Harvested Today from the Garden...

Raspberries, hazelnuts, pole beans, Kentucky Wonder bush beans, asparagus, white peaches, Asian pears, basil, cucumbers, and tomatoes: yellow pear, green zebra, purple cherokee, roma, brandywine.

From our farm share -- tomatillos, garlic, basil, Blue Peruvian fingerlings, onions (red, yellow, white)

Dinner -- tomato salsa, roasted tomatillo salsa, grilled chicken breasts, corn/tomato/black bean salad, roasted asparagus, peach crisp with vanilla ice cream, reisling/traminer with raspberries

Happy eating... Peace, Linda

All Worked Up

I recently returned from my first-ever, face-to-face writing workshop. Sure, I've gone to writing conferences, most of them chock-o-block with one hour quickie craft seminars and those oh-so-lovely pitch fests. But this past spring I was feeling masochistic, a little itchy to get reamed, truly reamed, by folks who know what they're doing. Plus, I thought a workshop intensive was one way to try an abbreviated version of an MFA program. So the last week of July I sojourned to Cambridge, conjoined with Boston in my mind as the place I came of age.

Lesley University's summer writing conference is not for those who envision munching bonbons while idly discussing the niceties of third person versus omniscient voice. Sure, we chatted about that sort of stuff, usually over meals, but for the most part it was constant immersion in craft and critique. For five days, I rised and shined for workshop from 9-12, then gobbled lunch, followed by an afternoon of craft sessions and readings. After another hasty dinner, there were evening readings by resident and guest faculty until 9. Of course, afterwards I was so exhausted yet simultaneously ennervated by caffeine and ideas that walking to any of the squares (Harvard, Porter, Central, Inman - I hit them all) for ice cream and beer with classmates was de rigeur. Then there were assignments to complete, and the cycle repeated itself.

So what's it like to be 'workshopped'? Somewhat intimidating. Classmate Thomas and I walked the plank first. We prepared approximately 4000 words of a work in progress, which our fabulous instructor Rachel Kadish (more on Rachel in a separate post) and fellow students (there were six of us in all) read in advance.

I workshopped the opening of PURE. A little scary because this novel is so in progress. Plus, my head was with another character from another story, so I struggled to sink into the chapter's cannibalized mice and the funeral.

At the table, I was instructed not to talk. Those of you who know me understand how difficult it is for me to zip my lips. Rachel opened up with the question: "What is this story about?" Which is a wonderful way to approach critique because you can see immediately how clearly (or not) you've told your story. Also GREAT fodder for pitches. Then discussion opened up: what worked? what didn't? what confused? was the prose sufficiently elevated? did the characters ring true? did POV work? tense? were writing fundamentals present? was the research sufficient? And so on.

After more than an hour of such disembowelment (PURE, not me), I was granted the floor to clarify remarks and ask questions of my own. Later, I reviewed everyone's extensive written line edits and globals.

What a rich experience. And an illuminating one. While my prose more than passed muster and the story itself was deemed compelling, it turns out I had a few too many balls in the air, which confused my classmates and instructor. In other words, exactly where was this story headed?

My new mantra: clarify, clarify, clarify. I'm revising PURE now, using these golden kernals as my guideposts.

Have you ever been workshopped? If yes, was it worthwhile? If no, would you?

Peace, Linda

I Wonder...

--if the slush pile of grant proposals at the National Institutes of Health is deeper than the stacks of manuscripts in agents' offices

--if the man passed out in his own vomit on this morning's metro received medical attention

--what the woman in the fur-lined parka was screaming in the alley

--why the tornado only took trees and not lives

--why we marginalize our mentally ill to the streets

--how to keep grace alive

Just wondering... Peace, Linda

While I Was Away...

A micro-burst of wind, sodden with gulf-stream moisture, gusted a path through my neighborhood, leaving downed trees, shingle-less homes, screens and shutters scattered over lawns. We arrived to this mess yesterday, grateful for the relatively minor damage to our property and that no one died.

Yes. I've been away. Did you notice? We journeyed north to visit family. Then, I spent five days work-shopping PURE at Lesley University's annual summer writing workshop. Like the storm blasting through my town, the week left my head awhirl with ideas and words, the intensity further fueled by caffeine, wine, and sleep deprivation.

What the week was NOT - a writing retreat. We were in community 12 hours a day, reading, critting, discussing craft, listening to the fabulous faculty read their works, pontificating ours. No la-dee-da days hanging in bookstores and coffeeshops for me, though I did hit Starbucks every morning when it opened for my usual hour of writing. And I did get to spend a little bit of time in Harvard Book Store (the BEST Indie bookstore anywhere) and Grolier (the best poetry only store), and drinking beer and licking ice cream with fellow writers.

Most nights, I wandered the same streets as my characters, sinking into their lives, their heads, their voices. One evening I sat on the same fountain rocks where Ben first kissed Phoebe in front of the science center, waiting for the lights in the glass complex to take over the day and scribbling madly.

I'll post more later, including cool exercises to help crack open idea- and word- constipated forebrains. But first, gotta breathe and catch up on stuff...

The Reading... Picked up TONS of books and started them all, including TOLSTOY LIED and FROM A SEALED ROOM by my instructor Rachel Kaddish, GOODBYE TO THE ORCHARD by Lesley MFA director and poet Steven Cramer, CHARITY GIRL by fiction instructor Michael Lowenthal, LIVING IN STORMS, a poetry anthology about the moods of manic depression, LIFE AT THE MOVIES by Peter Selgin, and more, so much more...

The Writing... Reworking the first section of PURE. Revising GONE, a short story for the Harbinger*33 anthology. A poem is accepted at Tattoo Highway, the first of mine to see print. A second poem was accepted by an anthology on psychiatry and creativity.

Hope all is well in your writing worlds... peace, Linda

The Rose Variations - July's Debut Author Pick

Rose MacGregor laughed and shouldn't have. Frances, it seemed, was going to cry. Frances Dupre, leaning against the kitchen counter of Rose's sublet in a twisting old neighborhood in St. Paul on a muggy August night, held a full wine glass that she didn't seem to be drinking from, but rather posing with as the tears trickled down her face. She wept because Rose was lucky in love, while she, Frances, was not. This was ridiculous, something Frances had invented out of thin air.

Thus begins THE ROSE VARIATIONS, a novel penned by Marisha Chamberlain (SOHO Press), a playwright, poet, and now novelist from Minnesota. The story follows the professional struggle of Rose MacGregor, a fledgling composer who navigates the wily paths of academia during the mid-seventies, a decade when women were just beginning to break through the 'glass ceiling' of promotion and tenure. The theme explored throughout is the balance of heart and mind, and how to find fulfillment in both. Rose is determined to stay independent, which gives her plenty of room to struggle with loneliness, ambition, and even at times love. Her quest is all too human - to answer the complex question of happiness.

A number of colorful characters support her journey: Alan, gay department colleague discovering his own balance in life and love; Frances, secretary of the Department who has a love affair with the married Department Chair; Lila, the bearded cello prodigy who returns from self-imposed sabbatical to play Rose's compositions; Guy, the stonemason who triggers love and lust in Rose; Natalie, Rose's unbalanced sister who has a niece out-of-wedlock; and the mysterious piano tuner.

The writing has moments of lyricism, especially when the author waxes eloquent on music. Indeed, there is a lilt to the story, a fine melody that wraps around the reader. I love music, was myself a performance major for a year, and this focus was what initially attracted me to purchase the book. Dialogue provides momentum; Chamberlain's playwrighting skills are enviably illustrated in her first novel.

That said, I found much of the story predictable, particularly the events shaping the relationships between the characters, some of which bordered on cliche. The conclusion left me vaguely unsatisfied, for it provided no new insight into the perpetual dilemma faced by ambituous women who wish to 'have it all'.

Rose has so much to share; this was a rare instance when I wished the story was told in first person or, at the least, close third. But the story is narrated in a rather formal third voice, staying true to Rose's point of view most of the time. But there are times when we (satisfyingly) get into Rose's head, like when she allows herself to experience love:

She needed stillness in which to sink down. Instead, she felt herself going up and up, groping upward in her mind, past Frances, up past tenure, up, up, groping her way up the face of the moon, no handholds nor footholds, just a dazzling, slippery surface, and an upward urge no one could sustain.

The Author... Marisha Chamberlain is a playwright, poet, and fiction writer who lives in Minnesota. Scherazade, a stage play, won the Dramatists Guild/CBS National Award, and her book of poems, Powers, won a Minnesota Voices Award.

The Press... Soho Press is a New York based independent publishing company that "place(s) a high priority on publishing quality unsolicited materials from new writers." Their list is eclectic and edgy, with a strong emphasis on crime fiction (they're the US firm pubbing Stuart Neville's THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST - yay!) and literary fiction. Read their Blog. This is a press whose offerings I covet for my shelves.


Sing your way to the closest indie bookstore (or click yourself directly to the source) and enjoy THE ROSE VARIATIONS.

Peace, Linda

Fabulous Flash Fiction - Forty For Free!

Available NOW for your reading pleasure -- The Editor Unleashed Flash Fiction Forty Winners.

Featuring:

--Defection (Yours Truly)
--Mirror, Mirror (Greta Igl)
--Pure White (Stephen Book)
--Rough Trade (Stephen Nicholson)
--Sportsmen (John Towler)
--Unscrambling Love (Angel Zapata)
--Ten One-hundreds of a Second (Deborah Bundy)
--The Mercantile Exchange (Kim Beck)

Peace, Linda

Writing What You Don't Know?

The conventional wisdom is to write what you do know. If so, then my stories should be rife with middle-aged women undergoing middle-aged crises of work, heart, and soul. But they are not. Instead, for some strange reason I write from the perspective of young men (very young men who most would argue are really on the cusp of adulthood) who have very different life experiences and situations than myself.

Why do I write what I write?

This fascination with young men likely stems from my total lack of understanding of what drives them. Males in their late teens and early twenties are mysterious creatures and, I sense, conflicted ones: how does one become a man in this society?

Aboriginal societies send their pubescent males into the wilds for walk-abouts. Other tribal groups will circumcise, conduct trial by fire challenges, or encourage duels to death. American society sends young men to college and/or work and tell them to provide for the family they will create. But now, with women sharing the load - and sometimes taking the lead in resource provision or even choosing to go solo - young malehood seems to be at a crossraods.

I think of this often, especially in context of my ten-year old son whose legs grow ever more lanky and whose jawline sports soft blond fuzz. How will he become a man?

This wondering must be why characters Ben and Clay and Kevin bubble up through my subconscious, demanding to Be.

The writing... a preoccupation these past three weeks. Almost finished GONE, a story I am very proud of because I stretched in so many ways. Polishing my opening of PURE for submission to my writing workshop starting July 25. Working on three HINT FICTION pieces due in August, as well as some garden-inspired poems for another deadline. Also playing around with a non-fiction book proposal on prescription drug abuse...

The reading... Finished MIDDLEMARCH - yay! Am in thrall with a fantastic anthropological study RIGHTEOUS DOPEFIEND by Phillippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonboem which follows homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. The authors get close and personal with camera and interviews. The writing is phenomenal and very accessible, and the photographs heart-breaking. Finishing up July's debut author write-up - look for it next week - the monthly hump was bumped due to my writing frenzy...


The awards... Shellie of Layers of Thought and fellow blogger from Project 100 sent me a Heartfelt Award. Thanks Shellie - glad you and others feel warm fuzzies in my little blog room. My turn to nominate:

Deborah: Makes the world of writing and riding come alive from the foothills of North Carolina. And she's a damn fine friend to boot.

Paige: Artist, photographer, poet... her blogs are fine places to settle with a glass of wine.

Greta: Fabulous writer - and foodie. Her recipes and prose both make me drool.

Hope: Writing with a dash of humor of lots of compassion.

Peace, Linda

Farming...

For some time now I've felt the saturation of too many words, of too much life, crowding my heart and head. Mornings, when I wake with the chortling birds, the words have come reluctantly, exerting their own tug-of-war that not even two cups of coffee can overcome. I have a short story due the end of July for an anthology and, as of last week, not a sentence committed to paper. Not even an idea. So when I left for North Carolina last week, I left sans computer, sans files, sans everything but a few stories written by friends. I decided to BE - in the moment, in the breath - for a few days.

On Sunday morning I stole away with my husband to the daylily farm a few miles from my parents' house. The air was swollen with moisture. While my husband chose his specimens, I paced the lanes between furrows of flowers, their reds and oranges, lilacs and pinks richer in the overcast. I walked for exercise - it was a large field as daylily fields go - and to release the tensions that continued to dog me. Workers pulled plants from the ground and tended the lilies still striving toward a distant sun. In the back field, a young man and woman clambered from a pick-up truck and began to harvest hydrangea blooms. Watching them as I walked, the muse snuck in and whispered: Clayton Oxendine Pettigrew, and the story unfurled.

I am smitten with my new character and his story, and hope to constrain GONE to its 2500 word limit - I have not written a 'proper' short before. But I like the sprawl of a novel, the luxury of space a long story affords, so who knows? For now, Clayton plants the red clay of Eastern North Carolina and I farm my words...

Peace, Linda

What Grows in the Garden

The peak of summer. My garden is lush with foliage, flowers, and the buds of many edibles: blueberries and service berries, hazelnuts fat for the squirrel to pick off, sugar snap peas late this year from the chilling spring rains. The asparagus have sprouted into high feathery fronds that hide my children and the rabbits, and the raspberries sport small white flowers that buzz with bees.


This year, for the first time, the kiwi trees droop with fruit, although the white peach is sparse after last season's bountiful crop.

We spend a lot of time in our garden. My husband is the primary caretaker; the garden is his genius genesis. I play supporting actor by weeding and dead-heading his prize daylilies, harvesting the bounty and making it part of our dinner staple. Caring for our outside living room, preparing the peas and berries, slows me down, puts me in a meditative frame.

Like my garden, my words slow, become more lazy yet purposive at the same time, unlike the manic rush of writing in the early dark hours of winter.

How does your garden grow?

**

The Writing... PURE trucking along at a steady pace. I am preparing work for the Harbinger*33 anthology, which has me confounded - what to submit? Something new? Something old and tweaked? I'm running out of time, and my head is full...

My short story DEFECTION placed well in the popular vote in the Editor Unleashed Flash Fiction 40, and snagged a spot in the anthology. I'm grateful for the feedback from readers, and especially thrilled that so many of the stories penned by my writing peeps (especially my Nudgers) will snuggle between the covers with mine.

The Reading... Finished Middlemarch and starting in on The Corrections (Franzen) and Lady Chatterly's Lover, among others. Also grooving on Best American Short Stories 2006, picked up at a yard sale for a dime. Short stories are one of those writing groups I don't eat enough of.

My dad... Thanks all who have shared your concerns and sent good thoughts and prayers. He starts a Phase II clinical trial that may help slow tumor growth. We leave this week to spend some vacation time with him and my mom...

My kids... turn 10 and 7 this week! My little sprouts, my joys, they grow with abundance like our garden.


Peace, Linda

(Garden by Henry, pictures by me)

The Last of Lasts...

Father's Day swept in this year on a bittersweet wind. I couldn't be with my father this year to honor him in what may likely be his last such celebration. But in my garden three hundred miles away, the currants hung, red fleshy globules. I spent the afternoon picking the lip-puckering berries, cleaning them, boiling them into juice. When I visit in two weeks, I will have jars of glistening ruby jelly for him to enjoy. His favorite.

Father's Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July... the flowering dogwoods, beach trip, my childrens' birthdays... the hummingbird, the taste of roast turkey, solid food, a day without morphine...

The last of lasts.

I am not sure next summer I'll be able to harvest currants without crying.


**


The Writing... HABITS DIE HARD up at Boston Literary Magazine. Kudos to writing friends Stephen Book, Greta Igl, Doug Mathewson, and Jane Banning, whose drabbles grace the same page.

DEFECTION continues to hang tough in the EDITOR UNLEASHED/SMASHWORDS Flash Fiction 40 Contest. I'm pretty flabbergasted - the popular vote ranks me in the Top 5 out of 280 entries, but the Pit Boss (Maria Schneider) decides the grand prize winner - as she should. Take a peek - tons of talent, and a fabulous lesson on writing concise fiction. Most gratifying? Every one of my Nudger writing buddies ranks in the Top 40!

HARBINGER*33 sets sail! Quite an honor to be a member of this amazing crew. More later, but the journey promises excitement - and fun.

Of course, still plugging away at PURE, prepping my submission to the summer workshop at Lesley University. Waiting to hear on several poems and flashes out for submission. Fingers crossed.

The Reading... Thirty pages from Middlemarch's grand conclusion. What fun sharing the epic reading with my Filling In the Gaps 100 Project reading buddies. Also made more fun by finishing the last two books on my sleek and sexy Kindle Dx. Next up... The Corrections (Franzen) and the July Debut Indie Pick.

Read hard, write hard... live and love hard. The days and the people who fill them pass too quickly...

Peace, Linda

Repeat After Me - June Indie Debut Pick

I MET DA GE ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON IN THE FALL OF 1989. New York was orange and confident then, leaves breezing the curb and towers poking above the skyline. I was teaching English as a second language at a school called Embassy when he arrived two weeks and fifteen minutes late. He stood in the doorway watching the class with an expression it was hard to identify -- some combination of grin, smirk, and sneer. I thought he might be shy.

Thus begins the relationship of Aysha Silverman, ESL teacher rebounding after a college breakdown, and Da Ge, an engimatic, troubled dissident who fled China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Despite language and cultural differences, the two develop a sensitivity to the other's harbored secrets. Aysha falls in love with Da Ge long before he asks her to marry him as a step toward attaining US citizenship. Aysha becomes pregnant, but before she can share the news with Da Ge, he commits suicide.

The story spans two decades and continents, and Rachel DeWoskin bridges these spans with rich detail and evocative prose. Beijing comes alive, it's own character, as does the less foreign but equally exotic New York City. Besides the settings and cultures, the strong ensemble of secondary characters are not easily forgettable: Aysha's best friend Julia One, Embassy Student Xiao Wang, De Ga's father Old Chen, and Julia Two, the perky tween-age daughter. Most believable is well-drawn relationship of Aysha with her mother.

Da Ge haunted me days after I finished the book. Tough, vulnerable, secretive, I turned pages to find out what made him tick. His character and blunt insights on life Chinese and American are revealed best in the essays, submitted to his 'Teacher', that preface each section. Rereading these excerpts a secnd and third time reveal layers of Da Ge unnoticed the first time through.

This is a quiet novel, complex in it's rendering of love in all its forms. The story meanders from time period and country, at times without sufficient guideposts to orient the reader. But the prose itself is straightforward and honest, and interesting enough to give pause for appreciation. For me, the story comes alive when Aysha relates the breakdown leading to her hospitalization and withdrawal from Columbia.

She asks: How do people know what to filter out and what to leave in? maybe we're permeable, and insanity is the loss of that membrane; everything floods in and out, uncontrolled.

In truth, the mental illness angle surprised -- and delighted -- me; from the front flap cover, the only inkling is of Aysha's "nervous breakdown". But both protagonists suffer psychiatric maladies, and it is in this suffering that their relationship is idealized and consummated. As someone who purposively seeks out books that explore the intersection of the unquiet mind and the restive heart, the central theme of mental unwellness was a bonus.

THE AUTHOR... RACHEL DEWOSKIN certainly has "platform" - educated at Columbia University, she moved to beijing where she worked in public relations before taking a starring role in a Chinese soap opera likened to "Sex and the City." Repeat After Me is her first novel; her memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing was published in 2005.


THE PRESS... Small but mighty, OVERLOOK PRESS has one of the most eclectic portfolios of fiction and non-fiction among all the independent presses. Sympathetic to emerging writers, I troll here frequently, and suggest you pay a visit as well.

Repeat after me - this is a gem of a novel. Read it.

Peace, Linda

Ant you are...

Though once you seemed
to me mighty,
a mastodon,
lifting me through
throngs, across mine
strewn lands stronger
than anyone
or anything.
Rendered wizened
small from weeks of
radiation,
still standing but
weaving stubborn;
brave ant you are.


Father's Day approaches. Mine survived 7 weeks of aggressive cancer treatment last year. But the pain is back and 4 biopsies and a CAT scan later we are waiting. Again.

Hold your father close.

Peace, Linda