AWAY

Off to a secluded cottage in Vermont to write, read, renew. May be MIA for a bit, not a bad thing for a novelist.

Will try to get some pics of the place to post...anon.

Happy Heat!

New Chapter

Here are some fun photos of my oldest's high school grad. On to college and the wider world.






Thanks to Kate for taking these great shots. Mazel Tov to you and yours!

NOT... The Real World, or a paradise for artists

I know how those cows feel--not wanting to cross the border into the "real world," to stay on the grounds of the colony (see final photo). I just returned from a month in a paradisal place, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts on a fellowship to work on a first draft of my third novel and fourth book, "Faraway Nearby," a place where a day is like a week, a week is like a month, and a month is like, well, about six months--in terms of deep concentrated focused attention, as well as productivity.

I had been to the VCCA before, perhaps as many as six times, over a span of about twenty years, as well as to other colonies, such as Yaddo, Ragdale, The Julia and David White Arts Foundation in Costa Rica,and the St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta. What these residencies provide is the gift of time and space, and more importantly, to use that buzz phrase,"head space." While in residence, I am cut free for a time from the quotidian demands of mother work and money work, for caring for a home and worrying about signing homework and bringing an eggplant to school! My head-space is often so cluttered at home, like so many working mothers, I am fragmented and feel as if I might burst apart from centrifugal force. While at VCCA, I miss my kids, my husband and my Hollywood star of a Bernese Mountain dog, Monty Booh, but I don't miss cooking and cleaning and nagging and worrying.


At VCCA, each artist has a private studio, as well as a bedroom in the residence or cottage. Three meals are provided, as well as clean towels. If a morning goes badly, there is always the afternoon and the evening and the night (studios provide beds.) If one chooses to participate, many evenings are rich with readings, open studios, screenings, or recordings of work that the resident novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, video-artists and composers are creating or have created. It's up to you if you attend, or if you sleep, or if you continue to work.

For me, as a novelist and short story author, something magical happens when my day is not chopped up into pieces and when I can think and dream and imagine into my book and characters on long, long walks on the thousands of beautiful acres encompassed by the colony and the college across the road, when I can gaze at the Blue Ridge Mountains and chat with the cows, the horses, and the goats, when I can swim in the lake, or wander a woodsy trail.







I am up to page 365 in Faraway Nearby. Need I say more?

Thanks to gifted installation artist Andrea (Andy) Lilienthal for these wonderful images of VCCA and do check out her work at andrealilienthal.com

Lighter, Brighter

Dear Friends,

I have not posted for awhile, I've been deep-in, living, surviving. It's been a tough year, with many challenges, on a variety of levels: practical, emotional, famlilial, but I won't over-share, offer TMI here and now, I will save the details for my journal, for transformation in my next book, for Oprah--Oprah, are you listening? If only....


To cope with tough times, I've turned to poetry. Yes, you heard that right, poetry. Blake, including his extraordinary plates, prints, and paintings, to Emily Dickinson, to Rilke. Why? I find when I am reading a great poem, a poem with that bottomlessness I seek, which always offers up something more, something new, I can do nothing else. The poem sucks me in and absorbs me, and through this concentrated focused attention, the treadmill of ruminating thoughts, the panic, vanishes, evaporates, and I am simply there, or here, present, inside the poem.

When I awaken these days, even up North, I hear the birds, after the deep silence of winter. The sky is lighter, brighter. There are only patches of snow on the weathered ground, rather than great drifts and high, soiled banks with their blackened crusts. Soon these patches will melt. The winter-warped silhouettes of trees, so lacey and beautiful against the sky, will bud.


Though we always doubt that spring will come, it must. I feel as if I don't have to bunch myself up, I can let the air out of my chest.

I am writing a new novel, my third, my fourth book. I feel blessed to do this creative work. I think about it as I write, as I walk, as I clean, as I sleep: my story, my characters, and more and more is coming to me each day. I have no doubt that the creative way saves me, allows me to give my best self to the world.

Winter's Deep

We are in the depths of winter now, darkness and chill, temperatures plummeting to minus thirty, with a burning wind. Last night, I took a walk with my Bernese Mountain dog, Monty Booh, and my daughter, Rosy. The air was still, so cold and raw we wrapped our wool scarves over our faces. It was an extraordinarily gorgeous night. The sky was a deep midnight blue, the winter-warped trees filagree lace against that wash of indigo. And the moon was full, round and golden. Though we could only stay out for a short while, it was bracing. Hibernating too long and one gets stale.

I love my winter walks on La Montagne, my X-country skiing around and about, the sun warm on my face, or if it is one of those silvery days, the cocoon-like magic inside the woods.

I do savour the stillness, the quiet of winter, the palette that is mostly silvery-gray and white. It is good writing and reading weather. Cozy weather. Inside, of course with a blazing fire and perhaps some hot cider spiked with Calvedos.

Speaking of writing and reading, we lost J.D. Salinger this week. With all of the homages to the reclusive author, one of his quotes from an interview gathers in my mind. "I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."

White Space Voted Notable Book of the Year!

January, 2010: The White Space Between is VOTED NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY BELLETRISTA, CELEBRATING WOMEN WRITERS AROUND THE WORLD. Check out this interesting
site focusing on literature by women.


http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue3/nandn_5_us.php

Canadian Jewish News Article

Dear Friends,

Take a look at the lovely article about The White Space Between and my recent Trepman talk at the Jewish Public Library.

Thanks to The Canadian Jewish News for doing the piece and to the JPL for having me.

Here's the link:

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18139&Itemid=86