The PensFatales Welcome Diana Orgain

The Pens welcome Diana Orgain today...Diana holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University with a minor in acting. Diana’s plays have been produced at San Francisco State University, GreenHouses Productions, and PlayGround in San Francisco. Bundle of Trouble is her first mystery novel. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and their children.

Thank you to the Pens for hosting me today. What a great topic, so interesting to see what Grace means to people and how many different meanings there are! I was a bit overwhelmed when looking it up in the dictionary and found 13 different meanings!

When I think of Grace I inevitably think of the Grace of God (that would probably explain why I feel compelled to capitalize it). My favorite definition was “God’s fullness in the life of the believer.” Yes! Fullness. That is what Grace is to me a fullness of everything good and beautiful and kind - Love that is freely given.

Every day I feel that fullness of love and joy with my family – with my husband and my three beautiful little ones – but if I’m very lucky I feel the joy of writing. Like others have said on this blog, sometimes writing can become an item on a to-do list, an obligation for the day, a hurried dash toward a deadline or word count. But on very good days, the writing can be so much more. It’s a way to connect to readers through plot and character to really capture someone’s heart and imagination and transport them into the world of fiction. And that in and of itself can be grace, can’t it?

What do you think? What does Grace mean to you? When do you most feel Grace? Leave a comment and I will randomly select someone on October 31st 2009 to win a copy of my debut mystery, Bundle of Trouble: A Maternal Instincts Mystery.

Capturing Grace

by Gigi

I didn't mean to do another photo-centric post so soon, but when I think of the topic of grace, I keep coming back to the fact that so much of what I love about photography is that it helps capture many of life's moments of grace.

Stopping on a bridge just after sunset:Walking through a plaza before it becomes crowded with people:

Pausing to look at the statue of an angel that was beautifully crafted centuries ago:

Interestingly, this isn't what I value most in writing. When I read a book, I'm not drawn to beautiful literary prose. I don't want a book to strive to give me moments of grace; I want it to suck me in and transport me somewhere. I don't want it to show me beauty; I want it to capture my imagination.

Come to think of it, I'd better get going so I can pick out a good book before I head to the airport, on my way to the Bouchercon mystery convention.

Martha Thinks Grace is Keeping The (Wo)Man Down

Did your mama ever tell you that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all?

My mom didn't. That's not how the women of my family roll, which is probably why I had a problem with this post. I just don't have anything nice to say about the word "grace."

It's not what grace means. It's what I think it means. There, I admit it, the problem lies with me.

I hear "grace," and I think "What? I'm not good enough for you the way I am? You need me to hold my head high and throw my shoulders back and float through a room, too?"

Women already yearn to be so many things: smart, sassy, witty, modest, popular, funny, intelligent. I'm not adding graceful to that list. To top it off, grace seems to be about maximizing the experience of the person watching me, instead of my own.

So I'll leave grace to the other ladies out there. It's not for me.

Living in the State of Grace

by Lisa Hughey

Grace is an ephemeral concept, a fleeting state which can elude us in moments of frustration or surprise us in moments of stress.

I live in a state of chaos most days.

There is order in my chaos (sort of) appointments, sports events, meetings, volunteering, reminders to do this or pick up that are faithfully recorded in my Blackberry. When I’m out I can check to make sure I’m not missing anything important and keep on target. The handy device holds my mind and my calendar, keeps me sane and on track.

The downside of this is I’ve moved to a place where writing is a chore to be ticked off, an item to cross out when I’ve met my goal for the day. And I realized that grace goes hand in hand with joy.

Whenever I’m frustrated with the world around me, I think, if I moved somewhere (Portland has been appealing to me lately) anywhere other than where I am, things would be better. Less frantic, less competitive, less expensive, less crazy, less everything and filled with more grace.

In lucid moments, I realize moving really isn’t the answer to my frustrations and fears. And that true peace will only arrive if I can find and hold onto that elusive state of grace.

Instead of chastising myself for being late because I got caught up in a scene, I celebrate the fact that I got caught up in writing. Instead of yelling at my son for forgetting about a cooking project due in fifteen hours, we trekked to the grocery store and cooked together and bonded over everything from literature to history.

Instead of lamenting the fact that I am an abysmal failure at belly dancing, I’m giving thanks for having access to a teacher, that I’m learning something new, and I’m doing something fun. I come home from class exhilarated and joyful. I’ve been trying to cultivate the appreciation for those moments of grace.

And slowly, but surely I’m moving to the State of Grace...anyone want to come with me?

GRACE IS THE WORD

Welcome guest blogger Diane Vallere. Diane is a retail fashion veteran who sells fine apparel by day and plots murders by night. At any given moment she is working on a project involving shoes, clues, and clothes. Currently, she is seeking agent representation for her fashion-based mystery, JUST KIDDING. You can catch her weekly blog at www.myspace.com/dianevallere.

There are two kinds of women in this world. Those with a natural grace… and those like me. I'm a lot of things, and on a good day I'll sit you down and tell you all about them, but the one thing you won't hear me brag about is that I'm a graceful person. A few weeks ago, I fell down in the middle of the Hollywood Walk of Fame! But that's only because I put pretty shoes above practical shoes that night – and given the chance to do things differently, I wouldn't change a thing.

So, as far as skill sets and natural graces go, I'm okay with the hand I've been dealt. Yes, it gets hard to explain over and over how I trip over my own feet, actually slipped on a banana peel, and nearly punch people in the face while gesturing wildly (it is the best way to properly tell a story, BTW). And yes, I said over and over, because none of these are isolated incidents.

But grace, well, I seem to have gotten out of line when they were handing it out and instead got an extra dose of silly. Even the three graces seem to elude me. Unless, okay. Here's a crazy thought – those three graces are kind of like muses, right? Well, I'm a writer, so I must have encountered the three muses. Although…my three muses aren't exactly like the ones depicted in the movies. Mine act an awful lot like the three stooges.

Don't laugh. I'm being serious.

There's Moe-Grace: the idea generator. The grace that tells me that every idea I have is a good one. The grace that tells me to get out there and do something, and is enough of a schoolyard bully to my Id to make me get things done. Then there's Larry-Grace: the creative. He gets talked into things by Moe-Grace. He's the middleman. The negotiator, although his efforts are always wasted. He's a wild card, but he's somewhat predictable: he'll stand up to Larry-Grace, he'll get slapped down by Larry-Grace, and he'll get back up again. Lastly, there's Curly-Grace: the common-sense challenged buffoon. He might not know where he's going, but he'll make you laugh along the way. He goes for the joke, even if he is the joke, no matter what. He's the grace that keeps me funny. And everybody likes funny, right?

I know these three graceless graces. Like, I KNOW know them. But until now, I've never stopped to think about the fact that I've been living with three wise guys for all these years (don't tell my mom).

On my first trip to Italy as a shoe buyer (I know!) I was particularly conscious of my innate lack of grace, and the importance of keeping it in check. It wasn't until the final night that my true colors showed. I'd spent the evening packing before dinner so I'd be ready for my 4:00am shuttle the next morning. At the designated time, I headed to the lobby to meet up with the other buyers. We stood around chatting about the success of the trip, and I relaxed, knowing I'd kept my inner goof in check for the whole trip. But when we turned to leave the lobby, one of the buyers pointed to the floor and asked, "What's that?"

Mortified, I realized what they were staring at. Before I could reign in that inner trio of goofballs, I proclaimed, "Oh My God! That's my underwear!"

During the packing process a pair of my underwear had attached themselves to a metal stud on the bottom of my handbag, been couriered to the lobby, and dropped onto the floor! I don't need to tell you that graceful women don't accidentally carry their panties attached to their handbags. I swooped down in a deep knee bend, scooped up the panties, and threw them into my bag. Twitching lips and amused eyes followed my actions until we all burst out into laughter. To this day, it remains one of the best stories I've told about those glamorous buying trips – because it was uniquely me.

So, maybe I do slip on the occasional banana peel. I've got my own graces, and wherever they chose to take me, I'm merely along for the ride. It could be worse. At least I don't have their hairstyles.

Graceland

I wasn’t an Elvis fan when I walked into Graceland, but I was when I walked out.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m an Elvis girl. The dork stripes, remember? Add it onto the list, right in between the Renaissance Faire and my love of Doctor Who.

Young Elvis. 

Movie star Elvis.

White bejeweled jumpsuit Elvis.

Huggy Bear Elvis.

I love them all.

 And if you’ve ever been to Graceland, you probably understand why. 

Because besides being massively talented and playing music that goes straight to the joy center of my brain, the man wasn’t afraid to be himself.  Need proof?

Yeah, that’s the Jungle Room. Do you have a Jungle Room? Hmmm...me neither. I don’t know anyone who has a Jungle Room. And I don’t remember seeing one the last time I watched Cribs or flipped through the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. Nope, only Elvis had a jungle room.

Or how about this. If your eyes are somehow able to focus on the center of this picture, you’ll see a pool table. Now, who the hell covers the walls, the ceiling and the sofa of their billiard room in ream after ream of pleated patchwork fabric? Someone with a thick stream of awesome running through their veins, that’s who. Someone like Elvis.

And the thing about Graceland is its not that big, not what I’d consider mansion anyways. Its a nice house--certainly bigger than anyplace I’ve ever lived--but hardly the palace-sized home you would imagine the King of Rock and Roll would live out his days in. 

So, what does Graceland have to do with Grace? Well if I had to pick some kind of connection out of thin air--and I do, this post has to end somehow, you know--I would probably say something about how being true to yourself and surrounding yourself with the things that make you happy, not what some magazine writer or tv host or anybody else for that matter says you should like, is one way to fill your life with real Grace. 

Or I can just give you the ending you knew was coming from the very start, and tell you that in the end it doesn't really matter, because...

Elvis Has Left The Building!

Graceful? Nah. On the lookout for Grace? Always.

Grace. Strictly speaking, I ain’t got much. I’m the one who spills the wine at the table (that’s why I hang around Sophie, hoping she’ll spill first…)

I trip. I stumble. I bump into things. But despite being the most likely amongst my companions to spill, to trip, to falter, I find that if I keep on going, I get to my destination nonetheless.

I try to hold on tightly to that metaphor as I careen my way through life.

Clearly there’s a difference between being graceful and encountering Grace-with-a-capital-G in one’s life. When I remind myself to slow down, I find it easy to recognize fleeting moments of Grace: the sweep of my son’s eyelashes when I catch him unawares, before he pulls away. The unselfconscious elegance of Oscar-the-cat stalking a fly, his sinewy, soot-black body slinking through the tall grass. The sensation of trailing a soft sable brush through buttery artists’ oil paint. The slant of afternoon sunlight through the majestic window at my stair landing, and the beams of moonlight through the pantry windowpanes at night. The rush of water over a rock in a crystal-clear mountain stream. Forgetting myself in my writing, so that I’m unaware of time passing. The peal of a child’s laugh. The understanding smile in a friend's eye. The whisper of a lover’s sigh.

Then there’s always the proof of enduring grace: the historic architecture of the house where I am lucky enough to live, wherein the ghosts of the architect, skilled craftspeople, and the original owners live on in scrawled messages on naked plaster, old newspapers in the walls, yellowed photos, a baby’s shoe. A picture of a dancer I painted years ago in Florence, which changes through time so that every time I see it I am reminded of a long-ago steamy, sweaty summer in that Italian city…and increasingly of the young woman that I no longer am. Holding my published books in my arms, knowing that my imagination has created stories read by perfect strangers all over the world, who sometimes even write to me. The long, smooth, perfect limbs and almond-shaped eyes of the being who emerged from my body so many years ago, now on the cusp of leaving my side to create his own life, to find his own, profoundly personal, moments of Grace.

Oops, just spilled the coffee.

Chasing Grace

There's a line in a Slaid Cleaves country song that I love. "Just give me one good year, to get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace, but grace ain't so easily found."

I was in the car one time with my sister, driving up the Cuesta Grade, bellowing these lines at the top of our lungs. I remember thinking, as I so often did when I heard them, So profound, so true, so true.

We looked up, and we saw the single word printed on the back of the tractor-trailer driving in front of us: GRACE.

"Well," said Christy, "I guess it's more easily found than he thought."

I never forgot that moment. Just because someone tells you something's hard doesn't mean that it is. Just because he said grace wasn't easily found didn't make it true. I love the idea, the romance of that poetic line, but I see grace all the time.

I heard that same songwriter speaking once, between songs, and he spoke of how he learned to write songs. He said he'd listened to Woody Guthrie songs for so long that he just took them and basically broke them apart and put new words to them and then put them back together and called them his own.

Isn't that what we're doing when we write? Nothing we're doing is really original. When I think about that, there's an element of relief. Sure, my voice is my own. Slaid Cleaves's voice is his own. No one is going to sing his words like he does, and no one is going to write my novels like I do. But these stories we're telling are as old as the hills, so let's not stress about Being The Very First and Being Original.

Let's just find truth, and guts, and loveliness, and bits of gore and ribbon if that's what it takes, and we'll find our own grace because we're that's what we're all chasing and really, it's more easily found than we originally thought.