one publisher tugging at my heart

okay - so here is what one of the presses that is considering my novel has to say about what they publish.

"Truth is often found in the invented story. We publish literary novels that capture us with the gritty characters and real life circumstances they chronicle."

i think i am in love. i even like the colors on their website and how they express their perspective on a spiritual life. very inclusive. very gentle. very real.

follow the yes

ok. so. i write in such a way that generally makes people on both the left and the right uncomfortable.

now people in the middle - the regular folk - the ones who loved my street theater too - they enjoy the life in my stories. but for the extremists - it comes down something like this: the academic radicals find too much faith and narrative in my stories and the faith community finds too much ugly reality.

question: so what's a storyteller to do?

answer: tell my story and follow the yesses. see who my audience is.

and so i throw out my work like seed to see where it lands, watch who nurtures it and find where it grows. i wont change - not the core of me - and so my stories will remain the color that they are...so whether i am left of right or right of left it doesnt really matter. what i do care about is writing stories to touch people's hearts - mine included.

anne lamott said that we write what we want to read - and so i suppose that i am - as one NYC rep said once years ago - too sacred for the secular and too secular for the sacred. amen. i wouldnt have it any other way!

love and story

so i've been pondering the nature and quality and entity of love over the past few days and i find that it is a bit like a virus...in a good way it infiltrates, wraps its way around things, and doesnt easily let go. when i choose love, it alters things - minds, emotions, states of being. it is not an idea...but a force. a great great force.

and so in my pondering i come to the question of how does love affect story?

are all stories really about love? or the lack of love? or the pining away for love? i mean certainly there are any number of themes...but arent they all - somehow - in the service of love?

and so my pondering leads me down a troublesome path for this soul of doubt...and that is if it is true that god IS love - not that he/she is lovING - but that the entity of god and love are one and the same...then is not the phenomenon of story a wrestle with the presence or absence of love...of god?

are not all stories a conversation of faith and doubt? spoken, written, read in the service of love?

monday morning

cool morning. sweater. covers. coffee.

the sun isnt up.

the flashing lights of the school bus just went by.

the inside lights are on.

cozy.

his HS reunion

my husband's 30 year HS reunion was this weekend.

now we live in the house and town that he grew up in, and the community is fairly close, so we see people he went to school with all the time - but it was fun to watch him find old friends he hadnt seen. it seems he was quite a popular guy - at any rate all the girls seemed to know him!

i have to say that the atmosphere was kind and generous and i didnt mind being "a spouse" at all, but i could not help but thinking, as i looked around the room, "these people are old!" i mean these are our parents right? when did we all get to be adults? parents? pudgy? balding? wrinkled? dont get me wrong, everyone looked great - myself included - but we were a far cry from looking like either of my fairly recently graduated kids!

even so, i had to laugh as we drove away in my mini cooper. (did i mention that i bought a mid-life car?) there are advantages to getting older.

reading today!

i am reading at the maitland arts festival around lake lily at 1:45 this afternoon. my son also has two pieces of cermanic art in the show. how fun!

the importance of things

my life is busy. there are so many "important" things vying for my attention, so much work to do, so many great things to accomplish. but there was a moment on my birthday that melted all of my bustle.

we had already been by the pool, cooked out, eaten around the table, blown out candles and opened gifts. there was plenty of laughter and love of course, but then there was singing. we left the dishes on the table and all four teenagers gathered at the piano with their grana and sang. the picture they made was delightful, tender, funny, engaging and warm. meredith sang like an opera star, whitney carried the melody, olivia the harmony and my only son, taylor, sang right along with the girls even tho it isnt "his thing." they were wrapped up arm in arm as they sang old standards and grana played on aunt myra's piano. i laughed so hard at their playfulness - and cried a little over what cannot be explained - and when they were through, nothing else seemed important.