The Personal Development List

This blog was included on a wonderful list of Personal Development Blogs. I was asked to add five new ones to the list and pass the list on. Here are the additional five:

Christine Valters Painter at Abbey of the Arts
Laura at Organizing Junkie
Nancy Mills at The Spirited Woman
JodeeB at You Already Know This Stuff
Brooke at Plain Advice


And here's the list, an impressive resource, from Priscilla Palmer:


Aaron Potts at Today is That Day
Adam Alexander at Adam’s Peace
Adam Kayce at Monk at Work
Adam Khoo at Adam Khoo’s Philosophies and Investing Insights
AgentSully at Life Learning Today
April Groves at Making Life Work For You
Argancel at C’eclair (for those who speak french)
Ash aka Mr. Biggs at One Powerful Word
Al at 7pproductions.com
Alan Torres at Made to Be Great
Alex Shalman at AlexShalman.com
Alexander Kjerulf at The Chief Happiness Officer
Alexys Fairfield at Unraveling The Spiritual Mystique
Albert Foong at urbanmonk.net
Amber at Random Mangus
Amie Ragan at Psychology of Clutter
Amy Hedin at There is no Maximum to Human Potential
Andrea Learned at Learned on Women
Andrea J. Lee at Money, Meaning, and Beyond
Andy Wibbels at AndyWibbels.com
Anita Pathik Law at Power of four Way
Anmol Mehta at AnmolMetha.com
Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand
Antonio Thornton at AntonioThornton.com
Ariane Benefit at Neat & Simple Living
Ask Lucid at Ask Lucid Spiritual Development
Barbara Sliter at Creatorship
Belle Wong at Abundance Journal
Bill Perry at Lucid Blog
Billy Smith at The Organic Leadership Blog
Blogfuse at LifeDev
Brad Isaac at Achieve It
Brian Clark at Copyblogger
Brian Kim at briankim.net
Brian Lee at geniustypes.com
Bob at everyeveryminute
Cam Beck at ChaosScenario
Cara Lumen at The Success Magnets With Cara Luman and Your Second Wind Blog
Carlon Haas at Possess Less Exist More
Chris Cree at SuccessCREEations
Chris Marshall at Martial Development
Chris Owen at Pink Apple
Christine Kane at ChristineKane.com
Clyde at Feeling Good
Colin Beavan at No Impact Man
Conceive, Believe, Achieve at Conceive, Believe, Achieve
Craig Harper at Motivational Speaker
Curt Rosengren at Occupational Adventure
Cyres at Cyres Matters
Damian Carr at Soul Terminal
Daniel Sitter at Idea Sellers
Darren Rowse at Problogger.net
Dave Schawbel at The Personal Branding Blog
Dave Schoof at Engaging the Disquiet
Davers at Language Trainers Blog
David Allen at The David Allen Company
David Bohl at Reflections on Balance
David Fitch at David Fitch.com
David Richeson at 360 Degree Success
David Rogers at How to Have Great Self Confidence
David Seah at David Seah.com
David Zinger at Slacker Manager
Dawud Miracle at dmiracle.com
Dean Lacono at Law of Attraction for Beginners
Debbie Call at Spirit In Gear
Debbie LaChusa at 10 Step Marketing Collection
Debra Moorhead at Debra Moorhead.com
Denise Mosawi at Destineering.com
Des Walsh at Thinking Home Business
Devlyn Steele at Tools To Life Guide
Dick Richards at Come Gather Round
Dominic Tay at Personal Development for Winners
Don Simkovich at Hey Don
Donald Latumahina at Life Optimizer
Donna Karlin at Perspectives
Donna Steinhorn at Rethinking
Dr. Charles Parker at The Core Psych Blog
Dr. Hal at Northstar Mental fitness blog
Drew Rozell at Drew Rozell.com
Dwayne Melancon at Genuine Curiosity
Edward Mills at Evolving Times
Ellen Weber at Brain Based Business
Emily G. W. Lilly at The Science of Waldorf Education
Emmanuel Lopez at The Adventures of Motivatorman
Ellesse at Goal Setting College
Elly Jolly at Jolly Life Coaching
Enoch Tan at Mind Reality
Eric Napier at Quotation Collection
Erin Pavlina at Erin Pavlina.com
Frank Kanu at Frank Uncovers Excellence in Leadership
Frank Roche at KnowHR Blog
Galba Bright at Tune Up Your EQ
Gilad Buchman at Sigsug
Gleb Reys at Personal Development Ideas
Grayson at Modern Worker Blog
Greg Butler at Life as Art
Greg Frost at ChargedAudio.com
Gretchen Rubin at Happiness Project
Gustav at Success-is-in-you.com
Guy Kawasaki at How to Change the World
Gyanish at Diethack
Halina Goldstein at The Inner Travel Journal
Hilda Carroll at Living Out Loud
Heather Goldsmith at A Creative Journal
Henrik Edberg at The Positivity Blog
Honman at Open Your Mind to Prosperity
Inkedmn at The Cranking Widgets Blog
Isabella Mori at MoriTherapy
Itzy Sabo at Email Overloaded
Jacklyn Ker at Inspiring and Empowing Lives
Jason and Michael at Black Belt Productivity
Jason Ivers at A Miracle a Day
Jason Womack at Fit and Effective
Jay White at dumb little man tips for life
Jean Browman at Transforming Stress Into Power and Cheerful Monk
Jeannette Maw at Good Vibe Coaching
Jeff Lilly at Druid Journal
Jeffrey Phillips at Think Faster
Jennifer at Goodness Graciousness
Jenny and Erin at Jenny and Erin
Jeremiah Owyang at Web Strategy by Jeremiah
Jerry Hart at Blue Print to emarketing
Jerry Lopper at Personal Growth
Jessa at clairvoyantGuidance.net
Jim stroup at Managing Leadership
Jim Walton at Black In Business
JoLynn Braley at The Fit Shack
Joan Schramm at Accelerating Momentum
Joanna Young at Coaching Wizardry
Joanne at I’m Happy Fish
Joe Vitale at Dr. Joe Vitale at Zero
John Pratt at John Pratt International
John Place at John Place Online
John W. McKenna at The Leadership Epidemic
John Wesley at Pick The Brain
Jon at Join The Secret
Jonathan at Smart Wealthy Rich and Freelance Folder
Jory Des Jardin at Pause: Meaningful Work
Josh Bickford at Reach For Magnificence and Reach for Magnificence
Josh Kaufman at The Personal MBA
Judy Martin at The Work/Life Monitor
Julia Rogers Hamrick at Julia’s Blog: Journal of the Journey Home to Eden
Julie Bonner at Declutter It
Kailani at An Island Review
Kammie Kobyleski at Passion Meets Purpose
Karen at Journey with Water Learner
Karen Lynch at Live The Power
Karen Wallace at The Clearing Space
Karl Moore at Karl Blog.com
Karl Staib at Karl Staib.com
Kathy Mallary at Coaching Biz Tips
Keith Ferrazzi at Never Eat Alone
Kenton Whitman at kentonwhitman.com
Kevin Kinchen at Creative Power of Thought
Killeris at Attitude, The Ultimate Power
Kim and Jason at Escape Adulthood
Kim George at Doing What You Can Do
Kirk Nugent at Kirk Nugent.com
Kirsten Harrell at Ipopin
Krishna De at Biz Growth News and Todays Women in Business
K.L. Masina at Be Conscious Now
Leah Maclean at Working Solo
Laura Young at The Dragon Slayer’s Guide to Life
Lee Nutter at bmindful
Leo Babauta at Zen Habits
Life Reflection at Universe in a Single Atom
Linda Salazar at Awaken The Genie Within
Lisa Braithwaite at Speak Schmeak
Lisa Gates at Design Your Writing Life
Lisa Van Allen at Finish Strong
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
Lodewijkvdb at How to be an Original
Lola Fayemi at Real World Spiritual and Personal Development
Lorraine Cohen at Powerfull Living
Luciano Passuello at Litemind.com
Lucid at Spiritual Suggestions
Lyman Reed at Creating a Better Life
Lyndon Antcliff at LyndonAntcliff.com and Cornwallseo.com
MT at MindTWEAKS
Maddy at Illuminated Minds Want to Know
Malathy Badri at Laws of Universe
Manny at Success Books
Maria Garcia at Get Organized Now
Maria Palma at The Good Life
Marianne Williamson at Journal
Mark at The Naked Soul
Mark Forster at Get Everything Done
Mark LaPierre at The Winding Path
Mark McManus at Build Your Life To Order
Mark W Shead at Productivity 501
Martin Avis at Kickstart Daily
Matthew Cornell at Matt’s Idea Blog
Meg Haworth at Life Lessons From Your Soul
Melanie Benson Strick at The Success Blog
Merlin Mann at 43 Folders
Michelle at aMusing My Genius
Michelle Moore at Happiness Blog
Michael Port at The Think Big Revolution
Michael Vanderdonk at TOACH Performance
Mike Janssen at Opgestroopte Mouwen
Mike St. Pierre at The Daily Saint
Mr.Wang at Mr Wang Says So
My Everyday Planner at My Everyday Planner
Nancy Tierney at Unconditional Confidence
Neil Patel at Quick Sprout
Nic Askew at Monday 9AM Blog
Nick Smith at Life 2.0
Nneka at Balanced Life Center
Organize-It at Organize-It
Pamala Slim at Escape From Cubicle Nation
Pamm Larry at My Spiritual Dance
Patricia Singleton at Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker
Patti Digh at 37 Days
Paul at Paul’s Tips
Paul Piotrowski at Self Help Wisdom
Paula Kawal at Paula Kawal.com
Peggy Payne at Peggy Payne’s Boldness Blog
Peter at I Will Change Your Life
Peter Aldin at Great Circle
Peter Haslem at Necessary Skills
Phil Gerbyshak at Make It Great
Philippe Matthews at Shockwealth
Priscilla Palmer at Personal Development Demands Success
Quint Jensen at Win Your Mind
Raymond Salas at Zenchill Powertools
Real Modern Man at Real Modern Man
Reg Adkins at ElementalTruths
Ricardo at Wake Up Tiger
Rich Schefren at Strategic Profits
Rick Cockrum at Shards of Consciousness
Rick Cooper at The PDA Pro
Ririan at Ririanproject
Rob at 7Breaths
Rob Cooke at Leave the Office
Robert at Compassionate Council
Robert at Myselfdev
Robin Skeen at Robin’s Reflections
Robin Yapp at Yapp 3.0
Robyn McMaster at Brain Based Biz
Roger Von Oech at Creative Think
Rolf F. Katzenberger at Evomend
Rosa Say at Managing With Aloha Coaching
Ryan Marle at The Alpha Project
S.J. Yee at Personal Development for the Book Smart
Sam at Aquire Wisdom and Live with Passion
Scott Adams at The Dilbert Blog
Scott Berkun at Berkun Blog
Scott Bernadot at Keeping The Secret
Scott Ginsberg at Hello, My Name Is Blog
Scott H Young at Scott H Young
Scott McArthur at McArthur’s Rant
Self Pursuit at Self Pursuit
Senia at Senia.com Positive Psychology Coaching
Seth Godin at Seth’s Blog
Shane Navratil at Zoomstart
Shauna Arthurs at Breathing Prosperity and Follow Your Path
Shaheen Lakhan at GNIF Brain Blogger
Simone at Dynamic Living
Simone and Mandy at Outfit Inspirations
Slade Roberson at Shift Your Spirits and Spiritual Blogging
Sleeping Dude at How to Wake Up Early
Sonora Jayne Case at Positive Realities Coaching
Spike at Organize It
Stephanie and Jeffrey at Brains on Purpose
Steve Beisheim at Jumping Ship Happens
Steve King at The Green Geek
Steve Olson at Steve-Olson.com
Steve Pavlina at stevepavlina.com
Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace
Stephen at HD bizblog
Steven Aitchison at Change Your Thoughts
Surjit at Gurushabad
Susan Sabo at Productivity Cafe
Suzanne Bird-Harris at Learning Curve Coaching
Takuin Minamoto at Takuin.com
Ted Demopoulos at Blogging For Business
Terry Starbucker at Ramblings From a Glass Half Full
Thom Quinn at Qlog
Tim Ferris at 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog
Tim Taylor at My Agapic Life
Tom Peters at Tom Peters.com
Tom Spanton at TRCoach
Tom Van Brunscot of Transformation Economy
Tony Chimento at Living Forward
Tony D Clark at Success From The Nest
Torlink at You Create Reality
Travis A. Sinquefield at Disorganizational Behavior
Travis Wright at Cultivate Greatness
Trizoko at Trizoko.com
Trevor Gay at Simplicity is the Key
Troy Worman at Orbit Now!
Tuck Self at Rebel Belle Blog
Tupelo Kenyon at Tupelokenyon.com
Ubertech at Geeks Guide To GTD
Vera Nadine at Vera Nadine.com
Vickie at Contemplate This
Wade Millican at The Middle Way
Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership
Wan Qi at Meditation Forum Mantras
Wild Bill at Passionate Blogger
and these collaborated sites:
Burst Blog
Change This
Change Your Thinking
Daily PlanIt
Did I Get Things Done
GTD Wannabe
Jobman2
Joyful Jubilant Learning
Life Coaches Blog Stratagies for a Greater Life
Lifehack.org
Lifehacker.com
Transformational Girlfriends
Unclutterer

A Note About My Personalized Car

I've been getting more credit than was due on the floral car debuting two posts ago. I used a stencil, twisting it this way and that, and using different bits of it. I didn't draw it freehand.

The stencil came from The Stencil Library, which boasts the world's largest mail-order collection. Also, important to note: they now have a BIG AND BOLD group of stencils. The one I bought was offered at a smaller size; they doubled it for me.

At Sea With My Writing: Part Four

(This is a section of a story running here in serial about a writing crisis on the ocean liner QE2 that resulted in a dramatic change in my approach to my work.)


Next day--I'm losing track of the days, and I'm not working on my book, I'm thinking about it. I've resolved to hold off writing, to think as long as I need. Easier to do here than it would be at home.

A lecture by science fiction writer Ray Bradbury: I remember my excitement when I first read a story of his in high school. Yes, he is working on a new novel on this cruise, he said, while waiting to go onstage. And he has written on this ship before. On an earlier crossing he got an idea for a new novel the night he boarded. He saw a passenger in a hallway, "some sort of English lord," a man whose face had been "horribly destroyed." Bradbury was so upset by the thought of a man losing his face that he burst into tears. And then he began writing. He finished the first 100 pages of A Graveyard for Lunatics on that voyage, working at night on a soundless typewriter.

His speech was, like my stateroom, exactly what I wanted. He told the audience how in 1929 when he was 12, he "fell in love with the future," and began collecting Buck Rogers spaceman comic strips. "All the kids in fifth grade made fun of me." And so he tore up his collection, then regretted it. Doing that, he said, "I killed myself. I killed the future. I listened to the damn fools."

He returned to Buck Rogers, whatever the other fifth-graders might think. When his big break came, years later, it was because of boyhood passions he'd held onto. Director John Huston, on reading a Bradbury story about a dinosaur, called to ask if he'd like to write a screenplay, in the same spirit, about a white whale.

My Artcar!

Nothing helps my writing like dabbling playfully in some other art form. This is the grandest scale on which I've dabbled. It's major cross-training.

For years, I've imagined having a car that's crawling with blue morning glories. I'm happy as can be with the outcome.

This portait of me and my personally hand-decorated machine was shot in a parking lot after a Mexican lunch by a friend with a car phone who says she shoots much better pictures with her real camera.

In addition to the value of the cross-training--and of course the sheer beauty of the artwork--there's an encouraging sense of satisfaction about setting off on an outrageous little undertaking like my Morning Glory Project and completing it. (Well, almost completing it: I still have the other side to do...and the clear coat. But I couldn't wait to show you.)

Powdermilk Biscuits

The research I'm doing just now on my biography subject is in the 1800-1903 period, and so I'm immersed in the language of that period.

One old-fashioned word I read this week leapt out at me: FAINT-HEARTED.

Now I'm a great fan of subtlety, of civility; I'm actually a rather mild-mannered person, not rowdy at all. Part of the reason I write on such a subject as boldness is to make sure I don't sink into a Henry James novel and never come out.

However, I feel sure that even the most deliberately low-key individual would howl at the accusation of being faint-hearted. Who would choose to have a faint heart?

With that in mind, if I look at particular daily behaviors of mine, like procrastinating about jumping into my writing, they could look suspiciously like a lack of courage and passion for what I'm doing. If I remind myself of that, I am immediately emboldened, immediately of stouter heart. (If I'm not careful, this research into 1900 will have me going around saying words like "ere" and "tarrying"and phrases like "happiest hours.") Ere I tarry further, I'll remind myself that my book writing time dwells among my happiest hours.

Does anyone else have a word or image that immediately impels them to do the thing that needs doing?

In Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, Powdermilk Biscuits give shy people the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.

Writing and Not-Writing on the QE2

Here is Part III in my mid-ocean writing crisis. Click to Part I and then scroll forward in time to read from the beginning.


Heavy seas woke us in the night, the room swinging. In the morning: a touch of seasickness, a staggering sweaty moment in the stairwell on the way to breakfast. I bought a pair of those little wristbands that are supposed to help. They did.

Then to a lecture on Wales, the country that is the theme of this crossing. Welsh historian Dr. Geraint Jenkins talked about how the people of Wales were for years not allowed speak their own language: they had English forced on them, and then began to adopt that foreign language. And yet, he said, they remained themselves. "We have our own personality and our own character ...Wales has still clung on." The Welsh have begun to reclaim their language.

...Which surely is what I am doing in my writing. I'm troubled, though, that I don't seem to have any choice in the matter. It is happening, no matter what I do.



Captain on the loudspeaker: we've traveled 644 miles since yesterday, passing the southernmost limits of the ice fields. "The QE2 will be steaming safely clear of the ice throughout the afternoon."
On a tour of the ship's galley, I met a novelist who intends to finish his new book on this six-day voyage. Peter Joseph--dark, intense, with typed pages protruding from his hip pocket. His novel is about Matisse's crossing these same waters on the Mauretania, titled Matisse in Deep Water. The QE2 is rich with good details for his story. "Are you a Southerner?" he asked, as we compared book notes. "Your accent is smothered," he said, "but it's still there."

Can Do: Expanding the Possibilities

The latest on my Morning Glory Project: This weekend I painted my car a fresh-snow white. Its old color was that of urban snow, pocked with black in every square inch of the roof and hood where tree sap had dropped and then gotten dingy.

So, I put on a new clean coat, forming the background for next weekend's application of glorious morning glories. (If you're new to this blog, please note my practice run on the file cabinet.Afterwards, on Monday, I kept telling people: I painted my car this weekend. Sanded, washed, dried, taped up, and sprayed, then sprayed again.People kept saying variations of the same idea: you can do that? Or: I didn't know that was something people did.The "you" referred to wasn't me; it meant "one." One can do that? The question reminded me: one can do a whole lot of things that might seem impossible. This floral-car project seems perfectly reasonable to me. Writing a novel quickly doesn't. Maybe I could rethink that.

(Part 3 of my writing crisis on the QE2 will appear on Friday.)

Part II of A Mid-Atlantic Turning Point in My Writing

(This is the serialized story of a writing crisis/career decision that took place on a crossing on the Queen Elizabeth 2, prior to publication of my novel Sister India. I came out of it with more resolution and courage in my writing. Part I was published last week.)


The ship set sail at midnight; my husband Bob and I joined the other passengers crowded along the deck rails. With the feel of New Year's Eve, we watched the long Manhattan skyline slide past, the lighted towers of the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty with torch alight.

...Then to the cabin, which looked exactly as I wanted it to: in the style of the golden era of liners earlier in this century. The walls were wood-paneled; there was a dressing table with a round Art Deco mirror, a spray of blooming orchids. I could settle in, wrap up in one of the QE2 bathrobes we found in the closets and, at some point, take out my stack of manuscript. Pure indulgence: this was being a writer the way it would be if Lauren Bacall were playing the part.

