Category Archives: writing

Don’t Look; Just Write

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I’m tucking into my second book, finessing the proposal with the world’s most patient woman, literary agent Pamela Malpas and her sidekick, Louise. (Louise is a bunny; she has a killer kick.)

And I have discovered something about the process of writing. It requires more than discipline; we all know it takes that. What writing really demands is hardass blindness.

It requires ignoring dirty dishes in the sink, or eating off paper plates. It requires admitting the spice rack isn’t alphabetized, the car cleaned out, or your underwear folded before it gets stuffed in the drawer. Writing demands serious thought time; although some people can, I’ve never been able to work on a chapter for half an hour, then get up and go. If I can’t get a couple of hours in with some depth perception, it’s not worth it to open the laptop cover. Sort of like napping; what’s the point if you don’t get to REM?

Someone asked my hobbies the other day; I said crocheting, playing the harp, caning chair seats, and swimming. The person said, “And writing, right?” No, not any more. Writing is something to make time for, not do when I can find time.

It’s not just professionalism (read: a tight deadline) that’s shifted my priorities. Like exercise of any muscle, writing begets the desire to do more of it. H0bbies fall away as you clear time to write, but so does household tidiness, perfectionism, and deferring to the social obligations others want to demand of you. It all goes in the same un-emptied dumpster, overflowing with good intentions.

Someday, I’m going to put my good china in the upstairs cupboard and our everyday dishes in our downstairs bookstore kitchen. Feeding Valkyttie yesterday, I realized my Irish Waterford Crystal saucers had gone to the cat closet. That night I had soup from a plastic bowl with a very old decal of Snoopy on the bottom.

Where did we get a Snoopy bowl? I don’t remember buying a Snoopy bowl, and I haven’t had time to yard sale this summer, anyway.

Someday, I’m going to pick the delicious apples on our backyard trees. Meanwhile, we just keep calling neighbors to come get them. They’re lovely. The Golden ones are the size of my head. The neighbors who pick them always give us a couple; they’re great with peanut butter as a quick desk lunch.

Someday, I’m going to go back to playing Celtic harp, and pick up my Arabic language lessons again. Someday. I still swim once a week because it’s good for me, and I’ve lessened the exercise slack by walking to the grocery store. It’s just a half mile from our house; I use the time to think about narrative structure. Or what’s not getting done at the bookstore.

Someday, I’m going to make Christmas tree angels from old hymnals, create bath bombs with the kit I bought two years ago, and cane the rest of the chairs in our garage.

Someday I’m going to say to Jack, “No, honey; you cooked last night. Let me do it” and make something that won’t frighten him with its swiftness, use of leftovers, and microwaved edges. Someday.

Meanwhile, I’m writing a book. Someone call me when it’s Thanksgiving Dinner, okay?

How the Little Bookstore met the Big Library

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An unexpected pleasure Saturday past was meeting two fans of Little Bookstore at Sycamore Shoals Celtic Festival and hearing this rather unique tale.  When I said, “this is so getting blogged” (a response friends and neighbors have gotten used to over the past months) Sue Powell  graciously obliged my request that she write it up herself. Sue is starting her own blog; we’ll be sure to let you know when she’s up and running. And now: Sue’s story.

 

The Library of Congress provides books and other materials to Congress and their staff. As a staff librarian, one of my responsibilities was to select books for the collection from thousands received through the Copyright Office and Cataloging-in-Publication program. LOC receives around 15,000 items daily and adds about 11,000 to the collection each day. Obviously, with those huge numbers many books aren’t selected, and for those that are, many take years to actually get to the shelf.

When selecting new books, I look for titles requested by Congressional offices, books by frequently-requested authors, books on subjects of interest to Congress and books I think they’ll request in the future.

The very place!

The very place!


Being a huge fan of Adriana Trigiani’s Big Stone Gap series, similar words caught my eye last winter as I scanned the spines in the “new book room.” I pulled “The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap” from the shelf and was further intrigued by the subtitle “a memoir of friendship, community, and the uncommon pleasure of a good book.” From the book jacket, I learned that Wendy Welch was a first-time author. I had a long list of books to look for, and this wasn’t one of them, but I wanted to read it! Also, I’d learned the reading preferences of many Congressional staffers and knew this book would interest them.

Yet more inside!

Yet more inside!

I placed the book in my cart and dropped it off with another 15-20 books to be processed and added to the Library collection within a couple of days. Wendy’s book thus took its place among the 155.3 million items in the largest library in the world! Its cataloging record would be there for other libraries to use as they added the book to their own collections.

I took a copy home to read over the weekend before I recommended it to library clients. After telling my husband about the book, he snatched it up to read as well. As I’d guessed, many of our clients eagerly accepted my suggestion and read it too.

When I retired a few months later, we moved to Kingsport, Tennessee which turns out to be about an hour south of Big Stone Gap, Virginia so one of our first weekend road-trips was to visit “Tales of the Lonesome Pine” bookstore. Wendy was tucked away in her mountain cabin writing, so we didn’t meet her then, but we met Jack and had him autograph a copy of Wendy’s book. Recently we were excited to finally meet Wendy while she was speaking at the Sycamore Shoals Celtic Festival in Elizabethton, Tennessee and tell her the story of how her first book became a part of the Library of Congress’ collection.

And if you want to look it up: http://lccn.loc.gov/2012026578  This is the catalog record for The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap.