Today, my debut novella Women Float launched. I'm at a loss. My book and I existed so well underwater, underground, entombed in that kind of perfect solitary wind tunnel that any artist understands. Input and output, all occurred in secret, a great compost heap of digested memory, experience, fantastic imagining, poof, into the brain and out through the great Play-Doh spaghetti factory of imagination. Never to be seen by anyone looking in from the outside.
        Until today. You'd think I'd be prepared. Ready. It's not like I've never seen my writing in print. For better or worse, I've slaved or scammed a thousand fast and easy stories for weeklies, monthlies, newspapers, websites, anything. When people have asked me what I write, I've sometimes answered, "Anything that pays."
      Is that like literary prostitution? If so, then I'm guilty of being a woman of the write. But writing on assignment, regardless of how minor the water board meeting or major the red carpet, was never like this. Because Women Float feels personal. The book feels like me. 
      I know, I know. I can hear you writing workshop graduates. I am not these words or the ones in my book. But I've cared for my characters, nurtured them, fed their existence and conjured them from air. I want everyone to love them, without judgement, like me. Besides my dear characters being exposed, there's also me, their writer. I'm their creator. I always wanted to publish a book and when I hadn't for so long, I became familiar with that, too. That void, like the unborn child or lost beloved or cancelled vacation. I got used to this feeling of something both precious and unattainable, and then I built stories around it to make myself feel better and then I inhabited those stories and wrapped them around myself like a warm Alpaca shawl, homely but comfortable. 
          Today, I removed that ugly sweater of failed writer-dom. Today I also ate the season's first ollalieberries from the forgotten bushes leftover from my family's abandoned u-pick berry farm. I shared them with my daughter, her first taste of that dark and surprising blackberry. Then, my daughter picked her first ripe apricot and showed it to me. I broke it in half and she pushed the half-moon  into my mouth again and again, smiling as I admired the tartness, flavor. She smeared the leaking orange orb across my face, until the clear juice stiffened like white glue, drying in the sun as a reminder that the world is too much sweetness. 
       This important day of delightful publication is both unprecedented and uncomfortable. Fear of failure sandwiched neatly by fear of success. Today, I bite my first fruit of true writing success and it is all sweet, with no bitterness at all. I force myself to rest here, for one, two, three, four breaths. I will engage just one reader at a time. That is all. That is enough. 

     I was recently invited to participate in an amazing project with my former grad school friends from Naropa. One of them, Chris Mazura, rounded up a group of us to participate in what he's calling the Naropa Postcard Project.  Here's the basic idea: a group of writers all received about 30 blank postcards which we were then tasked with transforming in any way we felt using writing, text, art, drawing or whatever. The writers were then required to mail the postcards out to other writers on the list. So, all 30 writers should receive 30 postcards. The idea was inspired by Ken Mikilowski's Alternative Press Postcard Project that the lit mag Bombay Gin covered when I helped edit the magazine. Cool idea, right? 
      So, about a month ago, I got a slick manila envelope filled with 8-sheets of printer friendly paper perforated into postcards. I couldn't believe Chris pulled off the logistical genius to get all the addresses and everything together. Then, my artist brain kicked into high gear and I decided to use the eight blank pages as mini art pieces, incorporating text and image and variety of mediums: graphite, colored pencils, water colors, oil pastels and permanent marker. The timing was perfect. I've been so overwhelmed with raising my daughter, working my day job at the organic farm, working on edits for Women Float and trying to cultivate a healthy marriage (not to mention the garden at home), that art has gone completely out the window. But the Postcard Project gave me the two key things every distracted creative person needs: peer pressure and deadlines.
       Each time I received a beautiful, inventive postcard in the mail, I'd pause and think, "Right. When are those due? What am I doing?" I broke the project down into chunks: time for creating the images, time for addressing the backs, time for writing the short messages, time to go to the Post Office to buy stamps. And yesterday I finally did it: I mailed out all 32 postcards! Did I really mean 32? Yes. 30 for the participating writers and two  extras for whatever. So, I sent one to Hoot a postcard-related lit mag and one to President Obama, just for safe keeping. I'll post that one below, called "Ode to Eileen Myles," just so you can see my great leap into the art-political circus.
     The takeaway? First, we all need friends to inspire us and get us out of the dark creativity doldrums sometimes. Second, deadlines are amazing. Third, I'm so excited to have connected with my former creative co-conspirators. It's never too late to revive past artistic connections. 
        For more on the project or if you want to participate in the next round, check out Chris' blog here.  Oh, and if you need anything to read, Women Float is now available for pre-orders here.