Blogger women unite

We received our first visit from cyber people.

Actually, the women who visited me are quite three-dimensional. Good, solid folk from the Midwest. Patti, whose son goes to Gutenberg, drove out with her daughters for a Gutenberg Junior Tea and a series of other events. They spent Friday, Sunday, and Monday nights here.

Patti blogs at Hobbits8. She's a self-sufficient homeschool mom (of six kids), and she's working on becoming a genealogist. I offered our home to her and the girls for the nights they needed, with fear and trepidation. I hadn't hosted overnight company for a long while.

Everything went well, though. I sensed Patti reveling in the sorts of conversations I almost take for granted here in Gutenberg land. She and I talked a lot. Tim (who attended a very interesting Oktoberfuss this past weekend with me), joined in our dialog-fest last evening. I so enjoyed Patti's daughters. They and my son and I played rounds of Catch Phrase last night, too.

Today Cherie came over, and her girls were able to join us for a Yumm-bowl lunch. Good gabbing, a full house, and Indian summer weather warmed my brain, heart, feet, fingertips.

I'm just a little empty, now that they're gone.

A fun thing

Small moves. Little steps. Moments of joy. Sometimes they happen.

I got a letter from Writer's Digest today. (Yep, my name is way down the list on this page, but it's there!)I'm honored to be mentioned.
Stay tuned for a post about the woman who came out of my computer and is spending a few nights in the guest bed beside it. :o)

Sixteen years ago

I prepared. I read pertinent books and attended seminars. I spluttered and worried, especially when things first were supposed to really get going.

We had moved into our house in August. All was lined up for me to plop this show on the road, but then the needs of a dear one couldn't be ignored. My grandmother who lived three miles from our new home had just received open heart surgery. Other relatives were hours away.

I began tending to Grandma Edna's needs: driving her for groceries, filling her insulin needles, dealing with her bookkeeping.

"We're supposed to start homeschooling. Yesterday!" I wailed, quietly, in my bedroom on my knees.

My two children accompanied me on adventures with Grandma Edna. We stopped with her to chat whenever a scraggy man or woman approached. "Hey, Edna," they would greet. "How's it going? We've seen better times, huh?"

Sometimes the old friends would relate to me how Edna helped them out of a tight spot back in the day. I knew some had been drug users. They could always crash at Edna's, to the chagrin of her neighbors.

I clenched my teeth, checking out at the grocery store. Grandma Edna's Oregon Trail food stamp card didn't work correctly when she gave it a shaky swipe through the machine. People in line behind us lost patience. Edna wrote a check sometimes.

I knew her finances might not cover it. I took her home and loaded her refrigerator and bade her farewell till we could go over bills again tomorrow.

Then at home I sat Victoria in a wooden elementary school desk, and we opened books. With her pencil she turned numbers into flowers and animals. Early into her lessons she slouched and fidgeted.

My stomach hurt.

By the next spring we would have little to show for our launch into homeschool kindergarten. Grandma Edna would be recovered enough to start up old tricks. She'd buy a Nissan, never make a payment on it, but at least be able to drive it until the repossessor came. She would visit us unannounced or phone asking Tim to fix things.

Though Victoria's eyes would glaze at the sight of addition worksheets and she'd rather I read to her than we practice ABC's, she would excel at drawing, coloring, painting. I'd begin a journey with her each evening through The Lord of the Rings.

My son would romp gleefully with the puppy we would acquire from Grandma Edna. Someone gave her the tiny, black-with-brown canine she named Brindy. Within two days Grandma Edna realized raising a pooch was beyond her. A miracle (and much small-child imploring) would make Tim grant our request to keep her.

We'd also be given a duckling, and not long afterward would find a garter snakeling. Quacker and Jafar would become handy educators, and both would be released again one day into more accustomed environs.

Grandma Edna would need me on and off for eight more years. I would struggle, and laugh, and cry, and continue.

Goodbye, sun

If our weather forecast's correct, this may have been the last sunny day for a while. Today transitioning trees hugged a blue sky.
The fat spider out front enjoyed warm breezes.Westley made his rounds in comfort.
My son spent time in "Chuck's" back yard. (Chuck, by the way, has recovered from being roughed up.)

Even Tim rested. At least he stayed put while I ran for the camera to record a rare pause in his activity.
Me, I soaked it in, the dallying farewell. A final embrace of summer.

The reason for my previous post

This week I pondered. I wasn't sure I believed it.

Not the possibility of someone writing for joy as opposed to money. I mean, a foundational part of my worldview at present is the idea that God bestows creativity as a gift. To me. To you. It's work and it's fun and it's just there to play with. To worry like a dog with her bone. To keep coming back to, because, hey, I want that.

I pondered, though, the outlandish concept that a man who succeeded in a ginormously commercial sense was simply wailing on his gift. You mean to say, Mr. Prestigious King, you did not set out with a five year plan, or practice eighteen sure-shot techniques each morning in order to realize the finances you desired through writing?

I guess it shouldn't be so hard to swallow, but somehow it is.

And yet if I do believe S. King (I just noticed he has the same initials as Kierkegaard -- kinda spooky), I must travel along a thought path regarding my own ambitions. I say I want to write, I'm at a place in life where I can do so, and I am now regularly writing. I also find myself constantly over-anxious about proving to Tim and the world (and myself) that I'm making progress. Real progress. Which, I guess, would translate into a saleable production of words.

I worry much and often about producing a fully formed structure. I pore over books of similar style and genre to the one I'm writing. I try to make sure I'm doing this in a way everyone might accept.

There's something, though, I often fail to do. In the midst of stressing and striving, I ought be thankful. I get to feel the buzz. Sure, writing, like any other endeavor, is work. But for me it's also a stroll along thought-forest trails. Some days I straggle. I'm frustrated; I go nowhere. Other days I pause in awe at sunlight striking a multi-hued cliff face.

As I excavate deeper, I discover meaning. A new sense emerges of confidence in my own instincts. The goal is not material; it's to reveal with care the tacitly understood. The form of this story exists beneath layers, solid granite in places, but worth going after. Days of Eureka! are awesome days.

Okay, just one more...

Near the end of his book, Stephen King says something I had to ponder this week:

Do you do it for the money, honey?

The answer is no. Don't now and never did. Yes, I've made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it...

I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side -- I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

For now

It's finding texture,
writing in color.

It's attempting to learn Greek,
to be involved with women studying biblical philosophy,
and to read and discuss Practice in Christianity.

It's dates with Tim,
times with Victoria,
getting my son where he needs to go,
moments with Mom,
evenings with friends.

It's a lot right now,
a fullness I embrace.

It's chest wall pain some days (our doctor assured me long ago that what I get is normal, a stress thing).

It's looking forward to a big weekend and welcome company in two weeks,
while wondering how the house can be homey for them.

It's bleary eyes,
Tim working one and a half jobs,
kitchen sink overflowing cups and plates,
frozen pizza every other day.

It's Much Ado about Nothing for my son,
a thesis conception for Victoria that must gestate.

It's cold in the yard,
glowing in the woodstove,
pancakes on the griddle.

Priority? The page.
Writing in color.
Finding texture.
For now.

Quote for today

"Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing -- being flattened, in fact -- is part of every writer's necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you." -- Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, p. 141

Lesson for today

Write till your eyes fall out.

Then stick them back in your head and go clean the kitchen for a while.

(Also, dream that overlooking the coastline, dramatic, in a Kierkegaard t-shirt will make you more literary.)

At least one serious post clamors in my head for publication, but all prose and no pics makes Deanna a tedious blogger. I'll share a few views from past weekends made enjoyable by friends, plants, and animals.

Mom shows off her begonias* in waning summer warmth.*Dahlias, begonias; they're some kinda flower.

Friends show up as evenings darken earlier.


Kinship during study time.

Blessings of companionable baking.

And, mm, ooh, the mouthwatering results.