Seymour Finkelstein and Other Elusive Dreams . .

As a girl, I read the same books over and over again. All the Nancy Drews at least 3 times, my favorite titles (The Password to Larkspur Lane, anyone?) perhaps dozens. Go Ask Alice and Are You There God, its Me Margaret (forget the iPad, remember the pad belt?!) occupied space on my night stand for months. But the book I most remember reading was a somewhat less patrician title called I Saw Him First in which two hormonal teenage girls fight over the new class hunk, Seymour Finklestein. I don't recall the ever so important details, but I'm sure you'll be shocked to find out the narrator, who fought to woo that tall drink of water, Seymour, finally realized the water, tall as it was, didn't run very deep. I don't remember if the girls became friends again, if the narrator ended up going to the prom with the nice kid from her side of the tracks who loved her from the beginning--oh, wait, I've ventured into film. Old Molly Ringwald movies aside (are there any new Molly Ringwald movies?), the righteous indignation that inspired the title of I Saw Him First reared its ugly head in my home this week, in a very non-fictional way.

Laura, the more media savvy of us, sent me several links to several Twitter feeds this week. (So un-savvy am I that I'm not even sure its called a Twitter feed, but I think that's right). If you're interested, they are as follows:

http://twitter.com/jenniferweiner/status/7996896247
http://twitter.com/Litopia/status/8205352478

If you're not that interested, don't worry I'll summarize. The first is a tweet from Jennifer Weiner, she of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, noting that ABC is reading her pilot about a smart, sassy lady lawyer. The second is an article from the Huffington Post written by two female co-authors waxing poetic on the benefits of co-authoring a novel.

By way of reminder, Laura and I wrote a novel about a smart, sassy lady lawyer. Five years ago we wrote it. And its good. We've been talking to groups for some time now about the benefits of writing together. And we're charming. I promise we are. For the moment, however, I'm abandoning that charm and instead of understanding that sometimes it really is about who you know, or just a matter of timing, or even wondering whether we gave up on The Pecking Order too soon, I'm opting to stomp my feet and grab for Seymour. Laura and I, after all, saw him first.

A Square Peg

We've been told our book, The Pecking Order (available now, online, for free!), doesn't quite fit into an established literary genre. It's like the offspring of chick lit and literary fiction, although every now and then one might whisper behind closed doors that it resembles the mailman (his name is Romance). Our agent called it upscale commercial women's fiction . . . whatever that means . . . but, still, even with a name, it hasn't found a comfortable home. I was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, it was destined to be a loner forever. But then I read Love Walked In and Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos. And I gotta tell you . . . The Pecking Order is in good company. It does not (unlike that stinky cheese we're all so fond of singing about) stand alone. The review "blurbs" for Love Walked In describe the book alternately as chick lit and romance, and praise the author's literary skills. As for me, I define her books as riveting, with characters I want to tuck in my pocket and carry around, conversations I want to jump into, and language that lingers long after I've closed the back cover. Marisa de Los Santos's books are filled with humor and self-deprecation . . . with a literary slant but a pop culture, relatable feel. And though Ms. de los Santos writes in a way I only aspire to, sometimes, every now and then, it seems that one of her sentences could have bled from my (and Kris's) very pen. So maybe "not fitting in" can be a good thing.
P.S. I just read that Sarah Jessica Parker is slated to star in the film version of Love Walked In. I titled this blog post "A Square Peg" before I knew that. Maybe I need my own psychic hotline?

Relentless Forward Progress

Its been a little more than a year now since my last marathon. I'm still smarting. And it wasn't my first. It was my fifth. That doesn't exactly qualify me as a "marathoner", but I also shrug off the label of "runner" like its an 80's ensemble. I just don't consider myself properly in that category. Yes, I've put one foot after another for 26.2 miles on several occasions and for 13.1 miles on even more occasions, not to mention the scads of 3, 6, and 10 milers I have under my belt. Yet still, in my mind, I am not a runner.

Almost a decade ago, I ran the most difficult race I've ever done, the Grandfather Mountain Marathon, rated one of the hardest marathons in the country. And you know what, I didn't train. And no I don't mean, oops, I only did a couple of long runs. I mean my hardest training run was a 40 minute hill workout on the treadmill. I will save the unimportant and uninteresting details related to why I didn't train, but suffice to say I was being obstinate in a way that only hurt me. And as I looked ahead at 26.2 miles and a 1000 foot climb, I told myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and I took to heart something my husband said as I watched him leave me in his dust at mile 3 - "relentless forward progress".

I (Laura and I) have written a novel. A good novel. Not to mention several short stories, countless legal briefs, and more than a hundred pages of a second novel. Yet I still have difficulties considering myself a writer. But as I look ahead at another 200 pages of that second novel, with callous-free fingertips and a word processing program that hasn't received a creative words in months, I remember what my husband said at the Grandfather Mountain Marathon - relentless forward progress. It took me across the finish line at Grandfather Mountain and I can't help but believe it will take us to the final chapter here.

It's Getting Sappy Up In Here...

It’s that time of year—time to deck the halls, fruit the cake, steamroll the mannheim, and nog the egg. We’re simplifying this year—buying fewer presents, spending more time together, and recognizing the inherent joy in the smallest of things. Decorating gingerbread houses. Bumbles and Yukon Cornelius (who came up with that name?). Singing in the church choir. Linus on national television reminding us what Christmas is all about. My son putting only the following three items on his Santa list: "a real live parakeet, 200 bucks, snow falling in my backyard." Trader Joe’s sea salt caramels (you've heard me talk about yin and yang...don't get me started on salty and sweet. Perfection in a cello wrapper). Peppermint hot chocolate and snowman Peeps. Not hearing that awful Christmas Shoes song. Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. The Star Wars Christmas Album (what do you get a Wookie for Christmas, when he already has a comb?). Cousin Eddie’s dickie, Aunt Bethany’s jello mold, and Clark Griswold demanding we have the “hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby danced with Danny [bleeping] Kaye.”

There is also joy to be found in honoring your craft. The best gifts we can give ourselves cost nothing—time to write amidst the frenzy of the season, stolen moments with our characters, juicy plot developments all wrapped up with a fat bow. And grace. Grace to accept that 1,000 words a day may not happen until the New Year, but each sentence, each word, each thought related to your work is a small treasure. This season, may you receive presence, along with your presents.

(And, because I can’t resist, for you Twilight fans . . . an extra special gift, courtesy of the LOLcats. It makes me giggle!)

Riding the Climb or Climbing the Wave

What do Miley Cyrus and Ursula K. Le Guin have in common? Presumably, very little. Okay, probably nothing. But its been a bit of a rough spell for Jayne Lynne. Not the one-of-us-has- taken-seriously-ill or-something-like-that kind of rough spell. But the kind of rough spell where the writing isn't coming and the time that should be spent writing is commandeered by annoyingly superfluous things like our jobs, our families, our friends, the holidays, and, admittedly, the occasional red wine hangover. I know what you're thinking. The economy is in the tank, no one has a job, its crazy cold in California, Tiger Woods is no longer the Golden Boy, and this is your rough spell? Well, yes. Everything is relative.

It seems that we let our new book, Done Fell Out, sit for a while. And it turns out that an unfinished manuscript is not unlike cheese. In some cases, it needs some age; in others, it just gets rank. And its pretty rank up in this beeatch, if you know what I mean. We recently took on Chapters 9 and 10 and proceeded to wrestle with them for the better part of a month. And I mean alligator mud pit wrestling. And, much like alligator mud pit wrestling, the outcome wasn't so pretty. And to make matters worse, I read through the first eight chapters and had to look around the house to find the person who had written those words. I knew Laura had written her parts, but mine? I couldn't find that woman anywhere. And I'm a little worried she's not coming back. I've talked often lately of hanging up the keyboard and have been prone to indulge in other bad, overly dramatic metaphors indicating I might just be done with writing.

And then this weekend I received a gift from The Writing Loft - a thank you for speaking at Artoberfest. It was a book by Ursula K. Le Guin entitled The Wave in the Mind, and it struck a chord I worried had been rendered inert-an inspired, creative chord. And later I was organizing my son's room, pulling out forsaken toys and unidentifiable pieces of plastic, when Its the Climb came on the radio. I was singing at the top of my lungs, in resonant frequency (high school physics anyone?) with that inspired chord (although, notably, cleaning my son's room and not writing), before I realized, with shame, that I was singing Miley Cyrus. I rationalized that she most certainly hadn't written the song, and then I silently thanked those who did because they reminded me to worry less about the destination and just enjoy the climb, or, as Ursula would prefer, ride the wave.

Mother Knows Best (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Technology)

Kris and I recently gave a talk about how we write together. Like an old married couple (think the vignettes in When Harry Met Sally, finishing each other's sentences, saying the same thing at the same time), we told the story about how we met at the firm (a very pregnant Kris interviewed me), how we discovered we both loved writing (talking late one night while working at the firm, wine in hand), and the genesis of The Pecking Order (a particularly long, pointless, billable-hour-sucking meeting that ended in a decision to, yes, have another meeting). We praised the benefits of having a writing partner to share in the struggle, the disappointments, and the joys, and we also explained our process. And it goes a little something like this (hit it!): we loosely outline two chapters; Kris writes one chapter, I write the other; we switch and edit; we switch and edit again; and so on and so forth. And we do this all over email, putting our edits and thoughts in bolds and brackets, so our drafts end up looking like this (note, real live excerpt from early working draft of The Pecking Order): “You’re right. A little harmless flirting never hurt anyone. I should let myself have fun. I work hard and I deserve it,” I say [uncorking our first bottle of wine] [delete – we have a lot of champagne going on….popping the cork on our first bottle of champagne.]

Then we each put the latest version in our respective running documents (on our respective laptops), which may or may not match each other at any given point, depending on whether I remembered to email the most recent draft to my work account or Kris could access the document on vacation or the planets aligned and the heavens smiled on us, making all things domestic and career-related run smoothly. Goodness gracious, it's a lot of work just to type our process . . .

Some time back, my mom (who is ridiculously more technologically advanced than I am) questioned why we weren't using google docs. She might as well have asked why we didn't have the robot prepare dinner or why we didn't drive to work in a hovercraft. We ignored her. For years. Until we finally tried it last week. And people, let me tell you, google docs is all that. You can store documents online and choose who to share them with. Much like a yahoo or gmail email account, you can access your document from anywhere with internet access. Now, we have a single running document and anything we write, be it a single sentence or entire chapter, goes into that document. No more passing bolds and brackets back and forth through email - one of us can open the document and make edits that the other can see simply by logging in. It's genius, I tell you, and not just for writing teams--it's a good back up system for any writer, and ensures you have your manuscript at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.
So, yea, I guess I should have listened to my mother the first time.

A Haiku

Steady rain grey skys
Lovely Seattle hotel
I forgot to blog