The Dog Days of Summer

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014

I think of the dog days of summer as being in August – that period of time when life seems to slow down. People are either away on holidays or they leave work early. Meals are simpler (popsicles for lunch anyone?), clothing is lighter, worries seem to recede.

Well, guess what? Depending on who you want to believe, the dog days of summer may end next week (I’m not impressed: that reminds me of fall and I’m not ready for sweaters and slippers).

In ancient times, the Romans associated the dog days with the Dog Star, Sirius, which happens to be the brightest star in the night sky. It’s so bright the Romans thought the earth received heat from it. In the summer, Sirius rises and sets with the sun and at one point in July, actually conjuncts the sun. Considered a particularly potent time, the Roman’s deemed the 20 days before this conjunction and the 20 days after as ‘the dog days of summer.’ That meant the dog days could run anywhere from late July to late August, and that’s still the belief in many European cultures today.

However, nothing stays the same, including the constellations in our sky. Given the precession of the equinoxes (basically the drift of our nighttime constellations) the conjunction of Sirius to our sun takes place earlier. So these days the Farmer’s Almanac lists the dog days as beginning July 3^rd and ending August 11^th.

Personally, I’m backing the Romans. Mind you, they also thought this period was an evil time when “the sea boiled, the wine turned sour, dogs grew mad and men were plagued with hysteria.” They were so fearful they generally sacrificed a dog to appease the Gods.

There’s no need for that around here. In my little world, the sea is calm, the wine is sweet and Team Sheltie is happy. Sure, I’m a little hysterical, but that’s nothing new.

And it’s got nothing to do with the dog days of summer.

The Creative Art of Doing Nothing

June 11, 2014June 11, 2014

I don’t have much time for lying on the grass and watching the clouds these days. You probably don’t either. Do you care? Or does some small part of you celebrate the fact that your life is busy, busy? That it’s always go, go, go?

Benjamin Franklin said, “It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.” Most of us have taken that attitude to heart. We’ve also adopted the belief that “Inspiration exists but it has to find you working” (Pablo Picasso) and that ‘Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.’ (That quote is so rampant and has so many variables no one is entirely sure where it first came from).

In our culture we celebrate busyness. Busyness equals business. If you aren’t busy, you aren’t doing business.

Except:

“To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.” Samuel Butler

And:

“Imagination needs moodling – long inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” Brenda Ueland in If You Want to be a Writer

Moodling isn’t watching TV or seeing a movie. It’s not surfing the net or reading a book. It’s not cooking a meal for someone you love or listening to a friend in trouble, or even walking the dog if that dog is anything like my youngest (lovable but demanding) Sheltie. Those things are all worthwhile. But they’re not moodling.

Moodling is

. . . watching a spider eat aphids on a rose.

. . walking the beach with no agenda and only your thoughts for company.

. . . sitting outside after dark and staring at the stars not because you’re locked out but because you want to lock in. To inspiration. To creativity. And to possibilities.

We all need a little moodling time. It’s the best way to let our imaginations soar.

To Look . . . and to Really See

May 14, 2014May 14, 2014

“In my own worst seasons, I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.”

Barbara Kingsolver

Sight is often taken for granted. It’s relatively rare to recognize how much joy sight brings to our lives. I certainly don’t get up every morning and celebrate the sight I see in the bathroom mirror (though I do smile when the alarm goes off and I see the furry bodies of Team Sheltie pouncing on the bed for a morning cuddle).

I’ve been thinking about sight a lot lately. I’m at the hospital waiting while my mother has the first of two surgeries to remove cataracts from her eyes. The world is becoming cloudier on a daily basis, she says. She stopped driving at night many months ago, and she admitted last week she shouldn’t be driving during the day now either.

The surgery has an extremely high success rate, so there’s no reason to worry. But sight is a subject fraught with emotion in our family. Growing up, I watched as my grandmother slowly went blind. She had diabetes, and though she went through multiple surgeries, there was nothing the doctors could do to stop the inevitable. She took it in stride, and with amazing grace, though it left her angry and depressed at times. My mother – her daughter – also has diabetes. Her eyes are showing signs of damage that cataract surgery cannot address. The upside, if there is one, is that while my grandmother spent most of her adult life as a diabetic and her eyes bore much of the damage, my mother was diagnosed much later in life. There is still time for her to see another sunset, watch a grandchild get married, perhaps even look into the eyes of her first great- grandchild. With luck, her eyesight will remain reasonably good for a long time.

But there are no guarantees in life. My mother’s surgeries, and memories of my grandmother, have given me a deeper appreciation of what’s around me this spring. In the back garden, the red tulips with blue and white throats are almost finished. The lovage has shot up in the herb garden; the celery-like stalks are almost five feet high. And beside the house, the lilac bush is heavy with richly-scented purple blooms. I’ve cut some for my desk. Every once in a while I stop to admire them. Not only is it important to stop and smell the flowers, it’s just as important to stop and see them too.

When Life and Writing Collide

April 30, 2014April 30, 2014

If life unfolded according to plan, I’d be writing this from a villa in the south of France while my personal assistant tracked the rise of my latest best seller on the New York Times list. The villa would be luxurious and clean, the pool refreshing, and my muse would be in high gear . . .

Okay, forget the fiction. In reality, if life unfolded according to plan, I’d be on the treadmill writing six hours every day and ignoring the dust, the dog hair, and the dirty dishes.

I’m not. I’m getting some writing done, and I’m doing it on the treadmill, but I’m being pulled in a number of stressful directions which is wreaking havoc on my routine.

A few weeks ago, Trace, the male half of Team Sheltie, had surgery to remove a lump that was supposed to be small, but ended up being much bigger than the vet anticipated. Recovery has been slow and he has needed careful watching, even wearing his fancy T-shirt to stop him licking the incision. Thank the Canine Gods the lump proved benign.

Then, just after Easter, my 89-year-old mother-in-law ended up in hospital. Last year she faced life-threatening surgery and was hospitalized for three months (That was a routine killer, let me tell you). She recovered and went home, but she’s been frail ever since. She has also relied on family to get her groceries and take her to various appointments. It’s no small commitment since we’re on the island and she lives on the mainland, about three and a half hours away. With this latest hospitalization, the ferry trips have started again as we wait for a diagnosis and prognosis. Though I’m concerned for her, I also recognize that we might be facing months of work disruptions and punishing expenses (thank you, BC Ferries).

And in case I’m not feeling committed enough, my mother is scheduled for two surgeries over the next six weeks. They’re relatively minor in the scheme of things, but she’ll require hands on support for a day or two afterwards, and I’m the chauffeur, caregiver, cheerleader.

Needless to say, I’m distracted these days.

Here are some thoughts on how to cope when life interferes with the best of (in my case) writing plans.

Focus more on less. Whether your job is writing or something else, when a crisis hits, zero in on what really matters. Your loved one. Your own health. If there’s time and energy left, pick one professional commitment that matters to you. For me, that’s writing. Everything else – social media, emails, reading blogs and professional sites – slides.

Prioritize. As soon as a crisis erupts, I mentally scan my professional ‘to do’ list and slash it in half. I determine what, if anything, must be addressed immediately. If I’m on deadline, that moves to the top of the list. I contact my editor and alert him or her to the situation. When my mother was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism three years ago and I was on deadline for an article, I contacted the editor, explained the situation and asked for a few extra days to complete the assignment. She was very understanding.

Stay flexible. When my stepfather was dying from lung cancer, I found it difficult to produce fresh writing but I was able to focus on short articles. Though I wasn’t happy about it, I let the fiction slide for a few months. I’ve never regretted it.

Say no when you can. This isn’t the time to bake two dozen cupcakes for the school bake sale, or take on a rush assignment. And don’t be afraid to change your mind and say no when you previously said yes, particularly when it comes to personal commitments. People understand as long as you tell them what’s going on.

Keep going. As frustrating as it can be to have plans derailed, I’ve found some comfort in taking small steps. I might not be able to write 1500 words a day on my work in progress, but with half an hour I can read over the last scene and make a few notes in the margin. I can read up on my setting or research another aspect of the story. The novel may not advance as quickly as I’d like, but a few minutes a day on peripheral work can keep the story in my mind and make it easier to return to later.

Maintain healthy habits. Easier said than done if you’re spending a lot of time at the hospital or traveling to reach a loved one, but it’s so important. For me, that means eating high quality food, avoiding alcohol and sugar, and getting regular – and that means heart-pumping – exercise. Doing this helps me sleep, and that’s another thing to maintain during times of high stress. Good sleep habits.

Get organized. Maybe it’s just me but when life is chaotic, I take some comfort in having the basics under control. I like to have a fridge full of food, the laundry done, the grass cut. It’s not always possible, but spending a few minutes every week thinking about meals, for instance, frees me up to concentrate on what really matters.

And finally:

Everything is temporary. This too shall pass. Repeat as needed.

Overheard This Week

April 23, 2014April 23, 2014

“I feel so grown up. I have so much debt.”

I was buying a bottle of grapefruit seed extract at the health food store this week when I overheard this comment behind me. I knew the speaker was a woman. That much was clear. But I was fuzzy on her age. Youngish for sure. Twenty or so, I guessed.

I was off by five or six years. The woman was very, very young. Probably just into her teens.

Her friend laughed. The two of them then proceeded to talk about how much money they owed parents, siblings, and several well-known retail clothing stores. About how much they’d need to borrow to buy their first car. To go to university.

It was a great reminder of how character can be shown through one’s relationship to money: how we value it, save it, spend it. But the relationship to money is also generational. I paid cash for my first car ($500 and, yes, it was a beater). I didn’t have a credit card until I was well into my twenties. My mother-in-law is 89 and doesn’t have a credit card, period. She pays cash for everything. She doesn’t believe in debt.

It may be easy for her, but it’s not easy to navigate life without some debt or a credit card anymore. Most homeowners start out with a mortgage. Many teens take out student loans to attend post-secondary institutions. If you get on a plane, in-flight services are often credit only these days. And booking that flight or ordering on line is usually impossible without a credit card or PayPal account.

I feel so grown up. I have so much debt. That comment really made me stop and think.

It’s unlikely credit cards will ever completely disappear. And no doubt debt, in one form or another, will exist until this rock we live on turns to dust. But I can’t help wondering if I’ll ever overhear someone say, I feel so young. I have absolutely no debt.

Wouldn’t that be a novel concept?

Getting Out of your Comfort Zone May Help Your Writing

April 9, 2014April 9, 2014

I’ve been making an effort to try new things over the last while. Even things I don’t feel all that confident about. I’ve started using a rowing machine (my body isn’t impressed but I’m not giving up yet); I’m working on a short story which takes me miles out of my comfort zone; and I’m about to use Adobe Acrobat for the first time to go through a set a page proofs. Small things, all of them, but the research is clear: doing things differently or learning something new (regardless of whether it’s something significant like a new language or something small like Adobe Acrobat) increases our brain activity and could make us more creative, more energetic, more social and just all around happier.

I’m all for that.

As I learn and stretch and try new things I’ve noticed how much it impacts my writing and helps me see things from a fresh perspective. Writing short stories requires brevity which sharpens my skills. Learning to row has given me insights into a character who plays an important role in a young adult novel I’m writing. Understanding and implementing Adobe Acrobat reminds me of what it was like learning to work with the track change feature in Word years ago.

More than anything, though, change alleviates boredom. The ennui I was beginning to feel at the gym is all gone as I challenge myself on the rowing equipment. The stress I sometimes feel around writing (deadlines; word lengths; acceptance/rejection) doesn’t apply to the short story I’m flirting with. I’m writing it just for me. I’m not even sure when I’ll finish it. Given my tendency to set deadlines and meet them, having a more free flowing approach to a writing project is a new thing for me. It’s taking me totally out of my comfort zone.

And it’s a surprisingly happy place to be.

Writing Books or Blowing Glass, It’s All a Process

March 12, 2014March 12, 2014

We spent a few days in Seattle last month and one of the highlights was visiting the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum at Seattle Center. Dale Chihuly is something of a phenomenon in the glass world. His blown glass –everything from single bowls to massive sculptures and chandeliers in complex shapes and dazzling color combinations – is shown around the globe. Some of it remains in private collections, but much of it is displayed in places like the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England, and in the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you ever watched the 1990’s sitcom ‘Frasier’ psychiatrist Frasier Crane had a Chihuly piece on display beside his fireplace too.

Chihuly has faced many challenges in his life (the death of his father and brother while he was in his teens; a head on collision as an adult that left him blind in one eye) and, like most artists, he’s not without his critics (who debate whether his work is art or craft; who criticize his move to hire others to blow the glass after a body surfing accident left him unable to do the heavy work). But Chihuly presses on, coping with his limitations, and ignoring the naysayers and critics. His job, as he sees it, is to show up and simply do the work.

The museum visit was inspirational. It reminded me that whether you’re creating a beautiful glass sculpture, a full-length novel, or a four course dinner, the real reward is in the doing.

Some pictures from our museum visit and some quotes from Dale Chihuly:

I never actually consider what I am, nor do I reflect much on what I’ve done, nor do I think too much about what I will do.

My well of inspiration never runs dry. Just working with the materials seems to bring forth the ideas.

I can’t worry about how the world will be received. People will respond in many different ways. If you could record the reactions, there would be tremendous variation.

I can’t understand it when people say they don’t like a particular color. How can you not like a color?

I want my work to appear like it came from nature.

Spontaneity is the one element I most strive for in my work.

I think all artists have to overcome criticism. Most artists who are successful, somebody’s there waiting to give you a hard time. I tend not to read a lot of the reviews.

Yeah, you have doubts. But you don’t want those doubts when you’re making the work. If you have doubts about work while you’re making it, it’s hard to make it. So you have to have some kind of vision about what you’re trying to do, and then while you’re doing that, you have to be very confident.

It doesn’t make any difference to me if the work is called art or craft or design. To me, the best of everything is an art form. A movie can be wonderful art or it can be poorly made and purely commercial. If it moves people in some way, that’s what’s important.

Just take things as they come. We’ll see how this works out. It’s like a lot of good things. If you follow your heart, sometimes you get lucky.

Giving Thanks

November 27, 2013November 28, 2013

When I do author talks or school visits, one of the questions I’m often asked is what I like best about being a writer. The question came up again the other day. Until now, my answer has usually been twofold. I’m most thankful, I generally say, that I can write in jeans and slippers (there’s something incredibly freeing about not having to pluck, mousse, iron, and endure heels before plonking down at the desk). I also admit that because I’m a writer I feel entitled to spy on people at the grocery store. I do. Character is truly revealed in the generally mindless acquisition of food (is my subject buying Kraft dinner or quinoa? Wearing sweats or silk? Do they stack and toss? Smile or glare? Rush or linger? Treat the cashier with kindness or indifference?)

With American Thanksgiving now upon us, I’ve decided to ponder the question of thankfulness more deeply.

I am most thankful to be a writer because:

I can ask questions of anyone, anywhere, and at any time, all under the guise of research (Although I do refrain at weddings, funerals and during bikini waxings).

I have a valid excuse for an extra twenty pounds since writing requires sitting for many long hours (given that I’ve just set up a treadmill desk, this sentence is subject to revision).

I get to read. A lot. And this I can do on a treadmill or an elliptical. At a stop light even. Until the guy behind me honks.

I can write anywhere and at any time. Though I don’t recommend mixing laptops and hot tubs. Especially after midnight. Trust me on this.

I set my own hours which means I can get a root canal in the middle of the day or take off to ~~watch a movie~~ do heavy, intense research. And I don’t have to ask my boss.

I am always learning. Fun, neat facts like ‘intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair’ and ‘women blink twice as many times as men do.’ Without these random bits of trivia my life would be seriously incomplete.

I’ve met many wonderful people through my writing, and I’ve made lifelong friends too.

I get to experience the thrill of the unknown twice a year when the royalty checks land in the mailbox. Sometimes I even get to shop afterwards.

I am allowed to daydream. Staring into space for long periods of time is mandatory. And my family understands that even when I look like I’m paying attention, sometimes I’m not.

I play every single day. And that, really, is the thing I am most thankful for. I play with words, with worlds, with people and emotions. In my slippers, on my laptop, at the gym or in my office. I play. Only everybody else calls it work.

Overheard This Week

November 13, 2013November 13, 2013

A poignant plea caught my ear as I visited Victoria’s new indoor market last week. Two women were bent over a plate of tacos and guacamole with corn chips. One of the women was marshmallow pale and her eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. She sighed, flipped a nubby brown scarf over her shoulder, leaned across the table and said: ‘Can’t we just talk about shoes?’

No surprise there I guess. Wilma and Betty were big on shoe talk back in the Flintstone era. But this week the plea hit me with the force of a Louboutin to the solar plexus. Sometimes we want to set the serious stuff aside. That woman certainly did. Right now, I do too.

I’ll admit it: I’m drawn to the dark stuff. My books inevitably end up being a mix of light and dark. Life isn’t all sunshine and I don’t think it pays to pretend it is. But these last few weeks the happenings have been grim: hundreds of thousands of people killed or impacted by typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. The impact is being felt in my city where many residents are worried sick about loved ones overseas. On a national scale, the mayor of our largest city has been embroiled in a Molotov cocktail of addiction, out-of-control rage and alleged ties to organized crime with widespread calls for his resignation. On a personal level, a dear family friend died a couple of days ago and a step aunt is facing her last days too. Needless to say, the nightly talk around our dinner table has been as heavy as braised short ribs and sweet potato mash, though not nearly as satisfying.

I guess that’s why I found myself repeating the plea from those anonymous women the other night: can’t we just talk about shoes?

Or maybe coffee beans? Okay, maybe not coffee because Teen Freud is sure to point out how child labor and exploitation is rampant in the cultivation of coffee in Colombia and Guatemala. Then how about we talk about the cute new puppy next door and how it falls on its bum every time it walks up the (basically negligible) hill between our houses? No, Teen Freud, they did not get it from a puppy mill. Yes, Teen Freud, it is a pure bred Bichon Frise; yes, we are aware that there are many abandoned, mistreated and mixed breed dogs in the world.

As a matter of fact, I’m painfully aware of all of it. I read the papers (or those that are left). I surf the ‘net (too much sometimes). I talk about it and think about it and live it. We all do. Our first two dogs were rescues from an abandoned litter. I’ve witnessed (up close and way too personal) the devastating effects of addiction. I’ve grieved more than one loss.

We all have. That’s why sometimes we need a few minutes to forget about it. That’s why sometimes we just want to talk about shoes.

Filling the Well, Fall Style

October 30, 2013November 4, 2013

After the wettest September on record, October has offered up a series of foggy mornings and brilliantly clear afternoons. And though I’ve been indoors a little more than I’d like to be, I have managed to sneak outside now and then to appreciate the beauty up close.