The Art of Joy

With my latest book
Starting Over

We writers are usually neurotic. Acknowledging my neuroses helps me deal with them. By practicing sports I overcome anxiety, worry, frustration and anger. Even my kids, who are now 9 and 6 tell me: “Mommy, you need to go for a run”, because they know it lifts my spirits.

Any sport or form of exercise is the best antidepressant. That, plus a balanced and healthy diet, sleeping enough hours each night, can keep the blues at bay. On the other hand, moderation is the key.

I’ve battled with obsession and compulsion since I was a kid (that’s perhaps why I suffered from bulimia, which I address in my books Me siento gorda (I Feel Fat) and Miedo a comer (Fear of Eating), and so I set limits for myself and practice moderation in all areas of life. Ever since I ditched the scale, stopped counting calories and quit overdoing it at the gym, I’ve had a healthy weight and size and I feel better than ever, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Don´t take yourself
too seriously!

Being pessimistic or negative can become a habit that you can certainly overcome. In order to avoid being washed away by negative thoughts, I often listen to self-improvement books or anything by David Sedaris on my MP3 player.

Something as simple as smiling often and not taking myself so seriously has worked wonders in my case.

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To know more about my books, visit www.lorrainecladish.com

The Magic Wand

A few months ago, Obelisco, a publisher in Spain that has published a few of my books, to include The Challenge of Writing and Publishing, A Creative Child is a Happy Child and 7 Strategies to Get the Most out of Self-Help Books  (with Raimon Samsó), asked me to write a fairy tale for their  2011 Fairy Planner . 

Alas, I was not inspired to write a fairy tale.

A few days later, something my daughters did inspired my short story entitled The Magic Wand, and I went from not remembering if fairies exist to thinking they just might.

It´s good to believe in magic, in fairies, in Santa Claus and Peter Pan.  

In fact I find it´s a fountain of youth!

If you can read and write Spanish, go to the web page of ediciones Obelisco, and submit your fairy tale to their Fairy Tale Contest, for their next planner. Good luck!


To buy the Fairy Tale planner on Amazon, click HERE. 

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To know more about my writing and my books, visit www.lorrainecladish.com

Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Book

I checked out Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert – author of Eat, Pray, Love, out of curiosity. I’d listened to her first book at a timely moment in my life. It was a Godsend.


What I found in Committed were countless paragraphs that I wanted to underline (but couldn’t since the book belongs to the library) because they hit home.

I recommend the book to any woman who is haunted by her exes, who hates them or loves them, who is in love again or wants to be or doesn’t want to be, who is divorced, married, single, widowed, dating, sworn off men, young, old, a mom, a non-mom. I recommend it to any woman who wonders what makes a marriage successful, or if it is even healthy to marry, to divorce or all of the above. That may very well be all women. 

“Part of what makes the experience of divorce so dreadful is the emotional ambivalence. It can be difficult, if not impossible, for many divorced people ever to rest in a state of pure grief, pure anger or pure relief when it comes to feelings about one’s ex spouse. Instead, the emotions often remain mixed up together in an uncomfortably raw stew of contradictions for many years,” states Gilbert.

Finally, someone owns up to this publicly. If you have kids, then this is compounded because you have to somehow interact with that person with whom you have so many unresolved issues. And, unresolved they may be forever. It might be a matter of learning to live with it and using that experience towards your next relationship.

Elizabeth Gilbert

She also reminds us that the person we choose (and hopefully chooses us) as a partner at different times in our life defines who we are at that moment. Both people are in it, and no manner of one-sided finger pointing will change that. It’s not easy to acknowledge, but I can relate to it.  

Gilbert mentions a study by the naturalist William Jordan, Divorce Among the Gulls, where he explains that seagulls – a species that mate for life – have a 25% “divorce rate”. Sometimes two seagulls just don’t get along. They bicker and complain and don’t communicate. After a couple of seasons of this, they go off and find other “spouses”.

“And here’s the kicker”, says Gilbert: “Often their ´second marriage´ is perfectly happy and then many of them do mate for life.”

“Imagine that, I beg you! Even among birds with brains the size of camera batteries, there does exist such a think as fundamental compatibility and incompatibility (…). The situation is the same for humans. Some of us drive each other nuts; some of us do not. Maybe there is a limit to what can be done about this.”

This is enlightening, and explains why some people have grand relationships with one particular person but strife-ridden relationships with someone else and yet they are – in essence – the same person. Mix oil and water as vigorously as you want, and you get nothing but oil and water, separated. Mix oil and an egg yolk, beating it smoothly and continuously and presto: mayonnaise! Of course, mayonnaise can also separate if it spoils. But, there are ways to prevent that. 

Gilbert wrote Committed when she and the love of her life found they had to marry so he would not be deported. The glitch was that they had promised each other not to marry – ever - after having both experienced shattering divorces. 

She then decided to study the institution of marriage and the ins and outs of commitment, of infatuation, of maturity, of compatibility, of loving someone because of who they are and not because of who you would like them to be. There is no tidy conclusion to it, as there is no tidy conclusion to relationships or even life. 

I enjoyed it. A lot. Now I’m going to buy my own copy, so I can highlight the heck out of it. 

www.lorrainecladish.com 

But .. that´s SO hard!

“Oh, but... That´s SO hard!”

Have you ever said it as an excuse not to do something you would really like to?
A difficulty should not be an obstacle. Writers have to get used to “difficulty” and rejection if we want one day to enjoy an acceptance or even a request to write.
Not to brag, but I have fifteen books published. Not all of them were accepted the first time around, however. I Feel Fat received several rejections, because “nobody knows what bulimia is”, and because “it isn´t an interesting subject”. The Challenge of Writing and Publishing was rejected because “people who write think they know it all” and “who is going to read a book about how to write?” My novel Voice Mail received many rejections, and one publisher offered to take it as long as I made the main characters gay men instead of lesbians. I said no, and knocked on other doors. Then a better publishing house took it without my having to make any changes.
The positive side of rejection and of persistence, no matter how difficult it may seem, is that when rejection or difficulty happens again down the road, you know it is circumstantial. Then you take it in stride, because you know everything is not lost. All it takes is for one person or in my case, one publisher to say yes. Besides, now when I get a rejection I tell myself that when I have my own reality TV show, they will even want to publish my blogs. And of course, that would be really hard! Or then again … would it?

PS.- In the picture, with my kids at the Madrid Book Fair in 2006. I miss it!

http://www.lorrainecladish.com/