Anne Spollen's Author Blog

Blogcation

2011-10-07T17:02:00.000-07:00

Hey fellow bloggers and blog readers --

I haven't been around much on the Internet lately. Actually, I haven't been around much at all. My mom was in the hospital for surgery and you know how crazy it gets when you have someone in the hospital. You sort of dash around living on coffee (hey, it's from a plant source, right? add milk and you've got calcium, a cheese danish with cherries and you've got protein and fruit -- need more?) We couldn't wait for Mom to get better, get out, and our lives to get back to normal.

Unfortunately, none of those three wishes came true. It was very unexpected and we are all left sort of in mid air. And truth being far stranger than ficiton, there are several other areas of craziness going on in my life that have coincided with this event.

I'll be back around. I'm not sure when, but I'll come visit you all soon.

Blog Hopping and Banned Books

2011-09-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

I'm blog hopping over to Donna's blog at Bite My Books to kick off Banned Books Week. Stop over to rant with us!

Rushing

2011-09-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have always wanted to be one of those Zen-like relaxed people who nod and listen and never worry. This past summer, a woman I met was talking to me about yoga. I figured if I tried yoga, I would become more Zen-like and calm. Right? Isn't that how it works?

While she was showing me some of the positions, I was following what she did as fast as I could. Finally, in a softly, barely perceptible tone, she said, "Anne, you don't rush through yoga. You have to let things flow more."

Huh.

So I did. I relaxed. Well, I thought I relaxed. I slowed down and tried to look sort of beatific and focused at the same time which is how she looked. (Go ahead - try to look that way; it's not as easy as it sounds) She finally said we should try it on a day when I wasn't quite so harried.

Sure.

Only I wasn't particularly harried on that day. That's kind of how I am. I tend to speak and move quickly, put on dinner while folding laundry, talking on the phone, and going through the mail. I have trouble driving at the speed limit. I never leave the house for only one errand: I average about four. I figure out my lesson plans while I'm grocery shopping, organize my paperwork while on the bank line, think about writing while doing dishes.

I think I'm just geared sort of twitchy, and the yoga woman is geared more gently. It's pretty much inbred. I couldn't imagine her saying to her kids, as I regularly do, "Salad or colon cancer?" "Sun block or melanoma?" or get texts back such as, "Mom, don't think I'm dead! I just had no service in the mall." No one in our house bats an eye at any of this. Then again, the yoga woman had no kids...

But I think, too, how we move, how we are geared has an effect on our writing. I don't think Emily Dickinson moved too fast - she noticed things like grasshoppers and that certain slant of light - whereas when I read Dr. Seuss, I would think from the pace of his writing that he would be a little more twitchy than most.

I'm revising a YA, yet again, and that's what I realized about it: it has a rushed quality that it can't have since it deals with a serious theme. Well, yeah, I was writing most of this late at night, and rushing, and it shows. But I put it away for a month and only noticed that during a fresh read when I was moving more slowly.

I was contemplating how I would slow down the pace, how I would make the story unfold more easily while deleting all the spam from this blog. So in case you're wondering what happened to all the comments, I was rushing and accidentally deleted YOUR comments and not the spam. There's a lesson there.

Still, I think I'm onto something. Rushing makes for thin, undeveloped writing. Maybe even if you're not geared to move quickly when you're writing and trying to finish, it will show. I'm wondering now if that's the essence of revision - slowing things down, having scenes and characters unfold more slowly?

Firsts! (and Mutant Wings)

2011-09-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

We've had a lot of firsts around here in the past few days. We finally celebrated Emma and Grandma's hurricane-delayed party (they share the same August 25 birthday) and we finally met my oldest brother's new family. And we I celebrated the first day of school. Celebrated may be pushing that verb a bit for the kids, but I actually think, deep down, they were glad to get back to see their friends.

Philip's artistic girlfriend, Tiffany, decorated the cake. She remembered that Emma is completely insane for zebra stripe and that's not particularly easy to translate into cake, but I think she did a great job.

And these are our adopted grandparents, the Baos, who are as gracious and lovely as people can be. They are also calm, so I was a little worried about introducing such gentle and balanced people to my house, with my three teenagers, their friends, and half a dozen animals, but somehow it all worked.

Eric Spollen, Jing and Chris Spollen, Grandma Bao

And Emma, now officially thirteen, is in her first year of being a teenager. She's my first girl teen, so when she came home from the first day of school, I asked the usual Mom questions. I was expecting, "It-was-ok-where-are-the-pizza-rolls?" then off to play video games. But girls are different.

She began by explaining how the rain was the perfect weather for such a terrible event as returning to the middle school. She ended with a thorough critique of one of her teacher's eyeliner application.

"You know the wing, Mom? When they extend the line up and out like on Jerseylicious?"

"Ummm, sort of."

"Well, I think she was going for that. But it didn't work. I mean, not at all. I felt so sorry for her. She was up there talking and she had this like mutant wing. I would be so embarrassed."

Maybe the best thing about firsts is that they bring seconds.

Earthquakes, Hurricanes and Thirteen

2011-08-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

We've been having a lot of "weather events" as the news calls them. I secretly love weather events because it usually means we lose power and my kids have to unplug and actually talk to me for more than a few minutes. I like when they have to sit around and listen to lots of radio static by candlelight. It's spooky and old fashioned. Add some lightning, sirens and heavy wind and it's a weirdly connected family moment.

This weather began with the earthquake. I've been using that as a barometer to assess exactly how weird or normal my friends and family are (the results are falling very heavily on the weird side) I was folding laundry while chatting on the phone. The kids were in the yard. Christopher came in just as the earth moved - the table seemed to be tipping and I felt a shudder beneath my feet. The call dropped. My immediate thought?

Satan.

Who else? I had seen The Exorcist, I knew he shook walls and floors before announcing his sinister presence.

"Feel that tipping?" I asked Christopher, "what is going on?"

"What tipping?"

I should say he's a teenage boy, and he was eating over the sink at the time. If you've ever been or ever taken care of a teenage boy, you know that when they eat, they go into a zone that not even an earthquake can shake them out of. Literally.

"The whole house is moving!"

"Huh. I don't feel anything. (still chewing) "You all right, Mom?"

"How can you not feel that? Everything is MOVING beneath our feet!"

He laughed. "Mom, it's okay. You're probably like hungry or something."

And he went outside, another sandwich in hand.

We had a few days of nice weather, then Irene. Here, in South Jersey, we had several tornado watches to go along with it all. In the middle of all these weather events, on Thursday, Emma turned thirteen. Her party had to be postponed when they closed most of the roads, but I was thinking how apt a metaphor it is to turn thirteen and have an earthquake, tornadic activity and a hurricane accompany the event. It's such perfect literary symbolism in a setting that I'll bet most editors would have us tone it down as being too obvious.

At least, I'm hoping it's setting, but most likely, it's foreshadowing.

Late Summer

2011-08-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Things are underway here for Emma's birthday celebration which is really more of a birthmonth celebration - her bd seems to stretch from mid-August to the first week of school. (Around the Fourth of July she begins asking for things, saying, "But it's soooo close to my birthday..." )

Her bd also means summer is nearing its end which is always bittersweet. I'm not sure I actually believe that last sentence - everyone always says it, but I never want to see summer end. Summer is my absolute favorite season and seems about as long as a three day weekend. But in honor of its end, it's time for a seasonal assessment. These are the three top things I remember about this summer:

1. We went to Exit 0 on the Garden State Parkway. I never knew there was an Exit 0, but on the way to ride go karts (see #2) we decided to travel south just to see Exit 0. I thought it was the perfect name for a YA novel.

2. My kids can talk me into almost anything. I was taking THEM to ride go karts. I brought the camera and drinks, never expecting that they expected me to actually go around the track with them. I am seriously not mechanical and these particular go karts had the look of reimagined lawn mowers. "I am NOT getting on that thing," I remember saying. Five minutes later, Philip and Emma waved as they passed me on the track.

3. I didn't plant a garden this year, not officially. I have perennial beds of oregano and sage that I weeded a little, but I didn't do the customary tomatoes and peppers and zucchini. I kept meaning to, but time has a way of slipping past, and it never got done. This morning, I went into the backyard and found pumpkins growing where I had buried them last fall - the seeds apparently took and there are vines all over the place.

I'm keeping that surprise as a really hopeful sign for the coming year. That may sound strange, but having taught for so many years, I tend to think of the "new year" as beginning in September with new classes. And those unexpected pumpkins I'm keeping as a good omen.

What did you do this summer that you remember the most?

Postcard Blog

2011-08-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Here's what I've been thinking about lately: gators, swamps, lizardy things that scamper everywhere, and hillbilly hand fishin'.

That's right - in the middle of August, my best friend from college and I decided to celebrate three decades of friendship on the outskirts of Orlando. We're not doing the Disney thing. We did go to SeaWorld because it's one of my favorite places on earth, but this is kind of the inverse of Disney. It's way more nature-y, and let's just say that's a learning experience for me, a person who views camping as a kind of disorder.

This is the ~~swamp~~ lake outside of our condo:

which seemed lovely enough with the family of mallards drifting past and the paddle boats. I definitely wanted to take a paddle boat out and go around the perimeter of the lake until I read this sign:

Florida wildlife? What does that include? Would there be mallards and people fishing if there were alligators? My friend, who has a shady history of talking me into things I wouldn't normally consider (actually, that's one of the things I like best about her) assured me no ducks would coexist alongside alligators. Wildlife, she insisted, meant things like fish and the little lizardy things. I believed her. Sort of. So I asked at the desk.

There are alligators in every body of water in Florida they told me. Why worry? They sleep at the bottom and won't bother you. Only worry if they come up on land when you're down there.

Come up on land? What? Maybe we should have booked in Disney. I didn't worry long because that's when a man with a heavy Southern drawl began talking about catfish and hillbilly hand fishin' - which I thought was some kind of regional joke.

It's real. Apparently, it's a sport that devolves humans from using tools to catch prey. You reach into the depths of a muddy creek with your hands and grab a fish until it bites. You then pull the fish out of the water that way. It's so widely known that there's a show about it. I'm not kidding -

I can't imagine walking into that water with the sleeping gators at the bottom and your hand as a lure, but it's something I won't forget about this vacation.

Oh, and the thirty plus years of friendship is pretty great as well.

When the Story Just Doesn't

2011-07-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

Last night, all my kids were out of the house at the same time. This almost never happens. It felt rare and eerie, the sort of things are slightly off here sense you get when watching a total eclipe. No plates of snacks, no teens lolling on sofas, no small mountain of fragrantly wet boy-socks on the rug, no Lady Gaga pulsing from Emma's room. No noise.

No noise. Astonishing. My house like a Zen monastery.

Understanding this time would be very, very finite, I sat down to confront my WIP. Recently, I had been avoiding its chapters and it was time to come clean. I didn't like the last three chapters and I had to figure out why. I kept attempting to wrangle them; they responded by wrangling right back.

I've reached this stage with other work, so it wasn't unfamiliar. I kept staring at the sentences. They were fine, really. All grammatically correct, the story went along at a good pace, but there was something I just didn't...I couldn't find the word. The story just didn't. It was sort of like this ~

When I wanted this ~

So I took Mazy for a walk, played with the cats, and folded laundry all the while trying to think of ways to fix it. Only I couldn't name what was wrong with it. It was a perfectly respectable story yet I didn't respect it.

Then Christopher texted me. He was worried that I might be lonesome so he came home with friend in tow and towed friend had a pile of books she gave me. I had just donated half a carload of books in an attempt to renovate my writing space. I am removing the desk, most of the books, and just about everything in the space since I am going to be spending more time writing.

I started one of the new books that night. It was wonderfully written, lyrical and inspiring, and I respected it. I stayed up way too late, in love with the author's imagery. At that moment, I understood that sometimes, just like the space I was writing in, instead of a little revision, you need to take the plunge and chop. Those last three chapters, all those hours of work, the entire direction of the novel, was off.

It was painful to press that delete button. I thought of all the time I had spent getting the dialogue just right, the atmosphere, the language - all gone. But now there is space, and with space comes possibility. Instead of revision, sometimes you have to raze.

Deleting the Obvious

2011-07-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

I was reading a middle grade book last night, and what struck me about the author was the way she used very simple language to create surprise in her writing. Her style struck me because the last few middle grades I read used a lot of repetition to get ideas across.

I think repetition is a pitfall of any YA or MG writer, maybe especially for MG writers. We are never sure if kids are connecting with the ideas we are saying, so we, as adults, tend to hammer them in a little too strongly sometimes. We do it in life, so it's pretty natural that we do it in writing. Kids, of course, pick up on this instantly. Case in point:

The other day, Christopher, who is now nineteen, came with me to run a few errands. He works about 30 hours a week, maintains a good GPA, has a steady girlfriend, and just completed and passed two summer classes. So, really, I should know better. Dashing into the library, I looked over at the semi busy road and called to him, "Be careful crossing that street!"

He looked at his friend, grinned, and said, "Aw hell, Mom, I'm just going to shut my eyes, run into traffic and hope for the best."

I know. I pretty much deserved that.

So now that I am writing more full time, I am doing a lot more revision. (Writing to me really IS revision - I can't go forward until I've gone back and tinkered for a bit) My new editing eye is to delete anything that is not only obvious, but anything that is predictable.

This is harder than it sounds. I remember reading assigned novels in college and skipping over long passages of dialogue or description because I pretty much knew what it would say. That's the other piece: you want to make your characters consistent, but you also don't want to make them dull. And a lot of what I had to read in college were the kind of books where characters represented ideas or theories, so it may have been worse. In kid lit, the cliched characters are lethal.

All this being said, I will leave you with this bit of advice:

Summer!

2011-07-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back. .. and I didn't actually finish my novel, but I got the first third of it down, at least the draft of that first third. Actually, I'm sort of saying it's the first third because it makes me feel cool and organized and all sorts of in control.

The first time I went for a sonogram when I was pregnant with Christopher, the incredibly dour ultrasound tech barked at me to "evacuate your bladder until it's only one third full." She was one of those efficient human machines who work in medical lab kinds of places and she scared me more than the whole business of pregnancy did. I remember standing in the bathroom, wondering if other people (even you men) knew how to do such a thing.

So what does that weird anecdote have to do with writing? Well, I never really know how long or short anything is going to turn out until I'm done, and it was the same in that bathroom. (Just in case you're wondering, I was sent back to the bathroom because I had not estimated correctly) Some writers know they are writing a 50,000 or a 120,000 word novel. I just know I'm writing a story.

Anyway, I've been spending a lot of time reading books I don't normally read, like chic lit (sorry, not a fan), steampunk which I'm undecided about, a couple of mysteries which I found formulaic, then back to YA and MG which I loved. The problem with broadening your horizon is it makes you that much more comfortable to stay in your own little spectrum of color. Really, who can beat the likes of Robert Cormier or Harper Lee?

And I've been spending a fair amount of time walking with the kids on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. This is pretty much what it looks like:

What have you guys been doing this summer? I have to visit everyone's blog to see what's been going on. It's nice to be away from the Internet, but it's also nice to come back.

My Own Personal NaNo

2011-05-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

Nano is six months away, or six months past, depending on your politics. But I'll be back in about a month. It's the end of school and because I may not be entirely stable, I am attempting to finish a YA that I've been tinkering with for almost two years. And I want to finish it by mid-June which is in about six weeks.

I'll be here, just not here here and I'll still be reading blogs, just spending my all too precious writing minutes on Thorn.

Happy Spring!

The Royal Wedding and Heads Shaped Like Potatoes

2011-05-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

I know this is yesterday's news, but I'm psychotically busy most of the time, so I just got around to watching it last night. Well, nine minutes of it because my kids are all home on a Sunday night, and they were not quite so much into the royal wedding as their mom.

"It's history," I told them, "and I remember when his mom got married."

Groans.

"Everything you want to see is soooo boring," Philip reminded me. "But this is the worst. It's even in a church."

"Nine minutes," I reminded him, "that's not asking much. I just want to see her walk down the aisle."

Emma looked at the royal pair. "She's okay looking, but he has a head shaped just like a potato. Why is she marrying him?"

Sigh.

"Those people watching them," Philip announced, referring to the royal wedding attendees, "actually look boring. Like they're so boring, it shows."

It was a little dull. There's probably not much around more drowsy than British royalty. I remember reading once that Prince Charles was "madly keen on the science of sheep husbandry," which is about what you would expect looking at him.

I tried to get my kids interested. I pointed out the architecture, the dress, the hats. I wanted them to see the fairy tale aspects, the whole idea of a kingdom, of royalty. Wouldn't that interest them? Then again, my kids were never very big on fairy tales. I remember reading a few to the boys and the conversation went something like this:

                            "And then he chopped the dragon's head off, Mommy?"

                             "Well, no. There is no dragon. He's going to rescue the princess now."

                            "Then there's a dragon and they fight? And that's when he chops the dragon's head off?"

                             and so on,

So when Emma was born, I couldn't wait to read the fairy tales I had so ardently loved as a child. We got through Cinderella and a few others. Then came one with an ogre.

Emma sat up.

I thought, Look at that. She's going to love them as much as I did.

She pointed to the picture of the ogre. He looked something like this:

That was it.

Her mouth dropped open.

She wanted to know where ogres lived, what did they eat, who says they're not real? I showed her a map of the Eastern seaboard, showed her our state and explained that ogres were not allowed anywhere near New York. Not even close.

The next day she told me again she was scared of ogres. I explained how they were not permitted in New York. She looked at me with very big eyes and said, "But they're ogres."

I got her point. Ogres would not obey trespassing rules because, well, that's not what ogres do. They don't obey anything.

So I got my nine minutes of royal yawn and after that the kids found a teen/tween kind of news show that was flashy and fast paced and full of Lady Gaga music. That's when they saw a flash of royal wedding hats on (Princess ??? not sure if she's been royally booted or not) Fergie's daughters:

You gotta hand it to the royals.

They even invited Cinderella's step sisters.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Mom's version of rebirth and renewal ~

Teenage version ~

Holidays always seem to sneak up on me. I think it's my resistance to the stores' insistence on mingling bunnies and marshmallow peeps alongside the Valentines cards. My brain screams, That's not real! Not yet!

It's kind of how I trick myself by setting the kitchen clock ahead ten minutes so I'm not late in the morning, then I pour another cup of coffee thinking I have way more time than I do.

Easter is late this year, and that's my favorite way to celebrate it. When it comes in the dull middle of March, it seems so...well, like it's in the dull middle of something.

Right now, here, the buds are coming out on the trees and we're leaving the heat off during the day. I've even got the kids outside helping to clean up the yard and doing the garden thing.

We're clearly not a yard-obsessed family (seeing as we found a rubber tire in the brush-clogged part of our yard we just started cleaning out), but there is something about working together to clear out brush and branches that makes you think about concepts like renewal. I've always thought we should make resolutions at Easter instead of New Year's when there is still so much chocolate left over.

So, in keeping with the spirit of rebirth, my Easter resolution is to streamline my life. In May, I am going to be working only three days a week so I can write more. It's official. I realized that as much as I like teaching, I like writing more. And the half day I have to write is constantly being consumed with orthodontia appointments or laundry or visits to the vet. I keep writing in small slivers and when that happens, not a whole lot gets completed.

I can't wait.

And I can't be the only one who thinks this way. Have you made any spring resolutions?

Time

2011-04-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

I remember studying that picture in my elementary school library instead of watching the film on the Dewey Decimal system. I also remember feeling sort of scared by it, but only in the way you can be scared in an elementary school library which is not too terribly scared.

I think it was the mysticism of the painting that alarmed me. On the whole, there is not too much mysticism in American schools, even though I was taught by returning Vietnam vets and hippies (the real kind who had lived, or at least had visited, Haight Ashbury and met Jerry Garcia, or at least had attended one of his concerts)

It was an interesting time to be a child because none of our once-upon-a-time hippie teachers agreed with anything the Vietnam vets thought and vice versa. And we could tell who they were because the VietNam vets all dressed like hippies and the previous hippies wore conservative clothing to indicate they had now changed and decided to devote their lives to working with children. Both groups told us a pretty sanitized version of what they had learned by their experiences.

We loved when they talked about their former lives.We used to steer them toward the topic and ask them questions.

It wasn't that we understood most of what they said; what we did understand was that it was really, really easy to get these young, devoted, highly sincere teachers to move and stay off the topic of say, the Dewey Decimal system. Or the exports of Guatemala. I became especially interested in learning about Vietnamese village life at the onset of math sessions.

But this is a post about time, not about Anne Spollen's politically divided elementary school experience. The above ramble actually sort of underscores what I haven't said yet...

Time is actually a concept that I grapple with every day. I don't think I am one of those people who is "good" with time in the sense that I am efficient. I do put on the wash and start dinner and help with homework all at the same time. I'll even return phone calls then and go through the bills. And I do it all really quickly, really efficiently.

Then I take the dog out and spent twenty minutes wondering if I should put a few trellises of roses over the spot where the neighbor's hideous plastic and vinyl fence meets my property line. Or forsythia? Wait, I can't stand forsythia; they look like skeletons most of the year.

Could I put a fence up over that fence? Does that require a survey? How about vines? Yeah, vines.Only they would go everywhere. Or have thorns. On the ground that the kids and the dog would get tangled up in. So yeah, roses. Wait, I love wisteria. Is that a good name for a character? Wisteria Howard. Maybe. But how many rose bushes or wisteria vines? And so on....

I feel like I can focus in bouts, but most of the time my brain is, well, more like a tumble of vines than say a straight growing tree organized into brances. I don't know if that's good or bad for writing or how writers' brains work in general. Writers all seem so different to me.

I've tried this before, but I am going to try and create a specific period of time to write and only write. Since I have times when I work, when I sleep, when I spend time with the kids, I need to build in some part of each day to write. I think it would help focus.

How do you structure your day? Do you have a specific time of day to write? Is it built in? Is it flexible?

Naming

2011-03-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

One weird thing I have noticed when I write is how easy it is to come up with names for characters when the story has ripened well enough to be written. Yick, that's an awkward sentence.

Anyway, if I am struggling with names, chances are, I don't know or understand the character well enough to begin writing that story. What's wonderful is when the name seems to float right in, almost as if the character is telling you her name.

I've always loved the name Jane Eyre - such a grounded first name, followed by the sound of "air" - perfect for that character. Then Edward Rochester - what a perfectly rhythmical name for a brooding, Byronic hero. I had trouble though with his ex wife who was supposed to be a wild, romantic nut job -- you would think, back in the days of the Brontes, a name like Flora or Stella maybe. But Charlotte Bronte chose Bertha.

Bertha.

I would name my diner waitress with the dark roots and the bad manicure Bertha, not the madwoman in the attic. But that's okay; the rest of the novel wasn't too shabby.

Recently, I began writing a first chapter featuring a difficult protagonist. Only I could not think of her name. I could see what she was doing, I had her voice down, but like I said, she was difficult. I read Wiccan naming charts, looked at ancient Celtic names, browsed my old baby name books and even ate a bowl of soup while looking at a phone book. Nothing stuck. So she's not ready to be written.

My friends who don't write, and these are the ones I actually speak to, not the bloggy ones, don't understand why I abandoned the difficult protagonist because I seemed to like her so much. But I think my writing friends (the ones whose voices I have never heard, the ones whose thoughts I read instead), might get it. If you get to a certain point, and the name isn't there, it's time to go on to a different project. It's hard to explain to non-writers; I'm not abandoning my witchy character - she's just not ready yet.

It's probably because names are so important, even in life. Imagine if the Prince of England were marrying a Bambi or a Tammy. Wouldn't work. It sort of has to be a Kate or maybe a Millicent. I wouldn't name my difficult character any of those names. I was thinking of Leda, something short like that. But it didn't sound authentic.

It's not like I don't have lots of other stories to work on; I just sort of mourned that one because I could envision the plot so well. I feel like I'll be looking at a class roster one day in July, and say, "Morgana! That's it." (No, she's not a Morgana)

But I know she's not ready yet. I have no idea how other writers generate names. I know I have to disqualify a lot of names if they are anywhere near the names of my kids or their friends. And I don't want anyone's name in my immediate or extended family either. So the choices get narrower.

How do you generate names? Do you ever change them mid-manuscript if they don't seem to fit?

Interview with A Middle Grade Reader

2011-03-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

Today I had the double pleasure of picking up the laundry from Emma's room and helping her edit a rough draft of her life story. Just in case I was developing any kind of ego, I discovered that she loves me slightly more than her Aeropostale clothes and slightly less than her kittens. But she did agree to two offers.

One, she read the first chapter of my new middle grade (of which there is only a first chapter) and she agreed to honestly answer some questions about her own reading habits.

"You have reading habits?" I asked her.

"They force us to read at school," she reminded me.

She liked my new middle grade, mostly, but she thought the first paragraph was really boring. She's a fairly reluctant reader as she spends most of her time listening to and reading song lyrics. But her answers might shed some light on any middle grade you might be writing.

1. What types of stories do you like to read?

I only read realistic fiction or fantasy.

2. What makes those books good?

With realistic fiction, you can relate to what's going on with the characters or the plot. I love when not everything is perfect, like the character fails a subject or has nerdy friends. The perfect stuff is just not interesting.

With fantasy, I love the feeling that anything can happen. I can't stand when I can predict what will happen next.

3. How do you pick a book to read?

By the cover. Like the cover of Dear, Dumb Diary there's a girl petting a brain. That's the best cover because it makes you want to read the book. Or at least the summary.

4. How long do you read a book before you decide whether or not to finish it?

First of all, I am not mad weird like you, Mom. I don't read a book to the end even if it's bad. I give it maybe two or three pages. Then I just go on to the next one.

5. What is your all time favorite book?

The Midnight Library series. The best.

6. If twelve year olds could control what students read, what would the choice be?

Music on youtube, lyrics. After that, just nothing from a teacher. Let them go pick out what they like to read and don't force books on kids because you just ask your friends what they're about and what happens if you don't want to read them.

7. What type of setting do you like the best?

For fantasy, it has to be a different place, and creepy. An old house or a creepy lake. For realistic fiction, I like home and school only.

8. What do most of your friends read?

Boy and girl stories, romance and Twilight. I can't stand those. I like fantasy and most twelve year olds don't really like fantasy.

9. Do you have any advice for your mom's new middle grade?

Ummm, honestly?

Yes.

Your first paragraph is dull. No one cares about description. But the creepiness is good. I like that. I like not knowing what will happen.

10. If I finish this one, will you read it?

Not if there's a lot of description, but probably if there's action and scary stuff.

Revision Revisited, Then Revisited Again

2011-03-04T10:51:00.000-08:00

I have been MIA from the Internet as of late due to three things: story revision, my crazy life, and story revision.Currently, I loathe revision more than I ever have.

For Christmas, I got a bright and shiny new laptop. For a time, I felt really cool moving my laptop around. In those spare minutes when all was quiet in the house, I was working on stories. I can write that way, in short periods of time. I always read about those writers who do yoga for an hour while gazing at the sunrise, have a cup of organic green tea and summon the muse prior to beginning writing.

Here, it's more like gag some coffee down, throw wet towels into the washing machine, get the kids out, go to work, transfer wash to dryer, then grab at a few quiet minutes here and there. My muse is not hearing --
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM, COME QUICK REALLY, REALLY QUICK!!!!!"

So I was getting a whole lot more done since the minute I shut my door, it seemed to trigger mini emergencies. Somehow, if I was right there at the kitchen table typing, no one seemed to need anything quite as urgently. I stayed off the huge distraction of the Internet. And I finished the revision.

I should add that I don't really like the hardware aspect of writing, as in sending files and using the computer. If a legal pad and a good Bic pen (like one that costs over $4.00) were as fast, I would sit and do the scrivener thing. But it's too slow and you end up having to type in the end, so I type from the beginning.

Okay, so finished the revision, and after one last look, ready to send. All writers love those words, READY TO SEND.

Only...no file. Gone. Vanished. I had even saved it under a bright and shiny new name on my bright and shiny new computer. Teenagers were summoned. They who had computers for their Sesame Street characters (seriously, Christopher's Big Bird computer is still in a cabinet in the living room) No luck. No one could find the story. I had the old version of it on my big old computer upstairs, so I emailed it back to myself and redid the revision. This time, I had them watch me save the file.

"That's exactly what I did last time," I insisted.

"Couldn't have been," teenagers insisted, "it would still be there."

"Fine, so it's definitely there?"

They nodded. I was sure it was there. I was now on say, hour eight of revision time.

So no one could figure out what happened when the SECOND complete revision disappeared. Vanished. Gone. They searched all the files. They did things I never knew about like system restores and actions that sounded like upwill sync primes. It seemed a little like sorcery.

Still gone.

I have given up my convenient laptop and gone back to the computer that seems rooted into an ancient part of the earth. After three days of ignoring the laptop, teenagers asked, "What's going on? Did you do a third revision?"

"Not yet. And not on that thing," I said, pointing to the laptop. "I can't stand that computer."

The teenagers exchanged glances that whispered, "How old is she now? Could she be getting..."

"Mom, you act like that computer is being mean. It doesn't have a personality. You're just unfamiliar with the word program on that one."

"It hates me. And it's haunted. You forgot to mention that little detail."

I'm hoping the third time is a charm.

And I'm not using the laptop again, just to up my odds.

Snowlog and Potluck Stuff

2011-02-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

While I was looking for pictures of the last snowstorm, I finally found the picture of our Christmas mantle that I thought I had never taken.

Everyone piled stuff there without any real pattern, sort of a designer's potluck. It has nothing to do with this post, but that's sort of the way February has been going around here.

Here are observations from my snowlog:

1. Cats really, really don't understand glass. Maybe buying a glass computer table to fit into the kitchen corner should have been thought through a little more.

Our cats are already nuts and now they are making themselves crazier than ever by trying to knock pens and papers off the glass. When we clear it, they try to bite each other's paws through the glass. Lots of giant skunk tails and long caterwauls that sound like: rrrrrrreeeeeeewwwwwwwoooooohhhhh. It's like living inside the soundtrack of nightmares.

2. Philip is going to church with me now. Yup, lapsed Catholics that we were. There is a much, much longer story to this, but suffice it to say, my tall boy is now listening to weekly homilies and gospel right next to his mom.

And isn't that every 16 year old boy's dream?

3. I am cleaning out my closet. Really cleaning, as in basement and attic scouring, so even the bagged up stuff that I paid a lot for and was going to fit into one day is getting washed and donated. Some of it I haven't worn since my early twenties, and that was more than a few years ago.

It's hard to imagine that I was once a size 5 with 32 inch hips. I tell myself that wider hips mean a larger heart and a size 10 is not such a bad way to end up. Besides, you can't wrangle with tweens and teens if you are frail. It takes strength to raise kids with any kind of care and vigilance. (See #2)

4. I really, really like Southern Gothic literature.

5. My new YA is finally taking shape. I have 16,000 words that I actually am happy with.

Okay, so I'm happy with maybe 10,000, but it's at that point where I am not changing the order around any more. Stuff is permanent.

And I'm working harder to write it - like closing the door and acting all moody when my kids come in and want a ride to Becky's house because she has gourmet popcorn and a vampire movie. I just watched how they acted when I asked them to do things like take out the garbage or pick up the wet towels. I give them the same looks when they interrupt me and now we are speaking the same unspoken language.

And it's the dull middle of February, nearly exactly, and I am buying potting soil tomorrow because I'm going to push spring. I saw daffodils in the supermarket on Sunday and had to buy them: they are just so hopeful.

February may be the shortest month, but since I don't really deal too much with mathematical realities, I think it's the longest. There are some nice days in March, but it's taking so long to get there with these freezing cold, windy days. Maybe we need days like this to do some planning and things like finding pictures and cleaning out our closets.

How are you keeping busy until spring?

Aligned Stars and the Presence of Dynamite

2011-01-30T06:58:00.000-08:00

There has been a whole lot written about "balance" between work and family, and almost all of it is aimed at women. I could never work when my kids were small, particularly the boys. And I'm not talking work as in leaving the house with shaved legs and make up on. I mean work as in planting marigolds.

I actually tried to make a garden once when both boys were toddlers. Philip began "tasting" the sand and Christopher got stuck in the thorny berry patch and began howling. So I just played with them. Everyone stayed intact and the only "balance" I had in my life occurred when I got the two boys, the groceries and the dog food into the shopping cart without tipping.

But they're older now, so the other day when I got a phone call from an actual interview person, I felt really cool. And I rarely feel cool, but that morning I did. I had cleaned my desk off and my new YA was coming together and I had FINALLY bought living room curtains, so all my stars were aligned. There I was, with that new ms, an interview, and Christopher safely off at college.

Of course, my life is generally not this smooth. The other side of that day was that the living room curtains are still in the bag, the YA only has the first chapter and a half done, and it was a snow day which meant Philip and Emma were both home.

Philip and Emma have been tight playmates ever since we toted Emma to the playground with us in a Snuggli.

Life with them is something like this. This is Philip's personality:

So alone, that's not so bad. Here's what happens when Emma comes along:

And there's a bigger reason I chose those images. So there I am, on the phone, feeling cool for the first three seconds of the interview. Very writerly. Very organized. And I get this text while I'm talking about organized,writerly things: Rmbr that rocket P got for his bd a lng time ago?

I do remember the rocket Philip got for his birthday. He was turning12 and a well-meaning (childless) friend had given him a rocket to launch. Somehow, ~~because I had put it there~~ it ended up in a box of old maternity clothes.

Put it back, I texted, and get out of the basement while I'm on the phone!!!!!

Mom, is he lying or is this acktual dynomite? BRB

So I trotted down to the basement, still discussing character and plot and all those kinds of things. I got the rocket and wrote an old fashioned note to them: We can launch this later, when I'm off the phone. I got the interview done. I sounded, the interviewer said, very animated.

If only she knew that it wasn't plot structure giving so much pitch to my voice.

MG/YA Brains: The Divide

2011-01-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

Whenever my house seems dusty and cluttered, which is a lot, I put on some real estate show and look at the adults only kind of living with porcelain objects on tables and alien things like crystal and wine decanters. It's an entirely different world from mine. There, basketballs would never roll across a living room floor (we have a small Juliette balcony which sounds so lovely, but it is at the perfect height for a basketball toss) and you wouldn't have to think of a way to hide cat scratch marks on the sofas.

I love watching those shows. It's an escape that helps me come back and hurl rogue basketballs into the garage, pick up the fossilized socks under the sofas and start the laundry with renewed apathy.

I do that with work, too. A few days ago, I was writing curriculum for a course I am less than excited about teaching. So in the middle of a thrilling lesson on apostrophe usage, I went online and looked at new jobs. These jobs wouldn't be in my classroom where the windows don't open, ever, and the air conditioning kicks in the week before Christmas. These would be in new and shiny classrooms where the students didn't text while I was talking about Herman Melville and all the apostrophes would arrive in meticulously rendered papers. I just needed to find that job.

One really interested me. It was about an hour from here and it was teaching MG and YA writing. You had to have written and published at least one book, have a current manuscript and a bunch of other requisites that I already have. It sounded perfect.

Of course, it's impossible for me to do this job since I'm already overly committed for the spring, but thinking about teaching MG and YA was no different from my viewing of adult only houses staged for sale.

And it made me think, again, about those lines between MG and YA. They seem so definite in the bookstores and libraries. Yet books like The Hobbit confuse me - that was assigned in our seventh grade class, yet it is in the YA section in a lot of places. Number the Stars, also a book I taught in middle school, is in the YA section. Other than obvious subject matter, I'm not sure what divides them. I have an idea, though, now, after one of our pre-dinner conversations.

Christopher was saying something about sleep and the brain, and how dreaming is essential to survival. (Remember finishing your first semester of college psychology and all the stuff you found out?) The conversation went something like this:

Definitely a YA reader, with a semi mature attitude. I say semi mature because Christopher would also agree with this brain theory:

Emma, who was gluing feathers onto the cover of her report on cell function, (because cell function reports are dull) explained to Christopher that she knew, exactly, why we dream.

"When you go to sleep, your brain has nothing to look at and nothing to do. It's sooooo bored. So it makes up stories until you wake up. That's why you dream."

I think I had my answer to the difference.

Spending New Year's Eve Alone

2011-01-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

With hubster working on New Year's Eve and nobody local available, I decided, for the first time, ever, to spend New Year's Eve alone.

I probably could have imposed myself on people who vaguely mentioned plans, but after the ho ho ho-ness of the holidays, I was pretty much looking forward to a few hours of hanging out with Mazy and the cats. Actually, impossibly nerdy as it sounds, I wanted to write for a couple of hours.

Yup, on New Year's Eve.

I thought if I took the kids to a nice place early in the evening, maybe some place wintry and cultural and made snacks, that would be enough of a celebration. I found this lovely lake in nearby Smithville - definitely fit the bill for wintry and cultural. I even found a video of the place I liked:

So off we went, kids, friends and complaints. By the time we found the lake, everyone was cold. And hungry. And grumpy. And vocal about all three of those conditions. My vision of an enchanting early evening felt much more like this -

But, like most trips with teenagers, and Emma as the mascot, there was adventure. I took a wrong turn somewhere because we were looking at "old people" eating in an inn. I thought it was nice, but the kids could not imagine sitting sedately at an inn because it was rich with history.

After the wrong turn, we drove for a really, really long time down a road with only marshes on either side. At the end was one of those bars that looks like it's falling into the swampland. I might have mentioned that the road was a perfect place for serial murderers to await prey. It's amazing how young they are - everyone got uncharacteristically quiet right after I said that.

I did find out a few tidbits: Christopher is going to study homeland security as a minor. Wow. I didn't realize you could get a degree in that. And Philip, being Philip, announced he wants to start a garden. I was so happy: all those seed plantings I took him to at the organic farm, all those nature walks and watching peppers grow had paid off.

Then I remembered, This is Philip talking. So I was ready for some kind of weird vegetable, maybe okra or kohlrabi.

"Know what I want to grow?"
"Umm, beets?"
"Nope. Tobacco. Tobacco and tea."
Right.
Don't all sixteen year olds?

I spent some of the night alone, but they all sent me texts at midnight, and Philip and I are going to find out how to grow tea in New Jersey, or maybe just leaves resembling tea.

And I'm taking New Year's Eve 2010 as an omen for 2011: I think it's going to be a year of surprises.

Happy Holidays!!!!

2010-12-28T19:52:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays to Everyone Who Writes to Me and/or Comments or Reads This Blog Silently!

These are my three ~~demons~~ kids who ~~begrudgingly~~ happily posed for a quick Christmas shot. We have the official White House portrait, but this was just a quick one that I think captures them more naturally. The boys look just so enthralled with the camera.

I love this week between Christmas and New Year's. I like the quietness of everything, love the blizzard and the snowed in slowness of these days. I finally got to some writing yesterday, after all the ho ho stuff, and I made a list of what's on my desk. It reads:

Chapters 1 - 4 of a paranormal YA (early YA)

Chapter 1 of an adult novel with an outline

Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of a YA

Revision of Middle Grade about 60 % done

Page One and Outline of a YA novel with a boy protagonist

So that's five things I'm working on. Yikes. No wonder I get lost when I sit down to work. I need more weeks like this with no work and no demands.

Do other people make lists of what they have or what they're working on? Probably not since this is not a sane way to write. I'll bet most folks go chapter by chapter with one, possibly two pieces.

Actually, my house has lots of "begun" projects that have been tinkered with and sort of abandoned. I have every intention of painting those shelves, stenciling that cool old bookshelf, organizing Christopher's baby album pictures now that he's just turned 19.

So this is my writing resolution: no new and shiny chapters until I finish all five of these. Yup, that's right. I am publicly humiliating myself so I don't begin yet another writing project. It clutters up my brain and I suffer from terminal tinkering which means I don't finish stuff at the pace I would like. I can abandon one or more of these wip's, but I can't start a new one until I see these through either to a manuscript or fodder for the compost heap.

So along with being able to identify a muscle in my body without a CT Scan (that is my physical resolution), I am going to have to identify these five beginnings into some kind of ending. I may be a little late with some holiday stuff, but with these resolutions, I'm starting early.

Do you have any writing resolutions for 2011?

The Season of Epiphany

2010-12-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

Baby Cat Touching the Moon

This is a kind of blurry picture of BabyCat who finally, finally got onto the highest window in the house to bat at the moon with her paw. Of course, that's not really the moon. It's the reflection of a hallway light, but she got to bat at it nonetheless as we left a ladder near the window to put up lights. She was completely baffled as to why that light didn't move like her toy balls do.

I liked that the Escher print beneath also had a moon and a lot of white and black - it just struck me so with a ton of Christmas stuff still undone (and just a ladder, no lights), I went and found the camera and took some pictures of her.

Now, what on earth does BabyCat chasing reflected light have to do with epiphanies? Well, in my tired-I've graded-way-too-many-term-papers-this-week brain, a lot. BabyCat isn't really capable of revision. And since I was kind of stuck in my revision, while I was watching her, the whole idea of why two scenes weren't

working came to me: she wasn't really batting at the moon, and my character wasn't really revealing her truth either. So after watching her, I left the lights and the wrapping undone, and wrote down notes for a new direction for my character to take. In about two seconds, while watching BabyCat, it dawned on me what I needed to do.

But those two seconds took about three months to arrive at, and I think that is the nature of any epiphany. The online dictionary says an epiphany is: "a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience..."

I'm not sure BabyCat up there on that ledge is homely or commonplace, but I guess it's simple. And it's weird the way our brains fire, jumping from one image to other ones that don't seem connected at all.

On some level, you are thinking of how to solve a problem, either in writing or in some other area of your life, but you aren't really conscious of it. I have had so many areas of my life demanding my time lately, that writing has had to take a very distant backseat. I was glad though, in those few minutes of downtime while watching her up there trying to play with something that wasn't really there, that I found my way out of the bog I had landed my character in.

Now all I have to do is finish shopping, baking, cleaning, wrapping, writing out cards, grading and submitting grades and I can get back to rescue her from that bog...

Thanksgiving and Three Heads and A Habit of Gratefulness

2010-11-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

I always have this idea that Thanksgiving is going to be one of those calm holidays where we bond as a normal family with a long car ride, and I don't know, stories of how wonderful our lives are or how wonderful something is. It seems that other families are driving into New York City all calm and happy with children coloring in the backseats. Maybe they are just better at using silence as a cloak of dsyfunction. I'm not sure. I like to think that's what it is.

Our holiday began normally enough. We were within an hour of our time to pick up the kids' grand uncle. (Yes, he brought his hair clipper so my husband could clip his ear hair - if you are familiar with this blog, you know Uncle Jack's ear hair cutting is a somewhat unusual, but expected, holiday tradition - if you want to really, really stretch the word tradition)

Around ten minutes into the ride, Emma asked me how many fingers I could hold from my hairline to my eyebrows. I sort of didn't want to answer, but I did. "Umm, four."

"See, that's my whole problem. I can only hold three fingers there. I don't have a forehead. I have a three head. And that's what aliens and cavemen have."

I turned to look at her brothers who were very, very innocently gazing out the window.

And our usual wildly weird conversation went on until we reached Grandma's. That's when I thought I'd take some nice holiday pictures. Here is a lovely shot of Philip growling while Christopher politely tries to duck the camera:

And here, poor Philip looks like he needs corrective surgery.

But it was at some point during the dinner, maybe when I realized they were actually pretty nice kids when people other than me spoke to them, that I realized I have to stop thinking about the serene families. I'm lucky to have them. They only pass the green bean casserole and whisper, "Some vomit in a bowl?" to each other when no one is within earshot. And even though they never colored or sat quietly, they do all pile in the car and endure the strange conversations of their elderly relatives (yeah, it's about that, complete with amount, consistency and frequency) without batting an eyelash.

We will probably never drive down the road without our minor battles and our own brand of three headed weirdness, but at least we are all together and we are all talking. It's really corny, but I like that Thanksgiving reminds everyone that we should be in a habit of gratefulness rather than think about it only on one day.

Setting

2010-11-16T18:49:00.000-08:00

I remember a graduate class where the professor seemed pretty much stuck on the idea that character and plot were one in the same. We talked about it for seven thousand hours, going over seven thousand lines of Henry James whereby that professor proved, undeniably, that Henry James could make both plot and character equally dull and therefore indistinguishable from one another.

I'm really sorry, but I can't stand Henry James.

I'm not really sure why I took so much American Lit in grad school since that seems to be all we did. I actually do think there's a big difference between plot and character. What interested me way more, and what we almost never talked about, was the importance of setting.

Someone I read in grad school, when I was supposed to be reading Henry, was Eudora Welty. I saw her name on a bookstore shelf and I loved it.

Go ahead, say it: Eudora Welty.

It sounds like a children's book protagonist who is orphaned then left a fortune.I loved her name so much that I opened the book and saw it was about writing so I bought it. And she said this about setting:

"Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?..."

When I sit down to write, I see a person, then I see where that person is standing or sitting or looking out a window. I have absolutely no sense of that person until I see where they are physically. It kind of fills in: rainy, city, Saturday afternoon, boy on bus, looking out sooty window. That kind of thinking. I put the character in the setting, then their personality sort of emerges.

I think I'd like to go back to graduate school now, as the teacher this time, and talk for a really long time about how setting is really a character in the story, right along with the characters who talk and interact and change or remain static.

I always wonder how other writers start their stories. I definitely think place before person. If someone said, "Quick! Write about a wedding!" I wouldn't think about the couple. I would think about where: if it was the Presbyterian chapel in Swedenboro, Minnesota (if there is such a place) it would be an entirely different couple than the couple waiting on the steps of the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. The Minnesota couple would have begun saving for their first home and decided to use only green cleaning methods; the Las Vegas couple might be able to use the same public restroom.

I think everyone who writes works from a different circuit board. I'm just wondering what comes first for writers out there: the character or the place?

Vampire Families and Theme Parks and Stuff

2010-11-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

I have been blog-neglectful in respect to my own blog and other folks' blogs. I sort of get lost in my life and don't have time for even a few minutes at the computer. Of course that's not because I'm actually writing or cleaning the house or reading or doing any of the things that would make me timely and organized and increasingly published. It's because I'm doing...stuff.

One of those things did was take the kids to Six Flags, or two of the three kids and a friend. And of course then there was Halloween which completely absorbs me. We went to Six Flags just before Halloween.

Now, we are not a theme park family, but every once in a while, I roll a wheelbarrow of cash into one of those places just so we feel connected to the rest of theme-park loving America.

None of my kids are hugely into roller coasters, but we walked around, went on a few rides and let teenagers jump out at us and scare the scream out of Emma. Philip kept reminding her to "look cool" because the people paid to scare you "prey on the weak." But Emma is too young not to look terrified, so she provided those folks a perfect target.

What scared me the most was the family of vampires. Not too many people who weren't hired by the park were in costume, but this family stood directly in front of us on line with their fanged teeth and capes. After a few minutes of watching them, it occurred to us, I think simultaneously, that they were really, really, really into being "the vampire family" - in other words, you sort of got that they wore these costumes at times other than Halloween. Way scarier a concept than roller coasters.

I'm not sure what's wrong with us that we don't enjoy theme parks. Its seems sort of un-American.

I remember right after Emma was born, we took the boys, then four and six and a newborn to Florida. We stood in the middle of Disney World and only then did my postpartum, exhausted brain realize that we never really participated in much Disney stuff. We watched Lion King and Barney and knew the names of animals, but we didn't go to Disney movies or watch commercial tv. My boys did not know who Buzz Lightyear was and Philip grew absolutely terrified when Lincoln began speaking. In fact, he began wailing with terror. Christopher was in tears because he wanted to drive the go carts and after about ten seconds, he realized that the go cart was being controlled for him and not by him. "This place stinks," he pronounced. I remember going back to the hotel thinking we were the strangest family in the United States. What kids don't like Disney World? Well, mine.

But we did have fun afterwards talking about the vampire family, imagining them going shopping for their small, medium and large capes and fangs and pointy collars and sitting for the family portrait:

But now it's boring, wet November and I have to actually get back to doing stuff that isn't just stuff, like finishing a revision and adding at least 100 words to NaNo. I'm really hoping there is someone else out there who joined NaNo and hasn't started yet. There has to be: if the vampire people found each other, I can't be alone in procrastination, right?

NaNoWriMo and Ganguros

2010-10-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

I just signed up for the NaNoWriMo even though I'm not really sure of the rules yet. I want to try to write an adult novel and I figured it might be fun to do. I know you can't have started the manuscript yet, except maybe mentally. Of course I don't have a whole lot of time to devote to this, but I can try. It's really a way to force me not to agonize and just get stuff down on paper, and it might be fun to do it with other folks. I actually don't know anyone who writes adult books...maybe I will after this. And I think there are forums, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

In other exciting news, I am HAPPILY REVISING. Now that might seem like an oxymoron, but I can assure you, it's not. Usually, I approach revision with the same enthusiasm I approach a pile of ironing with, which is to say none.

I suffer through revision. I feel very, very sorry for myself and console myself with hidden stashes of chocolate (not Mars or Hershey's either, the good kind, from Europe) I work slowly. I consider abandoning writing and taking a full time job in a middle school where I force twelve year olds to circle the subject of sentences. I stop and start and stop again.

This time, I didn't take advice. I just went with what seemed right to me and it's coming out much, much better than I thought. It may not be perfect, but I think confidence in actually listening to yourself is a writing skill that is largely ignored.

I'm always worried about craft, about having it sound exactly the way I intended it to, but if someone, even someone who doesn't write or doesn't read much, says, "Hey, have you ever thought of including Satan in that picture book?" I stop to consider that as an option.

This time, I just did what I thought would be better and it worked. You would think I would know that by now, but you know what they say (actually, I'm not sure what they say, but they must say something about learning things after the fact, I just don't know what it is)

And things just keep getting better and better. After several days of wondering how I went so woefully wrong as a parent that my daughter wants to go out as Snooki for Halloween, she has decided, instead, to be a Ganguro Girl. Apparently, she liked a specific cheetah print dress that Snooki has worn, and when the idea of wearing that wore off, she landed on the Ganguro Girl. After she showed me a picture - here are Ganguro Girls:

I got really worried that they were a certain class of working girl in Asian society that Emma may not realize. But they're not.

Apparently, researchers in Japanese studies think ganguro is a kind of fashion revenge against traditional Japanese society. I have no idea how she found out about it, but she does read fashion magazines. I am just really hoping they are not a form of the Japanese Snooki.

Hillbilly YA

2010-10-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

The other day I was reading a short story that was, in a word, dreadful.The hopeful writer who asked me to read it is an acquaintance of mine who is looking to make some holiday cash by penning a few short stories. What I didn't tell him is that you get paid in copies for years, and an acceptance can be months, or even years, in the offering. He would be better off stocking shelves at Toys 'R Us.

(Expert 1)

(Expert 2)

I think there's a whole misconception out there that writing is easy, sort of like a hobby. I've said this skadey eight million times, but when I meet people, I almost never confess to being a writer. I've gotten too many weird glances, like I'm saying, "I shrink ocelot heads in my basement and make garlands from their teeth." So I just say I teach English and change the subject back to something about them.

(Expert 3)

But I know I have to say something to this man about his work. It was dreadful due to the dialogue. It went something like, "She's at the beauty parlor." "You don't say." "Yup, she is. Getting her hair all done up for this Saturday night."

Now, I'm paraphrasing that sample, but if you're thinking they sound like hillbillies sitting outside the gun shop, that's pretty much the impression I got. And it's YA. Hillbilly YA. Maybe hillbilly teens still say "beauty parlor" but I doubt it. I'm sure even they go to the Daisy Duke Spa.

You don't necessarily have to have teens to write successful YA dialogue, but I really think it helps to either have them around or work with them in some capacity. I have a ready panel of YA experts. They never seem to mind when I swipe their phrasings. This is one example of a recent dinner:

Emma: Did you guys ever meet someone with an eye that doesn't quite...

Philip: Yes! You mean a slow eye?
Christopher: Mom, didn't you have an aunt with that?

Emma: This girl has it and she talks to me all the time. Like all the time. And I know I have to talk to her or Mom will lecture me on how lucky I am...

Philip: I know. To have two good eyes or something.

Mom: I'm sitting right here you know.

Christopher: I have a paper due in ten hours. It has to be five pages long. Mom, have you ever read...

Emma: So here's the problem. When she looks at me...

Philip: Who ate the last slice of pizza?

Christopher: So what happens when she looks at you?

Philip: You definitely ate it last night.

Emma: I never know where to look. It's just that there are too many...you know, decisions to make on what part of her face to focus on.

And so it goes.

Halloween Choice

2010-10-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

My kids change their Halloween ideas a few times before settling on one costume. It's kind of a ritual that they go through. Well, I should say Emma and Philip do this. They always loved costumes, dressing up, all that stuff when they were little. Christopher wore a Batman suit as his sole foray into dress up world, and every Halloween he knew what he wanted to be by Labor Day and he stuck to it. Of course, his particular weirdness was to eat all of his Halloween candy on Halloween night and well...you sort of know the rest if you've ever run a highly necessary wash at 3 am.

But not being able to make linear decisions is genetic. Emma and I went into the basement to look at all the Halloween stuff we had lying around. I saw a bunch of coats in a box and remembered the coat drive for the homeless. I was trying on a coat that I once really loved: this red, wool coat with big buttons that I haven't worn since I was maybe 25. I thought I looked pretty good when Emma looked over and said, "Wow, Mom, you look just like Clifford in that." In case you haven't traveled with the under 12 crowd recently, this is Clifford:

I put the coat in the box. Then Emma announced what she wanted to be for Halloween. "I need a new wig," she said, "since Snooki has long, black hair."

This is my interpretation of Snooki:

Needless to say, I got judgmental. The Jersey Shore is everywhere around here, particularly since we live at the Jersey Shore, only here's the thing: they act and speak just like people from North Jersey or Brooklyn or Staten Island do. They don't act at all like the folks down here who spend a lot of time quilting and quadding and thinking about ducks. After explaining to Emma all the reasons why she shouldn't go out dressed as her, she shrugged and said, "That's my final decision."

I appealed to Philip. "You talk to her," I said, "since she'll listen more to you." I was going on and on about what a terrible role model she is, how I was not happy, and he looked at me and smiled.

"You don't get it all, Mom. You act like this is serious. It's Halloween."

"Yes, but..."

"You're acting like she's going to be Snooki as a career or something. Emma thinks Snooki is a joke. She laughs when she sees her clothes. She's going out as her to make fun of the whole thing."

I was thinking about what he said when Emma walked in, her face red. "Philip, there is no way you are going out as that."

"As what?" I had been so preoccupied with Emma's choice that I hadn't asked Philip about his.

"A clown," she wailed. "An evil clown. I can't stand clowns. I won't go in the parade with you if you do this. Clowns are like my worst nighmare."

I'm fairly certain neither one will budge about their costume choice. This should be an interesting Halloween.

Maybe I should dig out my old favorite coat and just get a pair of big red ears.

Getting to be That Time

2010-09-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, this was "our" beach, but now it's definitely getting to be Halloween around here. Right after Emma's birthday, in late August, my kids start talking about costumes, and today we are going to start figuring out how to make them. I know it's more than a month away, but already our neighborhood is all orange and golden and there are plastic tombstones jutting out of lawns, lots of hay bales, and those gigantic blow up things that flatten out in a way each morning that is far scarier than when they're inflated into a twenty six foot Pumpkin Snoopy.

Last year's six foot werewolf; I finally found the picture that shows the tail.

Is it me, or has Halloween gotten to be a much bigger celebration than it used to be?

Ghosts don't scare me. Nothing mystical or spiritual does. Teen driving, that scares me. Boy teen driving in particular scares me, especially when there are other boys in the car. Philip and Emma conspiring also scares me. I think that thumbs up is a cover up because he looks plenty guilty.

Actually, when any of my kids acts quiet, I feel fear. Quiet is never good in this house. I think of other quiet things like lurking murderers in the basement or bugs waiting to pounce.

And I am not really big on crawling things like snakes or spiders. And my eel phobia is legendary. Come to think of it, I've never seen an eel costume for Halloween...

Speaking of spiders, here is my pick for scariest pre-Halloween video: five foot spiders. I kid you not. A spider the size of Emma. Good Lord. I mean, really, say you're in the basement dusting off the Halloween decorations and you see an actual five foot spider. Just typing that creates a sleep-depriving image in my brain.

I once had a literature professor who told us that autumn has always been the time when the margin between the living and the dead gets very, very thin. It was one of those archetypal patterns in human existence. Sometimes I look at the blow up Draculas, the ones that are purple and green, and think that we haven't really made all that much progress in adhering to our archetypal patterns. I think we've gone in a whole new direction.

I include myself in that. I am going to spend at least part of today figuring out how to transform one of the classic Schwinn bikes into Ghost Rider. That's after I get the decorations out of the basement.

And if I come across one spider down there, even if it's smaller than a bottle cap, I'm out of there.

I realize we're early because my kids love Halloween second only to Christmas, but has anyone else begun Halloween or plans?

Teens Read Too Blog Visit

2010-09-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

I'm blog hopping again, today over at Jen Wardrip's great teen blog, Teens Read Too. Stop by for a chance to win a signed copy of Light Beneath Ferns or The Shape of Water. She has tons of great interviews and all kind of interesting links. Hope to see you there!

Late Summer, Odds and Ends and Non Hurricanes

2010-09-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't been on the computer in so long that I had to use a DustBuster and damp rags to get BabyCat's hair off the keyboard. She is so weird; she loves nothing more than a nap on a nearby keyboard. There's a bed and a comfy chair not far from this keyboard, so that kind of doesn't add up. But that's the nature of cats: they resent assumptions.

This is such a strange time here, calendar wise. I'm not wild about the ten days or so before school starts. Being a teacher and having three kids as students means a whole lot of odds and ends have to get taken care of. There have been all these little things to do that don't add up to much but take up entire days like buying school supplies, going to redundant meetings, and standing in lots of lines. All this preparing for Tuesday when everything opens.

Then there's the hurricane preparing. The hype caused our neighbors to remind us tie down deck furniture for a hurricane that never materialized. No one would go anywhere near the beaches for a few days. And that's a shame since the beaches are gorgeous right now. Late August and early September are probably the best times for a beach, or maybe that's just when I like it. We live right by Long Beach Island.

Here's our beach - I love the fences around the dunes. You can't see them so much in this picture, but most of them slope and have this great wobbly effect:

And the dock over the bay:

I just finished a book about writing theory and it said, "Never use weather to open your setting. It is too obvious a device." I think preparing for a hurricane would be a great opening to a book. I was thinking about writing theory as I read that book last night, and I'm not sure there is one - a writing theory I mean. I do remember running to the campus book store when I was 21 and ready to write my first novel. I bought about five of those books, anxious to get started. And I remember how the advice pretty much conflicted. I think I would sum up my writing theory as: Tell the story clearly, just make sure you have a really good story.

I think this blog post is rambling since that pretty much matches what's been going on here lately. I did manage to figure out the "voice" in my next YA book that I've been struggling with for a year now. It's totally different from when it started and it's the first one I don't doubt. So maybe there is a reason that hyper type people like me are forced to wait. Even if it is for hurricanes that don't appear or classes that haven't started or voices in novels that don't speak in a way that convinces me they can carry the story I intend to write. Maybe all this waiting is a writing lesson of some sort.

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

2010-08-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

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?

Slanguage

2010-08-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Was it Confuscius who said, "She who attempts to do three rooms at once will only do one room at a time despite many lists"?

Maybe that was a Russian aphorism, but I am here to say: IT IS VERY TRUE. And because there is stuff all over the place in this house and it's weird, crazy hot and swampishly humid outside, I need to avoid both my writing work and the housework. So I've been keeping a new list: one of words that are new to me but not new to the under 18 set.

For those of you who are YA writers, take heed. The majority of these were lifted from sentences of the teens who infest my living room. In no particular order, here are the ones I've culled:

TwitLit - a "dumb" book that has no depth - taken from the mind numbing supeficiality of Tweets

Bacne - the appearance of zits on the back and/or shoulders

AFK - Away From Keyboard - as when asked any question as in, "Philip, what is the capital of Delaware?" It is answered, "IDK AFK" because the actual BOOKS are in the other room and he's already on the couch

Butter - a term that has nothing to do with what we once spread on toast; this now means that something is wonderful or the best

In this sentence, the bolded words all mean the same thing: That idiot is such a tool and his friend is like totally 404 (as in the message error 404 for vacant page)

How was the movie? Great, it was intense and riveting (Mom) Same sentence in teen: It was H (for hardcore)

Mouse Potato - replacing the Couch Potato of my generation who sat in awe of cable movies playing on the living room tv, this is a person who engages in much of the same nothingness in front of a computer screen

Swipe Out - when a debit card funded by a 'rent has been ground down to zero dollars

See if you can figure this out: I saw Erin chillaxing and she looked fly. She got new rides.

Answer Key: Erin was not stressed, she looked good and she had new sneakers on. It took me a bit to get rides meant shoes and not boyfriends who drove.

Maybe I was being a wanksta which I'm pretty sure is the dorky version of gangsta, as in a person who is trying to be all cool and fly but is in fact, a mom or a teacher (or in my case, both...)

Then there is this strange one: "So just because I asked for ONE belly piercing, Mom, you don't have to get all salty on me, ok?"

Say what? Am I the only one who thought of old, grizzled sailors cursing into their beers while sitting in seedy, dockside bars? Apparently, salty here only means difficult.

Then there is Christopher, back from his college summer, explaining to me that the girl I thought was lovely at the freshman orientation had, in fact, a tramp stamp visible above her thong. Ok, I thought, do I want to know? I couldn't resist; the rhyme forced me to press onward and ask. A tramp stamp is a tattoo (a tat in teen) right above the rump. I could have gone right on living without ever having known that little nugget.

Also in college, there is the dreaded, rushed paper called a Wikidemia which is writing solely researched on Wikipedia.org that a student submits hoping/praying that the professor will not check sources

College kids also run off to check their vitals, which means they run to the nearest electronic device to check their Facebook page (myspace has gone the so yesterday route of "emo" and voice mail), their texts and emails.

In the car today, Emma said breezily that she couldn't wait to see her bra back at school. After much confusion and a sense of surrealness that I had lost track of time, my children, and the motions of the planets, Emma explained that a brah is the female equivalent of a bro, or a best friend.

Right. Got it. Or rather, I'm down with it.

Revisions

2010-07-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

Right now, because I am almost entirely crazy, I promised all three of my kids that I would help them re-do their rooms - at the same time. In fairness to my sanity, when we moved here, it was a DIY job, with chairs and bureaus shoved into corners at 2 am so we could unearth the box storing the clean underwear. Things have sort of remained that way, and now the kids are pretty much due actual furniture that remotely matches and they can fit into.

Rooms are really important to teenagers. I'm trying to recall when writers show that emphasis, but I'm not coming up with any titles. They come home exclaiming how "cool" someone's room is, how amazing the colors/posters/speaker system/flat screen is and how much fun being in that kid's room was.

Chances are, you can remember your room as a teen. I know I spent a fair amount of time organizing it, finding spots to hide my diaries (I kept two; one my friends read at sleepovers and one that I wrote "the truth" in - )

I'm also working on revisions to a middle grade novel and what I'm finding is the prevailing sense that everything takes longer than I thought. And also the feeling that I am never going to finish anything. Here are a few notes from my recent undertakings:

Emma is doing her room in hot pumpkin, fuschia and zebra stripe. I kid you not.

She can't believe how beautiful this combination is. Her 'tween friends are all in OMG agreement that this is going to be THE room. No wonder they're a difficult age to write for...

Christopher believes that his fourth grade spelling folder, his last two hundred candy bar wrappers and his wet bathing suit create a force field around his bed that will keep the dark forces away. I can't think of any other explanation for some of the things I am finding as I strip his room down to the carpet and paint.

Philip can't part with a three foot high plastic penguin that blew onto our lawn during a snowstorm. It wears a Darth Vadar Halloween mask. Above that is a large, plastic hand puppet of Godzilla's head that Philip has given lip rings to and a few other piercings. Let's just say it's not a room Martha Stewart wants to die in.

I go back and forth between the mess of laundry baskets, bookshelves and paint cans and the mess of my WIP. In both revisions, I keep adding and deleting as I go along. The one wonderful aspect of revising a manuscript instead of a room is there is no one saying, "Mom, are you KIDDING? Why are you putting THAT into the donate pile? It's not like it has an odor..." I can sort of do what I want with the story which, at this point of the summer, is starting to look better and better.

After a few days of revising the kids' rooms, I've changed my mind that the rooms would be easier to tackle. If you had a choice, which would you prefer to strip down and redo - a room or a manuscript?

Of Bums and Blogs

2010-07-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Tiffany J., who created a website for Light Beneath Ferns. She's a really talented, artistic teen who has much more patience and timeliness than I do - not to mention technical ability. More on Tiffany when she gets her own website up and going (sorry T.J.J. -just a slight push there)

And here's another kitten picture I really like. We should probably stop calling them "the kittens" at this point, since they just turned a year, but they may be stuck with that name in the way BabyCat is now two or three years old and still BabyCat. (She was feral so the shelter couldn't be exactly sure of her age)

I have been a total blog bum, sort of like the kitten picture, and a bum in many other ways for the past couple of weeks. I went down to Long Island for a few days and left Dad in charge of the kids. I left food in the fridge, the kind made with simmering and vegetables and seasonings, but they ordered pizza both nights.

The rest of the time I've been cleaning out a scarily crowded basement, working in the herb garden and figuring out what I want to write/work on next. I haven't been around the Internet at all, but I'm sort of back now in the way anyone can be back on a computer during nice weather.

I have to thank Jemi for the The Versatile Blogger Award which she awarded me back in...maybe June? It's been awhile. In any event, the rules are:

1. Thank the folks and link them
2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Pass along to 15 bloggers
4. Comment on their blogs to tell them of the award

But since it's summer, and half of the bloggers I read regularly are on a temporary hiatus, if you read this blog, consider yourself nominated. That's the great thing about blogs; you can bend the rules into circles. Ok, so seven things about myself:

1. I almost never watch t.v. It makes me a total misfit (that's right, just that, and nothing else) I don't know anything about those sexual selection shows or any of the plots of the medical dramas. It just bores me.

2. When I do watch tv, the kids run from the room because I like to watch weirdomentraries like: The Boy With Three Ears or The Woman With the Ninety Pound Tumor. It's kind of a weapon: "Ew, Mom's watching TV!!!! It's another of those medical nightmares!"

3. I could be a bum. Very easily. I have no work ethic. Maybe that's why I like cats so much. Their occupation is preening between naps. That sounds pretty much ok to me. And a little bit, it describes a fair amount of my adolescence.

4. Speaking of cats, I get really scared when I think about the kids leaving and look around at the amount of books and cats I already have in my middle age. My fear is turning into one of those grotesques in Charles Dickens who lives with too much dust, too many memories and way, way too many cats. I mean, I'm sort of there now...

5. I can't stand writers who take themselves oh so seriously. You know, the kind who meet you and give you an autographed bookmark five seconds after saying their names and launch into a long explanation of their latest plot struggles. They seem so angsty and pained by writing it makes me wonder why they do it at all.

6. When I can't sleep, I look at real estate on the Internet. Not local real estate or anything I could buy. I go on tons of virtual tours. Last night, I was all over Rhode Island.

7. When I write, I have at least two full time stories going. I work on one or the other depending on my mood and my latest ideas. Other writers tell me this is a very, very strange way of getting anything done. So I never tell them that I often choose between three simultaneous stories. There have to be others who write like this.

And that's it, for now. If you've read this, you have my nomination to do one of these. Since mostly writerly types stop by here, I can vouch for their versatility.

Post Graduation

2010-07-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

That's Coco, one of the kittens Emma got last year. She's a lot bigger now, but I still think she is one of the world's cutest cat sleepers. Maybe her posture is a metaphor for the end of the school year. Kids seem so exhausted by the end of June.

Christopher didn't get much of a chance to relax. He graduated and at eight o'clock the morning after his graduation, he began a college summer program. Remember I'm the mom who always told the kids they could sleep over OUR house; I never really let them sleep over or go to camp or do any of that normal stuff. So I just paid the price when I dropped him off.

He made me swear not to cry or embarrass him in any way in front of his new roommates, so I cried before and on the ride and in the parking lot. Then I was cool. Really cool. We organized his room and took a walk around campus and went to the orientation barbeque. Still cool. So what if it felt like someone was ripping my lungs out? I acted like Christopher was going for one of the sleepovers finally at someone else's house.

It was almost time to leave and the counselor suggested I show him the laundry room. I was explaining how to work the machines when he looked at me, then at his I Touch. He had been looking at that device all through the orientation and all through my advice lectures and all through the long, boring introductions to things like the bursar representative and the tutoring center hours. I finally said,

"Christopher, you have to pay attention. I'm not driving down here just so you can do wash."

He looked back at his I Touch and said, "I was just thinking how great it would be to have a Mom app on my phone." Okay, so corny. But it did me in. I got to that line, then I started crying. Fast forward: he's doing fine, and he brought home a huge load of dirty laundry. I have him until tomorrow, but I'll be cool when I drop him off this time, Mom apps and all.

And in other good news, one of Philip's friends is in the process of making a website for Light Beneath Ferns. I haven't seen it yet, but I will later on tonight and I'll post a link to it here. They may not want to learn how to do their own laundry, but teenagers come in handy in a lot of other ways.

It's a little harder to get to the computer with everyone home, so I'm a little more behind than usual, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Fourth!

Nothing

2010-06-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a whole lot of nothing for the past few days, and I don't even feel guilty about it. Well, maybe not nothing.

I've been cleaning up the house and baking and planning for Christopher's graduation party, potting plants and planting squash and tomatoes, and building a fire pit in the back yard. So I have been doing stuff, but not the usual, frantic grading of papers and running around that I normally do. I have to say it's wonderful. I finally got to the library, the dentist, and the post office, and I might even have figured out the opening of the novel that has been daunting me for almost a year now. This is the same one that I wrote the opening two pages 17 times (an actual, counted number) I'm pretty sure I'm sticking to this opening. And I wrote notes on an MG I'm halfway through.

I like vacancy. Even though, by many people standards, this is a nut house with the half dozen animals, the kids and their friends, graduation, packing for the college summer program, and all the rest, there is nothing I actually HAVE to do for the next few days. I guess nothing for me is deciding when I do tasks and not feeling that ever present clock.

I also think down time is essential for writing. I manage to think about writing for short times during the school year, but usually when I'm driving to work, or buying broccoli at the green grocer. It sort of goes like this:

Character is...why is she so...what's that word? The kids would say emo, but she wouldn't. Maybe I could sneak that organic cabbage into the soup - would Philip detect it? Oh no, there's that PTA woman and she's coming toward me. Thank God, she turned. Did she see me? That character needs a name. Something with no snootiness, no Ashleys or Courtneys. Did Emma hand in that permission slip? Maybe an old fashioned name. Oh great, here comes the PTA mom headed right toward me and I think she just recognized me. Laura? Except I think of the Glass Menagerie with that name...bok choy? that's not as pronounced a taste as cabbage....

Once his party is over on Friday, and he's safely at the college summer program that begins on Saturday, I'll have even more nothing. At least for about three weeks or so. Then things start to pick up again around here.

Probably the best thing that's come out of the past few days is that I realized how much I like writing, and how I would be perfectly content to spend all of my time with my hair in a messy pony tail,working on novels. I used to think I needed to go out, to connect with other people, to have a job that forced me to find the mascara tube and shave my legs. Now, I'm thinking more along the Emily Dickinson framework of having a room and some ideas.

Of course the danger of Dickinson's way is that I would wind up spending too much time talking to the cats and probably develop some vague form of agoraphobia about going to the grocery store.

But I think that's okay. I'd rather suffer a little agoraphobia than not have my novel completed. I'm looking at the next few weeks as kind of a rough draft for how I want to shape my life, and I think the first thing I am going to do is make some cuts in a few areas I thought were essential. This time has taught me that what's essential is having time to do "nothing" ---

New Seasons

2010-06-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

The second prom is now over and done with and Christopher and I discovered a new species here in South Jersey. It's possible that this species inhabits more high schools, but since his first prom was just attended by us saying goodbye, it was a relatively calm process. No new species.

The second prom introduced us to the group goodbye, and the new species of person: a prom mom. The first picture here is not actually one of those moms, and yes, it's exaggerated, but the overall look, the general impression of that overly accessorized personality is pretty much representative of the prom mom. Maybe shows like Jerseylicious and The Jersey Shore have made this species more normalized so they came out, especially at an occasion like the group goodbye at the senior prom. Since this was not his high school, I didn't know anyone, but after a few minutes, I realized that I had seen them briefly on those idle, rich housewife shows.

They loved the limo: it was one of those superstretch ones that could house a small village. When it drove up and swallowed the kids, it seemed really apropos. I waved to Christopher. He was sitting there in tux number two with his eyes very, very wide. Of course, it could have been optical distress from the glare of the many sequins and sparkles on the dresses which looked something like this:

Tiaras are really, really big in these parts. So are gloves and boas. Wow.

Anyway, once the proms are over and I'm on line buying graduation decorations, it can mean only one thing: summer is nearly here! And that means plans. Tomorrow is my last day of work for six weeks. Now, a friend of mine pointed out that taking care of a house, keeping track of and feeding three kids and half a dozen animals and finishing two novels is not exactly "off" - but in my world, no lesson plans and no students is off. I usually ask my students to have three writing goals a semester, so here are my three summer goals:

1. to finish YA book and MG book (in other words, butt in chair time)

2. to have a yard people can walk through without checking themselves for ticks

3. it's possible that, after nearly four years of living here, I actually might buy curtains. Well, I HAVE bought curtains, ones that looked like they would fit. You really do have to measure first. So it's possible that we will have more than KMart blinds on our windows.

You can bet those prom moms had some pretty amazing curtains.

So what are your goals for the summer?

Prom Personalities

2010-06-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

We survived the prom, and I purposely chose the collective pronoun because not having gone to my own prom, I had no idea how many details went into those few hours of fun. I began having wedding preparation flashbacks.
But here he is, minutes before the limo arrived. Doesn't he look de-lighted at his mom taking his picture?

He's slightly happier here. At least he looked up from his texting (if you look closely, you can see his phone in his hand) at his little sister who was taking his picture.

Much happier here - picture taking is almost over at this point and very, very soon, he will make his escape.

After they left, Emma informed me that she wanted a pink limo and went into incredible detail about her future dress, hairstyle and shoes. Oh, the shoes -- orchids (real ones) appliqued on satin.

Philip, on the other hand, began looking at the credit card receipts. He informed me that for less than the cost of the prom, he could go to a water park, order pepperoni pizza every night for ten nights, get a bunch of songs on I Tunes and buy some new sneakers. "It's like you have to spend time with the people from school and pay for it."

I told him that even though the prom was being held in a hotel near Atlantic City, the teachers from school were chaperoning.

"There are teachers there? What? Chaperoning? Are you kidding me? Why would anyone ever spend all that money to go be with them. I just want the cash instead of the prom. The teachers probably don't even pay to go."

To say Philip and Christopher are different kids is to say there is water in the ocean. But the first prom is over.

What I didn't tell Philip is that Christopher is going to hers on Saturday. Yup, two proms in eight days. It's like arranging one last, giant play date.

Interrupted Interruptions

2010-05-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

That is the Celtic symbol for chaos. It will all make sense to you in the end. Hopefully, that second sentence is true for most things.

In college, one of my professors told us how J R R Tolkien had several children, and he locked himself in a room and wrote for up to twenty hours at a time.

I was about nineteen at the time, and I remember imagining some kind of Mary Poppins in the background sailing paper boats with them on the banks of the Thames and feeding them porridge. I always imagined British kids sitting at the table eating grayish oatmealy things. It was probably from watching Oliver Twist one too many times. They were constantly eating gray, gloppy stuff out of bowls. I remember being absolutely fixated for a time on the word offal which I could not really believe anyone had or would ever consume.

I figured if I was going to have kids (and I was leaning toward the absolutely never side of that question back then), I would put them outside and go about my novel business. You can tell I didn't babysit much.

I am kind of interrupting myself here on purpose. Blogs are like little snapshots of what is going on with folks and I have been leading a life of non finishing. Here are some things I have learned in the past week or so:

1. When you sit down to work on your new middle grade, you can't believe you have an hour to work. It's a weekend morning. You actually lock the indignant cats out of the room so they can't walk across the keyboard. Five minutes into your manuscript, you hear an insistent "Moooommmmm" and you know, instantly, what is wrong.

2. Strep throat can transform itself into acute pharyngitis. This is when a kid's throat begins to close and fun activities like swallowing and breathing become difficult. You don't know this until you drive up to the ER and your kid is seen.

3. It's a very bad sign when the triage nurse in the ER says, "Aren't you Anne? I remember you..." You shouldn't know the employees of the local ER unless you work there.

4. A steroid shot in the butt can open the throat until the antibiotics take effect.

5. The next time you sit down, it is late on Thursday afternoon, after working most of the day on the non-writing job. The kids are, miraculously, quiet. You get almost a full paragraph written when the door opens, "Mom, I need a white dress shirt for the concert."

"Hmmm, when's the concert?"

"At six."

It is currently 5:10.

A white dress shirt is found in the back of a closet. Emma and I wash the cuffs and neck and use a blow dryer to dry it. You arrive one minute of six. You look up on stage and realize your dashing young man never put on the black dress shoes, but is up there in his dress clothes - and a very well worn pair of Nike sneakers. You decide this is fine because it's an arty, Andy Warhol kind of look.

6. Emma keeps introducing your Malaysian house guest to American music. Because she's 11, this spring's musical selection is Lady Gaga:

I wan you ugly/I wan you dizeese/I wan you ever ting/long as it free...

Eventually, I am going back to that middle grade. It's still waiting for me and it won't change unless I decide it will.

I wish the same were true for the kids.

Those Voices in Your Head

2010-05-24T07:33:00.001-07:00

One of the main reasons teens dislike certain authors is, according to my entirely random survey, "They never sound like anyone I know." I think it's really difficult to get down authentic teenspeak; in fact, I think it's really difficult to get down any human dialogue that sounds authentic. But dialogue makes or breaks a story: if the writer lacks a good ear, it becomes dreary reading.

To some degree, you have to prune dialogue. I have this weird knack of remembering fairly long passages of conversation (and then forgetting to pick up ketchup two shopping trips in a row). Here is an actual dialogue that took place in my house on a Sunday morning:

Emma: "Mom, did you know that the juice of a dandelion root will remove moles?"

Mom: "How do you know that? And why would you want to?"

Emma: "I looked it up. It's right on Google."

Mom: "I'm beginning to think that you have too much free time. And you don't have moles."

Dad: "We have moles? Where? In the garden?"

Emma: "But I could get moles. You get moles when you get old. I never want moles."

Dad: "I haven't seen any moles and I was outside clearing brush."

Christopher: "Who ate the rest of that pizza?"

Emma: "You did. Duh."

Christopher: "I thought there was a piece left."

Emma: "You have to boil the dandelion root."

Mom: "Do you drink it or put it right on the moles?"

Dad: "Is that what moles eat? Dandelions?"

Christopher: "Are there any pizza rolls in the freezer?"

Dad: "You know moles are also spies..."

And so it went.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that a good story was "life, with the dull parts taken out."

I think the same applies to dialogue, maybe even more so.

Right now, I have changed the dialogue on a new YA no less than 17 times. I haven't written more than three pages in any one "voice", but none of them make me go, "Yeah, that's what she sounds like." I jot down different opening sentences that I think will fit this girl, but I think I'm having so much trouble because she's not really present in my mind. I'm going to put this idea away for a time, and wait for it to happen.

My guess is that writing good dialogue, dialogue that advances the plot and fleshes out the characters, rises from listening to those voices in your head of characters that don't exist - at least not yet.

I'm wondering how many centuries ago they would have burned you at the stake for admitting that.

Guest Post

2010-05-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

I am blog hopping for the weekend.

I did a guest post over on Donna's blog at Bites. It's a great blog for YA writers with lots of book reviews and contests - hopefully you can stop over there and join the discussion on writing.

Breathless and A New Interview

2010-05-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

I have been swamped these last two weeks or so, more swamped than I ever want to be again.

Ever.

We had some family illness, a good friend in a car accident, the end of the college semester with term papers and final exams, college entrance forms, prom preparations and a few other incredibly time-consuming situations that all added up to some of these behaviors:

1. Buying underwear at WalMart on my way home from the college so I could put off laundry one more day to grade papers.

2. Not one, not two, but three family sized packages of Lean Pockets and two giant bags of pre made salad as dinner two nights in a row.

3. I can now name all the items on the McDonald's value menu.

4. Ditto Walmart and sock buying.

5. Only using the computer to post grades and/or correspond with students.

I've been remiss in keeping a blog and in visiting other ones, but I'm back now, and hopefully with the end of the college semester, I will be stalking all my favorite blogs again.

Foreword magazine, which did a really nice review of Light Beneath Ferns, just posted this interview.

I've subscribed to them, and not just because they wrote a nice review of my book; they do a great job of reviewing a lot of independently published books.

I'll be back sooner than last time. Hope you enjoy the interview!

All Light Beneath Ferns Stuff

2010-04-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

When I wrote Light Beneath Ferns, I didn't really think in terms of genre. I just wrote a story about a girl who was a loner and wanted to stay that way because she was going to move in a new direction. A strange direction, but a new one. When it came out, I got emails from people telling me it wasn't romantic enough for a paranormal romance. Or it wasn't scary enough. Most of these people were within ten years of my age, which puts them way, way out of the age range for this novel which is about 14.

But of course some folks got it. I got emails from young teens who read parts of this at sleepovers and were creeped out. That was pretty much the idea. Then there were a few adults who loved it and wrote to me. One of these adults is Donna, who wrote probably my favorite review so far of this story.

Now, onto teens. As you know, they infest my house, leave shoes everywhere, carefully place empty milk cartons in the fridge and hog the computers. They are forgiven however as they took pity on me as I tried to make a simple book trailer.
Listening to me complain, they came over to the computer and put together this book trailer which I think is amazing. It's not a polished, marching band kind of trailer, but what's cool about it is that it is made by teens-

I have to especially thank Tiffany J. for her patience - not with the trailer, but with me and my technical blankness. She is responsible for the effects, and essentially the trailer as I had given up, Emma picked out the music which I think is perfect, Philip did a cameo, and Christopher explained to me that not everyone is meant to be technically competent. At least Christopher was patient enough to get me started. I think they did a great job! If you want to see more book trailers, you can watch and vote on your fav here.

Girl Bullying

2010-04-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

One thing I remember from the fifth and sixth grades was my closet. I kept all my "old" stuffed animals in the back, along with my Barbies and crayons. That way, if anyone stopped by, they would only see my perfume and lip glosses - all the stuff that everyone in my middle school owned. But I still locked the door and dragged out the crayons and Barbies when the coast was clear.

I distinctly remember why: I did not want to become Carol. Carol was the girl who openly talked about breast development, brought her ballerina sweatshirt on the field trip, and refused to wear a bra even on Tuesday, assembly day, when we had to wear white blouses. That meant we could easily inventory the girls who wore bras and those who didn't because the straps were visible.

Tween girl world is a treacherous place, with so many rules to follow that it seemed like a new world. Well, it was a new world, and one that I navigated only when I had to. I was glad we lived right by the beach, away from the housing developments where all my "friends" lived. I could still read on Saturdays, walk on the beach and revisit Barbie and her stewardess suit. I didn't have to worry about bras or pretending to like boys.

Carol was bullied. But not in the way boys were bullied: they punched each other in the nose, they shoved and hit. They were sent to the dean and suspended.

We were much more covert. We did something called relational bullying, or social bullying. We isolated Carol. She didn't attend sleepovers or get notes passed to her or go to the mall. When we had to work in groups, we moved our chairs tightly because no one wanted the teacher to say, "Let's see who has room for Carol." No one had room for Carol. No one spoke to her. Eventually, the teacher had her work with boys because we didn't pass the paper to her. I'm not sure how she survived sixth grade.

There is a tremendous amount of attention paid to bullying these days. PTA's are giving workshops on bullying, Dr. Phil is talking about it, and kids are dying, literally, as a result of bullying. There is the Internet now, and myspace which has replaced our passing of notes and "slam books" - stapled together looseleaf in which we wrote anonymous comments about each other. I never wrote in one. I used to move my pen across the top of the page and close it (while everyone watched) Then I passed it on to the next girl. I was terrified of that book, way too terrified to ever actually write in it.

I'm not sure if this type of girl bullying is recognized. It's not as obvious or direct as posting pictures or writing comments in cyberspace. The girl behind most of the bullying of Carol was popular and bright, a highly unlikely suspect. Researchers say that is the way it usually is. The social bullying increases that girl's social status while robbing the victim of any social status.

I used to wonder if the teachers knew what was going on; they seemed oblivious. Placing Carol with the boy group was pretty much the social death knell for Carol.

The problem with this kind of bullying is its subtle nature. It's might be difficult for adults to detect, but it's widespread: most women I talk to either remember or were the class Carol.

I've read about Carols in YA, but these protagonists were isolated in more of a Carrie situation: one of their parents was really, really odd or they did something highly unusual that weirded their classmates out. I don't see much attention being paid to this less visible kind of bullying, and I wonder if that's because you need to be in it, or have gone through it, to recognize it.

Last week, Emma cleaned her closet out (my kids clean their rooms when they are not under direct threat as often as Haley's Comet blazes past) because "Sandy" had worn one of the hoodies that Emma has. She had to go through all her clothes to make sure nothing she had was like "Sandy's" because, you know...she explained. I nodded. Sandy is the class Carol. I asked her what the teachers did to help Sandy. Emma looked at me, "Help her? They don't even know."

So little has changed.

Family Vacations

2010-04-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

We took a family vacation over Easter break, and family vacations are important because it gives us an opportunity to argue as a family and not in smaller groups of two or three.

And I love my kids' sense of roughing it: you had to walk outside the door of the hotel room to access the microwave. They had a suite with a fridge for their drinks and ice cream, but that microwave...

Emma informed me that there are hotels that leave a chocolate on your pillow after they make your bed. At our hotel, housekeeping actually forgot to make up the room. Poor Emma.

Here are some pix from our trip, beginning with the patron saint of Philly:

That's actually at the entrance of the Franklin Institute (not far from the Franklin Parkway, and that's over the Franklin Bridge -- you start getting the idea as soon as you drive in)I liked this one, also from the Franklin Institute:

and an early aviation engine in a room that Christopher really enjoyed:

The city skyline of Philly looks like anywhere else to me:

But I think my fav is this one of Philip (yes, who else?) on the sky bike, an actual bike you can ride up near the ceiling of the Franklin Institute. He may be over six feet and 16 now, but he's still a kid:

We ended up at the Camden waterfront, at Emma's fav place in the world: an aquarium. She took a picture of this lovely pair:

I think they learn a lot more than they realize on these trips.

At one point, after walking most of the day and using the hotel pool (it was indoor and heated, just wonderful), my kids were, for once, as tired as I was at the end of the day. While the other families were playing friendly games of Scrabble and Boggle, we were lying (all five of us) on the king size bed arguing about points made in a documentary on the Shroud of Turin. Things got quiet until one of the narrators announced that the Resurrection was "the greatest paranormal event of all time" - that was an interesting argument.

Everyone is kind of staying to themselves after getting back. Pretty soon, we will have recovered from all that togetherness.

Happy Birthday, Philip!

2010-04-03T07:29:00.001-07:00

Remember turning 16? Philip did on March 19, but we only had a small family party for him on that day. We celebrated last weekend; it's amazing how different he looks now than he did even last year.

No more little boy.

I remember people coming up to me around Christmas time (my bd is in February) and saying, "Amazing that you are going to be 16 on your next bd. It's unreal." I never got what was so special about turning 16 until I had my own kids. It really does seem like a transition. Plus, in NJ you can drive.

Anyway, here are some pictures from what we've been up to, beginning with a family basketball game:

and a quick bd moment with Philip:

I think I changed how I thought the year I turned 16 simply by virtue of telling people, "I'm 16." It sounded so much more official (I actually remember using that word when talking to my girlfriend back then) than 15. 15 just sounds so much younger. Or at least we thought it did.

Did you change when you were 16? What do you remember about it the most?

Spring is A-Sproinging

2010-03-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

Here in South Jersey, we are having middle school weather: very dramatic with sudden, terrible storms, freezing cold mornings and warm, sunny afternoons. I like the transition of seasons more than the actual seasons. Actual seasons are fairly predictable.

This is also the time of year that I make resolutions. I never feel like making resolutions when it's cold and gray outside. All I want to do then is read Russian novels and bake butterscotch brownies. Spring matches a sense of renewal. It's so much more hopeful than sleet.

Today, I'll make two resolutions since more than that overwhelms me.

My first resolution is to make our yard go from:

to:

My second is to actually COMPLETE a novel. I have three novels right now, yup, three, all of which need revision and endings. Annoying, those editors - they won't buy my stuff unless I have an ending.

I keep coming up with 75% of a novel...it's like a disorder. I can't wait to work on this new idea so I skip working on novel A to start novel B. I wonder if having a writing schedule would help. I could clear my throat and announce, "I'm going to write today from two to six." I would march off into my study.

Wait.

I don't have a study. And I never march. Scratch that.

Maybe I should take one of those focus supplements they sell at Rite Aid. They are supposed to help the over 40 folks like me who have the attention span of rabbits. What's weird is I can focus in all other areas of my life; I just want to work on new stuff.

Does this happen to other folks? It's like, "Ohhh, give me that bright and shiny new storyline, and I'll go back to the other one...eventually." Or do you see the current one through to the end?

The Family Vacation and Non Momish Moments

2010-03-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Warmer weather is here, so that means one thing: we are going to embark on a family trip. I always thought I did a pretty good job at planning these, but at a very informal meeting (right after I come back from BJ's with a fresh arsenal of pizza rolls the kids usually herd around the kitchen island), I discovered there may be some problems with my planning.

Before I begin, let me say that it is very difficult to plan lessons for a long time and not try to weave in some kind of theme when planning trips. I have been accused of making family vacations "like something our English teacher would force us to do" and I've been working on that. I keep forgetting that while I think it's amazing fun to go see Edgar Allan Poe's headstone, the kids are like, "Wait, did he write Twilight Zone?"

So for this year's Easter break, we came up with the idea of getting a Philadelphia City Pass that offers tickets to six attractions. Emma wanted the aquarium, I wanted the zoo, Christopher and hubster wanted the National Constitution Center, Philip wanted the Franklin Museum and everyone wanted the double decker bus tour. For the sixth, we had to choose between the National Science Museum and visiting the Eastern Penetentiary which houses Al Capone's cell. Of course, I picked the museum. They just put in a whole new butterfly wing.

"We knew you would," Christopher said, "because you want us to learn on a vacation."

"There are worse things."

"Nope," Emma said, "there aren't. You also make it so we have no time to relax. It's like every two seconds, we have to go somewhere or watch something."

"What did you want to do?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Relax in the hotel. Float in the pool. And you're like, 'Philip, show Emma how to do the back stroke.' "

I do remember saying that.

"So we're going to the penetentiary," Christopher said. "It's supposed to be haunted."

I was worried this would be too dark a destination for Emma. She looked right at me. "I definitely would LOVE to see a ghost. That would be the best vacation ever. A very not Momish vacation."

Momish? I make up words, so I guess I can't say anything.

So after a consensus, we are going to visit Al Capone's cell. Here is a picture of it:

I DID find out that the Eastern Penetentiary was the first place that believed in rehabilitating criminals rather than punishing them. It was based on Quaker beliefs that if you isolated prisoners, they would be able to refect on their crimes in the silence. They even put hoods over their heads when taking them out for meals so they didn't interact with other prisoners.

In fact, I found out a lot of facts about the Eastern Penetentiary, including ghost sightings and lots of legends. I did a little research so they might learn something - a very Momish thing to do.

Prom Season

2010-03-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

It is prom season now, even though the proms aren’t until June. All the signs are here along with the return of the robin. The phone is ringing with boys planning who to ask, how to ask, and Christopher’s question to me this morning, “What’s the name of the wrist thingy I have to buy the girl? The flower thing?” Tickets are being bought. Texting is nearly constant.

I never knew boys suffred prom agonies. I remember going shopping with some of my friends and tears in the dressing room. I also remember, in the days when phones were still actually connected to walls, taking turns "listening" to make sure when HE called, someone would answer. We had a schedule because I don't think any of us ever considered the idea that HE might call back...who says teens live in the moment?

I didn’t go to my own prom. I was way, way too cool for Beatles music and dorky boys who couldn’t dance. I think the real reason was I lacked any kind of knowledge about proms. One boy asked me, and I was shocked: not that he asked me, but at the thought that someone as obviously cool and nonconformist as me would go to something so uncool and conventional. (Maybe that was not how the rest of the high school saw me, as about 144 of my friends also used the same self-describing adjectives - we conformed to our non conformity)

I was surprised at how nervous he was. He bought me a hot dog on the lunch line. Then he blurted, "Are you going to the senior prom because you can go with me." Who could resist that invitation? We started talking, and he told me that his mom told him he had to ask at least one girl. I think he knew that I would decline both the hot dog and the invitation.

I think my real fear was more along these lines:

and of course:

I am trying to think of YA novels that feature "the prom", and I can't.I'm not counting Carrie as that was too icky. I mean normal prom moments -
it's such a rite of passage, yet it's another area that is oddly absent from YA lit. Are proms "bigger" now than they were when the YA writers were growing up? Or is it that the female authors are terrified that those dresses (and probably their hair do's) will be published somewhere on the Internet? For that reason alone, I am glad that I will get my prom ya ya's vicariously.

Liar, Liar Reveal

2010-03-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

It's time to reveal the truth and how well I fooled you guys - and I don't think I fooled you all that well, except there is some tiny truth to each of these statements. Really tiny in some, and in others, sort of true. But there still is only one true statement.

Here goes:

1. I am writing a novel involving a German shepherd, a teenager, a compass, an enchanted map, and a hidden, mystical land. I am about halfway done and not one, but two agents, are interested in repping it.

Let's see: I have a German shepherd and a couple of teenagers, but no agent or agents.

2. I only have one kidney. I lost the other to gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with my last baby.

I was on insulin during my pregnancies. After Philip was born, I mentioned to a doc that I thought my next baby would be a girl. His response was, "You better be happy with what you have unless you want to lose a kidney."

I changed docs, had Emma and still have both my kidneys.

3. I once told a NYC agent that I didn't want to be represented because I was never going to write novels. At the time he contacted me, I had just begun to write short stories, I had three kids under the age of six, and I couldn't imagine how he could "see" that I was going to become a novelist on the basis of a 1500 word short story. I explained how I could write a page or two a week. I thought he was nuts and stopped returning his phone calls.

This is sadly, 100% true. I did this -- I really did think he was nuts. Later, when I found out who he was, I felt like the biggest dork on the planet. How could I not know? Then again, who knew from agents? At that time, I didn't even know anyone else who wrote.

4. At the age of 15, I rowed almost completely across New York Harbor alongide a ferry boat. I turned around when I saw a Harbor Patrol boat.

This is sorta true. I attempted this, thinking I was the daughter of Poseidon and nothing could happen to me. Ok, so maybe I didn't think I was the daughter of Poseion: I thought more that I was Poseidon. I can say this: the New York City Harbor Patrol knew who I was that summer because I really, really wanted to get across. I got about 80% to Manhattan once. They were on the ball before the age of terrorism.

(And I am very glad my own kids don't read blogs...)

5. One of my best friends is Sam, a transsexual who channels Anna Nicole.

I met a "man" on the Atlantic City boardwalk who does this, but we had one brief, sparkling conversation and I never saw him again. If you are ever stuck for character ideas, I recommend a walk there around six or seven on a hot evening.

6. My oldest son is joining the Navy in July, two weeks after high school graduation.

I have a huge level of respect for people in the military, but a flat screen for his room and a few other incentives to at least try college first have worked so far. I think this is my current, primal fear rather than a true statement (realize that I'm the mom who still asks that his phone stay on while he walks the dog -- I know, I know)

So some truth to some of these, and unfortunately a lotta truth to #3. Then again, I think you have to be as ready for an agent and all that goes with publishing a novel in the same way you have to be ready for having kids. Or maybe I'm just hoping and that's not entirely true...

Awards, Awards

2010-03-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

Since Sunday is Oscar day, I thought this would be a good time to pay attention to my blog awards. The Silver Lining Award is from Lisa over at Why A? So many thanks to Lisa.

I like the idea of a silver lining, especially since I'm thinking spring these days despite the record breaking snow in South Jersey.

And here's another award:

It's the Creative Liar Award by Bish. You are supposed to tell six outrageous lies (aren't most lies outrageous?) and one truth, put the award on your blog, thank and link to the person. So thanks to Bish, and here goes.

1. I am writing a novel involving a German shepherd, a teenager, a compass, an enchanted map, and a hidden, mystical land. I am about halfway done and not one, but two agents, are interested in repping it.

2. I only have one kidney. I lost the other to gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with my last baby.

3. I once told a NYC agent that I didn't want to be represented because I was never going to write novels. At the time he contacted me, I had just begun to write short stories, I had three kids under the age of six, and I couldn't imagine how he could "see" that I was going to become a novelist on the basis of a 1500 word short story. I explained how I could write a page or two a week. I thought he was nuts and stopped returning his phone calls.

4. At the age of 15, I rowed almost completely across New York Harbor alongide a ferry boat. I turned around when I saw a Harbor Patrol boat.

5. One of my best friends is Sam, is a transsexual who channels Anna Nicole.

6. My oldest son is joining the Navy in July, two weeks after high school graduation.

Can you spot the one true statement?

Now, onto the nominees. For both awards, I am going to nominate Mary, KC, Katie and Sarah Frances at PlotThis, Marcia and Shelley. They can play if they want; no pressure if they don't.

Let's see who can guess the truth...

YA and YA Reviews

2010-02-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

This is Mazy. She has nothing to do with this post, but she's the only one here right now, so I thought I'd honor her. She likes to watch me type because she believes that if I type enough, my computer will eventually produce a Snausage.

This is the part about YA -

When I first realized that Shape of Water was no longer a short story and was becoming a novel, I thought, "Ok, this is sort of an initiation story." At least that's what we used to call books like Catcher in the Rye. A friend of mine, a little older and a reading teacher, called them "Adolescent Literature" and said they always viewed those stories as one cut above watching tv. In other words, books, but not quite literature.

Yesterday, someone asked me what I wrote and I said, "Mostly young adult." Person nodded. "You mean like the Hardy Boys?"

I had to think a minute. This guy was maybe 35. Weren't the Hardy Boys way back?

Sigh.

YA is its own world now, with certain star writers and publishing houses and agents specializing in it. Sometimes I forget that most of the people around me think that writing YA is akin to playing Dungeons and Dragons, kind of a hobby that my family tolerates as long as I regularly make dinner and occasionally contribute to the light bill.

I'm pretty much used to that. I'm really used to the question, "Did you ever think of writing an actual novel?" (meaning for adults) and I even get that people who ask it don't realize how insulting that question is.

But here's what I'm wondering about - YA reviews. I just read one a woman wrote about a YA novel she finished (not one of mine - and I try never to mention titles). She said the teen voice seemed too mature for her age. I met this reviewer once, and I know she is about my age, has no kids and doesn't work with kids. Hmmm...the protagonist was 16 and I also read that book and teen seemed spot on as far as maturity goes - or at least as far as girl maturity goes. It was a good book. She didn't like it because of the maturity issue.

So maybe the actual readers of YA should write reviews then. There are lots of 14 and 15 year old reviewers. They have shiny, pimped out blogs and lots of stars and exclamation points to prove their enthusiasm. They tend to like the same book over and over (vampires or angsty books) and not like other types (say historical fiction or crime) and they get all their friends to agree with them. I think it's great that 15 year olds have blogs and are reading books, but I'm not sure if 15 is a vast enough age to form valid literary opinions on books that don't speak directly to their lives. And that's understandable.

So it's back to adult reviewers, and that's the problem: do adult reviewers respond to the writing or to the way teens are portrayed? I've never read a lot of reviews, but I have lately mostly because I've been asked to review books. I realized that I respond mostly to writing, and not the story as much, so I'm not going to review books. I think editors would probably be the best reviewers since they respond to story and writing; even better, YA editors should review YA books, MG editors, MG books, etc.

And here's my final YA question. If you don't have kids, or work with kids, or write YA, why do folks read and review it? It reminds me of the middle aged couples who walked around Disney World grumbling about the kids, how they were slow climbing onto the train seats or started crying when the lights went out on a ride. Well, Disney World really isn't for the childless middle-aged couple. There are lots of places for them, but riding the teacups isn't one of them.

I feel more and more like that about YA.

Last night, a high school student emailed me and said she read in a review, "...how you spent your childhood next to a graveyard and wrote a novel about your memories there..." I don't know who wrote that particular review, but it's not true. I lived near a graveyard in my adult life, when the kids were small. I guess the Internet has done away with fact checking.

Then again, maybe I've just had too much coffee. I don't really go by reviews. I read blurbs, and if I like the sound of it, I buy it or borrow it. I tend to go by covers, too, shallow as that is. And sometimes, weirdly enough, if I read a terrible review, I want to read it just to see if it's all that bad. But I still don't know who should review YA - it just seems everyone has an opinion on the genre.

Valentines Day and A Conspicuous Absence of Vampires

2010-02-17T07:36:00.000-08:00

The kids are finally back in school for more than one day consecutively, the power is back on, and I just finished reading the first batch of email from readers of Light Beneath Ferns.

Valentines Day here was like something I would edit out of a YA I was writing. Since we were still snowed in pretty much (we could go on the roads, but it was scary cold and really icy), I made cupcakes and got a bunch of decorating stuff for Emma. Or so I thought.

Somehow we ended up on Valentines night with teenagers and a very, very impromptu Valentines Day party. I never thought teens would want to stay in the kitchen with me and Emma, but they proved me wrong. Not only did they make more cupcakes, they mixed icing and used all the sprinkles and hearts. They actually stayed in there and talked to me. I love what they did with the icing:

Of course, Philip had on his hat (you know how little kids like certain things, like belts or bracelets? Philip has always loved hats) Here he is with Emma and friend:

And yesterday I found out I was a paranormal romance writer. I didn't know that. But that's ok, paranormal romance is a perfectly acceptable sub genre. The only thing is, I don't write about vampires. And that seems to be a problem.

It's not that I have anything against vampires, and I'm sure there are good stories out there involving vampires, but I don't write them. In fact, I don't even read them. And if you like them, that's what you like and you should read all kinds of vampire books. Vampires just seem silly to me for the most part.

But somehow, somewhere, LBF got tagged "vampire" and a couple of people bought it and wrote to me complaining that they read the whole novel and there was no vampire. Not one.

They're right; there isn't a vampire in LBF. I'm not sure how books get tagged or who does the tagging, but just in case you are planning on reading it, be prepared for a very pronounced absence of vampires. The kids did talk me into walking in a Halloween parade in a vampire (vampress?) costume, but other than that, I live and write a completely vampire free life.

Maybe it's because I live in the New Jersey Pinelands which happens to be the tic capital of the world. According to the produce clerk at the local Acme, there are more tics here per square mile than any other place in the world. So maybe the whole idea of bloodsucking hits just a little too close to home.

Snow Days and Scientific Inquiry

2010-02-10T13:17:00.001-08:00

The big news here is the weather. I'm trying to type as fast as I can as the Internet keeps dropping and the power is blinking on and off. It's kind of like living in post-war London. This is our backyard:
and the view from the table where we usually eat (sort of a breakfast nook)

Of course, the kittens have never experienced winter, but I like their take on the cold and the snow:

The kids are, of course, home. I walked by Emma's room a few minutes ago and heard this conversation:

Christopher: Why do you want me to light a candle for you?
Emma: To see if gum is flammable or not.
Christopher: What would you possibly do with that information once you found out? That's an entirely useless thing to want to figure out.

I didn't worry too much about Philip because he was on Facebook, and at least he was doing something relatively normal even if it is cyber-socializing. Then he sent me this picture:
What is that? It's the Asian version of a baby I would have if my genes were mated with Cami's - one of our kittens. Apparently, there's a Facebook application that does such a thing.

I keep telling myself that spring is really just around the corner.

Salinger

2010-02-03T07:17:00.000-08:00

I don't believe writers when they say they aren't derivative: every writer had basic influences early on that left impressions on their writing style. I read a real lot when I was younger, and I tended to read European authors like Jane Austen and anything by the Brontes. I also read Frankenstein over and over. I didn't understand everything that I read, but since I wasn't required to read those books, they left a more lasting impression on me than say, Johnny Tremain which was required and achingly dull.

Literature seemed pretty tidy in those books. Emotions were veiled and even Frankenstein didn't scare me. Somewhere in my 'tween mind, I got he was a symbol.

Then I read Catcher in the Rye. It was as if I had been slouching around reading and this book made me sit up. He talked about places I recognized, like the duck pond in Central Park. He talked about having panic attacks. He talked about telling lies. He openly talked about not being happy.

I remember telling my English teacher I was reading Salinger. She snorted, "That book is like one long complaint."

Still, I read it over and over. I think I was about 12 or 13 when I read it. I read it again at about 16 and understood a lot more. I even looked up what a field of rye might look like back when you had to use an Encyclopedia Britannica. It pretty much looks like this:

All kinds of things are being said about Salinger now. I don't think he began YA as a genre as a lot of bloggers and interviewees are saying. I'm not sure if he spoke for a generation as that generation is now approaching 100. Maybe he did at the time.

What he did do was write a really, really good book that spoke to teenagers in a way that made them feel connected to someone else through literature.

Pretty much, that's the whole point.

Happy, Happy, Happy

2010-01-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

Bish has been kind enough to mention me for the Happy Award. This seems like a great thing to do right now considering they are predicting record level cold tonight and into the weekend. I can tell you that a forecast like that does NOT make me happy so this is a wonderful distraction right now. Here's the countdown for the happiometer:

1. Writing - which surprised me when I thought of this since I would have guessed my kids as first. But writing has been with me longer than they have, and it will be with me when I am just someone to visit at Christmas, so that had to come first. I actually get into bad moods when I don't write for a couple of days, and the kids will say to me, "Sheeesh, why don't you go on the computer for a little while and stop being such a psycho mom." I hate when they say that because they are so right.

2. My kids - even though they make me grit my teeth at least once a day, nothing and no one makes me happier than they do. I have always liked being around them and I think I always will.

3. Chocolate - my personal Xanax and a gift from the Aztec gods.

4. Animals - I'll just say it's a very good thing that we all like rescued, highly eccentric animals around here because we have a half dozen (and Emma is lobbying that we have room for one more kitten...)

5. Junk shops - for some reason I haven't fully figured out, I like to prowl junk shops and look at old dishes and furniture. My kids are suspicious of any item that comes home and ask me, "Are those new red glasses in the cabinet glasses from the dead?" I am sensitive to this and usually respond, "Better than being from the undead." I've gotten lots of great picture frames, flowerpots and Halloween costumes from these stores.

6. The Beach - We went to Bermuda for our honeymoon because I couldn't imagine not connecting the happiness of getting married to the beach. I spent most of my time snorkeling and finding out about coral reefs. Luckily, now we live near Long Beach Island which has a great ocean beach. I never feel as at home anywhere as I do at the beach.

7. Reading - kind of an anti-social habit, but with blogs and all, you can share more now than ever. I have to stop rereading books and move on to newer books.
(But seriously, Twilight as opposed to Jane Eyre?)

8. Libraries - Word nerd that I am, I love everything about libraries. It's kind of a combination of junk shop for books and a social area. They're always having sales with titles like "3 books for a dollar" and they host all sorts of talks and films. Plus, they have all the new books, and they are like room service - you just check off what you want to read or watch, and they will get it from another library. They are amazing places.

9. Friends - being around friends is good for the soul. I almost never have time to socialize, but in the small amount that I do socialize, it is always really fun.

10. Cooking/Gardening/Recipes - not the Tuesday night turkey burgers and broccoli, but growing the herbs, making a soup, reading old cookbooks (which I bought at the library sale or the junk shop) that kind of cooking. When I can't sleep, for some bizarre-o reason, I read old cookbooks, the kind that don't mention microwaves or husbands in the kitchen.

And that's about it. Right now, I am going to go get a whole bunch of stuff to cook the cold away. And I'm going to get some writing done. That should make me happy.

Happiometer? Did I say that?

Whoops - forgot to pass this award on. I will pass it on to Jemi and Elizabeth ,Lisa and K.C. if they would like to play along.

New Interview with Lisa

2010-01-22T10:20:00.001-08:00

Lisa Amowitz, an aspiring YA writer and artist, who has been flattering me to the point where I am considering changing my blog title to, Anne Spollen, Literary Diva, has posted an interview about my two novels on her blog, Why A? She asks some great questions -

I'll Be Back

2010-01-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

I should probably get a Twitter account or something instead of using my blog for announcements, but I just don't want to be any more connected than I am. This is a quick blog to explain why I may not have answered or responded to something you sent me.

First, I'll tell you that Boston was really fun. Philly was great, too. I went there the night before the train because it made life easier, and I am all for easier. The kids came, but not to the hotel - I had forgotten what it was like not to have to bring juice and fruit snacks to a hotel room. It was a little weird that no one jumped on the bed or kept begging to order room service. We did get to see a lot of stuff about Ben Franklin, his house and some of the things he did.

And I found out that I really, really like being on a train. I sat in the cafe car by random chance and I got a whole table to myself and with no one around, I was able to write without anybody interrupting. I think I might just go around and buy train tickets and ride to nowhere so I can hang out and write while watching New England go by. (Of course, they also serve beer on Amtrak which I had not realized, and by Providence, there was singing...)

Ben Franklin was in Boston, too. He had a house there also and did wonderful, patriotic things like he had done in Philly. In fact, I crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge to get to my hotel in Philly, and it was on Ben Franklin Boulevard.

But I am really behind -- I have a ton of emails in my mailbox that I haven't gotten to. I will get to them. I had to write a new curriculum when I got back, then there was a full day of work, and I just got home from jury duty about an hour ago. I was selected as a juror, which surprised me because I told them that I don't really watch tv and I read teen fiction in my spare time. I figured they would think I was way to weird to make an informed decision, but no...so I spent most of the day in the suspended animation of a courthouse, but at least the trial is done and I am back.

Tomorrow, Thursday, is another full day of work, so I promise Friday I will be back to write back and come visit your blog.

Gangsta Librarians

2010-01-14T07:51:00.001-08:00

I love train stations. That may seem weird since stations are so much like waiting rooms. It could be that I used to watch movies from the 1940's all the time (I still think that was the best decade for films) and everything important changed at a train station. People were always going off to war in Europe or waving them home from somewhere amazing while standing on train platforms.

Later on, I am taking a train from the Philly Amtrak station (see picture above) and I can't wait to take some pictures of the station. Here's another one:

Of course, my leaving the house has caused major questions from the kids because Mom only leaves to
a) work
or
b) get them food.

When I told them I was going to the ALA Conference in Boston, they wanted to know what our room would look like and if they got a day or maybe two off from school. "I'm not actually sure how much I like history," Emma reminded me, "and that's all like Pilgrim stuff, isn't it?"

They were stunned when I told them I would be back on Saturday night, and I was leaving and returning alone. These are kids who never even had a babysitter (I know, I know)

After the initial shock wore off (indicated by uncharacteristic silence), Philip asked me, "So are you like famous now or something?"

"No, it's just a conference."

He looked at me suspiciously. "You know what happened to Tupac when he became famous, right?"

I had that coming.

For years, it's been, "What? You ate a PORK HOT DOG THERE? Did you know they are associated with childhood leukemia?" "You forgot to wash your hands? WHAT? That's how the PLAGUE spread!"

You get the idea.

"Yes, I know what happened to Tupac. But these people are mostly librarians, people like that. They tend not to be violent."

"Maybe they are," he insisted. "They just cover it up."

"Gangsta librarians? The image just isn't forming, Philip."

They are coming with me all the way to the Amtrak station in Philly. Then I get to spend a day or so with a bunch of people who like books and reading and all that stuff as much as I do, probably even more. I'm betting I get over a hundred texts from my kids - and that will be within an hour of leaving the station.

But it's okay; I finally get to wave from a train - both ways.

Light Beneath Ferns

2010-01-08T09:24:00.001-08:00

Since I've blogged about my dog, I think it's only fair to devote one blog about a new book I have coming out.

Probably the number one question people ask me is, "So what is it like to get a book published?" I think my answer to that has changed. With my first book, I actually felt terrified. I liked anonymity, writing whatever I wanted without anyone knowing anything more about me other than where I had previously published. And it was really, really weird to go from that to having people send me manuscripts to pass along to "the people at Flux" -- I guess everyone knows by now that if you have a published writer's email address, you're just about there...

But you get used to it. And you get used to people asking you to sign the book and telling you what's wrong with the book and how they would have written it and what both you and Andrew Karre (the previous editor at Flux) should have done. But it's definitely a life transition. The readers force the change in your life. There's one Library Thing reader review of The Shape of Water that speaks to how that's done more than I ever could:

This novel helped me let go of some painful and shameful things I had a difficult time with in my own life that I had...I was able to finally speak up to my father about anger that I had never been listened to without him cutting me off mid-sentence and that was the one main thing I was angry about. This novel changed my being able to speak up for myself, by persisting and clarifying what I meant to him. I have never been able to say that before about a book. I really love this book. As a result of reading this book, I dealt with tying up some loose ends in my own life. TERRIFIC!!! HIGHLY RECOMMEND. The entire review is here.

That amazes me. And it reinforces what I've always believed: that books have the power to change lives. (Wonderful, I hear my son's voice saying, "Yeah, Mom, but so do diets." He's not here now, and I don't recall him ever saying that; I just hear that response. He really needs to go away to college...)

Anyway, I'm not talking about my NEW book which I said I would. First off, I love the cover. Everyone does; they tell me how great it is. I always say "THANKS!" even though the lovely folks at Flux did all the work. They figured out what went with the story, scouted for it, put it together, showed it to me, and I get the credit. So I love covers.

And second of all, I've already gotten emails that ask "It's not like your first book, is it?"

Nope. It's different. I think it's easier to read, less dense, and probably for a younger reader. I'm sure people will tell me what I and Brian Farrey (the present editor at Flux) should have done.

Or maybe not. I'm not sure what it's like to have a second book out yet, since it's not really official until February. I do know that if someone asked me now, "So what is it like to publish books?" I would answer: "It's great. It's really, really fun." How else would I ever open my email to read this from a thirteen year old girl: "Your new book is Parnormalish, right?"

Right.

Predictable Blog Day

2009-12-31T11:09:00.000-08:00

I love the idea of renewal. It's one of those collective human urges that we all share which is why we come together once a year and hope we are going to change. The hard part is, of course, admitting what we need to change because then we have to admit that our behavior is not always perfect. I am going to change things here a little.

I am going to publicly confess three imperfect things about me that I like and that I have no intention of ever changing.

Of course I'll have resolutions. But also only three. Three's a good number: it's one of the numbers of magic and it matches the amount of kids I have.

What Is Never Going to Change:

1. I use chocolate for stress relief. Probably way too often. It's kind of like legal Xanax for me. I carry it in my pocketbook, have some at work, in my car and all kinds of imported chocolate stashed in my desk. It makes me happy. It relaxes me. If I were in charge of primitive culture, I would probably make the cocoa bean a minor diety.

Maybe not so minor.

2. I stalk my kids. I sit in the living room when they are talking to their friends and I leaf through Bicycling magazine. I haven't been on a bicycle in about ten years, and I have no interest in gears or sprockets, but my husband reads it, so it's there for the leafing.

The kids view it as an anti-matter shield. They speak very openly, meaning they think the magazine is magical: it protects them from having Mom hear every word. I love listening to them, especially when their voices get low. It's probably wrong on some level, but since it provides vital information, I justify my behavior along the same lines as that government law that allows them to tap into your conversations to protect you from terrorism. I think there's kind of a parallel there.

3. I am streamlining my social obligations. I used to endure visits from and to people I couldn't stand because I thought, for some reason, the world would collapse if I didn't participate. I don't do certain parties and barbeques and holidays any more because I am a)really busy and usually desperate for time and b)past the age of caring whether or not people get miffed.

What will change in 2010?

1. I am going to write more. I have carved out almost four hours a week (I know, it's not a whole lot, but it's more than I've had recently) just to write. No laundry, no kid activities, nothing -- it's during school hours, and I had to really juggle my schedule, but it worked, and I can't wait.

2. I am going to stop applying mascara on the NJ Garden State Parkway while I am going about 75 mph. It's probably better to actually arrive to work than to arrive looking marginally better.

3. I am going to stop having Internet induced ADD. During those four hours, I am not going to go onto sites for twenty minutes just to say, "Wow, I didn't know whales could do that..." then go look up the history of the lighthouse I saw yesterday when I got lost on Long Beach Island.

And that's it. There you have it. They say publicly stating things enforces resolve, but the only image that comes to my mind is Hester from the Scarlet Letter walking around with the A emblazoned on her chest.

Anyway, Happy 2010!

Another Meme

2009-12-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this is one of those meme things, but I like it because it forces you to think about writing. Bish tagged me, and if you are reading this blog, consider yourself tagged. There are a lot of questions, and I would love to see Mary and K.C. answer them, but it's also Christmas, so I won't hold my breath if they don't get to it. Here then are the questions for all literary divas:

What's the last thing you wrote? What's the first thing you wrote that you still have?

The last thing I wrote is the seventeenth opening page of my current novel. (And I am not exaggerating; I actually kept track) I still have my diary from the year I was thirteen. It's scary; I was very, very disturbed.

2) Write poetry?

Not anymore, though I did when I walked around thinking I was Sylvia Plath.

3) Angsty poetry?

There's another kind?

4) Favorite genre of writing?

YA, with a smattering of MG.

5) Most annoying character you've ever created?

My children. I think of them as one force, like a character.

6) Best plot you've ever created?

Hmmm, I think my stuff is character driven. Maybe that's yet to come.

7) Coolest plot twist you've ever created?

In a novel that was "recycled" (self rejected because I grew to hate it) five years ago. An arsonist turns out to be a girl's illegimate half brother.

8) How often do you get writer's block?

Never. I have more ideas than time.

9) Write fan fiction?

I have never heard of fan fiction. Seriously. I don't go on many boards or to writing conferences so maybe someone could define that for me.

10) Do you type or write by hand?

I write things like: she knows where/give key/never needs to see the river/who does not get the ticket in the middle of the night by hand. Then I type it into English, and yeah, I know what it all means.

11) Do you save everything you write?

God no.

12) Do you ever go back to an idea after you've abandoned it?

Nope.

13) What's your favorite thing you've ever written?

My first novel. (This answer is open to change)

14) What's everyone else's favorite story you've written?

It better be my first novel.

15) Ever written romance or angsty teen drama?

Umm, that's like what I DO.

16) What's your favorite setting for your characters?

Nature-y places: woods, beaches, rivers.

17) How many writing projects are you working on right now?

Two: a YA, a sequel for an MG, and a novel for adults. That's three -- but the last two I have like a page of notes for and nothing else, so I'm counting them as one. (I have my own mathematical system, kind of an inverse of Newton's world)

18) Have you ever won an award for your writing?

Wait - publishing isn't an award? I've been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, but they gave them to people like T.C. Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates.

19) What are your five favorite words?

moon, shimmer, sea, abandon, will

20) What character have you created that is most like yourself?

My daughter.

21) Where do you get your ideas for your characters?

They sort of talk to me and appear. In another century, I would either be highly esteemed or burned at the stake.

22) Do you ever write based on your dreams?

I wrote an entire MG novel about five years ago based on a dream. It was dreadful. Dream doesn't translate well, at least for me.

23) Do you favor happy endings?

Nah.

24) Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?

Yes, compulsively so: I'm an English teacher.

25) Does music help you write?

It helps me when I'm out driving and I listen to U-2 or another favorite group, but no, when I'm writing, a car horn is irritating.

26) Quote something you've written.

"Elizah, sometimes it's good to leave the company of the dead." It's my favorite sentence from my second novel. I didn't realize I liked it that much until I read it over again during the proofing stage.

Character Study With YA Comments

2009-12-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

The teenagers who come to our house spend a huge percentage of their time with the cats. That's probably because a) there are five cats to choose from and b) all our cats are crazy.

As you know,I find teen comments very amusing and if you are reading this blog, you probably do, too. (I also swipe their comments freely when I write)I thought I'd put them together to create a YA guide to our cats.

Of course, there are the kittens. Only about six and a half months old, they are the only ones that don't occasionally hide for a nap when the house is filled with teens.
But they are very different; Cami, the one to the right, is "completely emo" -- she nurses on nubby blankets, shatters the fragile peace with the dog by sticking her own nose into Mazy's nostril, and trying to steal food from Jade, the senior cat. She is very, very needy. They call her over by going, "Aww, where's the little emo kitty?"

Her sister, Coco, has been nicknamed Jazz because she's so mellow.

If you remember how BabyCat summered in the wicker basket, she has now found a new spot to hide in which is a little stranger. She jumps to the top of the kitchen cabinets and stares down at us:

She is always paranoid, twitchy and unsettled. The kids call her "Rehab" because she acts like someone who once had an addiction. When I asked to what, they all looked at me with that, "She-doesn't-know-anything-look" and said, "To meth."

Of course.

Then there's Sarah who will cuddle up to you, purr and nap for a few minutes. Without warning, she will hiss and scratch and run off as if you have just poured acid on her. She hisses as she runs. Here is a typical expression of Sarah's:

I think she's bipolar, but the kids call her "D Wing" -- I think every high school has a wing for kids who have broken through the not fitting in category. That's where poor Sarah would be if she were a teen...

Jade, the senior cat, the alpha cat, keeps the other cats in line. Once, when someone forgot to shut the sliding glass door to the deck, we found all five cats outside with Jade up on the railing keeping watch. The dark side of Jade is the reason BabyCat has to sleep in baskets and on top of high kitchen cabinets: Jade has rage issues. She takes most of them out on BabyCat who is half her size. This is Jade:

In fairness, Jade's sister died very young of heart failure. They had been just like the two kittens are now, so everyone gives Jade a lot of room. She's not particularly cuddly or accessible, but she is a favorite of the teens.

What did they nickname Jade?

Kurt Cobain.

Teens and Mood Swings

2009-12-07T09:16:00.000-08:00

Most people who work with teens will complain mightily of mood swings, and what they mean is the mood swings of teens. My take on it is a little bit different; I think they cause mood swings in the adults around them. Or maybe that's just me. I do know I have stable moods when I am away from them. Once I am around them, I am as mercurial as any emo friend of theirs.

This weekend, we had our first bad weather. I discovered an infestation of teens in my living room and they were the kind that eat tubes of yogurt and leave the wrappers behind, take fresh glasses for a second glass of juice and open all three bags of crackers because they have to smell them first to see if they will like them. They are the kind that never go home.

Of course, while I was glowering at them, Mazy came up to me and did one of these:

which means she has to go do what dogs do in the wild. Except it was sleeting and freezing out and when I asked one of those healthy, young teens to take her, they all burrowed deeper into their couch blankets. I pulled out the one teen who was mine.

"Dude Mom," Philip protested, "it's too wet even for the dog."

"Think of something," I told him, "you have to do at least one chore around here if you want to keep doing nothing."

I walked away. Five minutes later, Philip came back with the one girl who drives. They had an idea. We would put Mazy in her van, take the extension leash to the bottom of the street, reel it out and let her poop.

I thought about it. It sounded like a no. The wind howled. Mazy howled. "We'll try it."

Yup, there we were, inside the van, letting the dog leash out like fish line. The kids remembered to bring a flashlight so we could witness the moment of truth. Once they were certain Mazy was done, they started singing, "Celebrate..."

I thought they did really well on that one. I picked up the wet socks, food wrappers and soda cans in a fine mood. That was Saturday.

Last night, Sunday, Christopher woke me up around 3 a.m. "Mom Dude, you know anything about MLA format for research? You'll like it. It's writing. Sort of."

I sat up. "Did you start it?"

Dumb question. And another mood change.

He had been playing Halo all day, and apparently all night. I was saying psychically sensitive things like, "So, have they ever done a study that correlates brain tumors with that headset?" and other things like, "You know, this is the kind of thing Howard Hughes would do if he were still alive. Remember, he's the guy who saved his urine?" Christopher kept putting his hand over the mic and whispering to his friends, "Wait. My MOM is here."

So yes, between 3 and 5 am this morning, I had to "help" research his MLA paper because he was involved in a Halo tournament of some kind. ("Help" means he sleeps while I find sources for research and document them) Around 5, Mazy gave her call of the wild again.

Philip woke up, rushed over to me at the computer and bear hugged me, "Remember when you used to call me Little Big Beluga?"

New mood change. Happy one. He walked the dog. I finished the research. I glowered at Christopher until I was at work, looking through some pictures on my phone. I knew I couldn't stay mad at him; he had taken this one of the kittens:

And I don't think anyone could look at that picture and not feel better.

Of course,they're due home any minute. With grades. I'll see how long that picture sustains me.

Flaky Preparations and Discharge Systems

2009-11-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

One of the weird things about publishing a novel is it thrusts you into a public position even if you resist it. This never happened when I published poetry or parenting essays. Then I was just an anonymous mom who wrote for a little extra diaper money. Every once in a while, I would get a letter (the stamped kind in the mailbox) from someone who liked what I had written: always a mom, always with kids the same ages.

Now I get regular emails about writing or comments on the book, and teenage girls write to me pretty often. I get requests to read and "fix" manuscripts or I am asked to pass them along to my editor or agent. Kids ask me questions to get extra points on their book reports.

I was asked to speak at a luncheon the other day. The median age at that luncheon is around 78 -- I'm going to stand there and talk about an angsty girl who sets fires in the woods and speaks to fish that reside in her head?

The other day I got some books in the mail. At first, I couldn't figure out why anyone would send me books in French. I teach Spanish now and then, but French? Then I looked closer. This was MY book, in translation. (Seeing my own name gave it away...duh)

I forgot they might translate it. I was feeling very international when Emma walked up and looked at the cover.

"You wrote a book about a pink mermaid?" She was very excited.

"No. This is The Shape of Water. Only in French."

"The same book?" (disgusted, disappointed) "I thought you finally wrote something I would like."

So much for feeling international and writerly. This morning, someone found it and sent me the page review in French. I put it into the Google translator and this is what I got:

See availability in branch Flaky preparation nonavailable Summarized more The mother of Magda had always said that the world was filled with strange secrecies and marvellous qu' they only could see. But now qu' it n' was there, the world of Magda found itself bathed d' distresses and of loneliness, even of madness. When an imaginary family of fish quarreling started to torment it, the only discharge system of Magda was to cause splendid but destroying fires in the surroundings of the marshes, close to the house. The form of l' water draws a picture sinisterly lyric and surprising daily newspaper and of l' unreal, in which Magda starts to disentangle the secrecies of its family and to seek a stable place in the world.

I like it; I think it's sinisterly lyrical in its own Gallic way.

Grateful

2009-11-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

Since I am the kind of parent who is up until 2 or 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve, and I wrap birthday presents in the car while my kids are waiting to go inside to the party, I've decided to celebrate Thanksgiving early. I'm never early, but here it is Thanksgiving already on my blog. See? People can change.

So what am I grateful for? I think most of all, I am grateful that my kids are turning out okay. Yes, they slam doors and act like Dracula on a regular basis (dark, brooding, filled with angst), but that's pretty normal I think. Philip told me yesterday that, "You're the kind of mom I'll like again when I'm like 30." But I think the larger stuff matters more.

Over the weekend, we had a birthday party for a teenager whose parents decided she is too old to have a party (she turned 18). We ran around the warehouse store looking for presents since everything else was closed. We came up with flowers, balloons and an enormous pumpkin pie. The girl likes to draw, so we found some art supplies, charcoal pencils and drawing papers. She didn't mind that we wrapped her presents in colored tissue paper and put candles in a giant pumpkin pie. I really liked that the kids worked together to put up crepe paper and get out the birthday tablecloth and some balloons. They were doing all this for someone else -- they couldn't believe parents wouldn't celebrate a birthday.

We had no guests other than ourselves, so we invited the cats, our Malaysian houseguest (who took the house down with Happy Birday - and that's not a typo - things really, really do get lost in translation).

Anyway, there we were, with five cats, Mazy, the German shepherd, the three kids, two parents, a Malaysian houseguest, and a pumpkin pie the size of a pizza with old Barbie candles blazing - and we had a good time. And that brings me to number two: I am grateful that my kids accept weirdness so readily. I mean, they have to, living here, but things don't have to be perfect for them to have a good time.

And I am grateful that they get along so well. This Halloween, Philip wanted to go out as an Eskimo and have Emma attached to him as an igloo - I think that's pretty telling (except once Emma found out what an igloo was, exactly, she protested) But moments like this make me grateful:

and in the rare Christopher sightings:

I am grateful that I have one quieter kid to balance out the other two chatty ones.

And I am grateful that even though I have very little time to write, what I do write seems to get published.

What I like about Thanksgiving is its positive thinking - it's like asking what's GOOD about your life? That's a great question. It makes us forget how dreary November can be.

So tell me -- what are some of the great things about your life?

CatWheels and Writing

2009-11-07T17:04:00.000-08:00

I just finished writing notes on Emily Dickinson for one of my classes. She actually had it very easy: that room in Amherst, a rich daddy, no interruptions. I can't imagine that kind of leisure. Actually, maybe I can. It would be wonderful. She didn't have to work or chase the cats or do anything really. She could spend all day on a single line of poetry if she wanted. Doesn't that sound amazing?

I sat down to write this afternoon. Just a little. Each of the kids had something to do and I had just gotten back from teaching my Saturday morning class, and I thought, Great, I can finally have an hour to work on something. That's when this innocent looking creature:

got together with her equally innocent looking counterpart/sister and invaded Baby Cat's straw fortress while Baby Cat was on watch:

which resulted in flying fur, claws and a wheel of cat spinning across the living room. The other two cats, much older than the kittens, have a feline respect for Baby Cat's spot; the kittens are more like toddlers jacked up on sugar.

After I got Baby Cat back into her spot, and put the kittens into the bathroom to calm down, Emma figured out how to get the Karaoke machine to work. I thought that phase was gone, but then I remembered: it was only gone for the boys. She was still young enough to discover it.

Our Malaysian houseguest is back and he likes to sing. He really, really likes to sing. A World Lit teacher once told me that the Asian culture has an underlying framework of shame; Western culture has an underlying framework of guilt. I thought about that, about shame and all, as he sang the lyrics to Emma's current favorite song, Fun House, by Pink. It sounded like this:

Eet use be fur house
but now it fill with effel cloows

only really, really loud. Over and over. Apparently, his particular area of Malaysia does not function on that framework of shame. The kids could not stop laughing. He then picked up a guitar and added that to the karaoke party. He had to sing that much louder to compensate for the guitar. All this caused our dog, who howls at sirens and other dogs' howling, to howl.

I thought about moving to Amherst. The only problem with moving is I would probably have to take them all with me.

The Illustrated Halloween

2009-11-03T10:31:00.001-08:00

Hope everyone had as much fun on Halloween as we did - Here's A Werewolf Costumed As Teen with Vampire Mom:

Philip as a changeling - from boy to werewolf -

A Glittery Devil:

Werewolf, Glittery Devil and Kitty:

Trend Alert - New YA Motif - Changeling Skateboarding Werewolves -- Hey, it could catch on -- think how silly vegan vampires sounded on the drawing board...

And all is well as BabyCat is still living in her basket and watching it all -

Driving

2009-10-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

My oldest son has just begun driving, and when I tell people this, I think this image forms:

For some reason, I am really relaxed about this, and I am not a relaxed mom. I still carry BandAids and Neosporin, and have since my oldest began crawling. I don't let them "chillax" at a house if I don't know the parents - and sometimes they can't go because I DO know the parenats. I still count their vegetable, fruit and calcium servings. But about driving, I am relaxed. Of course, that's probably because Christopher is a reasonable kid. (Come back when Philip starts and people will be sending me Xanax...)

His DAD grabbed the emergency brake the other day. His father is a wreck about this (pardon the pun). That's probably because his father has no history of driving with Christopher.

I remember when he was about five, we went out to the playground after he finally shook a bad cold. On the way home, he asked to sit in my lap and "drive" - we did this pretty often. Because he had been so sick, when he asked to drive in the seat by himself, I hesitated, but let him - only up our long, flat driveway. He was ecstatic. He was doing a great job. Only I had forgotten to teach him a really, really important aspect of driving. When you sit on mom's lap and steer, you don't get too much about the pedals below. So as he drove up and got close to the garage door, I said, "Brake, Christopher. It's time to brake."

He looked at me with his pre-kindergarten face. "What's that?"

I reached over and pulled the emergency brake literally one second before we would have crashed into the garage door.

I think that was the dumbest move I've made with kids in my life. Or at least with Christopher.

I think I'm relaxed about it because I learned to drive in New York City where stop signs are pauses and speed limits are viewed more as recommendations, not laws. Plus, he's the kind of kid who when I call him while I'm driving reminds me, "Mom, it's illegal to drive and talk on a cell phone."

It's such a strange rite of passage to see your kid driving past the house. And like a lot of milestones they pass, it's a rite of passage for the parents,too.

Balloon Boy and Other Parenting Nightmares

2009-10-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

The other day, Philip asked me (you already knew it would be Philip, right?) how I could push his buttons so easily. I told him he had to stop watching so much Dr. Phil. He only watches him because he thinks he looks like a human walrus, but still, the terminology wears off.

"Seriously, Mom, how?"

"I can push those buttons because as your Mom, I pretty much installed them."

I do believe that. I also think there is a really serious line between what parents can do to their kids and what they can't. This bothers me a real lot:

I listened to a radio interview with the balloon boy's dad. I tried to be open to the possibility that storm chasing dads are as competent and loving as employed dads who, say, mow the lawn instead of charting the courses of cyclones with their kids in tow. When the comment came about the boy saying he had to hide in garage attic rafters "for the show" the dad took out his harmonica and began tooting it. That's when I knew. I found out later that the whole family had appeared not once, but twice on Wife Swap. That's when I was certain.

I think it's great that the boy's innocence, the compelling element that the family tried to play off of, pretty much trumped in the end and revealed the gritty truth. I also can't imagine growing up in a family that has such visibly crazy parents - at least here we keep our craziness out of the national news.

But I also wonder how they get their kids to cooperate with that kind of thing. I remember trying to take pictures of my kids at their birthday parties and they would slide under the table to avoid it. When I would ask them to please, please not tell the teacher that I had actually gone to the bakery and bought the other dozen cupcakes to mix with the homemade ones, the teacher would greet me at the party and ask which ones had I made since the homemade ones were always so much better. They could never really be controlled to that level. In fact, control is the biggest issue in our house.

