A Standing Desk

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

How I love the cleaning and reorganizing of the first days of a new year. A couple days ago I spent some concentrated time in the sunroom where I’ve been writing. I showed you the space on New Year’s Day, but I did not show you the other side of the room, which, in the cold months, becomes a dumping ground for items with no home.

At the first sign of snow, the outdoor cushions get stashed here. Furniture that must be moved to make way for the Christmas tree ends up here as well, along with random items as diverse as birdhouses and remote control trucks and empty picture frames.

But on New Year’s Day I cleaned it all out and came up with this.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The reason I focused on this area is because my husband and I have been considering the merits of standing desks. It occurred to me earlier in the week that the “pull-down thing,” which is the technical term my husband and I use for any door with hinges on the bottom, would make a perfect standing desk were it accessible.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

And it turns out I was right. Just put up the seat bottom of the old pew from my grandmother’s church and pull down the desktop and voila! Now we can easily move from the sitting desk on the south end of the room to the standing one on the north end of the room.

Don’t you just love finding the easy solutions you didn’t know you already had?

StandingDesk

Thoughts upon Entering My Mid-Thirties

When I was a child with elastic skin
I sat in the bathroom
and wondered at my mother’s eyelids
stretched into narrow fissures of flesh
by a finger at the corner
then traced with a brown pencil.

Now my son builds imaginary worlds
in the other room
unaware that I am looking in a mirror
stretching my eyelids into fissures of flesh
with a finger at the corner
and tracing them with a brown pencil.

A Letter to My Future Self

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This morning I wrote a letter to myself, sealed it in an envelope, and taped it to the December page of my 2014 calendar. On January 1, 2015, I plan to open it. I won’t tell you what it said just yet (maybe I will next New Year’s Day), but in it I made some suggestions and promises to myself. I hope to find that this year next time some hopes and dreams will have come to pass, some goals may be met, and some growth may have occurred.

As for writing goals, this year I have just one–to write, revise, and edit my novel so that, come 2015, I’m ready to query agents. I’ll do other writing-related things, like publish my ebook, The Intentional Writer, and my collection of 2013’s short stories (now planned for June to avoid rights conflicts). I’ll put the individual short stories up on Smashwords for you non-Kindle users. I’ll continue to write in this space.

But the main thing is the novel. I’m quite thrilled about it. The first couple days of writing have gone well and netted me close to 5,000 words and a lower back ache that is subsiding a little today.

Here’s where I’ve been writing:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The big map is of Detroit and the markers are to delineate borders at various times in the city’s history and highlight spots affected by riots. The books include a number I’ve already read, some relevant ones I got for Christmas, and the sixteen new ones I just picked up from a couple used bookstores. Because, after all, the more you research the more you realize you need to know. I’m hoping I can get them all read as I work on writing the book.

My husband says it looks like I’m planning to go back in time and murder someone.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

But actually, I imagine the body count will be far greater than just one…

Gearing Up for a Week of Writing

I’ve taken the week off work to write. Starting Monday, I’m blocking Facebook, email, and the few websites I occasionally view to waste time (Twisted Sifter, I’m looking at you). I’m using Cold Turkey, a program that lets you block out web access for certain periods of time. I’ve scheduled a few posts in this space, but I doubt I’ll be actively blogging. For the next week, that will mean much of my days will be internet-free. 

The weather is cold, icy, gray, and fairly miserable so there is no temptation to even leave the house. We cleaned up most of our Christmas mess on Sunday afternoon, so I shouldn’t feel compelled to clean.

Nothing but time to write.

Oh, and celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary. And have breakfast with a friend. And maybe peek in on the Rose Bowl. And celebrate my 34th birthday.

It’s still a busy and celebratory time of year, after all.

Melt

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

With a predicted high today of 35 and 42 tomorrow, the icy grip on my town is beginning to ease. Friends are still without power, lines are still down all over my neighborhood, but the end is in sight now. For many, this will be a very memorable Christmas of last-minute plan changes and candlelight and frustration. But years hence, it will make a good story that I bet will get just a little bit more dramatic with each telling.

Merry (Early) Christmas

Look what I stumbled upon while I was updating my Amazon author page:

Click the cover image to get to the Amazon page where this collection is already available for Kindle for just $3.99! Printed books should be available in January or February.

And you’re going to want to hang out there at Amazon and pick up your copy of December’s short story, Water & Light. I wanted to make it free starting Christmas Eve, but the timing with uploading it made that impossible (boo!) so it will be free on Christmas Day and Boxing Day only!

12 Water & Light CVRsm

Thanks so much for your support this year as I carried out my short story writing experiment. It has been such fun and so rewarding. I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store…

Encased in Ice

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Michigan woke up Sunday to the beautiful phenomenon of ice trees and all their attendant problems–power outages, downed live wires, trees utterly destroyed, roads and sidewalk blocked by debris, and an extremely small (and skewing young) crowd at church.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The sounds of ice-laden limbs swaying, tinkling like glass, then cracking, breaking, plummeting, and shattering filled my ears as I chipped the car from its frozen skin.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After church my son “helped” clean up the front yard by karate-chopping ice from the defeated crabapple tree, which is scheduled for demolition this afternoon.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The ash that had thus far escaped death from emerald ash borers and being hit by a car has been severely damaged. I’m going to have to start thinking about moving plants around in the front, as it will likely be a full sun garden next year.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I’m disappointed that these trees will have to be replaced, but grateful nothing fell on the cars or house or power lines. As is so often the case when the weather turns challenging, we have some work to do. But we try not to miss the beauty that comes with the beast.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Mission Accomplished!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I don’t know about you, but I have rarely, if ever, kept a New Year’s Resolution for an entire year. I can hardly keep myself eating right for three meals in a day. So when I vowed last January to write one short story each month of the year, I was really hoping I’d have the tenacity to succeed, but I figured that somewhere in there, there would at least be a month when I was late and had to make a bunch of lame excuses about how life just got too busy to write.

But lo and behold, last night I finished the 12th and final short story of 2013!

Life did get busy. Crazy busy. For the last three months, every Saturday on the calendar was full. We had to adjust our schedules to fit with a boy who is now in elementary school. We navigated a summer filled with trips and hanging out with friends and canning homemade jam. I spent many evenings with my nose in thick books to prepare for writing a novel. And of course there’s work, eating, basic hygiene, and the like. But writing only happens if you make it happen. And this year, I made it happen.

This is the cover for the last story of the year…

12 Water & Light CVRsm

I will be making it available on Christmas Eve (last minute gift idea?) and it will be FREE on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

And here are the covers of all twelve short stories for 2013…

AllThumbs

It’s been a fun and challenging year, but I think 2014 will be even better. I’m hoping to release a nonfiction ebook called The Intentional Writer: Finding the Time, Space, and Inspiration You Need to Write in January. It’s designed to give beginning and struggling writers encouragement, motivation, and practical strategies to make regular creative writing a part of their lives. If you like my blog posts that relate to writing, you’ll love the book.

And, of course, what I’m most excited about is getting down in words the novel that has been growing in my head and my heart over the past year.

What do you have brewing in your mind for next year?