Falling Down

The day started out well: two cups of coffee, a leisurely breakfast, a sweet episode of The Middle (I am obsessed with this show, thanks to Netflix), some gentle reading (A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration & Encouragement, by Barbara Abercrombie), a trip to the office (upstairs, in my home).

I was eager to get back to work on my newest project --and I've been doing swimmingly--meeting my daily word goal, outlining and plotting strategically, monitoring and adjusting when characters change their minds, or the writing is so organic it doesn't want to be contained ... and then I noticed my desk was particularly dusty. (My chalkboard wall is both a delight and a curse.)
Rather than ignore the dust and pick up where I left off in my manuscript, I started to clear my desk; I started to dust; I started to get into a crappy mood; I fussed at the dog.
I have fallen from my Happy Writer Life ladder.
I must get out of the house, buy a latte, take a short drive, feel the warm winter air on my face (it's nearly fifty degrees), run two errands, get back to my room.
Pick myself up.
Start again.

A writer, on rejection ....

"...And if you do get discouraged or tired, give those hopes and dreams to someone else for a little while, get some rest, then take 'em back and carry on."  ~ Arlo Guthrie

"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." ~ Albert Einstein

"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way." ~ Carl Sandburg

"If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day ... you don't go to a well once but daily."
         ~ Walter Mosley

Hemingway's way

From The Writer's Almanac~

Today marks the 115th birthday of Ernest Hemingway. He didn't start writing until his 26th birthday: two months later, he had a first draft. Years later, he told a friend: "Toward the last it was like a fever. Toward the last I was sprinting, like in a bicycle race, and I did not want to lose my speed making love or anything else." This novel, first titled Fiesta, was revised to The Lost Generation. 
We know it as The Sun Also Rises.

**************
I'm certainly no Hemingway, but I know a thing or two about writing, and so it came as no surprise to me while watching a PBS special last night to discover that reclusive writer J.D. Salinger routinely holed up in a bunker outside his home in New Hampshire to attend to his writing.
I know that Maya Angelou rented hotel rooms when she needed to get writing done.
The need for solitude without distraction is the very reason why the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire exists, or why Hedgebrook in Washington state exists.
When I was at MacDowell, the gift of time and space allowed me to write eight to ten hours a day. Within twenty-four days, I had written (and revised) six short stories, four essays, and seven poems. I kept a detailed journal of my time there, too.
**************
Ask me how much I've gotten done since.

Trying again

Well, hello, 2014. I've been waiting for you.
I do have some resolutions, the kind that I will probably break, but I'm one of those eternal optimists and so I trudge forward, feeling only kind of certain that what I'm about to write might actually happen.
1) Lose twenty-five pounds. (Duh.)
2) Quit cursing (emphasis on burying the F-word).
3) Get organized.
      a) Clean out the linen closet
      b) Clean out the top middle drawer of my dresser
      c) Scrapbook photos as soon as I get them
      d) Keep the Taurus clean so HAS doesn't freak out when he drives it
      e) Donate all clothing that I haven't worn in a year
4) Pay bills on time.
5) ^Earn more money.
6) Follow that weekly savings plan I saw on Pinterest. (Week 1: deposit $1; Week 2, deposit $2 ...)
7) Plan a trip to Greenwich, Connecticut, to see the house where The Family Stone was filmed.
    (Book a bed and breakfast there in town!)
8) Go to church 52 times.
    *Try different denominations, in and around the Kansas City area
9) Blog about my church-journey?
10) Blog at least fifteen times every month.
11) FINISH BOLOGNA WITH THE RED STRING AND GET IT PUBLISHED.
12) Get at least three short stories published this year.

Shedding Skin

I hung wallpaper for a short time, around 1985. I sucked at measuring and cutting. My boss complained that I was weak and needed too much direction. (He was not wrong.)

Next: I entered tax forms for the Internal Revenue Service. Was a whiz at the 10-key, but pregnancy nausea put the kabosh on that desk job. Keystrokes were counted; I spent a vast amount of time hovering over a toilet in a dimly lit government-issued bathroom stall. (I wasn't fired. I quit.)

Twenty-two years later, after three children, a Bachelor of Arts degree to teach secondary English (I preferred high school then), a community newspaper gig (I was assigned the education beat) , and a newly elected seat on the local school board (I wanted to serve my community), I scooped ice cream at a mom and pop business as a stop gap between reporting and returning to the classroom. Turns out that a person cannot write education news and serve on the school board at the same time. Something about a conflict of interest. (Also, and this is important, because I am proud: I created a chicken salad concoction that became a kind of legend on the Square in downtown Liberty while working at the quaint, brick-walled ice cream shop.)

