Even on my days off I find myself making a mental list of everything I want to get done…everything I should get done.

I think on the top of that list should be the words:

1. Be still

Not for a minute, or a second, but for long enough to get past just catching my breath before the next marathon; long enough to get over that painful side-stitch.

Even fun activities are activities.

I need to learn how to BE STILL.

They say you aren’t a real writer till you can paper a room with rejections. I have been submitting manuscripts since 1990 and I could probably paper my entire house by now. I have been fortunate, I know. I have had the wonderful thrill and privilege of seeing some of my stuff in print, but gobs of rejections have come between each triumph…gobs!

The first few years I sent out my work I would ceremoniously tear each rejection letter into tiny pieces and throw it away. Then I’d take the manuscript back to group, rewrite, recheck, reevaluate and get it right back in the mail. I’d kiss the envelope, taking a moment to pray that my orphan story would soon find a loving home, then drop it in the blue gaping mouth of the post box. This routine helped, a bit, to relieve the frustration that came from pulling my heart from my chest and laying it out only to have it smacked, or worse, ignored.

And there were times when I’d lay down my pen and declare that this whole writing thing was just not worth it. What if I put all that heart and energy into something more attainable, more worthwhile?

But there were those few notes from readers…notes that said that somehow the way I put together words made a difference for them. Somehow the sentences I had sculpted helped.

And there were the “positive rejections”.  Rejection letters that contained one or two sentences of encouragement or perhaps a short handwritten note from an editor. I have saved every single one of those in a notebook because I know that being a submissions editor is like being a gold miner in a mud hole, and that only the kindest or most moved would make the effort. That notebook is so stuffed now that I can hardly turn the pages.

I got another “positive rejection” this week. 

“The editorial team read your work and found the story lively and engaging. We especially liked that the protagonist wasn’t a typical child.” 

Now, after that, how can I not take the chance of sending it out again? How can I set my pen down when maybe, no one else in all the world, could write about that one atypical child?

I am a writer. I have to write because I can’t figure out how not to write, and I know if I did find a way to stop I would probably just explode.

I know that creativity requires energy so I’m wondering; Do I need to store up energy to be more creative? When I blog does it drip creative energy out of me like a leaky faucet? Do I need to hold back on my blog and my painting for a bit until the pressure becomes so pent up that it explodes into my writing again? Or is this just a brief respite before the next writing project? For the first time, in a very long time, I have some good writing time. I am not blocked. I have ideas. I just haven’t been inspired to sit down and get going.

Sometimes the writing is like a creative vortex. It takes energy from me but then it swirls it around and gives it right back to me…often in greater quantities. Other times it leaves me happily exhausted, like a runner after a marathon.

And since it has been a while since I’ve had a book published I’m not sure why I’m writing anymore. I know that the writing isn’t all about being published, but since I’ve been published, writing things that sit in a drawer where no one- not even family or friends- reads them, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me anymore. What am I doing with my time? What am I doing with my energy?

Except that, there are interesting, sometimes beautiful places in this world, hidden thickets, coves, rocky crests, nooks and crannies, icy cliffs, storms and creatures that no person has ever seen, and no one ever will.

No one, that is, except God, who surely must value their creation. 

Making something beautiful, new or interesting just for the sake of making it must be enough. 

Saturday I went out in my Kayak again. Many times this year, even in winter, I have been fortunate to catch a glimpse of some of the local wildlife. I have seen a Great Blue Heron, an Osprey, a Kingfisher, a beaver, several turtles, a sea gull and a drunk skinny dipper (just kidding:).

Saturday was particularly windy so the water was a bit rough and the paddling a little strenuous, but in the distance I could just make out a little, brown head bobbing above the waves. 

Trying to be careful, at first I didn’t get too close. Quietly, and with much stealth I paddled toward it. I could tell it was swimming away from me so I started circling to see if I could catch a glimpse of its face.  And I could barely make out some eyes and a mouth held slightly open, but still, I couldn’t tell what it was.

I was thinking that maybe it was some kind of animal like a cat or something that had fallen in and was trying to make it to the shore, but a prior experience of trying to rescue a wild cat from the water had left me less than enthusiastic about trying it again, since THAT cat clearly hadn’t wanted any part of my heroic attempt.

Finally, I decided, I would give up trying not to scare the thing and just head straight towards it to find out, once and for all, what it was. I was proud that even though it kept swimming away from me I was able to paddle fast enough that I was catching up to it.

Just a few more strokes and…

It wasn’t long before I was face to face with…

a giant…

Mammals invest a lot of energy in keeping track of the disposition of each copy we spawn. It’s only natural, of course: we invest so much energy and so many resources in our offspring that it would be a shocking waste if they were to wander away and fall off the balcony or flush themselves down the garbage disposal. We’re hard-wired, as mammals, to view this kind of misfortune as a moral tragedy, a massive trauma to our psyches so deep that some of us never recover from it.

It follows naturally that we invest a lot of importance in the individual disposition of every copy of our artistic works as well, wringing our hands over “not for resale” advance review copies that show up on Amazon and tugging our beards at the thought of Google making a scan of our books in order to index them for searchers. And while printing a book doesn’t take nearly as much out of us as growing a baby, there’s no getting around the fact that every copy printed is money spent, and every copy sold without being accounted for is money taken away from us.

There are other organisms with other reproductive strategies. Take the dandelion: a single dandelion may produce 2,000 seeds per year, indiscriminately firing them off into the sky at the slightest breeze, without any care for where the seeds are heading and whether they’ll get an hospitable reception when they touch down.

And indeed, most of those thousands of seeds will likely fall on hard, unyielding pavement, there to lie fallow and unconsummated, a failure in the genetic race to survive and copy.

But the disposition of each — or even most — of the seeds aren’t the important thing, from a dandelion’s point of view. The important thing is that every spring, every crack in every pavement is filled with dandelions.

Cory Doctorow, in his column for Locus Online

Sometimes the giants among us look small because they are flying so high.

When I read this blog I thought it was so wise that I had to share it. I will only add one thing. I believe that this is a sustainable way to live as long as you have enough recreation and relaxing time, and as long as you give 100 percent to that rest time too.  Rest and recreation let us power up for all the other 100 percents that can deplete us if we don’t have the nurishing breaks, and it is almost always during those breaks that the seeds of our very best selves are born.   It was written by Caleb Monroe: My Leap Year: Small Steps 106-124 Posted: 03 Mar 2008 03:07 PM CST [My Leap Year is a 12-month life project (begun 11/01/07) at the end of which I intend to be writing full-time. 365 small steps = 1 giant leap.] Well Friday was Leap Day. I finished up three pitches that day. Sorry that I haven’t been blogging very regularly the past couple weeks, but I have been writing. Working on a lot of different projects and honestly feeling a bit overwhelmed, which is why the site has fallen by the wayside. But I’m back! Most of what I’ve been working on lately is pitches. Some solo, some with a co-writer, some with co-writers. I won’t go into them in much detail unless they start getting picked up. But I can tell you this: the more of them I write the better I get at them. I can see the improvement and the editorial response so far has ben very encouraging. Not only that, but the most useful pitching skill I’ve discovered is one I actually honed writing my flash fictions: economy of words without losing the energy or excitement. I never foresaw how much I would fall back on my approach to flash fiction when pitching until I started doing so many proposals lately and realized that ultimately I was using the exact same storytelling skills. So if you’ve been looking for an excuse to try a flash fiction experiment, there it is. Better pitches. I’ll be hopping back on the flash fiction wagon this Friday for this very reason. I was feeling very frustrated the other day trying to juggle the different aspects of my life: writing, wife, work, real-world stuff like bills and also some relaxation somewhere in there to keep the crazies away. I was watching the season finale of Scrubs season 6, of all things, when a potential solution started to work its way into my mind. Zach Braff’s character was talking about how scary it was to try to balance two things, both of which required all of him (in this case doctorhood and fatherhood). That gave words to the frustrations I had been having. How do you balance more than one part of your life that each require 100%? Writing and my wife are each in those category, at least, and the other categories aren’t going away, either. I mulled that over for the next hour or so. How can you get 100% + 100% + 100% to equal 100%? I finally realized there was no way to make the math work, and therein was the beginnings of a solution. I can’t give more than 100% of myself…at a time. When I’m with my wife I can give her 100% of myself without worrying about that other stuff. When I’m writing, the same. And on down the line. So I’ve been trying to apply the 100% factor to things lately, and seem to be seeing an improvement. Today, for instance, is a 100% writing day until we have to go somewhere this evening. I’ll have to see if this is a sustainable system.

Monday night I was tired so instead of packing up all my paints to go to my art class I took an old sketch pad, some pencils and tray of watercolors.

I opened the sketch pad and found some drawings of little characters that I had made, oh, probably about six years ago. I remember thinking that making greeting cards combines my two loves- writing and art. I liked the little characters, so I started reworking them a bit and then painting them.

Yesterday I scanned those pictures into a greeting card program and I made a few proto-type cards. It was fun and I am pleased with the results that are certainly not polished but instead loose and fun.

And I am amazed at how, sometimes, efforts we make come back to us. Those sketches were in that pad for years. Finally, I am using them to make something that perhaps I can share.

I think that we can’t even imagine how many times our everyday efforts come back to us. Most of the time we miss the connections of our past to our present, but the connections are there and that’s encouraging to me.

Have you missed me? I have missed you. I’ve just returned from a visit to my homeplace, the little town where I grew up…  a place that’s done quite a bit of growing up itself. I had some adventures there. I spent a day on the beach with my terrific husband. I walked my pug down to the lake where she tried to eat a mussel and was teased by the little waves. And I got to spend two evenings with my zany cousins.

And I am struck with the fact that though we are born with our very own personalities, where we grow up and who we grow up with becomes a part of us forever. I grew up on the water and almost felt I couldn’t breathe until I finally got back to it. My favorite pals and best friends were my cousins. We had adventures every time we were together … and still do. I was given the gift of a terrific mom who loved me completely and made me feel like anything was possible.

All these things made indentions and smooth places on the heart that I was born with, like a sculpturer’s polish…like an artist’s brush. And though the things that come into my life now might affect the shape of who I am, those early impressions and experiences are the things that have given me the color of my soul.

I was driving home last Monday feeling pretty rotten.

I had just been to the doctor, was given some antibiotics, and told to take it easy.

I passed by a church with a lighted sign. In big, red, flashing letters it said, “REST!”  

When I drove by the same church sign yesterday it was scrolling the verse, “Come ye all that are burdened and heavy laiden and I will give you REST!” Apparently the first time I drove by the sign was stuck on that one word, REST.

Who says that God doesn’t speak to us with flashing lights?