First day: the sky bright, the wind brisk. The swells rolling past were an even blue, whipped at the top into whitecaps. Some young Italian boys were playing deck tennis with a couple of American girls. The ship had the feel of a summer morning in childhood: step out your cabin door and play. People were shopping at the shipboard Harrods, taking the waters in the lower deck spa, sitting before PCs in the computing class, listening to the chamber music quartet. Outside the ship's library, readers had settled into armchairs along a long sunlit corridor that looked out on the water. I walked, tried to see everything.

A lunch of cold lobster and fresh pineapple, followed by creme brulee. Bob was downstairs in the weight room working out; I drank a second cup of tea, looked out at the water. The manuscript I've brought is my memoir of a winter I spent in India during an outbreak of Hindu-Muslim rioting and bombing. It's a strange hybrid book: nonfiction, structured like a journal, yet written in scenes like a novel. My agent sent the first eighty pages to several publishers who rejected it, saying: "What is it? Where would you shelve it?..."

I'd thought after I published my first novel Revelation that everything would become easy. It hasn't. Market niches and "big" mass market books are a larger factor in what the major houses publish now. Perhaps more important, my own style of writing has, in fits and starts, gradually changed. After so many years of matching anybody's style, from Cosmopolitan to The New York Times, and doing it almost reflexively, I find I can no longer count on myself to whip out a few pages the way someone else wants it. It's a change that scares me: writing is the way I've always made my living.

Artcar Progress: A Practice Run

Update on the the Morning Glory Project: I'm testing my plan on a thrift-shop file cabinet before actually approaching my car with sander or spray paint can.

I've sensed the old Camry warily watching this progress, but I think this first practice attempt is looking pretty good. Though I'm going to get a new green; this one's a little murky. And I'll paper over a larger area, since the green misted the top white part a bit here.

I've also realized that doing this around both sides and back of my car is going to take longer than the Sistine Chapel. That's all right. (My husband tells me I like "Great Wall of China projects." I think that's a useful cast of mind for a novelist.)

Note: Part II of A Mid-Atlantic Turning Point in My Writing will appear Friday.

A Mid-Atlantic Turning Point in My Writing

(This is the opening section of an essay I wrote a few years back about an Atlantic crossing on the QE2 that altered me and my writing, that gave me greater resolution and courage. The piece was published in The Spectator in Raleigh and won an honorable mention in literary magazine Rosebud's creative nonfiction contest. A Washington Post travel editor asked to publish it, but changed her mind when I told her it had come out in a local paper, and that I was writing about a subsidized press trip. I will be publishing this here as a serial. This is Part One.)






Even from the farthest reach of the dock on New York's 53rd Street, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was too long to photograph. I couldn't, with a wide-angle lens, get the whole ship into the frame at once. So I shot it by halves, the front and then the back, not sure what I'd do with two mismatched ship halves when I got home.

This ship, the QE2, is the last of the world's transatlantic liners. The Cunard brochure had described it as three football fields long. I don't measure things in football fields. I keep score in numbers of words, copy-inches, books. It's as a writer that I was heading to sea, and not only as a travel writer with a notebook, but as a novelist bringing along a manuscript that had been too long in progress. I was running late, by years, in getting another book out, felt pressed, frustrated, discouraged. I planned to look at the manuscript, away from my usual life, see where I stood with it. (Working aboard the QE2 was an idea that had also occurred to Francis Ford Coppola, Ray Bradbury, and other writers I would soon meet toting manuscripts on this voyage.)

But there was still another reason for my taking this trip: I am approaching the anniversary of my 25th year as a freelance writer, two and a half decades typing out of one little office or another in Raleigh, North Carolina. This crossing was to be both a celebration and, optimistically, the start of my career's second half, another 25 years. I wanted to spend a week living the writer's life the way it's supposed to be, working onboard ship in a grand, leisurely way ...And heading for new territory. My destination on this voyage was the country of Wales, a place I'd never been. One of my tasks there was to research an article on the struggle of the Welsh people to keep their language alive. I sympathized with their cause; after so many years of writing for publication, I'd come to wonder how much of my own voice was alive.

(Note: I'd love to hear from anyone who has had such a question about his or her voice...and how you've dealt with the issue. )

Today's Bold Proclamation

I'm hereby endorsing, supporting, and ordering bumper stickers to elect:
Al Gore.

He opposed the Iraq war early. He's in favor of the planet. He's for civil liberties and against the Patriot Act. I think he'll do as well as any on healthcare. These are the four biggest issues for me. I admire a great deal about Obama, Edwards, and Clinton. But every one of them has been at some point too hawkish for me.

And as for stopping global warming: it's damn hot here. Alarmingly hot. I say elect the guy today.

A Must-Visit: Dare to Be Fabulous

I just had a peek at a website with the enticing name of Dare to Be Fabulous. First let me mention that I've been feeling quite hit-by-a-truck today.

The art on the homepage alone perked me up enough so that I now have the strength to get out of the office and go to either a movie, a sofa with a book, or a hot tub. Any of those sound fabulous to me. I've just finished an enormous chunk of work done during the same three weeks in which we had both a small party and a houseguest for ten days. All three of these items are good and satisfying experiences, but at some point afterwards one needs a lie-down. This is it for me. Have a good weekend.

A Simple Means of Personal Transformation

A line from a story by Kristina Mahoney in The Boston Globe:
"I became curious about life beyond my own self-imposed limitations."

Following the example of her mentor, this woman followed her curiousity and her life grew immensely richer.

Change for the good can be that simple: following those flashes of interest that can come and go in a second, taking the next step, seeing something new grow.

The Morning Glory Project

I've tended to think--wrongly, I know--that a bold action is necessarily one quick simple movement. I'm finding that my current experiment in audacity--the Morning Glory Project-- is slow and involves lots of little pieces.

To paint these flowers on my aged car, I've so far assembled the equipment : borrowed sander, the right grade of sandpaper, spray paints, and a stencil. I also have an old $6 thrift shop filing cabinet I'm going to do first for practice. That's how far along I am now. Today I crank up the sander and grind on the file cabinet. Will report on progress.

I sorta wish I could just wake up tomorrow with giant morning glories growing all over my car. But doing the bits and pieces seems a necessary part of the process. As with writing books, etc.

From Passionate Marriage

My psychologist husband Bob often wants my opinion on books that pass across his desk. This one--Passionate Marriage, by David Schnarch--I grabbed. And I found that it offers some wisdom that applies to more than marriage.

From page 297: "We have the fantasy that we have the choice between being anxious or not. Unfortunately, we don't. Our choice is one anxiety or another. Do something scary--or face problems from not doing it. Make an error by commission--or omission. Face the anxiety that things will change--or stay the same. Do...things you've never done--or forfeit that taste of life. Face the anxiety of growing up--or the terror of living life as a perpetual child."

