Valley Haggard

Teach What You Need

2012-01-12T11:07:00.000-05:00

They say you teach what you need to know. Of course, they also say, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” but obviously those people don’t know anything. When I was little, everyday when I got home from school, I lined my dolls up against the bedroom wall, stood in front of the chalkboard my dad salvaged from a job site, put on a pair of my mother’s discarded high heels and reviewed what I’d learned that day for a very captive audience. My mother said she could tell exactly what each of my teachers were like because I aped their styles, at turns screaming at, berating, coddling or encouraging the plastic and cloth babies at my disposal.

But, despite my early track record it didn’t occur to me to become a teacher until many years after running the gamut of waitressing, administrative and freelance gigs that I scavenged up to pay the bills.

And then, through a series of happy accidents (otherwise known as getting laid off before becoming broke and desperate) I took up teaching. A friend of mine said, “It’s like you were a top careening madly around before collapsing in exactly the right place.” Yes, that’s exactly how it felt.

I don’t have a teaching degree, an 8-3, a salary or a principal. I don’t have to deal with grades or report cards or SATS. In a way I don’t consider myself a “real” teacher and I bow deeply to those I do. Their jobs, in my opinion, are the hardest, most thankless, and most deeply important in this world.

But I love teaching, because to me it is the process by which I learn the most. I learn from my students who- 8 or 68 —contain vast storehouses of knowledge and experience that I don’t. When I was a teenager, my goal, other than to be a famous reader, was to experience everything. In this way I get to do both.

The stories and poems and essays and bits of word play or dialogue shared by the writers in my class expand my imagination, my vision and my vocabulary. As I write right alongside them, the scratching of their pens pushes me across my own blank page. Writing can be a very isolating, intimidating and lonely task but diving in with everyone else gives me the sense that we’re all swimming in the same deep ocean together. And as we read aloud what we’ve just written, I never cease to be blown away. Beautiful, heartbreaking, disturbing, hilarious, strange, unsettling, thoughtful and deeply true words curl up from their pages, shattering whatever assumption about them I might have made before. Turning your insides out tends to do that. Not that it’s a course requirement, or a confession stand, but it’s hard to write for too long without beginning to write the truth. And the truth, whether it winds its way into a memoir, poem, short story or novel, is what helps me understand life- and writing- the best.

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” Scott Ray the Chief Engineer of the cruise ship in Alaska where I was a stewardess, said to me once. “Only sometimes you find that you have to be both the student and the teacher.” I didn’t quite know what he meant, only that I was glad to know, were we to hit a turbulent patch of sea as our small boat careened over large icebergs, I wasn’t the only one on board that knew how to swim.

Home is the Room

2011-12-16T08:43:00.000-05:00

Home is the room my mother uses as a canvas to paint a scene of Adam and Eve in paradise, lions and tigers and elephants and me.

Home is the rooftop of an apartment in the fan where I learn how to smoke cigarette butts from the ashtray while my Dad is in the shower.

Home is where my Barbies sleep.

Home is the quiet dorm where I am in charge of the freshman girls but instead catch my head on fire.

Home is an apartment above a Chianti store and across from a pastry shop when I am 20 and hungry, not for education or knowledge, but for decadence and experience, and also Chianti and pastries.

Home is the second floor with the window that you whistle up to once out of 365 days of waiting for your whistle.

Home is the pyramid of rocks my dad stacked at the top of the mountain where he'd planned to build a home but instead built four foundation posts and a pyramid of rocks.

Home is across the street from the house I've lived in my entire life where my mom moved when I was 15, dragging boxes of stuff in front of and behind her, diagonal, 100 yards, from one front door to another.

Home is the apartment across the hall my Dad moved into while I was at school, as a surprise.

Home is the dark hollow open basement with the fireplace and the view of the horses across the lake and the manual typewriter and the oriental rugs, that my Dad gave me the year he finally stopped moving and I left for college.

Home is the boat my Grandpa kept next to the pier that my Grandma fell off of.

Home is the nursing home my Grandpa thought was a whorehouse where he was the Sheriff in the last few years before he died.

Home is the room that was my room as a child that is my son's room now.

Religious (Mis)Education

2011-12-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Now that my son has begun to successfully navigate the world of public education I’m grappling with the idea of introducing him to a religious one. I have my own spiritual connection with the world around me and I pray constantly: Dear God! Thank God! God Dammit! And my favorite, Thank God Dammit! I love folklore and myths and stories and some of the most interesting are found in the Bible--Old Testament or New. But must we leave the gates of our own Garden of Eden for him to gain knowledge about God?

My son, like me, is Jewish because his mother is. And like me, he has more than Jewish blood running through his veins. I’m not sure if the fact that I never dated Jewish men is due to random chance or the Jewish cotillion I attended in middle school where none of my dance partners reached my chin, but like my mom, I married a goy. Whoever and whatever my son chooses for himself as an adult is fine with me. But right now I’m as hesitant to thrust him into the world of religion as I’d be to force him to visit just one booth on Career Day. I think it’s perfectly fine for a person still missing their two front teeth to aspire to be a wildlife biologist, organic farmer and bowling alley repairman in equal measure. And I’m just as hesitant to make him choose a single path to God.

However, as much as I want to spare him the dogma, I worry that he might miss some character building, too. My mother and I attended a New Age Church until I hit puberty when I suddenly found myself at synagogue wearing a Star of David. My first Sunday School teacher, a guard at a juvenile detention center, seemed to derive real pleasure from explaining, in great detail, the labor pains of childbirth. Our teacher the following year regaled us with horror stories about the Holocaust. My next and last teacher dedicated the entire year to suicide prevention, which, in retrospect, was probably a good idea, but not much fun. And, other than teaching me the Hebrew alphabet, I don’t remember our rabbi discussing anything other than the political and socio-economic details of The War in the Middle East.

All of which made the trappings of Christianity on my father’s side pretty tempting. She never said it, but I had the feeling my Grandma wanted me saved, not to be a better living girl, but a better dead one. The trilogy of romantic adventure Jews-for-Jesus books she’d given me when I was twelve were successful as page turners, but not as missionaries. By then I was already studying for my Bat Mitzvah and couldn’t squeeze Jesus into any picture other than the fluorescent velvet one I later bought to hang on my dorm room wall. But I always felt a little jealous of my Grandma’s certainty about salvation, not to mention the endless abundance of lemonade and sugar cookies her church handed out like blessings.

When my Grandma died and bequeathed me- her only Jewish grandchild- the golden crucifix she’d worn for as long as I’d known her, I was touched. I tried to put it around my neck but found that I could not wear it any more than I could belt out the hymns at the Gospel Chicken House where my father brought me once, on a whim. There the hootin’ hollerin’ foot stompin’ good time was almost enough to make me run and dunk myself in the river. But not quite.

And this year as the holidays approach I feel less of a need to shake who I am than ever. I struggle with routine so Hanukkah is eight times more difficult to celebrate than Christmas, but once again we’ll do it all. And though I don’t really think my son needs anyone to tell him what to believe, it’s likely I’ll pass on my almost supernatural love of New Years Eve, when the hope for reinvention and the promise of a clean slate—if only on my calendar— seems even more miraculous then the resurrection.

Give Me Pastries or Give Me Death

2011-11-18T09:24:00.000-05:00

My mother, a button maker, used to make a button that said “I was about to end it all when God spoke to me in the form of a chocolate éclair.” I love this because it can be used in so many situations, chiefly “I was about to start jogging when….”

Actually, I did start jogging this week. In the rain and the cold, up hill and down dale, pausing only to blow my nose in a really sexy, athletic way or to yell at one neighbor “Oh GOD! What was I thinking?” I cheer myself on as the real joggers in their real jogging gear leave me behind in a wake of soggy leaves, at last bursting into the house, panting, hotter than hell, feeling terrific and clocking in at a full 12 minutes. Oh Jesus, I think, where are the pastries?

Maybe I was a pastry chef in a past life--- or a pastry. I can’t make them, but I can eat them. And they taste like love. Better, actually.

Donuts, scones, croissants, danishes, tarts, cupcakes, jelly rolls, pies, ladyfingers: the kind of love you can buy for the price of a cup of coffee—and eat with one.

Of course my pastry-tooth comes with a price. The price of my thighs. The price of the jiggle and the squish. The price of the piles of jeans mounting like the dead in the corner of the dressing room stall. The price of the sugar highs and lows. The price of Snow White’s Queen who envies, instead of a step-daughter, her own 23-year-old self who had no idea how beautiful she was- or could be.

When I was 23 and working on a cruise ship in Alaska, the chief steward found a ripped open cardboard box of muffins in the storage closet behind the galley. “What kind of wild animal did this?” he asked. It wasn’t me, but I knew what kind of wild animal it was and could be. The wild animal who craves sweetness when she can’t give it to herself.

What I Wear

2011-11-11T09:29:00.000-05:00

I wear socks to bed. I'm that kind of girl- always have been. I don't make them match either. I gave up on that a few years ago when I gave up on laundry. If I took my boots off right now you'd see two different colored socks. One might be pink, one orange and green striped, who knows? All in all, socks might be the wildest thing about me. At least from a glance, if you could see through my shoes.

I've just about quit jewelry, too. I wear two pearl drop earrings that I received a free coupon for in the mail and sent my husband to fetch for me as a gift two Christmas' ago. Rings, too, have been whittled away-- other than my engagement and wedding band. When I got married I was more horrified about the idea of having to wear the same two rings for the rest of my life than the idea of living forever with just one man. Both now seem the most direct, straightforward route, allowing for deviation in more creative ways.

I have a collection of beautiful necklaces that go largely unworn. My mother hated to wear necklaces-- she said they constricted her energy. She disparaged her own neck as short and squat compared to mine-- "a swan's" and recently apologized to me for the disparity in how she talked about her body parts while teaching me to think in opposite ways about mine. I think her neck with its scar the surgeon cut like a smile from collar bone to collar bone to remove the tumor that could have made me a motherless child, is beautiful. I don't feel like wearing necklaces anymore either and I think of her as I let my neck stand plain, stand for itself.

Now, most days of the month I'm more pigeon or crow, less peacock. No more orange, magenta and mellow yellow hair. No more vintage purple prom dresses over orange fishnets and ratty combat boots. I try now, as often as possible, to speak for myself instead of hoping what I wear will do it for me. But then, of course, there are those days when all I pray for are feathers.

Beyond Barbie: Life in the First Person

2011-11-03T19:00:00.000-04:00

Life in the First Person: Women’s Stories Uncovered

A novelist. A storyteller. A poet. A freelance writer. A performance artist. A creative nonfiction writer. A blogger.

What do they all have in common?

The first person.

Their experiences and their points of view are different, but their pronouns are the same.

Find out what comes after “I.”

Come out to hear life in the first person with Gigi Amateau, novelist; Denise Bennett, storyteller; Tarfia Faizullah, poet; Julie Geen, freelance writer; Shelia Gray, performance artist; Valley Haggard, creative nonfiction writer and Alex Iwashyna, blogger.

Life in the First Person: Women’s Stories Uncovered will serve as the grand finale in the event series, Beyond Barbie: Piecing Together Today's Woman running in conjunction with Susan Singer’s art opening, “Not Barbie: A Celebration of Real Women,” on Thursday, November 3, at 7 PM at Crossroads Art Center. Tickets can be purchased online at www.SusanSinger.com or through Crossroads Art Center or at the door.

Purchase tickets and find out more about Susan Singer's art opening, Not Barbie, and the event series, Beyond Barbie at SusanSingerArt.Blogspot.Com!

Gigi Amateau is the author of the young adult novel, A Certain Strain of Peculiar, a 2010 Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year. She also wrote Chancey of the Maury River, a William Allen White Masters List title for grades 3-5. Her debut novel, Claiming Georgia Tate was selected as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. She recently completed 200-hour yoga teacher training. Visit www.gigiamateau.com.

Denise Bennett tells personal stories, her original versions of traditional stories and sacred stories often interlaced with harp and vocal music. She is a member of the Tell Tale Hearts Storytellers Theater in Richmond. Master storyteller Elizabeth Ellis has said of her, “Denise Bennett is a storyteller and a musician of exceptional talent. Her work is timeless, and flawless. Her work reminds us of the love that dwells in the deep heart's core.” Visit her at www.storiesbydenise.com.

Tarfia Faizullah is a graduate of VCU's creative writing program, and the former associate editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Diode, Bellingham Review and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Project award, the Ploughshares Cohen Award and a Fulbright scholarship.

Julie Geen writes a monthly column for belle magazine and is a contributor to Style Weekly. She has published essays in anthologies, most recently “Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost.” Along with raising children, dealing with pets and her own mind, she teaches creative writing classes through Hanover Parks and Recreation. Currently, she is turning one of her screenplays into a novel, and from there probably into a face book post. She blogs at juliegeen.com.

Shelia Gray is a graduate of the VCU Crafts Department, focusing in metal smithing, textiles and glass. She is currently involved in creating wearable art and costumes, as well as performance art and body painting for fashion shows, events and special projects. She’s writing a mixed-media graphic novel which incorporates sculptures and performance pieces. A self-employed gardener, she has winters off to do what ever she likes.

Valley Haggard, the executive director of Richmond Young Writers, teaches creative writing to kids at Chop Suey Books and creative nonfiction to adults at Chop Suey, Black Swan Bookstore and the Visual Arts Center. On the board of the James River Writers, she has written for Style Weekly, Belle, Rhome, V Magazine and Skirt and has published chapters of her memoir in The Writer’s Dojo and Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost. Visit her at www.richmondyoungwriters.com or www.valleyhaggard.com.

Alex Iwashyna went from a B.A. in Philosophy to an M.D. to a SAHM (stay at home mom), writer and poet before thirty. She spends most of her time on LateEnough.com blogging about life, parenting, marriage, culture and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. She also writes for Richmondmom.com, teaches at the Visual Arts Center and manages enough freelance work to guarantee sexy circles under her eyes.

Thank You Letters to Bad Boyfriends

2011-11-01T07:32:00.001-04:00

Having recently survived our ten year wedding anniversary, my husband tells me that he’s going to write a book about marriage called, “So, I Have to _____ You the Rest of My Life?”

“You’ll open it,” he says, “and there will be only one word inside: ‘YES.’ He laughs. “And then the back cover will say ‘Deal with it!’”

While he’s finishing up his bestseller, I’m hard at work on a project of my own. An old-school letter writer, I’ve saved several trash bags of mail in the attic corresponding to color-coded ribbons by person and place. I’m also a borderline hoarder of stationery with more post-it notes and postcards than notches in my bed post. And so, in an effort to both clean out my desk and apply the principal of positive thinking that suggests one write “thank you” on each bill, including those to the IRS, I have decided a new generation of letters are in order. Not to pen pals or congressman, not to my teen self, my senior self or my yet to be reincarnated self, but to a certain order of human that had a direct impact on my personal evolution. Genus: Ex-boyfriend, Species: Bad.

But why spend time writing letters to creatures such as these when there are bills to pay and books to write? To find closure, to seal the deal, to put a stamp on it. To decode the pattern and find the common thread, the one that runs through me, even still. To get in at last, the final word---in writing, even if the addressee is now unknown.

I need only deviate slightly from standard block form.

Dear Fill in the Blank:

Hi! How are you?? I’m writing to thank you for changing my life! Remember how you whipped out three things on our first date and the only one I wanted to touch was your gun? How, after dating for three months you never learned how to spell my name, how you read my stories and told me I really needed to travel, taped underwear models to your walls because you thought they looked like you, pretended not to recognize me even while running from the police, went to Hooters instead of returning my call, told me I drove a shitty car when I told you that I loved you?

Well, I’m writing to thank you, to thank you for making me the stunningly incredible woman that I am today. Sure, there were bad times, but we had our good times, too. For example, if you hadn’t been exactly who you were, there’s a chance I’d be with you still. If you hadn’t left me- or made me leave you- I would have found nowhere else to go. You gave me something to push against, something to become better than. While cracking open my heart, you formed my character, straightened my spine, and toughened my skin. You illuminated the darkest parts of me, the ones that needed light the most. In the end, not only did you give me something to work on and laugh about; you gave me world class material. To repurpose the famous quote by Tolstoy, “Happy relationships are all alike. The terrible ones will give you something interesting to write about for the rest of your life.”

So, thank you, bless you and God speed. I hope you learned as much from me as I learned from you.

PS: Can I have your forwarding address?

As I lick the envelopes shut, sealing a few with a kiss and cursing the others, my husband reminds me again that water always seeks its own level. This is a bitter sweet pill to swallow, the one that brought me to him. And so now it’s time to write the next frontier of thank you notes-- living acts of gratitude both to him and my son, who remind me on a daily basis that not only are boys red-blooded human beings, but I am too.

I Don’t Know

2011-10-21T08:20:00.001-04:00

I don’t know if I’m supposed to spend my days in pursuit of my manuscript or my happiness.

I don’t know if my friend’s professor who warned “beware of getting too happy; you’ll never finish your book,” was right or wrong but I know as the mouse I’m hard wired to search out the cheese and to bite and to chew and to search out the cheese again- even if it’s secured in the steel jaws of a trap.

I don’t know if the words I have to say are louder than the voice I have to say them with.

I don’t know which currency I hold.

I don’t know if I can exchange the credit of my writing for the cold hard cash of the spoken word, contracts, whispers, demands.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to spend so much time thinking about tense, point of view, perspective, if I’m allowed to love even the things that I'm sure to edit out.

I don’t know if I should jump off cliffs just to write cliffhangers. I don’t know if I should make major life decisions based on their affect on the arc of my story. I don’t know if I should create stories based on their influence on the arc of my life.

I don’t know if I need someone to fatten me up or to pare me down, to say “eat this child, eat that,” or if I need to lay my cabinets bare, pitching the curd, the chaff, the spoilt, the stale, the last crumbs that I’ve been holding onto, like a hoarder of scraps and words, made fat by leftovers.

I don’t know if I can make linear progress with chapter titles and word counts and page numbers and outlines or if one day the sum total of my jumbled contents will assemble themselves neatly onto the page, like a tidy house that I could actually move into and live.

I don’t know if I can exchange my internal editor for someone’s else’s, a kinder, gentler, slightly more organized, totally balanced internal editor, the way some people borrow each other’s Gods, just to get through.

I don’t know if I’m supposed to know or if it's to ask, to let it unfold, whether answers ever come or just a new line of questions.

Love Is a Vehicle Like Any Other

2011-10-14T07:51:00.000-04:00

My husband is more tempted to look at cars than women. Which is good, except when it isn’t. Cars are so hot and heavy on his mind that all you’d have to do is spread one with butter and he’d eat it for dinner. I, on the other hand, know nothing about what I’m driving, other than the color. My current car is orange. In my defense, I can drive stick, and for that matter a horse. I also know my way around a riding lawn mower- with a hot cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And I’m no snob about public transportation either. Some of my most formative hours were spent on Greyhound or Amtrak making my way from one coast to the other. It’s not that I don’t like cars—I just don’t understand them.

When I met Stan, he manhandled ten tons of tires every Friday at an auto repair shop. I, at the time, was driving a '79 Volvo station wagon— white-- that I’d bought from my Aunt Barbara for $400. She tried to talk me out of it but I argued with her and won. Having just gotten off a boat in Alaska, it fit my price range and my life style. That big white Volvo was a huge, sinking ship. I couldn’t have been happier. I didn’t want to drive anything fancier than me.

But when it started dragging its underbelly along the road in a very uncomely way, Stan offered to have look at it for me. I refused. I would take care of it myself. I think that’s when he considered asking me to marry him. I wasn’t the stereotypical needy girl who would count on a man to fix her car-- or her life. Yet.

Things have changed. When a man moves into your house and you give birth to his child, that tends to happen. I now count on him to fix everything— from the broken floor furnace to the pipes that have cracked open in the crawl space under our house. A few nights ago when he took a wrench to the valves behind the wall of the bathtub after rewiring the hot water heater allowing me to take a bath with more than a teaspoon of tepid water, I decided we could renew our vows-- at least for the next ten years. I no longer want to do everything myself. I don’t have time. I have books to read, classes to teach, important metaphysical questions to ponder. And I’m Ok with that. I still have a secret fantasy of being a tough pioneer woman who shoots her own dinner and builds her own house but this life doesn't seem to be heading in that direction. I may not know a single damn thing about home or auto repair, but I’ve gotten a lot better at asking for— and accepting help. And Stan’s gotten better at negotiating.

When my front headlight bulb went out a few weeks ago, I explained to him in great detail exactly how things would go down were I to take matters into my own hands. He eventually conceded, and in the parking lot of Advanced Auto Parts, he had the pleasure of not only changing my bulb but another lady’s as well. And from how he described her car, it sounded like it was just his type.

JRW Conference 2011

2011-10-06T07:44:00.000-04:00

Friday, Saturday, Oct. 7-8
The Library of Virginia
Workshops on Thursday, Oct. 6

Authors. Agents. Insiders.

And you.

Join us in Richmond to pitch your project, learn how to improve your craft and meet fellow writers. Among featured speakers are Robert Goolrick, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Reliable Wife, Tayari Jones, author of Leaving Atlanta, Karl Marlantes, author of the New York Times bestseller Matterhorn, and Kathi Appelt, Newbery Honor Award-winning author of The Underneath. Other noteworthy conference events include these:

Pitchapalooza - Sharpen your pitching skills with national book
marketing experts David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut
Hands-on workshops on query letters, poetry, and pitching an agent
One-on-one meetings with distinguished literary agents
Panels led by national and regional leaders in publishing
New sessions on using Facebook, Twitter and other social media

Find out more and register online at: www.jamesriverwriters.org!

The Ancient Art of Camping: Reluctantly Claiming My Birthright

2011-10-01T07:32:00.001-04:00

Camping should be in my blood. It should be my birthright.

After all, I was conceived in a tent on my mother’s birthday in the middle of October above the valley that would become my namesake. As a girl, my dad took me on many long trips into the mountains where, between campfires, my friends and I were allowed to run wild, shooting bows and arrows, creating our own battle cries and imaginary worlds. We ate hotdogs and marshmallows, running through the woods in our nightgowns like feral cats. Even when we were miserable, we were happy. I remember cracking my eyes open in the pre-dawn light surprised I hadn’t frozen to death, and on weekends at home directing the AC vents into my face to recreate the feeling.

I was no Girl Scout (unless you count being a Brownie for a year in hopes of getting s special rate on the cookies) but my Dad taught me how to pitch a tent, gather kindling, build a campfire and hold onto the rails in the back of the pick up while he sped down the mountain. My mother too had a taste for nature, giving me a grand tour of KOAs from here to Wyoming, stashing a certain yellow “Homemade Soup” grocery bucket in our tent for after-hours emergencies.

In my early twenties I roughed it with the best of them. I knew how to wash my whole body in one small sink and thoroughly enjoy a meal of half-cooked rice and crunchy beans. Chain-smoking while hiking without coughing was a point of pride. Camping, back then, was cool. And, hiking boots over long johns beneath beaded, ratty dresses, I was the height of cool.

So I’m not sure when exactly I started connecting more deeply with my mouse than other woodland creatures. Or when Netflix, Tivo and Xbox became easier to operate than an oil lamp or a Sterno. Or when G-Mail and Facebook began to offer more lifeblood than sunsets and gargling brooks. Or why my husband is more prone to hunting aliens and zombies than our dinner.

In our most recent power outage (AKA: Armageddon) when I was sent reeling back to my nature-baby-with-no-status update-roots I had a come to Jewish-Jesus moment. I’d been out scavenging like a cockroach for WiFi through the crumbs of Krispy Kreme and coffee grounds. “Why, oh WHY don’t I have a Smart Phone?” I’d keened, feeling dumb indeed. But my son had a different reaction. “Let’s go camping!” he said.

“OK,” I said, because although this sounded about as fun as eating steel wool, my hair had already started to dread, making me nostalgic for the olden days. “If we’re going to be this gross we might as well go camping!” I said. My husband pulled his truck into the yard and we started to throw stuff from the inside out, including the Incredible Hulk sleeping bag that had given me nightmares as a child. We packed everything but the kitchen sink—or anything else that might need to be plugged in.

Even without power, something switched on as soon as we got to our campsite. Instead of feeling dirtier, I felt like a swath of static electricity had suddenly been stripped away. We went skinny dipping in the river and made our own pit for a fire. Although we ate food from wrappers, it tasted better- like we’d earned it. When we finally lay down in our bags, it wasn’t quiet and dark—the moon was bright and the crickets were loud. There was a lot going on in those woods--- a whole lot more than I had remembered. I was glad I’d gotten unplugged long enough to let it soak back in.

And I’m proud to say that I not only survived sixteen full hours away from civilization, but my son, who will turn seven the week of Halloween, now knows how to do everything the Pope knows how to do--- in the woods. It’s his birthright, too.

Dead Brother & Prom Queen Make Their Debut

2011-09-22T22:08:00.008-04:00

It's not as bad as it sounds. It's a lot worse-- and a lot better. When Julie Geen and I read the call for submissions for the anthology Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost we knew we couldn't let the opportunity pass us by. Not when we had such a vast wealth of material to draw from. Not when the editor was Shawna Kenney, author of the cult-classic "I Was A Teenage Dominatrix," the first book I reviewed after calling my old editor from the bathroom of my new job where they'd made me put on an apron, begging to write for him again.

And so, last winter, Julie and I holed up in a seedy motel to write our hearts out. (And eat chocolate.) And re-write our hearts out. And dot the i's and cross the t's splayed across the polyester queen bedspread where we examined a few of those moments that changed us forever-- when we weren't eating chocolate, that is. And then we put the bloody things back together. It was excruciating and it was fun. It was exhilarating and it was exhausting. And in the end, it felt good to get these stories off our chests and between the covers of a book. And now we feel really honored and tickled by the opportunity to read together- twice in the next three weeks. First, at a bookstore that feels better than home and next at Atomic Books: Literary Finds for Mutated Minds where John Waters picks up his mail. Join us, won't you?

Read on for a little taste of each of our stories:

DEAD BROTHER by Julie Geen, an excerpt

I played the dead brother card for years after he died. Weekdays, I waited for the bus to take me from the suburban Colorado prairie, a land made more empty by the tract houses that replaced miles of waving grass, to a city school. My cruel best friend Wendy waited with me. Her David Cassidy haircut, the very best thing a person of either sex could have in 1974, and her ability to smoke at age twelve without coughing, made her my master.

“All you talk about is horses, and it’s boring,” she told me, bringing instant tears. When she rolled her eyes and asked what was wrong I said, “I’m crying about Mikey.” She narrowed her eyes, but she got quiet.

It really only worked once. After that, she said, “You just want me to feel sorry for you.”

We have a home movie of when he was just home from the hospital. He’s a little clay infant, and my mom is trying to breathe life into him. She’s animated and uses her whole body and her mouth moves, pumping him with encouraging words. He has the round, bland angel face of all Downs babies, his eyes unfocused and his body at once stiff and limp. It’s fruitless, you can tell.

My father had a knack with the Super 8. His shots were well staged: he came in late and left early, like a good director should. He captured rainbows, my mom with her arms curved reverently around a lapful of kittens, Christmas trees radiating tinsel, my brother like a little owl in his bouncy seat taking it all in. And, of course, me. My first ecstatic, out of control ride on my new rocking horse, my cakes, my friends in pointed party hats. There is also lots of footage of my mom’s butt. Pretty much every time he picked up the camera he got a shot or two.

I played with my brother. We shared a room in our tiny ranch house, me in my twin bed and him in his crib. He would lie on his back and stare, and I would pretend he was my husband and cook things for him, prattling away, pumping him with my own words. He sucked up all the attention in our house. He needed all the life we had.

PROM QUEEN by Valley Haggard, an excerpt

After driving past a dozen stands on the side of the road selling vegetables to eat, wear or hang as art on the wall, we pass a green highway sign that says “Gateway, Arkansas; Population: 67.”

“This is it,” says Will Jr. “But I’ll have to change that sign.” He laughs. “Sixty-seven plus us. Sixty-nine.”

Going to live with his recently widowed dad in Arkansas seems like a better option than waiting tables in Virginia and living with my mom. On the road, we take turns driving and camping in my little tent with only half its poles. The heat he generates in the sleeping bag is almost enough, but not quite, to make me love him.

Last summer Will Jr. had asked me to marry him on a dude ranch in Colorado. He’d been a wrangler and I’d been a cabin girl, but after getting pregnant, I’d given him his ring back. I was twenty-two and not ready to be anyone’s mother, or wife.

Arkansas, however, with its shaggy fields of bulls and buffalos stretched between doublewides and junk stores, I love instantly. In a new place like this, anything can happen and I pray that it will. Will Jr. tells me that his relationship with his old man isn’t easy and I ask him to tell me any relationships that are. “Us,” he says. “You and me.” But I begin to count cows instead of saying anything back and he jiggles his knee up and down for the rest of the drive, turning at last onto a dirt road that winds through the trees to his father’s farm. Will Sr. is waiting for us on the front porch of a wood cabin, a cigarette dangling between his lips as if he’s been there all day. He is wearing a red flannel shirt, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, leather boots and a cowboy hat. He’s not exactly handsome, but his blue eyes light up bright when he sees us and the white hair swirling around his temples seems a wild sort of distinguished.

“Welcome to your new home,” he says, leading us through the overgrown field to the blockhouse, a small metal shack about a hundred yards past his cabin. A bare double mattress is crammed between raw lumber and a tangle of shovels and rakes. Will Jr. pushes our canvas army sack through the cobwebs under a workbench as I sit down on the mattress and watch dust float up around my thighs.

There is no sink or toilet and I can’t name half of the rusted tools or machines on the shelves above our heads, but at least it’s completely different from what I’ve left behind.

“We’ll take it,” I say. “Home, sweet home.”

Come hear the rest!

Sat., Sept.24
7 pm
Chop Suey Books
2913 West Cary Street
Richmond, VA

Sat., Oct. 15th
7 pm
Atomic Books
3620 Falls Rd.
Baltimore, MD

Freaks Aren't the Only People Who Come Out at Night!

2011-09-14T21:00:00.011-04:00

The freaks come out at night, but so do the writers! For every minute of the 26.2 Hour All-Night, All-Write writing marathon in which we took over Chop Suey Books, someone was up and carrying the torch- or, um- the pen.

Like Alter-Edward and Gerund. Like Captain Obvious and Smurf Lord. Like Slim Ace Bo Peep and Donut Danny. In fact, there are a whole host of people scattered around Richmond I now only know by their alter-ego name.

We wrote together, young and old, in the same room, and when we read our works out loud, we seemed to read from the same page. We enjoyed surprise appearances by old friends, new friends and even celebrities!

We played madlibs and made buttons and constructed zines and wrote stories and sang songs. We found hope in rejection and hilarity in love gone wrong. We laughed at comedians and party buses. We holed up in the Fortress of Solitude and ate our weight in veggie dogs and hamburgers at the 24-Hour Cookout With Your Book Out sidewalk grill. We poured our hearts into "The Fire & Desire Notebook of Bad Poetry" and crafted witty one-liners for the "I Party With the Boogie Man Collection of 6 Word Memoirs." We tried to meditate for the sunrise tribute to 9/11 but "slept" for an hour and a half, halfway under a table instead.

We sold T-shirts, raffle tickets and cupcakes. And we raised, with help from a generous contribution from Chop Suey, over $500 in scholarship money for aspiring poets and writers, playwrights and surrealists. Of course, if you weren't able to donate in person, it's never too late to contribute to our scholarship fund!

And now, an exclusive interview with marathon winner, Georgina Coffey, a sophomore at Maggie Walker Governor's School!

So, Georgina, what would you say you got out of 26.2?
First off, I was able to write over 30 pages of material for various things I've been working on. That never happens! But I guess that there's something about being in a single place where everyone around you is at least trying to do the same. 26.2 was a great place to brush up on some skills as well as discover others I didn't know were there.

What surprised you about the experience?
Probably the 30 pages. I thought that I'd maybe write ten, fifteen at the most. But no! I wrote for nearly all of 26.2 and the time I didn't spend writing I was in seminars that had me to do other activities.

What did you most enjoy?
I really enjoyed the feel of the community at 26.2. Sure, we had some people who just drifted in or out, but there were a few people who were there for ten or more hours. That was really motivating.

What did you least enjoy?
This probably won't sound honest, but truly there was not a single thing I did not enjoy. That was a perfect "day" in my mind.

Would you do it again next year?
Yes, I will! And every year after that!

Richmond Young Writers was asked if we'd do it again: every year, every month, every weekend. We said we'd decide when it was all over and when it was all over we decided we would. After all, writing might not exactly be aerobic exercise, but it is definitely addictive.

Without whom none of this could have been possible, a big huge enormous thanks to:

The overly competent and extremely good looking staff at Chop Suey Books, including Ward Tefft, Andrew, Mark & Tommy
Lamplighter Roasting Company for delicious coffee!
Jason Lefton of GYLo for photography, graphics & technical support
Katie McBride for T-Shirt & poster design
Our fabulously talented workshop presenters:
Studio Two Three
Betsy Kelly of ART 180
Michele Young-Stone
Susann Cokal
Shane Sayers-Couzyn
Richmond Comedy Coalition
PH Balance: Herschel Stratego & Paul Ivey
Eliezer Sobel
Liz Canfield of Richmond Zine Fest

Cookout Organizer & Head Chef: Stephanie Failla, and the outstanding restaurants who donated food to the cookout: Mamma Zu, Sticky Rice, Cafe Ole, Bon Venu, New York Deli, Joe's Inn, Mojos, 821, The Nile, Christopher's Runaway Gourmet, Captain Slappy's & Cous Cous.

Julia Janeczek for the outstanding raspberry & mint chocolate cupcakes!
Betsy Harrell Thomas of Betsy's for the delicious pastries.
Our tireless volunteers: Michael Guedri, Emilie Tweeddale, Andy Brockmann, Robin Silberman, Chris Anders, Katie Harville, Jackson Meyer, Rivanna Youngpool and Jenna Clarke

And last but never least, everyone who came out to write!

See y'all next year!

Olympic Couch Surfing: 26.2, Kicking & Barely Moving At All

2011-09-10T07:44:00.002-04:00

Before even the first date with my husband I dreamed we ran a marathon together and at the end, when I collapsed in the dirt, he put his hand under my head to use as a pillow. I think that's when I decided to marry him. And it only took a few short months after that for him to ask me out on our first date!

But until today, when each member of our family will face their own Goliath of the Sports World, our marriage hasn't exactly been rife with athletic achievement. Our son (who I've at last come to realize was trying to kick a soccer ball, not me in the womb) is starting not only his first soccer team, but his first team sport ever, a little later this morning. He's so excited he can barely stand it. When I got him off the bus yesterday he said, "I can't believe tomorrow is finally here!" Well, sort of, I agreed.

Not only is Henry starting his first team today, Stan is coaching his first team, too. After receiving several emails about the head hunt for a head coach, Stan left a message asking what was required for the job. Three days later he got an email thanking him for stepping up to the position. So, after a trip to the library in which he checked out no less than 15 books about the sport including "Coaching Soccer For Dummies," my man is ready to enthusiastically wrangle a gaggle of 6 year-old co-eds. An innate athlete who is great with kids, I think it suits him to a T.

So it's not my boy's athletic debut that worries me. No, it's my own. My motto comes from a line by one of my favorite writers, Natalia Ginzburg: "...if I want to finish anything it is absolutely essential that I spend hours stretched out on the sofa."

Nevertheless, today marks my first - and possibly last- marathon. But not the kind where you have to actually move. Oh, no. No way. I'm writing. For 26. 2 hours, thanks to my husband who called me a dummy when I suggested writing for 24. As in: "No, dummy. You gotta make it 26.2," although, at this point, that number is more likely to refer to the number of pounds I'm going to gain eating all of the amazing food Ward & Stephanie are cooking up for their 24 hour cookout (with your book out) in conjunction with our completely insane writing festival of insanity. Did I mention that this is insane?

I'm not 19 anymore (no, really!) and I'm slightly terrified at the idea of staying up past midnight. I turn into a pumpkin and start to both drool and snore hours before the witching hour. So staying up is going to be a challenge. As is writing...so....much...! Except honestly, with all of the amazingly stimulating activities we have scheduled around the clock (open mics, zine-making, printmaking, songwriting, slam poetry, comedians, ETC) there are effectively enough distractions to keep me---or anyone-- from writing ever again! My favorite kind of writing of all.

But seriously. We've got a great cause. Scholarships! For the KIDS! And lots of amazing raffle prizes--including a typewriter! And an oil change! And my mother's art! And moleskin notebooks! And alter-ego nametags. And a prompt bucket. And laser-engraved RYW pencils. And totally hot 26.2 T-Shirts. Not to mention the most amazing fortress of solitude upon which I have ever lain eyes.

I would have done it just for the pure pleasure of working with Chop Suey's creative genius Ward Tefft and my own personal Queen among Women, Bird Cox, who is able to hang peacock feathers from the ceiling standing on a chair in high heels! Or, the many talented authors and artists, performers, comedians and poets who stepped up to help us out. Although I'm already a little sleepy, I feel tremendously grateful, connected and in love all over again with my fair city. As scared as I am about this test of stamina and endurance, I'm also excited about each part of this race, start to finish.

My cup runneth over. But luckily I do not runneth at all.

(A big thank you to Sarah Dawes at Richmond Magazine for her awesome article!)

Making Peace With the M-Word

2011-09-01T08:27:00.000-04:00

Last year I stood in front of the same judge three times. Even though I wasn’t on trial for murder and the judge looked more like my uncle than my executioner, I burned with shame. I felt like a common criminal, but knew I was actually something worse. A woman who had not only been convicted of speeding in a school zone but one who had no idea how to handle her money.

Like sex and religion, money has always been a vexing, contradictory and elusive topic. It involves numbers which alone endeared itself to me not at all. As a child, even as we shook out couch cushions for spare change, my mother drilled into my head that I could do or be anything I wanted. Living on food stamps was no reason not to reach for the stars. She encouraged me to align my future with my dreams rather than my savings. I accepted a scholarship and early admittance to the college of my choice, which happened to be the second most expensive college in the country at the time.

I arrived at school proud of my scrappiness and ability to make something out of nothing. But eventually rubbing shoulders with children of millionaires rubbed off on me. I wasn’t sure I wanted what they had; I just knew I didn’t have it. Money became an emotional barrier which separated me, at least in my own mind, from certain circles. No matter how many times I tried to balance the relationship between my self worth and my bank account, I always came up short. Eventually I started using credit cards not only to make ends meet but to make me feel a little better about myself. At first it was just a tiny charge, to take the edge off. But like a drug, after repeated use, I became dependent.

Finally, three years ago when I got laid off from my desk job, I quit credit cards cold turkey. But not only did I stop using them, in order to buy groceries, I stopped paying them, too. And it turns out credit card companies don’t like it when you do that, even if it’s for your own good. But rather than deal with the mess I was creating, I hid from it. Confronting my lack of funds meant confronting my lack of worth. I couldn’t see how one didn’t equal the other.

When I got sued- a fiscal version of the DUI- I resisted the urge to bury myself under the covers--- or under the ground. Miraculously, instead, I asked for help. I researched. I made phone calls. I sent emails. I peeked into the dark, terrifying corners I had created, mostly in the top drawer of my desk where stacks of unopened mail teemed like the head of Medusa.

In the end, a friend and former lawyer generously offered me her and her husband’s assistance. But not before I’d sobbed on the phone, admitting how ashamed I felt. “Oh Valley,” she’d said, “Credit card debt? Please! Last year I had two different friends convicted of embezzlement!” If she had been Mother Teresa absolving me of my sins, I could not have felt better. My friend and her husband’s combination of nonjudgmental kindness and belief in “paying it forward” helped pull me out of not only a monetary hole, but an emotional one.

My problems didn’t vanish when I faced them, but amazing things did begin to happen. Money actually started to come in through work that I actually loved. I no longer felt like I was spending my last dollar each time I pulled out my wallet. And I realized I have more to offer than the sum total of my pockets--- or anyone else’s.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking to a judge aspiring to be a writer—outside of the courtroom. As we talked literature, I realized I felt neither criminal nor less than. I realized that he and I stood on common ground, sharing equal footing. And that’s a feeling money can’t buy.

Alter Egocentric

2011-08-26T07:57:00.000-04:00

I’ve always had a thing for alter egos. I use them in my writing classes to explore both the creation of characters and the characters that we already have, existing within ourselves.

When I was a child I had imaginary friends. They’re every bit as real to me now as they were to me then, but now I see them on the inside rather than the out. I use them to navigate different stories as they play out in my life—in my head and on the page.

I am Rachel, the Jewish daughter and devoted cook. I am Bad Valley, refusing to take multi-vitamins and stumbling on and off buses in New York City. I am Madge from DMV wearing mumus and curlers, smoking menthols and burning TV dinners for one in the microwave.

Recently, when describing a few of these characters to my writing students, they explained the difference to me between multiple personalities and schizophrenia. We had a good laugh, but I think writers, to some extent or another, welcome whatever voices they manage to hear.

When I keep my alternate personalities in perspective, they give me great pleasure. When I become all of one and none of the others, my world tilts akimbo like a full dinner plate set on its edge.

Because if I’m right about anything it’s how often I’m wrong about myself. My opinion is often too high or too low, but rarely right on target. Maybe it’s not me but the full-time narrator in my head who gets a little carried away, but even small situations can become full-blown dramas, epic comedies, devastating love stories of the highest order. Greek tragedies play out on my small suburban street. Roman gods converse on my couch. Everyone I know has a Harry Potter double. I mythologize people who then become too big or too small to stay molded into the shape I’ve assigned them, but then too, they get to play some pretty exciting major roles opposite the cast in my head. And who wouldn’t want that?

Recently my husband and I were watching Ice Road Truckers: India and I was struck, as if for the first time, by the statue of Kali they were assigned to haul intact up the treacherous roads of the Himalayas. “Kali,” they explained as the North American truckers danced along with the traditional Hindu ceremony, “drinks the blood of her enemies and then stomps on the body of the gods!” I looked at her take-no-prisoners face lit up with glee and knew suddenly that she exists and has always existed within me, just as surely as the Good Citizen I was awarded for being in the first grade. My mother had kept a poster of her on the inside of our bathroom door in my childhood home and I had stared at her face for years and years, never realizing until this week that what I had been staring at all along was just another character lost and then found inside of me.

How to Cuss in 12 Different Languages or How Much Should a Teacher Teach Her Students?

2011-08-08T14:19:00.003-04:00

(Original art by the author, age 7, inside cover, "Rose Colored Glasses")

When I was seven, my mother found a list I’d made of every cuss word I knew. It was a very creative and exhaustive list. It should have been---I’d learned from a pro — her. Later, when I was a teenager, she would lend me her copy of a book about how to cuss in 12 different languages--- but in elementary school I’d have to settle for basic English. Even though my mother was comfortable using her remarkably descriptive tongue around me, she threatened to show the list she’d found to my grandmother— not her own mother, but my dad’s---the woman who dressed me like a girl in new clothes from the department store and taught me how to fold hospital bed corners when I visited her each summer.

I guess my mother had it in mind to teach me the difference between what you did at home and what you did in what she called polite company. In polite company, no elbows on the table. At home,eat on a blanket on your belly on the floor. Etcetera. My list, were it to get out, blurred the line between the two.

I was horrified at the idea of my grandmother being given this intimate bird's eye view into the part of my mind I’d tried to keep hidden from her. She thought I was an angel- albeit a slightly rumpled, dirt-streaked one—and I wanted to keep it that way. I liked being pampered in an immaculate house with the promise of polka-dotted skirts and chocolate chip cookies. Everything about Grandma was perfect— from her homemade biscuits to her aprons to her curls--- except those occasions when she was away in a mental institution for depression and hysteria, of course. But I didn’t know that, then. I just thought if you weren’t a wild and out there artist with a mouth like a sailor- mom, you were a perfect, saintly stay at home nurse-grandma.

Now I realize there are more gradations within the mind and the life of each woman than two. Reading my grandma’s diaries, given to me by my father after her death, helped me understand that. I adored her when I was little, but even more as a young woman when I came to understand the complex emotional life she’d hadn’t let me in on.

As a nonfiction writer with a past— and a present— I no longer have a list of cuss words to show or to hide, but I do have a seemingly endless expanse of colorful, complicated stories that I’m trying to figure out how— and to whom- to tell. Already much has been written about memoirists facing the music after their children learn to read. In fact, on my birthday this year a bookstore friend sent me the link to Dani Shapiro’s NY Times article: “The Me My Child Mustn’t Know.”

But it’s not my own child I’m worried about.

I teach kids. I love teaching kids. I feel called to do it. But it would be more convenient if, on the side I liked to knit or write about home décor rather than grittier topics like loss of innocence and addiction or whatever else I'm drawn to at the time. It would also be helpful if I were a little more perfect, a little less blemished rather than the messy memoirist turning her insides out for scrutiny that I've found myself to be.

But the things I want to write about- the things I feel driven to write about-- extend beyond the reach of what I was able to see sitting on a stool drinking milk in my grandma’s kitchen. They go behind the smile, revealing what I'd sometimes rather hide, what I sometimes wish wasn't there. But it is there and I can't seem to write a true line without it coming out.

I do my best to keep my most personal writing and my teaching separate, but maybe if I ever accidentally let it slip exactly how human I am, my humanity will give them permission to be a little bit more human, too. I could reassure them that it's possible to make a million mistakes when they're young and still turn out OK in the end. I could let them know that what goes on beneath the surface is even more important than the appearance from above. I could show, by example, that flaws, imperfections and mistakes can actually be our greatest assets, our most brilliant teachers and that we don't have to be perfect to be loved, or even to be good. Or, I could just tell them what to do with certain body parts attached to the twelve apostles of Jesus, in Spanish.

Confessions of a Secret Smoker

2011-08-01T12:15:00.003-04:00

I smoked my first cigarette on the rooftop of one of my dad’s fan apartments when I was eight and he was in the shower. But I didn’t fall desperately in love with smoking until ten years later when a friend lent me a clove during a reading at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City. The next day I bummed a Marlboro Red from a boy I hoped would not only lend me his cigarette, but his confidence. Not to mention his exclusive, intellectual brand of love. He lent me his cigarette. I became a pack a day smoker overnight.

When I decided to quit drinking five years later, I told my mother that I was going to wait just a few more years before I quit smoking too. “Fine,” she said, “but would you rather cut your arm off all at once or bit by bit, in pieces?” I decided she had a point. Instead of using gum or the patch, I used an old wiffle ball bat. Beating my couch senseless and crying hysterically for a month did the trick. I was a non-smoker once again. And after writing a long, heartfelt letter about the necessity of living long enough to be there for his children- and grandchildren- my dad quit, too. Good riddance of a nasty habit, I thought. Other than salivating a tiny bit when someone struck a match on the big screen, I didn’t miss it at all.

Until one morning after a storm last summer when I found a miraculously intact package of Black Clove cigarettes in the street next to my car. They had not only been run over, but rained on. I picked them up, ran into my backyard and smoked the entire pack. And then went out to buy another. I knew it was bad. I knew it was wrong. I knew that I never wanted my son--- or any other young person I knew—to see me smoking. Despite this and despite knowing everything that everyone knows about the side effects of tobacco and nicotine, I couldn’t not do it.

Smoking created a smokescreen that neatly hid the things I was hiding from. It reconnected me to the 18 year old girl I’d left behind and badly missed. It gave me a sense of ownership over my time and space, even if that time and space was stolen in furtive puffs next to the dumpster in my backyard. Best of all, smoking cured me of a nasty case of self-righteousness I’d developed the decade prior.

Other mothers in the neighborhood smoked openly while waiting at the bus stop. Now I could no longer think of myself as more highly evolved than they, but still I wondered how they managed to have no shame at all. Shouldn’t they be crouched down behind their dumpsters like me, trapped in an ever quickening cycle of craving and shame, pleasure and remorse?

I knew I had to quit but the idea seemed in the same vein as moving alone to Siberia in the middle of winter. I couldn’t imagine any other way of introducing such a quick rush of pleasure into my life. And, since there were now other actual people living in my house, a wiffle ball bat was no longer an option. I would have to find something meaningful to not only replace the cigarettes, but the ritual they created. I joined Twitter. When that failed, I dug a garden. I took up running. Slowly, these things and others--- making connections through words and people--- began to seal up the place the smoke had filled. I no longer felt the need to hide quite so much or so often—from others or myself. I didn’t have to wonder if I smelled like an ashtray, what kind of example I was setting for my son or if I was going to hack up a lung after dinner. I stopped being so quick to judge others by their vices, reentering a world defined by its many shades of gray. Still, every time a storm passes over our house, I find myself scanning the street to see what may have washed ashore.

When Doors Fly and Horses Multiply: The First Three Summers of Richmond Young Writers

2011-07-23T07:42:00.002-04:00

In the spring of 2009, a friend who also happened to be the chair of the James River Writers asked me numerous times if I knew of any creative writing camps in Richmond for kids. After assuring her repeatedly that I did not, it occurred to me that I could just go ahead and teach her son. One-on-one. In their attic. Which would have been great--- her son was an excellent writer--- but then I got to thinking. Were there other kids in Richmond who might enjoy doing some creative writing that summer? I called Chop Suey Books and asked if I could teach a class in their art gallery upstairs. They said yes. I invited other writers to come teach special genre specific workshops during the week. They said yes.

I wanted the kids to have a reading at the end of the week so I called the Byrd Theatre and asked if we could use their stage for half an hour on Friday afternoons. They said yes. Each door I knocked on flew open.

I set up a website and four week-long sessions. All four sessions made and were a smashing success. We invented worlds. We created characters and plots and poems. We played with language. We invented alter egos, explored our dreams and went people-watching at coffee shops. We were serious and silly and deep and ridiculous. Middle and high-schoolers who dreaded spelling tests, grammar drills, SOLs, SATs and the infamous five-paragraph essays wrote up a storm. Kids who had begged their parents not to sign them up, thanked them afterwards. Together, in that little art gallery upstairs, we made writing fun.

That I had a sense of the potential of a creative writing camp was no accident. My mother had sent me to the UVA Young Writer’s Workshop when I was 15 & 16 and those summers had changed my life. They’d solidified what I wanted to do, validated who I was and offered me a vision of what I could become At UVA, young writers were treated as “real writers.” We were not lectured or talked down to. We were encouraged to be ourselves, and to write about it. I returned as a counselor for two summers during college, reveling in the joy of giving back what had been given to me. In creating Richmond Young Writers in my own hometown, I followed this lead.

And, in a creative sense, I feel I’ve been right on target. But in a business sense, I’ve only had the vaguest intuitive notion of where we are and in which direction we should be heading.

Then, last summer, I had the great pleasure of meeting another UVA Young Writer’s Workshop alum, Bird Cox. In addition to being a freelance writer, the organizer of the Bizarre Market and numerous other laudable activities, Bird had taught creative writing to kids around town for years and wanted to take her teaching further. Based on my immediate sense of this vivacious, wildly creative and highly skilled woman, coupled with the segment I’d heard that morning on NPR about how two horses are able to carry more than twice the weight of one, I suggested that we partner. And so we did. And it has been one of the best “business decisions” I could have made for Richmond Young Writers. Even though Snopes.Com debunked the horse/weight baring load story I’ve found that two people working together are in fact able to accomplish more than one sitting at home scribbling in her notebook, wondering what in the world to do next.

This year we’ve been able to double our program, running eight sessions with students not only from Richmond, but from Henrico, Glen Allen, Chesterfield, Midlothian, Montpelier, Powhatan, Moseley, Mechanicsville, Afton, Rockville, Charlottesville and Gloucester, Virginia. The scope of our grass roots, relationship based “marketing campaign” has been further reaching than I could have imagined. We’ve even got an email from France and a family that plans to rearrange next year’s vacation from Louisiana to so their daughter can attend!

This year’s teachers, as always, were absolutely amazing, opening up heretofore unexplored worlds of surrealism, magical realism, character, plot, memoir, screenwriting, specificity, werewolves & wizards. I learned as much from their workshops as from any college class (and I loved my college classes! Hello Susan? Hello Melvin?)

Best of all, with the help of a whole bunch of generous people in our community we’ve instituted a scholarship program, awarding assistance to over a dozen kids in the area. A more-often-than-not scholarship kid myself, this has been one of the most incredibly rewarding parts of my year. Don’t be shocked to find me crying over a letter from a young person who wants to spend their summer writing but can’t afford it! That kid used to be me.

Bird and I are still not 100% sure what the future of Richmond Young Writers holds (other than our awesome fall intensives!) but after learning so much this summer, I’m beginning to realize that’s just part of the creative process. We are, after all, in the middle of writing our own adventure.

Who Do I Think I Am?

2011-07-15T09:45:00.005-04:00

Being both a mother and a writer poses many interesting questions.

For example, is it totally selfish to wish I was with a girlfriend, a box of chocolates and a laptop in a cheap motel when I am instead taping together rocket ships out of paper towel rolls up to my elbows in animal crackers and soccer balls?

Is it in poor taste to turn down a full time job with excellent benefits in order to keep writing stories just because they are stories I feel like writing?

And, what happens when mommy wants to write about men who aren’t daddy or activities not condoned by the PTA?

As I have spent the last 35 years narrating my life in my head, these questions are not only footnotes, but chapter headings.

Sometimes, I even catch myself blaming my six-year-old for my record low word counts, sleep-deprived metaphors and rambling, directionless paragraphs heading nowhere fast. But my lack of verve is not exactly his fault. In fact, I was pregnant with him when I took the fiction class at the Virginia Museum that got me back into writing after a multi-year hiatus waitressing/hotel-roomcleaning/basketweaving, etc.

And I could barely hide him under my shirt when I wrote my first article that I later had laminated at Kinkos.

And, I just so happened to be offered the job of Book Editor the exact same week he was born.

In fact, I called him my Writing Baby. So it’s not exactly fair to blame him when I’m not writing. He does still need me about 20,000 times a day, but I am inherently the kind of writer who seeks distractions. If it wasn’t him calling my mind from the page, it would be something else. Like the clowns from the circus I’ve considered running off with, for example.

There are a million things that make being a fulltime artist/writer and a mother both so difficult and so rewarding that it would be impossible to choose one over the other without feeling the devastation of losing both. And so, everyday I try to balance the two. I’m in good company. Recently, local blogger, Alexandra Nelson Iwashyna published a thoughtful piece that really nailed it: "Writing As a Mother: The Price I Pay" on her hilarious and thought-provoking blog Late Enough.

Daphne Du Maurier, of “Rebecca” fame took a different approach (paraphrased from The Telegraph): "I am not one of those mothers who live for having their brats with them all the time," she wrote....leaving behind four-year-old Tessa and the three-month-old Flavia....child-free quiet was the only hope for Rebecca....In her daughters' absence she worked quickly...four months after she started work, Daphne delivered her manuscript.

Last week after reading “Rebecca” in a 3-day fever of romantic suspense, learning about the fever with which she written it made me laugh. And hug my son. And demand that he go to community college while living in his room at home. Because the reality is I want him and my writing both together in the big messy soup of haiku and kung fu that makes up our life. Even if I'm thinking about one while spending time with the other.

And so, this week, to mark the end of the first half of my thirties I plan to re-watch the brilliant documentary, “Who Does She Think She Is?” focusing on female artists of many disciplines. Artists who are also mothers. Mothers who struggle with questions of selfishness, time-management, how to get paid for their art, balance, family, passion, discipline, figuring out how to do and be it all, without selling either themselves or their children short.

On the days when I feel like a bad mother because I’m a writer, or vice versa, another movie comes to mind: Sophie’s Choice. And I am reminded how happy I am that, somehow, I have chosen not to choose.

The Book That Taught Me Not to Judge A Book By Its Cover

2011-06-30T11:09:00.000-04:00

During my time as a book reviewer I learned that in order to actually sleep, eat, interact with my family or operate in any vertical way I did in fact have to judge books by their covers. It was brutal. It was unfair. But it was survival. Otherwise, I was sure I would be eaten alive. There was simply not enough time in the day to pay attention to anything that didn’t already appeal to me, look like me, or scream at me loudly enough.

And so, one glance at the distraught overdressed heroine thrusting her cheek away from what was either a plantation fire or a bloody sunset confirmed what I already suspected. I would never read Gone With the Wind. I was torn between dismissing this high strung Southern belle and overly-relating to her. Another melodramatic soap opera, I moaned, but the opportunity to interview the man who wrote its sequel arose and duty called, so I picked up my 959 page copy of the book. And found it impossible to put back down. I read it while I was working. I read it when I should have been sleeping. And it’s the only book I’ve read while driving, balanced precariously from cover to cover across my steering wheel.

Within the span of a week I was a fanatical convert. I inhaled “Rhett Butler’s People” and interviewed its gruff sheepherding author, Donald McCaig, moving on to read biographies about Margaret Mitchell as long as her own lifetime opus. They were all fascinating.

And so, when right around this time, I met former environmental lawyer and journalist Ellen Brown at a swanky literary conference party and she asked if I thought a book about the writing and subsequent success of Gone With the Wind was a salient project I couldn’t have been more enthusiastic. But why would this perfectly put together, completely adorable, well-spoken lawyer with unwrinkled clothes value my opinion? We chatted for a while, but then I wandered over to pick at the Hors D'ouvers, trying to control my urge to stuff some rare roast beef into my purse. Later, I learned that Ellen went home and started writing her book that night.

And published it, to great acclaim, two years later. Joining forces with all things GWTW collector and enthusiast, John Wiley, "Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey" came out this February and has made it big not only in dozens of bookstores around the country, but also in USA Today, the CBS Early Show and NPR.

In January, I interviewed Ellen for an article about her own writing process. Our conversation was to me, as fascinating as any of the books they were about. The archeological literary discoveries, the wild coincidences, the hard work of writing around the clock and the labors of love that went into the research and writing of Ellen’s book led me through a house of mirrors I never wanted to leave.

