I’ve been thinking lately about why it is I have not written fiction in so long. Let me back up. A year ago, I re-entered grad school and the critical writing I did took over the time I had for writing fiction. Then my novel was released and the work I did to promote it took over the time I had for writing fiction. Add on top of this mother, etc, and there was little time left over.

But then I finished my thesis and graduated and my book promotion ended and still I did not write. I tried. I wrote a few small things, but the thought of attaching myself to anything larger was overwhelming. I was out of the habit. I read, though. I never stopped doing that. But writing became something scary. In fact, I felt as though I might be acquiring a new phobia but this time of something I love: writing. So now I’m forcing myself to write every day while at the same time trying to unpack what has been stopping me from writing.

Right now I am reading A Moveable Feast, which is an unintentionally interesting time to read it given that there have been a spattering of perceived writer-on-writer nastinesses going on of late. In this book, Hemingway was both loving toward his fellow writers and utterly bitchy toward them (at his worst, he is horribly judgmental about their lifestyles and sexual lives). Mostly the latter and shockingly so, reminding me why I don’t like to read about writers’ lives.

At its best, A Moveable Feast inspires the writer in me when he speaks of his process and of how wonderful it feels when he is in the groove of his writing. Reading that has made me long for that feeling again.

But what is it that hurt me so to get me to this place of resistance to writing? Was it mental exhaustion after a taxing eight months? Or was it something more?

It was something more. And I know what it was. And I’m ashamed of what it was.

When Echolocation came out, I had steeled myself for negative reviews. I fully believed they would come because nothing in my life has ever come easily and I am used to the struggle. Instead, readers were incredibly generous in their feelings toward the books. Yes, there were some who felt the ending might have been different, but mostly they offered me praise. I was surprised and grateful that people felt about the book the way my editor, agent, and I felt about it. I was delighted.

But then something happened that left me unhinged. On May 12, a woman posted a one star on review on Goodreads and dismissed my work with but a few sentences of her own.

I did not react to her. I did not say anything. I made a joke about it on Facebook. I said that it showed that I had arrived. I really wanted to rise above this connection of words but over time I found I could not.

I visited her words almost every day until I let them live in me. I studied her face. She’s smiling but she looks mean. I examined the books she’s reviewed (noting that she’s one-starred the work of many writers I admire). The rational part of me said to let it go. She would never like what I am about and that is okay. But the child in me–the people pleaser–felt that I had failed and that her words validated every horrible thing I had ever thought of myself.

This reviewer was the exemplar of all that I expected. She was nastiness in the face of all of the love my book had received. She was the ugly voice inside my head that says you can’t really do this and you shouldn’t even try. The voice that says you are no one and never will be. The voice that says give up. The voice that says I don’t want to hear you.

She was that voice come to life. Before reading her words, I hadn’t know that that voice really did live in human form.

But now she has served her purpose and I am letting her go. I have learned from her. I have learned how to face this voice and not let it break me.

Now, right now, I’m pouring water on her and she is melting away.

I am here using my own voice and I am writing.

You cannot stop me.

I am the only one who can stop me.

I will not stop.

I ran alone and did not bring my phone. I looked into the woods and considered blazing a trail up into the cool, dark places. I was home and these were my woods. I knew the color of the light that cut through the trees. Men in trucks were just men in trucks. Stray dogs would come up and let you give them a pat.

I did not fear the dark of night. The sighs of the bats were comforting to me there.

I recognized the fear when my husband and I were first dating. He brought me out of the city and into the woods to visit his dad. After dinner, I wanted a smoke. I’d left my cigarettes in the car and set out to get them by myself. As soon as I stepped out of the light from the porch, the darkness overtook me. I had been gone from home for ten or more years by then and was accustomed to the halo of street lights. I panicked and ran for the car. I brought my cigarette back to the light to smoke it. I would not go into the dark alone again. I would not.

Living in the city, I had learned to fear the dark places. Walking back from the T alone at night, I ran through the near-dark spaces.

Once you recognize the fear, you can replace it with another energy. This is what a therapist once taught me. Your anxiety is actually fear. Understand what you are afraid of and then you can conquer it. And if you cannot conquer it, then at least you can take comfort in recognizing it.

At home, I fear the night. The time when my child is in one room and I am in another, both of us asleep and vulnerable. I worry about someone crawling through a window and snatching him as he sleeps. I tell this to a friend and she tells me that I’m being crazy. I agree with her but then the news is filled with stories of children snatched from their bedrooms. I say, “See? See? It’s not such an irrational fear.” But I know that it is irrational and unlikely.

Still, I fear people lurking outside. I lock the windows. I do not look out.

But there, back there, I was not so afraid. I ran out on that road alone and did not worry about who might take me. I ran until I was tired and then I turned around and ran back. My comfort there was maybe as irrational as my fear here, but it didn’t matter. I could breathe.

I was not afraid and I could breathe. But then the man in the truck drove up ahead and parked and pulled down the back of the trailer to load something on it and I was scared. I did not know what he would do to me. When I passed by, I said hello and he said hello back. He went about his work. He did nothing.

I remembered the time, back in the city, when I ran alone in the morning at the arboretum. I ran up the hill as the sun rose as I had done morning and morning and morning before. At the top,a group of young men sat quietly. They might have been meditating for all I knew but all I knew was fear. I could not see the individuals at all. I could only see the group. My head said, be rational, but my body said, run.

And so I ran, fast. I did not run on the path, instead I ran down the steepest part of the hill. I might have fallen but I ran. I ran and ran until I got home, so sure that they were following me, but when I stopped running and looked behind me, nobody was there.

My son is scared to jump from the side of the pool into the water. The action is required in his swimming class before he can move up to the next level. He asks me why it is necessary. I have no good answer.

He is not a child who acts on blind faith. He acts on fact and reason. He wants to know why.

When I say to his teacher, “Could you please tell him why he needs to learn how to jump?”

The teacher says, “Because it’s fun.” Not quite the answer we were looking for. When the teacher notes my son’s reaction as he sits shivering on the side of the pool, he mumbles a follow up about needing to learn how to jump into the water in case you are ever on a boat. Again, this does not move my son to jump.

I know what it is, this fear. He does not trust that the teacher will rescue him when he goes under. The pool is deep, the bottom uncertain.

At the beach, he jumps off the sandy cliff cut by a tide pool over and over into the shallow water. I say, “See? You can do it. You are jumping into the water.”

“It’s not like the pool,” he says. We both know that is true.

When I was his age, I would blindly jump into the pool, not even considering the bottom. I was not risk averse as he is. I know that while this aversion may hold him back in some ways, generally it will mean he will live a longer and happier life. At least that is what I hope.

In many ways, I am not risk averse, which has been a blessing and a curse throughout my life. At my son’s age, I nearly died because of my recklessness. It was winter. My sisters and I were in the vacant lot next door, climbing an apple tree. I must have slipped on a snowy branch because the next thing I knew, I was hanging by my neck in between V-d branches.

I was hanging. Dangling by my neck.

My sisters screamed and tried to help me but they were too small. My mother, washing dishes in the kitchen, saw us from the window and ran out in her bare feet. She quickly pulled me from the tree. Because she was there, she saved my life.

And I know how she felt in that moment. That horrific feeling of parental dread when you are collapsing within as you watch your child in distress and danger. The utter helplessness to turn back time.

When he was one, my son nearly choked to death fifteen minutes into us entering a remote vacation rental. As our son was grasping for breath, my husband and I realized even more fully than we had ever done before how very much he was intertwined with us. We could not imagine a world without him.

And yet part of modern parenting is constantly imagining that world and trying to find ways to fight against it, while at the same time finding a way to balance the desire to protect with the child’s desire for and need of independence.

As parents we either do too much or too little protecting. We either do too much or too little allowance for independence. There is not one person I know who has found the perfect balance. It is an imperfect art. An imperfect science.

Actually, it is not only an art and a science. It is an instinct. You see it with the mother duck trying to get her ducklings safely across the road. The cat with her kittens in her mouth moving them to a safer location.

So if it is partially an instinct, how do you help your child over his (rational) fear of doing something that is potentially dangerous?  Yes, he could possibly drown if he jumps in the pool, but with his teacher right there and lifeguard nearby, it is unlikely that he would.

After I fell out of the tree, I was no longer allowed to climb trees. This was added to my list of things that I could not do, which included spinning around as my mother believed this would bring on a seizure (I had suffered a petit mal seizure as an infant, most likely brought on by high fever). I was also not allowed to ride a bike.

Then, after my father died, all restrictions fell off me and my mother scarcely knew what I did or did not do because she was not around. Even when she was around and half-heartedly tried to place restrictions on me, we both soon forgot the restrictions and went on as we were. The way I was going on was in increasingly more dangerous ways. I risked my health. I risked my body. I risked my life.

It was only years later that I understood the lessons from taking these risks, but they were lessons that also might easily have been taught me by a parent: love yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be gentle. Yes, you can push against these boundaries, but always remember that I am here to love you without judgment.

On our way to swimming lessons this week, my son said, once again, that he did not want to jump in the pool. He said, “Will you tell my teacher that?”

I told him that no, I would not. I said, “It’s between you and your teacher and it’s your responsibility to talk to him about it.”

He said, “Well, I’m really mad at you then.”

I said, “That’s okay. Be angry with me. I still love you anyway.”

And he said in an angry voice, “I love you, too, Mummy.”

When it came time to jump, he told his teacher that he didn’t want to do it. The teacher cajoled. Next to him a much smaller child jumped over and over off the edge and into the water where his mother waited. My son looked at me, pleading with his eyes for me to intervene.

As much as it pained me, I turned my head.

They reached a compromise: he would jump, but only if he could still hold his teacher’s hands.

And this is what they did.

One day, he will jump on his own. His face will go under the water and in that moment when he is in the water and I am on the side, we will both panic. But then we will remember that beneath the water there is beauty. Bubbles, the pull of gravity, quiet. A reverse birth, a leaving of the air and a return to the quiet of the womb. Then, once again, pushing up to light, breaking the surface again to breathe and to see your mother’s face.

There’s still time to enter for your chance to win one of five copies of Echolocation. Please feel free to spread the word. Thank you!  

Here’s the reading list for the Dead Writers Book Group.

Tomorrow begins the first meeting of the dead writer’s book group. Michelle Bailat-Jones gets the ball rolling beautifully over at our blog. Please join us!

At the end of April, I heard Andrew Scott read for the first time at the Newburyport Literary Festival. I wasn’t prepared for what happened to me as he read his quietly beautiful story, “All That Water.” What happened was this: I was bowled over with emotion and I cried. Turns out the friend sitting next to me cried as well. And others in the audience cried as well. As an audience, we were collectively moved by his words.

The thing is that the story wasn’t forcing itself down our throats and saying, “CRY!” Instead, it quietly, subtly moved into our hearts and minds and brought us to a moment of connection with the narrative. And that, my friends, is what I call skill. Andrew Scott has skill, but more than that, he’s got heart.

Each one of the stories in his gorgeous collection, Naked Summer, will move you in some way. I promise you that. They may not all make you cry, but they will certainly not leave you without some sort of emotional connection. You will feel for these people that Scott introduces you to. The boy turning into a man as he is seduced and reduced by the woman across the street. The older couple falling in and out of love in the model apartment in their building. The young couples who struggle to find themselves and each other in this crazy and challenging world. You will see yourself in these stories and/or you will see someone you know or want to know.

After I finished the book last night, I lay in bed and tried to puzzle out which of the lot was my favorite story, but I couldn’t decide. I guess that’s because they all embody the title and the moment from which that title comes (from the story, “Naked Summer”):

Next door, a little girl without a shirt, not yet five years old, ran across her lawn, squealing, chased by her mother, who laughed with arms outstretched. Bobby and Annie watched the scene. “How cute,” Annie said. “It’s probably her last naked summer. Next year she’ll have to wear clothes.”

And there it is: the moment that sums up these stories separately and in their entirety. They are stories which glimpse that moment of joy or pain or despair before the transition into the next stage of life. Stories trapped in amber as we live and die.

It’s an utterly gorgeous book. Go on and read it, please.

I invite you to enter for a chance to win a copy of Echolocation on Goodreads. You can enter from now until June 17th, 2012. Many to thanks to my publisher, Engine Books, for this opportunity.

On September 11, 2001, my husband and I were camping on Dungeness Spit in Washington State when we heard the horrible news of the day. We felt lost and terrifyingly alone. We’d already been traveling for a couple of months and planned to keep traveling for a couple more but in those moments, nothing seemed more important than getting home. But we couldn’t get home. Not easily. And so we did that which we found most comforting; we hiked.

We found some solace in the hike, but by late afternoon, we had still not seen the actual footage. It wasn’t until we stood before a wall of televisions in Radio Shack where we’d gone to buy a radio for our camp that we saw the footage. I remember falling to my knees. I’m not sure if I actually did fall but I remember that I did.

I stayed up that night listening to the radio, bewildered people calling into talk radio. Everyone seeking a connection. The next morning, we decided to hike again. We hoped the hike would help us make our decision about whether to keep going on our trip or to head for home. As we were going up a beautiful trail in Olympic National Park, two young men were coming down. We stopped on the trail and chatted. They’d been camping in the backcountry for several days, they told us. Did you hear the news? We asked.

Yes, they said. They were almost blase about it. Not in a horrible way, but in a way I understood as not fully understanding the gravity of what they were about to witness once they made it back to reality. They had not yet heard the voices. They had not yet seen the images. They had been wrapped in the cocoon of nature. They had been safe. They had been innocent. I envied them their not knowing. I wanted to tell them to turn around and go back. Do not let yourself know this horrible thing.

I have wondered what it would be like to go back to that state of innocence when we don’t yet know that  a horrible act has occurred, when we are focus solely on feeding and housing ourselves. What would it be like to be alone in the woods? What would it like to be cocooned in nature? I think about this when I read the news–the atrocities. Children abused, starved. Bombs dropped on civilians. People murdered in their sleep. I want to unknow these things. I want to believe I am innocent and safe.

Steve Himmer has not only wondered about returning to our state of innocence–returning to the allegorical garden before an original sin has occurred and before the birth of knowledge–he has recreated it in his beautiful novel, The Bee-Loud Glade, where his protagonist Finch accepts a job as a decorative hermit on the property of an impossibly wealthy and powerful man named Mr. Crane.

What follows is an allegory for our times, in which we have forsaken human contact and chosen, instead, to communicate without our true voices or with no voices at all. In which we ARE the avatars we create for ourselves. We have closed off our speech and allowed ourselves to be viewed by others, our privacy stripped away. We have been tempted to believe the beautiful people we see in movies are what we should desire and in desiring them, we recognize our own limitations–our all-too-human smells and unfortunate hairs and dimples.

Though Finch has left the world of technology behind him, he does not really leave it behind, until Mr. Crane loses everything he owns, leaving Finch truly alone for the first time. Then he relies on himself alone and finds that he can, in fact, be self-reliant. It is only when two hikers seek out and find the aged Finch that he realizes the true state of his existence:

I pretend my solitude is isolation, that I’ve erased myself from the world, but I’m more in it than I’ve ever been. Which is to say, not very much, no more and no less than anyone else–we may have a more lasting impact on the world when we break down into nutrients and raw material that nourish a whole chain of life, insects and earthworms and grass, than we ever have when we’re alive. Perhaps that’s the closest any one of us comes to knowing how things fit together.

Ultimately, Finch understands his purpose in the garden. He understands that we can’t return to blissful ignorance. Once connected, we remain connected on this great big garden, planet Earth:

Maybe self-reliance was never what I was meant for, and sustainability was: can I build something and have it continue without me, can my good works outlast my good life?

This book will make you think. You will consider you reliance on social media, your inability to truly trust in the regenerative aspect of nature. You will see your own frailties and desires in Finch. Finally, you will see what Finch sees despite his failing eyes and that is that we are not often at our best when we are alone. We are social animals, after all, who need the warmth and love of others like us to help us reach  true sustainability and self-worth.

It is a beautiful book. I hope you will read it.

Last year, I lost a sweet friend. She was someone who believed wholeheartedly in the power of the coincidence. In fact, she often commented on coincidental events that occurred in her life. It did seem like she had a lot of them, but as I was thinking about her this morning I wondered if she did have more coincidences occur than the average person or if she was simply more open to them than the rest of us are.

Yesterday, as I was getting ready to board a ferry that would take me away from New York State, the world of my youth, and back into New England, the world of my adulthood, a song came on the radio. It was the song “Dust in the Wind,” by Kansas. This is notable because it was a song I dearly loved in 1978-1979 which is when I met my dear friends who attended my reading at my undergraduate alma mater, SUNY Plattsburgh, on Tuesday night. To me, hearing that song felt like a coincidence, a sign. An indication, that I was traveling once again from my childhood to my adulthood. Later, after I had left the ferry, another song came on. That song was “Heaven” by Brian Adams. Again, this song is significant because it was the song I sang over and over until we remembered the words with that same group of friends. Indeed, it was the song we chose for our prom theme. The coincidence felt important to me and I cried.

I left on a trip worrying about the outcome. I came home from a trip grateful for all of the people who have stood beside me in my life, bringing me to this moment of satisfaction and pride. You are standing beside me and I beside you. Once we are connected, that connection never leaves.

What it is is this: you are not alone in this world. There are people who have been there with you throughout your life, watching you grow, inspiring you, teaching you, bringing you up. There are people who knew who you were and who have witnessed the adult you’ve become, but inside you still is that child open to possibility, able to believe that a seemingly simple coincidence has significance.

*** disclaimer: brace yourself for this video as it is v. 1970s. ***