Hello,

It’s a sunny day here in Savannah.  In just two weeks we have 23,000 runners coming to town for the Rock and Roll Marathon.  Runners get my praise.  You die-hard souls of all ages hit the trails in all kinds of weather, push forward no matter what, with an unwavering dedication.  You go miles and miles day after day reaching personal goals of fitness.  You make it look easy, however I suspect that is a myth.

Just like sitting down to write, my guess is that becoming a runner takes hard work and requires a mountain of discipline.  I’m sure as we writers struggle to keep the creative juices flowing, you runners and bikers, and swimmers, and yes, you marvelous triathletes also must fight numerous temptations to stray from regimented patterns of training.

We writers can relate.  We know how difficult it can be to get to the finish line.  We get that I can’t keep going feeling in the middle of a book.  We think, I’m out of juice.  Why did I think I could do this?  I stink.  I should have taken up gardening.  Whatever made me think I could go down this road?  What was I thinking?  But then, we slink through the rough spots.  I guess for a writer it’s that period when observations start coming out as prose and it all feels so good — all the way to the finish line.

Okay, this was fun to write.  It makes me want to go out for some exercise and then get back to work revising my novel about the sisters, Tessa and Claudine.  It is high time we headed further toward the finish line.

PS:  Kudos to daughter-in-law Kara Thom, a writer and a runner, who is This Month’s Revlon Role Model and co-author of Hot (Sweaty) Mamas: Five Secrets to Life As A Fit Mom. She is featured in a Revlon ad in the October 24 People Magazine.  Way to go Kara.

Lisbeth

I just got the word that it is National Sister Week, and naturally that got me thinking about Tessa and Claudine, my novel about two sisters.  Tessa, the youngest sister, tells the story.   I grew up with one sibling, an older sister so I guess you can figure out where some of my material for my novel comes from.

My sister, Charlotte, was 15 months older.  Of course, in her eyes she was MUCH older.  When were were little our mother dressed us alike, much to my dismay.   I often had to wear hand me downs from my sister.  When I grew out of my dress or pants outfit, I then had to wear Charlotte’s clothes, perhaps in a different color.  Bummer.  

My sister reigned as the roller skating queen in the neighborhood. She taught all of the neighborhood kids how to skate.  I was her most difficult student.   Her lessons took place on the Jefferson Street hill on the corner, a half block away from our house.  I could skate down the hill — the problem was I had trouble stopping at the bottom.  I had scabs on both knees all summer the year I was in training.   Each evening I got iodine painted on my knees after my bath.

That reminds me of another sister issue.   We’d get called inside at night to take a bath.   The deal was if you went in first, when Nana, our great-grandmother who lived with us, hollered for us from the front porch — you got the clean bath water.  If you were last to come in, you got to skate with the neighborhood kids longer, but you got the dirty bath water.  Charlotte usually said, “You go first.”  Most of the time, I did just to keep her from throwing a fit.  The truth is, I rather liked the clean bath water.

It’s fun to think back to those years.  Over the years, I had a lot of fun with my sister.   We shared many good times, had many great conversations, played cards until all hours, agreed, disagreed, laughed and cried together.  We married and lived far apart, but we stayed in close touch with phone conversations and visits.   Our children got to know one another.   Life moved on.  We mourned the loss of our mother together.  And then one day I got a phone call from my niece — my sister was gone, too.  A car accident.  The news knocked the wind out of me.  I wondered what would I do without Charlotte in my life?

I stumbled around in a daze for a while, then realized that I had to keep my chin up, move on with my life, and carry along  my special memories.  I can still picture my sister’s fun, smiling face, and hear her laughter.   She was one unique gal. 

So, here’s to you, Charlotte.   Keep an eye out.  I’ll see  you someday when I cross over the bridge.   And if you are giving lessons of any kind, you know, like maybe how to flutter wings, or how to skate on clouds, whatever.  I’m getting in your line.  Sign me up — go ahead, pre-register me.

_________________________________

For all of  you readers who are lucky enough to have a sister, don’t forget to get in touch with your sister during National Sister week.  Thanks for stopping by.  Lisbeth

When I am working on a novel, I sometimes have to take a fork in the road and work on something else, just for a breather.  At a local writer’s group, I suggested that we write a short piece about our past involving our parents or grandparents.  I wrote about my great grandmother, Mae Stone, who lived in our home when I was a child, and I’d like to share it with you.  Feel free to leave a comment.  I’d love to hear from you. 

