“I had always wanted to be an explorer, though I didn’t know it at the time.”

I have started typing up the first part of the novel I’m working on. This will be a longer one, so I’m doing it in chunks, rather than scribbling the whole thing out and then going back to type it up. That line, the first line, is what the whole story sprang from. This particular character has been a pleasure to work with, and an entirely good influence on me. I just know you’ll like him.

Publishing the children’s book has been going slowly, which one can expect, I suppose. But in the last week at work, I discovered I had a small wealth of a couple people at the coffee shop who have connections in the literary world and would like to help me a bit along the way. Their expressed support alone is worth gold.

In other news, the strawberries are ripe. I bought a couple quarts at the farmer’s market this morning and have great plans for some afternoon strawberry shortcake, and perhaps some jam. I also got fresh peas, cucumber, and a loaf of sourdough bread. June is such a nice time for eating!

I was looking through my photographs the other day, searching for portraits I like to put in an online gallery.  As I sorted through the files, I couldn’t help but notice how few formal portraits I have.  And how few pictures I have of big, grand things or events.  Most of my pictures are of things I might almost look over: things left behind or set out to dry, things that are too high or too low, the smaller flower.  Sometimes I feel sorry for myself because I think my place in things is so often a quieter place without much grand applause.  But I think that place is what allows me to see the other unseen places, like sitting in the far corner of the room.  Writing reminds me of that.  And I like it.

The more I write, the more it’s a life I love.  I love sitting and stitching away (or pegging away, depending on the day) at  all the small pieces of the picture for hours.  The writing world of rumpled shirts, funny walks, and imaginative trees is so rich to me compared to the academic world.  There was a time I wanted to be a professor (though I’m not sure if I ever really, really wanted it).  But I like this better.  It suits me.  Even though it seems crazy and impossible sometimes.
I started a new story last week that’s new territory for me.  It’s a grown-up story that I know nothing about, yet, but it’s thrilling (and occasionally maddening) to watch it slowly unfold.  And I think the main character is a good influence on me.  He has such a simple, easy way with things, it’s hard to let myself get too knotted up around him.

Today, I finished the rough draft of the story I have been working on this spring. It is a very skeletal version of the book I hope it will be someday, but I’m still quite pleased. I can’t wait to dive in and put some flesh on its bones.

The last chapter is very short, and like the first chapter, it is called The Beginning.

That was the last time any of us stepped inside the yellow house. It sat empty for several months, and then the “For Rent” sign fell, and the dark windows glowed with light, again. I’m not sure what those people are like or if the yellow house was as kind to them as it was to us. Maybe someday, I’ll ask it as I walk by. Maybe it will answer.

Eric Jon’s phone number is still tucked, untouched, in my cell phone. I can’t bring myself to call him. I can’t bring myself to erase it, either. His life, now, is a mystery to me, like he is, but I still love him and always will. Like the words in that old, crumpled letter, he was a friend when I needed one most.

I read, once, that love endures. I think that must be true. Your love for me has been constant as the sun, whether I’ve seen it or not. I don’t think I’ve ever fallen out of love. I still love the boy I loved that spring. I still love the one before him. I still love the friend I looked up at the sky with in high school. I still love the boy who ate apples with me on the bus. I still love the girl I sang with in the back of my parent’s car. I will always love my best friends.

This constant flow of love, that has sometimes worried me and often caused aches deep in my chest, is what I now take comfort in. It is a comfort, as the houses and cities and plane rides between us grow, that I will always love the Gorham girls. That love will change, but it will never diminish.

Sometimes, I disbelieve the miraculous. But I have witnessed transformation. I have witnessed full hearts that stir with life. I have witnessed true beauty open like a flower in eight girls one spring. I have felt your breath become mine and your love burning inside my bones, which had always been cold and quiet.

In the beginning was the word, and word was with God and word was God and the word lived inside the fingers and ribs and lips and stomachs and toes of eight girls that left one yellow house on a sunny day in August. The life they carried with them was bigger than their boxes and bags of books and beauty.

I have spent a lot of time these last months slowly stitching one of the best stories I know with some of my favourite heroes. Putting those people on paper has been a pleasure. I don’t know what this story will look like in the end, and I don’t know that it will amount to anything in the publishing world, but I believe in my work with it. It’s a daily honour to write.

I’m not near finished with my first draft yet, and everything I have down is still full of bugs and hiccups. Still, I’d like to share a bit if it with you all. The first chapter of the book (following a small prelude) is called “The Beginning.” It starts something like this:

In the beginning, the world was formless and void. Then light fell on the stirring waters and it was good. The land was pulled up from the water and trees grew and roses pressed their way through the soil. There were ants and antelope and fireflies and men and women that fought for the survival of their families. There were wars and countries and sidewalks and strip clubs and strudel and bicycles and books and bobbins and Ebola and leaves shaped like hearts, and there were eight girls living in one yellow house three stories high on the street of East Gorham in the city of Madison in the USA in the month of March. In the beginning was Brianna and Hannah, Cassie, Katrina, Joelle, Janelle, Amy, and me, Lindsey.

I thought it might be time for a long over-due update on my work, on my writing.  As usual, I have more than one thing on my plate.  I’m working on getting my first story, the children’s story about Lloyd, Eliot and the No-Good Grizzling Sminks, published.  I got my first rejection letter, which I am proudly saving, and have two other copies of the manuscript out in the world.  It’s such a sweet story.  I hope I find a good home for it.

I am also working on the rough draft of two other books, which I am equally enthused about.  One is an autobiographical grown-up love story about eight girls living together in a yellow house.   The other is an adventurous children’s book involving long-lost cousins and secret libraries.  Slowly (always slowly), I am watching the pages fill.  I love that part of writing, turning blank pages into stories.

Thanks for your support, everyone.

Some scribblings on living with Hannah Guerra:

I always thought that Hannah was the most beautiful of us. Her face was rosy and radient, full of the natural honesty of leaves and flowers. She wore openness on that face and unmatching socks on her feet tucked into shoes with the heels worn into the soles. She burped loudly and without apology and ate peanut butter out of the jar with ferver. Hannah broke all the rules I created for myself of womanly propriety, and she did it with such glad grace that it built up her womanhood rather than diminishing it. It made her something of a wonder to me.

I find myself torn. There is just too much to write about, today.

I want to post more wedding pictures I like. Like this one. And this one. And these two, too.

I want to talk more about the apartment. About how we managed to put up the big bookshelf, the one I helped Adam pick out on our “first date” (to IKEA). I want to tell you how great it looks with both our books, and how we’ll need to get another to house the rest of our library.

I want to tell you some things about being married, like how they are right when they say that it’s hard, but working through the hard bits is more rewarding than ever, because you know that in the long run, the guts and tears you put into working it out will make things lighter and keep crawling things from creeping into your relationship. And in the short run, it’s rewarding too, and you find yourself dancing and twirling with your husband in a coffee shop while you wait for your smoothie.

I want to talk about Yeats, poetry, personality, pilgrim souls.

But, unfortunately, all that will have to wait, because I’ve just finished the first draft of my first book. It’s sitting next to me now, open to the first page I began back when summer was still young. I thought that this would excite me. And maybe it will. But for now, it just feels strange. I don’t really want the story to be over.

That’s not to say I have nothing left to do with it. I already have dozens of things I want to carve into and big things I want to plop in. But a part of me misses writing the first draft. There is something so fun about about holding a blank page with no idea what is coming next and filling it with a story. I loved creating the characters, and places, and adventures. I really loved it! I know that the hardest work is yet to come, but if it’s half as rewarding as this first bit has been, it is so worth it.

This story is a children’s story, and it begins with two heroes, one human, one feline, who don’t know they are heroes yet. They get caught up in an adventure involving a butler, a rich old woman, a rich dead woman, a gardner, and a no-good grizzling sminks. Before they know it, they’re setting traps in mansions and eating goulash in the remote mountains of Hungary. It’s all very exciting, really. And just now, quite rough. But I can’t wait to see where draft two takes these heroes.

Guess who is coming all the way from Norway to see me get married (and probably also just to see me)?

It’s Tåran! My dear, wonderful friend. I am so excited.

How was your 4th of July? I think my favourite bit of this holiday is that when you drive at night, there are fireworks happening all around you and a thick, smoky smog over the street from neighborhood bottle-rockets. And there always seem to be good stars with just the right amount of clouds breezing by them, don’t there? I am quite fond of the 4th of July, for all it’s colour, noise, dewy grass, and crepe paper.

On a tip from Superhero Journal, I recently listened to a wonderful interview with Roald Dahl (get on the glass elevator to get to his interview). It was inspiring in all the ways I needed to be inspired, and chock-full of useful advice. If you are interested in writing, give him a listen. You may want to give him a listen even if you aren’t. He has the most wonderful voice, don’t you think? I love when he talks about how he got the idea for James and the Giant Peach. Peaches are lovely and squishy!

I am having quite a good time scribbling away at my own bit of a story. I’m beginning to think scribbling away is quite a nice thing to do. I also think yogurt is nice, especially with some blueberries in it. So, I think the only logical thing to do tonight is sit and scribble while eating yogurt. With blueberries in it. And maybe some honey.

Yesterday was my last day of Creative Writing class. I ate half a grapefuit before I left and walked to class with Adam’s iPod and one ear bud (the other bud broke and had been snipped off). Despite having only one earful of music, it was delicious. So delicious, I can’t begin to tell you about the colour of the low sun or dark clouds or the intimacy of the music or the faces of the people I passed by or how I wanted to link arms with them or give them kisses on their cheeks. All I can tell you is that it was very, very beautiful.

Katrina and Georgia were at the Terrace studying physics and sharing a pitcher of cool beer. We sat together by the boats in the sunshine and read from our stories. Later we read our stories to the class and they read theirs and it was wonderful. Katrina and I walked together to the bus, talking about class and the people in it. Amazing people, all of them. I regret not getting to know them better.

Today, I ate the other half of the grapefruit. It squirted me in the eye. I baked bread, Adam bought me new ear buds, and I bought a gooey drippy ice cream cone.

It’s been a very successful couple of days. Here are the last four sentences of my story (as it stands now):

The smile started in a pit in our stomach and it rumbled and grew and spread to our knees and toes and elbows and the tips of our fingers and the ends of our hair and we threw up our hats and cheered. The cheer echoed off the Town Hall, bounced off the pavement, and rose through the trees that lined the street, flying past thick clouds into the sunshine. Our cheer went up and up, echoing through the atmosphere and passing into outer space. And it bounced off the moon, and it bounced off some stars, and it echoed and echoed and echoed.

This afternoon, I spent hours and hours and then a couple more hours plugging away at my short story for creative writing. Eliot helped by sleeping on my storyboard/bed. It’s definately still a work in progress, but I’m having so much fun, I just had to share a bit of it with you and let you know what I’ve been up to. Here are the first two paragraphs as they stand now:

One day, something spectacular happened in a place no one found spectacular at all. Our town is a town like millions of others. It has 4,820 trees, 12 restaurants, 400 dogs, 202 raspberry bushes, a countless number of dandelions, and 12,482 people. 50% of us are male, 50% are female. We are 10% depressed, 22% optimistic, and 1% insane. Most of us like breakfast cereal; only a handful of us like black licorice jelly beans. The majority likes our normal little town. We like the tree lined streets. We like the quaint shops. We like the safety. But no one, not the optimists, not the dandelions, not even the licorice-lovers, ever found it spectacular.

One night, a cool wind began to spin in this quaint, yet not quite spectacular town. It did things that most winds do: rattled tree branches and mussied the hair of girls coming home from bars. It twirled the curtains of open windows and tossed old leaves and flyers. But that wind, seemingly innocent like so many before, grabbed the light post in front of the bakery on Main Street and threw it into the lawn of the Town Hall one block down, knocking over a statue on its way. The noise of this incident startled remarkably few: only Bill, the Vietnam vet who slept on a bench in front of the Town Hall, and Jim, who was chain smoking and taking a long walk after a late-night fight with his girlfriend. But by morning, the Town Hall’s front lawn was strewn with dozens of buzzing people snapping photos. The light post stood high above them on its head, the exposed wires at the top flailing awkwardly like little legs. It didn’t take long for the news crews to get there or suited men telling us the end is nigh. Little kids were playing tag.