My unpredicable friends: Bev, Mary, Maxine, Ann and Judy

“It’s like they’re real,” said a friend over lunch yesterday. She was talking about the characters I was describing in the latest chapter book series I’m writing and the two more I have lined up. What she meant was, “it’s like you think they’re real…” [I totally got what she's saying; I'm not offended. But they ARE real.]

I haven’t created them, either. They just show up, sometimes with baggage that they dump at my feet for me to sort out. They always surprise me…when I sit down to write, I’m stunned at things they say to each other. Sometimes I dread it because I think, “now we have to deal with that, and with only a few more chapters to go. Why do you insist on making this difficult?” I’m a few thousand words away from wrapping up the first Fifties Chix book and I can’t believe what’s happening! I can’t tell my characters what to do…it’s out of my control. The most I can do is help them with their spelling and grammar (and some don’t let me go near their grammar; they are very stubborn about the idioms they use. Sooorrrrrryyyy, sheesh. I was just trying to help. Ain’t ain’t a word, you know.)

I can’t wait to see how this ends! I have a general idea, but I don’t know how they’re going to take me there. I’m guessing the scenic route…

This perfect Miss Pouty Pants pic is from http://www.singleparenttravel.net/

There was a saying around my house growing up that my mom especially liked to repeat “Gratitude is riches, complaint is poverty” (a line from a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal). It was often recited at the most annoying (for me) moments. Like, for example… when I was complaining.

Over this past weekend, in a moment of mucky, gooey, disgusting frustration, I called my friend Phebe. With great drama, I demanded, “are we supposed to be happy??” [the implication being that it feels like a lot of work sometimes, so is it even natural?] With great patience and care, Phebe replied, in her awesome Phebe way, that she had heard an interview with some 1960’s popstar who had been asked if he was happy. He said he didn’t understand what the questioner meant by “happy” but that he considered himself blessed. Phebe assured me that we are meant to be and feel blessed, are blessed, and indicated that perhaps a better question might be: “are we grateful?” An affirmative to this question is sure to result in joy…and more blessings.

I am grateful!

You hear peppy-happy-positive people say that there are no problems, only opportunities (I’ve been peppy-happy-positive myself, because I’ve actually written that in this blog!); this is true, even if we’re not in the mood to accept it. As I’ve noted in that blog post about opportunities, opportunity comes from the word that literally means “come into the harbor”. I think of a harbor as a safe place, as home. This is all to say that I am wealthy in opportunities to come home…and for this I am grateful.

the final product smells prettier than the fertilizer it takes to get there

…but that hasn’t stopped me from being a published author! A few months ago, I found one of my original manuscripts for Petalwink (whose original name was Periwinkle). It was horrifying. I’m not being self-deprecating or modest. Hear me: HORRIFYING. Which brings me to the point of my post (let’s take a moment to celebrate just how quickly I got to the point. This is something of a special occasion): I KEPT GOING.

Here is the horrifying text in question:

“We’ll be there soon, it will be worth the journey,

Just three magic tasks and you’ll be nice and secure-y.”

BAD, right? Even though this text (written in 2002) must have made it through some kind of initial edit because it was actually in a story that was printed out and I now have a humiliating printed record of it, it gets worse. I saw how ridiculous the couplet was at the time and edited it. In my handwriting is a strike-through and the addition of the word “trip.” The manuscript now reads:

“We’ll be there soon, it will be worth the journey, trip

Just three magic tasks and you’ll be nice and secure-y.”

Readers, dear, dear, patient friends. It’s true. I thought the word “journey” was what was wrong with the text in question. (Let me just clarify right away, because you are wondering if you don’t know me: I have never taken any kind of medication or narcotic in my life, legal or illegal.) To everyone out there who says, “I can’t write,” or “I’m not an artist,” or whatever else I’m-not-a-fill-in-the-blank you can dream up, take it from me, don’t let that stop ya. With so many beautiful and perfectly legitimate enterprises, there seems to come an awkward stage. Ever been in a play? On a first date? In middle school?

The point is to push through the self-loathing and take whatever shred of dignity you can salvage and KEEP GOING, while remembering what fertilizes the roses. One of the aspects of the creative process is “incubation,” where the idea is set aside to be completely forgotten so that it can develop without your grubby hands all over it. The key is to KEEP GOING and actually come back to the idea, undeterred and undisturbed, even if you tried to rhyme “journey” with “secure-y.”

I can’t fathom how many edits there must have been in seven Petalwink books; when I visit classrooms to talk about writing, I often take a sheet of paper that shows the original manuscript I wrote in black and the edits in red. There are about 3-4 words in black and the rest is red. It takes great humility and trust to edit your story down to its essence and then witness its development into its true lovely self. (If you’re wondering, by the way, the above-quoted manuscript is not in existence in any of the Petalwink books; the whole story line and premise were scrapped.) There are lots of  good ideas just waiting for expression and they are looking for you! Don’t let a little fertilizer stop you…

Look at that natural French white tip! Grow, baby, grow!

Ever since I can remember I’ve bitten my nails. I’ve tried a gazillion times to stop and I’ve tried a gazillion ways (not a fan of the icky stuff that you put on your fingertips to discourage biting…I end up sucking it off so I can nibble my nails without distraction and it makes finger foods taste awful. Why should potato chips pay the price for my bad habit?). Sometimes, I would stop for awhile and then fall off the wagon and then, I guess, figure, what’s the point? and start chowing down again. The more I think about it, the less sense that makes…

My grandma, “Cookie,” recently passed away. She was the biggest fan of my quitting and “suggested” it repeatedly and often (by smacking my hands if they went anywhere near my mouth). Cookie is one of the most sophisticated women I’ve ever known; always dressed in her best, including beautiful accessories, you can only imagine she had beautiful fingernails. She even used to say my teeth were “jewels not tools” to work on my nails (when I argued that I was “cleaning” my nails if they were in my mouth). When she passed away, my Grandpa, “Bumpa,” laid all her jewelry out for me and my cousins to go through and I took most of her rings. I had already lightened up on the chewing habit as soon as I found out she had passed on, but now with her beautiful bling gracing my fingers, it seems preposterous that I would have dilapidated digits to display along with.

Of course there has been study after study on why it is we have bad habits (knowingly continuing to systematically harm ourselves even) and how to “break” them. Most of those studies are based on the premise that we are matter-bodies with matter-brains affected by matter-chemicals and habits have to do with ruts in our brains. But I don’t subscribe to any of that. I don’t happen to believe that thoughts can be generated by matter. I have experienced learning something new and so changing my mind and I don’t see why a habit should be any different. I still remember the moment when I decided to stop sucking my thumb (I was actually at Cookie and Bumpa’s house!). I just decided and never did it again.

So, here’s to my new bling: my own homegrown fingernails. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going! What bad habit will you decide to do without today?

1) The beautiful and trendy watch my husband gave me for our anniversary a few years ago. All it does is tell me what time it is and look fantastic on my wrist. That’s all. When I am wearing it on a cross country trip, does it change time as I arrive in a new time zone? No. Does it allow me to go online, sign in to my satellite TV service and tell my DVR to record my fave sitcom? No. Does it tell me what the temperature is in Boston or Pakistan or show me satellite images of storms traipsing their way to my neck of the woods? NO! That ticking little hand is real genius. Just keep going round and round…Yawn.

2) Forks. I can eat some stuff with a fork–stuff I can stab or puncture and I can make neat stripes or crisscrosses in peanut butter cookie dough, frosting or mashed potatoes. That’s it! Fork, you are verging on useless. I can’t eat soup with a fork, I can’t Google “veggies that you can stab with a fork” with a fork, I can’t spell check “fork” with a fork. Until the iPhone came along, I didn’t realize just how disappointingly one-dimensional forks are.

