A look back at 2015

I’m always amazed to look back every year and see how much I’ve done. It's a good feeling to remind myself of everything, and to feel grateful for all the adventures, big and small. With that, here's a look back at the highlights of 2015...

January – I started off the year by diving into the icy waters of Puget Sound during the Polar Bear Plunge at Golden Gardens. I discovered it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be! I'm not in this picture (which was shamelessly stolen from the Seattle PI) but this is what it looked like. The temperature was probably about 40 degrees.

February – I was recovering from knee surgery, so this was a slow month. I did a lot of physical therapy. Snooze. Dave and I took one terrible trip to Fort Worden. The less said about that one the better. But Fort Worden is a beautiful place. Somehow I have no pictures from February. So I'll post a random cute pug picture of Sugar and Big Bud (who we adopted in July).

March – This was this first year I successfully grew my own garden. I started planting stuff in March, which was a good way to get outdoors since I wasn’t allowed to ski, bike, or hike. My cherry tomatoes were especially successful! (Thanks to global warming).

April – I camped with my sister, niece, and nephew at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park in Northern California. I’d forgotten how beautiful this part of the California coast is.

May – Going to Steamboat Rock State Park has become an annual tradition for me and Dave. This year I couldn’t hike up Steamboat Rock because of my knee, but I kept well occupied with biking, kayaking, and easier hikes...
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June –At the end of June, I headed to Oaxaca, Mexico for a language study at Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca and a homestay with a local family. I loved it! My only regret is not staying longer.

July – For the first week of July, Dave and I toured around Mexico City and visited Huatulco on the Oaxaca coast. We had our own plunge pool at the hotel, which felt like the height of luxury.

August – I did a solo camping trip on the Olympic Peninsula, during a rare stretch of perfect weather. Highlights included watching the surfers at Shi Shi Beach and hiking to Point of the Arches.

September – Fall colors were superb on this beautiful hike to Damfino Lakes and Excelsior Peak near Mt. Baker. Also, Dave and I went to see the Foo Fighters at the Gorge, and got in some (very hot) mountain biking at Ancient Lakes before the show.

October – Dave wore his scary pug costume and Sugar wore  her butterfly costume. Big Bud refused to wear one.

November – I taught a new class for the Seattle Public library this year, called “Get ready for NaNoWrimo.” It was a blast! Dave and I also went to Whidbey Island with the pugs, and hiked at Ebey's Landing and Deception Pass.

December – Skiied for the first time since my knee surgery at  beautiful Echo Ridge in Lake Chelan. Yay knee! All that boring physical therapy was worth it. What a great way to end the year.

Seeing dead people and killing your darlings

Revising my first kidlit novel (WHICH HAS TAKEN ME 1/8TH OF MY LIFE TO WRITE) is really hurting my brain. I'm trying to slash the manuscript from 70,000 words to 40,000 (to meet the recommended wordcount for middle grade fiction) and oh, is it painful. I'm having to kill many of my "darlings" as they saying goes.

So inspiration is most welcome these days and here's where I'm finding it.

courtesy of Whitely Center

The Whitely Center. I'd heard other Seattle writers talk about this retreat on San Juan Island for years before I finally applied (and realized how easy it was to apply). Now I've been twice in two months and I get loads of work done there. The value you get for the relatively low price is amazing. Your own beautiful college in a little grove of trees overlooking the water. Your own study in a soaring, glass-walled study center even closer to the water. It's a place of solitude and beauty, and I highly recommend it.
 



courtesy of San Juan Islands Sculpture Park

San Juan Islands Sculpture Park. I don't get out much when I'm at the Whitely Center even though it's in the scenic San Juan Islands. (Writer Lyanda Haupt calls Whitely her "beautiful writer's prison".) Partly because I haven't been there in the summer yet but mostly because I'm working my a*ss off when I'm there. But I do try to get some fresh air and this last weekend when I was there I visited an old favorite place: the San Juan Islands Sculpture Garden. It was just as awesome as I remembered, with great poetry by David Jenkins to go along with the beautiful and varied sculpture.

Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell. This book was recommended to me just this morning by my great kidlit writing teacher Anastasia Suen. I told her the midpoint of my novel was sucking and voila, she told about this book and I've already devoured it. (It's short). It gave me a new way to envision the midpoint, an "internal moment" where the hero looks in the figurative mirror and reflects on where they're going and what they need to do. Expect a brilliant midpoint to be forthcoming from yours truly soon.

Save the Cat and The Third Act: Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay are two other books about story structure Anastasia introduced me to that have been super helpful to me. Even though they're both about screenplays, they apply equally well to novels.

Lastly but not leastly I'm re-watching some of my favorite movies to analyze how come they're so great and these include The Sixth Sense and Slingblade. (Because when you're a writer you can get away with calling watching movies and calling it "work.") These are absolutely amazing stories that blow me away each time I watch them. The writing is so perfect! With the Blake Snyder "beat sheet" in hand (see above for Save the Cat), I'm trying to look at the backend and see how these stories are structured that make them resonate so strongly.

 Finally, this January at Hugo House I'll be teaching my popular class about how to write a rough draft of your novel in only six weeks, except this year - for the very first time - we'll have eight weeks. Hoorah!

First ever fan-fiction writer for Little Lord Fauntleroy! That's me.

Greetings!

It's that time of year when I gear up to teach my favorite class at Richard Hugo House and dream of warm locales.
 

Ahh Oahu, I dream of you

 Starting February 24, I'll be teaching Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks. You can read a bit about it here on the Hugo House website; meanwhile registration for their winter classes starts on Dec 9 so GET READY! This class fills fast.

Bye bye tiny condo
So much other stuff has been happening too, whoa. I MOVED for, one thing. Dave and I packed up our little 650-square-foot condo in Queen Anne (which took way more boxes and much longer than I ever imagined possible) and moved northward. To Greenwood. To a home with three whole bedrooms and 2.5 baths.

I never dreamed I'd live in a place where one could run the dishwasher AND go to sleep at the same time but it's finally happened!

Not only that, our little condo sold in a matter of hours. So thanks to my fab friend and real estate agent Terry Kildal, who helped me buy that condo ten years ago, and who helped us find our new home.

Novel-in-progress nears climax
Also, I'm finally reaching the end of the middle-grade novel that I'm writing. This has been a LONG process. Way too long! But I haven't given up even though I've felt like it many times and there are many reasons to (millions of better writers out there, small chance of every getting published, or ever making money, blah blah). 

This means I'm now writing the climax, which is both exciting and scary - just like the climax itself should be. It's the moment when everything has to come together, and be action-packed, and explosive, yet believable. 

Whether or not this thing ever gets published, I can honestly say it's been a joy to write. (Not every single minute, of course, but overall). When I sit down to write it, I escape to an alternate world where the mundane crap in life doesn't bother me. That hour in the morning when I write is usually the best time of my day.

Two tips for writers
After wandering in the wilderness for so long, the mere fact that I've got this momentum feels so good. And so I just want to reiterate to you writers out there, two things:

1)DO NOT GIVE UP. NO MATTER WHAT. It's been 8 years since I published BreakupBabe, and since then I've struggled and struggled to get traction on something. Then it finally happened. Only because I didn't give up. And if I can't sell this book, I will probably wallow  for a while. But then but I will pick myself up and start over again, because I can't not write.

2)FIND A COMMUNITY OF OTHER WRITERS. A writing group, a coach, a class. Whatever. It's too hard and lonely to do by yourself. You need feedback and encouragement. And most writers need some kind of structure too. That community, however small, can provide it for you. 

Parting note 
I've  realized I am probably the only writer (at least in this century) who has written what is essentially fan fiction about Little Lord Fauntleroy. And that's all I'll say about the plot of my current novel for now.

Happy holiday! 

The view from Casa Chepitos

Hola from San Miguel de Allende Mexico! I have the good fortune to be staying with writer Judith Gille at "Casa Chepitos," the beautiful home that stars in her touching and entertaining memoir, The View from Casa Chepitos. (Read it, if you haven't already!)


At this time of year, when Seattle is so cold and grey, with everyone dressed in black, it's such a treat to arrive in a colorful town like San Miguel de Allende. Orange trucks, yellow walls, hot pink bougainvillea - it's all a sight for winter-tired eyes.

A lovely courtyard at Casa Chepitos

Casa Chepitos itself is a riot of color, and full of Mexican crafts in wood, ceramic, and metal. The guest room is a bright red with a huge windows that looks out on the town and its many church domes.

You can hear the church bells ringing throughout the day from the giant rooftop terrace, along with roosters crowing, children playing, Mexican music, and lots of birds. (I have a feeling Seattle is going to seem very quiet when I get home.)

I've already taken a ton of pictures, most of them terrible, but a few that actually capture the vibrant color that's all around. I'll be here for two more weeks studying Spanish and relaxing (but also working, because I use up my vacation faster than I accrue it).

In other news, I'll be teaching my popular class, Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks, starting March 20th at Richard Hugo House. Find out more at the Hugo House website!

Grasshoppers anyone? A Oaxacan specialty.

Blogging class prompts blog teacher to actually blog (and post random hiking pictures)

Yellow Aster Butte
 

I had the distinct feeling that since I'm teaching a blog class TODAY for Seattle Public Library, I should probably update my own blog. Ahem.

(By the way, the photos here are  just some totally random hiking photos to make this post look pretty).

What to report? I'm finally making good progress on the children's novel I started three (or was it four?) year ago. It feels so good to be living in the fictional world again! The last time I was really in the groove with a novel was then I was writing BreakupBabe, and well all know how long ago THAT was.

Granite Mountain

Not that I haven't tried. I've written sh*tty first drafts of at least three novels since then, followed by sh*tty second drafts that I eventually gave up on because I could get no traction.

Then in 2010 I had a teacher named Joni Sensel.  She told me NOT TO GIVE UP on the book I was writing. Not because she thought it was so great or anything. But because I was suffering a syndrome common to many writers where I would abandon an old idea in favor of a shiny new one once I started to struggle with the old idea to much.

Chinook Pass

Because there is always struggle. It's just that sometimes you don' struggle quite as much, and you get lucky - as I did with BreakupBabe, which mostly wrote itself thanks to that miracle known as a book contract (and because, even though it was a novel, it was mostly about ME).

I knew that Joni was right, and that if I didn't just buckle down and finish something I might forever be drifting between ideas. So, three years later, having not given up, here I am FINALLY making progress on this thing and feeling good about it.

It might never get published, of course. But, while that is an important thing for a writer, it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that I'm writing. I'm making progress. And I'm enjoying it. So I feel like I have a purpose in life again .

Meanwhile I also wrote a fun articles on tree climbing (scary!) and backpacking (not so scary unless you encounter a bear or get lost!) both of which feature lots of my pictures including vintage 70s photos of my family wearing external frame packs and clothes that would never be allowed on a mountain today, such as jeans and cotton.

Planet of the Ex-Boyfriends Begins!

Oliver Tuthill and Matt Harrison

At last I have my own actual filmmaking photos to share and not just cheesy graphics swiped from the Internet!

The photos sprinkled throughout this entry are by my talented friend, Sergey Vasilevskiy, who was the photographer during our promo shoot form Planet of the Ex-Boyfriends in late January.

It was my first time producing ANYTHING and thanks to the fantastic cast and crew, it went swimmingly well. It was also my first time as a writer getting to hear my words acted out and brought to life. That was a thrill too.

Oliver Tuthill and Tara Walker

Originally my plan was to use the promo immediately in a crowdfunding campaign. Then I realized I could apply for a 4Culture award and get an answer on that as early as June (they seem like a fantastically organized org) so I poured my energy into applying for that and will now wait and see if they give me any money. If they DO, I get to save the crowdfunding for the post-production phase.



All cast and crew

If they don't, well, I'll use the promo we're creating to anchor a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign near YOU!

News tidbits
In other writing news, I'm teaching my fave class starting March 20th at Hugo House - Roughing It: Write a Rough Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks. There was still room last time I checked but it fills up fast.

Also, this past winter a short article of mine was published about Scottish Lakes High Camp, one of my favorite places to ski and relax. A big part of its rustic charm was that the hosts, Chris and Don Hansen, were so warm and friendly.



Don Hansen

Sadly, just this past weekend, Don died in an accident at High Camp. If you just look at his picture on the front page of their website (which I've also posted here) you will see what a vibrant and positive person he was. That smile says it all, because he was always wearing it. I will miss you very much Don, thank you for all the fantastic memories (and for always encouraging me to ski down stuff I might not have otherwise had the guts to do).

In better news
Dave and I are off to Oahu today. Crazy! This is the second time in ONE year we've gone to Hawaii but winter in Seattle can get hella long and dark. Especially when you're mourning the loss of your mom and best friend.

We'll be returning right after Daylight Savings begins so things will be literally a little brighter then. Strangely I usually don't look forward to that. Like a mole who's been hiding all winter I'm afraid of the sun. But not this year. Oahu here we come!

Weddings, kitchen appliances, and ex-boyfriends

Breakup Babe ties the knot

Whoa! A lot has happened in the last few months.

I got married.
I went on a honeymoon.*
I became the proud owner of many shiny new stainless steel kitchen appliances and intimidatingly spotless pots and pans.**

*As an idealistic college intern at the Peninsula Times Tribune, I wrote wedding announcements and snobbily thought it was sooo unoriginal when people went on their honeymoons to Hawaii or Mexico because EVERYONE went on their honeymoons to Hawaii or Mexico. Flash forward two decades later and where do I go on my honeymoon? Kauai! (And it rocked!)

Snorkeling in my own private tidepool

**Kitchen appliances are fantastic presents of course, but read here about how one of my most creative friends made our truly original engagement gift by hand!

Planet of the Ex Boyfriends coming soon to a theater near you
In other news, I found an excellent director to work with me on my short film, Planet of the Ex Boyfriends (PTEXB). Now I'm gearing up to raise money so we can produce it. You'll be hearing more about this soon!

Finally, I'm also getting ready to teach one of my favorite classes at one of my favorite places. Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks starts next week at Richard Hugo House. Shit*y rough drafts, here we come!

Aurevoir for now,
Rebecca

Greetings, Earthlings.

Me and mom in the old days

This has been a wacky fall and winter. I've been a bit under the weather and keeping a lower profile than usual. My mom was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer a year ago and it seemed to hit me all at once this past October.

First with a cold that never went away. Then the tension headaches that ate Manhattan.  Oh and let's not forget the back injury I got working on my laptop IN BED (the most unglamorous injury ever) and also the knee injury earned backcountry skiing last April (a tad more respectable) that have kept me from hitting the snowy slopes and neon lights with as much fervor as I usually do.

Oh, poor me, right? Meanwhile my mom is going through chemo and losing her hair and having many awful symptoms, on top of worrying when this stupid cancer is going to kill her. She has always been so robust and active (like me) and now this monster has laid her low.

But not TOO low. Because since her diagnosis she quit her job, traveled to the Galapagos with my sister, and to Alaska with me (on the worst-weather-ever-but-at-least-the-boat-didn't-sink-cruise.) Soon she's headed to Hawaii and Russia.

Best news yet, her doctor told her this week she was in remission. Yes, remission! That was a word none of us expected to hear ever. Not that she's cured, her doctor sternly told her. This thing could rear its ugly head in another three months or another year. It will rear its ugly head again, says Dr. Oncologist.

