The Calm Before the Tomatoes

Now that Buddy’s back on his favorite plum tree, serenading us every dawn, summer is officially in full swing. And, boy oh boy, did the weather gods get the memo. We’ve been in monsoon mode since mid-April, a time when the norm is 75 degrees and crisp spring air. It’s sticky and icky.

Luckily, my constant presence is not required in the garden this time of year. Sure, I potter around, pulling the odd weed, harvesting a few sugar snap peas, lettuces, and the last of the asparagus. But most of the plants are in growth mode and all I need to do is stand to the side and admire them.

Little gem lettuces

Little gem lettuces

Beets

Beets

sugar snap pea blossoms

sugar snap pea blossoms

In a month’s time, I will be inundated with produce and my kitchen will resemble a factory. I’ll be cleaning, chopping, freezing, blanching, canning and jamming! But not yet.

Because art imitates life, my writing is in much the same place as my garden. I’ve dealt with the copyedits and proofreading of True Places, my next book, and am awaiting the final cover. (!!!!) Since, well, forever, I’ve been working on What Comes Next—two projects in fact, to be submitted together, like a twofer. One of the proposals, a story of obsession and fraud, is pretty much good to go. The other, an immigrant/ WWII story, is almost there. Once my agent submits the proposals, there will be nothing to do but wait for what we hope will be a green light on one or both projects. And then I will, you know, have to write a book or two.

Any bets I hear from my editor when my garden is generating 20 pounds of produce a day? 

Good thing I love my work, both in the garden and at my desk. In the meantime, I have reading to catch up on, and daydreaming, too. Isn’t that what summer has always been for? Long, carefree days when your bathing suit never dried, you ate lunch in a treehouse and stayed up late playing tag and chasing fireflies until, at last, you were called inside by your exhausted parents. 

What are you looking forward to this summer? Homegrown tomatoes? The beach? Freeze tag?

Sowing the Blank Page

The blank page. The cursor blinking, counting seconds, heartbeats. It’s intimidating as hell to stare down that white sheet and find the word with which to begin. Then the next one and the one after that.

I’d like to tell you it gets easier once you’ve written a book, or four, but it doesn’t. If anything, it gets worse. Take the book I’m working on now. (I’m the Henny Youngman of writing. Take my book—please!) I am stalling so badly on writing it that I’ve actually created a synopsis. I hate synopses! We all do. But even a synopsis is less terrifying than that empty page.

Writing must be the one profession in which the more you do it, the less you believe that you can. We’re a strange bunch but try to love us anyway.

To get myself going on this book, I’ve tried all sorts of tactics. Watching Chef’s Table isn’t working, nor is drinking wine. Not even cleaning out the closets is resulting in words on the page. So curious.

Yesterday, I was looking for a photo on my phone and happened upon this one:

That’s my vegetable garden before it had vegetables. South-facing and gently sloped, it was, before my beloved took the rototiller to it, simply part of a field. We added truckloads of compost, creating a blank canvas, and encircled it in electric fencing, to keep deer and groundhogs and rabbits from raiding it. A few months later, it looked like this:

These photos gave me an idea. What if I considered the blank page as a freshly dug plot, empty but overflowing with potential? The earth, the unplanted earth, is not blank. It is moist and rich with nutrients and life. (And weeds, sure, but I know how to pull weeds.) Tomorrow I’m going to open that word document and take a new look at the blank page. It’s not empty. It just hasn’t been planted yet. If I set down the words and tend to them, they will grow; it is the nature of both seeds and stories. So much of what they become is already present—in the soil, in the case of the garden, and in the writer, in the case of the story. The page is not blank. It is simply waiting, like a field looking toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, patient under the sun.

Oh, Happy Day!

Look what I have--a new cover! And under that cover, that is, inside the book, will be lots of words that I went to a lot of trouble of arranging in a particular order. When the time comes (May 2017, or sooner, if you win a copy in one of the many giveaways we'll be having), I hope you will like how I arranged the words.

For now, let's just stare at the cover.

What do you think? Don't go telling me my baby is ugly because I won't hear you. I love this baby.

If you'd like to win a rough galley (no pretty baby cover--sorry), I'm hosting a giveaway on my Facebook page until 9 July. Just comment and share the post to enter. Go on, I'll wait.

Want to read what other authors had to say about ALL THE BEST PEOPLE? The full quotes are here, but I'll give you a sample platter.

“Not just the best people, but real people: authentic, quirky and troubled. I cared for them all."           Chris Bohjalian, author of The Sleepwalker and The Guest Room

“All The Best People unfurls the truth of three generations caught in a grandmother’s mysterious madness. Sonja Yoerg spins the story of a family on the brink of collapse—writing with tenderness, grace, and truth.”
           Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Accidents of Marriage

“All the Best People is powerful and haunting, a novel about betrayal and shame, acceptance and unconditional love. Book clubs will devour it.”
           Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of The Perfect Son and Echoes of Family

"Deftly and with the delicate brush of a master, Yoerg draws us into this brilliant, multi-generational saga of love, madness, mysticism and the markings they leave on a family. Beautifully rendered and aching in its portrayal of a mother’s slide into mental illness, All the Best People is destined to be a book club favorite."                 
           Christopher Scotton, author of The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

"This ambitious tale will enthrall readers with its lyrical prose and unforgettable characters. All the Best People is a mesmerizing read that will challenge, delight and redefine our notions of both weakness and resilience." 
           Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Two-Family House

“All the Best People is gorgeously written and chock-full of captivating and colorful characters. Unforgettable, your heart will break and swell in equal measure.”
          Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year

"Yoerg has crafted a suspenseful and poignant tale of three generations of a Vermont family whose long-held secrets threaten to devour them whole. The novel is paced so perfectly and so dense with truly unique psychological drama, readers will need to be reminded to exhale.”             Amy Impellizzeri, award-winning author of Lemongrass Hope

"All the Best People is a powerful story of a family whose legacy of mental illness and betrayals nearly destroys them. Yoerg's writing keeps us on a high wire of tension as we seek salvation and hope alongside her characters. The lessons in this novel resonate long after the book is finished."                                                                                                                                                       Holly Robinson, author of Chance Harbor and Folly Cove

"With Yoerg’s lush and moving prose, the characters are realistic and bold, yet so compassionately portrayed that I fell in love with even the most unlikable ones. This book will stay with you long after you read the last page.”
           Amy Sue Nathan, author of The Good Neighbor and The Glass Wives

I'm grateful for the generosity of all these authors. They're busy people and reading a book is not a small task. I feel very lucky indeed.

I'm a pretty excitable person but I am VERY excited to share this book with you. In the meantime, Happy Fourth of July to you and yours!