Yes, I do love living in a small town. I love everything about a community that works together to support local artists. I also believe in keeping local money in our own communities whenever we can. So, it was an easy decision when I came to launching my next book, “Rejected Writers Take the Stage,”to have a party downtown, especially as my book is set in Langley!
It’s always exciting for authors to get their hands on the first copy of their work. I don’t know about other writers, but it always makes me cry. It is as if all those electronic manuscripts, internet emails, and flat graphic covers are a fantasy until you actually hold that work in your hand as a physical book.
Holding my published book for the first time always makes me cry. (Photo by Matthew Wilson)
This was the second book in my Southlea Bay Series, and it was the most difficult piece of writing I have attempted yet, for many different reasons. First, I had some health challenges for a lot of the time I was writing it and being in acute pain is not the best environment to write comedy from. Secondly, I felt that “second book” pressure, I didn’t want to let down the people who had loved the first books so much. And lastly, I had to figure out some difficult, key plot points.
So, it was with joy and relief that I finally received the copy that had cost me so much in time and energy.
After the cake was ordered from Payless, it was time to arrange for entertainment. (Photo by Matthew Wilson)
With my new book in hand, all that was needed was to plan the physical launch party. I decided on Ott & Murphy for my venue. If you haven’t visited this wonderful place, I highly recommend you do this summer. Located on First Street, with its stunning views of the sound, fabulous wine, and marvelous entertainment, it is well worth stopping by for a glass of vino and plate of cheese.
Next was the books, and of course I wanted to include Moonraker, our local bookstore, which is also on First Street. I do get author copies, but I wanted this to be a celebration of the small town I live in, so inviting them to participate by providing the books seemed the right thing to do. As I went to check final arrangements with them, not only was my book in pride of place on their counter, but they had also filled the window with copies, too.
My books were already in the window at Moonraker. (Photo by Matthew Wilson)
Have I told you yet how much I love my small town?
With the venue and books arranged, and the cake order from Payless, all that was needed was to organize the entertainment for the event. Once again, my small town came to the rescue. A talented group of local actors agreed to bring my characters to life, pulling them straight from the page in their own unique interpretation of the parts. It was wonderful to sit back and be read to and also to see hidden depth brought forth from the characters as they were re-created in front of me.
Here is a photo of them hard at work.
Acting out scenes from the book (from left to right) are Eric Mulholland, Sandy O’Brien, Kim Wetherall, Melinda Mack, Kathy Stanley and Christina Parker. (Photo by Christopher Wilson)
As the event went off without a hitch, I felt my heart swell, I’m so glad I decided to write about a small town and that I get to reap the benefits of living in one every day.
A big thank you to all of you who contributed to this wonderful launch.
Suzanne Kelman is the author of “The Rejected Writers’ Book Club” and “Rejected Writers Take the Stage.” She is an award-winning screenwriter and playwright and was a Nicholl Fellowship Finalist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Kelman was awarded Best Comedy Feature Screenplay at the L.A. International Film Festival, received a Gold Award at the California Film Awards, and received a Van Gogh Award at the Amsterdam Film Festival.
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I have a confession to make. I am behind in my sky-minding. Lost in a mental clutter of this and that, I have forgotten to look up — to cast my eyes physically upward to the sky — and remind myself of what’s there and how it keeps changing. I think this simple action helps me remember that, like a famous fortune cookie once said, the only permanent condition in life is impermanence. That is the one thing we can count on — whatever is happening now, is changing even as I write this, even as you read it.
A friend I saw at the Whidbey Community Orchestra Concert in Oak Harbor last Sunday asked me, “How are you doing with it all since…since….”
And I nodded, without saying much, recognizing the grief that still comes in waves, about…oh…so much these days. Young lives lost for no known reason, people we loved still gone for good, others we know frightened for the well-being of parents or children, or themselves. A Canadian journalist I hope to work with confides he is afraid to go home for a visit, worried that as a credentialed journalist, he won’t be allowed back in the U.S. on return.
These are interesting times.
A whiter shade of pale (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
With so much to worry about, it helps to remember one fact: this is all temporary. This may all disappear.
Many people are struggling with a long list of uncertainties, ranging from wondering when the toxins in their drinking water will be dealt with to considering what will happen to them and their families if they miss one more mortgage payment. People are wondering who will feed the growing homeless population if the federal subsidies for food programs in schools and food banks in communities vanish. I know a few people who are awake in the middle of the night, considering such matters and trying to find answers, even under the current chaotic circumstances. Many good people are feeling the stress of the populace and are working on it. I just hope they, we, all practice ways and means of self-restoration.
Sudden snow can change your mind (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
If you are in overwhelm, characterized by a clouded dither of should-a-could-a-would-a’s and the paralysis that accompanies states of regret, self-doubt, and second-guessing, I suggest this one easy action: Look up.
The very movement opens your mind, while breath intake eases that inner crumpled feeling. Taking an oxygenating break, a moment to just focus on the in-breath and out-breath, helps that crazy panic feeling that comes of glancing at the headlines, catching one sound bite too many, or misplacing your car keys, reading glasses, and/or phone.
Look up and see the dragon in the tree (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
Take it slow. Pause. Look up at the sky, breathe in, breathe out, count to seven, and then turn your attention to the room you are in, to the project you are doing, to the task at hand. Do what you can to make progress, in some way, in the time and place where you are.
Changing skies over Honeymoon Bay (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
That’s the advice I am trying to practice and the advice I am giving to anyone who asks, as that same friend did at the concert, “How are you coping with that feeling in your gut, that something very wrong has happened?”
We are doing what we can to do something right, we are being with our community when we can, we are doing the work that we must by ourselves, the work that is ours and only ours to do. In this way, we are resisting entropy, resisting the easy urge to sit down on the job; we are carrying on and we are resisting apathy.
The wizard of Whidbey Island (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
I watched my husband take his place with the community orchestra, dressed as a gallant Gandalf or a dandy Dumbledore, take your pick! He came to read the texts behind the music performed by the participating volunteer musicians from all parts of Whidbey. The theme was Movie Magic, with music from the scores of Harry Potter and “The Hobbit” movies, the Tolkein Trilogy, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and even “Pinocchio.” The musicians were dressed for the occasion, with elf ears and Hogwarts uniforms and house colors. I thought — we are very far away from the world’s troubles here. Aren’t we the lucky ones? For a moment — here was unequivocal respite, here was magic, truly.
Where I am writing from (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
At home, I have piles of projects sliding into and around each other and no functioning wand to twinkle them into place. Only the practice of plodding along will do here — and that’s how I got behind in my sky-minding. I was busy staring into screens, staring down the issues, returning to the problem compounding all problems, for me at a personal level and regardless of politics.
I know it sounds a little small-minded in comparison to the bigger issues we are all looking at, but here it is, nonetheless: I have a book to finish. It has been on the back burner through so much, for so long, I can’t believe the thing hasn’t gotten up and left me for some other writer!
But it hasn’t. It is just sitting there, waiting for me to decide: are we there yet? Are we done?
Completion — people who know me know I have a problem with it.
Writing another sentence, one after another after another, avoiding reality by writing about it, revising and revising it, a little forward, a little backward, still writing, sometimes brand new sentences when I should be cutting old ones out or down. There is no end to it — how many times you can change a word, a phrase, an adjective, a verb. If there’s one, there’s bound to be another!
Look up and see a phantom dirigible (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
I get it. I am trying to arrive at the end of a book I have been writing on and off for, I kid you not, twenty-one years. I am getting closer, though.
And … I have been in this Zeno’s paradox place before — halfway and halfway and halfway to more, still more changes. I am beginning to see a pattern here.
I’ll put it to you this way — I have everything necessary except the beginning and the end. The middle is easy — it’s just one thing after another. I did have a beginning, once, of course. But between that beginning and the present draft’s beginning, a lot has changed — how much do I let that change, change the picture of the pre-21st-century reality in which the book takes place? I’m not sure!
If this is hard to follow, let me tell you — it is just a taste of what is going on in the inner workings of this writer’s mind.
Hey! Time to look up! What’s the sky doing?
Sky train observed from ground train (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
As for the end — there is a visible run of words that seems to indicate when the story is over. Do I feel good about it? No. I do not. What should it be?
I do not know — yet.
Why is that? Well, in the world of making things up, writing fiction rather than creating alternative facts, writers, for the most part, try to arrive at meaning, discovering it through a purposeful layering of realizations and understandings drawn from a character’s choices and experiences. And over the story’s arc, through the territory of it’s literary time, we make new meanings out of old ones. Sometimes, that process arrives at wisdom — or we are hopeful that it will arrive at that, at least some of the time.
What is the real beginning and the real ending of this book? How will I know when I am there? Will I get chicken skin on my forearms? Will the ghost of Ed McMahon show up at my door with an invisible check for $10,000,000?
Or will my editor wrest the thing from my cold, undead hard drive and forbid further changes? That would probably be best.
Some people — writers, painters, and artists of all kinds — just don’t know when to quit, when to put the final period, when to put the paintbrush down, when to just shut up already.
The best bet is to stop before it is ruined, to land on the side of something less, rather than something more. There is a beautiful word in Japanese that expresses that aesthetic which connotes simple, subtle, unobtrusive beauty. It is shibui.
Is this shibui or too over-the-top? (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
It expresses the suchness of leaving a thing be, just before it is complete, finding pleasure in its innate balance of simplicity and complexity, its natural perfection, just as it is.
I am always striving for something like shibui in things I write — especially here, in Minding the Sky, though it is a term not usually applied to literary works. But I think of it as the aha! moment where the meanings line up, and we all “get it,” with an exclamation point, like an epiphany or like the lift you get in front of a really good painting, sculpture, exquisite ceramic, or even just a flower arrangement — shibui is chemistry, a state of mind, triggered by such beauty.
Sky of aching beauty (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
Wabi-sabi — another term, similar to shibui but distinct from it, is probably closer to my heart and more apt to my work. The wabi part is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. The sabi piece suggests that beautiful wistful longing that transient beauty makes us feel. It is a beauty of things unconventional, one of a kind, capturing their evanescence.
I am trying to get there from here. I am trying to follow the path where the imperfect world speaks its imperfect beauty, through an unconventional character whose story begins where it ends — leaving town for good.
In the world of fiction, I can tell one indisputable alternative fact after another and no one is the wiser. Or maybe, just maybe they are! I think I’ll look up from where I am looking down now and think about it.
Try it yourself! You’ll like it! Look up and take some time to mind the sky.
You might find a moment of wabi-sabi grace, set against the wild blue patina of shibui in the sky — enough to get you through the next hard part.
Wabi and sabi together are sometimes shibui (Photo by Judith Walcutt)
Judith Walcutt is writer and media producer living on Whidbey Island with husband David Ossman. Her novel, “Memoirs of a Modern She-Noodle,” is currently scheduled for publication by Neopoiesis Press in 2017. She recommends the therapeutic value of attending Whidbey Island Community Orchestra concerts. The next one is Mother’s Day, May 14 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland with outstanding musicianship, huge heart, and delightful refreshments afterwards.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
When I first got out of graduate school and headed off into what passes for the real world, I had many ideas about what success would look like. I remember thinking, having a color postcard from a real gallery…that’s what success is. But as the shows and the years passed and the piles of color postcards started piling up, I realized that a color postcard with your art and a gallery name on it is just one small step in a really long journey.
My journey starts way back when (just you never mind how way back it started) and on the other side of the country. I loved to draw and I loved to read. I took a variety of art classes from many places, all through grade school and into high school. I majored in painting in college, moved across the country, and went on to get an MFA in painting.
But I soon learned that success would not, did not come instantly to me, not by any stretch of the imagination. My first gallery shows did not result in any sales. But I kept going, working in restaurants, retail, and at a coffee roaster, painting all the while, and dreaming of the day when I could do nothing but paint. It took me eight years after completing graduate school before I could quit my “day job” but I finally did and 28 years later, I haven’t had another one.
Breaking Fast: Reading Terminal Market (c) Anne Belov Oil on Linen
Here’s the interesting, or maybe frustrating thing about working and making your living from creative pursuits. There are no guarantees. Not a one. By 2007 I was showing at five galleries all around Western Washington and Oregon and making a decent living. I thought life (and my income) would keep getting better and I could look forward to, if not retirement, (because artists don’t retire,) at least a comfortable old age that did not involve living in a dumpster.
They say the gods laugh when humans make plans.
The economic collapse of 2008 did not last one year. For me, it has lasted seven years. I went from being represented by five galleries to being represented by one, with the expected hit to my income.
When Life Hands You Lemons…paint it! (c) Anne Belov Egg Tempera on panel
But here is another thing about creative people. We are problem solvers and infinitely curious. While I did make many attempts to find more representation for my paintings, so many artists were in the same boat, looking for new galleries as their galleries closed or jettisoned many of their artists. My search did not go well. I only found a new Seattle gallery to represent me this last fall.
I decided to take this as an opportunity to experiment and expand my horizons. About eight months before the economy went to hell in a hand basket, I became obsessed with pandas.
What do pandas have do do with painting? Why are you drawing silly cartoons about pandas? Aren’t you supposed to be a serious painter?
I didn’t have an answer to those questions, I only knew I felt compelled to make these drawings, which became cartoons, which became stories about…you guessed it …pandas. Cartoons on scraps of paper evolved into better drawings of pandas in a sketch book, and those became cartoons posted on a blog, which eventually got collected into a self published book. Stories got longer. One book became six.
You might think these cartoons have nothing to do with my painting, but in that you would be mistaken. The more that I immersed myself in panda narrative, the more the tools that I acquired in building my skills as a painter – composition, value, ways to show movement, facial expressions – came into play in my cartoons and illustrations.
Even when I am “playing” it is hard for me not to become serious about a pursuit. I joined SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) in the fall of 2009 and began to learn what I could from them about literature for children and the business of publishing. I knew somehow pandas would be involved. Last year I applied to and was accepted in a mentorship program organized by the Nevada chapter of SCBWI, to work on a graphic novel about a panda detective and a missing Impressionist painting. (See? I didn’t sleep through ALL my art history classes!) The program lasts six months, and during that time my story grew from a rough outline to what will become a middle grade graphic novel, with the help of my brilliant mentor.
And now, my mentor is my literary agent. Is that cool, or what?
But here’s what I’ve learned in my years of supporting myself as an artist. This is not the top accomplishment, but just a step along the way. It’s an ongoing process and there will be downs as well as ups. This partnership will work for, well, as long as it works, and as long as I keep working as hard as I can in this new – for me – medium. Right now, I am once again, sitting on top of the world.
But as we all should know by now, it ain’t over till the panda sings.
What, you were expecting the Metropolitan Opera? (c) Anne Belov
Anne Belov paints, writes, and draws pandas from her home on Whidbey Island. Her paintings can be found at The Rob Schouten Gallery at Greenbank Farm on Whidbey Island, and at The Fountainhead Gallery in Seattle. She is the ringleader of The Froggwell Biennale which takes place this year on August 5th, 6th, and 7th at Froggwell Garden. You can find her books at Moonraker Booksin Langley as well as at her website, Your Brain On Pandas. Her graphic novel The Pandyland Mysteries: The Case of the Picturesque Panda will be available sooner or later. She is represented in all things literary by Gordon Warnock at Fuse Literary.
Enjoy more articles in the print edition of Whidbey Life Magazine, which you can purchase at local and off-island retailers or receive in the mail via subscription.
