The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": It's Almost Over and....???

Friday, August 20, 2010

It's Almost Over and....???

Last night, the bog near our house had that Keatsian autumnal look - all misty and spiritual. I had a nice poetic moment of gazing at the bog while the kids stood there very quietly - so peaceful and poetic. That was just moments before I had to pull Mazy away from eating a fresh load of her favorite appetizer - goose poop. With bogs comes geese, and with geese comes...well.

But the end is drawing near. Emma's birthday decorations went up today (from Emma, "My birthday is more of a season than only one day...") True, since we have different birthday events planned from the 23 through the 30. Since she was born the last week of August, it must mean summer is ending. Yikes.

Because I've either been in school or taught school most of my life, September is my secret new year. Forget dull January when I'm working off debt and extra pounds. September always seems like a new beginning. And while the winter seems endless, summer seems about a week long.

I had really, really high expectations for the summer.Out of the three kids' rooms, I got one sort of cleared out, one done, and the other, Philip's, still looks like a DMZ.(He's not too worried - that's him up there during his last beach visit) I don't have my photographs organized, the yard is still spooky looking, and the book I was finishing in June is still languishing on a flash drive.

What I did get done was a revision of an MG, lots of new ideas for stories, one area of the basement cleared, and most of my fall curriculum written. And we found a new, more deserted beach a little south of here. That pales compared to my list, but with the start of the secret new year, I'll just roll them over there. (I'm sort of swiping that from the cell phone company - if they can roll over minutes, I can roll over ambitions since they both represent time in a wobbly way)

I can't be the only sitting here missing summer already and thinking time is speeding up. Did you have plans bigger than two months would allow? What did you get done and what's still waiting?

14 comments:

Jemi Fraser said...: Summer goes so quickly! My daughter and I managed to clean out a few spaces in the house and got rid of a ton of stuff. We didn't get much of a garden and I just realized I need a major revision on my book :) Not bad.; Friday, 20 August, 2010
K.C. Shaw said...: I always consider that my birthday festivities start on my actual birthday (Oct. 21) and continue until Halloween.

It sounds like you got a lot done this summer. The time sure does fly--it's hard to believe it's almost September already.; Friday, 20 August, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: No, not bad at all, Jemi. It's only two months. My eternal optimism has me thinking summer goes on and on...

Well, they do go on for 10 days, K.C. - they're one of those "mini seasons" like Lent or the 12 days of Christmas.

Yeah, September. School. Remember when we thought it was the kids who got all moody about returning to school?; Friday, 20 August, 2010
Marcia said...: When did summer shrink from 3 months to 2? No wonder it's gotten shorter -- because it has!

Yep, September is the real New Year's. Absolutely. Which means we get two, and two chances to start over is great!

Last night, instead of a Keatsian moment, we had a huge thunderstorm. I like thunderstorms, but we've had a LOT this year. No brown grass!; Saturday, 21 August, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Here, the kids (and the teachers) get out of school for the summer on about June 25 - June 28. So it seems like there's July and August, then it's back in early September. I'm not going by the calendar, especially since New Year's Eve is Labor Day Monday -

Thunderstorms are one of the best parts of summer : ); Saturday, 21 August, 2010
storyqueen said...: I just posted about the same thing. September is always the new year for me....and I did NOT get done everything in the summer that I had hoped. Not by a long shot.

Oh well. Without goals I would probably accomplish nothing, so better to have them and not reach them than to not have them at all, right?

At least one kid's room is done!!!

Shelley; Saturday, 21 August, 2010
Glynis Peters said...: My summer doesn't finish until mid October. November is my new year, the new season kicks in.

This November I will be trying the 50,000 NaNoWriMo challenge, a scary goal.; Sunday, 22 August, 2010
Anonymous said...: I didn't finish my new wip as I expected, but I drafted half of it this summer. I also did the bulk of revisions for another wip, which was another summer plan.

August also feels like the beginning of a new year for me since I teach. I get a new agenda/planner, I'm full of hope, and I make new plans.; Sunday, 22 August, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Wow, Shelley, I just popped over to your blog, and we are on the exact same wavelength!

I was thinking of trying the NaNoWriMo this year; maybe the idea of other folks under the same pressure would be motivating, Glynis.

New school supplies, all those wonderfully blank pages, Medeia! It is the unofficial New Year for most teachers and students.; Monday, 23 August, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: Let's see...I've managed an international move, gotten an agent, gotten resettled in Scotland, deleted half a dozen horrible manuscript files (which depressed me terribly -- not deleting them, the fact that I wrote them in the first place and didn't realize how bad they were), and I've rewritten 31,281 words of the most promising, least awful one. And on the eighth day, I shall rest.

I love September too. I love the smell of fresh notebooks, crisp new pencils, clean new erasers, and the promise of crunchy autumn leaves. And apples.; Tuesday, 24 August, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Whoa, Mary! That's a ton of stuff. The most exciting is a toss up - back in Scotland or the agent. I'm thinking to a seasoned mover like you, the agent would be exciting. I didn't know that -- CONGRATS!; Thursday, 26 August, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: I asked for 'Light Beneath Ferns' at a bookshop in Edinburgh, and when they told me they didn't have it in stock, I acted shocked and pointed out that they DID have other American YA on the shelves, not all entirely deserving of the honor (I'll let you guess what and by whom). They're going to order LBF for me!

I'm at 36,248 words on my WiP, and steaming away. The rewriting is going to be hell on earth, but what the heck.; Tuesday, 31 August, 2010
Adrienne said...: You got a lot accomplished in two months.
I got up the nerve to register for a whole semester-length class (hate to admit how long it's been) so it's back to school for me already.; Wednesday, 01 September, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Oh, Mary -- I feel so cool. Someone asked for my book in the UK! And it's on order -- I've been having a really crummy last couple of days, so that was so nice to read.

And revision - it's like the scrubbing floors of writing. Necessary and it will look better when you're done, but no fun in the process.

That's great, Adrienne! A full time class -- I'll bet it will feel sort of surreal at times to be a student again.; Saturday, 04 September, 2010

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

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