Straddling the Fence is not the same thing as Sitting on the Fence

My little beloved manuscript is still out at publishers being considered.

When I first sent my first book out into the world to be considered, I checked my inbox hourly to look for feedback. It took five months to hear anything at all - and the manuscript had been requested by the publisher. A few years and a few books later, I have learned that the process takes a long time.

It's also a tough industry. (What industry isn't struggling these days?) But in tough times, sometimes books become a luxury. And then publishers have a hard time paying staff, let alone paying for new titles. They have to be pretty certain they have a bestseller on their hands to take a chance on it. I explain it this way to people: imagine you're walking through the airport and you stop at the book kiosk to find something to read on the plane. Are you going to take a chance on an unknown writer? Possibly, but probably not. Same for publishers. I get that. I get that brilliantly amazing books (like my friend Erin Bow's) will find a good publishing home, but many clever, bright, creative, insightful books won't. Not in today's economy.

The other strike against my books is what I allude to in the title of today's post. My books straddle the fence of the publishing world. What I tend to write about are stories of people coming to know themselves and God better. The problem is: where to put such stories? Are they Christian novels? Well, kind of. Are they literary fiction? Yeah, mostly.

I had a Christian publisher roll eyes at my second novel, saying it was too "edgy." I can't remember if it was drinking, smoking or dancing that offended, but I think the publisher thought I was trying to be provocative. My book was coming across that way anyhow. There was also a mainstream publisher who didn't know what to do with the religious stuff.

What I write is - if you'll pardon the pun - neither fish nor fowl. It is a very good thing we don't depend on my fiction to put groceries on the table.

But here is the thing: I am writing about the world as I see it. A world in which people struggle to live out what they believe. A world in which people don't know what they believe. A world that is miraculously beautiful and devastatingly painful. A world where redemption is possible and hope is not foolish, but neither is it simple. A world in which dancing and drinking can be wonderful things - and can lead to big messes too. A world in which many of us straddle the fence where we reach out for something beyond ourselves but we don't always know how.

I believe with all my heart that the books I'm writing are ones that will lodge in people's hearts, regardless of their stripe of faith or non-faith. I believe too that good writing goes beyond categories. My brilliant friend Erin, again, sometimes feels apologetic that she writes genre fiction - but the point is that she writes astonishingly well and that goes beyond categories in a bookstore or fences of faith.

So, market realities are market realities. I can be surprisingly patient about that. What I get impatient for is the breaking down of walls and categories. There is definitely successful writing that transcends those borders - think Anne Lamott, Donald Miller and Sue Monk Kidd. It's what I love to read. It's what I am made to write.

Obeying Bonnie

Bonnie says it's time for a new post here. She's right, but my creative energy is at an ebb right now. I mentioned the big Grandma party event at the end of May. And then there was a novel I finished writing. And then busyness with work. And then hosting a church lunch for 100 or more people. Plus the regular madness of three sporty kids. And new work contracts.

I go back and forth between loving my life for its diversity and flexibility and interestingness and being flat out exhausted by it.

My sister always says that it's all about expectations. I think of that comment often. What are my expectations for this stage of life? For myself?

Last week, I compared myself to Barack Obama and commented that Mr. President has far more on his plate than I do. My friend's reply was to ask me what the differences were between BO and me. Well, I said, he's black. And male. I meant to be funny, but really there is something to that latter distinction. And, she added, he has staff. Also true.

This is, in some ways, the most challenging stage of parenting so far for me. Because the kids are big enough that I can do my own thing, work-wise or otherwise, a lot of the time. However, their independence (and mine) is also somewhat illusory: they still need a mom available a lot of the time. When they absorbed nearly my full attention, I was happy to give it to them. Now, I feel a push and pull between my work and my parenting. And I attempt to do both well. Earlier this month, when things really were crazy (see first paragraph above), I kept saying to myself, with exasperation, "Oh, and I'm trying to finish writing a novel too!" Like it was a little thing.

I'm trying to be kinder to myself with my expectations - and yet, not to expect the glass of wine in the backyard every evening. That stage will come and I will miss these exuberant puppies.

There, Bonnie. There you are. Or there I am.

Big Things

When I watched the quirky, poignant movie One Week last year, I resonated with the main character's love of big monuments. I have no idea why, but I love the kitchiness of these big fiberglass monoliths. Of course, there's the Big Apple on the 401 and the Big Nickel in Sudbury, but I was very very happy to go have my picture taken with the Big Axe in New Brunswick and the Big Pineapple in Australia, and was quite disappointed not to find the Big Banana. (You'd think a big banana would be hard to hide, wouldn't you?

