When You're Writing a Book about a Magical, Enchanted Space . . . and Then the Magic Dies

Dear friends,

I have been writing a middle-grade children's novel set in a cottage like the one I live in with my sweetheart, on a street filled with whimsy and wonder like ours. The book has a quasi-magical quality to it, where wishes come true in unexpected ways - was it magic? or not? - or was the magic just the warmth of the connections among the people who live on this street and interact with each other in such a caring way? I finished the first draft of it a week ago - TA-DAH!

But then yesterday morning, something terrible happened. 

While David was out for a short walk with Gaia-the-dog (while I was off on an outing with my visiting grandchildren), he came back to find the front door open; he assumed he had somehow forgotten to shut it, which of course he never does (neither of us ever bother to lock it) - but what other explanation could there be? Then he saw, lying on the loveseat in the living room, a carton of orange juice and empty bottle of raspberry lemonade. What?? He couldn't fathom what could be happening, until in the bedroom he saw the contents of one of the nightstand drawers on the bed - and discovered that from his drawer his wallet was missing . . . and the two dongles for his Subaru ... and my spare car key, too. He looked out the window and saw his car was gone. Then he called 911. The intruder, unbelievably, had not only robbed him of his wallet and car in the fifteen minutes or so he was out with Gaia, but had gone into our fridge and drunk our juice and lemonade!! All this happening in broad daylight at 9:30 in the morning.

We are both devastated. Our sweet little cottage, our late-life love nest, has been invaded, violated, desecrated.

And WHAT ABOUT MY BOOK? One friend said, "Well, now you have a plot twist." I don't want a plot twist! And certainly not THIS plot twist! But can I still encourage young readers to believe that magical spaces do exist, that there are enchanted places right here in our world, like the one in my story? One adult character in my book even denies the existence of "bad guys"!

Well, maybe our "bad guy" wasn't so very bad. Maybe he was just thirsty! And curious about what was in those closed drawers.... and the wallet and car dongle were just too tempting. Maybe he will bring back the car, sorry for his impulsive act. In the book, he could end up being friends with the child characters, and the book's final scene would show everyone having orange juice and raspberry lemonade on the rooftop deck together.

Ooh! Maybe, rather than my needing to change the book to match this sad reality, the sad reality will shift to match this imagined ending to my book! David's car will be parked outside the cottage again tomorrow morning! Maybe my fictional magic is strong enough to change the lives not just of my characters, but of mine, their creator?

I'm still pretty sad today, ready to start locking not only the doors of the cottage (a locksmith has already come to change them), but of my trusting heart.

But once I launch into revisions of the book, maybe my own story will work its magic on me, and I will let myself, like my fictional children Piper, Lydia, Xander, and Gabi, start believing again. . . 

When the Writing Magic Happens

February was an intense writing month. For me, "intense" means faithfully writing for a (predawn) hour a day, every day, up in my writing nook, with all my cozy paraphernalia (fluffy bathrobe, lap-size afghan, hourglass, tea or hot chocolate, and candle lit to consecrate this holy hour). It also means - gasp! - occasionally having a SECOND writing hour somewhere ELSE. One day I took my writing self to the elegant lobby of the posh St. Julien Hotel; on another, to the Bookmark Cafe overlooking Boulder Creek at the Boulder Public Library.   

No other book of mine has invited me on such a meandering journey to find my way into the heart of the story. This was also the work-in-progress where I somehow managed to leave all my notes-in-progress and beloved, battered, fifty-year-old clipboard on the plane, gone forever. I kept reminding myself of Tolkien's oft-quoted line, "Not all those who wander are lost." Except that I WAS lost. 

But then. . . as I kept on wandering . . . I got found. I guess I could say the story found me, or else that by dint of daily diligence with pen in hand, I somehow found it myself. What bliss when the path before you finally becomes clear! 

I'm calling this my "Bluff Street book" because it's set in a cottage like my cottage on a street like my street, where I'm making use of the abundant whimsy and wonder I've found here, courtesy of neighbors I've never met, such as in this sign:

I'm making use of it all - the fairy garden across the street from us, the mailbox that offers free seeds, the beckoning path up to tiny Lovers Hill Park. 

But for the longest time, all I had was a jumble . . . a mood . . . four characters with their heartfelt yearnings. What I didn't have, and readers seem to expect in a book, is a PLOT. And now . . . I do have one! I've been writing scenes that are very exciting (in a quiet way, of course! there is no murder or mayhem, no mystery, no adventure, the stakes so small ... but oh, so important to the children who care about them). 

I wrote the most thrilling (for me!!) scenes this past week. One left me so drained I had to take to my bed after the writing of it! It was the single most exhilarating hour of writing I've ever had. Now all that is left for this first full draft is half a dozen short scenes that follow this climactic moment to bring all these strands together in what is (I hope!) a wonderfully satisfying way. Then will come weeks of revision, and sharing it with my writing group, and more weeks of revision. Who knows if it will ever get published? These days, I take nothing for granted. But when the magic DOES happen, when the Muses finally reward a writer's faithful toil, it all feels worth it. 

It really does. 

Joy Report as Month Two Begins

My ONLY goal for 2025 is: "stuff my creative life as full as I can of JOY and PLAY." I am here to report that this is turning out to be an excellent goal indeed! I mean, what's not to like about JOY? PLAY is a bit more challenging for me; I'm so product-oriented that play has often seemed, I hate to say it (so I'm lowering my voice to a whisper), a waste of time. But I'm opening myself to play as well (appropriately, as my WORD for the year is "openness").

So: I have been doing my best to slip out of bed every morning at 4:30 to have a full hour of writing on my work-in-progress for young readers, which I call my "hour of bliss." Bliss was already provided by the standard elements of my writing routine: my trusty hourglass, my favorite pen and pad of paper, Swiss Miss hot chocolate or tea in a teapot (kept warm with a Liberty of London tea cozy from a long-ago trip to England).

But for this to count as a year of joy, EXTRA joy needed to be added, right? I found two FABULOUS additional joy-suppliers.

We turn off the heat at night in our cottage, so it is downright chilly in the morning when I creep upstairs to the writing nook. So . . . TA-DAH!

I seldom buy anything new; most of my clothes come from Goodwill. This luxurious, soft, plush, warm, pretty L.L Bean bathrobe is an enormous treat. How cozy and comfy I am now as I write!

The second new joy-supplier is even more fabulous. I am a passionate fan of the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, a series of books published mid-twentieth century, based on the author's childhood in Mankato, Minnesota (Deep Valley in the books) at the turn of the last century. In my favorite of the books, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, the four friends are going Christmas shopping, where their dimes (!) will ultimately be spent on Christmas ornaments, but along the way they pretend-shop for all kinds of other possible things. In the drug store, they "sniff assiduously" at the perfume counter and then each choose a fragrance: rose, lilac, violent, and new-mown hay,

Well, the Betsy-Tacy Society found a candle-maker to create candles in all four fragrances! And I bought them! And they are beyond adorable! Now I burn one each morning during my special, sacred writing time.

The writing on my book is going reasonably well, and I did try my hand at a draft of a personal essay which I kind of like, and I have a date this afternoon to brainstorm ideas for the picture book I want to write with my younger son's soon-to-be bride. So these are sources of joy and play, too. 

But, dear writer friends, consider splurging on a new bathrobe! And literary scented candles! I am hugging myself every day with happiness because of mine. 

Plans for the New Year: Joy and Play

I had lunch yesterday with a dear friend I hadn't seen for a long while. "Where was your new year's blog post?" she asked. "I was so looking forward to being inspired by it!"

Well, that was sweet to hear, of course, as well as guilt-inducing. But as the years go by, I have to confess that with each January 1, I feel I'm just making the same plans and setting the same goals I've done dozens of times before, blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's see if I actually do them this time. And yet... there is still something about the new year that gives me a tingle of anticipation, that tiny thrill that comes with a blank canvas, an open calendar, twelve months to fill with whatever I most want to fill them with.

So . . . 

I'm starting to feel I really am done with trying to coax the universe to shower me with its fickle, faddish fame and fortune, with shiny gold stickers on the covers of my books, with tiny tidbits of glory I can brag about on social media. I'm still not done with WANTING these, but I HAVE to be done with breaking my heart over not getting them. This year, I really DO have to write just for the joy of it. And writing still gives me so much joy!

There are few things I love more than to slip out of bed very early, tiptoe upstairs to my writing nook, with my hot chocolate or tea, and write for a blissful hour measured by my treasured hourglass.

I still want to write books for middle-grade readers, and I'm back on track writing the book for which I lost those fifty pages of notes on the plane in December. I thought maybe this was the universe's way of telling me to start the whole thing over again, but I am slowly rereading the 65 typed pages I already have of it, and have decided that whatever the universe thinks, I love this book, I do! And I want to keep going on it. So there, universe!

But this year I want to write lots of other things, too. I want to write poems for my sweetheart, David, to copy into the special book I created for his birthday three years ago. Many pages remain to be filled.

No other audience anywhere, ever, will love what I write more than he loves my poems. 

It's a tradition at my church that I deliver the sermon and preside over worship on the last Sunday of the year. I did that this past December, too, and they loved it as they always do, loving people that they are. I LOVE writing for people who love ME!

But I want to try writing some new and different kinds of things, too. I've always wanted to write (and yes, publish) personal essays. Now's the time to do that! There is a picture book I want to write with my younger son's bride-to-be. Now's the time to do that, too. At the least, it will be a way of deepening my already delightful connection with her. Could I try writing a play? I have an older friend who just wrote a play for the play-reading group at her retirement community, What fun it was to go there and see it performed by her friends and neighbors. I bet I could round up a group of friends who would have a blast reading a play of mine.

So, my ONLY goal for 2025 (well, except for being serious about using the waterpik with new faithfulness for my poor gums) is to stuff my creative life as full as I can of joy and play. I'm going to have FUN writing this year. Maybe I'll take myself to some delicious writing retreat somewhere. Or two or three! I'm certainly going to spend as many sweet hours in my writing nook as I can - this will be The Year of the Nook! I'm going to write with friends; I'm now in TWO groups of writers who are committed to a communal writing date each month. I'm going to EAT NICE THINGS while I write. Maybe apple turnovers? I do love apple turnovers...

Universe, are you listening? Whatever you decide my fate as a writer should be, I'm deciding my fate should be to give myself the gift of writing this year in the spirit of creative play, just for the joy of it. 

A Writer's Tragedy - and Maybe Getting Past It?

So I was going to a little family reunion in Dallas last weekend. I love to work on planes; I love filing my little backpack with tempting projects. For this trip I wanted to ponder my children's book-in-progress, a deliberately old-fashioned book set in a cottage like my cottage, on a street like my street, a street filled with whimsy and wonder. I wasn't sure I liked the direction I had taken the story and wanted the fresh perspective that would come from thinking about it Somewhere Else, like in a Southwest Airlines plane cruising at 35,000 feet. 

Into my backpack went my trusty clipboard-with-the-broken-off clip on which I've written all my books for the past half-century and the fifty pages of handwritten notes, in my teensy-weeny handwriting, which I had scribbled over the last few months in the predawn hours up in my writing nook. 

(Not the actual notes for this book but a sample of what the pages look like)

But my flight was at 6:30 a.m., and I had taken a 3:30 a.m. (!!!) bus from Boulder to the airport, so I was understandably a tiny bit sleepy as the plane took off.

Are you getting a bad feeling yet? A VERY bad feeling?

I didn't realize that I had left that labor of love in the seat pocket in front of me until I reached my destination and went into my backpack to retrieve my computer. Wait - wait - where was my clipboard and my notes? Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, OH MY GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I filled out the online form for items-left-on-planes although this one hardly fit into any of the categories offered (e.g., it had no serial number!). I got back a form reply from Soutwest that they would look for it and keep me posted. But their next email began with the dreaded word, "Unfortunately..."

They didn't find it. I realized they were never going to find it. If they hadn't found it as soon as they cleaned the plane, they weren't ever going to find it. It had apparently just looked like . . . trash. Oh, sweet little clipboard, companion for over sixty books written over forty years. Oh, months of thought, months of questions to myself, months of tentative answers (none of which I remember now), GONE FOREVER.

Now, this isn't quite as bad as it sounds. I had already written some 60 pages on the book; the handwritten pages of the manuscript were among the items now gone forever, but I HAD typed them up; they were saved in my Dropbox. And I HAD planned to rethink my original vision for my book: maybe this was the universe's way of nudging me - nay, forcing me - to do just that? 

Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, famously left a valise filled with all his story manuscripts - AND THE CARBON COPIES!!!! - on a train while going to buy a bottle of Evian water at a train stop, and it was gone forever when she returned. Hemingway reportedly said - many years later - that it was the best thing that could have happened to him, a catalyst in changing his style to the one that would someday win him the Nobel Prize in Literature. (He also reportedly said it was the reason he divorced Hadley!).

So maybe this is a GOOD THING? But what if it is a message from the universe telling me that my writing career is OVER? That this new book was indeed what it seemed to the cleaning crew on that Southwest flight: trash? And everything I wrote from now on would be trash? My sweetheart David says this isn't a message from the universe at all; it was just an ACCIDENT with no coded message from the Fates.

I'm going to go with the GOOD THING hypothesis. I'll weep and wail some more, then calm myself and get ready for a new vision for this book for the new year. With a new clipboard to go with it. 

The Winter of a Writer's Discontent

It's not quite winter yet according to the calendar. But the year is drawing to a close, which means end-of-year literary accolades are being trumpeted on social media, with best-of-year lists proliferating everywhere.

Lists that my own sweet, beautiful book is NOT on!!!  

Lists that most of my friends' books aren't on, either. Though certainly, a quick glance at Facebook reveals many friends posting how grateful, honored, humbled, etc. they are by the honors showering down upon them. As George Gershwin wrote, and Ella Fitzgerald sang, "They're writing songs of love - but not for me." And maybe not for you, either. 

This is a hard time of year to be a writer.

Mind you, we disconsolate ones are the lucky ones who actually had a book published in 2024! We are the fortunate few who ended up with a publisher's contract and a book with our name on the cover to hold in our hands. It is becoming harder and harder to squeeze one's way into that increasingly select society. Even writer friends reaping all this delicious end-of-year attention have long-time editors pass on their next book; after all, stellar reviews don't necessarily translate into sales. Even friends whose books sell heaps and heaps of copies lately are getting more than their share of rejections.

It's always been a hard time to be a professional writer - but lately, it seems, even harder.

So what is a poor, self-pitying writer to do? What tidings of comfort and joy can we offer ourselves? 

Alas, I have nothing better to offer than to remind myself that, hey, I actually like to write. In fact, I love to write. My happiest hour of the day, which I call "my hour of bliss," is when I'm curled up with pen and pad of paper, putting words on the page in my tiny scribbly penmanship. I enjoy this vastly more than I enjoy doing the New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle, which I also do faithfully every day. 

I also love sharing my writing with others, but there are MANY ways to do this. One friend is having a blast writing "fan fiction" (for a TV series I never heard of) and garnering lots of enthusiasm for it from her fellow fans. Another friend has become a storyteller and hosts small, intimate storytelling gatherings in her home. I am going to give the sermon in the worship service at my church on the last Sunday of this month. And my sweetheart's birthday is this month, too; he ADORES my poetry, and I'm woefully behind in writing some new poems for him as a birthday gift. 

The inimitable Brenda Ueland in her wonderful 1938 book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, has a chapter pondering "Why a Renaissance Nobleman Wrote Sonnets." She notes that it was NOT with the hope of "getting them in the Woman's Home Companion" (ha!!!). No, a Renaissance nobleman wrote sonnets "to tell a certain lady that he loved her," so that he "knew and understood his own feeling better" and "knew more what love is." We write, Ueland said quite simply, for "the enlargement of the soul." 

Yes, publication is nice. Yes, end-of-year fuss and fanfare are pleasant. I still want these. I am still going to try to get them in the years to come, though whether I do is chiefly up to the universe, not to me. But in the meantime, I might as well keep on writing. It enlarges my soul more than the New York Times Connections puzzle is ever going to do. 

My New October Life

 So now it's October, the most autumnal of autumn months, "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" (Keats). We made a visit to Munson's Farmstand in an effort to make a small, seasonal beautification of our beloved cottage. 

We are eagerly awaiting the changing colors of the many mature trees on our morning walk down Bluff Street, especially the maples, which have the promise of adding scarlet and crimson to the predominant gold of Colorado's fall foliage. The days are still warm, but the nights are cool. Today, as is fitting for the first day of October, the high is forecast to be 75 and the low to be 42. Bliss!

After a hiatus on my writing project, this morning I returned to the writing nook at 4:15 a.m., settled myself on the cozy loveseat there under a fleecy blanket, and picked up my pen again. 

During August I scribbled some 30-plus pages of notes and wrote 20 pages of actual text, which I shared with my writing group, the Writing Roosters, at our mid-September meeting. They had WONDERFUL comments. There is a magic in a critique group, where each member comes with their own comments and questions, but as we talk together, the interaction produces something new that none of us might have come up with on our own. 

Main problem they identified: this was my first-ever try at writing a book with an omniscient narrator, and I clearly have a lot to learn about how to do this effectively. Readers need to have a wise, trustworthy, insightful, authoritative presence guiding them through the story. All I had was distracting, frenetic head-hopping from one character's point-of-view to another's. But I LIKE learning new things!

Main insightful question they posed: the book is the story of four children during a semi-enchanted summer on a street much like my own Bluff Street, a street filled with whimsy and wonder, where the street itself is going to be a character in its own right. So: "How do the children need the street? And how does the street need the children?" Ooh!!!!!!

I couldn't leap into work on the book right away, however, as a long-dormant academic project reappeared on my desk to command my immediate attention. I sent it off a few days ago, and then gave myself a few days to recover.

Then today, the first day of the month, the first day of my FAVORITE month, I spent a joyous hour this morning, asking myself, "How DOES the street need the children?" I think I have the start of a couple of tentative attempts at an answer... and I have all month, and all year, and the rest of my life, really, to answer it, as ALL I want from writing now, in the eighth decade of my life, is joy, in whatever form it comes to me. And this is the form in which it is coming to me now...