Jeannine Atkins

I’m liking this day after Thanksgiving. The extra plates and cups are clean and seem are even put away. The refrigerator holds leftover turkey and vegetables and a spare bowl of my friend Jess’s chai butternut soup which tastes a bit like dessert – oh, vanilla! She said she made this and the pumpkin pie she brought from the actual tough-skinned vegetables, which made her feel more grateful.

The house is clean by my standards, and the novel I’ve worked on for a few years, with some projects in-between, is kind of done. My standards for that are of course higher than for how much is too much dog hair on the couch. I’m still fiddling with words and dreaming my way into some scenes, but there is a beginning, a middle, and end, something someone besides me might read and comprehend.

Thanksgiving is over and I know there’s a new season right ahead. I got out some cookie recipes and my clippers to start cutting greens. I’m making those lists. And I’m thinking how very little actually becomes “over.” I can move past a holiday on the calendar and put my manuscript in an envelope, but now I’m using the day to look back and peek ahead, and feeling happy for this peaceful time that’s just between.



Harvest wreath made by my husband, Peter

Since I put my manuscript into big envelopes for my writing group yesterday, I’ve made some notes about changes I need to make. But I’m calling this the end of a pretty polished draft. It enjoyed working with those last fifty pages, having a nice pile beside me that I poked and prodded now and then, taking out or adding sentences. I feel ready to do more shuffling after my writing group meets, but I’m also making notes about my next project.

And I get to give the novel to my husband, who’s heard about it for so long, who’s watched me at the computer, doing what? He said, “I know it will be good. The only question is will it be good enough for you?”

Last night I happened to be reading Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, which includes a wonderful talk she gave at Columbia about writing. She writes: “Who can find anything bad to say about the last day of a novel? It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.” (p.107)

Yes, that was fun: and just in time to hit the grocery stores for a turkey and start thinking about pie.I can knit, and repot the African violets, and stick the paperwhite bulbs into gravel. I can read, get past the first three chapters of A.S. Byatt's scarily thick but intriguing The Children's Book; maybe this will be the winter I read the final (okay, for me that means four) volumes of Harry Potter. And planning out a new project is kind of delicious, too.

Today I spoke on a panel called Blogalogue at the WriteAngles Conference http://writeanglesconference.org held at Mount Holyoke College. Writer Susan Garrett moderated the panel, which included Kathryn Hulick http://visiblethought.wordpress.com who writes middle grade novels* and is an editor for the Beacon Street Girls book series. Kathryn’s blog is mainly a place where she picks an image (she’s also an artist) that starts her on a story or first chapter shown on the blog. (*We in the children’s writing world take “middle grade” for granted as a swift way to indicate readers in grades 4 through 6 or so, but at lunch, a listener scolded Kathryn for putting herself down, thinking more in terms of middle grade maple syrup). Kathryn discussed the blog Beacon Street Girls kept for some time based on characters in those novels.

B. J. Roche is a former columnist for The Boston Globe who teaches in the Journalism Department at UMass-Amherst. She is the publisher and editor of http://fiftyshift.com/ which features essays on grief, memoir (by Pulitzer prize-winning writer Madeleine Blais), and others such as “When Moms Text. LOL” or “Why you need to use social media even if you’re sick of hearing about it.” There are useful resources such as an It’s okay series and news you can use targeted at midlife women. B.J. spoke of the need to focus and asked, “With 24 million blogs out there, why should anyone read yours?” Um. All I can say to you readers is: thank you!

Victoria Strauss http://www.victoriastrauss.com/ is the author of seven fantasy novels, including most recently The Burning Land and The Awakened City. Her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. She shares a Writer Beware website and blog with Ann Crispin http://www.writerbeware.org. It’s sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but you don’t have to write such to benefit. It’s packed with information about the varieties of publishers and agencies, some out to scam more than publish. Victoria pointed out how it doesn’t dovetail with her own writing, so doesn’t help with the goal of promoting her creative work. But she has gotten to work with the FBI and put down some bad guys. She does good.

It was a good day: seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and leaving with more names of blogs I want to check out! Here are Victoria, Kathryn, and B.J. behind me:

When I told my husband I was off to have tea, walk, talk about writing, then do some writing, too, he said: “Oh, all of your favorite things.” Yes, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens are fine, but doing the above with lovely Amy who many of you know as historymaven in one of my favorite places, Concord, MA: could a day get much better?

