Magnanimous Javelina

I have blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. Please, Shakespeare or Henry VI or Dick the Butcher or whomever, let's not kill all the lawyers first. Or ever, really. For starters, I am one. Laura is one. I'm married to one. A number of my close friends are lawyers. Apparently we run in packs - like javelina. Only without the hunting, killing, and maiming with those demonic, razor-sharp tusks. Okay, shake it off, Kris. Those years in Tucson took their toll. At any rate, as I noted In Defense of Lawyers, most of us have plenty of qualities that justify continued existence. We are funny, we know a lot of the rules, we can throw a latin phrase into almost any conversation - okay, fine, that undercuts the argument, but you get my point. And recently I was reminded that certain of us are downright magnanimous.

I was reading a blog post by David Kazzie, he of The Corner, So You Think You Want To Go To Law School, So You Think You Want To Write a Novel, and perhaps most significantly, The Jackpot, a legal thriller that should definitely grace your Kindle. David Kazzie is something like our male doppleganger. Only a little - okay wildly - more timely, driven, and - fine - successful. So maybe he's not our doppleganger at all and we're just flattering ourselves. Point is, he is an attorney who writes fiction and blogs about his process. He is insightful and funny and generally inspiring and published The Jackpot on Kindle within months of when we published The Pecking Order. The post I recently read was a detailed account of his experience with a Kindle Direct Publishing program he used to promote his book. The results were incredible and The Jackpot eventually broke into the top 100 paid Amazon books. This program is available to all of us who have published on Kindle but some of us didn't pay much attention to it. In fact, from the reaction to his blog post, most of us didn't. We just cruised along mildly embittered that our book hadn't yet trended on Twitter or otherwise gone viral a la that traveling pants book, somehow manufacturing hope in the fact that we had sold at least one a month since it had been published (yeah, do the math, that's 12 a year). But mostly we were just bitter. Kazzie admits he was headed down the same path before he discovered this program. And he could have treated it like his own special secret, hoarded it from the rest of us for some perceived competitive advantage, let us all wallow in our e-book marketing desert, but instead he chose to share his process. To write a road map for the rest of us. To be magnanimous with those folks who he could justifiably consider his competition.

We followed his road map and in three days, the The Pecking Order downloads tripled. It didn't break into the top 100 paid Amazon books, but many more people are getting to know Abby and Adam, the Pecker and the Blowhard, and Babies Don't Spit Up and Motorcycle Man, Man Slippers and Sweat Rings. For that, we thank Kazzie, and for his belief that there is infinite space in the universe for art, and that the pursuit of creativity, unlike law firm life and family, is never a zero sum game.

Oh, the Places She Should Go!

Rejection is the foundation upon which most writing careers are built. We get it. We know publishers turned up their noses umpteen times at Harry Potter and The Help and even Gone With the Wind. We take this sparkling diamond of a fact, wrap it in silk, and stitch it into the lining of our souls, because knowing it's there is often the only thing that keeps us going. We understand, in a rational legal-mind way, that publishing is a business. We don't (usually) fantasize about severed horse heads soiling editors' sheets. We have learned (through yoga and meditation and just plain getting old) to let go, to live in the current breath, to be thankful for the opportunities we've had and to seize the ones yet to come. Sure, we are disappointed our book doesn't recline upon store shelves. That the contract with our agent expired faster than an iPad deal. That the electronic release of The Pecking Order didn't single-handedly crash Amazon's site. But, mostly, we deal with it and hammer away at new projects. And drink champagne.

Today is not one of those days. Today, we stomp our feet and cross our arms and stick out our bottom lips and bitch, thanks to Jennifer Weiner and Dr. Suess. If you don't know Jennifer Weiner, you should. She's a funny, snarky, Bachelor-watching, blogging, tweeting writer with great hair who personifies that quote, "well behaved women seldom make history." She's also published more books than the Bible's got Psalms. (Okay, maybe not that many books, but I couldn't resist a House of Pain reference. Admit it, you're Jumpin' Around now...) She's long been an advocate for women writers, taking to task critics, the media, and authors (looking at you, Franzen), for the disparate treatment of books written by men versus women. She particularly calls out people who dismiss what they have labeled, pejoratively, "chick lit." She recently penned a brave and spot-on blog post regarding how the the New York Times statistically gives more coverage to books written by men. (For Huffington Post's discussion of the issue, see here.)

As we read her blog and tweets over the past few days, we became increasingly incensed. Don't get us wrong, we never expected our book to be reviewed by the NYT, but in our own podunk way, we have felt the same bias. Our agent called our book "upscale commercial women's fiction" and shopped it to major publishers. Every single one found it laugh-out-loud funny, engaging, and well written. But they passed because the market was "saturated." In other words, there was too much "chick lit" clogging up the shelves. Bullshit. How about male-written thrillers with well-coiffed male protagonists, some sort of far-fetched legal conundrum or conspiracy or code to crack, an egregious amount of passive voice, and overuse of adverbs? You can't spit in a bookstore without hitting dozens of those . . . and they're usually on the front tables. (For what it's worth, I'm not sure you should ever spit in a bookstore, but you see my point.) Good for those authors. You did it. You should be proud. We hope you ordered a cake and threw confetti. . . we know we would have. But it's time for women's fiction (and not just the "important" kind, whatever that is) to be invited to the party.

At this point you may be thinking . . . wtf does this have to do with Dr. Suess? (Or maybe you're thinking about a peanut butter chocolate chip milkshake. Or maybe I'm projecting). NPR aired a piece this morning, on the 75th anniversary of Dr. Suess publishing his first story, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I'm a huge fan of the Doctor. I listened to the segment with a smile on my face, nodding in solidarity when I learned his story had been rejected by publishers 27 times. This is exactly the encouragement I need today, I thought, pouring out a little green tea for my literary holmie. Then I heard this: Dr. Suess had all but given up when he was walking home and "bumped into a friend ... who had just become an editor at a publishing house in the children's section." Of course he did. Where's that champagne?

Follow Me Home

I have a little story to tell. If you know me personally I’ve probably bored you with the details already (perhaps multiple times on the same occasion, depending on how deep into the wine I’ve dipped). But the series of events in this small true tale won’t leave me be. They are pinching me at my desk and poking me awake at night and I fear I will have no respite until I commit them to paper. Instead of simply writing them down, however, I’ve turned the whole shebang into a writing exercise. I’m somewhat obsessed with point of view. My inclination is to write in the first person or in third person omniscient as the main character. But I’m always intrigued by multiple points of view, as in One Day or The Help. I’m also a tad in awe of authors who utilize a minor character’s point of view to drive the story. And so, here, though it might be gimmicky at best and painful at worst, I give you my story as told by. . . wait for it . . . my dog. Apologies in advance . . .

