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I am not a military person but there’s something to the idea of being ordered to attention.  How easy it is to drift through the day and end it none the richer for the experience. Thanks to Anne Lamott (and my friend June Cressy, who sent me this quotation from her), I see how guilty of this I am.

 “From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.”

The biggest thing I have lost in what has been overall a good, healthy period of not writing a novel, is the level of attentiveness required to find many of the insights and details that work their way into my writing.  An overheard comment, a bit of body language, an untied shoe, a puff of breeze can become a central metaphor or just a little detail that makes the book more real and alive.

Instead, I have had a wonderful stretch of time in which I have had nothing on my mind on my walks, in my car, and at workouts except the audiobook I am currently listening to.  I take in my surroundings (including the Alcazar Garden in Balboa Park, pictured here, which I walk through every day on my way to and from the college) but not in a contemplative or searching way, a way open to the surprises that always play an important role in shaping a book.

Mostly I haven’t started writing because I haven’t been taken over by a story yet.  Maybe all those forgotten women have moved on to populate other writers’ heads.  Maybe they know I need a break. Then again, maybe someone is saying, “turn off the audiobook–I’m trying to talk to you.”

I have written five historical novels, the fourth of which, The Mapmaker’s Daughter, is on the way next March from Sourcebooks.  The fifth, The Intuitive, is a completed and fairly well polished draft, but not done to my satisfaction yet.  I tell myself that if I don’t write any more historical fiction, that’s okay, because five is a lot, and I’ve made my overall point about forgotten women pretty well by now.

What I miss: the fun of finding out what’s going to happen next as I’m drafting.  Also, the great joy of working in the kinds of insights I described above, and the sheer joy of playing with language.

What I don’t miss:  the compulsive, all-consuming vortex that writing a book always becomes.  I haven’t been able to figure out how to have a full and balanced life, stay in full bloom in my relationships with other people, and avoid the feeling of being a little out of kilter in my teaching, when I am writing a novel.

I haven’t been able to get that nagging idea out of my head that I should be accomplishing something every minute of every day.  I have to develop a more inclusive sense of what it means to have something to show for myself, something I am adding to the world.  Novels have been so clear in that way.

I’m not ready to retire from this self-appointed job quite yet, but the simplest, monosyllabic way to put what I do understand about myself as a novelist right now is this: I don’t want to go there.   Sometime back I gave a workshop and wrote a blog post called “Writing Scared.”  I didn’t know I would be in need of my own advice a ways down the road. I guess that means I’m pretty sure another book is coming…someday.  And don’t forget, The Mapmaker’s Daughter definitely is.  Look for it in March 2014!

 

 

Postscript:

In Finding Emilie, here is one way that noticing the details of the day worked into the novel.  Fruit flies were hovering over the wine glasses at dinner one night and the next day I wrote this, using them as a metaphor for my heroine, Lili’s conflicted life.:

“Lili?”  The voice was Paul-Vincent’s, on her other side.  “Aren’t you speaking to me?”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted.  “I’m just a little distracted.”

“I just thought of an excellent experiment.  Look at this.”  He held up his wine glass.  “Do you see?”

“See what?” Not science.  Not tonight.

“The fruit flies.  They’re everywhere.  I think they like wine, but it looks as if something about it makes them act strange.”  Lili dutifully held up her own glass trying to catch as much light as possible from the candles.  “I’ve got two of them sitting on the rim,” she said, “tipping down inside, like they’re trying to get whatever’s left there.”

In spite of herself, she was interested.  “Maybe they just don’t want to fall in.”

“And maybe they’re a little drunk,” he snickered. “I wonder if vapors coming up from the wine are doing that, or if they’re actually drinking. I wish I’d brought the microscope.”

Lili laughed. “You can’t bring a microscope to dinner!”

“I know. But how about tomorrow?”  He lowered his voice. “I promise I won’t try to kiss you if you come to the lab.” Lili stared at him, so wrapped up in the problems of the day that it took a moment to understand what he was talking about.

She had already looked at a fruit fly under the microscope and been horrified by its enormous eyes and tiny claw-like feet. Now she felt nothing but sympathy for the little creatures hovering on the rim of her glass. Could they escape or would they just stay there, caught and confused between the forces that attracted and repelled them, until they fell in and drowned, or perhaps flew out and survived a little longer?

I got home from the Baltic to a nearly final version of the cover for novel number four. If you haven’t done so already, check out my introduction and synopsis here on this site under the tab for my books. Publication date is March 4, 2014. Write to me at lacauthor@gmail.com if you have comments!

As usual, I forget how much more difficult posting will be while on a trip, but that is about to end, since I am waiting on the Seabourn Sojourn for the call ashore, then to the airport. I just want to shout out to the universe my gratitude for all the blessings of my life, which includes the support of friends, new and old. Loved lecturing on the cruise to such interested audiences. I look forward to the next time, but not too much because I plan to embrace and enjoy every minute of my life between now and Christmas/New Years, when I am cruise lecturing again for Silversea in the Caribbean. Yes, I am the most fortunate person on earth–and I never forget that. I may need this mantra many times today as I sit squished in an airplane seat and hang out interminably in airports waiting for connections, but so it goes. Here I am toasting life with my traveling companion, Beverly.  Home to the  new boyfriend, tennis, golf, and a much stricter diet!  Bye bye champagne!

Does anyone actually say “ahoy” anymore?

Greetings from the Baltic!  I am currently on a very glassy sea, leaving Tallinn, Estonia, and headed for St. Petersburg, Russia, where we will dock tomorrow morning.  So far this cruise has been eventful and uneventful in the exact way one wishes when traveling.  No crises or disasters, and a lot of fun and educational moments shared with interesting people.  I have given two of my four lectures already, and I will not need to work again until after we leave St. Petersburg in a couple of days.

 

Attendance has been very good at my lectures–40 or more at each–and the feedback has been very positive. A highlight was a clip from a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring a very young Judi Dench clad in very little but green paint and strategically placed leaves.  I’l try to attach the link here so you can share in the amusement!

 

Smooth seas to you all, wherever you are.  I will write again from St. Petersburg.

 

http://file:///Users/laurelweeks/Desktop/Judi%20Dench%20A%20Midsummer%20Night’s%20Dream%20Pt%202%20-%20YouTube.webarchive

 

 

I’m on my way in a couple of days for another round of cruise lectures, this time on Seabourn in the Baltic. I will try to post from the ship, but in my experience, signals can be iffy at sea, so perhaps I will end up saving up my comments until my return. If I can I will try to post photos as well. If you aren’t already a follower of “Laurel Corona, Author” on Facebook, please sign up, as I will probably also post there.

And on another matter, I have sent in my revisions of THE MAPMAKER’S DAUGHTER so we are right on track for a March 2014 publication date. I truly believe this is my best story, and it is definitely the one I most yearned to tell when I set out to become a novelist. I will write more about that soon as well. For now, it’s “to do” lists pretty much non stop until the plane leaves, so I will sign off with a wave for now and check in again soon.

Life has a way, doesn’t it?

It’s been a little over a year since I lost my beloved Jim to cancer, and exactly a year since I moved into a shabby-chic little rental near the San Diego Zoo.  I kept to my routine I established when I lived with him downtown near the bay, of walking to the college where I teach, passing every day by the rose garden that was one of Jim’s and my favorite stops on weekend afternoons.

 

I sprinkled some of his ashes under many of the rose bushes, and for several months I could still see signs of them under one yellow and one white rose bush. I have paused in front of those two bushes coming and going over this past year, just to say hello, catch Jim up on my life, and whisper my appreciation for him.

I think there is something profound about the idea of mourning for twelve months and a day, because getting through the anniversary is such a big step.  I have now done without him all holidays, birthdays, memories of special times, and have relived the pain of those last days and hours.  Slowly, I have moved on, found my balance, retrieved the spring in my step. Little by little I have found there is less to say when I stop, though I always brush my lips against one of the roses which have taken in what I brought of him to that spot. Amazing how much rose petals feel like lips, and how truly I felt kissed back.

I don’t cry anymore when I talk to Jim. The vision of him in his sailor cap smelling a flower is dimmer now. That’s all right.  It all still really happened.

Sometime this spring I learned that I would need to sign another year lease where I was living. Since I hadn’t planned to stay, but didn’t want to buy anything while I was unclear about my life, I decided the time was right to make the commitment of buying a place of my own.  Last week I moved into a beautiful one-bedroom condo on the other side of Balboa Park, with a spectacular view of downtown, the bay, Point Loma, and the ocean beyond.

I won’t be passing by the rose garden anymore, though I will be making the occasional special trip.  Instead, I bought a large armful of beautiful artificial yellow and white roses to put in my new home.  No, they don’t kiss as well, but they are a way of saying that we never completely say goodbye.

Perhaps, though, it’s a good thing for both of us that my move created a natural end to my stops in the garden. Jim, you are free to take on the universe without worrying about me anymore.  Now I am free to take on the other side of the park and the life that goes with it.

 

 

Well, here I am, back after an absence of many months.  For those of you who know me only through this website, the last you heard from me was when I was reeling from the death of my beloved partner and husband, Jim, last April.  I dropped out of sight over that summer and haven’t really given much thought to my life as a writer since.

 

The post below this one is something I wrote this week for another site, San Diego Writing Women, a group of which I am a proud member.  It will catch you up on my state of mind, so I will use this one to do the same for my professional life.  This one comes with a promise to pick up regular posting from now on!

 

I am happy to report that novel number four, which I finished before he died, sold last December to Sourcebooks, a Chicago-based publisher, and one of the most prestigious remaining indie houses.  I am very excited about being involved with this arm of the publishing industry, and working with my new editor, Shana Drehs. The novel is tentative called THE MAPMAKER’S DAUGHTER (I had titled it something else, and hope the subject is still negotiable, but we shall see), and should come out in early 2014.

 

As a result, 2013 will be a momentous year for me as an author, even if I don’t write anything new.  Soon I will be hard at work on revisions and the other aspects of editing THE MAPMAKER’S DAUGHTER for publication.  Perhaps that will whet my appetite for one of my many great ideas for future novels about forgotten women, and I will be writing here soon about my next project.  As I write this, I must admit, I feel a little stir of excitement about that possibility.

 

My other big news is that I have finally fulfilled a dream of many years to lecture on a cruise line.  Not only did I do that for the first time recently on Silversea Cruises (South America over last Christmas and New Year’s ), but I have gotten new contracts for other Silversea destinations over the next two holiday seasons, and another assignment this August on Seabourn in the eastern Mediterranean.

 

Those of you who have followed my blog here know that Jim and I were literally on the eve of leaving for Lisbon in September 2011 for what was to be my first lecturer gig on Silversea. As our plane took off without us, I was sitting instead at the hospital as doctors struggled to save Jim from imminent death from kidney failure.  Rather than luxuriating for the next few weeks on a cruise, we spent the time dealing with a serious health crisis and a diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer.

 

I will always remember that time as one of the most painful and saddest in my life, but as my friends all know, I am blessed with the “happy gene” and have recovered well.  I am so grateful for my nine years with Jim, and even if I knew the end when we set out to spend life together, I would do it all again.  Not many people are lucky to be as loved as I have been, and to have the great feeling of loving someone equally in return.

 

Enough for now. Very glad to be back. Thank you for all your support!  Laurel

 

 

 

 

And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,
The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,
Will turn its private substance into green,
And young shoots spread upon our inner world.

 

These lines, the end of the poem “A Light Comes Brighter,” by one of my favorite poets, Theodore Roethke, was on my mind as I walked home from the college this week. It’s about the first signs of the end of winter, and indeed they can be found in San Diego already–despite the limited drama of changing seasons around here.

 

The first time these lines etched themselves into my consciousness was almost thirty years ago, when my home on a canyon rim was scorched by wildfire, leaving the yard looking like a huge ashtray and the trees scorched to a russet brown..  “It’s a miracle how the fire went around this house,” the reporter from the local news chirped from my driveway. My heroic neighbors, who had spent the afternoon on my roof with garden hoses, greeted that comment in muttered disgust: “Yeah, some miracle.”

 

I thought the trees were dead, but within a month, I saw a hint of something and went out to investigate.  There, in clusters of perfect little emeralds, was life reasserting itself.

 

When I see the first leaf buds or early blossoms every year, my heart lifts at the sheer doggedness of the will to live that had quietly been doing its work all winter. I often think of Roethke’s poem then, particularly the beautiful last line, where he reminds us of our own internal winters, and the green shoots that come up, often by surprise, to signal that perhaps it is time to put behind whatever has been dreary and cold, and regrow ourselves.

 

My daily walk to and from the college where I teach takes me past the Rose Garden in Balboa Park, and there is something about the brutality with which rose bushes are cut back in late December that always wounds me. Today the nodes are swelling and the first leaves are breaking out, turning their private substance into green, just as the gardeners with their faith and pruning shears, knew they would.

 

Last February I lived not just in a different home in a different part of town, but in a different world.  My beloved partner, Jim, was declining noticeably from the cancer that would steal his life in April. When June came, I cried because he was not there to see the jacarandas whose purple blooms he had always appreciated with the glee of a child.  There was only winter for me last summer.  There was even less for him.

 

But sap does rise and the juices of this beautiful life do surge again.  Somewhere between then and now, the sad, furled leaves of my grief and sorrow opened to reveal something lush and green and full of promise. It’s called life. It’s called understanding that we are still here, and rejoicing in that single, beautiful fact.  It’s what our own internal green shoots are trying to tell us as every season, every stage of life beckons.

 

A number of months ago, I wrote here that, “I can’t write about writing or the writing life today, because I am not doing any of the former, and as to the latter, I don’t have one.”  I’d have to say that’s still true.  I have been dormant. I haven’t written one word of fiction, or edited anything I had finished before Jim got sick. I’m perfectly okay with that, and have no sense of urgency and no plan to do anything different for now.

 

In the poem, such a time is called winter, but for me, life is not cold and dreary, it’s simply not the season for the pen. In the last few months it’s been the right time for lecturing on a cruise line, seeing movies, taking up golf, making some new friends, palling around with old ones, and starting to think about loving again.

 

I don’t speculate about my writing future, although my friends seem certain I have one. Blessings on you for your confidence and support.  Maybe you are right, but unlike the roses in Balboa Park that shared their wisdom with me this week, I am not stuck with being able to produce only one kind of flower.

Since my husband’s death in April, I have had one of life’s most important jobs: finding my way back to happiness.

 I have always believed it is my obligation to the universe to thrive, and when grief, trauma, or misfortune hit, I treat recovery as requiring the same intensity of attention and commitment I pay to my work as a writer and professor.

It should be obvious that sifting through all the thoughts and emotions that engulf one at such times is hard mental (and sometimes physical) labor. Still, when I tell people that I am working hard on being happy again, generally they seem confused.  “How do you work at being happy?” they ask. “Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?”

Since people really seem to want to know what I mean, I’ll try to explain.  We think of gravity as the force that brought Newton’s apple down, but the root word, “gravitas” simply means heaviness. Sorrow, dissatisfaction, grief, displeasure are all weighty burdens causing us slip easily into a hole it’s hard to climb out. What we need is a counterforce to lift us up. Gratitude, for me, is a force powerful enough to ride all the way out of that hole, defying gravity in a whole new way.

Why is it important to practice gratitude?  Because anything else is an insult to the universal force (whatever one believes it to be) that, as Jews say in the blessing known as Shehekiyanu, “creates us, sustains us, and enables us to reach this day.”

For those less cosmically inclined, gratitude is also practical: time spend outside a state of gratitude is time in which we are not healing.  Anger, remorse, guilt, wishful thinking, even grief that focuses only on loss–are all hindrances to finding the peace that must come before any real happiness.

So I worked (and continue to work) at reconciling myself with how it could be that a healthy, active, lusty, and adventurous man had been invaded by a mutation that ate him alive and left him an emaciated and sallow corpse in a hospice bed just seven month after his diagnosis.  Why it was that he had the bad luck to have such an aggressive strain of prostate cancer that even therapies that usually add several years to the life of patients added not a day to his.

There isn’t a why.  What is, is.  Jim knew this and said it often, not just about his cancer, but about everything he couldn’t change. I am so lucky to have spent the last eight years with a man who thought that way, for I realize now what a blessing it is to have an  outlook that makes practicing gratitude natural.

What is, is.

Isn’t that the heart of the matter?  Don’t we have to accept reality before we can find our way out of the holes into which life knocks us from time to time?

Jim and I practiced gratitude together until the end. As to the cards we had been dealt in life, any complaints simply died in our throats.  Jim’s life gave him seven decades of opportunities, accomplishments, and many joys.  He got to practice the science he loved in a lab that his many achievements kept funded.  He did well enough financially to be able to afford a 40-foot Valiant sailboat and a beautiful Ventus glider, both of which gave him outlets for his boundless energy and centers for his identity.  He traveled widely and read eclectically. He had the good sense to keep his wishes modest and within his means.  We treated each other with the respect we hadn’t always gotten in previous relationships, which gave us an opportunity to heal each other’s wounds.  Jim left this world honored and treasured by his family and friends, and deeply loved by me.

That was his reality.  This is mine.  I must face life without him, but I had an extraordinary and precious person in my life for a while.  Eight years was not as long as we hoped, but it will have to be enough. I lost my love, but I had an experience of love that many people never get.

Life has given me six decades of opportunities beyond measure, successes of countless kinds, resources of every sort with which to face up to problems, and the vision to see and accept challenges as chances to make something wonderful happen.  Straw into gold, lemons into lemonade, loss into gain, defeat into victory.  All it takes is seeing it that way.  Otherwise, straw, lemons, loss, and defeat just stay what they are.

I haven’t been either a Pollyanna or a Queen of Denial about my loss.  I cried buckets at the beginning, and I still get teary (although briefly) most days. For a time, I did all I could to stay in that liminal world between being alive and dead, grasping at chances to feel I was with him again, if only for a moment. I still chat with him in my head, but acknowledge that the talk is therapy for me, independent of whether he is there to hear it.  No, his death is real, and I have struggled hard, and so far successfully, to let him–and me–move on.

When I experience something beautiful, or amusing, or touching, I think of how much Jim would enjoy it, and I often cry.  What my thinking comes quickly around to, however, is that those beautiful, amusing, and touching moments are in this world here and now, and so am I.

Our wounds move away from front and center in our lives when we put the past in an honored place, but don’t try to live there. I am ready and excited to continue reinventing myself, to make new friends, begin new activities, and–who knows?–perhaps even find love again. So I move forward, saying an ongoing thank you to the universe for Jim’s life and my own, and for the countless blessings of this and every day.

Shantih. Shalom. Peace.

 

I can’t write about writing or the writing life today, because I am not doing any of the former, and as to the latter, I don’t have one.

Eight months ago, my beloved partner (and more recently husband) was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.  Though incurable, for most men his age (72), it’s likely to progress slowly enough that they die of something else.  Jim didn’t have that kind.  His was so invasive it left the doctors astonished, and took his life in less than eight months.

When he was diagnosed I was just finishing the first draft of a new book, and as the prognosis began to look grimmer, I set it aside and did not look at the file again. I couldn’t justify spending any time in a made-up world when I had my beautiful, gentle, loving, and utterly precious love still with me.

 

I still haven’t opened that file, and have no desire to do so. Nothing seems quite real to me now except the actual world in the present tense, and it requires such tremendous effort that there is nothing left over to call upon.  And, surprisingly, I am fine without writing–so fine it is difficult to imagine feeling driven in the same way again.

People say not to make important decisions in the throes of catastrophic events, so I will just say I don’t know what direction my writing life will go.  All I know is that when I make a list of the things that are important to getting myself back on my feet and launched into the next chapter of my life, writing novels is not on the list.  Perhaps that is the exact wrong thing to say on a website devoted to writers and writing, in the company of writing women whom I admire professionally and love as friends, but one thing life has shown me is that under stress, honesty is the only thing I have energy for.

So we will see.

“What was the outcome?” we often ask, as if there is some sort of linear end to matters, a convenient wrap-up that restores our faith that life is a predictable narrative, even if that predictability can only be seen after the fact.

The outcome of the last eight months, since that awful September day when we heard the dreaded “C” word, is that Jim died.  But the thing about outcomes is that they really aren’t.  They are thresholds.  Maybe that’s what we should say instead.

I don’t know what the outcome of Jim’s death is.  I know how I feel right now–or maybe I really don’t.  Our culture doesn’t give us much opportunity or practice in speaking of the nuances of feeling.  I am a writer, and my own vocabulary for such things is pathetic.  I am sad.  I am grief stricken. I am at loose ends….

Pathetic.  Told you so.

I am standing in a doorway.  Thinking about the past makes me sad.  The future without Jim makes me sad too. The only thing I can do anything about is the present, and exigencies are dictating most of that to me as well.

There are no outcomes, only thresholds.  As Goethe put it, “nothing is worth more than this day.”  How much will yours be worth?