We met in the great bookshop, then tore ourselves away to walk to the river, cutting behind Hawthorne’s yellow house, passing not the garden that Henry Thoreau put in as a wedding present for Nathaniel and Sophia, but there were dried cornstalks and fat tired cabbages. Amy and I talked about our novels in progress while watching the sluggish river where Minutemen fired shots and the Alcott girls skated in winter. Here’s a picture of Amy by a tree on the river’s other side.



Of course we talked as we walked: the Alcott sisters, research libraries, nineteenth century novelists, eighteenth century scientists, and oh how hard it can be to hit the first third point of a novel, and the second third spot is no piece of cake either. Amy spoke of trying new-to-her techniques – index cards in her bag – and how since we are always new, and each writing project is new, doesn’t it make sense to keep trying new ways to create a structure?

We snagged a quiet table at the back of a lively café in town, ordered tea and split a big cookie, taking out our work. I’d told Amy I was nearing the end, then glancing at the well-inked pages, added, “Even if it doesn’t look very finished.” She marked and drew her own bold lines through her pages. Cutting is so much nicer when you have a friendly face across the table.

We reminded each other, lost in our own worlds, that there is a holiday coming up. I will get a turkey and cranberries and dig out the pumpkin roll recipe. But to me, yesterday felt like Thanksgiving.

It’s truly mid-November in Massachusetts. Not long ago you could count on seeing a heroic Maple still with yellow leaves, but after a few rainstorms, most leaf-bearing trees are bare. It’s best to focus on the shapes of trunks and branches, which of course can be beautiful, like the dramatically slanting light. The fallen leaves open up views of distant hills and mountains, and brooks previously hidden by bushes. With less foliage in the way, we get to see brilliant pink and red sunsets breaking through cold sky.

But the world can seem a bit too gray. Yesterday my friend Sue and I walked through Smith College to the Botanic Gardens for a show of chrysanthemums and bamboo sculptures. http://www.smith.edu/garden/home.html Some flowers hung in cascades.



Students of East Asian Languages and Literature apparently look at the connections between poetry and plants, and select poems to be displayed among the flowers. (We missed the poetry reading, where chrysanthemum tea was served.). Is it the fleetingness of these flowers, and of so much in fall, that inspires poetry, my friend Sue wondered. Trying to capture something swiftly with a handful of words?



Horticulture students have worked on hybrids since the early 1900s, and visitors get to vote on their favorites of the year. You can visit the Chrysanthemum Hall of Fame on the web: http://www.smith.edu/garden/exhibits/alummumexhibit/mumalumshall.html



Sue wondered what happens to the bees when the show goes down.



When we left the greenhouse, I saw I’d been wrong about all yellow having left trees. Here’s a gingko tree going strong for over 100 years (love those campus trees with tags). I wish my camera could catch the brilliance.

I keep a folder un-creatively labeled Notes for my work in progress. In here I tuck away descriptions of places, animals, people that don’t fit where I am at the moment. I also put scraps of dialog that don’t belong, some plot ideas, moments that come to me when trying to sleep, character descriptions, edges of scenes, bent-out-of-shape metaphors: like an attic filled with boxes, there are some things in excellent repair, others that could be fiddled with and saved, and some things that will get tossed when I’m in the deleting mood.

The folder doesn’t seem appealing on a glance, but while there is junk to be waded through, I know it holds something that might feel like a gift to myself. When I’m stuck with my writing, sometimes starting out on a writing day, or feeling discouraged or bogged down, I may begin looking through here then finding a place to insert the sentence, phrase, of paragraph. I get to think: it fits! It looks good! And I’m no longer in a mire, sometimes working out from the place where I put this gift or ready to go back to the boggy place I left.

I’m at a point where this folder is down to a scant nine pages, while I’m working on the final chapters. Will someone ever get to eat that noted feast of roast lamb with thyme, fragrant grains, olives, figs, pears, and fresh hot bread? Hear round pigeons croon? I don’t yet know. But I'm glad to have that thin folder of notes that might prod or lift me through the end.

I am loving this book by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor about mothers and daughters, bees and pomegranates, Greece and South Carolina, myth and ordinary life, with its strand of how Sue Monk Kidd came to write her first novel after having raised two children and built a career writing nonfiction. The Secret Lives of Bees is one of my favorite novels, the kind of book whose title you can mention in a group of women and hear contented sighs, as if someone was passing around a sleepy baby: the book goes right to your heart.

But for the first half of this memoir, I was more captivated by the chapters written by her daughter Ann, visiting Greece with her mother after graduating from college, and coping with depression as she wondered what in the world she’d do now. She is so candid about her uncertainty and questioning, the tightrope of being in a beautiful place while feeling some hollowness inside. And not all her moments are bleak. She can still enjoy a good meal, and make jokes, while facing a future that seems to have way too many gaps.

As the two writers alternate chapters, you see the distance between them, despite their love, as both struggle with a sense of being incomplete. Only the edges of revelation enter their conversation in the first half of the book. Must sadness be a private struggle? There’s the tension. Sue writes about being a young mother first left alone with her baby, and sobbing as she thought of all that might go wrong. Now, wondering what to say to her daughter, she’s aware of all that can go wrong in such a conversation. She waits.

They travel to Turkey and visit Ephesus where Sue remembers surprising herself five years earlier sending up a prayer to write a novel. After some time she took a class and wrote a story set in her childhood bedroom, where bees sometimes nested: honey dripped, and the walls hummed. Her instructor called the story interesting, with that tone that suggests: not at all. He called the story small. Sue put it away, but the memory came back as she stood in a garden, having just prayed before a statue of Mary, then stands still when a bee lands on her arm. She let it be. She knew her prayer had been answered. It was time to start her novel.

Yesterday I gave a talk called Once Upon a Time: A History of Children’s Literature to a group of about forty seniors at Greenfield Community College. http://www.gcc.mass.edu/community_education/senior_symposia.html
It was sort of my semester course shrunk down to about an hour and a half. We began with fairy tales



And horn books



And Mother Goose



We took swift looks at Alice in Wonderland, Beatrix Potter, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Hobbit, then scrambled through Little Golden Books, Dick and Jane, and The Cat and the Hat.

Of course we looked at picture books, most lucky children’s introduction to literature, though I resisted the temptation to just pull a few out and read. People seemed happy to see images of old friends – Wanda Gag’s cats and McCloskey’s ducks --and meet new ones: Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret got a lot of oohs and ahs. And yay, my fifty plus powerpoint images went off without a hitch. Afterward, a couple introduced themselves as Dick and Jane. I also saw two old friends and Nancy Frazier, who’d been my husband’s boss when I met him, overseeing black and white illustrations for the local newspaper. She said, “We had a lot of fun.”

I spoke on the invitation of Margo Culley, who currently oversees the senior symposia program, and years ago was my professor for a class called Lost New England Women Writers, a course which ignited my passion for research. I was so lucky to have her as a professor, and am so lucky to be friends with her all these years later.

Last night I went to the Odyssey Bookshop http://www.odysseybks.com/ to hear Harriet Reisen talk about her new biography for adults: Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Like many of us, Harriet Reisen’s passion began as a girl reading her way through Louisa’s novels, and grew during the past twenty years of writing this biography and co-producing a film biography which will be aired Dec. 28 as part of American Masters on PBS. She talked about conversations with costume designers about making the linen outfits the family wore on the utopian farm, Fruitlands. There were visitors, many of whom wrote journals, but while Henry David Thoreau, for example, might lavish pages on a tree, there’s no written description of the tunics and bloomers. The costumers did their best with this period when the Louisa was ten and her family avoided cotton, because it was based on slave labor, and wool, since it relied upon unconsenting sheep, and leather: though practical Mrs. Alcott surely insisted on shoes once the weather got cold. As authors we can do our best with words, but costumers and illustrators have to get more specific. Here’s what illustrator Jean-Paul Tibbles did with the cover of my book (Putnam 2001).



Like Harriet Reisen, the topic of the Alcotts is one I could go on and on about. I liked that the quote from the diary Louisa wrote when she was ten – how she and her older sister Anna were called to a meeting to see if the family should stay together -- which inspired my novel also kind of broke her heart. I loved hearing a few research stories: the unanswered phone calls, the plodding, the serendipity of a letter that fell out from a volume at a used book store with a phone number at the end. Harriet Reisen read two excerpts, and it’s clear she worked hard not only to elegantly and truthfully show Louisa, but put her vividly into the context of her time and place. Harriet Reisen loves a material world both for its clues and color. And she shows Louisa as a runner. Often twenty miles a day.

She cited authors who have been influenced by Louisa Alcott including Simone de Beauvoir, Cynthia Ozick, and J.K. Rowling. I might add more than half the the writers I know. I look forward to reading the biography and seeing the television documentary, with a script that is all quotes, many from Louisa’s diaries and letters, with some commentary by scholars.

I know it’s been a banner year for pine cones, since I’ve been stumbling over them in the woods, and I know there’s some scientific explanation about the cycles in which they grow, but I can’t tell you what that is. Yesterday Tamra Wight tamra_wight mentioned on Facebook that scientists say it’s impossible to be sad while looking at the sky.

Add a tree, and you can be ecstatic. Here’s what I saw looking up through a pine and an oak. Thanks, Tami! And there look like more blue skies today.




And a little later in the afternoon.

I just saw the just slightly edited copy of an article about Margarita Engle’s verse novels and histories I wrote for Book Links magazine, to appear in their January issue. It’s called Green Paths and Open Views: The Poet Slave of Cuba, The Surrender Tree, and Tropical Secrets. The editor was so sweet, as was Margarita, who I interviewed by email. Book Links will print that interview with the article, and I’m happy others will get to be inspired by Margarita’s wonderful vision and imagination. I can't say the article was fast to write, still, compared to a book, not so much, and it's satisfying to see something complete.

And I got some possibly fun news about my book, Girls Who Looked Under Rocks. A big movie company wants to feature the book on the set and asked for rights to do so. I would be a proud mom in the audience if this happens. And hope the movie is a good one! Hey, the love interest is a woman naturalist.

Yesterday morning I enjoyed a walk seeing yellow leaves, red sumac, milkweed fluff, winterberry, West Brook, and an intrepid bit of blue someone planted on a bent tree intent on survival.



This morning I’m working hard on revisions, and in the afternoon tackling a presentation, so please join me if you can. Lorraine, I’m happy to hear you pushed past your stuck point yesterday, hanging out with Amy! And I’m ready to roll, after having the pleasure of witnessing Jo – in person! -- finish a draft in Esselon café yesterday. It’s not a myth after all. Even if one draft rolls into another, coming to an end is possible.

Also yesterday I came home with a bag of local apples, as did my husband. So apple crisp might have to be made. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a bit of maple syrup: maybe the smell will coax the muse.

I had a great afternoon talking about books at Smith Campus School in Northampton, MA. Thank you Sabra Aquadro and other organizers! And I got to listen to Patricia MacLachlan, author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, as well as many other books, read poems about dogs. Here she is holding a picture of herself when she was young.



Richard Michelson read from Did You Say Ghosts? while authors Heidi Stemple (back) and Corinne Demas listened, waiting for their turn to read.



What a thrill to hear Grace Lin read from Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. It’s exciting to see such a gorgeously illustrated novel.



Librarian Nancy Brady took this picture of me, Grace Lin, Anna Alter, Diane deGroat, and Shelley Rotner.



There was a lot of professional talent in that room, but the students, oh my gosh. We were given gift bags where I found, besides really good chocolate, cards the children had made on the theme of Great Changers. Here are two inspired by my picture books. Inside one card Abby wrote about Mary Anning. An excerpt: “She loved the sea as much as a lion loves his dinner. She loved her work.” I think you can see that from the beautiful grin she gave Mary. Hey, prying out a seventeen foot long ichthyosaur fossil has got to be some fun.



And Lila wrote, “…Aani made a great change in the seventies.
Whenever someone said, ‘Can I cut down some trees?’
She would say, ‘No.'
… She was peaceful
She was as peaceful as one tiny leaf falling
Were you scared, Aani?"

Excuse me while I go try to write another book that might be worthy of these readers.

Slow writers can be friends with fast writers, yes? I’m rooting for friends who are trying to write a novel in a month. Cheering and amazed, even when the goal is for a very rough draft, or getting in the habit of sprinting past internal censors. And in my area, Leslea Newman http://www.lesleakids.com/, who is currently the very active and imaginative poet laureate of Northampton, MA, was inspired by NaNoWriMo to start a 30 poems in 30 days project.
You can read about it here: http://www.northamptonartscouncil.org/view/web/id/7746/title/30_Poems_in_30_Days_Project_

Leslea has done wonderful things for our community, such as getting poems in the local newspaper and poetry books into doctor’s offices. Now money raised by this project – she suggests anything from a nickel to a dollar a poem --will benefit the Center for New Americans, http://www.cnam.org/ which supports literacy and education for people new to our part of Massachusetts. From what I’ve read, many who’ve learned language and computer skills here go on to help others, making this agency both cost-efficient and friendly to those who might arrive with trepidation.

