A Good (Writing) Life: Blurring the Lines

by lfullbright

I have an excuse for having been recently AWOL from “my rooom,” but, first, I’d like to share something a good friend just told me about being CEO’s of our own lives (which applies to every wage earner and hobbiest on the planet, not just writers!).  

The analogy (and another “nugget”) was supplied by a recent seminar this friend attended. The other nugget is that we’re also our own board of directors.

The rule of this “game” is that every 90 days you (the CEO) and you (the BOD) meet to discuss how you (and you) are doing with your life. The other caveat is that the only two questions y’all discuss at your 90-day meetings are these:

Where am I going? And how do I get there?

When I was twenty years old, my answer would’ve been shallow, considering I never looked at life past the next party.  

By thirty, I’d morphed into a worrier because I still was not challenging myself; only now I knew it. I was thirty, after all! But I didn’t know how to challenge myself in a healthy way. I didn’t trust myself enough, so I’d somehow convinced myself I wasn’t going beyond where I was—which actually wasn’t a bad place. I wasn’t massively discontent. I had many blessings: good health and good relationships.  

But I wasn’t stretching myself. And it wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted to go after, because I did. I really wanted to write novels, but I had one large problem in this arena (actually, several, but first things first): I couldn’t accept that novels-in-process are largely ephemeral things, some never finding their endings (or, often, even their middles).

And that’s because their “architect” just isn’t ready or seasoned, or committed.

And then something happened. My mother got sick. And I stepped up the pace and began writing furiously—and before I knew it, writing was my healer. And then it became my habit, and when my mother died, it became my commitment—and then, surprisingly, it evolved and became my joy: I had evolved. My new life was that I could hardly wait to get to my desk in the morning and dive back into my story.

I didn’t know it yet, but I’d just begun blurring the lines between work and play.   

And the next before-I knew-it was I’d finally found a middle and an ending to a novel—my novel—and I became content with myself, even though this first novel wasn’t commercially viable (and I knew it).

But what that first finished story (the one every writer has at the bottom of her/his closet) gave me was the knowledge that I had the ability to find middles and endings.

I held a meeting with myself. Where was I going next?

The answer was I now wanted to try writing something commercially viable. How would I get there?

By taking another first step, my husband, DDF, reminded me.

This next first step was already growing from an idea I’d fallen in love with some time before this. It had come about while visiting a Revolutionary War battlefield. Wandering that old Pennsylvania battlefield, I imagined a woman looking back on her own life’s fight for autonomy, and I knew, at that moment, I had “something”—what, specifically, I’d no clue. As I said, novels are especially fragile at their beginnings.   

But I did know I wanted to incorporate suspense, mystery, a love story, and all sorts of other meaty things into my autonomy story—and I wanted to have fun “building” it.   

So I took that first next step and began writing, and at a subsequent “daily briefing” with myself, I suddenly came to another realization: I wanted more than a book.

I wanted the lines in life to blur further.     

Actually, I want to make living well an art form.  

DDF, who enjoyed life to the fullest, knew the value of play. My husband played his heart out at tennis, golf, skiing, skating, biking, table tennis; you name it, all the while never losing sight of his responsibilities. He became ill while I wrote what would turn out to be The Angry Woman Suite, a suspense/historical novel about a celebrity double murder in Pennsylvania and the fallout on three generations of two families.

His illness, which started with the occasional “lost” word, became a 6-year journey to the bed just a few feet away from me, where he lies peacefully as I write this. He’s near death. Has our 6-year journey been hard? You betcha. But did we still have fun along the way?

You betcha times ten. We did our best to blur the lines.

I had a 90-day corporate meeting with myself last night.

Where am I going next? I asked myself. What will life look like without my husband in it? How do I even get started going where I’m going? And do I really have to go there?

Yes, I really do.

Many times I haven’t had a clue about anything in life. I rise up to meet it, only to find again and again that life’s a lot like novels at their beginnings: ephemeral, variable, hard to pin down.

But a master in the art of living—and, trust me, I’m not there! I’m a wannabe—knows that the pursuit of something, anything, is undertaken with equal parts work and play, blurring the lines.

I’ve picked up my husband’s healthiest tools for living well and added them to my toolbox. I intend to use all mine and his where I’m going, which is on to the next novel outline, the next character sketch—in fact, one of my new characters is almost fully developed, looking something like this:  

“He was decent, no matter the stories whispered about him, which I’ve since concluded were due to the fact that he was relatively young and still good-looking by the time everyone got to calling him “the keeper of Broadway”—in short, that he was a conniver was assumption. What he was, after all was said and done, was still a boy from the sticks, the purest kind of Oklahoma boy, a charm that worked for him—and on me—every single time.”      

This character is looking a bit like the man I married—or at least he does now. But characters, like life, have a way of changing.

Still, this is where I’m starting, Baby Rae at my side, for now.  

The Angry Woman Suite is available from Amazon, and via the Barnes and Noble website.

Writing, Creativity, and Meditation: I’m in a Yogi State of Mind

by lfullbright

When I was in my 20’s, a friend—I’ll call him Anthony—gave me a book called Be Here Now, by the Western-born spiritual teacher, Ram Dass. I was eager to dive into it because Anthony was totally gaga over the “amazing” concepts contained therein . . . um, none of which I’d been able to put a finger on, because I hadn’t been able to pin Anthony down to my satisfaction. 

So the book would be my way into Anthony’s head was what I thought, because the title meant nothing—it held no mystery or cachet for me (although Anthony did)—because where else could or would I be except where I was?

So in I went, leafing through the book before actually reading, what I always do with new books—and my heart sank looking at a drawing I didn’t get, which mirrored a man I didn’t get (Anthony, who, in the end, I shouldn’t have gotten).

But now here I am, many, many years later, with my own book out—a novel entitled The Angry Woman Suite—and I get “be here now.” I get it big-time, because “be here now” got me from “back then,” when I was a mess, to, well . . . here and now, where I like who I am.   

Yet, why, someone recently asked, has it just come up again? Why are you talking about it so much now?

First, it didn’t just. But I haven’t written about “be here now” much until now, because, for me, it feels a little like talking or writing about breathing—which could make me sound a little too much like Anthony lecturing on the right way to breathe. 

But the truth is, “be here now” never actually went away, because big truths never do. 

After Anthony, life eventually took me from being a scatterbrained, impulsive, unhappy, immature and romantic compulsive idealist (and those were my good traits) with a big ol’ stirring spoon in a drama cauldron the size of New Jersey to a relatively centered—and, according to others and I’m not going to quibble—calm, and mostly content (the three C’s) woman who learned to “be still.” To listen to the quiet (yes, that does mean turning off the cell, the music, the car radio, and the TV).  

And that, as it turned out, became my path: quiet. Not Anthony.  

But I didn’t even know I loved quiet so much until I forced myself to finish my first book after Anthony broke my heart (and I say forced, because as any novelist will tell you, it is extremely easy to turn away from finishing a book). But, come to find out, writing is a lot like meditation.

In fact, writing is meditation.

Just as it takes practice and focus and quiet to meditate, it takes focus and quiet to write. But here’s the B-I-G clincher:

Creating something from nothing, becoming fully absorbed in its creation, even separating from time and place during, causes us to secrete dopamine, a lovely fulfilling hormone that stills the “hysterical” hormones, cortisol and adrenaline.

According to Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Way in a Wild New World (Free Press), “. . . research indicates that we’re most creative when we’re happy and relaxed, and, conversely, that we can steer our brains into this state by undertaking a creative task.”

“Steer our brains”? Oh, boy. Who knew? Why isn’t this stuff being packaged and marketed?

And who needs a drama cauldron that invariably leaves its stirrer exhausted, unfulfilled, and unhappy, when real joyfulness is creativity—“be here now”—or, put another way, “mindfulness”—and why couldn’t Anthony just have said that?

Mindfulness is engrossing, beautiful, and ever-changing—and it’s habit-forming, so that after a while we even notice that the desire for creating becomes stronger (and the books and blog posts get finished).  

And another plus is that with practice, quiet, and continual creating, we become able to tune into the “here and now” even when not actively creating.     

On the other side (the dark side *smile*), my just-released novel, The Angry Woman Suite, a Kirkus Critics’ Pick, with enough drama in it to fill ten cauldrons, is available from Amazon.com in quality softcover, or from the Kindle store, and also via the Barnes and Noble website.   

The Angry Woman Suite, about a celebrity double murder in Pennsylvania, in the early 1900s, and the effects on three generations of two families, has also been nominated for a Global Ebook Award.  

Thanks for stopping by, and here’s to peace and quiet in a compulsive, noisy world. How do you “be here now”?

        

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Rejection: The Final Frontier

by lfullbright

The two best pieces of advice I ever got about writing were: One, you have to know all the rules before you can break them, otherwise it shows; and, two, should you decide to take your writing on the road, you must believe that rejection is not about you as a person, otherwise you won’t last two minutes. 

The first piece of advice, about rules, is actually easy. If you care about words and stories—or building things, or sports, cooking, photography, gardening, whatever—you probably want to be really proficient at this thing you love. If you’re a writer, it’s natural to want prose that shows a command of punctuation, grammar, syntax, and rhythm—because anything less than complete proficiency here takes away from the main event: the story.

But the second piece of advice I got, about rejection—now this one just sucks eggs. Not the advice—it’s right on. It’s the subject matter. Ick. Every writer I know has agonized over rejection. Agonized. I once knew a writer whose query had been rejected eight times, and he absolutely couldn’t figure out what was wrong with them (you do know who them is, right?).       

But eight rejections is nothing. Eight rejections is just getting started. So’s fifty rejections, and a hundred.   

And unlike actors who go to audition after audition, their “out there” personalities under a spotlight, a requirement of their business, it’s not the same for writers.

Writers aren’t known for spotlights. The act of writing, of creating something from nothing, is a solitary cerebral endeavor, not an “out there” one. And so of course many, many writers’ basic natures are largely introverted—not to say we don’t like people, because that’s not the point or even necessarily true. The point is we require time alone, and often feel drained by the presence of others (it’s not personal; it’s who we are, and we often mesh best with other introverts or “introvert-hybrids” who get this). We’re also self-starters; otherwise, we couldn’t write.  

We’re also probably much, much worse at rejection than other artists, whose job descriptions put them front and center from the get-go.

So, yes, rejection can feel covers-over-the-head, chest-pounding devastating. Every submitting writer has been there. I’ve been there, and there’s just no other way of putting it: it sucks dozens of eggs and the hens that laid them. Literary agent Rachelle Gardner recently wrote a post entitled “Do You Have a Thick Skin?” and said, “I’m here to tell you: some of you will never develop a thick skin. But the important thing is: You’ll survive.”

Of course, if you want to excel, if you want to trump yourself, survival in and of itself won’t be enough for you. (my words).

Neither will the metaphorical suit of armor.

It will take all your bravery (dig down deep)—especially for solitary writers not heretofore necessarily known for their great balls of steel, though that doesn’t mean they don’t have them; they just don’t flaunt them—to get out of your own way and consider if the criticism or feedback you’ve received has merit. If it does, be braver still and get out of bed and go back to work. Just do it. If the criticism doesn’t have merit—and criticism is always subjective—still get out of bed and go back to work.

And, yes, it is hard to move forward when you’re not feeling the love. Is it ever. But if you’ve already completed a project, or have made inroads on one, you are already so waaaay ballsy, my friend, sticking to something so hard and making it look easy, meaning you can survive rejection and live to laugh about it, too (though it doesn’t have to be today).             

More about survival: The Angry Woman Suite, a novel about a celebrity double murder in the early 1900s, and its effect on three generations of two Pennsylvania families, is just out in print (in addition to e-book format) and is now available via Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites.     

Check out amazon.com/author/leefullbright—and thanks for stopping here. Comments are always welcome!

How do you handle criticism?

 

 

 

E-book at Amazon: The Angry Woman Suite

by lfullbright

Hello, and finally! To all who’ve been following this blog—first, thank you!—and to friends and family who’ve asked, here it is, the first announcement:

The e-version of the novel, The Angry Woman Suite (about greed, murder, love gone bad, and imbalance in every single neurotic form there is—and who doesn’t love somebody else’s problems?) IS finally out as an e-book, yahoo! No, double yahoo!

The Angry Woman Suite e-book is now available from Amazon (and soon to be available for the Nook and ipad, too).

Here’s the link to my Amazon author page: amazon.com/author/leefullbright

If you’re partial to print books (who doesn’t love print?), the print version of The Angry Woman Suite (the novel is also about redemption and love gone good—in fact, very good love, and who doesn’t love good love?—and check out the super Kirkus review link over in the right column on this page) will be in the Ingram distribution channel in about a week, and available via both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites shortly thereafter—I’ll shout “when” as soon as I hear.  

And then I will be eternally grateful to each of you (forever) who posts a review or comment to my Amazon listing, and to Goodreads if you’re signed up with them, and to my Facebook page for The Angry Woman Suite, which is www.facebook.com/fullbrightlee

I know it’s a lot, but reviews and comments (especially at Amazon, leader of the free world) are what can set The Angry Woman Suite apart from the—yikes!—1,800,000+++ other books listed at Amazon! It’s truly going to be an uphill battle (and writers never use clichés?). Simply put, I need Y-O-U. 

I’ve just seen the completed back cover text for the print version of The Angry Woman Suite and it goes something like this . . . actually, it goes exactly like this:

A superb debut that exposes the consequences of the choices we make and legacy’s sometimes excruciating embrace.—Kirkus Reviews 

When overbearing former big band star Francis Grayson mentions the “murdering bitches” who supposedly ruined his life, his resentful stepdaughter Elyse—always on the lookout for simple dirt on Francis—takes note. Intertwining narrative with Francis, Elyse stumbles across glimmers of big murder instead of simple dirt, while Francis moves perspective of his “bitches” back to the 1930s, to his childhood in Pennsylvania. His coming-of-age story centers on a mysterious painting and search for the artist who he believes can fix his feuding family. Aiding him in his quest is his mother’s lover, Aidan Madsen, who not only mentors Francis’ music career, but knows everything about two murders implicating the women in Francis’ family. The three narrators of The Angry Woman Suite—Elyse, Francis, and Aidan—weave together a picture of two disturbed families who meet their match in the young, determined to survive Elyse Grayson, and the human to a fault hero, Aidan Madsen.

