Dear Teacher, please excuse Sarah from blogging. She was busy falling (apart, and also down). Insert forged signature here.

So, here's what happened.

Well, not all of it. I don't feel like talking about the Thanksgiving divorce or the lonely Christmas or the creepy spinster attic apartment or the hours spent learning how to decoupage, which are the root reasons I haven't been blogging. You just do not need to know all of that. It's possible I lived on little else but tea and honey and Kleenex and Brandie Carlisle songs for over a month, and it's not something I'm proud of.

 But I do feel the need to at least make an attempt at explaining why I have completely neglected everything writing-related, including but certainly not limited to this blog. So what I will tell you is that, back in April, I pretended to be Superman. That isn't to say that I jumped into a phone booth and popped out wearing tights and a save-the-world expression. No. What I did was, I attempted to run. Tripped. And sailed into the air like I knew how to fly.

What I didn't know how to do was land, so I came down full-force on my right knee, on a floor that is nothing more than thin carpet over concrete. And of course, being the super-sharp thumbtack that I am, I hopped right back up and kept running. It wasn't until twenty minutes later, cutting my pantleg up the seam to reveal a right knee roughly the size and color of a rotten cantaloupe that I realized: Crap.

Seven weeks, one surgery, one obnoxious knee immobilizing brace, and the development and frequent employment of a colorful vocabulary later, I still can't do a straight leg raise, or, more importantly, kick people. And, boy, oh boy, are there people I would like to kick. Namely, myself, for forgetting that I am not graceful enough to run, for any reason, ever.

My weirdo friends keep asking to see the photos, so I'm going to share them.Warning: the link you are about to click on is extremely gross!


 WARNING: Here be yucky-looking kneecaps!


That's where we are now -- seven weeks post-injury, four weeks post-op, and scheduled for a second MRI and an EMG to figure out why I still can't perform a straight leg raise -- or, as I've mentioned, kick people.

So that's what happened. And between surgery, recovery, and having to move out of my now-inaccessible creepy spinster attic apartment, I haven't been writing a whole lot. But I have collected all sorts of medical terms and unsettling hospital observations and weird nurse characterizations and colorful sailor vocabulary to use when I do get back to it!
 

Also, here's a completely unrelated classified ad (cue innocent hum):

WANTED: Someone I don't like. Your job duties would consist of standing in front of me until my right leg remembers how to kick. Volunteer position, no pay. Would look kick-ass on a resume. ;)

A few more stones

1/5 - End of every good day, we sweep the stable, hay and mud chased out the barn door, where at dusk we will forget not to walk through it, track it onto our neglected kitchen floors.

1/6 - In the gray, cool, dead-grass, damp-air, January meadow, one yellow flower whispers, "Bright things can grow here. Wait."

Mindful Writing Challenge (Small Stones)

January is the month of the Mindful Writing Challenge, and although I have been absent from this blog for some time, I have been picking up my small stones. I'll try to post them daily going forward, but here they are so far:


1/1/13 - Down the block, I hear fireworks and car horns honking. The dog flicks one ear. The cat twitches her whiskers. I pull up the covers.


1/2/13 - Cold sunset shines off the ice in hoofprint puddles. Anywhere this is true, I fit.


1/3/13 - She scratches blue ink on a page full of numbers, compares the sum to bills crunched in her fist. Adding three hundred, but counting just two. Over and over and over.


1/4/13 - He grips my fingertips, frustrated to the core. His handshape familiar, I flip my own hand to meet his, declare thumb war. His eyes raise to mine, smile, marvel: Teacher's lost her marbles.

No-Bake Cookies, Sarah Style

Check fridge and cupboards for ingredients.

Go to market and buy missing ingredients.

Walk dogs (because any time you leave, however briefly, they feel they must be walked on your return, or they will pee on your floor)

Over medium heat, melt one stick - crap. There's only half a stick left.

Go back to market. Buy butter.

Walk dogs.

Over medium heat, melt one stick of butter, a pile of sugar that looks like it might be one and three quarters cups, five Bento-box-sized-forkfuls (forksful?) of cocoa, and a coffee mug of milk.

Remove from heat. Answer phone. Walk outside where you can hear better. Talk about work.

Go inside.

Walk dogs.

Return mixture to heat. Bring to a boil.

Boil for the length of "Ghost of the Knoxville Girl" by Doug and Telisha Williams.

Remove from heat.

Drop by Bento-box-sized-forkfuls (forksful?) onto clean-ish Tupperware lids.

Wait till the cookies set up.

Acknowledge that they aren't going to set up. Eat with a Bento-box-sized fork.

In a panic, curse and run back to the kitchen to turn off the burner.

Leave the dishes for morning.

The Weight of Books (and Other Things)

Sometime between finding out I was the winner of PEN American Center's 2012 Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and the day that the winners were announced to the public, I found myself on the floor of my studio apartment, trying to prop up a broken futon with a copy of SHILOH.

It was a nice futon once. At least, I assume so. It was given to me by my former neighbor, Jim, who at fifty-five owns the last house on his block that hasn't been converted into college apartments. What this means for Jim is that he's got first dibs on all of the "I don't want this anymore so I'll leave it on the curb" furniture that gets put out by the students. Since Jim's house is pretty much full up on curb furniture at the moment, he is constantly passing some of his best finds on to his friends, family, and favorite former neighbors.

Jim is pretty much always on the lookout for one thing or other that I need for my apartment. Now, don't get me wrong. It isn't that I can't afford furniture. I have an amazing job that is comprised of a series of random tasks such as "wear a sparkly green leprechan hat," "chase a bicycle down a school hallway," and, my favorite power trip, "be in charge of the potato chips."  But a while back I decided not to work full-time, because I want to leave time in my day for as much writing as possible. Also, there's that pesky problem of lots and lots of old debt that I'm determined to pay off -- so, okay, yeah. I can't afford furniture.

As my futon was an adopted stray, I can't be sure how old it was by the time I started sleeping on it. All I know that it was a lot less pretty after the left rear leg bent in half under my weight. Hence, the propping.

I tried bricks, but the problem is, bricks are a set width. Books, on the other hand -- books come in all shapes and sizes. With a single bookshelf, I've got endless combinations not only of entertainment and information, but also, it turns out, futon building blocks.

It's a complicated art, finding the exact combination of reading material to prop up your sleeping surface. Of course it would have made sense to try my own books, but my last copy of LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE got stolen at a school visit in the spring (which -- a kid wanted it -- cool!), and the last few BODY OF WATER holdouts were still packed from that same school visit (because, clearly, four months isn't enough time to unpack one box). THE GOODLY SPELLBOOK was an obvious choice at 475 pages, but it proved to be just a touch too thick (maybe 450 would have worked). DRESSAGE FROM A TO X and PONY CLUB C-LEVEL MANUAL (which, okay, is for kids who ride horses), put together, didn't quite reach, so I grabbed a couple of paperbacks to fill the gap.

Of course I was grabbing by width and cover strength, not title, so it was a shock when I found myself sitting on the floor, surrounded by discarded futon-propping attempts (which would all be lovingly returned to the shelf once I was better-rested), clutching a copy of SHILOH.

SHILOH, which was written by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor -- the generous and talented author who made possible a working writer fellowship intended to ensure that authors can, among other things, afford a flat surface to sleep on while still being authors.

The details of the award, as well as the 17 other literary awards being granted this year by the PEN American Center, can be found on their website. I'm in stunningly good company, and it's difficult for me to stop hyperventilating about these particular judges reading my work long enough to realize that I actually won something. I'm completely over the moon about this award, and humbled by the faith the judges have put in me and FREE VERSE. I'm also extremely grateful to Phyllis Naylor for providing such a thrilling opportunity.

When I was fifteen, I won a county writing contest, and I got to go to the state awards ceremony. The keynote speaker was Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and I was too shy to say six words. Luckily, my mother, also a writer, was with me, and helped facilitate my verbal skills. Ms. Naylor was kind enough to stick around after her talk and answer some questions from the two of us. It was the first day I realized that people actually did this writing stuff for a living, and now all these years later, she's still making it possible for me to stay the course of a writing career.

And how do I repay her?

By stuffing one of her fabulous novels under the corner of a futon?

I think not. SHILOH went back on the shelf. So did the dressage books and the magic books and all my other books of varying widths but equal value. As for the futon? It turns out a combination of bricks and half-filled notebooks can be used to prop.

Plus, I can always lie on the floor to read.



(Author's Note:  I have since procured a sturdy and well-built futon, courtesy of my friend Janell -- so, you know, no worries, Mom!)

I'm off to camp! You coming?

It's Camp NaNoWriMo time!

The gist? Write a novel, start to finish, in August. It's just like regular NaNoWriMo, except it happens in August instead of November. The point is to write quickly, to write without stopping, to write something terrible that you can revise later into something great. It doesn't work for everybody. But it works for me - both my published novels were NaNo novels.

So I'm there (under the name "sarypotter") and I'd love to see you there, too!

I'm gonna start writing here in a sec. Yes, I am. No earthly clue what I'm writing about. My novel has neither a title nor a plot. Nor characters. Nor any words, yet. Thank goodness it's only August 1.

I will not pretend that I'm going to blog daily during Camp NaNo, because - um, yeah - I don't blog daily anyway. Sorry about that. My computer is broken. Very broken. I haven't seen it since April.

Which means I'm noveling via text message.

I'm gonna need a lot of S'mores.

Places I Have Lived, Continued

Friday, there were storms. And inside the little apartment off 14 1/2 Alley, there were no lights to see by. I sat with my dogs and my cat and a dozen half-filled boxes, waiting to see so I could finish packing. This weekend, we moved into an apartment above the park, not far from Huntington's new "World Class PetSafe Dog Park." We have dogs and cats and park-goers for neighbors. In trying to count -- because I always lose count -- how many moves this makes, I felt "moved" to go back and re-read something I wrote a few years back. In case you've got a few minutes and you'd like to know, here are the places I have lived: http://swdooley.blogspot.com/2009/05/places-i-have-lived.html And now I've got to add a few more: 43. When we got back to West Virginia, we stayed with my parents. My niece Marilyn was 13, and she cooked elaborate meals that she would not eat, and wrote menus for them so we could choose. We sat in rocking chairs and ate from the garden. We lay on our backs on hot pavement in the dark and watched fireworks. Who says you can't go home again? 44. We moved to Wyoming County. This was the first house we owned. We painted the walls. We sat in the dark. We watched snow cut us off from the rest of the world. I drove on tangled roads and dodged coal trucks. I taught kids I didn't know how to teach. I lost a friend. I left things unfinished. I saw cover art for Livvie Owen Lived Here. I wrote Body of Water and lived through part of what would someday be Free Verse. We nursed Buddy through Parvo. We worked in the yard, but the work was never done. We walked through grimy snow to Sunoco and bought off-brand dog food. We waited for the thaw. 45. Huntington! We moved to the apartment on 14 1/2 Alley. We got married on Independence Day. We found a home for Buddy, who needed a yard and water and not a tiny apartment in the alley. We found Oscar. Then Winifred. Both Dachshund mixes with attitudes bigger than their tiny, silly bodies. Jake and I separated. Then slowly found each other again. I wrote Ashes to Asheville. Then Free Verse. Livvie Owen Lived Here, then Body of Water, were published. We made friends with the neighbors for maybe the first time ever. We sat on porches and watched storms blow in. On Saturday, we moved. And now we are in number -- 46. The sweet, bright, light apartment on the park. Hardwood floors and a crappy futon and new countertops and promise. And the story continues.