WhAt Do yOu KnoW ThAt YoU dOn't WANT to kNoW?

Every time I meet an author I love, I feel I am touching fingertips with possibility. However silly I know it to be, there is a part of me that imagines there is this little book factory- a thousand story purple castle with hobgoblins writing on the pointiest steeples beneath glimmery moonlight, sitting in windowsills scurrying their pens across the page without need to pause, or maybe curled up under porticoes where all they do all day and night long are create books. Other times I want to believe that maybe they are written by fantastical beings in red and yellow polka dotted jumpsuits lying on their backs in shiny red huts beside the Mediterranean Sea, and whom are nothing like me or my fellow human beings, or even maybe produced by some fantastical contraption that pops out books like tennis balls that we know nothing about in some distant nook of the planet. I continue to be amazed each and every time I walk through a bookstore that each and every book was written by someone probably not half as different from me as I tend to assume.

This weekend I attended an amazing workshop led by one of my favorite writers, Geneen Roth. Geneen casually mentioned to the audience that her most recent book took her four years to write. This book, which felt so effortlessly flowing to me, actually didn't flow so effortlessly for its creator. I can read Megg's words on how it took her twelve years to finish her first book or see firsthand my best friend, Laini, and how she labored morning after morning to complete hers as well. Despite reading enough times how hard other writers really do struggle to map plots or catch the right words in their butterfly nets, something in me still doesn't want to believe it. Hmm....

"Never underestimate the inclination to bolt," Pema Chodron once said. I am feeling this inclination 99% of the time I sit down to write, and yet I write because as I scribbled in my journal this weekend, "Its this simple. When I write, I want to live. When I don't write, I don't want to live." What is it about the process of writing that is so vital? so essential to the fabric of who we are that it feels every bit as necessary as breathing in air or drinking water? Often times I know I have felt with clients that talk therapy can likely only take us so far. There are parts of ourselves that we can't access through talking alone, and this is where writing can come in. We discover things about ourselves and one another through writing that we might never learn otherwise.

One of the things Geneen asked this weekend was, "What do you know that you don't want to know?" This question was a painful one to answer. As for what I know that I don't want to know, as it applies to writing and sitting with my current project, I know that I don't want it to be even a quarter as hard as it is, and when I hear it in fact is every bit as excrutiatingly stressful for other writers I cherish so, I cling to believing otherwise. They're just saying that!", part of me seems to want to believe. What I know that I don't want to know is that this belief isn't about laziness. Rather, holding on to long proven false beliefs is about not giving myself a chance, or as Rumi wrote, not "giving my throat a chance to sing its song."

This morning I wrote out in pink and orange crayons one of my favorite quotes by Martha Graham. I taped it to my lamp. You may already know it as its often cited. It goes like this: "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."

So, I'm curious...What is it you know that you don't want to know?

MiGhtY ManUsCriPts WiTh FiSts!

Monday afternoon I once again mailed off a manuscript to a publisher. The book is about my two years spent living in Bulgaria from ages twenty-six to twenty-eight. In reality, the book doesn't have all that much to do with Bulgaria but does have everything to do with diving into the heart of one's life. (The book is co-created with my dearest friend, Laini Taylor, who did ALL the amazing illustrations/collage such as the one above which is an excerpt from our book!For an amazing treat you can visit her at www.lainitaylor.com and you can pre-order her EXTRAORDINARY fantasy novel, BLACKBRINGER, on Amazon! It comes out in June 2007 with Penguin Putnam. I have been reading drafts of this for two plus years and even were she not my dearest friend it would STILL be in my top five books of all time.)
...So there I was in the post office lobby, and I found myself whispering tender little sweet nothings into my manuscript's paper ears as I squished the book inside the Priority Mail envelope. The little tender sweet nothing blessings sounded something like this: "I love you and I want the very best for you. Now you go out there and get em'!" But then-shhhh!- I added in a much quieter voice, "And don't you even think about coming back without a contract-or else!" Is it wrong to have bullied my manuscript, timid as it probably already was about being thrust out into the odd and unpredictable web of the publishing universe once again?

But don't you have to get tough sometimes? I wanted to send the manuscript out this time with mini boxing gloves to fight for its place in the creative universe. But I guess the second best thing is simply not giving up no matter what. Last summer Laini and I got so incredibly close to having a publisher for it. It was honestly one of the most exciting feelings in all my life, to have people within those publishing walls championing so hard for it. And though in the end it didn't come to pass, I know that it will find its feet someway, somehow into the hands its meant for... Maybe even this year?

Often times I go to bookstores and the books seem to me throbbing with life. I hear them say, "You can do it. Theres room for everyone!" (Of course some of the books are more snooty and exclusive with their comments, but I just turn them in cover first against the shelf and then I don't hear another peep!) If you ever see books faced inward, now you'll know not to touch them. They're being punished.

