears I’m going to do something, but otherwise, I don’t notice them. It’s quite comforting.

I’m sure the imaginary life I lead could sound quite bizarre to anyone else, but I’d bet a lot of people live in their heads, too. It’s a fun place. Well, it’s a fun place for me to be. Hope everyone else’s imaginary life is a fun place, too.

Pain and gain

In case there is anyone out there who has not heard, my appendix ruptured last week. I have to say that even with the excellent drugs I was given, it has not been all fun and games.

There was pain, a lot of pain, but no longer. In fact, there is no pain at all. Big sigh of relief.

I am home and recovering. I feel fine. I cannot express how monumental this simple thing is to me now. I feel fine. If you haven’t been feeling fine, it is amazing when, once again, you do. It’s fantastic when there is such a difference, when feeling fine is feeling great.

So thank you to everyone who thought of me or prayed, who said a kind word or sent a card or a plant or who ran all over finding something good for me to eat and picked up endless prescriptions. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Because of you, I feel fine.

(Dande)Lions and Tiger(lilies)s and Bear(ded Irises)s

Oh, my!

The area nurseries are opening today. Even though it is still too early to plant much of what I want, I’m going to stop by just to see flowers and colors and sniff the air.

I’ve been checking my yard and the lilacs are loaded with blooms this year, yippie! I planted an azalea last fall and it has bright pink blooms ready to open. The hydrangeas all have leaf buds and the day lilies and poppies are pushing up green leaves. The peonies are pushing up red shoots. All this means I didn’t kill everything! The plants survived my care! Hurrah!

I’ve got to plant some daffodils for next year, just a couple so that I can see their bright little faces in the morning. They look so cheerful.

Happy spring.

Now Playing

Coming Attractions Part II

Climbing Everest

Journeys can be once around the block, a couple of times around the world or any length in between. Journeys on which you climb your own Everest have the most meaning for on these journeys you leave your boot prints in the snow. Unlike the pristine field of snow ahead of you, you’ve left a mark. Sometimes others can follow, but most frequently, your boot prints are there for you alone. The boot prints will rarely be in a straight line up the mountain. It doesn’t matter. Keep climbing.

Climbing your own Everest is worth the effort even if you don’t make the summit. For one thing, even if you only get a little bit higher the view is better. For another, the air is rarified. Rarified can mean air so thin it makes you lightheaded, but also elevated, exalted, noble, grand in purpose, and to convert into something of higher worth. How cool is that? In your whole life, you may not reach the summit and it doesn’t matter. The journey’s the thing. One step at a time. Keep climbing.

Journeys such as writing a book can be made without leaving home or you can travel around the world to do it. There are journeys through rehab or the journey as you raise a child. Whatever your journey, whatever your Everest, it doesn’t matter. Pack light. Keep climbing.

As my Whimsy takes me

which is the motto of Lord Peter Wimsey's family. And this is a quote I love from Lord Peter's creator, Dorothy L. Sayers -

"Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within."

I doubt I'll have the hot fire and buttered crumpets, but it is a wet(ish) day and I have not one, but two comfortable mysteries to keep me occupied while waiting on my husband's knee replacement surgery. I'll also have a pad of paper and pen so I can work on crafting comfortable horrors for my own mystery novel. And maybe a few chocolates to keep my energy level up. Alas, no crumpets.

How to work your Muse

Begin by choosing a muse. Calliope, perhaps, if you’re into the Greeks, or a more current writer you admire. Maybe you think Margaret Atwood with her Canadian mystique is the be-all end-all of writers and her short story, Happy Endings, is the greatest piece of writing ever and that you could never write as well as she does. If this is true, take my advice and don’t choose Atwood as your muse or you will forever be in shadow instead of light. What about Hemingway? Do you aspire to write alone... in the rain? Then Hemingway might be your choice. What about Stephen Hoffenfeffer? What, you’ve never heard of him? This brings us to one of the few rules. Your muse should not be an unknown struggling along the path toward their goal. Your muse needs to be worthy of the greatness to which you aspire, but a muse does not need to be human or even alive though I do not recommend choosing drink. You may get a great story about your struggle toward recovery to share with the others in rehab, but probably not a lot more than that. Chocolate, on the other hand, is acceptable.

Once you’ve decided upon a worthy muse, you can begin hitting them up for support. Tell them your story or character woes. Do you need to figure out why four sets of identical twins were involved in a multiple car collision? Ask your muse for help, then listen, for the answer may come in the form of a snippet from a news story or the juxtaposition of two cover stories at the magazine stand. Worried about why a character cannot find happiness after winning the lottery and being crowned Miss USA? Your muse may direct you to a child swinging alone on a playground. You realize your character was abandoned while a youth and this explains everything you’ve been trying to say. Or you may think your protagonist needs some grief, then your muse nudges you into grabbing your significant other’s coat for a run out to the mailbox to check for acceptance letters from the New Yorker. Reaching into the pockets, you find a few wrapped chocolates and you realize your character is involved with an addict. It is perfectly acceptable to eat the chocolate while mulling this over.

Certainly, the main purpose of your muse is to stand at your shoulder ready to be called, but they can also serve a greater function. If you take that nagging little voice of criticism that lives inside you, the one that insists your writing is crap, and hand it to your muse, they will subdue it in a stranglehold. They will not allow the critic to speak. They will not even allow the critic to catch a glimpse of what you put down on the page. Your muse will allow you the freedom to let the thoughts spill free even if they seem to have no bearing on the story. Especially if they seem to have no bearing on the story.

Choose and then use your muse wisely and one day you’ll say, “I left the window open and rain dappled the pages of my first draft. I looked at the spots and realized my heroine needed to die. It was like Hemingway was in the room with me.”

Armchair Adventures

I can do things. I can read a map held upside down if I have to and I don't get lost. I can pick out the tune on a piano. I don't panic in the kitchen and my three-chip chocolate chip cookies are the talk of the block, but from my armchair, I dream of what else I might do. I dream of what else I could do.

A bowl of ice cream, scoop piled upon scoop, reminds me that I could climb Everest. I could master the vernacular of pitons and belaying ropes, and I could master their use, too, but my hand is a little cold holding the bowl of ice cream. Perhaps something warmer would be more to my liking.

What if I biked across the United States? Nothing Tour de France-style, but at a steady pace, bent over the handlebars, tucked into one position the entire way across Iowa or Nebraska. Hmmm, this cushion I sitting on feels awfully soft as I type this. I think I'll ponder something else.

I could sail around the world. I can imagine the feel of the wind on my face as the sails fill and the boat sweeps along atop the water. As long as the boat stayed atop the water, I'd be fine. I wonder how long a person can dog paddle?

My cat is stretched out along the back of my chair. He's looking right at me. Maybe I should try lion taming? I stare back at my cat, but he yawns, his kibble breath making my eyes water. Sadly, I realize there is no way I could stick my head in a lion's mouth.

However, I think I have everything in the house to make those three-chip chocolate chip cookies. Thank goodness I don't panic in the kitchen.

Four Hundred Word Autobiography

I have known my life since the beginning. I knew the circus that set up in the field across from the house in which I grew up. A nighttime deluge of colors and lights, sounds and smells though gaudy and forced during the day. I have known people who were the same.

I’ve been a rustler and a card shark. I’ve created old shops that would not be out of place on a Dickensian street. I’ve been a flapper with a flask tucked into my rolled stocking and I’ve danced with Al Capone. I’ve been in lovely pine-paneled studies with fires crackling on the hearths and the lingering smells of tobacco and leather in the air. I’ve been courted and wooed. I’ve seen fall colors on East Coast weekends. I’ve developed a new rose. I’ve trod the boards as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I’ve opened old trunks in dusty attics and found both treasures and empty spaces with only the lingering hint of perfume left behind.

I have no favorite day in my life, no day I would live over again. The best day of my life is today with tomorrow the runner-up. I rarely look back for memories wander too far from where I want to be. The rough edges of old recollections have been smoothed though the sharpest peaks still jut through, inhospitable islands or gorgeous snow-covered peaks.

I’ve learned few lessons except for the importance of allowing neither mistake nor ego to get in my way. I’ve seen good and bad examples and not always taken either to heart. I’ve been frightened by the nonsensical, taken figurative blows for a friend and competed with Shaharazade in spinning tales to stay alive.

I know others would make little sense of the world I see through my eyes, but this is the tale of my life not theirs. For me, whatever I’ve imagined, I’ve also done. Life, as defined by the one I’m living, is clouded by memory and cheered by visions, prodded by goals and dreams and illuminated by the flickering light of an old movie palace projector. I am a queen, a slave, a teacher, a student, a mountain, a gully, sunshine and shadows, gently falling rain and fierce blizzards. I can swing on a trapeze above the crowd and wave or hide from everything. I am the unreliable narrator of my life.

Coming Attractions

I'm taking a creative writing class. This week's assignment is to do one of the following:

1. Write a six word story

2. Write a 400 word autobiography

3. Begin a story with the prompt "Give me back--"

I managed to think of two six word stories before I got home from the class and I didn't have much interest in 3 so I took the challenge of writing the 400 word autobiography. I'll post the result tomorrow. It's been an interesting exercise.

Oh, the six word stories are ---

I remembered too late. Faulty brakes.

Tried to kill me. Marriage over.

Performance pieces

When my uncle was in high school, he and a girl friend used to go into a store where they were not known and stage a mock, ad-libbed break up fight ending with her either slapping him and storming out or kissing him to make up. Once, when in a Vegas casino with his sister, niece and friends, he convinced staff that he was a man of the cloth there in Sin City with members of his flock. They got a very fancy dinner comped at which he said grace and after which they got the heaven out of there.

My grandfather once acted like a complete lunatic while stuffing kerosene soaked rags into the runs of the moles infesting his lawn all because someone pulled over to the roadside to ask for directions and seemed to expect him to stop what he was doing and walk over to the car so they wouldn’t have to get out. He fell about laughing when their tires squealed during their rush to get away. He also scared off a door-to-door salesman who ignored the “No Salesmen” notice on the door by complaining loudly to my grandmother, who had also come to the door, that her efforts were keeping him from seeing the salesman’s wares and the salesman had promised to show them. This while she was dressed in a nurse’s uniform for work with her arms around grandfather pulling him away from the door while saying in an undertone to the salesman, “If you back away slowly, you should be okay.”

My grandmother also used to dress as a witch at Halloween and sit in a chair beside a tree stacked around with pumpkins halfway along the sidewalk to the house. My grandfather would pass out the treats at the door and as the little ghouls, cowboys and princesses came back along the walk she would suddenly lean forward and say, “Did you get anything good?” The screams still reverberate through time.

All this is just so you’ll know I come by it naturally.

Opening gambits

I’m trying to come up with a good opening for my novel and have decided to have fun and take inspiration from others.

“Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way. Tom walked faster. There was no doubt the man was after him.”
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

“It was a dark and stormy night.”
Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen."
Red Wind by Raymond Chandler

“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.”
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

“In the beginning....”
The Bible by You Know Who with various guest writers

February

I find February to be an odd duck of a month. Compared to the other months it's Pluto, stuck in a cold and barren part of the year most people don't like. The best thing about Pluto is its name and the most cheering thing about February is the quirk of Valentine's Day. Unlike Pluto, however, I don't see February being struck off because it's not quite a "real" planet, I mean month. I'm sure January won't agree to take any of February's days, January is long enough as it is, and I doubt March would like to do any of February's time since March tries its best to be a part of spring.

And what's with a month that isn't even consistent about its number of days?

Embracing my inner Anglophile

I’ve always loved England. It’s the England of my imagination, I’m afraid, since I’ve never been there. I did see England once, from the window of a plane on my way to the Netherlands. So close and yet......

Part of “my” England is what I gleaned from old movies, always in black and white. Winding cobbled roads and paths, styles over fences instead of gates through them, loads of magical things like cream teas and playing sardines and murder in country houses. Things I can imagine though I don’t really know about them.

More of my England is from illustrations by Arthur Rackham. I find his work reminds me of something familiar but almost forgotten like waking from a dream and not quite remembering the details.

The rest of my England is from books. Mysteries from the golden age where a murder in a country house means a death instead of a game. Children’s books, most especially the Famous Five series where the four children and a dog rambled about having adventures and solving mysteries with no adult supervision. Dickens. And then there is Holmes. I suspect I carry a little bit of Holmes with me always. He was my first, best and most consistent British love. How could I not love someone who quoted Shakespeare, “the game’s afoot,” and made it his own. Who was not a policeman, but who solved crimes by deduction and became the world’s first consulting detective. Someone who was so interesting.

Interesting, like my England.

Thank you, Spencer Tracy

Time once again for a few favorites. This time it is films I like just because today I like them.

