don't read this book----yet!

So I finally have a 100% shi^&* first draft!
A friend I spoke with on the phone this morning was shocked I had accomplished the amazing feat of the terrible first draft- or any draft-- because of the nature & consistency of my complaints. That I'm getting nowhere fast. That writing sucks. That I have no discipline and just can't get it together. That nobody will agree to sit down and write my book for me.
But somehow-sometime- amidst my kvetching and canoodling I have managed to come up with some pages. Here and there. Around 150 to be inexact. They lack a consistent narrative drive, lots of threads go untied and I switch frequently between past and present tense. There are 2 or 3 paragraphs I would love to show anyone but all in all it is truly awful. At least it would be if it were a book. But it's not, it's a draft and for that reason I am THRILLED.
It was heartening last Friday night to hear Travis Holland- who just won the VCU first Novelist Award for his book, "The Archivist's Story"- say that he wrote 4 or 5 drafts before striking gold. And I'll never forget Jeannette Walls saying that she wrote the first draft of "The Glass Castle" in 5 weeks and then spent the next 5 YEARS revising it. I was in complete shock at the time and thought she must be an incredibly slow writer (yeah, somebody who covers celebrities for MSNBC would be a slow writer) and that couldn't possibly ever be the case with me. Now I'd be tickled fuscia to think that 5 years was my timeline and the NY Times bestseller list was my destination. Again and again I have to pull my mind out of the gutter of the publishing industry and the end product and whether or not Oprah will still have a book club by the time I'm 40 and just remember to concentrate on my task at hand. Writing. Another draft. Page by page.

This is what I want to know:

How do so many writers publish such amazing, breathtaking, awesomely beautiful books when I have felt like a writer my entire life but the act of actually sitting down to write makes me want to tear my hair out and consider Harikari?

As a book editor, I am subjected to achingly beautiful, gorgeous writing on an almost daily basis and for someone who has been trying to write the same damn book for 33 years, this is-at times-akin to torture. How come they can do it and I can't??

To make matters worse, the authors I am blessed to read make their writing seem both effortless and inspired. Easy and necessary and sprinkled with profound insight. Like God spake and they merely pulled out the little pencil behind their ear and took dictation. God may be speaking to me but the wires are crossed, the connection is fuzzy, the phone is ringing and the dishes, the peanut butter cookies, my son and my husband are calling to me on a much louder frequency.

OK, enough complaining. OK, maybe not quite enough. Here's a little more. I actually have time to write these days but I'm using that time to worry about health insurance, paying the bills, cleaning the house, going to the gym, taking care of my mental health and updating my BLOG. Oh, and reading all of those books that are so very good, they make me want to cry.

is it possible to become a bestseller through osmosis?

I must say that I just experienced the most star-studded week of my life- for a nerd like me. I'm not all gaga over actors or musicians (altho check back in if I ever run into zach braff, johnny depp, paul simon, leonard cohen, tom waits or any one of the Wiggles), but authors- good, brilliant, moving authors- really get my adrenaline pumping. The week started out last Monday night with a little known comedy writer named David Sedaris. Now, if ever there were a ROCK STAR of the book world, it is he, Mr. Morsel-of-Wood-Sedaris. I laughed so hard I felt like I wouldn't need to meditate or pray for a week. It was good, extremely left, irreverent, slightly foul humor that I oh-so-desperately needed to improve my blood flow, my marriage, and my faith in humanity. Thank you Modlin Center for scoring him TWICE even if he will never again grant interviews to lowly alt-weekly reviewers like me!

Next, Tuesday night, I sojourned to the ever-so-glamorous auditorium of Short Pump's illustrious Deep Run High School. The hassle of trying to park amidst the football demographic was totally forgotten and forgiven when Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez took the stage. She was beautiful, elegant, passionate and truly inspirational. It's too easy to say someone's inspirational these days, but I think Ms. Alvarez took it to a new level. Naturally some Henrico mom is trying to have her book banned...don't get me started...but Julia Alvarez continues to beat the odds. After escaping a dictatorship, immigrating to the US, learning a second language and trying to assimilate in NY and becoming an award winning best selling author she went back to the D.R. and built a library in the mountains, teaching all of the children and adults how to read while promoting organic coffee farming. I cried the whole way home because this is a woman who has never allowed her passion to die or dwindle, even while the odds were stacked against her.

So that was just the start of the week. Thursday through Sunday I immersed myself in the James River Writer's Conference at the Library of Virginia, meeting and schmoozing and hanging with and being intimidated by and forcing myself to try to act natural with any number of NY Times bestselling authors, screenwriters, magazine writers, agents and editors. I even moderated a panel loosely titled "Commercial v. Literary Fiction" with 2 editors from Algonquin, 1 editor from Simon & Schuster and an agent on the big ass stage with a microphone. Don't get me wrong, I love talking to people, I just don't love talking to people in front of a lot of other people while the whole conversation is being recorded. I was nervous as hell, made an egregious gaffe or two, but survived and lived to tell the tale. Just don't ask for details, because I don't remember them at the present moment.

Who knew that David Baldacci was funny? That people actually read the articles in Playboy? That Kate Jacobs practices dialogue by pretending she has 2 Barbies talking to each other? That Adriana Trigiani leaves General Hospital on because she read somewhere that dead people exist on the same wavelength as electricity? That Taylor Antrim could be "painfully attractive" while stringing coherent sentences together? By and large it was a productive, fun, stimulating, thought-provoking, butt-getting-in-gear kinda weekend. I was truly impressed with the masterful coordination and seamless execution of the event as a whole. I even found that I really liked a number of people I didn't think I'd like, and for someone striving to be less judgemental, that's a really good thing. There's truckloads more I could say, but my brain and body and soul and heart and mind and fingers are still digesting a lot of the information that came my way in the last 7 days. Here's to hoping the brilliance I swallowed will also recycle.

a mid monday morning evaluation of life in a list

#1) Well. Big surprise. I still love not driving an hour a day thru rushhour to go sit at a desk. Who wouldn't? I like not packing a lunch in the morning. I like dropping by to get my books & mail, like the Hollywood Dad of the office. "Hi Kids! Here are some delicious homemade chocolate chip oatmeal bars. Love ya! Bye! Have fun working!"

#2) Yesterday my live-in Hungry Caterpillar Henry ate 2 bananas, a peanut butter & honey sandwich, a baggie of choc teddy grahams, 2 peices of turkey bacon, 2 scrambled eggs, a green apple, a granola bar, a handful of pepperoni, a chunk of turkey and a tupperware of tortilla chips. On second thought, maybe I'd better get a job.

#3) I am reading or preparing to read or skimming or plotting out or wishing I could plagiarize the last d. sedaris book, a fun, light read called "Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children & Parents," 2 books to prepare for the panel discussion at the JCC in Nov: Songs for the Butcher's Daughter & The German Bride, Alan Cheuse's "The Fires" (NPR critic we are thrilled to have on the Writing Show in Jan), Jancee Dunn's "Enough About Me" and...... a lot of illustrated books about planting pumpkin seeds and alligators living under the bed.

#4) I am thrilled to go see David Sedaris tonight, Julia Alvarez tomorrow night and attend the James River Writer's conference this Friday & Saturday, moderating a panel full of esteemed agents and editors.

#5) I just joined Face Book so it's going to take an iron will and a lot of chocolate or something to tempt me away from the freakin' computer and out into that crazy land called the real world. And I don't mean the TV show.

#6) I used to hate October. It used to mean the world was turning towards darkness and cold, the terror and insecurity of school and dorms and hopeless crushes, the onslought of a cold, endless, shivery misery. But now it's my favorite month of the year, so beautiful and fabulous and job-free. There's the State Fair and Halloween. There's the JRW conference and the Lib of VA literary awards. My son will turn 4 and my mother will turn 62. I will celebrate a personal anniversary that is more meaningful to me than my age or my astrological sign or the fact that I was born in the year of the hare, all of which are good and decent and affirmative in and of their own. I will celebrate no longer falling for jerks and allowing all of my fantasies to turn into techni-color nightmares. I will applaud "selling out" and "settling down" and not moving to a different state every time things got a little nasty, instead sticking it out and finding out what the hell my mother meant when she said to me all those years ago when I wanted to move from Alaska to the desert, "But Valley, the real journeys are inside of you."

the unemployment files, week one

So far, I would say that unemployment is much closer to godliness than cleanliness. Having been gainfully un-employed for exactly one week today I would like to share with the world some of the joys of not working.

1--On Monday, my son and I baked pumpkin bread from scratch and have had it numerous afternoons in the guise of a hot-chocolate tea party. Yummmm. I have also learned how to make Bisquick Biscuits. Before today I didn't even know that I owned a rolling pin! Will wonders never cease?

2--I took my son to the library, this gigantic wonderland where all the books are free!! While I might experience a certain level of low grade depression about having to return books when I'm finished reading them, it's a blessing really. There's nowhere for an unemployed person to STORE all the damn books she reads anyway. I have had to purge my house of books so many times, maybe it will actually be less painful to return them little by little, when they are due. So that's a great free pleasure as long as you can convince your little library companion not to yell, squeal or launch himself off the furniture.

3--I helped Henry plant a carrot garden. Well, not exactly. I asked my dad if he had any extra seeds and then strongly encouraged my husband to help Henry plant the carrot garden. My black thumb has only gotten darker over the years, but Henry has developed an intense desire to garden that I really can't brush off. At least he doesn't want to own firearms (well, actually, yes he does) or join the McCain party or something horrible. So I just have to get over my fear of killing plants and help him with the damn thing. "I've never planted a garden before," I said while we were watering the carrots on Day 2 and he said "Well, I've never had a garden before either!" At night, after storytime when we lay down with him for sleep he says in a sweet whisper-voice, "I just can't stop thinking of my carrots all the time." Good night, baby planter.

4--I have spent an entire 30 minutes in the last 7 days working on my book. At this rate, I will be done by 2049... at the latest! Exciting developments, for sure. I have finished reading an excellent book on positive thinking, which has made being unemployed a lot less scary. I am still freelancing after all. I just don't have to drive anywhere to do it. God is good.

5-- I had a girlfriend coffee date that was 100% kid-free, was not frantically on the way to or from somewhere else and gave me hope of rekindling friendships that were blown to the side on the highway of the working too much mother.

Now I am quite sure that the Big Employer in the Sky will have plans for me soon, but in the meantime I'm off to see if I can whip up some yummy ramen noodle krispy treats.

Messages to Me with a Post Stamp from Heaven

In the last week or so I have interviewed half a dozen authors and while speaking to each one it was like in the background, behind their voice, God-or somebody- said EXCUSE ME, VALLEY- LISTEN TO THIS!! THIS PART IS FOR YOU!! I will now share experts from our esteemed panels of heavenly messengers that came down to comfort the soon-to-be-jobless woman struggling to write her first book, yours truly.

My students are worried about their profession and I say you know, this is going
to sound unrealistic, but what I wish for you is not a career or your
profession, what I wish for you is that you connect with your calling. Whether
or not you ever become famous, spend your life doing what you love, what you
feel passionate about. There's a wonderful Mayan weavers prayer that they pray
before they start, because each [blanket] is different: Grant me the patience
and the intelligence to find the true pattern. And that's part of being a
writer. Being patient and honest to the process and giving it all you've got,
again and again. Without a stopwatch in your hand. Every piece of writing wants
one more revision than you want to give it. If you love the work, that's bigger
than your own ego. Julia Alvarez, author of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent" and "In the Time of the Butterflies"


I think of infusing the book with emotion rather than inspiration. Inspiration seems to suggest that you’re hit with a lightning bolt and angels come out of the sky and music plays, but for me it’s much more about the hard work and putting one sentence after another and developing it and working at it. Kate Jacobs, bestselling author of the novels, "The Friday Night Knitting Club" and "Comfort Food."

I always wanted to be an artist ever since I was a kid. I was
always drawing in the margins of my school books. Eventually I did a Graphic Design course then got a job in advertising. I hated it! They didn’t like me much either – I was sacked for incompetence (hard to do a good job if you have zero interest in what you are doing). I started to do freelance illustration for some publishing companies, doing pictures for
other people’s texts, then decided to have a go at writing a story myself. It was a poem called ‘My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch’. It was published in 1983 and I’ve been writing and illustrating my own books ever since. Graeme Base, the internationally bestselling children's author of "The Watering Hole," "Animalia" and the most recent, "Enigma: A Magical Mystery"

(Sorry Matt, your picture would NOT post!)

Question: Do you start with a word or an image?
It’s almost simultaneous and I don’t mean it for it to sound mystical because it’s the
opposite of that. It’s a lot of literally stumbling through and putting
words on the paper. Stammering around and trying to determine what I want to
say, a tug at the sleeve that this is what I want to write about.....
I’m constantly grappling at whatever it is I want to say. I’m astonished
by these polished poems after a dozen drafts. I would guess I write around 100
drafts a poem, because I’m such a slow learner. It starts with 12 pages of notes
and doodles that gradually get pared down and evolves into a poem. It feels like
sailing in the dark every single time I put pen to paper for better or worse.
There are lots of periods of confusion and exhaustion. Matt Donovan, author of the poetry collection "Vellum" and winner of VCU's 2008 Larry Levis Poetry Prize.

Each of these authors is coming to Richmond in the next few weeks or months and none of the articles I've written about them have yet been published. Email me if you want to know when and where they're coming. These are just examples of the words of wisdom I have inadvertently received as I step out of the workaday world and begin to more persistently grind away at my book!

The New Desk- Empty Again?

About 2 weeks ago I finally got my own desk in the editorial department at the alternative weekly where I work. The phone has my first name and last initial programmed into its face. I have a bookshelf. That's my favorite part of the desk really- the bookshelf. Books are not an easy commodity to store if you don't have a bookshelf, so you can imagine my delight. I even tacked a photograph of my son fishing into the feaux-bulletin board that makes up the feaux-cubicle. When the publisher called me into her office last Thursday I didn't think much of it. I didn't think of the print crisis, the downed economy or the imminent and mysterious sale of our company. Why? Because I'm an optimist. I'm willfully naive. And usually I'm just too busy thinking about myself. So I was shocked that what she offered me, instead of a new freelance opportunity, was a lay-off and a severance package! This is the perfect occasion for me to admit that I have never been laid off or fired before, which some may say is a miracle held over from biblical times. I felt like such a grownup! And part of an historical movement- the downsizing of newspapers, the takeover of technology and the new millennium, etc. Just to be clear, they gave me a signed letter proving that my termination was not performance related or personal or about anybody thinking I wasn't cool enough or skinny enough or beautiful and wonderful enough or anything like that. And they want me to still freelance- perhaps more than ever. It's about not being able to pay for an extra body at the front desk. So, my feelings aren't hurt. Really, I think it's an opportunity for the universe to keep me at my word. I said I would be there for a year and it was 14 months, so God-or somebody- was like- remember what you said?? Your year is up!! Out you go!!! So, for the next two weeks I get to REALLY really cash in on some jokes like if I'm a minute late, "What are they gonna do? FIRE ME??" or if somebody asks if I want anything from CVS, I can say "YEAH! A JOB!" Ha ha. So. If you need a marvellously talented, brilliant, gorgeous new employee that you can pay a lot to work not so much (or you know someone else who does) tell them about me! Or tell me about them! Please, no waitressing positions at Waffle House. Been there, done that.

In the meantime, my dear co-worker is starting to organize a canned food drive for our family Thanksgiving- send the succotash! And now, excuse me, I have to go clean out that beautiful new desk.

My Other Life as Brangelina

Once upon a time in a land far, far away (gotta love the New Jersey Turnpike!) I fell in love with a boy. He had golden hair and green eyes and a French/British accent. He reminded me of every classic arrogant heartthrob in the tradition of great English European literature. He was Goldmund, Dorian Gray and Mr. Rochester all rolled into one silk scarf wearing French accent having piano playing philosophy reading wine drinking hunk of a Euro-snob who would haunt my dreams for the next 9 years until therapy FINALLY started to take.

I loved him past the point of ridiculousness and excruciating humiliation. Of course, the whole time he happened to have a girlfriend who happened to be a model and work for the UN and be 6 feet tall and all that but I was much more concerned about what was wrong with me than what was right with her. Anyway, it was tragic. Yeah. I cried a lot and made a generous and abundant ass of myself. So of course, at the end of our freshman year, Golden-Boy came to stay with me at my lovely home in the suburbs of Richmond. He stayed in the Button Room by night (my mom's a button maker- professionally!) and we toured cemeteries and drank coffee at Steak N' Egg Kitchen by day. One of the high-lites of our trip was when I couldn't take it another second and said: "I love you ****" and he said , "You have a shitty car!"

Needless to say, that wasn't the end of our "relationship." It continued for 3 more years, but got a little bit less romantic as time went on. The last semester of our Senior year we didn't talk at all. After we graduated he called me a few times from overseas- once when I was playing scrabble with my then boyfriend, now husband. And more recently to tell me he'd married the UN model and that they'd had a 3 year old- a girl (the same age as mine- a boy) and another one on the way. I cried for 2 days straight after that- releasing him from my entire nervous/limbic/endocrine system- once, I think, and for all.

But alas, that's not the end of it! A few weeks ago, while vacationing with my in-laws at sunny Lake Norman (conveniently located on the outskirts of a nuclear power plant) I happened to indulge in a certain decadence normally reserved for dentist's: PEOPLE Magazine. Imagine my chagrin when I recognized the name of a particular Chateau in the South of France where Brad and Angelina decided to move and raise their small clan of natives. It was the very Chateau he had grown up in, that I'd heard stories about and seen pictures of. That I'd imagined I'd visit one day, if he had fallen madly in love with me and we had run off together and gotten married. Or if I was hitchhiking homeless thru France and one of his maids let me crash in the vineyard. Or in the chapel. Or in the recording studio located somewhere on those thousand acres. But that was not to be.

Instead, I was to read about the leasing of his family home in the tabloids, across an ocean and a continent and a sound barrier and a solar system. Across my own lifetime and much of his, still loosely bound by myth and legend and language, even if my name never was Jane Eyre.

Having not blogged for the last 2 months I'm going to guess that I've lost the interest of my fan base (yes mom, that means you), freeing me up to say what I really think. Which unfortunately is nothing scandalous, just something basic: writing is hard. For me, doing anything consistently is hard. I can only do one thing at a time, especially if it's something good for me. Like eating right and exercising. Rarely do I manage to eat celery sticks for dessert after a big day at the gym- except for that one memorable day last July. Right now I'm not doing either, which leaves a lot of space for me to think positive thoughts- about how one day I will grow an organic garden and do handstands over my personal patch of okra in the backyard. For now, I'm working in the newspaper industry which is just booming these days- especially with the thriving economy and growing demand for print products (loads of job security and generous raises to boot!!), a broken muffler, bug sightings that would shock Gregor Samsa and the daily joys of raising a three year old. With this last, I do spare the sarcasm, for he truly delights me. Like right now he is demanding that I make a fort out of a folding ruler and 2 minutes ago he was in my lap begging me to make the world stop after a particularly nefarious spinning bout and 4 minutes before he showed me his paper with 2 large "O's" one large "E" and a squiggly line. What's that squiggle? I asked and he said "I don't know, it just looks like a wolf yelling in the snow." So he truly is a miracle, and no less a miracle is the fact that I've written anything at all in the last 10 minutes since I decided to tackle this beast of a blog that has been haunting me in its big empty, blank, dejected sort of way for the last month and 27 days or so. So once again I am at that place in my life where I have lots of excuses for not writing in the past, but the excuses for not writing in the present are growing shabbier and lamer by the nanosecond. Excuse me, I must go stuff a pillow up my son's shirt, but I must say, in a weird little way it feels good to be back.

more adventures of bad valley

Bad Valley is on her third divorce in New York.
She lives on the 8th floor without windows or an elevator.
She can run up the stairs because she never gained weight because she never got pregnant and she never, ever lived west of the city in the suburbs.
Bad Valley has the names of her most prominent lovers tattooed on the small of her back. However she can’t quite keep track of them all, so she has them sign a guest book on the way out the door. Bad Valley lives next to the bus station. She eats breakfast at 7-11 or Waffle House or Aunt Sarah’s every morning. She eats chocolates and skittles for lunch and has a steak dinner with fried onion rings every night. Bad Valley does not go to bed at a respectable hour. She jay-walks and hitchhikes and goes to midnight movies and after hour clubs. She has a whole different group of friends from dusk to dawn, friends whose last names she never bothers to discover. Bad Valley sleeps in a different bed every night of the week. She does not use a planner. She does not know what day it is or which month, only the season and sometimes the year. Bad Valley runs away with the circus for a month every summer. She is very flexible. Bad Valley does not go home at Christmas and is not sure to call. She does not own flats or sneakers or snow boots. Bad Valley wears flip-flops and heels and impractical clogs. Bad Valley never memorized her social security number and keeps cash wadded up in balls under the mattress and behind the mirror. Bad Valley does not have savings or mastercard or visa. Bad Valley has an endless cash flow from an unknown source. Bad Valley is very, very good at cards. Bad Valley has a poker face. Bad Valley can shoot darts and play pool. Bad Valley gets tips even when she’s not working. Bad Valley has a pocketknife. Bad Valley has a bottle opener on her key chain. Bad Valley has over due library books that she’ll just go ahead and keep. Bad Valley does not adhere enough postage. She signs all of her letters with red lipstick kisses and dots of perfume. Bad Valley lies to the clergy. Bad Valley wrecks automobiles and gets tickets for speeding. But nobody makes Bad Valley pay because she is too beautiful and beguiling. Bad Valley doesn’t use coupons or drive to different grocery stores in search of sales. Bad Valley does not plan the future or think about the past.

introducing my alter ego!

Bad Valley does not want to meet your mother.
Bad Valley doesn’t do windows.
Bad Valley does not take a multi-vitamin.
Bad Valley kisses boys on public transportation.
Bad Valley didn’t write her own vows but if she did, she wouldn’t mean them. Bad Valley only prays for herself. Bad Valley looks for a new apartment when it’s time to clean the house. Bad Valley lets the bills and the laundry and the dishes pile up and then stuffs them all big black garbage bags to be hauled away with the trash. Bad Valley has never filed state income tax. She eats nothing with artificial sweetener and at restaurants she orders cheesecake and French fries. Bad Valley drinks whiskey from the bottle and wine from the jug. She smokes unfiltered cigarettes from a skinny silver cigarette holder that has turned ashy black and is hot to the touch. She chain smokes in nature. Bad Valley never came back to Virginia, never sought a therapist and still speaks trash to her mother. Bad Valley doesn’t attend family reunions, write thank you cards or send wedding gifts. She does not get oil changes or state inspections or update her license plate tags. She never checks beneath the hood. She uses full service at gas station and tips with a kiss.

Where, oh where, is my weekend away?

I am lucky enough to have a room of my own (quite a feat for a 980 sq. foot house that hosts a boy, a man, a crazy girl (me), a dog, a cat and 6 big, fat fish), but I've shared a nook with my 3 year old who has decorated as if he's a drunken painter marooned on a Mardi Gras float.

Not to mention my husband is drawn to my computer like a fly to shit. He can't help himself, God love him, the moniter is BIG and the leather chair is adjustable. And all he has is a shed, a mock-shed addition and a LA-Z-BOY in the living room that offers an endless view of Koi butt.

So. To put it mildly, I have begun to pine for some time to myself. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. Not even a day. A WEEKEND!! A WEEK!! GIVE IT TO ME!!!

OK. I've calmed down a little. But after all this time strapped into my home-work-wife-mother-worker seat like a good little girl I am bursting! Give me an itinerary, a flight time, a roomate, nasty plane food, a map, a visor, a window seat, a destination, a boarding pass!

Of course nobody on God's green earth has kept me home but me. For Chrissakes, I'm a Cancer- I've wanted to stay home the last 9 1/2 years!

But maybe something in me is finally ready to go on that silent retreat, that writer's conference, that yoga/meditation/kundalini/swamibeyondananda getaway.

I spoke with a woman on the phone today who made it sound so easy. She's gone to writer's retreats for weeks at a time-- for the last 8 years. Since her daughter was 1. And she hasn't imploded. She hasn't lost her identity with her baggage. Her husband and child still speak to her. And right now she's on tour with her book.

Maybe I'll start small. Like if there's something for 2 days. In Virginia. That's free.

If you find it, sign me up and tell me where to go.

why didn't i like the nice boys in college?

Unfortunately, my freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, I was not terribly interested in the special manner of learning that the school could provide, the extensive opportunity to be near NYC, the internships, the clubs and coalitions, the special interest groups or the opportunity for close relationships with my professors.

No. I wanted to party. I wanted sex, drugs and rock n' roll~! (Well, if Leonard Cohen counts as rock n' roll.) I didn't even know it, but the truth- or at least part of the truth, is that I was out to educate my Id. And it did my thinking for me.

I suppose that's why after taking the subway into the city to see Grace Paley it was so easy to let go of the nice boy who'd taken me out. He was studious, sincere, authentic and sweet. I was not. I was deeply invested in finding just the right guy to break my heart. Which I did.

And so, just around the time I accepted my third or fourth waitressing position post-graduation, that nice boy of yore became the Senior Fiction Editor at Viking Penguin.

And he's still nice. So nice that when I called him last year to get an interview about the state of the publishing industry in 2007, he reminisced with me as if I were nice too.

all about me

Finally there is an article all about me!

Of course, all I think about is me, so an article about me is my favorite kinda reading. Join my fan club, and read the article about me, here at Richmond.com. Oh, it's so endlessly interesting. I wish that all of my articles from now on could be all about me, too. Of course they already are-my thinly veiled view of the world- wrapped up in someone else's ideas, thoughts, words. But what I hear, how I hear it and what ends up on the paper, is of course, really just more about me- disguised as someone else.

In all seriousness, you really should read about me. I'm so fascinating. This little preview will whet your tongue and get you revved up for my book, due out in no less than 10 years, which is of course, also about me, (plus an additional 200 pages.)

First of all, I want to thank Catherine Baab, the literary figure writer-abouter at Richmond.com for recognizing my amazingness and choosing to interview me. Catherine is an excellent writer whom I first met when she won 2nd place in the Style Fiction Contest in 2006, for her story, "The Last Reader." She also recently won the Best Unpublished Manuscript Contest sponsored by Richmond Magazine for her novel, "I Love You I Get Good Grades," for which I was also a judge. No connection or relation, purely subjective coincidence, as is all good judging.

Secondly and lastly, I would like to thank my mother and my father for working so hard to make me so great. They let me fall and rise again and they handed me their faults and their blessings on a big, endless platter, over which I still have free reign.

in case you haven't heard....

......the next big thing on the literal and proverbial tips of everyone's tongues these days is open marriage. Also known as polyamory, not to be confused with polygamy.

This is a true case of having your cake and eating it too.

In the last week I've received press releases about 2 books on the subject- "Open" which is a memoir about a woman's open marriage and "Opening Up" which is more of a how-to guide, offering stragegies for such horribly difficult subjects in a 3 or 4 or 5 way such as time management! (Opening Up looks interesting, but I'm afraid the publicity dpt. missed a really great opportunity with their image. There are a mere 2 hands being held! Where are the others? Isn't that what this is all about??)

In any case, yesterday, amidst all of the editorial buzz about Jenny Block, our very own former Style freelancer having written her memoir about open marriage, I had the opportunity to interview her. It was a brief interview only because it got farrrrrr tooooooooooo interesting for me to contain in the short preview word constraints confined me to. (I will write a longer peice for the end of June after I've had a chance to actually read a few of the books I'm writing about.)

Jenny couldn't have been nicer or well, more open. But as much as I admired her and can't wait to read her book, I am equally disturbed. And this is how it should be. This is why her book is practically a bestseller before its even been published.

I mean.... MARRIAGE yall!!! I happen to have one of those myself! We are coming up (next week!) on that proverbial SEVEN YEAR.....what? Itch? Yeah.

It seems that even reading this book or even thinking these thoughts is opening Pandora's box, which ain't always a bad thing. Hell, maybe I'll give Stan the book for our anniversary. Until next time, with love.

HOT SHORTS

211 submissions.

9 readers

One Valentine Richmond History Center Garden

A fruit salad tree

3 talented 20 something-men

a few crazy people

horseradish, meat

and me


And so concludes my fourth season with the style weekly fiction contest.
We did shorts this year- short shorts, flash fiction- daisy duke style.
They were the most fun submissions to read.

To me, they are the most fun stories to write.

Perhaps most interesting however, is how strongly people reacted to the whole event.

Some people have simply never heard of flash fiction. And it made them angry. I guess it's like if we had a contest for the most efficient, modern vehicle and the guy who showed up on his horse had never heard of a car.

One fearless emailer compared this year's fiction issue to an episode of How I Met My Mother. I'm flattered because I am a fan of the surreal, and that is definitely one big fat jump off the deep end.

Other people were deeply hurt by the superlatives or perplexed by the instructions.

Welll, I guess we shook things up a bit, rocked the boat, deviated from the norm, defied expectations and created a new normal.



We can only hope for so much excitement next year.





READ (AND LISTEN TO) THE STORIES HERE

Hello Anybody and Nobody;

I haven't written on my blog in one and a half eons because I'm actually trying to write my book. And check me out, I didn't even put quotes around book this time! Between writing about Richmond's social scene for the Style display-ad department (maybe we'll dissect that irony later), taking bizarre spiritual movement classes for my Belle column, interviewing people who paint ceilings for homestyle, trying to keep track of the plots (or lack thereof) of 14 1/2 books at a time for book reviews, author interviews, vcu first novelist judging events, etc and et al, I just don't have the time I used to. Actually, I didn't used to have the time either. I just fell into time backwards and it carried me for a while.

But! Thanks to my dear friend who is 1/3 agent, 1/3 professor, 1/3 scooter riding hellion, 100% writer and all woman, I now have a plan!!

Last Sunday we sat down on her couch and broke it down.

9 manilla folders.

5 color-coded sticky note pads.

Italy,

New York,

Colorado,

1205 Hillside Avenue,

Arkansas,

road trip,

Alaska,

train ride,

1202 Hillside Avenue.

At last it is beginning to coalesce.

Maybe it is becoming what it already was.

In any case, I am looking for 2 days and a free hotel to carry it there just a little bit faster.

Work History, 16-21

installement 1

Sixteen

I think in a past life I was an Amazon warrior, but now I waitress at Waffle House. I have to wear an apron with my name embroidered on the lapel and an ugly brown bonnet, that's really a visor. I try to slip it off when Bubba, my manager, is in the back, but usually he's watching me through the one way mirror. When the phone rings I have to say “This is Valley. Thank you for calling your friendly Waffle House.” It makes me gag. Mostly I wait on dead beat dads and the widowed old people of the city who want to look at another human face after they've finished their meal.
This place never stops, but there are some dead zones, like between the lunch and dinner rush. That's when everyone gets stoned in the back. Doris smokes through her tracheotomy and yells at the rest of us to shut the hell up for staring. The job I hate most, next to mopping the bathroom, is refilling the monster sized salad dressing containers and mixing together the chunks of ketchup, relish and mayo. Thirty-five pounds of Thousand Island dressing is so wrong. To me it looks like puke, but I got in big trouble for saying that.
Sometimes Carter rides his bike over to visit me, and then I take the visor off whether Bubba is looking or not. Usually when he comes, he tells me stories about his band or the death games he's been playing in the woods with his friends. Sometimes he brings me a cup full of butterscotch chips, my favorite. Carter says to find anything worthwhile in this world, you have to go out there and get it and that he's planning on going to get his in May.
Bubba gets mad at me for talking to Carter and taking my visor off but I tell him, you don't want me to mention the back room to anyone do you? And then he shuts up. Besides, my hair will not fall in the food. It is just my best weapon against growing old and ugly in this diner that never quits.

i didn't blog because of the plagues, i swear

The 10 Plagues of the bad Blogger

1-- 194 style fiction contest entries descended on my head.

2--The rain has decomposed the literary nature of my (soil) (sole) (soul)

3--I've been trying to find the right amount of postage necessary to mail my letter to G-D

4--Instead of giving up yeast, I've given up words

5--The cat ate my keyboard (well, he did throw up near it)

6--MIT professor Dan Ariely's new book "Predictably Irrational" has forced me to write an

article about it.

7--The plague inbetween death of the first born son and boils is writer's block

8--When I took the Continuum class called "The Body as Sacred Ground" I accidentally tilled, aerated and hydrated my brain.

9--It's more fun to sit in the backyard eating Hebrew Nationals and chocolate cake.

10--My dominant hand was hidden in the couch cushions with the afikomen, but nobody found it.

Truth
Heralds

Endings

Bitchin'

Literary

Aeronautical

Critques

Kickbutt

Sink

Wrong

Answers

Never

Stories

I have been in a writer's group for nigh on four years. It is better than a baker's dozen chocolate eclairs AND a teenage boys idea of sex. It keeps me afloat when my thoughts have turned against me and are ready to attack. It is like going on a treasure hunt in a foreign land with exotic travellers every single Tuesday night (except for those long, dry spells when you thirst and ache for that clue and that map, that finally, from heaven, appear.) It is a way to restore faith after hearing on the radio about all those boys being blown to bits across the sea. It's an idea, a story, a prayer, a blessing, a window into the other worlds I didn't own 2 hours before.

vall

Exhibit A: Michael Parker

Exhibit B: Michael Parker wearing my hat!

