At first it was going to be this week. But then I got busy with work and started talking over the details with Daniel and we decided it would be better if I did it the last weekend of the month (make Memorial Day a 4 day weekend and go then). But then yesterday we got to talking again and it seems like I had it right the first time. My sister-in-law is getting married the weekend after memorial day weekend, and there may be fun happenings leading up to that. Also, we have friends in town for memorial day weekend, and I’d like to see them.

So I did some calling this morning. I talked to my favorite, most wonderful client to see if there were any big projects starting up this week (there aren’t). I called Staci at Affordable Honda and found out the civic should be drivable by the end of today. I don’t have any appointments or meetings. In fact, this week, from tomorrow through Friday, is looking like the perfect time to disappear for a bit. The only trick is the hotel reservation. The place I’m staying doesn’t take calls until 3pm, so I don’t know yet if they have room for me this week. I hope they do, but really, if they don’t I might just book a room at any old Motel 6. It really doesn’t matter where I’m at. My only hope was to be in the desert, since that’s where my story is set. Also, it needs to be cheap.

So I won’t know for a few hours exactly where I’ll be, but it’s looking like this is it. Yeah! And then the panic sets in. Holy shit. You mean I actually have to finish my novel? Yes, that’s the whole point – set aside time to get through this final stretch. It is as scary as it is exciting. I’m pretty sure I know what needs to be done. I’ve been plugging away at it, a few hours a week, for months – years even.

So I guess I just need to not psych myself out. Just go and revel in the freedom to write, write, write. No schedule to keep. No laundry that needs doing. No meals to prepare. Just me and my hummus wraps. And cookies. Lots of cookie.

I’ll write a blog post when I get home Friday to let y’all know how it goes. Wish me luck.

But that’s not actually the reason I’m blogging about it. I was re-reading chapter 8 (Tapping Your Source) last night. In it Sage talks about finding your inspiration, and how important it is for writers to not lock themselves away in a room. You have to listen to other writers talk about their craft, you have to build a community.

The further I get in my writing career, the more that rings true for me. I have a writing group, but as awesome as they are (and they are amazing), I need more. I not only need inspiration and feedback on my fiction, I also need a network so that I can continue to find work as a professional. I need to meet more magazine editors, agents, potential clients. I also need writer friends who have similar schedules and can sneak off to a movie in the middle of the day.

I love working on my own, in my pajamas, with no one around to bug me with inane questions about how to make the copier work, but I am also a social person. I need to build my community of writers if for no other reason except that I get lonely sometimes.

To quote Sage Cohen: “Having friends to learn with and from, who are intimately engaged with the unique opportunities and challenges of the writing life, is something that I wish for every writer.”

So I’m starting today. I’m having coffee with an alum from Scripps College (where I got my BA). I’m really looking forward to it. I’m also going to send an email to a couple other writer friends. Wouldn’t it be great to have at least one date a week with a creative cohort? If you happen to be one of those lovely creative types I’ve met over the years – drop a line, we’ll get a cup of coffee one of these days.

Since then I’ve been working on the novel and my business. Both are going very well. My favorite client has been sending all kinds of work my way, and I’m nearing the end of a draft on the novel. Life is pretty simple. I sit down at my desk in the morning and check in on the work that clients need done. Some time shortly after lunch I switch to the novel and spend an hour or so on it. Then, from about 3 on, I do whatever needs attention most. If there’s no more paid work that needs to be done, I write query letters, pay bills or even read a little. It’s awesome.

It’s true, I could use one more client like my favorite client – I’m not quite where I want to be as far as yearly earnings go, but considering I only started this business last January, I’m feeling pretty good about it. And that’s not something I would have said in March.

So my little experiment in focus is going swimmingly.

At the end of this month I’m taking it to the extreme. I’ve booked a hotel room in Mojave for four days and I’m going to lock myself in it and finish this draft of my novel. I’m close, I know I am, and writing just an hour or so a day feels painfully slow. I’m hoping when I emerge at the end of this long weekend I will have a version of my story that I’m finally ready to let people (other than my writing group) read.

Exciting times.

