Week by Week

My husband joined me for a walk last Saturday, and we ended up down by the harbor, where a new home for the town sailing club is taking shape.  It’s a shingled building with porches and decks as well as a high widow’s walk, accessible by steps from the outside. So, of course we climbed up there.  We’ve seen all manner of views of our harbor over the years, but being this high, in this place was new.  Our muted seaside autumn was on display, as well as a cloud line marking a potential bout of rain.  After taking a few photos, we continued our walk, optimistic that the storm would hold off.  It didn’t.  We returned to the car soaked.

This weekend, only the oaks and ash remain covered with leaves.  A mid-week nor’easter stalled over us for two days, hammering us with 60 mph gusts and pounding squalls.  By Friday, our yard was littered in branches.  Out in the woods behind us, a leaning pine tree finally gave up, splintering yet another tree on the way down.  Our driveway was so covered in wet leaves I was tempted to shovel them, like snow.  

But then, as always after a big storm like that, the air freshens and clears.  A week later, I took another harbor walk.   

 Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Release Day - A Lizard's Tail

Happy release day!  Today Bish Denham releases her story, A Lizard's Tail featuring a sassy lizard who travels on an adventure outside of his home and comfort zone, while learning lessons in humility and the importance of friendship and family.   Bish has a musical style to her prose that makes the reader feel they're following right along during Marvin's quest to save his homeland from a feral cat. I finished this delightful story in one go.  I only wish my daughter were young again, so I could have  plunked myself down on a rocker and pulled her onto my lap, so we could experience this story together.

Here is Bish's blurb:

When a feral cat threatens the lives of all who live at Stone Wall, Marvin knows his destiny has finally arrived. But how can a vain young lizard get rid of such a dangerous enemy?

A Lizard's Tail is available on Amazon.

Congratulations to Bish!

A Past Present

We had a weekend away, taking the five-hour ride back to our college campus where Mr. Middle Passages and I met, for the wedding of his roommate's daughter who also attended our alma mater. Roommate's wife also graduated from there, and the four of us have a long history together.  Too many stories to tell, but let's just say this wedding and beautiful beginning, in a place that holds so many heart-shaping memories delivered mega doses of nostalgia.

We hadn't been up there in nine years and things on campus had changed a lot.  Other things, not so much.

For starters, the view of the Adirondack Mountains across Lake Champlain, from Burlington, Vermont still reaches down and plucks deep inside of me.

There is the view from across campus.  That hasn't changed.  I used to be able to see this from my dorm room.  Imagine those peaks covered with snow, as they were, for most of the school year.

Back on campus, there's a word garden now.  They've placed all manner of words etched in stone for visitors to arrange in contemplative and meaningful ways.  This was the first set I saw.

 

Okay.  I couldn't resist.  Our daughter will be making caramel apples for parents weekend at school.  I heeded the advice from the picture above this one, and sent her this photo as inspiration.

The view along Route 7, in Shelburne, VT.  That hasn't changed either.

On the way back, we stopped in my home town and took a walk to stretch our legs.  Here's a place where beauty remains constant.  So many memories...I learned to swim in this lake, but the little beach where I learned is long gone.

Keeping with the "way back" theme, we had dinner with all manner of family in the house where I grew up.  Brother and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins catching up cousins from as far away as Australia, and another long walk after  dinner.  When we woke up today, I downloaded my pictures, and found this.

 My contribution to the word garden.  Seems fitting to end this way.

Wishing you a wonderful week.

Extra Benefits

Back when I started what I call my new phase in life, post layoff from a long-term employer, I walked.  A lot.  Two or three, sometime four miles, five days a week.  I took my camera, often I listened to music, on occasion the only thing I listened to was my own brain.  Whatever.  For the longest time, I felt like I was seeing the world for the first time.  I stumbled on so many things I’d never experienced before, inspiring things.  Things that helped me to write.

But then, as is so often the case, life got in the way.  Bottom line, in the past year, I've barely walked at all.

Until two weeks ago.  My employer offered us an opportunity to take part in a twelve week heart healthy class for free, and I signed up.  During the first class, we were each given a pedometer, which we are to wear every day.  Now, here's the thing.  It may be called a pedometer but it's more like a conscience.  Knowing I have that thing strapped to me has forced me to be aware of how much (or little) activity I’ve been getting.  To that end, I’ve started walking after work. It eats into writing time, but I guess I call that a compromise.  I mean, you have to be alive to write, right?  The first week, my cumulative count was nineteen miles.  As I write this, for the second week, I'm approaching twenty-two.  That includes all the walking I do during day. But still.  From zero to twenty in under two weeks. That's what I call traction.

And so, during my afternoon perambulations, I’m back to taking pictures, albeit with my cell phone instead of the camera.  Not great quality, but the results offer up another reason why walking matters.  I get to see cool stuff. 

IWSG October 2014. The Truth of it

This is my October post for Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group and guess what?  Amazing Alex and his minion of helpers will be publishing a free eBook to benefit all writers - The IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond and it will include posts from this month.  The eBook will be free and available for all eReaders by early December.

Five years ago, corporate America and family occupied most of my time.  When the grind of the day job got to me, like millions of people, I’d muse, Gee, wouldn’t it be cool to write a novel?  I imagined myself working in a café part-time, so I had time to write the book, which was kind of like thinking it would be cool to win the lottery. And, well,  I don’t play the lottery.

Then, in a workforce-reduction, expense management strategy, corporate-downsizing or whatever buzz-phrase suits your mood, my employer dropped-kicked me across the parking lot, and within twenty-four hours of that pink-slip event, I started writing.  Not a novel. Nothing like a little layoff to call that bluff. No, I wrote personal essays–unemployment therapy I suppose, but so much more.  I wrote blog post after blog post having recognized within hours of my job elimination whatever I did next in life had to involve writing and the only way to get better at writing was to write.

It wasn’t fiction though.

Curiously, during those first butt-in-chair years, I did stumble into a part-time job in a café.  Well, not a café, but pretty close.  A gourmet food and cheese shop selling prepared items and made-to-order sandwiches.  And on the days I wasn't standing on a cement floor preparing panini's, serving up carrot hummus, or lugging cast iron pans to the sink, I planted myself in front of my computer and wrote.

 

But still.  The idea of fiction drifted out there, mist at dawn—until an acquaintance recommended Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY, a book of twelve week-long lessons subtitled A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.  Don’t worry.  “Spirit” is subjective, and if mine happened to be the ceramic vase sitting on my window shelf, it would have worked in context of this book.

  

As I plowed through the program, each chapter forced me to confront my creative future, to challenge myself to make my dreams happen.  THE ARTIST'S WAY works for anyone, but in my case, each lesson said, you want to write fiction?  You are the only one stopping yourself.  Before I’d finished the exercises in THE ARTIST’S WAY, I began writing a novel, to see if I could get to the end, which happened, though the result was so awful it was impossible to fix. So, more butt-in-chair.  Plus, I read writers on writing.  I gave myself timed writing exercises and scene-stormed.  I wrote a second book and submitted it to agents and received a request for one full manuscript that went nowhere, form rejections and lots of cold silence. I took a Grub Street novel-in- progress course.  And then another.

  

I know.  We’re well into this piece and you expect to read I’ve got a novel coming out. Nope. Not yet.  Lovely word, “yet.” We needed better insurance, so I’m back working in an office, almost full time.  I get up early every morning to write.  If I can, I write after work too.  I’m getting ready to submit my third novel to agents with this perspective. There’s no winning the lottery to it. Standing up in a café all day is brutal work, and writing a good novel is even more difficult.  But thanks to Julia Cameron, I get it.  The only person who can give up on me, is me. 

So, butt-in-chair.