FictionLimbo

Oh, the Places She Should Go!

2012-01-24T12:56:00.000-08:00

Rejection is the foundation upon which most writing careers are built. We get it. We know publishers turned up their noses umpteen times at Harry Potter and The Help and even Gone With the Wind. We take this sparkling diamond of a fact, wrap it in silk, and stitch it into the lining of our souls, because knowing it's there is often the only thing that keeps us going. We understand, in a rational legal-mind way, that publishing is a business. We don't (usually) fantasize about severed horse heads soiling editors' sheets. We have learned (through yoga and meditation and just plain getting old) to let go, to live in the current breath, to be thankful for the opportunities we've had and to seize the ones yet to come. Sure, we are disappointed our book doesn't recline upon store shelves. That the contract with our agent expired faster than an iPad deal. That the electronic release of The Pecking Order didn't single-handedly crash Amazon's site. But, mostly, we deal with it and hammer away at new projects. And drink champagne.

Today is not one of those days. Today, we stomp our feet and cross our arms and stick out our bottom lips and bitch, thanks to Jennifer Weiner and Dr. Suess. If you don't know Jennifer Weiner, you should. She's a funny, snarky, Bachelor-watching, blogging, tweeting writer with great hair who personifies that quote, "well behaved women seldom make history." She's also published more books than the Bible's got Psalms. (Okay, maybe not that many books, but I couldn't resist a House of Pain reference. Admit it, you're Jumpin' Around now...) She's long been an advocate for women writers, taking to task critics, the media, and authors (looking at you, Franzen), for the disparate treatment of books written by men versus women. She particularly calls out people who dismiss what they have labeled, pejoratively, "chick lit." She recently penned a brave and spot-on blog post regarding how the the New York Times statistically gives more coverage to books written by men. (For Huffington Post's discussion of the issue, see here.)

As we read her blog and tweets over the past few days, we became increasingly incensed. Don't get us wrong, we never expected our book to be reviewed by the NYT, but in our own podunk way, we have felt the same bias. Our agent called our book "upscale commercial women's fiction" and shopped it to major publishers. Every single one found it laugh-out-loud funny, engaging, and well written. But they passed because the market was "saturated." In other words, there was too much "chick lit" clogging up the shelves. Bullshit. How about male-written thrillers with well-coiffed male protagonists, some sort of far-fetched legal conundrum or conspiracy or code to crack, an egregious amount of passive voice, and overuse of adverbs? You can't spit in a bookstore without hitting dozens of those . . . and they're usually on the front tables. (For what it's worth, I'm not sure you should ever spit in a bookstore, but you see my point.) Good for those authors. You did it. You should be proud. We hope you ordered a cake and threw confetti. . . we know we would have. But it's time for women's fiction (and not just the "important" kind, whatever that is) to be invited to the party.

At this point you may be thinking . . . wtf does this have to do with Dr. Suess? (Or maybe you're thinking about a peanut butter chocolate chip milkshake. Or maybe I'm projecting). NPR aired a piece this morning, on the 75th anniversary of Dr. Suess publishing his first story, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I'm a huge fan of the Doctor. I listened to the segment with a smile on my face, nodding in solidarity when I learned his story had been rejected by publishers 27 times. This is exactly the encouragement I need today, I thought, pouring out a little green tea for my literary holmie. Then I heard this: Dr. Suess had all but given up when he was walking home and "bumped into a friend ... who had just become an editor at a publishing house in the children's section." Of course he did. Where's that champagne?

Follow Me Home

2011-07-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have a little story to tell. If you know me personally I’ve probably bored you with the details already (perhaps multiple times on the same occasion, depending on how deep into the wine I’ve dipped). But the series of events in this small true tale won’t leave me be. They are pinching me at my desk and poking me awake at night and I fear I will have no respite until I commit them to paper. Instead of simply writing them down, however, I’ve turned the whole shebang into a writing exercise. I’m somewhat obsessed with point of view. My inclination is to write in the first person or in third person omniscient as the main character. But I’m always intrigued by multiple points of view, as in One Day or The Help. I’m also a tad in awe of authors who utilize a minor character’s point of view to drive the story. And so, here, though it might be gimmicky at best and painful at worst, I give you my story as told by. . . wait for it . . . my dog. Apologies in advance . . .

The woman was straight up pissed. Cartoonish, even. Red-faced with steam coming out her ears, her eyes bloated and bulb-like, that vein at her left temple threatening to blow. You know why? Because it was her fault. She left the gate open, even after jabbing her finger at the boys and threatening a Gulag-type existence if they let me escape. She forgot I was outside. Worse yet, she hadn’t taken me running for a few days, even though she knows I’m a Husky and I’m born to run, baby. And, frankly, I think she was hungover. I can smell those things.

I saw that cracked gate and popped smoke. I didn’t mess around this time, either. I didn’t stop to sniff road kill or mark the neighbor’s mailbox (Though, for the record, if your mailbox is shaped like a wide-mouth bass, I think you have it coming). I got my sprint on. I felt badly for a moment. I knew she’d had a rough few weeks. I’d sensed the tension in her movements, heard her crying, felt the long, hard exhalations that jostled my head in her lap. She was taking up less space. The house, which was too cumbersome and too expensive for a half-time mom, was swallowing her a little each day. I thought about running back and leaning into her legs, but then the delicious heat from the asphalt hit my paws like a drug.

Honking, swerving, yelling with pumped fists—all the world noticed me as I tore down the street, crossing from one side to the other and back again. She and the boys followed me in the car. The older boy, he tried to entice me with cookies as she pulled alongside. But what’s a cookie compared to the open road? I’m a traveler, man. I won’t sell my soul for a treat. Eventually he became angry and started chucking them at me as hard as he could. Rotten kid’s got an arm. The little one? He just cried. “I don’t want to watch her die!” I heard him scream. This from a boy who has not only run into traffic on numerous occasions, laughing maniacally in the face of certain death, but who recently licked a wild mushroom “just to see if it was really poisonous.” Pots and kettles, my child. Pots and kettles.

A few miles down, she almost got me in the pool enclosure of an apartment complex. I thought the jig was up. I was cornered, trapped in some sort of fancy celebration amongst silver serving dishes and ladies in ruffled dresses. She wore running shorts and a sports bra. And pink slippers. I won’t lie; I was a little embarrassed. I was like, “Nah, party people, she’s not my owner. My real owner washes her face occasionally.” She lunged for me and I leaped over her like a creature of the Serengeti. Real Discovery Channel shit. (I’m still replaying that one). And then I was off again. Born Free . . . until I tasted pavement. Ouch. Some dude—some dude barely outta high school in a plaid button down and shitkickers—jumped out of a truck (one of those ubiquitous Northern California trucks sporting a gun rack and duck decals) and took me down. Game. Over. I guess he’d been following me the whole time, trying to help. She offered to compensate him, but he declined and, with a literal tip of his ball cap, disappeared. I heard her tell the kids, in her hyperbolic way, that he restored her faith in humanity.

This is where things get interesting. Fast forward four weeks. (Four weeks filled with a dive down to the rockiest of bottoms. With the paralytic odor of depression. With late night conversations about fear and loss and a yearning for peace in the abstract, and concrete discussions about the market and downsizing and a fresh start.) She was reluctantly suiting up for a run (which, between you and me, usually ends up being more of a walk/run these days). She had the shoes on, the earbuds in, the thick layer of sunscreen that makes her look like a Kabuki actor dying of consumption. “Alright,” she sighed, “let’s go girl. We’ll run by the cottage today.” The cottage. The cottage that was the perfect size and the perfect price and only a mile away and in the kids’ school district and biking distance to the creek. The cottage with the red door and the blue shutters and the big-ass lawn with the big-ass tree for climbing and swinging. The cottage she’d seen online a few days back and emailed about but had heard only crickets in response. The cottage she knew she couldn’t actually have because the ad said, quite clearly, No Dogs. (And besides, she’d never admit it, but I think she had started to believe she didn’t deserve good things.)

We stalked it anyway. Just as she was about to turn the corner and head back home, she paused and, for some reason, turned around. A car pulled up in front of the cottage right at that moment.

“Do you live here?” she said to the guy getting out of the car.

“Yea, but I’m moving in a couple of weeks,” he said. And then, “Hey! I know your dog.”

I narrowed my eyes. He did look familiar. I sniffed the air. Oh Snap! IT WAS THE DUDE. THE DUDE WHO TACKLED ME.

They chatted for a bit about me--how fast I am, how pretty I am, how nice I am--and then she mentioned her obsession with the house. He invited her in to see it. She may have actually swooned. It’s like the space was designed precisely for her. And can I just tell you about the kitchen? That kitchen was ripe for all sorts of culinary nonsense.

But, alas, the ad said No Dogs. And the landlord hadn’t returned any emails.

“No problem,” the dude said. “My mom grew up with the landlord. I’ll put in a good word for you. We can call her now if you want.”

Call it kismet, call it providential, call it serendipity . . . I now call it home. And this place? This place smells like hope.

To Each Her Own

2011-04-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

So I’m finally watching Mad Men. (Yes, I am quite tardy to that party. In other news, I hear there’s a fancy new way to withdraw money from your account without going into the bank!) Okay, maybe watching isn’t the most appropriate word. I’m devouring episodes at a pace that makes me think the Romans were on to something with that whole Vomitorium concept. (At this point, the only impediment to a complete and utter Mad Men bender is my frugality – I only get two DVDs at a time with my cheap ‘flix subscription.) In addition to being just plain riveting entertainment, the show--like the fictional advertisements Don Draper and company create—engenders a number of thoughts and feelings. Some are flippant: even though I don’t smoke I sure could go for a Lucky Strike right now; when did we stop drinking in the office; we should reinstate drinking in the office; when did we stop having sex in the office, for that matter . . . etc.

But some go deeper . . .

I was surprised to find myself, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, enticed by the show’s clearly defined gender roles. Men brought home the proverbial bacon and wives kept house, tended to the children, and made themselves pretty. In the office, men wore the suits (good gracious, how they wore them) and women rocked the steno pads. Everyone, with few exceptions, knew their place. Maybe it’s the leaning tower of files on my desk and the 4 weekly little league games and the bottomless craters my boys call stomachs and the fact that my neurotic cat won’t eat unless I’m simultaneously petting him, but--for just a moment--I coveted that life. For someone else to make the decisions. For an either/or existence—either work or family. For blatant in-your-face sexism and gender discrimination instead of the insidious mommy-track.

I came to my senses fairly quickly. Of course I wouldn’t want to travel back to a time when women had fewer choices. And, of course I know the women of the Mad Men era were not models of contentment—a hasty perusal of any Richard Yates novel will tell you that. But I’m not sure the modern concept that women can, and more importantly should, have it all is the panacea, either. Kris and I used to spend precious billable hours debating the issue of whether it was even possible for a woman to “have it all.” We decided that, no, she can’t . . . at least not the way society (which, make no mistake, is still largely male run) defines it. Sure, today we can be wives and mothers and professionals. And that’s to be celebrated. But even as law firms announce "flexible" schedules and Working Mother magazine makes lists of family friendly companies and we stand on the shoulder pads of the brave pioneers before us and roar—we still can’t have it all. At least not in the manner it has been billed by our mothers’ generation. Which is to say, we can’t have the exact same career as the man in the corner office and also the same family life as the woman who makes her own baby food and takes her hand-knit-sweater-wearing, sleep-sharing, violin-playing kid to Kindermusik. Put another way, even if boozy workday lunches were the norm, and even if we’d now be invited to throw back the scotch with our colleagues instead of simply securing the reservation, many of us would have to decline so we could sit in our offices pumping breast milk for our babies in an attempt to assuage the guilt we inevitably feel for putting them in daycare and going back to work in the first place.

Breathe.

Maybe we need to redefine for ourselves and the generations of women to come what having it all means (and hope that my grandmother and Gloria Steinem will forgive us). Maybe we need to recognize that we don’t have to be everything to everyone. That having it all can mean something different to each of us. We imparted Abby, The Pecking Order’s protagonist, with this notion. I do not suggest that our novel is in any way a treatise on the plight of working women or some sort of feminist manifesto. It’s light and it’s funny (and it’s a little racy at times). Still, like most women, Abby struggles with having it all. And, like most women, she often fails by modern social standards. She is at times not likeable or sympathetic, but she is real. And that’s why we have mad love for her.

(If you feel like giving her a chance, you can download the book here.)

So You Wanna Stress Therapy Dog?

2011-03-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

Yale law school now has a therapy dog available to students. A stress therapy dog. I guess it goes something like this – you take an absurdly difficult Torts exam (yes, for you fortunate non-lawyers, there’s a subject called Torts, and it isn’t remotely like tortes), after which you head over to the-well I’m not sure where they keep the therapy dog . . . wherever you must go to sign out Fido the terrier. (No, wait. This is law school. The poor pooch will have some dorky lawyer-y name like Habeas or Res Ipsa. And while I’m at it, a terrier? Really? Seems a bit of a yippy breed to be remotely relaxing, but I digress.) So you check out Habeas, take him home and curl around him in a fetal position. Problem solved? I don’t think so. And I’m not maligning stress therapy dogs. Or therapy. Or dogs. I’ve had plenty of both over the years and I’m a kinder, gentler Kris (or perhaps just a marginally less crazy Kris) for it. But I guess it’s the notion that the profession (as early as the poor budding baby lawyers in law school) is so inherently stressful that we need the likes of a therapy dog to get us through our days. It seems like a pretty clear case of treating the symptom rather than the condition. But how do you treat such an entrenched condition, with its white shoes and top tiers and all that? I don’t know. And in my defense (one can take the girl out of the law firm, but . . .) this blog only promises "tenuously related insights into the legal profession", not answers.

What I do know is that law firm culture, unless it experiences a significant shift, will continue to suck the souls from and ravage the bodies of those ambitious yet naive enough to pursue this path. It’s why David Kazzie’s Xtra Normal Video “So You Wanna Go To Law School” was not only a web sensation, but also reposted on Facebook by every lawyer I know. It’s why my former firm lost four brilliant women in a matter of two months, and shortly thereafter, every man who wanted to see his children, or perhaps just do some pleasure reading. It's why every third lawyer you know dreams of writing a bestseller and jettisoning the whole wretched practice, present company included. And yes, there is personal choice and responsibility, and sure, there are manageable firms and more mellow jobs, and fine, this post might be infused with a tad bit of hyperbole, but doesn’t the stress therapy terrier say it all?

It Was The Best Of Times

2011-03-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's Friday, and it's been raining for 40 days and nights (not the proverbial 40 days and nights, people, I'm talking true blue rain) and I haven't had a glass of wine all week and I'm out of Taco Bell sauce (again) and one kid said the "F" word and the other brought home an "F" and I busted out nearly 6,000 words over the past 72 hours. So, yea, I'm a little punchy. Maybe that's why today's The Book or Bust post hit me so hard. The blogger sent the first 50 pages of her manuscript to a requesting agent yesterday. Sigh. Oh how I remember those days. Full of waiting and hoping and casting the movie and spending the advance. We wish her the best of luck - shiny pennies found on street corners, four-leaf clovers, and the feet of rabbits. And we also encourage her, and other writers in her position, to cherish this time, as nerve-wracking as it may be. Because it is a rich, rich time. A time measured in units of possibility.

For us, the age of querying agents and readying manuscripts for editors and crossing our fingers (and toes and legs and eyes and any other body part capable of crossing) began (believe it or not!) nearly 7 years ago. And, for The Pecking Order, it has come to an end. We are now entering a new era with respect to that book, one equally rich, equally teeming with potential. So stay tuned for an exciting announcement in the next few days. Long live The Pecking Order!

Oh, and p.s., to all you naysayers: I really didn't drink wine for a week. Not since St. Patrick's Day. Which I spent with Kris. I won't go into the sordid details, but her first words to me the next morning, via text no less (because neither of us could make the short walk to the other end of her house), were, "Dude. You with a tolerance is a bad bad thing." Cheers my friends:)

The Book or Bust: We're Off To See The Wizard#links

All the Ladies in the House!

2011-03-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

I love women. Not in the Sapphic sense (though there was a rockin’ mom at school pick-up last week . . . I’m talking ink, pixie-cut, yoga body . . .), but in the divine secrets/traveling pants/ride shotgun with Thelma sort of way. In the way girlfriends can sense a shift in each other’s moods over the span of hundreds of miles. In the way a night out with the ladies can act as an intravenous drip for the soul. In the way even the most gut-wrenching laments inevitably evolve into gut-busting laughter in the presence of certain women. Sisters, you know what I’m talking about. (And guys, in case you’re wondering, yep . . . we talk about everything. It’s a good thing. A necessary thing. Get over it.)

For some reason, though, women can be the harshest critics of one another. Who among us hasn’t judged or been judged by body type or clothing style or parenting choices? (My kid used a pacifier until he was 5, so I've received my fair share of snarky comments.) If you work outside the home, you’re likely familiar with that particular breed of professional woman, more senior to you, who views your ascent up the ladder as a threat and is more likely to step on your fingers than lend a hand and hoist you up a rung or two. It used to baffle me, this lack of gender solidarity, but I think I’ve figured it out. I guess maybe it boils down to a feeling, however misguided, that her success/happiness/ability to eat 17 bowls of ice cream without gaining an ounce somehow negatively affects my ability to do the same.

But that’s just crazy-talk. What if Kris—Kris my writing partner, my kindred spirit, the doppelganger of my very heart—what if she had refused to pass my resume on to the rest of the firm’s hiring committee because she didn’t want the competition? We’d have missed out on not only a deep friendship and rare creative partnership, but also on the little things that make life rich--late-night wine-fests in the office and Mah Jongg tournaments and repeated viewings of the O.C. (Seth Cohen, I still love you; Coop, I wish you’d died earlier; Oliver, I’ve erased you from my memory).

I guess what I’m saying is, other women gettin’ theirs doesn’t preclude you from gettin’ yours. In fact, I’d argue it serves as inspiration, a light to guide you on your own path. Case in point: the go fug girls, hilarious purveyors of my favorite website, have co-authored a novel, Spoiled, coming out in hardcover on June 1. The two-worlds colliding storyline appeals to every fiber of my young-adult-chick-lit-Pretty-in-Pink-loving being. (And, really, with characters named Molly Dix and Brooke Berlin, how can you go wrong?) But, aside from the book itself, I dig that two women have realized a dream. If they can make it happen, we can, too. And so can you. And you. And all of you. I hope they sell a gazillion copies. Love and luck to them . . . and to all my gurls.

Seeing the Color

2011-02-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

There are a number of things that differentiate people who write. And not in some highfalutin, elitist way. And I don't just mean professional writers or writers who have work published. I mean writers in the broadest sense of the word. Those who write letters and long e-mails and meticulously crafted Facebook status updates. Those whose love to read and cherish words, especially when they are strung together in prescient and precise metaphors and similes. Take this one from my new favorite book, This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper (do yourself a favor and read it): "These middle-aged women in the early stages of disrepair…genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart." My goodness, that's good. But I digress.

What do these people have in common? Many things, I suppose, but certainly the art of observation. Of taking in their surroundings, appreciating the nuances, the absurdities, the cliches, the beauty, the offensive. (This is, by the way, what makes Tropper's work so brilliant, so engaging, so freaking hilarious. Apologies, this post is apparently now doubling as a plug for my new favorite book.) A dear friend of mine sums up this quality as seeing the color in life, and seeing it as brightly in the grocery store as in the Yosemite Valley. This week, while I was traveling for work, there was plenty of color to see. Is there a better place than the airport, where time seems to melt and bend, to take stock of your surroundings, welcome epiphanies, and consider the existential? Okay, well, maybe I left the epiphanies and the existential for another day, but what follows are my observations from four airports in two days:

A woman, late twenties, early thirties, dressed fashionably with all the trappings of upper middle class-dom, an iphone, a Netbook, a purse with a name I recognized. The first time I looked her way, she had three fingers in her mouth. And I mean in there. Up to the second knuckle. Okay, that's fine. We all get that pesky popcorn kernel wedged between a molar now and then. And if you don't have floss, who am I to begrudge you going in for it. (I will spare you a diatribe on the germ factor in airports . . .). When I looked at her a second time, probably five minutes later, her fingers are still in there, deep enough to tickle her uvula. Only those time she was taking a different angle, leading me to believe this was not a battle against a popcorn kernel shell. The next time, 15ish minutes later (and before you wonder who's the strange one here, she was in my direct line of sight to the gate from which I'd be boarding), Fingers. Still. In. Mouth. And, again, we're not talking biting off a hangnail. We're talking four fingers all in. So I had to wonder, what is going on there? Is it a fetish? Did she just have oral surgery? What would make someone who appears to conform to social norms flout them so obviously right there in the mini micro brew at the Portland airport?

I accidentally walked into the men's restroom at the Spokane airport (no, I wasn't drunk or tired or anything, really, other than, wait for it . . ., nonobservant). I skated in, somehow missing the five unoccupied urinals on the wall, with no problem. When I went to leave, those urinals had occupants so I had to hide in the stall and wait for the entitled to exit. Eventually they did. And neither washed their hands. What is that, men?

A Medicare eligible woman with a nose ring. Nothing else about her tipped its hat toward counter culture. That intrigued me. And not because I have some misguided notion that people with the wisdom of years subscribe strictly to the mainstream. I understand that people now in their 60s were doing things in the 60s and 70s that I've never imagined. I get that. But let's be honest, those folks, if they still embrace the spirit of that time on into their golden years, usually wear it on their skin in the form of tattoos or something else other than piercings. Nose rings seem so, I don't know, Portlandia. So 90s. So Eddie Vedder. And I'm interested in when this woman decided to pierce her nose and what led her to finally say, yeah, let's do this.

I could go on and on, but this post is already much too long so I will leave you with this. A woman who walked to the plane with me, wearing polyester slacks, the kind with the coarse seam down the front and an elastic waist. The kind my kindergarten teacher used to wear in, lo, 1978. She was talkative, steady on her feet, younger than the woman with the nose ring, and headed to Spokane. She told me with pride that she hadn't flown in 30 years. 30 years. Almost as long as I've been alive. (Yes, if you've done your math, you know that's a little generous to me). So why was she there? What finally spurred her to get on a plane after 30 years? A funeral? She certainly didn't have an air of mourning or sadness about her. A graduation? Not the right time of year.

There are so many questions and so many possible explanations for all of these things. And, in reality, I could have struck up conversation on all accounts and found answers. But that's the thing about writing and observations; if I had asked, I couldn't craft my own characters and write my own endings.

Roshambo!

2011-02-09T09:46:00.000-08:00

In an uncharacteristic move (and a possibly unsettling one for those who know me), I'm keeping this brief. In short, I’ve had an epiphany, courtesy of my kids fighting over the last of the gummi cherry hearts. It goes like this: to achieve balance, sanity, success as a writer, I must get my Roshambo on . . . play a little Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Let’s start with Paper, the medium of my chosen art form (ignoring, for the purposes of this strained metaphor, the Kindle and all Kindle-like devices). You wanna write? Then do it. Get your ideas on paper. Sit down and scratch out some prose. And do it often. But remember, as even the youngest Roshambo player quickly learns, you can't throw Paper every time and expect to win. At some point, those Scissors have to come along . . .

. . . and shear off the useless, the superfluous, that which hinders forward progress. Yes, I’m talking about cutting from manuscripts (you should have seen the carnage from our first professional edit), but also about life. Sure, it’s nice to make homemade confections for your kid’s bake sale, but what are those gooey chocolately squares doing for your characters, your plot, your agent search? A whole lot of nothing. Carve away the unnecessary. Stop by the bakery on the way home and call it good. Get some wine while you're at it. It helps.

And don't forget the Rock. (Anyone else picturing Dwayne Johnson? Shirtless? But I digress...) I’m relying on homonyms here to make this work but, again, it’s my strained metaphor so my prerogative. Rock. Not a stone for skipping, but Rock as in I Wanna Rock and R.O.C.K. in the USA and, dare I say it, Rock Lobster. In other words, ROCK! Surround yourself with kick-ass music. With transcendental art. With film and theatre and dance and paintings and clothing and humor and food that beckon your muse. That expand your mind creatively. Talk with people who challenge and inspire you. And then take that inspiration (and your glass of Cab, and one of the brownies you pilfered before shipping 'em off to a bunch of ungrateful third-graders), and start throwing Paper all over again.

'sall good

2011-01-12T09:30:00.000-08:00

A word about rejection—not Rejection with a capital “R,” but simple puny plain vanilla everyday mundane rejection. (Because that shift key does make a difference. Think about “right” vs. “Right,” for example. See?)

Okay, fine, for comparison’s sake let’s talk briefly about Rejection. Rejection of the capital variety--professional Rejection--is painful, but also expected and somewhat anonymous. Over time, you get used to agents scribbling “good luck with another agency,” or “not for us,” or, simply “NO!” (“Good God, no” is obviously implied) in the margins of your carefully crafted, blood-soaked and tear-stained queries. At some point (if you stick with it long enough), though you’re disappointed, you really do develop that duck’s back. The Rejections slide right off. I’m not saying you won’t harbor a vendetta against a particularly nasty agent or two, perhaps one who felt the need to say something akin to “how could I possibly sell this you stupid stupid fat smelly writer?” But I digress. Once you land an agent, you face publisher Rejections. These are the biggest and scariest of the big “Rs,” especially when you get the type of Rejection your agent labels the “kiss of death.” (As an aside, why is it a "kiss?" Bitch-slap seems more appropriate.) Which means the publisher “loves your writing style” but doesn’t know “how to sell the book.” In other words, “we dig the book you’ve forgone school plays and promotions and any hint of a normal sex life for, but not enough to go to bat for it.” And there’s nothing you can do to fix it, short of writing an entirely different book. Which is the opposite of awesome. But, again, though you may not like it, you can handle Rejection from these faceless powers that be who sit atop slush piles drinking Manhattans and mocking your font choice.

Lowercase rejection--that’s another animal altogether. It involves watching your mom’s face contort in pain as she reads your manuscript. It’s your friend asking how your “little project” is going before launching into details about her pug’s hemorrhoids. It’s posting your blog on Facebook and getting no love, while your drunken rant likening goldfish crackers to manna from heaven garners a host of thumbs-ups and a page of comments. It’s real and it’s painful and it plays into all your insecurities and fears and co-dependencies. And it sucks. Because I think we all can agree, rejection from someone you know is exponentially worse than a stranger’s rejection.

But I learned something this week. Somewhere along this crazy path to publication (or maybe to financial ruin and cirrhosis of the liver; the jury’s still out), rejection stopped slaying me. I have a friend--an uncommonly bright and talented friend--with whom I shared my work recently. I’d shared short stories and excerpts with her before but, I have to admit, only those I’d chosen carefully because I knew they fit her style—dark and gloomy and decidedly non-mainstream, bleeding into the margins of acceptable subject matter. I knew my current novel wasn’t her brand of artisanal whiskey. I knew that from the first time I told her about it over breakfast and she raised her eyebrows, impaled her pancake, and changed the subject to some new foreign film about excrement. But I sent her the first chapter anyway, just for shiggles. Because if you aren’t willing to put yourself out there, then what’s the point? Might as well keep your desk job.

I believe our subsequent conversation went something like this . . .

“Ummm . . . I read your chapter.”

“Yea?”

“Yea.”

Awkward pause.

“I’ll tell you what I did like about it. I liked the setting.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sniffle. Cough. Yawn.

“You write kind of flowery.”

“Yep.”

“Maybe if you, like, toned that down a bit . . . .”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Anyway, Lou and and I had an amazing time in Napa. We never left the bed, and let me tell you . . . .”

So, you know, essentially she hated it. I guess I should feel honored she said anything at all; she has a rule that if she can’t honestly heap praise, she keeps her mouth shut. (Clearly she’s not cut from the same “pleaser” cloth that I am.) Though I think she must have strained to find something nice to say. I mean, I appreciate the effort, but the setting? Really?

But here’s the upshot (to borrow one of Kris’s favorite phrases) . . . it didn’t bother me. I get it. It’s not her style or a subject matter that interests her. And I am a flowery writer. I lean toward the verbose and I never met a metaphor I didn’t want to whisk off to Vegas. I think it works for this book and the demographic I’m wooing. I’ve been writing long enough and had enough input over the years to feel secure in my vision. That doesn’t mean I won’t take another look at it with her comments in mind--criticism is always helpful. I may tone it down a bit, but I don’t anticipate a major overhaul. One person’s excrement is another person’s art and vice versa. It’s nice to finally live here, in a place where rejection doesn’t sour me on my work. In fact, I might even invite my friend over for pancakes when the book is published.

RSVP Oui

2011-01-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

You know when you first hear a word or phrase and then you hear it again and again in a matter of days? My latest iteration of this phenomenon, which really should have a name (yes, I know awareness is probably sufficient, but a quippy name would be so much better), is with the french term "mise en place". Credit goes to an episode of Top Chef, after which it showed up in varying contexts and situations. I've comandeered it as my own now, terrible accent and all. And while mise en place is a beautiful thing to say, not to mention a lovely concept for we type-A-the-Container-Store-might-be-my-heaven folks, the phenomenon I will call awareness (for lack of that quippy term) has recently spoken to me in a more profound way--not with a word or a phrase, but in an idea, a notion, a lesson, if you will.

The weeks leading up to the holidays included for me a book club meeting, a Mahjong game (if you don't know it, learn it, its fantastic, not to mention addictive and, in my house, always involves wine), and a fair amount of yoga. Out of each of these delightful endeavors came a consistent theme. At book club, we read Last Night in Montreal about a girl, Lilia, who, as a result of a vagabond childhood, couldn't stay in one place, emotionally or physically. She remained on what she called the surface of life, never diving in, never taking the risks, feeling the fear, experiencing the pain, or relishing the joy. At Mahjong, a dear friend discussed her fear of buying a dog for her kids, already anticipating the death of the animal they don't yet have but know they will love like a family member. All of this made me think about what is required of us, in the bigger sense. How invested must we become in our own existences? I found the answer at yoga - sweet, blessed yoga, where construct is meaningless and questions can be cast aside for their cosmic irrelevance. At the end of a practice, sweaty and splayed out on our mats, we were told to thank ourselves for showing up. Just showing up. Not for executing the best downward dog or flying into crow. But for being there, ready to take on whatever the body and the universe was offering up that day. Showing up. That is what is required of us.

For you fellow over-achievers, showing up might connote mediocrity, but to my mind, it is anything but mailing it in. Showing up is engaging, opening up, being vulnerable to all that life has to offer, the good and the bad. Because, to be sure, you can't have one without the other. That might mean bringing home that new fluffy puppy, or allowing yourself to finally fall in love, or continuing to write in the face of repeated rejection and failure, all of which bring both joy and pain. So this is me, showing up. I hope to see you here.

Out With The Old, In With The New

2010-12-31T13:05:00.000-08:00

I’ve always considered New Year’s Eve an arbitrary holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I like having the day off work (yea, I have the day off…public sector employee, remember), and I’m a sucker for all things sparkly and bubbly and filled with shredded bits of colored paper . . . but dressing to the nines and drinking ‘til you drop merely because 365 (or 366) days have passed seems so random. Kind of like the publishing industry. (Seriously, people, what lands one girl-in-love-triangle-solving-work/identity/body-image-crisis-with-the-help-of-quirky-gay/bawdy-sex-addict-best-friend story on bookstore shelves while another languishes in manuscript limbo, mocking you every time you fire up the ol’ laptop?) Despite my existential misgivings (Because, yea, I go there…why even have a calendar year? Isn’t every day essentially the same? Why even have days? If a blog is posted and nobody reads it, was it ever written?), I kinda like the idea of a New Year. Of giving in to the illogical notion that the act of opening a fresh calendar has real meaning. That the slate is wiped clean come midnight. It’s a Jedi mind trick, to be sure, but one I’m embracing with gusto this year. Rather than dwell on my anemic daily word count and the fact that I’m still not published (and all the other personal failings I won’t bore you with…you should see the refrigerator still sitting in the middle of my kitchen after 6 months), I’m choosing to let it go. To exhale fully when the clock chimes 12. Because only then can I breathe in the fresh, creative, hopeful air of 2011. I’m guessing it smells like rainbows and unicorns. Wishing you a year filled with your own brand of awesome. Catch ya in the double-ones.

All We Want For Christmas

2010-12-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

When I was but a wee girl, my mom would bring home the big fat JCPenney catalog each year lo around early November. (Check out some sweet shots from the 1976 catalog. I was a fetus, of course.) I’d spend hours flipping through the pages while drinking fresh-pressed apple cider and eating homemade spice cake in front of the fire. Okay, so maybe I actually sprawled on our green shag carpet drinking store-bought egg nog and eating Vienna sausages from the can (don’t judge me–we all did it), but the catalog part is true. I’d make my Christmas wish list by marking items with one, two or three stars (depending on their desirability) in between sneaking peeks at the lingerie section when my mom wasn’t looking.

Like most adults, I stopped making a Christmas wish list at some point—probably around the time I realized my three star items included a washing machine I didn’t have to start with a screwdriver and a holiday without one of my kids on antibiotics. But I miss those days spent with the JCPenney catalog—when you couldn’t simply click a mouse and have anything delivered overnight, when a dickie was a perfectly viable clothing option, when the Carpenters ruled the Christmas airwaves and that offensive Christmas Shoes song didn’t exist. So, in honor of those times, we are making a Christmas wish list this year—a writer’s Christmas wish list. This is what Kris and I would like to find under the tree Christmas morning:

1. A sequel to One Day by David Nicholls titled The Next Day: J/K, It Wasn't Emma On The Bike; It Was Really That Asshat Dexter

2. Some sort of device that allows us to go to the bathroom without leaving the computer. A Stadium Pal for women, if you will. Because you always have to pee just about the time you finally get into a writing groove. It's a law of nature.

3. A computer program that reads our otherwise brilliant sentences and fills in the brackets.

4. You know the Deluminator? That thing that Dumbledore gave to Ron Weasley? It looks like a pen and when Ron clicks it, he can extinguish or create light? I want one of those. But for apostrophes. (I’m coming for you, first, Sacramento International Airport. What do you mean “Shuttle Drivers’ may not assist passengers with their bag’s?”)

5. A kit that takes all the words we write each day on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, IMs, and e-mails, and converts them to useful prose for our various novels. Can you imagine the boost in daily word count?

6. For the various Dictionary Powers-That-Be to stop (for the love of all that is good and beautiful in the world, stop) adding made-up words to the dictionary. Turducken?! Really?! And don't tell me to chillax.

7. Pat Conroy's South of Broad rewritten with a modicum of meangingful character development and without the sociopath father/serial killer/rapist/pedophile/foreboding nail polish-graffiti artist. (Yea, you read that right...nail polish-graffiti artist) Still love you Pat, but that was wrong.

8. A Mucinex-like pill for writer's block. Literally hacking up the block seems like a great solution.

9. Grammar Girl as my new next door neighbor. We'll drink wine, she'll mentor me, and under the dark cover of night we'll enact vigilante justice on rogue apostrophes everywhere. (And because, really, any girl who calls grammar tips "quick and dirty" is okay in my book!)

10. An audio recording of 6-8 Black Men by David Sedaris. If you know it, ‘nuff said. If you don’t, Merry Christmas. (It's in three parts, but TOTALLY WORTH YOUR TIME . . . though I can't vouch for the homemade video images)

Happy Holidays to you and yours!!

Art and Craft and Ass in Chair

2010-05-30T06:34:00.001-07:00

Stephen King (or Oliver Stone, depending on your source) said writing equals ass-in-chair.

Its been months since my last post. Life has been working its insidious black magic, taking over with work and school and PTA, baseball and laundry and family crises, leaving little time or energy for writing. At long last, this morning, my hindquarters are planted firmly in a chair. And I'm learning, in a way I never have, that writing is not like riding. A bike, that is. Case in point: I just spent thirty minutes doing internet research for this post. Back in the heady days of weekly blog posts, Done Fell Out, and various short stories, I would grab a cup of tea, curl up on the couch, and wax at least somewhat poetic (humor me people) about some relatively engaging topic. And I did it with ease and in short order. I suppose, back then, I fancied myself a writer, an artist.

Laura is an artist. I've always known this. In the way she crafts story, thinks about characters, examines the novel from seventeen scenes ahead. And now she's embarked on a solo writing venture that is original and exciting and brilliant, not only sentence by sentence, but also for its creativity, on both a macro and micro level. Not only does it make me wonder if (a.k.a. feel terrified) she's been carrying the laboring oar on all of our collaborative projects, it has started me thinking about art versus craft. Folks much smarter than I have opined on this subject at length. I just read an essay by Susan Sontag, purportedly examining this topic, but it made my eyes cross and cramped my brain. Suffice to say, I don't expect to add much to the marketplace of ideas on art versus craft, but I do know this: I can craft a sentence with the best of them. I can both persuade a federal court judge and bring you to tears with words that, strung together, sound like song. Sure, I can do that. But that doesn't make me an artist; it makes me - to my mind - a craftsman, craftswoman. And there's pride in that, certainly. But it's not art.

Did I ever have art in me? I tend to think I did. The question is whether there's any left and, if so, where it went. Did it disappear into the seventeen loads of laundry I did last week, did I lose it on my fifth business trip in four weeks, is it caught in the family crises that takes up so much space in my house? I don't know. I guess I'll just have to start by looking for it.

What's in a Name?

2010-05-14T22:05:00.001-07:00

Seventh Grade was a good year. I was allowed to wear a little bit of make-up (iridescent blue eye-shadow, naturally), I graduated from a plaid jumper to a plaid skirt (yes, I’m a Catholic school girl), and I had my first kiss (in the school library . . . he tasted like mustard). I also had one of the best teachers ever—Mrs. Light. She wore bright red lipstick, had a dog named Liesl (named after the character in The Sound of Music), and used long, skinny chalk-holders that looked as if they’d been plucked from the manicured fingers of elegant smoking baronesses in black-and-white films. Mrs. Light taught me something about writing I remember to this day—the importance of finding just the right name for a character. Think about it. Would Severus Snape or Lucius Malfoy seem quite as sinister, at first blush, were they named Sanford Smith and Lucas Melfry? What if Mark Twain had switched Tom Sawyer’s and Huckleberry Finn’s names? Could you relate to Bridget Jones if she had an exotic name, like Alexandria DuPont?

Kris and I took this notion regarding the importance of names to its extreme in The Pecking Order, with character monikers like the Pecker and the Blowhard. But we also spent a great deal of time considering the real names in the book. Adam, for example, was chosen as Abby’s husband because we wanted an “everyman,” and what better name than that given the first man?

You only need to attend a little league baseball game to see the significant thought given to name choice in real life. A few of the more unique names from my son’s recent game: Jasten, Cooper, Chase, Atticus, P.J., Jackson, Carson, Colton, and Houston (that’s my son). I also have nephews aptly named Drake (the dragon) and Stryder (ranger, elf-lover, and future king). I believe mothers and fathers pick names they hope will “fit” their children . . . names that sound good rolling off your tongue, maybe have personal meaning, and present well in the world. If we take the time to pick a fitting name for a child whose actions we cannot control and whose destiny we cannot determine, shouldn’t we take care to find the right name for our characters, whose very existence we hold in the tips of our pens?

Nineteen Cents

2010-05-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

A man sat next to me at church on Sunday. I’d had a hard week, and I begrudgingly made room for him, rearranging the emotional baggage I’d carried in. He had baggage, too: a worn, heavy coat smelling of asphalt and nicotine; a filthy backpack; a bedroll. His hands, clasped in his lap, were cracked and caked with dirt. Every line in his face etched a tale of heartbreak and bad luck. He needed a haircut, a shave, and a good scrub. When he reached into his pocket, the air shifted and I struggled not to wince or wrinkle my nose. He pulled out a coarse, brown napkin—the thin kind used at establishments specializing in fried potato products—and dabbed tears from his eyes while the choir sang. His hand plunged into that pocket again when the collection plate came around. He dropped a dime, a nickel, and four pennies into the golden dish before passing it to me. I tucked my check on the side, hoping to bury with it the mild resentment I’d felt when filling it out.

He fell asleep in the middle of the sermon. I watched his chin fall to his chest and his shoulders melt away from his ears; I prayed he felt safe and secure enough to rest well. When the service ended, we filed out and I lost sight of him. I have no canned conclusions for you, no literary tie-in or moral imperative. I simply wanted to share that a man sat next to me at church on Sunday.

Word.

2010-04-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

You know what word I like? (And no, it' s not "published." I mean a real word.) Eclectic. It sounds like a bunch of spare parts crashing against one another in a burlap bag. Say it with me. See what I mean? Another one of my favorites? Supine. I feel the need to yawn and stretch at the mere sight of the word. I suspect we all have favorite words. My son is currently partial to "idiot" and "crud." (Yes, in case you're wondering, I am mother of the year.) I recently attended a legal training seminar where we engaged in that groan-inducing ice-breaker where you interview someone you don't know and then introduce them to the group. We had to find out something about our interviewees that most people don't know. (I thought about telling my interviewer I had buried my family under the Magnolia tree, but chickened out.) Guess what I found out? Lawyers really like the word "aficionado." You could say they are aficionados of the word aficionado. Not one person was a lover of art or a collector of wine or a horseback rider. They were all aficionados. Either the group didn't notice the blatant overuse of the word, or didn't care, because they kept using it. To the point where I was giggling to myself.

As writers, we need to be aware of this potential problem, especially when we craft an elegant sentence using one of our favorite words. In Pat Conroy's latest book, South of Broad, he used the word "repose" so beautifully that I reread the passage and then marked the page. Of course, then I noticed when he pulled out the same word in the next few pages. And again later in the book. The overuse not only lent a sense of commonality to a luminously crafted sentence, but it also took me out of the story. I doubt he even knew he'd done that. (Though, what do I know? He might have done it on purpose and I totally missed the point. I am the person who didn't realize The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was a retelling of Hamlet, so you should probably take my literary observations with a boulder of salt. That said, I'm sad to admit I didn't love South of Broad--a first for me, with respect to Conroy.) I doubt most of us know we use certain words more than we should. Not me, though. Nope. I have an eclectic vocabulary.

Excavating the Ancient and Discovering Gold a.k.a Listening to the Genius in the Corner

2010-03-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Laura and I have been busy (although not busy enough, which is why I will adopt and reincorporate by reference Perfect Games and Perfect Prose re: self flagellation. It will save us all another post on the topic of writing and discipline) with a new writing endeavor; one that's not quite flushed out, but does indeed, we assure you, have a plot. The devil and those details.

We've written often about our challenges writing The Pecking Order-the numerous iterations, the amazingly inconspicuous absence of a plot, the obscene overuse of introductory phrases, 90,000 words that were eventually whittled down to something just short of 60,000. And while we are both tremendously proud of The Pecking Order it its final iteration, we loved those 90,000 words - every last one of them. More than once we likened writing a paragraph to giving birth. We cried, sweat, and laughed over every last syllable. And well we should have. There was beauty and brilliance in those words - the 30,000 words that, at the end of the editing process, lay undignified, inert, debilitated in some forgotten word document for discarded prose. Scenes we cut, phrases we red-lined, characters we killed, all relegated to this document entitled "Ancient Pecking Order". And we let go of those things in the interest of marketing, following our heads, not our hearts, so even though it hurt, and even though our collective writing soul, the genius in the corner, that internal voice that makes Jayne Lynne, Jayne Lynne, told us differently (even screamed at us at times), we let go because we considered it necessary. As our agent told us, the minute we knocked on the publisher's door, The Pecking Order became not about us, but about the publishers, not about art, but about money. And who doesn't like a little money?

Fast forward a year - give or take - and Laura and I found ourselves on one of our lovely and too infrequent writing retreats. If you're thinking Walden Pond or the English countryside circa Jane Austen, try a roadside Ramada a stone's throw from I-5. (Did I mention the money for art thing hasn't quite yet come to fruition?) Still, there was WiFi in the room, Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar almonds (do yourself a favor and buy them), and perfect company. And in pursuit of this new project, we returned to what we knew, back when we were baby authors, full of hope and promise and high class problems like thinking we needed a nome de plume to hide our identity from the firm. We opened "Ancient Pecking Order" and, over the course of the evening, fell back in love with those deleted scenes, lost characters, and quirky turns of phrase. We remembered their humor, their beauty, their divine flaws. We remembered how and why we wrote them in the first place. So much so they have found their way - quite easily and fittingly - into our new work. And, this time, writing soul or genius in the corner or creative fairy or whoever you are, this time, we promise, we're listening.

Art and the Divine

2010-03-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

One of the pastors at my church has this running joke about how he can't make it through a sermon without mentioning C.S. Lewis. One of the other pastors has the same running joke, but about Bono. (Yea, in case you were wondering, my church is kind of really totally awesome. A few weeks ago, we thanked God for beer. ) Here's my bit--I have a hard time writing a blog post without gushing about Elizabeth Gilbert. She's just so . . . present and real and self-deprecating and witty and brilliant and radiant and whole. And she's a damn good speaker, too. If you haven't seen her speech about the role of the divine in the creative process, I implore you to take a break and watch this. It's not just for writers, but for anyone engaged in any act of creativity, be it modeling or singing or sewing or lunch packing or lego building. So, yes, it's for all of us.
Happy Weekend! May the genius find you (watch the clip . . . you'll get it)!

Perfect Games and Perfect Prose

2010-02-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

Back in the day (oh yeah, we're going there) I played collegiate softball. Several times a week, for four of the best months of the year, I would walk into that chalk-rendered circle, pick up the ball and represent my school for seven innings - 90 pitches, give or take, depending how the drop ball was breaking. My stats were solid (an ERA that hovered around 1), but inevitably there were times when the girl at the plate would connect. And sometimes she would really connect. And I'd curse myself for not getting the pitch far enough off the plate, or for trying, for the zillionth time, to finish the at-bat with a rise ball, which I refused to acknowledge was a misnomer in my pitching repertoire. But, ultimately, it didn't matter if it was a home run or a dribbler down the line that my third baseman booted or even a passed ball on a strike out. I always blamed myself. I could have done better. I could have chosen a better pitch, I could have placed it better, I could have thrown more pitches in practice, I could have, I should have, I could have, I should have.

I'll speak collectively now about me and Laura and how we put a good deal of pressure on ourselves. As writers, as mothers, as wives, as lawyers. Pressure is a little generous, in fact. It might be more accurate here to invoke the DaVinci Code and its charming monk, Silas. And while I can't give you anecdotes from Laura's college days to prove my point (although I'm sure there's a college theatre story in there somewhere), I can say that the woman graduated with the grades and LSAT scores to land her at the best law school in the country.

So now here we are, time on the stage and time on the mound a mere speck in the rear view mirror of our lives, trying to make our way as writers. And old habits die hard. At least once a day, one of us self-flagellates about how much we've written, or not written, or how poorly we've written it, or how terrible our ideas have been, or how we're too metaphor happy, or that we don't so much have a plot. (That, as it turns out was true, and a good thing to note.) And the last time I saw my dear friend and writing partner, she noted something she'd read declaring that people who don't write everyday, can't call themselves writers. So, of course, we started imposing daily word counts and time lines and generally agreed that if we didn't meet them that, well, we sucked. And, more importantly, we weren't writers.

Several days later, I was writing Laura a 7 paragraph e-mail about, among other things, how much we sucked. And while I was writing, I realized that we didn't. That we are writers. We do write everyday. To one another. My day almost always begins with writing or receiving an electronic missive that's full of raw feeling, insightful observations, and humor, always humor. And its these missives that have now become our muse. Our inspiration. Sure, it might not be flowing prose with precisely crafted plot turns, but its writing. And every good ball player knows, you can't throw a perfect game every time.

My Girl Crush

2010-02-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

This isn’t going to be one of those long, meandering posts in which I invite you to wander around my cranial cavity, viewing my memories, fantasies, and dreams through the prism of writing. (So, you know, it’s nothing like my usual posts.) You’re in luck, because it’s ugly up in there these days – memories like a child’s security blanket, worn thin from overuse; fantasies bleeding off the canvas, mixing with reality in unnatural ways; dreams recoiling and shrinking into the darkness at the mere glimpse of my outstretched hand. Oh yea, and melodrama abounds. It’s the techno-beat to which my brain dances. Like I said, you’re in luck.

Instead, I want to take a couple of moments to talk about Elizabeth Gilbert and her new book, Committed. When I read Eat, Pray, Love (and then reread it and then forced everyone I know to read it and then listened to it on CD and then read it again) I felt as if Liz was speaking directly to me. Like she’d come over for a cup of tea, which turned into an empty bottle of red, and by the time she left my eyes were puffy from crying and my stomach hurt from laughing and I felt, much like I do after a good yoga practice, complete. I put off Committed for a few weeks, because I was afraid I wouldn’t feel that way again; afraid it would disappoint in the way The Mermaid Chair bore not even a passing resemblance to The Secret Life of Bees.
But this was Lizzie G . . . I should have known better. My mom gave me the CD of Committed, with Liz reading, for Valentine’s Day. And, again, Liz speaks directly to me. Somehow, while weaving in marital statistics and history lessons on property acquisition and her views on same-sex marriage, Liz manages to sit right beside me, pull up her knees, and chat. She can do this because the book is, in effect, a conversation. She acknowledges as much in the forward, telling us she wrote the book for a group of specific women, whom she names. As a result, she has once again written something intimate. Words that are whispered tenderly. A book that feels less like an escape and more like an embrace. And an approach to writing that is both genuine and extraordinary.

The Good Stuff

2010-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

I've had one of those long weeks, involving trips to the hospital, on a plane, to the past, you name it. A good deal of wine has gone in and a good number of tears have come out. Some of it is just stage of life stuff, where you stop, look around, unsure of how you managed to get to this place, this unfamiliar place that is more properly inhabited by your parents. But then you do the math, look at your child, your mortgage statement, your wedding band, and realize you are your parents. There are people looking up for help and people looking down for help and they are all looking at you. And that's okay because you were once the person looking up and will soon enough be the person looking down and you love these people, but it doesn't mean its easy or fun. And doesn't mean you won't cry or feel like you might crumble under the weight of it all.

And just when you think your knees might actually give out, if you're blessed and loved and fortunate enough, the right person comes along and gives you a hug. The right kind of hug. And they make you laugh. And they make you remember what makes life worth living. They don't tell you its going to be okay or not to worry about it and they might not even indulge you in what are really the banal problems of your life, but their presence is enough to remind you of the good stuff. It may not look like what you expected, it may not present itself the way you want, but the good stuff is there in spades. I promise it is.

I'm trying desperately to end this blog without writing some kind of Hello Kitty or Blue Mountain greeting card-ish (see earlier post If You Love Something Set It Free and Other Bad Cliches) inanity about the benefits of hugging. But its hard. So instead I'll reference our book, The Pecking Order, where Abby talks about her best friend from college, saying "Racquel wraps her arms around me just as she did the first time we met. She gives me an extra squeeze, as if trying to leave a little piece of her with me, and the shaking subsides. " Never underestimate the right kind of hug.

Nature and Nurture and Gratitude

2010-02-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

My mom recently came upon one of my first stories, written when I was about six or seven. I’ve copied it here, complete with grammatical errors and misspellings(indulge me – it’s short, I promise):

Minnegan and her brother and her cousin.
Once upon a time there was a little white seal named Minnegan. One day a soft gray seal came along with a white seal by its side. The gray one was Minny’s brother and white one was Minny’s cousin. The’re names were Finny (short for Finnegan) and cutey. They dived together and slid on the ice. The had lots of fun
The end

So, there’s not really a plot, and my description leaves something to be desired, and what’s with the name Cutey? I mean, Minnegan and Finnegan, those are interesting names. But . . .Cutey? And the title is basically a rehash of the story. Let’s face it, if you added the word “playing” to the end of the title, you don’t even really need the story. (Although I wonder if the reiteration of “her brother and her cousin” had something to do with me being an only child?) But, that’s not the point. The point is, I wrote the story when I was missing my front teeth and could barely tie my shoes and brought potato bugs home in the pockets of my corduroys, and yet my mom saved it. She always encouraged me to write, save maybe for that unfortunate phase in high school when I wrote a collection of depressing suicide poetry titled My Wishing Well of Clear Blue Thoughts (and if the title isn’t enough to make you gag, nibble on this little sample: But will you mend my life/Or offer a quick stab/Maybe you’ll respect my name/When written on a marble slab. Oh yea, that’s the stuff.) For the most part, my mom has been incredibly supportive of my creative endeavors and, thus, I’ve always associated my writing, somewhat, with my mother.

Little did I know that my dad is a writer, too. He visited over Christmas, and brought me a box of blessings. A treasure. My dad was in the Navy from 1966-1970. He spend 2 ½ years of that time in Vietnam. You know those riverboats from Apocalypse Now? My dad was on one of those . . . when he was but a child. Turns out my dad, this boy, this boy at war, wrote home. And wrote home often. And my grandmother saved every letter. And now the letters are mine. These letters – they are witty and descriptive and full of subtext and emotion and powerful observation. They put Minnegan (and her brother and her cousin) to shame. He even wrote a poem. And it’s raw and real and good. It’s too long and too personal to post in its entirety, but these two stanzas capture the feel of the piece:

Someday military power will be nil
An “all volunteer force?” I wonder still.

Will love of country be enough to make it survive?
I think NO, not as long as personal freedom is alive.

I never knew my dad was a writer. A voracious reader, yes, but not a writer. And now I wonder – did his gift shape me in any way? Did he have a “writer’s view” of the world that, unbeknownst to the two of us, informed my world view? I like to think so. In that same way, I like to think that my devotion to the craft, the way I approach life, maybe my very blood, influenced this gem from my seven year old son:

Once upon a time there was a penguin. His name was Frosty . He was not like the other penguins . He is smaller and he is more shy than the other penguins. He eats minnows instead of salmon. Instead of jumping in the water he does cannonballs. He makes lots of splashes.

It’s a work in progress – he hasn’t titled it yet. Me, I’d go with Frosty the Penguin Who Was Not Like The Others.

I love writing. And I love my family. And I am blessed beyond measure to have the two intersect.

Seymour Finkelstein and Other Elusive Dreams . .

2010-01-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

As a girl, I read the same books over and over again. All the Nancy Drews at least 3 times, my favorite titles (The Password to Larkspur Lane, anyone?) perhaps dozens. Go Ask Alice and Are You There God, its Me Margaret (forget the iPad, remember the pad belt?!) occupied space on my night stand for months. But the book I most remember reading was a somewhat less patrician title called I Saw Him First in which two hormonal teenage girls fight over the new class hunk, Seymour Finklestein. I don't recall the ever so important details, but I'm sure you'll be shocked to find out the narrator, who fought to woo that tall drink of water, Seymour, finally realized the water, tall as it was, didn't run very deep. I don't remember if the girls became friends again, if the narrator ended up going to the prom with the nice kid from her side of the tracks who loved her from the beginning--oh, wait, I've ventured into film. Old Molly Ringwald movies aside (are there any new Molly Ringwald movies?), the righteous indignation that inspired the title of I Saw Him First reared its ugly head in my home this week, in a very non-fictional way.

Laura, the more media savvy of us, sent me several links to several Twitter feeds this week. (So un-savvy am I that I'm not even sure its called a Twitter feed, but I think that's right). If you're interested, they are as follows:

http://twitter.com/jenniferweiner/status/7996896247
http://twitter.com/Litopia/status/8205352478

If you're not that interested, don't worry I'll summarize. The first is a tweet from Jennifer Weiner, she of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, noting that ABC is reading her pilot about a smart, sassy lady lawyer. The second is an article from the Huffington Post written by two female co-authors waxing poetic on the benefits of co-authoring a novel.

By way of reminder, Laura and I wrote a novel about a smart, sassy lady lawyer. Five years ago we wrote it. And its good. We've been talking to groups for some time now about the benefits of writing together. And we're charming. I promise we are. For the moment, however, I'm abandoning that charm and instead of understanding that sometimes it really is about who you know, or just a matter of timing, or even wondering whether we gave up on The Pecking Order too soon, I'm opting to stomp my feet and grab for Seymour. Laura and I, after all, saw him first.

A Square Peg

2010-01-15T11:07:00.000-08:00

We've been told our book, The Pecking Order (available now, online, for free!), doesn't quite fit into an established literary genre. It's like the offspring of chick lit and literary fiction, although every now and then one might whisper behind closed doors that it resembles the mailman (his name is Romance). Our agent called it upscale commercial women's fiction . . . whatever that means . . . but, still, even with a name, it hasn't found a comfortable home. I was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, it was destined to be a loner forever. But then I read Love Walked In and Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos. And I gotta tell you . . . The Pecking Order is in good company. It does not (unlike that stinky cheese we're all so fond of singing about) stand alone. The review "blurbs" for Love Walked In describe the book alternately as chick lit and romance, and praise the author's literary skills. As for me, I define her books as riveting, with characters I want to tuck in my pocket and carry around, conversations I want to jump into, and language that lingers long after I've closed the back cover. Marisa de Los Santos's books are filled with humor and self-deprecation . . . with a literary slant but a pop culture, relatable feel. And though Ms. de los Santos writes in a way I only aspire to, sometimes, every now and then, it seems that one of her sentences could have bled from my (and Kris's) very pen. So maybe "not fitting in" can be a good thing.
P.S. I just read that Sarah Jessica Parker is slated to star in the film version of Love Walked In. I titled this blog post "A Square Peg" before I knew that. Maybe I need my own psychic hotline?

Relentless Forward Progress

2010-01-08T23:50:00.000-08:00

Its been a little more than a year now since my last marathon. I'm still smarting. And it wasn't my first. It was my fifth. That doesn't exactly qualify me as a "marathoner", but I also shrug off the label of "runner" like its an 80's ensemble. I just don't consider myself properly in that category. Yes, I've put one foot after another for 26.2 miles on several occasions and for 13.1 miles on even more occasions, not to mention the scads of 3, 6, and 10 milers I have under my belt. Yet still, in my mind, I am not a runner.

Almost a decade ago, I ran the most difficult race I've ever done, the Grandfather Mountain Marathon, rated one of the hardest marathons in the country. And you know what, I didn't train. And no I don't mean, oops, I only did a couple of long runs. I mean my hardest training run was a 40 minute hill workout on the treadmill. I will save the unimportant and uninteresting details related to why I didn't train, but suffice to say I was being obstinate in a way that only hurt me. And as I looked ahead at 26.2 miles and a 1000 foot climb, I told myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and I took to heart something my husband said as I watched him leave me in his dust at mile 3 - "relentless forward progress".

I (Laura and I) have written a novel. A good novel. Not to mention several short stories, countless legal briefs, and more than a hundred pages of a second novel. Yet I still have difficulties considering myself a writer. But as I look ahead at another 200 pages of that second novel, with callous-free fingertips and a word processing program that hasn't received a creative words in months, I remember what my husband said at the Grandfather Mountain Marathon - relentless forward progress. It took me across the finish line at Grandfather Mountain and I can't help but believe it will take us to the final chapter here.

It's Getting Sappy Up In Here...

2009-12-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year—time to deck the halls, fruit the cake, steamroll the mannheim, and nog the egg. We’re simplifying this year—buying fewer presents, spending more time together, and recognizing the inherent joy in the smallest of things. Decorating gingerbread houses. Bumbles and Yukon Cornelius (who came up with that name?). Singing in the church choir. Linus on national television reminding us what Christmas is all about. My son putting only the following three items on his Santa list: "a real live parakeet, 200 bucks, snow falling in my backyard." Trader Joe’s sea salt caramels (you've heard me talk about yin and yang...don't get me started on salty and sweet. Perfection in a cello wrapper). Peppermint hot chocolate and snowman Peeps. Not hearing that awful Christmas Shoes song. Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. The Star Wars Christmas Album (what do you get a Wookie for Christmas, when he already has a comb?). Cousin Eddie’s dickie, Aunt Bethany’s jello mold, and Clark Griswold demanding we have the “hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby danced with Danny [bleeping] Kaye.”

