a salary of one's own

WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #9

I SAT IN MY CAR LOOKING OUT THROUGH the dust-covered, cracked windshield at a small, ground-floor corner office for half an hour last Thursday afternoon. Rosehips hung like bright cherries to their thorny brown stalks. The flowers would be profuse, and the early summer breeze would catch up their perfume and wrap it ‘round my head like an intoxicating wreath as I sat at my desk inside.

But I was not inside, not yet. I held the lease in my hands turning the papers, reading every word, initialing the bottom of every page, stalling. I had just been to the bank, moved my savings to my checking, pulled another chunk from my business account. There it was, waiting, ready for me to sign the check over. But once the deposit, insurance, utilities, T1 access, and signage was paid, I would be left with nothing. No extra for any emergency. Nothing if my car radiator cracked. Nothing if I broke my hand and couldn’t use my mouse. Nothing if my current design job was cancelled. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I would have to make business happen quickly, and I had just come from a meeting where I lost the very advertising account I had hoped would see me through spring. To top it off, I had turned down a job offer the day before—too little money, too much time.

I had walked through the sunny office twice now. The floors were warm tan poured concrete. The door to the outside blew in crackling leaves. The sun out the southwest windows was tempered into butter by the soft accordion blinds. I had sketched the floor plan no less than five times. I could imagine myself designing and writing inside that office so easily, that when I stood up from my desk, I was surprised to find myself back in the corner of my bedroom, laundry piled on the edge of the bed.

How can you imagine something so strongly and then let go of it? It isn’t like me to consider things thoughtfully; I rush ahead, think about my actions later. I’m impulsive, determined, charging through barriers. But here I was, sitting in my car, having promised the leasing agent I would be by with lease in hand this afternoon. I hesitated, waiting for a sign, for someone to call on my cell phone, turn things around, make it absolutely necessary for me to make this step, to start my business, give it a home and a place my writing could share.

Everyone talks about Virginia Woolf’s quote, that a woman needs a room of her own to write. What she actually said was, “. . . a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” (Italics my emphasis.) She looks into her purse at lunch and sees a ten-shilling note, remarking that when the letter of her inheritance and the right for women to vote came at nearly the same time, she considered the money the more important of the two. A woman cannot spend the time to think if she has to spend it worrying about how she’s going to feed herself and her family.

I got to the last page of the lease, and listened to a skate boarder slowly rolling down a long incline, the wheels clacking at every sidewalk seam. I let myself think, What if I didn’t sign the lease? What if I wasn’t sitting inside this weekend, looking out those tall windows? What would I be doing instead?

The answer is that I would have another month to write. Another month’s worth of bills already paid for. Another month of freedom.

I put the car in reverse and drove away.

one day

WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #8

SOMEONE ONCE ASKED ME, How would you describe your ideal day? Years ago I knew the answer immediately: write in the morning and garden in the afternoon. That simple. I have not changed my answer in years, though these days I am asking the question in earnest.

In fact, my new, not-yet-implemented schedule looks like this:

5:30 – 6:30 am: Up. Walk. Write.
6:30 – 7:00 am: Get Asher to Bus.
7:00 – 8:00 am: Shower. Pack up computer.
8:00 – 9:00 am: Drive Colin to school. Stop for muffins and coffee. Get to office.
9:00 – 10:00 am: Work on personal business.
10:00 – 3:00 pm: Work for money.
3:00 – 4:30 pm: My writing life.
4:30 – 5:30 pm: Appreciating natural beauty.
5:30 – 6:00 pm: Get home.
6:00 – 9:00 pm: Family time.
9:00 – 10:00 pm: Read, computer games, budget.
10:00 pm: Bed.

There’s no lunch break in there; power bars and vitamin waters at the desk will have to do. There’s no office yet to put the desk in, but this is a work in progress. I have not yet stopped working at 3 pm and the last time I went to bed at 10:00 was because I was up ‘til four the night before. But I do get to do things that fit into my writing life: sending off a non-fiction piece, brainstorming more agents, contacting a possible article source. And appreciating natural beauty can be anything from hiking in the hills to picking up the blowing trash in the back yard.

I made one small step today; I stopped working on my client’s posters at 6:00 pm, even though I could have done more for tomorrow’s meeting. Even though I was messing with gorgeous images of white cone flowers, creeping thyme and weeping winter jasmine. The trick is in understanding there is always more work to do, but not always time to write. One day, I hope to be doing a whole lot less. Like just writing and gardening.

wind at my back

WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #7

THE WIND HITS MY BACK fiercely as I begin to walk west. My jeans feel like the thinnest cotton against the backs of my legs and I know that the biting cold will be stinging my face when I make the eventual turn toward home. I give myself the option to turn around and not walk today, but moving forward—inertia—is easier than backtracking.

FedEx returned a manuscript today, the first rejection of the year. I immediately did what every writing magazine, consultant, or online publishing guideline tells you to do: I noted the return, read the nice letter, and filed the papers away, making the manuscript ready for its next outing. But I still felt hollow inside. It was what the nice agent wrote: “I just didn’t fall in love with it.”

Of course she said some good things, too, that I must continue on and I would find the right person to work with, she was sure. I am sure, too. I have to find the person who would read the first line of DIZZY SUSHI—The first thing I saw in Japan was a corpse.—and fall head over heels in love, love, love. It will have to be some kind of Buddhist, don’t you think?

Until that day, I continue to walk in the cold wind, now turning directly into such a force that I have to breathe with my mouth open and my head bent down to my chest. Until that day, I will keep sending out the manuscript, putting one foot in front of the other, doing all the things that come crowding into my life.

So I thought it would be a good time to take inventory of my accomplishments, record some major and not-so-major events since I finished my regular, 50-hour-plus work week last November 11th (93 days ago) and decided to start focusing more on my writing:

• Wrote a 1500-word birth story
• Finished a 104,000 word travel story (DIZZY SUSHI)
• Sent query letters to one publisher and one agent
• Sent the manuscript of DIZZY SUSHI to two agents
• Had the manuscript returned from one agent
• Submitted one nonfiction story online
• Started a 16-week marketing class
• Applied for 26 jobs; interviewed for one; called back for one
• Applied for Unemployment benefits and received them
• Applied for Medicaid and have not received it
• Fractured my foot
• Caught the flu
• Suffered a sinus infection
• Started a blog
• Bought 8 books
• Read 9 books
• Reached Level 15 in Neverwinter Nights (5 Bard, 5 Wizard, 5 Rogue)
• Made an FBI Look-Alike logo in 16 hours for a feature film
• Gave my husband the bills to do after ten years of doing them
• Searched for my first lover’s photographs on the internet
• Filed paperwork for my own design company
• Started meetings for a non-profit design company
• Attended one night of theatre
• Started a carrot patch
• Made three bird baths which I water daily
• Taught my daughter to drive
• Taught myself GoLive and finished my website
• Registered six URLs
• Renewed six URLs
• Lost one really good URL
• Increased traffic to my website from 5 unique visits in December to 150 in January
• Called one of my senators
• Emailed one congressman
• Signed one online petition
• Called the governor’s office once
• Removed my name from every Democratic email newsletter I ever subscribed to
• Became a member of NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals)
• Scored 50% on the Ultimate Photoshop Quiz (http://www.photoshopuser.com/quiz/)
• Made glorious love to my husband not nearly often enough
• Remembered only seven dreams
• Consulted the I Ching only once
• Walked the dunes at White Sands with my daughter
• Watched a Stealth Bomber land
• Celebrated my youngest son’s 9th birthday
• Wrote 300 pages in my journal
• Wrote 7 Weekly Writer’s Paths
• Went for a walk nearly every day

distracted muse

WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #6

I HAVE AN INSISTENT MUSE. She is as demanding as a small child and mollified almost as easily. But that is because I have not betrayed her or lied to her. When I tell her I will write, I do. When I explain that walking and thinking are as much as writing, she listens. She likes to change her mask to create new attention—becoming a handsome actor, tricking me into listening with a fresh ear. But she has a consistent, intense, barely controlled, positive energy that is hard to disguise.

I drove east of Santa Fe this week to take an important walk on a little trail in Cañoncito. I have walked this trail in the past when I’ve had to make large decisions, and I was looking forward to an hour of silence.

On a side road, over narrow-gauge tracks, the Mendelssohn symphony on the radio went fuzzy and gave out altogether when the road turned to dirt as I downshifted the truck over the gravelly washboard.

It happened then: my muse stopped being patient and picked up where I’d left off over a year ago on my second book. Sarah said this would happen; as soon as DIZZY SUSHI was finished and on its way to agents I would have a new shot of energy. My muse began an entirely new scene with two of my characters without me, as it were. They just started talking, and the narrative voice describing the setting was like a low base line in the background. Meanwhile, the editor part of me immediately began repeating phrases, something I have trained it to do in crises situations when I cannot put my hand on a pen and scratch out thoughts on paper.

By the time I had arrived at the trailhead I had convinced my muse to relax and wait until I was back at my computer. She barely agreed. As I started down the trail, I suggested naming Newton’s laws of physics. I bet she couldn’t do it. Here’s what she came up with.

Law #1: Inertia. A rubber ball in its package at Toys R Us is at rest until a little boy comes along and begs his mom to buy it.

Law #2: The Application of Force. At home, the boy tears open the package and throws the ball hard against the linoleum floor in the kitchen and it bounces up into the air.

Law #3: Gravity pulls it back to earth.

Law #4: Degradation. The ball loses its momentum and rolls under the refrigerator where not even the cat can get it. Which brings us back to Law #1: Inertia.

Do you remember Newton’s Laws without referring back to his 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy? I had to look them up when I got home.

Imagine the last paragraph of today’s blog upside down to see how close my muse remembered Newton’s laws of physics. And when we got home, I did type three sentences into a new file to remind me of the scene begun in Cañoncito. She’s been OK with this, but I must feed her more regularly.



#1: The Law of Inertia. 1 point for muse.

#2: Force and Acceleration. Another point for muse, though she left out the simple quantitative rate of change: velocity is directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass.

#3: My distracted muse considered only the earth’s gravity on the bouncing ball and again not the messy calculation: R (F = G(m1 m2)/R2). ½ point for muse. Technically, gravity isn’t a law of motion, but a law unto itself.

#4: Equal and opposite reaction: my muse missed this entirely. “Degradation” doesn’t quite explain it. 0 points for muse.

2.5 out of 4. How did you do?

Newtonian Physics Link: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/laws_of_motion.html