It’s All About the Food and Tradition

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One of our sons is visiting this week with his wife, and a friend from his school days has driven up the coast to join us for a few days.

If there were a theme to this week it would be “Food and Tradition” because when mothers entertain sons, isn’t that a major factor?

The mother begins with the questions a couple weeks out from the visit.

“What would you like me to cook?” she asks.

“Oh, you know, my favorites,” he responds.

The school days friend has no idea what he’s getting into. First the grocery list, the mountains of fruit and vegetables—all in season—because your body responds most efficiently to seasonal produce. Cherries as big as plums. Peaches that hold to a thumbprint test of ripeness. Then the seafood. Weathervane scallops from Alaska. We’ll have them seared in cast iron with a drizzle of olive oil and a smidge of butter. Toss them into the nearly smoking hot pan just as soon as the two fats meld.

We have them stuffed and baked. Double-size portions and they wish there were more.

An entire king salmon, stored according to the fishmonger’s instructions. We won’t insult the wildest fish in the sea by freezing even a single ounce of it.

“Put it in a box in the refrigerator on ice,” he said.

“Top or bottom?” “How many days?”

Marinated a half a day, then we bake and glaze it with pecans according to a recipe shared by my favorite captain—Capt. Brenda Thomas of the schooner Isaac H. Evans, out of Rockland, Maine.

The air in the kitchen doesn’t have a chance to clear. If it isn’t yeasty caraway rye bread, it’s the pastrami ritual. The brisket, trimmed to a lean quarter-inch of fat, has been removed from the brine where it’s been curing, stirred and flipped lovingly four times a day, and now, after rubbing with smoked paprika, fresh ground pepper, and ground coriander, it’s ready to bake, sealed on a rack over a water bath. Do you know how long it takes to grind two tablespoons of Tellicherry pepper with only the peppermill from the kitchen table? It’s worth it.

With the vat of brine removed from the refrigerator, there’s room for the boxes of organic strawberries and a couple more bottles of wine. Layer the strawberries between paper towels in a sealed box and they’ll hold for ten days—instead of one. But we don’t need ten days. Strawberry rhubarb pies are on the menu.

Going kayaking today? Here’s lunch for the dry box. Muenster cheese en croute. Shredded and baked with minced parsley, lots of garlic, and sealed in pastry covered with toasty sesame seeds. Remember to pack the local craft brew, an IPA.

A hike down Shinglemill Creek? Pastrami sandwiches and trekking poles.

On the return, crispy fried oysters with homemade coleslaw, the cherished recipe from the cafeteria lady where I taught in 1973.

“Do you always eat this way?” asks the school days friend.

“When family visits, yes, absolutely yes.”

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Food and Tradition.

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Your Truth Can Inspire Others

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Your truth can inspire!

Linda Joy Myers, Author and Founder of the National Assn of Memoir Writers,

shared a post today about vulnerability and truth in memoir. I don’t want to quote her suggestions in their entirety but you can read the entire post here.

There was one point that stood out for me.

When you’re dealing with the truth that you’re exposing, she suggests (her point #4) that you should

“make a list of the ways you feel your story will help others—think of ten messages you will deliver in your book.”

I think this suggestion is one of the strongest reasons to press onward with your truth.
It’s more than a rationalization.
When the truth in your memoir presents strong examples of surviving the events that you detail, others who are experiencing the same will find strength and good in your conclusions.

Furthermore, if your memoir style is strong, you’re avoiding the “woe is me” syndrome.  Your memoir will stand out for other reasons and your words will be taken seriously.

Keep at it!

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Writer Conference Recharge

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When the going gets tough, it’s tempting to close and laptop and back away. Writing is a struggle for all of us, and yet, if we back away, we’re just pushing The End further down the line.

This morning I awakened at 4:45 in a terrifying nightmare sweat. It was the first time my memoir crossed the line, jumped from my manuscript to my dreams. I was glad to see the light of dawn fade the darkness.

I’m that close to The End.

It’s been a long slog that I wish I had shared somewhere, somehow. Living these past twenty months in a new location, I haven’t yet joined a regular writer community and it shows in my insecurities.

