Sheila Curran's Organizing Secrets Revealed!

It was extremely difficult for me to choose between the topics for this blog cycle.  Should it be time-management or marketing?  

How about Sumo Wrestling?  Because I am sure that, were I to suit myself up in that butt-cheek dividing diaper and go mano a mano with some huge fat man with sleek dark hair pulled back just so, I could seriously be better at that than either marketing my own work or managing my time.   

 It’s not that I haven’t tried.  I have purchased many products.  Like the binder system pictured below. I got the idea from this extremely entertaining (I’m saying HOURS of enjoyment!) series on the organized home.   (I want to be this woman.  The labels!  The systems!  Everything in its place.)

I dutifully bought a 3 ring binder, put in the plastic pockets, and filled the first one with all the errands I would run on Monday.  Register the car.  Renew daughter's passport.  Mail back shoes at post office.  Yeah!  I had it going on!

 Except that on Monday, I discovered that along with Obama's inauguration, it was also (duh) Martin Luther King Day!  All of my places were closed!  

Still, as you can see, I was trying.  (As my good friend Jane Ulrich would say, "very trying.")

The trouble is, when I set out to ‘get things done,” which has become an inside joke since I flunked the lessons of the extremely popular book of the same name, I discovered things like federal holidays that I didn't think of!  

My self-improvement chronicle is one of false starts. Like the thingie below.  Which I bought in December.

So how does it happen that the folders remain empty?

Because, until two days ago, when my husband sat in my office and said, "That's a nice organizer," I had consigned the piece to some sort of back burner of the brain.  So much so that I had, when I went to Staples for the binder, come very close to buying an organizer broken down into this one's exact constituent parts.  TO DO.  TO FILE.  IN BOX.

In one in-box and out the other.   

Instead of using the perfectly nice organizer, I've clung to my default system.

I admit it.  I cannot seem to do this thing called time management.  Not even the first step involving getting all your papers out of the way so you can think and focus.  It's not that I don't love reading about how to declutter my life.  However, when it comes to following through, or EVEN REMEMBERING the last system I swore would change everything, I do some kind of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind kind of thing.

My only system, if you can call it that, is to contain clutter in some spaces, like my kitchen desk,

so that the rest of the room can look something like this.

But even in those places I try to keep clean, I cannot help but play around.  
See my great room?

Here's the top of the coffee table.

So, let's see.  My system so far? Contain the clutter, order other things in ways that might make you laugh even if no one else sees them, and ... use organizers you ADORE. Because they are PRETTY.

The only successful folder I've ever maintained is an accordian file I bought in Florence.  It is so PRETTY.  Or I think so.

Lest you think I am frightfully good at this, I must say I just stuff papers in there willy-nilly.

For example, the picture below shows what I withdrew from one of its sleeves.

From top left to bottom, I found the following traces of my life:  a picture from my six year old daughter,the publisher's acceptance letter on my first manuscript, my premature son’s birth announcement, a letter from my 8 year old daughter begging me to let her ride in a car that I wasn’t driving, a card, a photo, the set list from a favorite Bruce Springsteen concert.  Beside those were a letter I wrote my brother a week before he died, in which I told him everything I admired about him, and a letter from my siblings in 2010 when I was recovering from cancer and my dad was dying of congestive heart failure and we were all gathered in New Hampshire to be with him. 

 

My point?  I held onto these things because I knew they were precious.  (And also because I really wanted to untie the ribbon and use my PRETTY folder.  I love knowing my treasures are contained therein.)  So I guess if I were to advise all you wannabee sumo wrestlers out there, I’d say try doing what works for you.  Who cares if it’s not like everyone else’s system, or if it’s the opposite of a system?
 

Some of us were born to organize, others to run.   

Others still are just holding on by the seat of our pants to the things we know we need to remember.  And it’s not the errands that so dearly need getting done.  It’s not the passport that must be renewed, but those parts of time that have fled so fast, leaving in their place simply text on a page.  Or a photo of a child who looks so different now.  Or maybe it's just a perfect vase of flowers, long gone but not forgotten.

 

Sheila Curran's Diana Lively is Falling Down is available only as a digital book, unless you contact the the author who'd be happy to sell you a paperback copy.  Her second novel Everyone She Loved is available in digital or hard copy.  You can view a trailer about the book (and the author's television-watching-dog) if you'd like to know more.  

 

The Female Line, by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

The following essay originally appeared on The Huffington Post on Mother’s Day 2007 and was frequently reprinted elsewhere on Mother’s Day in the years to follow. After my own mother, Lucille Baratz, died on January 17 of this year, I discovered multiple copies of it in one of her drawers at assisted living. Apparently she liked it so much, she made a habit of handing copies out to other residents like candy. I thought that in her memory, I would run it one last time. Here you go, Mom.

This is a story about women.

I know nothing abut my great-grandmother on my mother’s side. I do know that when she died, my great-grandfather replaced her with a woman known in family lore only as The Witch.

When my grandmother Lucy was sixteen, she was playing jacks with her younger sisters when my great-grandfather showed up one day with a new dress. He told Lucy to put it on, that she was getting married that day. With four daughters and two sons and The Witch to support, he couldn’t very well keep them all at home forever. So off Lucy went in her new dress, in 1907, to be married to a man ten years her senior.

Over the next sixteen years, Lucy became pregnant several times, resulting in four live births, the last of whom was my mother. When my mother was still quite young, Lucy decided it was time to stop cooking all the time. It was time to start joining clubs and traveling. When my mother grew up, they went on many trips together, often to Florida but also on bigger trips, like a cruise to Venezuela.

Unlike with The Witch, there are many family stories about Grandma Lucy. She was big on rituals: graduations, funerals, anywhere people gathered to celebrate or commiserate, Lucy felt a responsibility to show up and be counted. There was a boy from a large family in the neighborhood, Polish immigrants, who was to be the first in his large family to graduate from college. For whatever reason, lack of funds or lack of interest, no one from his family planned to attend. So Lucy took the train from Bridgeport to New York by herself so that when his big moment on stage at Fordham University came, there would be at least one person from back home to cheer his name. In terms of funerals, which she took to attending with a vengeance later in life, she was saddened and shocked one day to read in the papers of the death of her friend Mary Johnson. So of course Lucy went to the funeral. The only problem was, it was the wrong Mary Johnson. This Mary Johnson was black, while Lucy was white, and the packed church of mourners were all black too. I suppose it might have occurred to Lucy, this being the ‘40s, that it might have been simpler to just turn around and leave. But Lucy couldn’t, wouldn’t do that. Someone named Mary Johnson had died! She must pay her respects! Lucy went through the receiving line, hugging and kissing Mary Johnson’s children, telling them all what a great woman their mother had been. Lucy, unsurprisingly, was the hit of the funeral.

Lucy’s daughter Lucille, my mother, would take a different path in life. She would not marry until she was thirty-one, nearly twice as old as Lucy had been when she was married. Lucille was a maverick, the only one of Lucy’s female offspring to attend college, one of the few female pharmacy majors in her class. After receiving her pharmacist’s license, Lucille regularly attended meetings of the Bridgeport Pharmaceutical Association at which she was the only woman among 50-60 men. In 1948 she became the first woman elected to office in a local pharmacy organization in the state of Connecticut. 

Lucille was also a big fan of sports, any sports but in particular baseball. Rather than my father, it was Lucille who taught my older brother how to play ball and how to keep score. This meant that I had to learn how to play and keep score too, because there sure wasn’t anyone in the house that wanted to play dolls with me. At 84, Lucille still watches the Yankees every chance she gets, and still keeps score.

I have not had to insist on my right to pursue my own interests nor have I had to become a maverick: Lucy and Lucille paved the way for me. Because of them, I believe it is my natural right to go after my dreams. If I want to be a writer, then that is what I shall be. If I want to be published in several genres, despite popular wisdom that you are not supposed to sell fish in your meat market, then that is what I shall do. Because Lucille never questioned whether she should be in an organization with only men, when I grew up to develop a passion for pool, I never questioned whether it was OK or not for me to compete in predominantly masculine settings. I just loaded my pool cue and went. I also have Lucille to thank for my love of books. I don’t remember a time growing up when there wasn’t a stack of books between the couch and the old-fashioned stereo in the living room. I don’t remember a day when I didn’t see Lucille spend at least part of it lying on the couch with a book propped on her belly or, in the summer, out by the pool. Even in the pool! The women in my family read everywhere.

Which brings me to the next generation, my seven-year-old daughter Jackie, who has inherited our love of reading and will no doubt grow up to write circles around me. I spent 10 married years thinking I’d never be pregnant and then – poof! – along came Jackie. She is everything my line of women would predict she’d be: smart, kind, generous, happy, beautiful. Indeed, Lucille refers to her, and rightfully so, as Joy.

