Dear Reader,
Today's guest author, Diana Biller says...
I think the best way to you about myself is to tell you about the things I love. So here's a completely inexhaustive list: I love my husband, my dog, my family, and my friends. I love ballet--both watching it and taking adult beginner classes. I love hiking alone, writing in gardens, and jumping in waves. I love Disneyland. I love Los Angeles, where I live. I love reading--it's my oldest passion and my favorite.
My debut novel, The Widow of Rose House, is a historical rom-com set in 1875 New York. It features a scandalous and grumpy widow, an eccentric and devastatingly handsome inventor, and a house which may or may not be haunted.
I'd love to hear from you, email [email protected]
Please welcome author Diana Biller...
This summer my critique partner and I drove to Joshua Tree National Park for a three-day writing retreat. (We called it a writing retreat. It was the two of us and an insufficiently air-conditioned AirBnb.) Joshua Tree is the kind of ugly that borders on beautiful: nothing but rocks, bleached dirt, posters of missing hikers, and those eerie-looking trees dotting the landscape as far as you can see. The gift shop sells stickers telling visitors "Don't Die Today."
It was too hot to go out during the day, so we actually did what we came there for and wrote. In the evening, when it cooled down, we went whole hog on the creative retreat concept. We drove many miles into the pitch black desert to attend a "sound bath" with total strangers. We climbed a mountain to "watch the sunset," and forgot that the sun setting meant our descent would happen mostly in the dark. And we sat in our AirBnb, music playing, and channeled our inner thirteenth-century monk with a little creative hand-lettering practice.
This was unexpectedly soothing. She'd brought a workbook with some projects in it, and we both picked one with the words "Practice Makes Progress" surrounded by laurel wreaths. I won't lie, hers was better than mine. It also read "Practice Makes Perfect."
I laughed at her and accused her of making a Freudian slip. She's a known perfectionist, I thought this was a pretty perfect illustration of that. She took my teasing in good grace, and I tucked my 'correctly' written paper inside a book to take home, where I eventually set it on my desk.
And proceeded to make the same mistake. Every. Single. Time.
Now, I wanted to absorb this message. Practice makes progress is exactly right. It's true in writing and knitting and even my adult ballet classes. So why couldn't I say it? I'd look at the little page, read it, and hear "Practice Makes Perfect" in my head. I'd say it wrong while beating myself up for cooking too infrequently, for writing too slowly, for having bad balance in ballet that evening. And eventually, I read it and realized how incredibly brutal I was being to myself.
Practice Makes Progress. What would I do differently if progress, not perfection, was the goal? I don't have an answer yet--I'm still working on reading the words correctly. But what I do know is this: never make fun of your critique partner. It'll only bite you in the end.
-- Diana Biller
Welcome Diana to the book club, email [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
KIDSBUZZ: Click here to discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
Comments