Just Kids

I'm reading Patti Smith's memoir "Just Kids." I really wish I had it as an audiobook read aloud by Smith because I just love the sound of her voice.

At first I found it a little tedious. I was getting tired of reading about being hungry and living in grungy places. I'm also reading it on a Kindle and so far I worry that I am rushing through Kindle books (maybe because I rush through everything else I read on a screen?). So I tried to slow down and then I got to the part where she moved into the Chelsea Hotel. That's when I really started to enjoy myself.

Patti Smith is about 15 years older than me. It's startling to reflect on the fact that when I was in high school, trudging back and forth from Union Square to my school on 15th Street, it seems likely that I may have brushed past Patti Smith at some point. And just as her head was full of ideas of how to be an artist and find her way in the world, mine was too. I was walking along toting a dance bag and some volume of 19th century fiction and I was hungry not because I didn't have money but because I was intentionally not eating to try to fit in just a little bit more invisibly at American Ballet Theatre School.

In some ways I'm still walking along everyday wondering about how to be an artist. This past week I've been chewing on how to keep up with a writing practice. It seems like a burden right now. I want to wallow in words but I don't want to write a scene or tie up the loose ends of a character.

At breakfast yesterday as I read about Patti and Robert stringing up beads in their studio and about Patti hiring a guitar player to accompany her at her first big poetry reading, I realized I am looking at my own art from a narrow, prescribed point of view. It's important for me to have a "deliverable" to point to -- mostly for other people. "Oh, look, here is a set of short stories I've written," "Here is the first half of a novel I'm working on." Why should I care about that?

If I don't want to finish a scene, why should I? Isn't it enough to just play with words and colors and patterns for a while and see where it leads?

Blessing and Curse

I recently had lunch with a friend who is in the middle of writing her second novel. I don't know much about it other than it has given her a reason to learn a lot about the Warsaw ghetto during World War II and also the tapestries of Bayeux. (Sounds like my kind of project.) I asked how the book was going.

"It's fine. I expect it to have the same commercial success as the first." She laughed out loud. Because, of course, her first novel has not yet found a home in the publishing world.

She continued, "Aren't we lucky that we like the process so much?"

I nodded and smiled and hoped that she was right. I've always thought of myself as a happy "process writer" -- someone who gets enjoyment from the act of putting pen to paper even if it never leads to a published work I can hold in my hand and give to someone. But of late it's seemed more of a burden.

I've been having such a hard time writing. I'm preoccupied with my new office and my creative energy is being heavily used in things like logo design, decisions on websites, etc. But if I don't manage to sit down and write a bit, even if just a few times a week, I feel pretty uneven and eventually unhappy.

So -- for how long can I get away with just doing free-writing and, if I'm lucky, odd character sketches and potential background scenes for longer projects I am working on?

A wise friend has suggested that I try to shake myself up and do some drawing every time I sit down to write. I have never thought of myself as much of a visual artist - not in the "Oh, my God, I can't even draw a circle" way but more in the shruggy "it's just not something I've ever been attracted to" variety. I went ahead and bought a bunch of colored markers, which was great fun, and I have gone ahead and done a few odd little drawings that did lead to some free writing. But I'm not at all sure about any of this.

Not a Townie

I just finished reading my first book on a Kindle. I selected "Townie" by Andre Dubus III. I had heard a lot about the book when it came out a few months ago and it was on my list of books to get from the library. I thought this was a good choice for a Kindle book because I thought my husband and son would also be interested in reading it.

Well, I don't think I'll be recommending the book to anyone. Dubus certainly has a wonderful ability to create a scene and give the reader a sense of place. But I had no idea I was signing up for hours and hours of descriptions of fist fights, of long, hopeless hours in bars. The book had just one theme -- barely controlled and barely disguised anger. Frankly, it became pretty boring and I started to skim whenever he stepped into a bar and saw a well-muscled young man.

I felt like I lived in an entirely different world than the author. About 50 pages in I found myself looking up his picture because I just needed to have a face in mind as I read about these endless fights. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen anyone in a fight (including junior high) and I can't remember ever observing the things that seemed to happen to Dubus every week -- coming across a couple who were on the verge of physical violence and needing to make the decision of whether to step in and protect the woman. Have I just not noticed? It's not like I've spent my entire life in a rarified, protected suburb. My first 18 years on Staten Island and my several years living on the edge of Koreatown in Los Angeles allowed me to see a pretty broad cross-section of humanity. But I guess those places are a lot safer than the Boston suburbs where Dubus grew up.

One of the weirdest things about the book is that Dubus is the son of a well-regarded writer who was a working writer and teacher when the author was a child. And yet the son had never traveled out of Boston and lived in near poverty conditions with his mother and siblings. It left me really wondering about Dubus pere.