LaUncHinG A NeW tAg!

I enjoyed the last one boomeranging around the Net so much that I am starting a new one!

What were three things when you were little you wanted to be when you grew up?

An airline hostess
An employee in Disneyland's Haunted House
A donut shop baker

You can live one day over again from your childhood. What day will it be?

Taking the trolley with my Nana down St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans

You have two minutes (and a mover with you if you need heavy lifting help!) to grab 5 things from your home before it morphs into a polka dotted hobgblin and hops away. What will you take? (Food/drink/family/friends excluded!)

Photo album
Shabbat candleabra
Laini's paintings
My magic leather writing chair
Filebox of old letters/journals/favorite poems & misc scraps

You have to paint one quote on your kitchen wall. Whats it going to be?

"Feast on your life!"

What is one thing you want to have accomplished by the end of this year?

Finding a publisher for my first book!

You are moving to the moon for one year and can only bring one flower with you. What kind will you bring?

A yellow dahlia.

You just received word that aside from one flower, you can also bring five books with you too! Your choices?

Living, Loving, & Learning- Leo Buscaglia
His Dark Materials trilogy- Philip Pullman
Collection of Mary Oliver's poems
Les Miserables
Lord of the Rings/trilogy (because I've never read these last two and always wanted to and now would seem like a good time. Afterall, I am on the moon for a year.)

Tagging:

www.growwings.blogspot.com (yay! My best friend finally started her own blog today!)
www.jimdibartolo.blogspot.com
www.swirlygirl.com
www.meggenge.blogspot.com
www.asweetlife.blogspot.com

TaGGeD!

Consider yourself tagged as well if you are reading this!

Four Jobs I've Held:

Peace Corps Recruiter
High school English teacher
Canine-Nanny
Psychotherapist

Four Movies I Could Watch Over & Over:

Shakespeare In Love
Bread & Tulips
Il Postino
Harold & Maude

Four Places I've Lived:

Arad, Israel
Dryanovo, Bulgaria
Portland, Oregon
San Francisco, California

Four TV Shows I've Watched:

The Office
Arrested Development
Malcolm in the Middle
The Biggest Loser

Four PLaces I've Vacationed:

Goreme, Turkey
Cairo, Egypt
Ohrid, Macedonia
Transylvania, Romania

Four of My Favorite Dishes:

Penne Pasta Primavera
Zucchini Pie
Elephant Deli Tomato-Orange Soup & Bruschetta
Grilled Cheese Sandwich w/ sliced tomato inside

Four (six?) Sites I Visit Daily:

www.swirlygirl.com
www.meggenge.blogspot.com
www.chestofdrawers.blogspot.com
www.jimdibartolo.blogspot.com
www.http://taradawn80.blogspot.com/
www.asweetlife.blogspot.com
(And Laini, my very bestest friend at www.lainitaylor.com would be on here too if she would ever start her blog!cough cough


Four Places I'd Rather Be:

Turkey
Italy
Savannah, GA (never been but very much want to!)
Spain (never been here either but wanting to dearly!)

HaBiT HoLEs

Habit holes, not rabbit holes!

Tonight I am in the mood to roll up all my unproductive habits like a carpet once and for all and throw them over a ravenous ravine with a long, long way to landfall. Can it be that easy? It was just one line in a Robert Bly poem that has stayed with me since the holidays.
"Make holes in your habits," implores Bly.
I am one whom is truly for massive, radical self-acceptance, for making amends with the stretch size tushy, for all those verbs that ooze indulgence like lavish, spoil, luxuriate, pamper, coddle,...I even love the sounds of those words, but then yesterday morning amidst the frizzy television buzz that whirred around me as I got ready for work, I made out the following sentence in the background:

"I'll astonish Paris with an apple!" said the artist, Cezanne..."

And it sparked anew in me a strong desire to shed the habits I've long held that stand between me and my most sparkling dreams and possibilities. I could detail a not so tiny list of habits that no longer serve me on every level. Is this how I want to live? Its past time to poke gargantuan, gaping holes with a broomstick into my bad habits. Lately I am toying with the idea that perhaps change doesn't have to be like sludging through a treacherous, miserable swamp, something that I hold out at arm's length, fingers clenched to my nose at the smelly unpleasantness of it. What if change is simply rather like an evening gown that we can elegantly and merely slip into? I wake up tomorrow morning and don't bother to ask myself if I'm in the mood to write, to exercise, to brainstorm chapter or plot solutions. Instead, I just sit down and do it , well, because, that's just what I do now! Pushing the snooze option is no longer an option I give myself. Being tired before or after work is okay, but its not an excuse not to sit down and do the work I know I long inside to be doing.

Cezanne wanted to astonish Paris with an apple. Right now, I just want to astonish myself with myself! I'd say, "Wish me luck!," but I know by now that luck certainly has not even a pinky's pinch to do with it.