I’m thankful that she knew enough to turn around, go home, and call me. I tried to ease her anxiety by reminding her that she hadn’t taken the car to the dealership in years. Really, why would she remember that the dealership is located on the other side of the freeway?

Last week, I drove her to her CAT scan appointment. She hesitated with pen poised over the intake questionaire, her hand wavering as if she didn’t know how to fill in the blanks. She handed it over to me, and I walked her through the form. She couldn’t remember when she had her breast cancer lumpectomy, so I left a question mark.

I’m thankful her CAT scan returned normal for an 80-year-old woman. Whatever that means. Is there a bell curve for age-related brain atrophy?

After the CAT scan we went grocery shopping. She’d lost her appetite because of anxiety. In less than a week she gone from frail to barely there. “I go to the grocery store and just don’t know what to buy,” she said. So I walked the aisles with her. She forgot where to find the yogurt.

I’m thankful that with her usual depression-child obsessiveness, she nickeled and dimed every item she put in her grocery cart. For once, I wasn’t annoyed.

I’m also thankful that my mother doesn’t insist that she’s fine. She knows her mind is faltering. She can’t hide the desperation from her voice when she talks about it, which saddens me to no end. And scares me. But I’m glad she’s talking about it.

Most of all, I’m thankful for her sense of humor. On the way home from the grocery store, Mom mentioned a show she likes, “The Ghost Whisperer,” which is now rerunning over and over in syndication. “I think I’ve seen all the episodes,” she said. Pause. She laughed. “Well, with this short-term memory loss, I guess I’ll always enjoy them, won’t I?”

Oh how cute

Oh this is sweet, you think. Ms. Squirrel arriving for her almond bright and early on a Monday morning. You’ve got your coffee, and you’re ready to begin your work week with WIP development work. For once, the sun’s out, casting a burnished glow through turning leaves.

Ms. Squirrel takes her nut as usual, departs to store the nut for winter, reappears for another, departs, reappears, eats the third nut, and then sidles to the open screen door. What’s this, you think. You’re becoming quite friendly and tame indeed, Ms. Squirrel.

She’s just inside the house, standing up on her back legs, sniffing you. For a moment, sweet images of pet squirrels flit through your head.

The squirrel is insistent, and you’re thinking, how cute. And then you hear a crinkle of leaves, a scrabble, and a soft chitter. A head pops into view from the roof, checking you out. Then a second squirrel drops onto the balcony rail, and you realize that you have been feeding not one squirrel, but two.

Squirrelapalooza on my balcony

Double the fun, you think. What’s a few extra almonds?

But then, a strange thing happens: mother nature in action. How bizarre, you think. On MY balcony? You’re in denial as you watch the insistent squirrel chase away the newcomer. You realize that the newcomer is Ms. Squirrel, for real, and that the other one sports a big ol’ nut sack. You’re still holding out your hand, almond in place, when the nasty little effer bypasses the nut in favor of your finger.

He’s grabbed on good and tight, and at first you don’t know what’s happening. Then, the telltale jab of pain. Mother-effing-little-effer! You shake him loose, thinking, What is it about testosterone anyhow? Thinking, Dude, there’s plenty of almonds; you don’t need to go all Hannibal on my ass, and with a little bit of Cujo thrown in for good measure.

Bad squirrel

Finger throbbing, blood welling from the wound, you run to the sink. You’ve got the tap turned on high, and the water hits the blood, splattering it all over the sink and even onto your bathrobe. In your shock, you squeeze your index finger over and over in what you think is a snake-bite strategy — to squeeze out the squirrely toxins before they shoot through your bloodstream, latch onto your healthy blood cells, multiply, and turn into a nasty, infectious, frothy outbreak of something.

You can’t help but think of a few Stephen-King-esque story ideas. For example: What if Mr. Nut Sack liked the taste of human blood?

Mr. Nut Sack — that would be squirrel non grata to you, buddy.

—

Hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and a Band-Aid later, I’m fine. I’m wondering what the week has in store for me though. As I write this the female — doublecheck, yes, no nut sack — just ventured back and picked up the almond the male so rudely shunned.

Isn’t that typical — the female tidying up after the male!

This is my kind of porn!

Lately, I’ve been thinking alot about pleasuring myself. And not in a “Debbie Does Dallas” kind of way. I’m talking about porn in the bigger sense of anything that revs up your pleasure centers.

Winter is coming, and I’m planning ahead to beat the blues with my own brand of porn. For example, bookshelves at right? I plan to add books to the colorful display. Books as art installation–love it!

The truth is, I’m prone to depression, so S.A.D. is about the last thing I need. To this end, I’m preparing like the squirrels who gather nuts for the winter. I’m gathering my nuts: my little pleasures for the cold weather. These include flannel sheets and Mexican sipping chocolate with cinnamon.

And prowling around with my new DSLR camera. Writing is what I do. Photography is my hobby, and I’ve neglected it for the past few years.

And finding new cafes in which to people watch and write. It also includes visiting my usual haunts and chatting with my coffeehouse friends.

And festooning my place with seasonal decorations — grinning jack-o-lantern gourds and spider candles at the moment — from now through the New Year.

And experimenting with new ways to wake up my creativity because winter can wreak havoc on my writing. For example, I bought a gynormous roll of signage paper. This morning I unrolled a section and went crazy clustering a short story idea. It was, simply put, fun.

And keeping a steady supply of (organic!) almonds for the squirrel that visits me each morning. She now takes them directly from my hand. She’s incredibly gentle about it too.

And coordinating new outfits with which I can wear my brightly colored knee-high and thigh-high socks.

And stocking up on red wine. I rarely drink alone, which is why I don’t keep much alcohol in the house, but seeing the bottles comforts me. Like that song by UB40, a holdover from my bad-ass partying days. (Yes, I had them: New York friends, you reading this?)

And buying L’Occitane lavender foaming bath and verbena foaming bath.

And many obvious things like maintaining an exercise routine and my social life…but, hey, on the grayest days it’s sometimes the tiniest pleasures that elevate a so-so day to a good day.

So, what little pleasures help you get through the winter?

If you’re interested in bookshelf porn, check out http://bookshelfporn.com/. I loves me some books on shelves, all kinds of shelves!

(And if you like my bookshelves, check out Design Within Reach at http://www.dwr.com/.)

I didn't stare out the window too much today.

Getting out of the house helped today. I’ve been moldering within the first 50 pages of a revision for a few weeks now.

Let me clear: This isn’t a revision of the genteel sort. This is a massive overhaul. This is a rewrite, a restructuring, an upheaval.

Just now I cleared my way through the first 50, and through the next ten pages. I realized that I was stuck-ish (I never admit to writer’s block) because I’d softened my protagonist too much. We’re irrational creatures, we humans, with contradictory impulses and emotions that coexist especially in times of stress and grief. Anger and sadness, resentment and guilt. Inner conflict, need I say more?

Over on Murderati, Stephen Jay Schwartz discussed writing tight. Because, officially, the manuscript isn’t a first draft, I’ve been caught up in writing as lean as possible. Oddly enough, his post got me thinking that I need to liberate the manuscript, which is to say, treat it as a first draft all over again. The truth is that I still don’t feel sure enough about the upheaval to spend the extra time it takes to write tight.

I’ll write in all my wordy and expansive glory, and revise tight later.

Which book shall I buy?

Entering Costco, I felt like a real American, a bonafide overspending, gluttonous, credit-card-maxing member of my birth country, ready to pledge my allegiance to all that promises to raise my self-esteem and my sense of entitlement.

Be honest, doesn’t your common sense and fiscal rectitude recede when you enter a Costco warehouse? If you’re like me, a neural ball of me-wantsa-everything starts to pulse, and you find yourself strolling up and down the aisles with your oversized shopping cart, itching to oversize your life with five years worth of trash bags and enough wrapping paper to cover your walls. I often peruse other people’s carts, wondering what fabulous object I’ve missed. Could be the latest Keurig coffeemaker, or the fake-Ugg boots, or the cutesy tabbed-style chopping boards. I kid you not. Check them out right here.

After awhile the florescent lights coupled with quantitudinous excess send me into the consumer’s equivalent of insulin shock. Today was a prime example. Last night my nifty space heater almost fried the house down. Since I’d bought it at Costco many moons ago, I decided, Yes, I need this one thing, this is legit, this is okay. To further my needy resolve to partake of the — eh hem — American dream, I invited my 80-year-old mother to accompany me. This may seem strange, but getting her out of the house and walking around was a good deed. Really. (I am serious about that if nothing else in this post.) She doesn’t eat much anymore, so I also insisted that we stop at every, and mean every, food sampling.

I found a space heater, all right, but I also found a light box, a pound of shrimp (with cocktail sauce), a Brita water pitcher, a mongo-sized bottle of Neutrogena body bath, a — never mind — needless to say, I also found a book. While my mom jotted down the titles of books to check out of the library, I found my eye drawn to one book. This was a case of cover art successfully sucking me in. I’d never heard of CEMETERY GIRL’s author, but that stark white cover with the creepy, creeping branches about to take over the face? Love it! And the title too.

So hats off to the cover artist who managed to catch my glazed and by-then-headachy attention.

Kale: stir fry with ginger, soy, and garlic?

View: a little on the “meh” side this week.

I spent so much time staring out the window that I rearranged the physical view in hopes that my mental view would change. All week long I faced my laptop, but nothing much happened. I’m not sure why. No excuses here, but it got me wondering why it is that some weeks my output flows, and then others it fizzles to a barely discernable trickle.

It’s the weirdest thing. Nothing changed this week. No stressors. Ah, but perhaps that’s it. No stressors! Through last week I was gung-ho to finish a revision for an agent. I was PUMPED. The revision was a beautiful thing, and I knew to the core of my physical being that I was improving the manuscript. It just felt good, you know what I mean? I sent it off one week ago.

Then, this week — fizzle-city. I re-read where I’d left off on another revision, and after the headiness of my previous effort, this revision felt flat. Good news: I think I figured out what’s not right about it, thus far, which is a huge part of the battle. And I did get words down on paper — I did. Just not so much is all.

But, okay, in a fit of frustration I did buy the decorative kale you see in the image, and I did set piggy beside that sickly lily, poor thing. I kept pondering how to cook up kale, however. I like kale okay, but, come on now, not that much.

As a friend wrote in an email message this morning about her own window-staring: Taking a break, it seems.

Apparently, the brain wants what it wants at times, and no amount of striving and self-flaggelation on my part is going to change its stubborn mind. Hey, Brain, vacation’s over come Monday! Uhm, okay, pretty please?

Which way should I go?

If decisiveness is the hallmark of a great leader, then I’m letting myself down in Writingland. I’m sitting here at my computer procrastinating — talk about being the queen of social networking. This kind of queenliness isn’t good for my fiction. This morning I handed over my sceptre to my flaky coregent, who should have abdicated long ago. Today, she reigns supreme first on Facebook, then on various fictionista blogs such as Murderati, The Lipstick Chronicles, and Jungle Red, and now, here, on my blog.

I simply can’t take her seriously at the moment. Off with her head!

Here’s what’s going on in the bigger picture of my fiction pseudo-career: For awhile now I’ve considered self-publishing because I’m getting no joy from the traditional route. I’ve been working hard (between one major bout of depression, one major bout of economic hardship, not to mention the day-job), folks, since 1999.

In the spring, I told myself to give the agent-hunting thing one more heavy push, and if nothing comes of it – that’s it, self-publish. I’ve revised my favorite unpublished novel, and I continue the agent process…

Meanwhile, here I am in Writingland, also known as the Land of Indecision, having handed over my power to the Queen of Procrastination. I take responsibility. I’m being foolish. I need to make a decision about what to work on RIGHT NOW.

I’ve been here before. My ailment is called between-project-itis. It’s an inflammation of the brain that causes me to flounder around for a few days — hopefully only for a few days — while I get my head around the notion of beginning something new. Picture me flopping around, like, say, that time in Hawaii when a wave floated me over a pretty coral bed, then retreated to leave me stranded atop said coral, frantic and splashing while my friends laughed at me (until they saw my bloody wounds — I still have scars on my legs)…

That’s me, flipping, flopping around in berserk fashion. I feel a pull in two directions at once, hence, my indecisiveness. It feels like I need to make a decision based on a career strategy, or some such thing, or else trust my gut…

1. Start a new novel that I developed last year. I’ve got the  major plot points, I’ve got the major characters. Will require what all first drafts require: tears and toil.

2. Revise an existing novel that I still feel has oodles of commercial potential. I now know how to revise it to amplify the potential. Will require major historical research.

I’m leaning toward the second option. I figure there’s no reason not to self-publish this novel while pursuing the traditional route with the other one. Right? Right. Did I just make a decision? (I can’t tell…honestly.)

Who knows, maybe this guy will make it to Bouchercon someday.

Last year I attended Bouchercon, the mystery convention. But not this year. I thought I was okay with my decision until I popped into annoying Facebook — why oh why did I bother? — and noted how much fun everyone was having. I don’t know many of the publishing novelists having all the fun, yet I regressed to the mindset of a ten-year-old not invited to the popular girl’s sleepover.

This, even though I wasn’t a girl who pined for sleepovers. So I ask you, what the hell was my angst all about anyhow? Could I have been more immature, more childish, more silly?

The truth is that I yearn to be a member of the wider community of crime writers and known by at least a few of them for my writing. “Oh, Lisa Alber, yes,” Deborah Crombie might say. “Her debut novel is excellent.” Or from, say, Laura Lippman, “She got some buzz at BEA.” Or, from Louise Penny, “Haven’t read her novel yet, but it’s on my nightstand.”

That I don’t feel part of the larger community says too much about me, I guess. (Maybe I should look into therapy?) I’ve always strived for “As” — which is to say, external acknowledgment in return for my efforts. I don’t need much, but a few gnawed-on bones thrown in my direction would be nice; writing to the accolades of my inner critic and my friends and family isn’t enough.

Yesterday, I attended a lecture given by The Oregonian‘s book critic. On the return drive, a writer friend and I spoke about our futures in terms of ”when,” not “if.” When we sell our first novels, when we have to start promoting ourselves…when, when, when…I felt fine (no Facebook!), and then…

My childishness resurfaced this morning as I peeked at a few fictionista blogs. There I went, bobbing back into the land of “if.” As in, ”if only I went to the sleepover…,” as in “if only the damn novel would sell already…” One and all, the novelists who posted and who had attended Bouchercon professed to post-conference exhaustion. A good kind of exhausted, I’m sure. I remember boozing it up in the bar along with everyone else last year, watching the well-known authors greet each other with hugs. I eavesdropped on many a conversation about book tours, publication dates, agents, and publishers. Oh the fun! Even for me, the authorial voyeur. And man, I was exhausted just from absorbing it all.

I do love the writing process, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that my ten-year-old girl self won’t shut up. She still wants to be invited to the popular-girl sleepover (with boys, always with boys). This yearning of mine helps keep me motivated on the worst days. I don’t banish my ten-year-old self; I say to her, Hey, you, let’s keep chugging.

You never know, maybe next year I’ll show up  at Bouchercon with a book sale under my belt. A girl can yearn.

Industrious bee...if only revision were as bloodless

I completed the most gruesomely delicious month of manuscript revision. I’d received feedback from an interested agent – the most simple and straightforward, beginner-ish feedback that I’d heard in a loooong time. Little did I know that I needed to hear it.

The agent said, I felt the manuscript slowed in the two chapters before the murder and got muddled. I also felt like I lost the voice a little bit, which was so strong in the earlier parts…I think if a scene or dialogue doesn’t serve to move the story forward, you should cut.

I read the two specified chapters while attempting to inhabit her point of view. Which is to say, with pure objectivity. Lo and behold, something clicked. A big ol’ whopping, humiliating, painful, Homer-head-slap DOHing, light flashing, baseball-bat wielding CLICK.

I ended up cutting half the text and combining the chapters, the whole time pondering the weirdness of the brain, or maybe my brain. I can’t tell you how many times I’d ransacked the manuscript. But it took a near stranger with an interest in sales potential over all else to inspire a fundamental shift.

With the fundamental shift in place, I cut, sliced and hacked the entire beloved but aggravating thing. In the process of carving away the fat, a couple of muscular plot ideas appeared, lean and mean and there all along. It was like magic, sharp-edged magic, but magic all the same.

Poor thing needs to heal for a week before I pull out my bloody revision implements once again. Maybe all it will need is a punch here and there. That would be good. Bruises heal faster than cuts…

Then we’ll see what wounds the agent has in store for it. Once the plastic surgery starts, does it ever end?

Yes, it’s Saturday night, and I’m on a date with my manuscript. We’ve been in a long-term, off-and-on again relationship since the year 2000. After the initial infatuation that turned into an all-consuming affair for over a year, we faltered. Frankly, I lost interest. I thought it wasn’t the one for me. Another manuscript came along, and I cheated. It was time to move on. Time to ditch the lost cause.

These many years later, I noticed myself feeling nostalgic. Was that the manuscript that got away? I decided to go into counseling with the manuscript; my readers have helped me tremendously. Sometimes, you just need a new perspective. And let’s be honest, it’s not the manuscript’s fault it didn’t meet my expectations.

Sometimes, as we all know, it’s about timing. The timing feels good now. I’m in a better place craft-wise, and now I get the manuscript. It may need a massive restructuring, it may still cause me woe, but I’m going to give it another go.

So, I’m here in this chic bistro with my wine, ready to iron out an issue that I didn’t know was brewing until my readers pointed out one of my manuscript’s many flaws. Don’t you hate it when your friends, with the best of intentions, only notice the weaknesses? Here you are, trying to love on a manuscript, and you’ve got these nay-sayers giving you grief. The problem is, when they’re right, they’re right.

So, manuscript and I, we’re going to have a little discussion. Sometimes wine helps.