One of the only poignant things I discovered in the book was the description of the father's writing schedule. Apparently he wrote every morning, had lunch, and then went for a run. He kept careful track of how much he was writing and kept a log where he noted down his word count for every day and wrote "thank you" below it. I like that. A daily recognition that artists are just a vessel for a gift, a thing, that we only barely understand.

But I would have been happy reading that in an article. I didn't need to read the whole book.

Ballet Shoe

I'm in my new office. It's exciting and only a little bit terrifying.

I don't yet have my new computer system so I've brought my laptop from home to use as my primary work computer for now. It serves me perfectly well at this point. But there's one problem. The laptop is my writing computer. It has the manuscript of "Standing Room," countless short stories and essays and starts of many novels. They are all backed up, of course, but I'm finding it hard to have all that creative work resident in my office, even if for a short period of time. It's like I've crossed a great divide.

One of the first objects I placed on the desk in my new office is a Freed's pointe shoe. It's been in every office I've had for the last 20 years. The shoe is a Susan Jaffe reject that I obtained when I was doing volunteer work for American Ballet Theatre. It's unused but the inside is torn up a little and the satin on the tip is slightly ripped.

I always keep a pointe shoe on my desk. It's a reminder that there are much more difficult things to do everyday than to counsel clients and appear in court (or sit and try to write fiction for that matter). It's a reminder of the things I love and how hard they are to achieve and how fleeting. And it's a wonderful conversation piece.

The Anns

I will get no writing done for the next week thanks to the Anns. Ann Packer and Ann Patchett.

Even their twin first names, without the adornment of the final "e", are a reproach.

I'm reading each of their new books. Patchett's "State of Wonder" in hard cover from the library and Packer's "Swim Back To Me" as the first thing I purchased for my new Kindle.

I was stunned when I first read Patchett's "Bel Canto." I was just starting to think about writing again and had an idea that I wanted to write about music and dance and thus face the challenge of translating the power and pain of multi-dimensional arts into plain serifed words. My children were still fairly young and I stayed up late in my poorly lit home office to read "Bel Canto." I ran right into a frank assessment of my limitations. Because Patchett had written "Bel Canto," what was the point of even trying my own?

A few years later I read Packer's "The Dive From Clausen's Pier." Not long after I met her mother, Nancy Packer, long-time backbone of the writing program at Stanford. I learned that George Packer, one of my favorite writers at the New Yorker, was her brother.

I then read her next book, "Songs Without Words," not as powerful as the other but still very good. So, exactly when I was moving from the idea of writing about the arts and taking up a small canvas, suburban morality tale, I saw how Packer had already done that. Exceedingly well. Again, what was the point?

Then I saw a photo of Packer's writing studio - sort of a glorified garden shed - which looked like it was located in my brother's neighborhood on the San Francisco peninsula. I didn't understand my reaction, but the photo made me want to do a complete and thorough erasure of my computer just to put an efficient and certain end to my ambitions. It clearly isn't the straightforward writing studio that brought on that reaction. There must be much more elaborate writing spaces for me to envy (thankfully, a Google search for "Danielle Steele writing desk" did not produce any useful results).

The thing that gets to me about these two writers is that their styles, their methods of putting together a story, a character, a scene, their word choices, their ways of capturing dialogue, are all the ways I do it in my dreams. I read their work and I see a weak, hazy image of myself in the margins of the pages. It sort of makes me sick to my stomach.

I heard Patchett interviewed about the current book and she talked a little about the old adage that there are only a handful of plots in the world and this book is just her try at the search story. Yes, I get that. And yes, I've heard many people say to just keep on trying because no matter how many times a story seems to have been told, no one else can tell your story like you can, and you should just plug along.

Yes, yes, I know. And I will keep on trying. But probably not this week.

What Color Is My Parachute?

I'm in the middle of opening my own office. I've been knee deep in lease negotiations, domain names and marketing plans for a few weeks now. I'm having fun and seem to have endless energy for it. (Very little writing is getting done, of course, but I've decided that's OK for now.)

But now it's really getting fun. I need to design my logo and website. I get to hire a designer to help me! For some reason, I have been obsessed with deciding on a color. I thought it would be a deep cardinal red, but then I saw a wall painted the color of the packaging at Fortnum & Mason in London and I knew in an instant. It's also the color of the restroom at L.A. Mill, another one of my favorite places (L.A. Mill, that is, not necessarily the restroom there). And also the color of the jerseys of Leopard Trek. A win all around.

Now my obsession has moved on finding actual examples of the color so I can perform my own market research. Be careful -- if you pass me on the street I may whip out some notecards for you to study and opine on.

Highway to Hell

I am a power iPod user. I listen to it in the car, when I'm getting dressed in the morning and when I'm working -- whether on writing or "real" work. I can't imagine doing any creative work without some sort of musical accompaniment.

I got my first iPod mini in the fall of 2004 when I faced two months of almost constant travel for my job. I am now on probably my eighth -- each slicker and with more storage than the last. I have somewhat of a reputation as an iPod slayer in my family and at the Fashion Island Apple store. Invariably the device just stops working for me and I need to get another.

There are currently 12,950 items on my iPod. I have never listened to 5,895 of those. That's not an entirely accurate figure because I know there are a lot of Joni Mitchell songs and old Broadway show tunes in there that I have heard before but just haven't played on this particular device.

I despair a little when I scroll through the list of things I haven't listened to. I have 5.2 hours of Glenn Gould to listen to, 2.2 hours of the Velvet Underground and 13.9 hours of tango music.

If I tried to get through all of the unlistened to music in a year, I would need to listen to 16 new songs every day.

I'll do it today at least. So far -- Highway to Hell by AC/DC, Val Jester by the National, an arrangement of La Mer by Debussy, and Side of the Road by Beck.

Not sure if I'll keep it up.

A Week in Sicily

I've spent this week in Sicily. Not actually -- just in my mind and at my keyboard.

I wrote a short story two years ago in one sitting at the Starbucks in San Francisco at the corner of Bush and Grant (I think). First time I'd ever done that. I liked the story and recently pulled it out to reread it and to my surprise I liked it even better now.

A year ago I wrote a scene that I didn't think involved the same two characters.

On Monday, all of a sudden I knew how the two characters in the two-year-old story met. It came upon me like a memory. There were no hazy edges open to interpretation or to be colored in. It was as detailed and complete as if I'd just seen a movie depicting these events.

They met in Sicily.

And I realized that the fragmented scene I wrote a year ago was about the end of their relationship.

I've only spent six hours in Sicily -- an annoyingly enticing day excursion on a cruise that consisted of a lickety-split bus ride up to Taormina, a march through the amphitheater and a frustrating perp walk past what seemed like dozens of tantalizing restaurants not yet open for the day.

I want to go back -- not just in spirit, but also in body.

Nevertheless, I've been there all week. I've heard the water in the fountain at the small family-run hotel, I've seen the colors of the fish at the market at the edge of the sea and I've been surrounded by the fragrance of little white blossoms on the bushes outside my fictional window.

I have no way of knowing if any of that has any counterpart in reality. I guess I don't really care right now. I've entertained myself for days with unreeling the dialog that's going to have this woman start to fall in love with the man who will break her heart in the story I wrote two years ago.

So far I haven't been able to get myself to sit down and actually write that scene. Once it's written, even in shitty first draft, I won't be able to play with it the same way, to turn it over in my mind as I fall asleep, as I make tea in the morning and as I drive on the 405.

No wonder I never finish anything. It's too much fun to be in the middle

Spoke and Wheel

I spent the weekend watching the Tour of California. Went to Glendora on Saturday to watch the sprint, saw the start of the race Sunday morning in Santa Clarita and then positioned myself in front of a Shell station to watch all five laps of the finish in Thousand Oaks. Then came home to watch Tyler Hamilton on 60 Minutes.

I've never been able to quite decide what I think about Lance Armstrong. Yes, I have a Livestrong bracelet on my desk, but that's more about cancer than cycling. Yes, I love to see cyclists jackrabbit up amazingly steep slopes (like Alberto Contador this weekend in Italy). Yes, I follow the news about tainted meat, dodgy doctors in Italy and one after another Italian or Spanish rider who has to sit out a year or so. After watching Hamilton I'm still not sure what to think. I found Tyler believable, heart-renchingly so.

I still like cycling. I'm fascinated by the dedication, the gritty determination, the endless training, the sheer challenge of it -- and for the most part not for much money and not for much public glory. I just hope that all the under-25 riders I saw yesterday, people whose names are not yet known to the fans, who took time to sign autographs for little kids clutching Radio Shack and Leopard Trek jerseys instead of Kobe Bryant 33's, have figured out a way to make their way in the sport without the temptation of cheating.

And boy -- is this subject ripe for fiction. I'm already cooking up a great story told from the point of view of a soigneur.

Reading Aloud

As I have mentioned, I am experimenting with ways to slow down my reading. One of the things I started to do is to keep a log of the books I read, along with some analysis, in a thick-paper hard-covered journal. I write in it longhand with a fountain pen and I put only one book on each page. If nothing else, it's pretty to look at.

Now I have a new idea. Reading aloud.

I am a litigator by trade. I'm used to public speaking, used to arguing in open court and having people interrupt me to tell me they disagree with everything I'm saying. For some reason that is not intimidating to me. Yes, I get a little bit of butterflies in my stomach when I'm sitting in the courtroom waiting my turn, but the moment I get up and go to the counsel table, I forget about everyone else in that courtroom who is behind me and I only focus on the judge and the facts of my case.

But ask me to stand up in front of a friendly, supportive crowd of people and read two pages of my own creative work? Shaky voice, dry mouth, rushed words. It's amazing. It happens even when I'm in a workshop full of people I've known for years. I don't get it.

