Welcome to the web page of Cecilia Galante, author of The Patron Saint of Butterflies, Hershey Herself, Willowood, The Sweetness of Salt and The Summer of May,. The Patron Saint of Butterflies has been awarded as a Book Sense Pick for 2008, been named Young-Adult Book of the Year by the Northeast Independent Booksellers Association, and is a Recommended Read for Teens on Oprah's website.
All works are available through amazon.com: Patron Saint, Hershey Herself,
“I write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” - Isak Dinesen
I am starting to think that this banning of Patron Saint is having an inverse affect on the people who originally deemed it “inappropriate” and requested it be removed from their shelves.
Since the book has been banned, I have been featured in the local newspaper, been asked my three different libraries to do presentations and signings for the book, been asked to write a blog about it for The Huffington Post, and received a phone call from a public radio station in…..wait for it….IRELAND, asking if I would do an interview!! Listen to it here - Click on “part 2″ and scan ahead to minute 26:30:
Maybe the way to bring new and fresh attention to a book that has been out there for few years is to ban it!!
The world is a funny place, isn’t it?
Here’s to all it’s ups and downs - and everything that comes in between.
Onward, always - CG
So I’m having a terrible time of it. Really. Every day now, for months, just struggling, second-guessing, writing bluck and then rewriting more bluck, and trying not to despair. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t been posting on my blog - because deep down, I really feel as though I have nothing to say. And worse, even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to say it well. It’s not a great place to be. It’s tough to hold on; sometimes it even feels like an actual crisis of faith. Which maybe it is.
Anyway, I’ve been poking around, trying to read up on how other writers out there deal with stuff like this, and I came across a piece that I felt was almost miraculously meant for me to see. It’s by a woman named Aimee Bender, whose latest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, is just extraordinary. Here’s what she had to say about wrestling with those pesky “just throw in the towel, you can’t write for shit” moments:
“RB: How do you get all that unconscious material down on the page without second-guessing it?
AB: Mainly it’s just sitting there and trusting that the connections are being made and that I don’t have to work so hard but then anxiety creeps in, like what if it’s not true? Or what if this time it won’t work? And that needs to STOP. So the more I get reassurance from the world through various artists, etc., about the whole creative process, the better I feel. I once asked my mom for something like that and she said, “Oh, I have total faith,” and I said, “In me?” and she said, “Yeah, but I meant in the whole process of making something, I have faith in that.” Which I thought was great. That it wasn’t even really faith in me specifically was comforting because it was more mysterious than even that, it was about trusting the art made by people since people have been. So then I try to write using the good old “follow your nose” approach, which for me means to write each day just what I feel like and not feel obligated or forced to try to make connections or make a point or anything. Trusting that the point is ingrained, which is always a better point anyway. A more complex point.
I just put a new screen saver on my computer with fish and spent a few minutes this morning looking at the virtual fish. They were soothing. And feeling like: that’s okay. Fish are good to look at. If I want to look at fish, that can be more useful this exact moment than trying to figure out why this particular goddamn character is being such a pain in the ass. I have about ten signs above my computer saying “faith” in various synonym forms. Also, I think the way to get the unconscious revved up is to make a little contract with time, i.e. I have to sit at the desk for this long every day, a set amount, and that’s just the law. I believe in laws like that. Then the unconscious knows what’s what, it’s like a teenager, and it will follow those laws. Eventually it’ll start putting out. Uh oh. Now the teenager metaphor switched on me. But you get my point.
If the specifics, the discipline, is in place, then the rest will work. Within structure things loosen up. And here, the structure is just plain time on the chair. And that’s where I think the sole thing that’ll kick you out of your chair at that point is a crisis of faith and that’s why it’s so crucial to have support on that subject and to remind yourself constantly and crucially that that is the whole POINT, that writing can’t be thought out and known, that something happens between the brain and the fingers that is different than thought. It just is. It’s a new path. That’s why it works. I can’t think a story. I can tell one out loud and write one but I can’t think one. It gets stopped in the first paragraph and then I digress. I’d have to voice it out to make it work. Wild, that. Why is that? I don’t know. But it just makes me believe that the pathway, the wiring is different, and to think we can think through that wiring just isn’t true.”
I love the idea of showing up, and then waiting patiently for your unconscious to kick in. Or for your fingers to start moving without paying any attention to the very conscious and very nasty voice inside my head, and watching what happens. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Sometimes just waiting, and trying to trust myself fills me with an inexplicable emotion; a cross between wanting to weep and shout at the same time. It comes in little waves and, since I have been going to the computer lab at the local college every day to write, and there are about twenty frantic, mostly sleep-deprived students around me, I have to just ride those waves silently and not let myself fall apart. Sometimes I wonder if the feeling itself IS my unconscious trying to kick in, if it’s been bound so tightly all these days and months that just the possibility of being released brings it to the surface in this way. I don’t know.
But here’s to more sitting. And waiting.
And maybe even finding out.
Onward, always.
CG
I found out yesterday - through an article in USA Today - that The Patron Saint of Butterflies has officially been banned from a school in Minnesota. Read article here:
I can now say that I have joined the ranks of other banned authors, including Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, as well as hundreds of others. Long live freedom of speech!! And long live the writers who use it!!
Onward, always!
CG
I awoke this morning in a particularly foul mood. There were a number of reasons for my grumpiness - the kids were fighting (for the umpteenth time), a headache that has continued to persist over the last three days was still showing no signs of disippating, and my day’s writing work, which has for the last three weeks or so felt like trying to extract words from a cement block, loomed ahead, filling me with dread.
I got out of bed.
I hemmed and hawed, stewed and sighed. I yelled at the kids, apologized. Once, and then again.
And then I got in the car and went to the library where I go sometimes to write. The library is directly across the street from the local courthouse. As I pulled into the parking lot, and turned the car off, I noticed a young girl pushing a stroller with a baby in it. The baby - who had a hair of dark curly hair - could not have been more than two years old. Despite the heat, she was dressed in a heavy pink sleeper with feet. The stroller was old, one of those fold-up umbrella ones, with rust along the edges and white rubber handles. Both handles were loaded down with various items - a diaper bag, plastic bags filled with groceries, the girl’s purse. One of the wheels on the right hand side was loose and wobbly, threatening to come off completely.
The girl did not look any older than eighteen. Her skinny jeans, purple plaid halter top and flip flops accentuated a too thin frame. A cigarette dangled from her first two fingers, and her left ear bore a row of multiple silver hoops. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, revealing a tattoo of a four leaf clover on the back of her neck.
Today is Thursday. And as I watched the tiny duo cross the street to the courthouse, as the girl leaned down, lifting the stroller with all its bags and the baby in both of her arms, and began to carry it up the twenty cement steps to the front door, I knew exactly where they were going. Here in Luzerne County, Thursday is known as PFA Day in the courthouse. PFA stands for Protection from Abuse, which is an order that women (and some men too) have to get to keep violent spouses and boyfriends and significant others at bay.
I know this because long before I started to write or to teach, I worked in the PFA Office. For three years, I assisted women as they filled out paperwork recalling the atrocities done to them by the very men who said they loved them. Every Thursday, I would accompany these women to court, where they would stand before the bench and tell the judge in their own words what had happened that night.
But I also know this because long before I started to teach, long before I started to write, and long before I worked in the PFA Office, I was that girl with the cigarette between her fingers, pushing my own baby girl to the courthouse to get legal protection for the two of us. I was that too skinny girl who loaded up everything I owned in plastic bags, and looped them over the handles of a decrepit umbrella stroller so that when I returned to the apartment later that day, I would not find them all destroyed. I was that girl who waited all day long in a hot, stuffy court room to get a piece of paper that said that my baby’s father was not allowed to hit or kick or spit on me anymore, that if he did, he would go to jail.
I was that girl.
I got out of the car quickly, tripping over my sandals, catching myself on the side mirror of the car so that I didn’t fall over completely. I ran over to the girl, helped her and the baby and the stroller up the rest of the steps. Her eyes narrowed when we reached the door, and she ground out her cigarette as I held it open for her. “Do I know you?” she asked. I shook my head. She shrugged, glancing furtively over her shoulder as she moved inside. She stood in line, waiting to get scanned through the metal detector. A few inches below, her baby swung her feet, yawned, rubbed her eyes.
It gets better, I wanted to tell her. I promise it does. Just hang on.
I left then, and headed back to the library. I sat for a long time before turning on the computer, just staring at the screen. Thinking. Remembering. Maybe sometimes it takes recalling where you’ve been to realize just how far you’ve come.
After awhile, I started to work.
The words were still eight miles away, but it only took me two minutes to realize that my headache was gone.
Onward, always.
CG
It is July 6th, and my summer has officially started. Oh, I know summer began over a month ago, and yes, my children have been out of school for almost twice that long, but I have been eyeball deep in my own work, while also teaching creative writing at Wilkes University. Last week however, I finally finished some final edits on a new book I am working on, wrapped up the final revisions on Book #4 of the Little Wings series, and finally got through all the last of the paperwork for my students’ creative projects.
Yesterday afternoon, I took my babies down to the riverbank. We packed a picnic lunch - peanut butter sandwiches, a bag of baby carrots, apples, chocolate chip cookies and two thermoses of lemonade - and sat by the water’s edge, eating. For a moment, the only sounds in the world were the rush of the river nearby, the drone of an airplane overhead, and the scratch of my little boy itching his leg. Perfection.
Hope everyone has lots of summer moments like these - and many more.
Onward, always.
CG
Today, a few short days before the month of May, my new novel, The Summer of May, goes out into the big, wide world. Since this is the fifth time I will be launching a book, I have come to expect the feelings of excitement, fear, and hope whenever such an event arrives. Oh, and dread. Sending my work out into the reading stratosphere feels a little like sending another child of mine out into the cold without a coat, and hoping, no praying, that someone will notice him/her shivering and offer some warmth.
Okay, so I may be overdoing it just a bit.
Still, it’s always a gamble putting yourself out there like this. There will inevitably be people who will read the book - and then sneer, laugh, roll their eyes, or worse, ignore it altogether. And then there will be others who embrace it, take parts away with them that teach them something, who shelve it neatly next to their other “good reads.” (Yes Mom, I’m talking about you.)And that is just how life works. You have to take the good with the bad, the best with the worst.
Whatever happens to my May, I wish her the best of luck today. And like any mother would do, I’m standing in the doorway, waving goodbye, blowing kisses until she rounds the corner, disappearing into the early morning light like a ghost from my imagination.
Onward, always.
CG
On Friday, I received a wonderful surprise package in the mail from a group of middle school students who had recently read The Patron Saint of Butterflies. Inside were at least 50 hand made butterflies of every color and shape - one so small that I could fit it on the tip of my finger. Each butterfly had a message written on it from a student. Some of my favorites:
- “Although I enjoy reading, I have never liked it in school. Your book changed that.”
- “Your amazingly ambiguous ending stimulates my imagination.” (From an 8th grader!!!)
- “Nana Pete reminds me of my Grandma.”
- “I loved all the metaphors in the book.”
- “Winky was cool. P.S. I love Justin Beiber!”
It felt like Christmas morning, going through all the notes. I laughed out loud, teared up, giggled, even gasped a little. Afterward, I tucked them all back in the envelope package and put them upstairs in my memory box. They will be something I can pull out again and again as time goes on -with the same gratitude and awe as I felt today.
Onward, always.
CG
Three days ago, the snow was gone. It was! It had been washed away by a steady flow of warm rains, a slick afterthought of winter. In our front yard, little green things had begun pushing their heads out of the earth, peering around, looking for sun. Mud - glorious mud - squished up everywhere. My children put on their rubber boots and raced up and down the sidewalks, screaming and waving their coatless arms in the 62 degree weather.
And then overnight, the world turned white again.
The mud froze; the icy sidewalks split and buckled beneath the contrasting temperatures; the air, crystallized and silent, hovered like a ghost outside our front door.
My small son sat for a long time in the front window that morning, looking out at the new world. “Are you excited?” I asked, pulling him onto my lap, nuzzling the small space behind his ear that always seems to smell of peaches. “Do you want to go out and play in the snow again?”
But he shook his head. Pointed through the window pane and the patch of garden beneath. “What will happen to the green beans now?” he asked instead.
“The green beans?” I repeated. “There aren’t any green beans out there, angel.”
“He means those little green shoots,” his older (and much wiser) sister said to me from across the room. “You know, the ones that were starting to come up.”
Ah.
Later, in bed, I came across a passage from a poem written by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver:
“…The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees -
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention…”
- Mary Oliver
I put the book down afterward, stared at the blue shadows playing across my bedroom wall. I’ve been in an odd space for the last week or so, waiting to hear back about my new novel. It is not a space I like to be. I am trying to keep busy with other work, but I find myself too easily distracted, caught up in the dizzying thrums of possibility and rejection once again.
Reading Mary Oliver, trying to see things through the lens that she uses, has been helping. A lot. Her dreams are simple, and yet as complex as anyone elses. What would it be like to trade the dream of being “successful,” of being seen, for an afternoon of lying down by a slow river and looking at the light in the trees? What does it mean to learn something by being nothing? What does being nothing but the rich lens of attention really mean?
Can paying attention to the things in our lives really make a difference? Does it change us? Is there a chance that it can it make it us braver, quieter, more open to possibility?
I think so.
I do.
Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Wait.
Listen.
Believe.
The snows will melt again.
Despite everything, the green beans will come.
Onward, always.
CG
I don’t know if there is anything really comparable to the moment you get when you type the last words of a book. I’ve had a few of them now, and while the circumstances surrounding them are different, they’ve all been filled with this wonderful, fizzy sort of feeling. It’s a combination of euphoria, shock, and complete exhaustion.
Yesterday, I finished the last chapter of my first adult novel. For hours afterwards, I walked around in a daze, alternating between sniffling, laughing out loud, and shaking my head. If someone had seen me - and there is a good chance a few people did - they probably thought I’d just escaped from the loony bin. But I couldn’t help myself. It’s the most peculiar sort of feeling - like taking the first real breath in weeks, months, even a year (as was the case with this particular book) and not even realizing that you’d been holding it all that time.
Of course, that feeling will be short lived. The breath holding will begin again, as my agent takes the manuscript and begins submitting it to various publishing houses. This part of the process always feels like I am sending a child of mine out into the mean, horrible world without a coat, and waiting to see if anyone will notice her standing in the corner, shivering. The whole deal can take days, weeks, even months. And during that time, my face will turn various mottled shades of purple, my crankiness will rear its ugly little head, and I will not sleep very well.
It occurs to me just now writing this, that maybe the entire process - including the writing part - could get just a little easier if I learned how to breathe a little better. This breath-holding part of things not only makes things more difficult; it also makes me a little light-headed. Who needs that?
During this time of waiting therefore, I am going to make a concerted effort to pay more attention to not holding my breath so much. To letting air in - and then exhaling again. With each exhale, I’m going to try to picture all my fears and worries draining out along with it. The inhales will be full of new things: the smell of my little boy’s neck, a glance between my husband and me, the feel of an unripe peach in my palm.
It’s all I know these days.
And maybe, it’s all I need to know.
Onward, always.
CG
