I finished my desk declutterizing, and yes, it was somewhat like an enema. (We have lots of people who swear by colonics’ health benefits over here, along with crystals, marijuana as a lifestyle enhancer, etc) Here, in no particular order, are some of my discoveries:

• 5 boxes of various kinds of business cards from art jewelry, counseling and writing ventures over the years. Apparently I didn’t give many out but always meant to.
• My son’s senior high school portrait in which he looks like a pouting Hayden Christiansen in one of those bad Star Wars movies.
• YAY! PRINTER INK CARTRIDGE!!! The printer has been sitting, mouth agape, for two months at least waiting for me to go buy ink. I already had some! This is worth it all of a sudden.
• A stash of chocolate Easter eggs for emergency emotional  first aid.  *crunch crunch*  Should they crunch like this? and they’re beige not brown. Well maybe these are a little old…
• That really good article on Adult Attachment Styles in Scientific American Mind that I’ve been telling all my clients about and can’t find because I put it in a “safe place.”
• A flotilla of bank statements, tax forms, check stubs. Arg! April 15^th looms, but now I at least have 2011 all in one big envelope.
• At least 6 marked-up copies of various book manuscripts. I wondered where those went. *toss* Then, wonder if someday when I’m as famous as Steven King, they’ll be worth something. Dig out of trash. Decide I’m being ridiculous, such hubris is disgusting. *Re-toss.* (I think I mentioned The Shadow lurks in clutter. Mine is Hubris) This whole process with the manuscripts alone takes roughly 45 min.
• A box of broken costume jewelry, single earrings, loose beads found on my grandmother’s bedside table with a note inside “FOR TOBY.” Aunts sent it to me when she died. Apparently she remembered I used to fix jewelry (ten years ago.) Bittersad because it’s all junk I should toss. Bittersweet because she remembered anything at all about me as Alzheimer’s took her into the dark. Put the whole thing in my jewelry box to deal with some other declutterizing time (with tissues).
• Floppy disks. Hm. What?
• Credit cards I thought had expired or been destroyed long ago. (cut, cut, cut!)
• Several outdated cell phones that still work and incite guilt when I look at them.  *Donation box*
• A post-it note from when my daughter (now in postgrad program) first left for college and left post-its all over the house saying “I LOVE YOU.” I never found this one… *sniffle*
• Mysterious cords. Many mysterious cords. I don’t know what any of them go to but I’m sure it was something important. *Donation Box*
• Expired art calendars for that someday collaging project. Can’t I keep those? Pretty please? Okay I’ll take them to school where they actually will get used for collaging.
• An article on the latest research in blood spatter crime scene analysis, with photos of blood spatter. I have to stop and read this all over again. *Fascinating!*
• Area maps of Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Molokai. Not because I need them, but because that’s where my next books are set and I needed to study the geography and street names, etc. (boy I’m glad I brought in those accordion files for this project.
  

  I think he shows it rather well.

• A poignant piece of art from a young client- self portrait titled, I AM WORRIED AND ANGRY. I think I meant to discuss it with my supervision group.
• The laptop from when I did my Master’s Degree, circa 2001. WOW it’s big and heavy. Still works, damn it. *More donation bin.*

In a way this project has been an archeological dig of my life in the last five years. I highly recommend lots of coffee and garbage bags when you do yours.

This is the time to purge clutter.

Clutter weighs us down. It distracts. It smothers. Whenever you are on a creative roll, clutter calls out from the corners, “Here I am. You can’t really focus until you deal with me.” Clutter is the spawn all those unfinished projects, abandoned hobbies, and good intentions gone lazy that we accumulate in life.

Clutter is a problem. Dealing with it is never pleasant. It means facing up to all of the above, and often our Shadow (from Jungian psychology) takes up residence among our clutter: that gift from an old boyfriend that we harbor secret thoughts about. That Stairmaster that we took about 15 steps on before we decided to embrace love handles after all. That expensive juicer (like WAY expensive) we bought for when we were going add more nutrition to our lives. Etc, etc.

Hoarder alert. Clutter has a way of spawning more and stifling creativity.

This week, pick a clutter zone. Could be as small as the “everything” drawer in your kitchen, or as big as your bedroom closet. Take all your angst, stuckness, frustration with being creatively blocked, and ruthlessly get rid of everything you haven’t used or worn in a year.

Everything you’re having trouble letting go of, put in a box and label, CLUTTER. Put it in the secondary clutter spot (at our house, it’s the garage) where clutter makes one last stand before it leaves the house. Stack the boxes in the Almost Out the Door area. If you don’t need the item and get it out, you won’t remember what’s in the box.

In six months you deliver the box, unopened, to your favorite charity.

DO NOT plan to have a garage sale or put things up on E-Bay instead of dealing with them- in fact I think those two intentions often make clutter a permanent part of your life, because who EVER wants to do those things? Instead, try this box method and let me know how it goes. And if you MUST, plan to open the boxes in six months and have a garage sale with whatever is in them, on the day you open them. Period. End of story.

After you deal with your zone, sit down and check in with yourself. See if there isn’t a major amount of psychic and psychological creativity freed up.

This weekend I’m tackling my poky writing corner, with plans to relocate it to the hardly-used guest room. That will be my reward for tackling the dusty piles of old manuscripts, nameless binders, teetering piles of newspaper and magazine articles and stacks of old software CDs that have rendered my writing area a stifling mess. I’ll let you know how many boxes I generate.

Give it a shot. You’ve got nothing but useless crap to lose.

I hoped to feel good today. Triumphant even. I wrote another book! Even after a 55-hour work week, I finished the damn edit and ahead of schedule too!

Instead I woke up today feeling like poop on the bottom of a shoe. Mashed thin and really smelly, no resilience whatsoever, teary and stressed, in fact every bit like a postpartum new mother only without the baby to keep her occupied. Those of you who birthed babies, remember that saggy spongy feeling, like your empty uterus was going to fall out? Men, you will never have this dubious joy–but trust me, it’s a real physical sensation.

That’s what I feel like mentally.

Fortunately I’ve been through this before (3 other times) and like an experienced mother I know not to take myself seriously, that it will pass. It’s okay to wander, and putter, and sit staring into space, feeling flat and exhausted, and struggle with word retrieval and people’s names whom I’ve known for years.

Because, dammit, I just delivered a manuscript.

Anyone else relate to this?

But what about the print books???

I think PRINT BOOKS have an important role to play, even as technology changes. Print books are actually a class and economic issue, because of the secondary, used and donated book market that will disappear eventually. Perhaps it’s my social worker perspective, but I’m sensitive to the divide between the haves and have-nots, and the e-reader issue points this up.

How many older people can or will make the switch? How about the poor, the homeless, those in jail? Books are an important escape and route to education for working-class and poor folks, and libraries historically have been great equalizers and hangouts for a cross section of every community.

On Maui, our Borders store in Kahului functioned as a community center, a place where kids collected to read, real estate agents met their clients, and everyone gathered for poetry readings and ukulele jams.
The loss of Borders hit our island hard, and it hasn’t been replaced. Barnes & Noble, way over in Lahaina and much smaller, is all we have left. We all need to support them, or we’ll have nothing at all, and with the cuts to libraries, I worry we’ll lose access to those books too.

In Hawaii, because of our isolation, it’s a class issue. I believe passionately that everyone should have access to books—not just those who can afford and will use an e-reader.

For us authors, it’s a difficult call. I’m trying to play the whole field in the interests of the most access for readers.

Full disclosure: I got a great interview with B&N on their Unabashedly Bookish Blog, check it out here!

What do you think of the future of books, and access to them?

You’ll note the past tense. They’re both gone now, and I still miss them. They couldn’t have been more different but in some scary ways, the same.

My grandmother GeeGee was a classic: Republican, Catholic, bridge-playing, country-club golfing, delicate-boned charm wrapped around a steely core. She had one husband who adored her, and three sons who were commanded to.

She would have loved the fat blush-colored rose I picked and put in the big cut crystal bowl I took from her apartment after she died, the only thing that didn’t break in the mail on the way over here to Hawaii. It floats, a spiral of creamy pink fragrant petals. She would have enjoyed the sight of it on my table–she was a big fan of “just a few flowers, but just the right ones.”

I can remember some things about her so clearly: the powdery Chanel smell she had, the fragility of her tiny bones, the transparent white cotton candy of her hair, fluffed up over her skull to look like more than it was; immaculate coral colored nails that she had done every week. She was always a woman of style (even if it was a style I didn’t get) cardigan golf sweaters, button-down blouses and what she called “slacks.” For evening she liked Chanel suits and shoes with a lot of gold or gems on them. (The rows of them, carefully lined up, some of them new in the 50’s, were particularly wrenching to leave in her apartment for the Goodwill.)

I relate more to my grandmother Stella’s taste: voluminous ethnic pullovers, satin pajama pants, reams of beads and strange, large pendants with foreign gods on them, her long white hair in a braid to her waist.  She always cut a swath, with her love of bright bold fabrics and her “more is better” philosophy.

My grandmother Stella was GeeGee’s opposite on the political spectrum: liberal, a feminist, a working woman, an agnostic (though she tolerated trips to church “for the music”) she had two unhappy marriages and six children, and to the end of her life, opera was her passion. She died this Thanksgiving, because she was dramatic that way. We thought she’d go on Christmas if she could have–after all her name was Stella Natale “Star Christmas.”

The cool thing about a grandmother is, that no matter what the family baggage, what the relationships are like with other family members (namely, parents, aunts and uncles) grandmothers are a step removed and however batty, colorful, selfish, drinking, or crazy they might be (and both mine had their moments) as a grandmother they kind of get a free pass. It’s a generation removed, and that adds a layer of acceptance and tolerance.

Grandmothers can be cheerleaders. And role models, and spoilers, caregivers and criticizers. Usually they are our first and primary connection to another generation, to history. They have so much to share of a world we’ll never know, that will be gone when they are. I

f you’ve got a grandma, love on and appreciate her. Get her to tell some stories. Spend some time with her, and if you can’t, make sure she knows she’s loved. If she’s gone already, don’t forget her. Find a way to live with and share objects she left behind, and tell stories of her with your children.

Both my grandmothers were powerhouses, and I think I inherited a little something of that. The gift of a grandmother lives in your very DNA, and we are finding more and more, human traits are more than choice–they are often inherited. Appreciate and celebrate those whose lives became yours.

What are some of the things you’ll remember about your grandparents?

But she was supposed to be a boy.

We have the set-up, the conflict… and we’re off and running on my personal tale. Terrifying!

One of the best therapeutic tools ever is writing an autobiography, and I had the privilege of studying under a master of the school of therapy called Transactional Analysis , started by Eric Berne with his popular book Games People Play. It was big in the 1970′s and has since fallen out of vogue, but I love it and have found it very useful with a variety of clients. My instructor had us write an autobiography in order to understand our Personal Script, a key component of the therapy method, and I’m wincing at sharing. But the best truth is hard won, so here goes.

I discovered through writing it I had three major “themes” running through my story, which I subconsciously manipulated events to reinforce: the Princess in Disguise, in which I had a Great and Hidden Destiny and was somehow trapped in a family and situation that didn’t recognize that; and If It Weren’t For Him, in which I cast my husband who I married young (hoping for rescue from the family that didn’t understand me) in the role of captor/jailer, keeping me from my aforementioned Great Destiny.

(*wince, wince* I hope he doesn’t read this. Oh well, after 26 years of marriage, what’s one more round of couples counseling???)

In other words, I saw how I was keeping MYSELF from my own “great destiny” by blaming others around me.

It was terrifying, and liberating.  I had no one but myself to blame if I didn’t achieve the mysterious greatness I had always felt was inside. And it was the beginning of my creative unleashing.

So, now that you’ve had full disclosure from a therapist (we seldom allow this. We like to preserve the mystique. I feel like a magician selling trade secrets on how the woman really gets cut in half) I challenge you to write your story.

• Begin with “once upon a time” if nothing else comes to mind.
• Tell it in third person.
• Write freely, as fast as you can.
• Avoid judgement and critique/correcting. This is for you only, so be kind and accepting of how hard it is. Damn it’s hard, if you’re really truthful. But the third person thing helps.
• Use your Timeline to help you anchor the story.
• When you are done, go back with a highlighter and look for major archetypal characters- the Witch, the Mother, the Hero, the Warrior, the Damsel in Distress, the Wizard, the King. Each of these archetypes may have more to teach you, and we’ll explore that in a later post.

Good luck and happy self discovery. Who knows, your Great and Hidden Destiny might be waiting for you!

Going through the process of learning and accepting this has been a combination of dream-squashing and embarrassing. I’m so ignorant of the business of publishing, I thought all you had to do was get a store to order and carry the book. Ah, more fool me! That’s the easy part, it turns out.

Linda is a Nebula award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, rereleasing her backlist under her publishing company, Mythic Island Press. She’s also a former computer programmer, and used her techie skills to do the actual creation of my book in both print and ebook versions.

Linda faces the same bookstore issues I do, with the additional wrinkle that her books are not of the “local color” variety; instead, they are beautifully-crafted science fiction and fantasy. Here are two of her award-winning books for your reading pleasure, now only available online:

Linda's award-winning opus The Bohr Maker, winner of Locus Award for Best First Novel

The title story in this collection won the Nebula Award for Best Novella

Throughout my book’s  journey to publication, what’s become obvious is that, despite all the touting of the ebook revolution, many people lack the means or access to anything but print books–many people in Hawaii don’t have an e-reader and don’t ever plan to get one.

We need to keep making print books and making them affordable and available to people, or I fear a time when no one reads anything longer than a paragraph and that on an electronic device, and print books are just antiques on eBay.

What about the elderly, the shut-ins, the poor, and the just plain stubborn who don’t want to read on a device? We all deserve the joy of good books.

This is a trend that’s not going away, as traditional publishers, being driven out of business by the returns policy among other things, pick up fewer and fewer new authors. It would be great if the big chain bookstores that are left (Barnes and Noble in Hawaii)  and indie authors could figure out a way to meet halfway, so the risks and burdens of bringing new works into stores is possible.

Readers want new content, and authors want to present it, and stores want to sell it– but the returns policy will continue to prevent worthy indie literature from getting to the public in many areas.

And we’re all poorer for that.

I posted a blog on the Debatable Value of Twitter   a year or so ago, when I was still a noob with all this social media jazz. I am since a convert to Twitter as the single best outreach tool a writer has, and Sonia Rumzi is another writer and creative individual I met on Twitter. She is amazing, and when she listened to her copy of Orchids on her Kindle (in one sitting) she made this trailer.

I am still amazed at how the book is affecting people–some are upset by the violence. Others are intrigued by the Hawaii aspect. But mostly, people are falling in love with prickly, impulsive, damaged, fierce, courageous and hotheaded Lei Texeira, who will do anything to bring down a perp.

I am just so moved. I had no idea. This video is on my 1000 Things Grateful list as #39. Along with all the amazing reviews on Amazon, from people who took the time and hassle to log in, organize their thoughts, and make a statement. I just had no idea how emotional it all would be.

Did I mention possible menopause? Getting worried now.

I took the dare, without really knowing what it was about. Because I’ve always been a gambler that way.

*Spoiler alert*

One Thousand Gifts is about practicing gratitude. Daily. By writing down a list of one thousand things you’re grateful for. It’s nice that the author writes beautifully, it’s even more amazing the effect on me it’s had.

I’m feeling my feelings, and today, they are joy and gratitude for all the good things, so many amazing things, going on in my life. I’ve been doing this series on Unlocking Creativity, and beginning my list of a Thousand Gifts has been just that… A gift.

Another gift is the awesome opportunity to be interviewed by well known author Lorna Suzuki on her blog. She asked me a lot of really deep questions about my writing, why I did it, why Lei and the dark and gritty story of Blood Orchids. Check out the interview on her blog, All kinds of Writing and also on the huge website AuthorsDen.com .Pop by, check it out, and throw down some comment love! I’d appreciate it.

What an honor, to be featured on my birthday, and I wrote it down as #36 on my gratitude list. I just can’t emphasize enough how this “project” has broken loose much needed joy in my life–and I even have scholarly articles somewhere to back up the mental health benefits of this practice, not that I even care right now. It’s my birthday, and I’ll cry tears of joy if I want to! (and let’s hope they aren’t the sign of encroaching menopause)

Want to join me for one thousand things? I dare you- start your list today.

Patterns emerge. Trends. Epiphanies. It’s a priceless tool every thinking person should attempt. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living (Socrates? Someone famous and ancient). I’ve seen them done various ways:

• As a grid, with a box for each year, handwritten.
• As a line, with the years as notches, and events penciled in.
• As an outline on computer, with bullet points for events
• As an Excel spreadsheet
• As a line on a big paper, with events on post-it notes (so they can be moved around).

Something you’ll quickly realize is that your memory is not that reliable. (This should give you a clue as to the plasticity, resilience, and sheer stubbornness of the human mind. It simply forgets what it doesn’t want to remember, and magnifies what it does)

Doing a new one since my other ones were lost, before I began my Book of Secrets ten years ago. I've chosen to go with "old school" methods this time around.

I’ve done mine three times: the first in my first round of college in my Transactional Analysis class, the second time in my thirties at a career development seminar; and most recently, this October as I was trying to remember the context of some important personal decisions—and if I’d been keeping my Book of Secrets I wouldn’t have lost the first two, but I’ve only had it the last ten years. I shared my most recent timeline with my mother, and she helped with the timing of various childhood events. (Fact checking with family members, if you can, is super helpful—and can end up generating some interesting conversations)

The timeline will also help greatly with the next exercise in our “unleashing creativity” process- writing your life story, in third person, using archetypes. *grin* Get ready for all kinds of interesting sh*t to come bubbling up during that! And that’s all the stuff that keeps you creatively blocked, so letting it out is key.

The timeline is something you will only have to do once, and can keep coming back to again and again as you mine your life for creative material.

What do you think of this exercise? Have you tried something like this before?