Let Me Back In

I'm always getting metaphorically locked out of my own manuscript. The characters start nanny-nanny-poo-poo-ing behind the door, running around in superman capes, dipping their fingers into peanut butter jars, coloring all over the walls.

Today I said, I've had enough of you fools. I erased a moment they'll never have again. Ripped away a memory. Sent them back a week. Turned their day into night.

Ready to Fail

Tyler took on the topic of failure at the OOM blog last week (the post is here) and so it became a dinner conversation, as so many blog topics do in our household. I discussed it over sparkling wine (Tyler had a beer) because I am one of those people who drinks champagne whether or not there is something to celebrate.

The gist of Tyler's post is that we've all heard the cliches from highly successful people: you can't succeed without first overcoming failure. But now, there are studies to back it up.

As Tyler writes: "By looking at the brain activity of students during moments of failure, they were able to determine that some people react to errors by brushing them aside and moving on, and others by dwelling on them and learning from them. Those people believe they can get better at anything."

I thought about it during our conversation. I wondered about this kind of growth mindset. Did I have it?

As the bubbles went to my head I tried to yell over the restaurant's steady hum: Yes! I do!

Hello my name is Melissa and I write fiction. And, so far, I have been nothing but an epic failure at it. I'm not fishing for compliments. This is cold hard fact. I've got countless unpublishable short stories. Terrible novels and screenplays abandoned in a drawer. I send my work out to agents and editors and journals and magazines, every piece of paper, every digital file like a little legendary unicorn that no one else can see. No one has ever said 'yes' to me on this path to publication. I'm not lying. I have never, EVER heard the word 'yes' when it comes to my fiction.

I have no reason to believe I will succeed. I have every reason to believe I'll continue failing. But all this 'no' has never once deterred me.

I did not understand until Tyler presented the facts. Failure is sadly misunderstood. Failure makes you better. Failure is something to celebrate. Thank goodness I always have sparkling wine at the ready.

So what do you think? Are you ready and willing to fail with me?

My Grandmother the Snow Angel

Today, on this beautiful October day in the Northeast, I think of my grandmother, my father's mother. This photograph is always how I see her in my mind because I think it captures her perfectly. I don't know when it was taken. Her hair had turned snow white when she was very young. Her name was Angelina, which means 'little angel'. And because of her hair, I always think of her as a snow angel.

She had the softest, smoothest skin of anyone I have ever known. She used to hold both of my hands in hers when I was a little girl. My hands are like ice. They've always been like that. She held on to them for hours at a time to keep them warm. I liked it that way.

My grandmother spoke very softly too. She told me that she used to sing on the radio. I never knew more than that simple fact. To this day, I wonder about it. I imagine she must have had a beautiful singing voice. And even though she did not have a lot of money, I remember that she had exquisite taste. Her clothing was absolutely impeccable. She had all of these beautiful treasures in her tiny one bedroom apartment. The most fragile Lladro figurines, ceramic sculptures, and stained glass lamps. She let me touch everything. I never once heard her raise her voice.

She had the largest stack of coloring books I had ever seen. When I stayed with her, she colored with me for hours. I was never happier than at my Grandmother's kitchen table with my cousin Priscilla, all of us making our way through endless pages of coloring books. We would show one another our creations. How beautiful, one of us would remark. We always signed our names in the bottom right hand corner and dedicated them to one another before we moved on to the next page.

When I was older I remember sitting at her kitchen table talking with her and she said, " You know something, I feel like having a cigarette. I haven't had a cigarette in 40 years." She stood up, opened a drawer, and took out a pack of cigarettes. She had kept that pack there for forty years in case she ever felt the urge.

I can't imagine it tasted very good forty years later but she sat and savored that one cigarette and, as far as I know, never had another one. But, then again, it was like her to always practice such tremendous restraint.

It was such a strange and wonderful moment. And I think of it often. My grandmother sitting with legs crossed, in her silk blouse and pearls, smoke curling up around her perfectly coiffed hair.