Reading aloud, especially, is a great way to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your work. Reading aloud to yourself is OK, but not as effective as reading to an audience.

I (very recently) asked if I could read a couple chapters of my work to two very new friends for feedback—one male, one female, two diverse individuals—two different chapters, two different occasions. It reminded me that there’s no substitute for the value of community for honest feedback and support.

It also reminded me that I should look for the someone who needs my support. We all need help finding our way through the darkness.

I’m participating in two writer conferences in the coming months. These are an opportunity to learn and share that I look forward to every year.

I know many writers wonder how much they’ll get out of a conference for the time and money spent. If you’re wondering that, know that it’ll be worth it. I’ve never yet left a writer event that didn’t lift my spirits and send me home inspired and recharged.

writer conferenceSome West Coast events coming up:

The Pacific Northwest Writers Conference is coming up July 28-31, 2016 in Seattle. Note that if you can’t attend the conference, you can still take Masters Classes.  www.pnwa.org/

The Magic of Memoir conference is October 15 and 16, 2016 in Oakland CA.  A specialized event for memoir writers. I’m attending it for the first time and it looks promising.  http://magicofmemoir.com/

The Northwest Writers Weekend takes place Nov. 4-6, 2016 at an old-fashioned camp in the woods about a half-hour’s drive from the Southworth Ferry WA (take from Fauntleroy/Seattle). This weekend is unique in that it includes workshops on songwriting. Bring your instruments! Great sense of community here. http://www.nwwritersweekend.org/

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Dawn on the 4th of July

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The 4th of July dawns on Vashon Island with the sunrise race of the hydros (hydroplane boats, see wiki). 52 years running— a race to circumnavigate the island at sunrise.

People love it. Or Hate it. It’s a noisy tradition that I haven’t been here long enough to love, and certainly how could I “hate” someone else’s tradition? Let them be.

Yesterday, as I listened to the screamy high-pitched voices of a neighbor’s grandchildren echoing across the water, I thought: “Ahh, yes. This is fair enough retaliation for the sound of music that I periodically bounce off the wall behind me as I melt into my steamer lounge chair.”

The space created by a house with a bank of fir trees to the left and tall hedges to the right produces a pretty awesome surround sound simulation for someone sitting in its midst. I know for a fact that neighbors to the left and right are oblivious to it because I’ve gone behind the hedge to check. They hear nothing.

Those across the water, au contraire, are in the path of the volume. I’m more careful if I see anyone on a deck in the distance, but I do love the sound of music over water.

Maybe twenty years ago, friends had just picked us up from our dock on the lake in Arkansas. The dock juts from a peninsula into a narrow cove with steep-sided hills. The Corps of Engineers plan shows an elevation gain of fifty-five feet on the switchback path over a distance of maybe twenty feet on the map.

King—yes, that really was the name on his birth certificate— put the inboard in reverse, and the boat slowly—very slowly—came about. He had these high dollar speakers in the boat, and unexpectedly, he and I exchanged a recognition of the music and the hills and the magnification. I felt a massive rush of goosebumps. Full body music magic.

It was a wordless exchange. We were perfectly still. I watched as King reached to put the engine in neutral and I know that we both twitched our ears—figuratively—like a deer does when you surprise it on a path in the woods. Roger and Grace were in the bow chattering about some silly something. King and I, the introverts in the stern, were content to say nothing as we listened.

Heart of Gold (Neil Young) was playing—its lyrics of growing old were lifting to the hills around us with vivid clarity.

The boat—and the moment—froze in time, barely moving on the just-before-sunset stillness of the glassy water. Clouds were caught in the reflection on the surface.

For me, it was a flashback to the first time I felt a massive disconnect with life. 1971. No need to go there now. Those feelings. Old Man hit on it too. I suppose I thought it odd that Neil Young, at such a young age, was so simultaneously tuned in to the brevity and sweetness of life.

Recently I read an anecdote about Neil Young playing this exact music over water that made me laugh out loud. LOLOL out loud out loud. Partly because our only boat at the time was a little rowboat.

I want to get it right, so here’s the story—word for word from Graham Nash, as he told it to Terry Gross on NPR in 2013.

I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Francisco, and he has a beautiful lake with red-wing blackbirds. And he asked me if I wanted to hear his new album, “Harvest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the studio and listen.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the rowboat.

I said get into the rowboat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the middle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a little cassette player with him or a little, you know, early digital format player. So I’m thinking I’m going to wear headphones and listen in the relative peace in the middle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker. And I heard “Harvest” coming out of these two incredibly large loud speakers louder than hell. It was unbelievable. Elliot Mazer, who produced Neil, produced “Harvest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shouted out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shouted back: More barn!

Who would have guessed that King, not too many years later, would crash his private plane while hurrying home one evening after work?

We just don’t know when the music is going to stop, so we just have to keep playing.

Go there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh44QPT1mPE

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Writing in the Garden

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After two weeks of getting the gardens back in shape, I finally climbed down from the ladder and removed my deerskin gloves. I stood back to admire the roses I had just pruned, gathered up my tools and peeled off the extra layer of denim that does a superb job of protecting one from thorns while having a full body immersion in rosa floribunda “Lime Sublime”.

That morning I had crawled around in the shade of a respected Douglas Fir, tidied the copper bird bath and plucked a couple hundred weeds that were hiding behind a wall of Digitalis purpurea. Common foxglove is labeled an invasive species here in Washington but I let it enjoy grandfathered perennial status in my garden. Who can resist gorgeous, long-lasting spires that are happy to fill in the blanks before a backdrop of charcoal stone walls?

Every empty pot from the greenhouse was now refreshed and blooming plentifully. The two packets of nasturtiums that I had picked up half-heartedly from the rack at Thriftway have become the surprise stars of the garden. They never grew very well in my other gardens, but they’re loving it here—as I am.

Nasturtiums have been my favorite trawritingiling annual, ever since stepping from the street into the bright inner courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum nearly fifty years ago. Their variegated foliage dotted with brilliant orange and lemon-colored blooms hung in a curtain twenty or thirty feet from the fourth floor window boxes of Mrs. Gardner’s living quarters.

I had a boyfriend who was Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle. I was a naive farm girl and he, a tweed-jacketed student at a private men’s college. He introduced me to the Gardner Museum on The Fens in Boston, took me to dinner at La Petite Auberge and presented me with bouquets of fragrant flowers that filled the elevator with their heady scent as we rode up to the 8th floor of my dormitory amidst the envious sidelong glances of other bell-bottomed young women.

At home, we never had flowers on the table. With the exception of Mummy’s favorite lilacs in June, Daddy wouldn’t allow it. He said that florist flowers reminded him of funeral homes. Leave it to him to find evil and sadness in soft-petaled Stargazer lilies and pendulous snapdragons.

But my love of flowers grew as tall as the roses on my arbors. Here in coastal Washington, many of the plants are foreign to me. There are lots of new Latin names to learn and growth patterns to observe.

Best of all, while I’m dead-heading lilies or untangling clematis, my mind can wander freely. While raking up the fir cones after a storm, I can leaf through ideas for future writing. While cutting lavender to weave lavender wands for my dresser drawers, I can harvest ideas for an essay.

And sometimes, I’m able to encourage new growth by thinning out a chapter that I’m not a hundred per cent pleased with.

A little pruning, a little staking. Companion planting of subjects and objects. Like walking the rows in a landscape nursery, I enjoy searching for the perfect verb to complement a noun.

While kneeling at the edge of the lily pond and reaching to remove some fallen leaves, I see my reflection in a gmillstonelass orb floating on the surface.

I’m no longer that young Eliza Dolittle, but I still have a lot to learn.

 

 

 

 

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The Creative Process

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I love mornings. I wake up early and press the start button on the coffee, then slide back into bed to see who has visited me overnight and I respond right then because I’m all about “in the moment”. I go to pour some coffee, slide back into bed yet again and open Scrivener.

It opens to the chapter that I was working on the night before, and if I’m lucky—like this morning—I re-read it and think: Heck. This isn’t bad. In fact, it’s damned good.

The chapter that plagued me as I sat on the deck at dusk with a quilt and a laptop—and a cat—Don’t forget the cat—is actually good.

How did I not see that last night? When I closed my laptop and picked up a book from my stack and flicked on my headlamp, I had sighed with disgust.