3) My hair straightener and/or curling iron. The hair straightener changed my life…or so I thought. I have very thick unruly hair that kinks up in the most untrendy way (and I live in the muggy, humid Midwest, so use your imagination). When I got my first flat iron, I was giddy for a solid two months. My hair was sleek, shiny, and straight, straight, straight! But guess what? That’s all. Do you think I could use that flat iron to text a group of my friends to tell them how fantastic my hair looks? Do you think I could PROVE it by taking before and after pictures to send to them? Heck, no. In fact, this is how bad my flat iron is: I can’t even go to a home screen and see myself with great hair reflected in it. Thanks for next to nothing, flat iron. (Don’t even get me started on my hair dryer. So you have a cool-burst-of-air function. Big whoop.)

4) Our beautiful stainless steel refrigerator. It keeps stuff cold and spits out ice. Really? That’s all? No Youtube videos? You’re not embarrassed that you can’t even alert me to when I have an email (or send one? Has anyone gotten an email from me that says “sent from my rEfrigerator” at the bottom)? Sure, you can make cheese sprout a microcosmic forest, but you don’t even have a calculator, can’t translate cheese into Spanish (it’s “queso,” by the way; thank you, iPhone). Your insipid ineptness is, well, chilling.

5) Pants. I really like pants with pockets. I think it’s cool that women can wear pants and it’s not a big deal (because that wasn’t always the case. I know this ‘cause I read some stuff about it online on my iPhone). I truly appreciate being covered up by pants so that I’m not walking around indecently. But, pants, we need to talk. Don’t you have GPS so I know where I am, or any apps to help me grocery shop, compare prices or play games? I could probably stick a stack of cards in one of your pockets, Mr. Strauss, but would you deal the cards, suggest a next move and keep score–a running score–for me? I know from past experience that you would not. Speaking of scores, would you be able to tell me who’s ahead in the Central Division standings? Would you post my blog ranting against the limited utility of pants? No sirree, FancyPants. Not so fancy now, are ya?

6) Lightbulb. Mr. Edison, don’t you feel foolish now? That “light” thing was super overrated. I have a flashlight app with strobe function, mosquito repellant and brightness adjustment function on my iPhone. Lightbulb, shed some light on if you can take me to iTunes or Pandora and drum me up my favorite songs and play them for me whenever I want. Boring old lightbulb, you take the fun out of function and put it into the iPhone so that I henceforth will be calling it my iFun and you are now a lightdud.

7) Last but not least, the telephone. Let me get this straight I can’t record and/or edit audio or video or make video conference calls…all it allows me to do is make and/or receive phone calls? Hold on…I’m laughing so hard I can’t type and my Mr. Strauss’s are splitting…Oh, wait. Well, actually, that’s kinda one thing my iPhone isn’t so great at. But there’s a silver lining…my iPhone is brilliant enough to drop a call if it’s a creditor…(That’s really thanks to AT&T–let’s give credit where credit is due). And here’s a little irony, the creditor calling is probably AT&T because we can’t afford their service plan for our iFuns.

Well, my friends. The true test is now what. I have “unstructured time” and no fewer than eight writing projects, including 2 series and 3 novels. Doesn’t it sound HEAVENLY? And speaking of heavenly, I am well aware that my highest priority is spiritual in nature; checking in with You Know Who to see just what fulfills the best His purpose for me. So add to “giddy” and “sad”: “hopeful” and “ready.”

At the top of the list is finishing the first book in the Fifties Chix series. Have you subscribed to the posts to read the story so far? I’d love your feedback to help me keep going!

Here is an interview with Anne from the blog Goddess Diaries that is sure to inspire you. And if you have a moment, visit Anne’s website and find out how you can help her in her upcoming (June 2010) visit to Africa.

Enjoy!

Once again, Sesame Street says it perfectly.

Enjoy! (and don’t worry, you can pick up the duckie when you’re done)

Put Down the Duckie if you Want to Play the Saxophone