It’s titled “Las Gracias de Dona Diabla.” There was a huge launch party in Quito, Ecuador, last weekend. I couldn’t make it, but I hear it was a big success.

My Spanish, as of yet, isn’t quite good enough that I can actually read the book, but if yours is, I suggest you track down a copy. He’s a great story teller.

Felicidades, Juancho!

Though my guy’s been in the film business for a while now (he started as an assistant at DreamWorks back in the day), it’s only the last five years or so that his own films have started doing the whole festival thing. Coincidentally, it’s also in the last five years that we started our family. So while he’s been traveling to France, New York (he had another film, “Splinters,” at Tribeca last year), South America and such, I’ve been home taking care of the babies. Which is fine, really. I mean, who wants to walk down the red carpet when they can stay home and change poopy diapers.

Ah-hem.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to go. My dad came down from Idaho to watch the kiddos (thanks dad!) and I took the red eye Tuesday night to New York. I crashed into our hotel bed around 5am, slept untilI felt like waking up, ate, read my book, slept some more and basically lounged the day away until it was time to don the fancy duds and go to the screening. I got to walk down the red carpet and wait in the back with the cast until the screening started.

The theater, the largest at the festival with 900 seats, was packed (sold out, in fact). The Q&A after was great. The festival threw an after party at this cool, basement bar all lined in brick (what is it with New York and brick – they love that stuff) in the Village. It was a great night all around. Here are a few photos:

Sometimes it can be challenging being a creative couple. Sometimes our creative angst can lead us to lash out at each other, or be moody in unexpected ways, but sometimes, it’s awesome.

Anyway, we were at an event for my daughter’s kindergarten, that was hosted by Fairey and his wife in their gallery. So naturally the talk turned to art. I told him about how I had thought I wanted to be a visual artist when I was in college, but that my work lacked any real artistic instinct. I could render an image, but after years of that I finally asked the question my mom had been posing all my life – what’s the point in drawing like a photograph? Art is about interpretation. Color, form, shape, shadow. You have to bring something to reality, something more than reality, to make art.

Needless to say, I was not telling Shepard anything he didn’t already know, and we didn’t chat very long, but the conversation brought my head back to this idea I’ve playing with lately. What makes literature, as an art, good? Metaphorically it’s still about color, form, shape and shadow, but unlike visual arts, there’s a lot more room for spot-on rendering. So you might think this was the reason I was drawn to writing as an art form. You’d be wrong.

As much as I struggled with letting go of reality with my paintings and drawings, I have no such hang-ups with my stories. The first story I ever published was a coming of age story told from the perspective of an apple. The novel I’m working on now is set on an ostrich farm, which lends itself to all kinds of unusual imagery. I’m keeping it solidly rooted in reality, and it’s a very human story about a young girl dealing with the loss of her grandfather, but the setting gives it a whimsical, fun, ALMOST magical feel.

I don’t know why I feel free to push boundaries with my writing that I never could break free of with my painting. Maybe it’s that I feel more anonymous. A story is told by a narrator,  which gives a step of removal that to me has always felt like a buffer of safety. Then there’s the “it’s fiction,” forcefield. I can be as offensive as I want, as raunchy, or prim, or whatever, and if anyone has a problem with it I can just say “hey, it’s fiction, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.”

In any case, I’m really embracing this idea of loose rendering. The key, I think, is to figure out what you really want to say, and then let everything else just fall where it may. Who knows, maybe my ostriches will be singing, sock-wearing, modern dancers by the time I’m done with them. As long as my main character has the journey I want to her to have, the rest is artistic window dressing.

(Go, go gadget fingers!)

During my hiatus, I’ve been thinking a lot about styles of fiction. I’ve been reading “The Sense of An Ending,” by Julian Barnes, and it falls into a sub-genre that I call couldn’t-possibly-be fiction. That is to say, it’s so convincingly told that I often find myself checking the cover again to see if perhaps I missed the part where it says “memoir.” I felt the same way about “Middlesex.”

This is in contrast to books I internally categorize as minstrel fiction. I used to be really into these types of stories, particularly the ones by Tom Robins, who is a master of this sub-genre. Theses stories are fantastical and fun. They often have inanimate objects with opinions, and waitresses on great journeys. My absolute favorite was “Jitterbug Perfume.”

