I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. - Cormac McCarthy

File this under "who would have thunk?" I was just sorting through my mail and read an article that a friend sent me from The Wall Street Journal: They're No Bodice Rippers, but Amish Romances are Hot. The covers all feature a beautiful young woman wearing a bonnet with a pastoral setting in the background and the sales numbers are impressive. An excerpt: "Most bonnet books are G-rated romances, often involving an Amish character who falls for an outsider. Publishers attribute the books' popularity to their pastoral settings and forbidden love scenarios à la Romeo and Juliet. Lately, the genre has expanded to include Amish thrillers and murder mysteries. Most of the authors are women." You can also read three excerpts from novels at WSJ.com.

Morning skies are smothered in clouds. I'm going to start posting writing prompts here from time to time, but to get things started I wanted you to know about three blogs that have great prompts going on. If you know of more, pass them on. So check out: totallyoptionalprompts, easystreetprompts, and threewordwednesday. Keep writing because it's more fun than most other parts of life.

Dusk is settling in and in the distance I can hear geese honking. I saw several V-formations pass by today, although surely it's too early for migration. There is a huge pond about a mile away, where they gather and are fed bread and snacks by walkers and totter around fat and obnoxious.

For years I've assigned various writing prompts to my students and workshop attendees when we gathered. Here is one, based on Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier. The first line of her novel begins: Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again. The first line of your story begins: Last night I dreamt I went to____________again.

Try it.

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly. - Paul Rudnick

Blue skies this morning and my talk last night at Powells was lots of fun, although the joint needs some air conditioning....but what's not to like about being surrounded by thousands of books?

My Facebook experiences are already yielding great results. I want to let you know about a blog for self-employed artists/creatives funding your bliss by Dmae Roberts. Here is part of her bio.

"For 25 years, Dmae Roberts has made a living producing and writing award-winning radio programs and stage plays. She has successfully navigated the non-profit world to fund her artistic projects and created an independent business as a freelance writer and producer. Funding Your Bliss highlights some of her experiences and offers helpful hints and success stories from her own life as well as others in creative class professions." I was scrolling through the various interviews and info--it's a treasure trove folks, and she also links to this Writer's Digest
article Ten Questions Writers Must Ask Before they Quit Their Day Jobs.

Keep writing, keep dreaming.

Question for writers out there who are working on fiction: What is your protagonist hiding and what is he/she most afraid of?

Clouds obscuring the sky this morning. I love reading a good travel writer for a bit of armchair travel, and the September issue of Smithsonian magazine features six travel writers' dream assignments. The writers are Susan Orlean, Francine Prose, Geoffrey C. Ward, Caroline Alexander, Frances Mayes, and Paul Theroux.

Here are the first two paragraphs of an introduction to the series by Jan Morris: “Now that nearly everyone has been nearly everywhere, it might be thought that travel writers have lost their purpose. In a way they have. Only the most spectacularly perilous journey is nowadays worth writing a book about, and a public almost surfeited with TV travelogues rarely needs to be told what foreign parts look like.

Ah, but what they feel like is something else, and in a profounder sense the best travel writers are not really writing about travel at all. They are recording the effects of places or movements upon their own particular temperaments—recording the experience rather than the event, as they might make literary use of a love affair, an enigma, or tragedy….”

Woke up much too early so sky is still the color of soot. Yesterday I set up a Facebook account and will be adding a profile and other items to my Wall soon. My friend Stacey has been after me for ages to do this, but I have always protested that it's a big time suck. Guess what? It's a big time suck.

Anyway, I wanted to recommend Steve Almond's article on salon.com Glen Beck is the Future of Literary.And you thought the New York Time's Bestseller List was unattainable? Read it and weep.

Diana Page Jordan gave Thanks, But This Isn't For Us a terrific review at her blog. Thanks Diana--much appreciated.

Blazing hot afternoon here in Portlandia. I just ran across this essay on another blog and had to put up the link, because it's hilarious....and oh so true.
Publish and Perish
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
Published: October 23, 2005
"For any writer, the publication of a book, labored over for years, is an exciting event. But excitement is a fleeting emotion, and the business of publicizing the book, so that it sells and the author can earn out his advance, quickly displaces any initial euphoria. The writer then embarks on a tortured journey toward acceptance of the fact, several months after publication, that his book isn't going to vault him into the empyrean of fame, or even improve his life. At the intersection of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's stages of grief and Stendhal's stages of love, the contemporary author trudges along a predictable path that can only be described, in hindsight, as self-induced misery."

Cloudless skies this morning and another day of hot weather is predicted. Just a reminder from my division of shameless commerce (to borrow a phrase): I'll be reading from my new book, Thanks, But This Isn't For Us, A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected and chatting about the writing life. Or should I say, how to keep your sanity amid the writing life, at Powells on Hawthorne at 7:30 on Monday night (September 14).

Skies are overcast with temperatures heading into the 80s again. According to The Writer's Almanac, today is the birthday of editor, author, and essayist Cyril Connolly who said, The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.

Also, my audio interview at Author magazine is now available. In this interview I talk about common mistakes I notice in manuscripts and how to avoid them.
Keep writing, keep dreaming.

Overcast skies again this morning. I’ve been thinking about the whole idea of mentors lately, especially since the brouhaha over President Obama’s going-back-to-school talk to kids. I’ve rarely witnessed such crazy behavior as lately when the hate mongers like Glen Beck, Monika Crowley and their ilk keep voicing their consternation and comparing him to Hitler. And then there is Steve Anderson the pastor of the Baptist church in Arizona who has called for the president’s death. It would seem that if there is any morality in this organization this man should lose his job for his violent rhetoric. So I’ve been in one of my what-the-heck-is-this- country-coming-to-moods? And knew that if we elected a black president the shit would hit the fan and all the racists and haters would emerge. Meanwhile, Americans need to rise up and say enough is enough.

But I’m going to stop my rant and I want to quote something from Obama’s talk: "Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide. Maybe you could be a good writer--maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper--but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class."

The speech goes on to list a host of professions after President Obama's tribute to writers: "innovator or an inventor," "Senator or a Supreme Court Justice," and finally, the traditional favorites, "doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer."
But did you notice that writers came first?

I wish, I wish when I was a girl that I had more mentors. Someone who noticed my passion, my talents, but mostly my doubts and I’m-not-good enoughs. I think my life would have been far different. I was thinking back to my years in a small northern town and my love of ice skating. I skated every day in winter. Sometimes twice a day. When it was twenty or thirty below and I couldn’t feel my toes and the sky was black and glimmering like a diamond field, because out on the ice you’re kind of free and wild and unsure all at once. I could skate backward, I could stay on my feet, I could skate fast, but I didn’t have a special aptitude for skating. I was just a sort of athletic kid who possessed fair balance—most of the time.

Often on returning home from school I’d hang out in the driveway at the side of the house and practice until dusk fell on those hard, freezing winter afternoons. And I practiced Olympic-type moves---balancing and swiveling on one foot sort of things. The driveway ice was a bumpy, treacherous and the ice equivalent of potholes. I was alone. The sky was as purple as a bruise. But I never really mastered any of those steps, I never really became ballerina graceful—not like the picture in my head.

It was only about 10 years ago that I realized that the reason I never progressed as a skater was that I never had a teacher or mentor. In fact, as far as I know there were no professional skaters in our town. However, for years I carried a kind of inner failure that I hadn’t done better. The girl in me never realized that I needed instruction, guidance, a kind word—not just a kid alone on a cold night struggling to scrap together a performance without any instruction or help.

So thanks to Obama and every other adult who lends a guiding hand. If you’re a writer find a mentor. If you cannot find one, read books on craft. And for all the hate mongers who are poisoning our country, I curse you with a serious case of frostbite.

Paige, the six year old in my life failed to reach home by bus on her first day of first grade today. When I called at about 3:45 to chat with her about her new teacher, Mrs. Glove and first grade happenings, I heard hysteria on the other end of the phone line. Trouble is, that Paige, like many bright children whose souls or intelligence or whatever you want to call it, is/are too big for their small bodies, has a serious case of anxiety. We’re talking really serious.

As in on Sunday we were at a farmer’s market. It started to blow and rain. The sky was the color of soot meets The Wizard of Oz tornado scene. Paige, sensibly clad in her new LLBean raincoat and carrying her red and black ladybug print umbrella started freaking out. We retreated to a canopied area where great jazz was playing, the aromas of food were permeating, and Paige was melting down. I pointed out: “Look around. Don’t you notice that nobody else, not even the kids are crying?

Trembling, she surveyed the crowd. “Nobody’s crying.” she agreed.

“What do you think that means?

”I don’t know.” Lips quivering, large brown eyes spilling tears.

“It means there is nothing to be afraid of. It’s only rain. It’s all in your head.”

“Can we go now?

With no options since she was frozen in terror, I left her in the hands of her older sister ("It's only water, like the shower) for a few minutes so I could quickly dispatch with my necessary forays in buying veggies. Yesterday I delivered her home and she immediately stuck to her mother like a bur (if you’re not familiar with burs you should seek one out because they are a really apt simile) and started trembling about the first day of school. So the next hour or so was about cajoling, assurances, distractions, and choosing the perfect outfit.

So when she hopped on the wrong bus it wasn’t good. This is a kid who is afraid of rain and lives in Oregon. Many phone calls and walkie-talkie bus driver communications later she was discovered in her pink dress with cherries and pink Converse and was driven back to the school. When I talked with her later she knew she belonged on bus 5 and that Mrs. Glove was having a baby and she had received an award for already knowing how to read. Sigh of relief.

Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something. ~Isaac Asimov

Skies are overcast, but the sun is going to break through and warmer weather is on the way after a weekend of gloom and rain. I was just listening to Obama's talk to kids returning to school and thinking about how it is time for people of decency and common sense to talk back to all the hate speech and bizarre rhetoric that is choking the air waves.

Meanwhile here is a thought on writing:
“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” Mark Twain

It strikes me again how many works of fiction end with a character’s death… The use and reuse of death as an ending points to the inevitable resemblance between the arc of story and the arc of an individual existence rising and falling. It indicates, among other things, how elemental form is. Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction

Art has given me everything I have wanted or needed. Peter Small, author Stitches, illustrator

Skies washed over with clouds and the roofers should be here any moment. Yesterday they left soon after arriving because the wrong shingles were loaded up onto the roof. I'll be leaving home today.

But I wanted to point you to Kay Kenyon's blog. She just posted a segment from my July column in my newsletter, The Writing Life. If you don't receive the newsletter, please contact me. As for Kay, she's a science fiction author and her novels include Bright of the Sky, one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year 2007,A World Too Near, City Without End,concluding with Prince of Storms (Jan 2010).

Kay is also chair of the Write on the River conference which is held each May in Wenatchee, Washington, perched along the Columbia River. If you want to visit a town that feels like stepping into the Old West, this is the place. Fabulous architecture.

Also, I checked out her post excerpted from my newsletter and had that oh-so lovely "I wrote that" pride....Keep writing out there.

Overcast skies and it's 7:20 and a crew of roofers have just pulled up in a rattly- looking red pickup. Which means that soon it will sound as if a herd of elephants is at war overhead (my office is on the second floor). So if I'm noticeable in my absence in the next few days, it's because I've abandoned ship. Is it just me or every year when you hear about the hundreds of acres in California being devoured by flames don't you wonder if they're going to run out of places to burn down?

Meanwhile, a question for any readers who are tech savvy. Deone Kohler featured my Powells.com blog post at her blog--oh the world of cross-blogging--and then informed me that she cannot link to my blog in her Google reader. Does anyone know why? If so, please email me at jessicapage at spiritone.com.

Oh, and Mediabistro is reporting that Storm Large is going to portray Gretchen Lowell, Chelsea Cain's serial killer in a marketing campaign for her upcoming novel Evil at Heart. I recently saw Storm's one-woman show, Almost Crazy at Portland Center Stage. She is freaking amazing--sort of a triple threat since she can sing, act, and write. And she's hot.Yeesh.

Keep writing, keep dreaming.