The Calm Between Adventures

This summer has been unusually cool and the wind has been calm as well. There are very few ticks or mosquitoes, and the humidity is just about perfect.

We have not yet needed our AC turned on, a good thing since it is broken. *Note to self, remember to get a call in about that or bug Chad before winter gets here. **I'll forget anyway. Ha.

Isaac loves it. He loves sitting outside eating apples and cuddling chickens and chasing his sisters and counting clouds....one, two, three, four, five.....

Holly has been taking crayons outside and today I found her masterpiece, in crayon wax, on the front porch floor. It is pretty amazing actually.

Lily, ever the farm girl, has been taking care of her chores and heading out to the woods for explores. They stay out late, until bedtime, negotiating meals (ONLY COMING IN IF SOUP IS FOR DINNER!) Soup. Huh. I can do soup.

Chad and I have been taking walks in the late afternoon and evenings and dreaming pretty big about things. Lots of things. Finding thornless honey locust on our farm is pretty cool. Snacking on mulberries is lovely too. We talked about what time I need to do my job that is with the college and what I need to keep going with my freelance work. I have a list of places to submit work about farm life that I am researching. I have ideas for travel pieces.

The air feels too cool for July though. Winter teasing us. We bought this winter's hay and had it delivered today. Next up, chop and stack firewood. Try for enough for winter. Find a better place to stack and store it.

I have been furiously scribbling in my notebooks, learning formal verse form, then trashing it and wrecking all the rules. That's kind of my signature style, rule breaking. My intentions are to study the form and then dance around the edges, tearing at the border with my heals and tempo. Wild with pulpiness and red lines and life.

When I am done, good and worn out, I sway on the porch swing, sweet tea nearby, one ear out for duckings and another on the humming of children plotting their own way, book of verse in hand, reading poems about house fires in Tennessee, marsh whores in Florida, and urban schoolteachers falling in love.

This is my summer. This is my view. This is the calm between adventures.

Writer's Reflection

This week I received three acceptance letters from publishers for my writing submissions. The first one was an essay I wrote about my experience as a new farmer dealing with pasture predation. I sent this one out to the world because this experience meant a lot to me as a person and I worked on it for months. Normally, tales like this one would end up here on the blog but this experience was so soul changing and devastating and even humiliating that I just could not bring myself to share it.

It was not poetry. At that point my record was two photography acceptances and one essay- zero on the poetry. Yet, poetry is what keeps me coming back to these endeavour, is my true literary love.

Then, one evening, late, my email beeped. An acceptance and commentary of a POEM. The email sender was not a name I recognised, scrolling through quick....there was the name of the journal!! I was so excited. This one, (I'm being a stinker and not telling until it is published and released) is a journal that I have long read and admired. For those of you who have read my drafts, the poem is Poppy's Daughters.

The next morning a second one came in. My poem about Daphne in our own Iowa woods,  Daughter of the Osmanthus River, was accepted.

Those of you who have followed my struggles here know that my 15 year hiatus has left me doubting my own worth and skills, left me wondering and regretting. The thing is? Both poems and the essays are all new work- not the old work from the draft drawer of doom! New words, new lyrical twists, new stories. The work from long ago keeps coming back to me rejected. This sits with me like pregnancy heartburn, painful but productive. Realising this was really good for me too: again, I remind myself that I need the decade of silence to live life, to really birth my own new voice. The child that wrote poetry with only blue pens and gave up on performance when Slam took over the stage is not the poet I am now. I have even written a slam piece and planned a performance. Totally and completely out of my comfort zone.

Tally from 2014 thus far:

Portland Review: Photography
Flyway Journal: Photography
Yet to be announced: Essay fall of 2014
Yet to be announced: Poem August 2014
Yet to be announced: Poem  March 2015

AND.....November 2014 I will be reading at the Art on the Prairie even in Perry, Iowa.

Not a bad tally, actually. Tonight I am regrouping and looking at the work that just came back to me to figure out what goes where now. I am struggling to match journal to poems, I have exhausted almost all of the journals I read on my own and that is what I know to go to. 

This is where knowing and talking to other poets would really come in handy.

Where do you find poems that you love? What journals do you read?

Daring to Dream.....Again.

Sabotage. That is my word for the year. So much of the last decade has been me sabotaging any efforts of the creative part of myself. I was recently lent a copy of a book called Mamaphonic, a collection of essays about how motherhood changes the creative force in an artist/mother.  Three essays in I was in tears. I am not the only one, these roadblocks? They are the standard toolbox of motherhood induced writer's block.

The common thread so far, the rope to climb out of the hole, is to just start again. Write/dance/draw/paint/play through the self pity, through the negative self talk, through the distractions, through the insomnia, lack of time, and crappy artistic output. It is harder to pick back up the deeper in the hole you fall, so doodle through it. Keep that pen to paper and the ink flowing. Blogging did that for me. It isn't brilliant writing by any stretch, but it kept that part of my brain going, keeps it lit. Blogging tripe every day is better than long silences.

Pulling snail shells from a farm pond and always regretting that they are not seashells on the beach, sometimes you have to just look at the beauty and poetry of these small treasures, these little tokens of the wild mind and collect them just the same. It's still getting and keeping your feet wet, it's still communing with mermaids and goblins, still treading water. Holding that space for yourself for when the cycle returns and you can make more time for whatever that passion is.



What else? I finally shared with my family and friends what I was going through, instead of hiding it like a dirty secret. THIS was the real key to climbing out. Every time, every single time, I fall back....someone sends me a link to a submission, a suggestion, an inspirational meme, asks to read my work, or in some other small way lets me know that they support this effort, this vocation of mine. From my father in law sending and resending the link to the Ossabaw Island writer's retreat and following up with asking me if I got his link to it and then really helping Chad with kids when I actually went to it........to Chad making space and time for me to have time to write....to friends leaving me comments and small cards in the mail cheering me on.......all of these things make a huge difference in someone like me struggling to value my own work.

I realised today, that Chad has also found a vocation: Regenerative Farming is the name for it, Permaculture by design. I have never seen him so lit up inside and excited about something. Sometimes we come to our true calling later in life, and Chad has certainly found his. He is not as forthcoming asking for emotional support and encouragement though (is this a guy thing or a Chad thing?)....so I am trying to also hold his space for him. Making sure his goals and dreams can fruit without drift killing the branches. I have never seen him so happy. We can make this work, we can move this passion of his to the next level. I'm not sure what that will look like, right now we are in the dreaming phase. Still, those of you all who know us, know that when we dare to dream we do.

The cycle continues, but the more positive we put in, the more we can share with others. What are your dreams and goals and what do you need to move them forward?

Wild Women of the Woods, or how I got over my fear of boats but not horses......

I know most of the time I sound like a totally competent farm lady, right?

Nope. I grew up in the city. I had an aunt with a farm that we visited. For a while my dad had a vegetable garden, but when I was 10 we moved to Illinois and then Iowa and it wasn't until I was an adult living across town that he took up gardening again.

No chickens. Every dog we ever had ended up "moving to the country" and cats don't count.

Truly, my born and raised in the suburbs husband is more country than I am in practise.

Love of the prairie, the open sparkly night sky,  deep desire to raise my children in a safe environment with complex experiences- that is what brought me here. It isn't enough though to just read about experiences and then teach them to the kids, especially things like kayaking that one just cannot learn from a youtube video- not safely, at least in my case.

When the local county conservation office to the north of us advertised a women's only camp out and day long workshop, I was eager to go. I signed up for things that pushed my anxieties and fears, boldly faced them.

Stupid fear of boats first. Fear of boats you say? Then how on earth did I make it to Ossabaw island last February? White knuckled, lots of spiritual negotiation, and mediation. Flying? No problem, bus ride from hell? Take that over even shallow water any day. I HATES IT.

My kids are all water babies like Chad. They love it. We have a gorgeous pond on the farm, more like a lake. I needed to learn to at the very least navigate water like that. Kayak seemed like a good first step? I have taken our flat bottom with oars out before with Lily, but that requires my focus to be on keeping her safe instead of facing what makes me so afraid of water.

