Queens Write about Writing

The Power of Amazon

2005-10-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

by Laura Peters, Co-Author of Pilgrim Girl: Diary and Recipes of her First Year in the New World
Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Star Publish

Getting a book published and getting it promoted are two wildly different procedures. Where finding a publisher is a lesson in rejection and a process out of the author’s control, getting that book promoted is a whole class in the author taking the initiative and making it happen. Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s book, The Frugal Book Promoter, contains some of the best advice for the author about to set foot into Self-Promotion 101.

Recently, I focused on Chapter 32: “Amazon Offers Perks: Use Them to Your Advantage” to boost sales of the book I co-authored with Jule Selbo, Pilgrim Girl: Diary and Recipes of her First Year in the New World. Having worked for Francis Coppola’s American Zoetrope for ten years, I know that an important part of promoting anything, from films to books, is creating visibility. Using Frugal’s advice, I created a profile, wrote Listmania lists, linked to other books, and managed to change our Subject Heading connections within Amazon.

Amazon gives excellent directions to walk you through each task. Before you get started though, prepare a small blurb of your interests and write a brief autobiography. I used the one I created for Pilgrim Girl’s website. You will want to have a photo of small file size ready to upload as well. Next, choose a book you like and write a review for it. Your name goes into the Amazon system and you’ll be offered to create an account if you don’t have one already. The prompt offering you to create a profile may come up or you’ll see it. At this point, create your profile. Click here to read mine.

Now, in your word processing program create your first Listmania list. Remember to put your book in the list. The idea here is to create links within Amazon from the books you’ve recommended to your book. For the list, you’ll need to collect the name of the book, the author and particularly the ISBN number, which Amazon will use to connect all the books together. You’ll be offered to write one line about the book.

Please see my lists on Listmania by scrolling to the bottom of my profile to”More to Explore” and click “Listmania.”

Right now, I have two lists posted: Bring an Appetite to Your Reading, and Pilgrim and Thanksgiving Books for Children

Open the first list. Read and enjoy it, then at the top, where you see “Was this helpful to you?” click yes. Now go to the second list and let Amazon know that it was helpful to you too.

Thank you. You just “voted” for my lists and told Amazon that it was helpful which causes Amazon to link the list to the other books on the list raising my book’s visibility.

Last, send directions like the one above to the people on your personal mailing list (You do have a personal mailing list, don’t you? See Chapter 7 of Frugal to learn more) and ask them to enjoy your lists and express to Amazon how helpful your lists are.

Now, watch your Listmania lists appear alongside the books from which you want to draw new readers who will buy your book.

There is a section of your book’s Amazon webpage entitled “Look for similar items by subject.” The idea of this section is to have subjects shared by other books. So if you have a subject such as “Historical United States-Colonial” your book will be accessed when someone wants all books with that subject.

Changing the Subjects section of your Amazon website is a matter of choosing subjects that align with the Library of Congress subject lists. For instance, our book is both a children’s story set in 1620’s Massachusetts and a cookbook. I also wanted people looking for children’s books about Pilgrims and Thanksgiving to be able to find our book, but our subject headings of Juvenile Fiction and even Juvenile Historical Fiction were too restrictive. We needed more subjects! I reviewed the subjects on the Amazon pages for a number of other children’s books about Pilgrims and Thanksgiving to see what was being used and seemed the most likely to draw a reader to our book.

I then emailed Amazon.com at book-typos@amazon.com requesting my suggested new Subject Headings. Within a week, Amazon had changed Pilgrim Girl’s subjects, aligning them with other books in our category.

Promoting a book takes time, but using The Frugal Book Promoter and Amazon you can use your time efficiently and save enough of it to write another book.

Wrestling Alligators

2005-08-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

Dallas Nicole Woodburn

My computer screensaver is a photograph of a six-year-old girl perched at the kitchen table in front of an old-fashioned manual typewriter. She is sitting up on her knees in order to be tall enough to reach the keys. The little girl stares intently at the blank piece of paper in front of her, deep in concentration – oblivious to the camera, oblivious to her father as he snaps her picture, oblivious to everything save for the story unfolding inside her mind.

I am that little girl, now grown into a young woman of eighteen. The picture on my screensaver always makes me smile because I think it captures the essence of who I really am: a dreamer, a creator, a storyteller trying to share with others the magic I’ve discovered in my own imagination. To say it plainly, I am a writer. For as long as I can remember, writing has been my passion – my great passion.

I published my first book, There’s a Huge Pimple on My Nose (a Collection of Short Stories and Poems), in fifth grade. Pimple is proof that with a lot of hard work, a lot of perseverance – and, yes, a lot of support, too – a small idea can snowball into something bigger than you ever dreamed.

My snowball began as a snowflake when I received a fifty-dollar school grant to write and self-publish a children’s book. My first printing, done at a Kinkos copy shop, was modest: twenty-five staple-bound forty-page books. Actually, they were more like thick pamphlets, but no matter – to me, they were books, my books, the most beautiful books I had ever laid eyes upon. J.K. Rowling wasn’t more proud of her first Harry Potter hardcover edition.

My fellow students and teachers, bless them, acted as if Pimple was at the top of the New York Times Best-Seller List. The first twenty-five copies promptly sold – “Dallas, will you autograph it for when you become famous?” – in a couple of days. Can you imagine what a turbo-boost this was to a fifth-grader’s self-esteem? To anyone’s self-esteem, for that matter? I was pursuing my dream, but I wasn’t pursuing it alone – my family and friends and teachers were right there with me.

So. I went back to Kinkos, ordered twenty-five more books – and soon sold all those as well. After three more trips to Kinkos, where the workers now knew me by name, I searched out a publishing business and ordered 700 glossy-covered, glue-bound, professional-looking Pimples.

My little forty-page dream evolved from a snowball into a blizzard, with reviews in the national magazines CosmoGIRL! and Girls’ Life; booksignings at the Cal Lutheran Author’s Faire and the Jack London Writer’s Camp in San Jose; a “Dallas Woodburn Day” at the Santa Barbara Book Fair; and being featured as a “real author” alongside famous real authors such as Michael Crichton and Wendelin Van Draanen in the nationally-released book So, You Wanna Be a Writer?

The Los Angeles Times even raved, “If you simply want to enjoy some remarkable writing, it would be hard to find a book more satisfying than Dallas Woodburn’s.” I still have to pinch myself, but Pimple eventually sold more than 800 copies – to me, it seemed like 800,000!
More recently, I have begun writing articles for numerous national magazines including Writer’s Digest, Justine, and Writing, and books including Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV.

I also write a regular “Teen Talk” column for Family Circle magazine about teen/parent relationships – from a teenager’s unique perspective. And this summer, I released my second book, a collection of short stories titled 3 a.m., which is already garnering rave reviews. (“Woodburn is a very gifted writer whose work celebrates the beauty and humor of everyday life.” – Laurie Stolarz, author of the best-selling Blue is for Nightmares series.)

I have received letters from readers across the nation, and even Canada, saying they can relate to my stories. Hearing that I’ve connected with a reader is, in my opinion, one of the most rewarding aspects of being a writer. But at the same time, I know there are countless individuals who are not affected by my writing in the least – because they truly cannot read my words.

Illiteracy is a very serious problem in our society today. A recent study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education found that half – HALF! – the adult population (an estimated ninety-million Americans) does not possess the most basic level of reading ability. This in turn leads to a higher likelihood of poverty, crime, and unemployment.

Helping battle illiteracy is one of my lifelong goals. It is why I also used a portion of Pimple’s profits to found “Write On!” – a non-profit organization to encourage kids to read and write through essay contests, read-a-thons, and an inspirational website (www.zest.net/writeon). I am using a portion of the profits from 3 a.m. to set up a Write On Scholarship Fund to help send a deserving student to a writing camp each summer.

In addition, a couple years after Pimple debuted, I started an annual Holiday Book Drive with the motto “Toys get broken, but books last a lifetime.” In the past four years I have collected and distributed 6,390 new books to underprivileged kids who might not otherwise have received anything for Christmas. My book drive brings me the most pride of any of my endeavors. It not only gives books to disadvantaged children – just as importantly, it shows them people care. From a one-person effort it has evolved into an entire community of volunteers, with collection boxes at local bookstores, post offices, and schools. I have learned that together, we can help give sad tales a happier storyline.

After all, I know firsthand about sad tales turning happy. Born three months prematurely, I weighed a mere two pounds, six ounces, and back in 1987 the chances that I would survive were extremely small as well. A team of surgeons flew to my small hometown of Santa Maria and delivered me by an emergency Cesarean section, then took me to the state-of-the-art Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Fresno, where I stayed for eight touch-and-go weeks.

On my desk I have a framed photograph of my sickly newborn self, a tiny skin-and-bones infant inside a high-tech Plexiglas incubator and hooked up to an array of medical monitors and wires, tubes and needles. To others, the photograph may come into focus as heart-wrenching and tragic, but what I see is a portrait of inner strength and survival. Indeed, the sickly infant in the faded photo has become my personal cheerleader, silently urging me on through every new challenge – physical, academic, spiritual – I undertake. I know the preemie-who-was-me will continue to inspire the grown-up-me in my journey to become The Female John Steinbeck and make a lasting impression with my heartfelt written words. Too, the preemie-in-the-photo keeps the grown-up-me grounded during the highs of success, and gives me perspective during the low times by simply reminding me how blessed I am to be alive and healthy.

One of the surgeons who delivered me told my dad that May 29th night: “Your daughter is a real fighter.” I guess the doctor was right. Actually, I know he was. I was a fighter. I am still. Indeed, whenever I am faced with a challenge, I think about those words – “Your daughter is a fighter” – and I draw strength.

I often need this strength when I sit down to write.
Because in truth, while writing thrills me, it also terrifies me. Sometimes I think wrestling alligators must be less daunting. Some of my friends think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy, too. Running on the cross-country team is one thing – “You mean you actually like to run?! Doesn’t that get boring?” – but at least out on the running trails I’m surrounded by my teammates who are just as looney as I am. Wrestling alligators is quite a different matter. Why do I choose to spend hours each day or night with my fingers tapping across – or worse, sitting motionless on – the keyboard, staring at a computer screen?