This past weekend was my grandmother's 90th birthday and I was the main event organizer. I was thinking about the party this morning and realizing that I adore planning big events, and always have.

As a child, I came home one day to announce to my mother that we would be hosting a backyard skating show as a school fundraiser. We lived directly across from the school and my mother recalls her growing horror as swarms of children headed our way to watch a group of us skate to the Mexican Hat Dance.

In university, I loved running the kitchen at retreats. For me, the challenge was to cook the best tasting, simplest, healthiest. most gourmet food for a fraction of the cost of previous retreat budgets that had majored on Eggo waffles and prepared lasagna.

Last fall, my mania got out of control. I single-handedly cooked for a mostly sitdown, many coursed fundraising dinner for 35 people in my home. I was the Big Banana that day! The big tired banana.

And then, this weekend. This time, I had a funder for the event (my uncle Jack, who lives in Australia and wanted to host this party but couldn't really plan it at a distance). We started planning last fall. The theme was lilies of the valley. My grandma wanted something simple - but there should be a shrimp ring and no paper napkins. She wanted no alcohol; my uncle wanted people greeted at the door with options of beer and wine. Would we send out invitations? (yes) Would we advertise in the paper? (yes) The decisions were endless, but I still enjoyed almost everything. I forgot a crucial photo in the memory book we had made - which necessitated a reprint. Other than that, the day went swimmingly and my grandmother was delighted to be surrounded by 200 people who adored her.

She was the Big Cheese and I was happy to have my picture taken with her.

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

My uncle gave Dave and I his frequent flyer points as a wedding gift so we could go to Australia a year after we were married. We had an amazing time and stayed in every level of accommodation from relatives' couches to a five-star resort and everything else in between. We spent a week in a campervan driving up the Great Barrier Reef coast. It was spectacular.

The farther north we drove, though, the more tropical it became. To me, tropical equals snakes, and snakes equal RUN!!!!

One day, while we were visiting an aquarium, Dave spotted a handout labelled Snakes of the Local Area. Dave's theory, before I read the pamphlet, was that ignorance bred fear and that once I discovered that there were, oh, three harmless breeds of snakes, I would stop my vigilance. His theory after I read the pamphlet was that ignorance was bliss. There were 39 different breeds of snakes, including the second deadliest in the world, and a large number of large constrictors among the non-venomous snakes. These constrictors liked open, cool buildings - like the public washrooms we had to use in our campgrounds at night. Needless to say, I took to limiting my liquid intake and peeing in buckets at night.

Today, I feel like I read another such pamphlet. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the responsibilities in my life and I decided to make a list of the pressing ones. The pressing ones, I tell you. Not everything. And not a subdivided list showing the responsibilities in each responsibility. The conclusion: RUN!!!!

I guess the only good thing in this is that none of the snakes appear poisonous. It's all good stuff. But still, they're slithery and there are a lot of them. And peeing in a bucket won't help this time.

Sleep and Time

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I get what Shakespeare was saying here. Sleep is a beautiful thing. I'm not a bad sleeper, either, in the sense that I generally fall asleep soon after my head hits the pillow and more or less stay that way until morning. The challenge is getting my head onto the pillow.

My babies woke up to eat like clockwork at 2 and 5 am. I couldn't budge this and learned what it was to function as a sleep-deprived person.

When the kids were small, my day never began in the morning. It began the night before. The way the night went would determine the whole course of the next day: would the kids be cranky? would the mom be a zombie?

Just as the last of the kids were getting past that night-waking stage, I fell into the habit of writing fiction and the related condition of self-induced sleep deprivation.

I like when the house gets quiet and I know that no one is going to interrupt me. Late night is a great time to get into the zone, to sort out all sorts of creative things.

The problem is that family life starts early in the morning. I don't like that I sleep in later than I should. I don't like that I wander bleary-eyed for quite some time in the morning, in slow motion. I don't like the mad rush when I finally do come to life.

A good mom, I think, makes muffins and has a load of laundry on and a portion of the Bible read long before her cherubs roll out of bed. And I like being that mom too. I love the sense of being the only one in the world to see the sunrise. I enjoy the feeling of productivity of getting my household in order. Occasionally I even experience this.

Rock Garden

So, I have this stupid rock garden.

Don't get me wrong. I have two vegetable gardens that bring me great delight (and hopefully great zucchini and striped beets this year). It's this stupid rock garden that makes me growl.

