Day Four: 7,175

Fourth day of Nano and I'm just simmering along at just above the daily minimums. My total is 7,175 of Rosalita, my urban paranormal YA novel.

I have a lot of paid work right now, which is tough because I have trouble concentrating on any of it fully, or Nano, or anything really. I just feel inefficient.

Reading Update:

22. Golden Fool, Robin Hobb
21.Black, White and Dead All Over, John Darden
20-22 Liveship Trilogy: Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
18-19 Forest Mage & Renegade's Magic, Robin Hobb
17. Shaman's Crossing, Robin Hobb
16. The Book of Murder, Guillermo Martinez
15. The Likeness, Tana French
14. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
13. Tales of Old Whitehaven, Leigh Anne McCorkle
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
11. In the Woods, Tana French
10. Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kaye (should have been published as YA)
9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
46-47 Fool's Errand, Fool's Fate, Robin Hobb
45. The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7.

What a Writer Is Up Against

This is a brilliant assessment of the publishing industry today. The most chilling to me is number 4: if you are lucky enough to hit the target: "the corporation will see a spike in your profit and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year."

The other chilling thing is that my husband, one of the readers Mr. Menaker prizes the most--the one who buys hard-cover literary novels when they first come out, before they've won the Booker or the National Book Award--asked for a Kindle. I didn't know what to say. But I said a lot anyway. Or maybe I didn't. I think I held up a book, ran my finger along its cover, opened it, sniffed the glue wafting up from its sturdy spine. He said, "I know, but I can buy a new book for $9."

And as a writer who has been pursuing publication for so damned long, these are hard things to hear, although I have heard them before and before and all the time. But but but

I write to keep my soul alive, and hope springs eternal.

Female Archetypes: The Divine Feminine

I am puzzling over female archetypes again in preparing for Nano. My WIP has mythic elements and I've been doing research, reading parts of The White Goddess, The Golden Bough, and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I am troubled that female archetypes, and the feminine spiritual journey, are almost universally defined by their relationship to men, or male gods.

Robert Graves defines the elemental feminine archetype in The White Goddess as the three-faced female principle--lover, mother, crone. He describes the great war between matriarchal earth goddess religions and the patriarchal religions that won the war and have ever since stamped down any reemergence of raw feminine power.

This strikes an elemental chord in my soul. When the hero begins his journey it has absolutely no reference to the feminine. He goes on a spiritual journey to save the world. There is no equivalent heroic female quest.

As a writer I'm looking for those stories of the feminine that have the mythic power of the hero's journey that George Lucas tapped in Star Wars.

Reading Robin Hobb recently I can see how she's drawing on mythic female archetypes, as have other fantasy writers with female warriors, like Elizabeth Moon or Robin McKinley, or writers like Patricia McKillip or Gregory Maguire, who have been retelling the great fairy tales--like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Snow White.

Amongst the gooey new age-y drivel online about wolves and Lemuria, there is some marginally useful stuff for writers beyond Freud and Jung and the Myers-Briggs test. For example, this listing of male and female archetypes. In 2000 I went to the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs and the romance writers there had a similar list to the third one here. The one that has stuck with me ever since was "The Plucky Kid," or I think the Colorado group may have called her "The Buddy," the character played by Terri Garr or Jean Arthur, "come on, you can do it!" But who is she buddy to, who is she encouraging?

Thelma and Louise was so powerful because this was a female buddy movie. But once again, see, they launched their journey because of an attempt by the male to subjugate and dominate the feminine. Their journey ended with their own self-destruction. There was only one way out of the labyrinth and that was to jump off the mountain. They refused to submit to the masculine construct.

Like Anna Karenina who struggled for self-actualization and despaired. In fact, all those great 19th century novelists saw woman's predicament clearly. They brought their women to full, rounded, passionate and thoughtful life but could not bring them safely out of the labyrinth.

Or Fried Green Tomatoes, two women who love each other and protect each other and try to live independent fulfilled lives without the constant threat of men, in this case by quietly eliminating the male threat.

When a woman tries to escape, she cannot shake her male-referenced plight until she becomes the crone, the wise woman, the repository of tribal knowledge, like Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes, beyond the lure and trap of sexuality. Or unless she bears a sickle and spills the bull's blood to make the earth flower, as Mary Stuart Masterson did as Izzy.

My friend and writing partner Susan and I worked with the Celtic selkie myth in our screenplay, Never Touched Her. The selkie is a shape-changing seal, who comes out of the ocean one night to sit on the rocks and change to a woman. A fisherman sees her and steals her skin, so that she cannot change back to a seal and return to the sea. She goes to his home, keeps his house, bears his children, until one night she finds her skin, and without a backward glance, leaves his house, abandons her children and returns to the sea, like Ibsen's A Doll's House. Another powerful example of the universality of myth that Campbell, Graves, and Frazer all elucidate.

The Greek goddesses, like the gods, were jealous, lustful, vengeful, generous at times, fickle. Artemis is a nice archetype, the huntress, the virgin, although of course the male is always hunting her, tempting, trapping, her with silver apples. It's interesting that Athena, wisdom, is a goddess, not a god, and not yet a crone. The Greek gods certainly think with their manhood for the most part. Aphrodite, of course, love, sex, beauty, fertility. Persephone, the embodiment of the rape and captivity of the female principle. Demeter, earth goddess. I am just rambling now.

I just googled female archetypes images. Pretty interesting. Marilyn Monroe, another Anna Karenina. A sexy nurse. A girl sucking a candy.

This anime one is the waif as white goddess perhaps? Anime in general seems turned on by waifs with super powers. In fact, what about female superheroes, like Storm? The White Goddess for sure.

Oooh, check it out. Sigorney Weaver in Alien. Angry mothers in a fight to the death. I love it! Now that's what I've been looking for!



This divine feminine principle is the mythic essence of ardent female friendship. And every actualized thoughtful woman I know attests to the power of those friendships. Like The Four of Us, best friends from college--Susan, Eva, Ginny and me. Or the passionate friendship of the women who went to Camp Miramichee as girls, where we learned to succeed or fail on our own merits and with our own strength and wits without any reference to men whatsoever.

Lionesses hunt while the male lions lie around and roar occasionally, when they're not eating their rivals' cubs. We should all tap our inner lioness and come roaring our of the dark night of the soul, ready to hunt.

Reading Update:

20-22 Liveship Trilogy: Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
18-19 Forest Mage & Renegade's Magic, Robin Hobb
17. Shaman's Crossing, Robin Hobb
16. The Book of Murder, Guillermo Martinez
15. The Likeness, Tana French
14. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
13. Tales of Old Whitehaven, Leigh Anne McCorkle
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
11. In the Woods, Tana French
10. Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kaye (should have been published as YA)
9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
45. The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7.

Indie Bookstores

I have just returned from my annual camp reunion in Hardy, Ark., and was stunned and gratified to learn that a bookstore, coffee-shop, restaurant, caterer (they catered our Saturday night dinner) had opened. Words, and Afterwords.

This summer I have done a little short-haul traveling and made it a point to visit independent bookstores: Malaprops in Asheville, N.C., Lemuria in Jackson, Tenn. This is another aspect of the love affair with books that never fades. The excitement of seeing stacks of books, a section in Lemuria for Eudora Welty, a bookseller actually handselling when a customer asked for a good book to read at the beach, and she wasn't guiding him to Nora Roberts, but to the revolving shelf of recent literary releases. I recommended Netherland.

Booksellers who stock random Trollopes.

Reading Update

I'm still in the midst of this rich streak of upmarket mysteries. I'm reading the second Tana French novel now, The Likeness, which I like better than In the Woods, although it too is just a bit long-winded. There's a definite Donna Tartt, The Secret History, flavor to it. I love the tension.

This streak has made me go back and add a feral cat throughline to Meditations of an Animist, which is with two agents now, although it's probably the kiss of death for me to say so.

14. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
13. Tales of Old Whitehaven, Leigh Anne McCorkle
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
11. In the Woods, Tana French
10. Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kaye (should have been published as YA)
9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7.

Tomato Arts Fest

Trendy East Nashville has a quirky arts festival every summer--the Tomato Art Festival. An ode to the tomato. Went yesterday. Very very hot. Interesting dogs. Bought a little T-shirt for $3. Came home. But took a couple of pictures with my phone and then photoshopped them. I am loving this newfound tool for making crappy pix look cool. Click on the pictures if you want to see them larger and in all their glory.

Reading Update

I'm think that in addition to the books I've been listing, which are all books I've actually finished, I should list the books I start and don't finish for one reason or another. Like Secret Life of Bees is sitting on the nightstand because I can't make myself read the terrible part I sense is coming up in the next chapter. I should just get over it, because I'm 640 pages into 2666 and really terrible stuff happens, but Bolona's style is so mesmerizing and dispassionate that it's more like a dream than Bees, which is terribly personal somehow. That's part of the genius of 2666, he draws you into the dream where the lives of women don't matter. Where a few individuals struggle to the surface and gasp air, but are eventually sucked back down into the murk. And how can something this strange and awful be so readable? I'll devour 150 pages a night. I did stop for months though and then picked it back up.

And I've picked up a couple of other new authors at the library, writing literate mystery, which is where Meditations of an Animist, my latest novel would fall on a bookstore shelf. And put them down for one reason or another. It's a chilling lesson. How hard it is to fire a reader. How little time you have to do it.

9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, epic fantasy.
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7. Amazing how little I remembered of Deathly Hallows.

G4 - 1 or Swimming at the Biltmore

We just returned from our latest G4 summit, the occasional coming together of my three best friends from college and myself. This year our legal eagle Eva couldn't come, but Susan, Ginny and I spent a glorious few days at the White Gate Inn in Asheville, N.C.

We had a whole little house to ourselves, which was composed of the two-bedroom Joyce Kilmer suite and the one-bedroom Oscar Wilde. Can you imagine how much the two of them would have hated each other? But both were pet friendly, so we hauled along my 95-pound Shiloh Shepherd, El Cid.



From the get-go, this was highly fraught and terribly amusing. For example, at every possible transition, including slowing down or turning on the windshield wipers, Cid began to whirl, screech and trumpet like an elephant. Seriously. A god-awful racket. And when he tried to jump into the front seat and Ginny's lap, it was dramatic indeed, especially because we were going 80 mph through Davenport Gap in the Smokies.

But we were flying across Tennessee and North Carolina to check into the inn and then go to Charlotte to pick Susan up at the airport when around Crossville, Tenn., I realized I'd made a critical miscalculation.

"Oh, no, I just remembered something," I said.
"Is it bad?" Ginny asked.
"Oh, yeah." I'd forgotten the change to eastern time which made us two hours late picking Susan up, since I'd also miscalculated the distance to Charlotte. I cannot be trusted. It's clear.

But we finally were reunited and at one point I looked back and Susan had her head pillowed on Cid's back and was crooning to him. She's been dogless for a while and was clearly starved for doggish affection.

The next day we went to the Biltmore gardens. With Cid.



Which was ridiculous, but we did. It was blazing, blazing hot, and poor Cid kept drinking from and then jumping into every elegant formal fountain we passed. Some people beamed at him; others totally gave us the death stare. And everyone had to stop and pet him and ask what kind of dog he was until I felt like a Chatty Cathy doll: pull a string and "The Shiloh Shepherd was bred from old line German shepherds ..." recording played.

At one point we were walking down the middle of one of the estate's walled gardens, where banks of lavender hung down, booming with bees, when a woman came toward us shouting, "Is that a working dog?" I allowed that Cid was indeed a "retired" working dog, which is a nice way of saying that he trained as a search and rescue dog for a year and washed out and then herded sheep for another year and a half before his handler (me) decided we really couldn't go much farther without totally disgracing ourselves (which, by the way, is still I think the farthest a Shiloh has gone in herding). So I guess I wasn't really exaggerating.

"How could you tell?" I asked her. "I can just tell," she said. And we proceeded to have a very nice chat with her and her roommate. She had Delta Society Rottweiler therapy dogs.

And believe me, Cid really worked that day. He wants me to tell you just how hard it is to keep a flock of three women together. If I got ahead of Susan and Ginny, he'd walk in front of me and stop me, then look back anxiously, encouragingly, to get the other two moving. If we were close together, he wound himself around our legs. If they got ahead, he dragged me like a cart horse until we caught up.

Finally we started back toward the car and hadn't passed a fountain in a while. Cid was dragging; his tongue was lolling out of his mouth. So when we came to one of the main large terraced gardens with three giant formal circular ponds in the middle, I decided to let Cid have a drink.



I approached the fountain and before I knew it, Cid had jumped in and was up to his neck in water with a three foot stone curb above him and a look of total panic on his furry face. I screeched and Susan and I began to haul his heavy dripping, yipping, ass out of the fountain, while Ginny struggled in vain to find a point of purchase. It was all over in a few seconds, but we figured Cid had helped us establish our place as unrepentant revolutionaries. And imagined Edith saying to George, "Dear, I believe I see a large furry beast in the far pond."

We sneaked back to the car along a balustraded walk that had yet MORE fountains, lower and safer and each one sampled by Cid.

And that is the tale known now and forevermore as Swimming at the Biltmore.

Photos courtesy of Virginia Dzurinko, artist and musician

Filling in the Blanks

Our backyard is enclosed by a seven-foot privacy fence, the kind that alternates planks so that there is a narrow gap between each. On one side, our neighbors have two dogs who participate in vigorous fence-barking and running with our two dogs, especially 95-pound Cid, who learned this game from Kismet, the next-door dog back in Maryland.

After a few months, I noticed that as they all raced up and down the fence line I was seeing what I thought at first was Pongo's shadow through the fence. A few weeks later I realized, no, I was seeing Pongo's entire body, because my brain was creating a whole out of the pieces, like an animated film.

It reminded me of something my friend Michael Cook said after 9/11 when I sent him that famous photograph of the smoke pouring out of the top of one of the towers in the shape of the devil's face. He claimed he couldn't see the devil's face in the smoke, but said the human mind is constantly seeking to create order out of chaos.

So, I wonder how Cid senses Pongo. Probably as a vast odor and sound of barking and flash of white teeth (his nose is constantly slightly scratched now). Maybe that's why if he sees her in her front yard when he is on the front porch, he resolutely looks in the opposite direction. There are rigid conventions in dogdom and the fence game is one of them. What happens along the fence stays along the fence.

And what happens when we humans fill in the blanks, stays with us, even when it's really not the devil coming out of the World Trade Center, even when it's wrong, even when it's right.