Before you got here, you were a constellation
visible only in the southern hemisphere.
I could not travel that far; I could not find you.
You were a favorite song that hadn't been written.

Months and years passed without your face.
Test after test said, "negative,"
like a bad grade, a disappointing failure,
an essay I couldn't seem to get right.

All the while the people around me
remained as inaccessible as a sunset,
and your absence lived inside me like a secret,
like a cloud over the moon, like an admonition.

Then I felt your warm heart in my belly.
I heard the galloping of a thousand horses
bringing me the gift I thought I lost forever,
bringing me an open door to life.

Now that you are here, stacking toys and Cheerios
on the floor in my warm office, while outside
snow falls from the trees; I realize that the waiting,
the hunger, and the pain were all part of your story, our story.

Eventually we get to the other side of the earth,
look at the sky, and realize how far we have come.
We see that love is all that matters,
and that we all write our own songs as we go.

        

I was chatting with a colleague on the phone Sunday night when she mentioned offhandedly that I might consider not coming in the next day, as she heard that the weather was going to be pretty bad. I went to Weather.com and saw this at the top of the screen:

Blizzard Warning!

Now, we live in the mountains and we do get snow, but this was ridiculous. I mean, we live in Arizona, not North-freakin-Dakota. I checked again to make sure they didn't have the wrong zip code. But no, it was really a blizzard warning. Apparently the Storm Watch had been upgraded to an Extreme Weather Alert, which had evolved into a Blizzard Warning. I've been a fan of Weather.com long enough to know that a Watch is pretty interesting. We might get some weather. An Alert is even more fun. Could mean a Snow Day! But a Warning means the Serious Shit is coming and it's time to go into full-on survival mode.

After making sure we had a enough Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, Ruffles, and baby wipes to weather the storm, I kicked back and prepared to enjoy a day at home, completely trapped and unable to reach the stack of papers in need of grading that I had left in my office seven miles away.

We did indeed get a blizzard. Here's how the day went:

7:30 A.M.

I wake up and look outside. It hasn't started snowing yet. Liars! Then I remember that they said 8:00. Then I remember that I have a 9-month-old and yet the house is strangely quiet. I peek over at his crib and see a lump. He's asleep! Is he dead? I sneak over and listen to make sure he's breathing, careful not to make any sudden movements. If he sees me, it's all over. I crawl back under the covers and get, I think, about seven more minutes of sleep, which is wonderful.

9:00 A.M.

Darin gets up and brings up enough wood from the wood pile to last us awhile. Our house is heated by a wood-burning stove. If you're tempted to feel sorry for me (everything I own smells like a camp fire), just wait, later on tonight we will be the lucky ones.

Oscar gets his first glimpse of the coming storm.


Yes, my child does own more than one pair of pajamas. And yes, I know it's cold outside. I only had the door open for, like, a second. Later on, when we sent Oscar outside for more wood, I did put a sweater on him.

11:17 A.M.

I get an email saying that Northern Arizona University is closed. Snow Day!

1:00 P.M.

The snow begins to accumulate and it gets noticeably darker outside.


2:00 P.M.

Oscar gets a bath. Because the only thing scarier than being trapped in the house with a baby for two days? Being trapped with a stinky baby. Eeewww.



Please don't look closely at our very ghetto sink.

3:30 P.M.

I decide to make a turkey dinner. We had Thanksgiving out of town, which is fun at the time, but depressing in its total lack of leftovers. I had a turkey on hand from before Thanksgiving when they were selling them for like, five cents a pound, so I threw the turkey in the oven for about four hours. It would mean eating late, around 7:30 or so, which is when Oscar goes to bed and we like to empty the contents of the refrigerator into our stomachs.

7:14 P.M.

I start peeling potatoes, thinking that I will pull the turkey out of the oven soon and want the side dishes to be ready.

7:17 P.M.

The power goes out. I almost pee my pants.

7:18 P.M.

The power comes back on. I sigh with relief.

7:19 P.M.

The power goes out.

7:20 P.M.

The power stays out.

7:21 P.M.

Darin begins gathering flashlights and candles while I keep peeling potatoes. The power will come back on. The power WILL come back on...

7:22 P.M.

The power doesn't come back on.

8:00 P.M.

I decide to take the turkey out of the oven. At least we'll have turkey for dinner. Turkey with a side of turkey! And for dessert? Turkey!



Here I am taking the turkey's temperature. Because nobody wants food poisoning during a blizzard. The poor turkey looks like we are sacrificing it on an altar.

9:00 P.M.

Having determined that the power is not coming back on and that he doesn't want to listen to any more of my charming anecdotes, Darin asks what I would like to do.

What else is there to do when you have no electricity and a lot of poultry to consume?



Don't be fooled by the fact that I'm an English teacher. I'm not good at Scrabble. In fact, I suck. Darin beats me by at least a hundred points every time. That's because I come up with words like cat and dog and he comes up with words like Quixotic (go ahead, look it up, I'll wait).

10:30

The power is still out and I decide to go to bed. Luckily for us, our house is heated by a wood stove, so it's toasty warm all night. The power doesn't come back on until after 3:00 A.M.

9:00 A.M. The Next Morning

NAU is closed again, which is a good thing, considering this is what our driveway looks like:

        

In the morning you always wake before me. I hear you playing with and talking to your stuffed animals, which is much better than an alarm clock. I swing my legs out of bed, stand up, and turn toward the crib. Lately you have been doing a little dance as soon as you see me. It's like a shot of espresso, heroin, and love straight to the heart. It's the best feeling in the world.

I am still nursing you, and although it has been a long struggle, and not always the easiest choice, I know it is the best thing for you. You are often easily distracted by everything around you, but sometimes, like this morning, you eat contentedly while swinging your arms to and fro as if conducting an orchestra. Who knows, maybe you will be come a musician. You certainly love making noise! When you are done nursing you always beam at me, as if I have just given you a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Or the world's largest cupcake.


Of all my reasons for writing this blog, my favorite is the fact that some day you will have a journal of your childhood, a record of the highs and lows of being a little boy, and what a blessing and a gift you are to those around you. You have given me so much joy that I want nothing but joy for you. If I am tempted to think of myself as too busy, if I am tempted to think that anything in this world is more important than you, all I have to do is think about how quickly this first year has gone by, and how much you have changed. The best thing you have done for me is to teach me to stop, put everything else aside, and get down on the floor with you for a little while. Making you laugh is my only job. I had no idea there could be so much joy in the world.

Of course, you also like to make raspberries with a mouth full of applesauce. Or get into the paper recycling and spread it all over the room. Now when I tear those annoying cards out of magazines, I smile and think, "It's your favorite toy!" You also love empty boxes, hot cups of tea, and climbing the bookcases to get to Mama's books. No baby books for you, thank you very much, only the biggest, heaviest works of literature will do, because the paper is thinner and easier to chew, and the because the books make a more satisfying thump when they hit the ground.


You have two bottom teeth and the two on top are now breaking through. You walk all over the place while holding on to the furniture, but haven't yet tried taking an independent step. That's okay, because Mama and Papa aren't in a hurry for you to grow up too fast. We are enjoying all of your little stages.  Your papa and I want to be perfect parents, because you are such a perfect little boy. We want to create a childhood for you that is like a poem, or a symphony.

But we struggle. We are nervous and overprotective and overwhelmed. We weigh every decision and how it might impact you, from feeding to traveling to vaccinations to toys. I am constantly grappling with how to cope when my own instincts as a mom go up against the advice and wishes of the experts, the books, family, and friends. Every choice we make, we make with you and your needs at the center. We know that we are making many mistakes, but we are also creating a household filled with love and laughter. We are creating a family.


Love, Mama

        

Wikipedia refers to a Hail Mary pass as "any forward pass made in desperation, with only a small chance of success."

I love this.

Isn't this the way we live our lives? I know it's how I have lived mine, so often closing my eyes and throwing everything I have into some small distant spot in the future, hoping like hell that I make it.

When I moved to Flagstaff seventeen years ago I had no money, no job, no car, and no prospects of any kind except for conditional admission to Northern Arizona University. Because I had been kicked out of the U of A, had flunked out of community college (yes) and had spent the last two years working at one sucky job after another (telemarketing, bagging groceries, cleaning motel rooms...), I felt like I had nothing left to lose. So I packed up my belongings, jammed myself into the backseat of a car driven by the friend of a friend, and headed up to NAU. I had a very short period of time to get financial aid, get housing, get a job, and make decent enough grades that I was taken off of academic probation. I did all of those things.

Now I am a tenure-track professor at that same university and I live with my high school sweetheart and a magical little boy named Oscar. I have always felt like I scored the game-winning touch-down.

Except for one thing...

I haven't achieved my dream of becoming a writer.

I always assumed that by this point in my life I would be writing novel after novel, selling each one for a high advance and being able to live off of my income as a full-time writer. I'm not even close to achieving that. I've tried writing three different novels over the course of the last ten years, and none of them has broken the one hundred page mark.

Then in November I made one last attempt, one last forward pass made in desperation, with only a small chance of success. I tried to write 50,000 words in thirty days. For the first time in a long time I was able to stay focused about my writing, and more importantly I was able to stay excited about my story. The characters I was writing about came to live in my heart.

I finished! My first draft is 53,630 words long. I got this certificate to print out and the nifty winner badge in my sidebar.



My novel is nowhere near finished. The whole draft is currently a huge, unruly mess. The first half is pretty complete and polished, as is the last chapter (I actually wrote the end first), but the middle needs a lot of fleshing out and revising. I'm guessing that the final novel will be at least 90,000 words. I still have a lot of work to do.

        

For the past couple of months, ever since Oscar started standing, I've been thinking of him as a little boy instead of a baby. He does a lot of boy-like things (if I may generalize), like yelling, spitting, hitting, throwing, and banging. I love his little boy energy and his sense of humor. I get caught up in how quickly he grows and changes and I look forward to each new development.

Then there are moments like last night. He was having trouble falling asleep, so I came upstairs to nurse him again (he is easily distracted while nursing, so he often doesn't eat enough). He nursed for a long time, and fell soundly asleep. I was about to get up and dump him in his crib, when suddenly I could see the little baby he was for such a short time.

So I forgot everything I wanted to get done and I just held and rocked my baby boy, because time moves faster than ever before, and I wanted to cherish this moment.

I Capture Perfect Moments.

For more perfect moments, visit Lori

        

Long before Twilight, before Harry Potter, and before The Da Vinci Code, I read the book that made me want to write novels. Twenty years ago a friend handed me a thick paperback and said, "You have to read this, it's about chess." It was The Eight by Katherine Neville. It took me awhile to get around to reading it, mainly because I was not the least bit interested in chess. However, when I finally picked it up and started reading, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up all night two nights in a row to finish it. I am a rereader of books; I read my favorites again and again, and that is a book that I have reread almost every year since then. I read it because it sucks me in to the lives of a group of amazing characters, but I also read it because it teaches me more about writing and storytelling than any of the how-to-write books in my library.

Here is a list of my top five favorite bestselling novels (in reverse order of their publication), why I love them, and how they have helped my writing.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

A lush, beautifully written, and scary vampire book. Kostova gives a unique historical perspective on vampires (and no, they aren't sparkly). This novel takes story-within-a-story to new heights as she has a protagonist recounting her own story, her father's story, and another story told in letters (and each of these is presented in first person!). Yet she manages to keep it all straight to produce a riveting page-turner.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

What I loved about this book is its fast pace. Writers who hope their books will be turned into movies should see Dan Brown as a mentor and a model. All of his books take place in a twenty-four-hour time frame. Of course, Brown created one plot and reused it in all of his novels, but it's a good plot.

Possession by A.S. Byatt

Byatt takes "literary" fiction to new heights by inventing a 19th century writer and recreating his entire body of work in the form of letters and poems. Then she creates a protagonist who studies this writer while earning his Ph.D. in literature. I read this when I was getting my MA in literature and it made me sick with envy. Every literature professor I know wishes they had written this book. By the way, the movie sucks, so don't use it as a litmus test for whether or not to read the book.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This book was published when I was twenty and Tartt was twenty-eight, and I tore out and saved a magazine profile of Tartt and review of the book. This book is an educated person's mystery, and Tartt proves that your protagonist can be a college student (my creative writing professors lied to me).

The Eight by Katherine Neville

With a complex plot covering two historical time periods and three continents, Neville set the standard for smart thrillers long before Brown, Tartt, or Kostova hit the scene. You fall in love with her wacky cast of characters and get caught up in a book that is equal parts mystery, historical romance, and chess strategy.

Five Things They Have in Common

• The protagonists and characters are smart and full of quirky trivia, showing off the writer's knowledge of history, literature, science and art.

• People living ordinary lives are suddenly thrust into a world of mystery and adventure.

• There's enough action to keep you turning pages, but the novels are richly descriptive and character-driven.

• People's lives are in danger, but there is no blood and gore (or very little of it). Most of the deaths take place "off stage."

• They were published as mainstream fiction, but have elements of other genres. The writers clearly did not set out to write vampire books, or a literary thrillers, or historical fiction. These novels are centered around the characters and the stories they have to tell rather than being based on the conventions of a particular genre.

What We Can Learn From the Novels We Read

• Make a list of your favorite novels

• Make a list of the characteristics of those novels

• Figure out how the writer begins and ends chapters

• Figure out how the writer deals with point-of-view

• Analyze how the novel is organized and how the plot unfolds. How much exposition is there? How much dialogue? How does the writer show rather than tell?

I hate it when aspiring writers tell me they don't read, either because they don't have time or they don't want to be influenced. As writers, we have to make time to read, and not only should we want to be influenced, but we should use our favorite writers as models.

What are your favorite novels?

        

I really have no idea what I'm doing.

Flying by the seat of my pants is something I'm used to doing while teaching, cooking, and accessorizing, but it's not something I am entirely comfortable with when it comes to parenting. After all, I am shaping a human being.

I am continuously astonished by how being a parent has changed my life. I used to think I had it all under control, but one thing after another crumbled beneath me.

• I knew I would have a home birth. I wasn't expecting to have a breech baby and an emergency c-section.
• I knew I would breastfeed. I wasn't expecting three months of excruciating pain or having a baby that wanted to eat hourly at 9 months. I am now going against LLL and putting him on a schedule (gasp!).
• I knew I wouldn't let my baby "cry-it-out." I wasn't expecting that he would never sleep through the night.
• I knew I would co-sleep. I wasn't expecting to have a baby who slept better alone in his crib.
• I knew I would not vaccinate. I wasn't expecting that I would decide to vaccine my child on a modified schedule and that I would change my whole world view about vaccinations.
• I knew I would not allow Oscar to watch television. I wasn't expecting how desperately lonely it can be to be home with a baby, or how well reruns of Friends can alleviate that loneliness.
• I knew I would fall in love. I just had no idea how hard.

I'm not a perfect mom, and Oscar will not be a perfect child. But  one day I realized that I don't want him to be perfect. I hate perfect people!

I'm tired, so I started letting Oscar cry instead of getting up to feed him every two hours. I decided to cut out one feeding at a time, and currently his bedtime is 7:00, I feed him before I go to bed, and then he usually sleeps from around midnight until 5:00 A.M., which is HEAVENLY.

Oscar got the H1N1 vaccine. He had no side effects at all, as has been the case with all of his vaccines.

I worry A LOT. I worry that Oscar will get sick or injured. I'm actually pretty pissed that I created this magical little person, because now there is no way I could live without him.

Oscar is funny as hell. We play this game now where I yell and then he yells. Sometimes I look at him, take a deep breath, and we both yell at the same time. I have decided that this is now my all-time favorite activity.

Having a kid will really and truly ruin your life. In the best possible way.

        

Seventeen months ago I woke up on Saturday, June 14th, knowing I was pregnant, because I had just taken a pregnancy test the day before.



Exactly eight months after that, I woke up on Saturday, February 14th, knowing I was a mom, because Oscar was born the night before.



This morning I woke up on Saturday, November 14th, knowing I was the luckiest woman in the world, because I could look over and see the face of my nine-month-old little boy.

 

Thank you, Oscar, for making every day special.

        

I have officially passed my previous personal best of 28,000 words for Nanowrimo. This is my sixth year participating and this is the most I've ever written. Actually, this is the most I've written on any novel, ever.

I want to thank everyone who has been following along and cheering me on.

The word count widgets seem to be working again, so I put mine back underneath my profile. This way if I don't get a chance to post every day, you can still follow my word count.

        

I am halfway to my goal of 50,000 words for the month of November and I couldn't be more excited. I'm a little nervous because my plot is getting pretty big and I'm afraid I'm going to lose track of it all together. I need to make a list of characters and locations to help me keep track of everything, not to mention an outline of some kind. The most words I've ever written during Nanowrimo was 28,000, and it looks like I am AT LEAST going to pass that previous personal best.

Tomorrow Oscar is 9 months old! His birthday falls on Friday the 13th, and since he was born on a Friday the 13th I'm thinking of having a little party for him. All this means is just me, Darin, Oscar, and a cupcake. Because sometimes I need an excuse to eat a cupcake. I'll probably wait until Oscar is in bed because we are not ready to give him sugar yet.

Tomorrow is also his routine appointment with his pediatrician. I'm curious to find out how much he weighs. I will also know more about the H1N1 vaccine (whether or not it's available and whether or not I'm going to give it to Oscar).

I sense another blog post coming on!