I continue one of my blog features with a description of my “happy places.’ Every creator, whether writer, visual artist or peformance artist, needs to recharge his/her batteries. Creative energy is not infinite. It is not fair for us to expect to be able to continue creating/writing/sculpting/etc. without inspiration.
For me, getting out into nature whether physically or mentally, really helps me with this challenge. My existing “happy places” are shown here through descriptions, stories, history and pictures I’ve taken.
Sentinel Beach on the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California
In my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful places on the planet is Yosemite National Park. Apparently many of my fellow citizens of the planet Earth agree with me because it is unarguably the most visited national park in the U.S.
I could write fifty blog posts extolling the jaw-dropping wonders of this beautiful place. The valley, of course, is the most accessible and “in your face” about the marvel that is Yosemite. After all, who could ignore a five-story high waterfall (followed by at least three more just as high or higher) or massive sheer cliffs of granite all around you? Even the yellow meadows, which now stand in the place of the ancient lakes that once dominated the valley, are breathtaking.
I am fortunate enough to live within a day’s drive of this amazing place. And as often as we can, my family make it a point to go camping here. We usually choose to stay outside of the valley “on the the rim”–our launching point often near Glacier Point, which affords the most breathtaking vistas of the park and a front-row seat to Yosemite’s unforgettable and signature monument, Half Dome.
Here, however, I will talk about a feature in the valley, on a small beach located on the banks of the ancient Merced River, which flows through the valley. If you’ve ever visited Yosemite, you have no doubt rafted down the Merced. It is one of the easiest ways to get an hour long tour of the park while lying on your back and gazing upward.
After floating down the meandering Merced, your raft trip comes to a stop at the golden-tinged Sentinel Beach, a narrow stretch of sand that faces majestic El Capitan. It is here, that, after an hour and a half long trip maneuvering the river, we settled for lunch on a picnic bench.
Afterwards, the boys enjoyed some play time on the beach while I sat under a golden-leafed aspen and soaked up the energy and beauty of this place. It was a perfect summer day and the fresh breeze blowing through the valley made a person glad to be alive. I pictured what this place might look like in the dead of winter, that same tree devoid of leaves, the whole place silent and covered in a thin veneer of ice and snow.
It was a peaceful place, even with all of the activity going on around me. Those yellow-golden leaves swaying in the wind, the easy gait of the river and the cold indifference of El Capitan surveying me from on high.
My current work in progress (which was in its nascent stages when I was last in Yosemite) takes place in the Lakes District, which I consider to be England’s equivalent to Yosemite. It was very inspirational on that level as well.
For more amazing pictures of Sentinel Beach, go here and here.
Stay tuned to this blog for more of my happy places–which range from Europe to the West Coast of the United States, to Alaska, to the Northwest.
For the few of you who do visit this blog intentionally and not by accident while googling “deep freeze snooze,” I apologize. Things have been mighty dormant here for a while as my attentions were focussed elsewhere. But with one big burden off my back (to be discussed soon, as in probably this week), I’m more able to concentrate in areas where I’m lacking. Not for long, though. Because it’s only the partial manuscript that is complete and the full manuscript is another hurdle yet.
So without further ado, I’m making a “to-do” list of things you will see on this blog very soon:
Measuring Up: 2011 goals with only 1 month to go. How did I do?
Happy Places: Another one of my favorite features which has gone untended for too long will be back with another happy place
What I learned about Publishing Part 2, the second half of this post
My work in progress: Featuring Violette and Lawrence (pictured!), my hero and heroine and a teaser passage from the Regency historical romance
Why Pantsing had to become Plotting. What converted this semi-pantster into a firm believer in plotting (and just what the heck do plotting and pantsing mean, anyway?)
Retrospective 2011… if I can manage to write this without tearing my own beating heart out of my chest and letting it bleed all over this blog. 2011 has been one of those years.
Jane Austen Q & A with editor Laurel Ann Nattress
What I learned about writing first-person point of view … for the opposite sex
If you’ve got any ideas or questions, or want to see me discuss something, please feel free to post in the comments! I’d love to hear from you and find out what I could do to spruce the blog up and make it an interesting waypoint in the blogosphere (aside from not being comatose, that is).
On Saturday, I will be signing the JANE AUSTEN MADE ME DO IT anthology for the very first time. I’m so nervous that I’ve been obsessively practicing my signature so that it’s just right. Don’t want to make any screw-ups in someone’s book!
Ugh! And what if I spell a person’s name wrong… white-out just won’t cover that.. And do I put the person’s name in the book. Do I inscribe a message or just sign my name? And exactly WHERE do I sign it? Title page or on the first page of my story? (Page 367, by the way) Am I over-thinking this ? I tend to do that.
