Sandra Gail Lambert

Limbo

So, you know, that writing thing.  It seems I don't do that anymore,  

This is not the complete truth.  I do stare at my query letter drafts and sometimes change an indefinite article to a definite one.  Sometimes I change it back.  

 

Writing Below Sea Level - The Cedar Key Project

I've posted about Connie May Fowler's upcoming writing workshops before, but I want to again.  For one thing, the deadline for them is soon.  But also, as the days build up since the novel was declared done, I'm figuring out things.  Like, that you can watch too many episodes of Dexter on too many days in a row, that it's really exhausting not to be writing, and that the workshop I did with Connie May and the connections I made there over a year ago are a big deal.   

Long Past Any Memory - Excerpts

 

I've posted some bits and pieces of the novel here and here.  Or just click on the tabs in the header. 

Oh, and here's an introduction.  There is a river in Florida where sweet water billows to the surface from caves deep in the earth.  Using a mosaic of time and shadowed history, Long Past Any Memory tells the stories of women who may have lived on its edges. 

Enjoy. 

Long Past Any Memory

 

I am finished.  The novel, Long Past Any Memory, is done.  Really.  Done, done.  It's printed out, wrapped in a pink and an orange rubber band, and flopped at the end of my writing bed.  I pat it from time to time.  Three years of work and there it is.  Oh my, I feel like I'm wandering around outside of myself. 

Despite the weirdness of it all, the work on the agent query letter proceeds.  The drafts have progressed from horrid through moderately awful to moderately okay.  Not that I have any perspective.     

 

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."

 

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.   

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.   

 

  

Half done

I've revised my way through 140 of 230 pages and, to my great relief, at least so far, I think this novel is okay.  I mean, I don't hate it in general and sometimes, in particular, I'm sort of thrilled.  For me, about my own writing, that's pretty good.  

Another thing I'm noticing is how much help I've searched out and received these past three years.  I bid on a charity auction and won a chapter critique from Martha Southgate, and another section was brought to the Writers in Paradise Conference with Thisbe Nissen.  A whole year ago, (has it been that long?) Connie May Fowler brought together a fabulous group of writers for a week.  That's where she set me on the right, final path for the novel.  Then there was Kelly Cherry and the rest of my Atlantic Center for the Arts group who read a long, long segment, and just this week Laura van den Berggave me thoughtful notes as her contribution to a fundraiser for Dzanc Books educational programs. And right now, a novelist friend and her editor are reading the entire thing.   

Early on I had feedback from Suzanne Carlton who teaches a fine fiction writing class here in Gainesville, my poet friend offers support on an almost daily basis, and all along, most months, the Lesbian Readers Group and Potluck has listened to me read bits and pieces.  There is nothing like reading out loud, in front of other people, to make evey flaw evident.  

Okay, enough looking back.  It's time to get this done.   

The Compleat Novel

For all these three years, I've had this dragonfly scene scribbled in various forms on various pieces of scrap papers.  I've tucked them in with each chapter's notes as I work on it.  I've never found a place for it. 

So, on Monday, I was struggling again with this last little bridge thingee (highly technical craft term) that was all I needed to have done to have the whole book written and ready for revisions.  It was coming along okay, but.  In my mind, there was always the "but." 

I flipped through all the notes trying to figure something, anything out.  I found my latest additions to the dragonfly scene - "living veil," "riding her breath."  I closed the bridge thingee file, opened the computer to the last scene of the novel, wove in the dragonfly scene, and really, truly, right outloud, gasped.  I knew the novel was done.   

My skin tingled, my face flushed, all sorts of muscles tightened and released in waves (Yes, I know what it sounds like), and I just had to go outside and twirl around my yard.  

So, I've risked rereading the ending.  It needs some work, but yes, the novel is complete.  Not done or finished with revisions or anything like that, but still, let's celebrate. 

Writer friends

From the people I met years ago at a writer's conference who click "like" on my Facebook announcement that I've finished a draft to the fellow novelist who, in the whirlwind, anxious midst of preparing her own revised draft for an agent, says "send me the chapter to read," there is no way I'd be able to do all this that I'm doing without writer friends.  

Who knew?  I didn't.  All I knew was that I had done all I could in my comfortable, supportive home sphere.  In 2004 I searched the Internet for writing conferences that would be easy to drive to.  I found The Atlantic Center for the Arts, applied, and was put on the alternate list.  A week before the residency I got the call, and I'm still getting support (and giving it, I hope) to writers I met there.   

A poet friend called today to say she's been accepted at a writers conference this summer - her first.  She's taking her poems out there into the world.  I hung up, held the phone to my chest, and thought about how precious we all are to each other.  Thus, this post.   

Looking for Sarracenia

Hey All,

Tomorrow I'm finding my way over the flooded Suwannee River to the Ochlockonee River State Park.  For ten days, I'll be living in my van, parked between a bay and a pine flats chock full of wildflowers.  I've packed my six pillows, printer, extra ink, binoculars, computer, protein powder, two bags of books, camera, and only four sets of earrings.  I'm ready. 

My goals include revising this next chapter all the way through, writing up an application for a residency, visiting with a writer friend and her partner, and searching out sarracenias (pitcher plants).

It is unlikely that I'll be on the Internet until I return.  Here's the link to the eaglets.  Please check on them for me while I'm gone. 

The Inbetweens

The inbetweens nerve-wrack me.  Four days ago I tucked away a revision, pulled out the next chapter, copied Draft 4, renamed it Draft 5, and then closed everything - the computer files, the physical folder, the yellow pads. 

Since then I haven't written anything.  Part of it is having a somewhat workable wheelchair again and needing to fly around town doing things.  The other part is that same part that always happens - the I'm not a real writer, there's no point in continuing, I can't do this thoughts.  

This morning I woke up early, brushed my teeth, splashed my face, and instead of going to my writing bed went back to my sleeping bed.  When I woke up again, I had all sorts of thoughts - how to do the omniscient thing after the 1858 chapter, what the lady would be thinking about the tailor, and how the word "thicken" will be perfect in that problematic sentence in the 2006 chapter.  

Whew.   

73.5495%

My wheelchair is in the shop.  There are parts to be ordered.  Who knows when I'll be getting out of the house again?  After the anxiety, claustrophobia, and bouts of bureaucracy-induced rage, there is the part where I get to write more.  

So, here's the revision update.  According to the calculator on my cell phone, this go through is 73.5495% done.  It's inescapable.  If I keep working, I'll get to the end.      

Revision Update

It's been a week of rejections.  Sigh.  But, it's also been a week of finishing another chapter of revisions.  (Need I say it.  Not finished, finished.  Nothing is ever finished, finished.) 

I wasn't quite ready to delve into the next chapter so I did math.  I've revised 47,674 words.  The remaining,unrevised chapters add up to 28,797 more words. (So far.  That could go up or down, and then there's this little, interim, maybe omniscient voice segment set in 1703 that I haven't written yet.)

Anyway, that adds up to a novel of 76,471 words of which I've revised (this go around) 62.3426 per cent.  Okay, enough.  I'm going to open that next folder.    

Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions

Do you want your writing to receive affordable, right in your own home critique by skilled, generous authors?  Do you want to support Dzanc Books' writing education program for school students? Dzanc Books' creative writing sessionsare a fundraising effort for their educational programs.  Writers donate their craft, some of us pay for the help, and the money goes to fund writing classes for fourth through twelfth graders.   

I've already signed up for two hours of Laura van den Berg's time.  I met her at this past summer's workshop with Connie May Fowler.  She spoke to our gathering about literary journals in the most helpful of ways, and one night she read to us from her upcoming collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us.  I would like my writing to be that gorgeous. 

Check out the list of available writers.  For the price of the pesto gnocchi with tuna at The Top Restaurant followed by a cup of vanilla espresso gelato, these authors could be critiquing your poetry, editing a short story, or answering questions about form and voice. 

Atlantic Center for the Arts, Below Sea Level, and Writers in Paradise - Revisited

I'm revising a novel.  The first chapter was critiqued at the Below Sea Level conference with Connie May Fowler, the second at Writers in Paradise with Thisbe Nissen, the third has had to just make it on it's own, and now I've started in on the fourth.  This one has a fat folder of feedback from this past November's residency with Kelly Cherry at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. 

Yes, last year I was a bit of a conference slut.  Which is why the paint on the side of my house is peeling and my ramps still need to be power-washed and I'm making do with a frig whose freezer won't freeze. (I embezzled the registration fees out of my house repair funds.)  

Anyway, here I am opening these folders with check marks, exclamation points, cross outs, and arrows pointing sentences this way and that.  It's as if I have everyone back around the table with me.  And comments are making sense that didn't at first.  

So, to all of you who have taken a turn stirring the pot, kept it from bubbling over, suggested I try adding more roots, helped grind out a solution when it was too bland, or whipped up a spicy masala that I could swirl in at the end - Thank You.      

Collective Fallout is out

 

I arrive home after a 14 hour day of tucking my mother's whole life of belongings into one small room and leaving her for her first night in the new place, and in the mailbox there it is - a journal with my name in the table of contents.  It was such good timing.

Collective Fallout, edited by Eric Crapo, is a twice yearly journal "dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery fiction and poetry."  It's available in print or as an e-download.  Just click here to order.  

Now, here's the place where I would talk about the other contributors.  However, I came home that night, my arms full of old papers of my mother's, tired into stupidity, and after flipping through the journal, I fell asleep.  I woke up, went right back to moving chores, and now, I can't find the journal.  I've looked everywhere.  It might be in that box with my dead father's Army Air Corps enlistment records from 1938 or maybe under the stacks of old checks from just decades ago. 

Looking obsessed me for awhile, but I've given up and ordered a replacement copy.  I can tell you my story has lesbians, the Everglades, a swamp goddess, a serial killer, and infidelity with a park ranger.    

My writing brain - on anxiety

Maybe I'm the only one.  Maybe other writers don't have twisted, folded all over and through itself anxiety. 

For instance - maybe they don't have a morning of writing where things went quite well, where the chapter hardly needed much revision at all and so they've moved way ahead of schedule on completing their novel, where all this smooshy feel good stuff is followed by full-body anxiety because they don't have any friggin' idea about what to write next, after the novel is done.  In fact, (they probably don't think) the best idea is to slow down, not to finish the book too soon, maybe ever. 

Daily read publishing world blogs

Here's a glimpse of my daily procrastinating life or my educating-myself-about-publishing life or my just-need-a-friendly-voice writing life.  The following are the web links I click on most days.  

New Pages - OMG - this is a fantastic resource for writers.  My deepest appreciation to everyone that devotes their time to its existence.

Bookends - A Literary Agency - these agents take shifts answering questions about queries, ranting, giving glimpses of an agent's point of view. 

Editorial Ass - The famed Moonrat, an anonymous book editor, makes me laugh on a regular basis.  And, like the best of the blogs, encourages a huge conversation about books. 

Tayari Jones - The author of Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, offers one of the best writer blogs available - loads of links, community support, and all that it is that writer's do.

Swivet- Agent Colleen Lindsay's blog has practical info (Why I Rejected Your Query Letter), rants, Depends-necessary funny stuff - all in a queer friendly, genre friendly manner.  

Nathan Bransford - Another agent who makes me laugh. (Is there a theme going here?)  He has great contests. 

Booktour - Now this is the coolest site.  As an author I can post all my books, appearances, and where I'm based.  As a reader I can find out which authors are appearing when and where in my area.  Or if I want to set up an author reading I can see who lives in my area or who will be passing through. 

MediaBistro - basically a publishing gossip column.  Essential to every writer. 

 

I knew you were wondering.

So, how's the revision going, you ask.  I can say that I've started.  Many things that I hoped would be true, are.  Even from the first paragraph of the first chapter, the novel started to pull together as a, well, novel.  I'm tightening up the writing.  And only occasionally do I think that there's no way I can ever do this.

What bothers me the most is the inefficiency.  I write, ponder, and drop deeper until I feel the whole novel in my head all at once.  And now it's obvious that this chapter needs to end here, that sentence belongs in the third chapter, and I must, must have swallow-tailed kites appear right away.  Then, way before I'm done, I have to leave.  I scribble down all the connections, corrections, and shiftings around that are in my mind and hope they make sense when I return.  

Mostly, they don't.  So, I start over at the surface of my mind.  For a time management, list keeping, have everything at hand type, it's frustrating. 

Revision Plan

Okay.  I think I'm over the finishing-first-draft meltdown.  I stopped trying to write.  Then I poked and meandered through the chapters.  It was helpful to notice that not all of it was complete crap.  Now, I have a plan. 

This revision is about making the writing better and a first, light braiding of the chapters.  

There, that's a nice concrete plan.  I didn't even have one of those under arm stinging sweats when I typed it.  Today and tomorrow are OldEnglishLady days, but I'm ready.  

Speaking of my OldEnglishLady.  She knitted red/white/blue scarves in celebration of Obama.  Here I am wearing one and watching the Inauguration.

      

Post First Draft

I sat in front of my computer for days and days, not writing, having shame about not writing, being short tempered.  Yesterday I figured out that I was having just a teeny bit of an emotional fall apart after finishing the first draft of this novel. 

So I turned off the computer for a long time (five hours) and closed up the novel files (yes, actual physical files) and stacked them at the end of the writing bed.  For a few days, I'm going to do frivolous things.  Like watch this video.

All About Me

Yesterday, just before taking my mother to her doctor's appointment, I printed out a newly minted draft of a chapter.  Well, not just a chapter.  The last chapter.  I think.  I still need to write this one scene - a woman in the 1700's running/escaping through miles of long leaf pine - but then, most likely, that's it.  It, it.  The end.  The end of the first complete draft of this novel. 

Inside me somewhere are high-pitched squeals and ohmygods.  But not out loud, not yet.  I have to go research North Florida trade caravans of the 18th century. 

A Writer's Resolutions

 

1.  I will finish this novel this year. 

2.  I will show up at all the talks, signings, lectures, appearances of any kind of as many authors as I can.  

3.  I will add back into my life time to critique/exclaim over/support  other writers' works-in-progress.  

4.  I will read, read, read. 

There, that's it.  Is there something I've left out?

Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin

Okay. Why is this novel on my "2008 books that have changed my life" list?  First of all, I've sunk happily into LeGuin's novels for almost forty years.  Second, I'm working on a book that tells the stories of women and girl children who, like Lavinia, history would never have remembered.  Third of all, Lavinia is a novel written with such exquisite power that I think about it all the time even these many months after reading it. 

How does she make-up a story and it reads like an ancient myth passed down to you by ancestors and makes you also laugh out loud in parts?  How did she put so much strength into her characters?  How much owl imagery can I have in my novel and not be considered a plagiarizer?  I want to make readers feel the way Ursula K. LeGuin makes me feel - as if I've touched something ancient and deep and tender.  

  

Girls Write Now

Hankie alert.

So much could be said about this.  And nothing needs to be.  This young woman more than says it all. 

Although I will say that my blogger friend Tayari Jones will match any donations that are sent to Girls Write Now, the organization that fostered this young writer's voice.  And she wants us to post pictures of our own teen aged selves.  See below.

The Last Scene

I'm writing the last scene of the last (most likely) chapter of this novel.  Yikes.  It snuck up on me.  I'm eager to start on revision.  It's my favorite part of writing.  But this scene will take awhile. 

Like this morning, I was writing, and then I checked in my mother and it's possible that yesterday she took way too many of her steroid pills.  Or maybe not.  I'm poised to go out there, but my poet friend (whose mother lives in the same retirement community) will drop by first and check it out.  But I'm in hold-my-breath mode until she does. 

So I blog.  And listen to last week's episodes of Tell Me More.  Michele Martin comforts me. 

The New York Times and Dykes to Watch Out For

The NYT has a glowing, intelligent review of Alison Bechdel's The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.  Which means, sort of, that they did a glowing, intelligent review of my life. Which means that they said "dyke" in the NYT.  Which means that Alison Bechdel's talent and devotion to her own and our lesbian selves has, among so many other things, opened a bit more space for lesbian writers. 

P.S.  Me, I'm a combination of Mo and Clea who in the past years has relaxed enough to add a good bit of Harriet.  How about you? 

Collective Fallout

 

Collective Fallout is an upcoming, print journal "dedicated to queer themed sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mysteries."  And they have accepted a story of mine for their first issue.  When I know the release date, you'll know the release date.

Lately I've been awash, well in many ways, but especially in rejections.  I'm sure Pavlov would have something to say about how just one acceptance every now and then makes me go all yippy. 

I am online again. I am full of pie.

In the 90's a local group set up the Alachua Freenet.  They had meetings at the public library, gave out computer disks, taught us all how to set up our computers for a free dial up system, and were called the "Commie Net" by commercial Internet businesses.  I've been consistently on-line from then until three weeks ago.

I wasn't shocked by how dependent I am on the Internet, but the loneliness was a surprise.  I missed the personal back and forth of e-mails, Twitter, and Facebook.  And even though they have no idea who I am, I missed keeping up with the blog-documented going ons of agents, editors, and writers.  

And I couldn't blog routinely.  There are so many rejections I haven't whined about, unshared stories about the Old English Lady (my mother), and post-ACA tales. 

But here's a picture of me at ACA, before my mother's illness, while I was writing hours and hours every day. (Photo credit: Renee Ashley)

 

   

Mothers and motherboards

Well, my mother comes home from the hospital tomorrow.  And my computer, which is getting a new motherboard, might be ready before Thanksgiving.  Nevertheless, I am writing most mornings.  I sometimes fall asleep over the computer and wake up to a flurry of a's or o's across the screen from where my fingers weighed down, but I'm showing up.  

I'm not trying anything wild like forging ahead, but I rearrange sentences and expand scenes and trim dialog.  Next week, with any luck, the "big picture" writing will resume. 

Five Thousand Words

I think it's not worth it, that my mind is tired and scattered, but most mornings I get in my writing bed and start working.  Despite everything, those moments happen where a line of dialog seems perfect or a scene gets written that skips my mind and comes straight out of my hand and onto the page.  And it adds up.  The five thousand words on this chapter so far makes me smile a restorative smile every time I think about them. 

I'm still on a borrowed computer.  It's wonderful, but there won't be links or photographs on the blog for awhile.  You'll have to settle for my meanderings, unadorned.   

Writing again.

This morning, I worked on the current chapter for the first time since returning from ACA.  It's taken way to long to settle back in.  My computer is off to HP repair, but I'm using a graciously loaned to me laptop.  I've had to add a few essential writerly choices to my friend's toolbar - like "save," "undo," and "wordcount." 

I still don't have wireless.  I yearn for the almost forgotten ease of being propped up in my writing day bed and flipping back and forth from the internet to my writing.  Sigh.  The things we get used to.  I miss my daily internet dose of "Tell Me More." 

Well, I can only sit like this, huddled around the ethernet connection with the laptop actually on my lap, for a limited time.  Imagine my connections connecting. 

Where I've spent the weekend - ACA Day 7.

 

It's hard to even say the words out loud, but I've done initial research, written out the whole loose beginning to end on yellow sheets, and am over 3,000 words into an on-the-computer draft.  This is usually at least, at least, three weeks of work.  I've done it in six days.  And it's likely I'll move forward another thousand words tonight. 

Here at ACA, propped up against my pillows, writing, I'm having the time of my life. 

Atlantic Center for the Arts - Day Four

 

These are my favorite signs here.  I feel cared for like a turtle nest on the beach or a woodstork rookery.  Although today is a rough day.  I'm overtired, had bad dreams, and am pretty sure that I'm a crap and/or lazy writer.

News from the Coastal Scrub - ACA Day 3

 

Here's the view from my little, lovely apartment at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.  This morning I was up at four, wrote until 6:30, strolled the grounds under the setting full moon with a mug of soy milk mixed with protein powder, wrote more (I've started a new chapter, and about 8am the structure of it appeared in my mind!), and am now in the Commons Room pealing a grapefruit and blogging.  Need I say it? Life is Good.  

Today I meet in my group (three poets, three fiction writers, and Kelly Cherry).  Later are the introductory readings where I get to hear bits of writing from the whole mass of us.  And give one myself.  Then dinner, then bed, then up to write again in morning.  This is all so exciting. 

Fourteen Days Until The Atlantic Center for the Arts

Fifty thousand half-way decent words - that is what I want done on this novel by the time I arrive at the residency with Kelly Cherry.  Most likely, I'm going to make it.  I mean I have the words right now, but the last 4,000 are only half half-way decent.  There's a week to change this, a week to pack, and then it's on to three weeks of away-from-my-life writing.  All the time, I yearn. 

Book research

 

Sometimes it's searching the web, sometimes it's flicking through microfiche reels, but sometimes this novel's research means returning to its geographic setting - the Silver River.   

My kayak friend and I were launched by 7:30 and had the river to ourselves.  A batch of baby alligators and their mama curled over downed branches, ibis waited on the top of the tallest dead tree for the first sunlight, and in a sandy cove, naked lesbians squealed as they dropped into the cold spring water.  

And I did do research.  I consulted with my kayak friend and the overhanging branches on how to describe the smell of cypress.  I found out exactly how far you have to go into the trees before the mosquitoes gather.  And, finally, I figured out a simile for how the air is on those mornings in the summer when even before dawn the humidity is hardcore. 

Afterwards, there was barbeque.  Yum.   

Post Fay

Tree tops twirled and things thumped on the roof, but nothing bad happened on this particular half acre in North Central Florida.  We ended up with a respectable and much needed 5.55 inches of rain, but writer friends in other parts of Florida are flooded.  

I've had days of staying inside and having time to work on this new chapter.  Mostly, of course, I wasted it, but today my research ranged from finding out who was elected governor in 1932 to what a speedboat of that time looked like to watching the DVD of "Freaks." 

It was such a good movie. (Except for the parts that weren't.)  I loved seeing so many disabled and just different people in one story and two of them were even main characters. And it was made in 1931 so there, during the depression, were a bearded woman, a legless man, armless women, an intersexed person, little people, conjoined twins, Prince Randian the human torso, and Zip, Pip and Schlitzie, the "pinheads," all with good paying jobs.  One of them got around the same way my new character does.  I zoomed and slow motioned the screen to see how he moved his body.  The gloves he wore, their thickness, when he would take them off gave me a whole scene between my character and her mother. 

Sometimes this writing thing is way fun.     

A Pie Worthy Chapter

So.  Okay, here we go. The new novel time line means that I will have this next chapter finished in two months.  You heard it here.  I've got the year (1932), a main character, and a first page.  That's a start.  I wish this beginning part was easier. 

I have had two readers of the just finished chapter.  They had some good suggestions.  They say they liked it.  One of them will be baking me an apple pie very soon.

    

Wild Iris Books

It's been two days of revision at the sentence level.  It had gotten so that whenever someone said something to me, I'd see their words as if they were a strip of closed captioning.  Then I'd add commas and rearrange phrases.  It had to stop.  I had to clear my brain.

And now, after a night of dancing and lovely flirting at Wild Iris Books, I don't care if you run your sentences on it won't even make me blink.  To seriously dance will remove all my worries about split infinitives, and upon arriving home, even dangling modifiers left my mind. 

Well, I and those dangling modifiers I brought home with me are going to bed.  Sweet Dreams, all.      

 

Writer friends

Belea had to be in Gainesville yesterday, so that meant I had an evening of dinner, gelato, and bookstores, all wound through with writer talk.  We met at ACA a few years ago and have been sharing our successes and rejections ever since.  She showed me how to format my first submissions list.  She told me how to send a full ms. off to an agent that time one was requested.  Her mother made me a patchwork bag to hang off my wheelchair that is just the right size for file folders and yellow pads.  Writers (and their mothers) are so generous.   

Check out Belea's websites here and here.  And if you like the gay male romantic smut - buy this.  

I'm twittering

I think I'm the first of my crowd (mostly over forty, some of whom don't even own a television) to Twitter.  It's fun and would be even more fun if I had more company.  I promise, it only wastes a little bit of time. 

For a writer who sits alone in her room for most of the day, it works.  I get to announce every small accomplishment in a quick (140 characters or less) blurb out to the world.  It is satisfying even if hardly any one reads it.  Is that pathetic?  I don't care. 

Already, I have one follower, and our exchange of writerly moments makes me feel like part of a team.  Go Tayari.   

Thanks to the St. Augustine Project and Connie May Fowler

When I'm at a conference I'm just being there all prickly nervous one moment and heart-open engaged the next.  It's not until later, sometimes much later, that I know how it went. 

Here's a follow up from the Below Sea Level workshop.  Since that first week in June, I've rewritten (twice) the chapter that was critiqued there.  I like it. At the urging of Connie May, I made a time line for completing this novel - two months to write each chapter.  Today, a week short of two months, I'm done (Well, not done, done.  I'm never done, done.) with a brand new chapter.  

I think it's safe now for me make a few conclusions about the conference - productive, worth every penny, and meaningful in ways that continue to be revealed.     

This evening I printed out the final (for now) revision and then twirled around my house in celebration.  In the midst of all this, the ink not even dry on the pages, I heard a trampling up my ramp and then a knock at the door.  My poet friend and her house guests were, coincidentally, delivering fresh baked chocolate chip cookies (The type with ground oatmeal in them!), and we squealed together about my day's accomplishments. 

Alert.  Cliche to follow.  Close your eyes if you must. 

Life is Good.  (She says this while brushing cookie crumbs off the keyboard.)

Ta Dah!

 

It's July 23rd, a week before my self-imposed deadline, and I mostly, almost, maybe after one or two more go throughs, have a decent draft of this latest chapter.  I like it.  I printed off this latest version and with each slap of a page into the bin, my face scrunched up in little girl glee. 

Yeah, I know, it won't last.  But if I don't look at it until tomorrow, I'll have a great night. 

Silver River Story News

After a week of mostly staying home and wearing a variety of mumus (caftans, patio loungers, ugly house dresses -  whatever it is you call the garments that hardly touch your body anywhere.), I'm a stack of pages in on this chapter.  They might not be worth much, but they're there, telling some sort of story, a story that at this moment is boring to me, and it might be, but I know enough to know that I always think this at this point.  Anyway, it feels good to have racked up some words. 

I'm finishing a decent draft of this chapter by the end of the month.  Now, there's a nicely adamant statement of deadline.  We'll see what happens. 

 

  

   

Momentum and Salt Marsh Mallows

The toaster oven is still dirty.  I've been writing hard and, finally, maybe, I hate to say it out loud, this chapter has momentum.  Things are pulling together.  I think, "no, she wouldn't do that" and "this, this is what needs to happen right here."  The chapter is having its own authority.  And sometimes, just sometimes, I think I have this character's voice right. 

Whew, I was getting tired of feeling bad about myself. 

These are blooming in my yard.   

Jill Bolte Taylor

The monthly Lesbian Potluck and Readings were last night.  I scooped shrimp from the broth of a low country boil and sucked them out of their shells as women talked about the happenings of their day, their week, their lives.  Pitched among their voices was the goodnight song of a cardinal and the chaotic medley of frogs gearing up for a night of cruising around the lake.

After the readings, some of us stayed on the screened porch.  The lake was only a sheen in the darkness.  One woman had written of the thoughts in her mind just after a car wreck.  "I didn't mind not breathing," was one of the lines.  I asked a rambling question about if she remembered everything and was just transcribing the events or if the writing of it had allowed her to remember.  Was it all "true" or did she take the moment and write what must have been happening the best she could figure out?

Then, in a sort of mind meld, we asked each other if we'd heard Jill Bolte Taylor talk on NPR, on YouTube, on Oprah?  All of us writers were fascinated with this story of a woman who had (during a stroke) gone to the other side of her brain. And that she still lived in that place to a certain extent. All of us had visited there in our writing but not enough or easily enough or long enough.  We yearned for reliable access.

Here's Jill Bolte Taylor.   

Lesbian Writers Fund - last chance for 2008

Every year the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice selects a few emerging lesbian writers of fiction and poetry and awards them the majorly big bucks.  Here's the link for the submission guidelines and the in-their-office deadline is June 30th.  Hurry. Fame and fortune await!