Going for the jugular

Well, for some unknown reason I started working on the novel again. Perhaps it is all the Halloween and Dia de los Muertos preparations at my house. My daughter and I made our annual altar to our ancestors, decorated with fall fruits and vegetables, and dried flowers. Perhaps all these notions of transformations, death, and disguises have brought me back to the brink of fiction?

This weekend I wrote two new chapters and connected the dots between several others that had been floating around out of order. I had to go down to the bathroom several times to check the wall for sequence and setting details. It's really strange: much of the story is hard for me to remember and when I reread earlier chapters I almost don't remember writing them. I find the early chapters pretty compelling, but I'm not sure if the voice is consistent throughout. I still find myself struggling and hung up on moving characters through the plot. Yet I find the details very satisfying, like when Eydie traces the hexagonal white tiles on the cool bathroom floor with her fingers.

I finished reading another novel this weekend, which may have been one of the reasons I was inspired to write. It's called Jamesland and it's written by a family friend, Michelle Huneven. Reading it, and knowing what I know about Michelle's life, I feel like I glimpsed some of the secrets of novel writing. Autobiography works its way in and out, creating the tension in the threads that hold the story together. When people who know me well read this book, they will see much that is taken directly from my life. Yet it is entirely fiction and completely imaginary. And I suspect some people will see themselves where they do not exist, and others won't recognize themselves at all. Letterlady says I should tape Carly Simon's song lyric "You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you" on the screen of my computer so that I won't edit myself for fear of readers' reactions. Writing -- or at least, going for Natalie Goldberg's "jugular" -- requires a degree of fearlessness. Sometimes I feel like I should be wearing a helmet.

Given all that, I'm not at all sure that what I have written is worth much. It may quite possibly be garbage, actually. But that doesn't stop me from loving many of my characters and feeling great pleasure at spending time with them again. It is a strange head space that I find myself occupying these days...

Freewoman as Featured Poet

On Thursday night, October 4, I will be the featured poet at the Fall 2007 Open Reading Poetry Series at the Loveland Museum. There is a poetry open mic at 7, followed by me reading at around 8. I would love to see friendly faces, and even better, to hear you read your poetry in the open reading! Click here for more information.

Broken Ice

Blessings on teacher-friend Heather, whose invitation for a writing date finally motivated me to break the ice and spend some time with my book. I had to go down and stand in the guest bathroom for a while to reorient myself with the chronology and sequence. It seems like ages since last I joined my heroines in their fictional situations. But I took the leap and managed to crank out a new page and a half of Eurydice's story. She met Rhea and was directly asked about her family for the first time. Kind of awkward since the mythological original has none that I can find any reference to. Suffice it to say that in my story, her people weren't Catholic, which is all Rhea cared about anyway.

Rhea is a combination of women I grew up around: wealthy Pasadena and San Marino matrons. She's a lot more uptight than my own Pasadena Granny was, but they share a sense of style and, to a degree, a classist elitism. Granny did have a driver named Ed and a family who were often employed to serve holiday dinners, but Rhea has a full-time staff made up of multiple members of the same Hispanic family. As chilly as Rhea can be, she will ultimately be the key to Penny's liberation, so it's hard not to like her despite her many character flaws.

I am hoping that having written again at a lower altitude in a less-than-idyllic setting (only relatively speaking), I will now be able to continue to work on the book more regularly. I really want to finish the plot-draft (that's how I think of this incarnation of the story) so I can get to the revision and the enhancements. Now that we're back in the swing of things at school and the English department is staffed with at least five active writers, perhaps regular writing dates can be an ongoing event. Having a writing partner sit across from me certainly makes writing seem less lonely, even if I am the only one in my story. The challenge of the extrovert engaged in the introverted art form...

The Demonic Verses

Here's what George Orwell had to say about writing a book:

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

I hope I will be able to get back to my demons once the madness of starting school subsides a bit. It's hard to believe that the summer has ended (at least for teachers where we work...)

Harry Potter as Inspiration

Our family has just emerged from Harry Potter, like miners coming off shift surprised to see the sun in a new position. We spent Saturday morning through Monday in full immersion, barely taking time to eat or fluff our pillows.
And I know we are not alone. How cool is JK Rowling? She went from being no one, from a un-glamourous single-motherhood to being the second richest woman in Britain.
Number one is the queen.
This is the power of writing. This is what being a novelist could possibly accomplish -- making people around the world stop the rhythms of daily life and let themselves be drawn into the imaginative life. On Saturday, our friends Breeann and Rob showed up at 8 in the morning to begin reading with us -- the ten year olds at our house were haggard because they had stayed up WAY past bedtime to attend the midnight Harry Potter party (and win a golden snitch for costumes.) The grown ups were tired because we are old and were also up past midnight. But we made coffee and began to take turns, chapter by chapter. We put our family bets in writing (a combo of who will die and whether or not Snape is evil) before beginning since a cake was at stake.
And we have been reading ever since. Breeann and Rob had to return to their own lives but we kept reading (if you've tried to call and we didn't answer, don't take it personally.) At several points I had to hand the book to my husband as chapters made me cry (I'm a total sap.) Once, he had to hand the book to me, since I married a man who is not afraid to cry.
On the final night, the ten year olds stayed up past midnight again, because once we were that close to the end we just couldn't stop. I wonder how many hours we spend hearing every word that Rowling wrote out loud, or attempting (pathetically) to replicate British accents. Sure, our lives and our housekeeping came to a stop. I didn't write a word, or try to sell myself to any agents.
But talk about inspiring. I won't ruin anything, but I loved this book. My friend Kurt said that I only liked the books because I'm a mom -- I don't think so. Yes, I admit that reading out loud is more intense than reading silently. Someone putting sad things into the air for children makes me far more emotional than I would be reading silently to myself. But really I think I love them because they changed our vocabulary, and our rhythms.
How cool is that?

Plumbing the Depths

I put up all my notecards again (having carefully taken them down off the windows in our cabin.) I started to put them on my sliding glass doors, but they blocked out too much light, so I decided to make the most of the wasted wall space in the family room bathroom! Perhaps it will help me keep things in perspective when I start to feel like my writing is s#*t?

(No comments, please, about the horrible wallpaper. When I moved in almost thirteen years ago, I swore that the faux-Anasazi petroglyph wallpaper was the first thing that had to go. Now here we are in an entirely new century, and I still suffer with it every day. It is, however, at the top of my list of home improvement things to do. I even have the wallpaper steamer in my garage waiting for that slow weekend. Wallpaper removal tips, anyone?)

On another note, now that Letterlady and I are back in the same state, we had lunch and she told me that she has made the revisions that Careful Reader Susan and Lettermama suggested. Then she mailed off manuscripts to four agents who want to see it! She wants to target about ten more, and then she has to sit back and wait two to six months for their responses. Good thing school's starting soon and she has that lower-case Letterbaby to plan for...otherwise she might go a little crazy -- crazier? Strange to think that it takes longer for a book to be published than it does to gestate a human baby...or an elephant baby, for that matter.

Corrective Lens

I had dinner last night in Pasadena with my bosom college friend of twenty+ years, Tiné (on the left). She has had my chapters for the last several days, and is my only other reader besides Letterlady. Tiné was wonderfully helpful and very candid. She said that as she was reading it, she realized that it was like someone handing her their newborn infant, looking down and realizing that the baby is cross-eyed. I thought that was a perfect way to discuss a draft and plan to use the same analogy with my students. My draft is on its way to becoming a book, but it's cross-eyed and needs some vision therapy.

