"Yes, Virginia, there really is a spring...."

It is a crazy beautiful day in central Illinois.  All I want to do is take my camera and photograph the abundant flowering tree branches, the daffodils, the bright young green of the grass, the stillness of the blue sky.    Every year, but especially this winter of 2014, you could easily convince yourself spring will probably not actually come. The winter comes back over and over when we think it is gone, like some terrible bout of flu that keeps reinfecting our households.  Pretty soon even the most strident winter-lover has given up hope and is sure that this is the year that winter is going to last 12 months.

So why live here?  Well the advantage we have over California or South Carolina or one of the other eternal spring states, is that we let spring attack us with joy here.  We can barely believe our luck that a cold wind isn't trying to down that row of red tulips. Look at them, so red.

 

We enjoy spring here the way thirsty marathon runners enjoy that next Gatorade. We relish the mild-temperatured freedom, floating on the scents and sounds, as if on a movie set.  It all feels so foreign.  We literally pinch ourselves, assuming this is a pleasant dream. And it lasts such a short time.  Spring in central Illinois is about a fortnight long. You just put away the wool socks, start to take a few breaths and the air conditioners click on as it hits the upper 80s by June.We are grateful, down to our toes, for spring here, and we never, ever take it for granted.  It is like a little miracle we observe every year.   Just when you give up hope, that is when hope arrives.  In the form of grass seed sprouting, earthworms coming up for a tan, and lilacs popping out overnight like a row of dancing showgirls down the avenue. ("Park Avenue...")

Hope thy name is springtime.

Elizabeth Berg Stalker

So some people have a movie star or a sports legend they would be goofy over meeting.  For me it is authors.  I have anticipated meeting a particular author for many years now.  I first fell in love with her prose when she wrote parenting articles for Good Housekeeping (or Parenting I forget which) and discovered her books and ate them up the way you eat a bunch of cool grapes on a hot summer afternoon.  (or a butterscotch candy at a football game. ) Then I waited patiently as her books gradually were released and treated myself to one whenever they came out.  There is something about her writing that makes me feel like we could easily be best-friends.  I discovered that I'm not the only one that feels this way about Elizabeth Berg.  She now has a facebook following of very kindred spirits and I'm still surprised how many of them will post something that is exactly what I was thinking. 

Some years ago, I guess it would be 15 now to be exact (as I remember this trip was just weeks after my youngest was born), I was going to Boston on a business trip and I knew Elizabeth lived there.  Then I discovered the hotel they were putting me in was in the very suburb that I'd seen her mention in her essays.  I knew from her writing book that she often spent time at a coffee shop and so I decided while in this little burb, I would hang out at the coffee shop in hopes of sighting her.  This got me so excited, that I expanded the idea, and I wrote her a letter asking her to meet me for coffee at this shop on a particular day in June.  Just know that 'stalking' wasn't even a term then.

No surprise thinking back now, but she was unable to meet me.  She wrote me a charming letter on stationary though, explaining she would be in Hershey, PA that day. And though crest-fallen, the thought of her having a chocolate-related excuse did give me some comfort.  I'm sure if a complete stranger figured out my home address and asked me to meet for coffee, I wouldn't be the least bit suspicious or wary.  But, we didn't meet.

Down the road she moved to Chicago. And one year she was going to speak at the Iowa City Book Festival and I was going to go and spend two days there and hear my favorite author speak.  So close to home, books, party, and Elizabeth.  It was all meant to be, right?  Right.   Until I came down with not just a cold but pneumonia in July and had to miss that trip.  So close. 

I've reread her book for Writers every other year or so since it came out, "Escaping into the Open".  And I've daydreamed about attending one of her writing workshops she holds in Italy combining cooking classes, food, and fiction writing.  What could possibly be better?  But then I remind myself that I haven't written in weeks and do not deserve something like that until I grow my chops as a writer.  Until I get off my butt and get disciplined.  Unless I show that I can write and write and write some more.  Which in my mind, I haven't done.  I seem to take my writing career similar to that of a postage stamp hobbyist -- I work on it when the fancy strikes me, with weeks in between.

After that  I decided it was better not to meet someone that was so built up in your imagination that they couldn't possibly ever live up that image I have created over the years. It would be like meeting Mary Engelbreit and finding out she was jaded and negative in real life, like myself at times.

Then, surprise surprise, I found out she is speaking at the Midwest Writers' Workshop I'm attending this July.  Elizabeth Berg is the Saturday evening speaker.  At a dinner.  In INDIANA!  It seems crazy to think it.  And no I don't plan to go up to her and tell her, as the 597th fifty-something woman to do so, that I'm her biggest fan.  I don't plan to ask her to read my manuscript.  In fact I'm really hoping I don't have to speak to her at all.  I just want to soak it in.  Being in a room, watching her mannerisms, listening to her words, and matching what I've grown to understand about her over the years with a face. I do know she is human and not perfect and is in fact perfectly imperfect in the same way I strive to be.  I will go back to my hotel room and write down all the details I can and keep it for a rainy day when I want to read about it.  Because face it, now that I'm more mature, I can take a step back and acknowledge it for what it is -- a bit creepy.  But it is meant with genuine affection and esteem, and I sincerely hope I do not embarrass myself when the opportunity does present itself this July. 

No really.  I swear.  I'll be mature.  And I'll stay away from the wine.  Ok, I'll stay away from more than two glasses of wine and only take four pictures.  No three. Well, for now, anticipation.....

if you want to become a fan too, here is her website: http://www.elizabeth-berg.net/
and here is the link to the writer's conference  http://www.midwestwriters.org/

Target: Muncie

This week I registered for the Midwest Writer's Workshop in July, which includes a manuscript critique, a pitch session with an agent, and a query letter review.  Each of these is about 3 minutes long, so I don't expect to stress about it.  I am feeling excited because I don't actually have a manuscript, query letter or pitch as of this moment.  I have a manuscript begun, a query letter from my last novel, and a plan to Google what a pitch session is.  But, I need this like I need water and chocolate: external, structured, kick-in-the-butt.  I have paid for the conference, I made hotel reservations, I took the days off work.  So now, assuming I get to my writing room three weekends out of four, I have a total of about 36 hours to achieve these goals.  Not much.  Do I start polishing the five chapters I have completed?  Do I work on a synopsis (part of the ms review) and try to plan out my story?  Do I go back and review the dreaded query letter that gained me 132 or so rejections last time around?  Do I practice my pitch to my dog Molly? 

What I need to do is first things first.  And first things, at least the next 5 or 6 weekends, is going to be going full-steam on my story.  I have no  hope of creating a synopsis or a pitch until I get the story arc figured out.  Then I can try for a synopsis, and then start polishing, the first five pages, which is actually the limit to what they will critique.

In any case, my blood pressure is up even though I'm sitting on a comfy bed with a velour throw and my laptop actually in my lap.  I'm primed for writing.  Now, to keep that excitement flowing.  Note to self: Blog about this next weekend....How to keep the fire burning.  And the following week...Elizabeth Berg.