::grateful for::

:: walls to paint.

Remember that wall I painted orange for my birthday a year and a half ago?

It's not orange anymore. I covered it with chalkboard paint and it became an integral part of Thanksgiving dinner this year. I envision it holding all kinds of messages and lists and sayings over the years. I think I've got it just right now.

:: family.

Look closely and you'll find a gratitude list in photographs and even in words, high above the window... love that addition. Thank you, Jim.

:: those who pitch in.

Those who eat. Those who clean up. Those who appreciate. Thank you, my baker.

::good work to do.

I know it's almost December and we'll be racing headfirst into the holidays, I know I have one more trip this year, to two elementary schools in East Tennessee next week, but I am still going to try to write every day in December. Okay, maybe not Christmas Day, we'll see how it goes.

For the first time in ten years, I plan to be home more than away next year -- home almost all year long. I've been planning and scheming for this year, and I think finally I can swing it.

I'm grateful for this coming year of writing -- a writing intensive. I want to get a head start on that year in December. So on December 1, I will tiptoe back into my novel. I'll write about that process, here.

I'm also going to use December to set up next year's writing year. I'll chronicle that here, too. I don't exactly know how it will work, but I have ideas. I may never have another year like this one to write and write and write in, and I want to use it wisely. I have lots and lots... and lots... of ideas, and stories I want to write.

I also have lots of living I want to do. Lots of learning to love Atlanta. Lots of exploring with my sweetheart, lots of staying put and venturing forth. Lots of family time. Lots of memories to make. Lots of becoming. Lots of letting go.

I feel rawther pregnant with possibility. ha!

So I'm nesting now. Getting ready. And very grateful. For everything. In advance. Yep, everything. All the messy glory. Come on in, I say... let the year of possibility begin.

let us love one another

It's not possible to tell you all I am thankful for this year. I'm choked up just thinking about it. It has been an amazing year full of ups... and downs.

Thank goodness for ALL of it. As Uncle Edisto says, "Open your arms to life! Let it strut into your heart in all its messy glory!" Yessir. Wise man.

I have learned so much about the messy glory this year. And so, as I prepare for tomorrow's feast -- I am about to start all the cooking prep -- I want to say thank you. I am grateful to the crazymakers and the peacemakers. Grateful to the hapless, the hopeless, the helpless, and the helpers. Grateful to be alive in this time and place. Grateful to be able to do good work in the world. Grateful to those who labor beside me.

I want to be ready for tomorrow's feast, which I'm dedicating to those who will not have a feast but want one; those who will not be surrounded by family and friends but want to be. Those who are fallible. Those who are human. Those who love even when they are not loved back. I want to be ready to honor them.

So I spent some of yesterday bringing the outside in, which I always do when I know those I love will come celebrate with me.

 Into the yard with my clippers. Into Irene with my bounty.

Then I washed the dishes. Hannah and I found these beautiful old dishes at Kudzu last week. They called to me, whispered, cajoled, fairly begged to be taken home, so I adopted them, brought them to my kitchen, and started their new life by giving them a good bath.

Then I set the table.

And organized what I brought in from outside.

I moved the furniture in my office, and created a dining room.

 And I created a gratitude collage on one wall. I'm almost done adding the photographs of those I am grateful to this year. If you look carefully, you can see the Beatles peeking out from behind a photo of me in that top left corner. You can see my mother-in-law's wedding photo, you can see my children, my family, my heart.

2011 is almost gone. I have dreams for the future, even in these troubled times, these sometimes desperate days, these also-amazing days, and I say:

Let us not worry about who is right. Let us not care about who's ahead. Let us always see the best in one another. Let us feed and care for and nurture one another and see who we really are. Let us tend to one another's wounds and adopt one another and bathe one another in the light of our understanding. Let us understand what brotherhood means. And let us love one another. Always.

around atlanta: smack into the city

Downtown and South Downtown (SoDo), into Grant Park.  It was a Sunday afternoon and I had questions. Where are all the people who live here, dine here, shop here, raise their families here?

They aren't here. They have moved to Midtown and other neighborhoods. People may work in downtown Atlanta, but they surely don't live here anymore (for the most part), although there is a large homeless population. We got out and walked, and we drove through, in late afternoon, and watched men and women making ready their beds for the night with pieces of cardboard, with shopping carts, a blanket perhaps, under ramps and in parking lots, on steps.

We also got caught up in the traffic leaving the Georgia Dome after a Falcons game. The population swelled for a moment, but all cars were heading out of the city.

This article, in Creative Loafing, addressed some of my questions.  It's titled "South Downtown Must be Fixed for Atlanta to Thrive" followed by this subhead: "The area south of Five Points was once bustling. What the hell happened?" It's enlightening and opinionated. The comments are... interesting.

What a contrast from our last Sunday drive! I want some books about Atlanta's history. Preferably with lots of photos. Anybody know where I should start?

I'm in D.C. today, working with 4th graders at The Potomac School. We're talking about how to create unforgettable characters. These kids are teaching me a lot. They're fabulous. I'm on my lunch break. Back to it. I'll be home -- home to my new home town -- on Wednesday night.

good garden of peas: a writing prompt

{a writing prompt. If you feel so inclined, link to your own good-garden prompt in the comments, so we can all be inspired!}


 "I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible... We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.... In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone."
(Full text of the speech is here.)

recent reading

I'm catching my breath between three fabulous days at Brookstone School in Columbus, Georgia (where I was lucky enough to see every student in grades preK through 5, work with a lovely smattering of students in middle school writing workshops, and even an Honors English class for a fascinating hour) , and my trip to the D.C. area on Monday, where I'll work with all fourth graders and teachers at The Potomac School as they create characters with me. I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I'm staring at the wall and gathering some energy back to me. I'm knitting. I'm eating good food. I'm sleeping like the dead. I'm listening to Jim's amazing new music -- he's composing like a fiend on fire right now -- and I'm catching up on all manner of things, including reading.

I've started reading again, really reading, which must mean I'm getting set to start writing in earnest again, day after day, which is true, I am. But I have not read like this in years... it means something. I'm trying to figure out what. Remember when you used to read so much you couldn't put down your book to even come to the table for supper? You brought your book to supper. You had to put it down in order to eat. It was torture. Like that. Reading like that.

You can see what I'm currently reading in the blog sidebar, and you can see my 2011 reading list here. I started this reading and listing only a few months ago. It's changing me, making new inroads in my mind and heart, and it delights me more than I can say.

Quick notes: Loving Pulphead, just started it today and already am hooked. I opened it at random and read the piece on Michael Jackson. Well-written, thoughtful, compassionate, provocative. I buy a book a month from a favorite indie, Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi (where book 2 of the sixties trilogy takes place) and this is November's selection. Thank you, thank you!

I'm listening to Middlesex on CDs from my library, which is how I read both Kate Atkinson novels. Henrietta Lacks I read on hardcover loan from my library, which is how I started Fire and Rain, but I've now purchased this book for a friend, and am listening to it on CD, also on loan from my library.

Libraries and independent bookstores: great good things in the world. As are books. As are schools. As are a few days off. It's really fall here now, and it's beautiful. I am being spoiled these few days home: Jim makes me a fire every morning. I sit in the pink chair next to the fire, with my quilts and my coffee and a story. Maybe a little knitting. Maybe a little cooking. Maybe a bath later and a little more Middlesex while I soak.

There's business to attend to and I'm doing that as well. There are chores to do and I'm doing them as well, but there's nothing like finding my way back to the pink chair and the book in progress and the reward of the next chapter.

I crave good stories right now. Non-fiction, memoir, essay, fiction, it doesn't matter, as you can see. They feed me.

I crave the sound of stories, the heft of the book in my hand, the turn of the page near the fire, the reading of a passage out loud over supper, the amazement of what happens next, and the constant wonder of how an accomplished writer can gather a gaggle of seemingly unconnected words, add moments and memory into the mix, infuse the mix with meaning, and construct a glorious castle of story, a story I never would have known if I had not opened that book, been introduced to it through someone else's recommendation (Thank you, UES in Moorestown, NJ, for the Middlesex recommend! Thank you, Cousin Carol for our Masterpiece Mystery nights that led me to Kate Atkinson!) or stumbled across it in the stacks (which look suspiciously like my Google Reader these days) on my own.

I think this is what's happening: I'm settled enough in my life, finally, to welcome back story. I'm off the roller coaster. I've stepped out of the first car and I've got my feet under me, solid, steady, grounded again. I know who I am.

Suddenly I always have an audio book for the car, an audio book for the bath, and a stack of bedtime reading, fireside reading, reading in between the cracks, or late into the night. I soak up good writing like a sponge. I need it like I need water, food, sleep, coffee... chocolate. hee.

Reading is sustenance. It calls to me. It says, "Come spend some time with good writing, with good story, with thoughts you never had, people you have yet to meet, and places your heart has not yet visited. Come be filled."

So that's what I'm up to this fall, in addition to the travel and teaching and speaking and all the good work in schools and at conferences. It's a bit like being reshaped, reborn, retooled. It's like being opened up again to the world and its mysteries. It's becoming larger than myself.

And so, y'all.... got any recommends? I've had these white-heat reading times in my life before -- they turned me into a writer. I want to be a better writer. I'm making a list of Good Books. I'm holding on to this white-heat feeling as long as I can. Maybe it will last forever.

good garden of peas: a writing prompt

{a writing prompt. If you feel so inclined, link to your own good-garden prompt in the comments, so we can all be inspired!}

Boone, N.C.

overdue thanks

I sit this early morning in a hotel room in Boone, North Carolina. I will work here for the next two days. Today is a day in schools and a public library event. Tomorrow I will keynote the Appalachian State University Children's Literature Symposium and work with teachers throughout the day -- exciting!

This fall has been full of travels, and I am overdue on some October thanks. Thanks so much to Mikey Jones at Powhatan Elementary in Boyce, Virginia; Kathy Crane and Joy Simpkins and all those who brought me to W.G. Coleman Elementary in The Plains, Virginia; Carole Butler and her intrepid team at Moorestown Middle School; and Bev Grazioli, Carol Herb, and the Home & School team that brought me to Moorestown, New Jersey's Upper Elementary School --  amazing, insightful days of teaching and learning.

Here you'll see teachers modeling for their students in assembly, teachers telling their own stories in workshop, students writing away in assembly, and projects using Deborah Wiles' books as a jumping off point, and more. 

Every school has its own flavor, needs, goals, and atmosphere. Every journey has its distinct differences as well. Yesterday I drove into the Blue Ridge Mountains as the falling leaves swirled in masses all around me. I took the winding mountain roads as the rain began to fall and the fog crept in, and the dark seeped into the day.

Today I go out into the sunlight to meet new people, see new faces, work with new students and teachers, and discover new stories. And, as always, it's about the stories. Always about the stories.