The Out-Of-Sorts Time For Novelists

If you are a writer, could you base a novel on a single solitary memory from your childhood? 

Sometimes that's all that's needed to jumpstart a story.

For me it was a barefoot boy beckoning from an adjacent dock on a Northern Michigan lake,  the boomerang that wouldn't come back, and the boy who lived with his family in a migrant's shack and one day stopped coming to school.

Writing is a solitary business (why writers love to write). Yet we eavesdrop and belly up to the bar where interesting people rub shoulders and words flow and ideas percolate to flow off our fingertips onto the white expanse of a screen or a notebook or a bar napkin.

Some of the reasons I'm passionate about writing and the natural world are explained here  (the scary out-of-the-way, desolate places our dad would park our pop-up camper on family vacations), along with some of my favorite immersive fiction from 2023 and the novels whose readers I felt would enjoy Let Evening Come.  But I wonder how accurate my assumptions are.

I've been asked, if I  had to do anything other than write, what would it be? I would like to hide in the upper branches of a tree. Drop raspberries in a basket tied at my waist and stomp grapes. Walk the fencerow to the rear of the farm to see the eagle's nest I've heard tell of, a mere hundred-acre walk away.

With one project complete and out of my hands while another is stalled and yet another still percolating like a an old coffee pot, I'm stuck in that out-of-sorts time for a writer. So, why not do some of those things? Why let a 20-mile-an-hour wind dissuade me, or a cold rain, or a mass of turbulent clouds skuttling across the sky to hide the sun as if another eclipse were underway? Why do I let the mundane eat away at the day, like the moon to the sun, or suddenly find myself daydreaming in front of the open refrigerator as if dinner will miraculously appear? Why let the out-of-sorts-time interfere with a walk along a fencerow to discover an eagle's nest rumored to be as big as a dining room table and maybe . . . maybe even catch sight of an adult in the act of remodeling or adding to last years structure.

Now that would be something to write about!

Memoir/Memory

Memory is like a foggy morning: as the fog lifts, things take shape. A foggy morning pleases my writer's heart, like nature and seclusion. Upon awaking to fog, I want to light candles and brew coffee. I want it to stay like this: still and quiet.

Nothing except in things. 

So, I've decided to write a memoir, triggered by a contest notice. I'd never thought I had a life others would want to read about, but as I thought this over, I decided that wasn't true and began to dig around in my head for the childhood events that stand out like signposts. As one was unveiled and examined another emerged, like trees in a fogbank.

Do you ever wonder what made you the person you are today? How you got to where you are, why some things matter to you and other don't? What your career choices have been and the people you are attracted to and the ones who repel?  Writing a memoir is to take an untraveled road of discovery. And I've had the strangest, most vivid dreams of places and things and people I've not thought about in a long time. Do you wonder at the mother-lode of memory buried in our brains, waiting to be brought to light and shared?

I'm an environmentalist because my father is and my grandfather was, as was his and so on. Though they didn't call themselves that, any farmer who farms the land in a sustainable way and raises grazing animals while adhering to the time-honored practice of husbandry, is essentially an environmentalist. On road trips, Dad was constantly pointing out things of interest, from a herd of cattle to a hawk to the setting sun. He never let nature go unnoticed and while we might have been prone to day-dreaming in the backseat or squabbling about who was touching who, he drew our attention out the window to the vista in front of us or the one behind.

So that is one signpost in the road I've traveled to become the person I am today. But there are things I'm afraid to write about too, as sure as the fog will lift and the noise intrude. It takes a lot of courage to write a memoir and I commend the masters of this genre, namely Jeannette Walls who wrote The Glass Castle. And while I never led that nomadic of a life, it hasn't been one without interest and intrigue.

I've always found the idea of a "residency" intriguing. This farm might serve as my residency, except family obligations and chores always interfere. Life intrudes. That's the beauty of a true residency. Nothing intrudes between you and the writing. Dare I apply for a residency? Could I be gone for two weeks to participate in an endeavor that society places little value on? Many would see it as selfish and self-absorbed. I would see it as the gift and opportunity of a lifetime.

The closest I've ever come to a residency was a friend's summer house on a wake-free lake in Gladwin. I stayed there by myself for three days, nothing but loons, lily pads, jumping pike and grazing cattle in a field on the other side. I loved every single solitary minute. I wasn't afraid. I spread my manuscript out around the living room (itself, a luxury) and let it absorb every waking moment, stopping only to eat and sleep. In three days I edited fifty pages, wrote a poem and penned two or three sentences of another idea. Think what could be done with two weeks!

The Blackbird and the Strawberry

Observe the girl eating a strawberry. Observe the cattle observing her. They line the electric fence bordering the patch and watch with unblinking eyes. Some become bored with her repetition and chomp on grass, others chew their cuds as the calves scamper to and fro. They follow her progress along the 300-foot row and jostle each other for a view. Their fence runs out. Her row continues. She leaves them behind. 

Her fingers seek the silver dollar-sized berries hidden under the leaves in the center of the plant, heavy with ripeness and replete with moisture, nestled out of sight of the most keen-sighted blackbird. She holds them by the stem and drops them in the box.

The strawberry plant is the perfect camouflage, the perfect fruit. It needs no fungicides or chemicals. It needs no genetic tinkering. She regrets her father's position.

The odor from the animals wafts on the whip of their tails, earthy and fungal, not unpleasant, but memory-laden. The cattle, the grass, fresh cut hay in the air and holding hands in the night. A memory.

Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

I made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest in the General Fiction category. It was a shot of adreneline to find my name on the list. There were ten thousand entries so I guess that's pretty cool. If nothing else, I know my query is effective. I have the folks at Agent Query and She Writes to thank, as well as the amazing Mindy McGinnis at Writer Writer Pants On Fire, who also just so happens to have a short story in SPRING FEVERS. Her debut novel NOT A DROP TO DRINK is coming out in 2013 but you can add it to your Goodreads shelf if you have one. While you're there, you might as well add SPRING FEVERS too.

I've decided that Twitter might be a cool way to connect with people. If the creator of Spring Fevers can find time to Twitter, than I can too. One can only buck the current for so long. So if you see me out there floundering in a headwind, please offer me shelter on a branch.

I hear sleet against the window. Dare I wish for an "ice day". A free day to sit at my computer and make up stories? Delve deep into my imagination and bank of memory? This brings up an interesting discussion I started with Tricia over at Talespinning.

Do you think memory can be imagined? The mind is a fascinating thing. Dark and beautiful and mysterious. How do you know you don't know something and how do you know that that embellished memory is authentic? We all embellish memory, tweek it and edit it. Then there's memory loss. How much of your self do you retain if you lose your memory?

Keep a diary. It's the only sure way to remember the past with accuracy. That or sit down with an older family member or an old friend who can set you straight. But you might not like what they tell you.

Off to imagine some stories. Come on sleet. Come on.


P.S. I posted this accidently before all my links were in place. Sorry Mindy. Corrections have been made. And, no, I didn't get that free day.

Anything For Will

She longed to feel him inside of her again but was beginning to wonder if she ever would. The memories were fading, like the pictures he sent. His helmet was etched with anti-war dogma, but he did what he was told. His letters filled a drawer but held nothing of what he was told, and he wasn’t sending pictures anymore.


Write a flash fiction piece in 55 words, post it, and then let the G-Man who is Mr. Knowitall know. It's easy, it's fun. It's Friday.

My 55 this week is a passage from a work-in-progress that is working it's way back up to the top of the stack. It's been bothering me. I can see it in the corner of my eye, getting dusty on the filing cabinet. Oh, the injustice! I had to bring Will back up on my screen this morning. I have to look him in the eye and decide what to do with him.

TGIF
Peace out

Festival of the Trees (call for submissions)

I am pleased to announce that I will be hosting the 49th Festival of the Trees.


I am now taking submissions for the July festival. Please check here for submission guidelines, the history behind the festival, and July's theme. There is a contact form on the main site, or you can email me your link. I know there is a lot of talent out there, and I look forward to your entries, whether it be poem, flash fiction, photo, painting, haiku, etc. All mediums are welcome. Don't leave me standing alone like the last elm in North America.

The current festival is being hosted by Casey Harn so make sure you check that one out while you're at it.