The woman was straight up pissed. Cartoonish, even. Red-faced with steam coming out her ears, her eyes bloated and bulb-like, that vein at her left temple threatening to blow. You know why? Because it was her fault. She left the gate open, even after jabbing her finger at the boys and threatening a Gulag-type existence if they let me escape. She forgot I was outside. Worse yet, she hadn’t taken me running for a few days, even though she knows I’m a Husky and I’m born to run, baby. And, frankly, I think she was hungover. I can smell those things.

I saw that cracked gate and popped smoke. I didn’t mess around this time, either. I didn’t stop to sniff road kill or mark the neighbor’s mailbox (Though, for the record, if your mailbox is shaped like a wide-mouth bass, I think you have it coming). I got my sprint on. I felt badly for a moment. I knew she’d had a rough few weeks. I’d sensed the tension in her movements, heard her crying, felt the long, hard exhalations that jostled my head in her lap. She was taking up less space. The house, which was too cumbersome and too expensive for a half-time mom, was swallowing her a little each day. I thought about running back and leaning into her legs, but then the delicious heat from the asphalt hit my paws like a drug.

Honking, swerving, yelling with pumped fists—all the world noticed me as I tore down the street, crossing from one side to the other and back again. She and the boys followed me in the car. The older boy, he tried to entice me with cookies as she pulled alongside. But what’s a cookie compared to the open road? I’m a traveler, man. I won’t sell my soul for a treat. Eventually he became angry and started chucking them at me as hard as he could. Rotten kid’s got an arm. The little one? He just cried. “I don’t want to watch her die!” I heard him scream. This from a boy who has not only run into traffic on numerous occasions, laughing maniacally in the face of certain death, but who recently licked a wild mushroom “just to see if it was really poisonous.” Pots and kettles, my child. Pots and kettles.

A few miles down, she almost got me in the pool enclosure of an apartment complex. I thought the jig was up. I was cornered, trapped in some sort of fancy celebration amongst silver serving dishes and ladies in ruffled dresses. She wore running shorts and a sports bra. And pink slippers. I won’t lie; I was a little embarrassed. I was like, “Nah, party people, she’s not my owner. My real owner washes her face occasionally.” She lunged for me and I leaped over her like a creature of the Serengeti. Real Discovery Channel shit. (I’m still replaying that one). And then I was off again. Born Free . . . until I tasted pavement. Ouch. Some dude—some dude barely outta high school in a plaid button down and shitkickers—jumped out of a truck (one of those ubiquitous Northern California trucks sporting a gun rack and duck decals) and took me down. Game. Over. I guess he’d been following me the whole time, trying to help. She offered to compensate him, but he declined and, with a literal tip of his ball cap, disappeared. I heard her tell the kids, in her hyperbolic way, that he restored her faith in humanity.

This is where things get interesting. Fast forward four weeks. (Four weeks filled with a dive down to the rockiest of bottoms. With the paralytic odor of depression. With late night conversations about fear and loss and a yearning for peace in the abstract, and concrete discussions about the market and downsizing and a fresh start.) She was reluctantly suiting up for a run (which, between you and me, usually ends up being more of a walk/run these days). She had the shoes on, the earbuds in, the thick layer of sunscreen that makes her look like a Kabuki actor dying of consumption. “Alright,” she sighed, “let’s go girl. We’ll run by the cottage today.” The cottage. The cottage that was the perfect size and the perfect price and only a mile away and in the kids’ school district and biking distance to the creek. The cottage with the red door and the blue shutters and the big-ass lawn with the big-ass tree for climbing and swinging. The cottage she’d seen online a few days back and emailed about but had heard only crickets in response. The cottage she knew she couldn’t actually have because the ad said, quite clearly, No Dogs. (And besides, she’d never admit it, but I think she had started to believe she didn’t deserve good things.)

We stalked it anyway. Just as she was about to turn the corner and head back home, she paused and, for some reason, turned around. A car pulled up in front of the cottage right at that moment.

“Do you live here?” she said to the guy getting out of the car.

“Yea, but I’m moving in a couple of weeks,” he said. And then, “Hey! I know your dog.”

I narrowed my eyes. He did look familiar. I sniffed the air. Oh Snap! IT WAS THE DUDE. THE DUDE WHO TACKLED ME.

They chatted for a bit about me--how fast I am, how pretty I am, how nice I am--and then she mentioned her obsession with the house. He invited her in to see it. She may have actually swooned. It’s like the space was designed precisely for her. And can I just tell you about the kitchen? That kitchen was ripe for all sorts of culinary nonsense.

But, alas, the ad said No Dogs. And the landlord hadn’t returned any emails.

“No problem,” the dude said. “My mom grew up with the landlord. I’ll put in a good word for you. We can call her now if you want.”

Call it kismet, call it providential, call it serendipity . . . I now call it home. And this place? This place smells like hope.

To Each Her Own

So I’m finally watching Mad Men. (Yes, I am quite tardy to that party. In other news, I hear there’s a fancy new way to withdraw money from your account without going into the bank!) Okay, maybe watching isn’t the most appropriate word. I’m devouring episodes at a pace that makes me think the Romans were on to something with that whole Vomitorium concept. (At this point, the only impediment to a complete and utter Mad Men bender is my frugality – I only get two DVDs at a time with my cheap ‘flix subscription.) In addition to being just plain riveting entertainment, the show--like the fictional advertisements Don Draper and company create—engenders a number of thoughts and feelings. Some are flippant: even though I don’t smoke I sure could go for a Lucky Strike right now; when did we stop drinking in the office; we should reinstate drinking in the office; when did we stop having sex in the office, for that matter . . . etc.

But some go deeper . . .

I was surprised to find myself, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, enticed by the show’s clearly defined gender roles. Men brought home the proverbial bacon and wives kept house, tended to the children, and made themselves pretty. In the office, men wore the suits (good gracious, how they wore them) and women rocked the steno pads. Everyone, with few exceptions, knew their place. Maybe it’s the leaning tower of files on my desk and the 4 weekly little league games and the bottomless craters my boys call stomachs and the fact that my neurotic cat won’t eat unless I’m simultaneously petting him, but--for just a moment--I coveted that life. For someone else to make the decisions. For an either/or existence—either work or family. For blatant in-your-face sexism and gender discrimination instead of the insidious mommy-track.

I came to my senses fairly quickly. Of course I wouldn’t want to travel back to a time when women had fewer choices. And, of course I know the women of the Mad Men era were not models of contentment—a hasty perusal of any Richard Yates novel will tell you that. But I’m not sure the modern concept that women can, and more importantly should, have it all is the panacea, either. Kris and I used to spend precious billable hours debating the issue of whether it was even possible for a woman to “have it all.” We decided that, no, she can’t . . . at least not the way society (which, make no mistake, is still largely male run) defines it. Sure, today we can be wives and mothers and professionals. And that’s to be celebrated. But even as law firms announce "flexible" schedules and Working Mother magazine makes lists of family friendly companies and we stand on the shoulder pads of the brave pioneers before us and roar—we still can’t have it all. At least not in the manner it has been billed by our mothers’ generation. Which is to say, we can’t have the exact same career as the man in the corner office and also the same family life as the woman who makes her own baby food and takes her hand-knit-sweater-wearing, sleep-sharing, violin-playing kid to Kindermusik. Put another way, even if boozy workday lunches were the norm, and even if we’d now be invited to throw back the scotch with our colleagues instead of simply securing the reservation, many of us would have to decline so we could sit in our offices pumping breast milk for our babies in an attempt to assuage the guilt we inevitably feel for putting them in daycare and going back to work in the first place.

Breathe.

Maybe we need to redefine for ourselves and the generations of women to come what having it all means (and hope that my grandmother and Gloria Steinem will forgive us). Maybe we need to recognize that we don’t have to be everything to everyone. That having it all can mean something different to each of us. We imparted Abby, The Pecking Order’s protagonist, with this notion. I do not suggest that our novel is in any way a treatise on the plight of working women or some sort of feminist manifesto. It’s light and it’s funny (and it’s a little racy at times). Still, like most women, Abby struggles with having it all. And, like most women, she often fails by modern social standards. She is at times not likeable or sympathetic, but she is real. And that’s why we have mad love for her.

(If you feel like giving her a chance, you can download the book here.)

So You Wanna Stress Therapy Dog?

Yale law school now has a therapy dog available to students. A stress therapy dog. I guess it goes something like this – you take an absurdly difficult Torts exam (yes, for you fortunate non-lawyers, there’s a subject called Torts, and it isn’t remotely like tortes), after which you head over to the-well I’m not sure where they keep the therapy dog . . . wherever you must go to sign out Fido the terrier. (No, wait. This is law school. The poor pooch will have some dorky lawyer-y name like Habeas or Res Ipsa. And while I’m at it, a terrier? Really? Seems a bit of a yippy breed to be remotely relaxing, but I digress.) So you check out Habeas, take him home and curl around him in a fetal position. Problem solved? I don’t think so. And I’m not maligning stress therapy dogs. Or therapy. Or dogs. I’ve had plenty of both over the years and I’m a kinder, gentler Kris (or perhaps just a marginally less crazy Kris) for it. But I guess it’s the notion that the profession (as early as the poor budding baby lawyers in law school) is so inherently stressful that we need the likes of a therapy dog to get us through our days. It seems like a pretty clear case of treating the symptom rather than the condition. But how do you treat such an entrenched condition, with its white shoes and top tiers and all that? I don’t know. And in my defense (one can take the girl out of the law firm, but . . .) this blog only promises "tenuously related insights into the legal profession", not answers.

What I do know is that law firm culture, unless it experiences a significant shift, will continue to suck the souls from and ravage the bodies of those ambitious yet naive enough to pursue this path. It’s why David Kazzie’s Xtra Normal Video “So You Wanna Go To Law School” was not only a web sensation, but also reposted on Facebook by every lawyer I know. It’s why my former firm lost four brilliant women in a matter of two months, and shortly thereafter, every man who wanted to see his children, or perhaps just do some pleasure reading. It's why every third lawyer you know dreams of writing a bestseller and jettisoning the whole wretched practice, present company included. And yes, there is personal choice and responsibility, and sure, there are manageable firms and more mellow jobs, and fine, this post might be infused with a tad bit of hyperbole, but doesn’t the stress therapy terrier say it all?

It Was The Best Of Times

It's Friday, and it's been raining for 40 days and nights (not the proverbial 40 days and nights, people, I'm talking true blue rain) and I haven't had a glass of wine all week and I'm out of Taco Bell sauce (again) and one kid said the "F" word and the other brought home an "F" and I busted out nearly 6,000 words over the past 72 hours. So, yea, I'm a little punchy. Maybe that's why today's The Book or Bust post hit me so hard. The blogger sent the first 50 pages of her manuscript to a requesting agent yesterday. Sigh. Oh how I remember those days. Full of waiting and hoping and casting the movie and spending the advance. We wish her the best of luck - shiny pennies found on street corners, four-leaf clovers, and the feet of rabbits. And we also encourage her, and other writers in her position, to cherish this time, as nerve-wracking as it may be. Because it is a rich, rich time. A time measured in units of possibility.

For us, the age of querying agents and readying manuscripts for editors and crossing our fingers (and toes and legs and eyes and any other body part capable of crossing) began (believe it or not!) nearly 7 years ago. And, for The Pecking Order, it has come to an end. We are now entering a new era with respect to that book, one equally rich, equally teeming with potential. So stay tuned for an exciting announcement in the next few days. Long live The Pecking Order!

Oh, and p.s., to all you naysayers: I really didn't drink wine for a week. Not since St. Patrick's Day. Which I spent with Kris. I won't go into the sordid details, but her first words to me the next morning, via text no less (because neither of us could make the short walk to the other end of her house), were, "Dude. You with a tolerance is a bad bad thing." Cheers my friends:)

The Book or Bust: We're Off To See The Wizard#links

All the Ladies in the House!

I love women. Not in the Sapphic sense (though there was a rockin’ mom at school pick-up last week . . . I’m talking ink, pixie-cut, yoga body . . .), but in the divine secrets/traveling pants/ride shotgun with Thelma sort of way. In the way girlfriends can sense a shift in each other’s moods over the span of hundreds of miles. In the way a night out with the ladies can act as an intravenous drip for the soul. In the way even the most gut-wrenching laments inevitably evolve into gut-busting laughter in the presence of certain women. Sisters, you know what I’m talking about. (And guys, in case you’re wondering, yep . . . we talk about everything. It’s a good thing. A necessary thing. Get over it.)

For some reason, though, women can be the harshest critics of one another. Who among us hasn’t judged or been judged by body type or clothing style or parenting choices? (My kid used a pacifier until he was 5, so I've received my fair share of snarky comments.) If you work outside the home, you’re likely familiar with that particular breed of professional woman, more senior to you, who views your ascent up the ladder as a threat and is more likely to step on your fingers than lend a hand and hoist you up a rung or two. It used to baffle me, this lack of gender solidarity, but I think I’ve figured it out. I guess maybe it boils down to a feeling, however misguided, that her success/happiness/ability to eat 17 bowls of ice cream without gaining an ounce somehow negatively affects my ability to do the same.

But that’s just crazy-talk. What if Kris—Kris my writing partner, my kindred spirit, the doppelganger of my very heart—what if she had refused to pass my resume on to the rest of the firm’s hiring committee because she didn’t want the competition? We’d have missed out on not only a deep friendship and rare creative partnership, but also on the little things that make life rich--late-night wine-fests in the office and Mah Jongg tournaments and repeated viewings of the O.C. (Seth Cohen, I still love you; Coop, I wish you’d died earlier; Oliver, I’ve erased you from my memory).

I guess what I’m saying is, other women gettin’ theirs doesn’t preclude you from gettin’ yours. In fact, I’d argue it serves as inspiration, a light to guide you on your own path. Case in point: the go fug girls, hilarious purveyors of my favorite website, have co-authored a novel, Spoiled, coming out in hardcover on June 1. The two-worlds colliding storyline appeals to every fiber of my young-adult-chick-lit-Pretty-in-Pink-loving being. (And, really, with characters named Molly Dix and Brooke Berlin, how can you go wrong?) But, aside from the book itself, I dig that two women have realized a dream. If they can make it happen, we can, too. And so can you. And you. And all of you. I hope they sell a gazillion copies. Love and luck to them . . . and to all my gurls.

Seeing the Color

There are a number of things that differentiate people who write. And not in some highfalutin, elitist way. And I don't just mean professional writers or writers who have work published. I mean writers in the broadest sense of the word. Those who write letters and long e-mails and meticulously crafted Facebook status updates. Those whose love to read and cherish words, especially when they are strung together in prescient and precise metaphors and similes. Take this one from my new favorite book, This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper (do yourself a favor and read it): "These middle-aged women in the early stages of disrepair…genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart." My goodness, that's good. But I digress.

What do these people have in common? Many things, I suppose, but certainly the art of observation. Of taking in their surroundings, appreciating the nuances, the absurdities, the cliches, the beauty, the offensive. (This is, by the way, what makes Tropper's work so brilliant, so engaging, so freaking hilarious. Apologies, this post is apparently now doubling as a plug for my new favorite book.) A dear friend of mine sums up this quality as seeing the color in life, and seeing it as brightly in the grocery store as in the Yosemite Valley. This week, while I was traveling for work, there was plenty of color to see. Is there a better place than the airport, where time seems to melt and bend, to take stock of your surroundings, welcome epiphanies, and consider the existential? Okay, well, maybe I left the epiphanies and the existential for another day, but what follows are my observations from four airports in two days:

A woman, late twenties, early thirties, dressed fashionably with all the trappings of upper middle class-dom, an iphone, a Netbook, a purse with a name I recognized. The first time I looked her way, she had three fingers in her mouth. And I mean in there. Up to the second knuckle. Okay, that's fine. We all get that pesky popcorn kernel wedged between a molar now and then. And if you don't have floss, who am I to begrudge you going in for it. (I will spare you a diatribe on the germ factor in airports . . .). When I looked at her a second time, probably five minutes later, her fingers are still in there, deep enough to tickle her uvula. Only those time she was taking a different angle, leading me to believe this was not a battle against a popcorn kernel shell. The next time, 15ish minutes later (and before you wonder who's the strange one here, she was in my direct line of sight to the gate from which I'd be boarding), Fingers. Still. In. Mouth. And, again, we're not talking biting off a hangnail. We're talking four fingers all in. So I had to wonder, what is going on there? Is it a fetish? Did she just have oral surgery? What would make someone who appears to conform to social norms flout them so obviously right there in the mini micro brew at the Portland airport?

I accidentally walked into the men's restroom at the Spokane airport (no, I wasn't drunk or tired or anything, really, other than, wait for it . . ., nonobservant). I skated in, somehow missing the five unoccupied urinals on the wall, with no problem. When I went to leave, those urinals had occupants so I had to hide in the stall and wait for the entitled to exit. Eventually they did. And neither washed their hands. What is that, men?

A Medicare eligible woman with a nose ring. Nothing else about her tipped its hat toward counter culture. That intrigued me. And not because I have some misguided notion that people with the wisdom of years subscribe strictly to the mainstream. I understand that people now in their 60s were doing things in the 60s and 70s that I've never imagined. I get that. But let's be honest, those folks, if they still embrace the spirit of that time on into their golden years, usually wear it on their skin in the form of tattoos or something else other than piercings. Nose rings seem so, I don't know, Portlandia. So 90s. So Eddie Vedder. And I'm interested in when this woman decided to pierce her nose and what led her to finally say, yeah, let's do this.

I could go on and on, but this post is already much too long so I will leave you with this. A woman who walked to the plane with me, wearing polyester slacks, the kind with the coarse seam down the front and an elastic waist. The kind my kindergarten teacher used to wear in, lo, 1978. She was talkative, steady on her feet, younger than the woman with the nose ring, and headed to Spokane. She told me with pride that she hadn't flown in 30 years. 30 years. Almost as long as I've been alive. (Yes, if you've done your math, you know that's a little generous to me). So why was she there? What finally spurred her to get on a plane after 30 years? A funeral? She certainly didn't have an air of mourning or sadness about her. A graduation? Not the right time of year.

There are so many questions and so many possible explanations for all of these things. And, in reality, I could have struck up conversation on all accounts and found answers. But that's the thing about writing and observations; if I had asked, I couldn't craft my own characters and write my own endings.

Roshambo!

In an uncharacteristic move (and a possibly unsettling one for those who know me), I'm keeping this brief. In short, I’ve had an epiphany, courtesy of my kids fighting over the last of the gummi cherry hearts. It goes like this: to achieve balance, sanity, success as a writer, I must get my Roshambo on . . . play a little Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Let’s start with Paper, the medium of my chosen art form (ignoring, for the purposes of this strained metaphor, the Kindle and all Kindle-like devices). You wanna write? Then do it. Get your ideas on paper. Sit down and scratch out some prose. And do it often. But remember, as even the youngest Roshambo player quickly learns, you can't throw Paper every time and expect to win. At some point, those Scissors have to come along . . .

. . . and shear off the useless, the superfluous, that which hinders forward progress. Yes, I’m talking about cutting from manuscripts (you should have seen the carnage from our first professional edit), but also about life. Sure, it’s nice to make homemade confections for your kid’s bake sale, but what are those gooey chocolately squares doing for your characters, your plot, your agent search? A whole lot of nothing. Carve away the unnecessary. Stop by the bakery on the way home and call it good. Get some wine while you're at it. It helps.

And don't forget the Rock. (Anyone else picturing Dwayne Johnson? Shirtless? But I digress...) I’m relying on homonyms here to make this work but, again, it’s my strained metaphor so my prerogative. Rock. Not a stone for skipping, but Rock as in I Wanna Rock and R.O.C.K. in the USA and, dare I say it, Rock Lobster. In other words, ROCK! Surround yourself with kick-ass music. With transcendental art. With film and theatre and dance and paintings and clothing and humor and food that beckon your muse. That expand your mind creatively. Talk with people who challenge and inspire you. And then take that inspiration (and your glass of Cab, and one of the brownies you pilfered before shipping 'em off to a bunch of ungrateful third-graders), and start throwing Paper all over again.

'sall good

A word about rejection—not Rejection with a capital “R,” but simple puny plain vanilla everyday mundane rejection. (Because that shift key does make a difference. Think about “right” vs. “Right,” for example. See?)

Okay, fine, for comparison’s sake let’s talk briefly about Rejection. Rejection of the capital variety--professional Rejection--is painful, but also expected and somewhat anonymous. Over time, you get used to agents scribbling “good luck with another agency,” or “not for us,” or, simply “NO!” (“Good God, no” is obviously implied) in the margins of your carefully crafted, blood-soaked and tear-stained queries. At some point (if you stick with it long enough), though you’re disappointed, you really do develop that duck’s back. The Rejections slide right off. I’m not saying you won’t harbor a vendetta against a particularly nasty agent or two, perhaps one who felt the need to say something akin to “how could I possibly sell this you stupid stupid fat smelly writer?” But I digress. Once you land an agent, you face publisher Rejections. These are the biggest and scariest of the big “Rs,” especially when you get the type of Rejection your agent labels the “kiss of death.” (As an aside, why is it a "kiss?" Bitch-slap seems more appropriate.) Which means the publisher “loves your writing style” but doesn’t know “how to sell the book.” In other words, “we dig the book you’ve forgone school plays and promotions and any hint of a normal sex life for, but not enough to go to bat for it.” And there’s nothing you can do to fix it, short of writing an entirely different book. Which is the opposite of awesome. But, again, though you may not like it, you can handle Rejection from these faceless powers that be who sit atop slush piles drinking Manhattans and mocking your font choice.

Lowercase rejection--that’s another animal altogether. It involves watching your mom’s face contort in pain as she reads your manuscript. It’s your friend asking how your “little project” is going before launching into details about her pug’s hemorrhoids. It’s posting your blog on Facebook and getting no love, while your drunken rant likening goldfish crackers to manna from heaven garners a host of thumbs-ups and a page of comments. It’s real and it’s painful and it plays into all your insecurities and fears and co-dependencies. And it sucks. Because I think we all can agree, rejection from someone you know is exponentially worse than a stranger’s rejection.

But I learned something this week. Somewhere along this crazy path to publication (or maybe to financial ruin and cirrhosis of the liver; the jury’s still out), rejection stopped slaying me. I have a friend--an uncommonly bright and talented friend--with whom I shared my work recently. I’d shared short stories and excerpts with her before but, I have to admit, only those I’d chosen carefully because I knew they fit her style—dark and gloomy and decidedly non-mainstream, bleeding into the margins of acceptable subject matter. I knew my current novel wasn’t her brand of artisanal whiskey. I knew that from the first time I told her about it over breakfast and she raised her eyebrows, impaled her pancake, and changed the subject to some new foreign film about excrement. But I sent her the first chapter anyway, just for shiggles. Because if you aren’t willing to put yourself out there, then what’s the point? Might as well keep your desk job.

I believe our subsequent conversation went something like this . . .

“Ummm . . . I read your chapter.”

“Yea?”

“Yea.”

Awkward pause.

“I’ll tell you what I did like about it. I liked the setting.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sniffle. Cough. Yawn.

“You write kind of flowery.”

“Yep.”

“Maybe if you, like, toned that down a bit . . . .”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Anyway, Lou and and I had an amazing time in Napa. We never left the bed, and let me tell you . . . .”

So, you know, essentially she hated it. I guess I should feel honored she said anything at all; she has a rule that if she can’t honestly heap praise, she keeps her mouth shut. (Clearly she’s not cut from the same “pleaser” cloth that I am.) Though I think she must have strained to find something nice to say. I mean, I appreciate the effort, but the setting? Really?

But here’s the upshot (to borrow one of Kris’s favorite phrases) . . . it didn’t bother me. I get it. It’s not her style or a subject matter that interests her. And I am a flowery writer. I lean toward the verbose and I never met a metaphor I didn’t want to whisk off to Vegas. I think it works for this book and the demographic I’m wooing. I’ve been writing long enough and had enough input over the years to feel secure in my vision. That doesn’t mean I won’t take another look at it with her comments in mind--criticism is always helpful. I may tone it down a bit, but I don’t anticipate a major overhaul. One person’s excrement is another person’s art and vice versa. It’s nice to finally live here, in a place where rejection doesn’t sour me on my work. In fact, I might even invite my friend over for pancakes when the book is published.

RSVP Oui

You know when you first hear a word or phrase and then you hear it again and again in a matter of days? My latest iteration of this phenomenon, which really should have a name (yes, I know awareness is probably sufficient, but a quippy name would be so much better), is with the french term "mise en place". Credit goes to an episode of Top Chef, after which it showed up in varying contexts and situations. I've comandeered it as my own now, terrible accent and all. And while mise en place is a beautiful thing to say, not to mention a lovely concept for we type-A-the-Container-Store-might-be-my-heaven folks, the phenomenon I will call awareness (for lack of that quippy term) has recently spoken to me in a more profound way--not with a word or a phrase, but in an idea, a notion, a lesson, if you will.

The weeks leading up to the holidays included for me a book club meeting, a Mahjong game (if you don't know it, learn it, its fantastic, not to mention addictive and, in my house, always involves wine), and a fair amount of yoga. Out of each of these delightful endeavors came a consistent theme. At book club, we read Last Night in Montreal about a girl, Lilia, who, as a result of a vagabond childhood, couldn't stay in one place, emotionally or physically. She remained on what she called the surface of life, never diving in, never taking the risks, feeling the fear, experiencing the pain, or relishing the joy. At Mahjong, a dear friend discussed her fear of buying a dog for her kids, already anticipating the death of the animal they don't yet have but know they will love like a family member. All of this made me think about what is required of us, in the bigger sense. How invested must we become in our own existences? I found the answer at yoga - sweet, blessed yoga, where construct is meaningless and questions can be cast aside for their cosmic irrelevance. At the end of a practice, sweaty and splayed out on our mats, we were told to thank ourselves for showing up. Just showing up. Not for executing the best downward dog or flying into crow. But for being there, ready to take on whatever the body and the universe was offering up that day. Showing up. That is what is required of us.

For you fellow over-achievers, showing up might connote mediocrity, but to my mind, it is anything but mailing it in. Showing up is engaging, opening up, being vulnerable to all that life has to offer, the good and the bad. Because, to be sure, you can't have one without the other. That might mean bringing home that new fluffy puppy, or allowing yourself to finally fall in love, or continuing to write in the face of repeated rejection and failure, all of which bring both joy and pain. So this is me, showing up. I hope to see you here.

Out With The Old, In With The New

I’ve always considered New Year’s Eve an arbitrary holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I like having the day off work (yea, I have the day off…public sector employee, remember), and I’m a sucker for all things sparkly and bubbly and filled with shredded bits of colored paper . . . but dressing to the nines and drinking ‘til you drop merely because 365 (or 366) days have passed seems so random. Kind of like the publishing industry. (Seriously, people, what lands one girl-in-love-triangle-solving-work/identity/body-image-crisis-with-the-help-of-quirky-gay/bawdy-sex-addict-best-friend story on bookstore shelves while another languishes in manuscript limbo, mocking you every time you fire up the ol’ laptop?) Despite my existential misgivings (Because, yea, I go there…why even have a calendar year? Isn’t every day essentially the same? Why even have days? If a blog is posted and nobody reads it, was it ever written?), I kinda like the idea of a New Year. Of giving in to the illogical notion that the act of opening a fresh calendar has real meaning. That the slate is wiped clean come midnight. It’s a Jedi mind trick, to be sure, but one I’m embracing with gusto this year. Rather than dwell on my anemic daily word count and the fact that I’m still not published (and all the other personal failings I won’t bore you with…you should see the refrigerator still sitting in the middle of my kitchen after 6 months), I’m choosing to let it go. To exhale fully when the clock chimes 12. Because only then can I breathe in the fresh, creative, hopeful air of 2011. I’m guessing it smells like rainbows and unicorns. Wishing you a year filled with your own brand of awesome. Catch ya in the double-ones.

All We Want For Christmas

When I was but a wee girl, my mom would bring home the big fat JCPenney catalog each year lo around early November. (Check out some sweet shots from the 1976 catalog. I was a fetus, of course.) I’d spend hours flipping through the pages while drinking fresh-pressed apple cider and eating homemade spice cake in front of the fire. Okay, so maybe I actually sprawled on our green shag carpet drinking store-bought egg nog and eating Vienna sausages from the can (don’t judge me–we all did it), but the catalog part is true. I’d make my Christmas wish list by marking items with one, two or three stars (depending on their desirability) in between sneaking peeks at the lingerie section when my mom wasn’t looking.

Like most adults, I stopped making a Christmas wish list at some point—probably around the time I realized my three star items included a washing machine I didn’t have to start with a screwdriver and a holiday without one of my kids on antibiotics. But I miss those days spent with the JCPenney catalog—when you couldn’t simply click a mouse and have anything delivered overnight, when a dickie was a perfectly viable clothing option, when the Carpenters ruled the Christmas airwaves and that offensive Christmas Shoes song didn’t exist. So, in honor of those times, we are making a Christmas wish list this year—a writer’s Christmas wish list. This is what Kris and I would like to find under the tree Christmas morning:

1. A sequel to One Day by David Nicholls titled The Next Day: J/K, It Wasn't Emma On The Bike; It Was Really That Asshat Dexter

2. Some sort of device that allows us to go to the bathroom without leaving the computer. A Stadium Pal for women, if you will. Because you always have to pee just about the time you finally get into a writing groove. It's a law of nature.

3. A computer program that reads our otherwise brilliant sentences and fills in the brackets.

4. You know the Deluminator? That thing that Dumbledore gave to Ron Weasley? It looks like a pen and when Ron clicks it, he can extinguish or create light? I want one of those. But for apostrophes. (I’m coming for you, first, Sacramento International Airport. What do you mean “Shuttle Drivers’ may not assist passengers with their bag’s?”)

5. A kit that takes all the words we write each day on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, IMs, and e-mails, and converts them to useful prose for our various novels. Can you imagine the boost in daily word count?

6. For the various Dictionary Powers-That-Be to stop (for the love of all that is good and beautiful in the world, stop) adding made-up words to the dictionary. Turducken?! Really?! And don't tell me to chillax.

7. Pat Conroy's South of Broad rewritten with a modicum of meangingful character development and without the sociopath father/serial killer/rapist/pedophile/foreboding nail polish-graffiti artist. (Yea, you read that right...nail polish-graffiti artist) Still love you Pat, but that was wrong.

8. A Mucinex-like pill for writer's block. Literally hacking up the block seems like a great solution.

9. Grammar Girl as my new next door neighbor. We'll drink wine, she'll mentor me, and under the dark cover of night we'll enact vigilante justice on rogue apostrophes everywhere. (And because, really, any girl who calls grammar tips "quick and dirty" is okay in my book!)

10. An audio recording of 6-8 Black Men by David Sedaris. If you know it, ‘nuff said. If you don’t, Merry Christmas. (It's in three parts, but TOTALLY WORTH YOUR TIME . . . though I can't vouch for the homemade video images)

Happy Holidays to you and yours!!

Art and Craft and Ass in Chair

Stephen King (or Oliver Stone, depending on your source) said writing equals ass-in-chair.

Its been months since my last post. Life has been working its insidious black magic, taking over with work and school and PTA, baseball and laundry and family crises, leaving little time or energy for writing. At long last, this morning, my hindquarters are planted firmly in a chair. And I'm learning, in a way I never have, that writing is not like riding. A bike, that is. Case in point: I just spent thirty minutes doing internet research for this post. Back in the heady days of weekly blog posts, Done Fell Out, and various short stories, I would grab a cup of tea, curl up on the couch, and wax at least somewhat poetic (humor me people) about some relatively engaging topic. And I did it with ease and in short order. I suppose, back then, I fancied myself a writer, an artist.

Laura is an artist. I've always known this. In the way she crafts story, thinks about characters, examines the novel from seventeen scenes ahead. And now she's embarked on a solo writing venture that is original and exciting and brilliant, not only sentence by sentence, but also for its creativity, on both a macro and micro level. Not only does it make me wonder if (a.k.a. feel terrified) she's been carrying the laboring oar on all of our collaborative projects, it has started me thinking about art versus craft. Folks much smarter than I have opined on this subject at length. I just read an essay by Susan Sontag, purportedly examining this topic, but it made my eyes cross and cramped my brain. Suffice to say, I don't expect to add much to the marketplace of ideas on art versus craft, but I do know this: I can craft a sentence with the best of them. I can both persuade a federal court judge and bring you to tears with words that, strung together, sound like song. Sure, I can do that. But that doesn't make me an artist; it makes me - to my mind - a craftsman, craftswoman. And there's pride in that, certainly. But it's not art.

Did I ever have art in me? I tend to think I did. The question is whether there's any left and, if so, where it went. Did it disappear into the seventeen loads of laundry I did last week, did I lose it on my fifth business trip in four weeks, is it caught in the family crises that takes up so much space in my house? I don't know. I guess I'll just have to start by looking for it.

What's in a Name?

Seventh Grade was a good year. I was allowed to wear a little bit of make-up (iridescent blue eye-shadow, naturally), I graduated from a plaid jumper to a plaid skirt (yes, I’m a Catholic school girl), and I had my first kiss (in the school library . . . he tasted like mustard). I also had one of the best teachers ever—Mrs. Light. She wore bright red lipstick, had a dog named Liesl (named after the character in The Sound of Music), and used long, skinny chalk-holders that looked as if they’d been plucked from the manicured fingers of elegant smoking baronesses in black-and-white films. Mrs. Light taught me something about writing I remember to this day—the importance of finding just the right name for a character. Think about it. Would Severus Snape or Lucius Malfoy seem quite as sinister, at first blush, were they named Sanford Smith and Lucas Melfry? What if Mark Twain had switched Tom Sawyer’s and Huckleberry Finn’s names? Could you relate to Bridget Jones if she had an exotic name, like Alexandria DuPont?

Kris and I took this notion regarding the importance of names to its extreme in The Pecking Order, with character monikers like the Pecker and the Blowhard. But we also spent a great deal of time considering the real names in the book. Adam, for example, was chosen as Abby’s husband because we wanted an “everyman,” and what better name than that given the first man?

You only need to attend a little league baseball game to see the significant thought given to name choice in real life. A few of the more unique names from my son’s recent game: Jasten, Cooper, Chase, Atticus, P.J., Jackson, Carson, Colton, and Houston (that’s my son). I also have nephews aptly named Drake (the dragon) and Stryder (ranger, elf-lover, and future king). I believe mothers and fathers pick names they hope will “fit” their children . . . names that sound good rolling off your tongue, maybe have personal meaning, and present well in the world. If we take the time to pick a fitting name for a child whose actions we cannot control and whose destiny we cannot determine, shouldn’t we take care to find the right name for our characters, whose very existence we hold in the tips of our pens?

Nineteen Cents

A man sat next to me at church on Sunday. I’d had a hard week, and I begrudgingly made room for him, rearranging the emotional baggage I’d carried in. He had baggage, too: a worn, heavy coat smelling of asphalt and nicotine; a filthy backpack; a bedroll. His hands, clasped in his lap, were cracked and caked with dirt. Every line in his face etched a tale of heartbreak and bad luck. He needed a haircut, a shave, and a good scrub. When he reached into his pocket, the air shifted and I struggled not to wince or wrinkle my nose. He pulled out a coarse, brown napkin—the thin kind used at establishments specializing in fried potato products—and dabbed tears from his eyes while the choir sang. His hand plunged into that pocket again when the collection plate came around. He dropped a dime, a nickel, and four pennies into the golden dish before passing it to me. I tucked my check on the side, hoping to bury with it the mild resentment I’d felt when filling it out.

He fell asleep in the middle of the sermon. I watched his chin fall to his chest and his shoulders melt away from his ears; I prayed he felt safe and secure enough to rest well. When the service ended, we filed out and I lost sight of him. I have no canned conclusions for you, no literary tie-in or moral imperative. I simply wanted to share that a man sat next to me at church on Sunday.

Word.

You know what word I like? (And no, it' s not "published." I mean a real word.) Eclectic. It sounds like a bunch of spare parts crashing against one another in a burlap bag. Say it with me. See what I mean? Another one of my favorites? Supine. I feel the need to yawn and stretch at the mere sight of the word. I suspect we all have favorite words. My son is currently partial to "idiot" and "crud." (Yes, in case you're wondering, I am mother of the year.) I recently attended a legal training seminar where we engaged in that groan-inducing ice-breaker where you interview someone you don't know and then introduce them to the group. We had to find out something about our interviewees that most people don't know. (I thought about telling my interviewer I had buried my family under the Magnolia tree, but chickened out.) Guess what I found out? Lawyers really like the word "aficionado." You could say they are aficionados of the word aficionado. Not one person was a lover of art or a collector of wine or a horseback rider. They were all aficionados. Either the group didn't notice the blatant overuse of the word, or didn't care, because they kept using it. To the point where I was giggling to myself.

As writers, we need to be aware of this potential problem, especially when we craft an elegant sentence using one of our favorite words. In Pat Conroy's latest book, South of Broad, he used the word "repose" so beautifully that I reread the passage and then marked the page. Of course, then I noticed when he pulled out the same word in the next few pages. And again later in the book. The overuse not only lent a sense of commonality to a luminously crafted sentence, but it also took me out of the story. I doubt he even knew he'd done that. (Though, what do I know? He might have done it on purpose and I totally missed the point. I am the person who didn't realize The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was a retelling of Hamlet, so you should probably take my literary observations with a boulder of salt. That said, I'm sad to admit I didn't love South of Broad--a first for me, with respect to Conroy.) I doubt most of us know we use certain words more than we should. Not me, though. Nope. I have an eclectic vocabulary.

Excavating the Ancient and Discovering Gold a.k.a Listening to the Genius in the Corner

Laura and I have been busy (although not busy enough, which is why I will adopt and reincorporate by reference Perfect Games and Perfect Prose re: self flagellation. It will save us all another post on the topic of writing and discipline) with a new writing endeavor; one that's not quite flushed out, but does indeed, we assure you, have a plot. The devil and those details.

We've written often about our challenges writing The Pecking Order-the numerous iterations, the amazingly inconspicuous absence of a plot, the obscene overuse of introductory phrases, 90,000 words that were eventually whittled down to something just short of 60,000. And while we are both tremendously proud of The Pecking Order it its final iteration, we loved those 90,000 words - every last one of them. More than once we likened writing a paragraph to giving birth. We cried, sweat, and laughed over every last syllable. And well we should have. There was beauty and brilliance in those words - the 30,000 words that, at the end of the editing process, lay undignified, inert, debilitated in some forgotten word document for discarded prose. Scenes we cut, phrases we red-lined, characters we killed, all relegated to this document entitled "Ancient Pecking Order". And we let go of those things in the interest of marketing, following our heads, not our hearts, so even though it hurt, and even though our collective writing soul, the genius in the corner, that internal voice that makes Jayne Lynne, Jayne Lynne, told us differently (even screamed at us at times), we let go because we considered it necessary. As our agent told us, the minute we knocked on the publisher's door, The Pecking Order became not about us, but about the publishers, not about art, but about money. And who doesn't like a little money?

Fast forward a year - give or take - and Laura and I found ourselves on one of our lovely and too infrequent writing retreats. If you're thinking Walden Pond or the English countryside circa Jane Austen, try a roadside Ramada a stone's throw from I-5. (Did I mention the money for art thing hasn't quite yet come to fruition?) Still, there was WiFi in the room, Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar almonds (do yourself a favor and buy them), and perfect company. And in pursuit of this new project, we returned to what we knew, back when we were baby authors, full of hope and promise and high class problems like thinking we needed a nome de plume to hide our identity from the firm. We opened "Ancient Pecking Order" and, over the course of the evening, fell back in love with those deleted scenes, lost characters, and quirky turns of phrase. We remembered their humor, their beauty, their divine flaws. We remembered how and why we wrote them in the first place. So much so they have found their way - quite easily and fittingly - into our new work. And, this time, writing soul or genius in the corner or creative fairy or whoever you are, this time, we promise, we're listening.

Art and the Divine

One of the pastors at my church has this running joke about how he can't make it through a sermon without mentioning C.S. Lewis. One of the other pastors has the same running joke, but about Bono. (Yea, in case you were wondering, my church is kind of really totally awesome. A few weeks ago, we thanked God for beer. ) Here's my bit--I have a hard time writing a blog post without gushing about Elizabeth Gilbert. She's just so . . . present and real and self-deprecating and witty and brilliant and radiant and whole. And she's a damn good speaker, too. If you haven't seen her speech about the role of the divine in the creative process, I implore you to take a break and watch this. It's not just for writers, but for anyone engaged in any act of creativity, be it modeling or singing or sewing or lunch packing or lego building. So, yes, it's for all of us.
Happy Weekend! May the genius find you (watch the clip . . . you'll get it)!

Perfect Games and Perfect Prose

Back in the day (oh yeah, we're going there) I played collegiate softball. Several times a week, for four of the best months of the year, I would walk into that chalk-rendered circle, pick up the ball and represent my school for seven innings - 90 pitches, give or take, depending how the drop ball was breaking. My stats were solid (an ERA that hovered around 1), but inevitably there were times when the girl at the plate would connect. And sometimes she would really connect. And I'd curse myself for not getting the pitch far enough off the plate, or for trying, for the zillionth time, to finish the at-bat with a rise ball, which I refused to acknowledge was a misnomer in my pitching repertoire. But, ultimately, it didn't matter if it was a home run or a dribbler down the line that my third baseman booted or even a passed ball on a strike out. I always blamed myself. I could have done better. I could have chosen a better pitch, I could have placed it better, I could have thrown more pitches in practice, I could have, I should have, I could have, I should have.

I'll speak collectively now about me and Laura and how we put a good deal of pressure on ourselves. As writers, as mothers, as wives, as lawyers. Pressure is a little generous, in fact. It might be more accurate here to invoke the DaVinci Code and its charming monk, Silas. And while I can't give you anecdotes from Laura's college days to prove my point (although I'm sure there's a college theatre story in there somewhere), I can say that the woman graduated with the grades and LSAT scores to land her at the best law school in the country.

So now here we are, time on the stage and time on the mound a mere speck in the rear view mirror of our lives, trying to make our way as writers. And old habits die hard. At least once a day, one of us self-flagellates about how much we've written, or not written, or how poorly we've written it, or how terrible our ideas have been, or how we're too metaphor happy, or that we don't so much have a plot. (That, as it turns out was true, and a good thing to note.) And the last time I saw my dear friend and writing partner, she noted something she'd read declaring that people who don't write everyday, can't call themselves writers. So, of course, we started imposing daily word counts and time lines and generally agreed that if we didn't meet them that, well, we sucked. And, more importantly, we weren't writers.

Several days later, I was writing Laura a 7 paragraph e-mail about, among other things, how much we sucked. And while I was writing, I realized that we didn't. That we are writers. We do write everyday. To one another. My day almost always begins with writing or receiving an electronic missive that's full of raw feeling, insightful observations, and humor, always humor. And its these missives that have now become our muse. Our inspiration. Sure, it might not be flowing prose with precisely crafted plot turns, but its writing. And every good ball player knows, you can't throw a perfect game every time.