Creative Writing

I wrote this to read at my Creative Writing Class's public reading on 1/28.

Creative Writers

We fill our cups with each other’s words until they run over.

We fill picnic baskets, trunks, silos, freight cars, and hay barns with our words. Every one a gift.

Listening to each other’s words is as pleasurable as eating watermelon on the porch steps (with comments launched like watermelon seeds into the back yard).

Our words interlock

like the strands in a multi-colored braided rug.

Our words blend and sing harmonies.

Our words pluck long-forgotten chords in each of us.

Some words grow in neat rows, willing to be weeded and watered.

Other words escape and tangle into briar patches, resisting and drawing blood when we try to pick them.

Some words roam wild and free on the high slopes and have to be chased down and forcibly corralled.

Other words are as docile as sheep waiting to be penned.

As writers, we have to be

…as persistent as prospectors panning for word nuggets that will assay into stories.

...as faithful as fishermen, patiently casting into a pool of words to see which ones will bite, taking the keepers home to fillet and fry up as stories and poems.

…as tough as tight rope artists, walking the wire of writing and step by assured step bridging the gap between inspiration and story.

I celebrate the writers who have read their work tonight!

Quick to No

Okay, first query sent off in 2010, response in 4 hours, "No."
Impersonal response reminding me it's better to "know" than wait for a personal gentle let-down.
Hmmm. Not sure about that. The limbo of querying, in which all is possible for weeks until the reply comes back, was truncated today. After 4 hours, Grace was back in my court.

Time to serve an ace.

This is why having 10 queries out at a time is such a good idea.

5-Year Plan

New Year's resolutions are not enough: I am formulating a five-year plan. I have given myself to the end of January 2010 to design it. I plan to buy a Levenger (great notebook source) 5-Year Diary, so every day will show me not only where I am but where I'm heading.

My last 5-year plan (1980) had a single goal "get a job in the fire service." I accomplished that one in 4 years. Published a book on arson in 1982, joined the Bellport Fire Dept. as a volunteer in 1982; became an editor with the NY Fire Dept. --temp, 1983; full-time, 1984.

What does a five-year plan have to do with Grace at War? Everything! For 2010: have at least 10 queries out at all times; sell the book. See it in print by 2012. Meanwhile, get the new novel ready to send out before November 2010.

I'll post my progress!

Flamingo Poem

For Christmas I wrote a friend a poem. Then I thought blog readers might enjoy it too. So today, thinking of David, who always celebrated the Solstice, and is still doing so as part of the Universe, I suspect, here is a poem about light.

November Evening at the National Zoo

Thin grey light sifts through paddock and cage.
Locks snap shut.
Visitors hurry to the gates, while
wild deer watch in the shadows.

You and I are lost. Again.
Another wrong turn, another mis-read map and
we circle the locked bird house, a dead-end.
Then, just ahead, a vivid cacophony calls us.

On a wave of joy we surge forward.
Dazzled, we drown in a shimmering
flood of flame-pink flamingos,
aglow from within.

At last, surfeited and sure-footed
we find the path to the gate
Pass through it into the dark.

Incandescent.

—Susan Moger

"I encourage you to continue to submit elsewhere. "

That's just what I plan to do! On Queryday, aka Tuesday. For now, on the other weekdays, I am applying everything I learned writing Grace at War to the new novel, the NanoWriMo(www.nanowrimo.org) novel-in-progress. One book feeds the other.

Keeping On

A nice, positive rejection yesterday has generated renewed energy in sending out queries. As my confidants continually point out, I am still in the early days of my selling Grace campaign.

Grace Makes an Impression!

Catherine Adams, http://www.inkslingerediting.com, an editor who read Grace at War in July 2008, wrote this to me recently:

“There have been these strange moments when visions of Grace and her brother have popped up this summer. I've been working on a book about war (nonfiction), so that's probably why. Still it shows how the book sticks--it's those odd compelling images....One of those images that keeps coming back (and remember, this is memory, so it may not be exact) is Grace floating in the water and looking up....It's like I'm there, my ears below the surface of the water, time stopped, only the ripples of the water letting me know that this moment--like everything--will pass.”

Thanks, Catherine!