Celebrating Summer on Cape Cod

If you've never had to carry your largest fan onto the deck before attempting to sit outside, then you've never experienced the full force of a humid, Cape Cod summer. It's been brutal this year! The only way to escape the suffocating heat is to treat yourself to lunch in an air conditioned restaurant, followed by a movie for desert. At least that's how I choose to handle it.

Today's movie was Inception. It was amazing. I won't go into the intricacies of the multilevel story lines, nor rave too much about the brilliant casting choices, I'll just say that it was two and a half hours very well spent. The AC and stadium seating were mere cherries on a very delicious Sunday afternoon treat.

My sons couldn't discuss the movie with me on the way home because they were too busy contemplating what they'd just seen. I was told they'd need a few hours to "take it all in" before they could talk about it. That left me with my own thoughts. Which led me to firing up hoses to water my very thirsty gardens, and to the deck, which was still sweltering at 8pm tonight.

I recently bought myself a deck fountain for my birthday, so I'm currently bathing in the cool sounds of the lawn sprinklers and the water pouring into the half-barrel beside me. Thankfully, the fan is keeping the green heads and the no-see-ums at bay, or it would be impossible to stay out here for more than 3 seconds. The deck is one of my favorite places to sit in the summer, but with July running into August, I can count on one hand how often I've made it out here.

It's not just the heat and humidity keeping me from my new deck chairs that recline so much that I can watch the clouds dance across the sky. It's my crazy summer schedule that has me working 7 days a week, instead of the usual 5. My hopes of napping in my hammock, reading on my garden swing and writing at the table next to the chimenea are just that; hopes of time to slow down enough to celebrate summer before it's over.

How often have I walked through the front door with a firm plan to keep walking until I'm out the back door and in my garden? I don't recall a single day when I haven't held that dream. I typically make it three steps into the living room before picking up stray t-shirts, socks or yes, smelly undies off the floor, then it's into the kitchen to clear up breakfast dishes, or off to the bathroom to hang wet towels left straddling the shower stall. I'm not sure why teenagers have such a hard time cleaning up after themselves, but it doesn't take Inspector Morse to figure out who went where, what they ate and when they ate it.

Nor will this craziness last forever. Like the summer, my years hosting teenage boys are going much too fast. Three years from now my home will be nothing more than a stopping-off point in my sons' lives. I'm sure by then I will probably welcome their abandoned clothes, dirty dishes and damp towels.

My youngest son turned 15 last week so we had a beach bonfire party to celebrate. It was a wonderful combination of swimming, volley ball, pizza, s'mores and music blaring from an iLuv that was loud enough to clear the less adventurous souls from our party zone. On the way home, my eldest son announced that it was the best party he'd ever been to. That's saying something considering the fact that parents were present! I'd worked a full week and felt so tired that I could have fallen asleep in the trunk of my car, but his words made all the effort worth it. My younger son thanked me with a giant hug, which, coming from 15-year-old, is a miracle.

As the summer spins out of control with chaotic schedules and relentless demands for rides and sleepovers, I try to remember how fleeting the seasons are with these time-sucking teenage boys. I try to listen for the spaces between the noise. To find the moments I'll treasure long after they've moved on to their busy lives beyond these Cape Cod walls.

We followed today's movie with treats from Dairy Queen. I pretended that I thought it might cool us all down. My real motivation was to see, once again, that childish grin that always comes when you hand someone something you know they love.

Afterall, you can't have summer without ice cream!

Sunshine, Swans and Springtime!

Well it's finally here - the sound of the woodpecker that returns to my little corner of the Cape has replaced my alarm clock once again. It must be Spring.

The knocking of beak against bark begins as a distant tapping in late March, as the bird debugs my neighbors' trees. But by mid April, this beautiful creature has flown into my garden and announces itself with a jack-hammering on my chimney cap so loud that it makes the bedroom wall vibrate. A startling wake-up call that always makes me smile, once I've recovered from the hammering of my heart within my chest.

With spring come swans on the Herring River, sunrise peeping though my kitchen windows as I put the kettle on for tea, and those earthy smells of life pushing through the soil as we all greet another season of growth.

After many weeks of thinking up themes, gathering stories, editing and formatting pages, the Spring issue of CapeWomenOnline.com has been launched!

This is our 5th issue since I took on the Publisher's role and I am delighted with the growth of our little venture. We just added embedded video clips to some of the article pages, which add a whole new dimension to our storytelling, and we've joined the ranks of the Twitter and Facebook generation.

The T&F links are perplexing to me as I have to conquer my fear of yet another form of electronic communication. I barely get back here to update this blog - god knows how I'm going to add Tweeting and Facebook chat to my super busy world, but I am willing to give it a try.

I remember the very first time I went on the world wide web, as we used to call it back then.  I was standing in the back office of a restaurant I used to work at, watching an image of the earth circle in the center of a black computer screen. I had no idea what to expect other than the totally unfamiliar and fantastic.

When the Netscape browser opened up to reveal a website page I was completely flummoxed and struggled to connect the images on the screen to my physical reality. What the hell was this internet thingy, anyway? And why should I care?

I laugh at my ignorance now because I go online as much as anyone. Even when I'm not near a computer I can check my email on my cell phone, or look up the menu for the pizza place that just moved into town. It's a wonderful, curious, addicting phenomenon that has weaved its way into the lives of everyone I know. I can't imagine life without it.

This is why I knew I had to continue working with CapeWomenOnline magazine. Although I couldn't see where this might take me a year ago, I've learned so much from the interactions I've had with our writers, artists, editor and web princess (yes, she really does live in a princess palace) and the countless people who have just wanted to talk to me about the content we've published. It has widened my horizons on all levels and I feel so blessed to be a part of its continued growth.

I have to admit that I've been so busy with the magazine that my poor old novel has been shoved to the back of my mind for several months now. I miss talking to my characters and have so many details I want to add to the rewrite. Since January I have collected a slew of yellow sticky notes, scribblings on the backs of anything I could write on, thoughts added to the 'Notebook' in my cell phone and long rambling narrative downloaded into the parts of my brain that wake up when it's novel-writing time.

With the new issue online and already receiving rave reviews, I hope to carve out some time to dust off those manila files and get back to work on my rewrite. I still have the summer as my 2nd draft goal, because I need a deadline, so I will have to resist the urge to spend long hours in the garden weeding, planting and pruning, and settle for just sitting on my garden swing with my lap top on my knees instead.

Check out the new issue of CapeWomenOnline.com and let me know how you like it.

Happy Spring!

Tools of the Trade

It's been over a month since my last confession...I mean entry (flashback to being a Catholic there) and my excuse is simple - I've just been too damn busy to get back here!

Ridiculous, isn't it?

After giving myself the gift of finishing my first draft I let myself get buried, once again, beneath the many layers of my life. I feel like a million tiny fingers are tugging at my skin; wanting, pulling, demanding, needing. It's exhausting.

It's also validating and rewarding, to some extent. These fingers belong to my teenage sons, my students, my family in England, my pets, my friends and yes, some of them belong to me.  These fingers remind me that I am surrounded by people who make my life worth waking up to. While some days feel heavier than others, some are brightened by surprises that leap out of the darkest of shadows.

One such surprise came last week, when my high school friend called to tell me she had found a house. After years of struggling to raise her three children in rented accommodations, she finally has a place she can count on. When she emailed me a link to the realtor's virtual tour I found myself surfing around the rooms of her new home. It was magical! I felt like I was there, walking through those wonderful rooms, right beside her.

It doesn't matter that she lives on the other side of the Atlantic. I've seen her new place and it rocks!

A second ray of light came in the form of a phone call from another high school friend. She wants to come and visit me in July. As I've not seen her in over 6, maybe 7 years, that's absolutely fabulous news. I'm so glad we refused listen to those god-fearing teachers who said our friendship was "a terrible thing" because we got busted for writing notes to each other in French class.

Okay, so there were a few creative comments about our class mates. And perhaps we made a snide remark or two about the frustrated old prune that was our headmistress. But nothing we wrote at age twelve was bad enough to dedicate an entire assembly to shaming us publicly for our "wicked words".

