​I didn’t have cats growing up, just chickens and guppies. The guppies ate their babies, and the chickens eventually met sad ends. My first pet chicken, Peachy, died when his nighttime cage came down on his neck—he was trying to get out for a little more petting which he got every evening at the dinner table. The others, a pair named by my dad Egg (Eager Eagle) and Fuff (fearless Falcon) had to be given away. They caused disturbances in our suburban California neighborhood, crowing and flying over the fence into the neighbors’ yards, and the rooster sometimes attacked guests who came into the back yard wearing bright clothing. Or maybe it was because my dad died and we had to move far away. Egg and Fuff were sent to a nice farm nearby, or at least that’s what I was told. Anyway, that was the last of my pets until I met my future husband, Jim, in college.

Jim and his roommate Larry lived in an upstairs room in Baker college at Rice University. Right before I got involved with Jim, a pregnant cat (named Mama Kitty) moved into their dorm room. Her pregnancy was likely the result of an encounter with Mr. Baker, the un-neutered male cat who wandered around the dorm and the grounds. Mr. Baker had a jowly face, the result of many skirmishes defended his territory as the feline master of the most historic and beautiful of the residential colleges on campus.
We enjoyed Mama Kitty and those kittens while we fell in love, and a year or two afterwards, we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and got the first of our own series of cats, a black male we named Kitty. Kitty enjoyed the same free masculine status as Mr. Baker. He had nightly catfights on Johnson Lane where we slept with the screenless windows open in the summer. Often the catfights came inside. I was not too far past the birth of our son, so I when the cats set up a howl in our living room I was jolted awake from much needed sleep. Eventually, Gabe, our newly mobile baby, started crawling after Kitty, catching his tail, lying on top of him, pinning him to the ground, squealing with delight. Kitty didn’t make a fuss about it. I suppose he had accepted his diminished status from Kitty Baby, to just plain bothersome cat.

After we moved to West Manhattan Ave., we adopted Pepper and Mittens. We didn't yet believe in spaying and neutering, so Mittens was impregnated by her brother. Poor Mittens was so hungry during her pregnancy that she once jumped up on the table and licked the frosting off the Easter Cake. Their  kittens were born in  our bedroom closet. Missy, the runt of the litter, stayed with us too. She enjoyed nursing, long after her kittenhood, mainly on Mittens, her mother, but sometimes on Pepper.
When we moved to a new house on Gonzales Rd, Pepper got caught in a car engine and had his leg burned and mangled. He had to go to the vet for some expensive and extensive kitty surgery and a long recovery before he came home again. Mittens ran away that same night, obviously scared off by the trauma in a new and terrifying neighborhood. She showed up two month’s later on West Manhattan Ave., skinny and purring. She had crossed several miles of city, hunting, and finding water where she could, navigating by some magical kitty radar. 

When adopting a cat, we believe in the interview process. We go down to the local animal shelter and take them to the special room to see how they behave. I have been known to respond to cats choosing me, as well. Our smaller cat, Rufus, definitely made a pitch to me every time I walked past his cage.
We got two black cats this time for safety sake. If out at night they are less visible to predators. Our friend, Barbara, Aamodt, a very special nonagenarian, says if she can keep a cat two years, she can keep him twenty. I hope that will be true with our beloved two.
Dexter is big, strong, lithe, and likeable. His companion, though not litter mate, step-brother, Rufus, is easily spooked, runs from most people, except me, whom he adores. He hunts quite well, but is definitely the submissive, and Dexter, the dominant cat. If Rufus is on my lap and Dexter comes anywhere near, Rufus will jump down and slide under the couch. Then Dexter jumps up for his petting.
 We have erected a very nice cat fence around a portion of the back yard with small openings in several places, so the cats can run in and out. I call them in at night to feed them a treat--wet cat food from a can--and lock the kitty door. Then I feel safe to go to sleep, even if I hear a pack of coyotes howling.
However, Jim has confessed that Dexter asks to go out every night, and Jim usually lets him. Dexter is his favorite, after all.
 
You got to love a man who loves a cat.

​Is it real?
 
It seems people fall into several camps on this one. One: Writer’s Block is an excuse for being lazy, so just get busy. Two: Everyone gets to a tough, stuck point once in awhile, so give yourself a little slack, take a break, think about it, then … just get busy. Three: Something real and hidden is going on, like you need a career change or a divorce. Figure it out, change your life, then get busy. Four: You can’t write, because you don’t have anything to say, because you’re not a real writer, or maybe you just plain suck. Advice: Hire a real writer to do the dirty work. Or better yet, just stop writing.
 
The causes are listed as “fear”, “perfectionism”, “bad-timing”, “distractions”, “depression”, “no talent.” I think the problem is often too much self-criticism and self-editing while trying to write a first draft, famously called “a shitty first draft” by Anne Lamott.
 
I fall into the camp of “just get busy.” I know some people, some very good writers, who struggle at times, and some for complicated reasons. My struggle gets closer to the “you just plain suck,” when it’s time to submit to publishers, read aloud, send a draft to a critic or editor. However, in the meantime, I write as much as I can, as fast as I can, as often as I can. Here’s what helps me.
 
Free Writing
 
I’ve done a ton of “Free writing” of one sort or another, and find it, well, freeing. The idea is to just keep scribbling for a set period of time or length, say Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Three Pages first thing in the morning, no stopping, no editing. Or Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Practice. Usually done in a café in pairs, scribbling in notebooks for 20 minutes without stopping. Then there’s Tom Bird’s Divine Writer Within. I went to a seminar called “Write Your Bestseller in a Weekend.” This was the ultimate Free Writing exercise. We were crammed together in a room with the special music playing (coyotes howling, subliminal messages beneath the subtle piano) and wrote as fast as we could. We counted our words every twenty minutes, whether in a notebook, or on computer, so before long, we were driven by the desire to write more and more words in an hour. After a two minute counting break, the bell would ding, and we’d be back at it. I regularly wrote 2000 + words an hour, hour after hour, compared to a goal of 1000 words a day, to which I’ve sometimes adhered. Granted, of the 2000 words many were not always in sentences, or did not follow what came before the bell. The tenses and voice changed and shifted, the story jumped around, but what I got was a beginning, a middle, and an end, in short, a 30K word draft of a novel.
 
I believe in free-writing, the editor is mostly left in the dust, and the muse has a chance to shine through.
 
The first time I did free writing was in college, though I didn’t have a name for it then. At exam time, we were given a ruled notebook and a question or two, say comparing a work of Chaucer with one of Shakespeare. We had to hand-write an essay and turn it in to be graded an hour and a half later. I drank coffee back then, and sometimes took no-doz, so I was a little sped-up as I scribbled in my notebook. (Glad to be freed from the tortures of a pre-computerized typewriter, and my inability to type with any accuracy.) Somewhere in the middle, I would come to the nugget for which I’d been searching. There was still time to expand on my idea, tie it up into a final paragraph, and to seek that illusive A, which oddly, though I considered myself a bit of a dullard in those English classes, I earned more often than not.
 
This, I believe, is the essence of free-writing, even regular, on-the-computer writing that breaks through. If you go forward fast enough, without much editing or judging, without a plan or expectation, maybe driven by some kind of deadline or desperation, you eventually come to that nugget. The nugget can be a new plot twist, or a missing character, or a little bit of truth about the human condition, or even some insight into Chaucer. Some people call writing like that, “being in the zone.” I believe the zone is there, and can be accessed on a regular, though slightly unpredictable, basis.
 
One more thing about deadlines. I think often of all my unfinished novels or ideas for novels or novellas, or story collections, and I worry about the ultimate deadline: death. So, just like in English class, I am motivated to get the words and ideas down before that final bell rings.
 
Editing Later
 
Perhaps this post is more about the effectiveness of writing through the block in a free way, rather than the old-fashioned hunt and peck method, with lots of white-out and notes in the margins, or the computer equivalent. There’s plenty of time for editing later. If you have a chance to get something down, do it.
 
I do love editing and rewriting when the page is no longer blank, and I admit to editing while I go, as well, but there usually comes a point when I need to push out those pesky words and revise them later.
 
How good is it?
 
Just like hearing your own signing voice from inside your head, it is sometimes considered impossible to judge your own work. Can you let go of self-judgment? Can you go back and fix mistakes, improve your point-making without saying “I suck, I’d better quit?” My belief is that if you have a calling to do something, give it a go. A calling to creativity is a precious gift.
 
Here’s a quote from one my favorite articles on the subject of writer’s block:
 
“In general, it's a good practice to initially treat all blocks as emotional noise, something you can work your way through. You can work under the assumption that Writer's Block is an imaginary beast, a beast you can banish by writing. At the same time, the rare work stoppages that you can't defeat with enthusiasm and discipline are almost certainly signals that something's amiss in your life, your work habits or your goals. In that case, you'd be wise to work under the assumption that Writer's Block is a real live monster that you ignore at your peril.”
 
By Bruce Holland Rogers, The Writer’s Store.

​As many of you know, I completed and published Incarnation last year. Starting with a roaring success of a book launch on April Fools’ day, I’ve been slowly working on getting Incarnation out into the world. To those who have come to my readings, bought and read Incarnation, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I continue to be astonished by your kind reviews.
 
Writing a novel is a big undertaking. I was not prepared when I started over thirty years ago, and was not as patient as I am now. After a writing class or two, I dashed off a 1200 page draft, full of digressions and bad writing. Yet I pinned my hopes on that version and began going to writers’ conferences, pitching to literary agents and editors. At one such conference, I met a “psychic” agent who touched her third eye and told me to cut the book in half. I’d already understood that the book was too long, and had been editing it down, so I accepted her advice without much resistance or deep understanding. It wasn’t until a few months later that her words hit their mark.
 
Fish Out of Water, as it was then called, featured interwoven stories, two narrators, two protagonists, two worlds. Kelsey, my modern scientist, dreamed of Iriel, a young savior living in antediluvian Atlantis. Much of the length of the book came from Iriel’s passage from her teenage days on her outlying Atlantian island to her journey to the mainland to the destruction of her world to her escape across the sea. My epiphany was that I could make Fish into multiple books. And so I am doing that, with Chosen, the first of the series just about ready to go. Meanwhile, Incarnation became Kelsey’s story and her past life as Iriel informed her spiritual growth, as she informed Iriel’s spirit.
 
Life after death holds a fascination for me, but not to the point that I want to hurry it.  I like being alive and like to consider the possibilities of the other world. Incarnation is the story of one possibility: that we have lived before, and we might live again depending upon where we are on the ladder of enlightenment, and that our souls inhabit a heavenly realm for a time before returning to our earth classroom, and that there can be communication across the realms. Behind the veil a kind of magic exists. Time collapses, bargains are made, angelic beings watch and protect, and a most magnificent God embraces all of it.
 
Particularly, I have looked for my father on the other side of the veil, listened for his voice, sought his advice, and at times, like a punch in the chest, have received his answer. YES, DO IT! Now more beloveds, friends, my mother, have gone to the seat of our ancestors. I have vowed to write about those ancestors and those realms in all the days left to me.
 
I will write, because writing is my calling, my pleasure, my way into myself, my way to understand the world, and perhaps I have a little imagination and talent. I will invent, I will channel, I will craft. That is the true gift of Incarnation. I have become a writer, a real writer.
 
A year ago, I took a workshop led by the charismatic Tom Bird, called Write Your Bestseller in a Weekend. And I did. Rain, like the early Fish Out of Water, is a mess. Thankfully, it is much shorter! The magic that happened in those forced march writing sessions was akin to channeling. Many have spoken of waiting for an elusive muse, or wading through writer’s block. I don’t choose to go there. Sometimes a piece needs time to settle into a final form, and I honor that. Sometimes I need to muse upon the change I might make, whether big or small. There’s a little niggling voice that says, that part is not quite right. Take it out, expand it, tidy it up, make this change or go in like a blind surgeon, and see what happens. Then once I make the change, it’s done and the work is improved. I believe that I am led in the right direction, in this and everything else I undertake.
 
How do I feel, now that Incarnation is finished, published, out in the world after thirty years? It couldn’t be done until I stopped knowing how to make it better. That went on for a very long time. Then suddenly, I had a publisher and we were working on the finishing touches. I did put in a little scene or two near the end, couldn’t help it. Atlantis keeps giving me those stories, those pictures.
 
What I feel now is the thrill of not knowing what stranger or friend is going to read my book and judge it, or love it, or want to talk to me. I’m still shy about that. Like wanting to jump off the stage and hide after an ovation, I’m not quite comfortable taking the praise or promoting my work. But I do want to keep performing and expanding my circle of readers. I do want to get into a dialogue with my readers, have my audience help me grow and move in some undiscovered direction. I want that thrill of performance whether it’s a reading, giving a speech that I’ve crafted, a radio interview, or publishing something I’ve written.
 
You’re such a lovely audience, such gentle readers. This much I know.
 
My sincerest thanks and my love to all. 

​I’ve heard people say, “I write because I can’t not write.” At first glance this statement appears self-aggrandizing, i.e. I am that very special kind of person who was born to write, and you, that not-so-special person, are not like this and furthermore you wouldn’t understand.
 
I have enough trouble with specialness, being an only child (and the mother of an only child). I am a tribe of one, a unique snowflake, the center of the universe. So of course being also a very good introspective introvert (as are many only children) I would avoid this attitude at all costs.
 
But let’s follow the I-can’t-not-write idea a little further. If I, for instance, am caught up in pre-tax season, pulling together paperwork, proving the books for my 12-15 entities, I am usually not writing anything other than a few e-mails (granted, they are edited three times), but I’m not really writing. I might find myself getting a little dull, a little grumpy as I engage that problem solving part of my brain for hours and days on end, rushing to finish while still achieving numerical perfection that is only a little elusive because it is achievable. I get the bulldog complex. Won’t let go, won’t let go, won’t let go. Here’s what’s in my brain: If I can just get this done, I will be able to take a few days off to do some writing. If I just put it all away in neat color-coded folders, send the package off to the CPA, I will be able to WRITE this weekend.
 
Yes, I like to write. It is fun, it is satisfying, it is pleasure. It is my reward.
 
But it’s not really true that I can’t not write the same as I can’t not eat or can’t not breathe. I suppose I could not breathe, but I’d be dead then, certainly a valid state of being, or non-being, I suppose.
 
Here’s a better truth: I LIKE to write.
 
When I sit down at the computer or over a notebook and start typing or fidgeting with some sentence or paragraph, I get all smiley on the inside. Here I am at last, free and creative. I don’t know where I’ll be led. It’s like traveling to a foreign country. Around the next bend is something new. Or someone new.
 
Or I find myself wrapping my brain around a nice structural book-length problem. I don’t suffer from writer’s block (though sometimes I just want to go watch TV).  Usually, once I get started, the time disappears, and it’s soon lunch time and I’m hungry so I better stop to eat. (This also happens when I’m at one of my favorite clients’ office cranking through the numbers, absorbed, and suddenly look up and it’s four thirty.)
 
“Keep telling,” my six year old granddaughter Sadie said on a recent visit. She had discovered that I had written a book, that it was published and I was going to do a reading and a book signing in the coming days. So every evening she would sit with me on the back porch and ask me to, “Keep telling.” I’d describe a little more about Atlantis and Iriel and Kelsey and the characters and the story. When I got to the point of needing to provide a PG version of the romantic and sexual tensions that plagued the main characters I told her, “Kelsey has two boyfriends.”
 
“I have six,” Sadie responded without missing a beat.
 
Keep telling, that’s the essence of it. Writing seems the most sensible thing to do in light of the stories that run around in my head and the partly edited books that live in my computer.
 
Making art is an added benefit. Writing, like music, has that surprise element of beauty, a description, a truth, a discovery. When I’m writing I have a chance to express something that I didn’t know before. Maybe my characters reflect some personal truth that I haven’t quite understood, like, what it was like to be a teenager dealing with the death of a parent, or even remembering falling in love or being a child or winning a prize. Or more simply, didn’t I always want to travel to Atlantis?
 
Here I am with my feet in the sand at last, and the smell of salt in the air and the hush of the ocean filling my ears and clouds drifting overhead and the heat of the sun warming my back.
 
And then there’s that ambition.
 
What I really want to do is write something good, something really good. I want to express a UNIVERSAL TRUTH that inspires people, that makes people weep, that makes them laugh and go AH! I want to create a character so universal, so admirable that no-one ever forgets them, whether a Rocky Balboa, or an Anna Karenina, or a Siddhartha. Or a world or history so profound or interesting that everyone wants to go there … Or just make something beautiful.
 
Are we there yet? No, not yet. How much longer? Until the end of my lifetime, I suppose, and even then I probably won’t know for sure.
 
So in answer to your question, writing is my soul’s expression which is pretty close to soul purpose, which is pretty close to my reason for being alive.  That’s why I write.