Yes, VALL is the first 3 of the 33 letters in my name, but no, for once, it's not all about me. VALL happened at the Empire Theatre last Saturday night despite divas, demons and divorce (not really, i just had to come up with a third d). now that i am on the board of the jrw, i know more than a journalist should and despite all training of the last 4 years i shall remain mum as to the behind the scenes goings on as decency requires.

however, i will talk about the first story read, which as it so happens, was also the last story chosen. chosen at the 11th hour, as it were. under duress as it were. "Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony and Life Experiences in the Song 'Ain't Going to Bump No More No Big Fat Woman'" about a song by Joe Tex by the author Michael Parker is a story i had read twice before hearing it performed at VALL and I was just as happy to experience it a third time. particularly as this reading/performance/night drove home for me the fact that I am quite sure I know Michael Parker. If he did in fact attend UVA and is currently a creative writing teacher with dark hair and eyes as his bio suggests, i am led to conclude that he must be the michael parker that taught me FICTION at the UVA Young Writer's Workshop in 1991 when I was 15. It must have been him! It was!

OK. thank god for my scrapbooking days but damn those circle cutters. i found a picture of michael parker wearing my hat!!! See Exhibit B! (That's me with the wild bangs in the hippie shirt, bottom left). this was a helluva rambler, but see, I had a point! I just forgot what it was! Check out his collections of short stories and novels..... "Virginia Lovers," "If You Want Me to Stay" and "Don't Make Me Stop Now." Also do yourself a favor, and read "Ain't Gonna Bump No More..." in ... well i don't what the hell it's in... i swear it was in a best of the south but go find it yourself... you'll thank me later.

this is one monkey you gotta meet

To be honest, I haven't gotten quite so excited about someone else's life for a long time. When I first glanced over the press release for “The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist’s Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics, and Other Consciousness-Raising Experiments," I basically puh-shawed (verb usage?) And then I came to. (Press-releases send me into a 30 second stupor before I am able to resume normal brain function.) I read a few sentences. And then a few more. And then I couldn't stop! Which led to this beautifully written passage that now graces the editorial department's cutting room floor:

While reading his book, my work and my co-worker’s work suffered. I couldn’t stop compulsively reading, shrieking or quoting aloud passages as I delved deeper into the jungles of this man’s ridiculously adventured life, populated by the who’s who of the modern spiritual world against such backdrops as India, Brazil and Jerusalem.

Then I got to meet the guy. And he's so unassuming! He's not arrogant or prickish or loud or any of those things you may have come to fear in a writer, if, like me, you spend some time around writers (Or gurus for that matter. I'm not referring to YOU of course.)

Come to find out, he's spent over a year in our fine, charming, cosmopolitan town and has not yet met ANYBODY!! He has friends all over the globe and a lovely wife, etc. but he's been pretty much a hermit around these parts and so I graciously offered to help him step into the limelight of the South via the alternative weekly vehicle, Style Weekly! So anyhoo, read my article HERE. And come with me to hear him read at Chop Suey at 1317 West Cary Street on April 6 at 3pm. It'll be a swingin' good time.

Here's another little gem that got the axe:

But for all of his spiritual tomfoolery, the undercurrents of “99th Monkey” are serious, historical, and even monumental. Sobel’s moment with the Dalai Lama is transcendent; his homage to Auschwitz is sacred and his quest to understand the horror instilled in him as the child of a child of concentration camp victim is key. As a chaplain at a university hospital he helped people.

jesus' lap looks so full

Like every good Jewish girl, I love Easter.

Hunting for hollow chocolate bunnies in the bushes, rainbows of jelly beans buried in plastic eggs, flourescent yellow sugar chicks laying upon their beds of plastic grass. Just like what Jesus had at the last supper. So this Easter, we went to visit my mother-in-law (whom I love dearly. this is a disclaimer for anything that comes next.) Like all good Jewish girls, I married a Baptist boy, ensuring that our son would grow up to have just as big of an identity crisis as me. Sunday, after an anarchy filled egg hunt and a cartoon about the resurrection we took our boy to the nursery with his Baptist Grandma while we headed upstairs to catch the Sermon. Sadly, the sanctuary was already filled to capacity and we had to leave. Yes, we had to miss the 13 live baptisms on the docket for the day- unlike 2 years ago when my "Sex in the City" cellphone ring added a new dimension to one man's religious induction. We could have squeezed into the adult education room with the rest of the overflow and watched the service on video, as we were invited too, but we have standards. We are not McEaster nuggets. We walked up and down the streets of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood (wishing desperately that more Jewish people would move to the South and open some coffeeshops that weren't closed on Sundays) before returning to Church to wile away our time in the Bethany Room. There, Stan, who like all good reclusive-skater-intellectual-freaky types went to a Nazarene College in Boston, read to me some of the more interesting passages from one of the many Gideon Bibles, lining the shelves.

Such as this from the book of Judges:

But Ja'el, the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, till it went down into the ground, as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

Hmph. Well. Yeah. Happy Passover ya'll!

exhaustion is a 4 letter word.

this is what the inside of my planner and the inside of my brain look like tonight at 10:58 pm:

deadlines

line edits

publications committee preschool silent auction

calendars out the wazooky

spring social scene-- a beast I tell you!!

gym (well, at least i walked in)

board meetings (wait a minute- am I a grown-up??)

taxes

law suits

collection agencies

playdates

easter eggs

birthday parties. for people who haven't reached their double digits. lots of them.

bed

laundry laundry laundry

dishes dishes dishes

life and death

returned phonecalls

all the unreturned phone calls

subsequent guilt

disturbing dreams

dead sleep

carb heavy sugar laden breakfasts

caffeine

coffee

caffeine

coffee

a lite lunch salad

parking garage

energy bar

god

please

prayer

please

17 cool kids

So I wrote the "16 under 16" piece for Style this year honoring 17 kids ((15 + twins) that have made an impact on the community. Tonight was the event and it was even more inspiring than most events with kids that are intended to be inspiring. Dr. Bill Bosher was the speaker. As a lifetime on and off resident of Henrico County I have heard this man's name and seen his big smiley white mustached, bow-tied head shot at least one million times since kinder garden. He SORT OF looks like a mix of Colonel Sanders and Santa but he was a lot funnier and friendlier and more laid back than I expected a man with that many credentials following his name to be. He said he'd known his wife since he was in seventh grade and she in sixth. He thought she was the prettiest girl in the school and she thought "this boy needs help!" = they were a perfect match.

And then came the kids. They were all so ADORABLE (not to be condescending!) and kind hearted and enormously smart and more accomplished than a lot of us much further along in our double digits. I'd had the pleasure of interviewing each of these seventeen in February and had already fallen in love with every one of them. It was neat to see them with their families, dressed up, in front of a podium, accepting their honors graciously, shyly, with pizazz, humility and just a tiny tad of tomfoolery. Their parents were teary, beaming, immensely proud and grateful to have their kids recognized and honored in this way (aren't moms and dads the wind beneath all those little wings?). I mean, we were at the Virignia Historical Soceity. CBS 6 Evening News was there. The publisher and a local news anchor (I'm sorry, never caught his name, can't remember who, but Mr. Personality) read the bios and gave the awards. It was cool to hear my words read from a stage. Maybe I'll become a speech writer. Then again, I probably won't.

And of course, during the program, I had to reflect on my own childhood and early teen years. The coulda woulda shoulda didn't oh wells what the hells. The i'm glad I did that-but not that and the if onlys and thank gods and might have beens. The fights with my mom and my defiance and sneaking out and experimentations with substances not legal for my age group and the bleached blonde hair and the occasional bad case of the F-its. And then I think about my three year old and where he'll be in those tender painful raw middle high school years fraught with potential and danger and possibility. What stages will he walk across or trip on or soar above? Will we applaud as he stands and catch him if he falls? Yes of course we will. But please God, don't let him be like me!

It's an astronaut....it's a playboy bunny....it's Dan Mathews!

He's hot. He's wild. He's gay. He's into animals. Did I mention he's hot? He's also hilarious as hell and he's coming to Barnes & Noble on St. Patrick's Day. He's best friends with Pamela Anderson and he likes to go to jail naked. He's been in a psychiatric institution in Paris, lectured at Harvard and covered himself in fake blood at KFC. "Committed: A Rabble Rouser's Memoir" is very funny, endearing, absurd and brave. I had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Mathews on the phone for about 30 minutes last week, and not only did I laugh throughout our entire interview, I laughed after we hung up and I went to bed laughing. I woke up laughing. I laughed writing the article, and then later, reading it. THANK GOD I have a brilliant copy editor who caught the extra "T" I snuck into Mathews (altho, that's the first thing that hit me after I quit laughing). You might not think a guy who cares so much about ermines and bats and minks and rats and stuff would have such a sense of devil-may-care humour, but you'd be wrong. And the funny thing is, (IF YOU EVER FIND MY BLOG, DONT READ THIS PART, DAN) I still want to eat fried chicken and meatballs (not together) and I'm not throwing away my college friend Walker's grandfather's leather coat or my Danskos and yes, I'm one of those who would rather take a week's vacation at the IRS than look a slaughter house in the eye, but I will definitely THINK about it all differently. I will. Thanks for putting the funny back in the t00-disgusting-and-vile-to-consider, Dan. Maybe my kid will see the world differently too.

In any case, whatever side of the fur fence you sit on, you still gotta read my article in STYLE !

crusade

I have distributed posters before, for various and sundry open houses and festivals, but never with such finesse and panache as I managed today. I was a poster hanging genius! I channeled my super powers by way of my passion for the mission- the Style Weekly Fiction Contest!!! On previous poster hanging details I have been the messenger without much of a message. At least not a personal one, hitting so close to home. Now I deliver poster as if my near future depends on it- because it does. I will be reading the stories that these posters illicit and I want them to be good. I want them to be plentiful. I want my fiction cup to over-floweth.

Judging stories in the past has been a dubious pleasure. If ever YOU submitted a story, yours is not the I'm talking about. Yours was great! I'm talking about those others, the ones that made me want to peel my eyelids back, take my temperature, call the po-lice, push the button, prepare for armageddon, crawl back into the womb, play the record backwards and wait for Satan to speak.

Please, God of Posters, don't let my foray into Panera and Starbucks and the Book Room and Superstars (of course not Ukrops- it's Sunday, silly!) and Book People and BIG BOOK SALE and Barnes and Noble be for naught. Submit something; give me something good. And hear this Barnes & Noble: Even tho you're conveniently located and have a train table and make a good latte, I'm not just "some lady from Style," I am "the lady of style" and I hung my poster even tho you said I couldn't! In your face! Well, I sorta propped it up there inside of the Style rack. But still! Sock it to the man!

talk a story to me

I don't often blog about mother-son relationships (except on the HESH Files which is woefully far behind) but he and I are now in the early stages of an evolving oral tradition that is sure to live on in our family until everyone dies out, turns gay or the republicans start the apocolypse.

As a girl, my dad always tolds stories about gangs of silly monsters who took over our house while we were away and at bedtime he read Uncle Remus and Uncle Wiggily stories (are those 2 brothers or what?) My mother read me the Wizard of Oz, A Walk in Wolf Woods and other epic, mythologically relevant books but the only story I really remember her making up for me on the spot was: "Once upon a time there was girl named Dory who had a brother named Rory and a dog named Bory. The end." (any similiarities to people living or dead is not pure coincidence and should be taken as a sign ((change your name immediately))). (Bless my mom's heart. I'm sure she told me 8,564 imaginative stories and the only one I remember is the one with zero story line and rhyming sibling names. But that's the glory of momhood, eh?)

Anyway, story hour at the Haggard home begins with Henry saying "Mommy, talk a story to me" and I say "what about" and he says "about a blue baby bear named Henry Quinoa who falls out of a tree and lands on his back" and I say "oh god" (under my breath of course,) and then I begin. Henry Quinoa, our fair hero, is always a

bear/llama/lion/horse/squirrel/pig/cow/cat/dog/mammoth

of a different color, named after our first born son and his favorite pseudo-cereal, quinoa. He always has super-human-super-animal abilities, is completely anthropomorphic and can fly. He is 60 feet tall and likes to set out into the unknown without his Mommy or his Daddy (Joseph Campbell, you have nothing on us!). He likes to pack berries and cheese sticks in his backpack and help small children get to the top of the slide. He climbs to the top of the tree to trade a raisin with a bird for a white feather and then, right before he reaches the top, he falls down down down to the ground and that's when he learns how to fly.

the Big Ass Book of Crafts vs. Archeoastronomy.

Yes, these were my two features in Home Style for March.

"The Big Ass Book of Crafts," written by Mark Montano (a real life TLC celebrity!!) is totally rad. Mark is a designer on "While You Were Out" and hosts "10 Years Younger" (which I have watched in closed captioning while sweating on a cross-trainer in a perhaps futile attempt to never be one of Mark Montano's guests- at least not on that show.) ANYWAY, this is an awesome craft book, not in a Martha Stewart way, meaning you don't have to spend $400 just to think about a craft nor do you have to wear ironed jeans as you weild your glue gun. There are lots of wacko, fun, cheap ideas and the coolest thing is that Mark has done them all himself and is excited for you to do them too. Plus, he's cute, NOT TO MENTION he will be in Richmond on March 8 (THIS Saturday) at Tinker's furniture upholstery signing books from 2-4 pm. Read my article/blurb about it HERE. (Side note. Crafts are not really a super-great idea for me, personally. I have tried stained glass, basketweaving, pillow making, scrapbooking, crotcheting and collage. While these things are fun, the products i have produced are not so pretty and all of the supplies take up a looottt of closet space. Also, I have mainly done these things as a way to avoid writing, which is a bad, bad idea. But that's just me.)

Followed naturally by Sun Drawings & Archeoastronomy. This was one of the most interesting interviews/articles I've ever done because it really stretched the meagre fiber of my brain. We are talking science, physics, alchemy and ARCHEOASTRONOMY (a term I had never even heard before 2 months ago)!!! This is not my forte, but it was so interesting I couldn't turn back. I'm not going to try to recreate the explanations I managed to peice together in my article, because you can read them HERE, but let's just say this stuff is high-tech and beautiful. Janet Saad-Cook, whom I tracked down for an intuitive tarot reading (she is a very talented psychic- multi-task central!) has built her Sun Drawings all over the world. She has been hired by NASA. She works with astronomers. She acts like the sun is a good friend, and for her, it is. She has in a sense, lassoed the sun. At least she knows how to work with it and turn it into bright colors and make it dance. And that, my friends is pretty cool.

recycle my paper ridden soul

I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I feel my life is spinnnnnnning out of control. Like when there is not one clean spoon left in the house. Like when Style Weekly moves to 1313 East Main Street, Ste. 103, Richmond, VA 23219 and disconnects the phones and computers while I'm trying to write the calendar for 2008, when my husband keeps his 12 foot windsurfing pole in the bed and starts painting the living room on a Tuesday, when my cat walks across the printer, printing random HP test pages, when NONE of the tupperware lids fit the containers, when we are considering selling the house and renting an apartment in the fan, when I don't know what my purpose is or why I even need one, when my ex-boyfriend appears on the back of the Yellow Pages. (Listen to these existential bourgeois problems!! I should be so lucky!)

Anyway, the other day, I put a dent in the insanity by...........recycling. Ten bags of junk mail, rejected drafts, used envelopes, press releases, half finished never to be sent letters, receipts, scraps of things, grocery lists, remnants of my brain, feline HP test pages, I even recycled the aforementioned phone book. I admit, I am a paper whore. I am a stationery addict. I am a book-o-phile. And I can measure my level of serenity by how often I remember to beat the mean green recycling machine to my driveway at 6 am on a Thursday. And it's not often. But when I do, it's a major purge, like confession on the highest of holy days, the ultimate spring cleaning, a saging of the pulp ridden soul. And now the little recycle bin by my side looks so clean, so pure, so virginal. It won't last long.

the romance, the break up and the apology: about which she knows nothing!

This is a photo I took at WomanKind, February 2006.

So yesterday, Style printed my diatribe about not getting the Anne Lamott interview the last 2 times she's been in town. I wrote one just for me the first time and then elaborated and compounded for the second. But, when I read it in print it sounded a lot more whiny and pathetic than I had intended. Why would she want to interview with me anyway!? Not that it's her that makes those decisions. That's what publicists are for. Anyways, you can read my article, entitled "She Loves Me Not" HERE.

