Bitten by the Writing Bug

New blog

2010-03-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

I've taken a break from writing this blog in order to focus on my new one at kickstartyourwriting.wordpress.com. The new blog includes lots of information for writers. See you there.

Poem: Remembering Harding Lake

2010-02-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

My poem "Remembering Harding Lake" can be read on p. 64 of http://cirquejournal.com/.

Writing classes

2010-01-12T15:24:00.000-08:00

New Writing Class Starts Jan. 20

More students than expected expressed an interest in taking the Kickstart Your Writing class, so an additional session is being offered:

Kickstart Your Writing (Beginning to Intermediate)
Jan. 20-March 24
Wednesdays, 6:30-9 p.m.
Northeast Portland location
10 weeks, $200.
Registration deadline: Jan. 18

And there's still room in this class:

Kickstart Your Writing II (Advanced)
Jan. 23-March 27
Saturdays, 6:30-9 p.m.
Northeast Portland location
10 weeks, $200.
Registration deadline: Jan. 18

To register or for more information: wordpics@aracnet.com, (503) 288-2469.

Read what students say about Kickstart Your Writing:

I love the class and your support. Thanks, Nancy! The class helped me establish goals and a regular writing schedule. It is also very helpful to hear the ups and downs of other writers, for support and for the relationship aspect. — Sarah Retzer

Thank you, Nancy. You are a great motivator and coach. I have learned a lot and hope to continue. (The class) gave me a better sense of how to proceed with the material I had (and) increased my confidence in my writing. — A. S.

This class has been really helped me make writing a priority and take myself seriously. I was surprised to see how much I responded to having the deadlines of reading in class. Thank you! — Lisa Serrano

The class helped me focus on establishing writing goals and meeting them. Nancy is a very knowledgeable teacher as well as a supportive coach. I learned so much from other students in the class — they are very talented writers. I valued the diversity in this class — different backgrounds, variety of written material and styles made the class interesting and challenging. — K. E.

Writing class

2009-12-29T17:52:00.000-08:00

I'm offering a writing class: Kickstart Your Writing. 10 weeks. Mondays, 6:30-9 p.m. Jan. 18-March 22. $200. Northeast Portland, OR. www.nancywoods.org.

Taking part in reading on November 23, 2009

2009-11-20T16:21:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m., I'll be reading an excerpt from my short story "That Day on the River," which won honorable mention from the 2009 Oregon Writers Colony contest. The reading will take place at Looking Glass Bookstore, 7983 S.E. 13th Ave., Portland, Oregon.

That Day on the River

2009-10-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

I just found out my short story "That Day on the River" won honorable mention in this year's Oregon Writers Colony contest. Contest winners will take part in a reading Nov. 23, 2009 at Looking Glass Bookstore, 7983 S.E. 13th Ave., in Portland, Oregon. Here's the story:

That Day on the River

The day Twerp fell in the river I remember wishing I hadn't yelled at her like that. I mean some of us are just born a pain in the you-know-what; and the rest of us are, well, easier to get along with. We were up the Badger River in central Alaska on a family fishing trip, which we did almost every weekend in the summer. By “we” I mean Mom, Dad, my sister Twerp, my brother Twig and me.

The Badger is a dangerous river, cold and swift, with invisible whirlpools, backwashes and sweepers (low-hanging branches just waiting to scrape some poor kid off a boat). It was a nice day in June, though, so it didn't seem like a day when anything bad could happen. I was about ten years old, which meant Twerp would have been seven.

The ride to the cabin took a couple of hours. Once we got there, Dad tied the boat to the water pump, and I started fooling around with it. It was fun to pump the handle hard until river water gushed out all over the place. The minute I started having some fun, though, Twerp started horning in.

"My turn!" she insisted, trying to pull my hands off the pump handle. "You have to take turns."

"No I don’t," I said. "There's plenty of stuff to do around here. Go find your own fun."

"It's not fair," Twerp said, stomping her feet. To listen to Twerp, she was always getting the short end of some stick. "I'll tell Mom," she said. Now, there was nothing that made me want to do my sister's bidding less than her threats to take things to upper management. I maintained a firm grip on the pump.

"Mom!" Twerp yelled toward the cabin. "Twyla isn't sharing! It's my turn to play with the pump."

"Back off," I hissed. "Stop copying my life."

"Stop it right now, you two," Mom called from the top of the bank where she stood with a dishtowel in her hand. "I don't want to hear another word. Not one. Not on such a fine day. Twyla, you share."

"Let me, let me," Twerp said, pulling at my arm.

I could hardly see her, what with the sun shining off her teeth because she couldn't keep her big mouth shut.

"Oh, take your damn turn," I said before walking away. I didn't even bother to look back. Instead, I wandered out onto the boat to watch Dad. He was working on the motor. Several minutes passed before he said, "Where's Twerp?"

I shrugged my shoulders. What did I care, right, as long as she wasn't in my hair? But then I noticed the silence and realized something wasn't right. Twerp was never quiet. Never. Dad must have had the same idea I did. We looked at each other, then turned and looked back toward shore. There, by the water pump, all we could see were white bubbles in the water.

Dad pushed me out of the way and took what seemed like impossibly big leaps back to where Twerp had been. He stepped right on the duffel bags and tackle boxes and fishing poles, something that at any other time he would have yelled at us kids for doing.

What he pulled out of the water didn't look like anything living. It was all loose. The only things that looked familiar were Twerp's yellow boots.

I remember looking at them and then up at Mom. She must have come out to call us for lunch or something, but when she saw Twerp and Dad, her mouth fell open and stayed that way. Dad was holding Twerp upside down and pounding on her back. And that moment, for the first time in my life I realized what life would be like without her, how it would leave this big hole that we would have to walk around for the rest of our lives. And I realized how quiet everything would be. Too quiet.

Just then, Twig walked around the corner of the cabin carrying an ax. When he saw what was happening, he dropped the ax. It landed on the dirt and raised a cloud of brown smoke. Dad put his finger in Twerp's mouth and yelled, "Breathe, you little shit kicker. Breathe!" She must have heard him, because just then Twerp started to cough and choke, which made us laugh, which made her angry. Twerp hates to be laughed at.

That night, inside the cabin, after the sun had gone down and we’d finished eating dinner, we continued to sit around the table as Dad lit the Coleman lantern that hung overhead. The shiny table threw back the yellow light as, for the first time, Dad told the story we would come to call “The Day Twerp Almost Drowned.”
"Someone must have been watching," Dad whispered as he lit the first of the two bootie-shaped mantles. "Otherwise, how do you explain my turning around just then to check on Twerp?"

And we all nodded, knowing something mysterious had happened. We'd almost lost Twerp but she'd been saved. I couldn't take my eyes off her. Her braids were all washed now and freshly combed and she was wearing her flannel pajamas so clean and soft. She was enjoying all the attention, of course. Almost made you think she'd done the whole thing on purpose. Ever since the accident, she'd refused to leave Mom's lap, where she sat with a big smile on her face.
###

Pen in Hand

2009-10-02T18:17:00.001-07:00

Blind spots

2009-09-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

One day several months ago, a writer friend and I were taking a walk. He was telling me about how his father hadn’t loved him and how that relationship was holding him back, stopping him from writing.

Well, write about that, I thought. Write about being rejected. That’s your story, your wound. It might not be the only thing you could write about, but maybe you need to write about that so you can write about other things.

But I didn’t tell him what I was thinking. Why? Because, in my experience, when it comes to our own stories, self-discovery is vital. It’s just not the same thing when someone tells us what they think we might need to write about. In addition, as my friend and I were walking along, I could actually sense his writer’s block. It felt heavy and solid, like it had a lot of history behind it and wasn’t going to move.

The whole incident made me sad, because, when it came to writing, my friend was just as talented as a lot of writers I know. But sometimes our stories are so close to us, so embedded into our bodies and psyches, that we can’t see them. That’s why they’re called blind spots, I guess.

Joseph O'Neill

2009-09-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

I drew the above sketch while watching a TV show in which Charlie Rose interviewed novelist Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland: A Novel. The story is about two cricket players (which is why you can see the words "play cricket" on O'Neill's forehead). When asked about his writing process, O'Neill said that, unlike some writers who compare writing to chipping away at a piece of marble to reveal a human figure, he makes random chips at the stone to see what happens.

Office supplies

2009-08-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

The only things I like more than Pilot G-2 07 pens (Ah, the comfort of the rubber grip, the easy release of the black ink) are blank, 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards (Just the right size for cupping in the hand while jotting down a writing idea) and file folders (Buff color only, please, letter size).

Other people may prefer hanging out in coffee houses, dress shops or taverns, but I spend my off hours in office-supply stores, those big- and small-box outlets crammed floor-to-ceiling with all things clerical and writerly.

Heading down an aisle inside Office World or Paper Emporium, I breathe in the scent of 10-inch-by-13-inch mailing envelopes with their reinforced eyelets and long-life clasps. Then it’s on to the next row, where I fondle packages of red-edged address labels, Super Sticky florescent-green Post-it® notes and laminated maps of the world.

Extra-strong storage boxes that support up to 350 pounds beckon me on, followed by the perforated notepads, disappearing-glue sticks and bags of size 16 rubber bands. Who could bypass the pencil pillows, desk pads and leather-bound journals, the high-back chairs with lumbar support or ignore the briefcases (leather and plastic, with and without wheels), computers and printers, calculators and shredders, scissors and letter openers?

Eventually, I stumble out the door, feeling uplifted, as if life mattered somehow.

Plein Air

2009-08-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

At about this same time last year, I took part in a Plein Air event during which writers and painters wrote and painted outdoors in the Columbia River Gorge. It took place on a beautiful day with the sun shining brightly overhead, but I was carrying with me a certain feeling of sadness, a result of something that happened the night before.

I’d gone out for dinner with a friend, a member of a writing group I’d belonged to for many years. After we ate and talked, Beverly was walking me to my car when she told me she thought our writing group might be ending, that the whole thing had run its course. I didn’t say so at the time, but I felt sad, to think what Beverly said might be true. In typical fashion, I dealt with it by making a joke, about how I would send an e-mail to the members with a subject line that read, “Writing Group Dies Slow, Agonizing Death.”

It was true. Signs of the group breaking up had been showing up for months, if not years. Still, for some reason, I didn’t want to give up on the group. In addition to the fact that I just liked hanging out with writers, many of the group members had become my best friends. So that’s what I was thinking about during Plein Air – about loss and endings and giving up; but although I was feeling sad, at the same time, I was aware of the bright sun overhead. And I wrote this poem:

Fallen Fruit

Narrow shouldered and
Bottom heavy
The ripened pears
Fell like copper buddhas
Onto the welcoming earth

Where they
Kept each other company
After having given up on summer
Allowing gravity to do its work

Offering comfort
For lonely souls
Passing by
Revealing secrets
Hidden in the shadows of branches
Reflecting the strength
Of the sun overhead

Free copies

2009-07-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

One morning not long ago, I unlocked and opened my post-office box to find three thick, glossy copies of Oregon Home magazine stuffed inside, along with a copy of Oregon Home's Get Guide, and a kind note from the editor. The day before, I received two copies of Oregon Humanities, with a colorful cartoon on the front.

As I wrestled the magazines out of the small box, I gave thanks for one of the benefits of being a freelance writer — free copies of magazines.

Small-town news

2009-07-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

Other people may be addicted to sugar or sex. Me, I’m addicted to small-town newspapers, the more picayune the better. Whenever I visit a tiny town, the first thing I do is find a newspaper stand, where I plunk down two or three quarters for a copy of the local gazette, to find out what’s going on, what the residents are talking about.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the small town of Fairbanks, Alaska — where I cut my journalism teeth on the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, with its articles about moose sightings and curling bonspiels and its regular “Sourdough Jack Sez” column — that I have a soft spot for what other people might dismiss as insignificant rags.

Whatever the reason, I still enjoy reading everything from the Skamania County Pioneer to the Goldendale Sentinel, with their fuzzy photos showing someone handing someone else an oversized check and their features on everything from rooster-crowing contests and spelling bees to county fairs and students making the dean’s list.

Maybe it’s the relatively low percentage of crime stories combined with the unpretentious prose that makes the papers so appealing. Maybe it’s their neighborly, we’re-all-in-this-together tone combined with the outspoken letters to the editor and weekly recordings of births and deaths. Now what could be more significant than that?

Making fun of myself

2009-07-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

Last night, I took part in a reading at Blackbird Wineshop (blackbirdwine.com) in Portland, Oregon. The audience clapped in all the right places, perhaps because I had more than one plant in the crowd, including two members of my writing group and their spouses, a former writing student and my painting teacher and her husband.

Only a humor writer, I suppose, would understand what fun it is to be laughed at, something a more well-adjusted person might try to avoid. I read two pieces: “Hooked on Antifreeze,” about my tendency to return, again and again, to my hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska; and “New York Agent,” about my inability to schmooze.

E. B. White fan

2009-06-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

E.B. White's house. Photo by Nancy Woods

“It’s another E.B. White fan!” Mary Gallant called out to her husband.

The fan she was referring to was me. I’d shown up, unannounced, at White’s 19th-century Maine farmhouse with its barn and boathouse to see for myself where one of my favorite writers had penned everything from Charlotte’s Web and newsbreaks for The New Yorker to essays for Harper’s Magazine.

I’d arrived at White’s place in a rental car. White had died several years before; his home (where he lived for many years with his wife Katharine, who also had died), was now owned by Mary Gallant and her husband Robert.

It was all part of an East Coast trip I made that included stops at the homes of several other writers and artists, including the homes of Louisa May Alcott, Andrew Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth, L. M. Montgomery, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (well, in Thoreau’s case, I visited a replica of his cabin at Walden Pond).

But, for me, seeing White’s house and attached barn (where it was easy to imagine Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig hanging out) was the highlight of my trip.

After pulling my car into the driveway, I got out and walked up to the front door. Dark-green lilac bushes grew on either side. There was no doorbell, so I knocked and then stepped back.

“Hello!” someone shouted.

“Hello!” I shouted back, following the voice around to the side of the house just as Mary Gallant, an auburn-haired woman, stepped out.

When I told her I was an E.B. White fan, she smiled and said “Come on,” before leading me to the water side of the property and pointing out where I could stand to get a good shot of Allen Cove.

“You have to see the barn” she said next, explaining that that's where White kept his chicks. The interior of the building was high, wide and clean and conveyed a sense of safety. As Gallant showed me the corner where she potted her plants, her husband walked in.

“It’s another E.B. White fan!” she told him, before turning back to me and saying, “When people say, ‘I don’t know how you put up with it (visiting fans),’ I tell them, ‘Well, I don’t know if I could if I were living in Stephen King’s house, but I figure E.B. White was fairly benevolent.’”

I think E.B. White would be pleased to know that a woman with a sense of humor is living in his house.

The Gift

2009-06-25T10:58:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading (well, okay, skimming) The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde.

Originally published in 1979, the scholarly book left me with these takeaway thoughts:

Most artists need to somehow "make some peace with the market."

"...the artist who wishes neither to lose his gift nor to starve his belly reserves a protected gift-sphere in which the work is created, but once the work is made he allows himself some contact with the market."

Being an artist "is most often a way of getting by, not a way of getting rich."

"No matter how the artist chooses, or is forced, to resolve the problem of livelihood, he is likely to be poor."

Do I feel better yet?

Readings, wine tasting

2009-06-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

July 1. 7–9 p.m. Co-hosted by Oregon Literary Review. This month’s readers and performers are Barbara Blossom Ashmun, Samantha Waltz, Karen Flagstad and Nancy Woods. Free. Blackbird Wineshop, 3519 N.E. 44th Ave., Portland, OR (just north of Northeast Fremont Street). www.blackbirdwine.com. (503) 282-1887

Kickstart Your Writing: A Writing/Coaching Workshop

2009-06-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

I'm offering the following class, beginning on Sept. 28, 2009:

Kickstart Your Writing: A Writing/Coaching Workshop

September 28 – December 7, 2009
10 weeks/No class November 23
Mondays, 7-9 p.m.
Northeast Portland, Oregon location
$200

Part writing workshop, part coaching session, Kickstart Your Writing was designed to help beginning to intermediate writers improve their writing skills while they take positive steps toward completing specific writing projects. During the 10-week session, students will receive:
· Individual help in setting their own meaningful, measurable, long- and short-term writing goals
· Positive, helpful feedback on their writing
· Frequent check-ins and ongoing editorial and emotional support

By the end of the workshop, students will have:
· Increased how much, how well and how often they write
· Achieved a feeling of accomplishment from having reached their writing goals

About the Instructor:

Nancy Woods (M.A., Journalism, University of Oregon) is a freelance reporter, editor, humor writer, essayist and writing coach whose articles and essays have been read on Oregon Public Radio and published in The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, katu.com, Northwest Palate, Nostalgia, Oregon Home, Oregon Humanities, Oregon Quarterly, Portland Physician Scribe, Portrait of Portland, Raven Chronicles, GreenPrints, shortmemoir.com, UU World and Zephyr.

For more information or to be put on a mailing list: (503) 288-2469; wordpics@aracnet.com; www.nancywoods.org.

Keeping score

2009-06-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

“People say all kinds of things online,” my editor warned me, “especially when they can be anonymous.”

He’d called to tell me my article on couponing would be posted the next day and to give me a heads up about the fact that people might post critical comments.

The idea that anyone would spend one second of their time commenting on the value of something I wrote definitely got my attention. First thing the next morning, I went online to check the article which, it turned out, already had received five comments. The readers had rated the article, too.

About the topic of couponing, Missy wrote, “I love it! …I think I’ll change my ways and save even more!” before giving the article a +3.

Mmmhmm wasn’t so convinced, saying, “…coupons are never really for more than $1 off of the usual things you don’t need. Never on carrots and tomatoes...” Rating: +2.

To Middleroader, however (who gave the article a +5), the article was “Just more concrete evidence and fallout from 8 years of out-of-control Bush/Cheney/GOP economics that favored the rich time and time again until the system imploded.”

Hello?

During the day, I found myself strangely attracted to the comments (which varied from thoughtful to silly) and ratings. I returned again and again to the posted article, lured back to see if anyone else had said anything. It felt a bit strange. A traditional print journalist, I was used to turning an article in and never hearing another word. But Missy, Mmmhmm, Middleroader and 18 others had taken what would have been a static story and turned it into a living, breathing thing.

My article wasn’t the only one being read and rated that day.

“Portland jobless rate spikes to over 11 percent” earned 19 posts, with a highest rating of +7.

But it was “Search on for man and monkey in biting case,” about a pet monkey that bit a six-year-old child in a park, that captured top honors, with a total of 53 posts and a highest rating of +8.

The ABCs of Writing

2009-06-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Walking to work

2009-06-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Some days, walking to my office feels like the best part of the day. Overhead, the bluebirds and seagulls call to each other, while the scent of alyssum and lilac fills the air.

Ahead of me on the sidewalk, early morning shadows form angular lines, pulling me foreword.

From behind, I hear the pleasant rippling sound of two bicyclists coming up the street.

“Wait for me!” the young girl calls out to a man (her father?) as he bicycles ahead.

I’m still several blocks from my office where, in my mind, the day will officially start; but, in fact, I’ve already edited an essay while sitting in my living room and drinking a cup of coffee.

As a result, I feel as if the day has started before it started, as if my work is done before I get to work.

Writer's bouquet

2009-06-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

Parade day

2009-06-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Fred Meyer Junior Parade in Portland, Oregon. -- Photo by Nancy Woods

It all starts with the tweet of whistles and the shout of hawkers ― the annual Fred Meyer Junior Parade, a kids’ parade that rolls through Northeast Portland each June as part of the Rose Festival. The parade passes right by my office, within just a few feet of my desk. My second-story office windows look down on the parade route, sidewalk and street.

Every year, I forget about it until it’s too late. I’m sitting at my desk, working away, often under deadline, when I start to hear signs of a ruckus outside.

What’s that?! I think. Oh, no! The kids’ parade!

By then, city employees would have blocked off all the streets, so I wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere. There was no getting away from the noise.

Peering out my window, I would see hundreds of people, many of them with smiles on their faces, many of them adults with young children, setting up camp with their blankets, towels and lawn chairs, some using sidewalk chalk to mark their spot.

A pink stripe painted earlier by a city crew lines both sides of the street, an attempt to keep the youngsters from stepping too far out when grabbing for the candy that will be thrown from the floats.

The parade forms about five blocks from my office, where the marching bands, Boy Scout troops and bicyclists get into formation before strutting their stuff. By 10 a.m. the noise starts to ramp up, as police cars, with their sirens blasting, clear the parade route. By 1 p.m., when the parade actually starts, the sound is deafening.

Whatever article I’d planned to work on that day is a lost cause. It’s too noisy to think.

So I give up and enjoy the parade, which includes the Sherwood Middle School students in their blue shirts and black pants playing a song from a 1970s movie I can’t quite remember. James Bond? Then it’s the Cascade Middle School, in red-and-blue outfits, playing “76 Trombones,” followed by a bob-haired girl on a bicycle with tiny U.S. flags fluttering from her bicycle handles.

After her, a troop of Brownies in their patch-festooned brown vests passes by, followed by middle-school unicyclists, some holding an adult's arm, some peddling on their own, one wearing a helmet covered with fresh flowers, another wearing a clown jester-type hat.

Then it’s more drummers followed by hoops and hollers from the appreciative crowd, one band fading away to make way for another. A man pushing an ice cream cart passes by. After him come jugglers, jump ropers and joyful bell ringers (high school-age girls wearing black outfits with gold sequins). Underneath it all, the steady beat of drums and shouts from the crowd.

A young girl carrying a bouquet of bright yellow balloons struts by. Then it’s a squad of girls in red shirts and black skirts doing a River Dance kind of number down the middle of the street. The cops are everywhere in their blue uniforms, making sure no one interrupts the fun. The Fowler Middle School Band from Tigard, in white shirts and blue jeans, plays the theme from Star Wars. Girls from the Evergreen School District twirl gold flags. A blonde girl, who appears to be 3-4 years old, dressed in a pink dress, pink sweater and pink tennis shoes, walks down the middle of the street, a gold crown perched on her head.

Another school band marches by, the music dying down only to give way to another whistling band leader or another hawker selling ice-cream bars or balloons in the shape of monkeys.

And then, just as suddenly, it’s over, an annual reminder that life isn’t always meant to be quiet and peaceful, that sometimes it’s important to let the kids take over and for the rest of us to go home with the sound of “76 Trombones” ringing in our ears.

Book

2009-05-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hollywood Hank

2009-05-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

(Hollywood Hank photo by Judy Nelson)

Last week, I received a request from an advertiser of the newspaper I edit, asking if a photo of Hollywood Hank, a five-year-old standard Boxer (yes, a dog) who writes a column for the newspaper, could be used in an ad.

Hank doesn’t really write, of course. His column, which is accompanied by a photo of him in front of whatever local restaurant or shop or farmers’ market he visited that month, is actually written by his handler, a volunteer for the Oregon Humane Society, who takes Hank for walks around the neighborhood while his owners are at work.

Although spending any time deciding whether or not to release a photo of a dog to an advertiser might seem silly, in fact, the decision raised a significant journalist question.

After thinking it over, I decided to turn down the request. If I did, it would have blurred the line between the editorial and advertising departments of the newspaper. Then I posted this blog, along with Hank’s photo, to point out one of the issues editors face while blurring another line ― the one between work and life.

Natural-born Storytellers

2009-04-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

I come from a long line of storytellers known for relating funny anecdotes about themselves and everyone else. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where, during cold winter nights, we spent much of our time indoors, entertaining each other with stories that were, funny and sad, true and made-up.

“She didn’t want to stay down,” my brother said, laughing. Roy was telling me the true story about Aunt Helen who, even in death, found it hard to be left alone. I was sitting in Roy’s living room in Fairbanks when he told me the story. I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon, for many years now, but I occasionally return home to visit.

According to Roy, Aunt Helen, who lived near us when we were young, wanted to be interred next to her parents in the old Pioneer Cemetery downtown. Special arrangements had to be made, though, because officially the cemetery was full. Meanwhile, Aunt Helen was cremated and her ashes put in a steel cylinder that Roy, a sheet-metal worker, made and kept in his shop all summer.

“Nobody picked her up,” he said with a smile, referring to the family’s inability to deal with Aunt Helen’s death.

Eventually, though, one fall evening, they decided it was time for a proper burial. Aunt Helen’s son Bert, along with Roy, Roy’s wife Brenda and their son Rick did the honors. Armed with shovels, a pickax, wheelbarrow, cement mix and Aunt Helen, they drove down to the small cemetery, where a hole had already been cut in the cement slab between Grandma and Grandpa Wilbur’s headstones. The four grave diggers poured in some cement and then inserted Aunt Helen’s remains, but the cylinder immediately popped back up. They pushed it down again but it refused to stay put.

That only made sense because Aunt Helen hated to be left alone. I loved her dearly, looked forward to the nights when I was a kid and she’d stop by our house to talk. We’d have just finished our dinner of moose burgers, moose pot roast or moose stew but would still be sitting at the dining-room table when we’d hear this certain jingle jangle and, sure enough, it was Aunt Helen wearing her silver bangle bracelets and walking up the front steps. We’d offer her a seat at the table, pour her a cup of Hills Brothers coffee and listen to her stories, our elbows deep in cake crumbs.

She entertained us with anecdotes about her day at the post office where she was postmistress. She told us the story about the man who was fired for having B.O. and the one about the employee who got caught with his hand in the till. During the telling, Aunt Helen would, one by one, kick off her dress pumps and remove her clip-on earrings before helping out with the dinner dishes. Often, she would leave a piece of jewelry behind, which was comforting, because it meant she’d be back.

Unlike some members of my family, Aunt Helen openly expressed affection. It was her shoulder I cried on when my father died. In contrast with the other members of my family, Aunt Helen also had a sense of style. She wore nice clothes, dyed her hair and ― after she and Uncle Ken split ―lived in an apartment, which seemed so exotic.

"No one understands how lonely I get,” she told me when, years later, I visited her at the Pioneer Home, a nursing facility at the south edge of Fairbanks. So it wasn’t surprising that it was hard to get her to go underground, even if it meant being close to her parents.

That night in the cemetery, Roy and the rest of the burial party eventually had to break a branch off an overhanging chokecherry tree and use it to poke the metal canister containing Aunt Helen into the ground. Then they slapped a board on top of everything to keep her in place until the cement cured. By then it was dark and starting to snow. They wondered if the snow would prevent the cement from curing and allow Aunt Helen to pop back up. They were laughing really hard but forced themselves to get serious before taking a few minutes to reflect on how much Aunt Helen would have enjoyed their company and closing with a reading from the Good Book.

Compare and contrast

2009-04-03T10:39:00.001-07:00

Last Wednesday night, I attended a poetry reading at Blackbird Wineshop here in Portland, Oregon. At times during the evening, I found myself noticing the men in the audience more than the women reading their poems; and more than once, while stroking the stem of my wineglass, I felt how delicate it was and how it contrasted with the solidity of the cement floor.

The Title Wave Used Bookstore

2009-01-29T10:42:00.000-08:00

The Title Wave Used Bookstore.-- Photo by Nancy W. Woods

There’s something so comforting, so unassuming, about discarded and used books. With their tattered covers, torn pages and affectionate inscriptions written to unknown readers, they seem to offer all that is good about books while, at the same time, remaining unpretentious.

Every once in a while, to give myself a break from life’s trendy newness, I stop by the The Title Wave Used Bookstore, here in Portland, Oregon. Housed in a 1912 Spanish Renaissance Revival building, the store is filled with thousands of books, CDs, videos, tapes, maps, music and magazines that have been pulled from the shelves of the Multnomah County Library. Run mostly by volunteers, the store features an imposing front door; high, arched windows; and shelves and shelves of affordable books. Since the inventory is constantly changing, there’s no way of knowing quite what to expect.

When I stopped by the other day, the first thing I noticed was a signed copy of Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It by Martha Burk ($5). The book was inscribed “To Judy – Women will change the world! Martha Burk.”

Nearby, sat a paperback copy of Just Desserts: A Bed-And-Breakfast Mystery by Mary Daheim, with a price tag of 75 cents.

Amused and encouraged by the juxtaposition of political outrage and pure escapism, I headed to the Talking Books for Adults section, where I spotted a four-cassette set of Accent English for Russian Speakers ($1) and an eight-cassette set of Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie, described on the cover as a “delicious tale of scandal, gossip, and murder in a small town called Temptation.”

In keeping with the store’s free-thinking, open-minded mix of the silly and serious, classic and pop, practical and esoteric, its shelves included everything from outdated, $.25-copies of The New Yorker to a long-playing record of Vikki Carr’s called Don’t Break My Pretty Balloon ($.10); G. Schirmer’s Collection of Opera Librettos: Don Giovanni, Opera in Two Acts, Music by W.A. Mozart (in Italian and English) ($.01); and a hardcover copy of Danielle Steel’s The Kiss ($2).

Pittman’s map of Harney County ($.25) was shelved not far from Sensational Sex in 7 Easy Steps: The Proven Plan for Enhancing Your Sexual Function and Achieving Optimum Health by Ridwan Shabsigh, MD ($2).

Torn between buying an 1884 copy of Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F.R.S., Vol. V, April 1, 1665-April 8, 1666 ($15) or Dear Juliette: Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley, edited by Susan Sherman ($3), I settled, instead, on something even better, a spiral-bound blank book made from the covers of a 46-year-old copy of Theory and Practice of Presswork: United States Government Printing Office Training Series.

Then, feeling once again renewed and ready to face the brand-new world, I headed back out the door, armed with a sense of history and the comforting feeling that, for me at least, can only come from handling old books.

The Title Wave Used Bookstore
216 N.E. Knott St.
Portland, Oregon 97212
(503) 988-5021
www.multcolib.org/titlewave/

Trying too hard to lighten up

2009-01-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I took a writing-for-the-radio class. During one session, I practiced recording “Lighten Up Already,” an essay about how I think people should lighten up.

The recording didn’t go well. I was finding it difficult to lighten up and come across as my naturally funny self, because, the whole time I was speaking into the microphone, the instructor’s Labradoodle (a dark-haired Labrador/poodle mix) was running around the small room, chewing on a squeaky dog toy and, every so often, humping me and the other students, who included a Jewish woman who’d written a piece about what it felt like to have a Christmas tree during the holiday season and a woman who’d written about her trip to Southeast Asia.

“What’s the matter? You sound angry,” the instructor kept asking me, as I tried a second recording and then a third. “Try to come across as flabbergasted and vulnerable,” the teacher insisted, as her large, untrained mutt continued to run and hump and squeak.

Looking back

2009-01-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

You don't have to look very far to find a magazine article promising to tell you how to become a writer. In my case, however, the route was anything but straight.

Fall in love with reading

I started reading at the age of four or five. I spent much of those years sitting on the kitchen floor, slowly sounding out the words in my pink-covered reading book. Nearby, my mother would be washing the dishes. Whenever I came across a word I didn’t understand, I would do my best to pronounce it and my mother would tell me what it meant. Even at that age, I knew reading was a key to worlds I might otherwise never visit. If I could just figure out the secret, I would get in.

Be a bookworm

As a child growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska, I spent most of my time reading. I was particularly drawn toward pathetic stories about poor, fatherless families who enjoyed making each other Christmas gifts out of nothing more than bits of used string. I read Little Women in the overhead cab of my father’s camper, read Daddy Longlegs in the bow of my father’s boat, read The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew in our cabin at Harding Lake.

I gulped books whole, choked them down fast, gobbled down one only to swallow another. I checked books out of the George C. Thomas Memorial Library, bringing them home a bicycle basketful at a time. The library was housed in a log building down by the Chena River, a matronly, broad-hipped building that wore its front porch like a skirt. Inside, way in back, on the other side of the adult section, was a small set of stairs that led to a tiny landing where the children’s books were kept. It was up there while all alone, kneeling before the bookshelves that I made my choices, my coarse hair almost brushing the tin ceiling.

Be curious.

When I left home to go to college at the age of seventeen, I had only two goals, to become a medical technologist and get an apartment. My worst fear was I would die with other cities being nothing more than dots on a map. I wanted to expose myself to new ideas and cultures and people.

Eventually, I got a job as a med tech, but after several years of drawing, spinning, mixing, pouring and pipetting by mouth other people's bodily fluids, I woke up one day scared shitless that I was going to spend the rest of my life drawing, spinning, mixing, pouring and pipetting by mouth other people's bodily fluids, when I wasn’t barely paying my rent or bleaching other people’s blood out of my five white uniforms. So I quit.

Have an inexplicable, life-changing moment

Over the years, I delivered mail, took wedding photos and sold (legal) drugs, but nothing seemed to stick, so it isn’t all that surprising that one day while sitting on the floor of my barely furnished, no-bedroom apartment ― a ground-floor studio with a broken toilet and non-functioning TV ― I pulled out the portable Olivetti my parents gave me for leaving home. I’ve been writing between naps ever since.

Cute kids

2008-12-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

As the editor of a community newspaper, my job occasionally involves taking photos, so early one recent morning I drove to a building not far from my house to take photos for an article about a Montessori school.

The lighting inside the school was pleasantly dim and the children unusually calm, a result of the natural lighting, the director explained.

I’m the mother of a 20-year-old, so it had been a while since I’d been around children so young, in this case, infants through age six. All around me, cute, curly-haired kids, some still rubbing sleep from their eyes, were reading books and wielding pretend hammers.

Stocking footed, I stepped into a classroom where I stooped low to take a photo of one youngster sucking her thumb while sitting in her teacher’s lap.

In a few minutes I had all the photos I needed, including some that I would never run but that reminded of how cute kids can be, with their tossled hair, runny noses and bare rumps.

Sleeping with Poe

2008-12-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

“Now that’s a room!” my daughter Holly said as she walked into the Edgar Allan Poe room with its stuffed raven perched on the bureau and the pendulum-like scythe hanging over the brocade-covered bed. With its dark woodwork and red-velvet drapes, the hotel room looked like a scene out of “The Pit and the Pendulum” with a bit of “The Raven” thrown in.

Holly and I had come to the Sylvia Beach Hotel with its author-themed rooms for a mother-daughter vacation on the Oregon Coast.

“E. B. White is booked, but Jane Austen is available,” the reservation clerk told me when I called to book my room. E. B. White was my first choice. I’ve been a fan of White’s ever since I was a grad student and came across a collection of his humorous essays in a used-book store just off the University of Oregon campus.

But, as the clerk said, E. B. White was booked; and I’d already booked Poe for Holly, so when I found out the Austen room sat next door to the Poe room, I booked Jane for myself. That room included a small writing desk, stuffed chair, double bed with flowered bedspread and lace curtains.

Holly and I arrived in the small town of Newport in the middle of the afternoon. After parking in the nearby lot, we walked across the cobble-stoned street to the green, three-story, shingled hotel with its white picket fence and small garden.

The minute I stepped inside the pleasantly ramshackle hotel, I immediately felt at home. Unpretentious to the extreme, Sylvia Beach boasts uneven floors, wobbly lamps and two resident cats but no elevator, which meant Holly and I had to haul our suitcases to the third floor, where we checked out the cozy library with its fireplace and comfortable chairs.

Before dinner that night, we wandered up and down the halls, peeking into the unoccupied rooms. Holly got a kick out of the whimsical Dr. Seuss room, while I found myself wanting to move into the Emily Dickinson room, a spacious corner room set in the back.

That evening, Holly and I joined several of the other guests in the dining room to eat, visit and play a game called Two Truths and a Lie, in which everyone is asked to come up with two true stories and one untrue one about themselves. The trick was to try to fool everyone else.

I said I’d been to Denmark (true), had worked as a medical technologist (true) and had shot a moose (not true). Holly said she and her dad once got stuck in some sand while driving in the John Day Fossil Beds (true); knew how to play the violin, piano and guitar (true); and was valedictorian of her high-school class (close, but no cigar).

Neither Holly nor I fooled anyone, unlike the other guests, including a woman who said she once met Johnny Wisemiller―the actor who played Tarzan―and got his signature (true), hosted her own TV advice show (true) and played guard on a basketball team that won the state playoffs (not true).

Goody, the friendly owner of the hotel, told us several stories about herself, including one about a man she once knew who asked her to pretend to be his fiancé because he’d told his dying grandmother he was getting married (true); and another one about how, to surprise a friend on her 50th birthday, Goody stole the friend’s address book and used it to contact 50 men whom she asked to stop by the friend’s house and give her a kiss (true – 47 of the men showed up, including the woman’s Volvo repairman).

At the Sylvia Beach Hotel, I learned that night, telling stories is a highly valued form of entertainment.

Over the next couple of days, Holly and I met several of the other guests, including a freelance writer from San Francisco and a woman on sabbatical who’d come to the hotel to write.

During our stay, we did venture out long enough to visit the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse and check out the Old Bayfront Bazaar with its seashell jewelry boxes, seashell coasters and seashell coin purses. We even stopped by the Pirate’s Cove shopping area where we took pictures of ourselves standing in front of the pirate statues before having lunch (shrimp stew and clam chowder) and walking along the bay with is smelly crab nets and barking seals.

But it was inside the hotel, with its reading lamps, used books and photos of everyone from Kurt Vonnegut to W. B. Yeats, that we really relaxed.

On our last evening, Holly and I stayed up late playing the board game Balderdash (in you have to come up with word definitions) before adjourning to my room where we stretched out on the bed to read together. Holly flipped through pages of Cosmo Girl while I enjoyed a biography of Jane Austen, a copy of which I found in the room.

Experiencing the comfort of trees

2008-11-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

“You’re permeable to your surroundings,” a neighbor of mine once said after I told her how difficult it was for me to work in a busy newspaper office, with dozens of people around me, the phone ringing, and the police scanner announcing the next house fire or traffic accident.

That job was short-lived. I now work by myself.

My whole self is influenced by where I am. When I’m in the city, everything, my thoughts and feelings, my writing, how I interact with the world, are, to a certain degree, shaped by the sharp edges of the buildings and severe angles of the streets.

In contrast, when I’m in the country, I become softer, rounder, more sensual, more organic and complex. When surrounded by nature, my writing projects seem to begin and end more naturally, reflecting the gently sloping hills and waving trees.

In some ways, if I’m not in the country, I don’t feel like I’m really me. It’s there that I relax and open up, become less intellectual, more spiritual and reconnect with whatever it is that I lose sight of in the city.

Which explains why, every so often, armed with a cup of coffee, I play hooky and head out of town, to experience the comforting presence of trees. While there, driving this way and that down the curving roads, it feels as if the trees are brushing the air and me clean, as if, like green filters, they’re scrubbing away all that’s unnecessary and not me.

There’s something about the strong, silent presence of trees that makes me feel like I don’t have to be doing anything. Sure-footed and undemanding, trees provide a strong consistency. Their branches have a muffling effect on sounds and my thoughts, setting me above my concept of myself; their overhead canopy feels soothing.

Reaching high while digging deep, trees solve so much with their calm presence, as they march up the side of a hill, anchor the edge of a field or just stand there skirted by thick undergrowth.

Deep rooted and stalwart, they encompass me with their arms and bless me with their indifference to life’s successes and failures. “Everything is all right,” they seem to be saying, while swaying in life’s breeze.

Redhead

2008-11-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I went to Oregon Home magazine’s 10-year anniversary party.

“I thought you’d have red hair!” Sheila, the editor, said upon seeing me for the first time.

Until that moment, although I’d been writing for Sheila for several years, we’d never actually met.

“Wait. Let me get used to your face,” she said while forming a frame with her hands.

I’d seen photos of Sheila in the magazine, so had some idea of what to expect although, in person, she is even more attractive, more exotic looking. She also has a calming presence, a result, perhaps, of having to herd a lot of freelance writers, including me.

“I wasn’t expecting brunette,” she shouted over the sound of a man singing Jimmy Buffett songs and the chatter of the other partiers.

The odd thing was, until two days prior, I had been a redhead. Then, in one of those oh-what-the-heck moods, I had my hair stylist apply a heavy dose of dark hair color onto my locks. In addition to being an editor, could Sheila also be psychic?

Of all my editors, Sheila is one of my favorites. At the party she not only acknowledged I wrote for other publications before encouraging me to “Keep sending ME your good essays,” but she also made sure I got something to eat and asked if I’d found a writer’s getaway cabin. (No, not yet.) After talking with me for several minutes, she let me go with a “Well, no doubt you’re tired,” a response to an earlier email of mine in which I said I might not make the party because, depending on how the work day went, I sometimes turned into a pumpkin by 7 p.m.

As I headed out of the noisy party room and into the dark night, making my way down a rain-glistened city sidewalk to my car, for the first time I realized something that, in the flurry of making a living, I sometimes forget ― that, in addition to being a coworker, an editor can also be a friend.

Forced Entry

2008-08-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

People keep breaking into the office building where I rent a small room in which to write. Once, they broke through the front door and took the landlord’s bank bag, which didn't contain any money but did contain the keys to the rest of the building, including the door to my office. I immediately called my husband Dave to discuss the costs, advantages and idiocy of installing a deadbolt on my office door. Then I called my insurance agent because I don't have a therapist. I did have one, had a naturopath, too ─ as much as anyone can actually have a naturopath ─ and a family doctor who had a habit of giving me quick advice after complaining to me about her ex.

But the day of the latest break-in, I called my insurance agent to find out how much it would cost to insure my office equipment in case someone broke in and took everything.

"About $100 a year," he told me, "but first you'd have to put together an itemized list of all your stuff."

That list would include the bookshelf that's bolted to the wall and the desk Dave made me that weighs a ton. Even if the thieves were strong I don't think they could take that. So that left the cheap paper holder and wobbly desk lamp, the one I cut myself on while getting it out of the box.

I considered doing all of this but didn’t, in spite of the fact that three days after the break-in, I came to work to find graffiti splattered all over the building. John the landlord and I wondered what it meant. To me, the graffiti looked like a foreign language, intriguing and mysterious, like those marks hobos used to put on fence posts to tell fellow travelers if the woman of the house was generous or likely to chase them away with a broom. I wondered if the front of my office building had been marked "Easy Target. Come on in. Lots of Good Stuff Inside."

John is a rather timid man considering how big he is. He never evicts a tenant, no matter how obnoxious they are. More than once, he's had renters rip the place apart. Once, the sign over his wife's downstairs hair salon was plastered with paint. One Christmas Eve, vandals smashed the plate-glass window in the front of the salon, leaving nothing between the white-haired women sitting under the hair dryers and the all outdoors.

Another time, someone broke in by throwing a rock through the high bathroom window before climbing inside, breaking the sink and toilet and leaving a piece of finger on the jagged edge of the window glass.

And then there was the time someone broke through the back door and kicked down the wall into Joe's jewelry shop before setting off the alarm and high-tailing it out of there. And the time someone got inside and rummaged around in the basement. That time, they didn't break down the basement door but used the key hanging beside it instead, for which John was grateful.

One day, I was sitting in my office when John knocked on the door.

"If your eyes start to water," he said, "get out. It's mace. Joe's safe is the old kind that, if a burglar breaks into, they get sprayed with mace. It got them. They dropped all their tools and didn't get any jewelry."

They did break some lights, though, and a mirror in the salon before making off with a roll of pennies and the Kiwanis mints.

Later that same day, John showed me the office next door to mine. I was thinking of renting it to use as a classroom. Until recently, a middle-aged woman had worked there selling baby portraits over the phone. She'd moved out because the power substation across the street kept messing with her pacemaker. Anyway, there were still baby pictures stapled all over the walls, water stains on the ceiling, unpainted sills and an old, gray rug.

"We're going to have to wash down the walls," John told me. What with the break-in, it had been quite a day.

"Go home, have a beer," I told him.

"Can't," he said. "Gave up beer and cigarettes."

He gave up cigarettes, he told me, by chewing nicotine gum. After giving up drinking, his liver had gone down in size, and his enzymes had returned to normal.

"I don't miss the beer," he told me, "but I sure do miss those cigarettes. I dream about them. I dream I take a puff on the first half and then flick off the ash and then inhale the second half and put it out in an ashtray. But I don't have an ashtray beside my bed. The wife and I both quit. Two months later, she had surgery for lung cancer due to cigarette smoking. They removed the lower lobe of one lung. Boy, that's one way to make sure you don't start up again, to see someone lying there in the hospital with tubes running out of them. Everyday they would come in with a pair of pliers and run it down the tube. The wife said it felt like they were pulling her insides out. But she still says if they tell her she has six months to live, she's going to go out and buy a carton of cigarettes and smoke them up before she goes to bed. We miss cigarettes."

With that, John waved goodbye and then headed back down the stairs.

The Relaxing Presence of Horses

2008-07-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

I’m so proud of my daughter. Holly knows how to ride a horse. This is amazing to me. I know nothing about horses. I’ve sat on a horse maybe twice in my whole life and both times I found myself thinking Boy, this baby is huge. Now might be a good time to get off.

In contrast, Holly can not only sit on a horse but groom and ride one. I know because earlier this week I drove out to the Bridlewood riding stables where she’s taking horseback riding lessons through Mt. Hood Community College.

As I got in my car, leaving Portland behind me, I felt myself physically and mentally slow down, as the grid-like streets gave way to country roads, twisting and turning their way to the stables, which sat in a small valley in the woods outside of town.

After parking my car under a row of trees, I got out and walked into the dimly lit barn, where the soft sounds of people talking were muffled by the hay covering the worn floorboards.

The barn was rich with the scent of horse and life. Three or four dogs wandered about. I breathed in the smell of leather, listened to the soft swish of someone sweeping out a horse stall, from the deep interior of which came the sound of shifting hoofs.

I relaxed, welcomed the break from the intellectual demands of work, as the low afternoon sun threw deep slants of light into the shadowy barn.

I looked around me, at the thick horse blankets and deeply tooled, leather saddles, at the animals’ coarsely veined stomachs, the ropes and leashes and long-haired dogs. I watched as the students coaxed their horses out of their stalls, brushed them and saddled them up.

In the riding arena, I stood to one side as Holly and the other students rode their horses (named Abby and Lucky and Dusty) in lazy circles around the inside of the barn while the instructor, a soft-spoken man with a slight limp, stood in the center and offered suggestions: “Heels down. Toes up.” The students, sitting relaxed in their saddles, gently urged their steeds forward, when they weren’t clicking to back them up.

Life seemed so organic, the pace so slow, as if life had no pace at all. I felt a welcome sense of relief, from writing and work and the city, as all around me, the horses gently snickered and shook their manes, their black eyelashes half covering their dark eyes.

Tearing Down Fences

2008-07-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

My daughter is grown now, but during the days and months right after her birth, life was a bit of a jumble.

The small workroom in the back corner of my home where I’d used to write, read and occasionally nap now had to serve as a nursery as well, for a new baby had moved in our house.

I could no longer draw neat lines around who I was or what I did, for my infant daughter Holly, like a free-spirited gardener, had torn down the fences between the fields of my life. As a result, the rabbits were nibbling at the lettuce, and the cows were having a field day in the flower beds.

Tell-tale signs of the days-old gardener cropped up everywhere – baby blankets threatened to topple from the bookshelf, diapers sat next to a book on how to make a living as a writer, and a button-eyed Teddy bear peered down on the sleeping infant. On my desk, a night lamp in the shape of a hobby horse threatened to run circles around my computer, while behind me on the doorknob hung a frilly, doll-size dress.

The wonderful confusion began simply enough on the cold, clear January day Dave and I brought Holly home from the hospital where she was born. It was Dave who did the honors. Not knowing any better, he simply picked the bundled babe out of her car seat and carried her up the steps and into the house, transporting her through the kitchen and down the hall and not stopping until he reached the back room where he laid her down in the borrowed bassinet.

There was no hint, in the neatness and quickness of the act, of the wonderful chaos that would follow. Dave soon learned the importance of tiptoeing around the sleeping baby and her short-tempered mom, while I learned to write at odd moments on bits of scrap paper, used envelopes and note pads left by the furnace man.

Though Dave made a valiant effort to contain some of the confusion by building yet another set of shelves, I soon learned that making room in your life for a child means not just re-arranging the furniture but re-organizing one's priorities as well. I was left with a life in which the garden rows were not as neat, one in which the distinction between what was inside the garden and what was out was less clear, but one in which, when all was said and done, the crop would be more rich, more complete.

A Famous Writer Comes to Town

2008-06-24T09:52:00.001-07:00

Such long fingers he has, I thought, upon seeing Garrison Keillor for the first time. I'd come to the First Congregational Church in downtown Portland to hear the writer speak. Even from my seat high in the second balcony I could see that Keillor was a man who liked red socks and had a tendency to go too long between haircuts. These traits, combined with his glasses, gave him a sort of elongated Stephen King look.

I also noticed something that made my heart sink. When he walked onto the stage, Keillor carried with him a copy of his new novel. I was disappointed to see this because I was tired of paying $12.50 for a lecture ticket only to have the speaker read from a book that I could just as well read from the comfort of my own bed.

But a few minutes into Keillor's speech I realized he'd also known disappointment. Perhaps that explained why, before breaking out his book, he buttered us up with several minutes of funny stories. Keillor is a skilled speaker with a soft, deep voice and a studied stammer that almost makes you believe he just now thought of what he's going to say next. For a few minutes I even forgot where I was and imagined myself sitting in a farmhouse across the kitchen table from Keillor, swapping stories over glasses of buttermilk.

Keillor's performance was nostalgic, sad and silly. The sappy parts particularly endeared him to me, for I consider it an act of courage for a grown man, especially a tall grown man, to act goofy.

Several of his sentences burned deep: He described his hometown of Anoka, Minnesota, as a town where "at least twice a year nature tries to kill you." Life, he said, is "a continual conflict between loyalty and curiosity." And a storyteller is "someone who feels more comfortable with his relatives at a distance." His monologue went on to include a sing-a-long and more than one dirty limerick, by which time Keillor had me in the palm of his large, long-fingered hand.

After the reading, everyone was invited downstairs to meet the author. I hoped I might have enough nerve to go up and talk with him but that did not prove to be the case. I did spend some minutes hanging around the water fountain, pretending I was getting a drink when in fact I was watching the writer from a safe distance, which was when I noticed his shoes ─ black with thick rubber soles and somewhat scuffed. I imagined Keillor walking the sidewalks of New York City in those sensible shoes. Perhaps he even wore them into the offices of the New Yorker. Like Keillor, I come from a small town where people buy shoes because they fit, not because they look good, so when I saw Keillor's shoes I knew we had something in common, which, when I thought about it, was all I'd hoped for that night. I did not go home disappointed.

Name Recognition

2008-06-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

The summer sun felt warm on my back as I stepped into the dim lobby of the hotel. Inside, the air was cool, even overly air-conditioned, and heavy with the scent of desperation, which only made sense. I was at a writers' conference.

I'd signed up for the conference to, among other things, avoid writing but had only been there a few minutes when I spotted the familiar face of a rich and famous local author. Even in the low light I could tell it was her. Rumor had it she'd made enough money from selling her books to buy a tile-roofed house on the coast.

"May I help you?" the volunteer sitting behind the registration table asked her.

"I came to pick up my packet," the successful author replied.

"And what is your name?" the volunteer asked.

What is her name? I thought. Doesn't that registrar know who she's talking to? The woman standing before her was nothing less than the conference calling card. That very night, in fact, at a $25-a-plate dinner, she was going to be presented with the We Wish We Were You Award.

"I was just thinking there might be a packet or some tickets for me here," the famous writer said softly.

And I immediately felt a little better, to see that even a successful writer can go unrecognized when doing something as simple as requesting a laminated name tag.

Pens and Pencils

2008-06-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Swimming in Ideas

2008-06-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to guarantee I’ll get a great writing idea is to distance myself from paper and pen.

A lot of my ideas for essays and articles come to me while I’m swimming in the Northeast Community Center pool, where I do laps.

I no sooner don my swimsuit, cap and goggles and dip into the pool than I’m bombarded with the last lines of essays and opening lines for poems.

It’s as if the minute my mind is distracted from writing, writing ideas come pouring in. Maybe it’s because my mind, temporarily emptied, now has more room. Maybe it’s that repetitious activities open up parts of my mind that are otherwise closed. (I also get ideas while knitting, walking and driving. Watch out – I’m the one swerving down the interstate while jotting down an idea at the same time.)

Whatever the reason, it’s immersion in water that, for me, has the most consistently creative results. Taking a shower, for instance, works wonders. While standing in the warm water, covered in soapsuds, I often find ideas streaming down on my head.

Maybe it’s because, in some ways, writing is like being surrounded by water. To some degree, writing means being intentionally submerged. When I sit down to write, I’m immersing myself into thoughts and feelings, staying with them as long as I can, before slowly surfacing with the results.

Word Length

2008-06-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

“How long is the article supposed to be?” Janet asked. “650 words? 700?”

It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon, and Janet (a freelancer writer working on an article for a publication I edit) and I were standing in the middle of a quiet street in Northeast Portland.

Behind me, bearded blue iris bloomed in the front yard of the house we’d just left, where Janet had interviewed the homeowner, a local artist, while I took a few photos. We were outside now and returning to our cars.

“I trust your judgment,” I said, while brushing orange cat hairs off my shirt (hairs shed by the artist’s friendly 15-pound English tabby named Eddie).

Before driving off, Janet told me what a journalism professor once told her about how long an article should be:

“Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be of interest.”

Trying to Lighten Up

2008-06-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, I took a writing-for-the-radio class. During one session, I practiced recording “Lighten Up Already,” an essay I’d written about how I think people should lighten up.

The recording didn’t go well. The reason? I was finding it difficult to lighten up and be funny because the whole time I was speaking into the microphone, the instructor’s Labradoodle (a dark-haired Labrador/poodle mix) was running around the small room, chewing on a squeaky dog toy and, every so often, humping me and the other two students, who included a Jewish woman who’d written a piece about what it felt like to have a Christmas tree during the holiday season and a woman who’d written about her trip to Southeast Asia.

“What’s the matter? You sound angry,” the instructor kept asking me, as I tried a second recording and then a third. “Try to come across as flabbergasted and vulnerable,” the teacher insisted, as her large, untrained mutt continued to run and hump and squeak.

Interviewing Myself

2008-06-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

"I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.” – P.G. Wodehouse

Some days, like Wodehouse, all I want to do is write. I don’t want to leave my office, drive anywhere, interview anyone or write one more article based on someone else’s expertise.

Unfortunately, being a freelance writer frequently requires me to do just that, to interview people, in person and on the phone. Some days though, like today, after having finished three interviews, all I want to do is spend some time by myself.

In many ways, interviewing can be exhausting. For one thing, it requires me to be in a hyper state of alertness, paying close attention to everything that is said and not said. Like a ventriloquist, I have to throw myself at the source. Not literally, of course, but figuratively. Unlike a ventriloquist, instead of throwing my voice into a dummy, I have to throw my brain into someone else’s head.

As the interviewer, it’s my job to set myself aside and, often within the space of just a few minutes, figure out the source’s entire life story, or at least as much of it as is relevant to the article. In some ways, I have to become an instant expert on the person and the person’s field, which isn’t possible, of course, but when you’re a freelance writer on deadline, you do the best you can.

Interviews can be particularly trying if the source is difficult (second-guessing my questions, forcing me to bow down before what I can only describe as their self-appointed importance, insinuating I’m ignorant for not already knowing the answers to my questions when, not once, do I expect them to know how to write). And don’t get me started on sources who mumble or go on and on about the general corruptness and ineptness of all forms of media, (including but not limited to newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) while insinuating they could do a much better job and asking me to clean up their grammar and not use the best quotes.

On the other hand, some interviews can be enjoyable, even fun. The source is relaxed and forthcoming. The topic is interesting but not technically overwhelming. But even then, after the interview itself is completed, there’s the tediousness of filling in my notes and listening and re-listening to the audio recording (if there is one), to figure out if the fast-talking source said she did or didn’t like to plant roses in her garden.

And we haven’t even started writing the article yet.

Which is why, every so often, on a day like today, I take some time to write something that doesn’t require an interview, unless you count the interview with myself, which only took a few minutes. To matters even better, not once during the entire encounter did I insult my intelligence, tell myself how to do my own job or get off the track. At no point did I have to repeat myself because I talked too fast or was I forced to tread on thin ice for fear of offending myself. Unlike a lot of sources I won’t mention, I didn’t hold the interview on a cell phone while driving through a tunnel, expect me to talk over the sound of my dog barking in the background or demand to see the copy ahead of time to make sure every word made me look unnaturally smart.

Incoming!

2008-06-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

Feeling the Need to Fondle Books

2008-05-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I feel the need to fondle books, to run my hands over their slip covers, pat their pulpy pages and caress their naked spines until they relax and open up, revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings.

I love how books, when properly attended, release their characters and plots, offering experiences I may never have, each paperback or hardcover a new lover giving up untold mysteries, occasional torture, sexual innuendo, explicit description, in exchange for my undivided attention.

When it comes to books, we all have our favorites, from self-help to spiritual, gothic to horror, with the occasional action-packed adventure thrown in. New books, with their virginal covers and pristine pages have their own followers. Me, I prefer used books, some of them sorely abused, ripped and torn apart, covered with the sweat of previous owners. Who were they? Did they hesitate over the same pages? Did they read out loud? Silently? Alone or with someone else? After paying with cash, I bundle them home, to decipher the words and the stains – coffee? chocolate? Or something more?

Entering one bookstore aisle after another, I seek out romance, search for the hottest bestseller, the latest diet book on how to lose weight by eating, hover over the poor, forgotten remainders, like cheap hookers sold by the pound or box.

New and used, large and small, hard-covered and soft, they reach out, teasing me with covers that entice, promises to deliver. I flip through their pages, breathe in the scent of ink and paper, while glancing sideways at fellow book lovers, especially the ones hanging out in the Tantric Sex section.

Then it’s on to the next bookstore, in search of more passion. Before stepping inside, I stop, run my eyes over the shiny selections displayed in the front window, then place my hand on the smooth door handle, turn and push, take a deep breath before stepping in.

A blog about blogging

2008-05-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to start blogging. The form seemed so different from everything I’d learned as a traditional print journalist that I was hesitant to begin. To test the digital waters, I took a few possible blog entries to my writing group to ask if they thought the items could be used as blogs.

I hadn’t even finished handing out the copies when Shanna, one of the group members, turned toward me from where she sat at the other end of the sofa and said, “They aren’t blogs.”

“They aren’t?” I asked, feeling defeated before I’d even begun.

“No,” she said, laughing. “They’re printed out.”

“Oh, right,” I said while smiling weakly and feeling like the technophobe I was.

Later, after the group finished reading my writings, Shanna assured me that the items could be used as blogs, which made me feel good, because Shanna is a digital diva with her own blog, so she knows what she’s talking about.

“They are?!” I asked with a smile on my face and feeling bloggin’ proud of myself.

Almost Fifteen Minutes of Fame

2008-04-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

My fame as a writer was short lived. In fact, it lasted less than two minutes, the time it took me to read my essay inside a noisy coffee house in Southeast Portland. The espresso machine hissed steam into the air, drowning out most of my talk. Every few seconds another customer would burst through the door, bringing with her the roar of car engines, blast of air brakes and squeal of city buses.

I was just one of several writers who read that evening. An eclectic group, we were united by the fact that our essays had just been published in the same anthology. Other than us, only a few people showed up that night; and I have a feeling most of them were there for the coffee. Still, it was a real reading and we were in print. Afterwards, a woman came up and asked me for my autograph, which I gave her. The evening may have been the peak of my career, the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol was talking about. Well, in my case, ninety seconds.

Real Virtual Friends

2008-04-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

One way to find out who your real friends are is to have a computer problem and then see who sticks by you.

I’m working out of my home office today, using my laptop, because the desktop in my regular office is on the fritz. For whatever reason, it started sending out multiple copies of each email I sent. I had no idea it was happening until my email recipients started emailing me back.

“How strange,” Don emailed me. “Your message came to my Inbox 66 times!”

I’m “coming to your house to give you a noogie,” Sheila, one my editors, wrote back. “Got this four more times. It is, however, making me laugh!!”

I wanted to apologize but couldn’t, at least not by email from my desktop. It would only have generated more multiple copies. So that night at home, I emailed everyone I remembered having sent emails to, to say how sorry I was for having blitzed them with messages. I was all too familiar with what it felt like to be bombarded by email offering everything from replica watches to cheap meds.

My emailed friends, to my surprise, stuck by me, wrote back that they understood.

“Not a problem,” Don wrote. “I'm just glad it's your computer and not mine! God love technology.”

“No worries,” an editor replied. “Who knows, maybe you'll get a good essay out of it!”

“The Quill Pen!!” a fellow writer wrote back. “I say, the Quill Pen Age Shall Return!! The Spawn of Hal shall be overthrown! I don't know why any of these machines work the way they do, but I still have a Rolodex, just in case the electricity goes out but the phones still work. And I keep my quill pen and notepad nearby. Have a good weekend!”

Still, I felt horrible knowing that I’d showered everyone with multiple copies of messages they may not have wanted one copy of.

Since then, I’ve made an appointment to get my computer repaired. Until the problem is solved, I’ll continue to work out of my home office, where I gingerly send out emails and hope each recipient receives only one.

The Problem With Positive Thinking

2008-03-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

For some time I'd known that the only thing standing between me and my finished book was a quiet place in which to write. And for just as long, I'd known there was no better place to write than in a cabin, preferably a cabin set deep in the woods. A cabin just like Sarah's.

My friend Sarah lived in a tiny house under tall fir. She was planning a month-long trip to Belize and needed someone to cabin-sit, so she invited me to her place to take a look. She offered me a seat next to the woodstove and handed me a cup of hot coffee. By the time she'd pointed out the nearby ski trails and the desk where I could work, I knew this was The Place. I could see it clearly: a whole month ahead of me with nothing to do but write. Only in passing did Sarah mention her cats.

"Petula, the shy one, never comes out of the bedroom," Sarah said. "And Leo takes care of himself." When I looked concerned, Sarah patted me on the back. "Don't worry," she said. "Relax. Take it easy. Write."

So Sarah left for Central America and I moved into the cabin with my sleeping bag, papers and pens. And for the first five minutes, everything was fine. Then I made the mistake of sitting down. Without warning, Leo attacked, landing on my neck.

"Yeeeow!" I screamed, before knocking him to the ground. Once again, with claws bared, Leo leapt for my jugular. Once again I screamed and threw him off. It soon became clear that if I was going to get any writing done, I would have to do it standing up.

Meanwhile, the first chance she got, Petula bolted out the front door. Great, I thought. The cat Sarah had described as agoraphobic was now loose in the wild.

"Petula!" I called from the front porch, but got no response, unless you count the two huge dogs that loped up about then. I clapped my hands to scare them off, but they retreated only as far as the edge of the property where they stood their ground, staring and sniffing. They looked hungry. Did they smell cat?

The days and weeks passed. Every morning I vacuumed up the two-inch-thick blanket of Leo's hair that covered the living room. Every day I replenished his food dish and water bowl and scooped out the litter box, which filled at an alarming rate and emitted a disconcerting smell. The few times I did sit down to write, Leo pounced on my head, quickly clearing it of any literary thoughts.

Every day it rained. Every day Petula failed to come back. When I looked out the windows, all I saw were the dripping trees and the two dogs, circling. I spent my time thinking up ways to tell Sarah that Petula was dead.

Sarah finally returned, relaxed and full of stories about Mayan ruins. And since Sarah was home, Petula came back, acting like nothing had happened. I thanked them all and packed up my things, swearing never again to leave home in order to write.

Then one day I heard from Michelle, a friend who lived in an old farm house in the woods. Michelle was going to Alaska for four months and needed someone to house-sit. She invited me to her place where she offered me a seat at the kitchen table and handed me a glass of white wine. By the time she'd pointed out the quiet and seclusion and the glassed-in studio out back, I knew this was The Place.

"I wouldn't be responsible for any pets, would I?" I asked.

"Don't worry," Michelle said. "I'm sure I can farm out the dog, which means all you'd have to do is make sure the cattle gate is kept closed."

Cattle?! That word might’ve been a red flag to anyone else, but not to me. I was too busy looking ahead to a summer spent in a quiet cabin deep in the woods. A cabin where I could finally write that book.

(First published in Oregon Home magazine)

Chicken Poop

2008-03-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Being a writer sometimes means learning things I would just as soon not know.

Take the other day, for instance. The phone interview started out innocently enough. The source, a nice-enough, raising-chickens-in-the-city expert we’ll call Dan, was telling me that chickens are divided into two broad categories — Standard (normal size) and Bantam (small) — and then further broken down according to human-oriented purposes: egg layers, meat, dual purpose (egg layers who also taste good) and ornamental.

Leghorns, Dan told me, are known for being good egg producers. Araucanas, the “Easter egg chicken,” lay blue and green eggs. Frying Pan Special, Barbecue Special and Cornish Roster make good eating. Black Australorp is dual purpose. Partridge Cochin, with its featured feet, is considered good looking.

Bantams, Dan said, tend to be gentle and make good pets, but “can be outright liars.” All chickens are vulnerable to raccoons and stray dogs.

Sometimes, Dan continued, “people get into chickens without contemplating the bigger picture of their care,” which includes everything from over-wintering (some chickens don’t do well in the cold), to deciding what to do with egg layers when they stop laying (Turn them into pets? Sell them on craigslist? Eat them?) and dealing with what can turn out to be a considerable amount of chicken poop.

Even if you find ways to use the poop as garden fertilizer, Dan said, the truth of the matter is, “There’s going to be a lot of it.”

“Ah,...right,” I said, before thanking him for his time and hanging up.

After the interview, I was sitting at my computer, filling in my notes, when my computer signaled that I’d received an email. It was from my sister Jean, who’d written to say hi. I immediately emailed her back, explaining about the chicken interview I’d just finished.

“All I know is that the chicken poop ate holes in our asphalt driveway, and they stunk way worse than pigs!!” Jean wrote back.

I was surprised to hear this. My sister is a very strong, capable woman who lives on several acres in the country where, over the years, in addition to chickens and pigs, she’s raised horses, goats and five kids.

“We never did chickens again!!” Jean emailed. “The one experience was enough!!”

“Wow! That’s some powerful poop,” I wrote back, feeling relieved that the only chickens I knew where the ones I’d written about and that, so far, at least, I’d managed to avoid sharing my living space with poop-prolific poultry, even if they have feathered feet and lay delicious, blue and green eggs.

Counting Carbs

2008-03-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

Writing sometimes brings unexpected dietary results. The other day I stopped by a police station to compile a report. Mara, a reporter from another newspaper, showed up to do the same thing.

While tapping away on our laptops, Mara and I got to talking about carbs. Mara is pregnant and has gestational diabetes. I’m addicted to carbs.

Mara told me she is trying to limit herself to 2-3 carb units per meal. To figure out the carbs units in packaged food, she explained to me, you take the carb number and divide it by 15. For instance, if a bagel is listed on a package as having 40 carbs, you divide that by 15 and get 2-3 units.

I kept listening, took notes, but didn’t quite understand how changing the carbs to carb units was going to help me give up doughnuts. According to Mara, you’re supposed to eat three meals and 1-2 snacks per day. Snacks can only have 1-2 units. You can subtract 5 units if the bagel is whole wheat.

Friends and Family of Freelance Writers

2008-03-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

Giving Birth to an Essay

2008-03-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

The essay I’m working on is almost done. Its birth is the hard part. I don’t want to give it up. I like being in process, enjoy the maybe-this, maybe-that kind of experience.

Working on a piece of writing feels like when I was pregnant. I felt so fat and sassy. Every day I got up and was pregnant. End of story. I waddled around town with a big smile on my face.

For me, writing is like that. I get up in the morning and have something to sink my teeth into, because my essay or article isn't finished, not yet.

When my daughter was only a few days old, she had to be taken back to the hospital for a lab test. In the car, on the way to the hospital, I started crying. The tears came from nowhere. I didn’t even realize I was sad.

Looking back, I think it was hormones combined with relief, letting go, giving up, the kind that comes from having wanted something for so long and then finally getting it.

Finishing a piece of writing is both happy and sad like that.

Armed Robbery or Just Another Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer

2008-03-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of freelance writers, I wear more than one literary hat. In addition to editing a community newspaper, I compile events calendars and write articles and essays on everything from house clutter and truck mattresses to arc welding, physician-owned wineries, and “green” paint. In addition, once a week, I write a police report for a local newspaper.

To gather the necessary information for the article, I visit two police departments, where I paw through a thick pile of forms. On a recent visit, I came across a Xerox of a hand-written note passed to a bank clerk by a bank robber:

NO COP’S FOR 5 MIN.!
HEAR ME!!
ROBBERY, I HAVE A
HUGE BOMB! NO DYE,
NO TRACKER! $20’S, $50’S,
& $100’S! NOW! OR BOOM!
EVERY ONE GOES POW!

According to the form, the police were dispatched to the bank, where they were told the suspect had left on foot with an undetermined amount of money. No one was hurt.

Another day, another police report:

“At 6:38 p.m. police were dispatched to a report of harassment on Southeast 188th Avenue, where the victim told them a repairman retiling her bathroom had grabbed her left buttock and flirted with her. According to the woman, the suspect followed her from room to room, asked her if she was single and told her, “Maybe I’ll come by and see you.” He also asked what perfume she was wearing and told her, “It’s driving me crazy like a male dog.”

Then, this morning, just when I thought things couldn’t get more dysfunctional, they did. I was sitting inside one of the police stations when a man walked in carrying a backpack that, he told a woman on the staff, he’d found outdoors.

What was inside the pack? Powder, fireworks and a small, homemade pipe bomb, of course! And me a freelancer with no health benefits! When the man reached into the backpack and pulled out a small, white pipe, I started to climb up the back of my chair while the staff person turned green and said, “I’d better get an officer” and disappeared.

A few minutes later, she returned and told the man to take the backpack outside to the parking lot, where he was joined by two uniformed cops who started asking him questions.

“Boy,” the staff person told me, “you never know what people are going to bring in.”

To me it was just another bizarre day in the life of a freelancer. I gathered up my belongings and headed out to my car, while making a mental note to add the bomb incident to my report and giving a wide berth to the backpack and its explosive contents.

On the Take

2008-02-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

“Thank you for doing such a fabulous job on the article,” the handwritten note read. “Everyone who has read it loved it. I can’t thank you enough for making me look so good.”

The note arrived in the mail this morning, along with a Macy’s gift card. At last I was on the take! True, it was plastic money, but it was money nonetheless.

The woman who sent the gift card is a professional home stager I’d interviewed for an article about how to decorate your for-sale home to increase the likelihood that it will sell and sell quick. (Hint: Get rid of the gun collection and litter box, and paint the front door.)

Although, as a freelance journalist, I would never accept a gift that could in any way be considered a bribe, this doesn’t stop appreciative interviewees, clients, editors and publishers from sending me small thank-you gifts after the fact.

Over the years, I’ve received everything from fancy greeting cards and magnetic calendars to bottles of wine, plant fertilizer, slug bait, pizza, loose-leaf organic tea, bicycle-trail maps, movie passes, theater tickets, books, photographs, coffee mugs, music CDs and even dryer balls (non-toxic, allergy-free, plastic balls you throw into your clothes dryer instead of that old tennis shoe).

What do I do with all this free stuff?

Well, store it in the free tote bags, of course. In fact, right now, I can count no less than three gift tote bags in my office — a colorful one from a business organization, a zippered one from a political-action group, and a cloth one from a company that makes a highly-effective, fast-acting, environmentally friendly liquid formula that kills moss and algae on roofs and walks.

Kindle Caution

2008-02-22T14:39:00.000-08:00

A few minutes ago, while using my Kindle (the new marketing tool from amazon.com that also works as a kind of iPod for readers), I accidentally ordered a copy of Cheryl Richardson’s self-help book Stand Up for Your Life: Develop the Courage, Confidence and Character to Fulfill Your Greatest Potential.

I didn’t mean to order the book, but while reading a free, downloaded sample of it, I accidentally pushed the “Buy Now” button and, seconds later, became the surprised owner of the full version.

While reading the Kindle version of Richardson’s book, I followed a link to her Web site and discovered that a Richardson study group meets regularly just a few blocks from my house. The whole experience felt a little weird, though. With the Kindle, reading (what for me had always been a pleasantly private and personal experience) suddenly became interactive. It felt like someone had punched a hole in my universe.

Later, on my desktop, I emailed the contact person for the Richardson study group and made arrangements to attend the next meeting, which might not be a bad idea considering the fact that, for just a split second after accidentally ordering Richardson’s book, I considered contacting Kindle and cancelling my order but then decided against it. What are the chances they will believe me, I thought, proving it’s time I learned to stand up for my life.

Morning Pages

2008-02-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’m already writing. I like to get up early, before the world starts crashing in. I make a point to rise before my responsibilities, before I have to do anything.

I enjoy this time of the day when I’m not beholden to anyone because it’s then that I can just be me and write for the fun of it, write down whatever comes into my head. Free-association writing, morning pages, whatever you want to call it.

In some ways, I feel like I’m writing before I’m fully awake and, as a result, am able to tap into thoughts and feelings I might otherwise not have.

It’s at this time of day that I feel most like myself. My mind is clear, and I haven’t had to use keys or money, haven’t had to drive a car or talk.