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2013 Night of Writing Dangerously

November 18, 2013

The Night of Writing Dangerously is Prom for writers. (And it funds the Youth Writing Program for NaNoWriMo, what could be better?)

It really is.

It's six HOURS of writing, fueled by: caffeine, sugar, and alcohol. If at any point you feel weak, change your consumption order and write some more. If your hands get tired, stretch your fingers and write some more. Just. Keep. Writing.

Okay, that's what you SHOULD do, but I also tend to be a Flitter. I flit from bar to table to bathroom to photo area and back to table. Even with all the flitting I did, though, I still got two chapters written (3000 words), so huzzah for productivity!

It is, literally, my favorite night of the year. It's heaven. And this year, some of my favorite people of ALL came.

Veronica Wolff, sister Bethany, me, Kristin Miller, AJ Larrieu, Gigi Pandian, and Shannon Monroe!

This is me and Bethany grinning at our fairy godmother, whoever she is. Thank you for giving this to us. I feel like I still have my wings on, and my glass slippers never even got too tight! (When I took them off at home? Ouch. Another matter.)

I love this shot of Veronica. Seriously, she's as smokin' hot in light drag like this as she is in a little black dress.

Bethany looks on approvingly as I selfie.

Oh, my god, this. Every writer got a short story from a 4th grader. This was mine. It says, "A boy who got lost in the woods. He tumbles on a secret passage to another world. Then he has to fight a villan who is trying to hipnotize the bay area."

THAT'S A GOOD STORY, YO.

Gigi's card, though? She had an amazing one. From memory, it said something very close to: "I don't know what I'm going to write. I don't know how it ends. I'm going to put in a lot of action."

That's my current work-in-progress, summed up right there.

I'm still kind of floating on air today. I'm the luckiest writer in the world, I really, really am. (And dearest Fairy Godmother, you might like to know that I heard through the NaNo grapevine that someone got wind of what you did and sent someone else who couldn't have gone otherwise, so your kindness to us is making ripples out there. xoxox.)

Digit, Actually Dead This Time

November 8, 2013

Digit was the worst cat ever. He arrived as a tiny little jerk.

Even in that picture, he’s probably about to scratch me.

He fell in love with me, though, instantly. I was mama, since he was too young to leave his own who’d abandoned him under a house in San Francisco, but he was never my “fur baby.” I didn’t call him my son. No offense to those who call their pets that—it’s lovely. It just wasn’t the way we rolled. We were bachelors together in that little mother-in-law hovel that clung to the hill in east Oakland. We both went out at night and came back tore up. I’d have careless cigarette burns in my clothing, and he’d have foxtails and other cats’ claws stuck in his.

We bunked together. Happily. He nuzzled under my chin and shoved his paw in mine, using his claws to get closer if he needed to. He attacked visitors with creativity and enthusiasm, clawing his way up their jeans and over their shoulders to the sound of their curses. He drew blood first and often. I told visitors, “Don’t touch the cat, I mean it.” Then if they did that silly, “Oh, all cats love me, watch,” I never felt sorry for them and handed out bandages.

My neighbors, when we moved to a tonier section of Oakland, hated my emeffing cat. They demanded recompense for Digit chasing their cat into their house and beating the hell out of her—and I was about to pay their vet bill until I saw their cat beat the hell out of Digit in my yard, so we agreed to pay our own bills.

Digit saw me through six relationships. He didn’t care for most of the people I dated, but he loved Lala. Hated her dogs, though. Hated. He spent years thinking about ways to decapitate Harriet in her sleep, but Harriet could hold her own. He also hated me for a while, for introducing such low-bred animals into my life. He forgave all, however, when we got Clementine, a pit bull of his very own. For at least the first year that Clementine lived with us, all Digit had to do was breathe to make Clementine cower. Digit loved it. Nothing was better than punching Clementine and making her cry. It was fucking Disneyland.

He cost me at least fifteen thousand dollars over the years, and that’s not including the five thousand the knitters raised for his care after he returned from the dead (first, he died. Then, three months later, I got schmittens. Then he came back from the dead. After that, there was a raffle that put him back together again. If you haven't read that story here or in my memoir, I'll let you have a minute).

Fourteen years ago, I had him de-manned entirely, removing his penis because of a life-threatening disease. Last year, a vet told me soberly that, in fact, the cat I thought was male was actually female. I laughed my way out and I remain impressed with the remarkable job the first vet did.

