Wordspinning

Why I stay at home - and LOVE Saint Paul

posted by Kiara at 5:59 PM | 0 comment(s)

the long slow march to publication

I have begun the process of looking for a literary agent. It sounds terribly pretentious to me, but there it is.

After taking a class at the Loft Literary Center I decided that I need to get an agent for two reasons:

1. I am terrible at marketing myself so there is no way I could successfully self-publish (a successful first run would be around 10,000 books)

2. There are many publishers who will not look at unagented manuscripts.

It seems to be a no-risk venture as the reputable agents don't charge money upfront, but take it from a commission upon the sale of the project.

The plan at this time: pitch the book to a bunch of literary agents and hopefully find one. With luck, it won't take more then a year to find an agent. With even more luck they will be able to find a publisher for me.

We'll see.

At the moment I have querries out to about 20 agents. I have been turned down flat by 5 agencies with form letter rejections, I've received one request for sample pages of the manuscript and I'm waiting for responses from the rest.

Keep you posted.

posted by Kiara at 12:40 PM | 0 comment(s)

father, son, and holy ghost

For a nontheist, I am unusually preoccupied with god.

For a Quaker-Unitarian I am unusually obsessed with the trinity.

An idea that made itself known during my yoga practice grew further during Quaker meeting several weeks ago.

As we finished our yoga postures, the teacher finished with her ritual "peace on our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts." and something in her intonation sounded like the Presbyterian minister at my grandma's church finishing his prayer with "father, son, and holy ghost."

I have also been reading a lot of the Gnostic gospels lately. Specifically Elaine Pagel's book Beyond Belief. Got me to thinking about how different Christianity would be if the Thomas Christian texts had been included in the bible. They believed (like the Quakers) that the divine was in everyone and that one needed to find a way to access that inner light.

In meeting I was meditation on the mind, body, spirit connection and suddenly it all fit together. If we are made in god's image and if god is a three-in-one being of father (mind), son (body) and holy ghost (spirit)... then our job is to become balanced three-in-one people. We too face the difficult paradox of being equally whole and separate.

I spent much of my life over-valuing the mind, undervaluing the spirit and devaluing the body. As a recovering anorexic (with over a decade of healthy eating under my belt!) I too often wanted to ignore my body. It sent unreliable signals to me about who I was.

Now in my spiritual practice I am striving for this mind/body/spirit connection. Trying to achieve balance that mirrors the image of this triune god.

posted by Kiara at 4:13 AM | 0 comment(s)

prayed for/prayed against?

After meeting on Sunday I looked out in the parking lot and was surprised to see a circle of a dozen or so people all facing the meeting house with their palms to the sky seemingly praying.

One person had a bowl in which something was burning-- it smelled like sage to me. A few of them, and maybe all of them, had little green tags pinned to their shirts.

The really surprising thing was that no one at the meeting knew any of the people in the parking lot. So far as we knew they were not affiliated with the meeting.

When one member of our meeting left to go to her car, the whole praying circle turned to face her.

Were they trying to save our souls because we aren't of the One True Religion, whatever that may be? Or were they in solidarity with us over something?

I'm burning with curiousity to know who these people were and why they were there. Hopefully someone will know and tell me all about it.

The sage was really what confused me. Most narrow fundamentalist type religions who would demonize the Quakers don't really go in for the burning of incense.

And the liberal wacko fringe like the quakers and the unitarians would certainly be up for this kind of thing but usually at their own meetinghouse...

posted by Kiara at 12:12 PM | 2 comment(s)