Conquering the List

My sister-in-law made me a hand-made book journal for Christmas last year and I set a goal at the beginning of 2013 to see if I could read fifty-two books in fifty-two weeks.  This year offered up a fair share of struggles. Burying my head in a book has always provided an escape. Fifty-three books later, Happy New Year, (and happy reading) to you all!  (I still have twenty-six books on my TBR list.  Hello, 2014!)

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

The Doctor’s Lady, Jody Hedlund

Emma, Jane Austen

The Book of Ruth, Jane Hamilton

The Saint of Lost Things, Christopher Castellani

A Kiss from Maddelana, Christopher Castelani

Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwartz

Low Country Summer, Dorothea Beton Frank

The Forresters, Emily Perkins

Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead

The House on Fortune Street, Margot Livesy

The Witch of Little Italy, Suzanne Palmieri

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D, Nichole Bernier

All This Talk of Love, Christopher Castellani

Nowhere but Home, Liza Palmer

Coronado, Denis Lehane

More Like Her, Liza Palmer

Peaches for Father Frances, Joanne Harris

The Midwife of Hope River, Patricia Harmor

Looking for Me, Beth Hoffman

Free to a Good Home, Eve Mont

I’ll be Seeing You, Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan

Before I go to Sleep, S.J. Watson

The Beacon Trees, Karen White

The Bright Forever, Lee Martin

Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner

With No one as Witness, Elizabeth George

All that I am, Anna Funder

Minding Frankie, Maever Binchy

All New People, Anne Lamott

Happy All the Time, Laurie Colwin

The Lucky One, Nicholas Sparks

Porch Lights, Dorothea Beton Frank

Let the Great World Spin, Column McCann

When she was Gone, Gwendolyn Gross

Where or When, Anita Shreve

Defending Jacob, William Landay

The Other Mother, Gwendolyn Gross

Some Assembly Required, Lynn Kiele Bonasia

Coffin Ship, the Wreck of the Brig St. John, William Henry

Death Comes to Pemberly, TD James

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O’Farrell

Bridget Jones’ Diary, Helen Fielding

Between the Lines, Mastering the Subtle art of Novel Writing, Jessie Page Morrell

The flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey

Season to Taste, Molly Birnbaum

The Lemon Orchard, Luanne Rice

The book of Someday, Diane Dixon

Three Women, Marge Piercy

Letters from Skye, Elspeth Dunn

While I was Gone, Sue Miller

Object Lessons, Anna Quindelin

Merry Christmas

Wishing you joy, peace and a 2014 filled with blessings.

Timed Writing Exercise

I’m at a breather-place with the current project and struggling to find blog topics, but aware I need to keep writing.  At the suggestion of Writer’s Digest, I did a thirty minute timed writing using the following words:  lighthouse, rabbits, rosebush and ice skates. 

Yes, afterwards I edited. 

Try it.  It was fun.

Lara looked forward to sketching the first patterns on the surface.  Virgin ice, six inches deep, untouched but for three-toed prints.  Bird chains tiptoeing down the snow-covered ice in front of the lighthouse replica, the whimsy of some long ago Taubert—a focal piece to the topiary gardens terracing down to the water.  High above, the gabled mansion peered over the edge of the hill like a conscience, Tory-black chimney-tops poking above cypress and pine.   She looped a figure eight, picturing the paint on the house now blistered and peeling, prize winning rose bushes riddled with black spot.

   

Her mother used to go on about what it took to maintain the home, chefs and housekeepers, a trove of gardeners.  But there hadn’t been a Taubert living there in twenty years.  For the last fifteen, Len Michaels had been the only permanent gardener, appearing two days a week to clip the towering rabbits, the green elephant, the Dr. Seuss trees with marshmallow shapes. 

Way back when, she inquired why he didn’t ask for more hours.  He’d shrugged.  “Get paid by the bank.  Get what I get.”  A lawn service mowed in the summer.  In the winter, plows kept the driveway clear.  But she’d given up worrying about the footprints she left when she tramped down to the lake carrying her ice skates.  No one shoveled the walks, because no one came.  Ever.  In the middle of January, snow lay untouched, a sea of white. 

For the last fifteen years, she’d imagined the day she would cut across the woods to find a car parked in the driveway, hear glasses tinkling on the patio, the thwack of croquet mallets. Remembered the eyes of the boy she’d met fishing from the deck of the old lighthouse twenty years ago.  The nephew of one of the Tauberts, who’d appeared one brilliant summer and then so soon had been gone. 

She caught something out of the corner of her eye.  Sticking her toe pick into the ice half-way through a turn, Lara jolted to a stop.  Something wasn’t right.   She squinted toward the house.  A puff of grey smoke coiled from one of the chimneys. 

T'is the Season

I drove the long way home after an appointment last week.  Since Thanksgiving was so late this year folks, including us, seem to have jumped right into Christmas.  I figured I’d see a few light displays.  It was foggy, even drizzling a bit, and yet, for me the stars were aligned.  Number one I had the camera.  Number two, there was no wind.  I arrived at the harbor to low tide but a still reflection.  A half a mile away, Meeting Pond mirrored the lights on the town common. Last year my husband gave me a mini-tripod I keep in my car and I set it up on the cement.  It’s a good thing it was dark, because I looked like a contortionist, squatting down to [squirrel] level, squinting at the viewfinder.  

I read something recently.  Celebrating each day leading up to the holiday puts less pressure on the day itself.  Oh yeah.  Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a season. . 

I’m in for that.

Karma vs. the Check Book

 This is December's post of Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group.  For links to other posts on writing related, anxiety-type topics, click here.

Last spring, Grub Street offered a novel writing course locally, and I jumped at the chance to take it, though not without guilt.  When I got down to it, I could afford to pay for the class, but was it right to spend that kind of money on myself?  What would I have to show for it?   Nothing I could touch or store on a shelf.  But then I remembered something that helped me rationalize.  I’d written an article several months earlier and payment wasn’t scheduled until publication, the month the class started.  My fee would cover the Grub Street cost.  Bazinga.  I ran to the computer to pay.

  

When that class ended, the teacher asked if we would be interested in taking another session.  As much as I wanted to, dollar-sign guilt fluttered up again.  But get this.  The same week, a local editor asked me to write another article, this time with a much closer publication date. Yeehaa!  Sign me up.

So now, I'm finished with session two.  Grub Street is offering another class after the beginning of the year.  They switch things up and focus on different aspects of novel writing so it will cover new material.  I know how much this effort is helping me improve, so this time when the teacher asked who’d be interested, I raised my hand.  I didn’t even consider that the bill would come due at holiday time.

So here’s the synchronicity.  When life happened last winter and I had to take on more hours at work, I scaled way back on pitching articles, or shopping myself as a freelancer.  Anything that comes my way is gravy right now.  So here I am, all, “Damn the guilt, I’m paying for the third class anyway” when I get an email from the same editor asking for another article. 

Serve me up some mashed potatoes. We start back January 13.

Blessings Counted

This year, Thanksgiving comes to my family amid changes.  Faces that should be at the table won’t be.  Less family, fewer chairs, smaller turkeys.  Who knew, when my husband and I volunteered to take the holiday off his mother’s shoulders almost twenty years ago, we’d claim ownership to a guest list that would often exceed thirty?  Somehow we managed to seat them all.  It warms me that our twenty-five year old niece calls Thanksgiving at our house her favorite holiday.

Of course I expected at some point things would change. Kids grow up, schedules conflict, people move.  But expecting isn’t the same as experiencing. Folks seem to enjoy Thanksgiving in our little world.  Tables that stretch from the dining room to the far end of the living room.  A bar we are forced to set up in the garage.  I crossed my fingers that we’d keep our tradition going a little longer.

  

I wish I knew last Thanksgiving, that 2013 would be the one that would be different. That illness would wrap its fingers around one.  That geography would claim several more.  I would have taken a moment to pause during last year’s flurry of gravy making and potato mashing to mark the moment.  All that family surrounding us.  Had I been conscious of the pending adjustment, I would have made a point to sear the joy of that day deep into my mind.  Or better yet, my heart.

We’re still hosting the holiday. There will be nineteen at the table.  But as I roll out pie crusts, I’ll be conscious of those not with us.  Those flying in inclement weather.  Driving on icy roads.  I’ll say a prayer.  I’ll baste the turkey.  I’ll be delighted our daughter doesn’t have to work.  I’ll give my husband a hug.  Most of all, I’ll give a good long look at the family present and acknowledge what we still have.  Then I’ll offer up gratitude for last year, and all the Thankgivings that have gone on before.

Wishing you all a joyful holiday, surrounded by those you love.

T.J.C. March 22, 1922-November 28, 2003.  I miss you, Dad.