In Praise of Celebration

For my most recent book, The Lost Language, I had allowed myself to entertain such extravagant hopes of its reception by the world that I was doomed from the get-go to disappointment. There was no level of critical acclaim or popular adulation that could match the love I had for this book, the book of my heart, my best book ever! 

Many early readers did love the book and said so both privately and publicly. But I was still spending far too much time moping and sulking that very few people - none, actually - were saying that this was the best book ever written in the history of the world. I no longer cared about making a huge fuss over the book. Why bother? 

But I knew I owed it to the book and its publisher at least to make an effort. So I did. I lined up a total of six events for the book. Some authors line up sixty events for theirs, but six was a lot for me. And you know what? Each of the six events was WONDERFUL!

On the actual pub date for the book of October 19 I did an in-person reading/signing at the darling children's bookstore Second Star to the Right in Denver. It was the store's first in-person book launch since COVID, and it was for MY BOOK! Oh, the joy of REAL LIFE!! Of reading my book to actual human beings sitting there beside me (plus those attending on ZOOM - something for everyone!).

For The Wandering Jellyfish, the brand-new, off-the-charts-adorable children's bookstore in nearby Niwot, Colorado, I presented an evening author salon on "Writing the Verse Novel." Bliss! 

Next I did an online event with the bookstore owned by my sister and brother-in-law in Nashville, Indiana, Fallen Leaf Books. The ZOOM format meant that a cousin in New York City could attend, as well as far-flung friends I know only because of our shared (fanatic!) fandom for the Betsy-Tacy series of Maud Hart Lovelace. 

I was privileged to give a dinnertime talk about my book to the School-Family Partnership program for Title I schools in the Jefferson County school district. There I came away marveling at the commitment of brilliant, caring educators to make their schools true places of equity, diversity, and inclusion, as symbolized by this stunning piece of art - made from broken crayons! - created by the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students of Weber Elementary under the supervision of their amazingly gifted art teacher, Joy Worcester.

I had yet, however, to be able to talk with kids who had actually read my book. I did that outdoors last weekend at the wonderful BookBar bookstore on Tennyson Street in Denver. These three readers, all bright, insightful kids who adore reading, gave my book its first reviews from the audience it was written for. One said the book was "brilliant! flawless!"; another said he had read it twice; and the third said it was "enthralling." What more could any author ask for?

That afternoon I joined other local authors with new books out who are members of SCBWI (the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) for a Big Birthday Bash hosted by Second Star to the Right. Cupcakes! Candles! Singing "Happy Birthday to Books!" 

Then last night was the final event, in person at my own treasured hometown Boulder Bookstore. Friends from my old writing group, friends from my new writing group, friends from my book group, neighbors, and even the woman who had been my younger son's daycare provider 30 years ago (!!!!) came to rejoice over the book with me. When I arrived, I was told that someone had sent a dozen roses to the store, and it turned out be my extravagantly supportive agent, Steve Fraser, who loved the book from the very beginning.

I am so glad I roused myself from my grumpy slump and forced myself to celebrate this book of my heart. I'm still not sure where the writing path will lead me next - more on that to come (spoiler: it's going to start by leading me to . . . .Paris!). But right this minute I'm grateful that the writing path led me here, to this place, at this time, to share my book with these people - and that there were so many fabulous indie bookstores that helped me to do it. Indeed, this morning I was so excited about whatever the future will bring that I ordered a dozen more of my (new) favorite Pilot P-500 pens! 

Hooray for celebration! 

Not THE One, But Still a Very Nice One

I spent the entire month of September in a frenzy of fretting and fuming over reviews for my forthcoming book, The Lost Language, which officially enters the world on October 19. I had allowed myself to indulge in the dangerous pastime of Getting My Hopes Up. Now I was facing the dismal reality of Getting My Hopes Dashed. 

Would this - the book of my heart, the book that I and others think is my best book by far - be THE ONE? My BREAK-OUT BOOK? The book that would, after 61 previous titles, put me ON THE MAP and make me a HOUSEHOLD NAME? Would the book be showered with starred reviews and receive huge heaps of end-of-year accolades? Would it grant me literary IMMORTALITY? 

Or would it be - gasp! - A DUD????!!!!!

Well, with the pub date now two weeks away, I can say, alas and alack, I do not think this book will be THE ONE. I've received four of the major trade reviews so far. All four were good, though two had some quibbles about the book. Two were starred reviews (hooray!), including one of the reviews that had a quibble! Two more are yet to come - IF they come. Many books get no reviews at all. 

With each non-star, and each quibble, my spirits sank. As I read of friends' books raking in the stars and getting reviews in The New York Times and on NPR, my spirits sank still further. As Anne Lamott so brilliantly observes in Bird by Bird, jealousy is the besetting sin of writers: "some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know - people who are, in other words, not you." 

But with the most recent glowing-but-non-starred review, I felt for the first time a strange relief. At this point, there is really no way the book can be THE ONE. After all, one of my most lavishly praised writer friends made a point of telling me that HER publisher thinks merely getting THREE starred reviews is a terrible disappointment. Plus, it's late in the year now for buzz for a book to grow; indeed, end-of-year accolades are already being announced for 2021, with my book not yet even published.

So: my book is, by all appearances, not going to be THE ONE. 

Is it, then, a DUD?

That answer did tempt me. In my heart I issued a petulant wail: "Yes, a DUD! Like the 61 DUDS before it! Because that's who I am, a DUD AUTHOR! Who has written NOTHING BUT DUDS for forty solid DUD-filled years!"

But, really, that is a very silly thing to say. 

I have published 62 books. 

I loved writing each and every one.

Every single book received at least one excellent review, often three or four or five or six or seven. Just about all of them were chosen as Junior Library Guild Selections; I seldom visit a public library anywhere that doesn't have quite a few of my books in its collection. I've had books translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic. Best of all, teachers, librarians, and parents have shared them, and kids have read them, and some of these kids have loved them. For one of my non-starred, non-bestselling books published twenty-plus years ago, I still get occasional letters from women now in their twenties who tell me how much the book meant to them when they were twelve. 

The Lost Language, a Junior Library Guild Selection with two starred reviews already and audio rights sold, and four launch events coming up, and lots of love sent its way by friends who read advanced copies, is not a dud! It is my best book, the book I'm proudest of, and one that is having, by any standard, a very nice success. 

Frankly, even if this book were THE ONE, all that would happen is that I'd start agonizing about whether the next book would be AN EVEN BIGGER ONE, or whether I'd be just a one-hit wonder, destined to rest on past laurels and live on past glories. 

I always wished that the fisherman's wife in the fairy tale had contented herself with upgrading from the wretched hovel to the charming cottage, rather than obsessively hankering after ever-larger palaces and ever-greater power. It's not a bad idea to learn how to be contented with getting, not EVERYTHING, but ENOUGH. 

Maybe it's time for me to start learning this now.

Defeating the Demons of Doubt

A new friend sent me this email yesterday: "I know self-doubt comes to all writers, even successful ones like yourself. When those doubts come, what do you tell yourself?"

My first thought was: Hmmm. What DO I tell myself? Because right now I'm experiencing a level of self-doubt more intense than anything I've had in my previous forty years as a published children's book writer. I'm totally consumed with self-doubt! I'm paralyzed with self-doubt! I haven't written anything since a major rejection in January, weeping, wailing, and wallowing in self-doubt!

It is time for some stern self-talk.

But what am I supposed to say, given that my past platitudes don't seem to be working for me any longer? The chief platitude is that, when it comes to writing, and to life in general, it's the journey that matters. It's not reaching the dreamed-of destination of publication, but the joy in the writing itself: the process, not the product. It was so easy for me to say this when I was getting published with relative ease. Now that (to speak with frightening frankness) I'm not sure if I'll ever be published again, my glib assurances that publication isn't what matters, oh no, it's WRITING that matters, ring a bit hollow. 

For to be a WRITER, in almost every case, is to yearn for a READER, for that deep and beautiful form of human connection. To be an ACTOR is to yearn for an AUDIENCE. Few actors would be satisfied with delivering even the most heart-wrenching rendition of Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy merely to themselves in the bathroom mirror. Artists, musicians, chefs... all crave to share their creations with others,  and to have those creations appreciated by others. We just do.

So we start to doubt that this is ever going to happen. What if we NEVER get published? Or get published and our beloved book is a DUD? Or get published ONCE and never again? What if, what if, WHAT IF?

Huh, Claudia? What do you have to say NOW to your no longer smugly confident self?

Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath.

Okay.

1. It is impossible to know whether we will ever be published, or (if published) well reviewed and showered with accolades. As physicist Neils Bohr famously quipped, "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." We simply can't know this. It isn't ours to know. Stories abound of hugely successful books that were rejected many times before receiving an offer, or largely ignored after publication only to achieve posthumous glory. WE SIMPLY CAN'T KNOW.

2. But we CAN know with absolute certainty that NO unwritten book can EVER be published or indeed ever shared with any reader anywhere.

3. Publication comes in many forms. So actually, my first point, as written, is untrue. Today in the age of the internet, self-publication is increasingly respected and rewarding. Indeed, I'm self-publishing this blog post and expect to get a couple hundred readers as a result - a couple hundred other human beings who will read and ponder these words and perhaps draw benefit from them and maybe cherish them forever! Smaller publishers based outside of New York often lavish love  - and significant promotion - on their authors. I have one friend who has joyously published all her DOZENS of books with small publishers she finds through a modest amount of online research. I am pondering writing more poetry and trying to publish some of it, where publication will mean having the poems appear in a tiny publication read by hardly anybody and paying nothing whatsoever, but this will still please me enormously. There are so many different ways of being published. 

4. Finally, well, finally, the platitude I rejected above is, in the end, as true as anything else I've said here. If writing brings you joy, just DO IT. I miss writing. I miss it intensely. I miss lying on the couch with my mug of Swiss Miss hot chocolate beside me, scribbling lines on a blank page of narrow-ruled paper with my Pilot fine-tipped pen. I miss that little glow of satisfaction when I complete a page, or one single poem to share with a few friends. The fact is that I happen to love being a writer, which I realize more keenly now that I'm not letting myself be one. 

It might have been otherwise. I might have realized that I didn't miss writing, that the agony and ecstasy of it was too hard on my heart, and I would have a much happier life without the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with being a creator - and in particular, a creator who longs to share her creations with the wider world. If you are doubting whether you want to continue writing, or painting, or making music, those are doubts worth weighing. No one has to be a writer or an artist of any kind. We can walk away at any time (and then walk back at any time).  One friend did so happily, decades ago, saying she was tired of being "daunted, taunted, and haunted" by unpublished manuscripts. She hasn't had a moment of regret. 

So: doubt can be an enemy, but it can also be a friend. 

Which one it is can be up to us.

Two-Thirds of the Way to One Hundred

Seven years ago, on August 21, 2014, my 60th birthday, I wrote a blog post trumpeting the curtain's rise on what I was calling Act III of my life. The timing was partly reflective of my recent retirement from almost a quarter of a century of teaching in the University of Colorado Philosophy Department as a tenured professor. It was also partly reflective of the milestone birthday, though my husband always maintained that our cultural fixation on birthdays ending in zero was purely a fetish owed to Base Ten math. 

That post now seems. . . quaint to me. The woman who wrote it was so sure that Act III of her life was going to bring with it wondrous adventures, now that the main tasks of those middle-years of her life were accomplished. Little did she know that she would return to significant child-rearing responsibilities for her two little granddaughters following her son's bitter divorce, or that she would face the anguish of a family member's entanglement in the cruelty of the American criminal justice system, or that she would bury her husband after his heartbreaking decline from advanced Parkinson's. 

Well, I can't say that Act III was boring! Though even as I write this, it occurs to me that I do find the genre of survival stories to be downright dull, with their predictable parade of disaster after disaster that the hero must confront single-handedly: fire, flood, tornado, volcano, mudslide, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. I did bore myself with the same litany of miseries over and over again. 

Yesterday was another milestone birthday, at least in my reckoning. I'm now 67, or two-thirds of the way to 100. I can't figure out if THIS is where Act III is REALLY beginning, with all the intense drama of the past seven years just the finale of Act II. Or were the last seven years a very compressed Act III, with the curtain now rising on Act IV? Or I am entering some kind of Epilogue, which will include all the subsequent, quietly happy events of the main character's life, deemed less worthy of staging for their absence of conflict and drama? 

Or maybe... and I like this idea... maybe after seven years of a survival story, my least favorite genre (well, second only to horror), it's time to switch metaphors, and indeed to switch genres altogether. My favorite genre of film is what I call "Middle-Aged Women Following Their Dreams and Finding Themselves, Preferably in a Foreign Country." My favorite film ever, which I practically know by heart, is Nora Ephron's Julie and Julia. Julia Child finding her true calling in Paris! I also adore Enchanted April. Downtrodden English ladies escaping from their dreary lives to a villa in Italy!

I recently mentioned to a friend how I envy people who walk away from their lives and start a whole new life somewhere else. "That's my favorite genre of book!" she exclaimed. She obligingly sent me a list of titles, and so far I've read Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach, A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson, The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg, and My (Part-Time) Paris Life by Lisa Anselmo. 

Maybe, at two-thirds of the way to one hundred, I'm going to stop thinking of my life as a three-act play, with all that emoting in front of the footlights. I'm also going to allow myself to hope that my life stops being a survival story. Maybe I'll think of it as an example of my now-favorite genre of fiction (only real life this time!): the story of a woman heading off to Paris... or Croatia... or Latvia... or somewhere she hasn't even thought of yet, having poignant and delicious experiences of a form she can't yet fully anticipate... 

Maybe I'll think of it as the story of a woman delighting in expecting the unexpected.... 

A Final Farewell

My two sons and I set off on a pilgrimage last weekend to my late husband's most sacred spot on this earth: Arapaho Ridge in the Troublesome area of the Routt National Forest, here in Colorado. 

This is where we had family backpacking trips when the boys were growing up. This is the land he fought to protect from motorized recreation that would erode habitat, terrorize wildlife, and desecrate silence. This is the place we chose as the resting place for his ashes.

It was NOT easy to get there. As we drove up I-70 on Friday evening to make our way to the hotel in Kremling where we were to spend the night, heavy rain west of the twin tunnels closed the east-bound lanes of the highway; fortunately, we were heading west. But the driving conditions were definitely treacherous. Then, at an early breakfast the next morning, my truckdriver son, Christopher, checked road conditions and found that our intended route to the forest was closed from mudslides caused by the overnight storm. We would have to make a much longer approach to our destination: thank goodness we learned this before we made an already long drive in what would have turned out to be the wrong direction.

Once we reached the turn-off to access National Forest land, we had at least a half hour of rattling along on a dirt road, and then a daunting climb on the VERY narrow, VERY steep, and VERY rutted road up to Arapaho Ridge. I don't think we could have made it in my little Honda Fit, or for that matter, in any vehicle whatsoever with me at the wheel. But Christopher ably managed the trek in his Ford F-150 truck.

And then we were there.

It was so still and peaceful and beautiful, the weather in the upper 50s, the sunshine bright, memories blurring our eyes with tears.

The sign prohibiting motorbikes, one of his environmentalist legacies, was still where he had placed it well over a decade ago!

We walked into a grove of evergreen trees, searching for the right spot, and we agreed on this one, beneath the sheltering branches of a welcoming tree.

Christopher, Gregory, and I held hands as we said a prayer of gratitude for our life with him, and for our continuing life with each other, and we cried, and it was all exactly as I think he would have wanted it to be. 

My boys, who sometimes balk at family photos, let me take this one, which made me realize how much they are no longer boys, but full-grown men. Looking at it, I'm overwhelmed by how much I love them, and how much Rich loved them, and how much they loved him.

I don't know where I want my ashes to be placed at the end of my days. There is no place I love the way he loved this one. I've never cared much about where what's left of me ends up; I just want to live on in the hearts of those who love me. But taking Rich's remains to his beloved mountains felt so right and so perfect.

My favorite picture from the morning is this one, of Christopher walking into the distance on the trail his father so loved, after we said our heartfelt final farewell. 

Publishing a Book Forty Years Ago vs. Publishing a Book Now

 

As I was doing my massive book giveaway this summer, I realized that I had published my very first book, Luisa's American Dream, in 1981. Now, forty years later, I am publishing my 61st book, Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star, coming out from Holiday House on August 3. 

Forty years ago, books were just. . . published. There it was, my book, out in the world. I don't remember even knowing what the "pub date" was, or indeed even knowing that there was such a thing as a "pub date," though I suppose there had to be a particular date on which the book came to exist as a physical object available for purchase. But that date certainly wasn't on my radar as its author.

There was no such thing as a pre-publication "cover reveal" on Facebook and Twitter, because there was no such thing as the internet. Indeed, there weren't even any personal computers, not to mention laptops and cellphones. I typed that first book on an IBM Selectrix typewriter. There was no such thing - or at least I didn't know of any such thing - as a "book launch." And if there had been, I certainly wouldn't be telling people about it on my blog, because there were no such things as blogs. 

The commonality across the decades is that, both then and now, it's a wondrous - and anxious - thing to publish a book, to pour one's heart into its pages, work through all the stages of publication with the publisher's editorial team, and then to send it off to make its brave way into the wide, wide world. I feel the same joy - and trepidation - now as I did four decades ago. 

Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star is the fourth and final title in a four-book chapter book series set in an after-school program, where every month (and every book) takes place in a different month-long after-school camp: cooking camp, comic book camp, coding camp, and now, sign language camp. 

The research for the books was as fun as the writing itself. I did know something about cooking when I wrote Nixie Ness, Cooking Star, but comic books and coding were completely new territory for me. (I might note that "coding" as an activity for kids didn't exist forty years ago, either!) 

Sign language was most challenging of all: American Sign Language is extraordinarily beautiful as a form of human communication, but not easy to describe in words, especially in words for third-grade-level readers. But Boogie fell in love with it, and I did too. 

Dear readers, you are all invited to my (virtual) book launch for Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star, on Tuesday, August 3, 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time, hosted by one of Denver's treasured indie bookstores, BookBar (where you can browse a wide assortment of books AND have a glass of wine and delicious munchies). Indeed, I wrote part of Boogie's story, pre-pandemic, sitting on one of their comfy couches. 

Here's the link to the event if you want to come. All are welcome! 

Swedish Death Cleaning? Or Swedish LIFE Cleaning?

I've been proceeding with great cheerfulness on my current project of "Swedish death cleaning" -  clearing out one's mountains of accumulated stuff NOW to spare your grieving children/heirs the arduous task of dealing with it later.

I not only donated hundreds of author copies of my own books, I also cleared out heaps of other books from my bookcases, using the rule of thumb that if I was never going to open this book again in this lifetime, I might as well let someone else enjoy it. 

I had a stylish friend come over and review the contents of my closet, helping me sort clothes into piles to be donated, to be altered for better fit, or to be actually worn once again (to give my same three or four favorite items a much-deserved rest). 

I tackled boxes in the attic of stuff that was once my mother's and once my husband's. 

I even found a home for a box of fabric left over from my quilting days (some thirty-five years ago), by offering it on a neighborhood email list. 

When I told my younger son about this new obsession, he didn't seem as relieved as I expected. In his usual quiet, matter-of-fact way, he said, "Mom, everybody has to clean out a house at some point in their lives, and you just do it." Certainly, however much I do now, there will be plenty for him to do later, so I'm grateful that he is already predisposed to face this task with good grace.

But his comment made me realize how much I'm doing this project not for him, but for ME.

I'm now entering the third third of my life. The curtain is about to go up on Act III. For the first time in decades, I have no caregiving responsibilities for anyone but myself. )Cue Diana Ross singing, "It's My Turn.") And I've been making some hard but good decisions about my professional future that are going to lead me in a radically new direction, as yet to be determined. 

Will I move to Paris? Or Latvia? Or somewhere totally unexpected? Will I stay here but fill my days in some entirely new way? The future is a blank slate for me, blanker than it's ever been before. 

It will be easier to write the next chapter of my story, whatever it may be, if I make not only emotional but physical space for it. (Give yourself the treat of watching my friend Elizabeth Dulemba's fabulous TED talk, "Is Your Stuff Stopping You?"). 

I am making room for something wonderful to happen.

So now I'm off to brave the box that has my high school papers in it... 

What Should An Author Do with Hundreds of Old Author Copies?: My Gigantic, Ginormous, Gargantuan Book Giveaway

I published my first book exactly forty years ago, in 1981. 

I'm publishing #61 (Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star) and #62 (The Lost Language) this year.

For each book published I get a contracted number of complimentary author copies, often in both hardcover and paperback (and sometimes in foreign language editions - ooh!). When a book goes out of print (as most of mine eventually do), I may get another batch of free copies as a consolation prize. Over the years, I've given away a lot of these books to friends, provided baskets full of them for silent auctions, and sold them at author appearances. 

But, after publishing 62 books over the course of four decades, I still have a LOT of copies left. 

I counted them up: the total came to 462 books, housed in a repurposed linen closet, and in cartons in my attic, and cartons under my desk. 

I've been thinking quite a bit these days about "Swedish death cleaning," the practice of getting rid of excess stuff so that your grieving children/heirs won't have to do this after you're dead and gone. I don't expect to be dead and gone for another twenty years, or more, but I figured I might as well Swedish-death-clean these books while I'm still spry and agile. 

So I dragged them all out, organized them in piles all over the floor, and pondered their fate.

On Facebook I solicited ideas for what to do with this many children's books, all by the same author. Dozens of people responded. I was hoping for - and received - wonderful suggestions of organizations that have programs already in place to distribute books to children in need of them (see below). I preferred this simpler approach to trying to do-it-myself, contacting schools (in the middle of the summer) or hospitals (toward the end of a pandemic), or wandering around town stuffing my 462 books into Little Free Libraries.  

What I hadn't expected was how many people said, "Send them to me!" "Send them to my classroom!" "Send them to my school!" "We'd love some!" "We want them all!" 

At first I thought I would apologize for not being able to make individual donations. All that packaging, all that labeling, all that lugging of padded mailers and boxes to the post office! I would just pick one or two of the wonderful big organizations and ship them everything.

But . . . I wanted to send a book or two at least to this high school friend's granddaughter, and this college friend's nephew, and this librarian I met at a conference, and this former student, and this neighbor from long ago, and this committed teacher....

So: I now have 22 smaller packages (padded mailers containing a couple of books and cardboard boxes with half a dozen, or eight, or ten books) in my car to take to the post office, plus four large and very heavy cartons. Don't you feel sorry for whoever is behind me in line?! And my floor is STILL covered with books!

I love sending these book children out into the world to everybody who is kind enough to welcome them. 

Let there be books for everyone! 

In case you have your own big heaps of books to share, here are some of the organizations mentioned in response to my social media post:

The Lisa Libraries (this was the one mentioned most)

Reach Out and Read (this is the link to the Colorado chapter; I believe it's a nationwide program)

Appalachian Literacy Initiative 

Books to Kids (donation program from local indie bookstore Second Star to the Right)

BookGive (donation program from local indie bookstore BookBar)

Bess the Book Bus

Let there be books for everyone! 

One Satisfying Strategy for Dealing with a Bad Book Review

Your book is coming out soon! Advanced Reader's Copies have been sent to reviewers! Any day you could get that very first review! 

And then you get it.

And it isn't, shall we say, quite the review you were hoping for.

Maybe it's scathing (I've gotten a few of those). 

Maybe it's lukewarm, damning the book, as Alexander Pope noted, with faint praise (I've gotten plenty of those).

Maybe it's full of praise but not quite enough praise to satisfy an author still yearning for undying fame (the story of my writing life).

What should you do?

My new hobby is to go on the book review website Goodreads and see what readers have to say about the greatest classics in the history of literature. I can't stop doing it.

War and Peace has a rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars. One reader called it "not quite as readable as some other BIG books I have read but still pretty good." Another reader, giving it three stars, called it "okay-ish."

Middlemarch has a rating of 3.98. "At times a slog, but not too bad in the end." "I just COULD NOT get into this book." "Some books are just meant to be read as part of a college class. This was one of those books."

Well, all right, maybe it's understandable that books of the past might command a less enthusiastic reception in the present. But when I look up books by my favorite contemporary authors, like Anne Tyler or Ann Patchett, there still are plenty of detractors.

My favorite novel by Pulitzer-Prize-winning Anne Tyler is Ladder of Years: Goodreads rating of 3.72. "The only book I ever bought on a business trip, then threw in the trash." "I did not relate well to the main character. . . so I dragged through the plot." "I thought maybe this book would be different from Tyler's others. I guess I'm just not into her." 

Ann Patchett's riveting best-seller Bel Canto gets 3.92 of 5. One reader gave it a tie for her prize for Most Disappointing Book of the Year. Another wrote, "I finish every book I start, yet I did not finish this one!"

I could give a thousand more examples - this is indeed my new hobby - but the lesson here is clear. Sara Lee may have used the advertising slogan "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee," but when it comes to books, there is no book on earth that somebody doesn't love.

Including books by me.

Including books by you.

But I think it's also true there is no book that is not loved by at least somebody. One book I read over and over again in childhood, The Magic Ring by Neta Lohnes Frazier, published in 1959, is all but forgotten now, with only four ratings (average 3.25) and three reviews (all positive enough) on Goodreads. But the child I once was loved it so!

Somewhere out there is a child who loves a book of yours this way. 

And a child who loves a book of mine this way, too. 

 

How Much Should Authors Beg for Reviews?

In his delightful autobiography, Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope reports his pledge that he would "have no dealings with any critic on my own behalf, I would neither ask for nor deplore criticism, nor would I ever thank a critic for praise, or quarrel with him, even in my own heart, for censure." In his view, solicited praise of any kind "must be an injustice to the public, for whose instruction .  . . such notices are intended." Even a "mild suggestion" that one would welcome a review can too easily descend into "crawling at the critic's feet" - compromising the integrity of the review process itself. 

What would Anthony Trollope, who died in 1882, have to say about the dogged efforts today's authors make to secure attention from prominent bloggers or rack up an impressive total of glowing reviews on internet sites like Amazon and Goodreads? 

This is the question I'm pondering as I decide how best to promote my new book child, The Lost Language, which I love with the doting affection older parents lavish on their late-life children.

Cozying up to prominent children's literature bloggers does seem very similar to cozying up to reviewers at the key journals for children's books, a tainting of reviewing integrity of the kind Trollope decries. But reader reviews are just . . . reader reviews. Some authors (not me!) receive thousands of them. And most authors nowadays make some effort to coax friends to post a few reviews early on to start a trend of adulation, in the same way that playwrights and directors might plant a few audibly appreciative chums in the audience on opening night. 

All I want is for everyone in the world to read my book and love it! And I want everyone in the world to shout its praises from the cyber-rooftops! I want to remind everyone I know that the single nicest thing one can do for an author - even more so than buying their latest book - is to go online and post how wonderful the book is. The review doesn't have to be long or elaborate, it just has to be gushing. Oh, please gush about my book! And please accompany that gushing with a rating of it as five stars on Amazon and Goodreads! 

Does this count as "crawling at the critic's feet"? Well, I guess it kind of sort of does. Maybe it's more like begging than crawling, the way my little dog just STARES at me until I go and get him his doggie treat. I'm staring at you, universe! I'm staring at you with huge pleading eyes and panting tongue hanging out! 

I've been doing a lot of gushing myself during the past year for friends' recent books. I've set myself the goal of spending a few minutes to dash off a review on Amazon and Goodreads as soon as I finish reading a friend's book. For a while I was posting a review every single week. Does this compromise the integrity of the review process in the way Trollope feared? Well, I can say truthfully that I do this only for books I really truly love. I don't lie in my reviews. But part of my love for a book undeniably has to do with my love for its author. I'm also someone who just finds it easy to love things. Still, if I say I loved it, then I really truly did. And I've been making a special effort to declare that love publicly. 

So, friends, if you love a book, really, truly love it, consider taking the time to review it online. The author will leap up with an ecstatically wagging tail and slobber all over you the next time she sees you.

I think - at least for now - this is the extent of my begging and crawling for reviews!

Waiting (and Waiting and Waiting) for Reviews

Much of a writer's life involves waiting. Much of ALL human life, I suppose, involves waiting. As Dr. Seuss wrote in Oh, The Places You'll Go, we can spend countless hours of our precious time here on this earth in this way:

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,/ or a plane to go or the mail to come,/ or the rain to go or the phone to ring,/ or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No/or waiting for their hair to grow./Everyone is just waiting. 

After first waiting to hear if my agent liked my new book, The Lost Language, and then waiting to hear if my editor liked it, and then waiting to hear her responses to round after round of revisions made for her suggestions, the book is well along in production. I have a final cover, which I adore and am sharing every chance I get (see below!). And I have electronic ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies), which are now being sent out for early reviews, for which I am NOW beginning to wait. 

Let me tell you: It is terrifying to wait for those first reviews. 

I doubt it's possible for me to have any reviews for at least another month, and maybe two. But then they will come, if I'm lucky (with so many thousands of books published each year, many don't achieve the honor of any reviews at all). The chief review organs for children's book are Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, and Horn Book. What these reviewers have to say about my book will make a huge difference to its success - or lack thereof. The BEST kind of review is a starred review (where here, it's not that the book gets x number of stars on some scale, but that the review itself has one big, beautiful star next to it.) 

I've had starred reviews on various books throughout the course of my career, but not very many. But I've never before written a book as good as this one. Some of my author friends get HEAPS of starred reviews: three, four, or even five for one single book. Sometimes, in a mildly irritating way, they will write Facebook posts that begin: "Pinch me! My book has just gotten its FIFTH starred review!" 

What if that irritating person this time is . . . ME? 

I remember hearing stories about Broadway actors huddling at Sardi's in the early morning hours after opening night, waiting for those newspaper reviews that would hit the streets at dawn: the reviews that would determine whether their show closed immediately or ran through hundreds of performances. At least those theater reviews came right away, and the anxious actors were together as they waited, presumably drinking some cheering or consoling adult beverages. I don't know when my reviews will come. Not yet. But soon? Or soonish?

Now, everyone knows that the wisest course of action for any writer while waiting to hear from agents, editors, or reviewers is simply to get busy writing the next book. Forget the first book! Pretend it never existed! Pour your whole heart into the new work-in-progress!

This is not easy to do. 

Dr. Seuss reassures us:

Somehow you'll escape/ all that waiting and staying./ You'll find the bright places/ where Boom Bands are playing.

But note that he doesn't give any guidance for HOW you will do this.

My own plan - well, not MY plan, exactly, but the universe's plan for me - is to stuff my summer so full of a whirlwind of fully vaccinated gaiety that I will have little time to sit hunched over my email waiting for reviews to trickle in. My two little granddaughters are coming for a week each month. My younger son and his girlfriend are coming from Chicago for three whole weeks. Multiple friends are coming through Boulder on cross-country road/train trips. I'm going on a girlfriend getaway of my own to Santa Fe next week and to a mini-reunion with five friends from my freshman-year college dorm to Newport, Rhode Island, in August. 

My whole life will be a bright place where Boom Bands are playing!

Or at least that's the plan. 

As I wait, and wait, and wait for those first crucial reviews....

 

The Danger (and Delight?) of Getting Your Hopes Up

This week I did a cover reveal for my forthcoming verse novel for middle-grade readers, The Lost Language, about two sixth-grade best friends who are trying to save an endangered language and in the process to save their own endangered friendship. The cover, by Kathrin Honesta, is absolutely gorgeous and received a torrent of Facebook love. 

I think this is the best book I've ever written. So does my writing group.  So does my agent. So does my editor. So do all the friends who have read it in manuscript form. And now I have this terrific cover, too. Things are looking good for this book! 

But you know what this means, don't you?

It means I am STARTING TO GET MY HOPES UP.

And hopes can be dangerous. Hopes can be DASHED. Actually, to be more precise, hopes can be CRUELLY DASHED. Hopes can be DOOMED TO DISAPPOINTMENT.

I've had hopes for books before, dreams that this time I'd have my "breakout book," the one that would move me from "midlist" to wider recognition from the world. This has never happened for the previous 61 books. Why would it happen now? After all, as they say, "the best predictor of the future is the past." 

On the other hand, they also say, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten," and this book is NOT what I've always done. It's my first novel in verse, which allowed me to find my best and truest voice. And it has an intriguing, never-done-before-by-anyone-else premise: the crusade by two kids to save an endangered language (spoiler alert: also a hope that will be cruelly dashed and doomed to disappointment).

I gave a guest sermon once at church that was all about hope and its dangers. Buddhist writer Pema Chodron has written that we need "to begin to get the knack of hopelessness." The Christian's "addiction to hope," according to Chodron, is only a guarantee of continued suffering. Chodron recommends getting decorative magnets that say "Abandon Hope" and sticking them onto our refrigerator doors. In support of her view, there is empirical social science research that hope actually makes people feel worse: happiness levels increase when unemployed people finally decide to give up the job search and call themselves "retired," even when sick people receive a terminal diagnosis and can abandon a futile and heartbreaking chase after a cure. 

But there is also social science research on the beneficial effects of hope, or at least of optimism, its close cousin. Psychologist Martin Seligman's study on optimism versus pessimism in one large insurance company showed that optimists achieved much greater career success, outselling pessimists by anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. It turns out that the old song is correct: The ant with high apple-pie-in-the-sky-hopes is much more likely to topple the rubber tree plant than the ant who doesn't even try because he already knows he's going to fail. 

As for me, I love that pleasurable feeling that the universe might - just might! - be sending something wonderful my way. It's lovely to put myself to sleep at night imagining in delicious detail what it would feel like collect a slew of starred reviews for this book or to get that early morning, late January phone call that my book has won the Newbery Medal. I can savor months of happy daydreams before cold, hard reality bonks me on the head. And the bonk will be a bonk whether I let myself luxuriate in hope now or not. 

In my favorite philosophy article ever, "The Will to Believe," by Williams James, he writes in defense of letting ourselves err on the side of hope rather than fear. He focuses on hope for the existence of God, but his arguments apply to other kinds of hope as well. Yes, if we hope, we risk disappointment, and this fear may cause us to guard our hearts against allowing ourselves to hope. The refusal to hope protects us from the fear of disappointment, but the fear of disappointment, James points out, equally denies us the pleasures of hope. We do not want to be duped, but James writes, “Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?”

So I'm going to let myself hope that The Lost Language will be an enduring classic of children's literature, beloved of readers for generations to come! It may well be a dud instead. Given the number of books published each year versus the number of books that achieve immortality, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of dud-dom. But how lovely it is to tarry for a while in the landscape of hope. 

I'm hoping hard right now for my sweet little book. 

A Month of Moping

I've just finished a month of moping. 

Actually, it's more accurate to say that I've just finished several months of moping, but for this past month I gave myself explicit, formal permission to mope. (Also to weep and wail, with occasional bouts of blubbering.) 

Reeling from my husband's death in January, and a devastating book rejection in February, and a mass shooting in my neighborhood in March,  I decided not to even try to accomplish anything in April, except for whatever was required by teaching/mentoring jobs to which I was already committed. But nothing more than that. 

No new writing projects. 

No promotional efforts for the two books coming out later this year.

No goals. 

No dreams. 

I described my plan for the month, with some excitement, as "pitiful but not unpleasant." I convinced myself that my time would best be spent simply by passing time: merely by getting through each day, preferably while lying on the couch doing Sudoku puzzles on my i-Pad. I just needed to cross off the days till these current work commitments (all of which I love, by the way) would come to an end. Then surely, once I had emptied my life of everything else, I'd have the space, time, and energy to figure out how to revive my stalled career as a writer (this, though I'd published several dozen books over several decades while working full time at a demanding career AND raising a family). 

After all, as COVID and winter dragged on and on, wasn't the whole country listless and lethargic? The New York Times even had an article about it: "There's a Name for the Blah You're Feeling: It's Called Languishing." Okay, I might as well surrender to the current malaise and languish right along with everybody else. And so I did. 

But I'm here to report that a full month of languishing is less satisfying than one might think. By yesterday I was bored with being bored. I was tired of telling everybody how tired I was. I was sick of being sick of everything. 

So yesterday I did three farewell Sudoku puzzles, gave my i-Pad a gentle kiss, and placed it in an inconvenient location in the garage. I took myself to the Denver Botanic Gardens this morning, with a tote-bag full of stacks of paper containing possible book ideas I'd scribbled down in the past, and realized that my problem was NOT, as I had thought, that I had NO book ideas, but that I have so many I just need to close my eyes and let my finger fall upon one. Maybe it will be a bad idea, but a bad idea can turn into a good idea if I just start working on it. It will not turn into a good idea if it lies dormant in a tote-bag. 

Tomorrow is May 1. I will start a new life! A new, non-languishing life! Or at least I'll try. 

April was my month of refusing even to try.

May is going to be my month of trying.

Horror and Heartbreak in My World This Week

One friend had just been been putting on her shoes to head out the door, grocery list in hand. 

Another friend had pulled into the parking lot but hadn't yet left her car.

A third friend was in the store when she heard pop-pop-pop sounds and took off running. She found a tall stack of crates by a back door to hide behind and managed to cover her crouched-down self with a pile of King Soopers aprons. Only later was she escorted out of danger by the SWAT team.

And then there was the friend whose husband went to the store to pick up a few things and never came home. Victim photos show Kevin Mahoney, age 61, walking his daughter down the aisle last year for her beautiful wedding; she is pregnant now with a grandchild he will never hold. When I heard his name read out two days later, as one of the ten slain, I committed the crime in my heart of hoping it was somehow some other person with that same name, as if that other person's life was mine to wish away instead. 

And then there was 51-year-old Teri Leiker. I didn't recognize her by her name, but did by her photo. We all did. She had worked at King Soopers as a bagger for thirty years, serving faithfully on the front lines during a global pandemic, mowed down as she served customers for the last time. Everyone is sharing memories of how Teri always remembered, with a smile, that they wanted paper not plastic, or wanted their bags packed not too heavy. 

I was out walking my dog half a mile away when I got a friend's text about an active shooter at our neighborhood store. Maybe the sirens had already been wailing and I hadn't noticed, lost in my own thoughts. But I heard them then, and saw the helicopters circling overhead, and got another text, this time from my son telling me to go home NOW and stay there. It wasn't much later that my phone began exploding with frantic texts from loved ones across the country: "Are you okay? Please let me know that you're okay."

I was "okay" in the sense they meant, but in another sense none of us here in this neighborhood is okay. Gun violence can't touch the lives of anyone and leave them "okay." 

This store was a community hub. It was almost unheard of to go there without bumping into friends or neighbors and having a chat in the produce section or checkout line. My older son had his first job in the Starbucks there. My two little granddaughters used to love riding in one of the store's shopping carts that had a little plastic car affixed on the front of it: extremely unwieldy to maneuver in crowded aisles, but the joy of the preschool crowd. Rides (price: a penny) on the little horses by the checkout were another huge treat. At least two King Soopers checkers invariably ask after the girls when they aren't with me: "When are you getting your girls? Will they be here for Easter?" 

