Of bread, writing and lounging moose

Yesterday I tried to write and nothing came. No words, no images. I sat there like a dumb lump. I sat there for over an hour waiting for something, anything to come.

But alas, my mind was a silent and dark space (I imagine it as a closet, slightly musty, with the faint smell of mothballs).

So I made bread.

I highly recommend this to anyone stuck in a creative project. There's something soothing yet familiar about kneading dough, how it both works with and against you and how easy it is to lose yourself to the simple motion of your hands.

I used a basic recipe with few ingredients (after all, who needs complications, eh?) and measured as best as I could; I've never been a very precise person. Probably this is why I'm a writer. But here's the thing: Baking bread is a lot like writing. No matter how closely you follow the recipe, you're venturing into the unknown. Sometimes the dough refuses to rise. Sometimes you don't knead enough or knead too roughly or add too little salt or forget the pinch of sugar or honey to activate the yeast. Sometimes you do everything right and still come out with a flat, dense loaf that even the dog refuses to eat (trust me, it happens).

My brain while writing: An obstinate lump of dough.

I don't think I'd enjoy baking bread if the results were predictable, if every loaf came out perfectly, if I didn't hold my breath before peering into the oven.

Yesterday my characters weren't predictable. They wouldn't cooperate. They scattered across in the page in a mad heap of useless dialogue and small actions that did nothing to move the plot forward.

Finally I pushed my computer aside and took the dog for a walk. So there I was, walking around muttering to myself about my lack of a productive writing day, when I looked up and found myself staring straight at this dude:

Looks like this guy was stuck in his novel too, so I didn't linger. I'd like to say that this moosey meeting caused a great epiphany and I ran home and wrote like crazy but that didn't happen. I ate bread instead. Stuffing one's mouth with hot, buttered bread does little to alleviate a writing block but a lot to soothe the belly. Plus, face it, eating is often much more fun than writing.


Cinthia's Writing Block Bread:

-Cup warm milk or water (I used almond milk)
-Packet of active yeast
-2 tablespoons honey
-Large pinch of sugar
-2 tablespoons oil (I used olive but coconut adds a nice flavor)
-Teaspoon salt
-2 cups whole wheat flour
-1 cup white flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine warm milk/water with yeast, honey and oil. In a separate bowl mix salt and flours. Fold into yeast mixture, mix and then knead. I coat my hands with margarine while kneading to add a subtle buttery flavor to the bread.

Knead for a good 10 minutes.

Place dough into a bowl, cover with a dishtowel and let sit in a warm place for 30-45 minutes.

Punch it down (this is the fun part!), knead for a couple more minutes, place in a greased bread pan, cover and let rise for another 30 minutes or so. You'll know it's ready when it's expanded to double in size.

Slide in oven and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Let cool for a few minutes, remove the bread from the pan, slice, slater on the margarine or butter, and enjoy.

Ahhhhhh!

What I'm reading today:
"Pretty is What Changes" by Jessica Queller, a memoir of family, breast cancer and difficult choices.

Not-writing this morning

I'm not-writing this morning. I'm supposed to be writing. I feel obligated to write, since I am at this very moment sitting at my desk at the Kimmel Hardin Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska, enjoying a month-long writing residency in Nebraska City.

My room is right there on the second floor, see the closed blinds? I'm sitting behind them, trying to block out the sun, trying to write.

It's 75 outside, and sunny. The birds are chirping outside my window.

I can't write because last night while working on my second novel (as yet unnamed--why are titles so damned difficult?), my character took over. It was one of those magical times, and I'm sure you know what I mean, one of those times when it felt as if I weren't even writing, as if I were possessed by my character, this other woman, this Sasha Dewey, who is me yet isn't me at all.

The scene that unfolded was chillingly honest, and tender, and odd. It's exactly what the book needed yet, because of this one scene, I will have to rewrite the rest of the book.

I was SO close to being done. I could smell the finish. It was that reachable.

Now I have weeks, maybe months, of hard work, hard writing, in front of me. The result will be a better book, of course. But results are long-term and writing is long-term and is it terrible to want short-term gratification? To see the so-called fruits of my labor lovingly displayed in chapters that fit and interconnect and do what they're supposed to do? To see it now, not in three weeks or three months or three years, but now?

I had four hours of sleep last night. My hair is dirty, my toenail polish chipped. I'm slumped at  my desk, trying so hard to not-write that my hands and eyes and head hurt.

Writing is not easy. And not-writing is even harder. Especially when the spirit of your character rises up through your fingertips and takes you to places you never imagined, uncovers feelings and secret urges you've tried to keep hidden because (dare I say it?), each time you uncover something in one of your characters, you're also uncovering secrets inside yourself.

This can be unsettling.

I'm going to spend the morning and maybe even the early afternoon not-writing. I have three books to read ("Stay Awake" by Dan Chaon, a series of quirky short stories, is incredibly good) and a sunny balcony callling my name. I'll settle down with a bottle of sunscreen, a glass of orange juice, and I'll read and daydream as birds sing and crickets chirp and all around the splendor of autumn leaves waves in the sky.

Later today, after I run or swim my laps, after I feel stronger and more centered, I'll sit down and write. But for now, I'm taking it easy. I'm sitting with myself, alone though not alone because even now, in this patch of sunshine, at this desk in the middle of this small Nebraska town, I can feel her, my character, my Sasha, waiting. She's crouched, as if ready to pounch or sprint. She has so much energy!

I wonder where she'll take me next.

I have a publicist

I have a publicist.

This is BIG news to an Alaska girl who gets her kicks logging long runs in the mountains.

My usual idea of a thrill is being charged by a moose.

This is a much, much better.

My publicist, whose name is Sonya (I imagine she has sleek hair and wears expensive shoes) is, of course, to help publicize my book, slated for release Feb. 5.

I'm going to have to start including her in conversations. "My publicist says it's Tuesday," I'll say with a haughty toss of my (unsleek) hair, and everyone will be so impressed that they won't notice that it's really Wednesday.

But seriously--all of this scares the crap out of me. Publishing a book scares the crap out of me. Realizing that people will soon read (and comment, and criticize, and perhaps even hate) something I wrote scares the crap out of me

I'm not even sure if my book is any good, I've read and edited and reread and analyzed it so much. It's my book, that's all I know. I feel great affection and love for it, much the way I used to feel for my son, when he was still living at home. We'd interact and go through our daily routines, and then I'd look over and watch him cooking ramen noodles or pouring orange juice and my breath would suck in--I'd be so amazed by his beauty.

My book is a little bit like that. It's ordinary and familiar and commonplace, yet every so often I glance through it and my breath catches, my heart pounds, and I am be amazed. I wrote this, I think, and it seems such a miracle, such a truly stupendous thing, that I wrote a book.

And it's not that my book is so amazing; it's not. It's that I did it. I wrote it. I stuck with it through the hard and awful and truly terrible times. I didn't give up, and lord knows I've given up on so many things throughout my life.

So, yeah, I wrote a book. Other people write music and run ultra races and play the flute in the school band. It all connects us in a sense, and I suppose that's what makes it so amazing.

Gallery proofs, and another rejection

A few days ago a good looking UPS man knocked on my door. He was holding a package. A package from New York City.


I grabbed it and tore it open with my teeth. Okay, that's a lie. I cut it was my dulled Walmart scissors. But no matter, because inside were my galley proofs.

My novel. And it's a real book! A bit of a naughty book, but a Real. Book. With chapters and everything.

I was so excited that I cried. Then I drove my galley proofs around town and showed people. "See," I said. "It's a real book." (Like the Velveteen Rabbit, my book only became real when I actually held it in my greedy hands.)

The very next day, there was a rejection letter waiting in my email box.

This happens every single time I get puffed up about my writing. Something inevitably slaps me down. I think this is karma. I worrythat I was a critic in a former life.

Anyway, the Plume Poetry Journal doesn't want the poems I sent them. Which is a shame, because I love their journal. (I'm very choosey about where I send my work. I only submit to places that feel like home, journals and magazines that hit me hard and make me want to curl around them and take them to bed.)

But Daniel over at Plume sent me the most wonderful rejection letter. He wrote, and I quote: "You are a fine poet." While my work wasn't right for them, he was sure the poems would be picked up soon. "Our loss," he said.

This is a big deal because poets in the current Plume issue have been published in the New Yorker  and The American Poetry Review. Heady credentials.

Thanks, Daniel. You broke my heart but kinda swelled my head, which is a fair and balanced combination, no?

Final pass edits, and another rejection

The thing about writing is, right when you're feeling smug and sure of yourself, right when you finally believe that you've made it, yes, you've finally made it, that email or letter arrives in the mail informing you that no, you haven't.

Two weeks ago I received my final pass edits for my novel, Dolls Behaving Badly, and early Thursday morning, I handed them back in again, all finished except for a few additional clarifications.

All week I felt like The Writer, like The Big Deal. I even stood in the front of the bathroom mirror in my old, overly sized glasses, and practiced smiling like Joyce Carol Oates.

Then today, after returning home from racing the Big Wild Life Run, I turned on Dirty Dancing (the original version, with Patrick S.), and happily opened my email.

Oh, Patrick, if only I could have danced with you, then literary magazine rejections wouldn't matter so much.

And there it was: A rejection notice. The Heavy Feather Review doesn't want my creative nonfiction piece, but they were nice about it, very gracious, which made it worse: I couldn't even resent them.

 Three weeks ago, ZYZZYVA didn't want five of my poems. And two weeks ago, the Stone Highway Review didn't want another one of my creative nonfiction pieces.

Writerly rejection never really ends, no matter how many awards you might receive or books you might publish. Each time you send out a submission, you're basically starting from scratch. Oh, prior publications may count a small bit, but the bulk of emphasis is on your work.

Sometimes your work doesn't cut it. Sometimes the magazine is looking for something else. Sometimes your writing style doesn't jive with editorial preference. And sometimes it's about timing and moods and the phase of the moon.

More and more I think it's almost always about the phase of the moon but then again, I'm feeling a little cynical today so probably this isn't the case at all.

Writing sucks today

I'm having one of those days when everything I write sucks. Even writing my own name sucks (I mean, is that the best way to write my name or is there a better way? Last name first? No middle initial? Two lines instead of one?)

The details can drive one mad. And I'm good at driving myself mad.

I'm stuck on my second novel rewrite. I have my shitty first draft completed and am now rewriting and trying to make the whole book a little less shitty.

This is harder than I can say.

The first two chapters sing, and it's taken me months to get them to that point. I'm feeling discouraged: Do I really want to spend months rewriting one lousy chapter?

It's summer in Alaska. I want to be out in the mountains. I want to run. I want to lounge around eating pretzels dunked in Paul Newman's Ranch dressing.

I don't want to write.

At least, not today.

A grant, and a rejection

I was lucky and honored to be one of approximately 25 Alaska artist who received a Rasmuson Individual Artist award.

Photo credit: Rasmuson Foundation (I'm the startled-looking blonde near the back, hee, hee)

Yes, the money is much appreciated and will be a huge help with my upcoming project. But more than that, it's the honor of having been chosen, the acknowledgment, the pat on the back for a job well done.

Anyone who is a writer knows that such things don't arrive often.

For the most part, it's rejection, followed by more rejection, and then, when you're almost completely kicked down, even more rejection.

So I decided to write this post in thanks, not only for the grant, but for all of those people who unknowingly gave me a slight boost when my writing wasn't going well: The Fred Meyer cashier who gave me her chocolate chip recipe (thanks, honey); the guy at the gas station who told a joke while I was filling my Escort with unleaded; the Walmart employee who chased me down after I left my keys by the toilet paper.

I have many supportive friends, and they've helped more than I can say. But sometimes it's the unexpected gesture that keeps me going. Or, as Blanche DuBois said, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

Oh, Blanche, it wasn't all your fault. Truly!

Which leads me to the not so "kind" news.

I received a rejection letter for the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. It was a very kind rejection, and they sent me $5 (!!).

Turns out I had sent too much with the application fee and they mailed me back the remainder. Yep, I was rejected but still got five bucks out of the deal.

Love you Abe!

 I was a bit crushed. Even though I was recently awarded a month-long residency at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts for October, I wanted more. I wanted not just one residency, but two. Or maybe three. Or heck, an entire year of bouncing from residency to residency and writing like mad and never washing my hair and living like a hippie writer.

So I won't be living in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere in Oregon next year, with no electricity or running water, no neighbors, and limited contact with the outside world, sigh, sigh.

But I will be at KHN in October, and there will be electricity and running water and other people around, and I'm hoping to write like crazy, eat a lot of pretzels, meet a few new friends and run through the Nebraska cornfields.

Where I'll be in October, writing my heart out.

I suppose it's about balance or, as the old motto goes: You win some, you lose some.

Why, then, do the rejections linger so much longer than the awards and acceptances?


Writing: I'm presently working on an essay about running for a lit magazine contest
Reading: Anything and everything by Anne Tyler: I'm trying to improve my dialogue techniques and no one writes dialogue as well as Tyler.