I suspect silence reads as a lack of activity.  And I’ll confess, that’s what’s bothering me.  In the last few months there’s been a ton going on, and over busy-ness renders me less talkative here.  So I guess it’s not just fear of looking idle, it’s that I miss talking here- with the hypothetical you, there.

Here’s what I’ll attempt- a post a day for ten days- to see if it greases the wheels and makes it easier to pop in and talk, even when I’m trying to do and write a lot elsewhere.

The glitch will be that the posts are gonna be singular and short.

Like: Last month I was in New Orleans for the Faulkner House annual Words and Music conference.  It was very worthwhile.  It was a great time.  My new book (yet unpublished) placed on the short list this year.  2 editors (Random House and Orr Books) read 50 pages of the new novel and said they’d like to see the whole thing.  I had lunch with the editor of the Times-Picayune and exchanged birth stories with him.  I saw old friends.  My husband bicycled all over the city with our kid on a handlebar baby seat.

See you all tomorrrow.

Next week ends my six month maternity leave.  Maternity leave must be a concept that most first- time moms don’t really get.  First off, I thought my 8 year old yellow lab would love it.  I’d be home everyday, practically all day.  We’d take long walks in Prsopect Park with the baby, everyday- before 9:00 am, when dogs are allowed off- leash everywhere.  Then I thought I’d finish the final draft of the novel I’m working on and submit it to my agent, only to have her fall in love, think it’s publication ready, and start sending it to publishers.  Then I thought I’d fly to the west coast a couple times to introduce the baby to friends and family.  Then I thought Bill, Enrico and I would have a honeymoon- since we got married at 7.5 months pregnant, going somewhere special and far away- Italy was one thought.  I thought 6 months was a really long time.  I’m almost too depressed to finish this blog entry.

The dog, Caleb, didn’t love my leave.  Afterall, there was a newborn babyat home everyday, practically all day.  And the voice I used to use to speak to Caleb, began to be used for Enrico.  I never took Caleb to the park before 9.  Well maybe 5 times in six months.  In fact, I had a cesarean birth, and couldn’t walk Caleb for 6 weeks at all!  (He’s 100 pounds and a puller.)  If you’ve ever read my blog before you know where my current novel is at.  It’s not horrific.  But it certainly isn’t going to my agent again any time soon and she’s not showing it to publishers anytime soon.  Travel?  Well we did just come back from Portland and that was a great vacation, and we went to DC and upstate and to KY too.  But I was sort of thinking bigger. 

Back to work is a strange saying too.  Maternity leave is full of work.  I play a little game at night where I leave on a light in an area that needs cleaning, tidying, poop removal, spackling, power scrubbing.  Then when the whole apartment is lit up like a Chritsmas tree, I fall asleep before washing my face.  This hasn’t been a vacation.  And yet, I want it to go on and on.  And on and on.  I really hoped I’d be a little tired of being at home with the baby when it was time to return to work.  I’m not at all tired of it.  And I know time will rocket ahead once I’m back.  But alas, some good things will come of it.  I will wear leather shoes again.  I can wear pull-over shirts that don’t open in the front.  I will go to Manhattan four days a week!!  I will eat lunch by myself without it being like a speed eating contest everyday.  Soon enough, I’ll eat that lunch outside, in the sun.  I will get a paycheck.  My husband can actually have more time with Enrico and be a bigger caregiver.  I will walk Caleb every morning before 9.  Maybe I’ll get back in the habit of blogging too.

This morning I received an email from a reader is Israel.  (Hi Moshe!)  He was kind enough to drop a line after reading The Sign for Drowning.  He also mentioned that he is the cousin of one of my blurb writers.  Blurbs, on the book jacket, are written by other authors, hopefully of similar type work, and are there to help promote the work, especially for a first time author.  A reader might say- oh, I really like this author who wrote the blurb and they really liked this new book/author- I’ll give it a try.  I dauntingly discovered when my book was in pre-production, that first time novelists are asked to track down their own blurbs.  Well, we know other writers to varying degrees.  An ex teacher is easy enough to approach.  Someone you met or even just heard speak at a conference is pretty excruciating to contact.  And writing cold to the agent of an author who’s work you think is like your own- except wildly successful- is horrifying.

Moshe’s cousin is published by my same publisher and thankfully they offered her up to me, and she was a generous and honest reader and blurb writer.  Two other authors I reached out to, were more nerve wracking.  I’d “met” them both at the Pirate’s Alley William Faullkner Literary conference, meaning one I’d sat at a crowded bar table with for 10 minutes, and both I’d heard speak.  But I asked Rosemary, the organizer and major force behind the Faulkner House and conference for their emails to beg for blurbs.  Yikes.

I’m thrilled to report that Julia Glass said yes, although she insisted to wait for the corrected proof- a nerve-wracking process for me since that left me not knowing if she’d write the blurb until quite late- but a practice I would adopt if ever so flattered to receive a request for a blurb.  Glass let me know that her agreement to read my book during a busy time for her was based on her fondness of Rosemary.  Fair enough.

And the other author was Bret Lott.  By the time my request reached Bret Lott through the new university he’d just begun teaching at, he was about to embark on a multi-country tour.  I had grown more assertive in tracking down authors, and sent Lott several emails towards the end, when I did finally hear back from him.  He had actually already read The Sign for Drowning because he had been the final judge in the novel category, who had awarded me second runner up.  So, I figured it was less of an inconvenience to him to write a blurb.  But alas, he wrote me a sweet and thoughtful email, turning down my request due to his busy travel schedule, and that he really would need to re-read the novel.  He mentioned in passing that he would be touring Prague, Jerusalem, and a half dozen other cities I don’t recall.

The funny thing is that the day I opened his email, I curiously saw that there was yet another unopened email from him a day later.  Having read the first rejection, I opened the second.

“Dear Rachel, Guess who I’m sitting here with at the Jerusalem Center?”  Your aunt Linda!”  Bret Lott went on to say that the coincidence was too great, that Linda was his favorite person in Israel, and he would write the blurb.  I was almost as excited by how much my entire family would enjoy this story as I was about getting a blurb from Bret Lott- almost.  Linda is my Uncle Tsvi’s sister and she has some incredible job of hosting visiting VIP’s in Israel among other things.  If you are someone of note, politician, writer, musician, artist, etc. who has visited Israel on official business, you have probably met Linda and she is one of your favorite people in Israel.  Well Linda, being a professional connection maker, innocently informed Bret that he had judged her niece’s novel in a competition that year.  And he probably struck his forehead and said- I just turned her down for a blurb 24 hours ago!

I’m enjoying this story all over a again, nearly three years later.  Hope you did too.  Thanks Moshe for the memories.  Thanks Linda and Bret!

I received a welcome email from Rosemary James at the Faulkner House in New Orleans a few days ago.  She said she was including me and The Sign for Drowning on the home page for her literary conference, Words and Music, as a success story of the conference.  Indeed, I thanked Rosemary and her husband, Joe, in my acknowledgements as providing the literary event and celebration each year that also happened to give my book a new little engine.  Placing in their novel competition helped me secure an agent and ultimatley publish the book .  And attending Words and Music in 2006 and 2007, and visiting Rosemary at Faulkner House every year since, have given me a much greater sense of living a writing life- at least in part.  I am now able to envision what full time writers do.  They mingle with other writers and hear each other’s work.  They read, think about and discuss books.  You don’t have to write 40 hours a week every week of the year.  Rosemary also provided the connections to two of my favorite and most thrilling blurb authors for my novel, Julia Glass and Bret Lott.  I promise to tell the stories of getting those blurbs on this blog in the next month.  But meanwhile, if you’re an aspiring poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist- submit your work to Words and Music, the William Wisdom, William Faulkner Literary competition, and attend Words and Music this year.  You won’t regret it.

My cyber friend, Jill Dearman, interviewed me recently for a Barnes and Noble book blog.  This interview was thought provoking for me because Jill asked some questions I haven’t been asked before and made me think about events I haven’t in a long time.  I thought about who influenced my early reading.  My mom did becasue she was a big reader.   As I outgrew my childhhod books and young adult novels, I’d pluck what she was reading off her nightstand or off the shelves in the living room.  Lucky for me, she read good literary books.  I remember reading Saul Bellow, or Phillip Roth, or Elizabeth Rosner, and thinking- I can’t understand about 30% of this because I’m too young to get it.  Then my aunt Penny very forcefully wanted me to read the important books.  At age 14, I spent the summer in her home in Israel.  I was put through a literature tutorial including, Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, and other author’s who weren’t Toni Morrison but who I can’t think of now.  I also was instructed through many LP’s that had to be memorized, Bob Dylan primarily, Joni Mitchell, all the Beatles, and I learned how to make cake frosting and jelly squares, not to mention witnessing my first home birth of my cousin, Ya’acov. 

Long way of saying, talking to Jill provoked much reflection- on reading, writing and otherwise.

Also, if you’d be so kind to leave a comment at the B&N blog above, it’ll boost The Sign for Drowning in their esteemed ranking!

I’ve kept a journal on and off for most my life, tending to journal most often when I’m down or confused, thus making the collection of old journals a pretty sad lot of documentation.  But in recent years, my journaling habit has narrowed down to travel logs, an end of year re-cap and my new years goals and hopes (resolutions.)  I’m happy to say that the last four or five years have contained writing-related resolutions.  I say that, because there was a period of time between my MFA and 2004 or so that I wasn’t prioritizing writing.  So some writing goals for 2010?

1.  Finish current draft of second novel, which I will show my agent.  This goal is very likely to happen because I’m on chapter 12 of 14 and I’m determined to submit this draft to my agent and her editor.  

2.  Choose a night per week that I will go to writing space.  Tuesdays are the best candidate.  Consider it done!  

3.  Reap all the benefits of, and give all my powers of critique and support to, my amazing writing group, the Exiles.

3.  Continue to blog throughout 2010, hopefully a few times a month.  Setting the bar pretty low here, when I certainly could say once a week. 

4.  Write a play.  It’s true- I have a play idea, and I’m craving the experience of collaborating on a writing project.  We’ll see what happens.  This one will take back seat to finishing the novel, but sometimes a session every week or every other week on something else can be invigorating, right?

5.  I don’t have to make a resolution about reading, becasue I’m constantly reading, usually novels.  But I could and should say it’s a goal to read some of those mighty giants that I haven’t- Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, the Dostoevskys and Faulkners that have held me at bay, the list goes on and then there’s non-fiction. 

Any writing resolutions of your own?

I’m off on a couple small trips to Lexington and Portland.  Probably won’t be blogging again until 2010!  But over the holidays I will be doing an author interview for a Taiwanese magazine.  Saw a preview of the interview questions and they were interesting to me.  Of course, will share here when it’s happened.  This marks the first year of this blog….see you on the road folks.

Happy New Year friends,

peace,

Rachel

Last week I was in New Orleans.  As I have done on every trip there, I visited the Faulkner House.  The society is located in a house in the French Quarter on Pirate’s Alley, that William Faulkner lived in while writing Soldier’s Pay.  The ground floor hosts a hidden bookstore, of which the proprieter, Rosemary, likes to stock with almost all hardcovers.  It’s a great bookstore and one way I like to support redevelopment in New Orleans, by spending my money there.  But the Faulkner House is special to me beyond the house and store.

I credit Rosemary and the annual literary competition the Faulkner House sponsors with helping me publish The Sign for Drowning.  In 2005 I submitted the novel to their competition and was thrilled to find myself on the finalists list, and shortly thereafter named 2nd runner-up for best novel that year.  I was to attend the conference that November as an almost winner.  Katrina and the devastating flooding occured that September.   This was and continues to be a huge tragedy for the entire city and particularly the Lower 9th Ward.  It was with great pleasure that the Faulkner House’s conference, Words and Music got back on it’s feet a year later and hosted a couple hundred writers, including myself.   As I got ready to head to NO in November 06, I was in discussion with my now agent, Joelle Delbourgo- still waiting to hear if she would take me on as a new client.  Rosemary, in addition to organizing dozens of workshops, performances, panels, lunches, dinners, hotel arrangments, etc. actually gets editors and agents to schedule meetings with attending writers- and read their work in advance!  I, not so innocently, thought I should inform Joelle that I’d be meeting a few agents while in New Orleans, and it worked.  She offered me her representation and I accepted- and publication shortly followed.  

Rosemary’s and the Faulkner House’s generous support didn’t stop there either.  Bret Lott was the judge of the novel category in 2005, and graciously consented to write a blurb for my novel.  (This is truly it’s own international story of unlikely connections that I’ll have to blog about later.)  I also met Julia Glass, a favorite writer of mine, whose novel Three Junes had been a Faulkner winner in previous years, at the conference in 2006.  A year later when my ARC was ready, she agreed to read it, and wrote a blurb which I am honored to have received.

If you are a writer of novels, novellas, short stroies, poems, or essays, I highly recommend submitting your work to the William Wisdom- William Faulkner Literary Competition.  And whether you do or not, visit New Orleans, visit Faulkner House, spend some money in this beautiful, historic American city, volunteer if you can, common ground, donate if you can, makeitright

You’ll be the richer for it.