Sandra Gail Lambert

Nostalgia

It's odd, but listening to Pandora on my new I-Touch is making me remember a road trip I took in 1976 (7?).  It was me, barely out, and the only two other lesbians that I knew.  We drove from Augusta, Georgia through back roads for hours.  They knew two more lesbians who lived in a single wide in the middle of a patch of North Florida pine woods.  We arrived.  And then the five of us listened to two albums - Chris Williamson's Changer and the Changed and Meg Christian's I Know You Know.  Then we drove all the way back.  It was a huge deal.   

Soon after, a lover gave me Linda Tillery's album Womanly Way.  And now, here I am with my I-Touch.  Somehow, today, it all seems so connected. 

Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund - there is still time

Are you a lesbian-identified poet or fiction writer?  Have you had at least one piece of writing published somewhere but no more than one book?  Could you use an award ranging from $1500 to $10,000?  Astraea Foundation has extended their deadline to July 15th.  Check out the other requirements and apply now.  

Here's some info about Astraea from their website:

"Astraea is a dynamic global foundation providing critically needed financial support to lesbian-led, trans, LGBTI and progressive organizations. Separated by continents, language and culture, Astraea grantees are seizing opportunities, and laying the groundwork necessary for women and LGBTI people to claim their human rights. Astraea staff, board, members and grantees all share a deep commitment to feminist principles, racial and economic justice and human rights."

 

Alligator Princess of America's Nile - the St. Johns River

 

And this is just the preview Michelle Thatcher's still in production film of her solo kayak trip along the St. Johns River!  

The beginning makes me cry.  There is so much joy in me when I'm loading my kayak in the "early half-dream of dawn."  

Apropos of Nothing - Baby Armadillos

This is sort of related to writing.  The poet Renee Ashley fell in love with the armadillos that snuffled around our lodgings at Atlantic Center for the Arts.  This post is for her. 

The photo credits go to Lee and Taylor Savage.  These babies live under their house.  

 

 

 

How to revise a novel

 

Wander your kayak around mangrove islets.  Watch for crabs skittering along prop roots.  Surprise a burst of night herons.  Be ignored by an eagle.  Push against a rising afternoon wind to reach home. 

And in the middle of the post-kayak eating of shrimp and crab (caught in the same Gulf waters you just left) you will know what is important and how to begin. 

"My fingers press into clay.  I balance at the edge of my mind.  The excitement rises and wants to spill into bright colors and glare.  It whispers out of my bones and demands that I continue.  It says that I will not fail, that I know enough, everything."

Tayari Jones on finishing the first draft

I don't often do the touchy feely thing, but the truth is my heart just spread all the way out of my body as I listened to this. 

Any day now, after letting my novel rest for a few weeks, I'm starting the next revision .  Inside my head I've been doing the tough love thing - you must be unrelenting, you must have no mercy with extraneous minor characters, you must cut all that part about the young Seminole girl who charms snakes and wants to know how to sew bathing suits.  There's been more tough than love.

So when Tayari spoke of finding that "other kind of love," I sort of started crying.  And now I think I'm ready to begin this ending of three years of work.   

Visit - ability

 

Twenty years ago I made the switch from braces and crutches to a wheelchair.  My life opened back up.  There was less pain, less exhaustion, and everywhere I went, all the places I could get to now, I smiled - which was quite a change.  However, everywhere I went no longer included people's homes.  There was this one night back then - I was feeling lonely - that I tried to remember the last time I'd been in someone's house.  I couldn't. 

Join the campaign for CONCRETE CHANGE - make every new home visitable. 

Writing Below Sea Level with Connie May Fowler - The Cedar Key Project

Writing Below Sea Level - The St. Augustine Project was a year ago this week.  Here and here are links to my reporting of all the ways the workshop helped my writing.  It's certainly one of the reasons why, today, I have a finished novel. 

And now Connie May is offering The Cedar Key Project this October and then again in November.  Four days, six fiction writers with Connie May and six creative non-fiction writers with Zilpha Underwood, good food, the Gulf, pelicans - the woman knows how to put on a conference.   

I can't go this year, but I encourage anyone who wants to take that next movement forward in their writing to apply.   

The query letter, a synopsis, and my underwear drawer.

This is an odd time for the progress of my novel.  It's done, sort of.  Another revision go through is needed, but I'm waiting.  It's out to a couple of readers and I want to hear what they have to say, and it should fester for awhile anyway.  

So, what to do?  My underwear drawer is very neat, my closet less crowded, and the toaster oven sparkly.  I've sorted through all the piles of photos and papers from my mother's move out of her apartment, and they are in a box under my writing bed.  (Perhaps, my next writing project?  But I'll have to sit on the idea for awhile.  Get it?  That's a pun.) 

Yes, I am a bit rambling these days.  But I have put together a query letter (halfway decent) for the novel and a, so far, horrid synopsis.