Step by Step

Four summers ago, on an afternoon when I was supposed to be studying for the bar exam, I sat down at my computer with an irresistible urge to write a story. I felt overwhelmed, because I knew that I wanted to write a novel, and it felt like an impossibly large task. But I heard the thought “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” and I took a deep breath and started writing.

Four years and a million pages later, I’m glad I didn’t know what writing the novel would require of me, because if I had known, I might not have started. This experience, and others, have taught me that taking the smallest possible step is often the best way for me to proceed, especially if I’m feeling paralyzed. It’s a trick, because often if I take even a tiny step, I build a little momentum, and can then take the next one and the next.

My most recent application of this trick is to my computer angst. The thought of anything technology-related overwhelms me, and my computer issues have recently become urgent and unmanageable. Most pressing at the moment is how unbearably slow my laptop has become, and when I tried to resolve this on my own, I made it worse, then avoided it for three weeks.

But yesterday when I inadvertently parked right by the Mac store I took it as a sign, walked in and made an appointment at the Genius Bar for today, figuring that might give me the push I needed. I hate the Mac store—all sleek, modern, and white with its tantalizing products, and its child employees who want to know things like “What kind of Mac do you have?” and “Which operating system?” I arrived late for my appointment, with a headache, and a teen with Frank Sinatra eyes and a fake Phillies tattoo on his forearm ran some tests, told me my hard drive wasn’t failing, scolded me for not having backed up sooner, and gave me a long list of things to do to resolve the problems. I left muttering to myself something about “kids today.”

After some coffee and some deep breathing, I’ve gained some perspective, and am proud of having taken the first step, which is often the hardest. In this case, I feared what might be asked of me, what it would cost, the stress and difficulty that could ensue, and also, admitting I’m not good at something (the horror!) But as with most things, the reality is better than the horrific possibilities my imagination creates. After thinking about what Old Blue Eyes said, my first step is to buy an external hard drive. That seems manageable. Then I’ll need to backup whatever I want to save from this one laptop. I can handle that. And after accomplishing those things, I’ll need to archive and reinstall the operating system, which sounds scary, but has written instructions, which I can generally follow. Three pretty small steps. I can do that. After I do, I can reevaluate what else, if anything, technological I need to do. Maybe nothing. And if I need to, I can always swallow my pride, go back to the Mac store, and try to resist my impulse to buy yet another overpriced Mac product that I won’t know how to use.

The Flyin' Narberthian

Trapped inside my house for three days, snow piling up to the windows, I’ve been dreaming of spring, bringing to mind baseball and my dad, two things inextricably linked in my mind.

Growing up, my dad played baseball from sunup to sundown every day of the summer at the Narberth playground just down the road from where I now live. He went on to play at Bonner in high school, then St. Joe’s in college, where he held the record for stolen bases until just a few years ago, even appearing in Sports Illustrated for this feat. Baseball was his life.

He got married at twenty-two and had four kids in short order, and though he stopped playing baseball the love affair continued through coaching Little League, following his Phils, naming one son after Richie Allen, and taking my brothers and I to games whenever possible, where we sat in the bleachers at the very top of The Vet. When in eighth grade my St. Bernadette’s varsity softball team lost our coach, my dad volunteered for the job. He said he knew coaching girls would be different when we insisted on voting whether or not to get hats for the team, and decided not to because they messed up our hair.

Despite playing hatless, under my dad’s leadership and the magic arm of our pitcher Katie Weinrich, we had a storybook season, winning our division, making it all the way to the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Championship game. The chicken pox had kept me at home for the playoffs, but I returned for the final game, still pock-covered, but no longer contagious, knowing that my team needed me.

In the last inning, we trailed by one run, with two outs and the bases loaded when I came up to bat. The pitch flew at me, and I smacked it right on the sweet spot of the bat, that solid contact that you know is a good hit as it happens. But my dream of winning the game for my team shattered as I looked up to see the shortstop snag it out of the air, ending the game. I burst into tears, as a 13-year-old girl will, and threw my helmet, as anyone in my family will, but my dad hugged me and said, “That was a great hit. You did everything you could. I’m proud of you.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but that season would be the pinnacle of my sporting career. And though it didn’t have the heroic Hollywood ending I wanted, it had something better--the opportunity to learn that my dad was proud of me and loved me whether I won or not.

Two Julies and Julias

I saw the movie Julie and Julia last night, with my mom. It was a good movie, I enjoyed it, so why, when I got home, did I burst into tears? Well, it’s been a tough week for a few reasons, but mostly it was the green-eyed monster. Why were things so easy for that bitch Julie Powell? In the movie, which is based on a true story, she starts a blog, with an admittedly great idea—-in one year, she would make all the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and write about it. I haven’t read her blog, so I don’t know, but let’s say that it’s smart and funny and well-written. Fine. But then, with apparently no effort at marketing or self-promotion, within MONTHS she becomes the number three blog on salon.com? And then reporters start calling her, she gets a front page article written about her in the New York Times Food Section, and then hundreds of agents and publishers call her asking her to write a book? While her fairy tale story unfolded all I could think was “Fuck you Julie Powell.”

Interestingly, I did not resent Julia Child’s success. The movie showed her early years, when she learned how to cook French food, then stumbled into a cookbook project which consumed eight years of her life, which was then rejected by publishers before finding a home at Knopf, and going on to worldwide acclaim.

Going in, I knew that both Julie and Julia had happy endings of tremendous success, so why did I feel happy for Julia and resentful of Julie? I, like each of them, embarked on a quixotic, uncertain quest. Like Julie with her blog and Julia with her cookbook, I couldn’t say why I had to write the novel, I just knew that I did. Maybe I resented Julie because her success seemed to happen so quickly and easily, with so little effort on her part. Sure, she cooked a lot and wrote a daily blog, but I’ve been working my tail off on this novel for two and a half years and no one is banging on my door to publish it. Where is my happy ending?

As I sat in my kitchen, crying, I realized that I also have a Julia--Julia Cameron. So I took out one of her books and flipped at random. In the section about artistic integrity she writes that artists have an inner meter that tells us if our work is good or not, and that we need to listen to that voice within, and not the marketplace. This thought comforted me. What matters most is that I created something of worth, in my own estimation, and I have. Maybe that’s my happy ending. Or if not an ending, it is at least something that should make me happy.

I’m sorry, Julie Powell, I’m sure you’re a lovely person who worked very hard for your success. I will try to be happy for you, to believe that whatever is best for me and my work is what will happen, and to remember that I can choose to be happy, right here, right now, with or without a published book.

I Wrote A Book

Back in June, I set a goal for myself: by mid-September I wanted to have a complete manuscript of the book. At that point I had 300 pages of material, I had a beginning, and parts of a middle, but the work had large gaps and no ending—it was not a book. I created an ambitious work schedule for the summer and adhered pretty closely to it, and after giving myself an extension to October 1st, am amazed to say I achieved my goal—I wrote a book.

Getting there was intense. Almost every day I spent hours, barely conscious of the real world, living in the fictional one I was creating. It became easy to get into the fictional world, but harder to get out, some part of me staying there, reluctant to leave until it was finished. While writing I was hardly aware of my actual surroundings and for hours after each session I still felt only partly present in the here and now. The process felt similar to a migraine episode, just thankfully without pain.

The work reached a fever pitch in September, when I realized how much was left to do to meet my goal. I worked harder, longer, flying through the many tasks on my to-do lists for each section of the novel, slogging through chapter after chapter, version after version. On September 25 disaster struck when I spilled coffee on my laptop and the “genius” at the Apple Store told me it was almost certainly dead. Per his instructions I waited 72 hours, and prayed a lot before trying to turn it back on, very grateful that I had backed up all my important work on the book. And when it miraculously turned back on, undamaged, after many prayers of thanks, I got right back to writing and editing.

By September 30 I was not satisfied with everything in the book—I don’t know that I ever will be—but I had a beginning, middle, and end, without major gaps. I had a piece of work, a book, of which I feel very proud.

I. Wrote. A. Book.

Yes, there is still editing to do. But for the first time, I feel like if I were to die today, someone else could finish the book and it would remain mine. It has an essence of its own, is no longer just living within me. I have given birth to it.

Which leaves me…tired, depleted, proud, empty. Not empty in a bad way, but as if this thing that has occupied most of my mental and psychic energy has let go of me, moved on, leaving room for something else. And now that it’s let go of me, I have a sense that I will be able to let go of it. This journey has been incredible, but it’s nearing the end, and though I don’t know what comes next, I’m almost ready to find out.