What It Feels Like To Finish A Book

I've been slow to get my blog done, because I gave myself a pretty stringent deadline.

Book-finishes are so scary, I just twitch.

But so few people actually get to do this, to feel this feeling, I thought I'd try to explain what writing a book means, what it takes to get through the rough stuff, and finally to mold this mass/mess of words into something that resembles a finished work, a book.

I get a little whacked out writing books.  It's like that for every writer.  But it can get really weird for those who try to keep up with family, work, church, community.  I never did buy the starving artist premise or that we should suffer for our art.  Sometimes we do, but it's not the point.  We all try for riveting stories or a thought that might be original.  When I decided, more than a decade ago now, to try to enter the market place, I read a book whose author suggested that writers need to be about more than just showing off.  Your success would depend upon your usefulness, your ability to create beauty, and your authenticity.
That seemed a tall order.

When I left my job almost 3 years ago, I was all right with retirement for about three months. You do get really tired in the last stages of your fully-employed  life.  But it didn't take long to recognize that the money wasn't good, that I needed something to think about, that I was really confused about what that might be.  I'd published a book, with Conari press, they were interested in another.  But life, Holy Mackerel, life.  There were some walloping distractions,  My friends Rita and Judith, who've published books in the last year will testify to exactly how long it takes sometimes and how big those distractions can be. (Twenty-two years for Rita; a little less for Judy.)   I won't belabor what the distractions were, but jeesh!

I had three sort-of finished essays, but they really had no bearing or relationship to each other. They were built around events that had an extraordinary effect on my life. I didn't have a theme or a thesis (you're supposed to start out with those—failed at that). I was pretty clear about who the audience was, but there was a universe of options on what those folks might want to read.  A big, fat mess, that's what I had.

I was going through training to become a lay-minister at my church and Pastor Duane asked me if I had any concerns that he could pray about.  I told  him I had a lot of confusion and distraction about my writing projects, was basically lost, at sea. I'd been in that stuck place for 8 or 10 years, so you can see how it was a problem. Really,  I could have used a little bit of guidance there.  Within a week, I had it sorted.  Something somebody said to me at a workshop rang a bell and there it was.  The connecting theme of the book, the reason's for it's being, that made sense of the three essays.  It was the thing that made the project useful, that made it beautiful, that made it authentic.

So the middles.  I wrote 2 or 3 hours a day, 4 days a week, as the stories laid themselves out at my feet, as other books and the quotes reaffirmed what I was thinking about and why it was important.  Of course, I made a whole big bunch of mistakes.  Of course, other people have other ideas and experience.  Of course, a thousand times, of course.  A friend, Tim, wanted me to write more about men this time round.  Okay.

About a month ago, I realized I'd reached the dawdling stage of things.  I was close to the finish, there's wasn't much left, but I was stuck.  I decided to unstick myself and work really hard to finish—three weeks. That's what I gave myself.  I'm finishing up this week end.  What's left? A few paragraphs.  I also have some amount of editing and writing the book proposal, which I've already been working on.  Another week, maybe two on those things.

So, what am I feeling?  I'm having an out-of-body experience.  There is such joy, mingled with fear about a thousand things, none of which will stop me or slow me down, at this point.  Yet it's so tenuous, so tender.  My brother asked me if I would feel really grand about what I had done.  Yes, but it's tempered by the fact that a writer has to stay humble in the face of the next work.  Cockiness is the kiss of death.  I'm blessed by a dazzling light, realized, flashes of pride, and whatever it is about art or literature that takes the knees.  I'm there.


The little drawing is, of course, from Charles Schultz, our beloved Snoopy, whose lessons about writing proved to be truer than true.  Thanks.

We're Looking like Popcorn

Every once in awhile, my pretty little city turns out to be drop-dead gorgeous.  Like now.

I live in an older end of town and in mid-spring, all of our white blooming trees are in full bloom.  There are banks of those trees, around our local hospital, out by the mall, a couple of parks.  I'm simply breathless with it.  We're drenched in full blown beauty.  OK, OK I'll forgive the month in winter when we don't get above freezing, and the late summer when we don't get under one hundred.  

This is worth it, and we look, for all the world, like masses of pop corn.  Sweet and fun both.


So, our first  Big Trouble Support Group, the one we're working on in church, so that people who find themselves with diagnosis like Parkinson's, cancer, Hep C, et al.  You know, people in real trouble.