From Lucy Martin Caldana to Lucille Caldana Baratz to Lauren Baratz-Logsted to Jacqueline Logsted, we are one unbroken line of women, improving as many things as we can with each generation.   

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of 31 books. You can read more about her life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com    

Writing Wishes Come True

 by Barbara Claypole White

Writing during the holidays is a test of endurance—to be attempted only by diehards and those on deadline. This year, I fell into the latter category. Novel two was due in my editor’s inbox bright and early on Monday January 7^th. I was not panicking. I was not panicking. I was not panicking.

However, since every heroine needs a number of obstacles between her and her goal, here’s my list: I was the sickest I’d been since my son’s preschool days; the Jewish side of the family was coming for an English-Christmas-the-works; my son was turning eighteen, and a teenage invasion, I mean party, loomed; I hadn’t cleaned my house in a very, very long time; and our huge Christmas tree was still undecorated. (I’d strung the lights mid-fever, and our son, bless him, had attempted to fix them. It wasn’t pretty.)

When I’m overwhelmed, I tend to break life into daily goals and ignore the big picture. Drives my husband crazy, but narrowing my focus always works for me. While I wrestled the manuscript to a point where I could put it aside for five days, he valiantly morphed into Mr. Mom. He even organized the birthday cake, bought and distributed teacher gifts, and ensured we had the hard-to-find 15oz can of chestnut puree I needed for the stuffing.

Once the antibiotics kicked in, I became Molly Maids on steroids and baked at a level that would have impressed the goddess of English cooking, Delia Smith. I even took two days off to be sociable. Then I crawled upstairs to my office, closed the door, and stayed there for ten days. I emerged only to eat, sleep, and do laundry. On New Year’s Eve, I worked fifteen hours straight.

Friends left me alone or muttered, “Oh, you poor thing, how rotten having to work so hard over the holidays.” But during those ten days, something magical happened. Everything stripped down to me, my story, and my characters.

The Unfinished Garden, my debut novel, will always be my first baby, especially since it’s a story about my favorite topic—the courage it takes to fight OCD / obsessive-compulsive disorder. (I’m the proud mother of a brilliant obsessive-compulsive.) Novel two, however, has worked itself under my skin and into my heart. Even though it deals with dementia, depression, and the death of a child, it’s a hopeful story that circles a theme I love: finding light in darkness. It’s an emotional read, and to mine the psychology of my characters, I need to be fully present when I write their voices. For those ten days, I was.  

Within a week, my revision letter came back from my editor, and I was eager to dive back in. I was energized. Writing to deadline over the holidays had turned out to be the Christmas gift of my dreams.

Barbara Claypole White is the author of The Unfinished Garden, a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt. Originally from England, she lives in the North Carolina Forest with her family and a ridiculously large woodland garden. Temporarily unnamed novel two has a publication date of January 2014.

GBC SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Reviewed by Christa Allan

Every first Sunday in June, members of the Moses clan gather for an annual reunion at a sprawling hundred-acre farm in Arkansas. And every year, Samuel Lake, a vibrant and committed young preacher, brings his beloved wife, Willadee Moses, and their three children back for the festivities. In the midst of it all, Samuel and Willadee’s outspoken eleven-year-old daughter, Swan, is a bright light. Her high spirits and fearlessness have alternately seduced and bedeviled three generations of the family. But just as the reunion is getting under way, tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core and setting the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change. 

As a Louisiana born and bred girl myself, I looked forward to reading a novel by a writer who, as she says, "grew up all over Louisiana" as a preacher's kid. The first sentence of her story about "family and fun and sacrifice and tragedy"  wrapped itself around me and, even as I unwound at the end, the sensation of that embrace stayed with me.

Wingfield's characters range from quirky to charming to vile, but each is developed beyond the boundaries of stereotypes. Even the setting itself, Columbia County, Arkansas in the mid 1950s, feels like a character. The relationship between Samuel and his wife Willadee is a foil to that between Ras and Geraldine Ballinger, contrasting moments of pure tenderness with revolting abuse. Eleven-year-old Swan, the middle daughter of the Lakes, sandwiched between her older brother Noble and younger brother Bienville, steers the story with her spunky nature and her decision to befriend Blade, the Ballinger's eight-year-old son. That decision connects the families and change all of their lives. In many ways, Swan reminded me of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird in her determination to right wrongs and to speak from her heart.

I loved Wingfield's writing and her ability to wed the simple and the profound. She prevented Swan Lake from being a name that borders on ridiculous with this: "The girl, she (Willadee) named Swan. Not because a swan is beautiful, but because it is powerful. A girl needs power that she doesn't have to borrow from someone else." That same ability makes the violent scenes all the more gut-wrenching. 

Ultimately, Samuel Lake does find home-the place that defines him-in ways both unexpected and unexplainable. And, perhaps, it's in that testing of all that we believe in that leads us to recognize that where our heart is, there is our home.

This novel would be a great book club selection. Wingfield provides questions for discussion and "Letting the Story Happen," where she discusses how the novel evolved.





Christa Allan is the author of Walking on Broken Glass, The Edge of Grace, and Love Finds You in New Orleans. Her next novel, Threads of Hope, will release in March. You can find her at www.christaallan.com, Facebook, and Twitter. After twenty-five years of teaching high school English, Christa very recently retired...so she could meet her own deadlines. Christa and her husband recently moved to New Orleans to live in a home older than their combined ages. Their three neurotic cats are adjusting.

Saturday Book Give Away! Autographed Copy and What's tougher? The Beginning or the End?

Saturday Book Giveaway:  The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, autographed and shipped to you!

Email me 

Having fun with Photo Booth.

at micheleyoungstone@gmail.com 
for your chance to win.  Just type BLOG!  I'll draw names and email you back for your address.  (I'll accept emails up until this Wednesday.  Thanks!)  One reader said that my book is REAL, like homemade pie.  The Boston Globe liked it.  Goodreads likes it.  Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal recommended it.  What have you got to lose?   

On to writerly topics: 

Yesterday, I saw this Twitter post:  Which is harder for you?  The beginning of your novel or the end?

Immediately, without a second thought, I typed, “end”.

So, I’m asking you the same question?  Which is tougher?  Getting started or coming up with the ending?

Reading yesterday's responses, I noticed that those who responded, “Beginning,” weren’t so much talking about the beginning, but about that halfway point, that floundering no man’s land, where you, the writer, doesn’t know what you’re doing.  You started strong.  You thought you were brilliant, and then, all of the sudden, you don’t know what should happen next.  You’re out of ideas.  (I should be writing this in the first person plural because I think this happens, not just to me, but to every writer.)  

We get lost.  If we have a strong beginning or we think we know the ending, chances are that somewhere in between, a new character is going to present herself.  We’re going to flat-line and lose sight of the conflict’s intensity.  We’re going to run out of ideas.  Uncertainty is a guarantee.  The answer to this uncertainty is to keep moving forward, faithfully, unflinchingly.  Because:  No ifs ands or buts:  you are going to be cutting and rewriting.  That’s the name of the game.  

Target Summer Pick! That's mine in
the middle!

Writing a novel is not an easy endeavor.  By all means, it’s exciting and wondrous, but not easy.  If you're an idealist and you think Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road without revising, think again.  Anyone who makes anything great most likely suffered for it.     

And for those of you geniuses who don’t have to rewrite repeatedly, I'm not going to lie.  I'm envious.  I am in the midst of a rewrite.  It’s a necessity for me.  Sometimes, I think it’s plain evil, but then I see the change I’ve wrought through one draft and then another, and my work is all the better because of it.

Things to consider:  Do you know how your book is going to end when you begin it?  I do not, but all writers are different. 

Tom Robbins once said at the first James River Writers Conference, “If I knew how a book was going to end, why would I bother writing it?”  For him and for me, writing is an act of discovery.  But for others, they know the ending, they are just not sure how they’re going to get there.    

Don't Fear the Beginning or the Ending.  Love the Act!

So, beginning or ending?  What’s your thorn?  Is the middle your quicksand?

Thanks for reading.  I hope you win a signed hardback copy of The Handbook for Lightning Strike 

Survivors!!!

"Young-Stone has written an exceptionally rich and sure-handed debut, full of complex characters, brilliantly described..."  The Boston Globe

michele young-stone is the author of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors.  Her next two novels, including the one she is revising, are under contract with Simon & Schuster.  Michele lives on an island with her husband, son, dog, lizard and some groovy fish.