Making the Leap

I have entered once again the abyss, and now I'm free-falling, like one of those cave jumpers who dive screaming into the murk until on a whoosh comes a wide, white parachute and a waking dream of the dark and dank and cool.

Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. All I've done, like so many others, is make the decision to attempt to go back to school. It's a Master of Fine Arts in writing (fiction) I'm trying for, because--at least at this point in time--the MFA is still considered the terminal degree for creative writers who also want to be professors. I actually started the application process in late summer 2008, and then the life-changing happened that Fall (see the photo above). And the graduate school dream was put on indefinite hold while I navigated pregnancy and hormones and the wonders and stresses and waking dream that is new motherhood.

It's not the first time I've done this: I earned a MA in English in 2004, and I've been slaving away at various colleges and community/technical colleges since then, thoroughly enjoying my job but wanting to find something more permanent and, ahem... monetarily feasible. I know I'm not alone here; there are thousands of us--lowly adjuncts--teaching across the country, working for pittance and wondering why we got the advanced degree in the first place. (This could be a whole other blog, and it's been done, so I'm not going there.)

But I'm not one of those people. I earned my Master's degree in English for two reasons: to work towards a terminal degree (I thought at the time, a PhD), and to acquaint (and reacquaint) myself with the great writers, in order to become a better writer. I never regret school; I feel that education is a beauty "worthwhile in itself." But now that I'm starting the process all over again--and with a toddler, husband, and part-time job in tow--and though I know that it's the right and best thing for me, I wonder if I'm not a little nuts?

What am I thinking? I barely have time for myself now, and I have one child. One. My "free" time is not spent writing, but catching up on school work and bills and laundry and all the sundry and annoyingly wonderful things that come with being a wife and mother in the modern word. I poop out, exhausted, at about 10:30 every night. I'm nuts, I know it.

The thing is, I know that I can do this. I can figure out how to earn (another) degree, be a good mama, a loving partner, a healthy person. I'd just like a magic potion. A pill, perhaps (are you listening, Phizer?). I'll make my best go of it. I just wish it were a wee bit--just a wee bit--easier.

Any advice, you writers-with-children? Students-with-children?

Disclaimer: This post was a result of one week of cancelled preschool due to snow, and three days (so far) of delayed preschool. A bomb filled with toys, magazines, stuffed animals and thermal coffee mugs (don't ask) has exploded in my house, and I just let my toddler wade through it at will. I rock.

Wilderness House Literary Review

An excerpt from my historical novel, KEOWEE, has been published in Wilderness House Literary Review, #5/4. You'll find it when you click the link below, under "Fragments of novels looking for homes (publishers)."

http://www.whlreview.com/ (For the entire issue.)
http://www.whlreview.com/no-5.4/fiction/KSCrawford.pdf (For my excerpt alone.)

It's the first time an excerpt from my novel--which my agent is still pitching to publishers--has appeared in a literary journal.

Hope you enjoy. And a very Happy New Year to all!

Katie

Ghosts of Christmas Past

It's only just topped 20 degrees this snowy, frozen mountain morning. I am a-sit at my fireside desk, considering the end of 2010. The passage of time like this has always seemed to me a cosmic joke, a bittersweet reminder of the nature of being wonderfully human--a treatise on the rare and precious nature of life.

For me, one of the loveliest, and at the same regrettable, aspects of time passing so lightning-fast is not the new wrinkles around my eyes or my daughter morphing into a literal little girl, or even my dog growing more gray about the muzzle: it is, instead, my inability to connect with old friends in a real way.

Certainly, there are the things that separate us: age, different lives and responsibilities, new ideas and cares, state lines, even continents. But though we are no longer children, teenagers--or even tanned, carefree twenty-somethings--what we share are memories of experiences that glitter momentarily in the mind, a Christmas ornament catching the light. And memories of time spent with friends, however ephemeral, cannot be lost no matter how old we grow or how much we change.

So....

For My Friends at Christmastime

I miss you.

I miss the days spent lakeside, fireside, schoolside--

the quick flash of laughter, the raucous freedom of being wild,

the stories and the trust and the secrets.

Know that if you wonder on me, I wonder on you--

that ours is a snow globe shaken.

Ode on an Extraordinary Professor

Here's a link to a short piece I wrote for the Fall 2010 issue of College of Charleston Magazine. (Click the title of this post.) It's on the last page of the print issue, in a section called "My Space." And it's about a professor named Joe Harrison, who was my independent study advisor, and with whom I spent a summer study abroad in Italy in 2003.

On another note, College of Charleston Magazine is an impressive publication: by far the best alumni publication I've ever read. Even if you're not an alum, the whole thing is a good read.

Enjoy!

Steady as She Goes

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.

~ Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 1474-1564

Sitting at this desk in a brown-tiled room, a fire blazing on a chilly—but not yet cold—November morning, it becomes apparent to me that I am a Spurter. One-who-spurts. Better yet, I should say: One-Who-Does-Things-in-Spurts. I’m certain that this comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me; so indeed, it’s not really a surprise even to me. Recognition, however, comes a little slow for my mercurial and somewhat exhausted brain.

But it’s true: almost anything I’ve ever done—and done well—has been in a great spurt of inspiration or information or necessity: writing a college essay (night before, cram cram), reading a book (all in one sitting, no matter the tomb), writing a novel (I’m a sixteen-plus pages at a time sort of writer), cleaning the house (flurry of activity, Windex, Lysol, vacuum, oh my!), hiking a trail (turn around now, are you kidding?!), catching up with friends (all of them, all in one day), and even deciding to have a baby (okay, maybe I won’t go there.) “Slow and steady wins the race” has never been my adage of choice, and perhaps it should be. Perhaps those plodders, the successful, steady-as-she-goes types, are onto something. Maybe there’s a potion.

It can’t be easy to live with, this spurting tendency of mine. Since we dated for three years before becoming engaged, I think my husband may have had some sort of idea what he was getting into. But then, we’d never lived together before, so the day to day reality of this odd aspect of my nature may still be an annoyance… even after six years of marriage. Yeesh. As we’ve grown together, we try to plan, to budget, to make lists. These are all practical antidotes for the spurting. They help at times; at others they’re just stop-gap. My fifteen month-old daughter doesn’t seem to mind the spurting, though she may be too young at this point to recognize that Mama is a little nuts. Or maybe, heaven forbid, she’s a spurter, too. Maybe there’s a potion.

The dog is definitely a spurter: this I knew the day I brought her home from the breeder and she went skidding full-tilt around the hardwood floors of the beachhouse I was renting at the time; or, when she bounded—at all of six weeks old and about the size of a loaf of bread—into the rough Atlantic, only to be pummeled by a monster wave. She’s still that way, gazelling up steep trails in her late-middle-age, high on joy, then crashing on our couch for hours after. The lulls between spurts, for both of us—my dog and me—are getting longer. This does not bode well for future productivity.

At times I long to be one of the plodders, those whose houses stay clean for months on end, the ones who train for marathons a year away, whose lives are clear and unworried and neat, those steady, accomplished people. Michelangelo was steady. It took him four years each, give or take, to both sculpt the David and paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. During each of those times he was also commissioned for, and completed, other works—including architectural projects and paintings. Inspired? Surely. But also determined, prepared, steady. Most would say that Michelangelo was a master, a true genius. He felt differently: “If you knew how much work went into it,” he would say, “you would not call it genius.”

So there’s the goal: to marry the inspired, the passion, with the steady, the deliberate. In the meantime, I bow to you, Plodders. Keepers-of-the-schedules. Master Buonarroti, always. My elderly, across the street neighbor, who raises her American flag every morning at 7:35 a.m. You are the producers. That I may, one day, be one.

Why I Write: Or, Why I Will Write Soon

Writing is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. [And] sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled. ~ Dean Koontz

Exactly eleven months and two days after I'd given birth to our daughter, my husband and I were arguing. We were growing louder and more immature by the second when out of frustration and self-preservation, my husband took his head briefly in his hands and then shook them at me like a saner version of Kosmo Cramer. "You have got to write!" He shouted.

It had the same effect as a concerned friend begging lowly to an addict, You've got to quit drinking or You've got to get some help. Not writing was making me curt, ornery, and even a bit depressed.

Three years earlier, I'd attended a writing conference in South Carolina with a mere ten pages of an historical novel--the product of an idea that had been brewing in my brain for years. At the end of my sit-down with a reputable editor (formerly with Algonquin Books) he set my pages down on the table between us and looked at me directly. "Have you got more?" He asked.

"No," I answered, embarrassed. "That's it."

"Well, a year from now, when you finish it, you need to start shopping for agents. I think you've got a really publishable work here."

A year and a half later I finished the novel and followed the editor's advice. I did my research, and within six months I was choosing between four literary agents who'd offered to represent me and my fledgling novel. I went with the older agent: a man whose success and longevity in the business I'd admired, and whose name often popped up beneath the word "Producer" in the credits of several blockbuster action films. I didn't expect for my novel to be bought quickly, of course, but I'd been on such a lucky streak with the whole thing--my first novel, several offers of representation, the rarity of it all--that there was a tinny voice in my head whispering It'll happen. You're on a roll.

Six months passed. Then another six months. Then a year. The publisher rejection letters I insisted my agent send me poured in. Despite the occasional compliment, it was the negative that stuck with me: "Not right for my list." "A little old-fashioned." And my personal favorite: "We could've done a great job with this a few years back." Merely the stuff of experience, I told myself. I began new work, tried somewhat unsuccessfully to shore up my confidence, to take strength from the many failed-then-finally-published writers before me. Everyone goes through this, I reasoned.

Then, in the Fall of 2008, I got pregnant... and shortly thereafter lost the power to write. Whatever you want to call it--the creative spark, the Muse, my literary mojo--was simply swallowed up by Baby Brain Freeze. All the supportive comments from my writer friends who were already parents, the "Just think about how much you'll have to write about!" and "Your creativity will blossom!" did nothing to rouse my creative will. Though it was arguably the most important physical and emotional transition of my life, I felt no urge to write about the experience. I pushed aside my literary life and immersed myself in reading and thinking only about baby. Or at least I tried.

So when my husband shouted, I stopped. I didn't even have to take a breath. "You're right, " I told him. And he was--I needed to write like I needed to take my first shower in days or to sit down and eat a proper supper. Not doing so was making me mean.

I began by writing letters to my infant daughter, and no matter how sporadic, it is the act of channeling thought to fingertips, fear and hope and love to the page, that has brought me back from the abyss. Started the thaw. Revved my writer's engine. In doing so, I'm not making any great strides. God knows I'm still a bit paralyzed by the fact that my novel may never get published, that as the mother of a now one year-old, it may be years before I again have the opportunity for totally unencumbered writing time.

Today, my literary agent finally returned an email message I'd sent him over a month ago, and then re-sent two weeks later, just to be sure he'd received it. An apology: He's got several unfinished manuscripts due at the same time. He's having surgery soon, a hip replacement. He'll call me some time next week.

And what will I tell him? That the only writing I've accomplished in the past twenty-one months has been an occasional blog posting, handwritten "thank you" notes for baby shower gifts, and the random-yet-inspired letters to my daughter? Maybe.

Or perhaps I'll tell him that I've written this piece. That I'm coming back. That no matter the life change, the anxiety, the exhaustion--I have got to write.

My Dog is a Toddler

My dog is a toddler.

This has been a slow emergence; she's only recently morphed. But a toddler she is: she's suddenly got an infintismal attention span, and is so slow to respond--it takes her three or four times to obey a command--that I'm starting to feel like one of those "yelling mothers." We've all heard them, screeching at their children over... and over... and over again to do something they so desperately want.

Over the past weekend, which happened to be our daughter's first birthday and subsequent party at my family's lakehouse, my dog, Scout, (a 90 lb black lab) insisted on barking at every passing boat, stealing towels and t-shirts, begging for food: all the things she knows she's not supposed to do. Everyone in my family--and we're an opinionated lot--seems to think that this behavior is a result of not getting enough attention from my husband and me, the parents. And it's true: our world has been picked up like a coin jar and shaken, all the coins flipped. Our once fantastic dog, who used to get taken on several hikes, trail runs, and walks each week, and who used to come when called at most by the second try, has been consigned to second place.

It pains me to even write those words--second place--especially as I never thought I'd see the day. But if I'm to be honest, it's true. Everything, not just the dog, has been reshifted. The only runner in the lead is our daughter, and we're okay with that for now. But Scout, I'm afraid, is still a toddler.

She does, however, redeem herself in small ways. There was a human toddler, a little girl, at the birthday party: our friends' daughter, who was wandering the dock. Our friend reported that Scout put her body between the little girl and the water, and continued to do this every time the little girl ventured to the edge. And I can't forget that in the months after our daughter was born, Scout sat faithfully by my chair as I nursed, head regal, on the lookout for danger. Today, on our morning walk, she trotted faithfully to the left of the stroller, glancing repeatedly at our daughter, keeping between her and the street. On a downtown street corner, an older gentleman stopped his car, rolled down his window and called, "It's nice to have an old friend helping out."

I couldn't agree more.

Maybe in time, as my husband and I relax and reshuffle, organize and purge, Scout will settle into her new role with the ease of an old pro. She has endured my many moods and changes--from hermit graduate student to itinerate college professor to first-time mother--and she certainly deserves the same consideration and patience, the same faithful presence.

So when she leaps over my crawling baby on the way to find a place, any place, of peace in our tiny house, and knocks said baby in the head with her giant paws, I will deal with it. Pick up the baby, pet the dog.

Surely we'll all grow up together.