My Books

When I was in the sixth grade, I entered a writing contest. The topic was "the benefits of reading." Somewhere, I found these lines from Emily Dickinson—

—and, remembering some of the books I'd read, opened my essay with the Dickinson quotation. I won the contest and was awarded a free book.

Because I have functioning corpus callosum, which means that both sides of my brain work, I can be perfectly happy writing books of meditation and thealogy (when my right brain shows me nifty pictures and plays with poetry) and equally happy as a technical or manuscript editor (when I go into "left-brain nerd mode"). Sometimes, of course, both sides of my brain go on vacation, and then what I write is parody, like Finding New Goddesses.

Here I am, selling my books at the recent solstice fair. Sitting beside me is my daughter-in-law, the fabu Phish, who, among other things, maintains this web site. Notice the two books to the right, Be Blessed and The Dark Archetype. These are by my friend Denise Dumars. We like to mention each other in our books. Also on my table are little fabric amulet pouches that I sew up (by hand) in my copious free time and sell for $5. (And, yes, pretzels for shoppers to munch on.) Long Beach WomanSpirit has been holding its solstice fairs for since the mid-80s.

What is my writing process? I often start in the middle of the night (or 4 a.m.), semi-awake, listening and watching, constructing killer sentences and wondrous poetry. But I'm lazy. I decline to get up and write it down, so these inspirations, which I believe come directly from the Goddess, can be as ethereal as bubbles. I've made myself a rule: if it's good, I'll remember it or be able to reconstruct it in the morning. If it's not good, I'll forget it, and good riddance. Only once have I gotten out of bed and turned on my computer, and written down a poem. Pre-dawn dreaming and visioning are where my first drafts come from.

I sit down on my couch with a blue eversharp pencil with B lead in it and a tablet, on which I write sentences or even whole paragraphs that are the remains of my night-time visions. Pretty soon, I know that I won't be able to read my handwriting anymore, so I turn on my computer. And because I seldom take proper notes, I surround myself with books. That's right. I stack them on the floor around me until it looks like I'm under siege by flying ideas. I write in a kind of trance. If I'm doing fiction, I watch and listen to the characters. If I'm doing nonfiction, I let the Goddess or the goddesses talk to me. But we have an agreement: they may dictate, but I'm in charge of spelling, punctuation, syntax, and usage. Next, I print the first draft, always double-spaced. At this point, I go into left-brain nerd mode. I edit, rewrite, edit again, write some more, delete, add, move, delete, write and rewrite until I'm satisfied. This can take a long time. I'm very hard to satisfy.

Because I also take very seriously the idea that people may believe what they read in my books. I take every care to write accurately and, if I'm writing a meditation, to ensure that people will not harm themselves or others by using this meditation. I read all those books stacked around me and try not to pass on outdated ideas (like the nine million witches burned) or silly ones (like in the Neolithic period everyone lived at peace and in harmony with everyone else and there was no fighting or quarreling). Being an old English teacher, I also know what plagiarism is and how to avoid it; the books are piled around me so I can cite the authors whose ideas I am borrowing.

But, hey, I also write other things, like articles for print and online magazines, and my work also appears in a few anthologies. Click here for a list. You can find a couple of these articles here on my site and there are links to other sites. You could also buy the books (she says hopefully).