 

    Thanks for stopping by!

A Million Other Girls

by lfullbright

The following is a story of risk and fate.   

Many years ago, three thirteen-year-old girls became friends. They were like a million other girls in the world, eager to put their stamp on it. They were in junior high, and, interestingly, looked somewhat alike, in that they were all blond, slender, and tall. Of course their temperaments were different.

Susie was soft-spoken, slow-moving, almost languorous, and she was self-effacing, very sweet, never said a bad word about anyone—maybe it took too much energy? She was probably the prettiest; definitely the one who spent the most time on her almost platinum hair, plus she somehow got away with wearing blue eye shadow to school. Her grades were across-the-board C’s.    

Kathleen was giggly and energetic. She was Everywhere-girl, like a hummingbird flitting in and out and around the cliques in the lunch quad, raining energy—that rapid speech, constant giggle, and brilliant smile—down on all. Kathleen had long shiny hair parted in the middle, and was always tossing her head this way and that, making her light hair ripple. Kathleen didn’t care about her report card; she cared about movement.

Eileen was a moody bookworm who envied Susie’s blue eye shadow and Kathleen’s beautiful hair. She was prone to sullenness.                

The girls often spent weekends together at Susie or Kathleen’s house, but never at Eileen’s, whose parents had lots of rules and a curfew, and didn’t like the music the girls played or the makeup they experimented with—and let both be known.

Eileen, who pretty much lived in her head and was on the honor roll, broke away from herself when allowed to spend the night at Susie or Kathleen’s, reveling in the music she wasn’t allowed to play at home, and the dancing and makeup, and talk of boys. No surprise, but Eileen didn’t care much for rules for rules’ sake.  

Besides a shared love of blue eye shadow, the girls shared stories about where they’d be in twenty years—fantasies. All, of course, would find love, and their respective “Mr. Rights” would, naturally, be “cute” and accompany them to Rome.   

Kathleen talked of the four children she would someday have and the big parties she would throw, and Eileen wondered if she could one day write like Tennessee Williams, or sing like Joan Baez, or become a potter; perhaps all three. But Susie was curiously silent on life after returning from Rome. Susie merely listened to her friends dream aloud, smiling in her sweet way.

After junior high, Eileen went to one high school, and Susie and Kathleen to another. Although they vowed not to let their different schools and classrooms split them up, the girls made new friends, became involved in different activities, and inevitably drifted apart.

Years passed. So did graduations, many parties and attendant good and bad choices, trips to Rome, long hair, and blue eye shadow.

And then one day many, many years later, Eileen had lunch with another friend who dated back to junior high. His name was Jim, her oldest friend. By this time, Eileen had of course broken her share of rules, because she’d finally could; and become way less sullen and more complacent, even content; written a novel, and grown her hair long again because she still considered some rules, and any rule about hair length after a certain age, supremely asinine—and she was currently struggling with writing a piece that had been prompted by this question:

“What risk do you regret not taking?”

The piece wasn’t going well, yet Eileen still loved the question and asked it of everyone. But there were no “good” answers; in fact, there was much misunderstanding about the question itself, and Eileen began realizing (duh-oh) that “risk” is subjective.

Eileen’s BIG  risk, the one she’d avoided for an embarrassingly long time because it required all her bravery—finishing a novel—had finally been committed to—and so had her primary relationship. Ditto for financial decisions/risks, and for driving herself four hundred miles to Land’s End on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road. But physical challenges, which is how many people understood the question, like skydiving or sailing solo around the world, had never been attractions for Eileen, and so couldn’t be categorized as regrets.     

Considering the possibility that she had no regrets, Eileen was amazed . . . had her life really been so adequately . . . complete? So splendid? But—wait. What about all the stupid things she had done, the rules she had broken (and shouldn’t have); people she had hurt, and the recklessness and bad decisions—there had been plenty of those to go around! Fodder enough for ten novels! How was it her life hadn’t been utterly ruined by her bad decisions, or maybe even cut short?

Lunch conversation with Jim got around to junior high school days—and then, next, to Kathleen—what had become of her, did Jim know? Jim wasn’t positive—maybe he’d heard she’d married? Had a big family? And was happy? So much time had elapsed, he couldn’t be sure—but, yes, that had to be it. Eileen agreed: Kathleen had been such a magnet for activity, surely that big, happy family had been her destiny. 

And what about Susie?

Jim stared at Eileen.

“She died,” Jim said. “She was murdered. I thought you knew.”

Nooooooooooooo! How, when, what, where??????????

The murder had occurred years before. Susie had been hitchhiking alone in Sacramento, California, 600 miles away. She was 22.  

Her body had been found by youngsters playing in a sandy ravine—they’d seen the near-platinum hair, just a lock of it. The rest of Susie had been covered with sand. She’d been buried alive, suffocated, her only visible injury a dislocated jaw.   

A day or so after their lunch together, Jim sent an old newspaper article about Susie’s murder to Eileen, and Eileen carried it around for days, reading it time and again, wondering if Susie’s murderer had ever been caught, and what Susie had been thinking, hitchhiking alone in the dead of night. I mean, how stupid was that? And then—Eileen couldn’t help the thought—she kept imagining Susie’s terror when all that sand came down on her and filled her throat, her mouth, nostrils, everything . . . it couldn’t be borne—yet, Eileen, who could still so easily get stuck in her head, couldn’t shake the picture loose.   

Eileen saw other pictures as well. She saw the three young girls they’d been, their camaraderie and blue eye shadow. She saw them styling one another’s hair, laughing and dancing, sharing dreams, knowing they would one day own the world—but then Eileen suddenly remembered: Susie had never talked about life for herself after her dreamed-for Rome trip.  

Had Susie had a premonition?

Eileen thought again of her own younger-years’ stupid actions and decisions—and wondered, how is fate determined? Because it was surely not by doing everything by the book, as she could attest; making all the right decisions and never slipping up, or, completely fearless, taking every risk there is.     

Or, in Susie’s case, regretting the risk taken.

What was it all about then? Was it possible a young girl’s life had been in vain? Eileen couldn’t get that thought out of her head fast enough either–but what point had Susie’s story served?  

I believe there remains this huge attachment to history, to lessons learned. There’s everything right about that, learning about life through stories, because everything goes back to stories handed down through generations, or other firsthand accounts; or film, novels, periodicals, and journals—every single way we get stories counts. Because every story goes back to the people in them.

We were just three young girls full of life and dreams and hopes, who knew nothing about the vagaries of fate—or that vagaries even existed.   

We were like a million other girls.

Confessions of a Publisher: "We're in Amazon's Sights and They're Going to Kill Us"

by roomsofourown

Reblogged from PandoDaily:

Click to visit the original post

When you see Snooki’s book on the New York Times Best Seller List, you know publishing is in trouble.

You can blame readers and say publishing is just giving the public what they want. But that’s only half the problem.

The rest is a lazy publishing industry that does far too little of the work that got them here: Discovering new authors and giving them a shot.

Read more… 1,076 more words

Dog to Writer: Life Isn’t a List

by lfullbright

Baby and LeeBaby Rae, my Australian cattle dog, is talking to me.

How do I know? She’s bringing me things, all sorts of things: dog-speak for, Hey, down here!  So far, she’s deposited a muddy ball in my lap, a sock from the laundry room, and remnants of the newspaper front page.

I get it: she has a valid point. I’ve been “missing in action” again, my head firmly up—watch it—in the air. Lost in the ether. Inside myself. Not part of the world.

I’ve been gazing at a computer screen the better part of a weekend, tying up loose ends and marketing stuff re my novel’s release (The Angry Woman Suite) at the end of this month; getting taxes out of the way, and trouble-shooting my husband’s long term care insurance reimbursements, grrrr (note: this is how insurance actually works: you pay the provider—much the same as you pay premiums before you’re ever eligible for benefits, on time—and then the insurance company gets around to reimbursing you at their leisure).

Leisure being the operative word.

But back to the point: Baby and I have a “contract.”

When I brought Baby across the border to the U.S., I vowed never to let harm come to her if I could help it; and to feed her, exercise her, give her rawhide treats, groom her, take her to the “puppy doctor,” throw balls for her to fetch, and sit with her in the sun, preferably for hours on end. And to sing “How Much is That Doggy in the Window?” before she falls asleep at night (don’t ask).

For her part, she shows up.

See how uncomplicated dogs keep things?

But this is what Baby keeps reminding me: Love isn’t a list. And neither is life.

Instead, it’s about showing up, sharing food, and not biting others. Pretty simple.

And I know this, but I sometimes forget. That’s why we need dogs, who teach by example, and so of course they never forget the lesson. And the lesson is that somewhere in the middle of anything is the balance for everything. And balance, not a list with everything on it crossed off, is the goal, the optimum—the whole point of sucking air.

Not that I can leave my lists behind. Or doing. You might as well ask me to make my tall self shorter.

But I can keep aiming for balance.

The muddy ball is back in my lap. And we all know where this is going.

I’m closing down the computer. Baby’s an excellent teacher: we’re going outside.

We’re going to be instead of do.

An Improbable Life: Baby Rae, My Writing Partner

by lfullbright

I arguably have one of the world’s most neurotic dogs. Her name is Baby Rae Fullbright—Baby for short. (Baby is for “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” and Rae is after my sister, Colleen Rae, who was with me the day I took Baby.)

Smuggled out of Tecate, Mexico as a puppy—a very sick, abused one—hers is an improbable life. That she survived puppyhood was the biggest improbability. But she didn’t survive unscathed. She has—how do I put this? Well, she has issues. Like a draining bathtub can send her into paroxysms of drooling and shaking. And she hates dogs. Considering she is one, how messed-up is that?

She fears men, eyeglasses, hats, bicycles, scooters, towels, riding in cars, looking at cars, screen doors, wind, leaves, and lizards (the teensy ones!)—and that’s nowhere near a complete list. That’s a “just getting started” list.   

She is the unlikeliest cattle dog (normally brave and energetic—but also loyal and incredibly smart). She is lazy (except she loves to “dance”). And she’s the total house dog (she doesn’t do rain or cold—and cold is anything less than 68 degrees). She sleeps on a down pillow. Wherever I am, she is. Unless I’m working at the office. But at home she never lets me out of her sight. Never. When I get ready for the office in the morning, those big brown eyes of hers are almost comically mournful watching me, as if I’m never coming back. It’s pitiful, actually. You’d think after eleven years she’d get it: I am coming home. I’ll always come home to you.     

But her world has rocked a little more than usual the past two weeks. I’d some Kindle pages to read (many pages, actually; for reference, the print version of my novel is 370-odd pages), and formatting to modify as necessary and turn back around in a week or so. This is a different kind of work than creative writing, where I take lots of little breaks and read aloud to Baby, for the rhythm of words and phrasing (and, yes, she always approves); where she and I are “partners.” But galley-type work is intense, extremely focused, as in no interruptions, please.

Well, I finished (in fact, I just finished!), but I know Baby’s missed our regular “talks,” and those silly “dances” we do while I cook dinner (no time for cooking!), or the workouts after (that’s my sad, pensive Baby above . . . ouch).

And, yes, I’ve missed her, too. She’s a special old girl in spite of her issues. Or maybe because of them. She’s my friend—my best friend. She gets me. I get her. She even understands English. The only thing she doesn’t understand is that she’s not ever going to be abandoned again, or hurt; otherwise, this dog is so smart you can have a conversation with her. And she doesn’t chew furniture, or pee on the rugs.

She just waits for me—and now I’m back. And we’re getting ready to dance.

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New Release Critics’ Pick: The Angry Woman Suite

by lfullbright

Hi all, First off, a big SORRY to my poor dear friends reading this and already so over hearing the following, BUT—    

Just. One. More. Time. (promise) . . . so here goes:

My soon-to-be available novel, The Angry Woman Suite, about a Pennsylvania murder and its effects on two subsequent generations, was named a “New Release Critics’ Pick” by Kirkus Reviews last week (google Kirkus online newsletter of 1/4/12).

I did have champagne for dinner that night . . . and that’s all, just champagne.  

Second, while I’m so obviously aboard the “all about me” train tonight, I’d like to talk more about The Angry Woman Suite, starting with the lovely cover design by artist Laurie Fuller, which several people have asked about, as in who is this beautiful woman?

Still others have asked if The Angry Woman Suite is biographical or partly autobiographical (no, it’s not; it’s fiction, although it incorporates many historical elements); and others have asked about the title, if it means what it sounds like; i.e., a bunch of pissed women off their meds.    

The novel’s title refers to a famous suite of (ten) portraits that figure predominantly in the novel’s plot. This collection of paintings is called The Angry Woman Suite.  

The woman on The Angry Woman Suite cover is Magdalene Grayson, the model for this suite of portraits.    

The novel—mystery and love story and coming-of-age (three intersecting stories)—is told by three narrators in different time zones (between the early 1900s and 1968), in Pennsylvania.

Magdalene Grayson is not a narrator, but she is pivotal to the lives of all three narrators.

She is the love interest of one narrator, Aidan, and the mother of a second (more about him later). The third (and lead) narrator is her step-granddaughter, Elyse, who is the glue of the novel (and we know everything about Elyse, every thought in her head, from page one, on). But Magdalene remains a bit elusive, which is why I chose not to make her a narrator: I wanted her elusive. She is a beautiful cipher wrapped up in a riddle—and I think the book’s cover art captures her mystery.

So moving forward with what I love best about writing fiction, creating characters, two excerpts from The Angry Woman Suite follow. Both concern Magdalene Grayson from Aidan’s point of view. But the second excerpt, which shows Aidan’s new, wavering perception of Magdalene, reveals as much about Aidan as it does Magdalene.     

We meet Magdalene briefly when she is in her early thirties—but then, moving back in time, we get another, different picture of her through Aidan’s eyes, when she is sixteen—and it is not love between them. It is not even like.

What it is, is disdain on both sides.   

Because Magdalene is one of those people born observant and curious, and so she questions everything. She will listen, but all the while she’s likely to be thinking, “I wonder when the bullshit ends and your real story begins?” The much older Aidan finds this threatening to his walled-off existence.

This is what Aidan says about Magdalene when she is sixteen, in 1916:

“And from the back of Magdalene, I could tell nothing. I saw only a fall of long blond hair, the way she straightened her broad shoulders, and the dirt on her skirt where she’d been sitting . . . when she turned back around, her pale eyes were anguished. Other than that, she looked fine, same as always: large and awkward for a sixteen-year-old. What I didn’t see was that Magdalene Grayson’s bigness was smooth and symmetrical, even classical. I didn’t see it because, primarily, Magdalene did not impress me, never had. And I had my reasons (and it’s a long list). Let me condense it for you: Magdalene was difficult. She was damn difficult. Even as a first-grader she’d been difficult, restless and moody, regularly declining participation in the schoolyard, not wanting to be in my band, looking at me with disdain, as if she knew more than I.”

But a year later, on the eve of America’s entry into WWI, at Magdalene’s wedding reception—and Aidan has not seen Magdalene during this year—this is what he has to say about the woman destined for imminent widowhood, who will subsequently and unintentionally start a war on their own rural home front while having to choose between two men, and shield her disfigured sister from murder charges. . . .

Again, this is a year later, at Magdalene’s wedding reception through Aidan’s eyes:

“. . . But then, when they were almost on us, Magdalene turned her head. Our eyes locked, as did the breath in my chest.

            “I’ll close my mouth,” Jamie whispered in my ear, “if you close yours.”

            Her beauty was more spectacular than even Lothian’s. Whereas Lothian’s face was soft and oval-shaped, Magdalene’s had become chiseled angularity, fine and even—yet she wasn’t just beautiful. She had mystique, something rarely seen; it was something in her eyes. Tendrils of pale hair escaped the white snood she wore, making a halo around her damp forehead and flushed cheeks, and I sensed rather than heard Matthew’s own soft exclamation when she laughingly brushed Frederick’s cheek with her lips, lips that were wide and red and ripe, parted slightly, teasing, yet weirdly circumspect . . . 

            She was real, the dream existed, and of course she was not a good woman, this lovely dream of mine. How could she be? She’d been a challenging child to put it mildly, so she couldn’t be long-suffering like my mother, or generous like Sahar. No, Magdalene Grayson was interesting. She was inquisitive, fractious, self-absorbed and judgmental. And to top it off she was totally out of reach, and the absolute worst thing in the world for me.

            Of course I wanted her.

            Exhilarated, I looked closer and saw those pale eyes weren’t actually unkind; how could I have ever thought that? It was question I now saw in those eyes, and suddenly I also saw the rub . . .”

 Okay, so what’s the rub? Well, The Angry Woman Suite will be available at the end of February, so stay tuned.

 Not nice, huh? *smile*

However, what the rub is not, in this story, is truth. And the truth is that sometimes when we fall in like/love/lust—as Aidan’s apparently beginning to do—we are compelled to square that decision with a previous assessment. I mean, who’s going to say to him or herself, “I’m attracted to so-and-so because no one sets buildings on fire the way s/he does?”   

No sane person. So the first assessment has to be modified. Also, this last bit of narrative suggests our walled-off Aidan possesses at least a modicum of vulnerability.     

Thanks for coming by, and more on The Angry Woman Suite characters later—and, oh, my “metaphor,” the wooden ship! More on it, too. I’ll walk down to the bay and get new photos (see my post of 1/4/12), and be back with you in a week or so.  

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Wooden Ships and Writing Fiction, Free and Easy

by lfullbright

I love the sun—an excellent reason for living in San Diego—however, because I live on the peninsula, I generally experience more fog than sun. I don’t love fog but the deep, steady cadence of fog horns stirs something deep and primal in me—perhaps I was a seafarer in a previous life?

Hmmm . . . more likely I sold smelly fish dockside. . . .

But when the sun breaks through the fog or marine layer on the peninsula—and bear with me here, because I’m about to go all sappy on you—when it does, it’s like a benediction.

We celebrate the sun up on the point because it’s rarer here, and thus never taken for granted.

When it happens, it is the absolute loveliest thing to wake to sun streaming through my windows. What I see on a clear day, down the hill, is a sail-studded bay and the graceful arch of the Coronado Bay Bridge, and beyond the bridge, the hills of Mexico. To the left of the bridge is a city of silver skyscrapers shining in the sun, cradling an airport.   

And that view, instead of fog, is what has greeted me every morning this past week, thanks to a high pressure ridge, and it’s something we’re expecting for another full week.      

It was four days ago, right after I sent the last read-through of my novel, The Angry Woman Suite, back to my editor, and was thinking, What’s next? What do I do next, first? (if that makes sense) that I opened the newspaper and looked straight on at a full-page color sketch of a 3-masted Spanish galleon—so beautiful, she took my breath away. The stuff of dreams, of magic and adventure. I jumped into her story.

The galleon was called San Salvador, and she sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542—a full sixty-five years before the first English settlement on the North American continent. She was the flagship of an expedition led by Juan Cabrillo, the first European to explore San Diego Bay. Although Juan Cabrillo is memorialized by a statue at the tip of the peninsula, there is no remaining physical evidence of the beautiful San Salvador in San Diego.

But, oh, it gets better. . . .

Because there’s going to be. Funded in part by The San Diego Maritime Museum, and a very large contribution by an anonymous San Diegan, the museum is building a full-sized, historically accurate, working replica of Juan Cabrillo’s wooden ship.

In my backyard.

Okay, not literally. But almost.  

The San Salvador is being built on public land at Spanish Landing, across from the airport, an easy walk from my house—and so, of course, off I went with my brother, Brian, who also lives on the peninsula, a student of anything maritime and historical, to take a look at her.

It was still early morning when we set out—as I said, an easy walk—and climbing the Nimitz St. bridge, caught a glimpse of long reddish “fingers” touching the bluest of skies.  

We walked twenty feet or so along a winding underpass, past a myriad of mysterious tools and band saws and huge stacks of wood, until we emerged bayside again; amazingly, right next to varnished oak cross ribs rising ark-like from the keel, the backbone of what will be, in a year or so, a 92-foot, 3-masted wooden ship.

We didn’t speak . . . we walked the length of that keel and those ribs that look much like cathedral ribs turned skyward, and I imagined 16th century ship shipwrights piecing their wooden ships together without the help of naval historians or plans drawn on a computer and transmitted to a 93-foot by 35-foot lofting floor where today’s crew can look on a virtual drawing (made up of “jigsaw puzzle” pieces) of the ship for construction.

So how did those 16th century shipwrights build their ships?  

By the seat of their pants, come to find out. Trial and error. And probably always asking themselves, What’s next?

Because isn’t that what we all ask ourselves when we begin building something new for the first time, whether it be a house, a business, a painting, a Spanish galleon—or a novel?

What’s next? How do I make this work? How do I make this the best of the best? How to start, which direction to go, how to make my “dream” workable, and solid and beautiful at the same time? 

And that’s what I think is so cool about us. By that, I mean the big “us.” The human race. We reach, we move forward, and we build things from nothing but dreams and visions. We are innovative, and though our penchant for momentum is what often makes us giant pains in the patooties, too, it more often—and definitely historically—is what makes the human condition magnificent.

And that’s what I saw in that San Salvador skeleton. I saw “us” as builders—and it moved me, because the upside of us as a species is that we do bring the impossible to life. And if the first San Salvador, a “mere” vision before it became a launched reality and made history, wasn’t a stunning example of that, nothing is. And this second San Salvador was “just” a dream, too, before it became a keel and ribs on the beach—and the vision is that our second San Salvador will be used to travel the California coast as an ambassador for a city shining in the sun: San Diego.

What’s next?

Interestingly—to me, anyway, but especially on my “San Salvador day”—I’ve been asking myself, What’s next? a lot lately. I’ve started a second novel, and it’s slow going, primarily because I’ve been working toward the launch of The Angry Woman Suite, my novel about a double murder and the ensuing fallout on two generations—and I also have a fulltime day job and an ill husband: I’m busy.

But you know what they say about excuses. Plus, I don’t want to be one of those people who wave excuses around, until excuses become how they’re known. You know, like “the excuse lady.” Ugh. I don’t want to be that.      

What I want is to be a 16th century shipwright flying by the seat of her pants. Yes, I do.

Because building a story is also like working with jigsaw puzzle pieces. Making up believable primary and secondary characters; constructing a story arc, a plot line, secondary plots, dialogue that is spot-on, narrative with momentum, building tension—and, oh, did I once mention cohesion in all this?—a story with cohesion, where everything fits perfectly together, coming right up! Whew, where to start? And when you close up shop for the night, where to start again the next night?  

Of course it would be easier to plop down in front of the TV and tell yourself you’ll “work it” when you’re feeling the inspiration, when life isn’t so busy, when the day job’s not so hard, when you’re not needed so much, when you’re not so tired or put-upon—which is exactly how novels don’t get written.

And “plopping down” also guarantees a galleon won’t be built.  

So, what’s next? I asked myself on the beach the day I met San Salvador, walking the length of her keel and ribs and marveling at the idea, the sheer ballsiness, of her. Not just because she’s in my backyard, so to speak. But because she truly is rising from the ashes of a 16th century ballsy dream, from the hands of long-ago shipwrights who had to have asked themselves a few hundred times, “Oh holy hell, what do we have to try next to make this bloody thing fast and maneuverable, yet still big enough to hold people, horses, pigs, and cargo for weeks, months, on end, on the high seas?”

Variations of this question have always defined us, from inventing the wheel through to re-inventing it a bazillion times more throughout millennia—but the answer to “what’s next?” has always been the same: stay with “it” . . . stay the course; otherwise you’ll never know about bringing something home.   

So there you have it. Easy-peasy (do you want to slap me now?). Whether it’s a ship you’re building, a career, a family, your first book or the second, commit, and then fly by the sea of your pants. Trial and error. Stay with the vision, if for no other reason than the sheer ballsiness of rising to a challenge, falling down, and picking yourself back up again, until you finally bring your vision home. Because bringing home a dream is about as good as it gets.

As always, thanks for coming by! Till next time (and more on the ship and more on writing). . . .        

          

Anti-laments and The Angry Woman Suite Book Cover

by lfullbright

I read a lot of blogs most mornings, and this morning (the day after the day after) I’m reading a lot of Christmas “laments.” You know, like it’s over, dregs everywhere, and what was it all about, Alfie? (Yes, I realize the Alfie thing dates me to pre-historic.)

So, this is the anti-lament. But, first, yes, it is over. Time to assimilate.

Separate the wheat from the chaff. Events and people are not perfect—though all dogs and some moments are. *smile* So, keep the perfect moments out, like accessories, and put the imperfect ones in a box, to be packed away—who needs to keep pulling them out to obsess over anyway?   

Christmas, 2011, is history. And mine was nice—at least the season was. The actual day was defined by a nasty head cold (mine) and seizures (my husband’s). We—he and I—know what to do about seizures by now; we’re experts. And we all know what to do about head colds (not a damn thing—the upside of a cold, though, was the perfect excuse for planting myself in the lawn swing with Baby Rae and playing with my new Kindle Fire, which I totally love).

The San Diego weather has been, and remains, a balmy 72+ degrees (that’s perfection). Now, there are some who argue that Christmas isn’t Christmas without snow, just as there are some who argue that Christmas is over-hyped and over-commercialized, and over-everything, BUT— 

That’s silly.

We all choose how much to participate, easy as that. I don’t have to go to the mall, or listen to carolers, or eat all that yummy holiday food—nobody does (except it’s fun: the music, merry-making, prezzies, and food, all of it). Point is, I see no need for making minor things, like commercialization and letdowns, federal cases, unless making things federal cases is your claim to fame (and, personally, I wouldn’t touch that one).   

As for snow at Christmas—ahem: my husband and I’ve shared many a snowy Christmas. We used to be skiers, until he got sick. We spent a dozen Christmases at Snow Summit in Big Bear, CA, and sometimes in Park City, Utah.

My husband and stepsons thought all that snow and ice and skiing = bliss. Hog heaven every Christmas.  

Here’s what I thought: lovely to look at but damn cold. Uber cold. Way too many layers of clothing required for taking the trash out (and, hey, why weren’t those blissful guys taking it out?? Short answer: something to do with my guys not seeing trash as, well. . . trash).

And ice is slippery.

Let me repeat: ice is slippery. If I had a free lift ticket for every time I ended up on my ass taking the dang trash out, I’d still be skiing. 

I’m way happier with the simpler 72-degree San Diego life. Barefoot and sipping a cold one by the pool, with a new Christmas book in hand. Ahhhh. Not 20 layers of clothing and big honking parkas, and hats that make my hair go smooshed, or reading a Christmas book under an electric blanket—oh, and water heaters that run out of hot water because, hey, I just happen to be the last one to shower because I was cooking everybody’s dinner and cleaning up (after a full day of skiing, too) while my three guys warmed their oh-so-sore muscles under steaming 20-minute hot showers, poor babies.

It’s okay; the foregoing is the stuff of family lore and giggles.

But back to the best parts: this simple weather and those Christmas books = the anti-lament.

Since I can remember, the best part of Christmas, besides food and music and lights, has been books. New books! Meaning, when I was a kid and my grandparents had packed up and left and the tree came down, the books remained, and so I never felt blue after the Christmas hoopla. In fact, I barely noticed a lack of hoopla, I was so engrossed with the worlds my new books offered.  

And my husband always gave me books, too. Books to read under electric blankets or at the pool, it didn’t really matter.

I didn’t get many print books this year. I resisted my first e-reader (2 years ago), but I am totally into my new Kindle Fire. I’m not giving up print books, but I’m here to tell you: the Fire is pretty cool.

Now, here’s where I am with my own soon-to-be-available novel, The Angry Woman Suite:

The cover is done, ta-da! Loooooooooooooooooove it! Artist Laurie Fuller did a magnificent job capturing Magdalene Grayson’s mystique (above). Kirkus Reviews posted the cover to their website, and took The Angry Woman Suite review public (although the book will not be available 1/1/12, which is how it’s listed at Kirkus—we’re running a bit behind. Looks more like 2/1 now—of course I’ll keep you posted!).

Happy New Year everyone! Be safe in 2012, and be happy. Love deeply, work hard, read voraciously, laugh often, get a dog (and you will laugh often), and get as healthy as you can. I’ll resume regular blog posts after the holidays (in-between reading all my lovely new downloads).

Dancing With Dogs

by lfullbright

It’s a rooty-tooty time of year for a lot of people (vacation, holiday food, kids’ joy, more food), but for many others it’s a blue season (memories of things and people past, no money, no job—the list of why/how this holiday can be painful is as endless as the number of people who feel this way).

At my office—an ophthalmology practice —we go all out for the holidays. We hang wreaths, burn cinnamon-scented candles, and play seasonal music non-stop. So when I heard Tchaikovsky’s “The Waltz of the Flowers” the other day, I said aloud, “That was Boo’s song.”

It will always be Boo and Katie’s song. . . .

Boo was a slender chocolate-colored dachshund with a serene disposition, like a little buddha, brought home from a shelter at the age of eight years, meant as a companion for my two-year-old Katie, a rescued miniature pinscher with über attitude and energy (aka min pin ADD).

I’d no intention of falling in love with Boo. I was already in love with Katie—I just wanted a playmate for Katie while I worked. And it had yet to occur to me that one can love two of anything equally, or, put another way, differently but just as intensely.    

Which is something a friend and I talked about yesterday.

We compiled a list of things and people we love, but maybe not exclusively or the same, but just as intensely, like best friends for instance. We can have more than one best friend, and often do; different personalities who tap into varying aspects of us and vice-versa. And people can even fall (more or less equally) for two people at the same time . . . *ahem, spoil alert: problem with the love triangle, of course, is the drama and sometimes irreparable hurt. Great fodder for novels and film, but not so great for real life.

The first thing Boo did right was fall in love with me. Who can resist being the center of another’s universe? Sometimes, after writing for long stretches of time, I’d scoop Boo up and whirl her around the living room to “Glory Days,” working the kinks out, or to some old Beatles or Stones—and always, at Christmas, we’d dance to Tchaikovsky.

Katie preferred “dancing” to slower pieces, which was surprising given her need to be constantly moving at breakneck speed. We’d “waltz,” her sleek body stretched lengthwise against my chest, head tucked under my chin—perfect happiness.        

I’m smiling writing this. My little buddha girl Boo and my incorrigible Katie are now part of my history, equally loved and unbelievably missed. They lived long lives, long enough to know Baby Rae, the abused cattle dog from Mexico who now shares Christmas with me, and who is also greatly loved. Differently from Boo and Katie, but with comparable intensity. Baby Rae, though, is too big to dance around the living room in my arms.

But, dang, can Baby dance on her own.

Surfacing from a round of “hunchdom” at my desk, after being in my head for long periods of time, writing, it’s usually The Boss who jump-starts me back to real life.

And when the The Boss starts in, “The Babe” swings into full dance mode, becoming “everywhere dog,” bouncing on her hind legs, front paws, well, pawing the air, because she wants me to grab hold, and I do—and then we dance. Do we ever. It’s a weird kind of canine lindy hop—Ellen DeGeneres need not worry—but we dance hard, and we dance fast.

We dance because we can. Or at least we think we can. We dance for the joy of moving. We’re good partners, well-matched by a shared determination to live well. 

Christmas is different this year. . . .

This holiday Baby Rae and I dance in front of a “surprise” Christmas tree. Surprise, because I briefly (like for one second) considered not putting one up this year. Those who’ve been following me know my husband is ill, and we haven’t been all that festive lately.

But of course I did hang stockings and I did put up the tree, and spent a gazillion hours making it just as perfect and lovely (I think) as my mother’s, who adored the tradition of Christmas and passed that love of tradition on.      

My husband can’t enjoy the tree this year, but this tree, decorated with ornaments he’s given me through the years, and my mother’s ornaments, and even my grandmother’s, and ornaments from many best friends, is beginning to feel right.       

Though life is different, some things remain the same.

Every ornament on my tree has a story; it’s the story of the person (or dog) who gave it to me, and where we were at a particular stage of our relationship. I cherish those stories—and so of course I had to put this tree up to hang these stories on.     

Last night, on my way upstairs, I paused and looked at the beautiful tree shining like a beacon in my living room, and I suddenly understood that the tree and the light mean that nothing is going unrecognized or wasted, even as life shifts and changes time and again. This tree not only symbolizes a continuation of loves different but equally intense, but it validates and honors them. 

It’s a little like deciding to dance.

Joy, that is. As an adult, I now understand just how hard my mother worked to make our happy childhood holidays seem effortless.  

How hard my husband worked it.

Baby Rae doesn’t work it, though. Joy is as instinctive to a dog as breathing (which is why it’s good to have a dog: joy is also contagious).    

So when Baby and I finish wrapping presents and baking goodies tonight, we’ll rock out to Springsteen. We’ll dance BIG. She’ll go overboard, of course, because she always does, and I’ll probably look stupid, but she won’t care.  

And after we finish with The Boss, when Baby’s exhausted, we’ll dim the lights—except for the Christmas tree—and turn on Tchaikovsky and we’ll dance for my husband who used to do a jive like nobody’s business, and for my mother whose legacy still works magic (as in making me put up a Christmas tree when I didn’t want to).

And we’ll time everything just right, so that when “The Waltz of the Flowers” begins, we’ll both be ready.      

Then Baby and I’ll dance for Boo and Katie too, for the stories they left and a love shared there as well, different for each, but just as intense.          

  

Heaven’s Not A Colon

by lfullbright

Hi all, I’ve been hunched (and I do mean hunched) over a computer for 12+ hours a day, for a week, between clinic (day job) and last minute edits to my novel, The Angry Woman Suite, sent over from the editor at TP. 

And what I have to show for all this hunching and sitting? A spasm-y shoulder, red eyes, and a butt that’s spread another six inches.

Is it worth it?

Would you think me too weird if I were to say my idea of heaven is replacing colons with semi-colons and dashes with ellipses points? That I’m totally in my element hunting down slippery paragraph and page breaks?   

I’ll be wrapping up this proof in a couple of days, then the manuscript will be formatted again by Telemachus and downloaded to my Kindle, where I get to read the whole bleeping thing yet one more time, rechecking formatting for Kindle readers.  

Then The Angry Woman Suite goes to Smashwords for setup for the ipad, Nook, Sony e-reader, and all the rest (more on the print version next post). 

 

E-book trivia:

The Amazon Kindle, when first released in 2007, retailed for $400.00.

And, oh, the cacophony over paper books versus e-books! Of course, now we know it’s not a contest, but a done deal: it’s a co-existence between print and electronic, for now. We’ve all pretty much slipped over to the “dark side,” to electronic, even those who prefer paper (I will always have a love affair with paper, but who can argue with convenience and less money per book, going the e-way?). 

