I’m noticing lately that my friends (fellow-writers and/or fellow-mothers in this instance) and I are in a real grind these days.  My own writing problem, by joint diagnoses from self and loved ones, is that I am either too stubborn or too limited in time to go really deep into the scenes, pages, paragraphs, sentences and words.  I’m trying to get away with a dash across the surface.  Not totally, but enough that success is alluding me.  I was actually told today, by someone very near and dear, hint- we share a bed, that I could spend the time I spend on a chapter on one page- maybe two, to really get it right.  A game of depth was also quoted.  I’m not trying to make anyone turn against my spouse.  He’s right.  And maybe he’s not.  Other readers are telling me it’s really getting there- I feel it is too.  Of course, both can be right.   Suffice it to say that writing a novel has driven stronger minds than mine crazy.  Many hours each week should go into a novel.  Real hours- not pasted together ones, including train time, baby napping time, lunch time.  And it’s not just me.  I’m noticing my fellow writers and simpaticos who are not writers are really trying to do it all these days and mostly succeeding, ie doing well at their jobs, mainatining harmonious relationships, raising conscious, sweet and creative little babies or kids, even excercising.  But I think we’re all making a dash, hoping to get away with spending a page worth of deep energy on a whole chapter.  And I’m also thinking that this is the way it’s got to be for us right now.  Deep breath- go.

I’m feeling pretty momentous about this year coming to an end and starting a new one.  Maybe it’s getting older, or having a fifteen-month-old child coming to the end of his second year with us, and on the planet.  Whatever it is, I’m having some thoughts and feelings about it and looking for meaning and a sort of summation.  Writitng-wise it has not been the best year.  Clocked less hours than other recent years.  It wasn’t a publishing year.  Not a ton of PR, media, readings, etc. in 2011 either.  But I did make quite a lot of progress on my new novel this year.  I attended Words and Music in New Orleans.  I had my first foreign sale.  I started a new novel (15 pages), that I’m excited to work on when I get this current one off my plate.  I also read some very good books this year and some mediocre, but entertaining ones.  I went to Cape Cod- a place I’d like to go every year.  I’ve managed my job well, and gotten closer to my co-workers.  I’ve seen a lot of my friends and even more of my family.  Since this blog is about words and I happen to know a little boy who actually learned his very first words in the last few months, I’ll sign off for 2011 with Enrico’s Words. Dog, Bye, Dada, Mama, Hi, More, No, Yah, Cookie, and Alright!

Wishing you all a year of joy and peace.  

I have an accelerated new pace with finishing this draft of my novel.  My goal this go-around is restructuring, as I’ve said before, and the work is rather mid-range in terms of mental effort.  I’ve re-outlined, losing the chronological order and placing historical scenes in the context of the front story.  So my task at-hand is cutting and pasting and smoothing in, and there are at least two plotlines I’m dramatically changing.  So when those arcs appear, I do some mental heavy-lifting too.  It’s been good work, an enjoyable process and I’m pretty sure I’m seeing positive results.  Honestly, a much better draft.  The process also naturally helped me to cull less engaging sections from the characters’ histories.  There will be yet another comb-through after this, but that thought can wait.  

This draft has been taking quite awhile in and of itself.  I squeeze the work in during baby’s naptimes.  And once a week, I leave him with his dad and go to the library to get a real work session.  I recently had my mom and then sister visit and they both gave me baby-sitting time to go get some work done.  And then in their absence and my looming return to work, something miraculous happened.  Enrico offered to help me finish the job at a faster pace.  I’d been looking forward to utlizing our beuatiful library together, the main Brooklyn branch at Grand Army Plaza, and I had even made a big deal about our first visit there.  I tried to get our librarian friend to join us, but in the end took him alone, and relished reading him his first picture book in the children’s wing.  

But what I’m talking about here is different.  Enrico has agreed to coming along, not to the children’s wing, but to the long tables where mom likes to work and can plug in, and has offered to sleep or quietly read to himself (in his daydreams) so I can write virtually everyday.

And therefore this week alone, I went from 85 pages til the end, to 50, to 30, to 15.  Thank you Library Assistant!  We’ll get the job done together. 

In the surreal, dream-like weeks right after I had a baby this past September, I was contacted by someone interested in making The Sign for Drowning into a movie.  Novelists dream of this, and its the only way a novelist can get anywhere near making a living as a writer.  Or to put it another way, I wouldn’t be opposed to my book being made into a film.  Not at all.  So, this dialogue began in some pretty uncertain terms.  For one, I thought the woman getting in touch with me was a television producer looking for material for her network and interested in buying the rights to “Sign.”  Or to put it another way, I thought I met my perfect match.  Well, I was sort of right.  She is a producer of sorts, but that’s not what she was interested in.  You never know where opportunity will come from; I’m sure you’ll all agree, and I was more than happy to consider various ways a total stranger might help adapt my only novel into a screenplay and have it actually made into a movie.  But this proposal was hard to get a grasp on.  For one thing, I had a brand new baby, and only slept 2-3 hours at a stretch, for another the woman pursuing our collaboration was deaf and we started off by exchanging rather cryptic emails, which finally gave way to slightly clearer phone calls (she turned out to be hard of hearing and a good phone communicator.)  But the problem lay in our differing goals.  She wanted me to write the screenplay with her.  Oh, no problem, I thought, I just have to inform her I’m not a screenwriter.  No such easy exit.  She didn’t care, neither was she.  But still, she thought the two of us were the right team for the job.  The Sign for Drowning is about a girl, Anna, who embraces sign language as away to coomuniacte with her younger sister who drowned.  As an adult, Anna teaches deaf children and adopts a deaf little girl- helping her heal from the loss of her sister.  So my potential collaborator’s thinking was that a lifelong hearing aide wearer (she) and the author of  this novel were the most likely team to make a go of this project–even without the necessary experience.  To be fair, my husband, who is a screenwriter, thought she could be right.  He urged me not rule out the possibility of spending a year or so writing my first screenplay with someone I didn’t know, who had less experience than myself even.  Well in retrospect the way I handled the whole situation was a lot more post partum than I realized at the time.  I was communicating with this potential collaborator before I’d even left the house from bringing home our new baby, and in those first weeks, I got out maybe twice a week.  Everything outside the apartment, including wearing shoes, taking a subway, walking my dog, going out for a pint of beer seemed otherwordly.  So you can imagine how otherwordly I found this unknown woman dropping me notes about potential scenes, extended metaphors, and a mysterious financer seemed.  But what really tipped me off that I was operating from an altered state was that I very outrightly told her I’d be persuaded by money.  I found myself talking like some totally unknown Hollywood player, suggesting that we should both be paid at least $10,000 to even touch the thing.  My own book.  She seemed to like my new sundance kid way of thinking, and we made a clandestine plan to meet at Grand Central Station.  We picked a Starbucks, then a H&M, then another Starbucks.  She said if I couldn’t find her to just keep calling her cell phone, reminding me she was deaf and didn’t always hear it.  We met.  It was maybe the third time I’d left the baby.  We talked about him, and her children, and both our professional backgrounds.  We got along just fine.  If it were a sanity check- which was partially on my mind- we both passed.  We talked about meeting on her next trip to New York- Thanksgiving time.  We talked about working together for a year, every weekend, on Skype, or travelling together to a retreat to outline and write this screenplay.  “The reason she was on the planet,” she said on one phone call, my book as an example- not the literal reason.  We both said we needed to decide if we would take the plunge or not.  Would we go against the odds of our lack of proven ability, of our not knowing each other, of our limited time.  My own desire to finish my second novel while on maternity-leave weighed in heavily.  And then there was the fact that all I’m really doing with great commitment these days is caring for my boy.  Well, the decision went unmade.  We never spoke again.  Perhaps it was another 2010 dream, in a year full of unthinkable and dreamlike happenings.

