Happiness is...

Here it is, two days before thanksgiving, it's raining and the temperature is in the 30's and I have to go grocery shopping.

Yes, we went two days ago and got the turkey and most of the other things we need, but since then I have made an additional list--twice as long--of the things I forgot the first time.

I'm not complaining. Well, maybe about the weather, but as Mark Twain (or Charles Dudley Warner, depending on your source) aptly observed, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."

I'm happy because the stores are filled with food.

I'm happy because I can afford to buy it.

I'm happy because my family is going to share it.

Not everyone has access to well-stocked stores, and not everyone has enough money to buy what they need if they do. And some have no family to share it with, even if they met the first two criteria.

What makes this country great is how those who have reach out to those who have not.

One story that made me happy recently is the one about Coca Cola suspending its ad campaign in the Philippines this year, instead donating the money for typhoon relief.

I'm also selfishly happy they aren't suspending ads here. Sure would miss those Polar bears.

But if they did, I'd be okay with it.

I'm hoping in the midst of holiday preparations, shopping, visiting, and all the rest that goes along with it, we all take time to remember those for whom the holidays aren't quite
so happy. And maybe buy a few extra groceries and drop them off at the local food pantry.

Everyone should have a Happy Thanksgiving.

I hope you do.

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A Thanksgiving story

Have  you been enjoying these perfect fall days? I don't mean the cold and rainy ones, but the ones we've had recently with warm air, deep blue skies and the fading colors of the autumn trees.

Jim has been mulching the fallen leaves with his riding mower. I gathered enough of them before he started to mulch the hydrangea. The directions I got with the plant said to trim it down before cold weather and protect it. It's supposed to come up again in the spring. I hope so, because I darn near killed it this summer by putting it out in direct sunlight. Plants get sunburned, too.

The humming bird feeders need to come inside and get a thorough cleaning, and be put away until next year. I haven't seen the little birds in several weeks now, so I imagine they have gone to their winter home in Central America.

Luckily, we have Thanksgiving to look forward to before the chill of winter sets in. I'm hoping it will still be warm enough to take a walk after dinner. We'll have the grandkids (and parents) this year, which is always a treat -- especially when they offer to do the dishes!

Here's a link to a chapter from "The Lunch Club." Jane Ann has her entire family coming for Thanksgiving, and wonders if she can cope with Larry's increasing forgetfulness. More important, can she keep his memory lapses from their children?

If you enjoy the chapter, I am putting the Kindle version of the book out for just 99 cents November 28-30.
Happy Turkey Day!

Percolating

A comment on my last blog said, "So you're percolating..."

That about sums it up. But now it's time to get to work.

I'm doing something different this time around. A devout "pantser*" I have converted to "plotter."

I am going to write my character sketches, outline my plot, set up conflicts, before I start writing. I even started a chapter-by-chapter outline.

This way, I can see where I'm going before I get too far off the path. Even if the pantser in me comes forward and teases me onto a side road, I can look at my outline and find my way back.

Another thing I need to do is set goals. I am a slow writer, as witness my books being some two years apart. People tend to forget you in two years.  A writer has to keep her name out there, building up a following.

So I need to write not only better, but faster. Maybe I'll take a page from the nanowrimo writers and try to churn out so many words a day.  In case you are unfamiliar with nanowrimo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which happens to be November. Across the country, writers are turning off their cell phones, hiding their iPads or Kindles (or Nooks), telling friends and family they are not available, and writing. Their goal is a 50,000-word competed manuscript by November 31.

I didn't enter, because I know my limitations. But I can also stretch myself. Limitations are meant to be exceeded, right?



*Someone who writes by the seat of her pants, like airplane pilots did before planes came with instruments.

I'm back!

My "Fall Fever" left me this past week. I blame the drop in temperature and the gray skies. At any rate, I've gotten back to business.

The business at hand now is...deciding what to do next. Maybe my previous inertia had more to do with the fact that I finished "Riverbend" than the nice weather. I have sent it out to see what happens, which is a waiting game all writers are familiar with. No joke, some writers get a rejection slip years after they submitted a manuscript. The lucky ones can write back with the cheerful news that their book has been in print for some now, thank you very much.

No writer I know sits back and waits. The kind of inertia I experienced last week can wreck a career before it starts. Kristen Lamb blogged today that success comes only with hard work (which we know, or should know). She likens it to planting an orchard. No one plants a seed and expects a tree full of fruit the next day.

A writer is planting seeds every time she blogs, Tweets or leaves a post on Facebook. But, like the farmer, she should not expect her work to yield an instant crop...of readers, not peaches.

Until I read that, I was getting discouraged. The agent I pitched "Riverbend" to told me gently that historicals just aren't selling now.  The new big thing is erotica, which I won't touch. I'm not against it if that is what people enjoy, but I don't enjoy reading it and I don't think I would enjoy writing it. Or maybe I would, because I would be laughing at myself as I wrote.

I'm toying with an idea now, running it around in my brain, trying visualize the characters, wondering what kinds of stumbling blocks I put in their way as they journey toward their goals. And what are those goals? Do they even know, or do they think they want one thing when deep inside they really want another?

Yeah, I may look like I'm napping, but inside my head the wheels are turning, folks.

And, I'm still cultivating my orchard ( 3 trees full now!) I need only two more reviews for "Angels Unaware" before I can submit it to a newsletter that suggests titles to its readership. It's just another way to get it noticed, which is the hardest thing for a new writer to do. Unless she changes her name to Nora Roberts.

But I think that's unethical, if not illegal.

Fall Fever

Some people get spring fever. My dictionary defines this condition as "a listless, lazy, or restless feeling commonly associated with the beginning of spring."


I don't feel that way in the spring. Spring is for cleaning out closets and washing windows. Spring is for planting flowers.

I get that lazy, restless feeling in the fall.

I want to do something, but I don't know quite what. i start a book and put it down. I begin a letter, but I don't know what to day. I watch a TV show and switch channels halfway through, not caring how it ends.


I  admit that my writing has suffered. Plots swirl in my mind, but they don't make it to my fingers.  I daydream of making the NY Times best-seller list, but I can't force myself to Tweet and Blog and do all the other things I should be doing to promote my books. 

Maybe it's the weather: warm, with just a hint of chill in the air. Or the leaves turning scarlet, gold and purple, changing the landscape, telling me that summer is over and winter is on its way. 

This might well be the last nice day. Enjoy it. There will be time for work when it is cold and sleeting and the outdoors doesn't beckon. 

Maybe I'll go for a walk. 

Maybe I'll take a nap.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "It's fall fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it  you want--oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"

A picture is worth an afternoon

I'm in between projects right now and taking a break. In a week or so, I will most likely be immersed in another book. But for the present, I am so not at my keyboard.

The other day I printed out a photo from my son's wedding (the wedding was beautiful, thank you, as was the bride). I needed a frame and began sorting through the hodge-podge that had accumulated on the bottom shelf of our bookcase.

I found plenty of frames, some with pictures in them and some empty. As it turned out, none were exactly what I wanted, but that's another story. What I did was spend a few hours sorting through the pictures and putting them in various albums. I have one (or two) for each grandchild, and several labeled simply "Family."

There were wedding albums, the small 4x6 ones that you used to get when the drug store developed a roll of film. (Remember rolls of film?) I smiled at the young couples looking so confidently at the future.

There were pictures of family members who are no longer with us. Those pictures also made me smile as I recalled their presence in my life.

I added the grandchildren's photos to their respective albums, noting how they had grown from gap-toothed first graders to teenagers. Yes, it has been awhile since I did more than look at the pictures and add them to the pile on the shelf.

I re-framed a few, finding the perfect frame for a picture of Mom standing among her prize peonies. And I selected some that had been face-down for years and gave them their deserved place on the now-cleared shelf.

But what to do with several years' worth of Christmas photo cards? I hate to throw them away, and they don't fit neatly in the sleeves of an album. Still, those happy smiling families are too precious to toss. I guess I am a sentimental fool, but I kept them.

I ended up with more than an organized bookcase. I had a lovely afternoon filled with memories.

Why I write

Why do you write?

I hear this question a lot, and so do many other writers. If not addressed to me personally, it comes up in forums, blogs, Tweets and other means of communication.


I don't think the question is so much as why I write, but why I create. Writing is the medium; I could as easily (if I had the talent) express myself in music or art.

I believe everyone is born with a creative gene or impulse or trait--whatever you want to call it. Sadly, that creativity is mostly squashed by the time we reach puberty. But that's a rant for another day.

Some of us persevere, much to the amazement and puzzlement of our friends and relations. Unless we achieve the success of a J.K. Rowling, our efforts seem meaningless. Why put so much time and energy into a project that at most becomes an expensive hobby?

My reply is that I don't believe anyone, even Ms. Rowling, starts out with the idea that they will make millions of dollars and retire early. If it happens, it is a side benefit received gratefully and humbly. We start out because that story, that vision, that haunting thread of melody, must be freed.

Why do I write?

I answered the question once by  saying, "To get the story out of my head."

I guess that's as good an answer as any.