Bye bye, cnn. You suck my energy too much.

You too, news feeds. get the hell out of here. I am too selfish with my energy these days. I’m liking the groove I’m in a little too much.

Another very productive writing/painting day for me today, despite not getting to bed until 1:46 a.m. I’m noticing that my biorhythms are changing their flow (does anybody even do biorhythms anymore? Isn’t that so…so…so 80s???), and I’m more awake in the evenings now than when I’m teaching. I’m also getting tons of rest during the day. I’ve never, never had such a relaxing string of days in my life. There’s no desperation, no stress, just writing, painting, and familying.

But then I hopped online and, before I logged out, I had to do my usual cnn/wbal/baltimoresun news check. it was all filled with crazy news about politicians being caught in their corruptions (oh, there’s breaking news), tragedies in every county, in every state, depressing economic news, blah blah blah…I could feel the energy being sucked out of me.

So I stopped. Cold Turkey.

My sister who lives in Florida (whom I cannot wait to see in just 24 days) only goes on happynews.com. She’s been through so many life-threatening cancers and scares that she doesn’t waste her time on bad news. I think she’s on to something.

If there’s an emergency, some dj will break into Styx playing Grand Illusion or whatever is on my classic rock stations. Until then, I’m honing that energy, baby. Funneling it into me, my art, my life.

(picture taken at LRR, 6/19/08)

By all measures, I had a writer’s day.I woke up early (but not as early as I intended; still, 6 a.m. did the trick) and hit the daybook immediately, followed by a full hour of watercolors before the family started to stir. I’ve been experimenting with various blends, wet and dry brushes, all with bringing a new look to some of the photography I’ve been doing recently.

I’m having trouble with watercolor daisies, though. I’m determined to get that just exactly right by the end of the week. I’ve got a note card I want to send off, but it would be wrong to send with naturally challenged daisies…

Then it was off to the pool for about 90 minutes as my two daughters had swim lessons and my son built sand castles in the world’s most wonderful sandbox. This is a miniature playground built around a tall oak, which provides plenty of shade for the kids as they bulldoze, construct, sift, and dream away the morning hours. I brought along Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind to re-re-read and do some of the exercises. The first one, where she talks about ten-minute writes where you begin with one starter (”I remember”) and then take its opposite for the next ten-minute write (”I don’t remember”). Wow….

I decided to write about remembering the first time I actually workshopped a piece of writing. I remembered getting ready for the workshop, working on that first draft at my dining room table, pressing hard on that sheet of looseleaf with my blue-Bic ballpoint, pushing the ink into the paper so that, when I was finished, I had to peel the paper from the wood, where the indentations from my writing stuck to the tabletop. That was a fun write to do this morning.

Then I turned the tables and did my “I don’t remember” piece about that very same topic, and what I discovered was that I don’t remember the actual workshop. I don’t remember getting peer feedback, although I knew there must have been some. That was the whole purpose of the activity. That led me to think about my own students and the workshops we do. What do they really get out of them? Do they remember them at all?

That led me to this: What do my students really need to remember at all when I teach them writing?

I turned the page and I drafted the first chapter of what I believe to be the essentials to good writing. This chapter focused on Audience and the reasons why we resist writing in the first place. Where it ends up eventually, I don’t know. But I did cherish the thought of having these 90-minute writing sessions to focus on these chapters. 30 days at the pool means 30 chapters….

When I returned home, I shared Natalie Goldberg’s “rules of writing” with my summer grad students on our online forum, and when we went back to the pool for our own afternoon of swimming, I enjoyed reading more Goldberg, some Lamott, and a little Thich Nhat Hanh.

After dinner, I went through my old writing files and found a few gems that I can rework. I also found some email correspondence with old friends. Some of it saddened me, as much has changed over the last eight years. But much of the words reminded me of all I have to be thankful for in the present, and that was a nice surprise.

I end the night blogging, thinking about my friends out there who may be writing in their blogs, too, doing our best to stay a little sane, support each other, and express love in any way we know how.

I hope you had a good day, too. There’s so much to be grateful for…

(photo taken at Loch Raven Reservoir, Nikon D70s, 18-55mm Nikkor lens, 6/19/08)

…by Catherine
What were you doing ten years ago?
I was quitting my job as editorial supervisor to the world’s largest weekly medical publication, The Journal of Biological Chemistry. I felt dead inside. Just dead. I faced mortality for the first time in my life, and I genuinely believed that if I stayed in that job any longer, I was going to die of a heart attack. I worked from home as a freelance writer/editor until I realized that I just could not stay out of the classroom. Going back to teaching saved my life. Now, I find it funny that I am taking aggressive measures to transition from full-time educator to full-time writer.
Five things to do today
It’s late, so I’ll do my five things for Sunday…

1. get up early to re-outline my once-finished book Cold Rock to begin the final process of last-round edits.

2. Pray to the weather gods that the rains stay in the sky, at least until 4 or 5 (I’d like to spend 11-5 at the pool with no weather-related closings…

3. Read another 60 pages of Lamott’s Lessons in Faith. Love this book. Love it even more knowing that Anne spent two years at Goucher, studying writing. 30 years later, so was I.

4. Time time time with my family.

5. composing a necessary and detailed email to my friend Catherine about a new writers’ group we’re starting.

Four places you have lived
I’ve been all around the world…

Well, not exactly. I’ve been all around the US, especially when I was younger. I ended up in New England in November/December ‘92, writing full-time. That was the last time I lived out of state. Since then, I’ve moved from Cockeysville to Hampstead, to Towson (three places, four years). Before all of that, though, I lived in two log cabins in southern Maryland. Best days of my life when it comes to living that dream.

Five things you would purchase if you were a billionaire
1. Buy lots of land in New England, North Carolina, or western Maryland.
2. Air tickets to attend Maui writers’ workshops, among others.
3. A complete Apple Trifecta: iPhone, MacBook Pro, another 150-gig iPod!
4. Old abandoned (but structurally sound) cabins and homes and convert them into writing houses.
5. New socks.
Six people I want to know more about
1. Salinger
2. Hemingway
3. My grandfather
4. My father

5. Natalie Goldberg

6. Anne Lamott

Now I’ll tag…. Michelle and Janet and anyone else who wants to play.

I was blessed with two early-morning hours of writing in solitude. I found the event to unfold in three rather untidy stages: the dumping of all that which has clogged my brain–deadlines, to-do’s, anxieties; the recognition of why we’re here in the first place; and the rededication to hold on to those things that are most important in this life and deny the distractors, the life-suckers, the opportunity to take me away from living, loving, being.The picture above (thanks, flickr) is the perfect fit for where I am right now. We’re getting steamed crabs from Ocean Pride just down the street, then heading to the pool for a day of relaxing and communing. But yesterday I took a 200-mile round trip to St. Mary’s, close to Maryland’s southernmost point (Point Lookout, to be exact) to lead a workshop in the teaching of daybook writing. It was a wonderful morning, and I enjoyed working with fellow writers in the rural environs of southern Maryland. One fellow writer even shared a cigar from his humidor, which I find to be a great gift to share among writing friends. I will enjoy it on June 29, when I put Cold Rock to rest, ready for press.

Returning to Southern Maryland, where I lived for most of my 20-something years, was a reminder of a time when I cultivated a love for Maryland’s natural side and began the lifelong process of consciously discovering the mystery of me. Spending time along and on the waters of the Chesapeake and its many tributaries seemed so natural, and every time I return to the area, I return to that time of discovery, of immersion, of celebration.

It’s a good place. In my writing this morning, in those two brief hours post-dawn, I returned to a place where I need to stay. How hard it is, though, to do just that. Tomorrow I’ll go back to school to finish my grades, go through the process of getting “checked out” by admins, financial managers, and our principal. I dumped a lot of the stress this morning in that first phase of my writing. But I’m going to have to make the time again tomorrow before I switch gears.

After that–after all the signatures from the admins and others, I’ll leave and begin the full immersion into recuperating, revitalizating, re-energizing. But I think that this morning already put me on that path.

I’ll be around a lot this summer. I’m looking forward to the journey, the new path, the new focus.

I do too much. It’s as simple as that.
I never really thought that it affected anybody but me. In fact, I thought that others benefited from my little whirlwind of productivity. I’ve mastered the art of multi-tasking by cutting a few corners here and there, and although I might not come across as being the most organized guy on the lot, I always know what’s going on.
Or so I thought.
I was workshopping a paper written by one of my students this morning, and as I get deeper into the story, I am left breathless by the incredibly personal and vivid descriptions of her surgery to pre-empt what seemed to be an inevitable bout with cancer. I turned to her and said, “Wow, Jess. This is amazing writing. Is this true?”
She looked at me with a mix of incredulity and sadness, biting her lower lip, nodding.
“When did this happen?” I ask.
“Last year,” she says.
I keep reading, realizing that this happened to her while she was a sophomore, and I have spent her entire junior year with her, never even realizing that she had been such trauma.
Then I said something like, “Gee, Jess. That must have been really hard during your sophomore year.”
This time, there was no sadness. A drift of anger joined the incredulous look.
“Not last school year. Just this past October.”
Well, my heart sunk, and all I could do was stare at her. She had endured all of this: the cancer scare, the operation, everything, during her school year with me, and I didn’t even realize it.
Meanwhile, another student of mine was undergoing brain surgery at the same time, and I took the time to visit her in the hospital, talk to her on the phone, spend time with her parents. Everything. We even took a class picture with a huge sign we made that said, GET WELL SOON, which we sent to her immediately via cell phone.
For Jess, I never even acknowledged her absence. I am sure that when she came back and saw that big get well soon sign, she felt like she just didn’t matter.
Nothing could be further from the truth of course. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one bit at all. I saw the sadness in her eyes today. I saw the gentle affirmation that seemed to tell me, Finally, you idiot. Finally you realized that I, too, faced mortality at this too-young age of 16.
We just wrapped up reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a tremendous read about hope and the pursuit of holding on to love. The protag, a boy of 9 whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks, wishes everything could just go in reverse, and the attacks never happened, and things were like they used to be.
I wish I could go in reverse and make it different, but I cannot.
As a culminating activity, we talked about his father’s last words left to him on the answering machine. Ten times he cried out, “Are you there?” And in the eleventh time, he is stopped midway through, presumably when the towers began to fall.
I asked my kids to reverse that question as well. Are you there? becomes There You Are. Tell the ones you love that you see them. Tell them they matter. Tell them you love them. Just tell them anything. Then they’ll know that they are there. In your mind. In your heart.
I didn’t practice that with Jess last October, or any other month, for that matter. I was too busy. I wasn’t there.
And that’s why today is one of the saddest days in teaching I’ve ever had in these 20-plus years. I became too busy for what really matters in my job, in my life. I was too busy to notice that one of my students was facing cancer scares and surgeries.
I’m not going to end this post by saying I’m going to slow down. That I’m going to be more mindful of my kids. If I didn’t have the common sense to do those two things, then I probably wouldn’t have the common sense to even write about it, which would really make me a jerk.
But I will end it by saying this:
Jess, you matter. I know where you are now. I’ll never forget that look in your eyes, that resigned sadness that you knew all along that I didn’t know, and we had reached the point where I finally got it. I’m so sorry, Jess. I told you that today, but I mean it even more now.
I preach Carpe Diem to my kids, my family, my comrades in grocery store checkout lines. Live to the fullest, I shout. It is my barbaric yawp that I shout from the rooftops, indeed. But living fully doesn’t mean being a master at multi-tasking. I think that when you lose touch with the very human beings that comprise your small, wonderful community, you’ve stopped living to the fullest. You’ve lost your direction instead, and you need to heed the warning signs before it’s too late.
I think I need to revisit some Thoreau.
Live your life fully, folks. Just do it fully with the ones you love. Never stop shouting, THERE YOU ARE. For if you do, you’ll experience the sadness I felt today, and nobody should live their lives so neglectfully, so selfishly, that they carry with them the pain of not one but two broken hearts.
There you are, now. I see you. All of you. And nothing should ever get in our way again.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone. :)

Whew! things are finally cooling down for me. Now that the seniors have graduated and I’ve made it through all of those tough birthdays and memorial anniversaries in the past month, I can feel the tension rolling away as each moment of this Memorial Day Weekend passes by…

So to jump back into the blogging world, I thought I’d be light n’ easy tonight. Here are the top five things I’ve missed in the past two months:

1. Writing on my schedule, on my time, by my rules. I’ve kept up the daybooking, but my fictive characters are crying for me to breathe a little life into them (even the dead ones). An early jump on writing tomorrow morning will help make up for lost time.

2. Writing to my friend d. She is such an inspiration to me and my muse, and I’ve done a horrible job of keeping a volley of missives alive.

3. Breathing. Yeah, I know. I’ve been breathing this whole time. But I mean intentional, meditative breathing. Again–I played the I’m-too-busy card, and that has made everything just a little harder. I should’ve known better…

4. Reading. I just started the first of seven books in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and I am already enjoying the peaceful escape a book gives me.

5. Blogging/being with fam/friends, writing letters, all of it.

Funny. These are the top five things I cherish as well….

Love the one you’re with, everyone…. :)

r.

I thought this would be a tough week for me, but for this moment, I’m handling things ok.

Sunday, May 11: Mother’s day. This was the day in 2005 when Mom had to be resuscitated twice and then signed the DNR, all falling at the end of a week where we learned that cancer was everywhere inside of her.

Monday, May 12: Mom’s birthday. In 2005, on her 79th birthday, all she wanted to do was make it to 80. In 2007, when she turned 81, she whispered her final words.
Saturday, May 17:  Five days later in 2007, she died.

I have been dreading all of this, but now that I am here, I am calm, albeit a little reserved. But calm nonetheless.

Why? Perhaps it’s that I’m not close enough to my brothers to mourn her passing, where there’s strong emotion flowing freely between us. Or maybe because my sister, whom I am close with, lives in Florida, and we’re not close geographically. Or maybe it’s this. When Dad died, Mom mourned for many months, and it was so tough helping her through that. But there is no surviving spouse. She lived a wonderful life. I was with her just hours before she died. I had my chances–and I used them–to say goodbye. There’s no anger or frustration or guilt or any of that.

There is sadness. I miss her terribly every day.

But on this day, I have no worries about turning my attention to my wife and the celebrations with our own children. I do not see my sadness interfering at all with her wonderful day.

There was much of that last year. On my wife’s birthday on May 20, we spent the night at my mother’s viewing.

This, more than any other year, is my wife’s day for celebration with her children.

And maybe it’s this way because I know that’s the way Mom would want it anyway.

To all of you: my thoughts, my wishes, my love are with you on this day of celebration and remembrance for the sacrifices mothers have made–and continue to make–for their children.

Since mid-March, I’ve been fighting illness after illness–colds, a flu, hacking coughs, interminable sore throats, you name it. No matter how hard I try to get better, I pick up the next round of whatever’s going around and do my part by breathing life into its nasty, persistent existence.

Even my computer–my Mac!–caught some kind of bug last week, and I had to do a full reformat to rid it of its germs.

If only it were so easy when we were ill, eh?

There’s no doubt that the time I’ve spent trying to nurse myself back to good health has taken a toll on my writing. I’m looking for more time to sleep, not write. More time to grade papers during the day, not at night. More time to keep the river flowing in all aspects of my life so that it doesn’t build, become stressful, and contribute even more to my compromised immune system.

What I have written, though, has been a darker, more poetic side of me.

I’m at Red Robin, sitting at the bar waiting for them to complete my to-go order, when I open my daybook and write this:

I lick my fingertips and granules of love slip to my cheek like crack,

An illusion of perfection.

This–all of this–is mine:

The prize, the bell around my neck, and the flowers on the floor–

Salt dissolves and the gums go dry.

I awaken to the clamoring of dishes in some far-off kitchen,

Where busboys dream of sex after the last customer leaves. . .

That’s just not the kind of stuff that I write. A product of being sick? The medications I’m taking to combat the red eyes and the stuffy noses?

For the record, Benadryl is just about the hardest “drug” that’s been in my system in 20 years. I don’t drink, either, unless you tally the occasional Guinness that I enjoy, oh, about once a month. I’ve always believed (corny alert! Beware!!!) that I can get my highs out of life; to rely on drugs or alcohol to transcend is, in my belief, the wrong way to get that Rocky Mountain high.

Okay. Off soapbox.

Here’s my point. I teach writing. I study the lives of other writers, past and present. One of the questions that has been frequenting my thoughts lately is the wellness of the writer. As I mentioned, I cannot deny that my being sick has slowed my writing. Philip Gerard, creative nonfiction guru and author of many books, including Secret Soldiers, stresses the importance of being in shape when you write. He compares writing a book to running a marathon. You have to be in top shape and show up every day, ready to play your hardest.

He’s a nonfiction writer. I hear the same strategy from countless others who write true stories.
Then I study the lives of fiction and poetry writers, and I see a slightly different pattern. Historically, writers like Poe and Kesey have turned to various life-altering drugs when they have written. Many singers/songwriters follow the same lifestyle, where performers like James Taylor have battled heroin addictions in their attempts to manage the pace of their lives and dig down deeper to get the lyrics that connect with their audience.

I know. As many drug-taking performers that I can list here, you can name two clean poets who have made it through the back-alley poetry slams to have their words heard to a much larger audience.

Still, I don’t know many nonfiction writers who dip in the doozy to find the right words, strike the right mood, describe the final conflict. I do know plenty of fiction writers and poets, though, who say they can’t put the words on the paper with a little help from their pseudo-friends…

Given the choice, I’ll train to run the marathon. Gerard puts a bottle of high-end bubbly in the fridge for when he crosses the finish line. Interesting that the booze comes after the journey.

I’m with him. Even writing the fiction works that I’m currently doing, I can’t imagine composing a single line without having the clarity and vision of a sea captain when it’s time to weather an oncoming storm. My Benadryl-induced poetry of crack-like salt crystals on a Red Robin bar are interesting, but little else.

I think I’ll take two Motrin and see my muse in an hour. Anybody seen my running shoes?

For some reason, my comments are dropping out of my posts…I’m getting notification via email that they’re posted, and the entry even lists the correct number of comments, but alas, they are nowhere to be found.

Working on the problem as I write this…If you will be so kind as to post a “saw this” comment to see if it’s posting, I’d appreciate it.

thanks, all.

One of the many questions I pondered during my blogging hiatus was how to pursue publishing my work. Last year, I was determined to create my own press and self-publish my work. However, a few less-than-rave reviews about my book made me reconsider, and I pulled the project entirely (well, postponed it for six months).

I dropped all of my plans to start my own press, and I decided that I would go the more traditional route and seek out representation and work through an agency. But then I began to doubt that decision as well, and when I started my blogging break, I initiated some deeper-than-usual soul searching about my career, my writing, and how to publish my polished works.

I’m not going to pretend that I have the answers to those questions, even now. It’s a difficult decision for me to make.

The self-publishing route places me in full control of what I write, how, when, and where I publish it, and how I market it. The agent-seeking route strips me of all of those things (with the exception of the marketing aspect, which falls more on the author’s shoulders than ever before).

On the other hand, there’s still the stereotype attached to self-publishers. To some, they’re seen as auxiliary cops who couldn’t cut the academy, or volunteer firefighters who couldn’t get through the rigorous EMT training. Both of these stereotypes are just that–false conclusions about individuals who have chosen to put their lives on the line for us, every time they put on a uniform.

I’m not saying that self-published authors are exactly putting the bad guys behind bars or extinguishing 3-alarm blazes, but we’re authors who know the other side of the business. Know the layout and design elements of what makes a good book, know the ins and outs of marketing, and have confidence in our writing that it will hold its own against any book that might be represented by a million-dollar agent from William Morris. Self-publishers enjoy what they do, and they focus more on getting the work out to the larger public than trying to secure the best financial deal (that is, if you even get that far; in today’s market, it’s harder than ever to break in).

Self-publishers also give back to their communities and support a local network of writers and readers. They also support the locally owned coffee houses, used book stores, and bars by holding public readings and discussions. They publish the works of other local talents.

In short, they give their communities a mega b-12 shot to their culture. They don’t get hung up on the bigger deal that may never come. Instead, they’re out there publishing, reading, writing, sharing, helping other writers, promoting discussions and book groups that might never have formed.

I guess you can tell which way I’m leaning. The start-up costs to establish the press as an LLC are minimal (under $1,000), though the first book launch will probably cost twice that amount.

But who cares. If I’m going to get this career moving on all cylinders within 2 years, I’ve got to keep working at the pace I’ve gotten used to. This is what I’ve always wanted to do, so there’s no looking back from here.

Self-publishing, here I come!