Light-skinned-ed Girl

One Book Turns Into One Awesome Winter Hat

Last Spring, I was traveling home from Portland, and noticed a woman knitting a gorgeous looking winter cap on the flight.  It looked just like my beloved cap that I lost last winter in a cab.  I was bummed out for several days about losing that cap--not just because it was blue and green (the perfect colors), but a family friend knit it for me shortly before she died of cancer.

It became clear to me that I had to have the hat the woman on the plane was knitting. 

"Hi," I blurted as we got off the plane.  "Can I buy that hat from you?"

She laughed and said she didn't sell her knitting.  I explained how much the hat reminded me of one I had lost that meant a lot to me.  Was there any way she could make an exception?

Well, in that case, she said, the hat was mine.  She'd send it when she was done.  What was my address?

How happy was I?  Ecstatic, but felt like I had to give her something.  So I signed a copy of my book and gave it to her along with my mailing address.

I hadn't thought about that encounter since--until I got a package in the mail last week.  My hat!  With a lovely note from Sara (I didn't even know her name), and a beatiful bracelet she made too.

She still isn't selling her wonderful work.  Don't you think she should? 

Thank you Sara!  You made my week!  And your hat will keep me warm all winter!

 

End of the Year Bustle

Whew! I just finished the last of my deadlines for 2011 -- a short story commissioned by WNYC's Selected Shorts program.  I hope they like it.  And now, it is time to breathe again.  

I feel almost giddy knowing that all I have to think about in the coming months is the new book!  Whoo hoo!  Okay, there are a couple of speeches I need to write (notably the Everybody Reads 2012 event with an audience of 2000 in Portland in March), and a workshop I need to put together.  But still, what I am feeling right now is relief.  I have some time to do some big picture thinking, reading, organizing my closets, exercising and of course, having some holiday fun.

Do you have time off during the next couple of weeks?  What are you going to do?

The Cult of Done Manifesto

I'm working on a short story that was commissioned by a popular NPR program.  I'm freaking out as the deadline looms next week.  And then I saw this wonderful manifesto that's helping me focus!

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.