Today, please welcome writer CYNTHIA NEWBERRY MARTIN.

Writers at the Wrecking Bar Series hosted by A Cappella Books. Photo by John Ramspott

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In the dark, with my husband, Cal, asleep beside me, I swing my feet to the floor where they land on Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, this book a result of Ross’s year-long practice of writing an essay a day on something delightful. My first book, Tidal Flats, was officially published yesterday. A day when delight was everywhere—the morning signing, the evening party, the friends, the book cake—but so was nervousness.

Twenty-four years ago, on March 26, 1995, with child #4 almost two years old, I’d had a moment when no one needed me. I’ve always been a reader, but during those years my children were young, books became a lifeline. And I wanted to extend that line to others. So, at 38, I made my first attempt at creative writing.

Stand up, I tell myself. You have no extra minutes. I’m due at the Georgia Public Broadcasting station in Atlanta, a hundred miles away, at 8:30 am, and there’s no way to predict the traffic. It will be my first interview and my first time on the radio. And it will be live.

Back in 1995, I ended up with three free moments, and in 1996, seven. Each time, I typed a few words into our family computer. In 1997, I had a little more time, and the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. And before January was even over, I’d pierced through to a layer deep enough that the words began to pour out. I was writing about women and the different choices they made for their lives. And I couldn’t stop. From then on, I made time for writing.

It’s still dark at 5:45 am as my friend Karen Nelson, who flew from California to celebrate the Tidal Flats launch, and I climb into my car to drive the two hours to Atlanta. “I’m just going to concentrate on listening to what Virginia Prescott says,” I say, gulping coffee. “Being in the moment.”

For more than twenty years, I had one goal, one dream—to get a book published. With that mission accomplished, calm and confidence should be right beside me, but instead, inside the studio, my hands are damp and feel unconnected to my body. My heart and stomach are trying to switch places.

A producer comes out to show me the passage Virginia wants me to read. Virginia comes out to say hello. I’m taken back for a mic check. Breathe, I tell myself. I want this to be fun, as fun as it would sound if someone else said they were doing it.

For years, people would say, let me know when your book is published. For years, I imagined jumping up and down with excitement. Then, as more years went by, I began to imagine quietly sinking into a chair as Ed Harris does in Apollo 13 when he finally hears Tom Hanks’ voice after those long minutes of static-y silence.

In the sound studio, I put on headphones. The mic in front of me is so giant I can barely see Virginia sitting across the table. Music comes on and then the voice of Steve McCurry talking about the “Afghan Girl” photo. Then Virginia is saying my name and talking about Tidal Flats. What she’s saying is so interesting. Then she pauses and looks at me. A question. What was the question? But my brain kicks in, and just like that, the seventeen minutes are over.

During the last decade, I’ve done a number of projects, one a year long like Ross’s, all with the goal of “getting my insides out.” But there’s nothing that will get your insides out faster than being interviewed live. And I would be doing another live interview in a few short hours.

The night before, as I got ready for the launch party, Cal said, by way of encouragement, just be yourself. And I thought no, that’s not going to work. I want to do a really good job. For too many years, I watched Pam Houston do these things, always thinking if I ever get a book published and get to read at a bookstore, I want to do as good a job as she does.

Karen and I head to Stone Mountain for some exercise just like Cass and Ethan do in Tidal Flats. It’s a little over a mile to the top, and it’s 98 degrees and humid—much hotter than it should be even for Georgia. Why, I wonder as I climb, did I want a book published if it brought with it so many things I didn’t want to do? Except I do want to do them. I just want to be comfortable doing them. I want to be a writer who’s comfortable standing in front of a room talking about her book and herself.

After our hike, we drive to Westside Atlanta for lunch at JCT. Kitchen—where Cass and Ethan have dinner one night. Back in 2013, while I was writing the first draft of Tidal Flats, I often came here for lunch after Gyrotonics. I show Karen the dirt-red pedestrian bridge, where at the end of Chapter 10, Cass and Ethan pause, the old Atlanta Water Works smokestack in the distance.

I also pause on the bridge as I take a photo. I tend to separate things. Projects over there; life over here. However, despite my best efforts, things seem to be coming together. Real life giving me a little push. You know, a live interview could actually be fun. Being you is not scary. It’s easy.

After an unsuccessful attempt at a nap, Cal and Karen and I get ready for my fourth event in 48 hours—the Atlanta launch of Tidal Flats hosted by A Cappella Books as part of their Writers at the Wrecking Bar series. It’s thundering, and the wind is gusting. When I was little and it would thunder, I would hide in the back of the coat closet. At the moment, though, in a new black dress and new black boots, I look around at the swaying trees and my shoulders drop. I take a breath without having to remind myself to breathe. I feel as comfortable as if I had on pjs and slippers and was about to curl up in front of a TV movie.

