Notes from the Red Bird House

"At the tennis courts, two young women were in the middle of a match,  playing well, their pleated skirts flying as they raced after the ball." That one sentence changed my life. More to the point, it changed the direction of my art. I doubt the author - Sarah Waters - even remembers writing the words. They describe a scene in a park as observed by the two protagonists in her novel, The Paying Guests . I focused on them because of tennis (obviously) but within my imagination something came to life. The two women playing became Anna and Adah, who had a story all of their own, a story I had to tell.  I was at the inevitable low point that follows the completion of a major project. I'd finished my first novel and, because I was steadfastly procrastinating its editing, I re-started work on another novel project I'd left unfinished while in grad school. After a couple weeks miserably slogging and fighting my way toward an ending, I realized I was deadlocked. I...

Alright, so I'm more than a non-reader. I hate it. Actually, I more than hate it. I despise it. Does "despise" indicate more than "hate"? It sounds like it does. Maybe if I read more, I'd be better able to tease out the nuances. But I digress... I'm sure the folks at the coffee place where I 'office' think I love to read. Hell, I do it all the time. When I'm not writing, I mean. Or flitting around the Internet. And there I go again... Digression at it's best. I'm stalling. I need to confess and I'm apparently not quite ready. Bless me Father for I have sinned... Isn't that how it goes? I did a bit of research on the Catholic Church when I was writing my novel, but I never delved into the confessional. I figured I'd seen enough movies to guess that part. Ok, ok. Here we go. I'm ashamed to admit this and I'm asking for absolution. I started reading post-graduate school for research purposes only. And I do mea...

"...we're all a part of nature. Some day the world will realize this, but meanwhile there's plenty of work that's waiting. For the sake of others like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, it's up to you to have the courage to make good..." ~ from The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1929, p. 205) Years ago a friend said something similar to me. I'd run into a few issues after posting a blog called "I'm a Girl, Part 2". Many of my readers, the closed-minded ones, didn't like my re-vision of what it meant to be a woman. When I threatened to quit writing, quit blogging, quit posting, she told me that I had to write, I had to blog, I had to post. Above all, I had to stand. Because unlike many, I was strong enough. And people needed my words. The closed-minded ones, sure, may never truly understand, but the ones like me...they needed to know they weren't alone. And so I kept writing. And I keep writing. Those who ha...