Off to Weymouth

Most of next week I'll be holing up at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, where I'll be a writer-in-residence.

This will be my first experience of working at a writers retreat.

My plan is to, among other things, write the first chapter of my biography of painter Elisabeth Chant.

Also, I'm hoping to see a ghost; the place has a reputation for being haunted. I know five credible people who have had ghostly encounters there.

Ideally, I'll see the ghost of my biography subject. That would definitely be worth the trip.

I'm not sure how I'll react to working in a quiet place. I live in the country and I drive into Raleigh to work to make sure I have enough people and noise around me. This will be an adventure, and pretty likely to stimulate some different brain cells.

I will report back, about the book and the ghost.

Career Success Barbie Doll

Some time back, I promised a picture, and then couldn't find the picture. The file finally turned up, and here it is: my Career Success Barbie Doll.

Sorry that the picture is lousy. It's a photo of a photo, with a camera I'm still not used to.

Here's the reason for this little tableau. By accident, I had discovered that VISUALIZATIONS CAN REALLY WORK. And putting before me in physical form an image of what I want works even better.

I learned this when I found that I'd unwittingly reproduced, with real flowers, a floral arrangement that was on a picture near my computer.

If an image could work that easily to get me to produce the real thing, I wanted to apply the principle to something more important.

So I set out to EMBODY MY CAREER GOALS. Here, on the grungy window sill of my office at that time, is the doll I "dolled up" to be a visual symbol of the success I wanted.

This doll has a photo of my face attached, with the hair cut to the length of mine then, and tiny mockups of my books, existing and planned. Four of those are now published, which is one -- or two? -- more than were published then. And another is recently finished.

Note in "my" right hand the pink quill pen, and in my left, the cell phone and the Oscar. I do now have a cell phone. That much of those items has come true.

I haven't exactly come to look like that. But I find in the photo on the bio page of my website, I'm at least wearing the same color.

Perhaps it's time for another version of my icon, to project a few more books down the road. Or one to focus entirely on publication of the just-completed one.

A Writer's Mid-Career Continuing Education

When I read last week in my local alternative weekly the horoscope that said I was facing A MINOR COME-UPPANCE that would turn out to be a gift, I assured myself that it wasn't so.

Well, it was.

This past weekend, I attended a three-day course led by feminist writer and leader Naomi Wolf, at the lovely country campus of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

The topic was "CAREER BUILDING FOR THE SEASONED WRITER: Cracking the Mass Market." I went to learn more, for myself and my consulting clients, about writing nonfiction book proposals. I learned that and a whole lot more.

This three-day experience updated all my magazine and newspaper business skills (I spent the first 15 years of my career writing almost entirely for magazines and newspapers.)

In these 10 am to 9:30 pm sessions, we wrote pitches, lots of pitches of story ideas and op-ed ideas and book ideas. It was a bit like being on a quiz show where you race to write and speak a few persuasive lines while a light blinks and a bell will soon ring.

At the same time, I, and others, were wrestling--in my case, re-wrestling--with the difference between the inevitable formats and formulas of writing for periodicals, and the writing we each most admired.

The pace and tough feedback and mostly-inner CLASHES OF VALUES felt so intense that in the first day my face broke out and my hands started to peel (which my derm calls "stress-induced eczema")and that night I dreamed my teeth were dropping out.

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE: The faculty seems to expect that sort of thing because a psychotherapist was a full-time part of the program, offering a daily group session and/or individual meetings for anyone interested.

My experience of the weekend was humbling and -- and then re-invigorating -- and, finally, A VALUABLE GIFT. I got the piece of education I went for, in the company of a couple of dozen fascinating folks, and I made excellent contacts, including an editor who is interested in both the novel I just finished and the biography I'm just beginning.

I highly recommend the course -- whenever it should happen again-- for writers of strong ambition and sturdy constitution who want to write for the largest markets and audiences.

Energy Cycle/Courage Cycle

This morning I was struck for the first time by a pattern: I realized I have much more gumption later in the day than I do in the mornings. And that has been true for as long as I can remember.

The energy version of that idea is familiar, that there is a daily pattern of peak and low energy periods for each person. You know, everybody is "a morning person" or "a night person," etc. I've always held that I was a "lunch person." My energy level in the course of a day is actually pretty even.

What does form a daily pattern is my PEAKS AND LOWS OF COURAGE. In the morning, hard phone calls and hard projects are intimidating. I procrastinate (I've read that that's nature's way of getting desk drawers cleaned out.) I answer e-mail.

After lunch -- now, for example -- I'm starting to feel pretty capable. By late afternoon I'm on fire, and do what needs doing without a moment's hesitation. And then by about ten o'clock, I can't see that there's a whole lot that needs doing.

Could be I should stop berating myself for my morning hesitations. But I've spent years thinking everybody else in the world is efficient and fearless all day. I still want to be that way. It sounds so grown-up and productive.

A Writer Taking Voice Lessons

Here's a great example of THE VALUE OF CROSS-TRAINING, recently added to the comments on an old post. From Stephanie Bass:


"I am a writer, and have been taking voice lessons for about four months now. I'm rediscovering how to produce the mezzo soprano tones that made me so happy as a teenage choir member. And, I am working through decades of 'muck' to find the head space and body space for what my teacher calls 'free singing.'

It has everything to do with being bold, being completely taken by the pure expression of voice, simply hearing the tone and letting the body repeat what it hears. In those rare moments when a full, resonant, clear note soars from my throat I feel as if I've been struck by holy fire.

Last week my teacher told me, "the voice HATES IT" when the singer is shy, holds back, cringes in anticipation of getting it wrong. I get my best sounds when I imitate Julia Child-- in her full-bodied, all-butter, drenched-in-cream joyfulness. There's bold for you. And creativity."


Isn't that lovely?

On Waiting to Hear from an Editor or Agent

I hit total impatience occasionally and then it eases off again. The scary thought is that the impatience is going to last until I get a deal. It never does.

But it will crop up again after I get the deal, though the focus will be about the next stage of publication. Never-ending, but at least it's only occasional.

Yesterday morning was very frustrating. Today I'm cool.

Office Napping

I've read that SHORT NAPS while you're processing a problem can help creativity. And that pondering while lying down leads to solutions more quickly.

This morning I took that to an extreme: lay down on the rug to close my eyes for a minute and woke up three hours later. My phone had even rung and that hadn't stirred me. I found I'd slept through a monthly lunch group a friend and I started years ago; a few folks with shared metaphysical interests, a gathering we call Mystic Pizza.

Think I must be tired. I didn't take a break after finishing COBALT BLUE because I was so eager to get to the biography I've begun. And of course my work with other writers continues as books come and go. Also, two dear friends have had health crises in the last two weeks. One is now fine; one is over the worst. In any event--as most of us usually can say--"I got a lot going on."

POST-NAP, I feel less fuzzy-headed, a little feeble, not necessarily more creative, but then I never feel the process when my imagination is doing it's best work. It's always something I notice after the fact.

Southern Dishes for Southern Authors

Technically I'm a Southern writer, but I don't write about the South in the rural way that is usually associated with Southern writing.

My feeling is that there are many kinds of Southern. In fact, we've had towns here for a long time. And I like writing about places like India, anyway. The research gives me a good reason to travel.

Still, I've lived in North Carolina all my life and when it's time to break for lunch, I most often go to the nearby K&W cafeteria for Southern vegetables cooked the simmered-with-fat way I grew up on.

Today was a particularly good day at the K&W. My office partner, author-artist Carrie Knowles, and I celebrated her birthday there. The menu?

I consumed:
fried broccoli
lima beans
watermelon
sweet potato pie
sublimely sweet iced tea

Carrie celebrated with a slice of pudding-y chocolate pie with a fluffy white topping.

Some years ago I attended a small dinner for a visiting author, the wonderful short-story writer Lorrie Moore, of NY and Wisconsin. It was one of these Southern affairs, and dessert was a mammoth, meringued piece of lemon pie.

A half hour later, Moore was upstairs in the auditorium reading a short story to a sizeable audience, when, apparently to her surprise, she came upon a section of the story that was very witty and ironic on the subject of a similar meal, including a daunting piece of pie topped by a snow bank of meringue. She winced. I snickered and glanced around for my fellow diners.

A funny moment. At the same time, that was an excellent piece of lemon pie. So was today's sweet potato "tart." Good fuel for this afternoon's literary output. I recommend it to anyone.

Writers and Artists Seeing Ghosts

Do you suppose that artists of various sorts are more likely to have encounters with ghosts than other people are? (When I first wrote that sentence, it sounded like writers encounter more ghosts than people.)

Last night I had dinner with another novelist who told me the story of her experience with spirits. And that of a writer-friend.

A high percentage of the artists I know have seen apparitions, or had some other physical encounter that they matter-of-factly attribute to a ghost.

In a way, I'm envious. I've never met a ghost--though I did see a ball of light rise off the head of a reiki teacher once. I've enshrined that experience in my memory.

I do love to write about mystical subjects.

In my novel Revelation, a liberal preacher hears the voice of God, seriously, and his skeptical congregation thinks he needs psychotherapy.

In Sister India, an American woman living next to the Ganges develops in a crisis a sort of personal omniscience.

A lot of my interest in this stuff is wishful thinking. On the other hand, when I heard last night about my friend's experience, I was glad I wasn't there.

There's a writers retreat nearby where four novelists I know have independently had extremely spooky experiences. I have an interest in going; and I may do it. I'll certainly take a friend.