Switching blogs mid-stream

For those of you waiting to hear how I did on the writing retreat I mentioned in my last post, please go to my new blog, Healing Through Writing. It went so well I made a bunch of phone calls and extended it another three days.

I will soon de-commission this blog. I appreciate the patronage of the friends and colleagues who have followed these freshman blog entries as I cast around for my "true" material. While I certainly have plenty to say about the writing and re-writing life, an abundance of other worthy blogs exist on the topic, and if you are interested in hearing more from me on writing craft, please go to my Writing-Partner website and sign up for my free quarterly newsletter, Nibs. I'd be happy to send it along.

As writers, I think we are all trying to figure out what point of view we have that differs from the norm. In my case—like it or not—it is the way I've used my writing to heal from my first husband's suicide ten years ago. Before then I was a dance critic who had begun journaling to establish a greater sense of self; since then I have been seeking the transformative power of fiction and creative nonfiction. I did not want this horrific event in my life, yet the fact of it exists, and I must co-create with it the way a tree grows around and accommodates barbed wire—the tree can't stop its growth, nor can it will the fence to move. 

I have many resources for healing body, heart or wounded soul, but writing is one of my favorites. It is on this topic that I will now focus my blogging efforts. Point of View being the pervasive thing it is, the underlying theme of healing has run through all of my blog entries to date, even on this site—I simply want to solidify the theme through a new title. Please make the jump and come along with me!

Leaving a legacy

This is a picture of our summer home in northern New York. When I see it I think of love. Many generations of our family have vacationed here, and my extended family's archival slide show is a 50-50 split between Christmas shots and pictures of smiling faces at the lake.

A few years ago it became apparent that the hundred-year-old camp needed a new roof. My aging parents couldn't afford it, so ultimately my husband and I purchased the camp. But it turned out the roof was only one problem in a structure pieced together through the decades by weekend carpenters armed with determination, enough brawn to swing a hammer, and enough paint to make it look good in the end. (I also suspect a wad of bubblegum or two.) They had succeeded in turning what was once a hunting shanty into a two-story camp, but without the proper forethought and foundation work, it was no longer safe.

My good friend Doug, principal architect of Lifespan Design Studio—after he could breathe again, laughing as he had at my stories of how the door at the bottom of the second floor dresser opened on its own when you hit the spongy floorboard, or how the bottom two stairs were movable because they obstructed a doorway—designed us a wonderful new camp, pictured above. "New roof" to "new camp" was not an easy transition, though. We had to say goodbye to spaces that housed many happy memories, some centered around family members long gone. We had to set difficult financial priorities that made our retirement years feel less secure.

But we took a deep breath—and then, the bulldozer. In a few months, our camp went from the oldest on the lake to the newest.

Last year I happily made the 13-hour round trip drive to the lake nine times to check on progress, deliver materials, and work (now I'm glad gas prices hadn't yet spiked)—because I loved the new camp from the moment I first saw it. The pain of our decision-making faded away with the smell of mildew we had once thought was an integral part of the camp experience. And the new bedrooms and open communal spaces inspired a thought: what a great place to have a writing retreat. Guests could write on the porch overlooking the lake, on the shore, or down on the dock. Ideas could simmer on the back burner while paddling, hiking, or swimming. We could have popcorn parties to discuss work in the cool evenings while gathered around the fireplace.

I'm heading up there alone, the day after tomorrow, to give the writing retreat idea a personal test run. The memoir I'm writing is difficult, making me all too willing to be distracted by the phone, appointments, and e-mails at home. I think that I could hang with my writing for longer blocks of time surrounded by the wild beauty of the Adirondack foothills. So for six whole days, I am going "rustic." (That used to mean no indoor toilet facilities—now it means no Internet.) I want—I need—to write this story of healing since my first husband's suicide. Even if it doesn't see publication I hope it to be my legacy, handed down through the generations of my family.

Then I uploaded the above picture to this blog and realized my husband and I have already created a family legacy. If the last camp survived a hundred years by determination alone, a good foundation and a design addressing our needs should net us at least double that, wouldn't you think? I guess that's what I'll be writing about while I'm there: the way that, after the deterioration that resulted in my first husband's suicide, the boys and I laid a foundation for a new life designed to suit our needs. 

I'll let you know how that goes next week.

Great ideas and chocolate chips

This morning I judged the 9th grade projects at Boyertown Junior High West in Boyertown, PA. We watched kids take on roles such as architect, interior designer, recreation facilities manager, marketing director, and landscaper to create and present a group land development project that would contribute to the betterment of their hometown.

Their goal to "win the room"—to be the best presentation that any one panel of judges saw—is analogous to winning the bid for the construction project. But steeped as I currently am in the process of submitting a novel to agents and helping other writers develop their manuscripts, I saw another analogy. 

Like glancing over a clean manuscript, slick presentation was easy to assess. Dressing nicely, speaking with confidence, and organizing the material well created a great impression right off the bat. The first group in our room quickly racked up points in these areas. 

Another presented well enough but left a memorable impression with the originality and cohesiveness of theme: to bring the beach to Boyertown, which is a good 120 miles inland. They incorporated sand boxes under balconies in their 3-D rendering of the facade, painted the building in peach and seafoam green, and carried through all of their elements a unified theme of stress reduction. The marketing director was full of ideas of how to get the word out about their new facility.

When the presentations in our room were over and it came to deciding who had "won the room," the score sheets for these two groups were tied. Moving to a more subjective vote—who should win—the judges' tied again, 3-3. We considered declaring the tie, but since there were only three presentations in our room, that meant that while no one would "win" the room, one team would definitely lose. The judges did not feel comfortable with this result.

We haggled for a while over details. Both groups had worked hard on their presentation materials. The first group forgot to include a required element in their presentation, the second went above and beyond expectations in that same element. Yet this alone didn't seem enough to decide the outcome. (We tried to let the fact that the first group handed out homemade chocolate chip cookies stay out of the equation.)

The question we ultimately had to ask ourselves is, if we were truly thinking about investing in one of these facilities, where would we put our money? Which would we want to have in Boyertown?

When posed that way, the question was pretty easy to answer—the money element often has a way of clarifying things. We eschewed the slick presentation and went with the solid, original idea that had an integrated marketing plan. Years down the road, when the faces of those slick presenters had long faded from memory, it would be the idea that really mattered anyway. I am writing this just three hours after leaving the junior high and I frankly have already forgotten the theme of the other facility.

I think there is a great lesson for us in our writing here. Especially for someone like me, who can easily spend an hour crafting, deconstructing, and reforming a paragraph: sometimes beautiful words won't be enough to get someone to invest money in your project. You need that great, memorable idea with a solid marketing plan to reach your audience.

Therein lies the great mystery of writing: what the heck comprises a "great" idea? The uncertainty can drive you nuts. But the yearning to find that special idea that grabs you and doesn't let go is the thrill that entices writer, agent, editor, and reader alike.

Now. A good idea AND beautiful sentences? Throw in a good chocolate chip cookie and I'm in heaven.

Graduation card

A special young woman I know will graduate from college this Saturday and my first inclination was to go to the store and buy her a card. It's amazing how I've internalized that advertising-driven prompt. As if Hallmark could come up with something better than I could—I know her, and I'm a writer!

But what is left to say about graduation, except perhaps to note that the spelling of the word is what will prompt many to hand-write the word "congradulations" at the bottom of the Hallmark card they picked out? Thousands of graduation speeches will be delivered at schools across the country in the coming month; it's all been said before. But since I've never been asked to give one, I thought I'd devote some space to it here.

For many high-achieving college prep kids, high school graduation was expected and—despite the hoopla and the certificate from the state senator—just a blip in the continuum. College graduation is different. It seems like a threshold between safety and the big bad unknown; between the person who has been reacting to known variables and the person that will be revealed.

That's not the case with this young woman, who despite her considerable accomplishment will have no proud parents watching her walk with her class. The obstacles she's already hurdled reveal graduation as nothing more than a moment in time, a line drawn in quicksand. Don't get me wrong: as the three degrees framed on my wall will tell you, I'm a huge believer in education and I adore ritual and I'll take any opportunity to revisit accomplishments that make me feel as though my life exhibits forward thrust. But at 23, this young woman already knows that school is only part of the education picture, because life has its own way of distributing its lessons. By pulling the rug from under your home life to the point that you must completely re-define the concept of family, for example. Or handing you your own life-or-death health scares. Or by planting within you a dream that cannot be satisfied at your first hometown college, requiring a lone drive across America to try again. 

I know people who, when confronted by any one of these challenges, would choose to wilt within their own victimhood. Yet this young woman has faced them all. Her innocence was crushed long ago—she knows life isn't going to be fair. So, unwilling to wait for dumb luck to turn the tide, she has not waited for graduation to provide life's starting line. Instead, she stacked the odds in her favor before graduation by pursuing an unpaid internship in the highly competitive field of television journalism, a move that has paid off with an entry-level offer at a major network. She has replaced the dysfunction in her birth family with the rewards of love freely given to close friends—one wall of her apartment is plastered with photos of them—and by caring for her Pomeranian, Burklee.

This young woman knows that graduation does not magically commence anything. It is an opportunity to give thanks and see how far you've come, but so is every day. Day by day, life will continue to reveal her inner strength and beauty and call forth the maturation required of her. For the grace with which she has accepted this, I want her to know that she is an inspiration to me. I'm glad to know her and I'll be thinking of her on Saturday. This is her graduation card.

And, so that I don't disappoint:

"Condradulations," Elizabeth!

Deadlines: When to keep ’em, when to ditch ’em

I'm not talking about hard deadlines here—you know, the ones you'd better heed to keep your job. I'm thinking about the artificial deadlines, the ones on that Post-It on your computer: "Fourth draft completed by April, get agent by December, publish next year." When you are self-employed—and if you're anything like me, you're self-employed by Madam Scrooge herself—such deadlines are useful motivators.

But sometimes stuff happens. Stuff like illness (heart disease from no exercise + too much chocolate + too much caffeine), injury (eye strain, carpal tunnel), and road rage (from swerving dangerously near the car in the next lane while jotting down notes). We try to ignore the kids or parents or house or even our own physical symptoms because if we know one thing it's that "seat of pants in seat of chair" trumps all. So we keep going despite added writerly pressures like frequent rejection and utter lack of job security and WAY too much time spent alone. 

And then we break down. You know the symptoms: nagging self-doubt, sudden crying jags, the need for more and more sleep, and a whole lotta "This is a bunch of hooey and who the hell did I think I was trying to _________ (you're the creative writer, fill it in!), all the while telling yourself that if you could just roll up your sleeves and get some work done you'd feel a heck of a lot better.

Perky and optimistic as you might know me to be, I've just come through such a period, and I have learned that when you are off your game is NOT the best time to expend even more effort to achieve an arbitrarily set goal. Better to ditch it so you can rest and restore.

One of my favorite self-help authors, the late Richard Carlson, suggests we don't need to get better at handling the stress in our lives, we need to become more sensitive to it so we can avoid the stressors determined to get the better of us. He might explain it this way: Before finishing a race course you set for yourself, you sprain your ankle. You don't (hopefully) pop up and say "I just need to run around the block a few more times and it will get better." You heed the pain and rest until it regains strength. There is no glory in finishing the race while injuring yourself further.

Stress is also an injury—an injury to the spirit. It would be equally ineffective to roll up your sleeves and work harder while suffering the effects of acute stress. Yes, our goals are important to us—they see us through when we are whiny or distracted. But when our spirit is injured and we are stressed out and everything exhausts us we must replenish. Chances are, if you worked for a solid week in such a state you wouldn't achieve the results possible by resting for several days, restoring your equilibrium, and working more efficiently.

What I am learning is that effort is not always the answer. Sometimes we need to detach and wait so that the phoenix that is your wise, clever, creative self can once again rise from the ashes within. 

On Vanity Publishing

For years I have written articles for the Lehigh Valley Arts Council advocating that artists get paid for their work. Artists pay for an education, work to hone their craft, and try to make the most of resources and talents God gave them. Re-read that last sentence thinking about your plumber--his education, his honing, his gift. Is an artist's worth any less? The human soul craves artistic stimulation just as the body thirsts for water. But can you imagine a plumber ever paying for the opportunity to come to your house and fix your pipes? 

Writers shouldn't be barred from monetary gain just because we admit to sometimes loving what we do. Creative writing, if it produces a good story, creates a product with a monetary value in the market place. I'll be the first to agree that the traditional route to book publication is maddening. The process is sluggish and skewed toward celebrity and all of its pesky checks and balances would be a lot easier to defend if they resulted in any kind of consistent quality. But if droves of weekend writers are willing to spend money hard-earned in other endeavors to see their work in print, why should traditional publishers bother paying anyone anymore?

Traditional publishers are willing to take on publication risk because their process identifies books that, in their experienced opinion, might be able to reach target markets. To the extent that their marketing budget allows, they are motivated to sell books because this is how they make their money. For vanity publishers, the commodity is not the book, but the author--specifically, the desperate author. By charging fees, the vanity publisher is motivated to get as many authors through their doors as possible. Selling books would be gravy, because they get a piece of that action as well--but it isn't as crucial.

No matter who publishes your book, you will have to take on the task of promoting it. That's a given. Will you start this process at ground level, with a traditional publisher, or in the hole, after paying for publication? 

For obvious reasons, vanity publishers often disguise themselves as traditional publishers at their websites, and unsuspecting authors don't find out until wrapped up in the euphoria of receiving a contract. Don't let that ego-crushing scenario happen to you. Before you submit, check out a publisher's reputation at the following websites:

Preditors & Editors

Writer Beware Blogs

Absolute Write Water Cooler: Bewares and Background Check

Missing Max

My children are both off to college now. Empty stretches of time loom before me and yet, surprisingly, my writing life seems more difficult. One look at my 2006 planner compared to this year's shows how my sons' activities structured my days and focused my writing time. They also provided me with small victories that helped bridge the long spans of inconclusive behavior required to write a novel. Yes, today's rewrite of Chapter 12 requires changes in later chapters that might take weeks to address, and the whole thing may or may not be better once I make them, but in the meantime... the boys got their homework done-YAY! Got to all their extracurriculars on time-WAY TO GO, MOM! Ate nutritious meals-EXTRA POINTS! Had no cavities-WOOHOO!

I miss the boys, but I'm happy they're out in the world testing their own balance. It was time they stop gripping the handrails created, for better or worse, from decisions I'd made. And it's not like they've disappeared. We're in touch on a regular basis, since I still give them advice they didn't ask for via e-mail, and they must write back to tell me off.

Yet still I fight bouts of sadness. Thanks to some perspective from my husband and a disproportionately visceral reaction I had to the recent news of my sister's dog's death, I think I discovered the root of my problem: I miss Max.

Max, a cock-a-poo (technically, three-quarters cock and one-quarter poo) was my close companion for 15 years. He was never destined to go find his own life; he was utterly happy to share mine. He had commandeered the Lazy-Boy recliner in my office, where he would wait patiently while I worked at the computer. If my gaze drifted from the screen, Max would sense the movement and lift his head to look at me, waiting to see if he could be of some assistance. If a problem needed extra thought, he was always happy to go outside and walk with me until a solution could be found. When clients came to meet with me, he'd jump off the chair to give them an intimidating sniff. "You'll have to excuse my secretary," I'd say. "Get back in your chair, Max," and back he'd go. We were so close that when I was under stress he was, too: we each threw our backs out a few weeks before my second wedding.

At her wonderful web page listing ten pieces of advice for writers, Jennifer Weiner lists having a dog as item 6. Max has been gone a year now, but I've been hesitant to get another pet, since this is the first time in 23 years I've been able to walk out the door without making sure everyone else has urinated, and it's great to go on a vacation without having to line up sitters. But I'm learning there can be a down side to too much freedom--we need our responsibilities. On my walk today, just thinking about getting another dog perked me right up. Hmm... 

Don't get me wrong, my husband is a great companion, but he's only here in the evenings, and he's getting sick of me asking him to fetch and lick my face. I'm not on the way to the pound just yet--you know, just to look--but we'll see how long I hold out.

And Max, if cyberland connects up in some magical way to doggie heaven: I miss you, buddy.

Random facts about Kathryn

My friend Melanie tagged me. It's a chain game among bloggers that, should everyone play, serves to drive traffic to your blog. The crux of the assignment is to list six random things about yourself, then pass the assignment on to six others. I enjoyed reading hers so, in like spirit, here we go. Six random facts about me:

1. I have broken every chain letter or e-mail ever sent to me, even fun ones like this. For one thing, I am new to blogging, and outside of the friends Mel and I have in common, don't yet know six bloggers I could send this to. Plus, I hate to annoy people. So much so, in fact, that when I was young, the anxiety of having to go door to door to sell Girl Scout Cookies—a proven product!—was enough to make me quit Scouts after only one year. (This will mean more to those of you who are acquainted with my high-achieving self well enough to know how painful it was for me to lose the opportunity to continue to earn badges for my sash.)

2. Head connections. 

I once shook hands with champion downhill skier Jean-Claude Killy, who had recently won three medals in the 1968 Olympics. Our neighbor in Baltimore was an executive with Head skis, for which Jean-Claude (oh yeah, first name basis!) was doing a promotion. Since this executive's wife was too pregnant to entertain, my parents had a party at our house in his honor. While guests congregated in the living room and dining room, my four siblings and I, dressed nicely, sat on the couch in the family room until he arrived. After we stood he shook each of our hands, saying our names. With his French accent, mine was "Katrine." Yes, it rhymed with latrine but it was enough to make my 12-year-old heart palpitate. My favorite memory of the day, though: my older sister had been entrusted with making the coffee in one of those big party percolators. After reading the directions to determine how many "cups" of coffee to put in the basket, she used a "one-cup coffee measure" instead of a measuring cup. Espresso it wasn't!

3. It's the process that matters. Before ending my six years at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, by leaving with a master's degree, I had officially declared seven different majors. The only job I ever held that required any of these fields of academic study was a one-year adjunct teaching position at Trenton State College, NJ, for which I earned $600 per semester.

4. Twelve interminable weeks. While student teaching biology in a suburban Cincinnati high school to which inner city students were being newly bussed in 1978: each day I had to reproduce my lesson plan for the third of the class that would need to learn the material by themselves via worksheet while sitting in in-school detention; I was cussed out for being a bigot by the mother of a black boy who I was required to punish for cussing me out during class (I determined a few weeks later that this same boy couldn't even read); a fist fight between two boys broke out in my class; a girl went into hysterics (she literally had trouble breathing) when her lab partner accidentally flung an earthworm off the dissecting needle into her face, requiring that I send her to the nurse; two kids lit up a joint in the back of my biology room, requiring I call the police; and one day the big class bully put the trash can up on the lab counter then picked up hyperactive little Nathan Feldman, folded him in half, and plopped him butt-first into the can. I could not get him down. And to think I'd wanted to teach because I loved biology. I ended up leaving my position early to have a grapefruit-sized ovarian cyst surgically removed, an activity I found much more pleasurable than student teaching. The kids made me a card that everyone signed: "We miss you so much!"

5. Them's me genes. Growing up I had such a crush on my older cousin Bob that I couldn't speak when he was in the room. Maybe it was the genes: we're both descended from a private in the American Revolution whose parents were second cousins. Another family tree fun fact is that my husband and I own property on a lake in northern New York state (as does cousin Bob, who has been married happily for many years to a woman from outside our family). Five generations of my extended family have summered there, but it turns out our ties to the area go back much further: a  local newspaper, in probing the history of the lake, found that the first white man to discover the area was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Esek Earle, in 1813. His first comment upon seeing it for the first time: "I have found a place where we can kill all the deer we need." 

6. Look at this face:

Unbelievable as it seems, and unready as I am, I am a grandmother! Not technically, I guess, as this is my husband's adopted daughter's son. But genetics aside, when you look at a face like that, you find yourself saying, "Can you say, 'Grandma?'"

Movin' and Shakin' in the Lehigh Valley

Wednesday night, in the spirit of "Dancing with the Stars," members of the Lehigh Valley Arts Council looked on while three area dancers paired up with untrained-but-game community members to compete for... bragging rights (a REAL reality show). As with most arts endeavors the greater reward was not in the destination, but in the journey. Although they did grip those trophies tightly.

Joining me on the judges' panel, above, were ceramicist/"dancing monk" Rafael Canizares and Allentown Main Street manager/glass blower Peter Lewnes. With a 19-year background in this capacity at The Morning Call (writing under the names Kathryn Williams and Kathryn Williams Craft), I can tell you it was the most fun I've ever had as a dance critic. No grant money would ride on my words, no tender creative spirit would be squelched beneath them. Indeed, like Simon Cowell on American Idol, the more I "let it rip," the greater the booing and the higher the entertainment value, everyone realizing it was all in good fun.

While the female judge usually sits on the left on this show, once we figured out that I was the oldest, I drew the Len Goodman spot. My comments were aimed toward performance quality. "Carrie Ann" was Rafael, who tapped his background in ballroom dance to dissect technical expertise; Peter, like effusive Bruno Tonioli, played cheerleader. (Of course, Peter's main qualification for the judges' panel was that he does his laundry on Monday nights at the house of a friend who watches the show.) 

The hosts were Randall Forte, Executive Director of the Arts Council, and Pam Deller, Associate Publisher of Lehigh Valley Style. First up were John Thoder of the Allentown Area Swing Dance Society and Anne Episcopo of Alvin H. Butz, performing a competent jitterbug/smooth lindy. They had met previously for six rehearsals. My comments ran something like:

Martha Graham said it takes ten years to make a dancer. The good news is that nothing just happened here that 9 years and 11 months more couldn't solve. [boos] But you looked great, Anne, and while you often wore a smile as a facade, I appreciated all of the funny faces John made at you that helped the real smile break through.

Next came Eric Feinstein of Repertory Dance Theatre and student Betsy Harting of Olympus America doing the waltz. They admitted to only rehearsing three times including the dress rehearsal, but they pulled off an elegant performance thanks to Betsy's previous dance training on the very Cedar Crest College stage where they performed. (Way previous, she added.)

You set a difficult challenge by picking such slow music, which demanded that you luxuriate to fill every count—instead, you sometimes hit a pose on "one" and simply held. But there were some moments of real tenderness in this performance, and I dare say we watched you fall in love--and if we didn't, don't tell us!

Up last were HALA (Hispanic American League of Artists) dance instructor Aja Jefferson with student Joe Owens, editor of the Express-Times, performing the merengue/salsa. It wasn't just the beat that energized the stage, but the, er, enthusiasm of the dancers as well. It was enough for the couple to win the competition. Watch their performance to see for yourself. Video of the runners up is also available, so check these out and share in the fun (video clips thanks to Pennlive.com). My comments to Aja and Joe are on the video: I'm the back-lit wraith at the center of the judges' panel. 

Your styles were disparate yet complementary, with Aja's energy all horizontal and round and Joe's all vertical and jittery. So jittery, in fact, that I think it would have been fun to see Joe perform the jitterbug with John. Peter's assessment: Hot, hot, hot!

After the competition, the audience was invited onto the stage for a salsa lesson taught by Aja. It was a most enjoyable evening, a lot of laughs, and due to the participation component, the best idea Randall has ever had for the annual Lehigh Valley Arts Council member reception. Thank you to the organizers, the contestants, and my fellow judges for making it so much fun. 

Write Stuff 2008: A writer is born

Ever since getting involved with the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group in 2001, I have volunteered to help out with their annual Write Stuff  conference in one capacity or another. I love the energy of this event. It's just big enough to attract great presenting authors, and just small enough so that you can build relationships with other attendees. Each year, my favorite part of the conference is watching the conferees arrive—so many familiar faces, eager to learn of the riches the weekend will hold for them.

A highlight in the sea of this year's faces was Fritz, a client of my editing business, writing-partner.com. I met Fritz, a man I'd guess was nearing retirement age, a year ago when he attended one of my library talks. (The library talks are a pre-conference series I'd designed in 2005, when funding cuts to Pennsylvania's libraries had put a damper on their ability to offer special programs. I figured our writers could offer area libraries a variety of free programs on topics related to the publication process while promoting our organization and the Write Stuff conference.) Fritz was not a writer—he was a man with an amazing story to tell whose memoir was being assembled by someone else. 

I left that talk with the first 50 pages of his story tucked under my arm, a check in my pocket, and a request to assess its commercial potential. Encouraged by my enthusiasm and his budding knowledge of the publishing world, this year he attended several talks—including one I gave at the Boyertown Community Library, "Polish Your Writing for Publication: 13 Self-Editing Tips & Tricks." Riveting title right? One only a writer could love.

The next time I saw Fritz was seven weeks later, at the Write Stuff conference.

"Kathryn," he called out, his face lit up like an amusement park ride. "I have to tell you—I am having so much fun writing! I've gone through my manuscript and applied all of the self-editing tips you shared with us and—well—it's like magic! Suddenly, it reads so much better!"

It was a real kick for me to see my enthusiasm for the self-editing process mirrored in his face. I do find satisfaction in first draft work—how could I not, when a big batch of words now covers pages that were previously blank? But to me, the true excitement of writing comes in shaping subsequent drafts, when through careful weaving of word choice and syntax and rhythm and punctuation and the voice that results from these variables, the prose gains enough strength to carry the story that had been hidden within.

Fritz has discovered that love of craft. And in doing so, a writer is born.

2008 Central PA Writing Contest: "almost"?

Something magical always happens when I congregate with other writers. That's why, earlier this week, I drove to York College to pick up my honorable mention from Central PA magazine's 2008 Writing Contest. Whether to go was no easy decision: four hours round-trip is a long time to travel for punch, crudites and stuffed mushrooms. After all, I hadn't won one of the top three cash prizes. Should I even bother?

All things ecological and economic considered, it made most sense to let them mail me my certificate. But... what magic might I miss out on? I decided to go.

And I'm so glad I did. At the reception preceding the awards, the other honorees and I introduced ourselves by asking, "Which one did you write?" Often, the answer would be followed by a second question: "Remind me again, what was it about?" That led to the first of three valuable lessons.

Lesson #1: It pays to choose an evocative title. As in, a title that evokes the specific story content, not theme, of your piece. As it turned out, my piece, "The Boys, Harry Potter and Me"  earned instant recognition: I never once had to remind someone what it was about.

Lesson #2: Contest decisions are made by committee, so if you are at the top of the crop, someone liked your piece very much. The senior editor at the magazine told me that one of the other editors responsible for selecting the top ten finalists (York college professors were entrusted with choosing the three cash winners) liked my memoir piece the best, even though fiction typically wins. That sorta kinda almost means something, I think. Maybe.

Lesson #3: Meeting your readers offers the possibility for writing's biggest reward. And here I'm not talking about publication, or a certificate that could be ruined in a mad dash through a rainstorm, or $200 that would be here today and gone tomorrow. I'm talking about something more permanent: learning that you have touched a reader's heart.

One of the other contestants, a young mother of two, told me that the moment she finished reading my entry online she called to her husband in the next room, saying, "You have to read this." He told me he was moved by it, too. That's cool, right? But then she quoted a line that she'd found poignant, and her choice surprised and delighted me: "When had they become men?" She hoped that down the road, once she became a mother distracted by the multiple responsibilities of raising teens, she too would remain aware of all of the miracles of change in her children.

But then I earned my real prize. She said, "My children are a little too young to start reading them the Harry Potter series. But when I do, I won't be able to begin without thinking of you and your boys."

I'm a big advocate of payment for artists, and I need to make a living just like anyone else. I will try to re-sell this piece. As many writers realize, however, there are easier ways to make money. But an effective story can be an indelible way of touching a stranger's life. And for me, banking such memories creates an account that even a recession can't touch.

Philadelphia Writers' Conference Free Forum

On Sunday I spoke at one of the Free Forums leading up to the 60th anniversary Philadelphia Writers Conference. That's me on the right, standing with Forums coordinator Sean Toner, in a photo taken by his wife Robin. To me, this picture captures the magic of the event, held in the A.J. Drexel Picture Gallery in Drexel University's Main Building: 60 eager writers hoping to learn what they could to boost their craft, large historical figures standing mute on the walls, and Sean and I in the middle.

I was speaking on one of my favorite topics, "Those Critical First Pages." My writing friends already know this: I am a "first page junkie." While raising my sons, I would spend an odd half-hour between dropping one at soccer and picking up the other from Tae Kwon Do by ducking into my local library and reading as many first pages as I could. If the lead hooked me, I'd analyze why. If not, I'd try to figure out what stood between me and my interest in the story. Developing a talk for other writers on the topic was a natural for me. I've already given this talk several times, but Sunday's was the largest and most enthusiastic audience.

Maybe they could feel the energy as I did—that crackle in the air when people come together to pursue a passion. The figures on the wall stood in for authors published long before us, from whose words we can learn. The audience represented the next crop of writers, struggling to commit ideas and events to the page so that they, too, might leave a legacy. Sean, as presenter, and I, as speaker, stood in the middle, passing the torch of knowledge from one generation to the next. I like the fact that in this picture his white cane took on the glow of a lightsaber, as if such knowledge could banish the darkness of doubt and rejection from writers' lives.

But of course it can't. We need the darkness, it is part of the process of sinking deep within to find our truth. We need the rejection, too. It is the manifestation of the glorious fact that we humans are complex creatures with different likes and dislikes, and that this variety of taste keeps all aspects of our world—including publishing—in balance.

But knowledge can light our way back out of the darkness, and our published heroes can inspire us to transcend rejection. What Sean doesn't know: I keep an Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure beside me on my computer desk, complete with lightsaber. He represents the wisdom of the ones who came before. More than once I have picked him up to whisper in his ear: "Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."

So thank you, Sean, for letting me play a part in a program that allows me to feel plugged in to such a time-honored tradition in the arts. May the force be with us all.

And so it begins...

I have always trailed at least a good three years behind the cutting edge. I first noticed this in tenth grade when, finally convinced that clogs were here to stay, I purchased my first pair. I still remember the day in chemistry class when I walked from the back of the quiet room up to Mrs. Lems' desk to hand in my test paper. No one was still wearing clogs, the trend-savvy had moved on to wedged heels, and I remember the way one pair of eyes after another looked up from their papers to see what horse was clip-clopping down the aisle between the lab tables. (Since my feet had been growing steadily, I had bought them a little large—you know, to extend their usefulness—so the wood made a particularly resonant rap against the tile floor.) My narrow feet stopped growing and never got used to them; I threw them away after only a month or two of flopping around.

Let's hope I do better with this blog.

I have feared that writing a blog posed a potential drain on my creative energy, and I didn't want to usurp precious writing and editing hours by reading the blogs of others, either. So I held out against blogging until it became something of a public relations mandate for a writer. (Or maybe that happened three years ago.)

Thus the title. Yes, it is blatant self-promotion for the novel I am trying to find representation for, THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY, but it is also a reference to wisdom hard-won in my life: if you fail to move forward with the times, you become a stationary target for large ideas falling from above.

Now that I sit down to my first blog entry, so many ideas crowd my mind that I must admonish them to wait in line without screaming; I look forward to setting them down in this space in an orderly fashion. The same thing happened with the life-changing practice of journaling: never thinking I'd have much to say, I waited until I was 38 to begin. Much to my surprise, though, words spilled from my pen until my cramped hand had to put an end to the first entry.

Guess I'm just one of those writers who needs the pressure to build up inside before she can clog. I mean blog.