I feel like I’m watching a train wreck… in slow motion.

I was so excited when I heard about Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine. This was what I’d asked for: the brain science behind creativity!

Earlier, I’d read Brain Rules, which was about learning. I asked them about creativity, and they said that it’s pretty much the same. I didn’t believe them. I finally had my aha moment when I realized that both learning and creativity are memory based. In learning, you’re pulling information out of memory. In creating, you’re brain’s juxtaposing different memories (information, experiences) in a new way. But that was just my theory. Now there was a book!

Eureka!

I bought a copy at one of my favorite indy bookstores. I recommended the book to everyone–including my boss’s boss’s boss and my whole team at work.

But then, accusations of misrepresenting, misquoting, the publisher pulling copies from booksellers, a departure from the staff at The New Yorker.

Scandal.

I’m disappointed, and I’m wondering how much–if any–of the science is actually true and represented accurately.

It reminded a teammate of Three Cups of Tea, which is still on sale after allegations of lies and fraud. More scandal. Even diverting donations from building schools to funding book tours.

Really?

No book proceeds were used for my East Coast Book Tour (although I’m thankful for all the people who put me up and glad I could purchase my plane ticket with airline miles).

When you buy a copy of Into the Rumored Spring, all the author proceeds go to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

It’s one way to help.

To the new home of the Poe-query blog, random thoughts on writing poetry and life in general.

Plus other stuff.

The blog is coming soon.

I like beginnings–the new year, a new month, each solstice and equinox, even Mondays, the beginning of a new week, a fresh start. I like fresh starts.

And resolutions? Sure, for any of those beginnings. For me, to do better, live better, be better is a constant evolution. Do I break my resolutions or let them lapse? Yes, I do. But then Monday comes around.

As eager as I feel to greet the New Year, I’m also sad to see 2010 go. For me it was a milestone year (turning 50) and a year that brought both opportunities and hard loss. Leaving this year feels, in a way, like I’m leaving the people who left.

But the new year is coming, a chance to resolve and risk and write.

The Writer’s Almanac today quoted Junot Diaz as saying, “What we do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

I raise my glass and my pen to new hope and great joy.

Happy New Year!

After an hour reading Little Bee, I think about my efforts to publish my manuscript and choke on perspective.

It’s an important reminder for me.