I've considered taking acting classes or joining Toastmasters to try to get more comfortable with delivering my own material. Maybe I will. But for now, I am going to read aloud. Just ten minutes a day. Get more used to the sound of my own voice and SLOW DOWN. Taste each syllable. Let the words roll on my tongue.

I'm starting with a set of short stories by Bernard MacLaverty. Just ten minutes. I set the timer on my phone and when it's time to stop a lovely trilling harp tone sounds. Then it's time to put down the book. No reading ahead of the class. I've only been doing this a few days so far, but I'm pleased to report that after just a few minutes I lose my self-consciousness and start to fall under the spell of the story and the language. I don't think about whether I still have a New York accent or if my voice is too low. I anticipate getting to read dialogue and can see the character come alive a bit.

This could be fun.

Chanel #29

I am too old to wear dark red lipstick, but I do anyway. By now, readers may have picked up that I have an affinity for all things ballet-related. A few months ago I read of a Chanel Rouge Coco lipstick color called "Ballet Russe." From the moment I saw the title I knew I had to have a tube and I knew I would love it. After all, my first ballet teacher, Ms. Elfrieda, had been with the Ballet Russe. This feeling got stronger and even more compelling when I realized that this color was #29 in the Chanel line-up. My birthday is January 29 and I've always considered 29 as a lucky number for me.

And, yes, it is a dark, dark red. It goes with my coloring but is a bit harsh on me. But I LOVE how it feels on and how it makes me feel to wear it. It's like I'm wearing a magic cloak and only good things will happen to me while I'm wearing it. I have two tubes -- one in my writing desk drawer and one in my purse. I prefer to wear it when no one else is around so as to have no interference with its special, magical powers. My writing seems to come more smoothly, I am less antsy in the chair, I can get all the things done I have in mind. That goes for my "real" lawyering work as well as my creative work.

At times like these I wish I were one of those bloggers who has figured out how to monetize her blog and that the people who run the U.S. arm of Chanel will decide I'm wonderful and ship me a lifetime supply of #29 Ballet Russe. Or, at the very least, I hope I am given warning if they decide to ever discontinue this color.

Glowing Rectangles

I heard recently that researchers at Stanford have discovered that we spend a horrifying percentage of each day staring at glowing rectangles. I tried to find more information on this and the only thing I could find is a piece in The Onion, so I don't know what to make of the report.

But it got me thinking. I was most taken by the term "glowing rectangles." I understand why it's used -- to capture the whole gamut from phones to iPads to television to computer screens. It evokes the idea of mind-numbing, non-personal, time-sucking ways of making our days flow by without realizing it.

After a while, when I tried to think of yet another sample of a glowing rectangle, I could only conjure up medieval illuminated manuscripts and other pieces of art. If I believed in past lives, I could easily convince myself that I once spent a lifetime toiling away creating nothing but the margins of books. When you think of the rarity, the mystique, the magic of books in those times, let alone the special beauty of an illuminated manuscript, it makes me wonder what the equivalent is today. It's hard to come up with the same power and the same promise. Now 15 years into the ubiquity of the internet it's silly to nominate it for that title. Any other ideas?

No Slices, Cash Only

Recently we went to lunch at Grimaldi's in Brooklyn. Great pizza and brusque, efficient New York service. The sign on the door warns you of what's ahead.

In the weeks since that lunch I've thought a lot about living a "no slices, cash only" life. It's sort of a no compromise, say what you mean, take it or leave it kind of approach that I've never imagined for myself. Not sure what the equivalent would be in the language of my life. But when I find someone asking me to do something I think is unreasonable or crossing that invisible line I find myself muttering "no slices."

Writer Gal

I recently needed to order new business cards. I had a lot of fun playing on the Vista Print website. When I finished designing my professional card, I decided I needed a card to reflect my writer status. They were so cheap I couldn't resist. And it would be nice to have something that only lists my email address and my cell phone to give to people I meet at writing classes, etc.

How fun. Not limited by the perceptions of what a lawyer's business card should or should not look like. And a place to list my blog address instead of scribbling it out for people in my largely unreadable handwriting.

I chose a design that has a little graphic of birds on branches of a tree. I have many bird-themed objects on my desk, all a reminder of Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird." The back side is a sage green.

They came yesterday. I'm just thrilled. The typeface is a bit smaller than would be ideal but I happily stuffed them in my wallet to distribute to --- well, I'm not sure. But my writing group meets tonight so I will be able to hand out at least eight of them.

3 Square Cafe - Re-inventory

Have a break from work and can get some writing done. Printed out my inventory list of writing projects and got in my car this morning. Just an excuse to find a shady, breezy place to write? With great pretzel bread?

Started my day with the same objective as on many other days -- to find an interesting place to pound out my thousand words and have a great cappuccino and a croissant. But the traffic and errand gods were not in agreement. I saw my vision of a quiet hour in Tanner's Coffee in Culver City and then Urth Caffe in Santa Monica dissolve into the mist ahead of my windshield on the 405.

Instead -- as the hour drew on toward noon - there is was -- a parking place just a block off Abbot Kinney and no line at 3 Square. My only decision now is whether to have a beer with lunch or allow myself the illusion that I will actually finalize my submission for a summer workshop this afternoon.

Can You Read Too Much?

I joined Goodreads in October at the suggestion of a friend with whom I've exchanged book recommendations over the years. The week after I joined I had a sinus infection and stayed home from work for three days. Between bouts of watching old Grey's Anatomy episodes I entered a lot of books into my profile on Goodreads.

I read a lot. I know that. I read about 100 books a year. I guess I read quickly and I can get make use of ten minutes here and there to get through books. But now I'm self-conscious about it because many of my friends on Goodreads tell me that I am intimidating them. They ask how I possibly find time to work and write and do all things I purport to do. Until now I didn't think my reading habits were in any way remarkable.

So now I'm considering making a conscious effort to read less. I know it would be good for me to slow down a little and savor works more. I should probably also be more directed in what I read and not be so swayed by what I see featured in each Sunday's New York Times.

I don't know if I can read less. Or at least not without a great deal of effort. And aren't there other things that effort should be directed toward? Not spent on something that's free and has absolutely no grams of fat or carbs and which is pretty much universally considered a "good" thing? Can there be too much of a "good" thing if the thing is reading? I don't know.

Franzen

For years I was certain I had read and enjoyed "The Corrections." So it was with eagerness that I queued up early in the library website line to get "Freedom" as soon as it was released. I read the first 50 pages and couldn't take it. I didn't like any of the characters and while I appreciated Franzen's story-telling abilities and eye to absurd detail, I just didn't want to spent 500+ pages on this project.

About two months ago I was having lunch with a writer friend who talked about how much she loved "The Corrections." I agreed and talked about how I loved that final scene at the house in New Jersey. My friend looked at me strangely. Within a minute of further discussion I learned that I had not in fact read "The Corrections" but some other book which must have come out at around the same time. [I have also learned I never read "Cloud Atlas."]

I decided I had attempted the wrong Franzen as my first foray. In the week after that conversation two more people whose reading critiques I highly prize also went on and on about "The Corrections." All right, already. I got it as a book on CD from the library.

I listened to the first few tracks and it didn't grab me. OK, maybe I needed a bigger stretch of time. Well, I've now done 6 CDs (12 more to go -- that's another 15 hours). I DON'T WANT TO SPEND ANOTHER MINUTE OF MY TIME WITH THIS FAMILY.

Is it elegantly written? Yes. Does Franzen have a amazing eye for detail and dialogue? Yes. It is laugh out loud funny at points? Yes. But I just don't like it. I don't get the thrust of the story and whether I should be most worried about the guy going to Lithuania or the patent owned by the father. Franzen wore me out by so many alley-ways and furbelows in the story that I no longer care about any of the main characters.

So Franzen has now joined my list of writers that includes Philip Roth (see 2009 posting about my attempt to read the Zuckerman novels over the course of one summer). It's very hard for me to admit that I just don't like/just don't get such well-regarded, acclaimed writers and I do feel the nudge of thinking it's a fault in me rather than a question of taste. But for me, life is just too short for a Franzen novel.

Anticipation

The sentence slides up and off the page at me. Well-balanced, nice use of metaphor, good insight into the character. Always a nice surprise.

It is lunchtime and I sit in my car between errands at the Auto Club and the post office. I am reading the submission of a member of my writing group for our next meeting.

I am filled with the desire to go home, rather than back to work -- to roll up my sleeves and bury myself in my own words for the afternoon -- NOT to sit at my desk at work and sort through financial documents for a client. I have a burning, pressing itch to spend the rest of the day writing, when my energy is good and I'm not distracted by fatigue or hunger, when I still have enough of me to give to myself -- to get to write out the scene that's been rolling around in my mind before it is forever gone.

Is that a touch of congestion in my sinuses? Can I possibly justify calling in sick?

I look up at the sun beaming down through my windshield, feel the fresh spring breeze and know that I feel great. No edge of malaise anywhere.

Grr.

Will I still have the passion, the energy, the urgency to sit at the computer when I get home at 8 tonight? I can promise myself, I can hope, but I know it's unlikely. I will prefer to sit and talk to my husband, maybe have a glass of wine and play with the cats while I watch an episode of "Lie to Me."

I work hard to remind myself that that's OK too.

Spring Classics

I spent most of the weekend watching the Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico bike races. It was almost too much.

I felt weird doing this when there is so much destruction in Japan. But after a few minutes, watching video of the tsunami and of computer-animated fission felt unbearably voyeuristic.

So I retreated to Versus and Universal Sports.

I don't know why I like professional cycling so much. I know the history of doping and its continuing threads into today's peloton. I like Lance Armstrong for his anti-cancer awareness raising but got tired of watching his comebacks and now I'm not even following him on Twitter.

I have no desire to ever ride 100 miles in a day, I don't look for opportunities to "eat" gels and bars instead of real food, and the idea of one of those week-long charity rides down the coast of California, carrying only as much as I can fit in a shoebox, leaves me cold.

But I can name upwards of fifty professional cyclists, I can give you a rough outline of most of the big races in the cycling season, and it is one of my dreams to go see the Paris-Roubaix race in person and be covered in the dust of those centuries-old cobblestones.

I like the day-to-day, week-to-week drama of the sport. Who is recovering well from a broken clavicle? Who is able to ignore the nasty comments made by another sprinter? Which GC contender is accused of not following one of the dozens of unwritten rules of conduct (like not speeding up when someone pulls to the side of the road to urinate)?

I also like watching the French, Italian and Spanish countryside roll by on my television screen. I feel like I've been on a slow tour through thousands of miles of Europe. From this, I know I want to go to Bruges and Brittany and Perugia. I know that the Paris suburbs are not very attractive (I probably knew that already) and I know that most of Spain looks just like Southern California so maybe I should just stick to cities when I go there.

So - Tirreno-Adriatico finished today and Milan-San Remo is Saturday. And then the Tour of Flanders is April 3, followed by Paris-Roubaix the next week. And then, in May, the Tour of California, taking place nearly in my backyard. I'm already planning where to go see it in person.

Soul Sister

Last year I helped clean out the house of my oldest living blood relative, my father's sister. My aunt moved to an assisted living facility and my job was to go through her house and try to cull important papers. My husband and I spent three dusty days going through old tax returns, computer manuals from the early 1980's, and copies of old angry letters to William F. Buckley.

But then I discovered the treasure -- my grandmother's household account book from 1927.

I was only eight when my grandmother died. I have fond memories of her but I never really knew her. But I did get to hear her first-hand description of what it was like to cross the north Atlantic in 1914 with two small children and what it was like to go through Ellis Island.

She was born in Northern Ireland in the 1870's and came to New York in 1914. Her husband died in 1927, leaving her with four children to raise. So when I realized that the notebook I found dated from the year her husband died the little hairs on my arms stood up straight.

The first page is written in pencil and is a recitation of the costs of a construction job for "Mr. Cooney" from May 5 - June 4. From other things I know, this was my grandfather's last construction job before he died. Apparently it cost $1,075 to put plumbing in a new house on Staten Island in 1927. Pages later I learn how much a funeral cost at that time. And a few pages later: "magpies stripping cherries from Mr. J's backyard cherry trees. Neighborhood perturbed."

I guess life went on.

I found a few other similar volumes, covering odd bits of years until her death.

I NOW know how much my father earned from one of his first gigs as a musician in 1929 ($4). I know when my uncle enrolled at Columbia (Sept. 27, 1934).

So I guess I'm not the only one in my family who has felt an inexplicable need to record what is going on around me.

The book now sits on my desk and whenever I feel stuck, I open to a page and try to decipher her handwriting. And I feel a burning need to fill in all of the empty pages, even if just in my own mind.

The Ritual is the Cab

I have always admired Twyla Tharp. The day I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov in "Push Comes to Shove" when I was a teenager was a key day in my emotional and creative life. I admired how she was an insider and an outsider in the classical dance world and how she employed a new vocabulary of dance within the strict, strict rules of ballet.

One of my favorite books is her "The Creative Habit -- Learn It And Use It For Life." I've read tons of books about the writing process but this book sticks with me because she approaches the subject of how to create something, day after day, project after project, from a different art. She doesn't tell me to write a thousand words a day and go to writing conferences.

Early in the book she talks about rituals. She explains their power. She talks about how important it is for her to start her day by going to the gym. But she doesn't identify that as the key ritual for her -- the ritual is when she gets herself down to the sidewalk and tells a cab driver where she wants to go. "The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual."

I've been thinking about what the equivalent is for me. It's not sitting at my desk to write, because that doesn't happen everyday. It's not getting to the gym or to yoga, because that doesn't happen everyday either. But what do I do to help assure that those things happen more often than not? When I put it that way, the answer is easy.

I get up at 5:30 every morning and make tea (in a pot using loose leaf tea from India). I light a candle and sit and read for a little while. Right now, I have pictures of my grandmother with her family as a little girl and as a young married woman on my desk, because images from her life are rolling around in my mind for writing subjects.

By the time I finish the tea and read a chapter or two, I'm ready for what's next. Some days that means I just go fix my lunch (which means I will get to eat home-made food at lunch at work instead of processed purchased food), some days it means I go put on exercise clothes, and some days I go make another cup of tea (herbal this time to keep the caffeine under control) to keep the real day at bay a little bit longer.

