Month: March 2023

Some Days, You Just Need a Time-Out

Sunset photo shoes house and evergreens in silhouette under a sky awash in blue, gray and peach-colored clouds. The photo is here to show what I would have missed if I didn't look up from my screen.

“Don’t call me in the morning,” I tell everyone I know. I say no to breakfasts with friends, morning appointments, and a.m. meetings because that’s my WRITING TIME. Even the dog knows it. After breakfast, she spreads herself across the doorway so I can’t leave the office without climbing over her.

The world still leaks in. Notices pop up on my screen: X liked your post on ABC. Breaking news: crash on Highway 101. Friend request from handsome man who is a figment of Facebook’s imagination.

The phone rings: A stranger mumbles about helping me make my book famous, or a bot offers to help me with Medicare. I generally don’t pick up unless I recognize the name on Caller ID, but it breaks my concentration. Some days I take the landline off the hook and silence the cell phone, but what if a friend or relative needs me? What if someone is inviting me out to lunch?

What if it’s just Verizon telling me it’s time to pay my bill?

Sometimes I hope for a power failure.

At noon, the dog comes in, brushing my arm, anxious for attention, food, and a walk. I’m still not dressed, and there’s a zoom meeting coming up with my big old face exposed. Okay, I surrender.

It’s hard to hold the world back. When I take a bathroom break, the toothpaste gunk in the sink grosses me out. When I heat water for tea, I see the stove needs scrubbing. When I take my notebook to write by the fireplace, I see dust and dog fur everywhere.

When I don’t know what I’m going to eat for dinner, I haven’t practiced this weekend’s church choir music, and my bones ache from sitting too much, it’s time for a catch-up day. The brain needs a break, and life demands I stop and take care of things. Wednesday was one of those days. I turned up the stereo, cleaned my bathrooms and my kitchen, baked bread, practiced music, updated the spa chemicals, and put away the mail, books, and assorted coats left on and around the kitchen table. I swept the floors, trimmed my nails, walked the dog, played online Mahjong, and generally caught up with the non-writing part of my life. It felt great.

You’ve got to look up sometimes. Tuesday night, while listening to the Head for the Hills online poetry reading (Francesca Bell and Todd Davis, both fabulous), I glanced out my office window and saw a glorious sunset unfolding. I raced out to take pictures. Five minutes later, it was over.

A writer needs to gather material and let it percolate so she has something to write about. Some days, I do everything but writing, and that’s okay. I’m a happier writer for having taken a break.

There’s still dust on the piano, but my bathrooms and kitchen are clean, my refrigerator full, my bills paid, and my music ready to play this weekend. I can feel the firm calluses on my left-hand fingertips from practicing lots of guitar music.

I am writing this morning. Tomorrow, April 1, National Poetry Month begins. I have signed up for not just one but two poem-a-day workshops and also pledged with National Novel Writing Month that I would turn out 20,000 words on the third novel in my Beaver Creek series. Plus the usual social media posts and blogs and pre-publication work for the memoir coming out next year. Oh, and doing my presidential duties for Oregon Poetry Association, where we are hosting open mics every Monday night this month.

I’m writing. I have blocked Facebook notifications. If the phone rings, I will startle and check Caller ID, but I will not answer it. I will sip Earl Grey from my Jack Daniel’s mug and commit words to the page because that’s what I do in the mornings.

How about you? Do you need to trash the schedule and just catch up sometimes, whether it’s doing chores or settling in for a day of naps, novels and Netflix? How do you arrange it?

References:

Rebecca Smolen and John Miller poetry month daily prompts and writing sessions

Sage Cohen’s Write a Poem a Day

National Novel Writing Month’s “Camp Nanowrimo”

Oregon Poetry Association open mics (on Zoom, non-Oregonians welcome) Register at https://oregonpoets.org/events-all/#opa-events to receive the Zoom link.

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Covid Masks Off, We Take Our Chances Now

In March 2020, I was on the way to the Portland, OR airport to fly to San Antonio for the Associated Writers and Writing Programs conference (AWP), the monster gathering to which all the writers, editors, publishers, teachers, and students of writing flock. As I drove, I kept getting disturbing reports. NPR told me that a state of emergency had been declared in San Antonio due to an outbreak of COVID-19. Okay, but we’d be safe in our hotel . . .

People I had been hoping to talk to at the conference sent emails and posted on Facebook that they were no longer coming. Our Antioch University MFA alumni reunion was canceled. My childhood best friend who lives in Texas called to say, “Don’t come.”

The conference went on, but I did not go. Instead, I spent a week visiting places in Oregon that I enjoyed, including The Grotto in Portland and the Oregon Garden outside Silverton. I shopped in Salem and saw the sights in Corvallis, where I joined a friend for lunch at a Chinese buffet. Within a week, everything would be shut down. Grotto, Gardens, stores, restaurants. Even the state parks along the beach where I live were blocked off sawhorses as we began that spooky time when COVID took over our lives, when we were afraid to go out, to touch our mail, or to touch each other.

If we did have to go out, we put on masks. I remember trying to make an old bandanna into a suitable mask and downloading sewing patterns that I never used. My more crafty friends started turning out homemade masks. Soon I had a whole wardrobe of them, including some made for singing with extra breathing space in front. Wherever there were other people, we were required to wear masks.

Women no longer needed to worry about makeup. No one would see most of their faces. We couldn’t tell if someone was smiling, frowning, talking to herself, or yawning. It was difficult to hear what people were saying. But we held onto our masks because people were dying of this disease, people we knew and loved. Even those who didn’t die felt like they might.

The arrival of vaccines in August 2021 gave us hope. One shot, two shots, a booster, another. Death rates went down. People were still getting COVID, but only the ones with other serious health problems died. The rest of us just got sick for a while and recovered. We think. The possibility of long-term effects and “Long COVID” worries us (Is that why I’m so tired?), but by now most of us seem to have experienced this weird disease that manifests in various ways and steals your ability to taste food.

The mask mandate has ended, except for health-care settings, and even that requirement is ending soon. We each get to decide whether we still want to wear a mask.

Do we think about COVID anymore? I do. When I told me doctor at my checkup that I had had it around the holidays, she said, “Me too. You’ll probably get it again.” Like it was no big deal. But it is a big deal. It killed Uncle Peter. It killed Cousin John. My friend’s son was in the hospital on a ventilator for months. It is a big deal. And yet . . .

I returned to AWP this year. It was held in Seattle, which was one of the first cities to report major outbreaks of the disease in 2020. More than 9,000 people attended the conference. We were jammed together in elevators, meeting rooms, and restaurants. We walked elbow to elbow along the crowded sidewalks. We hugged and hugged and hugged. Masks were recommended, but most people didn’t wear them. We touched books that many others had touched and held onto railings smudged with other people’s fingerprints. We took the chance. And yes, AWP was wonderful.

I don’t know who got sick afterward. I was so worn out I didn’t feel well for a few days. I tested myself twice for COVID and prayed while I waited for the results. Negative. I’m lucky. I knew I was taking a chance.

We have always risked illness when we’re among other people. Long before COVID, there were plenty of contagious diseases we could catch. But we didn’t worry about it. Now we do.

I rarely wear a mask anymore unless it’s required. But I keep one handy just in case. The pandemic has gotten easier to live with, but it’s not over.

How about you? Do you still worry about getting COVID in crowds? Have you had it? Do you wear a mask? Do you find you’re the only person wearing one sometimes?

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Can you describe yourself in one word?

If you had a theme song, what would it be? What makes you, you? Authors are forever being preached to about “platform,” that combination of achievements and media attention that makes everybody know who they are—or at least everybody in their chosen field. Stephen King, for example. His brand? Horror fiction. In Catholic music right now, Sarah Hart is known for sweet singable songs for liturgy and beyond. Football? Tom Brady. Hell of a quarterback at an age when most players are retired. Even I know that.

I have been attending an online workshop called The Writers Bridge. Leader Allison K. Williams preaches that a platform is where someone stands and yells while a bridge is where you make a connection. She and her co-host Sharla Yates offer useful information for writers and other creatives trying to be heard over the noise. We’ve talked about websites, newsletters, Instagram, tiktok, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and so much more. The monthly sessions, which are recorded, are free and open to all.

What am I doing with all this information? I’m looking for a way to blend the different types of books I have written and the ones that are coming into one distinctive brand. People always ask, “What do you write?” Saying, “Oh, lots of things” doesn’t get me anywhere. I have published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, journalistic articles, blogs, and social media posts, written about Portuguese Americans, living in Oregon, being childless, being a dog mom, and being a widow. But what seems to tie it all together is being a childless widow. What makes me stand out in every story is that I am solo in a world of families and likely to stay that way. In fact, we could boil it down to one word: Alone. Theme song: “All by Myself.”

Twenty years ago, in grad school, one of our professors asked each of us to name our “theme.” At that time, I had no idea. Now I would say “Alone.” It shows in my books, whether it’s the narrator of Childless by Marriage, my protagonist PD Soares in Up Beaver Creek or the church pianist in my poetry chapbook Widow at the Piano. Did you know 27 percent of American households are occupied by just one person? Calling out the theme helps us loners find each other.

So what is your brand, your theme? Even if you’re not selling anything, can you describe yourself in one word or phrase? What’s your song? I’d like to hear it.

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