I was reminded of Feng Shui recently as I restructured my office to fit in a treadmill desk. Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of creating harmony in living spaces. Its literal translation means wind and water.   It’s based on the principle that, like wind and water, you and your environment are two forces of nature, constantly interacting and influencing each other.  When they’re in balance, chi or positive energy can flow and that, in turn, impacts our health, wealth and happiness.

As simple as it sounds, the art of Feng Shui is surprisingly complex and doesn’t lend itself to a superficial approach. Feng Shui masters spend their entire lives studying the principles and helping others apply them.  There are also various schools of Feng Shui which interpret and apply the rules differently.

I didn’t know any of that when I picked up a book on Feng Shui years ago.  Back then, my office was a mess, and I thought perhaps the Chinese principles of Feng Shui could help. After all, as the book pointed out, many of us utilize the principles of Feng Shui without even realizing it. We arrange furniture in a certain way, decorate our living rooms artfully, and design gardens and ponds so they flow.  Why not bring that same sensibility to the space where we write our books?

Here are some of the Feng Shui principles I introduced into my office years ago, and still utilize, to a greater or lesser extent, today.

* Simplify and declutter. Active chaos or temporary clutter (reference books or the visuals that pile up as we write) is the result of creativity in motion.  But passive chaos or stagnant clutter – outdated papers or books not being used, old magazines and journals – needs to be eliminated.

* Your desk should be in your office’s commanding position. Ideally it should face the room’s entrance, but angled to the left or the right and not directly in line with the door. If that’s impossible, use a mirror to reflect the entrance door or, at the very least, hang a bell on your doorknob so you’ll hear someone approaching.

*Put the materials you use regularly within arm’s reach of your desk. If that’s impossible, gather whatever you need at the beginning of your writing session and have everything close.

* Avoid having an abstract painting on the wall in an area where you want to focus.

* Watch out for doors that stick. Feng Shui believes they can create sticky situations.

* Make sure your work area engages all five senses. This is critical for us as writers too.  When you look up from your desk you should see something you love on the wall.  Create a soundtrack for the book you’re writing. Add a scented oil diffuser to the shelf.  Toss a throw rug with a beautiful texture onto the floor.

* Hang a crystal over your desk to stimulate the thinking chi and improve your work habits.

* Surround yourself with colors that personally resonate. The color blue activates the fifth chakra, or throat chakra, and can inspire creative writing. If that color appeals, put a few blue touches in your office. I’ve added red in my office to kick start my thinking. My desk is black and grounding, which is good for persistence.

* Keep a plant in your office and make sure it’s healthy.

* And finally, if you want things to change, relocate (or get rid of) 27 things in your working area. This is a powerful Feng Shui tool that can be used to sweep out the old and bring in the new.

It doesn’t happen often, but yes, we do get snow on Vancouver Island.  Ironically, the last couple of times we’ve had any real accumulation, it’s been near the end of February when the snowdrops are in full bloom.  This time was no different. As well as snowdrops, the buds on my plum trees were swollen and pink, just days from bursting into bloom, and the crocuses were poking out of the ground too.  I was downtown when the flurries started and some of the tourists arriving from south of the border grumbled and shivered as they waited in line for cabs.  This is nothing, I wanted to tell them. You should see what the poor souls in Winnipeg are dealing with. Out there, the ground is so frozen city officials are telling residents it might be June before it’s completely thawed.  But it was too chilly to talk. So I pulled on my toque, whipped out my gloves and picked up my pace. Once my downtown business was done, I had important things waiting at home: Team Sheltie wanted to romp in the snow. I had a fire to build. And I had books waiting to be read.

Here’s what I’m reading these days:

Beside the Bed: The One That I Want by Allison Winn Scotch

On the Kindle: Love in a Pawn Shop by Bonnie Edwards

At the Gym: Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

 When I lost my email connection last week, it reinforced how much I rely on email, and, in particular, how much I look forward to the automatic arrival of several blogs I’ve signed up to receive.

Given that we were buffeted by gale force winds and heavy rain, I expected a power outage.  I pulled out some candles, brought in wood for the fire, backed up obsessively and hunkered down.  The wind blew for days it seemed, but the lights – and my computer – stayed on. We made a pot of Mulligatawny soup, reminded ourselves that it was January and, considering what our friends and relatives to the east were experiencing, we were just fine.

A few days later, my email stopped. Nothing came in or went out for more than a day. When it came back up, it was sporadic at best for another twelve hours. It had nothing to do with the weather; it was an issue with my service provider. I wasn’t the only one with the problem either according to the live (and cranky) tweets on their site. Luckily I have a second email address on a different server so I quickly fired off emails to a couple of editors to let them know I was still at the keyboard.

All was fine. Until Passive Guy didn’t show up in my inbox as he usually does. Nor did Writer Unboxed or Live, Write, Thrive.

I survived. In the same way I’ll survive when door-to-door mail service stops a few years from now.   But the thing is, I like hearing that metallic slam of my mailbox when the letter carrier brings news (even if Team Sheltie doesn’t). I love the ping of email hitting my in box. I’ve gotten attached to some great writing blogs too. I don’t need to subscribe – I know that – but I happen to like home delivery. Half the time if I don’t sign up, I forget to pop over and check things out.  Here are a few of my favorites:

The Passive Voice   http://www.thepassivevoice.com/      Subscribe and receive a daily round up of publishing news and views from the Passive Guy.  It hits my in box every day around lunch and I usually read it while I eat my salad.

Writer UnBoxed http://writerunboxed.com/   is there when I first check email in the morning and I read it with my first cup of coffee. What I love about this blog is the range – a different writer every day and a ton of different topics.

Live, Write, Thrive http://www.livewritethrive.com/  Another early morning arrival and becoming a favorite. Posts by author/editor C.S. Lakin who publishes both traditionally and independently in e and audio form. Great blend of craft, business and all round inspiration.

There are other blogs I love too:

Chuck Wendig’s  http://terribleminds.com/

Rachelle Gardner’s Books & Such Blog:  http://www.rachellegardner.com/

The always informative Kristine Kathryn Rusch:  http://kriswrites.com/

And last but not least:   http://writersinnerjourney.com/

Actually, it was a bookish Christmas at our house. That’s nothing out of the ordinary. I tend to give – and receive – books for Christmas. I scored big-time this year too with new titles by Kristan Higgins, Lisa Gardner, Jodi Picoult, and Anne Lamott. Once Christmas was over (and it was a doozy this year with two very sick dogs; scarily sick, in fact, though they were well enough to watch out the window as the company left), I settled in to read.  It occurred to me that I should set myself an annual reading goal – say two books a week, which is an easy target for me.  Ultimately I decided against it. I’m stretching myself with some extra writing goals this year. Reading is my reward; I don’t want to turn it into a ‘should.’  Having said that, I am going to track the number of books I read over the next twelve months. I’m curious to see if I read as much as I think I do.

What I’m reading right now:

At the Gym:

The First Phone Call From Heaven by Mitch Albom

Beside the Bed:

The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins

On the Kindle:

Man For Grace by EC Sheedy

Books read to date 2014:  4

 Achoo. Hack, Hack. Sniffle. Moan.

Yes, it’s cold season.  I fought the good fight for about three weeks, battling a sore throat with Echinacea spray, drinking lots of fluids, staying home and resting.  I was determined to be healthy for a day of author talks in Vancouver.  And I was.  The day went well. Everyone had a good time.  The sore throat receded. I felt pretty good. But four days after I came back to Victoria, the cold hit. And it’s a doozy.  I haven’t had one this bad in years.

My normal tendency is to push through, continue writing, keep up the routine. And I tried. I really did. But this frigus et caput (Latin for head cold – way more descriptive than common cold, don’t you think?) will have none of it.  Sitting at the computer is too hard on my eyes. My body aches. My concentration is shot.

So I’ve been tucked up on the couch, a cup of rose hip tea beside me, Team Sheltie at my feet. I’ve been resting, reading, and thinking. Taking notes on my work-in-progress when I feel inclined. And here’s a funny thing – this cold seems to have shut down the logical, analytical left side of my brain.  The ‘that-wouldn’t-work-editor’ is flat lined. The only part of me that’s thinking (and not too clearly at that) is the ‘why not?’ part of me.

Yesterday I had a thought, admittedly a feverish and fuzzy one, about a possible plot twist in my current WIP.   It was the kind of twist that would force the protagonist to do something so far out of her comfort zone it would either leave her guilt-riddled forever, or force her to grow and change the way she needs to in this particular story.  It would push my boundaries too because it’s a scene I’m not sure I’d be comfortable writing.  Will I run with it? I don’t know.  I’ll have to wait until the mucus clears. In the meantime, I’m writing down all the weird and wacky thoughts that float my way. Drinking lots of tea.    And cuddling Team Sheltie.

The last thing you want in a book is a perfect protagonist, or one with a perfect life. It doesn’t make for an interesting story.  I get my writing kicks out of complicating the lives of my characters, throwing one damn thing after another at them. But I like my life to be as smooth and as sweet as a latte.  It never is, of course (is anybody’s?).  This, however, seems to be my Season of the Unwelcome.

The peaches are feeling my pain.  They’re stressed this year. Diseased or blighted or suffering from the peach flu, I don’t know what it is, but they aren’t happy.  They’re mottled in some spots, tough in others, certainly not at their dripping-juice-down-your-arm best.

Now here’s the thing. I have expectations. And as Mr. Petrol Head keeps reminding me, I should know better (he apparently mastered the rather remarkable skill of going through life without expectations back in the crib).   If I’ve learned one thing from publishing – from life itself – it’s that expectations bite you in the butt.

I thought I’d beaten back this particular character flaw, especially where my garden is concerned.  Out there, I like to think of myself as sanguine (the word has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think?).  Some years the peach tree sets a good crop and some years it doesn’t.   The same goes for my apples and pears and raspberries and figs and just about anything else I grow.  Some years the bees and the weather and the Gods are kind and the harvest is good. When it isn’t, I tell myself there’s always the following year.

Except (and there’s always an except and I’m pretty sure the word except and the word expectation are related).  Except, I like to eat the food I grow. (I also like to sell every book I write which is another blog where the word sanguine may or may not appear).  But as far as the garden is concerned, I feel as if we have a deal of sorts. I will do the work and step back and let Nature do the rest. If – when – the plants produce, the unspoken rule is the results shall be edible.

This year the peaches are not. At least not as a whole, and not in the way I like my peaches – for breakfast or after lunch or late in the afternoon, peeled with a delicate little knife I bought years back at a flea market. I like my peaches minutes from the tree, fragrant, plain and real.

Not possible this year. Maybe, I decided, the peach tree was trying to tell me something. Maybe it was saying that into every life a little peach pie must fall.  That in the Season of the Unwelcome, a little sweet can be soothing. Even for those of us who aren’t dessert people, who rarely indulge, who are so task oriented that they would never consider peeling and slicing and baking peaches into a pie to only pamper themselves. Especially for them, the peach tree seemed to be saying.  Especially for them. And so I went into the kitchen where I peeled and sliced and diced, and turned a basket of perfectly imperfect peaches into a deliciously imperfect peach pie.

Thanks peach tree, for giving me the most unexpected and welcome gift of summer.

I just finished reading Step by Step, A Pedestrian Memoir, by Lawrence Block. It’s a combination memoir, travel piece and journal of his years as a race walker. I’ve read Block forever (I loved his column in Writer’s Digest). He’s funny and insightful. I expected a great read and I got one. I especially enjoyed his recollection of his unlikely pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

As I read the book I was reminded again of that link between creativity and movement, especially walking. Author Brenda Ueland regularly walked up to 9 miles a day (she was a prolific writer and she lived to be a healthy 93). Thoreau would ramble for miles through the forest every day too. Author Barbara Samuel titled her blog after her love of walking (A Writer Afoot: http://www.barbarasamuel.com/blog/); she has spoken often of how important a regular walking habit is to her writing practice.

I walk several times a day with Team Sheltie, often with my partner or my son. It’s never a race walk. Depending on the friskiness of the dogs, it’s sometimes more of an amble. But it becomes a time for sharing confidences, or working through a story problem or hatching plans for the future. Or maybe simply a time to enjoy the changing seasons: the smell of lilacs in spring, wood smoke infused air in fall.

Author Julia Cameron calls walking a potent form of prayer. She says it leads us, a step at a time, and gives us a gentle path.  Walking leads me, a step at a time, into my own creativity. Not every day perhaps, but often enough to keep me going back for more.

Every new relationship needs a little alone time, right?  Plus, it’s important to find out how you travel together. How you collectively handle stress. Like do arguments flare if there’s no shade at noon or if the bar runs out of tequila, that kind of thing?   So in an effort to determine if I’m in the middle of a Kindle fling or if this is the start of a long term commitment, I’m sacrificing a week of my time, pulling myself off the couch and taking my Kindle to sunnier climes. It’s a hard job but our fledgling relationship needs the test. The Martian is coming too. He’s carrying my baggage. He’s good that way.

Books on the Kindle for the trip:

The Lear Sisters Trilogy by Julia London

The Best Man by Kristan Higgins

Don’t Let Me Go by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Books waiting for my return:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Miracles Happen by Brian Weiss