Minstrel fiction still holds a big ‘ol place in my heart because the stories always seem to me like tales you might hear around a camp fire, stories like my family tells. They always have a solid objective. They’ll make you laugh. They are not subtle. In fact, at least when my family tells them, they are often exaggerated to make a point. (Why be accurate when you can be passionate?)

Couldn’t-possibly-be fiction still only holds a sliver of my heart. Its abiding characteristics are an undeniable realism, comical self awareness, and the feeling of complete honesty. These are not stories told around a camp fire so much as they are glimpses into what it means to be human. They make you laugh AND cry. They are usually written with impeccable prose, but often have no obvious point and tend to ramble. These are the books I read because I feel I should. And I do usually enjoy them, just not as much as their fantastical counterparts.

And that’s the part I’ve been going around on in my head. If these couldn’t-possibly-be fiction books are so great, why do I fall so much harder for the minstrel fiction? It’s a style thing, right? I like a good yarn. Nothing wrong with that, but there is a line. I don’t usually care for bodice ripping (which is about 180 from couldn’t-possibly-be fiction on this little internal spectrum of mine), but I do love a good Jack Reacher novel now and then. So I guess I fall in the middle.

The reason I’ve been contemplating all this is that I’m nearing the end of a draft of my novel. (Sweet.) I know I’ll have at least one more pass to make on it after this, but it’s feeling good. Good enough that I might even let some trusted folks read it soon. It’s a yarn, no doubt, but I also hope to tell it with grace and style. That is to say, I want the prose to be beautiful, but I also want it to be a page turner. Am I asking too much? I don’t think so. The million dollar question is: Can I pull it off?

Since then my left arm has been in a sling and I’ve been hunting and pecking and it’s making me CRAZY. To go from 60-70 wpm to this painfully slow method of typing is a jarring adjustment.

So for the next few weeks I’ll be saving all my patience for work I need to do, and my dear blog will be on hold.

Check back next month or follow me on Facebook. I’ll be sure to let you all know when I get back to it.

Til then.

The USC Women’s conference was pretty great. There was the usual amount of thanking sponsors and other junk that went on for far too long, but the swag bag was fat and the speakers were actually quite stunning  They really got me thinking. One in particular, a former USC Basketball player, who now coaches after playing all over the world, got my synapses firing. “I’m in it to win it,” she said over and over.

Later that night I met with my writing group. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – they’re amazing. Not only with the feedback, but with the moral support. I’ve been struggling with where to put my energies. If you’re in it to win it, you have to focus and work on being the best you can be at your chosen craft (be it basketball or fiction).

So I took all the things I heard last Thursday (bot the general advice on success from USC and the specific advice on writing from my superb writing group) and mulled them over in my brain.

The word that kept coming back was focus. Right now I’m a business writer, a fiction writer, a science writer, a travel writer, a food writer. I blog, narrate and edit. Everything I do is writing, but I’ve realized that to progress further in any one of those efforts, I will need to focus. But where to focus?

For the answer to that I went back to my new years resolution list. The things I prioritized in my goals were the business writing and the fiction. The first because it pays the bills, the second because I love, love, love it (and it might someday pay my bills). So I’ve begun the effort of focusing.

I passed on a new food writing gig, painful though it was, and spent the time on my business writing. I even signed up for a refresher course on my copy editing skills, since I have a client in the que who needs a lot of copy editing and I intend to be do the best damn copy editing she’s ever seen.

Focus. That’s what it comes down to. You can’t win everything. If you’re in it to win it, you have to focus.

At least, that’s the theory I’m running with this week.

The emails I got sold it as a chance to discuss “professional development, women’s health, personal wellness and financial strategies.” Honestly, I’m not really sure what to expect.

The basic truth of it is, these types of networking events are key for anyone who works alone, from a home office.

As a freelancer, I have no water cooler, and online social outlets are just not the same as meeting people face to face.

So I’ve filled the wallet with business cards, and I’m off.

I’ll tell you all about it on Friday.