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...

Reunited (with Writing) and It Feels So Good!

Now that we are settled in the cottage (the cottage! the cottage! the cottage I love so much!), it was time to face The Rest of My Life. Which means: if I have this beautiful writing nook, I needed to start actually writing in it. 

So, four days ago, on July 29, I actually did.

I slipped out of bed at 4:30 a.m. and crept up the stairs to the nook. I made myself a pot of tea in my Wedgewood teapot. I curled up on the couch under a blanket. I turned over my beloved hourglass and picked up my clipboard, pad, and pen. And I started to write.

I didn't know what to write, so I just started talking to myself on the page:

WRITING NOOK - DAY ONE! RETURN TO WRITING!

ONLY GOAL: TO WRITE - to play - to explore - to reenter this world and reinhabit this identity

I don't know WHAT I will write, only THAT I will write.

I am always thinking about reinventing myself as a writer, so I wrote a list of possibilities. Try writing - gasp - a book for grownups? Personal essays? Make a serious commitment to poetry? 

But every time I consider reinventing myself as a writer, I always come back to my first and best love: children's books. And now I was drawn to writing a book for young readers set . . . in a cottage! On a street like my new street! I made this goal for myself: to create a fictional world readers will want to live in and never leave, a world filled with whimsy and wonder, like the world I am living in now.

I started making notes... asking myself questions... walking each day on Bluff Street with a writer's eyes alert for story possibilities. I decided right away that this book is going to be, defiantly and unapologetically, just what I want to write, a book with an old-fashioned sensibility (think Maud Hart Lovelace, Eleanor Estes, Elizabeth Enright), a quiet book without a page-turning plot, a book radiating kindness and generosity toward its characters and its readers. 

ALL I want right now is just to LOVE writing this book with all my heart. Then whatever happens is up to the universe. The ONLY point right now is LOVE. 

As of this morning, day four of my return to writing, I have 13 pages in my tiny handwriting of scribbled notes. 

Each one a labor of LOVE. 

If You Have the Perfect Writing Nook, Don't You Just HAVE to Write?

The best thing about my new cottage - the very best thing about my very sweet new cottage - is the little room tucked under the eaves on the upper level, which David has designated as my writing nook.

You approach it up a narrow circular staircase.

And then there it is: a small, snug, cozy room with a loveseat (and I love to write while sitting sideways on a loveseat), and a chair for David if he comes to visit me, and a little table tucked under a window, and a bookcase made decades ago by my father filled with the books I love best with my beloved hourglass perched in the place of honor on top. 

There is even a little sink where I can get water to heat up for tea in my Wedgewood teapot. David just ordered for me the New York Times recommended best water-heating device, and it arrived yesterday.

The nook opens out onto a rooftop deck.

From the deck you can get a view of Boulder's iconic mountains, the Flatirons (the ones that are featured on all the postcards). Here they are!

I have had many pleasant writing spaces in my long life as a writer, but never one as irresistible as this, and one given to me, all to me, by someone who loves me and is rooting with all his might for me to thrive and flourish as a writer.

The only problem is that I haven't been writing this year, recovering from my sequential double fractures (first left elbow, then right arm) and feeling generally discouraged about myself as a writer, given the many changes in the world of publishing in recent years, many of which seem to be leaving me behind (which is fine, it really is, or sort of is, or just has to be). 

But with a writing nook like this, how can I NOT write? 

I just HAVE to write in a nook like this. 

Don't I?

Welcome to My New Fairyland

We moved! My sweetheart and I said our farewells to Rainbow's End, the mountain paradise where we lived so happily for the past two years. It was time to live somewhere in town, closer to public transportation and with fewer (than 34!) steps to shovel in the winter. So we found ourselves a hundred-year-old cottage on quiet Bluff Street in the Whittier neighborhood of Boulder, which has oodles of whimsy and bursts of joy on every block.

First, the cottage itself! Isn't it sweet?

Here are photos from this morning's short walk of exploration. 

A hollow tree welcomes strangers. 

A community fairy garden invites all to linger and play.

Generosity abounds!

A pocket park is hidden up a secret path of steep steps.

And just around the corner:

As I ponder the second half of 2024 and what it will bring, and where my future journey as a writer will take me, it's hard not to think this creative, generative energy is bound to rub off on me. Maybe my next book will feature fairies, elves, and gnomes . . . and ripe cherries for the picking . . . and free seeds for the planting ... and a secret park . . .   

Who knows?!

The First Day of the Second Half of 2024

I haven't written a blog post since early March. 

I haven't written much of anything since early March.

My life has been pretty much on hold since I had a SECOND fall (this time on black ice) and a SECOND fracture (this time a "proximal fracture of the right humerus" - terminology I had never heard of until this unfortunate event) on March 21, almost three months to the day after tripping over an exuberant grandchild and breaking my left elbow. Luckily, I could just switch the cast on my Vermont Teddy Bear from one arm to another.

For what seemed like forever, I couldn't write with a pen (my favorite activity on this earth) or type (my second favorite activity on this earth) or dress myself or use a can opener or scoop out hard-frozen ice cream or drive or . . . or . . . or . . . anything at all, really.

Long famed for cheery resilience in the face of trauma and tragedy, I have to confess I just gave up. I moped. I whimpered, whined, and wailed. I sulked, sniffled, and sobbed. 

I still loved my sweetheart, and he still loved me, but he now had excruciating and incapacitating sciatica pain. At least we had complementary disabilities and could offer compensatory services, he with two functional arms, me with ease in bending and stooping. But it wasn't exactly a season of great joy. Nor did having to shovel the 34 steps into our house after a series of spring snowstorms (one dumped twenty inches of heavy, wet, white stuff) appreciably increase our daily quotient of rapture. 

I published a book but wished it had gotten more effusive reviews. I abandoned the plans I had made (which I probably wouldn't have carried out anyway) to figure out how to promote it on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Why bother? What bother about anything?

Bowing to age and infirmity, my sweetheart and I decided it was time to leave our little lovers' paradise in the mountains for the ease of living in town, and we managed to find a sweet hundred-year-old cottage to which we will be moving next week. It's the right thing to do, but oh, it's hard to leave this place we have loved so much. Will we ever be that happy anywhere else? Will we ever be that happy ever again?

The first half of 2024 has been HARD!!!

But today is the first day of the month. For decades I had the practice of starting a new life on the first day of each month. And it's also the first day of the second half of this challenging year. So it's time to start an EXTRA-new new life, right? A complete restart? A chance to salvage 2024? A chance to salvage everything?

Wish me luck!

The Worst Thing about Being a Writer

The best thing about being a writer is, for me, extremely obvious. It's the sheer joy of writing, of course! 

The worst thing about being a writer? 

Waiting.

And by waiting, I mean, waiting for the world to render its verdict on what I have written. Waiting on the reaction of my writing group, my agent, my editor, the editorial board at my publisher, and (if the book is fortunate enough to be published) for trade reviews, reader reviews, and any kind of nice little fuss that might be made over it. 

I have spent most of 2024 so far waiting re two different projects: first, waiting to see if Book I Just Finished would be accepted for publication, and second, waiting for reviews on Book That Is Coming Out in June. Waiting as the minutes, hours, and days slipped by. 

Now, I do have to acknowledge that I am extremely lucky to be in this position, to have two different book projects that have cleared early hurdles and that I love with all my heart. 

But it doesn't feel all that lucky when I'm waiting. It actually feels more like agony. And it feels hard to do anything else BUT wait, which is the very worst thing an author person can do. 

Everyone says - and it's true - that instead of twiddling your thumbs and checking email on your phone every few minutes and consoling yourselves with nibbling all day long on Easter candy (Cadbury eggs! Russell Stover chocolate-covered strawberry-cream eggs! Jellybeans, the original Brach's ones of my childhood!), you should get busy WRITING THE NEXT BOOK.

But, gosh, that is hard. Because it's a lot more fun writing a book if there is at least SOME chance of its being read by somebody someday. And its chances of being read are greatly influenced by the outcome of the very things you are waiting on. In my long career, I've had one publisher reject a book of mine because of the disappointingness of my past sales - something that would doom the next book, too. And publishers are less likely to want your next book if the current book turns out to be a DUD. And I've had my share of duds.

Waiting for the editorial verdict on Book I Just Finished was complicated by the fact that my agent is currently spending a month in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. As any news from the publisher would go first to him, I looked up the time difference between Boulder, Colorado, and Ho Chi Minh City: 14 hours, so I could time my obsessive email checking accordingly. Plus, it's a very unusual book for the children's book market: a book about an emotionally intense sixth-grade girl who falls in love with - wait for it - ancient Greek philosophy (!) and uses it to navigate various crises at home and at school. The wisdom of dead white men is not a super-hot topic in the publishing world right now.

As the weeks went by, my hopes for the book dimmed even more. When my editor loves a book of mine, she responds right away - last time, it was within FOUR HOURS of her receiving it! When she doesn't love a book, she takes her time to write a long letter laying out the faults of the book in excruciating detail. And "right away" had come and gone. And with it, any hope for the book. 

Oh, well.

But then, last Thursday, Leap Year's Day, as I was driving along, I glanced at my phone at a stoplight, and there was an email from my agent with "Offer" in the subject line. (If it's bad news, or no news at all, he uses the subject line "Update"). Unbelievably, astonishingly, miraculously, they are going to publish my book. 

I was too stunned even to be happy. But my sweetheart, David, was happy enough for both of us (after having been forced to listen to all my weeping and wailing as I waited). Here are the flowers he gave me to celebrate, with the manuscript next to them and some works of ancient Greek philosophy that star in the book.

So now, I'm back to waiting for reviews on Book That Is Coming Out in June. More on that to come...

Just Write the Darned Thing!

Sometime last year a professor friend invited me to contribute a chapter to an edited collection he was putting together on a certain Scholarly Topic. I love to accept invitations like this! I still want to remain professionally active, but I'm sick unto death of submitting articles to journals for the brutality of double-blind anonymous peer review. It's so much more fun to write an article for someone who actually WANTS something actually written by ME. 

I didn't have much of an idea for what I might write, but the deadline to send in an abstract was looming, so I did some pondering and came up with an idea for the Thing I Would Write. I sent it off to my professor friend, and he liked the idea for this Thing. He got a contract for the book, as yet unwritten, with a table of contents that included me as a contributor and my Thing as one of the chapters.

But then, when I started seriously reading up on the Thing, I saw that the main thing I had wanted to say about the Thing had already been said, thirty years ago, by a Brilliant Prominent Scholar - and said vastly better than I was going to say it.

Needless to say, this took a considerable amount of wind out of my sails. But it was too late to back out of the Thing. I somehow had to write the Thing anyway. 

Still, I moped and whimpered and kept wishing I hadn't said yes to writing the Thing. 

Finally, I realized that, as I wasn't going to back out, all I could do, limp as my sails were hanging, absent any stiff breeze to sail me along, was, yes, just Write the Darned Thing.

I plugged along on it diligently for an hour a day, day after day. I found some interesting background information to include about the history of the Thing. I came up with half a dozen fairly worthwhile insights of my own into the Thing. I reframed my discussion so that the part derivative from Brilliant Prominent Scholar was no longer the main point of the Thing, but just one of many points I made along the way, with plenty of effusive citations to her.

When I had done the best I could do, with a sigh I pressed SEND.

And you know what? The editors read the Thing right away and thought it was just fine. In fact, they used the word "great." I don't think it's a Great Thing myself. I think it's a Nice Little Thing. The single best part of it is still the points made by the Brilliant Prominent Scholar. But hey, that's why she's a Brilliant Prominent Scholar, and not me.

There's a ditty I learned as a child, from Henry Van Dyke: "Use what talents you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best." 

There is room in the world - and in the academic world, too - for lots of voices raised in song. In the end, I'm glad I said yes to singing my own little song and wrote this Nice Little Thing.

A Month Post Elbow Surgery: A Lovely Little Miracle Each Day

It's almost a month now since I had my elbow surgery, on January 4, following my parking-lot fall and fracture two days before Christmas. 

This was NOT how I had wanted to start 2024. 

2022 and 2023 had been two of the happiest years of my life, and both began SPLENDIDLY.

2022 began with my taking myself all alone to Paris for a solo writing retreat and soon after going on Match.com for ONE HOUR and meeting the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. 

2023 began with having my editor - who had rejected my previous middle-grade novel - reading my submission of The Last Apple Tree, loving it instantly, and offering me a contract a week later. 

2024 began with elbow surgery. 

Certainly, this was an omen that this would be a completely sucky year. I would spend months in painful recovery, unable to engage in any of my usual sweet life activities, and the whole year would be RUINED. Right? 

Wrong! 

If you have to break a bone, I heartily recommend breaking your non-dominant elbow. Yes, there was pain at first, and massive inconvenience, but a week after surgery, the doctor took off the bulky, incapacitating splint and sling and ordered me to PT. My sister sent me this bear, from Vermont Teddy Bear, to keep me company through all of it (note that he has a cast on HIS left elbow, too!)

Then the series of miracles began. One by one, day by day, I started to be able to do things I thought I could never do again. 

My first and best victory: getting a dab of jam on the index finger of my left hand and being able to LICK IT OFF!

More victories followed.

Taking off my top ALL BY MYSELF without having to have someone else assist by giving one sleeve a little tug! 

Shampooing my hair with BOTH HANDS! And being able to get my left arm WET!

Sleeping comfortably on either side (HUGE)! And typing with both hands without discomfort (HUGEST OF ALL!). 

At church last Sunday, my first time there since the surgery, when people asked how my recovery was going, I would demonstrate a few of these stunning accomplishments, e.g., reenacting the momentous licking of my index finger. But then to one woman I said, mournfully, "But I fear I have to face the fact that I will never again be able to reach behind my head to gather my hair into a rubber band." I started to dramatize the impossibility of doing this - the left arm just wouldn't GO that far - and suddenly realized that NOW I COULD!

Hooray for the licking of jam at will! Hooray for comfort in typing and sleeping! Hooray for being able to GET YOUR ARM INTO THE SLEEVE OF A COAT! And DRIVE A CAR! And FLOSS YOUR TEETH!

Hooray for learning how many fears are unfounded. 

2024 is turning out to be a wonderful year, after all.  

How Should You Spend the First, Best Hour of Your Day? (Part II)

In the previous post I confessed that I have been spending the first, best hour of my day NOT on writing (my passion, my profession, my identity, my bliss) but on New York Times word puzzles. 

My work-in-progress was stalled. I thought it was simply because I was stuck, unsure where the story should go next. In fact, I told myself, maybe sinking for hours into the La Brea Tar Pits of the puzzles might be, oh, I don't know, a sort-of meditative practice that might actually help me get unstuck. 

But of course, the truth I was avoiding was that I was stuck because I was allowing myself to do New York Times puzzles instead of putting in a faithful hour a day sitting, pen in hand, trying to unstick myself. 

It was my sweetheart, ruthless though loving truth teller that he is, who pointed this out to me. 

I had to admit he might be on to something.

So for two solid weeks back in December, I made a commitment to myself to return to devoting that first, best hour each day to writing. 

I prepared everything the night before, carrying my writing materials and hourglass up to my writing nook and even filling the electric kettle with enough hot water for a pot of heavily sugared tea, with teapot, mug, and teabag in readiness on the kitchen table.

I allowed myself to get up even earlier than usual, at 4:00 (the earlier I get up, the happier I am all day, though impossibly smug). While the water heated - maybe for ten minutes - I did steal a peek at the puzzle. Cold turkey was a bit too daunting. But then, teapot filled, I tiptoed upstairs, settled myself on the loveseat, and wrote - WROTE! - till 5:30 or so.

The pages came pouring out of me. I wrote the entire last third of a 45,000-word draft in those two weeks, and the scenes I wrote were GOOD. Dare I say, with an author's besotted love for her own creation, they were WONDERFUL. All day long, I hugged myself with happiness for what I had written and could hardly wait till the next morning to see what would happen next as the story hurtled toward its climax and denouement with the fabulous force of momentum making it happen. 

Oh, and I still finished the puzzle every day, doing it in bits and pieces, as a palette cleanser between other activities, which turned out to be a much better way to approach puzzles, at least for me. 

Oh, dear ones, try using the best hour of YOUR day for what you love best. It might work as much magic for you as it has for me. 

How Should You Spend the First, Best Hour of Your Day? (Part I)

For most of my career as a children's book author, I published a book for young readers just about every year while working full-time as a tenured professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and raising a family. My only secret was this: I devoted the first, best hour of the day to my writing. 

That is the whole entire secret right there. Wired to be an early-morning person, I woke up every morning at 5 a.m. (without an alarm), made myself a steaming mug of Swiss Miss hot chocolate, and curled up on the couch with my beloved clipboard, pad of narrow-ruled white paper, and Pilot Razor Point pen, to write for exactly one hour, timed with my most-beloved-of-all hourglass. 

Then, almost a decade ago, I took early retirement from CU. Now I had all day to write! Now I could write whenever I wanted to, all day long!

I did keep on writing books for young readers. But - funny thing - I wrote not MORE but LESS than I had before. With all day to do it, I also had all day NOT to do it. NOT doing it started to become my default setting. 

What did I do instead with my first, best hour of the day? Well, some of it was spent helping to take care of live-in grandchildren, a worthy activity I don't regret. But in recent years - oh, this is terrible to say!! - I have been giving the first, best hour of the day to New York Times puzzles. First Wordle, which after all, does take just two minutes followed by the fun of texting my score to a select few recipients. The new Connections puzzle, though sometimes infuriating, can be dispatched in five or ten minutes. 

But the Spelling Bee... oh, the Spelling Bee... 

It's possible to get lost in it for hours. Once upon a time I was satisfied if I got past the lower levels of Solid, Nice, Great, and Amazing, all the way to Genius. But then I learned there was the level of Queen Bee, where you found absolutely every word recognized by the puzzle. I became so obsessed with the NYT Spelling Bee that sometimes in the night I'd wake up and realize it was now past 1:00 a.m. here in Colorado (the puzzle for each day is released at 3 a.m. ET), and I'd actually leap out of bed to start doing it. 

Would you say I had a PROBLEM? 

To answer my original question: what you should be doing in your first, best hour of the day (whenever that falls for YOU in clock time) is what matters most to YOU (whatever that is in your own personal priorities). It should almost certainly NOT be hunting for one last eight-letter word starting with CO and one last six-letter word starting with PL. 

In the next post I will share my somewhat successful journey toward reclaiming that first, best hour of the day for the purposes of my true, best self. 

Starting the New Year - 11 Days Late

Things are looking up for me and my broken elbow! Surgery with the very young but very capable orthopedic doctor a week ago today! I am now the proud owner of six screws and one metal plate to hold my once-shattered elbow together from now until the grave. Then a few frustrating but healing days with the left arm cradled - i.e., imprisoned - in a huge, heavy, bulky, awkward, almost utterly incapacitating splint and sling. Then.... yesterday! ... the post-op visit where the loathed splint was removed and the arm was set free! Hooray! I can cuddle beside my sweetheart without this forbidding barrier of the enormous, lifeless arm lying in bed between us. I can type with both hands! 

What else in life is needed for happiness? I now know that the answer to that is: nothing.

But. . . I am so far behind on EVERYTHING! The year went right ahead and got started WITHOUT ME and now I'm panting - with my still-depleted store of energy - to catch up.  Already, on January 11, I'm ready to give up on 2024 and admit defeat. Maybe 2025 will be better? 

But this would be just a tad premature, don't you think? I have to find a way to give myself permission to start the new year 11 days late - or maybe, start it on Monday, the 15th, halfway through January, which feels a little less random. Or even... just ease into it? Just start doing a few of my pleasant little piddly tasks (like writing this blog post) and see what happens?

I've already developed, over the past decades, a few ways to trick myself into summoning the motivational energy that comes from new beginnings even when these beginnings don't fall on the most auspicious times of day or month or year. I fell in love with my trusty, trademark hourglass in part because the new beginning began whenever I turned it over, whether right on the dot of 5 a.m. or at 5:03 or even - heaven forbid - at 7:30. I inaugurated the practice of starting a new life on the first day of each month just so I could have that "5-4-3-2-1 Happy New Year!" energy twelve times a year. 

The saying popular in the years of my youth - "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" - was designed just to allow us to have a new beginning WHENEVER we need one. Today can always be the first day of SOMETHING.

So: today is the first day of a life with a partially healed fractured elbow and partially restored level of functionality. I'm giving 2024 another chance.

Starting today.

Starting All Over Again in the New Year - with One Big, Unexpected Hindrance

 Happy new year!

 As you may or may not have noticed, and as I myself barely noticed, I haven't posted on this blog since May. I was too busy with my sweet new romance, and feeling discouraged about the current children's book marketplace, and trying to decide whether I would ever write another book again, and then finally falling in love with a new book idea and spending the rest of the year happily scribbling away in my upstairs writing nook on my hour a day of writing bliss.

 But now it's the new year, and I was filled with plans for starting all over again with every once-beloved activity under the sun. Blogging again! Teaching an online course for the graduate programs in children's literature at Hollins University! Working with my mentees through the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators! And revising my beautiful book to share with my writing group and then with my agent and editor. I could hardly wait for the new year to begin!

 Alas, two days before Christmas, I was off to the grocery store with my two little granddaughters, and one of them was leaping and bounding with wild, uninhibited joy for the coming holidays, when she leaped and bounded so exuberantly that I tripped over her and fell hard onto the parking lot of King Soopers. “Are you okay?” a concerned stranger asked me. “No!” I wailed. Because I wasn't. He helped me up, both my grown sons were summoned, I was off to urgent care, and it turned out to be a broken elbow, with surgery now scheduled for this coming Thursday.

 What is to become of all my cherished plans? How can I type with one arm in a sling? Thank goodness it is my left elbow and not my right, but it is much harder than I realized to accomplish the tasks of daily life with only one good arm. Adjustments will need to be made. In fact, I am composing this right now, as an experiment, using the dictation feature on my laptop. Somehow this will all work out, right? So many of my friends have had similar surgeries, and they have survived. I suspect I will, too.

 At least I am writing this blog post today, just as I promised myself I would do. So I'm counting this as an auspicious start to the challenging first month of this new year.

 Wishing all of you health and happiness, and avoidance of unpleasant encounters with gravity, in 2024!