The Unbearable Impatience of Incompleteness

Do you ever find yourself in a place where you feel like nothing will ever get done?

Do you ever wonder why you start so many things and abandon them hoping that the next thing will actually work its way to total success?

Do you ever wish that some genie would wave her magic wand and finish everything for you?

I have those thoughts. Usually at 2am, up and wondering if my studio will ever be done and if I will ever work in it. Wondering if I will ever sell another book, and why do I have so many ideas, so many partial texts/sketches/dummies. Wishing someone would just finish them. Make them look perfect. Make them sell bazillions of copies. Win awards. Take me on a whirlwind tour of warm sunny places where people love to come to author/illustrator events and buy multiple copies for all of their relatives and relatives still not born yet.

LOL.

I can actually hear my college professor Roger DeMuth laughing at me right now. He loved to tell me, (in a painfully slow, steady cadence) "Nina.  Patience.  Is.  A.  Virtue." 

And I would reply," noit'snotIcan'twaittogetstartedrightnowIwanttobepublishedandseemyworkinstoresandlibrariesandschoolsallovertheworldandwinawardsandtraveltoexoticplacesandbuildthestudioofmydreamsandhaveahappyfamilyandahappylifeandlivehappilyeverafter."

Okay, maybe I didn't say all that in college, but I did think it. And truth be told, if you put the spaces in between the words, all of those things did happen, although not perfectly and definitely not quickly.

It's true that all good things take time. It's also true that all good things require patience. I've been a student of patience all of my life.

I now find myself at a strange crossroads of impatience, though. On the physical level, I have a studio that just keeps taking longer and longer to get done. It seems that every month there is another month to go before we can get that all important certificate of occupancy. Of course it's going to be gorgeous, amazing, and beyond my dreams. But do you remember that song, "No One is To Blame" by Howard Jones? One of the lines is: "You can build a mansion but you just can't live in it." Right now it feels like I'm never going to get there.

On the mental/emotional level I've been so ready to get out of the hole that I've been in creatively. I went through some very rough years dealing with intense family issues of health, and then issues of family members and addiction. It put all of my work on a huge metaphoric back burner. But now I'm ready to get going. I have a YA novel that came out of all of that torment. It's called "Jacked." I'll write about it soon. For now, though, I have to do a final revision so it can make its' way out to editors.

I also have a stack of picture book that I want to work on. I had to pick ONE to start with, and I picked this one:

It's not my typical humorous picture book. It's different. It also required doing a full dummy, which I just finished. I also have to present two sketches and one painting in order to sell it. That is what I wish the genie would do while I was sleeping... well, I won't be sleeping. I'll be revising my YA novel. You see I have a split personality: I'm an author. I'm an illustrator. What that does is this: when I'm illustrating I want to be writing. When I'm writing I want to be illustrating. Not always, though. 

Sometimes I just want things to be done. And there is a lot to do. I want to make things happen fast, but then I realize that is just unrealistic. My totem animal is the turtle for many reasons. One of them is that slowly and steadily I do eventually get there. The sweater that is still undone ten years plus after I started it will someday be worn. (even it it's sleeveless) The sketches and painting will be done. (hopefully by the deadline) I will then have the time for the revisions on the novel. And then...

Somehow I have to figure out when I can go pack up my dad and his things and move him in with us.

It's never over. It's never done.

We just have to learn to love being incompletely complete.

How do you deal with the unbearable impatience of incompleteness?

I am your student. 

Enlighten me, please.

With Love,

Nina

Poetry in Motion: flying home from Atlanta

I just returned home from visiting schools in Roswell, Georgia. I spoke in Cogburn Woods, Roswell North and Mountain Park elementary schools. The students, teachers and parents that I met were terrific. Here is a special shout-out to Media Specialists Martha Powell and Jody Brooks, who made my days run so smoothly. I wish I had photos to show you, but this was a working trip and there was very little time for fun. I stayed with an old friend, artist Rae Broyles, and drew pictures with her kids, Britta* (third grade) and Kristof (second grade) one day after school. Kristof made the drawing above for me.

*Britta just asked me to add this.

I used to live in Atlanta from 1984 until January of 1998, so it was wild to drive around and see what had changed (more big buildings, much more traffic) and what was still the same. (my old house is still the same paint job I did- and my sassafras porch swing is still there.) I ate at an old favorite restaurant, Canoe- my friends Rae and Matt pointed out the waterline inside the restaurant where the Chattahoochee River flooded, turning the dining room into a lagoon. If you go, eat this: Slow Roasted Carolina Rabbit with Swiss Chard – Bacon Ravioli, Sweet Potato Hash and Candied Garlic Sauce  It was amazing.


The time in Atlanta was over too quickly. Rae handed me off to my friend Yvonne in the Target parking lot, and Yvonne and I grabbed a late lunch before she took me to Hartsfield airport. We ate blue plate specials in Star Provisions near the Waterworks. Full of meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and collard greens I headed through airport security and into the "transportation zone" which really translates into "The Twilight Zone."


What is it about flying that turns people into zombies? It is really fascinating to me how some of the worst character traits seem to magnify themselves in airplanes.


I won't go into detail about my flight home here. But what I will do is post the poem that I wrote on the plane. I think it is self-explanatory.

THE REAL DELTA BLUES

 (©Nina Laden 2011)

Flying through the air

Turbulence in the chair

Coming from a child

Kicking my seat.

My ears, they are plugged

By earphones tightly snugged

Playing the blues

To mask the shrieks.

The parents don’t seem to care

That there is anyone there

Who paid to take this flight.

Torture for five hours

I wish I had magic powers

To make the time quickly pass.

Yet in my bubble I fret

And try to forget

That others are flying first class.

So I’m stuck in this tube

No empty seats to move

With a pressurized cabin

Too many people gabbing

A seatmate who is quite obese.

They charge you for bags

You come home with jet lag

Is it too much to ask for peace?

Sure I could have driven

No kids would be kicking

But it would take a week.

Now someone’s passing gas

This, too, shall pass

Like the turbulence at

Thirty thousand feet.

There’s something about this altitude

That puts me in a very bad mood

Landing and baggage claim

Is the only relief.

Okay, what do you think? And what do you do to cope with flying?

With Love,

Nina

A New Year's Card for You

Sometimes I feel like I am always behind. Yet most of the time I'm just trying to do too many things at once. I am also cursed by the "you have to make everything yourself" mantra. That was a bigger curse before computers because it involved a lot of cutting, pasting, printing- sometimes by hand, stamping... and then wondering if it was even worth the effort.

At least now I can use my scanner and a couple of Adobe products and then voila: instant creativity that I can display in cyberspace. This, by the way, is not replacing all of the cards I just printed, and still have to fold and write on, then stick in envelopes and mail. I still believe in old-fashioned mail. Every day I hope that there is something in my mailbox besides catalogs, bills and magazines that I have no time to read anymore.

There are those of you who will receive those cards. There may be folks I forgot. You may get the card in more than one way, which is also a by-product of us being too social these days. I'm using Facebook and my blog to wish everyone a happy new year. I guess the only thing I'm not doing is Twittering. I don't Twitter. I won't Twitter. Actually my New Year's resolutions- which I did not write down, are to get back to basics. Basics being: drawing, painting and writing. Yes, technology will creep in there no doubt. But... I'm going to focus on the solid stuff. I hope you have a solid year. Thank you for stopping by. Please visit often, and say "hey" when you can.

Full Circle: beginnings, endings, beginnings again...

We all begin somewhere. Stories all begin somewhere. I began with my mom. She had me in January almost forty-nine years ago. It was not an easy birth. I was born too soon. They didn't know my mom had a chemical imbalance. She didn't do well, but we both survived somehow.

My parents were both artists, and even if they didn't stick together like glue, they provided the materials that inspired me to become the artist, the author, the illustrator, the creative woman I have become.

When I was little, I had decided that I wanted to be a children's book author and illustrator and kept that goal in mind despite many side trips down other roads. As an illustration student I still kept looking back to that sense of wonder that kept me alive and enchanted despite obstacles and difficulties.

My mom never lived to see my books get published. In fact she died six days after my twenty-fourth birthday in January almost twenty-five years ago. Ten days later the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Somehow that expressed my grief at the time- it was universal, galactic, unfathomable.

We didn't have much growing up, especially after my father left my mother for my brother's first grade teacher. My mother couldn't afford to pay our taxes or our heating bills. She didn't have health insurance, and she had been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the red blood cells. When she died, all that was left was the old, rundown farmhouse and barn we lived in, and she had sold it for less than the land was worth just before she died. We had to keep that sale going just to pay her medical bills.

What little was left was put into some stock for my younger brother and me to inherit when we turned twenty-five. Now I could have used that money to buy a car. A nice car for back then. But I didn't. I didn't touch it. Not for almost twenty-four years. I didn't know why. Partially it was because I wanted to prove I could build a life on my own and by myself. And I did.

This is the little studio that we restored. It used to be a work shed. It's over a hundred years old, and for the past fourteen years, this little building has been where I've created the art for the books I've written.

My mom always wanted a huge barn to paint in. She had a barn, but you could see through the floor boards to the old cement stalls below. The pot belly stove barely kept it warm in winter, and then one night a crazy kid in the neighborhood set it on fire and she lost four hundred of her paintings. It was the beginning of the end for her. I was the first one to see the flames from our kitchen window and had to tell her that the firemen were at our door.

But the other reason I think I didn't spend the inheritance is that I thought it was the last bit of "her" that I had left. If that money was gone, she would be gone. So I didn't touch it, and it grew. Just before the economy fell I was lucky to pull it out of the stock it had been sitting in all those years...

Now I'm skipping over a bunch of parts now, because they are not as relevant, but one day my beloved husband made me realize that if I used that money to build the studio I had always dreamed of, wouldn't my mother think that was better than it sitting in a bank account?

So. You know what? I used it all. I built that studio. It's almost done.

I can't wait to start writing, drawing, painting, dreaming, singing, dancing, creating... and the best part is that in the end, it came from my mother. It's her gift to me. Sometimes we have to take what seems like an ending and make it a beginning. It's true in writing, and in life, and you never know where it will lead you...

Have an amazing and inspirational 2011...
Here's to great beginnings, and middles and endings, too.
With Love,
Nina

Inspiration: Friends, Stones, Stories...

My friend, children's book author/illustrator Paul Owen Lewis took this photo. That dark silhouette of a human being is me, hunting for agates. Paul and I went on a long walk the other day, working off Thanksgiving meals, and talking about writing, creating books, and being artists. We walked on the beach and discussed the differences between those who are compelled to create "art" and those who are more "family-oriented." Now, I'm not saying that artists are not family oriented. Not saying that at all. We both just happen to have a lot in common - we came from less-than-ideal family circumstances, we both write and illustrate, and neither of us has had biological children. This is no formula for being creative, by the way. There are as many stories behind the stories of authors and illustrators who have been "inner directed" to bring their inspirations to life.

Here we are, cold and happy. Hand-held portrait by Paul. We both love to find things on the beach. I hunt mostly for agates, but I also find petrified wood, jade, jasper, "zen" rocks, which are just stones that I respond to, and the occasional seal's tooth. Paul likes sea glass and perfectly spherical stones. As much as we have in common, we are just as different. Non-artist friends used to ask me how I could be friends with other authors and illustrators. "Aren't they your competition?" they would ask. "Not at all," I always answered. "Their ideas and their ways of doing things are completely different from mine." Just like Paul and I live in the same neighborhood, on the same hill, we have different views. When we walk the beach, he also sees things that I don't, and visa versa. Actually, that's not true. I find sea glass and give it to him. But there is comfort there in the fact that we are not wired the same. We share the same space, but we bring our own original perspectives to what we experience. That comes out in our stories and our art, as well. It is our fingerprint... or mental print, or something like that.

What I've discovered is that friendship with my fellow creative folks is inspirational, not competitive. We need someone else who understands the strange world we inhabit. A world where ideas sometimes envelope us in a fog that makes us seem "not present" to our spouses or significant others. We find ourselves laughing, or crying at something we've read, or heard in song lyrics, and we feel things sometimes too deeply, or we find ourselves in weird synchronicity with our little world when the iPod chooses the perfect song to play with the story we are reading or writing, or just the thought that has gone through our head. 

