You know those days when you wake up only to find out you're out of coffee AND toothpaste? When you wait for the bus in a fog of drizzle and a passing car sends a mud puddle up in the air and then down with a splash onto your head? Then at work everyone seems really mean and the vending machine eats your last dollar and the most interesting email of the day is a chain letter?

Well, at least in Nancyland it wasn't one of those days. I cleared my desk early, strapped on the hiking boots and hit the butt busting trails that scale the towering basalt cliffs rising high above the Columbia River. My mind cleared out, my legs are screaming and the endorphins make everything seem all rainbows and unicorns.

And then I came home to an email from my editor alerting me to a very excellent review of my new book, Big, Bigger, Biggest.

You can check it out here: http://wildaboutnaturewriters.blogspot.com/

Now everything's rainbows, unicorns AND chocolate cupcakes.

I love chocolate cupcakes....

Yesterday, I fled the confines of my troll hole (otherwise known as my office/studio to get out into the big, big world of nature. It was a beautiful day, and knowing that the famous Portland rains were already hulking off the coast just waiting to make sure we all remembered we aren't called webfoots for nothing, a friend and I laced up our hiking boots and headed out to the woods.

This particular trail starts out following a sparkling stream, bubbling over rocks and boulders, flowing past ferns, stands of Solomon's Seal and the shadows of massive Douglas firs. But before long, the trail heads up, up the hill. Goodbye, gentle stream grade - hello, lung bursting, butt busting battle against the law of gravity.

Thankfully, the uphill struggles were broken up by some brief downhills and the higher we climbed the more rolling the terrain. Yes, it was an effort, but it wasn't a back breaking, soul sucking one. We watched for hawks and eagles, dodged the pine cones hurled from the Doug firs by belligerent squirrels (NOW I know where monkeys learned to fling poo) and had ourselves a jolly good time overall.

And we looked forward to the hike back to the car. After all, we told ourselves, we'd walked UP to get to the top, so now we'd get to walk DOWN. But it didn't exactly turn out that way. Sure, we did lose elevation on our return trip, but remember the rolling terrain part? It was a LOT more rolling than I remembered. Suddenly, my tired legs were having a bit of difficulty heading UP. And I had to give them a combination of a stern talking-to and a pep talk to keep my pooped gams moving. But move they did and I was very happy to see the car at the end of it all.

I've hiked a lot of hikes. I've run a lot of runs. I've completed a marathon and ridden over a hundred miles in a day on my bike on more than a few occasions. It's ingrained in me that during any hike, run, bike ride or marathon there are uphills, downhills and a bunch of rolling terrain in between.

Today I hit a bit of an uphill - not in my exercise regime, but in my work. I thought I was on the easy downhill part of a project. But a call from my agent let me know that, like so many deals and contracts in these "uncertain economic times" my deal had gone poof. But I didn't freak, I didn't wail in despair, claw at my eyes or even remotely feel like doing so.

I was disappointed, sure. But that disappointment felt familiar. It felt like yesterday when after a pleasant ten minutes of downhill hiking, yet another incline loomed just ahead. I knew all I had to do was huff and puff and then there'd be another downhill coming along soon. It's just the way it is - in hiking or in a creative career.

But here's the other part that made that hike and that disappearing deal feel much more manageable. I wasn't alone in either situation. On the hike, my friend and I would chat it up during the uphills, encourage each other and talk about the downhills yet to come. On the phone today, my agent and I didn't dwell on the bad news but instead made plans about just how we'd not only get past this challenge (climb that hill) but also talked about all the wonderful rolling terrain that is the true reality of my career right now.

So I just can't make myself feel bad about this. Maybe all those athletic endeavors and 25 years of making my living as an artist and writer have allowed me a little perspective about these things.

And maybe it's also because I'm the luckiest person in the world to have not only good friends and hiking buddies, but also the best agent ever - one who always sticks with me on the uphills and never, ever lets me forget the triumphs of a journey successfully completed.

I attended my 30 year high school reunion this weekend. I wasn't sure I really wanted to go. I mean, I wasn't exactly a happy teenager (do those creatures actually exist?) and I wasn't a particularly avid student so it seemed like a bit of a scary prospect. What if no one talked to me? What if no one remembered me? What if the banquet style dinner, the 89 DOLLAR banquet dinner was icky?

But I was happily surprised.

Sure, the food wasn't all that great, but the rest of it? It was all sorts of odd, unexpected, wonderful and more odd. And then more wonderful times ensued.

It didn't start out that way, though.

When I walked into the event hall, I was flummoxed. I didn't recognize a single face. Who were these people - and what had they done with my high school friends?

But, after a necessary visit to the no-host bar for my white wine security blanket, I began tentatively making the rounds. Slowly, ever so slowly, the faces of those long ago teenagers emerged from the middle-aged faces we now all wore.

The voices began to shine through as well and suddenly I could pick out the shrill, unmistakable shriek of a former cheerleader. I heard the huge laugh of the class clown. Before long, even though the old familiar was gone forever, a new familiar had taken its place.

We all laughed and drank and laughed some more and promised each other that it wouldn't be so long before the next time we got together.

How does this relate to writing, you ask? Fine - this is how.

I've had a frantically busy summer full of work, life and life's little catastrophes. I was about a third of a way through the first draft of my newest work in progress when, because the shinola hit the fan, had to put my new novel away.

And the longer I was away from it, the scarier it felt to have to face it again. What if it didn't talk to me? What if I didn't recognize it? What if I thought it was icky?

But attending the reunion gave me the confidence to reacquaint myself with my story. Sure, by now, the old familiar was long gone. But you know, I prefer the experience, crow's feet and the few gray hairs of the new familiarity I now had with my story.

I'm ready to rock on with my work in progress again.

And class of 1979 - you totally rock too.

In my last post I wrote about writing for fun - forgetting about dreams of the fame and fortunes of published work glory (ha!) and just enjoy the thrill of making stuff up.

Last week while teaching 3rd through 6th graders the joys of making stuff I decided to jump right in and make something up myself. Amazing! For the first time in a long while writing didn't feel so much like rats gnawing at my toes and instead was, wait for it, fun. I thought I'd post the fruits of my efforts -

just for fun.

Frank

Frank awoke to lovely Antarctic evening. As the moon rose he stretched his wings and yawned. His tummy rumbled and he grinned. Frank's fangs glittered in the starlight as he leapt up from his ice floe and dove into the water as clean and silent as a knife blade. He had places to go and things to do.

Frank took pleasure in the teeming ranks of panicked little fish that darted all around him. As a penguin vampire, the only penguin vampire in the world, Frank knew that frightened fish blood was the tastiest.

One evening as Frank gleefully preyed upon the fish, he noticed something he'd never seen before. Way back, among the jumbled rocks in the dark of a sea cave, Frank spied an opening.

"What's this?" he asked. "A home of some sort?" Frank peered into the black of the hole. "A home for a tasty snack?"

Two eyes suddenly blinked open.

"Aha!" cried Frank as he lunged forward. But the space was too small for him to fit through. "Ouch!" said Frank as his beak crunched against the hard rock. Frank felt himself running out of air. He needed to get back to the surface.

"I'll be back," he promised the glowing eyes.

The next night Frank returned to the pile of rocks.

"Knock, knock!" he called.

The eyes appeared. "Who's there?"

"Come on out," answered Frank, "and you'll see."

"You're a vampire penguin," said the eyes. "You'll drink my blood."

"Oh, no," Frank lied, trying not to drool. "I wouldn't do a thing like that."

"I'm just a baby," said the eyes. "And I'm the last of my kind, so I have to be careful."

"A baby!" thought Frank. "And the last of its kind? That makes it all the more special. I won't touch another drop of ordinary fish blood until I have this delicacy!"

"Maybe if you brought me something to eat," suggested the eyes. "Then I might trust you a little."

Frank turned and flapped hard through the water. He gathered a bunch of seaweed together and got to work.

"Here," said Frank when he got back to the rocks. "I made you a kelp cake."

"Just toss it in," said the eyes.

Frank did and the kelp cake disappeared. "Now do you trust me?" he asked.

"Sort of," said the eyes. "But I'm still hungry."

Frank spent the whole evening fetching food for the baby. He brought sea urchin casserole, starfish surprise and even a jellyfish sandwich. One by one the treats vanished into the rocks.

"Are you ready to come out now?" asked Frank.

"I'll think about it," said the eyes. "Can you come back later?"

"You bet I'll be back later," grumbled Frank. He climbed up on his ice floe and sighed. His stomach ached with hunger and he felt weak. "I'll make that baby face me," vowed Frank, "if it's the last thing I do."

The next night, Frank stood in front of the opening. "Come on out," he called, "like you promised."

"I promised no such thing," said the eyes and for a moment Frank thought they took on a red glint. "I need one more thing from you to prove that we'll get along just fine."

"What final thing?" asked Frank impatiently, knowing he must eat soon. He could feel himself getting skinnier by the minute.

"I need a nightlight," said the eyes. "the deep sea Angler Fish make the best ones."

"But they're at the bottom of the deepest trench," protested Frank.

"Then you better get going," replied the eyes.

As Frank raced to the to the trench, he consoled himself with the thought that the baby was probably nice and fat from all the treats he'd been eating. "That'll make him extra tasty," he promised his growling stomach.

Suddenly he saw a glow and flitted fast toward the unsuspecting Angler Fish. The surprised fish sank its teeth into Frank's flipper.

"Ouch!" yelled Frank, but he tightened his grip on his prize. "This better be worth it!" Leaving a trickle of blood behind him, Frank swam back to the rocks.

"Soon I'll get what I deserve."

His stomach grumbled in reply.

When Frank arrived back at the opening, he held the Angler Fish before him. "Here's your nightlight!"

There was no answer.

"I said," Frank's voice shook with anger and determination, "I have your Angler Fish. Come out and get it, you selfish baby!"

There was still no answer.

"That's it!" shrieked Frank. "I'm coming in after you!"

Frank was so thin by now he easily slipped through the rocks. Once inside, he held the Angler Fish high and looked around. "Come out, come out wherever you are," said Frank. "Your blood will soon be mine."

The light from the fish illuminated his surroundings and Frank took in the interior of the baby's home. Huge stone walls loomed from all sides. Boulders hulked like whale backs on the sandy floor. But that wasn't what captured Frank's attention. Bones littered the gigantic cavern. Skeletons draped over the rocks, and skulls - fish, sea mammal, and bird stared blindly from their stony perches.

"What an odd place for a baby," thought Frank. "No wonder he had me running all over the place for him. He must be lonely."

"I'm sorry I scared you," said Frank, feeling sorry for the little guy. "I promise I won't drink your blood. You can come out now."

"Is that your blood I smell?"

Frank whirled around, holding the fish up, but it only cast shadows across the rocks and bones. "It's okay," he stammered. "The Angler Fish nipped me is all." Frank felt the feathers go up on the back of his neck. "Where are you?" he asked.

"Your blood smells nice, Frank." The baby's voice sounded almost oily now - smooth and slick.

"Uh, thanks," said Frank, suddenly wanting very badly to be back on his ice floe. "Why don't you come out and get your night light? I told you I wouldn't hurt you."

"That's nice to know, Frank."

Frank felt a tap on his shoulder. His empty stomach now in his throat, he slowly turned around.

The last thing Frank heard was a roared "TASTY!"

The last thing Frank saw was the small, familiar eyes of the baby - attached to the scaly, tentacled, clawed, razor jaws of the rest of its body.

Later, the baby napped. He was content. As a penguin vampire hunter, the only penguin vampire hunter in the world, he knew that frightened vampire penguin blood was the tastiest.


Author's note: I hear vampires are out, out, out in the publishing world. So instead of jumping the shark with my contribution to the ranks of bloodsucker stories out there - I thought I'd jump the penguin.

My name is Nancy Coffelt and I'm a - writer. These words should be uttered in some church basement, seated in a metal folding chair along with all the other others, sipping watery coffee, directing our collective angst toward the center - the shimmering devil jewel - our creativity, that is at once horrible and fabulous.

I don't believe we chose this. We were born this way. Sitting alone and despairing in a room illuminated by nothing a monitor screen? Babbling endlessly about character, plot, and the pluperfect tense? Subsisting on nothing but frozen pizza, Twizzlers, and Diet Cherry-vanilla Dr. Pepper (sooo excellent, by the way) for weeks? Pasty skin, increasingly eroding social skills, a growing dread of but irresistable pull towards the qwerty god? Blame the writing, not the writer.

And that's just the fabulous part.

The horrible is when you can't suffer all of the above when you want to - when the dog needs walking, the laundry needs doing, an actual paycheck must be brought in - your spouse or children have the nerve to want to talk to you - that's the horrible part.

So what are we supposed to do about it?

Continue to suffer, that's a given. But maybe, just maybe there is a possibility of perhaps a smidgen, an iota, a microscopic bit of a chance of creating some sort of balance.

But even finding some other interest to distract you from your creativity then becomes an obession in itself. Come on, admit it. The same driving force holding your nose hard down on that writing grindstone has a circle of influence that extends well beyond the keyboard. For example, I play tennis. But am I able to just go out and peacefully lob a ball back and forth? If you guessed yes then you've never been on the opposite side of the net from me when I'm all wild eyes and bared teeth. I've had prettier moments, that's for sure - but pretty don't win, baby and that's what that distraction became - another mountain to conquer. Tennis = winning, so scratch that off the distraction list.

Running was no different, neither was cribbage, backgammon, and scrabble - triple word score using all my letters including a Z - eat that word, sucker!

Can you sense a pattern here? The distractions I chose were all of the competitive variety and that does make some sense. In writing, we are competing with others out in the marketplace to a degree, but mostly we're competing with - wait for it - ourselves. It's in our nature.

So is it the writing that has us by the short hairs or is it competitvness?

I decided to try a little experiment. I'd do my best to relax, have fun, NOT COMPETE with myself or anybody else with my writing.

What a concept. I'm teaching writing to a group of kids this week and while they had their heads bent over their papers, tongues sticking out sideways, writing about something that was silly and fun, I did the same. Wow. The angst shrieked and shriveled away to nothing. I felt my shoulders go down, I lost inches off my waist and thighs, my hair was full and shiny, my wrinkles disappered and my complexion glowed. Not really but a girl can dream. The angst shrivelling is true though - seriously.

And the best part was that I really liked what I wrote. It's not publishable - not by a long shot, but it's fun and more importantly it was fun to write. That writing became a distraction from my writing.

Funny how life work's isn't it?

So here's to all of you finding your distractions from your obsessions. If it's knitting socks, great. If it's baking pies, I'll be right over. But if it's simply pulling the competitive fangs off your creativity for even a little while - more power to you.

In these challenging economic times... Don't you hate it when the icy-eyed talking heads on the TV mindlessly reading what passes for news these days say those words? Aaaaaaaah! Make them stop!

Well, as long as those words are still bringing in the donut money for them there's not much of a chance of that. And the truth is - it IS challenging out there and making a living as a writer or an artist is even harder than the extremely hard it was before everything exploded in our faces just like that one Brady Bunch episode where Peter's science project volcano blows mud lava all over Marcia and her snotty friends. Wow, that last sentence was a lot longer than the mini dresses Marcia and her snotty friends were wearing that day I tell you.

What's creative person to do?

We can continue to create. That's a given because it's not like we have a choice about that, right? We're always creating whether we want to or not. Don't tell me you've never looked up in a panic from a doodle-covered slip of paper only to come eye to eye with someone (usually spouse) asking in a not nice way, "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?)

So then what? We're still creating. But what if fewer and fewer are spending their hard-earned bucks on said creations. I guess that's when it's time to confront the dreaded "P" word -

promotion.

Nooooooooooooooo! Most creative people are introverts. We live in our heads and like it there so very, very much. Go out into the world? Actually face people? Talk about - gulp - myself?

Yep.

As someone who spent her adolesence hiding behind her hair, a book or her sketchpad, I'm vastly qualified to hate this prospect as much as you do. Getting out there, putting yourself forward can feel downright, well, icky.

But we're creative, right? Well that's where you can put your skills to use. How can you promote yourself without having to see, or worse, talk to anyone? That's the main reason I started a blog. It was a way to get new work seen and - AND THIS IS IMPORTANT - purchased. There is a pretty button on the right sidebar that says "fine art". The art there (fine) is mine. AND IT'S FOR SALE.

Facebook is supposed to be all that and then some as far as promotion. But honestly, if I see one more quiz like "What kind of egg dish are you?" I'll do more than scream, I'll sing. And no one wants to hear that.

Posting insightful and helpful comments on other blogs can also bring you some attention. But notice that I said "insightful" and "helpful". If your idea of that is an endless stream of "right on!" and "yeah, baby!" then perhaps that's not for you.

I belong to a fabulous group called Picture Book Artists Association (http://picturebookartists.org/ - check them out) and I always feel like such a slacker when I hear members say they've just sent out a huge mailing of postcards of their art to editors and art directors. I haven't done that in a couple of years - BUT - I am a member of that group, pay my dues, and get to be listed on that site. So even though I AM a slacker in the postcard department, I am not a slacker when it comes to joining professional organizations - whew. So maybe that's something you can do too.

Well, that's all I have for now. I the meantime, here's my last promotional plug for the day:

My book, Fred Stays With Me is being translated into French - tre classy.
My book, Big, Bigger, Biggest is going into its third printing since April - awesome.
And my debut novel, Listen is going to be out in less than 3 months - oh happy day!

Back to hiding behind something now.....