A few of the many favorites that didn't make it into my Blogger profile:

TV Show: The Adventures of Pete & Pete - it's a kid/teen show from the mid-90s, though I didn't see it until 2002 or 2003. It's surreal, brilliant, & hilarious. It also had some amazing guest stars. I was thrilled to discover today that they're finally releasing the first season on DVD next month. Another good Pete & Pete site is here.

Song: I can rarely name a favorite song, but the Flaming Lips song "Do You Realize?" stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it, and was the first song I downloaded from iTunes (even if it did later become part of a car commercial!). The first songs I downloaded were a rather odd, mostly moody collection...see a screenshot. Since then I've mainly been relying on my husband to convert our CDs to digital files.

Play: I already cheated and listed my favorite play (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead) under books. It's intelligent, witty, and shows Hamlet from a different perspective. My high school made it to the state one-act play competition with it my senior year. Unfortunately, I was only an alternate, but did get to play Ophelia in one performance, & got to go on all the trips as a crew member.

Musical: Merrily We Roll Along, a Sondheim musical that apparently bombed badly on Broadway, but blew me away when I saw it at UT in about 1988. The UT production had been brought back for a second run due to popular demand. I'm not sure it would resonate as much for people without theatre backgrounds, but the way it traveled backwards in time, with reprises occurring before the original songs and the characters growing less jaded and more hopeful as they got younger, amazed me, and the female lead did a particularly outstanding job. My favorite musical to perform in (a joke, since I can't sing!) has been Free to Be...You and Me, which I did in a repertory group as a teen and got to do again with some of the same people in 2004. (In the teeny tiny black & white picture on the lower ride side of this page, I'm the teeny tiny person seated at the bottom right.)

Color: Cobalt blue, blue violet, or other similar deep, rich shades of blue and purple. It kills me that Crayola retired the violet blue crayon a few years back. I recently ran across an old one and still thought it was gorgeous.

Restaurant: Don Juan's Romantic Mexican Food, a hole-in-the-wall fast food place in Grand Prairie, TX I've been going to since I was 2. Their bean burritos are possibly my favorite food on earth. Also Candlelite Inn in Arlington, TX, another place I've been going to that long. Many people think of it as a Mexican restaurant or steak place, but I mainly go there for spaghetti with meat sauce. (Check out their pralines, too.) I'd prefer either of these places to an upscale gourmet restaurant any day! In Austin, I'm fond of Chuy's and Kerbey Lane Cafe. (And I don't eat a lot of burgers, but the best are at Snuffer's in Dallas.)

Place: One of the best days in my life was a day I spent all alone in Cardiff, Wales in August 1988. The weather was perfect (odd for Wales, I know), the scenery was beautiful, and I didn't have a care in the world. I still want to "stand on some hillside in Wales" with my husband someday. I also love New Mexico. And Six Flags Over Texas! (And, though it's been a while, I also like being on stage, or backstage.)

I've decided to enable commenting in my journal, so people can leave comments, which scares me somewhat! So please play nice, so I don't have to delete comments or turn them off. And please try to keep any posts kid-friendly. Thanks!

Thursday I visited the Texas Library Association (TLA) conference exhibits with a friend who founded the Austin chapter of SCBWI. I bought a great new book on space (right up my older son's alley!) from Austin author Jane Ann Peddicord, and picked up way more publisher catalogs than I could reasonably carry (especially several blocks back to the car), and my hands and arms are still a bit sore from the bags!

It was interesting to see what's coming out from all the publishers this year, though I also found it daunting. Ever since I looked at all those books and started looking at the catalogs, I've been questioning what I write and whether I'm concentrating on the right things. My quirky stuff doesn't seem quirky enough; my realistic stuff doesn't seem edgy enough (nor do I want it to be edgy). I actually started thinking my best chance for a book contract would be a rhyming picture book, even though they're supposedly the hardest books to sell! I have had success with rhyme thus far. I'm not really giving up on my other stuff, though. In fact, I aim to be a prolific writer because there are so many stories I want to tell, so I need to get cracking!

By the way, I edited my second old journal entry from my last post to add a photo I just found that was taken the same week I wrote it, at a mini-party I threw for getting a decent grade. This has inspired me to write a list of Unusual Things I've Thrown Parties For:

· Getting a B+ when I expected an F
· Groundhog Day Eve
· Thanksgiving (not a turkey dinner, just a pre-holiday party)
· Advent
· Pre-Columbus Day
· Oscar the Grouch's Birthday (June 1)
· My kids' half-birthdays

We also go to Dairy Queen every year on Shakespeare's birthday (April 23). We celebrate both Shakespeare and his contemporary Spenser, whose exact birthdate is unknown and who wrote The Faerie Queene (well, where else would you celebrate a poet whose most famous poem title rhymes with Dairy Queen?!).

Author Linda Joy Singleton has been including some of her high school journal entries in her blog--from the same day of the year but many years earlier. I thought it was such a fun idea I decided to see if I could find anything of my own to post. I found very little that was actually from April of any year, and most of what I did find was too long-winded (pages long!), too boring, too personal or embarrassing, or some combination of those. But I found one from 22 years ago today that is kind of amusing, and slightly embarrassing but not TOO embarrassing. (I promise I didn't always use that many exclamation points.) The most potentially embarrassing thing about it is that all these years later, I'm currently on an e-mail list with 2 of the people mentioned in the entry! But I assume they'd find it humorous.

It seems like I wrote much more in the fall than I ever did in the spring. So, in light of what I wrote yesterday about autobiographical writing, I thought I'd share this entry I found from October 1985. (I don't believe I ever really wanted to write an autobiography, though! I was probably being slightly facetious.)

I've heard that most first novels are autobiographical. So far, none of mine have been. It would be difficult to find many traces of my life in any of the three novels I've written significant portions of so far, or most of the others I've jotted ideas for. However, the one I've been contemplating lately (the YA that would involve a death) would include incidents inspired by events in my own life. I don't want to write about the actual events from my life, or the actual people I knew, partly because that would be weird and seems dangerous, and partly because the actual events were too bizarre and convoluted to be believed in fiction (Greg Leitich Smith has a great blog entry about this). But it's still a very difficult thing to approach, and it's hard to figure out how much of real life I would need to include, or what the most important elements of the story are. I want to include some things I actually wrote back then, because I don't think I could do a better job now of getting those raw, powerful emotions onto paper, especially in the voice of a teenager. But that makes it tricky, because then the character would have to face situations that are somewhat similar to mine without being the same. I also have to think of an ending to it all, and that's hard, too. So, for now I just have ideas swirling in my head, and am leaving most of the writing until later. I definitely need to finish my midgrade novel first in any case!

I recently wrote a crucial scene for the midgrade, though I'm not too happy with the way it turned out. I'm trying to write the book without major revising, just making notes for future revision as I go along, but in this case I may rewrite the scene before moving on. I'm pleased today, though, because I thought of yet another twist I might add that could tie several loose threads from the story together. If it works, it could solve some of the logistical problems I've been having with the story, as well as adding a bit more quirky fun to the manuscript. Here's hoping it does!

This weekend I went to Dallas/Fort Worth to hear award-winning YA author Amanda (A.M.) Jenkins speak on rewriting and revising at an SCBWI meeting there. Her talk was fantastic! I took away a ton of useful insights and information, some of which I can start applying right away. I was a bit amazed to hear such a great talk at a free meeting instead of a paid conference! Before the meeting, I had a nice lunch with Kathryn Lay, author of the new middle grade novel Crown Me!, as well as more than 1,000 (!) short stories and articles. I'm always amazed I've been able to meet so many great writers and learn from them!

Hooray, I wrote 2,460 new words on my stalled middle grade novel today--2 new chapters! I have to stop now (and considering that it's late afternoon, it might be good to finally have some lunch!), but I'm so happy to have gotten past my block on this book, and I know what needs to happen next. I also came up with another idea for the book that will explain a little better why the main character's seemingly goofy problem is such a big deal to her. That will involve some rewriting later, but I'm thrilled to have made a small breakthrough!

I just saw in Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog that she's proudly announcing her first published story "featuring in part a romantic relationship in which no one dies." I had to laugh out loud at that. Especially because I've spent much of this afternoon contemplating (and writing part of) a new novel idea featuring in part a romantic relationship in which someone does die. Yikes!

Speaking of which, today I read Sonya Sones' whole free verse novel One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies while standing in front of the library shelf when I was supposed to be hurrying home so my husband could go to the post office! Oops. I didn't mean to read it...I was just going to look at it, and got so engrossed that I kept reading until I was done. Anyway, I thought it was well done and it gave me hope for my own new idea. I don't think mine would be free verse but it would include poetry and possibly be told in a choppy, somewhat verselike style, and I had also been worrying that it wouldn't be possible to start a book with a death but then go on to other things (like romance), not focusing on the death all that much later on, without seeming callous. But Sones does exactly that and it works great. There were also a couple of passages in the book that I strongly related to on a personal level. Actually, at one point the main character is on a plane, dreaming that her boyfriend comes down the aisle and saves her, and my semi-completed YA novel has a scene with my main character on a bus, daydreaming the same thing! I guess it's a common fantasy. I wrote that because I used to daydream that my crush of the moment would suddenly appear to rescue me from whatever boring class I was stuck in!

I was surprised to find Daniel Pinkwater, a regular NPR commentator & author of about 100 (!) books, in a writers' chat room I popped into last night. He writes the kind of absurd, humorous children's books I especially love, and the books he reviews on the radio become bestsellers. Another writer and I chatted with him for more than 3 hours! It was absolutely fascinating, not to mention entertaining--I felt like I'd gone to a private writing conference. He shared lots of stories and advice, and I found it heartening that even after 35 years as a children's writer and plenty of ups and downs, he was still interested enough in writing to want to discuss it in the middle of the night. One statement he made resonated with me enough that I asked if I could quote him on it, which he said I could: "Seeing your name on a book gets old really fast, but trying to make one that sings all the way through can be endlessly interesting." Now that is something I look forward to, and it also reminds me to keep raising the bar on my own expectations for my writing! Be sure to keep an eye out for his next novel, The Artsy Smartsy Club, which he thinks is possibly his best work yet.

In other news, my 6-year-old, Ryan, created his own little vanity press the other night. He set up a "writing stand" in our living room. The rest of us were supposed to come there and write stories with the pens, pencils, & paper he provided. Then he would make a cover, illustrate the stories, & bind them with staples. (Amazingly he decided not to charge for that service, though he charged 5 cents apiece for sharpening pencils, and managed to need 4 of them sharpened for his illustrations.) It was challenging to write a story on demand while he waited, especially one that would be very short and easy to illustrate, but I wrote an extremely low-conflict story about a pig's journey to Jupiter, with too many pages, and he patiently illustrated the whole thing and made a color cover with the title written in a "fancy font". Too funny! (And knowing Ryan, within a few years he may have invented his own printing press to do the job right!)

Also, my brother in Hollywood is a "featured extra" in an upcoming episode of the TV show Las Vegas. He plays a crook who gets chased through a casino, and he creates a diversion by throwing a stack of $100 bills in the air. Only they aren't ordinary $100 bills--they have his picture on them, and they actually made up fake bills with my brother's picture on them! If my brother ever comes up with a list of 10 things he's done that most people haven't, it would put any list of mine to shame.

The day before yesterday, I went to a picture book workshop given by Lisa Wheeler. It was excellent! I got helpful tips and information out of every bit of it. (And if I may be permitted to brag a little, she used my manuscript as a good example twice, and also told me I can rhyme well! That's big praise coming from one of the queens of rhyme! That's not to say that my manuscript doesn't need plenty of work...but her critique gave me helpful advice for revision.)

Yesterday, I spent much of the day preparing, printing, collating, stapling, correcting, reprinting, and restapling entries for the SmartWriters.com W.I.N. competition and the SCBWI Work-in-Progress Grant competition. I got those out in the mail this morning so that is a lot off my plate! Now let's see if I can put them out of my mind until July (for SmartWriters) and September (for SCBWI), when they announce the winners.

Today I had lunch with a writer friend who should by all rights be the Next Big Thing in children's writing. She's supposed to get back to me next month with a critique of my YA novel that needs revision. I also plan to attend the NC/NE Texas SCBWI chapter meeting later this month to hear noted YA author A.M. Jenkins speak on rewriting & revising the YA novel.

My goals for the rest of this week are to do my taxes and to read the books I mentioned in my previous post. Then I plan to choose one of my unfinished writing projects and tackle it head-on. I also have a poem I'm looking for a home for. I'm trying to decide whether to submit it to a magazine, save it to use in a poetry collection someday, or find some other use for it.

Yesterday I woke up from a detailed and complex dream in which I was acting in a play about a teenage brother and sister. I had a line in my head I had to write down. As I continued drifting in & out of sleep, I kept waking up to write more and more. What I was writing was not what I had dreamed about, but was inspired by thoughts that came out of the dream. I ended up with 544 words towards what seems to be a somewhat edgy short story for an older YA audience. Right after I'd sworn to give up writing short stories, and one day after I'd decided maybe I should start writing more for the 10-14 age range than for older teens! Argh. A story like this seems almost completely unmarketable, but I feel compelled to at least finish it & see what I end up with. (I suppose it could be fodder for a novel if I added a lot of subplots, but that wasn't how it struck me, and I already have too many novels on the back burner!)

This week I finally bought the DVD of Where the Wild Things Are and Other Maurice Sendak Stories. Four of the stories have songs sung by Carole King that are positively infectious--we saw One Was Johnny at a library storytime a few years ago & the song has taken up residence in my brain ever since! My 4-year-old, Kyle, is particularly entranced with In the Night Kitchen, so we've been reading the book of that lately, also. It was also one of my favorites as a child and it makes hardly any sense at all--either that helps explain my love for absurd humor, or my love for absurd humor helps explain why I liked the book! One thing I've noticed is that 4 of the 6 stories on the Maurice Sendak video have characters threatening to eat (or at least cook) other characters, and in one case it actually happens. I'm not sure what to infer from that, but I found it interesting! (Now I don't feel so weird for telling my kids I'm going to gobble them up!)

I'm busy this week preparing writing contest entries and reading picture books for my picture book workshop. Once I'm done with all that, I've got two novels set aside to read: Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, & Crown Me! by Kathryn Lay. I'm eager to get to those!

A lot of writers blogging on LiveJournal have been putting up lists of "10 Things I've Done That Most People Haven't." I've been a bit alarmed reading their lists, because their lives sound much more interesting than mine! In brainstorming about what I might have to put on such a list, I noticed that most of the things coming to mind had to do with forms of transportation. So, without further ado, here are 10 Things I've Ridden On/In That Most People Haven't:

1. A camel


2. An elephant


3. The Judge Roy Scream roller coaster 23 times in a row


4. A train on a boat


5. A bus on a boat


6. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile (you knew that was coming)


7. A hovercraft


8. A parade float (note: wearing a long-sleeved leotard & long pants outside in Texas in July is less than ideal, even if you do get to play a kazoo)


9. Two ocean liners (the Queen Elizabeth 2 & the France, both at age six)


10. An Oscar nominee's limousine on Oscar night (unbeknownst to the nominee, who was busy attending the ceremony!)

Runner-up was riding in a gondola ride over fireworks. I also rode to school on the back of a motorcycle fairly often at age 6 or 7...not quite up to today's safety standards! I have ridden many other forms of transportation, but I have not yet ridden in a helicopter, blimp, or hot air balloon, and I haven't ridden in a tank, though I've been inside of an old one. I also haven't ridden a Zamboni, but two of my characters do!

I really didn't need to see this new TV promo. It sounds way too much like the novel I've had semi-underway for the past, um, 5 years. Two guys and a girl, lack of ambition, food on sticks in ridiculous uniforms at the food court... I can't decide whether to hope the show fizzles & dies before I finish my book, or whether its fizzling & dying would only foreshadow the eventual fizzling & dying of my own story. I was going to say that at least my story doesn't have any precocious young kids in it, but then I remembered that it does! (Maybe not precocious, but at least young.) Argh.

Of course, I know there is nothing new under the sun (least of all that phrase!). I was at the library reading picture books tonight, and just happened to read not one, but two, stories about parents who eventually learn to love playing in the mud, as their children do (The Piggy in the Puddle by Charlotte Pomerantz and Mrs. Potter's Pig by Phyllis Root). That also happens to be the approximate plot of my rhyming story Holly McPolly McDolly McBean, published in Half-Price Books' Say Good Night to Illiteracy anthology in 2001. Though my story is about grass, not mud, and doesn't have any pigs in it... (Or any other animals, though I actually pictured Holly as a rabbit, since I had a rabbit named Holly!) Still, I had hoped to have this food-on-a-stick novel finished and submitted years ago (even had an invitation to submit it in 2002), so it drives me crazy to see this show coming out now, while my novel is still far from done. As it is, I've been toying with changing the whole tone of the novel before I continue writing.

Earlier today I decided to change the format of my journal archives from weekly to monthly, and to put them in reverse chronological order instead of chronological (not a standard Blogger option). Simple, right? For some reason it took hours to get all the formatting right. I'm starting to think I could use an update of the basic HTML skills I learned in 1995! I created my writing site with Netscape Composer the first time, but ever since I've kept it updated just by editing the HTML, and I don't think I've even learned any new HTML since HTML 1.0. I'm surprised it still works at all anymore! Today I had to tweak Javascript and it would have been nice if I'd had a halfway decent idea of what I was doing. But it oddly seems easier to me to just edit the HTML than to have to learn a web design program.

Lack of focus: I keep thinking of the Rolling Stones song "Shattered," but with the word "Scattered" instead. Describing myself. Scattered, scattered...shadoobie. I feel soooo scattered lately and am having trouble focusing on one writing project. I have bits and pieces of many, many projects floating around in my head, yet haven't sat down lately to work on any of them. (Being sick on & off for a month hasn't helped.) My goal for the rest of the month is to get some contest entries prepared and sent in, but haven't even managed to concentrate on that. (Completely unrelated, but in a similar fashion, I always found myself thinking of the Cure song "Fascination Street" while filling out "pagination sheets" in my tech writing job--note the rhyme. I could no more stop that song from getting into my head than I could stop from yawning when someone mentions it. How about you...are you yawning now?)

I've had so much distress floating around my head this week that I thought about writing a list called 50 Reasons to Give Up on Writing. Over the weekend, I've probably had close to that many different thoughts, some related to the market or writing in general (most recently, reading bad reviews that led me to believe my own would be worse), and some related to me and my quirks, leading me to think, "In that case, I might as well just give up." But then, I can't really give up because I have a few insistent reasons to go on--namely: Lydia, Lainie, Dan, Whitney, Miranda, and friends--characters whose stories I feel compelled to tell, even if no one else cares to hear them. Sounds silly but it's true. I will be really unhappy with myself if I never get all these stories out of my head and onto paper. I have to think they're in my head for a reason!

Today I read a midgrade novel called While You Were Out by J. Irvin Kuns. I hadn't heard of it before; it just caught my eye in the library. I thought it was pretty good. Though I really need to be reading picture books in preparation for the picture book workshop I'm going to in 2 weeks!

This morning I went to an SCBWI meeting to hear author/illustrator Janie Bynum talk about book promotion. It was a bit daunting to hear how much authors have to sell themselves. I don't think I'd be nearly as nervous about actually doing a school visit or book signing as I would about having to get visits lined up in the first place!

I finished a new short story last month, but it's already been rejected and I'm not sure there's anywhere else to send it! I meant to stop spending time on short stories, anyway, but it just spilled out. I guess I should be glad none of my other manuscripts has come back recently. I submitted one manuscript in January that I've since decided wasn't quite ready to submit, so I'm feeling a bit uneasy about that. At least I think it was probably 80 or 90% ready...and if the editor doesn't like what I sent, I don't think she'd like an improved version, either.

Interesting grammar tidbit: While writing the paragraph above, I wondered whether to say "none of my other manuscripts HAS come back" or "none of my other manuscripts HAVE come back." I did a little research online and, although a couple of sites said emphatically that "none" must take the singular "has," I also came across this article about that very issue. According to this, the rule is that there is no rule! A Merriam Webster usage guide apparently even says it depends on what the author thinks it should be! In this case I figured it was safer to go with "has," anyway, since "none has" is more widely accepted among people who are likely to nitpick such things. Sorry to bore those who find grammar tedious--but in my former job as a technical writer & editor, I saw fierce battles waged over grammar and usage issues! Somewhere I have a fun book called Mrs. Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins, which debunks a lot of supposed grammar "rules." I'd also recommend Woe is I and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire as amusing grammar-related reads.

My Wienermobile article just came out in the January-February 2005 issue of the SCBWI Bulletin! Better yet, the Bulletin has been newly redesigned, with full-color cover art by Tomie dePaola on this issue, so it's a really sharp-looking publication to appear in. My 6-year-old son was also thrilled to find his photo in the magazine!

I also got 2 rejections in the past 2 days, and wow, were they quick! They were both from e-mail submissions I made on January 16th. One rejection came on the 17th and one on the 18th! But both were friendly and helpful, and I thanked both editors for their quick responses. At least they didn't leave me hanging for months. (My rejection last week came 8 months after the initial submission.) One of the editors also mentioned that my writing was "spot-on" (unlike the topic), and they both said I am welcome to try them again, so that is heartening.

Finally, I finished drafting a new poem last night. I'm not sure if it's a poem or an attempt at a picture book, but I hope to figure that out as I polish it!

The only resolutions I've made for 2005 are: (1) to get rid of at least 1,000 things, and (2) to finish my novel, Purple Panic. With any luck (or rather, discipline...), I'll knock both of those things out in the first half of the year and move on from there!

Unfortunately, I got a rejection yesterday for a short story. I like the story a lot, but can't think of another place to send it. So, I have to brainstorm about a new market for that one, and meanwhile, I sent a status request about another short story submission yesterday, and submitted a picture book manuscript.

I'm looking forward to a picture book workshop with Lisa Wheeler in March. I know it's going to be a lot of fun, not to mention helpful! I submitted my manuscript The Zoo That Grew for her to critique, since she's known for rhyme and it's a rhyming manuscript. I already know some of the problems with the manuscript, but haven't figured out how to solve them, so I'm hoping her critique will give me some insight. In the meantime, she's assigned us a lot of "homework" of picture books to read in preparation for the workshop, so I need to get going with that!

In other news, the youngest of my 2 sons is turning 4 this week. I would have sworn I had a baby just yesterday...this age is a lot of fun, though! We're celebrating Friday with Spider-Man cupcakes in his preschool class, followed by a Lion King party. He's been counting down to his birthday for a couple of weeks now! (And with the help of his new Spider-Man watch, he's also telling us the time every, oh...half-minute or so!)

I made a sale today! Last week I queried the SCBWI Bulletin to see if they'd be interested in a short article about my "Wienerbookmobile" experience. After getting a go-ahead, I emailed my article to them yesterday, and they said yes! Hooray! (And remember how I once had an article in ByLine about how much of my writing has been inspired by fast food? I had to chuckle to myself thinking of how the Wienermobile is the ultimate fast food...a hot dog going 65 mph!)

I can proudly say that I have now ridden in a large rolling hot dog. It was an absolute blast, we gave away nearly 300 books, and the jingle "Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener," which both of my kids had the opportunity to belt out over the loudspeaker, will probably be in my head forever! While they're still online, check out these sausage...I mean, links:

Austin American-Statesman article
Suburban newspaper article (we made the front page of this one!)Short article/transcript from local TV news station

What a day, what a week! And what a day it will be tomorrow. This celebrity lifestyle is so tiring. By celebrity, of course, I mean my moment of local fame as a winner of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile for a day. First off, I found out there was a press release about me on the Austin library's web site today. And this morning the local Fox news channel, KTBC, and the Wienermobile came to my house by 6:15 am so they could tape a segment on my win for their live morning broadcast. I survived it! My kids even got on TV, and my kindergartener had a good excuse as to why he was late for school! But tomorrow, instead of just relaxing until the Wienermobile picks us up at 9:30, I have to drive to the NBC station, KXAN, around 7:00 am or earlier to be there for an early morning interview on their morning news. Then it's off for a full day of riding in a chauffered Wienermobile and distributing books, with more news stations and newspapers slated to attend. (Who knew?!) We have about 300 books for our book giveaways, everything from board books to young adult novels, and I hope it's enough... If it ends up being way more than enough, we'll find someplace good to donate the rest. I have spent much of the week shopping for books, taking price tags off, boxing them up, etc. But now, after 2 nights in a row of about 4 hours sleep, I must get some rest before having to get up early again!

Oh, and speaking of the Wienermobile chauffers, they are actually called "hotdoggers" and are basically goodwill ambassadors for Oscar Mayer, which means they have to be very friendly and personable, and to enjoy making wiener puns such as "Have a bunderful day." Since our hotdogger team was going to be here all weekend, we offered to take them to dinner tonight at The Oasis, an Austin restaurant legendary for its view. We did all meet for dinner there and had nice food and conversation, but one of our kids started feeling sick and the other turned into a maniac by the end of dinner, so I hope our hotdoggers aren't scared to be stuck with us all day tomorrow!

So much to report! Where to start? Hmm...

Writing: I got my copies of The First Line with my story in it, and was very impressed with the whole publication! I felt honored to be included.

Reading: In a strange turn of events for me, I've been reading some fiction written for adults instead of kids. I read The Nanny Diaries last weekend and greatly enjoyed it--laughed out loud a lot, but also cried at the end. (As pure fiction it wouldn't have moved me so much, but I assumed much of it was a fictionalized composite of real experiences, and in that light it made me sad for the children whose eventual therapy will scarcely be able to undo their fear of forming attachments.) Right now I'm reading something completely different--Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, which Salon described as "Harry Potter meets Jane Austen." I'm 317 pages into it and still less than halfway through! It has 782 pages of fairly small type. I'm finding it quite delightful, though, and haven't had trouble staying engaged with it (in fact, I'm anxious to get back to it right now). Oh, and on the subject of fiction for kids, Austin writer Greg Leitich Smith's novel, Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo, mentioned earlier in this journal, just won the Teddy Children's Book Award for Long Works from the Writers' League of Texas. Congrats, Greg, and for everyone else, check it out if you haven't read it yet!

Music: Speaking of winning, my husband recently won concert tickets to a Sting/Annie Lennox concert, including passes for a meet & greet with Sting before the show. We went to the concert in Dallas this past Sunday night. I had always thought that if I met someone really famous they would just seem like an ordinary person, but Sting really did seem like a rock star to me! (He was nice, though.) It was the first "big" concert my husband and I had ever been to together, so it was a fun way to celebrate our (gasp) 13th anniversary last week!

Wieners: Speaking even more of winning, Oscar Mayer recently held an "Oh, I Wish" essay contest, in which 50 people nationwide would win a day in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, based on what they said they would do with it. I said that as an aspiring children's writer, I have a passion for literacy and would like to use it as a bookmobile, to pass out free books to kids. And I won!! On Saturday, October 9th, my family and I will be riding around town in the Wienermobile! I'm nervous about the publicity, but I adore the Wienermobile (that's for you, Jason) so I'll deal with it! As plans currently stand, we'll visit two local libraries to donate new children's books both to the libraries and to kids in the parking lots, though it's still possible we could end up going to other locations. I'm also hoping to get some of my writing/SCBWI friends involved. If you are near the Austin area, stay tuned for more info & turn out to support the causes of wiener vehicles and literacy! ;-)

Good news, bad news, and randomness--> Good: My 3-year-old survived his dental surgery today and seemed back to his normal self by bedtime (can't be too out of sorts if he's jumping on the bed, huh?!), and Once Upon A Time is going to publish another of my articles. Hooray! Bad: I got a rejection today on a manuscript I had high hopes for. (But Good: the editor complimented my writing and said she'd be happy to look at my next manuscript.) Random: I won an iPod! I wanted one really badly, so I'm thrilled.

Another sale! And oddly, it's a short story for adults again, which isn't something I write very often. That makes two this summer! A few months back, I saw a blurb about a literary journal called The First Line. They provide an opening sentence for each issue, and writers must submit stories that all begin with that sentence. That sounded like a fascinating writing exercise (as well as a cool read!), especially because the sentence for this fall's issue was so specific and interesting: "I was born Rosa Carlotta Silvana Grisanti, but in the mid-Eighties I legally changed my name to Eve." I wrote a story beginning with that line, submitted it shortly before the August 1 deadline, and got an acceptance on August 13! Wow. The editor also emailed me today to ask if I'd like to submit my young adult novel for consideration by a new publishing company they are starting. That is very intriguing, of course, and I will probably take him up on it. I am admittedly not sure how I'd feel about being published by a brand new press...but it's certainly nice to be asked!

I survived my son's birthday party and we've gotten through the first week of kindergarten, my other son's first dental appointment (but he needs dental surgery--eek!), and even a call for federal jury duty this week (I wasn't assigned to a jury, but it was a wild case involving multiple bank robberies!). I'm happy to say that my son's castle cake turned out very well, which is good since I was up until 3:30 am the morning of the party, working on the cake!

I have a new manuscript and I'm not even sure what it is--picture book or magazine story--though I'm hoping it could be a picture book. And I have no idea what to do with it. I went to the bookstore last night and spent at least an hour looking through the picture books, but found it all pretty disheartening. I couldn't find many that were similar to my picture book manuscripts at all, and also couldn't find many books by the particular publishers I was interested in, other than some classics and a few other books that were completely different from mine in tone and style. The ones that appealed to me most were mostly from publishers that don't take unsolicited submissions. And I didn't see any books from my local or online writer friends who have published picture books. Yet there are, quite frankly, a great many books on the shelves that I'd have no interest in buying for my own young kids. I did find one that cracked me up, Alison McGhee's Countdown to Kindergarten (maybe I just liked the author's name, LOL!), and got that for my son who's starting kindergarten in 11 days. Most books for soon-to-be-kindergarteners don't apply well to a child who has been in preschool for years, can already read & do math, etc., but this hilarious story of a girl who is panicked because she can't tie her shoes seemed like a good match for him. (He cracked up about the line "shoes are not canoes," and I find the art by Harry Bliss to be hysterical!) Anyway, maybe I should just stick to longer fiction, but I have these stories that come to me, so I'd like to do something with them!

And speaking of longer fiction, I also had a new idea for a novel while lying in bed the other night trying to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like getting up to write down the great opening lines I came up with (I normally keep paper and a light-up pen on my nightstand, but alas, they were not to be found...), and the lines are gone now. I recall the title and the vague idea for the novel, but I think I'd developed it a bit further in my head and now I don't have much to go on. I'll have to brainstorm some more, as I think it could be kind of powerful, but it would be more experimental and difficult than most of the novels I've tried writing! It's not like I need another novel idea when I already have about 8 on the back burner waiting to be written (or completed), but there it is. Maybe I'll save it for National Novel Writing Month this November, assuming I'll be able to participate this year!

Patience certainly helps in the writing business.... I've had a novel out to a publisher for more than 6 months now, a short story out to a magazine for more than 3 months, and a picture book out for just under 3 months (not to mention the story I sent to a magazine a year ago & have given up hearing back about!). I try to keep busy writing other things while I'm waiting, but still can't help but check the calendar occasionally!

I got quite a bit done yesterday. I spent way too long dealing with printer problems, but finally got the invitations and envelopes printed for my son's upcoming 6th birthday party, and got those mailed out. The theme is "Knights, Princesses, and Bouncy Castles!" I designed the invitations on the computer to save money, but ended up spending tons of time on them, and just as much money (with the inkjet greeting card paper and all the ink I must have used for the many failed printing attempts) as I would have spent to buy professionally printed ones! At any rate, I also wrote a bio for the Tall Tales Press anthology and sent that off, and finished polishing a story I'm submitting to a small literary magazine, and submitted that in the evening, along with another bio I had to write for that one. Then later at night, I started making some revisions on a children's story I've never been able to find a market for, but soon decided it was a lost cause--I decided I didn't even like it much! I still may rework the idea, but I'd want to start nearly from scratch. And last of all, I submitted an entry in a contest to win a day in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile! The Wienermobile has to be one of the coolest vehicles ever. I said I'd like to use it as a bookmobile, to distribute free books to kids.

Finally some good news! My quirky story "Falling Through the Quacks" received an honorable mention in the Hidden Talents short story contest from Tall Tales Press (a Canadian contest, though I'm not Canadian), and will be published in their Tall Tales and Short Stories Vol. II anthology this September! I really like the story and it had gotten notice in a contest before, but I wondered how I'd find a home for it, considering that it's a romantic humor story involving a dancing duck! It's about adults, not kids, but is appropriate for a general audience. This will be my second fiction publication, so it's a nice confidence booster for my fiction writing!

Bummer. I had sent a short story to Seventeen magazine, hoping they might still publish occasional fiction (as mentioned in Writer's Market), even though I hadn't seen it in their pages recently. I just got a phone call from a very nice woman there, thanking me for my submission but letting me know they don't publish fiction anymore. A rejection by phone was a new one on me, but it actually seemed much friendlier than getting one by mail. Which I also got this week...my midgrade story came back to me so fast I can hardly believe they had time to read it! I don't think I'll be going out of my way to write more short stories soon, as there are so few markets for them anymore. I have no idea what to do with the midgrade story now, since even the newly edited version is too long for most relevant markets. Too bad, as I still like it!

Someone just told me about freecycle.org, where you can link up with other people in your area to give away useful items you no longer want or get items other people no longer want. We have a ton of stuff we no longer need, like baby furniture, an old couch, etc., so I'm thrilled to find a way to ensure it can get to just the person who actually wants or needs it, without them having to pay for it! I already signed up.

Hooray, I finally have that midgrade short story revised to my satisfaction! It involved throwing out pretty much all of the new stuff I'd added a couple of weeks ago, even though I'd thought that stuff strengthened the story at the time. But I do think this new version works better and just seems to have more purpose to it than the older versions. I'm submitting it to a magazine tomorrow, and also submitting it and a YA story to ByLine's Juvenile Short Story Contest.

A few weeks ago, my husband left an old pair of sneakers on the porch after wearing them to mow the lawn, and a toad took up residence in one of them. He was there most of the day for about a week and a half, and we grew rather attached to seeing him there. We named him, not surprisingly, Schubert, since he lived in a shoe. (There was an old toad who lived in a shoe...) Anyway, this week he disappeared. For 4 or 5 days in a row, there was no sign of him, and we assumed he'd just moved on. But this afternoon, there he was in the shoe again! The kids were thrilled and we hope he decides to hang around this time, though it does meaning leaving old shoes on the porch!

2,758 total words today on my novel, which isn't too shabby, even if it's not as many as I'd hoped for. Too bad they seem rather disjointed at the moment, but, as I have to keep reminding myself, that's what revisions are for.

And speaking of revisions, I also did a revision on that midgrade short story, but ended up adding 500 words to it! Which makes it at least 180 words too long for my target market, and up to 800 words too long for many other markets! Yikes. I'm not sure there will ever be a final and definitive version of this story!

I've had so little writing time lately that my goal for today was to hole up in our excuse for an office and write for 10 hours. My husband found ways to keep the kids busy, taking them out for haircuts and ice cream, etc., but I had a hard time getting started. I didn't manage to get into the office until 2:00 pm, and didn't write a word of my midgrade novel unil 4:00! However, I've made pretty good progress since, adding another 2,000 words to the novel so far. That brings the total word count up to nearly 13,000. It's hardly the finished product I had hoped to have by this point in the year, but at least it's going somewhere! And something just happened in it that I wasn't expecting, so we'll see where that leads.

Also on my "to write" list is yet another revision of the midgrade short story I just revised earlier this month! It needs a change of focus to fit the market I hope to send it to soon, though I'm not sure yet how that might work. And on my "to read" list are 2 novels I just bought from Amazon.com: The City of Ember by Jeanne duPrau, and Winchell Mink: The Misadventure Begins by Steve Young. They both look fantastic in completely different ways.

My poem "High Dive" is up at Guideposts for Kids now--it was actually one of their two featured cover stories last week!

This past weekend, I went to a novel writing workshop led by D. Anne Love, author of The Puppeteer's Apprentice and many other novels. I got a lot out of it! Much of it was about plotting, which is probably my weakest point as a writer. I was worried that learning yet another plotting technique would only confuse me more, as I've already got too much conflicting information about plotting swimming around in my head, but was thrilled to discover that the "Writer's Journey" plot structure she outlined (based on a book by Christopher Vogler) fits the middle-grade novel I'm writing very well. Comparing the ideas I have for the novel now against that structure, I was able to figure out more of how the novel should develop. The young adult novel I have submitted, on the other hand, can't fit into that structure by a long stretch, as far as I can see...which would be fine with me, except that I wish it had some plot structure! ;-) Seriously, I'm realizing more & more how plot-deprived it is, but want to wait for feedback on it before I start rethinking it too much.

I also had a couple of really good writing-related conversations with other writers this week, one over lunch and one at the novel writing workshop. As my writer friends shared their own struggles and asked some really good, pointed questions about my work, they helped me clarify my writing priorities and to think of ways I can deepen and strengthen the projects I'm working on. Between those conversations and the workshop, I have pages full of new notes about my writing projects, and I'm feeling pumped!

Other than that, it's been so busy around here lately! Besides my writing workshop this weekend, my kids had 2 birthday parties to attend (one of which I also attended), we had a reunion of a graduate student reading group we were involved with in the mid-to-late 90s, and I'm currently taking a cake decorating class and also being dragged into scrapbooking by a couple of my writer friends. (I'm still iffy on the scrapbooking, but I like the company!) And as usual, the kids' summer activities (gymnastics, swimming, Vacation Bible School, etc.) are taking up lots of time and energy, as is the library's summer reading club. But it's all good!

Last weekend I went to another excellent SCBWI event, featuring Simon & Schuster editor Alyssa Eisner, author/writing instructor Kristi Holl, and author April Lurie, in a beautiful lakeside setting. The attendees were all writers, not illustrators, and as an icebreaker, we were asked to bring a sample of our writing, something to illustrate it, a true author bio, and a fake artist bio, with any sort of display we wanted. I went kind of nuts over all the cool paper choices at the craft stores, and ended up displaying my poem "Inside Out House" on a spiral-themed corkboard, with scenes from the switched inside and outside of the house depicted (thanks to what I termed my "gratuitous use of clipart") on either side of a tri-fold card. Everyone voted for their favorite display, and I ended up winning second prize, an autographed copy of Sid Fleischman's autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid. Cool! The event itself was, of course, informative and inspiring. Thanks to the writing exercises Kristi Holl shared, I also created a great new character while there, to go in another novel I want to write someday.

At the event, I bought April Lurie's novel Dancing in the Streets of Brooklyn. I started flipping through it the next day, and got so hooked I couldn't put it down until I'd read the whole thing! About the same thing happened to me a few days later, when I picked up Greg Leitich Smith's novel Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo at the bookstore and began to read it. I had to leave the store shortly afterwards, but felt compelled to buy the book so I could keep reading it. They're very different types of books, but both terrific!

Last week I finished a draft of a young adult short story I'd been stuck on for a couple of years--unfortunately, there's almost no market for YA short stories anymore, and this one is odd (as is typical for me...), so now I'm not sure what to do with it. But I guess I'll try sending it out this week. Meanwhile I'm starting to get antsy about the novel manuscript I sent out 3 months ago...& am thinking I need to focus on my midgrade novel again. Lately my kids have made it difficult for me to focus on anything! But I discovered when working on my "art" project for the SCBWI event last weekend that I worked really well in our "office." It's a spare bedroom/junk room that houses a desk but no computer at the moment (our only working computer is my laptop), and I've never actually written in there before (usually my laptop is truly on my lap, as it is while I'm typing this!), but I think I'll see about setting it up as my office. I need some change in perspective!

There's a photo from our January SCBWI retreat online at author Vivian Vande Velde's website. I'm second from the left in the back row.

I'm currently awaiting a packet of manuscripts from the San Gabriel Writer's League contest, as one of several judges in the children's writing category. This will be my first time to judge a contest. Should be interesting!

The retreat was great! It was indeed the energizing experience I was hoping for, and I'm newly excited about returning to some of my writing projects. The most rewarding moment of the weekend came when several critiquers, including two of the speakers at the retreat, gave me excellent and positive feedback on the midgrade manuscript I'd pretty much given up on after a negative critique at last year's retreat. Now I can't wait to jump back into it...as soon as I get my young adult novel-in-progress off my plate for a while, that is! My next writing goal is to get that novel in shape to submit, and then I'll focus on the midgrade manuscript for a while. At any rate, I enjoyed the retreat so much I've already printed out a registration form for a novel writing workshop in June!

I've just had a fantastic week and a half participating in a children's theatre production for the first time in about 20 years. I performed in a Creative Arts Theatre & School alumni production of the kids' show Free to Be...You and Me, which was truly a blast, despite a very hectic schedule with one week of rehearsals and three performances, all mixed in around the holidays and family visits out of town. (Kudos to my wonderful husband for playing Mr. Mom much of the time while I did this!) There's even a small picture of me with many other cast members in this week's Dallas Observer.

And now it's time to turn my sights back to "real life" and also to my writing. I think the theatrical experience will prove to rejuvenate my writing, as it got me directly involved in relating stories to kids (the real kids in the audience, including my own kids, who loved it), showed me how much children's theatre really did influence my writing, and also reminded me once again how it felt to be a kid! It also reminded me, at a time when things had begun to dry up for me creatively, how much more to life there can be than the dull daily grind, and gave me a fresh dose of the joy of creativity. Now I'm raring to go! Which is good, because I have a weekend writing conference/retreat coming up in less than 2 weeks! I'll be going to the Austin chapter of SCBWI's "Mind, Body, Pen" retreat, with editors, authors, and illustrators in attendance, and it promises to be another energizing experience (and thanks again to my husband for covering home base while I go!).

Next stop: the January 2004 Austin SCBWI retreat. I have to get a writing sample out for critique by tomorrow and am still going back and forth about what to send. I've had so much critiqued already that nothing stands out--I'm not sure whether to send my best work or something I'm really stuck on and need help with. I'm also not even sure what type of manuscript to send--a picture book, novel excerpt, or even my previously lambasted chapter book manuscript (I still keep hoping it can be salvaged!). In any case, the retreat should be great, with Harper Collins editor Rosemary Brosnan, novelist Vivian Vande Velde, and picture book author Marsha Hayles. I can't wait! And in completely unrelated news, last week I won a really cool Panasonic electronics package valued at over $1,000...I can't wait for that to come, either!

I sent my short story "Ending Some of It" to another contest today. Meanwhile, I have one day to figure out whether or not to do NaNoWriMo this year. It was great for me last year, but so far this year, I don't have a well-formed idea to take off running with on Saturday. The complicating factor is the rule that you must create a new novel project for NaNoWriMo, rather than working on something you've already started. I have plenty of projects I've already started that I'd like to work more on, but nothing new that's really calling my name. I have a few backburner ideas that would require too much research, back story, or whatever to blast through a quick draft of. I had one other idea I thought I could do, but so far I have too many conflicting ideas for it, and can't settle on the main character, and without a clear idea of my main character, there is no story! So, we'll see. I want to participate because it's so much fun and so energizing, but I don't think I'd be energized by working daily on an idea I didn't care about.

My light verse writing has paid off again... Yesterday I found out I won the grand prize--a $100 gift certificate to Savers thrift stores--in the Savers.com haiku and limerick contest. Too funny! I submitted 2 haikus & 5 limericks, but it was one of the limericks that won. I was shocked when they told me they'd received 500 entries!
(My winning limerick was:
My boyfriend is cool as can be,
and awfully smart as you'll see.
He does me great favors
by shopping at Savers,
so he can spend more bucks on me!)

I returned from vacation last night & was thrilled to find another envelope from Guideposts for Kids in my mailbox, with a bright yellow "YES!" sticker on it. This one was an acceptance for my poem "High Dive." I'm thrilled to get some good news after a dry spell--I guess this is a good way to, er..., dive back in (groan)!

Whew! I read 4 books this week--the 3 mentioned in my last post, and also If I Live to Be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians by Neenah Ellis (based on an NPR radio series), which gave me a lot of food for thought. Between all of those books and the ones I've read to my kids, I finished 2 more 400-minute reading logs for the library summer reading club, which ends tomorrow. I also subbed one of my short stories for adults yesterday. So now I have very little hanging over my head to keep me from working on my novel(s)! I did read through nearly all of my Chasing Monday novel this week and was a bit horrified by its remaining need for plot development...which may be why I buried my nose in other books all week! But now I must get back to it.

I got a couple of submissions out this week--a picture book manuscript and a short story. Now I'm trying to revise one other picture book and a YA novel, and neither one is going as smoothly as I'd wish! It's so hard to know how to change a story to make it better, especially when it's not a matter of just polishing or tightening the words, but really requies a plot makeover. In both cases I have some idea what's wrong and what kinds of things to work on, but can't figure out the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of how to work on those things. Any little change starts a chain reaction that affects the rest of the book, so I'm trying to think everything through thoroughly first, and that's easier said than done!

Meanwhile, I've also been trying to do some reading, especially with the library's summer reading club still in full swing. I read Gail Giles' Dead Girls Don't Write Letters a couple of days ago, and today I checked out Linda Sue Park's When My Name Was Keoko and Stephanie S. Tolan's Surviving the Applewhites, as well as James McBride's memoir The Color of Water. I read fast, usually a book in a day, but how I'm going to read all these while also writing a couple of books and watching 2 small and very active children all day, I'm not quite sure!

I finally got the "Mom's Chair" essay revised and sent back out to Welcome Home tonight. I hope they'll like the revision! It feels so good to get it done, and also to possibly make two sales from one article! Now I need to get back to the books I'm working on writing, though I've also got a lot going on at home right now. Including, unfortunately, a broken air conditioner that's been leaking through the downstairs ceiling, so we had to turn it off for tonight, which is quite unpleasant in July in Texas!

I was surprised last week when Welcome Home magazine contacted me about publishing my "Mom's Chair" essay, which I'd submitted to them 17 months ago! I had eventually assumed they weren't interested, and recently sold it to a Chocolate for a Woman's Soul anthology. However, the anthology guidelines allow me to sell it elsewhere as long as I don't sell it to a competing anthology, so this should work out. Welcome Home wants it revised with a somewhat different focus, and they need it fairly soon to get it into the issue where it will be most relevant, so I have a lot of work to do! And not much time to do it, with summer keeping me incredibly busy. But it's neat that I may get an unexpected sale! I have some other pieces I need to get circulating again, too.

My silly poem, "Inside Out House," is up on the Guideposts for Kids site! I sold it to them nine months ago, and while it was my sixth acceptance, it was my first sale for actual money instead of just copies or gift certificates. And since I sold that one, I've sold six other pieces for pay (and one more for copies and a gift certificate)! The funny thing is, without knowing they were about to publish the poem this week, I was just polishing up a new poem to submit to them today or Monday! We'll see how that goes.

I've been so busy (and harried!) lately that I haven't been working on my novel after all, but I am working on a new poem. I'm a bit stuck on it right now, but my mind is mulling it over... and mulling over some novel-related stuff, too, even though I haven't been actively working on it. I'm still trying to get my new computer all set up, and in the meantime I've hardly been online at all (especially with e-mail, since I don't have a mail program configured on the new PC yet and I can barely get the other PC to start). At least I've been reading a bunch of children's books, as my kids are enrolled in summer reading clubs and I'm reading them tons of books for that! (My 4.75-year-old is also trying to read 15 books on his own--reading simple picture books and easy readers aloud to me--for one of the clubs, and he's read 5 so far! I'm proud of him!)



My 4-year-old reading to his 2-year-old brother (upside down, even!)

Woo hoo! I finally got my new computer yesterday! My old one has been dying a painful death for a long time. Both computers are laptops, and the screen of the old one is literally hanging on by one thread (or rather, cable)! Not to mention the many other problems it has, including shutting off accidentally several times a day. Having a laptop that can actually stay on when it's moved will be great for my writing. Now if I can just get all my old stuff transferred over to the new one & organized...not too fun, but worth it!

Cool, I sold a poem! When I got back from vacation tonight, I was a bit disheartened to find one of my SASEs in the mailbox, from a submission to Purpose magazine. But instead of finding a rejection inside, as I expected, I found a check! I wrote the original version of the poem, "Supplication," probably ten years ago, though the version that sold is slightly different. I've had several rhyming poems accepted in the past, but this is my first sale of a non-rhyming poem.

My humor article, "Fast Food for Thought," came out this week in the June 2003 issue of ByLine. They misspelled my name (Allison instead of Alison), but I was happy to see it in print, anyway! I haven't yet started that 40-day novel writing challenge I was talking about, but I may do it as a June challenge instead, with the hope of finishing my draft by the 4th of July.

I'm thinking of challenging myself to finish a draft of one of my novels by June 30th. That would be 40 days, starting tomorrow. It will already be 3 years in June that I've been working on it! But this June will be a difficult month to do that, with my kids' summer schedules. I may not have any daytime hours to write, so my family would have to be very supportive of my writing in the evenings! We'll see what happens. I seem to work better sometimes with a challenge and a deadline.

I went to the 2003 Austin SCBWI Editor Spring Thing conference today. It was another good conference and a positive experience for me all around. Helped me get back into a writing frame of mind, too!

Now I have a lot of thinking to do about my two very different novel projects, and I'm not sure which one I need to work on more! Ideally I'd like to have both ready for submission by the end of this year, but that may be unrealistic. And I'm even beginning to rethink the whole plot of the one I already have drafted! Eek.

I'm still alive! And I got amazing news today. Based on a few sample chapters, an editor at a major publishing house wants to see my whole YA novel! It's the novel I have a complete draft of, but the editor doesn't want to see it for a while due to her other obligations, so now I have to figure out whether to do the heavy revisions I was considering before sending it, or just to send her what I have! I've had major, major writer's block lately, so this certainly helps to jump start my interest in writing again! As should the conference I'll be attending this weekend. Anyway, I've been jumping up & down today!

What a lovely surprise--I got my first piece of "fan mail" today! It was actually from someone I know slightly, an old high school & college friend of my husband's who now lives in another state and saw my essay in Welcome Home (she must've gotten her copy before I got mine!). Anyway, that was a fun piece of mail.

I also got a certificate in the mail saying my "Mom's Chair" essay--the one that recently sold to Chocolate for Women--had won First Honorable Mention in the short nonfiction category of the San Gabriel Writers' League writing contest. The category is quite broad, so it's good to get any notice at all! I was rather nervous to read my judging sheets for the other pieces I'd entered, but they were pretty good overall. I cringed that someone had tried to edit my rhyming manuscript--messing up the rhythm that I know scanned well--so that actually made me feel better about not placing in that category! I was also pleased that a judge wrote on my YA chapter that it was a "bright spot" in their stack of manuscripts!

I was pleasantly surprised today to get 5 copies of the April issue of Welcome Home in the mail, featuring my humor essay, "By Any Other Name." I hadn't known when it would be published. The funny thing is that they published it along with a photo of two young boys who are about the same ages as my sons...and the older one has glasses, just like my older son, but of course they aren't my sons & it'll probably confuse the relatives! :-) They did change a couple of sentences slightly in ways that sound awkward to me, but oh well...it's mostly just as I wrote it, and it's always great to see something I wrote in print!

I got a frustrating rejection today on an adult fiction story... I'm quite sick today & barely managed to change out of my pajamas at 3:15 to trudge out to the mailbox, & seeing my SASE in there didn't make me feel much better! ;-) The rejection said, "too short for us," which bugged me because they say they take stories of 2,000+ words, and this one was 1,993 words, which to me is approximately 2,000 words. True, I wasn't really thinking about word count when I mailed it, or else I would have fleshed it out a bit first--this was a second sub to the magazine after my first was returned with a request that I send more, and I just sent the best story I had ready--but if I'd added 7 or 10 or 25 words before sending it, would that really have made a difference? It probably wouldn't even take up more room in the magazine if I had. (In truth, I had just cut a few hundred words from it earlier to get it short enough to enter in a contest, though I don't think I kept the wordier draft!) Oh well, whatever. Now back to resting! Being sick is no fun, especially when you have preschoolers underfoot!

I finally filed my taxes yesterday, over a month after starting them, because I was debating whether or not to call my writing a business. I eventually decided to take the plunge, which hopefully won't send up too many red flags!

I also finished two of my book projects this week and got a contract for a third. Ha...I doubt I even have to say "April Fool" for you to see through that one! I only wish any of that were true!

After finding out yesterday that my essay is a finalist in a contest, I was empowered to try again to find a market for it (the contest prizes don't include publication). There is an anthology series called Chocolate for Woman (Chocolate for a Woman's Soul, etc.), and I decided it couldn't hurt to submit my essay, even though I wasn't sure it would be quite what they wanted. I e-mailed it to the editor last night, and got an acceptance for it this morning!! That's got to be my fastest acceptance ever. If all goes well, my essay will appear in the next edition of the anthology, to be published in 2004. Hooray!

Oh, cool. I just found out my essay "Mom's Chair" is a finalist in the short non-fiction category of the San Gabriel Writers' League contest. It's gotten good feedback from people I've shown it to, but I've never found a home for it, or even a good potential home for it. I submitted it to one magazine & still haven't heard back 14 months later, so I'm pretty sure I'm not going to! Now I'm kicking myself for forgetting to enter it in the personal essay contest I meant to in January!

This week I once again dreamed that I sold a book--a rhyming picture book about fathers, which apparently had a unique take on things. I was thrilled as I looked forward to seeing a book with my name on the shelves & feeling like a "real" writer, & felt lucky because I'd written it in one day & would be getting a nice amount of money for it. However, I was a little concerned that the publisher was a small, possibly fly-by-night company called "Dollar Books"!

My 4-year-old is so funny. A few minutes ago, after I told him he must be tired because he kept dropping things, he threw some small toys across the room while acting silly. When I told him not to throw things, he happily excused his behavior by saying, "When I'm tired I don't make the best decisions."

My children's writing finally got some recognition in a ByLine contest. Two of my picture book manuscripts, If I Were Little and The Zoo that Grew, received honorable mentions in their latest Children's Story or Picture Book Contest. I know that both need a bit of work, so I'm happy that they were noticed at all! (Now I guess I need to go work on my short stories that didn't get mentions!)

While everyone is waiting with bated breath (or beeted breath...) for me to finish my beet-related book, let me direct you to the web site of my online friend Chérie B. Stihler, who has another veggie-related book, The Giant Cabbage: An Alaska Folktale, available for purchase right now. She has lots of fun cabbage-related stuff on her site, including a "dress the cabbage" game. And take note: she has Girl Scout cookies, and is not afraid to send them! ;-) When I sent her a cabbage lady decoration I happened to have (yes, one can just "happen to have" cabbage lady decorations), she responded with a treasure chest of Girl Scout cookies, candy, Alaskan toys & goodies, & even some beety treats! The least I can do is plug her book!

As for me, I'm not writing too much at the moment. The world situation has got me down, as it probably has most of us. But I do believe we need stories, and hope, and fun, to get us through life and hard times, so I'm sure I'll be back on track before long.

I got another "good rejection" today. Though that sounds like an oxymoron, it really was good. It said, "Very nice. Not what I need right now, but do send others." So I've already got another submission going out to that editor today! Here's hoping!

Happy Birthday to my husband!!

As for me, I just entered a couple more contests, and I think I'm done with those for a while! (Maybe even for the rest of the year...just depends what comes up, I guess.) My next hurdle is to finish my taxes, and particularly to figure out whether to declare my paltry writing income for last year as miscellaneous/hobby income or self-employment income. It doesn't make a difference in the amount I owe unless I want to write off some of my writing expenses & declare a business loss, which could add a small amount to my refund. Just not sure what is smartest in the long run, as I don't know if I have a reasonable assumption of becoming profitable soon! (And theoretically you are not supposed to declare a self-employment loss for more than 2 out of 5 years.) And then it's back to full-tilt novel writing!

Another sale! ByLine bought another of my short pieces--a humor article called "Fast Food for Thought," the strange but true tale of how fast food has inspired much of my writing!

Lots of stuff going on this week! First, I entered a small poetry contest. Second, I got the professional critique of my novel back from the critiquer yesterday. It was so helpful! She didn't trash the novel--hooray! And nearly everything she said fit in with my personal vision for the novel, but was stuff I hadn't quite clarified for myself, & gives me great ideas of where to start revising. Of course, it appears I need to rewrite, rethink, & possibly restructure the whole novel, but I'm sure it will make the novel much stronger.

Third, I mailed my application packet for the SCBWI Work-in-Progress grant today! I figured there was nothing to lose by entering, since I have a novel that's far along in the writing & revision process, and there's no fee to apply for the grant. I'm applying for the Grant for a Contemporary Novel for Young People (or the grant for a writer without a published book). I also applied last year with a different project, and didn't win a grant, but figure it's certainly worth the trouble to apply. This year I sent the novel I just had critiqued, though I'm not as confident as I might be because I know the first chapter, which I had to send for my writing sample, is going to change as I revise further, & will probably be better later than it is now.

Fourth, I got an encouraging rejection letter today! It's probably pathetic to celebrate "good" rejections, but the letter was funny and chatty, not just one of the businesslike "not right for our list" letters I sometimes get even when the rejection is personal. It also contained a great compliment and an offer to look at a different manuscript. So now I have a lot of work to do getting the other manuscript finished & ready for eventual submission!

I was surprised to get yet another honorable mention in a ByLine fiction contest today. My adult humor story, "Falling Through the Quacks," was one of 4 stories that received Special Honorable Mentions in their general Short-Short Story contest. I hadn't told anyone I was entering it, as it's so silly that even my husband thought it should probably be reserved for my own amusement, but I'm glad someone liked it! I can't imagine finding a market for it, though, as it's a light, humorous romance of a sort, involving a dancing duck! (See? I said I write quirky stuff!)

The critiquer I sent my manuscript to should have it now & is supposed to work on it today...eek! Makes me a bit nervous, though I'll be glad to get the feedback. Getting it all printed out & ready to send was a bit of a nightmare, & of course I found 16 more minor changes I need to make even after I printed it, but went ahead & sent it off as it was. I am mainly looking for a "big picture" critique of it, anyway. In the meantime, I'm polishing my synopsis some more, worked a little more on the chapter book I'm now iffy about, & have been trying to write a new poem, with only moderate success. I haven't submitted anything in a couple of weeks, & have no plans to do so soon. I don't have any submission goals this year as I did last year--this time it's mainly completion goals!

I'm getting curious about who looks at this site. My site counter says I've had 17 hits this week, which isn't terribly many, but I know I was only 2 or 3 of them so I still wonder who they were... (I suspect one may have been a friend from years ago for whom I have no current contact info, so Jim, if you're reading this, e-mail me!) Some weeks there have been more like 100 hits, but in those weeks I had shared the address of the site somewhere online that I hadn't previously shared it.

What a weekend--I got about 8 hours sleep on Friday & Saturday combined. Saturday night I stayed up until 5 am! What kept me harried all weekend, and even into today, was making "minor edits" to my novel. Still not done, either--I'm now done with everything but the first chapter (for this pass), but I've got maybe 30 more outstanding issues to resolve in that one. I'm trying to hurry to get it out for critique, but am nervous to get the critique as I'm sure the critiquer will suggest major revisions. And if this has been a minor revision, I'd hate to see a major one!

Is it a good sign that I dreamed I sold a book? (Maybe not, since the other time I dreamed that, the manuscript was rejected not long after the dream!) I worry I'll never really sell a book because much of what I write is "quirky," or at least has quirky touches, & I know that turns some people off. I can't see changing that, though, because it's what I like, & avoiding it altogether would kill half the fun of writing. I've got to believe there are some other people out there with tastes similar to mine!

I've been doing what I thought would be minor line edits on my YA novel, but they've really grown! I still have hours left to do just on that, and I was horrified to find a major continuity error, where I left out an entire day. (When the protagonist got home from Sunday lunch, it was Monday night...and given the pacing up to that point, I can't just skip ahead that far with no explanation.) I wrote some transitional stuff that seems to work, but it still needs some cleaning up. When I get the whole thing ready--hopefully this weekend--I'll find someplace to print it all out on a laser printer, then I'm sending it out for critique. I worry I'll be spending big bucks to find out it's worthless, but at this point I'm too close to it to even have a clue what's working and what's not. I figure that, especially as a first-time novelist, I could really benefit from the input of an experienced critiquer.

Good news yesterday--I got my February issue of ByLine and learned that my short story "Ending Some of It" was a finalist in their annual Literary Awards. I'm not sure how many people entered, but I was at least in the top 9. Another short story, "For Better or For Worse," got an honorable mention in their New-Talent Short Story Contest. Those 2 validations of my writing definitely helped to make up for the rejection letter I received the same day.

At last week's SCBWI retreat, we were encouraged to enter the San Gabriel Writers' League Contest, as it's run by a local organization & they added a Writing for Children category this year. I planned to enter in the children's category, & also wanted to enter an adult manuscript but wasn't sure whether to enter a personal essay or a short story. My husband thought the essay was stronger, so I sent that, but when I found out about 10 minutes later that the short story was a finalist in ByLine's big contest, I rushed to enter that one, too! Considering the entry fees, I'd now have to win at least 2nd place in something just to break even....

In other news, I managed to get my YA novel synopsis down to one page, and finally submitted my humor article (mentioned 1/13) to ByLine. I also submitted a picture book manuscript to an editor. I sent the book submission in a business-sized envelope instead of the large kind I usually use, thinking that since the manuscript is so short (2 pages), it might seem less daunting than yet another big manila envelope, & therefore might get opened more quickly. Now other writers are telling me they think manuscripts should always be mailed in large envelopes. Oh well...we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, Happy Groundhog Day Eve!

I was up until 3:00 this morning finally breaking my YA novel into chapters--remind me to write novels in chapters from now on! It flowed out faster without them, but now may lack a good structure or obvious places to break the chapters. I've already changed the chapter breaks around more today. And I'm really not sure what a good number of chapters is, or how long they should be. At the moment I have 39 chapters of approximately 1,000 to 2,000 words apiece (most between 1,200 and 1,800 words). I'm also trying to write a concise synopsis of it for the SCBWI grant competition. I haven't managed to get it onto one page, but it only goes one paragraph onto the second page, so that may not be too bad.

My writers' retreat was both stressful and addictive! I found myself frazzled a lot and unsure of myself--and got nothing written at all--but I loved the creative atmosphere and the social aspects, hanging out with other writers all weekend, and would love to go back now! I still haven't quite come down from it. My critique session was a bit odd, since the editor didn't like the premise of my story enough to do a thorough critique of it, but at the same time she treated me like a real writer and seemed to think I had skill at writing. The resulting feeling was something like the dissonant "vertigo zoom" camera shots they sometimes use in movies, where the camera moves further back while the lens zooms in. She was particularly enthusiastic about my ability to write in rhyme--interesting to me since children's writers are always cautioned against writing in rhyme. I was not sure what to think afterwards, but once I got over my surprise about her analysis of my chapter book, I relaxed and had a great time!

I don't think it was the most relevant thing I could have been doing, but I spent the last couple of days doing line editing on my completed novel draft, and cleaning up some things in the manuscript. I'm going to try to print a complete copy today, so I'll have one with me at my retreat, just in case I want to show it to anyone. Not that it is really ready for anyone else's eyes! I'm trying to read a lot about revision and novel structure, and am ordering several books to read on those topics. I'm completely confused about the whole thing. I was hoping to enter the novel in SCBWI's work-in-progress grant competition next month, but I'd have to provide approximately the first 2,500 words of the manuscript, and they happen to be the ones I am least happy with! They do give a good sense of the narrator's voice, through which the whole novel is filtered, but the novel doesn't currently start with an actual scene, but more of an introductory monologue, and I'm not sure if that's okay. Most of the books say it's not, but YA is kind of a different breed. I don't just want to write a new opening quickly for the grant competition--I want to make sure I'm picking the right opening. But I'm not sure I'll be ready to do that even within a month! (Strange because the whole novel took less time to write than that.)

I also entered five manuscripts in ByLine's Children's Story or Picture Book Contest today. If I won third place, I'd only break even! But it's not about the money...I just want to see if my stuff is any good, and if so, which stuff is best. I entered 3 picture book manuscripts and 2 magazine stories. I may also enter a local (San Gabriel Writers' League) contest next week, but with $10 entry fees for each manuscript, I'm not sure what to enter, or even what genre to enter in (just children's, or children's and adults', or what). I wouldn't want to enter more than a couple of things, for that price.

I am so not ready for my writers' retreat tomorrow. Not packed, not sure what I'm taking, feeling under the weather at the moment (with 2 sick kids to take care of...), and needing to print out a bunch of my writing! With a printer that's often on the fritz. I'm not sure what to take, writing-wise, but there are supposed to be several critique circles & round table discussions. I was up until 3 am (!) this morning doing the line edit on my novel, and fear I'll be up until all hours tonight as well. I hope not. I'm trying to brace myself for the possibility that the editor critiquing my stuff will hate it, or at least be iffy about it. I'm getting way too optimistic, and want to squash that now before I get the rug pulled out from under me! I'd much rather find myself pleasantly surprised than deflated.

My main writing goal of the week is to polish up a humor article I drafted a month or two ago and send it off. I'm not making much headway, though. It's mostly okay as is, but I'm having trouble with parts of it, and no matter how much I stare at it, I don't come up with any better ideas! I'm not sure how to get past that. I want to get this mailed out & not have it hanging over my head any longer, but of course I don't want to send it out without making it good enough to actually sell! My secondary goal is to work more on my chapter book/mid-grade. It's going to be a busy week even if you take writing out of the equation. And I can't believe my "baby" turns 2 tomorrow! I'd be even more wistful about him growing up if he and his 4-year-old brother hadn't colored all over the wall, door, TV, and a toy today!

When I participated in National Novel Writing Month last November, I kept nearly daily updates in an online journal, which helped keep me thinking about the writing, and sort of kept me accountable. I also found that writing out the problems helped me to think through and solve them. So excuse me if I blather on about some of my current writing projects in this journal.... I figure some people might be interested to get a glimpse into the process, anyway.

Right now I'm writing what I intended to be a chapter book for young readers--the type that usually only have one fairly simple plot, instead of complex sub-plots. But I'm to a point in the book where the main thing that needs to happen is that the character needs to hide a secret habit, and get more and more paranoid that people will find out, etc. But I just realized that I have nothing for her to be doing during all that deepening of her problem! It seems like anything I write for her to do--going to school, hanging out with friends, or whatever--will give me a platform for her paranoia but will not further the plot in and of itself. Now I'm wondering if I should come up with a sub-plot to keep her busy on the surface while her main problem grows stronger. Or maybe it's a pacing issue...maybe I don't need to show everything but can just skip over it with text like, "The next two weeks were the worst of my life. Every day I was sure that someone would find out...." Anyway, I'm sure I can come up with something (actually, I already have a showdown scene at the end that I could start planting the seeds for now), but it's certainly not as easy as just sticking to my synopsis, which only discusses the problem and not the details of how it plays out. I was also hoping to get through an entire draft of this before my writing retreat in 2 weeks, but the book seems to be growing on me (I thought it might be 60 pages, but now I'm thinking maybe 90+) & I would be surpised if I can do it! Especially with my younger son's 2nd birthday this week and a few celebrations to keep us busy this week. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with it overall, which is more than I can say for some of the things I've written!

Happy 2003, everyone! I have finally gotten back into my writing after the holidays. I have been preparing a few contest entries over the past few days, and also making some edits to an article I was working on in December and trying to cut down an old short story that was too long, but today I finally started doing some more original writing.

I wrote just over 2,000 more words today (so far) on my chapter book or mid-grade novel in progress (it's morphing a bit so I'm not quite sure what it is yet, or how long it will be). I hadn't written on it in a month, so it's a little difficult to get back into the same flow. Also, the last thing I wrote regarding it in December was a 2-page synopsis laying out the major plot events of the book. Although I was thrilled to come up with some of the plot developments I did at the time, I now find it rather daunting to see all that remains to be written. At about 30 double-spaced pages in, I feel like I'm about halfway through the story, but when I look over the synopsis, it seems more like I'm about 1/3 through it. Of course, I can veer off from the synopsis, but I do think my basic ideas were good, and I also know that in any case, there's a lot more to write. But I don't know quite how I'm going to get there from here, and it looks like a long, hard road!

So I ended the year with a bang! In today's mail, on the last day of the year, I got an acceptance and a check from On the Line magazine for my children's story, "All's Fair at Science Fairs." It was my first-ever acceptance for fiction, so it's a nice validation of my desire to write fiction, and particularly fiction for children. I had actually prayed on the way to the mailbox that there would be an acceptance in there, and when I saw my SASE in the mailbox, I assumed it was a rejection instead. Nope! I literally jumped for joy when I saw that it was an acceptance!

We were supposed to celebrate New Year's with some friends, but many of us were sick (myself, my husband, and our friends), so we stayed home. But I got a New Year's tablecloth, plates, hats, noisemakers, decorations, & serpentine, and we had sherbet punch and cookies, then counted down to the new year with the kids a bit early...about 9:30 pm. But Ryan is still up, so we may let him watch the ball drop in New York on TV in a few minutes.

YES! My impulsive submission last week paid off! A small quarterly publication called Peeks & Valleys is buying my poem The Diet, which I actually wrote the first version of 21 or 22 years ago, when I was 13 years old! This version was almost completely rewritten, but some of the lines are the same, and I have not found any appropriate markets for it in the past (not many markets for light verse). The editor actually said if she'd gotten it a week earlier, she would have included it in the January issue, but since that issue is already out now, it may have to wait until they have space in the October 2003 issue. Fine with me! I'm just amazed to have gotten 5 acceptances this year, including one for something I only submitted around Christmas!

OK, make that 33 submissions. I heard about a small market that might take light verse, and impulsively sent off an old poem I had never been able to find a market for (not that it was rejected a lot--I think I only found one or two places to ever submit it). It's easy to be impulsive with e-mail submissions... I know it's silly to submit something the Saturday night before Christmas, but I thought I might as well strike while the iron was hot, even if they don't get around to looking at it until the new year.

Speaking of which, I can't believe it's going to be 2003 soon! I'm excited. I don't know why, but I just like the sound of that number.

Wow, my article "Goofy About Writing" is in the new ByLine magazine I got today (Jan. 2003 issue), only 3.5 weeks after I got the acceptance letter and check! Amazing! What a nice way to end the year.

I just realized that I've gotten 4 writing acceptances this year, which has doubled the number of acceptances I've gotten since my first one 8 years ago! That is, I got 4 acceptances over 8 years' time (1994-2001) and then 4 in one year, 2002. Of course, I've submitted much more this year than I ever did before--in all, I sent off 15 contest entries this year, and 16 submissions to editors, for a total of 32 submissions representing 18 different manuscripts. In any case, it's nice to see myself making progress!

This month alone, which I thought would pretty much be a month "off" because of the holidays, I've submitted 5 manuscripts to editors and 2 to contests, plus sent off 2 others for a conference critique. I've also gotten 3 rejections & 1 acceptance, & gotten a copy of a magazine with an article by me in it. Last month, I drafted a whole novel, wrote about 12,000 words on two other novels, sent 1 story to a contest & 1 to a magazine, got an honorable mention in a short story contest, got 1 acceptance, & got another magazine with an article by me in it. It's definitely sounding like I'm a writer! So it's very fitting that I got a Snoopy "Literary Ace" ornament for my Christmas tree this year, with the year 2002 on it and Snoopy pounding away at his typewriter.

I got a letter from Welcome Home today about the humor essay I sent them 7.5 months ago (though I still haven't heard about the one from 11 months ago!). It is sort of an acceptance...though they're not very committal about it! It says, "We like it enough to consider it for publication, however at this time we cannot assure you that it will be published." They enclosed a publication agreement and said they'll probably be able to use the article within one year, and will notify me in advance before they print it. It also says they appreciate my patience as I await publication of it, but then again says, "This is not a contract to publish your article (or guaranteeing the publication)." So, we'll see!

I'm getting a little more into the holiday spirit now that I've mailed out most of the gifts I needed to mail ($22 postage for 3 packages!!) and am more than halfway done with my shopping. But I'd still be happy to wait another month before Christmas!

Magazines that accept submissions by e-mail are kind of a mixed blessing. On one hand, it's nice to be able to send something out so quickly & easily, and getting to hear back sooner in most cases. On the other hand, getting rejections within 24 hours can get old! I've submitted 5 manuscripts by e-mail this year. One was accepted, which took 8 weeks, but the other four were all rejected in less than 24 hours...one of them in a mere 19 minutes!

I am so not ready for Christmas this year. Some years, I've been almost done with shopping by December 1. This year, I've barely started or even thought about it. I wish it could be pushed back a couple of weeks! On the other hand, after Christmas is going to be awfully busy, too. I need to set up a web site by January 1, Kyle's 2nd birthday is January 14th, and I'm also vaguely hoping to finish 2 novels by the end of January, when I'm going on a writers' retreat! (It's not crucial, but it'd be nice....)