It’s my third morning of work — back on the novel — and, just as I predicted, I’m feeling better about it. And about life.

I’ve also been reading The Pen and the Bell, a splendid new book about writing and meditation by Holly Hughes and Brenda Miller. One exercise they suggest is to write about how one begins.

This summer I haven’t been getting up early. Even when I get to bed at a decent time (last night, for instance) I sleep until six or seven in the morning. This morning, it was seven o’clock when I opened my eyes. But by 7:15 I had made coffee and was headed out to my cabin. Or, “The Potting Shed,” which is what I call it. I flipped on some music (Shostakovich), and my electric fireplace (no heat today, just the flicker of flames), and turned on a lamp.

Some mornings I light a candle, too. It was so warm this morning I skipped the candle (and soon turned off the flames — who needs the atmosphere when it’s 75 degrees at 8 a.m.?). I got out my journal and scribbled, pretty aimlessly, for a while. Then I picked up my notebook.

I read aloud. I made some notes. I found  my laptop (in the house, in Annie’s room as she borrows it to do her math homework and never returns it). I typed up what I have on the midpoint event. I’m killing a character — just a minor one — but it’s hard! I tend to watch out for my characters as if they were my children, and even the bad ones get all kinds of attention and positive efforts lavished on them if I’m not careful. “How does this advance the plot?” “How does this contribute to the main character’s emotional development?”

I wrote a very bad first draft of the death scene. I printed it out.

And now to do a little more.

That wasn’t so much how I start as the whole lollapalooza.

Over and over people say to me, “How nice that you’re not working this summer.” That’s what I want to write about tomorrow.

 

 

So I have been thinking about mentors, and then today my friend Carolynne gave me a piece of writing about courage. I think what the ideal mentor does is to give us courage. In Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor is a friend of Odysseus, an older, trusted adviser. The goddess Athena later takes the form of Mentor in order to encourage Penelope.

I have had a lot of good mentors, but some of the best of them came to me because I had the courage to ask for them. When I was embarking on graduate school, and (at the same time — what folly!) trying to adopt a baby, I went in search of women professors who had children. I wanted my journey to be comprehensible to them. I also wanted to have, clearly in view, a model of what I hoped to achieve.

It’s good to have people who will read manuscripts and push you to become a better and better writer. It’s great if you have someone who enables your work. Maybe. But mentors don’t necessarily do the down-and-dirty work, and, in the classic sense, they don’t  do that sort of work. All a mentor has to do is give you something to believe in. Well, and believe in you.  When I look back over my life, I’ve had scores of people who did that for me. Suddenly, I think of my Aunt Evelyn who always thought I was brilliant, even when everyone else thought I was a skinny little fifth grader who didn’t practice the piano enough. As an assignment, maybe we should all stop what we’re doing and write a thank you note to a mentor.

Thinking about Aunt Evelyn, makes me think about food, and — interestingly enough — here’s my desk calendar: “Rich, fatty foods are like destiny: they, too, shape our ends.” And so do beliefs. Have the courage to believe in yourself. I’ll believe in you, too.