A Stop on the Pacific NW Writers Blog Tour

I've been tagged by the fabulous writer, Shannon Huffman Polson, to post for the blog tour today, and in turn, I'm tagging Claudia Rowe, Kitty Harmon, and Jennifer Murphy, three great and wonderfully diverse writers in Seattle.

The point is to share a bit about the writing life by answering these questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my writing differ from others in its genre?
3. Why do I write what I do?
4. How does my writing process work?

The quick answers:
1. a new novel, 2. I have no idea, 3. because I want to, and 4. I wish I knew.

The more complex answers:

1. I've embarked on an idea I've had for twelve or so years about characters from the 1930s, during the Depression, and the very odd thing they do for a living.  I'm not yet ready to talk a whole lot about it, and historical fiction is new for me, but these characters have been pulling at me for so long. I'm in heaven writing right now, but it will be at least a year before I finish! This is the reality of novel writing. It just takes a really, really, really long time.

2. We all write how and what we write as individuals, and I never really think of it as how writers compare. Some writers delight us with their beautiful prose, the kind you can read over and over and take pure delight in. Some writers pack their stories with so much meat and muscle that you feel you've been taken on a thrill ride by the end. Some writers are quiet and introspective. Some are hilarious. Most writers don't know how to characterize their own writing. Now that I have five books in the world, I do feel fairly confident saying that I think my strengths are concision, ease of reading (which is important to me; I want readers to feel pulled through my pages as much as possible), creating real characters, and an attempt to get at the emotional truth. I hope so, anyway.

3. I write what I do because it's what bubbles to the surface. As it turns out, my stories are often about characters who do battle with emotional trauma or mental illness (in themselves or others). I'm glad for that, because it gives me a way to talk about my own issues with those things in a way that might help someone else and reduce stigma one tiny step at a time.

4. First, I do a lot of thinking. I keep my eyes and ears and heart open to what's happening around me in the world, in my life, even on my walks and shopping and visits with friends. Certain things will "glimmer" and begin to coalesce into characters, themes, plot lines, etc. I'll gather them all up and begin to write about these things, looking for a way to build something from it. I'll have a few false starts and adjust, and eventually, I will launch. From there, I draft every weekday morning for about a year, and then I will revise for another year or so. I get help from trusted readers and experts, including my agent. Every book works a little differently, but that's basically how it happens for me. And if you ask me this in a year or five, it may have changed. It's ever evolving.

If you are a reader, thank you. If you are a writer, bless you. We're all in this together!

How Grateful Am I for Thee?

Let me count the ways (with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning).

1. I am grateful to those of you who read my books and find some insight, solace, confirmation or joy in them. Or just a good story.

2. I am grateful when above-mentioned yous write and tell me how my book(s) made you feel or what they made you think, even when it's not all good. Hopefully some good.

3. I am grateful to all you booksellers and librarians and publisher's reps and sales teams and marketing people and publicists, because you are the ones who convince the vast majority of readers out there to give one of my books a try.

4. I'm grateful to you whose decisions mean I even get to publish books: my agent and editor, the publisher and VPs and so many people I may never even meet.

5. I am grateful to my friends and family and husband for encouraging me to write, for supporting me when I do, for catching me when I stumble and cheering me on when I achieve a small miracle.

6. I am grateful to my teachers, the ones who challenged me and encouraged me. Except for my algebra teacher, but I suspect he doesn't care.

7. I am grateful to you, whoever you are, because you took the time to read this far, and I wish you gratitude and happiness and a large slab of pie on Thursday.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Hello. It's so good to see you.

Exactly three weeks after I took a tumble and smashed my face into concrete (see previous post) I had to have a new author head shot taken for pre-publicity for my new book (shameless self-promotion: Love Water Memory, out April 2, 2013). Yes, in August I needed a photo of ME for a book not coming out until April.


I'd been postponing with the photographer all three weeks as bruises turned purple, green, then yellow, as road rash scabbed and flaked, as skin beneath came red and angry to the surface. As swelling subsided. As my wounded self regained confidence.


When I was a tiny kid, two, three-ish, I became desperately frightened of cameras, of the flash bulbs, particularly. All photos of me from that era show me screaming and red-faced, teary eyed and snot nosed, holding my arms over my face as though the camera is going to explode in it.


By five I seemed to have recovered and marched joyously to the little seat in front of the big standing camera for my kindergarten shot. I was wearing a dress I loved, blue with white and red polka dots, and at the last minute I decided my pixie bangs would look far more stylish swept to the side. The photo turned out darn cute, but my mom was not happy with my impromptu hairstyling.


I became increasingly self conscious in school photos, as adolescents do, but by the time it was senior picture time, I was determined to look sexy and serious, grown up. All things I was not. Unbeknownst to me, I'd eaten tainted chicken at a friend's house the week before and was in the beginning throes of salmonella, which accounts for the sweaty pale face, but even that was okay because I was wearing my denim halter dress. Or rather my sister's denim halter dress. I mostly filled it out.


When we got the proofs (which took about as long back then as it did for the salmonella to have its evil way with me before retreating), I chose the one I loved: me, sitting in the grass, leaning back on one elbow, nostrils flared, not smiling, but dead sexy. My pasty complexion was camouflaged by the filtered light of tree leaves.

My mother hated it. "This one looks like you," she said, indicating the goofiest of the bunch, me with a big toothy smile, full face, my hair all weird, the sexiness of the dress cropped out. "You can have the one you want for the yearbook, but I'm ordering this one to hang on the wall."

Of course, when the yearbook came out, guess which photo appeared. I was crushed. I'd so desperately wanted to look like someone I was not. Thus began an adulthood of hating photos of myself, of being too critical, of stiffening up so much in front of them that I did that weird snarl-smile thing that Chandler did on Friends in the episode about his not being photogenic.

And now I need to have photos taken regularly, because that is what authors do, for book jackets and websites. I had to figure out how to smile in front of a camera, just a natural smile, just a friendly face for readers to connect with. And this is what occurred to me, finally. We are beautiful to those we love (as they are to us). So I started looking into camera lenses as though I was looking into the eyes of someone I loved, smiling at them they way I would upon seeing them for the first time in a long time.

Hello, I think, looking into the lens. I love you. It's so good to see you.

Heaven for Women Writers

As posted today by the good folks at Open Road Media Group, publisher of Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices, a collaborative novel by the members of Seattle7Writers (my peeps).

 Hedgebrook, a Women’s Writing 

Community—Advantage, Female

Editor’s Note: Author Jennie Shortridge (When She Flew and other novels) speaks out on behalf of Women’s History Month. Jennie is a co-curator and contributor behind the epic, inventive novel Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voicesand a co-founder of the Seattle7Writers.

The conversation over wine in our seriously awesome (and mixed gender) Seattle7Writers group might go like this:

Female writer: “I just got back from Hedgebrook and it was incredible.”
Male writer: “Oh god, here we go . . .”

Another female writer: “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go! I need to apply next year.”

A third female writer: “It was the best writing experience of my life!” Male writer: “Why do women get a whole writers’ retreat to themselves? It’s 2012, for crying out loud.”

Yes, he’s jealous. Hedgebrook on nearby Whidbey Island is indeed a writing retreat and community for women only. It opened in 1987 under the direction and vision of Nancy Nordhoff and Sheryl Feldman. Hedgebrook provides six sweet, small, well-appointed cabins; forty acres of forest and farmland to wander; a rugged beach nearby; and a farmhouse kitchen for delectable family-style suppers using local Northwest ingredients. Each participant shares all this with five other women and can talk about writing together. In a word? It’s heaven. And to those female residents from around the world who are chosen from the ever-growing pool of applicants, it’s free.

Why women only? While the founders and staff feel a personal passion for supporting women writers in this very generous way, I know that others think our society should be beyond that by now. Women in 2012, after all, have taken their place alongside men in the working world (um, still for less pay), in the political world (in numbers still slim), and in the arts (again, still for less pay in most cases, and in terms of reviews and attention, nowhere near equal).

But that’s only part of the conundrum facing women in the creative arts. Forget that we don’t get the reviews and attention, the larger advances. We’re used to all that, as much as we continue to work to change it. What we don’t get in life (as many women will agree) is a wife! What we don’t get is someone who anticipates our needs well enough to leave our minds open to creative pursuit (though well-meaning partners often try). We still nurture and nourish our loved ones, fitting in our writing around them, and often a job to boot. It’s not in our biological makeup to ignore the needs of others, thus making it only our fault that we put our creative endeavors aside to help.

And that, Virginia, is why I believe in Hedgebrook.

At Hedgebrook, your small cabin has just enough of everything to maximize comfort and minimize housework: one plate, one bowl, one coffee mug, one wine glass, one pan . . . and yet the resident writers are also challenged to use a small wood stove for heat (with supplemental heat available), to visit a bathhouse for bathing (heated tile floors, two roomy showers, a clawfoot tub—it’s hardly a challenge), and to integrate with the natural world in so doing, walking from cabin through thick forest along old animal trails, often in complete darkness. And when it gets dark on Whidbey Island, it can feel like being in the center of a black hole for city slickers. (Yes, flashlights are provided, as are toilets and sinks in each cabin.) In the journals that record each resident’s experience, found in each cabin, the stories are rife with newbie anxieties and missteps, but more so, the final reflective thoughts on these writers’ last days at Hedgebrook. Even experienced and famous writers discover what it was they came for, whether they knew they were looking for it or not. In real life, women rarely get the time and space to even think in those  terms.

For me, the thing I didn’t know I went looking for was myself—my own authentic voice in my work, after nearly seventeen years of working in the world of “what it takes to get published.” It wasn’t that it wasn’t there, but my trust in it had grown shaky. The publishing world is a tough place to maintain your own creative vision, but if you don’t, why write? It came to me in so many small details at Hedgebrook: the way light broke through tall trees to spill across my desk, a cold wind-snapping walk on the beach in search of sand dollars, the laughter and wisdom of the other women in the room at supper. And finally, the two does who stood outside my cabin on the snowy morning I had to leave, just watching me with big deer eyes, saying, “Pay attention. Take this with you.”

It’s a gift everyone should receive, regardless of gender, of course. But I’ll revel in the fact that because I’m a woman who takes my writing seriously, Hedgebrook gave it to me.