Publication is the Goal

Posted on May 17, 2012 by karolynsherwood

I haven’t been honest with you, dear readers. But take heart because I haven’t been completely honest with myself either. Until now.

My last post was a sweet, esoteric, zen-rific ditty about “The Path Is the Goal.”

Yeah, no.

I mean, yes of course, the path is the goal… BUT, my ultimate goal is publishing my novel. I want to sell my novel. Period.

I have learned over the years that it’s vital for a person’s sanity to enjoy and appreciate the trek it takes to reach one’s goal; my last post was as much to remind myself of that as well as the millions of you reading along. In my case, it’s a curlicue path toward a golden bookstore, where I will pick my hardbound book up off the New Fiction shelf, and hold said book in my shaking hands. For you, it might be hearing your song on the radio, or buying a house, or landing your dream job, or walking up the aisle with your soulmate…

How many of you out there aren’t yet where you want to ultimately be? (I cannot see you  nod your head or raise your hands) (unless my spy camera is set to your IP address today). (In other words, leave a comment below if you’d like to chime in.) Dreams are fantastic; goals have a deadline. Deadlines bring out the best and the worst in me. They make me productive and make me strive for brilliance. They also make me crazy, which brings us back to The Path Is the Goal.

Each of us, I am sure, has had moments of blood, sweat, and tears (if you get that reference, you’re either a music buff or you’re as old as I am) throughout our lifetime when things haven’t gone as planned, or at least haven’t gone as quickly as planned. That is where my previous post comes into play. Not to sound too preachy here, but it is essential that you ENJOY the route you take to reach a goal of which you may or may not even realize is waiting for you to find it. By not enjoying LIFE until you reach your pre-determined milestone/goal/net worth, you could waste years being miserable and missing out on the beauty that you will pass along the way, as well as the lessons you are meant to learn as you go.

In other words, life is a highway balance. Like a teeter-totter. Walk the walk with one eye on the ultimate goal, and the other eye on the path. But be careful because the path can bend, twist, make a 90 degree turn, possibly to a better goal, one you might never even have imagined. And that may be where you are supposed to end up. As my soul-sister/literary idol Ann Patchett said in State of Wonder, ”Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”

When I was a little girl, I used to write poems and short stories, but I never once dreamed that one day I would be a writer, writing novels. Today, that is my happy dream, with a deadline. Which means… hasta luega, amigos. I’ve gotta go write!

What about you? What have you learned on your path through life? And what (I love this question) would you tell your younger, naive self?

Posted in Writer | 2 Comments

The Path Is The Goal

Posted on May 11, 2012 by karolynsherwood

What kind of person would take an hour to blog when she has her first professional deadline zooming toward her like the Japanese Bullet train?

One exactly like me.

I am signed up for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference in June. I am, in equal parts, eager, excited, and dreading it. Very soon I need to submit the first 40 pages of a manuscript for critique (yeah, I paid extra for this pressure privilege). But am I happy with them? Not even close. I’ve been writing and rewriting those first pages for the last month. Now, mind you, the novel is currently 300 pages long (75% written, 100% outlined), but it’s those first 40 pages that are kicking my butt. Oh, I’ve thought they were strong and ready about ten times. Just ask my husband about our nightly conversations. “How did your writing go today, honey?” “Fantastic!” I would reply. “Today I rewrote the opening to my novel, and it’s so much better!” Then the next day: “How did your writing go today, honey?” “Awful! I scrapped the new opening to my novel.” Then the next day: “Fantastic!” Then: “Awful!” Yeah, not kidding here.

Here’s my problem: I’m teaching myself to write by reading the best authors in the world. How do you compare to the experts in your field? See? It’s like that.

But a friend of mine, Sabine Friesicke, one of my favorite artists who is much wiser than I, recently told me what she reminds herself while she’s painting. It’s an old Chinese proverb (those guys were really smart): The path is the goal.

Yes, Sabine, the Chinese, and I are all minimalists.

I’ve been writing for five years, and have completed three novels plus my work in progress, A Reasonable Price. I started out slow, “just an hour a day,” and I’ve progressed to 4-6+ hours a day, plus reading everything I can get my hands on. As my bio says, I read the classics (for the education) and I read debut novels (for the comparison). What kills me is that until my work starts sounding more like—well, not Nabokov—but “Ann Patchett meets Dennis Lehane”, then I am not going to be happy with it. It’s very difficult to remember that they had to start somewhere, and their debut novels undoubtedly needed the help of a great editor too. It’s the same comparison I drew about Steve Jobs and Me.

But here’s the kicker: No matter what happens in my publishing career (ooh, I like the sound of that), I am a better, happier person because of the path I’m on to get there. When I look back on the last five years of my life, I can see that I am a much, much happier, wiser, more centered person than I was when I was an art dealer. The beauty of writing is that when you slow down enough to think about what makes people (i.e. characters) (including and most importantly yourself) tick, then the world starts to make so much more sense. I have learned more about myself through my hours and hours of pecking at my laptop about my characters than I did in the four decades before that.

The path is the goal.

So, today’s lesson, peeps: Relax. Today is probably not your last day on Earth, so enjoy it and stop putting so much pressure on yourself. Every day is a privilege.

Posted in Reader, Writer | Leave a comment

What’s The Opposite of Prescient?

Posted on April 28, 2012 by karolynsherwood

I was at lunch recently with my dear friend Larassa Kabel, aka. my personal John Galt, and she asked my if I ever felt prescient. Didn’t see that question coming! Alas, I rarely see anything coming. In fact, today I had another shining example of “I’m always the last to know!”

Writers often hear the advice: Write the novel you want to read. That’s what I’m doing with A Reasonable Price, my current work in progress. I read a lot, but few books, even the great ones, really speak to me. I love a plot-driven, emotional roller coaster of a book with characters you love to hate, e.g. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. So I started poking around the internet in regards to antiheroes. Would you look at this list! This looks like the Mother List from where I’ve picked all my favorite books and movies (and a few I hated for the same reason (see American Psycho)). Who knew? I’m a sucker for an antihero. And indeed, I’ve got a terribly good one in A Reasonable Price.

I had a similar bonk on the head about a year ago when I was talking with New York Lit agent Jenny Bent about my last novel, and the same thing happened. She told me I write noir fiction. How did I not know that before she did?

In the art world, there is a category called Outsider Art. The term actually grew from the name art brut coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe, among other things, art produced by insane asylum inmates, but I’m not going to touch that connection here. It does make me wonder though, if there’s an official category for Outsider Literature. (Wikipedia says no, but that I can ask for it to be created. Hmmm.) In essence, outsider art, and by extension, outsider literature is that which is created by untrained “artists.”

Yep, that’s me! And countless other authors who do not have Lit degrees or MFAs; I’m certainly not alone here.

All of this makes me wish, however, that I were Benjamin Button, living my life in reverse so that I could finally be prescient.

Posted in Observer, Reader, Writer | Leave a comment

The Itinerant Techie

Posted on April 20, 2012 by karolynsherwood

Here I go again… literally. I’m moving my website… again.

I’d be happy to give you my online presence history, but I doubt you care that much.

It’s still at www.karolynsherwood.com, but now it’s hosted via WordPress. In the transfer, I lost a lot of photos and links, so I’ll work to get those back asap, and any other kinks should be fixed soon. Sorry for any confusion.

The brilliant guys, okay, Justin, at 8/7 Central in Des Moines did the hard work. The fun part—the blogging—is all me.

I think it’s fair to say that I love Apple more than they love me.

Posted in Blogger | Leave a comment

How To Be An Optimist

Posted on March 31, 2012 by karolynsherwood

There’s a saying: We make plans; God laughs.

Whether or not you believe in God, truth of the matter is that we’re not in control of our lives. If you think you are, just wait. One day you’ll see what I’m talking about. Certainly we have to make plans and decisions to tackle day-to-day life, but occasionally the gods/stars/planets/marshmallows fall out of line and all goes astray. Marshmallows? Ok, who knows what has to align, but how you respond to unfortunate situations is what really matters.