There is also joy to be found in honoring your craft. The best gifts we can give ourselves cost nothing—time to write amidst the frenzy of the season, stolen moments with our characters, juicy plot developments all wrapped up with a fat bow. And grace. Grace to accept that 1,000 words a day may not happen until the New Year, but each sentence, each word, each thought related to your work is a small treasure. This season, may you receive presence, along with your presents.

(And, because I can’t resist, for you Twilight fans . . . an extra special gift, courtesy of the LOLcats. It makes me giggle!)

Riding the Climb or Climbing the Wave

2009-12-06T17:58:00.001-08:00

What do Miley Cyrus and Ursula K. Le Guin have in common? Presumably, very little. Okay, probably nothing. But its been a bit of a rough spell for Jayne Lynne. Not the one-of-us-has- taken-seriously-ill or-something-like-that kind of rough spell. But the kind of rough spell where the writing isn't coming and the time that should be spent writing is commandeered by annoyingly superfluous things like our jobs, our families, our friends, the holidays, and, admittedly, the occasional red wine hangover. I know what you're thinking. The economy is in the tank, no one has a job, its crazy cold in California, Tiger Woods is no longer the Golden Boy, and this is your rough spell? Well, yes. Everything is relative.

It seems that we let our new book, Done Fell Out, sit for a while. And it turns out that an unfinished manuscript is not unlike cheese. In some cases, it needs some age; in others, it just gets rank. And its pretty rank up in this beeatch, if you know what I mean. We recently took on Chapters 9 and 10 and proceeded to wrestle with them for the better part of a month. And I mean alligator mud pit wrestling. And, much like alligator mud pit wrestling, the outcome wasn't so pretty. And to make matters worse, I read through the first eight chapters and had to look around the house to find the person who had written those words. I knew Laura had written her parts, but mine? I couldn't find that woman anywhere. And I'm a little worried she's not coming back. I've talked often lately of hanging up the keyboard and have been prone to indulge in other bad, overly dramatic metaphors indicating I might just be done with writing.

And then this weekend I received a gift from The Writing Loft - a thank you for speaking at Artoberfest. It was a book by Ursula K. Le Guin entitled The Wave in the Mind, and it struck a chord I worried had been rendered inert-an inspired, creative chord. And later I was organizing my son's room, pulling out forsaken toys and unidentifiable pieces of plastic, when Its the Climb came on the radio. I was singing at the top of my lungs, in resonant frequency (high school physics anyone?) with that inspired chord (although, notably, cleaning my son's room and not writing), before I realized, with shame, that I was singing Miley Cyrus. I rationalized that she most certainly hadn't written the song, and then I silently thanked those who did because they reminded me to worry less about the destination and just enjoy the climb, or, as Ursula would prefer, ride the wave.

Mother Knows Best (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Technology)

2009-11-20T17:47:00.001-08:00

Kris and I recently gave a talk about how we write together. Like an old married couple (think the vignettes in When Harry Met Sally, finishing each other's sentences, saying the same thing at the same time), we told the story about how we met at the firm (a very pregnant Kris interviewed me), how we discovered we both loved writing (talking late one night while working at the firm, wine in hand), and the genesis of The Pecking Order (a particularly long, pointless, billable-hour-sucking meeting that ended in a decision to, yes, have another meeting). We praised the benefits of having a writing partner to share in the struggle, the disappointments, and the joys, and we also explained our process. And it goes a little something like this (hit it!): we loosely outline two chapters; Kris writes one chapter, I write the other; we switch and edit; we switch and edit again; and so on and so forth. And we do this all over email, putting our edits and thoughts in bolds and brackets, so our drafts end up looking like this (note, real live excerpt from early working draft of The Pecking Order): “You’re right. A little harmless flirting never hurt anyone. I should let myself have fun. I work hard and I deserve it,” I say [uncorking our first bottle of wine] [delete – we have a lot of champagne going on….popping the cork on our first bottle of champagne.]

Then we each put the latest version in our respective running documents (on our respective laptops), which may or may not match each other at any given point, depending on whether I remembered to email the most recent draft to my work account or Kris could access the document on vacation or the planets aligned and the heavens smiled on us, making all things domestic and career-related run smoothly. Goodness gracious, it's a lot of work just to type our process . . .

Some time back, my mom (who is ridiculously more technologically advanced than I am) questioned why we weren't using google docs. She might as well have asked why we didn't have the robot prepare dinner or why we didn't drive to work in a hovercraft. We ignored her. For years. Until we finally tried it last week. And people, let me tell you, google docs is all that. You can store documents online and choose who to share them with. Much like a yahoo or gmail email account, you can access your document from anywhere with internet access. Now, we have a single running document and anything we write, be it a single sentence or entire chapter, goes into that document. No more passing bolds and brackets back and forth through email - one of us can open the document and make edits that the other can see simply by logging in. It's genius, I tell you, and not just for writing teams--it's a good back up system for any writer, and ensures you have your manuscript at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.
So, yea, I guess I should have listened to my mother the first time.

A Haiku

2009-11-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

Steady rain grey skys
Lovely Seattle hotel
I forgot to blog

Unplug

2009-11-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

You know MTV Unplugged--that show where a major musical artist sits on a cozy stage with only a guitar or piano or ukulele (or whatever instrument he or she uses), plays, and sings without benefit of amplifiers, background tracks, or bubble machines? It's just an artist and his or her craft, and more often than not it is moving and raw and real. Well, guess what fellow writers? We need to unplug every now and then, too. Not from sound enhancers or the whammy bar (thank you, Guitar Hero, for my current state of musical literacy), but from all those things that are necessary and helpful, but often get in our way. I'm talking about you, Facebook and Twitter and Writing Blogs (but feel free to finish reading this blog before heeding my advice).

I don't know about you, but when I sit down to write, my process usually goes something like this: Make tea. Sit on chaise with laptop. Open manuscript. Read the last paragraph. Check email. Open Twitter. Log on to Facebook and read multiple status updates from friends stressing out about their NaNoWriMo word count. Open http://www.gofugyourself.com/ and wonder, once again, why these girls aren't my best friends. Read Inkygirl's latest blog and comic--if there's a new caption contest, spend the next few minutes trying vainly to come up with a witty caption (girlfriend is hilarious, btw . . . I know I'm telling you to go offline, but you really should check her out.). Maximize manuscript. Write a few lines. Send email to Kris telling her I'm writing. Refresh gofugyourself. Refresh Twitter. And so on and so forth . . .

Sound familiar? Sure, I've read all about how we need to cut the electronic leash--heck, my pastor literally wrote the book on simplifying our lives, on saying yes to the important things and no to meaningless distractions. And yet, I rarely put it into practice. But this past week was different. I attended a legal conference at a lovely hotel with lovely, child-free rooms and lovely, squishy, crumb-free beds . . . and wireless internet access priced at $9.95/day. I've mentioned I'm a public sector lawyer in California, right? And you've heard of a little thing we like to call CALIFORNIA'S MASSIVE BUDGET CRISIS, right? So, yea, I can't rationalize ten bucks for internet access when words like furlough and pay cut and phasing out are bandied about my office the way we used to talk about American Idol contestants and how Jon and Kate seemed like a cute couple. (Of course, I tried every unsecured network that showed up on my laptop to no avail. . .curse you kittyboy17 and your weak signal). So I sat in bed, ate a $3.00 bag of cheese crackers for dinner, and wrote. I wrote 500 words in about 40 minutes. I nearly finished an entire chapter in one evening. I unplugged and, oh my gosh, it worked.

And then in the morning (after discovering the lobby has free internet) I read a tweet from @inkyelbows (InkyGirl's twitter alter ego) announcing, "when you're reading about writing, you're not writing." Amen, sister.

The Red Baron Lives.

2009-10-30T21:53:00.001-07:00

I really like champagne. Okay, that has nothing to do with this blog, other than that its Friday night, I should have written this post this morning, and now I'm reveling in a lovely bottle of bubbly supplied by my parents who, fortunately for me, happen to have fantastic taste in champagne. The apple doesn't fall far and all that . . .

Anyhoo, its Halloween. The time for trick or treat, candy and costumes, ghouls and goblins. As I dressed my son in his store-bought "Golden Dragon Ninja" costume today (an early victim of precisely targeted marketing, my son. He has two other very viable ninja costumes), I felt sad I hadn't made his costume, that we hadn't culled together random pieces of fabric, poster board, old jewelry, and make-up to come up with some fabulous iteration of Sponge Bob, Anakin Skywalker, or Caillou (yeah, I know I could just shave his head and call it good on that one. . . .what's with that kid having no hair?). But, for better or worse, that's not how we roll in the Blanco house. A homemade meal, for sure. Homemade costumes, never going to happen. But does that mean I have to forsake all sense of tradition and authenticity? Well, perhaps. On Tuesday night, when I cleared my schedule and set the whole house up for an Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown viewing, they just wanted to watch Goosebumps and then the Monsters vs. Alien Halloween special. They begged, they pleaded, but I made them sit and watch Its the Great Pumpkin and I'm not ashamed to say I issued several threats during that half hour. I repeated Lucy's jokes, highlighted Schroeder's talent, but you know what? They didn't care. I guess I can only hope that one day my son will fake complain that his mother made him watch The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown every year and that he'll meet people later in life who have the exact same story.

So I'll ask the same question I always do. What does this have to do with writing? Well, not much. But it has something to do with reading. My book club has recently read some great new books - The Selected Works of T.S Spivet being one of them. What a book, what a character. I would recommend it to anyone. But now we're reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I can't help but think of Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin and Snoopy as the Red Baron lost in France during WWI, and ask where would we be, who would be, without the classics.

And the Student Becomes the Teacher...

2009-10-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of helping edit some short stories today for a writing class. The assignment was to write a story in 10 minutes or less, in the spirit of a Native American legend, explaining something we take for granted in our modern world. The stories had titles like, "Why the Sun is in the Sky," "How Snakes and Legless Lizards Came to Be," and, my personal favorite, "Why Women Talk So Much." (In case you're wondering, a lovely, handsome man wooed a young maiden and they would have lived happily ever after, except she ran around the woods and proclaimed her love to all who would listen and he was hounded day and night by curious and annoying woodland creatures until he had enough and sailed away, leaving the maiden with only her own voice for company. I probably would have titled it, "Why Women are Better Off Alone Than With Some Tool Who Can't Express His Feelings," but that's just me...)

I must say, I was impressed. The stories were only a page or two in length, but fully formed. The students were instructed to use their senses, so the stories were engaging, but also to the point. There was no digression, no backstory, no sentences requiring more than one breath, no cramming of words where they don't fit just because they sound pretty. Sure, given more time the authors could have rounded out their stories, but the exercise reminded me that, at its core, writing is about the story. The plot. The point! So often, I find myself stumbling over my words, trying to craft something beautiful, publishable, worthy of a table at Barnes and Noble. I've stared at a blinking cursor, trying to sift literary gold from the muddy recesses of my brain for longer than the time it took these students to write an entire story. Maybe, in those instances, I should try to just write what happens. After all, once I lay the foundation, I can build upon it later. Like Maria von Trapp always said, the beginning (the very beginning) is a very good place to start. So, thank you, Mrs. Sloan's fourth grade class (yes, fourth graders!) for helping me get back to basics.

And, in that odd, inexplicable way that everything seems cosmically connected these days, I stumbled upon this link on InkyGirl's website (helpful blogger for writers, and ridiculously hilarious literary cartoonist). It's called "One Word," and each day it provides a different one-word prompt. Writers have 60 seconds to write about that word. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it would help those of us (you know who you are) with the tendency to look far too long before leaping.

10 Things I Hate . . .Not About You, I Promise

2009-10-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

It's not cool to put negative energy out in the world. I try in earnest to live that each day so that's why I'm considering this more of an unsolicited, benign airing of pet peeves than a rant about things that bother me. And in any event, I'm hoping I have enough stored up in the karma bank should the universe take it a different way. What does it have to do with writing? Well, let's see.

10 Things I Hate . . .Not About You

1. Those things you often see on the roof at car dealerships that look like a large dancing person, but are really just heaps of plastic that move by the gale force of a large fan. I hate those.
2. Passive-aggressive communication. Hate that.
3. The sound and feel of styrofoam. Ick.
4. The fact that businesses employ people to stand on the road waving a sign. Bums me out.
5. Waiting in line for the car wash when the person in front of me does the super slow drive out under the dryer. Get a hand wash if you're that concerned, people. Its a drive-thru.
6. Kalamata olives. Gag.
7. All of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton. Sorry, that's kind of about them, I suppose.
8. When people take themeselves too seriously.
9. Being grabbed in that tickle spot around/just above the knee. And I don't fake-ha-ha-squeal-hate that. I hate that.
And what I hate most of all . . .David Lettermen (although maybe I shouldn't so easily invoke his name) drum roll here . . .

10. Writer's block.

My life story, Holden Caulfield, and a living saint

2009-10-09T11:50:00.001-07:00

So, you know I planned to post a blog a day for Great Books Week. Well, I skipped the past two days - circumstances beyond my control, I tell you (and maybe, just maybe, some Chardonnay). But, never fear...here are posts for the last three days, all rolled up in one convenient, easy to use post:)

Topic: I'd write my autobiography, but I don't need to because my story has already been told in [what classic book].

This was supposed to post Wednesday, but when I divulge the name of the book that most resembles my life, you'll understand why. Okay, okay, so it doesn't track my entire life, but if I just take a snapshot of my life right at this moment (with one kid home sick with swine flu, important deadlines looming at work, successive dinners from a box or bag, and a stalled manuscript)...it's Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (I considered One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with an inmates-taking-over-the-asylum analogy, but thouight my family might take issue.). I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere between "we're not going to be too indulgent as parents" and "okay, boys, you string hammocks in the hallway and eat canned frosting for breakfast if you'll just settle down and let me finish my work/work-out/chapter/edit/glass of wine" I lost control of the little three bedroom, 2 bath island we call home. Rescue missions appreciated...bring chocolate.

Topic: I hated [book] when I had to read it in high school, but when I read it on my own later, I loved it because . . .

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. My impression in Senior AP English? Blech. It was about a boy. Bo-ring. And he was whining about college, of all things. I'd just sent off my applications, worried I'd be stuck in my no-movie-theatre, party-in-the-cow-pastures town forever, and Holden was complaining about college? Even the much-hyped "bad word" didn't save the book. I thought he was a whiny boy with no real problems and I didn't understand why I should care about him. I reread the book last summer, after having two boys of my own (and raising a husband). And, it just clicked. Maybe it's our culture, or the benefit of psych 101, but Holden came across as a depressed ADD-addled narcissist. And that, is actually interesting.

Topic: When I want to give someone a special gift, I give them [book] because...

Oh, there are soooo many! It depends on the person and where they are in life. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a favorite. (I tend to even urge strangers to buy it, and I've given it to many, many friends). Another favorite is Three Cups of Tea. In fact, I know someone who sent her copy to President Obama after she read it, because it moved her so much. I'm going to re-post here a blog I wrote earlier this year about the book - it will explain why it is a special gift, and hopefully inspire you to buy it for yourself, or someone you love.

Here's the thing about Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin . . . you just need to read it. No matter your political affiliation, religious beliefs, social status, gender, ethnicity, race, age, or favorite breakfast cereal (mine's Cheerios . . . I'm old school), it will speak to you. Within the pages of the book, "hope" and "change," which have saturated our airwaves the past two years, cease existing as words and take shape as tangible ideals.
The book is non-fiction - a true account of American Greg Mortenson's failed attempt to climb K2 and his subsequent recuperation in a remote mountain village in Pakistan, which spawned his promise to build a school for the village, and led to 15 years of single-minded devotion to educating the war-stricken and impoverished children of Pakistan and Afghanistan. I know, I know, it sounds kind of dry. But it is not. It reads less like a factual account and more like an action-packed novel with a daring protagonist who just happens to have integrity running through his veins. It's like the love-child of Into the Wild and a biography of Mother Teresa. There is enough action to induce stomach acid (falling down mountains, kidnapping by a radical sect of Pakistani militants) and sufficient facts, figures, and maps to appease a scholar. But above all, there is the story. The story of impoverished communities in the Middle East whose hospitality toward Greg made me examine my own notions of love and acceptance. The story of children, their villages and parents and siblings destroyed by years of civil conflict, foreign wars, and American missiles, who scratch figures in the dirt because they have no school but want to learn. The story of radical Madrassas sprouting up across Pakistan and Afghanistan, built with blood money, certain to educate generations in the art of terror and graduate scores of Jihadists who hate America, unless the children have the option of attending real schools. The story of Muslim leaders agreeing to educate girls, because they recognize the importance of education for the future of the individual, the nation, and the world. The story of a Pakistani girl (who, ten years ago, had never attended school) now studying to become a doctor for women. And the story of Greg Mortenson who, through sheer determination and love for humanity, began raising money, building schools, paying teachers, and otherwise attending to the real human needs of the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. While living out of his car. The story of hope. The story of change. The story of peace.
I don't presume to know how the book will affect you. For me, it engendered many feelings. I was embarrassed that I had to keep referring to the map at the beginning of the book because I never learned Middle Eastern geography. I was ashamed that in the days after 9/11, I was scared of the turbaned men on the BART train with me--that I considered myself progressive, and yet subconsciously equated Muslim with Terrorist. I was so incredibly thankful for my life in America, for my education and my opportunities, which I admit, I've taken for granted. The book talks about teachers and children climbing a ladder to reach the second story of their school, because the stairs were bombed out. I couldn't help but think about what would happen in America. Here, parents would be outraged if their child's school didn't meet each and every building standard. Here, most kids would be thrilled if they couldn't reach their classroom. I was inspired by Greg. I believe that one person can make a difference. I was frustrated at our government's lack of humanitarian aid, but simultaneously so proud to be an American, because, as citizens, we can be a beacon of light around the world.
It is so much more than a book about the Middle East. It challenges, educates, and inspires. For me, it shifted my perception. It clearly demarcated the notions of "want" and "need." It led me to pick up trash in my neighborhood and seriously consider whether I "needed" to add another pair of jeans to my closet. Given the result of the election, I think Americans are ready to embrace a spirit of volunteerism. Even if you think are not, please, read the book. It exemplifies pioneering spirit and perseverance at its best.
To learn more about Greg's foundation, the Central Asia Institute, or to make a donation, visit: http://www.ikat.org/ To learn more about Three Cups of Tea, visit: http://www.threecupsoftea.com/

Great Books Week, Part Deux

2009-10-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

NAIWE's blog topic for today, in honor of Great Books Week, is: "When I was a child, my favorite book was… because…." I could fill pages (screens) with my love for Laura Ingalls, Betsey and Tacy, and, sigh, The Secret Language. But I'm going to modify the topic a bit and post a blog I wrote last year as a guest blogger for Engine Ed (for more discussion of children's books, check out Engine Ed's site). Let's call it, "now that I'm an adult, my favorite children's book is...because..."

I started reading chapter books when I was four years old, imagining myself putting on a show with Annie Oakley, sleeping on a bed of pine needles with the Boxcar Children, and traveling in a wagon with Ma and Pa Ingalls. When my boys were born, I couldn’t wait until they were old enough to enter magical fictional worlds . . . and I was devastated when they were uninterested. They’d spend hours with a snake encyclopedia or guide to rocks and minerals, but my attempts to engage them in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh were met with yawns. And then my older son received a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends for his 6th birthday. Thanks to Shel Silverstein and his perfect imagination, we read and laugh together nightly. To say that his poems are funny or interesting merely scratches the surface. Shel Silverstein had a gift for giving voice to topics that roll around silently in most kids’ brains and are dismissed by adults. Silly topics like belching (Rudy Felsh), scary topics like getting sucked down the bath drain (Skinny), and important topics, like how we’re all alike inside (No Difference). His poems address these topics without condescension, preaching, or advice—they have just the right amount of humor and irony. And though they seem silly at first, they often touch upon a deeper truth about how kids feel and think. A great example is the poem What a Day, which describes how it feels to have the weight of the world on your shoulders—a feeling many adults incorrectly assume is reserved only for grown-ups. Uncle Shelby writes: What a day/Oh what a day./My baby brother ran away/And now my tuba will not play./I’m eight years old and turning grey/Oh what a day/Oh what a day. Indeed.

I highly recommend this book, as well as his other poetry collections (A Light in the Attic, Runny Babbitt, etc.). I like to think of the poems as small bridges across the generation gap. Not only will you laugh, you’ll also remember what it’s like to be a child. And, if you’re like me, you just may find that the poems mirror your dreams and desires for your children. As Mr. Silverstein says:

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
the IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
hen listen close to me—
Anything can happen, child
ANYTHING can be.

Great Books Week!

2009-10-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

I was posting more chick twit today (in case you haven't seen, we're tweeting the first chapter of The Pecking Order, check it out), and came across Grammar Girl's tweet about Great Books Week. In honor of Great Books Week, the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors is "hosting a Blog Tour with a specific daily topic Monday through Friday." Though it may cut into our fug girls time, it sounds fun and we decided to participate. Here's the first topic:

If I were stranded alone on a deserted island with only seven books to read over the next few years, I would like to have…
1. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. If I were stranded alone on an island, I’d probably be neck deep in self-pity (and sand), and Gilbert’s book would, as always (the two to three times I read it each year), remind me that I can choose how I wish to feel in this vast universe.
2. The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy. Language. Beautiful, lyrical, gut-wrenching language. Plus, he so effectively conveys the splendor of the ocean and the tides, with which I’m destined over the next few years, apparently, to become intimately familiar.
3. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I had to make a chart the first time I read this book, and even then I’m not sure I fully grasped the time travel component. Time travel hurts my head. It’s why watching Lost sometimes puts me in a state of panic. But if I have a few years to figure it out, I’d love to dive back in.
4. Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. Because I have to have a guilty pleasure now and then, and there won’t be any US Weekly or OK magazine stands on the island. And I doubt the coconuts make good gossip fodder.
5. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. Solitude doesn't exactly do wonders for one's sense of humor and laughter is the best medicine and all that, so I can't imagine a deserted island without at least one of Sedaris's collection of guffaw-inducing essays.
6. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. This book is a reminder that books are fun, stories are fun, language is fun, perhaps moving me to pen a humorous, fictionalized account of my ordeal on banana leaves or the bark of palm trees.
7. The Collected Works of Shakespeare. Lust, murder, disguise, and iambic pentameter. Does it get any better? Plus, it could make an effective tent.

Dharma and Karma and Funeral Homes

2009-10-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last night at Zuda, I was in the second minute of Utkatasana (or squat for my gym friends)--sweating, wincing, possibly cursing--when our instructor said "When things are hard, the teacher is in the room". The teacher, of course, being the universe or God, depending on how you roll in that regard. And at the end, he chanted something for which I can't remember the exact translation from Sanskrit, but the gist was the universe--or God-- is wise, all-knowing, and our greatest teacher.

Fabulous, you're thinking, what does this have to do with writing? Well, as you few, but fierce fictionlimbo followers know, Laura and I trekked across the country last week for a real, live Done Fell Out research trip. If you know me and Laura, or if you're a mother who often feels the weight of your family, perhaps the world, on your shoulders, you know how not-easy it is to make a solo trip and leave the troops behind to fend for themselves. Will lunches get made? Will homework be completed? Will they make it to practice? Will they--God, please--wear underwear to school? I could go on and on, but you get it. So as the date approached, Laura and I worried we were being frivolous, indulgent, even delusional. Sure, as we went through security and boarded the plane, we gave lip service to the commitment to our craft, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and other Oprah-isms, but not so deep down, we both questioned whether the trip was a good use of our time.

This is where the yoga comes in, the chant, the universe, God; because we found our answer shortly after we walked into McDougald Funeral Home and Crematorium, a place we were referred to as a result of chance encounters and the kindness of strangers. (In the interest of context, and in case I've not mentioned this before, our main character in Done Fell Out--a California native-- inherits a funeral home in a small town in North Carolina). There we met Beacham McDougald, whose family has owned the funeral home since the mid 1800s when it was a funeral home and a furniture store, who happened to have a free hour to discuss his business (he had two funerals that afternoon), talk about the families he serviced, give us a tour, and who happened--hello universe, God--to be a writer. He didn't say as much, but when he gave us (yes, gave and let us take home) a personally bound collection of the stories he'd written about the families his home had serviced, we knew writing was also his personal passion. Laura and I looked at each other with the tears and goose bumps of gratitude because we knew with all certainty (and how often does that happen?) that in that moment, in that instant, we were exactly where God, the universe, intended.

A special thanks to Beacham McDougald for his time and his lovely stories and a special apology to Ty at Zuda for possibly butchering his lovely chant.

The Right Place The Right Time

2009-09-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Laura and I embarked on our first research trip for Done Fell Out last Thursday at 12:55 am, returning home yesterday at 10:45 am. North Carolina and back in two days. Needless to say we are recovering and will write more than you'd ever want to know about what was an incredible, fun, and ridiculously helpful and productive trip in due course, but for now, you can follow our adventures in NC on twitter - just click here. We tweeted like mad women . . .stay tuned for next Friday's post.

It Takes A Village

2009-09-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

We often think of writing as a solitary endeavor, picturing authors tucked away in some version of Walden Pond chewing on the end of a pen, or sitting alone in a dark room with only a computer for company while a highball sweats a ring onto the desk. Think Virginia Woolf in The Hours, William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, Mort Rainey in Secret Window (Don't know that one? It's based on a Stephen King novel about a disturbed writer, played onscreen by #1 on my laminated list, the delectable Johnny Depp. Psst, Johnny, call me.). And, yes, at some point every writer has to sit down without distraction and put pen to paper. But just scan the acknowledgements page in any novel, and it's clear "Writing" (with a capital W) is a collective effort.

So, even at the early stages, when your characters just begin to come to life, share them with others. We didn't do that when we first began writing The Pecking Order (fearful, I suppose, that this fragile little piece of art we'd carefully sculpted and polished and protected would shatter under criticism) and it was a lesson hard learned. Believe me, it's better to hear something doesn't make sense from a friend, over Pinot and manchego (and maybe some tangential discussions about Johnny Depp), than from a prospective agent declining to represent you. This time around, we're sharing chapters of Done Fell Out as we write it, and it's invaluable. So far, we've not only learned a pivotal plot point was confusing, but also that a peripheral character interested readers and may warrant a bigger part. And yes, in case you're wondering, just like every Kindergartener knows, sharing is easier said than done. You need to find encouraging people (family, friends, other writers) who are comfortable expressing their true opinions, but also gentle in their delivery. And, if you're the type of person who feels bad saying no to telemarketers, and thinks you've done something wrong if a stranger doesn't smile at you, you'll have to develop a thicker skin (although, if you 've been sending work out and receiving rejections for any length of time, your skin could probably already deflect bullets). Maybe start by reading to your dog. Most of all, you need to have a well-working internal filter, so you can take in the useful comments, and expel anything that is harmful or doesn't further your vision. Remember, all consumers of art have different tastes and, ultimately, it is your work.

Falling Short

2009-09-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

Laura and I agreed we would blog every Friday. This week was my week. It's now Sunday. We also agreed we would begin a series of entries about what we've learned on the path to (almost) publication. (See You Might Learn Something When You're Not Looking) This blog entry is not about that. My son had timed math tests on Thursday and Friday last week. I knew about neither of them. I haven't yet finished the book selected by my book club, I forgot sunscreen last weekend at the beach and now my face is peeling off in large chunks, and didn't hit my half marathon training goals this week. And to top off the week, I went to the air show here in Sacramento today. Our tent was next to the Thunderbird tent and I sat within earshot and arms length of Thunderbird No. 9, their female flight surgeon. Hot, female flight surgeon. Did you get that? She's beautiful, a surgeon, and a Thunderbird. The coup de gras of a seven day streak where I seemed destined to fall short.

And here is where I should close with a smidge of wisdom, a modest life lesson, or at least relate this entry to the struggle to publish our work, which really seems like it would be simple enough given the theme. But, listen people, I may fall short on a lot of points, but consistency isn't one of them . . .

You Might Learn Something When You're Not Looking

2009-09-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

We had our first speaking engagement last weekend at a working retreat for writers (notice I didn't use the term "aspiring writers." Writer = one who writes. If you write, you are a writer - embrace it, live it, shout it from the rooftops!) hosted by the Writing Loft, a writing school here in Northern California. (And I can say it's our "first" speaking engagement because we've just booked another. This is humbling and exciting!) We drove up into the hills and braved the sub-Saharan heat (seriously, it was 106) to meet a diverse and inspiring group of writers. In addition to speaking, we helped critique their works in progress, one of us ate far too much pasta with cream sauce, and one of us was stalked the entire time by the biggest, hairiest, most persistent cat to ever pad the Earth.

All in all, it was a good time. But in the days leading up to the retreat, we were somewhat anxious (I know, I know - us, anxious? Shocking.) about our talk. What in the world did we have to offer? How to write a rambling first draft with no discernible plot? Lessons in the art of getting ahead of yourself (also known as casting the movie and planning the book tour with only 10,000 words on the page)? A slide-show of our numerous rejections, perhaps one of the largest in the hands of private collectors? So we put ourselves in the writers' shoes and asked what we would have wanted to know five long years ago, when our children were still babies, we were toiling away at the law firm, and The Pecking Order was just a twinkle in our eyes. And--Eureka--we discovered we've actually learned boatloads about writing, securing an agent, the publishing process, marketing, and the state of the publishing industry. In fact, we realized we had so much to say, we had to leave some things out. (Lawyers with a lot to say. Again, shocking, I know.) In the next few weeks, we're going to post some topics from the retreat, in the hopes that someone, somewhere might find them useful. Because I don't know about you, but I'd rather hear about the process from someone who's learned through trial and error (emphasis on the error, in those early days) and late nights and hard work than someone who tells of meeting their agent when they were stuck in an elevator together. Unless you plan on stalking agents and orchestrating power failures at opportune moments (which I wouldn't really recommend, you know, from a legal standpoint), that's just not helpful.

So, check in next Friday for the first topic, "It Takes a Village." For now, I'll leave you with the story that opened our talk - our story. People are always intrigued by how we came to write together, and how we can write together. For us, it seems so natural now; we are extensions of each other. As one woman put it at the retreat, we may have husbands and families, but the two of us share a special, rare connection. Maybe the stars were aligned or God was nudging us in the right direction or the dice just rolled that way, but for whatever reason we both ended up at the firm at the same time, as the only female associates with babies. And it was hard. Like, my hair started falling out hard. Like, I once was so agitated the phone receiver flew out of my hand and gave me a black eye hard. Like, we both often contemplated, at the turn-off to the parking garage, just driving right on by and applying for a job at Starbucks hard. The work, while high-level litigation, wasn't over our heads, but the management of life was impossible--midnight feedings and 6am diaper changes and 8am marketing meetings and noon visits to the lactation room and 7pm preservative-laden microwaved dinners for the family and 8pm screaming at the kids to get to sleep and 9pm treks back to the office once they fell asleep. Yea, that was hard.

One night Kris showed up at the office late, and I was the only other one there, toiling away on some motion or brief. And, God bless her, she'd brought red wine. Lacking any fitting travel container (because, as new mothers/professionals, locating your thermos is about as likely as having sex with your husband, which is to say it's not going to happen), she'd brought the wine in a baby bottle. Needless to say, we became fast friends. We talked often during those late nights about how litigation and motherhood was a zero sum game, about being stretched to the breaking point, about the absurdity of the large law firm where we lost valuable billable time each day doing ridiculous things like waiting for our secretaries to finish making the partners' vacation reservations or securing their tee times before agreeing to look at our work, or taking the three elevators needed to get us from the parking garage to the 23rd floor (a stroke of architectural genius, that one). At some point we realized we both had dreams of writing more than legalese, and we decided to try our hand at a book--fictional, but based largely on our experience. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I've gone on long enough at this point, so I'll leave discussion of how we write together for another time. Have a safe, fun, and creative Labor Day weekend. See you next Friday.

In Defense of Lawyers

2009-08-28T07:04:00.000-07:00

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

William Shakespeare, Henry VI, (Act IV. Scene II.)

So we have a bad reputation. We've heard the jokes, we've seen the shameless DUI defense billboards, we watched as OJ was found not guilty, and we've personally witnessed various other miscarriages of justice orchestrated at our hands. We get it. We deserve it. We're sorry.

Recently, however, I have been reminded why I am more than willing to take up the flag for lawyers. I like lawyers. Lawyers, as it turns out, are some of my favorite people. (That's not to say I don't have favorite people who aren't lawyers, of course . . .) As a general matter, we're funny. We are. You can't endure the circus that is law school, complete with the socratic method, existing and still applicable legal principles from the time of the covered wagon, and the mania that is class rank and law review, without at least a modicum of humor. Not to mention what you have to do to get through the billable hour and, in the case of women, the still testosterone laden practice, and the deadlines . . .oh the deadlines. I recently attended a small all-women, all-attorney party where the banter was faster than Usain Bolt, and (she says proudly) baser than any bachelor party. Love those lady lawyers. . .

And we're not just a funny bunch. Several weeks ago someone dear to me was in need of an attorney--and for something serious, and not of their own making. I wrote a few e-mails, made a few calls, and within minutes had helpful responses from, if you can imagine, several busy lawyers. So, you see, we're useful. Sure, kind of like flashlight useful or baking powder useful--you never think twice about us, but if you need us, you really need us--but useful nonetheless.

Then, of course, there's my writing partner Laura, without whom this blog, The Pecking Order, Done Fell Out, my razor thin margin of sanity, my love for Chico chai would not exist - and what kind of life would that be?

So as I sit looking into the future, after 18 months of voluntary unemployment, and see the practice of law on the very near horizon, all I can say is, put down the Shakespeare and bring on the jokes. I promise we'll laugh.

Basketti

2009-08-20T21:53:00.001-07:00

If you scroll to the top of this page you're reading, you'll see the title and description of our blog. See that part that reads, "unrelated thoughts on . . . well . . . unrelated topics?" That's where this post is headed. I got nothing. My kid had the pukes this week (yup, woke me up at 5 a.m. to tell me he didn't feel good, then puked the previous night's spaghetti all over my feet . . . twice. I gotta learn to move) and school has started and work is nutty and we're writing like crazy on the new book and, basically, my creativity is all tapped out. Oh yea . . . and I haven't had a drink all week! What I'm trying to say, in a terribly verbose, round-about way, is that this post has no rhyme or reason, no structure, no coherent narrative. It's more like . . . say . . .well, the aforementioned spaghetti - I'm just going to spew my thoughts all over the page.

So, my gynecologist is really cute (told you I'd spew - no segue, no transition, just bam! Random thought). No, that's not an apt description. He's burn-your-retinas hot. So hot, in fact, that this week, when he talked to me for over 20 minutes about healthcare reform (of all things) after my annual exam, I batted my eyes and tossed my head and asked questions, not even caring that I was still in that dusty rose paper open-backed crop top with nothing but a glorified paper towel over my nether regions and some poor woman was probably waiting in another exam room to hear her baby's heartbeat. Classy.

Know what's not classy? Telling me about your ENTIRE DAY in one long Facebook status update. Do I want to know that you opened your front door and a goat was standing on your porch? Absolutely. Do I want you to quote some (a) obscure or (b) naughty or (c) nostalgic song lyric and wait for others to quote additional lines in their comments? Might be entertaining. Is the occasional one sentence update about your hot gynecologist interesting? Usually. But please do not do this: Had fried eel for lunch today, then fell asleep at my desk. After work went to the store. Preparation H was on sale so I bought three tubes. Then Hector and I got in the spa and watched the stars. My favorite was the big dipper. We just finished eating ice-cream sundaes and now I'm going to brush my teeth, use the Preparation H, and go to bed. Stop. Just. Stop.

And now, I will heed my own advice and put this post out of its misery. But first, I have to share one more thing . . . when I'm blogging, the tab at the top of the page says "Blogger." And every time I read it, my internal dialogue goes like this: "Blogger? I hardly know her." (I do the same thing with Twitter. Yep, just did it again.)

So now you know. I have a crush on my gynecologist, I'm not interested in the minutiae of your life, and my humor is base and juvenile. Pretty sure I'm about 12 years old. Thanks for still being my friend. I promise to write something more interesting next time . . .

Can't (Probably Shouldn't) Touch This

2009-08-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm of the age where, at least once a day, the passage of time is at the forefront of my mind. Whether its a new laugh line or the desire for neck surgery or the fact that I am now the coach and not the player, its there. Often. I'm also of the age where if I mention this to any number of my loved ones, they roll their eyes, call me a baby, and say "just you wait".

Today I am staking official claim on feeling old. I don't care if I am still occasionally carded when buying wine or that I wander into Bebe every now and then, which really should never be done by anyone larger than Twiggy (see, not really a spring chicken with that reference). Why, you ask. Because I've decided, after research and consideration, to opt out of fashion this season and I urge you women who also lived through the 80s to do the same.

I sat below the dryer at my salon, and, yes, its a salon, complete with tattooed assistants and uber-hip stylists in leather and 6 inch heels, although, in the interest of candor, I haven't changed my hair style in any meaningful way (save a mishap in Paris last year that cost 300 Euro [do you know the exchange rate!?] and a large measure of self-confidence) for over a decade. I was reading Elle's 20 must have fall fashion items and all I have to say is, in the spirit of Joan Rivers (just keeping the vintage consistent), can we talk? Of particular concern is the following:

Man Trousers: Okay, that's not exactly what the folks at Elle were calling them, but its close and it doesn't really matter, because what ever you call them is a mere euphemism for high-waisted, pleated slacks. PLEATED slacks, people! Did we not finally decide in the early 90s that, to our collective horror, a front pleat is never, ever our friend.
MC Hammer Pants: I'm sure there's a revamped name that taps into the collective conscious of the kids too young to remember "Can't Touch This", but they will always be MC Hammer pants to me. Not only is all that material a little less than comfortable to walk in, I'm not sure its ever a good idea to leave that much to the imagination in that particular region, if you know what I mean.
Neon: I think we called it fluorescent in the 80s, when I was 13 and it was okay to wear the particular shade of pink that sears the corneas. Fluorescent, neon, whatever you want to call it, its like a fling with the guy from the coffee shop--fun while it lasted, but it should never be revisited.
Shoulder Pads: Please refer to MC Hammer Pants comments and incorporate by reference comment from Man Trousers re: never being our friend.
And finally, my personal favorite:
Leather Shorts: And not just leather shorts, but high waisted leather shorts. There are so many things to say about leather shorts that if I have to spell them out, you might as well just buy a pair and find out yourself.

I emerged from the dryer and closed the Elle magazine, taking up silent arms against the fashion powers that be who are trying to bring back the mishaps that litter my old photo albums. And when I returned to my stylist's chair and she asked if I wanted something different, I looked down at my boot cut jeans and muted t-shirt, looked up proudly and said, no, don't touch it.

Art in the Modern Age (Or, Does This Mean Pale Ale is the New Absinthe?)

2009-08-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

When my family and I went to Paris last summer with Kris and her son, we stayed in the Montmartre. (And by the by, for anyone who thinks that sentence sounds snobby, please know that since that fabulous trip, we have been eating ramen and vacationing in Oroville while we pay off the credit card bill…). Our metro stop “sortie” funneled us past the Moulin Rouge, and the Place du Tertre was only a short, steep, smoke-filled walk from our apartment (about the equivalent of 6-8 blocks, or as I measured it, two crepe stands four boulangeries, one cheese shop, and about 15 cafes . . . sigh). Even though the area is now somewhat touristy and commercialized, the mention of “Montmarte” still conjures images of anbsinthe-addled artists communing to share vision and talent and wax quixotic on all things bohemian, of men like van Gogh, Matisse, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec living the artist’s life, of Picasso setting up his easel in the Place du Tertre. We’ve all seen Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s poster for the famous Montmartre cabaret, Le Chat Noir (yes, you know it, it’s orange and yellow with a large “artsy” black cat, can be found on postcards, canvas bags, and adorning the wall of at least one of your college friends, most likely the one majoring in theatre or dance), and maybe some of us (me) have wished we were part of the artistic community it’s come to represent.

