Gratitude a Day part 5

 11/24/23

#NaNoWriMo 

What challenge are you Thankful for?

In 2008 I heard about the challenge to write a rough, sloppy unedited first draft of a novel in thirty days. And I had been writing since I was in second grade so it sounded fun. It kind of was fun, but it also

was exhausting and November always feels stressful to me anyway. I did do the 1,667 words a day to meet their 50,000 word goal, but the struggle to pick it up again and write the next 40,000 words that made it in, sure didn’t start on December First, or after New Years. But forward 15 years. I have finished 4 novels, three picture books and some private collections of letters I’ve written over the last 40 years. I haven’t made a ton of money, but I’ve managed to pay a bill every now and then. Best of all, it’s been fun to give author talks at schools, to speak to book clubs, and to read the books with classrooms of third to fifth grade students. 

National Novel Writing Month. My favorite challenge 

11/25/23

What moment this week are you most grateful for?

My husband’s birthday was on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. He and I got to talk to family and friends on the phone. Our Granddaughter told him Happy Birthday and my brother sang him a birthday song he heard loud 3,000 miles away. 

Our youngest son and oldest granddaughter came with us for a drive up the coast. We walked on the docks and watched the sun set and the moon rise over a beautiful beach. We ate pizza and ice cream and fudge and played air hockey in the game room. 

We missed a lot of people over this week and the fact so many celebrated his birthday was a good reminder that when we feel alone we really are not. 

11/26/23

What form of expression are you most grateful for?

Every year for 42 years now, I have sat down and thought about the friends and family, far and near, still here, expecting babies, missing from this earth. All of them. And while my current family and friends gather to play boardgames I sit listening to the laughter and write out addresses after having tried to sum up the past year in a letter and single photo card. 

11/27/23

What small thing that you use daily are you most grateful for?

Honestly the one thing that I am always aware is an amazing gift is being able to turn a tap and have running, hot or cold water, clean and safe to drink, abundant enough to fill washing machines and wading pools and take daily baths or showers. 

It’s a luxury my grandmother didn’t have in her house, and one my great grandmother only had via a hand pump and a reservoir on the side of her stove. It’s one I’ve done enough long camping or power outages to know I can live without, but I sure do love living with it.

11/28/23

What small thing that happened today are you grateful for?

Sometimes, in spite of forcing yourself to stop and look at all the negatives in comparison to the good things, when you can see that the scale tips heavily to the side of being blessed, it isn’t enough to keep me from feeling overwhelmed and depressed. It’s hard to keep from the dark thoughts and the fears and loneliness even in a crowd. November is often like that and this one has been especially difficult. So many days when getting up and forcing myself to take a shower is harder than it should be. But music is a lifeline. And my family often leaves sounding stressed, goes to choir and comes back singing and laughing. 

Today the movies did that for us. We went to see the third Trolls movie. The first two were energetic, musical and very positive. This one also served to energize me and I came home happier than I left, singing and teasing Daisy and greeting the dog. Movies are hard for me though, sitting without moving, or standing more than 20 minutes both trigger muscle spasms and pain. The theater was not crowded but still there were plenty of other people, so I held Greg’s hand, gritted my teeth until it felt like they would shatter and screamed silently, kicking my feet around to make my nerves think I was moving. And then the soundtrack would catch me up and carry me, like the pain meds never really do. 

11/29/23

What friend/family member are you grateful for?

Ok, I’m grateful for all my friends and family members, Duh! 

That said, of course it mostly comes back to Greg. I was such an insecure, hopeful girl when I met him. Finally away from the cliques and bullies of Cody Schools but not yet believing or trusting offers of friendship. He was steady and gentle and dependable. He let me freak out and scream, let me cry and swear I hated him, let me repeatedly push him away, without leaving. When I didn’t trust him, he just stayed true and waited for me to realize it. Then when he wanted to introduce me to his family I was terrified. They were 327 miles away, and he was the baby of six kids, and I just knew that going to stay at his parents house when everyone came home would mean they’d all see what a loser I was and then he’d see it too. He, on the other hand, assured me that if he loved me, they’d love me. Well, it wasn’t quite as fast as he assumed, but it was far more instant than I’d expected. His Mom was hesitant but became my other mom and his ten year old nephew leaped into my arms and fell asleep with his head on my lap as we watched movies. Soon I knew that my mom would keep Greg and kick me out if I was stupid enough to break up with him.  I knew this because she told me so in pretty much those exact words. And I haven’t ever stopped being grateful that he entered my life in the Fall of 1981 and is still here. No one makes me happier, or madder or more of any emotion - in short, he is tangled in who I have become because he makes me more me. 

11/30/23

What talent or skill do you have that you are grateful for?

Well, Day thirty of this challenge. Without sounding vain, I hope, there are many skills that come easily to me, but while I enjoy them, painting and weaving and drawing and writing, reading and singing, and telling stories, all of them, they are things I’m interested in, until I figure out how they work. But I get to a basic understanding and ability and get interested in something else. It’s like Greg is a singer, a vocal music director. But also can teach band. He isn’t an instrument player really, but he understands how they all work and can tell a student how to improve, but never really took the time to master one. With so many things I can judge if it’s good or Great, but I don’t do the great stuff myself. It took me awhile to realize my particular skill that I love is teaching. I love to find the ways to relate to kids and light their enthusiasm and help them see where they can grow. I love when learning is creative and makes huge messes. I love that kids love me and show me the stuff they can barely contain their enthusiasm for, whether it’s art or snakes, or likely something I have to start learning about to help me teach them. 

I love when one of them leans over and whispers, “you keep me safe.” I can’t always. But I sure try. 

Christmas 2015

Merry Christmas 2015 and May A Happy and Healthy 2016 Be Heading Your Way.

This was a year of changes for our extended family, it was a scary and emotional roller coaster at times, but we are finding ourselves at the end of it with a lot to be thankful for.

First of all, as we have had so many of you asking about Mom

and Lance,                         

 let me update you on what has been happening with them this year.  Lance and Mom were living in Virginia with Brett and his wife, Emily. Mom’s dementia got really bad and she was hallucinating, and paranoid and unable to take care of basic hygiene. She tried to run away and got lost, so she has been in assisted living, not far from Brett and Emily’s home, for over a year. The first home really made her worse and messed with her meds, changing her from just insulin and blood pressure meds, to 27 different medicines a month later.  The home she is in now, she likes, but she fell in June and broke her hip and was in a hospital and rehab before getting to go “home.” She is weaker and needs a wheelchair and once when Brett went to talk to her and asked her if she was worried about Lance, she answered, “I’m worried about him, but I don’t know who he is. Did I meet him here?”

 

The reason Brett asked about Lance is that he has been really sick since mid August, and in the Hospital, in ICU and a Rehab Hospital again and again ever since September began.  He was nearly dead (not an exaggeration) before the Dr. decided to do emergency exploratory abdominal surgery starting at 10 PM. He came out of surgery around midnight, and they had found his bladder blocked and holding 800 ccs of urine when a normal adult male would be uncomfortable with 300 ccs. They cleaned out the infection and put in a drain, but that only began the journey.  He has kept getting sick when he leaves ICU and they reduce antibiotics.  He has had his gallbladder removed and had a bad case of staff infection in his lungs.  He still has need of the Rehab hospital, the staff infection in his lungs is gone, the gall bladder cured the need for the drain in his abdomen, but he still can't eat much beyond ice cream without vomiting and he still needs a catheter, so he still has an appointment for micro-biotic robot cameras to scan his abdomen in the end of December. He can walk, but has no stamina so needs a wheelchair when Brett takes him out. Three months now has been a huge financial drain on Brett's family. He'd be able to take mom out too, if he had a wheelchair Van, but of course that would be another big financial hit, so probably won't happen. Anyway, Lance sounded excited to be out of ICU, happy to talk and more energetic than I've heard in ages when he talked to Greg and me on Thanksgiving. Brett had sprung him from the rehab hospital to go eat Turkey with Mom at her Assisted Living Center.  Mom doesn’t really talk on the phone anymore, but Lance has a cell phone (540)-359-1413 and you can send cards and pictures and letters to them at the same address

  Lance Miller /PO box 865/ Middleburg, VA 20118

Then in October we had to face the death of the daycare grandma who had helped us raise our boys when they were toddlers. Nadine was a large part of who they became and of why we have a family of daycare cousins and their parents here in Crescent City. It was such a blessing to have had her so long.

So, now for news about the rest of us.  Greg and I have not changed as much as the other people in our families.  He is teaching again up in Brookings, OR. (year 10 I think.)  He only has choir this year, and with a local choir on Monday evenings is working with kids age 9 to High School.  He is also singing in the adult community Choir in Crescent City.  In February he flew a bunch of kids to Spokane for the All Northwest Choir Festival, while I went to Gold Beach for a writer’s conference.  I am still substitute teaching, and writing, and finished my sixth book this November which I hope to have edited and available by the beginning of February. This summer he tried his hand working with Special Ed. and taught a summer school class before we drove to Wyoming to visit his family.  Mimi and Harvey were both doing great, and had celebrated their 65^th anniversary in June. All of Greg’s surviving siblings were there, but the only one from our children’s generation (The grandchildren) who made it, was our niece Remi, at age 15, just back from touring China with the Tucson Girls Choir.  Mimi and Harvey have three great-grandchildren, but none of them could be there either. We did manage to get to Laramie, and saw our nephew Colton there as well. 

Emerson and Lula’s daughter, Daisy turned 1 on April 28^th, and we were able to spend a lot of time with her between April and September when she was living part time with Emerson and us, and part time with Lula. Now we are happy to say that Emerson and Lula are back together and Daisy is happy being with both parents, but selfishly, Greg and I miss having the little Miss Daisy here on a daily basis. She has totally stolen our hearts. Emerson and Lula both work as assistants in the School District where I sub, and they both had summer jobs as well.

Austin and Trisha seem happy and busy but we don’t ever see enough of them either.  It has been hard going from being Mom and Dad to being empty nesters for Greg and I. Still we are lucky that they live in the county here, so we do see them a couple times a month at least.  They have been keeping us in firewood, and have gone to dinner, or celebrated a holiday with us occasionally.  I am excited to see Trisha’s baby bump growing and to welcome our second grandchild in May of 2016.  Austin is still working with the crew he supervises at G & H outreach, a group of handicapped adults. He seems to enjoy the fact that a lot of their work is outside and active. They appear to be happy and that is really what parents want most of all I think.

So that is the news, and I hope next year is less newsy and more peaceful. Merry Christmas!

Love,

 

 

Dixie and Greg

 oh and PS. I did get my novel finished, at least the first draft, in the NaNoWriMo month of November. Yes!

NaNoWriMo 2013 Participant

I #amwriting again of course

Yesterday was November 16, and that has been a special day to me for 20 years now.  It is the anniversary of the day my husband and I stood in front of the Judge and promised to Love, and cherish the 6 month old boy who had been ours since his birth Mom handed him to me when he was 14 hours old. Adoption Day has been a joy. A celebration of the world recognizing what we already knew. But this year we are lonely for him, he's grown and working on a Crabbing boat 400 miles away from home, and I still celebrate being his Mom.

but writing means needing to reward myself with apple custard pie

 But it is also National Novel Writing Month.  I love November for the rush of typing a novel with all the emphasis on the story and non of the worry about editing it until later.  Some of my books have taken 13 years to edit so the intensity of jut doing story, while hundreds of thousands of others encourage and challenge me, is delicious freedom.  Writing is lonely, and has to be, to allow me to hear the soft voice of characters who live nowhere else but in the point where my fingertip meets the keyboard. For now

lots of fog and that is both in my mind and in my yard

 Usually I am good at this month long dash, but sometimes it doesn't work.  This year it is working, but not according to the rules so I am going with it and joining the group who call themselves nano rebels. I am still trying for the 50,000 words in a month, but with two books competing for my attention.  The third in my Duffy Barkley series is now at 60,000 words but didn't start here. I just can't stay way from it when something exciting comes into my mind for that story.  The other book, the new one, is a story of two boys facing destructive volcano eruptions 1901 years apart. But it uses the same device to communicate between times as I used in Double Time On The Oregon Trail.

snuggling the dog can count as work if I'm plotting the story

I work better with this guy in the house

 So Life is all about words on paper here this month, but of course it isn't. Today was proof of that.  My husband was just home after 48 hours away at a music festival, I got up early to write and brewed a 12 cup pot of lovely coffee all over the counter and the floor in my kitchen, so mopping happened. Then It is my sister-in-laws birthday and then My brother texted me about Christmas plans and a friend wants to come visit and someone else needs me to substitute teach and another friend needed to talk.  Family is hurting, to angry or celebrating, and actually all three. Life doesn't stop just because I have A NOVEL TO WRITE FOLKS!

And you know what, I'm glad it doesn't. I love so many people and I am not the best at letting them know sometimes, but They let me know, even when the timing isn't convenient, that good times and bad times, lonely or not. I'm not alone, even though it feels like it.

Good night

November Mid-Point - Waiting for Hope to Appear

 Today, I should be at 25,000 words on my newest NaNoWriMo novel, but I am not.  I should be at work, but I didn't get a call to sub for anyone today.  I should . . .  but I won't do many things.

     What I did do, was spend the morning with my boys and a girlfriend - and I drove a load, a major load of clothing that had been cleared from my closet for months but hadn't made it out the door, to a clothing give-away that was happening today, so that I keep going in now and smiling at nothing.

Nothing is so worth smiling at when it used to be a mountain of clutter and now it will be helping someone else stay warm through  the coming cold season.

 After the drop off, I drove down next to the beach and instead of seagulls and pelicans, smiled at the nosy pair of crows and then I came home and smiled at the full woodstove and the warmth it promises me.

I have been smiling a lot lately, even though the bills and the kids have added a lot of stress to my daily life.

Why the smiles?

I think it has to do with an experiment.

I promised myself that I would not just be Thankful on Thanksgiving, but that I would find something to be thankful for every day this month.

It wasn't easy to begin but now it is easy to continue.  Even for a perpetual grumbler like I sometimes am.

 So I have looked around me with my eyes open to the gifts that life has just deposited in my hands

and I remember a quote I one had hanging above my sink,

"thank God for dirty dishes,
at least you had food"

 Today I was reading a book of meditations, and I have to admit, I'm about a month behind in that too

but my stomach was in knots over the shortage of cash between now and the end of the month, and the abundance of bills

and the meditation brought me back into peace, so I want to share it with you,

I don't care what your faith is, so I hope you do not turn away from the wisdom here, if I tell you it is from Lamentations

"When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself.  Enter the silence.  Bow in prayer.  Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear.  Don't run from trouble.  Take it full-face.  The "worst" is never the worst."
Lamentations 3:28-30 (MSG)

National Novel writing Month, again.

Lately, every time that I sit down at the computer to write, I open the file with my infant novel, which will hopefully be a fully grown, if still pimply young adult by the end of November.

Promising to write a 50,000 word novel in November is my most selfish piece of craziness, and I refuse to give it up.
National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, turns off my natural self denial buttons and allows me to say, "No you can't have the computer, No you can go by yourself this time. No, I'm not cooking, if you want dinner, cook it yourself." Not that I am advocating total selfishness, but like the Mom on the airplane who must get her own oxygen mask first in order to stay conscious and help her family, I believe that some intense selfishness refills the well and allows me to give to everyone else the rest of the year.

There are, of course times when being chained to my own thoughts at the keyboard also fail me, then I am so glad that I live in a place of great beauty. i can take my camera and take a walk, or a drive and soak in the wordless beauty, refill my well with the cool, clean, splendor of the pacific northwest, and then return home to pour it into an imaginary, fantastical world, where somehow, the thing I always discover, is ME.
This year, instead of returning to the world of Uhrlin, with my favorite protagonist, Duffy Barkley, I have taken a trip along the Oregon Trail, twice. In this years NaNoWriMo, there are two girls making the trip, and they share an ancient wooden lap desk, where they store their treasures and their journals.

But they are taking the same trip 150 years apart. One in a wagon caravan, and one in a Dodge Caravan. Only sometimes, when they slide back the lid on the old desk, what they find is not their belongings but those of the other girl.
Can you imagine walking all day to get 4 miles, and being hot and thirsty, and having to filter buggy, muddy water through a bandana - and then reading a journal written by a girl who drove 400 miles in air conditioned comfort and spent the evening in a motel pool?

I Can. It is what I do for fun.

A couple weeks after publishing

Hi, I just have to tell you about my experience in self-publishing "Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog." It has been easy and inexpensive, the way I did it, but there are more expensive, more help available packages from CreateSpace if you are less broke, or perhaps simply smarter than I was.

