I have been in a bit of a mood lately.  Josh has been joking that it is my mid-life crisis, and it is strongly making me resemble a 9-year-old boy.  Last week, I took the kids to a comic book store and bought myself Superboy (I am very partial to Superman right now).  Afterward, I took them to an arcade so we could play pinball.  That sort of sums up where I am right now: I’m reading comic books and playing pinball.

I am watching old Fugazi concerts on YouTube instead of working.  I am spending all of my time marveling at how high other people can jump and wondering why I am incapable of getting that much air between myself and the floor.

This is not a good space for me.  I am restless.  I can’t get any traction to finish what I am writing.  I mean, it’s done; I could release it, but I’m keeping it around to pick at it self-consciously.  I both simultaneously love it and hate it.  I’m weighing it against things that aren’t even books.  I’m also weighing it against things that are books.  Usually, the mental scale tells me that it’s not as profound.  Sometimes, I can convince myself that it’s decent.  This is not a good space for me.

*******

The dinner outing came at the perfect time; there is something about seeing Julie that is so grounding.  She is the type of person you can unravel and reknit yourself in front of and she won’t bat an eye.  She’ll just keep asking questions so the figurative stitching can happen.

We ate Thai food until the waitress not so kindly told us that they wanted to shut the restaurant (not to sound gluttonous; we had actually finished dinner an hour earlier and were just sitting there.  I didn’t want you to think that we were like Augustus Gloop, hand-fisting Pad Thai as we ran from the establishment).  We went to sit in the Barnes and Noble until they told us that we had now kept their store open an additional ten minutes.

(See, no one is chewing in this picture)

(This is how Julie sees me: all mouth)

I knew that I would see Julie this spring, so this winter trip just sort of dropped from the sky this week.  And it was what I needed in the moment to help crawl out of this comic-book-and-YouTube hole; a good conversation about nothing and everything.  I realized as we sat there how much I wanted to finish the project and move onto the next thing, so I woke up early to take a bunch of tasks off my plate so I could shut down email for a few hours today and speed up the picking process so the manuscript is nice and smooth.  In that moment, I decided that I had to love it, had to be happy with my manuscript and stop coveting everyone else’s manuscript.  Because fuck it, I have a perfectly lovely manuscript.

There is pretty much nothing better than having someone you read step through the screen.  And it made me miss every single one of you last night — those that have also stepped through the screen, and those who are still on the other side of the monitor that I hope to one day meet.

I was asked to write about how I came to write Life from Scratch for the blog, Riding with the Top Down.  The title is a little facetious, but I think the advice is still good, if I do say so myself.  And I do say so myself, because this is my blog.

The idea for Life from Scratch came to me while I was crossing a library parking lot, holding a stack of cook books I had checked out. What if a woman used the year post-divorce to teach herself how to cook? A half hour later, during my next errand to the food store, I wondered what if that woman became a blogger and that’s how she found the voice she lost during the marriage. Over the next few days, I tugged and twisted the skeleton of the story out on paper, throwing in a best friend and some siblings, an ex-husband and a new lover. And voila — I had a book.

Okay, it took more like six months or so to write it, but I had the bare bones of a book.

You’re supposed to write about what you know, but I think people take that idea in such a literal sense that it limits them creatively.  I’ve always believed that if you are willing to listen — willing to do the research — that you can build off of your own experiences and slide sideways to something unrelated (please note that key point about listening to others who have lived it).

I’ve never been divorced from a marriage, but I have been divorced from a job, and that first year away from work was scary and life-changing and regretful and joyous. It wasn’t the same thing in the least, but it was a window into understanding what friends spoke about when they talked about their divorce, when I did the work and asked people about divorce. The job I left had started out as a wonderful connection and had turned into a soul-draining relationship over the years. In my case, it bordered on abusive. I completely lost my voice and was too terrified to express what I needed. Leaving was the right step, but it meant relearning a lot of things. We financially had to learn a new existence. The daily rhythm of my life changed.

I have never left a marriage, but I have left a life behind and asked myself, “what now?”

Without my career, I was free-floating for a few weeks. The excitement of the first few days (“no work today, yay!”) turned into anxiety (“holy shit, no work today… what am I going to do with myself?”). A random trip to a bookstore changed everything when I saw a cooking school textbook on sale. I couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars it would cost to go to cooking school, but I could afford $49.95 for the textbook. So I started at the beginning and taught myself how to cook.

Which is not to say that like Rachel, I considered toasting an English muffin as close as I would get to baking my own bread. I was a decent cook before I started my cooking school for one. I became someone who understood how to write her own recipe, who understood how to deconstruct someone else’s food and rebuild it again. It really wasn’t about cooking at all. It was about finding my passion.

I did start a short-lived blog about my personal cooking school where I posted some recipes. My husband helped me set it up because he was in that first wave of bloggers on the Internet, and I thought that it was amazingly cool that strangers read his posts and followed our lives. He linked to my blog and some of his readers came over. It was intoxicating to get those first comments.

I stopped posting in that space because I didn’t need it. I think for a blog to be successful, you need to need it. If you don’t need it, you won’t take the time to write there regularly and then it ceases to capture your life if you are swinging by every few weeks to jot down a random idea. I needed to cook, but I didn’t need to write about cooking.

I found the space I needed a year or so later when my husband and I were trying to conceive again. We had gone through fertility treatments to conceive our twins (again, if you’ve read Life from Scratch, it connects to writing what you know… sort of), and I had become massively depressed during those years. My husband suggested that I start a blog as an outlet as we got back into trying to conceive, and I also wanted to connect with other infertile men and women for a book idea I had jumping off of an Ask Amy column. So Stirrup Queens was born.

I needed to write Stirrup Queens, and I needed to read other bloggers and talk with them via the comment section on their blog. While I loved Stirrup Queens from the beginning, it took a little time to find my rhythm and make it feel like an electronic version of myself on the Web. A written extension of myself. It was Melissa Ford, in word form. I think my voice has changed over the years. Like Rachel, I am a general diarist who happens to concentrate on a certain facet of her life. Where Rachel writes about cooking, I write about my uterus.

My blog has gotten a large following. I’ve won awards, gotten work based on my blog success, published two books due to that space, and have gotten amazing opportunities, such as going to the White House. All because I started a blog. So I am continuously asked how one goes about building a large following online. What is the secret?

Here, come close to the screen and I’ll whisper it…

Need your space.

Okay, it’s not as simple as that, but that’s where you have to start. Need your space. If you need it for yourself (not to build a platform or get a huge audience) and need to write there regardless of whether or not anyone reads it, you will build the foundation for a great blog. At first, don’t worry about what anyone else is writing or whether they’ll even want to read what you have to say. Just enjoy your space on the Web. And when you find that your mind goes to your blog when you’re away from the computer; when you jump there mentally because it’s your happy space — a comforting space — you are ready for the next step: connecting with others.

Read other blogs. Comment on them (that’s the important part — people will find you when you comment). Not just once or twice, but go back over and over again, reading every post and commenting when you can. Expand that reading circle to new blogs, and comment on those blogs. And at the same time, keep writing your content. Don’t compare yourself or feel self-conscious. Just write what you need to write; write the type of stuff that you would want to read. Get involved with online projects such as IComLeavWe or NaBloPoMo. And most of all, don’t quit. Don’t get frustrated that your audience isn’t finding you quickly enough for your taste and walk away. Finding your tribe takes time.

I write often about how to build your blog traffic or how to leave a good comment, and while there are general guidelines you can follow (and certainly things you should never do), like marriage, there is no one, clear line that leads to happiness. Though, just like novel writing, you need to start with what you know.

Which is how I came to write about someone so unlike myself (okay, so maybe I’m a bit neurotic like Rachel) — a divorcee who can’t cook and is dating a Spanish photographer — who is based so deeply in what I do know — that it is scary to leave your old life behind even if that life doesn’t work anymore; that sometimes when we can’t find our voice orally, we can find it via a written medium; and that we all need those human connections, to not feel as if we are a tiny voice shouting into the ether, but to know that we have something to say and people are hearing it.

So, now answer this: do you need your space?

Photo Credit: Mary Gardella

I have six hours of MTV footage from the day that Kurt Cobain died.  I had been out picking up these watercolours that I special ordered at the university bookstore, and when I walked into the apartment, my roommates gave me the news of his suicide.  We watched MTV continuously for the rest of the afternoon and evening, and at some point, I decided to put a new tape in the VCR and let it record until it ran out of tape.

Every so often, I hook two VCRs together and make copies of this tape for other people.  It has every Nirvana video, Kurt Loder grimly reporting the news.  Every so often, when I am feeling most sentimental, I put it on and watch it alone if I can’t rope Josh into a few hours of it.

We have two or three boxes in the basement filled with VHS tapes.  I didn’t mean to create these time capsules.  Most of the time, I simply recorded something because I wanted to see it later.  And then time passed and I recorded something after it without erasing the first thing and now I couldn’t erase the first thing until I saw the second.  Once the tapes filled in this manner, I started a new one.

So we have random old Thirtysomething episodes.  And probably 20 or so Real World episodes.  We have every episode of My So-Called Life — out of order.  Probably 4 hours worth of The State.  I have snippets from the Tony Awards and made-for-tv movies and news footage of random events.  I have Family Ties and the Facts of Life and several Party of Five.

I probably can’t reuse the tapes at this points and I don’t watch them very often (though I have been known when Josh is out of town to slip in a tape or two).  But I also find myself unable to part with them.  With few exceptions, those recordings meant something to me at the time.  And if they didn’t mean something to me then, they mean something to me now because they’re a time capsule of that era in my life.  I can’t imagine throwing them out any more than I could toss old photographs.

What specific television episode or footage do you wish you had on VHS tape right now and could watch again?  Who know… I may have it in my basement.

If I could see anything, it would be the Family Ties episode where Alex Keaton’s friend dies and he sings  “Light My Fire.”  I remember it being the perfect piece of television drama for invoking a good cry when you need one.  But I haven’t seen it in many years.

Came across this little upcoming book description in Publisher’s Weekly, and call me crazy, but I don’t think I’ll be reading it:

Sold his horror debut, Breed … which follows a group of very desperate New York parents in an infertility support group.

When I am queen of the world, I’m going to ban the pairing of “desperate” and “infertile.”  In my world, treating a disease or trying to circumvent a problem doesn’t equal desperation.  Google the two words together and you get over 800,000 hits.  You’re a writer; you can stretch farther than this cliche.  But I’m really glad to see that infertility is entering into the horror genre.  I’ve always found infertility terrifying so I’m glad to see the literary world in agreement.

And I hope there are zombies.  Zombie reproductive endocrinologists.

*******

The Weekly What If: What if the best reproductive endocrinologist with a nearly 100% success rate was a zombie.  Would you go to him?  What if he was local and inexpensive with a great shared risk program?  Had a warm bedside manner and always called you with test results himself?  Literally the only thing out of place was that he was part of the undead and wanted to eat your brains.

Just wondering — you know, if horror infertility books are the next big thing, I want to do my research and stay ahead of the curve.

*******

Write Mind Open Heart has kicked off her annual Limerick Chicks contest.  She is taking entries until February 28th, and I have decided to get mine in early this year.  I have chosen to pick on Forever Reaching because I’ve read her forever and she has been quiet this month.  She’s not the only one, so this limerick is dedicated to all who feel that they are in a writing slump.  And NYCPhoenix — I hope knowing there are people out there cheering for you will give you the energy you need to write again.

Forever Reaching has been quiet
She tweets as if on a blog diet
She’s looking to be inspired
She’s written out; tired
Hoping like a phoenix she’ll rise up and riot

Vote for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

*******

And now the blogs…

The first one goes off the beaten track because it’s an image rather than words (I think this is the first time I’ve done this?).  But once I saw it, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bionic Mamas’ painting “Baby is Gravid.”  It defies being described (though I will give you the heads up that it’s a nude and features her pregnancy), so I implore you to click over and just marvel at the skill.

Park Slope Purgatory has a post about that limbo place between optimism and pessimism where she can’t really wrap her mind around the pregnancy.  She describes that space perfectly — where you want to believe and yet she explains she is living more in a place of “if” than a place of “when.”  And I love this: “But I’m doing my best not to grieve a potentially devastating day before I absolutely have to.”  Please hold her hand today as she goes in for the ultrasound.

Knocked Up By Another Man has a post looking back a year into the past.  I love this way of looking at the scars of infertility: “The scars of the journey remain on my heart. But instead of being something bad, they are mixed with the love of Fairyegg’s gift and the pride of our determination. Instead of marring our hearts as parents, I think the scars add to the character of our love for E.”  Isn’t that beautiful?

Lastly, Sesame-Seed-Sized Dreams has a heartbreaking post about a vivid dream that ties in with the loss of their daughter.  The description of the dream — in and of itself — is interesting as you try to interpret it, but it’s the final lines that really squeezed my heart: “Trying to make babies is a big game of uncertainty. I know all that but I still find this so hard.”  Such a beautiful post — please read the whole thing and give her comfort since the cycle is over.

Actually, really lastly, I thought Songs for My Unborn Children is a really cool idea — a blog where she is telling a story in poems.  She already knows the ending (which sort of reminded me of Drama 2B Mama, where you start the story already knowing how it ends).

The roundup to the Roundup: Zombie reproductive endocrinologists are all the rage.  Answer the Weekly What If (would you let a zombie near your girlie parts or man sack?).  What do you think of my limerick?  And lots of great posts to read.

Astute readers of Life from Scratch probably already know that today is my character, Rachel Goldman’s, birthday.  She is most likely celebrating it by NOT baking a cake, but instead buying one from some nearby bakery, sticking her finger into the box to steal some icing on the way home, kicking herself for doing so because now she has messed up the cake, and then saying fuck all to that and eating it whole.  Just a girl and her fork.

Which is a step up from her last birthday.  We won’t even mention last year’s birthday since the whole sordid tale is in the book.  And yes, she still has the lobster pin.  Though she and Arianna trade it back and forth as a joke.

The secret you don’t know — which I will reveal now — is that Rachel shares her birthday with my very real best friend.  And I dropped her old last name into the book too in her honour because a good friend is hard to find and when you have one, you celebrate her any way you can.  Let that be a lesson not to interact with me too much lest you find yourself on the pages of a fictional book.

In honour of Rachel’s birthday, the publisher is giving away the Kindle version of the book for free as a promotion.  You can download it without charge for a limited time.  So go share the love with your best friend and toast female friendships for Rachel’s birthday.  Because the broad would do it for you (and she’d let you have a 24-hour mope avec chocolate mousse if you needed that too).

And let my paper friend, Rachel, know that you’re celebrating with her.  And let my very real friend, Julie, know you’re toasting her too.