In the nude

I live on an island located within spitting distance of the equator and the setting on the regional thermostat is stuck at HOT. I don't thrive in heat; it makes me want to do nothing more strenuous than lie around and pant while fantasizing about diving headfirst into a pool filled with chilled watermelon cubes, or having a clutch of buff, dedicated young men in togas take turns at sliding ice cubes all over my skin. Focusing on anything that takes actual effort, such as writing, is really asking too much.

The first thing I do on entering the house is strip; once I'm in the privacy of my home I wear little or nothing. I've written roughly half a million words of fiction, most of them in the buff (or close), late at night when the air has cooled enough to render me capable of coherent thought.

My relatives and friends who know of my aversion to clothing are unanimous in their verdict: "Girl, you're CRA-ZY!" I was therefore delighted to stumble across an article this week that proved I was not alone in my strange (to others, utterly natural to me) predilection for writing au naturel. These famous authors did not live in the tropics, to my knowledge, so heat and humidity could not have been that much of a problem for them, but they're kindred naturist spirits.

• Agatha Christie liked to write in the bathtub. (Sounds lovely, but I'm a shower gal.)
• Benjamin Franklin liked to take 'air baths' where he sat around naked in a cold room for a couple hours while he wrote. (Air baths rock!)
• D.H. Lawrence, author of the controversial erotic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (one of my favourites), liked to climb mulberry trees in the nude before coming down to write. (Um, no. No splinters in delicate crannies, thank you.)
• Ernest Hemingway, author of A Farewell to Arms and other classics, wrote nude, standing up, with his typewriter about waist level. (His cousin Edward Hemingway opened Britain’s oldest nudist colony, a nine-bedroom chateau called Metherell Towers, back in the 1930s. Cool!)
• Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, overcame writer's block by having his servant take all of his clothes away for the day leaving him nude with only pen and paper so he’d have nothing to do but sit down and write. (Wasn't life simple before they invented the Internet...)

I'm in such great company. I can't help wondering, though: Are there other closet naturist writers out there - or am I the last survivor of an almost extinct species?

Thank you, Whitney. ♥♥♥ you always!

Wanted to write about how much her music has meant to me, about the beauty of that peerless voice, about the way great gifts always seem to exact their price in pain, how I agonized for her, how the "celebrity" industry cannibalizes its own, how one can have everything yet never have it all. But I've read too much and heard too much and seen too much these past few days. I'm sick of all the words.

Thank you for the music. I'll try to take the advice in this song. It's not working right now, though...

Novel Spaces: Giveaways!

Novel Spaces: Giveaways!: To be entered in the January giveaway, please leave a comment on the Giveaways! page. This month's titles are:

Act of Grace by Karen Simpson (Fantasy, hard copy)

The Unrepentant Rake by Barbara Monajem 9Historical Romance, Digital)

The Check Your Luck Agency by Cara d'Bastien (Urban Fantasy, Digital, various formats available)

Thursday Thirteen: To-Do List # 94,309

1. Get laid. Lay out my work clothes the night before to save on morning stress.

2. Acquire a toyboy. Reward myself by buying something I love every time I get paid.

3. Flirt with strange men. Be less guarded with people I don't know well.

4. Show more cleavage. Wear only clothes that make me feel great.

5. Show more leg. Stop dressing up to go to the mall. If I can wear shorts to the grocery I can wear them to the store.

6. Shack up with a hottie. Not.

7. Torture an old flame. Bury grudges forever and delete memories of men I got over a long time ago.

8. Torture a current flame. Ditch plans to start a blog along the lines of My Boyfriend is a Twat. :D

9. Pray for a Lotto win. Give thanks for my blessings every day.

10. Acquire a Greek god look-alike to wake me on mornings. Get a really savage alarm. My Tinkerbell cell phone just doesn't do the job.

11. In between romps with Greek god, think about what I should write next. Complete and submit two novels (or a novel and the memoir) to my agent this year.

12. Indulge in romantic fantasies. Get off my dreaming ass and turn those fantasies into stories.

13. Buy lots of fabulous underwear. Save your money, chica.

Carpe diem - again

Raymond on the peak of 

El Tucuche, Nov. 2010   

My first piano teacher was a short, rotund, elderly nun. Sister Lucy was so ravaged with what I now believe to be osteoporosis that her upper back was U-shaped and her chin rested on her chest. She could barely manage to show me the proper placement of fingers on keys, but her keystrokes as she demonstrated the movements were strong and sure. She had clear grey eyes magnified by her glasses and was a gentle soul. I think she came from Ireland like the other foreign nuns at St. Joseph's Convent and it was under her tutelage, in one of the tiny music rooms that barely managed to fit a piano, two stools and a metronome, that I discovered the joy of playing something that at least approximated music. I distinguished myself under her guidance - far more so than under her successor, a chain-smoking, gentlemanly English lady who terrified me.

I graduated from high school and went out into the not-so-wide world of work in the same town where I had gone to school, and every once in awhile I'd remember sweet Sister Lucy and resolve to go and visit her. I never got around to it, and when I heard that she had died, along with remorse at my procrastination, I began to understand that for most young people, the reality and inevitability of death is not a concept that can readily be grasped. I realized then that putting off a visit to an elderly person means that when you're ready to make the effort, the person might be gone - forever.

Which brings me to November 2010 and an e-mail I received from an elderly gentleman here in Trinidad. I had written a blog post about hiking my favourite mountain, El Tucuche. He told me he had discovered the post and enjoyed it tremendously because that was also his favourite hike and he had scaled the peak more than 100 times in his ninety years. In fact, he had celebrated his ninetieth birthday just weeks before by climbing El Tucuche once again, a feat that attracted quite a bit of media coverage.

When I finally wrapped my head around what my new friend, Raymond, had achieved, I told him he had become my inspiration: I could think of nothing I'd love more than to be able to repeat his feat if I lived to his age. We began corresponding, found each other on Facebook, and he invited me to join him on his next hike in early 2011. This one would be to Paria Waterfall, a lovely trek along the north coast and into the forest that I had undertaken several times in my earlier hiking years. I decided to work on improving my fitness so that when Raymond and his group next hiked El Tucuche I'd be ready.

The hike to Paria was postponed four times. We had an unseasonably rainy dry season and the weather simply refused to cooperate with our plans. When the hike finally came off I didn't go; Raymond had probably tired of having to call and tell me about postponements and didn't want to disappoint me again. The next time we communicated was in July when my niece graduated and he left a gracious comment on her photo on my Facebook page. By this time the true rainy season was in full pour and hiking was out of the question. The months flew by imperceptibly.

Three weeks ago Raymond contacted me on Facebook and told me he had suffered a heart attack three months before, but was on the mend and spending several days a week in his store. I was assailed by a sense of urgency; I told my friend I'd visit him at his store that week. He said he was looking forward to finally meeting me face to face. I asked if he would be at the store on Thursday or Friday. When two days passed and I did not hear from him I felt a deep foreboding. That Friday night I left a message on his page: "Well, maybe another week. Thinking of you and hoping you're okay, Raymond." The next time I visited his Facebook page I learned he had died on November 10, three days after his ninety-first birthday.

It felt like Sister Lucy all over again. I will never be able to hike and not think of Raymond pounding those trails in his nineties. He is indeed my inspiration to seize the day and to understand that living fully has no correlation with the number of birthdays accumulated..

Write that book. Sail that ocean. Climb those mountains; Raymond climbed them at 90.

In memory of Raymond "Don Ramos" Banfield, hiker, former Spanish teacher and vice-principal, mentor of many, practitioner of healthy living. I will climb El Tucuche again, and I know he'll be walking right there beside me.

My favourite things: The creations of perfumer Sophia Grojsman

There are women who love clothes. There are those who go shoe-crazy. There are the jewellery whores. Don't get me wrong; I love all of the above. A masterfully constructed leather sandal, a fine Irish linen shirt or a classic gold hoop earring can bring out the acquisitive demon in me just like any other gal. The product that really transports me, though, the commodity I'd spend countless thousands of dollars on if I had the means to do so, is perfume.

Perfume is not just about smelling pretty. I have an extraordinarily keen sense of smell and of all the senses this is the most associative, the one that best transports me to places, people and occasions in my past, creates a mood, makes me deliriously happy just by sniffing my wrist or catching a whiff of something delicious on my pillow, or on a man.

If the sense of smell is the road to wherever I travel, perfume is the powerful, high-performance vehicle that takes me there. It can be capricious or whimsical, lighthearted or deep-blue-twilight nostalgic, indulgently melancholic, quietly joyful or emphatically euphoric. It can conjure elegance, discreet sex, or the powerful animalic kind. It can even conjure... money. Perfume is smoke and mirrors, mystery and mania, quiet and noise, control and obsession. It can attract; it often repels. It can heal or nauseate.

Six months ago the name Sophia Grojsman meant nothing to me - then I discovered she was the 'nose' behind Eternity, a 90s signature fragrance and one of my favourites ever. Since I'm constantly updating my perfume wish list and reading excellent perfume blogs (Now Smell This, Perfume Smellin' Things, Bois de Jasmin) to get an idea of whether or not I might like to experiment with a scent, I've stumbled across Ms. Grojsman's name again and again. Finally, I read an interview with her on Bois de Jasmin and discovered that she has created not two, not three, but EIGHT of my top 10 fragrances.

This has reinforced for me once again that there's no such thing as
coincidence. I've chosen these perfumes out of hundreds over a 30 year period. Of the scores I've owned I've loved only about 10 - and Sophia Grojsman created very nearly all of them. Take Estee Lauder, for example: the only three scents from this line that I've been able to wear are the three she created: Beautiful, Spellbound and White Linen. Did I know back then that she had created them all? No. All I knew was that I liked these - and none of the others.

Don't assume that the smells are similar, because they're not. What do they have in common? Their beauty, their quality - a Grojsman fragrance can never be mistaken for a cheap scent - and that she usually incorporates rose accords. She also creates perfumes from the base up, whereas other perfumers start with the top notes and work from there in to the mid and base notes. Perfumery is a science - Ms. Grojsman has a Bachelor of Science degree in analytical inorganic chemistry - but at the high end it's also very much an art. Sophia Grojsman creates masterpieces.

Among her best-selling fragrances are:

* Bill Blass Nude
* Boucheron Jaipur (1994)
* Bvlgari Bvlgari Pour Femme (1994)
* Calvin Klein Eternity (1988)
* Calvin Klein Eternity Purple Orchid
* Celine Magic (1996)
* Christian Lacroix Christian Lacroix (1999)
* Elizabeth Taylor Diamonds and Rubies (1993)
* Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds (1991)
* Estée Lauder Beautiful (1985)
* Estée Lauder Spellbound (1992)
* Estée Lauder White Linen (1978)
* Frederic Malle Outrageous! (2007)
* Gloria Vanderbilt Vanderbilt (1982)
* HRH Princess Elizabeth E
* HRH Princess Elizabeth Jelisaveta
* Karl Lagerfeld Sun Moon Stars (1994)
* Kenzo Kashaya (1994)
* Lalique Lalique (2002)
* Lancôme Trésor (1990)
* Lancôme Trésor Sparkling
* Laura Biagiotti Sotto Voce (1996)
* Paloma Picasso Tentations (1996)
* Perry Ellis 360°
* Prescriptives Calyx (1987)
* sexual - Michel Germain (1994)
* S-Perfume 100% Love
* Yves Saint Laurent Paris (1983)
* Yves Saint Laurent Paris Premieres Roses (2003)
* Yves Saint Laurent Parisienne (2009)
* Yves Saint Laurent Yvresse (1993)

Free fiction on Novel Spaces

Over on Novel Spaces we have dedicated the following dates for free fiction giveaways. These dates are open to group members, guest authors, visiting authors and publishers who would like to increase their reach, visibility and goodwill among readers.

October 30, 2011

December 30, 2011

January 30, 2012

March 30, 2012

April 30, 2012

May 30, 2012

June 30, 2012

Several authors may book on the same day: the bigger the giveaway, the bigger the buzz! To participate, leave a comment on this article stating:

Your preferred date

The title, author and genre of the novel(s)

Hard copy or digital

The featured titles will be displayed in the sidebar on the Novel Spaces blog for the month of the giveaway.

Please note that although Novel Spaces will host the giveaways, individual authors whose books are featured on free fiction days will be responsible for contacting winners and either mailing paper books to them or providing guidelines / coupon codes for downloading e-books. Let the giveaways begin!

Shameful little secrets

I don't think I'm the only writer who admits only under extreme duress that she writes... [looks around furtively] ...romance. The few times I foolishly admitted to the fact that, yeah, I do a bit of scribbling, I was bombarded with 'Oprah' comments, and talk about 'the great West Indian novel'. Romance was nowhere to be spotted amid the thronging expectations of literary outpourings.

In my circle, few admit to even reading romance; writing it is beyond the pale. Those who read it don't do so openly, and if caught in the act mumble some shame-faced excuse about having 'confiscated' the book from a student. (Borrowed, more likely!) I've seen that scenario played out countless times.

And what about the overwhelming response to romance novels from the male half of the population? Dismissal, snickers, 'girl porn' comments, and the general opinion that no woman with half a brain would read (or write) the stuff. According to the popular mythology, romance novels are the preserve of:

• The girl behind the counter at the drugstore, twirling a lock of purple hair and snapping her chewing gum, maybe.
• Gauche schoolgirls, definitely.
• The old spinster librarian with parchment skin and wattles, glaring over her glasses at the boys and girls flirting instead of doing their research, and hiding a lurid bodice-ripper under her copy of Dostoevsky.
• The downtrodden wife trapped in a miserable marriage.
• The anti-feminists.

But mature, smart, professional women? Never. They - we - don't stoop to such lows.

Well, surprise, surprise. We do. And after decades, or centuries rather, of being treated with scorn and ridicule by the literary establishment, the romance genre seems to finally, finally be coming into its own. It's becoming so respectable, in fact, that men are jostling to join the ranks of romance writers and many popular authors, formerly hidden behind their pseudonyms, are coming forward and revealing that they're smart, professional women. Some are young. Some are happily married, and feminist to the core. Some are college professors. Some are all of the above. They read romance - and they write it too.

You don't believe me, do you. Well, take a gander at this USA Today article: Scholarly writers empower the romance genre. It's all about college professors working undercover as romance authors and attending Princeton University conferences on the genre. Smart women have always read and written great stories, including romances. The difference now is that, more and more, they're not ashamed to admit it.

—Liane Spicer

What I learned from books on writing

I sometimes miss that blissful time when I wrote my first novel, unaware that there were dozens of books out there presenting countless rules and recommendations for what I was attempting to do. I've picked up a few things since then, and the advice that has resonated often had little to do with the actual writing and everything to do with the attitudes that might make the difference between being a productive writer or a frustrated one.

On Writing by Stephen King:
I learned from King's recounting of his years spent collecting rejection slips that those little forms are not symbols for "Failed Writer". You place the slip in the appropriate file and move on.




The War of Art by Steven Pressfield:
Mr. Pressfield wrote this book for me. He turns a spotlight on writers' block in all its manifestations: fear, resistance, procrastination, obsessiveness, self-dramatization, self-medication, victimhood, self-doubt, toxic relationships, support (yes, you read that right), and rationalization. Then he tells you how to combat it all, and his recommendation is simple: You turn pro. How does a professional approach his work? Apply the same principles to your writing and see the difference.

"A professional shows up every day."
"A professional demystifies."
"A professional acts in the face of fear."
"A professional does not show off."
"A professional self-validates."

There's lots more, and it's all written with the authority that comes only from first-hand experience, aka the school of hard knocks.

Page After Page by Heather Sellers:
Here's another writer who demystifies. She knows that declarations like 'waiting for my muse' are nothing but lame excuses. "It's a matter of sitting down, conjuring a state of complete dedication and complete openness, and writing. Putting pen to paper." No hocus-pocus there.

What else did she teach me? To talk less about writing, and write more. That except for a very few lucky souls, being published (finally!) does not change your life. You won't be rich and famous, loved and admired by everyone, rail-thin and immune to chocolate binges. You'll still have to deal with all your bumps and warts; those don't disappear once you get published.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White:
This book gives great advice on the fine points of usage, common errors, and style. There was little in there I didn't already know after having taught the language for 22 years, but that slim book clarified something vital I had hitherto understood only superficially: the US version of my mother tongue is a very different beast from the UK version I was taught.

I've got two more books on writing lined up: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, the title of which has just the sort of new-agey tone I'm a sucker for. (Did someone mention the word demystify?) Next to it on my bedhead bookshelf is The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I'll be sure to let you know what I learn from those in a later post.

—Liane Spicer

Micromanaging, overediting and knowing when to stop

When the Novel Spaces group blog went live two years ago I watched over it like a fussy mama. As co-coordinator, I wanted everything to be purrrrfect. I checked the list of posts already written and scheduled, and noticed that one author had not pre-scheduled his first post. No problem, I told myself. People have different approaches: some will prepare weeks ahead while others will create and post at the very moment they're supposed to go live...

But there I was anyway, minutes to midnight, just before my friend's post was to appear, and there was no sign of his article in the lineup. Sheesh, I wondered. Maybe he forgot, it being a holiday weekend and all. I trotted over to Amazon, did some window shopping, then returned to the blog and checked the list of posts again. Nothing. I shot off an apologetic e-mail to the guy, something along the lines of: Sorry to be a nuisance - but did you forget today's your day to post? Then I clicked over to check the blog once more before I went to bed - and there it was! My friend's post! Right on time, too.

Needless to say, I felt like an idiot. I don't like anyone looking over my shoulder, sniffing at my heels, or whatever analogy there might be for just being ANNOYING! So why was I doing that to other people? Couldn't I have waited at least until the next morning before I started firing off nagging e-mails?

I made a resolution that night: Don't be a bloody pest. Leave grown people alone to do what they have to.

This obsessiveness carries over to my writing, sad to say. I know writers who never rewrite, who edit as they go, submit their product when they get to the end and then move on to the next project. I'm at the other end of the spectrum: when I get to 'The End' my work is just beginning. If I re-read my manuscript 50 times I find things to change each of those times. I delete, add, modify, shift around, rename, reword, rephrase, restore to the original, shift back again and generally edit until I reach a point where I have to say: Hands off. Leave it alone. Didn't you hear me? Step away from that @#$%*! manuscript!

Overediting is a real danger to writers, just like micromanaging is to organizers. You run the risk of running past the point where your nit-picking is beneficial and you begin doing real damage. Instead of growing stronger, the work grows weaker as you focus more and more on minutiae and begin to lose sight of the big picture. Recognizing that point is vital, and truly difficult for micromanaging, perfectionist, anal-retentive writers - like me.

—Liane Spicer