Strategy (and Hope) for the Stubborn Artist

A recent essay in the New York Times Book Review quotes Jonathan Galassi, president of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, as defending the potential of the books that get the least marketing effort and sell the fewest copies.

This situation, he says, "is where the major writers of the future usually start. It's where much of the best writing is, the work of the ODD, UNCOOPERATIVE, INTRACTABLE, PIGHEADED AUTHORS who insist on seeing and saying things their own way and change the game in the process. The 'system' can only recognize what it's already cycled through. What's truly new is usually indigestible at first."

I tell myself that. And at the same time I know it's easy to discount criticism of my work as lack of appreciation for genius. (please take that comment in the ironic way it was intended)

HERE'S MY STRATEGY: I do my work the way I want it. Then if it doesn't sell the first time out, I take any feedback and revise in a way I think will satisfy the editor and that still is true to my vision, my voice, my purpose.

Sometimes I go through that process several times before a book sells. And it takes a godawful long time. But I've always felt that the book was better. And I take comfort in remaining fundamentally pigheaded, though it may not always show.

Advanced Decision-Making Skills

I've been obsessing today about whether to schedule a trip to NY and London--for book research--in October when the weather is better and my gut tells me is the best time, or in November when the airfare drops about $200 and I'd have more time to get ready. What would you do?

I knew something like this was going to happen today when I went to get dressed and was completely stymied: all my clothes were wrong. This is never a good omen. But I did manage to get dressed: jeans, boots (we had hurricane Ernesto today) and a striped T-shirt. How could that be so hard?

And then an epiphany in an e-mail from one of my sisters-in-law, who said in passing that she'd NEVER REGRETTED A SINGLE ADVENTURE she'd ever taken. I like that attitude. From that perspective, it doesn't matter if my trip is in October or November. I'm just tickled that I'm going.

Cryptoquote from Sophocles

Toward the end of finishing a book, I get re-hooked on word puzzles: crosswords and cryptoquotes, the ones that are seemingly jumbled letters and the trick is to break the code and read the quotation.

My guess about why is that every day during these periods I'm impatient to feel THE SENSATION OF FINISHING AND TYING UP ALL LOOSE ENDS. Solving these little puzzles gives me this feeling, so that I don't wrap up the book prematurely.

Not long ago I triumphed on the cryptoquote in my local paper, thus revealing an important piece of wisdom. The quote of the day was from Sophocles; his message was: "Fortune is not on the side of the faint-hearted." Finding that felt like a double victory.

Play Your Own Tune

Remember the mad genius mathematician in A Beautiful Mind? I've been reading that book about John Nash by Sylvia Nasar because my biography-in-progress is about a woman who conversed with spirits and was hospitalized--against her will.

Nasar quotes an item found in Nash's mother's scrapbook, which she placed there when Nash was a child, no doubt in an attempt to reassure herself. Mrs. Nash is quoting Angelo Patri:

"QUEER LITTLE TWISTS AND QUIRKS GO INTO THE MAKING OF AN INDIVIDUAL. To suppress them all and follow clock and calendar and creed until the individual is lost...is to be less than true to our inheritance....Life, that gorgeous quality of life, is not accomplished by following another man's rules. It is true we have the same hungers and the same thirsts, but they are for different things and in different ways and in different seasons....LAY DOWN YOUR OWN DAY, FOLLOW IT TO ITS NOON, or you will sit in an outer hall listening to the chimes but never reaching high enough to strike your own."

I don't know who Angelo Patri is or was, but he's onto something there.

Speaking of Elves and Faeries

I've just come from the monthly get-together that I fondly call Mystic Pizza. It's a few people--frequently very few--who get together at a local K&W cafeteria to talk about metaphysical subjects.

This time the talk ranged from the story of a FAIRY SIGHTING to the question of whether cause-and-effect rules the universe.

Everyone seemed open to the most extreme possibilities. On each subject, at least one person had no doubt.

I've read that something like 42% of Americans believe in ghosts. But most of us don't go around in the world at large talking about such things. And that's understandable. For one thing, it could put a job at risk. (In my first novel Revelation, I wrote about a minister who heard the voice of God, and TOLD, and his liberal congregation began to question whether he was well.)

I wonder WHAT THE WORLD WOULD BE LIKE, IF WE ACTUALLY TALKED FREELY ABOUT WHAT WE REALLY BELIEVE.

For myself, I face no risk at all. As an artist with a metaphysical bent, I have a cultural sanction for being wacky. It's expected, nearly obligatory. The fact that I tend to wear classic clothes (with a twist) instead of flowing gowns with moons and stars on them is probably more of a liability than claiming gnomes are doing my garden chores. But I boldly go on with my quiet presentation.

At the same time, I find that, with nonbelievers, I talk far more skeptically about the "supernatural" than I am. I'm completely willing to believe stories of ghosts and fairies etc--and I want to get to see them too. Sunday I went to a Body, Mind, Spirit Expo, and bought a fifteen-minute reading from a guy, Christian von Lahr, who sees "little people." The way I tell the story of that intriguing conversation varies depending on who I'm talking with. I've heard myself speaking with a lot more skepticism and irony than I feel.

As the popular saying goes: what's up with that?

One of the Paradoxes of Creativity

It's easy to think of bold creativity as a move to be louder or faster, or working longer hours, being more offensive, more "different."

But that's not necessarily true. At times, it's better for our work to have the guts to be slow or scared or silent or child-like. IT TAKES GUTS TO "REGRESS", but it can be just the right thing for the best function of the senses and the imagination.

My husband Bob's Turkish Kangal Dog, Kaya, is very bold about regressing. He goes back to being a puppy whenever he feels like it. Here's a moment from this past Christmas when he was feeling like a child again.

A Very Assertive Girl

Lee Smith's new novel coming out next month is about A NOTABLY BOLD CHARACTER. I like that this protagonist is a teenage girl. On Agate Hill is the story of a 13 year-old during the Civil War. From Lee Smith's website:

“I know I am a spitfire and a burden,” she begins her diary. “I do not care. For evil or good this is my own true life and I WILL have it. I will.” She keeps the diary in her treasured “box of phenomena” which contains “letters, poems, songs, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones, some human” by the time it is found during a historic renovation project in 2003. These items tell the story of Molly’s passionate journey through life.

The Missing Link to Oprah, Etc.

About that story on writers' attempts and strategies for getting on Oprah. Sorry I left the link out of my previous post. I still can't make it work; I get nothing but pop-ups. But if you want to go hunting for it, the piece is "Oprah Means Business for Authors" in the August 8, 2006, Chicago Sun-Times.



And here is the sea-going pedal-kayak that was supposed to go with the earlier coastal-retreat post. Actually pedaling this vessel out in the mile-wide Core Sound behind the Outer Banks is a wonderful meditative little adventure. Now, as I look at this picture, it seems quite a bit like the writing/artistic experience: setting forth alone in one's little boat, afloat on a mysterious medium.

Getting on Oprah

Check out this piece on how writers have managed to get themselves and their books on Oprah, and how they've embarrassed themselves trying.

I once had a writer attend a workshop I was teaching who'd been a guest on Oprah with her book and sold a pile of them, and still wondered if she was "a real writer." Dear God! Does self-doubt never end?

I've never been on the show myself, not that I haven't tried. I collaborated on a book The Healing Power of Doing Good, with Allan Luks who previously had been on the show to talk about the message of the book. When the publication date came, the producers felt they'd already adequately covered the subject.

Then when Oprah came to Raleigh to speak, I hired a courier to take a copy of my novel Sister India to the stage door and do battle through the crowd for me. I was told that somebody there had taken the book off his hands.

