Lisa Jones's Blog: THE UNBEARABLE CROWDEDNESS OF BEING LISA JONES

Dear friends,

Stanford died on May 10 in the hospital in Casper. He was buried a week ago. It was a cathartic, grueling, beautiful funeral.

I feel kind of dizzy inside and know this will come in waves… But the support and love from Stan's family and friends, and from the nonnative tribe with whom I traveled to Wyoming (about 8 of us in all, including my 10-year-old nephew Calum, who loved Stan and used to come up there with me to ride horses) was so strong and good I just feel a lot of gratitude and wonder at how wide the web reached from Stanford into the wide world.

Lisa

Good golly, it's been a long, long time since I've been here. I've been — oh, a lot of places, like North Dakota. On my way there, I attended a really interesting horsemanship clinic called in Rapid City, S.D. which you can read more about here: http://www.medicinewheelmodel.com/

At that clinic, I spent a lot of time giggling and yakkin' with my new pal Suzi Landolphi, who, among other things, started the first sex shop in the United States (back in the dawning days of the AIDS epidemic). Since then, Suzi has been applying lipstick in the middle of cattle roundups, eating pancakes and teaching equine therapy to inner city kids in Los Angeles. She's a hoot, and a total bringer-together of people… She wrote this very nice blog piece about the book. So in the spirit of cross pollination, here ya go:

http://www.goinggaited.com/aSpiritOfT...

There you go! I'm feeling very blog-ish, linking you to other nifty people and efforts.

Ciao for now,

Lisa

Fortitude is common among first-time authors on book tour. In fact it's required. Especially the kind you may have needed, say, last September, when a grand total of three people showed up for your reading in Oklahoma City. Stoicism: A must-have. Terror, which blooms at four in the morning and then again 10 minutes before you start to read. Vodka: Not a bad idea. Erratic behavior at home: Absolutely. I am president of that club. I could go on.

But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to t...

A few years ago, I sat in my car outside the tribal clinic on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, being tied to my steering wheel by a two-year-old Northern Arapaho boy named Quame. We were waiting for his mother to finish her appointment. Then she and Quame would go home and I would go into the desert with a relative of theirs to look for runaway horses — an adventure I'd been looking forward to for days. But the minutes ticked by without her coming out, and I felt my opportunity f...

Join Laura Pritchett and I for two back-to-back classes

followed by a reading:

Boulder, Monday Aug. 9, 1:30-9 p.m.

THE CLASSES will be held from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. in North Boulder. They come as a package & cost $60/person emboldenyourwriting@gmail.com

THE READING (which can be attended separately) starts at 7 p.m., Chatauqua Community House. Admission is $5; to learn more or by a ticket go to:

http://www.chatauqua.com/forums_and_f...

What will the classes cover, you ask? They will strike at the heart of our emotional and creative lives and are designed to proke and inspire. Like the reading, they feature authors

Laura Pritchett www.laurapritchett.com and moi, Lisa Jones www.lisajoneswrites.com

HERE ARE THE CLASS DESCRIPTIONS:

WRITING SEX WELL (get out of bed and onto the pages!)

One of Laura Pritchett’s most popular classes, WRITING SEX WELL will have you giggling, writing furiously, and exploring the possibilities of writing real stuff in a real way. Sex is not always good, but it’s always revealing! Whether it’s fantastic, boring, strange or predictable, sex is one of the most powerful unions and sensations we experience, and it shouldn’t be skipped or avoided in writing. On the other hand, a sex scene shouldn’t be included unless it serves a purpose, which is to illustrate the characters and the larger themes of the work. This workshop will introuce examples of good literary sex scenes and explore some ideas about writing sex well — how to direct an honest gaze at this most fascinating activity.

I’D RATHER GNAW OFF MY ARM THAN WRITE THAT!

(what you’re avoiding putting on the page)

Lisa Jones, who went through this feeling umpteen times while writing BROKEN: A Love Story, will lead this segment. Memoir may sound like an easy genre, because you know the material — you were there, right? But the truth is, writing memoir brings you face to face with things you’ve done and decisions you and others have made that you’d rather leave out. But good narrative may demand they be acknowledged on the page. Lisa will draw from the experience of other memoirists, as well as describe her own final, wine-assisted surrender to writing down the bare, shuddering facts in her own book. And she’ll talk about how forgiving the reading public has been. Then we’ll do some fun, generative writing exercises to assist the beginning of the surrender to the truth.

Join Laura Pritchett and I for two back-to-back classes

followed by a reading:

Boulder, Monday Aug. 9, 1:30-9 p.m.

THE CLASSES will be held from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. in North Boulder. They come as a package & cost $60/person emboldenyourwriting@gmail.com

THE READING (which can be attended separately) starts at 7 p.m., Chatauqua Community House. Admission is $5; to learn more or by a ticket go to:

http://www.chatauqua.com/forums_and_f...

What will the classes cover, you ask? They will strike...

the bad Santas and me, earlier this month

the bad Santas and me, earlier this month

Stanford got out of the hospital two days ago, a little less than six

weeks after he went in. Hooray!

His sister Arilda drove down to Cheyenne to pick him up in her

Suburban (with a mattress laid down so he doesn't have to sit up),

while his son Daniel ferried Stanford's wheelchair home in the pickup.

When I spoke to him today, Stan was extremely excited to get out of

the hospital, and even more excited to have his first

cigarette.

He'll be in bed for a week at least to heal from his bedsore...

I visited Stanford in the Cheyenne hospital last night and I'm here to
tell you that he may be home within a week! This would make his entire
stay slightly longer than a month — which is a whole lot better than
the four months that was being bandied about at first. His surgeon was
Dr. William Wyatt (one of count 'em THREE reconstructive and plastic
surgeons in the state of Wyoming, Dr. Wyatt is my hero as he works all
week on low income patients, confines his tummy tuck and face lift
practice to...