I had wanted to share each step of the publication process with you, but between dealing with my parents’ estates and helping with my son’s wedding (in two weeks), I’m only just meeting the publishing deadlines. I can’t believe it’s been two months since I showed you the cover. And that three months from now, Tidal Flats will be out in the world.

Here’s the short version of what’s been happening:

January and February: edits

March: copyedits, cover design, and requests for blurbs

April and May: a new direction with cover design, first and second galleys (last chance for me to make changes to a manuscript I’ve been making changes to for six years), proofreaders, and interior design (where to put page numbers, chapter numbers, what font to use…)

June: final correction of a few missing commas, jacket design with blurbs, front and back flap design, choosing end sheets and the color of the foil for the spine (I had to ask what these were), and uploading files to the printer

The interior files were uploaded on Friday, and after some missing italics are added to the back cover today, the jacket will also be uploaded. So, sometime today, we will be finished with the book itself.

The main thing I’d like to say about the process for those of you who want to publish a book-length manuscript is this: I LOVE the small-press experience. It’s collaborative. It’s manageable. And I know it would be cool beans to be with one of the big five, but my book is the only book Yellow Pear Press is publishing this fall. That makes me kind of like a queen : ) But here’s the most important thing–finding an editor at whatever size press you choose who wants the same thing you do–the same type of book (literary or commercial or mystery or whatever) and the same beautiful, physical book.

So now I get to put my feet up and rest, right? Not so fast. Now we begin scheduling readings at book stores and visits with book groups–the publicity and marketing portion of the journey. Already I’ve been working on this new website.

Back in September of 2008, at the same time that I began Catching Days, I also put up a small website. A few months ago, when I began thinking about a new one, I had no idea how I wanted it to look or feel. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to be all in one place. As of today, I will be. From now on, you will find Catching Days here with the rest of me.

If you’d like to continue receiving a notification when I post, you will find the RSS Reader button located at the bottom of the CATCHING DAYS page.

Otherwise, I’ll be sending out a newsletter–but not every time I post. More on that soon. If you’re interested, you can sign up at the bottom of the HOME page.

I’m sure there will be kinks to work out, so please send feedback. But hooray! I’m all in one spot–a lovely, light-filled, airy, new place, and I’m happy you’re here with me.

~

to be published by Yellow Pear Press on 9/9/19!

This is the story of a marriage.

Mary Cassatt Miller falls for famous photojournalist Ethan Graham. But it’s complicated. For months at a time, Ethan’s work takes him to Afghanistan, and Cass, who’s passionate about her job in Atlanta, wants a husband who comes home at night. Then, there’s the issue of family―he wants one; she doesn’t. What they do want is a life together, so Ethan agrees that after three years, he will stop traveling―whether Cass agrees to children or not. In this debut novel, Cass and Ethan must navigate that fine line between the things they want for themselves and the life they want together, and it appears that, ultimately, Cass will have to choose one or the other. 

Edits are done. Copyedits are done. I have new photos and a new bio. I’m now reviewing first galleys.

And, as it turns out, Amazon is like a well-developed character–not ALL bad. And while independent bookstores are always my first choice, if you’re inclined to make a second choice as well, Tidal Flats is now available for pre-order, and the pre-order numbers will help me enormously.

And the coolest thing of all–my son Jack designed the cover : )

Another amazing week in Provincetown–this one including a visit from a friend. Number one on my agenda was reading through my novel. Happy to report the beginning is still WORKING! But solve one problem and you can see another… This time the middle seemed heavy so I got to practice my cutting skills. Also, the prose felt see-jane-run-ish. I said to my friend that I needed to find an app to increase my vocabulary. But I have a pretty good vocabulary–at least in my head. Perhaps what I needed was not more words but a better way to reach the words I already know. I keep a book of poetry on my desk, and the next day, when I noticed the same thing, I read a poem. Which sparked new sentences here and there. Which made me wonder if the problem was less the words and more the linear thinking that is my default position. On Monday and Tuesday, I put the edits in the computer. Now I’m going to take a week off and then read the novel again–with doses of poetry and my fingers crossed that it’s done. On my way home shortly. xo ~cyn

But from the first draft, these scenes never seemed to be in the right place–whether it was interspersed throughout as sections, included as separate chapters, as one chapter… I tried adding to them with some less good writing. I tried compressing them.

Almost nothing am I ever certain of when writing a novel, and yet, from the beginning I knew where this novel began–at the airport some years into Cass and Ethan’s marriage.

Despite that certainty, for the last draft, I put these origin scene pages at the beginning–right up front. It was the only place I hadn’t tried, plus I thought it might create a good feeling for them as a couple. I knew it wasn’t right and yet I did it.

In all these years, the one thing I never considered (or if I did it was so fleeting as not to register) was that I didn’t need these pages AT ALL. But last week, this was the only option I had left.

I didn’t know how I would make the story work without them. I stared into the ocean. The tide went out and it came back in again. I couldn’t figure out how I would land safely. But I jumped anyway. I cut the pages.

And then I kept going. In the end I went back and picked up one scene as a separate chapter.

But this was the answer. After all this time, I didn’t need them. These scenes from the past were weights around the story I was trying to tell. They were also the problem with the pacing. It’s crazy. Now the pages fly by.

After all these years, it was as simple as that.

I’ve just cleared off my desk leaving only my novel notes, hoping I will focus on that and not set off into one of my twenty-seven other enticing projects, each enclosed in a separate, clear plastic folder. Of course my computer is still on the desk, so here I am. Also, I want to order new pillowcases. The process of getting back into the novel has been tough–realizing I’ve written 4 finished and polished novels since January of 2013–all the same basic story but each with a critically different component. At the end of 2014 the original, in 2015 the original with a voicey storytelling overlay, in 2016 a key event of the story moved to the beginning and another key event deleted, and now in 2017 returning to the original beginning but without the event I dropped last year. So, yes, some low moments. But in my notes, I found a copy of Dean Young’s letter to his nephew Seth Pollins, where he writes that all the time that seems wasted is the time that must be spent. I’ve taped the letter to the wall next to me. Now I’m going to work. Happy spending of your day wherever you are. xo ~cyn

Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.
–David Bowie

This is sixty.

60 is more freedom than I’ve ever had. Really. It’s awesome.

60 is not just feeling the same but feeling better than I have in years.

60 is thinner skin–actually not metaphorically.

60 is loving my new MacBook Pro with touchbar a little too much.

60 is not yet having used age as a reason I can’t do something.

60 is wanting to do just as many things as I wanted to do at 15.

60 is wondering why, still, I’m preoccupied with freedom.

60 is starting to think hashtag before pound.

60 is having lived 21,900 days. Which doesn’t seem like so many. If anyone had asked me I would have guessed a person lived hundreds of thousands of days. But then math is not my strong suit.

60 is my own small house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the very tip of Cape Cod, as far as you can go without falling into the sea.

60 is wearing peace sign earrings and a nevertheless she resisted bracelet.

60 is having not as many days as I have lived still to live.

60 is googling life expectancy. Did you know the longer you live the more years they give you?

60 is 4 adult children—all off on their own—plus a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and girlfriends. And liking them ALL.

60 is four grandchildren. But we are not your mothers’ grandmothers; we are grandmothers who facetime from airplanes.

60 is, as Cal says, one day older than I was yesterday.

60 is walking in the women’s march.

60 is finally liking yoga.

60 is liking socks.

60 is contributing to the ACLU on a monthly basis.

60 is taking 3 prescriptions–for blood pressure, for eyes, and  for hypothyroidism.

60 is still loving to travel–all the movement and that moment the wheels lift off the ground.

60 is strength training twice a week.

60 is feeling happy.

60 is resisting.

60 is still wanting adventure.

60 is almost never wearing makeup.

60 is finally, finally finding clothes that are comfortable, that look good on me, and that look like me–black leggings, a short little black skirt, a long top, and these kick-ass black ankle boots. That is, when I wear something other than black exercise pants.

60 is more adverbs.

60 is 32 years of marriage and still liking each other. He still makes me laugh. 

60 is being born in 1957, the same year as Caroline Kennedy and Princess Caroline of Monaco.

60 is remembering each of the years and understanding that they add up to 60, that they add up to me.

60 is listening to my body instead of telling my body what to do. It’s resting instead of pushing. It’s eating more vegetables, doing qigong energy movements, and having my body say finally. It’s being amazed as, after a year of trying, the weight just falls off.

60 is listening to Sarah Jaffe’s Clementine, The Killer’s Human, the Branches Darlin’, and Roo Panes’ I Was Here…

60 is preparing to do one last revision on novel #4.

60 is knowing the correct form is to put the names of songs in quotes but liking the way they look in italics better.

60 is adding coconut oil, cinnamon, and turmeric to my coffee.

60 is using the word still a lot.

60 is 6 decades on this planet.

60 is gratitude for each of those days in each of those years.

