Summer's sweet end...

The chirping of crickets fills the evening summer air with a bittersweet melancholy. Harvest time. Late August heralds a bounty of tomatoes, raspberries, seckel pears, and sweet Hosui and Honsako Asian pears. The squirrels absconded with our hazelnuts, and the rabbits devoured much of our thornless blackberry crop, but for the first time, our white flesh peach tree, a gift fgrom my sister's North Carolina garden five years ago, bore fruit. In less than six hours, this peach, along with it's brethren, became a pie, the epitome of summer lushness.

Tomorrow, my not-so-wee ones strap on their backpacks and step on the bus. Another school year begins for them, and for me as well; this past week I welcomed 7 new doctoral students. Tomorrow morning, I hit the lecture circuit with 3 courses. In addition to research and committees galore, not to mention the tenure and promotion stuff, let's just say this semster will be... challenging...

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ON WRITING GROUPS... Robert Brewer, intrepid poet and editor of The Writer's Market for Poetry, is pitching an idea to his bosses at Writer's Digest: a book on writing groups. Good idea? Let him know at POETIC ASIDES and drop him your ideas. Or mention them here.

For myself, I find writing groups indispensible. I rely on one - THE NUDGE-NUDGE COLLECTIVE. I have waxed eloqent about the NNC before. These five fellow journeyers (John from the OBX is the newest fifth) have most definitely stretched me - and BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT - in directions I'd never imagined. I've also been blessed with 'singular' writers who have served as my harshest, and thus kindest, critics: CHRYS from Orcas, Jimmy the Prince, and my local writing group.

Do you belong to a writing group? How does it help you - or not? What guidelines would you suggest in establshing such a group?

THE WRITING... This week I will send along the requested sections of the revised BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Please, cross fingers for me. I've decided to spend the next 2 months finishing the tense revisions for the entire novel. Then, in November, when the infamous writing blitzkrieg commences, I'll be ready to plunge back into PURE.

Peace, Linda

Who Are You? Who, who? (And why being conservative might keep you sane(r))

The theme song for CSI is blaring in my darkened living room as I pull this post together. Yes, of course I multi-task. Left brain/right brain – right? The refrain keeps pounding in my head, over and over, such a catchy little mantra. In fact, the tune’s been kicking around my grey matter for the past few days, ever since meeting with my newly-reconvened ‘real’ writing group (as opposed to my ‘virtual’ ones). So last Thursday, I found myself in the middle of a small room, quaking in me wee boots as I read aloud one of my newly-crafted poems. As I finished the third stanza of my first-ever metered, rhyming poem (a rondeau redouble, no less!), the song flashes through my head: Who the heck am I?


It occurs to me I am a forty-something years young woman, mother to two young ‘uns, happily-married wife, and professor with crows feet marching proudly across my upper cheeks. But I didn’t write these verses I'm tripping over. Rather, Ben, the brilliant but bipolar 20 year-old protagonist of my completed (!!!!!) novel BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, penned these words. And of course these poems preface sections of the book and, because Ben is a genius (and I am not), they best be damn good poems if they’re ever going to be published. So as I bare my and Ben's souls to my fellow writers, some of who actually deserve the title ‘poet’, half-way through my rather serious poem about child abuse and false paternity, I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.

It’s enough to make me crazy. Or at least qualify me for a diagnosis of disordered personalities…

To write about people who only exist in your head means you need to get down into their souls. You live them, breathe them, become them. There were times last year when I would jolt awake in the dark, convinced I was in a psychiatric hospital. Because that's where Ben was at that particular juncture of the story. And when he was shot in the left shoulder, well…. I couldn’t sleep on that side for weeks. It hurt too much.

So now, I am taking a poetry class in character as Ben. My instructor’s great, very tolerant of my eccentricities, and my classmates ask appropriate and probing questions about my life as a young, mentally-ill Harvard undergrad who runs marathons (ha!) and comes from a family of considerable means (double ha!). I’ve learned a lot about writing poems - and being a writer in drag.

Here’s the first stanza of my rondeau redouble…

Newton’s Principia
(Or a Young Boy’s Lesson on Gravity)

He runs free beneath God’s sky-blue brilliance.
On cider-tinged air, quills quiver and twist.
Crimson stains white, the world roars its silence;
bodies of mass fall, clenched into tight fists.

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Want better mental health? Go conservative! According to a recent Gallup Poll, Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or Independents to rate their mental health as excellent. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report excellent mental health, compared to 43% of Independents and 38% of Democrats. These distinctions held up after controlling for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, income, church attendance, marital status, having children, and presidential job approval. What we don’t know is what comes first – the healthy head or the conservative bent.

Thus, in addition to talk therapy and chemistry, there are at least two other ways to attain a healthier and happier mental life: eating dirt and voting Republican. Hmmmm…. Which of the two is most palatable? Peace, Linda

It Takes A Village...

Writing is a lonely business, especially at 5 in the morning when the rest of the world (sanely) sleeps. But writing is a process, and to do it well, you often have to dig deep, fall into dark spaces that are too small for another voice to enter. Sometimes that chasm holds my psyche close, too close, and the residue of funked-up isolation and darkness follows me into my 'daily' life. Other times I get frustrated, hit a wall and the story shrivels up like a slug on salt. More often, I read my story and wonder why the hell I'm wasting my time writing such drivel.

It's at these moments when I'm grateful for my friends who write. They UNDERSTAND. They GET IT. We talk each other out of despair and feelings of inadequacy. But we share much more than red pens held to each others' manuscripts. We share a camraderie, an understanding that writing is HARD, that getting the words down is a damn difficult business, full of sweat and tears and exhaustion. There are many in the business - writers, agents, publishers - who state that writing with peer groups is dangerous to novice writers (i.e., those yet unpublished) than writing alone because it's difficult for novices to weed out sound, constructive advice from that provided out of ignorance, sloppiness, and insecurity. In my not-so-humble opinion, I believe receiving criticism and feedback from peers - and providing the same - is immensely valuable, a necessary part of the writing learning curve. It is the practice of discernment that makes for better writing.

My stories and poems are better for the careful reviews of fellow writers. I have friends and family (my dear hubby, Jeanne, Mark P, Lynne) to thank, as well as my on-line forumistas at Writers Digest. Instructors and classmates in my writing classes also have helped me become a stronger writer.

But I am most grateful for the talented writers in the Nudge-Nudge Collective, my on-line writing group. The NNC is comprised of Steve from Beantown (PRODIGAL SON), Margeurite from Joisey (FALSE ALIBI), Kim from the Alaskan Kenai Peninsula (TAKING ON WATER), and Deborah from the soft foothills of North Carolina (PAINTED BLACK). These thriller/mystery writers are more than just writers - they are friends. Together, we've shared our stories, those for publication and those private, sad, and joyous ones that will never see black ink.

My other source of writing inspiration is Chrys, my friend from Orcas Island. She's penning her memoir (MOONCHILD), a fabulous read about her first year away from a chaotic yet over-protected home as a young albino rocker-chick stuck in the Eastern Maryland shore. Chrys and I have a challenge: mail the penultimate drafts of our manuscripts to each other on September 15. We've been with each for the first draft and parts of the second. Wish us luck.

I am blessed to live in such a supportive, visionary village. Thank you, fellow travellers. Without you, the journey would not be as productive - or fun. Peace. Linda