As With All Matters Of The Heart

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

~Steve Jobs

Some Words from the Work In Progress

I don't think I'll ever be able to figure out what this blog is about. But the writing is at the heart of it. And I haven't talked much about writing lately, which has probably led most of you to believe that not much of it has been going on.

But it has. Very late into the night. Every night. My days have become endless. After working a full day, it feels as if I begin an entirely new one when I return home. I walk in the door at 8pm, I cook, I eat dinner, and then it's time to write for a few hours.

It's been like this for months and, I'll admit, that the schedule is about to break me. But then, I think, I am healthy. I don't have children to take care of. I have time. So, really, I could be working harder. I should be working harder. I promise, I will.

So that you believe me, so that somebody out there (besides me) knows, here are some words from the current work in progress. Because I really do need someone to know.

What are you writing? I'd like to know too.



He kicked his heel back into the leg of the elephant, reached up for the belly of it, hammered against the metal, drummed out a hollow beat. The way he fidgeted reminded her of a little boy, always tinkering, snapping tree branches, running sticks through the sand. And it saddened her that she had become so perfectly still, so terrified to touch or disturb a thing.

“Where you going now?” he said, as if it weren’t a question, but a plea. Stay.

“Why does it matter?”

He stared at her as if he were looking into a camera and had forgotten to take the lens cap off. As if he were gazing into darkness and couldn’t figure out why. “Com’ere. Look.” He ducked underneath the massive elephant structure.

She hesitated.

His voice echoed. “Come on.”

A Vacation To Read

Lately I've been pretty unsatisfied in my reading life. I have been going through my worst reading funk to date and I don't know what will pull me out of it.

It's funny. I keep a list of everything I read. And if I look at that list, scan past the abandoned books (lately there have been far too many to count), and note the books I did manage to finish, I would say, in almost every case, I liked that book.

So it's not the books.

It's the experience of reading that leaves me wanting. I just don't feel the same joy I used to when I read. Reading has become a wild stop and start pattern. From one subway stop to the next. In the five minutes while I wait on line. Just before I drift off to sleep. In the fifteen free minutes between stirring the soup and writing for the night. It's an in-between kind of reading. A squeeze-it-in when and where I can.

I just don't know where to find the hours to sit and read. I want to read from start to finish. I don't want to have to stop. I just want to go until I can not go anymore.

The reading moments I remember are always the moments when I was able to sit and read for hours and hours. On a hammock. On a beach. In a bed. On a train.

It's the book more than the place. And it's the feeling more than the book.

I'm thinking of taking a reading vacation. And I don't mean a vacation from reading. I mean a day off. To settle in. And read.

Who will join me? Where will we sit? What will we read?

A Frolic, A Wedding and, Oh Right, the HAIR...

My dear friend Krista got married this weekend.

Krista is the girl who wakes me up at ungodly hours to go for walks. She knows the best games for long car rides. She will sing with me, at the top of her lungs, no matter where we are. She once taught me to frolic properly through the Cornell plantations. I'm pretty sure you think you know how to frolic. But you don't. Not unless you have received proper instruction from Krista.

I don't know why but she entrusted me with the task to do her hair for her wedding. I would not consider myself someone who is good at this kind of thing. I've had the same hairstyle since first grade. My idea of high style is a ponytail. But she asked me and I could not refuse.

And even though I had no idea how to turn her curly, curly hair into wavy hair (seriously, Krista? Seriously...) I pretended that I knew exactly what I was doing.

The truth is...I was terrified. I was pretty sure I was going to ruin the whole day.

The good news is...I didn't. Because when you're working with someone as gorgeous as Krista, it's hard to mess up.





It seems appropriate that she'd take us to the top of a mountain for her wedding. That she'd send us up the narrowest of roads into fog so dense we joked that the headless horseman would appear in the mist. She always takes us to the best places. Always sends us higher than we think we can go.

I realize this photo is blurry but I think it is the right kind of portrait. Krista is not so easy to capture, always frolicking through life like that. Spike, I wonder, how did you ever catch her?