There are times when I’ve been sucked into believing I need all that: the perfect view, the clear schedule, a quiet house. And sure it’s great and inspiring and all, but if we sit around and wait for the time or conditions to be “perfect” for writing, we’ll hardly ever write. Because there’s always something. Real life keeps going on around us, and surprise! we’re meant to be part of that. The trick is to write anyway. 

If you don’t have time to write a page, write a sentence.

If the muse doesn’t show up, write crap.

If you don’t feel like writing, write that you don’t feel like writing.

If your laptop’s busted and you can’t find your favourite pen, write with pencil and paper. (Ooh, I know — really shaking things up now, lol.)

You get my point. When we scrap the excuses and write anyway, words get written. And that’s a good thing for those of us who call ourselves writers! So why is it so hard sometimes? Why do we readily hand over our writing goals and dreams to a few lousy excuses? Really, that’s what we’re doing when we make excuses.  And I’m pretty sure that, at least in my case, it’s not really about a busy schedule or a missing muse. Maybe fear of failure? Laziness? ADD? (I’m kidding about that last one there. It’s more like IAD —  internet addiction disorder.) Whatever the root of it, the outcome’s the same. And personally, I don’t want to be someone who surrenders dreams quite so readily.

For the next couple days, I’ll take advantage of the abundance of dedicated writing time and be thankful for it. But when life gets back to its more usual blend of chores/kids/job/clutter/phone-calls/meetings, I’ll still be a writer. Odds are, there won’t be too many “perfect” moments to get my words written, but hopefully I’ll be brave enough and wise enough to shun excuses and write anyway.

Need a dose of inspiration? Remember, my friends, this day we write! :)

I’m not saying we should be grateful because it’s so wonderful and so powerful, because really I think gratitude is just one of those things that’s right. But it’s kind of cool what a difference it can make, don’t you think?

Today (even though I’ve missed the opportunity to blend alliteration with gratitude ), I want to say this:

In the midst of grief and sadness, I am grateful for laughter and bad jokes and silliness and love. And above all, for family.

1. books written by real-life or online friends of mine
2. books written by authors I already know I love
3. books that win or are short-listed for awards (assuming the stories appeal to me!)
4. books that have been recommended to me by crit partners
5. books that have received good reviews from book-bloggers, SLJ, Kirkus…
6. books I’ve stumbled across online that strongly appeal to my taste, even if there’s not a lot of buzz

So, it’s not often I pick up a book that’s completely new to me and decide to buy it right then. That’s really not fair to all those fabulous-but-unknown-to-me books out there, but sadly, that’s the way it is. In case you care (and I know some of my writer-friends probably do — the rest of you, maybe not so much), here, in order, is what tipped the scales and resulted in today’s purchase:

• cover art
• title
• back cover copy
• blurb by author I know & love (Courtney Summers)
• blurbs by others I’m familiar with but haven’t yet read (Stephanie Kuehnert and Kody Keplinger)
• first page

If the blurbs were from people I hadn’t heard of, I still would’ve opened the book and read the first page based on cover art, title, and back cover copy — ultimately, the voice has to grab me on page one — but the blurbs definitely helped in this case. (Full disclosure: if I’d noticed before I decided to buy that the publisher was Harlequin Teen, I may have put the book down again, cuz I’m totally not a romance person. Shame on me for being so biased.) (ETA: I checked out Harlequin Teen, and they publish a much wider range of books than I’d assumed. Never assume. Never assume. Never assume. I hope I’ve learned my lesson. )

So what’s the book?

SAVING JUNE, by Hannah Harrington. Hannah, I’m sorry I hadn’t heard of your book before. I should’ve been paying better attention, lol. But now I’ve heard of it, bought it, and am looking forward to reading it! Yay for new books!

Out of the ones I did get to, here are my faves:

	Gary D. Schmidt’s OKAY FOR NOW. Funny and heartbreaking and oh-so-good. I loved the voice and all the threads woven through this one, from Audubon’s birds, to baseball, to the Vietnam war.
	Sara Zarr’s HOW TO SAVE A LIFE, a story of two very different girls, each in need of a new sense of home and family. Told in alternating POV, each voice is absolutely pitch-perfect. Excellent book!
	Nova Ren Suma’s IMAGINARY GIRLS, a story of sisters, and the lengths one goes to to protect the other. The lines between real and imaginary are deliciously blurred in this compelling, unique story.
	Sarah Addison Allen’s THE PEACH KEEPER, which rivals GARDEN SPELLS as my favourite from this author. A delightful Southern setting full of odd, magical happenings, fabulous characters, and the underlying tension of a mystery all make this an excellent story.
	Natalie Goldberg’s WILD MIND. I wrote down so many quotes as I read this – so many things resonated with me, like this bit on style: “…becoming more and more present, settling deeper and deeper inside the layers of ourselves and then speaking, knowing what we write echoes all of us; all of who we are is backing our writing.”

Want more deets? You can see my full list of 2011 books read HERE and my still-waiting-to-be-read list HERE.

2012 books I’m REALLY looking forward to:

• Eileen Cook’s UNRAVELING ISOBEL (January 3)
• Holly Cupala’s DON’T BREATHE A WORD (January 3)
• K.M. Walton’s CRACKED (January 3)
• John Green’s THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (January 16)
• Kirsten Hubbard’s WANDERLOVE (March 13)
• Catherine Knutsson’s SHADOWS CAST BY STARS (June 5)
• Denise Jaden’s NEVER ENOUGH (July 10)
• and many, many more….

I’m always game to add to my leaning tower of to-be-read books, so let me know your favourite books of 2011. And what are you most looking forward to reading in the new year?

Peace….

Wishing you all the best over the holiday season.

Peace….

I’m sure my blood pressure was fine yesterday, because (a) it tends to run in the if-it-gets-much-lower-I’ll-fall-down range anyway, and (b) I don’t really mind line-ups. Seriously. They’re good for lots of things. For instance, you could…

• Enjoy the piped-in Christmas tunes if they’re the enjoyable kind.
• Have fun mocking the piped-in Christmas tunes if they’re the annoyable kind.
• Chat with the people in line.
• Chat with the people in your head.
• Daydream. Plan. Totally zone out so the person behind you in line has to nudge you hard on the shoulder to get you to move up. Not that that happened to me.
• Enjoy the rare no-one-demanding-anything-of-you time. (Unless you brought your toddler with you, in which case, what were you thinking?!)
• Do some biceps work with your packages, cuz with the post office errand taking this long, it’s going to cut into your gym time. Your arms will thank you, and the looks you’ll get from others in line will be quite entertaining.

Okay, enough of that. What’s my point? The waiting — so much waiting in life, and if you don’t approach it with the right attitude, your crazy factor is going to go up, right along with your blood pressure. And we don’t want that, do we?

I figure we’ve got to learn to enjoy the moment. Enjoy the “in betweens” and the “not yets”: the time in between errands and commitments, the time in between goal-setting and goal-achieving, the time in between dreaming up ideas and living them out. And what about the not yets? For writers, that might be “not yet agented” or “not yet published” (remember, that also means we’re not yet tied to someone else’s deadlines, so yay for that!). A lot of life happens in these in between, not yet times!

For those of you that follow “the Christian year”, we are in the midst of Advent, which is so much about waiting — waiting for the Christ, and waiting for ourselves to learn to get out of our own way so that we can see the Christ who is already among us. Neither seems easy. Both require grace. For me, this Advent waiting is a very significant “not yet”, and I believe it’s ripe with the possibility of joy, even as the waiting continues.

I would like to recognize that grace in all aspects of my life, and find joy wherever I am along my journey.  I imagine everyone who has hopes, dreams, and goals knows first-hand how hard waiting can be. Not gonna lie – it’s tough. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in the mother of all post office line-ups. But even so, I’m trying to be thankful for the in betweens and not yets, both career-wise and faith-wise.

Bonus? I’m getting to know the voices in my head pretty well. That’s a good thing, right?

Peace….

Feeling small and powerless may not seem appealing (no, really?), but it’s the flip side — the flip side says there’s something big and powerful out there. Something beyond the confines of my daily life, beyond what I see and know and understand. And that brings a new perspective to things. It might seem scary, but I find it freeing.

So if you see me standing out there, the wind whipping my hair, rain lashing my face and clothing, don’t be surprised if I’m laughing. Because freedom feels really good! Well, unless you get hit by flying driftwood, but that’s a whole ‘nother post….

Happy storm season.

After a storm: driftwood has all been tossed up onto the breakwater.

Nova Ren Suma has been hosting a series of guest posts on inspiration. Last week on Nova’s blog, Sara Zarr posted about being inspired by failure. In the creative life, she says, “we’re always living in the gap between our vision of what could be and what might be, and what is.” (Read the whole post HERE – definitely worth your time!)

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this gap, and about the scary possibility that I can’t quite bridge it, that I don’t have the tools or the skills to get my art from where it is to where I imagine it could be.

I wonder about me, too. About that gap between who I am and who I could be – or maybe should be – and I peer across this gap and suck in my breath cuz, ooh boy, I can not jump that far. But… that’s where I believe grace comes in. Grace comes in, not to swoop me up and set me on the other side, the side where I’m right and perfect and never screw up. Nuh-uh. It comes in to say hey, so you’re a little damaged, so what? I can work with that.

Another guest post in Nova’s series on inspiration is from Veronica Roth. Veronica included a quote I love: “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.” I think writing, for me, is a means of grace, something that lets me explore the broken bits of me and expose the raw edges so the glue can be applied. And sometimes I emerge stronger for it, a bit further along on the journey.

I want to share with you another bit from Sara’s post. I think it applies to both the creative life and the personal/spiritual life, and it offers encouragement and hope for all those times we find ourselves in the gap:

In a way, “failure” is just another word for “the journey,” for not being there yet but on the way. It’s the road we walk on to get wherever it is we’re trying to go.

That’s a good way to redefine failure, don’t you think?

Peace….

I have a great stack of book waiting for me, but I can’t settle on one. I have yard work and housework to catch up on, but that’s hardly inspiring. I seem to have all this empty time, yet I can’t latch on to the one, perfect thing that will fill the emptiness. So… I’m lost. And it’s only now, looking back over the past week, that I realize why: I’ve entered the Between-Projects Wilderness.

Two weeks ago, I finished revisions on my novel, and I devoted last week to agent research, query-writing, and synopsising (synopsis is a verb, right?). And now, here I am, wandering between my last project and my next project. And yes, it feels a bit like wandering in the wilderness. It occurred to me, though, that the wilderness may be a perfect place to be.

wil·der·ness (noun) 1. a wild and uncultivated region, as of forest or desert…

See what I mean? Wild and uncultivated. *waggles eyebrows* Sounds like a place where ideas run rampant and potential stories fall over themselves in tangled mounds… exactly the place to be when you’re in between writing projects. And that wilderness is everywhere! The day job, the yard work, movies, books, trips to the beach, gatherings with relatives — all wild and uncultivated if I look at them the right way (no offence to my relatives).

Of course, if I wander around with a blindfold on, I’m going to miss all the awesomeness bursting from the wild, uncultivated landscape around me. So I’m planning to spend the next little while taking in the wilderness – eyes open, ears open, mind open. Just being intentional about it makes me feel I’ve found my way.

Peace….