I know myself. I’d be beating myself on the head trying to write a poem a day, and would be left in the dust, tinkering, though Leslea says they just have to be poems, not good poems. But I’m going for the bystander role, sponsoring Dina Friedman d_dina_friedman who’s in my writing group. Dina writes:. “I'm seeing it as a goal to be disciplined and use the form to pay closer attention to language. I find that focusing on poetry from time to time really helps my fiction writing.” Other participants include published poets such as Leslea, Jane Yolen, Corinne Demas, Katha Pollitt, and Amy Dryansky, while others may be writing some of their first poems, or first poems in years. And all sorts of poets in between, with everyone welcome. It’s about having fun for a great cause.

Have you written a poem today? Go! if you can. And cheer on our friends if you can’t.

This Monday, November 2, from 3 to 5 I’ll be talking about and signing books at the Smith College Campus School on 33 Prospect St, Northampton, MA.

I’ll be in great company. Other authors and illustrators include Patricia MacLachlan, Grace Lin, Anna Alter, Marguerite Davol, Diane deGroat, Barbara Diamond Goldin, Brooke Dyer, Jane Dyer, Jeff Mack, Rich Michelson, Michael Nelson, Shelley Rotner, Heidi E. Y. Stemple, Mo Willems and Kevin Markey.

Please come if you can! The event is free and open to the public. For more information, see

http://www.smith.edu/newsoffice/releases/NewsOffice09-050.html

I'll try to get some pictures!

If you know jbknowles at all, you can imagine how many times Jo thanked me for offering to show up at her writing for children class while she stayed home with tea and too many tissues. I assured her it would be fun, and of course it was. What a wonderful group of people, who missed Jo, and praised her, but were ready to hear about ways to experiment with nonfiction. They had so many good questions that I never got to my notes, but I think we covered enough. Ronnie asked if nonfiction writing had a voice in the same way that fiction does. “Let’s look,” I said, glad I’d hauled in a small suitcase full of books. They each chose a picture book biography and read the first few sentences. Ann began with Barbara Cooney’s Eleanor: “From the beginning the baby was a disappointment to her mother. She was born red and wrinkled, an ugly little thing. And she was not a boy.”

They all nodded: yes, this was not the kind of writing you’d find in a newspaper or textbook.

I urged them to check out INK: Interesting Nonfiction for Kids http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/
And I would have loved to do a whole class just on poetry that draws from history, my current obsession, but mostly just pointed to another pile, and left them with a quote from Marilyn Nelson, author of Carver and other great collections: “What I do most and best is track, like a good hound, with my nose to the ground, gathering information and impressions, and piecing together a story shaped like a poem, and with a poem’s ambition.” (interview in September’s Writer’s Chronicle)

Yesterday was social, eating and writing with friends before class, then getting an always-coveted phone call from my daughter, and hearing about Halloween adventures already begun. Tomorrow I’m reading not-too-spooky stories at the library. Today it’s gray again, the dogs are sleepy, and I’m hunkering in to creep toward the end of my long-long-revision. I’m always happy for quiet company, so whether you’re sick or well, I hope you can join me. And don’t mind if I break for a bit of knitting.

My friend Jo-Ann read my recent report about her amazing pumpkin in my blog, then about the Thursday morning walkers, so decided to join us last week. Our default plan is to head left or right from the library where this time of year we walk under yellow maple trees. Jo-Ann has raised her girls in town, but she said this was the first time, except for one Halloween, that she’d walked along the road. Of course you see a lot more than you do from a car, and it’s beatuful.

We headed past houses and meadows, turning toward Mill Brook and an abandoned farmhouse that had moved to make room for the highway. The brook had been changed, too: this is where about two hundred years ago a lot of pottery was made. Now it’s mostly fields of squash. When we headed back, Jo-Ann and I climbed a hill ahead of Bill and Jeanne, but turned when a car stopped beside them. The driver leaned over with a question we learned was: Have you seen two horses?

Hers had escaped, Jeanne told us. Bill added, Though she said the gate had been shut and locked.

The car turned into a driveway before they'd finished recapping the problem. Apparently the horses had just come to see what might be good to eat in a neighbor’s yard. I tentatively asked if I could help, and was relieved when Anita just asked me to hold the lead of one horse while she corralled the other, and thankfully both seemed happy enough to see her. She left her car to pick up later, while leading the horses home.




So was the gate really shut? What kind of horses are these? It could be the beginning of a story, which we may also find more on foot than in a car.

The hydrangeas I planted a few years ago because they’re one of my daughter’s favorite flowers first turn cream-colored, then rosy, and finally a golden-brown. If the deer don’t eat off their tips, they’ll bloom again next year. This I can count on. Though we notice that “if.” So often it follows “always.”