Well, let me tell you . . . we are. The ideals the Montmartre have come to represent—a marketplace for creativity, the exchange of “big ideas,” a haven where emerging artists can rub shoulders with those who have paved the way—are alive and thriving and can be found . . . on Facebook. Artistic endeavors can feel lonely, especially in our modern world, where art is often relegated to hobby status—to something we fit in after work and the kids’ soccer practice and walking the dog and cleaning our toilets (my life is glamorous, no?). It’s not our “real job,” so we don’t bring it up in conversation, hesitate to ask for input from others, and often pursue it quietly and alone. But Facebook has changed that. In the past year, I’ve discovered many of my friends—not only those I’ve just found, but also those I know well—are artists. They are talented photographers, children's authors, video-game designers, choreographers, purveyors of cupcake creations, actors, models, tutu-makers, and rock stars. We may not live in the same place, but we can engage and innovate and inspire one another simply by putting our work out there. Nothing rips me from the banality of daily life and gets me back to the manuscript faster than reading about a friend starting a fashion/music/lifestyle company, or another friend touring with his band. So, for all its problems (no, I don’t care that you just bought a cow for your farm or that your fairy name is Princess fussypants), Facebook serves an important (I would argue necessary) purpose. Sure, it can be a time-suck, a voyeuristic escape, a narcissistic soapbox—but it can also be an artistic enclave without geographic constraint. To all the artists . . . let your light shine! Please, comment, and let us know about your creative endeavor.

Falling Out of Perspective

2009-07-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

A word about perspective--the precious, elusive thing that it is. Like wisdom, it usually comes with age and almost always too late to do anything but nod your head with a wry smile and lament what you could have done better. I could give you a number of examples, but most of them are simply too personal for this blog, so let's take an easy one--my ill-fated move to North Carolina at the age of 26, the day after I graduated from law school.

Let's be clear--I am not the faint of heart when it comes to moving. The child of an Air Force officer, I'd had seven houses and seven schools by the time I was fifteen. You do the math. So showing up in a new place, receiving the stares, the whispers, eating alone, faking nonchalance, disinterest, confidence, ingratiating myself to strangers, learning who to ask questions and from whom to stay away--all this was bred into me as strongly as my love for all things coconut (other than car air fresheners) and Jim Croce music, which is why I braved the first move of my married life with, well, what I thought was perspective.

As my husband and I drove the Honda Accord and Toyota Landcruiser from Arizona to North Carolina, it didn't occur to me that I hadn't lived in the south for, oh, 18 years. That I had become, in my own mind, a native Californian, that even Arizona (where I attended law school) was a little too far from home and right of center for my taste. I won't bore you with details of how difficult the move was and I'll only briefly share something that happened while I worked as an assistant public defender in a small, rural, town on the border of North and South Carolina and, if you think there's not much difference there, you're wrong.

After months of losing cases, trying to help clients with problems neither I nor anyone else could likely solve, and feeling generally eroded by representing the indigent in criminal court, Mary Jane Bryant's case was called. She was in her fifties, dressed to the nines--meaning she wore a bra--and charged with larceny for stealing lipstick, lingerie, and condoms from Kmart (I'm not making that up). It was not her first offense and a conviction would mean jail time. Not a lot, but I'm not sure the amount of jail time is really any one's first concern. As I was heading to the courtroom for her trial, one of the probation officers came running in and said "Mary Jane Bryant done fell out again!" And there she was in the middle of the courtroom, pretending she'd fainted, trying to stop her eyelids from fluttering, waiting for the ambulance, or whomever, to pick her up and cart her away to another day of freedom. It was mildly funny at the time, but more than anything I was concerned with what the judge would say because, you see, Ms. Bryant had apparently pulled this stunt a time or two.

I don't know what happened to Mary Jane Bryant and her larceny case because I quit my job and moved back to California to take the bar and start my career here. I wanted to leave North Carolina quickly as I could, but once I arrived home, I found myself talking constantly about this place I'd just spent the last two years. And now, with 8 years behind me and yes, you guessed it, a little perspective, I wish I could have seen the situation for what it was--a brief, colorful period in my life that would produce dozens of ridiculously funny memories, not to mention be the inspiration (one of them) for our second novel, Done Fell Out. If it's ever published, I'll be dedicating my portion to Mary Jane Bryant.

Unrelated post script - please note for the record my dear friend, you know who you are, the change in title. You can rest easy that there will be no raised beach scenes or purple cursive writing on the cover of this novel.

Random . . .

2009-07-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

I am vexed. Perplexed. It's like I have been hexed. (Straight outta 8-mile, yo). Bad rhymes aside, a few things are troubling me lately because of their nonsensical nature. Because they defy rational explanation. Because they are so random. Why, for instance, are there so many dead snakes on the side of the road I take to work? I get that snakes crawl out of the fields to the hot asphalt at night. I get that these unsuspecting, moonbathing serpents are likely hit by cars. But why do they end up on the side of the road, just on the shoulder? Are they flung there by car tires? Do they slither slowly off the road after a mortal wound, only to collapse and die once they cross the fog line? Is there a roving band of snake killers in python boots veering off the road to take them out while the rest of us sleep? Again, it vexes me.

Here's another one. I live in a small-ish town. I have a fairly tight circle of friends and acquaintances. Yet, I know at least five different women-bright, lovely women-who sell Mary Kay products. Do any of them really think they'll sell enough to earn that pearly pink Cadillac? Have they heard of market saturation? Yep, perplexed.

There's one more, and it's the most troubling, the most random, the most explanation-defying, the most likely to prompt an audible "WTF." I work in a nice office. We have cake each month to celebrate birthdays, baby showers for employees, and potlucks every now and then. We are courteous and professional to one another. We have adjustable office chairs, ergonomic keyboards and Vista on our 27-inch monitors. We don’t wear open-toed shoes, skirts above the knee, or bare shoulders. And yet, one wall of our employees-only bathroom (which is decorated like the public sector version of Las Vegas’s version of a cathedral, complete with faux-paint, stenciled border and tri-color light) is covered in . . . wait for it . . . boogers. I know, right?! WTF?

These things pain me. I need the world to make sense. I soak up order and patterns and logic. And, yet, I recognize our blog has had no discernible posting pattern. Sometimes we post twice a week, sometimes once a month. Well, no more! From now on, dear readers (all 5 or 6 of you), we post every Friday! Fictionlimbo Fridays are here!

And now that you can breathe that huge sigh of relief, I'm interested to hear what vexes you . . .

Vomiting with Precision

2009-07-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

So I've been boycotting my own blog. I'm not sure why. Maybe I should have known it was coming considering the last, bitter entry I penned, i.e. Pity Party. The party, however, seems to be over and I thank Laura for continuing to post on our behalf. Good woman, that-not-quite-a- cougar-but-she-will-be-all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips-in-five-years (see Choose Wisely) dear friend and writing partner of mine. Now, onward.

During my blogging hiatus, I observed at coffee shops, read interesting books, took my son and a friend to Folsom Lake (yikes), all of which could have inspired a blog entry. For example, I sat down to begin an entry about bumper stickers after I saw a quintessential, silver 1980’s Fiero (did they actually make them after the 80s?) with a spoiler and a bumper sticker that read “I’d Rather Be Driving a DeLorean ”. Awesome. There were so many things to say I had no idea where to start with that one, so I didn't. (But stay tuned, I still think there’s valuable stuff to mine on the topic of bumper stickers).

Where I will start is the same old place we always start—writing. Last week, I was editing the first two chapters of our second book, currently entitled Star Struck, when I noticed that we used a certain word three times. This happens when two people write together, whether it’s subliminal, by happenstance, or because we are of the same mind when it comes to choosing words. Whatever the case, it happens more often than we even realized. Take vomit, for example. Laura has mentioned (Warning! This Post May Self-Destruct!) that we couldn’t seem to get enough of vomit in the Pecking Order and, as it turns out, there’s not a great substitute for vomit. Puke is too coarse, throw-up is awkward, hurl is too colloquial, and so on and so forth.

In the first two chapters of Star Struck, we used the word precise twice and precision once. And as I was pondering a good alternative (I have yet to come up with one, by the way; precise sounds so crisp and neat its hard to replace), I realized that the difference between the words vomit and precise captures the difference between our first and second books, not only in terms of the style in which we're writing, but the way in which we're writing it. The genesis of The Pecking Order was two vignettes - one that discussed a giant fruit of the type a farmer ties to his flatbed truck to haul down to the county fair for the big blue ribbon prize (or something equally ridiculous); and a second about being lost in the grocery store in the middle of the day. After these two vignettes, which had nothing to do with one another (both were cut from the final draft), Laura and I proceeded to upchuck (see, I've learned my lesson) all over the computer screen, trying to cleanse our souls of the big firm litigation experience by writing about it. Upchuck writing: cathartic, yes; glimmers of brilliance, certainly; plot producing, no. So, and you know the story by now, we cleaned ourselves up and set about making a book of it.

We've done things differently with Star Struck, which, as an aside, is a title subject to change (a dear friend of mine scrunched up her face and said "Jackie Collins" when I told her). Before putting proverbial pen to paper, we toiled over the plot, sketched out major and minor characters, giving them birthdays and histories and quirks and hangups, and debated tone and point of view longer than you'd believe and definitely for more than several Sponge Bob episodes. Dare I say, we've approached it with--wait for it--precision. And it shows in the writing and the ease with which we edit and move on to the next chapter. The writing gods willing and the creek don't rise (method writing, I suppose - some of Star Struck is set in the south), we'll be finished in five months rather than five years. And while we might repeat the same word every now and then, we definitely don't feel like vomiting.

Choose Wisely

2009-07-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

A few words about word choice, inspired by my weekend.

I attended a wedding last weekend. In the evening. With my husband. Without my kids. With a full bar. So, you know, nirvana. I actually shaved my legs, plucked my brows, bronzed and glittered and coiffed, and poured myself into a far-too-expensive-but-worth-every-penny spaghetti-strapped cocktail dress. After dinner and cake and champagne, the dance floor opened. I didn't even care that my shoes hurt and I couldn't get very "low low low" in my tight dress. But after the fourth country song in a row, I did need a change of music. I shimmied up to the adorable DJ, and requested something rocking. I believe the exchange went something like this:

Me: Hey, Mister DJ, how about something rockin'? How about some KISS? (I may have actually stuck out my tongue and given him the "rock on" hand gesture and head bang. It's a bit fuzzy.)
Cute DJ: KISS? Who's that? I'm only 22.
Me, slightly slurring, patting aforementioned cute DJ on the arm, batting my eyes: I'm only 23 and I know who they are. Please?

So, back on the dance floor, what do you know, the DJ started playing Rock and Roll All Night. All of us of a certain age hooped and hollered, and the group I was with gave me high fives for asking. And then, it happened. Over the loud speaker, across the dance floor, the DJ said, "THIS GOES OUT TO THE 23 YEAR OLD COUGAR!"

Oh. No. He. Didn't. Cougar? Really? By definition, I believe a cougar must be in her forties. Me? I'm a young, perky 35. And I take issue with the characterization. In writing, and on the dance floor, for the love of women everywhere (and my ego), choose your words carefully. MILF would have sufficed, thank you very much.

Warning! This Post May Self-Destruct!

2009-06-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

We learned many things through the process of writing and struggling to publish The Pecking Order: we have a weird, inexplicable obsession with the word vomit; when a smarmy guy “in the know” sidles up to you at a bar and tells you to start a blog and generate a following, you should listen instead of putting it off for four years while the blogosphere expands all around you and publishing deals are made after the click of a mouse (note, we did not make the same mistake twice…check out fictionlimbo on twitter); perseverance really does pay off.

You know what else we learned? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie rule the world! (cue sinister laughter of the mwah, mwah, mwah variety). Seriously. You already know pop culture references permeate our blog entries. It should come as no surprise that The Pecking Order is also seasoned with dashes of pop culture. Off the top of my head, I know Dr. Phil, Leonardo DiCaprio, Linda Evans, and Matt Damon all make an appearance. Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie were in there, too . . . until we were told to take them out. As originally written, when Abby, The Pecking Order’s stretched-to-snapping lawyer/mother/wife, worries that her husband is spending too much time with his hot young protégé on an environmental law issue, she refers to them as a socially-conscious, aesthetically pleasing couple—as the “Brad and Angie of the East Bay.” Ms. Reality Check, the professional writer who helped us hone our draft, red-lined those words right off the page. We thought maybe the reference was too obscure (you know, if you’re living on a not yet discovered planet with no Earthly contact), so we changed it to “Brangelina.” More red ink. We relented and wrote “Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.” This time the word “NO!” screamed at us from the margins. But Leo and the others? No problem.

When we readied our final submission, we snuck our Brad and Angie reference back in. Our soon-to-be agent didn’t so much cross-out the reference as obliterate it so the original words were unrecognizable. In the legal profession (and, probably, in organized crime) we call that total destruction of evidence. Yet again, the other names we dropped were not an issue. Maybe it was a particularly bad sentence all around. Perhaps it was disjointed or threw off the rhythm. Or maybe, just maybe, their names are to be spoken only in hushed, reverent tones, and printed only with their permission because they do, actually, rule the world!

Portrait of an Artist?

2009-05-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Weiner, author of Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and the upcoming Best Friends Forever (and, as we recently discovered on twitter and her blog, generally hilarious person who we may have been separated from at birth and who should clearly be our new BFF), wrote a funny and inspirational blog post about her writing space. Apparently Entertainment Weekly is doing a piece on writers and their writing spaces, and she blogs about how (and I'm paraphrasing and condensing and hopefully not butchering here) she writes on a laptop in her closet, rather than in her fancy office, and how writing is about the margins and the stolen moments, not the ostentatious “arty-ness” of the endeavor. (“Arty-ness” is my word, by the by. Ms. Weiner would have used a much more fitting word. And, you know, probably one in existence. Maybe that's why she's the published one...).

Anyway, it occurred to me, writing not only occupies the margins . . . it shoves other parts of my life right off the page. Consider my legs, if you don’t mind. They are scaly. Reptilian, even. If some Hollywood genius decides to remake the television show V (which, OMG, I just found out is actually happening!), I’m all over it. You might ask, why? (Or, like my kids, you might just say “ew.”) I don’t have time for lotion. Every so often I’ll slather up, but usually, I rush from bed to shower to closet to kitchen to car with no time for extras. If I didn’t spend hours each day writing or researching or outlining, in addition to working and raising a family, I just might have time for a little lanolin love. (Or, let’s be honest, I might just start watching reality TV; I hear Daisy of Love is enthralling). Writing colors my other habits, too. Like the fact that I often can only fit in a workout at lunch, which means I end up practicing yoga in the corner of my office in my underwear on an afghan embroidered with cats. Classy.

Jennifer Weiner is a writer with a capital W. She has published novels and Entertainment Weekly talks to her about her writing habits. Me? I have leg hair so far beyond stubble it's frightening . . . and this is how I know I'm a writer. I don’t write as a hobby or write only according to a strict schedule or write when the house is quiet and the work is done. I write. I write even though I can’t find time for a real work-out and my kids had boxed mac-n-cheese three nights in a row and publishers aren’t knocking down my door. Writing is under my scaly skin. It is part of my soul.

Pity Party

2009-05-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Writing sucks and it’s hard. If you have a good idea, it’s really hard to turn it into a proof statement. Then it’s really hard to turn that proof statement into a fluid plot and an interesting story. Then it’s really hard to snowflake that story into the places, characters, and scenes that will make the book a book. But if you manage to do that, it’s really hard to pick the right words, to show the story instead of tell it, to set the right tone, to keep the right rhythm, to vary the sentence structure and not use words like “vomit” fifty times.

But even if you do manage to work through all that and write a good novel, it’s really hard to write a good query letter. But if you write a good query letter, it’s really hard to write a synopsis. Like pulling out toenails or chewing on foil hard. But if you manage to do all of these things, its really hard to wait the months and months after you’ve sent your query package to agents, many of whom won’t give you the courtesy of a response, and the rest of them who will just say no. And it’s really hard to wait 4 years for this process to finally come to fruition. But if do you manage to get an agent, it’s hard to listen to his or her criticism, stay up late making the changes, and then worry about whether they are good enough, whether you are good enough, and whether what you wrote is actually a book rather than thousands of words strung together for your own self-indulgent edification.

And then, when the agent loves your changes and agrees to market your book to major publishers, you think you’ve finally cleared the hurdles and that’s anything but hard. That’s wonderful. But then you wait and wait and wait and that waiting is the hardest part yet, because you’re finally so close to your goal. And then it gets harder when that first publisher rejects the manuscript for reasons unrelated to the quality of the writing. And then it’s a little less hard when additional publishers reject the novel for the same reasons. But then you do something silly like read the blog of a woman who writes mommy lit books about Bunco groups and has published not one, but two of these books and that’s hard. It’s so hard you do something base and unfair and lashy-y out-y like make a caustic comment about this author’s hair-do.

Then you try to let go of the hope that your mommy lit, chick lit, upscale commercial women’s fiction, whatever those ne’er-do-wells in the publishing world want to call it book will be published and you start the second book. And that’s hard. It’s all hard. And it sucks. And I won’t even qualify with a bunch of comments about how wonderfully fortunate I am and that I have my health, a wonderful family, a house, a dog, a very cool washer and dryer, and an express chill function in my fridge that chills my wine in 5 minutes. It’s my pity party and I don’t have to. Writing sucks and I hate it so much I can’t stop.

Updates and Chewing Gum

2009-05-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Update. I don’t know how Webster’s defines the word, because I’m too lazy to get up and get the dictionary off the shelf. Dictionary.com defines the word as “an act or instance of bringing a person up to date on a particular subject.” Laura-and-Kris-the-neurotic-writing-duo define “update” a little differently. It’s a six-letter word inducing nausea and heart palpitations; an act or instance of relaying information likely to kill a dream. Okay, so our agent, the lovely Ann Collette of the Helen Rees Literary Agency, is wonderful about keeping us in the loop. She champions our book and sends email updates of editors’ responses, always using the word “update” in the subject line. At first, we tore open these emails (virtually, of course) with gusto. They said things like, “another editor is interested in reading your ms,” or “Editor X makes four editors to ask for the ms.” (ms, by the by, is publishing lingo for manuscript. And, just for fun, the publishing world uses “softcover” not “paperback.” We’re so savvy now. ) Lately, however, when an “update” arrives, we’re inclined to leave it unopened, having already read our fair share of, “Editor Y likes the book but doesn’t think he can market it,” and “Editor Z thinks you are hilarious and the book is well written, but is going to pass.” Hear that? That’s the sound of our dream gasping for air, struggling to hang on. We still hope one of the editors with the ms will come to the rescue, but instead of sitting around praying for that possibility or brooding about the alternative (which we’ve done, extensively, times two), we’re chewing gum. I dated a guy in high school with a fantastic family. Dad watched The Simpsons and wore Hawaiian shirts, mom baked cookies and drank California Coolers, and little sister looked up to me and let me "teach" her gymnastics for hours on end. Mom believed Wrigley’s Spearmint gum was the answer to every problem. Carsick? Chew some gum. Headache? Chew some gum. Didn’t make the football team? Chew some gum. And though mom probably ensured vacation homes and convertibles for the kids’ future psychologists with her gum/denial therapy, there was some merit to her minty madness. In a word…distraction. If you want to stop dwelling on a problem, find something else to do. In our case, we’re not masticating our problems away . . . we’re writing. We finally sat down and started our new book in earnest and it’s added so much joy to our lives. This morning, for the first time in weeks, I woke up and the first thing I thought about was a particular character in the new book. I didn’t even wonder if there was an “update” on my BlackBerry until I was on the way to work. Score one for chewing gum.

Keeping the Dream Alive

2009-04-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

My family and I were blessed to visit Kris and her family in Germany last summer, and take a whirlwind tour of parts of Europe. I not only learned interesting facts about European history and culture (The Pieta is the only piece Michelangelo signed; don’t touch the fruit at the French open-air markets unless you enjoy public scorn and ridicule; Spongebob Squarepants transcends the language barrier) but also discovered some facts about myself and my family. Like, I have an unlimited capacity for French cheese and coconut gelato. Like, no matter how much beer I drink in Rome, I will never get drunk when I walk around in the July heat. Like, even though I haven’t practiced Catholicism in decades, it still feels right to make the sign of the cross in a Cathedral. Like, I can see God in the sun rising above St. Peter’s Basilica. Kris and I both noted something about our children at the Louvre. (And, yes, we took three boys, ages 4, 5, and 7, to the Louvre for 5 hours and it was, miraculously, wonderful.) Our kids speak in pop cultural references. The mummy at the Louvre warranted a Scooby Doo reference, naturally. Raphael and Michelangelo? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There we were, in the middle of this amazing museum, in the heart of culture, and our kids were referencing cartoons . . . Kris and I winced more than once. But, in retrospect, I understand. Of course our children speak in pop cultural references . . . the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. A quick look at our blog shows that tv shows and movies and books color our lives. It's also evidence that we have a particular affinity for pop culture from the ‘80s. And, apparently, there's a special place in my heart reserved for the Coreys. I’ve already referenced The Lost Boys; this time, it’s The Goonies.

If you haven’t seen The Goonies, you’re missing out! If you haven’t watched it in years, watch it again. (It holds up well, but you’ll be surprised at the incessant swearing. I suppose it says something about how sanitized adolescent movies have become that I flinched each time the “S” word was uttered. ) Remember that scene when the kids are below ground searching for One-Eyed Willie and they find a mountain of coins? They all start screaming “treasure!” and stuffing their pockets and thinking they’ve saved their family homes from the big bad developer until Mouth (Corey Feldman) stops them. He stands on the coins, water streaming down his face, and tells them they can’t take the coins. They’re at the bottom of a wishing well, and the coins represent wishes. To us, he says, the coins are treasure, but to the people who tossed them down the well, they are dreams. And you can’t take someone’s dreams.

We received two rejections from editors in the past few days. They complimented our writing style and noted that the book had much to offer, but passed for various reasons. I get it; to them, the book is a commodity. Especially in this market, they have to know they can sell it. But I can’t help wanting to scream, “it may be a commodity to you, but to us, it’s our dream! Don’t take our dream!” I just have to keep reminding myself, other editors are considering the book and, at the end of The Goonies, the kids find treasure after all.

Labor Pains

2009-03-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

At the risk of sharing too much, my husband and I are considering a second child. We've always wanted a second child, we always assumed we'd have a second child, but the years have slipped away and we have remained a one kid family. I know, I know, you're thinking big woop, you're not exactly the first family to consider a second child. But its been more than five years since we had our son and the prospect of going back to a house with diapers, wipes, and and cabinets I can't open, not to mention the sleep deprivation, oh my word, the sleep deprivation, well, you get the picture. Its down right scary. And that's just logistics; what about the "will I have time for this child, will I have time for my son, will I love this child as much, what if he or she isn't nearly as cool as the child I do have, will I ever have a quiet moment with my husband again, will I ever do yoga again, exactly how fat am I going to get and will it ever come off?" I have, if you can believe it, been accused of over-thinking things, which is clearly just unfair. Or maybe it isn't, I don't know, I should give that some thought.

When Laura and I asked our agent if there was anything we could do while the editors consider our book, she told us we could start another book. We've always wanted to write another book, we always assumed we'd write another book, but the years have passed and the second book has remained a mere twinkle in our eyes. And in many ways, it feels like The Pecking Order just got out of diapers and is finally able to feed itself. Writing a new book means brainstorming, character development, plot structure, writing, and editing, oh the editing. And that's just the logistics; what about the "will I have time for this book, will it be any good, am I really a writer, will Laura and I gel in the same way we always have, will I ever do yoga again, exactly how fat am I going to get and will it ever come off?" I have, if you can believe it, been accused of body image issues, which is clearly unfair. But do you think this blog makes me look fat?

Attempted self aware jokes aside, the prospect of another book is, like the prospect of another child, scary and overwhelming. But, in the end, the joy, love, and pride the first one brings is enough to make you (kind of) forget the pain and do it all over again. And so Laura and I begin again . . .anyone have an epidural handy??

5 Random Things You Didn't Know About Abby

2009-03-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

Those of you who've read our One Novel to Live blog entry know Abby Taylor is the protagonist of our novel, The Pecking Order. Laura and I both readily admit Abby began as an amalgam of the two of us at our most manic, most stretched (which was the original title of the book, by the way), most certifiably insane (now we're just uncertifiable). For the good of everyone involved, Abby has now, like all good fiction characters, taken on an identity and a life completely her own. If you know either one or both of us, you don't necessarily know Abby, but here are five tidbits to introduce and entice you. We hope you'll get to know her very well and very soon.

Abby calls only the most deserving people in her life by their given names. The rest receive only monikers--think The Pecker, The Blowhard, Man Slippers, and Sweat Rings.

Abby's been known, after equal parts peer pressure and booze, to remove her underwear in public places.

Abby's husband, Adam, is the love of her life, but kids, work, and the occasional ill-timed fart have rendered them celibate by default.

Abby's learned the hard way that a particularly messy diaper and a quick-footed toddler can wreak havoc at a dinner party.

Abby believes she can have it all, believes she can find balance, but when we first meet her, she has no idea where to look for it.

Here's to hoping you can take that journey with her.

The Morning After

2009-03-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

So, I’m feeling like a victim of Lestat today. Wow, does that reference date me, or what? No Edward Cullen for me—when I think of vampires, I think of Tom Cruise in the Anne Rice Vampstravaganza. (Sometimes I think of The Lost Boys, too, but I associate that movie less with blood-sucking and more with my own teen angst and a monster crush on Kiefer Sutherland). The point is, all hyperbole aside, I’m feeling drained. The last three days since securing a literary agent have been a whirlwind of excitement, incredulity, well-wishes, and congratulations. Of blog posts, Facebook notes, and many, many emails to and from Kris of the “can you believe this is happening” variety.

Today I woke up tired. And anxious. It’s like my boyfriend proposed and I ran around and told all my friends and picked a date and couldn’t focus on anything else for three days, and then I realized the wedding was a year away and even though I had a shiny new bauble on my finger and only wanted to focus on auditioning bands and tasting cakes, I still had to go to work and clean the litter box and pluck my eyebrows and . . . OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS . . .what if, in that year, we have a huge fight and don’t get married after all? So, yea, that’s how I’m feeling. I’m thrilled at our prospects, but, ever the realist and conditioned to contemplate failure (see, e.g., self-flagellation after every single test I’ve ever taken in my life), I’m also nervous about the process and, ultimately, the result. As best we understand, our agent is submitting queries (and then, if requested, the manuscript) to specific editors at the major publishing houses. If an editor likes it, he or she takes it to a larger group of editors. If they all sign off, they prepare a sales and marketing plan and determine whether to publish us and what they can offer to us. And, at that point, our screams of joy shatter the very screen you are reading this on. Now, don’t get me wrong, just getting the agent is cause for celebration and we are still beaming—but right now, there’s a teeny tiny part of me that can't help but worry my fiancé will leave me and I’ll feel embarrassed for getting so worked up about him in the first place.

Big News

2009-03-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

Kris and I often refer to our relationship as yin and yang, by which we mean we are complementary opposites within a greater whole. (Note that I used the word “complementary” as opposed to “complimentary.” I’ll never forget a business trip to San Francisco, when I stayed in a hotel that had a room service menu certain to raise Grammar Girl’s ire. The menu listed “tea, with compliments.” Imagine my dismay when, after a particularly harrowing day listening to Constitutional Law updates and statistics on the high number of alcoholics in the legal profession, I ordered said tea and it arrived with lemon, honey, cream, and sugar, instead of flattering remarks about my beauty and sense of style. False advertising, I say.) Our friendship is the circle, itself, and each of us, at any given time, tends to occupy the yin (black) or yang (white) components of that circle—the comma or the apostrophe. This is most apparent in our attitudes toward our book, The Pecking Order. Over the past few years, I can’t count how many times Kris or I considered throwing in the proverbial towel (which, in this case, would have involved throwing the laptop out the window), only to call the other and hear how excited and optimistic she was about the book’s prospects. Or how many times one of us emailed words of encouragement out of the blue, not knowing the other was slumped in front of a monitor with writer’s block, finishing a second box of Junior Mints and flirting with the blues. I believe this symbiotic dynamic—which cannot be manufactured, but must exist organically between two people—is largely to account for not only the ease with which we write together, but also the depth of our friendship (other factors include a shared affinity for French macaroons, a mutual desire to simplify our lives, and the fact that both of us have children who are preoccupied with bodily functions).

But today . . . today we are all yang. Today, that circle is bright white and burns with the intensity of the Vegas strip. For, today . . . cover your ears, I’m about to scream . . . WE ARE REPRESENTED AUTHORS! WE HAVE A LITERARY AGENT! Remember that agent who expressed interest in working with us on a rewrite back in November? (Of course you do, because you diligently read each of our blog posts and stay up at night worried about our future, right? God bless you.) Well, she worked with us. We rewrote. She read. She loved it. She’s our agent! Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that . . . this is the culmination of four-plus years of hard work, of carpal tunnel, crashed computers, wrestling with mail merge, deciphering the intent behind phantom agent emails, and accepting disappointment. Of many, many, dark, yin moments. But through it all, we never let hope die completely; at least one of us always kept a toe (desperately in need of a pedicure, most likely) on the light side. We know we have a long road ahead of us, filled with prospective editors and rewrites and who-knows-what-else. But, man, does it feel like we cleared a hurdle bigger than Ryan Seacrest’s monthly salon bill. We’ll post updates on the process and our progress but, in the meantime, if you happen to see one of us . . . you’d better bring your sunglasses, because we are shining!

If You Love Something Set It Free and Other Bad Cliches

2009-03-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

There are certain things I remember from the '80s that no one else seems to remember. The Land of the Lost, for example. That might be one of the best shows ever (They fall over a waterfall into the Cretaceous Period! C'mon, how can you go wrong with that?) and, yet, no one I know can have a meaningful discussion about Chakka or the Slee Stacks. The movie North Shore and that zany surfer Turtle. Why does no one remember Turtle? At times, I've gone so far as to wonder whether I manufactured these memories --perhaps my jelly sandals were a little too tight, my fluorescent leggings a little too bright, who knows.

But of all my '80s memories, Blue Mountain greeting cards, for some reason, are one of my favorites. You know, the cards with their own special rack, the ones with the purposefully frayed edge, sappy cursive writing and putrid pastel colors. They are like Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy, only completely serious. They generally have three full paragraphs of sap that would put any soap opera monologue to shame and, at the age of 14, I was certain the author of this stunning prose saw straight into my heart. I still remember perusing the rack, nursing a broken heart because Chucky Lang broke up with me after a few short weeks of whirlwind-baseball-field-snack-bar romance, and coming across a card that was printed with some overdone cliche about loving something and setting it free and when and whether it would come back.

If you've read this blog, you know how Laura and I love The Pecking Order. Well, sometime in 2008, we both set it free. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but we both felt the release and it was liberating. When we started writing, we held the book so tightly our knuckles were white. We tried to squeeze from it an exit from the firm, which was sucking out our souls like one of JK Rowling's Dementors, not to mention wreaking havoc in our marriages, our friendships, and with our health. We just knew that along with an agent would come balance and happiness and wholeness and consciousness in all its splendor. Forget The Secret; what we needed was an advance.

In time we both realized in our strange cosmically connected way that maybe there was something to what Oprah, Eckhardt, our pastors, and our yoga instructors were saying. Perhaps, just perhaps, happiness and wholeness and consciousness would not be found in the pages of our yet to be published novel. Sure, we had worked hard to write it and even harder to find it a publishing home, but what we really needed to do was (to use another bad cliche) look inside ourselves. And as it turned out, we had work to do there, too. And with that work, we unshackled The Pecking Order at long last and put the responsibility on the right parties. Don't get me wrong, neither one of us sits around meditating or moves through life in complete zen; we still occasionally yell at our kids, snap at our husbands, and curse in traffic, but not nearly as much. And what we've learned is something I was taught twenty years ago by the Blue Mountain greeting card - if you love something, truly love something, set it free and it will come back to you better and bigger than it ever was. And thank goodness (see Big News), unlike Chucky Lang, The Pecking Order did.

Stupid in Germany

2009-02-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

I am a word person. In college, my best friend bought me a word of the day calendar. In law school, I embraced words like 'tautology' and 'specious', using them not just in class, but also in social situations. I'm sorry friends and thank you for still being my friends. And while I am not a collector of things - beanie babies and Hummels just aren't my speed - words have a value all their own. For years I've placed the best of them in my mental curio cabinet with care, displaying them proudly and in a way that has managed to serve me relatively well both in writing and the practice of law.

When I decided to take a hiatus from work and move with my family to Germany for the better part of 2008, I had grand plans not only to read the likes of Roth, Carver, and Coelho, but also to pen stories like Conroy. And, in between traveling, hosting guests, my son starting kindergarten, and marathon training, I did read those authors. And while I'm not ready to take on The Prince of Tides, I did write, among other things, two stories that at least don't make me wince when I read them. But something happened on the way to the Biergarten with respect to my verbal communication. I started losing words, unable to complete sentences, snapping my fingers and saying "you know, that one word, you KNOW. . ." And the word was often something like 'significant' or 'valuable' - not exactly high dollar vocabulary. Its as if the Riesling or the male Speedo exposure or the shades of red hair dye, ubiquitous as they were unfortunate, unlocked that mental curio cabinet and the words fell out and rolled under my cerebral cortex or some other place I no longer knew the name for. In other words people, I got stupid in Germany.

Like many such declines, it was insidious, happening little by little, day by day. As my interaction with the English speaking waned, so did my vocabulary, my ability to speak in complex sentences, my recall of multi syllabic words. And while I love my alone time, I don't think it helped matters that, for most of the day, I was alone with my own thoughts. My apparently increasingly simple thoughts.

When it came time to pack up the lederhosen and beer steins, my compromised diction and I weren't quite ready to leave. The ability to drive to Paris for the weekend or hop a quick flight to Italy never did lose its appeal. On the other hand, I missed my family and my family of friends, the people who add color to my life in a way not even Paris can. I've been back for over a month now and have been happily steeping in the company of those friends and family. And while I always knew they brought color to my life, I didn't readily realize they also made me smart. But they do. Our conversations, our kidding around, our confidences; all of that is valuable in more ways than I ever imagined. And slowly, little by little, I'm locating and replacing the contents of my mental curio cabinet. In fact, I'm pretty sure just last week I strung together a seven word sentence. And for that, my friends, I thank you and promise never again to use tautology in social conversation.

Two Roads Diverged...

2009-02-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

Kris and I are at a crossroads of sorts. (By the by, each time I use the word “crossroads,” I picture that scene from The Muppet Movie where Kermit tells Fozzie to turn left at the “fork in the road.” In perfect Muppet fashion, they soon come upon an actual giant fork stabbed into the ground.) Kris recently returned from her great European adventure and is settling back into American life, so it’s to be expected in her case. Me, I’m stripping wallpaper—not the kind of activity that generally raises life-altering questions, but there you go.
In a nutshell, we’re wrestling with our writing habits—whether we’re disciplined enough to become writers. (I also wonder whether one “is” a writer or “becomes” a writer, but I’ll save that for another day. Let’s just say we wonder whether we’re sufficiently disciplined to write for a living. Or to even get published once, for that matter.) As rabid fans of those who purvey the written word (we are the literary equivalent of groupies), we often search for information about authors we love. What inspires them? How did they start? What makes them tick? We are particularly interested in writing habits and advice for writers. For example, on her website, Jodi Picoult explains she has a firm discipline. She doesn’t believe in writer’s block, because in the early days when she had to fit writing around her children’s schedules, she couldn’t afford the luxury of writer’s block. She generally writes all day, every day, but not on weekends, and she writes rather quickly.
We don’t write all day, every day. We sometimes go days, nay weeks, on end without writing. We both have small children to raise, dinners to cook, paychecks to earn, and, in my case, moldy wallpaper to strip. There are soccer games and classroom help and rare, stolen, intimate moments with husbands. We exercise, clean our houses, and catch up with friends on occasion. I’ll be honest. At night when I finally have a couple of free hours, sometimes Cabernet and a good book seem infinitely more enticing than a blank word document and a mocking cursor. And yet, we both want (dare I say, need) to write. We both crave creativity. But do we want it badly enough to devote every spare moment to it? And if we have to question our dedication, do we even have any business writing in the first place? After all, Ms. Picoult has three kids, and she managed to make it work.
Of course, I’m terrified a potential agent will read this and question our work ethic. (Note to agents: if you show us even the whisper of interest, we will spin straw into gold for you.) And then I have to remind myself: we have written a book. We wrote over 250 pages while working at the kind of law firm you read about in Grisham novels. We wrote briefs and motions all day, six days a week, and then stole time in the early morning and evening hours to create The Pecking Order. We have effectively rewritten the book twice. We spent countless hours on the synopsis, outline, and query letters, not to mention time spent researching agents and publishers. The fact that we’ve recently taken a much-needed breather from daily novel writing(during which I wrote a short story and Kris wrote two short stories and took a writing class), does not diminish our previous efforts; it does not portend a future devoid of creativity.
As that most admirable of writers, Elizabeth Gilbert, says, it’s natural to be disappointed in both the substance and process of our writing. But, it is important that we continue to write, nonetheless—that we continue to put our work, our soul’s language, out there. According to Ms. Gilbert, strict discipline in writing is sometimes overrated, but self-forgiveness is essential.
And so, I forgive myself for not writing in every spare moment. I, for one, needed a break. I needed to do something mindless—something that, unlike writing, was finite. At some point, I will have stripped my wallpaper and repainted my bathroom and I’ll reevaluate my time. For now, I’m staring at that giant fork and taking the “easy street,” knowing that the road runs both ways, and I’ll be back here again in no time, hopefully refreshed and ready to charge (pen in hand) off the beaten path once again.

Let Us Give Thanks

2008-11-24T21:57:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you cross turkey, cigars, shell shock, and needles? My childhood Thanksgiving tradition, of course. For almost 20 years, my family eschewed the hyper-American ritual of dressing in Cosby-esque sweaters, gathering with extended kin, and gorging on roast beast and stuffing while the grunts and groans on the gridiron bellowed from the TV. Instead, we created our own tradition (or, more accurately, my parents did – I was too young to really have a say in such matters). Around 1984, my family and four other families decided to celebrate Thanksgiving together. The adults were a who’s who of our small town—educators and PTA presidents and business owners and lawyers and, importantly, a pharmacist, a doctor, and a nurse. That first year, sometime after dinner, when once-full wine bottles had turned into candle holders, the pharmacist, the doctor, and the nurse harangued the lone pregnant woman into taking them for a drive. They returned with more wine and . . . flu shots. The doctor and the pharmacist conversed about proper dosage, and the nurse administered a shot to each of us. Mind you, this was before flu shots were all the rage—before your local supermarket used flu shot clinics as an enticement. While we were still rubbing our shoulders, cigars appeared, courtesy of the lawyer. Those of us who had been at the kiddie table snuck outside with the adults and tried to blend into the darkness so the adults wouldn’t shoo us away. Under a haze of smoke, I heard my first Vietnam stories. My dad and the lawyer had both served during the war, but I’d never heard it mentioned at home. They joked and they laughed, but their vocal cords were strung tight. I didn’t realize until years later that my dad couldn’t talk about it with anyone but a fellow veteran—we just wouldn’t understand.

For the next two decades, each of the five families (sounds like the Godfather, doesn’t it) traded hosting duties. Sometimes one family couldn’t make it, but the tradition continued, nonetheless. Boyfriends and girlfriends came and went, some of us moved to the adult table, and I introduced first my husband, and then a third generation, to the mix. Still, the important things remained constant—turkey, cigars, Vietnam stories, and flu shots (administered in the later years by the second generation of doctors, while the second generation of lawyers nervously looked on). We haven’t had one of those Thanksgivings for 5 years. My parents divorced, most of the kids live out of the area, cigars are bad for you, and experts recommend getting the flu shot in October. But that’s okay – my husband and I have new traditions involving nephews, Santa pictures, board games, Rock Band, good red wine, and homemade bread. It’s a more standard way to celebrate the holiday, but it’s still lovely, and no one comes at me with a syringe.

