Hello, Friends,

Just a note to wish you happy holidays and a bright new year.
I am taking a break from all things computer-y until then and, in the meantime, plan to enjoy lots of…

Picture Books in Winter
— Robert Louis Stevenson

So, don’t you think it’s kinda funny that I started this little series about two weeks ago — with an explicit promise to discuss how I manage my own process — but since then my process has been so unmanageable that I’ve never been able to make that post?

I’m hoping that most of you are thinking, "Yep. I feel your pain, sister."

But those of you who aren’t? 
Who have tidy little tick marks all over your to-do lists and bedtimes that are within the realm of reason?
Could you do me a favor and not mention it?

‘Cause part of how I manage my process is to reassure myself that I am not alone, that I have many companions on the bumpy, root-ridden, overgrown trails I’m trying to negotiate. A stubbed toe’s not so bad if a friend is there to laugh when I kick the tree that caused it. And if I can recognize that the utter sense of order and consistent clarity I think I see in other people’s work and lives is illusory — that we all step, step, step and sometimes misstep — it becomes evermore feasible for me to move forward myself, without crazy expectations but with a sense of hope.

So.
Number one on my list of "things I do to survive manage my process" is to sustain a sense of community.
Writing’s a lonely affair — solitary and mostly quiet, though some days I can listen to some kinds of music while I work.
It’s exceedingly comforting to know that I have my best gals, my husband and my sis, my writer chums and the voices in the blogosphere, to serve as soundingboards and stepping stones along the way.

Number two, I diversify.
While I understand the call to "write full time," I’ve always needed to sprawl and range a little bit.

So first-off, I had kids.
Well, okay, that had a little something to do with love, optimism and body clocks — I didn’t really give birth just to broaden my daily portfolio. But I do relish the work at their school and the planning of slumber parties and the reading aloud at bedtime. Partly because it’s all such luscious pleasure, for and with these amazing little people who happen to be my daughters, but also because of the perspective it offers me.

I cannot lose myself in the one tight room of my work.
Even if I sometimes want to.

And when I am in that room, I have my teaching and my blogging and my poetry and, always, more than one children’s book project going at all times. I do not want to know what would happen to my sanity or social standing if I woke up one day with nothing to do.

Next, I ensure a little immediate gratification.
No need to recount here the glacial pace that is publishing, particularly picture book publishing.
The amount of time that one might wait for a submission to be responded to or a contract to arrive or a manuscript to become a book.
Suffice it to say, longer than you might think.

I need, sometimes, to put stuff out there immediately, to declare something finished and even, on a good day, to realize connection that way.
To be received.

There are lots of ways to do this.
Writing letters to my grandparents used to do the trick.
Blogging is pretty darn satisfying, too…

Fourth, I continue to develop, explore and expand.
Honestly, if my process grew stagnant I would never sell a thing and, plus, I’d pull all my hair out.
Which would hurt, since it’s already so curly and tangly anyway.

In order to grow my craft I read. A lot.
And I go to conferences and retreats when I get the chance.
I absorb all that I can from other writers.
I practice new things.
I dare to suck.
And I teach.
Which, ironically or not, is what keeps me on my tippy-toes more than anything else.
Trying to answer questions honestly and with depth is a very good way to begin to embody those answers myself.

And finally, I have faith.
Bearing in mind that that word makes some folks a little nervous.

But honestly, it is my faith that there are more ideas where that one came from…
that I will find the right words in this deep, dark forest of choices…
that there are editors and librarians and teachers and parents and children waiting for those words…

It is my faith in all of those things that keeps me coming back to my desk again and again and again.

To write.
Which is really, if you shave all this other stuff away, the heart of the process.

This week I was supposed to run less than last week, which is a scary and unintuitive thing to do when you’re trying to build up mileage.

Tapering is about bolstering leg muscle power and blood content and otherwise revitalizing yourself for next week’s big run. The two weeks before the marathon, in fact, the longest recommended runs are 12 and 8 miles.
Yikes.

But taper I did.
And the upshot is realizing that 7 and 10 mile jaunts no longer freak me out.
Seven, dare I say, has become a walk in the park.

It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
Not unlike the moon that looked so momentuous to us just a couple of days ago
and is now dwindling in our eyes and judgement.

Mileage for the week: 24 miles
Longest run: 10
Grand total since I started training: 169

Quote for the week:
As far as the Moon is concerned, he is always full. — Nathaniel LeTonnerre

The other morning as I set out for an early morning run, I suddenly felt the glow of daylight on my shoulders.
I turned to face the moon, hugely swollen and sinking into the west like a well-lit ship.
Rocking ever so slightly on it’s bright bow.

Turns out it wasn’t even full yet.
Tonight it is, and closer to earth than its been in about 15 years.

It looks something like this, but don’t take my word for it.

Step outside and check it out.

In the meantime, or when you get back in, here’s what Ms. Dickinson has to say on the subject:

The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.

Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known.

Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!

And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.

Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue.

— Emily Dickinson

The universe her shoe.
Don’t you just love that line? 
So little and large, all at the same time.

Go wallow in the luster, friends.
Happy Friday…

The thing about a half marathon when you’re training for a marathon is that it becomes just another training run. And kind of a skimpy one at that, when you consider the 16, 18, 20 milers coming up in the next few weeks.

Still, up until this year, 13.1 was my ultimate goal, and the race I ran each January was a sign of success, in terms of intent and endurance.

So yesterday, as I was finishing the Decker Challenge (a halfer that just so handily fit into my training schedule), I consciously recalibrated my perspective for a minute or two and ramped it up to celebration mode.

Yes, I got to tick off another required workout.
Yes, this means I’ve finished 7 of 18 weeks of training.
Yes, I need new shoes and I need more hill training and I need to keep this up over the holidays.

Yes yes yes.
And … I ran a half marathon.

And this is where Marathon Monday and Process and Product meet.

Celebrating milestones and small successes is one of the best ways to sustain the energy of process.
The occasional splash of champagne in the midst of a long slog is a good idea

I celebrate when I finish a manuscript.
I celebrate when I send it to my agent.
I celebrate when she sends it out.

I often tell my students that even rejection letters are worthy of celebration, in that they indicate the manuscript is yours again — to burn, revise or send back out into the world, sealed with a kiss.

I celebrate it all, and I celebrate half marathons.

I think that you should, too.
Jump for joy…

Mileage for the week: 25 miles

Longest run: 13.1

Grand total since I started training: 145

Quote for the week:
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. — Stanislaw J. Lec

I’m lurching along in my exploration of process.
Have faith; it’s coalescing.

But today I don’t even have to be articulate about it because it’s Poetry Friday and I’ll let Alice Walker speak.

This poem hearkens back to my post on Tuesday when I talked about appreciating process, in part because every step of process is in the final product. The two are inextricable. What we make is what we’ve been through. The path is apparent in the place we reach.

How Poems are Made
— Alice Walker

Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.  

There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
Of the too full cup
And runs and hides
Its too full self
In shame. 

I gradually comprehend
How poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
Heart. 

I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
That season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
That crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made. 

There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.

"What do you do?" is sort of the quintessential American identity question.

The poser of the question is asking about your job, or career, with the presumption being that the answer will say a lot about you.
About your interests and passions and skills and values.
About who you really are.
Or at least about where you fall in the socioeconomic pecking order of our capitalist society.

What the person is not asking is "What do you do? Really. What is the practice and process of your daily life?"

Nope. That’d be way too much information.
Either way too perplexing or way too boring or way too scary.

I mean, let’s admit it right here and now.
Many of us don’t know what some of our best friends really do everyday.
Some of us are a little foggy on what our spouses do everyday.

Which is kinda too bad. Because to me, that’s really the interesting question.
I mean, yes, we may be able to capture a certain sort of biographical snapshot when someone says, "I’m a lawyer (or engineer or rock musician or rock climber or waitress or gumshoe or pharmacist or curator or crook)," but the really revealing question is, "How?"
 
How do you fulfill those roles? 
How do you feel fulfilling those roles? 
How do you manage the tasks associated with filling those roles? 
How do you think you’re doing in the scope of those roles?
How does that role fit with your life and your heart and who you really are?

It’s really that stuff — the practice and process of one’s daily life — that starts to tell us something real, I think.

For example, "I’m a writer" is an appropriate and expected answer to the quintessential American identity question.
But, I mean, big whoop.
Right?

Does that mean I’m good with words? 
Or that someone once told me I’m good with words? 
Or that I just believe myself to be good with words?

Does it mean I write newspaper articles or ad copy or computer manuals or pulp fiction?

Does it mean I like to be alone?

Does it mean I drink a lot of bourbon?

Does it mean I’m happy?
Or unhappy?

See what I’m getting at here?

So, really, I’m more interested in the process.
The ups and downs. The thrills. The doldrums.
The doubts and fears. The celebrations.
The pride. The shame.
The what you actually do everyday.

Me? My process has a terrifying amount to do with a wing and a prayer.
I am not a novelist (or rather I don’t think I’m a novelist) (or rather I’m not a novelist yet) so there are no 1,000-words-a-day parameters to keep me honest. 1,000 words might be two or three picture books, for godssake. In a day. I’m getting kind of faint just thinking about it.

Instead I have some secret Indiana Jonesish-type equation — some mysterious alchemy — of planned time, goals and deadlines combined with utter flexibility, receptiveness and riskiness. This is what makes my writing life work and, at the same time, is what nearly sends me to apply for jobs as a bank teller numerous times a year.

It’s all about working to manage that process so that I survive and my work thrives or vice versa or, sometimes, on the very best days, both together at the same time. Thriving, that is.

And I know I said I was going to talk about managing process today and instead this is just a long and wandery introduction, but that’s the way it works when you build utter flexibility into a system. So. Managing process tomorrow. I promise…

I interrupt my fledgling series on process to share my sadness as what is being called
Black Wednesday in the publishing world.

Hardly nothing nor nobody’s sacred, it seems.

You can read a little bit about what’s going on here and here and here, but the bottom line is that houses are hurting and, as a result, editors and authors and illustrators and designers and booksellers and the whole long string of us are hurting.

I have a personal, vested interest in Simon & Schuster, which got hit hard, but the truth is that there’s got to be an all-for-one mentality here.

Writers and readers, booklovers and bookmakers.

Let’s hope we can ride out this recession together, with words still valued and stories still standing — and the good people who have made words and stories their life work still around to bring them to life…

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a reliable blogger, but I’m jumping back in with a post that will be the first in a series exploring the horrors (and occasional gleam) of process (as it looks & feels to me).

We hear often, from the experts, that it’s all about the process.

The journey.
The gettin’ there.

Not just writing, but life, too.

This isn’t always easy to swallow.

We want to believe that there’s an endpoint that will make the fear and self-loathing and doubt and effort and second-guessing not just ‘worth it’ but ‘gone’.  There’s a self-protective desire to be knocked out for the tough stuff and wake me when it’s over. We want to skip ahead to product. To success. Fame and fortune. The finish line.

Or do we?

What’s occurred to me lately is that if I wish away process, I’m wishing away the better portion of my days.
Better, as in larger.
But also better. As in, more good.

Because really, is there anything more good than getting into the zone — working your way through the fear and self-loathing and doubt and effort and second-guessing, and getting into the zone? Logic disappears, logistics vanish, time suspends, fingers race. And somewhere in the midst of that dreamy, muse-driven floatiness your brain says, "I’m onto something here." That is pretty sweet.

I’m thinking specifically about writing, but really, isn’t there a mama zone and a runner’s zone and a teaching zone and a gardening zone and, well, you get the idea.

Isn’t there?

Which makes me think, "There are no short cuts to the finish line and thank god."

Plus, even those moments (which are many) that don’t qualify for dreamy, muse-driven or floaty, even those all feed who I am and what I do, such that not a single line of poetry or a story idea would have legs or hold water if I hadn’t done what I did to get there.

So, I no longer wish process away.
But I still try to manage it.
Because the arbitrary, unscheduled, unpredictable riskiness of the artistic process is something akin to tightrope walking.
I think.
Although I don’t know for sure, because I’m too scared to try. If you see what I mean.

So, how do I manage process so I can enjoy it a little and not just bite my nails and beg someone to institutionalize me? 
More on that tomorrow…

Things have been so crazy here that I’ve barely been keeping up with my minimum training schedule.
And I certainly haven’t been posting about it.
That said, I ran 13 miles yesterday so I’m still in the running.
So to speak.

Mileage for the week: 25 miles

Longest run: 13

Grand total since I started training: 120

High point: The annual Turkey Trot on Thursday. Nearly 12,000 of us kicked off Thanksgiving Day with a festive little jog through Austin.

Fun Fact: 77 Days ’til the marathon

Which sort of seems right around the corner when you take into account the holidays and all.
I am daunted when I think that what I ran yesterday is just half of what I’ll need to run in February.
But then I just put my nose down, lace up my shoes and try not to look too far forward.
Having a long view can be helpful when envisioning a big life, but so much of getting there is simply doing what needs to be done.
Right now.
Today.

Quote for the week:
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. — Thomas Carlyle