Reporting and teaching: the bulk of my career. Two decadess. During those years, I was also raising kids, laundering thousands of socks, grocery shopping twice weekly and preparing meals twice daily. My husband traveled six months out of the year. He ate meals out and slept in nice hotel beds. I was left at home, trying to get myself and three children under the age of six up and out the door by 6:45 a.m. Needless to say, I was tired and bitch-cranky. My PMS was severe; at one point I (seriously) thought about running away from home (and work responsibilities), maybe head to New England. Chop off my hair and peroxide-dye it. Pierce my navel ~ hell, FIND my navel. Get into shape. Get a tattoo. Create a new identity that had nothing to do with motherhood or teaching or asking complete strangers prying questions.

For two decades, I was passionate and pissy about those two jobs. (There were some good days.) Now, I tell myself those feelings were valid, and not emotional fabrications to ease the psychic pain of withdrawal from the newsroom and the classroom. It's what I did. Was good at. Defined by. Paid for.

Look. At heart, I am an introvert, and as such, I am a person who not only adores solitude and quiet but needs it. As you can imagine, it was tough for me to go out into the world (read: my community) with a smile and a notebook and interview superintendents and lottery winners and city councilmen. I always felt artificially poised and posed, there in my pumps and business suit, as I asked questions and wrote furiously to record answers. Showtime! (Jazz hands.)

Teaching high school was one big show, too, only six chaotic times a day ~ in profoundly noisy fifty-five minute increments. The hooligans needed fun assignments or else they were bored, apathetic, and problematic. With the energy I expended day-in-day-out, I might've trained to swim from Cuba to Florida. (Bet Diana Nyad never taught high school English.)
Later, I found middle school and it fit me like a comfortable shoe. At heart, I am fourteen years old. I laugh at fart jokes; I like, truly like, the music of Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez; I purchase for myself fuzzy-fabric covered journals and when the Book Fair rolls around, I always buy bobble-head pens and erasers that look like chunks of cheese. Mostly, I think early teens are pretty dang funny; in fact, I feel most tender toward awkward adolescents. Why? I remember being thirteen, fourteen. I remember feeling out of control and painfully shy and oh-so-ready to grow up, even though it meant leaving the security of my childhood.
And then my mom died and I lost my mind. I left the classroom to devote my life to beating myself up with guilt and trying to work shit out in/through/around/ my writing. I got accepted to the MacDowell Colony and got to write, undisturbed, ten hours a day in a gingerbread-like stone cottage nestled among towering trees in southern New Hampshire. I was productive and loved every single minute of my twenty-four days.  I came home energized. I would finish my novel and send it off; I would enter contests and win; I would be published in bona fide literary journals, like Ploughshares and Glimmer Train.
None of the above happened. What happened was home and all the responsibilities that come with it. Furthermore, a lack of discipline and my damned ADD took over and I reverted to pre-MacDowell ways, which meant spending too much time on facebook, too much time watching Modern Family and Dr. Phil, and eating out with friends three times a week. Bad for the waistline; bad for publishing.

And now, here I am. Forty-eight years old. I am not reporting. I am not teaching. Without my income, vacations are a luxury of the past; I do my own nails now. Pedicures? What are those? I do, however, have money in my purse for a Starbucks latte anytime I want one. I am one lucky lady, thanks to a wonderful and supportive husband who goes to work each day loving what he does. He is the major bread-bringer-homer. Me? I freelance and pick up some money here and there. I am a (paid) morning and after-school childcare provider. (Love my pseudo-grandchildren!). And ~ and this is BIG ~ I am owner of a kick-ass writing room. 
Sometimes, I even go in there and I write.

On government shutdowns, lack of money, bologna, and MacDowell

It's Day Two of the government shutdown and I am feeling pissy and sad and emotional. Very PMS-y, I might say. Part of me wants to log on to Facebook and rant and rave and call Republicans Retardicans or Repugnacans, because it is the GOP that I (and much of America, including our fine president) blame for the mess that is in Washington. Congress schmongress. Let's fire them all and get new idiots in there. Let's start with the Tea Partiers.
My husband, who's been with the Federal Aviation Administration for twenty-five years, went to work yesterday, and today, and he will go tomorrow and the next day, but he isn't getting paid right away. Government-issued IOUs. So of course I have a pony in this race, which makes me (somewhat) worthless because I bring in a whopping $275 weekly from my nanny jobs. (I love my morning and afternoon gigs; I am torn. Don't want to leave my families; might have to leave my families and get a 9-5 desk job, which is necessary at this stage in the race because my foot is still semi-broken and throbs ten hours a day. But then there's my adorable children, and a verbal promise that I will stay with them throughout the school year. As I said before, I am torn. Oh, and broke.)
My default plan, whenever the pissiness and sadness and OhmigodIneedtomakemoney sets in, I turn to my writing. Specifically, I am trying very, very, very hard to corral my ADD and focus on my Bologna book. I am particularly in support of this plan because it has been one year since I was at MacDowell, holed up in my cozy stone cottage in the woods of New Hampshire. It was ONE YEAR ago that I was at my laptop working on Bologna With the Red String, and now 365 days have gone by, and I am still not finished.
Not finished.
Getting closer, but ...
NOT FINISHED.
What to do?
Pretend I'm at MacDowell. Head to my writing room, which my dear husband helped make possible (the man I'm disappointing financially); spray Indigo Wild's Frankincense & Myrrh Zum Mist -- that's the scent I sprayed inside Mixter Studio; listen to Tony Bennett's Duets II album --that's the music I listened to on my iPod as I wrote, outlined, edited and cursed at the simple desk adjacent to the stone fireplace; set myself to a schedule: 9 a.m. to noon, write; break for lunch; write from 12:30 to 3 p.m. And yet ... I am missing (son of a bitch, oh, how I am missing) the screened-in porch and wooded surroundings of Mixter studio; I am missing the electric hotpot that I used four, five, six times a day to make decaf coffee or tea; I am missing the glorious absence of housekeeping; I am missing the wonderful Plunk! of my lunch basket hitting the porch; I am missing naptime. (At MacDowell, I napped from 3 to 5 each day, waking to shower and prepare for dinner.)

To encourage my focus and discipline, I tell myself that I will to return to MacDowell once I publish the food memoir. You will go back, Kathleen, you will get there.

It will happen for you. Now sit your ass down in that chair. Finish the fucking book.

On Meredith Maran, her book, and the MacDowell Colony

I just finished reading Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They do What They Do, edited by Meredith Maran, whom I met this fall at MacDowell. She was witty and charming and beautiful and tanned and thin and smart and a Democrat. Also, talented. What stood out most, though, about Maran was her choice to write inside Bond Hall, the communal meeting place for MacDowell artists-in-residence. That's where the phone was, and the pool table, and the ping-pong table. It's where artists presented their work each night after supper. Maran had a studio reserved for her, Wood, but she chose not to use it. I heard something about there not being enough sun around her studio; I heard something about needing to be where the people were.
What I remember most about Maran, however, was overhearing her talking to the chef in the kitchen one night, about how much love was obviously put into the food. It doesn't have to be this good, you know, she said, but it is. It is this good because it's made with love. Thank you, thank you.
I liked that about her, that she took the time to say that.
And it's true, about love being in that food. I have never eaten so consistently well, never been so gloriously fed. Before leaving the colony, I hitched a ride into town with a glorious soul named Risa Mickenberg. a funny writer-singer lady from Manhattan. We stopped to buy bottled soda and a pack of cigarettes, then we walked across the street to Peterborough Basket Co., a metal building that smelled of bug spray and microwave popcorn. There, I bought a facsimile of the basket my lunches came in each day around noon at the colony, thinking that its presence back in Kansas City would serve as a wonderful reminder of my twenty-four MacDowell lunches; instead, I look at it every day and feel sadness that I am eating a grilled cheese prepared with store-bought bread and processed American cheese slices. My soup here at home comes out of a can.
***
While at MacDowell, I read Maran's first novel, A Theory of Small Earthquakes, which I liked well enough. It is about a lesbian couple who have a baby together during the time California is being rocked with earthquakes. Although I never grew to like the main character, Maran's writing was good and had a clean, nonfiction feel to it, so I persevered and made it to the final page. Before I could talk to Maran about the ending, which bothered me only a small bit, she had left the colony.
But that's MacDowell. Artists come and go on a regular basis. You have breakfast with Playwright A and Novelist H and Composer D and Filmmaker M and before you know it, those folks are gone and Playwright B and Novelist T are sitting across from you sipping their coffee. One of my favorite people there, a writer named Steve, said at dinner one evening that it was like a series of small deaths, watching people you've become friends with all of a sudden disappear. I agreed.
***
Sometimes I wish, truly wish, that I could read a book like a normal person (i.e. not a writer), and not have to write notes in the margins and highlight passages and circle certain words or phrases. For this reason, I can never get library books. Maran's Why We Write came to my doorstep in an Amazon box on Wednesday (sometimes I hate myself for ordering from Amazon), and by Friday, around noon, I had finished reading it.  That's how I know I really like a book, when I read it fast, sometimes all at once, because I can't put it down. If it had not been for an intermittent raging headache and having to go to work, Why We Write would have been read in about ninety minutes.
You should see my copy. It is yellow highlighted and underlined in blue Sharpie and annotated in pink ink. There is a small hole on page 73 from where I got a bit too enthusiastic with the Sharpie. This is what I underlined: "Writing is a lonely job. You have to be willing to work for months and months without anyone saying, 'You're doing well; keep going.' You have to be willing to live in a constant state of uncertainty. Not very many personalities are well suited for it. Fortunately, mine is."
(Kathryn Harrison)
Fortunately for me, Maran's newest book, which hit bookstores last week, has enough advice and good-will commiseration to keep me at the keyboard for a while.

No news really is good news

Operating on the theory that ignorance is bliss, I decided two days ago to start a news fast: no newspaper, no magazines, no talk radio, no television (inluding Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan, two men I have begun to love deeply ~), no NPR, no MSN headline crap when my internet powers on.
I am one of those anxious and neurotic people who can't read obituaries without starting to hyperventilate. What do you mean, Cheryl A. Brown died suddenly? She was only 36. ONLY 36! I have lived 11 years longer. ELEVEN YEARS LONGER!
I am one of those people who feels compelled to start an ad hoc committee whenever I read an article about something in the community that is wrong, plain WRONG, and if only folks would gather together ~ none of us is as smart as all of us, right? ~ well, then, we'd find a solution to the problem. Only I lose interest thirty minutes after the idea springs to mind, because I've either all of a sudden got a hankering for stovetop pudding, the kind you have to stir nonstop for twenty minutes, or a dog needs to be let out, or my husband needs a load of clothes washed right now for his upcoming business trip, which is tomorrow.
I am one of those people who cannot watch any animal commercial that features dogs with missing ear bits and crusty, oozy eyes, especially if Sarah MacLachlan is singing softly in the background. Those sad commercials can set me back emotionally for hours and hours.
***
My two-day news fast has ended, and here is what I have found: I am not as stressed about planet earth and gun violence and missing children. I am, however, stressed that Something Big might have happened and I have missed it. My job now is to decide which feeling is worse.

One way to look at it ...

"The difference between constructing a short story and constructing a novel is like the difference between building a rowboat and building a yacht: They both have to float, but one is bigger and grander and meant to carry people farther. Just as the yacht is not simply a bigger rowboat, the novel is not a big short story." ~ John Stazinski

Something's happening ~

The planets are aligning; the universe is listening to me; my dead parents are pulling for me. Next thing I know, my new friend from craigslist will announce her second cousin is Kevin Bacon.
Something is happening.
MacDowell Colony coincidences?
Why, all of a sudden, are there books seemingly falling into my lap, books whose authors spent time in New Hampshire at MacDowell?
Consider this, from last month: I am going to Goin' Postal to get fingerprinted so I can substitute teach. Goin' Postal is a place where not only can I buy stamps and send packages, but can plunk down $48 and have a complete stranger manipulate my fingerpads, searching for past or current criminal activity. On this hot-ass day in August, there's a line. For customer convenience, there exists a tiny bookshelf. "Take one, lend one," a sign reads, rendered in blue magic marker.
There are six books on top. I decide, randomly (?) to choose one from the middle. It is Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. Probably my favorite little play in the entire world. There's an excerpt posted on this blog, the part about Mama's sunflowers, new-ironed dresses and coffee. I pick up the book, an edition larger than I've seen. There's a foreward by Donald Margulies. There's an afterword, which I turn to, randomly (?), a specific page, 145. And there, on this page, in a book that I never in a million years would have planned on seeing at a freaking Goin' Postal, on this page is a black and white photo of the studio where Wilder wrote Our Town. It is a picture of Veltin Studio. Which is one of the studios at The MacDowell Colony. Which is the picture posted at the top of my blog, which I had chosen randomly (?) a few weeks ago, not remembering that Veltin was Wilder's hangout.
MacDowell Colony: Where I will be in thirteen days.
But that's not all.
Tonight, after reading book 25 of my FiftyFifty challenge (to read fifty books in 2012 and watch fifty movies ~), I decide to google "domestic fiction," because domestic fiction is the genre I most like to read; it is the genre The Hour of Lead will be labeled upon its publication. (I will be rewriting The Hour of Lead at MacDowell ~). I am wanting to find other domestic fiction book titles. Three pop up on the first page of my iPhone screen: Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard, between sisters, by Kristin Hannah, and Still Alice, by Lisa Genova.
And, wouldn't you know, I happen to have all three of those books on my shelves in my library, books I picked up at Borders when they were going out of business a couple of years ago. Books I have not yet read. In my personal library, I have more than a thousand titles, of which I've read, tops, 60 percent.
But it's a rainy and chilly day here in Kansas City, and so I decide to go ahead and start one of these books. I choose Labor Day first because I like its cover the most: a bowl of peaches, with two outstretched hands, hovering. Besides, Labor Day recently came and went. It's relevant, I think.
Maynard's teen narrator sucks me in, and next thing I know, the story line has me hooked. I am amazed at what is happening in this novel. I am thinking, Why in the hell didn't I think of this? and then ... and then ... I feel compelled to turn to the back of the book and here's what I find, under Acknowledgments: "I offer deep thanks to the MacDowell Colony ~ and all who make it possible ~ for providing the most supportive environment an artist colony (sic ) could hope to encounter, and to the artists with whom I shared residencies at MacDowell and at the Corporation of Yaddo, whose shared love of their work nurtured my own."
I cannot effing believe it. A random google search. Random titles. Titles I already own. A cover to seduce me. And it turns out to have been written by a MacDowell fellow.
Holy shit.
Love you, Mommy and Daddy.