Research! I'm so happy

Today is the first Saturday in weeks I've had to myself. I usually get a lot of writing done on Saturdays (or at least pretend I will) and try to go to yoga (or at least pretend I will).

I started my day drinking tea in the dining room and reading. I'm reading "Cutting for Stone," which has taken a while to worm its way into my heart but now it's good and truly wormed and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. As I was settling in to a good, long session with the book, the name of a song from the 1920's floated through my mind. It had nothing to do with what I was reading about - a hospital in Ethiopia.

OK, I thought. I will listen to that song when I go take a shower. And then a surge of energy pushed through me. I felt my pulse go up. No, no, no. It's the name of the novel I've been thinking about for the last week or so. Yes! That's it! Perfect!

I almost jumped out of the chair.

My mind started pinballing around, with a rush of images and ideas I almost couldn't keep track of. Paper. I needed paper. Before I forgot any of this.

And the first thing I did was start to list all of things I was going to have to learn more about to do this right:

-- 1920's jazz -- Bix Biederbecke, Paul Whiteman, Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin
-- women's fashion from that time -- Chanel etc. -- and how women's high end clothing was sold in New York
-- what was going on with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and other Irish political things at that time?
-- the Cotton Club, Broadway shows of the 1920's, Tin Pan Alley
-- the early history of World War I -- late 1914 specifically
-- banking and saving practices in the mid-1920's

Wow. This is going to be fun.

The Rabbit Hole

I'm just emerging from a few weeks of working on a case that demanded a lot of attention and a few weekends in a row in the office. It's been a long time since I spent an entire three-day weekend in the office. I brought in a bunch of yellow freesias, packed berries to have for lunch everyday and listened to the new Radiohead CD as loud as I wanted to but that couldn't really disguise that I was in my office for all of President's Day.

So despite my good intentions to do some writing, to get some pieces straightened up to submit for summer conferences, to get in the habit of posting here at least twice a week -- nothing happened on those fronts.

But still I carried my writing notebook in my black bag to and from my office everyday. Usually my writing notebook is a slim Moleskine or Apica notebook that can easily slip into any bag. But right now my writing notebook is a bit thicker, with a prominent spiral binding. The notebook was a gift from a writing retreat I went to two years ago. It's not the most convenient thing to carry but the quality of the paper is so wonderful I put up with the bulkiness -- it's a creamy off-white and very FPF (that's "fountain pen friendly" for those of you who are not drawn to such things).

And even though I know at the start of each day that it's highly unlikely I will have an idea or thought that I want to record, let alone find some time for dedicated free writing or anything like that, it's like a talisman. It just seems like bad luck to leave it at home.

At the end of the workday, as I switch off my computer and gather my electronic gadgets from my desk, I feel the weight of the notebook as I put my bag on my shoulder. I like it. I get a little lift of promise -- maybe tonight will be the night (as tonight was) where I can summon the energy after dinner to go to my writing desk rather than to the couch, when I can find peace and satisfaction in my own words rather than the words of others. Carrying my notebook with me everywhere makes me feel like a card-carrying member of something. And maybe I just need to be happy with that somedays.

Taking Stock

I am stuck. I have too little time to write and too many ideas.

Today I sat down and did something I've been wanting to do since New Year's. I went through my notebooks and my computer files and took stock of what I have in process. I felt like a greengrocer at the turn of last century climbing up a ladder to peer to the back of the shelves where the old potatoes are kept.

Here's what's in my inventory:

-2 completed memoirs
-1 half-written memoir
-6 partially written novels - some with only fragments or a chapter and two with over 100 pages
-10+ essays or sketches
-11 stories comprising a short story collection -- 4 are completed

So, now what? If I activate my lawyer brain I scan through everything to try to find the thing I can most easily finish, so I can move one more thing into the "finished" column. But I know that's not what I should do.

My preoccupation with work and my failure to have a writing routine yet means I can't hear my own voice telling me what to do. I need a long stretch of quiet with some good, clean energy (and really good tea). I need a week off. I need to find the wispiest character in the bunch and figure out what she is trying to say.

Discovery Buddha

I've been listening to podcasts by Gil Fronsdal from the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City. I have never practiced what I consider "real" Zen meditation even though I have read or listened to many materials by Thich Nhat Han, Pema Chodrom and Joko Beck. I don't think I'm up to the reality of the meditations, let alone the retreats, but I can handle walking meditation and try to practice mindfulness.

I've made a few stabs at developing a meditation practice over the years. I studied yoga at an old-style 1970's center, with orange thick-pile carpet and an actual yogi who visited from time to time from his retreat on Mount Palomar.

Once when I tried to explain my progress with mediation with a teacher, I compared my experience to being how I feel when I play the piano or write or listen to an amazing piece of music like a Beethoven string quartet. The teacher had a funny expression. It took me a while to figure out that for me maybe it was best to stick with music and writing to bring me a feeling of peace and flow and quiet, softened focus -- and not feel too bad about my inability to empty my mind while sitting cross-legged on the floor.

This week I listened to a talk called Sun Buddha, Moon Buddha. Gil explained that the Sun Buddha is eternal and lasts forever. The Moon Buddha lasts only the cycle of a moon. He used this dichotomy to talk about the need to accept the situation and work you are given.

When I listened to the talk I was in the middle of a several day project of writing several discovery motions. For those not familiar with litigation, discovery is the time-consuming process of exchanging information and "discovering" facts about the other party's case. It leads to the delivery of dozens of boxes of documents that need to be reviewed and digested. And when we think someone hasn't given us everything we asked for, we complain to the court in the form of a motion. So that's what I was doing this week. It's tedious and yet pretty important.

So I realized that for this week at least it is my role to be a Discovery Buddha. Applying that label helped me focus better on the work at hand and keep my butt in the chair until I was done.

God, I Hope I Get It

I think of myself as one of the most risk-adverse people I know. I never took time off to backpack around the world. I never experimented with drugs. I've never even had a variable rate mortgage. Instead, I went to school, I went to work, I paid my bills.

But now I'm reconsidering that view of myself. This week I watched "Every Little Step," a documentary about the recent revival of "A Chorus Line" set against an exploration of the original production.

I saw the revival in New York a few years ago. But I also saw the original production at the Schubert when I was in high school. When "A Chorus Line" first came to prominence I was already deeply and truly bitten by the dance bug. I spent nearly every day after school taking class at American Ballet Theatre. Perfecting a triple pirouette was all I could think about, when I should have been worrying about my SATs. When I went to see "A Chorus Line" with my friends from high school, I most likely had my dance bag on my shoulder and pink tights on under my jeans.

After the show finished, when everyone had that flushed, amazed look from having briefly entered another world, I had a "see what I mean?" reaction. I already felt like I lived in that world.

But I didn't. I was a student at Stuyvesant, New York's famous "public prep" school, and was hoping to go to a "serious" college. I was tongue-tied and insecure about my looks and my body and was never going to be a professional dancer.

So what made me go uptown after school every day and take my place at the barre, wearing just the thinnest layers of nylon and exposing all of my physical faults to a room of not exactly sympathetic eyes?

I don't know.

As I watched the movie this week I started thinking about all of the other risky things I've done --

-- leaving my family in New York to go to college in California, knowing I would never go back to New York
-- leaving my first job in Silicon Valley to go to law school with less than $1,000 in savings
-- deciding there was no reason I shouldn't become a partner in a major law firm and work on intellectual property matters during the internet boom, when I had two children under age ten
-- resigning from that same law firm ten years later to write a book
-- taking on an entirely new area of law when the book was done, during the worst recession the country has seen in my lifetime

Maybe I'm a contrarian. Maybe I don't like being told I can't do something that intrigues me. Maybe I don't like being defined by one phrase or word -- "the smart girl," "the mother," "the lawyer."

Maybe I'm a lot more attracted to risk than I ever imagined. Maybe I just define risk in a different way than most people.

I'm back

I joined a new writing group last week. It's an on-going group and there are two new people this time.

I think it will be just what I need right now. We do writing exercises, can choose to read or not, and can sign up for critiques if we want them. No big pressure but I really liked the energy of the group.

One of the things we did in the first class was to set objectives for the next ten weeks. My top two objectives are to re-find a habit of writing and to set some objectives for myself. As I was making my list a character crossed my mind. He was intriguing and I couldn't remember where I knew him from at first. Then I remembered I had written half a short story about him. It was a short story that I really liked. I had even gone to L.A. and taken pictures of apartment houses where I thought he would live. And I felt the little flicker of artistic interest in me -- for the first time in a long time.

Then I thought of another half-written story.

I realized I have no idea what is in my own computer.

So now I know that one of the first things I need to do is take inventory and figure out what to leave as is, what to pick up again, and what should never see the light of day. Maybe my year off from writing was a good thing. I will certainly have distance and hopefully a more objective eye about the things I wrote before. We will just have to see.

The "K" List for 2010 -- My Favorite Books

This is a New Year's tradition for me. Here is my list of the 15 books I liked best in 2010. The order is the order in which I read them. Questions welcome.

The Good Soldiers – David Finkel
Sarah’s Key – Tatiana De Rosnay
In the Woods – Tana French
Blame – Michelle Huneven
The Days of Abandonment – Elena Ferrante
Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House – Meghan Daum
Purge – Sofi Oksanen
Lost Hearts in Italy – Andrea Leee
Changing Light – Nora Gallagher
The Widow Clicquot – Tilar Mazzeo
The Lotus Eaters – Tatjana Soli
Paris Stories – Mavis Gallant
Seventh Heaven – Alice Hoffman
The Ghosts of Belfast – Stuart Neville
The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman