Kusasa -- This week's blog post

Kassi’s African name is Kusasa.  It means future, or tomorrow.  Deciding to get a pup was a big decision for us.  After losing Brodi it was hard to think of going through that loss again.  Sunny grieved and he had some health issues afterward that we’d never experienced had before.  After about six months, he recovered and returned to his spry self.  But he was coming up on nine years old.  I still hope we have a long time together, but big dogs being big dogs, you just never know.  We figured he was healthy enough to handle a pup at this point, but if we waited any longer, then it might be too late.  I really wanted him to help train the new dog in the house, which turned out to be really helpful.  We considered a rescue, and that might still be a possibility down the road, but we had to look at our own ages as well, and the truth is, Kassi might be our last big dog puppy.  It was a now or never decision, one that we haven’t regretted from day one. Kassi was meant to carry on the legacy of Brodi and Sunny, to fill our house with as much ridgebackiness (yes, I know that’s not a word) as possible, for us to keep walking and moving into the future.  Plans change, life changes, but one hopes that there will be some constants.  Kassi is our constant, and she has proven that she’s more than up to the task.  We couldn’t have asked for a better pup.   

When someone asks me about writer’s block, I usually respond that I don’t believe in it, that you can’t edit a blank page, that you have to keep moving and write you’re way out of the spot you’re stuck in.  I totally believe that, and I’ve used Anne Lamott’s “Don’t be afraid a shitty first draft,” as a mantra for more years than I can count.  Writers, artists, musicians, creative people don’t quit.  At least not the ones who are obsessed, who have to create or tempt madness.  No matter what life throws at you, if you’re an artist, you have to create, exercise your craft, believe in the future.   

Whatever it takes.  Keep moving.  Find that constant, whether it’s the dream of publishing one book or striving for a career.  Whatever it is you have to have something to hang to and something to pull you forward, otherwise when the going gets tough, it’ll be easy to walk away, to quit, and then there’s only regret left to chew on…  Find your own Kusasa, your own future and believe in it as deeply and completely as possible. 

Walking (Part 2)

I should probably take a step back and explain why I chose to have Rhodesian ridgebacks in my life.  After freelancing for a couple of years, I knew I needed a reason to get out from behind the desk.  I was indexing more and writing less in those days and I was spending a lot of time in my chair.  When we moved to the house we live in now, I would be sitting and working, and at certain times of the day I would look up and see a guy walking a big Siberian husky regularly.  Like clockwork.   And I thought, that’s I what I need to do…  And so it began. 

Up to that point, I had not been a dog walker even though we’d had a dog, Meggie, a basenji, that lived to be sixteen.  I would even venture to say that I was a sub-par dog owner.  She got a decent amount of attention, decent food, reasonably regular vet visits, but that was about it.  No exercise, no focus on her.  Meg was just part of our house and part of our life.   I learned a lot from her.   So, after some time without her, I started looking into large breed dogs.  I wanted a dog that could handle walking regularly.  Meg had a lot of African attributes that we liked.  Short hair, quiet, smart, loyal, so I started looking in that direction and I immediately found ridgebacks.  Then by happenstance not long after, Rose and I were out at a park walking, and a guy with two big red ridgebacks came our way.  We stopped and talked for a minute, then off they went.  It’s still a vivid memory today almost fifteen years later.  I knew right then that ridgebacks were for me and it wasn’t long before Brodi, our first ridgeback, came into our life.  He was a great dog, and I probably have lot more to say than that, but we did walk every day, three times a day in the beginning and two most other days unless it was just too cold.  After we lost Brodi, when he was almost thirteen, I calculated that we had walked all the across the United States and half way back again.  It wasn’t a glamorous walk, nothing to brag about.  That was never the point.  We hardly ever left the neighborhood.  But in that time, I got out from behind the desk, got some exercise, experienced some sunshine and rain, and worked out a whole lot of plot problems and gained more ideas than I could ever hope to finish.

Walking on a regular, disciplined basis has become an essential part of my writing and indexing practice.  But so has my time with the dogs. After we lost Brodi, Sunny and I walked the same path, and that unbroken routine helped to ease the pain and allowed us both keep going.  Our decision to bring Kassi into the house will help us all walk into the future, which by the way is the basis for Kassi’s name.  Her African name is Kusasa.  It means tomorrow, the future.  Once the weather warms up, Kassi will join Sunny and I on our journey to anywhere…as I solve plot problems and continue to wonder and wander in and out of my imagination. Sometimes the the biggest, most important part of writing happens when you aren't working.

Brodi’s African name was Baruti, by the way.  It means teacher. 

  

Walking (Part 1)

No dog ever wants to walk on a leash.  Imagine tethering a wolf and telling it to heel the first time you meet it.  Good luck with that.   One of the most useful ways to train a dog to walk on a leash is to introduce the lead slowly to a pup.  If you put a leash on a pup then pull it in tight next you and start barking orders, then the pup is going to stress out, feel your disappointment, and most likely start bucking like a wild horse.   A loose leash is usually the best place to start training a pup to have some walking manners.  Wrap the leash around you, walk backward slowly, and entice the pup to follow you with a treat and with no tension on the lead.   If your pup is food-motivated like Kassi is, then it won’t be long before your pup will ignore the leash and focus on you.  Heeling comes later.

Starting out as a writer is just as stressful as pup learning to heel.   What to write, how to get it published, what will readers think (oh, I hope grandma doesn’t read this), etc. can be very intimidating.  So can writing a novel.   It’s so long…  How do you keep your momentum and your enthusiasm?

I started out writing short stories.  The treat I was following was length. I was happy to finish a story so I could start another one.   I was intimidated by novels.  I wrote one story after another, learning and submitting as I went.  I did that for a couple of years until I was comfortable with what a story really was, and then I attempted to tackle the elephant in the room, the long feared novel.  I proceeded to eat it one bite at a time.  I wrote seven novels before the first one was published. 

Short stories might not be your thing.  Maybe the novel is your ultimate quest.  You can still make it simple.  Write page a day.  A year later, you’ll have a novel.  Don’t stress out and don’t make it so hard on yourself that you stop pursuing your dream.  And remember to give yourself a treat when you’ve accomplished your daily goal, even if that treat is the simple satisfaction for taking one more step closer to writing the best novel you can.