But even better, Ellen was kind, generous and humble. She told me ghost stories and hair stories, asking me continuously about myself and my own projects. She offered me suggestions, encouragement and advice that scratched all the right itches. It thrilled me to no end to see that she had quoted a line from my interview with McCaig in her book. I had made it into an index! This in itself was exciting, but recognizing that this smart, tough-cookie and I had more to talk about than we could squeeze into the coffee shop was even better.

And, since today is the 75th year anniversary of the publication of Gone With the Wind, I thought I’d take a moment to remember the importance of not only not judging books by their covers, but their authors as well.

Poor Dirty Virginia Girl Makes Good at Local Furniture Store

2011-06-24T09:53:00.001-04:00

For our wedding, my husband and I were given a $60 gift certificate to La Diff, the outrageously gorgeous avant-garde furniture store downtown. While the sentiment was beautiful, the reality was bleak. Would we even be able to buy the leg of one chair? We didn’t know, but we decided to find out.

It just so happened La Diff was having their annual 4th of July sale, in which anyone who sang a patriotic song at the register could receive a discount. I am tone-deaf, but have been able to recite the pledge of allegiance in sign language since 4th grade summer camp so we were able to buy one half of a lawn chair set from the discount room in the back for 20% off. But boy, was that one beautiful lawn chair.

Unfortunately, however, while scouring the three floors of warehouse sized rooms, I’d lost my new husband and had even run out to the parking lot to see if his car was still there. To see if he’d left me, even though we’d just gotten married three weeks earlier. Because, you know, the idea that he-- or anyone-- would want to love me forever was unthinkable in my not-so subconscious. I saw myself as a dirty, poor Virginia girl who wore her heart on her ripped up thrift-store sleeve.

In the car on the way home, my husband gave me a super-hero nickname which has stuck ever since. Fatal Leap. To this day we refer to La Diff as more of a mind-set than a place. “Are you getting all La Diff on me?” he asks if I make a mountain out of a molehill. “Don’t leave me like you did at La Diff!” I say when he goes for milk.

You get the picture.

But yesterday, my first time back to La Diff in ten years, was a little different. I’d been asked to give a 13 minute presentation with artist, Susan Singer by a new Richmond City initiative called i.e., (Innovative Excellence) meant to both high lite and jumpstart innovation, creativity and collaboration amongst individuals and businesses in RVA. The big screen, stage and microphones were on the third floor, but this time I didn’t get lost because I was wearing a lanyard and there were lots of nice people showing me where to go and how to get there.

The room was electric with both smart phones and energy. I’m usually skeptical about words like innovation and synergy, but yesterday I encountered them in action.

The room was full of superstars and suits. World-renowned creative geniuses and mega-business masterminds. Cutting edge entrepreneurs and people who know not only how to balance their checkbooks, but the definition of a stock portfolio. Whatever that means.

When it was our turn, Susan opened with her intention to use her art to change the way the world views women, to honor all body types, not just those with physics-defying dimensions, like Barbie, which led nicely into talk about her upcoming show Not Barbie: A Celebration of Real Women and the seven week event/lecture series that will accompany it, Beyond Barbie: Piecing Together Today’s Woman.

As the backdrop for our talk were Susan’s paintings--- two of me as well as her own nude self-portrait. Directly next to our nude paintings sat the Mayor of Richmond, who had a front row view of both Susan and I a la carte. For a second I thought I might die, but once again I did not.

Instead, I talked about how having Susan photograph and paint me naked helped me confront and overcome one of my biggest fears. That it had allowed me to be more naked, more vulnerable, more honest and more real in other ways, like in my writing. That since our collaboration this February I had written about what a disaster my house is, surviving 6 miscarriages and a hysterectomy, the almost-dissolution of my marriage last year. That sharing these things with others had made me feel less alone, less ashamed, less isolated and less weird, like when you’re shopping for a new orange VW bug and suddenly EVERYONE has an orange VW bug. Like that, but instead of with an orange VW bug, with what I had once considered my darkest, deepest most shameful secrets. There were a million more things I could have talked about had our timer not gone off, but they are future thoughts, future posts, future collaborations, future explorations and conversations that I now actually think I can- and will- have in this city. Not that they weren't happening before- but I had failed to see how my voice could have been strong enough to hear.

Afterwards, when not only people who looked like me, but men in suits came up to shake my hand, I discovered what may already be obvious to everyone else—that their hearts beat, too. The big man president of a big successful company had shared a story about accidentally peeing on himself after a really huge big deal event at a really huge big deal place. Was that story naked enough for you? he asked me. Yes, it most certainly was, I said. Suddenly, this poor, dirty Virginia girl felt like she was on the same floor as everyone else.

So, not only did I not die in front Susan last year, I did not die in front of the Mayor and a whole room chock full of CFOs, CEOs, executive directors, ad execs, musicians, artists and my own mother sitting on very fancy chairs, from La Diff, all for sale, yesterday. And next week, you too can buy those chairs for a song. The important thing is recognizing that you deserve to sit in one.

Thank you, i.e.

What’s Your Name?

2011-06-17T09:24:00.000-04:00

Valley Jane Cecelia Yane (Yanpolski) Smith Haggard

1- A baby conceived in the Shenandoah Valley in a tent on her mother’s birthday
2- A name signifying every woman. Jane Doe. Plain Jane.
3- Maternal great grandmother.
4- Mother’s maiden name before and after her father changed it during the Red Scare.
5- Father’s mountain people
6- The name her bridesmaids convinced her to take the night before the wedding

Val-Dar
Val-Pak
Valley of Death
Back Alley Valley
Valley of the Dolls
Valley Dale Sausage/Valley Dale Weiners

The only other Valley—spelled the same way---- that I’ve heard of living in this town was an African girl working at Hooters.

When I was a little white Jewish girl at an all black elementary school in the east end of Richmond there was one teacher who made me feel completely happy and safe and loved--- my SPACE teacher, John Hunter. He wore a green and yellow crotchet knit cap over his big afro and twirled the fuzz of his beard between his fingers while telling us stories about kids hunting rainbows. He staged a naming ceremony for us in the basement of the school that also served as a gymnasium, a cafeteria and was, we all believed, haunted by the ghost of a dead slave girl. The name he gave me was: Laughing Rainbow. John Hunter has gone on to change the world, give TED talks and inspire kids and teachers all over the country. I understand why. The name he gave me is the one I think of as my real underneath the surface of everything true name to this day.

During the first hour of the first day of most of the creative writing camps I teach I ask the children to write the story of their name. Then, I ask them to create an alter ego or super hero for themselves, writing each name on one side of a folded piece of card stock. The name they turn to face out that day is the name you have to call them.

We didn’t settle on my son’s name until we were checking out of the hospital and his birth certificate was due. I had so many names for him in my mind, having to choose one seemed impossible, limiting. Cosmo, Sterling, Elijah, Jackson, Raymond, Henry. In the end we went with the last, the name of the paternal grandfather who had died the year before, the only grandparent our baby would never get to meet. Although you can’t step into a play area or a library or a school without hearing “HENRY!” from any of the four directions (turns out lots of other grandfather’s were named Henry, too) I’m glad our son carries part of his dad’s dad into his life every single day.

What does your name mean to you?

Not Such A Funny Bunny, Honey

2011-06-12T09:47:00.000-04:00

I’ve always dreaded the inevitable moment when someone asks, “If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?” I don’t know! I am not fierce like a tiger, strong like a horse or sleek like a dolphin. One friend assures me regularly that whatever animal I am, it’s not a carnivore.

Maybe it’s a bunny.

According to my Chinese Zodiac Placemat I was born in the Year of the Rabbit, “the luckiest of all the animal signs.” But that could have been the fried bean curd talking.

According to a Feng-Shui friend’s annual newsletter 2011 is once again the year of the rabbit which should make sense to everyone in Richmond not living on the top floor of a high rise. Rabbits are everywhere. You can’t get your newspaper without being cut off by Peter chasing Cotton Tale. Rabbit ears plunge upwards out of the grass like picketers at a rally. Each sighting makes me incredibly happy. The near Westend of Richmond is not exactly a nature preserve, so I do feel lucky when I see them.

But, yesterday morning, instead of discovering outdoor wildlife Stan and I discovered that we had not in fact recorded over Henry’s birth video as we’d believed for the last 6 ½ years. For the first time, the three of us watched wide-eyed as our baby opened his eyes for the first time, his cries more like the mews of a kitten than the wails of a human being. In the corner of the video I caught site of the blood-soaked sheets into which he’d been delivered by emergency C-section, the umbilical chord wrapped three times around his neck. I cried for the miracle of it. Henry, obsessed with all things babies, asked if he could start nursing again. I said sorry honey, but no way.

This morning we all had the opportunity to cry again. After brushing my teeth I walked into Henry’s room and discovered on the carpet the still-warm body of a tiny baby rabbit.

Stan! I whisper-shouted. Dead baby bunny on the floor in Henry’s room! Stan snuck in with a cardboard box, which he then hid on the kitchen stove by the trashcan. Maybe we should tell Henry, we told each other.

Oh, how I hate the cycle of life.

Zeus brought it to you, because he loves you, Stan told Henry.

So it’s like when I eat shrimp--- I say thank you and I’m sorry. It’s sad and it’s good, said Henry. Yes we said.

Then Stan put the bunny in its box in our dumpster.

Henry and I decided we should give it a proper burial instead. He found Bread-and-Honey-Bunny, his stuffed animal and wet the fur around its eyes. He’s wet because he’s crying, said Henry.

Of course by then, so was I.

Stan took the bunny out of the dumpster and gave Henry and I shovels. The ground in our yard was hard with stone and clay and roots. We stood outside digging for a long time, messily slopping the dirt from inside the grave to the inside of our shoes. When the hole was finally a shovel’s head deep, Henry let the baby roll from inside the box to the inside of the dirt and then he said the first unprompted prayer of his life. Thank you God, and sorry.

I thought that summed it up pretty well.

Pleasure Seeker

2011-06-10T12:24:00.001-04:00

Ten years ago I married--- not the first man I was engaged to----but the first man I loved as much in my sweat pants as my wedding dress.

Up until this year our anniversaries have been worthy of mixed reviews. One year our cat died. One year our internet got shut off. One year we discussed who we might prefer to date rather than each other.

This year, since we had failed to budget for vacations that occurred outside of a tent, my mother who commented that our “ten year anniversary only happens once a year” used her barter club to book us an overnight at a luxury B&B in Orange County, Virginia.

At first she tried to reserve us the more cost-effective handicapped room but since it was already booked we were forced to stay in the honeymoon suite.

It was a bit of a shock as I am more accustomed to motels with numbers in their names, even though we'd spent the night of our wedding in a grand hotel and were made to feel special by the valet (“You’re my 8th married couple today!”). This little B&B out in the middle of ma & pa country USA was a real palace.

Marble columns abounded--- even in the bathroom. Crystal chandeliers and porcelain angels dripped from the ceilings like rich-people stalactites. Every shade of white was in attendance--- from the feather bed (that was really a leased out cloud) to the vanilla scented lotion to the cream colored leopard patterned throw blanket on the eggshell love-seat. Not a detail of our stay or our room went unnoticed-- or undecorated.

The owners (imagine the Sopranos discovering the top of a hill in rural Virginia) were eager to wait on us hand and foot. They had me with the chocolate dipped strawberries splayed across a doily on a crystal plate hand delivered to our door but it was the salami and cheese platter that won Stan’s undying affection.

We spent every second of our 22 hour stay napping, eating and indulging in the decadence of achieving nothing. No lawns were mowed or children entertained in the making of our anniversary weekend. Even though we went on a leisurely two-hour kayak trip on the Rapidan River, the hardest I really worked was raising my head to get a better view of “The Hangover.”

It did not take me long to relax fully into the lap of luxury, although I did worry for a few moments that I'd never want to get back up. And with good reason.

I have always been a hedonist.

A pleasure seeker.

In fact, I have spent almost every minute of my entire life desperately seeking the secret to unchecked bliss.

Up until my early twenties I sought it through Boones Farm Strawberry Hill, Mad Dog 20-20, Kalhua, Peach Schnapps, Jim Beam, Marlboro Reds, sex and Krispy Kreme donuts.

As I matured, I sought it through prayer, publication, hypnosis, meditation, double shot lattes, credit cards and Krispy Kreme donuts.

Something though, has changed dramatically in the last few months. I have been getting more pleasure—even actual bliss---from the process of writing and connecting with other people through their writing than through any of the outside stimuli I’ve used and abused in the past. The difference is this kind of pleasure doesn’t cause weight gain, hangovers or bad credit. And it doesn’t come with a price tag.

However, for a little while I hoped that someone would continue to serve it to me on a platter. On the drive home through the lush green mountains of Virginia, I started to regret having set foot somewhere so nice. “Next year we should go somewhere really crappy,” I told my husband. “Like an abandoned trailer park or a maximum security prison. That would make coming home seem really amazing.”

Because coming home was hard. The paint was peeling, the beds unmade, the ceiling buckled, the sink full, the food unprepared and unappealing laying wait in the back of the pantry. "What did I ever love about this?" I wondered. Then I remembered. Reservations can’t be made for the kind of pleasure I’m really seeking. What I want most isn’t available to drink, smoke or rent. It can’t be bought, pre-ordered or reserved, but to my relief, it can be found.

The Wire Saved My Marriage

2011-06-02T07:43:00.001-04:00

While waiting tables in my early twenties I became determined to learn, once and for all, the difference between a date and a one-night stand. Another waitress and I swapped dating advice books wrapped in brown paper bags at the cash register, hoping people would think they were something less humiliating, like drugs.

One of the books suggested that the basic character defects men had fell into two categories, a profound duality that encompassed all of the subtle complexities of life. Type A Men were axe murderers or pimps who refused to tell you their last name and arrived to pick you up with a police escort. Type B Men cleared their throats a tad too loudly when they were, on occasion, ten minutes late to pick you up. It was up to you to decide which kind of man you could live with.

Well, the man I wanted to live with did not have any problems at all. He was perfect. I had only known him for a few weeks and I’d already dreamt about him twice. In the first dream we’d sailed around the world visiting exotic locales on a wooden sailboat and in the second, we’d run a marathon side by side. At the end of the marathon I’d been so exhausted I’d flopped down in the dirt to sleep and he’d put his hand under my head to use as a pillow. This was a man I wanted not only to eat popcorn with, but to marry.

And amazingly, despite the counter-intuitive suggestions I actually took from the dating books, we did go on a date and we did get married, a year later to the day.

But there was a wee bit of territory my reading had not covered. Not only, I discovered, were there more than two types of men, but sharing a life, a house, a mortgage and a child with one of them was a sure-fire way to uncover a Dewey Decimal system worth of categorical flaws of my own. I had vowed to stick with one man for the rest of my life before knowing exactly who I was or what kind of life I wanted to live.

Nine years in, I began to blame him.

And so, last spring when I was ready to move out, my husband was ready to help me pack. We decided to visit a marriage counselor first. It was clear that we still loved each other but that the whole living together thing wasn’t going to work. My husband said it best: “I’d like to date Valley again after our divorce.”

Our counselor was skilled enough to avoid taking sides while making us both feel heard. I’m sure that she offered lots of helpful advice, but one suggestion stood out. She asked us to rent and watch HBO’s “The Wire.” Every night. Together. Even though we weren’t speaking during the day and were sleeping in different rooms at night.

It seemed like such an absurd suggestion that I was willing to try it. And eventually, through five complete seasons of Baltimore cops chasing, arresting and building intimate bonds with Baltimore drug dealers, my husband and I began to inch closer together on our chair and a half. Compared to McNulty’s relationship with his ex-wife, ours didn’t seem so bad. I began to realize that, married or not, I’m still responsible for running my own race. Having the chance to rest my head on my husband’s shoulder at the end of the day is a lot better than demanding he carry me through it.

And now that we are celebrating our ten year wedding anniversary this June, we can’t agree on which series to watch next. But, I would say that’s a Type B kind of problem to have.

Bringing My Story to the World Like a Covered Dish at a Potluck

2011-05-27T08:14:00.002-04:00

I teach a creative nonfiction class.

At first I was pretty sure people signed up because, as my friends, they didn’t want me taking out loans to buy sunscreen.

Or, because they had nowhere else to go on a Tuesday night or a Thursday morning or a Saturday afternoon.

Or, because they thought it was both cool to hang out in a bookstore and cheaper than therapy.

Or, because like me, they’d finally given up being cynical, hibernating in some hovel alone hunched over an antique typewriter sweating over the first sentence of the great American novel, key by tortured key.

Or, because they believed that truth is stranger than fiction, that the stories they have to tell are as wild, as intimate, as unbelievable as myth, that the bug they stepped on during breakfast is somehow as interesting as Kafka’s cockroach, if only they would give themselves the time and the space to inspect it a little more closely. To write about it, laying it out and turning it over. And not just bugs, but days, stories, lives.

Maybe they come for all of those reasons or none, but why-ever they come, every week I bring them selections of essays by other people who have written the truth in the first person.

Yesterday, for the first time, I brought them writing, not from a book, but from a blog. I found White Girl in Black Face through a friend of a friend in that nether world called Facebook. The essays— "Exposed" and "For Writers Who Have Considered Memoir When the Story is Enuf"---moved me in a get under your skin/can’t put you down/you speak for us all/ kind of way and so I wrote to their author, Meadow Braun, and asked her permission to print them out and pass them around. She graciously said yes. And so we wrote our own versions using Meadow’s last lines as piers from which to jump.

But while Meadow wrote in a compelling and gorgeous way (that I encourage you to read) about why she’s writing her memoir, I wrote about why I want to stop writing mine. And why I’d rather write this instead:

As the cobwebs and rat’s nests in the attic of my life gets cleaned out I have less interest in the stories they once held and more interest in the days they impact now. What was once etched in stone seems fluid now, alchemically changed, impossible to pin down concretely. How can I prove what led to what to what to what? The real question I want to ask today is what’s happening next and with whom and what are we going to eat when we get there?

It’s not that I don’t want to write about my life, because My God, I do. Alone and in groups. In sickness and in health. At this table with these women, and others. In all kinds of weather. It’s just that I don’t want to wait for a deadline or a final draft or the narrative arc of a story that’s not finished before I feel I have the right to tell it.

Besides, I no longer care how or why I got from A to Z but what I’m thinking while walking to B talking to D. My past is already old in the telling, boring after a too long shelf life with a date past expiration.

Yes, parts of it were good, juicy, rich. At least the parts when I wasn't flailing around in bed praying for something to--- please dear God---- happen. Betrayal, luck, lust, horses, farmers, cowboys, cruise ships, fleet captains, sex, whales, trains, whiskey, God, sudden deaths, long distances, heart break. Sobriety. Marriage. Childbirth. Taxes. Etcetera.

But, if I am too obsessed with my past, it will keep me stuck an adolescent girl pining for her daddy, crashing backwards into bottles and men rather than forwards into the woman with strong hands I hoped one day to be. That, holding this pen, I find myself becoming.

My stories linger overripe-- ready to be snatched up or fall away, rotten. Why starve myself waiting alone at a table for a five course meal when I can feast on a platter of delicacies whenever I'm hungry? My story is just like yours--or hers-- and I want to bring it to the world like a covered dish at a potluck.

So, right now I really don’t want to go back, down, through there. At least not alone or for long. I'd rather find myself- and run into you- in unexpected alleys, unexplored valleys, than stir up dust on old roads where the story dead ends.

WARNING: All views expressed in this post about whether or not I am currently writing a memoir are subject to sudden, volatile change.

Running the Distance Between Pages and Streets

2011-05-19T21:59:00.006-04:00

Moving has always felt foreign and overwhelming to me. Not just my house, but my body.

They say a body in motion stays in motion but I say a body lying on the bed reading a book stays in bed reading a book until it is time to pay the required fine, because getting to the library requires movement.

Although at one point I made frequent use of public transportation I have traveled far more miles through pages than streets. When I was thirteen and took a cross-country trip with my mother it was not the radio station we fought over but whether I would take my nose out of a book long enough to notice we were no longer in Kansas. I’ve always been a terrible book snob, judging people by their covers, dropping author names like bread crumbs. I made the mistake early in my marriage of giving my husband hell for not reading enough “novels,” even though his preferred reading material baffled me enough to finally seal the deal. What kind of man read Feynman’s Lectures on Physics in the bathroom? The kind of man, apparently, I would spend the rest of my life trying to figure out.

In high school I discovered that I might be book-smart but that my nearly flunking step-brother had a sort of intelligence I would always envy. Street smarts. He might have misspelled every word he spray-painted on his bedroom wall but when the bully at the bus stop threw rocks at my head, it was my step-brother who knew what to say. “Stay the #*@! away from my sister, you $#&@*.” To me, no single sentence before or since has ever sounded smarter.

Particularly not last month, when my husband— high from a newfound running jag- told me he had signed up our entire family not only to run a 5K, but a 5K MudRun. I wasn’t sure whether to kill him or myself. I hadn’t run a mile since those last tortured laps around the field in high school. But, to avoid complete humiliation- and to avoid losing our deposit-- I decided I had better start to train. And by “train,” I mean elevate my feet from the ground at a pace slightly faster than shuffling. But, as the miles added up something weird happened. I started to like it.

Running with my husband allowed me to marvel at his kinesthetic, animal-like intelligence which I could not seem to trump with any quote from any novel. Running with my son allowed us to spend quality time together without having to play baseball or practice kung fu, although perhaps, dear God, those sports are probably next on the horizon. We counted bunnies and butterflies, made up hand signals and sang songs happily hoofing it to the next Stop Sign. Running alone allowed me bursts of energy, confidence and pleasure that I never dreamed I could achieve by moving more than the muscles in my eyelids.

And to my surprise, the race itself was actually ridiculously fun, another in my series of mind-blowing revelations that are already obvious to everyone else [NEWSFLASH, PEOPLE! EXERCISE MAKES YOU FEEL GREAT!). When we first arrived at the island downtown amidst a throng of lithe athletes I felt like an illiterate at a city-wide Spelling Bee. But by the time I actually started to run, I felt A-Part-Of.

A-Part-Of my city, A-Part-Of the river we were running through, A-Part-Of my family, A-Part-Of my body which was sky-rocketing over rocks, trails, suspension bridges, embankments, nature paths. I felt like a thousand million bucks as we crawled across the finish line in the mud on our hands and knees. Even though we were almost last, I knew we were winners. We hadn’t died. And we’d had fun doing it.

Two days later, when I took my pile of books back to the library, I felt a pang of sadness and regret that I had not cracked any of them. I realized this was the first spring I could remember since prepubescence spending more time exploring the world beneath my feet than between two covers. And then, even though I still owed a fine, I didn’t feel sad at all.

The Fabric of My Life Is Duct-Taped Together By the Kindness of Others

2011-05-10T10:18:00.001-04:00

I was once accused of believing that everything that happened in the world happened directly to me.

Because it’s true! When my washing machine's spin cycle stopped spinning a couple of weeks ago it might as well have been me having the breakdown, not my kitchen appliance. That same week, when my car's alternator stopped alternating (or, um, whatever it does) I felt like the one who refused to budge, spitting cold fire, dying silently in Carytown’s upper deck parking lot.

But then something weird happened. People started to offer me help. A family I was convinced you would never see outside of Walmart jumped my car and didn’t laugh at me when I admitted I didn’t know how to pop my own hood. A friend fixed our washing machine on barter. Other friends, in outrageously kind ways have offered me: money, help, advice, time. I am speechless at their generosity and kindness. And I am trying to accept it with grace rather than shame or pride.

Because even though I am thirty-five and a mother who has a mother, I still feel like a babe in the woods. Life still surprises me, usurps me, catches me off guard. I feel like I had my nose in a book about mythological fairies when they handed out the Instruction Manual to Life. And appliances. And finances.

I was once accused of being emotional about money. And it’s true! I am emotional about money, but I’m also emotional about everything else. The lining of my shoes, ripe avocados, the lilt of Delila's voice on Lite 98, my student's writing, electric wires, song birds, books, old friends, new friends, birth, death, refrigerator art, car parts, music.

I seem to process life through my tear ducts.

Friends have told me that they envy my ability to cry. I envy their ability not to. I wish I was tougher, stronger, less vulnerable, more in control, less in need of help, more self-sufficient. But I’m not. I seem to need all the help I can get. And it’s humbling, and beautiful and life-changing to accept it. I only hope I can repay all of the kindnesses that have been given to me.

Because lately it’s felt like the fabric of my life has been duct-taped together by the kindness of others. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s not so bad to have a life that looks more like a collaboration than a one-woman show.

Sometimes I Miss My Uterus. Period.

2011-05-03T07:30:00.002-04:00

(Frida Kahlo Uterus Plushie compliments of Regretsy)

It still catches me off guard.

Suddenly, I find myself craving a cheeseburger smothered in chocolate. I start to miss people I never even liked. At the same time, I’m convinced I could teach a week-long seminar called “F-You! Recovery From People Pleasing.” Immersed in a strange blend of fierce and tender, maternal and homicidal feelings, I cry at soft rock and infomercials. I unbutton my jeans and wonder if it’s that time of the month. From 13 until 31, the seismic shift in my emotional landscape was signaled by a monthly red flag-- that arrived in my own underpants. But not anymore.

Four years ago, my period vanished with a bang. On Cinco de Mayo in 2007, I was T-boned at an intersection on the way home from getting a mani-pedi at a salon downtown. I don’t normally care about my nails, but I had just had my sixth miscarriage and a thoughtful friend felt like I needed a little extra TLC. At the time of the accident, there was still a baby inside me, scheduled to be removed, along with my uterus, at the end of the week. On the stretcher, I held onto the one positive thought I could conjure: “My cuticles looked great!” But everything else looked pretty grim. After getting my bangs and bruises bandaged up, I checked back into the same hospital, three days later, for a hysterectomy.

In most regards, I was more than ready to part ways with my uterus. For as long as I could remember I’d suffered terrible pain from fibroids. And six miscarriages was six too many. Because my uterus was sent to pathology the same week my family car was sold for parts at the city junkyard, I decided I would not be looking at minivans. That Mother’s Day, I chose the most adorable hunk of metal with wheels I could find in the tri-city area: a 2003 diesel Volkswagen New Beetle. And my son’s car seat fit perfectly in the back.

Slowly, over the last few years, I have come to terms with raising an only child. The grief I initially felt at not being able to give him a sibling has been replaced by acceptance, relief and even gratitude. I know now how fortunate we are to have one vibrant, beautiful, healthy boy. And honestly, I really don’t miss poop-filled diapers, sleepless nights or trying to get work done with another human being attached to my ankle. At six, my son is a full-fledged human being who is actually quite fun to hang out with. I am an extremely lucky mom. And I think that my shiny tomato red bug is as good a trade-in on my uterus as I am going to get.

But sometimes, to my surprise, I actually miss having a period. Without its regularity, my life often feels like one long run-on sentence. I don’t miss the monthly cocktail of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, the heating pads, the boiling hot Epsom salt baths that took the pain away as long as I was in them, but there are things I do. I miss the excuse and the explanation, the cycle, the rhythm, the idea of the blood in my body being connected to the moon, to the tides and to the women with whom I spend my time.

A few months ago, I took my son to the play area of the local mall. As I watched him jump repeatedly off the head of an enormous green turtle, I started to cry uncontrollably. And then it occurred to me. I texted a girlfriend. “Do you have your period?” I asked. “Because I’m crying at the mall.”

“Yes,” she texted back. “And I’m crying at home.” Immediately, I felt better. I felt connected to something bigger than myself, part of an invisible network of support accessible to me if I asked for it. I was still all me and all woman... with a little help from my friends.

“Life begins when you grow a garden."-- Confucius

2011-04-29T12:03:00.001-04:00

The first plant I remember killing was a Wandering Jew I named Captain Morgan that kept me company in my college dorm while I drank and smoked my way to a BA. There have been others before and since, but I loved that plant and killing it truly hurt me. Ever since, I have avoided green things as much as possible and when someone gives me a potted plant I immediately try to find it a better home. A safer home. A foster home.

So naturally, my own son started asking for a garden about five minutes after he learned how to talk. He started having dreams about carrots and demanded fresh, organic produce. He told us he wanted to grow up to be either an organic farmer or a bowling alley repair man. I hoped for the latter. The summer when he was four he asked for a Home Depot book called "Gardening 1-2-3" for Father's Day while we were buying flashlights for my Dad. My husband bought it for him while I cringed. It might, I feared, give him hope. A hope I didn't want to kill. Or over water.

So that's why it was miraculous when this Easter, rather than going to the parade, I suggested we stay home. And dig a garden. Something in me had shifted. Maybe it was deciding not to move out last spring. Maybe it was actually running around the block a few times, moving my body in an unusual way, a groundbreaking way, for me. Maybe it was craving tomatoes that didn't taste like the plastic bag they came in. Whatever it was, my husband and son chose not to question me. Instead, they went to the shed and got their shovels. I pulled Gardening 1-2-3 off of Henry's shelf and started to read. But reading, that thing I always do and have always done, did not teach me anything compared to putting my hand on that shovel and actually digging in.

My mother and her husband lent us their wheelbarrow, sifter and fertilizer. Our neighbor, a master gardener, gave us tomato, cucumber and sunflower seedlings. Friends gave us herb seeds, tomato plants and a worm starter kit. It literally felt like manna from heaven, like the whole world wanted us to plant our freakin' garden. We spent six hours that day sifting rocks, grubs, nails, screws and pottery shards out of the earth. We got blisters, splinters and filthier than we'd ever all been at the same time. It was fantastic. I got the sense that I was actually allowing myself to put down roots in the home I've lived in my entire life. I stopped worrying about whether the plants would live or die because I realized that thinking their survival was entirely up to me was an egregious act of hubris.

Most people I know already have a garden or are at least capable of tending window boxes and indoor house plants. I have always respected and admired their faith in the process of life, but I've also always felt somehow outside of that process. Yes, our garden is only about 6 days old but I feel like the simple act of laying it in the ground was a rite of passage- like losing my virginity or getting my Bat Mitzvah. Only this time I don't have to write thank-you notes.

Bury My Potential Under Mount Trashmore

2011-04-22T09:57:00.001-04:00

My mother always told me I could be/do/have anything in the world. But I took her pearls of wisdom and wore them like ankle weights.

So, as a good and wise friend recently suggested I decided to bury my potential. Under Mount Trashmore.

A few weeks ago, I took a walk with my mother and told her what I planned to do. She said she understood. “In college, I had a Charlie Brown poster that said ‘So much potential is an enormous burden.’”

“But I thought you wanted me to be an Oprah bestseller before I turned twenty,” I told her.

“I’m over all that outward success stuff now,” she said. “It’s taken most of my energy just to stay alive. I’m on a spiritual path now, one that no one else can measure.”

I thought about it. I am comfortable measuring the distance between my pupils for prescription glasses with a ruler I found on Google, so why do I expect to be able to measure success in perfect increments of one?

Because, as Marge Piercy says, “Talent is what you have after you’ve finished the novel.”

But for now, I’m done with that. And not only my potential but also my internal critic/editor/censor that the great writing teachers suggest one dialogues with. The one who tells me that I need to put on a pantsuit and flat iron my curly hair. The one that reminds me Mary Shelley was only 19 when she wrote Frankenstein and that Zadie Smith was, is and always will be 3 months younger than me.

The one who shows me what to wear to the awards ceremony and then pulls the cloths off the tables, turns on the sprinklers, sticks dirty fingers in my special cake. The one who says I should write more like X, edit more like Y, publish more like Z and that if God really loved me, God would speak to me in final drafts.

The one who says I should be in NY or LA, that I should travel more in general, that I should minimize my metaphors, pare down, hole up in a cabin in a woods, or the Chelsea Hotel, or inside of a bottle tossed over the side of some shipwreck somewhere.

The one with the poison ivy/syphilis/piranaha/medusa/dorian gray decayed pitchfork death grip cloaked in golden skin and a motorcycle jacket, cupid lips, an accent, a ponytail, a cigar, a chateau and fine leather boots. The one who looks good but wants me dead. The one I need to fire and then bury along with my potential, along with the hatchet.

***Image of "Trash Mountain" above by Megan Whitmarsh

Where I'm From

2011-04-15T11:45:00.004-04:00

I am from the little lady with the big baby. The little lady who carved us naked out of clay, she on her back, arms open, me sprawled fat and barely born across her belly.

I am from the man who was a boy with a foot so long they said he looked like an “L” with hands, I’ve discovered, mine will never grow into.

I’m from Jewish anarchists and Methodist peacekeepers, garden gnomes and Denmark, Boris and Margaret, Whilhelmina and Ray, the Pale- that stretch of land between Poland and Russia.

I’m from a little house with a big backyard in the noble heritage of the near West End in a corner of the world called Tuckahoe, a name I’ve heard means “Little Potato.”

I am from short and tall, late and early, passive aggressive and just aggressive, tongues that long to whip and to kiss. I am from a grated oil burning floor heater and metal ducts snaking forced heat through holes in the wall, couches found in alleys, lampshades made by hand, food stamps, thrift stores, love first rate, never used before.

I am from pastel and oil, acrylic and watercolor, pencil and ink, wood and ruler, hammer and nail, chisel, chainsaw, miter, drill, screw.

I am from Mr. Rogers and Bob Marley, Uncle Wiggly and The Rainbow Goblins, The Monkey King and Thumbelina.

I am from a marriage and a divorce, love and its opposite, the familiar clang of the world at its end and at its beginning, splitting apart and then reformed, broken and whole, the consistency of two people working out their distances across town and across a river and across a home and across a little girl.

I am from blooming fig trees and hacked down dogwoods, watermelon rinds, black licorice sticks, mugs of Folgers shot through with honey and hot milk.

I am from a house full of art and cats and paint and dishes piled in the sink, addiction treated and untreated, words in sentences, stories in books, love kept and love given in such abundance it takes all of me to remember.

Still Learning to Love Domestic Life: My 6 Word Memoirs from April 5-7

2011-04-08T07:18:00.009-04:00

I no longer want three marriages.

One husband is more than enough.

Even when he coughs and snorts.

I think of animals in bed.

This is the wrong direction. Turn around.

Reincarnation gives me hope for fame.

Dishes, laundry, sweeping, scrubbing. For fun?

Have to do/Want to do.

This year: posed naked, taught adults.

Three classes end. What’s next, God?

Five, fifteen, thirty-five. Same body.

I'm trying to stop killing plants.

Black thumb girl is given flowers.

Son is begging for a garden.

Crushed when carrot seeds don't grow.

Son, husband, dog, cat. Plants too?

We are a three shutter house.

Fourth shutter on way to dump.

I am scared of growing things.

Killed even the most durable plants.

Confessions of a reformed book whore.

It’s hard to sum up anyone’s life.

It's always something else with me.

Maybe this spring will be different?

Maybe next life I'll try pig farming.

Lost track of time. Still alive.

I eat my food and words.

Inspired by "Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure"

Escape Artist: How Not to Write a Book

2011-03-31T08:29:00.005-04:00

First, have a deep and abiding passion for cheap motels.

Second, have an idea for a book that you are sure will save your family from imminent financial collapse and wrest you from the emotional despair of having never achieved your potential.

Next, decline an invitation to a fancy writer’s retreat at a villa in France and instead Google “cheap motels” in your own vicinity. Consider, for a minute, booking the gem with the online reviews that boast cockroaches, mold, vomit, stained sheets and the final, winning comment: “If this is the only place you can stay in this city, go to a different city.” Chicken out and book, instead, the motel with the broken hairdryer. Use the $50 visa gift card your mother gave you for Hanukkah to confirm the transaction. Invite your girlfriend, who shares your conviction that Calgon will never be enough to take you away. Mark the dates out in your calendar with a sharpie so that in order to change your plans you will have to go to the store and buy white out, which you refuse to do, due to your office supply addiction.

As you pack, reminisce over all the places you’ve ever slept—from damp sleeping bags in soggy tents to hostel bunks to the executive suite in the Opryland hotel where your family was once upgraded on a lark. Remember how you dumped a whole bottle of shampoo in the Jacuzzi and then sniffed the sheets of the king-sized bed whose last occupant was Jon Bon Jovi. Get called “Klassy with a K.” Honor that truth.

Sing “Rambling Fever” loudly in the car before abruptly pulling into the parking lot which you have clocked at 2.1 miles from your own driveway. Drive an extra .2 miles to pick up a menu from a Chinese restaurant so that you will be able to shave 8 seconds off your dinner order. Check into the motel as the clock strikes three. You don’t have a moment to lose. Great things, you know, happen in pressure cookers. Put your laptop on the desk next to the motel stationery and then put the motel stationery in your purse.

Draw the curtains and take in the stunning view of the Auto Zone. Remember that you are close enough to home that your mother could drive by and wave at you through the window. Redraw the curtains. Unpack your red silk robe, because when else are you going to wear it? Forget to wear it. Spend the next twenty-one hours in your track suit. In the bathroom, put the package of Folgers in the miniature coffee maker that is small enough to put in your purse. Don’t put it in your purse. Drink the bathroom coffee out of a Styrofoam cup like it’s an Italian espresso.

Plan the bulk of your time around snack breaks. Where else would Jarlsburg cheese scooped up with a pita chip taste so good? Between the cherries and the olives, open your laptop. Decide that instead of a book, what you really need to write is a book proposal. Write three zingy chapter titles and as a reward, take a field trip to the lobby for more coffee. Back in the room, turn the lights out and switch on the battery-operated candle you brought for ambience. Sit cross-legged with your girlfriend, each on your own queen sized bed. Expose your deepest secrets. Re-plan your life. Consult your tarot cards. Laugh your mascara off. Open the mini-fridge and debate over which box of chocolate to open first. Fall into a coma like sleep completely uninterrupted by your dog, your cat, your husband or your son.

In the morning, write frantically for 15 minutes before running down to the all you can eat Waffle Bar. Use three or four packets of syrup. At check out feel like you are turning in your wild side with your room key. Bid a teary farewell to your friend who you will see next Thursday. Make the most of your 2.1 mile drive home to reflect on all you have accomplished. Listen to your husband explain that after helping your cousin move and cleaning up the vomit of the dog who devoured what was left of your chocolate stash, he fielded a call from your ex-boyfriend who drunk-dialed you from Europe in the middle of the night. Thank him profusely.

Then, start planning next year’s trip. Make it a tradition.

Published in Belle, April 2011

My Q&A with Jon Scieszka

2011-03-30T09:05:00.009-04:00

Q: You are slated to give a two hour talk about inspiring guys to read on Monday, April 4 at St. Christopher's, here in Richmond. What are one or two of the most important points you hope to get across?

A: I'm only going to talk for one hour, sign for another. And most of the talking hour will be jokes, so tell people to not be afraid. But my most basic advice to folks is to 1. expand their definition of what they call "reading' to include non-fiction, graphic novels, sci-fi, magazines, audio books . . ., and 2. to let guys be a part of choosing what they want to read. Reading is a very personal activity.

Q: What do you wish you had in the way of reading and writing when you were a kid?

A: I think I had plenty of great reading and writing when I was a kid. I didn't find much reading I enjoyed in elementary school. But outside of school I read the Hardy Boys, Landmark non-fiction books, Dr. Seuss, comic books, MAD magazine, and all sorts of random literature and not-literature around the house.

Q: What event or person made the difference in your life, allowing or encouraging you to become such a prolific and beloved writer?

A: My mom made all of the difference in the world. I was reading Dick and Jane and other equally strange and uninspiring stories in school as I was learning to read. But at home, my mom was the one reading Caps for Sale, To Think What I Saw on Mulberry Street, The Carrot Seed, Go Dog Go and other stories to me that made we want to hear more stories . . . and to ultimately tell some of my own.

Q: What advice do you have for children’s writers whose primary readers are boys?

A: I tell all writers to please not "write for boys" or "write for girls." Write the best story you can. Write what thrills, excites, moves you. Your readers, boys and girls, will find it.

Q: What did you learn about young readers during your two year stint as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature?

A: I knew young readers are smart, but in my first year as Ambassador, I discovered that young readers and writers are even smarter than I had suspected. The crazy range of stories that kids are reading and writing is phenomenal.

Q: What has your work on the NYC Board of Valencia 826 taught you about writing with young people?

A: The work that 826 does connects perfectly with what I learned from kids when I was a teacher -- kids will produce amazing work if there is a good reason to. And the reason at 826 is that kids get to make real books. You use correct spelling so someone else can read your story. You edit the story as many times as you need to so it is the best it can be. You are writing for a reason, not for an abstract assignment. And that is how and why the real world of reading and writing works.

Q: Do you have anything new and exciting in the works right now?

A: I'm in the middle of the crazy 4-book / multi media storytelling extravaganza that is SPACEHEADZ . . . and really enjoying writing with the kids who become Spaceheadz. And I'm also still messing around with stories for the younger guys with TRUCKTOWN.
But my newest, and most unformed project is a YA novel I'm just starting. I don't even know what it's about yet. I'm writing to find out.

Q: Is there anything else you might like to add?

A: With all of the crazy tech developments happening right now, this is a fun time to be a writer/storyteller. I think that kids becoming writers now will take us places we never imagined even 10 years ago. And I can't wait.

Jon Scieszka will speak and sign books at St. Christopher’s School on Monday, April 4 from 7-9 pm. Adults only, please. Tickets are free, but must be reserved at: EventBrite.com Donations will benefit Read Aloud Virginia and Guys Read.

Visit him online at Jon Scieszka Worldwide.

She & I

2011-03-25T13:17:00.007-04:00

She goes between countries. I go between grocery stores.

She travels the way I read: voraciously.

She can change money in any language; I can quote Lolita.

She runs. I eat french fries, cheesecake, double shot lattes.

When we were 16 that she told me she had libraries inside her. I felt that I had at most a pamphlet, maybe a few books.

She knows exactly how to care for her hair, spending hundreds of dollars on fine, organic products, sharing them with me in special, miniature glass jars.

I float between Hair Cutteries, searching, dissatisfied, never going to the same place twice as if I've just been to a Cathouse. As if I'll be seen.

She loves deep and fast and often. I love slow and unspectacularly, but in an endless, enduring kind of way.

She has a sister. I feel like they both belong to me.

My House, My Self?

2011-03-01T07:30:00.003-05:00

I have recently made a resolution, not to perfect my house, but to stop apologizing for its many imperfections. I hate it when anyone else does, especially when their house turns out to actually be immaculate, but, say, with a child’s puzzle splayed out charmingly atop a freshly vacuumed carpet. The effect is the same as a skinny woman apologizing for eating a French fry—it just makes everyone involved feel terrible.

Because I once lived in a tool shed in Arkansas for a few months in my early twenties, I feel I can say on full authority that our house is “Very Arkansas.” But even with the half painted walls, the haphazard shutters, the backyard full of nearly functional machinery and the hole in the fence large enough for our neighbor’s dogs to climb through, our house does boast a certain resourcefulness and creativity that I found in concentrated supply in the tool shed’s surrounding grounds. In the spirit of Macgyver, my husband can restore things to usefulness that, had I been single, would have inspired me to move out. Like plugging our broken bathtub drain with a rubber ball, for instance.

Looking back, “in cleanliness and in filth” should have been part of our marriage vows, directly following “for richer or for poorer,” because over time, we have wrestled with and accepted varying degrees of all four. Whenever I point out one of my husband’s rat’s nests of wires, tools and dirty socks beneath his desk he has but to look in the direction of my overflowing piles of photo albums, books, journals and junk mail to settle the score. As they say, “you spot it, you got it,” and oh, how I’ve got it. I envy my friends who are naturally inclined to pick up a scrub brush to battle their grief, stress or anxiety. For me, when anything hits the fan, I pick up a pen, the phone, a book or a deluxe sized package of Little Debbies. I talk, eat, read and write my way through my troubles, but rarely, if ever, do I put on rubber gloves and scour them away.

I love it though, when my friends take trips to third world countries, because even before I see their pictures of the dirt-smeared children or hear their livestock-on-the-bus stories, I am reminded of how filthy rich we actually are, even on days when our bank deposits are in increments of one.

My son started kindergarten this year and, upon inviting new friends over for play dates rather than thinking, “Oh boy, my son is making friends!” I braced myself with, “Oh dear God! Another West End mom is going to see my house!” But, I tell myself, kids like spaces in which they feel free to make a big, artistic mess and that the crayon art preserved like a caveman’s buffalos on the walls promotes a certain creativity that sterility might stifle. And, by the sheer volume of art produced in our house, so far this seems true.

I keep a reminder from my 2010 “Daily Bitch” calendar on my fridge: “A clean house is a sign of a wasted life.” It at least partially balances out the other idea- that the state of one’s house is an outward reflection of one’s inner life. Because that is frightening. If it’s true, my inner life probably needs a power-washer and a full time maid. On the other hand, the contents of my inner life--- the sloppiest, the ugliest, the most real and the most beautiful-- are always available for my own inspection, and for the inspection of those I invite in, as well. And for this, I am not sorry at all.

Belle, March 2011

I'm Learning How to Soak Up the Warmth of the Fire Rather Than Throw Myself In

2011-02-25T18:48:00.009-05:00

I have never been a thrill seeker of the physical variety. I leave jumping out of airplanes, bungee jumping and regular exercise to superheroes and the otherwise better equipped. I was secretly relieved when the Ropes Course in the Outdoor Adventures Class I took at J-Sargeant Reynolds during high school was repeatedly cancelled due to bad weather. But pushing myself past my comfort zone has always held an attraction for me.

Just ask the various men who picked me up hitchhiking, chased me down when I ran out on bar tabs or helped me find the right country when I was lost on the train in Europe.

At 19, it was easy to embrace danger a dozen times before going to bed.

Now, at 35, I balk at the outrageous situations I used to put myself in. And I’ve toned it down, because, really white suburban moms in their mid-thirties having a mid-life crises aren’t all that attractive. But I’m still drawn to the idea of living on the edge.

Just ask my banker with whom I am now on a first name basis.

Or the temp agency that finally quit offering me full time jobs.

Or my husband who commandeered a magnet I was going to give to a friend last Christmas. “I chose the road less traveled. Now where the hell am I?” now sits on our fridge instead of hers.

The last boyfriend I had before getting married, seduced me with a copy of the book “The Razor’s Edge.” He left it on my front porch in the middle of the night with a detailed analysis of how he and I were like the main characters scribbled in the margins. It meant more to me than a five course meal, even if he did spell my name wrong. I am a sucker, not only for words, but for the idea of walking the razor’s edge.

The problem though, is that instead of walking that edge, I’ve had a tendency to fall over it and land on my face.

That same boyfriend didn’t slow down at yellow lights when I was following him in traffic. He took calls from other women whom I could hear saying, “Hi, it’s me” into the phone. And, the last time we talked, during a snowstorm when my power went out, he called to say he’d be going to Hooters rather than coming over to sit with me by the fire. Nevertheless, all of these years later, I still love him, not because he’s a literate football player who also happens to be successful and good looking, but because he helped me identify what I didn’t want.

It’s just that sometimes I forget. Sometimes I still want the spike of adrenaline, the pleasure of danger, the thrill of risk that comes, for me, most quickly around the fringe of safety.

So lately, I’ve been trying to funnel these desires into my writing rather than into my life. It takes work, though. Laboring over a row of sentences isn’t always instantly gratifying. There’s a lot more work. And creating something original borne of the truth sometimes feels more painful than living it in the first place. I have to look at it from more than one angle. I have to decide how I really feel in a deliberate manner that is more nuanced than fight or flight. In a strange way, it feels like there is even more at stake being laid out on the page than doing something obviously dangerous.

And so, I’m still trying to learn how to soak up the warmth of the fire rather than throw myself in.

And my husband? If I have to follow him, he drives like a granny. But half the time, I’m the one in the lead.

Reading for the Flippo Gallery

2011-02-21T06:32:00.005-05:00

Last January I was invited to a vision board making party at the apartment of a good friend. I had just spent the morning having a past life regression in Mechanicsville. But after entering a state of deep relaxation instead of visiting a past life, I had visited an archetype. I was Guinevere in King Arthur’s Court and I was sobbing in front of a mirror. Beauty is dangerous, beauty is betrayal, beauty is a crime, Guinevere/Me moaned through her sobs. The words, and the thoughts behind them, were so powerful that I spoke them out loud.

This a belief worth examining, my past-life regression practitioner observed. And so I did. As a young woman in my early twenties traveling across America by bus, train and ship, my mother had felt compelled to write me a letter. “Valley, your body is not a thank you note,” she had said, because I was still in the habit of offering it as a substitute for everything else I felt I intrinsically lacked.

In my mind, being beautiful was the equivalent of being a slut. I wanted to be beautiful, but beauty was, I believed, a weapon women used against other people, particularly themselves. This belief left me confused, divided and shut down about my own body and physical nature for many years.

At the vision board party, while flipping through old magazines I thought about what it was I truly wanted for the year ahead. Yes, money, fame and fortune. But as I cut out a stunning photograph of a nude statue and then pasted the words “WE LOVE YOU” over her breasts, I looked up at Susan Singer. I remembered the first time I’d seen her paintings and the electric current they’d sent through me. She had managed to render the rolls and folds of the female body in a bold, exquisite way that was completely unapologetic. Her paintings had woken something in me that now sat up at attention.

Across the coffee table scattered with glue sticks and magazines, I asked Susan if she would be willing to collaborate with me for the Artists and Writers show at the Flippo Gallery the following year. In other words, I asked if she would allow me to be her model, first photographing and then painting me naked. This was a scary prospect for me, but one that I instinctively knew I needed to try. She, it turns out, had just pasted the words/images “Gallery Show” on her vision board. She said yes.

We have spent the last year making this happen.

The experience of being naked is not unlike the first time you show someone a raw and vulnerable first draft of a novel. As a writer I have a tendency to edit myself down until there is almost nothing left. I whittle and cut and delete and fret over my words like a woman first making up her face and then changing 18 times before leaving the house. I worry that what comes out on its own- without being heavily clothed, made-up or edited, is unacceptable. The plastic surgery I have committed on my own writing has left some of it more mangled than those sad brides competing for the opportunity to be disfigured on the reality TV show, Bridalplasty.

However, being painted naked has made whittling myself down to nothing more difficult. My body carries the blue print of the life I have lived. In the last decade I have had six surgeries between my neck and my thighs. I have had six miscarriages and one beautiful child. I have probably lost and gained 300 pounds. Six months after getting married, I developed Cushings Disease, an adrenal disorder which gave me moon face and a buffalo hump. My body is short a uterus, a gall bladder, one rib and an adrenal gland. I have been sliced open and stitched back together, but some of my deepest scars are invisible. Allowing myself to be seen, to be studied, to be photographed and painted by Susan has been the catalyst for healing many of them.

Obviously this exhibition was heavily edited. There are not 389 nude pictures of me on the wall. But it does represent a year long process within which I’ve struggled to uncover both my body and my writing, finding what lies beneath the surface of not only my clothes, but the words I use to represent myself in the world. In the beginning I felt fragile, exposed and like I might die. But when I didn’t die, and in fact felt accepted, celebrated and nourished in Susan’s presence, something powerful happened.

I believe that what Susan Singer is doing with her art is a gift not just to the women she paints, but to the world. I feel like her work is revolutionary- not because she is inventing something new but because she is showing us in a new way what is already there.

And beauty, I’m learning, isn’t about having flawless skin, thighs that don’t touch, perfectly aligned features or the right person next to you in bed.

For me, it’s about allowing my imperfections, insecurities and battle scars to co-exist with the parts of myself that I already liked in a way that is vulnerable, authentic and open.

And now in a completely different way, my body is a thank you note. One that I am giving to myself.

To close, I would like to thank Katie Shaw for having the vision to bring all of this together, and my husband for his unflagging patience the last ten years as I’ve struggled to learn the things he has always known intuitively.

My letter to the students who asked why, if I’m a writer, I’m wasting my time teaching them:

2011-02-18T07:25:00.001-05:00

First, I probably learn more from you than you will ever learn from me. You have not yet had the joy of words beaten out of you and this is a gift to everyone you encounter. When I hear your poems about libraries and drumbeats and cheese and Chilè and stalkers and the sea, I am glad.

Second, I get to do the exercises with you which is great practice for any writer.

Third, most writers, no matter how well-published or successful, also have jobs. I’d much rather be here helping you guys write a play about two lovers who stop by Red Lobster after jumping through a painting of the White House in a Walmart onto a rooftop in the Valley of the End than waiting tables (which I’ve done) or writing ad copy (which I do).

Every week I look forward to our time together. I don’t necessarily relish re-entering the halls of a middle school, but I do love the time I get to spend with a group of people who are original, brave, creative and as of yet not boxed in or squashed up by what they think writing should be.

I hope that one day, you are each lucky enough to get to do this too.

Love,

Valley

389 Nude Photos of Me

2011-02-01T09:00:00.006-05:00

"Valley's Folds" by Susan Singer

Between February and July of 2010, artist Susan Singer took 389 nude photographs of me. Our first shoot was, in many ways, like a first date. I shaved my legs, preened in front of the mirror and, after putting my clothes back on, wondered what the hell had just happened. In other ways, however, our photo shoot couldn’t have been more different. Susan, who helps women work through body image issues by painting them exactly as they are, helped me process my tumultuous mix of feelings as they came up, coaxing me through my most self-conscious moments and awkward poses. She offered only praise and encouragement as I stood in front of her red backdrop and arranged myself in her wingchair. But despite desperately trying to edit the narrative unfolding behind my glasses, the photographs we looked at later told the whole story. There I was— folds and curves, breasts and thighs, cellulite and scars. I went home and ate an entire bag of potato chips.

Like every other woman I know, I have a complicated relationship with my body. As a writer, I spend most of my time in my head, conveniently ignoring everything it’s attached to. Over the years I have attempted to remedy this. I have gone on women’s retreats where we vowed never to insult our bodies again. I have had my body traced on butcher paper to get a realistic sense of its shape. And when someone complains about gaining five pounds, I laugh, because I never gain five without gaining fifty. But how much I do or don’t weigh is only one portion of the getting painted naked pie. I know intellectually that I have survived a lot more than a mere undressing: 35 years of sporadic hedonism, irregular exercise, multiple surgeries, pregnancies and birth, to name a few. Still, I’m not sure I won’t die if someone other than my husband sees hard evidence of this. What’s the line between pushing myself to the edge of my comfort zone and shameless exhibitionism? Susan’s pastels and oil paintings are clearly a joyful celebration of the human body in all of its perfect imperfection, but that’s easier for me to say when I’m looking at someone else.

In 2009, when Curator to the Flippo Gallery and Adjunct Professor of Art at Randolph Macon College, Katie Shaw asked me to participate in the Artists and Writers Show in February 2011, I agreed instantly. I had no idea what I was going to do, but when I ran into Susan Singer a few months later, a light went off. I’d seen her paintings of women of every age, shape and size before- and they’d struck me as glorious- and groundbreaking. Was it really OK to be that fat or that skinny and that exposed? Since the very thought of being naked in front of other people terrified me, I knew it was perfect. Why not take advantage of a gallery exhibition to work through one of my biggest fears?

Despite the initial shock of seeing myself in full color below the neck, something happened between Valentine’s Day and our second photo shoot in July. I had just gotten back from the beach, but it wasn’t the tan that made me feel at home in my skin. The physical act of being naked in front of Susan for a few hours had actually done more for my body image issues than a lifetime of talking about them. I hadn’t died! And no one else had either. In fact, I’d felt more alive- more me- than I had since being a toddler running bare-bottomed around my own backyard. I pranced around Susan’s studio like it was not just my second nature, but my true nature. Instead of hiding behind props, I strutted my stuff. And the results were…gorgeous. I looked like a person who knew- and was happy- that her head connected to her body.

Am I now the body image poster child? Not exactly. Will I be wearing a bikini to the pool next summer? Doubtful. But standing beside Susan’s paintings and photographs documenting my journey in a well-lit room full of other people will be a testament to how far I’ve come. My body didn’t undergo a drastic transformation when Susan painted it, but the way I feel- and think- about it did.

The Artists and Writers Show, featuring Valley Haggard and Susan Singer amongst other collaborative pairs, will be held in the Flippo Gallery of Randolph Macon College in Ashland from February 18- April 1 with an opening reception on February 20 from 3-5 pm.

Belle, February 2011

Body Shop

2011-01-03T08:33:00.003-05:00

The Heartbreaker

2011-01-02T15:13:00.005-05:00

Ever since my husband and I went to see “The Vagina Monologues” on Valentine’s Day in 2001, I swore I would never EVER shave Down There. I barely shave my legs past the knee and only recently have I started shaving my armpits in any season other than summer. But approaching my 35th birthday, I feel it is time to find a rite of passage for my entry into this new stage of womanhood. One of my best friends flew to Africa for her 35th, another to Paris. Me? I book a Brazilian.

To be honest, I don’t know precisely what a Brazilian Heartbreaker is when I call Bombshell Brazilian Waxing and Skincare Studio to schedule my appointment, but when the owner, Melissa Bryant, advises me to take four ibuprofen before I come in, I start to get a clearer picture. Surely those children on the way to wild bush or jungle initiation ceremonies were advised no less! If they can do it, so can I.

“I’m not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful,” proclaims Marilyn Monroe from the wall of the adorable, spotless salon where everything is either pink, black or leopard print. Melissa greets me warmly, nodding with empathy as I explain how terrified- and excited- I am. The former general manager of Nesbit’s Salon, Melissa opened Bombshell in February 2010, offering a full range of services in tanning, hair, nail, makeup and all manner of waxing. She has spent many, many years making women wonderful.

As I make myself comfortable on her table, inspecting various bottles of ointment, tweezers and a huge vat of hot green wax, Melissa turns down Frank Sinatra on the phonograph and explains the process. “First,” she says, “You’re going to do The Frog.” There are, I discover, several other yoga positions I will find myself in over the course of the next hour, including the Pretzel and a modified Happy Baby. Totally exposed from the waist down, I bend my legs into V’s as Melissa slathers me with a healthy dose of lotion and lidocaine numbing spray. “I call this greasing the pan,” she laughs, before trimming me with an electric razor. I imagine that I am about to mow the lawn with a sickle on the hottest day of the year, and a tiny bead of sweat forms on my brow.

But the wax is hot in a pleasant way and although I brace every muscle in my body for the first pull, the pain is surprisingly mild. I thank my lucky stars, because in order to complete the job, Melissa must revisit my most delicate nether regions with this wax and yank process a few dozen more times. Her upbeat, professional bedside manner could school more than a few gynecologists, I think, shocked to find myself yammering away as if I were wearing pants, in a coffee shop somewhere.

“I am so OCD,” says Melissa, fastidiously cleaning me up with a razor and tweezers, fashioning a perfect heart out of heretofore raw materials, coating the final product in baby powder and tea tree oil. “This is Bactine for your hoo-ha,” she explains, admiring her handiwork. And I must say, for a girl like me, the results are both pretty and pretty shocking. “I kicked ass!” I tell Melissa and she agrees. After this, I could do most anything.

She sends me out the door with a congratulations and a care package: detailed maintenance instructions, an exfoliating glove and a blow pop. As I walk to the car I feel triumphant with my secret. There’s a fine line between a skinned cat and a fresh peach, but who’s splitting hairs?

Bombshell Brazilian Waxing and Skincare Studio is located at 10 S. Crenshaw Avenue in Carytown. For appointments, visit www.ilovebombshell.com or call 342-0051.

Published in Belle, August 2010

The Holiday Sweater

2010-12-06T08:52:00.006-05:00

Everybody in my extended family has a different religion and a different last name. In many ways our motley crew exemplifies the American melting pot, but in other ways we are as unique as the raw baby cocoanut pies with dehydrated seed crusts my mother makes as a holiday treat. We are rife with divorce, remarriage, step-siblings (who have their own step-siblings), in-laws, half-relations and hyphenated last names.

I was raised every other week between a New Age Jewish mother and a once-upon-a-time Methodist father who were both creative in their religious approach. For every Christmas tree of my youth, there was an equal or better Hanukkah bush. I received gifts on both the eight little nights and the one big day. Mid-December meant fried latkes and gold covered gilt, but also Yule logs, eggnog and fruit cake. As a child, the mish-mashed holidays were separated by whatever distance my parents were living apart at the time. I told my friends that I was “half Jewish,” a segment of the population once rare but now growing by leaps and bounds. Because lately the Chosen Few have chosen to marry around.

I, myself, married a Southern Baptist. Our thrift store menorah is displayed right next to our Dollar Store Nativity Scene. One of our ornaments says “Baby’s First Hanukkah.” We string lights across our roof, but I try to limit the color selection to blue and white. Someday, my blonde, blue-eyed son will just as confused as me, but for now he doesn’t distinguish his gifts from the cardboard box they came in.

Still, no matter how schizophrenic our house looks around the holidays, there is nothing like receiving a Christmas sweater from my mother-in-law to set off the identity crisis I’ve only barely managed to keep at bay. Yes, I quoted the Book of Ruth “For wherever you go, I shall go” passage in a pre-wedding letter to her, but I was referencing the Old Testament. I so badly wanted to be the perfect daughter-in-law that untying the white satin bow atop the red and green plaid paper to discover a delicate black knit sweater tastefully embroidered with a deep red flower caused me actual agony.

My own mother’s gifts have always been wrapped in the story of how cheaply she managed to find them. “What a bargain, this one!.... the best little yard sale… oy, my barter club!” But unlike the teddy-bear-spinning-a-dreidel socks from my mother that scream “ironic-kitsch!” my mother in law’s gift was simply too elegant, too understated, too real for me to consider wearing. I worried. Could wearing a sweater endorsing one religion cancel out the other? Does a proclamation of Christmas across my chest make me less Jewish? And, most importantly, can I don a poinsettia and still consider myself “cool?” To leave the house in my mother-in-laws gift felt like a more serious commitment than actually marrying her son. I thanked her profusely and then took the sweater home to hold hostage in my closet.

Finally, in a holiday tradition I can live with, re-gifting, I found the poinsettia sweater a happy home. I did not reconcile all of my feelings about how best to blend blood with the holidays, but I did answer one question. Am I the kind of person that can pull off a holiday sweater? No, I am not. But I am the kind of person that will warmly embrace you while you wear yours, whatever religion- or lack thereof- is embroidered across the front.

Belle Magazine, Dec-Jan 2011
Image borrowed from MyUglyChristmasSweater.com

Almost Alternative: Navigating the murky terrain between the bohemian and the bourgeois

2010-11-15T09:25:00.011-05:00

Being self-employed has a long list of pros and cons, so to tip the scales in the favor of eating regularly, last spring, I acquired myself a mentor. A spit-fire writer in her early seventies, she dishes out equal parts encouragement and criticism, never mincing words although she says she’s like a priest—confessions exit her head as quickly as they enter it.

Recently she called to tell me that she’d finished reading my manuscript.

“You’re a real talent, Valley,” she said, “but the question is, what are you going to do with it? You need discipline! Reading your writing is like racing through a museum with too many paintings on the walls. You need to slow down.” Essentially she was saying that I had something readable that needed to be entirely rewritten. I felt my spirit soar and then flop as it always done when my as yet unrealized potential is held up for inspection.

But instead of balking, I listened. You can’t just pick up a mentor on special at Martin’s. They are hard won. In fact, I feel I deserve special recognition just for having one. A reference to our working relationship really beefs up my self-esteem and my resume, a few short lines after “Waffle House Waitress” and “Food Lion Coupon Distributor.” She went on to quote Gustave Flaubert, who said, “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

“Get boring, girl!” she said.

I agreed that I would try, but getting more boring than I already am is a task. All of the bohemian types I once knew, like me, now have dental insurance and mortgages. Well, that’s not entirely true. One friend is living in a corner of an abandoned warehouse, another sends me emails about her skinny dipping expeditions in Sierra Leone. But by and large the ramblin’ fever with which I used to burn has been watered down.

While there are many ways that I do live on the edge (I actually don’t have dental insurance), I am, for all intents and tax purposes a wife and a mother living in the suburbs. This is a set of facts I often find difficult to accept, much like Steve Martin who refused to believe he was anything other than a small black boy in “The Jerk.” My once bleached, dreaded hair now gets conditioned and blow-dryed. Sensible crocs have replaced the combat boots and fishnet stockings of yore. I can almost say that I am now more comfortable blending in than sticking out.

To enhance the boringness of my life I could stop going to all night dance parties- but oh, wait, I already did that- twelve years ago when I also stopped hopping from state to state, man to man, etc. But what I could really do, that would have an actual impact on the quality of my artistic life, is not say yes when I mean no. I could silence the phone and disconnect the internet when I’ve carved out time to write. I could make a schedule, adhering to it when it’s the last thing on God’s green earth I want to do. I could slough off the outdated belief that being creative means being haphazard and wild. Because being boring and being disciplined are two entirely different beasts; beasts that must be slain politely and with decorum, in the manner of the bourgeois.

From Belle, November 2010.

The Circuitous Route

2010-09-09T08:34:00.007-04:00

I seem to be a fan of the circuitous route, even when I try my hardest to adhere to the straight and narrow. Last week for example, I drove back from Petersburg to Richmond via 95 South, 295 North and Route 895--- a highway I didn't previously know existed but whose $2.75 toll plaza moved the term "highway robbery" to the forefront of my vocabulary. Getting home from the county dump continues to mystify me, even though I am perfectly capable of driving directly there when the piles in the backyard are adequate. My father once invented the term "spatial relations dyslexia" especially for me, but I am now trying to use this handicap of perspective to my advantage. Going at things sideways can be far more effective and far more interesting, especially when applied to packing, or art.

I forget the least stuff when I leave my suitcase (or canvas sack, really) in the corner of the bedroom for a 24-48 period of time and then throw something in it every time I walk past. Likewise, leaving word documents up on the screen and throwing words or phrases at them offhandedly doesn't give me that dreaded or (equally bad) overly ambitious feeling of Sitting Down to Write. And too, the books and movies that have left the strongest impression on my psyche never make it from Point A to Point B without scooping up and inspecting C-Z first.

"Out of Sheer Rage," Geoff Dyer's book about D.H. Lawrence is composed almost entirely of asides, completely brilliant in their neuroses. Ross McElwee's documentary "Sherman's March" is everything Sherman, but more importantly, everything but.

I admire linear thinkers, but if I am on the path to becoming one, it is via the most indirect route possible.

2010-08-15T00:13:00.005-04:00

Who cares what I have to say?

I haven’t quite answered this question yet, but when memoirist, Phyllis Theroux, hired me to archive 30 years worth of her personal essays, I considered it differently. The beauty and humor with which she writes about cockroaches, having a conversation with an elderly prostitute, not wanting to take out the trash, watching a snake eat a frog, raising three kids on her own and the life of a writer exemplifies the very idea of finding the universal within the personal. Alongside the columns indicating which articles had yet been scanned and filed, I was tempted to create a column for which articles made me laugh, cry or get goose bumps, most of which did all three. Phyllis has an impressive resume- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Jim Lehrer Newshour, several amazing books, etc. - but even more impressive is her ability to hook the details of her life into the tapestry of the bigger picture.

Phyllis is a disciplined and prolific writer-- two adjectives anyone living a creative life aspires for-- but what I admire about her writing most is its deeper exploration and hence, elevation of common occurrences. Domestic life is not insignificant. Time spent on a train talking to a stranger does not simply vanish. Phyllis holds a magnifying glass to her eye, turning that ragged shard of glass into a prism. Rather than offering you a glass of water she leads you down the rocky, exquisite path to the ocean where she got it from. Luckily for the rest of us, Phyllis Theroux lives- and writes- an examined life. Luckily for my scanner, but sadly for my eager, endless appetite for her work, the files are complete.

Visit Phyllis Theroux's website, here.

2010-06-25T09:19:00.009-04:00

Blog this blog!

I am as terrible at blogging as I am at exercise, meditation, folding linen napkins into origami swans and everything else that requires repetition, routine and discipline. Oh well. It's OK. My sporadic nature leaves room for surprise. Or, as my dad likes to say: "Indecision is the key to flexibility."

That's what I tell myself, anyway. Here are a few other things I told myself on my last cottage sitting expedition, where I had three blissful days to write, sun, drink espresso and lounge. Of course, I had the secret mission of accomplishing a whole hell of a lot (write a book), but I couldn't tell myself that directly: it would have been FAR too intimidating. So, as soon as I arrived at that idyllic cottage in the woods, I made a list of 100 things to calm myself down, to sweet talk myself, to sneak up on writing stealthily, through the back door.

1. I don't have to accomplish anything in these three days. This is for my spirit, not my bottom line. If I get lonely or scared or bored, that's OK. If I don't know what to do next, that's OK. If I get freaked out or depressed, that's OK.

2. I'm not getting a grade or a paycheck for my time here. This is not pass/fail. It is just time, to do with as I please.

3. It's really not possible to waste time, right? I'm allowed to spend my time anyway I choose. I can sit in this chair for ten minutes and stare at that tree. I might go inside and flip through the bathroom reading material. That's OK. Right?

4. If I do sit down to write it's OK if I write the wrong thing. Terrible, God-awful things. All manner of shit. It's OK. Obviously, it needed to be said by someone.

5. 34 really isn't that old. It's really quite young, actually. Even if I have taxes and a mortgage and a husband a son, I'm a fucking spring chicken.

6. It's OK if I decide to draw something and it's terrible. There are no yardsticks out here to measure myself against anyone else.

7. I am a very good person. It's OK if I don't type a publishable word on my trip out here. Or ever again. Sometimes, I contribute to society. I have gorgeous eyes and skin. Soft hands. (Often)curly hair. Great curves. Tapered fingers. I have a long neck.

8. I just realized that I like to peel and eat oranges like a wild animal.

9. That laptop in there is horrifying. The files in it are horrifying. It's quite alright if I avoid it like the Black Plague the entire time I'm here, at this gorgeous quiet cabin, perfect for anyone who actually wants to write.

10. I really like dilapidated buildings and outhouses, peeling paint, rotting infrastructures and old wooden spools used as tables like this one I'm writing on now.

11. Lists are very satisfying and reassuring. 1-2-3. Check, check, check. No right or wrong. No need for editing. No revision.

12. My fears and insecurities and shortcomings are not really worse than anyone else's. I'm OK. I'm normal. Hell, the hole in my soul is just as big as the next guy's!

13. No coffee pot, so I'm going to attempt to make my first espresso in 14 years. I melded my last espresso maker together on a stove top in Italy.

14. My greatest fear is not of my lack, but of my power. Attributed to both Marianne Williamson and Nelson Mandela.

15. My other greatest fear is that I'll be deemed unworthy. By people I find unworthy! Emotionally handicapped vindictive narcissists.

16. Actually my greatest fear is that I'll fuck up the espresso.

17. Hot damn, it's delicious! Of course, now I'm ruined for my own lesser coffee. Oh well. That's OK. Coffee's coffee.

18. It's OK that I have an addictive personality. There's room enough in this world, hell, even in Virginia for an addictive personality like mine. More than enough room! Speaking of more, more coffee.

19. It's OK if I bore the living hell out of myself. It's OK if I'm not Anne Lamott or Elizabeth Gilbert or Dorothy Parker or Anna Akhmatova. I have great lips! What did TB say? They'd be sexy if he didn't know me. A-Hole. I do have nice lips. And I have published a few things.

20. It's OK if I never use that laptop again and get carpel tunnel syndrome out here scribbling in my journal. Thumb cramps! A hazard of my trade.

21. My desire to be left alone is tempered only by my craving for people.

22. I'm finally of an age where I've learned how to pack, but I'm still learning how to leave a place like I found it.

23. Actually, some people love me with a vast and astounding intensity. Take Henry for example. He wants me ALL THE TIME.

24. All those places I've been still live inside me, even in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia.

25. There are so many, many things I know absolutely nothing about. Not even enough to be dangerous. Geography? I can't find north on a compass. History? Dance? Art? Music? Politics? Science? Forget it. I don't even know most of the things I'm supposed to know in my own supposed field.

26. Not to mention everything else I know nothing about.

27. My impulse is almost always to talk rather than to write. I'd like to be a professional talker. I'll even practice talking meditation.

28. All of the apples and oranges and carrots I've been eating make me feel like a horse. I want some meat. Chicken. Cheeseburgers. Pork chops. Bacon. A big juicy BLT.

29. The bad news is I don't know how to write about this year without horrifying everyone.

30. The good news is I have a chapter outline.

31-100.

Motel X, Cabin Y

2010-04-07T14:42:00.008-04:00

We all know about the importance of a room of one's own.

Well, I have that- and don't get me wrong- I THANK MY LUCKY STARS FOR IT EVERY DAY- but it does little to infiltrate the boundary-less qualities of motherhood, wifehood, workhood, etc., all of which have little regard for the sturdiest of blueprints or shut doors. And since I've always been a big fan of moving (that is until I stopped completely) I do what I can to create an altogether geographically removed location of my own.

This can be hard when my time is pressed and my budget is zero, but not, thank God, impossible. This past Hannukah I received a $50 Visa card and within minutes to the day, I used it to book a motel room on West Broad. It was less than two miles from my house, so I had to plan everything I wished to accomplish with my 3 pm to 11 am getaway in the less than 6 minute drive. A whole lot of too much- is what I wanted- but I was delighted to give it a try.

I have stayed in some nice hotels in my day, quite by accident, but this one topped them all. The less than glamorous online reviews only made it all the more appealing. "Seedy" someone said. "More a place for lover's trysts than business meetings." Oh boy! Never had I been able to wake up with such an excellent view of the Auto Zone, not to mention the Waffle House where I worked my first job at 16- hired by Bubba Hicks(I sh*t you not); slinging coffee with Doris who smoked through her traech.

Also, I'd invited a girlfriend with similar hopes of accomplishing everything and nothing to join me. I figured she'd keep me on track and off, equally desirable aspirations. We met, on the dot of check-in, laptops and plentiful snacks in tow, giddy with our alone togetherness.

Amazingly, we got work done. We banged around ideas and started stories. We edited. We brainstormed. We ate and we slept. We made repeat trips to the lobby for refills of watery coffee, but that counted as exercise. And even the bad coffee was good: the high water content enabled us to drink three or four times as much. It was luxurious. It was exotic. It was productive. Of course check-out came way too soon. Luckily, I had the long, stop-light ridden two mile drive home to reflect on the thrill of my recent uninterrupted accomplishment.

And also, to begin to dream about my next getaway. No more Visa giftcards have fallen in my lap, but a small miracle has. I have been asked to Cabin Sit for a new friend while she is away for several days on business. Several Days. Several long, empty, rural, (good) coffee-filled days. I might miss the light/noise/air pollution of suburban shopping Hell, but I think I'll manage.

Cabin Y, ready or not, here I come.

short stack

2010-03-02T08:03:00.006-05:00

I am a big fan of short fiction.

As a counselor at a creative writing summer camp, I taught a flash fiction elective I called the Daisy Duke. (Also 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and Candle Making with Leonard Cohen. What were these kids, 12? Geez.)

In college, I wrote a series of one page stories that as a collection won some sort of prize. Really, though, the titles were more memorable than the prose, most of which I no longer have anyway. Although I struggle more with naming stuff now than I used to, here's a short list of some ancient stories I pulled out of ye-olde file, just for fun:

Little Pig
Manuel Noriega, Manuel Noriega
Friends of the Devil
Girl in Love With Life
When Angels Fight With Poison Ivy
Yellow Popcorn, Yellow Bathrooms and Dreams of Wyoming
Southern Comfort
Invisible Witches and the History of My Name
God Made the Train Tracks When He Was Sleeping
An Exodus in Drowning
The Lips of a Loose Woman
The Whore You Could Never Afford
It's Surprisingly Sweet!
A Shotgun and a Bitch
An Exodus in Drowning
Intersection
Reunion
Shrinking
Royal Suburban Girl
Trash Fire
Mutiny
Deliver Me
Love is a Vehicle Like Any Other
The Land of Milk and Honey
Table of Contents
Pretty Little Head

Nowadays, I think these titles are more valuable, to me at least, than any sort of explanation or "story" that may have followed. That's why I am also a big fan of FaceBook status updates. How I love to write just ONE SENTENCE and feel as though I've accomplished something for the day. All that could possibly follow would be dull drudgery (read: writing my book).

In the same vein, last summer I was introduced to the concept of the "6 word memoir" by my friend Anne Soffee, who has written 2 actual memoirs. That are captivating from first word to last, thank God for her, me and everyone, but not every writer is so lucky to have that much good stuff to say. 6 word memoirs, first introduced by Smith Magazine, have made a HUGE splash and I can see why. They are pithy, fun and inject a sense of accomplishment without the accompanying sense of getting chased down, wrung out and hung up like longer prose seem to do.

So naturally I've introduced 6 word memoirs to a few of the creative writing classes I'm teaching to kids at local schools. And they are....AWESOME. From "I am getting an ugly hat" to "Blastoff! Blastoff! Blastoff! Getting boring" to "Get out of my face, dummy" to "Love is my fate, yours too" to "I represent America, and cheese pizza," I am proud of these kids, and a little jealous. They don't worry about whether or not their writing is publishable, or even good, really. They just squeeze out that fresh joy of what they want to say on the page. Ta-da! There I am, in sentence form: newly practiced cursive etched out in #2 on wide-rule paper. Me.

A lesson I will learn from them.

Talk Is Cheap

2010-01-26T10:42:00.004-05:00

My good friend Darren, a fine and many times published poet gives this advice: "Save it for the page."

My good friend Slash, a storyteller, performer, comedian and writer advises against revealing your ideas before you have actually executed them.

Sound advice, yes. Practical, wise. Advice I am guilty of betraying on a daily basis.

The other day I was at a gathering of creatives who were discussing the difference between extroverted and introverted artists. It seems clear to me that the introverted artist has the advantage. As far as actually producing ANYTHING worth a goddamn.

That is why I am considering pursuing a line of work in Talking rather than Writing.

Please, let's discuss this idea until it is a bloody pulp. Let's hash it out and grind it into the seventh layer of Hell. Let's meet at the coffee shop to talk about it until there's nothing left.

Another friend- a screenwriter and freelance writer working on her first novel-has a fantasy in which she becomes a dental hygienist who wears Victoria Sweatshirts with lots of bling. I share this fantasy with her. It is so lovely, so alluring, so...easy. So impossible.

How nice it would be to go to bed each night without the nagging, ripping feeling that there is still work to be done. Deep, hard, intense creative work. That won't let me rest until it's over and out and framed and complete. A tangled, gnarled web of thoughts and ideas that have to be expressed in just the right way. The write way. The write, elusive way that requires time and space. Not answering the phone or the door. Keeping my body pinned to the chair, my pen to the page, one lip sealed against the other.

Unfortunately, so far, I have not been to keep my own secrets. To shut it down. To quiet myself. For more than a few hours at a time, anyway. That's why I like to write short short stories. Daisy Duke stories. One page per week. One sentence per day. It's tough though, when I get a book idea. Especially a few book ideas. Ideas that sound fantastic. To talk about. To outline. To graph. Honestly, right now I have some really great chapter titles. Outstanding. Pithy. But they are lonely without their chapters. Naked. And as hard and as I try to drown them out, I can't make them shut up.

To Be or Not to Be a Memoirist (When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction)

2009-11-02T08:35:00.010-05:00

My name is Valley Haggard and I am writing a memoir.

There, I said it. But rest assured, that statement is offered up with a cringe, an apology and enough explanations to assure you that I'm not just like every other self-indulgent narcissist out there editing their over-wrought diary entries from high school. Except that well, I am, a little.

See, once upon a time I wrote fiction. But then weird, interesting, fascinating, tragic, life-changing things started happening to me. You know- crazy shit like falling in love, getting my heart squished, traveling around---essentially the same stuff that happened to everybody who couldn't find a good job after college. I've just never been able to shake these experiences loose when it's time to sit down to write a "story." Even if I get as far as inventing a gutsy heroine utterly unlike myself, suddenly out pops the buffalo head I saw sitting on a picnic table in Arkansas. Or the remains of Hooker, the first horse I ever rode, rotting out in a clearing in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. Certain images have been so burned into my consciousness that they have overridden every other thing I've tried to write about for any sustained period of time. So while I dabble around the blurry lines of creative nonfiction, I have to tell the truth, ugly as it may be. I am writing a memoir.

My mother, for one, would prefer I wrote a novel. So, perhaps, would everyone else in my book who makes more than a cameo. But other than borrowing certain devices- like plot and dialogue- from the world of fiction- I just don't see what there is to be gained from changing the story. Avoiding lawsuits? Bah. What's the fun in that? Maybe my imagination jumped ship somewhere in Alaska, but I think it's more likely that I've made the full conversion to become a devoted handmaiden to the belief that Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.

But it's not as easy as typing up my journals or scribbling down what I think you said. At this year's James River Writer's Conference one of the top New York agents said- to roughly paraphrase- that by and large memoirs fall into 2 categories: those by the already famous with huge, exciting lives that can't write for shit OR beautifully written, lyrical memoirs by nobodies about absolutely nothing at all. The trick, my friends, is to strike the balance.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I love reading memoirs. It is a bit of a guilty pleasure because I always feel like I should be reading Moby Dick or Gravity's Rainbow, but please. What I haven't read (or finished reading) is an entire confession unto itself that I'll submit to Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.

Memoirists who can ride the seesaw of a thrilling life captured by perfect words are the writers to whom I am currently offering virgin sacrifices. One such is Jeannette Walls, whose books I've gobbled up and who I would definitely select as my one allotted companion on a desert island- or Welch, West Virginia- wherever I happened to be stranded. I have had the pleasure of interviewing Jeannette at her rural Virginia farmhouse twice- once in 2006 after the publication of her international bestselling memoir, "The Glass Castle" and more recently- this past September for "Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel" about her spitfire maternal Grandma, Lily Smith. And Jeannette- one of the kindest, toughest, smartest, bravest women I've had the honor of knowing- is far from apologetic about whatever it is she chooses to write.

So, after much agonizing, I've (mostly) come to terms with the fact that I'm writing a fucking memoir. And I've managed to get one chapter smack in the middle of it, Mountain Baby, published by the Writers' Dojo out of Portland, Oregon. It is just one chapter and it is just online but please, humor me while I pretend I won a Pulitzer this year, OK? The rewards of spending so much "free time" in tortured introspective life-revisions are few and far between so I must insist on eeking out this small glory long enough to get me through the next chapter.

The Right Book at the Wrong Time: A Deviant History of Reading

2009-09-08T16:52:00.014-04:00

I have never owned one of those decorative fabric bookcovers meant to hide trashy Harlequin romances, poolside. But still, whether I like it or not, the books I read say as much about my state of mind as a temporary tattoo.

Before I discovered the joys of sneaking out in the middle of the night, I broke bad by reading "Mad Magazine" under the covers with a flashlight long after Lights Out. My mother claims this is why I'm near-sighted now, but I don't care. It was worth it.

In elementary school I blew through a few books a week when I should have been learning something about sports. Or math. Or how to get along with The Republicans.

In high school my friends and I wrote the equivalent of 12 epistolary novels each semester. I read other books too, but literature during that time consisted of decoupaging the bloodied shards of my heart into a spiral bound notebook, passing it off to friends in the hall and then white-knuckling it through Chemistry to read their replies.

Although I took a heavy load of literature classes in college, I got the most pleasure from checking out unwieldy stacks of unassigned books and stashing them by my bed to read with a stolen bit of cheese and box o' wine. I was really pulling a fast one on my professors by sneaking Rilke, Hesse, Nabokov and Rimbaud while Tolstoy, Babel and Sophocles waited patiently for me on the sidelines.

During my 4th or 5th restaurant job after graduating, a waitress-colleague and I passed trashy dating advice books wrapped in brown paper bags back and forth to each other at the cash register- like they were pistols or a pound of weed! We could not risk letting our boyfriends (or the guys on the deck eating tuna melts) know what the hell made us so beguiling.

It seems that around the time of my wedding I was on a book starvation diet and that is why, irrationally, on my honeymoon, I took up basketweaving. A venture into crafts that I repeatedly forced into other venues: stained glass, crotchet, scrapbooking.... all with the same tragic end. Now I leave crafting to the crafty and keep my nose where it belongs, in a book.

I started reading again, in earnest, after I had my son. I read all of the ironic, literary parenting books I could get my hands on--Operating Instructions, Inconsolable: How I Threw My Mental Health Out With the Diapers, etc. They were my lifeline out of the diapers and the boppies.

And then, in the midst of learning how to live with a monkey on my back, I was asked to put together a few cogent thoughts about the books I was reading. Reconciling thinking and parenting was a challenge, and as I struggled not to lactate on the books that I inevitably rolled over in bed, the likes of Breath and Bones and Whores on the Hill breathed life back into my milk-addled brain. Thank God. Not thinking beyond the realm of the mall play area would have done me in.

Untrained as a journalist, but writing for a paper, I clung to certain memoirs by certain writers that schooled me more than any copy editing class at any community college. I laughed my ass off through Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City: A True Story of Faking it in Hair Metal L.A. and But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous, praying to one day write my own journalistic tell-all. Or at least pass myself off as a journalist until things got good.

You know how you find some books and some books find you? I was working at a local children's hot spot when I called up my old editor from a locked bathroom stall to see if he might have any extra work lying around. He happened to mention "I Was a Teenage Dominatrix" and I haven't found myself mixing primary colors in an apron ever since.

Lately, Bad Valley has been choosing 9 out of 1o of the books by my bed. She never finishes the dull books and skips straight to the end of the good ones. Yes, my husband has mentioned that he preferred finding "Open: Love, Life & Sex in an Open Marriage" under my pillow on our 7th anniversary to "Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On" on the occasion of our 8th. But it's my job to read everything, right? Of course it is.

Still, I felt like I was sharing a secret with my librarian this spring when I checked out "Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity" alongside Clifford's Birthday Party and Shel Silverstein's "Falling Up."

Not that staying in bed for two and a half days straight to read "The Bell Jar" bodes that well either.

And, really, there's something not right about me reading "Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex," right now in the midst of this economic turndown. Because it seems that writing about life pays a lot less than living it.

I know what Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran," meant when I interviewed her on the phone: "Reading is the one place we can allow ourselves to be promiscuous." But in these desperate times writing about reading about being promiscuous seems a necessary measure, too.

Words are my weakness. And cowgirls. And olives.