*Pulling out hair* Off to practice some more, I guess!
And as a parting treat, here is Laurel Ann Nattress, editor of the anthology, at the Seattle-area book launch party. In this clip, she is introducing the anthology, discussing her inspiration for it and then she gives a reading.
To my utter delight, I’m proud to say that Laurel Ann chose to read the beginning of my story for her author reading at the book release (watch at the very end). Woo hoo!
*off to pinch self again*
**Note: I’m not usually given to all these sorts of self-injurious behaviors. **
I’ve been invited to guest post on several different blogs this next month. Now stop laughing, you in the back row. I know what you are thinking. “But she barely posts on this blog…” And I guess you would be right. I haven’t had much to write about until the last month or so. But it seems I have more subjects at my disposal of late, so you may find I’ll tend to get rather chatty. Just ask my friends… sometimes they can never get me to shut up!
Without much further ado… here’s where I’ll be and when during the month of November (cyberly speaking*, of course).
Winning the short story contest and being included in a wonderful anthology—aside from all the awesomeness implied in those things—also provided me with a unique opportunity to get my feet wet in the shallow-end of the publishing business without being thrust into deep, cold waters to flounder my way back to the edge. It was an education that I greatly appreciated and think would be of value to pass on. So, here, I discuss my microcosm lesson in publishing. The first, I hope, of many such experiences to come.
The editor of the anthology, Laurel Ann Nattress, called me on a Tuesday night to deliver the wonderful news that I had won the JAMMDI contest and that my story would be included in the collection. Naturally, I was thrilled and barely remember our conversation that night but I do remember how kind and complimentary she was. She had even passed on some nice remarks from her editor at Ballantine. At the time, Laurel Ann warned me that things would move rather fast from that point because the book was only five months out from publication and all the other stories had been polished and edited. She told me I had a busy few weeks ahead of me.
And was she ever right! I heard nothing else from Laurel Ann until that Friday morning, when I opened my Outlook before racing off to work and had an email with an attachment waiting for me. Laurel Ann passed along the edits from the Ballantine editor, Caitlin Alexander, with the request that I have them finished and back to her by Monday morning. Laurel Ann added at the end, “I hope you didn’t have any big plans for the weekend.”
I groaned out loud. Actually, I did have big plans. I had a huge exam to take the next day in connection with my teaching credential. Three exams, actually. My plans had been to come home and study Friday night, sleep in Saturday morning, get up and study for a few more hours (thanks to my husband who had arranged to have the kids out of the house that day) and then go to the test at 1 p.m., when it was scheduled, likely to stay the full six hours of testing. I didn’t have time to do edits. A new job for the new school year was riding on this new credential.
But this was a dream come true and I wasn’t about to blow it off and miss my very first deadline. Thus, I revised my plan: instead of going out to celebrate on Saturday night after my exam, I resolved to come home, open up the document and work continuously through the wee hours of Saturday night and all day Sunday to get the edits done.
Of course I resolved this all in about three seconds before opening up the document. Caitlin had included her edits using “track changes” in Microsoft Word and putting her comments in bubbles along the margin using the “comments” feature. When I saw all the red text crisscrossing the entire document, I almost cried—I think I sniveled a little and hunched my shoulders. I may—for a moment—have been tempted to curl into a fetal position.
Now Caitlin had some wonderful things to say about the story. Her comments were not all negative—in fact none of them were harsh at all. And she did take time to make positive remarks throughout the story such as “I love the hook sentence,” and “This is beautiful”—all neatly filed away in the “I don’t completely suck” file. I treasured those comments and still do. Caitlin’s feedback meant a lot to me. A real, live,New York editor had read my stuff and, mostly, liked it.
Her comments were insightful and her sentence and word choice suggestions were spot-on. I only disagreed with one suggested change to one sentence so did not end up changing it. The rest, though, was fair game.
Caitlin did so much more than just cross my t’s, dot my i’s and fix my tenses. Her work on my story was invaluable. She pointed out logic flaws where I had mentioned that my characters were doing something without giving any evidence beforehand that they had been doing those things. For example, Mark mentions in one scene that he had run into Justine that morning in her front yard gardening. But Caitlin pointed out that when I had described that meeting in the previous scene, I had made no mention or showed no evidence that Justine had been gardening. I believe my original phrasing was that she was “wandering about like a lost soul.” So I went back and added the flowerpot that she was bending over and her brother’s huge gardening gloves that gave her hands a comical appearance.
Caitlin did this all throughout the document. And boy, by the time I was done (and rather exhausted) on Sunday night, that story was gleaming. Or at least so I thought. But I still had to go through two more rounds of edits (the copy edits and the page proofs).
