Flat. Down. Up.

I rode my bicycle through Prospect park on Saturday, thinking about my writing, about this blog. I can not tell you how many blog posts I have 'written' while I've pedalled, how many plot holes I have worked out while gripping my pink handlebars (It's almost time for new tape, what color do you suggest?)

On this particular ride, I was thinking a lot about my novel, with it's completed first draft, which sits until I can sit with it. I have designated Friday afternoon as the time to do that. To read it, in it's entirety and see what can be done. Since I began writing the book, I've struggled to define one of the most important characters. She is a catalyst for everything that happens to my main character and I have danced around her for 72,000 words. There are decisions that need to be made and there are literal blank pages waiting for me to make them. I have lost sleep over this woman. She has made me insane.

My ride through Prospect Park did not provide any breakthroughs but I am very, very close to figuring things out.

What I did realize is how cathartic it is to ride this particular loop. I begin on a flat road, then I dip down a long hill where I fly and feel free. At the end, there is a steep slope upwards and I sweat and curse to myself the entire time. While I'm climbing, I think, I'm going home. There is no way I can do this again. But then I come to that flat and I take off for another round.

As I tried to sort through this mess of a character, I thought about what I was doing. I thought about the loop. And it made me feel better. Not just about my book but about life in general. Flat. Down. Up. And how natural it is to start again. I realize it's cliche, these hills and valleys. But to feel it, really feel it, makes me know it's true. Because that's what it's really like...to move across the earth this way.

Best Friends

Pat and my mother have known one another since they were infants. My mother's grandmother lived in the same two-story home in Astoria, Queens as Pat's grandmother...and so began three generations of friends.

When they are together, it is a flurry of high-pitched conversation and laughter. It is impossible to tell who is speaking. They yell over one another and still manage to know exactly what the other is saying. When our families got together over the years Pat's son, Drew, and I always looked at one another across the kitchen table and wondered what in the world was happening.

Here they are in purple and blue at Drew's wedding. Their friendship amazes me. It has lasted 64 years.

You look like sisters, I told them earlier in the night.

We are sisters, my mother said.

Being In Summer

I saw this woman at the beach on Sunday and I understood. Sometimes you can not put a book down. Sometimes you want to be in too many places at once.

This summer has been so busy and, until Sunday, I had not been able to get to the beach. So I found, in between endless appointments and projects and obligations, one hour this weekend. I forced myself out of bed much earlier than usual (I am not a morning person) and went out to this beach on Long Island, just a twenty minute drive from my parents house, where I was staying for the weekend. I wanted to sit in the sun and read for hours. I wanted to be in the water for as long as I could.

But I only had one hour.

It was enough to remind me of the silence I do not get to hear. How refreshing cool waters can be when I am not racing across hot pavement to my next destination. I remembered summer in a way I hadn't in a while: as a time to sit. And be.

Are you finding time this summer to really be in summer?

Rita Williams-Garcia

Last night, I had the great fortune to meet Rita Williams-Garcia whose book One Crazy Summer has been named a Coretta Scott King Award Winner and a Newbery Honor Book. The book also won the Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction and it was a National Book Award Finalist...so many accolades that you can barely see the title of the book because these awards are plastered all over the cover.

I really enjoyed Ms. Williams-Garcia's talk. We all sat in Dylan's Candy bar, with it's cotton-candy drinks, it's red-and white striped chairs, easter-egg pastel tables that look like carousels, and even admist all of this color, she stood out like a bright star. She shared stories about her childhood, how, at just 12 years old, she sent out stories and received rejections that made her happy as a clam. Doesn't she know she's been rejected? her family would wonder, but all she could think was, Wow! Someone read my story and wrote me a letter! (Perhaps we can all take lessons from 12 year old Rita...)

She's been writing for 25 years without an agent, working with the very same editor she sold her first book to and, until just recently, worked a full-time job. She originally began writing for young people because in college she worked with the kinds of kids she called: women-girls. These young adults who had more adult experiences than she had.

She talked about pitching hard books like middle grade books that tackle subjects like genital mutilation and about making difficult choices that limit your market and your readership. In the end, she always has to ask herself, what is the big thing I want to get across? What can I sacrifice, if anything at all?

Her excitement was infectious, the rhythm of her speech frenetic and thoughtful at the same time. When I told her that she seemed so bright and full of energy, she just said, It took me 40 years to get here. I am happy.

She reminded me that there is joy in writing and in sharing your work with others. That we can push ourselves to take on hard topics and bring them to children who read these kind of books, breathe a sigh of relief, and say: I am not the only one.

Nothing to Say

I keep opening blogger and staring blankly at the screen. I have nothing to say, I think. And then I immediately launch into sung dialogue from Sunday In The Park With George, trying to imitate Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, which is really hard for one person to do because their lines overlap one another as they sing:

George: I've nothing to say

Dot: You have many things

George: Well, nothing that's not been said

Dot: Said by you though, George

George: I do not know where to go

Dot: Nor did I

George: I want to make things that count. Things that will be new

Dot: I did what I had to do

George: What am I to do?

This happened about three times before I realized I better just give you this song.

That's all I've got, friends. What do you have to say?

Some Kind of 'End'

Somehow, in the midst of this heat that won't break, after climbing hills of resistance in spin class because there is no way to bike in this wet blanket weather and stuffing myself with spicy gazpacho which seems to be the only thing we can eat in this summer fire, I finished the first draft of my WIP.

Of course, it needs work. This is only the beginning. But, somehow, there are 72,000 words and I don't know where they came from. I just feel grateful they are there. And I feel like it is some kind of end, even if it is not quite the end.

Since Tyler is sound asleep and I don't think the people in our little brownstone building would appreciate me banging on their doors to tell them the news, you, my friends, are the first to know.

And now I sleep.

A Place To Sit

I recently joined the community garden just across the street from my apartment. It is called The Amazing Garden and it is, indeed, amazing. It has many places to sit and raised flower and vegetable beds. It even has four barbecue grills.

I have lived in New York City since March of 2005, which puts me at seven years in this town. Perhaps I am considered a 'real New Yorker' even if the requirements for garnering this title are unclear (I've heard as little as five years and as many as fifteen.) In all seven years, I have never had an outdoor space, a little patch of land, even a terrace to sit on.

It is one of the things I like least about living here. Being outside is what I crave most. Ever since I was a little girl. I finished my homework as quickly as possible so I could barrel down the front steps and call on my friends. And in the summers, I played outside until the sun dropped in the sky.

Even now, I try to spend as much time as I can outdoors, riding my bicycle, browsing farmers markets, sitting in parks and at rooftop bars, walking along piers. But it is not something I can do with ease. It is not as simple as stepping outside and sitting down with a good book.

The Amazing Garden will, hopefully, eliminate the problem. I can, quite literally, step outside and have a place to sit within seconds, without having to pack up my bike and find uncharted territory in New York City's overcrowded parks. And the grills...oh the grills! We already had a small barbecue for Tyler's birthday on Sunday.

Someday I hope to look out at acres and acres of land that are all mine. I could live in the tiniest shelter imaginable. I've already survived years of unimaginably small quarters in New York. But, I dream that I will have grass and trees and hills.

Right now, I have a place to sit. It is a start.