The English Geek

a Night of Omens and (possibly) Answers

Since the events that transpired to create this post happened, I have been in a dark place in my soul. I have doubted my decisions, my relationships, my faith. I had a dark moment on a dark night sitting alone on a cold bench in a park, so late at night that the lights had gone out.

I want to believe what I have believed. I want to believe what others have said about my choices. I want to believe, again, that I am forging a good life. But I don’t know how to do that, here in the dark alone. And I don’t know how to convey what I believe to the people who need to believe it too.

So. I’m in this dark spot.

I can’t really talk about it, because talking induces hysteria. The kind of tears that feel like a heart attack. Putting it into spoken words, the kind with sound waves, makes it feel even more real.

So I’ve written a lot in my journal. I’ve fasted for myself (not something I ever do). I’ve thought and relived and tried to see things from an objective perspective.

I’ve spent a lot of time crying in the bathtub.

Two weeks ago, my mom asked me to come to her church’s birthday dinner. Some sort of writers or artists were coming to speak—she was vague on the details—and she thought it would be fun if I came because, you know, my writerly ambitions. And while I usually feel guilty about doing things in the evening on nights when I’m not working, something told me I should go.

So I did, despite the fact that I argued with Kendell about it and I argued with Haley about it and there was a big meltdown just before I left and I left late and then I had to speed down the freeway (which is a brave thing to do in Utah right now, considering all the freeway construction). I went, taking my darkness with me and my hope that the something telling me to go was right.

When I got off the freeway and turned east towards Springville where my mom lives, I gasped. The moon was rising, very close to full, right in the valley between two mountains. A sheet of clouds hung in the lower part of the valley, so it looked like the bottom quarter of the moon had been torn off. The rest of it, though, looked enormous—you know how it looks when it first rises?

If I wasn’t late and the road wasn’t so congested, I would have stopped and taken a photo of it, even though I’m certain that my camera phone couldn’t begin to capture how that moon made me feel. A little bit of light.

I rushed to my mom’s, picked her up, and drove to the church. She was still a little bit vague on the details of who was speaking, but as I listened to the conversations around me, I picked it up: the painter Liz Lemon Swindle, who does religious paintings, and Susan Easton Black, who is a church historian and a professor at BYU. She also writes the books that tell the story behind Swindle’s paintings.

And it just so happened that my mom and I ended up sitting at the very same table as these two women.

As I tend to do when I am around successful people, I clammed up. I wanted to talk to them both, gush my admiration and ask them for advice and learn their secrets, but mostly I just listened and ate chicken salad.

I loved listening to Liz Lemon Swindle speak about her art. As art is something I am immensely fond of—partly because my grandpa, Curtis Allman, was an artist—but not anything I can do with any resemblance to actual art, I find artists to be amazing people. The translation between the idea and the finished painting—it is a source of magic I think.

But the talk I needed to hear, the one I didn’t know I came to the meeting for, was Susan Easton Black’s. She spoke of a time in her life when she found herself in bed, having given up trying to live any sort of real life, and how a sort-of acquaintance helped her get out of bed, wash her sheets, and move forward. "You just have to find your talents and then do something with them," the friend told her, and so that is what she did. She took her talent of being able to remember the details of anything she read, and she became a teacher of church history. She wrote books with her knowledge, and shared what she knew. She made a life for herself by building up her talent.

Talent.

That word came up several times in these two talks. Over and over, in fact. By the end it was almost the only word I could hear: talent. Find your talent. Build upon it. Move forward by using your talent. Build a life based on your talent.

What is my talent? I thought. And what I want the answer to be is this: writing.

What have I done with my talent? I asked myself. Focused all of my education around it. Taught it to high school students. Used it to share my kids’ stories. Taught courses on it to scrapbookers around the world. Put down my thoughts about books so that other people could discover the good ones, too.

But never what I really, really wanted to use it for, ever since I was 16 and listened to a popular girl in my sophomore English class read her poems out loud and knew: my poems were better than hers even if every boy in the school adored her. Writing books that other people might read: that is what I have wanted to use my talent for.

But I got married young. And then I had things like a mortgage and health insurance to pay for. I had babies. I finished school. I tried to be a good wife and mom. I suffered through Kendell’s unemployment, went back to school, became a teacher. Became a librarian. And throughout most of those years I kept my writing ambitions a sort of secret. I kept my Madeline L’Engle moment in my head: once my kids were all in school, it would be my time to write.

And here I am: all my kids are in school. It is the time my writing has been waiting for. But here I am: in the dark. Unsure. Maybe all those years were simply my way of laying in bed, ignoring the world and trying to sleep through my life? Maybe my Madeline L’Engle moment was only an excuse for me to not try? Because trying? Trying means failing. If I never try to be a writer, if I only talk about it, then I will still have the dream in front of me. By not starting I don’t have to ever confront failing.

Because that is the hitch that all my darkness spins around: is writing really my talent? Am I good and strong and determined enough to take the road I want to take? Is it selfish of me to even try, when my kids still need so much from me, both emotionally, yes, but also financially.

I thought, and I listened to Susan Easton Black’s story, and I thought some more, and soon the only word I heard was that one: talent.

A fragment of a Mary Oliver poem skipped into my thoughts:

little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

(I am a mother and a wife and a friend and an employee. But I am also myself, and no one else can save my life but me.)

And of course the scripture from Matthew:

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

(Have I waited too long? Did I bury instead of build upon? That unprofitable servant who buried his talent didn’t just go away. He was cast into outer darkness, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Did I only once have the ability to write?)

And an idea from Borges:

"like every writer, he measured other men’s virtues by what they had accomplished, yet asked that other men measure him by what he planned someday to do."

(Can I only talk and dream about it?)

And that word:

talent
talent
talent.

And then the talks were over. I told them both how much I appreciated their words, my own syllables hollow. Neither one of them could know the story behind my appreciation. Because it felt like there was an answer here, somehow. An answer I still don’t know how to make be the answer. Because I have to believe in the answer so much that the other people who don’t believe in this answer are converted to it. And I have to be good enough to make it the answer. And I don’t know how to move from what I planned to someday do to actually doing it.

But it still felt like an answer somehow.

After I dropped my mom back at home and started the rush for home (Haley needed the car), I thought. I thought out loud—a sort of a prayer. I drove the long way home (despite Haley needing the car). And when I was out on the road that runs between towns, a road tucked right up against the foothills, I looked across the lake and I saw a shooting star.

Then I stopped my talking. I didn’t think, really. I just drove, to the end of my night which was book-ended by celestial lights, a sort of punctuation to the message I still don’t properly understand but know, somehow, is the one I needed to hear.

I confess: I am still in the dark. I am subsisting on shaky faith, doubt, and self-flagellation. But the dark is not so dark, quite. It is that word—talent—which is a light I can almost, almost see. And perhaps if I keep moving forward I will catch up to it.

when I am bloggily silent...

it usually means there is something I want to write about but can't yet.

That's certainly true right now.

What I want to write about is the night I had with my mother last week, and answered prayers; an enormous moon and a shooting star.

But every time I try, I change my mind. I look at the blank screen, take a deep breath, and then do something else. I balance the checkbook instead. Clean out a drawer of scrapbook supplies. Do a load of laundry.

I want to write what is simmering in me.

But this time I am afraid to, because I don't know what it means yet.

And I can't write about anything else until I write about this topic.

So if I am bloggily silent, you know why: I am trying to find my writerly courage.

Hopefully it will blossom soon.

the power of powerlessness

Sometimes I feel like the Queen of the Socially Awkward Gaffe. Like I don't know when to just keep my mouth shut to stop the words in my head from coming out into the world, where they will make me blush and feel uncomfortable.

For instance, last week at work two other librarians were talking about a person who is coming to do a program at the library. He's an English professor at a nearby university, a published poet, and one of my least-favorite people. Instead of just keeping my thoughts in my head, though, I let a little annoyed groan out, and said something snarky like "why would you do __________ a favor?"

Keep in mind that these two librarians also went to the same university. They both have Master's degrees and have certainly taken classes from this professor. Maybe he was even one of their favorite  professors. Maybe they have become friends with this professor? I don't know. But once my gaffe escaped my lips, they wanted to know why I didn't like him, and instead of making a socially deft move—maybe an awkward change of subject such as, "Oh, you know. What did you think about Cat's Table?"—I barrelled ahead with the story.

When I was at college, I took a poetry writing class from this professor. He was young-ish then, late thirties, and walked with a sort of swaggering confidence into class on the first day. He put his obligatory university-professor brief case on the desk, took hold of the podium, and said "In my teaching career, I will be lucky to meet one real poet. If I am seriously, amazingly blessed I might meet two." And then he went on to describe the publishing world with severity. And to discuss how all English majors assume they each have a inner poet just waiting to be released, but they couldn't be more wrong; most of that is just conceit and a little bit of encouragement from their public high school English teacher, who probably also thought she  had a writing career just around the corner.

Part of me knows why he started the class this way. He's right, of course: real poets are  rare. The publishing world is  severe and cruel and nearly impossible to be successful in, especially in poetry which most people don't read. I'd even heard another professor (who was one of my favorites and who taught me much about the writing craft) say nearly the same thing to a writing class: just because you're an English major doesn't mean you automatically know how to write well. The difference was tone and intent. The writing teacher I loved said this with an intent to clear away self-aggrandizement and put real writing knowledge in its place. The poetry writing teacher I (still) can't stand did it to put us all in our places. I am the real poet here,  his words and attitude said, and the rest of you are foolish minions.

Perhaps he also did it to get rid of the easily-offended. It was always interesting to me, in college, to see how the make up of a class would change after the first day. I know lots of students would shop their classes, trying to find the easiest professors and the smallest workload. Maybe Mr. Poet just wanted to get rid of the lazy students right off the bat. And honestly: I really did  want to get up and walk out of class that first day. But I wasn't most students; I was married and had a child (and would be pregnant again at the end of that semester). My schedule was carefully planned around nap times, daycare, and when I could use the car. I couldn't just change it because I hated the professor.

So I stuck it out. I did the required readings and wrote the assigned poems and tried to learn everything I could. I did whatever I could to get an A in the class. (I got an A in the class.) I didn't know that professor was teaching me stuff about how not  to be a teacher. (Like: who becomes a poetry teacher because of that one real poet they will hopefully find?) I thought about his example quite often when I was teaching, especially my creative writing classes. Sure: not everyone who loves writing or even is really, really good at it will be successful at it. But writing wealth, fame, and wide-spread publication are hardly the point for a classful of English majors, or at least not the  point. The point is learning, and while I did  learn about poetry from this professor, I also learned that gender bias? Totally still alive and kicking in academia. I learned which types of poems I could hand it to him and get an A on, and they weren't anything that seemed "too feminine." I learned to never  volunteer an answer, especially not a supposition, or to work through my thought processes aloud in front of him, because he was so swift to point out errors.

I didn't tell all of this to my fellow librarians, just the bit about the first five minutes of class. I'm pretty sure they are  big fans of this professor anyway, which is fine. I shouldn't have told the story anyway. But my gaffe and that flood of memories have left me thinking. This happened 15 years ago. Fifteen! Yet I still remember the details as crisply as if it happened last week. It left an impression because it became my story I could tell whenever people compared awful university professors. But it remains crisp also because it is one of the experiences that make me doubt my writing abilities. Make me slightly ashamed of them, in fact, as if wanting to write—no, as if thinking I could  write well—was just one of those silly notions that vapid women like me get.

Yesterday I read something that counteracted, a little bit, that semester with that professor. This is from the book Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing  by Roger Rosenblatt:

Since 1975, the number of creative writing programs has increased 800 percent. It is amazing. The economy has tanked. Publishing favors nonfiction. young people seem to prefer the image to the word. Yet al over America, students ranging in age from their early twenties to their eighties hunker down at seminar tables . . . avid to join a profession that practically guarantees them rejection, poverty, and failure.

Which sounds an awfully lot like what my professor started that long-ago poetry-writing class with, right? But he continues:

They all want the world of writing so very much—not only to succeed in it, but to be a part of it, to stroll in it and feel it wrap around them. I admire their brash impracticality and wonder if, in some way, their reckless enthusiasm for art, conceived and nurtured in an increasingly money-driven age, represents their unconscious protest against the age. . . . something deliberate and stubborn lies behind their decision to make artists of themselves. They turn to the power of their powerlessness.

The power of powerlessness. That is it exactly. I might not write poems that professor would ever admire, and I know there are thousands of poetry editors in the world who think the exact way he did about poems like mine: centered in woman and so lacking in universality. The power comes in knowing. I know the publishing world is brutal. I know  real poets are rare things and I am probably not that rare. I know  my odds of succeeding are infinitesimal.

But, it is just like Mark Twain said: a person who doesn't write anyway is no different from a person who can't write at all. Pushing forward, continuing to try despite the very stacked odds, refusing to swallow that one professor's poisons—knowing he is right and I will more than likely fail but writing anyway: that is the only power I have. He might think that it is no power at all, because it hurts no one but myself. But it doesn't only hurt me, the failure. It reminds me that I did, I have, at least, tried. And the trying gives me courage to try again, despite the inevitable failure.

What do You Want to Make?

The contrast in the room was marked: new carpet, new paint, that lingering smell of cut wood and carpenter’s glue. The dark and dated wood paneling replaced by bright neutrals, the musty drapes pulled down to let in simple light. A new, fresh room. But filled with old things: bulging black garbage sacks, water-stained cardboard boxes, damaged furniture.

This was my mother’s downstairs family room, where my sister Becky and I stood, not exactly sure how to start but certain we needed to accomplish our goal: get the room clean before Christmas day.

This spring, my mom’s basement flooded. She was away on a trip when this happened, so she came home to a puddled basement and some very damp possessions. Most of this was put into the black garbage bags, to be sifted through and sorted at a later date. When the restoration was finished, the construction men just moved all the stuff out of her garage and back into her basement, where it waited until that Saturday, the one just 8 days before Christmas, when Becky and I and our mother all took deep breaths and got started.

The stuff in the bags and boxes and drawers was a portion of the accumulation of a lifetime. Much of it was my mother’s sewing projects, lengths of quilting cotton and flannels waiting to be sewn into quilts. There were boxes of old patterns—one, which I’ve giggled over at odd moments since, was a girls’ nightgown pattern, sized "smalls and chubbies"—and old clothes. Boxes of my dad’s things, also, gun powder and empty bullet casings from the days when he liked to reload bullets; a few remnant wooden ducks from the decorative-duck company he started. A handful of watercolor paintings he made.

As we worked we got down to surfaces, the end tables and bookshelves that’ve been in that room since my childhood. We sorted: keep, donate, throw away. We put together two entire boxes of UFOs (unfinished objects, all of the quilting variety). We made fun of clothing and fabric choices. We laughed and sneezed and needed water. We argued gently with each other over the wisdom of keeping certain things. And, when we were nearly done, we found a journal of my dad’s. This empty book was giving to him on Christmas in 1989 by Becky—we know because we read it. In it, he’d written three or four paragraphs about his early life and memories. He managed to move his voice from the air onto the page in those few sentences, and for an instant I was 17 again, sitting by the fire on Christmas night, reading my new book while my dad wrote in his journal next to me.

Reading that one, solitary journal entry, surrounded by the flotsam of my father’s unfinished objects—and my mother’s—was like falling from a scarp into rough waves. Like drowning in irrelevance. We arrive in our lives, we find the things we care about, the things we love to do, and then we leave them behind. All of the time, energy, and money we invest in our hobbies—what do they amount to in the end? What do you want to make? My heart kept asking me. What do you want to leave behind? If I died tomorrow, how many unfinished objects would I leave behind? Three quilts, dozens of scrapbook layouts, hundreds of essays and poems and stories never written. I don’t want to come to the end of my life, whenever that might be, and leave only unfinished things. I want to make things that last.

What do you want to make?

I worked for as long as I could, that question in my heart, but I had to leave by 1:00. There was a book signing at our library and I had two books I wanted to have signed as Christmas gifts. I arrived with only ten minutes to spare, still in my dusty clothes, clutching my copies of Crossed and Beyonders, and waited in line to have Ally Condie and Brandon Mull (respectively) sign them. As I waited, I looked at them. Successful writers (along with Dan Wells, Robinson Wells, and Bree Despain). But also simply people. People who were determined and passionate enough to make something lasting. People who tried their craft even if they were scared. (Or maybe they weren’t scared—maybe it’s just me completely bound by fear?) Here is the answer to the question pounding at the door of my heart: what do you want to make? I want to make a life like that. I want to be the person on the other side of the book-signing table. I want to be the one delving into words and story. I want to overcome the fear that is strangling me, and do it anyway.

That is what I want to make.

What do you?

I Love Lucy

Last year, I got to meet some of the people I previously only knew through blogging (well, blogging & sdbbe-ing, but they feel fairly cohesive). Along with my sister Becky, I met up with

Apryl
Britt and
Jeanette

at my local Carl's Jr, where we let our kids play and we hung out and talked. Unfortunately I had to work that day, so I couldn't stay long, but it was still awesome. It is delightful to put a real voice to the writerly one I already know. Plus, it's like Whammo! Instant friend! because you already know so much about each other.

Oddly enough, I became really good friends with Jamie and Wendy, who are two of my closest real-life friends, because of blogging. By "closest" I don't only mean on an emotional level—I mean literally, too, as they both live less than a mile from me. But reading each others' blogs let us get to know one another in a way we probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I've met a few other bloggy friends in real life. Of course, Sophia and I have met several times. (She is my oldest Internet friend...we've been friends since before blogs!) My second-oldest Internet friend, Helena, and her husband once came to my house so we could hang out and talk about scrapbooking and folklore for her husband's dissertation. (In a strange coincidence, her husband also used to work at the library I now currently work at. Coolio!) And once I accidentally met Shaunte, whose blog I love because she's really, really snarky-funny. We bumped into each other at the movie theater and were both like, "Hey! I read your blog!" and then we went to our separate movies.

My husband and children think it's odd, this meeting of online friends. What I try to explain, and what they don't really get, is that they're not just online friends or blogging friends. They're just friends. Yeah, I happened to meet them through their blogs, but how many couples do you know who also happened to meet online? More than a few, I'd wager. Why can't friends meet the same way? I don't think it's weird. I think it's awesome, except for I do get kind of anxious beforehand. What if my blogging friend only likes me as a blogger? or what if *I* only like her as a blogger? What if, in real life, we have nothing to say?

So I was a little bit nervous last week when I drove to the mall to meet my friend Lucy. I found Lucy's blog by way of Becky's blog, because they were real-life friends before blogging. (Another it's-a-small-world connection: Lucy is friends with Kristin, who was one of my best friends in fifth grade.) I think we clicked over similar Twilight aversions and we've been great blogging and emailing friends since then. Last week, though, she was in town, and hence my drive to the mall. I had Kaleb with me, and she had Sam, and it was hot. So we took the kids to the play place at the mall and we sat and talked.

And talked, and talked, and talked! My nerves were for nothing because being with Lucy in real life is even better than hanging out online. She is kind, and funny, and sincere. Plus, she's a great listener—you know when you can tell someone is really paying attention, not just waiting for you to stop talking so she can say something? That's how Lucy is—she listens. And she asks good questions.

Our hour at the mall play place flew by. Kaleb had fun, too—in fact, he's still talking about next year, when Lucy and Sam come again, and we go to lunch with them andBen and Thomas (Becky's sons). It might even be at the Carl's Jr. where I met my other bloggy friends! (Orem's not exactly a hot spot for entertainment choices, obviously.) And I'm still thinking about serendipity and the finding of friends, and how I wished Lucy lived closer so I could bring her some ginger ale (she's sickly pregnant) and come to the hospital, bearing gifts, when her baby is born.

But, you know, it's OK. Because we still have each other's blogs, and emailing. Despite how we met, I still count her as one of my favorite friends!

Why Blog?

"What's your blog about?" a friend, who'd recently discovered that I had one, asked me last night. I opened my mouth—and started stuttering some lame response. It's hard to say what my blog's "about," and I've been thinking about that question all day. There's not a topic I can answer with, because it isn't about just one thing. Not only books or gardening or hiking, not scrapbooking or quilting or writing on their own.

Plenty of people blog to keep in touch with their family members, to let them know what's going on in their lives. Most of my family, though, lives fairly close to me, so they already know what's going on. My sister reads my blog, and sometimes one or two of my nieces, but for the most part it's not about family updates. In fact, most of the people closest to me don't read it. ("I don't need to read it," Kendell is known to say, "I live it," which thoroughly annoys me.) I also don't blog very often about my kids, especially as they get older. This is because I don't want to embarrass them by putting "out there" something they don't want other people to know. I want the details of their lives to stay their own, so I write about them a lot in my journal and only blog when there is a way to relate their experiences to a wider context—or if something is irresistably way-too-funny-not-to share hilarious.

Yes, 'tis true: I keep both a journal and a blog, although occasionally, my blog discourages me. I think about other blogs—blogs of the well-known variety—and wonder why more people don't read mine. I start to ponder about those other bloggers' lives, their seemingly-perfect marriages and homes and children and extended families and skills and connections and successes; I start to reason that their blogs are so well-known because their lives are so awesome, while mine moves around its wandering, lackluster track. Perhaps if I were more perfect: if I stopped writing about my issues. Perhaps if I were more exciting: went on trips to exotic locales, or stopped off in New York City to go shopping, or, well, did anything. Perhaps if I were more focused: only on scrapbooking, or photography, or running, or quilting. Perhaps if I were more dedicated: a thoughtful, insightful post every single day.

Maybe if I managed those things, I'd have a well-known blog.

But of course, that begs the question: do I blog to become well-known? Probably not. I mean, sure: I'd like it if my blog brought me some otherwise-unattainable success as a writer. But mostly, I blog because I like writing, because I filter my experiences through my "how would I write this?" glass, because finding a "so what?" is one of my coping mechanisms. Because I am not perfect, and I don't want to portray an illusion, I blog about the truth: I fight with my husband and my kids hate my cooking and I am a lazy housekeeper.

Like Michel de Montaigne (the father of the modern-day essay), "'I am myself the matter of my book" blog. My blog is "about" me—the way I think and the conclusions I draw (or don't). I try to write entries that might make someone consider a different perspective, or thumb their own similar wound, or smile in recognition. I don't always succeed at this, of course; sometimes my blog is just a collection of thoughts without a point. But I try to not let it become a daily agenda—I did this and then I did this and then I went here. Instead, I strive to make my posts mini-essays. "Strive" is a good word because "essay" is based on the French word for "attempts." Like Montaigne (whose writing is much better than mine), I want to put myself into the world with words, by looking at a topic through the only lens I truly can (my own) and to figure out what I know (or what I don't know).

Probably I will never be one of those well-known bloggers. I won't get spots on the local afternoon news; no one will write newspaper articles about my blog. But if I stay true to my original intent, a large audience isn't really the point anyway. If I flip through my blog posts, I discover the translation of my own psyche here on the computer screen. Whether or not it matters to (or is understood by) anyone else doesn't matter. Getting a bit of myself down does.

Why do you blog?

Book Note: A Broom of One's Own

Remember the time I mocked those scrapbooking murder mysteries, and the author left a sort of snappy response? I'm convinced she must have been using Google Alerts or something similar; how else would she have found my out-of-the-way review? I am hoping that writer Nancy Peacock uses Google Alerts because about five pages into her book about writing, I decided I want to be her friend.

 

A Broom of One's Own is a collection of essays about Peacock's experiences blending writing with housecleaning. In my getting-serious-about-writing efforts of late, I've been reading, or at least checking out/buying, quite a few books about writing. (That is hardly a new thing for me, I must say. I love books about writing.) This one isn't really about how to create a fantastic plot, or imbue your characters with life, or craft memorable sentences. Instead, it's about living your life as a writer. And mostly, it's about how impossibly difficult it is to become successful.

 

This concept—writers are rarely fiscally viable—is one I keep stumbling across. There was that biton Shannon Hale's blog, and then I somehow came across Clare Dunkle's blog, which basically says the same thing: unless you're Stephanie Meyer (read: extremely, ridiculously lucky) don't expect to actually make a living with writing. Mostly this is discouraging me, because honestly: I'm way too old to just be starting a writing career. I don't have five years left to putz around—if I'm going to do it, I need to do it. Jump in and find success quickly.

 

Oh, but wait! This was a book note. That's right. What I took from this book was a renewed gratitude for my librarian role. Say I eventually manage it: write the book. Maybe there would be the miracle: publish the book. Even if the unspeakably optimistic thing (my theoretical book actually selling any copies) didn't happen, I still have the library gig. Plus, Peacock's eventual success—perhaps not billions or even, ok, hundreds of thousands of dollars, but published books and a teaching spot at a university—gives me a little courage that hard work eventually counts for something.

 

I enjoyed this one thoroughly. The title still makes me grin. Plus, when I finished it, I felt inspired. The next morning, I got up and, get this: cleaned my house. It's still a little bit sparkly clean. And that, my friends, is a fine, fine read!

Guest Blogger

Keeping a blog sometimes leads to unexpected results. Take two of my closest friends in my neighborhood, for example...we sort-of knew each other, but when we discovered each others' blogs, the friendships blossomed. You come to know someone in a different light when you read them.

There are also people I admire, whose blogs I read every day, even though I've never met them in real life. Audrey Neal is one of those. She's creative and her digital scrapbook designs are awesome. Her reading tastes are very similar to mine. Plus, she's a Damien Rice fan. What more do I need in an online pal? ;)

She asked me to write a guest blog post for her about scrapbook journaling, and it's up today. You can check it out here!