Martha Thinks Grace is Keeping The (Wo)Man Down

Did your mama ever tell you that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all?

My mom didn't. That's not how the women of my family roll, which is probably why I had a problem with this post. I just don't have anything nice to say about the word "grace."

It's not what grace means. It's what I think it means. There, I admit it, the problem lies with me.

I hear "grace," and I think "What? I'm not good enough for you the way I am? You need me to hold my head high and throw my shoulders back and float through a room, too?"

Women already yearn to be so many things: smart, sassy, witty, modest, popular, funny, intelligent. I'm not adding graceful to that list. To top it off, grace seems to be about maximizing the experience of the person watching me, instead of my own.

So I'll leave grace to the other ladies out there. It's not for me.

Living in the State of Grace

by Lisa Hughey

Grace is an ephemeral concept, a fleeting state which can elude us in moments of frustration or surprise us in moments of stress.

I live in a state of chaos most days.

There is order in my chaos (sort of) appointments, sports events, meetings, volunteering, reminders to do this or pick up that are faithfully recorded in my Blackberry. When I’m out I can check to make sure I’m not missing anything important and keep on target. The handy device holds my mind and my calendar, keeps me sane and on track.

The downside of this is I’ve moved to a place where writing is a chore to be ticked off, an item to cross out when I’ve met my goal for the day. And I realized that grace goes hand in hand with joy.

Whenever I’m frustrated with the world around me, I think, if I moved somewhere (Portland has been appealing to me lately) anywhere other than where I am, things would be better. Less frantic, less competitive, less expensive, less crazy, less everything and filled with more grace.

In lucid moments, I realize moving really isn’t the answer to my frustrations and fears. And that true peace will only arrive if I can find and hold onto that elusive state of grace.

Instead of chastising myself for being late because I got caught up in a scene, I celebrate the fact that I got caught up in writing. Instead of yelling at my son for forgetting about a cooking project due in fifteen hours, we trekked to the grocery store and cooked together and bonded over everything from literature to history.

Instead of lamenting the fact that I am an abysmal failure at belly dancing, I’m giving thanks for having access to a teacher, that I’m learning something new, and I’m doing something fun. I come home from class exhilarated and joyful. I’ve been trying to cultivate the appreciation for those moments of grace.

And slowly, but surely I’m moving to the State of Grace...anyone want to come with me?

Pens in Action

Here's a new occasional feature of the blog - a glimpse into the Pens' lives in pictures. We thought it would be fun to share photos of our various doings and undertakings, especially as our careers start taking us on all kinds of new adventures.

Because we're all friends, we hang out together for fun as well as for writing events...and occasionally a glass of champagne just might be involved.

That might be why I keep forgetting to take pictures, as a matter of fact, but I have vowed to do better.

Unfortunately, for this first attempt, I didn't do a whole lot better. But I blame that on the combination of bad lighting and an iPhone with no flash. Oh, and my really poor photo taking skills. In the future, with more capable Pens on the job, you're sure to get better photos!

Here's a few recent get-togethers when I, unfortunately, didn't think to take pictures:

* there was the late-night nosh at our friend Monica's house to celebrate when her Ravenous Romance novel was featured on the Home Shopping Network

* ...and the long "working" lunch a few fridays back when a few of the Pens invented a, well, I guess you might call it a sub, sub, sub-genre of romance that had us screaming with laughter and nearly got us thrown out of the restaurant

* Last Thursday Lisa and I both took our cars in for service, asked the unusually good-looking mechanics some really inappropriate questions "for research," and then drank eleven cups of coffee each "discussing the industry" (okay, gossiping) until our cars were ready

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So without further ado, your first "Pens in Pictures." We are all members of the San Francisco Area Romance Writers of America and, in fact, some of us are on the board, which means that when we invite fabulous industry people to address the chapter, we get to take them out to dinner the night before and ply them with drinks and drag out all their secrets. This month's victim - er, speaker was the amazing Sue Grimshaw, romance buyer for Borders and undisputable friend to the genre.

