Easter, spring, hope, renewal–what a wonderful time of year. Good Friday and we remember Christ’s death. On Easter Sunday we will celebrate his resurrection and all that means to us.

I wondered what I could post for Easter then remembered the postcards.

When my husband and I had been married a couple of years, we made arrangements to buy the family farm. His parents moved out of the big old house and we moved in and inherited fifty years of stuff. The house has under the eaves closets that ran the length of the room–still full. It has a full basement used mostly for storage and still full. It has an attic. This wasn’t the sort of attic where you go play and explore remnants of past years. This attic was reached by a ladder and boxes were shoved through it to later be dealt with. Later never came. We found lots of junk and a few treasures.

Among the treasures, mixed in with the junk, were postcards. Old postcards. It appeared that postcards were once as popular as phonecalls and emails. The collection forms a wonderful document of buildings a century ago. And as today, the seasons were remembered. I thought I’d share a few of the Easter postcards. Enjoy.

Enjoy the season. Enjoy your family. Most of all enjoy the blesesings of Easter.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.

I confess to having endured a bad spell of discouragement. Thankfully, it was short. But for that bit of time I wanted to give up writing. In fact, I had decided I would. (The feeling lasted about 24 hours.) I guess I’m not alone in occassional bouts of discouragment. Dale Carnegie says, “Develop success from failures. Discouragment and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to sucess.” Thanks for the assurance but couldn’t there be another way?

I had lunch with a writing friend this week and she told me she had given up writing after a discouraging rejection. She’d packed up every bit of writing stuff–manuscript pages, how-to books, notes…everything. Put it all in boxes and hauled it down to the basement. In fact, she considered giving away her computer and turning her little office into something more practical. A spare bedroom or a nice private sitting area. It lasted two days and then she was downstairs digging through the boxes looking for notes on a story that she was pretty sure she could write. Funny, maybe? But only if you don’t go through those dark times.

Mary Anne Racmacher has writing a book, Courage Doesn’t Always Roar. In it she says, ‘Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.’ ‘Courage is the willingness to aspire, reach and again believe in the promises of tomorrow.’ And ‘It take courage to reinvent dreams.” 

Someone has said success is picking yourself up one more time than you fall down. A long journey in the WRITE direction in my case.

‘Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.’ Dan Rather.

‘I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.’ Frank Lloyd Wright. (Interesting that his last name is Wright.)

‘Energy and persistence conquer all things.’ Benjamin Franklin. (How many times did he fail to create a light bulb before he succeeded? Some say he experimented with 3000 different theories.)

‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it, boldnes has genius, power and magic in it.’ Attributed to Goethe.

And so I pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. Or as Vincent Van Gogh said, ‘In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.’ According to my research, Van Gogh produced more than 1000 drawings in addition to 870 paintings, 150 watercolors, and 133 letter sketches.

 (information from this site.http://www.vggallery.com/drawings/main_az.htm) Mind you, if you study Van Gogh’s life you might not find it such an inspiration. He suffered ill-fated romances, cut off part of his ear in a fit of anger and finally shot himself ‘for the good of all.”  Perhaps I’ll limit myself to finding encouragement in his work rather than his life.

On the other hand, I can find encouragement in something as simple as a dandelion.  I once wrote a poem called Dandelion Love, and no I won’t subject you to it (even if I could find a copy). But the message was roses are too fragile, I want a love that is as stubborn, tenacious and unstoppable as a dandelion which pokes up through cracks in the pavement and waves its cheery head from ever corner and crevise.

I also find encouragement in the scriptures. Is. 40:31 ‘… but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.’

So what do you do when discouragement hits? What things encourage you and get you over the dark period? I’d love to hear what works for you.

It began with a New Year’s resolution. A good thing. Yes? Get into shape. Lose a few pounds and start taking some of the supplements we are encouarged to take–baby aspirin, Omega 3–that sort of thing.

So I started doing them–at least the easy part. I started taking the extra supplements. All good. Right?

Turns out, not so much, in my case.

It began with difficulty catching my breath. Then I got so I was breathless at far less than my normal amount of exertion. Constant ache in my left chest which worsened at night.  Yes, I did the reasonable thing. I arranged to see my doctor. Unfortunately the earliest date was three weeks away. But the nurse told me what days my doctor would be the ER doctor. So I waited. And I checked out my symptons on webMD. For most of them a warning orange flag appeared. ‘Go immediately to the nearest medical facility.’ But I needed to see my doctor so I could get follow up. So I waited as my symptoms worsened. Or was I just imagining it? You know how it is when you start to think about aches and pains. They get worse.

Friday was her day in ER so up I went. She rubbed her hands in glee at being able to poke and prod me. I had ECG, xrays, blood work. My heart was fine but she said my lungs looked…okay, I can’t remember what she said but something about them being over inflated, or something. It appears I am having an allergic reaction to the Omega fish based pills which I had quit taking two weeks prior as soon as my symptoms appeared.

I’m home with a puffer and pills and orders not to do anything strenuous until I get an all clear. (At least 2 weeks). Not that doing anything strenuous is an option. I can’t get enough air into my lungs for just ordinary activity. And a strict warning to avoid fish in the future. Any kind of fish. (There goes tuna melts and salmon sandwiches.)

So now I have an excuse for sitting around enjoying the sunrise and/or sunset.

Or planning trips to somewhere warm and sunny. Like Hawaii.

I enjoy spying on other writers. I like sites that show their offices. Some are little cubby holes, others are beautiful big rooms with views you could sell. I like reading about their daily habits as well and comparing my own. So today, I have brought you some glimpses into the habits of famous authors.

These quotes  are from a site:

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/

Alice Munro

As a young author taking care of three small children, Munro learned to write in the slivers of time she had, churning out stories during children’s nap times, in between feedings, as dinners baked in the oven. It took her nearly twenty years to put together the stories for her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades

Toni Morrison

INTERVIEWER
You have said that you begin to write before dawn. Did this habit begin for practical reasons, or was the early morning an especially fruitful time for you?

MORRISON
Writing before dawn began as a necessity–I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, Mama–and that was always around five in the morning.

My comment: I’m tired just thinking of this. How did she function throughout the rest of the day.

Continue quote: Many years later, after I stopped working at Random House, I just stayed at home for a couple of years. I discovered things about myself I had never thought about before. At first I didn’t know when I wanted to eat, because I had always eaten when it was lunchtime or dinnertime or breakfast time. Work and the children had driven all of my habits… I didn’t know the weekday sounds of my own house; it all made me feel a little giddy.

I was involved in writing Beloved at that time–this was in 1983–and eventually I realized that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more intelligent in the morning. The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.

Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don’t remember exactly what the gesture was–there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard–but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that’s a ritual. And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space I can only call nonsecular… Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.

My comment: I wish I had a ritual that would signal to my brain that is has to start producing intelligent thoughts RELATED TO THE STORY. Instead, I spring up and head for the fridge. I tell myself there are no ideas there. But there is food. And it’s a good substitute. I return to my computer and beg the ideas to come. I sweat and bleed from ears. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed for this.

Continue quote: I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?

My comment: At least I know what I like about surroundings. I like being able to see outside. I like my things about me, sometimes in apparent chaos because as I work on a story, bits and pieces of research, lists, books I’m referring to, tend to pile up at my side. As to chaos outside my door…well, there is a level of chaos I can close the door (and my mind) to and then there is unusual chaos that requires I check on it. (Think crashes, hollering, moaning, etc.)

INTERVIEWER.
What about your writing routine?

MORRISON
I have an ideal writing routine that I’ve never experienced, which is to have, say, nine uninterrupted days when I wouldn’t have to leave the house or take phone calls. And to have the space–a space where I have huge tables. I end up with this much space [she indicates a small square spot on her desk] everywhere I am, and I can’t beat my way out of it. I am reminded of that tiny desk that Emily Dickinson wrote on and I chuckle when I think, Sweet thing, there she was. But that is all any of us have: just this small space and no matter what the filing system or how often you clear it out–life, documents, letters, requests, invitations, invoices just keep going back in. I am not able to write regularly. I have never been able to do that–mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time.

The Paris Review, Issue 128, 1993

My comment: I laughed at her ideal writing routine which she has never experienced. Yup. That’s me. In fact, I think if everything was what I considered ideal  I wouldn’t be able to work for being nervous that something dreadful was about to happen.

Truman Capote

INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?

CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957

My comment: if I tried writing horizontally I would fall asleep. Besides my arms hurt just thinking about it. But I do some of my best creative thinking while horizontal. I often use a small light to write notes during the night as my ideas begin to sort themselves out.

Isaac Asimov

His usual routine was to awake at 6 A.M., sit down at the typewriter by 7:30 and work until 10 P.M. 

In “In Memory Yet Green,” the first volume of his autobiography, published in 1979, he explained how he became a compulsive writer. His Russian-born father owned a succession of candy stores in Brooklyn that were open from 6 A.M. to 1 A.M. seven days a week. Young Isaac got up at 6 o’clock every morning to deliver papers and rushed home from school to help out in the store every afternoon. If he was even a few minutes late, his father yelled at him for being a folyack, Yiddish for sluggard. Even more than 50 years later, he wrote: “It is a point of pride with me that though I have an alarm clock, I never set it, but get up at 6 A.M. anyway. I am still showing my father I’m not a folyack.”

The New York Times, April 7, 1992

My comment: LOL. Sounds like a great work ethic. Sometimes, too many times, authors wait to FEEL like writing. Issac’s comments prove that getting at the work is more important that sitting around waiting for something inspirational to drive us to it.

Roger Ebert

Morning routine: I usually get up around 7. I make oatmeal in my rice cooker. Then I take an hour-long walk: outside if the weather’s good; on my treadmill if it’s cold. Then I shower, shave and go to the first of three movies I see on many weekdays.

The New York Times Magazine, February 13, 2005

My comment: What? Going to the movies is work? Bring it on. Shaping thoughts and whispy ideas into a story and getting words on the page, now that’s work.

‘Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.’

I like reading how other authors work. Listen to a famous author tell of his day.

Ernest Hemingway

INTERVIEWER
Could you say something of this process? When do you work? Do you keep to a strict schedule?

HEMINGWAY
When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and you know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.The Paris Review, Issue 18, 1958

Doesn’t he make it sound like a magical, wonderful process?

It can be. It often is. Other times, for me, writing is like trying to swim in peanut butter. I struggle through a sticky mess trying to find a rock, a bit of shore..something…anything that is clear and solid. Bits of ideas try and make it to the surface. When they do, they are often fragmented and chipped and bear no resemblance to anything solid. It’s a magical, scary, frustrating part of my writing when the story is stiff and unwieldy and when I wonder how, in the past, I ever got from a beginning idea to a fully formed story.

It’s times like this that encouragement about my writing is valued the most.

Someone tells me they enjoyed a book. Or I read a good review. Or I get copies of a new release. This week I did indeed receive copies. Not of a new book but one in which I have a story reiussed.

This book will be on the shelves soon. I guess it proves (to me) that I can somehow, with perserverance, figure out how to shape this current mess into a story.

Happy New Year to all. I wish for you health, peace and happiness.

In my own life (the writing part of it) I’m working on a story that seems destined to be written entirely in the dark. First, I was in the dark about my story. I couldn’t find it but I pushed on ahead and created a synopsis. Of sorts. I wrote over 100 pages but every day it felt wrong, stilted, and worse, I dreaded facing the keyboard the next day and trying to figure out what next??? So Dec. 23, I gave up and threw it all out and started again. This time I did two things I know I need to ALWAYS do. First, I made sure I had a clearly definable conflict that put the 2) motivated characters in opposition. Duh. How basic is that?

Still, the story is being stubborn. I can blame the holiday season when it’s hard to pull my thoughts into the office and force them to remain on the words appearing on the screen. Or I could blame it on a touch of the flu. No brain power.  But the last couple of days something miraculous and odd has occurred. When I go to bed, my story becomes a living organism in my head. I see the characters moving, talking, laughing. Like a mixed up dream, I see bits from different scenes. I have to jot things down in the dark. Last night I ended up with four pages of notes that will translate into 20 pages or more in my story. I could complain about missing my sleep but after agonizing over this story, I am not about to whine about that (though I might steal a nap during the day). In fact, I intend to do all I can to nurture this particular event.

It’s like I have fallen back into my childhood when I always made up stories to put myself to sleep. (One big difference-this is NOT putting me to sleep.) It just goes to prove that I can nurture the creative process but I can’t control it.  Not that I intend to trust my future to this method. In fact, I strive always to prepare well for writing a story. I don’t know all the details (in this case it seems I know none of them) but I need to know the major turning points, the emotional journey, and have a feel for the theme (which often changes and develops as I write).  As I said,  I need to have understandable motivation, and then, clearly definable conflict. I have learned the horrible frustration of trying to write a story without and vow every time it won’t happen again. 

Oh yes, a pen with a light in the tip or a little book light at the bedside are absolutely essential as well.

Here are the light and pen I use.

BTW, my newest book, The Path to Her Heart, is out mid January so watch for it.

We had the presents. We had the meals. We had the company. And we had the good news–2 new babies coming in 09.

Some unusual visitors came through our yard on Christmas Day. I managed to grab my camera and get one picture before the camera announced my memory card was full. That’s what happens when I don’t erase any pictures all summer and autumn. Here’s our visitors leaving.

We had a great time over the holidays. We made a big jig saw puzzle and enjoyed visiting the kids and grandkids. We had 22 here yesterday for the family dinner. Fun.

But I am ready to get back to work.

On Christmas Eve day I finally accepted that the story I was working on wasn’t working. It wasn’t simply a matter of pushing through resistance because the resistance wouldn’t go away. I expect my ‘muse’ tried yelling and when I wouldn’t listen, started yawning. Eventually, I stopped and went back to square one. I’m happy I did because the story I came up with is so much better. I’d tell you about it but it might take a few unexpected turns before it actually is finished (and published).

Which makes me think of things that make me unique as  a writer. (I suspect every writer has similiar traits)

•  I talk to voices inside my head.
• Some of the letters on my keyboard are worn off.
• There are food crumbs in my keyboard. (And coffee stains on the keys)
• I have favorite pens that no one is allowed to touch (especially the one from Harrod’s)
• I would rather stay home and write than go out (even for dinner)
• My idea of a perfect holiday is just me and my computer.
• I love the smell of books.
• A bookstore is one of my favorite places.
• I know several good on-line sites for used books. (In fact, I get special shipping rates).
• When I’m working I’m happy.

With that, I will confess that I am looking forward to Monday morning and getting back to work.

“Tis the season to remember the gift of the savior born in a manger, to think of all his birth meant. I especially like the words of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’

God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day;
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.

Refrain

O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy.

You can listen to the music and read the whole song here:

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/g/o/godrest.htm

This is a wonderful gift and certainly the cause of comfort and joy.

But I too often overlook the small things that bring comfort and joy. So for my own reminder I am going to list some of them.

1. The smell of soup simmering on the stove.

2. The smell of freshly baked bread.

3. A ‘window’ view of winter. (The rubber on the road reality of snow and ice and cold are not at all comforting.)

4. Good health.

5. Warm houses.

6. Good friends.

7. Family, especially grandchildren.

8. Flowers which seem to speak both comfort and joy to one’s soul.

9. A happy marriage.

10. Satisfying work. My writing is at times frustrating but if I view it from a dispassionate distance, it is a source of joy.

To turn the list back to the real meaning of the season, I am including a picture of one of my favorite creches. I bought this in Mexico one year while my sister and I were visiting my brother.

Enjoy the comfort and joy of the season.

(I’d love to hear what things bring you comfort and joy.)

I was walking with my sister-in-law today. She told me about the books she got at the library. I told her about the coffee table book I saw there about the most beautiful libraries in the world. Pages folded out to give one a panoramic view of many of them. Libraries in Paris, London, Rome, Spain and the New York Central library. 

 The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World (Hardcover)by Guillaume de Laubier (Author), Jacques Bosser (Contributor), James H. Billington (Photographer), Laurel Hirsch (translator)(Author)  

Of course the library I remember most wasn’t there. It wasn’t even beautiful. In fact, it was at one time a one-roomed school house that had been moved to town as a ‘portable’ classroom when our school burned to the ground in the dead of winter. I was eight and my mother couldn’t find me because I had taken shelter at the wrong house but that’s a different story. After the new school was built one of the temporary classrooms served as a library for many years. I didn’t care if the building was old or not. It was always exciting to walk into the library and smell the oiled wood floors and the dusty shelves. In the winter the only warm spot was near the pot-bellied stove but we didn’t care. We made our selection and hurried to the desk so the librarian could mark the due date in the back.

 I remember The Green-eyed Stallion that I read when I was home with pink eye. I had to pry my eyelids apart to read. And Cherry Ames Nurse stories that took me inside hospitals and into romance.  Nancy Drew– girl detective took me into the world of mystery and logic. I read everything and anything.

 I’ve had an on-going love affair with libraries. I confess that I know the whereabouts and the general layout of libraries across the country. It’s one of the first places I locate when visiting a place especially on research. I have found lovely treasures. One library in a nearby university town had a special room to house old and rare books about Alberta history. It overwhelms me to simply look at the titles.

 Thanks to the foresight of librarians and powers that be, we can access books from across the country in our own library through inter-library loans. I’ve held and read rare and hard to find books this way though I confess I usually go to an on-line used book source and try and find my own afterwards so I can read and reference them often.

 The history of libraries goes back a long way. About 30,000 clay tablets found in ancient Mesopotamia date back more than 5,000 years. Archaelogists have uncovered papyrus scrolls from 1300-1200bc in the ancient Egyptian cities of Amarna and Thebes. The Great Library of Alexandria, a public library open to those with the proper scholarly and literary qualifications, was founded about 300bc.It wasn’t until waves of immigration and the philosophy of free public education for children that public libraries spread in the US. The first public library in the country opened in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1833. Philanthropist Andrew Carnegie helped build more than 1,700 public libraries in the US between 1881 and 1919. (information from http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html)

 I know that in many pioneer towns one of the first things the community got after a school and church was a library.

I found this information on an early Canadian library.

Claremont established a Mechanics’ Institute in November 1891. Mr. Jobbitt was the first librarian and the library operated from his store. In 1895 the institute became a public library (not free). After 1897 the library was open three afternoons and evenings each week. It continued in its location until Mr. Jobbitt resigned in 1903. (from http://www.uoguelph.ca/~lbruce/photos/Claremont.htm)

Rows and rows of books. It makes me want to pop into a library right now and breath deeply. I hope you have lots of fond memories of libraries and books.

I just got a new blog look. Nice and tidy, don’t you think. I thought I’d celebrate by posting flower pictures. Enjoy.