Coping with a global pandemic

How does one maintain some semblance of balance, positivity, sanity, peace, health and focus during these fraught times? It's a struggle for me, a constant work-in-progress, but here are a few things that help me stay afloat, at worst, and bring me joy, at best. 

1. Plants and nature. There is something very healing and balancing about tending green, growing things and observing nature. This plant to the left is my pony tail palm (beaucarnea recurvata) that has been languishing for months, root bound, in a too-small pot. (It's a succulent, not a palm, btw.) If it wasn't such a hardy plant it might have expired from neglect already. I recently scrubbed this pot that used to house my old lavender and replanted the pony tail in it. With more than enough space, new soil and a generous helping of fertilizer it should begin thriving again. It looks happier already. I'm sure it feels happier--and so do I! 

2. Meditation. I'm a total neophyte at it but I've tried to make it a habit since the lockdown started. I don't manage to meditate every day but on the days that I do it DOES make a difference. For some people, this practice might take the form of prayer. Whatever centering practice you prefer, do it! Or do several. It does calm the mind and relax the body. I promise.

3. Counting blessings and nurturing gratitude. I'm in the habit of counting my blessings--have been doing this for several decades--but it was only this year that I followed Steve Harvey's advice and made a list of all that I'm grateful for: family, friends, trees, plants, rain... I include even the simplest things like indoor plumbing and electricity. Health. Birdsong. The ability to think, breathe, move, see, hear, smell, taste. I make a habit of taking little for granted. 

4. Dreams, hopes and plans. It's healthy to have things to look forward to. I know I'm going to sound like a Steve Harvey acolyte here, but I started watching his shows on YT for the laughs and came away with so much more. I followed his advice to make a list of 300 things I wanted. That list took me a long time--weeks or months--before I hit 300. I broke things into small pieces. For example, instead of just writing that I wanted a garden of my own again some day soon, I listed separately all the plants I wanted: the herbs, vegetables, flowers, fruits etc that I wanted to grow again, or grow for the first time. 

You want new shoes? List the types and colors. (Don't go overboard with this. You don't want the entire list to consist of clothes, bags and shoes. The same goes for books: my reading wish list alone has more than 300 titles.) You want to travel when restrictions ease up? List each country individually. What about those medical checkups, the dental work, the documents that need to be renewed, selling your car, getting rid of the things you don't need or use... You want to climb mountains? Sail around the world in a boat you built yourself? Go back to school? Adopt a child? Adopt a puppy? List them all. Let it sink into your brain that you have all these things to do, or see, or experience, or achieve. You have a future to look forward to. It helps to keep hopelessness at bay.

5. YouTube! My screen time has increased dramatically this year--like most people's I believe. I've made a conscious decision to cut down and cut back because it was getting out of hand. I now minimize some types of content (politics! coronavirus news! toxic humans!) and maximize others. I choose to watch content that feeds the soul, that brings joy, that cheers me up. Here are some of my favorites:

• Gardening channels such as Planterina, Self Sufficient Me and The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni. I get happily lost in videos of beautiful plants and the caring of them. 
• Comedy. Laughter is good for the soul. It lightens the spirit, reminds us that we're together in this mess called life, allows us to chuckle at ourselves and others. In addition to my favorite standup comedians (Dave Chappelle, George Carlin) I've discovered lots of new (to me) performers on the Dry Bar Comedy channel. 
• Channels that promote healthy, harmonious, sustainable and adventurous living. I make a point of subscribing to my favorites since these channels contribute towards the livelihood of the owners through ads and sponsorship. (I let the ads run for at least 30 seconds so the owners of the channels can get paid.) These channels feature themes such as van life, tiny home living, organic gardening, sustainable living/permaculture, DIY, preservation of the environment, respect for people and cultures, kindness, love of nature ... Here are the ones I frequent most: Rob Greenfield, Adventure Rich, The Nomadic Movement, Amelia & JP, Trent and Allie, Kalle Flodin--all people who are living their lives unconventionally and whose principles I endorse to some degree. 
• Films. I don't subscribe to Netflix, but I have a comprehensive list of films I found on YouTube. Some are perennial favorites that I re-watch now and then. Others are movies that I've always wanted to see or have recently discovered. More and more I'm drawn to older films, the classics from my parents' time and from my childhood. I find them much gentler on my spirit.
• Exercise. This is the hardest one for me, but it makes a world of difference to my sense of well-being and my mood. Whether it's walking, yoga, spin, dance, Pilates, whatever--just do it. You'll be glad you did.

