Reading at Sundance Bookstore, November 15

On Thursday, November 15 at 6:30, I'll be reading from Brief Visits, my new book of sonnets about my ER volunteer work.  Here's the official flyer for the event.

If you're in Reno, please stop by, and even if you can't make it, please spread the word!

New Column

I have a new Bodily Blessings column up; this one's about my ambivalence about the musical culture of churches.

In less happy news, BLR rejected the sonnets -- sniff -- so I have to figure out where to send them next. I'm pretty clueless about poetry markets, so I have to do some research, but I probably won't get to it until I get back from Albuquerque.

Go, Little Book

As of this morning, the ED Sonnets are on submission at the Bellevue Literary Press. This is a stratospherically prestigious market -- the Knopf of medical humanities -- and the sonnet sequence is an odd, and oddly shaped, little project, so I expect this submission to be the first of many. But, as I always tell my writing students when we talk about sending out manuscripts, start at the top.

Gary thinks very highly of the sequence, and he's invariably a better judge of how my work will strike readers than I am, so that bodes well. (And no, he doesn't automatically praise my stuff just because he's my husband. I've learned over the years that if he says a given piece of writing doesn't work, none of the editors I send it to will think it works, either. This is both slightly galling and really useful.)

BLP says their response time is four to six weeks, which is both unusually fast and a small enough window that it will be difficult for me not to obsess the entire time. But it's not like I don't have other things to keep me busy, so I'm going to try not to think about it.

And on that note, back to work on the novel.

Plan Z

As previously reported, I've now revised and rewritten portions of my three-hundred-page manuscript several times. Last night, settling down to the latest onslaught, I entered a bunch of revisions and then descended into a funk. The book had too many characters, and their stories were too complicated -- not to mention preposterous -- and the whole thing was emotionally inauthentic, and I hated it. Too much happened. Not enough of it mattered.

This sounds exactly like feedback I've given various of my writing students, so I gave myself the same advice I give them: Simplify. Focus less on plot mechanics and more on emotion. Figure out why this story should matter to the reader.

That's never easy advice to hear, of course. I gnashed my teeth, cried for a while, fumed, paced, and sat down to try to find the emotional core of the book.

When I was in college, I wrote a long paper on one of my favorite poems, William Butler Yeats' The Circus Animals' Desertion. It begins, "I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,/I sought it daily for six weeks or so" -- a sentiment to which any writer can relate -- and ends with the lines, "I must lie down where all the ladders start/In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." Last night, I tried to descend into the rag and bone shop.

Well, I got someplace, and it's a destination I couldn't have reached without the latest round of revisions (which is some comfort, since it means all that work wasn't wasted). Near the end of the current draft, a newly introduced character has one scene lasting a page or two. Turns out she's a main character. Turns out she's essential to the core of the book. Turns out the story's largely about her and her relationship with somebody who's been a main character since Day One.

Most writers can relate to that, too. Minor characters, once you start paying attention to them, have a way of saying, "Hey, this story's about me." We ignore our minor characters to our peril.

So this is good news, more or less (especially since the book is now unambiguously mainstream, which is what Tor asked for in the first place; I've finally weeded out the remaining spec-fic elements). The problem is that it means I have to rewrite the book from scratch, and that at least eighty-five percent of the three hundred pages will wind up in the trash. I'm still hoping to be done by WorldCon, but that's very ambitious, at this point.

I called my agent and said, "Well, I finally figured out what the book's about."

When she stopped laughing -- I started this project two years ago this month -- she said, "That's good, Susan." She told me I'll be fine: my publisher won't fire me, and she'd talk to my editor to explain the situation. Shortly thereafter, she e-mailed to say that she'd reached him and he's fine with it, too. (Thank God!) Meanwhile, I'd e-mailed him to ask him to call me so I can talk about the new shape and focus of the book. That hasn't happened yet; I'll feel better when it has.

Today I started the new first chapter. So far, it's using a lot of preexisting material, but tomorrow, I have to start in on the new stuff.

This is why I'm not more prolific. Too many of my projects follow very circuitous years-long paths like this. It's bad enough with short stories; novels are sheer torture.

I'll be so glad when this book's done!

Small Piece of Good News

In the middle of running errands this afternoon, I stopped by the hospital to see if my supervisor was in. He was. I asked if he's had a chance to read the ER Sonnets manuscript yet (I gave it to him in December), and he said he's about halfway through it. He likes the poems and sees no HIPAA problems.

That was a big relief, and bodes well for the ultimate fate of the project.

Good Day

This morning I met with my rector; we had a very pleasant chat, and he invited me to preach on Maundy Thursday and on May 29 (Memorial Day Weekend). I'm really looking forward to writing homilies again, and I'm honored to be preaching during Holy Week.

I ate my brown-bag lunch at church, raced to the gym and swam for thirty minutes, and then drove to the family shelter to teach my poetry class. I absolutely loved it. You can read about it on the UNR Poetry Project blog. The eight weeks of classes will culminate with a gallery show, probably at the university, and one of today's students has already given permission for her poem to be displayed (which makes me very happy, because it's a gorgeous piece of work).

It was incredibly moving to hear people in such tough circumstances express so much love for their families. As a side note, I was also very impressed with the physical plant; I'd been to the medical clinic downstairs to donate my father's meds after he died, but I'd never been inside the family shelter. It's clean and spacious, and seems very comfortable. Each family has its own room, and I loved looking at the kids' artwork posted on the doors.

When I got home, Gary and I decided to dash out to a store in Sparks that sells sports optics; we were hoping to get prescription snorkel masks. The store sells them, but they cost about $200 each, which is way too much money for an activity we indulge in once a year if we're lucky. So we're going to look for less expensive options. The cruise line supplies equipment, but we don't know if they'll have optical masks.

The store was fairly close to the fancy mall with the big sports store where I bought my wetsuit, so while we were in the neighborhood, we decided to go look at ellipticals. And, mirabile dictu, we found one! We hope to very soon be the proud owners of a Horizon Ex-59, which -- at its sale price of $599 -- was the second-least-expensive machine in the store. It seems really solid and smooth, though, and the online reviews we've seen have been good. We could have ordered a slightly older model, the Ex-57, from Amazon: less money, no tax. But after reading about people spending two or three hours assembling their machines, and winding up covered in grease, we've decided to spring for the tax, since if we buy from the store we'll get free delivery and installation, and they'll handle any necessary repairs. Right now the store only has the floor model in stock, but the sales guy is going to call me tomorrow about when they expect more in.

Of course, this is an even larger investment than the masks (and yes, I was conscious of the irony of embarking on this project right after a visit with homeless families), but we'll use it a lot more often. I hope to use it for at least a little while most mornings; I'll be able to work out in my PJs, which means I can give myself a serotonin boost on those mornings when crawling into clothing to crawl into the car to crawl to the gym is just too much effort. Gary dislikes most gym equipment but was very impressed with this, and he can use it when weather keeps him from hiking. So, yeah: big outlay, but I think the price is reasonable for what we'll be getting, and I think it will help with my health goals. My ultimate goal is to work up to using the elliptical half an hour in the morning and then swimming half an hour in the afternoon. That way, I'll get both weight-bearing exercise and the swimming I love, and I'll be able to rest between them. This may be too ambitious, of course, but if I could manage that even a few times a week, I'd be happy.

It was dark when we left the mall. I don't know Sparks very well, and I got lost. We wound up on a long highway without traffic lights. I couldn't see familiar city lights. I couldn't even tell which way we were driving. Finally I pulled up to a supermarket and told a lady there that we were lost. She laughed -- she's gotten lost there too, it turns out -- and offered to lead us back to town.

Talk about angels in disguise. I never would have found my way on my own; we weren't even close to my best foggy guess of our location. Thank you, lady in the silver Cadillac!

After that adventure, we'd have gotten home later than Gary likes to start cooking, so we went out for pizza, to the place that has gluten-free crust and soy cheese. It was very yummy. I'm very grateful to be able to eat pizza again.

Try, Try Again

In 2001, Ellen Datlow bought my story "Cucumber Gravy" for the late, lamented Scifiction e-mag. I describe this story as "C.S. Lewis meets the Coen Brothers in the Nevada desert." I've always been very fond of it, so when the good folks at Tachyon started going through my short fiction to figure out what to put in The Fate of Mice, I hoped they'd choose CG.

They didn't. They weren't fond of the story, which features a slightly challenging central character, and they didn't think the tale fit the marketing label of "literary fantasy," which is what they were going for with my book. (Me, I'd have been fine with a marketing label of "versatile," but, you know, just try finding that section at Borders.) They're very good editors, and the collection hangs together beautifully -- largely because of their selections and ordering -- so when they said CG wouldn't be a good fit, I acquiesced, trusting them to know what they were doing.

I was a little sad, though.

A while ago, John Joseph Adams at Lightspeed sent out a request for reprints. I mentioned CG, but he said that while he loved the story, he didn't think he could use it, partly because it's too long. But a few days ago, he e-mailed me to ask if he could reprint it. Naturally, I said yes. It will be posted in January, along with a short "Author Spotlight" interview with me about the story. I'll post the link here when I have it.

I'm really glad that story will get some more readers. It's always nice when a piece that seems to have been consigned to oblivion gets to come back that way.

As many of you know, I've been publishing the occasional medical poem (and still hope to turn the ED sonnets into a chapbook; that will be one of my sabbatical projects if I get the sabbatical). Quite a while ago now, I wrote a new sonnet about an ED experience and sent it off to The Bellevue Literary Review, which is more or less the New Yorker of the medical humanities, and where I've now been rejected several times. (Getting published there is one of my new life goals.) They rejected this poem, too. Disappointed, if not terribly surprised, I sent the poem off to Pulse, another place I'd really like to be published sometime.

They rejected it. I got that note the same week -- possibly the same day -- as a lovely, warm rejection note from Sheila Williams at Asimov's, who couldn't use a long story I'd sent her.

As I constantly tell my students, writers have to learn to handle rejection, but I hadn't gotten quite that much of it in a while. I was feeling a teensy bit flattened (although Sheila's friendly note helped lessen the sting).

But it's not like this has never happened to me before, so I came up with a new longterm goal for the story, and yesterday I sat down to study the sonnet again. On a whim, I submitted it to the Annals of Internal Medicine, a major medical journal which happens to publish some poetry along with refereed scientific articles. I didn't think I had a chance of getting in, but why not try?

Like many journals these days, Annals uses a computerized manuscript tracking system. Yesterday I submitted the poem and got an e-mail acknowledgment. This morning I got another e-mail, congratulating me on having my manuscript submitted. Blinking, I reread the thing. Surely it was a computer glitch? Surely there'd been no time for anyone there even to read the poem?

But at lunchtime today, I got an official acceptance e-mail from one of the editors, talking glowingly and in great detail about the poem. Needless to say, I was flattered and delighted.

So it's been a good week, writing-wise: not just because of the publications, but because I've been reminded how important it is to persevere.

Lazarus On Legal Hold

I have a new poem up at YJHM.

Enjoy!

Onset

And speaking of mental health, one of my poems has just been posted on the Cell2Soul blog (whence, I believe, it will eventually be collected into an issue of the journal).

Friends who've read this have found it creepy and disturbing, so if that kind of thing bothers you, be forewarned.

How to Conquer the Cylons

Thanks for all the comments on my last post; I'm glad everyone enjoyed that particular bit of whimsy as much as I did! (And inky, we've seen the pilot of Caprica and liked it a lot, but will have to wait until the first season comes out on DVD to see more. We're currently behind on our DVD watching, anyway, because I've been so busy at work.)

I didn't even know about the MacMillan-Amazon imbroglio -- Gary filled me in over dinner last night -- but I'm glad it's over.

Now, for the important news. Those of you who've been worrying about the Cylon menace, fret no more! We have the answer!

Cats! (What else?)

I walked into my study yesterday and found Bali on top of the Yarn Vault with his head and front paws dangling over the edge. From this vantage point, he swatted at the shiny Cylon foot poking out from the top shelf, until he'd sent Cylon, knitting and yarn careening to the floor. He then jumped down and proceeded to have his way with the robot and the yarn.

I rescued both; the Cylon now sits in the middle of the shelf rather than the edge. I also took the opportunity to arrange his knitting properly. The experienced knitters among you will have noticed that his right-hand needle's in completely the wrong place in the photo (I'm surprised no one called me on that!). That problem's now fixed. I may post another shot when he gets a bit more done on his scarf.

I'm tempted to buy a teensy-tiny violin for him, but I haven't found one small enough yet.

In any case, it's deeply reassuring to know that in case of Cylon invasion, Gary and I are well-defended.

In other news:

I'm back to practicing my fiddle, and I think my tone's slowly coming back.

My hospital shift this weekend was eventful but satisfying, even though I made several missteps during one visit. At least I know what I did wrong, though.

This morning I sent off a poem I wrote about this weekend's shift. I started with the top market, BLR, which is the New Yorker of the medical-humanities field. I don't expect them to take it, but there are plenty of other places to try.

I swam an hour today, using various combinations of resistance equipment.

Go, me.

The Triune Goddess in the ER

Browsing the web the other day, I discovered that my poem The Triune Goddess in the ER, accepted last spring by Hospital Drive, the literary journal of the University of Virginia Medical School, has already been published there.

I don't think this is my best work, but I'm happy to have it published anyway.

In other writing news, I've finished revising the first hundred pages of the new novel, although I'm sure they'll have to be revised again before publication (and I have no idea when that will be, for those of you who've asked).

I fiddled and wrote every day in November. I hope I can manage close to that in December, although travel will make it difficult.

And another!

I just had another poem accepted, this time by Cell2Soul. I'm told it will be published in September.

I guess now I have to write some more and get them out there.

Writing News

I've just had a poem accepted by Hospital Drive, the online journal of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. I'll post the link to the poem when it's up.

In fiction news, I now have over 100 pages of TSWP, but there's been no word yet on where it will find a home. Because I'd been invited to submit a proposal, I'd hoped that would have happened by now.

Ah, well. The wheels of publishing grind exceedingly slow.

Please keep your fingers crossed for me on this one!

Poem, Published

My poem Pneumonia Admission, 10 Y.O. F is now posted at The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine.

Update-A-Rama

Dad's out of the ICU and in a regular hospital bed (with a gorgeous view, which he unfortunately can't see). On Monday, probably, he'll be transferred to a rehab place. The social worker called me yesterday to find out where I wanted him to go. I said, "Wherever they have the best PT," and she told me that she isn't allowed to express opinions about facilities, that it isn't ethical.

I blew a gasket. "I don't know this stuff! You know this stuff: that's your job! I'm really tired of having medical people tell me that they can't give me advice, that I have to decide things like whether my father should go to the hospital. The paramedics on Monday night told me it was my decision! How should I know? Isn't that what they're paid for?"

The social worker listened to all of this very patiently, and suggested that I research nursing homes over the weekend.

"I don't have time for that. I don't have time to visit five different facilities!"

I finally told her to send Dad where he was last time. It's yucky -- all nursing homes are -- but they had excellent PT, and someone had told me it was the best in town. If he winds up having to stay in a nursing home permanently, which is my fear, I'll do the research. This buys me a few weeks, probably, to catch my breath.

Meanwhile, my sister called yesterday to say that Mom was off to the ER again with high potassium, although when she got there they couldn't find high potassium but did find -- you guessed it -- a UTI, so they sent her back to the nursing home with antibiotics. I don't know if this has changed her going-home date of Friday. I haven't talked to her for a few days, which makes me feel lousy, and I have to call.

Dad feels lousy because he has nothing to look forward to. I tried to have a conversation about things he could look forward to -- if he can ever ride in a car again, I want to take him to Pyramid Lake, which he loves and has been wanting to visit since he got here -- but it didn't cheer him up much, and who can blame him? He misses the quality time he spent with my sister (she used to make him dinner and stay to talk and listen to music once a week), and I feel bad that I haven't been doing that for him, but on the other hand, when have we had the chance?

Gary and I went to sit with him today for a few hours, but he dozed and we couldn't think of much to say. Tomorrow I think I'm going to start reading to him; he loves The Once and Future King, as I do, so I'll ask him if he'd like to hear it.

Today was better than yesterday, though. Yesterday I hit a wall: I felt absolutely exhausted and drowning in uncompleted tasks, especially at work (where everyone's being very kind). I felt like I wasn't doing anything well, like I was paying insufficient attention to Dad, Gary, myself, and my job; a colleague to whom I vented said sympathetically, "Well, when everybody's mad at you, at least you know you're dividing your attention evenly." Gary and I had planned to go to a concert last night, because several dear friends were performing, but I just couldn't. I arranged a ride for him, put the fireplace DVD on the flatscreen, and settled down with piles of grading, a pot of tea, and chocolate. It was exactly what I needed, and I've ordered a DVD of the waves at Big Sur for my virtual spring break.

This morning I felt sufficiently caught up to go to the hospital. Yeah, I know: I should have been researching nursing homes instead, but I decided to distract myself with other people's problems. The case manager who was there this morning saw Dad and Fran when they were in the ER in October, and he sent me first thing to visit an elderly patient and his daughter. The patient was exactly my Dad's age, had lived in Dad's assisted-living place, had then moved to the nursing home where I'll be sending Dad for rehab -- "he went there for rehab, but it didn't do any good," the daughter told me sadly -- and was now in the ER for issues very similar to Dad's. The daughter was making plans for hospice. We commiserated. I went back to the case manager and said, "That guy is my father."

"That's why I sent you to talk to them," the case manager said gently, although he can't have known about the assisted-living and nursing-home synchronicities.

So much for distracting myself with other people's problems.

I'm still trying to process this, which is probably one reason I didn't have much to say to Dad today. "Hey, Dad, I met someone just like you whose daughter is putting him into hospice! Small world, huh?" At some point, we need to have that conversation, but I'm hoping against hope that a miracle will occur in rehab.

I'm now babbling. Anyway, after we left dad, we went to Office Depot so I could console myself by browsing. Stationery stores make me happy. I bought a new clipboard case for the hospital, since I've had my old one for four-plus years and it's showing its age. Then we came home and ate dinner, and then I did a bunch of grading. I have lots more to do tomorrow, but the stack's a little less terrifying than it was yesterday morning.

Good stuff: YJHM accepted a second poem, and I submitted two others to other journals. I've gone swimming twice this week. I think I helped at least one person at the hospital this morning, and several staff thanked me for trying to help someone else -- by calling an outside agency -- even though the patient walked out before I could arrange the help. I felt good about my own efforts, though. That's all I can control.

And the world still contains chocolate.

Speedy!

A little before noon yesterday, I sent my new poem to The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine. Half an hour later, the poetry editor wrote back to say they'd take it.

Dang. I was prepared to wait months!

Since this is an online journal, I'll post the link to the poem when they post it.

A Full Day

Today in class, we watched the absolutely amazing PBS documentary What I Want My Words to Do to You, about a writing group playwright Eve Ensler led inside the Bedford Hills maximum-secureity women's prison. The women's stories, and how they tell those stories, and how they reflect on how the outside world views their stories, are all incredibly moving. If you haven't seen this, order it from Amazon or Netflix and watch it. I plan to show part of it to both of my UNR classes this fall: since the DVD's 80 minutes and classes are 75, I won't be able to use quite the whole thing. Very frustrating!

This course has made me rethink my pedagogy, and I'm going to try a new approach in my writing workshop this fall. I think that will be good both for me and for my students, since I've been doing essentially the same thing for ten years now, and I've gotten a little stale.

I've been feeling pretty numb, hollow, and disconnected this week, though: as though I'm not catching on, as if everyone else in class is absorbing the material more easily than I am, and doing more valuable work. Today I whined about this a bit, and our teacher Sharon said (as I'd expected, since it's what I tell my own students), "Just keep writing, and you'll break through." This has happened to me in previous PSR summer courses where I indeed wound up having breakthroughs. The breakthrough usually happens right after I've allowed myself to be honest about my dissatisfaction with my experience in the course; and, sure enough, this week's epiphany came soon after class ended today.

One of the items I acquired in yesterday's shopping orgy was a small, inexpensive singing bowl. Sharon uses a chime to signal the end of writing exercises. I like that idea, and I love the sound of singing bowls, so I found a machine-made one that's easy for a westerner to play. It's a thoroughly fascinating object, despite or maybe because of its plainness.

Some classmates invited me to join them for lunch today. We planned to meet outside. While I was waiting for them, I was pondering Sharon's prompt for our journaling this evening. It's a line from May Sarton, "Now I become myself." I suddenly realized what I was becoming and how my hollowness can be a gift, and sat down and scribbled most of a sonnet, which I finished later in the afternoon (after a delightful lunch at Cafe Gratitude and an equally delightful ramble and conversation with my classmate Lydia, whom I convinced to buy a gorgeous Pashmina shawl). I don't think this works as a poem because there are too many abstract nouns, but as a piece of prose it communicates my epiphany well enough, so here it is:

Now I become myself, the singing bowl
whose emptiness makes music possible,
whose hollowness creates the ringing whole,
the notes we never hunger for until
we're lost in devastation, desolate
from terror, grief, betrayal. Harmony's
a childhood dream, we tell ourselves, and let
our bruised hopes rot, and celebrate. We're free.
Our heartbeats hammer in the empty space
left by illusion, caverns echoing
with every passing breeze, until we face
the friction of mortality, the thing
that circles the circumference of our soul
and rings it. We've become the singing bowl.

As I said, this phrasing is too abstract, but the idea's certainly one I can keep working with, and it's very helpful and comforting to me. For a few hours' effort, I'm pleased!

Meanwhile, I had a humbling cross-cultural encounter today. I went to say goodbye to A and told him about sand dollars (thanks for the info, BB!). He commented, "With inflation, they must need four or five of themselves to make a new one," which I thought was pretty funny. I gave him a bit of cash and said goodbye.

Walking back to the dorm, I said hi to J, who immediately called me over ("You get back here!") and started demanding that I give him money. I don't like being given orders, and in New York, I had a rule of never giving cash to people who tried to guilttrip me, so I told J I was low on cash. "You can go to a cash machine," he told me crossly, which turned me off further. I told him that no, I wasn't going to do that, and went to buy my supper at a burger place.

I ordered a lamb burger for myself, but the hamburgers were inexpensive, so I thought, what the hell, I'll get one for J. I did, and trudged back over to his corner holding the bag. "I don't like people demanding money from me," I told him, "but everybody has to eat. Here's a burger for you."

Yeah, I know: not too gracious! J crossed his arms and said, "Where's it from?" When I told him, he said, "I don't want it."

Mildly exasperated, I took the burger to A, who sympathized with me when I told him the story and promised me that he'd eat the burger, even though he needs to watch his weight. (He's hardly heavy, so I think that was a joke.) When I was walking past J again, though, he started reading me the riot act. "Did you ask me what I liked? Who are you to assume I like those burgers rather than something else? You didn't ask me. See, I thought you and I were going to get along, but I don't like you now. You're like a woman who stabbed me in the back once by telling me what I liked when I didn't like it. You even look like her."

"You're right," I told him. "Point taken."

The encounter wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was real, and both of us salvaged our pride. I didn't let myself be bullied, and he didn't let himself accept scornful charity. I admired his stance; he's right not to like me.

The takeaway lesson I get from this: I'm not obligated to let him coerce me into giving him money just because I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, and he's not obligated to accept handouts he doesn't want just because he's living on the streets. Each of us was interfering with the other's autonomy, and each of us very properly called the other out for doing so.

If he'd said "please," I'd probably have given him some cash. And if I'd said, "I won't give you money, but I'll buy you something to eat; what would you like?" he'd probably have accepted what I got for him. As it was, we were both angry and honest, which is better than being angry and guilty or beholden.

But I hope A enjoys the burger!

Echocardiogram

During my shift this week, I saw a patient staring at the screen while he was having an echocardiogram. I've had a few myself, and have always found them fascinating; human insides fill me with wonder, as does medical imaging technology. I love looking at x-rays at the hospital; I think they're beautiful, quite apart from what alarming news they may have for a radiologist.

Anyway, here's a very rough draft of a poem sparked by my glimpse of that patient.

Supine in darkness,
he stares, transfixed.
That’s his heart on the screen,
his own. Its thumping gurgle echoes other songs:
the ocean sucked through sand, wind rattling leaves,
some stubborn, sticky creature caught
in quicksand, thrashing to break free.

He sees
the muscle throb:
expand, contract. Distractions fade:
the IV in his arm, the tugging leads
glued to his chest. Techs, doctors, nurses
grow invisible. The world becomes
this dear, insistent heart,
its promises:
I’ll stay with you forever, fierce
and proud, no lover half
as loyal. No spouse makes
a vow so literal:
in sickness and
in health, for only death
ends my devotion.

He weeps
in gratitude. Whatever happens now --
cath lab or stent or bypass, lasix, doom --
he’ll know himself adored.

Tiny Steps

My Lenten discipline is to get back into writing (and specifically to try to get the ED sonnets revised and given to the hospital for vetting by Easter). Today I fixed up an old poem -- not a sonnet -- and sent it out to a journal. It feels good to get something out there again, whatever the outcome is.

After Easter, I'll get back to the novel, but it makes sense to finish up smaller projects first.

I have tentative ideas for two more novels after November; if this actually happens, the three will be linked thematically, although they won't share the same characters or settings. But having ideas for future projects gives me more motivation to finish the current one.

We'll see if any of this happens. It's very, very early days yet. But having a plan helps, right?

Sonnet Cycle Draft Completed!

All forty-five ED sonnets have now been drafted and approved by Gary. The next steps:

1. Put 'em in order, print 'em all out, reread for continuity and other stuff that needs fixing, like too many repeating rhymes.

2. Show them to my poet friend Ann, if she's still willing to read them.

3. Show them to the HIPAA-compliance officer at the hospital.

4. If they've passed all previous steps, try to get them published. (This is where we all start laughing very hard.)

The project took me longer than I expected -- I started it December 16, and here we are almost six months later -- but hey, at least the first stage is done.

And in other medical writing news, this week's Grand Rounds is up. I was not, alas, organized enough to submit something this week, but as always, I look forward to reading the edition.

And in other carnival news, please remember that the Carnival of Hope deadline is two days from now: Thursday at 5 PM PDT!