That's been a few years ago now, but you never know when Chicago is going to call.

Deadly Serious Career Planning

Here's a writing assignment guaranteed to clarify your goals in your art career and in every thing else: WRITE YOUR OWN OBITUARY. I gave it a try and I promise you, it is immodest.

MY FAKE OBIT:

Nobel laureate and bestselling novelist Peggy Payne, 3-time winner of the National Book Award, died yesterday at the age of 122, at her home after a brief illness.

An outspoken advocate for self-actualization Payne also wrote a number of nonfiction books, including a much-loved biography of painter Elisabeth Chant.

Her books combined her explorations of the supernatural and paranormal with her travels in exotic and enticing locations, including India, Ireland, Greece, Brittany, and the city of New Orleans. Her work has been published in 42 languages. She continued to travel and write and lecture, and to work with other writers, until weeks before her death.

Most of her novels were made into movies and a script she co-authored received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Born in 1949 in Wilmington, NC, to Margaret and Harry Payne, she lived in North Carolina throughout her life. She and her beloved husband psychologist Bob Dick celebrated her hundredth birthday on a round-the-world cruise on the QE2. To the end of her life she maintained a close relationship with her family and friends, continuing to have tea with her writing group each Thursday she was in town.

In the second half of her life, she amassed great wealth and created a foundation to support artists, inventors and start-up businesses in imaginative undertakings.

Having wrestled with obsessive-compulsive disorder in her early years, she achieved in her fifties a state of inner peace that she considered her greatest achievement. Her explorations of the supernatural led her to ecstatic experiences of God and to an intimate connection with spirits.

She is remembered also as an enthusiastic gossip, a fan of old rock and roll, a magazine junkie, connoisseur of thrift shops, slapdash gardener, sometime clothes horse, and reader.

The Duke pep band will play at her funeral.

Inventist.com

"Don't just walk on water. Hop on it."

That's the slogan for the Aquaskipper, one of the cool inventions at the site called Inventist.com.

I consider inventing gizmos to be one of the finest of the fine arts. This inventive site features peculiar vehicles for transporting the daring individual--designs that go far beyond the pogo stick and the unicycle. The Aquaskipper, for example, allows you to scoot across water in a very undignified rabbit-like motion.

The site is worth visiting for entertainment value alone. The video of a guy hopping along the water should qualify for "America's Funniest Home Videos."

And one of my bold fifty-something brothers bought one of these items and gave it to his wife for her birthday. Talk about bold!

A Decent Income for a Writer

I do admire an artist who manages to BILL BOLDLY and be well paid. This item is from Bookslut and may be of special interest to my fellow writers in NC where Charles Frazier got started.


"Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier made headlines by getting paid $8 million, 17 NFL teams, and the state of Delaware for his new novel, Thirteen Moons. Kirkus has the first review of the forthcoming novel, and they find that Frazier's BIG-ASS PAYCHECK was totally worth it."

(The caps and boldface are all mine.)

Re-entry

Today is my first day back after vacation. I haven't adjusted to getting up at work-day time. I don't like some of my e-mail I found waiting. And I woke up feeling beat all to hell from miles of kayaking on Core Sound.

WISH I WERE STILL THERE.

Boldly Sashaying Out My Office Door

As of 4:30 today, Tuesday, August 1, I am on vacation until Monday.

This is A BIG MOVE for me. I don't do it often enough--though, God knows, I fritter away big chunks of time on a daily basis. But I'm assured that vacation is very good for one's writing. And I've seen that myself, though it's always hard to remember from one time to the next.

Anyway, I'm going to the beach, leaving normal life in the care of a house-sitter. I plan to venture out into the Atlantic in a one-person, pedal-instead-of-row sea kayak--and, during the heat of the day, to read in the shade. I will come back so refreshed that you probably won't recognize me.

Just wait and see.

Getting Unstuck

If you happen to be in central North Carolina Friday, you might be interested in this event:

My psychologist husband Bob Dick is running a HALF DAY SEMINAR, helping people to USE HYPNOSIS to get unstuck, whether the issue has to do with creativity, relationships, career, health, etc.

I went to one of these once myself and got myself out of a sticky writing spot, through a wonderful hypnotic trance dream. Long story: but basically I went down a well, literally got stuck there, settled in, and a door opened onto such light that I had to squint. I also came out of the afternoon with a practical idea that helped solve my problem.

Call 919 929-1227 if you're interested.

Bold and Passionate

Here's an UNUSUALLY BRAVE EXAMPLE of somebody making a leap on behalf of her true purpose. This little tale comes from a cool site called BLOGGER STORIES.

"Nadia Muna Gil stepped off the tried and true path to follow her passion. She left a well-paying job, at a prestigious Wall Street firm, to pursue CHEESE BLOGGING and education full-time. The Cheesaholics Anonymous blog is more than a blog about cheese .. it is also a woman's dream to tell the world about artisan cheesemakers."

Turns out (when I visited her site) that her company also does cheese education events, at least one of which has been featured in The New Yorker. Not bad!

Writing and Teaching at Duke

My career will take a new and intriguing turn this coming spring.

I've accepted a one-semester-long position called SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE in the English Department at Duke University.

So for four months I'll be teaching two fiction writing seminars to undergraduates. I've done a lot of kinds of teaching, but this particular job already feels especially satisfying. I graduated from Duke -- and I love the place -- and there's a nicely circular feel to coming back there now.

Of course I'll continue writing and consulting...though far less than usual during this spring.

I look forward to a taste of campus life again. I always loved living in a dorm with a cafeteria downstairs, though I understand that this is not part of the deal.

Literary Feedback: Writing Group Hates My New First Chapter

I read the first chapter yesterday of the biography I've just begun to my long-time writing group (23 years). It was the WORST REACTION I EVER GOT FROM THIS GROUP.

I kind-a like the chapter, and so did the only other person who has read it.

The most encouraging response I got out the meeting was: well, you always make it work in the end, so you'll no doubt do it again.

WHAT THEY HATED: the way I used PERSONAL MATERIAL as well as the stuff about my biography subject. One person wanted me to turn it into a novel. They also didn't like most of the references to the sources of the information I got; instead wanting me to just tell the story, without interruption, and put footnotes as needed. (That makes a sort of sense, but I'm always interested in THE UNDERPINNINGS OF A STORY.
Also, I started life as newspaper reporter, so I'm inclined to attribute.)

WHAT I'M GOING TO DO: Let it sit for a few days then see how it looks to me. What I now expect is that I'll stick with the approach of including my own piece of the story, and perhaps go a little deeper into one piece of that, hold some of it back until a later chapter, and then make the reason for my own WEIRD FASCINATION with the bizarre artist who is my subject part of the discovery process for both writer and reader.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSES:
1. Well, shit...how inconvenient that I need to take time to think about their reactions, to figure out how to make the story widely accessible without abandoning any of my purposes in writing it
2. Refreshed...this is not a healthy response, my being so kneejerk rebellious that I feel energized by opposition
3. Grudgingly glad to have early notice of what I'm up against in meeting readers' needs with the way I present this project
4. Startled by the vehemence of some of the reaction
5. Wearied by the knowledge that I've taken on something complicated. (My psychologist husband Bob has always said that I like "Great Wall of China projects.")

IN THE SHORT-TERM: I got my car washed this morning. This felt very pertinent, somehow. I also once again have the impulse to paint flowers on it.

Deadline for Perfection

Sunday is the deadline I gave myself to become as physically fit as I can possibly be, or give away any clothes that don't fit -- no more saving them until I get around to being that size.

This may not seem related to bold creativity in art or any other field. But it is.

What I mean by fit, I regret to say, is movie-star perfect muscle tone. Ripped. Never mind that I'm 57 years old.

For me, THIS PREOCCUPATION IS RELATED TO CREATIVITY IN 2 WAYS:
*it's wasting mental time
*it's a bit perfectionistic, and perfectionism is a notorious hindrance to trying out new ideas, and getting work finished

Probably I should settle for reasonable fitness -- which I already have -- and quit being an idiot about this. But I had an eating disorder in my twenties, and those things die hard.

The main thing going on with me though is not about muscle tone and appearance. It's that I'm having trouble MANAGING MYSELF. I tell myself to jump rope. Then I quit after about ten jumps. This is new. And very unnerving.

I'm not quite sure what to do. My whole being rebels against the idea of giving up.

My First Writers' Retreat Experience

Last night, I got back from Weymouth, the writers hide-away in Southern Pines, NC.

I am A NEW CONVERT to this approach to writing. And I'm surprised. I've always thought I would hate going off somewhere with a laptop and a lot of silence, when my formative writing experience is a newsroom.

The way I worked it, though, it wasn't so silent. It was more like taking my toothbrush and moving into a newsroom, day and night. And I loved it.

The way I got my noise quota, was to have an adjoining room with Billie, the friend I went with. We kept the door open and could toss comments back and forth occasionally.

Also, the gorgeous grounds of the place are used for weddings and such, which are visible from the upstairs writer rooms, and were very entertaining. At one point, Billie, who had a better view of those events than I did, reported, "THE FLOWERGIRL IS NOW BITING PEOPLE." (This is possibly one of those had-to-be-there items, but it was wildly funny and companionable at the time.)

At the same time, I got A HUGE OF AMOUNT OF WRITING DONE. I wrote the first, second and third drafts of the first chapter of my new book, a biography of a painter, Elisabeth Chant. And I spent 18 hours on work for a client. We were there Wednesday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, and walked into charming downtown Southern Pines for most every meal. I got that much work done and still it FELT LIKE A VACATION.

I highly recommend it. And if you're not a rowdy sort of writer, you can arrange to be as quiet and solitary there as you want.

NOW ABOUT THE GHOSTS: in planning my trip to Weymouth, I was very interested in tales I'd heard from other writers-in-residence there of ghostly encounters. Bottom line: I didn't see any ghosts. But still, there were a number of peculiar things going on.

GHOSTLY CLUES:
*A closet door opened by itself
*A chair twice appeared to be slightly moved
*Two nights in a row there was a sound like cardboard boxes being pushed around overhead
*A latch of a room down the hall made some clicking noises with no one around
*And others

I thought of perfectly ordinary explanations for all these things. But I HOPE I'M WRONG about those. If you're a ghost hunter (or skeptic), please feel free to weigh in on this.

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.

New-Book Nesting

I've been seized by the getting-into-a-new-book phenomenon of MAKING SPACE FOR THE NEW PROJECT.

This is quite a strong urge. I liken it to what pregnant women do in getting a house ready.

So I just walked into my office with a treasure that took me many stores to find: a cabinet of the sort that's used for filing mail for the different people in a small business. There are 24 boxes in this rectangle, each slightly larger than an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper, and it cost $8.99 at the Goodwill. Please note the photo to the right.

This is where I'm now going to file the notes for the various chapters of the biography I've begun researching: of an obscure but weirdly fascinating painter of the early 20th century. Right now about 30 pounds of notes are piled up in one drawer, which is about to become impossible for finding anything in.

In a few minutes, I'm going to get this item dusted off, glue some felt pad to the bottom so I can get the envelopes out from under it and not scratch the floor. Then start sorting by chapter and topic. At that point, I will know that this new book is WELL AND TRULY LAUNCHED.

(I also intend to get a new trash can: one with a lid on it, so that I'm not looking down into my trash all day.)

These things are not frivolous and they're not procrastination. For me, they're essential to move into this next stage.

Turning a Journal into a Book

(This post is a handout for a panel I was on Saturday about The Writer's Life at Peace College in Raleigh, for the spring conference of the NC Writers Network. Instead of actually handing out these sheets, I've placed them here, for anyone who might be interested.)


How to find the book(s) hidden in your journal


*Look for the quest. A story is one main character in search of something specific and crucial, the efforts to reach the goal, and the obstacles that get in the way.

*Let your journal entries jog your memory. Remember the events you didn’t write down…the little details, bits of conversation, things that might not have seemed important then but in retrospect might turn out to be a significant part of the story.

*Let the writing in your journal be the starting place for deeper exploration. Even if you already told all, ask yourself: what was really going on then? what was I trying to do? what was my most urgent motivation?

*Remember that it’s the obstacles that make the suspense in the story. And that it’s the hero/ine’s efforts, rather than a perfect outcome, that create a satisfying tale.

*As you continue writing in your journal, be sure to put down sensory information, and specific details. That’s what will bring the experience back full force. To say “this afternoon was nice or dreary or amazing” does not take a reader to a particular day with particular weather, it doesn’t recreate how it was to be there. But if you say that rain was pouring off the edge of the roof, the house smelled like gardenias and burned cookies, and you just heard a sputtering that sounded like a motorcycle shutting off in your driveway, then you have the material to recreate how it was that day, whether for a book or your own memories.

What to Write About?

(This post is a handout for a panel I'm on, Saturday, May 20, at Peace College in Raleigh, for the spring conference of the NC Writers Network. Instead of actually handing out these sheets, I'm placing them here, for anyone who might be interested.)


Find The Writing Topic To Inspire Your LASTING PASSION

*FOLLOW A LEAD, no matter how flimsy. If something about a piece of green glass or the memory of a coffeehouse in Krakov has an uncanny appeal, free-associate on paper. Let that take you where it will.

*Understand that SMALL DISTINCTIONS MATTER. What we wind up passionate about is very particular. So pay attention to those distinctions. You may not care about Egyptian history, yet be drawn to know everything about the pharaoh Hatshepsut. Is it the tea or the rose on the teacup that touches your soul?

*Before you go to sleep, tell yourself you’re going to DREAM of what you’re most called to write. The moment you wake up, write down every detail you can recall, whether the dream seems to have any value or not.

*NOTICE: What do you spend most of your time thinking about?

*WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE, if you couldn't fail? (somebody else wrote this line, don’t know who)

*Without looking, PUT YOUR FINGER ON A WORD in a book. Write about that word and what it evokes for you. Do it several times, perhaps over a period of time, then look back at any themes or images or phrases that recur.

*Write and write, following where WHIM takes you, all the while keeping the writing to what is experienced through the senses. They’ll get you to the good stuff.

Sidewalk Blogging and Elisabeth Chant

I'm on my way home from two days of research on a biography of a painter, a book project that I began in the fall, and have just gotten back to after a bout of novel revisions.

On the road the last two and a half hours, I pulled over to check e-mail and chat on my laptop in a little town I knew had a wireless network on its one downtown street.

This feels like a nice break, sitting in the cool on a park bench between an insurance agency and an ice cream shop. I've been living in 1922 for the past two days, the winter my subject arrived in my hometown of Wilmington, NC. My 57 year-old heroine (my age, too, as it happens) was walking on Jan. 12, 1922, from the train station in Wilmington to the "prestigious Hotel Orton." I was trying to find out what she saw on those few blocks. Not easy!

Now I'm back to technology. And so I'll take an Internet approach to this work:

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF A PAINTER NAMED ELISABETH CHANT? IF SO, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH.

The Birth of an Art Opening.

