The Divining Wand

[ Among the many books she's written, Jessica Barksdale Inclan (Intimate Beings, The Beautiful Being) has most recently focused on The Being Trilogy with Being With Him releasing in mass market edition on September 7, 2010. According to the author, "This is a story of two people who have felt different and "other" all their lives, who manage to find each other. And then the fun begins!"

Soulmates united in writing....and in life? For Jessica is getting married on September 25th and she'll be a real bride this time, despite her initial reservations. In today's special guest post, the author shares the wisdom and joy of being a mature bride.]

There is the bride-to-be, standing on the platform in the bridal salon dressing room. She’s nervous, being yanked into a bridal gown. The attendant uses various clips and hard tugs to get the floor sample to fit. The bride’s mother sits in the corner of the room, beaming. She’s overjoyed, thrilled for her daughter.

The daughter turns, faces the mirror, the dress looks lovely, but what is wrong with this picture? If only she didn’t have all those wrinkles. And what about that bra? Will it hold up everything? Her seventy-two-year old mother nods, so glad to finally be able to take on the supportive mother role. It’s a bit late, of course, but at least it’s finally happening.

Five months ago, that bride-to-be was me. Though I am a “mature” bride at 48, I decided to give a bridal shop a go. I was just going to look around, and then I would head over to Nordstrom and get a regular dress.

My first wedding in 1985 was a too-late-for-a-shotgun affair, my boyfriend and I driving up to South Lake Tahoe for a “Church of the Many Delights” quickie wedding, while my mother babysat our nine-month-old son. I’d worn something I’d found on-the-rack, and there had been no bridal shop, no invitations, no shower, no gifts, no nothing. We got married, stayed at some Nordic-themed roadside motel for the night, and drove home and into the next twenty-three years.

Everything about this second go round is different. My fiancé Michael actually proposed. He put my engagement ring in my stocking on Christmas Eve, and then in front of all our four children and my mother, popped the question when I found the small blue box. He was down on his knee, asking for my hand. And I said yes because this time, I’m ready. This time, I know I’m right. This man is the man I will spend the rest of my life with.

For the first time in my life, I have a bone fide engagement ring. My first husband and I had been broke beyond broke back when we were 23, and we bought our wedding rings at a discount department store. Now, I have an actual diamond.

Proposed to, engagement ring, and then a wedding dress.

So I found myself standing on the dressing room platform, feeling sheepish as the lace went over my head. How stupid is this? I thought. This is ridiculous and wasteful. What would my college students think if they saw their English professor up here on this silly platform?

But then as I turned to face the mirror, I saw myself as a bride for the first time in my life. The white flowing dress meant that the day would be special. My mother smiled, I laughed, and I knew that I didn’t want to go to Nordstrom. Maybe I’m mature, maybe I’m slightly pruned from time, maybe I will never be a featured bride on Say Yes to the Dress, but I wanted a wedding gown. This wedding gown. So I bought it.

Even though a wedding seems an event for younger couples, my fiancé and I have invited 50 people to ours this September. We have registered at Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn, making lists of things that we should and could buy on our own. After all, what do we really need? Michael is fifty-five, and both of us have been around the block a few times. We are not setting up a house. We’ve already had two households and merged them into one when we bought our house in Oakland, California last year. We don’t need to prepare for children—the children have flown the coop, all of them in their twenties.

But because that is what’s done, we did it, walking around the stores with that fabulous little scanning gun. We’ve ordered invitations. We’ve hired a wedding planner, a caterer, a cellist. We ordered a cake. My friends have organized a small shower.

Well meaning friends tell us we should find a charity to have guests donate to in our name. “That’s what mature couples do,” I’ve been told.

Miss Manners would be appalled by other suggestions. One of my friends told me we should ask for donations toward our Barcelona honeymoon in lieu of gifts.

We will just keep our lists. I really do want that baking set from Crate and Barrel.

Aside from my fiancé’s actual proposal, the image I will remember most is being on that dressing room platform, looking at myself in all my maturity but finding myself lovely nonetheless. I’m making a bold leap, getting married again. I’m giving it a go, and doing it in a way that seems final, permanent, full of hope. I’m dressing up toward that hope, wanting all the good things that all brides want, no matter what age. It’s my turn now. I can have a happy ending.

Announcement: The winners of Katharine Davis’s A Slender Thread are Ruthie and Sarah Pekkanen. Congratulations!

Please email diviningwand (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and Kate will send out your book as soon as possible.

[How well do you know your friends? Do you know them as well as favorite fictional characters? In today's guest post Tanya Egan Gibson (How to Buy a Love of Reading) reflects on how by reading and knowing characters, we're motivated to close the human "gap" of getting to know and understand the truth of real-life people. ]

At the beginning of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway says he wishes for “no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.” He’s had enough of confidences from people he barely knows; he doesn’t want emotional involvement with strangers. But F. Scott Fitzgerald did, I believe. I suppose every writer of fiction does.

I write because other people are a paradox—essentially like me (human), yet essentially unknowable. I stare at strangers on line in the grocery store and want to know their stories. Does that T-shirt with the dancing cat on it mean something to her, or is it something she threw on? Is that last-minute candy bar purchase a happy treat or a guilty pleasure? Is she glancing at her cell-phone to check the time or to wish a call into happening? Her doctor? Her boss? Her child? Her lover?

Does she love someone? What does love feel like for her? We all want to be loved. But loved how? What feels like love to someone else doesn’t necessarily feel like love to me. I want to know what her love feels like. This is where and why the storytelling starts for me, this what if?-ing. To bridge the gap between myself and other people, I make them up in my head.

There’s always distance between people, even those we know well. I imagine a Zeno’s Paradox of Relationships where the space between us and those we care about is halved with every interaction, every effort, every disclosure–a gap that shrinks but never quite disappears. Most of the characters in my novel, How To Buy a Love of Reading, suffer from loneliness because they give up on other people, believing that nobody can ever understand them. (A little gap seems just as daunting to them as a big one.)

It isn’t just other people’s unknowability that plagues them; it is their own fear of being unknown. Hunter Cay, a sixteen-year-old bibliophile and substance abuser, is desperate to be seen for who he is–to be read accurately. He looks like he has everything–he’s handsome, wealthy, and idolized by his friends and his friends’ parents alike. But he makes it impossible for anybody but his overweight, unpopular, book-hating best friend, Carley, to crack open his “cover” to read his true “text” (and accept the unexpected story she discovers therein). He chooses the fiction he reads and the fictions he constructs about himself over real life because in the world of pretend there is no gap. You can be the character.

As much as I adore fiction, and as much as I turn to it to make sense of life, and to be entertained, and not infrequently to be comforted, I don’t think the real-life gap between real-life people is a bad thing. The mystery of other people draws me to them; the slow unveiling of another human being is a beautiful, mesmerizing dance.

In the end, I care about people more than characters–even my own. It’s easy to fall in love with characters, especially those of your own creation–they do what you want them to, they lay their souls bare, and (you can imagine) they understand you completely. The unreal is addictive because bonding with characters requires no emotional risks. (Hunter fantasizes about the authors of the books in which he buries himself, making up scenarios in which they befriend him in bookstores and bars, but when he is confronted with two real authors who want to help him, he is unable to be real.) Characters are easy; real people are hard. And what is easy is rarely most worthwhile.

I can’t imagine a life without stories. But fiction, I think, is a means, not an end; a prescription, not a cure. It suggests that peering closer to people is a good thing. It promises that we are not alone, that the universality of the “gap” can, paradoxically, bring us together. It is a “privileged [glimpse] into the human heart” that inspires us to read real people more closely, more thoughtfully, and–I hope–with more care.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of Katharine Davis’s A Slender Thread in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Katharine Davis and A Slender Thread. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[Katharine Davis (East Hope, Capturing Paris) -- like all authors -- gets ideas for her writing from everywhere at any time. In today's guest post, however, she explains how a chance encounter evolved into her latest novel, A Slender Thread.]

I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my novels. Capturing Paris, my first book, came from a dream I had about a woman glimpsed in the Paris subway. My second novel, East Hope, came from a short story I had written years before. But, from time to time, I wondered about the main character in that story. What if Caroline had succumbed to Pete’s advances in the story, instead of coming to her senses at the last moment? That fateful act would change everything.

Often stories or novels evolve from asking the “what if” question. What if the husband leaves his wife? What if the single woman wants to adopt a child? What if the boss falls in love with his assistant? The possibilities are endless.

Now try to imagine eight women around a table in a museum restaurant talking about a photography exhibit. The women, most of them in their fifties, well dressed and accomplished, are enjoying themselves. They comment enthusiastically on art, current events, books, movies, and their own families.

Yet, one woman says nothing at all. She is visiting from the West Coast, and she is the college roommate of one of the guests. She looks no different from the women around her. She has a loving husband, has raised two children, and has had a successful career in real estate.

Except unlike the other women at the luncheon, this woman has a rare brain disease. Her name is Anna and she can no longer speak. When it is time to order lunch the woman next to Anna asks her if she would like the chicken salad. Anna nods in agreement. She still understands language, but eventually, as her disease progresses, she will lose her ability to comprehend anything at all.

Two years ago I was a guest at that luncheon. I met Anna, a woman very much like me, but a woman whose life had begun to unravel in a way she never expected. I was writing another novel at the time, but every day when I sat at my computer to work, I kept thinking of Anna. I tried to imagine what this tragedy was like for her husband, for her children, and for the many friends who loved her. Here was a vibrant woman in her prime who could not utter a word.

I didn’t want to tell Anna’s personal story. I don’t know her family, or even her last name. Instead, I began writing a new novel and A Slender Thread was born. It is the story of two sisters, the elder of whom is diagnosed with the same disease, Primary Progressive Aphasia.

How do we find the strength to cope in the face of adversity? How do we start over at mid-life? Are we capable of change? Do we ever truly leave the past behind? How do we communicate? Are words enough? Is love enough? These were the questions I asked myself while writing A Slender Thread. Over the next year that chance meeting became a novel.

One warm afternoon last spring, I found myself thinking about a summer I had spent in Florence, Italy when I was twenty-one years old. I had stayed at a small hotel, more of a bed and breakfast, and I remembered the Italian woman who cooked and served the lunch. I also had the vague recollection of a very old English woman who lived in a shabby room on the top floor with her ancient husband. I knew immediately I had the germ of a novel. I began to picture three women in Florence, three different nationalities, three different ages, but all living together in the same little inn. Why were they there? What did they fear? What did they hope for? The questions keep coming and the scenes are already forming in my head. So yes, I’ve started another novel. Best of all, I think I need to travel to Florence for some necessary research!

Book Giveaway: This week Kate Ledger has graciously offered two “signed” copies of Remedies to the winners of a random drawing from comments left on this specific post, Kate Ledger and Remedies. A comment left on any other post during the week will not be eligible. The deadline for this contest is Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT and the winners will be announced here in Thursday’s post. IF you do enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.

[Kate Ledger, in her debut novel Remedies, tells a brilliantly complex story of physical and emotional pain. In today's guest post, she explains how an initial fascination with medical knowledge led her on a ten year writing journey to an even richer, deeper, more painful subject requiring a remedy. ]

I’d always wanted to be a fiction writer, even as far back as my childhood. But in my mid-20s, after a graduate program in creative writing, and with no livelihood in sight, I did a little freelance magazine writing and then began a fulltime job at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, writing for publications about medicine and research. It was a fascinating job. I sat in on all kinds of surgeries, visited the labs of world famous scientists, and had the chance to talk with people who were making great advances and new discoveries.

The truth was, I enjoyed the job, but I missed writing fiction. After a few years, I left to become a fulltime freelance writer, which I imagined would make time for the novel I’d always wanted to write. I had new and very rich material to draw on from my experiences writing about the medical world. Over the years, I’d met many doctors and researchers who’d developed astounding and helpful treatments for patients. Some of those treatments even defied the scientific thinking of the time. As I pondered the core of a novel, I wondered: what about a doctor who believes he’s discovered a cure for pain?

That was the launching point. I began to read about pain. I interviewed several people who suffered daily from chronic pain, whose lives had been completely undermined by mysterious ailments. I interviewed pain specialists about the treatments that exist. But the burning question, and what really intrigued me, was about character. What kind of person would believe he’d discovered a cure. even if he had no proof, beyond what his patients told him, that it was helping them? What would that person be like? I began writing about a doctor, Simon Bear—a passionate man full of ideas and ambitious plans—who believes he’s stumbled across a cure for pain. I imagined he would be confident, even to the point of being overbearing, but that he would be devoted to healing his patients. But as Simon’s character began to evolve, I wondered why he was so committed to his patients’ pain. I realized he was focused on curing others because he wasn’t able to address his own pain. At that moment, I realized that, in fact, I was writing about a marriage. The miraculous cure for pain wasn’t a thing in and of itself, but an onerous stumbling block to Simon’s most intimate relationship.

Choosing to write from the point of view of a forty-seven year old man was incredibly liberating to me as a writer. It meant imagining a world wrenched from my own anxieties and concerns—and I was free to make Simon both overbearing and insecure, wistfully in love and incapable of making the right decisions without feeling inhibited. I wasn’t sure about some things—for instance, I didn’t know: Are forty-seven-year-old men with established careers still concerned what their parents think of them? (I began reading books with middle-aged male protagonists, and also asking around, and it turns out, yes, they are.) But I also made the decision to tell the story of this painful marriage simultaneously from Emily’s point of view. I felt the two perspectives would give real insight about what’s going on in this house. And I have to admit, as different as I am personally from Emily—she’s proper, super-confident and very defended—telling a woman’s point of view created a familiar zone for me within the book.

But the most profound leap for me came the day I realized the source of their terrible pain. In this sense, the book evolved from a cerebral place—thinking about characters and their circumstances—to a place of deep emotion. The process surprised me, but I think this is typical in writing a novel. You have a story, and you write and you write, until you realize what, exactly, you’re writing about. At this point, I’d written about Simon and Emily for several years; he was finding the miracle treatment, defending his decision to give it to his patients, and in each iteration, his character and Emily’s were growing more and more layered. When I’d begun writing the novel, I was still dating the man who would become my husband. A few years later, we’d married and had children. As I pondered Simon and Emily’s pain, I asked myself a question that felt daring: what was I most afraid to put on the page? What words was I most afraid to see? The answer came to me immediately. As a new mom, I was most afraid of losing a child. Once I’d thought the words, the feeling they evoked was so overpowering, I felt I had no choice but to write about it.

I teach novel-writing these days. I tell my students that a good place to begin is with something that absolutely fascinates them, something that’s always gripped them, or that they keep wondering about. That’s your toehold on the mountain. But you’re on a journey as you write, and you keep asking questions, and keep feeling your way forward. You try to be ready for what you encounter.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of Kristina Riggle’s The Life You’ve Imagined in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Kristina Riggle and The Life You’ve Imagined. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.

[As she did with her debut novel, Real Life & Liars, Kristina Riggle writes with soul about family and friends coming to terms with change in The Life You've Imagined, being released August 17, 2010. And, in today's guest post, she shares the personal inspiration for the book.]

This is what I remember most about my dad starting his own business: him sitting in a basement office space with a city directory open in front of him, cold-calling strangers to sell his lawn care service.

Since you don’t know my dad, this is probably unremarkable. But my dad is shy.

And if you’re shy, too, you know how hard it is to talk to strangers about the weather. And here he was, calling up strangers in their homes to sell them something. And the stakes were high. If he failed, there went our family’s livelihood.

Meanwhile, my mother – raising two children and already working full time to support us – would spend her evenings doing the accounting for the family business.

I wasn’t consciously thinking of this as I sat down to write The Life You’ve Imagined, but it must have been lurking in the back of my mind. The story revolves around four women connected by a dying family business, in this case a convenience store called the Nee Nance Store.

No matter how much you love your job, if it’s not your company, it just isn’t the same. You can’t have that ownership and pride, nor is the fear of failure ever quite as great. And the odds are stacked against small businesses, certainly. As a reporter I’d done many a story about a new business venture. The owners would show off their shiny new spaces and equipment, bubbling over about how their store was unique and special. And more often than not, I’d drive by later only to see an empty, dark storefront.

My dad’s business beat those odds. He just retired in January after twenty-one years. And it was my dad’s company – plus the support of my mom, without whom he never would have made it — that finally pushed us firmly into middle class instead of hovering over the poverty line.

How did the business affect my sister and me? From middle school on I was also a receptionist when I got home from school. I’d have to answer, “Riggle Professional Lawn Care” or at least, “Riggles” when I answered the phone, and then professionally and courteously take down the message, even if someone was honked off about too much crabgrass. (My dad used to joke that I should answer, “Riggle Towers, how may I direct your call?” as if we were in some shiny office complex, as opposed to our little brown house.) I also had to begin processing the incoming checks every day, to make it easier for my mom to enter them into our books every night when she got home from a long day working at the bank.

But my small contributions to the family business were nothing compared to my characters in The Life You’ve Imagined. Maeve and her daughter Anna lived out their lives behind the front counter of their store; the operating hours of a convenience store meant that they were almost always working, and had scant privacy.

For Maeve, who was stuck with the store after her husband took off, the Nee Nance was a necessary evil: it was income and support for her daughter, and the only job skill she thought she had. For Anna, it symbolized everything she never wanted, so she took off for the big city as soon as she could. But as the story opens, she finds herself back home again.

This isn’t the only family business in the story. Anna’s childhood sweetheart, Beck, is heir to the Becker Development fortune. The contrast between their two lives growing up was something else which imprinted Anna with a desire for something better than what she had. She’s going to have a new relationship with Becker Dev, now, as it turns out that the other son, Paul Becker, has just purchased the Nee Nance Store’s building….

I’m lucky in that my family’s business story wasn’t so dramatic. But I know now, with adult perspective and as a parent myself, how terrifying those first years must have been, and how every economic downturn must have left my parents wondering: Is this the year we fail?

Labor Day is approaching, a time when we applaud the everyday working Joe and Jane. I’d like to take a moment to cheer for the family business, for the proprietors who have the guts to chase a dream. In fact, do more than just cheer, give them your business. Like Anna and Maeve, they might just be hanging on by their fingernails…

Book Giveaway: This week Julie Buxbaum has graciously offered two “signed” copies of After You to the winners of a random drawing from comments left on this specific post, Julie Buxbaum and After You. A comment on any other post during this week will not be eligible. The deadline for this contest is Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT and the winners will be announced here in Thursday’s post. IF you do enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.

[Imagine Julie Buxbaum (After You, The Opposite of Love) being afraid to share her insight, honesty, and humor in writing! It's true and -- in today's guest post -- she not only confesses but explains how/why her "transformation" to being an author took place.]

I’m pretty sure there are only two kinds of writers in this world. The ones who spent their childhood dragging around piles of journals and their free time actually writing, and the ones like me, who for years only wrote in their heads. The biggest difference between the first and the second, I think, besides using paper, is that the first embraced what I like to call their inner writerdom, while the latter succumbed to the fear. When an option, fear seems to suit me.

For those of us who fancy ourselves writers, but have never written anything (and I was one of those people for a very long time, so believe me when I say I’m not judging) there is nothing more terrifying than the blank page. The idea is so terrifying in fact, that we choose to ignore it altogether and pursue alternative means of spending our lives. For me, I ran from the page by going to law school, and spending four years as an attorney, where I could fill pages by regurgitating case law, slewing together other people’s sentences. And only in the dark hours of night, or sometimes in the shower, would I write for myself, rearrange words until they meant something, only to get lost by morning, or when I put my foot on the bathmat, as if writing was some sort of dirty secret. Ah, it’s amazing what fear can do.

In college, my roommate took a fiction-writing course, and because I was too scared to share my work—no worse, I was too scared to create any work—I didn’t take the class, but read her syllabus again late at night, as if it was something to be shameful of. Neither did I turn my love of reading (and my distaste for numbers) into a major. Nope, again the fear kept me away and I embraced Philosophy, Political Science, Economics (Economics, really?), anything to avoid having to put my own thoughts, my own words onto paper. And still the paragraphs would line up at night, march into order, where I played with them, as if they were a game, not a way of life.

The funny thing is that when I finally embraced my identity as a writer, quit my job and plunged head first, I suddenly wasn’t scared at all. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I really, really hated my job, but I like to think that I needed to do all these other things first to know I was ready. Come to think of it, maybe there are two kinds of writers in the world. The ones who are born ready, and the rest of us who need to struggle just a bit first before we can face that terrifying blank page.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of Alicia Bessette’s Simply from Scratch in a random drawing to anyone who comments only on this specific post, Presenting Debutante Alicia Bessette and Simply from Scratch. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winner to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.

[When Alicia Bessette (Simply from Scratch coming August 5, 2010) responded to the Revealing Q&A of, "What are your 5 favorite songs," she said:

For someone who craves music like it’s oxygen, answering this question is impossible. Impossible! Instead, could I offer some songs off the “soundtrack” to Simply From Scratch? They’re all performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips:
“Didn’t You Know (You’d Have To Cry Sometime)”
“Every Little Bit Hurts”
“Every Beat of My Heart”
“All I Need Is Time”
“Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye)”
For more information on the connection between Simply From Scratch and songs by Gladys Knight and the Pips, please visit The Divining Wand on Tuesday, July 27, and read my guest post.

Today is the day and Alicia is true to her word.]

Matt and I both believe in singing in the car. A few winters ago, we were on our way to a friends’ house in Pennsylvania, driving up I-95, singing along to a new soul mix Matt had made for his iPod. We belted out tunes by Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Marvin Gaye.

Then a song came on that I’d never heard before. Though I wasn’t familiar with any Gladys Knight and the Pips songs besides “Midnight Train To Georgia,” I recognized her velvety voice. She was singing, “Why, why don’t you make me the woman you go home to, and not the one you leave behind? Not the one that’s left to cry, and die?” And the Pips echoed her, “Why, why?”

So pleading, so spurned.

Just like something I had written that morning: a passage about a woman who missed her deceased husband so much that she stood back and watched her kitchen nearly burn to the ground around her. I didn’t know it then, but that scene would eventually become the first scene of Simply From Scratch⎯and that grieving woman would become my narrator, Zell, short for Rose-Ellen.

In the car, Matt hummed along, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel as Gladys promised, “Total acceptance is all you’ll get. Knowing this you won’t ever regret finding yourself homeward bound.”

Matt glanced over at me. “Are you crying?”

I looked out my window, at the trees whizzing by. “Shut up.”

“You’re totally crying.”

“It’s a sad song, okay?”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “That’s why I love you.”

I told him about the scene I’d written that morning: the firefighters tromping through Zell’s house to douse the flames; the friends who came to check on her; her nine-year-old neighbor, who announced her desire to become a celebrity chef; and Ahab, Zell’s greyhound, stalwart witness to everything.

The song ended. Matt pushed repeat and quoted Robert Frost: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” We listened to “Make Me The Woman You Come Home To” again. I got teary again, and then we both laughed as I tried to reapply my mascara without jabbing myself in the eyeballs.

The next day I downloaded about twenty-five songs by Gladys Knight and the Pips and grouped them together in a special mix on my iPod. Almost all breakup songs, but their sentiments paralleled Zell’s whirlwind emotions: Didn’t you know you’d have to cry sometime? Every little bit hurts. Every beat of my heart. All I need is time. Letter full of tears. Neither one of us wants to be the first to say goodbye. It should have been me.

And on and on.

The songs are about pain, loneliness, unfairness⎯all things lamented by the brokenhearted.

All things lamented by grieving widows, too.

I listened to those songs exclusively while I wrote Simply From Scratch. One day I was in the grocery story and heard “Midnight Train To Georgia.” My response was Pavlovian: I stopped my cart in the middle of the cereal aisle to scribble a new scene on the back of my grocery list, using a box of Puffins as a writing surface. The line, “I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine” spoke directly to the heart of Zell’s grief.

And yet, Simply From Scratch isn’t about grief. It’s about moving on. Like the music that ushered my writing process, the book contains joy as well as sadness, friendship to make solitude bearable, small good moments to balance out the dark ones.

Zell listens to Gladys Knight and the Pips when she draws her medical illustrations. She’s got her own particular bittersweet reasons for loving that great music. Doesn’t everybody?

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of Claire Cook’s Seven Year Switch in a random drawing to anyone who comments only on this specific post, Claire Cook and Seven Year Switch. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winner to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.

[Bestselling, prolific author Claire Cook (Seven Year Switch, Must Love Dogs, Life's A Beach, and the rest in Bibliography) is everywhere. Whether featured in print newspaper's, magazine's, or on online publication's "must read" lists, Claire's novels of being the best you can be resonate with a universal readership. And to think she's become this popular with seven books in ten years. Yet why not? After living life with a buried dream, she finally "Just Did It!" by pursuing her dream of becoming a novelist. In today's guest post, Claire describes her successful journey -- one that we all can achieve too.]

I write because I can. I’d love to be a musician or a painter, but writing is the place where my urge to create and my ability intersect. I think we all have that place. For some, the trick is finding it. For others, it’s all about having the courage to live the dream.

I’ve known I was a writer since I was three. My mother entered me in a contest to name the Fizzies whale, and I won in my age group. It’s quite possible that mine was the only entry in my age group, since “Cutie Fizz” was enough to win my family a six-month supply of Fizzies tablets (root beer was the best flavor) and a half dozen turquoise plastic mugs with removable handles.

At six I had my first story on the Little People’s Page in the Sunday paper (about Hot Dog, the family dachshund, even though we had a beagle at the time — the first clue that I’d be a novelist and not a journalist) and at sixteen I had my first front page feature in the local weekly. I majored in film and creative writing in college, and fully expected that the day after graduation, I would go into labor and a brilliant novel would emerge, fully formed, like giving birth.

It didn’t happen. I guess I knew how to write, but not what to write. Looking back, I can see that I had to live my life so I’d have something to write about, and if I could give my younger self some good advice, it would be not to beat myself up for the next couple of decades.

But I did. At the same time, I pretended I wasn’t feeling terrible about not writing a novel, and did a lot of other creative things. I wrote shoe ads for an in house advertising agency for five weeks, became continuity director of a local radio station for a couple of years, taught aerobics and did some choreography, helped a friend with landscape design, wrote a few freelance magazine pieces, took some more detours. Eventually, I had two children and followed them to school as a teacher, where I taught everything from multicultural games and dance to open ocean rowing to creative writing.

Years later, when I was in my forties and sitting in my minivan outside my daughter’s swim practice at 5 AM, it hit me that I might live my whole life without ever once going after my dream of writing a novel. So, for the next six months I wrote a rough draft in the pool parking lot, and it sold to the first publisher who asked to read it.

My first novel was published when I was 45. At 50, I walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the movie version of my second novel, Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. I’m now 55, and my seventh novel, Seven Year Switch, is off to a great start, with beach read shout outs from USA Today, The New York Times, and the New York Post. I sometimes take a deep breath and remind myself that this is the career I almost didn’t have.

So many readers have approached me after book events or emailed me through my website, ClaireCook.com, or messaged me on Facebook or Twitter to share their buried dreams. They tell me that my own journey has been an inspiration to them. I love the idea that someone reading this right now might take a minute to think about dusting off her own dream.

Seven Year Switch is the story of a single mom whose husband ran off to join the Peace Corps. Seven years later, he’s ba-ack – proving he can’t even run away reliably! If there’s an overarching theme in my seven novels, it’s that each of my main characters is trying to reinvent herself. I think that’s what I bring to the table from my own life, and I think it’s something most of us face at one point or another. Here are some tips to help you find what’s next for you.

Self. You can’t have self-awareness, self-confidence, or any of those other good self words until you decide to like yourSELF, and who you really are.

Soul Searching. Sometimes it’s just getting quiet enough to figure out what you really want; often it’s digging up that buried dream you had before life got in the way.

Serendipity. When you stay open to surprises, they often turn out to be even better than the things you planned. Throw your routine out the window and let spontaneity change your life.

Synchronicity. It’s like that saying about luck being the place where preparation meets opportunity. Open your eyes and ears – then catch the next wave that’s meant for you!

Strength. Life is tough. Decide to be tougher. If Plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters (204 if you’re in Japan!)

Sisterhood. Connect, network, smile. Build a structure of support, step by step. Do something nice for someone – remember, karma is a boomerang!

Satisfaction. Of course you can get some (no matter what the Rolling Stones said.) Call it satisfaction, fulfillment, gratification, but there’s nothing like the feeling of setting a goal and achieving it. So make yours a good one!

[Time can be elusive. One might think that living in a small southern town -- as opposed to a big city -- that the pace would be slower and offer more time. But, in today's guest post, Keetha DePriest Mosley [formerly Reed] (Culinary Kudzu: Recollections & Recipes from Growing Up Southern, More Culinary Kudzu: Recollections & Recipes from Growing Up Southern) explains that even she’s had to learn to create and embrace life’s moments.]

It’s funny about living in a small town, and loving it so much, because when I was younger, I knew Manhattan is where I would live. I would have a sophisticated job and buy flowers from the little carts on the way home. I’d live in a loft and go to art galleries and whatever else it was sophisticated people did. I was going to be fabulous.

I realized – in time – that I could be fabulous right here in Mississippi but finding time, or, rather, making time to do what I really wanted to do was a challenge.

Years ago I read an interview withPeyton Manning. He was asked how was he so successful. One of the things he said was that he used his time. If he had five minutes to look over chemistry notes, he didn’t think, “I can’t possibly get anything done in that time so I won’t try.” He used those five minutes.

I’d heard that advice before. Heard it and ignored it. It was easier to say I don’t have time because I didn’t have a big, pretty block of two hours to write in. I had a messy, jumbled up, untidy, scraggly looking 12 minutes here and four minutes there and that’s not nearly as appealing.

But it works. I find that writing on demand, when an unexpected time opens up works pretty well. I do it fast, without thinking about it and kind of sneak behind my inner critic’s back. I’ve surprised myself by coming up with some decent stuff during those times. Ideas, sentences, topics.

That keeps me busy but it’s a good busy. It always surprises me what I can get done in fifteen minutes.

My mother once said, “You know? Nobody thinks they have enough hours in the day but people tend to do what they want to. If you really want to do something, you’ll figure out a way.”

Finding time is a challenge. Everyone is busy. I don’t know anyone who isn’t. I read a quote once (I love quotes) – I’m paraphrasing – but it was something like, Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have the same number of hours in a day that Benjamin Franklin, Mother Theresa, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Thomas Jefferson had.

A friend of mine told me once that she thought self-discipline is remembering what you really want. I have those words typed out where I can see them every day.

So now I write every day. I’m working on a novel and about halfway through with it. It may well be dreadful – that’s okay. I’m treating this as my own personal intense fiction-writing workshop. By the time I write to the end of it, I’ll know much lot more about crafting a novel than when I began. My second one should be better, and the third one even better.

I almost said that writing fiction is hard. Then I remembered a quote I read by Richard Ford. A Mississippi native, Ford won a Pulitzer. He said that digging ditches is hard. Standing for eight hours in an operating room performing brain surgery is hard. Writing is not hard. I think about that when it feels like it’s too much, that pulling the threads of a story together is too out of my skill level.

Making up stories is the best. I do it all the time. Driving to work, a car will pass me with a man in a business suit. And he’s singing away. I imagine he’s listening to opera. He and his wife’s first date was to opera production in college. Today is their wedding anniversary. Oh and he’s got tickets to Italy he’s going to surprise her with. My husband and I will be in Jackson and he’ll get annoyed because some car cut us off in traffic. I’ll say, Maybe his wife is in labor and he’s on the way to the hospital. Oh, wait – maybe his son is about to play his first t-ball game and he’s late for it. Oh, no, maybe he’s dog has been hit by a car and he’s speeding to the vet’s office. Maybe the guy is a jerk but even if he is, he’s got a story.

The reading life, the writing life, it’s so abundant and marvelous. It makes life – ordinary, every day simple things – seem so full and big. So much to wonder and marvel over – it’s vibrant way of life that I feel so lucky to live.

Note: The movie version of the bestselling novel, The Help, will be filmed mostly in Greenwood, Mississippi, the town where Keetha works. Imagine the behind-the-scenes film making tales she’ll be privy to and might well share in her blog posts at Write Kudzu, so visit often.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of Robin Antalek’s The Summer We Fell Apart in a random drawing to anyone who comments only on this specific post, Robin Antalek and The Summer We Fell Apart. Comments left on other posts during the week are not entered into the contest. The deadline is Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winner to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.

[Robin Antalek, in her debut novel The Summer We Fell Apart, (Facebook) introduces the reader to four main characters -- all siblings in a dysfunctional family. In today's guest post she describes the toil and toll required to birth, develop, and then let each one go out into the world...even beyond the book's pages.]

During the process of writing The Summer We Fell Apart I was a mess. These characters and their lives were so demanding of my emotional well-being (including some very non-hygienic periods – ick –sorry) that I nearly had nothing left for my daughters’, my husband, and my friends … you name it, I ignored it could have been my motto. In many ways it resembled those first few months of motherhood when I survived on instinct and very little else. Then and only then I was as in tune with my infant daughter (now 19) in the most basic of ways, our cyclical routine of: sleep, eat, burp, diaper, hardly varied from hour to hour and day to day for months on end. I existed only for her nourishment and needs.

Except here – in my fictional world — I could re-write the scene from the day before. I could change a word, delete a paragraph, erase a conversation, and alter the mood, all without excess emotional attachment. Or could I?

As the characters grew in my head, on the page, and into the story, there were things so intrinsic that even if I wanted to – I couldn’t mess with. When I tried to re-write their lives it just came up false and I knew – I knew – that no matter what I would have to allow them to be who they were meant to be for better or worse. As a parent and now as a writer, this was one of the hardest lessons I ever learned: your baby (characters) had to fail, it was inevitable and you had to stand by and let them as much as you wanted to run ahead screaming danger and pointing out the bad guys.

The writing life – creating character, plot, theme and story is not so unlike those early days of motherhood. As I was submerged in the world of my newborn – so was I in the “newborn-ness” (so not a word – forgive me) of Amy, George, Finn and Kate Haas. I only worked on one character and their section of the novel at a time – so through the course of the book I metaphorically gave birth four times – and if you think they didn’t demand all my attention – including stealing some serious sleep – you would be wrong. As if I raised quadruplets, this crew was in my face the entire two years it took from conception to birth.

Because of my process, or maybe in spite of, who knows, readers identify strongly with these fictional siblings. And two of the questions I always get from readers whether it’s a book club visit or via mail is: who is your favorite? And, are they all okay? I have to answer in all honesty that some of the siblings were easier to be around than the others at times (as are my own beautiful girls’) – but I am hard pressed to choose a favorite. It would be tantamount to choosing between my children. The answer to the second question? Well that gives me chills every time – in the asking and the answer. It’s what all of us as parents hope for our own children: they are okay, they are making their way in the world. They will figure it out, there’s hope. Always, always, hope.

The Summer We Fell Apart has taken on a life of its own – as have Amy, Kate, George and Finn. And in the words of their mother, Marilyn, “…it is more than I ever imagined.”

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away a copy of Trish Ryan’s latest memoir, A Maze of Grace in a random drawing to anyone who comments only on this specific post, Trish Ryan and A Maze of Grace. Comments left on other posts during the week are not entered into the contest. The deadline is Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winner to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to possibly claim your book.