women bloggers

One Year In

| Linda DeMers Hummel

My blog is now one year old, and — if anything — I’ve learned that I’m more consistent in getting words out every week than I’ve ever been at finishing all those needlepoint projects that went to die in my closet.

In a year, the blog has garnered 91,387 hits and now has 2,341 subscribers. I have resisted looking into whether that’s good or bad in the big scheme of stats. What I really care about are the comments I get to read from people who take the time to write back. Even after all these years of writing, that thrill has never left me.

My original intent in starting this was to present pieces of the memoir I’ve been writing and see the reaction. Now the book is finished. It’s similar to pushing out a baby and finally getting to see just what the last nine months were really all about. Now begins the process of finding an agent who reads my query letter and smiles and writes back. I like the belief that — even at my age —when we tend too much to look back, there will be a next step that will take my breath away.

I’ll continue to write here, but I’m not sure yet what form it will take. And to the thoughtful, smart, funny people who read “me,” every week (and you know who you are) thanks.

And for any agent who has secretly become a visitor to this page, I’ll be waiting for your call.

 

Older, Wiser, Hipper

| Linda DeMers Hummel

In my family it is known as the “Jongebloed Hip.” Amazingly, it is even less glamorous than its name. The Jongebloed Hip caused my grandfather and his twin brother to lilt to the left for their last thirty years. It caused my mother to concede that a hip replacement was on her horizon (but only after her exasperated doctor convinced her he was pretty sure her bones were well on their way to becoming dust).

I’m not sure what it means for me. Only that sometimes my hip speaks to me as I’m getting up from a seated position.

I’ve always been a person who didn’t give in to every ache and pain. These good intentions sometimes get waylaid in your 60s. That’s just the way it is. I’ve also been a person who took pride in aging gracefully. That’s not to say I don’t spend a small fortune on highlights for my hair or the best make-up I can find. We live in an age when you can still be pretty at 65, even if you need extra time getting up from a seated position.

I have aging-gracefully role models in this endeavor. Lots of women who got on with the work of getting older without wringing their hands or flying to a plastic surgeon for answers. I was only 21 when I met the first of these. She was 93. I was in college, and Mrs. Clark lived in one of the town’s last magnificent mansions still owned by its original family.

She hired me for one afternoon a week so she could “go to town” and have lunch with friends. Her husband’s nurse drove her to and from the restaurant, so she needed extra help with Mr. Clark, who was 97. He was bedridden by then but had been known to try to get out of bed to sneak a cigarette.

The first time I met Mrs. Clark, I arrived nervous and a little early. I was ushered into the vestibule (the only word for it) by her uniformed maid. We made small talk, our voices echoing.

Mrs. Clark began her slow descent down the curved mahogany staircase. Radiant, she smiled at me as I waited below.

“I’ll be with you in a bit, my dear,” she called down. “As you can see, I move with all the grace of a lame camel.”

Although she moved slowly, none of the rest of it was true. Mrs. Clark was still shining, still beautiful in her 90s. I picture our meeting now, the year when I was just getting to that full bloom of womanhood, when somehow I just figured I’d never get old.

I wonder when her hip gave her the first twinge. I wonder if she was surprised — like me — that she wasn’t going to stay young forever.

For now, I’ll keep her in mind every time I feel my hip say, “Not so fast.” I’ll keep leading with my better foot, taking my time. I’ll remember to smile from the inside, to be as pretty as I can be. And believe that if I take extra care in those first few steps, everything will even out. Just like Mrs. Clark did.

 

The Other Rules for Writers

| Linda DeMers Hummel

All the sage wisdom that begins with “Write what you know,” and ends with “Show, don’t tell,” is there for the asking. Here are some other rules you probably haven’t found in any writer’s handbook. Perhaps one of them will unlock that bestseller that’s inside you somewhere.

1. Let your wall inspire you. Furnish the wall near your desk with meaning. Frame or tack up little things your eyes can drink in when you wonder why you thought writing seemed like a good idea in the first place. My wall sports, among many things, my favorite New Yorker cartoon of a penguin flying high above other penguins, saying, “We just haven’t been flapping them hard enough.” It also has a framed note from Anne Tyler, telling me sweetly why she couldn’t read and critique my manuscript I had sent her. I keep that note to remind myself to be that gracious if I ever win the Pulitzer, and as commentary on my boundless optimism that I really thought she would read my stuff in the first place.

2. Make a negative list. Create a list of all the people who doubt you as a writer. If anyone has said, “Many are called but few are chosen,” put that person at the top. Same with someone who has used the words “writing” and “starving” in the same sentence. Give your parents a little slack. (After all, their job is to worry, so don’t include them.) When you’re finished with the list, fold it carefully and tie it with a ribbon before you throw it away.

3. Make a positive list. Make a list of 12 living people in your life, present or past. Choose one each month and write him or her a letter. E-mails, texts, and cards don’t count. Make peace with your old college roommate; tell someone why you’ve always admired them; make the day of someone who wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Good writing is about relationships, so resurrect, enhance, create or feed some of yours.

4. Don’t throw anything away. Keep a notebook and take it everywhere. After writing becomes your way of life, you may find you dream in already constructed sentences that delight you. Write down phrases and sentences that come to you even though they may have nothing to do with what you’re writing at the moment. And then never throw away your notebook.

5. People watch. Got to a ballgame, even if you don’t like baseball. Sit on a park bench. Give blood. Have lunch alone in a restaurant and listen to the way people really talk. It will help you in writing dialogue more than any workshop ever will.

6. Start over every morning. Let your accomplishments excite you, but don’t let them placate you. Let your rejections teach you something, but don’t let them paralyze you. A writer’s life is like that of any other artist — a composer, a painter, a sculptor. There is nothing there until you sit at your desk and create it. You’re in charge, and there’s no one in the world who can string words together the way you do at that moment, on that day. Now go. Create.

The Book Thing

| Linda DeMers Hummel

So, for the last seven months I’ve been writing a book. A memoir. One day back in the fall, for no good reason I can recall, I was struck with the idea that there was a book in me. A really good book that would make readers laugh and cry and — yes — maybe wince here and there. And since time’s  a-wastin’ when you’re 64, I got started that afternoon.

I’ve been a freelancer (on and off) since the early 80s, but I’ve never done anything this serious or extensive … or potentially heartbreaking. Sometimes I read through parts of my manuscript and think “What drivel,” while other times I think it’s got legs. Only time and literary agents who might not “get me” will tell.

Only three friends know about “the book thing” because I have been known to abandon projects with alarming regularity, and I didn’t want to meet an acquaintance in the grocery store sometime in the future, who — just trying to be pleasant — would ask, “So how is your book coming?” and then have to lie or pretend I didn’t hear the question.

So I’m going public. My plan is to post pieces of the memoir (as yet untitled) here, as well as some of my recently published essays that I especially like, and see if I’m hitting any high notes. In the publishing world, this is called creating a platform, a phrase that makes me want to gag, to be honest. Writers are notoriously bad pragmatists. But I’m trying. And Baby Boomers are notoriously bad at putting the microphone down at weddings and karaoke. But I’ve gotten better at that, too. Bear with me.