Fifteen hundred words ~

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."
 ~ Raymond Carver

Today the ideas came faster than I could type them. I microwaved an entree and a random sentence flashed in my mind: "Grandma kept a jar of pickles in her purse." On the drive to Walgreen's, this: "On Jan. 11, 2004, the night before his disappearance, Spalding Gray saw Tim Burton's Big Fish, which ends with the line, 'A man tells a story over and over so many times he becomes the story.
In that way, he is immortal.'"
What kind of person carries that around in her head? The same kind of person who has memorized E. E. Cummings's beach-happy poem, "maggie and milly and molly and may" and has the verse at her disposal when she is, say, undergoing a medical procedure and needs some calming.
The same kind of person who knows that E.E. Cummings hated the non-capitalizing of his initials; it was his editor's idea.
The same kind of person who knows that E.E. stands for Edward Estlin.
If I didn't know better, I would say that I must be ovulating. I am most creative, most receptive to new ideas, when I am mid-cycle. Makes sense, if you ask me. It's a time of conception.
My ovaries are aging; they are not dependable. It is peri-menopause, then? Too much caffeine?
***
Regardless of inspiration, I got 1,500 words today on the page. Not as much as I would like, but more than I did yesterday.
Progress.

Counting down the days to MacDowell

In fifteen days, I'll board a Southwest Airlines flight to Manchester, New Hampshire.
From there, I'll take a one-hour shuttle to Peterborough, New Hampshire,
home of The MacDowell Colony's 450-acre wooded artists' retreat.
In fifteen days, I'll meet the many folks I've been emailing. It will be wonderful
to put a face to a name. I will finally figure out how to pronounce this name: "Kyle,"
who, as it turns out, is a girl.
In fifteen days, I'll be shown my private studio in the woods. I'll unpack my suitcase
and set out my supplies. I'll examine the "tombstones" that are already in the
studio. I'll freak out to find Alice Walker's name, or Michael Chabon's, or his wife's, Ayelet
Waldman's. I'll be starstruck. I'll have to say the Hail Mary to calm myself down,
or Psalm 23, which, this past summer, I finally memorized. After I Get My Shit Together (*cold
water splashed on face*), I'll eat dinner (or is it supper there?) with thirty or so other
artists at the colony.
I will probably hyperventilate; I will probably talk too much, because that's what
happens when I am in a new environment; I will probably need to find a toilet Right Effing Now,
because that's what I do when I am in a new environment and I am nervous: my irritable
bowel works itself into a frenzy.
I have already begun losing sleep: I am anxious; I am excited; I am pumped.
Mostly, I am a bit undone about what it is, exactly, that I'll be writing once I get there.
I have great plans to rewrite the novel I started the summer before my dad died (2006).
I have great plans to finish the collection of essays I started this summer.
I have great plans to write more short stories.
***
Today I called the pharmacy to get a refill on my Xanax, a script I so infrequently
use that the prescription number was worn off the bottle, having rolled around in my
purse, unused, for the better part of half a year. I might need the little white pill; might not.
Better be there, though, just in case.

MacDowell Colony fellowship ...

Yesterday, at precisely 2:06 p.m. CST, I received this email:

Dear Kathleen,
I am writing to let you know that we have space available for a Fall residency at The MacDowell Colony. We are happy to offer you a 3 week residency between 9/26/12 and 10/19/12.
Please let us know at your earliest convenience if you are able to accept this offer. Once we hear back from you, I will send further instructions.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
MaryRuth*

To which I immediately replied, hand shaking:

Oh. My. Goodness.
Yes. Yes! YES!!!
I (joyfully) accept your residency offer!
You have made my day, week, month, year.
Gratefully yours ~
Kathleen

To which "MaryRuth" (not her real name) replied:

Wonderful!
I will follow up with formal email and further instructions shortly.
After you receive that email, please let me know if you have
any questions.
Best,
MaryRuth*

And shortly thereafter came this, on Colony "letterhead":

Dear Kathleen,
We are glad to be able to offer you a MacDowell Colony Fellowship
during the Fall/Winter 2012 season.We have a studio set aside for you
from 9/26/2012 to 10/19/2012.  Skide.cmslufe.cudr. dur.d vi'w.xiens.blsuengls
slucs.ufffiejvns.ekthsocieht.shdofke.vbsodured.d.vyspoemruyggjuslv.nslku
ekslsox.wjf';aa;eic.sjdriiilw/fdfules.Djdulw d,sleudllsiec,dkeoslg mslepovhes,
pfkr oixkwodlpv mdkeiduhsl;mboeidhjsl. Pcsmeols jamplwendlsjweibomhlsjs
uwnmv;po ikslmcjwuydh;mlkjut fsjvnkspqwosdlvmcjhyeuifkvmssksk.
Wekdicl dmeldomlspod mslodjcnmwlptdglkmxposmlx;poiwhslmxvcojsm.
Qksolv mnw vsblops jhglasedopldmoe.
Congratulations on your upcoming residency, we look forward
to having you at the Colony!
Best wishes,
Morgan S. Alderman*
Executive Director

*Not her real name

(Once I read "We have a studio set aside for you ... " all the other words
became unreadable. I was in some kind of shock.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"We are glad to be able to offer you a MacDowell Colony Fellowship
during the Fall/Winter 2012 season. We have a studio set aside for you
from 9/26/2012 to 10/19/2012."