I like to blame Ms H. for my writer's block, on occasion, although I don't believe that our "evil notes" really had the power to condemn our souls into eternal damnation. Nor do I believe that it was necessary for Ms H. to hurl our writing into the flames of the sanitary towel incinerator.

Wouldn't she just turn in her grave (she MUST be dead by now) to know that this friend, whom she thought was such a bad influence on me, is now the inspiration for one of the lead characters of my novel?

Okay, back to that novel. Well, I've been reading my first draft and it's a very interesting experience.

The characters feel so much more, what's the word? Full? I don't remember writing the words that gave them their color, their accents and my god, what attitudes! Who are these people? Where do their voices come from? It's so strange to listen to them chatting back and forth, to hear what they have to say about the world that we created, together.

Talk about flashbacks! I wonder if all that magic mushroom tea, from my university days, can be credited for opening up my mind enough to let these characters in? I'm sure they weren't always in there....

I didn't mean to digress so completely from the title of this entry - I bought a new lap top last month. Yep. Got an email from Staples advertising President's Day specials. So, in the spirit of honoring Obama's stimulus efforts, I invested in an HP Pavilion. I really wanted to buy a Mac, but that will have to wait for more affluent times. The HP is fine, for now.

Instead of rewriting my novel I've been learning how to use Windows 7 and discovering that Microsoft 7 is actually a very intuitive program that thinks very much like a Mac...I know, weird, isn't it? This new distraction was so delicious that I lost myself in online tutorials for days. I also spent endless hours copying all my files from my beloved, aging iBook to the HP.

Not to keep harping on the magic mushrooms, but I swear my iBook knew there was an intruder in the house because after 7 years of flawless service it started freaking out the very day I bought the new lap top home. My screen began freezing then it refused to reboot altogether. I did the usual rescue routine: drew a couple of Reiki symbols over the keyboard, slapped the screen a few times, then yanked out the cord and the battery. That worked.

Now I have to spend 20 minutes convincing my iBook that I still think it's amazing before it will deign to boot up for me, then it lets me save a few files to my thumb drive before throwing another hissy fit. We seem to have fallen into a pretty workable routine. It just takes hours to accomplish what used to take seconds.

I don't think I'll ever have the heart to permanently unplug it...even if it does need an ethernet cable to get online.

Now if I could only figure out how to transfer my Quicktime version of "Here's to the Crazy Ones" Apple ad. from my iBook to the HP. The Mac to Pc files just won't translate and it was so easy to download it back in '97!

Hang on - I just found it on YouTube. If you haven't seen the ad here it is:
Think Different Apple Ad - Original version

It's such a great reminder that round pegs in square holes are good things...and that "the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Cheers to you, if you're crazy :-)

I did it :-) !!!

That's right - I completed the first draft of my novel.

To be honest, it was a bit of a non-event. I was so busy shoveling snow and clearing out the basement in preparation for a teen-packed New Year's Eve party that I didn't fully appreciate the fact that I'd met a goal I'd been chasing for a decade.

Of course, after the snow stopped falling, the earth began to shake and all eyes turned to Haiti, especially mine.

For several days I felt paralyzed by the devastation and horror of the high definition images sweeping into my home. Absorbing each gory detail with a writer's eye, I downloaded the unfolding events, holding my breath each time a possible survivor was located.

It took me until now to sift through the files that have crystallized in my brain. A dead baby lies on top of an endless pile of rotting corpses. Parents scream at the concrete rubble in the hopes of hearing their child's cry. Sounds of anger, frustration and desperation.

I wasn't prepared for the eruption of emotion this earthquake resurrected in me. I was unable to leave my couch, turn off the television or just turn away. I couldn't pretend it wasn't happening.

Yesterday I poured my anxiety onto the page and wrote a poem about it. I had to do something other than text a donation.

I will publish this poem in the Winter issue of CapeWomenOnline.com and ask the readers to continue donating to the ClintonBushHaitiFund long after the reporters have left town. This is all I can do. I know it's not enough. But it's better than doing nothing.

Today I finished writing an article about completing my novel. It felt so good to think about something inspiring and I was reminded that I'd met the challenge I'd set myself at the beginning of this blog.

It also prompted me to set myself a new goal - to complete my first rewrite by the end of the summer.

I've had almost a month to let my first draft simmer in the back of my mind. It's time to get back to work and face the new journey that lies ahead.

"Only when it's dark enough can you see the stars"

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Please click on this link to make a donation to the ClintonBushHaitiFund

Dreaming of a White Christmas

There was less than an inch of snow on the ground when I went to bed last night - when I woke up the entire neighborhood was buried beneath a flawless white blanket over twelve inches thick.

The weather teams haven't decided if they can officially call it the "Blizzard of '09" ( how the love their fancy names) but it would be impossible to venture out until after the roads are plowed.

Until then, I am happy to stay warm and toasty in my pajamas and watch the wind whip the white powder across my gardens.

I should be writing. I am so close to reaching my goal of 100,000 words by December 31st, but here I am, in full procrastination mode. Why? Where do I start?

Prior to this last week I was in a wonderful rhythm of working, writing and sleeping.

The usual avoidance techniques had been well and truly defeated by my determination to complete this single goal that I set for myself. My fingers were flying across my newly acquired wireless keyboard (thank you Logitech) as my characters dictated their stories at breakneck speed.

My eyes had abandoned their protest of the tiny text on my iBook screen since I installed a large monitor that made it possible for me to write without having my lap top anywhere near my lap. No more hot legs or nauseating vibrations.

So what's the problem?

I'm not sure, and I don't think I should waste time trying to figure it out.

There are the usual culprits to blame:

- over-scheduling myself to make up for the upcoming Holiday break when I'll have two 4-day weekends in a row! What luxury!

- the incessant "nipping to the store" on my way to and from work to buy gifts, cards, wrapping supplies.

- deciding who to cross off my Christmas card list and which new names to add.

- baking pumpkin muffins, cookies and stick-to-your-ribs dinners to help pile on the internal layers that mother nature thinks we need during the cold winter months - maybe someone should tell her we have fleece blankets and furnaces nowadays?

- then there's the real creative monster - the finish-line-is-finally-in-sight monster that lunges into your path just when you think you are going to make it

Yeah, that's the one I suspect I'm dancing with as I watch another episode of House, CSI Miami, or Masterpiece Theater. I have all these shows saved to my DVR so I could watch them AFTER I complete my first draft. But I still find myself snuggling into my over-sized chair with my super soft blanket and glass of Pinot Noir for yet another few hours of staring at the flat screen, instead of the monitor.

I don't know if we'll have a snow day tomorrow. I guess that depends upon whether or not I dig out my car before it gets dark. 

The snow pants, gloves, jackets and boots are piled by the door next to the shovels. There's at least 2 hours worth of shoveling to do just to clear the driveway.

I could pretend that it's okay to ignore the fact that I'm wasting a perfect opportunity to get my novel written this afternoon, but my characters are sitting on my shoulders and literally whining like children, telling me to JUST WRITE.

They've been at it since I woke up to this winter wonderland, when they squealed their delight at the picture perfect scenes lying just beyond my snow framed windows. Their unconstrained excitement reminded me of my children on Christmas Eve, thrilled by the magic surrounding them in the form of fairy lights, candy canes and mysterious colorful gifts tucked under the tree. I guess I've never spent the Holidays with my characters before. They were probably buried beneath my endless To Do lists and the uncompromising "I'm way too busy to write" mantra that usually accompanies me in December.

But here we are, on a gorgeous snowy afternoon, talking to each other.

If I could ask Santa for a special gift this year it would be the gift of completion. I want to cross the finish line, once and for all, and leave my creative monsters in the dust behind me.

That said, I'm off to write - after I bribe my sons with Egg Nog and cookies to go out there and dig out my car!

A Room of My Own

I chose the Chatham Room of the Beach Rose Inn as the location for my mini writer's retreat because of the little seating area in the corner of the bedroom. Little did I know how pivotal a role this beautiful room would play when I finally decided that I was ready to blast through years of writer's block.

It wasn't the plug-in fireplace, or the Victorian styled lamp that captured my imagination - it was the idea of having somewhere to write that looked comfortable and private.

What I didn't tell you in my previous entry was how I created the perfect nest to nurture the writing child within me. I had packed my tool kit with all the ammunition I could find to do battle with my creative monsters. These tools were set up around my room within an hour of my arrival.

My printer was plugged into the socket behind my chair and the ream of recycled paper was opened.

The box containing years of novel notes
(both scribbled and printed) was organized with small post-it stickies. My word count color chart was placed on top of the pretend wood stove. It clearly showed me that I was only half way to my goal of 100,000 words.


My blue writing candle was set on one of the nesting tables opposite my wing back chair, along with a DVD about a mustang sanctuary and copy of Writer's Digest telling me to "Write Your Novel in 2009".
 
I cleared the antique hair brush and comb set from the top of the dresser (which concealed a TV that I never used) and laid out a display of crystals, wine, water and a photograph of John Cusack - hey, with his eyes on you all day you'd want to stay on task too!

Let's review: a  hot tub in the garden, red wine, home made chocolate, my trusted iBook (with thumb drive to back up all files) and one of my favorite actors  playing guardian to my writing schedule - what more could a girl possibly ask for?

John Cusack in person perhaps?

I felt like a child as I arranged my favorite writing tools around me, allowing myself the glorious privilege of unreserved indulgence.

I sat in the chair, then got up again to stuff a pillow behind my back. Moments after I began the unfamiliar task of moving my fingers around the yellowing keys of my lap top I decided I needed to pee.

It took me some time to settle into a rhythm of writing that did not include jumping up and down every five seconds for a pencil, my fluffy slippers, a glass of water, or a prolonged conversation with my ten inch teddy bear, who was also witnessing my evasion techniques from the seat of a wooden stool by the window.

Any fantasy that I may have had about writing brand new pages was soon dispelled by the reality of the continual review then edit cycle. I found myself reading over chapters I had written so long ago that I didn't even recognize the writing as my own. It was almost 4pm before I realized that I was hungry for lunch.

I must have been a girl scout in a past life because I'd packed whole wheat bread, peanut butter, banana's and hot chocolate packets for Wednesday and Thursday's lunch. I ate in my chair with my lap top opened on my knee.



I was officially in the flow of writing, communicating with characters who had hounded me relentlessly to just show up and listen to what they had to say. Their voices grew louder as my fingers became used to flying over the keys. I was honestly startled when I did a word count. I found a pencil and shaded in the space between 50 and 60,000 words.

I hit a wall when I had to write a new chapter that takes place in Sedona. Having been there several years ago, I realized that memory alone wasn't going to give me the color and texture I needed to complete my scenes. I closed my iBook and left the lap top fan running to cool down its hot little hardrive.

The wooden floorboards creaked under my weight as I crept down the corridor of the old Inn and down the stairs leading into the dining area and study, where a guest computer was set up.

I made hot chocolate in my favorite china cup (which I had also packed) and settled in for a web surfing session that turned into two hours of copious note-taking and photograph reviews.







By the time I was done with my research, my friend and hostess had set out a bowl of salad and homemade pizza on the dining table for supper. I continued taking notes as I ate.


It was hard to return to my room because I knew I'd have to get right back to my story. I felt tired and wanted to watch crap on television, but I also knew that the TV was one of my strongest writer's blocks. I promised myself a nice glass of wine if I wrote just one more paragraph from the research I had completed.

I soon became lost in a jumble of old and new pages because I was weaving a developing sub plot into the text I had already written. Piles of papers sprang up around me as I tried to straighten up the growing chaos in my mind.









I scribbled notes and partial sentences on the back of my synopsis, then on the back of anything that was not an official 'page' of my novel. Once again I lost all sense of time. Three hours later I closed my lap top and gave myself permission to call it a night.

Before crawling into bed, I updated my writing journal and discovered that I had written for a total of 11 hours between 7:00am and 11:30pm. I drew smiley faces and stuck colored foil stars next to each entry for that day. I don't remember how long it took me to fall asleep.

Sweet Escape

Just Keep Writing...

It's been over 16 years since I gave myself the luxury of a writer's retreat. What a mistake!

I've only been here since yesterday afternoon - here being a friend's B&B in Falmouth - and I've already written 1,200 words. I would have written a lot more, but I had an article to complete about local chocolatiers, which took me close to 4 hours by the time I'd written the copy and designed the page for my online magazine. As I was writing the "must do" article, which was already well past deadline, I found the rusted doors of my creative mind begin to creak open, one millimeter at a time. Yeah, it was that slow!

The whole point in coming here was to step out of my usual routine and do nothing but work on my manuscript for 3 days. No animals to feed at 6am, no sons to negotiate with during the mad scramble to get out the door to school/work by 7:30am, no emails to reply to, no phone calls to answer, no classes to teach, no bills to pay, no leaves to rake and no mail to open...nothing to do but write, eat and sleep.

I have less than 2 months to get to 'THE END' and this was the only way I could think of to jump start my creative engine, which totally crapped out a few weeks ago. The more I tried to show up for my writing, the louder and more dramatic the distractions became. I won't list them here, but let's just say they run the gamut from personal, work and family issues, all claiming priority over one another.

'Nuff about that - I'm here now and that's all that matters.

It took a 10 minute drive into Falmouth to help me unwind after I emailed the Chocolatier's story to my editor. I felt frustrated that I'd spent so much time not writing my novel, but I was hungry and craving some of the home made chocolate I had spent all afternoon writing about.

I grabbed a buffalo chicken wrap (to go) and headed for Ghelfi's, on Main Street. As I'd predicted in my article, the woman behind the counter was delighted to chat about the history of the store and invited me to take a tour of where they made all the chocolate and candies.

It was amazing to see the giant copper kettles and collection of wooden stirring paddles in the kitchen. She showed me the family photo's of 3 generations of chocolate makers, and as I stood in the back office, absorbing the heart and soul of the chocolate world I had only imagined hours earlier, I felt my time writing about our local Chocolatiers was worth it.

I do believe in buying local, and supporting the small businesses who have been serving our community for years. I want to do whatever I can to help them keep their doors open, and if writing an article about them can help do that, even in a small way, it's worth the effort.

 I left with a box of assorted samplings - chocolate covered brittle, milk chocolate turtles, dark chocolate cranberry bark, orange creams...in my rush back to my room I missed my turn and wandered around Rte 28A in the dark, singing my heart out to Robbie Williams.

By the time I found the road where I was staying I'd talked myself into NOT taking advantage of the hot tub that was nestled into one corner of the English styled landscaped gardens because I was "too tired"...silly me. How can anyone be too tired for a hot tub?

Ten minutes later I was about to drop my robe and climb into the hot tub when I realized I'd forgotten to put on my bathing suite - I laughed all the way back to my room, kept laughing as I squeezed into my bathing suit and was still laughing as I surrendered to the jets that were churning the water around me. That would have been an epic disaster if my friend had found me wallowing in her spa completely naked - it's okay if it's your own tub, but not at a B&B for god sakes! Get a grip Nic!! I guess I was more tired than I realized...

Tired or not, I poured myself a glass of Pinot Noir, lit my blue "writing candle" and flipped open the lid of my trusted iBook. There was my manuscript, staring right back at me, asking me where the hell I had been all night? I took a deep breath and replied with two hours of non-stop writing.

I don't know how half the bottle of wine disappeared, but by midnight I was ready to crawl into bed and let my characters regroup. They woke me up at 6:30am wanting my attention. For the first time in forever I gave them exactly what they were asking for. I carried my lap top over to the bed, grabbed a bottle of water and started writing again.

Two and a half hours later and I was ready for breakfast. My friend had already set the table for me. I didn't have to do a thing except pour my coffee and juice and fill my bowl with fresh fruit, yogurt and granola.

Now that's a wonderful way to start the day!! I get to repeat this new routine tomorrow :-)

I didn't mean for this to turn into a whole chapter, so I'd best get going...