I decided somewhere in my college years that life was sufficiently daunting that going for broke hardly adds to the risk at all. I've certainly wavered on that many a time. Yet I still hold to it, act on it as much as I can.

Color Your Own Parachute

Perhaps thirty years ago I read an article in Travel & Leisure about Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. I'm pretty sure it was written by Paul Theroux, a fellow travel writer/novelist, though a much more prolific one. The photos showed mist and deep green. And there was a line in the story that I've remembered ever since, which said in effect: only a fool blames his bad vacation on the rain.
Last weekend, I was at Wrightsville Beach where I grew up. The weather was so-so, and the beach was terrific: the water warm and the waves, close-up, full of light. A few clouds didn't stop the major surfing competition that brought crowds to the beach--the Reef/Sweetwater Pro-Am--though surfers had to paddle in for a little while to let a spate of lightning pass.

One way and another, people brought their own color, their own good weather. It was inspiring. Now I'm toying with the idea of taking a surfing lesson; it seems the right thing to do before I turn sixty. Also to finally get around to going to the Dingle Peninsula. I was so happy that I finally braved getting into the water last weekend. I'm generally happier, I find, when I don't let myself be stopped by a trifling obstacle, when I go ahead and take the plunge.

Dressing Bold

"Loud and Clear

The Message in Accessories? Go Bold or Go Home."

This is a message in the new issue of W, my favorite fashion magazine--and even with the fun of the Internet, I'm still a hard-copy-full-0f-perfume-ads-magazine junkie.

Now the truly self-expressive person certainly isn't ruled by fashion mavens or trends.

However, there's an advantage to each new turn of the fashion wheel. That is: for a few months, those of us who like feathered pocketbooks or other such conversation pieces will have them easily available and can stock up. And then they'll be drifting into the thrift shops for a few years. So if big color and strange clothing creations are your style of high glam, this is your heads-up.

Then too, I just sort of like the phrase: go bold or go home. I like it even better this way: go bold and go home. The real boldness is authenticity. And decorating one's self according to one's genuine taste is part of being authentic.

Approached that way the whole process is a joy, as it should be, rather than a social obligation.

And decoration is, I read, more and more of a guy thing. Note above the fine start on a decorated mailbox from RK, a novelist/teacher as well as a valued commenter here. He is continuing to work on this, with the addition of red paint, and some leaf prints. Definitely going to be a bold combo.

The Admirable Art of Self-Promotion

For anyone who is hesitant about promoting her or his own work: take a look at this piece of encouragement in the New York Times.



I am one who is blessed with what my politician brother calls microphone fever. I like promoting my work. I respect others' efforts to promote theirs.



The only time I ever cringe in embarrassment is when my husband leaves my business card, with book credits and contact info, etc, at a restaurant table for the waiter to pick up with the credit card. That's my limit. Maybe it's the fact that he's doing it and not me. I'm not sure. (I keep giving him cards, because he puts a lot of them to good use when I'm not around.)



In any event, I think most of us have some shaky moment about advancing our own passionately-held cause. I believe that, on the whole, holding back from telling people about our work is a bad idea. It leads to resentment and poor sales, and who knows what else.



You might also have a look at the book refered to in the article: Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It. One review says it defines bragging as an act of authenticity. Seems right to me.

Obsession Update; Obsessive Art

The project to paint huge blue morning glories on my car has taken tiny steps forward. The custom-cut stencil has arrived from England. I borrowed an electric sander from one of my brothers. And I've acquired a thrift-shop file cabinet to practice on. (Keep in mind: I'm a writer not a visual artist.)

The idea of painting my car this way has dogged me for years. There's a very good chance that it will look awful. But I must proceed. It's in my DNA. Or my karma. It was the same way with the idea of setting a novel in the city of Varanasi, India; it was clear years before I ever visited the city that I had to write such a book. That turned out to be Sister India, which grew out of notes I took after spending a winter there.

I am possessed in the same way now, not only with the morning glories, but with research on a biography of a strange and little-known painter who died in 1947. It's a good thing it's possible to be ferociously pulled by more than one project at a time; I'd be in trouble if I devoted all my time to car painting.

The feeling I--and so many of us, at one point or another--share is that of the guy in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's obsessed with the shape of a mountain he has never seen. He even sculpts the form in mashed potatoes at the dinner table. He has to find that place.

That's one kind of obsessive art. The other is the kind that is meticulously repetitive: Campbell Soup cans, for example. No doubt, the two types of obsessiveness are related.

I do have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And I don't want to romanticize that. It's no fun at all. But this passion for a project feels like an obsession of a different sort. It feels like love.

SIX LINKS, cool in extremely various ways, to more on art obsessiveness:


!Obsessive-Compulsive-Artistic Geniuses?

Why Do We Like to Watch Obsessive Art

On Being Eccentric

Inventive Art Created from the Mundane

Insect-Obsessed Artist

Obsessed with Painting vs. Finding a Balance


And A QUESTION: Do you ever get obsessed with a project, maybe one that you know is weird but MUST PURSUE anyway?

Billionaire Inventor Who Doesn't "Think Straight"

James Sorenson's teachers said he'd never learn to read, says Monday's USA Today. His mom said he could do anything he set his mind to. A friend and dean of a business school says he's a "non-linear thinker." The reporter who wrote the story said that "his thoughts meander so much that a few hours (with him) produced a...notebook full of disconnected clutter."

Yet Sorenson has, over his several decades, put his thoughts together extremely well and come up with a list of medical inventions to his credit. Many of his ideas have come to him while he's soaking in the bathtub with a washcloth over his face.

Now at 86 he has begun the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, sampling DNA in 107 countries. He wants to show that people have a common ancestry, without regard to races and ethnic groups. His hope is that demonstrating this will lead to world peace. His wife of 60 years says," I stand back and wait, because he does the impossible...You can't tell him he can't do something."

Biography Research: Repotting a Book-in-Progress

When I was a few months into my research on my biography of painter Elisabeth Chant, I bought a thrift shop item to house my growing stacks of notes.

That piece of furniture, shelves that were more like mail slots, was fine for a while.

But recently I realized I needed more space, and lots more different files. The distinctions in topics were growing ever finer, in addition to the added piles of bulk material.

So: a new container. I'm up to a very deep-drawered file cabinet, dressed in a sari from Varanasi, the setting of my novel Sister India. (This is the very distinctive Banarsi brocade.)

And this doesn't count the shelves of books, or the digital material.

I expect I'll have to repot another time or three before this book is done. It's a satisfying piece of the process, seeing it grow.

Repurposing

I like using things in ways other than their original purpose. To me, that's one of the three basic approaches to creativity, to making up new stuff:
1. use a familiar object for a new purpose
2. look at the familiar from a different perspective
3. combine elements that haven't been put together before (or never so well.)

This assemblage to the right is my project of last weekend: the idea being to do something with the unsightly nearly-six-foot multi-armed "stump" at the edge of my woodland garden.

I find it wonderfully phantamagorical, and expect the flower-pot-handed arms to start waving, hydralike.

Another nice thing about this kind of project is: it's not my writing, my career, and all that...I'm free to do it as sloppily as I want. Very liberating.

A Passion-Driven Career Move

The founder of Felony & Mayhem press, Maggie Topkis, likes mysteries--yet found that a lot of the kind she most admires were out of print. So, according to The Week magazine (summarizing a story originally in Forbes), she read about a machine that could print out a paperback in seventeen minutes.

She got the rights to a British mystery Death in the Garden that had come out in '95 and started printing copies. That was the beginning. She has since gone on to publish more than forty titles--"bringing the best in bygone mysteries back to life."

Necessary Uncertainty

From an old (last winter's)More Magazine, a story on re-creating one's life by Susan Crandell:

"Most great ventures arise in uncertainty. Did Louis and Clark know they would make it to the Pacific? ... The hallmark of an adventure is not knowing the outcome, trusting in the flow of events....The least successful reinventers were the ones who'd figured everything out, down to the last decimal point....You're smart. You can make some of it up as you go along."

More, by the way, did not choose me as one of their winning women in their over-forty model search. More's the pity. But wasn't it wonderfully cheeky of me to enter the contest?

How to Reduce Fear: A Strategy

The idea is to take small steps in each beginning of the work on the project. And there's neurological reasoning behind this.

The approach is called the Kaizen Way, developed by Dr. Robert Maurer. Japanese business people used that word to describe the way they went about rebuilding their businesses after the devastation of World War II.

I found a description of this technique in Unlock Your Creative Genius by Bernard Golden:

"Maurer suggests that the human brain, motivated to maintain stability and security, is wired to resist change....The fear center of the brain, the amygdala, can lead us to react to situations without first checking in with the cortex, the more objective administrative part. Thus, new challenges can arouse fear in the amygdala, the center of the brain that is involved in the "fight or flight" response. However, small steps toward change or creativity do not trigger such a response. In effect, taking small steps toward change allows you to sidestep the fight-or-flight response...."

The Anxiety of Completion

I'm almost through with a revision and ready to send it to my agent. This makes me alternately want: to procrastinate and drag the process out...or to ship it off hastily with barely a proof-reading.

Anybody had that experience?

I'm managing to keep steadily working on it without following either rash course. In between bouts of writing, I plunge into a frenzy of gardening or crossword puzzles, both of which are somehow relieving. I'm open to other strategies, if anyone else is familiar with this state. I

I'm also excited about this project, which is a great feeling.

A Bit of Pagan Encouragement from Emerson

"The maker of a sentence, like the other artist, launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of a wild, creative delight."

Art Car: Going Bold on the Road

Some time back, I confided to you here that I've for years longed to have large cobalt-blue morning glories painted all over my 1992 pine-sap-speckled, beach-corroded Camry. (My novel-long-in-progress is titled Cobalt Blue.)

Well, I have just now ordered a stencil of morning glory blossoms and leaves, had the size of it doubled to 16 inches, and am commencing on research on car paint.

I meant to have an artist do this job; guess I'm getting gutsier: I'm going to do it myself.

And, for better or worse, you will see the finished product here. Note car in its current state (with a hint of my previous novel's title on the license plate.)

I always used to worry about seeming eccentric, and have reacted against that so much that I think I come off as rather buttoned-down. But once you have an art car, it's official, you're eccentric. It's the ultimate credential.

Saying Just Enough

Yesterday I got feedback from my writing group on fifty pages. Mostly they liked it a lot, which is always nice.

However, the parts they felt needed more work had problems of two kinds, directly opposite to each other. Or, you could argue, two sides of the same nickel. In some places, I'd hit people over the head with what I was saying, and in others I'd left too much to the imagination.

For me, getting this balance right is and has always been the hardest part of writing. If someone has discovered a guideline that works (other than getting feedback), I'd love to know.

What I'd really like is a clarity meter, a little gizmo like a photographer's light meter that can be held close to the page and that will then register the exact degree of balancing needed.

Rebelliousness

A lot of us like to think we're rebellious--as if there were something innately valuable in opposing whatever somebody else comes up with.

Intellectually, I know that's just as reflexive as slavishly following instructions.

But my gut has never gotten the message.

And in the last 24 hours, I've staged one of my frequent rebellions against myself. Having declared my ideal best life ruling principle at this site yesterday, I went home and was seized by all of my soft addictions nearly simultaneously: steady snacking all evening while turning through trashy magazines and then working crossword puzzles into the wee hours--I simply could not get myself to stop earlier and go to bed. Then of course I overslept hugely. And, worst of all, I indulged in beating up on myself.

Now none of this is so bad, obviously. Still. I'd like to feel I can stop. And an hour or two of those activities would have been plenty.

What happened is: the part of me that doesn't want anybody--including myself--telling me what to do got really fired up by my new ambitions.

The trick now is: to stay focused on my larger aim and outlast the rebellious part (I've been through this sort of thing a time or two before.) Will keep you posted.

More on Soft Addiction

A few weeks ago I wrote here about a book I was reading, The Soft Addiction Solution, on the idea that lots of us zone out much of the time doing the same habitual stuff: the TV and chips, or any repetitive escapist activity.

What I like about the philosophy of this author, Judith Wright, is that she doesn't preach discipline, self-restraint, character, deprivation, etc.

Instead the idea is to make a more satisfying choice, at least some of the time. I'm all the way to step one of this process, which is to make one overall decision about how I want my life to be, so that I at least have the option of making my daily decisions in support of that big one.

For example, like Lance Armstrong's Live Strong mantra.

I had to think about it for a while before I came up with mine. In fact, as recommended, I "test-drove" it for a few weeks. I'm happy with my selection, which is: I am living my life as my best self. I'm sorry to say I'm not bold enough to put this in boldface. I take that back. I'm putting it in boldface AND ALL CAPS: I AM LIVING MY LIFE AS MY BEST SELF.

It's a pretty clarifying idea. And I pay attention to it some of the time. I'd say it has steered me away from a lot of fried food and to a couple of yoga classes--and made clear a few times that it was time to knock off work for the day and go home.

I'm excited about this. It works. Will keep you posted on the next step in this process.

Discernment

What's the bold action for this moment? By bold, I don't necessarily mean flamboyant or loud. I mean taking the most direct road to where I want to be--and doing it without obsessing over it or second-guessing myself.

Here's the moment in question: I'm suddenly depressed (since Friday morning), mysteriously losing too much hair, and have also lost a surprising amount of weight (7 lbs in a week and a half.) I expected to lose some weight because I was teaching writing at a fitness spa, Rancho La Puerta, for a week of that time. So I ate healthy and worked out a lot. But I didn't expect to lose that much.

At first I thought I was just having back-to-the-desk letdown. But that doesn't cause weight loss.

What I've done so far: checked with my hairdresser yesterday morning and found that she too noted some missing hairs, called my doctor, went in and got a thyroid blood test in the afternoon, am now waiting to hear from test in a couple of days. So far so good, on the boldness front.

Now it's Wednesday morning and my impulse is to lie down on the floor and close my eyes.

Is that the boldly effective move? Will it help? Or is it better to keep working?

Sometimes making the bold move isn't the hard part. Instead the trick is to figure out what that move is.

Buddhism teaches sticking to right thought, right speech, right action, etc. I'd like to have a sort of pocket calculator that tells in any given moment what the right move (or lack of move) is. But I haven't yet seen one in any of the gadget catalogs.

Easy Does It

A useful bit of wisdom at a turn in the path.

Performance Anxiety

There are some yoga poses that are for me a reliable indicator of performance anxiety.

These are any that require balance on one foot.

When I do these at home, I can balance for long periods of time with no problem.

When I'm in a class with other people, I have a lot of trouble getting into equilibrium and staying that way. I'm never conscious of any audience effect in yoga classes-- but what else could cause this difference?

One thing I've learned that helps when I'm wobbly. The Sanskrit word for it is drishtee, roughly translated as "point of focus." That means find a spot to fasten your gaze on and don't look to the left or right.

When I do that, pretty soon I'm maintaining balance. The same principle applies to working on a novel: just focus on the work at hand.

(The photos are at Rancho La Puerta where I've been teaching: the sculpture in front of one of the yoga studios, the one of me taken on the grounds just after I finished with my last class. This is a good example of how we unconsciously reproduce what we see or visualize. I passed that sculpture every day, but didn't realize I had copied the pose, and even dressed the part.)

The Guts to Be First

(First a note about photos, etc. I'm on a Spanish-speaking computer and can't find some of the clicks. So I can't seem to move these the way I want. What's here: the swing under the Rancho pepper tree, a blossom that was growing beside me in the chi kung class, and a bit of BOLD ART in my room. And then the story....)

The couple that started the fitness spa in Baja where I'm teaching this week are an astonishing example of bold creative thinking. They were health nuts in 1940, with some ideas that are treated as news in recent years.

The place now called Rancho La Puerta welcomed its first visitors under the name Essene School of Life: "$17.50 a week, bring your own tent." (The Essenes were, among other things, highly successful farmers of antiquity, producing prodigious crops in poor Dead Sea area soil.)

Founder Prof. Edmond Szekely of Transylvania and his wife Deborah created what was in its early years the home of what the Prof called cosmotherapy, a regimen heavy on grape juice. He also believed that people need 20 minutes a day of direct sunlight for vitamin D, but that baking on a beach blanket is unhealthy. He was sure ahead of a lot of folks on that one.

A 1949 article in The San Diego Union reported that he kept a crystal ball in his study.

Szekely foresight also led to the school being an organic farm with a mainly vegetarian diet.

Today Deborah Szekely is still fit and active and inspiring, and still the grand dame. (The Prof died some years ago.) Grape arbors are still here, visible through a glass wall of the yoga gym. And the food remains largely vegetarian.

Now it costs a bit more than $17.50 and there's no need to pack a tent. The garden campus has enough Mexican-style cottages to house about 160 people, attending classes on mainstream topics like writing and Pilates.

And nobody thinks it's odd any more to eat a lot of vegetables or to drink the fruit of the vine for high anti-oxidant levels or to avoid skin cancer by limiting sun-time.

A fair number of people are comfortable with the idea of a crystal ball.

Back then it took courage.

The School of Life

TECATE, Mexico---This week I'm teaching writing at the health and fitness spa Rancho La Puerta in the mountains of Baja.

The guiding principle of this place is to help make healthy people healthier. Hikes go up the mountains (seriously up) starting at 6 every morning. And there are six or ten different classes going almost every hour from 9 until late afternoon. Most are about physical fitness: dance, yoga, that sort of thing.

In the afternoons classes focus on mind and spirit, to add to the body part of the equation. These are referred to on the schedule as the school of life, and include such topics as bird-watching, introductory Spanish, meditation, how to get the most out of a nap, etc.

This is my fifth time spending a week teaching here, and I love the place. When I'm not on duty, I feel as if I'm enrolled in the school of "improved self" and the process is delightful. (The gyms are charming, which I didn't think was possible--stone and tiles and good art and glass walls with views of gardens. Pictures to come.)

When I'm home, I do work out, but certainly not hours a day. In fact, I was once accused by a significant other of being interested in nothing but words and ideas. (Not so. But it was indeed true that I'm not interested in watching ballgames on TV.)

In any event, it's a huge shift to go from most days spent at my desk, to yesterday's cardio boxing, my first such experience, followed by this morning's 3.5 mile hike, exactly one half of that uphill.

The change--such an immersion in physical activity--feels invigorating. It feels bold. For the moment, I'm a new woman, and enjoying it.

Rancho La Puerta

I'm off to teach writing for a week in a fabulous spa in Mexico called Rancho La Puerta. It is heaven on earth--pardon cliche, but got to pack. Will be in touch here soon.

My Writing Office

Because of popular request, I've posted here the pictures of my newly feng-shuied office, which I wrote about several days back.

It feels about 20% larger than it did. Easier to find things too.

The mantel is now, at the direction of the office organizing person, a promotional center for my work, ("a shrine," she said), lining up books I've written and books that have something by or about me. The one tucked in at the very end that appears to have been published by an elementary school student is a mockup I made of my still-in-revision novel Cobalt Blue. I take visualization of the finished product very seriously.

Grant News in the Form of Rejection

I just now found out that I didn't get a grant I'd have loved to have.

The odds were tremendously against my getting it. Intellectually, I didn't expect it to happen.

Even so-- Pooey!!

On the other hand, I learned recently this encouraging bit of information: many grant sources won't award an applicant until they've applied at least two or three times.

My experience in winning these things is a mix: one fellowship took about ten tries to get (and that means ten YEARS), one took two tries, and, thrillingly, I got a couple of others with my first application. Actually they were all pretty thrilling when the answer was finally yes.

I suppose I could code it as a form of boldness, of creative courage, to apply to the same people more than ten times. In any event, it finally worked.

I've only applied for this grant once. So maybe next year--or in 2017.

"Soft Addictions"

I thought I'd recovered from last week's sudden end of the semester of teaching. But no.

Now I'm not sure if it's Duke withdrawal or caffeine (too much or too little.) In either case, my head, if not my spirits, is light.

I suspect caffeine. My wicked near-constant sweet iced tea habit.

Speaking of which-- I'm in the process of reading a book called The Soft Addiction Solution. Pardon the cliche, but it's an eye-opener. Not that I don't know about my harmless calming strategies: the nights with trashy magazines, the tea, the crossword puzzles even at red lights. What's new to me in this book is a way of reclaiming some of that time for conscious life, not through deprivation at all, but through a focus on something more inspiring.

Of course I ate chocolate cookies while I was reading about this. Nonetheless, I see a door opening before me in this book. I like the fact that it doesn't suggest giving anything up.

After Deadline

So the semester ended Friday.

Saturday I spent on the sofa with a novel, a book of crossword puzzles, and a lot of chocolate cookies. Sounds blissful, exactly what I'd looked forward to--but it wasn't. Instead it was like the days after finishing a draft of a book; theoretically, I feel released. But in fact, I feel foggy, emotionally flat, and irritable.

Sunday was better. I ran some errands, planted a bed of impatiens, stayed awake all day, congratulated myself on having that much energy.

Today, Monday, I'm back at my desk. The work version of post-deadline is: all those little things I was expecting to be eager to catch up on, I'm not. Not eager at all. Any sane person reading this is probably thinking: take a day off! But I don't feel like it. Not eager to do that either.

This mood (which feels chemical/physiological) will pass in another day or so. Most likely by tomorrow. The transition has always taken three days in the past. You'd think I'd learn.

If I did learn, what would I do differently? Probably nothing different. Maybe these periods simply have to be weathered.

I welcome ideas, if anyone knows how to better manage this sort of thing.

My 200th Post--School's Out

I'm about to finish doing the grading for my semester of teaching fiction writing at Duke. So it feels right that this entry is an auspicious round number.

Grading is tough in a creative writing course, as every writer/teacher knows.

I do have a system, but there is an unavoidably subjective element. I'm giving it my best judgment, no doubt, overthinking it--not much else I can do.

I'm also startled to discover that I'm losing these people I've focused on so intensely these last four months. I'm not used to this; it's a long time since I dealt with a graduation or last day at summer camp. I'm not jaded, to put it mildly. I'll be watching for their books forever.

At the same time, my schedule will be my own again. I don't mind that part at all. Also, I'll be chatting at this location more frequently than I have this semester. Let me know if I've gotten over-didactic.

Gutsy Writer: The Photo

Here's the picture of novelist Lionel Shriver promised in the previous post. Her books have the kind boldness that you'd expect of someone who, at age fifteen, changed her name to Lionel from Margaret Ann.

Lionel Shriver: One Gutsy Writer

Recently I've fallen in love with the work of novelist Lionel Shriver. So has much of the rest of the world. I wish I'd known about her novels long ago.

With her seventh and eighth novels, she has finally gotten big-time attention: bestsellerdom, a huge feature in The New York Times, book tour of New Zealand, etc.

NB: big success came with her 7th and 8th published novels. And she said her former agent refused to handle the seventh one and so she sent it out herself.

A+ for ENORMOUS PERSISTENCE. (Also, for quality in writing, insights, and plots.)

The two books that have finally brought her much-deserved attention are We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Post-Birthday World.

Both these books feel so honest that they seem skinless, exposing bare nerve endings.

I went to hear her read a week or so ago at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books (turns out she spent much of her youth in my town and I interviewed her father a time or two for The Raleigh Times.) I asked her if she'd always been so bold as a writer or had she developed that courage over time.

She seemed genuinely baffled: "That's what writing is for," she said, "to SAY THE UNSAID." She wondered aloud: What are other writers doing? (boldface and caps are all mine)

And another thing: as the Times pointed out, she isn't exactly groveling over success. The head on the story: "After Lean Times, Prizes and Not One Apology." The Times referred to The Guardian (she lives in England) as saying that she had "violated the British law of self-deprecation by boldly declaring that she had WANTED HER BOOK TO WIN" the Orange Prize, which it did indeed win.

Do we ever really believe that someone doesn't want his or her book to win?

From henceforth I hold her work (including the PR wing) before me as a shining example, and will post here in the next couple of days a picture I took at her Quail Ridge reading.

On Taking a Stand

Be bold, but be impeccable.

I heard a speaker at a seminar last spring advise that. I think it was Katie Orenstein, a writer of op-ed opinion pieces among other things. She attributed the line to her mother-in-law.

It's a fine piece of wisdom, if you're inclined to be impetuous.

I spend too much time on impeccability. Quadruple-checking does me more harm than good. I'd like to work out a good balance. Oh hell, a perfect balance--that's what I'd really like.

Make It Legible

Last week a "room redesigner," Julie Tomlin of Raleigh/Cary, spent three and a half hours in my office and when I returned in early afternoon, the place had been transformed.

She didn't add anything or take anything away. Instead, she shuffled and restacked and consolidated, and now it seems as if the room has come into focus. And I feel as clearly located and defined as if I were sitting on top of a float in a parade.

A doctor I know has the clearest handwriting I've ever seen. It's like an architect's printing. He said he made it that way on purpose. It was a way to say: here I am, here's what I'm prescribing, and I stand by it.

I don't think doctors' reputedly messy handwritings are by design a way to hide. But it has crossed my mind before that my own might be a form of privacy. Nobody's every going to be prying into my bits and pieces of handwritten journal. It wouldn't be worth the effort to decipher.

All of which is to say that: making things clean and clear is a way of declaring one's self. Of standing by who and what we are.

Big Two-Hearted River

That's a Hemingway title and I think it fits.

A week and a half ago, my brother Franc had a scary bout of heart bypass surgery. Today we learn that my other brother (and Franc's identical twin) Harry has to have the same operation. Tomorrow morning.

Harry's doctor has the advantage of knowing about Franc's identical heart. That will probably mean one less incision. Also, Harry saw up-close the shape Franc was in during the days just after the surgery, so he knows exactly what he's in for. Otherwise, it'll be the same--attaching him to the heart-lung machine, cutting open his chest, stopping his heart, sewing in new vessels taken from pieces of vein in his arms, the whole terrifying miraculous ball game.

It'll go fine. Franc's doing well, so Harry will too. It cannot be otherwise, their lives and hearts are so entwined.

Here are a couple of pictures of them, working at the house they built with friends on the NC coast. Not good photography, but this is the best I have available this minute, and now is when I'm posting. Franc on the left, Harry on the right, .

Neighborhood Witches, Psychic Aunties and Spiritualist Grandmothers

I'm looking for true stories about people like Miss Chant, the subject of my biography in progress.

The title of the post pretty well sums up the category. If you grew up knowing an older person in your community who was considered to have special powers and be a little strange, I'd love to hear from you. Please leave a comment here or email me at ppayne51@cs.com.

Thanks.