"We are glad to be able to offer you a MacDowell Colony Fellowship
during the Fall/Winter 2012 season. We have a studio set aside for you
from 9/26/2012 to 10/19/2012."

"We are glad to be able to offer you a MacDowell Colony Fellowship
during the Fall/Winter 2012 season. We have a studio set aside for you
from 9/26/2012 to 10/19/2012."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We have a studio set up for you ...
We have a studio set up for you...
We have a studio set up for you...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was eating lunch at Chili's in Kansas City North with my daughter, Estee, when the email
came in. I'd been Debbie Downer earlier in the day, feeling sorry for myself. A dead mother.
Inability to get a teaching job. An ever-growing fat roll on my torso. Four-hundred thirty-two dollars left in my checking account after paying the month's bills (with no income to count on).
"Let's go to lunch," my daughter proffered. "You'll feel better."
I dragged my feet out to the car; drove like an old farmer on a slow Sunday to the restaurant; ordered a water; waited for my daughter to decide what she wanted. (Me? Chili's is easy: Get the chicken fajitas.) And while she decided, I got out my iPhone and checked my email.
And there it was, the email that had brought on heart palpitations and a thin layer of sweat.
Later, my daughter told me that she'd thought someone had died, the look on my face.
I couldn't even open the entire email; I made her do it.
"You're gonna like this," she said, smiling broadly, her orthodontically enhanced teeth glistening. (Oh, to be twenty-six again. And beautiful.)
Yeah. I liked it. Told the waitress to change my drink order to a margarita.
It was time to celebrate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The celebration lasted approximately 15 minutes, and then paranoia set in.
I am somewhat neurotic. I am a writer. I am definitely a neurotic writer.
(If you only knew the things I go through to write ... .)

1) This has been a mistake, this offer of residency. There is another person with a name similar to mine and a like-email address. I have received the "We want you" email in error. Next Tuesday, I will receive a "Sorry, but we screwed up" email from MacDowell. "Never mind, Kathleen Stander. We were looking for Kathleen Strander."
2) I will die before Sept. 26. What will it be? An accident? GERD gone BAD? Developing MRSA on that bug-bite looking thing on my chest?
3) The MacDowell Colony will shut down before Sept. 26. Budget cuts.
4) The airplane I am flying on to New Hampshire will crash. I will: a) die in the crash, or b) become mentally incapacitated on account of the crash.
5) I will forget how to write between now and Sept. 26.
6) I will remember HOW to write between now and Sept. 26, but everything will suck.

My Screw-This-Paranoia Plan:

1) Feel the paranoia. Look at what I just wrote up there. Note its patheticness. (Consult dictionary to see if patheticness is even a word ~) Indulge the paranoia for one day only and then let it go.
2) Write for a minimum of five hours every day between now and Sept. 26.
3) Pray.
4) Troll The MacDowell Colony's website every day between now and Sept. 26.
5) Pray some more.

www.macdowellcolony.org

Food memoirs: yummy!

Know that FiftyFiftyMe Challenge that I started back in January? Read fifty books and see fifty movies in one year? Well, I'm on schedule to meet that goal in terms of theaters and movie rentals. But the reading? VERY behind. Me, get behind in reading? Say it isn't so. Very unusual. I enjoy reading more than many people enjoy breathing.
The reading was going too slowly; I wasn't enjoying it. Literary fiction? Turns out it's not my thing. I wanted it to be my thing, just like I wanted hot tea to be my thing, thinking that it was cultured and a little Bohemian and literary, but no matter how much I tried, it turns out I just don't like hot tea. Not with honey, not with lemon. Iced tea? Sure, sign me up. Hot tea? No. I've tried, this tea thing, for about five years now. It's not going to happen for me. I accepted the defeat. I have stuck with coffee, which appeals to me in all its forms ~ hot, cold, lukewarm, iced, frozen.
So what's up with the slow-go with the reading? I was trying to be too cultured, thinking that literary books would make me happy, or smarter, or more refined. Turns out refinement and I don't mesh too well. Marilynne Robinson might have won the Pulitzer for fiction (GILEAD) and the Orange Prize for HOME, but her writing makes me want to pull out pieces of my hair. Check out this passage:
  
          An excerpt from HOME (page 69):
   
 "As she considered the prayer she was not yet disconsolate enough to put into words, the unwelcome realization came to her that she loved Jack and yearned for his approval. This was no doubt inevitable, since it was assumed to be true of the whole family, separately and together, excluding in-laws, who might hever have met him or even heard his name, and who could only be a little amazed by the potency of this collective sentiment if by some means they became aware of it. He was the black sheep, the ne'er-do-well, unremarkable in photographs. None of the very few stories that mentioned him suggested the loss of him could have been wholly regrettable. It was the sad privilege of blood relations to love him despite all. Glory was thirteen when he left for college, having been by that time ignored by him for years. And here she was in middle age feeling the fact of his touchy indifference a judgment on her, so it seemed to her, though he had been so grievously at fault, and her intrusions all those years ago, her excesses, whatever he might have called them, were no such think ~ she had defended them in her mind a thousand times and would defend them to his face if the occasion ever arose, which God forbid, God forbid."