All week as I've sat at my computer, I've watched an art show being assembled in the adjoining rooms.

My office is in an old Victorian home owned by my good buddy artist-writer Carrie Knowles,pictured here. The downstairs contains my office and her Free Range Studio, where the mantra is "Creativity should have no boundaries and dreams no fences..."

On Sunday, May 21, a week from Mother's Day, she's holding her first opening in this (Raleigh, NC) building we moved into early last fall. And YOU'RE INVITED. Carrie's a printmaker, and doing gorgeous pieces that use photos she made of cobblestones in Brussels, where her son is a classical musician. In these prints the stones seem to float.

For a thoroughly verbal sort as I am, it's a rousing thing to see, as I work, new prints spread out all over the floors drying, to watch the work go through various stages, and see the show start to come together. It sparks my own imagination to see all this going on around me. This work of hers is evocative and surprising, good qualities to have around when you're writing.

Next Sunday's party is open to the public. Come look if you're in this part of the world. It's at 410 Morson Street, near the Capitol, 1-5 pm. A handbag designer will be showing here at the same time. And I'll be here as a guest, with my own office neatened up a bit.

Access to Creativity

Artist Patricia Roshaven asked in a recent comment here how I get access to my own creativity.

In the course of working with other folks, I've put together dozens of tricks for doing that, but I'm going to ponder here what I regularly do myself to GET TO THE DEEPEST, WILDEST STUFF:

1. I start work, in my case, writing. The result may be awful for a while and then get better. And ideas emerge while I'm working.

2. After working--maybe later in the day--I do something physical and mindless: exercise, take a shower, eat lunch, do the laundry, run errands. After I've been writing, ideas pop up when I'm doing something physical and routine.

3. I've learned this one only in the last year: Keep a little sign on my computer that helps me remember the point of what I'm writing: insofar as I know the point. This may seem obvious, but what I write seems to come from preconscious material, and it slips away very easily. Here's a post about the therapy session I had that brought me to a breakthrough on this.

4. At times when I've felt gripped by fear, I've taken short breaks every hour and read something that helped me keep the floodgates open: in writing the first chapter of Sister India, I kept stopping to read a couple of pages of Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind. At another point when I was feeling shocked by what I was writing, I read bits of an autobiography by a friend, Lucy Daniels, With a Woman's Voice, which was startlingly personal and disclosing. I kept thinking: if she can do this, I can surely keep on spinning this fiction.

5. Having lots of toys and visual stimulation has helped me when I needed to write an ad on a deadline. (I used to do a lot of this kind of work.) Also, meditation has worked well for this: read the basic information, then sit and not-think about it for half an hour. Several times I've opened my eyes and had the idea present itself full-blown.


Part Two of Patricia's question was: what causes creativity to stop for me. One word answer: overwork.

Please suggest some of your own creativity tricks in the comments section, if you will.

The Good News Blues

Used to be that at the completion of each draft of each book, I'd go into a three-day emotional hell that I referred to as POST-DRAFT NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.

This was like an amplifed version of coming out of a movie into bright daylight: *light too bright
*sounds too loud
*real world appears badly managed and in need of a wash
*irritants become infuriating
Fortunately, I seem to have gotten over that.

This weekend, I surprised myself with a writerly emotional phenomenon that I'd forgotten: AGENT-LOVES-MY-BOOK JITTERS.

As I boasted in my last post, my agent reported Thursday that she's quite keen on my novel. She's enthusiastically sending it out.

So this weekend, I spent much of Saturday BERATING MYSELF for:
*being too fat (false)
*being out of shape (somewhat true)
*wasting a lot of time (mostly not true)
*house in a perpetual mess (mostly true)
*berating myself (true)

Of course, I barely thought about the novel and its future at all.

On Sunday came STAGE 2 of the jitters:
*mind calm
*painfully tense neck

Still no thought of book going out this week to editors.

Today, Monday: So far so good, which will likely continue. Working tends to distract me, which is a damn good thing.

Some Book News

My agent called yesterday and she's excited about the revision of my novel COBALT BLUE that I finished and Fedexed two weeks ago.

This was what I wanted to hear: serious enthusiasm. I feel and she feels that the novel is really working after this last five-month go-round (Lord, let it be the last go-round before a sale!)

So now she sends it out. Please send it selling vibes (much like healing vibes) to help wing it to a soft landing in the lap of the publisher who will love it and provide it an enormous promotion budget. Thanks!

Authenticity

One of my heroes, the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, said this about authenticity:

THE PRIVILEGE OF A LIFETIME IS BEING WHO YOU ARE.

Takes guts to let the truth show, though. Especially in a piece of art that goes out into the world. That difficulty, on the face of it, doesn't make a lot of sense. Because nothing is more satisfying.

Well, maybe a happy marriage; but that too requires being authentic. In fact, so do most things that are worth doing.

So, as far as I can see, there's really not a lot of reason to hide out in a false persona. Except for the cost in courage, approval, awkward moments, and sometimes cash. I tell myself these are all short-term problems, and I'm convinced that this is true. But moment by moment, damn, it can be scary to venture out unguarded, and without apology.

The Artist's Career at Lake Junaluska

Last weekend's 3-day workshop at Lake Junaluska was about artists of all sorts increasing audience, income, and time for creative work. The photos are some of the artists and this old Methodist mountain retreat in the NC mountains where we met.

There were a couple of dozen of us and we left there wildly excited, full of ideas, and each carrrying
one overriding lesson: set your goal as high as you can imagine, and then develop a detailed step-by-step plan for how you can use the resources you have to start moving yourself in that direction.
The big lesson was that simple. And yet how many artists of any sort put together such a plan?


The idea is that each small step you take toward your goal opens some new resources and wider possibilities. And when we run up on the inevitable setbacks and fits of nervousness: just STAY WITH YOUR PLAN.

I set as my goal to sell one million copies of Cobalt Blue and all my other books. I do have a plan--and I've begun. Will keep you posted.

Feel free to post here any similarly immodest goal of your own. (The workshop was run by Creative Capital and sponsored by the NC Arts Council.)

Hypnotic Exploration

A note to women in central NC: my mesmerizing husband, psychologist Dr. Bob Dick, is running a seminar at our house this Friday on hypnosis and women's issues: which of course always include creativity.

I attended one of these self-hypnosis seminars of his not long after we got married, and, because of a trance experience there, the next day started work on what would become my first published novel, Revelation. Bob's contact number is 919 929-1227. We live in a log cabin on a pond out in the woods of eastern Chatham County.

The photo to the right is of Bob and me on an Alaskan exploration.

Stunned by Wisdom, Ambition, and Fatigue

The fatigue is mine. The wisdom came from the Creative Capital workshop I attended in the NC mountains this weekend.

Over this past winter, I wrote a lot of posts here about the one-day class I took with this group whose purpose is to help all kinds of artists, especially the most experimental ones, learn how to make money at a professional level and have the time and independence to do their best work. The workshop was sponsored by the NC Arts Council.

I said this before, but I will brag again. My income increased 82% in the four months after that workshop in December compared to the same four months a year earlier.

So I went back for the 3-day class. It was extremely valuable strategic career planning. That may not sound sexy. But the income that these teacher/artists were making sure did. And it was pretty fascinating and exciting when I started working with some seriously high-priced planners on how to arrange for my just-completed novel COBALT BLUE to sell a million copies.

It was also intriguing to see a couple of dozen other artists show their first-rate work, and see their plans get bigger--and more do-able and detailed.

I'm hoping some of those folks are going to comment on this blog about their art and accelerating careers.

