Lifescapes

rituals of getting ready

What do I do to get ready to write another book?

Yesterday, I cleaned the walk-in closet in my office, a Herculean task, since I am naturally untidy and have a tendency to hoard. The closet was not quite as bad as the Augean stables, but it was pretty damn close. This is a job to be undertaken only when I'm feeling physically fit, morally courageous, and critically acute. Physical fitness is required to wrestle the half ton of junk (magazines, book promotion materials, clipping files, projects I started and never finished) off the shelves and the floor; moral courage to confront the stuff I have accumulated since the last closet cleaning (what was I THINKING?); and critical acumen to choose between what goes and what stays.

Bill donated a 30-gallon garbage can to the cause, and I filled it. Twice. Mostly paper. How in the world can I possibly accumulate that much PAPER?

Today I tackle the bookcases. Twelve Thirteen Fourteen, plus another 40 feet of shelf space along a wall. (I would include DO NOT BUY ANY MORE BOOKS in my list of New Year's resolutions, but it wouldn't help, since I've made that resolution for the last ten years and it never stopped me. Didn't even make me hesitate.)

Meanwhile, I am thinking about the next book on the to-be-written list, the fourth in the Beatrix Potter series. By the time I finish all this housekeeping, I will be very glad to go back to being a writer again.

Reading Notes.

The best time for planning a book is when you're doing the dishes.--Agatha Christie

I got the blues thinking about the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and wash the floor.--D. H. Lawrence

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.--John Barth

dry dry dry

You've probably been seeing the news reports of the Texas fires. The worst one was at Crossplains, west of Fort Worth, where 90 homes burned and two people died. No homes burned in the several fires in our area, but everything around us is tinder dry, and the slightest spark can set it off--like the stupid people who started a fire near Round Rock a couple of days ago with their fireworks.

Usually, we get our best rains between October and March. But the last rain here was September, and we're down about 12" for the year, from a usual total of around 32". Yesterday, the temperature hit 74--it'll be warmer today, with humidity down around 40 percent and the wind gusting to 25 or so. It's a bad situation and won't get better without rain. Which isn't coming any time soon, according to the forecasts. Dry for at least the next ten days, with warmer and drier than usual predicted for the next three months.

Bill chainsawed a couple of dead trees this morning--the photo shows how dry the grass is around him, at the edge of what used to be a cattail marsh. The cattails won't come up in the spring unless the lake fills, because their marsh depends on seepage from the lake. The willows, too, will die, unless they were able to push their roots down through the limestone strata that lies about four feet beneath the soil here.

The dead willow Bill is working on in this photo was leaning across a barbwire fence and had to be taken out or we'd lose the fence. While he was doing that, I cut back the pyracanthus that was going crazy, and trimmed some of the salvia. The Madonna lilies are already up, poor things. They'll get zapped in the next hard freeze.

Reading Note:

Everything has its place. Everything has its season. As events turn, balance is to know what is here, what is coming, and how to be in perfect harmony with it.--Deng Ming-Dao

all in a day's work

The thing I love most about writing is the learning that comes with it.

Take Dagger, for instance. One of the characters is connected to a Texas narcotics task force, a subject I had only passing acquaintance with until I heard Nate Blakeslee on Texas Monthly Talks, discussing his book Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town. I immediately ordered the book (online bookstores make it possible to buy books in the middle of the night, which is either a very good thing or a very bad thing, depending on how you look at it) and devoured it. Amazing book, with fascinating insight into the way these task forces operate, often outside the law. And nobody is making this stuff up, either. It's true, which makes it even more scary than any fiction I could conjure.

And then, fairly late in Dagger, the subject of the abuses of the criminal and civil forfeiture laws came up. Bill knew something about it (and has an Attitude) but it was new stuff to me. Plenty of information here--and of course I had to order another book. Obviously, this is a subject that China wants to get her teeth into. Maybe it's something that she and The Whiz could work together on.

The title of the book, Spanish Dagger, refers to the signature herb, yucca, and there are other herbs in the book, most of them native to the Southwest. I already know many from my own experience: I am well acquainted with yucca, prickly pear, chile peppers, epazote, and the like. I grow them, use them, and have written about them. But I had no clue about agave (from which tequila is produced), which has been the source of many folk medicines and a great deal of folk lore. I have a large, handsome blue agave growing in my garden and I've drunk my share of tequila over the years, but when I found Lucinda Hutson's tequila cookbook hiding in plain sight on my cookbook shelf, I learned a gazillion things about agave and tequila I'd never heard before. Even when I think I know something, turns out there's lots more to learn.

I'm nearly done with the book now: 90,000+ words, with only the acknowledgments and a couple of end notes yet to write. It's not due until the end of March (I'm compulsive about getting things done early, in case I break a leg or my computer dies or something awful like that), so there's time to let it get cold before I give it a final run-through.

In the meantime, I'll take a couple of days to clean house and do the laundry and reshelve all the books I've pulled out and clip the pyracanthus that is going wild on the fence. And then it's on to the next Beatrix Potter book, and talking animals, and another time and place and another universe of new ideas. Wonder what kind of journey this project will take me on, what it will teach me, where it will lead me. Wonder what kind of person I will be at the end of it.

Reading Note, by Mary Daly:

Journeyer: one who whirls through Other worlds, Spinning/Spiraling on multidimensional Voyages through Realms of the Wild, which involve Quests, adventurous Travel, the Dispelling of demons, cosmic encounters, participations in Paradise.

let there be light

One of the lovelies I inherited from my mother is an iron bridge lamp that dates from 1910 or so, with a lamp arm that can be moved up and down the stand, so you can have the light just as high as you want. It was my grandmother's favorite reading lamp, and I remember it as having an amber-colored shade. When she died, it moved to my parents' house, where it stood beside my father's chair and illuminated the detective novels he was so fond of reading. After he died, my mother had it beside her chair--she read newspapers, the Reader's Digest, and her Bible--until she broke up housekeeping.

I've had the lamp for nearly ten years, but kept it in storage because the cheap replacement lampshade Mom bought in the 60s (the lamp requires an unusual shade that screws onto the fixture) was a wreck. The electrical socket's threading was stripped, and when I tried to plug in the lamp, there was a fizzy flash of blue light. The socket and wiring could probably be replaced, but since bridge lamps are of roughly the same vintage as dodo birds, I thought I'd never be able to find a fitting shade, especially an amber-colored shade, like the one on the lamp in my grandmother's era/

...until I went websurfing one day and found this. It was one of life's little thrills, right up there with finding the yarn you need to finish the sweater you started for your little boy (which will now fit that little boy's son) or the silver spoon to replace the one that went down the garbage disposal on New Year's Eve twenty years ago. I ordered the lampshade from Linda, who makes and paints lampshades somewhere in Oregon--fashions them by hand, from sheets of mica made with a shellac binder that gives them that lovely amber glow, like firelight. Then I web-hunted until I found the right electrical socket. Bill rewired the lamp so it won't electrocute me, and here it is: my Christmas present.

My grandmother and mother would be thrilled. My father might have smiled, perhaps, before he went back to the adventures of Nero Wolfe and Archie. I feel as if I've come home, without even being aware that I had been gone. And I wonder how the lamp feels, doing its job again after so many years of being in the dark, pleased to take its rightful place beside another reader's chair, content to be a part of the family once again. Merry Christmas, lamp. May you shine on another century of books and readers.

Reading Note, from "Storied Objects," by Allan Gurganus

The few true things adopt us. The choicest things you've acquired . . . prove once and for all: "inanimate object" is a contradiction in terms. Matter matters.

What three items would you save from your own burning home? Think fast. And friend, in case of fire, know this--if they could move and weren't weighted by the awful burden of immortality that you and I have been lightly spared, you are the first thing those three favorite items would save. I believe that to them, the sight of you means welcome, happiness, and use. For your own storied objects, you are home.

housekeeping

No writing today. Bill was housekeeping on my computer, cleaning up files and installing an upgraded AV program, which took all morning. Which meant that I had the morning free, and since the dog hair was lying in drifts across the floor and all the flat surfaces were furry, I took the opportunity to vaccuum and dust. (It's a good thing we love our two black Labs and the heeler, or they would find themselves looking for new doggie homes.)

I was not born with a broom in my hand, and I usually mutter nasty things while I housekeep. But now I'm loving the clean floors and bookcases (they'll be fur-free for--oh, another ten minutes, at least) and am celebrating by cooking up a big pot of spaghetti sauce for supper. China says it's okay if I declare the rest of the day a Knitting Holiday, since she hasn't yet figured out how to negotiate that next-to-last chapter. Maybe it will come to her while I knit the neck module for the right front of this vest. One nice thing about modules is that you can add and subtract, as the spirit moves. The spirit is moving me in the direction of adding two more modules at the bottom, to make this vest longer.