Blogger Nathan Bransford annually asks his readers if they will buy mostly e-books, and the results for this year, as well as every year since 2007, since the Kindle debut, are:

2007 . . . only 7% said they’d pick an e-book over a paper book

2008 . . . hanging in there at 11% (who said they’d pick “e” over paper)

2009 . . . picking up momentum at 19% (who’d choose e-book)

2010 . . . 32% say electronic is the way to go  

2011 . . . 47% say yes they do and will buy mostly e-books      

What a trend. Hope you’re enjoying the season! I’ll check back in a week or so. Oh! oh! oh! wait till you see The Angry Woman Suite cover–it’s coming along, and I love it. Can’t wait to show you!

The Creative

by lfullbright
Alan Alda on the red carpet at the Emmys 9/11/...

Image via Wikipedia

Thanksgiving dinner conversation drifted to the subject of Alan Alda—why or how I can’t tell you, I was so intent on the epic spread my niece had produced (this girl can cook!), but it reminded me of a quote I’d clipped recently of Alan Alda’s, from a speech about creatives and creativity (and isn’t that really all of us and what we’re doing—or should be doing—with our time here, creating something?). When I got home, I pulled it out and fell in love with Alan Alda all over again. I thought, He gets it, he really gets it. And here it is:  

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk, and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you discover will be wonderful. What you discover will be yourself.”—Alan Alda

 See why I love him? Madly?

Hope you’re enjoying the holiday season!   

A Magic Place

by lfullbright

Happy Thanksgiving week! A lot of us are on holiday break right now, or will be (and I’m one), so I’m writing just the one post this week—and then I’m off to cook like mad, eat like mad, and hang with those I love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother lately, who died too young—and not just because of Thanksgiving, although that is part of it . . . but I think it’s also my crazy life: sick husband, FT job, house, writing, what’s going on with my book right now. . . . 

No booze in Norden.  

Her name was Donna, and she had an isolated start as an only child living in the Sierras, in a place called Norden (close to where the Donner party perished), in a small railroad cabin. In the winters she couldn’t even see out the windows for all the snow—and there were no other children around; no playmates. It was a lonely existence.    

Donna’s father worked for the railroad, which was the first reason they’d moved to remote Norden, to tend trains crossing the mountains. Donna’s neurotic, alcohol-loving mother was the second reason. There was no booze in Norden, so her sobriety was guaranteed—there was nothing but a railroad platform, work station, and the railroad cabin.  

Donna’s father was a loving man, but her suddenly sober, 40-year-old mother was not. She was sullen, thirsty, and ignored the little girl. But Donna’s father had to work long, hard hours, so Donna, for all intents and purposes, alone, learned to nurture herself. She made an extended family: her dog Laddie, the chickens, and her doll. She was a self-reliant dreamer who imagined herself one day living in a city surrounded by lots of friends. She dreamed she’d be loved. Immensely loved. And she’d have children. Happy children. In the meantime, she loved on Laddie and her doll—and the few books the family brought with them to Norden.  

And, as it would turn out, books were to be Donna’s ticket out of Norden. Her father realized that Donna’s mother couldn’t home school Donna, so the family eventually moved to Sacramento. Finally, the city!  

But there was booze in Sacramento. . . .

And Donna’s mother found it. Drunk, she often beat Donna and locked her in a dark closet for hours on end. Blaming herself for the abuse, a shamed Donna didn’t tell her father. She covered her bruises and took refuge in books instead. But when Donna was twelve, a neighbor told Donna’s father what she’d seen and heard while he was at work. Donna’s mother was committed, which often happened to alcoholics in those days. 

Her father eventually remarried, to a woman with children, and Donna became part of a real family. It was a bit of a John Irving-type family, but after what Donna had been through, she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She started making friends, and doing well in school. Very well in school. Donna was a sharp cookie who could not only read and write circles around everyone else, but she was also an accomplished musician.  

Donna fell in love and married—and I was her first-born. A lot happened to Donna after she married—life changed many times over, which is the nature of life, change—but I remember the laughter, music, and the books, those things my mother loved most, after her three kids

The books and music nurtured my mother’s spirit, as did quiet time. I think she must’ve been leery of her childhood wounds, afraid she’d reopen them, of becoming anything like her mother. Though she didn’t dwell on her childhood trauma, she was vigilant against its aftermath of depression and migraines, and she avoided conflict, and even, sometimes, too much intimacy. She was careful how much she let others see. 

She wanted happiness and she kept her eye on that ball, having learned young that if she didn’t nurture herself, she’d lose her semblance of balance. 

So books were everywhere in my mother’s house—but not strewn. Nothing but nothing in her house was strewn. But books were part of our backdrop, like the lamps. And we all read. We read like mad. And my mother’s taste and mine meshed. We talked of the Brontes and Alcott, Dickens and Mitchell, and many other authors and stories, as well as the stories playing out on the block we lived on. She told me the story of her isolated early life (though she didn’t tell me of the abuse until I was an adult). She talked, I listened. And I began writing, and she began typing up my little stories and poems and sending them to magazines.

But then something happened: full-blown adolescence. My writing became private, sacrosanct. I didn’t appreciate my mother’s overtures–the magic was gone. She could no longer do anything right. All her decisions had ruined my life.

I think this often happens with mothers and daughters, that mothers don’t get the credit they deserve, because we daughters are somewhat wired to, at some point, pull away in order to become our own women.

Well, my wiring was pretty good.

My adolescence (and young adulthood) was one giant pull-away. For many reasons. But then I came back. And after a pretty big, disapproving, “Well, you took your time,” my mother never said another word about my crappy behavior or about not living up to my potential. Not once—and I eventually got life and discipline on track, and the best years with my mother began: we were grownups together, talking stories–the magic was back.

When my mother passed, my niece read a journal entry of mine at Mother’s memorial service. I’d written of my mother’s connection with each of her children. With my sister, it was cooking, and with my brother, music. I did write of the pride Mother took in my writing, but what I felt when I wrote that entry was nothing like what I feel today, because this story/reading-writing connection I had with my mother was so natural, so intrinsic, like having two arms, that not having her in my life anymore couldn’t be wholly absorbed. It was like I was missing parts of me, my other pair of arms, and it didn’t feel real.   

Until, actually, right now, when our shared love of stories has morphed again, this time into my novel, The Angry Woman Suite—

—and I’m missing her. Really, really missing her. And, finally, fully,  appreciating her.

I actually imagine my mother and me sitting at the kitchen table, where we always sat and talked, and she wants to know everything, every last detail about The Angry Woman Suite, and the whole publishing process, and then who said what, where, when, how, and why. 

And I’m thanking her. I’m thanking her profusely. Not only for giving me books, for instilling the love of words and sharing the magic of storytelling, but for showing me how to self-nurture. For teaching me that nurturing is not only okay, but required when shit hits the fan or responsibilities mount and time’s not getting any longer.

First she gave me the life, and then she gave me purpose, and then she showed me how to keep my balance—all pretty cool things to give someone, and I’m grateful.    

And her dream did become reality: she was immensely loved, and she knew it.      

I’m thankful for that, too.

Gratitude does feel good. Happy Thanksgiving one and all. I hope your day is wonderful (and the oh-dawn-hundred wake-up call on Black Friday doesn’t kill you). *smile* I’ll be back next Monday . . . or maybe Tuesday.