This store is now surrounded by yellow tape as the crime scene where ten people were murdered this past Monday. 

I created this blog in part to process my experiences and offer myself little life lessons that I can share with the rest of you. This time I have none. Yes, tragedies like this show that life is fragile and precious. Yes, make sure you tell friends and family RIGHT NOW how much you love them. Yes, America has too many guns and too little political will to make sure tragedies like this stop happening. If we didn't do anything after 26 people, including 20 children ages six and seven, were killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary, why would we do anything when another ten more people are killed at a grocery store? Yes, these tragedies feel vastly more real when they happen to you, but now you know that all tragedies happen to some real, actual human beings. Yes, start savoring every moment you spend shopping in your own neighborhood store with groceries packed up by your own cheery bagger. 

I have nothing to add to this list. It's actually a pretty good list, I guess, or as good as any such list can be.

 

Oh, and yes, love is powerful, and beautiful, and a world with love in it is a better world for that reason. Here, two final photos of the outpouring of love for the victims of the King Soopers massacre in 

Boulder, Colorado, on Monday, March 22, 2021, and for their families, their community, and our broken world.

What to Do While You Are Waiting to Hear from the Universe

You are waiting to hear back from the universe about something that matters to you a great deal. 

You might hear this month. Or next month. Or the month after that.

The longer it takes for you to hear, the less likely it is that you will hear what you hope to hear. 

You are fairly good at estimating probabilities about this sort of thing, and your best guess is that you only have a 5 percent chance of getting good news, anyway. 

Good news would bring a small jolt of much-needed joy to your life and reassurance that your career is not over. 

Bad news would spell the end of your career, or at least you think it would, but you have a feeling you may be exaggerating a wee bit in thinking this.

So the question is what you should do while you are waiting to hear.

This is STRATEGY NUMBER ONE: 

1. Check your email every few minutes. If you are sitting by your computer, which for some reason gives a little ding if an email arrives, listen for the ding. If you are out and about, just keep checking your phone. Occasionally make yourself wait a full ten minutes before checking. Surely if you do this, the universe will reward you with good news, right? 

2. In between dings, lie on the couch and do Sudoku puzzles on your I-pad, even though this always makes you feel terrible about yourself. 

3. In between Sudoku puzzles, eat squares of raw cookie dough. Right now you have available Annie's Organic Oatmeal Raisin and the ever-reliable Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip.

4. Also work your way through a bag of Reese's peanut butter Easter eggs.

5. Repeat daily.

This is STRATEGY NUMBER TWO:

1. Do anything OTHER than 1-5 above. Take a walk. Read one of the half dozen enticing library books you have in a pile by your couch, including the extremely engrossing new 900-page biography of Sylvia Plath. Do the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of Amsterdam that you bought as a treat for yourself. Work on the delightful online course you are teaching. Read a friend's manuscript and give her insightful comments. Revise that darned article (see previous post)! Write a poem. Write ideas for a possible new book. Write anything at all. Call a friend. Call two friends. Call three friends. 

As you may have guessed, I've been following STRATEGY NUMBER ONE, and I have to confess it isn't working as well as I had hoped. I'm thinking tomorrow I might at least try STRATEGY NUMBER TWO.

What do you think?

Just Suck It Up and Revise the Darned Thing!

My new year's goal for 2021 was "Bliss, Not Dread." Spelled out a bit more fully: Do more of what I love, less of what I hate. Well, I retreated from the "bliss" ambition in the face of some personal heartbreak, but I was still holding on to the "dread" part of the equation. Why should I, in my depleted and diminished state, seek out any projects that would make me even more miserable? 

In my trusty little notebook, I made two lists, one of THINGS I LOVE and one of THINGS I HATE, so I wouldn't get confused. Included under THINGS I HATE were: 

1. anything that makes me feel bad about myself

2. pretending to be an expert

3. trying to please reviewer #2!

For those of you who are not academics, let me explain about "reviewer #2." Articles submitted to academic journals are sent out for double-blind peer review. Two experts in your field read your paper and write up their comments and recommendations for or against publication. You don't know who they are, and they don't know who you are (except that sometimes your field is small enough that it's easy to guess, on both sides). A very common verdict is "revise-and-resubmit": heed the reviewer comments, revise accordingly, and send it back to the same journal (usually with the same reviewers) to see if they are happier this time. Almost invariably one reviewer is fairly enthusiastic and wants only minor changes. And the other reviewer . . . is not. That reviewer has come to be known as "reviewer #2." 

Well, last summer I received comments on a children's literature article, and sure enough, reviewer #1 was fairly positive and reviewer #2 was downright scathing, though still recommended that I revise "substantially" and resubmit. Here is a sample of "scathing": "One of the key issues the author should consider addressing in revision is the essay's overall lack of purpose and coherence"!!!! That was one of FIVE similarly damning comments. And even reviewer #1's comments were annoying, pointing out grievances about how I used semi-colons and parentheses. 

I am retired. I have no need of any further items on my c.v. And in fact, the universe as a whole is remarkably indifferent to whether there are any further articles published by me about anything. I do NOT need to engage in the enormously dispiriting work of trying to deal with problems regarding purpose, coherence, and semi-colons!

And yet . . . I just discovered that my little granddaughters aren't coming to us this month because of their recent COVID exposure. I had cleared an entire week to take care of them, a week that is now given to me as a gift. I haven't been able to face any creative projects right now. How should I use that week? Hmmm... well, maybe I could at least try to revise that article... maybe I should at least TRY.

So here are my stern-but-encouraging thoughts to myself as I gird up my loins for revision.

1. I have published MANY academic articles in my life, both in philosophy and children's literature, at least several dozen. With only two exceptions (one outright acceptance and one outright rejection), I have ALWAYS received a revise-and-resubmit verdict. The comments have ALWAYS been scathing. But I have ALWAYS managed to do enough to address them that the paper ended up getting published.

2. It was work for the editor of the journal to recruit these reviewers. It was work for them to read my (purposeless, incoherent) article (with its flawed use of semicolons); reviewer #1 (the nice reviewer) took the added time to send very helpful line-by-line comments, particularly on the introductory section. It feels moderately wrong to blow off their efforts and just walk away.

3. I myself spent several months on the article and poured a lot of love into it. Doesn't this article deserve another two weeks of effort to find it a home? Also, in the past, despite much wailing and gnashing of the teeth, I've always thought the reviewer-prompted revisions strengthened the paper enormously. 

4. I am spending most of my days moping and brooding. Isn't it better to do something useful? And whenever I send something off into the universe I have a lovely little tingle of anticipation that something nice MIGHT happen.

I am going to do this thing! I am going to please reviewer #1 and make at least a stab at pleasing reviewer #2. I am going to suck it up and revise the darned thing!

Wish me luck!

From Bliss to Blah

My new year's goal was supposed to be such a simple one: BLISS, NOT DREAD. That wasn't too much to ask, was it? Just a daily dose of bliss, preferably from writing something brilliant and beautiful?

But then my husband died... and I got a devastating book rejection that made me think maybe my career as a writer is over, and maybe I'm okay with that, except not really okay... and COVID lingered and lingered, and winter lingered and lingered. 

I did find joy in launching my online graduate Ethics and Children's Literature course at Hollins University, where teaching is the closest thing the academy offers to a total love fest. I enjoyed working with three aspiring authors through the mentorship program sponsored by our local chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. And I adored taking part in poet Molly Fisk's Poem-a-Day Facebook group, where I did succeed in writing a poem from one of her tantalizing prompts every single day for the whole month. So hooray for that.

Still, my life has more "blah" than "bliss" in it right now, and I'm not in the mood to make heroic efforts to do something about this. I'm too tired. I'm too sad. I know I'd perk up considerably if my agent sold the rejected book somewhere else, but that's something outside my control, so I'm trying not to check my email more than every five minutes to see if there is good news on that front. I'd also perk up considerably if I bought myself a ticket to Paris for a post-COVID jaunt (and I do get my first dose of the vaccine tomorrow). But it feels like tempting fate to expect the world to open up to accommodate my travel plans.

So I'm just going to - well, not embrace blah, but accept it for now. There are worse things than blah. I know that as well as anyone.

Here, as my farewell to February, three poems from this month's harvest, one silly and two sad. Maybe a month in which I wrote twenty-eight poems in the company of wonderful fellow poets wasn't such a blah month after all.

The Tunnel’s Lament

Few slow down

to linger by me,

feelin’ groovy.

When times are rough,

I am not their chosen refuge

from troubled waters.

Hart Crane ignored me,

effusive though he was

on certain other subjects

I prefer not to mention.

Those traveling to Terabithia

look elsewhere

for their means of passage.

I can go to nowhere, too,

you know.

I can occasion sighs.

I’ve been crawled through,

collapsed in to.

When will I be loved? 

Self-Pity

 I think of her in the third person,
my younger self. There she is,
 
in girls’ chorus, singing her heart out
for a boy who will never love her back.
 
“More than the greatest love the world has known….”
“Love, look away….”  “Softly, as I leave you.”
 
And I think, she doesn’t know, she has no idea,
that she’ll someday marry someone else,
 
and the marriage will be so hard, so hard,
but she’ll stick it out somehow to the end,
 
to the part where he dies alone
in a nursing home in the midst of a pandemic,
 
and she’ll try to make peace with her grief
by listening over and over again
 
to a You Tube video of Eydie Gorme
singing “Softly, As I Leave You.”
 
And I feel so sorry for that girl,
my heart breaking with pity for her,
 
and maybe a little bit
of pity for me, too.

On This Last Day of February, Almost Two Months Since Your Passing

 

Despite everything, I got out of bed this morning.

Instead of merely making the bed, I yanked

off the covers for laundering, and they are

tumbling in the dryer now. I walked the dog

for half an hour, putting on his sweater

as I do in freezing weather, for warmth

as well as for added adorableness.

After tidying the kitchen, I scrambled myself

two eggs with cheese and sauteed onions

and peppers and let the dog gobble up

what I left behind on my plate. Soon

I’ll take that plate and fork downstairs

for washing, too. Today is another hard

day. But maybe tomorrow will be better,

this new month with its vernal equinox,

the coming of spring, crocuses budding

beneath the snow, sap rising in the trees,

new life stirring somewhere, etcetera, etcetera,

and if not this month, maybe the next one,

or maybe the month after that.

Cured by Poetry?

 The philosopher John Stuart Mill, the most brilliant of all the utilitarians, wrote in his autobiography about what he called "A Crisis in My Mental History." Raised to be a crusading reformer, dedicated to the goal of increasing happiness in all its forms, he reached a point where this goal lost its meaning for him. In a state of deep depression, he wrote,

it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, “No!” At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

The only cure he found for this sense of bleak hopelessness was in  . . . poetry. In particular, immersing himself in the poetry of Wordsworth. Wordsworth's poems were 

a medicine for my state of mind. . .they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of.. . . From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.

Mill was cured by poetry.

I've been in my own bleak midwinter for the past month, not only grieving the recent loss of my husband but also reeling from a devastating, and unexpected, rejection of a book for which I had cherished the highest hopes. Writing has always been my source of bliss. Writing was supposed to be how I would recover from the grief of this family loss. If writing was taken away, to quote Mill, I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

Well, nothing except for poetry.

I rejoined an online poetry group of a dozen or so poets facilitated by the wondrous poet and teacher Molly Fisk. On each morning of the month that the group meets, Molly posts a prompt for us: a striking photo paired with her own evocative caption. Then, if so moved, we write poems in response to this prompt and share them in a private Facebook group. Reactions from the others are welcome, with one crucial caveat: no criticism! not even any helpful "suggestions" for improvement! Just "likes" or "loves" or the occasion "ha-ha" or "WOW!" or a comment lifting up an especially pleasing line or image. 

Now I DO have something to live for, or at least a reason to get out of bed in the morning. What will Molly's prompt be for today??!! I love pondering the prompt  - playing with it - poking around for an idea for what poem I might offer in response. It's fascinating to see what my fellow poets do with that same stimulus, and dazzling to see what some of them produce. 

I have to admit I can get a teensy bit sad that my pitiful little poem isn't as good as some of the others. I'm puzzled - but also intrigued - that some of my poems get more "loves" and comments than others of mine - why? But mainly I try to give up all thought of critique and evaluation and just luxuriate in the joy of creativity and generativity.

It's February 8th today. I have written seven poems so far this month! And I plan to write another one today! Today's prompt is a photo of a wrecked, partially submerged ship that has lush greenery growing up from it (credit: Conor Moore, Australian shipwreck).

 Molly captioned it, "Sometimes shipwrecks turn into islands."

Ooh!

And sometimes despair can turn into a harvest of seven (soon to be eight!) new, not-very-good-but-also-in-some-ways-very-wonderful poems.

What will my poem be today?

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Molly hosts these Poem-a-Month gatherings several times a year, and you can join for a nominal fee. She is hosting the next one in April.