Manuscript or Pickax?

This is the first week since the beginning of June that I’ve had full days at home alone; the first time in three months that I can actually write. So what do I do? I grab the pickax, of course.

A couple of years ago we bought a big, beautiful Fir to be our outdoor Christmas tree. Because we purchased it in winter when the ground was too hard to dig, we left it in the planter it came in. Fast forward two years: the poor tree was still in the planter, strangling itself with its own roots. I kept meaning to get to it but it was off in an odd corner of the yard that I rarely visited and wouldn’t remember until late at night when you start worrying about the weirdest stuff, like having the death of a fir tree on your conscience.

My manuscript that sold is with the editor for comments, the one I finished in June is with my agent, and now I have to face page one of a new manuscript. So Monday I avoided it by cleaning the house for seven hours, Tuesday I avoided it by creating a website to manage six years of digital photos, and yesterday I avoided it by planting The Tree.

First I grabbed the shovel but the going was slow—this baby needed a huge hole. That’s when I reached for the pickax. I’ve always been impressed with how lethal it looked and I must say, swinging that thing was immensely satisfying; sometimes you need to exercise your inner gravedigger and just go at the earth with a pickax. Once I’d dug a hole big enough to bury one of the Seven Dwarfs, I wrestled the 200 pound mass of needles onto a dolly and wheeled it to its new home. It looks happy.

So I successfully avoided another day of opening a new document, titling it, and typing the first words. But today is wide open—like the calluses on my palms. Today I’ll do it.

Uh, right after I organize my desk.

Does anyone else find crazy ways to avoid the fear of staring a new manuscript?

The Class of 2010!

I’m proud to announce that I'm now a member of 2010: A Book Odyssey. Administered by authors Lindsey Leavitt and Heidi R. Kling, this is where the writers who have books coming out in 2010 gather. (Thanks to Suzanne Young for letting me know about the Tenners.)

I must admit I was happy to meet so many other writer’s whose books won’t becoming out anytime soon! After working in high-tech where a product is obsolete after 18 months, a year and a half to bring a book to market seems bizarre. But I'm really excited to be in such great company. Thanks for having me, Tenners.

8 - 12 - 8

Here is the publishing agreement. Here are my hands. I probably shouldn’t have made that deal with the Devil about cutting off my left index finger for a book contract.

I finally got the courage to sign it!

Hereinafter referred to as…

I now have in my possession a contract for two books with Flux, an edgy new imprint for teens. On this publishing agreement my name appears and is then followed by these words:

Hereinafter referred to as “Author”

Seeing those five words written after my name has been a dream of mine for decades. It was first a dream so big I put it in the better-to-never-try-than-fail category. Slowly, I circled around it and poked at it until it seemed less daunting. I took endless classes, read all the books, and then I started in earnest. Five years after I typed the first bits of this story I now have an amazing agent and a two-book deal with an editor I respect immensely.

I’m having trouble signing the contract. I ruffle through the glorious 18 pages and gaze at the Hereinafter sentence often, but I can’t get to the last page to sign it. I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s because writing my name on this contract—however small or large the books may turn out to be—will forever put me on the other side of this dream. And that’s a weird concept.

A Photo Essay by the World's Worst Photographer and Even Worse Essayist

It began and ended as any gathering of children’s book writers and illustrators should – with a frosty Gin and Tonic. Here Davis Wakefield sips his from one of the 100 cups he “borrowed” from the lobby Starbucks late the first night.

Below is a photo of my "new favorite” Graeme Stone, who came to children’s books by way of modeling. You can tell by his circa 1990s pose that he’s watched a bit too much Elsa Klensch. Graeme knows more about the gritty side of Serbian culture than anyone I’ve ever met. I envy his name, which will make any book jacket seem a little more highbrow.

And then there were the Mermaids. One was working:

Two were working it:

The Disco Mermaids are the most fun people in children’s publishing and are so generous with their time and vast knowledge. Smart and beautiful – you want to hate them but just can’t.

Then there were Katie and Sarah Frances, the Y’all contingent from Mississippi. Gorgeous and elegant and very, very funny. Fabulous accents that make you hang on their every word, wondering what they’ll say next. When I die I want to come back as a southern woman.

I loved hanging out with Lee Wind. Smart, witty and so articulate and passionate about gay teen lit that he’s been asked to moderate a panel at the NYC SCBWI conference with some very heavy hitters from publishing. Congrats to you Lee! Well deserved.

Another woman in the “I want to hate you for your quick success but can’t because you’re too damn funny” category is Suzanne Young. Sorry Suzanne, had a steal a photo from your website because my only pic of you sucked and you deserve better than that. Oregon is kind of a wild west state anyway, so that’s how we roll: See it, take it.

And last but not least there was Jennifer Gray "No one puts Baby in a corner" Olson. An AMAZING illustrator and all-around hilarious woman. We connected on a soul level about Reality TV.

All in all a great conference. Thanks everyone!

Oh, yeah, there were also some good speakers. They get enough publicity on their own.

SCBWI Post-Mortem

Fun. Lots of fun. Met some really great people, reconnected with some others I'd met earlier, and had a chance to catch up with my agent at a lovely little cocktail party she threw for her clients. Had many awkward moments in my Editor one-on-one meeting, as my manuscript was critiqued by my all-time dream Editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel of Dutton. She is smart and acerbic and gets right o the meat of the matter. Love her, and had to keep myself from stalking her.

More later when I have time to post some pics.

Outsourcing for SCBWI

I have a peculiar form of social anxiety that really only rears its head in very specific scenarios: writer's conferences. One-on-one I’m fine, in groups of people I know I’m fine—but put me in a room full of strangers and ask me to schmooze and talk about my writing and, as previously documented, I fall apart. So when it comes to conferences, I need a companion like my friend Davis. Witty, wealthy, and wickedly good looking, he’s got the "fabulous trifecta" covered. See, I can keep up with fabulous, but I can’t generate it on my own. We all have our weaknesses.

So, when I decided to sign up for the SCBWI conference I went straight to Davis and coerced him into signing up. Lest you think I lack self-esteem, let me publicly announce and fully embrace my great coercion skills. I’m good even when I talk someone into something just for the sport of it, but when my performance at a writing conference depends on coercion, watch out.

So he had to come all the way from London, he had to take time off work, and he’d never heard of SCBWI, but Davis actually does have an amazing YA sci-fi in the works and has always wanted to become a published author. So really, it’s a win-win, no?

We met this morning for breakfast to discuss our plan of action. I agreed to do all the research on the editors, agents, and writers going to the conference and he agreed to be the life of the party. When I mentioned that the ultimate scenario would be to have a high-powered editor fall in love with him over the course of the four-day event, he shrugged as if it were in the bag. I love Davis. For the first four days of August I will be his auxiliary brain and he will be my auxiliary fabulousness.

Symbiosis: not just for clownfish and sea anemones any more!

Nothing but Eve

No musings, no anecdotes, no wry commentary. I’m a dried up husk of a writer; I used up everything I had to revise my manuscript and send it off to my agent yesterday.

Turns out I’m not the only one feeling frantic about finishing a project—this seems to be the summer of urgent writing. I’ve enjoyed following my sister-in-agent Eve’s hilarious blog about trying to finish a novel in 30 days.

She starts here. Gets to a dark place here. And sounds hopeful again here.

Thank you, Eve for being amusing in my place today!

Speaking of Fetishists...

A woman from Ojai, California recently moved to Ashland because of our lax nudity ordinance that allows the libertines in town to bike naked, stroll naked, or just simply “be” naked as long as they cover their naughty bits while in a city park or the downtown commercial district.

The Ashland Chamber of Commerce would not let her walk in the parade. Deeming their decision “unconstitutional” she did it anyway, commando style. Photographers Jim Chamberlain and Steve Yungen took some incredible shots of this, starting with when she stripped down (check out the children’s faces in the background) stood up (love the things associated with stripping—gloves and fringe—misplaced in this photo on the veteran and flag) and paraded down the sidewalk (much to the merriment of frat boys with video cams. Soon to be seen on Girls Gone Wild - Ashland!).

Click for full (graphic) frontal:

She says she’s making a statement about the Earth, but her signs read random things like “Check out Dr. Emoto’s research,” and her actions are fueled by pure exhibitionism. She needs some PR help, needs to shore up her messaging and refine her spin. Otherwise she’s just another naked lady holding a conch.

Kinky?

Curiously, a lot of traffic to my blog comes from fetishists.

According to Google Analytics, quite a few people are directed to my blog after Googling tight pants + pain and/or fetish, which will lead the disappointed masses here and here.

I didn’t do this on purpose, to increase traffic. After all, any poor fetishist who lands on Juvenescence and sees my dumb mug in the sidebar or reads a line or two of me droning on about writing will run faster than you can say latex-rubber ball gag.

The Internet seems to be a decent resource for fetish material (!) so I'm sure they'll eventually find what they're looking for...

The Wheel

Yesterday I wrote this on my blog:

"I have just finished Young Adult Novel number two! After weeks of ignoring dishes, weeds, children, friends and not least of all, husband, I have a sleek 180-page, 45,137-word manuscript. It’s just half the size of my first novel, but an altogether different kind of book. I’m happy. Very happy. Now about those dishes…"

A few hours later (after the dishes were done) I was already angst-ridden and feverishly working on the excellent edits I’d received from Jennie.

When does it stop? Will I ever be able to sit back, put my feet on my messy desk and say, “Ahh, job well done, self!”

I set goals for being able to celebrate, but then celebrating doesn’t seem right because the next goal is bigger. First it’s when I finish the manuscript, then it’s when I finish the edits, then it’s when my agent starts submitting it, then it’s when I get a contract, then it's when the next manuscript is finished—it’s a publishing hamster wheel I tell you!

New goal: relax. Let it soak in. Go sit by the pool.

But first, Jennies great edits!

See what I mean?

Out of the Weeds

I have just finished Young Adult Novel number two!

After weeks of ignoring dishes, weeds, children, friends and not least of all, husband, I have a sleek 180-page, 45,137-word manuscript. It’s just half the size of my first novel, but an altogether different kind of book.

I’m happy. Very happy. Now about those dishes…

The Lawn, Ablaze.

The Fourth of July is a major spectacle around here. It starts with the Ashland parade, which lasts over two hot hours and attracts about 15,000 spectators (perhaps more this year because of the Naked Lady). After a short respite and some barbecue we get on with the real fun: lighting the fireworks that Scott and the kids had procured at the seasonal TNT Shack. Chosen mostly based on size and name (particular favorites are Screaming Bees and Underwater Fury), these Chinese gems never fail to amuse.

We start with an appetizer of sparklers and after someone gets hurt—nicked by an errant spark, poked by another child’s hot stick, etcetera—we get to the good stuff. Crazy Monkey, Around the World, Climbing Panda, we light them all, sometimes simultaneously. Once we've violated as many air and noise pollution laws as we can, we head out to watch the City of Ashland do its Fireworks Show, which is orchestrated to music composed just for this event by American composer Robert W. Smith, and played by the members of the American Band College at SOU. Quite the to-do.

Exhausted, we drive back from the city fireworks show around 11:00 to find our front lawn ablaze. Apparently one of the six chambers of Havana Heat, a pyrotechnic the size of a small car battery, had not lit earlier and only went off after the smoldering chamber next to it heated it up. In flagrant disregard for Smokey the Bear’s advice earlier at the parade, we had not hosed down all the fireworks before we ran off to see the big show. Oops.

Thankfully, all ended well and the Raedekes continue to set a good example for kids everywhere.

(Addendum: Garage Band next door played in the parade and killed! I'm swollen with pride.)

Making lemonade - with a paper cut

For two days I have been forcing words from my fingers, absolutely forcing them. We’re only talking about thirtyish pages here, but it’s like squeezing juice from a shriveled old lemon with a paper cut on your hand—once something finally comes out you wince. I’m losing confidence, wondering if I can really pull this off. It’s not feeling promising, but still, I grind on. I have to. I made a pact with several other writers on the Editorial Ass blog and I must finish this by July 1. Writing these last three chapters has been the hardest part of the whole manuscript. So what am I doing blathering on in my blog? Got to get back to that desiccated lemon!

Garage Band

As previously mentioned, my first reaction to the newly formed garage band next door was ****!!!!!!!!!!!!

Almost as if a sound engineer had designed the placement of my office window from their practice area for perfect acoustics, I can hear them with astonishing clarity even when they whisper, which is not often. Mostly they yell. Mostly they yell "Tequila!" three times every two minutes and ten seconds, which is how long it takes to play that song.

These are young boys, early teens, who wear their hair in the fashion of Shaggy and speak only in voice-cracking insults. They are gangly and disproportionate, with large heads and feet like puppies. They seem fairly new to their instruments but they’re getting pretty good, and fast, because they are nothing if not dogged. The record so far is 4.5 hours playing one song—you guessed it, Tequila! by the one-hit-wonders, The Champs.

They simply play until they get it right and the joy of playing does not diminish one bit between the first time the song is played and the 122^nd time the song is played (I did the math).

So I’ve grown to like this garage band next door. I need a little tenacity right now and they’ve got it to spare.

Just keep playing until you get it right. And enjoy every bad chord along the way.

The Champs next door.

The kids got out of school in early June and today is the first day I’ve had to work on my new manuscript. Coincidently, today is the first day my dumbass 13 year old neighbor held practice for his band. They seem to have a short playlist; he and his friends have been playing “Tequila!” over and over again for the last three hours.

While they have crappy instruments and crappy talent, somehow they’ve managed to secure the world’s best—and loudest—amp.

Addendum: Make that 4.5 hours. When will their fingers bleed so they can stop?

Soul Food

I’m leaving again for the woods. It has been a good week, a very good week, and camping along a beautiful river under a full moon is the perfect way to extend the goodness.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia

When you go camping on Friday the 13th, I suppose you should just assume that you'll see either a bloodthirsty guy in a hockey mask or a rattlesnake in your campsite.
We got the rattlesnake. Huzzah!

Out of Office

In a few minutes we're heading down to the Klamath River in California to meet some friends for our annual kayaking/camping trip. Best part? Just a 35 minute drive from home. Worst part? Freezing cold water! But if you go any later in the summer the water gets slow and the thrill is gone.

Writers' Rooms

There's a really interesting article in The Guardian that features photos of rooms where writers do their thing, along with a short explanation. It’s fascinating! I was intrigued by the weird collection of stuff (including part of his own hip bone) neatly displayed beside Roald Dahl’s customized writing chair and I loved the spare tool-shed-cum-office that George Bernard Shaw used, complete with a bunk for “Napoleonic naps.”

What I want is an office like Jung Chang or Siri Hustvedt but mine is closer to Charlotte Mendelson. Piles. I’m a piler.

Of the past five home offices I’ve had, this—although by far the smallest—is my favorite. It feels like a cockpit; I slide into my chair and everything is literally within reach. I painted it Scottish Thistle, which I think is beautiful in any light. And there’s an enormous window in front of me. The view is obscured by two large bushes that are refuge to the creatures that inspire me the most right now.

Six important things to me:

1) Two framed New Yorker cartoons from fellow writer Julie that make me laugh every day. One of two bored, middle aged people on a couch at home. The man says to t he woman, "I suppose we could burst onto the literary scene." The other is of a man in a chair reading the paper while his wife types on the computer. He looks annoyed and says to her, "Joyce Carol Oates seems to have no problem coming out with book after book."

2) A small ceramic milk jug that says “kindness” on it (a gift from friend Peggy years ago) filled with Nag Champa, a scent I enjoy more when it’s fresh than when burning.

3) My “Fetish Garden” to the left of the computer with important bits and bobs.

4) A large cup of coffee (trying to quit, not going well) sipped from what a friend recently called a flower pot. I’m pretty sure I picked it up from the kitchen section at Ikea, but you never know.

5) Cookie fortunes taped to my printer. I started this and my daughter Juliet has continued it whenever she finds a suitable fortune. But we are very selective, they can’t the generic ones you get all the time. My favorite is: Pull the universe inside you. Make it your own.

6) A photo taped to the printer of a dolphin kissing my son Hank. Cuteness overload.

I started to tidy up, but then restrained myself. This was difficult for me but as you can tell by the photo, it is in “as is” condition.

(Thanks to Stuart Neville for highlighting this article on his blog, which I found via Editorial Ass.)

Today’s non sequitur: Writing = India

I’ve been thinking a lot about India lately. Scott and I traveled there about ten years ago but my memory of it is as sharp as it was the day I left. It is a country that leaves an impression. India assaults you in every way—with its crowds, with its smells, with its heat, with its swindlers, and with its beauty.

Anywhere else in the world you can get in a cab and say, I’d like to go to X restaurant please, and you’d actually be taken to restaurant X. In India you say, I’d like to go to X restaurant please, and then you are taken to the cab driver’s brother-in-law’s parents’ restaurant. “Is much better here,” the cabbie will say, unapologetically collecting your money even though he’s taken you someplace you didn’t ask to go. “And tell them Dinesh sent you,” he’ll add before zooming off.

The one place I really wanted to see in India was Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first teaching and introduced his doctrine of peace. Sarnath is outside of intensely populated Varansi, which is, at about 3,000 years old, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It's situated on the banks of Ganges River where throngs of Indians come every morning, descending the stepped ghats to bathe, pray, and brush their teeth. No one seems to mind if the ghat they 're using is next to a crematorium where relatives wait next to burning funeral pyres for bodies to become ashes so they can scatter them in the Ganges. There might be more DNA in that river than water.