2009-08-04T07:55:00.006-04:00

I've always loved words. I was labeled a "creative speller" in elementary school but that hardly thwarted my ambitions. At seven, I told my mother that when I grew up I was going to be a famous reader. She, in turn, forced me out of the house on a semi-regular basis to get sunlight and fresh air since left to my own devices I read from the school bus to the bed, and beyond, a flashlight pressed to the pages. My mother is an artist and I remember violently disagreeing with her in an art class she taught once at my summer camp. No, a picture is NOT worth a thousand words. To me, each word is worth a thousand pictures. Take maps for example. For me, they only increase the inherent mystery of geography. I interpret left and right in more of a liquid than a solid state. If I'm driving and it is time to turn, please shout "MY SIDE" or "YOUR SIDE" as left and right, for me are apt to morph without warning. My father, a master carpenter and by proxy an architect, once kindly suggested that perhaps I have a term he coined just for me: "spatial relations dyslexia." And yes, that resonates. And applies to music. If a song has bad lyrics, forget it. If it has no lyrics- as in the whole world of classical music, jazz, new age- whatever- then it is as if I am a plant in a cave listening through a glass with earmuffs. Actually, my plants seem to get more out of classical music than me, a fact I proved in an 8th grade science experiment.

Luckily though, the gods are benevolant and when I shipped off to a fancy NY college in 1993, they roomed me next to a blonde-headed angel with a sense of direction big enough for the both of us. And in this case, "sense of direction" applied to more than how the hell do you get to the train station. Jenne always seemed to know where she was going and how to get there. If she didn't yet, she would soon. She took internships, participated in school activities, took advantage of the vast opportunities offered to those motivationally inclined. I, meanwhile designed a major in Heartbreak and Whiskey with a minor in Creative Writing, really excelling at it, as much as one can with that sort of thing.

One summer back home in Denver, Jenne found a want-ad for a wrangler at a remote ranch in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. "I called Jack and Elaine 37 times," she said, "and they finally agreed to meet me at Denny's where they offered me a waitressing job."

"I didn't call to be a waitress," she told them. "I called to be a wrangler." You can just imagine the paradigm shift that blew their brains as they finally agreed to let Jenne be the first female wrangler in the history of Budge's White River Resort. That summer she wrangled the shit out of some horses, kicked ass and took prisoners (mainly smitten cowboys). I went to visit her and on the second full day she led me up and down a mountain and through a valley with a couple of horses and a pack of mules. That night, after 8 hours on my first ever horse, drinking whiskey in a lodge full of hard-ass wrangler types, I threw up into my own hand. And the next summer, I went back to work at Budge's as a waitress, only my official title was "Cabin Girl."

After that, Jenne went on to hitchhike from one end of South America to the other, selling macrame and crotched hats, purses and bikinis to pay her way. Down South, she ran a bed and breakfast (although she said it was more of a breakfast and hammock), befriended an alcoholic monkey and was a street mime, although this is a grotesquely short list of her many and sundry adventures.

She is the kind of friend I expect to drink coffee with in my late 90's after all of our boyfriends and husbands are dead. Sometime in college, I named her my North Star because no matter how long it's been since I've seen her or how far apart we are, the thought of her face instills in me a sense of the right place to go.

This past weekend I saw Jenne for the first time in 7 years. She flew from Portland (where she is a third grade bilingual teacher, Lewis and Clark college professor and Flamenco dancer)to Boston, where she rented a car for an East Coast tour. At my dad's ex-alpaca farm out in the country we indulged in 24 blissful hours of old records (with good lyrics), long sunset bedazzled walks, river wading, candles, mozzarella, chocolate, salmon, basil and big, fat Kalamata olives that we ate like candy.

Tomorrow she and I are getting up early and driving to New York. I have not been there for 11 years and will do my best to spend 72 hours making up for it. We will take turns driving. I hope to trust my sense of direction, but God knows who will hold the map.

Subterranean Protozoa, Reincarnation & Hope

2009-06-27T08:59:00.009-04:00

Ever since landing a repeat role as the drummer in our subdivision's Madonna cover band the summer after fourth grade, I've had a hangup around the idea of being famous. Because life is meaningless if your face isn't plastered in gloss on someone else's bedroom wall. Right?

As a more mature adult, it's been my belief in reincarnation that's helped me reconcile the fact that my name is conspicuously absent from Oprah's bestseller list. I have multiple lifetimes to achieve greatness! My soul has been pretty busy building pyramids, schlepping water in pails out of rivers and rubbing elbows with the Queen. Maybe more than that- I'm not sure- the latest Facebook quiz assures me I'm 88% gay, not big news to my husband THIS lifetime. So after receiving several lovely rejection letters from my first-ever national magazines queries (my fave came from Men's Vogue, which I didn't know existed 10 minutes before I sent them a typed up shard of my latest adventure query-style. Turns out they don't. "Sounds like a good idea, but Men's Vogue is no longer," wrote the editor), I've decided THAT article is just another chapter for the memoir. Which thus far exists 50% as a huge unwieldy mess on my hard drive, 10% in the journal that VANISHED from the face of the earth last month, 7% in my witty, comprehensive, beautifully crafted status updates that disappear into the ether of nowhere land and 33% in my repressed subconscious.

Regardless, I seek out my place on the food chain of literary fame and find myself subterranean protozoa, again and again. And then there's always this perspective offered by my good friend and the oft-published author, Eliezer Sobel last November at the Jewish Book Fair. "How's your book coming?" he asked.

"Miserably," I said. "I'll never get published."

"Well, hurry up and get published so you can be miserable AND published like the rest of us," he said.

So last week, plodding through the unsung joys of domestication peppered with a few rare and erotic moments of inspiration, I organized a panel for a local nonprofit on playwriting and screenwriting. You might say I joined the nonprofit so I could borrow someone else's budget to organize such panels, carting in my handful of wildly successful friends from around the country to the capitol of the South just so I can hear them talk.

Of course prior to the panel, I was most concerned with what to wear. After amassing a pile of unsightlys on the sagging mattress, I headed to the local Exxon to vacuum out the inch of dirt, twigs and volcanic sediment encrusting the bottom of my car before driving to the airport to pick up my good friend Bryan, creator of The Philocetes Project. Handing me change for a dollar, the curly-haired Hispanic woman behind the counter said, "Hey, I see you the last Thursday of every month!" I quickly scanned my memory for all of the various cults I attend regularly but came up blank. "You know, The Writing Show!" she said, introducing herself by way of her name plate, "HOPE." "I started going last October."

"No kidding!" I said. "I hope you can come tonight- it's gonna be a good one."

"I'll try," she said. "But it's the end of the month and there are a lot of inspections to get through."

Right then and there I felt more famous than God. Someone recognized me at the GAS STATION!! My whole attitude and outlook on life changed. When I saw Hope later that night in the front row of the audience splendid in a lavender v-neck, I gave her a huge hug and introduced her to the panel.

So for today, fame may not be what I'm after, after all. As I write this, I'm reminded that for a while there in '98, aspects of my life on the farm in Arkansas paralleled Monica Lewinski's and I never envied her press package one bit.

2009-05-24T07:44:00.004-04:00

When I had my identity crisis back in January, I quit my job as Book Editor over at our local rag, and tried half-heartedly to find a full time job. Thank God I didn't. Even the part time job I had was so painful that on the 5th day I called my editor from the bathroom and begged him to let me write something. Just, you know, ANYTHING that didn't require wearing an apron and punching a time clock. Luckily he had a fun little press release about the author of "I Was A Teenage Dominatrix" sitting on his desk. I was in.

[Editorial aside: Ladies, if you have even the remotest desire for ex-boyfriends or other unruly specimens to ring you up I suggest you write an article about a dominatrix too. What are you waiting for? Get on it!]

After that, I essentially continued interviewing authors and writing about books. People kept sending them to me! Events kept happening! I couldn't say no. I didn't want to say no. And knowing the intense amount of sorting, labeling, reading and hysterical laughter required to run the Fiction Contest, I offered to help with that too. In the end, I ran it. For the 5th consecutive year. And I loved it just as much as I ever had. Around a smoky bar after the winners had been awarded, read and gone home I had a heart to heart with my editor, who is very inconsiderately moving to California in July.

I want you to have something regular here, he said, so it won't confuse my successor.
OK, I said. I'll be the book editor again.
Good, he said.
You never gave it away, I said.
I knew you'd be back, he said. A good editor knows you better than you know yourself.

And maybe he never met my grandmother and doesn't have a clue what kind of granola I eat with lowfat vanilla yogurt, but dammit if he hasn't had a thread connected to the big picture all along. Five years ago we met at a crowded intersection. He was whistling and smiling and I didn't know what to do with my hands. Why aren't you crossing the street? he asked. I'm afraid of getting hit by cars, I said, a bird might shit on my head and what if I don't recognize the grass or the sounds or the glints of light on the other side.

C'mon, it's easy, he said and crossed with a confident gait, a wink, a snap bouncing off the end of his long fingers. I waited another second before following, everything new and breathless and possible waiting for me on the other side.

Now, I'm at another intersection, but this time it's a cliff atop a deep sea filled with jagged rocks and circling sharks. For months I have been pacing the precipice, hearing the sirens call. I don't want to drown, I'm scared of getting my dress wet, of being eaten alive, of falling for some horrid merman and never regaining my rightful place on solid ground. As I try to think of what will happen if I lose my balance, or jump or if I am pushed, I realize that I may not know how to fly, but I already know how to swim.

Bad Valley Takes the Night Bus.

2009-05-19T20:57:00.005-04:00

She’s got generic cigarettes, a Zippo, gummy bears and an illegible map streaked with blood and beer stuffed in the side of her bra. She has taken other forms of public transportation including hitchhiking and moustache rides, but now she’s on the night bus without a clue as to where it- or she- is going. She finds the middle of the night the best time to listen to institutional escapees talk about their lives and the ghosts only they can see flying past the tinted windows. Bad Valley listens as the lady with the wig takes out her teeth and tries to offer her $100. Bad Valley doesn’t take it, but she lets the woman give it away to the man in the back, huffing down a beer underneath the brim of his baseball cap.

Bad Valley pretends to listen while she daydreams. It is Bad Valley’s Jesus Year and she is full of sin. She is full of hellfire and damnation and those little guys in Purgatory that wait around with hooks and crooks to drag good people down. Bad Valley rides the tilt-a-whirl backwards. She knows where and why and how the grass is greener and yet still she steadfastly refuses to plant or tend to anything.

She closes her eyes, nodding occasionally and lets the wig lady buy her a cheeseburger and a coke. And a coffee. And a beer. Bad Valley is always drinking something and usually way too much of it. She is ready to sleep on someone else’s floor. She is ready to abandon someone else’s dishes and someone else’s laundry on someone else’s dime. She wants to listen to scratchy records and smoke unfiltered cigarettes indoors all day, without a clue as to whether or not the sun is out. Bad Valley doesn’t want to call home or check in. Bad Valley doesn’t carry the proper documents for travel. She shreds her parking tickets, her state taxes and any evidence of having being insured, past, present and future. Her license and her visa are expired. She only keeps them around for their pictures, which are pretty and dark and difficult to discern.

When it stops, Bad Valley has no desire to get off the bus and doesn’t have enough money for another ticket so she cries until the driver takes pity on her and takes her where she thinks she wants to go. Bad Valley arrives unannounced, unaccounted for and unexpected. Even so, Bad Valley is welcome where she is found.

Bad Valley doesn’t care what Good Valley thinks. Bad Valley doesn’t have a bedtime, watches the sun rise, makes the sunset hazier with smoke from her swishers sweet cigar. Bad Valley doesn’t teach, she takes. She doesn’t’ listen, she tells. She doesn’t wake them up when she gets to where she is going. She crawls into their bed, puts her arms around their waist and whispers to them until she is the most important thing they have ever dared to dream.

Some Jobs Are Like Bad Boyfriends

2009-05-13T18:50:00.007-04:00

Some jobs are like bad boyfriends: they never truly go away. Or they go away at the wrong time and then pounce when you're weak. Having been almost entirely dumped by my job last September and then attempting to cut the remaining strings in January, somehow I managed to find myself in the office working for the better part of the day. And loving it. Missing it. Remembering only the good times. The complimentary cupcakes. The witty office banter. The escape from the feverish den of my home currently housing a sick child, a semi-employed man that loves to talk about wire and H-cats (am I making that up? I'm sure I am) in a space roughly equivalent to a rich man's closet. I love my house, don't get me wrong, especially on the days I think we're gonna lose it. But today, it was nice to be gone.

Packing up my massive stack of papers from the ice-hockey table (I don't exactly have a desk anymore) I felt the satisfaction of accomplishment. A job well done- or at least done. I didn't wonder if I should continue to revise (OK, I did) or if I should start a whole new draft or chuck the whole damn thing in the already overflowing recycle bin. There was a start line and a finish line and I made it from one to the other, from A to B-- zip zip zap. Not so easily done in "real life" anymore.

A decade ago, in my first months home off of the boat in Alaska I felt utterly lost, directionless and adrift. I felt that I had to have a job to stand and be counted but during that time I wasn't exactly employable. My mother, the artist, pointed to the cat lounging luxuriously on the bed by my side. "Does Felicia have a job?" she asked. "No," I said. "And she's perfect just the way she is," said my mother.

And I got it. It wasn’t about numbers or things but the quality of my ability to simply be. Something I’m still not good at. The minute I start to meditate I think of an email that must be sent IMMEDIATELY. If I don’t have specific plans, I’m restless, moody, pacing, trying to stalk down everything contained within the moment that I should be seizing. When I sit down to write, I wish I were writing something different. It’s why I couldn’t stand to live in New York. The constant influx of choices at every moment. Each street, each alley, each job, each bad boyfriend calling my name.

creative house cleaning

2009-05-03T11:14:00.005-04:00

When I was growing up my mom attached a pin to her dresser mirror that said "Fuck the Real World- I'm an Artist." As the dining room table was often piled high with inedible objects, we ate dinner on a picnic blanket in the middle of the living room. On one memorable occasion, a friend and I found potatoes in the washing machine. I had no idea what an iron was. Our house was characterized by dirt, oil pastels, clutter, clay, those colorful crystals that you can use to make feaux-stained glass window hangings, tissue paper, tye dies, paint brushes, cats, cat hair and random surplus natural and manmade materials that might at some point come in handy for creating something. A lampshade collage! A little clay animal friend to hang out in a potted plant! One of our cats often slept in the dish drying rack because it was pretty much guaranteed to be dish-free. We didn't have a TV until I turned 13 (and then my mom insisted it be in my room and not in her WAY) so we made shit. And we didn't clean. At least I have no memories of cleaning. My first 3 jobs after graduating from liberal arts school were in the house keeping and food service industries. It was while scrubbing out cabins on a dude ranch in Colorado, hotel rooms in Arkansas and heads on a cruise ship in Alaska that I learned how to use a mop, a vacuum cleaner and to tell the difference between Windex and 409. This was a skill set previously unknown to me and I tried it on like an ill-fitting wig. I was fast but never good. I simply couldn't make myself care, the way that people who grew up cleaning every Saturday did.

For the last 10 years I have lived in the house that I grew up in. The feelings surrounding this are as complex as the sedimentary layers of dust and dead skin and karma that have built up like invisible earth. I light sage, I put mirrors behind the toilet and baguas in the corners but the sacred hold of the past and dead things and my childhood burns stronger. I woke up this morning with every intention of setting things straight. Putting this here and that there. Sorting, folding, sifting, washing, scrubbing, arranging. But I simply cannot muster up the right kind of energy to make it happen. Over animal crackers and steak this morning, I told my husband I was too busy anymore to attend to domestic duties and asked if we could please hire a maid.

Sure, he said. How should we pay for it? Well, you could sleep with her in exchange for laundry, I suggested. OK, he said. But in that case, I get to pick who we hire. And you're in charge of finding lawn care.

2009-04-20T09:58:00.004-04:00

In a Continuum Class that I took a few months ago, one of the other participants- the wife of the leader in fact, said that before Continuum, she had felt like a walking head that happened to be attached to a body. She felt disconnected from her toes and her fingers and her legs and arms and the cellular makeup of her skin and blood and bones. As it so happens, I feel exactly that way myself. I put so much credence in words and thoughts and phrases and paper and computer screens and hard copies and leaflets and magazines and newspapers and blogs and facebook and deadlines and short story submissions and new releases and press releases and poetry and emails and snail mails and bills and documents and my living will and our tax return and cut-off notices and receipts and sticky notes and scratch pads and cookbooks and recipes and jokes and photographs and jpegs and calendars and planners and theatre tickets and parking tickets and the million and one works of art by my son and the million and one to-do-lists and floor plans of my husband and our combined and individual legacies of paper in paragraphs and sentences and phrases, it all gets in my head and I forget that I have anything attached to those rapidly moving fingers. Cuticles. Knuckles. Arms. Ankles. Toes. Ridges. Miles and miles of skin and organ and breathing masses of blood all contained within myself. So last night, I got in bed with my book and then I got back out and put the book down on the floor. I lit a candle and stood in the darkened room lit by a flicker. I touched my toes. I pulled my arms behind my back and over my head. I sat on the floor and arched my neck to the ceiling and saw the words that I've been eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner digested into the moving shadow of my body. Everything creaked like an unoiled machine. It's uncomfortable to remember bones but worse to forget. Everything I have ever done and known and lost is still contained within the memory of my flesh and most days it's easier to throw clothes over top of it all and bury my head in a book. But that can't work forever. Two days ago, at the edge of the river, I watched my son and his friends squish their feet and hands in the mud, smearing it up and down their legs and arms for the sheer pleasure- it seemed- of sensation and cool, wet earth- what grown ups pay hundreds of dollars for at the salon and massage parlor- something solid and mostly alive in full contact with their skin. I kept my shoes on and my pant legs rolled down, hesitant to engage in the elements below my neck. But I wondered abstractly- through talking and safety and admonishments- what I might be starving for in this anorexic relationship with the elements. Because truly, I am more ruled by the insistent coming and going of winter and summer and the terrible seduction of spring and fall than I'd ever care to admit. Even if I slam my door shut and black out my windows my natural rhythms are still magnetically yanked about by the moon. I can forget or ignore or deny or wrap my body in cloth like a mummy but it still will answer the call of its true master. And it ain't this screen.

reality check

2009-03-15T15:51:00.000-04:00

As somebody supposedly versed and submerged in the literary world, I am often horrified by how unwell read I actually am. There are an unreasonable amount of books out there!! And there are more being published every freakin' moment! Not to mention periodicals of the daily, weekly, monthly and annual variety, blogs, emails, snail mails, daily meditations, horoscopes, facebook updates AND a garden variety of other crazies vying for face time, like WORK and FAMILY.

So. I admit it. I have never read Moby Dick. I haven't read the collected works of Jane Austen. I only made it through .094 of chapter one of Gravity's Rainbow.

And I had only read one short story by Richard Bausch when I interviewed him by phone two days ago from my home office. I hate interviewing someone with whose work I am only marginally familiar. (with whom's work I am only marginally familiar? whose work with which I am only marginally...?? PLEASE, if you have an idea about how to make this sentence grammatically correct, I would LOVE to hear it!) And Richard Bausch has written about 100 books. And at least 1000 short stories. The one I read was compelling, excellent, enviable. And he's very distinguished and important looking.

But I was on a deadline. And I had to make the call. I felt the entire time like a complete, bumbling idiot. "So, uh, you've, uh, written, a lot of ummm, books, right?" is, I, believe how I started the conversation. And in my mind, it only got worse from there. Soon, I gave up all hope of sounding intelligent and just prayed that he would politely overlook my idiocy and say something quotable. He did. He said a lot of great stuff and thankfully I have an article to prove it. But the thing that really floored me was what he said at the end. "Are you a fiction writer, too?" he asked. "Ummm, yeah," I said. "I could tell," he said. "You're questions were more intelligent than most."Oh, geez, uh, thanks," I said. I told him how honored I was to be able to interview him and when I got off the phone I did a big, stupid dance around my house. I'm not sure if our conversation proved that most people who have interviewed Richard Baush shouldn't have been let off the farm or if, maybe, possibly, I am too hard on myself and have a slightly skewed perception of reality. Or maybe, it's a lucky combination of both.

letting the baby breathe

2009-03-04T09:47:00.003-05:00

I created this blog for the express purpose of writing more about the authors I have had the honor or horror to interview and the books I have slogged through, sped through or otherwise read as the Book Editor for Style Weekly. The spillover. The chafe. The extra thoughts that didn't succinctly squeeze into my modest column. But in the interim, I have developed my alter ego- Bad Valley, shared about my son's desire to grow a vegetable garden and publicly wrestled with my angst over losing my job, the family health insurance and a slew of the other regular, stable factors that this american life seems to require.

Two months ago I resigned from my position as book editor. Having told my mother at the age of 7 that I wanted to grow up to be a famous reader, it was like a real life fairytale when the then arts and culture editor- who had entirely rewritten my first article- offered me the position of book editor. It was my DREAM job- right down to having no idea what the hell I was doing and making a whopping $50 per month. I could read the day away and claim- truthfully- that I was working. I got LOADS of FREE books and the opportunity to talk to the masterminds that wrote them. I got to run around town picking up books and ferrying them between reviewers, the art director and myself and then back again, just to get a good shot of the cover. I got to ask myself life's most important questions: Should I judge this book by its cover? Would the hero want to marry me? Am I prettier than the heroine? Does laying it this way make my coffee table appear more clean?

No, seriously. I was like a kid in a candy store. All the books I could eat. But then something started to happen. To my blood/reading saturation level, I suppose. Instead of being inspired as I was for the first 4 years, I began to be depressed. If there are this many good books already out there, why the hell should I bother with mine? This book is a perfect 10 and in comparison, mine is a negative 3. I started to judge my rough draft against the edited, polished and published books I was reviewing. I couldn't take it bird by bird because I was watching all these bald eagles soar from their nests. Or some ornithological writing analogy like that. In short, I ran my own writing into a big, fat ditch and let it rot there. I burrowed deep into my left, critical, analytical brain and stood by as it beat my right brain's tender shoots to a bloody pulp. So. I quit.

Now I'm trying to let my preemie newborn draft breathe. I'm trying to make my reviewer/judging/critical brain take a nap and quit being so cranky. I'm trying to let go of word counts and deadlines and good vs. bad and other polarizing, critical brain desegmentations like that. And since I have, my little draft has taken its first baby step. Yes, it fell on its face and stubbed its toe, but it's getting up to try again. And this time I promise not to yell and scream and run away just as its learning how to walk.

(Shhhhhh! During nap time I might write an article. Or two.)

Gainful Unemployment

2009-03-01T07:44:00.006-05:00

I have never had a hard time finding a job.

Of course, the kinds of jobs I've wanted have included mopping the floor at Waffle House and scrubbing other people's toilets, but still. Work has always materialized when I needed it. I have never, ever found a job through the classifieds, but just peeking makes me want to fling myself from the closest window. Because my BA in Creative Writing does not qualify me to run a group home or sell insurance or assist in brain surgery. Nor do I want to be an office administrator for the Marijuana Policy Project (this job can be YOURS if you check Craig's List today) or supervise 37 kids for $8 an hour. No, my degree qualifies me for those really special jobs that usually don't get printed in the paper. Stained Glass Maker's Assistant. Cruise ship stewardess. Dude Ranch Cabin Girl. Freelance Writer.

When I got laid off from my desk job at the local alternative weekly last September I felt- in a sad way- part of an historic movement. The downsizing of print media. The big recession of late 0-8. The first job I was ever asked to leave. Historic, yes. Convenient, no.

Because answering phones and greeting people for 20 hours a week provided me with 2 invaluable necessities. a) Health Insurance and b) the unambiguous knowledge that I had "a job." If someone said "do you have a job?" I could answer them without having to think about it. If there was an argument in my home about who was actually employed, I was above reproach. Now- even though I'm writing articles here and there and teaching an odd ball assortment of classes- I don't always know the answer to any of those questions.

Do I work? Yes. I wash the laundry and then throw it in the general direction of the dresser. I scrub the dishes. I pack my son's snack and take him to school. Then I interview dominatrixes and try to come up with witty introductory sentences to reviews of their memoirs. I check facebook and debate about what, who and when to update my status. Then I run out and teach a class across town for an hour and a half, come back, cook dinner, decide not to vacuum and put my child to bed. Does that count? Yes. But is it succinct? No. And does it provide health insurance. Hell no.

Which brings me and every other writer/artist/musician/creative type I know to the same harrowing debate. Is it worth it to risk gazillions of dollars of unpaid hospital bills in order to stay home and fulfill our life's desire by creating art? After a moment of tortured reflection, I think yes. But is it worth it to put my child at risk to stay home and create my art? This one isn't so easy. This is the question that has tortured me for the weeks and months since I have been laid off. Because at the same time that the market is saturated with thousands of people looking for work, I have been picky. I have wanted health insurance, but I haven't wanted it at the risk of a mind numbing, soul eating, blood sucking vacuous 40+ hour a week job copy writing credit card ads. (Anyone out there who does this, hats off! I admire you for your stamina and power of will! REALLY!) But the very thought makes my insides shudder and wilt. I'd rather wear rags and learn how to plant carrots in a front yard victory garden than succumb to the likes of that.

So, today, as I apply for state funded health insurance for my son, finish my article about the teenage dominatrix and revise (again) chapter 2 of my book, I will for now, quiet the inner beast that has raged with doubt and confusion. We might not be able to go out to dinner, but tonight I will revel in the luxury of staying home and eating my words.

back again

2009-02-12T09:34:00.005-05:00

I want to thank everyone who bore with me through the throes of my "existential crisis" starting first and foremost with my husband. It's not exactly a compliment to learn that your spouse has been reevaluating every aspect of their life when you are one of the leading componants. So honey, sorry. I wouldn't trade you or the life we've fashioned together/stumbled upon/ earned thru blood sweat and tears for all the nightlife in NYC. Not in a million years. Just for a few days I forgot one thing. And that thing is gratitude. The cup half full, the miracle that my life ACTUALLY is when I stop and remember, the beauty of the details rather than the broad strokes of life. A spiritual mentor reminds me that our success is not measured by the mountain we climb but the pit we climb out of. And I'd dug myself a pretty deep pit back in the day. Some days I'm still digging.

Because the truth is I have a bevy of amazing, hilarious and good looking friends. I have the most beautiful son on the planet who says funny and entertaining things (that's Venus not Penis!!!) and then hugs me and says "I love you Mommy!" Today he even said, "Mommy, thank you for cleaning my room." Amazing! He attends a wonderful community based preschool that provides for a lot of interesting conversations and opportunities to participate in my son's education.

I have a husband who loves me when I'm wearing sweatpants.

It's easy to complain about living across the street from my mom and turn a blind eye to the baked chickens, raw carrot juice and ginormous emounts of babysitting that most neighbors don't provide.

And when I found out the other day that I didn't get the full time job I'd applied for, I rededicated myself to my book which has been simmering on the back burner for way too long.

In fact, I've begun working on it everyday and I'm beginning to remember who the hell I am and why I bother. Which I'd started to forget in the midst of the grind, the numbers and trying to make all that outside chaos add up. Because out there, the world might never make complete and perfect sense. But here on the inside, it's time to start writing.

Existential Crisises "R" Us (or Stephenie, can I please steal your brilliant title for this chapter of my life?)

2009-01-31T15:53:00.011-05:00

I'm having an existential crisis. By this I mean to say that I am not having a real crisis but one that is fabricated in my head. My family is healthy. We have food to eat. I am *sort of* employed. The credit card companies that call the phone do not ring the door. I do not live in a war zone or have AIDS or cancer and my family gets along in a better than average sort of way. None of us face jail time, impeachment or deportation. I do not have a foot growing out of my head.

But I'm still incredibly freaked out by the course of my life and the dreaded worry that I will not live up to my potential. I might die without ever getting on Oprah's book club.

I'm 33. I live in the house I grew up in. In the suburbs. I like to say it's not, but it is. My mom lives across the street. I've lived here for the last 10 years. It was supposed to be a short term layover between travels. But it wasn't. It was permanent. At least a decade's worth of permanent. I got a dog, a marriage, a mortgage and a son, in that order. Technically we're in a good school district and we have a fenced in back yard, all features which are supposed to make me not want to rent a one bedroom apartment by myself somewhere in a big city far away. I feel like the Paul Simon lyric: "I'm a wanderer. Not really, I've always lived in my parent's house...."

On a good day I remember that I am the luckiest woman alive to have a devoted husband and a healthy son, but on a bad day I feel like a choose your own adventure book that somebody forgot to keep writing. The first dozen chapters are action packed cliffhangers and then you reach this long section in the middle that just kind of goes on and on and on and on and on. There are trips to the dentist and the doctors and to grandma's house and the food court at the mall and the park and the playground and maybe to chuckecheese or the children's museum but the map is succinct and the paths are well worn. Grooved. Deep.

Enter Josh.

I am involved with a local nonprofit that brings people to Richmond to talk about the business and craft of writing. This week I had the good fortune to fly in Josh- a friend from my freshman year college writing workshop who has gone on to become a senior fiction editor at Viking Penguin. All told his trip was a less than 24 hour whirlwind of catching up on the last 15 years, eating over-priced fish, speaking brilliantly to the public about the future of fiction (him), trying to put out event related fires (me) and pretending, as a lifelong Richmonder, to be knowledgable about the history of Richmond while being sure to show off only the beautiful stuff, not the Walmarts and Burger Kings- on my side of town.

While, perhaps what I should be blogging about is all the briliant, witty and insightful stuff he said, what interested me far more was the alchemic reaction that occured within me as a result of his trip. In college, we went out once but he just wasn't cool enough for me to date. And by "cool" I mean he wasn't a pretentious, conceited budding alchoholic womanizer and hence not "fun" enough for me. In fact, I mentioned to him the "boy" I was obsessed with for the entire length of my college career and he said "You mean ---? That arrogant prick?" Yes! That's exactly who I mean! And I felt really sad for my 18 year old self who went for the mean guy who treated me like trash instead of the nice, earnest, sincere, friendly young man who treated me like an equal. Do I think my tale of woe is unusal? Not in the slightest. I think it's one of the most common blues a woman can sing. I think it's the other half of the Cinderella fairytale. I think it's a cliche. Which cheers and depresses me, both.

Did I accidentally get stuck in my hometown or is this a deliberate, educated, sophisticated choice that I continue to make everyday?

Have I sacrificed some sort of brilliant, world-changing career by getting married at 25 and becoming a mother four years later? Can I really blame my lack of worldly success on the fact that I have a child and live in the suburbs? (Hardly, but wouldn't that be an easy out?)

Do the soul searing effects of my bottom feeder self-esteem in college continue to effect the choices I make today?

I wish I could sum up this blog entry with a snappy come back to gratitude or a self-searching realization that makes it all worth it in the end. But I can't do that. Yet. I'm still a suburban mom struggling to come to terms with the choices I've made. And like another fabled cliche, if I went back through the chapters of my life knowing what I know now, would I make different choices?

I don't know. I haven't finished reading yet.

Bad Valley Lives

2009-01-22T14:56:00.000-05:00

Bad Valley has been very, very bad.
She has refused to keep you in the loop.

She lives in squalor, entertaining roches and the friends and families of roches. She drinks instant coffee, boiled like black soup from the microwave. She never grinds her own beans. She crunches raw ramen noodles, twinkies and red hot cheetos straight from their wrappers.

Bad Valley lives by caller id, doesn't answer the phone or return emails. Her inbox is full, you can't leave a message. She is too busy watching daytime tv and pasting cutouts of her head onto the pages of US magazine. Bad Valley eats apple pie for breakfast and drives even if she's just going around the corner and there are sidewalks.

Bad Valley has a perfectly good bike rusting in the shed.
Bad Valley doesn't recycle. She never takes the trash out on the right day. When she does take the trash out, she doesn't move the can out of sight after it's been emptied. She rakes her leaves but lets them rot in putrid little piles in the front yard, never bagging them, blowing them or calling the county to haul them away. Bad Valley forgets to eat the vegetables she buys and they go bad at the bottom of the refrigerator. Instead of washing her sheets she sprays Febreeze. She doesn't price check either. She just buys the first thing that catches her fancy. She throws away coupons and doesn't record her receipts. She has no idea what's in the bank, what's coming down the pike or how to reconcile her checkbook with a hill of beans. Bad Valley doesn't brush her teeth very often.

Bad Valley stuffs her clothes in her drawers rather than folding them neatly. Bad Valley doesn't know what's at the bottom of her closet, hasn't organized it in years, hopes that it will somehow-magically- take care of itself.

don't read this book----yet!

2008-11-20T15:26:00.003-05:00

So I finally have a 100% shi^&* first draft!
A friend I spoke with on the phone this morning was shocked I had accomplished the amazing feat of the terrible first draft- or any draft-- because of the nature & consistency of my complaints. That I'm getting nowhere fast. That writing sucks. That I have no discipline and just can't get it together. That nobody will agree to sit down and write my book for me.
But somehow-sometime- amidst my kvetching and canoodling I have managed to come up with some pages. Here and there. Around 150 to be inexact. They lack a consistent narrative drive, lots of threads go untied and I switch frequently between past and present tense. There are 2 or 3 paragraphs I would love to show anyone but all in all it is truly awful. At least it would be if it were a book. But it's not, it's a draft and for that reason I am THRILLED.
It was heartening last Friday night to hear Travis Holland- who just won the VCU first Novelist Award for his book, "The Archivist's Story"- say that he wrote 4 or 5 drafts before striking gold. And I'll never forget Jeannette Walls saying that she wrote the first draft of "The Glass Castle" in 5 weeks and then spent the next 5 YEARS revising it. I was in complete shock at the time and thought she must be an incredibly slow writer (yeah, somebody who covers celebrities for MSNBC would be a slow writer) and that couldn't possibly ever be the case with me. Now I'd be tickled fuscia to think that 5 years was my timeline and the NY Times bestseller list was my destination. Again and again I have to pull my mind out of the gutter of the publishing industry and the end product and whether or not Oprah will still have a book club by the time I'm 40 and just remember to concentrate on my task at hand. Writing. Another draft. Page by page.

This is what I want to know:

2008-11-12T14:25:00.002-05:00

How do so many writers publish such amazing, breathtaking, awesomely beautiful books when I have felt like a writer my entire life but the act of actually sitting down to write makes me want to tear my hair out and consider Harikari?

As a book editor, I am subjected to achingly beautiful, gorgeous writing on an almost daily basis and for someone who has been trying to write the same damn book for 33 years, this is-at times-akin to torture. How come they can do it and I can't??

To make matters worse, the authors I am blessed to read make their writing seem both effortless and inspired. Easy and necessary and sprinkled with profound insight. Like God spake and they merely pulled out the little pencil behind their ear and took dictation. God may be speaking to me but the wires are crossed, the connection is fuzzy, the phone is ringing and the dishes, the peanut butter cookies, my son and my husband are calling to me on a much louder frequency.

OK, enough complaining. OK, maybe not quite enough. Here's a little more. I actually have time to write these days but I'm using that time to worry about health insurance, paying the bills, cleaning the house, going to the gym, taking care of my mental health and updating my BLOG. Oh, and reading all of those books that are so very good, they make me want to cry.

is it possible to become a bestseller through osmosis?

2008-10-12T20:37:00.003-04:00

I must say that I just experienced the most star-studded week of my life- for a nerd like me. I'm not all gaga over actors or musicians (altho check back in if I ever run into zach braff, johnny depp, paul simon, leonard cohen, tom waits or any one of the Wiggles), but authors- good, brilliant, moving authors- really get my adrenaline pumping. The week started out last Monday night with a little known comedy writer named David Sedaris. Now, if ever there were a ROCK STAR of the book world, it is he, Mr. Morsel-of-Wood-Sedaris. I laughed so hard I felt like I wouldn't need to meditate or pray for a week. It was good, extremely left, irreverent, slightly foul humor that I oh-so-desperately needed to improve my blood flow, my marriage, and my faith in humanity. Thank you Modlin Center for scoring him TWICE even if he will never again grant interviews to lowly alt-weekly reviewers like me!

Next, Tuesday night, I sojourned to the ever-so-glamorous auditorium of Short Pump's illustrious Deep Run High School. The hassle of trying to park amidst the football demographic was totally forgotten and forgiven when Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez took the stage. She was beautiful, elegant, passionate and truly inspirational. It's too easy to say someone's inspirational these days, but I think Ms. Alvarez took it to a new level. Naturally some Henrico mom is trying to have her book banned...don't get me started...but Julia Alvarez continues to beat the odds. After escaping a dictatorship, immigrating to the US, learning a second language and trying to assimilate in NY and becoming an award winning best selling author she went back to the D.R. and built a library in the mountains, teaching all of the children and adults how to read while promoting organic coffee farming. I cried the whole way home because this is a woman who has never allowed her passion to die or dwindle, even while the odds were stacked against her.

So that was just the start of the week. Thursday through Sunday I immersed myself in the James River Writer's Conference at the Library of Virginia, meeting and schmoozing and hanging with and being intimidated by and forcing myself to try to act natural with any number of NY Times bestselling authors, screenwriters, magazine writers, agents and editors. I even moderated a panel loosely titled "Commercial v. Literary Fiction" with 2 editors from Algonquin, 1 editor from Simon & Schuster and an agent on the big ass stage with a microphone. Don't get me wrong, I love talking to people, I just don't love talking to people in front of a lot of other people while the whole conversation is being recorded. I was nervous as hell, made an egregious gaffe or two, but survived and lived to tell the tale. Just don't ask for details, because I don't remember them at the present moment.

Who knew that David Baldacci was funny? That people actually read the articles in Playboy? That Kate Jacobs practices dialogue by pretending she has 2 Barbies talking to each other? That Adriana Trigiani leaves General Hospital on because she read somewhere that dead people exist on the same wavelength as electricity? That Taylor Antrim could be "painfully attractive" while stringing coherent sentences together? By and large it was a productive, fun, stimulating, thought-provoking, butt-getting-in-gear kinda weekend. I was truly impressed with the masterful coordination and seamless execution of the event as a whole. I even found that I really liked a number of people I didn't think I'd like, and for someone striving to be less judgemental, that's a really good thing. There's truckloads more I could say, but my brain and body and soul and heart and mind and fingers are still digesting a lot of the information that came my way in the last 7 days. Here's to hoping the brilliance I swallowed will also recycle.

a mid monday morning evaluation of life in a list

2008-10-06T11:19:00.005-04:00

#1) Well. Big surprise. I still love not driving an hour a day thru rushhour to go sit at a desk. Who wouldn't? I like not packing a lunch in the morning. I like dropping by to get my books & mail, like the Hollywood Dad of the office. "Hi Kids! Here are some delicious homemade chocolate chip oatmeal bars. Love ya! Bye! Have fun working!"

#2) Yesterday my live-in Hungry Caterpillar Henry ate 2 bananas, a peanut butter & honey sandwich, a baggie of choc teddy grahams, 2 peices of turkey bacon, 2 scrambled eggs, a green apple, a granola bar, a handful of pepperoni, a chunk of turkey and a tupperware of tortilla chips. On second thought, maybe I'd better get a job.

#3) I am reading or preparing to read or skimming or plotting out or wishing I could plagiarize the last d. sedaris book, a fun, light read called "Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children & Parents," 2 books to prepare for the panel discussion at the JCC in Nov: Songs for the Butcher's Daughter & The German Bride, Alan Cheuse's "The Fires" (NPR critic we are thrilled to have on the Writing Show in Jan), Jancee Dunn's "Enough About Me" and...... a lot of illustrated books about planting pumpkin seeds and alligators living under the bed.

#4) I am thrilled to go see David Sedaris tonight, Julia Alvarez tomorrow night and attend the James River Writer's conference this Friday & Saturday, moderating a panel full of esteemed agents and editors.

#5) I just joined Face Book so it's going to take an iron will and a lot of chocolate or something to tempt me away from the freakin' computer and out into that crazy land called the real world. And I don't mean the TV show.

#6) I used to hate October. It used to mean the world was turning towards darkness and cold, the terror and insecurity of school and dorms and hopeless crushes, the onslought of a cold, endless, shivery misery. But now it's my favorite month of the year, so beautiful and fabulous and job-free. There's the State Fair and Halloween. There's the JRW conference and the Lib of VA literary awards. My son will turn 4 and my mother will turn 62. I will celebrate a personal anniversary that is more meaningful to me than my age or my astrological sign or the fact that I was born in the year of the hare, all of which are good and decent and affirmative in and of their own. I will celebrate no longer falling for jerks and allowing all of my fantasies to turn into techni-color nightmares. I will applaud "selling out" and "settling down" and not moving to a different state every time things got a little nasty, instead sticking it out and finding out what the hell my mother meant when she said to me all those years ago when I wanted to move from Alaska to the desert, "But Valley, the real journeys are inside of you."

the unemployment files, week one

2008-09-25T17:01:00.005-04:00

So far, I would say that unemployment is much closer to godliness than cleanliness. Having been gainfully un-employed for exactly one week today I would like to share with the world some of the joys of not working.

1--On Monday, my son and I baked pumpkin bread from scratch and have had it numerous afternoons in the guise of a hot-chocolate tea party. Yummmm. I have also learned how to make Bisquick Biscuits. Before today I didn't even know that I owned a rolling pin! Will wonders never cease?

2--I took my son to the library, this gigantic wonderland where all the books are free!! While I might experience a certain level of low grade depression about having to return books when I'm finished reading them, it's a blessing really. There's nowhere for an unemployed person to STORE all the damn books she reads anyway. I have had to purge my house of books so many times, maybe it will actually be less painful to return them little by little, when they are due. So that's a great free pleasure as long as you can convince your little library companion not to yell, squeal or launch himself off the furniture.

3--I helped Henry plant a carrot garden. Well, not exactly. I asked my dad if he had any extra seeds and then strongly encouraged my husband to help Henry plant the carrot garden. My black thumb has only gotten darker over the years, but Henry has developed an intense desire to garden that I really can't brush off. At least he doesn't want to own firearms (well, actually, yes he does) or join the McCain party or something horrible. So I just have to get over my fear of killing plants and help him with the damn thing. "I've never planted a garden before," I said while we were watering the carrots on Day 2 and he said "Well, I've never had a garden before either!" At night, after storytime when we lay down with him for sleep he says in a sweet whisper-voice, "I just can't stop thinking of my carrots all the time." Good night, baby planter.

4--I have spent an entire 30 minutes in the last 7 days working on my book. At this rate, I will be done by 2049... at the latest! Exciting developments, for sure. I have finished reading an excellent book on positive thinking, which has made being unemployed a lot less scary. I am still freelancing after all. I just don't have to drive anywhere to do it. God is good.

5-- I had a girlfriend coffee date that was 100% kid-free, was not frantically on the way to or from somewhere else and gave me hope of rekindling friendships that were blown to the side on the highway of the working too much mother.

Now I am quite sure that the Big Employer in the Sky will have plans for me soon, but in the meantime I'm off to see if I can whip up some yummy ramen noodle krispy treats.

Messages to Me with a Post Stamp from Heaven

2008-09-12T14:18:00.007-04:00

In the last week or so I have interviewed half a dozen authors and while speaking to each one it was like in the background, behind their voice, God-or somebody- said EXCUSE ME, VALLEY- LISTEN TO THIS!! THIS PART IS FOR YOU!! I will now share experts from our esteemed panels of heavenly messengers that came down to comfort the soon-to-be-jobless woman struggling to write her first book, yours truly.

My students are worried about their profession and I say you know, this is going
to sound unrealistic, but what I wish for you is not a career or your
profession, what I wish for you is that you connect with your calling. Whether
or not you ever become famous, spend your life doing what you love, what you
feel passionate about. There's a wonderful Mayan weavers prayer that they pray
before they start, because each [blanket] is different: Grant me the patience
and the intelligence to find the true pattern. And that's part of being a
writer. Being patient and honest to the process and giving it all you've got,
again and again. Without a stopwatch in your hand. Every piece of writing wants
one more revision than you want to give it. If you love the work, that's bigger
than your own ego. Julia Alvarez, author of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent" and "In the Time of the Butterflies"

I think of infusing the book with emotion rather than inspiration. Inspiration seems to suggest that you’re hit with a lightning bolt and angels come out of the sky and music plays, but for me it’s much more about the hard work and putting one sentence after another and developing it and working at it. Kate Jacobs, bestselling author of the novels, "The Friday Night Knitting Club" and "Comfort Food."

I always wanted to be an artist ever since I was a kid. I was
always drawing in the margins of my school books. Eventually I did a Graphic Design course then got a job in advertising. I hated it! They didn’t like me much either – I was sacked for incompetence (hard to do a good job if you have zero interest in what you are doing). I started to do freelance illustration for some publishing companies, doing pictures for
other people’s texts, then decided to have a go at writing a story myself. It was a poem called ‘My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch’. It was published in 1983 and I’ve been writing and illustrating my own books ever since. Graeme Base, the internationally bestselling children's author of "The Watering Hole," "Animalia" and the most recent, "Enigma: A Magical Mystery"

(Sorry Matt, your picture would NOT post!)

Question: Do you start with a word or an image?
It’s almost simultaneous and I don’t mean it for it to sound mystical because it’s the
opposite of that. It’s a lot of literally stumbling through and putting
words on the paper. Stammering around and trying to determine what I want to
say, a tug at the sleeve that this is what I want to write about.....
I’m constantly grappling at whatever it is I want to say. I’m astonished
by these polished poems after a dozen drafts. I would guess I write around 100
drafts a poem, because I’m such a slow learner. It starts with 12 pages of notes
and doodles that gradually get pared down and evolves into a poem. It feels like
sailing in the dark every single time I put pen to paper for better or worse.
There are lots of periods of confusion and exhaustion. Matt Donovan, author of the poetry collection "Vellum" and winner of VCU's 2008 Larry Levis Poetry Prize.

Each of these authors is coming to Richmond in the next few weeks or months and none of the articles I've written about them have yet been published. Email me if you want to know when and where they're coming. These are just examples of the words of wisdom I have inadvertently received as I step out of the workaday world and begin to more persistently grind away at my book!

The New Desk- Empty Again?

2008-09-10T07:16:00.004-04:00

About 2 weeks ago I finally got my own desk in the editorial department at the alternative weekly where I work. The phone has my first name and last initial programmed into its face. I have a bookshelf. That's my favorite part of the desk really- the bookshelf. Books are not an easy commodity to store if you don't have a bookshelf, so you can imagine my delight. I even tacked a photograph of my son fishing into the feaux-bulletin board that makes up the feaux-cubicle. When the publisher called me into her office last Thursday I didn't think much of it. I didn't think of the print crisis, the downed economy or the imminent and mysterious sale of our company. Why? Because I'm an optimist. I'm willfully naive. And usually I'm just too busy thinking about myself. So I was shocked that what she offered me, instead of a new freelance opportunity, was a lay-off and a severance package! This is the perfect occasion for me to admit that I have never been laid off or fired before, which some may say is a miracle held over from biblical times. I felt like such a grownup! And part of an historical movement- the downsizing of newspapers, the takeover of technology and the new millennium, etc. Just to be clear, they gave me a signed letter proving that my termination was not performance related or personal or about anybody thinking I wasn't cool enough or skinny enough or beautiful and wonderful enough or anything like that. And they want me to still freelance- perhaps more than ever. It's about not being able to pay for an extra body at the front desk. So, my feelings aren't hurt. Really, I think it's an opportunity for the universe to keep me at my word. I said I would be there for a year and it was 14 months, so God-or somebody- was like- remember what you said?? Your year is up!! Out you go!!! So, for the next two weeks I get to REALLY really cash in on some jokes like if I'm a minute late, "What are they gonna do? FIRE ME??" or if somebody asks if I want anything from CVS, I can say "YEAH! A JOB!" Ha ha. So. If you need a marvellously talented, brilliant, gorgeous new employee that you can pay a lot to work not so much (or you know someone else who does) tell them about me! Or tell me about them! Please, no waitressing positions at Waffle House. Been there, done that.

In the meantime, my dear co-worker is starting to organize a canned food drive for our family Thanksgiving- send the succotash! And now, excuse me, I have to go clean out that beautiful new desk.

My Other Life as Brangelina

2008-09-01T20:47:00.006-04:00

Once upon a time in a land far, far away (gotta love the New Jersey Turnpike!) I fell in love with a boy. He had golden hair and green eyes and a French/British accent. He reminded me of every classic arrogant heartthrob in the tradition of great English European literature. He was Goldmund, Dorian Gray and Mr. Rochester all rolled into one silk scarf wearing French accent having piano playing philosophy reading wine drinking hunk of a Euro-snob who would haunt my dreams for the next 9 years until therapy FINALLY started to take.

I loved him past the point of ridiculousness and excruciating humiliation. Of course, the whole time he happened to have a girlfriend who happened to be a model and work for the UN and be 6 feet tall and all that but I was much more concerned about what was wrong with me than what was right with her. Anyway, it was tragic. Yeah. I cried a lot and made a generous and abundant ass of myself. So of course, at the end of our freshman year, Golden-Boy came to stay with me at my lovely home in the suburbs of Richmond. He stayed in the Button Room by night (my mom's a button maker- professionally!) and we toured cemeteries and drank coffee at Steak N' Egg Kitchen by day. One of the high-lites of our trip was when I couldn't take it another second and said: "I love you ****" and he said , "You have a shitty car!"

Needless to say, that wasn't the end of our "relationship." It continued for 3 more years, but got a little bit less romantic as time went on. The last semester of our Senior year we didn't talk at all. After we graduated he called me a few times from overseas- once when I was playing scrabble with my then boyfriend, now husband. And more recently to tell me he'd married the UN model and that they'd had a 3 year old- a girl (the same age as mine- a boy) and another one on the way. I cried for 2 days straight after that- releasing him from my entire nervous/limbic/endocrine system- once, I think, and for all.

But alas, that's not the end of it! A few weeks ago, while vacationing with my in-laws at sunny Lake Norman (conveniently located on the outskirts of a nuclear power plant) I happened to indulge in a certain decadence normally reserved for dentist's: PEOPLE Magazine. Imagine my chagrin when I recognized the name of a particular Chateau in the South of France where Brad and Angelina decided to move and raise their small clan of natives. It was the very Chateau he had grown up in, that I'd heard stories about and seen pictures of. That I'd imagined I'd visit one day, if he had fallen madly in love with me and we had run off together and gotten married. Or if I was hitchhiking homeless thru France and one of his maids let me crash in the vineyard. Or in the chapel. Or in the recording studio located somewhere on those thousand acres. But that was not to be.

Instead, I was to read about the leasing of his family home in the tabloids, across an ocean and a continent and a sound barrier and a solar system. Across my own lifetime and much of his, still loosely bound by myth and legend and language, even if my name never was Jane Eyre.

2008-08-24T09:19:00.003-04:00

Having not blogged for the last 2 months I'm going to guess that I've lost the interest of my fan base (yes mom, that means you), freeing me up to say what I really think. Which unfortunately is nothing scandalous, just something basic: writing is hard. For me, doing anything consistently is hard. I can only do one thing at a time, especially if it's something good for me. Like eating right and exercising. Rarely do I manage to eat celery sticks for dessert after a big day at the gym- except for that one memorable day last July. Right now I'm not doing either, which leaves a lot of space for me to think positive thoughts- about how one day I will grow an organic garden and do handstands over my personal patch of okra in the backyard. For now, I'm working in the newspaper industry which is just booming these days- especially with the thriving economy and growing demand for print products (loads of job security and generous raises to boot!!), a broken muffler, bug sightings that would shock Gregor Samsa and the daily joys of raising a three year old. With this last, I do spare the sarcasm, for he truly delights me. Like right now he is demanding that I make a fort out of a folding ruler and 2 minutes ago he was in my lap begging me to make the world stop after a particularly nefarious spinning bout and 4 minutes before he showed me his paper with 2 large "O's" one large "E" and a squiggly line. What's that squiggle? I asked and he said "I don't know, it just looks like a wolf yelling in the snow." So he truly is a miracle, and no less a miracle is the fact that I've written anything at all in the last 10 minutes since I decided to tackle this beast of a blog that has been haunting me in its big empty, blank, dejected sort of way for the last month and 27 days or so. So once again I am at that place in my life where I have lots of excuses for not writing in the past, but the excuses for not writing in the present are growing shabbier and lamer by the nanosecond. Excuse me, I must go stuff a pillow up my son's shirt, but I must say, in a weird little way it feels good to be back.

more adventures of bad valley

2008-06-25T08:03:00.001-04:00

Bad Valley is on her third divorce in New York.
She lives on the 8th floor without windows or an elevator.
She can run up the stairs because she never gained weight because she never got pregnant and she never, ever lived west of the city in the suburbs.
Bad Valley has the names of her most prominent lovers tattooed on the small of her back. However she can’t quite keep track of them all, so she has them sign a guest book on the way out the door. Bad Valley lives next to the bus station. She eats breakfast at 7-11 or Waffle House or Aunt Sarah’s every morning. She eats chocolates and skittles for lunch and has a steak dinner with fried onion rings every night. Bad Valley does not go to bed at a respectable hour. She jay-walks and hitchhikes and goes to midnight movies and after hour clubs. She has a whole different group of friends from dusk to dawn, friends whose last names she never bothers to discover. Bad Valley sleeps in a different bed every night of the week. She does not use a planner. She does not know what day it is or which month, only the season and sometimes the year. Bad Valley runs away with the circus for a month every summer. She is very flexible. Bad Valley does not go home at Christmas and is not sure to call. She does not own flats or sneakers or snow boots. Bad Valley wears flip-flops and heels and impractical clogs. Bad Valley never memorized her social security number and keeps cash wadded up in balls under the mattress and behind the mirror. Bad Valley does not have savings or mastercard or visa. Bad Valley has an endless cash flow from an unknown source. Bad Valley is very, very good at cards. Bad Valley has a poker face. Bad Valley can shoot darts and play pool. Bad Valley gets tips even when she’s not working. Bad Valley has a pocketknife. Bad Valley has a bottle opener on her key chain. Bad Valley has over due library books that she’ll just go ahead and keep. Bad Valley does not adhere enough postage. She signs all of her letters with red lipstick kisses and dots of perfume. Bad Valley lies to the clergy. Bad Valley wrecks automobiles and gets tickets for speeding. But nobody makes Bad Valley pay because she is too beautiful and beguiling. Bad Valley doesn’t use coupons or drive to different grocery stores in search of sales. Bad Valley does not plan the future or think about the past.

introducing my alter ego!

2008-06-23T15:58:00.000-04:00

Bad Valley does not want to meet your mother.
Bad Valley doesn’t do windows.
Bad Valley does not take a multi-vitamin.
Bad Valley kisses boys on public transportation.
Bad Valley didn’t write her own vows but if she did, she wouldn’t mean them. Bad Valley only prays for herself. Bad Valley looks for a new apartment when it’s time to clean the house. Bad Valley lets the bills and the laundry and the dishes pile up and then stuffs them all big black garbage bags to be hauled away with the trash. Bad Valley has never filed state income tax. She eats nothing with artificial sweetener and at restaurants she orders cheesecake and French fries. Bad Valley drinks whiskey from the bottle and wine from the jug. She smokes unfiltered cigarettes from a skinny silver cigarette holder that has turned ashy black and is hot to the touch. She chain smokes in nature. Bad Valley never came back to Virginia, never sought a therapist and still speaks trash to her mother. Bad Valley doesn’t attend family reunions, write thank you cards or send wedding gifts. She does not get oil changes or state inspections or update her license plate tags. She never checks beneath the hood. She uses full service at gas station and tips with a kiss.

2008-06-12T17:23:00.003-04:00

Where, oh where, is my weekend away?

I am lucky enough to have a room of my own (quite a feat for a 980 sq. foot house that hosts a boy, a man, a crazy girl (me), a dog, a cat and 6 big, fat fish), but I've shared a nook with my 3 year old who has decorated as if he's a drunken painter marooned on a Mardi Gras float.

Not to mention my husband is drawn to my computer like a fly to shit. He can't help himself, God love him, the moniter is BIG and the leather chair is adjustable. And all he has is a shed, a mock-shed addition and a LA-Z-BOY in the living room that offers an endless view of Koi butt.

So. To put it mildly, I have begun to pine for some time to myself. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. Not even a day. A WEEKEND!! A WEEK!! GIVE IT TO ME!!!

OK. I've calmed down a little. But after all this time strapped into my home-work-wife-mother-worker seat like a good little girl I am bursting! Give me an itinerary, a flight time, a roomate, nasty plane food, a map, a visor, a window seat, a destination, a boarding pass!

Of course nobody on God's green earth has kept me home but me. For Chrissakes, I'm a Cancer- I've wanted to stay home the last 9 1/2 years!

But maybe something in me is finally ready to go on that silent retreat, that writer's conference, that yoga/meditation/kundalini/swamibeyondananda getaway.

I spoke with a woman on the phone today who made it sound so easy. She's gone to writer's retreats for weeks at a time-- for the last 8 years. Since her daughter was 1. And she hasn't imploded. She hasn't lost her identity with her baggage. Her husband and child still speak to her. And right now she's on tour with her book.

Maybe I'll start small. Like if there's something for 2 days. In Virginia. That's free.

If you find it, sign me up and tell me where to go.

why didn't i like the nice boys in college?

2008-05-30T10:05:00.007-04:00

Unfortunately, my freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, I was not terribly interested in the special manner of learning that the school could provide, the extensive opportunity to be near NYC, the internships, the clubs and coalitions, the special interest groups or the opportunity for close relationships with my professors.

No. I wanted to party. I wanted sex, drugs and rock n' roll~! (Well, if Leonard Cohen counts as rock n' roll.) I didn't even know it, but the truth- or at least part of the truth, is that I was out to educate my Id. And it did my thinking for me.

I suppose that's why after taking the subway into the city to see Grace Paley it was so easy to let go of the nice boy who'd taken me out. He was studious, sincere, authentic and sweet. I was not. I was deeply invested in finding just the right guy to break my heart. Which I did.

And so, just around the time I accepted my third or fourth waitressing position post-graduation, that nice boy of yore became the Senior Fiction Editor at Viking Penguin.