60 is not yet 70 or 80 or 90. It’s not yet 100.

60 is spending a month in my small house on the water.

60 is being excited about the year ahead and the rest of the journey.

~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

–Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

THIS IS 60

X

this was 58

this was 57

Continued appreciation to Lindsey Mead for the inspiration.

2010: The new year begins in the deep snow of Vermont. I stay in the dorm, wear my first pair of snow boots, and vow not to waste any more years writing novels that don’t sell. I will go shorter. And I start something new that has hold of me rather than the other way around. But every time it threatens to get bigger, I shut it down. Not only do I ferry Nan and Gay Talese from and back to the Atlanta Airport, but Gay is hot to watch a football game so they end up at our house. February brings several inches of snow to Columbus, a spa trip with Pam to Santa Fe’s Ten Thousand Waves, where I stay in an adorable little airstream trailer called Silver Moon that doesn’t exist anymore, a workshop with Robin Black on the Jersey shore, and a family visit to Jack in California, with a side trip to Disneyland. In March, Obamacare becomes law, and Cal and I go back to Sirenland–more steps, more of the brothers, and Ron Carlson’s class instead of Dani’s. On the day we talk about my piece in class, the first thing Ron says is, “Well, this is certainly a story that wants to be a novel.” I tell Dani, and she says, “Some people are just novelists.” On the way home, we spend the night in Rome, and I get violently ill, which leads to the wrong boarding pass the next day. I’m unsure whether I can fly, but I finally make it to the right plane only to have to de-plane due to mechanical difficulties. I then spend an extra night at an airport hotel. These days, Cal and I fly on separate planes, and he doesn’t know I’m still in Rome until he lands in the U.S. The iPad comes out, I take Sam to Florida for spring break, and I visit Jack again. I’m trying to get used to contacts, but I have such trouble getting the damn things in. Every month a packet is due for school. Cal and I go see James Taylor and Carole King in Atlanta on their Troubadour Reunion Tour. June 29th is our 25th wedding anniversary, but I’m in Vermont at the summer residency, where one day, I drive to Ferrisburgh to visit my old French Camp that is now a state park. When I sit still on the porch of the old infirmary, it’s like I can feel the past. My first novel places on the Short List for Finalists in the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and my second novel places as a Semi-Finalist. In September, I go back to Pam’s ranch, and Bobby goes back to St. Andrews. In October I join the staff at Contrary as Review Editor. Kathleen is pregnant! It actually snows on Christmas Day in Atlanta. 50 books this year, with the highlights being Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh and Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, which, as soon as I finish it, I start again. I email Annie and she emails me back. And then, listening to Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris sing All the Roadrunning, I’m back in Vermont where the year began.

7 days to 60

~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

c

Is the title of one of the novels I’ve written. Could be the title of all four.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

I wanted to tell you about my novel that went out the first week in June to a very small number of editors. Good, positive, specific things were said but no takers. Honestly this time I’ve been unsure what to do next. I’ve thought about starting a new novel, and I’ve thought about revision. I talked to readers, and I reread the rejections. The concensus: too good to put in a drawer but not working as is.

So. I’m blowing it up. Going to start with an event that began on page 171 of the old version. And giving my main character a make-over (and I don’t mean hair and clothes). As I wrote in my revision notebook, I can change anything I want to. Also, I’m scraping a secondary storyline that was perhaps interfering with the main one.

Speaking of that notebook, on its first page, which I originally left blank as I do in all my notebooks, yesterday I wrote the question that is driving the novel, and I also made a note to myself to read that question every day before I start working.

I am a revision queen, but I have never done a revision as radical as this one. And… I have to say… I like what starting the story later is doing to my writing as well as to the trajectory of the novel–there’s not so much dot-connecting. And I like the character make-over–she is becoming more complex. I like her new sense of agency.

And, I never liked the title of the old version, and I have a title I LOVE–that works to drive the story forward. And I’m 98% sure my agent is going to like it too.

At only ten days in, the hard work is just beginning, but the novel has a new energy and so do I.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

I just now finished a story I first started in 2004. Yep, 2004. I worked on it consistently for several years and then would go back to it between novels, but I hadn’t worked on it since 2010 when I submitted it to a graduate school workshop my first residency. Last month I brought it up here to take another crack at it.

The things I felt were important to the story never did make sense. For example, it’s about Ansley, but I felt strongly it was Nora’s story to tell.

Well, I finally cracked the code. I’ll send it out next week and see what happens.

afternoon walk

*my healthy action today: 2 walks even though I have no energy

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice