Endings and Beginnings - IWSG April 2025

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of our ninja leader Alex Cavanaugh. Thank you to April co-hosts: Jennifer Lane, L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre. For links to all contributors, click here.

This month’s optional question: What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?

I’m not big into fantasy so this question isn’t my bailiwick, but a butter beer with Hermione Granger might be kind of fun.

So, writing related. No. Sorry. Life related. 

This week marks a new era for me. 

I started this blog to deal with the emotional fallout related to unexpected job elimination from a long-term employer. Middle Passages led to some freelance writing and one of my freelance jobs resulted in an offer of a position for my town council on aging. When I accepted it I promised myself I’d keep writing, no matter what. I’m proud to have done that, getting up at 5:30 in the morning, five days a week to spend an hour writing before work. But on Friday April 4, I’ll be turning my alarm off permanently. At noon that day, I’ll be officially retired.

I let out a long breath as I typed that last sentence.

Being used to so much structure in my life, I’m not sure what shape unlimited free time will take, but I hope I’ll buckle down and focus on getting one of my darn books published. Over the last year while working on a revision for book #4 as well as one for book #2, I stopped doing anything query related. It left me disheartened and it was hard to write and query while working and keeping up a home, pretty-much singlehandedly.  

I’m honest enough to recognize that other people find a way to do it all. I however, have not.

That says something, and I know it. With all the time in the world, I wonder if I’ll call my own bluff and dedicate my energy toward publication. If anything, I’d love to shut off that nasty voice in my brain that says, “It’s not that you didn’t make time. You’re just not good enough.”

In the meantime, I do have one plan for early retirement. Fifteen years ago I worked through the lessons in The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, which I’ve referred to so many times here in Middle Passages. Between morning pages, artist’s dates and the weekly lessons, I determined my future course. Without The Artist’s Way, I’m pretty sure my four novels would never have been written.  

The book sits on my bookshelf with other treasured reading. After a vacation down south to clear my head, I plan to open it up again.

 

On Walking and Artist Dates - IWSG November 2024

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. Thank you to November co-hosts: Diedre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard , Kim Lajevardi, and JQ Rose. To find links to all contributors, click here.

November optional question: What creative activity do you engage in when you're not writing?

Years ago I worked through the twelve-week lessons from The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. One of the requirements was to take a weekly “artist date,” which could be any activity designed to inspire creativity. Unemployed at the time and not keen on spending money, an artist date for me meant a walk with my camera.

Having worked indoors for more than half of my life by then, walking outside any time I wanted introduced me to a world I'd missed. Everything I encountered felt nuanced and layered. Two dories reflecting on still water at dawn. A paint-peeling house emerging from a thick fog at the edge of a salt marsh. Egrets stick-legging through the eelgrass. A golden retriever balancing on the gunnel of a lobster boat as it trundled into the harbor. Each time I took a walk, I found myself savoring these vignettes, taking them into my heart, if you will. It was during this time I learned to look east during sunset to find a more subtle beauty, and that winter light offers something ethereal so it's worth bundling up to catch it. Even now I think that spell of unemployment was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. After each outing I downloaded my photos and more often than not, wrote a blog post about something I’d witnessed.

These days, my writing is pretty much at a standstill. A reader/proofreader I trust is going through my last project, so I can’t fuss with that right now. I have no will or desire to start anything new but I don’t want to stop the practice of writing. For the past month I’ve been forcing myself to journal during my early morning writing hour. Truth be told, it feels like homework and I give myself weekends off for good behavior. Thankfully, I woke up last Saturday with an artist date in mind. Before I could talk myself into chores, I hopped into the car.

It helps when things seem fresh and new, so I took myself to a park one town over that I've rarely been to and not for a very long time. The land was purchased by the navy in 1906 and served as an ammunition depot until the early '70's when the government declared it surplus. Paved roads remain from its former incarnation. Rambling dirt paths skirt the river. The location is popular with dog walkers and joggers and it was busy enough that I felt the company, but peaceful enough for me to reflect on my own thoughts. I have a new phone and since the upgrade from an iPhone 8 to a 16, improvements to the camera are notable.

So there I was, walking amid the skitter of falling leaves, watching kids trying to skim rocks on the river while imagining gunmetal ships docked at old wharfs. The sun is low in the sky these days and my phone could actually capture the sparkles on the water. A cormorant circled and I waited, hoping it would land on an old piling and lift its wings to dry them. When it did, relief floated through me. 

I may not have a writing project to work on, but at least I came up with an IWSG post.

What creative activity inspires you?

How it is Now - IWSG November 2022.

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of the amazing and generous  Alex Cavanaugh. To find links to other monthly contributors, click here.  Thank you to November co-hosts: Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!

The writing hasn’t been kind to me lately. Back in the day when I felt stuck, I took an artist’s date which I learned to do while completing the lessons in The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. The writer suggests taking regular time-outs from your "art" to pursue an activity that might spur creativity. For me, that usually involved going on a walk with a camera. I’d click images of scenes around the area I love so much, then go home and write about something I'd photographed. Once I wrote a vignette about a house blurred by fog and it ended up inspiring my third novel.

But because of life (and cell phones), I haven’t taken a walk with my actual camera in a long time. When I took it out of the cupboard recently, the last photo on the memory card was from 2019.

A few days later, I took a ride down to the harbor with the camera in the passenger seat, just to see how it felt. In truth, it felt weird. Who uses an actual camera now, anyway? But really the issue was something bigger. I didn’t grow up near the ocean. After almost 40 years of living by the sea, I’m still in awe of  my surroundings but as in every other realm of my life these days, there's something missing. 

Before two years ago, my walking habit was to keep my eyes open and frame picture after picture trying to capture the essence of what made me feel so joyful. These days though, what used to feel fun is hard work. Nevertheless, as flat as I felt that afternoon at the harbor, I was there. The egrets were, too. My heart wasn't in it much, but it gave me a little peace when I got home and downloaded the pictures to find my eyes still work.

All I've Got- IWSG July 2018

 

It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader. Co-Hosts: Nicki Elson, Juneta Key, Tamara Narayan, and Patricia Lynne! To read posts from other IWSG members, click here. 

This month, the OPTIONAL IWSG Day question is: 

What are your ultimate writing goals, and how have they changed over time (if at all)? 

I feel like I’ve written this post before, but here goes. My ultimate goal is to publish my novels via a traditional publishing process. 

Eight or nine years ago, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron changed my life. Recently unemployed, I’d determined that writing HAD to be a part of my new incarnation but wasn’t sure how that requirement would take shape. I’d blogged like mad for a while and my essays here on Middle Passages helped me to shape my writing and find my voice. Then I freelanced, writing magazine articles (fun) and resumes (a skill learned during my former employment and not so fun) until I began to wonder what was next. Perhaps like many folks, I thought (naively), it would be “neat” or “cool” to write a book, not actually thinking I could, until an acquaintance suggested I complete The Artist’s Way course. Essentially, the daily and weekly exercises therein help participants eliminate real or imagined barriers that stifle creativity. In other words, The Artist’s Way dared me to try.

I met that challenge by managing to complete one rough novel and one I will call “better,” after which I amplified my goal to improve my writing and complete a publishable novel. The jury is out on that folks, as I query my third novel and approach the point on a fourth where I'll share it with critical readers.

This much I know now. Writing the best book I can, one that will attract an agent, one that will sell, is so much more than “neat” or “cool,” that it’s hard to put it into words. The process is as energizing and enriching as it is grueling. Sometimes words like daunting and discouraging and even soul-sucking apply. At the same time, I’m as much in love with my stories as I am sick to death of them. They’re my babies. My loves. They’ve given me almost as much joy and angst as my flesh and blood child. And yet, while I’ll be forever proud at what I’ve accomplished to date, my current road is such a tough one, I wonder I’ll ever achieve publication.

 

But if we’re open to them, there are messages in the universe to encourage us to carry on. Today, I read the following:

You have three choices in life. Give up. Give in, or, give it all you've got. 

Lord help me, I’m pretty sure there’s only one choice there.

What has it taken for you to meet your writing goals? 

Wishing all my American readers a Happy Independence Day!

Hand Made

My handwriting has returned. The chicken-scratch that has sufficed for over twenty years shows distinct signs of improvement, as a result of an unrelenting requirement from The Artist’s Way to write three Morning Pages longhand each day.

Since the fourth grade, I have alternated between straight, up-and-down printing and a flowing, right handed cursive--two styles of handwriting so radically different that I wonder what a graphologist would say. However, in my long career working as a recruitment manager, interviewing candidates face-to-face all day long and conducting hour-long telephone interviews as a regular part of business, my two writing techniques morphed into a messy shorthand scrawl, designed to catch relevant details while applicants spoke. Other than those barely-legible scribbles, I conducted written business via the computer.

Two months ago, I starting my Morning Pages and after the first few wrist-aching attempts, realized I was much more comfortable writing cursive. Now, my red Artist’s Way notebook is filled with Palmer-derived lettering. I use the same blue pen and each time I open the book I marvel at page after page of consistent, flowing script.

Before Morning Pages came into my life, all my writing occurred via the keyboard—Middle Passages, my two classes, timed writing, you name it; it all took place in front of the screen. Back space, delete, cut and paste, the ease of this writing-at-the-computer-addiction was so complete that the idea of attempting to capture anything of substance longhand flat out scared me--until a few days ago.

Last week, as I sipped coffee at a tiny table at the French Café while waiting for the library doors to open, an entry in The Artist’s Way inspired me to yank out the aforementioned red notebook. Grasping my pen, I opened to a blank page and began working on something I hadn't touched in several weeks. When the hands on the clocked hit 10:00, I climbed into the jeep for the short trip to the library, before realizing I’d forgotten the power cord and the laptop was dead. Rather than driving home, I opened the red notebook again. If you read Middle Passages regularly, you’ll remember that five pages later, I was pretty darn tickled with myself.

The pride from that minor accomplishment stuck with me, to the point that before my library visit this week, I stopped at Walgreen’s and bought a blue-spiral lined notebook. Pulling a chair up in front of my favorite polished cherry table situated in the sun underneath the palladium window, I grabbed my medium-point Paper Mate and went at it again. This time eight pages spewed out, which in longhand only comes to something like 1500 words, but felt like a marathon to me.

I’m not sure what is going on here, but cross your fingers, because so far, as long as the handwriting flows, it seems like words do too.

How do you write? On the computer or long-hand? Do you feel a difference?

I Believe

Last week, I penciled a self-imposed deadline to work on a stalled writing project I have ignored for several weeks into my day planner. Flipping the page this morning, the note stared up at me. When possible, Thursday is library day, so I printed out my existing document, planning to settle in among the stacks to read, proof, and edit it before writing anything more.

Wrong.

Having stashed the printed pages inside my copy of The Artist’s Way, I stopped at the French Café in our town center for a cup of coffee before the library opened. Claiming a marble-topped table in a bright corner by the plate-glass window, I opened the book to the page marked with a torn piece of paper, and realized that these lessons continue to communicate to me proof of synchronicity. While fingering the draft of my neglected document protruding from inside the back cover, I read:

"Midway through a project, the perfectionist decides to read it all over, outline it, see where it’s going.

And where is it going? Nowhere, very fast.

The perfectionist is never satisfied. The perfectionist never says, “This is pretty good, I’ll keep going…

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough—that we should try again.”

After finishing the chapter, I removed the piece I had shoved into the spine of the book and folded it in half. Searching my purse for my favorite blue ball-point, I opened my red spiral notebook and began to write.

Five--yes ma'm I said five--pages later, I got up and drove to the library.

Withdrawal

Stalking the circuit around the living and dining rooms, across the 1990's blue and beige patchwork kitchen, I rub my arms up and down. Why do they itch so? Purple elephants, or are they pink? That’s what comes next, right? Of course, the newspaper would have to sprawl over the counter, like a gangly teenager, all elbows and knees, in-your-face slouching across a too-narrow space. Oh God. Library books. Four stacked and waiting to be returned on the desk, another open and face-down on the coffee table; the one I can't see, bookmarked and taunting from the bureau next to the bed.

Huh! Don’t look at the bookshelves. Six rows double-stacked. No you don't. Just. Turn. Away. How can I do this? Impossible. Magazines, Bon Appetite, Food and Wine, slick covers sliding off of each other, a corner folded where I left off reading last month’s Yankee. My heart. It’s skipping beats, it’s pounding too hard. I can’t breathe. I CAN’T BREATHE! Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Inhale, exhale, force the air in, blow out. I'm thirsty. Water. A glass of water, pure and cleansing from the pitcher in the fridge. Drink it down. Shake out your shoulders. Sit at the computer. Write because it means not reading. Work on the piece you have ignored for three weeks. Write anything. Make up a story, a distraction. Travel inside, dig down; take a backhoe, at least a shovel. Go after it.

Does it count if I read what I have written? What about the blogs? Those too? But I have to review at least a few. What about the lesson from my on-line class? Surely that's OK?

You have got to be kidding me. I cannot do this. I cannot stop myself from reading for an entire week.

It has been 24 hours.

I’ve never smoked. I don’t use recreational drugs. I enjoy wine on the weekends and sometimes think it would be hard to give up. But today, I know my real addiction.

Lesson Four: The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron:

“If you feel stuck in your life or in your art, few jump starts are more effective than a week of reading deprivation…For most artists, words are like tiny tranquilizers…Like greasy food, it clogs our system…It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions, we are actually filling the well. Without distractions, we are once again thrust into the sensory world…With no newspaper to shield us, a train becomes a viewing gallery. With no novel to sink into (and no television to numb us out) our evening becomes a vast savannah in which furniture—and other assumptions—get rearranged…Reading deprivation is very a powerful tool—and a very frightening one. Even thinking about it can bring up enormous rage. For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own.”

Between reading blogs and the newspaper, I’ve slipped up already. But I edited and re-wrote something I’ve been ignoring since January 21.

Still though, I’m not sure I can do this. The burning flames of withdrawal hell have nothing on a bookless me.

Cross your fingers.

Old Enemies

An assignment in The Artist’s Way, requires that we record a real life “horror story” that resulted in “damage to our creative self-worth.” Per the author, “It is necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them.” For the most part, I think she anticipates that enemies are others--outside parties who question the artist’s skills. In my case, the enemy resided within. I can’t change the past, but I can recognize it, mourn it, and crumple it up in the fireplace before touching it with a match. Join me if you like, in front of the crackling flames.


At the end of my freshman year of college, I jumped off the “undecided” fence I was straddling and dipped myself into black ink by declaring myself a Journalism Major. The school hosted a small department--two cranky full-time professors who may or may not have once been journalists, one part-time teacher who also ran the sports section of the local newspaper. He was the one I liked the most.

Toward the end of sophomore year, our “final exam” in Cranky Professor #2’s class involved conducting a bona fide interview with a public official. I was shy, shy, shy, and back then; it took little for what confidence I had to trickle out of me like water from a low-flow sprinkler. Too scared to knock on the door of some stranger, I constructed my own little press conference by convincing a friend in class that we could interview the Chief of Police together.

She knew better, I’m thinking, but agreed. Off we went, making sure to write and ask our own questions, take our own notes, and author our own feature articles. Our collaboration, if you call it that, occurred because we sat in the same place at the same time. Since writing was always the easy part; my article flowed from me. The story contained a stellar hook; I remember it went something like: “As a boy, Joe Smith always wanted to be a policeman. Now he’s proud to be chief.” I passed in my completed assignment feeling pretty darn tickled with myself.

The day he returned our graded articles, the teacher walked around handing them out one by one. As he approached my desk, I gasped at the red “F” at the top of my paper--staring in disbelief at his comment: “Miss M--- says this is her story!!” I looked in shock at my friend and she waved her paper marked C+. Of course I should have waited until after class, but instead raised my hand and asked why he failed me. He offered a condescending comment her paper getting in first, and rather than bawling in class, I stomped out.

It was clear, whether it was his plan or not, the professor had called my bluff. I was a chicken, and chickens don’t make it in the rough and challenging field of investigative journalism. It galled however, the way he arbitrarily assigned the failing grade to me. Not that I was wishing it on my friend; I wasn’t. But she never claimed it was “her” story; he never asked. The F landed with me simply because hers landed closer to the top of his pile.

In looking back I thank God, that I, and not the friend I had coerced, was the one that got the F. Back then though, the unequal punishment chewed at me. Deep down I knew I had dug my own hole; I had to build a ladder and climb out. The next day I marched up the steps to the professor’s office in my wooden clogs. During that meeting, in which he informed me that my paper would have been graded an A, I was successful making my point about the unequal treatment in his grading. He granted me a second chance to complete the assignment.

Leaving his office, I walked the three miles to town and interviewed the Postmaster, returned to my room, pounded out an article on my manual typewriter and marched it back to the professor’s office. I remember the hook to that story too: “Some people dislike their jobs, but the Postmaster of Winooski never feels out of sorts.” Grade on that one: A-

Sadly though, after I proved myself, I caved. Rather than admitting I could, indeed, conduct interviews with strangers, and write a damn good story to boot, I rationalized all over the place about how unjust the punishment had been. I wasn’t going to put up with it, no sir. Within the week, I confided my woes to the head of the English Department and switched majors. Two years later I graduated with no clue as to what to do.

The irony to this story of which I am not proud, is that seven years after that life-altering class, I fell into a career in an HR Recruitment role in which I spent anywhere from 50% to 90% of the time interviewing strangers. Unfortunately, the position did not require me to write.

Should have, would have, and could have… nothing now but phrases to warm my hands by. If I had toughed it out all those years ago though, I might have learned to do both.

Did you have enemies to your creative self-worth? How did you banish them?

The Things We Are Supposed to See

I may have mentioned that I am ophthalmologically challenged. Nah, it’s not a word, but I was going for something more original than “blind as a bat.” The only place I step without my glasses is from the bed to the shower in the morning, and as soon as I’ve toweled off, those babies are on my face to stay. I was a dedicated contact lens girl for about thirty years, until middle-aged eyes decided to dry up and reject those cellophane wrappers. So it appears I am four-eyes for life, since I’ve checked out laser surgery and as it stands today, it’s not an option for me.

Why does of this matter to you? Because yesterday—at the recommendation of Paula, (please check out her blog and beautiful paintings) I started The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, billed as a course in “discovering and recovering your creative self” —getting as far as the “Basic Tools” chapter—which explains the course requirement for “Morning Pages.”

I’m sure so many of you know all about this, but I ask your indulgence, because it’s new for me. Basically, Julia says that first thing in the morning, every morning, throughout the life of the course but hopefully for longer, you need to write three pages, long-hand, stream of consciousness, on anything that comes to mind, “a brain drain” Julie calls it, “the primary tool of creative recovery.” I interpret Morning Pages as a way to clear the, um, clutter, out of your brain to leave it clean and fresh and receptive to creativity.

“Oh right,” I thought, upon reading about them yesterday. “Like I’m going to fit that in. Hmmm. Does she mean as soon as I get up? No way. Well, maybe I could do it after school drop-off, before I sit down to the computer. Still though, it seems rather—demanding don’t you think? Every day? First thing? That’s going to mean getting up earlier. Seriously—every day? Oh well, maybe I’ll buy a notebook over the weekend and give it a try— I suppose that can’t hurt, too much, right?” And so it went.

Until, this morning, when I received the gift of an extra sleep-in, because my daughter has no school. After my husband kissed me goodbye, I rolled over, and glancing at my bedside table, caught sight (albeit, a blurry one) of a blue toile cloth-bound journal, a gift to me, which has perched untouched, around which we’ve dusted, since August. “Hmmm” again. “Morning pages? Nice book. It’s kind of small, might be cheating. Could always write more then three pages to even it out. Maybe, just for this morning I'll see how it feels—”

So, with no glasses, in the gray, predawn light, with my eyes about two inches from the book, I began to write—letting it all out, not caring about punctuation or spelling, still in bed, leaning on my elbow, my hand cramping, but scribbling anyway.

Engrossed and focused, I poured out words until I had occasion to look up--

and scream “Oh sh_t!” at huge black shape standing in front of the picture window of our first floor bedroom, no more than twelve feet from me. “What the heck is that?” I panted, while scrabbling at my bureau for my glasses, all the while trying to untangle myself from the sheets so I could run. Really, it could have been a man, it could have been a bear, I just couldn’t tell.

Sorry for the interruption Julia, I know we are probably not supposed to stop, but once the glasses were on, I saw two deer, lifting and placing thin legs through the backyard path beside the window; and as if she knew I could see her now, one turned her head and stared at me, soft eyed and still, drinking me in, a five second gaze that said, “Good Morning Liza. This is what you were meant to see.” And then, turning away, the two does stepped up the hill, followed by their hiccupping trail, folding themselves through the tight-leafed rhododendrons lining our yard. I watched one small tail flipping as they disappeared.

The Artists Way is a twelve week course. My two week borrow from the library won’t cut it. Hello Amazon? I need to buy a book.