On My Way Back Home

I’m spending my last couple hours at Starved Rock sitting in front of the fireplace in the Great Hall, soaking up the atmosphere. It has been a good vacation despite my frustrations borne of childhood issues temporarily clouding my perception.

I need to get back to writing. This will be easily cured by a big project in the form of my developmental edit of Whose Hearts are Mountains. The frustration, though, is that I don’t have any ideas on the back burner, neither short story nor novel. I don’t like feeling so tenuous about my attachment to writing.

I need to have a resolution that I will write two hours a day once more. It’s been a while since I’ve spent that much time — no, I take that back; I was writing/editing four hours a day cleaning up Whose Hearts are Mountains in November.

Does anyone have any story ideas I can play around with?

Christmas and the Days After

It’s Christmas day, and I’m sitting in the Great Hall at Starved Rock State Park, in front of the fireplace. My husband just snapped a picture of the fireplace and some Christmas decor for us:

Despite my fretting, it has been a good Christmas. I knew pretty much what I was getting before Christmas, because that’s how Richard and I do our shopping. He managed to surprise me with the chocolate in the stocking (given that I’m eating responsibly again, the chocolate should lasr me a long time.

Once Christmas is over, I’m going to need to strategize. January and February are hard for me, particularly because the weather is so bleak and the celebrations are over. I’m more prone to depression at this time. I will have to find things to celebrate and time to celebrate them until springtime comes with its sun.

But in the meantime, Wingless Dreamer wants a headshot of me so they can publish one of my poems. That’s a positive.

Christmases in My Family

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting in the cabin at Starved Rock writing this. There’s a small fire in the fireplace, and I’ve just gotten done watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.We go to my dad’s at noon today, which almost didn’t happen because Christmas is strange in my family.

Christmas was my mother’s holiday — she decorated the house elaborately with red ribbons and greens and ornaments until it looked like a Victorian fantasy. She chose presents with care and wrapped them in a way Martha Stewart would envy (for my overseas visitors, look up Martha Stewart. She’s a personality whose fame is based on her overly-involved home decor aesthetic). Mom planned menus and created a spread of Christmas buffet (but no cookies; she found those too fussy).

Even on her last Christmas in 2007, she orchestrated Christmas from the hospital bed in her living room when she could no longer make it up and down the stairs. She decided she would wear her grey robe with Christmas jewelry and direct the Christmas action from her bed. My mom died of the tumor in her brain just before Christmas.

I am my mother’s child, and I celebrate Christmas rather vigorously. My husband, luckily, loves Christmas as much as I do, so the house is decorated, Christmas carols play all season, and we have our yearly ritual of Starved Rock because there are few places so welcoming at Christmas as the Lodge there. But there’s still that remembrance of my mother mixed up in there, and all the complex feelings memories of my mother stir up — sorrow, joy, frustration, anger, love.

So my Christmases are strangely textured now. I accept that, and I accept my remembrances of prior Christmases are likely romanticized. It’s all part of life.

Anticipation — good and bad

American culture is built upon anticipation.

The foundling nation, in its Declaration of Independence, declared that its citizens had the right to the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit of happiness with its implication that happiness will be at the end of pursuit.

The consumerist culture of America, likewise, is built upon this anticipation. Every commercial that sells a product or service hooks the buyer through anticipation. The scenario presented on the screen, the promised emotional experience becomes the commodity anticipated; the item purchased is merely the vehicle.

Christmas, likewise, is sold to Americans through everything from commercials to Hallmark movies. There must be family, of course; a big meal; a big tree with presents underneath; an admonition despite all the focus on accumulation that Christmas is in the heart.

The problem with anticipation is that it often builds into a fantasy against which reality can’t measure. The family get-together involves political divisiveness, or such lack of acceptance from parents that it’s made unbearable. The person tasked with making the big dinner grows resentful at the lack of appreciation and the pile of dishes. The presents don’t provide as much joy as expected. One’s heart isn’t feeling Christmas.

My Christmas doesn’t look like the one being sold on TV. My husband and I travel seven hours to visit my relatives, who do not greet us effusively. We have no children, and we leave our Christmas tree back home. We mingle with people celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah and many other holidays. The lodge we stay at is the only thing that looks like a Hallmark Christmas.

And I anticipate this escape every year, and it doesn’t disappoint me.

Holiday Travel

I didn’t write yesterday because I was on the road from the far northwest corner of Missouri to Illinois to visit my family and celebrate Christmas. I’m in town now, typing this at Jeremiah Joe’s in Ottawa, IL, watching children misbehave next to the Christmas tree in the big display windows left over from when this space was Famous Department Store.

I’m getting old. I’m talking in that way older people talk: “I remember when this was Famous Department Store …” It’s inevitable that, when one gets old enough to see things change, that one documents the change aloud. I don’t like admitting I’m old; there’s still that part of me that thinks younger men should be conducting courtly displays of mischievous intellectualism toward me, but I’m officially past my expiration date for that.

The white Christmas this year will be only in our dreams, given that highs this week will be in the 40s and there’s no precipitation in the forecast. I might be able to take a Christmas hike at Starved Rock State Park. I wonder if that’s a thing.

It looks like my dev edit has been delayed till New Years (thank goodness; I wasn’t ready for a Christmas present that would make me cry!) No, I know all of what I’m getting for Christmas, unless the universe decides to surprise me with good news about my writing.

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Yule was yesterday, Hanukkah starts tonight, Christmas is Wednesday. Good greetings to all of you!

Apprehensive about the dev edit

Maybe I’m a bit apprehensive about my dev edit. My new dev editor says she wrote 2500 words on the first two chapters alone. That’s about half the words in the actual chapters.

I’m afraid I’m going to be overwhelmed with the whole thing. Maybe I will go through the list and come up with short summaries of what I need to do.

I mean it’s a good thing she’s this thorough. I asked for it — in fact, I paid her to be thorough. This is what I want. But it’s still intimidating, and still difficult, and still likely to make me feel like I just can’t write. I’ll need to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and tell myself it’s for my own good.

I will be editing a bit over Christmas at Starved Rock; I always bring my laptop on trips for that reason. But the bulk of this editing will be when I return from my trip.

Wish me luck.

Looking forward to dev edit

My developmental editor has warned me that there’s LOTS of comments on the manuscript she’s turning in to me this week. LOTS.

I think she doesn’t want to freak me out. My only worry is that there’s going to be so much to process I don’t know where to start. But it’s exciting to be able to delve into improving my work.

Note: this is going to be short because I’m typing it on my phone. I’m typing it on my phone because my cat is on my lap cleaning itself. Oh, the hardships I go through …

Taking a vacation

Feeling a little down. That happens at the end of every semester. I think it’s because I’m always in high gear to get through the semester, and then nothing. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m tired yet antsy. I suddenly have no goals. It’s hard to deal with.

Too much time to think. I suddenly have to fight a bunch of negative self-talk, I don’t feel inspired to write. I get grouchy.

The solution: get up, do something. Go to the cafe and perhaps try something new. Conversely, get lots of sleep and meditation. Do something different for a change of pace.

In other words, take a vacation.

Dear Santa:

I dream of getting published by a major publishing house. Think of it as my visions of sugarplums for the season. I have no idea if my wish is overly ambitious, or if you can grant it.

I don’t know if you answer adults’ wishes. I suppose if you did, you’d have to have McMansions and Maseratis in that big bottomless sack of yours. And I don’t know if you answer everyone’s wishes, because there are children starving and children separated from their families, and you haven’t granted their wishes. To be honest, if you have to choose between me and those children, I’d prefer you give them comfort and peace and all good things.

But I still wish, because I’m superstitious. I hope that it’s possible for you to hook into that ephemeral luck and catch its attention for a fleeting second so my manuscript gets a second look.

So if you’re listening, Santa …

Waiting for the Snow

I love keeping up with weather forecasts when a winter storm is coming.

Yesterday, the National Weather Service said our area was to get 2-4 inches, then 4-6. This morning I wake up to find out we’re going to get 1-2 inches. Hardly enough to justify putting the snow boots on, and certainly not enough to justify an emergency trip to the store to buy bread and milk.

I’d like some picturesque snow, enough to cover drab lawns and make for a cozy evening. But I don’t want too much snow, or else I won’t be able to get dug out in time to go to Starved Rock for Christmas.

I should know better than to expect the weather to conform to my wishes. I’ve been stuck in my house during blizzards only to watch the snow melt the next morning, driven into a half-mile wide blizzard on the interstate, snowed in for two-three days when a storm dropped 36 inches of snow overnight.

But still, I hope the snow doesn’t ruin my plans for travel.