My New Space

Apologies for missing a week here.

We moved, and one thing that I've discovered throughout this process is I've wanted to imagine that moving is no big deal and that I could proceed along with my normal routine, and that just simply did not happen. Will I have amnesia again before our next move? I think maybe that's the only way that we can do it.

When you move, you are given the opportunity to reimagine how you will live. In this new house, the owners left behind a bed. Mike's first instinct was to tell them to take it out, but I said that I wanted it in my office. I have always loved to write in bed. Now I can get out of our bedroom and write in my office from my own bed.

There are other things that I've put in my new office this week:

I have one of Mike's framed prints of the ocean. When I was young, I loved my time in the ocean. At our previous home, we were twenty minutes away from my old friend. It's important to me to always be near the ocean in some way

I have an amazing new bed reading pillow. It's really a wonderful support to have if you like to write in bed.

I have a piece of cat furniture that we call the Crow's Nest by the window so the cats can visit and look out  at the world.

I have a Tigger key chain on my desk to remind me of the part of me that is silly and joyous.

I have a Beanie baby of an orange cat to remind me of my sweet, loving Pumpkin.

I have a rock with a calico cat painted on it to remind me of my original muse.

The Chicago Manual of Style calls to me from the bookshelf.

I'm going to put a horseshoe over my threshold, ends up, in honor of my character, Kate, from Kate and the Horses.

I will need something about a piano in here somewhere for Joy Returns! It will not be a piano. It won't fit. And at some point in life, you have to make choices. I now make my music by typing on keyboards.

This is a work in progress. There's still so much to do. But I believe that our writing/work spaces are so important. Are there things that you have to have? Feel free to comment below.

My Writer Story

We're getting ready to move, and as I've navigated my way through my clutter of paper, I've realized something. Before embarking on this project, I had a story about my writing life that went something like this: I've always wanted to write ever since I was a kid. As a fan of Harriet the Spy, I wrote in notebooks and created stories all through my childhood and my teens. When I was in my twenties, a well-meaning person told me that I could never be a novelist, and I believed it. In my thirties, I decided to just give it a try anyway, went the academic route, received an MA in creative writing, and taught as a lecturer. Then I decided that fiction wasn't for me and sold creative nonfiction to newspapers and magazines. After a while, I felt that wasn't my niche, and it took me until my fifties to go back to novels and to start writing books.

But, here in current time, I had these boxes of paper to go through, and what I soon realized was that, although it had seemed like there was periods in my life when I stopped writing, it wasn't really true. When I felt that I couldn't approach fiction or creative nonfiction any more, I composed songs. I wrote blogs. I reviewed things. I posted about songs and books I read and podcasts episodes that made me think. I analyzed The Good Wife. I wrote about anything that interested me in the hope that eventually I would have the strength and maturity to write novels. I eventually got there, but it was a windy road of words for me.

I'm still bringing some boxes of my paper with me to our new home. It will need to be filed. My old dented file cabinet has already been taken away. I didn't even say goodbye. Once we move in, I will need to face my boxes again and put things in order. Will I throw things away? Will I cry? Will I laugh and shake my head? I will probably do all of these things. But I will now know that I have actually always been a writer. It's just been in different ways, shapes, and forms.

I have a feeling that other writers will understand this story. Hopefully, you won't have to go through a mountain of clutter to realize it. But I would encourage everyone to take your writing legacy seriously. It all counts. It all brought you to where you are now as a writer.

The First Book I Wrote

This last week, I made a presentation to students in a after-school writing program. In the question-and-answer session, a student asked me, “What was your first book?”

I held up Joy Returns!

“No,” she said, “what was the first book you wrote as a child?”

And just like that, a memory popped up in my brain that I hadn't thought of for a very long time.

“Well,” I said, “you will probably have never heard of this person. His name was Joe Garigiola. He was a professional baseball player, and I knew him as a game-show host on television. And he was bald.” I paused. “For some reason, when I was young, I thought that bald men were hilarious. So one afternoon, after watching Joe Garigiola on television, I wrote a joke book about bald men. I called it The Baldy Joke Book.”

I told them that I didn't really know why I had thought bald men were so funny. I said it wasn't a terribly enlightened thing to believe, much less use as an inspiration for a book. I said I had announced my intention to my family right after the show was over. They all basically rolled their eyes. I didn't care. I was on a mission. I went straight off to my room and I dashed off a book of jokes that made me laugh so hard, I wept. I drew illustrations for the book and created a cover that proudly carried my name.

I have no idea what happened to that book. I had forgotten about it for so many years. I would imagine that the jokes were super silly with probably never much of a shelf life to begin with. But what I will hold on to was that sense of pure, unadulterated delight at the idea of making this book and dreaming up these jokes, and feeling that it didn't matter if others didn't understand, that it was something that pleased me to the nth degree, and that I could do it, and in a very short while, hold my book in my hands. And I did.

This morning, while making coffee, I thought, “That couldn't possibly be the first book I wrote.”

And then I remembered two before then, class assignments, a table full of children's creations, stories with construction paper covers. We had punched holes in the pages, and the books were held together by yarn. I know my first book was inspired by The Exorcist. And when it came time for my second book, the teacher said I could not write a sequel. Was that a class policy or did she not want to hear further details about demonic possession? I will never know. I remember I was disappointed, but then I rallied. I wish I could remember what I dreamed up next.

Words to Young Writers

This week, I have the chance to talk to the students in Word Lab, an activity put on by the Young Writers Program in Santa Cruz County. In this nine-week adventure, students write a story that is then reviewed, edited, and published in an anthology that they will receive this summer. Here's what I have to say:

Thank you for this opportunity today. It's always such a great honor to be at Word Lab. I volunteered at Word Lab for three different sessions—Spring 2017, Fall 2017, and Winter 2018. I had planned to volunteer again for Spring 2018, for this session, and then Life stepped in, and we have to move. My family and I will be leaving Santa Cruz in three weeks and moving up to the Gold Country. I'm very sad that I couldn't work with you. I really wanted to.

Today I thought I would say a few words about things I wish I had known when I was a young writer. I wanted to be a writer ever since I knew how to read. I didn't know it at the time, but reading is the first great tool that you have in learning how to be the best writer you can be. Reading can inspire you. You can learn great things from reading. When I was young, my two favorite books were Harriet the Spy and A Little Princess. I loved Harriet the Spy because it was a story about a young girl who felt so passionately about writing that, if she couldn't write, it was as if she had been deprived of oxygen. She knew that about herself, and so she always had a notebook on hand to jot down her thoughts. After I read Harriet the Spy, I always had a notebook, too. In A Little Princess, Sarah Crewe's world is turned upside down when her father dies. In order to get through her grief and her change in circumstances, she turns to her imagination. She makes up stories. She learns to find joy and beauty in situations that most people would find hard to bear. When I read this book, I began to understand how telling stories can change your life. So it's something to think about. What are your favorite books? What do you like the most about them? Do they teach you a lesson that it feels important to remember? Is there a type of story that you like best? Maybe you like coming-of-age stories or romances or mysteries or war stories or fantasies or horror stories or thrillers. Whatever you most like to read, you will probably like to write in that genre.

And then there's what exactly to write about. Sometimes that can feel overwhelming, figuring out exactly what you want to write. Again, I would say, think about what you love. For me, although I love to write, there are always moments when it's difficult, and it just makes it easier if you're writing about something that really interests you or something you know a lot about or something you feel strongly about. When you choose something like that, you'll have specific things to say or describe. It's a great way to make your words come alive to your readers.

Over the years, as a writer, I've learned that I really need to give myself time to write. You have this built into your time at Word Lab, but it's something to think about for your life as a writer when you're not here, in the years ahead. I have discovered that if I can even take fifteen minutes a day that I can get a lot done. And on the days when that doesn't seem possible, if I can jot down an idea or a couple of sentences that have popped in my head, then it feels like I'm strengthening my writing muscles, and in the long run, I develop more confidence and trust in myself as a writer. It doesn't mean that there aren't still times when I feel stumped or that every sentence seems to come out as mush, but if I keep writing, I begin to remember that this discomfort has happened before and that I will eventually write my way out of it, and I will be happy with my words again, that that moment is actually around the next corner, if I just have faith in what I'm doing.

At Word Lab, there comes a time when it's important to share your work with others. Now writers are often sensitive souls. I certainly am. This part of the process can be hard for me. And this is what I would say to you about it: It's important. It's necessary. Listen. Appreciate the fact that you can get help. If you're not the foremost authority on spelling or where commas should go, you have volunteers at your table who will happy to tell you all about that. I know that for me, sometimes after I've worked very hard on something, it's hard for me to see it any more. Another person can find something that needs to be fixed, and I may feel silly that I missed it, but I'm really grateful that they pointed it out to me. Sometimes I know my story so well that I may be telling it in code. My listener may say to me, “I don't quite understand this or that” and it's only then that I realize that something quite clear in my head may need to be spelled out more so that other people can see it, too. And there are sometimes when I get feedback that doesn't seem right. Then here's what I do. I listen. I make a note to myself. I may get a second opinion. Sometimes I'll think on it myself. There are times when after I think on it, I realize that person was absolutely right. Sometimes I decide that wasn't the change that I wanted to make, but it really should be changed in another way. Sometimes I leave it the way it was.

And in the end, there will be a book, and you will feel the power and the glory of holding that book in your hands, opening it up, reading your friends' work, and turning to the page with your name on it, and seeing your story there. It's a great feeling, and you all deserve it. I wish you the absolute best, and I hope that you will always keep on writing and telling your stories.

Paper

We are in the midst of preparing to move.

I am going through paper. I have quite a lot of it—notebooks and statements and drafts that have settled in drifts around me. I'm accustomed to it after all these years, but now we have to move.

So I'm making decisions—discard, recycle, shred, or file. I'm remembering moments of my writer's life. I have notebooks where I told myself to write anything, just so that I could get in a habit of writing again. After that, I had notebooks where I planned projects. They're full of writing clusters, lists, outlines, scenes, and back again.

Rifling through these pages, I came across a letter that I had forgotten. When I tried to please everyone but me and tried to write the book that they thought I should write, I almost lost my project. Anyway, in going through these old papers, I found a letter I wrote to my book. This was when I really didn't think I could write it. I apologized to my book. I made a promise. I said that I would stay true to my book, that perhaps no one else in the world would understand, but that the deal was between me and my book. And then I wrote it. I thought I would share what I did with you because it was something that was critical for me in that process. I had to set things right between me and my book. I had to recognize the importance of our connection and honor it above all others.