I Always Wash the Sheets and Towels on Sundays...

           

      ...I consider this my one concession to my mother's orderly approach to life, though I'm sure I could come up with many more, if I were to really think about it...but of course, I won't...not if I can help it, anyway. And besides, she always washed the sheets and towels on Mondays, because on Sundays we all went to church, and then had a big Sunday dinner, after which my brother's band arrived and played rock music for the next three hours in our basement. Not sure why I never found the juxtaposition of these events odd, but maybe it was because they constituted a routine and in our house, a scheduled routine was something that was never questioned.

      One of my biggest regrets is that my parents did not live long enough to read my published novels. I say this not because I immediately became a best-selling author and they would have had so much to be proud of, but because they were simply proud of everything I did, no matter how unimpressive these achievements may have been to the rest of the world. Okay, maybe not everything I did (there were the dents in the car, for example, and my less than stellar academic average my freshman year in college), but at least the things I hoped they would see as successes.

    The most interesting thing to me when I look back on my parents' role as my never wavering cheerleaders is how inherently different we were; so much so, in fact, that when my brother suggested (shortly after his first Sunday School experience) that, rather than a legitimate offspring of our parents, I had been found in a basket in the bullrushes, I semi-believed him. Of course, this is the sibling who also told me if I swallowed watermelon seeds, vines would grow in my stomach. To this day, I only buy seedless melons.

      I also have to confess that that in my younger years, I may have especially tried not to be like my parents, which though I often regret this too, I'm given to understand is a common affliction. As a young mother, though, I worked especially hard not emulate my own, but of course, ended up doing exactly that.

I bought the same dishwashing liquid without even checking the price, organized the towels in the linen closet not just by color by the shade of that color, wrote out the grocery list according the aisles in the store, and sewed custom made name tags in all my children’s clothes (despite the fact they never took their clothes off anywhere but at home). But when it came to scheduling household tasks, however, I have to admit that I failed to rise to my parents’ standards.

Every day always started well; I made a list of what had to be accomplished (depending on the day of the week, naturally), fed and dressed the children and myself, made the beds, and tidied up the kitchen. But somehow, by lunch time, the kitchen trash was overflowing again, unfolded clean laundry was piled on the living room couch, and I had just handed my toddler the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he threw on the floor, after briefly wiping off the cat hair with my sleeve. I also realized that whatever that stain was on the living room rug had clearly been there for some time, and when I finally had a chance to go the bathroom, I looked in the mirror and noticed there was some sort of hardened sticky stuff in my hair. Worse than that, I seemed to have misplaced my “to do” list.

Over the years, however, I seem to have gotten more in the habit of having a scheduled life, and I often wonder if it is because I chose teaching as my career. For someone who hates getting up early and is always late to everything, this would seem like an odd choice of occupation. But for someone who grew up in an orderly world such as my parents created, the situation was strangely ideal.

No matter how chaotic your own children’s existence seems to be, you don’t have to be a teacher long before you realize that outside their homes, kids love order in their lives; the first question they ask, for example, following your explanation of what you originally thought was a truly creative and intellectually exciting assignment is “when is it due?”

This response does not necessarily mean they can’t wait to get started, or even that they are planning their time in such a way as to complete the task as thoroughly and thoughtfully as possible. Nor is it a clever ploy to allow them to use their smartphones in class (i.e., “I just need to put this on my calendar”). In fact, chances are, no matter how much optimism their response inspires in you at the time, your students probably won’t start this “long-term” project until a day or two before its due. The bottom line is, they just want it to be scheduled.

Once, during what was to become my final year of teaching, I had a student actually come to me several weeks before his term paper was due and ask if I might be available at some point to “discuss” his “progress.”

“Sure,” I said, “how about tomorrow at lunch?”

The student took out his phone, logged in, and began to scroll intently through the calendar on his screen. Then he shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, “tomorrow at lunch I have robotics club.”

“Okay,” I said, “what about Thursday at lunch?”

He looked down at his phone once more.

“Thursday I have Yearbook,” he informed me, shrugging apologetically.

“After school some day?” I suggested.

“Let’s see,” he mused. “I have Karate on Wednesdays and Fridays, and intramural basketball on Tuesdays, and on Thursdays I have a piano lesson. But Monday could work.”

“Monday would be fine,” I told him, but something tells me that might have been the moment when I ultimately changed sheet and towel washing day to Sunday.

Now that I’m retired, I have also discovered a few more compelling reasons to designate certain days for certain tasks. For example, Friday is the best day to go to the grocery store, because that’s when the weekly sales kick in. Also, Monday is the worst day to go to the dump, because everyone under 30 had a weekend party and everyone over 50 spent Sunday cleaning out the garage, and the line is ridiculous. Wednesdays are the perfect days for doctor and dental appointments, because the medical profession tends to be most enthusiastic (not to mention most available) in the middle of the week. It’s also senior citizen discount day at most stores and restaurants, knowledge, I’m sorry to admit, I have also recently acquired.

So, try as I might, the genetic pull of the weekly routine has turned out to be too much for me, and I regularly have the frightening sense that my parents are looking down on me with great pride. On one especially gloomy Tuesday, I received three rejections from three different publishing companies, broke my favorite mug, and accidentally put my favorite turtleneck in the dryer, which meant that if I were to ever wear it again, I'd have to lose 50 pounds and shrink approximately 10 inches.

“I’m sorry you’re having a bad day,” my ever optimistic husband said, “Do you want to do something? Go to a movie? Go out to lunch?”

“After you finish what you're doing now, of course,” he added, supportively. Tuesday was the day I usually vacuumed, washed clothes, and also watered the plants, a scheduled process already underway.

“Sure,” I replied, “why not?”

I knew I could quickly water the plants and turn on the washer before we left. But the vacuuming would just have to wait until Wednesday. Sorry, Mom...but just for the record, I think you would have really liked my books...at least that's what you and Dad would have told me anyways... 

This is too much like work...

     ...was one of my mother's favorite expressions. Of course, she always used it in a joking context, like when we were hauling the dock and raft down the hill and into the water at the beginning of the summer. Or when she had picked buckets of raspberries that had to be made into jam while they were still fresh. In other words, she was putting the work into something that, in truth, she actually enjoyed doing, or ultimately would appreciate having done.
     I was editing and outlining chapters of my newest works in progress this morning when suddenly I was struck by the perfect relevance of her treasured saying. While just a few hours earlier I woke up to a gloomy, rainy day, the sun was now out, the temperature rising, and the beach beckoning for a springtime walk. After all, it's only spring on Cape Cod for a couple hours between winter and summer, and it seemed a shame to waste them. But this was also my cherished writing time, and how could I be thinking of giving it up, when it is something I truly love and look forward to, right?
     Wrong. Editing and outlining are boring. Methodical, tedious, and boring. But also, they are, unfortunately, necessary to the more enjoyable parts of the writing process. For example, I would much rather be creating descriptions of my fictional domains and then letting my characters loose in these "places," to get into trouble, fall in love, suffer disappointment, or simply chase after their dreams. That way I could just run along beside them and enjoy their company, as I escape into my love of words. Why bother with the boring stuff, right?
      Wrong again. The initial mistake I made as a would-be Best Selling novelist was to plunge headlong into my first book with a creative frenzy, thoroughly convinced that my artistic flair would far surpass the distraction of any grammatical or contextual errors. My readers would be so enchanted with the plot, characters, and enriched setting I presented, that they would be unlikely to notice any mere discrepancies...let's see, like changing a character's name halfway through Chapter 9, or having it start to snow when the Chapter title was "June," or use "there" when I meant "their," "you" when I meant "your," or in some cases, using a word that was the complete opposite of what I meant...either that, or leaving out whole words entirely.
       Imagine, if you will, that James Fenimore Cooper typed an "i" instead of an "a" in the title of the novel that brought fame and recognition to New York's Hudson River Valley. While many readers certainly would be curious to learn about the "Last" Mohican, how many would want to just read a "List" of the members of that Native American tribe. And what about Charles Dickens's novel depicting the grim realities of the French Revolution? Who wants to read a "Tale" of "Too" Cities? Does that mean one was a city and the other one was also? Who cares? In all honesty, the reason I could never drag myself through War and Peace was because the Russian characters all had nicknames that didn't resemble their actual names in the slightest, and I kept thinking they were supposed to be different people.
      So, here's what happened in my case. I rushed into publishing novel #1, which was then (perhaps reluctantly) purchased by 30 some loyal and kind acquaintances, many of whom dutifully read it. It wasn't until I reread it myself that I discovered the surplus of errors...and guess what, it did detract from my artistic flair, even for me. Since then, I corrected these errors and put out a second edition, but sadly, it was too late (i.e., my "fans" already...supportively...read the uncorrected version and were done with it). Another sad fact, for many of them, was that that was the end of their kindness and loyalty, and even though I've gotten better as a writer (both grammatically and contextually), many former readers weren't willing to take the chance that this was true. (Book #4, Taking Flight, is really good, by the way.) Sigh...
      So yeah, editing, outlining, rereading, fact checking, researching, are all boring sometimes...and tedious...and methodical...but also important and necessary, and occasionally satisfying enough to be enjoyable (or at least ultimately rewarding in terms of having been done) ...even though a lot of the time, well, it seems too much like work. Huh...now that I think of it, it's a bit like keeping up with a blog...

Is This My Swan Song?

      When I looked up the term "Swan Song" online, here's what I found in Wikipedia: "The swan song (ancient Greek: κύκνειον ᾆσμα; Latin: carmen cygni) is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans (Cygnus spp.) sing a beautiful song just before their death, having been silent (or alternatively, not so musical) during most of their lifetime." And, of course, as they say, if it's on the internet, it must be true.
      Anyhow, I was curious about the derivation, having heard the expression so many times over the years, but I also recently realized how very appropriate it is for the dilemma of a writer, such as myself, who plunges into this so-called career late in life, and for whom the inevitable creative uncertainty arises. Am I actually any good at what I'm attempting to do? Is the reason I keep starting projects and then abandoning them, because in rereading what I've written I decide it's truly bad, or because I think no one else will like it (much less read it)?
     My apologies to the four of you who have continued to read this blog after its initial flurry of attention, but as I write this, I wonder if this entry might be my version of a swan song...not for the final beauty, but perhaps for the finality of the effort. This blog began, of course, with the thought that rather than just share my fictional efforts via published books and submitted short stories, I would share something of the process...write about writing, in other words. 
     This "online presence," I read in an "how to become an author" article, was a way for potential readers to get to know me as a person and therefore have a more in depth understanding of my creative process. But it turns out that the first "rule" of a writer's blog is that you don't write about your work. Seriously? Write about writing without writing about your writing? Seems like an oxymoron. Then rule #2 is, don't whine. Again, seriously? Okay, I'm willing to not whine, but a little cynicism is still good for the soul now and then, right?
     So, that same "how-to" article then goes on to say that John Grisham writes about his dog. I don't have a dog, but I do have two cats; however, if I write about them, they would no doubt figure out how to sue me for slander...if you own a cat, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Their idea of being helpful is to lie across my lap while I'm typing on my laptop, and occasionally flick their tales over the keyboard. I fully believe this is the cats' way of assuring that the people who read my books for the sole purpose of finding typos and other errors will be able to do so more easily.
    Okay, so back to the "swan song." I usually "quit" writing about once a month or so. I take my books off the coffee table and put them back in the box, change the subject when someone asks me how the "writing thing is going," and delete a bunch of half-finished stories. I also generally send at least two or three friends an email declaring what I've done. Is this my swan song (i.e., final gesture before it all ends)? 
     Nope. A few days later I suddenly have a new idea and there I am again, typing away with tails flicking periodically across the keys. I actually prefer the second half of the definition: the "beautiful song" sung after being "silent" for so long or "not so musical" during most of my lifetime. Yes, I'm an older writer, and yes, I started writing later in life, but is there a possibility because of this, the song might be sweeter? I like to think so, and that perhaps the swans would agree.