Why, indeed? I still don’t really have an answer. I guess because writing is a lot like running – and not just because it’s an activity most normal people regard with eyebrows raised. Running is hard, but – as I learned when I was forced to sit out my high school sophomore and junior cross-country seasons because of leg injuries that eventually required surgery – not running is harder. The same goes with writing. Writing is hard – tortuous, tedious, boring, scary. But, for me at least, not writing is harder.

So. I am a coward. I take the easier route. I keep writing. And writing. And writing some more. Why? I guess because the thrills are worth it. I may not always enjoy the sometimes-tedious, sometimes-dull, sometimes-terrifying process of writing – but I love the sweet satisfaction of having written.

French philosopher Denis Diderot once wrote, “Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.” I feel blessed to have already discovered my great passion; to know that I want to study Creative Writing at the University of Southern California and further pursue my craft. My great passion for writing has inspired me to push beyond self-doubt and take the risk of sharing my words with others.

I shared Pimple’s success with you earlier – what I didn’t tell you about was my “failures.” I could wallpaper my bedroom with all the rejection slips I’ve received from editors. But I am a preemie; I am “a fighter”; I keep writing. And all the while, my great passion for wrestling alligators burns brighter with each sunrise.

About the Author:

Dallas Woodburn’s recently released collection of short stories, 3 a.m., is available at http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/. Her writing credits include the magazines Family Circle, Writer’s Digest, and Justine, and the books So, You Wanna Be a Writer? and Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV. Dallas is a Creative Writing major at the University of Southern California. Visit her website at www.zest.net/writeon.

© Dalllas Woodburn 2005
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A Ben and Jerry Night

2005-08-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

Dawn Rachel Carrington

Crying again and no, it has nothing to do with my boyfriend’s forgetfulness. I mean, it’s entirely feasible he would forget my birthday. After all, it only comes around once a year.

No, I’m crying for a different reason. Rejection-that horrid word that’s the bane of every writer’s existence. Yes, I’d been rejected. And yes, I’ve heard the patronizing attempts to reassure me the manuscript had been rejected not me personally. Big deal. I still held the letter in my hand.

"Thank you for your submission. However, we do not feel your project works for us. We wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere."

How could my three-hundred page historical romance novel not work for this publisher? With trembling hands, I checked the printout of the company’s guidelines. Historical. Check. Romance. Check. Novel. Check. I had all the components!

Sniffling, I crawled from my bed and shuffled to my computer. The screen blinked at me, the tumbling stars I once thought cute as a screensaver now mocking me.

It was my first rejection. And yes, I was taking it personally. How could I not? Did that publisher not know what I went through to get to this point in my life? I’d finished a novel-the next Gone with the Wind. I was going to be famous. Just not with this company.

I returned to the pint of melting ice cream.

That was almost eleven years and thirty pounds ago. I went through a lot of ice cream and other fattening foods before I finally absorbed the notion that I really wasn’t getting personally rejected. And then it finally came. I got THE CALL.

“We’d like to buy your story.”

Great. Perfect. But couldn’t my fifteen minutes of fame have come when I could still fit into that snazzy little pantsuit I bought half-price at Dillard’s three years ago

Dawn Rachel Carrington is a multi-published author of fantasy and paranormal romance, the editor of Vintage Romance Publishing and a freelance editor. She resides on the East Coast near the ocean which provides the perfect backdrop for working at home.

www.vrpublishing.com
www.dawnrachel.com

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Finding Freedom in the Common

2005-06-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

by Eveline Maedel

The other day I was browsing through a back issue of Personal Journaling magazine and came across an article about using a "commonplace book," or a book to record "unremarkable activities." The article discussed using a common book to keep a listing of the events of the day.

At last, I thought, something I can relate to! See, journaling for me has always been a sporadic process. Intimidated by the thought that any journaling has to be profound, I avoid writing in mine for weeks on end because I just don't have anything profound to say. I further complicate this process by reading journals of great writers and finding my entries pitiful in comparison. And so the page remains blank because the inner critic has already squashed the creative process.

On the other hand, keeping a list of the day’s happenings seemed to be painless. I decided to give it a try.

I'm one week into the practice of using the common book. It's a remarkably freeing process. The common book doesn't require long, dramatic entries - just simple, short bullet point lists will do. I can fill it out in ten minutes or less. I keep the notebook in my purse and often jot something down during the day. Some days the entries are pretty mundane - "got groceries," "chicken for supper," "finished newsletter." Once in a while something a little more inspiring slips through - "drove TJ to Red Rock and saw an awesome rainbow over the mountain. Skies soon clouded over again and went back to a misty rain. Weather site on the web calls it 'distant precipitation'. "

This listing of daily events frees me up to be more creative in my other journal. This journal is more like a scrapbook. Larger and with big blank pages that I can draw on, paste on, and scribble on. Sometimes I'll paste emails and letters into it, or notes from friends. I save movie and concert ticket stubs and paste those in - adding a little note about the performance. If I want to write a long diatribe, I have lots of room. I can cut out words and pictures from magazines and make a collage.

Because I've cleared out the clutter of my day and poured it into the common book, I can play in my scrapbook journal as often or as little as I want. I know I'll mine the common book later - to remember things that have happened, to write more about something I've recorded, to dig out nuggets for a poem.

No longer do my days seem to disappear in a blur. The minutiae of my everyday life is duly jotted down in my little common book.

© Eveline Maedel, 2005

Eveline Maedel is a part-time writer living in Northern Ontario. Married for 20 years and the mother of two boys she finds that writing helps her reflect on her spiritual journey. Besides editing her church’s newsletter, she has been published at Sisters in the Lord, Utmost Christian Writers, Sowing Seeds of Faith, Looking Up, Divine Eloquence, Christian Women Today, and Heart’s at Home. Her first book, Heart’s Desire, can be purchased by contacting her at maedel@shaw.ca or visiting her website at www.lulu.com/EvelineMaedel (All proceeds go to St. Mary’s church in Nipigon, Ontario). You can also visit her blog, EbenezerScribe at http://www.ebenezerscribe.blogspot.com./

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The Muse

2005-05-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

by Paula Lovgren

I was complaining to my husband the other day about missing my muse. He looked at me oddly and said “Muse? What the heck is that?” To which I looked at him oddly and realized, huh, not everyone has a muse. Weird. Because having a muse to me is as natural as having legs or arms or a head. It’s just there. But he’s an accounting/business type of guy and apparently there’s no need of a balance sheet muse or an international sales muse. Which I think is lucky really, or unfortunate, depending on the kind of day I’m having and the status of my relationship with my muse.

It’s my lot in life to be a creative person. And creative people seem to have muses, even when they try to pretend they don’t. Because believe me, I’ve tried hiding from mine. I’ve tried running away. I’ve tried simply ignoring it. I’ve been downright brutal and abused it, hoping eventually it would just GO AWAY! I don’t have time to write, I’m not good enough, I don’t need to write, it’s silly, it’s a waste of time, it’s too scary. But somehow, it was always there, tapping me on the shoulder, buzzing in my ear, nagging, not allowing me to let my dream, my talents, my happiness die.

So fine. Fine! I turn to face it and my muse is a skittish deer. Literally. A doe. A deer. A skittish female deer.

No, no, no! This is all wrong. This isn’t what I want. I want a hot, Latin, salsa dancing muse with washboard abs and a sexy accent. A male muse. Now that’s something I can work with. If I had the right muse, well, then I could write. I wouldn’t have done all that hiding and running. So I try to conjure him up. I close my eyes and envision him, smiling and sexy, swiveling his hips with those glistening abs and whispering great lines, paragraphs, whole novels to me in that incredible accent. Ah, yes, that I can work with. I open my eyes and there’s my muse, blinking her doe eyes at me, waiting patiently for me to get a clue.

I sigh and imagine some guy in Connecticut trying to work with his hot salsa dancing muse who taunts him with his perfect body and impossible dance moves wondering why in the world his muse can’t just be a skittish deer. A female deer. And I realize we all just have to work with what we have. We can rage against it and use it as still another reason to not do what we want to do, need to do but are too scared to do. We must let go.

So finally, after all the years of running and hiding from her, abusing her and insulting her by trying to make her something else, I turn to her and say (and not so kindly, I might add), “Fine, fine! What do you want?”

But my muse is a funny thing. While she doesn’t like to be ignored or abused neither does she like too much pressure. She doesn’t like to be confronted face to face. She will not be bullied into submission. She doesn’t like to be talked about like something I own or brought out into public for show and tell. In short, she’s high-maintenance. She likes to be approached gently, quietly with outstretched hand she can sniff for signs of deceit. If I move slowly, focus on her, respect her needs she gives me everything I need. Words flow like a torrent, metaphors drop from the sky, every answer is within reach. But, if I jump ahead, try to get to the end without really working, focus on my selfish material desires she scampers off into the dark leaving me alone with a jumble of words I can’t make fit no matter what I do.

Some days, she’s a royal pain in my butt. Other days she’s my greatest ally. It all depends on how I approach her. As much as I would like to blame all my writing failings on her, I can’t. It’s me. Do I show up? Do I let go? Do I listen? If the answer is yes, work flows. If the answer is no, well, that isn’t so pretty and I pay the price in frustration and feelings of worthlessness and failure. Who wants to feel like that? If I want to be happy, I just follow her lead. She hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

After I explained all this to my husband, he cocked his head to one side, blinked a couple of times and said, “So the muse is a deer, huh?” Oh sweet, sweet, literal boy. I love him so. I can only imagine what he’d think if I had gotten the hot salsa dancing muse!

© Paula Lovgren, 2005, all rights reserved

Paula Lovgren lives in Minnesota with her husband and two children. She is a former blackjack dealer, retail manager and marketing minion who is now realizing her genuine life as a mother, a writer, an avid gardener and a rabid basketball fan.
Visit her on the web at http://logicisoptional.blogspot.com/.

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The Power of Journaling for Writers

2005-05-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Queen Erica Miner shares . . .

Anne Frank ... Virginia Woolf …Anaïs Nin ... Sylvia Plath …

Henry David Thoreau ... James M. Barrie … Franz Kafka … Samuel Pepys

Some of these authors are best known for their journals; others have used journaling as both a source of inspiration and a stepping-stone to self-enlightenment. But they, among many others, have one important element in common: they have all engaged in that wonderful, creative activity we call journaling.

We all follow journeys of self-discovery at some points in our lives, but as writers we take these journeys on a daily basis. Journaling is a powerful way for us to chronicle these fantastic voyages. And as I like to point out in my journaling workshops and lectures, it’s no coincidence that the words ‘journey’ and ‘journaling’ come from the same root.

Not only do we gain personal insights and discover new layers of our psyches through journaling; it can also help us get our creative juices flowing and often help us through bouts of writers’ block. I’d like to share with you some of my thoughts and wisdom about journaling that have served me well, both as a writer and as a voyager through life.

Just to give you a little background about myself, I was born in Detroit and started journaling at the tender age of thirteen, when I was just starting high school. Already I found my journal to be my best friend, allowing me to confide my deepest secrets, fears and emotions at that hormone- infused time of life. My recall of that era is so vivid that I am able to recapture my experiences in the novel series I have been working on about a young girl growing up in the volatile 60s and 70s – even though those journals have long been lost.

Years later, when I was going through a devastating divorce, journaling saved my life – literally. Suddenly I found myself with two children to raise and support on my own, and on my worst days I was ready to jump out of my ninth floor apartment window – until I started journaling and poured my heart and soul into my writing instead. And I’m not the only one who has had that kind of profound experience from journaling: Oprah herself credits journaling for saving her life. How powerful is that?

Yes, a journal can see you through difficult times. It can also be a veritable treasure chest of creative ideas and personal history that you can use again and again in your writing. I fervently believe we all have a book inside of us, if not more than one. How many of us have family histories just crying to be told, for example? Your journal could become a novel, or a movie – witness ‘Angela’s Ashes’ or ‘In America.’ The possibilities are endless. A number of writers I have met recently are penning novels that stem from stories they have lived: one woman is writing a novel about living through the ‘blitz’ in London as a young girl; another, a man who survived the battlefields of World War II, is turning his story into a screenplay. Even our own personal family histories handed down by elderly family members can make for compelling writing.

What about travel journals? My own novel, Travels With My Lovers, started as a journal that I had written over a number of years. A number of my other travel experiences have ended up as articles in magazines. People love to read evocative descriptions of far-off places written from the point of view of an expressive observer. In fact, the entire June issue of Vision Magazine, to which I have contributed an article, is devoted to the ‘Traveler’s Path.’

There are so many other ways we can use journaling to enhance our lives. Journals have been kept to help women heal from traumatic illnesses: actress Lynn Redgrave published a book of her healing journey from cancer recently. I met a woman who keeps what she calls a ‘dinner table’ journal, chronicling her favorite culinary and entertaining experiences and the conversations that went along with them. Parents who are motivated enough to take the time to journal the miraculous changes that their babies go through from day to day are rewarded with a joyful record of their children’s early journeys through life.

And the beauty of all this is that you can journal in any way you like, in any form and under any circumstances. The only limitations are those of the human imagination.

So to get you started – or re-started, as the case may be – here are some of my suggestions for making your journaling journey pleasurable and rewarding.

Believe it or not, the type of equipment you use can be a major factor. It’s of utmost importance to choose the type of journal that will inspire you to crack it open and sully the pages with your thoughts and feelings. It can be a bound book of blank pages with a beautiful cover; an artist’s sketch book to which you can add your own inventive touches; a pocket-sized notebook for travel; or a journal with quotes from writers on artists on each page to help inspire you. There’s no limit to the types of journals you can find in stores and on the web.

It’s also important to use the type of writing implement that’s comfortable for you. If you have a favorite pen that feels nice in your hand or even makes your writing look more legible (trust me, even for hopelessly illegible penmanship like mine, there are pens that can do this!) then use that. Of course, if you prefer using your computer to journal, that will work well, too. I am often asked during my talks whether I prefer journaling in longhand or on my computer. I confess that I like to think of journaling as a cozy, intimate activity; and for that, only longhand will do.

Find your perfect time of day or night, when you can quiet your mind and let your thoughts flow. Sit by the fire or light a candle – both are conducive to deep concentration – and let your muse take over.

After you’re set up with that, here are just a few of the many ‘hints’ and techniques I’ve got up my sleeve to get those creative juices flowing:

· Create your own imaginary world and describe it in vivid detail
· Write about someone you met only once but still remember strongly
· Describe your favorite ‘secret hideaway’
And my own personal favorite:
· Recount your very first childhood memory

These are but a few of the wealth of possibilities for journaling that I like to impart to my readers. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send me an email through my website, http://www.ericaminer.com/. And for those of you for whom journaling is truly a passion and who would like to learn more, you may subscribe to my monthly newsletter in which I pass along a new set of journaling hints in each issue: http://www.ericaminer.com/newsletter.php.

The key is just to take pen in hand, or create a private journaling file on your computer, and see where your personal journey will take you. Once you settle into your own ‘ritual’ you will discover what you have been missing!

Author of Travels With My Lovers

Fiction Prize Winner,

Direct from the Author Book AwardsTop-rated Lecturer,

Celebrity Cruise Lines

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What I Need

2005-04-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2005

Today Twenty-Twenty publishing announces the winner of its $2000 blogging contest….the entrant had to write, in less than 500 words, why $2000 would mean the world to her. I wrote instead about my long-languishing novel: “Winning the contest won’t mean the world to me. Sorry. But it will mean a world to the world…it will mean that Late Night Nate lives. You will bestow legitimacy on Nate and Euclid. ‘Oh, no,’ I will say to the little time demons creeping up my steps, gobbling out my name. ‘I’m being paid. I must write about Euclid.’ Without the payola, I’m afraid the Houlkas will remain shrouded in the mists of my gray matter. Rena’s great fear will come true. Nobody will remember her. If I win, you will meet Nate, and probably be as fetched with him as everyone else.”

Mind you, I have $2000 stashed in a bank account with my name on it. I can use it any way I want. I have more than $2000. I could use that much and go back for more, a time or two. If $2000 was what it took to write Late Night Nate, or anything else, I could pay myself. So what’s stopping me?

I had to think about that for a while. Space, I always say. In Parting the Curtains, Maya Angelou said she left her house every morning to write in a hotel room. She said: It costs so much to write a decent sentence. It’s a very serious matter… And so I noticed at home…that when I would set myself up in a room—I always have art, and I have a serious collection—I would look up, and I’d think, “where did I get that? Now, did I buy it outright? Oh, yeah. No. I paid for that for over two years. Oh, yeah. I wonder, where is that artist? Is that hanging straight?” And there goes my concentration.

Concentration. Where does mine go? If I move, at least two, and as many as five, animals dog my steps. And they need something. To eat, or go pee, or they want me to throw them a toy. The phone rings, or I think of a call I have to make. E-mail. The clothes need washing, and by 10:30, I’d better have figured out what I am cooking for lunch. There are the flower beds, and those two rooms I never quite get to, and the closets. Don’t look in the closets.

Now, at the end of a day in the hotel room, Angelou said, I may have done two pages that are acceptable. But I have been trying. But at the end of a day if I am at home, if I have done two pages, it’s nothing. So I thought, it costs everything, so I better treat it seriously.

I don’t need $2000. What I need is space, and lack of accouterments, of clutter. I need concentration. I decide I need an office…a little room away from the house. Away from the life I have to give up if I am going to write at all. I began to daydream about the $2000 and my little room, austere, no phone line, even, with lots of windows, a second-story bower. Above a river. Above the green line of the trees. In such a room, I could weave magic, create worlds.

Sunday morning, I talked to a friend. I told her about my need of my little room. This is my friend who just finished a grueling two years of nursing school. She was not impressed. She has as many pets as I do, a husband (who feeds himself, by the way), a home and all that goes with it. After I revealed my secret, she was at first silent; then she said, “I wonder if you don’t have attention deficient disorder.”

Of course she was right. I must be ADD, me, the luckiest of women, with no outside job, no inside kids, if I can’t write, the problem is me, not the world. Why, I thought, why have I wanted to be a writer, and at 55, am still wanting and not being? Flawed, I am. Ruined. Or maybe it was lunch. That 10:30 a.m. deadline looming over my head, interrupting the smooth flow of my most capable thoughts. Perhaps I should give up lunch. We could make sandwiches and I could cook later in the afternoon. We would have an early supper, and I would have long, lovely hours to write in.

I broached the subject to my husband before we gathered up the dogs for the pre-bed romp. He sat in his chair, staring out the window. He works forty hours a week at a job whose only benefit is it pays him enough money to put some away for retirement. Hearing me whimper about time probably made him remember F. Scott Fitzgerald’s reflections on men who own yachts: “It’s hard to feel sorry for a boy on a boat.” After a bit, he said, “’bout time for bed?”

“We were having a conversation,” I said. “I did my part. It wasn’t a monologue. It’s your turn now.”

“I can’t help you figure out how to write,” my husband said. “I can’t do the man thing and tell you how to fix it.”

It’s not really about lunch. I wouldn’t cook in the afternoons, anyway, after he’s home. We would end up eating cheesy sandwiches until one of us fell dead from a heart attack. I can write, say from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. The dogs can last that long. Any lunch that needs to happen has plenty of time after 10:00, after three hours of serious writing. If I have a visit to make that must occur in the morning, I can reschedule the three hours in the afternoon or at night. I don’t have to answer the phone. I can disconnect the internet, really, I can. And though it hasn’t happened in almost fifty years, not for a book, except for that family cookbook, and I did leave home for three hours in the morning until it was finally organized and I could work around the interruptions at home, it can happen, it will happen this lifetime.

It’s not space, or lack of clutter that I need. I don’t need that little room above the trees, though I already miss it; not even concentration (I don’t think I’m really ADD, not seriously, and I don’t think I can do the speed which ameliorates it). I need permission. My parents are dead, my children off in far states making, kind of, a life for themselves that doesn’t need my daily intervention, my husband isn’t going divorce me over missing a meal or the dirty kitchen floor, or we’d already be cold soup by now. So the permission I need is my own.

And it happened today, along with a boost from the Universe which kindly killed the service for thousands of internet customers. I wrote…not for three hours, but four, and was in the middle of making lunch when my internet company called to see if I was back on line. I wasn’t. I listened to Davis as he ran me through my paces, trying to restore my service. I knew I had turned off the burners under the mystery spaghetti and the mushrooms, and that my husband would come in a bit after twelve and have to wait until lunch was good and ready. He would still have plenty of time to eat before going back to work.

Which is what happened. And I discovered I don't really need permission. I just need to do it. Do what I want to have happen. Or as my spiritual guide book says, “application rather than theory, experience rather than theology.” If tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I continue to be experiential, no magic remedy is needed, or prayers, either. Today, while my internet service is still down, before I learn Twenty Twenty publishing really isn’t going to send me $2000, I am the winner. And every day I get up and do it again, I get first prize.

© Donna Warner, 2005, all rights reserved

Donna Warner, or Camellia, Queen of the Late Bloomers on the Queen Power Forum, and official Wordsmith for QueenPower, wants to know. How would your life change if you had $2000 to apply to your dream life?…No, it’s not a contest, and you won’t win anything if you tell her about it, but if you tell QueenPower about it, you might create a road map with shortcuts to your best life.

http://www.queenpower.com
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This and That...It's About Time

2005-04-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

The focus for April has been Writing and Time. Here is a little collection from a few of the Queens who have had a bit to say on the subject. Cara, Queen Cookie, tells us how to be an effective CEO of your own company…which really means managing your life. Queen Meredith gives us a picture of those times life takes over and manages us. Queen Camellia discovers what happens when you work like a man. And for dessert, Queen Jaw Jaw reveals the pay-off of being a successful life-CEO.

And…time has gotten away from us in April, and there is more to say about the dearth of it. So we are continuing the subject through May. Please join us and tell us if you are managing your dream life, or if it’s managing you. Are you creating your dream life? Is not, what’s holding you back? Have you created the life you dreamed of, only to discover you’re exhausted? Do you have time to tell us about it? Have you found balance in the life you want and the life your living? If so, we need to know what you are doing. We’ll be publishing essays this month on Dreams and Time…and your dream life doesn’t have to be about writing. Don’t want to write a blog article? Just contact Donna@www.queenpower.com and I’ll include your comments on the blog.

5 Tips for WAHMs by Cara Sonnier

So you thought working at home would be an easy thing? Sometimes it’s just like working outside the home, or even worse. Along with your full time job as domestic goddess, you are now a CEO of your own company. Here are a few tips for keeping your family as priority while reaching your business goals:

1 - Prioritize. Get your Day Planner and set aside all the time you want to spend with your family. Mark out your daughter's soccer schedule, evenings out with your husband and all other family appointments like doctor visits. When you have someone calling for an appointment for your services or to book a home party, you will have all your "business" time in front of you.

2 - Delegate. Discover what you can and can't live with when it comes to housework. Do you hate dirty dishes hanging out overnight? Can you live with dust? Does it really bug you to have toys all over the floor? Once you have established that, delegate responsibilities paid off. Also employ hubby to help out too!

3 - Automate. Technology is a wonderful thing. Use email forms, voicemail, or ipods to your advantage. Let the voicemail get your business call if little Suzie is screaming her head off and you can't take time to devote to your customers. Do not let technology overtake your free time. Machines are there to help you do your tasks, not to make more time for more tasks.

4 - Re-evaluate. Every once in a while (I recommend every 3 months), look at what you are doing and redo things as needed. Your son may have earned his next karate belt and now his classes are on a different day. Change your calendar to reflect this. Update your voicemail or email responses to reflect your new schedule.

5 - Enjoy. You are a WAHM (Work at home mom) for a reason- to be there for your kids. So whether they are in school or you are home schooling, set side time to go to the park, take in a movie, or just goof off at home. Resist the temptation to do business on family time.

© Cara Sonnier, 2005Author Cara Sonnier (admin@thedessertbox.com) and her husband Eddie along with their 2 children live in southern Louisiana. She is a home schooling mom and owner of The Dessert Box http://www.thedessertbox.com/

Life and Assorted Blahblahby Her Royal Queenness Meredith

The following piece was originally posted on forums sponsored by Boomer Women Speak as an answer to the question posed by another member: "Where's Meredith?"

An update on the insanity that passes for my life:

1. The Yard. After 2 weeks of being jerked around by both homeowners assosiation and regular insurance, both HOA and Allstate decided that none of the damage is covered. 2 days later, HOA sent us an official letter telling us our yard was an eyesore and we had to clean it. Yeah, your yard would be an eyesore too if a 25' cactus uprooted and took with it all the landscaping on that side of the house, and all of the above was basically everywhere. We called one person about doing the work but they haven't gotten back.Husband and I put in a little time cleaning what we could get to, but still need a chainsaw to cut the cactus. Still can't get into our yard except through the garage.

2. and I have company coming Friday and Saturday, which means that we NEED to do some housecleaning.

3. and as far as the poetry programs: we're having 3 workshops this quarter as our main program, and one month ago presenter #3 cancelled, which means that I had to get someone else ASAP. I had spent three hours getting publicity together for the person whocancelled and it was all ready to go, and then I had to do everything all over again for the new person.

4. the website thingy: got the new website but NEVER got the intro letter telling me how to log into my account to edit etc. Sent several emails before I got a human reply, and all tripod said was "we already sent you that info; you should check your junk mail settings blahblah." To which I replied: "been there, done that, ain't there; can you just resend it so I can edit my account already?" to which there was no reply, so I just went in and kept pressing buttons and entering variables for about an hour until I got it to work.

6. and then there were 2 consumer products that were lemons, which translates into 3-4 hours EACH between emails and phone calls. Maybe more; or maybe it just seemed like more because of the aggravation.

7. oh and jewelry -- do I actually still make that stuff? Yeah, I think I remember... it pays the bills or something... Been spending ~12 hours each week just on DISPLAY, cleaning, replacing and whatnot, for the upcoming season. My big season starts in May, every bit as good as December for me with Mothers' Day, graduation, brides et al. So in between the rest of the insanity, I've been making up stock. Plus selling every weekend, to keep up the cash flow.8. I've been so short on time, I didn't even have the plane tickets for the April 22-24 poetry convention until 11:57 Friday night, leaving me a whopping 2 minutes to still get the "2 weeks in advance" fare.9. I'm sure there's more, but I'm too exhausted to remember. Getting real close to burnout here.

All of this happened within a two-week time span. Selected areas of the house sort of got cleaned. Company came and went through the garage door. The poetry workshop was magnificent. The website was edited, and the consumer lemons are history.
This coming weekend? I'm one of the invited speakers at the annual convention of California Chaparral Poets, the oldest and largest poetry organization in California. Hopefully I will write my speech sometime before I board the plane Friday morning. And pack my poetry, my books, and extra socks and underwear.

©Meredith Karen Laskow

Meredith Laskow would call herself a starving artist, but the scales indicate otherwise. In her "day job", the one that allegedly pays the bills, she creates gorgeous jewelry made from semi-precious gemstones, freshwater pearls and an assortment of really interesting beads. She has two jewelry websites: http://www.meredithbead.com/ and http://members.tripod.com/meredithbead-ivil/
May promises to be a busy month for jewelry, as customers plan for Mothers' Day, graduation, weddings, vacations and divorces, all of which she is happy to accessorize.
Her "writing job" as Poet Laureate of Placentia California Library District is kinda-sorta nominally prestigious, and extremely non-paying. Her philosophy on life and poetry can be seen at http://www.placentialibrary.org/laureate/poetlaureate.htmHer books are pictured at http://www.placentialibrary.org/laureate/books.htmBooks can be ordered directly from and autographed by the poet at meredkl-poet@yahoo.com -- provided they don't all sell out this weekend!
In July or August Ms. Laskow will take part in a major archaeological expedition to unearth her bedroom.

Catch This by Donna Warner

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base. Dave Barry

What was my biggest challenge at work this week? This week? I have a huge project I’m trying to finish and my boss is a slave driver. The housekeeper has gotten so slack, this morning there wasn’t even toilet paper in the ladies’ room. The snack vendor hasn’t shown up, and the boss expects me to provide refreshments for the crew. I don’t know what has gotten into the secretary—she has quit doing those ‘we care about you’ gestures which keep everyone feeling warm and cozy. This would not be a problem, but since I am a woman, my boss thinks I should take over all these duties, and complete my own work in a timely fashion. So, I take it home. Somehow I manage one hot meal a day, but my clothes are in the floor. I’ve taken to sniffing them when I pick up something to wear. A while back my husband started mentioning Obsession, and though I’m taking precautions not to stand up wind from anybody, I don’t think he was talking about the perfume. Now, he just fumbles around, shaking my hand, and muttering, “It’s been nice to meet you. You must come back and visit sometime.”

Oh. I almost forgot. I work at home. I am the housekeeper, the night watchman, the secretary, the snack vendor. What’s worse, I am the boss. I no longer think blind Milton mistreated his two daughters, but wish my two kids were the kind to stand and wait to serve me. I now identify with consciousness-guru Gurdjieff instead of the little niece he had stationed by his chair all day to replenish his coffee when it got cold. In odd, spare moments I fondly remember the housekeeper Alice from the Brady bunch, and wonder if any of my cousins have hit a hard patch and are desperate for room and board. I want a wife…one better at house cleaning that I ever was. Frankly, my dear, cleaning has never been my strong suit.

I love the work of word smithing. When I was younger, I used to think if I were good at it, it would bring me love. Now it’s a joy unto itself. After I finish this current project, I would be deliriously ecstatic if I could spend every day, every hour, every second, writing about joy and happiness and being in the moment, and friendship and sharing and folks loving one another.

Wait. I already have that. And if I only write about it, then would I still have it?

The biggest challenge is when I keep waking up at night, so excited to get back to work I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. It’s knowing this project is winding down, and wondering if I am in for the let down. It’s already being famished for the next idea I’ve spotted coming down the pike. It’s realizing that if an infant’s life is in danger, I would at least consider checking the bases out first. It’s knowing, if I give myself the opportunity, I would work like a man. Scary, ain’t it?

© Donna Warner
Donna Warner is QueenPower’s WordSmith and Advice Aunt. She is compiling a book of essays on everyday spirituality, Being in America, http://beinginamerica.blogspot.com/
and a book on intuitive knowing, The Little Voice.

And, as always, Jaw Jaw has the final word:

are you kidding me? Time? What's that? We wait our entire young lives for our kids to be grown and gone so we would have this precious commodity...and then...we are certain we could/would/should write a best seller. What happens? They go out, find a mate, marry, have grandchildren, and then like that wasn't enough...they suddenly LIKE you and want to spend more TIME with you. Bunch of sadists if you ask me. Time...ha! What a joke. JJ

Georgia Richardson - a.k.a., Queen Jaw JawThe Queen of Experienceshttp://www.queenjawjaw.com/http://allthingsroyal.blogspot.com/Humor Columnist for Shoals Woman Magazine, The Monthly View, and Penwomanship

http://www.queenpower.com
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Don't Feel Like Working On Your Dream Today?

2005-04-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Queen Me shares . . .

Please check back with us Friday! We'll have the blog posted soon:). You know the line . . . "Oops, we're experiencing technical difficulties!" Or maybe it's more appropriate to describe it as 'life'.

http://www.queenpower.com

You're Invited to a Publicity Party

2005-04-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

Queen of Frugal Promotion, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, shares . . .

An Excerpt from a much longer chapter on Media Kits in
THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER:

HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T

Many authors don’t crash the FREE publicity party because, although they’re writers, they fear the process of assembling a press release.

They may worry about looking less than professional to the media. Kind of like we worried about what to wear to the prom when we were in high school. I promise you this party is lots easier to dress for. Here are the basics for sending your release off in style.

■Use a header of only five lines on your existing business stationery.
The first says MEDIA RELEASE. Put it in caps, large type, boldface, 18-point Ariel typeface with a space between each letter. Justify it on the left of your page.

Leave a space and enter CONTACT in 14-point, Ariel caps. Left justify it. If you’re the one who knows the most about what you are publicizing, this will be your name, phone, fax and e-mail address, each on its own line. Revert back to upper and lower case for the details. Include this information even if it is in your letterhead. I have read advice to authors that they use a fake name and pretend they have a publicist. Don’t do it. Editors are on to it. If you’re not a consummate actor/fibber, you’ll only make yourself look foolish.

■Release information goes one space beneath that. Type in For Immediate
Release in 12-point bold Times New Roman, also left justified. Change this only if there were a very good reason for doing so, in which case it would read: For Release After … with your chosen date. Space is an issue for editors. Don’t limit them unless you must.

■Your headline is centered in 16-point Ariel bold. This catches an editor or producer’s attention. Study headlines in the newspaper. Avoid anything cute or elaborate at first. More advanced partygoers will learn how to make their headlines catchy. Choose the most newsworthy (read that original, unique or honor-driven) element of your story to feature.

■The lead should be simple and brief. It is the first sentence in the body of your release. State who, how, where and what. Check to be sure that the “when” includes the day of the week and the date. A sample would be, “Joseph Martin was honored by Authors of America at a gala ball Tuesday, March 8, at Rockville’s City Hall.”

■The body of the release follows, single-spaced. Leave a space between paragraphs. Do not indent. Mention the single most newsworthy aspect of your story in the paragraph after the lead: “Martin was a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1976.” Or even, “Martin has been a Rockwille resident for more than a decade.” Add details to the next paragraph: You might credit those who are involved with planning carefully include the town in which they live after their names. This will give editors an idea for local angles, if needed.

■Your permanent promotional paragraph comes next. Put it together once and it may only need an occasional update. It is your sales pitch: My short version says, “Howard-Johnson is the author of the award-winning This is the Place, and her next book, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, will be published later this year.” If you have space, you should also include a blurb about your book and/or any local organizations you belong to or important offices you’ve held. This kind of information can convince an editor that you are newsworthy. Use it in every release you send out.

■Media kit or photos are mentioned next in parentheses, 10-point bold, Times New Roman, centered: (A media kit and photos are available on request.)

■Fax your releases; that is the cheapest way. Include a Fax cover sheet to direct it to the proper editor. This will usually be the features or book editor. For radio and TV, it will be addressed to the producer of each show. Check by phone to make sure the name is current and spelled correctly. If you send photos with your release, use envelopes to match your letterhead and print each address using the envelope feeder on your printer.

Warning: When your release is complete, you won’t want to be overdressed. One page or less is best.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s award-winning novel, This is the Place, was recently honored by her publisher for exceptional sales in its first year of publication. She is a fashion columnist for the Pasadena Star News and writes movie reviews for the Glendale News-Press. The e-book version of THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T topped its e-book sites sales in only a few days (http://ebookad.com/ Learn more at: www.tlt.com/authors/carolynhowardjohnson.htm.

http://www.queenpower.com

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Feng Shui by Donna Warner

2005-04-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

There have been some changes at my house. Not large ones…fifteen minute ones…but the results are large. For a week, my sink has been clean. Not just clean (which includes the gross goop which had collected under the faucet covers), but shining. And the baked-on crud in the microwave? Gone. The clothes? All washed. Washed, folded and put away. My bathroom is clean. A tiny corner of my flowerbed is ready for spring herbs and marigolds, and I am sure I will have zinnias blooming this summer, the way I’ve hoped for three years now. Space aliens haven’t spirited me away and left the daughter my blessed mother wished she had. I still have books stacked in the hall, and the extra bedroom and the writing room require a map to navigate. But their time is coming, in fifteen minutes stretches.

You might ask what this has to do with writing or queens? I’ll tell you—order out of chaos. It seems as if most of my life, I have been running full steam ahead, dogs and children off the tracks, or I’ve been goofing off. Either way it seems my days, indeed, my life, often has evaporated while I haven’t been paying attention. If something needs doing, I can do it. But if I have a goal, or a small dream, I am easily distracted. Often I feel as if it’s the night before a term paper is due, and my note cards are jumbled and sparse. In fact, when Allyn and I discussed my editing Grab the Queen Power, I indicated my need to sneak up on her manuscript, to avoid the term-paper syndrome. Instead, I jumped into the soup of editing like the ship was sinking and all the lifeboats were gone. Neither way is the method I want to use to navigate my life.

But then the Queens’ Forum came along, and I had the opportunity to listen and speak to women who are creating the life they want. Instead of cleaning the kitchen, I played on the forums. And took notes about how other women managed to stay on task as they invented their own lives. Jaw Jaw speaks of beginning to organize her writing life by slapping sticky notes on her jacket. I wish I could find that post, but I have already looked way past my fifteen minutes.

The Queen of Step lets us know the dream life isn’t always what we imagine when she laughs about making her work-at-home occupation a ‘Vocation/Vacation’ for young women who want to test-drive the life of a mother/wife/at-home-writer. She says: “We've actually had people request to take a V-V with ME! Well...we try to make the V-Vs really active, and unless they want to try to swim in my roller coaster of a head, I'm afraid they'd be pretty bored...I can see it now.........Well, first we're going to take my children to school, then we'll go back to my home office...but first we'll stop in the kitchen for coffee and check the dogs' water and food bowls... now we're going to sit at the computer for 7 hours, check email obsessively, write, juggle too many projects, take a break to check the QueenPower forum, make some phone calls (excuse all the dogs barking and pawing at you - I do work from my home office, after all, and their dog door is in my office)...lunch? sure, just bring it in here - we'll eat in front of the computer...oh, is it 3:30 already? I hear the school bus outside (excuse the dogs going wild - happens every day)...we'll take a break to say hello to my kids, hear about their day, sign folders, approve the snacks they choose, give the evil eye if they make a move to the computer or TV without doing their homework first...then it's back to the computer for another hour before we start dinner (what do we have that's healthy and we can make FAST?)...now it's back to the computer for another hour...my husband is home...now he'll come share the office with us for a while, and we won't get much work done because we'll talk...everyone is getting hungry so we better finish dinner...wait - where are you going??...that was just the first shift!...o.k., o.k., take a 3 hour break and meet me back in my office at 9:30pm, then we'll work on the computer until midnight, maybe 1 a.m. or even 2:30 (if we can't stand sitting in the desk chair any longer, we'll pull out the laptop and work on the couch in the family room)....wait!...where are you going?”

Did you change your mind and stick around? Still determined to have that life you dreamed of? Queen Cookie has more information for us. She says you must prioritize, delegate, automate, re-evaluate, and enjoy…a five-step formula for being , and mother, wife, CEO and Queen of your life.

Okay, but I was still missing a piece—or a backbone, initiative, or focus—whatever is required to get it all done without discovering I was dog-tired and sleepy, and I hadn’t finished the essay again today. I followed Queen Jaw Jaw’s advice. I bought sticky pads, notebook paper, appointment calendars. I started tracking my time to see where it was hemorrhaging.

Then Queens Dawn and Clarissa mentioned something called Flylady and fifteen minutes. Off I went to investigate (better, my dear, than toting out the trash). Flylady suggested I could reclaim my life in five, ten, and fifteen minute increments, beginning with cleaning my sink.

I gave it try. And it’s worked for a week. Not only worked, but it’s fun. When I do something for fifteen minutes, I really can see the result; I don’t experience the trapped feeling that the task will never get done, and anyway will just have to be done over again. Now I look forward to the next time I can do a little more. It’s true. Where I saw weeds, now I see the possibility for zinnias.

But more than that, I am doing it all for me. Not for my mother, not for company, not for my family. By taking these small definite steps, I am claiming my house. And even better, now I can write for an hour and love it. I can love the one I’m with. Bit by bit, I am claiming more time for writing. I am fitting into my life.

Here’s a fact about your dreams. Unless you do the steps necessary to nurture them, they will not manifest. And if you have to step over the trash to take those steps, you have slowed the process, often until it’s dead in the water. Queen Cookie was right…if you are too tired to enjoy the life your living, even if it’s the one you’ve dreamed of, your dreams are unfulfilled.

Feng Shui is the practice (and it can be an art) of positioning objects according to the positive and negative effects of the flow of chi, or energy. Our dreams are our energy. When they are blocked, we are blocked. Our physical backgrounds can mirror our inner energy. What Flylady has done for me is to open my home to the flow of chi. This week I have not been stopped by dust in the corners, or my usual lament, not enough time to do it all. Flylady suggests taking baby steps and utilizing small increments of time. It works for dishes. And I must ask myself, if zinnias are possible, why not essays? Or books?

This month I invite you to look at how time flows through your life. My momma always said you can tell what a person values by what she gives her time to. We all know when push comes to shove, we make time for the really important elements of our lives. April’s Queens Write about Writing theme is about scheduling the life you were meant to live. Are you creating your dream life? If not, what’s holding you back? Have you created the life you’ve dreamed of, only to discover you’re exhausted? Do you have time to tell us about it? Have you found balance in the life you want and the life your living? If so, we need to know what you are doing. We’ll be publishing essays this month on Dreams and Time…and your dream life doesn’t have to be about writing. Don’t want to write a blog article? Just contact me and I’ll incorporate your comments on the blog.

© Donna Warner, April, 2005 all rights reserved

Flylady’s hints and techniques can be found at
http://flylady.net/index.asp

Queen Jaw JawThe Queen of Experiences
http://www.shoalswoman.com/
http://www.penwomanship.com/
http://www.themonthlyview.com/

Kelly Kirkendoll Shafer (Queen of Step)Founder, Stepfamilies Work!A Place for Stepfamilies to Find Help, Hope and InspirationAuthor, 29 Ways to Make Your Stepfamily Work
http://www.stepfamilieswork.com/
http://www.shafercommunications.com/

Queen Cookie
The Dessert BoxDelectable desserts delivered to your door!
http://www.thedessertbox.com/

Queen Clarissa
http://www.travelingtealady.com/

Donna Warner
http://beinginamerica.blogspot.com/

QueenPower.com
http://www.queenpower.com
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Why Write, or, Why I Write by Jean Madigan

2005-03-29T07:55:00.000-08:00

WHY WRITE, OR, WHY I WRITE
I thought about writing how confused and depressed I am, but a lot of other thoughts came into my head and jumbled my decision on what to write.

JOURNAL ENTRY 3/24/05

"Why am I depressed? Why do I envy others their success? Because I feel that there's not enough left for me. Several authors have said we're supposed to write because we have a story to tell and not for money, but if we get the money, that's gravy.

Why do I write? Because there’s some burning desire within me to tell the world about something that’s important to me. It might only affect one other person, but if it helps that person, my mission has been accomplished. When I DON’T write, I feel like something is missing in my soul. Throughout the years, I gave up too quickly when rejections piled up and no one was around to answer my questions. For the past two years, I’ve hung in there, trying not to give up, because if I persevere, I will write to the best of my ability.

Do I feel that someone is against me because I'm not selling stories? Who would I sell them to, with my endings? It’s not really THAT important that I sell them. I just want to get the process right and then go to town and write my heart out.

I truly AM grateful to Donna for telling me to tighten plot, omit adjectives and adverbs, not tell, but show, etc. It's painful though, to know that I've been on the wrong track all these years, to know why my stories haven't sold. I guess it's a process, just like being a Christian is a process. It’s not something you stumble upon and then it's accomplished. I'm just disappointed no one pointed these things out to me before, but this is no time for self-pity or crying over spilled milk, it's time for action, time for change."

Whatever success I have is due to the Holy Spirit within me. He is responsible for the quality of my writing, and I am responsible for the quantity. I ask for Him to make things clear to me and he does, when I listen.

© Jean Madigan, March, 2005, all rights reserved

Jean M. Madigan is a writer living with her husband in Phoenix, Arizona and has stories published at the following sites: http://www.sistersinthelord.org,/
http://www.penwomanship.com%20/
http://www.anthologiesonline.com/
http://www.whowon.com/. Nonfiction
Madigan is also the Women In History columnist for penwomanship.com http://www.worthfinding.com/ry
columnist for penwomanship.com
Links can be found at her website:
http:jean.handsforhope.com

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The Comadrazgo of Queen Power

2005-03-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

I’ve been playing on the Queen Power Forum, reading about other women and how they turn their attention to their own interests even in the bustle of families and jobs. There is Clarissa who has been an at-home mom for five children, and whose beloved volunteer assignment turned sour. She first applied at other agencies, then conceived a dream of a personal business that would use her skills and interests—and the Traveling Tea Lady was born. Lauralulu had one job her entire adult life. When her company announced it was closing, she searched her heart and turned down a sure bet doing the same thing, even though her husband was dealing with a serious illness. Within weeks she had a new job in a completely different field. All she has to do is decide if this is the job for her. Jaw Jaw worked and raised two children, and helped care for her father during his last illness. Then she wrote her first article, one about her father, and two years later she is still writing and on the cusp of a new career as America’s funniest humor writer. QueenMe, who made sensible decisions concerning her education and career, recognized the familiar, safe path was closing her heart. She chose instead to search for a new way, a better way, her way…and has invited us to join her. Woman after woman, queen after queen, has come forward to say, “This is how I honor my talents, my interests, my dreams.”

Judith Ortiz Cofer in her article “The Woman Who Slept with One Eye Open” speaks of her life honoring her choices: the traditional ones women make, and her own decision to be a writer as well. She talks of two women from her family’s folk stories who were germane to her development as a creative artist and as a free person. One was Maria Sabida. She outsmarted a murderous thief who sedated his brides with tainted figs and killed them; she first won his heart and then married him—though she always slept thereafter with one eye open. The other woman, Maria La Loca, was jilted at the altar. Driven crazy by unrequited love, she wandered her village, mourning and alone.

Cofer says from Maria Sabida she learned to claim macho—“the arrogance to assume that you belong where you choose to stand, that you are inferior to no one, and that you will defend your domain at whatever cost.” To be a woman and a mother and to realize one’s personal dreams requires a woman to have macho, or else, like Maria La Loca, to live as if you have been abandoned, mad with love lost.

John Dufresne in The Lie That Tells a Truth echoes Cofer’s evocation to stand up for your dreams; in his case, writing. “Well, the plain truth is that if you want to write, you can,” he says. “And if you want to write but you don’t write, you’re inviting madness...Wanting to write means, of course, that you’re not writing. And wanting to write but not writing will lead to frustration, guilt, and regret. And regret eats the soul. Writing, on the other hand, leads to discovery, insight, and accomplishment. The fact is, it’s easier to write than it is to want to write. Just pick up your pen, put down a word. Any word.”But Dufresne warns there is a price to be paid for your dream—“You have to pay for the privilege of writing with your time. But that’s not so hard. You only have to want to write as much as you want to watch TV or go to the movies. You manage to get those done. You can probably mange all three. You pay with your time, your patience, your persistence. And one more thing. You have to be willing to fail, to see you aren’t half so clever as you thought you were. (But then humility is the first step on the road to wisdom.)”

Dufresne goes on to warn that the people in your world might present as much resistance to the writing life as your critical self. If you’re writing (or trying to put any dream in place) you aren’t accomplishing all of the tasks necessary for a smooth and uncomplicated existence. If fact, it may appear you are not accomplishing anything at all. He says to tell your loved ones, “you are not going to be good, that you’re not going to do what you’re supposed to do…Tell them you’ll get the house painted, mop the dust bunnies under the bed, you’ll pay the gas bill but not right now. Tell them you love them, and you’ll see them again just as soon as you find the verb that will make this sentence sing.”

Cofer takes the discussion of resistance a step further. The murderous/thief/husband is a metaphor for “the destroyer of ambition, drive, and talent. It does not have to be a man. It is anything or anyone who keeps the artist from her work. To marry the killer means…that the artist has wedded the negative forces in her life that would keep her from fulfilling her mission and, furthermore, that she has made the negative forces work for her instead of against her.” Still, this artist must watch what she eats, avoid the dreamy fruit which will render her unconscious, and sleep with one eye open in order to protect her creative life, the dream which is hers alone.

In my own life, I have been the one who exhorts myself to be good…to leave the writing desk and look toward others to see if I’m worthy or not. I reach for the fruit which will put me to sleep, and even when my eyes are open, I fail to see what’s blocking my own path.

But I’ve listened to Cofer and Dufresne, the queens of the forum, and anyone who has a clue about the next step in any dream. This week I bought notebook paper, dividers, first a pad-sized appointment calendar, then a larger, notebook-sized one, sticky notes, and a timer—all designed to help me claim my life. I’ve gone through this drill before, only to be distracted by household projects, family members in need, and my own inattention to details.

As I set out on my journey one more time, Judith Ortiz Cofer has more advice for me. She says, “In Catholic cultures two women otherwise unrelated can enter in to a sacred bond, usually for the sake of a child, called the comadrazgo. One woman swears to stand in for the other as a surrogate mother if the need arises. It is a sacrament that joins them, more sacred than friendship, more binding than blood.” The women are comadres. The relationship, a shared parenting, is the comadrazgo.

Everywhere I seek my comadres to help me protect my dream this time, to mother my writing self, the self I’ve never quite learned to nourish alone. Professional writers such Cofer and Dufresne teach me about macho—the notion I have a right to the time to use my talents and to share them. I ask my friends to take their stand by my side, to remind me to take the next step and the next step. I ask my children and my husband, without whom I would have little worth writing about, for their love and support. And I turn to the Queens Forum. Here are my comadres. Here are the women with different goals, but the same dreams. It is your stories which give me stamina and resolve. It is your path which teaches me to make a map of my own. It is here we gather to give testament to a life made richer when we claim our talents and live our dreams.

© Donna Warner, March, 2005all rights reserved

John Dufresne, The Lie That Tells a Truth, A Guide to Writing Fiction, W. W. Norton and Company, 2003.

Judith Ortiz Cofer, "The Woman Who Slept with One Eye Open," Sleeping with One Eye Open, Women Writers and the Art of Survival, Edited by Marilyn Kallet and Judith Ortiz Cofer, The University of Georgia Press, 1999.

If you have stories to tell about your dreams…achieving them or those resistances which need to be examined, please share them with Queens Write about Writing. Your experience has messages for us all. Please send your observations to donna@queenpower.com

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Deferred Dreams by Rhonda J. Foster

2005-03-16T06:42:00.000-08:00

Recent topics in the QueenMe newsletter have inspired me to tell my own story. I graduated college with a 4.0 GPA, class valedictorian, and a BA in English. All I had ever wanted to do was write, and I was certain I would have no trouble finding the job of my dreams. It seems that when we are younger we tend to believe that anything is possible, and as we get older, life has tainted that optimism to a dull practicality. I encountered questions such as: “What! No computer courses? No business management classes?” My job search was not successful and I had to come up with a survival plan.

I sent out an application to law school, just one – and I was accepted. I had no burning dreams of becoming a terror in the courtroom, of helping to change the world. My dreams were of an easy and substantial income that would enable me to write. Law school kept me focused for the next few years, and then came graduation – time to get serious again. I dutifully worked on my resume and sent it out. No big offers. Then I discovered there was an opening in the public defender’s office in a nearby town. At the job interview, I told the chief public defender that I didn’t think I could handle “criminals.” Not to worry – I could represent the children, the abused, neglected, and eventually, the delinquents.

Representing children meant dealing with the parents, and most of these parents were not happy, well adjusted people. A great number of them had severe mental disorders and were off medication, or had criminal histories themselves. They tended to be aggressive, vicious, and blaming the system and the attorneys for everything that was wrong. I was shy, non-assertive, and sensitive. I was prey. The probation officers would line up in the hallway of the courthouse to watch me deal with these clients, amused at the terror and discomfort evident on my face.

I gave my best and did an excellent job. I took my work home and lost sleep finding solutions for my clients, only to see them back in court again and again. Nothing I did seemed to make a difference. For those who don’t think stereotypes apply, they do. A client could be argumentative and difficult with me, and if one of the male public defenders (there was one in particular who was built like a linebacker) walked over, suddenly they would accept whatever that attorney told them. I realized that as a petite female I would never receive the same respect that less-competent-but-larger-built male attorneys received in this setting.

I began to be sick to my stomach at the thought of going to work and facing people. It would begin the evening before my court dates. I would dread getting up and going in to work. I hated my job, but I had no energy to make the effort to escape. I came home at night and collapsed on the couch, staring at the television. There was no writing, no creativity, only a sense of emptiness and being drained. I never went out on weekends until I left for work again Monday morning. I was totally exhausted, and it was all I could do to keep going – but I had to. I would not quit. I had something to prove.

Eventually my emotions had completely shut down. I had no dreams, no desires. I did not think about what I wanted or needed; only what I had to do to survive. I did not live anymore. I survived. I didn’t do anything for fun. I didn’t know what constituted “fun” anymore. I held out for over ten years. I showed the world I could do it! The tragedy is that the world did not care, and the world did not have to face my life each day – I did. Eventually I left for a non-law job that was completely unsuitable for me. I think it was a desperate subconscious survival move.

It was too late to just keep going in this condition. I lasted at this job for a year, where I was treated with suspicion – why would an attorney take such a huge cut in pay and prestige? Their attitude was that there had to be something wrong with me, some scandal. Needless to say, I began to have problems with balance and coordination, frequent illnesses resembling the flu, pains that would shift from one part of my body to another. I was unable to leave the house or to walk normally. I spent most of my days on the couch, moaning in pain, exhausted. Even sleep granted me no peace. I had nightmares about work and about people in my life who had hurt me, even those from years before.

After numerous medical tests and months of waiting, it turned out I had fibromyalgia. It seems that this is common among women who are driven to “do the right thing,” to “do the responsible thing,” to “do what is expected,” rather than doing what is in their hearts. The body forced me to do what my mind had not – to take time off, to rediscover myself, to grieve for all those things that I had never taken the time to grieve for. I was afraid to mourn my losses and feared that I would never stop crying if I allowed myself to grieve.

Before this diagnosis, I got out my second expired passport and dwelt on the fact that I had never traveled to Europe as I had wanted to do for over twenty years. I thought about my closet filled with boxes of the “nice things” I was saving for “someday.” I got out the silky soft pajamas a friend had bought me in the 80’s that I was saving for a “special occasion.” I threw them out because the elastic had rotted. I cried because I believed I had some serious disease and the thought chanting in my head repeatedly was: “I will die and I have never lived.” In essence I had put my life, my happiness, and my dreams “on hold” waiting for the perfect time to enjoy them. And now I know that the perfect time is right now, not someday. You might not have someday, but you do have right now.

It took a year. I sat outside with my journal almost every day. It took months for the pressured feeling that I had to be somewhere, or that I had some obligation to fulfill, to pass. I even mourned for pets I had lost in my youth, letting a little bit of pain at a time out. I released years of pent-up emotion in tolerable doses. There were times I had to cut it off, to go to a movie and forget. I would sit and try to write down my dreams. The tragedy was that I had none. I had given up dreaming years before. It took months, but eventually I could write sentences that began with “I want” or “I hope.” It was safe to have feelings again. I found that I slowly became warmer, more affectionate, more caring, as the “thaw” continued. People responded to me again. My journal was more genuine. It spoke of emotions -- it represented a real person.

Initially, it was easier to discover what I didn’t want. I made lists of all the things I didn’t want to do. They seemed to flow out of me, out of the bitterness at all the obligations I had imposed on myself. I was angry at others for making me feel so obligated, but the more I processed things, the more I realized I had let it happen. I took responsibility for burying me under the “should-do” landslide. I gradually rediscovered my love for tea – the intricate ritual of preparing, breathing in the scented steam, slowly sipping. I burned incense and it was relaxing. I performed little activities that took time but gave me peaceful sensations, things that I had not taken the time to do in over ten years.

I began to read before bed, something else I had always enjoyed. I would read a little, look up at the clock and think that I had to stop because it was getting late. One evening I realized “Hey! I don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow – I can stay up all night if I want to!” I stayed up that night until 2 in the morning and finished the novel. It was wonderful.

I sat in the sunlight and daydreamed, listening to the birds and the breeze in the trees. I lost track of the passage of time, and allowed my soul to emerge. My writing took on a stream of consciousness mode, and upon later reading it was enlightening and uplifting. After months it subtly changed from remorse and grieving to hoping, from weariness and trepidation to wanting to embrace life.

PART II

So here I am, ready to face life again. I still have my fibromyalgia, but by controlling stress it is bearable. I see clearly the link between physical pain and suppressed emotions. (There are some wonderful books on this subject by John E. Sarno, M.D.) I have allowed myself the time and space to heal. I can now tell anyone who asks what I like and dislike. I am actually more assertive and genuine than I was when I worked as a public defender. I am writing again. I feel enthusiastic and hopeful. But there is a pitfall. I decided to follow my heart, but sticking to the decision is not always an easy one. I am often tempted to get a job which will provide the comforts of life, but which once again might leave me emotionally drained at the end of the day and unable to write. Even Stephen King didn’t start off making millions, and supporting yourself writing is a long process, with a lot of hard work involved.

So once you decide to follow your heart, you must have the courage to stay with that decision even when tempted to return to the old ways of survival – and they often seem to be easier. I face temptation all the time, but then I realize… I really like ME, and I don’t want that funny, warm, affectionate woman to go away again.

You can spend all kinds of time wondering how you got to the place of bitterness and regret, lost chances and deferred dreams, but my suggestion is to bypass this stage entirely. It doesn’t matter why, and you can’t do it over. It comes down to now. A very simple concept: change. Make a change, any change. Don’t you feel a little more alive after you do? It becomes addicting – suddenly making changes is fun, challenging, and a sign of life. I began cleaning out old clothes and was appalled to discover things I hadn’t worn in 12 years. I felt so refreshed donating huge hefty bags of things that I had clung to and not used.

The process is ongoing. I’m not done by any means. But maybe you will see a little of yourself here and learn from my experiences. I will get a job one of these days to provide stimulation and a little extra income. On my resume, where it says “OBJECTIVE” I am tempted to put, “An interesting job with fun or positive people that won’t leave me emotionally drained.” Go figure.

© March, 2005 Rhonda J. Foster

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Swearing In

2005-03-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

“Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“And so much more.”
Velma Kelly to the Officer of the Court: Chicago

I have a problem I’ve lived with all of my life. I don’t feel legitimate. I’m not talking about my birth circumstance, but the backdrop of my life. Some times are worse than others, but often I feel like a dog scrounging for the bones of affection and approval. Who knows the cause? Some say nature, some say nurture, some say a mixture of both. The spiritual pilgrims among us say it’s the god shaped hole in my psyche. Its origins don’t matter to me. What matters is, no matter what my good intentions are, I constantly stumble over other people’s opinions.

What matters is I have lived parallel lives. In one, the one you would see if you met me, I have been the dutiful: daughter, wife, mother, friend. I have been steadfast. I have faced gales and landslides, the first one at the barricade, the last one off the ship. I have been good in emergencies and hostage-of-life situations.

People say I am a good cook, but perhaps that’s because I do actually cook. I am recipe-impaired and do not know if I can follow instructions. Sometimes my husband asks if a certain dish has come to me by vision. He is not expressing gratitude. I have never been a citizen in the land of cooking…all of my successes are those of a beginner desperately seizing what’s at hand. And if someone else does not care for the results, suddenly neither do I.

I have not been good at term papers, housekeeping, yard work, and long term maintenance problems. Here I am sloppy, easily distracted, and quick to surrender.

This is the life you would see, the one I’ve lived as if I were trapped behind a bubble of clear acrylic, muffled and anxious, and often numb.

Then there is my other life…my unlived life. In this life I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was eight-years-old, but bewildered by my acrylic bubbled existence, I not only did not know the writing rules, I didn’t know what to write. It seemed to me everyone else was in on a secret I could not fathom.In this unlived life, this life of unrealized dreams, I’ve had flashes of awakenings.

I took up photography once. Like cooking, I could not comprehend the basic elements. For a while it seemed as if everything I saw was The Picture. I quit when I realized the camera was always between me and what was happening, and I wasn’t making progress with fstops and shutter speeds. Two years later, my husband created a website, honing in on the bizarre customs of the area where we’ve lived most of our lives. He called it Euclid, after a town in my unfinished novel. He looted my pictures. “You have the Euclid eye,” he said. I smiled, and felt I had missed some undefined opportunity.

I briefly took up clay, but when I discovered myself not setting, but making platters on the dining room table, and was still as lousy at vacuuming as I ever was, I decided I might be a trifle insane. Anyway, clay and I had not become one. It held its secrets and I could not quite decipher even its most basic nature. I was depleting clay deposits of the earth, and making dust-catchers Chinese factory workers could make better. Last month at a local discount store, I ran into an artist I admire, a potter with an essential eye. “Did you ever go back to potting?” she asked. She mentioned one of my pieces hanging on her mother’s wall. I said I didn’t have time, and I didn’t feel I was very accomplished at it. “I thought you really captured the expressiveness of clay,” she said, whatever that meant. “It’s a shame you didn’t keep it up.” Under the florescent lights I looked back at a path I had left, to glimpse something I’d lost I would never return to claim.

Though I wanted to write, always, but also figured I didn’t know enough to write, it was easier to pick up something else which would garner me someone else’s approval. Either that, or lie down with a good book. But I returned to writing over and over again.

At thirty-one, I took my first ‘writing class.’ “Why do you want to write,” was our first essay. Why do I want to write? Why do I want to breathe? I got slightly tipsy and let her rip. When I read my claim aloud in class, by the time I got near my closing line, borrowed from Bob Dylan, “Whoo-we, are we gonna fly…” my fellow students were drumming on their desks, and the teacher’s eye had a proprietary gleam….he had a star.

What he hadn’t anticipated was my penchant for getting stuck and falling down. Over the years I’ve spent less time falling down, because I’ve spent so much more time stuck…didn’t I mention that novel about Euclid? And my husband would ask when I was going to: weed my one flower bed, sweep the floor, clean the bathroom. This friend would need a little helping hand, or one of the children would have a small dire need. Throw in three parents (his and mine) with terminal illnesses. And the fact I did not know what I was doing when I was trying to fashion a novel, had no guarantee it would be good in the end, and was probably, no, most certainly was wasting my time…STOP.

Go piddle.

Along the way I participated in a few writing groups. And took writing courses, where, always (visualize the coy smile, the slight nod of the head, so ingratiating) I was the star. Not hard to do after twenty years of being a beginner.

Then Allyn Evans came along with her Queen Power book. On the recommendation of one of my writing teachers, she asked if I might help her edit it. Might I? What a plum. Good material, a gracious client, and a goal not my own. What better reason not to dust today?

My every-day friend took to parting with, “Get busy. Go write.” She was ready for me to be done already, and back into our regular schedule. Every time she encouraged me, I heard admonishment. I would feel bile rise in my stomach. I got the sudden urge to fall asleep. “Tell me to have fun,” I said. She did. Each time I heard, “Have fun,” I was surprised. And happy. “Yes,” I would say, hurrying off so the fun could start.

My husband gave me space, and started vacuuming his own room again. This was not our agreed upon arrangement. “Next week,” I would promise him. “This will be over soon.” I felt as if I were running a marathon, sprinting toward the finish line, praying to finish before his patience ended in an explosion of my guilt, the kind of explosion he never requires. Before my what-the-heck-are-you-doing-this-time switch flipped, and I came to my customary screeching halt.Finish I did. Fun it was.

Did I forget to mention this? Toward the end of the editing process, I called an English professor for some copyright advice. “What are you writing?” she said. “I’ve had your essay on my desk for nearly three years. Some people write well. Some people write to be entertaining. Your writing is life changing. It’s not yours to keep. Send it out.”

I had been instructed. I finished the editing, and once again could turn to my own writing.

Did I?

Uh-uh.

Not only that, it took me nearly two weeks to wash all the clothes I’d ignored during my joyfully chosen marathon. And there are still some areas of the house it’s best not to let venture without security by your side.Back to piddling…doing nothing wholly, nothing really getting done.

Then Allyn and I began pitching ideas about my next step. Critiquing, writing, a couple of Queen projects. Meanwhile, a friend flew home to check on her dad. I give her a rides to and from the big city airport—a 250 mile round trip, one we use to catch up on each other’s lives. On the way to fetch her, I remembered I hadn’t taken my blood pressure medication. Could this be terminal? No. But I thought about fatality, about all my small accouterments of skill and interest dissipating, dissolving like a wave into the sea.

On the way to her father’s house, my friend wanted to know about my work with Allyn. She mentioned my years of study, of my intense interest in writing.

Suddenly I knew what I have, what I have been given, I want to pass on, from mind to mind, from hand to hand. When I leave this world, I want to be clutching nothing. I want to die with my heart emptied, all my treasures fallen like seeds on the earth that nourished me.

I returned home, eager to work with Allyn, eager to follow the path of my own words.

As soon I checked the e-mail, went to lunch with a friend, dusted, made spinach lasagna, told my husband.

Told my husband?Why is this hard? He has always agreed for me to do what I choose to do…he would like not to go to work and do all the housework, too, but rarely complains if the bathtub has a film along the water edges.

When I finished the editing marathon, I emerged as if I were newly hatched to this world…tenuous, shaky, curious, glad.

I took the dogs out for a walk. The world seemed as new as I did. Trees hinted of furled leaves. Sparrows and sky formed kaleidoscopic patterns, complete with a fluting symphony. The new tips of branches shot outward from limbs as slivers of light. And what words can describe jonquils and narcissus on a sunny February day, the yellow and white almost an explosion among the dancing petals? If you do not remember, run quickly now out of doors. See what ever is growing or has grown, all the light and energy alive and pulsating, singing to you, singing with you.

Back now?

On this particular day in February I met my every-day friend. “I’m done,” I said. I almost sang it with the release of this wild spring day at the end of winter.

“Guess what I’ve been doing?” she said.

My brain was trying to fathom being alive, how in all that excitement to put one foot in front of the other. I knew her name and my name, but more than that was beyond my grasp.“Tell me,” I said.

“You haven’t been paying attention to anything I say,” she said.

I tumbled out of the ecstatic air, slammed against the term paper wall. Shamed.Trying to remember my lessons, ask for what I needed, not to automatically assume the mantle of guilt, I said, “I just finished the book. I can’t think. Tell me.”

“No,” she answered. “You’ll have to remember on your own.”

As she walked down the street, I was eight years old, just returned from riding the wind in Never Land, and found all the clothes my mother had dumped from my messy drawers out onto the floor for me to fold, edges neat.

My every-day friend is a good friend. She later said she was teasing. She later said she didn’t mean for me to be sad. She said she had missed me.

“I’ve finished,” I told my husband.

“I guess this is another of those things you’ve thrown yourself into that’ll never lead to anything," he said.

“It’s good,” I said. “I learned so much from doing it. I think other people will get a lot from reading it.” I stumbled over all the good things that had already occurred. And I was going to clean the house the next day. Then I realized…. “You mean money…..?” I was talking to the man who told me not to go back to work after my father died, to stay home…well, and put in a few hours a week cleaning the house. I was talking to the man I am sure has been my companion for eons, time immeasurable, who agreed at some moment when existence began to help me learn what I need to know.I was talking to the man four years away from early retirement, who felt he is living a prison sentence.

“Yes,” he said.

So how can I tell him…I am taking on this project, and this project, and this project? Writing never guarantees your next insurance payment. It’s always the crazy leap without the net. On the other hand, a clean toilet is a sure bet.

Soon after my daughter came over for a visit. She told us of a disagreement she had recently. “I hate feeling this way. I feel like a bad person. On one hand, I’m okay with the resolution, on the other I want revenge.”

“Those are just thoughts,” my husband said. “When you bring them to light, they aren’t really scary at all. They just go away. It’s when you try to hide them they become viscous, foul you up.”

“When I tell you these terrible things,” she said, “the next day they do seem to have gone away.”

“Think of thoughts as shadows,” he said.

Already I could see all my little secrets, black forms with no details, lurking in dark corners and darting behind pillars in my mind. Usually my husband stops with one statement, but this time he continued . He was telling me what I needed to hear. I knew he was telling a profound truth, and I could sense the well spring of great joy.

“When shadows are brought into the sunlight, they simply disappear.”

“Holy Spirit,” I said. This is the name we call when we recognize a truth unfolding from a friend, a mechanic, a bum on the street, a husband. I was laughing. “Aren’t we orating tonight!” The words clunked as I said them.

Later we played with the dogs before we went to bed. He asked me why I had told him to shut up.

I didn’t understand.

“When I was talking about thoughts coming to light,” he said. “You said I was orating. It’s the same thing.”

I started crying, unexpectedly, unstoppably.Of course there is more here. More ‘he said,’ ‘I said,’ but I knew enough to know I was crying because in some way I had hurt myself. And I knew what it was. I wanted to do new things. Take on projects which just interested me, which would not buy him one day out of work. I wanted to leap off the cliff yet again. Was I silly? Wasting my time? Selfish?

I couldn’t tell him because I couldn’t believe in myself. I couldn’t risk he would not only not believe in me…he would think I should do something a trifle less insane.

Years ago I would have thought my pain was his fault. That somehow what he thought was toxic to me, was denying me my gifts.

Today I know if I am allowing some part of my life to wither, I am the one who has made the choice.If I take up my pen and paper…or rather, my computer…if I choose to come to the edge of the cliff, breathe deep, plunge…

What will happen? Will I wake up? Will I call to my unlived life to wildly bloom like the jonquils in winter? Will I squander my time, be a fool? I know this. I couldn’t be worse at cleaning house.

So I am trying it one more time. I will write an essay, create a pamphlet, and clean a toilet. I will look at what it takes to follow a dream. Really follow a dream. I will be a citizen of my own country. I may squander my life, but I will not waste it.

I will share my path with you. I ask you to share yours with me. Tell me what you know. Tell me the dangers, and what eases the way.

And before I die, if I don’t ever feel legitimate, it won’t be because I never took up my own life. It won’t be because I never really lived.

Camellia

2005 by Donna Warner
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