A Quickie

The world is still again. I have recently re-located to Fife Lake, lovely, and have finally, after a grueling battle to get satellite Internet, have begun writing again. Edits on Ula are slow, tedious and extremely rewarding. I have rewritten approx. the first 40 pages and added grammatical edits into the early 100's - thanks again to Michael, my editorial savior. The chic lit novel continues to waver in the low 60,000 word mark because I have been trying to get back to Demand Studios and get some articles done - which is not exactly easy when you have endless time and zero organization. On books, I just finished Pigs in Heaven (Barbara Kingsolver) - an amazing novel filled with her usual imagery. I also read Foxfire (Joyce Carol Oates) - true to her soul gripping narrative - I loved every page of it. Beyond that I'm slogging through Writer's Digest 101 Best websites, mostly to procrastinate, but also to add more useful sites to my bookmarks page, which now involves several minutes of scrolling to reach the bottom. That's it for writing updates, I believe. Au Revoir

An Eden of that dim lake

This morning the lake is a sheet of diamonds. The sun streaks onto it, lays flat its contours and reflects the most glorious image back to the sky. Perhaps this is nature's modern day sacrifice to the sun god Ra, surely it is pleased looking down on this splendor. The trees have begun their crawl from the deep shredded wood and cold roots back to the rawness of Springs air. Their tips have sprouted tiny colored buds that grow green with each passing morning that we walk the road to the woods nearby. I am surprised not to see birds diving for the water's surface, magpies scrambling to seize the faux diamonds blinking in and out of light like nighttime stars. I can imagine floating out there on a clear raft, allowing my fingers to trail the icy surface, prepared for the hard cut of the jewels that will not come. Diving beneath the water, down, and flipping to stare back at the sun that dives with me, that shoots like bullets into the tendrils of algae, flicks off the scales of otherwise colorless fish allowing them momentary glamour in their underwater world. The cats wander aimlessly, they face off at night with their tails bushed to maximum size and their backs arched, they race up and down the driveway, the hills, the road. They are so alive, they are alive like the grass clawing its way up from winters dirt bed, the ducks flapping their frantic wings to ward off those meandering too close to their nests, the flowers already folding back their vibrant waxen petals to draw the other creatures, the bee that will begin its codependent relationship for another heavenly summer.

This was a post from my journal in April, but it seemed appropriate for today as well. It has already been such a glorious summer and every day, even the gray ones, feel charged with energy. My writing has been going exceptionally well. Michael's edits have been tantamount to a massive re-write that I've undertaken in Ula (five thousand words today). I've been blogging for a realtor about things to do in Northern Michigan, which makes me want to run out and do all of those things. I've also been doing online articles again and have nearly reached 60,000 words in my chick lit novel. Been reading as well, but nothing I'll report just yet - oh - except for Writing Down the Bones, which I've read before, but am re-reading b/c it is spectacular.