Here at this artists retreat in the Midwest, I'm amazed at the way the other residents retain the strictures, diets and good habits of the lives they have left behind. One writer walked into town yesterday to buy yogurt and fresh greens. Another runs every day. An artist does her yoga in the living room in late afternoon. Obviously, they don't let slip the daily habits of a disciplined live.

I, on the other hand, do. Oh, I arrive with the best intentions. I pack my running shoes and yoga clothes and cart along five bottles of supplements. I promise myself I'll abstain from sugar and white flour. (Stuff I generally won't have in the house.) In short, I'll continue the disciplines of home. But within days, I've adopted a general permissiveness, an amnesty from rules. As if - here - consequences don't apply and the desserts consumed in the dining room don't count, the way some people claim that if you eat a cookie by breaking it off in pieces, the calories fall out.

My away-from-home indulgences are as follows:

Continue reading "AT THE RETREAT" »

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had just left my afternoon class at the Maui Writers Retreat. I'd sent my students off with a load of homework (they work like sled dogs) and headed to the beach for a late day swim. I had about an hour before I was meeting Ann Hood for dinner to talk about the speech we were giving the next day.

I waded in, submerged to my shoulders. I figured there wasn't enough time for a shampoo and blow-dry before my date with Ann and so paddled around, bobbing in the surf, all the while careful to keep my head out of the water, my hair dry, so I'd look good at dinner.

Around me, the carnival that is Wakiki Beach played on. On shore, couples posed for photos, five neon-hued parrots perched on their arms and shoulders. The dude who ran the umbrella and chaise concession flirted with customers. Tourists climbed on an outrigger canoe and headed off into the distance. Surfers paddled by on their boards. Children, encircled with hot-pink inner-tubes, floated by, trailing laughter.

I observed life around me.

And then a wave crashed in, taking me up and throwing me head over bandbox, as if I weighted no more than a sand flea. After the first sputtering shock, I swung my hair back from my eyes, as wet and stringy as seaweed, and laughed out loud. I'd been swept not only by the wave, but by the liberating, exhilerating sense of freedom that grabs us when we surrender to what life thows us. When we no longer are trying to be careful. Safe. Looking good. For the next half-hour, I cavorted like a six-year old. Diving into the surf like a seal until my head was water-logged and my fingers wrinkled.

Later that night, I thought of my students and how they were careful to stay close to shore. How they resisted tearing apart a chapter they've worked on for months. Or even years. How they moaned at having to toss the first twenty pages or five chapters in order to begin where the book really begins. In this they are not alone. Most writers know this agony. How careful we try to be with our prose. How reluctant we are to rip up what we crafted when what we need to do is pry our fingers loose from the page and rip that mother up. Scatter the pieces to the wind. Dive in. Let go of caution. Get our hair wet.

I have an image of myself on that beach. Sopping wet. Stringy hair in my face. Laughing out loud. I'll try and remember it as I work on the new novel. The exhilaration of releasing - whether to water or to writing - reminds us of what it feels like to truly come alive.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been having an interesting e-mail exchange with a reader named Linda R. about how we decide on when to give up on a book we’re reading.

I remember one novel that stayed on my night table for months. Again and again I would pick it up to give it one more try although I found the plot tedious and the prose uninspired. Finally I donated the book to a library book sale.

Quite some time later, during a book discussion at a dinner party, I mentioned my disappointment over this popular book (it was a best-seller, though I should know by now that this often is a guarantee of nothing more than a strong marketing machine at work). A friend, another avid reader, asked how far along I was. “About page fifty,” I said. “Oh,” she said. “The beginning is really, really slow, but it‘s worth it.” Another friend chimed in. “You have to get to page 100,” she said. “Then you won’t be able to put it down.”

This was not the first time I’ve heard that comment about a book. I call it the just-stick-with-it advice. But why didn’t the author begin at page 100? Or why hadn’t an editor recommended tightening the beginning? Why must I have to slog through the first third of a book before becoming engaged?

Linda R. said she was willing to give a book an honest go but there were too many books she wanted to read to spent the time on one that she doesn’t like.

For years I’ve felt a moral obligation to finish any book I began, but no longer. As Linda wrote, life is too short. And there are, indeed, far too many books. When we open to page one, we agree to no contract to read to the final page. The imperative lies with the author who is charged with creating a book that draws the reader in early on, to create an engine of desire that drives the train through the long journey to its destination.

These e-mails with Linda have me thinking about calling it quits in general. Most of us have been raised on the “Never give up,” mantra. The Vince Lombardi school of “Winners never quit and quiters never win,” a philosophy underscored these days as we watch Olympians push beyond imagined barriers and possibilities. They are men and women who serve as object lessons that perseverance - linked with hard work, desires and dreams - does pay off. If we only did what we knew we could do instead of what we imagined might be possible, no barrier would be broken. Of space, or time or mind.

And yet. And yet.

Sometimes the most positive thing we can do is hop off the train. To put down a book that goes no where. To make another choice. To make the hard call to back off from relationships that consistently drain. To step away from friendships that have become abusive. To put down a book that bores.

Sometimes calling it quits is a sign we’ve taken charge of our own time. Our own lives.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, the chickens are no longer in that adorable Easter-peeps-fluff stage. Now they are in pre-adolescence, all gawky and full of attitude. They roost on the branches Hillary has threaded through the hen yard wire, chase each other around in what seems like a fowl version of tag, and come running to wrangle over kitchen scraps.

One has chosen me for friendship. Or what passes for it in the poultry world.

A Black Star, she walked up to me the day she arrived, twenty-four hours after being hatched, the only one of twenty-eight not timid or wary. She hasn't stopped coming to me since. When I step into the yard, she rushes over, ignores the melon rind I offer and pushes against my leg. While the rest of the chick-lets mill about and squabble over the peelings, she stands still while I stoke her feathers. She is a handsome creature who, according to the McMurray Hatchery people, will weigh a little over five pounds when full grown. They advertise her as egg-laying machine. They said nothing about any proclivity to bond with an owner. But bond we have, Black Star and I.

Now back in June when they arrived. I swore I was not going to get attached to this batch. In the past, each time I grew fond of a chick - at least fond enough to name her - she was the first to fall prey to a predator. Tina Turner, a Buff Laced Polish with a flowing crown that looked like a rock star's wig, we lost to a fox who managed to get through the wire fence. Lady Day, a Golden Campine as handsome as a partridge, fell victim to a racoon. Ella we lost to a hawk who squeezed through a narrow hole in the wire netting above the yard. Each time I wept. Although I spent most of my childhood on a farm and know the cruelty of nature, I never get used to it.

So when this batch arrived I said, that's it. No more. I'm not setting myself up for loss. And I'm definitely not naming any of them.

And then little Black Star chose me. And as simple as that, I was hooked.

In this complicated world, it is a simple thing to stand in a chicken yard on a summer day and commune with a chicken. And a simple and wondrous thing, too, to open your heart in spite of a history woven with the anguish of loss.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let the rest of the world keep the golf courses and tennis courts and shopping expeditions, my idea of a perfect summer day is to be sequestered with a good book. A hammock and fat novel and I’m in hog heaven. Add a glass of iced tea and I’ll just roll in the dust, metaphorically speaking.

When I was in high school, each summer break I was required to read and report on eight books chosen from a reading list as lengthy as it was diverse. While this idea may strike some as onerous, to me it was a treat. Even now I can remember some of those books. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. LIFE WITH FATHER. The autobiography of George Washington Carver. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY.

This summer my book stack measures a foot high and is as varied as the high school one.

Among the non-fiction titles are THREE CUPS OF TEA and THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT.

I have my pal Thomas Cook’s new book MASTER OF THE DELTA to look forward to. Judging by the write-up in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, I won’t be disappointed. A bunch of us have been getting Tom’s book tour dispatches and if he ever decides to give up a life of crime and turn to comedy, I’ll be first in line at the book store.

Also in the crime genre is Lee Child’s latest NOTHING TO LOSE. Child is a relatively new discovery for me and I’ve been taking his backlist out from the library all spring.

Usually I’m so put off by hype that a year or two passes before I get around to reading what everyone else has been chatting up for months, but the word of mouth from tons of readers and reviewers and authors I trust for THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE has been so over the moon that I just bought a copy.

Books that I read earlier in the spring but highly recommend are Ann Hood’s heartbreaking memoir COMFORT, and LOVING FRANK by Nancy Horan, the story of the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

What about you? What’s on your summer reading list these days? What is your most memorable summer read? If you had only one book to take to the hammock, what would it be?

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the winter, Hillary tried to get me involved in the ordering of the new chicks. I resisted, even when he pulled out the catelog and offered me the opportunity to choose my favorites. I wasn't interested. After ten years of chickens, I'd had enough. They're cute when they arrive, but soon there is the reality of tending them 24/7 year round and finding caretakers for them when we want to go on vacation, not to mention the sorrow when - inevitably - we lose one to a predatator. I was ready to move on to a life beyond the chickens.

Not HIllary. Niight after night, he poured over the Murray McMurray Hatchery catelog, seduced by the variety of breeds. As always he was torn between selecting the proven egg producers like the Rhode Island Reds and the gorgeous plumage of the more exotic breeds like the rare Golden Campines, all black and gold, and the Egyptian Fayoumis and Silver Laced Wyandottes.

"What do you think?" he'd ask.

"I don't care," I'd answer. Though secretly drawn to the Buff Rocks and Campines, I offered no encouragement. Enough was enough.

But a Hen Man is a Hen Man through and through, and, even without enthusiasm on my part, he sent in his order.

The chicks arrived this morning. They're in the smaller hen house, huddled under the heat lamp and I am no longer able to remain unmoved by the miracle of life playing out before me. Earlier, I helped teach them how to drink by picking each one up out of a shipping container no larger than a shoe box and dunking its beak in the water trough. They are weighless as smoke in the palm, but already - one day old - filled with spunk. And even this early, a pecking order is developing. The bossy ones push the meeker aside to get to the water. One adventuresome one chased a bug across the floor. Their antics make me laugh out loud.

If you're in the neighborhood, stop by for a visit. In the midst of the trials and heartbreaks of our days when it seems as if every week comes news of another friend struck by cancer or other illness, not to mention the bleak national reports of war and a tanking economy, it is good to celebrate life in whatever form it comes to us.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in that first stage of writing a new book when all things are still possible.

A friend asked me if writing a book was like giving birth. The comparison is apt. There is the conception - that first spark of an idea that hits in the middle of the night or in the shower or when I'm out running, followed by a period of gestation as the project grows and develops. And then, eventually, there is the labor of birth and euphoria,followed by - at least for me and for a number of my colleagues - post-partum depression.

"So where are you in the process?" my friend asked. "Have you conceived?"

I told her I was still dating. Right now I'm in the back seat of the Chevy making out and steaming up the windows. The hard work lies ahead.

In an exchange with one of my students from last year's Maui Writers Conference, I mentioned that non-writers
couldn't possible know how difficult writing a novel is. "Yeah," Alan e-mailed back, "but they don't know how exciting and gratifying it can be either."

Or how alive you feel when passionately in love with a story and the characters who people it. I'll let you know when I crawl out of that back seat and start driving the Chevy down the road.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)