snapshot

I am here. 

the way it was

After two back-to-back weekends of travel for work, it took four days last week for my mind to come back online enough to tackle the copy-edited manuscript, and it was due on Friday last week. I asked for the weekend and promised it first thing Monday morning.

I had felt so smug, the week between the travels. I had addressed all of the copy editor's queries and had begun the read-through. Piece of cake! I'll get it back early!

Well, no.

I constantly have to re-learn a Mandrian Truth:

It is what it is; it's not the picture in my head of what it's supposed to be.

In work and in life. In all things.

The weekend became an exercise in having faith in my process and being steadfast in my commitments.

On Friday night, after a quiet date with my husband, I went back to work on the manuscript. This work involved cutting, smoothing, clarifying, adding a line here, choosing the better word there, shaping and thinking in a linear way about the story at hand, moving carefully and deliberately through the manuscript, page by page. This will be my last opportunity to revise. The next time I see the story, it will be in page proofs. 


On Saturday I attended a rain gardening class all afternoon at the Oakhurst Community Garden taught by Daniel Ballard of Edible Yard and Garden. I went to the farmer's market and restocked our almost-empty fridge with fresh vegetables. I was tired -- my mind was tired. I went to bed early without having made any novel progress.

On Sunday I had over 300 pages to finish, three songs to swap out because they cost too much or we couldn't get permission (Sam Cooke's "A Change Gonna Come" being the one we were denied permission to use), and snippets about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Vietnam War to provide for the last two scrapbooks... I had run out of steam and had sent the manuscript in without those snippets on my last revision round. Now I would have to put in the work to create them and source them.

And I'd have to work hard to find some songs in the public domain, if possible -- freedom songs, protest songs, folk songs that matched the era and the scrapbook they were anchoring -- to offset what we were finding to be the prohibitive cost of some of our song lyrics. I reached for my headphones, began my search on Google and YouTube, strapped on my long-distance writer shoes, and went to work.

I had the day -- and the night -- to finish. I also had a concert/recital by a friend of mine that I had promised (and wanted) to attend, a phone texting/television date with my sweet cousin that I did not want to miss, and a lentil loaf I wanted to make, not to mention apples and tomatoes to dehydrate or make into sauces. I wanted to do it all.

And I had promised Scholastic a 90-second video of me talking about Revolution. Well!

It is what it is. What it is is what I had to work with.

The lentils got cooked and stayed in the pot. The apples and the tomatoes still wait for attention. The video got done, and it was filmed in the most inventive way:

Whenever I took five from the painstaking work with the manuscript, I did one thing, i.e., I scripted myself. I washed my hair. I dried my hair. I practiced my script and timed myself. I dressed up. I practiced with the flip camera. I erased that try. I practiced again. And again. I memorized the script. I figured out the best arrangement for the camera... and for me. I laughed myself silly trying to film and write, film and write.

Jim came home from his Sunday brunch gig at Einstein's, and I was ready for him to press record on the flip, which he did. Three takes later, we had a 90-second video fit to send in. It took me another hour to try to figure out how to upload it to Scholastic's FTP site. I ultimately sent it to them in an email.

I still had over 200 pages of Revolution to finish. I went to my friend Katherine's recital. I sat near the door so I could scoot out before my 8pm date with my cousin. I was so moved during the concert I couldn't hold back tears. I dashed home, wiping my eyes and texting my cousin at the longest stoplight: "Almost home."

We watched our hour of television together -- our weekly ritual, she in Mississippi, me in Georgia. I couldn't resist Boardwalk Empire with my sweet husband (everybody is sweet at this point).

Then I got back to work. I pulled an all-night -- there is something thrilling about a deadline all-nighter, actually, especially when you know you can sleep the next day. 

In the quiet wee hours, I went back in time. I sank into 1964, I was there. I was Sunny Fairchild, telling her story to young readers. I made sure my mind was clear and my heart was open. I gave everything I had in me to the reader.

I remembered I was a writer, too. Where there was a disconnect, I added back in material we had cut earlier -- just enough for clarity, a line here, a word there. I found my snippets and sourced them properly. I found three new songs in the public domain and swapped them for the ones that were too rich for our budget. I decided I liked them even more than my original choices.

I wrote a short note to my editor as the sun rose. I uploaded the 482 pages with songs, photographs, documents, archival materials, newspaper clippings and Sunny's story, to sendspace and I sent the link and the note to my editor. It was 6:39am. The heat had been turned down and I realized I was cold. I was also triumphant.

I took an extra quilt with me as I tiptoed down the hallway to the bedroom. "Now I can sleep," murmured my husband. I crawled between the covers. I was asleep as my head hit the pillow.

That's the way it was. Not the way it was "supposed" to be. And it was good.

and now, november

Whew. And now, November. Halloween has long been my favorite holiday, way back before it became commercialized, in the days when Franny in Countdown worried over her costume, and that costume was thrown together -- like everyone else's was -- from scavenged bits and pieces and a lot of ingenuity.

When I was a kid, a neighbor lady sat outside at a card table, at the top of her front walk, wearing a witch costume complete with hat, and utterly silent in the dark. The candy bowl was on the card table. You had to brave the walk and her silence in order to get to the treats. She never moved as you approached, but you got the feeling that she might, any minute, reach out and grab you. I was terrified and awed by her and have never forgotten the delicious thrill she gave me and the neighborhood kids each Halloween.

Now I'm grown up. In an effort to emulate my witchy neighbor and expand on her generosity, we've made a fire in our driveway for over thirty years, where we've welcomed trick-or-treaters and their parents and our friends, where we've sipped cider and dished chili and hot dogs and stories.

We've watched people come and go from around that fire. We've watched our kids grow up. When my kids were little they made tombstones and "dead" people and we played spooky music, long before you could find it in the stores or online -- there wasn't an "online."

I am so glad for those memories, and those families, and their kids, and those moments, crunching through the fallen leaves, running from house to house, everything looking different -- both scary and somehow comforting -- in the dark.

Now I make a fire at the new house in Atlanta. Friends still come and sit and swap. I didn't see my grands on Halloween, but I have pictures of all three girls in their costumes -- I make beautiful grandgirls, don't I? I'm glad to see the scavenged tradition lives on! If you look closely, you can see my granddog Wesley's mohawk. He was with us all evening, and wanted more than anything to be right in the thick of it all... and he was.

The day after Halloween at our house is traditionally for roasting the pumpkin seeds, making a comforting meal, and getting back to work. I'm at the halfway point with the copyedited manuscript for Revolution. My goal is to have it finished and on my editor's desk by Monday morning. This is Saturday. I can do it. It's November.