Monday miscellany

1. I think fried eggs are inherently funny. I'm not sure why, but toy fried eggs and pictures of fried eggs usually make me smile. Forks also strike me as slightly funny, though not as funny as fried eggs. (And of course sporks are funny, but that's more obvious.)
   
   
2. On Saturday Cartoon Network had a phone-in contest to win a $30 Transformers toy, and my 6-year-old was one of only 100 kids nationwide to win one. The same day, my husband won a $20 "Wii Points" card from the Wendy's contest where they give contest codes on their drink cups. (I think it's good for buying old-style games for the Wii, so when we get a Wii, and someday we will...we can use it.) Not to miss out on the good luck, my brother got offered a full-time job (a Hollywood job!) that day, after being out of steady work for quite a while.
   
   
3. If your restaurant chain sells a drink called a Frosty and for more than 25 years, the only flavor it came in was chocolate, then chocolate should still be the default flavor when someone orders a Frosty from you, even if you've recently started selling vanilla ones, too. Just saying...
   
   
4. Also, if a vending machine is sold out of the drink you want, it should give you back your money instead of making you buy a drink you don't want. Especially if nearly all the other drinks in the machine are also sold out, so you have to get a diet soda, which you don't drink (I wrote down the code from the bottle cap and threw the drink away).
   
   
5. Today we took the older kids to Vacation Bible School at the church where they both started preschool, nearly 7 years ago in the case of my oldest. What a blast from the past! I ran into 3 different people I'd known (from elsewhere!) years ago, and also saw the teachers who taught my son's 2-year-old class, now that he's almost 9. After dropping them off, we had some great breakfast burritos...and speaking of blasts from the past, and soda, I also had an RC Cola in a glass bottle!
   
   
6. 12-packs of Dr Pepper (my lifeblood) no longer exist. After 3 stores including Walmart didn't have them, I mentioned it to the convenience store clerk, who told me they were all taken away, & were going to be replaced with 8-packs. Coke will apparently be doing the same. (I'm sure we'll soon be paying as much for them as for 12-packs...and I'll need 3 hands to carry 24 cans.)
   
   
7. My sweet, rarely-crying baby has been replaced with a wildly restless, active, and frustrated one who will probably not calm down or stop moving and kicking until he finally learns to crawl, walk, or run! He's only 4 months old now, so I don't know whether to hope this happens soon or not...but he longs to be on the move.
   
   
8. I heard the song "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White T's on the radio yesterday and thought it was sweet and catchy--the kind of song anyone would want written for them, so I bought it from iTunes today without even hearing it again first.
   
   
9. The above made me think that even though Elvis Costello's "Alison" is not the greatest song to have as your namesake song, I have had a song and several poems written for me in real life, and I'm happy about that. (Also, considering that I'm a writer and have written quite a few poems over the years, it's surprising how few poems I've written for other people, though there have been some.)
   
   
10. I think it would be really cool to have a '57 Chevy, a '63 Corvette convertible, or a '65 Mustang convertible. But my other dream car is a minivan! I loved my bright blue van and I really miss it. I also miss having a car with a power moonroof (which I had in my '84 Oldsmobile, once upon a time).
    
    
11. This morning I was annoyed with people for complaining about their (nice) vehicles when I'd be happy just to have 2 vehicles--or even 1 big enough or reliable enough vehicle--for our family of 5. Then I realized I'm not grateful enough for all the things I do have that other people may lack--children, a husband, a house, my eyesight and hearing, mobility, an education, a safe neighborhood, a computer, food, air conditioning, etc., etc. Now I'm feeling very appreciative for all that I do have, and I hope I can keep that perspective in mind!
    
    
12. In a Real Simple magazine section on favorite summer memories, a couple of people mentioned lazy drives, and rides in convertibles. I remember lots of lazy drives with my parents, often with stops for snow cones. I also remember one summer night in my teens, when I went for a ride late at night in my friend John's huge old yellow convertible (one of those 70s boat-sized cars) with him and another friend. We drove out towards nowhere with the top down, with no destination and no place else to be. I'm not sure that the guys were having much fun, but I felt free, like I was flying, without a care in the world. It's just a snapshot in my mind now, but it's still one of my favorite memories.

Yak & tats

There was a yak in my mailbox! Well, actually, a copy of K. Pluta's new picture book, There's a Yak in My Bed, which I won in an online giveaway from her! Yay! We found it when we checked the mail on the way out of the house a couple of days ago, and my 6-year-old immediately read it out loud to all of us on our drive. Then the 8-year-old wanted to read it to himself, even though he'd already heard the story! I'm guessing he wanted to see the pictures, by Austin's own Christy Stallop, better. Obviously, the book went over well here. It's cute and fun, and given that Blooming Tree is a small press that doesn't normally do picture books, I was impressed with the quality of the physical book as well. So congrats again, K. Pluta, & thanks again for the book!

Meanwhile, last night I started reading Jennifer Lynn Barnes' book Tattoo. My husband was out of town, I had finally gotten the baby to sleep around 9:30 (no small feat!), and I let the other boys stay up to have a movie-watching party (they watched Sky High, one of my favorites, and then a new Pokemon episode) and a "sleepover." They finally fell asleep around 11 pm, in sleeping bags on the living room floor. I wasn't sleepy myself yet, so I decided to read. Well, let me tell you that Tattoo may not be the book to read when you're alone in your room late at night! Heh. I got about halfway through, finally going to sleep at 1 am when the sense of impending doom was really starting to creep me out. Let's just say that Jen did a good job of creating suspense and dread. :-)

I woke up this morning with a baby in my bed (he joined me when he woke in the night), but no evil beings and no yaks, so I'd have to say it's so far so good today.

18 years ago today

18 years ago today I met my husband at a Jason's Deli (with mutual friends). Here's the oldest pic of us I have on my computer, from about 4 months after that:

Of course we'll go to Jason's Deli today, as we always do on June 11. And we won't have to drive 65 miles to get there this year, like we did last year living in Florida!

Books & bananas!

OK, this is really strange... in the "8 things about me" meme I just posted two days ago, I admitted, with some embarrassment, that I still like to eat banana baby food. Today, I checked out Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes from the library and read the whole thing. In it, the main character, Martha, and her grandmother tell each other something about themselves every day. And on one of the days, the grandmother happens to tell Martha two things...one of which is that she ate a jar of Martha's little sister's banana baby food that morning!! I am pretty sure I've never read any other thing in which an adult admitted to eating baby food, and here it was banana baby food at that. Bizarre.

That was the second full midgrade novel I read today. First I read M.T. Anderson's The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen, the sequel to Whales on Stilts. Parts of it had me laughing with tears running down my face. Though I'm not sure who it's written for. It looks like a book for 10 or 12-year-olds, but to get most of the humor, it seems to require an ironic stance towards children's series books from the past, not to mention a lot of general knowledge. My older son could easily read all the words, but he'd be completely lost. It seems like its best target audience is...well, adults with weird senses of humor who like to read children's books. But I must say, M.T. Anderson is extremely versatile!

As is Kevin Henkes. I loved Olive's Ocean, which was a Newbery Honor Book. I was amazed again (as with his book Protecting Marie) that he can get so fully into the head of a 12-year-old girl. I think his writing is full of true and perfect moments. I was just lamenting to my husband the other night that the little siblings in fiction books often don't ring true to me, but the 2-year-old in this one did. The adults also seemed particularly real to me, especially the father and grandmother. I think I'll have to buy a copy of this one to keep.

Number 9...number 9...

A 9th "thing about me" I thought of after posting the 8 things meme last night:

Some years ago, I participated in a "Life Vision" workshop at my church where I had to come up with the one word I thought described me best. Just one! I finally decided on analytical. When I later, well, analyzed it a little more (ha ha), I decided my one word should have been imaginative. Though perhaps it should have been indecisive!

The 8 things meme

This one has gone around, and I didn't do it because I already posted 100 things about me. But I suspect there are at least 108 things about me, so here goes:

1. I once ran for office unopposed--and lost! However, the same year, I was elected to an office I did not run for (ran for one position and was somehow elected for a different one), and got to perform in a play when I wasn't in the cast or even the official understudy. So I guess it all evened out.
   
   
2. I have never gone on a diet. (Not that I shouldn't have; I just haven't!)
   
   
3. I am good at remembering birthdays, if I've known them. (Happy Birthday, David.)
   
   
4. I have never tried sushi.
   
   
5. I've been reading magazines about writing on & off since I was maybe 10 years old. My grandmother often bought Writer's Digest and I used to read hers. I also bought it in college, & have since subscribed to various writing magazines. My head is crammed full of writing knowledge, but somehow it doesn't always translate to actual writing.
   
   
6. I don't wear glasses or contact lenses.
   
   
7. I have liked banana baby food since I was a baby! I rarely actually buy it, but now I have an excuse again... though the banana baby food we gave our baby the other day was awful, sour instead of sweet, so I won't be buying that kind again.
   
   
8. When my 8-year-old recently made a Mother's Day booklet for me, one page was little ovals with things about me, and here's what he said about me: children's book writer, uses computer a lot, is wonderful, is smart, likes me, is nice, likes refried beans, best mom ever. In another part of the book, he says I am "amazing and awesome," and I am not "dull," "dopey," "unsmart," or "other bad things." He also says I'm "one of a kind" and "not bad at all." :-)

It's that time of year again...

We had our 4th annual Oscar the Grouch's birthday party on Friday, & put pics here. I suggest using the slideshow option for optimal viewing with the captions.

Meanwhile...where did my baby go?!

Prom Dates from Hell

With prom season just winding down, I read Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore this weekend. It's the fun, fast-paced story of a girl who has to track down something Evil and save her classmates from destruction--and possibly worse, go to the prom. One character says that the heroine, Maggie, lives and dies by wisecracks, and indeed, Maggie's narration is so full of witty comments and one-liners, it could be a stand-up comedy routine. It's funny, literate, and suspenseful, with memorable characters and more than one hint at romance. Maggie, who doesn't want to go to prom at all, ends up there with not one but two guys (pseudo-dates), both of whom are thankfully not from Hell. And while prom nights have a reputation of being wild...at this one all Hell breaks loose. Well, at least some of it.

This is another one I bought as a full-priced hardback, though in this case I do know the author. Not just online, but it turns out I knew her in person many years ago. I will now possibly embarrass her and definitely embarrass myself by sharing a pic of me and her as toga-clad pre-teens, dressed for a Musical Theatre production. She's the one who looks poised & confident; I'm the one who looks like a deer in the headlights!

I'm a little curious whether Prom Dates from Hell was set vaguely at my own high school, except for the natatorium--I'm not sure where Rosemary went to high school, but a few of the details of the school seemed familiar, especially the walkway where the opening action takes place. The college town enviroment rang true to my experience as well.

And since it fits in with the topic, I thought I'd share my own prom pic...though with my date's face blocked out! Note that my dress could have been a wedding dress now, but at the time strapless wedding dresses were pretty much unheard of. (It also turned out that the majority of girls at my prom showed up in white, including two at my table alone wearing the same dress as one another, but it was hard to find other colors that year! I looked for a black dress & couldn't even find one.)

Recent reading

A week or two ago, I finally read An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. Although the math emphasis in it might have turned me off in the past, my own math & science-obsessed son has made me much more open to all things mathematical, and sympathetic in any case to brainy boys like Colin, the protagonist of this book. Although I did find it highly improbable, mathematically, that anyone could have even met 19 girls named Katherine between the ages of 7 and 18, much less gone out with that many of them, a lot of things in this book resonated with me, and a lot of things in it made me think. In fact, I think my husband would even enjoy it if I could get him to read it--he doesn't read much fiction and YA would be particularly unlikely for him, but I already shared a bunch from this book with him, accurately guessing that he would relate to things like Colin's long-standing desire to have a "Eureka!" moment like Archimedes. Loved the anagrammatic poem in the book dedication, too!

One thing that struck me in the book was the narrative voice. It's third person, not first, and while it's limited third in that it sticks with Colin's perspective instead of jumping into other character's heads, it's also kind of omniscient since it knows more about Colin than he knows himself. It's like--limited omniscient or something. I don't recall seeing that POV used much in recent books, but I rather liked it. I suspect something similar was probably used in some books I read growing up, but in a more invisible way, not as a means to comment on the character. I might experiment with a similar POV for one of my YA manuscripts. It's in first person right now and the voice has never worked for me, but my limited third person voice tends to be about the same as first with the pronouns switched, and that hasn't solved the problem. But a narrator who's slightly more distant from Dan, while still sticking with his POV, might work quite well.

I finished Going Nowhere Faster a few days ago. Still liked it. Though my recent reading has once again thrown me for a loop in regards to my own writing. My YA manuscript mentioned above is mainly about a guy struggling with what to do after high school. He finally decides, against his parents' wishes, not to apply for college (at that time, anyway), and goes in a different direction. It's a huge decision to make since his parents have placed a lot of expectations on him. When I first started writing it, (cough cough) seven years ago, dealing with college at all was a stretch for YA. He's a senior, and that seemed like the upper limit of YA, and there pretty much weren't YA books about people who were already out of high school. But now...I've read two YA books in the last two weeks about guys after high school, drifting around. And they both gave the impression that the college decision is not such a big deal. It's something to consider, but not the high-stakes decision it was for my character. So now my story seems misguided... I mean, it becomes a big deal for him because it's a huge deal to his parents, but my book is supposed to be humor, not some big family rebellion story, and it seems like my ending isn't as counter-intuitive as I'd thought it might be. Ah well.

Boys and girls and books

Earlier this week, I read Tanya Lee Stone's A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl, which I'd heard a lot about. I admit I was a little uncomfortable with it at first. I assumed it was because of the subject matter (3 girls who get involved with the same jerky guy who's only after one thing), but I realized it was also because I didn't relate to it. I wasn't in a position where I needed to fight off the guys in high school, so I couldn't easily imagine being a high school girl attractive enough to get hit on by one of the most popular guys in school or to imagine I could wield any power over one, nor could I understand why any of the girls were interested in this guy at all, having never been attracted to that sort of jock for a moment of my life, and generally only liking guys I was friends with first. But I still read the whole thing through in about 45 minutes (it was a quick read because it's written in free verse), and had the realization, for the first time ever, that it might be a good thing not to be one of the more attractive girls in school. No, I wouldn't have liked a guy like this, but girls who have guys falling all over them must be faced with a lot of jerks, and must have to spend a lot of time sorting the jerks from the nice guys.

And speaking of boys, and girls, and books, I was suddenly slightly bummed last Saturday to find myself with a family of 3 boys and no girl, when we went to the public library together and it dawned on me that I had no daughters to share my interest in "girl" books or "feeling" books in general. Up to now, their interests in fiction have been pretty unisex. They've liked Magic Tree House, and mysteries like Cam Jansen or Nate the Great, and adventure stories like Narnia, or Time Warp Trio which is pretty boyish but also throws in a few girls (especially in the TV series). I've always been glad they haven't cared if the protagonists in their books were boys or girls. But last week I realized--they don't mind girl characters in adventure books. Or mystery books. But as they're getting older and there are more books for kids their ages that have emotional themes...they have no interest in those. Not with girl characters, not with boy characters. I tried to interest my nearly-9-year-old who has a baby brother in a book about a 9-year-old boy having to adjust to a baby brother while having wacky adventures with pets, and he wouldn't even vaguely consider it. He wanted Star Wars books. And maybe a Pokémon book, and he took a Time Warp Trio book mainly to make me happy (he likes them but was definitely in a Star Wars mindset), and threw in a series mystery, but he mainly only likes series books, and things about science fiction or time travel. Or heavy, hard non-fiction science books. And he only took Encyclopedia Brown under duress, even though I thought he would love it. My younger son likes some of those things, but also non-fiction about snakes or sharks or dinosaurs. In short, nothing at all like I read at their age or imagined sharing with my children.

Maybe I can eventually get them to read something like Running Out of Time (mystery/thriller), The City of Ember (same), or even Ella Enchanted (funny/fantasy), even though they aren't series books, but who will read something like Harriet the Spy or Because of Winn-Dixie with me? No one. A Wrinkle in Time? Sure. A Ring of Endless Light? No. Boo hoo. Maybe I'm wrong... maybe my second or third son will surprise me. So far my second isn't nearly as all-science-all-the-time as my first, and he's also more emotional and social. But he's also a lot more likely to say "That's a girl thing! Yuck!" (Then gain, at a school party this week when a mom gave little plastic maze things for boys or fairy princess wands for boys--he picked the wand!) I can see them reading these books as assigned school reading, and even enjoying them, but for leisure time reading I have a hard time getting them to read even boyish books if they're not exactly what they already had in mind.

Gold stars all around

I dreamed I got an A+ on a project. It was great to remember what that felt like! In recent years, I've been so worn down by writing rejections (and self-rejection, as I watch other writers soar past me and assume I could never compete) and various personal failures, that I'd forgotten, at least emotionally, that I used to do good work and get rewarded for it. I've focused on the times I slid by and got A's I didn't deserve (like when I wrote a paper the morning it was due and got an A on it), or the times I slacked off on the work completely and got bad grades, but it somehow slipped my mind that those were the exceptions. That most of the time, I did work I could be proud of, and teachers liked it. It was the shortest, simplest dream, but surprisingly it's made me feel more confident just having that reminder!

And a related mom brag: on the last day of school, everyone in my kids' classes got little awards. My kindergartener got the "Best Class Artist" award (he's got definite art talent), and my 2nd grader got the "Awesome Math Student" award (being the only 2nd grader in the school to ace all the 3rd grade math quizzes). Good grades, too--the 2nd grader even got an average of 100 for the whole 9 weeks in social studies!

Musings on parental guidance

Last night, on the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, we finally let our sons (ages 6 & 8) watch Episode III (Revenge of the Sith), which they'd been bugging us about for a while. We'd held off before because it's so dark & violent, & most reviews said kids shouldn't see it before 10 or 12 years old. But they are soooo familiar with the whole saga now, since they've been playing the two Lego Star Wars video games constantly, and reading Star Wars novels, blah blah blah. They did fine with it. I'm sure it was very different seeing it on just a TV screen, knowing some of the scariest things in advance (we'd warned them), than if they'd seen it on the big screen without being recently immersed in the characters & their worlds so much. As for myself, I didn't watch most of it (had seen it in the theater), but when I was watching, we had the closed captioning on to help the kids follow it, and most of the dialogue and line readings were so wooden, it sounded like an early cast read-through, or even a bad audition. I also found it amusing that the Darth Vader suit Anakin/Vader got at the end not only lowers his voice, but greatly improves his inflection. ;-) (I think if they can go back & insert Jabba the Hutt into the original Star Wars movie later, they should be able to go back & insert a different actor in Hayden Christiansen's place.)