I'll have a lot more to say about mine, as you might imagine. And be back with some pictures too, once I get my mind unpacked.

Shipping the Manuscript

Just shipped my book to my agent. After first going all the way to the copy center without bothering to take it with me.

My first two novels--Sister India and Revelation--are stories about people daring to to be bold on behalf of what's most important to them.

This new one Cobalt Blue is my own act of daring. It ventures into some raw sexual territory--and into sacred sex. The scenes are absolutely integral to the story and the character; and it's a serious novel, has ambitions. Nonetheless, I'm a little worried about what my mama's going to think; and curious about what it will feel like to have this book out in the world. My agent, when she first read the first chapter, said, "This is quite a story, Peggy."

Final Copy?

Four minutes after midnight Good Friday; actually Saturday morning technically. I'm printing out what I'm hoping is my final copy of my new novel COBALT BLUE.

I just spent a couple of hours going through and getting rid of what I'm told is my excessive use of words including: now, again, so, and sardonic. What does that say about my book? I'm not sure.

I have great hopes, confidence, actually, in this novel. Long-term anyway. I do hope it flies on this time out, though. I'm eager to get it to my agent before the publishing industry slows down for the summer. She'll have it by the end of this coming week.

Maybe I'll follow the industry's excellent example then and slow down for the summer myself. I'm not really sure I want to. Guess we'll see.

Happy Easter, Passover, Holi (that's Hindu) and Spring.

Increasing Income of Writers/Artists

The weekend after this one, I'm going to a second event run by Creative Capital and the NC Arts Council on how writers and artists can make professional incomes.

Last fall I went to the one-day seminar, did (most of) the homework assignments, because the folks there said that if you did that, your income the next year would rise 20%. Well, in the first month mine went up roughly 250% over the previous year. This is a fluke, I cautioned myself. It was, but still...the first quarter of this year was 28% higher than last year. I'm happy. And I'm going back to learn more, and I will report here.

If you'd like to go back to earlier posts and look at some of the earlier homework assignments and tips, just do a search of this blog for the phrase "Creative Capital."

Knowing The Guts of the Story

At this late point in my revisions, the changes I'm making in my novel Cobalt Blue are small and huge.

SMALL CHANGES because:
*they're short
*they don't take long.

HUGE CHANGES because:
*the small additions, to fill in holes that my local reader/critics pointed out, are very high-impact
*I've worked on this story off and on for 18 years (while also writing three other books, etc.) and know all the off-stage history of the characters, can thus produce a highly relevant mini-scene pretty easily
*I know the story so well that I've grown more sure of each step I take, and each step is therefore stronger and clearer: BOLDER.

It's a very nice feeling, a real treat, in fact. It feels like a reward for a lot of groudwork, this rare ease.

Final Revision Mood Swings

I'm about three weeks from sending my new novel COBALT BLUE back to my agent. I can tell the end is near because I'm shifting from mood to mood in a most unsettling way.

END-OF-NOVEL MOODS SO FAR:
*relief, as if I'd already finished
*fear that this finished book is going to make trouble for me one way or another *exhaustion that makes me feel tremulous with any emotion
*indecisiveness about small, unrelated things
*feebleness as if I'm starting to come out of an illness
*anger, that it hasn't already won the National Book Award, and that it still isn't quite finished
*uneasiness about the peculiarly erotic nature of this novel
*sadness that it will soon leave my hands
*pride that it's so good
*excitement about what will happen next

So mid-morning today, I lay down on the rug in front of my desk and slept for an hour. It was an excellent solution. It's 8 pm. and I've been balanced and productive ever since. Now I'm wrapping up for the day. And soon I will re-encounter my peculiar emotional state in my dreams, at least that's the way it was last night.

I'm telling myself to cherish these interestingly tumultuous times. At least I've given up fighting off the turmoil.

Billy Arthur: Small and Bold

"William J. "Billy" Arthur, well-known journalist, newspaper publisher, legislator, businessman and dwarf, died Monday, March 27, 2006 at Carolina Meadows Health Center."

This is the lead to an obit in the Raleigh News & Observer. A friend e-mailed it to me and said: you don't see many like this. The list of accomplishments is impressive and then you get to that last descriptor: dwarf.

In North Carolina, this man was A STATEWIDE PRESENCE, THOUGH HE WAS 42 INCHES TALL.

He didn't hide. He "went all out."

He was a politician. With his wife, he operated several businesses. And he wrote a newspaper column that ran for 66 years. He also sang on Broadway and was, in his youth, head cheerleader at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The friend who sent me the obit said her father remembered running into him on the street in the '40s and '50s and if you squatted down to talk with him, he would squat down too. "Just to keep things equal."

A Wealth of Old Newspaper War Stories

One notable effect of a reunion of old newspaper people is that MOST EVERYONE LEAVES THE PARTY AND WRITES A STORY ABOUT IT.

The reunion at the new Raleigh Times Bar of staffers from the old Raleigh Times newspaper, which I've written about in the last few posts, has now turned into a print and cyberspace newsroom-nostalgia-fest.

Coming from a bunch of career writers, it's probably no surprise that the reminiscences make good stories: funny, poignant, and mostly well-written. Otherwise, the accounts are interestingly different from each other, and the coverage at the smaller newspapers is just as good as at the larger papers.

I've already linked to a couple of stories in previous posts. Here's A BRIEF RUNDOWN ON THE LATEST DISPATCHES:

At The Island Packet in Hilton Head, SC, David Lauderdale writes in both his blog and his column about the reunion: "Sharon Campbell remembers a reporter throwing a chair that whizzed right over her head. (Someone else recalled that) Dudley Price got tired of paper spilling over from the desk crammed next to his, so he set it on fire. With all the cigarette smoke in the room, it probably went unnoticed for hours."

David Lauderdale also quotes Arthur Sulzberger, now New York Times publisher, on his best and worst memories of his tenure at The Raleigh Times. The worst was when he called the home of a man and his son who had just been killed in a boating accident. The wife and mother answered, and Arthur learned that she hadn't yet been given the news.

Bob Ashley, now editor of The Herald-Sun in Durham started at The Raleigh Times the same week I did, both of fresh out of Duke, and both having worked for The Duke Chronicle. Bob notes how every detail of Raleigh was news for our staff; he once wrote eleven stories from one City Council meeting: no small morning's work.

Former Times editor A.C. Snow's column in the News & Observer remembers an angry call from a subscriber whose mother had been quoted all too correctly.

In The Apex Herald, Lynne Wogan conducts an interview with Gail Gregg, who was editor and the only writer of the Apex newspaper, then called the Western Wake Herald, while her husband Arthur, was working at the Raleigh Times. Apex was then a town of 3,000 and Gail, now a successful painter and freelance writer, was young, a self-described Yankee, ready to take on the world.

In the Clayton News-Star, editor Margaret Ritchie tells where a lot of old Times staffers are now, and says that what she has done with the newspaper in Clayton is recreate a paper a lot like the old Raleigh Times.

I'm still waiting for The Raleigh Times nostalgia piece to show up in The New York Times. Arthur, you're up.

More on Newspaper Buddies, Novelist Buddies

Here's another post from the recent reunion of people who worked for The Raleigh Times newspaper. In the previous post--where I told about this historic get-together of writers, editors, and photographers--I invited others to send in better pictures than mine. Well, a real photographer responded: these two vivid moments are from the camera of freelance photojournalist Karen Tam.

In this first, Sharon (Kilby) Campbell, retired editor of The Chapel Hill News is addressing the assemblage; with her are host and downtown redeveloper Greg Hatem (owner of The Raleigh Times Bar) and former Timeser Mary Burch, now executive director of a nonprofit, the Auditory Learning Center.