Get out your hanky.

what i read in alaska

This was my ship, and that is a whale.

In Alaska I read "Pride and Predjudice," my first ever Jane Austen novel. I lusted after Mr. Darcy and feared that I wasn't as spirited and rosy cheeked as Elizabeth and would never get the chance to run breathlessly across a moor.

I read "Gulliver's Travels" and felt like the at times huge at times tiny traveller of strange and foreign lands.

I read "Hero With a Thousand Faces." Isn't that pretentious? But I was really really trying to make sense out of the Hero's Journey, particularly those journeys upon which the hero repeatedly encounters a whale.

I read the prose-poet W.S. Merwin, particularly those prose-poems involving icebergs.

I read Poe's "Annabel Lee" because Avo the deck-hand had set it to music and kept singing it to the elderly guests after dinner.

I read a select few traditional Hebrew prayers because my mother sent them to me.

I read "She's Come Undone," the Wally Lamb novel about the obese woman who goes through therapy.

I read a Chinese poem about ghosts and drowing that the Chief Steward gave me one day in a card, with a rose.

a lotta angels & a lot more words

Yesterday around 3 pm, Henry and I headed into the fan for a lively afternoon of blue grass music and children's literature at Narnia Bookstore. The word "Narnia" alone made Henry laugh. I'm ashamed to say I had never taken him there before. We've already been gifted with about 1.34 billion children's books, not to mention I still have most of mine, so selfishly when we look for new books they are usually for me. Also, bookstores are trouble because of their high risk potential for spending way too much money. But this was a perfect excuse to risk taking out my wallet and adding to the boy's massive book collection.

Patricia Keeler, the step-mother of my genuine scraped-knee blood sister from kindergarten's was in town from Hoboken, NJ to sign her newly illustrated book, "Thank You Angels." A nice 4-some of staid looking 50 somethings played a guitar, a cello, a mandolin?? I don't know my stringed instruments!!! But I recognized a lot of the good music and soon a lot of kids and some moms and stragglers were doing a sort of stomp dance jump clap fest in the middle of the floor. Henry's favorite activity was eating the angel-shaped sugar cookies on the refreshment table and then demanding me to read him board books pulled at random from the shelves. We bought a copy of Patricia's book and I immediately recognized the name of the author: Doreen Virtue, PhD, because she authored a particularly good set of Goddess Tarot cards I used to have.

So this was all nice and fun, but the crazy part (I guess it's not really crazy considering we're talking Richmond) was the people I knew who showed up! It was wonderful of course to see Ida and her new-ish husband Ben (more about them later) and Sabot families I used to know and local author/actress/director Irene Ziegler, and Ingrid Mercer and Gail Shookoff (sp?) who took Ida and I to Water Country USA every summer for like 8 years even tho I didn't get a chance to even say "hi" because I was over reading a Cheerios Action Book in the corner , and then.....(drumroll).....Carter Graham walked in! Just last week I'd had this astral travel/vacuuming/muppet movie dream about him and had tracked down his address to send him a blow by blow along with an invitation to maybe come for dinner sometime and meet my son. I don't think I'd seen him for about 3 years. But since we were both there, I just went ahead and told him my dream and introduced him to Henry- they did the high 5-guy thing- and then that night, when he got home, my card was waiting.

So this morning, Stan, Henry & I had brunch with Ida and Ben: french toast, ruby red grapefruit juice, turkey-bacon, strooooong coffee and red grapes. What a great time! Ida, a former poetry professor now writes a newsletter for a museum/garden place in Wilmington, Delaware where they moved for Ben to work at House Industries as a "type designer." That's right, Ben has Master's Degree in Fonts. He received it somewhere in England, but I already forgot where. I asked him what he does all day working at a font company and he said he stares at letters (and answers tech support calls)!! Isn't that WILD?? I thought so too.

the unsuspecting poet

We met Darren through his writing first. We were sitting around the Black Swan bookstore one cold and stormy night when we the author of "The Paper Airplane Engineer" surfaced in little fits and starts through 5 double-spaced pieces of ordinary white paper. We were simultaneously curious and relieved to find a submission for the fiction contest that didn't suck, bore, need massive editing or an immediate call to the suicide hot line. Who was this masked man? Well, after he won second place (which was a horrible travesty and a major nudge to never again use nincompoops for judges) I called to interview him and mostly I remember that he made me laugh. Hard. He'd won the Virginia Commission for the Arts Fiction Prize and bought a couch with the stipend. Other wacky, funny stuff. He was very modest, self-effacing and goofy too.

The first time I ever saw Darren, I recognized him from the back of his head. He was about 10 rows in front of me in the auditorium at the Library of Virginia's James River Writer's conference. From the cocked way he held his chin, the earnest yet mocking look on his face when he turned around, the blonde goatee. It couldn't have been anybody else. The next week we made a unanimous decision to give him a trial run (we had an elaborate and crazy but foolproof system for trying out new potential group members including but not limited to monkey masks and black balls). Our round table discussion that night has gone down in the annals of writing group history- scatalogical jokes were made somebody cried, somebody quit, sparks flew, etc. etc and with that Darren was in.

How is it possible that there was a time we didn't know Darren? Last night, his poetry reading in the lower atrium (I do not know what the hell it's really called) of the Virginia Museum was subtle magic. Have you ever seen a 6 foot 5 baseball player read poetry beautifully? Death by fire, Persephone, the siren's song, bad god-lovin' license plates, thrushes and sparrows, a state of Henrys, vodka, apples, broken bottles of wine, death, love- you know the good stuff. It wasn't too long; it wasn't too short. And he didn't have on a turtle neck or a beret or read in that terrible monotonous sing-song voice that gives poetry a bad name. And he read a poem that made it OK to hate poetry readings, but truly, I think I can say this for all of us, last night, nobody did.

i lost the photo of tom robbins and me

Here are the remaining photos of the day my mother, my mother's then boyfriend but now husband, Buddy & I went to a picnic for Tom Robbins at the home of the White Pygmy Queen (I swear, i think that was her name!! I also think she died some tragic, lonely death with noone to bury her.) We brought a potato salad and some extra chairs. My mother is a button maker, listed in the phone book. The Pygmy Queen wanted to have buttons made for the picnic she was planning for her old friend coming to visit from Cal-i-forn-i-a, Tom Robbins. (You can see Tom with one of the buttons pinned to his Hawaain Shirt, middle right). My mother said I'll make the buttons if you let me and my boyfriend and my daughter come to the picnic. She drives a tough bargain, my old ma, doesn't she? The Pygmy Queen (standing with Tom Robbins in the white t-shirt on the photo to the right) said O.K. So. I was 20 and still very much enamored of Mr. Robbins as were the at least 8 other women who married him. (I don't know if it's really 8, but it's more than 3 and less than 10). I was then spending 6 weeks of my summer as a counselor at the UVA Young Writer's Workshop in Charlottesville, but arranged to take the day off to come over and meet my own personal effusive pan jitterbug freaky literary hero man. So I was wearing a brown polyester dress with flowers on it and several people there came up and asked if I was his new wife!! Ha! She wasn't much older than me, and looked like me too. Then I met Tom. He had on a LOT of skull and snake rings. I told him I was a writer. He told me that writing classes are worthless. Then I told him I was majoring in creative writing at sarah lawrence college and teaching at a young writer's workshop at UVA. He said drop out immediately and do something useful with your life like attend nursing school. I told him no freakin bleepin way, are you kidding? Actually, I don't remember what I told him, but I know it wasn't good. And them my mom gave him a photocopy of a story I'd written (OF COURSE, right??) and he told me he'd read it on the plane (YEAH RIGHT?) The story was called Star Wars and was about a girl taking a bath and dying her leg hair purple when Jesus comes in and they have this crazy conversation about Star Wars and Taco Bell and other modern pop culture stuff. Do you think my style was at all influenced by Tom Robbins? Anyway, later on in the picnic, the wicker bench Tom and his wife were sitting on fell over and me and my mom ran up and started taking photos of them lying on the ground. (See photo bottom left). Of course the really great shots are scrapbooked away somewhere and I just can't find them anywhere, so these that I've scrounged up will have to do as the visual representation of my story. And that's pretty much the end of it.

uniform

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

I've been wondering why there are no standard issue uniforms for writers. Why must we be indistinguishable from normies? My husband, for example, has a different uniform or "outfit" for every hobby he's adopted (or adapted or whatever.) When he bought his Tiger Triumph when I was 8 months pregnant, the fluorescent full body suit was not far behind. See exhibit A. Now he's into windsurfing, and you guessed it, another full body suit. See exhibit B. These lifeless 4 limbed phantoms are always flying around suspended by hooks or hangers in the bathroom or just inside the closet door scaring the bejesus out of me. I, on the other hand could spend my entire working day in sweat pants or tights or a hula skirt or whatever the hell I want. I'm a "writer." Yes, I go into the "office" 2 and 1/2 days a week, but that's pretty loosy-goosy too. I just have to look not-crazy. Sure, it doesn't hurt to blow dry my hair and/or put on makeup every once in a while, but whether I do or not does not a writer make (or destroy.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that I'd ever wear a uniform even if there was one, nor do I long for my name cross-stitched into the left breast pocket of my shirt. I just want to know if you're anything like me when I see you walking down the street.

true confessions

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. Thank you for taking my confession. (I have never done this before! Am I doing it right??)

I am an arrogant, picky reader.

I do not love all books, as muck as I'd like to say I do.

I only like books that are compulsively readable.

I am turning away from fiction (gasp!!) and reading more memoir (self-indulgent! trendy!)

I adore People Magazine (lowbrow!)

My son likes movies more than books- he said so himself! (will he also turn out to be a Republican??)

I judge books by their covers. Ugly cover- no read.

I turn my nose up at genre fiction (but what about mysteries/sci-fi/fantasy/romance? what about all those authors just trying to make a living? Sorry!!)

I get totally intimidated and overwhelmed in bookstores knowing that I'll never be able to read everything so I head straight over to the cafe to drown my insecurity in big, fat lattes.

In the last 4 years I have read only contemporary literature (except Gone With the Wind)

I'm in love with Rhett Butler- and my husband doesn't know!

So what do I do now, say 50 rosaries and 10 hail marys or run to the nearest independent bookstore and repent?

What's weighing on your chest? What are you too embarassed to admit in polite/intellectual company? Share your guilty secrets here in the Haggard confessional!

valentine's day index of the irrelevant and love too

a poem made of book titles that I can see from where I sit:

the mythic image- land of the ocean mists- writer's dreaming- starting from scratch- writing from the heart- sin in the second city- gone with the wind- kosher sex- i love you let's meet- memories of my melancholy whores- the razor's edge- enemies a love story- where are you going-i have become alive

things that i love:

irreverant uses of grammar- odd shaped stationery- hot gingerbread- drizzle- old maps with dragons in the water- body butter- those upper chest muscles on my husband- the first sip of a hot cup of coffee thick with cream and sugar- tights that don't run- personalized license plates- prisms-butterfly kites- memories of our wedding canoe- my son's tiny voice on the telephone- holding hands to say an impromptu prayer- leaving the gym- checking for mail- having money and being in a bookstore at the same time- letting someone else shampoo my hair- finding the perfect wrapping paper- photo booth photos- waiting rooms that have People- the sound of a diesel- turning the page of the calendar- horseradish- goblets- candelabras- piles of change- starting a new journal- finishing an old book- love poems on bathroom walls

number of men in target this afternoon crowded around the valentine's cards: seven

boys named thomas that i have loved: three

men named stan that i have married: one

days after i met him before i knew i would marry him: thirty

times i've wanted to throw him out the window: 479

times he has let me down: 0

the almost death of my almost book

Last night I was ready to treat the "book" I am writing to a nice little bubble bath of kerosene and flaming inferno. I felt the utterly hopeless despair of the midway writer; midway to nowhere with all of my insides tied up in a couple hundred pages of jumpy, non-linear, emotional mish-mash. How was I going to turn this non-narrative rambling into a coherant whole? What had I been doing in front of my computer screen for the past 4 years? Receiving hypnotic brainwashing by aliens? How could something I found so utterly fascinating last year turn out to be such utter crap this year? Why are so many trite, arrogant sons-o-bitches published and not me? Who's going to love me if I never publish my book? Who's going to love me if I do? Am I a self-indulgent narcissist or do I actually have something to say that's interesting to people other than My Mom?

I've always been pretty sure that life is a bazillion times better when I'm writing, that I'm more fun to be around, that even plants like me better when I have an outlet for the constant weird/sad/stupid/funny experiences of my life other than the 4 cramped walls inside my brain. And I'm pretty sure that taking up crotchet, basket-weaving, scrapbooking, pillow sewing stained glass making and even sometimes motherhood and all the trappings of a marriage were all just a stack of mattresses to stop the free-fall of my fear of being a terrible- or a brilliant- or a mediocre- writer.

In any case, these are the thoughts I was battling last night as I drove downtown to Robinson and Maine to meet my writing group. (A terrible idea, to drive and think!). As we gathered in our usual, cozy book-filled room, I announced that I would be setting fire to all of my writing at midnight and that I would never write another word again. Well, it wasn't that dramatic, but that was the general idea. And then they, the both talented and physically very attractive, members of my writing group preceded to pull the emergency rope-thingy attached to parachutes, one by one, word by word. They pulled me out of the muck and the mire. They spun me around in a new direction. All was not lost! Those hours and pages and pages and hours were research, not natural disasters! I was actually a lot closer than I thought! This was part of the process! It wouldn't be good if there wasn't any doubt! I didn't have to die, or worse yet, self-publish (ha-ha, just kidding!-sort of). I could leave it be. I could go home and do something else. I could wile away the hours on my blog or in my head or in a bag of bbq potato chips or with my husband and son and that didn't mean I would die a miserable unpublished death. I could wait for detachment to occur, for inspiration to strike, for structure to form and I could trust that it would happen (before 2050) as long as I continued.... to believe. And yes, that I can do. Thank you H, D, B & S. You saved my proverbial life.

Last night with Arlo

Last night I took my Dad to see Arlo Guthrie at the UR Modlin Center. Arlo turned 60 this year and my Dad turned 59 today, so they are contemporaries that never met except maybe in 1967 on memory-altering substances. Although like a lot of 30 something kids with hippie-something parents, I'm familiar with Arlo in the sense that I watched "Alice's Restaurant" sometime in highschool, but mostly I just carried him around in my head as a fuzzy headed druggie songster. Well, he was definitely fuzzy headed, but he was also helluva smart, funny and as always there was much more to him than the 2-D poster boy my brain had constructed.

He possessed the ability to infuse each song he sang with its own passion even though you knew he'd sung it a billion and three times before because he's been on tour constantly for like 40 years. He's also a fantastic storyteller which is what for me, really made the concert. I have always loved lyric heavy music; voice, rhythm and beat are almost incidental to me. That's why I adore Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco, Paul Simon, Meatloaf... etc. Lyrics! Words! Stories! That's what it's all about for me. What is a soprano, a treble cleft, a C note? I have no earthly idea but if you play them while singing a nice rhyme or turn of phrase, I'm hooked. So I was thrilled to hear Arlo Guthrie sing "St. James' Infermary" (because it reminds me a of a lot of old friends), "This Land Is Your Land" (because I didn't even know that his DAD wrote it) and "I don't want a pickle/I just want to ride my motorcycle" (because I actually knew all of the words.) And I loved his rambling renditions of Joseph and the Technicolor DreamCoat, his first-ever memory of being two years old and hanging out with Leadbelly, and the stories of his mythic legendary dad. He said his Dad liked to write so much that it was annoying. If he came to visit at your house he'd use up all of you paper-like apparatus and then move onto the furniture, the cat, your wife, whatever he could get his hands on. In fact, there are something like 3500 unpublished songs in addition to the published books, plays, songs, etc. that Arlo's sister is slowly releasing to the public!


Anyway, he said that at one point his Dad felt like there was something funny about him so he quit drinking. Well, that wasn't it so he started drinking again and checked himself into a mental institution in New Jersey. After a while, the psych doctor called Arlo's mom and said "Ma'am, your husband has delusions of grandeur. He thinks he's a famous folk singer!" Woody was relieved to finally meet a man who said- "I know who you are. You're Woody Guthrie. I loved your book." "You read my book?" asked Woody. "No, I ate it," said the man. After 3 months in the loonybin, Arlo's mom went to get him out but by then he didn't want to leave because he'd made a lot of friends. Truth or fiction? I don't care. It's a great story.