There's so much more that helps: connecting with family and friends on the phone, an occasional bottle of wine, my writing, editing for my clients, exchanging text messages and voice notes with grandkids, posting plant pics on Instagram... Whatever feeds you, lifts you, energizes you, do it. And if you can do something for someone else, that helps too. Be kind to someone. A neighbor who has no car or who is elderly and afraid to leave the house would appreciate it if you offered to pick up some groceries for her/him. If you can afford to, make a contribution to a cause that makes the world a better place. Help to support an artist by signing up for his or her Patreon. Give that tired cashier or the security guard taking your temperature a heartfelt smile of gratitude. And remember...

It's good to be alive, every single day. 

Spider plants have amazing flowers!

I've had spider plants for years, and I'm aware that they send out tiny white flowers that become the spider babies for which this plant is famous. But I never realized just how beautiful these tiny white flowers were until recently when I hung two spider plants at eye level. The blooms are just half to three-quarters of an inch wide, but they are utterly breathtaking. 

Pristine white petals and yellow stamens - exquisite!

Here's my hand for scale - and no, I don't have a gigantic hand!

Closeup of spider plant bloom courtesy my trusty iPhone! So lovely!

See the buds in this pic? More blooms and more baby spiders to come!

Delicate, airy fairy flowers of the spider plant

This is one of the spider plants currently beautifying my porch

Here's all the proof you need, thanks to the magic of an iPhone camera! I've always loved spider plants for their beautiful and graceful foliage and the babies they grow on their own shoots, but now I have a whole new appreciation of their tiny white flowers as well! 

Interestingly, spider plants are not as easy to grow as I thought: I've tried several indoors and both died after a few months. I did not overwater and I did not let them dry out; one was right next to a window where it got lots of light - but they died all the same. (One was a pure green, and the other was the white-striped as in the photo above, so it's not a peculiarity of a single variety.) The one on my balcony survived and I recently bought a second; it's these two that I hung in the porch--and they're flourishing thus far! 

Keep growing, greenies!

Follow The Gardening Writer on Instagram for more plant pics!

Fairy mushrooms of Panama

The pandemic has delayed my trip to Panama indefinitely but happily I have people there who send me lots of pics and videos of the delights of the Central American highlands. These photos were taken in the Chiriqui Sierras on the western end of Panama, part of which has seen much devastation in the wake of Hurricane Eta last week. Here's to happier times, beautiful sierras!

 

These are fairy inkcap mushrooms (coprinellus disseminatus) growing in the Panama Sierras. They aren't toxic but are seldom eaten because they have no particular taste or flavor.   

Blue, blue, my world is blue

This plumbago is one of two that I kept in big pots on my balcony. The unusual blue flowers are simply gorgeous! These grow best in full sun and don't like to be overwatered. I live three floors up in an apartment building and this was the first plant on my balcony to attract hummingbirds. 💖💖💖 

My plumbago plants tend to bloom in flushes.  After every flush I trim off the spent flower shoots, remove the top layer of potting mix and top up with fresh soil, fertilizing with slow release pellets at the same time. If you grow them in the ground this consistent renewal and fertilizing isn't necessary; plumbago will spread and drape and thrive in regular soil once it gets lots of sunlight.

Confession: I became so enchanted by these sky blue flowers that I went in search of other plants with blue blooms for a section of my future yard that I plan to call "The Blue Garden". It's going to be beautiful. 

Green, growing things

I'm taking a break from monitoring the parlous state of the world to focus on things that give me joy, namely plants--my plants, my mother's plants, my friends' plants, and the plants and trees all around me here in the Southern Caribbean and wherever I might roam when the world is no longer in pandemic mode. 

Angel's trumpet (brugmansia)

This is a peach angel's trumpet (brugmansia) in my mother's garden. It's a stunning plant with huuuuge perfumed blooms that range in length from 6 - 20 inches. It's one of my favorite ornamental plants, quickly growing to the size of a large shrub or small tree. The pleasant fragrance is most noticeable in the evening. Fun fact: This shrub contains a deadly poison similar to the one found in the deadly nightshade.

