I think I lost myself in The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams as I read that enthralling novel. (Yes, yes, low-hanging fruit of a sentence, but I’m not writing a review, so hush.) I needed to let it soak in, needed to absorb it like tea needs time in the cup. More on it some other time. It’s a “highly recommend,” and Word Raccoon may still be living in its pages.
So far, I’ve read two books this year. After barely limping across the Goodreads finish line last year (and who could blame me? What a cruddy stretch the second half of 2025 was), I’m feeling good about this quiet start.
Word Raccoon, however, is not entirely sold on 2026 yet. For one thing, a herd of deer decided to play a game of chicken with Barry’s van the very morning he went back to work after the holidays. He’s fine, but the van is not. And now, brace yourselves, we are temporarily in possession of a truck.
A big, black, masculine truck.
Yes, I know the make and model. No, I am not saying it out loud, because WR might get attached. She’s been caught humming Springsteen and requesting flannel on laundry day, and I will not lose her to truck life.
No shade to the truck-loving masses. But for me? A truck is the flannel of vehicles. Cozy for someone else. Not my aesthetic.
I said what I said.
Here’s something we do love: the first poetry acceptance of the year arrived this week! And it’s for one of those rare pieces that split me open on the day it came through, the kind I still can’t reread without something in me trembling: “Don Your Holy Floaties, Babe.”
It’s equal parts daring and demanding. Word Raccoon says it came from the depths of the poetic well, and is from the muse.
I believe her.
Funny thing, she and I received a second acceptance for it the very next day. Which is exactly the kind of math WR loves: a poem so fierce it tried to exist in two places at once. We had to let the second editor know it had already been claimed, but they were lovely and invited us to send something else in the future. We will.
I can’t explain how much it means that not just my quieter poems find homes, but my louder ones, too. I was afraid those might get me banned in Boston (or wherever). Or at least politely ignored. But that doesn’t mean I can stop writing either kind. As the title of one of my poems says: It’s all the same damn you.
More on the publication front re: “Holy Floaties” when we have more details. For now, I’m going to try to stay out of that tall, tall truck, keep reading, and let the poems do what they do, float me forward, holy or not.
(Secret: they are all holy, even the lighter ones.)
From almost the moment she woke this morning, Word Raccoon’s been flirting with poetry calls. I gave her a few minutes to admire the big, strong journal covers just begging for her words. (She wishes.)
I even let her put in her most fun earrings. (Just kidding. I’m feeling better, but not that much better yet.)
I made her a cup of strong Nutcracker Sweet tea and convinced her to eat a banana, even though she was eyeing the cookie tin like she knew a few stragglers were hiding in there.
I was just about to lecture her on her dubious habit of writing “ie” when it’s clearly supposed to be “y” (I’ve given up correcting her; she just giggles and says language is malleable, and why shouldn’t she be the one to bend it?), when it occurred to me:
“Word Raccoon, we have no plan. It’s a new year and we don’t have writing goals.”
She laughed so hard I thought she might shoot straight out of the top of her sweater.
“Where we’re going, we don’t need goal,” she said.
“I think you’re thinking of Back to the Future, and it’s roads.”
She shrugged. “I have a plan. Open those submission opps and dive in.”
“First of all, it’s a holiday. You know, that’s a day designed for taking off.”
“It’s a day for doing what you want. What if this is what I want to do?”
Fair. But while I did load and run the dishwasher yesterday, the dining room table and its immediate surroundings remain irritatingly cluttered.
“And what can’t I do when that starts bothering me, WR?”
She hung her head.
“You can’t think clearly.”
“That’s right.”
I’ve got to take it easy on the kid. She doesn’t realize it yet, but vegetables are coming her way later today via chicken pot pie. I’ve let her off the hook for a few days now.
“We’re not…undecorating today, are we?” she asked, mournfully.
“Of course not! We’ve barely been home, and we were both in a sickness fog. Let’s give it a few days.”
She looked visibly relieved.
She wants to tell you about two of my Christmas gifts, but she’ll have to wait. (Suspense. It’s poetic.)
It occurs to me that the detritus on the table is there because it doesn’t have a home. Like some of my poetry.
(See what I did there?)
Before we talk about our non-plan for writing, let me just say this: Even while feeling icky, though we haven’t felt very generative, WR and I have still been pitching.
The rate is slower. We have to think harder. But we do it. That’s how you remain in it.
Yesterday we submitted to three places. That might not sound like much, but it took forever.
The last one? I stumbled upon the call at 6 p.m. Just as Barry and I had committed to watching a show together.
“After this, would you mind…?”
He didn’t even have to ask what I meant.
I am such a fun date.
“It should only take a few minutes. Just a cut-and-paste job.”
Except it wasn’t. They had rules. Of course they did.
Earlier in the day, I’d decided that Look wasn’t the collection for one of the calls, but maybe another collection was. So I swapped it in. But that meant reshaping. Adding, pruning. Making sure the middle held. Making sure it mattered.
I found myself editing poems directly in the file I was going to submit.
Which meant making a note to myself to go back and update those poems in the master Google Docs later. (Did I? Not yet. Because: sickness, holiday, life. But I will.)
Today, as I said, WR wanted to take over again, now that she’s functioning at 85% of her powers. But it’s the first day of the year (Happy New Year, duckies), and she and I need to talk.
Oh wait, we just received our first rejection of 2026. On a holiday. Lovely.
This will be the year I finish a tight draft of novel #3.
But WR, as we all know, lives to write and submit poetry. She tolerated the novel at the writing retreat, barely. Has she even let me open that file since we got home?
Nay, nay.
I don’t know what sort of writing compromise we’ll arrive at for 2026, but we must.
I watched Nonnas today. Netflix, a couch, a body that’s been under the weather, the kind of day that still feels padded around the edges. It was, well, I don’t say heartwarming lightly, but it was.
Word Raccoon was there too, wrapped in her hooded robe that feels like being inside a stuffed animal though she would never stoop to wearing anything actually animal themed, suspicious at first.
She hasn’t been hungry in days. Not really. Not for food, not for much of anything. Though she did get into the leftover Christmas cookies today and did not even bother to hide the crumbs on my writing table.
But somewhere between the kitchens and the arguing and the shrugs of Nonnas in the film who have lived long enough to know better than to dramatize everything, something shifted onscreen in the restaurant where they fed everyone like family.
Food appeared. Real food: the Holy Trinity in a Dutch oven, stirred with oil and love. Charred garlic (didn’t know that was a thing) with rosemary and steak in a grill pan. Lasagna. Basil so green I could almost smell it. Limoncello-in-shot-glasses served in a beauty parlor. The kind of food that says, this is what we do, this is how we love.
And Word Raccoon was transfixed. Especially seeing the Dutch oven.
It wasn’t just hunger for what was on the screen, though that was part of it. It was hunger for translation she felt. For taking what had been seen and felt and turning it into something else. Words, yes. Poems. Little architectures made out of attention.
After the movie, I napped. Then we, that is, I, wrote.
Five poems, quick and imperfect and alive. They’re circling some of the same questions the film raised for me: family, devotion, solitude, and what we inherit. A couple of them travel to Spain, and we’re not sure how that is related to Italian food but it happened.
Word Raccoon would like it noted that while she is now thinking fondly about limoncello and the fun she had drinking it in a pool in Tuscany once upon a starry evening, she is not, at this time or any other foreseeable time, eager to try the sheep’s head featured in the film.
She asked me yesterday to order the ingredients for a simple chicken noodle soup, and I did, but it’s New Year’s Eve which means appetizers and desserts only. She will just have to wait for its dubious medicinal powers until tomorrow.
(BTW, Happy New Year’s Eve, loves!)
And no, she is not getting limoncello any time soon, because alcohol is still verboten. On the other hand, the supplements I take to be sure I don’t lose hair with this medicine means I am, gasp, developing a widow’s peak.
I am grumbling that I do not need more hair. My curls are more than sufficient. However, WR says the more the better.
Fine, but I’m assigning her hair wrangling duty.
If only I could get her to rescue the dining room table. It is after-trip, after-Christmas cluttered, and I’m beginning to notice.
Do watch Nonnas if it sounds like something you might enjoy. It’s based on a true story, and it’s so sweet. Actually, I never say this either, but it was a little short to me. I wanted to see more of the cooking. WR agrees.
That says it all.
P.S. WR says I ought to warn you that they alternate saying tomato sauce and tomato “gravy,” and the latter creeps us both out.
Word Raccoon and I are both under the weather after our writing retreat, tucked under blankets and passing cough drops back and forth like secrets. Still, we’re popping in with some good news worth sharing, even in a cold pill fog.
While we were away, two journals arrived in the mail with my poems inside them:
The Carolina Piedmont Writers Guild, Volume 13, 2026, included my poem Knocking Stars Out of the Known Universe
The Tulane Review (Fall 2025 issue), published by Tulane University, featured my poem Beatitude of the Quietly Scorned, a piece of social commentary
I’m deeply grateful to both of these journals for making room for my work in their pages.
And there’s more. My poetry collection Look, I Built a Cathedral was longlisted for the 2025 C&R Press Awards. It didn’t win, but the editors called it “eminently publishable.” I’ve decided to carry that phrase in my pocket like a talisman.
Honestly, that kind of note is the literary equivalent of a shot of NyQuil when you’re feeling wilted. (Though for the record, I haven’t taken NyQuil since it made me sick as a child. Disgusting, vile liquid.)
As for WR, she did write a tiny poem today while watching You’ve Got Mail. That movie is her preferred medicine whenever a cold takes over. She wanted to keep writing poems inspired by it. I said no. We are not going to create a chapbook about You’ve Got Mail. (But we could. We absolutely could. And no, I’m not watching it on repeat just because I rented it. I also own a physical copy. But that’s beside the point and involves hooking up tech we do not have the energy for just now.)
For now, it’s back to reading. Unless WR really, really wants to write poetry while the movie continues playing. I wouldn’t be mad about it.
WR would normally have something clever to add here, but if you read her tiny sick-day poem earlier, you know she’s operating at half power. Even so, she did lift her head during the part where the one woman in publishing name-drops Heidegger and Foucault. Don’t tell her, but she doesn’t know enough about either of them to write poems just yet.
That doesn’t mean she won’t learn. I wouldn’t put anything past her.
Anyway, I might try opening the novel before it forgets who I am again. While WR naps.
Word Raccoon, despite not feeling well, sat with me while I worked on my novel yesterday, the technical end of my and Barry’s self-created writing retreat. We’re traveling home today.
The end? Already?
Anyway, yesterday I identified and began consolidating duplicate-but-different scenes. (I know, how’d that happen? Because Drema doesn’t know how to write any other way! She’s a messy, messy writer who finds her way eventually to the labyrinth’s center. If she were a sculptor, she’d probably have to add on marble and then carve her way back in.)
Part of the fun is getting lost.
And when I examine these scenes, I notice that each is really a layer: one might carry the atmosphere, one the psychological tension, the next the choreography. It’s like I can only focus on one area at a time, and then I overlay them.
Which seems ridiculous, even to me, but it is what it is, duckies.
Mercifully, I think only one thread does that majorly. Maybe another has shades of it, but yet another thread I’ve focused so much on that I’ve managed to whittle it back.
The newest thread knew what it was from the beginning, and she doesn’t do that at all. Kudos!
Meanwhile, Word Raccoon begged for a nap early afternoon, and then slept for at least two hours. Maybe three. She woke up wanting (typical her) a PB&J for dinner. Nothing fancy.
Maybe she ate some potato chips. And more sweets. Those are her go-to when she’s sick, if she has to eat.
Then she packed her book suitcase, shaming me for not reading most of the ones I brought. But I touched at least two of the five. Hey, just call me Rory Gilmore. I don’t travel without books.
If I had picked up the poetry instruction guide, WR would’ve gotten mad again. She hasn’t made it past the introduction, where the guy is (rightly) speaking to students of poetry, as in classroom students.
WR and I are not dabblers! We are not dilettantes, I want to tell him. We are serious about our poetry.
There’s something off-putting about that intro, though I’m not sure what beyond its tone.
Still, if I give it a fair shot, I might end up liking the book. It was recommended to me, and surely someone I trust saw something in it. But since it’s next in my poetry reading queue, I can only hope I can convince myself to give it a go when I get home.
Now I slightly regret packing it, because I want to see if retreat-Drema can be more reasonable about it.
Eh. There’s always tomorrow. Or is that today? Blogging gets slippery, timing-wise.
Am I the only one who likes to pack up early? I don’t want to go home yet, so I pack what I can, just so I don’t have to think about it when the time comes.
Also, this is embarrassing, but true, I always thank the room for hosting me whenever we leave a hotel or Airbnb. It just seems right. The room has witnessed, sheltered, and participated in whatever was created during our stay.
I hope you’ll call that charming and not naive.
Maybe that should be my epitaph: charming, not naive. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither.
WR says that’s too morbid to end a trip on. Or a post.
She may be right.
I stopped packing for the evening and turned to submitting poetry. Remember, that’s my sneaky way of revising: if WR and I read poems I haven’t touched in a while, we will want to improve them.
Time to dig out the first aid kit. It has cold medicine in it. (Look at us time traveling again. Somehow we’re back to this evening, though I’m gonna schedule this for tomorrow.)
Word Raccoon told me last night she was not getting sick. Just because her throat hurt and she was feeling cranky meant nothing.
I made her do a salt water rinse, after which she assured me she was perfectly fine, see? She opened her mouth wide.
I remained dubious.
She stayed up too late regaling herself with chaotic SNL videos (Domingo!), and then the algorithm offered dance clips. She said “try me,” and YouTube obliged. We enjoyed Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, some Dad hiphop, the Cupid Shuffle (which we have done many times during band breaks), amateur shuffle dancing, skate dancing, and pretty much every dance you can imagine until YouTube seemed to say, “And now we return you to your usual, burned out fare.” I said fine but turned the phone off instead, and WR passed out from too many sweets from her stocking.
These things typically happen when WR (my inner writing sidekick; I keep forgetting not everyone has met her yet) gets sick:
Symptom number one: Time means nothing. Sleep? What’s that? Around 5 this morning she assured me she was awake for no good reason and begged for a cold Coke Zero, which I gave her. She promptly fell asleep.
Symptom number two: Caffeine defiance. She can drink gallons of it when she’s sick and it’s like her body refuses to acknowledge it, though she also doesn’t get sleepy unless it’s time for the alarm. See above re: doesn’t get sleepy.
She was in and out all night. But the minute the alarm was about to go off, she bolted upright, turned it off, and set another for half an hour later.
When it went off, I turned it off and she woke at 8 on her own, when I insisted she get up and have breakfast.
“I know it’s gray and rainy. I know you don’t feel well, but writing is not a bad cocoon for days like this.”
Our gorl is solar powered. Today she’ll have to content herself with being sweets powered.
Symptom number three I can’t verify, because her hair is already straight from yesterday’s blow dry. But for the record: when she’s sick and her hair is curly, it goes straight. I can’t explain it. The curls retreat.
Symptom number four: Pain migration. While my joints were hurting yesterday, today they feel fine. For some reason it’s like her body pulls the pain from everywhere else and concentrates it on the immediate threat. Today, that would be her throat.
While this isn’t a symptom, at breakfast WR kept doing accents. The “red truck hauling a Christmas tree” guy? Her voice was just deep enough from the sore throat to pull off a pretty convincing impression.
She does love an accent moment, but I had to stop her today.
