I don’t eat Jello–haven’t for 20-some years–but I love this use of Jello

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After I delivered Travis and Alex to their birthday party gig in Redondo Beach–yes, the Green Room, Trav’s classic rock band, had their second paying gig yesterday; today they play at Gina’s Pizza at the Corona del Mar Christmas walk (for tips)–and on the way home stopped at Pudgy Beads

in Long Beach (a glorious vintage bead store with wonderful owners), bought a few things, then drove home, cleaned up a bit (always cleaning up a bit, it seems), lighted the candles I had bought at Ikea on the way to Redondo, and sat on the sofa with my Clairefontaine notebook

and Waterman fountain pen (indigo ink).

My iBook G4, which I love, tends to make me a little too perfectionistic, when it comes to first drafts of fiction. It’s so easy to delete. With the notebook, I just write. I don’t care about being perfect. I can cross out, but I can’t delete, and for me, this is a good thing. So I set the timer and sat and wrote and by the time I was done, the room was dark, lit only by candlelight.

This morning at 6:15, Rosie, our six-month-old cat, jumped on the bed and woke me. I tried, for a minute, to go back to sleep, but the house was quiet, bamboo wind chimes by the front door were clacking tastily, so I got up, straightened up a bit (see … always straightening…..) and sat down with the notebook and pen and wrote a couple pages.

This got me thinking about tools, again. I still love sitting with paper and pen, getting comfortable, and writing. The laptop is good for nonfiction first drafts, though not fiction. Wish I’d remember that when I’m trying to write at the laptop and nothing’s coming out.

Debra and Michelle and I went to see this movie tonight. Jeff Daniels is a pompous, no longer successful novelist. His wife is more successful than he. It’s downhill from there. An intense movie. And an anti-divorce film, if there ever was one. If you and your spouse are on the fence about splitting up and you have kids, see this film. You will decide you are being whiny and work a little harder to stay together, for the kids, anyway. Laura Linney was great; what else has she been in? I can’t place her.

It’s going to rain. The sky is overcast, damp. I like rain. But I want it to pour and then be done with–at least until after Sunday when my 11-year-old’s band plays at Gina’s Pizza at the Corona del Mar Christmas walk. That’s the one day a year this town is like New York. The streets are packed. There’s one long traffic jam. I’m a back East girl at heart, still, and I love it.

But I don’t feel like writing.

Still, I work on The ASJA Monthly

, which I edit. But I don’t feel like writing–doing my own writing, that is. So I pull on my purple boots, wrap my clapotis around my shoulders and head out with the list for Mother’s Market.

I go to the library and check out a book on CD (The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, which I read years and years ago, and loved). I am so addicted to books on tape or CD. You can listen when you walk, when you clean, when you knit. They help me have more patience with books. If the book starts slow, I don’t mind so much. But I do find that certain readers are irritating. I checked out Don DeLillo’s Underworld, which I only got to page 400 in (it’s an 800-page book) and figured I’d listen to the rest on tape, but the narrator sounded like that digitalized voice you hear when the library calls you to leave a message that your book has come in and is on hold (my friend, Allison, does a perfect rendition of the voice), so I couldn’t listen. And the narrator for Middlesex wasn’t right either–not for me, so I turned the book in. I did love the narrator for Little Earthquakes, though, and loved the book, too.

Then I go to Mother’s Market and down a wheatgrass juice and a Brain Power smoothie, figuring the combo should turbo charge my bloodstream, shop a little, and on the way home, stop at a little store, Paris to the Moon, where I read there was a section entirely devoted to Mother Mary, one of my idols. The store is all glittery and small. There’s a pink area, a black and white area, a kids’ nook with tin crowns from Mexico, and lots of vintage Christmas tree ornaments and snowglobes.

Onward to home, with goods and groceries. I clean up a little. Swiffer. Iron a red and white vintage tablecloth and spread it out on the table, in preparation for tonight, for Writers Block Party, my every other week group of talented students. Actually, all of people in my private groups, those current and departed, are talented, and it’s a pleasure reading their work. My class at UC-Extension is a group of stellar women, bright and funny.

I still don’t want to write, though, so I eat lunch: rice with soymilk and maple syrup. I know, I know… But I’m a vegetarian and Italian and like to eat a little differently.

I check in on my Gotham online class. Post a message on the blackboard.

Soon I will go pick Travis up at school. I have to prepare for my show, and my class. Maybe stop by Barnes & Noble and buy a new Moleskine notebook

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I don’t think this will be a writing day for me.

I love Thanksgiving. I love the day–the cooking and house filling with fragrance, the resulting tofu turkey and stuffing and all the great sides, the friends and down time. And I love the day before Thanksgiving. It’s a kind of gearing-down day, shifting into a slower mode, dwelling a bit more on … stuff.

On my walk this morning, as I listened to Anne Lamott’s Blue Shoe, I began to think about gratefulness, and how it’s so easy to get caught up in kvetching, or all the controversial things there are to rage about. It’s good to focus on what’s good, what you’re grateful for. As a writer, there are a bunch of down sides. But there are a bunch of up sides, too. Here’s my top ten list of writerly things I’m grateful for:

1. No nylons. I can’t remember the last time I stepped into a pair of pantyhose. Maybe it was for a funeral or something. I wore fishnets on Halloween, but that’s different.

2. Wearing jammies or whatever to write. Right now I’m cooling down for a walk and have on tennis shoes and workout clothes as I sit at my computer.

3. Working at my dining room table, or wherever I like, and not be forced to sit at a desk. I like desks and sometimes I use mine, but mostly I sit at the dining room table with my laptop. Right now my son is on the sofa, in his jammies, watching Wacko’s Wish on the tube. Which brings me to another thing …

4. … Learning to focus amidst distraction. I used to need a room of my own, and I had one for a time. I worked in the studio behind the house and it was quiet back there, but it became too quiet and I returned to the house.

5. And which brings me to another thing–being able to watch my son grow up. I may be the most grateful for this–being able to do work that has allowed me to be here.

6.

Being a Libra, I of course see both sides of a situation and can see virtue in each side. (Actually, I tend to see more sides that are there…..!) I do feel people do the best they can and sometimes they just reach a limit.

Thing is, the teacher in me wants them to push beyond their limits, and becomes disappointed when they don’t, or can’t. The writer in me–which is a bigger part of me; it was there first, before the teacher–has little patience for the thinned skinned approach. I have been through a ton of workshopping and have brought stuff that stunk and have been the recipient of criticism that hurt. I guess I kept going because I made the commitment and am loyal to my commitments–to a fault, some would say. I used to think, some day I will come here and they will love what I bring. That day came.

I know this: That day would not have come had I quit because of my feelings that they just didn’t get what I was trying to do.

Currently reading: Map of the World by Jane Hamilton.
I didn’t pay much attention to this book when it became a bestseller a few years back. Partly it was because the book is difficult–a child drowns. When my son was smaller, children getting hurt in books was too too much. But what an incredible book. Such wonderful writing and character development. We can all learn a thing or three from this book.