Because that cat was all male. He stood up to pee, his beer farts were terrible, and when he lost at poker we had to eat ramen for weeks. And he was my guy. I was his girl. We were each other's. We’ve been each other's since the very first moment. It was love at first sight for both of us, and tonight, as I held his paw as he drifted off, there was no one else in the whole world but him.

Today's decision to let him go was the right decision. It was a terrible day, deciding. Lala called me at work this morning, and I was able to take vacation for the rest of the day.

I spent almost seven hours in bed today holding him as he slept like this.

By the time we got to the vet, he was almost all the way checked out, not even able to purr. Strangely, it was a relief to let him go.

He was a jerk. A real, complete asshole. And he was MINE.

My face hurts and my head aches. My eyes are almost swollen shut. I miss the hell out of that beast already and it’s gonna get worse, I bet, before it gets better. We have a lot of animals, yes. We still have three dogs and two cats left. And you know what? I like them all. I even love them.

But I loved no one and nothing like I loved Digit. We came as a package deal, and for the first time in seventeen years, he’s not yelling at me, and I’m not yelling back.

Lala has said for a while that his first name is Fuck Off. This is because of how many times a day one or the other of us said, “Fuck off, Digit.” Because he was a ridiculous, demanding jerk who tried to eat the food off our plates constantly. But he’s dying, I’d joke.

Not a joke, I guess.

Tonight, after we said our goodbyes, before the vet pushed the needle, I said, “Fuck off, Digit.”

Lala said, “Fuck right off.”

As we left, we saw the vet petting his body.

Some cat. Fucking love of my life.

Stars

November 7, 2013

Last night I went out with (as I think of her) my Young Writer friend. My favorite barista at my beloved but now defunct cafe, she has stars in her eyes about writing, and is applying to MFA programs all over the country. We ate sushi and talked about writing, and I remembered myself in her.

When I was 25–her age–I packed up my tiny Ford Festiva with its roller-skate wheels and headed to Mills for my MFA. I was going to light the world on fire with my prose. Or at least, I was going to write. And I lit a lot of things on fire, namely the cigarettes I was still smoking back then. I was giving myself two years in the ivory tower, two years to really focus on craft.

Then, for those two years, I avoided writing as much as possible. I did the bare minimum, because that's what we do sometimes, when it comes to what we love most, right?

Artists don't draw. Musicians don't play. Writers don't write. If we write, we fail (because when we're learning something, DOING anything at all, we fail. Just part of the process). And as artists, we strive for perfection and failing is really not ideal.

So we don't write. I managed my 150 pages of a terrible novel for my thesis. I took an amazing dialogue class in which we read a book famous for dialogue every week and then wrote a three page scene in the voice of that writer (that did more for my skill with dialogue than anything else). I took a poetry class which almost killed me.

Then I graduated and spent the next ten years also avoiding failure by not writing. Not writing = safe! Not writing = dreaming about the perfect words you'd string together if you just had time.

What I didn't realize was this:

Not writing was the biggest failure of all.

No matter how spectacularly I screwed up in the writing itself (which I did! Still do! Spectacularly!), when I finally started to write everyday (thanks, NaNoWriMo 2006), I was succeeding!

And seven years (JEESH!) later, I'm still writing, all the time. Every day. Even when I fail, I win.

The job has gotten harder the more I learn. A rank amateur says LOOK I WROTE A BOOK YOU SHOULD READ IT OMG — a writer who's spent years actively learning how to craft emotion out of words says, Well, you don't have to read it. It's the best I could do but it's still not as good as Murakami. Maybe someday. *kicks rock* (Also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.*)

I've been both of those people. (Admission: I've been both of those people this WEEK.)

But I've changed my website a little bit because I want y'all to see that book up there to the left with its quotes and overview and all that because I'm proud of it and I'm excited for it.

Pack Up the Moon. It's literally the book of my heart, and it's available for preorder right now. I'll be releasing excerpts and reasons for you to preorder (gifts! prizes! kisses on the mouth if I see you IRL and you want one!) but the real truth is this: It's a good book. It will make you cry, and then–I hope–it will help heal you a little bit.

I love the stars in my Young Writer friend's eyes. The funny thing is I still have them, too.

* "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average . . . Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding."

Winner! And Book Recommendations!

November 2, 2013

THANK YOU for the book reviews! I love that y'all like Cora's Heart as much as you do. The reviews and the emails are amazing and when I get one, I do a little spin in my chair. My chair is almost spun out, I'm telling you. Might need a new chair.

Randomly drawn winner of $50 book certificate: Anna, who's been reading me for ages and is always the first person to ask me "When is it coming out in the UK?" (I love it when long-time readers win things. Don't forget to sign up for my mailing list to be on the random win list! Sometimes I just send a book I like to a random winner! I'll probably do that again next week!)

What I've Been Reading:
Amazon links for convenience but check your local shop

The Husband's Secret – Liane Moriarty – I'm about 70% done with this, and I love it. It hits all my buttons — a slow, intent look at family life, a secret that blows up, and female characters fully explored and realized… I'm reading slowly to make this Australian gem last.

Love on Main Street – A bunch of people I know – It's possible that I and my friends made up a fictional mountain town called Snow Creek and wrote a whack of interconnected stories set at the holidays. It's also quite possible I chose to write about the yarn store owner. As I do. It turned out even more darling than I thought it would, and I had high hopes. I have talented friends, yo.

Human Remains – Elizabeth Haynes – You know that when I talk about books, I like to present a wide variety. This is nothing like anything above dark, and it's incredibly gory (I even had to skip over a section when I was eating a gyro, and I'm a dispatcher and not much grosses me out–I can listen to people vomiting while eating oatmeal). (Oh, my god, was that too much? Maybe. Okay, if it was too much, though, don't read this book. Otherwise:) and SO GOOD. If you like Gillian Flynn (which I do, Gone Girl not as much as Sharp Objects), you'll like this British serial killer novel.

My Favorite Writing Quotes

October 27, 2013

Google, in all their wisdom, has decided to shut down iGoogle, saying it’s not used for much. All I do on my page is store my favorite writing quotes, so I guess they might have something there. I was casting about in my mind: WHERE WILL I KEEP THE QUOTES? when I realized I have a place! Right here!

At the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to assist you. GOETHE
(This is my favorite quote of all. The week I dedicated myself to writing every day, to really doing it even on the days I had to get up at 3:30am to get the work done, I got my agent. Coincidence? Probably. I’d already written the book, after all. But this quote was large in my mind. The universe does conspire to help you, and it knows when you’re finally truly serious.)

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. GLORIA STEINEM
For most of my life I felt like this. Now I write so much that now when I’m hanging out with loved ones, or watching Scandal and knitting, I feel just fine, thanks.

Write about it by day, and dream about it by night. E.B. WHITE

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult. E. B. WHITE
I think me and ole Elwyn would have gotten along well.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. THOMAS EDISON

In fiction, veracity is nice…but believability is all that you’re really required to provide and all that your audience has a right to expect. ROBERT MASELLO – Robert’s Rules of Writing
Whew.

Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears. E.B. WHITE

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. LOUIS L’AMOUR

I’m like a big old hen. I can’t cluck too long about the egg I’ve just laid because I’ve got five more inside me pushing to get out. LOUIS L’AMOUR
Don’t you just love this man?

Don’t get it right, just get it written. JAMES THURBER

I have so little control over the act of writing that it’s all I can do to remain conscious. DAVID RAKOFF
I die over this line.

No one ever said it would be easy. ANNIE DILLARD

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. TRUMAN CAPOTE

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself. ISAK DINESEN
Like knitting!

Writing is when we make the words. Editing is when we make the words not shitty. CHUCK WENDIG

How much a character cares about his/her goals is in direct proportion to how much the reader will care. LAURA DEVRIES

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. MADELEINE L’ENGLE

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river. MARGARET ATWOOD
I saw her speak recently. She remains my hero. A smarter, classier, funnier woman I think there never was.

As for discipline—it’s important, but sort of overrated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. ELIZABETH GILBERT

Nulla dies sine linea. Let that be their motto. And let their work be to them as is his common work to the common labourer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,—as men have sat, or said that they have sat. More than nine-tenths of my literary work has been done in the last twenty years, and during twelve of those years I followed another profession. I have never been a slave to this work, giving due time, if not more than due time, to the amusements I have loved. But I have been constant,—and constancy in labour will conquer all difficulties. Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo. – Trollope
Someday, the first line of this will be a tattoo.

If I waited until I felt like writing, I’d never write at all. ANNE TYLER

Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline. ANDRÉ DUBUS
My first writing teacher, Al Landwehr, told me this many, many years ago. He told me I had the first, wasn’t sure if I had the second. I was SO MAD, mostly because I knew he was right. So I went about proving him wrong about the latter. (Not about the former.)

I write pieces and move them around. The fun of it is watching the truthful parts slide together. What is false won’t fit. ELIZABETH STROUT

Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject. JOYCE CAROL OATES

The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraphlike clusters. LARRY McMURTRY
I am the border collie of active verbs!

Easy reading is damned hard writing. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
This is why I am pleased instead of insulted every time anyone says my books are easy to read.

Writing is driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make whole trip that way. E.L. DOCTOROW

Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone. URSULA K. LEGUIN

Every time I hear writers talk about “the muse,” I just want to bitch-slap them. It’s a job. Do your job. NORA ROBERTS
“Sister Mary Responsibility kicks the Muse’s ass every single day.” Nora Roberts, great video HERE.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. HENRY MILLER

I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork. PETER DE VRIES

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives… ANNIE DILLARD
I had a postcard with this phrase on my refrigerator. I looked at it daily during the ten years I wasn’t really writing. It didn’t feel good to think about. Then I started Really Writing, and this is true: I lost the postcard. I know how I’m spending my life.

Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to. ANN PATCHETT

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. JOYCE CAROL OATES

The first 8 drafts are terrible. MALCOLM GLADWELL
Word.

Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving. NEIL GAIMAN

Take the time to write. You can do your life’s work in half an hour a day. ROBERT HASS

You run it through your mind until your tuning fork is still. MARTIN AMIS

If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you. BILLY WILDER

An overflow of creative urges is the reward for indulging in the new. JULIA CAMERON

I think the hardest part about writing is writing. NORA EPHRON

All I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world. E. B. WHITE

Be obscure clearly. E.B. WHITE

Scenery is fine, but human nature is finer. JOHN KEATS

A word after a word after a word is power. MARGARET ATWOOD

The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person. BRENDA UELAND

The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

There are techniques and skills to be learned for writing as in any profession or trade. All the stories fall into certain patterns of behavior that we call plots. Plots are nothing but a constantly recurring human situation, patterns of behavior. It’s my belief that 90% of all fiction is based on just 12 to 18 plots, and you can find them in any metropolitan newspaper in any given week. The same plots used by the ancient Greek dramatists were also used by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens. Nobody “invents” a plot. LOUIS L’AMOUR

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting. PETE HAMILL

Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine. MARGARET ATWOOD
No whiners. This rule can be broken if you’re talking to your writing partners. Then whine with élan.

I don’t grasp it very readily at all, the “it” being whatever I’m trying to do. ALICE MUNRO

If I’m going slow I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them. RAYMOND CHANDLER
This is my biggest sign that I’m going the wrong direction–the words just don’t come. It feels like block, but it’s only that I haven’t found the right door yet. If I feel around the room blindly, I eventually find the handle.

We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance. NATALIE GOLDBERG

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose. P.G. Wodehouse

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. Robert Frost

Once you’re into a story everything seems to apply … Wherever you go, you meet part of your story. Eudora Welty

What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing—my major sense organ is apparently a pencil.
KAY RYAN

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.
DIANE JOHNSON

I never think when I write; nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.
DON MARQUIS

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. —E. L. Doctorow

I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. — ANNE TYLER

There are only two things to write about: life and death. — EDWARD ALBEE

I write pieces, and move them around. And the fun of it is watching the truthful parts slide together. What is false won’t fit. — ELIZ. STROUT

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.—Louise Erdrich

I always begin with a character, or characters, and then try to think up as much action for them as possible. — JOHN IRVING

The imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering. —BRENDA UELAND

When I finish a 1st draft, it’s always just as much of a mess as it’s always been. I still make the same mistakes every time. – MICHAEL CHABON

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you’re not in that existential panic when you don’t have a novel at all. – ROSE TREMAIN

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing. – BRENDA UELAND

Go looking for an idea and it’ll show up. Begin now. Be a fucking soldier about it and be tough. – IRA GLASS

It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.– SALMAN RUSHDIE

You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you’re lucky you finish at the smart end. —SALMAN RUSHDIE

Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. —Sam Shepard

You say the sentence or you write the sentence again and again until the tuning fork is still. —Martin Amis

Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation. – LORRIE MOORE

When you’re speaking in the truest, most intimate voice about your life, you are speaking with the universal voice.
CHERYL STRAYED

Mindfulness

October 22, 2013

I feel like I have a new toy. I really do. (And it's not the fact that I'm now a New Zealand citizen, although that is AWESOME, too! I am sure my first sheep is on its way from the consulate. RIGHT?) This whole meditation thing has clicked, and it's because I'm using guided meditation, which–for me–has been the ultimate way to learn to do it.

Doesn't guided meditation sound so woo-woo? Like you're going to lie on your back and someone will talk to you about imagining a field of lilies while really you're just trying desperately to keep from thinking about lunch? Or maybe you'll have to chant something at the end or pretzel your limbs into a position that you haven't been able to get into for fifteen years before drinking some tea that smells like feet?

What I've been doing is a meditation class. (I have no reason or motivation to pimp this except that it's Something Rachael Loves.) Andy Puddicombe, lovely man, talks to you as sit upright in your chair with your hands on your lap. This is something you can do at your desk if no one minds you closing your eyes for ten minutes. Or at the kitchen table. Or on the couch. (I have a low settee in my office that I use.)

Then you listen to him talk you through things for a few minutes. If you've been reading my blog a while, you know that I have energy to spare. I don't sit still, ever, unless I'm sick. But during these sessions? I just rest. My mind rests, and my body rests.

It's amazing to find that stillness. And it's even nicer to learn how to not worry about finding that stillness. It's there, you just go visit it, you don't have to do anything but show up. You don't have to make anything work. You just sit and breathe. (Before, when I'd tried, I'd always thought meditation was so much work.)

The program starts with a free 10 day 10-minute course, and then if you like it, you can advance to a subscription, and the next course is 15 days of 15 minutes a day. Then you get 20 days of 20 minutes a day. I'm ten days into the 20 minute course, and I can tell you this: This section has blown my MIND.

OMG I AM SO CALIFORNIA HIPPIE RIGHT NOW but dude, if you're reading this, so are you, so light up that nag champa and sit next to me on my locally-sourced hemp chair. (Just kidding. I freaking hate the smell of nag champa. Too many drunk nights as a college student with those sticks burning. Burn some sage instead.)

Today I learned this: Permission. I think this may be a thing you have to learn on your own and I'm sure I've read it a million times as people chronicle their own discovery, but to me, that's what this mindfulness is all about. Giving yourself permission. You allow thoughts, feelings, and sensations* to arise and fall.

Today, in the middle of the practice, I got a TERRIBLE itch in my eye. I mean, it was the rub-it-till-it-bleeds kind of itch. I thought, Oh, no! How am I going to resist this? How am I going to ignore it? How will I stay in the meditation, following my breath?

I thought about what I'd learned in the last month or so and just gave my eye permission to itch. I kind of rested there. Go ahead. Itch. I don't mind. And I just went on breathing.

My eye still itched. It's not like it went away. But I didn't care. It was just a thing. Eventually my eye watered and the itch died, and then later, I noticed it was gone.

THIS IS HUGE, PEOPLE. I IGNORED SOMETHING. I didn't twitch, scratch, fret, or tic. When I sit and write, I can get 2500 words/hour and still fix my hair into three different buns in sixty seconds. I move.

Meditation is being still. Being present. Giving yourself permission. Holy crap.

If you're like me, a person who can't rest, you might want to give Get Some Headspace a try.

And for the knitters who are still patiently reading, a bonus photo:

My gorgeous friends, Juliet Blackwell and Sophie Littlefield in their new shawls. I rarely knit for family, and even more rarely for friends, but after my surgery last month — even then — I couldn't sit still. So I knitted a lot. (Super easy pattern, Shaelyn. I'm knitting my third now. It's addictive.) I love the look of delight on their faces in this shot.

* My least favorite sensation I get during meditation is something that I've had happen in yoga classes, too. With my eyes closed, I feel as if my head is turned, looking over my left shoulder. IT IS NOT. It's dizzy-making and I hate it. Today it happened, too, and I said, All right. Then it went away. DUDE.