July, 1944

            Mae Stone took a tray of oatmeal raisin cookies from the oven and set it down on top of the stove to cool.  From the dining room hutch, she retrieved a silver tray to hold the cookies and a two small crystal bowls, one for mints, the other for the mixed nuts.  Her friends loved to munch while they played cards.  She heard a familiar squeak as the back porch door opened and then slammed shut.  Her great-granddaughter, Charlotte, ran into the kitchen.

            “It sure smells good in here.  May I have a cookie?”  Charlotte darted over to stove and stood beside the tray.

            “Just one,” Nana said.  “You girls can each have a cookie. The rest are for my friends.  “They’ll be here before long.  Take a cookie outside to your sister, and then both of you girls have to come inside and get cleaned up.”

            “Did you make those fancy sandwiches you cut up in little triangles?”

            Yes, honey.  I have the pimento cheese sandwiches in the refrigerator, and the iced tea, too.  Your mother set up the card table in the living room before she left for work.  Using the spatula, Mae took the cookies off the metal tray and put them onto the oval serving dish.  Next, she filled the crystal bowls with mints and nuts.  Charlotte popped a two pale pink mints into her mouth and then ran across the red linoleum floor and she headed back outside, her dark brown pigtails flying behind her.

            “I’ve got a cookie for you,” she hollered to her sister, Lisbeth, who was sitting with a neighborhood friend underneath the weeping willow tree in the side yard.  Her sister ran over to get the cookie.  “We have to go in and wash up now,” Nana’s lady friends are coming soon.” 

            “I’m clean enough,” Lisbeth said, looking down at her shorts and T-shirt.

            “No, you’re not.  Besides you have to put on a dress.  Follow me, or I’ll get in trouble,” Charlotte said.  Lisbeth ate her cookie, said goodbye to her friend, Ruth Ann, and then sauntered toward the back porch.  

            After taking her flowered apron off, Mae arranged the food in the living room, putting the sandwiches and cookies on white lace doilies on the mahogany serving table, and the small crystal bowls on the corners of the dark green card table.  Then she hurried into her bedroom past her sewing corner where she’d spent hours hand sewing quilts..            

            She used a hexagon-shaped piece of cardboard as a pattern to cut out the pieces from whatever cotton material she could find.  She often took the dresses her great-granddaughters had outgrown and used the material for her quilts.  The girls liked to help select which pieces to use next..  She’d made both of them a quilt for their twin beds.  “Remember when I was really little and wore this dress,” Mae often heard the girls say to one another as they pointed to their quilts.  She figured stitching quilts for them was a way of giving them a part of herself.  She often thought about the girls as she stitched.  She had been seventy-six years old when the girls were born.  And now they were five and six.  My, but the time had flown past.

            Mae returned to the living wearing a navy dress, a triple strand of pearls given to her by her late husband, Henry, and her new navy shoes with a wedge heel.  A small German lady, even with the one-inch heel, she still did not stand five-feet tall.  Mae had powdered her pale skin, added a touch of rouge, and pulled her white hair back into a bun.  She rather liked the new round, wire-rimmed glasses she wore.    

            “Nana, they’re here,” an excited Charlotte said when she heard the tires on the Cousin Ella’s black Ford hit the gravel in the driveway.  Charlotte ran to the window and peered out.  Lisbeth stayed in her room at her desk playing school.  She liked to pretend she was a teacher.  And besides, she hated having Cousin Ella and Nana’s other two friends, Bess and Ada Jane hugging her to death. They were nice enough, but they wore strong perfume that about gagged her.  Lisbeth always waited until they were seated and playing cards before she said hello.  At that point, the ladies were unable to give full hugs, only pats on the back or a half hug.

            “They’re here now,” Charlotte ran into the bedroom and said.

            “I know silly.  I can hear the noise.”

            “Nana wants you to come in and say hello.  You’d better come right now. You can sneak food.  Those ladies are so busy talking, no one even notices,” she said before she turned and ran back into the living room. 

            Lisbeth smoothed out her blue ruffled pinafore and walked into the living room, her Mary Janes clicking on the hardwood floor.

            “Well, don’t you look like a little princess?  I love those blond curls,” Ada Jane said.  “Come over here and see me honey.”   Lisbeth hesitated, then headed to Ada Jane’s side and received a small pat on the arm.  “Want some candy, dear?”  Ada Jane held up the bowl.  Lisbeth  took several mints.

            “Thank you,” Lisbeth said, smiling.  She quickly grabbed a few more mints.

            “How old are you now, dear?” Cousin Ella asked.

            “I’m five, but I’ll be six in September.  I’ll start first grade at Lincoln School,” Liisbeth said.

            “Well, good for you.  Oh my goodness.  Wait until I tell your uncle you’re going to first grade.  He’ll be so excited.”

            “You mean Uncle Adolph?” Lisbeth said.  All four women turned and glared at her.  A confused Lisbeth scrunched up her face, glancing at Nana, who put her short pointer finger to her chin and shook her head back and forth, gesturing no.  Lisbeth didn’t understand.  What was that supposed to mean?  She had no idea what was going on.  Was she interfering with their card game? 

            “Charlotte’s waiting for me.  I’d better go back to my room,” she said, wanting to get away from the women..   She tiptoed out of the room. 

            “She’s just a child.  You can’t blame her,” she heard Nana say as she left.

            “Did you eat more cookies” Charlotte asked when she got back to her room.

            “No, just candy,” she said.

              That evening when it was time to tell Nana goodnight, Lisbeth kissed her on the cheek and then finally got the nerve to ask what she had done wrong at the card table that afternoon.  “Honey, you must remember this.  You cannot call Cousin Ella Dieckmann’s father anything but Uncle.  No one dares to call him Uncle Adolph any more.  I’m certain I told you that.”

            “Well, why not.  That’s his name?” Lisbeth said.

            “Trust me.  It’s simply not a good idea.  Some day you’ll understand.”

“Sometimes real life takes over my fictional fantasies. I recently found myself in ambulance on the way to the ER after suffering a coronary spasm while driving my car.  Not fun, I can assure you.  The ambulance driver asked me if I’d been under any kind if stress.  “Not really,” I said.  After all, I had walked three miles that morning with my good pal, Phyllis, and that afternoon I planned to give a talk to a book club.  Life was rolling along at a normal speed.  I almost mentioned that Tessa and Claudine were driving me a bit batty, but I kept my thoughts to myself.  Think about it.  If that guy found out that Tessa and Claudine were fictional characters, he’d be sure to question my sanity.

Just for the record, I’m home and doing much better, but I must mention my twelve hours in ER land.  Here goes:  I was placed on a gurney in the hallway that was mobbed with doctors and nurses scurrying in every direction.  The rooms were all filled.  Gurneys covered every inch of space.  A young doctor named Aaron stopped by and asked me a list of questions.  He looked like he just stopped playing with his Brio train and didn’t need to shave.   He took notes.  I imagined him writing down.  “Older woman.  Typical chest pain case.. “I’ll report this to Dr. Rogers, my boss, he said and walked away.  In side my head, I started humming,  “Oh, its a wonderful day in the neighborhood…”

I got wheeled into a small room and hooked up to a heart monitor.  My husband paced the floor.  We were in a supply room which became a great people-watching center.  We heard voices and saw all kinds of action outside the door.  A new patient arrived, a woman on a gurney.  “Ma’am, why did you call an ambulance,” an attendant asked.

“I was feeling lousy,” she said.

“Do you have pain in your chest?”

“No.”

“Any vomiting?  Didn’t you say you’d been throwing up?”

“No, I never said that.”

“Did you fall?”

“No.  I didn’t fall.  My bones are just fine.”

“Why did you call?”

“I just did.  I feel real bad.”  The man sighed.

A male nurse took my blood pressure.  He said they were trying to get a  hospital room for me, but the hospital was full.  My husband went out to get us a sandwich.   After we ate, they moved me out of the supply room, rolled the gurney out the door.  That’s when the real circus began.  It was 9 pm, and life in the ER had begun to escalate.

I got wheeled past an African American man who refused to lie down on his gurney.  Like a jack-in-the-box, he sat up.  The nurses laid  him back down.  Up, down, up down.  It continued.  He talked in a loud voice.  He pointed at me as we passed by.  He jabbered and laughed, pointed at other patients, and shouted.  It seemed he was flying high on something, feeling no pain.  The other patients scowled,  acting irritated at his noisy behavior. 

“Cleveland,  now just where did they pick you up this time?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t reckon I recall,” he said, with a sly grin.  “I jes don’t recall.”

I made a trip to the restroom, right next to Cleveland’s gurney.  I had left my long pants on.  I’d seen enough people walk past with hospital gowns on, their rear ends hanging out.  “Hey, girlie,” he said, pointing at me.  I refused to make eye contact with him.  When I headed back to my room, I noticed a  husky, strong-looking police officer walking with a huge ER patient  in handcuffs.  Once this patient got onto an oversized gurney, they handcuffed him to the rails. 

Barney, the transport nurse, kept busy wheeling patients to X-ray.  He took me down the hall, on what he admitted was the hospital’s squeakiest gurney, for a chest X-ray and then brought me back.  At this point, we’d been in the ER for nine hours.   On the way back to my ER cubicle I watched as nurses and doctors rushed from patient to patient  I saw all varieties of patients young, old, tall, short, fat, thin, Asian, Caucasian, Spanish, African American, and who knows what else.  Cops hung out in every corner.  A black woman over six feet tall walked in limping, her hands handcuffed behind her, a strong-looking female police officer at her side. 

“Do you think my wife will get a room tonight?” my husband asked a nurse. 

“I’ll check,” she said.  “She’s been here a long time.  A lot of people won’t.”  She came back an hour later and said,  “Consider yourself  lucky.  You’ve got a room.  It still needs to be cleaned, however.” 

We left the ER after 12 1/2 hours.  I felt like I’d had enough real life for one day.

 Mother’s Day makes me think  of the time I visited my daughter for an overnight, in her very first place of her own, right out of college.   She had landed a job after enough rejections to cover a whole wall. 

I looked at her that morning, dressed in her tailored suit of light gray, holding a briefcase, amazed.  Could this be the child that I had to walk to kindergarten every day for two weeks until I convinced her she could walk the path alone?  Could she actuallly be out in the world selling business forms? 

“Make yourself at home,” my daughter said before she left.  She put down her briefcase and gave me a hug.  Then she went out the door, briefcase in hand.  A part of me went with her. 

After she left left, I drank a cup of tea from the heart-covered mug we sent her for Valentine’s Day when she was in college.   On her coffee table lay copies of Business Week and Time.  She threw out her issues of Seventeen when she came home to retrieve her belongings.  We watched as she pulled out of the driveway,  a U-haul trailer in tow.  

Months later, when I arrived for my visit, the towels lay on the bed for me just the way I always put them out for her on trips home from college.  She served me a cold drink.  Offered me a snack.  Made me feel at home in her home.  It was like watching a movie of myself.  Our visit was short but we covered a lifetime of memories. Shared thoughts.  Ideas. Dreams for the future.  We laughed a lot.  

When it was time to leave, I grabbed a pen, a piece of note paper from her desk top and wrote a note thanking her for the visit.  I told her that we were so PROUD of her.  Then I went out the door, taking with me the hug she gave me earlier.   I left her home and headed for mine.  

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers.

We went on this fantastic Western Carribbean cruise  — Cayamo,  A Journey Through Song and LOVED it.  We listened to concerts day and  night  for five days- it was great.  The musicians:  Lyle Lovett, Brandi Carlisle, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Steve Earle, Shawn Mullins, Chuck Cannon (my favorite), and a host of others wowed us.  I went to a songwriters workshop and ever since I’ve been playing with words night and day.  

TESSA AND CLAUDINE – REVISION TIPS:  I’m rolling along with my novel, revising each chapter, making sure the reader can see the scene, and cutting out parts.  I may like a certain paragraph, or scene, but I ask, “Does this relate to the  overall story?”  If the answer is no, then no matter how well it’s written, I push the delte button.  It hurts, but it has to go.  I remember a writing instructor saying, “If you’re writing about an Indian, then everything you write must in some way relate to the Indian.”

I’m sharing chapters with a cousin who’s writing a memoir.  We read and critique.  It works well.  She catches things I can’t see.  I recommend this type of back and forth critiquing with one person you trust to do a good critique.  Sometimes we get too close to our work that we can’t see the small mistakes.  Knowng my cousin is going to want to touch, taste, see and feel what is going on is helping me to make sure I appeal to the senses.

On the cruise, I saw lot of families.  I visited with sisters traveling together.   Often the sisters seemed so different in personality, but there they were laughing, singing, having a great time together.  It gave me hope that I could get my two characters back in touch with one another.   

My sister, Charlotte, and I had our many differences, but we both liked to cook.  She loved my chicken enchiladas.  I’m going to add that recipe today.   Let me know if you like it.  (Look under Recipes for the chicken enchilada recipe.)

Any other Cayamo fans out there?

Well here it is Abe Lincoln’s birthday, a significant day indeed.  I grew up in Vandalia, Illinois, the Land of Lincoln.  Our small town of 5,000 was the first state capitol of Illinois, so in grade school we studied former President Lincoln like he was part of the family.  My great-grandmother, Lydia Mae, lived in our house when I was a child, and her claim to fame was that her grandfather, a member of the Illinois legislature, got an invitation to Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield.  She let me take the invitation to school for show and tell.  The other significant fact today is that it is grandson, Blake’s first birthday.  