Reading Note, from The Knitting Way, by Linda Skolnik and Janice MacDaniels:

Knitting is not just something you do, it is a place that you can go. The minds needs a safe and secure space for thoughts and dreams--a place of resting that settles the spirit and refreshes the brain. . . . When I knit, the rhythm of my hands and needles creates space in my mind, which opens up the focus of my thoughts . . .

Dagger again, and the website

China still hasn't told me what happened when she, Blackie, and Sheila raided the plant nursery in the next-to-last chpater, so I haven't quite finished the book. However, today I put together the resources section at the back of the book: a short piece on herbs of the Southwest, a reading list, and some interesting recipes (Braised Yucca, anybody?). Tomorrow, I'll write the wrap-up chapter--you know, the end-of-the-mystery chapter in which all the clues are explained and all the loose ends are tied up. Except, of course, the loose end that will be braided into the next book, which is called Nightshade. (How's that for a shivery title?) And maybe China will figure out how everything came down, and will let me know so I can write the next-to-last chapter, too. For now, the book stands at 87,400 words, which means that these last two chapters are going to have to be pretty short. 90,000 is the outside limit for these books.

Besides the writing, Peggy and I worked on a couple of new web pages for the Book of Days, which will be published next October. Of course you know that authors are responsible for doing most of their own promotion, and our Mysterypartners website has always been a big part of that effort. The website's current look is several years old, and it could stand a makeover--the Book of Days pages are a step in that direction. If you want to take a sneak peek, it's here. Working with Peggy is a joy, and I'm always amazed at what we can do together, inventing as we go.

Reading Note, fromThe Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, by Dan P. McAdams:

If you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who I am. And if I want to know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own life, then I, too, must come to know my own story. I must come to see in all its particulars the narrative of the self--the personal myth--that I have tacitly, even unconsciously, composed over the course of my years. It is a story I continue to revise, and tell to myself (and sometimes to others) as I go on living.

One block at a time

I think this is going to be a vest. It's supposed to be a sweater--at least, that's what the pattern shows in Ginger Luters' Module Magic. A sweater, built a block at a time, which is a nifty idea. But heck, this is Texas, and while we might get a little ice and cold wind now and then (enough to make the cows shiver), a knitted sweater is pretty much too hot pretty much all of the time. Hence a vest. Maybe. Anyway, I will keep knitting until the object declares what it wants to be when it grows up. I think we can rule out socks, however. And mittens.

Reading Note, from The Yarn Harlot, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee: In general, I am a process, rather than a product knitter. I like the feel of the wool, the smell of the wool, the ritual of sorting through patterns, choosing the right needles, and casting on... I like the moment when the yarn tells you what it would like to be. I like getting past the first little bit of the knitting, to the point where I can see the pattern develop and start getting a sense of what I'm making. I like how much knitting is a magic trick. You have string and sticks; you wave your hands about, and there you have it--a sweater, a sock, warm mittens, a blanket, a shawl. I admit that it can be slow magic. Sometimes you have to wave your hands around for a really, really long time.

bird pudding

Chilly here, with icy rain, sleet, and maybe snow forecast for Monday and Tuesday. The birds are flocking to the feeders: redwing blackbirds, with cardinals (so bright), chickadees (so dapper), titmice, and a gazillion sparrows. The blackbirds can be a nuisance, but I love their spring song. I feel the same way about the bronze-headed cowbirds (a few of them out there, too), which are brood parasites: the female lays her eggs in the songbirds nests and the growing cowbird chicks out-compete the smaller songbird chicks for food.

But while I might have reservations about the cowbird's family values (What is that cowbird mama doing with herself while other mamas sit on her eggs? Is she enjoying a career? seeing the world? finding a new lover?), I certainly admire their sprightly, complexly choreographed song-and-dance routine, which they perform in pairs on the wires along our lane in April and May. Scientists think that female cowbirds prefer males who can dance as well as sing, so the Gene Kellys of the cowbird world win out. But since male cowbirds aren't raised in cowbird families, the larger question arises: who teaches the teenaged male cowbird to sing cowbird songs, let alone dance cowbird dances? Fascinating questions on a chilly December morning.

But thinking of April and May and spring birdsong won't warm up the day, for me or the birds. So I put on the kettle for tea and trek out to the cedar tree in the back yard with a bowl of bird pudding, made with equal parts lard and peanut butter, with a couple of spoonfuls of molasses and enough cornmeal, oatmeal, and birdseed to make a very stiff batter. (It's easier to stir this up if you stick the whole thing in the microwave for 20 seconds or so, to soften the peanut butter and lard.) Years ago, back in the days when you could go into a meat market and ask the butcher for a bag full of beef trimmings, I made bird pudding from suet. No more. Meat comes ready-trimmed to the supermarket, and there is no suet to be had, at least in my corner of the world. The birds don't seem to care. By the time I'm ready to pour my cup of tea, they're busy on the limbs that I've buttered with their pudding.

If you do this, be aware that the fat will stain the limbs dark. If this matters to you, choose limbs that won't be seen by your neighbors or your company or whoever you are trying to impress.

Reading Note, from Henry David Thoreau: Birds were very naturally made the subject of augury, for they are but borderers upon the earth, creatures of another and more ehtereal element than our existence can be supported in, which seem to flit between us and the unexplored.

Better Today

The day began with an email from Gin Petty, with helpful instructions (and not a whiff of oh-you-dummy) for getting my Pub 2003 to talk down to Peggy's Pub 2000. And when I didn't understand, she wrote again. The second time I got it, and five minutes later (how simple could this be? how could I not have understood this from the very beginning?) I am sending my file off to Peggy and repenting of yesterday's temper tantrums and all the Bad Things (very bad) I said about Bill Gates. Well, not all of them. Just what I said about Publisher. The rest of it stands. Thank you, Gin--I hate to think how much time you spent chasing this information across the Internet. To see all the totally wonderful things Gin does when she isn't helping dummies learn their software, go here. She is also the Big Mama of the papermaking list-serve, which introduced me to the pleasures of papermaking. That's how I met her. Isn't the Internet wonderful?

And to those who wrote me all those wonderful there-now-it-will-be-better-tomorrow emails, yes, it is, thank you very much. China came through with a drug-sniffing Rottweiler named Rambo. And while she hasn't yet told me exactly how she, Sheila, and Rambo plan to interdict that truckload of smuggled cocaine, I am confident that it will happen. Tomorrow, please, China, if you don't mind. We are already up to 82,000 words, and you still haven't captured the Bad Guys. And there is the papermaking workshop to do at the end of the book.

Bill says he still feels like a ranch hand--he's cutting cedar out of fence lines, but it's warmer today (up to 56 degrees this afternoon!) so it's bearable. I finished my holiday knitting last night--got that last cap off the needles and intend to retire from caps until next November. Now I am ready to go back to the vest I am knitting for mememe.

Reading Note, from William Trevor: I believe in not quite knowing. A writer needs to be doubtful, questioning. I write out of curiosity and bewilderment.

One of those days

It's been one of those days when nothing goes right. Nothing. Peggy and I are working on a website for the Book of Days, and I spent an hour this morning setting up a couple of dummy pages in Publisher for her to work with. Emailed them off to her, only to find that she couldn't open them. The computer wizard who worked on my machine last September was very clever. He upgraded my 2000 Publisher to a 2003 version, which means that this software (oh, Bill Gates, how could you?) will not talk to Peggy's 2000 version.

Of course, this computer wizard, confronted with the consequences of his folly, pled innocent: "What? I'd never do a thing like that! Never!" But he did.

@#$%.

We won't talk about what has to be done to downgrade this software, except to say that it might involve the acquiring of a certain installation disk.... Thanks to Peggy for her patience and goodwill.

The last couple of chapters of DAGGER aren't going so well, either. It's a dense, complicated plot, and the major events are open to more than one interpretation. I had forgotten a couple of crucial bits that needed to be tied in. Which meant that I had to move and rewrite a thousand-word section. Which meant tracking down a gazillion references scattered throughout the text. Which meant being explicit about which interpretation belonged to which character. Which involved . . .  But you get the picture. That's why they call these "mysteries." And at the moment, it's a mystery to me.

And when Bill and I went up to the barn to feed the cows, we discovered that they were out of water. Completely. They had emptied their water tank and it had not--as it's supposed to do--automatically refilled itself. This required a bit of complicated tinkering on Bill's part, and a substantial amount of muttering, at the end of which, he turned to me and said, in a grim voice: "Where in the contract did it say that I was signing on as a ranch hand? Somehow I must have missed it."

Reading note. From "Writing A Novel," by James Magnuson, in TEXAS MONTHLY, November 2005. Stephen Harrigan [author of The Gates of the Alamo] says that if you're stuck, you need to figure out what that character would really do next. Don't ask anything else, like "How do I advance the plot from A to B?" Just think about what that character would really do.

Okay, China. I'm listening. We won't worry about advancing the plot or finishing this puppy. Just tell me what you would do next. Really. Like soon, maybe? Like early tomorrow morning, right after breakfast?