Lighting a celebratory cigar is Arthur Sulzberger, New York Times publisher, with News & Observer business writer Dudley Price inhaling.

These newspaper folks and I were covering Raleigh for the small and fiercely competitive Raleigh Times in the 1970s. Our being buddies helped us to do good work--after all, who would want to be the faltering member of the team?

I remember being part of the group that covered V.P. Spiro Agnew coming to town. My job was writing features from the hotel where he was staying, The Velvet Cloak. Security around the place was intense, and I was determined to find and interview his speech writer on this trip, a man I'm 97% sure was Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I found out the room number and, coming out of the elevator, I scooted unseen past the back of the security guard. When he caught sight of me, I ran, heading around a corner and toward a door at the end of the balcony hallway.

I looked back only at the point when I was pounding on Moynihan's door. The guard was running toward me with his rifle held ready, as if he were advancing single-handedly on the whole Russian army.

The door opened. "A MAN IS FOLLOWING ME WITH A GUN," I said, appropriately breathless. The rather courtly Moynihan-most-likely ushered me in.

I was seated and near-composed by the time the guard got to the door. The White House advisor assured the man that all was well, not to worry.

He then, genially, gave me a few good quotes for my story, and I left him to his typewriter and his work-in-progress. The thing is: I don't know if I would have run down that hall without THE HONOR OF THE TEAM to uphold--or if I'd have stood in the bushes under one of the hotel's kitchen windows to interview people cooking for Agnew and his entourage.

MY NEWSPAPER BUDDIES FIRED ME UP TO DO MY BEST WORK then. Other "working" friendships, intensified by commitment to similar goals, help me do my best work as a novelist now. My office partner, and the fiction-writing critique group that I've been part of for 24 years, and other friends, including one from the old Times gang, all help me in this way. From them I get trustworthy criticism and encouragement, which is as important as any professional tool I have, and this includes my computer.

So--anybody got any more reunion pictures I can post? Or MORE WAR STORIES?

In the meantime, do go to the Times reunion coverage in the News and Observer written by columnist (and, as it happens, my sister-in-law) Ruth Sheehan, or to the report in The Independent by former Timeser Sylvia Adcock, who was later part of THE NEWSDAY TEAM that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting with their coverage of the TWA plane crash off Long Island.

A Hundred Year-Old Writers' Group

Comrades-in-arts are crucial for writers, painters, and others working in fields that are often solitary and speculative. (I think I've said this a time or two before on this blog.)

Friday night I took part in A BANG-UP CELEBRATION of writer (and editor and photographer, etc.) SOLIDARITY that was so unusual--and terrific--that it drew a television crew, news reporters and people from New York to Florida.

The party was a gathering of "alums" of the now-defunct Raleigh Times. The invited guests included anyone who had ever worked for this little afternoon newspaper that was started just over a hundred years ago. The host was Greg Hatem, owner of the Raleigh Times Bar soon to open in the 1906 building that first housed the newspaper. The picture at the top of this post shows in the background the staff in the mid-70s.


This was not the first such gathering of Timesers--I've been to three other reunions. This is a bunch of people who have stayed in touch, stayed buddies even at a distance, and over so many years, so many decades.

I worked at this paper in 1970-1972--quite a while ago. The paper has been closed since '89. And yet, dozens of us still gather every few years. For any kind of enterprise, this is some unusual solidarity.

This tight connection came about because we were such a scrappy little newspaper. There were probably no more than 8 or 10 reporters in the newsroom at a time, and we competed daily against the magnitudes-larger News & Observer.

The work was intense. My beat was health, science, the environment and education, and that was the year the schools here desegregated. Busy? Whoa, baby!

When I first interviewed for the job, the managing editor Joe Harper asked if I was comfortable writing up to five stories a day; I assured him I was, though I doubt if I ever had done any such thing. We wrote for two deadlines, 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Then we went to lunch together. Supposedly, we were off work at three.

The group was typically young and single. So people partied together, romanced, shared apartments, as well as working together.

Now those of us who worked there are bonded. Permanently. Sort of like we were underdogs together in the same battle.

And people have turned out pretty well so far: among those attending were a reporter from the St. Petersburg paper, an art gallery owner, several successful freelancers, an antiques dealer, a couple of painters, a journalism professor, a media consultant, the editor of The Durham Herald-Sun and the publisher of The New York Times. Those who had to miss this time include: an editor at The Washington Post, and the just-retired head of a university journalism school.

Karen Tam, a photographer, staged her slide show of "how-we-were" in the '70's--always a hilarious and poignant event at these reunions. The media consultant and I were an item in one of those "hippie" years; there he was in dashiki in one of the old pictures, with me in my pink velour bell bottoms.

A regular highlight of the slide show: a guy who is now a reporter for the News & Observer was literally caught with his pants down on some unnamed social occasion; it was a moment he will never be allowed to forget.

Also portrayed were various members of the gang: climbing a tree, playing at the beach, working in the newsroom, making faces, showing off a new baby, etc. That baby is an adult now. The rest of us are adults-and-then-some.

As you see, I tried shooting a few pictures at Friday's party. They didn't turn out very well. All the people are much more fetching than these pix would indicate. (I held back the real howlers, maybe they'll be in the next slide show.) New camera, low light, fit of shyness, dying batteries, and good conversations got in the way. But here are a few of them. If you happened to be at that party and have better ones, email me (ppayne51@cs.com) and I'll post those.

Again, let me say: it's a great thing to have such friends.

An Invitation to Promote Your Art

A lot of blogs ask people who comment to refrain from writing anything self-promotional.

I'm taking the opposite approach. I'd like to invite you to use this space to PROMOTE YOUR CREATIVE WORK. If you have a book coming out, or an art opening, a dazzling new invention, or a class or speaker to assist people in doing this kind of work: ANNOUNCE IT HERE.

Doesn't matter where you are. Even if readers can't get to the show, they can still learn where to find you and your work.

So if you have a product that you, as an individual, created, HAVE AT IT. Say, in the comments section of any one post, regardless of the post topic, what you've got going on--unless what you created is Viagra.

City of Literature

From the blog The Elegant Variation:


THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

As part of its City of Literature push, Edinburgh would like to become a "city of refuge" for persecuted writers.

The Scottish capital could offer sanctuary to those unable to work and live safely in their home country.

If senior councillors give the proposal their backing on Tuesday, the Lord Provost Lesley Hinds will launch a consultation on the move.

Edinburgh would then look to bid for official status, aiming to be accepted in time for this year's book festival.

The idea has been brought forward by the Scottish branch of PEN, a worldwide association of writers committed to protecting freedom of expression.


Note from Peggy: I applaud the idea of a City of Literature. May all our villages have such aspirations.

Social Support for Artists

One of the best things I've ever done for my daily productivity as a writer is move my office into my good buddy Carrie's office building. That's her, just to the right--Carrie Knowles, both a printmaker and writer (The Last Childhood, Three Rivers, 2000.)

My office and hers are situated so that, with doors open, we can talk without either of us getting up from our desks. Or if we need quiet (hasn't happened yet) or have a client, then we can shut the doors.

Her visual art space--Free Range Studio and Gallery--is in the front room and in the big old-fashioned foyer of this 1910 house. In the picture she's setting up a piece of art just inside the front door.

So, not only do I get to my office through a small charming gallery, but she and I have an ongoing conversation as well as trading advice throughout the day. My question this morning: can I use the word "disingenuous" and not have to explain it?

More important than the advice is being able to have two minutes of conversation most any time. For a person who works in solitude, this is so valuable, because:

*The frustrations of the work are less frustrating.
*Work is more fun, and I keep going longer.
*Looking at her artworks in progress refreshes my mind.
*I have the sense that my daily work problems are shared and they are less serious than they otherwise would be.
*If I'm about to shoot myself in the foot by, for example, agreeing to a price or timeline that I shouldn't, she can see it more clearly in the moment than I can.
*I take five-minute breaks in the building, instead of the 30-minute go-somewhere kind that I would otherwise.
*And again, it's just fun.

Even if you sit and write together at a fast-food restaurant, it can be helpful to have a writing buddy.

Post-Deadline Euphoria

I shipped the big editing project, caught up on sleep, and today I am as light as pollen. (It's warmy and breezy spring here today.)

It's a delicious feeling, to have just gotten a huge amount of work done. Back when I worked for The Raleigh Times--a now-defunct afternoon newspaper, and my first job after graduation--I had this feeling many days. Because the work I did in the morning was in the paper in the afternoon. Not many kinds of work give that immediate relief, celebration and feedback. Writing novels certainly doesn't.

I find it nice--no, more than that--to have this feeling periodically. Like the pollen, I'm pure potential (a rare feeling in adult life.) And like the pollen, today I'm just drifting on the breeze.

That's crucial before re-immersing myself in the details of work.

Once in my 20s, I finished a batch of stories for Family Circle magazine and felt, not light, but so burned-out I couldn't imagine lifting a finger to a keyboard again. The day that work was done, I decided I was going to Mexico the next day. By myself. No reservations, no definite return date. And I told the editor that I couldn't be reached. I wound up in Isla Mujeres, "the island of women." I slept a mere 20 hours my first day there, and when I finally emerged from the room, I found someone had put flowers around my door.

I stayed a week, rode a bike around the island, snorkelled, ate, improbably, in a French restaurant on a porch. The woman who owned the place came out and sat down with me and said her 30 year-old son was coming in from Paris that afternoon. Would I have dinner with him? A blind date set up by the guy's mother. I was flattered, sort of. I don't think he was, though. He seemed jet-lagged and irritable mainly, but we got through dinner.

I came home from that trip feeling good. But it only lasted a few days. It became clear to me then that I was facing some decisions about career direction. I think it took that interim, and it's not "working," to help me see. So I'm in favor of time off, sometimes taken grudgingly, whether it feels good or not.

Today it feels good. Now I shut down my computer and go outside and play.

My First All-Nighter

Last night gives new meaning to the cliche: it's never too late.

At the age of 57, I did my first all-nighter--a rough deadline on an editing project. I worked straight through the night and now it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm about to leave the office and call it A DAY.

I'm pleased with the work. And feel proud,as if I held up reasonably well in some athletic competition like a triathlon. Hour after hour--kept pawing at the keyboard and after a while the sun started coming up. Just wanted to share this moment with you.

Inspiration from the Oscars

Watching the Academy Awards--an annual event of great importance for me--offers every year TWO KINDS OF INSPIRATION. The show flamboyantly demonstrates that:

1. Dreams do come true, in a huge way, and sometimes for people who didn't seem to have a chance from the start.

2. Even wildly successful people still have big disappointments that they cope with and then keep on working.

This year there was AN INSPIRATIONAL BONUS: the Coke ad campaign. One of the slogans was (something on the order of): "Live Life As If They're Wanting an Encore."

Imagine that. Literally. Not only does the audience love your song, they want you to sing another one. That's inspiring. That kind of thinking can keep you singing.

Ferociously Busy

Finished the latest draft of my new novel COBALT BLUE. And working nearly continuously (though I do sleep and eat) to get a line-edit done ASAP of another writer's novel. Wow!

At the same time, "literary lightning," a great rush of wonderful book-luck hit a friend of mine in the past week. So I took a multi-hour break to celebrate. She doesn't want her name used yet, because she's superstitious and feels it's too soon to talk about. But I think most of the nation will hear at some point not too far away.

And I want to highly recommend another excellent book, just out from a good buddy. Have a look at Dan Wakefield's THE HIGHJACKING OF JESUS. It tells exactly how the fundamentalist right-wing movement has used churches as a political base. Pretty juicy. You can click to Dan's website from my links list.

More later when the smoke clears.

"Literary Lightning"

You know those stories about megamillion-dollar literary luck? My local newspaper (The News & Observer in Raleigh) just ran a piece on the luck involved in huge success. It's about one author who has just been struck by "literary lightning" and about me, as an example of a writer who has had good luck, but not the million dollar kind.

As you can imagine, I was a little nervous about being an interviewed for an article where I could come off as the "designated loser," the one that luck was ignoring.

But the reporter, Bridgette Lacy, is a very good one, and a novelist herself. And as my husband reminded me "all publicity is good publicity." So I went ahead. And I was very pleased with the results. It felt like a kind of public wish for my good luck, for which I'm grateful.

If anybody has any ideas about how to bring on this kind of luck, do pass them on.

New from Anna Deavere Smith

Just heard on my local Shaw University radio station: an intriguing interview with actor-writer Anna Deavere Smith. Her new book Letters to a Young Artist has been out three weeks and sounds like the sort of thing we'd be interested in.
Sounds terrific, in fact, whether or not the artist is experienced or young. (Of course the practice of an art does keep a person young.)

The subtitle is Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts-For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind and the reviews are good.

The author is seriously smart and also very wide-ranging in her view of art--includes advice from a rodeo rider and a dentist. This point-of-view about art is, I think, good for writers and good for dentists.

Use The Promotional Resources You Have

My writer/artist-buddy Carrie Knowles brought into the office last night a tantalizing book Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark that because of my metaphysical interest she thought I'd like.

Glancing over the flap copy I paused at this bit in the writer's bio: The author Laurence Gardner is "a Knight Templar of St. Anthony and Prior of Sacred Kindred of St. Columba." Moreover, at least one of his books has been a bestseller. I'm thinking maybe there's a connection

SO WHY HAVE I BEEN IGNORING MY OWN ESOTERIC CREDENTIALS, since my novels are all mystical adventures?

Here is my tenuous connection--based on my internet research--and you may well see this info noted on my next dust jacket.

My name Payne is a variation on the name Payen, etc. It comes from the word "pagan" and originally referred not to a family group but to the people in the British Isles who hid out in the boondocks (le pays) when the Romans arrived. These were the folks who didn't like being taken over and organized. So it's no wonder that I and most of my relatives are bull-headed, given to flights of fancy, and self-employed.

NOW HERE'S THE HEADLINE ITEM: The first recorded use of the name for a particular individual was Hugh de Payen (sometimes written Payens or Pagen)who was FOUNDER OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

Not that I've tracked down any kinship to Sir Hugh.

Nonetheless, I mean to mention this name thing prominently when COBALT BLUE comes out. Seriously. I think the Knights Templar founder will CONNECT me with readers who would like my work.

Writer's Block

Here's a good NPR show on writer's block and some ways to deal with it from the series "The Infinite Mind."

One of the most useful parts of the show is the quotes from writers like FLAUBERT, CONRAD, DANTE, etc. talking about their problems with blocking. It's encouraging to know that they had this problem and managed to do pretty well anyway.

Then there's best-selling satirist Fran Lebowitz, who could put most writers' writer's block problems into perspective: she had a multi-year phobia of going into the room where her desk sat.

For me, the songwriter Aimee Mann was the MOST USEFUL. One of her ideas for solving the problem is to write out how you're feeling. She wrote a song about "calling it quits" that got her to writing songs again.

"Living Out Loud"

My husband Bob who turns 64 tomorrow received the unlikely birthday gift of two tickets to Menopause: The Musical, which is now on a many-city national tour.

And what a burst of boldness this show is!
(It may seem an odd present for a man. But it's something any married man should see at some point. Also, Bob's a psychotherapist and deals with menopause issues in his practice.

So we went to this musical. And loved it, both of us.

WHAT AN UPPER!!! it is.

Four women--Iowa Housewife, Soap Star, Power Woman, and Earth Mother-- sing Boomer rock-and-roll songs with the words hilariously changed to such subjects as sex and hot flashes.

Essentially it's about the solidarity between women who are going through the sweaty, tumultuous experience of estrogen loss, who bond with an intensity like men's war friendships.

And it's about "living out loud," being bold. From the writer Emile Zola: "If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I will answer--I CAME HERE TO LIVE OUT LOUD."

Each of the four women gives a fine performance. And when Power Woman, who is rather large, emerges at the end in a slinky little black dress and a lion-sized Tina Turner mane, the result in the crowd is a rush of giddiness, not unlike the moment when a gulp of champagne goes straight to the brainstem.

At the end of the performance, the entire audience was invited to the stage to join in the final kick line.

For anyone wanting to live with more intensity, daring, and authenticity, this is a delightful encouragement. And it's as much fun as any show I've ever seen.

Thanks for the tix, Ruth and Harry and sons.

(Lately this blog has become my thank-you notes. I guess there's nothing wrong with "thank you" writ large.)

The Gift of Boldness

I've decorated my desk with a couple of birthday presents I recently received in celebration of my turning 57.

One was a set of inspirational cards, (Isle of View Insight Cards). Next to my computer today is the one that plays off the word BOLD. The letters of the word are a reminder of the message: Believing Opens Life's Dream.

The idea, of course, is: BELIEVE YOU CAN ACHIEVE WHAT YOU WANT AND YOU'LL BE ABLE TO.. I do believe that and I have, pretty much, found it to be so (although the jury's still out on a couple of matters). Much as I believe it, I also find it helpful to be reminded.

Then there's the Lady Godiva cup, which holds enough to feed Lady Godiva's horse, and came with some sumptuous Godiva cocoa. The image--of the naked woman on the horse--also brought along its thousand year-old history: Lady Godiva bared all in order to achieve her purpose.

What she wanted was for her husband, the Earl of Leofric, to lower taxes on the peasantry. He said he'd do it the day she rode through town naked. So she did.

What artists must summon again and again is the courage be as EMOTIONALLY BARE IN OUR WORK AS LADY GODIVA.

So I'm drinking deep out of this mug; of course the chocolate helps too.

And thank you, Joe Burgo and Karen Tam.

From Robertson Davies

Davies is one of my long-time favorite novelists, especially The Deptford Trilogy. His Jungian tilt intrigues me. Nobody does archetypes better.

Here's a thought from him that I found encouraging--especially for when a manuscript is at its muddy stage.


The best among our writers are doing their accustomed work of mirroring what is deep in the spirit of our time; if chaos appears in those mirrors, we must have faith that in the future, as always in the past, that chaos will slowly reveal itself as a new aspect of order.
Robertson Davies
A Voice from the Attic (1951)


The way I think about this is personal: "what is deep in my spirit" rather than what's in the spirit of our time. Often it's something I don't know about, and am shocked to find. Also, I don't try to "mirror" it. Instead I use it as a spark of energy that will start to lead me into a fictional story.

I chase the spark, do my best to keep it in sight.

ADDENDUM: Adapting bits of wisdom to suit me is necessary. A writer friend told me this definition of a writer: someone who, if present as God creates the universe, would stare at the final product then say, You know, God, it's nice, but it would be so much better if you just changed this...." I expect that definition applies pretty well to most humans.

Rejection Slip

Only one post ago, I was blythely writing about how we have to consider rejections, obstacles, setbacks as progress. Since it's inevitable that some come along, we just need to view them as part of the trip, not a reason to stop or slow down.

And then-- a favorite client of mine decided to cancel the project I'd already gotten deeply involved in. I'd written one draft of a booklet, a piece I'm especially proud of. Now: no booklet.

I got paid anyway, very well-treated. No hard feelings from me, and none from them that I know of.

Yet--that piece I like so much will likely never be read.

Indeed, A DISAPPOINTMENT.

I looked back ruefully on what I'd just so easily written about absorbing these blows. Well, the thing is I NEVER SAID THEY'RE NOT BLOWS.. The news hovered at the edge of my consciousness, like a pulled muscle, until mid-day the following day. I kept working, I'm proud to say.

Now once again I feel philosophical about the parts of this work I cannot control. I still wish, though, that that 20-pager was going to be published.

And I'm genuinely pleased to discover again that I still possess my RESILIENCE.

6 More Hints on Arts Marketing

*When you're having a booksigning or an art opening or some other career event, figure out who the people are whose presence would mean the most for your career. Write those people A PERSONAL LETTER of invitation, perhaps in addition to including them in an mass e-mail.

*LEARN ABOUT THE PERSON YOU WANT TO REACH, his or her interests and accomplishments, how you can fit into what that person is doing, what mutual friends or contacts you might have.

*COUNT ON A LOT OF REJECTIONS and setbacks in marketing, just as most of us do in the process of doing the work. Part of the day's work and the progress is getting the inevitable rejections. These are a step forward.

*OTHER ARTISTS' SUCCESSES show where there may be an opportunity for you. Find out how they did it, and how you can adapt that approach for yourself.

*In sending out UPDATES ON YOUR WORK, limit yourself to twice a year, and don't send announcements about your very small victories. You might save some of your mailing list, in announcing a book release or a long-running art show, until you have a good review to quote.

*COMMUNICATE YOUR PASSION about your work to the person you want to interest. Show your excitement and say what has drawn you to this project, what it means to you.

These ideas are brought to you from the Creative Capital seminar on strategic planning for artists, which I've been carrying on about for weeks now.

ADDENDUM: The picture is the view from my desk (isn't my office building wonderful?)with the glass I mentioned in my last post. Note the COBALT BLUE color. Every time I reach for this weak iced tea, I'm reminded of my novel and my goals for it.

Delicious Literary Promotion Gambit

I got a terrific suggestion from one of the writers at the Creative Capital alum reunion Sunday night:

****For promotion (and celebration)of my nearly-done novel Cobalt Blue, to create a drink called a Cobalt Blue.

This potion needs to be an ethereal blue--and sizzling good. If you HAVE IDEAS? for the recipe that you'd like to contribute, do feel free to pass them on.

I already have the perfect vessel for the testing: it's a martini glass with a cobalt blue rim and a cobalt blue stem that I picked up at a thrift shop for the color.

A hard version and a soft version of the drink are needed--since I can handle about three sips of wine and that's all. So, for myself at least, I'm going to create for this pretty-racy novel a Virgin Cobalt Blue.

Years ago I thought it was funny that the screen rights contract for my first novel, Revelation, included the soft drink rights. I couldn't imagine a Revelation soft drink. I was clearly too narrow in my thinking.

Visualize the Published Book

Visualizations of a goal work even better for me when I create the image of what I want and keep it before me.

Here's an example: my mock-up of COBALT BLUE, my novel-in-terrific-progress, as a published hardback. It's about a painter: note the paintbrush, and the color blue.
Those little gold seals on the cover are for national awards, including the Pulitzer. I also put some nice blurbs and a picture of me on the back.

This looks like a second grader did it. But you get the idea. And so does my unconscious. I've done this with my previous books; it hasn't missed yet.