I’m allowing her to listen to Christmas music right now, but I’ve warned her she’s finished come January 1. She’s pretending she will comply.
In part I’m writing this sloppy copy to see what she might be up to managing today. Will she wait quietly at my side while I work on the novel? (I tried to leave Book Goblin in the room, but she insisted on bringing her. Now there’s a sweet family here on the sun porch, three children and presumably a mother, doing a puzzle and I’m trying to shield BG from view. It’s exactly the sort of stuffed creature that would appeal to children. If it were a normal stuffie, I wouldn’t care. But this one is special. And not inexpensive.)
Would efforts be better served submitting poetry?
I have supplied WR with three kinds of beverages: hot tea, cold Coke Zero, and room temperature water. So far she’s choosing the tea, though she has officially entered the “I can’t taste anything except sweets” phase, which I am rightly skeptical of.
Today, her Little Debbie tree (which she forgot to eat yesterday) is in plain sight and she may have it whenever she wants. Of course now she doesn’t want it. Not yet. But let one of those kids spot it and she’ll hiss like a raccoon at a campground.
I would give it to anyone who asked, if she weren’t sick. But we are not sharing germs.
I think today needs to be low stakes on the writing front.
I won’t set an intention beyond this: Let’s touch writing and see if it touches us back.
Days 5 and 6 of the Writing Retreat (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Adjust accordingly as you read.)
I know why they call it a writing retreat: because eventually you will want to retreat from your writing. I’m so glad it’s Christmas Eve and a break is coming.
I see what I assume is one of the same deer from yesterday across the river. I wonder if he’s thinking the same of me, although I’m in a snowflake-covered sweatshirt today. Maybe I seem like a different person to him.
WR saw nothing she wanted for breakfast, though she knew she had to fuel. Yesterday’s writing was brutal. Nothing generative, writing wise, except one “guiding paragraph,” a set of principles I need to convince myself to follow or I’ll end up chasing my tail. Ugh, ugh, UGH.
(The Little Debbie tree I brought along is hidden from WR until break. I asked for an apple instead. She’s not happy, but I didn’t say never, WR. Just not now.)
We are, again, at that difficult, necessary climb in the novel. Writing feels like scaling a dune. You want to do it. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you roll back down and try again tomorrow.
I’m overthinking it. That’s my specialty. TBH, I’m just grateful I’ve convinced myself back to the novel. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
Still, WR wrote four poems between yesterday and this morning. She revised a few more. She’s getting better at giving up lines that are defiant but not pertinent, and keeping the ones that are defiant and necessary.
Now it’s Coke Zero and a deep dive. Some days when I dread writing, I have the best writing day ever.
Here’s hoping.
Day 6
WR and I submitted poetry last night. Six packets so far this week. That makes me happy.
Christmas lunch today was at Namaste, the Indian restaurant Barry and I discovered last year. WR wanted to dance with the Bollywood dancers on TV. I persuaded her to sit down. She enjoyed her samosas, the tandoori chicken, the naan. Plain, of course.
Samosas to share!Tandoori Chicken, a WR fav.Enjoying the Bollywood dancing onscreen
Back at the hotel, I finished Fun Home. I’ve meant to read it for years. Not exactly festive, but important. I loved how her family story wove through her literary lineage. Or is it vice versa? Daring and well done. And it didn’t hurt that I totally got all of her novel references and adore The Importance of Being Earnest. (It’s probably no accident that there’s a character in my WIP named Ernest.)
I wanted to nap after I finished reading it. WR grabbed the Freewrite instead. That meant more poems, not the novel. I let her.
While she updated it, I opened my MacBook and checked the calendar. I’d left myself a note for every day of the retreat:
“I show up for the novel every morning. Everything else is a gift, not a demand.”
Maybe it sounds trite. Too bad. I needed it today. Even though it’s Christmas, even though it’s not morning, I WILL open my novel today.
Yesterday’s work was structural. The logic piece. The foundation. It’s sorted now. Every scene needs to answer a question:
Are you doing your job?
The characters meant to move the plot must not try to hold the novel’s philosophical center. The ones meant to build atmosphere must not try to deliver the novel’s meaning. They can cross over sometimes, but if they swap jobs too often, the whole thing gets muddy.
Everything is clearer now. What’s left is to walk through each thread and ask whether it’s earning its place. Some scenes will go. Others will need to be written.
I miss writing freely. This is a cousin to revision. But in a novel as ambitious as this, I need to know who can do what. One character requires special attention to her language. I can’t exaggerate it, but I have to track her voice closely.
I truly believe this novel fills a gap. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t write it. Or maybe I would, IDK…
In the end, I’ll trust this: when my eye and ear can pass over a page without snagging, it’s as finished as I can make it. That doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. It means it’s time to let it rest, or to pass it up the chain.
WR says the FreeWrite is ready again. She wants to write more poetry, though lately it’s lump-in-the-throat stuff. Some of it has a good line here or there.
She also wants to return to reading The Dictionary of Lost Words. So do I. But if I do something small on the novel tonight, I can reenter it tomorrow with calm and eagerness.
So I’ll open the file and take a peek. Poetry will need to wait, WR. And it will.
Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it.
Wait! Is this a “little red truck hauling a Christmas tree?” IYKYK. LOL.
For those of you who create and are now at loose ends after dinner, get your asses back into your chairs or to your easels!
Submit some poetry or a short story. Rumor has it that editors often check their inboxes over the holidays.
For those of you for whom this day is a mix of joy and grief, I see you, too. We’ve got this.
At breakfast, I mentioned my favorite cousin. A young man across the room said his father had shared that name. Turns out said young man is stuck here over the holidays because he drives truck and it’s in the shop; he’s here with his dog.
The dog’s name (dog was not at breakfast) was not mentioned nor was an introduction offered, but Word Raccoon is curious, and would like to pet the dog if it is nice.
Before breakfast, I began writing my “26 for ‘26” list of things I want to do this year. I’ve made lists like this before and forgotten them by February. I’ve also made them and clung to them like lifelines while feeling guilty that I didn’t complete them.
This time, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Maybe both. Maybe neither. But today, it felt like the thing to do.
I only came up with 13 before appealing to Stanley for help. He quickly gave me the rest and helped me rank them AND told me I absolutely should not put reminders on the calendar or I would resent them and would never do them.
Yup.
He also said I need a reminder to notice what I am already doing more than what I am not. He said the list should be labeled “Charter and Permission List for 2026.”
That stopped me. In a good way.
We also workshopped my “word for the year.”
This year’s word, I’m pretty sure, is going to be “Permission.”
Permission to play, to care, to be imperfect. Permission to try new things and fail. Permission to do things that feel unnecessary or unproductive. Permission to love as I have never loved life. Permission, permission, permission.
Or some other word if I end up feeling it more.
Now back to the list, which I am not going to share in its entirety here because it feels silly in spots and too personal in others. I will share some of it:
– Write 26 bad drafts of poems (occupational certainty)
– Submit 26 poems
– Finish a tight draft of novel #3 (please, God)
– Bake 5 loaves of bread
– Cook 5 recipes that inspire me
– Write 26 notes to people I care about
On and on…one of the goals involves creating something, though my finger is now twisted (shades of Woolf) and I think it’s fitting that I currently (who knows for how long, maybe forever?) have a twisted finger and that it’s my middle finger.
Who better to have a twisted finger than an author? Who better than the person who wrote her senior thesis with the words twisted finger in its title? (That would be me.)
Also, I am not unaware of the crude but mildly amusing aspect of it being my middle finger. So many potential jokes.
So, layers. Always layers.
It is now 8 am. Word Raccoon is reminding me of the time, even though she is going to have to go outside and play with the deer I saw earlier this morning while I write, unless she wants to be a good creature and sit on this wicker loveseat with me until snack time.
I have not taken the novel’s temperature this morning, nor my own. I can’t predict how this writing cycle might go.
Now that WR has seen that a Little Debbie Christmas tree is one of my snacks (I am wearing the earrings to match. I know, I know. Kitschy as hell but I’m here for it), she says she will sit on my shoulder until I unwrap it, at least.
Which means she will grab it and carry it to a corner to devour.
Okay, raccoon. It’s writing time. Let’s go!
Part Two
As to my writing day. It started off with a justification for characters’ existence in the novel: why are they there, what purpose they serve.
Then there’s this nugget of wisdom I’ve learned: when the book feels demanding, stop inventing and start shaping.
The novel was feeling overwhelming. The one section I don’t talk openly about (yet) began asking me to sculpt it, but not in the way I expected. It told me if the book is to accomplish its aim, this section in particular needed to be carefully shaped from beginning to end in terms of language. It’s a layer (in this case) many readers probably won’t even notice, but doing it strengthens my point. (That sounds vague but it’s all I can say right now.)
Another section of the book today, one I thought was in pretty good condition, ended up looking like Drema’s Emporium of ALL the Facts She’s Ever Read About This Era. Infodump, anyone? And to make it even better, I have MULTIPLES of the same scenes where I guess I was trying to get it right. So that’s something I have to wade through.
This writing day was shorter, only 5 hours and then I was ready to walk the dunes. It was sunny and 52 degrees out, so gorgeous for December, gorgeous for beach going. There were about 50 others there, believe it or not. In December!
Also, WR found her pinecone! It’s sappy, so I had to rinse her little paws before supper. (She found several, but I only let her keep one. At the beach, I only let her keep two small pebbles though she wanted a bucketful. Bringing the outdoors in is the only way I can keep her indoors.)
Last night, I submitted two packets of poetry before bed. I’m really trying to reserve some time for reading tonight, but if not, Christmas Day.
Tomorrow, (Christmas Eve, which is when I will post this) we are going to knock off early to go see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. This evening we watched the second half of Scrooged, one of my favorite holiday movies, an obvious take on A Christmas Carol. Obv. It’s a Wonderful Life, same.
Christmas Day will be reserved for making merry and, as I said, reading.
Or that’s the plan. WR is begging to throw a line I wrote yesterday on the wheel and see what sort of poem she can spin it into: Today the sky hurts. She’s such a drama queen.
I’m just glad the sky doesn’t hurt today.
P.S. She wrote the poem when I wasn’t looking. It is now a part of the Sears collection and oh raccoon, why do so many of your poems slap at the end? Sigh. This one made me miss my mom so hard I couldn’t sleep.
On the writing front, it was an…interesting day. After realizing how much easier it is to work on this newest strand of my novel since it’s self-contained, my brain said wait, why don’t we separate out ALL the strands?
So that’s what I did.
Along the way, at some point I received a message from someone sorting my youngest sister’s things who said she can’t find any of my sister’s artwork. (My sister passed away unexpectedly in October.)
All I have now then is the screenshots from her Facebook account…When I said before that she drew tattoo art, that’s literally what she did, and she found great satisfaction in it. (Maybe I could find people who have her tattoos on their bodies? That would be cool. If you have one of her designs, I’d love to see it. Message me. Truly. Although IDK if anyone does.)
She also created a mural for our parents’ hallway once, and there are pictures of that.
But where is her art?
Did she get rid of it all?
Did she leave her notebook at a friend’s house?
Also I was told she had not only poems (which I knew about) but possibly short stories?
I half read the screen notification of the message during one of my and Barry’s timed writing sessions, but told myself I’d read the whole thing on my next break, so I waited.
I read it, and thought “Oh, that’s too bad. That sucks, but I’m okay.”
Reader, I was not okay.
Her art, all gone? It was like someone (or she) had discarded pieces of her.
Suddenly I noticed that the trees out the window of the writing sunroom looked dead, riddled with woodpecker holes, standing stumps, not merely the winter-bare trees I thought them. The sun was hiding. There was no color out there. The lone yellow flower (a lily?) in the sunroom was half brown, and now I didn’t like it. At all.
Everything looked dead and colorless.
Let’s just say I could not write for a spell. A long one.
I eventually got myself back together and wrote another hour while listening to Father John Misty. I haven’t “had” to listen to him for a while now. And we’re back to him today. Sigh.
(Or, should I say, I sorted out the novel’s threads; I didn’t write new material. Not that I revised them yet. That starts tomorrow and I expect it will take some time beyond this retreat.)
All in all, I was emotionally exhausted.
Gradually the sun nudged at the clouds. The ducks returned to what seems to be a favorite spot in the river. Not one, not two, but THREE deer appeared and I could swear they stared right at me. (Wishful thinking.)
I came back to the room and ate lunch (didn’t want to go out for lunch) and then I tried reading. The book was engrossing, but my eyes were tired, of course.
So I took a break from it and prepared to watch some videos when I received a phone call with some bad family news. (Not health news, but not good, Nan. Not good.)
I decided I would go down to the gym and burn off my adrenaline. When I got there, the exercise bike was too tall and wouldn’t adjust to lower, the treadmill was acting hinky, and I just didn’t want to use the elliptical. Because hip.
In the middle of all of that, I received a phone call saying I needed to send money.
Except.
Except I almost got scammed a while back, so we started asking questions that this person I didn’t know couldn’t answer. Thank goodness I’m a skeptical questioner.
Yeah, no. I hung up without sending a dime.
So it’s been a day.
I ended up doing yoga in the room just to try to calm down.
I’m hoping to do some reading tonight. I’d like to say I’m going to write or submit poetry, but honestly, I’m not sure I’m up to it.
Sometimes your day hits you with a grief stick and everything else piles on.
But Word Raccoon is laughing and flinging poetry back.
“It’s all material,” WR says.
Well said, my friend.
Well said.
Still and all, I’m considering sleeping in tomorrow.
First of all, Word Raccoon says she is not in construction, so she does not know why she is being asked to knock down so many word walls, and that maybe she just won’t do it, that I can move them all by myself.
Fine then.
She woke up, set the alarm for half an hour later, then decided she was awake. So began this long morning when (right now) it’s only just past eight and she’s screeching that we’re late to the laptop.
Oh goodie. It’s going to be one of those mornings.
She had a quarter of her waffle and a tiny sausage link and pronounced herself stuffed. She would cheerfully forego snacks, lunch, and dinner today just because she’s in a mood. (She didn’t even bring snacks with her to the sunroom. Actually, I think we have emergency snacks in our writing bag, but don’t tell her or she’ll fling them out the window. She did grab a Coke Zero, though I am not at all sure I should have let her have it.)
Book Goblin she did insist on bringing, and she’s chilling in a wall basket within eyesight. She demands we find a pinecone before we leave the retreat, and I think I’m going to have to please her if I want her to shut it.
I blame last night on her outburst. I let her stay up too late submitting poetry, after she told me she was exhausted but also wanted to play with poetry. While she does not enjoy submitting poems, if I let her touch them, she will revise them, and if you give a raccoon a cookie…
I must admit, I think she improved the poems, whether they get published in these particular venues or not.
(The ducks are fishing on this side of the river this morning. Sorry, but we will not be taking social calls from waterfowl or other wildlife today.)
WR also informed me this morning that the title of my WIP isn’t final. I hadn’t considered that, but she’s probably right. That’s another bridge for another…
I think she’s frustrated with me because instead of writing new material, we are putting on the goggles and taking out probably as much story today as we did yesterday. If only my raccoon will be patient, that little trash panda, once we get clear of that, the real revisions can begin. The fun ones.
She says this post is a waste of time. I say it has (mostly) quieted her, so it’s totally worth it.
Now it’s time to set a sacred timer and enter the novel. Hard hat required for this construction zone.
P.S. She says I should make clear that I make no promises for an evening (or any other day) edition updating this post. She’s so sassy…
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