Some people are afraid of spiders, have nightmares about zombies, or the like. I have nightmares about drowning. Slowly. In filthy, mucky, swampy water. Tangled in rusted chains or algae. Taking a boat out in the deeps is like tempting fate to make that reality.

Still, I got in this boat and rowed my little heart out. I actually enjoyed myself. I actually liked it enough to seriously contemplate buying a kayak to use at home. For real. I stood at the farm pond tonight and the water was clear and glassy and I actually felt pulled to get in it. I didn't, but I really wanted to. That was an odd feeling.

I also took a lovely nature walk and geocahed. It was fun, like where's Waldo or those hidden picture puzzles. I think Lily might like it, but I loves the opportunities for macro nature pictures.

I ended up leaving a few hours early. Not sleeping combined with heat and anxiety over leaving Isaac at home with his breathing problems last week (Chad totally had this btw, he's DAD of the year....) that landed poor little Zap in the ER one night....all of that combined to make he feel really sick, too sick to play with bow and arrow equipment. I headed home mid afternoon.

I think I may do this again next year. When Lily is old enough, I hope to bring her along too. Actually, this is the camp we are thinking of sending her too this summer with her church group. She can pick horses or fishing and she chose......fishing. Of course. It is LILY after all.

Goals for this year?

This is my personal goal list from 2011, though it includes some farm stuff too.

1)Expand the apiary
2)Learn to play fiddle
3)Grow tomatoes
4)Bring strawberries to market
5)Harvest wild fruit and can it (I did get some this year but the major bounty of the farm has yet been untouched. We have gooseberries, black raspberries, morels, wild plum, rose hips, nettle, juniper, mulberries, elderberries, blackberries, crab apple, boysenberries, and who knows what else.)
6) plant 15 more trees, find cherries that I like
7) create a wall poster with the tree varieties we have planted for reference
8) mail the envelope back to NY (I've been saying this for 12 years now and really, it is too late, but the principle of the thing is bugging me.)
9) write the last chapter
10)sell the DM house
11) say thank you more often with both words and actions
12) take the kids (and grandpa) to ride the train in Boone
13) bake pie more often
14) read more books.



I did all of these except # 7. Well, and number 2 is still being worked on. :/ 

Why goals like this, lists like this, are important? The reflection back is hopeful. I got these things accomplished, though not all in 2011. In fact, many of them were checked off the list in 2013 and 2014.  Progress is still progress, in inches or in miles. I had to travel cross country on a bus and suffer severe sleep deprivation have dinner with the ghost of a drag queen in Savannah, Georgia, and track pigs on a wilderness island to get number 8 done.

Sometimes it takes a bunch of Jennifers to get me on the bus to begin with. Ha!

Completing these goals led me to new ones, new adventures, new connections, deeper connections with friends and family, all good things. It helps when you look back, to know what you were looking at, like an aerial landscape, you can see the watershed, the rivers, a clearer view of the options ahead. There are always variables, storms that happen, rerouting, delays, but adventure is still to be had. You can hide in a corner and wish for death or you can make a ridiculous video and make friends.

I have been thinking about what my new goals are. How my New Years goals are going, am I remembering not to Sabotage myself? No, but I have folks holding me accountable for that and it is often.

1) Finish my self designed/paced poetry course. I have about 7 unites left, stalled at writing a ghazal, not yet to Haiku.
2) Travel to Prague, hug my friend Adrienne, who needs a hug. Take a ton of pictures of buildings a sheep.
3) Finish the short story about Alice.
4) Finish the short story about the cat lady.
5) Write more poems. Revise twice as many.
6) Send all of them out and stop fretting about them being done enough.
7) Take Isaac to ride the trains in Boone, now that he is old enough to love trains and pay attention to it.
8) Submit more work to Literary Mama. Start writing essays.
9) Work on cookbook.
10) Take a photography class of some sort. I never have, y'all. Not one.
11) Send out all the thank you letters. Even ones that are long over due. My gratitude has not expired.
12) Be more patient.
13) Visit my aunt.
14) Get a self portrait done. One that is good for bio blurb. One that is sexy and cool.
15) Paint things. All the things. Except not the perfectly finished, pristine antique wooden things, that is a crime against history and humanity. Painting cheap crappy things is ok though. ;)
16) Host a dinner party and use the good dishes.
17) Recover the dining room chairs. 
18) Master baking cookies and making caramels.
19) Clean out my closet.
20) Feel pretty more often.

What are your goals? How do you stay on track?

In The Silent Gap

I have a lot of work out for consideration, so much in fact that I have nothing right now to submit. I have 4 poems in progress, 4 in revision, about 20 I have deemed the rantings of an unreasonable teenager and shall be left behind (retired) unless I get bored and want to transform them.

So while waiting for rejections or lovely notes of revisions suggestions, there is a silence. Many literary journals are Sept- May term considerations too, so the summer is also a down time.

I plan on filling the gap of radio silence with:

• Reading books, all the ones on my bedside table. 
• Taking a kayaking class. Seriously. Fear of boats will be kicked in the rear. Maybe.
• Take a short nature photography class.
• Travel to Wisconsin to see the driftless valley.
• Watch all the new Orange in the New Black, Sherlock, and Luther. Because.
• Camp outside.
• Taking photos.
• Paint something.
• Write letters on paper with pen and send them USPS. 
• Cook some new things and remember to blog about them.
• Oh yeah, I have a blog. Get back to daily posts. 

So, what do you do when patiently waiting?

Flyway

This year I pledged to empty my draft drawer of doom, to not sabotage myself, to get the work I created out there. No more regrets.

Why is this year any different than the last 20? I have no idea. These last three years have been hard, but they have also been filled with hope and joy and love and friendship so amazing that I am still in shock at the depth of kindness and honesty in our lives.

I traveled to Georgia in February to a writer's retreat. I started writing poetry again because of this retreat and the insistence of my friends. The next step was to submit the work. Let me tell you, this is way easier now than it was 20 years ago! Everything is online and really easy. Easy to track too.

I was still terrified though. As disorganized as I am I am also meticulous when it comes to paperwork. I came up with a strategy to overcome my anxiety over it. I would pick my two favourite journals, the ones I always reach for at the library, and submit a couple photos first, then poetry later.

What felt like right away, they both contacted me about the artwork. I never even considered that possibility, though I do love the photos that I took.

I present to you, Flyway. (The second publication is mentioned on the Flyway page, but will be in print later this month!) Flyway is an online journal of art and literature, so follow the link and you can see all three photos if you go there.

So go there! Take a look! Share the link. Iowa has more than just sweet corn this summer, but what a perfect pair. Pour some sweet tea, grill up some Iowa food, and then delve into this Iowa grown literary treasure. It's free too.

Bonus? By this summer's end, I will have the prints available on Etsy. Just these three to start, but it is a start and I am ready. Spices and spaces, it will be awesome!

Going Back to the Start

I have written about 12 new poems since I returned from Georgia. It was as if I picked up the pen and 15 years had not passed. Some things though are drastically different this time around. For one, sometimes I don't remember writing the poems, as often I work on them really late at night. I work in a three phase system, sometimes four, I start with a notebook and sketch out the images and word play that go with them, then I transfer to a computer file called draft, when I think that it is completed I move it to a file called revise later, and when that is done it goes to a needs to be submitted file.

Now that the warm weather is here, my hands no longer ache from the constant cold and I am writing more. On the other hand, I am also feeling more emotions (another warm weather occurrence) and sometimes all these feelings leave me exhausted.

In addition to that, the incredible poor timing of the work I have submitted coming back rejected just as this season starts has been harder than I thought. I have to remind myself of my plan which was this:
1) submit to the top 25 literary giants. These top markets are the hardest and most respected.
2) Once those are rejected, submit to the next. There are 5,000 journals on this list. Eventually I will find what tier I rank at and work from there.
3) Continue to submit there and keep writing.

That's the plan. That's what I am working at. I have to remind myself that these are the top 25 and rejection from these giants is not the end of the journey. Still, a little part of me was hoping for gold, you know? It is humbling to be told no......but one of these actually sent back a personal note with feedback, (two if you count the one from 15 years ago), and two accepted my photography.

The fact that I have work out there means that I am about 20 leagues out to sea from the landlocked prairie that I started in just six months ago.  I have to self talk myself through this. I have to keep writing, keep submitting, and find which view is mine. Much of the despair I am feeling, the rejection, is self sabotage. Ah, my old friend, we meet again.

I am going to keep working at this.

Question Asked and Answered

This came up: Do I feel like I missed an entire lifetime and potential by abandoning writing, by not moving to Savannah, GA in 1999, by not revising and returning the one thing I submitted in 1998, by having kids, working as an adjunct instead of pursuing an academic career, ect? 

Wow.

The thing is? The answer is yes. Yes, of course I missed out and there are a million could a have beens.  Of course I wonder.

I also really love my life, the life I have right now. I really don't think I was ready for anything more in 1999. I have PSTD and in 1999 and a stranger knocking on my door after dark sent me into a full blown panic attack, hiding in a closet, for example. I was 19! Geesh. I am much better now.

When I graduated, my adviser said to me, something along these lines, Don't write for your job. Lay bricks for a living. Do something else. Learn about things. Live. Then you can write from your heart and keep it an art.

Sage advice. I followed it. Graduate school was history, architecture, and non-fiction. I went to work in the field of historic preservation. I was so busy and deep into the movement of saving houses that I forgot about people. Then I had children and they became my focus which evolved into teaching them and farming and teaching online classes. Always learning things. Living.

I wasn't ready before now to write again. Now that I am back in the habit, it feels good! It isn't a chore, it is artful, and I am turning more time to it but balancing it well with family and farm. I know things about life that I could not have at 19 and I am grateful for that.

Now, too, I am venturing along with Chad into the study of permaculture and regenerative farming. It is interesting and I plan to write more through the year as I learn.

In January, I chose the word Sabotage as my word for the year. Met with well meaning critics concerned about the negativity of the word, I waffled a bit about using it. Still, I did. It has proven to be a fantastic choice. Seriously fantastic. Every time I  start dragging my feet or second guessing myself, a friend will simply type Sabotage and then I do the thing that moves this all forward. Usually the friend's name is Jen. Ha.

Questions like these can sabotage my writing effort. Sure, I think them, but there are also no conclusive proofs that I wouldn't have died in a car crash driving out East or that anything I wrote then would have been published. I could very well have ended up doing what I am doing now, no matter what.

Artistic Junk and Kudzu

Since I have been there and back again (to Ossabaw), I have written 10 new poems, edited 60, retired 10 or so. I have submitted 32 of those poems, had 5 rejected and awaiting response on the others.

To get myself started with the submission process, I decided to practise submitting photographs to just two journals that I love and respect. Once I got the process down, I then began submitting poetry, non-fiction, entering contests, sending to journals, applying for festivals.

Wait, festivals? Yes. Back in the day, when I studied performance poetry seriously, I performed regularly at coffee shops and literature festivals. One night I became so overcome with stage fright and anxiety....I never again stepped up to the mic. Not once. It was around that same time that I stopped writing poetry too.

So. The time has come. Many things I have been fearful of, I have slain. I can get on a boat now without a panic attack. I can even take our boat out on the pond, alone. I can let others read my work without completely freaking out. The only way to become an artist is to make art and share it?

So, yesterday I got in the mail the acceptance to perform at the local art festival. It is a pretty special event and I am honoured. In the last week I also received two acceptance letters for work I submitted.....those photos I submitted! Hilarious. Also, eye opening. I think I will nurture this part of my art and see what happens.

I plan on going back to Georgia next year and I recommend the retreat to anyone else who might be struggling to find their voice. Magic happens there. It must. My fears were very, very rooted and thorny. Kudzu.

So, the photographs that are getting the most attention? I have this habit of taking pictures of abandoned things and junk. I love the colours and lines of corrosion and decay. I just had no idea that others might find beauty in it too.

Purple

The specs on this: Manic Panic, the lighter colour is Fuscia Shock, I used that on my dark roots because this colour lasts and holds its vibrancy longer than regular purple. The darker purple is Purple Haze, vegan MP. I applied, then used the hot blower dryer to set it. I braided up the length and wrapped my head with a headscarf over night. In the morning, I hot air blow dried it again to get the braid all the way dry. Then I rinsed and rinsed with cold water until the water ran clear. Towel and blow dry again. Now I have to be careful about shampoo and using products, even leave in conditioner, because each soap application will take some colour with it. Cool water rinses are ok. This is how I keep my colour really vibrant for longer.

Now, why my 36 year old, work at home, rural Iowa farmer self dyes my hair purple?

Because I love it. I love the way I look with purple. Some women like blonde or red or dye a darker brown, but I LOVE purple. What is not to love, look at the colour! This is the colour I had on my wedding day. This is the colour I wore in my hair when I used to perform on stage at a local coffee house. Why not put this back on reawakening my inner artist?



This. This is who I am.

Let me say this though, it isn't easy. Last Spring as I was dropping off my five year old at ballet, a minivan pulled up in front of the studio, loaded up two ballerinas, and then was waiting in line to depart the parking lot when I heard.....Daddy! That's Holly's mom, she's not a WHORE! She's nice!

Excuse me? What on earth?

Purple hair trumps that I am a mother of three, college professor, farmer, and married for 15 years to my high school sweetheart. Purple hair means that I am a sex worker? AND that a father of little girls gets to call me that in front of his children and in earshot of everyone waiting at ballet class? *I was in a long sleeve high neck sweater and a long skirt with boots, lest any of you think that my appearance other than purple hair warranted such a comment.

Way to stand up for me little girl. I hope that spunk and truth in you stays strong and being raised by a person like that doesn't damage you. No worries though, I got this. I own my purple hair and some random dude calling names only startles me, it no longer hurts me or changes my self value. May you be blessed with such fire of spirit.

I also get followed at retail stores. I get rude remarks from middle aged women. I sometimes have to remind folks in authority that I am an artist, college professor, and educated. I am not invisible, but purple hair certainly sends a message to others of many negative social codings. If I was someone trying to navigate social or economic tides, I would have a disadvantage. When I worked a minimum wage job, I was threatened with being fired. I called the corporate office and it was never mentioned again, though my hours were shifted. It didn't matter to me, but to many it would have been horrible. I know this. I dye my hair anyway because I can. If I can and do more people will start to see me and see that hair and other appearance markers do not tell the character of a person. I also have the safety of being able to change this about my look, back to something natural.

I can only feel the tinglings of what it must hurt like to be treated as dirt for something unchangeable.

So, know me. Know that I am not what you think. I am a brave mother, a farmer, a women with a voice, a writer, a really good and loyal friend, I do not play dirty ever, and I love so fiercely that it hurts. I am purple.

And just for the record, none of the sex industry workers I have known ever had purple hair but they certainly have more class than the dad in the minivan at ballet class. Just saying.

My Other Love

Last night I fell asleep wondering about my last 15 years. How did I walk away from poetry when I so clearly and deeply adore it? What happened? It wasn't motherhood. I had closed my books long before Lily was born.

Ah. Then this morning a picture of a lovely abandoned house, three storied, Italianate lines.....peeling paint, five gables, a hybrid Stick, Queen Anne style beauty. I wondered about the balustrade inside.

I fell for architecture. When I graduated college the first time, BA in hand, wisdom my adviser had given me casually, haunted me. Sure, you know how to write....but about what? What do you really know of the world? Don't write for a living, be a brick layer or farmer by day. Let the salt of the sweat of your days season the writing you do at night when the day slips away. Let writing be the mistress you run to, not the drudge of the mundane.

So, I fell forward into restoring houses. It was a family business but I am a solitary creature. We bought a three storied Victorian, plaster collapsing, floors unstable and moved in to live like homeless teenagers. It sometimes snowed and gathered drifts in the bedrooms. There were rooms we didn't know about when we bought it. Sometimes we would get lost inside the house. It was an amazing project. I interned at the State Historical Preservation Office. I got hired at a local museum. I spent my days and nights deeply immersed in old house restoration, history, and technology. I got so intensely involved in starting the restoration that I started taking graduate architecture classes. Then, easily slipped into the graduate programs for history, architecture, and non fiction writing. One thing flowed into another and I was in love.