I’ve been writing and complaining all summer and fall about my pace, the small steps forward, the awkward ones back. I’m still doing that shuffling. But the gaps between good sentences are smaller. The characters are showing rather intriguing faces, and speaking up. Even the arc is starting to look sturdy.

I hope I’m finding a place here between self-frustration and bragging. I’m trying to stay true to how I feel as I creep a little farther forward. Sometimes, like hiking through the woods today with Mary and the dogs, I whine about my pace. But the good news is that I like what’s behind me and the small surprises that keep coming. I’ve got to accept my pace because, well, as with most acceptance issues, I don’t have a choice. And besides, without too many side looks at calendars and clocks, it’s getting me to a place where I’m starting to feel proud.

Thank you for keeping me company along the way!

I’ve always liked books in which not a lot happens, and action is what I find hardest to write. That’s not all bad, but while I’m happy with the characters and details in the novel I’m revising, I need a stronger arc going through it all. An arc any reader can see.

Many many years ago, I took a dance class that the teacher touted as inspired by African, Caribbean, jazz, modern dance, and her cat’s stretches. I remember a class when Diana yanked up my leg, stretched my arms, tipped me almost over, and said, “You think you’re moving far when you aren’t.”

The words stuck not because I was to go on with dance – I was there for the fun and exercise – but because they summed me up. I love what’s subtle, which has its charms and uses, but sometimes, yeah, I think I’m moving when no one else can see a change. Some of this is just part of me, like the sound of my voice and a taste for gardens without placards. I’m not going to write something that keeps people on the edge of their seat, but I’d like to keep readers turning pages.

So I try to stretch. There’s Diana, laughing, leaping, reminding me I can bound a little further and hold the pace.

Thanks to those writers who joined me wielding sharp revision tools on Monday. Yesterday I started to clear some of the wreckage and look for ways to fill in holes I left in the first few chapters, work I’ll continue with today. Please join me if you like – Vivian? I know you were sorry to miss Monday -- whether with hatchets or brooms or simply quiet hands. I’m putting on more Irish Breakfast tea, and if we’re lucky, Lorraine has some banana bread leftover. I picked up a loaf of sourdough, and my friend Margaret gave me a jar of crabapple jelly her husband made. (Thanks, Jim!) So pretty I hate to break it open, but I will for you.

And I expect I’ll break from time to time to join my husband in some nostalgia and some forward-thinking as he just sold a business begun twenty-five years ago. We weren’t long married and I was in grad school, paying rent by teaching freshman comp, when Peter and a buddy wrote and drew a comic book called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It became way more successful than any of us dreamed – you know I was the one who worried if we’d ever lose the cartons in the dining room-turned-studio – and so much of the past years has been great. But without the pressure of running the business it became, Peter looks forward to new creative ventures. We plan to celebrate by seeing Where the Wild Things.

Today’s work is about patching in notes scribbled in plot-brainstorming and seeing how they fit. Yesterday I learned how to correct holes with knitting: tug, tug, tug, and weave. Tricky, but possible. Now it's about putting in the right words. Pouring tea.

Lovely Melodye newport2newport pulled up soft chairs, put on tea, and invited us to join her while revising this weekend. And when Lorraine lorrainemt and I showed up in hip boots and hauling axes this remarkable hostess let us in. Though gently suggesting the axes might go in the closet, lest the gunk on them scare away fledgling ideas.

She’s right: there’s a time for axes and a time to stash them. I had to wait very quietly and patiently for all the ideas on my pages: now many need to be cut, but some I’m very happy to have. And the sight of that axe indeed would have meant some would never have seen the light of day.

But now it’s time for lumberjack work. I make it gentler by saving a draft. Telling myself these sentences, paragraphs, chapters are not totally gone. Just stored. Like clothes I know will never fit again, but maybe…

Last Thursday my writing group told me what I kind of knew: I’ve got characters, details, history, even some plot, but not the overriding arc. So I’m cutting much of what’s there, trying to clear a path for something that rises and falls and ends in a satisfying way. I’m working today, and those with or without axes are welcome. Just expect to smell some rough fresh-cut thatch along with the pot of Irish Breakfast. You can wear a dress or plaid flannel, a fancy hat or something with a net to protect you from storms of insects we might disturb with our hacking. Hey storming insects: could they be what I need? What’s that sting on my neck? Let’s begin.