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH.
After nine days ~ nine DAYS! ~ of trying to read this damned book, I made it to page 110 and have learned nothing about anything, only that Glory and her brother are sister and brother and he's aloof and she's milquetoast and their father is dying and now they're both in the same home they grew up in. Occasionally Glory makes Jack coffee; sometimes he smokes a cigarette out on the porch.
AAAARRRRGGGHHHH.
  
Breathe, Kathleen. Breathe.
Always the problem solver (i.e. middle child), I made the decision four days ago to read only what truly interests me (as of this summer): food, and the writing of food and food products.
So I threw HOME by famed and acclaimed literary novelist Marilynne Robinson across the floor; I suggested to Millie that she eat the edges off the boring-ass book. She said No. It wasn't her thing, either. She requested something meatier.
I then went to my bookshelves and started looking for books that were about my favorite subject: eating. First up: A HOMEMADE LIFE: stories and recipes from my kitchen table, by Molly Wizenberg, and this, THIS, is what I was received. On page 19.

     "I know there are a million recipes out there for pound cake, and probably berry versions, too, but as you can see, I consider this one to be very important. It accompanied be through crucial times. It's also delicious, and it's my mother's, and more than any of that, it has the lightest, most delicate crumb I've ever seen on a pound cake. In fact, I'm tempted to call it a butter cake instead, because the word pound is too heavy for what is actually going on here. It's rich, yes, but not too much so, and its crumb is fine and tender. The batter is very smooth, and folded gently around fragile berries and scented with fruity liqueur, it bakes up into the kind of cake that you can't help but want to eat outdoors. Preferably on a picnic blanket, with your mother."

Well. I gobbled up Wizenberg's book in one day. ONE DAY. I would have read it straight through, but there was a shower to take and beds to make and laundry to do and groceries to buy and a dog to let in, let out, let in, let out, let in, let out. And it wasn't a short book: At 313 pages, it was, really, over way too soon. I wanted more from this writer who isn't considered literary, but, GUESS WHAT? is readable! I did not have to reread a single paragraph. I got it from the get go. Wizenberg made me laugh. She made me cry. Really, there were tears, because in the middle of the book, she writes about her dad dying in the family's den, and there's skin mottling going on, and hospice nurses involved, and this kind of thing hit way too close to my heart, but I plowed through my tears and kept going.
When I finished A HOMEMADE LIFE, I went back to my bookshelf and grabbed FINDING MARTHA'S PLACE: My Journey Through Sin, Salvation, and Lots of Soul Food, by Martha Hawkins with Marcus Brotherton. Consider these words about lima beans, from the introduction:

     "The lima beans at Martha's Place are cooked with a whole lot of love. When you put them against your lips they feel plump, like you was smooching the back of your baby grandson's knee. The beans are soft and piping warm, straight out of the pot they was cooked in. They're cooked in together with a lot of good country butter, and flavored with salt and pepper and a few kitchen secrets only a handful of folks know. And if you close your eyes and let them, those lima beans will remind you of sitting at home with all the people you love, and on the supper table in front of you is spread a country banquet on a red-checked cloth, and all of your friends are enjoying themselves and diving in and helping themselves and joking together and having a good time. Those lima beans are on my menu because I know how food can become more than just food. It's what a body uses for change. Like crackers and grape juice passed around at church, food can become what centers things when everything has gone astray."

Now THAT's beautiful writing. Why didn't Martha Hawkins win some kind of literary prize?

Rainy Day Cold

Home today. Sick. Cough with cold, as Forrest Gump would say. Also, it's Columbus Day, and school is out for the kids. Hubby is home, too, only he's been tinkering in the garage for the better part of the day.

I've been in the chair, alternately checking FB and reading through the Sunday paper and several periodicals ("St. Anthony Messenger" and "Instructor" ~ two pubs that represent who I am, I suppose: A Catholic and an Educator.)

I've been subbing this year. Nineteen days, I believe. Don't have any pre-arranged dates this week, but I know the phone will ring incessantly starting at 5:30 a.m.

Still not writing. Outlining a tentative piece: "One Hundred Dollars, One Hundred Days" ~

detailing the life of a sub. I had a strong start, but like most things in my life, I start wholeheartedly and then ... stop, suddenly or with dramatic cessation.

Recently I was diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Makes sense to me. Explains my starts and stops, my inattention to Things Around Me, my indecisiveness, my inability to sit anywhere without shaking my leg.

It's a start, the knowing. As Oprah says, "Once we know better, we do better."

