marya hornbacher

Interview link

webmaster — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 20:20:00 GMT

http://www.aberrationnation.com/2010/11/holding-onto-her-hat-marya-hornbacher.html

Fun essay by Penelope Przecop plus an interview with me if yr curious...

When, exactly, cities sleep...

webmaster — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 20:17:00 GMT

At approx. 4 a.m.

That is what I have determined this fall. In a mad dash through an insane number of cities these last few months, I’ve decided that cities fall asleep—kind of suddenly—at 4 a.m.

I’m an early riser—a cross between a night owl and a morning person—and I generally get up between 2 and 3, when most of my night owl friends are abandoning their desks or late-night walks or easels or what have you, and head for bed. That’s when I’m making coffee and sitting down to work. So I’m a counter of stars, a student of degrees of dark, and a connoisseur of sunrise details.

So it is that I happen to be awake to determine when cities sleep. And, almost across the board, it’s 4.

Sitting on a fire escape above West 4^th and 6^thlast week, bundled in a sweatshirt and freezing my bare feet, I watched the last-gaspers stagger home from bars around 3:30. The cabs came fewer and farther between. The Papaya King on the corner stayed neon-lit, of course, in case anyone should want a hot dog for an early breakfast. The all-night shouting lost energy and eventually quieted down. And at 4, New York, the city that does not sleep, slept.

Columbus, Indianapolis, Calgary, Seattle, and various other cities fall mostly asleep earlier. But there are always those who feel it necessary to shout down hotel hallways till all hours, always a few cars running red lights on streets below, presumably in a hurry to make their 4 a.m. bedtime. And then those cities, too, go dark.

Tonight Minneapolis has just fallen heavily asleep. The lingerers in Loring Park—who were particularly raucous tonight—have headed home. The people coming and going and coming and going from various old brick buildings have disappeared, and are no longer shouting on the street outside or banging on windows and doors.

All is quiet on the northern front. And the sun won’t rise anytime soon. Winter is pressing at the edges of the city. The trees are almost all stripped bare, the last color drained from the color-mad trees of a few weeks ago. Those leaves, dry now, skitter up and down the sidewalks and swirl around your feet as you walk. The lakes are silver, the sky shifting from that same silver to an impossible blue, a blue so rich and saturated you’d think it was painted onto the inner arch of whatever arches over and around this tiny planet where we spin.

It’s November. And soon the snow will “come shawling down,” as Dylan Thomas wrote in A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and cover everything as far as the eye can see.

The new book I’ve written for Hazelden Publishers, Waiting: A Non-Believer’s Higher Power, is finished. Turned in almost exactly on time, now in copyediting, and lurking in that pre-publication world where it goes through whatever mysterious machinations books go through before they hit the shelves. As I’ve told you, it was the singularly weirdest writing experience I’ve ever had. One feels one’s way along through any book, but with this one I felt like I had no earthly idea what I was going to write until it was there, staring back at me from the page. But it came together, like books do, and completed itself, and will come out this spring.

Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps is on the shelves as well, and I want to thank all of you who’ve written to tell me how the book has affected you. It means the world to me to hear from readers at any time, but hearing that people are able to put into practice some of the ideas Sane suggests is an enormous gift, and I’m awfully grateful to you.

So on November 1, I sat down with my notebook and returned full-force to the novel. Which, of course, immediately morphed all over the place, cut vast swaths of pages from itself, in fact decided it was two novels, put one of itself in a drawer, and left me with what is actually a clear and writeable story. Despite my irritation at its willfulness, I am elated that it has decided to emerge from the murk and tell me what the hell it wants to be. The notes and new pages are piling up, the research is being done, the voices of the characters are making themselves noisy, and I can finally sit down to it every day without wanting to scream and tear out my teeth with a pliers. In fact, I’m having a very good time.

Meanwhile, I’m preparing the class I’ll teach this winter—taking a machete to the reading list I’d like to assign, dithering about which craft point to focus on when, etc, and generally behaving as I always do when I’m about to teach. I. Cannot. Wait.

Poems, as usual, come and go. I have a friend who writes something like a poem a day. I want to hit her with a pan. I take comfort in the fact that Louise Gluck goes on wild sprees of writing periodically, and then stops altogether for periods of time. Surely this is a valid way of doing a thing.

NB: Someone recently read me Jorie Graham’s work. Prior to this, I hadn’t much liked Graham. Upon hearing her read aloud, though, I fell madly in love, and am telling anyone who will listen to read her poems. Sit in a coffee shop and read them aloud. Everyone will think you odd, but you will get to revel in her marvelous way of putting together images and words.

It’s now 4:20 a.m. The city is well and truly asleep. The light won’t begin to come up for hours, and even then will come up slow. People will lie in bed, half-waking, burrowing deeper into their blankets, in no mood to throw them off and dash out into the freezing world. And it isn’t even that cold yet. Our blood slowly thickens to take on the falling temperatures. Today it is only 32 degrees. Soon the mercury will drop and drop and drop, and we’ll bustle out the door in heavy coats, 22, 12, 2 degrees, -2, -10…

Winter has barely begun.

Peace,

Monet-colored dawn (an extremely long blog)

webmaster — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:01:00 GMT

So I’m sitting on the porch of my grandmother’s house (she’s no longer here), looking out at the lake and the rising light, a wash of soft pink and blue across the sky, the thick line of pines on the opposite shore cast purple-gray. And I’m thinking of the time my agent, who I worship and adore, told me that when she’s having a rotten day, she goes to the Museum of Modern Art and sits in the Water Lilies room until she’s all right again. In truth, it had never occurred to me that she might not be all right, at any time or for any reason; she’s very impressive and a little fierce. So I liked the idea that she would be calmed by Monet. Have you ever seen his Haystacks series? I don’t even know how many there are—many—and they chronicle the seasons and qualities of light as the day and year goes by. I have seen them in New York and Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Louis (I think)—it seems like everywhere I go there is the same haystack in the middle of the same field with the precisely captured changing season and sky. I would like to see them all in one place, and walk down a very long hall watching the light change, and trying to fathom how Monet could possibly get things so right, and wishing I could describe place so perfectly as he does.

I was writing to a painter and poet friend the other day—it makes me a little cross that he can both paint and write, and more than a little envious—about the fact that visual artists are terribly lucky to have such a tactile thing with which to make art. If I knew how to paint or draw or sketch, I think I would take terrific pleasure in being able to actually touch my materials, and in having something that guides my hand and translates what I see to what I say. There are, it seems to me, not nearly enough words with which to do this. Van Gough’s sunflowers make you want to reach out and grab them. They seem to burst from the canvas into the room. Language is less evocative, and it has to invite readers into it, rather than coming to them.

The train’s whistling by. It’s the same train whistle I’ve been listening to for nearly forty years, and the same whistle that the characters in The Center of Winter listen to as they lie awake. I’ve always wanted to know who’s on a train this early. I remember overnight train rides up the west coast, from San Francisco to Portland to see my grandmother when I was very small. And I remember middle-of-the-night treks from Minneapolis to Chicago when I was older and alone and eavesdropping on the old men arguing amicably nearby.

I think writers return and return to places, maybe a little obsessively, in their work. I don’t know why they do. I don’t know why some writers are so deeply immersed in place, and keep trying to describe the place they’re in and bring the reader into it with them and show them what it’s like and make them feel the place for themselves. I’m one of these weirdly place-centric writers. It bothers me when I can’t find myself in a place in my work; it makes me feel like I leave the reader floating in midair, unable to see or sense their surroundings, and it makes me very uneasy. So I keep coming back to places. One of them is obviously northern Minnesota, and I’m not sure why; it just absorbs me and I want to take people here. Though I’m not from here originally, I spent long spells of my childhood here, driving north on Highway 10 through cornfields and fields of sugar beet, to visit relatives who were loud and a little scary but fascinating, the same relatives who morphed into characters in my novel—and now they’re doing it again.

People ask me often if the characters in my fiction are me, or my family, or people I know. The answer is no; they are people who have taken on a life of their own, emerging mostly from names that pop into my head, names or features of people familiar to me, but who walk away from their starting point and take on form and substance totally unknown to me until they write themselves down. It’s an eerie process, and I don’t particularly like it; fiction is awfully amorphous and dictates itself according to its own interior logic. Not knowing how it will go until it goes there is a deeply unsettling process, and very uncertain, and it seems like you’re feeling around in the dark for a thing, and you don’t find it till it’s found.

So now the new novel is doing that, and I wish it wouldn’t. When I stop thinking about it and trying to push it around, it’s actually kind of neat, a discovery process that’s as much like reading someone else’s work as it is like writing your own. This is rarely possible for me; I’m hoping I’ll grow into it, and by the time I’m eighty let my books write themselves as they intend to do anyway. Anyway, the new novel has returned to this place, this very porch, with the seagulls making noise and the whistling train and the Monet light. It doesn’t stay here, of course; it goes right back to the west coast, another place that consumes me and to which my stories gravitate. And its characters are doing what characters do. I began with my grandmother’s name; she then walked off, changed eras, changed selves, became her own thing. This may have something to do with the fact that I hardly knew her, in life; it may just be the way characters act. Both my grandmother’s names set characters in motion in this novel; neither of my grandmothers is in it after all.

As for the book on spirituality—it’s the most amorphous writing process I’ve ever gone through. This is probably to be expected. The subject is a more than slightly amorphous in itself. There are days when, while writing, I wonder what in the hell I was thinking, starting a book like this. And there are days when it surges along of its own accord, and makes sense of itself as it goes, and surprises me every time.

Frankly, only poetry makes sense.

And memoir is a different beast. I’m reading Mary Karr’s Lit, which is fantastic. Karr’s memoirs are all wonderful, but this is my favorite of hers. She takes an enormous risk, which is to write about her life. This sounds odd. Many memoirs—probably most—are about a subject. A topic. Say, eating disorders or mental illness. And I have often said in teaching about memoir that when writing about one’s life, one perhaps is wise to take a subject. A great many awful memoirs have been written that are about a writer’s thoughts. Just, you know, thoughts in general. And most of us meander through the thickets of our thoughts with little direction or purpose. This does not, plot-wise, make for a good book. We find our thoughts terribly interesting; to most people outside our own selves, they are not. Mine certainly are not. I have thoughts about subjects that may be interesting; but not to everyone, and my average, everyday thoughts are a big plotless mess. And our lives take much the same shape—they have no plot. They do not have narrative structure. In order to make good books, they have to be pared down to the barest minimum—an era, or a situation, or a subject—to make for well-paced reading. So, generally, memoirists don’t write about their lives; that is what autobiography is for, and the only people who get to write autobiographies have had long and interesting lives that encompass so much they’re worth writing down in full. But Mary Karr takes on life. The daily and the precise and the detailed and the crystal-clear, and the damn thing has a plot.

The rest of us should be so good.

And it’s on my mind today in particular because the characters in this novel that has been kicking my ass for two years—what I’d give to write fiction as rapidly as, say, Louise Erdrich—the characters in this novel are in an argument. It is a book-length argument, a basic difference in their view of the principle of what matters in life. Some of them hold that life is the grand scheme, the whole scope, the cultural and political and world-sized and ever-changing business of people in the tide of time. The others hold the opposite. They believe, as Jake (character) says, that “what we have is our little lives. These little worlds. Only each other, and these days.” The difference in opinion splits them apart.

Today I hold with Jake. In truth, the subjects of my memoirs, which are specific and relatively broad and touch on things that affect lots of people, are not the things that consume my days, or, I suppose, very many of our days. I think about small and insignificant things. Places. Degrees and qualities of light. The people who populate my head and the coffee shops where I sit. The fact that seagulls, for some unfathomable reason, have gotten from the sea to the dock where boats are drifting in front of my porch.

It’s what I have. I wish you happiness in your very own world, and your day.

Peace,

Marya

Sunny day in June

webmaster — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:30:00 GMT

Hello all!

It's a most glorious summer day, and the sun through my office window is hitting the room just so, in this way that unfortunately lights up the total catastrophe of my desks and bookshelves, which seem to be piling their own selves with papers and notebooks and books and more papers and tape recorders and coffee cups and folders and reading glasses and various and sundry that I am sure I cannot have set there in such disarray myself. So I have concluded that offices breed paper like closets breed hangers, and in the exact same way, you cannot find the paper you need when you need it, nor can you find a hanger when you want one.

That's my theory for the day.

But the view from here is indeed lovely--the trees are thick and green, my lawn is in need of mowing, and my neighbor's yard is improbably tidy. The lakes are a spectacular blue, and it's strangely all very conducive to work. You'd think I'd be lounging in a hammock if I could. But I like it here, even though I will soon be buried under a pile of paper myself. My friend Pat, many years ago, expressed concern that I was going to become one of those old women whose entire house is a sea of books, and I was going to own seventeen cats, and never dust, and call him when I needed to reach a book on a high shelf (he's very tall) (I am not very tall), and wear only black. Which reminds me of Chekhov's Masha characters (he had several), who were all very bleak and wore only black and spoke in elliptical terms of the pointlessness of it all. I never did like those characters, despite the fact that I am, weirdly, named after one of them. I still cannot fathom what possessed my parents to name me such a thing. When I was a kid, I wanted so badly to be named Nancy.

I have now so completely overbooked myself with work that I have stopped feeling the raging stress I was feeling a few days ago and have slipped into some sort of meditative anti-stress state, sort of like when you drink so much caffeine you come round the other edge of it and get sleepy. It's also possible that the necklace a friend gave me, with the Sanskrit symbol for OHM, is having some kind of magical effect, and I am really quite genuinely peaceful. Go figure.

Meanwhile, the article I am writing has grown horns and a tail and has taken over my life almost entirely. In the remaining three square inches of brain space I have available to me, I'm working on the spirituality book, and am twitching for the article to get itself written so I can properly focus on the spir book and the novel. And Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps comes out next month! There will be a proper link to information on Sane as soon as our infamous webmaster gets a moment to make one.

Perhaps I failed to mention--I thought the spirituality book was due in February. No indeed! It is due in October. So I will not be coming out of my office until that time. I really am going to be buried in paper pretty soon.

And on other marvelous fronts! Turns out I will be teaching a graduate seminar in nonfiction at Northwestern University in Winter Quarter, 2011. That means a staggering amount of prep work this fall, which sounds positively delicious. I can't wait to be teaching again, and it will give me a solid quarter to work on the novel uninterrupted by my own dithering.

As for poetry: I have had time to work on it precisely not at all. This means I'm getting that achy feeling in my head that I have when poems are dying to come out. I even dreamed poems the other night, and to my fury I had forgotten them when I woke up.

Put it on your calendars: in 2011, I'll be one of the speakers at the Women Healing Conference, put on by Hazelden in four cities over the course of the year. It's a two-day conference for women in addiction recovery and the recovery professions. Minneapolis, Chicago, Tampa, and Portland, OR. This will be an incredible event--when I know who the other speakers are, I'll post right away.

And with that, I must get back to the fearsome article. By the time I post next month, Sane will be out--pass the word, if you would. I'm forever grateful to all of you for all your letters, your well-wishes, and your remarkable support. I hope all are happy, healthy, and doing what they love.

Be well,
Marya

And summer came rushing in

webmaster — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:41:00 GMT

Hello all!

Apologies for the long silence--I don't quite know what happened to the last month or so--I've been on the road for most of it, and maybe a little spring-addled as well. Minneapolis was a profusion of tulips and lilacs, bursting with people who emerge pale and stir-crazy from their houses into the cool spring rains and sunshine to walk around the lakes and take in the rippling waters that just a little bit ago were a thick crust of ice. Denver was chilly but sunny, and the streets of downtown were crowded with people who looked like they had somewhere very important to be. Chicago was warm and green and I sat on the balcony of my exceedingly weird hotel looking out over the blooming trees. Columbus was rain and more rain, so the tulips were surreally bright in the gray haze. Portland, of course, poured, except for one glorious day, when the magnolia trees were heavy with blooms and I happened to be at a wedding lit up by 9,000 daffodils and my cousin, the glowing bride. The South Dakota fields were rich black and just starting to sprout tiny growing things.

But by last week, I was travel-weary and tired of airports and staying in a tiny town in a little motel on Highway 65, leaning my head on the window and watching the May rain and wondering if it would ever be summer after all, and if I would ever get home.

In fact, I did, and here I sit with snoozing dogs, and I actually unpacked the suitcases out of which I've been living for months, and now I have itchy feet, a phenomenon that strikes me whenever I've been traveling a long time. I get so used to being away that I start thinking of more places to go, and when summertime rushes in for real, as it did this week, I start plotting all the road trips I want to take and all the road trips I've ever taken in summer, criss-crossing the country and getting a sunburn on my left (driver's side) arm. So today I want to go to the desert, the coast of Maine, British Columbia, the north woods, and Savannah, Georgia. But I think in fact I will stay here in my pajamas and write a book instead.

The books go well. Sane comes out next month--spread the word, my friends--and I'm now well into the book on spirituality, which, frankly, is harder than it looked at first glance. It's not as if the subject is a little amorphous or anything, right? But I'm chipping away at it, and it's starting to look, act, and quack like a book, so I figure that's a good sign. I've been doing a good bit of research for the second half of the novel, which covers 1961-1971, and I keep being floored by how much there is to know and how strange a time it actually was. Capturing what I can of it in the novel is a challenge, and an exciting one, and, like most exciting challenges, sends me into fits of worry that I don't know what I'm doing and will never uncover this book after all. On my better days, I know I will. Writing a novel is a hell of a thing.

Chris Pureka--as you know, I'm totally fixated on her--has an excellent new album out. Give it a listen.

Someone asked on the discussion board what it was like to write Wasted. In a word, it was awful. For one thing, I had never written a book before, so I had no idea what I was doing. For another, it was very very very hard to put all that information about my deep dark stuff out there in public. It was not therapeutic. It was not cathartic. It was awful. But I'm glad I did it. Like any author, there are things I would change about all the books I've written, which sadly is not an option once they're out. But I think Wasted has been useful to people, and I'm very, very glad of that.

Lots of mail lately on Madness. Here's the thing: I am absolutely, constantly blown away by the strength of people to get through difficult, painful, confusing times in their lives, and to withstand illnesses and struggles that seem almost impossible to overcome. And you people who write to me tell me every day that you are overcoming these struggles, and are doing it with your sense of humor and a deep humanity intact. And you inspire me more than I can say.

And now it's time to go puddle about the Walker Art Center--come to Mpls and see it sometime--to get my brain stirred up and churning again. My very warmest wishes for a happy end-of-spring to all of you, and, as ever, you're on my mind.

Be well,
marya

April showers...

webmaster — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:45:00 GMT

Hello all!

Well, it's a gray day with a soft misty rain coming down. I had my doubts about spring this year. I was pretty well sure it wasn't coming. And I was almost certain my tulips wouldn't come up. But here they come, along with the iris, and some other blooming-type stuff I don't know the name of--just their leaves so far, but every day when I come out my front door they're a little higher, scatterings of them all through the garden, not counting the one tulip shoot that seems to have escaped the garden and is coming up in the lawn. Whatever. Spring's sprung.

This week is the AWP Writer's Conference in Denver--I expect some of you will be there for the festivities?--and I'm looking forward to it. My panel should be a blast--it's on the use of humor in writing about illness--headed up by Dr. Sandi Wisenberg of Northwestern University. Plus I get to stay in a hotel. I am such a fan of hotels. Here's hoping for a proper coffee maker in the room. And then, as many of you know, the DBSA 2010 conference is coming up at the end of the month. Here's hoping I come up with something intelligible to say. (I promise I will. Really.)

Many thanks to all who wrote with good birthday wishes! I'm a whopping thirty-six. Who saw that coming? Not I, my friends. I'm a little alarmed. I made a really silly crack the other day about how I never, in my worst eating disordered days, thought I'd wind up worrying instead about wrinkles. But lo! It has come to pass, and good Lord but I'm glad to be here.

Work muddles on apace. Spirituality book coming along, the novel in spurts and starts, a couple of new poems this month, and my column for a local magazine, all lots of fun and challenging enough to have me tearing my hair as usual. The release of Sane in June is creeping up quickly--will keep you posted on media and suchlike.

The passing of winter and my semi-alarming birthday have me thinking about the way time flurries by, and I'm doing all I can to be very still and aware and attentive to each day. There are so many beautiful days. There are days that are hard as hell, I'll grant you. A dear friend of mine recently passed away, and that was a heartbroken day if there ever was one. But he'd have us all out and about in the spring rain, celebrating April and tulips that escape their bounds and come springing up in the middle of the lawn. So I'll follow his lead and sing praises to whatever's listening.

Here's a passage from Rilke that's been on my mind lately.

Tell us, Poet, what it is you do? —I praise.
But the deadly and the monstrous,
How do you bear them, how do you accept them? —I praise.
But the nameless, the anonymous,
How do you, Poet, call upon it? —I praise.
What gives you the right to be true,
In every disguise and beneath every mask? —I praise.
And how is it that both calm and violent things,
Like star and storm, know you so well? —I praise.

And I'll leave you with that on this rainy spring day.

Peace,
Marya

Misty-foggy-almost-spring

webmaster — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:49:00 GMT

Hello all!

The world is damp with mist and melting snow. Every time I come up my front steps, I peer into my garden to see if there's anything coming up through the snow piles, but no luck yet--though I hear tell, from people who keep porch gardens, that the chamomile and leeks are making an appearance. In the windows of the Grand Cafe yesterday morning, great huge bunches of crocuses and daffodils caught the sunlight and lit the whole place in pastels. And today's that kind of foggy day that makes me want to curl up with the dachshunds and read a book--The Lacuna (Barbara Kingsolver) and The House of Tomorrow (by local Peter Bognanni) both come highly recommended, and if I was in the business of recommending how I spend my own day, I would recommend a long, long read.

But it just isn't that sort of day. I've got a column to write, and a chapter to begin in the new Hazelden book, and a lecture to prepare--this may not all happen today, I suppose, but a girl can dream.

Life this past month was most sluggish and slow. I had a case of the Februaries. You're familiar with these, I suspect? And I spent the better part of the month feeling like I was beating my head on my desk as if that might knock some useful thoughts out my ears. No luck, though. I think I got a thing or two done--well, I know I did, because there are things on my desk that weren't there before--but it was not one of those months where I go sailing peacefully through words. Words defied me entirely. Also, I spent the better portion of the month in a pair of ratty sweatpants. Hence, last night, when I had to go to an Oscars Party (??), getting into some fancy getup felt like putting on someone else's shoes. But I did it. And my friends, the party was a terrific bore. It occurred to me too late that I do not really like the Oscars, and a friend had reminded me the day before that I had no idea what was up for a single award. True fact. I had no business being there, so I went traipsing home to bed & a book.

On a completely different note, I had the amazing opportunity to give a talk at a women's prison a few weeks ago. It was incredible. The women had boatloads of questions and comments on everything from racial imbalance in access to treatment, to whether meds were really necessary for mental illness, to which character I most identified with in Center of Winter--they were smart, funny, and beyond inspiring. I may get the wonderful chance to be helping out with a book club there soon, and if I do get to, I will count myself beyond lucky.

Those of you who have interest--are you registered for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) national convention this year? If not, get to it! I want to meet you! And you'll get the chance to hear Kay Redfield Jameson as well--do not miss!

Other upcomings: For Indiana residents, I'll be speaking at the NAMI Indiana state conference this fall (October 9). And for Canada folks--or folks who want to GO to Canada--I'll be speaking in Calgary on October 6, at the Organization for Bipolar and Affective Disorders. Also speaking at that event will be Andy Behrman, author of Electroboy. All of these should be great events.

Mist is clinging to my window screen, and I hold out hope that soon the rains will come and wash this snow away in one great whoosh. March is finally here, the Februaries have lifted, and though it's gray and dreary out, I'm almost certain my garden is under those snow piles, stirring and unfolding and getting ready to burst through. Happy almost-spring to all of you!

Be well,
Marya

Discussion board & blog

webmaster — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:43:00 GMT

Hey everyone,

I'm noticing the discussion board is pretty dead these days, and people are saying they wish it would perk up. A couple of things:

This board is your board. You can use it as you see fit. I know that it goes through periods where people are posting frequently and offering each other a lot of support, and I think that's fantastic. So--if you want to make that happen again, it's up to you to start those conversations again.

People sometimes complain that I'm not on there very often, and that's true. I also only blog once a month or so. I have to gently remind folks that this is really just an author site, and I'm just an author. I'm not a mental health professional of any kind. Many of the conversations that get going on the board are looking for advice that I'm not in a position to give.

And guys, I'm really busy with my current work. I can't stay focused on the subjects raised in Wasted and Madness forever; I have to keep going with my writing.

What I can offer is simply to do my best to keep up with the mail I get from my wonderful readers. If you do want to get in touch with me, please email, and I'll get back to you as fast as I can.

As for the board--if you do want to keep using it for support and conversation, and I think that's great, then by all means start some new discussions.

Be well,
Marya

Memoir survey opportunity

webmaster — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:54:00 GMT

For those of you who have read Wasted, here's an opportunity to participate in an interesting survey being done on why people read eating disorder memoirs:

http://camsocialscience.qualtrics.com//SE?SID=SV_77pUhoMzXem3n5W&SVID=Prod

Snowy coffee shop day

webmaster — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:19:00 GMT

Hello!

At any given time, the dozens? hundreds? of coffee shops in my part of the world are packed with people who sit huddled over laptops and notebooks and books and coffee, or having hushed and apparently very important conversations involving much gesturing, and I take my place among them and mostly eavesdrop and spy. No, I don't really. But the people-watching here is really particularly good, and on this snowy February day it almost seems like a person could make it through the long last months of winter simply by hiding in a coffee shop and letting the waves of chatter and laughter carry one directly over February and March and straight into April, when the tulips bloom.

Today, the coffee shop finds me alternately working on and despairing over the book on spirituality. My agent once informed me that I actually hate writing. She is not entirely wrong. As Mark Twain said, "I do not like to write. I like to have written." And so today, when I'm still at the confuddled point of the process where I'm figuring out such scintillating tidbits as structure and thesis and through line, I think it's entirely reasonable to alternate between working and despair. The only fun part of writing is when you stop thinking about the fact that you're writing, and just bloody write. But I am not the only writer I know who spends an insufferable amount of time trying to figure out what I'm doing rather than simply doing it. So to I am mostly refilling my coffee cup, chewing my pen, scribbling things which make sense until I re-read them, and putting my head on the table in hopes of a quick nap.

A friend of mine told me the other day she sometimes dreams whole poems. I was very jealous. Sometimes I dream I have figured out some particularly knotted-up part of a piece or a plot or whatever, and wake up much relieved, and then find I have not figured it out after all, and am very cross. I want to dream whole poems. In fact, right now I'm wishing I could dream whole books, and avoid this writing business altogether.

Apropos of nothing--anybody know the band Semisonic? Marvelous band, and their lead singer, Dan Wilson, lives around here and frequents this coffee shop and always looks very cheerful and disheveled.

February is a very, very, very long month in the north. That it is only February 2 is somewhat discouraging. But--as I have said in previous blogs--I am on a mission to live each day fully, rather than trying to rush past it into the next and the next and the next, and therefore this February 2 will do just fine, regardless of the wretched slush. This year is off to a pretty wonderful start. I have a new magazine column that's lots of fun, a long theater piece came out last month, the spirituality book goes well, and I'm noodling my way through the novel. Poetry continues apace, going well, I think, but one can never tell, and it might all be perfectly awful. In any case, a few new pieces coming out in journals soon. Reading A.S. Byatt's fantastic new tome The Children's Book, which will take me the next seven years or so, and Jim Harrison's The Farmer's Daughter. Harrison is one of the midwesterny sorts of fellows, and his writing is so precise and spare and gloriously imagistic it just comes alive as you read. Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road was highly silly and a jolly read.

A few notes of interest: I'll be doing one of the keynotes at the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance's annual conference, which will be held April 30-May 2 just outside of Chicago. Also speaking will be the fantastic Kay Redfield Jameson, author of many books, including An Unquiet Mind. For more information, go to www.dbsalliance.org. It would be great to see you there. (Also, there will be a podcast interview with me online sometime in late February--go to the website to check the date.)

Also--for Wasted readers, please see the next blog entry for an opportunity to participate in a really interesting survey about why and how people read memoirs on eating disorders.

And now it's back to work with me. Thanks so much to all for all the mail recently--I'm scrambling to get back to you as fast as I can!

Here's to a happy February for you all!

Peace,
Marya

Winter hello

webmaster — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:41:00 GMT

Greetings to all!

From where I sit, the world's all white--white snow ground, white sky, white plumes of smoke from the chimneys on the white rooftops. It's really quite Norman Rockwell, or maybe more Robert Frost--it's lovely in any case, and a good day to catch up on this badly-belated, and sadly brief, blog.

The winter rushed in here all of a sudden one day a few weeks ago, almost overnight, and now it's teeth-chatteringly cold and very beautiful. Everyone ran inside and curled up in a blanket, or at least wished they could. I've been doing as much of that as I can, and since I'm in the research process for two new books, I can do it a fair amount--it's possible to research wrapped in a blanket, as long as one doesn't take a small nap--which is lucky indeed.

Can't quite believe a new year is upon us. Something about the year itself--2010--has me thinking a decade back, to the turn of the century (!) and how much has changed since then, in both the world at large and in my tiny life and heart and mind. We are such transformative creatures, no? We morph and change so profoundly over time, and while that's a little unsettling at times, it is also how we become--I think--who we're supposed to be. In any case, the year's end finds me thoughtful, grateful, glad at what the year just past has both brought and taken with it, and looking hugely forward to what is coming down the road this year about to begin.

Am reading New American Poets, Poets of the New Century, and God in All Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Spiritual Writing, the last of which is massive and printed in infinitesimal type but is quite wonderful nevertheless. All three of these collections are so packed with good material I frankly don't want to do anything but read them, and will be very bereft when they're done.

The research goes well, and on other fronts, I've just finished the first of two books for Hazelden Publishers. Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps will be released in May. Many of you have written to talk to me about your own stories of addiction and mental health, and I hope you'll enjoy this new book. It's very much a guide through the Twelve Steps--isn't a memoir, and isn't intended to tell a story--it's intended as a companion to recovery from addiction. Those of you who know people who might be interested in the subject, please spread the word. I'm very grateful to all of you for all the support you give!

Many thanks, also, for the flurry of letters--I so appreciate all of you who take the time to write and let me know bits of your stories and your thoughts. I know it takes me a while to get back to you, but I'll keep at it.

My warmest wishes to you in this season of dormancy and renewing. Happy New Year!

Peace,
Marya

Prose poems and the yellow leaves

webmaster — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:38:00 GMT

Greetings from the north!

A most satisfactory feeling, when you kick out a draft of a new poem. A prose poem, this time--I'm a bit addicted to the form--have you read Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (ed. David Lehman)? I just encountered it this weekend, and there's stuff in there like you wouldn't believe. Topping the list are the Mark Strand entries, one of which is a sestina. Ever tried a sestina? Beastly hard, those, and I don't think I could write one if my life depended on it, but I intend to try soon.

The yellow leaves are nearly glowing in the gray day. I drove through South Dakota yesterday, endless cornfields in every direction, and the sparse stands of trees along the road were mostly bare. It stays dark late these late-fall mornings, and it will be winter soon. I'm working on the spirituality book, a good thing for the long winter ahead. Articulating a subject like this is most confounding, but the effort sharpens the brain.

Note: if you have not heard singer/songwriter Chris Pureka, give her a listen. I'm completely consumed by her two albums. They are perfect driving music, and her voice is a smokey drawly lovely thing.

I'm looking forward to seeing those of you who will attend the New Paltz, NY lecture on the 4th and the Skaneateles, NY reading on the 5th. This fall has been a mad dash of lectures, and it's delightful to get a chance to meet readers. As many of you are quite aware, writing is a pretty solitary business, and being out in the world is essential from time to time. I am always having a debate with a poet friend of mind about whether the generative, creative energy one feels and uses to work finds its source in the self or in relationship with others; I'm of the latter bent, and find the people around me to be a constant wellspring of new ways of seeing and being in the world. So a chance to interact with people at lectures and readings is a chance to wake up and see new things, and I'm looking forward to New York.

The year is winding down, and it's been quite something. It seems essential to me that I keep time from passing too quickly. I can't speak for anyone, really, but it seems to me we spend an awful lot of time letting time whip past without really living. Too much effort spent on getting somewhere and not enough on being in a place or a day or a moment. So I am on a mission to spend the next year savoring. There is so much to savor, so much to love about being alive. As I write this spirituality book, I'm casting about for words that describe the sense of awe we tend to forget we have. But there are no words, I think, and I'll just have to mumble and sing.

Have a lovely end of autumn and beginning of winter!
Peace,
Marya

September afternoon

webmaster — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:25:00 GMT

Hello, all!

Up at the lake, out on the porch, noodling around with the last chapter of a book...a fine Sunday in September, with big white billowing clouds that seem to hold totally still in the sky. The leaves are just beginning to scatter on the still-green lawn, and the wax begonias (red and pink and white) are starting to drop their petals -- I read this line a few hours ago: "When I bent to touch one, the cool, heavy petals fell to the ground like swooning birds." (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World--loaned to me by my father, insatiable reader of good books and adviser in same, as well as all other things.) Also in this book (which I was reading as the sun came up through a thick, rose-colored, motionless mist over the lake): "According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, 'Grow, grow.'"

Summer seems to be laying its head on the pillow, sighing, and slowly drifting off to sleep. (Which reminds me of the line "All endings seem to whisper, then lie down" -- the source of which of course I have forgotten, and now it will drive me nuts.) Fall--my favorite season--is almost here, and will whip through this corner of the world, gloriously arrayed in red and orange and gold, before it is ushered out in a rush one day by winter wind. The days are getting shorter. I wake early (has anyone read Mary Oliver's collection Why I Wake Early ? I wish I had it on hand--I would tell you what reason she gives), and sit for hours in a lingering night. It's when I write. Well, I write all day, in fits and starts, but those long dark morning hours are when the words seem to be most easily found.

There are writers, I've read of them, who say they write only two hours a day, or three or so, and that's that. Then they read, or walk, or write letters. I have decided these things--reading, walking, and the writing of letters--are possibly the things most nourishing to actually writing poetry or plays or prose. When people ask me how to learn to write, I tell them to read. Now I will add that they should walk, and write letters as well. Has anyone ever walked a labyrinth? I hear it's extremely peaceful. In truth, I suspect I would be just as happy walking down a street in Manhattan; I find it very meditative. Point being: motion seems to still the mind, and when the mind is still, maybe it's possible to reach a little deeper in it, and find language that's fresher and newer and more precise. But that's just a theory. And writing letters is an art that's much overlooked these days. I have complained of this here before. The epistolary form is dying out. We shouldn't let it--historically, it's our best record of intellects at work and love affairs in process and the spirit in its search. Journals and diaries aren't half as telling, I don't think. Because when we write for someone else, we work harder to express and to connect. God knows I hope my journals are burned en masse when I die--they're a wretched bore.

These days I'm buried in two sorts of books: those on spiritual matters, and collections of poetry by women. The former I am reading in preparation to write the second book of two for Hazelden Publishers, which is on spirituality for the non-believer. If anyone has suggestions for books or essays or poems that might be good food for thought on this subject, please bombard me. The latter I am reading because I have a new idea, which I will discuss when it's more than a fairly nascent inarticulate notion in my head. But between these two bodies of literature, I feel like I could do nothing but read all the time, and life would be complete. (Perhaps I would also write letters, and walk.) I wrote a friend asking for names of women poets; she obliged me with an astonishingly long list, in alphabetical order, no less, and I am reminded of how little I know, and how delightfully much there is still to read. Those of you who read poetry--who are your favorite women poets? What do they do for you, why do you read them, what makes their work work? More on all this to come.

This always happens in fall--I'm itching to travel. I mentioned upcoming locations in my last blog (Boston, Columbus, Florida, New Paltz, NY), but what I really want to do is get in my car and head out to the South Dakota Badlands. The sky there is like nothing you've ever seen. Instead, I'll hotel-hop my way from here until Thanksgiving, and then finally will get to work on the novel for a nice long spell of uninterrupted time. And then snow and more snow...

Many of you are back to school now--read much and write well--and for those of you who've long since left school behind, I say the same thing: read much, write well. And, to all, much peace on this end-of-summer day.

m

August already!

webmaster — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:40:00 GMT

My lord, I can't believe it's a month and a half gone by since I last posted. As usual, summer seems to be sailing past me while I scramble to keep up. The days have passed so quickly I'm not even sure what's happened--the only thing I'm quite clear on is that the Minnesota Fringe Festival just wrapped up on Sunday night. I spent ten days racing around town with all the other theater fanatics, going from show to show to show, trying to drink it all in and becoming entirely theater-glutted and dizzy with the quantity of ideas, images, good shows and bad shows, conversations, debates, and all the attendant Fringe matter. It was a fine time. I was blogging daily on www.MinnesotaPlaylist.com, and if you're interested in some mutterings on theater, art, and things related, you can read my blog there. In any case, as always happens after a long spell of ridiculously intense focus on/immersion in a single thing, I've emerged a little disoriented. I was so saturated in theater (seeing it, talking about it, writing about it, thinking about it) that I forgot what regular life was like. But here it is, being its usual regular self, and I'm back to work on my usual regular things.

I also can't believe summer's coming to an end. August is stormy and richly green in the north, and the rain has my garden gloating in its fullness. But soonish the trees will start shaking out their hair and strewing leaves all over the streets, and fall will arrive. I'm not quite ready yet. The last of summer and all of fall hold a whole lot of work for me. I'm wrapping up the first of the Hazelden books, writing and giving a passel of lectures, then returning to work on the novel and the poems. Fall and winter are good work spells around here--you sort of hunker down as the weather turns cold, put on a sweater, and focus your attention a little more effectively. I'm looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to the smell of woodsmoke and apple orchards and to long drives to see the leaves, and to the first snows...but good grief, not quite yet.

*

Events upcoming...

Boston residents: I'm lucky enough to be giving the keynote at a fundraising dinner on September 22 for a wonderful organization called On the Rise (www.ontherise.org), which provides support to homeless women and women in crisis. I'm thrilled to be a part of this event, and if you live in those parts, I encourage you to get involved with this organization. They do remarkable work, and they could use your support.

Columbus, Ohio residents: The next day, I'm giving a talk at a fundraiser for an amazing new project called Melissa's House (www.melissasouse.org). Melissa's House is in the development stage of creating a facility for adults with severe and persistent mental illness--but not your ordinary facility. This will be a home-like setting that will foster independence and relationship-building. Read Melissa's Story on their website, and see if there's a way you can get involved.

New York residents: If you feel like a road trip, I'll be speaking on the topic of eating disorders at SUNY-New Paltz on November 4. I get an awful lot of mail from those parts asking me if I've got anything scheduled nearby--now I do. I'll also be reading at an independent bookstore in Skanekteles, NY the next evening. Details to follow.

*

I think I just posted this prematurely by accident... oops. In any case, that's all the news I've got at the moment--will have more soon. Hope all of you are having a wonderful summer, and gearing up for a splendid fall.

Peace,
M

Lush green world!

webmaster — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:55:00 GMT

Hello all!

The end of June here is always a sea of green. My office is up in the treetops (it is not, however, a treehouse, though I would like that), and there trees are heavy with leaves in all directions. It's a bit of a challenge to work, when what I want to do is laze about on the porch and listen to the birds all summer long and read books and do nothing whatsoever else. Books! I just finished Best American Poetry 2008 (I know, I'm a little behind), and LOVED IT. There is some absolutely divine stuff in there this year, which is a great comfort, because I absolutely hated last year's volume. Also reading Louise Erdrich's newest book, A Plague of Doves, which is positively delicious. If I could, I'd do nothing but read it all day long. I have become deeply lazy of late, and it's helping nothing at all. But so it goes.

Work goes on at a bit of a mad pace, laziness or not. I'm trying to wrap a finished draft of the 1st 100 pages of the new novel by August 1, and am having periodic annoying crises of faith about the thing, which are most interruptive and unhelpful and aggravating. I keep muttering E.L. Doctorow's very comforting quote: "Writing is like driving through the fog at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." I can seriously only see as far as the headlights on this thing, but am hoping to hell I'm actually making the trip. Also at work on the first of the two books I'm writing for Hazelden, which is great fun. And I am being harassed by four poems. It's good there's four of them, at least; this way, when one bothers me too severely I can switch over to the next, and in this fashion I intend to finish them all. At this point, it's beginning to look like an actual manuscript of poetry is taking shape. Lordy, it's only taken me fifteen years. Good grief.

Up next: I'm covering the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Do you have Fringe Festivals where you are? I know there's a great one in New York, and another fabulous one in Scotland--where else? The Fringe is a madcap 10 days of new theater that run from 10 a.m. to midnight, one after another, all over the city. The serious Fringe goers take their vacation that week, and spend all their time zipping from one show to the next, trying to hit some five shows a day, which is a major undertaking, and a little hard on the brain, but extremely fun all around. So this year I'll be one of them, and will be posting blogs on the whole experience as I go. I cannot WAIT. Some years ago, the Jfeffrey and I hosted an insane Fringe party on closing night. I think we managed to pack about 250 people into every room of our house, the yard, the deck, and the lawn, and we're thinking of doing it again, because we are crazy.

Lately I'm thinking a lot about memory. It keeps appearing as a theme in my poems, and on this windy warm morning I'm thinking about those luscious summer days I spent as a kid by the lake at my grandmother's house. Living in a bathing suit and covered head to toe in sand and falling into dead-sleep naps in the afternoon while the curtains lifted and fell on the breeze. Lying on my belly on the living room floor, reading book after book that I'd lugged home from the public library. Those were summers I fell in love with Joan Didion and C.S. Lewis--a curious pair--and wound up with a face-print of the green and blue shag rug on my cheek. Summer was a much slower time back then--it seemed to go completely still, while the heat grew oppressive and time didn't maybe pass at all. Nowadays, I'm sharply aware of how quickly summer passes in these parts--a month already gone, and me still racing to keep up with the work I need to get done. Every summer I swear I'll take next summer off, and maybe some summer I will, and then I'll go up to my grandmother's house and lie face-down on the floor and read Joan Didion all over again.

So here's hoping some of you at least can let time slow down these summer days, and savor each one. Keep body and soul and mind healthy, all of you, and write and write and write some more...

Peace,
Marya

Last of the lilacs

webmaster — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:06:00 GMT

And it is finally here! Happy June 1, and happy summer to all. The lilacs, which bloom for about ten minutes in May, bloomed wildly all over the city--the city was sort of drunk on the purple-sweet smell of them--have wrapped up their show, and now it is green and more green everywhere. I swear the trees in these parts have more leaves, and arch over the streets to create a semi-tropical canopy through which sunlight makes its way and dapples the tables at the sidewalk cafes. Which is where I can mostly be found, trying to organize my wits into working order. They work well enough, my wits, but summer seems like the sort of time one ought to do like the sensible citizens of Minneapolis do, and grab a blanket and a book and sprawl out on the grass by the lakes. But I persevere, and work proceeds. I'm about halfway through the draft of the first book I'm writing for Hazelden Publishers, and I'm pleased with the progress. I'm sailing along on the novel, and find myself immersed in World War II and the lives of my characters during those years--I dream about them, for heaven's sakes, and wake up and scribble out whatever sense can be made of the dreams. I have a couple of new poems in the works--I work on poetry slowly, and have only two new ones to show for May, and I'm much looking forward to the time when I can focus more attention on them and see what there is to see. I am always bowled over by my madly productive poet friend Amanda, who is crabby if she doesn't kick out four new drafts a week -- a week! -- and I sigh and accept my plodding rate of poetic production. Meanwhile, I'm stewing up an idea for a new book. But no reports on that till it's properly stewed. Will report soon enough.

As for the issue of orchids: As previously reported, the winter orchid died, and I was most unthrilled. However, I got a new phaleonopsis, bright pink and full of blooms, for my birthday. This time I put it in the dining room, which gets only green filtered light, as the windows are thickly covered with ivy--it's warm enough in there but not too warm, and dark enough but not too dark, and the orchid seems to be happy as can be. Dammit, I WILL grow orchids!

I forgot to thank everyone for their kind birthday wishes in April! So I thank you now, very much. The original plan was that, because I was feeling terribly sober and mature upon turning 35, I was going to stop dying my hair and let it all go gray. The Jeffrey bet me I wouldn't last a year. I fact, I lasted a month. It is now, once again, brown, rather than frizzily brown-and-gray. I will try again next year. These are important matters, I know. I have to say, it's sort of hilarious to me that--for those of you who've read Wasted--after all those years uselessly and insanely worrying about my weight, I failed to realize that eventually I would start worrying about looking old. And in truth, my friends, it is a much more entertaining thing to worry about! Besides, I sort of like the process. My laugh lines are proof positive that I laugh all the time. Screw Botox.

Meanwhile, now that summer has come rushing into the city, everyone goes meandering around the lakes all day long. If you want to see your friends, you have to walk around a lake with them. Today I am walking with Megan. Megan has a fine dog named Happy. Happy is a Javanese--white, fluffy, cheerful. And Happy will not under any circumstances be walked. She will run wildly around her great big yard, sure, but when Megan tries to walk her, Happy sits down and will not be moved for treats nor love nor money. So Megan bought her a stroller. Now we stroll Happy around the lake. People stare. We don't mind. The dog enjoys herself, so who cares?

So, I've got the next three months of walks around the lakes, trips up north, long bike rides, and grilled things (I do not, myself, grill; The Jeffrey grills) in which to kick out a couple of big projects. Here's hoping I can pull it off.

For those of you who are poetry and short fiction fans, I've got a couple of pieces up this month on the really neat new online journal Slush Pile (find it at SlushPileMag.com). Hope you enjoy!

Peace, and happy June,
M

Finally spring! (mini-blog)

webmaster — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:39:00 GMT

Spring has taken its bloody time getting here--and now the leaves are nudging their way out of the branches with interminable slowness--but they're making headway, and soon the lilac tree in front of the house will bloom. There's very little to report, as I'm mostly addled with the sunshine, as are most Minnesotans this time of year. I've been hard at work on the novel, and am taking a break today to work on an essay for MinnesotaPlaylist.com, an excellent theater site where I am lucky enough to publish a piece now and then. A few new pieces out here and there lately and upcoming--when they go online, I'll post their whereabouts.

Life lately has been simple and slow. I feel a little like a caterpillar trying to kick and punch its way out of a cocoon. Winter can have that effect, and when it finally breaks it's a little disorienting. There's a huge amount of work to be done over the summer, and long bike rides to take, and some hikes planned, and many walks around the lakes, but most of all just sitting back and drinking in the long sunlit days.

I hope spring has arrived with its usual aplomb wherever you are, and I'll write a proper blog soon.

Note to Minnesota readers: I'm reading on May 14, 7pm, Barnes & Noble, Galleria, Edina. Can't wait to see you there!

Coffee shop, redux

webmaster — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

So at this point I've pretty much moved into a coffee shop. A couple of them, actually. I rotate. And so, it seems, does the entire populace of Minneapolis. We've all crawled out from under winter, pale and blinking, and are crowding into the coffee shops for warmth. Today the sky spat down what's euphemistically called a "wintery mix." This means it's "raining slush." Everyone looks a little cross. Meanwhile, up in Fargo, the Red River--which, incidentally, runs south to north, for whatever reason--has risen way over its banks and is flooding the town, while thousands of volunteers stay up 24-7 sandbagging and building levees to try to prevent any further damage. It's a nightmare up there, by all reports. Thus, I am thankful all we've got down here is a "wintery mix."

Oof. I'm wiped out. It's been a mad, mad couple of work weeks, and at this point pretty much all that's left in my head is static. I wrapped up a major section of the novel, and that's now in editing; wrote and edited a piece for the Boston Globe, which runs next Sunday (April 5) in the Ideas Section; worked on a couple of chapters of another book I've got underway; gave three lectures; and so what happens, when I'm working like this, is that I start dreaming I'm writing. I go to sleep, and keep right on working. Sometimes (rarely) this results in actual work getting done in my sleep--I wake up, and there it is, some new thing. But most of the time, it's just a frantic dream scribbling. So frustrating. If I could sort out how to actually write in my sleep, I'd be thrilled. But I'm taking a real live vacation soon: a week from now, I'll be in New York with the infamous Lora, banging around town, haunting yet more coffee shops and probably talking too loud. I can't wait.

Oh! Madness comes out in paperback tomorrow. Officially. The cover is wonderful. Go check it out in stores or online, and spread the word!

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me two sonnets, unrhymed, and it's got me thinking about sonnets. Do you guys ever write or read the very formal stuff? I have a certain fondness for it. If I wasn't at a coffee shop right now, I'd post a favorite sonnet. But I am at said coffee shop, so I'm leaving it to you: what's your favorite sonnet, or other formal poem? Go to!

The other thing on my mind is community. How essential it is to our health and wellness, and how when we lack it we lack something big in our lives. What do you guys do for community? Who are your people? How do you keep yourself well in this way?

And with that, I've got to get back to a chapter. Thanks to all for the many wonderful letters recently--you guys warm my heart more than you know. I'm grateful to all of you.

Be well!
Marya

Spring or NOT Spring?

webmaster — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:15:00 GMT

A sunny gorgeous warm weekend, coffee shops filled with blinding rays through the windows and squinting disheveled people over their newspapers and coffee and bagel and chattering in pairs or groups--the springness of it having gotten into everyone--and then this morning, 5 a.m., i set out for yoga sock-less and my windshield was covered with frost. I was most cross. Yoga did much to improve my mood, and now it's at least not fifteen degrees below zero. Just gray. Blech. The minute I got home from Florida, I wanted to turn around and get back on the plane and return until Minnesota properly agrees to be spring. My friend in Berkeley, California claims her grape hyacinths are blooming. I am dying of jealousy. I would grow them myself if I did not notoriously kill plants. I wish I were a gardener. But I seriously am not. Anyway, anyway...

I'm cheerfully drowning in work. Good work makes one feel a little better about the drowning than unpleasant work, and all this is good. I'm working away on the novel--getting close to enough pages to present it to my agent--and just had an editorial meeting with the infamous Megan to work on edits yesterday afternoon (back when it was spring). Megan is setting out on a new painting project, to my delight. Excited about that. And am plunking away on the first chapter of the first book of two I'm writing for Hazelden Books. That's a project close to my heart, and it's good to be working on it. Wrapped up that legal article, which was absurdly fun--will post when it comes out in June--and just did a little article for another magazine on Mother's Day--the assignment was "give us 700 words on your relationship with your mother"--ha! YOU try fitting that particular relationship into 700 words! But I managed something, and will post that in May. And up this week is a piece I'll be doing for the Boston Globe. That one will be a long process of working back and forth with the editor to shape it into the kind of thing that's right for the section (the Ideas Section, if you're familiar with it), and I'm greatly looking forward to that. So--with the above various projects underway--I'm teetering on the edge of not-quite-stressed-yet-but-almost, and will be heading out to the Oregon coast in April to wrap up several in one fell swoop. Can't wait to be out in the Pacific Northwest, with the misty walks on the beach. Something to be said for spells of solitude with work. They make the return to one's wonderful crowd all the more delightful. And I do have such a delightful crowd.

Interestingly, am giving a talk tonight on mental illness and spirituality. Might make for an interesting thread on the discussion board. Anyone want to take it up?

Neat news--long shots both, but I'm a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Bush Foundation Award. Will find out in April. ot holding my breath, but tickled enough just to be a finalist. Feels pretty darn good.

So I'm off to work on the Globe article. Will keep you posted on the progression of all of the above. And will let you know if the one bird who sings in the bare-branched tree outside my window is joined by either other birds or, let us hope, some leaves.

Peace,
m

Lazy Florida day

webmaster — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:34:00 GMT

Oh, ok. It's not that lazy. But it is a Florida day. We're borrowing someone's lovely house, and have escaped the positively wretched Minnesota-ness of Minnesota in February, and instead are gazing out at the blue-green Gulf and listening to the breeze through the palm trees. And ogling the boats that come and go in the marina. Jeff is hatching plots to sail the world. As for me, I'm content to amble around in my flipflops and drift in the pool every twenty minutes. You people who live in southern climates have a good thing going, let me tell you.

Like I said, not so lazy, just lovely--work has followed me here, like it does when you work for yourself. Wherever you go, there it is. Much afoot with work these days. I'm whaling away on the novel, for starters, and that's moving forward by leaps and bounds. I just got a two-book deal with Hazelden Books for a couple of recovery-related books that I'm excited about, and I'm getting to work on the first of those. I'll be teaching at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, MN, this fall, and I just can't wait. Just for fun, I'm a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award for Madness. And--at last!--I finished that law article that's been on my desk for months. It'll be published in July, and I'll post a link then.

The paperback of Madness comes out pretty quick--April somethingth. The cover is completely killer. I will post more about publicity stuff in the next couple of weeks as I learn of it.

Too much sunshine has made me freckled and a little dazed. Sorry to post so briefly--promise my next post, which will be from the wilds of a never-ending Minnesota winter, will be better!

Hope all's well with all of you. Your letters continue to make my day, and I'm doing my best to get back to you as soon as I can.

Peace,
M