Soon motherhood entered that world too. That was hard. Balancing my day job, a newborn, graduate school, and the house restoration. So very hard.

Why did I abandon poetry for the crumbling plaster and splintery fumes of the hard labour and physical work of house restoration? Because there is poetry in the grain of the wood, because the stories of the people who haunt these places with their lives are intoxicating, because the words of architecture filled my soul the way that Shakespeare and Leonard Cohen do. I was not without.

Even now, my heart quickens when I oil the hardwood of our old farmhouse. I mourn brokenhearted when I see an abandoned turn of the century barn that will soon fall with the seasons from neglect, slipping from our collective memories and memorialised with corn and bean chemical fields. Sometimes I break down and cry.



Now, as I re-open the poetry part of my mind, I have a life I can write from. That was not a waste, that time was not idle. I need not regret my chosen path, as sometimes I have in the dark when sleep is stolen by babies and frozen pipes.

Tell me, where is the poetry and beauty in your life?

Taking Myself Seriously

When I started reviving my wild mind, listening to the writer's voice again, and taking up the pen.....I was unsure. I still am. I am falling in love with word craft again. I know much more about love than I did 20 years ago though, and this time around I know that love is hard work and not all intuition and applause. So I set to work to learn this skill again.

I surprised myself. I was startled at how much of the vocabulary of poetry I actually remember. I was reminded of the parts I never understood and took to puzzling it out this time around instead of haughtily moving on, nose upturned.

I set a schedule. I stuck to it.

Then, I let go. I let other people read my work instead of hiding it.

At some point I was researching something for the farm, we raise Ossabaw Island hogs, and I came upon a website for the Ossabaw Island Writer's Retreat. Ah, that looks neat, I said. Aw, it is also way expensive and 2,000 miles away. I clicked the page closed and moved on.

A couple days later my father in law sent me the link to it. Again, I sighed heavily and closed the email.

A week later or so my dear husband Chad brought it up over dinner. Why this retreat? There are others close by! At better times of the year!

A conversation with a friend led me to the realisation that the piece I am missing to publishing is networking, is knowing people who publish, is being out there with published folks. I brought it up with Chad and he reminded me of the retreat again. I set aside money to travel later in the year, had almost reached my goal....why not use it for this instead?

No.

I went to bed grumpy.

I woke up thinking of an island off the coast of Georgia.

I brought it up with Chad again, we looked up travel cost. Well, that nixed it. Travel there was WAY expensive. Train, plane, rental car....all of it too expensive. So I lamented to a friend and she said, MEGABUS.

Wait, what is that? 5$ to Chicago from here is what that is. Another friend said once I get to Georgia she will drive me to the ferry (4 hours from her house!).

So.....I applied. I sent in the best work I had as an example for the application. I waited.

I waited. Waited. Days and days of waiting. I hate waiting.

Today, friends, I got the notification that I was accepted.

I nearly shook with fear. Yes, fear! To do this I have to ride a bus for 36 hours over the whole of the United States and take myself seriously as a writer.

The bus ride is easy compared to that last part.

I'm Tellin' Y'all It's Sabotage

The past few years I have picked a word to theme my year, to write at the top of the page, to start the day.

I think my word for 2014 may be..... Sabotage. I know it isn't the super inspirational, joyful, high energy words everyone else is making theirs.....but last night I listed out all the ways I self sabotage my own creative process and projects. I need to be reminded that around every corner I have laid a booby trap for my own failure, that it is like the Temple of Doom in my own head! 

Previous years words: Grateful, Thrive, Release, and Breathe

Nothing like that speaks to me.

A recent discussion with my friend Jen about inspiration and creating art, got me thinking. I am afraid of my own dark thoughts. I am afraid what people with think of the creative force inside me. I am afraid that they will be horrified. Really? No. I am the one who is afraid, terrified, paralysed with this fear.

I just turned on Beastie Boys Pandora and first song up? Sabotage. It's a sign.

"I can't stand it I know you planned it
I'm gonna set it straight, this watergate
I can't stand rocking when I'm in here
Because your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why
I got this fucking thorn in my side
Oh my, it's a mirage
I'm tellin' y'all it's sabotage

So listen up 'cause you can't say nothin'
You'll shut me down with a push of your button?
But yo I'm out and I'm gone
I'll tell you now I keep it on and on

'cause what you see you might not get
And we can bet so don't you get souped yet
You're scheming on a thing that's a mirage
I'm trying to tell you now it's sabotage" -Beastie Boys

I started the self study I mentioned in the Derailed post. It was thrilling and exciting to realise that I DO in fact know the technical vocabulary of poetry. I DO know these concepts. I remember learning them in my very first writing class. How could I have talked myself into thinking that I didn't? I know this like breathing. I know it in my bones. It flows through me with every heart beat. I got so excited. I started to think.....maybe I don't need to do this study?

Um, sabotage.

I DO need this. I need to work through it slow, go one unit at a time, savour it and do the work. To rush it, to decide that I already know it and I don't need it is my youthful ego sabotaging my efforts....again. A good description of this is two little trolls on my shoulders, one saying, "Danelle, you are a total phony, they will find you out, they will know that you can't do the things that your degree says, they will KNOW." The other saying, "Who cares! You are SO good, a genius, a prodigy, you don't need this bullshit, stop wasting your time with this! You are so unbearably superior, don't even worry about doing the work! It will be much more fun to watch Dexter on Netflix, come on......open the Netflix browser......"

They both hate me.

This is why I fail. My internal narrative is constantly doing this to me. I need to make friends with these gnarly dudes, feed them some of my peach pie and get them on my side. I will be queen of this swamp and honey will have to work. Otherwise, I have a big stick.

So then this whisper of a voice told me that I couldn't use this as my word. It is too dark, to menacing, too much. I needed  to use something else, something happy.

No. Not this time. No mirages, no hallmark dainty thing that will satisfy my sweet side. Not everything is lightness and maple syrup. I have a full range of feelings and even some darkness. It is time to face that and get to work.

What's your word? Do you ever talk yourself down from your own potential and creativity?

2014 Day 2: Struggles Mighty

I love the idea of resolutions. I love the idea of the hope and cheer and confidence that people have when they proclaim them. I often try too, and fail. Things like this do not work for me. My friend Natalie says that attaching the label of resolution to an important goal is like setting a laser beam on destruction and ruining it from day one....or something like that. Goodness, I do understand that.

I also understand the need to have a fresh start, a clean plate, a newly washed slate. For me it is like getting a new notebook and beginning something exciting. Just like that though, staring at the blank page can bring on panic and induce anxiety= writer's block!

Isaac and farming have both taught me that goals are attainable and that progress measured in inches is still progress. If I don't make a list, create a plan, then I have no map. Sometimes that is fun, other times it leaves me lost and frightened and the sun sets on opportunities I miss out for not being where I need to be on time.

Here are my goals for 2014, the things I would like to do.

1. Travel for a week on my own or with friends, to Europe I hope (travel fund is growing, goal is almost met). 
2. Get those things out of the draft drawer of doom and out into the world. See what happens.
3. Write 5 new poems a week. They will be terrible, but practise is something I desperately need to get my feet under me. 10 years without poetry has been hard on me.
4. Read more for fun.
5. Learn to cook these things: roasting garlic in the oven, flan, and chocolate peanut butter cups. 
6. Connect more with my friends, face to face. Nourish those friendships.
7. Can enough salsa (learn how to use pressure canner without (unreasonable) fear). Enough is 100 pints or 50 quarts. Less if it isn't as tasty as store bought.
8. Meet all the neighbours on our road. Schedule play dates with folks who have kids my kids ages.
9. Plan a trip to see someone I love dearly who lives where it is warm.
10. Connect more with people who publish.
11. Row in the flat bottom boat once a week in good weather, while Lily fishes.
12. Blog once a day, no matter what.
13. Mail out 60 pieces. 60. That's a lot. 5 per month isn't a lot though, that is doable.
14. Keep my hair dyed red or purple. I like how I look with bright hair. 

That's my list. That is what I will keep to. Our goal for the farm is a separate list, the homeschooling goals are too. Chad and I plan to finish the cook book together and publish it as an E-book.

What lovely things are you dreaming of friends?