My Slow Christmas

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I’ve mentioned before how much difficulty I’ve had getting into the spirit of the season. I know I’m not alone. And I have been “busy.” Aside from obsessing about politics (looking forward to having it all take a back seat–as David Brooks has promised), I have several different writing projects going.

And I’ve been acting “as if“: sending out a massive amount of Christmas cards, sneaking in some shopping and trying to organize gifts for my daughters to pick up at the house. I’ve been negotiating our Boxing Day Zoom for opening gifts (as our youngest daughter is working today and tomorrow). I’ve been hanging out with my old dog. I’ve kept up with my goal to walk 5 miles a day. On the Solstice, given torrential rain, and snow (!), I did almost the entire 5 miles inside the house. (Pabu and I did make it outside for a bit in the early evening–a Tibetan Terrier, he likes snow.)

But now it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m feeling that maybe an Ann Cleeves’s novel and some tea and shortbread are in order. Even if I can’t get the picture to shift.

One of the gifts I splurged on for myself recently was to sign up for BookFox’s “Master Your Writing Time” course. I’m dawdling my way through it, but finding–despite my best efforts, or the opposite–that it has helped. Some of the lessons are action tips, and adopting the Pomodoro method has worked beautifully for me. Sitting for very long makes me feel achy and stiff. But working for just 25 minutes, then spending 5 minutes moving around, doing a few chores (avoiding my phone & computer), has been pretty amazing.

Then I came to his lesson “Hasty Writing vs. Slow Writing.” As a huge fan of Louise DeSalvo, I was already primed for what Matthew Fox called a “mindset” lesson. It ended with a link to the blogpost below.

I’ll still find a way to walk my 5 miles today. But I wish us both a slow Christmas.

A Manifesto for Slow Writing

Fresh Ink

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I have no idea what just happened, but it kind of sums up my blogging year. (With the exception of April,when I did manage to post every day.) I wrote a whole post, and now it looks like I need to rewrite it. So here goes.

Earlier this year I decided to submit every poem, every essay, and every short story I had. Somewhere. With the result that, amid a hailstorm of rejections (ouch!) I also have a few very nice acceptances to brag about.

One is at Fresh Ink, an on-line journal that reprints short stories. They picked up my story, “Corinne, at Floodtime,” which had previously been published on-line by Calyx, when it was a runner-up for the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. Corinne is “live” just today, and I’d love it if you took a look.

Another publication is at One Sentence Poems. This on-line journal and their sister site (or parent?), Right Hand Pointing, first came to my attention when I read a book recommended to me by Christopher Howell: One for the Money: The Sentence as a Poetic Form. If you search my name or the poem title, “What She Memorized for the Test,” you’ll find me.

Finally, take a look at my last post to see my other recent publications. I should add, that my poetry books are also available from Edmonds Bookshop and Village Books.

If you have recommendations for where next we should be sending our work, please share in the comments!

 

What to buy your favorite writer…poet…new mom for Christmas

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I’m having a terrible time trying to get into the Christmas spirit. I think what I really want is for my three daughters to be youngsters again. I want to go out as a family and pick out a tree, then bring it home to decorate it, bake cookies, and watch Santa Claus Saves Earth from the Martians. 

Short of that, I want to meet a friend at a noisy restaurant and drink about four glasses of wine. Except the restaurants aren’t open, my best friends are all barricaded in their houses, and I appear to have quit drinking alcohol.

So what I’ll do instead is take a long walk, help my husband get the new dishwasher installed (grrr), and imagine in the most idle possible way putting up a Christmas tree all by my lonesome.

As Deepak Chopra says somewhere, when faith fails you, have faith in faith. Trust in trust.

If you haven’t yet decided what to buy those socially-distanced, masked-up loved ones on your list, here are my recommendations.

My poetry appeared in three anthologies over the last twelve months. Chrysanthemum’s 2020 Literary Anthology, Footbridge Above the Waterfall from Rose Alley Press, and Our Deepest Calling, which is an anthology of writings from my Wednesday writing group.

To find more about Footbridge, visit this site: https://www.rosealleypress.com/works/horowitz/footbridge/

The Chrysanthemum anthology is available from Amazon.

If you’d like a copy of Our Deepest Calling, they are available from private sellers only, but I could probably help you with that.

And for my final entry in the poetry department, there’s my friend Paul Marshall’s wonderful first book, which I helped edit: Stealing Foundation Stones. 

But, poetry aside (never) I have another new book to push.

December 11 my little essay, “You Are Very Upset” — which began life as a poem with numbered aphorisms about parenting, teaching, and writing — will be available from DLG Publishing Partners as a Kindle book. AND it’s only $.99.

If you know any newish moms who are also teaching, homeschooling, and trying to write, I’m happy to recommend it.

And now, for that walk.

On Hold

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I’m trying to get through this election without falling apart. Why am I so surprised that people would vote for this awful, bigoted man? I’m trying to visualize Joe Biden as my president. To read what (once-conservative) columnist David Brooks wrote about Biden, this centrist (not a communist) statesman with progressive (yay!) leanings, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/opinion/joe-biden.html

I made the excellent choice to enroll in a poetry class, which started this week, and so my assignment to write a poem is welcome. It also helped to get new blog posts in my in-box from here: http://ritaottramstad.com/

and here: https://spokeandhub.blog/author/alysonindrunas/

Re those blog posts: apart from the election, my dog, too, is getting old. Dang it.

But it helps to know that there are–in point of fact–more of us who believe that the world can be a kinder, better place, that we belong to a nation that protects children and people of every kind, values education, values justice, and cares about the freaking planet.

Meanwhile, a friend forwarded these paragraphs from Clarissa Pinkola Estes and I’ve been sharing them with everyone I know.  Also trying to remember to breathe. I hope you are, too.

“In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this our suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take ‘everyone on earth’ to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of the soul in shadowy times like these–to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
“There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: in my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. This comes with much love and a prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes