Sunday In Salem

My travels this past weekend took me to the Salem Literary Festival, which celebrates "the art, beauty, and business of writing."  The artistic community in Salem is thriving, so it was wonderful to see such a great turnout.

Salem's (silly) 'Bewitched' Statue

I could only go on Sunday, but I still got to hear local luminaries like Brunonia Barry, Katherine Howe, and Hank Phillippi Ryan.  Almost everyone was talking about the importance of blogging, so I was very happy that I am finally adding my humble little squeaks to the overall din.

The Phillips House

One of the venues, where I attended a workshop, was the Phillips House on Chestnut Street in the historic McIntire District.  This broad tree-lined avenue of huge Federal-style mansions must be one of the most beautiful streets in New England.

                                                    A relative, perhaps???

IndieBound: One Little Step At A Time

I'm slowly learning how to blog, and it's actually more fun than I thought it would be!

I crossed a major hurdle the other day when I figured out how to link my book to a site where prospective readers could buy a copy of Angus MacMouse Brings Down the House.  (I still have some tinkering to do, but I'm getting there.)

I have no problem with Amazon, or Barnes & Noble––  but I decided to go another direction and support the smaller, independent bookstores.  These local stores need and deserve our help to stay in business and serve our communities.  So, if you click on the image of my book, or go to the bottom of this page and click on the red logo, you will be taken magically to IndieBound.org.

IndieBound is a wonderful site that helps you find a local independent bookstore near you. I know of several on the North Shore that are absolutely wonderful.  Toad Hall in Rockport,  Spirit of '76 in Marblehead, The Book Shop in Beverly Farms, Manchester-By-The-Book in Manchester, and Banbury Cross in Hamilton, to name a few.  I'm sure you can find a shop in your neighborhood too.  The owners and staff members are always very friendly and more than happy to help.

The Fine Art of Waiting

If you're a writer, hoping to be published, and you're not a patient person–– you're in trouble!

As we all know, the publishing business moves at its own pace, which is only slightly faster than a glacier.

I finished my new story in mid-August and sent it off to New York.  YAY!  But the relief of sending it off didn't last very long.  Soon it was replaced by anxiously looking at the calendar several times a day.  ("Has it really been only a week?  It seems SO much longer!")

I'm sure I was spoiled by my first experience with Angus MacMouse.  Miraculously, it only took about five weeks before Bloomsbury made an offer.  I'm heading into week five now, so every day the nagging little voice in my head says, "What if no one likes it?"

They say the best thing to do is to get busy on your next story.  OK.  I sat at the computer today.  I checked e-mails.  I did some research.  I did a little re-writing, but I couldn't write anything new; the story just isn't flowing, and I'm getting frustrated with it.

It's time for 'Plan B.'  Actually, I'm rather fond of 'Plan B.'  I think today it's going to be ginger ice cream with chocolate sauce.  That should chase away the evils of waiting...

waiting...

waiting.

My prescription for impatience.

On My Night Table…

If You Want To Write,  A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit, by Brenda Ueland, Greywolf Press, 2007, originally published in 1938.

Actually, this book is always on my night table!  It is my favorite book on writing and creativity.  You can turn to almost any page and find something wonderful, truthful, and refreshing.  Dear old Brenda always lifts my spirits.

Here is a little bit of what I read last night in Chapter 7.  She is talking about the students in her class:

"...they would break through... as from a cocoon, and write suddenly in a living, true, touching, remarkable way.  It would happen suddenly, overnight.  They would break through from composition- writing, theme-writing, to some freedom and honesty...
What made them do this?  I think I know.  I think I helped them to do it.  And I did not do it by criticism, i.e., by pointing out all the mediocrities in their efforts (and so making them contract and try nervously to avoid all sorts of faults).  I helped them by trying to make them feel freer and bolder.  Let her go!  Be careless, reckless!  Be a lion, be a pirate!  Write any old way.
Francesca [a friend] helped me to understand this.  When giving violin lessons she never tells a child that he is playing a bad note.  Why do that?  He knows it himself.  All are trying to get nearer and nearer to true pitch, to perfection, anyway.  Why fix the attention on the avoidance of mistakes?  It just tightens them up, contracts them, and makes them dislike lessons.  Moreover, when they are thinking so vividly about the bad notes that they are warned to avoid, they play them again and again... To play a note truly, as the simplest person knows, your mind must be on the true note, your Imagination hearing it as you want to play it."

Isn't she marvellous?

Be a lion!

                                                              

Ahhhh... Labor Day Weekend

Yes, it's the unofficial end of summer (and summer in New England is much too short), so it's kind of sad.

But I managed to squeeze a lot of fun into the weekend.  It started out with pizza and cannolis (yum!), then fabulous fireworks over the harbor in Gloucester.

                                  Then I stumbled upon the Myopia Horse Show...

made a trip to Brooksby Farm where apples were dripping from the trees....

and sunflowers were dancing in the breeze.

Then I spent a sparkling morning at the beach.

How fortunate I am to live in such a beautiful place!

On My Night Table…

The Cat Who Came For Christmas by Cleveland Amory, Little, Brown & Co., 1987.


A lot of my reading falls into the category of research for what I'm writing.  So… since my new book is about a cat (sorry Angus!), I went to the library recently and brought home Cleveland Amory's classic cat lover's book, The Cat Who Came For Christmas.  I love cats, but I haven't had one for a long time and I wanted to make sure I remembered their behavior and antics correctly.

As it turned out, I was equally interested in learning about Mr. Amory as I was in reading about his cat!  He was the founder of the Fund for Animals in 1967 and was directly involved in the early campaigns against illegal whaling, and the horrendous clubbing of baby seals.  He also helped rescue hundreds of wild burros from the Grand Canyon which were going to be killed.  I was impressed that this man, who seemed to delight in calling himself a 'curmudgeon,' had such a big heart for innocent animals.  I think most people agree that his tireless work became the bedrock for the animal protection movement of today.

Mr. Amory rescued his beloved Polar Bear from an alley in Manhattan.  He soon discovered that the skinny, bedraggled, filthy gray cat he brought home on Christmas eve, 1977, was actually white, beautiful, and extremely opinionated!

My favorite quote:  "As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience for the limitations of human kind."

If you like cats, or even if you don't, you'll enjoy this warm and witty story of a very interesting man, and his relationship with a remarkable cat.