It is possible that once or twice in mylifetime I might have been accused of being a pessimist. Only in the last few years (under the loving tutelage of my husband) have I learned how to turn limes into margaritas. In the past three years, we have spent about six months in Costa Rica. In the past few weeks, I have had several chances to whip up a pitcher of optimism.

Let me offer you a taste test:

1) If you hate tarantulas, but happen to find a fine example of one in your bathroom when you are home alone, killing it with a broom handle will give you an enormous sense of accomplishment.
2) If you have trouble digesting gluten, you will find that a caveman’s diet (meat and fruits and vegetables) is very healthy. Man lived like this for thousands of years–yes, without pizza or beer.
3) If you create anything (e.g., a novel) on a computer, and said computer gets stolen, you will learn the absolute necessity of backing up your work.
4) If said thieves steal ALL your electronics, but spare your life and limbs, you are one lucky sonofabitch.
5) Once said thieves have fractured your sense of goodness in the world, you will learn to be safer and smarter. In fact, you will learn to hire a security guard with a shotgun.
6) If you love, love, love to sit quietly in the morning, sipping amazingly delicious coffee while over looking the Pacific Ocean, but said security guard wants to tell you all about his life and his country-in Spanish–because he has spent the last 12 hours walking the perimeter of your villa while you watched David Letterman in subtitles and got eight refreshing hours of sleep, then you will learn that your guard might be the best Spanish teacher you will ever have.
7) If you wake up one morning to the smell of smoke from the wildfires approaching your villa, you will learn how the infrastructure of a country such as Costa Rica actually works: Do it yourself, and help your neighbors. What did you think the damn garden hoses were for anyway?
And lastly,
8 ) If you think that The Good Life involves a villa, an ocean, tropical weather, and tequila, you will learn that there’s no place like home. AND, all of the above can be excellent material for your next novel.

Adios, Costa Rica.

Posted in Observer, Traveler | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Badly Do You Want It?

Posted on February 28, 2012 by karolynsherwood

I want you. I want you so bad. I want you. I want you so bad, it’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad.

That’s how I feel right now about my Work In Progress.

Friends, family, work, TV, the internet, eating, sleeping, reading, blogging, cleaning out your closets… On any given day it’s easy to get distracted. Life holds not only Jungian hierarchies and obligations, but also the freedom to make poor choices, give in to poor time management skills, a million cracks in the sidewalks, and a few other things that can get in the way of our goals.

Generally speaking, everyone has time for what’s truly important to them, but some things are completely out of our control: Computer crashes, health problems, money problems, accidents, theft of one’s laptop… If you read my last post then you know that two weeks ago when my husband and I were in Costa Rica, we were robbed. They took not only our electronics, ALL of them, but also my eyeglasses and Rx sunglasses, four pair of shoes, jewelry, clothes, and most importantly, they stole two weeks of my life. That’s how long it has taken me to regroup, replace all my stuff (including my peace of mind), and get back to writing. The two most fortunate aspects of what we’ve been through are, one, we were not harmed physically, and, two, they did not steal my novel in progress.

My dear Twitter friend, Taylor Stevens—NYTBSA of The Informationist and The Innocent—and I agreed that a writer’s list of priorities are: 1) Life, 2) Work in progress, 3) Everything else. Los hombres malos did not get my novel because I was wise enough to back it up each day. (Note to others: since I was traveling, I actually emailed my novel to myself each night so that no matter what happened to my electronics, my novel would be safe. Google Docs would also work.)

What would have happened if I lost all 200 pages and all my notes and outlines and research? Would I have had it in me to start over, rewrite the entire work from memory, re-interview my experts? As much as I want this novel to be published (that would be more than anything in the world other than good health for me and my loved ones), I’m not sure if I could have garnered the strength and energy to recreate it. I would have been a pile of mush, I know that much. I would have been devastated. I would have tried, but I’m not sure if I would have felt capable of bringing it back to life, or if I would just have moved on. I do know I would not have given up writing all together.

This I know for sure: I am a writer; I will always write.

Fortunately, I am safe and I am back. I want this SO badly I must keep writing. So without further ado, please excuse me while I go apologize to my characters for abandoning them for the past two weeks, and see if I can’t write them in and out of a few more mini-dramas.

What about you? What’s the most important goal of your life? How badly do you want it? What would it take for you to be defeated? What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve your goal? Sure helps determine your priorities, doesn’t it?

Turns out orderly closets aren’t so important after all.

 

Posted in Observer, Writer | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Most Important Thing of All

Posted on February 20, 2012 by karolynsherwood

It’s easy, fun, smart to post happy news, positive outlooks, positive outcomes.
It’s difficult to post bad news.

But sometimes, shit happens.

My husband and I just returned home after five weeks in Costa Rica, five out of our planned eleven weeks. Our home was robbed while we were there, asleep. A home invasion.

We are safe, and we know that’s the most important thing of all, but I can truly say we were shaken to the core. The bad guys, “los hombres malos,” came into our bedroom and stole our iPads from our beside tables. Inches from our faces.

I wrote about it. I had to. The feelings, emotions, fear, they haven’t let go. Even now, almost a week later, as I type this, my throat tightens and my eyes well with tears because I realize how close I was to never coming home, never talking to my children again, never saying “I love you” again, to anyone. You may find this melodramatic, unless you’ve been violated or felt absolutely vulnerable to evil. Then you might remember how this feels.

Los Hombres Malos

Sound asleep, wake to a noise, the unmistakeable noise, of a person, an unknown person, 
a bad person, close.
“There’s someone in our kitchen.”
Try to wake up, stumble to the door, turn on a light, face to face with a masked man.
Shouting, anger, the fear and primal rage of two grown men—
one fueled to survive, the other to save his wife.
Protect ourselves; hide; find a weapon. 
Now wait. Let them leave.
Long enough? No, wait. Wait. Okay, ready? Ready.
Quiet preparation, caution, caution, exploration.
Are they gone? Gone?
Are we sure?
Grab shoes, phones, keys—now get out! Call the police. 
What? What’s that? Don’t you speak any English?
Anger, fear, frustration—unleashed.
Slowly, finally, help.
A foreign country, a foreign language, a foreign system.
A helpless, total realization of vulnerability.
Then the visions.
They were standing over us, over me, in the dark, while we slept.
Pillows, fluffy and white, and capable of death.
Or a knife, or a gloved hand against my throat.
Or worse.
All for an iPad, or two.
Then a guard, a man, another strange man, with a gun.
This one’s on our side. Right?
Try to sleep, in the dark, in the same bed.
A noise. A branch in the wind? A bird?
No more sleep.
Take an inventory, make a list. What’s missing?
This, that, those too.
Counting. Still counting. And more—how bizarre… soap?
But nothing rivals our peace of mind. It’s gone. All gone.
Moving on. Chopping vegetables while detectives roam the house, 
dusting for fingerprints, black dust.
Everywhere.
Okay. We’re okay. We can do this. We can replace it all.
All except a sense of peace.
We can stay. Limp along. Make changes.
No. Why?
We’re better than this. We don’t have to endure.
This isn’t normal. This wasn’t our fault. We did everything right.
We have options. We’re in charge.
Not los hombres malos.
We are safe. We are smart. We are in charge.
We’re going home. We live in the United States. We’re okay.
But, what if?
What if panic, instinct, fear, surprise, madness took over?
What if “something went wrong”, “that wasn’t supposed to happen”?
Feel your neck.
Imagine someone else feeling your neck.
With their hands. With their knife.
Feel your heart.
Feel it stop.
Close your eyes.
Never open them.

Posted in Family, Observer, Traveler | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Only The Dates Have Been Changed

Posted on January 11, 2012 by karolynsherwood

Costa Rica, Year 3, Day 1: It’s like we never left, only more so.

I’ve been reading The Best American Travel Stories 2011, edited by one of my favorite authors, Sloane Crosley. In her introduction essay, she states that she never wants to go back to the same place twice because the world is so big and wonderful. I used to agree with her, and in many ways I still do. In a previous life (about 15 years ago, I suppose) I spent 10 days on the island of Mustique. Mystical, to be sure. Ah, Basil and his friends (rock stars, clothing designers, European royalty, entrepreneurs and trust fund babies). What’s not to like? The beaches, the views, the restaurants. Ok, there was only one restaurant, but it was fabulous—a lively lobster once scampered across the dining room floor trying to escape his devilishly hot fate—heaven on earth for us humans. And here is where Ms. Crosley’s point is valid: my return trip the following year had none of the awe and fascination. I went back hoping to repeat the wonderment. Alas, it was, “Oh, yeah, I remember this beach.”
But this spot in Costa Rica where we (my hubby and I) have found… We love it more each year. We’ve met people here, found the best places to eat and buy good meat (organic beef and pork from Nicaragua), my Spanish has greatly improved, and I am over the culture shock that overwhelmed me on my first visit. But I post this post as a marker, taking my emotional temperature, if you will, so I can compare how I feel about it at the end of our trip.
Here’s my Costa Rican recap:
First trip to CR: 1 Week in Tamarindo: Fabulous. Me, hubby, 4 sons. Great time, great food, great town, great house though it didn’t have an ocean view.
Second trip to CR: 1 month near Coco Beach: Not so fabulous. Hubby and I land after dark; by the time we got our rental car and found our house, I was depleted of all positive emotions. An afternoon wildfire had scorched the hilltop just below our house, but our host insisted they’d hosed everything down so we’d be fine. The house was in disrepair, though the ants and geckos didn’t seem to mind. The tarantulas loved our pool, but they can’t swim so it wasn’t that scary to scoop them out in the mornings. But by Week 3, when 5 (grown) kids arrived, I had adjusted and relearned to sleep at night out of pure exhaustion from all the local adventures we mastered. This is how I felt about it at the time!
Then we moved to another house for 1 month: Ah, much better. Clean, airtight, no bugs inside. Wonderful. Enjoyment! A writer’s dream. Lovely. Until our final night here. That night, sound asleep, pure bliss, and then BANG! Ouch! OMFingG! My husband was stung by a scorpion who had crawled into our bed! After we killed it, we wondered if it had a nest of friends nearby…
Year 2: Back to the Scorpion house. (yes, I agreed to this… hey, it wasn’t me who got stung!). (We did have 10 scorpions in the house during our stay, but no stings. They were mostly dead due to perimeter fumigation by the time they snuck into middle of the rooms.) This year, no kids, no adventures, only peace, quiet, calm, happiness, and writing: 45,000 words on my “third” novel, The King of Liars. I also did a lot of blogging about our time here (See January 2011 archives). Some of it’s worth reading. Most of the last 20 or so entries relay our adventures. (Note: This link is to my “old” blog via Apple. I have since moved my blog to where you are reading now.)
Year 3: Now here I sit, in the Scorpion house again, in my “writing studio over looking the Pacific Ocean.” I wonder what lies ahead for us over the next 11 weeks. We’ll have most of our kids visiting for parts of 3 separate weeks. With any luck, our children will outnumber the scorpions, although that still leaves room for too many scorpions! This year, I’m working on a new novel—my “breakout” novel? Yes, this is the one!—A Reasonable Price. I’m at 35,000 words now (125 pages), but no telling how many of those I’ll scrap in the next 11 weeks. My current friends—I mean, characters—have different names from last year, but my intensity persists.
So, friends, I hope to entertain and inform you in the coming months. I’d love questions or comments from you along the way so don’t be shy. Take care and I’ll write more soon! Hasta luega!

Posted in Traveler, Writer | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Reflection for Sloane Crosley

Posted on January 3, 2012 by karolynsherwood

I’ve recently begun reading The Best American Travel Writing, 2011, edited by Sloane Crosley, whose work I adore. She wrote, among other things, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, a collection of essays that I have often referenced for its humor and poignancy. I follow her on Twitter, and I always read anything I run across with her name on it. This post is in no way a criticism of her; this is my thirst for literary discussion in blog format. Oh how I would love to have a cup of coffee with Ms. Crosley and talk about this (and hope that she would start by saying, “Oh, please, call me Sloane.”)

I’m about one third into the Travel the stories so far, but I keep coming back to something Ms. Crosley said in her introduction. In her explanation of her selection process, whittling hundreds of stories down to the 18 that made it into this year’s book, she talks briefly about her own travels. Here I quote:
“As we grow up, most real experience is increasingly hindered by two factors. One is the infamous prism of our own perspective (the real terrain of exploration is seldom external). I would argue that the second, equally intuitive but less discussed obstacle has to do with a kind of virginity of the mind. We can only learn something—I mean really be introduced to it—once… I will say now that I’ve been to Puerto Rico three times in my life and won’t be returning. Because Puerto Rico is a terrible place? Well, it ain’t no Bali, but no, that’s not why. It’s because of the other 30 percent of the planet Earth covered in landmass. I have the one life and the one brain to match it, and I’d rather not waste either on knowing a foreign locale like the back of my hand unless the front of my hand is singing a lease there.” 
(Ms. Crosley goes on to add a few disclaimers to clarify.)
In any case, here is my thought: What about getting past the “wow factor” to experience the authenticity of a foreign locale? How can someone from the Midwest (or anywhere for that matter) not be overwhelmed on their first visit to the ocean, waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, cocktails, and everything else that people seek out on trips to vacation locations? If vacation time is limited, of course one wants to see the highlights. But, I would argue, to really get to know the best of any place, one either needs to know a local, or spend enough time there (in one trip or multiple trips) to get past the awe of salmon-colored sunsets, warm, white-sand beaches, jagged, snow-capped mountain tops, and the 4-star restaurants with an English-speaking waitstaff, to find the family-run “restaurants” where the locals go for breakfast, find the hidden waterfalls, and meet the native with the juiciest mangoes on the beach.
Over the years, I have known many people who have “vacation homes” around the world, and I have said repeatedly that I never wanted to own a second home for exactly the same reason that Ms. Crosley gave above. Why would anyone want to limit herself to one (primary) vacation spot? Once a person owns a vacation home, they’re often either financially or “common-sensically” bound to spend the bulk of their time there over traveling to new places.
However, I can say from experience that my travel experience has been deepened by leagues because we’ve gone back repeatedly to one location. I’ve been lucky enough to spend 19 weeks in Costa Rica in the past two years, and my husband and I are about to head back there for an additional 11 weeks.
The first time I went to Costa Rica I was a “victim” of culture shock . (The scorpions in our house were difficult to get used to.) The second time I went to Costa Rica, I was enthralled by the beauty of the ocean, the volcanoes, the zip-lining and hiking through the rain forests. It wasn’t until the end of our last trip that we began to venture down gravel roads (on purpose), talk (in broken Spanish) to the locals, eat food from roadside vendors, and explore beaches off the “monkey roads” instead of those listed in the Lonely Planet Guide Books.
Now, whether or not one likes scorpions, the first visit to a new location (generally, I would think for a week at a time, maybe two) is often dominated by the wow factor; only upon additional or extended trips can one really get to know a place—and discover a different sort of “wow.”

Posted in Reader, Traveler | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: The Innocent by Taylor Stevens

Posted on January 3, 2012 by karolynsherwood

Taylor Stevens is a master-storyteller. She deftly feeds the reader facts and clues and backstory as the characters race through the incredible city of Buenos Aires to save a little girl from a terrible life. The pace is rapid, and the plot of The Innocent is as straight as a bullet through this gripping novel.

(Vanessa) Michael Munroe, the literary world’s newest superhero, infiltrates a cult as few people could describe as accurately as Stevens (if you haven’t read the author’s bio, do that here). This story is as horrific as it is exciting, and while I imagine some there has been some dramatic license taken, it is very believable knowing how Stevens was raised.

But the best part of this book is that Stevens has created an anti-hero that we/I not only root for, but one that we care about. Yes, she kills people, but her subsequent nightmares create sympathy for her. “Michael” makes me feel smarter/stronger/faster. It’s like the Holiday Inn commercial: I’m not a spy, but I have read Taylor Stevens’ books.

The Innocent is an excellent thriller, full of action, tension and mystery.

I give it a strong 4 Stars.

Posted in Reader | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment