Rest well, Starr. http://ping.fm/NuKZh

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God sells us all things at the price of labor – Leonardo da Vinci. A post about procrastina . . . . . . tion.

Udi’s gluten-free baked goods are now on display at the local Whole Foods. They’re not frozen (!) and the bread bounces back (!) when you poke it through the plastic wrapper. Moist and tasty, it does *not* need to be toasted. Seriously.

I haven’t seen this kind of thing since last October in Ireland, where it was no big deal to pop into the Tesco and find shelf-stable soft and moist GF bread. I can still taste the hot cross buns, matter of fact. Now I can have that sort of thing here.

Hooray!

In happy wire news, there’s an off-Broadway revival of Angels in America in the works. I’ve only ever seen the fabulous HBO version, and it would be even more fabulous if I could see a touring version of the off-Broadway production here.

The play reminds me of my friend Roy Oakes, may he rest in peace and joy, because it was his oft-stated favorite. I met Roy the year I started writing — he and I took a beginning fiction writing class together and were the only two invited by the instructor to join her advanced class. I remember both of us standing outside her front door on our first “advanced” evening, terrified that we wouldn’t fit in or that no one would like our work. And of course it turned out neither of us had a reason to worry.

Roy eventually moved to Taos, New Mexico. Visiting him was my first real vacation. I met great friends of his. It snowed. We ate Stilton (well, *he* ate the Stilton) and drank port and fed cookies to the Corgis in his living room, feet bare with the radiating heat warming our toes. I fell in love with Taos so hard he had to push me into the van that would take me and my luggage back to Albuquerque. You have responsibilities, he said. You can’t stay here. True, but I kept on coming around when I could.

When his favorite play was slotted to be shown on HBO, I ordered the channel (which I don’t normally keep) just so I could see it. I thought of him often while I watched.

I ordered the soundtrack and played it incessantly while I wrote for the next year or so, and it became the soundtrack to one of my novels, Skin and Bone. I thought of Roy often then, too.

And here I sit, thinking about my friend some more. What a blessing he was and is.

http://leslieclairewalker.com/226/angels-in-america/

Today is day 5 of the daily workout regimen -- an hour of Nia on Monday and every other day except Thursday (on account of a late-running Wednesday night meeting), 30 minutes of heavy cardio. I'm hoping to incorporate some lifting into the mix and some formal stretching (yoga) in the next couple of weeks.
I'm gradually getting more used to this schedule and I'm liking it. Good stuff.

Page 142 of the novel and counting. Happily this weekend I don't have a ton going on, so there can be extra writing time.

The Barnes & Noble big box (thanks to the $100 of gift card money I found in my bookcase) is here. It includes my very own copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I, like everyone else of late, blame Julie & Julia). Also the first in the Sookie Stackhouse series (because I'm behind the rest of the world), Just Listen, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Fragile Eternity, and The Demon's Lexicon. These are in line behind God is a Verb and Coyote Blue. Plenty reading, me. Oh, and cooking, too!

In an effort to get more exercise, I've started to wake up even earlier than usual to work out in the morning. That means a sitting meditation, an hour of writing, and a workout -- all before going to the day job.

Yesterday, this sort of silliness produced a state beyond exhaustion: zombietude. No amount of caffeine could rescue it, either. Bah!

Today, not so bad. Mostly awake, even. We'll see how long that lasts seeing as I have a meeting tonight and can't stare at a book or another Netflixed episode of LOST.

Via my friend Anne Hill and Talking Points Memo, I share a very moving memory of Ted Kennedy.

In all the eulogizing today, I've seen a lot of tributes and several comments about Chappaquiddick, plenty about his public service and more than enough about how he murdered/was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and should never be forgiven.

I say Ted Kennedy was a complicated and flawed human being, just like everyone else. It's always struck me that, whatever he may have to answer for and to whomever, he did the best he could with his life to help people. That's some redemption in my book.

Not my most fun Saturday morning (and afternoon) ever, but I did get a lot done. Wrote 2K and read the entire second half of Le Carre's The Constant Gardener, with all that thick and engrossing prose.

Oh, yeah, and the car finally got fixed. New throttle body and a regular service. Yay for a working car that shifts when it's supposed to and doesn't threaten to die when it idles. :-)

This morning there has been an egg scramble with lots of kale, ground turkey, and pico, all wrapped up in corn tortillas. Stuffed, we are. Now that the tea has brewed, there will be caffeine and some more novel pages.

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Once upon a time, I thought this kind of thing involved sitting at the computer for a certain amount of time every day and meeting my goal word count. Plus, every so often, attending workshops taught by people far ahead of me in the game so that I could learn what I need to always be bumping up my level of craft and business knowledge. And then there’s all the amazing people I’ve met and continue to meet at those workshops. Fast friends made under trial by fire.

All of that is at the top of the list for being and staying in writing shape. But that’s not all.

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After last night’s birthday festivities (no, not mine, but hosted at my house), I have this gorgeous port. What to do with it?

http://leslieclairewalker.com/187/lost-the-other-kind/

I’m finally hooked into Lost after years of avoidy-ness on account of not wanting to have another show I absolutely had to see. But that’s not what I’m writing about today.

Instead, I’m jumping off of today’s post by my friend Robert Jeschonek over at The Fictioneer because it got me to thinking. He talks about having the August blues, what with so much of publishing on vacation during this month and life eating his writing time.

I had a whole year or more of August blues, or more aptly the January 2008 through July 2009 blues. I hit a brick wall on my writing, hammering away at a book against tenacious project block only to lose every time; allowing my life in all its various categories (work, home, friends, staring at the television like a vegetable) to eat what remained of my creative force. To say it was awful is a gross misunderstatement (props to the Shrub for his language foibles, if (and) nothing else).

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lost creatively.

On some level, I knew I was looking (or, as the case actually was, not looking) at an emotional block. Not only was it an emotional block, it was a block about emotion. (See my previous post.) The one-on-one work got me through that block.

Which doesn’t mean the block is entirely gone — but we do understand each other, that block and I. The one thing I can do to deepen that understanding and work with that block is to write every day, or as near to every day as possible, that one scene at a time, focussing on emotion. That’s how not to get lost again.

It feels so good to be found.

And now, because I have words to write (800-1,500 of them), I sign off. Happy Wednesday, all.

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I spent my Saturday night out with good friends. Dinner first at P.F. Chang’s, where they have added glorious fried rice to their gluten-free menu. First fried rice in three years. Hooray!

Followed by District 9 at the Alamo. Not so hooray. Which is not to say it wasn’t an amazing movie, because it was. It’s just disturbing. The only other movie that I felt the same way during and after viewing is Children of Men, with its teardrop of hope in the midst of so much dehumanization and disconnection.

It’s a hard thing to take a look at humanity when it’s portrayed that way. There is so much truth there that a lot of us don’t see in our daily lives because we are so damned privileged. The ugly faces of humanity are there, though, in Abu Ghraib and Darfur and on the streets of the good old U.S. of A. The heroism in Children of Men and in District 9 both is and isn’t enough to redeem the horror; in a world made of both beauty and terror, how do we see the beauty? How do we see it in ourselves?

The one thing that experiencing stories like District 9 does for me is to redouble my resolve to do live my life as if it both is and is encompassed by that teardrop of hope.

It's chilly and breezy and rainy around here. The kind of day that makes a body want to stay home and nest. But I did go to Nia this morning (music: Queen Latifah's Dana Owens CD -- and if you haven't head it, I highly recommend it). And to the Fiesta for soup supplies.

The beginnings of black bean soup are simmering on the stove. Beans and onions and garlic and cilantro and cumin and soon-to-be-added chipotle chilis canned in adobo. And at the end, an enormous amount of spinach and more cilantro. I hope it's good -- I blame the New York Times either way.

Hope everyone is well and that you had lovely holidays.

After a difficult 2008, I rejoin the world. To that end, I'm writing with abandon and joy again, and often.

Also to that end, "The Devil Wears Combat Boots" is now available for reading in the fabulous Electric Velocipede Issue No. 15/16 (Double Issue). If it is your will, read and hopefully enjoy.

On Countdown tonight, I saw that Sarah Palin has taken her condescending line about community organizers on the stump. We'll probably be hearing it a lot from here on out.

I am baffled by the people who cheer for an insult to millions of people in this country. I'm related to one of them, in fact. He commented to me that Obama started the whole thing by mocking Palin's having been the mayor of a small town. I told him that what she said about community organizers goes far beyond any return fire at Obama. She fired her words at every community organizer in the nation. And that was very, very stupid.

The response? Crickets.

Because of course there is no response.

I could use a lot of words other than stupid to describe Palin's words. Such as cruel, venal, nasty, sneering, and evil. Heartless -- definitely heartless.

Oh, and backfiring.

bunnies on CD. With hoppy legs and itchy little noses.

For those who missed other announcements, please proceed immediately via the lovely banner to get your Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on. Free! And in the wind on the 20th.

The story I sold last week to Chiaroscuro -- "Outcast" -- is online and free to read. If you're interested, go to http://chizine.com/ and follow the fiction link.

w00t!