Sitting like a cat in the sunshine, even if I do fee grumpy and miserable. Still.  I am a cat, as my sister tells me (dogs have owners, cats have slaves, and yes, that’s why I adore her because she’s always given me this great vision of myself) , and you know that dogs get sorrowful when they have a cold. Cats throw themselves off the closest bridge.  Or at least they complain so much that you wish they would. 

Here’s a great cheerful place for you to visit and feel inspired: The Soul Food Cafe, which is an arty site for you, O Creative One.

–Yesterday, I took my notebook to Starbucks and wrote a lot of pages longhand in my notebook while two girls talked about their boyfriends and who was pretty at school.  I kept wondering why they weren’t in class at 10:30 am.

–I figured out why there are pink candy skulls everywhere. 

–I seriously wish that the Literature of the Southwest and Its Women as studied as seriously as Southern Lit.  Which I like a lot.  I just know we are different here. Cultures. Religions. Attitudes. Landscapes. 

–I hate getting to the end of a book I love.  It’s like sending the kids off to college. I have LOVED writing this book and I’m dragging my feet because once it’s done, I don’t get to live here anymore

–writing books takes eating spinach and brown rice, plenty of yoga to keep the shoulders loose and some fresh air to blow away too much thinking.  Maybe some wine, but not too much.

Somehow, suddenly, I’ve arrived at the final 100 pages of Elena, the MIP.  It’s the most intense stage for me, when I cannot stay present in this world, this moment, because I’m over there, living in that one.  It was the meals I cooked under the influence of There that I earned such terrible marks as a cook (never mind all the awards I won for my breads and the fact that my ex still calls to get my recipes for things).   But it’s hard to cook in this world if there’s something on the stove over There. 

I knew this was coming, so over the weekend, I made krautburgers and a lasagna and a spinach and bean soup to get us through this week.  I’ll order pizza if I must.  I will not cook much, if at all.  It is–seriously–dangerous.  I can’t live this way for very long, so this part of a book goes very, very fast.  Often 100 pages in a week.  (My usual pace is about 7-8 pages per day, 4-5 days per week, as a point of comparison).

I am immersing now.  Writing and rewriting. Moving things around and finally, finally getting some of the  detail work right.  The colors. The imagery that’s been taunting me.  I’ve added thick strings of fake red roses and yellow daisies to the collage, and some more orange photos.  (See above).  I’m also writing a lot by hand, and moving my endless post-it notes from door to computer monitor to notebook, color coding everything.  This is a shot of the part of my desk that’s at my left elbow.  Obviously, I work with color rewards and directives–could I work without post-its, highlighters, and my notebooks?  Well, probably, but it wouldn’t be as pleasurable. (If you’ve never tried Clairefontaine paper, I highly, highly recommend it for those who like to write by hand.  I bought some notebooks when in Paris the first time (and wrote all my 9-11 observations in them) and have been hooked ever since.)

Not sure if this is technically nuts and bolts, but this is fairly coherent, considering I’m only calling in from Over There. 

Blogs have been scarce for several reasons.  I’m finishing the second of two voice classes. Planning two day-long intensives and arranging those trips (during which I will see one son in NYC and the other will go with me to Florida–yippee!).  Mainly, however, I’m working on the MIP.   The chef interview was fantastic and he gave me some more resources, so I’ve been reading and working and rearranging, looking up headers for the tops of the chapters.  It’s not a finished book by any stretch, but it really is time to send my agent what I have and let her have a look.   If I don’t do it now, it will be the middle of November before I can get back to it.  I asked a writer friend to have a look last week.  She said she had to stop in the middle and go eat somthing because it made her so hungry.  A good sign. 🙂

So, I’ll send out around 150 pages at the end of the week.  This woke me up in the middle of the night last night and I was scrolling through the pages at 3 am, moving a word, changing a sentence, a verb, deleting extraneous dialogue tags and adverbs.  Passive to active.  Telling to showing.  All those ordinary polishing things.  Not that it’s a finishing kind of polish.   More like tying a kindergartener’s shoe before she goes off to school the first day.

Aside from that golden period before I actually start, everything about the writing process makes me fret.  I fret about starting and finishing. I fret about synopses (because I am wretched at writing them) and about titles and about releases.   It’s brilliant and exciting, but also nerve-wracking. 

What’s been brilliant and nerve wracking for you lately?