First of all, it's big. Secondly, whoever planted it wanted plants to succeed each other throughout the growing season. This may be lovely and all, but it also makes for a very full garden. And, did I mention the rocks? Here's what rocks do in a garden: they harbour fugitive weeds. And, as soon as I've finished weeding the garden, they release new ones.

Finally, my garden has a couple of very subtle weeds that lurk in it, most notably Creeping Charlie. Two years ago, old Chuck took over half of our back lawn and even the region's environmentalists threw up their hands and told us to spray it dead. We have a new lawn now, but we weren't about to spray the rock garden. It is pretty, at least.

So, I go outside to look at the tulips in bloom, to see what survived the winter and what didn't. I'm itching to get my fingers into soil and so far only the peas have come up in the vegetable garden. I get a tool and pull out dandelions from the garden. And then I sit on one of the rocks and pull handful after handful of weeds. And I put my eye right down to the thyme and the violets and find tendrils of Creeping Charlie sneaking through them, and I slip a finger beneath and pull them out. I make mounds of pulled weeds. I snap off dead branches and twigs.

And then two days later, I do it all over again.

When we moved into this house, the rock garden was home to sumac and goldenrod. Shrubs had run rampant and Chuck had had his way with it. I knew it was a recovery operation and I was happy to do it. What I'm less happy about is that it comes back. Really really fast.

(I will say that I am grateful for the garden. I do take photos of it. I make bouquets from it. I cut chives from it for salads. I know my apartment-dweller friends wish they could have a garden. I have opted not to bulldoze it. But still, my relationship with the garden is tenuous - like a pet the kids promised to feed and clean up after which ends up being the parent's responsibility on a dark winter morning.)

Maybe it was because the sun felt good on my back as I weeded the other day. Maybe it was because the kids were playing nicely. Maybe it was because the rain had softened the ground and the weeds weren't playing hard to get. Maybe it was because the double colour of the lungwort was stunning.

Because what happened was this: I started to see the stupid rock garden as a metaphor for my inner life. Or at least that I approach both in the same way, willing to do the big recovery project more than the daily tending, frustrated that weeds come back, wanting everything to stay the same like furniture does once it is arranged. It's that Creeping Charlie that bugs me. In my inner life, anxiety is like Creeping Charlie. It's insidious and seems to survive regardless of what I do. I'd like to blast it with chemicals sometime, but I'm afraid of wrecking the rest of the garden. Like the garden, I get frustrated with what is left undone in my inner work. I want it all weeded now, thank you very much. I remember when we moved to another house with a rundown yard and I assumed we could pick all the dandelions in the bright yellow backyard in oh, an hour or so. Five hours later we had cleared a small patch.

I wonder what would happen if I shifted perspective. In my garden and life, what if I just worked happily on a little area each day and then smiled at the progress. And then the next day did a bit more elsewhere and sniffed the lavender. If I accepted that the weeds will come, that the presence of weeds is not an affront to my hard work or a failure, but just reality in a broken beautiful world. I don't want to embrace the weeds, to welcome whatever the wind blows into the garden - I can't imagine cultivating Creeping Charlie as a friend, but I want to learn to recognize where he lurks and to calmly remove him before he takes over.

There's a parable like this - about letting weeds grow up with good crops for fear of destroying the good in removing the bad. It's a parable about why God allows evil. It might explain Creeping Charlie, anxiety and the other weeds that lurk within my garden, hidden under rocks.

Growing a garden is not like arranging furniture. Things change. Things sprout up or are choked off. It's a work in progress. Learning to accept this is a process for me too.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help.
Gardening is an instrument of grace.
- May Sarton

Gardening is an active participation in
The deepest mysteries of the universe.
- Thomas Berry

Loose Change

Neil Gaiman writes, "I think I got about half way through The Hero with a Thousand Faces [by Joseph Campbell, whose work seems to describe themes in Gaiman's work] and found myself thinking if this is true — I don’t want to know. I really would rather not know this stuff. I’d rather do it because it’s true and because I accidentally wind up creating something that falls into this pattern than be told what the pattern is."

I am currently trying to decide whether to spend money we don't have to take a course at Regent College in Vancouver this summer. The course is a theology one for artists. Which is what I am interested in exploring. But, I resonate with Gaiman's quote deeply too, and find myself less interested in talking about theology - or any ology - than either doing it or illustrating it. The course dovetails pretty perfectly into other summer plans and gives me a chance to satisfy my Vancouver craving. It might also let me see an old friend I really need to hang out with. But, it's money we don't have. It probably costs the same as replacing our shed, which we had already planned to put off because of the cost. And, what if my Gaiman-like gut is right?

Do I search the couches for loose change to finance this trip or not?