the life – Page 5 – the chelsea chronicles

where have all the bookstores gone?

Remember the days when if you had a little extra time, you’d meander into a bookstore? Walk between the aisles, looking for something new or maybe a long lost book written by a favorite author? Nowadays we instead spend our leisure time taking Buzz Feed quizzes and following on Facebook the lives of people who wouldn’t under other circumstances make the friend cut.

I miss bookstores. Hey, I fell for it like everyone else. I jumped on the Kindle bandwagon early. It felt safer to travel with an e-reader in case I’m ever stuck on the Tarmac for so long that if I finish my book, I conveniently have another waiting without all the bulk. But lately I’ve been craving books. Real paper and binding books.

I love the way books smell. I love the way they feel. You can bathe with them, sleep with them, and even dribble ice cream on them without concern.

My desire to trade my electronics for paper did not come out of nowhere. I’m inspired by the fact that I JUST WROTE A NOVEL and at some point in the undefined future, I’m going to want people to buy my book. And not the electronic version (though if that’s the only way to get you to read it, then fine). I want you all to buy the tangible version and take it with you everywhere so passers by ask, “hey, how is it?” To which you will reply, “I can’t put it down.”

But I digress.

These days when I buy a book, I usually order from Amazon because there are no more bookstores. I read an interview with a literary agent who said if you are a debut author and you aren’t going to a bookstore at least once a month to buy in hardback another debut author’s work, you aren’t supporting other writers. I want to help, I do. I believe in karma. Please someone let me pay full price for a hard cover book. But where?

Today I tried to hit the only Barnes and Noble I can think of, which I know is really no better than Amazon but forget finding an independent bookstore. Traffic jams, too many tourists and lack of parking got the better of me and I gave up the mission. This evening I stopped by Busboys and Poets. While I appreciate the curated (i.e. small) fiction collection, it wasn’t as satisfying of an experience. You can’t get lost in between two bookshelves.

I’m determined to bring back books. Let’s make it sexy again to carry a book. (I’d totally date that book toting guy.) If we demand it, they shall build it, right? As shopping trends move toward buying local, don’t forget that there are and should be more places to buy your reads than Amazon.

parting is such sweet sorrow

I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, drink, sleep or throw up. Maybe I will just go to yoga.

I’m elated, but exhausted. My confidence is high, but I have moments of self-doubt. My book is done. At least stage one. At 91,837 words, it’s probably too long for a debut novel. It has a working title. Emailing it to my editor (you know I wanted to say “my editor”) approximately 22 minutes ago was harder than sending my kids off to school for the first time.

I set an initial goal to finish writing by March 31st, but as the words came freely, I upped that self-imposed deadline to COB today. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t editing/writing up until the end. In the moments before sending off my manuscript, I was seeing double. I was probably doing more harm than good. Pencils down. Step away from the computer, Chelsea.

A little piece of me is gone. I already miss my baby, though I’m glad it’s temporarily out of my hands. I know it will be a better story after undergoing a professional edit. I can’t wait to be reunited with my characters and their plot lines to rewrite, rethink, restructure.

If I’ve canceled lunch/drink plans with you, cried on your shoulder, sent you panicky texts/emails, or just generally been unexplainably weepy, absent-minded, spacey, anti-social, insecure and/or self-absorbed, I’m sorry. I owe you one.

The hard work lies ahead. (Trying to find an agent sounds worse than on-line dating.) This journey is far from over. But thank you all who have helped me get this far. You know who you are.

the process

You write and you write and you write and you write and you write. Then you delete a bunch of shit and write some more. Then you write and you write and you write. You put your computer away but then you think of something so you sit back down and write and write and write. But you don’t read what you wrote right away because it needs time to marinate. So the next day you read the new stuff and it’s good but it’s bad so you delete some and write some more and make it better. Then you write and you write and you write and you write. You write more because editing sucks and you hate reading your own work. Sometimes you read it and want to cry and delete it all. Sometimes you read it and want to cry because you move yourself to tears. And you write and you write and you write. Occasionally you shower. You panic. You focus. You fold laundry because that’s productive. You take a few days off because you are tormented. You wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea, so fabulous you won’t forget it. In the morning, you can’t remember.

You visualize your book on a table at a bookstore. You see someone walk over to it and pick it up, read the back cover. You imagine this person buying your book (recognizing most people don’t buy books in bookstores but this is more satisfying than picturing someone placing an Amazon order). You cringe at the bad review in your mind. You hear your voice on the Diane Rehm Show. On a good day, you might rehearse your Academy Award acceptance speech for best adapted screenplay. On a bad day, you print out your manuscript and use it for kindling.

You write. You edit. You perfect. You write more. You find mistakes. You drive yourself crazy.

And in the end, you have a book.

the drafting table

Sleep begets sleep. That’s what I’ve found when it comes to the boys. I can’t explain it but when they were babies, the better the nap, the easier bedtime was. And now, if I put them to bed early, they sleep later. It even works for me.

I’ve learned the same is true when it comes to writing. Writing begets writing. Words beget words. Plot begets plot. I don’t quite understand this is anymore than I understand it when it comes to sleep, but the phenomenon is rather consistent with my personality. When I find something I like to do (sleep, cook, exercise, drink wine) and it turns out I’m good at it then I want to do it every day. And when I don’t do it, I don’t feel like myself.

Until yesterday, I had written every day since January 1st. You already know I crushed my January goal and I’m close to killing February too. But about 24 hours into a headache last night, I cut myself some slack and gave my brain the night off.

That didn’t come without an internal struggle. What if skipping a day killed my momentum? What if it takes me another six weeks to streak again? What if I return to my story and find it sucks? But in the end, a rest was what I needed. And while I haven’t had a chance to sit down at the computer today, my characters and their lives are never far from my thoughts. And I’m not freaking out at all. Really.

After all, I’ve got 63,000 words and counting.

the drafting table

Okay, now that I’ve found my higher purpose, blah, blah, blah, it’s time to achieve it.

I have become one of those people who measures document length by word count, not pages. It finally makes sense to my brain. I think back to all the college papers where I used a large font size and wide margins in order to meet a certain page-based length requirement. Word counts can’t be manipulated. Well, I guess you could add bunch of superfluous words but that’s not my point.

So while apparently the answer to “how long should a novel be?” is “as long as it needs to be” the research I have done yielded the answer: 80,000-100,000 words for my genre.

It’s hard to measure art in quantitative terms, but I need benchmarks to move me beyond “write another chapter.”

After my intention setting classes, I decided to set a word count goal for my novel. I started New Year’s Day with approximately 40,000 words. The January goal is to get to 53,000. The February goal is to reach 66,000 and by the end of March, 80,000. From there I’ll assess whether the story is complete and then undertake the review and editing process. The point is to get the words out of my head and on paper.

As of tonight, I’ve written 56,500 words. I crushed the January goal. By the time I get to February, I might have to recalibrate the goals. There’s a higher purpose but there’s also a process. I might be making it up along the way but at least I’m on the road.

an update on the goals

Remember the 13 in ’13? Good, neither did I. In fact, I wouldn’t even earn a gentlewoman’s C if I were to grade myself. By my generous calculations, I fulfilled 3 out of 13 goals, which for you math geeks is 23%.

But rather than focus on what I didn’t do, I’d like to focus on what I did achieve.

I may not have published the sequel to My Night with George Clooney, but I did start my first novel – and am more than halfway done writing it.

I didn’t get spin certified (thank to the concussion I sustained one day before training was to begin) but I rediscovered yoga, which has been a savior.

I hosted nothing even coming close to a full-fledged dinner party, though I did have people over for a plethora of meals, including Thanksgiving. And I brought food to other people’s houses for their events. In fact, when I look back on the year, I cooked quite a lot. Sometimes just for me.

I didn’t make it to Italy or back to Hawaii, but I did manage New York City, Lake Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco/Napa. I made lots of treks across the river (and through to woods) to Nancy’s house.

I barely know more about Italian wine than I did a year ago, but I’m no longer reluctant to order it in restaurants. I mean, how am I really going to figure out that region if I don’t experiment and figure out what I like and don’t like.

I didn’t make an iconic fashion purpose, fall in love or refinance my house. But I went on some great dates, started my own company, found good life-work balance with the boys and had some great belly laughs. I tried to be a better friend, listen more, put my devices down when the kids are talking to me, and generally be more attentive.

I haven’t started to think about what challenges to set for myself next year. But in closing out 2013, I don’t look back with regrets, only awe at the way life evolves and my ability to adapt, at times with tears but mostly with grace.

Thanksgiving Eve

I like to feed people. It’s my way of expressing love. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I can’t imagine a better way to give thanks to those who are important to me than to make them lots and lots of delicious food.

I started baking on Tuesday. I made pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing as sort of a decoy dessert for the boys while I made the prime time offerings (and kept them off limits until Thursday).

Yesterday I baked three batches of cornbread muffins for use in the cornbread, caramelized onion, sage and pork sausage stuffing (a departure for me which represents a hybrid of recipes from my friend Lexa, the high maintenance Martha Stewart, and Chris Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen). I also made a bourbon pumpkin cheesecake because Colin has never had cheesecake, and frankly I don’t like pumpkin pie.

I had a long to do list for today: bake the apple pie, prep the traditional mushroom turnovers, prepare the stuffing, brine the turkey. Done. Done. Done. And done. I feel like there should be more “dones” because each recipe had numerous steps and/or components. But now I’m finished way ahead of schedule. Run of show is sketched out for tomorrow. Wine graces my glass. Life is good. A shower would make it even better.

I have a small crew for tomorrow’s festivities. The boys, my sister Meghann, my DC sister Rayanne, and Nancy and her crew for their second dinner. I would welcome double the numbers but I’m thankful that I get to be surrounded by these important people in my life.

But they better bring their appetites. I have lots of love to express.

working for myself, day one

Today I officially begin working for myself. Mark this as the first day of my new professional adventure. And by adventure I mean that I plan to tackle messes, convert the playroom into an office and otherwise preempt my usual forms of procrastination so that when it comes down to the task at hand, finishing my novel, I have no distractions.

It’s kind of amazing how much more productive I already feel at 9:45 this morning even though I haven’t even had a shower yet, and since I didn’t need to take a shower by any specific time, I got to sleep an hour later than usual. I successfully fed and got two kids off to school (okay, I do that most mornings) but this morning I could do it with a smile and not the proverbial whip that I usually carry because I’m trying to get myself ready too among the chaos.

The second load of laundry is running and I unloaded the dishwasher. I cleaned out one of the drawers of the drafting table I’m using for my desk, a space that previously housed a variety of little boy trinkets, all covered with a film of pencil shaving dust. I made a to do list and paid some bills.

Now, I feel somewhat settled and ready to write, though I am a little jittery from too much coffee. And I even have a starting place. Last night my instructor posted her critique of my major writing assignment of the semester, 5000 words of my story ending. But before I sit down to tackle her comments, there’s a new chapter idea brewing in my head that I feel compelled to start. But before that, I have this post to finish. And after that, I think the book shelf needs reorganizing.

And then at some point this afternoon, the professional adventure will begin.

Happy anniversary, George

A year ago today, I self-published my first story with help from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. It was short. It wasn’t overly promoted except perhaps in these pages. It never went viral. My fantasy of appearing on late night TV has not been fulfilled. But it was an accomplishment nonetheless.

I’d estimate that a couple hundred of you read it. Frankly, I have not. Not since doing a final run through anyway before hitting click and committing it to the electronic world forever. I just can’t. And especially now, eight weeks into my writing class. I already suspect what my flaws were. I can be at peace with it all by thinking that someday, you all will call it my ‘early work’.

My full-length novel, which does not feature an appearance by George Clooney, is developing nicely. The Stanford online writing class has provided me good structure, feedback and a community of fellow writers. In two weeks, 5,000 words of my ending will be workshopped. While at the start of this class, I dreaded my workshop week, now I look forward to it.

I can’t say for sure how far along I’d be right now in writing my novel if I hadn’t taken the baby step of writing My Night with George Clooney. So on this, our anniversary, I think of George and apologize that he’s been folded up in a box since our return from Hawaii.

I promise to pull him out to celebrate the completion of No Working Title Yet.

hiatus

I just wanted to issue a warning that I won’t be writing much. Wait, let me rephrase that: I won’t be writing here much.

In an emotional moment over the summer, I started researching MFAs in creative writing. It turns out most of the good programs are located in bumblefuck America, and while I can fantasize about living a completely different lifestyle with my boys in Iowa, I know that’s not in the realm of the possible.

But through this exercise, I discovered that Stanford offers online creative writing courses. One in particular caught my eye: Novel Writing Back to Front. Since coming up with the ending is always the hardest part for me whether writing a blog post, email or story, it sounded perfect. I set a calendar reminder to sign up on the date registration opened.

Coincidentally, that day happened to be the one when I lost my car for 2.5 hours at DCA. Once I got home, the insurance assessor was there to investigate my flood claim. By the time I got to my computer, the class was full.

“I will just have to be self-motivated to write,” I told myself.

A month later, I hadn’t committed a single word to paper. Last week, I took some time to meditate and made a promise to myself that I would find a way to be disciplined about writing. When I was done, I had an email from the universe, I mean, Stanford, informing me I was in the class off the wait list.

Class started last week. I was officially in by Wednesday. Due Friday was the first assignment: 750 words from anywhere in your novel except the end because we workshop up to 5000 words of the ending for our final class project.

750 words of a novel I haven’t started writing? And a 5000-word ending by October 25th? Well, Wednesday night, I wrote 750 words. Then Thursday I compulsively revised and refined until at 11:38pm when I was comfortable enough to post my work on the discussion board. Then I waited nervously for responses from the instructor and my fellow classmates.

The feedback was all good. “Rich and believable” dialogue, according to the instructor. “Have you considered screenplay writing?” a student asked. Part of me was disappointed in the lack of criticism. I want to get better. But another part of me was fueled to expand those 750 words into nearly 8000 by the time the weekend was over.

So while I’m not writing here, I am writing somewhere. And I can tell you now with the greatest assurance that nowhere in the last 5000 words of my novel does a main characters sleep with a celebrity.

That story has already been written.