because ink + yarn make cozy friends

Strait waistcoats would be called for and padded cells dusted off. -- P.G. Wodehouse

It was a love-at-first-sight kind of idea.

Mom was the one to mention it... I was sniffing and dithering about how to earn money while still working hard on writing. Draft Three is nearly done, and I already have some ambitious plans for the next draft, for agent research, for what it will take to finally launch this much-loved book of mine.

(Note: I do know that many many successful people balance full-time jobs and spin engaging novels at the same time. And yes, I've had people tell me to just get a job and let the chips fall where they may. But you've heard all my rants and fears about how long this novel takes... I can't imagine slicing another twenty-plus hours out of each week. Checks in my savings account just don't feel worth that kind of heartbreak. And yes, I do know that this makes me insane. See the epigraph. I know.)

Anyway. I took a break from feeling mournful and showed Mom the knitting projects I'd done while she was away for a week: two hats, a set of fingerless mitts, and a long skinny scarf. They all turned out happily enough, and I was twisting the scarf into knots when Mom mentioned Etsy.

Etsy, where I could sell the things I knit. The things that I'm knitting as I write.

Yes, my mother is a genius.

I've given it intense thought and have decided to take the plunge. After all--it's autumn! We're coming up to Christmas... what better time to knit up a storm? Besides, I've always wanted to get carpal tunnel syndrome before the age of thirty... (joke.)

Bonus: my brilliant and talented sister will be joining me on it, which broadens the scope of what we could sell... And she has so many great ideas! It's fun to be doing something like this together...

I could wallpaper my room with the lists I've made this week--ideas, plans, time tables, required materials... My ideas for knitted goods have fast outstripped anything I could reasonably do! But oh, it's so very exciting. Daunting... but exciting.

Part Four (of my novel) is still going very well. If it's intimidated by its writer giving her heart to all things yarn, it hasn't shown it yet. So we'll just be one happy family, me, this little Etsy store, and my monstrously long and lovely novel.

I'm hoping to open my Etsy site in a month... about the same time that I'm hoping this latest draft of the novel is done. (Wow. That will call for confetti. Confetti, fine food, and hysterical laughter.) I'll keep you posted!

spending my days with imaginary people

In dreams begins responsibility. -- W.B. Yeats

Hard to corral my thoughts into a straight line tonight... so many things buzzing about in my brain!

First off, I honestly can't believe that it's mid-September. CAN'T. I'm going through my usual reactions to the passing of time... though I do love watching the leaves outside consider change. Still. The thought of mid-September makes me break out in hives...

But the writing has picked up since my last post--in fact, it's gotten so much better. Life has settled down long enough that I can find my way back to routine, and with it, all the blessings routine can give.

My archvillain is grounded, and it serves him right. He still refuses to be up front with me about how he'll behave in Part Four, so he's stuck in his room with no dessert, no phone, no TV, no computer, no nothing. I'll check on him in a week or two and see if he's feeling penitent and conversational again.

But with the archvillain out of the way, my other characters are coming out and having wonderful conversations with each other and with me. I actually can't get them to be quiet, even if I wanted to. (Sleep has been difficult.)

And they have these fantastic lines--making me laugh out loud at my desk, like a crazy person. They're chattering at me about why they're doing what they do, who they're mad at, what they're hoping for, and how they're going to wind up in the epilogue.

I love it. I can't keep up--even typing as fast as I can, I can't keep up with them.

So that's where I am, even though it's mid-September... I am happy, drinking my weight in coffee. There's always ink on my fingers, and I'm scribbling scribbling scribbling away.

And, too, a new idea has been birthed today, a very, very new idea, with wonderful and exciting possibilities. I'll be quiet about it for the rest of the week, water it and stick it in the sun... If it grows and blossoms, I assure you: I won't be able to shut up about it. So, you might hear some happy news soon...

so this is september.

It's one of those bits of advice you read when you research blogging... never take a huge break from your blog! Alas. I have. Absolutely unintentional, but nevertheless... a break it was.

But I've taken a break from pretty much everything, lately. Writing has slowed to a trickle, and I've lost my place in a dozen other projects... but it's all for a good cause, one of the best possible causes: my niece has arrived!! And her arrival prompted all the celebrating and helping out that should ensue...

Now the confetti has been swept up, and we're a week into September. September?? I finally look at a calendar again and see that the weeks have rushed past. I'm still surprised that I had a birthday last week--why does twenty-five years old feel the same as nineteen? Shouldn't I know some things by now?

The grocery stores are selling caramel apples and putting out Halloween decorations--anyone else feel rushed? Personally, I haven't said a proper goodbye to summer, so I skirted the apples and picked up enough peaches to make another pie, a farewell-to-summer pie. (With honey caramel. Mmm.)

And at my writing desk, I'm shaking out file folders and rounding up my cast of characters. We have a draft to finish, after all, and I can't do it alone. My archvillain, in particular, has his ears back and refuses to be anything but commonplace. Contest of wills: I want him to be stunning and without cliché. He wants to take a nap. To bolster my courage, I dyed my hair red. I'm hoping that this somehow brings my feisty writer self to the fore...

So this is where I'm at: trying to find my way back to my work, back to the rhythms and patterns of bookery. I'll find my way back to blogging again too, and soon.

a crafty weekend

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark. -- Henry David Thoreau

Three moments of creative loveliness amidst a busy weekend...

* Got a chance to browse through this store again with my sisters. It never fails to get me excited... such gorgeous things!

* Then I spent quite some time on this lovely blog. Endless inspiration!! She is so creative: I wish I could borrow her brain!

* And so, after getting inspired, I made this:

(outside)

(and inside...)

Kind of made it up as I went along! But I had knitted two panels up for a pillow... and suddenly fell out of love with the whole pillow concept. So I was staring at one of the panels and trying to come up with some pillow shape bizarre enough to be fun again, when Kristen leaned over.

"Looks like a clutch purse," she said. I blinked. It did look like a clutch purse. Several hours later... it was. The most perfect, yummiest summer purse ever.

A crafty weekend mysteriously gets me ready for another week amidst words and invisible characters. It maintains some kind of artistic balance that I can't quite understand: knitting helps me write? I don't know exactly how it works, but it makes artsy weekends like this a priority... and that's more than fine with me!

milk + sugar + ghosts

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of my coat and a pencil and started to write. -- Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

I had lunch at Kaldi's today, with my mom and my very pregnant sister. Conversation is always good, the paninis were lovely, and I'm a diehard fan of their Highlander Grogg coffee.

What was delightfully unexpected were the words on the wall. For the record: I love words on walls, doors, mugs, people... almost anywhere at all. And these words were the ones in the above quote by Hemingway.

Even better: when I looked at my coffee, I saw this:


And it just gets me thinking. Hemingway. Coffee. Writing in cafés...

It's supposed to be killer hot this weekend, absolutely scorching temperatures, and I find myself wanting Paris. Paris and small tables and the rain. Trench coats and the smell of newspaper, pigeons and baguettes. Lamplight dancing in puddles, and all those bridges over the Seine. (I also would not turn down a Nutella crepe, thank you very much.)

I don't especially love Hemingway, but I do love the idea of him. I like the idea of pencils and Moleskine journals and his cafe au lait. I like seeing his words hovering in my coffee, because they goad me back to my desk, to the one thing that I can have in common with my Paris daydreams:

It's the words. Always the words.

The heat will try to wither us this weekend, and a St. Louis August is a far cry from a Parisian autumn. No rain, no pigeons, no Seine. (The Mississippi? Not a shred of romance in that muddy water, not for me.)

But it's the string of words that I have to keep weaving--that rope, that web, that net. I am still spinning my story, despite everything. It's probably the only thing I have in common with Hemingway, the thing that connects me back to expatriate dreaming.

Dang.

Another day that I love and love and love being a writer. I'll take it.

eleven lovelinesses for now

Even the afternoon sunlight had a tender, sneezy scent that Molly would have known anywhere. -- Peter S. Beagle

1. My new Paperchase journal with vibrant robots on it... not a typical style move for me, but it makes me laugh every time I look at it.

2. Cilantro. Fresh. With limes. In rice.

3. Less than three weeks until I'm an aunt!!!

4. A new mystery to read, with a gorgeous cover. Perfect if our threatening sky decides to spill some rain...

5. An armful of enticing yarn to knit.

6. Rereading The Phantom Tollbooth out loud with my younger sister

7. ... and rereading Brat Farrar out loud with my older sister. (Okay. We like reading out loud. Try it sometime.)

8. Finding a wonderful new church in Saint Louis to revisit.

9. Considering a temporary change of scenery for my next draft... Perhaps carting my computer and blank notebooks north to Grand Rapids for a while? Maybe? We shall see, but the possibility is tantalizing at least...

10. My camera's full of pictures of roses from our recent jaunt to Missouri's Botanical Gardens.

... and water lilies, it would seem:

11. And on that note, I'm still smiling over memories of last week's family reunion with my dad's extended family. Such wonderful people! Summers are the best time to see those familiar faces, and hear everything that's happened since we last met.

oh, the joys of writing your own novel...

Any time your list of characters includes "assorted madpeople," you know you're on the right track.

overheard

Tonight in the checkout line at Borders, a boy stood with his mom. Couldn't see his face--it was eclipsed by a picture book.

BOY: Mommy, are minotaurs real? ... Because, if they're real, then this is amazing.

MOMMY: It's a legend.

BOY: Oh. (pause) What's a legend?

MOMMY: It means... It means we don't know.

BOY: Oh. (wistfully) But this would be really amazing...

Sigh. One more reason why I go to bookstores, and one more reason why I write: because some stories could still be true... and that's enough for me.

written or unwritten, books make me giddy

My library / was dukedom large enough. -- William Shakespeare

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Another milestone in the life of my book! And I should make a cake with candles, or build one of those crossing-state-line signs. "Welcome to the Next Draft, home of brilliant plot twists and happy readers."

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Because Part Three is done again! (Forget the cake. That announcement is worthy of fireworks, after everything this ragged section of the draft has been through!)

.

So it took longer than I wanted, but yes, Part Three has been written again--this makes the fourth time I've written it. Sketched it out during Nanowrimo 2006, then rewrote it the next fall. Made some enormous strides in understanding my character and wrote it again... Fine-tuned last year's enormous strides, and yes, wrote it yet again.

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From scratch. (Is anything for the faint of heart?)

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Part Four--the last section of the book--is next up for retreatment, so I'm shuffling through notes and ideas for it...

.

But before that work starts in earnest, I have this delicious weightless sense in my mind. It comes between the intense drafting sessions, this wonderfully luxurious feeling that there are stories everywhere. Which is always true, of course, but it feels palpable somehow.

.

Like that summer night years ago, when I really saw, for the first time, the Milky Way spanning the night sky. Standing on a road between cornfields, Dad tracing that galaxy glow. A concept became seeable. Almost--on a night like that--touchable.

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In these days between drafts, I feel like I could stretch out my hand and drag my fingers through a veritable stream of stories, words, characters, narratives... They're pressing in all around me. If I could just hear them properly, maybe hold my head a certain way to catch their voices, I'd never get up from my desk.

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Truly wonderful for someone who wants to live, always, in the midst of story.

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Which brings us to home renovation. And one more perk of living with my parents for a while: they can afford built-in bookcases; I can afford stacking my books in piles. I prefer the former.

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Look, just look at what July has wrought in our living room!

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It has turned into a true library, a gorgeous, bright, wonderful place for coffee and writing and reading. Yum.

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And these books are another galaxy, another place where all I have to do is stretch my hand out... and which book will fall into it? CS Lewis, or Anne Perry, or PG Wodehouse? A bit of botany or the series on world history or the shelf full of epics?

Bookdrunk, I call it. That dizzy euphoria I always feel around so many pages of words. Heady and upsweeping and unfailing. That delirious knowing that no, no, I could never live long enough to read or write them all.

But I could try.

a new manifesto

Front yards are boring. Backyards tell stories. -- James Stevenson

I hope I can admit it when I'm wrong. So this is me, admitting: as far back as I can remember, I've declared (rather passionately) that I hate summers. Hate them. Which usually makes people look at me as if I've said something inhuman. What kind of a girl hates summer?

A girl who dislikes slow suffocation, I grumble back. St. Louis humidity is not a gentle thing. And so I prefer what I call Jane Eyre weather over a sizzling July. Not a hard choice.

But they haven't been summers like this.

Today was another gorgeous day, another blaze of writing productivity, another glorious evening. They are gifts, days like this.

A simple supper of eggs and toast, and coffee with Kristen. The coffee taken out to our new deck--recently replaced amidst all the home renovating going on here. The old deck was very exciting but not inviting: you didn't know when and where you might fall through. This new one is entirely inviting. It invited us and our coffee and a dozen hungry mosquitoes.

But the evening was perfect. Perfect. For drinking hazelnut coffee and talking about everything--our weeks and what was on our minds. She introduced me to Owl City, music that completed the summer air.

She worked on a painting, and I decoupaged our ... what to call it? It's the thing that hangs in a foyer to cover the guts of the doorbell. That hideous olivey-puce bit of plastic. That. Covering it is a social service, a saving of civilization...

So we talk. Rave about coffee. Swat mosquitoes. Spray bug repellent. Then find a mosquito actually sitting on the repellent bottle. Consider effectiveness of repellent. Continue swatting. I stick my fingers together with decoupage glue. She stands back to judge her painting. We turn the music up.

We're there until the light is nearly gone, and I am squinting at my project. The sunset would make every artist devote her life to the study of clouds. What kind of God makes the sky his ever-changing, breath-taking canvas? As we're marveling, the bat flicks through.

And then we're shouting at it, cheering it on. Eat those mosquitoes! It is very welcome here.

She has a petsitting job, so I go with her to visit Phoebe. Phoebe the Wonder Dog, I call her. She is so frightened of me that I spend the visit apologizing as she quivers away from me. So I wander the garden behind her house, smelling the flowers, and thinking about gardens at night. On the ride home, I look at the profiles of other drivers. And I think that profiles for some artists (or some writers?) could be what clouds are to others...

So it was a day for revising. For changing my mind. A week like this will make me uproot my thesis about summer, my dissertation on humidity and glare and hundred-degree heat. I will love rainy days and sleet and fog and their accompanying atmosphere, no question. But I think now I have room for loving summer, this kind of summer. Let's make them all like this, please.

It was a full day. And I'm up too late. But there is something intoxicating about such beauty. I hope that it's contagious. That maybe, if I stare long and hard enough, it will soak in, and pour through my dreams. I'll go find out.