Tiné was able to articulate what I suspected was the biggest issue, which is that right now it is entirely plot driven, and that there are big gaps that need filling in. Everything written up to this point serves to advance the plot, and what's missing is a lot of the information that will help create a fully realized world around our two heroines. She described the heroines as existing right now in a vacuum, and wanting more information about everything and everyone around them so that the reader can inhabit their world, not just their points of view. She suggested that I continue to write the plot, and then when the whole draft is articulated from beginning to end, go back and add all the stuff that will answer the questions and fill out the world.

As a result of needing more of the characters' inner monologues and backgrounds, Tiné said it was hard to know who to sympathize with, especially since they all make morally questionable choices. I think the solution to that is having more access to their thought processes as they are making their choices, so that we are in on their own self-reflection and therefore understand why they are doing things. That way even if they make choices we wouldn't make ourselves, we can at least know why they made them, and sympathize with their dilemmas if not their decisions.

Other hugely helpful observations she made:

The names I've chosen for my characters are often hard to pronounce and trip the reader up. I need to revisit all of them and think about that aspect of it. I love names, and I love unusual names, so this could be painful.

I need to really figure out who my audience is, and how overt all the Greek stuff wants to be. Is it a titillating beach read for readers who may never have heard of Ovid and won't notice the allusions? Is it for more erudite, literary types who will get every allusion and criticize me when I stray from the original? How does the answer to the question affect the way it's written?

I think in a lot of ways, my background with dramatic literature (two degrees in theater) is in part responsible for the problems Tiné pointed out. So far, I have written a lot of dialogue and plot, both of which are central in a dramatic script that's intended to be performed. But in a script, dialogue and plot are only the sheet music for the actors to interpret. (In a play, names can be difficult because the actors will say them for the audience and the audience doesn't have to figure them out for themselves. Just think about Shakespeare and Shaw's names. There is a good reason that theater companies employ dramaturgs and speech coaches.) A novel needs to be fully formed and leave far less to the interpretation of the audience, as the novelist is both playwright and actor. A play needs to be relatively short. A novel is far less limited. I need to give myself permission to leave the momentum of the action and explore the more literary elements of fiction. I need to let in more poetry and figurative language, more flavor, more color. I need to allow more meandering into the lives of the other characters who interact with the heroines, so that when they do interact, it's from a three-dimensional place and not a vacuum.

SO, the challenge I feel right now is to create a paradigm in which I can continue to write this book while working full-time and being a single mom. Since this next fall will be my first ever in that capacity, a lot will be trial and error, I think. Surely there is a way to be productive without being isolated for days at a time in a tiny house in the mountains? In that regard, writing poetry is easier. An hour stolen here or there can result in a poem. An hour of novel writing is like ten minutes of physical exercise: barely enough to get warmed up enough to make it safe to proceed...

Collective Unconscious?

Interesting that in the past month, I've read two articles in the New York Times about new works of theater that use the Eurydice and Persephone myths.

The first is Sarah Ruhl's new play Eurydice, currently playing at the Second Stage Theater in New York City. It's apparently about Eurydice's experience in the underworld, and creates a central relationship between Eurydice and her father. I find that particularly interesting, as I have not been able to find any back story about Eurydice's family or lineage. In some versions of the myth she is called a nymph but in others they don't even say if she's mortal or not. Maybe I should email the playwright and ask her if she found any research into her family, or if she invented the entire relationship. I have chosen to leave my Eurydice's family life deliberately ambiguous.

The second work is Jake Heggie's opera To Hell and Back, in which Patti Lupone was recently performing. The New York Times describes it thus: "Reframing the Persephone myth as a contemporary tale of domestic abuse, [Heggie and Scheer] had conceived the 38-minute operatic piece with Ms. LuPone specifically in mind to sing the role of the battered wife’s mother-in-law."

My dad says the Collective Unconscious explains the rise of these themes all in seemingly unrelated places by unconnected people. I wonder if it isn't the same phenomenon that occurred when I named my daughter a very unusual name and then started noticing it everywhere. Was it always there, or was I unwittingly part of a trend about which I was previously unaware...?

Give me an L-E-T-T-E-R-L-A-D-Y!

Since she is too modest (or busy) to post it herself, I thought I'd let our loyal readers know that Letterlady has four agents interested in seeing her manuscript. These are folks she networked with two years ago when she was shopping her anthology of short stories. They each told her there wasn't much of a market for short stories by unknown authors, but to contact them when she had a novel. Well, now she has one, she has contacted them, and they all want to see it. Yay!!

When she gets her draft back from Susan, the Careful Reader, we are going to set up some times to get together to edit, revise and generally prepare the drafts for sending out. I predict that they will be in the mail before school starts and she'll have an agent by Thanksgiving (maybe a book contract by the new year??)

Rah Rah Rah! Sis Boom Bah! Go-o-o-o-o Letterlady!!

Susan

So here is the delightful Susan, who wears outfits that match her trailer, and is willing to read my whole entire book and make comments.

She is all that and a bag of chips. We went to her house and she made us sausage BBQ and 2 different kinds of milkshakes. The kids followed her around like the Pied Piper, and I was tempted to as well.

When printing off a copy of the manuscript for Susan, I had a mini breakdown trying to put 26 chapters in order. Then my sweet husband swooped in with a stapler and saved the day. Now he knows what I'm really like when I'm writing. We have a fun, full house now (4 children, 2 parents, 2 grandparents) which leads to some rollicking games of 20 questions, but not a ton of writing time. Luckily Susan is still making me feel like progress is happening!

Continuity

I realized this morning in my half-waked stupor that Darryl has to teach Persephone to drive the truck or the scene in the hotel at Christmas doesn't work. (Hades refused to teach her to drive in L.A., you see, so then how could she steal the truck to sneak out? Right now, there's no explanation, but since Darryl helps her get her GED, it seems reasonable that he'd teach her to drive. Especially since that would mean she could be more helpful around the orchard.)

I haven't written a single word since I got home, but that doesn't stop my brain from working on it. I am trying to trust that in the midst of painting the bathroom and Freedaughter's room, fixing the sprinkler, going to the grocery store, and doing laundry, that the literary stew is simmering and seasoning on the back burner and will be richer when I get back to give it a stir.

I need to put up all the index cards on my sliding glass doors downstairs so that I can keep everything straight. I hope I numbered them correctly when I took them down before.

I went to the bookstore and bought two different translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses to compare the myths and different interpretations. Letterlady's brilliant suggestion that I use pieces of the original text to begin chapters greatly appeals to me, but I also like the idea of using texts from a wider variety of interpretations (H.D.'s poem "Eurydice", various operas, etc.)

What about you, Dear Reader? Can you suggest other versions of these myths that might provide literary glue for my wee tale?

A Scrabble Win, Most Importantly

You will be happy to know that immediately upon returning home (after being showered with homemade confetti by my daughter) I beat my husband in Scrabble. Some of you I know were getting worried. But after a day driving rather than writing for 11 hours, I got my game back. Like Freewoman, I woke that first morning home anxious, with that "what do I have to do first" feeling, and the inability to believe that the answer was "nothing."
But tomorrow I have to deliver the manuscript in toto to my smart friend Susan. So tonight, my family is out riding bikes in the beautiful twilight, and I'm here writing once again, making all the changes suggested by my mother and Freewoman. By the way if you see my mother let me know. Last I saw her, she was driving off to see Emmylou Harris at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and we haven't seen hide or hair since. Hopefully that's for very very good reasons.
I need to finish this novel and send it out before school starts because full time teaching doesn't leave much time. Yikes!
Always looking for readers, those of you who might be bored with summer!

There's No Place Like Home

I feel like Dorothy, waking up in black and white, back in Kansas. Was it all a dream?

I awoke at 5:38 this morning and debated getting out of bed and writing, but fell back to sleep and dreamed I was married to Tom Cruise. Holy Nightmare, Rainman!

I love being home and reunited with my daughter, and we had a very lively lunch talking through the Greek myths that have been obsessing me for the last two weeks. She's very interested in knowing the story and what Letterlady and I have been up to. She's mad that I didn't take any pictures of the cats that surrounded our little domicile, but she likes the columbine earrings I got her at the little gift shop before we left Ouray.

Our drive home was long, made richer by the music of The Dixie Chicks and the fiction of Richard Peck on the CD player. We decided to listen to a book in order to get out of our own heads for a while. The River Between Us is a wonderful tale of two friends at the outbreak of the Civil War, living along the Mississippi River. It deals with ghosts, family, racism, loyalty, and love. What more could a story want? We got it out of the Lafayette Library, and you can too, once I return it. We recommend it. (I also loved and recommend listening to his book A Year Down Yonder, also available at the library.)

I'm heading to L.A. in a week and a half and am trying to set up lunch with an author friend of my Dad's, to pick her brain about agents and manuscripts and the like. I'd like to make the revisions that Letterlady so wisely suggested before I go, so that I can have a few folks read it and give feedback while I'm out there. It's hard to know whether to keep composing and work towards the end of the story, or to revise what I already have.

I think I'll go take a nap and meditate on that question...

Happy Endings

So this is our last night in the Chipeta cottage, in beautiful Ouray, under the hospitality of the perfect Paul and Becky. Tonight we had a reading with wine (and O'Douls for me). Please see the photo to view the wonderful writers at said reading. This was a lovely, perfect ending to a very productive journey.
During our listening journey we heard about tarantulas eating into a man's brain, a compound fracture in a quarry, a ballsy woman in overalls with a cigar, and a girl being abandoned at a rock concert. I read 1/2 of my first chapter of my complete (yay!) manuscript, and freewoman read her first chapter of the 25 she has written while here. Only people doing meth could have been more productive. Then after everyone read a piece of writing, we talked about literature, tattoos, and people who go to the emergency room with animals embedded in their bodies. There was words, wine and actual guffaws. It was perfect. This journey made us cry, made us smell, made us mad, but it definitely made us better writers.
We've decided to keep this blog. We may not post twice a day, but we will definitely track our progress to finish, make it comprehensible (okay that's mostly my problem not Freewoman's) and get published. Yippee!
Now that we have lived through it, we highly recommend putting yourself through this. Just let us know and we'll put you in touch with Paul and Becky, muses extraordinaire.

Running Short on Supplies

In the mania of the day I'm having, I've been all over the map with my writing today. I wrote what might be the very last chapter (Eurydice and hot painter boy hitting the road) and the scene where Eurydice gets her dream job and house (in northeast L.A., for God's sake) and the scene where she gets the call and learns that the Maenads have torn Orpheus limb from limb. I'm going to need an actual medical-type person read that little section and tell me if it comes close to ringing true. To me, it sounds exactly like an episode of ER, which is the extent of my medical training. You see my problem.

Yesterday I wrote the awful scene where Hades blackmails Persephone into staying with him (think Sophie's Choice with a little porn thrown in). The disturbing thing is that last week, writing that scene would have given me stomach cramps, whereas this week it just rolls out of my head and onto the page (the fact that it comes out of my head in the first place is disturbing in and of itself.)

Tonight we are having a little reading with our hosts and two other writers who are in residence here from Minnesota. I was trying to figure out which sections to read, and I think I'll stick to Eurydice's two chapters in Boulder teaching at the Buddhist university. And possibly the first Persephone chapter where she meets Hades and Demeter forgets her at the concert. We'll see. It's one thing to write steamy scenes...it's another thing entirely to read them out loud.

Fascinating Trivia Fact: Letterlady and Freewoman have used an entire ream of paper and two ink cartridges in the two weeks we have been here writing. It's a good thing we're leaving tomorrow or we'd have to hitchhike down to civilization and get us some more.

Note to any students reading this post: Hitchhiking is dangerous and we are using hyperbole here to exaggerate our situation and the relative size of the town we are staying in. We do not hitchhike and neither should you.

24 Hours To Go...I Wanna Be Sedated

It's our last full day in paradise. Probably a good thing, based on the looks of Letterlady. I hope Letterhubby's got a hot bubble bath and a stack of trashy magazines at the ready. She's going to need them...

Of Cakes, Climaxes and Index Cards

It's now 10:50 a.m. and Letterlady has succumbed to the dark side of insomnia: the mid-morning nap. Those of you who know her know that this is highly unusual behavior.

Because I didn't come with her clearly articulated goals of being "finished" with a novel, I don't feel the same pressure that she does. On the other hand, she came with 27 chapters in various stages of drafts, and has been rewriting, revising, excising (80 brave pages into the Cut file on one day.) I am still in the first round of drafts, so my story is still half woven in the loom, while hers is stretched out and pinned, damp, to the finishing board. She's busy knotting and hiding all the loose and dangling ends.

I'm at the point now where the two women's stories have largely intersected. It's getting harder to designate a chapter as belonging to one or the other. I woke up this morning and lay in bed for an hour trying to figure out the timing and sequence for their stories' separate climaxes with regards to their relationships with the men. Both culminate in awful betrayals and permanent damage, and yet they are each involved in the circumstances of the other, so the timing is intricate and hard to plot out.

I am a visual learner. I have index cards taped to the left kitchen window, outlining each woman's story-line, in chronological order with dates (month and year) in the corners. Their stories don't start at the same time, but they merge, so keeping the timing straight is important. On the right window, I have taped individual cards for each chapter, for each woman, numbered in sequence, summarizing the events of the chapters. On the kitchen table, I have a grid of cards detailing the climaxes that I have yet to draft, and that were only broadly sketched in the original outline. I have approximate dates and locations for the events, but things have a way of taking on a life of their own once I begin to write, so a lot of this could still rearrange itself.

Having said all that stuff earlier about not having a self-imposed deadline or goal, I do worry that once out of this miraculous state of isolated, uninterrupted, 'constant composition', I will lose momentum, lose the thread of the stories, the voices of the characters. I worry that after these two intimate weeks with the muse (may She be blessed and honored always) I will turn back into a pumpkin, and the business of life will creep in and taint the business of writing. That the lure of the laundry and the television and the mundane tasks of being in the world will ultimately condemn my efforts to a forgotten drawer, much like the half-knit sweater I started three years ago and have yet to finish.

It is hard to have faith in oneself, in one's ideas, in one's world. It is hard to believe that we will be capable of creating our own creative miracles even when surrounded by ordinary, every-day life.

I choose to believe that the beauty of this place and the gift of this time allowed us to find in ourselves the discipline and creative energy that we needed to accomplish these tasks, but that neither is required for their completion. I choose to believe that these stories are asking to be told, and that they will not sit willingly, quietly, forgotten in drawers under bills and day-camp registration forms. I believe they will harass us until they are done, much like the buzzer on the stove does not turn itself off and take the cake out of the oven, but hollers persistently until the baker completes her task and sets the sweet reward on the cooling rack to share.