I don't know if this will hold, but I was a little afraid that people would be the teensiest bit unstable:  they might talk too long, or be a little bit unrealistic, or socially out of it.  Well, the people who came last night had all of that burned out of them, and they were the most pragmatic, kind, and considerate people you could imagine.  Real live troubles bring out the pragmatists, the humanists, the humility in all of us, I'm guessing.  
'
They were people who needed our attention and our prayers.  People need love and support in the best of times,  in trouble,  well. . .    They want to come back.  Here's my hubris, I sometimes think I know what they are thinking.  That almost always fools me.  People often need something entirely different.  So I'm always the learner.  There were three other women of faith, Maryanne, Audrey, and Debbie.  Serious women doing serious things.  Exactly whom we all needed.  

This feels like the center point of Christianity: helping people who need help.  There is no more daunting task, nor a more sacred space. 


News on the cancer fighting front:  Gail is on her last week of radiation,  only 2 or 3 treatments left.  She looks great.  She kept her hair, her energy is marginal, her stamina is profound.  Julie, who is a little over  7 years out, still has a good scan.  Had one last week.  Big smile here.

That Deep Sigh

Spring foods.  Asparagus.  Strawberries.  Tiny green peas.

When the temperature hits 60 degrees, we're looking for cafes where you can have your coffee outside and veggie dishes become important.   I don't survive winter without beef or pork anymore, but the lightness and tastiness of veggies come to prominence in March and April.   The flavors are magnificent.

But they just don't taste the same when they are out of season.

Here is one of my favorite spring dishes:

You'll need a package of raviolis, cheese maybe.  Cook those.



While those are on the stove,  melt a tablespoon of butter in a heavy skillet.  Add a garlic clove, some red chopped onion, let those brown.  Add 2-3 pounds of fresh veg:  this time of year it's asparagus, green peas (sugar snaps are fine),  small mushrooms.   Cut them into bit sized pieces. Later in the summer it's green beans, halved cherry tomatoes, corn.  Cook them until they are just tender.  Add salt and pepper.

Put the raviolis on a platter, add a little butter, and then layer the veggies on top, and top that with a little squeeze of lemon.  Add some goat cheese if you want a little more protein.  Add some fresh basil leaves and/or some fresh parsley to top.

It is so good.  Serve it with a fresh green salad with radishes and green onion, maybe some cucumber, and then finish with a strawberry pie.  There's that deep sigh.  Promise.



These notes are from Gail.  She's on the downhill side of her treatments.  It's been tough,  but we keeping our fingers crossed, our toes on high alert, and our prayers on active status.

Not my best week, but still on home stretch.  Glass remains half full.  I have found the perfect use for the knit shawl from your church.....A sarong!!!  It works perfectly when I'm up and in the house so I do not creat a spectacle for people walking by or coming unexpectedly to the door.  Perfect!

Just 'Cause It's Spring

I was just thinking of all the babies that have crossed my life:  bunnies, chicks, ducklings, piglets, calves, lambie-pies, kids of the pigmy goat variety, puppies, kitties, kidlets.  Julie and Tim are getting a little bit of joy, posing as a tiny furball, fueled by kisses and snuggles, a little-bitty lovey puppy.  I am so jealous.

I'd think about it more, but Obi wouldn't tolerate it.  He's been known to bat things around the house that really shouldn't be batted.

Tim, our ex-corrections officer, is particularly a soft touch.  I expect him to go down in a whoosh.  Julie will be steady and patient in teaching little Bear where he can pee and where he can't, what he can gnaw on and and what's off limits. One lucky puppy.

I grew up on a farm, and that 40-acres attracted animals like sun to daffies.  Everybody wandered through.  My brother and I watered the calves when we were in elementary school.  We'd load up the buckets and then slosh the water around the corner to the water pans.  They would drink so much they resembled little hide-bound barrels.  I must have thought they were very thirsty,  but I'm guessing now that they just liked the attention from other living things.  We'd pet the calves and play with them, they would suck on our fingers (it was the way we taught them how to find the water pans).

They were always ready for a love, a pat, a kiss on the top of their heads.  Makes you wonder how they see people, little people.

We raised a little lamb—in the house, for a couple of weeks.  It was born in early February, so it was still freezing out at nights, hence the baby in the house.  Needless to say it was really socialized and played with us as much as we played with it.  It was really happy to escape it's box and the house it was in when it got old enough to have it's own pen.  My brother teased it unmercifully, and that didn't have a good outcome.  We let it out to play one day, and intent on revenge, our sheep chased my brother to our house, a football field-length of beating feet,  promising mayhem.

You gotta be good to everybody.

What I've Been Up To

I've been in a conference for part of this week, listening for what radical, vibrant churches are doing these days from far-flung reaches of this country.  In most Methodist churches there are about 50 families, singing the same songs they've sung for generations, trying to do their best with what they know now.  They are comforting and sustaining for  lots of families, but, but, but...

My own church is vibrant, between 1,500 and 2,500 people visit each Sunday.  We have knock-your-socks off music.  It's a beautiful cathedral in a downtown Northwestern city.  We are moving, more and more, toward missions and community service.  On the walls outside the kitchen are photos of our Mexico trips, our malarial campaign, our Habitat builds, the trip to Oklahoma.  We're busy.

But in some communities new things, new thinking are required to meet the needs and expectations of people from a multiplicity of cultures, from spiritual needs that arise out of a very, very complicated neighborhood.  Ours, maybe.

Things are a poppin'.

I met three people who are shaping our quiet little Methodists in ways that I'd never dreamed.  Rudy who works in Houston, Texas, is a global humanitarian, has the high, high cool factor of a beat poet, presented his material with the poetic cadences, silences, and understandings of high art.  He took a tiny, beat-up little neighborhood church, along with his beautiful wife, a spiritual powerhouse her-own-self, pulled out the pews.  Everything in the church was a memorial (the pews, the walls, the gardens).   They needed to start all over again—with life.  The congregation, which had been six little old white ladies (like moi) now has grown into a collection of 3,000 souls who experience a radical love for each other.  He's the guy with the luminosity of the saints.

Dottie had a church implode on her.  Her church was ruled by the iron fist of a woman who bullied everybody in sight, not particularly liking her racially-economically divergent neighbors either.  When it came time to open up the eyes of the church to the multi-racial and economic communities around them; there was massive resistance. The fight made national news, not just Phoenix news.  Dottie got death threats.
Now Dottie is an introvert and that kind of attention nearly drowned her.  What started the fight?  Providing food for the homeless from a neighboring neighborhood.  It was those homeless folks who provided protection for Dottie during those hard months.  Finally, in a showdown, the bully was forced to leave.  And the church began to find it's footing, and then to flourish, with dozens of programs that actively help struggling families in Phoenix, which in this economy was nearly everybody.

Then there was Jason, a techie artist who was helping churches "talk" to his own generation, a thing we haven't been very good at.  He's teaching people how to use story, metaphor, and images to present a compelling message.  The message is already all right, but how we were talking to young people is dismal and loses relevancy by the second.  He was joyously wry and funny, brought a lightness and a thoughtfulness.  Turns out we can lose our churchy, preachy ways and focus on the engaging and the compelling.  Jason is incredibly bright, humble guy who just wants to help us become the teensiest bit relevant in our culture.  He will bear watching.

This little tree is in the basement, our children's wing. The image above is from a little formal chapel on the main floor. Those lillies were supposed to reflect on the loveliness of spring, but they look like a funeral bouquet to me. This morning I'm feeling like we need to be heading more toward this beautiful little tree of life. I'm thinking Jason would point me in that direction.

Lastly, there was Duane, my own pastor, whose history with big trouble goes deep and long.  Multiple cancer deaths, permanent grief.  Yet there was also this rising toward life present within him, however messy that might be.  For people like me, who have lived through their own miswhacks and family wobbles, you don't entirely take people seriously who haven't lived through trouble—and come out the other side with some amount of grace and love for other people.  Which seems to me to be the point.  Not everything is kind or fair for everybody.  What saves people, Pastor Duane believes, are communities of believers working together to serve and love everybody.  The more creative, the more energetic, the more relevant, the better.

We will bear watching as well.

Note on Miss Gail.  We got to see her last weekend.  She was substantially thinner, her hair is shorter, she could come and meet us for coffee.  I showed her the hat I'm working on.  Her spirits are good, although she was more subdued.  She's half way through her treatment protocols, and the first half was rough. The next half will be harder, because she has been through the wars already.   She didn't complain, but I know with the doses of radiation and chemo she's getting, it has to be difficult.  I respect that.  She told us that she would be tough to reach these next two weeks.   Too tired; too sick; too monumental a trip.  Really, really hard.  If you are the praying sort, these next two weeks would be the time.

Here's what she said this morning:  Spring seems to be in the air, at the very least, I'll get out in the yard and sit, enjoy the sunshine, listen to the birds, check the flower beds for signs of rebirth, and make plans for which vegetables get planted this year.  Almost time to put in sugar snap peas. 

Bits and Pieces

It's closing in on spring.  Sixty degrees today. Tulip time.  I see so many people across the continent still shoveling their way out of winter.  Grateful.

So my church had a six week course on community and community building.  I had  a problem with it, mainly because the guy on the video was the teensiest bit dogmatic and demanding.  I wasn't the only one with abrasions and contusions over  him.  Those of us who had left the church—for decades because of leaders like that—felt it viscerally.  Some of us slid away from that.   (Here's an aside:  my sweet, accepting Methodist church is traditional but open; thoughtful and brilliant.  Those kinds of demands are never made.)

About 450 of us stayed however.  And here's what happened.  We broke into small groups and each group was directed to come up with a community service project.  Some of them could be inside the church, but we were supposed to help people on the outside of our church as well.  My group, with two other groups, wanted to throw a housewarming party for the family moving into a Habitat for Humanity house, our church helped frame last spring.  One group wants to do a kitchen shower, the other group wants to provide the tools for keeping the house in good shape.  Love that. Another group wanted to host a bingo party at the VA.  Another is raising money to buy Bibles for the 3rd graders at the Wilder church, some of them in Spanish.  There are others, equally brilliant,  motivated by love for  the peeps in our community.   That feels wonderful.  Hope we do a project like this next year too.

So, some of my readers come from the Ukraine.  Praying for everybody's safety and the ability for that country to find a leader who understands freedom and governmental structures that are reasonable for those populations.

Update on Gail:  End of the second week.  She's had big doses of chemo and radiation.  Already her mouth is sore and there is that bone tired exhaustion.  None of that is a surprise.  Incredibly difficult, just the same.  Thinking about her around the clock.

Spring seems to be the time for big changes.  I'm praying that those are good for everybody.

Update on Gail's Week

I got to talk to Gail yesterday. She was looking for a ride home.

Scheduling.  It was the bain of our existence for awhile.  I remembered when Julie was so sick, one of my worst afternoons was waiting and waiting and waiting.  I'd had a biopsy myself when I was in my twenties, so I expected . . .  about half an hour.  This one took four and a half hours.  I was frantic.

It seemed like all of those first time experiences were all day ordeals.  I think that's what was happening with Gail.

If there is something you need to know, it's this.  Always ask how long the procedure will take, so you know, more or less, what to expect.  It's the difference between a relatively peaceful wait and gobsmacked craziness.

The timing was off, however, so Gail wound up driving herself.

This week she's had a hard time with nausea.  Boy, howdy.  It was better later in the week, enough that she could drive.

So, I'm reloading my  knitting needles, getting ready to do the chemo hat Gail will need.  Here's what I learned about that.  You need to make a hat in colors that are colors your sick one would wear normally.  No screaming yellow or titanium pink for Gail.  Nor power red or Greek azure.  Not her.  I'm going for a soft green, because Marty gave me a lovely alpaca in that color, so I'm using that.  A double gift.  Must be blessed if two of us are in on the gift.  Also, you don't want anything scratchy.  Like sheep's wool, particularly.

 Alpaca is wonderfully soft  and warm for those sweet bald heads.  I found them to be immensely endearing.  An evidence of courage.

And, this week, I'm going to do a chicken noodle soup worthy of it's name.  Here's the recipe:

5-6 Chicken thighs.
Salt and pepper.

Roast those in the oven, 350 degrees, skin on, for about 45 - 50 minutes.  Let them cool.  Remove the skin and debone the thighs.  Cut the meat in bit sized pieces.  Set aside.  The roasting process keeps the meat moist and intact.  And the fat levels are lower too.  If there is a lot of ooey-gooey chicken goodness in the bottom of the pan, you can skim off the fat and put that into the soup when you add the stock.

Brown 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves of  sliced garlic, in about a tablespoon of oil.  When it is just translucent, add 2-3 peeled and sliced carrots, 2-3 stalks of celery that are sliced.  Slice up a small box of mushrooms, wash them quickly and add them to the vegie mixture.  Let them settle about 10 minutes.

Add 2 boxes of a decent-quality, lower-salt chicken stock.  Let the vegies cook away for about half an hour.  The body will need a little salt.  It can help quiet a queasy tummy, but go easy on adding more.

Add one frozen package of noodles.  (Don't thaw those out before you put them in the broth.  You'll have an awful mess.)  Add the chicken.  Cook all of that together at a simmer, for another 15 minutes.

The other flat, ruffly noodles are fine too, but I like the noodles that look like they are homemade.

You can add half a cup of chopped parsley or 3-4 tablespoons of the dried, and a little pepper.

You can put it in a quart mason job, so it can be transported easily, then warmed up in the microwave and used over the week.

Anything that's left over, you get to eat.

Sweet healing, my friends.  Week one is over and out.