Nadine Feldman, Author

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jeanette feldman

Return of the Muse

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Getting back into a creative thinking mode after wearing my “business” cap for a while, as I’ve already written, hasn’t been easy. I have gone forward knowing that the well runs dry from time to time, and eventually the juices flow once again. Sometimes we plod along for days, weeks, or months, doing creative exercises and writing wooden, boring prose, waiting, sometimes patiently but more often not for the muse to show her face.

Of course, sometimes when we look back during those plodding moments, we realize that we did some of our best work, or at least created the foundation for it. When we write for a period of time, we know that our relationship to our work is much like our relationships with our spouses. There are times of intense romance, times of slow, steady flame, and times of just getting through–but if we hang in there, those moments of “just getting through” can deepen our commitment.

Still, I admit to loving the romance! So I’m happy to report a reappearance of the muse. And it happened in an instant.

It was Saturday, Rosh Hoshanah, the Jewish New Year. This is always a difficult day for me, because twelve years ago on RH, I learned that the child I was carrying was dying. Over the years, my grief has diminished considerably, but on Rosh Hoshanah and Mother’s Day, I give myself permission to be a complete, sobbing mess. This year was no exception.

By afternoon I was feeling better, and we decided to go to our storage unit where we keep my late mother-in-law’s art. Since Patchwork and Ornament is done, I wanted to put the piles of journals I had used as source material into storage…it’s quite a stack that has occupied my living room for the past nine months.

Within five minutes of completing our task, I felt lighter and happier. I remembered an old creative project that could be a lot of fun to finish. I started to talk to Henry about going to Sorrento, Italy, where my mother-in-law conceived her “Blossoms” art series, to develop some text to go with the 100+ drawings in the series. Ideas flowed easily, and along with them flowed a deep river of joy. We stopped for a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I talked nonstop about all the fun things I wanted to work on.

Working on Patchwork and Ornament, I have worked on my own grief about Jenny Feldman’s death. Perhaps in putting away the journals, I was ready to put away some of the sadness. Perhaps the tears had washed away enough pain that I could feel new again. Or maybe I just plodded along enough, keeping the faith, until the switch of creativity came on again.

Who knows?

The Home Stretch – And the Starting Gate

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The 14th is looming…this is the day I’ve selected for uploading the Patchwork and Ornament file to the printer. Until that moment, I will continue to proofread and to make sure the pdf meets their specifications. I’ve learned a lot this week about imbedding color profiles and all kinds of other things I really don’t care to know. I wake in the night thinking about a particular page or essay in the book, thinking of something else I need to change or clarify. This will go on, I’m sure, until the files are uploaded. I’ve been on this path before, and, well, this is how I roll. I will be making changes until the last minute. This is why I have to set timetables for myself, or I would never get anything done.

Nagging in the back of my brain is all the marketing tasks that are already overdue. If you’re going to write, whether or not you use a traditional publisher, you will have the number one responsibility for marketing. Daddy Publisher no longer provides this support. As a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, I have access to some excellent resources, and I also study the work of Dan Poynter, Peter Bowerman, and John Kremer for guidance. There are endless tips on writing news releases, optimizing websites, maximizing social media, and more.

This is an odd time. On the one hand, I am about to complete a very big project. On the other, it’s really just beginning. I will take a few days to shift gears and regroup once I send the files off…then it’s off again for another run!

Printers, Photographers, and Photoshop Gurus

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Some time ago I pondered when and how to let go of a task and allow someone else to do it. I think I’m getting the hang of it! And it only took 50 years! Part of the problem is that I love to learn, and thus sometimes get into the weeds of projects that take me away from my primary purpose.

This time around, I caught myself after viewing a photograph, before and after it had been worked on by a Photoshop guru. Given that Patchwork and Ornament is full of color photographs (images of artwork, travel, and family), this particular photo caught my attention. It was a picture of a little boy next to someone dressed in a bunny suit. In the after photo, some of bunny’s ears were cut off…and the photo looked great. I never would have crossed such a line. This is when I knew I was out of my league.

My husband, Henry, sensing my panic, swooped in and found a guru on Craigslist who, for a reasonable fee, could remove shadows, lighten dark areas, and brighten colors. All the things I don’t know how to do and don’t have any business learning in this lifetime. We met with her, and I felt instant confidence in her abilities. Moreover, she cares about the project, which is important to me.

Henry also re-shot photographs that I had taken. His equipment and skill level are both well beyond mine.

In less than three weeks, I will send all of this to the printer. I’m confident with my layout–I think I’m doing a darn good job. But it feels good to let work go that someone else knows how to do. My job, I remind myself, is to write, edit, and publish. I’ll have to remind myself again and again, I’m sure, but for today I get it.

Excerpt from Patchwork and Ornament: A Woman’s Journey of Life, Love, and Art

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by Jeanette Feldman

Dear friend, I have your recent letter in hand and have read it several times.

You ask how is it that I can write a vivid, positive, hopeful poem like Hans Hoffman’s House and yet write intensely, bitterly, negatively about my career failure as a painter, work so painful that I cannot read it or show it to anyone, not even my family. I find that this question has provoked some thought, a question that I can answer only with visual images.

Picture a ballroom in an old and seedy hotel in a small eastern city. It is a high school reunion. The people at the reunion are near the age of fifty. Their high school prom was held in this ballroom. It is bittersweet for them to listen to the musicians play Glenn Miller and to understand that the men and women they are now were boys and girls of years ago. They dance stiffly and formally on the wooden floor.

Above their heads, a great ball of small glass squares revolves. The great ball turns slowly, catching light from little spotlights trained on it. The couples dance, the ball revolves, and the images reflected on the ball are never the same, as both ball and people are always in motion. Their reflections move across the mirrored squares from dark to light, above and below, and back into dark nothingness.

I see myself as one of the people dancing my dance of life under the slowly revolving ball, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the light, my reflection shattered in many pieces but never the same, never in the same place, many parts of one being never the same twice but always in flux, always in change. I too dance at times in the dark, an then there are times I dance in the light.