Team Changes; Book Progresses; Toad Takes Up Residence

Note:  In the fall of 2008, I wanted to try my hand at writing a book but that plan quickly hit a snag:  me.  For a month I tried to wriggle my out of some heavy duty resistance, but the resistance ultimately prevailed.  Which was a shame.  (Or, maybe not as I can’t even remember what sort of book it was I wanted to write!)  At any rate, working through the problem did lead me into some interesting exercises.  So, it wasn’t a total loss.  It was, in a way, a partial win. This post was the second of a series I called Writer’s Knot.

Back in September I joined a Writer’s Success Group, thinking (quite rightly as it turns out) that it would play a key supporting role in completing my book.  Once a month there are check-in calls with this great group of talented, warm and funny writers during which we talk about our challenges and our progress and the overall experience of engaging in the creative process.  We’ve also agreed that each week we’d send a report to the group – what’s shakin’, what’s still, etc. This isn’t just about accountability, but more about leaning into what connects the six of us – all of us hear the undeniable call to write and create.

So, for the time being, I’m using this blog to update the group (and myself!) as to how I’m doing with my project.  I’ve decided to playful with it, especially the woes, and I’m so enjoying how these check-ins have given me a new way to reconnect with my beloved little ritual of self-congratulations. Thus…

Since we last spoke:

Team Changes:  Dreaming and Scheming got bored with the Just-For-Tomorrows and busied themselves with other projects.  This is fine.  Their job was done.

Mid-week I hit a snag thanks to a lack of sleep.  One night I drank one too many cups of tea and had caffeine induced insomnia.  Another night I drank two too many glasses of vino and had red wine induced insomnia.  On yet another night the phone rang at 2 AM (the downside of keeping our US phone numbers via Vonage) from some Georgia politico wanting me to vote them into office.  As a result there were some Just-For-Tomorrows that never saw daylight, and I began to berate myself and get anxious and seek comfort from a jar of peanuts that had been set aside for a dinner of Szechuan Pork.  I know this state of mind all too well.  I know where it sends me.  The bottom of Stew Pot Gorge.

Literary Ambition stepped in and pinged Unconditional Love, who was meditating (as she usually is) upon a velvet pillow, in her lush retreat high, high, high up in her mist-ringed mountains.  Please, have a word with her, was the gist of the request.  She’s in her Gorge below, picking peanut skins from her teeth and questioning everything. Sooner than later would be good, what with x grams of fat and x number of calories in every ounce of monkey nuts.

Once she regained consciousness (her meditations send her deep), Unconditional Love glided down to the gorge from her velvet pillow, from her high, high, high mountains. And when she landed she had this to say:  How many people do you know sleep with their rough drafts in the bed beside them?  That’s dedication. Finish chewing. Keep on trucking, my plucky duck. And then she smiled one of those cloud-lifting, gorge-busting, light-bearing smiles.  Except for the peanuts, Literary Ambition whispered from behind a rock.  Yes, of course!  Except for the peanuts.  Back up to her lush heights and her velvet pillow Unconditional Love floated, a faint odor of orange zest and sage lingering behind her.

Of course I immediately felt better.  Saner.  Seen.  Like it was safe and sound to climb out of Stew Pot and back into the light that is the imagination, the creative process.

Literary Ambition espied my loosened grip and swooped in, seizing the peanut jar.  Then she placed it in the hands of a new recruit, Peanut Jar Monitor, wisely anticipating that other dips into the gorge might lay ahead.  With her prune face and prison matron uniform and minotaur-like upper body, Peanut Jar Monitor is very, very hard to circumvent. Whatever else may happen to a person, you DO NOT want your face to freeze like that of PJM.  You DO NOT want your upper body to bulge in this fashion.  Trust me.

All through “the troubles”, Literary Ambition has stuck to me like a soft, fuzzy burr.  Enlisting the necessary reinforcements.  Keeping the Just-For-Tomorrow’s rolling with adequate regularity.  Even saying a very gracious à bientôt to Dreaming and Scheming.  We need just such a burr sometimes.  I’m so lucky she showed up.

Despite everything that’s gone one, there’s plenty for which I can self-congratulate today – leaving the gorge, listening to Unconditional Love and resisting the peanuts.  Not to mention that the Just-For-Tomorrow’s, despite the setbacks, have still created real, tangible progress, and the book is just where I want it to be:  nearly at the point where the bits and pieces are ready to be assembled into a true, coherent first rough draft.

But today I’m acknowledging Literary Ambition – my darling burr, for not whisking it off, for letting it stick.

As for the toad in the title…on our back terrace a toad seems to have staked out his winter home.  Since Wednesday he’s been burrowed in the verbena planter, under the mint boughs.  I know he’s alive, because when I water the plants he bristles, a little irritated at being disturbed with a cold shower.  I’m hoping he’ll rouse himself again and eat all of the snails. I hate the snails. They’ve wreaked havoc on my terrace garden since June.

I’m very fond of Toad.  He’s quiet, just blinks, the sac beneath his mouth pulsing.   It makes for nice company.