On Seedlings, and The Sea

Dear Friends,

I’ve been away from the blogosphere these past several weeks. My apologies, but there have been many fires to put out and nothing good to share with you that could fill a blog post. From now on, I’ll post here once a week, and the posts will be shorter, but at least they will be more consistent in their timing.

One of the only bright spots in these last weeks has been that the seeds I started a few weeks ago actually sprouted. Until that first tiny shoot of green showed itself above the soil, I didn’t realize how much I doubted my ability to grow anything. Just when I desperately needed something to go right and to receive some semblance of hope for the future (it really has been that bad, but I will spare you the details), the first eggplant seedling showed itself. Now there are Italian heirloom (sweet yellow) peppers, Bull Nose peppers (bell, sweet) like the ones grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, French eggplant (they will bear pretty white fruits with purple stripes, hardly bitter at all), and traditional eggplant for my dad because he wants to make eggplant parmigiana. Since I eat what he makes, I am happy to grow the main ingredient. 

It was the first sign that things were going to turn around. The rhythms of nature also help slow me down. People who know me comment on my “clock speed”. One person said that I was like a dog in that one year seems like seven to me. My sense of time is accelerated, and everything seems to take forever and a day. It can drive those around me crazy, but it’s worse inside me. It’s almost painful to wait for everyone and everything to catch up. Still, this garden thing has helped with my little peculiarity. I look every day, usually more than once a day, to see what progress the little starts have made. It seems a reflection of what I've known for a while, that we are too far removed from nature and its rhythms anymore, and technology has gone beyond serving us and has become our master.

Taking a break from social media was necessary for me. It is becoming such a trend to do so lately I wonder if Facebook's board of directors didn't choose an astoundingly bad time in their brief history to go public. That remains to be seen, but that is where my suspicions lie. 

A couple of weeks ago I ran across this lovely quote from Isak Dinesen, the author of “Out of Africa” among many other literary wonders, on Pinterest, and I wanted to share it with you:

"The cure for anything is saltwater--sweat, tears, or the sea."

 It reminded me how much I miss San Diego, specifically how much I miss the ocean. Falling asleep to the sound of the waves coming and going is one of the most curative experiences I have ever known. I miss the salt air, the sunshine, and the easy-going culture. Who wouldn't prefer the sea over the other two forms of saltwater?

Lately lots of sweat and tears, two out of Dinesen’s three, but the payoff is on its way. By the end of February, I hope to have e-published my first non-fiction project and a short story, unrelated to each other. It's just the way the timing worked out. And then there are the seedlings that hopefully will continue to thrive followed by the five kinds of tomato seeds I look forward to starting in March. And then the next writing project after the current two have been birthed. 

Thanks to all whom have stopped by and commented and sent new friends my way. Best regards to all of you. 

See you next week! 

Cheers, 

India

Social Media Highlights Our Relationship With Books

Recently this photograph has made the rounds on Facebook:

In case you can’t read the text, it reads 

“A book commits suicide every time you watch Jersey Shore.”  

I found it hilarious, and metaphorically accurate!  I commented on Facebook that it was representative of all reality t.v. shows.  So many of my friends “liked” and commented on the photo, even friends that don’t read compulsively and aren’t bookworms.  They shared this sentiment at least in part.  To be fair, it may just be Jersey Shore backlash, but I don’t think so.

This question arose from observing the reactions to the photo, “Is reality t.v. actually helping increase book sales?”  I took stock of how often I’d turned the t.v. on in the past month looking for something informative or entertaining, only to turn it off in disgust less than 5 minutes later.  Several hundred channels and there’s nothing on!  Not even on my DVR!  What the bleep, people?  Again, I asked myself if this might not be a contributing factor to the increase in e-book sales.  While my trend-spotting radar says “Yes”, I have no definitive proof, only anecdotal evidence.  As in, my own observations.

In addition to the above photograph, a link to a website called “Book Porn” was Tweeted this past week by Susan Haws, a member of my writers’ group.  The name sounded just awful, but Susan is so conservative, it had to be a play on words.  So I bit and clicked out to www.bookshelfporn.com.  It was not, as I feared, so many books on pornography being sold off a virtual shelf.  Instead, it is photograph after mind-numbing, drool-worthy photograph, of places with bookshelves.  These can be home libraries or public ones, bookstores or works of art made from books.  It is incredible and astounding, and I’m so mad that I didn’t think of it first.  All I’d have needed to do is scan and upload to the internet all of the pictures I have saved over the years of different places and ways people store and display books.  There are some on their site that I have in my scrapbook, and there are some I have that they do not.  Drool worthy ones that I might share some day.  

This site points toward another trend:  The Comeback of the Hardcover Book.  We who love books will always love the sensory experience that comes with holding a book.  Not just the heft of a hardcover in hand, but the smell, the weight of the paper it is printed on, the design and color of the cover and the end papers, the subtle nuances upon which a true bibliophile can base a relationship with a book.  There was even this quote among the photographs on Bookshelf Porn:

"Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us."

Why second hand bookstores smell so good, from “Perfumes:  The Guide” by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.

Another quote on this site is something that I’ve done in my own life, long before ever hearing this advice:  

“We need to make books cool again.  If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.”  John Waters

More than once, I’ve had a date pick me up at home and upon entering, the comment was made, “You have too many books!”  It’s not like my home is a fire hazard.  They just don’t all have a home.

“There is no such thing as too many books.  There are just too few bookshelves,” I’d reply.  They might as well have insulted my friends to their faces.  I was deeply offended, and more than a little hurt. 

There was never a second date.  I knew there would not be before I picked up my purse to leave with the guy for the first date.  Once those words left their lips, there was not a chance in hell he was going to get lucky, that night, or ever.  

My mother read to me whilst she was pregnant with me.  She took me to the St. Louis Public Library when I was two weeks old, that is not a typo, and got me my first library card.  The librarian tried to dissuade her at first, but didn’t have an argument for the fact that there was no age requirement for someone to acquire one, only a parent’s or guardian’s signature.  By the time I was two years old, I was reading on my own.  Not Chaucer or Shakespeare, but first readers.  By the time I reached school, I was impatient with those just learning and read ahead because I wanted to know what happened next.  When it was my time to read the next sentence aloud, I had no idea where we were.  I’d been too absorbed in the story, and I was passed over.  The nuns were scary, and I didn’t want to admit I’d broken the rules.  The day the school called my mother and said they would have to hold me back because I could not read, she almost fell off her chair.  They sorted it out pretty quickly, and I was left alone to read ahead after that.  

My point here is, books have been an integral part of my life, and I could never form an intimate relationship with someone who does not himself have at least an understanding of my love of books.  It was at one time my goal to read every book in the library, and I developed a system to get through them all before I realized that not all books are created equal, therefore not all books are worth reading.  Today it is my goal to own a house with enough room to create a library.  Anyone I am with will have to know going in that this is a non-negotiable item.  Indoor plumbing, a library, and a garden.   Electricity is optional, but not the library or running water.  

One of the loveliest blog posts I have seen to date is “A Girl You Should Date” by Nona Merah at http://nonamerah.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/869/?refid=12.  In it she describes why a boy should love a girl who reads, and how to approach her once he finds one such female.  A quote from her post:

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve." --Nona Mereh 

And finally, I leave you with this link to “20 of the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries”:  http://www.oddee.com/item_96527.aspx, yet another reason to thank www.bookshelfporn.com.

All this social media chatter around books is good news for writers and the publishing industry.  The last few days I have been held hostage by a manuscript that I hope to get out in e-book form this fall, and another one I’d love to see in hardcover next year.  We’ll see if I break free in time.  Meanwhile, it is nice to know that market demand for reading material is, for whatever reason, on the rise.

Until next time, fellow travelers on the road paved with words, go do your share to increase our collective IQ's and GDP's:   Turn off the bad television shows, and read a book instead!

The Upside of Quiet Winter Days

This is my second winter back in Missouri after eleven years in Southern CA, where winter isn’t as wintery as it is here in the Midwest.  Last year was brutal here, with ice and snow, a couple of snowstorms that bordered on blizzards, power outages and subzero temperatures.  Parents who would be stuck inside for days at a time with rambunctious kids and marathon video game sessions flooded the grocery store before each of those storms, filling their grocery carts with several bottles of wine and a few of the harder stuff and cases of beer (which one was the chaser?), leaving the shelves in the alcohol aisle near empty. 

This year, though, winter has been pretty mild.  The sun is shining, but it is getting pretty cold again after a few days of near 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Temperatures dip below freezing at night, which is a good thing if you know anything about bugs.  If we don’t have a “good freeze” or two over winter, the mosquito, tic, chigger, and flea populations rejoice.  Those critters go forth and multiply as they would do normally, but the existing populations from the previous year are not killed off when there’s no freeze, effectively doubling the population of all those blood suckers.  It makes for an awful summer.  Have you ever had 60 mosquito bites and a sunburn at the same time?  It makes scratching an exercise in masochism.  You have to make some Faustian deal over which is worse:  The itching or the pain from the burn.

Even in a mild winter such as this one, there is a sense of dormancy, of things lying in wait, resting, reserving, and refueling.  This dormant energy lends itself to quiet activities, such as reading, writing a novel (or three, if your like me and can’t focus on one at a time), planning a garden, planning your spring break or your summer vacation, getting in touch with old friends and family members you’ve not seen in too long.  While this is a good time to do these things, we don’t always get them accomplished.  To think of a thing is not the same as doing that thing.  To that end, I have made lists of things I want to accomplish, and each day as I write my daily to-do list I check to see if I am doing at least one of those things from my bigger lists.  Sounds like too many lists, doesn’t it?  Not really.  

This is how I broke it down, a method I learned from reading Alan Lakein’s book “How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life”:

Lifetime Goals List

Yearly Goals List (2012, for example)

Monthly Special Emphasis List

Weekly Goals List

The Lifetime Goals List is the inspiration for the other lists.  My big goals are to make a living writing, to produce certain works I have in mind, to get my boys through college, and to travel the world.  

My monthly Special Emphasis List actually has less to do with my Lifetime Goals and more to do with seasonal activities or short term goals.  For instance, every month I like to decorate for that month’s holidays or the season, but I don’t always do it because it’s not written down somewhere and it gets away from me.  However, when I do it, it keeps my house and yard tidy because I get into the nooks and crannies every month and move things around, take things down, etc., for a fun reason rather than for drudgery.  It keeps me cheerful because the decor is never dull.  Floral arrangements change with holidays and seasons, the wreath on the door can be swapped out, from winter to summer the curtains may even change to let in more light.  

Always for the Month’s Special Emphasis List I add at least two family members that I wish to visit because too much time has passed.  This has become important to me since I went to my mother’s funeral in April and realized how many people were there that I hadn’t seen in years, some in decades.  I didn’t want the next time we saw each other to be at one of our own funerals.  I resolved then and there to make the effort.  There are also special, one-off projects; books I want to read (a combination of genre and classic novels); books I ought to read; special occasions and events; deadlines; things like that.  This year my goal was to read a classic novel each month, so each month I write down which title I want to read so I won’t let that goal fall by the wayside.  

My Weekly Goals List is taken from the other Lists, chipping away at the big stuff a little at a time, hoping to move the ball forward on my long-term goals.  In this way, I can see which things I can realistically fit into one week.  I still overdo it and end up carrying some things over, or just crossing some things off because they weren’t as important as I’d initially thought, but since using this method I have become far more effective and get much more accomplished.

The Daily List keeps me honest.  It includes all the little nitty gritty things I am required to do in Life, but also time for writing, and I hold it religiously, even turning off the WiFi and the phone to avoid interruptions.  There is time for reading each day (it’s still not enough!), and finally, some of those things from the Weekly List make it onto this Daily List. 

I like the feeling of accomplishment that comes when I cross off an item from my to-do lists, especially from the larger, more long-term lists!  

This week I will finish up the Alan Lakein book, “How to Control Your Time...” and hopefully I will be able to read Juliet Blackwell’s “Hexes and Hemlines”, my brain candy book for this week.  I need to begin this month’s classic novel, “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin.  The books I ought to read are writing related, about story structure, and writing mystery novels and romances.  

It’s a lot to juggle, but I find it much easier to track with a binder to hold all my lists written on looseleaf paper and a desk calendar which I use to track my writing projects and deadlines, also known as an “editorial calendar”.

My favorite thing to do when it’s cold outside and all the plants look like they’ve died?  Bake something.  It’s so life-affirming, and cozy.  Here’s the link to my new favorite banana bread recipe, complete with cinnamon crunch topping, from www.allrecipes.com:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bates-banana-bread/detail.aspx.  It’s called “Bates Banana Bread”, and it is awesome.  

Enjoy :-)

Yearly Goals for 2012

2011 is over, and I for one, am relieved.  2012 may be the end of the world according to the Mayan Calendar, or it may not, but if it is, it will still be an improvement over 2011.  

Normally I would post a new blog entry every day, but in the last few months of 2011, my PC had increasing numbers of fits and viruses, crashing, running slow, even with 3 separate anti-virus, anti-malware programs on my machine.  In one of the most generous gestures I have ever seen, a friend of mine surprised me, and I mean really surprised me, with a brand new MacBookPro.  In all honesty, it doesn’t feel yet like it is truly mine, as though he will either change his mind (he won’t) or I will wake up and find I dreamt it all, or something to that effect.  It’s just surreal.  The best thing about Mac is that they are far less prone to viruses.  The other best thing (I can’t bring myself to say “the second best” thing because I love everything about this computer equally) is that the keyboard is so easy to type with.  No more missed keys, I backspace almost never.  It’s lightning fast on the internet, and has tons of storage left over even after transferring my massive iTunes library.  I’m glad to be back, having been without either notebook computer for a few days while date was being transferred and then needing a few more days to get used to the new Mac.  I am at least confident enough now that I can get back into the business of writing, just in time to kick off the New Year.  

For 2012, I made a list of general goals, professional, personal, spiritual, mental, and physical.  If you care to share yours here as well, please feel free to post them in the comments space after this posting.  I’m curious to know what my readers feel inspired to do this year.  Mine are as follows:

Professional goals:

Write 6000 words per day Monday through Friday

Write 3000 words per day Saturday and Sunday

Finish WIP’s:  

A guide for loved ones of Rape Trauma Syndrome sufferers, publish as an e-book and make available as a downloadable PDF. 

A series of short guides dealing with persons with certain psychological disorders, non-pharmaceutical coping strategies proven to improve quality of life, and coping strategies that might make life better for the caregiver or person living with the afflicted.  Publish as e-books and as downloadable PDF’s. 

A locked room mystery; then publish as an e-book.

Write the thriller based on two ideas that collided with a third while I was driving the other day.  Publish as an e-book.  (This one may take longer than a year.  It is the largest undertaking, with the most characters, plot twists and subplots, but it is also the one I may enjoy most!)

Write the humorous romance novel that’s been in my head and in my notes for the last 3 months.  Publish as an e-book.

10,000 followers on Twitter

Build and launch my author website

Mental Goals:

Increase my Spanish vocabulary

Read one classic book each month.  My list includes:

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Paradise Lost by Milton

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner

The French Revolution by Alexis De Tocqueville

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

I also have a Chaucer book that tempts me, but I would like to get some of the above titles off of my “to read” shelf.  I have an actual bookshelf, four shelves high and five feet wide, filled mostly with books I have not yet read, though some favorites I can’t bear to part with, and some reference books.  

The rest of my reading in 2012 will consist of works by my friends as well as my favorite authors, including what I call “brain candy books”.  You can only be serious so much of the time before your head threatens to explode.  Sometimes a good cozy mystery or paperback romance, anything that doesn’t require me to have a dictionary at hand (that rules out P.D. James) and can be read in an afternoon qualifies.  

To not lose my mind while writing this year.  Or if I do, to at least lose it in some way that makes me sound like a genius on paper.

Be more Zen, and just focus on the task in front of me, to do the thing that most needs doing in this moment, and not let my ADD mind bounce around like a kernel of corn in an air popper; to be less of a butterfly chaser and further develop my ability to focus and finish what I start.

Personal goals:

Prepare my household for a natural disaster, starting with a 72-hour emergency supply of food, water and fuel (I live in tornado country and live near the New Madrid fault line, where an earthquake would be devastating, though rare).

Plant a vegetable and flower garden.

Share the extra vegetables with my elderly family members on a fixed income, as well as with my relatives with small children.  Anything leftover beyond that I will share with my local food bank.

Cooking: I want to try a new recipe every week, and cook more from scratch in general.

De-clutter my house.

Organize the garage and basement.

Botanical Illustration classes at the local community college 

Visit a family member each week that I haven’t seen in a while

A road trip to visit my cousins whom are scattered across the U.S.

Take up nature and travel photography as a hobby

Travel as often as possible, and make it possible more often.

Spiritual Goals:

Meditate a little every day

Spend time with the teachers I find soothing, like Thich Naht Hanh, via books and podcasts

To live heartfully and practice awareness in every moment of each day

To let go of the past, those that hurt me and forgive those upon whom I would visit vengeance upon.  Except on the page.  It’s all fair game in my writing.

Physical goals:

Get outside more.  It’s a hazard of my profession, but I sit too much these days.  

Walk to the store when I only need a few things.

Ride my bike.

Hike a few miles of the Pacific Coast Trail (in San Diego)

Kayak or canoe during the summer

Be strong enough to garden (that will be my biggest physical challenge of 2012, to consistently garden).

That’s it for now.  I have other small things here and there but you have the gist of it here, and it’s got to be boring to read someone else’s goals for the year, so I’ll stop now.

This week I’ll share with you the method behind my madness.