Not so standard is “Jayne Lynne’s” Thanksgiving tradition. Oh yes, even though she’s only our pen name, she has her own Thanksgiving tradition. For four years, Kris and I, in Jayne Lynne’s name, have done the same thing every Thanksgiving . . . scrambled to get queries and manuscripts to the post office. The very first year of The Pecking Order, when Liza Dawson showed interest, we made ourselves sick putting the manuscript together late at night after working 16-hour days at the Firm. It was imperative that she received it before Thanksgiving, in case her tradition involved reading manuscripts by a crackling fire in Aspen. The next few years, we found ourselves somehow sending out more queries or responding to manuscript requests just before Thanksgiving. Nothing like giving yourself more to do before hosting dozens of people in your home. Last year, we reworked the manuscript at an agent’s suggestion over Thanksgiving. This year, we thought we were ahead of the game. We sent out queries in October (around the same time I got my flu shot). But, like the Velveeta commentary accompanying the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, some things never change. An agent responded this week, indicating she loved our voice, would like to read the manuscript, and might be interested in working with us on a revision. I think I now know what Jayne Lynne’s Thanksgiving tradition is all about – hope, faith, and keeping the dream alive. For the love of the Pilgrims, Hallelujah! And, whatever your tradition, blessings to you and yours.

Change Came to Rammelsbach Germany

2008-11-16T23:29:00.000-08:00

I recently spent several hours huddled around the desk in our spare bedroom, shuffling letters to agents, excerpts from our book, and the book synopsis (a beast of a document warranting its own blog entry altogether) into various piles. I cross checked literary agent addresses and submission requirements before sliding the papers into envelopes and off into the world with a wink and a promise. Only, it wasn’t really a wink. It was more like a twitch. You see, this is the not the first time we’ve gone through this query process for the The Pecking Order. It is, however, the last.

And as I drove to the US post office on the military installation closest to our house here in Germany, I wondered if I should have stuck a note in the envelopes letting the agents know I had to clear armed military guards to reach them. Surely that would get The Pecking Order the attention I believe it deserves--an agent would see the military APO return address, read my note, and feel duty bound to read the manuscript. And The Pecking Order would be as good as on the shelves. I didn’t include such a note, of course. Unlike when we first started this process, when I'm not sure I was beyond including naked photographs of myself (and Laura, witting or unwitting) to get the book noticed, I couldn’t muster the energy to be inspired or hopeful. I don’t know if it was the dreary weather, the aforementioned armed military guards, or the fact that sometimes the pursuit of a dream is made up of doubts and cynicism and self-flagellation of the “who do you think you are and and why can’t you just do what you’re trained to do, go forth, and continue being a lawyer” variety. Whatever the reason, I unceremoniously tossed the envelopes into the mouth of the squat blue mailbox and then stopped by the store for dish towels and toilet paper.

The following morning I was in bed with the computer on my lap. If that conjures up a vision of sloth and indulgence, you’re spot on. (Here’s where I qualify and self-promote - I'm training for the Florence marathon, so I’m not generally slothy, just occasionally, especially on gray German mornings, and sometimes after a long evening with my friends Moet & Chandon, Tattinger, Mumm, I could go on and on . . .). It was post-election and I was scanning the headlines. (We have no television programming in Germany and so we skated through election season free of talking heads, hyperbolic campaign commercials, and punditry.) I came across will.i.am.'s Yes We Can video. And, in that instant, with tears streaming down my face, I knew we could. I knew we could in that Oprah-live-only-your-best-life-be-always-in-relentless-pursuit-of-your-dream kind of way. No, it might not be The Pecking Order and, yes, we might ultimately have to bury Abby in the graveyard of unpublished fiction. But it will be something-a short story, a new novel. Whatever the case, I know we can.

High-Class Problems

2008-10-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Boy, if we had a nickel for every time someone asked us, “how do you write together?” Well, let’s just say we could buy our way into the publishing world, like Ethan Hawke or Jewel. (Though there may be some sort of monetary penalty for using that terrible “nickel” cliché.) It’s a good question, though, and at some point we’ll sit down and write (together, of course) a long, truthful answer full of insight, war stories, and a-ha moments (I’m referring to epiphanies, of course, not the awesome Norwegian pop trio). For now, let me just generalize. We write well together because we’re wired the same way. We’re both pleasers. We both thrive on order and organization (some might say we’re obsessed with order and organization, and to those people I say, let’s make a color-coded list of the salient points in your argument and address them one by one). And we both have anxiety issues.

Truthfully, to say Kris and I have anxiety issues is like saying David Beckham is kind-of-okay-looking. We’re strung higher than a boy-band falsetto. It’s tempting to blame this facet of our personality on the years spent slaving away at a big law firm. And yes, the firm, with its deadlines, impossible billable-hour requirement, partner power plays, and litigation disasters (which, as Abby will tell you in The Pecking Order, “appear out of nowhere like Midwestern tornadoes”) can surely be blamed for at least one or two of my permanent frown lines. But there’s a chicken and egg dynamic at play, as well. I think we both can now admit (after years of collective therapy and a large dose of much-needed hindsight) that we were drawn to litigation in the first place partly because of our anxious nature. We understand stress. When we were working at the firm, we bathed in stress. Stress sustained us like a drug. And, like a drug, it affected the non-firm aspects of our life. The book was no exception.

When The Pecking Order was still in its infancy, all shiny and cuddly and new, unmarred by criticism and rejection, we created anxiety. We fabricated problems which, looking back now (battle-scarred and thick-skinned by four years of rewrites, critique, refusals, and stagnancy) can only be described as high-class. I wish-I-may-wish-I-might actually have such problems today. We worried about whether the firm would sue us when our book became a success, because the fictional characters somewhat resembled our bosses and colleagues. We rented a P.O. Box near the firm so we could check it together, because we worried if we used a home address one of us would have the pleasure of reading the inevitable acceptance letter before the other. Then we worried our co-workers thought we were having a lesbian love affair because we snuck off in secret to check the box every day. When two agents showed interest at the same time, we obsessed over what to do if and when both wanted to represent us. We stayed up until 4:00 a.m. for an entire week after work, because we convinced ourselves all was lost if Liza Dawson didn’t have the manuscript on her desk before Thanksgiving. Because, you know, obviously she was going to read it on her private jet to the Bahamas or wherever fancy agents go during the holidays. We answered our phones at all hours of the day and night, during dinner, and at the movie theatre, just in case an agent had to reach us right then! We stressed about whether to take our children on the book tour with us, and what to wear on The Today Show. We fretted over the sex scenes, concerned about the impact on our mothers when the book hit the shelves.

Seriously. Sounds crazy, but at the time, these issues seemed so important, so real. The book consumed our thoughts, and created strong, sometimes irrational emotions - like a new love affair. The idea of the book was exciting, but it wasn’t grounded in reality. Now, we’ve eased into a comfortable kind of anxiety – a long-term relationship with real problems, like Liza Dawson's phantom e-mail, and the teeny-tiny little fact that we still don’t have an agent. But even these problems no longer nibble away at our stomach linings. The book stands on its own, we’re proud of it, and we’re working to get it published. If the firm sues us, we’ll deal with it. If two agents want us, we should be so lucky. If an agent gets our voicemail, he or she will leave a message (though if it's Liza, that message will no doubt be left as she's driving through a tunnel and we will be able to make out only her name). As for the sex scenes . . . Shoot, at this point we’d write porn starring our parents if it would get us published.

Living in the Brackets

2008-10-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

When I was 18 and in college, I started hearing the term “living in the margins” to describe those people who, for whatever reason, don't live in what is generally considered mainstream society. The burgeoning psuedo intellectual in me loved this phrase. I commandeered it. I took it as my own and in all my baseless arrogant glory, repeated it as often as possible, definitely much more than necessary, and no doubt incorrectly at times. I did the same thing with the word paradigm. "Paradigm shift" was a particular favorite. I also insisted upon calling my 18 year old pledge sisters "women". And not just women, but "ahhhhmaaaazing women". And it’s not necessarily that they weren’t amazing (or women for that matter), but it just seems a little much, especially considering they had been out of their parents' homes for all of 63 days, were spilling bong water all over their sheets, and puking out of their dorm windows. But I digress.

While some people live in the margins, as a writer I live, and die, in the brackets. There are those who know exactly of what I write. (Or what I write of. Don't look at me, Grammar Girl says its perfectly proper to end a sentence with a preposition.) For those fortunate folks who don’t, here’s how it goes: you're writing, it’s flowing, you have a grasp on the big picture, and the small stuff is coming together. Then, boom, you hit a spot where you know just what you need-a tight description, the perfect metaphor, whatever. But your brain refuses to cooperate. And its there, you can feel it, almost see it meandering around, elusive, in the gray matter. In this situation there are those who persevere, who sit and wait until it comes, perhaps flip through a thesaurus or a dictionary. Not me. Or Laura for that matter, which is one of the million reasons we are kindred writing spirits. Instead, after a long writing session, our word documents are filled with this: [insert description here]. And let’s call a spade a spade - its procrastination, one of my many unproductive strong suits. But in that moment I choose to bracket, I rationalize that I need to move forward. And I have faith - no I don’t just have faith - I know the right words will come . . . later.

And so I move on, clicking the keyboard and patting myself on the back until I finish the chapter or paragraph or scene, read it and re-discover the brackets. It’s like spending hours cleaning your house only to realize you forgot to clean the toilet. What were my greatest friends turn into my greatest foes. And, sure, sometimes the words come easily. But other times, most of the time, it might as well read [F--- you] in those brackets. And this, my friends, is one of the many upsides of having a kindred writing spirit. If the brackets are telling me to do something vulgar, I know they will be kinder to Laura and that she will find the word or phrase that eluded me. Its often a better word or phrase. And I think she feels the same; her brackets just seem to like me a little more. But most of us are not so fortunate to have the better half of a Jayne Lynne at their disposal. So my fellow writers, in the spirit of the paradigm-shifting, margin-living writer William Shakespeare, to bracket or not to bracket, that is the question . . .

One Novel to Live

2008-10-08T01:58:00.000-07:00

One of the seven thousand reasons I love David Sedaris is his willingness to embrace the soap opera. Not with some convoluted, high-brow argument that the soap opera is an overlooked art, but rather for its beautiful absurdity and the fact that it played a mentionable, if not significant, role in his formative years. And here’s my horribly predictable confession: I love soap operas. No, let’s be clear. I love my soap operas. It’s like sports that way. You don’t just love baseball or football or basketball; you love the Giants, the Niners, or the Lakers. I’m a CBS soap fan myself, but I'm not afraid to spend an hour with Bo and Hope, Marlena and John, and whatever purgatorial beast is haunting the docks of Salem these days. And I won’t mention Passions other than to thank the go fug girls for blazing the trail so other smart women can admit they watched something so, so wrong.

The Pecking Order, as it turns out, is our own personal soap opera. It's on live feed in our heads, not to mention our hearts. The protagonist, Abigail Taylor, is our plucky heroine-our Reva, our Cricket (I grew up in the 80's - she'll always be Cricket to me). And as any faithful soap fan will tell you, the role of plucky heroine is not for the faint of heart. There are murders and miscarriages, affairs and kidnappings, demonic possessions and organized crime. Children often grow 10 years in the span of 2 without so much as a second glance or unreasonable explanation. Our Abby (as Laura and I call our heroine) doesn't have hyper-speed-growth kids or a philandering, murderous husband who is really her brother, but she faces her fair share of battles, nonetheless. She's a stretch-mark-covered, billable-hour-crazed BlackBerry junkie trying to hold her marriage together and make partner at a premier law firm - a heroic, if not impossible, endeavor. In Abby's words, she's a "half-ass lawyer, part-time mother, and non-existent wife." She has a sadistic boss, backstabbing colleagues, and a neglected husband who's been spending too much time with a hot young female friend. So sure, she may not have to dress like she's going to the prom every day and, no, she hasn't been stalked by a man-child sorcerer, but her road has its fair share of bumps.

Abby's life outside the book has been full of twists and turns, as well. She's had fleeting success (like the many marriages of Ridge and Brook) and repeated failures (also like the many marriages of Ridge and Brook). She’s been tweaked and reinvented more times than Erica Kane's been married. She’s evolved with each successive draft, so much so we realized we didn’t even like the first iteration of Abby - the woman we created and about whom we wrote nearly 100,000 words. I’m sure that’s an issue ripe for psychological analysis, but I’ll leave that to Marlena.

Like any good woman with a favorite soap character, we've stuck by Abby. We've seen her through the toughest of times; we love her despite of and because of our past together. We are proud of who she’s become and we think you’d like her, too. You might even enjoy spending about 300 pages with her, but the problem is we haven't yet found someone to agree with us. We’ve been close, so close there were committees discussing our manuscript. And while they were doing so, we saw ourselves perfectly air-brushed on the back flap; we felt the raised title on the velvety soft cover. But we visualized too soon. The Pecking Order remains unpublished and Abby now languishes in the bowels of our computer, saving her family and charting a path for working moms everywhere like the proverbial tree that falls in the woods. She's in Fiction Limbo. Publishing purgatory. The only thing left for us is to query more agents and write this blog in hopes of sharing her with the world. Or we could grab Tabitha, have a séance, and raise John Black from the dead so he can save our lovely heroine from this wretched fate.

Ms. Reality Check's Proof Statement

2008-10-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Well, we did it again. We started writing without a Proof Statement. Know what that is? Yea, we didn’t either. We wrote our rambling, plot-thin, 94,000-word first draft of The Pecking Order without having heard of a Proof Statement. (Well, that’s not entirely true. I think I may have heard of a Proof Statement in high school geometry, maybe. Then again, I’m not sure. I became a lawyer partly so I wouldn’t have to think about math.) After a couple of rounds of rejections we had our first meeting with the local professional writer who agreed to give us a private workshop—let’s call her Ms. Reality Check. We drove to her house in the country, handed her a cool grand, and perched on the edge of our folding chairs like baby birds waiting for mama’s return. We waited for words of wisdom, for insight into our manuscript. For the name of an agent. “What’s your Proof Statement?” she asked us. We looked at each other and stammered inaudibly for a few moments. You’d think two litigators would feel comfortable answering a question on the spot, but this didn’t come from the bench. Now we had to defend our own personal work, our passion, our proverbial baby. And we were afraid she’d kick us to the curb (or the gravel road, as it were) when she found out we were mere amateurs; that we didn’t even know what a Proof Statement was. (A ridiculous fear, really, because who else would pay for a professional writer to butcher their life’s work if not an amateur? I doubt Stephen King pays the Castle Rock junior college English professor to give him pointers). Ms. Reality Check elaborated.

“Every written work must have a Proof Statement. Every single word in your manuscript should support your Proof Statement. You should write it down and tape it to your computer. It should state, ‘I am writing this to prove that . . . .’”

My heart stopped.

“So,” she continued, “what’s your Proof Statement? Why are you writing this book?”

Kris and I glanced at each other. I’ve never asked her, but I can bet some of my initial thoughts were somersaulting through her cerebral cortex, too. We’re writing to prove we’re more than litigators. We’re writing to prove law school was just a stepping stone on the path to bigger and better things. We’re writing to prove it’s possible to pay down mountains of student loan debt without selling our souls to the firm. We’re writing to prove that tax law and the rules of intestate succession and the elements of inchoate crimes didn’t suck all the creative juices from our marrow.

But I responded, “We’re writing to prove you can’t have it all.”

Kris’s eyes met mine in an ocular high five. We leaned back in anticipation of Ms. Reality Check's praise.

“That’s not a Proof Statement,” she said. “It’s a truism. Try again. Come back when you have one.”

Oh crap. We had toiled, for years, over 350 pages that had no proof statement and, therefore, no purpose. We struggled for two weeks to come up with a Proof Statement, and finally landed on, “We’re writing to prove that everyone has to make difficult choices when they try to have it all.” She loved it. Now, why our first stab was a truism, but this was a Proof Statement is still a bit filmy, but I’m over it at this point. And I will say, despite my initial grumblings (I seriously considered asking for a refund and vowing to only show my work to family members who would, no doubt, lavish it with praise), the Proof Statement helped us have a focal point, especially when our writing felt forced. More often than not, when we struggled we’d come back to the Proof Statement and realize the scene didn’t shore up the book’s theme. Many well-written, witty sentences became victims of the delete key because they didn’t fit the Proof Statement. At least one character lost her fictional life—erased from the pages forever because we realized she was superfluous. The Proof Statement solidified our vision . . . who knew? I, for one, will never sit down to write another piece without taking that pivotal first step. And yet, we didn’t come up with a Proof Statement before beginning this blog. So why are we writing? To feel relevant? To work together again? To satiate our lust for the written word? Probably all of the above, but if I had to distill it down to one overly broad thematic sentence . . . we’re writing this blog to prove that there’s life after rejection . . . even if we have to artificially create it.

The Liza Dawson Effect

2008-09-26T01:17:00.000-07:00

What causes two up-and-coming litigators at an international law firm to morph into angst-ridden artists? I think Laura and I can soundly blame New York literary agent, Liza Dawson, for the the fact that we now embody the cliché of neurotic aspiring writers. Were we not also room mothers, soccer coaches, yoga junkies, and nutrition freaks, I’m pretty sure we’d both be cloaked in black with cigarettes wedged permanently between our fingers. We would no doubt pass hours in a gritty coffee shop debating existentialism and mocking the mainstream. On the other hand, had no one shown interest when we sprinkled the literary world with our The Pecking Order query over 4 years ago, we likely would have cashed it in and dove back, headlong, into the billable hour abyss. We would have continued killing ourselves for the large law firm . . . continued whittling away our souls . . . but at least we would have been the richer for it – Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin richer, not Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle richer. Oh, and how a new pair of heels rivals a deep downward dog any day of the week. But someone did show interest. The “I’d be happy to read the first 100 pages” Liza scribbled in the upper right hand corner of our query letter sucked us in like Facebook and there was no turning back.

It turns out, though, that Liza Dawson is like my high school boyfriend. Technically, I’m still going out with him (and therefore cheating on him with my husband of 10 years) because we never officially broke up. Instead, we simply stopped speaking to each other after five years of dramatic, adolescent love. The break-up is clearly implied and/or understood, but I’m a lawyer, and I can’t help but stick to the formalities. It’s the same thing with Liza. We readied the manuscript, held it like a newborn as we handed it to the post office employee, and then proceeded to check e-mail and cell phone messages incessantly. We calculated time down to the last minute, trying to guess who opened Liza's mail, at what time, and what would happen if the manuscript arrived on a Friday. Did she work on the weekend? Would she shove her desk clean when it arrived and devour our manuscript like the delicacy that it was? We built a one-sided relationship with this woman – one in which we swept off to New York to sign papers, sip champagne, and mingle with Liz Gilbert and Lauren Weisenberger, because that is clearly what happens when you actually land a literary agent. As time passed, we began to spin out scenarios that became less like new love and more like a desperate break-up. We were the raw and rejected, the what-not-to-do girls, the How to Lose an Agent Who Never Actually Represented You in 10 days girls. We refreshed our e-mail incessantly, counted the calendar days obsessively, called and hung up, called and left messages. We even spoke to her once. She was very kind, said she was looking forward to reading our work and would be back with us soon. Four years later, we have yet to receive a clear message from Liza.

But for all the insufferable waiting, the rejection, and, most importantly, the initial interest, we thank her. Oh sure, there have been agents since Liza. Agents who summarily rejected us, agents who praised our work, even an agent who gave us detailed, constructive criticism and then was kind enough to read the manuscript again after we re-wrote it entirely. Those agents have shaped our work, certainly. With them we have had our hopes raised and dashed and raised again, enough to continue writing despite full-time jobs, to continue sending The Pecking Order into the world, continue churning out short stories, blog entries, and the beginning of another novel. But it all comes back to Liza and those few scribbled words - "I'd be happy to read the first 100 pages." With her came the genesis of hope, the pursuit of a dream. For that we thank her and from her we need nothing more.

We did finally receive an e-mail response from Liza Dawson, just a few months ago. After living a lifetime of emotions in milliseconds, we opened the e-mail to find nothing there. It was as if someone just hit reply and then send, without writing any text in the message. I suppose one could argue that rejection was implied, kind of like with my high school boyfriend, but on the other hand, someone who’s really inspired by the work might actually have been too excited, too anxious, and accidentally hit send before crafting the e-mail, right? So we wrote her back. Just to make sure. And I’m sure she’ll e-mail any day now.