That's Sue on the right, and our dear friend and fellow board member Rachelle Chase on the left:



Because that's such an awful shot, here is a much better photo of Sue so you can see what she really looks like!

And here's a shot of me and Lisa, taken by a far better photographer than I.


The following morning, Sue addressed a group of 40 romance writers and shared her insights into bookselling in the fall of 2009, which is an undeniably interesting time to be in the business.

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Finally, this young man is a special friend of the Pens, and he brought me this gift, below, to encourage me on a particular plot point. It worked great!

GRACE IS THE WORD

Welcome guest blogger Diane Vallere. Diane is a retail fashion veteran who sells fine apparel by day and plots murders by night. At any given moment she is working on a project involving shoes, clues, and clothes. Currently, she is seeking agent representation for her fashion-based mystery, JUST KIDDING. You can catch her weekly blog at www.myspace.com/dianevallere.

There are two kinds of women in this world. Those with a natural grace… and those like me. I'm a lot of things, and on a good day I'll sit you down and tell you all about them, but the one thing you won't hear me brag about is that I'm a graceful person. A few weeks ago, I fell down in the middle of the Hollywood Walk of Fame! But that's only because I put pretty shoes above practical shoes that night – and given the chance to do things differently, I wouldn't change a thing.

So, as far as skill sets and natural graces go, I'm okay with the hand I've been dealt. Yes, it gets hard to explain over and over how I trip over my own feet, actually slipped on a banana peel, and nearly punch people in the face while gesturing wildly (it is the best way to properly tell a story, BTW). And yes, I said over and over, because none of these are isolated incidents.

But grace, well, I seem to have gotten out of line when they were handing it out and instead got an extra dose of silly. Even the three graces seem to elude me. Unless, okay. Here's a crazy thought – those three graces are kind of like muses, right? Well, I'm a writer, so I must have encountered the three muses. Although…my three muses aren't exactly like the ones depicted in the movies. Mine act an awful lot like the three stooges.

Don't laugh. I'm being serious.

There's Moe-Grace: the idea generator. The grace that tells me that every idea I have is a good one. The grace that tells me to get out there and do something, and is enough of a schoolyard bully to my Id to make me get things done. Then there's Larry-Grace: the creative. He gets talked into things by Moe-Grace. He's the middleman. The negotiator, although his efforts are always wasted. He's a wild card, but he's somewhat predictable: he'll stand up to Larry-Grace, he'll get slapped down by Larry-Grace, and he'll get back up again. Lastly, there's Curly-Grace: the common-sense challenged buffoon. He might not know where he's going, but he'll make you laugh along the way. He goes for the joke, even if he is the joke, no matter what. He's the grace that keeps me funny. And everybody likes funny, right?

I know these three graceless graces. Like, I KNOW know them. But until now, I've never stopped to think about the fact that I've been living with three wise guys for all these years (don't tell my mom).

On my first trip to Italy as a shoe buyer (I know!) I was particularly conscious of my innate lack of grace, and the importance of keeping it in check. It wasn't until the final night that my true colors showed. I'd spent the evening packing before dinner so I'd be ready for my 4:00am shuttle the next morning. At the designated time, I headed to the lobby to meet up with the other buyers. We stood around chatting about the success of the trip, and I relaxed, knowing I'd kept my inner goof in check for the whole trip. But when we turned to leave the lobby, one of the buyers pointed to the floor and asked, "What's that?"

Mortified, I realized what they were staring at. Before I could reign in that inner trio of goofballs, I proclaimed, "Oh My God! That's my underwear!"

During the packing process a pair of my underwear had attached themselves to a metal stud on the bottom of my handbag, been couriered to the lobby, and dropped onto the floor! I don't need to tell you that graceful women don't accidentally carry their panties attached to their handbags. I swooped down in a deep knee bend, scooped up the panties, and threw them into my bag. Twitching lips and amused eyes followed my actions until we all burst out into laughter. To this day, it remains one of the best stories I've told about those glamorous buying trips – because it was uniquely me.

