Spinning Plates

and the writing life

In this week’s newsletter, you’ll find me chatting about how much I love my writing buddies (If you aren’t one already, there’s always room for more.), how I pile things on my plate before I’ve eaten what’s already there, a little about the Spain retreat (there’s still space), about my three novels in their various stages, the May residency in France where I promise to do more than hang out in cafes and sample Burgundy’s grape products, self-promotion woes, AWA writes, and my new love affair with creating PowerPoint presentations. To finish off, I’ll share a poem I wrote this morning from a prompt given by Rasma Haidri.

Ever felt like one of those Chinese acts with the spinning plates? Me too. If you saw me sitting here, you wouldn’t think I had more than one plate orbiting on a stick. As we’re all aware, however, the reality is so often contrary to the image.

I keep thinking that I’ll clear my plate (pun intended) but then I remember I haven’t finished my novel in progress. I haven’t even sorted out the hot mess of the one that’s ostensibly completed, and I have to get on the bandwagon to begin letting the “world” know about the shape of the one that is actually going to be published next year.

I write together with various groups as many as seven times a week which may sound like a lot, but these online groups are what keep me from being a sad and lonely little potato. (Seven plates.)

A week or so ago, my dear friend, Esana and I created an introductory video about the April yoga and writing retreat in Spain. It was such fun to do and funner still when my son, who’s been creating delightful videos of his fishing adventures, designed and edited the final product. (1 plate.)

Then, as a way to offer some behind-the-scenes glimpses of my writing process for What the Living Do, I began a podcast. Then I thought, what the hell am I doing? A podcast isn’t a one-off kind of thing. I have to come up with engaging content week after week. So far, I’m behind. (1 plate.)

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

What almost every writer and artist I know struggles with is self-promotion. Not only introverts find this aspect of the creative life painful. Even we extroverts have a bitch of a time setting aside our feelings of exposure and quietening the voices that tell us, aren’t we so full of ourselves? Another aspect of creativity comes to the fore—how to engage readers by offering something. Something they want. Because it’s been suggested that writers seek out groups, book clubs, etc. interested in various themes in one’s book, in the podcast I chatted about various elements of my novel and how they came together. Later, when combing through proofs for What the Living Do, I realized I’d overlooked a major thread running through the story; that of the intimate relationship of the protagonist and her younger partner. It has a unique bend and twist that I hadn’t mentioned. So I think I’ll go there in the next podcast. (There are a few plates indicated here—haven’t counted them all yet.)

The hot mess book is called The Soft Ones. It’s 100,000 words and needs to be 80,000. I’m going to have a long talk with it once I arrive in France. I am delirious with delight to spend an entire month in Noyers sur Serein at La Porte Peinte Residency polishing up that book. The problem is that in the 90-Day novel course I’m doing, I keep getting distracted by the deep investigation into the characters and stories in the lessons, which sends me back to The Soft Ones and away from the new novel, tentatively titled, The Breath She Took. (That’s another two plates right there.)

It's snowing right now and that’s fine with me—I’ve got lots to do inside: design lesson plans (I’ve recently discovered the world of PowerPoint and all its sexy little bells.), jot down ideas for the next podcast, and do some 90-Day Novel homework (uh oh, that meeting is this evening). (I think I just heard a crash.)

Last evening the AWA hosted another event (open to everyone) with about sixty writers coming together to write to prompts and then get split off into small groups to read, be heard, and listen. I encourage everyone to take part in these remarkably fun and intimate (I know, right? Doesn’t sound intimate but it is.) workshops.

Photo by Mette van der Linden on Unsplash

(Bowls are an option.)

This morning I wrote with a bi-weekly poetry group, this week led by Rasma Haidri. She gave us the word grave for us to jump into our writing.

The bones of the dead, stacked layer upon layer,
I don’t know where are my brother’s bones,
or the bones of my friend who once danced.

In Pompeii, the bones and stones
of not one but two civilizations
lie beneath where we walked
on roads rutted by chariots.
We burn them now, the bodies,
even though we may have the space
to lay them out in green and floral fields.

It’s true
I haven’t come to the heart of it,
this grave matter.
How the graves are mass.

When I believed the world was good
I learned of Babi Yar,
And then they fell before my eyes, 
the landscape pocked and gutted—
Poland, Ukraine, Germany…

Somewhere else, surely not here
where the honey flows.
We travel with maple leaves sewn to our packs.

They were dropped, the little ones,
when our backs were turned,
hundreds of their small bodies
discarded as potatoes sprouting eyes.

Land of the free and the brave,
O Canada, your patina dulls 
as we step to the edge of the pit
and do not look away.

Until next time,

Deepam (Susan)