TESSA AND CLAUDINE UPDATE: I am revising Chapter 9 at the moment.  Tessa, a high school junior, just received a letter from a boy she’s dating, a college freshman.  My story’s fiction, but I use some  autobiographical tidbits –as is the case with Tessa’s letter from Bill, her college beau.  He writes Tessa and also his parents, but he puts the letters into the wrong envelopes.  Tessa gets the letter intended for his parents, and they get the letter he’s written to her.  Writing this scene took me back to that day when I read the letter my old boyfriend wrote his parents.  It was pretty darn funny.  Little did I know it would one day end up in a novel. 

ECHOES UPDATE:  Our poetry book is doing well.   The Eden Prairie, MN, newspaper had a great article about ECHOES and Rachel Nelson, my granddaughter and 12 year old co-author.  They had a photo of Rachel, who lives in Eden Prairie, information about the poetry book, biography information about both of us, and a couple of our poems. 

Stay warm.  Snow is expected in Savannah tonight, not much, but it’s a big deal here in the South where it hasn’t snowed for many years.  I guess it’s time make one of my soup recipes. 

By the way, I now have a google and yahoo connection to my RSS feed in case you’d like to subscribe to my blog.  Come back for a visit.

Did you ever send the wrong letter to someone?

Lisbeth

My goal this year is to revise my novel, TESSA and CLAUDINE get it on the market.  I finally have a working plan.  As a Virgo, this makes me feel soooo much better. 

Here’s the deal:  I reread a chapter on the computer.  What I’m doing is changing the tense from past to present and also tightening.  As I read, I ask myself — does this scene move the story forward.  If the answer is no, I delete it.   Since I’ve decided to put the whole book in present tense, instead of past, I pay close attention to the verbs and make tense changes.  And then I record the whole chapter on a tape recorder.

I got this idea after reading a newspaper article in which authors were interviewed about writing techiniques.  If I hesitate while reading my words, it tells me that the sentence doesn’t flow well.  I stop and make changes.  I find that while reading, I often automatically change the sentence to something that sounds more natural.  I catch spelling errors working this way and also find words that still the tense change.   Overall, this system of revision has me pretty excited.  Try it.  You might like it.

Have you got any writing tips for me?  Any new writing books you love?  I saw a book advertised by James Alexander Thom, on Writing Historical Fiction that sounded good.  No, he’s not a relative. We just happen to share the same last name.

If you are looking for some good recipes, check out Samantha Matthews website:  www.diggfood.com   She wrote me a note this week, and I loved her recipes. 

Stay warm. The winter weather is upon us.  Lisbeth

I know, I know.  Everyone is hustling and bustling around this week getting last minute things done in readiness for Christmas.  Me too.  We head to Minneapolis on 12/23 to visit family.  And yes, we have  read the weather reports — a big snow storm is on the way.  I haven’t been dreaming of a white Christmas, but guess what?  I’m getting one anyhow.  I think the grandkids will be building giant snowmen, or is it better  to say snowpeople?   We certainly don’t want to get stuck in an airport.  Just in case, I’ll have my Kindle with me  and a notebook for jotting down people-watching observations and whatever else pops into my head.

I’ve been busy reworking my novel in first person, present tense, and it sounds more natural.  The good news is my characters are happy with me.   I hated that guilty feeling when they were sitting across the room, breathing down my neck.  Now, they come with me to holiday parties, to church, out to dinner, shopping, on walks, into the bathtub.   We ‘re back in synch — they march around in my head giving me tips on what they would like to do or NOT do next.  Tessa, my main character, had the nerve to ask me what I got her for Christmas.   I told her to simmer down.  What I got her was a new lease on life.  I put her back in action, as if that wasn’t enough.  She acts like a goody two-shoes.  But, I can assure you, she is not all perfume and roses.  Like everyone else, she has her devious moments.  Everyone knows her older sister, Claudine, has a bit of the devil in her, but Tessa puts on this nice-girl front.

As many a writing instructor has told me, a character cannot be all good or all bad.  Everyone is made up of a little of both.   That’s always a good thing to remember.  My sister used to be the one who got in the most trouble.  She argued with my mom a lot, which got her in  hot water.  As for me, I often behaved poorly, but didn’t talk back.   Acting innocent saved my skin.  Mouthy Charlotte often got blamed.  (Sorry Charlotte.)

Here’s hoping all of you have a blessed Christmas.  I wish  you peace and joy in the coming New Year.  I’ll check back in with a report after we return from Minnesota.

Do you have sister stories to share?  Did you let your sister take the blame?  Feel like confessing?