So, maybe I do slip on the occasional banana peel. I've got my own graces, and wherever they chose to take me, I'm merely along for the ride. It could be worse. At least I don't have their hairstyles.

Graceland

I wasn’t an Elvis fan when I walked into Graceland, but I was when I walked out.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m an Elvis girl. The dork stripes, remember? Add it onto the list, right in between the Renaissance Faire and my love of Doctor Who.

Young Elvis. 

Movie star Elvis.

White bejeweled jumpsuit Elvis.

Huggy Bear Elvis.

I love them all.

 And if you’ve ever been to Graceland, you probably understand why. 

Because besides being massively talented and playing music that goes straight to the joy center of my brain, the man wasn’t afraid to be himself.  Need proof?

Yeah, that’s the Jungle Room. Do you have a Jungle Room? Hmmm...me neither. I don’t know anyone who has a Jungle Room. And I don’t remember seeing one the last time I watched Cribs or flipped through the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. Nope, only Elvis had a jungle room.

Or how about this. If your eyes are somehow able to focus on the center of this picture, you’ll see a pool table. Now, who the hell covers the walls, the ceiling and the sofa of their billiard room in ream after ream of pleated patchwork fabric? Someone with a thick stream of awesome running through their veins, that’s who. Someone like Elvis.

And the thing about Graceland is its not that big, not what I’d consider mansion anyways. Its a nice house--certainly bigger than anyplace I’ve ever lived--but hardly the palace-sized home you would imagine the King of Rock and Roll would live out his days in. 

So, what does Graceland have to do with Grace? Well if I had to pick some kind of connection out of thin air--and I do, this post has to end somehow, you know--I would probably say something about how being true to yourself and surrounding yourself with the things that make you happy, not what some magazine writer or tv host or anybody else for that matter says you should like, is one way to fill your life with real Grace. 

Or I can just give you the ending you knew was coming from the very start, and tell you that in the end it doesn't really matter, because...

Elvis Has Left The Building!

Graceful? Nah. On the lookout for Grace? Always.

Grace. Strictly speaking, I ain’t got much. I’m the one who spills the wine at the table (that’s why I hang around Sophie, hoping she’ll spill first…)

I trip. I stumble. I bump into things. But despite being the most likely amongst my companions to spill, to trip, to falter, I find that if I keep on going, I get to my destination nonetheless.

I try to hold on tightly to that metaphor as I careen my way through life.

Clearly there’s a difference between being graceful and encountering Grace-with-a-capital-G in one’s life. When I remind myself to slow down, I find it easy to recognize fleeting moments of Grace: the sweep of my son’s eyelashes when I catch him unawares, before he pulls away. The unselfconscious elegance of Oscar-the-cat stalking a fly, his sinewy, soot-black body slinking through the tall grass. The sensation of trailing a soft sable brush through buttery artists’ oil paint. The slant of afternoon sunlight through the majestic window at my stair landing, and the beams of moonlight through the pantry windowpanes at night. The rush of water over a rock in a crystal-clear mountain stream. Forgetting myself in my writing, so that I’m unaware of time passing. The peal of a child’s laugh. The understanding smile in a friend's eye. The whisper of a lover’s sigh.

Then there’s always the proof of enduring grace: the historic architecture of the house where I am lucky enough to live, wherein the ghosts of the architect, skilled craftspeople, and the original owners live on in scrawled messages on naked plaster, old newspapers in the walls, yellowed photos, a baby’s shoe. A picture of a dancer I painted years ago in Florence, which changes through time so that every time I see it I am reminded of a long-ago steamy, sweaty summer in that Italian city…and increasingly of the young woman that I no longer am. Holding my published books in my arms, knowing that my imagination has created stories read by perfect strangers all over the world, who sometimes even write to me. The long, smooth, perfect limbs and almond-shaped eyes of the being who emerged from my body so many years ago, now on the cusp of leaving my side to create his own life, to find his own, profoundly personal, moments of Grace.

Oops, just spilled the coffee.

Chasing Grace

There's a line in a Slaid Cleaves country song that I love. "Just give me one good year, to get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace, but grace ain't so easily found."

I was in the car one time with my sister, driving up the Cuesta Grade, bellowing these lines at the top of our lungs. I remember thinking, as I so often did when I heard them, So profound, so true, so true.

We looked up, and we saw the single word printed on the back of the tractor-trailer driving in front of us: GRACE.

"Well," said Christy, "I guess it's more easily found than he thought."

I never forgot that moment. Just because someone tells you something's hard doesn't mean that it is. Just because he said grace wasn't easily found didn't make it true. I love the idea, the romance of that poetic line, but I see grace all the time.

I heard that same songwriter speaking once, between songs, and he spoke of how he learned to write songs. He said he'd listened to Woody Guthrie songs for so long that he just took them and basically broke them apart and put new words to them and then put them back together and called them his own.

Isn't that what we're doing when we write? Nothing we're doing is really original. When I think about that, there's an element of relief. Sure, my voice is my own. Slaid Cleaves's voice is his own. No one is going to sing his words like he does, and no one is going to write my novels like I do. But these stories we're telling are as old as the hills, so let's not stress about Being The Very First and Being Original.

Let's just find truth, and guts, and loveliness, and bits of gore and ribbon if that's what it takes, and we'll find our own grace because we're that's what we're all chasing and really, it's more easily found than we originally thought.

Grace Is Nothing Less Than Everything

by Sophie

I think I might have been the one to suggest this subject.

Lisa's been a faithful scribe; whenever any combination of Pens gets together and someone interrupts herself with a stray thought to say "hey! That's a subject for the blog!" Lisa always emails herself on the spot, and it's a good thing too because I can't possibly keep track of anyone else's tangents, much less my own. I'm no good that way.

But my friends are. They fill in the blanks. They're bountiful where I lack. And that is just one example of the grace that is, I believe, the engine that fuels me.

I'm not here to dictate anyone else's spiritual instruction manual, so please don't read any proselytizing in what follows. But grace is the force that has gotten me through every difficult moment in my life and has allowed me to start to learn to claim the lovely ones.

Shall we just agree that when I say "God" we all immediately substitute "as I understand Him, or him or her or them or it, as the case may be"? Yes? We can do that?

Okay...then I will say that grace, to me, is God's gentle presence in everything I do. It is at its strongest when I'm tempted to deny it; it appears when I am not expecting it; it is always present when I am not aware of it.

Instances of grace are everywhere, but they are also ephemeral. You can repudiate or disprove any example I give you easily, so I concede. If you wish to call those moments happenstance or coincidence or mad chaos, you're right. You're right! I agree! And yet - at the end of the day - that stubborn tendril remains; I am more than the sum of myself plus where I find me.

I spend my professional life in an often dark, sometimes angry, sometimes vulgar, and nearly always uncooperative place. I'm delighted when I can make a reader laugh, but just as often I write scenes that tear me up, so I can only imagine what they do to unsuspecting readers. I write about human ugliness and pain and the damage we do to each other. And yet - for the close reader - I maintain that there is always a seed of grace within.

I have an ongoing debate with a writing friend about the nature of our work. He's adamant that it should entertain, and nothing more. I disagree. I think that fiction should present both an honest reflection of life's messy chaos, and - in the very best examples - a glimpse of the way to something better. I don't care how raw someone writes...at the end of the day, if you walk away feeling that s/he has moved you, I will bet that it's the presence of grace that made a difference for you.

Look at Pete Dexter, Ken Bruen, Denise Mina...those are the easy examples, those whose native tongue is "unfiltered" and whose natural pace is "straight to the core." But then look at your own library with a thoughtful, critical eye, and I think that your own favorite authors have been slipping in grace when you were not looking. It's easy to confuse with redemption; but redemption to me has the distinction of having had to work for it; redemption is the payoff for suffering and striving. Grace is something else entirely - it's given freely by that God-concept we discussed earlier. It's there for the most irredeemable and occasionally elusive for the most humble.

This post was a bit like tossing pebbles into a lake: a fleeting impression quickly covered over by the laws of surface tension and gravity and I don't even know what else. But I do think it deserves mention every now and again. Because we all struggle...we all consider giving up...we all rail and then feel guilty. Grace forgives all that. Grace can't wait to see what you'll do next.

The photos of the Diablo foothills - not too far from where I live - were taken by Matt Granz.

How to Write When you Don't Have Time to Write

by Susan Wiggs

I hear it from emerging writers all the time. I’ve got a great idea for a novel. I’m going to sit down and write it as soon as I...

...get my day job under control

...get my final kid into kindergarten

...into college

...out of jail

...get my finances in order

...fix my marriage

...finish painting the house

...pay off the car

...clean the can opener

...clean the rain gutters

...get the puppy housebroken

...retire from my job

...finish watching the third season of "Weeds"

...get my Bachelor’s...Master’s...PhD...LLB...MD

...pay off my student loans

...read all the Stephanie Plum books

...check in with my nineteen thousand Facebook friends

...upgrade my computer

...make tenure

...landscape the yard

...take a vacation

...host my book group

...teach my teenager to drive

...finish knitting this sweater

...forgive my parents

...forgive myself

...get over my fear of failure

...get over my fear of success

...get permission from my parents/spouse/children/therapist

...hire an agent

...learn to use the subjunctive case

...quit worrying about what my family will think of my story, especially the dirty parts

...stop smoking/drinking/playing online games

...figure out the business of publishing

...lose 20 pounds so I look good in my author photo...

You name it, and a procrastinating writer has said it.

Here’s a dirty little secret. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the cruel reality is this. There will never be a good time to write.

Life will always intrude. That’s what life is. Be glad for that. If you have no life, you have nothing to write about.

The good news is, there’s a simple solution. Make time for the things that are important to you. If writing your story is important, make time for it. Simple as that. Turn off the TV, leave the dishes undone, close your e-mail, grab a notebook and pen, and tell your family, "Don’t interrupt me unless your eyes are bleeding." You’ll be surprised by the respect they give you.

The way you spend your day is the way you spend your life. So quit being your own worst enemy and start being your own best friend. Make time to write, even if you don’t have time.

Author bio:

Susan Wiggs's life is all about family, friends...and fiction. She lives at the water's edge on an island in Puget Sound, and she commutes to her writers' group in a 17-foot motorboat. She's been featured in the national media, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation," and her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and have made national bestseller lists, including the USA Today, Washington Post and New York Times lists.

The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. Her latest novel, now available, is called Lakeshore Christmas. Readers can learn more on the web at www.susanwiggs.com and on her lively blog at www.susanwiggs.wordpress.com.

Time is a Plastic Camera (Or Maybe Not. But Plastic Cameras Are At Least a Good Compromise)

by Gigi

I used to love to go to the darkroom to print black and white photographs. In addition to getting some great prints, the time spent in the quiet darkness was relaxing.

But somewhere along the way, the tools of Photoshop and the quality of digital cameras caught up to the detail I could get from making my own prints. I could no longer justify the inefficient time spent in the darkroom. (At right: darkroom or digital?)

Giving it up had to be done. I was done with design school, I was working full time, and I had gotten serious about writing. Something had to give. (Unlike Martha, I need sleep.)

I got myself a digital SLR camera and some cool lenses, and thought I was good to go.

But something was missing.

Did I really want to see exactly what a photo would look like the second I took it? Where was the mystery and anticipation in that?

I couldn't go back to regular 35mm, so what could I do? Medium format 120. And not the fancy kind. The sloppy fun kind.

I now have two plastic cameras: A Holga that takes square photos and allows light to sneak in through its duck-taped sides and gives each photo its own unique look; and a 35mm Lomo Fisheye camera that captures skewed images I never would have imagined.

So although I won't make it into the darkroom any time soon (too many edits to make and stories to write!), I've got my plastic cameras to keep the mystery of photography alive.