And he's still nice. So nice that when I called him last year to get an interview about the state of the publishing industry in 2007, he reminisced with me as if I were nice too.

all about me

2008-05-28T17:47:00.003-04:00

Finally there is an article all about me!

Of course, all I think about is me, so an article about me is my favorite kinda reading. Join my fan club, and read the article about me, here at Richmond.com. Oh, it's so endlessly interesting. I wish that all of my articles from now on could be all about me, too. Of course they already are-my thinly veiled view of the world- wrapped up in someone else's ideas, thoughts, words. But what I hear, how I hear it and what ends up on the paper, is of course, really just more about me- disguised as someone else.

In all seriousness, you really should read about me. I'm so fascinating. This little preview will whet your tongue and get you revved up for my book, due out in no less than 10 years, which is of course, also about me, (plus an additional 200 pages.)

First of all, I want to thank Catherine Baab, the literary figure writer-abouter at Richmond.com for recognizing my amazingness and choosing to interview me. Catherine is an excellent writer whom I first met when she won 2nd place in the Style Fiction Contest in 2006, for her story, "The Last Reader." She also recently won the Best Unpublished Manuscript Contest sponsored by Richmond Magazine for her novel, "I Love You I Get Good Grades," for which I was also a judge. No connection or relation, purely subjective coincidence, as is all good judging.

Secondly and lastly, I would like to thank my mother and my father for working so hard to make me so great. They let me fall and rise again and they handed me their faults and their blessings on a big, endless platter, over which I still have free reign.

in case you haven't heard....

2008-05-23T07:56:00.004-04:00

......the next big thing on the literal and proverbial tips of everyone's tongues these days is open marriage. Also known as polyamory, not to be confused with polygamy.

This is a true case of having your cake and eating it too.

In the last week I've received press releases about 2 books on the subject- "Open" which is a memoir about a woman's open marriage and "Opening Up" which is more of a how-to guide, offering stragegies for such horribly difficult subjects in a 3 or 4 or 5 way such as time management! (Opening Up looks interesting, but I'm afraid the publicity dpt. missed a really great opportunity with their image. There are a mere 2 hands being held! Where are the others? Isn't that what this is all about??)

In any case, yesterday, amidst all of the editorial buzz about Jenny Block, our very own former Style freelancer having written her memoir about open marriage, I had the opportunity to interview her. It was a brief interview only because it got farrrrrr tooooooooooo interesting for me to contain in the short preview word constraints confined me to. (I will write a longer peice for the end of June after I've had a chance to actually read a few of the books I'm writing about.)

Jenny couldn't have been nicer or well, more open. But as much as I admired her and can't wait to read her book, I am equally disturbed. And this is how it should be. This is why her book is practically a bestseller before its even been published.

I mean.... MARRIAGE yall!!! I happen to have one of those myself! We are coming up (next week!) on that proverbial SEVEN YEAR.....what? Itch? Yeah.

It seems that even reading this book or even thinking these thoughts is opening Pandora's box, which ain't always a bad thing. Hell, maybe I'll give Stan the book for our anniversary. Until next time, with love.

HOT SHORTS

2008-05-17T07:37:00.005-04:00

211 submissions.

9 readers

One Valentine Richmond History Center Garden

A fruit salad tree

3 talented 20 something-men

a few crazy people

horseradish, meat

and me

And so concludes my fourth season with the style weekly fiction contest.
We did shorts this year- short shorts, flash fiction- daisy duke style.
They were the most fun submissions to read.

To me, they are the most fun stories to write.

Perhaps most interesting however, is how strongly people reacted to the whole event.

Some people have simply never heard of flash fiction. And it made them angry. I guess it's like if we had a contest for the most efficient, modern vehicle and the guy who showed up on his horse had never heard of a car.

One fearless emailer compared this year's fiction issue to an episode of How I Met My Mother. I'm flattered because I am a fan of the surreal, and that is definitely one big fat jump off the deep end.

Other people were deeply hurt by the superlatives or perplexed by the instructions.

Welll, I guess we shook things up a bit, rocked the boat, deviated from the norm, defied expectations and created a new normal.

We can only hope for so much excitement next year.

READ (AND LISTEN TO) THE STORIES HERE

2008-05-09T20:42:00.004-04:00

Hello Anybody and Nobody;

I haven't written on my blog in one and a half eons because I'm actually trying to write my book. And check me out, I didn't even put quotes around book this time! Between writing about Richmond's social scene for the Style display-ad department (maybe we'll dissect that irony later), taking bizarre spiritual movement classes for my Belle column, interviewing people who paint ceilings for homestyle, trying to keep track of the plots (or lack thereof) of 14 1/2 books at a time for book reviews, author interviews, vcu first novelist judging events, etc and et al, I just don't have the time I used to. Actually, I didn't used to have the time either. I just fell into time backwards and it carried me for a while.

But! Thanks to my dear friend who is 1/3 agent, 1/3 professor, 1/3 scooter riding hellion, 100% writer and all woman, I now have a plan!!

Last Sunday we sat down on her couch and broke it down.

9 manilla folders.

5 color-coded sticky note pads.

Italy,

New York,

Colorado,

1205 Hillside Avenue,

Arkansas,

road trip,

Alaska,

train ride,

1202 Hillside Avenue.

At last it is beginning to coalesce.

Maybe it is becoming what it already was.

In any case, I am looking for 2 days and a free hotel to carry it there just a little bit faster.

Work History, 16-21

2008-05-03T20:59:00.001-04:00

installement 1

Sixteen

I think in a past life I was an Amazon warrior, but now I waitress at Waffle House. I have to wear an apron with my name embroidered on the lapel and an ugly brown bonnet, that's really a visor. I try to slip it off when Bubba, my manager, is in the back, but usually he's watching me through the one way mirror. When the phone rings I have to say “This is Valley. Thank you for calling your friendly Waffle House.” It makes me gag. Mostly I wait on dead beat dads and the widowed old people of the city who want to look at another human face after they've finished their meal.
This place never stops, but there are some dead zones, like between the lunch and dinner rush. That's when everyone gets stoned in the back. Doris smokes through her tracheotomy and yells at the rest of us to shut the hell up for staring. The job I hate most, next to mopping the bathroom, is refilling the monster sized salad dressing containers and mixing together the chunks of ketchup, relish and mayo. Thirty-five pounds of Thousand Island dressing is so wrong. To me it looks like puke, but I got in big trouble for saying that.
Sometimes Carter rides his bike over to visit me, and then I take the visor off whether Bubba is looking or not. Usually when he comes, he tells me stories about his band or the death games he's been playing in the woods with his friends. Sometimes he brings me a cup full of butterscotch chips, my favorite. Carter says to find anything worthwhile in this world, you have to go out there and get it and that he's planning on going to get his in May.
Bubba gets mad at me for talking to Carter and taking my visor off but I tell him, you don't want me to mention the back room to anyone do you? And then he shuts up. Besides, my hair will not fall in the food. It is just my best weapon against growing old and ugly in this diner that never quits.

i didn't blog because of the plagues, i swear

2008-04-22T07:29:00.004-04:00

The 10 Plagues of the bad Blogger

1-- 194 style fiction contest entries descended on my head.

2--The rain has decomposed the literary nature of my (soil) (sole) (soul)

3--I've been trying to find the right amount of postage necessary to mail my letter to G-D

4--Instead of giving up yeast, I've given up words

5--The cat ate my keyboard (well, he did throw up near it)

6--MIT professor Dan Ariely's new book "Predictably Irrational" has forced me to write an

article about it.

7--The plague inbetween death of the first born son and boils is writer's block

8--When I took the Continuum class called "The Body as Sacred Ground" I accidentally tilled, aerated and hydrated my brain.

9--It's more fun to sit in the backyard eating Hebrew Nationals and chocolate cake.

10--My dominant hand was hidden in the couch cushions with the afikomen, but nobody found it.

2008-04-08T21:48:00.004-04:00

Truth
Heralds

Endings

Bitchin'

Literary

Aeronautical

Critques

Kickbutt

Sink

Wrong

Answers

Never

Stories

I have been in a writer's group for nigh on four years. It is better than a baker's dozen chocolate eclairs AND a teenage boys idea of sex. It keeps me afloat when my thoughts have turned against me and are ready to attack. It is like going on a treasure hunt in a foreign land with exotic travellers every single Tuesday night (except for those long, dry spells when you thirst and ache for that clue and that map, that finally, from heaven, appear.) It is a way to restore faith after hearing on the radio about all those boys being blown to bits across the sea. It's an idea, a story, a prayer, a blessing, a window into the other worlds I didn't own 2 hours before.

vall

2008-04-01T20:37:00.004-04:00

Exhibit A: Michael Parker

Exhibit B: Michael Parker wearing my hat!

Yes, VALL is the first 3 of the 33 letters in my name, but no, for once, it's not all about me. VALL happened at the Empire Theatre last Saturday night despite divas, demons and divorce (not really, i just had to come up with a third d). now that i am on the board of the jrw, i know more than a journalist should and despite all training of the last 4 years i shall remain mum as to the behind the scenes goings on as decency requires.

however, i will talk about the first story read, which as it so happens, was also the last story chosen. chosen at the 11th hour, as it were. under duress as it were. "Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony and Life Experiences in the Song 'Ain't Going to Bump No More No Big Fat Woman'" about a song by Joe Tex by the author Michael Parker is a story i had read twice before hearing it performed at VALL and I was just as happy to experience it a third time. particularly as this reading/performance/night drove home for me the fact that I am quite sure I know Michael Parker. If he did in fact attend UVA and is currently a creative writing teacher with dark hair and eyes as his bio suggests, i am led to conclude that he must be the michael parker that taught me FICTION at the UVA Young Writer's Workshop in 1991 when I was 15. It must have been him! It was!

OK. thank god for my scrapbooking days but damn those circle cutters. i found a picture of michael parker wearing my hat!!! See Exhibit B! (That's me with the wild bangs in the hippie shirt, bottom left). this was a helluva rambler, but see, I had a point! I just forgot what it was! Check out his collections of short stories and novels..... "Virginia Lovers," "If You Want Me to Stay" and "Don't Make Me Stop Now." Also do yourself a favor, and read "Ain't Gonna Bump No More..." in ... well i don't what the hell it's in... i swear it was in a best of the south but go find it yourself... you'll thank me later.

this is one monkey you gotta meet

2008-03-26T21:35:00.004-04:00

To be honest, I haven't gotten quite so excited about someone else's life for a long time. When I first glanced over the press release for “The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist’s Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics, and Other Consciousness-Raising Experiments," I basically puh-shawed (verb usage?) And then I came to. (Press-releases send me into a 30 second stupor before I am able to resume normal brain function.) I read a few sentences. And then a few more. And then I couldn't stop! Which led to this beautifully written passage that now graces the editorial department's cutting room floor:

While reading his book, my work and my co-worker’s work suffered. I couldn’t stop compulsively reading, shrieking or quoting aloud passages as I delved deeper into the jungles of this man’s ridiculously adventured life, populated by the who’s who of the modern spiritual world against such backdrops as India, Brazil and Jerusalem.

Then I got to meet the guy. And he's so unassuming! He's not arrogant or prickish or loud or any of those things you may have come to fear in a writer, if, like me, you spend some time around writers (Or gurus for that matter. I'm not referring to YOU of course.)

Come to find out, he's spent over a year in our fine, charming, cosmopolitan town and has not yet met ANYBODY!! He has friends all over the globe and a lovely wife, etc. but he's been pretty much a hermit around these parts and so I graciously offered to help him step into the limelight of the South via the alternative weekly vehicle, Style Weekly! So anyhoo, read my article HERE. And come with me to hear him read at Chop Suey at 1317 West Cary Street on April 6 at 3pm. It'll be a swingin' good time.

Here's another little gem that got the axe:

But for all of his spiritual tomfoolery, the undercurrents of “99th Monkey” are serious, historical, and even monumental. Sobel’s moment with the Dalai Lama is transcendent; his homage to Auschwitz is sacred and his quest to understand the horror instilled in him as the child of a child of concentration camp victim is key. As a chaplain at a university hospital he helped people.

jesus' lap looks so full

2008-03-24T20:14:00.002-04:00

Like every good Jewish girl, I love Easter.

Hunting for hollow chocolate bunnies in the bushes, rainbows of jelly beans buried in plastic eggs, flourescent yellow sugar chicks laying upon their beds of plastic grass. Just like what Jesus had at the last supper. So this Easter, we went to visit my mother-in-law (whom I love dearly. this is a disclaimer for anything that comes next.) Like all good Jewish girls, I married a Baptist boy, ensuring that our son would grow up to have just as big of an identity crisis as me. Sunday, after an anarchy filled egg hunt and a cartoon about the resurrection we took our boy to the nursery with his Baptist Grandma while we headed upstairs to catch the Sermon. Sadly, the sanctuary was already filled to capacity and we had to leave. Yes, we had to miss the 13 live baptisms on the docket for the day- unlike 2 years ago when my "Sex in the City" cellphone ring added a new dimension to one man's religious induction. We could have squeezed into the adult education room with the rest of the overflow and watched the service on video, as we were invited too, but we have standards. We are not McEaster nuggets. We walked up and down the streets of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood (wishing desperately that more Jewish people would move to the South and open some coffeeshops that weren't closed on Sundays) before returning to Church to wile away our time in the Bethany Room. There, Stan, who like all good reclusive-skater-intellectual-freaky types went to a Nazarene College in Boston, read to me some of the more interesting passages from one of the many Gideon Bibles, lining the shelves.

Such as this from the book of Judges:

But Ja'el, the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, till it went down into the ground, as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

Hmph. Well. Yeah. Happy Passover ya'll!

exhaustion is a 4 letter word.

2008-03-19T22:47:00.004-04:00

this is what the inside of my planner and the inside of my brain look like tonight at 10:58 pm:

deadlines

line edits

publications committee preschool silent auction

calendars out the wazooky

spring social scene-- a beast I tell you!!

gym (well, at least i walked in)

board meetings (wait a minute- am I a grown-up??)

taxes

law suits

collection agencies

playdates

easter eggs

birthday parties. for people who haven't reached their double digits. lots of them.

bed

laundry laundry laundry

dishes dishes dishes

life and death

returned phonecalls

all the unreturned phone calls

subsequent guilt

disturbing dreams

dead sleep

carb heavy sugar laden breakfasts

caffeine

coffee

caffeine

coffee

a lite lunch salad

parking garage

energy bar

god

please

prayer

please

17 cool kids

2008-03-13T20:55:00.006-04:00

So I wrote the "16 under 16" piece for Style this year honoring 17 kids ((15 + twins) that have made an impact on the community. Tonight was the event and it was even more inspiring than most events with kids that are intended to be inspiring. Dr. Bill Bosher was the speaker. As a lifetime on and off resident of Henrico County I have heard this man's name and seen his big smiley white mustached, bow-tied head shot at least one million times since kinder garden. He SORT OF looks like a mix of Colonel Sanders and Santa but he was a lot funnier and friendlier and more laid back than I expected a man with that many credentials following his name to be. He said he'd known his wife since he was in seventh grade and she in sixth. He thought she was the prettiest girl in the school and she thought "this boy needs help!" = they were a perfect match.

And then came the kids. They were all so ADORABLE (not to be condescending!) and kind hearted and enormously smart and more accomplished than a lot of us much further along in our double digits. I'd had the pleasure of interviewing each of these seventeen in February and had already fallen in love with every one of them. It was neat to see them with their families, dressed up, in front of a podium, accepting their honors graciously, shyly, with pizazz, humility and just a tiny tad of tomfoolery. Their parents were teary, beaming, immensely proud and grateful to have their kids recognized and honored in this way (aren't moms and dads the wind beneath all those little wings?). I mean, we were at the Virignia Historical Soceity. CBS 6 Evening News was there. The publisher and a local news anchor (I'm sorry, never caught his name, can't remember who, but Mr. Personality) read the bios and gave the awards. It was cool to hear my words read from a stage. Maybe I'll become a speech writer. Then again, I probably won't.

And of course, during the program, I had to reflect on my own childhood and early teen years. The coulda woulda shoulda didn't oh wells what the hells. The i'm glad I did that-but not that and the if onlys and thank gods and might have beens. The fights with my mom and my defiance and sneaking out and experimentations with substances not legal for my age group and the bleached blonde hair and the occasional bad case of the F-its. And then I think about my three year old and where he'll be in those tender painful raw middle high school years fraught with potential and danger and possibility. What stages will he walk across or trip on or soar above? Will we applaud as he stands and catch him if he falls? Yes of course we will. But please God, don't let him be like me!

It's an astronaut....it's a playboy bunny....it's Dan Mathews!

2008-03-11T20:42:00.004-04:00

He's hot. He's wild. He's gay. He's into animals. Did I mention he's hot? He's also hilarious as hell and he's coming to Barnes & Noble on St. Patrick's Day. He's best friends with Pamela Anderson and he likes to go to jail naked. He's been in a psychiatric institution in Paris, lectured at Harvard and covered himself in fake blood at KFC. "Committed: A Rabble Rouser's Memoir" is very funny, endearing, absurd and brave. I had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Mathews on the phone for about 30 minutes last week, and not only did I laugh throughout our entire interview, I laughed after we hung up and I went to bed laughing. I woke up laughing. I laughed writing the article, and then later, reading it. THANK GOD I have a brilliant copy editor who caught the extra "T" I snuck into Mathews (altho, that's the first thing that hit me after I quit laughing). You might not think a guy who cares so much about ermines and bats and minks and rats and stuff would have such a sense of devil-may-care humour, but you'd be wrong. And the funny thing is, (IF YOU EVER FIND MY BLOG, DONT READ THIS PART, DAN) I still want to eat fried chicken and meatballs (not together) and I'm not throwing away my college friend Walker's grandfather's leather coat or my Danskos and yes, I'm one of those who would rather take a week's vacation at the IRS than look a slaughter house in the eye, but I will definitely THINK about it all differently. I will. Thanks for putting the funny back in the t00-disgusting-and-vile-to-consider, Dan. Maybe my kid will see the world differently too.

In any case, whatever side of the fur fence you sit on, you still gotta read my article in STYLE !

crusade

2008-03-09T22:14:00.003-04:00

I have distributed posters before, for various and sundry open houses and festivals, but never with such finesse and panache as I managed today. I was a poster hanging genius! I channeled my super powers by way of my passion for the mission- the Style Weekly Fiction Contest!!! On previous poster hanging details I have been the messenger without much of a message. At least not a personal one, hitting so close to home. Now I deliver poster as if my near future depends on it- because it does. I will be reading the stories that these posters illicit and I want them to be good. I want them to be plentiful. I want my fiction cup to over-floweth.

Judging stories in the past has been a dubious pleasure. If ever YOU submitted a story, yours is not the I'm talking about. Yours was great! I'm talking about those others, the ones that made me want to peel my eyelids back, take my temperature, call the po-lice, push the button, prepare for armageddon, crawl back into the womb, play the record backwards and wait for Satan to speak.

Please, God of Posters, don't let my foray into Panera and Starbucks and the Book Room and Superstars (of course not Ukrops- it's Sunday, silly!) and Book People and BIG BOOK SALE and Barnes and Noble be for naught. Submit something; give me something good. And hear this Barnes & Noble: Even tho you're conveniently located and have a train table and make a good latte, I'm not just "some lady from Style," I am "the lady of style" and I hung my poster even tho you said I couldn't! In your face! Well, I sorta propped it up there inside of the Style rack. But still! Sock it to the man!

talk a story to me

2008-03-06T20:31:00.004-05:00

I don't often blog about mother-son relationships (except on the HESH Files which is woefully far behind) but he and I are now in the early stages of an evolving oral tradition that is sure to live on in our family until everyone dies out, turns gay or the republicans start the apocolypse.

As a girl, my dad always tolds stories about gangs of silly monsters who took over our house while we were away and at bedtime he read Uncle Remus and Uncle Wiggily stories (are those 2 brothers or what?) My mother read me the Wizard of Oz, A Walk in Wolf Woods and other epic, mythologically relevant books but the only story I really remember her making up for me on the spot was: "Once upon a time there was girl named Dory who had a brother named Rory and a dog named Bory. The end." (any similiarities to people living or dead is not pure coincidence and should be taken as a sign ((change your name immediately))). (Bless my mom's heart. I'm sure she told me 8,564 imaginative stories and the only one I remember is the one with zero story line and rhyming sibling names. But that's the glory of momhood, eh?)

Anyway, story hour at the Haggard home begins with Henry saying "Mommy, talk a story to me" and I say "what about" and he says "about a blue baby bear named Henry Quinoa who falls out of a tree and lands on his back" and I say "oh god" (under my breath of course,) and then I begin. Henry Quinoa, our fair hero, is always a

bear/llama/lion/horse/squirrel/pig/cow/cat/dog/mammoth

of a different color, named after our first born son and his favorite pseudo-cereal, quinoa. He always has super-human-super-animal abilities, is completely anthropomorphic and can fly. He is 60 feet tall and likes to set out into the unknown without his Mommy or his Daddy (Joseph Campbell, you have nothing on us!). He likes to pack berries and cheese sticks in his backpack and help small children get to the top of the slide. He climbs to the top of the tree to trade a raisin with a bird for a white feather and then, right before he reaches the top, he falls down down down to the ground and that's when he learns how to fly.

the Big Ass Book of Crafts vs. Archeoastronomy.

2008-03-04T19:22:00.005-05:00

Yes, these were my two features in Home Style for March.

"The Big Ass Book of Crafts," written by Mark Montano (a real life TLC celebrity!!) is totally rad. Mark is a designer on "While You Were Out" and hosts "10 Years Younger" (which I have watched in closed captioning while sweating on a cross-trainer in a perhaps futile attempt to never be one of Mark Montano's guests- at least not on that show.) ANYWAY, this is an awesome craft book, not in a Martha Stewart way, meaning you don't have to spend $400 just to think about a craft nor do you have to wear ironed jeans as you weild your glue gun. There are lots of wacko, fun, cheap ideas and the coolest thing is that Mark has done them all himself and is excited for you to do them too. Plus, he's cute, NOT TO MENTION he will be in Richmond on March 8 (THIS Saturday) at Tinker's furniture upholstery signing books from 2-4 pm. Read my article/blurb about it HERE. (Side note. Crafts are not really a super-great idea for me, personally. I have tried stained glass, basketweaving, pillow making, scrapbooking, crotcheting and collage. While these things are fun, the products i have produced are not so pretty and all of the supplies take up a looottt of closet space. Also, I have mainly done these things as a way to avoid writing, which is a bad, bad idea. But that's just me.)

Followed naturally by Sun Drawings & Archeoastronomy. This was one of the most interesting interviews/articles I've ever done because it really stretched the meagre fiber of my brain. We are talking science, physics, alchemy and ARCHEOASTRONOMY (a term I had never even heard before 2 months ago)!!! This is not my forte, but it was so interesting I couldn't turn back. I'm not going to try to recreate the explanations I managed to peice together in my article, because you can read them HERE, but let's just say this stuff is high-tech and beautiful. Janet Saad-Cook, whom I tracked down for an intuitive tarot reading (she is a very talented psychic- multi-task central!) has built her Sun Drawings all over the world. She has been hired by NASA. She works with astronomers. She acts like the sun is a good friend, and for her, it is. She has in a sense, lassoed the sun. At least she knows how to work with it and turn it into bright colors and make it dance. And that, my friends is pretty cool.

recycle my paper ridden soul

2008-03-01T07:04:00.004-05:00

I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I feel my life is spinnnnnnning out of control. Like when there is not one clean spoon left in the house. Like when Style Weekly moves to 1313 East Main Street, Ste. 103, Richmond, VA 23219 and disconnects the phones and computers while I'm trying to write the calendar for 2008, when my husband keeps his 12 foot windsurfing pole in the bed and starts painting the living room on a Tuesday, when my cat walks across the printer, printing random HP test pages, when NONE of the tupperware lids fit the containers, when we are considering selling the house and renting an apartment in the fan, when I don't know what my purpose is or why I even need one, when my ex-boyfriend appears on the back of the Yellow Pages. (Listen to these existential bourgeois problems!! I should be so lucky!)

Anyway, the other day, I put a dent in the insanity by...........recycling. Ten bags of junk mail, rejected drafts, used envelopes, press releases, half finished never to be sent letters, receipts, scraps of things, grocery lists, remnants of my brain, feline HP test pages, I even recycled the aforementioned phone book. I admit, I am a paper whore. I am a stationery addict. I am a book-o-phile. And I can measure my level of serenity by how often I remember to beat the mean green recycling machine to my driveway at 6 am on a Thursday. And it's not often. But when I do, it's a major purge, like confession on the highest of holy days, the ultimate spring cleaning, a saging of the pulp ridden soul. And now the little recycle bin by my side looks so clean, so pure, so virginal. It won't last long.

the romance, the break up and the apology: about which she knows nothing!

2008-02-28T07:52:00.005-05:00

This is a photo I took at WomanKind, February 2006.

So yesterday, Style printed my diatribe about not getting the Anne Lamott interview the last 2 times she's been in town. I wrote one just for me the first time and then elaborated and compounded for the second. But, when I read it in print it sounded a lot more whiny and pathetic than I had intended. Why would she want to interview with me anyway!? Not that it's her that makes those decisions. That's what publicists are for. Anyways, you can read my article, entitled "She Loves Me Not" HERE.

Get out your hanky.

what i read in alaska

2008-02-26T19:05:00.002-05:00

This was my ship, and that is a whale.

In Alaska I read "Pride and Predjudice," my first ever Jane Austen novel. I lusted after Mr. Darcy and feared that I wasn't as spirited and rosy cheeked as Elizabeth and would never get the chance to run breathlessly across a moor.

I read "Gulliver's Travels" and felt like the at times huge at times tiny traveller of strange and foreign lands.

I read "Hero With a Thousand Faces." Isn't that pretentious? But I was really really trying to make sense out of the Hero's Journey, particularly those journeys upon which the hero repeatedly encounters a whale.

I read the prose-poet W.S. Merwin, particularly those prose-poems involving icebergs.

I read Poe's "Annabel Lee" because Avo the deck-hand had set it to music and kept singing it to the elderly guests after dinner.

I read a select few traditional Hebrew prayers because my mother sent them to me.

I read "She's Come Undone," the Wally Lamb novel about the obese woman who goes through therapy.

I read a Chinese poem about ghosts and drowing that the Chief Steward gave me one day in a card, with a rose.

a lotta angels & a lot more words

2008-02-24T16:34:00.003-05:00

Yesterday around 3 pm, Henry and I headed into the fan for a lively afternoon of blue grass music and children's literature at Narnia Bookstore. The word "Narnia" alone made Henry laugh. I'm ashamed to say I had never taken him there before. We've already been gifted with about 1.34 billion children's books, not to mention I still have most of mine, so selfishly when we look for new books they are usually for me. Also, bookstores are trouble because of their high risk potential for spending way too much money. But this was a perfect excuse to risk taking out my wallet and adding to the boy's massive book collection.

Patricia Keeler, the step-mother of my genuine scraped-knee blood sister from kindergarten's was in town from Hoboken, NJ to sign her newly illustrated book, "Thank You Angels." A nice 4-some of staid looking 50 somethings played a guitar, a cello, a mandolin?? I don't know my stringed instruments!!! But I recognized a lot of the good music and soon a lot of kids and some moms and stragglers were doing a sort of stomp dance jump clap fest in the middle of the floor. Henry's favorite activity was eating the angel-shaped sugar cookies on the refreshment table and then demanding me to read him board books pulled at random from the shelves. We bought a copy of Patricia's book and I immediately recognized the name of the author: Doreen Virtue, PhD, because she authored a particularly good set of Goddess Tarot cards I used to have.

So this was all nice and fun, but the crazy part (I guess it's not really crazy considering we're talking Richmond) was the people I knew who showed up! It was wonderful of course to see Ida and her new-ish husband Ben (more about them later) and Sabot families I used to know and local author/actress/director Irene Ziegler, and Ingrid Mercer and Gail Shookoff (sp?) who took Ida and I to Water Country USA every summer for like 8 years even tho I didn't get a chance to even say "hi" because I was over reading a Cheerios Action Book in the corner , and then.....(drumroll).....Carter Graham walked in! Just last week I'd had this astral travel/vacuuming/muppet movie dream about him and had tracked down his address to send him a blow by blow along with an invitation to maybe come for dinner sometime and meet my son. I don't think I'd seen him for about 3 years. But since we were both there, I just went ahead and told him my dream and introduced him to Henry- they did the high 5-guy thing- and then that night, when he got home, my card was waiting.

So this morning, Stan, Henry & I had brunch with Ida and Ben: french toast, ruby red grapefruit juice, turkey-bacon, strooooong coffee and red grapes. What a great time! Ida, a former poetry professor now writes a newsletter for a museum/garden place in Wilmington, Delaware where they moved for Ben to work at House Industries as a "type designer." That's right, Ben has Master's Degree in Fonts. He received it somewhere in England, but I already forgot where. I asked him what he does all day working at a font company and he said he stares at letters (and answers tech support calls)!! Isn't that WILD?? I thought so too.