Rome Wasn't Built in a Day and Other Deep Thoughts

Welcome, New Subscribers!

Wow, that was fun! Writer and publishing expert Jane Friedman recommended this humble little newsletter to her readers, thanks to a shout-out from Carol Michel, a garden writer I've known for...well, Carol and I would prefer not to count how many decades we've known each other.

Anyway, I had an unexpected flurry of new subscribers and I want to welcome you all!  I put this newsletter together out of what I love and what I find inspiring, helpful, useful, silly, etc etc. Sometimes that's a cocktail, sometimes it's a book, sometimes it's an art class...you never know. I've met many of you in person over the years, and I feel like I know you all. I'm glad you're here.

How do you know when to let a painting (or a book) be what it wants to be?

Several years ago, I took a class with Qiang Huang, an amazing oil painter from Austin. We were all painting from still lifes set up next to our easels. His work is both beautifully precise and also loose and imaginative. That balance of accuracy and abstraction was what we were all after.

At one point he said, “Your still life setup is just a reference for the design you want to create. You don't have to copy it.”

In other words, a still life setup or a reference photo or the landscape in front of you should just be a jumping-off point for the painting that you’re going to make. If you find yourself struggling to make an exact copy, you’ve lost the thread of the thing.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I think there comes a point in a painting or a drawing where you almost have to set the reference aside. At some point, you just have to deal with the painting that’s in front of you. What it needs next may not be found in the reference you’ve been using. 

This is true for books as well, of course. At some point, the idea you had when you started the book just isn't relevant anymore. Now you have a half-written book in front of you. You have to take it for what it is, and figure out what it needs. 

More about this on my blog...

Here's my Thanksgiving cocktail

(yes, I made a little illustration for this bit. Should I do a completely hand-illustrated newsletter from now on, yes or no?)

It's going to be a weird Thanksgiving, isn't it? Many of us will not be with our people this year. Green bean casserole just doesn't taste the same over Zoom.

But we still have hot casserole dishes filled with side dishes we never eat the rest of the year, and strange new cocktails to try, right?

Here's my contribution. There's a chapter on maple trees in The Drunken Botanist, and I included a maple syrup cocktail from Canada called the Caribou. The version I put in the book is served cold, but it makes for a fine mulled drink, too. Here's how to make a modest two servings:

8 oz red wine
4 oz whiskey (you could also use brandy)
2 oz real maple syrup (Accept no imitations!)
Optional: cinnamon stick, whole allspice, star anise, orange slices

Simmer gently over low heat until the maple syrup has melted and incorporated with the drink. Include optional spices and a few thin orange slices or orange peel if you're into that sort of thing.  Serve warm but not boiling hot.

Another cocktail idea for your Thanksgiving: I'm here to report that Trader Joe's Sparkling Cranberry Juice is a fine non-alcoholic holiday drink, and it could not possibly be bad with a splash of vodka and maybe just a bit of St-Germain elderflower liquor. 

This Week in Pigeon News

Several of you sent me this article about a tiny capsule containing a WWI-era message that had once been strapped to a pigeon's leg (thank you for sending it, I love hearing from you people!)

Of course I am madly jealous. Why can't I go for walks in France and pick up messenger pigeon capsules?

Also (thanks to you readers for sending this one too) a racing pigeon just sold for 1.6 million euros, which would've made Norma feel vidicated, but also, are you really going to pay that kind of money for a bird that you will then allow to FLY AWAY? I mean, I know they're supposed to come back, but also...hawks???

This is probably a good time for me to remind you that DEAR MISS KOPP, set in WWI and containing quite a bit of messenger-pigeon-in-France storyline, will burst upon the literary scene in January. Nice reviews are already coming in from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, who gave it a coveted star and called it "smart, fun, staunchly feminist entertainment," while continuing to grouse about the previous book in the series. C'mon, people, get over yourselves.

Anyway, it would mean the world to me if you would consider adding the book to your holiday wishlist, asking your local bookseller to order it for you, or maybe you'd even like to order a copy from Bookshop, which benefits independent bookstores.

These are tough times for bookstores, publishers, and authors. Even adding a book to your Goodreads list or posting a review online means more than you can probably guess. Much appreciated.

Are you getting a little stiff? Maybe you could use a yoga class.

I am apparently the 8 millionth person to discover Yoga with Adrienne, a YouTube channel of free yoga classes that are blessedly short and simple. If you're finding yourself tied up in knots like I am, maybe Adrienne can help.

Also, Este MacLeod is teaching another fabulous free art class.

Some of you took Este MacLeod's fabulous free art class Colour Play with me in the spring. Her art is so playful and inventive that I just can't stop looking at it. She's doing another free class next week. Sign up here.

Asked and Answered...

Ask me a question, and if I answer it here, I'll send you the book of your choice! This month's winner is Mary from Dayton, OH, who asks:

How do you find the time to do all that you do?

I get asked this question a lot, and I think it's worth exploring, because we all struggle to manage the demands on our time.

First I'll say, for those of you who are new here, that by "all that you do," what Mary is talking about is writing books, making art, teaching online, and (in the old days) going on book tour. That's pretty much all I do, apart from getting myself fed, exercised, showered, dressed, etc. every day.

So the simple way to answer this is to say that I truly don't have any other obligations or responsibilities. I don't have a day job. (I did have a day job while I wrote my first three books, or for roughly the first seven years of my writing career. Because I had a salary coming in, I didn't spend a penny that I earned as a writer. I put it all in a separate bank account that was not very easy to get to, and I saved it up with the idea that I'd quit my job when I had a year's living expenses in the bank. That took seven years.)

So anyway, I don't have another job, and I also don't have any family responsibilities: I don't have kids, and my husband is very self-sufficient. No one depends on me for their day-to-day existence. If you are responsible for earning a paycheck or keeping other human beings alive, that does make a difference in how much time you have to pursue creative endeavors. No getting around it.

But the other answer is that I am sort of deliberate about how I structure my day. And I've figured out what kinds of things I can do and when I can do them throughout the day.

For instance, I don't like to write in the mornings. Never have. So I write in the afternoons, after lunch. I paint in the mornings.

I know how to break a project down into bite-sized pieces and just do a little every day, knowing it will all add up. Writing a page a day gives me a book in a year. Spending an hour or two on a painting every morning gives me a new painting every few days.

And now that I've started to teach classes online, I've learned how to break that process down into smaller chunks and just do a little every day. (And by the way, I teach a class on developing good writing habits, which you can take on Skillshare or on Udemy , where I have made it part of a longer class on starting a book.)

I save up all that nonsensical admin work--answering emails, paying bills, etc--for late afternoon or evenings, when I'm too brain-dead to do anything interesting.

So how do I do what I do? A little at a time, and with the luxury of very few distractions.
 

Ask a Question, Win a Book

Most of you know the drill by now. Ask me a question and tell me which book you'd like to win. If I pick your question to answer in the next newsletter, I'll send you the book you chose.  Please head over here to enter, and if you've entered before, ask the same question or a different one! I love all your questions and hope to get to all of them eventually. Only SIX people entered last month. Your chances are good!

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

Hey, do you need a project to get you through the long winter months ahead? How about a 9000 piece Lego set of the Roman Colosseum? Sure, it's $550, but it's cheaper than that trip to Italy that you can't take anyway, right? I wondered how long it would take to build, so of course I had to look it up, and apparently a fast Lego-builder can assemble about 400 pieces per hour, which clocks this in at roughly 23 hours. I would not even be able to find 400 pieces in an hour, so I'm estimating this would take me 3000 hours, or roughly an entire year of full-time construction, which means I could just have it finished by the time I can actually go to Italy again.

New Art in My Shop

Paris! Brooklyn! I'm going through old photos of past travels and making new paintings. Feel free to stop by my little art shop anytime and have a poke around. You can always see new stuff on Instagram, too.

I'm still doing virtual events!

I'm always happy to do an online chat with a book club, but now I'm also doing actual presentations, like the sort of thing I used to do on the road in the Before Times. So if you run a lecture series or any sort of event series and you need a virtual speaker, you can go here to see four types of virtual events I'm doing now. Feel free to pass this on if you know someone who's putting on these types of events right now.

Are you writing a book? Want to learn to paint? I have some new classes!

I teach a lot of writing classes on Skillshare, which is a membership site kind of like Netflix where you can take all the classes you like. This link gives you a free trial. 

But some people don't want to sign up for a membership type thing, so with that in mind I'm adding some of my classes to Udemy, where you just pay to take one class at a time. I just bundled my three classes on how to get started with a first draft, so you can take them all together for one price on Udemy. If you've always wanted to write a book but don't know where to start, or if you've made some false starts and feel stuck--this one's for you.

Or maybe we could paint and draw together! I have a two new classes on mixed media still life. You can use watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, marker, paint pen...and in each class, we learn a few new art techniques, so it's not just about painting this one thing.

The pumpkin class is only on Skillshare at the moment. You can take the florals class on either Udemy or Skillshare--get the links for those here on my blog.

What Are You Reading?

I seem to be on an art biography kick, and I picked this one up mostly because I'm also on a Matisse kick but also because...well, Paris. It's a quick entertaining read. If Montmarte is your thing, you might also love this virtual tour that includes conversations with residents. It's all in French, but it's so charming.