Inside the Wrecking Bar, I meet Frank Reiss, the owner of A Cappella Books, and Alison Law of the Literary Atlanta podcast. Kim Ware of The Good Graces is warming up on her guitar. I get a glass of wine, people arrive, I listen to the music. My sisters and brother are here and two nephews. And so many friends—from French camp, from high school, from law school, Cal’s friends, friends of friends. I’m catching up with people I haven’t seen in ages, and when Alison asks if I’m ready, I’m almost surprised.

Frank introduces us, and we head to cozy chairs. Someone hands me a mic, and Alison and I are talking. At one point, Karen pops up from her seat and mimes for me to hold the mic closer to my mouth. People in the audience participate and ask questions, and it’s all so fun, more fun than I ever imagined possible.

Later that night in bed, I pick up The Book of Delights, stare at it for a minute, then place it back on the floor. Earlier in the day, as I had stood on top of the mountain granite where Ethan pulls Cass close and tells her that things have changed, that now he feels more himself with her than anywhere in the world, I had looked in all directions and felt all the space and all the possibility.

Looking around the quiet bedroom, my husband asleep beside me, although I neither want to jump up and down nor sink into a chair, it finally feels as if I’ve crossed over to the place I’ve been working toward for years and years, which perhaps wasn’t as much a published book as it was this feeling of being more myself than ever before.

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NOT THOSE SAME 3 QUESTIONS…

1. When you’re writing, is there something you return to again and again for inspiration?

• Especially The Anna Papers but anything by Ellen Gilchrist. For her voice, her authority, her wildness, and her stories.

2. Do you write in your books?

• Yes, yes, yes. If I don’t underline, my favorite passages will be lost forever. I make notes too, like “amazing sentence–see how much work it does.” In Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, I underlined this: “I don’t keep a journal. My journals are the things I underline in books.”

3. Any obsessions?

• Pine trees that are all wiry and taller than the other trees so they stick out, different textures coming together, abandoned things and places, stairs and thresholds, rainy days and fog, sunrises and sunsets, doors and windows, trains and tracks, lines of laundry, row houses, fall leaves, a full moon, the ocean…

By CYNTHIA NEWBERRY MARTIN

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—Other Writers in the Series—

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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how he or she spends the day.

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photo credit: Chuck Murphy

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October 1, 2019: Cynthia Newberry Martin

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Over the ten plus years of the How We Spend Our Days series, readers and family have often asked when I was going to write about one of my days. I hesitated for two reasons. One, I was often writing about my days here. And two, despite the fact that I’ve been a writer for years, I got it in my head that even though guest writers did not need to have a published book, I did.

Tidal Flats was officially published 9-9-19. So on October 1st, I will write about one of my days.

Normally, my way into a book and therefore the way I introduce the next writer is by way of language. In lieu of that, if anyone who has read Tidal Flats has a favorite line or lines, will you share them in the comments? I would love that.

Since Tidal Flats was published, I’ve had two other firsts–first time on the radio and first time on TV.

Radio: Georgia Public Radio (NPR), “On Second Thought” with Virginia Prescott

 

TV: WLOX-TV in Biloxi, “The Four O’Clock Show” with Dave Elliott

If you’re new to me or to the website, click over for a little lot about me. And please,

Come back on OCTOBER 1st to read how CYNTHIA NEWBERRY MARTIN spends her days.

In Tidal Flats, Cass’s father loved his leather-bound edition of Rumi’s poems, Rumi who was born in Afghanistan. Instead of bedtime stories, he read to Cass from Rumi. And Cass would lie in her closet underneath her dresses and think about elephants tearing the darkness to shreds. The Essential Rumi has been on my shelf since I met Coleman Barks back in 2005, but I read it cover to cover, more than once, as I was working on this novel.

Cass works at Howell House, the home to three unusual women referred to as the Fates. One of them, May, loves The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Cass reads to her from this book that I did not like when I read it in high school. But I fell in love with it when I read it years later after moving to Columbus, recognizing the red brick buildings of both our worlds.

Although Cass had a lonely childhood, early on it was full of a pleasant darkness that gave way to imagination. As an adult, her best friend, Vee, gives her The Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton in an attempt to help her become comfortable with being alone during Ethan’s long absences.

There’s something about Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. It has inspired me with other books I’ve written too. Here, in Tidal Flats, it has a small part near the end of the novel when a stranger mentions it to Cass.

I’m grateful to every book I’ve ever read. And at this moment in time, to these in particular.

Enter Giveaway

August 2012

I love seeing the world through Paul’s eyes.

How emotions are not simple but can be opposing, like these in The Burning House that add depth and complexity to the descriptions.

Joan lay on the couch with an arm thrown over her face, a posture both carefree and desperate at once. (114)

If time could be sweetness, this was it. Sunday night, the sweetest night of the week. And lonesome too, slightly blue. All that work about to begin again, grinding and dull, on the other side of sleep. (49)

Here are some of my favorite passages from The Narrow Door, where I’ve underlined something on almost every page:

[S]pilling is our most inevitable condition. How much work goes into reining ourselves in at every moment when all we want to do is spill, spill? (110)

How many tasks does one not get done in a single day? That’s how most of us live our lives, but that’s not our problem right now. Denise’s family and I are holding ourselves still in the room of light. (200)

To think you can love someone so well that he’d forget the dead, forget his pain. To think of love as a laser beam of attention. (203)

Paul’s blog is cool. If you don’t know it, take a minute. Pick a card–any card. This morning I turned over the card “Present” from January 1st.

At a certain point this week I was running my thumb over photos on my phone. Terrible year, I’d been thinking, terrible. Terrible! And yet there were vivid trees, lightstruck shots of the sea, and faces (friends, strangers, me) that looked, well, awake, present–and dare I say, happy?  Happy in our dailiness. So this is why we make representations. This is why we put a frame around things. How else could we see otherwise?

See what I mean?

His new memoir, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, will be out in March. From Graywolf,

To read how Paul spent one of his days in July 2012: How We Spend Our Days: Paul Lisicky

I love seeing the world through Paul’s eyes. I’m especially grateful for how he sees Tidal Flats.

Joshua Mohr is a wonderful writer and a wonderful human being. His smile will make all your troubles fall away. The dedication to his memoir Sirens, my favorite book of his, reads as follows:

For those of us who want to do better.

Josh had three strokes before he turned 40. And then they found a hole in his heart. Sirens is about this and his addiction and recovery and relapse and recovery. It was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2017. The following is from an interview with the LA Times:

I’m thirty-nine now, writing this as a father, someone sober six years, writing this wondering if a look backward can make sense of who I am, what I am.

I think that’s why I loved Sirens so much. With all my projects I’m trying to make sense of who I am, often looking backwards.

But another really cool thing about Sirens is its musical structure of three notes–the addition stories, the person fearing for his life, and the person looking back trying to make sense of it all. The juxtaposition of these three notes creates something bigger than you can imagine.

You’ll find more about Josh in my introduction of him last May. And more from Josh in his essay on how he spends his days.

I’m grateful for presence in the world and his wonderful writing, and his support of mine.

First sentence of the Prologue: “The summer just past had marked a full year since Beth had learned what happened to her son Ben.”

On June 1, 1996, when The Deep End of the Ocean was published, my kids were 2, 7, 9, and 15. I had not practiced law in 7 years–they were a full-time job. Reading was my lifeline.

But the all-consuming part of mothering appeared to be coming to an end. During 1995, I had 3 free moments. 1996 brought me 7 more. I know the exact number because the moments were so astonishing that I wrote them down. I still have the tiny slip of paper.

During each of those 10 moments, I picked up a pen and a piece of paper or I sat at our first computer and tried to write. Writing was not a need or even a desire, but if I had a free moment, I dipped in.

But in January of 1997, when I started writing, I couldn’t stop. I began to make time for it. And it was in April of the same year that I finally read The Deep End of the Ocean. It was Jacquelyn Mitchard’s debut novel. She had five children and had written this book that I could not put down, that took me to another place, that I have kept on my shelf for all these years.

In the novel, Beth and Pat have 3 children–a baby, 3-year-old Ben and 7-year-old Vincent. Chapter 1 begins with a moment between a husband and a wife that feels true.

“I only like the baby,” Beth told her husband, as they stacked plastic bags and diaper bags, and duffel bags and camera bags, and Beth’s big old Bacfold reflector–all in a pile in the hall.

She was surprised when Pat looked at her with disgust; she knew he didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to make trouble on the verge of clearing the whole tribe out for a weekend.

It was my love of books like The Deep End of the Ocean that made me want to write in the first place. During my 2012 residency at Ragdale, I had the pleasure of meeting Jacquelyn Mitchard. Earlier this year, she generously agreed to read my first novel and send a quote. Huge thanks to Jacquelyn Mitchard for her writing and for her support of mine.

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.

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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 : )

In actuality, when I signed the contract in early January for my novel Tidal Flats to be published by Yellow Pear Press, I just smiled.

And then I did the happy dance–all by myself in Provincetown.

I wanted to tell Cal first and I wanted to tell him in person and I wasn’t going home for almost two weeks. So… I got to work on edits.

That’s actually what sold me on the small, independent California press–edits. Yellow Pear Press’s editor Lisa McGuinness had three main suggestions after reading the manuscript in late November. And I agreed with ALL.

Of course, it didn’t hurt when she mentioned publication in the fall of 2019. (Yay!)

December was the contract. January and February were edits. On Friday, March 1st, the manuscript went to the copyeditor. Isn’t it awesome to hear those words?

A lot of you know that I’ve been writing for a long time, and that I’ve been working on this particular novel since January of 2013. You know I’ve tried different openings, that I’ve abandoned entire sections, that I’ve jumped without any idea where I would land. I kept at it, as Elizabeth Strout wrote, “long past the point where it made sense.”

And yet, here we are–later this year, there will be a real book–hooray!