Question: As a huge fan of your first book, The Italian Prisoner, I’ve met Laura before, but please tell us how she came to be the protagonist of Triage. What was it about her that intrigued you?

Answer: In conducting the research behind Laura’s letters home to her sister Rose in the first book, I waded through journals, letters, memoirs, and oral histories about nurses in the service—during World War II and other wars. Of course, there’s no shortage of World War II stories out there. Sometimes women show up, as they do in Martha Hall Kelly’s and Kristin Hannah’s books. But I was disappointed there weren’t more novels written about the American nurses who served in World War II, outside of a few books about the 67 nurses who were captured as POWs in the Pacific, and a couple of nurse-adjacent books, like Luis Alberto Urrea’s wonderful novel Good Night, Irene about the Red Cross Clubmobile girls. I wondered: why was there no “band of sisters?”

Q: I was especially taken with the Anzio bombing scene, in which Laura is most shaken, and I am curious how you went about researching and recreating it so effectively.

A: I was so intrigued by this brutal siege that I traveled to Anzio in 2024 and visited the battlefield and hospital sites. I also got to tour the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and the grave of Lt. Ellen Ainsworth, one of six nurses killed at Anzio. Two memoirs were especially helpful: A Half Acre of Hell, by Lt. Avis D. Schorer (Army Nurse Corps), and They Called it Purple Heart Valley, by Margaret Bourke-White, the Life magazine photographer who has a cameo appearance in the book.

Q: Frances is such a compelling, larger-than-life character. Did you have a model for her? How did you create her?

A: I can’t seem to write a story without centering female friendship, and Frances was mentioned in Laura’s letters in The Italian Prisoner. She’s a composite of some colorful friends I’ve had (from Texas and elsewhere) and my imagination. I needed a foil for Laura’s more reserved personality, and Frances stepped up.

Q: The structure of the book, flipping between the 1940s and the aftermath in the 1950s, was also an interesting choice, rather than moving chronologically. I can guess why you did it that way, but please explain for the readers.

A: In writing the 1951 narrative, I kept wanting to know more about why Laura was making certain choices (many of them ill-advised) and how her experience in the war informed what was happening in her life. I don’t think readers would have been satisfied if I just mentioned the war and moved on. It was tricky getting all the timelines and story arcs to line up, but even more challenging to make sure the flashback sections had equal weight and depth to the contemporary sections. Otherwise, the characters would’ve felt too flat, and I think readers pick up on that.

Q: Two of the male leads, Nicholas and Boyer, were wonderfully complex characters who defied stereotypes while also being realistic for the culture at the time. They surprised me when I thought I had them pegged, especially Boyer. Was that a goal of yours? Or did it just happen as you were writing?

A: Thanks! I wish I could say I set out to do that, but they kind of showed up that way. Boyer especially. He stepped into the story fully-formed and started making decisions. Nicholas was a little more challenging, since he was present both in 1951 and in the war, so his character arc had to line up.

Q: The novel makes us realize how undervalued nurses were by the military—and by all of us, really—after their service. What led you to develop this as a theme?

A: Over 70,000 American nurses served during World War 2, and 222 died during the war. PTSD wasn’t a named condition until 1980. The men suffered enduring trauma, of course, but the women bore the added burden of not having their service recognized. At the Anzio cemetery, I saw a plaque that read: “In proud remembrance of the achievements of her sons and in humble tribute to their sacrifice, this memorial has been erected by the United States of America.” I don’t think there was malicious intent, but the American nurses were written out of the story. I wanted to write them back in.

This morning I spent some time on my back porch, digging oak catkins out of the cracks on the deck (I hear catkins make good mulch. The trees have given us enough to cover an acre, I think), and scrubbing down the outdoor table and chairs encrusted with golden brown pollen. My dark blue car was covered in thick yellow dust, even though I’d washed it just yesterday.

I love how I feel when I’ve just cleaned something up, and made it all fresh. I actually do like house chores, especially on a pretty morning. Spring cleaning outdoors especially appeals to me, getting ready for the summer. Eager as I am, there’s really no reason to start this process any earlier in spring, with two giant (beautiful but messy) oak trees right next door. Cleaning might be futile for a couple more weeks, but one must fight the good fight.

While I was outside, the sun was shining and everything felt possible so I finally planted a tomato start that I picked up for free at the library, even while knowing the odds of it making into fruit-bearing adulthood were pretty slim (because that’s how good a gardener I am). Last month I bought a pot of sunflowers to decorate the area by the door to my studio, then later brought it home to plant in the yard. Currently it’s still in the pot but after I deadheaded it, it looked happy in the sun so there’s still hope for it. Little things make a big difference.

Birds were chirping. Somebody’s dog was barking its greetings. Neighbors who have been gone since last autumn were outside in their garden chatting with visitors. Multiple voices, laughter, and a bit of clinking glass - sounds of praise for summer.

The best part of the morning clean up was getting into the outdoor shower for the first time this year. Heaven. Looking at the blue sky, standing naked in the “rain,” washing away all my worries (and that pollen). Then I was off to write at Featherstone.

On my way home I stopped at Owen Park. Donning a big hat, another first for the year, I walked out to the end of the new dock. Having grown up on an island in California, it feels comfortingly familiar to stand on a dock in the sun, just a step from the water. It’s deeply reassuring in ways I can’t describe.

At the end of the day I went for another walk. Neighbors up the block offered stems from their beautiful white peony bush. I’ll go back with my clippers to take them up on their offer. Neighborly generosity, and peonies! What a luxury!

Despite the heat and all the other woes of our times, people around town seem pretty relaxed and happy lately, especially the ones coming to the island for a little vacation. Visitors got lucky with the weather this weekend. So did the MVRHS graduates! Congratulations kids!

Happy sunny days, friends. May your flowers bloom and the world stay on its axis.

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If you want to help me look good to my co-writers, hit the heart (like) button.

In the immediate post-Covid world, when I launched with a friend what turned into the supportive sisterhood of the Washashores Writers Collective, I assumed it to be an anomaly.

But then I stumbled upon Biographers International.

I’d just been tasked by the Martha’s Vineyard Museum with guest-curating an exhibit on the actress Katharine Cornell. Though I love reading biographies, I’ve never myself told the story of another person’s life. I needed to learn how, and fast. So I googled: “biography” + “organizations".

Within days of reaching out to the email addresses I found on Bio’s website, I got a friendly reply. Next, I was linked with the accomplished biographer Lisa Napoli. Lisa and I had a friendly phone and; she offered to coach me through my project. I started catching up on their fascinating podcast series, including this one that tracked four biographers in action.

This instant welcome by a group of accomplished biographers was a stunning gift to someone new to the field of biography. For Bio people, though, such support seems to require only a shared enthusiasm.

I signed up for their 2026 the day registration opened.

Even before the conference opened, Bio held a roundtable on Zoom for first-timers—organized, we were told, so we’d see familiar faces when we arrived at the conference.

Nice!

That niceness permeated the conference. The concourse level of the CUNY Grad Center on Fifth Avenue was filled with strangers who greeted me with sincere curiosity: “Hi, who are you? What’s your project?”

Over two days I heard speeches by Pulitzer Prize and other award winners, each one packed with ideas and advice for newbies like me (to be shared in future posts here).

I found the same spirit of inclusion I thought unique to the Washashores Writers Collective. And left the closing reception with thoughtful suggestions from experts on questions I had about my project. (Plus, I walked away with an expert-curated reading list.)

Over the years, I’ve been in traditional writing groups, attended countless workshops, and even worked with a book coach at one point. But what’s helped more than anything is discovering “mutual aid societies”—collections of smart, welcoming, and supportive people. Groups like that—maybe not as rare as I once assumed—are essential sustenance for the all-too-solitary months and years it takes to turn a creative dream into a finished project. Where have you found your sources of support?

P.S. The Washashore Writers Collective just published its second annual anthology. Check it out!

You know which you are. Unless, bafflingly, you are one of the masses who sat in the middle rows. And who are, I’m assuming—perhaps unfairly—to be normal and thus (to me) uninteresting. (Sincere apologies to my middle-row readers.)

But I digress. As an introvert, I am, unapologetically, a back-row person. Teachers and instructors who coaxed (or forced) me to move forward “to join in the conversation” meant well, but engendered acute discomfort. (As do rooms set up with seats in a circle or square, and thus no back row.) With no one behind me, I can relax and concentrate without the distraction of feeling eyes on the back of my head. (Classroom settings only, I’m as fond as the next person of a good seat at a performance.)

I posit that back-row people, excluding the slackers, process information differently. I suspect we are more independent, non-conformist, “out of the box” thinkers who seek the big picture, unlike my law school classmates whose compulsive hand-raising was so predictable that it spawned “Turkey Bingo” and the “Gage Gauge.” (In Turkey Bingo, the grid was filled out not with numbers but with the names of the inveterate hand-raisers. The “Gage Gauge” involved guessing, I believe, when and how many times Gage, who went on to enjoy professional success, would raise his hand.)

The introversion-extroversion trait that differentiates back-row from front-row people is obvious, but are there other factors at play? (Besides running late or being unprepared and/or hungover, the latter a not uncommon occurrence at my law school.) Are back-row people more creative and independent-minded? Or just terrified at being put in the spotlight? Although AI was happy to hallucinate an answer, actual studies focused primarily (and not surprisingly) on academic success. Which, predictably, gave a gold star to the front row-ers. And my searches failed to disgorge anything about where Steve Jobs or Bill Gates sat. But I’d bet that Steve, with his non-conformist views towards formal education, was a back-row person. (That is, until he dropped out.)

And so my curiosity goes unanswered as I enjoy life from the back row, relaxed in my chair, thinking my un-spoon-fed thoughts, and taking my notes. So, where do you sit — and why?

At the opening of the History Through Fiction writers’ conference I attended in March at Endicott College, bestselling author Sarah Penner (The Lost Apothecary, The London Séance Society, and The Amalfi Curse) told a roomful of writers that her road to publishing began with something she called “creative discontent.”

She found herself struck by a powerful need for an outlet other than her finance job. She tried knitting and cooking, but “something wasn’t cutting it.” She took an online writing course and began waking at an ungodly hour every morning to write before going to work. This drive and dedication led to The Lost Apothecary, her debut novel, which hit #7 on the New York Times bestsellers list and her subsequent bestsellers.

But to me, her talk became even more interesting when she said that after she hands in her latest, she won’t write another book in her dual timeline, slightly mystical, historical genre—at least not right away – again because of “creative discontent.”

Some experts define creative discontent as a restlessness or unease; others as a necessary push to combat complacency. I had never heard the term before Penner’s opening remarks, but I knew exactly what she was talking about.

After writing four murder mysteries published in the early 2000s, I knew I couldn’t write another one, even though I didn’t have the name for the feeling. All I knew was that even though I could write mysteries, now I wanted to find a “story that needed to be told.” A story I felt was meaningful to me, and that I had the best skills to execute.

Creative discontent led me to write a historical true crime book, The Combat Zone: Murder, Race and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, (UMass Press 2021), about a Harvard football player stabbed to death in the city’s old red light district in 1976—at the height of the city’s racial tensions—and the impact the two subsequent murder trials had on improving criminal justice in Massachusetts..

I felt my background in both journalism (a love of research and an ability to hunt down sources) and suspenseful crime writing made me just the right match to tell the story of The Combat Zone. Loving history and growing up working in my father’s law office were bonuses.

My creative discontent with writing mysteries also made me buckle down and finish a historical novel I’d been researching since I began sailing in my early twenties. It’s about the New England women who went on global whaling voyages with their husbands in the 19^th century. These women, who were willing to live as the sole woman aboard a ship of thirty-five men and brave storms for love and adventure, have always fascinated me.

The throughline in both books was a mix of history and suspense in a story I felt was important to tell. But if you are keeping track, that’s technically TWO genre changes.

This is not exactly what you are supposed to do these days as a writer. You’re supposed to stay “on brand” by writing the same kind of book over and over, but my creative discontent wouldn’t let me do that.

But then, I’ve never wanted to be a brand. I’ve only ever wanted to be a writer.

How about you? Have you experienced a “creative discontent” that led you to a more satisfying project? Or maybe a misadventure? (Jury is out on my career.) I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

I’m lucky to have grown up close with aunts, uncles, and cousins, and to have stayed in touch with them. I’ve traveled west for our bi-annual reunions, but no one had come east since 2011, and some had never even been to New England.

Every year, when the forsythia and daffodils bring their sunny yellow greetings, I want them to see it, too. Walking home along Main Street, catching glimpses of bright blue water between the white buildings, or wandering the beach from Owen Little to the ferry, I wish they could see what I see: the rocks and shells, the growing number of boats on the water, and the big sky that reminds me of our grandparents’ homestead in Montana. Even at Cronig’s, buying groceries, I imagine stocking up for visiting family and cooking meals together while stories are told for the first or hundredth time.

Martha’s Vineyard and the west coast don’t have much in common beyond the water. I wanted my family to experience this place. I also wanted everyone to see me where I live, as though they couldn’t fully know me unless they could picture me at home in this landscape.

Now that we cousins are the eldest generation - and some of us have already passed - that now-or-never feeling was creeping up on me. So I arranged a get together here on MV.

I rented a big house near town and the water, just blocks from mine, and last Sunday the cousins who could make the trip arrived. A few couldn’t manage the journey and were deeply missed, but there were still plenty of us.

For me it was gratifying to know there was something new for them to discover here. On her way to the island, one cousin texted from the ferry terminal to say she had just tried chowder for the first time in her life. At the end of the week, a few people tasted their first lobster rolls.

My daughter and her beau helped cook and drive cars. She also scanned an impressive pile of family trees, poems, eulogies, and stories stretching back a hundred years. So many ways to be remembered, identified, connected.

The week itself was wonderfully simple. We cooked and ate together, wandered around town, drove along the stone walls of Chilmark, and rode the bus through Oak Bluffs and Edgartown and back to Vineyard Haven. We spent the week drifting along together: walking, talking, napping, eating (Rosewater, Mo’s, Art Cliff, Offshore Ale, Menemsha…) and exclaiming over the beautiful views. We visited the MV Museum and multiple landmarks, without much of an agenda. Without planning to, we stepped outside ordinary life for a little while, and felt revived by the break.

Yesterday morning, the cousins boarded the ferry home. We took group photos at the landing, something I’ve watched other families do for years. Now it was my turn. I cried watching them leave, but I also felt deeply happy and satisfied.

Having my family here, in the place where I’ve built my life, had the unexpected effect of making me feel landed. It turns out I just needed my people to travel three thousand miles to see me here at home.

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One of her many gifts to her adopted home was to make a film in 1971 called “This Is Our Island.” I’m now going through that film’s archives as research for a 2027 exhibit on Cornell at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

The film’s archive consists of 200+ file folders packed with screenplay drafts, music-score notes, and the like. Most fascinating: the many interviews with Islanders and long-time residents. One talked about the local geological history; another explained the delicate politics of the town meeting. Still another was steeped in the history of the first white settlers who descended on the Wampanoag natives in the 17th century. Yet another focused on the Island’s history of farming.

But everyone had a strong opinion on one thing: HIPPIES!

By the summer of 1971, when these interviews were being conducted, a large contingent of young people had descended on Martha’s Vineyard. Most of the locals were not amused:

• “I hate hippies worse than I hate dirt… They don’t want to work, all they want to do is love.”

• “The only thing they can do is let their hair grow, and their beards grow.”

• “Did you see in the Gazette where they want the people to support the hippies? I think it’s terrible.”

One claimed the hippies’ antics led to Oak Bluffs’ Grand Illumination Night being canceled. (Happy to say rumors of its demise were premature.)

Another told of a Mrs. Mayhew’s confrontation with hippies raiding her flower garden: They claimed the flowers weren’t hers, but God’s. “God doesn’t pay the taxes here,” she retorted and shooed them off.

Several interviewee fretted over whether the hippies might stay through the winter, might make this their home. Might register to vote and change Island life forever.

The hippies did stay; the Island did change. This old Martha’s Vineyard Magazine feature on the hippie years is a fabulous roundup about their impact:

The hippies of 1971 became shop owners, artisans, builders, and fishermen. Like Janet Messineo, who described about her early years on the Island in her brilliant book Casting Into the Wind. Like sculptor Barney Zeitz, who is partnering with me on the Katharine Cornell project. (He was a bad hippie, he insists: He liked to work.)

I started hunting through the “This Is Our Island” archives because I wanted to learn more about Cornell and her partner Nancy Hamilton, who did much of the film’s legwork, including the Islander interviews. But what I learned was how the filmmaking coincided with a turning point in Island history.

Nicole Galland, in her terrific overview of Vineyard history in last week’s Martha’s Vineyard Times, notes a distinctly changed vibe on the Island in the early 1970s. She cites the fallout from Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick accident and the making of “Jaws.” I’d add the influx of freewheeling, long-haired people who infused our Island with new ways of thinking and living.

Think of me while you’re out soaking up the spring sun: I’ve got another 142 files to go through next week. So I won’t be getting gardening done outdoors—but indoors some fascinating ideas are taking root.

So what happened to Spam Cat, you may ask? (Or maybe, after reading this, wish you hadn’t?) I was curious if Spam was one of those foods that defy decomposition, a prime example being the 21-year-old McDonald’s hamburger. Like an Egyptian mummy, Spam Cat shrank and acquired a leathery, dessicated skin. But that was it. Unfortunately (or fortunately), after some weeks (months?), my family had had enough of my experiment and convinced me it was time to toss Spam Cat into the trash.

I have an affection for odd and quirky. Vegetables with personality amuse me. Finding gifts that are both perfect and weird, such as a gnome-inspired sauna hat, or a block that sprouts mushrooms, brings me joy. My new Godzilla-and-octopus-in-DC oven mitts make me happy. I aspire to more whimsy in my life, to indulge creative urges to make art in unconventional ways (not that anyone would ever call Spam Cat art), to nurture the tender shoots of my eccentricity.

Eccentrics are happier than most, more passionate about their interests, more curious, and more creative. They have less social anxiety, naturally, because they frankly don’t care what people think. John Stuart Mill warned against the perils of conformity, asserting that “The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.” Martha’s Vineyard, with its tolerance and warm embrace of the arts, is the perfect place to cultivate an eccentric streak. The world needs more Luna Lovegoods.

I don’t need to go as far as Nancy Luce and her chickens. But it’s nice to have a goal. Wish me luck.

Often, when I’d get stalled writing a chapter in my book about the nineteenth-century women who went whaling with their husbands, I’d listen to old sea shanties I found online. And before I started a new Arctic chapter, I’d take a road trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum to gaze at its gorgeous Arctic art collection.

But secretly, I wondered if these were just procrastination techniques. I’d been known to linger at the New Bedford café that has the delicious Portuguese pastries, and frankly, I listened to sea shanties for a very long time.

But at the History Through Fiction writers’ conference I recently attended at Endicott College in Beverly, I took a wonderful workshop that taught me how to create a bridge between the arts I use for inspiration and the actual writing. For me, it was the highlight of the conference.

1. Find a piece of artwork created in the time period you are writing about. Take note about what you see and the details that intrigue you. Also spend time asking yourself what is happening outside the frame—what’s going on right before or after the scene in the painting, or what is happening beyond the borders of painting.

   For example, I chose Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884), pictured at top. Since most of the Parisian crowd on the riverbank is facing the water, I imagined all the attention focused on a drowning just beyond the painting. (the former mystery writer in me). But I could reimagine that scene with a romance or family conflict. The point of the exercise isn’t necessarily to use any of the imagined scenes in your writing but to fully engage and lodge some of those period details in your brain.

2. The second exercise involves what Lehman called layered annotation, a six-stage process detailed in the graphic below. It begins with an initial reading aloud of a poem and requires rereading the poem after each stage. “This moves you beyond the surface and helps you get at deeper truths,” Lehman says.

   You conclude the exercise by writing a caption that summarizes the most important things you got out of the poem, whether that’s meaning or just interesting adjectives.

A critical element in all Lehman’s exercises is to take all notes longhand and keep it in a notebook near your writing desk. Studies have shown that handwriting boosts connectivity between brain regions as well as boosting memory.

These exercises help the brain process and retain what’s important. “The details that stick with you will show up at the right place at the right time. Like a seed that blooms in a different garden,” Lehman says.

She offered this example of how her annotation of Margaret Atwood’s poem “Half Hanged Mary” enriched her own prose.

The idea is not to steal metaphors or ideas but to be inspired by them. You might evolve a metaphor or use a portion of it in a completely different way. “All writing is a response to what comes before. No work is completely singular or original,” Lehman says. “We all draw from the common well.”

She also suggested including a “Works Consulted” list at the end of your novel or other writing as a means of giving credit to these inspirational works.

Note: Read more about creative inspiration in Lehman’s columns on Medium.com or email her directly with questions at: thestorydoctorisin@gmail.com.

When I moved to Martha’s Vineyard, I was burned out. May 10, three years ago, I threw a party at Love Lane Kitchen, my great across-the-street neighbor, to say goodbye to my friends and neighboring businesses and the whole neighborhood.

My generous-hearted daughter flew in from her home in LA to celebrate the changes and help sort through my many things. This was not the first time she showed up to help in a big way. What fortitude! This time, we were wrapping up 14 years on the North Fork of Long Island.

I was also leaving behind my quirky 1840s house (rented, but mine nonetheless) in lovely New Suffolk. A lot happened there: I started a new business, made new friends, got married, was widowed, carried on, met a new fella from MV, barely hung onto my business through 2020, and finally understood it was time to retire.

So, I sold my beloved yarn shop, packed up the remains of the needlework department that the buyer didn’t want, thinking I’d use it to start a new business, and relocated to the Vineyard. My tiny car was packed to the brim, trip after trip, two ferries each direction. That new fella made quite a few trips, too. Sometimes I think I spent more time on the water than the road.

The moving truck arrived for the big stuff while I was still packing boxes full of things leftover after the tag sale (rainy weather was no help with that). I was still preparing the donations waiting to be delivered to the charity shop, and boxing up some vintage tableware to be left on my porch for the second-hand shop to pick up. And there was, at the very end, boxes and boxes of fabric scraps to donate to fellow makers and the quilters guild. A generous friend came to my rescue, and I will be forever grateful.

I also hired a guy to take things for repurposing and donations; he neglected to tell me he was too busy before he took it all to the dump instead. My heart still aches over the waste and the loss. I used to see lovely objects floating alone atop the heaps of trash at the dump, wondering how anyone could let that little thing go. Now I was the one, accidentally depositing practically a whole house of objects including my favorite chair and a good sofa, there where nobody could save them. I wished I had left it all on the side of the road.

Not that I arrived here empty-handed! I still have some favorite pieces, lots of art and art books, and I probably enjoy and appreciate these survivors even more now. One visit to my studio and you’d see that no art supplies nor favorite fabric was left behind.

Why some of us cling to “just things” is hard to explain to someone who feels freedom in not having them, who isn’t sentimental. But we are each our own complicated selves—neither right nor wrong.

While I’m glad to have thinned out my possessions, it was hard getting there, and I’m still recovering from that fraught process. Everyone said I’d feel better without so much “stuff,” but I do miss the things I didn’t mean to leave behind (eg: the Le Crueset gratin dish I bought in the 70’s and used a lot—left in the oven drawer along with the perfect baking sheets received as a wedding present). At least my daughter won’t have as much to clean up after I’m gone—and that is a serious motivator even today as I continue to pare down.

Three springs later I can say I’ve made good progress. The first year was rough, but since then I’ve made great new friends, I have a studio where I can make things and give lessons, I live in a sweet little cottage with a wonderful man, and I’m here on this beautiful island that, since 1979, I have been dreaming of landing on permanently. Dreams can come true, if not necessarily in the way one would hope or expect.

This spring, I think, will be mostly about what’s new and wonderful, with a respectable amount of gratitude for what was and what is.

But I woke a week ago to see sun streamed through my window. The snowbank on my doorstep looked like it was, at last, gone for good. Yes—spring! I logged into Substack to see what my fellow Creative Currenters were up to. And up popped “Blossoming Creativity” about how connecting with nature spurs creative energy.

The essay was so packed with color, it lit a fire: Gonna get me some of that color stuff, those pinks and reds and blues and yellows blossoms, I thought. An hour later, I returned with this paltry flower and no creative jumpstart to get those essays done.

If I’d paused a second in my rush out the door, I would’ve remembered: every damn year my Easter dress goes to church under my winter coat. Bamboozled yet again by New England’s Spring of Deception:

But I’m an optimist by nature. Or maybe I’d more deeply internalized a book I copyedited years before.

In his book The Luck Factor Dr. Richard Wiseman, a British research psychologist and science educator, conducted experiments and compiled empirical data to support a series of principles and hypotheses to explain why some people are luckier than others.

One that stuck with me was: Lucky people expect good fortune. And that in turn affects how they think and act. What they expect to happen and how positive expectations can propel the lucky person to attempt to achieve what they want.

But I’d expected good fortune—expected to find colorful blooms poking through the dead leaves outside. After all, the calendar said spring had officially arrived over a week before.

Oh well. It was dinner-prep time. Annoyed, I retreated to my kitchen. Heck with you, Dr. Wiseman. Some leftover hunks of cod went into seafood broth with chopped carrots and onion, saffron and sweet smoked paprika. While that simmered, I went to buy salad stuff—and found something rare for here: Meyer lemons! Perfect for slicing and baking atop focaccia dough (with a dash of sea salt and a sprinkle of sugar).

Amid this chopping, sauteeing, simmering, and taste-testing, an idea for my grant essay popped up. Plus a livelier title for the overall project.

Soon I was scrambling for a pen and a notebook.

Some writers turn to sewing or painting or gardening when blocked. I’ve tried them but ended up with needle-poked fingers, a mess of a canvas, and deep paranoia (“Is that a tick on my back?”)

But in the kitchen the writing lightbulb blinked on.

Or maybe I’m just practicing a final principle in The Luck Factor: Lucky people, says Dr. Wisemen, “turn bad luck into good” by finding a positive outcome even in setbacks. I took in the dinner spread on the counter and had to admit: Right again, Dr. Wiseman.

Spring focuses our attention on the natural world, encouraging us to watch it unfold, tender leaf by tender leaf, blossom by blossom, until it gets really excited and, like a three-year-old on a sugar high, bursts out everywhere with tulips competing with dogwoods and azaleas for attention. But in early spring, the changes are gradual: fragile white snowdrops, way-too-yellow forsythia, nodding daffodils, palest-of-pink cherry blossoms, and perhaps my favorite stage in nature, baby leaf-green leaves.

As you may know, spending time in nature gifts a remarkable array of benefits, both physical and mental: better sleep, lower blood pressure, reduced risk of chronic disease and psychiatric disorders, increased positive emotions, and decreased anxiety. (Wow.) It’s even been scientifically proven to increase creativity and rewire the brain to be more open, flexible, and receptive to generating new ideas. (For more, I highly recommend The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams.) Big doses of nature are great—long walks, hiking, camping—but little ones do good too.

A spring creativity challenge. Pick a tree or a bush. Give it a name, if you like. Jeremy, for example, or Emily, or Bushy-bush. Whatever works for you. Take a few minutes to look at him or her—really look—at the tiny buds and shape of the branches, snapped short where the deer may have pruned a bit too much. Maybe give them likes (sun, water, warm days, being admired) and dislikes (frost, dog pee), even a personality. Visit your new friend every day or so, watch how they change, buds turning to tender tiny bright green leaves or heart-cheering flowers. Not a five-second glance as you rush out the door, but take your cup of coffee or tea and visit for a bit. Give them a pat. Ask how they’re doing. So what if your partner or spouse or kids think you’re nuts. You have a new friend, and they don’t.

Bonus points. Draw a picture. Or write a poem. A bad one is fine. No judging, pretend that you’re five, back when it was perfectly acceptable to color the sky green and add unicorns to your picture because you liked them. Or try a neurographic doodle inspired by spring. Drawing a single-line doodle, then smoothing out where the lines intersect, allegedly “links your conscious and subconscious mind and creates new neural pathways,” resulting in a sense of well-being. I found it relaxing, no artistic talent required.

I’m lucky enough to have Japanese cherry trees to befriend. It’s a bit of an obsession in DC, watching the buds move through the six official stages of bloom—green buds, florets visible, floret extension, peduncle elongation, early pink, and puffy full—watching the weather and eagerly anticipating the peak bloom, planning when and where you’ll go see the trees. (Which, by the way, are even more spectacular and magical in person than photos can convey.) We usually celebrate the cherry trees in the Japanese way with an O-hana-mi with friends, literally a “looking at the flowers” picnic under the trees. But if you don’t have a Japanese cherry tree nearby, I think it would work as well under any tree you particularly like (remembering to give your picnic blanket, legs, and feet a good spritz with bug spray first—always advisable before spending time in nature on Martha’s Vineyard).

Happy Spring!

But we lost power before we woke up, and my hopes for hours of happy sewing were dashed. I couldn’t think, and I felt disoriented as if my brain required electricity and heat to function. Determined to sew, I settled into stitching by hand, loving the comforting process. I sat there for hours, bundled up as if for an outdoor adventure, watching the snow come down every which way in the wild wind. When the power was still out the next day and into the next evening, I continued sewing and managed to finish piecing 90 little rectangles together. Without a functioning iron to press the pieces, I decided to embrace the resulting imperfections.

After the storm, I was still obsessed so I laid out a new design (still in rectangles mode), using the same fabrics I got from Tara for the original exercise, and stitched it up by hand, by choice. The power was back on, so I charged up my phone and tuned into a favorite podcast, Ologies, which, funny enough, happened to be about quilting. Did you know that the word culcitology is the study (or science) of quilts? I did not, and I’ve been quilting (intermittently) since the 70’s.

Even though these colors were taken from someone else’s palette, the ones I chose unintentionally matched a chain-stitched pillow with a flower design that I bought 20 years ago. I love it so it’s always in plain sight, even though it doesn’t coordinate with anything in our house. I didn’t even notice that the two things seemed to belong together until that night when I had the piece on the coffee table, as I pined away over not being able to do any stitching on it.

You can see I made very little progress with the actual quilting. This is because my hand began screaming, and even my left (helper) hand, that I use to pull the needle and thread through, began complaining (thank you carpel tunnel). So this piece will remain undone for however long the recovery takes. I’ll give it a long break and hopefully I’ll be back in business again soon.

Back at the studio I decided to settle down at my old Featherweight and sew together another design I’d laid out last month. I didn’t finish it in time for this post, but I’m having lots of fun putting it together. It’s a serious puzzle! Machine sewing even on an ancient (slow) machine is so much faster! Why am I surprised?

The course I’ve referred to several times recently is Tara Faughnan’s block of the month. Suddenly it’s time for the next – and last – block of the series, and a new stack of colors. Just in time for the big melt and a tiny glimpse of spring. I’m ready for it!

I have been forcing myself to read a book by an author I hate because a creative writing professor once told me I should give it a try, and it has now made me wonder:

1) Why am I inflicting this on myself?

2) Am I learning anything from it?

3) Has anyone else ever hated a classic author this much?

In this case I define “classic” as a book assigned by a teacher or a professor, or a book you read because you thought you should read it. For many people, that’s Moby Dick, but I loved that book so much I developed a crush on Herman Melville. For me, it’s The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein.

This is still fresh in my mind because I went back and got a master’s in English only seven years ago—which, despite its lack of practical application, was one of the joys of my life, even with Gertrude Stein as required reading.

When I began reading her novel The Making of Americans, all I could think was that if Gertrude had been one of my writing students, I would have questioned her mental health. She employed a level of repetition so intense, another graduate student described it as “mind-numbing.” Only she made that sound like a compliment.

My reaction might have been over the top. As a journalist, I was trained to consider even the tiniest bit of repetition a grave imposition on the reader. But I went on about it so long, my son, also a writer, bought me a pillow with Gertude’s face on it as a joke for Christmas.

Mercifully, we only had to read a hundred pages of the novel, but we also sampled a portion of Tender Buttons, Stein’s poetry, which was neither lyrical, resonant, nor emotionally powerful. So I had to ask myself: why in the name of all things literary, was this woman famous? Was it just because she was an early supporter of artists like Picasso and Matisse and hung out with Hemingway and all the right people?

I recycled a lot of my lit books, but kept my collection of Gertrude Stein’s work. It stayed on my bookshelf unread until last month, when I decided to give her another try. You can’t write off a famous and groundbreaking author as “the emperor has no clothes” based on just a couple of works, can you?

Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is categorized as a “fictionalized autobiography” because Stein writes about herself in the voice of her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas. Even without the egocentricity of writing about oneself in third person and all the self-pandering, it’s still pretty awful. There is no scene-building, no sensory writing, emotional depth, and deliberately no narrative thread. Mostly just a lot of trivial observations. But it made her famous, probably because it’s all about Stein hobnobbing with celebrities and their often-changing wives—kind of a literary People magazine only much duller.

But I’ve been able to make myself read it because I am fascinated by that time period. And there is a payoff: 120 pages in, I figured out why my creative writing professor wanted me to read it. Not because it’s good writing, but because it chronicles what a risk-taker Stein was.

In The Making of Americans. Stein was reportedly trying to move beyond plot and dialogue and create some sort of musicality with repetition. She was attempting a verbal version of abstract cubism in Tender Buttons, and got very excited about something she called “portrait writing,” a series of avant-garde character sketches. And of course, she played with voice in the Alice B. Toklas memoir that was really about herself.

In the Modernist era, Stein wished to break the mold in writing, the way her friends were breaking the mold in other art forms. It is that kind of courage and experimentation that makes literature great. Even if all her experiments failed for me, a diehard fan of nineteenth century writing, I have to give her credit for attempting them. Maybe I should be a little more adventurous, a little less linear, in my own writing.

• Are there any classic works or authors you feel passionate about?

• Any you tried to understand by reading more of their work?

For those of us without Lauri’s talent and imagination, just looking at art has remarkable benefits. It stimulates the part of your mind that seeks patterns and connections, and makes you feel better and less stressed by releasing dopamine, the feel-good chemical, and reducing cortisol. (Side bonus in the winter: galleries and museums are warm.) Gazing at art can trigger “embodied cognition,” the sense of drawing you in, placing yourself within the artwork.

Last week, I was utterly entranced by the exhibit of Australian indigenous art at the National Gallery of Art in DC. Surprisingly so, despite my having no connection, geographic or otherwise, to the people or place. Which is the magic of art, I suppose, to erase barriers of time and place, of race and tribe. The exhibit explored the Aboriginal concept of Country, which includes “not only the physical lands, waterways, and skies of the Aboriginals’ ancestral homelands, but also the plant life, ancestral knowledge, living beings, spirituality, and laws that are integral to culture.”

Other pieces represent ancestral knowledge, sometimes referred to as the Dreaming. Dots and lines can carry multiple meanings, like the crosses and dots in Garak (the Universe). “Each cross represents a star that we can see, and that is visible in the known universe. The dots symbolize everything in the universe that is unknown: ‘the stars we do not see.’” Mind-blowing, that.

The paintings seemed to want to communicate their stories to the viewer, both the community’s connection to Country and the tragic tale of eviction from ancestral Aboriginal lands. Other friends I talked to had similarly powerful experiences. They, too, felt compelled to stop and sit down, to really experience the art. (Fact: on average, museum-goers only spend 17 seconds looking at any individual painting or sculpture. More time is spent reading the descriptive placards than with the art itself. For more on immersing yourself in art, check out my fellow Substacker Jan’s post here. )

One friend shared that she felt she was invited into a community’s sacred space, another felt as if she could walk into the paintings if they were a room, letting the dots and lines and shapes surround her. “The art is big and bold and sacred. The artist’s knowledge of their land is pure and it feels joyful, even as you read that it is probably painfully documentary,” texted a friend.

I was inspired to take up a brush, to paint the Vineyard conceptually, the people connected by ancient ways, painting the farms and towns and ponds and beaches not as they look but as they feel. Or maybe I’ll take inspiration from Lauri, find my six-year-old self, and (finally) do something with the beach stones, shells, and driftwood I’ve collected over the years. Or combine the two. There are no rules.

While I think there was something very special about this exhibit and the art that tells the stories of a people who have inhabited their land for 65,000 years, any art can be transformative if it speaks to you. The opening last week of “Featherstone Blue” (until March 22) at the Featherstone Center for the Arts brought back the memory of the Yves Klein show I saw some years back, that mesmerizing cobalt hue that feels so good I could stare at it for hours.

On the Vineyard, we are blessed with so many wonderful museums and galleries. Drop in, take a look around—for more than 17 seconds, please!—and let me know what you see— and feel.

(Note: After traveling to Denver and Portland, Oregon, The Stars We Do Not See will come to the Peabody Museum in Salem from February 27-June 13, 2027. Go if you can! More photos from the exhibit below.)

Often, I have wished I had a passion more practical than writing, more useful than sitting alone in a room making up imaginary people with imaginary conflicts. Passions like gardening—oh, the organic vegetables I’d grow if only I didn’t loathe gardening. Or decorating—how beautiful my home would be if I could tolerate fabric stores or wandering through showrooms. I am seriously jealous of people who pick up hobbies like sewing, carpentry, and furniture reupholstering.

But this week it feels useful to be a writer, for personal rather than professional reasons. Because I was asked to write a eulogy.

A couple of weeks ago, I lost my very dear friend, Lisa, to AML leukemia. Compounding the loss was a terrible sense of injustice: She’d lived the healthiest possible lifestyle and was a model of kindness, generosity, and grace—even under the most difficult circumstances, dealing with the loss of her son, only three years before.

One of the worst parts of grief—aside from anger at the injustice— is the feeling of helplessness: There is nothing you can do for that person anymore. Writing a eulogy was something I could do.

It felt like a prayer, an extended prayer that kept Lisa on my mind first thing in the morning until the end of the day. You generally like your friends—or they wouldn’t be friends—but rarely do you take the time to examine their lives and methodically tabulate their traits. In Lisa’s case, each memory led to a new realization. And the last realization was about her courage and generosity: Her positive attitude and the information she withheld in the last few months of her life was, at least partly, for the friends she left behind. She’d spent her entire life being upbeat and fun; she did not want to leave anyone wallowing in gloom.

This was the second time I’d been asked to give a eulogy, and I have now developed my own ideas on how I think eulogies should be written. In this case, I began by listing Lisa’s most remarkable traits, so I could hone in on those memories. I tried to choose the ones she would laugh about. And I worked hard to keep it well under ten minutes.

Maybe when this loss is little less raw, I will go into more detail on the mechanics, but today, I am writing to say this:

If you lose someone dear and are having trouble processing your grief, try writing one—even if you never have to deliver it. Spending that much dedicated time thinking about the people you mourn, reliving memories and detailing their qualities, is something you can do for them. It’s a tribute to that person’s life and a gift to yourself.

We sighed (remembering what sun feels like); envied (just a little bit) our friends who got to those warm-weather conferences this month; and moved on to discussion of various workshops and a newly discovered online conference for indie writers and publishers.

Suddenly, one friend who’d been quietly listening slumped back and moaned: How do I take advantage of any of these opportunities and and still get my books written?

She startled me aware of the delusion I’ve been living in: that soon it would be off-season here. Things would quiet down at last, leaving loads of distraction-free time to work on my projects.

“Some say February on the Island is a ghost town, a place of quiet refuge and low whispers,” Vineyard Gazette editor Bill Eville writes. “Hogwash. The Island in February is a loose cannon of activity.”

All this compelled me this week to dust off some tricks I’ve used in the past. If you’re struggling to focus on what matter most, maybe they’ll help you too.

• Grab a sticky note and write This Before All Else. I slap mine on the file folder holding my current project so I see it first thing each morning.

• Launch the Freedom app. When all else fails, this stops my Internet surfing habit cold.

• Review part 2 of Deep Work by Cal Newport, where he lays out a system to shut out distraction.

• Try Twyla Tharp’s One Week Without. (“When I commit to a project,” she writes in The Creative Habit, “I don’t expand my contact with the world; I try to cut it off.”)

• Hole up for an afternoon (or two or three) where no one can easily find you. For me, that’s the private study room upstairs at the Edgartown library. How about you?

Just as there are endless wants to spent your money on, there will always be fun stuff to pull us away from creative work. Creating something original is hard. It requires saying No again and again.

A box of brightly colored fabric beckoned, the washed and neatly folded solids inviting me to play. These materials are part of a Tara Faughnan workshop I signed up for last year. Once a month she sends a new twelve-color palette and a new design for a patchwork block.

They’re like practice sketches, you could say. But I was not able to even begin the blocks for November or December or January. I have skills for days, yet just thinking about the precision piecing involved in these three designs made me feel tired.

To stretch and practice new techniques and color combinations is the whole point of this program, but I haven’t been in the mood to expand. I needed a lift, something comforting and cheerful.

The February block design instantly appealed to me, because it was all about rectangles and the color palette was bright and interesting. I wanted something simple and fun and this was it.

There are numerous articles about how color affects mood, but this simple & colorful one is pretty good, I think. In it they say “The human brain operates on wavelengths and frequencies. For example, brain frequencies in the delta range will decrease our awareness and make us sleepy. It is the alpha frequencies that are responsible for human creativity, and it is [those] colors that most change alpha brain waves.” (I’m tempted to make an alpha-gal pun.)

I had so much fun cutting and stitching up the February assignment that all I wanted to do for days after was think about colorful rectangles. During my next visit to the studio I could not resist sewing a new block, and have since started a third. My mood has definitely improved!

Looking online at what other students did with this prompt, I saw there is no end to the possibilities of what can be done with a simple rectangle and a lot of colors. Some people managed to make block letters into impressive protest messages!

People often ask, what are you going to do with that? Or what will you make with all those needlepointed canvases and embroidery compositions and scraps of fabric sewn together? How many pillows does anyone need (or want)? I have not made anything useful from so very many of my creations. I’m beginning to realize that for me the process might be the whole thing, not the end product. I guess I’ll just leave them in a portfolio and flip the pages as needed, getting a boost of color happiness from each one.

-x-x-x-

For a different kind of texture/color story, with a hint of seasonal pink & red, check out this class description at Tatter, one of my favorite organizations.

It’s too delectable to resist, this pause between the end of one project and start of the next. I hunger to do something that doesn’t involve Scrivener or Word or Grammarly.

I wander a while through the Smithsonian’s webpages dedicated to artists’ notebooks. They, in turn, remind me of Sara Midda’s In and Out of the Garden.

I bought it on impulse decades ago, for reasons I couldn’t fathom. (You’re no gardener; you’re no artist, I’d berated myself on the way to the cash register. I’ve since learned to ignore such “sensible” internal voices.)

With Midda’s book open next to a notebook my daughter gave me for Christmas, I gaze out the window at the pristine white blanket Mother Nature just dropped upon the remains of my flower garden. I snap a photo.

Waterbrush in hand, I transform the photo into my fantasy garden, adding that gravel path I’ve wanted, curving it around patches of poppies and marigolds in shades of orange. (My favorite color too!)

After a few hours of doodling and dreaming, I sense other ideas germinating. About my writing, about a next project. Something to do with this land beyond my window and two lives lived on it long ago. Something to do with “inspirational space,” a concept a famed geographer and mentor explained to me years ago that I’d forgotten.

But the soil hasn’t warmed enough to get to work; I jot down a few phrases and let them be.

Later that evening, in a Substack Note, I stumble upon this from the insightful Amy Shearn: “I heartily recommend luring out books by not looking directly at them and pretending to be distracted with something else.”

She’s onto something—and vow to keep doodling and daydreaming for now. It’s not yet time to declare Day One on my next writing project. And while I’m still workaholic me, I find I’m content with that fact.

It’s also the smack of cold air when you open the door, flakes of snow (if you’re lucky) or pellets of sleet icing your cheeks (talking about you, January 25th). It’s the slight chill of flannel sheets under a down comforter until warmed by your body. It’s always wearing socks to bed.

I’m blessed/cursed with a heightened sensitivity to touch, which makes wonderful textures (anything fuzzy and soft) even more wonderful and others (satin, slippery silk) abhorrent. I also dislike hugs, massages (I know, weird — but ew, that oil and some stranger’s fingers all over you?), lotions and creams, and getting into water that isn’t bathtub warm. But give me a faux chinchilla fur throw (or a cat to pet), and I’m in heaven.

Touch is the most overlooked of the senses, jealous of its more popular siblings. Literally right at your fingertips, touch offers a wonderful access point to mindfulness and relaxation. Right now, try thinking about what you can feel. For me, it’s the smooth hardness of the keyboard, the fuzziness of my fleece jacket, slight roughness of the wool blanket in my lap, and best of all, the long, soft fur of my other pup as he lies beside me.

Touch can also create an access point to creativity, be it pottery or sculpture or any of the multitude of crafts. (Don’t forget the classes at Featherstone— I’m intrigued by the sweater mug workshop.) Research shows that touch and the manipulation of objects foster a positive mood and the generation of new ideas. For writers, tactile descriptions can drop the reader into a character (and his bare feet), like poor Pip in Dickens’ Great Expectations: "The marshes were damp, and the wind was cold. I shivered in my thin clothes, and the mud squelched between my toes. Each step was a battle against the sucking clay, which seemed intent on pulling me down into its freezing embrace." For me, I’m intrigued by how we’ll explore touch in Elizabeth Benedict’s upcoming workshop, The Joy of Writing Sex Scenes, sponsored by the MV Times’s Islanders Write.

I’ll leave you with that thought. In the meantime, stay warm, stay cozy, and stay fleecy.