Conferencing - Julie

As Christy and ex-pat extraordinaire Davis Wakefield head off to SCBWI in Los Angeles this weekend, I of course must reminisce about my vast experience with writers’ conferences. All three of them. The first wasn’t even really a conference, more of a warm-up, located in one of the meeting rooms at Anna Maria Creekside Retirement Home in Medford. An agent was there, I think, talking about pitches and proposals. Our writing group was wide-eyed, soaking it all in, except for one moment when we were forced to roll our eyes at the guy in the Indiana Jones adventurer hat who asked if it were possible to have a book title copyrighted, nervously looking around, sure that someone would hear his title and rush home to write his NYT bestseller.

Next was the Whidbey Island Writers' Conference and after much discussion of which clothing choices would come off as confident without looking presumptuous, we set off to get the inside scoop on the world of publishing. The breakout sessions were my favorite part. This I understood. Figure out which ones sounded interesting, get some coffee and go listen to someone talk. Take some notes. Like college.

The one-on-one meetings with real agents, showing them my actual writing, this was different. This I did not understand. What’s my role here? Learner? Poser? Seller? Beggar? Bootlicker? I brought my manuscript to them the way a child shows you a bug they have found and are protecting in their little cupped hands. It’s neat alright, maybe it has some cool stripes or interesting shaped wings, but it is, after all, just a bug. Likely to be stepped on or squashed on a windshield or eaten by a frog the second it leaves their hands. So I showed them my bug and we talked about its stripes for a bit, then I put it back.

Then I went to the Big Sur Writers Conference to show THEM my bug. A couple of the more entomologically minded of them thought it was cool, but then of course there was the 'famous author' who thought a can of Raid was really the only thing for it.

Not to push my metaphor too hard, which I am very much prone to do, but Christy and Davis don't have bugs. They have honest-to-goodness high quality marketable works of fiction. They should be proud of themselves. I am.

Squandering Riches-Marcia

James and I ride the tag-a-long bike through town today. We cycle down through the historic district, past Roosevelt Elementary where they have just chopped down the hundred-year-old silver maples that lined the entire block.

I fought hard to save the school from being shuttered. After a long persistent battle, we were told our school would be demolished and rebuilt. It’s bricks, circa 1911, are supposedly crumbling. We were evacuated two years ago because of the extreme risk. This has since proved to be a lot of hog slop. The Medford School District is going to demolish what I think is a charming old building anyway.

I am a nooks and crannies kind of gal. I like wood windows, clanking radiators, mysterious basements, brass door knobs with beautiful detail, velvet curtains on a deep stage, and stairs that lead up Stage Right and Stage Left to secret rooms, long forgotten by anyone but a handful of PTO presidents and Duane the janitor. Duane likes to hide out in the one overlooking the treetops of Queen Anne. I have snuck up there myself before just to gaze out through the original glass, all warped and bubbly, at the bare branches in winter. It is quiet and remote, peaceful. It’s a place where you can be alone with your thoughts--a commodity rarer than the Hope Diamond. I often wondered if they’d let me rent the space in summer as a studio.

There is so much to love about this building, but you have to be one of those people that like old buildings. We are rare in Medford. I am a romantic. I have never chosen the practical route. In fact I drive linear people insane. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t mind getting lost, it just means there will be more adventure, something unexpected to discover. I am the kind of person that thinks the two-storey arched and mullioned windows are breathtaking. I know that thousands of little kids have felt the same. Every day they would struggle mightily to earn the privilege of reading in the window seats on the landings.

I didn’t care about all the weird levels and bizarre additions that were made over the years. I thought it was interesting and fun. My kids liked it too. So did others. You could tell by the way they owned the space. They were comfortable in their environment. There was no hindrance to their ability to learn, not from the building anyway. Classroom size and No Child Left Behind--now that’s another story.

No one in our neighborhood really believes the district will rebuild our “walking” school. We are sure, now that they’ve passed the bond, rebuilt in the wealthier neighborhoods, and established a budget for the new high school, that they will magically run out of money. We will be left with dead rose bushes, silver maple stumps, and a vandalized building. Our children will be bussed to even more crowded classrooms.

Today though, while riding back home, I came a different direction, and saw the giant dumpster pulled up to the back. Men in white t-shirts, jeans, and gloves looked up as I passed. An upstairs window was covered in plastic where a hole has been poked for a giant vacuum tube. I can only assume they are beginning the very expensive process of asbestos removal.

For one hundred years the people of this neighborhood have walked to Roosevelt greeting neighbors and dogs, checking the blue jay’s nest in the climbing rosebush on the corner, watching their children run to catch up with a friend a few yards ahead of them. As kids got a little older it felt safe to send them out the door alone, knowing that everyone on the block knew them, and they could have a small semblance of freedom and independence in an overly protective world.

I rolled by the school, my eyes running over the length of the building. I started to pedal faster. I don’t want to be here when those windows shatter. Glass like rain, it won’t matter to most.

As much as I want to keep a school in my neighborhood, I feel like I have betrayed this old girl. Her brasses have already been stripped. Her wide halls, banisters, woodfloors, mullions and radiators will be bulldozed, wreaking-balled and sledged to death. Yes, we will have some kind of new school, but we will never have another school like this one, and it certainly will not last 100 years.

I feel like I have had to put a good dog down.

Oh Yes They Call Him the Streak -- Kerry

Max went to summer camp with a padded foam sword and a new name - "Lightening". He joined his teacher, Rain, the teacher's sidekick "Slice" and a few other boys at the swordsmanship and medieval combat summer camp for kids, aptly titled "Wee Warriors," at Briscoe school last week.

This camp follows on the heels of circus school camp, dodge ball camp and god knows what other kind of camp that I can't remember anymore.

What delineates these camps from the summer camps of my youth is simple: they bear little or no resemblance to them except for maybe the brown bag lunch and the tube socks.

I once went to a "summer school" program at the grade school down the street in 1974. We made macrame bracelets and drank school-ration orange drink which in no way had a particle of orange juice in it. This we considered a good time; at least we were not hanging out with our parents and the gym was air-conditioned. I think it was here that I became a fledgling writer out of necessity. It gave me something to do in between the crafts and lunch hour. I wrote long, rambling letters proclaiming my love to the boy I had a crush on, Chuck, and then threw them in the garbage can before anyone could see them.

If we were really looking for rippin' it up a little bit more, we rode to the library on our banana bike seats with plastic streamers coming out of the purple glitter-flecked handlebars and listened to the Walt Disney record "The Streak" and "Eensie weensie teenie weeanie yellow polka dot bikini." We rolled around and chortled in our bean bag chairs each of the twenty times we played it in the "media room."

Or course we did go to real honest-to-god summer camps, but they didn't have exotic themes or involve trapezes. They involved more good old fashioned 1970's fun, like carpooling in our neighbors disco van that sported swivel captain seats, bubble windows shaped like a moon and mag wheels with gold hubcabs to the high school gymnasium.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with hazy summer memories of the 1970's. What color was your banana seat bike?

Man Down—Way Down -- Jennie

Hey Blog-ees,

There are no Big Thoughts from me this week.

I’m Man Down after some un-fun surgery.

But I’ll be back next week, after the Vicodin’s gone, and the rat’s nest has been cut from my hair.

Until then!

Unfaithful - Julie

I am 110% uninspired to write today. I could barely write the check to Giseppi's Pizza last night for my son's slumber party. The house looks like it has been dismantled, piece by piece, and my brain feels thick. Days like these make me feel lucky that my livlihood doesn't depend on my writing. I know that's what we're all supposed to want, to support ourselves with our writing, but my writing is unpredictable, unfaithful. Like everyone's early 20's boyfriend, he can be soooo sweet and funny, but then all of a sudden, when you go by his apartment on a whim, he won't open the door all the way. Says he's really busy and he'll call you later. And when he doesn't call you right away, you call him, but you get a busy signal (remember those?). So all you can do is just sit around and wait, and wonder what he's doing. Or was that just my early 20's boyfriend?

Outsourcing

I have a peculiar form of social anxiety that really only rears its head in very specific scenarios: writer's conferences. One-on-one I’m fine, in groups of people I know I’m fine—but put me in a room full of strangers and ask me to schmooze and talk about my writing and, as previously documented, I fall apart. So when it comes to conferences, I need a companion like my friend Davis. Witty, wealthy, and wickedly good looking, he’s got the "fabulous trifecta" covered. See, I can keep up with fabulous, but I can’t generate it on my own. We all have our weaknesses.

So, when I decided to sign up for the SCBWI conference I went straight to Davis and coerced him into signing up. Lest you think I lack self-esteem, let me publicly announce and fully embrace my great coercion skills. I’m good even when I talk someone into something just for the sport of it, but when my performance at a writing conference depends on coercion, watch out.

So he had to come all the way from London, he had to take time off work, and he’d never heard of SCBWI, but Davis actually does have an amazing YA sci-fi in the works and has always wanted to become a published author. So really, it’s a win-win, no?

We met this morning for breakfast to discuss our plan of action. I agreed to do all the research on the editors, agents, and writers going to the conference and he agreed to be the life of the party. When I mentioned that the ultimate scenario would be to have a high-powered editor fall in love with him over the course of the four-day event, he shrugged as if it were in the bag. I love Davis. For the first four days of August I will be his auxiliary brain and he will be my auxiliary fabulousness.

Symbiosis: not just for clownfish and sea anemones any more!

Gambling on Writing-Marcia

When we first started many years back, we had a high time of it, meeting at places like Bangkok 3, The Black Sheep, and The Wild Goose. I remember laughing so hard one night at the Wild Goose that the famous chocolate cake threatened to squidge out my nostrils. If any one of us says the magic words, "Cracky McCrackin" we can still get a giggle on. It's the opening for an inside joke that never fails.

At the places where liquor was served, we enjoyed a drink. Plates of food were involved, so was tipping. It cost a lot to be a writer back then, somewhere between twelve and twenty bucks a week. And that didn’t include any of the babysitting fees, summer camp dollars, or daycare ducats. After several years of enjoying our Round Table ‘Round Ashland lifestyle, I think we all realized we were spending way more than we were earning—which was absolutely nothing.

We tailored back to Starbucks. You can go fancy for the 16oz. Choke-a-latte and spend close to $4, or scale back to a buck-something for black coffee. I'm the strictly black girl, it's lighter on the wallet and the waistline.

As our writing got more risqué, our voices louder, and our Starbucks audience more interested in our story lines and sidebars, we realized we better head out to more secluded digs.

We retrenched at the SOU student union. It’s an abandoned shell in summer. Well, once we were interrupted by a Tourette’s-stricken women who’d lost her keys and a starving college kid who’d lost his cell phone (He took one of Jennie’s day old bagels, used her cell to call his, and voila! Problem solved.), but other than that the only person we can scandalize is the janitor--and sometimes he does mop a little close.

So we are now incurring significant savings. No bangers and beer, no Reuben and bread pudding, no pumpkin lattes and gingerbread scones—it’s whatever's in the thermos or water bottle, plus any wee treat we’ve squirreled away in our summer totes.

This is how I figure it, (depending on how the individual previously ordered) one can save between $20 and $80 a month (our first years’ expenses) down to somewhere between $8 and $16 a month for our Starbucks excursions. I propose that the Lithia Women start gambling.

I say we pool our coffee monies and buy Powerball tickets. The ability to make art is about the ability to buy time. Art takes time. Time is money. Most of us have no money and no time. If we win $44 million I’d like to think, once that’s split five ways and we’ve paid our taxes, none of us would have to work at Harbor Freight Tools or Jasper’s. We could write while our children are in school and shop at the farmer’s market for our organic vegetables and have beautiful meals al fresco every night. We would write for writing’s sake. What a tremendous luxury.

Come on ladies, pony up.

Live Like You Are Dying - - Kerry

I can almost see the sweetness in their eyes as Max and Jillian direct the hose, which is cranked up to full volume, through the screen door. I can almost see this as humorous, almost, maybe more in the memory of it than the actual event.

"Mom said not to do that," Jillian casually remarked as she adjusted the perpetual wedgie from her swimming suit. At least she had one on today; normally she prefers nudity in the backyard and has been known to channel an alter-ego named Janessa, who swings her blanket over her head in the air and dances to her own tune.

Our summer in no way resembles anything I have seen in t.v. commercials, where the kids, house and mommy are always clean, happy and satisfied. I ran downstairs and surveyed the damage. This incident came on the heels of another incident with the semi-functional icee machine, in which the disaster-duo took juice, mud and ice and jammed it into the machine with a potato masher, then caught the sludge as it came out and flung it on each other. Thus the rush to the hose.

The only reason I am somewhat calm in the midst of all this mid-summer madness is because my husband announced that he's going rafting with a gift certificate that says "Not for wussies."

I declined attending the wussie-free event because a)I am one and b) I have a contractual obligation I made with myself, twenty-three years ago, when I fell off the back of a raft that was descending Boxcar Rapids on the Deschutes river outside Maupin, Oregon. I shot down the back of the rapid behind the raft and could not breathe or speak for what felt like two minutes as my lungs started to tingle and I felt the pressure of the river pulling me down into it's depths. My head began to feel light and my heart throbbed in my chest.

The contract read something like this in my head: "If I ever get out of this alive I will never, ever do this again." Though I was rocketing down the rapids, time stood still. About the fifteenth time I repeated this in my head I got sick of hearing myself and decided to fight. In slow motion I aimed my arms for what I thought was up and kicked like I have never kicked before. I shot out of the water in what was later described by those on shore as a look of total joy and anger all at the same time. I was standing on a rock in the middle of the water screaming at the top of my lungs, "Someone get me out of here right now." (I've omitted the swear words for family friendly forum).

Now, as an aside to all of this craziness, this was not the first time I have come close dying. The first time was on a backpacking trip when I was twelve and we were stranded on the top of Jefferson Glacier when it was snowing and I made a similar contract with myself and God (it was a church backpack trip) if I could just find the trail off the glacier in time. But that's another blog.

What those two contracts taught me was this: live, laugh and love as much as possible, and don't sweat the small stuff because I'm not going to get out of this alive anyway. And maybe it also made me believe Winston Churchill's famous phrase,"Never, ever, ever give up." It worked for me.

And so I go forth, past the icee machine, which I have thrown away, past the load of towels I used to mop up the hose debacle, straight to the cool of the library. I'm working on a query for Portland Magazine, my perpetual pitch for the Willamette Writer's conference, and an article about a new Dundee winery. I strap the little perpetrators into their car seats, which has always been my favorite mode of restraint for them, and resist the urge to leave them there for the rest of the hot afternoon. I don't want to show up in a mug shot in some commercial about bad mommies.

As James Taylor so aptly sung," The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time."

And I plan on doing just that.

To Be Like Reesie -- Jennie

I want to like animals.

My 7 year-old son, Reesie, is the inspiration; he likes animals so much, he’s a strict vegetarian—no Jello, even. He hands over his allowance to the SPCA, scours real estate ads for a house big enough to turn into a cat-rehab center, and solicited neighborhood donations for saving the whales. When we walk to school, creatures come right up to him, and a pack of wolves at a wildlife park layed at his feet.

I’ve tried to be as critter-crazy as Reesie. I’ve had cats, bunnies, Sea Monkeys, fish, butterflies, a grow-your-own-frog, and a bearded dragon. When we first moved to Oregon, my husband and I were broke. We had an iguana, Spike, who developed a severe jaw problem. Taking Spike to the vet depleted our Christmas tree funds, so we put lights around his tank and a gold star on top. When Spike died, we wrapped him in toilet paper and buried him in the backyard. I cried. But not hard enough to get another lizard.

Over my 37 years, I haven’t grown as fond of the Kingdom as I would have hoped. There’s a history—beginning with a horse who chomped into my cheek when I was only a baby. Since then, I’ve been clawed by a rooster, attacked by a swarm of bees, stung by a sting ray, and bit by a poisonous spider, not to mention coming face-to-face with a water snake.

So it’s easy to see why, when we travel, I push museums instead of zoos or aquariums.

I’ll tell you one thing: I’m no Saint Francis.

But I’m working on it.

I tentatively rub the short fur of a funny little dog, after Reesie thrusts her into my arms.

“Pet her, Mommy,” he says. “Isn’t she cute?”

Trust No One -- Julie

The second X-Files movie comes out next week. In the early 90's when the show was on, my obsession with it gave me a little street cred with my middle school students; now it just makes me sound out of touch and slightly dorky. "You named your dog 'Mulder'? Why?"

In the show, the main character, Agent Fox Mulder, is a wee bit paranoid and trusts no one except his partner, Agent Scully. He's typically right. This pretty much describes me as a reader. I trust very few authors and I am a skeptical reader. Opening a book my assumption is that I won't like it, and soon something will happen that will make me fall out the narrative. I'll see the work of writing going on as I'm reading and I'll stop believing. I'm typically right.

Here's why I love my writer's group: week after week they bring writing, and skeptical as I am, it just works, page after page, and I believe every word of it. I'm in a Buddhist shrine conversing with a Rinpoche, I'm in a drugstore shoplifting a pine-scented car deodorizer, I'm in the driveway of a woman whose house has just burned, I'm sitting on a 'motorcycle' getting my insides cleaned out...

Mulder had only one Scully -- I've got four.

Nothing But Eve -- Christy

No musings, no anecdotes, no wry commentary. I’m a dried up husk of a writer; I used up everything I had to revise my manuscript and send it off to my agent. Turns out I’m not the only one feeling frantic about finishing a project – this seems to be the summer of urgent writing. I’ve enjoyed following my sister-in-agent Eve’s hilarious blog about trying to finish a novel in 30 days.

She starts here. Gets to a dark place here. And sounds hopeful again here.

Thank you, Eve for being amusing in my place today!

Live Like You Are Dying - - Kerry

I can almost see the sweetness in their eyes as Max and Jillian direct the hose, which is cranked up to full volume, through the screen door. I can almost see this as humorous, almost, maybe more in the memory of it than the actual event.

"Mom said not to do that," Jillian casually remarked as she adjusted the perpetual wedgie from her swimming suit. At least she had one on today; normally she prefers nudity in the backyard and has been known to channel an alter-ego named Janessa, who swings her blanket over her head in the air and dances to her own tune.

Our summer in no way resembles anything I have seen in t.v. commercials, where the kids, house and mommy are always clean, happy and satisfied.

I ran downstairs and surveyed the damage. This incident came on the heels of another incident with the semi-functional icee machine, in which the disaster-duo took juice, mud and ice and jammed it into the machine with a potato masher, then caught the sludge as it came out and flung it on each other. Thus the rush to the hose.

The only reason I am somewhat calm in the midst of all this mid-summer madness is because my husband announced that he's going rafting with a gift certificate that says "Not for wussies."

I declined attending the wussie-free event because a)I am one and b) I have a contractual obligation I made with myself, twenty-three years ago, when I fell off the back of a raft that was descending Boxcar Rapids on the Deschutes river outside Maupin, Oregon. I shot down the back of the rapid behind the raft and could not breathe or speak for what felt like two minutes as my lungs started to tingle and I felt the pressure of the river pulling me down into it's depths. My head began to feel light and my heart throbbed in my chest.

The contract read something like this in my head: "If I ever get out of this alive I will never, ever do this again."

Though I was rocketing down the rapids, time stood still. About the fifteenth time I repeated this in my head I got sick of hearing myself and decided to fight. In slow motion I aimed my arms for what I thought was up and kicked like I have never kicked before. I shot out of the water in what was later described by those on shore as a look of total joy and anger all at the same time.

I was standing on a rock in the middle of the water screaming at the top of my lungs,
"Someone get me out of here right now." (I've omitted the swear words for family friendly forum).

Now, as an aside to all of this craziness, this was not the first time I have come close dying. The first time was on a backpacking trip when I was twelve and we were stranded on the top of Jefferson Glacier when it was snowing and I made a similar contract with myself and God (it was a church backpack trip) if I could just find the trail off the glacier in time. But that's another blog.
What those two contracts taught me was this: live, laugh and love as much as possible, and don't sweat the small stuff because I'm not going to get out of this alive anyway. And maybe it also made me believe Winston Churchill's famous phrase,"Never, ever, ever give up." It worked for me.

And so I go forth, past the icee machine, which I have thrown away, past the load of towels I used to mop up the hose debacle, straight to the cool of the library. I'm working on a query for Portland Magazine, my perpetual pitch for the Willamette Writer's conference, and an article about a new Dundee winery. I strap the little perpetrators into their car seats, which has always been my favorite mode of restraint for them, and resist the urge to leave them there for the rest of the hot afternoon. I don't want to show up in a mug shot in some commercial about bad mommies.

As James Taylor so aptly sung," The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time."

And I plan on doing just that.

Support Staff-Marcia

People around me are leaving. The tennis director at the club where I am an ardent player, the teacher I work for, our dear neighbors (their first son is James' best friend), and now my fitness trainer.

Yes, I have a personal trainer. It happened by accident.

Last summer right around this time, I was asked to partner with one of the most skilled and humble tennis players at our club. This was like being asked to go to the prom with the Homecoming King and you are the chubby Queen of the Chess Club: The one whose dress always rides up in the back. I could not believe my good fortune.

Then the dread set in.

What if he hates me? What if I'm too loud on the court? What if I miss a shot and he thinks, in his head (because that's where most of Dennis' conversations take place), "God, how did I get saddled with this heifer!"

Two days later I was at Oz Fitness. Sign me up! Get me in shape and step on it!!!!!!

While the ink was drying on my contract, the 23 year-old saleswoman tottered off on her high heels to find me a trainer.

"I don't want a trainer," I called after her, noticing, considering her "product", that her pinstripe trousers were a little tight in the tush.

"Don't worry, it's free!" she blithely looked around, made a decision, then dragged me over to someone named Chris.

I didn't pay too much attention to Chris and he didn't pay too much attention to me. His eyes were fixed somewhere over my left shoulder, he was chewing gum, jiggling his leg, and talking so fast I had to keep my eyes planted on his mouth to catch the words as they fired past.

His face was impossible to read. I thought he's probably wishing I were a player on the Panther's basketball team or, better, a Panther cheerleader. It didn't matter, whatever his spiel, I couldn't afford him. Still we soldiered on.

I remember being plopped on the scale out on the gym floor (!) and then lead into the trainers' den of torture . . . the Let's-Get-Real room full of tape measures and calipers. My post-baby belly hadn't seen the light of day in nine years. Now I was raising my shirt amidst the general hubbub, flourescent lighting, and file cabinetry for a tot and his calipers. He was swift and quiet.

Then he gave me the news. I was 60 pounds human, 130 pounds whale blubber.

After that, the cunning poker-faced devil took out his calculator and figured out how long it would take me to get as ripped as Serena Williams. He broke the calculator. Should I choose to commit, I would be with him for a very long time.

I do the "How much are we talking?" thumb and finger rub.

Poker man taps on the calculator and gives me a staggering number.

If I had been chewing gum it would have fallen out. There was silence.

After awhile I said, "Well, uh, okay."

I remember thinking this will be good, we'll have this totally antiseptic thing. Do 20 push ups and call me in the morning. I won't get attached, I won't try to get to know him, find out what makes him tick, I won't tell him my whole life story. I'm here to get in shape, not make friends.

But he was oddly funny. He gave me a hard time. Teased me. Bossed me around a little. But mostly he told me the truth when I needed to hear it. He worked hard to find ways to keep me motivated, keep it fun, and make it feel like I was an athlete in training. My fantasy.

Once, clipboard in hand, he was moving at his usual rapid pace through the gym, my short legs trying to keep up behind him--I don't know what I said, but he responded, "Don't worry, I'll take good care of you." He kept moving, scanning the gym for bosu balls and available space--I was stopped. His statement, made the same way a waiter says, "enjoy your meal", gutted me like a fish. Struck way too close to home. I almost wept.

When our agreed upon time was through I thought, okay, we're done. His face is going to close back up. We're no longer business partners. He doesn't have to smile at me every day and ask how I am. But you know what he did anyway. And I found myself plunked in the chair across the desk from him, or giving quick reports in passing. If I was missing, he wanted to know why. When I offered up some lame excuse, he offered a solution. He checked up on me. He did take care of me.

I was schooled by a kid who hasn't even reached the quarter-century mark. His professionalism and service were sterling. Eventually his speech slowed down, eye contact was made, every obstacle I threw up, he showed me how to hurdle. He gave me no option but success.

"Remember your goal," he would say. "Picture my face. You can do it."

I've learned not to assume that just because a cute guy is bouncing his leg, chewing gum, and looking off in the distance, he isn't listening. Because this one was. And often what he said surprised me. When a man of so few words speaks, he means it.

I try to use a lot of what Chris Hill taught me in my writing. Remember the goal, be consistent, be accountable, and the rest will follow.

I believe that whittling down my writing, my possessions, and my body all require the same kind of discipline, attention, and control. And if I can succeed at one, I can succeed at the others. So It's Bon Voyage to my trainer boy. I'm going to have to hope his lessons stick. Luckily the Lithia Girls will make sure they do. It's great to have so much support.

I am going to remember my goals, all of them. I can do it.

They say it's your birthday, you're gonna have a good time - Kerry

Today I awoke to giggling beside the bed, followed by a little voice that chirped,

"Mommy, get some sleep, we're making you breakfast."

I liked that idea in theory, except that two out of my three children kept checking on me every other minute, announcing,

"I hope you're getting some sleep."

After ten minutes of this I groggily sat up and surveyed the morning of my forty-second birthday. It was hazy outside, but there was definitely potential for some sunshine later on. I smiled in anticipation of our birthday plan later on in the day, when we would blow up our raft and float on the water with a plate of sushi and a bottle of Argyle brut (sparkling apple juice for the kids, of course). Of course half of the entertainment would be trying to keep the food out of the lake and our clothing.

I pondered last week's family vacation, where we'd dug for fossils in where else but Fossil, Oregon. Our son announced his dismay that were no dinosaur bones or skeletons. At least he wasn't lacking in the imagination department. Later on in the trip we played endless games of Marco Polo in the Red Lion hotel pool overlooking wheat fields in Pendleton.

My husband arrived carrying the breakfast tray, a gift certificate to Bikram Yoga and a card on which he had carefully recorded our children's voices and "five reasons why I love my mommy." Jillian said one of her reasons she loved me was because I read her good books.

"It doesn't get better than this," I thought to myself.

And then my son mentioned, "I think you snored a little bit last night. It was kind of noisy."

Well, maybe nothing's perfect, but this was still pretty close.

A Year After -- Jennie

Is Lake Tahoe magical, or what?

Why hasn’t anyone written about it?

Why hasn’t everyone written about it?

Even as a little girl, I knew how special was. So of course I wanted to share it with my own kids.

Last July, we vacationed in South Lake Tahoe, one day after volunteer evacuations from the neighborhood in which we’d rented a home. Just down the street, big, beautiful houses had burned to the ground during the Angora fires.

It could have been sad.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, there was a spirit of gratitude. Gratitude!

Huge “Thank You!” signs decorated the woodsy city, and we got into a nightclub for free during “Bring Your Own Firefighter” Night.

A year after the fire, South Lake Tahoe is reborn. Entire neighborhoods are reconstructed, and Indian Paintbrushes sprout from the ashes.

South Lake’s moving forward is inspiring. But this trip was also a going back for us—an opportunity to revisit the previous 52 weeks.

Our nine year-old daughter was diagnosed with a mild form of epilepsy, I finished my second novel, and my husband completed his probation at the fire department. We had made some fun family memories—like my dad’s 60th birthday party, and our groovy Fourth of July float—and probably sunk a bit deeper in debt.

Mostly, we’re thankful to have had those days together.

When we dive into the emerald waters next summer, who knows what the year will have brought?

For the article I wrote on last summer’s Tahoe visit, please see www.dailytidings.com/2007/0714/stories/0718_bp_tahoe.php

Two Things - Julie

My sister and her two teenaged daughters are coming to visit this month, which means I have to do two things I haven’t done in a long time. Clean my spare room and read a play.

The spare room has been accumulating layers of items for years and I’m learning about myself in the same way you can learn about the earth’s history from the layers in the crust. The earth suffered from a terrible flood 35,000 thousand years ago; I used to watch A LOT of X Files, and at one point I thought I’d get really into the exercise ball.

The play I have to read is Our Town, and apparently I’m the only one on the planet who hasn’t. I wasn’t about to be the aunt who lives in Ashland, Oregon, Playgoers’ Paradise, teaches middle school language arts and takes her nieces to see a play that they have both read but she hasn’t. It wouldn't look right. So I’m reading it. And the first thing I thought, when I was reading Donald Margulies’ introduction (I say that like I know who Donald Margulies is; I don’t), “Oh crap, I’m gonna cry in this play.” You see, from what I gather from the intro and the first Act or so is that it’s about the passage of time, and the inevitability of death. In the play, characters get introduced to us by the Stage Manager, and we see them go about their sweet business, getting phosphates, mowing the lawn, delivering newspapers and then he tells us offhandedly that this one’s going to die in the war and that one is buried in the cemetery four blocks down, etc. I haven’t finished the play, so maybe at the end everyone comes back to life, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve been thinking about such things lately, as my husband kindly keeps reading to me from a book called The Denial of Death which is about how, essentially, we human beings are all terrified of our own deaths, and are completely controlled by this fear, even if we don’t think we are. That everything we do is an attempt to avoid contemplating it, to make ourselves somehow feel, however unreasonably, that perhaps we won’t die.

Of course this is what much art is about. How you reconcile all the beautiful glorious details of your life (especially those penguin Christmas candles – what was I thinking?), with the hard cold fact that at some point it will all be gone.

Well, maybe you never will reconcile these things. But in the meantime, it’s good to sort through your rooms, holding each item in your hand and remembering when it was important to you, and to read something you’ve never read before, and to go see a play with your nieces, who are visiting this month.

The Wheel -Christy

Yesterday I wrote this on my blog:

"I have just finished Young Adult Novel number two! After weeks of ignoring dishes, weeds, children, friends and not least of all, husband, I have a sleek 180-page, 45,137-word manuscript. It’s just half the size of my first novel, but an altogether different kind of book. I’m happy. Very happy. Now about those dishes…"

A few hours later (after the dishes were, indeed, done) I was already angst-ridden and feverishly working on the excellent edits I’d received from Jennie.

When does it stop? Will I ever be able to sit back, put my feet on my messy desk and say, “Ahh, job well done, self!”

I set goals for being able to celebrate, but then celebrating doesn’t seem right because the next goal is bigger. First it’s when I finish the manuscript, then it’s when I finish the edits, then it’s when my agent starts submitting it, then it’s when I get a contract, then it's when the next manuscript is finished—it’s a publishing hamster wheel I tell you!

New goal: relax. Let it soak in. Go sit by the pool.

But first, back to Jennie's great edits!

See what I mean?

Eating My Words-Marcia

One of my good and very literate friends told me I had to read this book by Jodi Picoult. She made sure, despite her insane schedule, to drop "Change of Heart" off at my house the other night.

She read the book in a day.

I like the book. I think I'll stay up late and finish it off tonight, but . . . But.

I have noticed that Ms. Picoult is doing something we at the Lithia Writers have warned our colleague Ms. Raedeke against. "Change of Heart" is a long discussion: religious, moral, medical etc. about the death penalty. The author has obviously done tons of interesting reading, interviewing, and general kibbutzing about her subject.

Christy's wickedly observant work is often interspersed with well-researched discussions that take place around dinner tables in Scotland, on the Eurail through France, or, most currently, in a Buddhist Monastery in Southern Oregon. We always tell her, okay, maybe I always tell her, when we get to the talky parts--more action, more detail, more body (meaning let's see the heroine scratch her nose or something.)"

And I'm only thinking of this, because it was one of the last comments we/I made last Wednesday. Fluff it out, action it up, spread it out.

And here is Ms. P running on about religion while a priest sits in front of a death row inmate, an atheist attorney sits in front of a handsome Christian doctor, or in her rabbi-father's office. Sometimes the priest and the attorney sit together and discuss their motives for bonding with the inmate. There is a lof of "telling" versus "showing".

Maybe the writer realizes at times she is doing that which is forbidden, because there will be breaks from the debate --the death row inmate will perform a miracle resonant of S. King's inmate in "The Green Mile", or the chubby attorney will go home and feed her rabbit, (shades of Stephanie Plum and her hamster). Or maybe she knows something we don't. Maybe in order to get her message across this is the only way. Barbara Kingsolver has been known to wax on a bit too.

So, maybe I'm wrong. If J. Picoult and B. Kingsolver can have characters who talk away without action, C. Raedeke can too. I would much rather listen to Christy's Lemonhead-eating Rinpoche than Jodi's rabbit-feeding attorney (although I do hope the pudgy woman gets the British doctor). Seriously. Christy's characters are much better drawn and their conversation, even if it's all conversation, is always interesting and very zippy. We've learned about zero-point energy, safe cracking, tulpas, the Mayan Calendar--all kinds of goodies.

It just goes to show . . . I don't know what . . . that if you're a best selling author you can get away with a thinly veiled debate on the death penalty, or that you should not take the comments of your writers group too seriously.

Go ahead and write. Get all good and wordy, and you too shall appear air-brushed and beautiful in a moss green shrug on the back of a hardback book. What are you going to wear anyway? Turquoise. A summer shot, good tan, highlights, swimming pool and cabana in the background. I like it.

Love Your Inner Monster - Kerry

For most of my life, I've had a stilted or at best weird, relationship with food. According to various theories by experts and non-experts alike, I need to examine my feelings and feel them instead of distract/comfort myself with food.

It's a nice theory, anyway, but when those feelings come sometimes I am mad and hungry or sad but still hungry and really don't alot of emotions revolve around comfort food like cheese and wine anyway?

The French seem to have made a good run at it.

"The only way out is through it," said Winston Churchill.

According to New Age thought, running towards your enemy and getting to know it is the only way to appease it.

Yea, well maybe, but it still seems a bit ludicrous.

I've read alot about other people who have had bad relationships with food and tried just about every technique under the sun to make peace with this monster - except one.

Making peace with my inner monster, my war with food, by loving it to death, slowly, one bite at a time.

My colon therapist would be so pleased that I am chewing my food. I know I have reached a certain age when that actually means something to me. I am starting to approach my parent's concern for roughage. This is somewhat frightening.

Tentatively I'm making small frontal attacks in the war with slight forward momentum. I may win yet. Sitting on our deck in the late afternoon sunshine yesterday after I had made a meal from all fresh produce and local products that actually tasted interesting, I had an epiphany - maybe I was learning to love food instead of abuse it.

This comes after years of the opposite behavior, like a bad go of it in college in the cafeteria my freshman year, where I gained ten pounds and went from 129 to 139 pounds but it felt like 200 in my head. And that's where the monster grew.

Loving food seems so deceptively simple in hindsight. I mean really getting into the taste, smell and texture simply to nourish myself, instead of my monster.

At the writer's conference coming up at the end of July, I'm going to make a pitch about this inner journey to planet myself, or more aptly, how I learned to love my monster in only 10,223 easy steps.

Wish me luck.

The Busy-ness -- Jennie

There are three things I learned from my first writers’ conference: 1) it is infinitesimally possible to get published, 2) if you happen to be the lucky one in a ba-zillion who gets the chance, the actual process takes forever, and 3) if the book is printed during your lifetime, you won’t make much money.

All that aside, I’m still hoping, still trying, to get my story in print.

But the publishing world is busy. Really busy.

Agencies which promise a query response in 5-10 days are replying in four weeks, and others that promise 3 weeks are taking six. But they are replying.

Even on a Saturday—the morning after the Fourth of July—agencies were working; an incredibly polite assistant emailed an inquisition to whether her office could have a bit more time with my manuscript before Deciding.

Sure, I replied, renewed in hope after weeks of … nothing.

I pictured the assistant, blurry-eyed, coffee in hand as she sorted through a flooded Inbox. I felt for her.

This reminded me: I was humane once. It was, let’s see, the time before May 29, the time before I sent out the manuscript all over the nation.

I’ve been abominable.

Is it true that good things come to those who wait?

When You Are Engulfed in Sedaris - Julie

About every five years or so I rediscover David Sedaris, and it’s like rediscovering ice cream – my God, it’s sweet, creamy, cold, and there may be chunks of cookie dough in it?! This stuff is great!

Here’s what reading David Sedaris does for me: convinces me that dull real life experiences – watching One Life to Live, taking a French class, looking at beach real estate with your family, flying on an airplane – can be achingly funny and medicinally satisfying to read when well-told.

Having just finished a slew of YA novels for a contest I’m helping judge, none of which were funny or really very satisfying, I am on a little writing binge, rooting through my life, pulling out moments and dusting them off, seeing how I can shine them up, maybe add some paint or a decal. I’m having fun. Thanks, David.

An Ornamental Hermit

Why writing? Because, sadly, no one has been paying Ornamental Hermits for a couple of centuries now.

I worked in Seattle’s high-tech world for more than a decade and loved it. But then something happened; suddenly work was depleting me rather than energizing me and it occurred to me that perhaps my parachute was not that color.

Someone once told me that to find out what you’d love to do for work, look critically at your bookshelf. See what you spend your time and money reading about. Me? I have an extensive collection of books on hermits. Ancient Tibetan hermits, Indian hermits, modern-day Catholic hermits – you name the hermit, I’ve got the book. Give me a new hermit to read about and I’ll be up all night. So I realized that inside my broad Germanic frame lives a tiny, hunched over anchorite begging for solitude.

As a writer working from an office at home I have found a way (when the kids are in school) to have long stretches of solitude without having to survive only on tsampa and sleep on a bed of pine boughs. I can live like a hermit for six hours a day and then enjoy the richness of the rest of my life.

In addition to the solitude, there is the thrill of constructing something from nothing, of creating a new world, of developing characters you come to truly love or at least love to hate. Most of all, though, there is the sheer pleasure of working with words; for every hundred dull sentences I write there’s one that I love so much I keep rolling it over and over on my tongue like a dessert that’s too good to swallow.

From Edith Sitwell’s 1933 English Eccentrics:

Certain noblemen and country squires were advertising for Ornamental Hermits. Nothing, it was felt, could give such delight to the eye, as the spectacle of an aged person, with a long grey beard, and a goatish rough robe, doddering about amongst the discomforts and pleasures of Nature.

Shaka Bra--Marcia

This week Daniel goes off to “Hoop Camp”. He is not nervous about meeting the teeming horde of other little boys. He’s not nervous about whether or not he’ll be good enough. He just is.

He steps out onto the gym floor with all these mini strangers, picks up a ball and starts shooting, pretty soon he’s in a pod and they are talking and shooting. Familiar faces start to emerge. Brady from football camp, Charlie from Hoover, Ryan from Tennis.

“Hey, How’s it going!” Swoosh.

“I know you! Didn’t you play for the Mets?” Swoosh.

“Do you think Kyle Singler’s going to be here this year?” Swoosh.

Daniel doesn’t think too much, try too hard, or show off. Golf, tennis, basketball, football, baseball, ping-pong. They all come easy. He just flows.

James is on a T-Ball team this summer. His first practice was yesterday. He’s got on all the regalia. White pants, cleats, his brother’s River Dogs hat, and a new glove. He can’t wait. James has been waiting a long time to have his day in the sun. He’s sat on Daniel’s sidelines for the last five years. He’s ready to let it rip.

He gets up to bat, scrunches up his face and swings with all his might. It’s all rubber. The dull thwack of the bat hitting the “T” instead of the ball. He digs in again. Scrunches up again—Thwack. This goes on maybe four or five times. Each time he puts every ounce of his soul in it. Eventually he does a dribbler and takes off—Head down, arms flying, chubby legs churning. He rounds third base to come home and his face is Def Con 3. Beet red, eyes blazing. Tagging home plate he’s the Sultan of Swat. His swagger increases ten-fold as he heads back to his position in the field.

Now this is practice. Every kid runs all the bases. You can’t get tagged out. For James it’s the World Series. He’s a new man. A baseball player.

When I sit in front of my manuscript, my face scrunches up, my shoulders tighten, and my brain clenches its fist. I will muscle this book into shape. I will Will it into shape. So instead of staying loose and swooshing, I’m scrunching and dribbling. Both have value. One way is just a heck of a lot more graceful with greater end results.

James has my intensity, my desire to win, my ferocity. I hope I also did not pass on my habit of thinking too hard, trying too hard, and showing off. It doesn’t work in sports and it doesn’t work in writing. Hang loose, Jamesie.

Today I want to emulate both of my sons as I approach the page. I want the effortless grace of my eldest and the passion of my youngest.

No Complaining Allowed - Kerry

I ponder the pitch that I will be making to various agents at the Willamette Writer's Conference as I drive down the road, buy groceries at the store and shuttle my children to and from various locales.

Then I start to feel sorry for myself because I haven't thoroughly covered the entire subject enough. Even though I have a month left to prepare, it's as if being preoccupied with said subjects wasn't a good enough excuse for not having the entire pitch down on paper in detailed outline form.

I sink deeper into moroseness.

Until I go to the Ashland Farmer's Market on Tuesday and notice the blind man buying carrots, his social security card dangling in the sunlight from his wallet while he asks the clerk,
"How much is it?"

I regress to my parents' standard phrase:

"Someone is always worse off than yourself."

Later in the day I am shocked as I notice a clerk at the grocery store as a former business owner who lost her business to bankruptcy.

And then there's the conversation I have that evening with my mother about my godmother, who is lying in a hospital bed after suffering a stroke, still unable to speak.

But finally, there's my fellow writers at Lithia Writer's Collective, who know how to listen to all the moaning and turn it into a smart peice of writing after listening.

So about that pitch, or that b****.

I'm not going to worry about it anymore.

As Nike would say,

"Just do it."

No complaining allowed.