Marking an anniversary

A year ago this week, we'd just closed on our little North Carolina home in the woods, and had driven to the city for groceries. There, in the Harris Teeter parking lot, a woman and her son had propped a handmade sign against a tree in one of the medians: Free puppies.

The last thing we needed then was another dog. We had our hands full with two. Our oldest, a yellow Lab, Chivo, was nearly 14, and had to be lifted to her feet and carried outside to take care of her business. Our scrappy Terrier, Molly, insisted on hoarding all of Chivo's toys, and any interest Chivo might have strength to show for a toy compelled a fight between the two of them -- a blood-drawing fight. Try pulling a Terrier from another dog's ear. Good luck.

Anyway, there we were in the parking lot of Harris Teeter, when I said, "Look, Honey -- they're giving away puppies." My husband's the biggest dog lover I've ever known. For months, I'd catch him watching Chivo with sadness. "You didn't know her," he'd say, "when she could bound from one floor of this condo (our Florida home) to the third in seconds to bring me the newspaper." Or, "You should have seen her when she loved to go fishing with me on the dock...."

The night we went to see the movie Marley & Me, we'd planned to dine out afterward. We never made it. We were both sobbing, and couldn't get home quick enough to cuddle our aging yellow Lab. The end was near. We knew it. Chivo knew it, too.

Of course, my husband hit the brakes in the parking lot that day a year ago. Of course, he wanted to see the puppies, just 7 weeks old. Of course, he lifted a little guy. I knew that moment we were going home with a puppy. You know your husband. You know what he loves, what he grieves for, what he needs.

But, my husband also travels all the time. "You know," I said, stalling the inevitable, "we just moved in yesterday...we haven't even unpacked. We really can't handle a puppy right now."

"I know," he said, and reluctantly placed the puppy back among three rambunctious brothers.

Who was I kidding? "That's not the puppy you want anyway," I heard myself say. "You want that one." I pointed toward the only puppy who had not rushed for my husband. The only one still studying both of us. My husband knelt, and the puppy slowly made his way over and climbed up in my husband's outstretched hands.

On the way home, we named him Cash. "He's free," I said, "so he's likely to cost us a fortune."

And he has. A few weeks later, Cash tripped me. I fell four feet off our back deck and broke my ankle in two places. A plate and seven screws and a ton of hospital bills later.... Now, our story is we named him Cash after Johnny Cash.

Everyone that summer had a theory about Cash. His curled up tail and odd markings were a mystery. Was he part Doberman, part Rotty, part Bloodhound, part Lab? We spent $140 on a DNA test, and discovered Cash is part Beagle, part Anatolian Shepherd, which explains his need to herd Molly, and me, everywhere. If Molly gets too close to the pond to suit Cash, he grabs her by the collar and pulls her to "safety." Molly loves people, but Cash, apparently fearing for her safety, pulls her by the collar from the reach of everyone.

By the end of last summer, my ankle was healing, and I was walking on a boot. The end of September, however, we lost our Chivo just days before she would have turned 14. She'd been like a mother to Cash. He wanted to be wherever she was, nestled against her.

The vet came to our home to administer the end, and afterward, she encouraged me to allow Molly and Cash to have their goodbye moment with Chivo's body. Molly refused to go near her old friend. Cash, however, jumped on Chivo's bed, expecting his surrogate mother to growl a reproach, but when she didn't, the little guy lay beside her, against her, his head down and eyes closed.

One year ago this week, we picked up a little Cash in the parking lot of a Harris Teeter grocery store.

Why being relentless pays off

relentless: unyielding determination


At the end of last summer, my agent of several years abruptly left the business. Personal reasons, his colleagues told me. Worse yet, no one in the agency expressed an interest in representing my work.

I had a completed memoir manuscript about my unusual experiences in the Marine Corps during the 1980s, and a second project, a military conspiracy thriller, that my agent had encouraged, or rather insisted, I write.

For a while, I wallowed in self-pity. I even contemplated giving up this torturous writing thing. Why not? Wouldn't life be so much easier? I'd have more time to devote to my students, more time to take my dogs to the local dog park, more time for traveling with my husband. It's true, you know, what they say about writers: if you want to be a writer, don't get a dog or a plant; you'll eventually kill both. So far, the dogs are still thriving, but all my indoor plants were long ago replaced with silk.

I didn't quit, obviously. But I did get mad. And I got more determined than ever. I tapped into my reservoir of "being relentless." I love that word, relentless. Love how it conjures the mental image of a bulldog after a pork chop bone. That's me. A bulldog.

So, when it seemed I had to start all over in a search for an agent, here's what I did instead: I wrote a letter.

I wrote a letter addressed to no one in particular; just a letter. A letter that clearly defined my wishes and expectations for my writing life. Then I burned that letter and scattered the ashes over our pond. All the way back up the hill from the pond, I shouted to the tops of our very tall trees, "This is the house in which I wrote EYES RIGHT, you know...This is the house in which I wrote..." and I filled in all the other working titles of current projects.

And then I went to work on revising the memoir. When I was satisfied, I sent it to two publishers. A few months later, both wanted the project. All this without the help of an agent.

Maybe this sounds too New Age, but I firmly believe we design our lives by our thoughts and actions. In addition to writing that letter, I made a space in my home library where MY book would appear alphabetically on the shelf. That space is still empty, waiting for the hard copy of my first book, forthcoming next year from the University of Nebraska Press.

Today, I wrote another letter.

It's a bee, it's a bird, it's a ....

I thought a giant bee had taken a liking to our hummingbird feeder yesterday, or maybe the tiny winged creature was actually a baby hummingbird.

Thanks to my mother, who knows all things great and small, I discovered this unusual creature is actually a hummingbird moth.

The titles that make my July reading list

I've started my July reading list a little ahead of schedule. Here are the titles that made the list:

Tinkers by Paul Harding (I finally found a copy of this 2009 Pulitzer-winning book.)
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (A highly recommended novel of the Vietnam War -- can't wait!)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Man Booker Prize Finalist)
Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende (It's Allende. Need I say more?)
Serena by Ron Rash (A second helping because it's that delicious.)
Solar by Ian McEwan (Reviews may be lukewarm, but hey, I'm a loyal fan.)

Muskrat love? Maybe....

We were on the side porch last night, about to eat dinner, when a large brown furry creature emerged from the woods. I thought it was a beaver. How exciting, I thought, and ran inside for the binoculars.

Exciting for two reasons: I've never seen a beaver in the "wild," and we've been watching for signs of beavers on the advice of neighbors because our pond is losing water. Sure the heat and drought haven't helped, but neighbors tell us industrious beavers will often build dams upstream. We occasionally follow our creek upstream in search of signs. Not that I would feel overjoyed about destroying a beaver's dam.

But, a closer look through the binoculars revealed not a beaver but a muskrat. Anything that includes the word "rat" is an immediate turnoff for me; I don't care how prized the fur or how precious the scent for perfumes. I'll admit, though, that muskrats are certainly as cute as beavers. They're certainly as industrious as beavers, and herein lies our newest dilemma.

Do we call in the trappers? Or, do we accept that we're living in "Wild Kingdom," and the muskrat(s) have as much right here as the snakes, deer, hummingbirds, turtles, and us.

Beavers build their lodges above ground, but muskrats tunnel and burrow through embankments of ponds. Our muskrat is certainly living up to this reputation. This morning, we gingerly walked over for a closer look. The holes, and there appears an elaborate underground maze linking one hole to another, are large enough to swallow my Cairn Terrier, Molly. One whiff of a muskrat, and Molly's down the hole anyway. Rooting out rats is part of her nature.

The question: To trap, or not to trap?

Sensory overload

North Carolina already has an official flower, tree, and an official bird, the Cardinal. I've decided to fill in a few gaps. My suggestions:

-- Official Scent: a freshly sliced homegrown tomato

-- Official Sound: a lawnmower on Saturday mornings in summer -- wait for it. :) From Mondays to Fridays, the whine of an old screened door (like mine) opening and closing will have to suffice.

-- Official Taste: sweet tea (lemon optional)

When the "greener pastures" are in your backyard

While in Boston last week, I found myself envious of Bostonians and their connection to place. As a friend mentioned, Boston is a cultural and intellectual hot spot, and city leaders have done an excellent job at not paving over the historical.

For writers, a strong sense of place plays a vital role in their storytelling. Place becomes a character. So, I left Boston a little heart-heavy, and feeling as if I'd missed out on something by not having been born a Bostonian.

That is, until I turned my car onto Interstate 40 West, exiting the Raleigh airport for home, and meeting little but open space and green-green pastures. Even more so when I reached the two-lane winding road that leads to our little country home. The road is one long stretch of farms, barns, and ponds. The creeks and springs that feed one neighbor's pond spill into another's, mine included.

This, I thought, is MY history. MY connection to place. The land of MY family who trekked here from Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. My great-great grandfathers, both Moravian ministers, who came by way of wagons to Winston-Salem. And later, the great-grandfather whose Carolina farm fed our entire family and their friends during the Depression.

And where an entire farming community these past three days after the sudden death of my uncle trekked in and out of my aunt's small kitchen -- neighbors' arms heavy with dishes of chicken pies, peach cobblers, baskets of homegrown tomatoes, fried chicken, and jugs and jugs of sweet tea.

I have lived in the Far East, California, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, but I've always said my life wouldn't feel settled until I was back in North Carolina. I didn't know why, really.

Now I do. I'm finally home.

That red Thunderbird

I hadn't been home ten hours from the Boston trip when my uncle died from a massive heart attack. He was 67.

Tall and lanky, he was also a man of few needs and of even fewer words: he spoke so rarely that when he did, the moment commanded attention.

More than fifty years ago, my aunt was just sixteen, and my uncle a year older, when they decided to marry. They met a world of resistance, of course. My grandfather even tried to bribe his headstrong redheaded daughter with a new Thunderbird if she'd give up on the idea of marriage.

They eloped, instead.

When she teased she'd given up a new Thunderbird for him, my uncle made her two promises: she'd have a house with a pool before she was thirty, and one day, even a new Thunderbird. Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, true to his word, they moved into their charming Cape Cod with a pool, their home ever since.

And tomorrow, the day my aunt will bury the love of her life, she will drive that red Thunderbird to the church -- and on to the cemetery.

Boston makes the list

I travel a lot. I travel mostly to catch up with my husband during the ten months of baseball season, 11 months when we're fortunate enough to make the post-season, which is often, thank goodness.

My husband's the advance scout for a Major League Baseball team. His scout associates tease that I married him for his 9 MILLION Marriott points. Several times I've tried to catch up with him in Boston, but something else always prevailed. The last effort -- our 14-year-old yellow lab became so ill I had to cancel my flight at the last moment. Until this week, I've never been to Fenway Park, or to the bar Cheers, or to Hahvahd. I can happily report I have now been to all three, and then some.

We do joke that our Marriott points may very well become our assisted living plan when we get to that depressing stage of life. Imagine...life in some fabulous Marriott hotel somewhere in the world, anywhere we choose. Clean linens every day. Room service. Urban living at its finest.

This week, Boston makes my list: the list of cities where I could see us living some day. Also on the list are San Diego, San Francisco, Scottsdale, Santa Barbara, downtown St. Pete, and where we currently live in the woods of North Carolina. Hmm...just realized how many of these wonderful cities begin with the letter S.

As much as I've fallen for Boston, however, I'm not sure Boston would fall for me. I have a Southern accent. I would never fool a Bostonian. I would never completely fit in here as I would in other more eclectic places such as Santa Barbara.

Hope lies here: The man sitting behind me with his toddler on the flight from Raleigh abruptly changed from a hint of Southernness that had me fooled to, "Look, Son, there's the Bahstun Hahbah."

Maybe if I start practicing now....

In the words of Dennis Lehane....

Bestselling writer Dennis Lehane and I are college alums, though years apart. I took a much diverted path toward this life of writing and academia.

But a couple of years ago, Dennis returned to our alma mater, and taught several courses. I was fortunate enough to audit his fiction class, during which he provided us a copy of the foreward he'd just drafted for a craft book forthcoming from his agent, Ann Rittenberg, who is also a fellow alum.

First of all, Dennis is not only a gifted, hard-working writer but a gifted, generous instructor. Today, I have the office he once inhabited as a writer-in-residence. His nameplate is still on our door, but below mine, which I joke is the only time I'm ever likely to top Dennis Lehane.

Whenever I feel myself stumbling as a writer, I return to his words.

Here are a few:

"Think about it: you have never existed in the world of literature before. Your voice, your vision, your unique stamp. I’ve read or seen a few hundred Westerns but I felt as if I were discovering the form for the first time when I read Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN. This country has the South and then we have Flannery O’Connor’s South. I’ve read Nadine Gordimer’s and JM Coetzee’s novels of South Africa and they are equally indelible and yet neither could have been written by the other. In great writing, the teller and the tale become so inextricably linked that to attempt to discern where one begins and the other ends is to court farce. So the next time you look in the mirror and think of your own writing remember that the face staring back at you is your most potent weapon. It’s the thing you bring to the table that no one else can."

My wacky writing process

Every writer has a process for getting a story to the page.

Most of the writers I know are much more methodical than I. They've shared their stories of cutting out the scenes within their manuscripts and of taping those scenes in various orders along the walls of their writing spaces. They shuffle scene orders like a Vegas card dealer.

Some writers create storyboards. Some (poor) writers develop tedious outlines.

MY process? Wacky and messy, I'm afraid. My stories come to me in a visual way, a mental visual, as if I were watching a movie play out in my mind. When I sit down every day to write, I attempt to recreate the movie in my head: the line by line dialogue, character development, the plot, and the exposition for setting, etc.

And, like Hemingway, I end each day's writing session with the knowledge of where I'll begin the next day. This ensures my eagerness to return.

But what I especially enjoy is that my writing process allows for the element of surprise. Even though I've seen my characters' reactions in a mental movie, they still find ways to surprise me.

Maybe someone delivers an unexpected line of dialogue, which can be both thrilling and frightening for where this may lead.

Sometimes a character surprises me by revealing an unusual physical attribute. For example, one of my characters in this new project revealed she has an unusual and provocative tattoo just above her backside. When I shared this new development with my husband over dinner that night, he looked bewildered and said, "How do you come up with this stuff?"

Beats me. But that's what sends me running back to my little writing table on the side porch every day.

The bottom line, for me, is to simply cherish the writing process that is yours. What works for me won't necessarily work for others.

In other words, whatever it is that compels us back to our writing day after day...THAT is our process.

Hone it.

Cherish it.

Claim it.

"At the still point of the turning world" ~ T.S. Eliot

The writer of a recent Wall Street Journal article, "Is the Internet making you Dumber," compares the differences and tragedies of Internet skimming to engaged reading, contending the latter encourages T.S. Eliot's state of being "at the still point of the turning world."

Later, I'm back to work on the new manuscript when I realize Eliot's line is still resonating.

Should I conclude that the act of reading is the still point of the turning world beyond the reader's engagement, or that the reader is at the still point of the turning world WITHIN which he is both mentally and physically engaged?

Ahh...any wonder as a writer I would prefer the latter?

A deer, a crawfish, a rabbit, and a blue heron all have THIS in common....

They were all spotted here at "the camp" within an hour this morning.

A neighbor's visit

I've never met our North Carolina neighbors, except in passing on the gravel road that leads us in and out of our quiet rural subdivision where each of us owns five acres.

The road is narrow, and rarely do we meet one another. But when we do, we scoot to the outer edges and wave.

I know their last name from a list of homeowners. I know the name of their dog, Wyatt, from the tag on his collar.

Wyatt is a Basset Hound: a thick, heavy, long dog with ears that nearly drag the ground, super-fat short legs and paws, and a long tail with a white tip. Though our two homes are separated by acres of dense forest, Wyatt somehow manages to break free of whatever confines him at home to tromp over and under the thick underbrush: the tip of his white tail sometimes the only visible sign of him like a perpetual wave of reassurance that he's still on course.

When he lumbers his disproportionate weight up our steep steps, I have to resist a mothering instinct to help. His determination to reach our porch for a visit with our dogs, Cash and Molly, is nothing short of inspirational.

That is until yesterday, when Wyatt finally irked me. I was loading the dishwasher when I realized Wyatt was somehow in the kitchen, too, and already beginning to mark every piece of furniture, including the silk tree, with Cash eagerly trailing behind him to re-mark each spot. I fussed and shuffled Wyatt back out the hole he'd created by pushing through our screen door.

My dad drove over and re-screened the door.

This morning at 7: I went through the routine of opening up the house to greet the day, which involves opening doors so I can hear the fountain from the pond, the birds, and the cows from the farm behind us. A few minutes later, I was taking my vitamins when there he was again, in my kitchen. Wyatt was determined to create a doggy door for his pleasure.

They say the way a child acts tells you a lot about the parents. Can the same be said about a dog? Wyatt sits and downs on command. When I say "No," and shoo him back through our new doggy door, commanding him to stay, he stays.

Now if only he'd stop "marking" everything in our house as his....

Buy a book to help a soldier

For every book you buy from PRESS 53 between today and June 14 (Flag Day), the PRESS will send a book to a soldier.

Here's a link for more information:

http://www.press53.com/

My recommendations from PRESS 53:

SURREAL SOUTH '09
WOMEN UP ON BLOCKS
IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY
MIRACLE BOY
HOME OF THE BRAVE

What are your writing pet peeves?

When I was an undergrad, I finally learned how to employ the dash -- yep, that one.

Unfortunately, I employed it so much in the next paper that my professor circled each one in red. The page looked strafed with anti-dash machine-gun fire.

Fast forward decades later: I'm now the professor, and one of my students who has just learned how to employ a semi-colon submits her next paper burdened with the little buggers every other sentence. Hilarious. I returned the paper with the same circle technique, but in a kinder, gentler ink color of blue.

Over the years, I suppose from my journalism background as much as anything else, I've developed a number of writing pet peeves. I'll share two:

1) Sentences that begin with "There." Is it me, or does anyone else see this as a lazy way into a sentence? I try to encourage my students to write around this type of opening because one THERE tends to breed a paragraph of THEREs.

2) Sentences that begin with "It." What is the "it"? Is it something in the previous sentence, or something yet to come within the current sentence?

Distractions a bad thing? Not necessarily....

As I mentioned, I'm back in my North Carolina home, writing away during my summer break from the college. I write off and on all day, every day. The off moments are generated by a number of distractions.

For example, yesterday, I had to break from the writing to watch two copperheads swimming feverishly throughout our pond. I grabbed the binoculars and rushed down the path toward the dock for an even closer look. At first, I thought they were searching for prey. But they ignored every easy opportunity to strike at a frog.

So after a half-hour of watching, observing how they skimmed the perimeter of the pond, sometimes half in and half out, sometimes in an elaborate water ballet with one another, I decided this must be some sort of mating ritual.

Great, right? Just what we need. More copperheads. Our landscapers kill at least one every Friday, much to my husband's glee and my consternation. I'm not above killing a mosquito, but a snake, even a poisonous one that's trying to flee for the safety of the pond or woods? Too cruel.

I read yesterday, while researching copperheads (another distracting break from my writing, by the way), that copperheads are actually endangered in Massachusetts. It's illegal to kill one. My husband would gladly help trappers here send all we have up north. I wouldn't. The copperheads here are so much a part of the nature, as much as the deer that wander down to the pond for a drink.

But back to my original thought regarding this post: are distractions for a writer good or bad? For me, distractions provide another learning opportunity to be used as material. The copperheads will somehow slither their way in this new novel or in another body of work some day, just as the information I learned last week from my mother about hummingbirds and how they send scouts to find the best food supplies has already found its way in this new novel. (Thanks, Mom!)