A trip to Wally World last night reminded me of a couple of recent pubs of my work that I haven’t shared. 🤓

The first was released just after Christmas: 

I was actually looking for a friend’s book and stumbled upon Chicken Soup for the Soul: Curvy and Confident in the rack. Sweet! 

I am so pleased to have an essay in the book, co-written by the amazing Supermodel Emme and the brave Natasha Stoynoff. It gathers 101 stories of women who have found ways to gain confidence in a world that thinks it’s fine to judge women (people) by their size. 

While my story in it highlights my desire to pass on body confidence to young women, that doesn’t mean I don’t still battle self consciousness somedays. I’m a work in progress. This book’s cloud of witnesses, however, shows me I’m in good company, and that it is possible to win the war. 

And curves? If you can’t appreciate curves I don’t think we can be friends. #SorryNotSorry.

On to #2: 

Those of you who know I’m a Woolfie will understand my excessive clapping right now: I am proud to announce that I had a flash fiction piece published in the premiere issue of Woolf Zine, a fine U.K. based publication and heart child of editor Sean Richardson of Nottingham Trent University. 

You can read the issue here:  https://issuu.com/woolfzine/docs/untitled-1

My piece was written in 2007 in response to reading To the Lighthouse for the first time, though it deals with several aspects of Woolf’s life. My story is a stream-of-consciousness experiment, a love letter, a bewailing of her suicide, and a commiseration with Woolf’s plight all in one.   

I feared the piece was destined to live out its life on my computer, a personal reflection of sorts that I wasn’t sure anyone else would or could enjoy. I am glad to be proven wrong. 

Lastly, this meme below  is a little ditty I sent to my hubs earlier today. I thought I was pasting a link to my story here but put this instead. Since I can’t seem to easily delete it and in the interest of not allowing myself to be overly stuffy (fatal to creativity), let it stand. Maybe you’ll enjoy it as much as I do All Things Minion. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

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I’m taking a sabbatical from my novel. It’s been just over three weeks since I’ve caressed my darling book’s pages, stung its sentences with stronger verbs, mercilessly trimmed its split ends.

You see, I did finish my ugly first draft before the end of the year, (👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻) and now  I’m letting it sit for a month.

It’s been tough, this separation. I miss my book. I worry it’s been seeing that woman from the copy shop with the belly ring. (Hi, fellow Friends fans.)

I’ve been seeing other novel ideas myself, truth be told. I even wrote an outline, planned a research trip, and have begun reading up on a new topic. (Shh…)

Truth? I like this new idea, too. A lot. He lets me say things my WIP won’t, lets me use a different voice for him, and his tense? Oh, yeah.

So though I’m ready to get back to my darling novel in waiting, I know I’ll also be ok once it’s polished, is  beta-read, and is handed over to the agent, assuming she wants to read it. 🤞🏻

And if my WIP finds out about this new idea? We WERE (ok, are) on a break. Though if it writes me an eighteen-page letter (front and back), I’m going to read it all, just in case I find myself making promises (like Ross did) that I shouldn’t. Or in case my novel has things of its  own it would like to fix.

Eight days and counting until I can get back to it.

This weekend I was thrilled to help my hubby tidy his music/writing/study room. 

For one thing, I knew how much he wanted to free up space so he can easily create fun projects.

For another, I enjoy watching people get rid of excess stuff. A lot. I also am pretty good at organizing, but I’m no clean freak.

We talked first about what he wanted to do in the room: listen to, practice, write, and record music; study, and store his instruments and books. 

Backstory: when we first married, his “music room” was our dining room. I wasn’t thrilled about that. Ever since he has been really good about trying to confine his stuff to one room. 

While I appreciate his thoughtfulness, there’s a problem with that: everything of his except toiletries and clothes pretty much ends up in one room. I’ve told him more than once that doesn’t need to be the case. 

It no longer is. 

So I have this bad habit of going to garage sales, second hand shops and the like. I’m thrifty that way, and I like decorating with unique finds. I periodically purge. About once a quarter the house feels too full and I begin culling. It feels great. 

Recently I cleared one side of a long closet in my writing room, the kind of closet that you can’t really hang a clothes bar in so yay, space! (If there were room for clothes it would have been quickly claimed by moi, believe you me.) 

I had also created space in the hall closet. 

The big clear began with carrying everything out of his room. Then we discussed what furniture would stay, what could go. I offered to paint his room but he said no, not just now. In my head I’m choosing colors. 🤓

He donated this cool old TV set and clock to the living room, which  gladly accepted:  

 
We sorted his bookshelves and got rid of approximately 50 books. I put them in the milk crates I’ve been storing in the garage for a decade and decided I would quit trying to find something to do with them and donate them along with the books. 

Then there were the cd’s that I was surprised he was cool with storing in the garage. 

The man has so much musical equipment. His 4 and 8 track recorders found new homes upstairs. An ancient practice amp was let go of. I’m so proud. 

Was I ever thrilled when we found his personal scissors that I bought for him and even put his name on. I knew he thought I’d borrowed them again and hadn’t returned them. Ha! Did not!

We found borrowed items, Christmas wrap, gifts it was time to let go of, candy. 

Thankfully episodes of The Office entertained us as we plowed through piles of papers. 

There was only so much I could do to help, because most of the decisions were his to make. I did make clear that he could get rid of almost anything I had given him in the name of freeing up space.

I did gain a few things: a shirt he didn’t want, some cd’s I don’t have uploaded to my computer, and his appreciation.

At some point we talked about only putting back into that room the things he will regularly use. I would, I said, find space for whatever else he wanted to keep.

It was with a grateful heart I loaded my vehicle with the crates and dumped bags of trash into the garbage can. (Barry is on a writing deadline so I offered to finish up.) 

Emptying the room revealed things we need to buy: a case for his keyboard and a set of shelves for his ever-growing collection of lp’s. That’s important info for creating and protecting your inspiration. 

After he finished practicing bass the evening of the clean up, I asked him how it felt to play in there. Needless to say, he loved it.

My husband is a multi talented man, much more than he gives himself credit for. I am thrilled he now has a clear space he’s happy to create in. I’m pleased to have helped.

I tell this story to remind us all to literally make space for our creativity by mentally and physically lightening our lives. Get rid of what you don’t need. 

Then again, besides books and clothing, I’m a minimalist. Works for me. 

  
Barry relaxes in his music room after a long day. (He said I could share the photo.) 

So Deborah Norville tweeted this awesomeness at me this afternoon:  

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Need I say how excited I am that this Chicken Soup for the Soul book, the Power of Gratitude, is being featured tonight on Inside Edition? 

The vivacious Deborah Norville and the incomparable Amy Newmark have put together this hope-filled collection. Again, I am thrilled to be included. The world can always use reminders to be grateful, because there is always something to be grateful for. 

I doubt my story will be referenced, but still. I am pumped! 

Please watch this evening and buy the book if you could use another bowl of Chicken Soup. 

This is my current journal. It’s a little over half full right now.   

I’ve noticed something: whenever I’m most scared about writing my novel, I automatically start prewriting in my journal. I may only jot an idea, a quote, or even a few lines of dialog. But it’s so much easier to start there, where no one will ever need to see how untidy the writing is. 
From there I go to a notebook, preferably a cheap one. Maybe you learned this from Natalie Goldberg as well? You just fill cheap notebooks because they’re so unassuming. I have a stack that I bought two years ago for like ten cents each. 

There the ideas get refined. I write in big letters, skipping lines. If my thinking is really sloppy, I might rewrite it in list form, numbers and all. Then I make a list from that list until it all (for the moment) makes sense. 

Or I at least have a direction to head in. Truth be told, I love the initial chaos, the passion for an idea that eludes me, slipping somewhere between consciousness and that place between pen and paper. The idea that has to be reckoned with or the earth might implode. 🌎

Then, the laptop. 

There are many reasons to love laptops and their kin. For writing purposes, not so much.

Before you call me a hypocrite when you see me clacking the keys, let me explain.

I need the laptop. It’s as if I’m wearing a suit and heels when I use it, though. In ways I get more done, sure. But it’s not as much fun. I’m not as fearless at it. Still, I do plenty of laptop writing and revising for convenience’s sake. 

(I still think I mainly do it to look like an adult. And because agents frown on getting pages torn out of a notebook mailed to them.)

Back to that journal: it was in my journal recently that I wrestled that latest writing dilemma and determined that I would decide once and for all, no turning back. Rock, paper, scissors. It meant trimming, rearranging my WIP, but that was the easy part.

I’m not someone who journals to impress. No way! Mine are an embarrassing mess. Rarely do I write a line in one that impresses me. My entries are quotidian and banal, mostly. 

That said, there should be a special place without Netflix or pizza forever for those who violate someone by reading her journal. I’m very serious. 

Once our house was broken into when we lived in Nashville, and the police are pretty sure it’s someone who knew us. Why? Because my journal’s pages had been turned as if someone had read it — it was a spiral bound book. Talk about feeling violated. 

Do you journal? Does it shape your creative endeavors? If not, what purpose does it serve? I’m always eager to talk process. 

This post isn’t likely to be particularly erudite as I am suffering from jet lag; Barry and I are just home from a glorious trip to Rome and Florence. While I am extremely passionate about today’s topic, I’m just beginning my extended research into The David, so even if I weren’t suffering from jet lag, I’m not sure how learnedly I could speak about this. But I have to write about him so I can get back to writing my novel! I’m preoccupied with him.

In the summer of 2011 I saw Michelangelo’s David for the first time. I think I’ve written elsewhere about my stunned reaction. While I do suffer from Stendhal’s Syndrome (basically being overwhelmed by great art to the point of crying or fainting), this was an extreme case. I didn’t want to leave The David. I had the urge to move to Florence and protect him, visit him every day. I cried when I had to leave, ugly tears, pleading tears. For a moment I refused to leave, stamping my foot as if I were five. I kept looking backwards, telling him I’d return to him some day. Not that I really imagined I would.

Then I wrote a tedious, 15-page essay trying to explain the experience and my personal connections to the statue. My apologies to my classmates who had to read it.

I was going through some life stuff at the time not worth talking about now. I assumed part of my reaction to Michelangelo’s masterpiece was due to that. So when we decided to return to Italy, I wanted Barry to see The David with me, confident that though I would be happy to see the statue, surely I would be composed.

Uh, not so much. When we got in front of him, I barely stayed still long enough for us to get a blurry selfie of ourselves with our Carrera-carved friend. I may have said something snotty to the person with the camera about this not being a tourist trip. My husband who knows me so well knew I’d regret it later if I didn’t have  a photo with David, so he persisted.

I did take photos to study later.

Then I began circling the marble man. (Wait, that’s hokey. Don’t care.)  And the tears started. Mine, that is. Don’t ask me why I was crying. I can’t explain it, not really. Which made me cry more when I tried to explain to Barry why I was crying. Not that he was asking because the man has been married to me for 25 years.

Again, a recap of things I might have written about before: I first heard of The David when I was taking Art Appreciation as a senior. It was a college class but I was able to take it concurrently with my other classes. The class was enlightening. At the time, I never imagined that I would ever make it to Italy once, let alone twice.

When I said farewell to David this time, I again told him I’d be back. Not sure when, but I will be.

That sounds like a wrap, but it’s not.

The reason I can’t work on my novel right now is because I’ve wanted to write something substantial about The David since the first time I saw him. Fiction, no doubt. But The David’s been done. And besides, you have to have an angle that hasn’t been approached before and that’s not easy.

Finally, I think I do have an idea. At least for a short story. While I tend to write about women, I also believe artists are a breed unto themselves. Art is about no limits. (Within reason.) And if I can’t stand in front of this statue without crying, something in me surely wants to write about him. Which is exciting and scary.

But I’m not committing to more than a short story. (Please, oh please let that be true.)

In the meantime, I just may take a nap. Jet lag’s a bitch.