Celebrating writing “The End”

On July 13, 2025 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Designing Your Life, finish something, Publishing Process, Work, writing3 Comments

This is really hard for me, so I’m just going to blurt it out. I am proud of myself. Whoa, honey. No one likes a braggart. Probably everyone is going to stop reading this post now, right?

When I walked away from my career last September I had one goal: to finish my novel and make it good enough for my mom to read. Why my mom, you ask? Because she’s a devourer of all types of books and no matter what genre I wrote, she would appreciate it. Because she’s an English teacher and could tell me if my book actually met standard and historical book criteria. I love books because my mom loves books and she encouraged me to read whatever I wanted my entire life. (She actually had to stand up to the elementary school librarian on my behalf for reading a “age inappropriate” books. Poor librarian.) I wanted to write this book, because it was a story I wanted to read and I wanted to share it with my mom.

On Friday June 13th I wrote “The End.” (Which is a totally fine date to finish your novel. No bad omens associated with Friday the thirteenth at all.) Then I read and edited and spell checked and edited some more until June 23rd when I printed out all 285 pages and presented it to mom. Part one of my goal accomplished.

(Mom took this picture of me and my book. We are at her kitchen table. I normally hate how I look in pictures, but not this time. Look at how happy I am.)

I’ve read many writing books. I think Stephen King is the one who said that writing is magic. In my head was a world, characters and actions. Part one of the magic is the transference from my head onto the paper. To the best of my abilities, I accomplished that. I’ve read my complete book twice since writing “The End” and I believe the story is there. Could it be better? Yeah. (The comma situation is certainly dicey.) Could the story be better? Maybe, but not from what my own eyes can see or my own brain can comprehend. Now I need to find out if I accomplished the second part of the magic: can someone else’s eyes and brain read the story and interpret it? I don’t know, but I’m about to find out. Feedback from my mom, my writing group, and my husband is coming. I’m trying to be brave.

I have little glimmers that give me hope. As they have finished, my writing group has sent texts saying “It’s wonderful” and “It’s a big wonderful book.” (At 107,000 words, it’s a bit of a behemoth.) Mom finished on July 7th and sent me a picture of the last page of my book. On it she wrote, “So good” underlined three times and “I got teary eyed.” I got teary eyed when she sent me the picture.

I’ve had a month to celebrate. A month to marvel at my accomplishment. I left 20 years of stability, a nice paycheck, and great benefits for a dream. That dream is now a physical hunk of word-filled paper big enough to cause death to a bug or pain to a foot if dropped.

No matter what the next few weeks of critique and discussion brings, I want to acknowledge that I achieved my dream and that’s pretty gosh darn amazing. (I can say that here, because everyone stopped reading after the first braggy paragraph, right?)

The End

An Extremely Belated Celebration

On October 16, 2024October 15, 2024 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Favorite Lines, Uncategorized, writing3 Comments

2020 was a crazy year. In the midst of a global pandemic, I had a really good thing happen. But I never shared the really good thing on Afthead, because Afthead was a public place and the really good thing wasn’t necessarily something I wanted people to know about. Okay, I didn’t want my friends to know, because I was extremely frustrated with some of their COVID protocols, or lack thereof. To cope I wrote a satire piece about them and it got published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. This publication is a big deal in the humor world. McSweeney’s acceptance rate hovers right around 1%. It’s like getting into the Stanford-Harvard of magazines. I highly recommend checking it out.

Somehow, the idea of reaching out to all my friends whose food intolerances I’d fastidiously honored in the past and telling them that I was publicly mocking them seemed wrong. Also, I wasn’t in a good place with many of them when it was published. I was busy being lonely and angry while they were out camping without me, because I wanted to do ridiculous things like wear a mask. Or their kids were doing remote school together because it was so hard on them.

Four years in the future, several of those people are my friends again (and the ones who aren’t never really were). Most of us have talked about how we were all doing the best we could during those really hard times, and have forgiven each other. Or we just let it go.

But I still haven’t mentioned to them about the most popular thing I’ve ever written. I didn’t tell them that afterwards I got interviewed by The Writer magazine, featured in an article about getting COVID-19 stories published. I didn’t share all the emails I got from strangers telling me how they were struggling too. I didn’t forward the funny comment from Facebook, “Licorice has gluten?” I didn’t want to stretch those strained relationships any farther.

So why post this now? Why not just let the happiness stay quarantined? A couple of things have changed. First, I realized that the friends I was frustrated with don’t read this blog. They don’t see my words. Unless I print this out and shove it under their windshield wipers they won’t know. Also, I did tell lots of people. Work friends got a link. Family got a link. People who I know didn’t follow my exact protocols read it and enjoyed it. Finally, I’ve told everyone I’m taking a year off to write. If I’m a writer, I want to celebrate my writing successes. I decided four years was enough space. It’s okay to let out a little celebratory yay about this piece and say I’m proud of it.

The magical thing about this piece was that it all came out in a whoosh. Normally my writing has tens of drafts littering a piece-specific folder on my computer. (Even this post has 22 revisions!) For my McSweeney’s piece there’s not a single draft on my computer. I wrote it, edited it, and published it from one file. I remember showering and furiously crafting this letter I would send to my friends. I didn’t write a word until I had all the biting phrases worked out. It was like I’d birthed the story fully formed out of my fingertips. Such magic should be acknowledged.

The last amazing thing about this piece? I was in the middle of graduate school when I wrote it. I hadn’t had a creative urge since March 13, 2020 when we all got sent home from work and school to survive the end of the world. I was taking my last two master’s level classes before my capstone. I was working full time and helping my kid do school from home. I was terrified for my parent’s lives, and my support system was fractured and frayed because of my community’s disagreement on the pandemic. It was a horrible, horrible time, and I dealt with it by producing witty, poignant, biting satire. Looking back, I am in awe of myself.

If you want to take a trip back in time and see how September of 2020 felt, now’s your chance. It was a time before COVID vaccinations. We were on the cusp of a huge winter surge. 700 people were dying a day. Somehow I coped by crafting words like this:

People can have COVID and not know it, kind of like that irresponsible room mom last Halloween that didn’t know licorice has gluten. Mistakes happen. You might be laughing and shouting germs all over and never know until someone gets sick. Imagine how embarrassed you’d feel if you accidentally killed my parents. They say hi by the way.

The little masterpiece is still online at McSweeney’s if you feel like taking a trip down that horrific memory lane. Me? I’m going to go reread the acceptance note. It’s glorious.

Thanks for the submission. This is great. We will take it! It should run in the next few weeks. Would you mind sending me a photo and bio for your author profile?

Would I mind? Uh, heck no! Yeah, I have an author profile on McSweeney’s too. Pretty cool, even four years later.

It Feels like a Perfect Night

On July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, parenting, Tickles my afthead4 Comments

It feels like a perfect night
For breakfast at midnight
To fall in love with strangers
Ah-ah, ah-ah
22
by Taylor Swift

Full honesty here. I am not a legitimate Swifty. I haven’t been following Taylor Swift since her debut. In fact, I didn’t even notice when Folklore, Evermore or Taylor’s versions of Fearless and Red came out during the pandemic. But something was different when she released Midnights. What changed? I had a teenage daughter whose casual “listening to Taylor Swift in the car” became a shared obsession.

The Eras tour was announced and we attempted to buy tickets, but I didn’t know all the mysterious incantations — verified fan, Capital One card — needed to purchase entry to the concert. But I did know StubHub and Seat Geek, so once the scalpers bought up most of the tickets, I started a fun hobby of watching ticket prices to see if maybe, just maybe, we could go. I checked the price in other cities to see if it was cheaper to fly somewhere, get a hotel, and see Taylor in Pittsburgh or Minneapolis or Detroit. It was not. Every time I looked the prices went up past reasonable to extravagant to embarrassing.

My fatal flaw was mentioning my ticket searching hobby to my daughter. When her reaction wasn’t “MOM, you are SO lame,” but instead “I’d go to Taylor Swift with you” our fate was sealed and my hobby became a quest. I compared resale sites, contrasted seat locations and venues and finally picked out seats, only to have my credit card reject what was obviously a purchase outside of my normal tendencies. (Okay, I also shouldn’t have tried the transaction after midnight local time – every one of my actions screamed fraud to the banking AI algorithms.)

But after appeasing the credit card overlords, I dropped more money than I will ever admit on two tickets, a few weeks before my daughter’s fifteenth birthday. I reached out to our family and invited everyone to contribute, so the tickets could be from all of us. This was in no way an attempt to offset our extravagant purchase (because again, they cost a humiliating amount of money) but a way to let everyone be a part of what I hoped would be a keystone memory for my daughter.

Her birthday had the potential to be awful. First school then choir practice then basketball practice; she’d be gone from the house from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. The only break was a planned run to the DMV so she could get her driver’s permit. Luckily, she woke up to a family group text with a picture of the tickets. She’s not a screaming hysterical happy person, especially in the morning, but her birthday was saved and her dedication over the next two months to learn every lyric of every song in the set list showed just how much our gift meant.

The anticipation was amazing. We sang. We made friendship bracelets. I joined Facebook groups. I researched logistics. We bought our clear plastic bag for the stadium. We had something big to look forward too. Something big and ridiculous and fun, just her and me, and that wasn’t something we’d had since March of 2020 when COVID hit.

In the midst of the excitement I let worry creep in. What if we got sick? What if traffic was terrible and we couldn’t get to the stadium? Could we take water? Snacks? What shoes should we wear? Should we stand in line at the merch tent for 12 hours the day before the concert to make sure whe got the perfect memorabilia?

In the end, everything went wrong and everything worked out. My husband was going to drive and pick us up, but when we got near the venue there was a lovely middle school parking lot, so we paid the energetic attendant $25 and my husband took an Uber home. My daughter and I queued at our gate and raced into the stadium, but didn’t immediately get in the merch line, so I had to leave during the concert to get her the coveted quarter zip and Midnights CD (sadly my water bottle was sold out.) Our seats were behind the sound tower, so we couldn’t see anything that matchstick sized Taylor did at center stage, but the screen was huge and we saw the show of our lives. The girls next to us crammed 5 girls into 4 seats and they were lovely and sang their hearts out and traded friendship bracelets with us.

And everything was better than we’d dreamed. Our seats were club level, but we had no idea that meant air conditioning, easy access to food and bathrooms, and our own Taylor Swift Eras backdrop for an epic picture. The opening act, Gracie Abrams, is one of my daughter’s favorite and she played more songs than expected. We were in the last row of our section, so no one ruined the night by shouting the lyrics, singing off key, or spilling anything on us. I got to talk to strangers from Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico and trade bracelets with kids, teens, grown-ups, security guards, concession stand workers, and the guy who sold me merch.

There is so much wrong with this story. First, my ridiculously unfair privilege to spend the amount of money I spent to see a concert that I didn’t deserve to see. Facebook groups were filled with people pleading for tickets who have been fans since the beginning and couldn’t afford $700 for scalped obstructed view seats in the fifth level. Second, it’s disgusting how much StubHub, Seat Geek, and brokers made on Taylor Swift’s art and Ticketmaster’s complacent negligence. Finally, it made me sad that the concession workers – every single one I talked to was a Swifty – were in the venue but couldn’t watch the show, but only listen to the echoes of music through the concourse.

But for me there was so much that felt right after years of being afraid that nothing on this scale would ever feel right again. After my run to the merchandise line, during All Too Well (10 minute version), the logistics were finally complete, and I let myself escape into the joy of the night for a few eras. My daughter and I gasped at the heat of the flames that burned during Bad Blood. We cried together when Back to December was one of our surprise songs. I sang my heart out to the self-deprecating lyrics of Anti-Hero, a glorious anthem to the entire night, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” As we left the stadium, we experienced a last magical goodbye as a coveted piece of confetti blew off a woman’s cowboy hat onto the ground in front of us. I reached down and captured one last memento of a perfect night.

The Four Passover Questions – Thanksgiving 2020 Edition

On November 26, 2020November 25, 2020 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Tickles my aftheadLeave a comment

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency requested submissions that reflected how surreal Thanksgiving will be this year. I submit, but sadly my piece was not accepted. I worked hard on it though, and it’s timely, so I figured I’d stick it up on Afthead for grins. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hold on sweetie. Let mommy light the candles. Go wash your hands, then you can ask the questions.

How is this Thanksgiving different from all other Thanksgivings?

I’m glad you asked, young child. This Thanksgiving is different from all other Thanksgivings in every way imaginable. Our health is being threatened by a virus; our democracy is being endangered by the current fascist-curious administration; racists, bigots and misogynists are swarming out of their bunkers; murder hornets are apparently a thing; and Alex Trebek died (he’s Canadian, but we still were thankful for him and mourn his loss).

Now, you may ask your four questions as this question was a meta-question and does not count against your quota.

Mommy drinks a glass of wine.

On all other Thanksgivings we eat turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. Why on this Thanksgiving do we eat only mashed potatoes?

I’m glad you asked, young child. On all other Thanksgivings, the meal is a communal endeavor. Family members brings their individual talents to each dish’s preparation. Mommy is excellent at making mashed potatoes, so I make mashed potatoes every year. Grandma makes the stuffing and Grandpa sticks that sausage-y goodness into the body cavity of a turkey and bakes it up golden using his magical paper bag trick.

Did you notice Daddy wasn’t mentioned in the “meal preparation talent” list? Yet he thought he could handle the Thanksgiving turkey. But, since he neglected to take the plastic bag of giblets out of the turkey before putting it in the oven, now both the turkey and Mommy’s pathetic attempt at stuffing are ruined. (No, we didn’t notice the bag when we were stuffing the turkey, because putting your hand in there is gross. We didn’t dig around exploring.) What are giblets you ask? Turkey guts. No, that question doesn’t count against your four-question limit.

Mommy drinks a glass of wine

On all other Thanksgivings we eat sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Why on this Thanksgiving are there only marshmallows?

I’m glad you asked, young child. This Thanksgiving, we do not eat sweet potatoes, because they remind us of the unnatural hue of our president. We refuse to even hint at accepting his totalitarian regime by enjoying the sweetness of the orange potato.

We eat marshmallows because of our recent realization that our family enjoys an unhealthy amount of white privilege. The eating of the marshmallows symbolizes the destruction of all squishy white racists – McConnell, Pence, and Graham to name a few. The sickness we feel after eating an entire bag of marshmallows reminds us that too much whiteness is largely responsible for the mess our country is in right now.

Mommy drinks a glass of wine.

On all other Thanksgivings, we don’t have any dips. Why do we have two dips this Thanksgiving?

Did you have to ask, young child? Can you not smell the burnt plastic? Mommy and daddy are not adult enough to pull off a real Thanksgiving. While essential grocery store workers are at the store today, they are getting COVID at a frightening rate, so we don’t want to risk their lives by rushing out and buying another dinner that we would probably ruin anyway. We made do. We are like the fucking pilgrims, with no native Americans to bail us out.

Yes, fucking is a bad word. I’m sorry. But you LOVE French onion and fake cheese dip. Why are you complaining?

Yes, firemen are also essential workers, which is why we didn’t let daddy fry the turkey. No, hon, it wouldn’t have worked better that way, you just would have fried the damn bag of giblets.

Mommy drinks a glass of wine

On all other Thanksgivings we sit upright at the dining room table, surrounded by friends and family. Why on this night are we alone reclining in front of the television?

I’m SO glad you asked, young child. This year it’s just our little family for Thanksgiving, because infecting grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends with COVID might ruin our chance to spend future holidays together. Reclining alone in our living room shows our despondence at society’s collective failure to protect each other, and listening to our friends Troy Aikman and Joe Buck commentate the Cowboys game is the closest thing to adult conversation we….

What? Ohmygosh, yes. We want COVID to pass over our family, just like we learned at Zoom Passover this spring. Wow, you were really paying attention. No, sweetie, you don’t need to paint blood on our door. This is a different kind of plague. No, I don’t think there will be any frogs. I’m sorry I know you love frogs. Shhhh. I’m sad and scared too. Here, eat another marshmallow.

Mommy pours a fifth glass of wine.

Is this cup of wine for Elijah? I don’t think Elijah comes to Thanksgiving. Well sure, you can open the door, just in case. Guess what? Question quota is full. Mommy is all done. Let’s have some pie. Yes, I’m sure Elijah likes pie.

Photo by Rebecca Freeman on Unsplash

Twas the night before publication…

On June 2, 2019 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Uncategorized, writing7 Comments

Twas the night before publication, and all through the house not a creature was stirring except me because gosh darn it, holy moly, gee whiz my first short story is getting published tomorrow! Monday, June 3rd is publication day. After a rough few years of submitting and being rejected, then completely quitting for a bit, I’ve had a run of acceptances. (Is two a run? I feel like it is.) My first creative essay was published online April 20th and now my first fiction story will come out tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow….

Grork Dentist will be published by Luna Station Quarterly, a magazine in their tenth year of publication. I’ve loved Luna Station Quarterly since I first came across Holly Lyn Walrath’s story The Joy of Baking. It’s a magazine with a cool mission: publishing speculative fiction by women-identified writers. I love that they do a print and online publication (I’ve got four print copies arriving Tuesday from Amazon, thank you very much.) It’s easy to share online publications with friends and family, but likewise really special to have a print copy of your very own story to hold, and smell, and sleep with, and carry in your purse everywhere, and give to your mom, and accidentally leave at your dentist office and… and…. I might need to order more copies.

The other cool thing? I got to write my very own real live author bio. I mean, does it get any more official than that? My full bio is online and a shortened version will appear with my story. Nothing makes you feel more like a real honest to goodness writer than a bio. That is, not until tomorrow when I see my story. I bet that will feel even better.

It’s funny, because I spend a lot of time with the Twitter writing community. (Too much time, but hey, it got me my first publication.) I’ve read how getting your story published doesn’t change anything. My expectations will just get adjusted and I’ll want bigger and better things. I must disagree. For me, getting my first story published means the world. As great as this story’s rejections were from high quality magazines — “We loved this story’s delightfully ridiculous concept” and “there’s some good writing here” — nothing equaled the joy of “We would like to publish your story, “Grork Dentist”, in the next issue of Luna Station Quarterly. Thank you for submitting!” Getting a story you are proud of accepted into a journal you love is a very special feeling. I’m now no longer afraid of calling myself a writer, and the publication has made me believe that my stories are worth writing and worth being read. That feeds my writing soul.

Tomorrow I’m going to be refreshing my browser like an idiot waiting for the cover image to change and my story to show up. Until then, I’ll be like a kid waiting for Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny to all show up overnight and bring me the best present imaginable. Happy publication eve to all, and to all a good night.

Acceptance

On March 17, 2019March 16, 2019 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, finish something, writing6 Comments

LeveneJohanna_0162

I’ve been sending little stories of mine off to journals to be read, judged, and rejected. From 2015 to 2017 I had one story rejected four times. Then last year I got brave. I threw three stories to the winds and let the rejections flow: ten of them. I worked hard to perfect those little tales. My writing group read them and gave feedback. My mom read them and gave feedback. My husband read them, corrected my grammar, and disliked them. I even donated enough money to a new journal so a real live editor could critique my story. I worked and tweaked, and while the rejections kept coming they started to give me hope.

My favorite rejection? One that ended, “We loved this story’s delightfully ridiculous concept, but we felt the story didn’t have enough conflict to support it through the middle and ending.” Um, the words love and this story appear together in this delightful rejection. It almost feels like an acceptance….almost. Another was rejected the day before they sent out the list of anthology finalists. They said, “…there’s some nice writing in the story, but unfortunately we felt it just wasn’t quite right for the collection.” Nice writing? That’s enough to make me brave enough to submit somewhere else, and to watch this journal’s calendar carefully so I can submit to them again.

I know that ten rejections in a year is nothing. One of my favorite blogs, Rejectomancy, has a whole formula for calculating your power as a rejectomancer. Aeryn, the blog’s author, revels in his rejections, having just tallied his 300th rejection. Three hundred. I love Aeryn’s blog because it’s really hard for me to get all freaked out about 10 rejections when he’s statistically analyzing three hundred. Also, I’m not just a writer but also a geeky spreadsheet loving engineer, so recording and analyzing rejections is a form of comfort for me. Another comfort? Watching your Rejectomancy score increase as you get different types of rejections. By the end of 2018 I was at 20 points: a glass level rejectomancer aiming for ceramic. (Really, this system is so amazingly nerdy!)

2019 hit and I was ready to submit like mad. Armed with my positive feedback and desire to rise through the Rejectomancy ranks, on a whim, I submit to a journal I had not researched that promised personalized feedback. The story I sent had already received one lovely personalized rejection – the nice writing one – and one form rejection. It was a piece I loved and felt confident about. The day after submission I was rejected with a full page of detailed information about how horrible my story was, what a terrible writer I am, how the concept was interesting but horribly executed, and the ending sucked. It would have been kinder and more succinct to reply, “You are a terrible writer with no concept of story. Your words caused my eyes to bleed. Cut your hands off so your tales never torture again.”

So I quit writing. I quit submitting. I quit my writers group. I quit. The end. Eleven rejections was all I’d ever see. It was one thing to get rejected with kind words and another to have strangers rip me to shreds. Writing wasn’t worth it.

Except, I didn’t really. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont talks about writing presents, “Twice now I have written books that began as presents to people I loved who were going to die.” The concept of writing presents speaks to me, drives my desire to finish my novels, and made me write a love letter to myself. I wasn’t dying, but my hope and dreams of being published were dying, so when I saw a tweet for the 1000 Love, You Letter’s project I started to write.

The concept is not really me. I am not a self-love essay writing kind of gal. I’m an alien dentist, fisherman of children’s souls, bumblecat type of writer. I’ve got stories about convicts puking, the end of the world, and heaven being destroyed by bureaucracy, but my dying craft cried for a story, a goodbye, a last hurrah, so I wrote myself a love letter. No one read it but me. No one edited it. No one even knew it existed. I wasn’t going to send it, but my tribute required a submission, so I sent off my letter.

The submission’s initial response is what you would expect from a project collecting letters from women writing love letters to themselves. “This is a beautiful letter and we’re thankful for you trusting us to share it with the world.” Sweet, and what you’d want every vulnerable woman essayist to hear. Writing a love letter to yourself is an embarrassing emotional effort, and even more embarrassing knowing that others are going to read what you wrote. Urban Ivy, the publisher, does a wonderful job of making the brave women who submit to them feel valued and that kindness was a salve to my broken writer’s heart.

Before I quit writing, I dreamed of seeing my story in print on a piece of paper. Not on a website, but on a tangible page where I could run my finger over the text. Something that I could put on a bookshelf and read until it was tattered. Something that, when I was old, would smell like old paper and ink. My submissions were brave and bold, targeting the journals that still print and accept less than 0.5% of the stories they receive. I had a plan to move onto online journals once I’d exhausted the list of print publications.

The submission response from the 1,000 Love, You Letter project also said, “We will be in touch by March 15 to share which letters will be published in the Love, You book and on our social media!” Even though I had quit writing, this little glow of hope that I find hard to extinguish grew as I watched the social media announcements about the project.

On International Woman’s Day, Friday March 8th, a message in my inbox was titled, “Your Love, You letter has been selected!” I was stuck in a traffic jam on the highway so checked my email. (Totally unsafe. Never do this.) I didn’t want to read the email on the road, but my glow of hope spread during the 20 minutes it took me to get to work. My dream of publication might be coming true. I wondered if there was going to be a request to send my bank account information to a prince in Nigeria before they published. Then I yelled at myself to just be happy for once and not think how this could go wrong. I thought about who I wanted to tell and how. Once I parked, I reopened my email and read, “We’re excited to share that your letter has been selected to be featured in the Love You Book which is set to publish this Fall and will also appear on the 1000 Love You Letter website within the next few weeks.”

I burst into tears. Happy tears. Accomplishment tears. Dream tears. Tears I never thought I’d be able to shed but always wanted to shed. My present to myself was going to be published, and not just published, but published in a book. I unquit writing right there and then.

A week later I’m stalking the publisher, Urban Ivy, the letters that are already being published online, and the Instagram and Twitter feeds about the project. I’m liking and retweeting and anxiously awaiting the next steps. 10 points were added to my rejectomancer score jolting me right past the ceramic level and on my way to denim. My confidence restored, I resubmit my one-day-rejection story to a journal I love in hopes that it will find a home there, or at least some kind words. I returned to my writing group, tail between my legs, and told them of my acceptance and thanked them for their kind words that I had ignored while I was feeling sorry for myself. Because they are awesome people, and writers too, they welcomed me back. Slowly I’ve been telling family and friends, while savoring my happiness.

I wish this fairy tale ending on everyone. I hope that every low point is offset with a high, but I know that this is a wonderful, beautiful anomaly. Unquit writer me is going to continue to have mean things said about her writing. If I’m really successful, people will rant about me the way I rant about Neal Stephenson and Paolo Bacigalupi; I cannot stand the famous, successful, prizewinning works they produce. I have to get thicker skin and grow from these experiences: both the bad one and the good one.

The primary wisdom I gained from this came from my good friend Lew Gibb, part of my amazing writing group, who said about my mean rejection, “My wife and I have a great saying that works in these types of situations: ‘If someone honks at you for more than a second, it’s not about you.’ Everyone’s dealing with their own shit. It’s obvious, since they did the literary equivalent of a three second honk, that your reviewer allowed their shit to overflow into your story.” He’s right. I need to be strong enough to tune out the long honks. I need to value the cheers of myself and my friends more than nasty words generated in a single thoughtless day. I can’t just write love letters when I’m down. I want to remember that everything I write a present, even knowing that there will always be critics who despise my gift.

But guess what? I’m going to be published! Acceptance at last! I cannot wait to hold this book. I’ll need at least two copies: one to cherish and one to get spotty with I’m-holding-my-story tears.

My favorite flower

On May 14, 2018 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, parenting, Uncategorized2 Comments

I’d like to introduce you to my favorite flower. Don’t misunderstand. Tulips are not my favorite type of flower: that’s an iris. This specific tulip is my favorite flower. My husband and I have owned our house for almost 18 years. I believe this flower came with the house, or at least I don’t remember planting it, and I don’t remember a spring when it didn’t bloom. It’s a big tulip, the flower probably four inches tall, and it can’t decide if it wants to be pink, orange, salmon or all of them at once. In a garden filled with blossoms it commands attention.

The spring before my daughter was born I remember checking on my favorite flower each morning wondering if my baby or flower would arrive first. The flower bloomed a month before my due date, and my visions of enjoying it’s beauty with my baby evaporated when it’s petals fell and I was still pregnant. Seasons, flowers and babies have their own timelines.

Now every spring I remember the anticipation, anxiety, and excitement of those last weeks of pregnancy. With my favorite flower’s arrival comes reflection on my decade of motherhood. I tell the story of the flower to my daughter, and we remember our springs together. My favorite flower makes me pause to remember and appreciate the wonder filled life I’ve been given.

When I am an old woman

On April 27, 2017April 27, 2017 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, childhood, parenting, Tickles my afthead12 Comments

Tuesday, I was a chaperone for a group of third graders at the zoo, and as we were leaving I met the woman I want to be when I am very old. Racing to the rendezvous point by our deadline I encouraged the kids, “We’ve made it this far and no one has lost a leg. Keep going…” Well the hurrying stopped and the kids proceeded to pretend body parts were falling off. They limped, dragged and moaned themselves to the exit of the zoo. Thankfully we had three minutes and I could see the teachers, so I just laughed and kept encouraging them to move forward while the zombie leprosy overtook them.

Of course, while my kids were emulating disastrous disabilities we lurched past a group of really old people in wheelchairs. Some had oxygen. All had a helper pushing them. One was staring at me and my kids. Her red lipstick both matched the smart red jacket she was wearing and framed the beautiful smile on her face. She clapped her hands in delight and then held her clasped hands to her chest watching the loud silly kids parade past her. I don’t think one of them noticed her, but she noticed them, and we noticed each other. As I walked past she smiled at me and gave me a little wave while she kept laughing.

The kids weren’t being insensitive to people who couldn’t walk, or who were missing body parts. They were just playing and having fun. The old lady could have been grouchy. She could have wished that those loud kids would quiet down so she could enjoy the zoo sounds. Other old ladies might have shook their heads at me for not making my group of six urchins behave. But she didn’t. She recognized the joy of the moment. The fun that comes after six kids and one grown up have spent the day watching peacocks dance their mating dance, learning about assassin bugs, and picking which fish resembles their daddy. The excitement of getting to ride back on the bus. The pride of finishing their whole packet of zoo worksheets before lunch. It was a great day for us and it was like that old lady had a crystal ball and could see the entire joy of the trip in that last single moment our group had together.

While we were doing our last count of the kids before boarding the bus, the old woman was wheeled past our giant group of 82 kids and chaperones, and still she was smiling. Even as the kids did obnoxious kid things like play with toys they weren’t going to buy from the gift shop and try to trip each other. Then she saw me and reached out, so I stepped forward and held her hand, just for a moment, and smiled at her. As her dry paper skinned hand pulled out of mine I thought, I want to be like her when I grow up.

Mardi Gras Hiatus

On February 25, 2017 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever1 Comment

This not so regularly scheduled blog has been interrupted by Mardi Gras. Be back Tuesday!

Afthead at the White House

On December 28, 2016 By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Uncategorized15 Comments

Dear readers. The weeks before Christmas are chaotic and filled with high expectations, high demands, and fun…fun…fun. So when a work trip pops up the answer is inevitably no, unless the request comes from the White House. Yes, my friends, you read that right. I was invited to the White House. Now let me get a couple of questions out of the way:

Yes, I went on the work trip two weeks before Christmas.
No, I did not get to meet the President or the First Lady.
No, I did not get to hug Joe Biden, even though that was Afthead Junior’s number one request.
No, I did not sit in the Oval Office. In fact, I didn’t even make it to the White House building. My meeting was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building or EEOB seen on the right, behind the many fences, in the image below. It is very close to the White House, and still pretty darn impressive, as you will see.

After checking in with security, being sniffed by a dog, x-rayed, and being checked by security again I was presented with my official credentials, that I had to return, and the badge I still wear everywhere except to sleep because it is pokey.

Do you see that? It says “The White House.” Then it says “Johanna Levene.” That’s me! The weird part about being in the EEOB – I am so official using the acronym – is that once you get through all of the security you just get to wander around this insanely cool old building. All the important rooms are locked with a badge reader – like the Vice President’s office, so one couldn’t just wander in for a hug – but you can just walk into many of the historic rooms if there isn’t a meeting going on.

The ceilings are impressive.

The stairwells are impressive.

The library is impressive.

The conference rooms are impressive. This is part of the Secretary of War Suite.

The wallpaper is impressive.

I am impressive (and very smiley, because my badge says White House.) I cannot believe my Christmas cards were made before I got this picture. Maybe next year….

But the computers are archaic. Just kidding. Oddly there were flat screen TVs in all the conference rooms, and they looked completely out of place. However, in the Secretary of War Suite there was also this little set up in case you brought your typing skills, or some ink and parchment and wanted to pen a founding document real quick.

After my meeting – yes I actually participated in a four hour meeting in addition to taking all these pictures – I ate lunch in the coffee shop (lunch at the White House); tried to get into the Truman bowling alley (locked); and bought a bunch of Christmas presents at the White House gift shop. As I left I came the closest to the actual White House itself, so of course I took a picture. Yeah, that’s the West Wing there on the other side of the parking lot. Wave to President Obama. Then I turned around and snapped a picture of the EEOB one last time, because you can’t get this angle unless you are a White House visitor.

This was my first White House invitation in my thirteen year career, and the best part about the meeting is that it was actually important I was there. This was no gratuitous White House invite. I briefed my boss’s, boss’s, boss’s….on and on… boss before the meeting, and he used my talking points in his presentation. I got to speak. I made a call to action. It was pretty darn cool. I think I deserve a congratulatory pat on the afthead.

In case you are interested in learning more of the history of the EEOB or White House check out these great sites:

West Wing Tour: https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/inside-white-house/west-wing-tour

Eisenhower Executive Office Building Tour: https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/inside-white-house/eeob-tour