But while the monster is in hibernation, she can take a break from chemo. Yay! She can get back the two weeks out of every month that she loses from being poisoned. Yay! Her eyelashes can grow back and food might taste normal again and she'll regain some of that vibrant energy that has made her such an unstoppable force for creativity and social justice and adventure all her life.

So that's what I've got for you.

Plus:

• I'm speaking at the AWP conference in February (along with some staggeringly famous authors). Who-hoo, freezing Chicago, here I come!
• I'm teaching an online blogging class for the Editorial Freelancer's Association starting Feb 15.
• I just finished my first screenplay, called "Planet of the Ex-Boyfriends."

Ok, maybe "screenplay" is a stretch. It's a  five-minute script. For my class at Experimental College called "Let's Make a Movie!"

Tonight we'll be voting on a script to make movie out of (anyone in the class can submit one) and I want mine to win! If it doesn't, it was hell of fun to write, which is more than I can say about a lot of things I've written recently.

Spring arrives with a crash

Pre-collision skiing at Scottish Lakes

Happy spring!

A lot has happened since my last post, including smashing into a tree while skiing at one of my favorite places, Scottish Lakes High Camp. Luckily I walked away with only a minor knee sprain. It hurt like h*ll when it happened but it could have been a whole lot worse. So while I feel dumb (Hello! why did I not steer away from that stupid tree?) I also feel lucky.

Meanwhile, things have been going a little more smoothly in the writing world. Here's the latest:

*Two articles that I wrote came out in the spring issue of Harbors Magazine. Check out my Portfolio page to see them, or better yet, read the article about kayaking the southern Gulf Islands right now!

*Also I'm excited to announce that my essay, Once More to Wire Lake, is going to be published in Literary Mama's Father's Day Issue. I have literally been trying to write this essay since I was about 12 years old. This is my fourth version of it and I finally got it right. It's all about my family's adventures in the high Sierras when I was a wee lass, focusing particularly on my dad's motivation for bringing us there.

*For National Poetry Month, I recited one of my favorite poems for Richard Hugo House, which is posting a poem a day on YouTube for the month of April. The best part of it is that Snuffy, my oh-so-literary pug was part of the proceedings. Check out my video now, or look at Joe Lambert's Hugo House blog to see all of them!

*I'm hard at work on my novel for middle readers, and though it's going slowly (what else is new?) it is going!

*My spring Hugo House class, Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Six Weeks, is filled to the brim with eager writers ready for the masochistic challenge of writing a book-length manuscript in just over a month. I will be encouraging them with wine and chocolate. Thanks to student, and writer in his own right, Evan Peterson for the shout-out in his blog, Poemocracy.

March Madness

My niece has clearly inherited my sense of style

Hello darlings. Hope you are weathering the weather out there.

Bad weather is always conducive to creativity for me, and I've been particularly productive during these late winter months. Here are a few things brewing.

First and foremost, my spring class at Richard Hugo House is now open for registration and it's already half full! Find out more on my classes page or go directly to the Hugo House class catalog and sign up for it there. It's called "Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks."

I hope to be speaking again this fall at the Write on the Sound conference on the topic of blogging, this time with an all-star panel. Stay tuned!

I've really enjoyed the Novel Revision class I'm taking at Hugo House and highly recommend Joni Sensel as a teacher.

I've added a new element to my writing routine: doing fifteen minutes of free-writing every day in my notebook by hand. Author and writing teacher Priscilla Long convinced me of the importance of this in her great book, The Writer's Portable Mentor, and now it's a habit I can't live without.

I was thrilled recently to receive two comments on my blog that talked about how much my book had meant to people. Here they are:

"In January a friend and I took a trip to Chicago after my boyfriend of nearly 3 years broke up with me and in a used book store. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but stumbled upon breakup babe and read it in about a week. I couldn't put it down! Being that when I started to notice distance in my relationship I attempted to start a blog about it your book really hit a nerve with me! I loved it and it gave me so much hope for my future in dating and life in general. It made me laugh, made me cry, but most of all made me hopeful that what everyone is saying is true, time heals!! Thank you for your wonderful writing and sharing your story of love, loss, and being single." - posted by Sammie on 2/13

"I stumbled across your book in my public library and am so happy I did. I could not put it down as I could relate to it on many levels. So yes, four years later, it is still helping to mend broken hearts and put some things into perspective. Thank you for sharing and putting it out there. It is nice to know one is not alone in troubled times." - posted by A New Fan on 10/18

Thanks so much for your comments Sammie and "A New Fan!"

Funtastic February News

Happy February all! Here are a few things that are shaking in my literary world lately:

• Saw poet extraordinaire Kate Lebo read at Mary Schile's world-famous pie party
• Am taking a class called Novel Revision from Joni Sensel at Richard Hugo House
• Have two travel articles coming out in the spring issue of "Harbors" Magazine (the new inflight air magazine for Kenmore Air)
• Am teaching a reprise of my popular class "Roughing It: Write a Draft of Your Book in Just Six Weeks" class at Hugo House this spring. It hasn't been formally announced yet but the class will be on Thursday nights starting on April 7.
• Coached a writer on her suspensful entry for the Ninth Annual Speculative Fiction Contest (good luck, Karyn!)
• Have been reading my friend and colleague Waverly Fitzgerald's book "Slow Time" and finding it both intriguing and practical.

Happy New Year and Happy New Blog!

Yo peeps! I got a new blog! Undoubtedly every writer who uses Blogger is using this bookish template, but whatevs.

It's a new year, time for a new blog. Notice I've imported all the entries from SparklySparkly (RIP) for posterity. I still need to flesh this baby out with all the gadgets and whatnot but here it is for now.

*NEWS* *NEWS* *NEWS*
Uh, let's see.

In travel news, I  made it back alive from Costa Rica. Had a lovely trip, complete with monkeys, toucans, sloths, poison dart frogs, and lingering stomach ailment. Went whitewater rafting, strolled through the rainforest canopy on suspension bridges strung hundreds of feet over rushing rivers, swam at the foot of waterfalls, and was awakened at dawn by howler monkeys starting their day.

Also ate lots of "casado," the typical Costa Rican dish of rice, beans, plantains, salad, and some protein or other. Drank lots of "Imperial" - one of five (or so) beers made in Costa Rica. We suffered through some torrential rain on the Carribbean coast but got in one very sunny day there which Dave and I spent strolling through the lovely Parque Nacional de Cahuita.


Photo courtesy of El Viajero Contento


 It not only featured stunning white sand beaches but monkeys and sloths at close range plus lots of magnificent blue morpho butterflies.

Perhaps I'll write more about the trip shortly. Meanwhile, in writing news, I have a class coming up this spring at Hugo House - the ever-popular Roughing It: Write a Rough Draft of Your Book in Six Weeks. So stay tuned for details about that!

I also recently submitted an essay for a travel-writing contest at Wanderlust and Lipstick, a fun travel website geared towards the ladies. I dusted off an essay I'd started three years ago about my family's trips to the Sierras when I was a kid, in particular our annual backpacking trip to a place called Wire Lake. Here's how it begins:

It is half an hour into our first ever family backpacking trip and things are not going well. My little sister, age six, is crying. On top of her pack, her decrepit stuffed elephant Freddie bobs around with a little stuffing poking out of his pink, earless head.

“What’s the matter?” says my father, as if it isn’t obvious. Since leaving the trailhead, we have been hiking upwards at a suicidally steep angle with heavy packs on our shoulders. It is hot. It is dusty. On a normal Saturday, Erica and I would be living the high life: roller-skating, reading books, or watching Brady Bunch reruns. Now, inexplicably, we are being tortured...