When I started this blog, two and a half years ago, everyone had a blog.  But now, everyone has a blog.  I don’t mind.  Actually, I want to spend more time reading really good blogs.  They can be inspiring.  They can be about subjects that really interest me.  They can teach, connect and help us with our careers.  But they do even more for the people who write them.  They are a way for us to flex a writing muscle, develop a different voice than we write with in our respective genres, write things that other people actually read in our daily lives, instead of once every 38 years, as in my first novel.  The things we write in blogs are most often read by our friends and family, and they provide a way for us to move them and to let them get to know us better, a part of ourselves that we want to be known.

My husband and I have a an 8 week old son.  So last weekend, my big dream for Friday night, was to get a couple people to come over for a four person card game and cocktails.  This idea felt like it could salvage a pretty claustrophobic week.  So, in the evening, after my husband Bill had visited a friend for tips on his new blog, one friend, Shannon, came over to have a bite pre-cards, and we talked about what she should name her new blog.  Then during our five person card game it came out that all five of us have blogs.  We made fun of each other’s blog’s names.  And still, I’m excited about all these things to read from interesting people I know- who are even willing to play cards with me on a Friday night, while Enrico gets used to living in this bloggy world.

Our son has arrived.  In fact, this Friday he will be one month old.  He’s miraculous and beautiful, consuming and a zen master at keeping my mind in the present at all hours of the day and night.  We’ve noticed many people in our lives are fast-forwarding to when he’s older, when he can go to museums, ride a bike, talk, visit Ireland, and it seems strange that neither my husband nor I are engaged in that kind of thinking.  Until you remember that we are caring for him in his present state 24 hours a day, usually at 3 hour intervals, not having slept more than 4 hours straight in a month.  And yet, I’m enjoying every day and even more so the nights!  These are sweet and inexpicable times; I instinctually get how quickly these days and weeks will pass, and I stay present without effort or choice. 

I haven’t written since Enrico was born.  Not here on this blog or my novel in progress.  Enrico was eight days late and during those eight days I reviewed feedback on the darft of my novel from my husband, Bill, my writing group friend, Anne, and my agent, Joelle.  I had one session of work in the library, about 5 days past due, where I re-outlined the entire novel and felt great- ready to cut and dice, or at least ready to try three more variations on an outline and meditate a whole lot more.  This is structure I’m talking about.  Then the radical, life-altering, and I will confess- nearly unbearable labor happened, and the magnificant Enrico arrived in our open arms.  When he was about ten days old I piled 400 pages of notated manuscript on our coffee table and presumed that while hours floated by in the living room between feedings, changing, sipping 10 times re-heated coffee, I’d look at notes.  I had the sad and amusing experience of noticing a minor character’s name on a random page, and thinking, “who’s that?”  It did come back to me.  It will all come back to me I’m sure.

I discovered a new book blog recently, because, as a treat (pun intended), this blogger discovered me.  A few times I’ve gotten a random email from a reader, often another writer, who wanted to say they enjoyed The Sign for Drowning.  This one intrigued me because he or she, wrote a rather cryptic email about not having time to make the chocolate souffle for bon voyage, but that I should check out their review on Food for Thought- their blog.  Well I did get around to checking out this blog, and I really like it.  The blogger, Jain, takes either a dish or recipe mentioned in a novel and makes it.  Then Jain posts a book review, and beautiful, inviting photos of the dishes she made.  Well The Sign for drowning contains a bon voyage party for Anna and Adrea, who are headed to france for a sumer intensive program for deaf children.  At the party, Maritza, the head teacher, serves up French food for the other children to experience.  There’s several quiches and a chocolate souffle.  Jain made some beautiful spinach and mushroom quiches, and photographed slices of them, with greens of course, on some decorative little French plates.  I like this blog a lot, it made me want to read and cook.

Jain also mentions in her review and blog entry how she goes about choosing the books to read.  And yes, it’s by their cover.  I think Jain doesn’t always judge a book by its cover.  But she mentioned periodic buying sprees on Amazon, where she’ll select a bunch of unknown titles, like a box of candies, and fire away an order of new books.  This reminded me that books really are about one cent on Amazon.  So, I decided to check on The Sign for Drowning, and see how cheaply it could be found there.  Indeed, there are two (hardcover!) copies for one penny.  A few for under three dollars.  And amusingly, two “collectibles” meaning a signed hardcover for $14 and $40.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  You should grab up that $14 signed hardcover!

It’s a well known fact that non-fiction is a bigger part of the marketplace than fiction- more sellable.  Well baby books, pregnancy books, parenting books, birth books, and every possible niche of child-rearing books are a huge market.  For the past 9 months, I’ve been reading a lot of pregnancy books, books about labor, baby name books and I’m now starting to look at some books about baby care and newborns.  A little a day of this reading is best- and I admit some weeks or even two where I had no desire for this reading.  Isn’t it enough to be growing a baby around the clock- without reading about it!  But I have always had an interest in pregnancy and birth.  I am also a labor doula- so I actually have read a lot in this area, have had training and have attended lots of births.  (Although any day now I will have this experience myself for the first time!)  So I thought I’d mention that not all books are created equal.

A well-known and I’m sure best-selling book for decades is What to Expect When You’re Expecting.  We should all consider this book outdated, even though I’m sure it’s updated all the time.  No expectant parent has ever enjoyed this book and it will focus you on everything that can go wrong.  I’ve found with my nightly or at least two nights a week reading, that I’m enjoying most the Dr. and Martha Sears book on pregnnacy and their Baby Book tomb.  They’re  a pediatrician/RN, husband and wife duo and parents to eight kids.  They have a great attitude toward healthy pregnancy and parenting and speak very plainly and naturally about it.  They wrote their pregnancy book in chapters for each month.  Which made it very digestible.  I read the chapter for the month I was in and then waited to reach the next month.  And best of all, at the end of each chapter is a sweet little worksheet for you to write what you’re feeling, dreaming, stressing about, excited about, etc.  Just the right amount of journaling for a tired, hard-working, reproducing body!

The Birth Partner and the Big Book of Birth are plenty for preparing partners and yourself.  We received a lot of books form other people, had some in the house from my doula training, found some in our basement library, took out some from our local library, and still we probably spent too much on a few more.  These books are very accesible and of time limited interest to you.  I’m imagining as soon as you’ve given birth once, you’re ready to pass along the text books!

There’s a little known fact about me that most my friends don’t know, that I go crazy for maritime books.  I’m also very fond of maritime films, museums, food, towns!, apparel, art- all of it.  But a great tale from the sea always captures my imagination and stirs deeper feelings than a land-locked story could.  I feel this way in the same way that if the world only contained blue grass and gospel music- I wouldn’t be too miserable.   That said, I probably haven’t read as much maritime literature as some other folks.  Of course I was swept away by Old Man and the Sea, also The Pearl.  Moby Dick didn’t bore me at all.  The Shipping News was a rare treat.  So it’s not just oceans I love, but knots, fish, fisherman and their women, rubber boots, weather, etc.  About a year ago I picked up the Perfect Storm in my basement- and I’m here to tell you that it is a fantastic book.  It’s non-fiction- in case you didn’t know- and it’s truly about the fishing industry off the eastern seaboard, love and alcoholism, as much as it is about that boat and that storm.  A few things I learned in that book, is that it’s not just getting a lot of fish that’s required to earn a living- but who gets back to land first with the haul and sets the current prices.  I was also inspired to write the first poem I’d written in awhile from a tidbit I found in that book.  There are lengthy, detailed accounts of deep-sea fishing- namely swordfish- that hold your attention for more than 20 page stretches.  With swordfish, the adult females are the largest and therefore choicest catches.  But they are the hardest to catch, being the smartest and most experienced of their kind.  The adolescent males are the easist caught, being the opposite.  There’s poetry just in that I think.  But listen to this.  If you go deep-sea fishing at night, on a full moon, you will catch the adult females.  Because they lose their heads.

This weekend, Saturday, the Red Hook Waterfront Museum in Brooklyn is having a Maritme book fair.  The museum is a barge in the NY harbor.  I’m planning to go, and maybe bring a few copies of The Sign for Drowning.  If I’m gonna be a poser ever in life, I think maybe the most dignified thing to pose as is a maritime writer.