Yesterday I signed up for Dr. Oz's "Transformation Nation." Goal: Lose 50 pounds by my August birthday.

Done that before, the goal setting. How to finish what I start?

Productive day ...

I finally got my laptop, which should lead to writing. On this blog, on the new nonfiction project I have brewing. Should I find the novel I wrote in 2006 (how does a novel go missing?), this laptop will lead to its edit and completion and solicitation.

I have not been writing.

I have not been writing.

I have not been writing.

I will begin writing. One hour a day is my plan.

Also, I want to write a blog post a day, just to check in. Unless I have more important things to say.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy ....

Catfish are jumpin' and the river is high (or something like that) ... .
Well.
School is out and that means one thing: I have time to write and read now; I have time to talk to other people about writing and reading; I have time to plompf my butt down on a worn leather chair at my fave bookstore and turn pages in a beloved dreamlike trance. In short: I am free of grading and lesson planning and 5:30 alarms. Free of mothering 110 eighth graders (which is mostly great, but, hey, a gal needs a break).
Free to blog. Which makes me happy.

Why I write ...

I recently sat down to think about why it is, exactly, that I write. The way I figure it, if I didn't feel compelled to write, and spend anywhere from ten minutes a day to ten hours a day (no kidding, yeah, I've done that ... .) I'd have more time in my day. To clean house. To watch The West Wing with my politically-oriented son. To make my husband a homemade pie. You get the picture. I've had dry periods, where no writing came forth, but then I got cranky and had to pick up a pen to right/write my way out of the funk.
Why is it, exactly, that I write?
This is what I've come up with: I can't seem to NOT write. (So what I've split an infinitive.)
I started writing even before I knew how to write. What was I ... three or four years old? I distinctly remember "writing" stories under Mom's scalloped-trimmed coffee table ... using a skinny felt-tipped marker, or one of Mom's fountain pens. (She always called them "fountain pens," which to this day makes me feel tender about her.)
In second grade I wrote a story about a dog with a 100-foot tail. Won the teacher's seal of approval. My mom saved the story for years, and then it just up and disappeared. I'd really like to see it again. I remember the illustrations, but the words are out of my head.
In seventh grade I joined the school newspaper. Wrote a "Dear Somebody" column, offering advice. "My boyfriend skated with another girl. What do I do?" sort of stuff.
In tenth grade I was named Features Editor of my high school newspaper, which meant something because The Criterion won numerous state awards. Senior year? I was Editor in Chief. I wore business suits to school, high-heeled pumps. Aspired to be the next Jessica Savitch.
In college, I got distracted (Read: pregnant) and then, because I was a mother, left journalism to pursue a career I thought would be family friendly: teaching!
Taught high school English for five years, got burned out, left the field. While teaching, I dabbled in poetry and playwrighting. Wrote, produced and directed a two-act comedy, Trail Mix. Aspired to be the female Neil Simon.
Too much month at the end of the money. Had to get a job. A local newspaper was hiring a receptionist/typist (this dates me, doesn't it?). I typed up press releases and obituaries. Got brave one day and asked the editor if I could write a story. He said yes. Pretty soon I was writing more and more.
Missed teaching. Went back. Went for one year only.
Missed writing for publication. Got hired at a different newspaper. Did obits, press releases, feature stories, covered three local school districts. The paper hired a new managing editor: he gave me a column. Tales from the (mother)hood was born. It ran weekly, was my pride and joy.
Feeling civic duty, I ran for a school board seat and was elected. Could no longer work for the local paper. Missed teaching. Went back to it.
Two years in, I missed writing. Put myself on a deadline to write a novel, the summer of 2006. Wrote from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. six days a week; took an hour for lunch and to stretch out my neck and shoulders. Ever typed nine hours a day? I lost 28 pounds that summer and by the time mid-August rolled around I'd done it: written a 130,000 word literary novel called The Hour of Lead. Solicited two agents. Struck down twice. School started. Teaching sucks my energy; I quit marketing my book.
Winter of 2006-07, my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. I took six weeks off from school to take care of him while my mom was doing her own dying in a local hospital.
He died in front of me on a muggy, rainy Saturday night. June 30, 2007.
I didn't write for nine months. A pregnancy of drought.
And I missed it.
So I started this blog.
Why is it you write, dear reader?

Feeling sad/creative/financially reckless

Consider it a method of dealing with my-dad's-been-dead-for-two-years-grief, but I've been keeping uber-busy these last few days.
Bought twenty-two new frames for family pictures. Now all I have to do is get them hung in some sort of attractive manner.
Been playing the old vinyl LP's since Tuesday. Have listened to MJ's THRILLER 19 times. The children are getting very annoyed with that album.
Lots of retail therapy. Hundreds of dollars spent on household items. What is it about psychic pain that makes me want to buy kitchen linens?
Wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about how Stevie Nicks's music saved my life back in 1982 (long story). Got brave and e-mailed it to The New Yorker.
What have I got to lose?