Emma has a teacher who makes them walk to lunch in a really straight line. (All I could think of when she described this was the children's book, Madeline, and that chant about walking "in two staight lines"). The other day, while the teacher was heading up the line, Emma began a silent version of the Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance and most of the class followed her moves. (I blame her father for those genes) They did this all the way to the cafeteria. She told me she's "kind of famous" in her school now.

I can't imagine asking her to crawl up into attic rafters even for five minutes let alone hours.

Kids that age are pretty innocent. Emma and Philip used to do things like this:

That family damaged that little boy, and I really hope someone other than me notices and steps in to check on the welfare and stability of those parents. It's too bad they can't find more positive ways to bring attention to themselves.

Organizing, The Sequel

2009-10-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

I am in a stage of organizing to organize which means I have to get rid of the first layers in the house to see what we actually have. Emma has big plans for a yard sale - which I secretly dread since I would have to talk to my neighbors. I'm not actually sure I want to move beyond the wave stage.

I know how awful that sounds, but remember where I live, and know that these guys would fit right in at the decoy show:

Yup, we had a duck decoy show last week, sort of like a festival celebrating wooden duck decoys. The folks there made the Walmart people look glamourous.

We do have some normal neighbors. One family is really organized. They put their garbage out at 5:45 on Tuesday afternoons. We're more like, "Wait, is today Wednesday? Quick, I hear the garbage trucks. Hurry up!" Everything in their yard looks pretty much like this:

They have two little girls who play together in the yard, doing things like hanging birdfeeders and planting butterfly gardens. I was outside, trying to untangle the herb garden I started that seemed like such a great idea in May. Now I have this wild scraggle that grew like oregano on meth. I tried untangling it, but it gets really scratchy and my hands were getting all cut up.

The little girls were on their swing outside. From my house, all you could hear was Lady Gaga chanting "Poker Face" and the sounds of Philip showing his girlfriend his latest discovery: he learned in science that methane ignites. He then realized that he is a very reliable source of methane and there is a candle lighter in the kitchen drawer. His girlfriend squealed with delight as he demonstrated (yes, this is early teen romance - not exactly like Edward and Bella). Except there was, as there always is with fire, a backdraft problem and his jeans now have scorch marks on the rear.

I watched the lovely little girls help their mom put pumpkins on the stoop. We tried to grow pumpkins, but the boys and their friends quickly realized that pumpkins are amazing targets for BB guns. The splat factor is very big in the boy world.

I'm wondering if organizing is a personality type rather than a matter of habitual neatness. Maybe there are certain families who have to have everything in order or they feel kind of crazy. And maybe some families are the opposite. When I cleared off the kitchen counter, Christopher looked at it and commented, "Why does that look so weird?"

Organizing

2009-10-02T09:05:00.001-07:00

At 5:52 this morning, Philip leaned over my bed and said, "Hey, Mom, did you know that if you give a cat a mint, it sneezes for like twenty minutes?"

I sat up immediately. "And how did you find this out, Philip?"

I listened to a story involving Sarah, one of the already crazy cats, a perfectly timed cat yawn, interest in the texture of a cat tongue and a mint Tic Tac. You can fill in the rest. (She's fine by the way, and is safely sleeping right now on a basket of papers on my desk)

Papers on my desk lead me to announce my latest plan: I am going to get organized. It occurred to me that when I went through some of my writing titles that I don't really have records of sending my stuff out. I get emails from aspiring writers who can tell me, "I sent this to 17 publishers, 4 agents..." and go on to tell me dates and times and responses.

My system is more like, "Wait. Where did I put chapter two?" or "Ok, let me send John the editor an email to make sure he got this rewrite. Did I finish that rewrite?"

It's so aggravating when editors don't publish my stuff just because I haven't sent it yet. You would think they could anticipate more.

It's not that I haven't tried organizing. It's actually that I have tried organizing one too many times I write things in different notebooks or I save them under different file names and then misplace the notebooks and forget the file names.

I teach people how to organize their writing. I start by explaining there are only two types of organizers: internally organized people and externally organized people. Internally organized people can write, do taxes, compose a libretto with a messy desk, cats, and piles of laundry all around them. (That's me) Externally organized folks need spare, neat space, the rug vacuumed (preferably with all the swirls going in the same direction) and the dishes done before they can put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

Part of the problem is that I write in short breaks between work, house and kids. I am going to try to organize my time as well. I might even change the layout of this blog. I want to have one of those WIP bars with my daily word count. I have never even thought of doing such a thing, probably because I like to work on different novels and types of writing simultaneously.

I told the kids this morning. Emma looked at Christopher. "It's like all 'o' things today - organizing, October..."

Christopher added, "Odd.."

Then he went on to explain that Cami, our insanely mischievous kitten, had just swallowed a piece of string that had broken off Emma's YoYo string. He had tried to pull it from her mouth, but she growled and went under the sofa until she had eaten it.

I can't tell you how happy I am that I am internally organized.

Normal Problems

2009-09-25T14:46:00.001-07:00

This morning (it's Friday, but my computer is refusing to allow me to post anything to blogger or even comment on other blogs, so this will have to go up later) I was doing my frantic change the sheets, put on the dishwasher, general clean up and I was listening to a radio show called, "Is My Child Normal?"

Now, right after I finished my domestic diva duties, I went hunting in the basement for material to make a Halloween costume. When I came back upstairs, the folks were still talking about what constitutes normal. I was holding some old feather boas, yellow crepe paper and glue. Nothing wrong with gathering some material for a Halloween costume, right? Except this is to make a giant chicken costume for Philip. Somehow I have to figure out how to make size 13 chicken feet.

We could buy a chicken costume, but Philip is the only one of my kids who still likes to make them with me like when they were little. As I was putting the boas in a box, Cami, one of the kittens, ran past with a beaver skin that Christopher has had in his room for a few years. I was still thinking how to make chicken feet as I wrangled the beaver skin away from Cami. She was panting under the dining room table because she thought she had caught some big African game.

When I came back, the other four cats were frantically attacking the feather boas and the feathers were floating in the kitchen. I forgot I had put Emma's dress up boas down there because the cats were getting into them all the time.

I looked up at the time, but I remembered we don't have any clocks downstairs. There's the microwave clock, and a clock built in to the stove because Emma finds the sound of ticking clocks unbearable. It reminds her of bombs.

My computer clock, and the weather, is set for Los Angeles because Emma is completely crazy for anything LA. She has done this to all the computers in the house. We are constantly adding to the time to see what time it is where we are.

Emma also believes there is a ghost who is attracted to the scent of her conditioner. Whenever she is in the shower, as soon as she opens the conditioner, the ghost knocks on the wall. Three times. (This is in addition to the ghosts that haunt her classroom bathroom)

The radio people were talking about fearing birthday parties. The Zen-sounding psychosomething said this was just a little social anxiety. My kids never had normal problems like that.

Christopher seems normal, probably the most normal, but then again, he moves around the house like a stealth bomber. I'm not sure how he could hang around with us all these years and actually be normal; I think he's just learned compensatory behaviors.

Then again, he decided in kindergarten that he would wear nothing but jeans, and he has lived it for the last dozen years. That can't be right.

The next radio problem was a child's reluctance to try new foods.

I remember giving Emma a bowl once, she looked at it, looked at me, and said, "It's too blue. I can't eat from that."

Philip once slid under the table at a Chinese buffet and refused to come out because "the food is too shiny here; it looks alive." That was an interesting cultural exchange between me and the ultra polite Chinese waiter.

I thought about calling in.

Or maybe I should just write a parenting book, "Raising the Paranormal Child," -- or something along those lines.

I'll bet it would get picked up by Time Warner.

The Corridor of the Undead

2009-09-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

It's like a rite of autumn around here: the back to school nights in schools, with nervous teachers explaining their policies and parents sitting there smiling, silently judging them.

I used to be the teacher up there; now I'm the parent. I try not to judge them. Last night, I got there five minutes late (which is pretty good for me) and I had to stand next to the cafeteria doors. I think all cafeterias look the same in schools everywhere - something like this:

with the student area resembling:

although that is a much nicer cafeteria than I remember from grade school. I remember broken benches and stains that we all decided were from some gruesome event that had befallen previous students -

of course, there is generally someone who looks like this:

encouraging you to eat the meal that looks like:

The sinks in my daughter's school are large enough to slaughter a cow in. And the kitchen is made of cinder blocks with dancing vegetables smiling from the walls. The onion looked a little like Osama Bin Laden.

The evening opened with a speaker from the county health department. You can bet I was listening to a forty minute presentation on the H1N1 virus. I only heard the part about 91K being spent on installing hand sanitizing stations. So then, swine flu is a virus that isn't airborne? I didn't quite get that, then again, while she was speaking, I was imagining the onion with a turban.

I can't think of a whole lot of writing that has taken place in school cafeterias, yet it's an experience we have all shared. More so than say sports which I completely bypassed in high school - yet there are lots of books out there involving sports or where the protagonist is involved with a sport.

I had forgetten all the memories I had of my grade school cafeteria until I stood in front of the window last night. I remember a lunch lady standing over me when I tried to slide an untouched lunch into the garbage can. She stopped me and ordered me to try a Swedish meatball. I was in the second grade and she was straight from the corridor of the undead. She picked up my fork and held it up to my mouth. I was too scared not to eat it, so I swallowed it and nodded, then ran. To this day, I have never been able to try Swedish meatballs.

I also remember a tremendous amount of gossiping at the lunch table. We exchanged notes, hair barrettes, phone numbers and party invitations. That time, even though it was probably only about forty minutes a day, was the best time of the day.

I'm trying to think of children's books that involve the cafeteria. Is it one of those places that you stop remembering once you get past college age? I can't think of a single title...

They're Baaack....

2009-09-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

My kids all fell asleep in the living room last night in a big heap of end-of-the-summer-exhaustion. The boys have to be out the door at 7 am which, after long afternoons of summer slumber, is like the middle of the night to them.

Emma has to take "orders" from people who "are only taller, not any smarter" than kids. (Yes, that's how she put it)

I actually got almost, not quite, but almost caught up with the wash and I had all my papers in order when I got to campus. I even had on matching clothes and earrings. I hope my students don't get too used to that.

And I'm starting a new novel. I keep saying that, but I keep changing the way it opens. I think the problem was the voice just didn't sound authentic to me. I put books in the heap after about three pages if the voice doesn't hook me. Kids do, too.

That being said, here is a sampling of real voices from my kids on the first day of school. Voice really is character.

When I asked Christopher, he said, "Mom, everything is all good." He pushed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth so he couldn't say anymore then high tailed it to his room.

Philip reminded me, "He knows if he tells you too much, you'll call the school or something." When I asked Philip which of his teachers he liked, he smirked and said, "Mom, no one likes teachers. They're not likeable; they're just all control freaks.You tolerate teachers; you don't like them."

Right. I forgot.

Emma had the most descriptive assessment of the first couple of days. Her "friend" L. got a new haircut so now she looks like a "fuzzy pumpkin." I put friend in quotes because L. is one of those people we talk to, but never truly befriend. I should say that L. sees ghosts, carries tarot cards, and could use a little help in the hygiene department. She came over once, and Emma decided she needed to remain a school friend.

Anyway, L. informed Emma that the bathroom in their classroom was haunted. Not only did several ghosts inhabit it, but the janitor is somehow involved in maintaining the ghosts' secrecy. (I felt a little guilty when she was explaining all this; I couldn't help but see the huge difference in the YA mind and the MG mind)

All day, Emma and L. listened to toilets flush when no one was in there, lights blinked, faucets ran and there is a low creaking sound which is, of course, how the ghosts speak to one another.

"Could it be the water running in the pipes?" I asked, "the school is pretty old."

"It's not water," she explained (barely hiding the exasperation in her voice), "water sounds wet. This is more like wind."

"So how is everything else?"

"I almost fell asleep during history. What's the point in learning about the colonies? Aren't all those people dead?"

"Maybe they're the ghosts," I suggested.

She looked at me for a second. "No, I don't think so. That would be interesting. And there's nothing interesting about school."

So much for the first three days...

Happy Labor Day!

2009-09-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

It's Labor Day weekend - the last weekend of summer.That's a picture of our backyard, and it already looks empty to me.

I'm never sure what to do on holidays like this. I could invite my neighbors over for a barbeque, but they tend to like to catch what they eat from the lake or the woods so I think I'll pass. We'll probably go shopping for school supplies, but none of the schools here tell us what the kids need until the first day of school, which is Wednesday. We try and guess in the middle of the store, big binders? small, vinyl ones? book socks or paper bag covers? It seems like everyone else has these neat lists...

When the kids asked me why we have Labor Day, I told them it was an extra day so they could start their summer reading.

They always remind me I don't really have a job, except a few days a week at the college. They see me writing on the computer, but they associate computer time with fun and socializing.

The weird thing about being a writer is you kind of feel that you don't really have a job, or are part of the labor force because you are usually home when you are writing. Plus, you could always be working. Always. It's kind of like having perpetual homework.

But I feel like we should all probably think about what we do during Labor Day, or something connected to what we do for a living.

In the spring, there was an article in The NY Times that I have thought about for a while now. It talks about the responsibility authors have in choosing what to write about, especially authors who write YA (and probably MG) It's sort of an old question I suppose, but do you think writing about things like cutting, anorexia, shoplifting, all those behaviors encourages it? Or just exposes it? Should those topics be avoided? When we write about drinking or drug use, does it give kids ideas? Or do they just see a reflection of what they already know?

I remember sneak-reading a book (during algebra which might explain a lot) about these two girls who ran away from home and experimented with everything I had never done - or even come close to doing. It was my favorite book for a few months, far more interesting than the Boston adventures of Johnny Tremain. Sin is far more compelling than compliance. That book was a hot topic at sleepovers, yet I still have never done any of the things those girls did.

I don't have an answer to this. I do know that we can't write for the mentally fragile. I also know there is a fine line between avoiding topics and censorship.

In the end, at least for me, I think writing has to reflect what is true. If it's not authentic, it's just not interesting. And when I write, I don't want to feel parental since it's really one of the very few things I do that doesn't involve my kids.

I also know that my answer isn't everyone's. Do you avoid topics that are controversial? or ones that go against your personal beliefs? Do you think what kids read influences them so easily?

Three Deadlies

2009-08-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

The best aspect of being a published writer happens when someone writes to you and says how much they liked your book and how it has helped them in some way. It's also very handy when I am grilling one of my boys and he responds by saying, "Geez, Mom, what are you doing -- writing a book?"

As a matter of fact...

So there has to be a darker side, and there is: you get swamped with requests to read other folks unpubbed manuscripts. Initially, it's really flattering (and there are maybe two in your inbox in a month) I am the first to say writing a novel is

a) hopeful

and

b) hopeful

Of course I can't read them anymore. Most people who write, work, and have a family don't have the time to critique entire manuscripts, and I'm no exception. But I have read a few pages of them recently, just the first ones,because it's August and boring. There's a lot going on in the good department with writing, but the teacher in me has picked out three really consistent mistakes an awful lot of writers seem to be making. In random order, they are:

1. Dullness. Yikes. Death sentence. And the most common of the three deadlies.

Kids give you fifteen nanoseconds to interest them. Start in the middle. Let the school explode, then talk about how Doug had been bullied one science class too long and had always had an interest in dynamite. You can always go back and fill in the backstory later. You have to get them to WANT to know the backstory. And you have to do it fast. That may not hold true for adult stories, but YA/MG audiences are not known for patience.

And dullness goes for the writing, too. For some reason, maybe writers are striving for a casual approach in the dialog, there's a lot of "good as gold," and "black as night." Boring.

Here's a sentence I still remember from last year that Emma told me. "Mom, you have to cut off the crusts on these sandwiches. They taste like balloons." I remembered it because it's surprising.

If there is no fresh language and there are lots of cliches, no one will want to read it. Coat the characters and the actions in layers of irrelevant details and it will send everyone running, including agents and editors. You don't want to be a word slut and show everything you've got in the first few pages.

2. Beige Settings.

So much of YA takes place in the mall or the school, and it's THE MALL or THE SCHOOL, the generic one on the Disney channel. Give the place flavor. All schools and places have their quirks, strange characters, weird smells, an abandoned factory, a crazy neighbor, something along those lines. It helps the kids "see" the place. And they are still young enough to really, really like engaging all their senses to "see" --

3.Writer as Pastor.

I'm surprised at how common this is.

I did this once, and I thought it was soooo subtle. An editor at Carolrhoda picked it up (this was maybe five years ago) wrote to me and told me the story came close, but in the end she could sense the "lesson" through the story -- and she was sure kids would, too. It never works unless you are writing for vacation bible schools.

Right now, I'm reading Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson, and I think as long as you have a sense of humor and have seen a few B movies and you want to write with more freshness, that's a great book to start with. It is sort of strange and surprising, but I'm reading pages of it to my balloon-bread daughter and she thinks it's "not so bad for a boy writer."

Teradactyls Over D.C.

2009-08-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

We just got back from Washington, D.C. and Williamsburg, Virginia. I really think the colonists had it easy compared to traveling in a mid size car with three kids in the middle of an August heat wave.

After a few hours of arguing, I began pointing out, “Look, see those nice families in the car next to us? They’re talking together and playing games with license plates and state capitals. Why can't we be normal like that?"

Philip interpreted this observation as a request to teach his younger sister the sound a teradactyl makes. Teradactyls used to be Philip’s favorite animal, back when he was seriously interested in dinosaurs. Emma, being a girl, missed that phase and was bored enough to make the screeching sounds along with her brother. (Christopher, amazingly, slept through this, though he was listening to his Ipod)

I forgot new batteries for the camera, so I handed Philip my phone and asked him to take pictures -- but he had to stop the teradactyl noises. We got some great shots this way:

That's the road we were on, or it might be The Baltimore Tunnel, and here's a bridge:

But at least the prehistoric screeching slowed down and we stopped arguing long enough to reach the hotel. They had a rooftop pool which the kids and I loved. Most of the people around us were speaking French or German and the kids were amazed that we were the only English speakers.

After the pool, while everyone was getting dressed, I decided to go down to the lobby to get some restaurant menus. I had on new clothes (no stains! no cat claw holes!) and I had just come from swimming, so I was feeling pretty cool in that elevator. I was thinking how we could pass for a normal, maybe even a civilized family. Elegant folks all dressed for dinner got on at each floor.

That’s when my phone rang. Except it didn’t ring: it screeched like a teradactyl. Right there, with all the international people in their evening wear, in a small, urban elevator, I heard Philip and Emma going ARRRRRRHCCCCCCCCARRRAGHHHGARRR or something like that. The sound came right from my new black purse that I had bought to go with the new clothes. I had forgotten how he liked to change his ring tone every ten minutes. I fumbled for the phone. No one said a word. They just got off the elevator and walked away. Actually, they walked a little fast…

Human Teradactyls:

Williamsburg was better. We had a bigger space which is always good for family harmony, and there was enough history and canons and things along those lines to interest everyone.

I did escape a demonstration on colonial weaving by sneaking off to this bookstore. Christopher got this shot as I broke free:

I really did want to buy some books and a lamp as souvenirs. I explained to Christopher the style I wanted to get, how it would look colonial, and we would have a reminder of the trip.

Christopher looked at me for a long minute. "Mom," he reminded me, "the colonists did not have lamps."

He thinks he's so smart.