Friendship

Before I was tapped to be part of this group (o fortuitous unearned tap), I thought I had all the friends I needed. I'd reached saturation. I couldn't give the friends I already had the time and energy they deserved, and I already had fabulous friends in many of the arts. Why would I want more?

Back then, I wrote in a vacuum. I wrote alone and didn't talk to anyone about what I was working on. I read writing blogs voraciously, and I thought that I could get everything I needed from them.

And yes, from the internet I learned how to write an effective query letter. I learned how to find an agent. I learned that I needed to write every day to make reliable forward progress (something I hadn't even learned in grad school).

But from the Pens, I learned how to live as a writer. From them, I learned that I wasn't alone in my blatant eavesdropping habits. I wasn't the only person who jotted notes on the clothing of people on BART. I wasn't alone in being unable to sleep when in the first throes of a fresh, perfect, sparkling idea. It was okay to be obsessed, over-the-top in love with your new crush, your work.

I learned that true writer friends will help you figure out where and how to bury the body. They'll tell you when you have toothpaste on your shirt and when your character motivation is unrealistic. And most importantly, I learned that writer friends laugh and laugh and laugh and then laugh some more. The internet is good at transmitting information, but lousy at hugging. Hugs are plentiful with writer friends. Love is real, and strong.

Thank you, ladies. I am so lucky.

Rachael's Image

A long time ago, I thought writers worked late at night, the Muse singing in their ears, telling them fantastical tales. I thought they wore only expensive black clothes and thick glasses with interesting frames. I thought they attended fabulous soirees where they were the guests of honor, toasted and feted to within an inch of their lives, every night.

You know what the writer's image really is?

The writer's image includes pulling on the black sweatpants that your dad gave you for Christmas five years ago. You laughed then, holding them up, saying, "When am I ever going to wear something like this?" never believing they would become more beloved to you than your favorite pen. It doesn't matter if they're covered in cat hair, if they haven't been washed in a week, if they sag in the ass -- they are your WRITING pants and anyone who wants to take them from you can peel them from your cold, dead, well-written frame.

It includes the "With Love from Crotch Lake" coffee mug that your friend Alison mailed you from Canada after you protested that no lake could really be named that, let alone the lake where her family fly-fished every year. Coffee tastes better in that mug. Especially if you forgot to wash it yesterday.

It includes the felted slippers you knitted yourself six years ago, the ones with the holes in the heels. An added pair of Target-purchased acrylic black socks mean that you can get at least another two years out of these suckers.

It includes an unhealthy addiction to Twitter, so sick so that you dedicated your last book to Mac Freedom for tearing you away from the internet when you would have bargained with a man with a gun demanding the same thing.

It includes, instead of the Muse dropping by for a cup of inspiration, a cat throwing up on your keyboard while you're writing the hottest part of the sex scene. In includes your dog barking every time a person has the gall to breathe in front of your house. It includes computer failures, blown printers, and FedEx failing to deliver copyedits that were guaranteed to arrive before you left town.

The real writer's image isn't glamorous. It involves sweat and oily skin and insomnia and stress-related breakouts.

And every once in a while, you get to dress up and drink Scotch and rub elbows with other glamorous-looking people who've been greased into their Spanx just like you have, and you talk writing and laugh and pretend you always look this great, but tomorrow you'll all be grateful to be back in the sweats you laughed at when your dad gave them to you.

Worst Pick-up Line Ever

I have a favorite hotel in Venice, a tiny place which bought the old Danieli furnishings when they renovated. It's hard to find, tucked into a corner of Cannaregio that you have to be really looking for, and opposite its front door is a little osteria. Mario runs it. He's a big guy--imagine Mario Batali meets James Gandolfini. If you become a semi-regular, he'll pour you shots of his homemade grappa which would melt the rubber off a steel-belted radial. His waiter-cum-busboy Franco only knows three words of English, and wanders around the five tiny tables singing "I luff you" to everyone as Mario puts things on your plate that you won't recognize as food and he won't tell you till you're done eating that it was a calf's hoof.

One Monday night, I was relaxing over a half-litre of red wine with a friend I'd made at the bookshop when Mario called me over to the bar and poured me another shot.

"Wednesday night," he said. "You come back. You can meet my wife. Private party here, family only. My wife is cooking."

"Me?" I said, delighted to my toes. "You want me to come to your family's party?"

"My wife cooks good. Better than me."

I thought of the calf's hoof and decided that yes, this would be wonderful. A true Venetian experience.

All day Wednesday, I could only think about the evening to come--what I'd wear, what I'd say. I brushed up on my Idiot's Guide to Italian.

I put on makeup and a pretty dress, pulled on my high boots. I walked through the lobby, chatting with Santina at the desk as if I wasn't nervous, but my heart was racing. I crossed the narrow alley (so narrow if I turned sideways, I could touch both walls) and pushed open the door of the darkened restaurant.

Mario was behind the bar. Instead of his kitchen whites, he wore a dark, well-fitting suit.

There was no one else in the room.

"Where's the party?" I asked, confused, thinking perhaps I'd gotten the time wrong.

"Here," he said, holding out his arms.

"But your family?"

"Is just me."

I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it. "But your wife?"

"Just me."

"I wanted to meet your wife! I wanted to taste her cooking!" I'd been duped, and I hadn't seen it coming.

"Andiamo," he said, offering me his arm.

I went. He bought spritz and polpette at another osteria, and we chatted, awkwardly. He tried to kiss me, and I didn't let him, pleading tiredness. I practically sprinted back to the hotel.

It wasn't that he'd tricked me. It wasn't even really that he was married. It was that I'd been so excited to meet his wife, to taste her cooking, to sit in a room with a Venetian family and be welcomed as a guest, not a tourist.

Also, it has to be the worst pick-up line that's ever been used on me. You can meet my wife. Please.