Insomnia, Garden Hoses

It's 8:30 am, and Freewoman is sleeping peacefully. Me, on the otherhand? I've been up for approximately 4 and 1/2 hours. I woke at 4 in the morning and despite my best efforts to think calm, boring thoughts, my head was racing and at 5:30 I just gave in and got up. I think the ticking clock is getting to me. Other writers, those who have advances or large trust funds perhaps, might luxuriate in this last stages of writings. "Golly, I just don't want it to end! I want to savor every word!" But I am so worried about meeting my self imposed deadlines that I may be getting a little sloppy. I want so badly to be done, to say those words (casually, with a flick of the hair): "yes, I've finished my novel."
So I'm trying not to rush, and not to let my dazed sleepiness affect the quality of my prose. This may prove impossible.
Jumping Jehosophat novels are long slippery things. I feel like I'm trying to do macrame with garden hoses.

Sustenance and Head Counts

We've just returned from a lovely late dinner of carrot-ginger soup and artichoke dip with home-baked crostinis. I don't know why it seems so vital to report on all our adventures in eating, except that it's the only thing we do, other than writing. It's the highlight of our days. We challenge any teachers anywhere to write for ten (plus) hours a day for ten straight days and then not get excited at the arrival of carrot-ginger soup.

I realized, after printing today's compositions, that I now have twenty completed chapters of my book: nine for Persephone and eleven for Eurydice. I have a total of thirty-six characters, some of whom intersect both women's stories, and others who only appear in momentary cameos. I love certain characters passionately. I love the way they talk and the choices they make. I can see them so clearly in my mind. I hate it when crummy things happen to them.

Today Orpheus convinced Eurydice to sell her '68 VW bug. It just didn't make sense to have it towed back to L.A. from Vegas, you know? But it killed me when they sold off that car. That car was a part of her, man. I do not have a lot of hope for those two, but they're giving it their best shot.

Alley cats are prowling and yowling and Venus is quite shameful up there next to the moon...

Say goodnight, Gracie...

We Love The Fund for Teachers

Now that Lettermama's here, there is someone to take pictures of us together! (Although I did figure out how to use the timer on my camera to take the lovely shot on the left, under our names on the front page of this blog. I had to stack the camera on about six video tapes in order to get our whole heads. Letterlady was actually trying to get work done and I was very annoying.) So here we are, in front of our home away from home. All this, compliments of The Fund For Teachers. How lucky are we?

I have lost count of my chapters, since I started skipping around and going out of order. I was finding myself really frustrated with one of my characters, and wanting to write things like, "And then he proposed and she said yes and they got married." Ugh. Do I really have to write the scenes? Can't we just move on?

Letterlady's advice was good. She said I should skip ahead and write the part I was anxious to get to, and come back to the part that bored me later. Despite the fact that it goes against my grain to work out of sequence, I took her suggestion and I've been having a great time writing about Eurydice's semester as an adjunct professor at a "non-sectarian, Buddhist-inspired university in Boulder, Colorado." Hee hee. Several new characters showed up who I like much better than the folks I was writing about before, and suddenly, I'm happy again. Good advice, Letterlady!

Maternity

Last night, my mother arrived to do that which no one else wants to do -- read a ridiculous amount of single spaced pages, all with footnotes. She promises to tell me when she is confused, and write comments. What a wonderful mom. Plus, she is all cheerful and sane, making comments such as "Perhaps you should shower."
Mothers are the best.
We have three writing days, including today. I have to finish a long confusing conversation in a Winnebago, write a flashback section in California, and then give a forensics report. But if I can do all of this, I will have finished a complete draft in this time. Wish me luck. And don't worry, I wont let my mother talk me into too many personal grooming rituals that would sap writing time.
We havent' been listening to any music as we write (no distractions, no distractions) but lately I have been hearing the Smiths in my head constantly. This might be because I associate the Smiths with the unfettered creativity/depression of my teenage years, or because my characters have been a funeral for the past three days. I am finally taking them out of the funeral and into the Winnebago, so lets hope that the soundtrack cheers up.
Though what could possibly be more poetic than the line, " I wear black on the outside, 'cause black is how I feel on the inside"? Possibly nothing.

M is for Mother...and Mexican food

Letterlady's mother arrived last night and treated us to Mexican food and margaritas (and ginger ale). We sat together on the porch of our favorite little eatery and watched the crescent moon rise and Venus emerge as the mountains grew purple in the twilight. Having Lettermama here is a good reminder for us of exactly how lucky we are. She sees our little town and our writing den through fresh eyes. She oohs and aahs over everything that charmed us, too, upon our arrival, but that we have become a bit blind to in our frenzy to produce work. Walking through town and giving her the tour of the writers' cottage, our little home, the daisies, the stars, helped us remember that we are, indeed, working in paradise.

Today Lettermama has her work cut out for her. Letterlady presented her with at least 160 pages of text to read and comment on. While she is hard at work on Letterlady's draft, I will be getting a massage at a little yoga/massage therapy place in town. I know, it's sad isn't it? We are having such a rotten time. We'll have to make up for it somehow.

It's all in the nails.

In other issues of grooming and inspiration, Freewoman has found that she types faster if she has blue fingernails.

Look closely.

Closer.

See how fast the blue nails are? You gotta get you some of those.

scruffy finds his muse

Here is Freewoman finding inspiration in stuffed dog. Here is letterlady finding inspiration in stuffed dog.

Here is stuffed dog finding inspiration by sniffing flowers.

So my daughter said that her well-traveled pet needed to go with us. This canine has been to Delaware, California, and spent 6 months at "Stacy's house." So now Scruffy is in Ouray, getting distracted by all the cats that congregate.

As you can clearly see, Scruffy recognizes the importances of not only narrative, but context.

Scruffy has been able to help Freewoman navigate the underworld, and help me not burst into tears when my characters will not have coherent conversations at the funeral. And Scruffy is definitely the word for two women who write as many hours a day as we do. Who needs showers?

The Word-Space Continuum

At brunch today, Letterlady and I were musing over the differences between writing poetry and long prose, the process of writing, and the importance of food and sleep. Her pregnancy has forced us to remember that our bodies are not machines to be abused, but rather delicate vehicles through which our ideas must come if they are ever to reach paper. We both heartily reject the stereotype of the miserable, starving artist who must struggle in order to create. Sorry. What we find we need is time, space, and regular meals. We are more productive when we are well-rested, well-fed and uninterrupted. As romantic as it may be to imagine a chilly garret in Paris, smoking unfiltered cigarettes while wearing a beret, we actually like being warm, full, and capable of taking a deep breath without coughing. We sacrifice enough in the daily grind of our regular lives to want suffering when we are actually free to make art.

Which brings me back to the discussion of poetry vs. prose. I find it liberating, in writing prose, not to have to obsess over every single comma. Whereas in poetry, each choice, be it comma or word, is completely critical to the impact or meaning of the finished piece. That's not to say I don't make choices in prose without any care, of course I do. I find myself listening to the rhythm of the prose as carefully, if not more carefully, than when I write poetry (especially with dialogue, where I want it to sound believable and authentic, as well as clear.)

The difference is more in the rhythm of the writing process, perhaps, than the rhythm of the written product. Prose allows for an almost hypnotic, trance-like state to occur, in which all around me is forgotten and the lives of the characters swing into action at the tips of my fingers. Time is lost, bodily needs are forgotten, and the end result is deeply satisfying, eight single-spaced pages later.

Writing poetry, on the other hand, is more intense, more focused. More like studying a series of cells through a microscope than watching a flock of birds migrating in the sky. It is strong and undiluted, like a bouillon cube, a heightened flavor that shocks the tongue.

Regardless of the form, it is a phenomenon when it occurs. When something on the page takes shape and becomes real, separate from myself, separate from this place, the feeling of satisfaction is tangible, visceral, and makes me want to drive really fast and honk the horn repeatedly. That experience is what I believe is the crux of the creative experience manifested in the human body. I believe it is experienced by artists in every medium, as well as scientists and mathematicians and others who study and explore the mysteries of the universe. It is, ultimately, what may distinguish our species from all the others: not our clever use of tools, but our ability to imagine those tools before they exist.