When we got to Varanasi, Scott didn’t feel well so I set out on my own. I was going to save the big sightseeing for when he was better, so I thought I’d check out a sari silk shop. I got the name of a good one from a guy at our hotel who gave me a card with precise directions for the cab driver to follow. Of course, the cab driver ignored the address. Instead of going deeper into the labyrinthine city, this guy started driving me out of town. I leaned over a couple of times, pointing to the name and address on the card I clutched, and the driver would nod vigorously. When we finally stopped it was at a wholesale fabric warehouse far from the city. “This is best silk in India,” he said, pointing to his meter to show me how many rupees I owed him. “And tell them Pradeep sent you.”

The man in the warehouse helped me call a cab to get back, but of course the driver had other plans for me. This time, though, it was not about commerce. “To Rishipattana?” he asked. I shook my head and handed him a card with my hotel’s name and address. He looked at it and handed it back. “You have been to Rishipattana?” he asked. I said no, but I wanted to go straight back to the hotel. He started driving and in less than two minutes I understood; Rishipattana was another name for Sarnath. The driver stopped, rightly assuming I'd want to visit this sacred place, and put his palm over the meter. It couldn’t have been much—it turned out the fabric warehouse was only about a mile away—but in my experience of India, not accepting money was rare.

At last, I had been taken somewhere I had planned on going. Just not that day. Or in that way.

I suppose I’m thinking of India because it’s very much like writing a novel. You know where you want to go, you just don’t know how you’re going to get there. Or if you’ll be taken somewhere else entirely.

I’m about 40 pages from finishing my current work in progress and I feel like I’m stepping in to a cab in India. Despite having a good idea about where I want to go, I have no idea where I’ll end up.

Where I'd like to be today.

This is the pristine Otolum River below the Maya ruins of Palenque in Chiapas.

It was even more beautiful in person, if you can believe it. I've never met a grotto I didn't want to wallow in and it killed me that this was off limits. Later Diego and I walked up above the ruins into the rain forest where guards didn't watch the river and splashed around. After we emerged and made it back to the ruins I stepped in a nest of fire ants. Coincidence or a smiting?

Old Favorites (You Tell Me)

I’m curious about the books that really formed you as a young reader.

The two that stick out in my mind are Judy Bloom’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (no explanation necessary, I assume; I think every young girl devoured this book with the same enthusiasm) and a more obscure book, The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin.

I recently bought The Mysterious Disappearance for my daughter, and in skimming through it I could clearly see why I loved it so much as a child: it is really weird. Zany might be the right word. It’s the first book I ever read that played with language and story structure—and fostered my life-long love of footnotes in fiction.

The third book I have been dying to read again is a story about a girl, an only child, growing up in New York City where she lives with her parents who have perfected the art of making a classic Caesar salad tableside, using real coddled egg. Sounds bizarre, but I remember repeatedly checking this book out to vicariously live this girl’s quiet, cultured life. Anyone remember the title to this book?

I'm only posting to get rid of that clown

Over the weekend we took a vacationette to a hotel in the town 12 miles north of here just to swim, order embarrassing amounts of room service, and sleep in a place where every sheet and towel was clean at the same time. Now and then I find it sweet to have our little family sleeping together in 600 square feet of space; there’s something vaguely Little House on the Prairie about it. Plus, when I get home it makes me appreciate my own child-free bed—excessively and immoderately dressed in just the right combination of thread count, white down feather count, and pillow loft—even more.

Now I’m back in front of my computer, my weekly volunteer gig in Juliet’s class is finished, and I’m digging in to the manuscript. I’ll set a weekly goal for myself here, just so it’s in print: one chapter a day, three days in a row. That’s three chapters by Friday. Can I put it any more plainly, self?

The view from my window is wet and green and my mind feels just as fertile. Here I go…

Cue the Funeral Dirge

So I opened my blog today and read the last few entries and wondered when the plaintive violin music was going to start. Geeze, lighten up, man! Since I’m obviously incapable of writing anything unelegiac right now, I bring you: Jokes From Around the World.

According to the Internet, which is always right, these are the top jokes in various countries. If we can glean anything at all from this collection it’s that Belgium should stick solely to beer and chocolate as exports.

US:
A man walks into a bar..........OUCH!

England:
A turtle was walking down an alley in New York when he was mugged by a gang of snails. A police detective came to investigate and asked the turtle if he could explain what happened.

The turtle looked at the detective with a confused look on his face and replied “I don't know, it all happened so fast.”

Belgium:
Why do ducks have webbed feet?
To stamp out fires.
Why do elephants have flat feet?
To stamp out burning ducks.

Italy:
How do you get Holy Water?
You boil the Hell out of it.

Beginnings and Endings

I don’t know if it was seeing my dad in the hospital on my way out of town, not speaking to another soul for 48 hours, or pushing myself so hard to write all weekend, but I had a bit of a breakdown on my way home today.

After driving in silence for about a half an hour I wanted to stop thinking about this damn book for awhile, so just as I hit the winding mountain road I reached into the console, fished out a random CD, and plugged it in without looking. I was surprised and delighted when a song I had not heard in nearly five years started; it was a favorite of mine in 2003, an indie that never played on the radio, and one of the songs on to the CD I’d had Scott make for our second baby’s delivery.

Unlike the birth of Juliet, which turned into a trauma situation and is scrambled eggs in terms of a memory, the second birth I remember vividly. Because of the size of the baby’s head vis-à-vis my anatomy I was scheduled for a c-section. Once in the operating room, I recall handing the CD to the anesthesiologist who could not hide his disdain as he took it from me as if it were a dead mouse. These overindulged Ashland women, I could hear him say to himself.

I remember the room filling with my favorite music, I remember Scott by my side and my good friend and surgeon Jani at the helm. I remember Hank as they pulled him out, screaming and glorious. But what I remember most—and best—about that day was later, when we were back in the room. All was quiet; Hank was tucked under my arm like a loaf of bread and Scott was getting ready to make the calls. Then I remember how his always strong and unwavering voice broke as he told his mom it was a boy. Crushed by the weight of new love.

So this song, playing nearly five years later, took me back to that moment so fully and vividly that I had to pull off. Overlooking verdant hills covered in patches of purple and yellow wildflowers, I lost it. I cried like I hadn’t cried in years.

Then unexpectedly from this mess of emotions that I’d just spilled onto the roadside, the ending to my novel floated lightly into my mind. I reached for my laptop, fired it up and wrote the last page before the thought could fly away as quickly as it had come. It’s not all that profound or magical but it's perfect in that it is exactly how I wanted it to end but had not, until then, figured out how.

Odd that the memory of my child’s beginning begat my manuscript’s ending. A weird day, for sure.

Hermit Weekend

You’d think I was going to Hawaii, considering how excited I am to go away this weekend. I’m just going to my Mom’s cabin, about an hour and a half away, but it means one thing: momentum will not be lost!

I hit page 100 in my manuscript yesterday. Okay, there are only two words on page 100, but still. I got there. I only have 17 days until kids are out of school and any dedicated writing time is gone, so I’m going to make the most of the next three weeks. In 48 hours away this weekend I hope to get 30-40 pages written; that’s about 7,000 – 9,000 words. It’s a push, but being without distraction will make it possible.

Once I’m near 150 pages, mass and velocity pick up and momentum cannot be stopped! (She says with hope.)

Thanks to the Moody's for the cabin, and thanks to my husband for taking over weekend kid duty.

Bait

A blue jay recently built a platter-sized nest in the holly tree by my front door. Every time I’d walk to the car I’d try to catch a glimpse of the three newly hatched babies inside, but they always hid when they heard the door open. Not yet able to fly, they’d hop out of the nest to the branch below and wait for me to leave before hopping back in.

Today as I sat down to write I noticed the babies had relocated to a quieter tree that grows less than a foot from my office window. There is no nest here but the birds, still unable to fly, are now big enough to hang out without it. Mom Jay flies off to forage for worms and buggy treats and comes back to her children, who fluff themselves up and screech to get her attention so they can be fed first. I can relate.

When Mom Jay is off, the babies sit on their branches and scratch, feak, chirp, and even lay their weary little heads on a neighboring branch to nap. It’s killing me—as everyone knows, any action is more adorable when done by something small and fluffy. It’s cute overload here, my friends.

Sometimes when I sit down to write I set goals and rewards, just to get things rolling. It’s a juvenile system but it works for me. This morning as I watched Mom Jay do nothing but forage/feed/forage/feed, I knew what my reward would be: a trip to the sporting goods store. As soon as I get five pages written I’ll be off to buy a styrofoam container of worms from the creepy bait fridge in the back corner of Bi-Mart so I can make Mom Jay’s life a little easier for awhile.

Whatever it takes to get the pages, right?

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference

Can you hear the glee in my typing? I just signed up for the annual summer conference of the SCBWI—the most difficult acronym in the world to say—in August! And, perhaps more exciting, my very good friend, muse, and all-around fabulous guy Davis Wakefield will be coming from London to join me. He’s working on a brilliant YA sci-fi that will blow the socks off of the editors at the conference.

The SCBWI knows how to put on a conference; I noticed they’ve even built yoga classes in t o the schedule! Unfortunately these overlap with prime cocktail time, and I, for one, have my priorities straight. Straight up.

Momentum, inertia, and other things missing on a Monday morning.

For me writing gets easier and faster the deeper into the manuscript I get—probably due to momentum. Any object in motion (a manuscript) has momentum; the amount of momentum is determined by the mass (page count) of the object multiplied by the velocity (speed with which it’s written). Momentum is lost when mass (page count) remains the same and velocity (writing) stops. For me, that’s Thursday night—momentum brakes to a screeching halt. On Friday I have my son with me all day and over the weekend everyone’s at home, so no writing gets done. And I wonder why every Monday morning is the same. I look forward to it until I sit in my chair and then—what? Where do I start? Where did I finish? Have I lost the plot?

Cheers!

Yesterday the Lithia Writers Collective had its regular Wednesday meeting, but regular it was not! It was an extraordinary day: Jennie had finished her manuscript.

She’d finished!

Starting a book is easy—really easy—and plugging away at one for years is fairly easy as well, but finishing a book? That is damn hard. And she did it in four months.

So we toasted with a lovely bottle of bubbly and passed around the weighty pages. Of course Jennie demurred, mumbling on about how rough it was and how much revision was left to do. Of course, we told her to shut up.

We forced her to look at the stack of paper she had produced, forced her to soak up the fact that she had finished two manuscripts in as many years, forced her to enjoy the moment. Because Jennie’s success is our success, because seeing a fellow writer finish a manuscript is a beautiful thing; it makes you realize it’s possible.

Cheers, Jennie!

Okay, already.

When do we get to stop learning annoying things about ourselves?

I’d been reading interviews with several writers who say that their method is to write the really powerful scenes they love the most in their books and then go back and connect all the dots with the bridging scenes. I’d never tried this before because, frankly, it sounded outlandish. In real life you don’t get to skip to the good parts and then relive the no-so-exciting ones, so why should I get to do that as a writer?

Anyway, the writers who spoke of doing this are all quite successful so I thought I’d give it a try. It worked marvelously! And then failed miserably. I wrote two unconnected, unanchored chapters that I had really, really been looking forward to writing; they were two of the scenes I’d thought about most when I first dreamed up the idea for the book. The minute I started I couldn’t stop! The words flowed like hot magma! I thought I’d finally found the secret to writing!

The next day I opened the manuscript to do the bridging chapters. Can you guess what happened? I got nothin’. No interest at all in writing those chapters. I even thought about turning it into some kind of experimental novel where there are only high-octane, amazing scenes and you, as the reader, have to fill in the blanks about how and why these people get to be there. Yes, my friends, desperation had set in.

The bottom line? I suppose I’m impulsive and greedy. If given the choice of having dessert first I will. In fact, I’ll eat so much dessert that I won’t want dinner anymore. The ability to write scenes out of order, to do the fun stuff and then go back and do the technical stuff, that’s for people who have temperate dispositions. People who have willpower and discipline. Me? I have to deprive myself of the good stuff until the mundane is done and then, then I get to feast.

Happiness and Writing

My PEN America journal came in the mail the other day, and this morning I finally got a chance to look through it. PEN is an organization that defends free expression of the written word throughout the world, and reading the journal is depressing for two reasons:
1) the greatness of the writing puts in perspective the meagerness of my own, and 2) the oppression many of the writers have endured makes my life seem frivolous.

I’ll admit I have a bit of talent, but will my work ever foment protests and demonstrations? Not likely. Will my work transcend my death? Probably not. Should I stop writing? After reading the PEN journal, this is always a viable question.

So I close the PEN journal and open another one of my favorite books about being a writer, On Writing by Stephen King. My finger lands on this paragraph:

“Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.”

Good old Stephen King makes me realize that I am not writing so that my words can transcend my death or incite riots, I am writing because it makes me happy. And hopefully, that’s enough.

HTV (Hermit Television)

There’s just no accounting for taste. Or for obsessions. I can’t tell you why I’m obsessed with hermits, but I can tell you today is a banner day if you happen to be interested in hermits too—there are hermit videos on YouTube!

Yes, now if you’ve ever wanted to see the inside of a hermit cave you can click HERE, or if you want to stare into the face of meditating yogis in solitude you can click HERE.

And really, who doesn't?

On Being Edited

After college I moved to Seattle, into a two-bedroom apartment with three girls from school (one of whom slept on the couch in nothing but nylons every night, but that’s another story). At first life was bleak, and not just because of the cramped quarters. I didn’t have a car and the only job I could find was as a sales clerk at Victoria’s Secret. Taking the bus to downtown Seattle to spend the day re-folding undies and bras plucked off the dressing room floor was not, I thought, a good use of my shiny new degree in Journalism.

Then one day I got a break. My roommate, an intern in the PR department at Microsoft, landed me an interview with the Copy Chief of Corporate Communications—the head of all the marketing and communications writers. Despite the fact that I took the wrong bus and arrived late and, perhaps worse, wore a really bad hound’s tooth suit, Tony and I clicked. He had done his graduate work at the same School of Journalism and we shared (and loved) the same advisor. Tony made a call to Dr. White; I'll admit I had been a bit of a teacher’s pet so he gave me a stellar recommendation. I got the job in December of 1988 and thus began my lifelong love of being edited.

The department had an equal number of writers and copy editors, and nothing ever went to print without your editor scrutinizing it several times. This was the best education in writing that I ever had. These copy editors were serious. These people earned their money on my crappy copy. But I loved it. When I’d get a piece back that had been routed through editorial I’d grab a fresh cup of coffee, close the door to my office and pore over the red hieroglyphic marks. Then I’d open the document, make the corrections, and print my deliciously flawless pages.

Until then, I’d never had the pleasure of being edited on a regular, daily basis. I miss it terribly. This piece could definitely have used an editor. To me being edited is like scratching a mosquito bite, the way it feels good and bad at the same time. Sure you feel like an ass for being caught making dumb mistakes, but reading that freshly edited page, free of errors…well, I guess you might have to be a writer to appreciate how that feels a lot like getting into clean sheets that someone else has washed and put on the bed.

Every Wednesday night the Lithia Writers critique group gathers. I love Wednesday, love the writing group, but if I’m honest about what I love most it it’s not the discussion about what I’ve brought, the talk about content, momentum, tension, and all that. No, it’s about Thursday morning when I get a fresh cup of coffee, close the door to my office, and pore over the four new sets of marked-up pages. It’s about scratching that mosquito bite.

Fetish Garden

Does anyone else do things that feel completely normal to you, but may seem bizarre or superstitious to others?

Amongst the requisite computer-related items on my desk sits a tray with collection of various trinkets, my Fetish Garden. It holds a clan Cameron badge, a jade three-legged toad, an ingot, coins from countries I’ve visited in a small clay bowl that my son made, a prism with the Mayan calendar carved in it, a replica Egyptian monkey inkwell filled with shells that I picked up from Big Sur after I’d won an award at a writing workshop there, and a carved stone my Mom gave me before surgery, among other things.

I realize these items have meaning only because I have ascribed it to them, but I still find it hard to start my day without acknowledging my garden of oddities or end the day without straightening them up.

Improve your writing AND fight hunger!

My friend Kelly over at Blue Like the Sky tipped me off to a new website that immediately eclipsed Pandora.com as my number one time suck. Challenge yourself at www.freerice.com where you build your vocabulary and they donate rice to the world’s largest food aid agency! For every definition you guess correctly the World Food Programme gets 20 grains of rice. Sounds meager until you get hooked; I just donated 5680 grains of rice in one sitting. Lucky for me I got a string of weird/icky medical words (my favorite!) like ictus, cnidoblast and sanies, which helped. I was trying to reach level 50 but never made it; stalled out at 49. Let me know if you reach 50!

Oh, and regarding yesterday’s euphoria over Pandora.com—my husband ruined the mystique by explaining how it works. Apparently I’m easily reducible. At the end of the day, I’m just another drone that likes major key tonality, excessive vamping, and acoustic sonority. So much for being complicated…

Open Pandora's Box!

I was writing a road trip scene today and felt like I needed a little music while I worked. But since I prefer to write in austere conditions with no distractions to the eyes or ears, I don’t even have a way to play music in my office other than my laptop. So I thought I’d check out Pandora.com, which my husband has been raving about since it debuted on the internet. Guess what? I have a new obsession! Pandora knows me better than I know myself! Pandora understands me at the core! Brace yourself for even more exclamation points!

For those of you who haven’t used Pandora, you type in a couple of your favorite random artists and it figures out what you like. How it works is all very mysterious to me, but damn if I didn’t type in Dave Matthews and Jeff Buckley and have Pandora tell me I’d like Ben Harper. I love Ben Harper! And I hadn’t yet said a word about it, Pandora just knew. Then I added Ray LaMontagne and Alison Krauss and Pandora told me I’d like Matt Costa. I’d never heard of him, but now he’s my new favorite!

This kind of unbridled joy at Pandora’s mind reading skills has been going on all day.

On/Off by Snow Patrol just came on! I’d written this song on my hand a few weeks ago, meaning to buy it, but never got around to it. Did Pandora see that? It’s crazy over here, my friends! Run to Pandora.com and feast your ears. She knows what you like!

Wait…are you kidding me? Now it’s Jason Mraz! Am I that transparent? Are my tastes that obvious?

At what point to you wonder if they’ve planted a chip in your head?

Flashy

When not writing, I’m busy raising two children. Sometimes they astound me–like when seven-year-old Juliet cranks out a Flash animation in less time than it takes me to upgrade my browser. All DNA responsible for this feat comes directly from her father. From me? A love of books and frosting.

Click here for cute flash of Flash.

Must. Go. Make. Stuff. Up.

Today I have to take my own advice and just get my asp in the chair and open my manuscript.

Yesterday I was working on a freelance project that involved far too much of my left brain: reworking citations in an essay bound for an MIT Press anthology. This is dull work, closer to tweaking html code than writing—Chicago Style, MLA Style, Turabian Style, they all have their own weird little rules to follow and translating one to the other is tedious¹⁰. For me, this is the soul-sucking part of freelance writing.

Working on non-fiction projects, especially anything academic, always throws off my fiction writing for a while. After double checking each and every word or date to make sure it follows specific citation style rules, it feels a bit weird to sit down and write with no parameters. I can write a sentence without having to hit the “insert endnote” shortcut key? Really? I can just, you know, make stuff up?

The day before last it was over 80 degrees and yesterday five inches of snow fell on the newly mowed lawn. If the weather can move that quickly from one extreme to the other, why can’t I?

Stalking Your Agent's Other Clients

If you are lucky enough to secure representation by a big-time Literary Agent, here are three things you should never do:

1) Never put your Literary Agent’s name on Google Alerts so that you can be notified every damn time they make a sale or sign a client.

2) Never collect a list of other writers they represent, either culled by disregarding my #1 piece of advice or by typing the agent’s name into Amazon to see which authors thank her/him in their acknowledgments, or by any other cunning method yet unknown to me.

3) If you’ve already gone as far as #2, for God’s sake do not, for any reason, spend an evening web-hunting the writers who have made it on this list. You must realize that writers will only list successes on their blogs/websites, which, after reading, will lead directly to some serious self loathing.

There’s a reason most agents don't tell their clients the names of their other clients. Because reading the chipper websites and blogs of writers recently signed to your agent, all full of hope and promise and – ugh – good news, can do nothing positive for your writing. If you’re looking to get a bleeding ulcer they’re top notch, other than that there’s no reason to do this kind of stalking research.

Maybe this whole path to publication, which for me has been one gigantic, slowly meted dose of discomiture, is designed to toughen you up for when your manuscript is published and gets reviewed. Maybe it’s like how being unable to sleep well while pregnant prepares you for the next decade of sleep deprivation. Or maybe my manuscript just sucks.

I don’t know much but I do know this: Google Alerts is a gateway drug to full-blown peer stalking and the inevitable ego mangling that it induces. I wish I’d never taken that first hit, because now I can’t stop...

The internet isn’t the only place to publish crap.

I live in a small town called Ashland, known for its mineral springs and theater. I grew up here and couldn’t wait to leave when high school was over, but after 16 years away, I couldn’t wait to move back. It was a bit like spawning.

I delivered my children in the same small hospital where I was born, my daughter is the Bellview Bobcat that I was long ago, and I only live a short walk from the house in which I grew up. Because this is a small town, I know the people who bought that house. Decades later they still live there; he was my old English teacher and she's the children’s librarian at our local branch. I go to the library often and almost every time I see her she mentions the cutting board.

I was tortured by my older sister, positively tortured. Ask anyone, they’ll agree. I couldn’t fight back so I struck with words—including some choice ones hidden under the cutting board. I remember the day I carved the cruel words about her there, thinking no one would ever get under the thing. I had just made a cup of Personal Frosting, you know a little powdered sugar, cocoa, butter, and milk, all stirred together in a mug and eaten with a spoon. (Admit it; the frosting is the destination. Who needs cake?) I sat on the kitchen floor and looked up at the cutting board that was pulled out above my head and though, perfect. I can’t remember what she had done that day to piss me off, but my thoughts about her that day are now recorded forever.

Who knew Mrs. C would keep her cookbooks in the cupboard under the cutting board? Who knew she’d enjoy sitting on the kitchen floor next to her open cupboard browsing those books? Who knew she’d ever pull out the cutting board and look up while down there?

I saw Mrs. C again today at the library and the first thing my kids asked her was, “Do you still live in Mom’s old house?” They love the cutting board story, no matter how many times it’s told…

Words live on; be careful where you publish.

My Escher Moment

In Making a Literary Life, the book I mentioned in my last post, author Carolyn See talks about the power of the Charming Note. She suggests a five-day a week habit of two things: 1) either writing 1000 words or doing two hours of revision and 2) sending out a Charming Note to a writer, editor, or agent you admire (that does not ask a favor).

So after I wrote about Making a Literary Life, I thought I’d send Carolyn See a Charming Note about how much I loved it, and include a link to the post. Guess what? She wrote back! How great is it to get a Charming Note responding to my Charming Note about the Charming Note’s author of a book about Charming Notes?

While I felt like an idiot because I implied it was her book that spooked my long-lost friend, and while being described as "chipper" does nothing for my Street Cred®, Ms. See’s Charming Note was a fantastically charming treat:

Dear Christy!

That's the cutest damn thing I ever saw! (But I can't help but wonder what spooked the other woman so much!)

Thank you, dear. You were just so sweet to write it -- and to send it to me. Might it be possible to connect on to my web site? I don't know how to do that, but if I forward it to my web master, might she glue it on somehow?

I love the rest of your blog too. It's so chipper!

Many, many many thanks...

xxx

Carolyn See

It's Just That Good

I’m the kind of person who never misses a meal, even if I have to take beta blockers in order to deal with the social anxiety of sitting with hundreds of strangers. So last year at a writing workshop that I attended without the camaraderie of my writing group, I tried to time it so I’d arrive for dinner right as the dreaded “wine reception” was ending. Unfortunately, when I got there it was in full swing so I had to grab a drink and make a few laps, hoping for someone to grab my arm and say something, anything, to me. While social, even gregarious, in many ways, I am absolutely incapable of walking up to a cluster of strangers and joining in the conversation, especially if the topic is oneself and one’s writing.