The More the Merrier (Charles Coburn and Jean Arthur were both nominated for acting Oscars, Coburn won)
Old Acquaintance (one of my favorite Bette Davis films)
To Each His Own (Olivia de Havilland won the first of her two Oscars, and John Lund in his first movie role plays two parts, a world weary pilot as well as a lovestruck young soldier)
The Male Animal (I didn’t know Henry Fonda could be so funny)
Father of the Bride (the Spencer Tracy version, not the Steve Martin one)
Another Man’s Poison (Bette Davis playing a not so nice mystery writer)
Possessed (Joan Crawford starred in two movies with this title, this is the second one and she was nominated for an Oscar for the part of a woman slowly losing her mind, plus I find the banter between Van Heflin and Geraldine Brooks priceless)

Watson, come here. I need you

Much of what we know of the dictionary writer, Samuel Johnson, is as a result of the uncommon biography, Life of Johnson, by James Boswell. Quoting actual conversations and including details Boswell personally observed, the biography was much more lifelike to the readers. Boswell was a friend of Johnson’s, they’d traveled together, wined and dined together and Boswell had years during which to observe the man.

I think having a biographer would be fantastic, but only when they do hold some admiration for the subject, even a fictional subject. I doubt anyone would have wanted to read about Sherlock Holmes if he’d been viewed by someone who described him as a show-off know-it-all. Instead, Holmes had a very dear friend tell the tales, a friend who did not shy away from pointing out the Great Detective’s foibles, the seven percent solution in which Holmes indulged was cocaine, the three-pipe problems, etc. Those bullet holes in the shape of a “V” on the fireplace wall weren’t done to honor Queen Victoria at a time when Sherlock was well rested and feeling his best, but during a time when he wrestled with internal demons. These excesses offset the “brilliant” deductions and give us, as readers of the stories, a much better view of a flawed genius who fought past his personal fiends.

I believe I’d best step up my efforts to add more interesting items to my to-do list and then begin crossing them off. Just in case I have a Boswell or a Watson out there. Somewhere.

Day of Old

There are, I hate to admit it, days when I feel old. Not Druid old, more like milk just past its sell-by date old. And, invariably, it happens when I’m faced with telephone technology. I’m a girl who still prefers rotary dial phones. I prefer to dial a number, not punch it. And the fact that my cell phone can not only take photos, but mini movies leaves me flummoxed. I have a very good digital camera and it took me an unbelievably long to switch from an analog to this digital camera, plus we have a video camera, so why do I need that technology in my phone? I do not need the ability to go online using my phone and I do not need to be able to send text messages from my phone. It’s bad enough to talk on the thing, let alone wear blinders to the world around me by focusing on which keys to hit to type out abbreviated questions and answers.

Let me repeat, it’s bad enough to talk on the thing. Granted, there is a certain giggling little girl somewhere in my brain that likes the whole sci-fi or Dick Tracy aspect of flipping the phone open and calling the Enterprise or headquarters, but the reception is no better than when the things first came out. Back when they were the size of a brick and usually came with their own little duffle bag.

I suppose I miss the time when people called one another to share news too urgent to put in a letter or called when they needed to hear a familiar voice. It makes me wonder about the technology that is to come. Will future generations long for the olden days when they used a cell phone to type out their answer to the question, “What are you doing now?”

As to what I’m doing now, I’m longing for days of old.

Pax Domestica

There are few things I find more enjoyable than a Saturday morning. Around our house it’s usually a pot of coffee then an agreeably late breakfast before getting down to the important stuff, read, watch something we’ve DVR’d or talk. Often, no matter what we’ve chosen to do, we end up talking. We’ve been known to recite so many passages out loud from the books we’re currently reading that the listener finally throws up their hands and says, don’t tell me any more, I’m going to have to read that one myself. We’ve also been known to take more than twice the broadcast length of a movie or television show to get to the end because we keep pausing the action to discuss what we think is going to happen. Is this respect even comedies become a kind of whodunit.

This post is a short one because we’ve just finished that pot of coffee and the agreeably late breakfast is about to start.

And after that? Well, we'll have to talk.

Love letter

I don’t know why I like snow.

It has something to do with no two snowfalls being alike.

It has something to do with being able to make things with it; forts, snowmen, snowballs, sled runs, etc.

It has something to do with cross county skiing between long rows of pine trees just before dawn when the snow if falling thick enough to make the landscape seem softly foggy and faintly blue.

It has something to do with the cold because I’ve always preferred cold, but also to the fact that if you get out in it and play around, you get quite nicely warm, but, unlike the summer, not too warm.

It has something to do with how snow looks at night, the luminous quality of a snow-lit landscape.

It has something to do with all the different ways it falls; thick and fast, slow and soft, or even, sometimes, almost sideways on the wind.

It has something to do with the sheer transforming beauty of a snowfall as well as the muffling silence.

It has something to do with memory, at least for me. Like seeing a place you’ve never been and finding it feels familiar. I think, oh, yes, I remember this. It reminds me of something I can’t quite name.

It has, unique oddity that I am, something to do with driving in it along completely snow-covered back roads. Perhaps the way the evergreens and bare trees hold the snow then, with a shiver, twitch it off. Or the way a dark red barn surrounded by evergreens stands out in the otherwise black and white landscape. Or even the way a snowfall will sometimes leave the road a black ribbon unfurling before me pulling me past houses with windows of soft welcoming yellow calling their owners home.

Wish list

I want a reality distortion field!

Excuse me while I rant

I know way more than one person who has told me they need to be in the right mood in order to write. These are people who do not write yet call themselves writers. As in saying to me, “You and I are writers” or “we’re both writers.” Sorry, Charlie, but if you don’t write you’re not a writer and it would greatly please me if you’d stop lumping yourself in with me.

If you want to be a writer (or a painter or a violinist or a whatever), you need to do the work. Can you imagine telling your boss you’re only going to come to the job when you’re in the right mood? Can you imagine being a violinist who has to be in the mood in order to practice or give a concert? Now I can procrastinate with the best of them, but I still write and being in the right mood has nothing to do with getting my butt in the chair and my fingers wrapped around a pen or hovering over the keyboard. It’s like getting gas when the car’s tank is low. If I don’t do it, it’s not going to get done and I’ll be stuck where I don’t want to be. I suppose one of the things that does drive me to write, or to fill up the gas tank for that matter, is fear. Fear that I will be stuck where I don’t want to be when, with some effort on my part, I could have gone anywhere I wanted. In the case of writing, I might not get there, but at least I would have been on the way and on the way is so much better than never heading out.

To do anything properly takes an effort. It takes practice and practice and practice and the desire to accomplish something, then more practice. It takes dedication and then some more practice, but the biggest and best perk of doing the writing is that you can call yourself a writer.

I am a writer.

Sixteen things you may not know about me

1. I’ve been published.

2. I walked on crutches for most of fifth grade.

3. When my husband and I were in Boston before we were husband and wife, we almost literally walked into Robert B. Parker, collectively our favorite author as he jogged along the Charles River.

4. I own the complete DVD collection of the Dick Van Dyke show and would willingly listen to him read the phone book. I also own the complete DVD collection (though not the made for television movies that followed the series) of Gilligan’s Island. I really only wanted the first season because it was in black and white, but without the musical Hamlet episode I’d never be able to raise my head around my youngest cousin. So, as long as I was going in for a Ginger, I figured I might as well go in for a Mary Ann and get the lot.

5. I won my entire school’s art fair grand prize when I was in 3rd grade with a picture of a white horse near a lake in the mountains rendered entirely in pieces of dyed egg shells.

6. I used to read a book a day while working. It was a factory job and very boring.

7. I was a contestant on Jeopardy. I came I second place.

8. I was an exchange student to the Netherlands the summer between my junior and senior years in high school.

9. So far in my life, I’ve had dogs, cats and a pony.

10. I like Tab and, when no one is looking, I occasionally put a six pack of the pink cans in my grocery shopping cart and hurry through the self-service aisle so the fewest people possible know.

11. My favorite pizza is cheese stuffed cheese with extra cheese.

12. I much prefer listening to old radio shows (Jack Benny, the Shadow, etc.) than music. In fact, if music is playing, I find it impossible to work.

13. I legally changed my name when I was 29.

14. I like my job.

15. For my fortieth birthday, my husband got me a ride on a Ford Tri-Motor airplane. Hands down the best present ever.

16. I am a total Luddite except when it comes to the DVR service on our television. I think someone crawled into my mind, saw what I didn’t even know I wanted and gave it to me.