A love story to start the day

Wow. I am caught off guard. I called my dad this morning and he told me to go look at some pictures my uncle posted of a spring break trip to the Florida gulf coast. The trip included my uncle, who will be 50 this year, his girlfriend, my grandfather, who is 85, and my grandfather’s 80-year-old girlfriend. I thought I’d be amused by the photos. Instead, I am unexpectedly touched.

Too busy to be productive

I have freed my desk from all non-book distractions.

I use activity to procrastinate. If I am cleaning the house or cooking for company or doing paperwork at the office late at night, I am by definition too busy to work on my book.

HOWEVER… I am on yet another furlough from work, and despite the fact that I will make about 4.5% less money than I did last year, I’m really happy to have the week to get back into writing. For the moment, anyway, I am not too busy to be productive.

Ethical dilemma: Writing “non-fiction as literature”

I have a great-uncle who is an orchestral musician. He composes music in his sleep, the most famous among our family being a concerto he watched his cat bang out on a grand piano. He was dreaming, of course, and it’s really too bad that cat has passed away. Not that my uncle needs him to write. He had a stroke 20 years ago that limited movement in half of his body. Somehow he became a better pianist with one hand than most people will ever be with two. You’ve heard stories like that before, no doubt. I guess if you’re determined to do something so much that you do it in your sleep, you will find a way around a physical handicap.

Can you find your way around a mental one?

Is there a reason things happen?

Often, something small will happen and I realize later it was the catalyst behind something really big. Or I’ll make some decision that I will swear later was a  bad one, only to eventually understand it led me somewhere I needed to discover. Yesterday, I ran out of gas on my way to work, and I’m going to assume my stupid decision not to fill up the night before will eventually bring about something good.

First day back in the “real world”

I go back to work today after a week of unpaid leave. I spent the time writing things I wanted to write, and the fact that I wasn’t paid for it (at least not right away) probably made it that much sweeter. Coworkers at my newspaper told me I would love this, and they were right. They didn’t tell me how hard the first morning back would be, though. Or maybe they did but I didn’t listen. This morning, I am in need of a strategy.

A very self-indulgent afternoon

“She lies still, her eyes open, thinking. She is remembering the time when she was nine and took apart a jewelry box she loved, to see what made the ballerina turn around. Though she paid careful attention to each step, when she tried to reassemble it, it didn’t work the way it had before. No one else could fix it, either. The ballerina stayed in place, permanently turned away, oblivious to the music she had danced to before.”

That is one of the lines from Elizabeth Berg’s collection of short stories, Ordinary Life, that I would have underlined had I not been afraid of breaking the spell by digging around in my purse for a pen.

How to set the creative mood

Livre looks out the open window in my home office. We both like to hear the birds.

I am no expert on this topic. In truth, I am looking for help from readers who might have better tips than I do to charge their brains and get the juices flowing. But right now I’m feeling it, so right now I’ll share what I did.

Details matter

Depending on the typeface, I am three or four pages into what I think will be the first chapter, though that could change. I want to set the scene – Franklin, Tennessee, in the 1950s – without droning on. Everyone knows little boys had crew cuts then. Everyone knows girls wore bobby socks. I need to talk about the parts they don’t see. For example, Wonder Bread came out in the late 1920s and the phrase, “Best thing since sliced bread” was born. But not everyone bought sliced bread. The people who couldn’t afford it…Did they make their own? My protagonist’s family had a wood stove. How the heck can you bake bread in a wood stove? People made cornbread. I need to write about cornbread.

I’m starting this blog as an excuse to continue procrastinating

I am a journalist who works for a major newspaper chain that, like all newspaper chains, is struggling with transforming changes within our industry and a terrible U.S. economy on top of that. This week I am on an unpaid furlough, which I thought would be miserable but is turning out to be quite inspiring.

I've spent much of the week on this bench, finishing "2666" and drinking white wine.

I promised myself I would spend this week being the kind of mother who reads to the class and eats in the cafeteria. (It’s Wednesday, and I’ve already done both of those things. I’ve also bought her some socks at Target, cooked dinner each night, planted seeds in my container garden, replenished the bird feeders, made blueberry pies, killed a bottle of wine on an old friend’s patio, and wandered around the stacks at Borders.)