Regardless of genre, regardless of style, regardless of audience.

Every story.

I know this isn’t new information, but it is the thought that came to me this morning in the shower, and as I scribbled it on my AquaNotes I realized it is no coincidence that this epiphany comes on the day before my birthday. This will be the goal that I strive towards in my writing this year.

Feel free to use it, too.

I was up contemplating my efficacy as a parent, my questionable pursuit of a writing career, my own mortality.

Oh, and I watched Phineas and Ferb.

I love that show. And maybe it was the fact that I was bleary-eyed and it was 4 a.m., but I had this epiphany.

Candace never gives up. She lives to bust her brothers, and no matter how many times she fails – like, every time – she just keeps trying.  My wailing and whining about a couple of rejections seems trivial compared to Candace’s failures. Yet, she pushes on.  I respect that.

Plus, there’s Doofenschmirtz. He keeps trying, too. Never mind that he keeps getting beaten – by a platypus. He never quits trying to inator whatever needs inatoring.

But what really struck me is Phineas and Ferb. They build these incredible inventions week after week, and invariably they get destroyed by the end of the episode. Hours and hours of work with nothing to show for it, but are they bitter? Never. They do it for the pleasure of the doing. They live in the moment of the creation.

It sounds a lot like writing, doesn’t it?

If Candace and Doof can push on in the face of impossible odds, how can I give up? If Phineas and Ferb can take so much joy in creating something so fleeting, how can I do any less?

What do you think? Who loves Phineas and Ferb? And who thinks I should get a pet platypus?

But last week I was on vacation in North Carolina with three of my favorite people – my two daughters and my sister-in-law. We spent one night in a yurt in the mountains. Yes, a yurt. (It’s fun to say yurt.) Our’s was a deluxe yurt, complete with domed skylight through which to watch the stars, and a deck out front from which I watched the sunrise.

It was glorious, and I was inspired to write this haiku. Please enjoy.

Dawn

Sky streaked pink and blue,

Mother Nature celebrates

birth of a new dawn.

I was first seized with the inspiration the weekend of my daughter’s First Communion. (I don’t think you’ll find any correlation between the sacrament and the content of the story, but go ahead and try. I think it’s just the way my mind works.) Anyway, it was First Communion weekend, and I had a boatload of other stuff to do. In-laws staying at the house, food to cook, veils to press. But this story came to me, whole, in one of those priceless flashes that just can’t be ignored. If it weren’t for that, my daughter might have had a better First Communion. Sorry, Em.

But then the story sat. For years. I tweaked it, rewrote, threw out multiple drafts. It was always lacking something. Then I sent it out to an amazing editor over at Recess Magazine. He was able to see what I was missing and gave me some notes, and after one last rewrite, I am thrilled to announce its debut this morning over at Recess Magazine! I have to say, if it weren’t for this cat [story], I wouldn’t be able to say that my story is Recess Magazine’s debut piece of Friday Fiction. And that is something I am truly proud of. 

So head on over and take a look, and let me know what you think.

No one I knew liked it. No one I knew even understood it, which left me feeling inadequate and misunderstood. In other words, normal.  I finally sent it off to The Binnacle, for their Ultra-Short Competition, because the deadline was looming and I really love the little box and business cards they print your story on if you are lucky enough to be selected.

Imagine my shock, when not only was I selected, but I won a prize. And not only did they pay me, publish my work, and send me beautiful words of flattery, they nominated me for a Pushcart Prize.

All because of this one little story that I almost didn’t send them.  

Which brings me to my vow this year. I am going to write dangerously. I am going to write words with meaning, stories that I’ve put off because they might be off-putting. Then I’m going to send them out in the hopes that they get accepted and printed and offend someone I’ll never meet. And if they don’t, not only will I embrace rejection, I will buy it dinner and kiss it good night! I am going to do all the things that scare me, and I am going to enjoy every minute of it.

I’ve started by submitting to Broken Pencil’s Deathmatch 2012. They pit eight stories against one another in a no-holds-barred online voting competition, with only one story surviving until the end. To paraphrase their website, it’s like literary survivor on an island surrounded by sharks.

I have not yet heard if I’ve made the cut, and I’m not sure what scares me more – being selected for the competition or being rejected.

 Either way, I’m terrified, so I must be doing something right.

10. At Home on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball. The second in the wonderful Ladybug Farm series. If you haven’t read them yet, I encourage you to pick them up. I bought myself the entire series for Christmas. I love it when I get exactly what I wanted!

9. River House by Sarahlee Lawrence. Fabulous memoir. It’s about rafting and house-building – hence the title – but it’s also about passion and commitment and family and what makes a place a home.

8. The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter. I loved everything about this – the characters, the setting, the surprise ending that I didn’t see coming. Bonus – my kids loved it, too.

7. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White / Holes by Louis Sachar. These were both re-reads, but just as amazing as when I first read them, so I’m calling it a tie. Holes remains one of my all-time favorite books. It is both entertainment and art, and every time I read it I am grateful that books like this exist. As for Charlotte’s Web, I read this aloud to my kids this year, and fell in love all over again. In fact, I strive to be more like Charlotte. “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” (White, 1952, p. 184) What else is there to say?
6. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. It took me a while to get around to Dame Agatha, and I’m sorry I waited so long. This one is particularly good, the kind of story that makes you want to turn around and start over just to make sure you got everything. The twist ending rivals anything being done in the genre today,  some 80 years later. A must read for mystery fans.

5. Bossypants by Tina Fey. I don’t need to tell you that Fey is brilliant and hilarious. But if you haven’t read the book yet, I do need to tell you that the description of her first pelvic exam may be the funniest thing you’ll ever read. I laughed until I cried.

4. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. The amnesia thing may be overdone in fiction, but this premise – Alice blacks out at the gym and wakes up thinking she is ten years younger – is so well done that I couldn’t put the book down. I also couldn’t stop wondering what I’d do in Alice’s shoes, which is in no small part because of the brilliantly written characters.

3. Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward. A mystery in which the authors- who also happen to be exes – write every other chapter. Their email correspondence, which appears between chapters, details the increasing antagonism between them, and only adds to the hilarity. A brilliant book by one of my favorite authors.

2. A Year on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball. Number one in the series, and one I’ve read twice already this year. Ball’s writing makes me long to crawl inside the pages and live there, spending my evenings on the porch sipping wine and making friends with three fabulous and independent women. I loved these books so much I keep buying them for my friends and family.  I may have already paid for Ball’s next vacation. I hope when she gets back she writes another Ladybug Farm book

1.The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I’m not sure what took me so long to read this. I imagine I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but that was a needless worry. It was everything I’d hoped and more. The characters were so real, they were like friends that I still miss.

So, there it is. My best and brightest of 2011.

Stats -

Out of 108 books I read, these 11 scored a perfect 5.  In comparison, I didn’t give out any 1′s, though I did put down several books. If I don’t finish, I don’t score it.  And only three received a two-star rating. I suppose those would be counted as the worst books I read this year, but I won’t be publishing that list here. This one is all about the LOVE.

Long story short, this year I’m back and finding the experience much different from my first few times.  This year, I’m finding NaNo to be much like getting into a swimming pool. 

And the pool is cold.

I mean, it is freezing. I circled it a couple of times, trying to psych myself into just jumping in. I came SO CLOSE – and then I backed off. Maybe it’s better to just dip my toes in a little, thought I. But all that did was make my toes numb and scare me even further.

So finally I just took the plunge and started typing, er, swimming. I was rusty at first, I’ll admit. I hadn’t swum in a long time, and I wasn’t really comfortable. I walked around on my tiptoes, holding my hands above my waist to keep them warm. I was sort of just scoping out the pool, trying to get my bearings. Figuring out where the exits were. Trying to calculate how close to hypothermia I could come and still be able to drag myself up over the side.

Then yesterday a wonderful thing happened. The water got warm. Or I got warmed up. And I realized, hey, look at this beautiful swimming pool I’ve got! It’ s Olympic size! And I’ve got it all to myself. I can do whatever I want! So I splashed and I played. I did somersaults, and scissor kicks, and handstands, and played Marco Polo. Okay, that one was a little difficult by myself, but so what? The point is, it was marvelous.  A whole pool to stretch out in and explore.

In a word, it felt luxurious.

I know that by next week, I’ll probably have to think about swimming laps. After all, I’ve only got this pool for a month, and I’m going to have to use it wisely if I want something to show for it at the end. Firm thighs; a rough draft. And I know that the laps are going to get harder, going into week 3. But I also have this feeling that I’m going to be able to pull it off, as long as I keep swimming. Just keep pulling myself through that water. It gets easier once you get a rhythm going.

And then, around week 4, I’m looking forward to that big rush of adrenaline, that final kick off the back wall that’s going to push me toward the finish line. I’ll pull myself out of the pool and hold up my hands in victory! Even with the pool still empty, even with no one there to cheer, I’ll still hear the whistles and applause in my head. This I know, because I’ve been here before. There is no other feeling quite like finishing the last line of a first draft.

Everything after that will be a let down. I’ll have to leave the pool before someone starts snapping me with towels. And don’t even get me started on the revisions. If NaNo is a swimming pool, then revisions are a murky pond.

But that’s another post.

For now, this NaNo, I invite everyone to revel in the luxury of their very own swimming pool, knowing that every splash, every kick, every lap is carrying you all that much closer to victory.

“Did you finish that chapter yet? What are you waiting for? Don’t you want to be able to send that rewrite to Ms. Agent, the one who said she liked your voice and would love to read a revision? Do you want her to lose interest? You know how the story ends, just hurry up and finish already.”

So, Suzie can be annoying. Still, she’s the voice in my head that pushes me on and I have to love her for that.

And then there’s Forrest. I never really considered Forrest a muse. He was more like my bad angel. Forrest says things like, “What’s the hurry? Publishing moves slowly. You don’t want to rush things,” and “Momma always said, writing is like a box of cho-co-lates. Hey, maybe instead of writing, you should eat a box of cho-co-lates!” (Forrest is smart like that.) So he knows about chocolate, but in terms of writing, I always defer to Suzie. She’s the go-getter.

Or so I thought.

This weekend, those two really got into it. Suzie was all up in my business, with her “You already know the ending, just write it for gosh sakes!” and “If you don’t plant your butt in that chair, I’m leaving and I’m never coming back,” while Forrest was saying, “It’s a beautiful weekend. Sit on the deck, have a mimosa and enjoy this moment. Beauty like this is fuel for your muse.” Of course, I thought he meant Suzie. And I hated to tell him, but she is not a stop and smell the roses kind of gal.

But I deferred to Forrest, as I often do, feeling slightly guilty but enjoying the patterns of sunlight on the leaves and the sounds of the birds in the trees anyway.

 And then something amazing happened.

I saw the ending of my book. Right there, like a gift from the writing gods. Or more likely, a gift from Forrest. We’d had it all wrong, Suzie and I. That bit character that she wanted me to cut because he had no purpose, and I resisted because I couldn’t stomach any more bloodshed, it turns out he’s integral to the plot! And Forrest knew it all along. Or maybe he knew that I knew it, and he just wanted to give me a chance to figure it out. Whatever the case, if I hadn’t slowed down and let the story simmer, if I’d pushed through and written it quickly, poor Jack would be dead, my ending would have fallen flat, and I’d have been left with that deflated balloon feeling in the pit of my stomach, wondering where I’d gone wrong and why my perfect story didn’t feel so perfect after all.

Instead, I’m going to finish that perfect story after all. I’m happy, Forrest is happy, and even Suze is happy.

It fills me with a sense of wonder, this process. I learn something new every time I sit down to write. Today, I discovered that I have not one, but two muses.

Also, never call Susie “Suze.” She’s not some pom-pom waving backseat bimbo, after all.

It’s also possible that I might be suffering from some sort of mental instability. But that is a topic for another post.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171725

I don’t pretend to know a lot about poetry. I certainly can’t compose it with any sort of talent. But I know good writing when I see it, and the images evoked in this poem have stayed with me since high school. (I won’t say how long ago that was, but I do have a reunion coming up this year.)

I only dream of creating these sorts of word paintings in my own books.  Which brings to mind my favorite Lowell quote:

“All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut, or you can drug, with words.” – Amy Lowell

Great writers do both. Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day, everyone!