It’s the writer’s dilemma. The cycle of the creative process.

You like it. You hate it. You hate yourself. You say the heck with this (or worse). Then it’s OK. It’s good. No, it’s great.

“Cracker Pie” was last night’s chapter.  I went back to the farm to talk to Babci while I wrote it. Heard the rooster crowing when I rolled out from under the covers. I walked around the farmhouse in my mind. I smelled the smells in the kitchen. Smelled the sweat that wet her underarms as she dumped an armload of split oak into the woodbox. Felt the heat from the Glenwood warming my backside.

Here’s a sample.

“Meanwhile, after tending to her flocks and garden in the morning, Babci usually moved indoors for a little rest. She could count on me to pop into her kitchen unannounced about once a day—especially if I smelled cinnamon floating up the back stairs.

If I didn’t find her in the kitchen, she was probably feeding logs into the yawning mouth of her behemoth furnace in the dirt-floored cellar below.

I waited patiently in a pressed back chair at the kitchen table under the watchful eye of Jesus and the Apostles. (All good Catholics had a print of daVinci’s The Last Supper in their kitchen or dining room.)

Eventually Babci returned and eased her bottom into the chair beside me with a sigh.  She wiped a folded pad of handkerchief across her sweaty forehead.

The table was a massive, round, and oak with claw feet clutching the linoleum. Every Easter our entire family of aunts and uncles gathered around it for ham and kielbasa. Like most kids, we cousins sat off to the side at card tables, the boys in white shirts and the girls in pastel nylon party dresses. Me in a pastel party dress? Yeah. I’ve seen Uncle Joe’s slide collection. Proof positive that Mummy got me into one on special occasions.

Babci always had something good cooking or baking in her kitchen. The Polish standards, I wasn’t so fond of. I wasn’t into fleshy pierogis or pale goat cheese, but I sure did like the baking.

When I was lucky enough to be offered a slice of her homemade apple pie on a Blue Willow plate alongside a cup of Salada tea, or maybe a slice of raisin-studded babka, between bites I stared up at the men behind the table, wondering which one was Judas, that double-crossing jerk.

Judas would be all I knew about kisses for a very long time.”

Later today, I’m probably going to think this is crap. And now my coffee’s gone cold. Damn.

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The Writer’s Voice

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While I was being chased by pugilistic geese and frightened by hoof-pounding Percherons back on our farm in 1955, I was almost totally unaware of the world that existed at the end of the road beyond our mailbox.

Sure, there were those Sunday afternoon drives to my grandmother’s cottage for our weekly shampoo in the lake after the well went dry—because the well always went dry around the 4th, necessitating an alternative to our sacred Saturday after supper bathtub ritual.

Along the way, I saw the signs (literally) that began to awaken the sense of inquiry that would forever motivate my life. “Clean Fill Wanted”. “Happy Hour”.

Likewise, those Friday mornings locked in the back seat of our Plymouth while my mother did her grocery shopping. “Weekend Special. Coca-Cola.” I wondered what Coca-Cola tasted like.

Sitting in the middle of my siblings’ fist jabs, I watched the other mothers entering and leaving with their kids until, at last, my mother returned. Pulling a box of Cheerios from the bag at my feet, I read “…or a reasonable facsimile”.

When I asked about the meaning of these, my mother said “I don’t know”.

She always said “I don’t know”, so before long I stopped asking, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I met the person who would answer my questions.

His name was Holden Caulfield.

He blew my freakin’ mind. Finally a voice I could identify with—although how a boy in California talking about a Pennsylvania prep school existence could have spoken so vividly to me, the barefoot kid in the hayloft, I’ll never know.

He had me on page one at the first mention of “cold as a witch’s teat”. Shocked my little Catholic body to its toes. I had certainly never met anyone like Holden. Until then, I had had to be my own bad influence.

He was no Nancy Drew in a roadster.

“Mummy, what’s a ‘roadster’?” I asked, holding my place in The Secret of the Old Clock with my finger and thumb.

“I don’t know,” said Mummy.

Holden’s voice was clear—shocking, irreverent—yet comforting at the same time. He shared his innermost thoughts with me and I suddenly realized that I was no longer alone.

Today I know that it was the voice of Holden Caulfield that made the difference. A writer’s voice is his most powerful tool.

J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield came into my room that day and threw his stupid deerstalker cap down on my bed. He looked me in the eye, and said “Goddammit, there’s more to life than being curled up in the fetal position every day after school. Get up and get out there!”

His voice spoke with such clarity that there was no doubt he was a real, walking, talking, true to life being.

Holden Caulfield saved my freakin’ life.

He really did.

“. . . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

I was so close to the edge of that damn cliff, I wanted to run right into his arms and never open my eyes again.

That’s what a writer’s voice is all about. If I can speak to someone—anyone—with a voice as clear as Holden Caulfield’s, I’ll finally be there, catching those who are running in the rye.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, and if I ever finish editing this damn memoir, I’m going to drive right down to the Vashon Bookshop and buy a copy of The Catcher in the Rye to re-read in the glow of completion.

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The Setting in Your Manuscript

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When I was in fifth grade I read a book with a vivid salt-sprayed setting on the coast of Maine, a mysterious place a few hours drive from where we lived in inland Massachusetts.

The author’s words described it in great detail and I entered her world vicariously.

The marsh grass swept the tips of my fingers as I crossed from the field to the edge of the beach. I could smell the dampness of the spray. The grains of sand were warm on the bottom of my feet as I walked the shore, and I shivered when the icy water reached my toes.

In this story, the child protagonist lived in an idyllic summer setting near the sea. The house had weather-beaten shingles, the windows were always open and the sheer white curtains fluttered in the ocean breezes.

When the child looked down from her bedroom window, she saw her mother weeding a flower bed of zinnias and petunias.

You’re wondering how I would remember such a simple scene in a book so long ago.

Here’s the thing. I had never seen the ocean. I wanted to see that ocean. I wanted to walk on that beach, and I definitely wanted to grow a flower garden.

For most readers, “zinnias and petunias” would be enough. I, however, had no idea what those flowers looked like.

I sorely wanted to see these flowers in my mind’s eye, so I asked my mother.

“Mummy, what are ‘zinnias’? What are ‘petunias’?”

My mother said, “I don’t know.”

My mother always said “I don’t know.” It was always too much trouble for her to devote a minute to explaining something to me.

You might find this sad or disconcerting. Don’t.

Yes, the coldness, that was inherent in that negativity, did hurt me. It caused me to turn within myself. Why wasn’t I worth an answer? Why couldn’t I get a response to that which puzzled or bothered me? Why was I always left hanging in uncertainty?

On the up side of this was the fact that her attitude fostered creativity and resourcefulness in me. I had to find my own answers. I had to find my own way to do things. I had to keep plugging away.

Look what just happened. You just witnessed a flashback.

A description of Setting sidetracked into a scene from my memoir—the reason being that I’m deep in the editing process right now and I never know what is going to trigger a momentary shift in time.

I began this post with the intention of describing the importance of detailed settings, and lapsed into recalling a frustrating childhood moment.

Books should totally do that too.

The book set in Maine did a perfect job with the setting for most people, so I doubt that anyone—except me—would object to not having enough description to visualize zinnias and petunias. However, my puzzlement over the zinnias and petunias is the kind of opportunity for description that we writers need to identify in our pages.

The zinnias had layers of tiny petals, that began at the center of each bloom and expanded outward like the explosion of a fireworks display.

The petunias, trumpet shaped, and ruffled like the collar of my favorite blouse, were white with throats of purple and lavender.

Look for your petunias and zinnias. Paint them vividly with words and feelings.

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The Playlist of My Memoir

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My memoir has a musical current running through it that begins with the energetic rhythms of the Charleston and ends with a sentimental Van Morrison tune.

Blog posts on this page frequently have their beginnings in my musical memories, and many of them are gathered during my aerobic dance class.

I’m used to writing with a playlist at home. Often I’m optimistic for the future, sometimes moody for the present—and contemplative of the past. I get up periodically to move across the floor, yoga dance style, so it’s only natural that I should find myself developing writing themes during grapevines and curls.

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Today was one of those days. Our newest routine involved a combination of  The Charleston and The Jitterbug—the dance steps of my grandmother Mémère and my mother.

I had never actually tried either of these moves but as soon as my feet fell into the snazzy jazzy steps of the Charleston with my arms swinging back and forth, I was drawn back in time to a few days before Memorial Day in 1929. It was Thursday, May 23, five months before the Stock Market crash. Could life have been any more optimistic? The two who would become my grandparents were whooping it up in the rumble seat of their best friends’ Buick after a night out on the town.

Mémère personified the quintessential Roaring Twenties gal with her auburn boop-boop-bee-doo curls cut in a stylish bob. Her fashion was glitzy and glamorous, her Prohibition beverage of choice was brandy and she loved to dance and sing at every opportunity.

Mémère was also six months pregnant with my mother that night.

Her water broke with the impact of a pothole off Main. Her shrieks cut the cool night air as the warm amniotic fluid seeped onto the seat and soaked the hem of her dress.

“Gerrrrald! The baby! The baby’s coming!!”
My grandmother always tended to shriek when she was excited.

That night, the amniotic fluid and the brandy combined in a potent mix.

Mémère and Pépère hastened back to the triple-decker in the Buick. Pépère helped her down onto the running board and then carefully up the three flights of stairs to their walk-up apartment. He could hear my grandmother moaning on the bed as he shut the door and flew down the stairs to fetch the doctor two streets away.

Pépère and the doctor arrived barely in time to deliver my mother. The young doctor shook his head nervously. Mummy weighed a mere two pounds.

There weren’t a lot of options back then for a premature home birth. He washed and dried his instruments at the kitchen sink, placed them in the black leather bag and snapped it shut. As he unrolled his shirt sleeves and buttoned his cuffs, the doctor gave careful thought to the situation.

He returned to the bedroom, where Mummy lay at Mémère’s breast and Pépère sat nervously on a straight back chair. He asked Pépère to find a shoebox.

Dr. Favreau proceeded to swaddle Mummy with a diaper folded over multiple times, and then he nestled her in the shoebox like a robin chick found beneath an apple tree in April. His instructions were simple. “Keep her in the oven with the door open.”

It was a gas oven.

The doctor tapped his bowler onto his head while Pépère accompanied him to the door. “Best of luck to you,” said the doctor as they shook hands. He retraced his steps down the stairs to the street level, slower this time. The milkman looked up from the bottles he was setting in the delivery box on the porch.

Mummy thrived in the warmth of the gas oven on Moon Street. She’s never been sick a day in her life, with the exception of that gallstone operation back in ’74. She’ll be 87 when the lilacs bloom.

The story that blossomed on the notes of the Charleston had been in development for a while, but it took experiencing the dance itself, eighty-seven years after the event, to bring it to life.

I continued to stretch and move and dance, finally coming back to reality with Stevie Nicks’ Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.

And Tom Petty…”I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing

Well, the good ol’ days may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn.”

By the time we were positioned on our mats in plank, Van Morrison was echoing off the rafters.

Hamstring stretch, seated twist.

I pulled back to child’s pose for a few minutes, then rolled onto my side with my eyes shut.

I made believe the drops sliding down my cheek were sweat.

 

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Publishing News, continued.

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Publishing News is continuing to be somewhat grim.

After the Booktrope fiasco, it appears that a lot of us have been talking about being more proactive about our futures, and checking around for similar writing on the wall.

A. C. Fuller posted a link to the publishing nightmare that writer Claire Cook (author of Must Love Dogs, which became the film starring Diane Lane and John Cusack) experienced and lived to tell about.

Writers, you have to read this!

In spite of the chain reaction of disasters, one aspect that Claire Cook notes in her story is identical to what I mentioned last night.

I said: “But not to worry… if you’re a writer, you know that you can’t stop writing just because of turmoil in the market. Likewise, the readers aren’t going anywhere either.”

She said: “I never once questioned that I would continue writing. And I never once questioned that my readers would want to read my next book, no matter how it was published.”

Isn’t this so true? Writing is such a calling that we can’t just quit—even when it gets bad.

No one says it better than Claire Cook herself, so here you go. Her story appears on the website of Jane Friedman, linked below.

https://janefriedman.com/i-left-my-agent/

Onward and Upward!

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