Sylvia Madrigal

You can count the words, and even the years, but can you count the beads of sweat? The doubts crawling like ants up your leg?

 

I tried to quit many times. I couldn't understand why I would make myself suffer so much over writing that absolutely no one, except my dear beloved Gail, gave a damn about.

 

Was there a writers' rehab I could join? 12 steps I could take? Was there any way to beat the compulsion that propelled me to the computer every day? Could I overcome this self-destructive habit that swallowed up all my free time and soured every moment of freedom I managed to create?

 

No, there wasn't. No matter how many times I stopped, even the month that my therapist forced me to cease and desist, I always came back. The relapse was always around the corner.

 

One day I realized that there was no way to end the suffering except by soldiering on, and FINISHING, goddammit. 

 

Which I finally did, on January 12, 2014. My facebook post of that day: "I wrote THE END today. I am numb." It received 44 likes and 35 comments, the most I have ever received. 

 

The suffering ended only momentarily. The magnetic pull to the computer has returned in full force, more virulent than before. One query letter a day for 90 days, I have solemnly vowed.

 

After that? I've already begun research on the next novel. I can't wait to get back to my drug of choice, the torture chamber that is writing.

When I was young, I entertained the delusion that I would one day play on Centre Court, Wimbledon. 

 

I have revised that childhood ambition by vowing to complete the Spectator Grand Slam. I have been to the U.S. Open several times, once to Roland Garros (2000), and once to Wimbledon (2009). We waited to go to Wimbledon until they had the roof, because we could not imagine spending that much money and getting rained out. In the photo above, I am waiting for my beloved Roger Federer.

 

All I've got left is the Australian Open, which I have promised myself for my 60th birthday in 2018. Only time will tell.

One summer when I was twelve, I told my mother I was bored. Huge mistake. In order to cure me of my boredom, and to insure that I would never repeat that statement, she made me embroider a tablecloth for 12 with 12 matching napkins.

 

I did not embroider again for over 40 years.

 

But then one day, I wanted to give my freelance editor a gift. I had heard her speak on a panel at the Yale in Hollywood conference. In my notebook, I had written a spontaneous utterance of hers that I found remarkable: THE PERFECT BOOK IS THE ONE ONLY YOU CAN WRITE. My first instinct was to turn this into a graphic print. Gail, my ever-so-wise partner, innocently asked, "Why don't you embroider it instead?"

 

That one gift has turned into a daily spiritual practice which brings me the peace and solace that writing most definitively does not. 

 

The photo above is of Pakal's sarcophagus lid. It is the most complex design I have ever attempted. I found it while I was doing research for The Fifth Codex. It took me over a year to complete.

I have embroidered several gifts, and even designed some of my own embroideries. But mostly I embroider Mayan and Aztec designs that I find in books or on Internet. I usually have to simplify the designs, and then have them transferred to cross-stich fabric. I make copies of the design on paper and try many different colors before I decide on the final palette. I embroider almost every day for an hour or two. And I emerge peaceful, as if I had been meditating for hours.

 

The piece above is a design that I first did as a woodcut. It is of a cheerful Quetzalcóatl. I call him Quezzie.

My most recent piece is called Fractals, inspired by Star. It was the last piece Gail saw me design and embroider. Unfortunately, she did not see it completed. She helped me pick the colors. She also convinced me that I did not need to start over when I realized that I used the wrong cross-stitch fabric. (I had designed it for an 18-count and had started embroidering it on a 16-count). We spent many weekends sitting side-by-side as I embroidered and we watched tennis, or police procedurals. Ocean, sun, earth and bird: all things that she loved and that remind me of her. Needless to say, this piece is extremely meaningful to me.