Lets turn our attention away from war and oil spills and the destruction wrought by man and have some tree love.
















(photo courtesy of Deviant Art)


Ahhh, trees . . . big, small, scraggly and knarled, or majestic and stalwart, they do their part in keeping the lid on a steaming planet.



I'll see you in the woods, twenty rods beyond the brush pile in a clearing by the creek, short of the bee hives. Don't disturb the bees, just send me your stuff!

Rage Against The Advancing Darkness

Have you ever been in the throes of writing to find yourself writing something you didn’t know you knew? Have you ever wondered about the dreamstate you slip into, which allows you to inhabit other lives? How does this work?

For me, and I think for many of you as well, the writing process can be therapeutic, write or die, but it has also now been found to be beneficial to people afflicted with the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

The Alzheimer’s Association is working with writers to connect people in the early stages of the disease to writing groups. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s but they have found that with early diagnosis you can still construct a life in front of the advancing darkness. It is essential to begin while the patient is in the early stages of the disease, but many people are in denial. Hence, precious time is lost. In recent polls it has been discovered that people are more afraid of contacting Alzheimer’s than heart disease or cancer. Working with writers groups, the Alzheimer’s Association is helping people afflicted with this tragic disease to seize the opportunity to say what they want to say while still cognizant, before their knowledge of what went before is lost forever.

So let us open our minds to this possibility: that a person can write something down they didn’t know they knew. Writing is a form of memory, and we use a different part of our brain when we write. Thus it has been discovered that an Alzheimer’s patient can write something down they have actually forgotten. In fact, the next day they've forgotten that they wrote it. But there it is, proof on the page, visible and tangible.

I find this to be such an interesting concept, that there is a special area of the brain that clicks into overdrive when we write. Can it be that this ties into the “vivid and continuous dream” that John Gardner (my favorite writer on writing) talked about? Writing is nothing if not a mysterious process.

Verbal exchange is invisible and intangible, while writing lasts. When these patients write something down in their writing group, they are entrusting their memory to someone else. If you can give something away you don’t lose it.

Alzheimer’s patients lose so much of their identity as they start to lose simple things like the ability to drive a car and plan their day. If we can help them preserve some of their memories for themselves and their loved ones, then this is a noble endeavor. There is no nobler profession than writing.

And The Ones That Mother Gives You Don't Do Anything At All. . .

“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” Thus begins The Giver, Lois Lowry’s Newberry award novel about a futuristic world of fragile perfection where there is no pain or suffering, no hunger or cold . . . no pleasure, color, or choices to be made.

During Banned Books week I made a commitment to read as many banned and challenged books over the next year as I could. I’ve recently finished The Giver, and I have Jemi Fraser, writer and teacher of the talented and gifted and Jean Oram, writer and chat moderator over at Agent Query here to discuss this complicated, brilliant novel about what it means to be human and how easily we can be molded and conditioned into “sameness”.

All memories of the past are retained for the community in one person, the Giver. He appears very old, but is he really that old, or is it just that the burden of memory has aged him? At the beginning of the book he is about to be rid of some of these burdensome memories. At the age of twelve Jonas is singled out to be the new Receiver. Do you think Jonas’s relationship with the Giver is dangerous after what happened to Rosemary, the prior “receiver”?

JEAN... I kind of wondered about that, too. Has the burden of all that knowledge prematurely aged him? Or is he actually that old?

JEMI...I think the memories have aged him, although he must be middle aged at least. It takes years for him to become the receiver, then years to do it before training Rosemary 10 years before. I don't know if the relationship is dangerous or not - Receivers have been doing this for generations. But because both Jonas & the Giver are questioning the status quo it becomes dangerous for both of them.

JEAN... It is definitely dangerous for Jonas's innocence and naivety. I did get the impression that the Giver had learned his lessons with Rosemary and that he was a lot more careful with Jonas. I didn't fear that the same thing would happen to Jonas, although it did seem that Jonas had fears that he would follow Rosemary.

The death of Rosemary is never really explored but she evidently asked to be “released” and then injected herself. The Giver watched. She was his daughter. But was she his biological daughter? If so, how could that have been possible?

JEAN... I doubted that he was her biological daughter. I think in a way, everyone was family and everyone was biologically connected, but I didn't get the impression that she was a direct descendant. They never did say where they got the males for reproduction though, did they? He didn't take his pills--maybe he's everyone's father. :)

JEMI... I think the eye colour strain is very dominant in the genes. Because they all have similar eyes, they probably are all related, although that's never really explained. We also don't know how the birthmothers are impregnated - I would assume sperm donors because of the pills to eliminate the stirrings. In that case, they could assume Rosemary is his daughter & Jonas is his son.

What was the meaning of the opening flashback when the jet overflew the community? What is this greater power that everyone is afraid of? Something or someone holds sway over the community. Does the community itself have a military? It seems they had the capability to shoot the fighter jet down, but the Giver advised them to wait.

JEMI... I think the opening was a way to set the scene - make it obvious from the beginning how different this society is from ours. My students always look around at each other for reactions when I read that part. They're wondering if it's just them realizing it's different. I think they are afraid because it is against a major rule - and they worry the status quo is being changed -jets would be a rarity. They have advanced technology, but there would be very few trained to build/fix etc. They've eschewed it to go to sameness. I don't believe the community has a military at all - war is too far removed. But there is never a satisfactory explanation for why they have planes at all.

JEAN... I think the community feels vulnerable. There is a primitive fear and awareness--an instinct that is still alive--to protect the ones they care for. I think there is also a natural reaction to lash out at things we don't understand. And things that we don't understand can feel threatening.

The sterile nightly conversations at Jonas’s dinner table and the “sharing of feelings” really irritated me. I wanted to reach across the table and shake them. I suppose this was Lowry’s intent, that we would realize how important it is to the human psyche to have real emotions. To feel real feelings. My impression of the family unit was that the mother is the enforcer…should father ever slip she’d have his head. What do you think? They don’t use the word love. “Do you love me?” asks Jonas at one point. Jonas’s mother corrects him. “It is much better to ask, do you enjoy me. Yes,” she says, “I enjoy you.” Why is it so important for the community to have what they call “precision of language”?

JEAN... I think if people become too real or feel too much, then things have the capacity to get messy. They also are not allowed to touch, something that is a basic human need. It builds connections, too. If they are to create real, deep, meaningful connections, then everything could come down like a house of cards. People might question things. Couples may fight to stay together instead of be separated and placed in the home for the old.

JEMI... There is no reason for love in their society. The parents do what they do to produce capable citizens. They are just following community expectations. Jonas' first experience of love is through the Christmas memory. All real emotions are eliminated because of their desire for sameness. They must have wanted safety in order to choose sameness. Emotions aren't safe, so they've been eliminated. The rituals are to ensure the children grow up and fit in, to ensure their reactions are acceptable.

JEAN... As for language, emotion is difficult to put into precise language. Just look at any little kid. They know happy, sad, angry. But try something more fuzzy like self-conscious, or even embarrassed. I would argue that 'love' is actually, a rather general word in the English language. For example: I loved that movie. I love chai tea. I love it when snowflakes fall on my tongue. I love you. Those are all different contexts for love, and we feel different degrees of emotion in those contexts. It isn't precise. True emotions often aren't. I think that keeping language precise is way to keep the citizens in their numb boxes, to keep them from those confusing emotions that cannot be fully (precisely) expressed.


When the first receiver (Rosemary) died and memories were released into the community, the Giver called it chaos before the memories were assimilated. What I wondered is that if one, say Jonas’s father, received memories, even fleetingly, then how could he not retain some of that knowledge about death and pain and sex and all those things related to the human experience?

JEAN... Good question. I have no idea, because The Giver didn't get them back. You would think they'd have retained some of it.

JEMI... They wouldn't retain them because they didn't want them. They would pretend they didn't exist. They would have been terrified of anything causing them to feel. They would have been desperate to return to sameness. Remember Jonas' memories of colour take a long time before they become permanent. One memory isn't anywhere near enough. I think it would be like understanding a small phrase of an foreign language, but having no context, no way to interpret it. You'd have a very slim chance of remembering it for long at all. These people are cowards. They would push the memories away as quickly as they could. One of their greatest worries is that they won't be like the others. They want to be part of the whole, and you can't if you're unique. Every ritual is geared towards being like everyone else.


Imagine how different we’d be without our memories. “People know facts,” the Giver says, “they know scientific things, but without memories, they know nothing.” Once a memory is given, it is lost to the Giver. Why is that? Like the first time Jonas gives a memory to the child Gabriel to get him to go to sleep, he can barely recall it himself. And why does Gabe have such a hard time sleeping? Could he have been born with memories? Is a child like Gabe, one who can’t or won’t conform to their narrow expectations of behavior, a danger to the community?

JEAN... I was curious about that, myself. Reincarnation? Just a colicky type who needs that connection with others, that attachment, etc? Some babies need a lot of holding to be happy. They need a connection that isn't viable in that community.

JEMI... I think Gabe is of the same genetic strain as Jonas & the Giver. They are all aberrations/throwbacks. There is something "wrong" in them that causes them to ask questions, to wonder. Even before the training, Jonas is questioning sameness. I think memories need to be repeated, built upon in order to be kept. The Giver probably wants to give them away - can you imagine being burdened with generational memories? You wouldn't have room for your own thoughts. We understand blue because we've seen it, heard it called blue and connected the colour/word over and over again for years and years and years. They don't have that advantage.

JEAN... Yes, it breaks their idyllic little scene. They might have to think and feel and try. Despite the sameness, everyone is very individualistic in that they are insular and in some ways, independent. They aren't to depend upon each other emotionally. They are not to lean on each other, ask difficult questions or question things. Someone who is on the fringe threatens their world. Look at a conservative person with rigid attitudes when they face a skinhead. They don't know what to do and feel uncomfortable. It threatens their 'world' views. They might have to question things.

Shortly after this, Jonas stops taking his “pills”. How did you feel about that?

JEAN... Rock on, Jonas!

JEMI... Not taking the pills is one of the reasons Jonas is able to perceive emotions. The pills are emotional suppressants. These people never go through emotional puberty. They never mature. They are stuck at the preteen emotional stage - the importance of rules, the stress on sameness (equal not fair).

Jonas has a gift…the ability to see colors. At first I didn’t realize that that was what it was—I think when he was tossing an apple back and forth to his friend, Asher—then I realized that no one sees colors. How much are our perceptions and feelings formed by colors? At what point does sameness become unbearable? No blue sky….no red apples….

JEAN... If you know nothing else, how can it be unbearable? I think for Jonas, the more he knew, the more unbearable it became. Plus, it isolated him. He couldn't share color or discuss his new world and experiences. People who are colorblind do see shades and tones, so I imagined it would be the same for the people in this community.

JEMI... I love the way the book has no color words until that point. What an awesome concept! Hard to even imagine. My students spend a lot of time discussing how this could happen. Same with the sun - how do they not see it? Are they in a dome - nope, unless it's big - the jet. It's a powerful message about the human capacity to only see/believe what we want. How we can ignore something until it no longer exists. I think the human brain is incapable of staying in this mode for long. We could retreat there for safety, for escape, but our desire to really live would pull us through. It reminds me very much of Hitler's desire for sameness in the world, and I believe Lowry used this as her basis for the story.


With his first memory of pain, Jonas automatically asks for the release-of-pain pill, but it is refused Jonas by the Giver. Is this part of his “lesson”?

JEMI... Definitely - again, these folks want no emotions at all. They don't want to learn from experience, they don't want to experience. Jonas must learn to deal with small pain before he takes on so much more.

JEAN... I think it was. He wanted to numb himself from the truth, but the whole truth is important to being the one holding the memories. How would be become a good consultant for the community if he blocked the true feelings with the memories he was holding?


There is a ban against books in the community. Only the Giver is allowed to have books and if Jonas were to decide to apply for a spouse, they wouldn’t be able to live together because the spouse could not have access to books. The community would collapse into chaos if people read books. So many things in this novel saddened me, but is that what Lowry intended? To make us think about the value of pain and suffering? This ties into the religious idea of suffering for redemption though oddly enough no religiosity is mentioned in this novel.

JEMI... Yes!!! Lowry wants us to fear ignorance. She wants us to embrace diversity and emotional growth. I can't comment on the religious aspect (no knowledge in that department). I think people need to suffer (hopefully in small doses) in order to enjoy the joys as well. We can't block off one part of the spectrum without blocking off its opposite. That's what this society has done - reduced the pain, therefore reduced the joy, until there is no rollercoaster of emotion - just a plain boring highway. No chance for growth or maturity at all.

Jean… I think youth often feel overwhelmed by the world and its sadness, its truths (heck, adults too) and the idea of making everything fair, even, and the same is a tempting thought. I think by showing how different life would be and how things we take for granted would be taken from us can serve as a real eye-opener. If you want sameness, then you have this whole cascade of effects. No books is one of them.


A turning point for Jonas is when he watches his father release a newborn. As father inserts the needle into the soft spot in the head, Jonas realizes that his father is killing it. Why do you suppose they always released one of a set of identical twins when they celebrate sameness?

JEAN... Because people would confuse the two and cause them embarrassment and other feelings.

JEMI... I think they would regard twins as an aberration. They don't want anything outside of the usual pattern.


The Giver and Jonas plan for Jonas’s escape to find the Elsewhere they both are sure exists. He lies to his parents and they lie to him the night before this is to take place, but then the plan goes awry when Jonas finds out that the child, Gabe, is set to be “released” the next morning. He leaves that very night and takes Gabe with him. Herein lies the biggest question for me. As the landscape changes and Jonas starts to see wildlife and birds and then rain for the first time and then snow, does he or does he not really get to a better place where there is love and music and people waiting? With the special knowledge deep inside him he finds the waiting sled he’s dreamed about and starts down the hill to reach those waiting for him. Or does he? Is Jonas only reliving the memory imparted to him by The Giver? Is the sled real or is he simply hallucinating as he falls into unconsciousness?

JEAN... I don't know. That's the beauty of the ending. You can imagine that he has escaped and found a family. Possibly even people he 'knows' or is related to. Maybe there is a higher order at work. Or maybe he passes out. Maybe he freezes. Maybe he's caught and released. It is a bit fishy that this is a memory that he is reliving. Unless The Giver has memories of the future that are to be lived/fulfilled and those to be avoided/unfulfilled.

JEMI... I love this ending - and my students almost always hate it! They want a cut and dried answer. They want to know - and they want to know NOW!!! I love the "what if' aspect of it. If you haven't done so, you must read Gathering Blue, then The Messenger. Although I didn't find the 3rd one as strong and more than a little weird, it's interesting to watch where Lowry takes us.

In the end, what answered this question for me was when the word "baby" is used for the first time...when Jonas becomes aware that the people at the bottom of the hill are waiting, not just for him, but for the baby too.

JEMI... Yes, it's a powerful image. I don't know if most people catch it. Many of Lowry's messages are hidden in nuances of her writing. She is a master!

JEAN... What does it answer for you?

I think it tells me that there is an Elsewhere and Jonas and the baby find it. I think this is what Lowry herself believes.

The book received awards for Best Book for Young Adults and Notable Book for Children, yet as an adult I enjoyed it, so it has a wide range of appeal. I was interested, Jemi, in how your students received it. Wow….there’s an unintended pun.

JEMI... LOL :) My students can't wait for me to read more. We are just past the point where Jonas learns of war. Complete and utter silence in the room when I read that part! Students generally don't like the book right away. Most of them would probably put it down if they were reading it alone. Older, more mature students might continue - they'd have to be strong readers. It entices them slowly with its bizarre society. They can't understand why anyone would want to live like that. They tend to get more interested during the ceremonies. There is limited discussion during the first few days when I read. Now, they groan when I stop, but keep talking about it during lunch and recess. It's very powerful. I think it's great for kids 10 and up - mostly if someone reads to them for the younger kids. Kids of this age are obsessed with fairness. My very first talk of the year is about how equal is not fair, and fair is not equal. By this point in the year, they are beginning to understand it. This book really helps them make connections and grow as people.
I also get caught up and can ramble on when I'm passionate about something. I am passionate about this book and its themes. Hopefully I didn't bore you to tears :)

On the contrary, this discussion has given me a deeper understanding of the book and all its subtleties. I want to thank you both for joining me in this conversation. I love talking about serious books and their hidden meanings, and I look forward to future discussions about other banned and challenged books on your respective blogs.

And to all my readers, thanks for staying with us during this indepth discussion. Now do yourselves a favor and check out Jemi's blog here and Jean's here.

The Colors of Standard Time

Everyone writes about the sky. But this morning it seems particularly beautiful. Maybe because the sun is up at 7am as it should be. Maybe because there were traces of pink behind the silo on the hill when I first got up, ribbons of amethyst between the granary and the milkhouse and light reflecting off the steel beams connecting the grain bins . . . on the hill. We live on the downward slope and the old farmstead rests on a hill, as it should. When my ancestors walked in from Detroit one hundred and eighty years ago they were clever enough to select the high spots. Our ancestors had enough sense to know you shouldn’t build a house in a floodplain or in a wetland. But see how I wander? About the sunrise. Yes, even as I type the colors fade and the show is over. And now I’m typing through sunspots on the page because I had to check on the sun’s progress. What dummy looks directly at the sun, even in its diminished state? I’ve noticed it doesn’t come up over the barn as it was, even a month ago, shining through my kitchen window and directly across my laptop to blind me. Sure I could move, but I like routine when it comes to writing, and I’m a squinter. (Farmers squint and so do writers.) Now the sun rises towards the south, and now I can type in the early hours without squinting.

I love early morning and if I didn’t have that other tedious job, I could write all day now that the garden is going to sleep. I'd participate in NaNnoWriMo. A 50,000 word novel in one month? Shoot, that ain't nuthin! But one has to “earn” a living. Cathy Essinger, the creative writing teacher who set me on the path to novels, once told me that phrase had always irritated the hell out of her. “Why should we have to earn a living?” she asked in the car when we were coming back from a poetry reading, after I told her I couldn’t enroll for the fall quarter because I had to go back to work fulltime. "As if we weren’t born on this earth to Live." It’s a shame not to use our God given talent and when the rules of society interfere with people doing what they were born to do, that society is in trouble. As Ernest Hemingway said, “I can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write, I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.”

Here's an update on our outdoor wood furnace experiment. It was installed a week ago and looks like a cute little Hansel and Gretel house with a ten foot high smoke stack. The prevailing winds are from the West so we situated it just to the north of the house so the folks won’t get wood smoke in their bedroom window. The boiler automatically maintains a temperature between 180 and 190 degrees. The damper is controlled by a magnet and when the temperature falls to 180 it automatically opens. All we have to do is keep wood in it (no splitting because of the large capacity) and if it’s full, it’ll burn for 36 hours. It heats the old farm house and at 89 years of age, Mom and Dad like heat. It also heats their hot water. It’ll heat our greenhouse if we ever get the plastic on. Oct. was a miserable, rainy, cold month and slowed progress in many areas. We’ve already had more sunshine in November than we had in the last two weeks of October! Cleaning up the garden last week, pulling the last of the beets and cutting the last of the cabbage, I caught an occasional whiff of wood smoke. It warmed me in a way that is hard to explain,as if the smell of buring wood sent signals of perceived warmth to my brain, the way the smell of freshly cut hay triggers a rush of childhood memories. They say that memories are triggered more by the sense of smell than by any other sense. Is there a certain smell that triggers memory for you?

Memory

Do you believe that robins return to the same location year after year? Last year we had a robin’s nest in an old arborvitae beside the front of the house. We dug the tree out mid-summer because it was scraggly and unsightly. We have yet to replace it with something new, so the front of the house is bare. This morning a robin is building a nest on top of a post tucked in beside a beam under the overhang on the porch roof. The activity is in direct view of my writer’s window, so I shall be able to keep track of her progress. Or is it a he? I know the male helps sit on the eggs. Does he help build the nest as well? I hope this spot offers protection and I’m sorry we took down her tree. My grandma used to shoo the sparrows off her front porch and knock down the pesky bird’s nests. But I think she would like my robin.

I wish I could spend all day exploring serious themes in handsome prose while watching the robins. But I'm in the throes of query letter angst...to lead with a hook or to avoid the hook. Or to hang oneself by the neck from a post with a rope until dead.

Just kidding.