Three Things from Hot, Hazy, Humid NYC

Something Old! Something New! Something Blue!

What I’m writing…

Oh, friends, I am happily revising my new novel. It is…drum roll, please…A time travel romance! As of this minute, my time travel romance does not have a title. My working title—The Project—was roundly disliked! So I have a running list of possible titles, in the hopes that one will stick.

I had the same problem with my first novel. Its original title was Different Galaxies, which sounded like a sci fi story, yes? At one point I actually considered The Fish When She’s Exposed to Air! I mean, what???

As I’m doing now, I kept a running list of titles—lines from the book, bible quotations, song titles, anything. Everything! I was desperate.

It came down to the wire. I had to find a title. My editor and I went over the dozens of rejected titles (this was a million years ago so we did this by phone) and somehow, by a miracle or kismet or the stars aligning, we both landed on the same title…

Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine. And it was perfect.

Fingers crossed that will happen again. When I finish revising this draft, I’ll post possible titles and you can all let me know which one you like best!

Meanwhile…

What I’m Knitting…

Remember the gorgeous Purl Soho Giverny Cowl I knit and gifted to Suzanne Strempek Shea back in Dingle?

I mentioned I had enough yarn to knit a second one, and so I did!

I spent last week at The Newport MFA, which is the low residency MFA program I created an co-direct with the fabulous poet Jen McClanaghan. I am so proud of what we do there! In fact, our opening reading was by alum Raquel Y. Levitt from her debut novel, The Seer.

Brava, Raquel!

And alum Zoe Sprankle closed the residency with a reading from her essay that’s included in the anthology Edge of the World, which is edited by faculty member Alden Jones. Such beautiful synchronicity!

Yay, Zoe!

Alden Jones

As you know if you’ve been at a workshop or conference with me, I knit all the time. Before I learned to knit, no matter how interesting the reading or lecture, my mind wandered. In fact, this goes way back: I remember being in second grade listening to Miss Nolan teach us arithmetic, then all of sudden realizing we had somehow moved on to penmanship.

After my daughter Grace died in 2002, my concentration failed me completely. Wise friends suggested I learn to knit and I began to knit my way through grief. I never stopped. As we know, neither does grief.

So in Newport I knit that cowl while I listened to readings and craft talks by graduating students, faculty, and guest writers.

The fabulous Laura Lippman was a guest writer. Pick up a copy of her new novel, Murder Takes a Vacation

Guest writer Helen Schulman read from her new book of short stories, Fools for Love, out July 8.

Faculty member Tim Weed reading from his new novel, The Afterlife Project

(Not pictured: guest writer Bruce Handy because the two pictures I have of him showing us the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and talking about his terrific new book, Hollywood High: A Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies were not very good)

When I finished the cowl I gifted it to Jen…

…and then went back to work on the Loopy Mango Brioche Summer Top that I started before The Big Trip. I love knitting this because it’s in brioche stitch, which I taught myself how to do by watching videos on YouTube. I felt very clever.

So clever that I didn’t remind myself how to knit brioche when I picked up my needles again. I just dove right in.

It only took about 5 rows for me to realize I’d made a big mistake somewhere. I spent the next several days taking out stitches and starting over.

Again and again and again. One day, faculty and friend (and my editor for kids’ books) Francesco Sedita, who always sat next to me, said, “You’ve got to stop with that. It’s not working.” Maybe he even said I was driving him crazy.

Francesco taught our cross genre workshop and here he is looking really moved by something a student wrote. But it is very similar to how he looked when I started frogging yet again.

But of course I couldn’t stop. I was revising. Just like with my novel, I can’t stop until I get it right.

Every day I pick up the manuscript and I cut and add and rearrange. I write new scenes and better dialogue. I put in commas and take other commas out. As Oscar Wilde said, “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma, and then taking it out again.”

It’s thrilling and frustrating and maddening and exhilarating. I’m taking something old, and making it new. And better.

That tee I’m knitting? I fixed it! I had to remove and redo over 25 rows, but I found the mistake.

What I’m Thinking About…

I’m hot!

I don’t like those three H’s of summer—hazy, hot, and humid. I never have. Growing up in the Ocean State, I lived for the beach. Running headfirst into the ocean. Riding waves. Eating sandy peaches from the cooler and root beer popsicles from the concession stand at Scarborough Beach.

As a teenager, my friend Beth and I went to that beach every day. We wore neon bikinis and slathered ourselves with Coppertone as we slurped popsicles and discussed, endlessly, boys. As I wrote in Yankee Magazine back in 2008: “Scarborough Beach was a metaphor for us — chaotic and busy and seductive. The ocean shone in the summer sun, as endless as all the hopes and possibilities our 16-year-old selves possessed.”

But here I am in NYC with Michael, who is recuperating from knee replacement surgery.

And it’s hot, hot, hot.

Here is the Mersea Provence Linen Kaftan Dress I am living in. It’s loose and it’s linen and it’s pretty. Highly recommend. (The Merci tote bag is compliments of Francesco. After I gushed over his and told him that I had wanted to buy one at Merci when we were in Paris a few weeks ago but ran out of time, he gave it to me! Merci, Francesco!)

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday…You get the idea!

And also…

Michael was on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon!

PS…

I have seen an embarrassment of rainbows the past couple of months. Thank you, Ireland!

Then last week, at the Newport MFA, Tim Weed made us all paella.

We were sitting outside eating with the ocean glittering before us when it started to rain. Everyone ran inside until this appeared and then we all rushed back outside to get a picture of it.

Pretty, yes? But prettier still after I revised…

Thank you, as always, for reading and subscribing (if you do). There’s no break in sight from this dreadful heat, but I have my blue dress and my brioche stitch and miles of revision to go.

Don’t give up, friends. We all know what’s at the end of those rainbows.