So friends play a role in my creative process and keep me out of isolation, which I can easily slide into especially in the claws of winter. 

The stones also play a role for me. (and I don't mean the Rolling Stones, although I do love the sound of both that band and the sound the real stones make on the beach as the tide massages them in and out.)

I mean these stones. While I am out there, lost in my fog, searching for these little treasures on the beach, I am writing in my head. I am talking to my characters. I am singing song lyrics. I am telling myself subconscious stories. The agates sparkle and glow at me and ask me to take them home. They are my inspiration on my walking meditations. I bring them home and polish them, just like you would write down your ideas and then start polishing them. Over time, when I collect hundreds of agates, all polished, and waiting... I turn them into this:

...an agate luminaria candle holder. I have these all around my home, and they not only light up the dark nights, and make meals elegant, but they warm my soul. Each one of those little beach finds have found their potential. I hope that I can do that with stories, too. The pieces gradually come together to create a whole that is more powerful than the individual parts. It takes polishing, patience, and time.

Another thing that Paul and I both have in common is this love of natural objects. I know this is true for so many artists. 

Give me a beautiful bone, or a fabulous feather. 

Show me a root ball or a field of heather. 

Take me to the beach and leave me alone. 

Don't buy me an iPad or a new cell phone. 

I don't want a fancy vacation.

Just natural beauty and sweet inspiration.

You can sing that in the key of E, kinda bluesy.

I'd love to know what inspires you.

With love,

Nina

Fear and Loathing in my Brain

I shouldn't feel this way. All doom and gloom and can't and won't. But I do. This photo recently taken in New York's meatpacking district reflects my angst. It also shows that my black Levi's are way too short for my 5'6" frame leg length. (I actually think they were stuck on my boots. The pants should have been tucked into the boots.) Fashion faux pas aside, what pray tell is causing me all this trepidation?

Come on, guess?

No. It's not the fact that I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. Sorry about that, I apologize.

No. It's not the impending Thanksgiving holiday and the incoming brother, and the outgoing finances from impending holiday spending and a studio/garage construction project over budget.

No. It's not even the rejection I just received on a picture book project from the publisher I've worked with for over sixteen years - and the fact that the editor I've worked with all those years has not personally contacted me in ten months. I'm over that.

Okay, I'll tell you.

But first here is another photo to show you how I feel.

Mummified. Or perhaps petrified. (I think you would feel petrified if you slept on a bed made of stone.)

What is causing all this is the fact that I just finished a draft of my first novel. It's sitting there in hard copy form, all 282 pages of it so that I can give it a read through and find all the typos, grammatical errors, missing transitions, and what have you. I had to print it because I can't edit on screen. Can't find typos to save my life or my vision. I've been working on this story in parts over the past year or more, but threads of it go back longer.

At first, when I finished it, I was elated. I thought I was so clever and creative. But now, only hours after I hit the save button for the last time, not so much. That stupid radio station that Anne Lamott talks about in her book, "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life"- "KFKD" has been playing in my head. It's been telling me, "you suck. This sucks. NO one is going to like it, care about it, want to read it, want to publish it, etc... don't quit your day job." But my day job is writing and illustrating.

True, I made myself cry a few times while I was writing it, but maybe I was pre-menstrual or something. Maybe the outlandish narrator I dreamed up is completely far fetched. I won't say who he is, but I will say he exists in the imaginations of anyone who has ever read Mother Goose. Was I nuts to think that would work?

Yeah, I know I need to give it a rest. Both the complaining and the draft. I need to be objective enough to read it through before I go apply for a job as holiday help at Fred Meyer. And I know I'm not the only writer who has ever gone through this. We are all our own worst enemies sometimes. The only remedy seems to be a couple of glasses of wine, or a publishing contract.

I know, I know. Shut up. I should be thrilled that I did this. It's no easy task to write a novel. I marvel every time I read one I truly love. How much blood, sweat, and psychiatrist bills did it take that human miracle of a being to put that together? How many nights did they wake up and realize that they had a better direction for their character? How many times did their story change right in front of their eyes and fingertips as they were typing it? How many people get to weave bits and pieces of their lives, their thoughts and their concepts into something others may someday connect to?

The truth is, I really don't know if what I wrote is good, is worthy... but I have to believe in it. I have to take it to the next step. I never realized that writing was such an act of bravery, but it is. It really is.

To all of you who hang your literary laundry out to dry - I stand with you in solidarity. And now I'm going to take my underwear off the flag pole and go work on some picture books.

By the way, if you have any good ideas on how to deal with this mental gymnastics stuff, post a comment. It will save me on my shrink bills.
With love,
Nina

A Sensorial Journey: Where Writing Can Take You

You could say it started with the papaya. Or you could say it started with my birthday at Blackcomb mountain in British Columbia. Or even before that- it could have started with visiting my sisters-in-law in San Francisco and staying at the Hotel Vitale across the street from the Ferry Building. Stories can begin anywhere, and sometimes finding the origin is like doing an archeological dig. It can virtually go back in time until we are all somehow connected by sequences of DNA. 

For the sake of time and space, I'm going to say it began in the shower at the Hotel Vitale. It was there that I discovered Fresh products, namely the Soy Shampoo, the Pomegranate conditioner, the Lemon Sugar Shower Gel and the Sugar Lemon Body Lotion. No, this is not an advertisement. It was simply a moment when I discovered something that smelled beautiful and felt beautiful, and added some pleasure and luxury to my life, and I began ordering the products online so I could bring that experience home.

Now we can fast forward to last January when my husband and I made a last minute reservation to spend my birthday skiing at Whistler/Blackcomb in British Columbia. It was the twentieth year that we had been going to ski there- and it was the place where we first "dated" and discovered that we had so much in common that we wanted to ski parallel for the rest of our lives. It was the day of my actual birthday, and it was pre-Olympics, but not by much. The snow was not great, but I was thrilled to be on a mountain on my "day." We broke for lunch early to avoid any crowds, and that was when he came up to us. 

"He" was a representative of Intrawest, the company that owns most of Whistler/Blackcomb. Now my husband would have shooed him away in an instant, but it was my birthday, and I was feeling a little cheeky. When I told him it was my birthday, he had an instant comeback: "You must be turning twenty-something." Now this 48 year old was quick on her feet and responded, "my ski jacket is twenty years old, I don't think so." Mr. Sales was suave though, and he replied, "I can buy you a new ski jacket."

Long story short: it was one of those resort club membership deals. Something my husband and I would never have gone near except maybe in a bad economy for the free wine and cheese. Yet we went along for the ride and I didn't get the free jacket, but I did get some nice mid-weight capris and a zip-T from the Salomon store. We didn't sign up for the big deal, but we agreed, especially since they didn't want to let us leave, to take the resort for a "test run." They called it a "passport."

Booth had never been to Mexico, and their resort in Zihuatanejo looked mighty fine, so we aimed our compass and our frequent flyer miles in that direction, and next thing you know, we were there... or here:

Zihuatanejo exceeded our expectations. But I'm not writing a travelogue. However each morning we would visit the delightful Isabel on the Calle Adelita and drink her incredible juice that she prepared fresh for so few pesos it was ridiculous. 

We spoke in Spanish and English and I could tell you more stories, but I have to get back to the papaya and how it wound up taking me on a journey. Yes. That papaya. The one that Isabel juiced and added to the orange juice sitting there... I could drink one now.

Flash forward to this August, and an email in my inbox. It was from Fresh. I had been ordering their products online for years, so I was on the mailing list. They were announcing an essay contest to tie in to the new "Eat, Pray, Love" movie that they had just created fragrances and candles for. I had not seen the movie, but I loved the book. The contest asked that you write an essay in 250 words or less describing a "sensorial journey" that you had taken, and include a photograph. I knew immediately what I was going to write about. Even though I had been to Zihuatanejo in April, it was still vivid in my mind and my senses. So I wrote this essay, I titled it, "Zihuatanejo in a Bottle:"

Can you smell that papaya? Can you smell the salty sea air as it flows around Isabel’s fruit stand on Calle Adelita in Zihuatanejo, Mexico? Can you smell the oranges she just juiced to mix with that papaya, that huge cup of sunshine that you are about to drink as you inhale the scent of health, relaxation, the very vitamins and minerals that make Mexico a place to be breathing in? There are almond trees, mango, and banana trees around the corner. There is the central Mercado filled with the intoxicating aroma of tortillas frying, salsas cooking, fresh coffee beans, Mexican vanilla and cinnamon. There are waves rolling in from the bay and fisherman bringing back the catch so fresh it smells like the ocean. There is the warm scent of your husband’s neck, after an afternoon on the beach, his first time in Mexico and he swam with a five foot long loggerhead turtle. There is an afternoon breeze, filled with a cocktail of songbirds, tropical flowers and love. If Zihuatanejo were a fragrance you would want to live in the bottle. We were only there for six days, but the scent of this trip, this enchanted paradise will thankfully never wash out of our memories. 

This is 212 words. A paragraph. I wrote it in fifteen inspired minutes, and I included the photograph of that papaya at the top of this post, and then I sent it off into the cyber-ionosphere.

The beauty of the contest was that you could read the other entries and see their photos throughout the month of August. On September 1st, the contest closed and the judging began. 

I had never entered a contest like this before. Sure, I'd clicked some buttons and randomly entered into some lottery-like mass-marketed things that gave you virtually no chance of being anything but spam. I'd tried my hand at the New Yorker Magazine Cartoon Caption Contest thinking I was actually funny enough to win the prize of a signed cartoon print. (which I could have drawn myself.) But a contest where my writing was being judged, no, not really. (Not unless you count my application for the MFA program, but that wasn't supposed to be a contest.)

On September 9th I was in the plumbing supply store buying a toilet for my new studio under construction and my cell phone rang. It was the publicity assistant at Fresh calling to tell me that I had won the Grand Prize in the Fresh Eat Pray Love contest. I was nearly speechless. Not to mention embarrassed because I was staring at toilets.

Over the next few weeks, the reality of what I had won started soaking in. My little essay- barely one at that, had garnered me and my husband a trip for two to New York City- hotel and airfare, and I was to meet with Lev Glazman, the co-owner of Fresh to consult with him as he was to create my own personal bespoke fragrance. 

It is a long journey from Seattle to New York City for such a quick trip. But Lev had taken an even longer one from his childhood in Russia to the incredible company he and his partner, Alina had created. My experience meeting Lev and the stories he told were more valuable than any airfare or hotel or shopping spree. The connection was as potent as what I learned about fragrance, which held a lot of irony for me.

I used to wear fragrance. I stopped wearing it in 1997 when I went through major clinical depression. I stopped being able to smell or taste back then. I stopped eating and sleeping. After medical intervention and a lot of inner strength I pulled out of that tailspin, but I didn't recover my ability to tolerate a personal scent. But over time my chemistry changed, and little by little I started to warm up to natural essenses- mostly made by my friends at Tree Frog Farm on Lummi Island. 

What Lev showed me- or actually revealed to me- is that we respond so differently to fragrance. We have our own way of smelling and tasting that is unique to who we are. Some of us may be incapsulated in a commercial fragrance, but some of us may be a mysterious layering of code: floral, woodsy, citrus, musky... it's mind boggling. Good thing Lev is a genius and a scent-ual spirit guide.

This personal bespoke fragrance is a "once in lifetime" opportunity- a dream that I didn't even know that I was wishing for when I wrote those sentences. Now I realize that my writing has taken me to a place I didn't know existed before and I have so much to learn. My husband is excited, too. He had never told me, but he secretly had mourned that I had forsaken fragrance after my depression, and now I will have one that is me alone. 

What is even better is that this will invariably inspire not only more words, more stories, but hopefully friendship as well. 

Think about it. What does your writing do for you, and where can it take you? The possibilities are endless and hopefully the journey is just as sweet.

Love, 

Nina