A Room of Our Own (and a Glass of Champagne)

It's another miserable day in paradise. Gorgeous, puffy clouds high in the sky, birds twittering and scolding, butterflies (really, there are butterflies) flitting from the daisies to the forget-me-nots in the yard.

We've just returned from a lovely brunch where we feasted (and I do mean feasted) on Eggs Benedict with salmon and spinach, potatoes and fresh fruit. This was after the green salad garnished with fresh citrus and poppyseed dressing, the complimentary glass of Champagne and orange juice. We toasted one full week of productive writing. Fifteen chapters drafted for me, two of four sections revised for Letterlady. We are the ants! We work while the grasshoppers fiddle away. We will be ready for winter.

Our delightful hosts have a little outbuilding (that they built themselves) for writers to use for study and composition. It has books and fresh flowers, dictionaries and maps. A little porch provides options for sitting, and inside, a table and chairs stand outfitted with pens and highlighters for hard labor. All with wireless internet access, if you can imagine. It sits in the daisies and faces the beautiful Alpine views (actually there are views in all directions.) We are headed there this afternoon if we can raise ourselves out of the various horizontal poses in which we now find ourselves.

We called our daughters this morning to make sure that appropriate Father's Day celebrations were underway. All was well in both houses, although in my self-centered myopia, I forgot to put anything in the mail to my own father, who is my steadfast and true source of all things important (and a regular contributor to the comments section on this blog.) I called and groveled and he readily forgave me, but I still feel guilty and am using this opportunity to publicly shame myself and pronounce to the world (or at least to the four people who actually read this) that I have the best Dad a girl could ever hope for.

Happy Father's Day, Pops.

the time has come the walrus said

And finally, on Saturday night, our brains have begun to sputter. I got lost cutting and pasting, so I took a break. On the break, I lost at Scrabble to my smart husband. Good thing he is so sweet or I would be really really bitter. And then I decided that it being Saturday night, it being 8pm and we have worked since waking, and it being my summer vacation--- I will take a break for the rest of the night.
WOO HOOO
party on.
I have convinced my compatriot to join me in this revelry. We are drinking juice with Jackfruit in it (how wild is that? we don't even know what Jackfruit is? does anyone out there?), and planning on watching TV. That's right, you heard me. We are forgoing all the fine literary stuff we are creating, and forgoing all the fine literary stuff we brought for pleasure reading. Instead, we offer our brains the anesthesia of the procedural drama. Because I really never lose this many games of scrabble, and no 2 teachers have ever worked this hard (through the weekend!) on summer break.
Gotta go. CSI Miami is on.

Peek-a-boo!

This little lady showed up outside our kitchen window as were making dinner last night. She seemed completely unimpressed with us, and wandered around for quite a while before joining her friend in a lovely lie-down in the neighbors' backyard. Between the deer and the alley cats, we're practically living in Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom!

Last night at nine o' clock, Letterlady and I shut down the laptops and indulged in three hours of crime dramas on TV. We felt extremely decadent and thought that after six straight days of 10-12 hours a day of writing, we had earned the right to some formulaic dialogue, spiced up with melodramatic line readings. But by the end of two episodes of CSI Miami, I wanted to take David Caruso to my chiropractor for an adjustment. Does the man EVER straighten out his head? My neck is stiff just thinking about it.

I completed two more chapters today, finally arriving at Persephone's penultimate show-down with Hades. (Thanks, Ramon, for the info about double-barreled shot guns.) Unfortunately, it comes too late because she's going to fail the rabbit test and then where will she be?

Tomorrow, Eurydice may just elope in Las Vegas. We'll see how far we get...

Cheaper by the Dozen

I just completed my twelfth chapter. Six for Eurydice, six for Persephone. This last one was such a pleasure to write, I realized, because everyone in it behaves so nicely. There's no betrayal, no lying, no violence. Actually, there aren't really any men in it, either. Hmm.... Coincidence?

Eurydice just arrived at the collective where she's the writer-in-residence for the next three months, and the coastal setting (lighthouse, baskets of hanging fuchsia) have me a little homesick for the California coast. The people in Eydie's new town are just so nice, compared to the people in Hell.

Letterlady wasn't familiar with the name of fuchsia flowers, so I've included an example here for everyone's botanical edification.

The inside of a mouth

Oh these poor wonderful people that have to deal with me right now. Writing is like watching a movie, where you sit in one spot, and then laugh, and then cry, and then shout something out. Except that there is pre-existing narrative to legitimize these odd behaviors.

I have a crying jag, I eat an enchilada, I'm happy as a clam.

And my handsome husband and delightful writing partner act as if this is perfectly normal. Perhaps taking on a project of this size when on extra-hormone high alert should come with some kind of a warning, not for me but for those around me.

My daughter took this photograph of the inside of her mouth, and was very happy with the result. She got a digital camera from her Mama Lou and is more of the abstract artist than I gave her credit for being. My writing right now reminds me of this picture. It's pinking up, but it doesn't really have a clear shape and purpose.

"merry flowers"

The daisies outside our front door put me in mind of one of my favorite e.e. cummings poems, provided below for your enjoyment. (It's also about long distances and far-away loved ones, so that seems apropos, too.)

your little voice
            Over the wires came leaping
and i felt suddenly
dizzy
    With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
                        or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
                      stars and the Humorous
                                            moon
dear girl
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
                                       over time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
      your voice

--e.e. cummings

They never said it would be easy...

Okay, it's official. We've now both had our crying jags and our subsequent therapy sessions (online Scrabble for one of us and a cup of hot tea sitting in the daisies for the other.) Fortunately, as one hopes for in any good partnership, we didn't fall apart on the same day (I'm fine now, Mom. Really. You don't need to worry but I love that you do.)

Writing is hard. It brings stuff up to the surface, much the way the San Miguel river is so muddy after a churning rain storm. Muddy and dangerous, with the power to sweep one away and pull one under (Virginia Woolf, anyone?). Writing a week after one's divorce is final adds some significant snow melt to the river's flow. Melting, as in dissolving, as in Dissolution Decree. A lot of endings: school year, relationship, thirties...

But of course new beginnings sprout up, like the strawberries hidden in the tundra at the top of the Gondola ride. Invisible at first, but there for the tenacious hunter to find and deliciously sweet with a flavor belied by their size. Lucky bears. Lucky me.

Goddesses Who Love Too Much

Well I spent all day with Hades and Persephone, and I feel like I need a shower and a twelve step meeting. I know I've said it before, but he is just such a creep! Persephone's finally hitting bottom with all his controlling, sick behavior, and the sun is finally shining a little hope into her life, since Demeter showed up to take her home in a 1965 Chevy pickup. Unfortunately Persephone has a broken nose and a fat lip, but time heals all wounds, right? They don't call him the Lord of Darkness for nothing.

On that note, I'm a little disturbed that the story of obsession and abuse comes so much easier to me than the story of love-that-makes-us-stupid and the consequences thereof. What does it mean that I seem to have a knack for sick and violent sex scenes? (I'm sure no one I teach is reading this, although they all know the themes of World Literature...Maybe that's it! I've been teaching World Literature too long...Next year we're adding Pollyanna and My Friend Flicka to the ninth grade reading list.)

Eurydice and Orpheus had the day off today, and will get back to work tomorrow. When last we left them they were debating commitments and whether or not they want one. Long distance relationships with touring musicians don't sound all that smart to me, but Eydie has a mind of her own and a lot less experience, so we'll see what she decides. Whatever it is, we know it can't last long, right? Snakes are lurking in the grasses all around...

I'm finding that writing a novel that's hung on the framework of a myth is a wonderful exercise. The allusions and symbolism almost become a kind of scavenger hunt, and the ability to shape the form within the basic structure is great fun. Of course, in the original myths neither of these women comes to much good, but for those of you who know me, you know I can't just leave it at that. What would my college Philosophy of Feminism professor say?

Redemption, here we come.

Don't go chasing Waterfalls....

Today was a much better day. I was a bit kinder to myself, giving my self permission to hoist up off the couch, close the computer and go for a hike. Ouray is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been. I hiked alone up to a waterfall and made significant eye contact with several deer (it was just like a Disney movie except for the singing.) I felt very embodied and inspired again. I stood in the spray of a waterfall. I broke the umbilical tie with the laptop.
My husband, the great people that post and my daughter have been helping too, with kind words and total support. My sweet 10 year old wrote me a poem:

Mothers
mothers love,
mothers wish,
mothers say tiss tiss.
mothers cry,
mothers laugh,why?
mothers do it because they miss you and me,
to history
and forever on and on.
that is why mothers wish.

So that one is for all you mothers out there-- courtesy of my poetic child
I have great respect for people that make full-time writing a life, and those that post to a blog every day, like my wonderful brother and sister-in-laws. You should visit their blogs at http://www.amyletter.com/ and http://www.incertus.blogspot.com/ because they are brilliant and dedicated. I wish things came out of my brain in a more orderly fashion, but they come out in full Jackson Pollack splatter and then I have to pick up bits to reassemble. yuck.
Tomorrow I start part two of the novel, traveling back in time to a pink hotel on the Jersey shore. Wish me luck. As for Freewoman things are heating up in her novel so if you are under 18 don't even think about asking why.
Special prize for anyone who identifies the allusion in the title of this post.

Hot water makes everything better

We are both still damp and puckery from a relaxing trip to the local hot springs. We each swam a few laps and then soaked in varying degrees of heat, depending on whether we happen to be gestating babies or books, or both.

We are now in the front room of the main house, and Letterlady is preparing to kick Letterhubby's behind again in online Scrabble. We haven't had much luck with internet in our cottage, possibly because of the cloudy and rainy weather we've been having. According to my wee girl back home, the whole state is getting some showers, which is good, as I fear returning to dead flowers and grass despite the efforts of neighborhood children to keep everything green in my absence. I miss my girl and hope she's having fun at daycamp.

I read four more chapters of Letterlady's novel today. It's been frustrating her and I wish I could help her believe that it's fabulous, if not finished. The main character (I like to think of her as "our hero") is one of three in the book with the same name, and she's afraid she may have killed her boyfriend but she isn't sure. How's that for a premise, huh? Don't you wish you were here to read it? I thought so. In one of the chapters I read today, our hero's best friend goes missing, presumably subsumed into an underworld of eco-food terrorism determined to make eating safe for humanity again. Letterlady's descriptions of the organic supermarkets that rival one another and the people employed by said supermarkets is wickedly brilliant and hits a bit close to home in Boulder County (a favorite image being about the guy with the "white-boy dreadlocks" who's stacking leeks in the front of the store.)

Perhaps, Reader, if you were to leave an encouraging comment here for Letterlady, she would have more faith in herself and her book and would feel better about it all in the morning...

Demeter showed up in my novel today to try to bring Persephone home again, to no avail. Maybe that's why we've been having such gloomy weather around here... Hades continued his diabolical bad-boy behavior, and Letterlady put it best when she said that the hard part about moving forward is knowing that Persephone's life is going to get so much worse before it gets better. It's really true, I'm afraid. She doesn't even know that birth control pills are only available by prescription. Poor kid. She really tries.

Eurydice and Orpheus, however, are just getting started, and though their time together is necessarily shorter, at least it's appropriately consensual. I find them significantly harder to write, although a housemate for Eurydice showed up in the form of my darling friend Patrick, (from grad school) and he breathed new life into the chapter I was working on. Yay!

Okay. I think I have at least one more chapter in me tonight, and I'm happy to report that I wrote two poems this morning to make up for the one I didn't write yesterday. Does that mean I only get half credit?

Rainy Day

After a while, oh say a 12-hour writing day, your body gets sorta mad at you. I need to pay more attention. Today is the frustrating, must slog through it day. We are going to swim tonight and I think that will clease the negativity from me.
I miss my family!
I don't understand why my novel contradicts itself -- very disobediant!
I want to know why something I think (gorgeously) in my head looks so inane on paper!
But that's just it, isn't it? To really do well at anything you have to push past the "honeymoon stage" and keep going even when it's tough. That's why I never continue to run. I go the first time and think, "Good GRIEF am I sporty! I rock!" But then the second time, I'm sore and slow and I think, "I was made to read books, not exercise."
I just cannot do that here. Must keep going.
Freewoman's novel is taking beautiful shape (just think -- it began, when we first arrived in Ouray, as nothing more than an IDEA. That's the real magic, the something from nothing. Pulling a rabbit from a hat is nothing. Pulling a fully formed narrative is impressive!) Her characters enact a present day myth with concerts, weddings, disappointments and poetry readings. The best scene yet is a description of one of the main characters Eydie making eggs for a young musician (these are the present day versions of Eurydice and Orpheus.) You have never read something so delicious as this particular passage.

See Letterlady write. Write, Letterlady, write!

This is what a pregnant novelist looks like.

It's also what a teacher on summer vacation looks like.

I'm stuffed

The Fund for Teachers certainly does broaden our horizons...

The hills are alive...

Here are two of the views from the balcony off our bedroom. Letterlady, who has been to Austria, says the Alps don't have anything over our beautiful setting.

Monday, Monday...so good to me

The lovely and talented Letterlady is hard at work beside me researching all those fascinating footnotes I mentioned in the last post. We have had another productive day, although spent some of it frustrated with what seemed on the surface to be a slowing down, compared with yesterday. I think it's actually a combination of ridiculously high expectations combined with a natural pendular swing that will eventually manifest in a sustainable daily rhythm. It's only our second full day, after all.

Having said that, I have managed to write a total of five chapters of my novel, but encountered difficulty with the one where Eurydice gets a backstage pass to Orpheus's concert. I really want it to ring true, and while I really like the dialogue, I'm less sure about some of the details and it took longer than I would have liked. The chapter where Persephone loses her virginity to Hades flowed more easily, but he is such a creep that my stomach was in knots by the time I finished it.

I'm going to try to post some pictures, now that we've taken some...

First Full Day

It's midnight and the glass coach is still glittering downstairs. We have arrived at the ball and for the next two weeks, we don't have a curfew!

We learned a lot from today. We each surpassed our writing goals, although we occasionally forgot to eat and regularly forgot to drink. (We have a new system to address that which includes refiling our glasses every time one of us gets up to do something. Fortunately, the tap water in this pristine mountain town is cold and fresh.) After ten plus hours at the computer with a short break for lunch (only because the pregnant lady was hungry), we finally took our daily constitutional, but waited until the restaurants were close to closing for the night. Not yet having eaten dinner, we had to cut it short and didn't make our goal of an hour and a half. Better than nothing, though.

Letterlady arrived with some incredible number of chapters (27?) of her novel already drafted in some form or another. Today she edited five and I read through and made notes on the first three. Suffice it to say that she's as smart on paper as she is in person. She weaves mathematics, probability, statistics, philosophy, physics, paranoia and coincidence into a book that stretches your brain and leaves you hanging off a cliff at the end of every chapter. What's more, she uses footnotes on every page as a device through which we can hear more of the narrator's inner monologue. It's one of my favorite things about the book so far. I am awed and humbled by the complicated brilliance of her work, and honored that she thinks I'm smart enough to actually be of use.

As crazy as it sounds, being cooped up with such witty and charming company, doing nothing all day but write fiction is easily the most fun I've had in years (with the possible exception of reading with my daughter every night before bed.) I'm not kidding. I mean YEARS.

Hallelujah. Long Live the Fund for Teachers!

endurance and our athletic prowess

We did it. Now we are writing, in the groove, on the move. Or, more accurately, hunched into strange positions and forgetting to drink enough water. We look up from our manuscripts like miners emerging after a long shift, curious at the fact that it is still daylight. We are kicking ass, and the feeling is great (though my back hurts.) We put in more than 10 hours today writing and then read-n-critiqued each other's work. Writing is an endurance sport (hey, maybe I DO belong in Boulder!)
Freewoman breathed new life two mythological women who were wronged by some loud powerful guys (Orpheus and Hades) and is giving them a voice and a contemporary story. It's amazing and I was here for the conception. In her wonderful re-vision, Eurydice is a published poet as Orpheus just begins to make music. Persephone is still a girl when the leader of the band Tartarus (does this woman rock mythology or what?) whisks her away from her mother to the underworld of a Van Halen-esque band on tour. It's sexy, compelling, and more than Ovid could have ever imagined. Watch out world!!!

Without a net

Poetry is about rhythm and photographs. The feeling of completing a poem makes me want to drive fast and honk the horn. Like sending a shout out to God or a muse, like figuring out a riddle that was always there but needed to be solved.


In my sleep last night, I dreamed I did a back-flip off a doctor's examining table and landed perfectly on my feet. I started laughing uncontrollably and woke myself and Letterlady up. She, who sees and interprets omens everywhere, pronounced it a Good Sign.

Ready, set......

So it's early morning and I'm ready to begin. Everything is lined up: our hosts are wonderful, writers themselves with great wit and a lovely home, my computer is not broken as I hysterically feared last night, my daughter is fine, the coffee is made, the setting is scrumptious. I was woken up in the middle of the night by my writing partner's hysterical laughter. She had a dream where one of her students inadvertantly made her do a back flip. I hope my students do the same for me.
I am so excited, and yet so nervous.
Of COURSE I never finished a novel before. I'm a full time teacher and mom! There was never enough time. But now there is and I have these days to make it happen. If I can't do it now then the problem is bigger than time. So no excuses. Coffee in, words out, wish me luck.
Did I mention that it's incredibly beautiful here?

Home Sweet Away-From-Home

We are safely ensconced in our lovely nest for the next two weeks!

We departed our home town with egg salad sandwiches and burritos in hand, Doritos and Dr. Peppers at the ready in the front seat. The Indigo Girls sang us south on 285, and then Loretta Lynn and Elton John kept us company the rest of the way. Letterlady, being the new bride that she is, was a wee bit melancholy at the prospect of not seeing her groom for two whole weeks. It was quite darling of her.

We had an extremely productive seven hour drive through the most beautiful parts of our fair state, stopping for bubble gum and gas, Mexican food and beach towels. (Did we mention that our retreat is walking distance to a hot springs?)

We spent much of the time in the car outlining the novel I am going to begin to write, playing with Greek myths and contemporary themes to weave a modern story of hubris and liberation. Letterlady was my muse and my scribe all wrapped up into one, and thanks to her, I have about ten pages of notes ready to begin shaping into chapters. When we weren't brainstorming and impressing ourselves with our cleverness, we were watching the beautiful ranches roll by and imagining what the people who live in the little towns do for a living.

When we reached our final destination, the sun was low in the west and the light was beginning to cast long shadows across the valley. Everything took on that golden hue that loves twilight and always makes me believe in the inherent goodness of all people. The smell of hot, sporadic rain on the highway finished the moment deliciously.

Upon arrival we were greeted by our generous hosts, Paul and Becky, who are also writers and live here operating the B&B. They welcomed us with wine and cheese and we sat around a lovely table sharing conversation about our respective projects. We drank a toast to the bun in Letterlady's oven and my week-old divorce, and felt right at home almost instantly. We are looking forward to sharing our work and reading some of theirs.

Right now, we are back in our suite, and Letterlady is playing online Scrabble with Letterhubby, who's back at home. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and more competitive, apparently. We are in a charming second floor abode with a full kitchen, living and sleeping area with a gracious balcony and all the amenities. On Monday, we move into The Cottage, where we will have a whole little house all to ourselves with a separate entrance, access to a garden, a writer's cottage, and balcony. The main house of the retreat has a book and video library and opens onto Main Street, so if this town sees any action, so will we.

As we were driving in, we set some goals for ourselves to try to accomplish so as not to waste a moment of this precious gift of time. Because we will write so much each day, we also intend to get at least an hour and a half of daily exercise, whether long walks, swimming laps at the local pool, or alpine hikes in the surrounding glory of the Rockies. We intend to eat at least one meal out each day. (There is a European bakery two blocks down, and anyone who knows me knows that I love breakfast...my favorite being fresh croissants and strawberry jam with cafe au lait. I'm starting to think that I may be in heaven right here on earth.) After dinner each evening, we will trade pages and read each other's work, making comments and suggestions. We will then post on this blog what we loved best about what the other wrote. We are of the mind that structure, accountability and encouragement are the three key ingredients to a successful writing life, and we intend to provide that for each other.

My personal goal is to reestablish my previous practice of writing at least one poem per day, and to focus on this prenatal novel. I'm going to have to figure out a way to think about it that isn't so BIG. Poems are so small.

Letterlady's goal is to work the 300+ pages she has written of her novel into a completely finished draft. Then she'll have the rest of the summer to research agents and start shopping it around. Just think, you'll be able to say you knew her when...

Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can figure out how to add photos to the blog. Don't you think it would be enhanced by some action shots of writers at work? Stay tuned!

Countdown now in minutes

We leave today. I am doing last minute laundry and feeling bad about the wretched state of the house to which I consign my husband. Leaving family to be a writer -- hard stuff. And yet how else to really get things done? I miss them already; my daughter wants me to take her stuffed animal with me to keep me company.
Yesterday other teachers were like children, wild-eyed and irreverant at 3 pm. I couldn't quite participate (no more teachers, no more books...) because I think what we are about to do isn't quite summer revelry. To do lists, self-imposed deadlines, attention to detail. Not quite lounging poolside. Does every novelist go through this to finish the first one? The complete un-fun of working when others relax? This is why so many famous writers drank too much, had unhappy wives, and a very large trust fund.
I am excited, I swear, but in that first-day-of-school nervous anticipation way, not in that last-day-of-school Bacchanalian revelry way.
I am not packing a single pair of pants without an elastic waistband. If I'm going to be working, I will at least be cosy damn it.

Low Fuel Warning

Despite the fact that I have SO much to do to get ready to depart in the morning, now that I'm home with my feet up, I don't seem to be able to get up out of this chair.

Nothing like margaritas and raucous stories about students to cap the events of a school year. A whole posse of teachers colonized the back porch of our local Mexican eatery, where happy hour lived up to its name.

The power at school was restored this morning around 8:30, and we worked our tails off all day cleaning, organizing, moving teachers in and out of classrooms, finishing and posting grades, celebrating career and personal milestones over a faculty lunch, and basically working ourselves hard to the very end. I feel like I'm running on fumes and if anyone tries to crank my ignition, I will simply stall.

Or, I could write a poem about some of the themes of the happy hour conversations...they would include dragons, unicorns, good books, sweet pickles, tequila worms and banjos. This sounds like a good assignment for everyone!

Readers, make a poem that uses at least three of the themes/words listed above and post your results in the comments section of the blog. Don't forget that weblogs are supposed to be interactive, so your responses to what we write here will generate more good conversation. We might even learn something!

Looking forward to reading what you come up with...

Force of Nature

Well, the hurricane-force winds knocked out the power at school all day today. Kids had to open their lockers by the light of their cell phones, yet final exams went on as planned. It was a timely reminder not to get too complacent in the illusion that we actually have some control over the events of the universe. We're all crossing our fingers and hoping that the power will be back on tomorrow so we can update grades and start processing final report cards.

I'm happy to report that my exams are now completely graded and we finished our hiring for two positions in the English department. That should be a huge load off my mind, but my body doesn't really believe it yet. In my experience, the only antidote is a road trip. In previous years, I've had the car packed on the morning of the last day of school, and I was on the road within a half hour of the last bell. Otherwise, my brain takes a while to get into vacation mode, and we don't have enough days off to waste any.

On the way home today, I stopped at the library and got several books on tape so that in the unlikely event there's a lull in our road trip conversation, we'll have some options. I'm also hoping that we'll come across some garage sales and thrift stores as we mosey south. I feel like I've been rather numb for months, and I'm hoping this trip will help me start to get the feeling back in my bones and my muscle.

I realized today that we will drive directly past Platte Canyon High School on our way out of Denver. I've driven by it so many times on other trips, and always thought about what a beautiful little school it is, and how nice it would be to work there. Then when the tragic school shooting happened last fall, it seemed too surreal to grasp, despite the fact that many of our students knew kids there. That was a horrible week to be a teacher. After something like that happens, everyone in schools goes into high alert, and the vigilance is mentally exhausting. I knew I needed a day off when I was at the CLAS fall writing workshop listening to former poet laureate Ted Kooser speak. A waiter in a white catering jacket came around the corner into the ballroom and I found myself looking for a gun in his hands. I called in sick shortly thereafter, stayed in my pajamas all day, and wrote this tiny poem:

Personal Day - October 2006

curled in the fetal position on the couch
feet pulled up and cupped together
like mollusks without shells

tears roll quietly over the bridge of my nose
too much grief wrapped in candy-striped flannel
hard week to be a teacher in the U. S. of A.


Maybe Letterlady wouldn't mind if we stop and leave some flowers...

Gusts of up to 46 mph

The wind blowing outside sounds a lot like the storm in my head, swirling in the gray matter behind my eyes...

As I drove home today, I was thinking about the birth of my daughter, and the fact that I labored for 40 hours before she finally emerged. This last week of school reminded me of that...will these two weeks on retreat be as productive and rewarding as that 40 hours in April, 1998?

Letterlady already knows what she's gestating. She's birthing a novel that will make her famous and will one day be added to the canon of AP texts that she currently indoctrinates her students with.

I haven't had the ultrasound. I could be carrying a book of poetry or a children's picture book about an amicable divorce where the family isn't deconstructed but rather expanded. (Might be too soon for that, though there is a shameful dearth of quality children's literature on the subject.) It could be a book draft of my article about raising a reader, but nonfiction seems so unglamorous given the alpine ambiance that will surround us. And the poetry has been piling up on my tongue for months for lack of a spoon big enough to manage the bites and ease the digestion.

I read once that Sue Grafton started writing her murder mysteries (A is for Alibi, etc.), because she was having homicidal fantasies about killing her ex-husband. I hope it's a true story.

Help! I need math (who thought I would say that?)

Anyone with specialized math knowledge should let me know. My narrator is a mathematician, and I need lots of cool math facts that would be part of her regular brain space (though of course they are not a part of mine.) I've already learned that the word "algebra" comes from a word meaning "to reassemble bones." I have lots to say about that. But any cool math stories, problems or hip vocab, please tell me. I'm just a poor struggling English teacher, trying to write fiction.
It helps that my husband knows math, but I don't want to burn him out on the project.

When it rains it pours

Of course we decided that the right time to move all the furniture in our house was ....now. Leaving in four days, early pregnant (fatigue manifests as nausea), and lots of grading to do. So yes, we empty drawers and play musical bedrooms. One down, three to go. And no one needs as many pairs of tights as I apparently (previously unknown to me) have. I have fantasies of arson, of the house burning (with no one inside and all of our photos magically out) and then we just have to start over with clean corners, no clutter and an appropriate number of tights.
yikes.
It's been so long since I've had time for my fiction (since spring break) that I forget what happens in the end.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Woke up early this morning with my typical workaholic-end-of-the-year insomnia. It must be June. My alarm says I have forty-five more minutes to sleep, but my brain says, "You leave in five days! You can't be sleeping! You have way too much to do!!" So naturally, instead of doing any of those things, I'm blogging. Ah, the insanity.

Must do before we leave:

• Grade the exams my World Lit students are taking all this week (I hope they reviewed the Ovid packet. They are forever confusing Pyramus and Pygmalion, Orpheus and Odysseus. Do you think they realized that all the level one answers are in the crossword puzzle?)
  
• Write a letter and assemble mailings for all the teachers who will be new to our school next year.
• Read The Secret Garden with my daughter.
• Hand out the summer reading books to faculty mentors.
• Pack and clean my classroom.
• Move into a new office (my job is being reconfigured with new and exciting responsibilities for the fall.)
• Post final grades.
• Call the kid up the street who mows my grass.
• Receive (I hope) finalized divorce decree in the mail.
  
• Decide which journals to pack.
• Go to Office Max for a jump drive, ink cartridges and paper. Probably want to treat myself with a pack of brand new fine-tip pens, too (black ink, of course.)
  
• Pay bills.
• Read The Secret Garden with my daughter.
• Pack camera and printer!!!
  
• Clean out the fridge. (I actually already did this, but I always put things on my lists that I've already done so that I can cross them off.)
• Call the other kid up the street who will water my yard and plants.
• Sell precious family stock so I can buy gas for the trip.
• Get postcard stamps (did they go up in price, too?)
  
• Choose CD's that Letterlady won't hate me for bringing (will our cottage at the retreat have a CD player? Better bring one.)
• Decide which books on writing to take (currently am sure that I can't live without Ted Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual, Mary Pipher's Writing to Change the World, Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook, Margaret Atwood's Writing With Intent, a gift from a member of my Estrogen Posse called The Writer's Path by Walton and Toomay, and of course, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.)
  
• Rent a van.
• Get Doritos and Dr. Pepper for celebratory departure feast (need the Indigo Girls Shaming of the Sun for driving down the driveway.)
• Call mom with phone numbers where we'll be.
  
• Read The Secret Garden with my daughter.
• Laundry!!!

Help me readers...what am I forgetting?

The Last Educational Week

The last week of school is like a bad haircut -- it keeps getting shorter but that doesn't make it better. Students become (more) apathetic and (gasp) teacher can relate. Counting down to our road trip and writing extravaganza.

Welcome!

We are two public school teachers who work and play together at a charter school in Boulder County, Colorado. In addition to teaching high school English, we are also mothers and writers (not to mention newly married and newly divorced), and we are forever trying to carve time to write from the complexity of our rich daily lives.

In the past, we've been lucky enough to receive summer fellowships from the Colorado State University Writing Project and the English Speaking Union of the United States. This year, thanks to sabbatical grants from the Fund for Teachers, we are getting ready to begin a two-week residency at a writer's retreat in southern Colorado. During our stay, we will update this blog regularly so that students, colleagues, friends and family can check in with our progress and our adventures.

School ends next week and we hit the road in exactly seven days...