I recently heard a TED Talk about choosing one new thing to do every day for 30 days. This was a self-improvement exercise. The idea was to pick something simple you’ve always wanted to try, say play the ukulele, and try it out for 15 minutes every day. To further simplify, the month would coincide with the calendar month. Since it’s now the middle of July, I figure I’m off the hook until August 1. I have a few ideas:
 
READ A POEM
 
I should read poetry, I know, I’m a writer after all. People read poems to me all the time and I admire them a lot. But I never seem to get all the way through one of those long ones in the New Yorker by myself. This would definitely improve me.
 
PRACTICE A CLASSICAL PIECE ON THE PIANO
 
How about one of those Chopin Nocturnes I once took a crack at? I’d start out not knowing it much at all, so the playing through might take a very long time at first, and be really really bad. I might get frustrated and it might be hard and it might hurt the ears of those I live with: cats and humans, both. Plus my piano needs tuning.
 
I think I’ll save this one for the winter.
 
TAKE A PHOTOGRAPH
 
My friend, Linda Durham, a discriminating person with an artistic eye, suggests not all the pictures should be “nice.” How about some ugly drying flowers, or bugs, or the inside of my laundry basket? I would, of course, need to post these on my Instagram account. And that means liking a bunch of pictures other people posted so they will like me back.
 
MORNING PAGES OR WRITING PRACTICE
 
Julia Cameron invented Morning Pages—three pages, long-hand first thing in the morning, no self-criticism or editing as you go. Natalie Goldberg invented Writing Practice, kind of the same, only you do it in cafes and any time of the day. The rule is, if the A-bomb goes off, you don’t stop writing. Not even if the waiter comes over to take your order. I’ve done both of these and it certainly keeps the words flowing whether on a personal topic or some fiction backstory. I have notebooks full of these scribblings and have never gotten around to reading any of it, let alone typing it into the computer.
 
TYPE IN MORNING PAGES
 
OK, so I could start sorting through all that crap, and create documents, editing as I type. A lot of work and I promise to do it someday. Or perhaps I’ll just leave these notebooks to my grandchildren.
 
OTHER GOOD HABITS LIKE Exercising, Eating Right, Flossing, Meditating, or Going to bed early
 
OK, I will, later, after the movie’s over.
 
MAYBE A BAD HABIT
 
A could play a game of Spider Solitaire (addictive, can’t play only one), or watch a bad TV show like my 600 Pound Life, or Hoarders, or What Not to Wear. I could eat a bowl of ice cream, or have a martini every day. I could take up smoking.
 
A BLOG A DAY
 
Here’s the one I’m settling on. A bit ambitious, but appeals somehow, as I always was overambitious. I can do it first thing in the morning, or after work in the evening while drinking wine (oh-oh). I could write 30 of them this weekend and then post them one-by-one, or I could dive off the deep end on August 1.  Maybe I could just post a picture, or write a single paragraph by way of simplification.  I could write about the news, my opinions, my dreams, post an old story that never got published. The benefits are many: I would have to give up being so OBSESSIVE about details and perfection. I could get people interested in my blog (maybe). I could become adept at posting, avoiding those typical mistakes that I’ve made before where I replaced my website picture with one of Melania Trump.
 
I would make Art Tucker happy.
 
THE WORRY
 
What if after a few months I picked up all kinds of new habits. What if I felt compelled to do everything every day, as the months built up. Here’s what a Typical day would look like:
 
Get up early
Write morning pages
Type morning pages into computer
Practice Chopin Nocturne
Have a Martini
Play a game of Spider Solitaire, OK play Spider for 2 hours.
Do 5 Salutations to the Sun
Take a selfie of me doing Sun Salutation and post it on Instagram
Browse Instagram for 45 minutes
Have another Martini
Eat some Kale
Eat some Ice Cream
Watch TV
Read a bedtime poem while flossing
Go to bed early

​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. 

The other morning I looked out my bedroom window and saw a coyote eating a rabbit. I don't like coyotes because I have cats for pets, and have lost a number of them to the predator that roams freely in our neighborhood. However, this particular morning, Rufus and Dexter were safely inside, so I watched with fascination. I grabbed my phone and started taking pictures. After awhile, the coyote became aware of me ....

Or perhaps he became aware of another presence ...

A bobcat came to check out the feast, and the coyote retreated.
Bobcats represent the attributes of Awareness and Strategy, Clear Vision in Dark Places, Vigilance and Patience. They are known as solitary creatures. But hold on .....

 Another one appeared! 
Beautiful and wild, a privilege to see.
I take this as a sign, that we are together, protected, powerful and patient. Thank you to the animals who showed themselves to us and who crossed our path one morning.

​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.