Dizzy from my fruitless laps, I took my wine and slipped out of a side door into the wet, black night to wait it out until dinner. I found a fellow writer out there already. She was having a smoke—a very bold choice at a Children’s Writing Workshop. I liked her instantly and we struck up a friendship that lasted through the conference and even beyond; we emailed for awhile and she sent me some new work to edit and I felt like we had a good thing going. Until I sent her a book. It was my absolute favorite book on writing, a gem that I reread at least once a year—Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life. And then I never heard from her again. Not a peep.

I feel weird about it, and I think about her and the book every now and then and get that icky cringe sensation. But I can’t stop giving that book away. If anyone within earshot mentions that they’ve thought about writing, I note their address and send it off. In fact, I sent one off yesterday to a woman I met on my trip to Palenque who is full of stories waiting to be set free. When I was checking out of Amazon I looked through my account history and saw that I had given the book away 16 times—four of those even after it ended a relationship! It’s just that good.

If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to order it in hardcover so you can reread it yearly as I do. Or, if you’re at a Writers Workshop and see a woman walking aimlessly but trying to look as if she has a destination, for the love of God grab her arm and introduce yourself! You might find a box from Amazon on your porch not long after.

Five Writers, Five Days

Today is a very special day. My writer’s critique group has decided to start a blog, and today was the first post. At last night’s meeting we hashed out who would post on what day and I didn’t take into consideration that I’d be following Julie, writer and English teacher extraordinaire. She posted first and set the bar high—including graphics! Now every Friday I’m going to post some lame thing that disappoints everyone who has read her Thursday post.

Anyway, I’m deep into working on an article on the ethics of OB-GYNs pushing Botox® and lipo, so I gotta go. But check out the Lithia Writer’s Collective blog!

The more you think about it, the harder it is.

If I ever had to have a fully rendered image of what I was going to write before I started, I’d never open another document. This took me a long, long time to figure out. Some writers speak so romantically of The Muse, of nighttime dreams that turn into four-pound manuscripts that, in a fluke, are read by important agents, sold for hundreds of thousands, and then become best sellers. Stories like this will make you want to create a seductive environment for The Muse and then wait for her to appear.

For me, The Muse never comes when asked and certainly never drops by; I have to chase Her down with all the intensity of a celebrity stalker. I have to capture The Muse, tie her to a chair, put the chair in a pit, and then, if the bird feeders are full, I can write. Because I’m a writer who doesn’t really know what’s going to happen until it does. Sure, with my current manuscript I have a general idea of plot line, but I also know what I have planned for tomorrow and I’m quite sure that life will interfere and what I imagine will happen will not really be what happens.

Each day I force myself to sit in the chair, force myself to open the document, force myself to hunt and peck my way into a story. And that, my worldwide blog audience of six, is my writing process.

So if you are sitting around waiting for The Muse, I encourage you to just get your butt in the chair. She may not come, but you’ll be there. Put your hands on the keys and begin…

It's about the people, people.

You know when you have so much to say about something that you can’t say anything at all? That’s how I feel about the Chiapas trip. It was both magical in unexpected ways and mundane in disappointing ways, but overall it was an amazing experience in an exquisitely beautiful place. Having ten days to think, without the “real world” of kids, TV, phone, email, and writing, was an enormous indulgence.

I have never been on a group tour, and never thought I would. But for some reason this one appealed to me. My general disdain for tours comes from my deep, dark need for complete control, but by giving up the control of planning the travel I freed myself up in ways I hadn't anticipated. I suppose you don’t really know how anxious being in control can make you until you relinquish it.

One unexpected delight of group travel was meeting like-minded people. I was really surprised at the level of education most travelers had; I suppose I thought since this tour was a Nueva Age thing it would attract the flakier types. I must say, I felt like a dolt with my paltry B.A. in Journalism among the many PhDs, MDs, and JDs. Everyone on the tour was simpatico, but there was definitely a front-of-the-bus group and a back-of-the-bus-gang. I loved the delight of making easy friends; in a way the tour was a pre-screening, a net that caught only those who liked to believe in mystery and magic and the possibility that ancient knowledge can have an impact on our modern lives. I hadn’t had that first-week-in-the-dorm feeling for a long time—that sense that I was meeting with people with whom I was making life-long connections. It was refreshing and restorative.

Most surprising, though, was what it did to my writing. I tried to actively not think about the new manuscript, to put the 45 pages already written on simmer in the back brain. Every once in awhile it would bubble over and I’d note a new idea, turn the heat down, and go back to not thinking about it. By the time I was on the plane home I had a fully flushed out plotline. This never happens. Now I’m anxious to get the thing written and have given myself an outrageous deadline of six weeks for the next 200 pages! Once school gets out my time is not my own and I can’t do much writing, only revising, so I’m running scared from June 13^th. But I can do it!

Okay, so much for not being able to write anything about the trip.

Dazed/Confused

Wow. It´s been quite a ride so far. I´m with a group of Nueva Age people, which has made this trip a real trip. Nothing is as it seems, there is hidden meaning in everything: "tourista" is the spirit clearing your bad energy (it´s the salad, people, stay away from the leafy greens!), the freaky sound of the howler monkey, which is a lot like a thousand Jaguars all roaring at once, is the monkey throwing its etheric body around (it´s called an enlarged hyoid bone, people!), and on and on.

There's also a bit of competition to run up to important looking stones, throw your hands upon them and divine what was going on there back in the day. Pretty hilarious stuff. So today, college pal Peggy (whom I dragged along on this Nueva Age romp with, I´m ashamed to say, not fully disclosing how wacky it might be) and I are staying back at the hotel pool. I want to read and drink freshly squeezed limonada y tequila and listen to the howler monkeys throwing their etheric bodies around.

More later! Adios.