That, plus a discussion I just saw on a writers' board about the appropriateness of certain books for young readers, has made me think about how differently I view the topic of appropriateness as a writer, as a reader, and as a mother! Actually, as a writer I always err on the side of clean & broadly "appropriate" material, because that's what I prefer. I can't imagine myself ever writing an R-rated book, and even as a reader and moviegoer, I'd rather not be bombarded with explicit language, sex, violence, or whatever. Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn didn't need to spout f-words for their movies to appeal to adults. But because I want to encounter good stories, I put up with that stuff, to a degree, as a reader and a movie watcher. If it's not too in-your-face, I look beyond it. (And I'm afraid that if it's really funny or clever, I may look beyond it even if it is in-your-face... though I would like it even better if it was really funny without all that.) But I only just realized now that I have no idea how to balance my own ability to filter out what I don't like with my maternal tendency to want to protect my children.

I mean... as a YA reader & writer, and as a former child reader myself, I tend to think that while some books may not be exactly beneficial for kids, or praiseworthy in their subject matter, kids are smart enough to read critically and make their own decisions. I don't think they mindlessly accept everything they read as being the norm or the way things should be. And frankly, I assume that they hear things in their lives every day that are worse than a lot of things they may read on the page. I sure did, and no one is filtering or editing what teens really say and experience. But I always think of these things in the abstract--about teenagers in general, or about me as a teen. I had never until today thought to extend it to my own children as teenagers! It hadn't seemed relevant yet. Of course, my kids are only 6, 8, and 4 months old. They still need a lot of parental guidance. They do seem to believe everything they hear for the most part--even that Bounty is the "best" paper towel and we must buy it now! They even believe the TV ads for Floam even though we already bought Floam and they were already horribly disappointed in it! They keep thinking next time it might be different... And naturally I don't want them exposed to things before they are ready.

But looking back on my own childhood & teen years, my parents had no idea what I knew, and no idea what I was reading, either. They looked down on YA fiction in general, but only because they thought it was brain candy & not substantial enough. They suggested other books I could read (which I never took them up on...), but I chose all my own books and no one ever bothered glancing at them, as far as I recall. But even as a fairly young kid, I knew what I liked and what I thought about stuff. My mother would have passed out if she'd known I read Forever at age 11 (had she known what it was about), but even at 11, with Judy Blume being my favorite author, I thought the girl made a stupid choice and I didn't want to emulate it. When I read books with lots of swear words, I often tossed them aside on my own if they started annoying me too much--but I would have been patently offended if my parents had presumed to tell me not to read them! So I wonder how often I underestimate my own children, or if I'm not now (and I haven't had much cause to worry about this stuff yet), how much I will. I can't imagine being quite as uninvolved in my own kids' reading choices as my family was--but it's not like I've been reading all the mystery and fantasy adventure books my 8-year-old brings home, either. I trust him to choose what he likes. I'd love to be able to discuss things like this with them in the future and help them to analyze things critically, but I also have to remember I would never have wanted to discuss some of this stuff with my parents & can't imagine I would ever have told them everything! (I recently read in a magazine that if your 12-year-old daughter tells you she's in love with a boy, you shouldn't scoff that she's too young, but ask what she likes about him. I thought, wow, when I was 12, I never would have told my parents I was in love with a boy!! And I did think I was.)

Strange dreams are made of this

For my 2nd post of the day... I'm not prone to posting about my dreams, but I had the world's weirdest dreams last night. The weirdest image was of dead mutant dolphins hovering in the air! They were sort of like swordfish & mostly purple... There was something about a comedy horror movie, similar to Shaun of the Dead but eerier. At one point, I was in a hotel lobby and ran into a writer friend, Kay, who was wearing white mime-style make-up on her way to do a school author visit. I was wearing a loooong black t-shirt & black jeans & was horrified to note I was wearing really grungy pink pig socks. I ran to change either my pants or socks, & found myself in a place that was a combination homeless shelter, Goodwill store, and health club for people aged 50 and up. (?!) And all I could find was a pair of yarn shoes that turned into socks I had accidentally grabbed a whole handful of, all attached to each other, but which I couldn't wear unless I "hand-conditioned" the yarn by somehow unraveling and spinning every thread in the yarn with my fingers until it looked right. Yeah.

And then it got weirder. ;-) Because I've almost never dreamed I was anyone other than me. But suddenly, in this dream, I was a teenage boy! This may be because of all the YA fiction I've been reading & trying to write, often with male protagonists, but anyway, I was a teenage boy who was alternately the best friend, step-brother, and newly adopted brother of another guy who was the son and heir of a billionaire who was a combination of Bill Gates and a successful wacky inventor (the father in the book I'm reading is a wacky inventor, though not a successful one). In the dream, the rich guy was my step-dad for most of the dream, but somehow I had no share in his riches. I had this female friend and sidekick, the kind who's always coming up with crazy schemes, and suddenly she started coming on to me. I had thought she mainly hung around me to get closer to my rich friend/brother, and I told her so. She said that had crossed her mind, but she also thought he was a spoiled brat. So we were in one of those tense moments where she was hoping that I (being a teenage guy to her teenage girl) would feel the same, and all I could think were horrible things I felt guilty about thinking, like that her eyes and nose were too big and she wore way too much make-up, and that I could only see her as a friend. (This slightly echoes back to something in one of the books I was reading last night, but still, it was weird.) And then I woke up. So who knows, maybe I can tell Dan's story after all!

(P.S. Shortly before falling asleep for the night, I had murmured something about hoping the protagonist in this book I'm reading didn't end up being like the protagonist of the very strange, dream-oriented movie The Science of Sleep, so maybe I was asking for it. Could explain the sock yarn stuff, anyway, since fabric arts figure prominently in that movie.)

Book therapy

I've heard that when women get depressed, they may shop. Especially for shoes. I had a very bad day yesterday, and feeling very depressed in the evening, I escaped to go shop for...books! Who needs shoes when there are books?!

I didn't even know what I was going to do or why. I just had to get out of the house and found myself making my way, like a homing pigeon, to Barnes & Noble. It was one of those bad days with the baby where I felt the full weight of what I'd gotten myself into by having a baby at nearly 40 years old, not just an "oh no the baby's crying and I can't catch a break" day, but an "oh no my life was finally supposed to start now but this puts it off 5 more years and there's no way my dreams could entail waiting until I'm 45 to pursue them so they're all defunct" day. I think I instinctively went to where I feel most myself, where the things I care about are. I thought I'd look at magazines, but I couldn't get interested in them. (In a move that would shock & horrify my children, I even chose not to purchase the latest Neopets magazine....) I found myself going to the YA section, where I stood in amazement looking at all the pretty covers and all the enticing-looking books. They have made the YA section much bigger in the past year, and the books mostly looked fantastic! I looked through many of them with longing.

Finally, I treated myself by doing something I have probably not done in 20 years: I bought two full-priced books I'd never even heard of before! One even by an author I'd never heard of before! And a hardback, at that! I will occasionally buy a hardback by an author I know personally, though usually at Amazon prices. I pulled out all the stops this time. I bought a graphic novel, of all things (the first I've read), The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci, and then Going Nowhere Faster by Sean Beaudoin. Further maximizing my retreat into comfort items, I found myself stopping on the way home for a Coke Slurpee and a Twix. Mmmm.

I read The Plain Janes as soon as I got home, which only took about 20 minutes. I enjoyed it, even if it did seem improbable that a town would react to something like bubbles in the town fountain as an act of terrorism or frightening criminal vandalism...but then, I guess comics are supposed to be a bit over the top (most real-life bad guys don't go to quite the lengths of, say, the Green Goblin). Still, it made me think of Footloose, with the town that banned dancing until the young people revolted, and the 80's song "99 Luftballons," with its idea that the sighting of some balloons by paranoid people could set off a nuclear war. I found the graphic novel format interesting and realized I could tell most of my stories in a lot fewer words. I also particularly liked the way the protagonist's eyes told the story a couple of times where her love interest was involved. There's an ad in the back for another graphic novel I'll definitely keep an eye out for (Good as Lily), about an 18-year-old girl who suddenly finds herself in the presence of versions of herself at 6, 29, and 70 years old. I'm fascinated already.

I'm halfway through Going Nowhere Faster, and loving it so far. I said before that I liked books with footnotes, but this one has something I relate to even more: parentheses. It's loaded with parenthetical remarks, and that's how I think. The character also reminds me a lot of my protagonist Dan, in my mostly unwritten book Can't Beet It, only funnier than Dan in ways that make me hit my head for not making Dan funnier. I'm beginning to think I can't do my story justice at all, when I see how much more other writers are doing with theirs than I'd even thought to do with mine. But no matter, the point is that I'm so glad (so far) I took a chance on this book. It has some things in common with An Abundance of Katherines (which I started to write a post about, which I haven't posted yet), in that the protagonist was a gifted child who has grown up without reaching his potential (something I have particular interest in, as a person who graduated high school at 16 and is still waiting for a book contract at nearly 40!), and it has those parentheses while the Katherines book has footnotes, but it's not too similar otherwise except that I like them both.

I have so much to post about, I'm breaking it into 2 or 3 posts, so that's all for that one.

Meet the Robinsons

Recently, we saw Meet the Robinsons in 3-D. Although the reviews I'd seen were mixed, and most parents I'd seen mention it online seemed to think it was just okay, I really liked the movie. The 3-D was a cool extra, and I'm sure we will buy the movie on DVD, 3-D or not. However, it's impossible to separate my feelings for it from the fact that I have a science nerd, inventor wanna-be son very much like the movie's main character, Lewis. Lewis's diagrams in the movie, which might look crazy to other viewers, reminded me a lot of my son's own diagrams! Also, even before my son existed, I had met William Joyce, whose book inspired the movie, and I'd been looking out for this movie for years.

About 10 years ago (yikes!), before I had children at all, I attended an SCBWI conference in the Dallas area. One of the speakers was William Joyce, and I bought a signed copy of his book A Day with WIlbur Robinson, and also a copy of George Shrinks. I found his work delightful, and at the time, he told us he was working with Disney to make a movie of the Wilbur Robinson book. A year went by, and I had a son, Ryan. Then I had another son, and somewhere in there William Joyce came out with an animated kids' show, Rolie Polie Olie, which Ryan chose as the theme for his 4th birthday party, even though there was almost nothing available for it. (I made Olie cupcakes for the occasion.) Later, there was a show based on George Shrinks, which also became a favorite of Ryan's. Ryan seemed to come out of the womb with an intuitive sense of math and a strong interest in science, so he's always wanted to be an inventor, and William Joyce's wacky, retro yet futuristic worlds, with quirky characters and lots of cool inventions, have always been right up his alley. But that first movie I'd heard about never showed up until finally, after I had yet a third son, Meet the Robinsons came out this year. I hadn't been thrilled with Robots, which William Joyce also had a hand in (though of course Ryan liked it), so I wasn't all that excited about this movie--the book is a short picture book that wouldn't support a movie as it was, so I felt pretty sure they would have ruined it. And the reviews were fairly lackluster. But when I found out it was showing in 3-D, we took the whole family out to see it, even taking the baby! (It was a weekday afternoon when it had been out a while, so there was only one other family in the theater--and the baby slept through the whole thing.)

I walked away from this movie with such a positive feeling. I know that not everyone would have the same opinion--many reviews mentioned it feeling too fast-paced or frenetic, and I didn't even notice that! But even though I had many reasons to like it, for us the best thing about it was the theme, "Keep moving forward." Both Ryan and his brother Kyle have SUCH a hard time with that. Ryan often panics and gives up very easily at the first difficulty, whereas Kyle stubbornly digs in his heels and refuses to change what he is trying to do even if it is very clear it isn't working and isn't going to work. Neither one moves forward easily. So we have probably repeated, "Keep moving forward!" about 10 times just since we've seen it, when difficulties have arisen, and it has proved very careful to have that catchphrase they can relate to. It helped them both to finally learn to ride their bikes without training wheels last week, learning that they could work through the frustration and failures and eventually succeed. And of course, it's a great lesson for me, too, especially as a writer!

You know you're on the computer too much when...

...you want your empty drink cup thrown away, so you ask your husband to please delete your cup. Yes, I said that, and no, I wasn't trying to be funny. That's really the first word that came into my head for that action. (Though since I also wanted him to bring me a new drink, he said I should have asked him to reboot my drink!)

Write like you meme it

From memegirls: Copy the questions into your blog and answer them. Then tag five other writers to do the same!

1. Do you outline? Not exactly. I usually just start writing, and eventually find myself needing to write a general outline of sorts to get me to the end, but it's usually more like a summary or synopsis of the major story points. And I don't always do even that. Sometimes I don't do it until I finish a draft, when it's time to start on revisions and I need to fix the plot. But I tend to start off writing off the top of my head.

2. Do you write straight through a book, or do you sometimes tackle the scenes out of order? Almost always straight through. Sometimes I jot notes or partial scenes for future parts of the book before I really get to that point, but I prefer to write most of it in order.

3. Do you prefer writing with a pen or using a computer? Computer, but I sometimes write notes for the story in longhand, or switch to writing in longhand to shake up my perspective and get through a block, or write in longhand when I'm not near a computer! I really enjoy writing in longhand, but it's usually just not fast enough.

4. Do you prefer writing in first person or third? I prefer first, but I usually try each story both ways just to make sure I'm picking what works best for the story. First person may come easier because of my theatre background, or maybe just because I'm used to talking and thinking my own thoughts in first person!

5. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, do you create a playlist, listen randomly, or pick a single song that fits the book? It seems unusual these days, but I don't listen to music while I write! If I'm really into the writing, there could be a rock band playing in my living room and I'd hardly notice, but I don't go out of my way to listen to music while writing. I've tried a couple of times and it usually distracts me too much when I'm getting started.

6. How do you come up with the perfect names for your characters? My characters normally show up in my head with names already! When I have to brainstorm about one, it's hard, but I usually just try out lots of possibilities until something seems right. I've always loved reading books and web sites about names and naming, so I have a lot of names in my head as it is.

7. When you're writing, do you ever imagine your book as a television show or movie? Sometimes I do that on purpose when I'm stuck in the story. I try to picture it as a movie or TV show, and imagine what I'd like to see happen next--or how I'd start the story or approach it in general. The medium really changes the way it's presented, and that sometimes kickstarts new ideas for approaching the text. I'm probably inclined to do this because I have a degree in Radio/TV/Film. I never imagine it will get made into a TV show or movie, though...the stuff I write doesn't usually lend itself to that. But that's one reason I like the exercise of imagining it that way, because it forces me to think more of action and visuals instead of getting stuck in the character's head too much (unless I start imagining it as something like Scrubs, where there's a ton of voiceover narration!).

8. Have you ever had a character insist on doing something you really didn't want him/her to do? I expect so. My characters definitely surprise me all the time! One time, I wanted to change the narrator of my story, but the character I was switching to just wouldn't tell it the way I liked it, so I had to take away her microphone and give the story back to the original MC.... Odd how that happens.

9. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it? Sometimes I don't even know what it's about! (I tend to start with just a character in a situation.) But if I do know what it's about, I usually have at least a vague idea how I want it to end. But then, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'd get to the ending more often if I wasn't trying to find my way to an ending that might not fit the story anymore...hmm.

10. Where do you write? On my laptop, on my lap, wherever that happens to be! Generally, on the couch, on a chair, on my bed, or occasionally in the car (either parked or as a passenger, not the driver!), or at Barnes & Noble (in longhand) or at the library. I've worked at a desk or table a few times, but don't have an office. I wish I did! I thinks it helps me to focus if I have a dedicated space for writing. Once I'm going, I can keep going, but it's easier to get started in a good writing environment.

11. What do you do when you get writer's block? Brainstorm. Try writing in longhand. Journal about the story or characters. Try to imagine it playing out on a screen. Sleep on it. Take a walk or drive. Give up for a while and work on something else! Any or all of the above, and probably a lot of other things, too. And of course, just write through it, and throw out all the crap that comes out the first few tries, and keep anything good that comes along when I finally stumble into something that works. (And don't tell me writer's block doesn't exist, because it's one of my pet peeves when people say that. Maybe it shouldn't exist, or doesn't exist for you, but it exists for me. But I won't do the Emma Thompson in Stranger Than Fiction thing and refuse to try writing anything until I'm sure what's going to work...and definitely won't get an assistant sent to me by a publisher to help me break my block! Though in that movie, it did work out best that she didn't write anything until she did....)

12. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of wordcount, or as a percentage of the book as a whole)? Any and all! I don't normally have a wordcount-per-day or page-per-day goal, but I've tended to write between 500 and 2,000 words in a day (when writing novels, not picture books!). But I've probably had 10-word days (not to mention all the 0-word days), and I've had at least one 10,000-word-day during NaNoWriMo, as well as some 7,000-word days. I write manuscripts of all different lengths, though, from poems and very short picture book texts to my longest manuscript, a YA novel of about 60,000 words.

13. How many different drafts did you write for your last project? I don't know how to count revisions. I'm always tweaking, so except for the first time through, I never know when one draft is "finished" and the next draft begins. Suffice it to say, more than one!

14. Have you ever changed a character's name midway through a draft? Yes. In one case, I realized I had three characters with one-syllable names with a long "a" sound, so Paige ended up becoming Gena.

15. Do you let anyone read your book while you're working on it, or do you wait until you've completed a draft before letting someone else see it? I prefer not to share it before it's done, but because I've occasionally needed something to submit for conference critiques or critique groups, I have shared chapters of unfinished manuscripts. (It's also much easier to get someone to read a chapter than a whole book!)

16. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft? Rest! And probably jump up and down and shout it to the world. Sadly, this doesn't happen often enough for me to really know what I "normally" do.

17. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once? I've done both. I normally have one "main" project, but if things aren't going well, I sometimes have a bad habit of skipping around, unable to settle on one thing for long, and if things are going well, I often find that writing begets writing, and I have so many ideas I start writing more stuff! The month I did NaNoWriMo and completed a YA novel manuscript, I was so inspired I also wrote 16,000 moe words on two other projects! (But only after meeting my NaNo word count quota.) I guess it helps that when I was a technical writer, I often had to work on 7 or 8 manuals at a time.

18. Do your books grow or shrink in revision? Both. I tend to write long so they have to get tighter, but I've also had to add scenes or even chapters. My longest manuscript got a little longer, but my short stories usually shrink.

19. Do you have any writing or critique partners? I've been in critique groups in the past, but I'm not now. I have asked individual writers to read stuff for me on occasion, though. Actually, two local writer friends recently asked if I wanted to form an informal critique group with them & I said yes but nothing has happened with it yet & I'm not sure if it will. I have also paid for critiques in the past.

20. Do you prefer drafting or revising? Drafting!

I tag anyone who wants to answer.

Getting going again

I finally read a book for the first time in more than a month! Last night I read the moving midgrade verse novel Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown. And I agree with one of the reviewers at Amazon that it takes a lot of courage to write a negative mother character without softening it or watering down the hurt at the end.

It occurred to me that, since much of my writing focuses more on exploring feelings than on action plots, maybe I should consider writing one of my novel projects in free verse. It wouldn't work with most of my projects, but there's one story I haven't landed on the right voice for yet, and I'd already planned to intersperse poems and lyrics throughout it, but now I'm thinking maybe it should be mainly verse. But there are so many characters, and so much exposition is needed, I'm not quite sure how it would work. It might be one of those novels that's made up of multiple things like poems, article clippings, diary entries, quotes, dialogue...I'm not sure yet, but it's something to explore.

In other news, I've decided to stop being a couch potato. You'd be hard pressed to find someone less athletic than me, and it's been that way since I was a kid. But being a kid, I still did things like riding my bike, roller skating, and taking tap dance classes. As an adult, those things fell by the wayside, and I've been quite sedentary. I've only gone to a gym once (YMCA), several years ago, and after one try on the treadmill I never went back. But after a physically taxing pregnancy and recovery, I decided that if I got my health & range of motion back, I wanted to enjoy it and not take it for granted. Also...I was taking a women's magazine survey and they asked for article ideas. I started thinking they should write about someone who went from being a complete couch potato to being moderately active, and they could call it 50 Days to Fitness or something like that. But then I thought that if anyone were to write that, it should be me, but first I would have to do it! So with that idea as a starting point, I just started walking, not with any major goal except to stop being a couch potato, and to invest at least 50 days into it before letting myself call it off. I wanted to log my daily activity in some way, and being an Internet addict, it seemed like the easiest way to keep track of it would be with a blog. So I started a blog for my "No Potato Project" at nopotato.blogspot.com. It's mainly just for me, but if other people know it's there and could theoretically check up on me, I figure that will give me more impetus not to quit! The cool thing is, I think I've walked about 11 miles in the past week that I never would have walked otherwise, and that is huge for me.

An abundance of books (and baby laughs)

My parents finally got to meet my baby, now that he's already 12 weeks old! They visited for part of Thursday & part of Friday. Blake did not disappoint, as he was a giggly bundle of joy most of the time they were here.

Meanwhile, I've only read a couple of books since he was born, so my reading list has been stacking up. I kept seeing people go on about John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, but when I found out it had footnotes, I had to go check it out... For some reason, I've loved every fiction book I have read with footnotes in it, as different as they have been from one another (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson, and The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart--maybe the sequel to it, also). It's partly because the footnotes are usually clever and enjoyable on their own terms, but probably mostly because I'm a pretty parenthetical thinker myself. I have no problem with tangents...I have more trouble staying linear. So I suspect that on some level, I'm on a similar wavelength with authors who think to use footnotes in fiction, so their writing resonates with me in general.

But that's just one of many books I have piled up to read. I also have lots of books by authors I know: Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown, Tattoo by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement Moore. I also can't wait to read Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson and Reality Leak by Joni Sensel, as well as some other books I've heard of recently. I just can't figure out when I'm going to read them all!

Never mind

Things are not looking up after all.

Things are looking up...

Yeah, our car needs a new engine...but at least we got our tax refund this past week, just in time! I also found a large surprise win on my porch from a Quick and Simple magazine contest--a Black & Decker power scrubber and a Black & Decker garden cultivator. And yeah, my poor baby had to get immunizations this week, which made him cry much of the day, but in the doctor's office, we found the Parents magazine my son Kyle and I are mentioned in--we're on page 142 of the April 2007 issue--and the dr told us to take it home. It was Kyle's turn for Show & Tell in his kindergarten class this week, so he took a copy of the article, along with the pictures referred to in it, of him covered in peanut butter as a toddler. Also, my husband had an interview on Friday. He has another interview elsewhere this coming Friday, but we're really hoping the one from this past Friday works out. It would be great in about 20 ways.

Meanwhile, oddly, it sleeted at our house in central Texas in April yesterday! We made a mini ice bunny, and also made our poor baby wear an outfit with bunny ears and a tail:

  
Sometime in the night, a certain bunny found its way to our house and left goodies for the kids. Today, we went to church, had a nice lunch out at Brick Oven Pizza (not crowded on Easter!), and had a few Easter egg hunts in the no-longer-frozen yard.

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it, from me and my Happy Easter Baby!

Foolin'

Bored this April Fool's Day? Check out this long list of April Fool's pranks being perpetrated by various web sites today: http://aprilfools.urgo.org/2007.html

My favorites so far are Gmail Paper (see also Learn More About Gmail Paper) and the whole front page of startrek.com.

Here on the home front, my 6 & 8-year-old sons are notoriously sound sleepers who have been carried to their beds asleep on many occasions without waking up, so we tried to trick them by switching them into each other's beds in the middle of the night, so they'd both wake up in the wrong rooms. Unfortunately, this time they both woke up when being moved. My husband continued moving them anyway, hoping they were mostly asleep and would forget the sleepy conversation, but they didn't. Oh well, we tried! We may still come up with another prank today.

Meanwhile, in less funny news, our car pulled a prank on us a day early. The same car that just stranded us on the highway last week, necessitating a tow truck, a rental car, and a new radiator, gave out again on the highway last night, only 4 days after we got it out of the repair shop. This time, it decided to die completely on a highway overpass after dark. Cars were zooming by at 70 mph very close to the driver's side, and on the passenger side, we were within inches of a concrete wall--on the other side of the wall was a drop-off onto a major intersection a story below. I have almost never been so frightened, especially with 3 small kids in the car, including a screaming baby! I was sure we'd get hit from behind, there was no easy way to get out of the car, and nowhere to walk to nearby. Our roadside assistance service eventually sent a police car, and the policeman helpfully pushed our car down the exit ramp in front of us and into an empty driveway nearby, then a friend came and took us all home in his van. A tow truck apparently showed up and took our car to yet another repair shop after we left. We had to miss Palm Sunday church today, but the friend who picked us up last night offered us his family's Toyota 4Runner until our car is back from the shop (isn't that nice?!), and they'll be bringing it by today, hopefully in time for us to make it to the city Easter egg hunt at 2:00!

Blog haiku

Haiku2 for ambd
imagine it as a rope to hoist himself out of the theater
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Blogs I have known

I've been tagged by Liz Scanlon to list 5 blogs I read regularly that are not related to children's literature. I've been putting this off, because...well, most of the blogs I read are related to children's literature. And the ones that aren't are mostly personal blogs of people I've known in real life, not necessarily intended for mass audiences. So I've been wracking my brain to think of a few to list.

One of the funnest I've come across lately is SenseList, a blog of interesting lists created by an old friend of mine. He also runs the Interesting Thing of the Day blog, although it's not quite daily at the moment. (But I noted that SenseList actually did have a post related to children's writing--in this case, writing by children--recently.)

I've also been known to check out some blog communities such as British Comedy and Dr Pepper Freak, and meme sites like The Friday Five (or metablog The Daily Meme).

And, more locally, I sometimes check out Austinist.com.

Seems like this meme's been around a while, so I'll just tag anyone who still wants to play.

Thwarted

I am so sad right now. We didn't get to see my parents after all, or introduce Blake to my family. Our car broke down halfway there. It's now at a repair shop far from home, while we are home, thanks to a nice tow truck owner who drove all 5 of us home in his large pick-up truck...but we're home with no car. (We're trying to rent one, which has proved very difficult on a Sunday, but looks like it will be possible with help.)

I feel almost a biological need to show off my new baby, and I'm soooo sad his grandparents can't meet him! My mother has already said we live too far for her to come very soon, and she also doesn't want us to visit her because she's not up to having us over. The baby was also supposed to meet my great-uncle, step-grandmother, uncle, and some teenage cousins. What a lousy day. (Though at least Blake has been sleeping peacefully in his carseat almost all day...5 hours so far, except for one 15-minute feeding while we were stranded!)

Parents

I've heard from people online that I am quoted in the new (April 2007) issue of Parents magazine, though I subscribe and still haven't gotten mine or seen it yet! Someone in one of my writing groups had asked if she could include my story in an article about toddlers making messes, so the quote should refer to the time my middle son got into the peanut buttter at 15 months old (pictures here).

My current adorable baby is 2 months old today and my parents should finally get to meet him tomorrow, when we go to a family gathering halfway between our homes to celebrate my great-uncle's 92nd (or 93rd?) birthday. My mom has been too ill to do anything since my baby was born, so this will be her first big trip out. She still doesn't feel up to a long visit, but can at least meet her new grandson!

Thoughts for a Thursday

I've gotten caught up in all the talk on various blogs and boards about "hooks" in writing & pitching novels, but the fact is, I don't need to worry about selling a novel right now. I need to worry about writing a novel right now. And rewriting one. And none of the talk about hooks is really going to change what I'm writing. These are the stories I have to tell right now. Obviously I want to make them as compelling as possible, but I'm unlikely to change the basic storylines. (And very unlikely to add, say, mutant reptilian zombies from outer space to punch them up a bit.) So, I just need to stop worrying and start writing!

I'm grateful to Megan McCafferty for writing in the 2007 Children's Writers and Illustrators Market that it's okay to write what you're passionate about instead of what seems marketable but that you have no interest in. Even if the book you want to write is yet another teen angst book. (Here's hoping publishers agree.)

And, on the topic of selling books, I think I may submit a picture book manuscript. It's been a long time since I've submitted anything, and PBs are particularly hard because most agents don't represent them, yet most publishers don't accept unagented manuscripts. But I realized I have two manuscripts sitting around that seem done to me, and I might as well get at least one of them out there. They aren't stories with a main character and a real plot, which seems to be what editors want from PBs these days, and one is pretty quiet. That's why I've been slow to submit them, but I still like the manuscripts, so might as well try. I also have a PB manuscript that I love, but it's nowhere near done (requires a complete overhaul) and I don't think I have the brainpower for that one right now!

Also, I'm so happy to have a new digital camera and even happier to have something like this to use it on:

It's easy being green...

Last night, my enterprising 8-year-old designed a new, improved leprechaun trap for 2007, since the 2006 version hadn't worked. He made an elaborate diagram, and then he and his 6-year-old brother worked together to make the trap.


A trail of fake gold coins would lure the leprechaun up the Lego stairs to the top of an overturned moving box, where more gold coins waited. But in front of the coins on top of the box was a trap door, covered by tissue paper, so the leprechaun would fall in when he tried to walk across. My son was concerned that the leprechaun could hack his way out if he happened to have an ax, so he wanted to fortify the sides with wood, but settled for heavy books.

The result--a message from the leprechaun, spelled out in fake coins: HA HA.

It appeared that the leprechaun had used a computer mouse he found around our house as a rope to hoist himself out of the box & get away. But he left behind treasures anyway, some gold-wrapped chocolate coins and some Spree candy in green bags. Also a leprechaun-themed rubber ducky with a note: "Hee Hee. You can't catch a real leprechaun, and you can't have my real gold! Better luck next year!"

The kids were a bit astounded that the leprechaun left them chocolate coins in bags with the "Coins of the World" label on them. "It has a tag on it!" they said about one of the bags. "He got that at a candy store!" They wondered how a leprechaun could shop at a store. "Wouldn't they notice he was a leprechaun?" they asked. My 6-year-old then figured out how he could have gotten the candy, which makes perfect sense for the high-tech leprechaun who used a mouse cord as a rope. "Maybe he bought it on eBay," he said.

For breakfast today, it was Lucky Charms, of course, and later we had our annual green dinner (lunch in this case). Our special guest was the cutest leprechaun in the world! Oh, wait, that's just my baby. ;-)

And after lunch, the 6-year-old lost his first tooth...that was lucky! We expect to go to the park pretty soon to look for four-leaf clovers--one year we found quite a few! HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY TO YOU ALL!

Small world after all

A couple of days ago, I happened to read a blog post from Jennifer Barnes (again), writing from England, about a new YA novel coming out that day, Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore. The author's name struck me as sounding familiar somehow. I realized I'd known a Rosemary Clement when I was growing up. Turns out, it's her! We did children's theatre together years ago. She was actually in the Musical Theatre class I had just mentioned in my blog the previous day! I realized if she hadn't kept the Clement in her name, I could have read her book and never even realized the author was someone I knew. Anyway, I plan to get the book as soon as I can, and I'm still amazed that I found out from someone in England that someone I knew growing up in Texas is now a YA author.

More plot thoughts

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that some writer friends and I were having trouble with our largely emotion-based, rather than action-based, plots. This week, Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein wrote a great blog post dealing with this very thing. Her responses in the comments give even more insights. (Boiling it down...try to include both kinds of plot.)

Last night, I caught the end of the movie Ghost World, which I'd seen before, on TV. The existence of that movie proves to me that you don't have to have much of a plot...and particularly not an action-based one...but then, you probably won't rack up huge sales figures, either. These days, it seems to be all about the plot, or the hook, so I think I'd better try some plottier stuff before I go too quiet or artsy! Anyway, Ghost World is an interesting movie for me, as the main character, Enid, is very much like Lydia, the main character in my YA Chasing Monday, while the subject matter--facing life after high school when you don't have a plan--is pretty much the theme of my YA Can't Beet It, though Ghost World is much darker and, I'm afraid, more stylish than either of my novels. Can't Beet It is a humor novel with a basically happy ending. Chasing Monday is a more typical high school story, and at least aiming for happiness at the end.

Ghost World, I realized, has sort of the same ending as the movie The Graduate, despite having little in common with it other than an originally aimless main character who just graduated. The Graduate, which we had to dissect endlessly in a college film class, was driven by the actions of the character Ben, who was literally going after (even speedily, racing his car down the freeway) what he'd decided he wanted. Enid is never sure what she wants and doesn't do much at all. In Ghost World, unlike The Graduate, what really happens at the end is open to different interpretations, yet the endings are very similar on a surface level. Interesting.

Britcoms & multiple writers

I was amused this weekend to see Jennifer Barnes' blog post about being in England, pining for her American TV shows, while I'm here in the States, where I've never watched any of the shows she mentioned, and instead have been watching British shows all week! We watched some Extras (okay, so it's half-American, sort of), and Series VII of Red Dwarf (again), and we just rented Season One of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, which we also saw years ago. But my favorite this week has been Spaced, a rather brilliant (though often crude) sitcom from the folks behind the movie Shaun of the Dead. It apparently hasn't been released on Region 1 DVDs for some reason (I guess the video store made their own copy with a multi-region DVD player or something)...very annoying as I'd love to see the DVD extras, which this version didn't have. Anyway, it's clever and sometimes surreal, which makes it right up my alley, and one of the lead characters is a frustrated writer, though she doesn't get around to much writing.

At one point in the show, the writer character, Daisy, is working in a nightmarish job at a nacho restaurant with a power-crazed boss. She finally tells the boss off, saying she doesn't belong there, cleaning the kitchen. She's a creative person, not a mopper...she's a writer. The evil boss proceeds to tell her that all the hapless employees are writers. She motions to several of them, in turn. One writes haikus, one writes scripts, and one particularly skittish employee had a short story published once, a few years back. But there they all are in this horrible nacho sweatshop. I found it hilarious, scary, and sad, all at once! Now, I have a YA manuscript about a humiliating fast food job, and I've also written a story about a taco restaurant (in the desert...), but I hope there's more hope for my writing than those fictional writers had! I did work as a technical writer where it seemed like more than half my co-workers were also frustrated creative writers (creative writers in waiting?), but at least we were writing, and our bosses weren't insane. ;-) Um, but I am about to have some nacho chips & queso. Hmm.

My husband noticed that the British shows we've watched tend to have 2-person writing teams, often writers who have collaborated on a number of projects. We also saw an interview with John Cleese in which he said that Monty Python had two 2-person writing teams with different tastes in sketches. Off the top of our heads, we couldn't think of many similar writing teams in the U.S. Which got me to wondering...have any of you out there collaborated with other writers? I think it would take just the right person and I'm still not sure I could do it. Maybe for skits, but seems like it would be harder to collaborate on something long. Once in a Musical Theatre class, my class wrote a short show together, which worked out pretty well, but that's about my only experience with it. I tried to write skits with some friends in college, but most of our writing sessions degenerated into just hanging out (which basically led to my first date with my husband!), and when my writer friends from high school tried to improvise our way into a writing collaboration, it just changed our writing club into an improv club. I have long thought it might be interesting to co-write something with my husband, but I'm not sure what it would be. I assumed it would be non-fiction, probably not a children's book--more like humor or a collection of interesting facts--though we've talked about working together on my chapter book series idea. But I imagine him contributing mostly ideas, and research, and funny lines here and there, with me doing most of the actual writing. I'm sure we'd drive each other crazy, but I usually drive him crazy asking for feedback on my writing, anyway!

Plot and hooks

A writer friend called me this week to say she'd come across a copy of my YA manuscript, which she'd misplaced after I gave it to her for critique a couple of years ago, and had just spent about an hour reading and thinking about it (!). I had included some of the comments I'd gotten about it from other critiquers, and she said the comments I was getting were very similar to comments she and another friend of ours have gotten from editors and agents. And they all boil down to the fact that we can write, but we're not great in the plot department. We get bogged down in feelings instead of showing action, and not enough really happens.

So, she and the other friend dissected some well-plotted books and came up with a basic plot outline, almost a formula--pretty much the basic stuff, such as a problem, obstacles, etc. They plan to apply this outline to their books, to see if they can make their plots flow better, and she invited me to try it, too. I can see how it would fit a simple story, with one main problem and a linear narrative, but I'm not sure how it would fit complex YA stuff, with multiple storylines and problems, or sub-plots, and also not sure how it would accommodate flashbacks or other such deviations. But it probably would fit my midgrade stuff, and definitely the chapter books I want to write, so I ought to give it a serious go, as I really am plot-challenged! Though sometimes, when I outline a story and know exactly where it's going, it's harder for me to actually write it, because the voice isn't necessarily there and it sounds like a forced trip from point A to point B, and/or it feels like I've already written it when I know what's going to happen at each step.

I'm not hot on the whole plot-driven thing, in any case. I do think my novels should have plots, and I know that is their main problem, but the "hook" critiques I saw at an agent's blog yesterday just depressed me. I rarely write stuff with clear "hooks," and that's not really what I read for, either. It's not just what the story is about that draws me in, but the characters, the language, the way the story is told, etc. It's whether it's a world I want to spend time in, or a character I want to spend time with. The concept may get me to open the book, but it's what I see on the page that determines whether I'm going to read the book. I also wince at the idea that every book needs a wildly different plot hook than every other book before it--people don't even know what to do with stories that are too different. Half the movies in Hollywood have predictable plots we've all seen a hundred times, but they keep getting made and people keep buying tickets. If someone likes one kind of story, they usually want more that are like it. That's why series books are popular, or romance novels, or whatever. Not that I want to write stuff that's been done to death--I doubt I'm running that risk with my novel about beets, anyway--but I don't think every novel needs a stunningly new conflict, or extremely high stakes. Maybe it just needs an interesting take on a time-honored concept.

So, I'm grumpy about the hook idea. I'm hoping to sell my books based on the writing, not the concepts, because a concept is worthless to me without good writing to back it up. 20 writers can start with the same interesting concept and come out with 20 exceedingly different novels, and I'm sure not all would end up compelling! But some writers could take a quiet, everyday concept and come up with a brilliant novel about it. On the other hand...I'm probably just protesting too much because plot isn't my strong suit!

Answers to my Friend Test

Answers to my friend test from Wednesday's post:

 

1. My drink of choice is Dr Pepper. I drink a lot of it. (Though years ago, I drank Coke almost exclusively. I then stopped drinking Coke at all for a long time, and now I can stand it again, but I'm really a Pepper!)

 

2. I have 1 sibling, a brother 8 years younger.

 

3. I would never want to be on American Idol (can't sing), Survivor (too hard & you have to wear skimpy clothes!), or Trading Spaces (I have no decorating instincts, & the show usually does horrible things to people's houses). But I've always kind of wanted to do sketch comedy, so out of the choices I listed, I'd pick MAD TV--but nearly any comedy show would do. (What I'd really love to be on is the old Carol Burnett show!)

 

4. I have fiction manuscripts about bubble gum, beets, and slushies, but not popcorn. I have also written about tacos. (But popcorn is my favorite snack, & my first job was at a movie theater popcorn stand.)

 

5. I have had 2 rabbits, a duck (for about a week, as a child), and a guinea pig, but I have never had a cat.

 

6. As a child, I was the only girl I knew who didn't aim to be a veterinarian. I did say I wanted to be a garbage collector, though! (I also wanted to be a writer and actress, but garbage collector was right up there.) It's my 16-year-old cousin who wants to be a meteorologist.

 

7. I never took a class in knitting. I tried to sign up for one once, but it was full, so I'm still handicraft-challenged. I took cartooning and ice skating classes as a kid, and actually took Mayan hieroglyphics as an elective in college, which turned out to be a bad choice. I figured none of the students would know anything about it coming in, but I was probably the only non-anthropology major in there, and everyone else knew and cared much more about the subject than I did, so I had trouble keeping up!

 

8. I have a college degree in Radio-TV-Film. Why, I'm not sure. ;-)

 

9. I have won musical electronic drumsticks--basically a toy--from a Coke promotion, and a glowing martini glass, as well as a martini shaker, from an online contest a few years back. I won 32 lbs. of Tootsie Rolls (144 jumbo-sized ones) from a prize drawing on the University of Texas campus during a Texas Independence Day festival (22 years ago today, I believe), and had to lug the whole big, awkward box of them across campus to my dorm, which I barely managed. I'd been trying to win an old vinyl record, but oops, I got the grand prize! I did make lots of new "friends" in my dorm after that, but the friendships dried up when the girls started blaming my candy for making them gain weight! I have never won a $50.00 red velvet cake, by the way, but I've been entering to win one from womansday.com!

 

10. My husband's name is Mark.

Musings

Nobody had any comments about the bad hair photos of myself I linked to in my "harrowing hair tales" post yesterday?! Methinks no one must have read the post!

A couple of nights ago, I read back over the 7,000+ words of my unfinished National Novel Writing Month manuscript from last fall, hoping it would turn out to be good, and I'd feel spurred on to get back to it. No such luck! If anything, I found it depressing that there were a few, mostly buried gems of ideas or characters lost in a story I don't think is good enough to finish. Also, I had set the story in Sarasota, Florida, where we lived last year. It was the first story I ever tried to write that was set in a real, identifiable place, and for that alone I found it noteworthy--I wanted to write it as a tribute to somewhere I might soon forget. Unfortunately, it seems I have already forgotten Sarasota! I started the manuscript just 1 month after moving away. Now, 4 months after that, even the landmarks I wrote about in the story had largely slipped my mind, and I realized I could never finish it with the same realistic descriptions now, from here, as out of touch as I am with that area already. Very strange. How quickly we forget!

On a brighter note, I also looked back over some sample intro paragraphs I'd written for a chapter book series I'd like to write. And I liked them! What the novel manuscript lacked most of all was voice, and the chapter book idea seems to have it. What it doesn't have is plots, or even definite characters...I still haven't decided if the characters are humans or animals! So I don't feel ready to start it right now. But I do think it's worth batting around, while my kids are still at chapter book age so I'm familiar with the genre. I'm thinking I should probably finish one of my YA novels first, though, if only because I'd prefer to make a name for myself in midgrade or YA first, since they are my first loves. But if I figure out a plot for one of the chapter books (I have titles in mind, oddly, but not specific plots), I may start writing it and see what happens. 

I'm also not sure which YA I'd want to work on--one I have a full draft for, which needs massive revisions I've been putting off, or one I only have partially written, which has given me fits for years. All of the characters deserve to have their stories told, so I'm not sure who should win! And then I begin to doubt that any of their stories is really interesting enough to tell. I've been reading the novel "hooks" some other writers are posting in their blogs, and I know my novels don't really have hooks. When one of them had a first chapter critique at a conference some years ago, the editor critiquing it said it was fine as far as it went, but it needed "more." More what, I asked? She couldn't say. Just "more." I'm still mulling over that! For ages I thought she meant deeper themes, or more going on in the plot, and I even tried to add in some edgier stuff that another editor then told me didn't fit. But now I'm thinking maybe it just needs to be more vivid, more sensory, more tangible--areas I often struggle with--so it pulls the reader more deeply into the world of the story. Hmm. Part of me wants to work on that, and the other part of me thinks I should write the chapter books because they have simple storylines by necessity, and won't require so much of that elusive "more"! (Not that I think they'd be "easy" to write--just that they might be an easier fit for my natural writing style.)

Now go laugh at my hair pics!

All the cool kids are doing it...

Create your own Friend Test here

Harrowing hair tales

Look what I got in the mail from the lovely Laura Bowers recently:

It's a handy (pun intended) emery board advertising her forthcoming YA novel, Beauty Shop for Rent. (I even used it to file my nails within moments after opening the envelope, since I really needed to do so at the time, though I only used the plain side!) Very nifty.

Laura is also having a contest right now to win a galley copy of her book. See her blog for details. Two of the ways to enter are to share a bad salon experience, or a photo of a bad hairstyle you've had. You can get another entry by posting a link to her contest on your blog. I'm going for broke by doing ALL of these things. I've suffered enough from bad hair to deserve a few entries! ;-)

I've had many bad salon experiences over the years, but one stands out as the worst because it was bad in several shudder-worthy ways. I was in 9th grade, which was still in junior high instead of high school in my town. My hair was flat and limp and wouldn't hold a curl--or more importantly in 1980, couldn't be shaped into properly feathered bangs. Obviously, something had to be done. My grandmother decided to help me out by getting me my first perm--a body wave just to help my hair hold curls. For some reason, even though she usually didn't mind paying for quality and this was a very vulnerable age in my life, she took me to get the perm at a small, hole-in-the-wall sort of beauty college. Here the horrors begain. First, my student hairdresser, Lawanda, was smoking while doing my hair, dropping ashes on me as she worked! Second, she didn't cover my clothes well, and spilled some sort of perm fluid on my favorite t-shirt, leaving a big white stain where the color was apparently bleached out of my shirt. But worst of all...she left the perm solution on too long, and burned a section of hair off the top of my scalp. I'm not sure how big the burned spot was now--maybe the size of a nickel or quarter--but it might as well have been the size of a silver dollar when I was in 9th grade!

As the hair grew in, it stuck straight up, which was very obvious. My solution to this was to keep cutting that section of hair back to crewcut length every time it grew to a quarter or half an inch. I did that for months of the school year. Finally, I decided I had to let it grow out sometime, and so I did. It probably grew to an inch high standing straight up, before it finally started laying flat like the rest of my hair. Meanwhile, throughout that time, a couple of guys at school called me "Mohawk"! At the end of the year, when one of them signed my yearbook, he drew a picture of a man with a Mohawk, and I was so mortified I actually colored the rest of the man's hair in later, so no one would see that in there & figure out what he was referring to. (And I just found my yearbook and scanned it in here!) I never thought much about it after that, and if you'd asked me, I would have said it wasn't that traumatizing...at least, the guys who made fun of me were teasing me in a friendly way, rather than a malicious one. However, when preparing to write this up, I realized that in my YA novel draft, written more than 20 years later, one of the traumatic & formative experiences in the protagonist's past was dyeing her hair bright red in junior high and getting harassed and made fun of about it the rest of the year, with kids calling her Raggedy Ann and Painthead. I guess my "Mohawk" problem stuck with me longer than I thought! (But strangely, I continued getting perms for years after that, and even went to a beauty school for some later haircuts--and not all those experiences were trauma-free, either--but I never again got a perm at a beauty school, and only braved an upscale one for the haircuts!)

I don't have a photo of my mini-Mohawk look, but I still have quite a few bad hair pictures from my past. So, with a bit of humiliation, I present to you a small sampling of Alison's bad hair history. As I said in a humor piece I wrote once: "Bad hair--for some, it's just a phase. For me, it's a way of life!" (This was brought back home at Cynthia Leitich Smith's launch party for her book Tantalize this week, when my bangs were so horribly in my face I had to resort to pulling them back with a headband that made me feel 11 years old all night!) I guess I really need the help of Laura Bowers' protagonist!

A tantalizing weekend

Friday night I had the good fortune to attend a book launch party for Cynthia Leitich Smith's new YA novel, Tantalize. The soiree was hosted by Cynthia and her husband Greg Leitich Smith (who can sing in Italian, by the way) at their amazing 1920s house in the heart of Austin. It was altogether delicious, given the atmosphere, the food, and the company. Cynthia definitely knows how to throw a party. There was a lavish spread of food, there were door prizes related to her book and other local authors' books, and there were even wine servers outfitted in t-shirts from the book's fictional restaurant, Sanguini's. The house had a darkly festive atmosphere, inside and out (I'll have to remember their amusing tactic of blocking off off-limits rooms with crime scene tape!), the weather was perfect for going onto the porch, the house was filled with artsy and literary folks, such as fellow bloggers Jo Whittemore and Liz Garton Scanlon (and many, many books!), and the view could not have been more Austiny--ideal considering that Tantalize is set in Austin. Best of all, every guest received a free hardback copy of Tantalize! I had assumed the book might be for sale at the party. Then when I heard they were free, I expected a paperback advanced reading copy, at best. But we all got gorgeous, autographed hardcover books. It was my first night away from my baby (and my first time to have wine in almost a year!), and all in all was a lovely evening out. The baby...and my husband...even survived without me!

Saturday was the first lazy day we'd had in a while, with absolutely no commitments, so I took the opportunity to lie around reading Tantalize. I read the whole thing that day, despite its being more than 300 pages. I must admit I have never read a vampire or werewolf book before, so I don't know how it compares to others in the genre, but I enjoyed it and cared for the characters, and it certainly kept me reading. I found it suspenseful from beginning to end. And, as a regular YA reader, I loved the way the typical YA elements of the plot blended with the fantasy elements. Of course, living in the Austin area I also loved the Austin-centric nature of the plot (I laughed out loud about the "Bat Anti-Defamation League"), though living north of town, the South Congress area featured in the book is almost as foreign to me as San Antonio. Guess I'll have to go down there soon and see what's what! Cynthia is a talented writer and I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in YA or urban fantasy literature. I could definitely imagine it as a movie, also. Though I am wondering now if I should have really drunk the red wine at Cynthia's house! (I did leave the party with fangs, but only the fake ones I'd brought...I hope!)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Heart Day, everyone! For some reason, Valentine's Day always puts a smile on my face, even though it was rarely a romantic day for me when I was single, and even when I don't have plans for it, like today! I guess I have good memories of childhood Valentine treats, classroom parties & card exchanges, etc. It's a hassle to help my kids find valentine cards and address them all, but I still enjoy it somehow. Plus, I just like holidays. (And, I like the candy & flowers my husband gave me this morning!) But my husband actually had lunch with a friend today and we don't want to take 3 kids out to a nice dinner, so we don't have any big plans for the day. But we ordered delivery from Jason's Deli tonight, which is kind of romantic since we met there.

In other news...

• A week after my baby was born, I was diagnosed with late-onset pre-eclampsia, one symptom of which is very high blood pressure, and readmitted to the hospital for 2 nights. My blood pressure finally stabilized with some medication, but went back up into a nerve-wracking range a few days after I came home from the hospital. The dr told me to stay on the meds another 2 weeks & see how it goes. So far, so good--it seems to have stabilized again. I started being a little more active, after trying to rest a lot at first, and I think it really makes me feel better. (Not that I'm particularly active, but I've at least gone out to the store & stuff instead of just staying in resting.)
  
• My baby is 3 weeks old today! It goes so fast. At his 2-week checkup last week, all seemed well. He was finally back up to his birth weight (minus 1 oz.), & had grown an inch longer.
  
• Nothing in the world is sweeter than my baby. (Though lots of things are less messy! So far neither one of us can get through the day without at least 1 change of clothes, and usually 3 or 4 in his case!)
  
• My 6 & 8-year-olds had trouble getting into the original Star Wars movies enough to stay awake through one. Then, enter the Lego Star Wars 2 video game. Now, they are obsessed. They have watched the whole original trilogy now, plus the first movie of the new trilogy (and don't you think that nearly any episode of Star Trek is better than that movie?!). So, I decided to download & play for them Weird Al Yankovic's "Yoda" song. This may have been a mistake. It gets old to hear kids yelling "Yo, yo, yo, yo, Yoda!" all the time.
  
• My husband's dad & stepmother visited us last week from Colorado. It was a nice, laid-back visit.
  
• My mother has been sick for a few weeks so my parents haven't been able to meet my baby yet. I hope they can visit while he still looks mostly like a newborn! (Of course, my brother hasn't even met my 6-year-old yet, so who knows?!)

My baby is here!

My third son, Blake, arrived on Wednesday, January 24th, after only 2 crazy hours of labor! My water broke at 7:20 am and we left for the hospital shortly before 8:00. Between rush hour traffic and rain, it took over an hour to get there. I checked into the hospital at 9:01 am, and Blake was born at 9:36! Click here to meet him! Last night was his first night home, and while I ended up sitting up holding him pretty much all night... (he consented to maybe 10 minutes in his bassinet), we are all doing well and really enjoying our newest and tiniest family member!

3 weeks into the new year

A couple of months ago, I paid $5 to enter a WritersWeekly.com contest to write a short story in 24 hours this month. They would send out a topic and word count when the contest began, and entrants would have to send in a story that fit the topic and word count within 24 hours of the original e-mail. Then I forgot about the contest. Until today, when I got the second e-mail from them. That is, the one announcing that the contest was over & no more entries would be accepted. I had never seen the first e-mail yesterday with the topic or word count! After a bit of digging, I found it in my deleted mail folder. :-( I get soooooo much spam, I'm obviously going through my mail too quickly. I guess I deleted it because I didn't recognize the sender (the editor's name), but I don't know why I didn't see the clear subject line. And I was sooooooo bored yesterday. As bored as I've been in months or a year. I complained about it several times. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be busily writing a story! (And the topic was vaguely about cooking, which would have been more timely for me than usual since I've been watching Top Chef lately.) Argh. That's at least the second message I've missed lately, so I've got to get less delete-happy. Sigh.

Meanwhile...this is shaping up to be my longest pregnancy yet. I'm 12 days from the baby's due date. My first son was born 12 days from his due date, at 3:20 pm CST. I have just passed that time in this pregnancy. And my second son was 11 days old by this point. While I'm happy to have this baby a week or more past his brother's birthday, the waiting is still getting frustrating. I'm as huge and uncomfortable as I've ever been in my life, and because I keep thinking it could be any minute, I feel compelled to take everything I might need at the hospital with me every time I leave the house! We have bags for me, the older kids (who will stay with some of our friends while I'm giving birth), and the baby in the trunk of our car, but there are last-minute items I still need at home, so I've been dragging things back & forth to the car all the time. Ugh. Both of the other kids came before I expected them, so I'm not used to waiting & wondering, and I also didn't have all these annoying pre-labor symptoms with them. I've been having contractions on & off for more than 2 weeks now! So I'm getting antsy. It's weird to find myself wishing for painful labor to start. Though I still don't have a name for the baby, and the house really isn't ready, either, so I shouldn't be in a hurry. I was at least very glad not to go into labor when we were iced in a few days back!

So the ice is gone, & we have sun again today for the first time in more than a week. It's lovely! We were really going stir crazy being stuck at home for several days, especially with the kids being out of school for 3 days this past week (one for MLK Jr. Day, two for icy weather). Friday night, we went to see Night at the Museum. It was okay, but I don't think the kids were crazy about it. And the happiest news in days is...Girl Scout cookies are here!! We got 3 boxes so far: Thin Mints, my favorite Caramel deLites (known as Samoas in some other states), and the new Lemonades. I was a little wary of the Lemonades, since I loved the lemon creme sandwich cookies they had in years past, and these didn't look as good (big round shortbread cookies with lemon icing), but the lemon icing tastes the same as in the sandwich cookies, and they're really pretty good. My 8-year-old likes them better, because "the lemon is closer to your tongue." But the boxes have fewer, large cookies instead of many small ones, and I'd really prefer more cookies to larger ones! (I'm trying to eat half a cookie at a time...we'll see how long that lasts!)