I've been sharing plant pics on Instagram as @thegardeningwriter. I try to post one every day, and this focus has helped to save my sanity during the worst of the lockdown. I've decided to share some of them here on my neglected writing blog as well. Enjoy!

"May you live in interesting times"

The title of this blog post is supposed to be an old Chinese curse; it may be apocryphal but it resonates nonetheless. I like "boring" times; boring translates to peaceful for me, a respite from horror, loss, devastation and sadness. The prospect of "interesting times" is downright chilling. So, right on time, interesting times have arrived with the force of planetary collision in the guise of Covid 19--just when we thought the state of the world was as "interesting" as we could bear.

So much has changed...

...There are people in my writing network who have lost beloved relatives and friends to Covid 19. 

...I've visited my mother once in the past 5 months. It's not safe for me to visit her; she's 84. She forgets the reason we're not visiting and perceives it as neglect. The older we grow, the more sensitive we become to real and imagined slights, so it doesn't matter that my mother and I chat on the phone almost every day. I'm not visiting so it must be that I've thrown her away.

...A germaphobe I've always been, but my paranoia is off the charts now. It would be funny if it weren't so exhausting: the stripping at the door as I come in,  the flinging of said clothes into a bag in the entry, the scrubbing of everything that comes in from the supermarket (I never thought I'd be scrubbing onions with dish soap, ffs!), the struggle to focus on anything, the elevated stress levels--and maybe the uncertainty most of all.

...My blog buddies from 12+ years ago when I started this blog might remember my son--barefoot surfer boy who loved nothing more than a good adventure. Well, a brand new adventure found him when he visited Panama earlier this year on business and found himself stranded there when the country went into lockdown, closed its borders and the airline canceled his flight back. He should have returned at the start of April. Instead he's still there. He's nothing if not resourceful, though, and is fortunate in that he loves the place and has very good friends there. Two weeks ago he started vlogging his journey, with the encouragement of Kaylee and Jordan of The Nomadic Movement, a popular YouTube channel. You can find him at Adventure Rich which is off to a great start. The fact that he's a professional videographer puts him at an advantage; hopefully he will be able to monetize his vlogs soon and this will go a long way toward helping him survive in a very challenging situation.

...And finally, speaking of changes... Facebook has dumped me. 😂😂😂 Seriously. A few months ago I tried to sign in and couldn't: they said I had violated their community guidelines, which is absolute BS unless photos of my spider plants are somehow threatening to the Facebook community. I can get back on if I give them my phone number, they say. Well, my response is Up yours, Mr. Zuckerberg. I can buy a burner phone and use that, but I have other priorities. I lost the gardening page that was helping to preserve my sanity during the lockdown since it was tied to the Liane Spicer account, but my FB author page survived because there are other admins there and I access it through them. Ironic, this divorce, as I've always hated FB and was there only to keep in touch with my writing network. I've wanted to leave FB for years.

I've missed this blog. Some of my old blog buddies are still active on their blogs, I know. I'll try to drop by now and then. I enjoy the peace here. I certainly don't miss the rudeness and crassness and insane politics and sensation-mongering and click-baiting and conspiracy theories and outright lies and malignancy of FB. Now to wean myself off WhatsApp...

Inhale...

Exhale...

Be kind. 

Take care of yourself. 

You're stronger than you know.

Hello world!

No, that's not me. I'm older. And wider. And...
Okay, that's not me. We'll leave it at that.

Hello, Wordtryst, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again...

I started this blog, my first venture into social media, back in 2007, one year after I found a literary agent for my first novel and mere months after she sold it to Dorchester Publishing NY (now defunct). Wordtryst has been on hiatus for most of the 9 years that I've been devoted to coordinating and contributing to the Novel Spaces group blog. That second blog is now on hiatus for a year and my thoughts return, as they often have, to Wordtryst.

The 11+ years since I started this blog have been quite a ride. I published just two romance novels under the pen name Liane Spicer. I've published dozens of short stories, novelettes and novellas in several genres under different pen names. That's what I call my commercial work, the work that consistently brings in royalties.

Then there's 'me art' -- the serious stories in which I explore form and language and the ethos of this Caribbean place I call home. A few stories have been published in journals, and one short story landed me on the shortlist for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize (2014, under my real name Charmaine Rousseau). I have at least a dozen incomplete works -- both commercial and otherwise. I have eight unpublished literary short stories squatting on my drive; I'm working toward an anthology but I'm inconsistent because I don't write those stories until they 'come' to me (unlike the commercial work that I write much more consistently and intentionally).

I've moved twice over this period. My son has grown up from the barefoot surfer boy my old visitors remember -- but that carefree surfer with the passionate love of nature and green spaces is still his core identity. I'm so glad. My son is my soul-brother. We understand each other like no one else, I think. And he's brought angels into my people-averse existence in the form of his offspring and his partner. The memoir about our journey through his childhood is written, has been written for years. It needs a final polish, and a publisher. I hope the world gets to read it some day soon.

Coming back to Wordtryst feels like coming home. Hello, world! I've missed you! And like Cynara's lover in that old poem, I've been faithful to you, Wordtryst, in my fashion. I've blogged elsewhere, but my heart never left you. I've dallied with Facebook, but I hate it more than I love it. And I abhor Twitter, that sometimes-entertaining, sometimes-brilliant, but dreadfully noisy place. I've met some truly lovely people on this quiet blog. Maybe I'll meet a few more, or renew old blog friendships that fell by the wayside. Or maybe it'll be just me, my musings and my photos. A quiet space. A Zen room in this chaotic world.

I'll just close my eyes and rest here for a bit. Mmmmm.

Books on Writing: Spicer's Picks

Several of my favorite books on writing, such as Stephen King's On Writing and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, have already been discussed on Novel Spaces over the past weeks. My approach to writing differs somewhat from the "craftsman" approach mentioned by Kevin Killiany in "Kevin's Picks: Books on Writing". I like to believe mine is more holistic--embracing both the preeminence of craft and the mysterious, subliminal, sometimes magical nature of writing.

Stephen King puts it well: “At its most basic we are discussing a learned skill (writing), but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style... but as we move along, you’d do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.” Spanish writer Luis Buñuel writes: “Mystery is the basic element of all works of art.” And Jorge Luis Borges views writing as "Nothing more than a guided dream."

I'm not King or Borges, or Buñuel, or Steinbeck who famously said, “I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.” But I'm in good company. When Joan Baez claims "...those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page” I feel the hairs raise up on my arm because this has been my lived experience. My very best stories come to me in an intuitive flash and these rare gifts invariably eclipse the ones that I consciously, deliberately and laboriously craft. It makes sense that the books on writing which I choose to read are eclectic rather than craft-heavy. Here are two of my favorites.

Page After Page by Heather Sellers is one writing book that I hardly ever see other writers mention. It's for those who are just starting out and it does an excellent job of dispelling the illusions with which most of us begin. Sellers is a teacher of fiction, poetry and nonfiction writing workshops and she brings a wealth of experience in coaching writers to the table. There are chapters on the state of mind you bring to starting something new, on balance, on tools for getting the work done, on reading, on the influence of parents on your work, on managing anxiety, on daring to suck, on mentors, rejection, workshops, ambition... In short, it covers everything beginning writers need to know about what they're getting themselves into. I'm glad I read it early on. Bonus: There are exercises at the end of each chapter. I admit I did very few of them.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, Tides of War and Last of the Amazons) is all about breaking through the blocks to creativity, or put another way, about overcoming potentially paralyzing fears and doubts. Pressfield says:

"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance."

He defines the many forms that resistance takes, shows how to combat it, then discusses the powerful psychic forces that sustain artists on their journey.

I've given away one writing book because I knew I was never going to read it again. That was Zen in the Art of Writing, a collection of essays by Ray Bradbury. There are others languishing on my bookshelf: A Writer's Space by Eric Maisel, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and Letters to a Young Artist, also by Julia Cameron. I have no idea when or if I'll read them. I called a moratorium on buying books on writing, but given all the intriguing suggestions I've seen on the blog this month, my resolve is crumbling fast. Thank you Novelnauts for introducing me to all these resources!

~Liane Spicer

Papyrus, Paper, Pixels...and Life

I had planned to write a sober assessment of the paper versus digital publishing situation, and the ramifications for traditionally published, indie and hybrid authors. I was planning to write about the way Amazon's Kindle Unlimited subscription programme all but killed my indie sales on the Zon since its launch last year. After reading several depressing essays on the issues in sources such as The Economist (The Future of the Book) and Smashwords (2016 Book Publishing Industry Predictions--a must read for anyone in the indie publishing business), I decided to give it a rest.

Since my first novel was published in 2008 there has been nothing but turmoil and upheaval in the industry. I'm tired to the bone of it all. I've come full circle and I'm back to the basics: my love of reading and my love of writing. Reading has been the mainstay of my life, my escape, my therapy, my delight, my muse, my great teacher. And writing? I no longer fuss about what I 'should' be doing. I do what I want, zipping back and forth between genres, between novel and novella and short story, between editing and formatting my own work and doing the same for other writers.

Late last year I discovered the pleasure of writing in a totally new, fun historical niche (new to me as a writer, not a reader) when a short story turned into a novel which I serialized and which now outsells my twenty-something other indie titles. I'm now reading up on the history because I'm about to start another series set in the same period. Plus, I'm back at school and one year into a graduate programme. The taught courses are behind me (or will be when I turn in the last paper on Friday) and then the real work begins for the vivas and thesis that will absorb much of the next two years. I see a lot of juggling in my immediate future: school-related research and writing, fiction writing and publishing, editing jobs.... I've also been invited by one of my lecturers to tutor her UG courses. I have to make time to enjoy my two awesome grandkids...and to do this every now and then:

Me just chillin' on Maracas Beach, Dec. 2015

So, let the publishing battles rage. Let the players--the giants like Amazon and the ocean of tiny authors trying to eke some cash out of making up stuff--duke it out. Let others sweat and swear and worry. Me? I'll be busy doing...other things.

~Liane Spicer

Writing or Wasting Time?

Kevin Killiany's column on August 19, "I Was Just Getting To That", touched on a sore issue for me: disrespect for writers' time. Except for the big guns—who I assume command respect based on their impressive royalties and resultant lush lifestyles—nonwriters regard your writing as a kind of sneaky self-indulgence at best, or an affectation at worst. The expression "I'm working on a novel" has somehow become synonymous with pie in the sky or dereliction of duty.

I tend to write late at night because that's when the house is cool and quiet and I can string two thoughts together without any kind of intentional or nonintentional interruption. My mother knocking on the door to ask for the five millionth time if I might have purloined her car keys or reading glasses just for the fun of it, and if not, whether I happened to see them anywhere unusual, falls under "intentional interruption". The man cutting the grass outside my window with what must be the loudest weed whacker on the planet falls under "unintentional interruption". But whether one or the other, these things interrupt the flow of my thoughts and sometimes it's hard to get back in there.

One of the problems with intentional interruptions—and part of the reason there's so much disrespect for writers' time—is that the writing process looks like wasting time or just chilling to others. Writing is hard work, but nonwriters think we're having them on when we say that. Case in point: back in December I achieved what I think is a personal record: I wrote roughly 8,000 words, the first draft of a short story, in one day. I was in the flow and I just kept going until I reached the end. I don't recommend these marathons although they sound impressive, and the reason is that I was completely fried: I spent the day after my marathon in bed, firing up the laptop for short stints to work on the edits for another project. To anyone who saw me in crash mode that day, I was just lying around doing nothing. They have no idea that I crashed because I did four days' writing work in one.

When I taught high school, no one visited or intruded on my work unless there was a real emergency. A call during school hours was rare—like that time my brother whacked off several of his toes while mowing the grass barefooted, or the day he was found alive after being lost at sea for three weeks. Now that I'm a home-based writer, however, everyone thinks I'm accessible all the time. It's really annoying.

The question Kevin raised about whether the writing or your family is more important should not even arise. It's unfair, a straw-man argument that has no correlation. No one ever suggested I should abandon my students back in the day to run errands, do laundry or clean the house. I did what I could manage around my workdays, and what I could not do had to be postponed. The hours the job required were inviolate. Not so a writer's hours.

I don't expect that nonwriters—and especially the families of writers—are going to develop respect for what writers do anytime soon. It's therefore up to us, the writers, to respect our own writing time, to growl, bark and bite when we need to so that we get the point across: writing is a job and trying to do it around the edges of other people's expectations of us and demands on our time won't cut it. Be strong. Be firm. And eschew the guilt.

~Liane Spicer