(When you read this, I'll be in Venice again, staying in an apartment on the Zattere. I'm not really that eager to see Mario, but I'll pop by to see if Franco still luffs me.)

Strategy. I Haz It.

I love a game plan, people. I just read a great article in the Romance Writers Report by Jane McBride Choate that asked the reader to decide whether she was a left- or a right-brained writer.

Um. I had no idea you could be one or the other. I thought all writers were creative people. I thought the corollary to that was that they were all right-brained.

Therefore, I thought I was a fraud. I've always kind of thought that. (It's not really a shocker; I think all writers think they're frauds on the verge of Being Found Out most of the time.)

I know, deep in my very soul, that I'm left-brained. I love a plan. I like patterns. Routines please me very, very much (when I travel, I create a routine in a day if I have to. Just knowing I have a specific route to walk to my new favorite coffee shop--which I will use only one more time in my whole life--thrills me).

I like to plan. Recently, I spent a great deal of time going through things, setting them in order. The fact that I didn't have a will until a week ago has been something that left me sleepless some nights (I'm easily jarred). And planning for a worst-case scenario, instead of depressing me, excited me. (I set up a living trust, too, and while it was difficult for me to understand that Rachael Herron's assets didn't really exist anymore, I was over the moon to figure out that the Rachael Herron Trust was a thing, and that Rachael Herron was the current Trustee. Little old me! A trustee of something! How exciting! In reality, nothing had changed, but it felt like it had.)

So yeah. I knew I was left-brained. But writers were supposed to be right-brained, all spontaneous and go with the flow and peace, love, and understanding, right? They sat, and the Muse flowed. I sat, and my brain froze like I'd guzzled a Slurpee in twelve seconds.

But this article blew my mind. There are both kinds of writers. They exist. It's why I love an outline (even though I'm not good at them) and why first drafts are so difficult for me. Choate says, "Less experienced writers may find it difficult to incorporate emotion in their writing with the strict demands that their left brains place upon them."

Oh, yeah. I'm too busy lining up the trees on the page to notice the forest went missing a while back. She says my challenge as a left-brained writer "is to combine the best of your organizational techniques while being open to new ideas that may strengthen [my] book."

Those words make my soul sing. Organizational techniques. Hello, my darling highlighter. (I am reminded when, not that long ago, I was teaching a novel revision workshop and I was demonstrating my beloved Post-it technique while talking about the fact that I was a pantser. Carolyn Jewel, who was observing, pointed out, "Oh, girlfriend? You got a system like that? You're a plotter.")

My characters still don't always behave. I don't know the endings to my books until I approach them from seven different directions, and the middles often surprise me. But just the fact that I know this about my system pleases me. I have a routine! I can never figure out endings! That routine is mine.

I feel freed, if a person can be freed by learning it's okay to stay in the lines, which, I must say, I am SO good at doing. Pass the coloring book. (And while I may stay in the lines, I'm giving the main character blue hair and FABulous boots.)

Rachael's First Kiss

I was a big reader as a child (surprise!). I couldn't get my hands on enough books, and I read way above my level, in terms of age. So by the time I was eight or so, I was scouring the library shelves for books that were about more than princesses. I read books like Coffee, Tea, or Me when I was ten, and I had no idea what they were talking about half the time. But I could tell when it was sex-related, and I read and reread every passage, scouring each for meaning, as if by concentrating I could figure out what "the rabbit didn't die" meant.

There weren't as many young adult books then, but I remember loving every one that I read. My favorite, Madeleine L'Engle, taught me that nerds could be cool, and even nerds got kissed at fourteen by boys who were smart and almost as cute as she.

So I waited. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. I was terrible at talking to boys. They frightened me. Coming from a family of three daughters, I knew nothing about their culture. I didn't understand their language or their actions, or even their clothes.

Worse, I didn't understand the girls who did. Ellen Riggins could flip her feathered hair and say, "Do you like my friendship pins, Danny?" and Danny Thiess would kick her jellie shoe and laugh as he ran by. This, somehow, was what she was looking for, because by the end of the day, he'd be wearing her friendship pin on his stonewashed jean jacket, and I'd still be trying to figure out where the heck you bought those little beads.

But it was going to get better. I knew it was. I waited to meet him. The cute, smart boy who was going to listen (incredibly) to the shy, quiet girl and see past her thick lenses (shades of Meg Murry) and know that she was the one for him. There were a couple of smart boys in class, but only one who gave me any kind of run for my money. And I wished I could like him. But Sean was the uber-geek, the very Platonic ideal of a nerd. His voice squeaked. His braces shone. He said weird things that weren't funny, and he took it personally when I beat him on the tests.*

My biggest fear? That I would be sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Sixteen Candles came out when I was twelve. John Hughes nailed every one of my fears and brought it out in technicolor. Many people remember that movie fondly, but for me, it played like a horror movie.

Then I was fourteen. No kiss. Then fifteen. Virgin lips. Then sixteen, and desperate.

I went to a church camp, because all kids lose themselves in sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, or religion, and I'd chosen religion. There, I met [oh my god, I just forgot his name. Let's call him Dirk because it was something like that]. Dirk was six foot six, weighed about a hundred and twenty, but he was surfer cute, which to me was godlike.

And he liked me. We held hands at camp. After the week-long camp was done, he wrote to me and invited me to visit him in Bakersfield. My mother, god bless her, put me on the Greyhound bus and sent me that way because she had total trust in me that I wasn't going to get in any trouble. Which I didn't. I was so good it hurt.

However, on one of the two nights I spent in his house (sleeping on the couch in the family room, surrounded by people the size of giants), we sat on the floor cross-legged (it was the only way we could be eye-to-eye). We made the most painful of small-talk. Then he said goodnight and leaned forward.

His lips touched mine.

Instead of thinking of how it felt (cold, wet), I did a victory lap in my brain. I would NOT turn seventeen, unkissed (a fate worse than death, as far as my romantic heart was concerned). It didn't last long, and there was no tongue. It was chaste and sweet.

And even though it was the last kiss I'd get for a year or more, it was enough. I wasn't a total pariah. I'd been kissed.

*Sean kissed me once, just after high school. It was awful. And then he had the gall to send me a letter (these were still the days of letters!) from college saying he'd had some experience, and I wasn't very good at kissing, and I should probably work on it. I think somewhere he's still probably unable to talk to women and mad about it, whereas I got very good at kissing, well, everyone.

Nagging Through the Doldrums

Yesterday, while at work, I wrote a thousand words while on a break. I'm in the middle (oh, the sagging middle) of a novel, and I get my words wherever I can, even if it means writing in the driver's seat of my car during lunch.

This, to me, is the hardest part of writing -- the first draft doldrums. (Related: you already knew, I'm sure, that the doldrums is slang for the low-pressure area around the equator where the winds are calm, making sailing difficult. It's damned hard to move without wind. But this was something I didn't know: In the doldrums, you can also have variable winds, squalls gales, and even hurricanes. Now, doesn't that remind us of writing the middle of the book? Flat, nothing going on, never gonna get anywhere, OH RIP ROARING EXCITEMENT, RIDE THIS AS FAR AS SHE BLOWS BAYBEEEE, oh crap it's gone again.)

So when I'm writing a first draft, I push through. Every day, I sit in front of the computer and wait for a breeze. If there's no breeze, I turn on my desk fan. If the power goes out, I puff out my cheeks and blow on my screen, wiping the spit off as needed.

I do it because I nag. I'm a nagger, by blood. My mother was a consummate and professional nagger, and I follow in her footsteps even though I don't want to. It's not as if I sit down and plan to nag. In fact, I spend quality time trying not to nag. If I nag my wife, she doesn't know about the thirty times I swallowed the request trying not to say anything. My sisters know to tune me out when I get wound up on issues like their health or their housing (and I do try to hold most of it in, I swear).

But I nag the life out of myself.

My eyes open, and it starts. Write. Write. Write. Write.

I roll over. Write something. Write anything.

I roll to my other side. Just sit at the desk. Three hours, that's all.

I pull the pillow over my head. Fine. You want to be that way? An hour would do it.

I squinch my eyes harder shut. Half-hour?

I hold my breath. Okay, ten minutes.

Fine. Ten minutes and you can have a carrot muffin at the cafe.

As usual, the offer of food-as-reward works, and I give in, just to shut the voice up. Then, when I get to the cafe, I can usually browbeat myself into three hours of work, just from that one carrot muffin and double Americano.

People often ask me (usually with an annoyed tone) how I get so much done. But I think I've just figured out why I feel like such a slacker all the time. If people had any idea how much more I feel like I should do, how much of the time I'm struggling to tune out the guilt-laced whiny voice inside my head, they'd understand how well I'm actually practicing active, chosen laziness whenever I possibly can.

It is one way to get through the doldrums, though. A thousand words? Great! And oh, by the way. It's not enough. Get off your ass and write another thousand on your next break. See you on the other side of the ocean, where The End lives.

Vice is Fun

A vice is a habit or behavior considered immoral. And therefore, honey, they are FUN.
Running down the list of a few of my favorites:

1. Writing. I tell lies for a living. I make up truth, and then I make it up some more. When the lies are thick as tar, it's time to lay them on thicker, until the subject being written about is squirming and hopelessly stuck. And get this: the better the lie is, the harder it will be to tell that it's untrue.

2. Smoking. It's bad for you, and I don't do it. But the only reason I don't do it is because if I had even half a cigarette, I'd be back to a pack a day in a week. I've been an ex-smoker now for almost ten years, and I still love the smell of it. It's a sexy vice, too. Is there anything as seductive of that play of hands and mouth, the dance of smoke?

3. Sugar. Some people like crunchy snacks? Save 'em. I can leave a bag of potato chips on the counter for a month, but if you put ice cream in front of me and fail to remove your hand, I will bite it right off as I dive headfirst into the pint. I live, breathe, and run on sugar. Once, I cut it out of my life. For six months, I ate nothing sweeter than the occasional depressing drip of agave syrup on my oatmeal. I lost weight! I felt better than I ever had before! I was strong! Lean! Fast! Then I ate a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter minis, and I'm slower, heavier, and yes, happier.

4. Accordion. I don't think I need to say anything more than that.

(Oh. Maybe one more.)

5. Bluegrass. Don't tell me it's wrong because it feels so right.

And at its core, isn't that what vice is about? Be it Scotch or fast women (and with luck, both!), vice is bad. And that's why the thrill is particular, why the rush feels so good. Yes, we may regret it later, but let me play that accordion along with my Doc Watson album while drinking Laphroig and eating M&Ms, and I'm a happy-in-the-moment girl. I might regret the hangover tomorrow, but tonight, it's exactly what the doctor ordered.

Peanut Butter Dreams

If you put chocolate in front of me, I'll eat it. No questions asked (unless the candies in question look fuzzy, in which case I want to know as little as possible, and I'll probably still manage to choke down a few). If you bring out ice cream, I'm your girl. I've been known to substitute sweetened condensed milk for a healthy dinner--just me, the spoon, and sweet, sweet sugar.

But cookies? Meh. Mostly they've always felt like a waste of time: never as sweet as you want them to be, filling you up without the sharp, steep sugar rush that you get from, say, frosting. I'm a hardcore sugar junkie. No false starts for me. Keep your cake and most of your cookies, too.

The exception are my friend JoAnn's peanut butter cookies.

They are amazing. I'm placing the recipe here for posterity, which I realize is ridiculous since there is almost nothing to remember, but I forget this recipe at least once a year. It's a good excuse to get in touch with JoAnn though, and she's used to me asking for the recipe since I've been doing it regularly for the last ten years.

(These cookies are so delicious they garnered me a marriage proposal. No lie. (I accepted.) And they couldn't be easier.)

1 cup peanut butter (I like Skippy creamy though crunchy works well, too)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp baking soda

Mix and bake at 350 for 11-13 minutes.

Enjoy the sugar, y'all.

El Sobrante

When I was young (very young, the kind of young that remembers looking up at the phone hung on the wall), we lived in El Sobrante, California. I remember practicing it: Ell So-BRAWN-tay. It was Spanish, my parents told me, for the Leftover. The land was the leftover bit of a ranch, parceled off after Mexico gained independence from Spain.

This fascinated me. Unless it was twice-baked spaghetti with a golden cheese crust, I could spot a meal on its second time around from twenty paces. No one liked leftovers. No one could.

So why then was my pretty little town called the leftover? Didn't they know about our library with the tall dark stacks full of books I would someday read? Didn't they know that our house had the best climbing tree ever? And that our school had the crunchiest tater tots I'd ever had in my whole life?

We didn't live in El Sobrante for long, not more than three or four years, I think, but it stuck in my mind as firmly as the phone number we had there, the very first number I ever memorized. And I wasn't the only one affected. When we moved overseas to Saipan when I was a teenager, my father decided to build a boat. Now, he's a talented man, a good builder. But no matter what, building a boat is…tricky. And he was doing it on the cheap with parts gleaned from wherever he could beg, borrow or steal them. So when the boat was finally put together in a form that looked like it might repel water, he christened it the El Sobrante (redundant article and all). He loved it, and the family spent many happy hours on the lagoon bailing water using old milk jugs.

And when SuperTyphoon Kim smashed the island and left slivers of his boat literally hanging from the trees on the Garapan beach, my mother put screwdrivers into my and my sisters' hands, sending us to rummage under palm fronds. "Watch out for scorpions," she said. "Bring back the metal. The bolts and screws, anything you can find."

That Christmas, Dad unwrapped his present from us. In a plain white envelope, he found the hardware of his boat. The label said, "Seeds of the El Sobrante II."

Leftovers. They can surprise you.

Presenting Rachael

I struggled with this post. I’m ambivalent, at best, about presents. I hate to wrap—I think it’s a waste of time and resources—so I’m the kind of person who hides the gift behind her back and says, “Pick a hand.” Giving is nice, but the getting part stresses me out.

There’s so much managing of emotion that goes along with presents. And oh, my goodness, do my codependent tendencies come out when I’m thinking about this.

Say it’s your birthday. Perhaps you get just what you want. Great! But then you have to think of adequate words to thank the giver, which can be difficult. Worse, you get something you didn’t want, in which case you have to work even harder to find words that aren’t lies but convey something better, warmer, than disappointment.

And if you’re the giver? That’s even harder. You think and plan and make and knit and sew and plot, and in four seconds, the gift is received and pushed aside in order to open the next one. I really try to prevent myself from saying “Do you like it? Do you really like it? Look, did you see that it flies/walks/cries when you push this button? It’s so you, isn’t it? You love it, right? Do you love it?” because then I’m making the poor recipient manage all the emotions that I myself have a hard time with.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I was a kid, I was sneaky. I could pull off a piece of tape like I was one of Santa’s elves. Mom never suspected that I already knew what every present under the tree already was, and I had to keep it that way—when I opened the big book of fairy tales, I had to act surprised while I managed the disappointment (that I’d brought down onto my own head) that there were no surprises left on Christmas morning, none at all.

That shaped me into who I am today. If someone places a present in front of me with the wrapping paper gapping open, I’ll shut my eyes and hold the paper in place while hollering for someone to get me some tape. If I think an area might be off-limits due to present-goings-on, I’ll stay out of the entire room. If a receipt falls to the floor and I start to read it, the second I think it might be private, my eyes shut tight. I hate figuring out surprises in advance now, to the extent that when I’m reading mystery novels, I work hard not to think too much about whodunit. I want that reward. I don’t even read the backs of books. I want the surprise.

So I can’t wait for December 6th. Juliet Blackwell’s new book, Dead Bolt, comes out, and if anyone breathes a word of the ending before I get there, I’ll hit that person in the head with a dictionary. I’m just saying.

Rachael's Regret

I regret the things I didn't do. They're what spring to mind when I think of regret -- not my screw-ups. I get over those pretty quickly, probably because I'm pretty damn used to them.

But these things I regret:

1. I didn't go to the Hell's Angel party (on Sonny Barger's birthday) in Oakland when I was invited. Ron was my next door neighbor when I lived in the treehouse/shack in East Oakland. He was a Vietnam vet with pretty bad PTSD. He made throwing stars out of twelve inch saw blades, and in the wee hours, they'd thwack into the side of the garage to which my lean-to was attached. He was nice to me, though. And I knew, as I was saying "No, thank you," that I would regret it someday. I do.

2. I regret not feeding our dog Harriet more treats before she died. We were so careful because of her kidney disease. We wanted her to live forever (and she almost did -- she died every morning, we thought -- stiff, cold -- sometimes we'd find her lying there with eyes half-open. No signs of breath. We'd poke her for a while and she'd snorffle her way back to life). But there, when we knew it was the end, I regret not sneaking her some chicken bones. She loved nothing more.

3. I regret not finishing a book in time for my mother to read it.

4. I regret not telling a boy I loved that I truly loved him.

5. I do NOT regret thinking about Harriet while eating Ben'n'Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream today. Because I thought of her, I let my cat Digit lick my spoon when I was done. Okay, I might have let him stick his whole head in the empty tub. It made him happy. And that's the whole point, isn't it?

Ikea Hell

Hell is Ikea.

Really, Hell is any space occupied by:
1) a lot of people I don't know and probably wouldn't like if I did know and
2) large things for purchase piled the ceiling in dizzying quantities and colors with
3) open, echoing space in between these things.

So therefore, Hell can be defined as Office Max, Costco, or any other big box store.

But Ikea is a special kind of hell. I mean, really, what kind of store purposely confuses you? It's like they rub their hands together in glee and say, "Yes, we are trying to turn you around and around like the lines at Disneyland but there is no magical ride at the end! There are no fireworks! There is just you and a cart full of things you never knew you wanted and a line that winds almost all the way back to your house!" Then the maniacal laughter starts and it doesn't stop until you cry.

Or until you buy a car.

The first time I ever went to Ikea, I went alone. I was excited! A twelve dollar nightstand? Sure! I threw everything into my cart: pots and glasses and plants and tiny clear magnets I couldn't imagine using, but with the life I was creating with my New Ikea Things, I knew they would come in handy.

It wasn't until I standing in the back of of the interminable line, totting up the purchase price of my now-towering cart, that I started to panic. The child in line behind me, whom I'd seen entering the store, a cherubic blond with blue eyes, had taken on a demonic appearance. He gaped and screamed at me, all red-faced with bulging eyes. The demons were entering him, and I was next, I knew it!

I didn't need a single thing. Not one hanging photo frame or fuzzy floor pillow. But I was completely stuck. Once in the line at Ikea, you sign their contract: You are theirs. They own you. Look at everyone else's faces; admire the portraits of bleakness and despair. You must shuffle forward, always forward, fumbling for the credit card they will demand in exchange for your stuff and your soul.

There's no way out. You can almost feel the flames, can't you?

That day, I ran. I ignored the sticking-out tongue of the child-devil behind me, and I pushed my way past a man who was chuckling diabolically over a set of pleated polka-dot valances. I left my cart right where it was, in the middle of the line. I didn't care.

I ran out into the lot, got in my old beater Ford Fiesta and drove away blindly, still panicked, trying to calm my heart rate. I drove past the water into the heart of Oakland. Then I passed a used car lot. In the front row sat an older white convertible with a low sticker price. I pulled over, and within thirty minutes, I'd purchased a new-to-me car and had left my old car as a trade-in.

Let me repeat: Buying a used car was easier than buying popsicle sticks at Ikea. Less stressful. More fun.

So I know this: if I'm a bad person, when I die I will be trapped on aisle K-16 trying to lift pallets of porch swings with a broken forklift for all of eternity. The back up beep beep beep will never end. Therefore, I try to be as nice as possible. I'm hoping for the top-down on the convertible kind of afterlife, if you know what I mean.

Ojos de Dios

One of my favorite art projects as a kid was that God's Eye project. Remember that? The Ojo de Dios?

You took two popsicle sticks and held them crosswise to each other. Then you wound a piece of yarn around them, weaving the strand up and over then over again. You added another color, and another, lining those strands up perfectly, so that nothing was out of place. That knot at the end was the hardest part--you had to make sure it was sturdy enough to stay in place, but if it was too tight, the yarn pulled, and if it was too loose, the yarn sagged. (Sure, there were signs that this was more important, somehow, and I'm sure we talked about how the four points stood for earth, air, fire, and water, but IT WAS ALL ABOUT THE YARN for me.)

I was a master God's Eye maker. I'm just saying. I know my strengths, and if it involves yarn, I'm your girl. But somewhere along the line, God's Eyes got mixed up in my personal dictionary with dream catchers. But both, I learned along the way somewhere, were childish projects. They weren't something babies made, even though they'd been called Art when I'd learned how to make them. (My dream catchers didn't look like this one; they looked like twigs and twisted string, a forest macrame.)


[Aside: Boy, I loved me some macrame, too.]

Art Projects. We filed the popsicle sticks in the bins next to the dyed macaroni (remember that dry paste smell of the pasta? The way some broke and poked your fingers unexpectedly?) and dried peas (oh, the clatter of dessicated legumes rolling off the table to the tiled first-grade floor). Toothpicks and Elmer's Glue. Glitter and left-handed scissors that drove you crazy because you were a righty but no one could find the right-handed ones (that's still a mystery to me, one that jolts me awake in the middle of the night sometimes and I AM NOT KIDDING HERE--why don't they work the same way? Spatially, I cannot figure this out).

At some point, Art turned to Craft. And craft turned to something that was less than art, while art became more than. Better than. More difficult and more nebulous.

I taught (very) briefly at the California College for Arts and Crafts. I loved that the c-word was in their title, but in 2003, they took it out, and now they are simply College for the Arts. It made me sad: they'd started as part of the Arts and Crafts movement, and I thought it was a shame to lose a reference to that. It was always school for the "practical arts" as well as decorative ones but aren't those, by definition, crafts? Why do we need to feel shame about the word?

Craft can be defined as functional art. And God knows, the arts I love best are functional:

Writing delivers information, meaning and emotion.
Knitting delivers warmth and protection.

Functional. Utilitarian. I hone the craft of my writing every time I sit at my computer, and my knitting is a crafted art. The words blend together like my childish ideas of God's Eyes and dream catchers. All guard the weaver/writer (or the bearer/wearer) and it comes down to this: art IS craft, and craft IS art, and the combination of both? Sublime.

Whisper Meme

Meme: an idea that spreads through a population, taking hold like a virus. They can be harmful: racist memes that spread through a family/territory/area. Or, as in the case of faith-based religions, they can be argued to be helpful--they assist people to live happier, more peaceful lives (unless that faith-based religion likes to bash/fight other people in which case, let's go back to calling it harmful).

And in terms of internet memes, they can make you feel like you're in fourth grade, still feathering your hair the wrong way, pegging your jeans but not knowing the rubber band trick so the pant leg always falls down.

If you miss a meme, you're out. Not with it. You're hanging with the uncool crowd, and you thought you doing okay up until that point. Someone chortles and says, "But what does it meeeeean?" and everyone else says, "Double Rainbow!" And you go, huh? Then everybody trips over themselves to tell you about the funniest thing that's ever happened, anywhere, and YOU MISSED IT, and they tell you the story, and even though you don't care, you try to look like you do, because then maybe you'll be a little cooler than you were five minutes ago.

Can you tell I was one of the uncool kids? When my peers at school at school would ask if I knew the latest song, I would nod and pretend that I did. Friendship pins? No, I just didn't like wearing mine, I said, desperate to catch a glimpse of one so I could try to approximate it in private later.

And I can see the attraction of a meme, I really can. It's fun to be on the forefront of anything. "Yeah, it has five million views now but when I saw it first it had six." But I miss too many things. I get Rickrolled and I don't even know it. (But click here if you'd like to be -- wouldn't you like that?) It's a flood. No one can keep up with the coolth on the internet, so I've given up again. I keep abreast of the knitting memes as much as I can (and they exist, believe me. Clapotis! Koigu! Swallowtail!) but that's about it.

But now, because I know something that you MIGHT not know about, I have to share it with you -- did you know about whisper videos? That they're A Thing? People video themselves whispering, and people clamor for more. It seems to be some kind of relaxation fetish-y type thing, and I'm both fascinated and completely creeped out by them. I can't listen to them, can't even get through one. But there's a good example here. I think you should click. Good GOD, it's odd.

And THAT, my friends, is what the internet is for.

Charity Begins at Home

There’s a thing I want to do, and it’s something I’m completely terrified of doing. I want to be a hospice volunteer.

Three years ago my mother died. In the last month of her life (perhaps just the last three weeks—it blends together in my memory like a hideous nightmare), she was able to be home, surrounded by her three daughters. Looking back, I'm not sure how we all managed to take the time off work. None of us worked flexible jobs. But we were there, all the time. We were there up till the very end.

Two things made that time bearable: the fact that we were in it together, and the fact that every day a hospice care worker came by.

Now, the nurse didn’t come every day. He or she stopped by once every four or five days. At first, this didn't feel like enough. We wanted them there all the time. We were terrified. I work 911 for a living, and we’d been told that now 911 wasn’t an option. They gave us a sticker to put on our phone that said In Case Of Emergency, Do Not Call 911. Call Hospice Nurse For Advice. We were, for the first time in our lives, completely alone, beyond help. It was up to us.

But every day, someone came by. An older woman who talked too much and said strange things about crystals came twice a week—she was an odd duck, but she knew how to wash my mother’s hair without hurting her, something we hadn’t been able to figure out. Another person came just to help around the house. The chaplain came by. Mom didn’t want to pray with him because he wasn’t her minister, but I talked to him in the garden, which was what I needed.

They made us feel not so alone.

One night, I helped my mother to the bathroom, using my arms to support all her weight. I dropped her—either that or she slipped one way as I went the other—all I knew was that her head hit the doorjamb with a gigantic thud. A goose egg formed almost instantly, and I was sick to my stomach. Mom didn’t even notice it had happened, and no one else was awake in the house. I couldn't, wouldn't, wake them. My first instinct was to—what else?—call 911. But I couldn’t.

So I called the nurse. She soothed my nerves, telling me yes, it would bruise, but if her breathing remained the same then I didn’t even need to do anything for it. She was dying, for Chrissakes, what did a bruise matter? (Okay, she didn’t say that. But I took that away from it.) She made me feel better. “It happens,” she said. “You’re doing everything you can, and you’re doing it right.”

That was what we needed then, so desperately. We needed people who weren’t too uncomfortable to look us in the eye. People who didn’t burst into tears as soon as they came out of her room. People who could ask us how we were, to whom we could tell the whole truth. Unvarnished.

It’s almost a cliché, isn’t it? That hospice workers are angels? But they are. I want to be one. I have a new job, and a little more time on my hands. I’m looking into it this week.

Satiety

One of my greatest hungers has been sated, and it feels like a miracle.

All my life, from the time I knew what a book was, I’d longed to write one. When I was five, I wrote a small book and illustrated it, and I was frustrated it didn’t look like a book. As the years went on, I routinely took a pen, a notebook, and a flashlight under my covers, determined that this time, I would write a real book. Every time, I didn’t write more than a few disappointing words.

When I was eleven I tried to write a romance novel. It was going along great guns until I got to the second chapter and got irrevocably stuck. The worst part was the I knew with complete certainty what that book was. I knew the emotion of it. I knew the ache of the kiss, the look of the night sky above my world-wise (and practically elderly) fifteen-year old protagonists. I just couldn’t write it.

In high school, I started short stories based, again, on an emotion—the urge to capture a moment of great change in a small space. I failed. In college, I started to “really” write. I wrote what I thought was a good short story, and my beloved mentor and professor Al Landwehr, sat me down and told me I was talented. Then he leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and said, “Talent doesn’t count for much, though. And I’m not sure you’ve got enough to say yet. Even after you've lived some more, I’m not quite sure you understand this—it’s a hard road.”

Of course, I didn’t think he was right. I knew I was ready to write big things. Novels. I just had to start, that was all, and I’d get it right.

So I started. Over and over again, I started. I’d lie in bed and figure out the story. I had plot! Characters! I knew exactly which amazing words I’d use. Then I’d get up and string a few words together and stare at them, almost unable to believe how much it was possible to let myself down.

I know now I was at that state where your taste is better than your talent, a state Ira Glass talks beautifully about here. An excerpt:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

You know what’s good—you just can’t do it. Most people, I think, stop there. They have the hunger to write, the burning need to share emotions on paper with another person, but when it doesn’t go well on the first or second try, it’s so damn easy to say, “I was wrong. I’m not cut out to be a writer.” Or worse, “I’ll figure it out later, when I have more time.”(The thing about later is that it automatically holds less time, not more.)

Some people (those crazies who don’t mind slamming their heads into walls, over and over again) just keep sucking at things until they get better. That’s what I did. I worked at sucking at writing until I sucked a little less, and now, every day I write I get incrementally less sucktastic.

And here’s the miracle: that ache is gone. The longing I’d had my whole life to write, the hunger I’d feel in the middle of dark nights to pick up a pen and get the words down, is completely satisfied because I do it. I do it all the time.

I remember about five years ago, after I’d been writing regularly, I felt tired one afternoon. I didn’t usually nap—it wasn’t something I’d ever been able to do. But that day, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, and when I woke, I realized it had been because the voice was quiet in my head, the voice that had always—always—been telling me I needed to listen to it, to feed it.

The unsatisfied hunger is gone, and now I write. I am a writer.

Salt

I'm not comfortable if I can't see the ocean, in some way or another, every day. Inland, I'm cranky. Itchy. I don't fit into my skin. I spent a summer in Colorado once, and I felt as if I couldn't breathe the entire time. Where I live now, in order to come home, I have to drive down a steep hill--the view is a wide expanse of the San Francisco Bay, a perfect shot of the city in the distance, sometimes obscured by fog, sometimes sparklingly clear. Sometimes, on perfect nights or gorgeous days, I just pull over and stare at the water for long minutes.

But the best place for me is an island. Surrounded on all sides by water? Yes, please. That's where I feel most at home.

1. My parents met in Western Samoa. Dad (in the Peace Corps) lived on Apia and heard about a woman with the NZ Diplomatic Service who lived on Savai'i who had a bigger record collection than he did. He called her; the rest is Herron history.

2. My mother was from New Zealand. She was from the South Island, and I think her blood that runs in my veins was what infected me first. Once, on a trip to New Zealand, during a plane refueling stop in Fiji (remember those?), my sister Christy and I got tired of waiting for Mom to come back to us where we were sitting on our suitcases. A little worried, I set out to find her and found her in the middle of a ring of island dancers, swaying and moving to a rhythm she understood. She was exotic and gorgeous at that moment, more than my mother--she was a woman I didn't understand but wanted someday to be.

3. When I was a teenager, we went to live on Saipan, a tiny island in the Northern Marianas, north of Guam. Of every good thing in my childhood (and luckily, there were many), living there was the best part. We were home-schooled in the morning, and every afternoon we went to a beach. We snorkeled on the Philippine Sea side, and we jumped off volcanic rock into deep swirling waters on the rough Pacific side (what was Mom thinking?). Set on the Ring of Fire, earthquakes were a daily occurrence, and we'd lie on our mats and watch them happen: little ripples of sand that looked like rumpled bedsheets, moving toward us, under us, and on. The beach was our classroom, our playground, our home. Digging my fingers and heels into the sand, I held on as hard as I could.

4. In the early 90s, I visited Venice for a day and fell head over heels in love. I've been back as often as possible since. It doesn't make sense how that city got into my veins, but I think it can best be explained by this: 117 miniscule islands, connected by small bridges. Sometimes only mere steps separate these islands, and of course, because much of it is man-made, there is no beach, per se (we could talk about the Lido, but let's not), but the water matters to me more than sand, and it's home.

I have a theory that there are three kinds of people: ocean people, desert people, and mountain people. The passion for each is probably the same, although I can't understand the other two. They are like a foreign language--I understand that there are adverbs and nouns in those languages also, but surely, the words can't be as beautiful, can they? The words peace and rest can't sound the same on an inland plain as they do on the beach, can they?

When I sit and imagine my perfect writing spot, there is always a desk at a window that overlooks the water. At night, I can see the moon tracing a path to the shore, and the breeze flutters the curtains. And in the mornings, I can smell salt.

Oops

Did you see this week's article on the shy and how shyness might be an evolutionary tactic? The author talks about two kinds of people: sitters and rovers.

Sitters are the 20(ish)% of the population who are "watchful, slow-to-warm-up types who stick to the sidelines," and rovers are the remaining 80% who "sally forth without paying much attention to their surroundings." Both have evolutionary advantages and disadvantages: sitting will keep you safe if you are slow to walk into a trap, and roving will keep you rapidly acclimated to differing climes which might help keep you alive.

I am SUCH a sitter. I'm shy. This is hard for people who know me to believe because I'm very friendly and it looks like I leap, early and often. But I don't. I may make quick judgements about things and it might LOOK like I'm leaping, but I'm not. I wish I were.

The the article made something clear to me that I hadn't before understood: shy people are worried about negative attention, whereas introverts just prefer to be alone. Ah! The light bulb went on when I read that. I'm not an introvert. I like to be around people. But the fact that I've always been worried about negative attention creates such a conflict that it's hard to decide which way to go sometimes. I like to sit and watch and determine the best, safest course of action so that I don't make a great OOPS and cause everyone to look at me and laugh (like in fifth grade, when the mime wanted me to form a conga-line behind him, but I jumped on his back instead, misreading his clues to my GREAT chagrin). But I also want to make friends and laugh with new people!

I remember as a child, my ultimate fear was being called on in class. I developed all kinds of methods to avoid it: I'd look my teacher straight in the eye, to make sure she knew I wasn't dodging the question and then I'd become suddenly absorbed in the tip of pencil. Was it sharp enough? Oh! Perhaps it needs sharpening! And then she'd say, "Rachael? Do you know?" And I did, I really did know that the answer was Guatemala, but instead I'd get too nervous to say anything or I'd say, "Guh..." and she'd move on. I'd feel the class looking at me in judgment (which they weren't! But I didn't know that then) and I would want to dig a hole to Australia.

When I was in my early twenties, I was extremely self-conscious about my bad skin. I thought everyone was looking at my acne, all the time. IT WAS ALL ABOUT ME. I thought when I walked down a street that the person who turned aside to whisper to their friend was talking about my skin. It was horrible. I died a thousand deaths every time I went outside, to school, to the store.

I'm not sure how I realized this, but I think it was a combination of therapy mixed with time: I finally figured out: NO ONE CARES HOW I LOOK. Or how anyone else looks. People might notice if my hair is cute. They might notice if there's a big hole in my pants and my ass is hanging out. But apart from that, no one really notices, or cares. I look like Rachael most days, and they like me or they don't. How I apply my eyeliner or how my skin looks doesn't matter a whit. If I gain weight or if I lose it -- it doesn't make people look at me differently. I'm still Rachael to them.

I'm still Rachael to me. Sitter at times, rover at others (hello, RWA National! I'll be roving! I hope!), I'm still just me, and I'm not getting negative attention (unless I walk into a pole in the middle of sidewalk, which is a thing I'm prone to do, and in that case, oops -- just pick me up, and thanks, in advance, for choking your laughter back. I appreciate it).

Rachael's One

One is the first, and therefore, automatically, it's the most exciting.

1. My first kiss. Mine was while sitting on a floor of a Bakersfield family room. I'd travelled from the coast by Greyhound (I was sixteen! What was my mother thinking?) to visit a young man of whom I'd become enamored while, yes, at Bible camp (um, maybe that's what my mother was thinking). I'd just turned sixteen, and I was terrified I'd remain Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed until I was seventeen, with no way to go back in time to fix it, a perpetual John Hughes joke. I can't remember the boy's name (isn't that awful?) but he was 6'6" and very blond. I had to crane my neck when I imagined kissing him. That night, we sat on the floor across from each other (probably because we'd thought we be able to reach each other's lips), and I remember scooting closer and closer, until our mouths finally met. And I thought, Wow. Is this all there is?

2. My first boombox. We lived overseas on the tiny island of Saipan (random fact: I'm one of three Pens who've been there!) when I was a teenager, and I wanted one thing more than anything else in my life--a boombox so I could play the bootleg tapes we bought at the Chinese store in Garapan. I had a whole collection: Tears for Fears, Madonna, A-ha! But I didn't have anything to play them on except my best friend Tammy's boombox, and I dreamed of the time I could have my very own. After I saved up the money and ordered one from the mainland, I drew a picture of the exact boombox I'd ordered to scale and set the drawing next to my bed to pass the two months I waited for it to arrive. The songs I imagined it playing were better than any of the actual songs I ended up using it for.

3. My first apartment. It was tiny, barely 300 square feet, $350 a month. I had one fire, many gas leaks, marching tarantulas, and creeping mold, but I loved that place. Everything in the fridge was mine. It was built hanging off the back of a garage, completely illegal, and the teeny bedroom was on stilts, but I loved the forest of eucalyptus that grew on all three side of the room. I felt as if I lived in a tree house. But I outgrew it, even though I didn't want to, and moved to a larger place in a better location. Le sigh.

4. My first book. That was the best. Nothing took away from it. Nothing detracted from seeing that ARC for the first time. This was one of the best moments of my life.



Firsts are great. But I will propose this: after one, I quite like two and three. And four and five and eleven and 127 and 1252. They aren't like the first one. The other night I came home from work to find my third book's early copies had arrived. I didn't wait for Lala to get home, I just let the dogs out, fed the cats, and opened the package. Then I set a copy on the dining room table for her to see when she got home.

It was not as exciting as the first one. But the joy of accomplishment (it isn't a fluke!) might be even deeper.

I've gotten better at kissing, too.

A Knitting Celebrity

I made a knitting celebrity.

I didn't mean to -- it just happened. In my series, the Cypress Hollow Yarns, the overarching character who spans all the books (even though she's dead when the first one opens) is Eliza Carpenter. I wanted to create a character who was one part Barbara Walker, one part Alice Starmore, and two parts Elizabeth Zimmerman (all are BIG names in knitting -- you are forgiven if you don't know who they are).

The funny thing was that when I don't really remember writing Eliza's epigraphs for the books. I get emails all the time from people who love the things she said, and I think, Oooh! That IS good. That Eliza is something else, all right.

And then I remember I made her up. She kind of seems to exist all on her own, though, and she says things much better than I could:

If you can believe one thing, believe this: No one will notice your mistakes.

The magic of knitting is that very small acts add up into something substantial, useful and beautiful. [Kind of like writing, that, no?]

Of course, patience is only a virtue to a point. A decision will have to be made, but you'll know when it's time to make the change that's needed.

Eliza became someone more than just a character to me, and what's interesting is that she's grown to mean more to others, too. Down Under, there's going to be a book of her aphorisms collected together as a gift book. Here in the States, she props up a line of actual yarn -- and I love that Lorajean decided that Eliza's color would be cream. She would be too difficult to pin down to one specific color. Better that she represents them all.


From left to right, Cade, Abigail, Eliza, Lucy, Owen.

Eliza would be proud, I think.

And this is the epigraph from the second book that people keep quoting to me, and I'm glad they do, because it's TRUE (and I always forget it).

When you start a project, have respect for the fact that it may turn out to be something completely different than the item you originally intended it to be. It may be prettier, longer, shorter, or stranger altogether. It will certainly be better.

And I think that perfectly sums up a lot of my take on life (but Eliza said it better than I ever would). We never see a project out the way we imagine it will go, but generally, it ends up better. Doesn't it?

That Eliza. I'm glad I know her.