A friend on a forum I hang out at, asked me if I was interested in signing up to write a whole novel in the month of November a couple years ago, on NationalNovelWritingMonth, (NaNoWriMo - every November), I signed up and participated the last two years, but didn't finish the first year, you have to write at least 50,000 words. Last year, I did finish the 50,000 word commitment although that story did not feel finished at that point. CreateSpace, not connected to NaNoWriMo, offered a free proof copy of your book to anyone who finished.

I had talked to other people who had self-published with vanity presses that cost them thousands of dollars and left them with boxes of unsold books, but CreateSpace's proof, was like a real book, but legally it was not "published," so I could still try to sell it as unpublished to an agent or editor if I wanted to.

So I did the proof, converted my Word document to a pdf and uploaded it. Then designed my own cover and uploaded a photo of it, but they have a stock library of cover photos if you want. I loved the way the book looked. This wasn't one I'd written for NaNo, it was one I'd written and rewritten and passed out seven copies to friends and got feedback from them and then read it to a couple classes and to my husband and my own kids and got more feedback. I had actually been trying to interest a publisher for about 5 years but by trying, I mean sending out a couple letters then waiting months for a reply.

I googled info on CreateSpace and a few others. I liked that CreateSpace links to Amazon and to a couple sites that sell to libraries and bookstores, and that it is print-on-demand, so you never pay for extra copies, they print as the book sells. There is a $40.00 charge if you want to link to the pro-sites but none if you just sell off CreateSpace's own site. A proof costs about $10 with S&H and that is the only expense that you have to have. If you publish, after you see the proof it is just a matter of saying, "yes" and giving them a place to send checks and filling out some tax payer info. You set the price of your book but they have a minimum. They charge based on # of pages and book size, mine is 6x9 inches and 252 pages. I wanted to charge $9.99 but then if it sold for that on Amazon, I would have owed them $0.50 per book

When I had people ask if it was available for the kindle. I did that but it is through Amazon, not a CreateSpace thing, but I could upload the same pdf to Amazon and they converted it for me.

I have had fun, and interest from others, a book signing offer from a library, a few copies go on sale at the local Walgreen's, but I'm doing something every day to promote it. The thing is, once you self-publish, traditional publishers are even less interested unless you sell 5,000 copies and show them there is a real market.

One thing that amazed me, is I went to a local Writer's conference just to hear the speakers, and in a break, I found myself surrounded by eager, curious people who were asking questions that I knew the answers too, and giving me positive comments and their attention. That is when I realized that it was different from any previous conference, because, self-published and all that implies, I was and always will be, an Author.

So I'm working on the sequel this nanowrimo and loving saying I'm an author and seeing people reading my book is a kick. It is also really scary. I had always been the girl scribbling in my notebook to avoid having to make real conversation, when I was a socially terrified grade school kid. She is still in there, in spite of the fact that I get up every day and teach classes. Teaching is not the same as putting your stories and your secret dreams in someone else's power and letting them do as they will to it. Knowing that there are people reading and talking about your book in places you've never been and in conversations you'll never hear. It's like having your baby leave home for the first time, and begin a life where you are no longer necessary.

Getting up the Nerve & self-publishing

I have been working on this novel, and the following one, which I call, "Duffy Barkley: Seek Well" since my own children were 7 and 8. Now they are close to graduating from High school, and until today I have not been brave enough to offer my story to more than a few friends and family members, and that was as 280 loose pages of copier paper in a gallon zip-lock bag.

Today, flylady, one of my heroes, challenged us to an anti-procrastination week. I looked back at the novel I finally finished during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the free proof copy that CreateSpace offered to all of those who actually wrote a November Novel. Then, with shaking hands and barely able to breathe, I pressed the mouse over the Publish button.

So now, here it is, the book that justifies all those time I called myself a writer.

https://www.createspace.com/3450238

I hope that some of you will read my story and enjoy it even a fraction as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope that a few will recommend it to a friend or teacher or librarian, or mention it on Facebook or MySpace. But if that never happens, I have already had the best part of writing it.

The best part for me, was taking a long road trip with my family, and reading it out loud to my husband and my boys, and realizing that it read like a real book, and that they loved it. After that, everything else is gravy, or in my world, Hot fudge Sauce.

Thank you, at least, for reading this post.

Echo AKA Dixie Dawn Miller Goode