I mailed out four manuscripts today! That brings me up to 23 submissions (including many contest entries) for the year, and I still have another picture book manuscript to send out this year. I also have another idea for a humor article, though I'm not sure if I'll write it soon or not. I probably want to get the picture book done first. I also got a letter from Once Upon A Time today, saying that my humor piece When the Muse Strikes (Out) will run in their next issue, to be mailed out next week.

I also had a very strange dream last night--basically I dreamed an odd concept for an adult literary novel set in Victorian England. I saw the parlor or drawing room where part of it would be set, and I saw the cover of the book in great detail... It was a moody and dreamy-looking cover with the title beautiful hands in lowercase script, in a text box in the center of a dark green book jacket, with a painting (very old and crackly-looking, like the detail from a classic painting) on the top half of the cover of several women's arms and hands extended, reaching up, above the book title. Like this was a novel I was supposed to write or something. But not only can I not figure out what it was supposed to mean, but it doesn't really even appeal to me (except for the book jacket design)! I write contemporary young adult fiction, not adult literary stuff or anything set in the past. (I imagined this as a lyrical, slow-moving tome of adult literary fiction, whereas I usually write fast-paced first person stuff about teenagers today.) Very odd. I can't figure out if I should be trying to learn something from that or not! ;-)

Woo hoo! I got my first actual writing check today!! I'm not going to cash it until I scan or photocopy it, and I am pathetic enough I'll probably frame that & put it over my desk...if I ever start using my desk. Now I have to figure out what to spend it on. It's not really even enough to go out to dinner on! (At least not with the kids.) So I can't decide whether to spend it on a small celebration dinner, or to buy some sort of keepsake with it. I did recently buy a Native American-style Storyteller figurine from eBay to replace one I got in New Mexico & can't find right now...but I doubt that should be my keepsake because I think it's an imitation and I'll replace it with my old one when I find it. OK...I just went to eBay again & bought a silver charm of Snoopy as the Literary Ace. Maybe that'll be my keepsake! And it was cheap enough I'll still have almost enough to go out to dinner, LOL.

I signed up yesterday to participate in National Novel Writing Month. It's a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30. There's no obligation to finish & no prizes for completion...all they do is put up the names of people who got to 50,000 words and who are willing to submit their manuscripts to a word count. So, why not try it, if the fun of the deadline will motivate me to sit down & do something I want to do anyway? I do have one young adult novel in progress (or rather, in stasis!) but you are supposed to start something new for the challenge, so I plan to try to blast through a different young adult novel I have an idea for. I doubt I can do it justice in a month, and don't want to alienate my husband and kids, either, but figured I'd at least give it a try! I'll use the rest of October to finish up some short pieces I've been working on and send them out, and will switch into dedicated novel-writing mode on November 1. Looks like I've ordered a keyboard for my PDA (a lovely color Sony Clié I got for Christmas last year) just in time!

As much as I dreaded it, 35 has been surprisingly good to me so far. It seems to have provided the motivation I needed to actually spend a lot of energy on writing. I have never been more prolific. The most I've ever submitted, whether for publication or to contests, was 11 submissions in one year, in 2000. This year, I've already hit 19 and have at least 4 more things I plan to send out by the end of the year. (2 have been accepted, a lot were contests, and I'm still waiting to hear about quite a few.) And there are still 3 months to go!

In the past week alone, I finished a silly short story for grown-ups (probably not marketable, but I still wanted to finish it) that I started years ago--I'm not sure how many, and also a more serious story for grown-ups that I started at least ten years ago! I also drafted a story for young readers (maybe ages 6-9) that I hope to send out next week, and I'm polishing a picture book manuscript and have written some notes for a short non-fiction piece.

Other things aren't going quite as well as writing, and I've been feeling sick a lot lately, but I'm so happy about the writing that it kind of trumps everything else right now.

Good news today! Guideposts for Kids is buying one of my poems! Here's the acceptance envelope I got in today's mail, minus my address:

Well, I thought I was feeling older than my years these days, and I guess I was right. I got this in the mail this week:

(So why are all the stores trying to sell me hip huggers?! Is there an old person's store I can shop at now, that sells pants with waistlines at the actual waist...?)

One of the things that bothers me most in the whole world is the idea some people have that dark, sordid, or depressing things, especially in art/fiction/movies/etc., are somehow more "real" or "true" than light or joyous things. Nothing is more real or true than the laugh of my 16-month-old son, or the all-encompassing love and mercy of God. I doubt there is anything I can do in my lifetime to counteract this misguided hierarchy of truth or of worthiness for art, but I wish I could. I think it will be an uphill battle for me to ever be taken seriously as a writer if I keep writing light or funny things instead of desparing things. And I'm not saying I won't write despairing things, either, because I undoubtedly will...but I think they are all different parts of the truth, and all equally part of human experience. And I do hope to celebrate the glorious, which is so misunderstood or overlooked, instead of just pondering the sordid and feeling somehow more profound for it. (I don't make a lot of distinctions between "high art" or "low art," either, and I have a very egalitarian view of whose views are worth listening to...but that's another subject.)

I also bristle at the idea that authors and artists should write or create whatever they feel they "need" to, regardless of whom they hurt or alienate in the process. Maybe I'm just clueless in this area since I don't currently have any difficult or potentially hurtful stories clamoring to be told, but I have trouble believing that any one person's art is so wonderful or needed that it trumps the needs and feelings of many other flesh-and-blood people. I could be wrong, and am certainly willing to consider anything on a case-by-case basis, but I would want to take a long, hard look at my motives, my goals, and the long-term potential costs and benefits before purposefully doing something that would hurt other people. There will always be exceptions, but most of those painful books that just "had to be written" will end up on the bookstore remainder table for $1 in a year or two, and the authors will be mere footnotes in literary history...will they feel it was worth it then? (But then, I also have trouble understanding how the life of one pet snake could be worth the lives of many mice! I understand it in nature, where it's just the food chain, but not so much with pets. I know I'm a hypocrite, though, because I do seem to value cute little mice over, say, cockroaches!)

So I'm doing this instead of the 80 other things I should be doing. OK, maybe not 80 but at least 5, including gathering a box of giveaway clothes for the TX Paralyzed Vets, who are coming by tomorrow, doing 2 Bible study lessons I need to have done by tomorrow morning, rummaging through paper piles to find some bills I need to pay, and gathering materials I need to do our taxes. I am so exhausted. It's been a hard day with the kids, it's rainy & cold (for Texas) outside, and I had a dental emergency this week & have to get a root canal on Friday. Whee. I don't think I'll be able to eat "real" food again (things I can really bite down on) for at least a month.... Not to mention I've been trying to write a novel! Actually I'm trying to write a snyopsis of it right now so I can apply for a small grant to finish it--the application is due by March 1. But since I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen at the end yet, it's pretty hard to write a synopsis! (I know basically what happens, but not when/where/how the big showdown will occur.) I've been pretty excited about this for most of the past week, since I actually got some writing done on the novel and came up with some ideas I was really happy with, but today I heard that some publishing houses sometimes hold things for 2 to 3 years before even rejecting them! So if one place held it that long and then rejected it, then another did the same, and then another finally accepted it but 2 or 3 years to get it into print, my contemporary novel could be historical fiction by the time it was actually published! I'm already pushing 35 here, I certainly don't want to be 50 by the time I could have a book in print! If I even live that long. So I'm not feeling so great today...but maybe things will turn around tomorrow. I also did submit a couple of other bits of writing to some publications (2 that don't pay...1 that would) last week, so I have at least a bit of hope for my writing at the moment.

Temptation Aisle: Have you ever noticed how stores put tons and tons of impulse items along even the express checkout lane? There I am with my 10 items or less, or 20 items or less (should be fewer, but most stores say less), and I usually have just that many items...and there's that Twix, or that magazine, or pack of batteries I need, or whatever, just daring me to put it in the cart. Do I take something else out of my cart and put it where it isn't supposed to go, so I can buy this new item I want more? Do I bury the urge for the new item? Or do I risk the express lane police by sticking that extra item--or items--in my cart? I half-expect alarms to sound and handcuffs to close around my wrists if I do, or at least I expect a nasty look from the person behind me. I think it's cruel and unusual to put so much eye candy in the express lane, when most people are barely squeaking through it with the right number of items as it is....

Today was my 2nd critique group meeting. I thought it went better this time, since this time they agreed my YA novel really was YA. And liked it, for that matter! Someone said something I liked a lot, about submitting to publishers: You can reject me, but you can't stop me.

My absolute favorite quote at the moment, considering my current mid-30s crisis, is by George Eliot: "It is never too late to be what you might have been." (Actually, I think it a lot of cases it is too late--I'll never be a child star, for instance, or an Olympic athlete!--but I'm still clinging to that quote daily!)

Three clichés I need to take to heart:

1) Don't sweat the small stuff.

2) Don't sell yourself short.

3) Strike while the iron is hot.

I went to my first critique group meeting this past weekend. They seemed to think my YA-novel-in-progress should be written as a mid-grade instead. I thought long & hard about it & didn't agree, but of course I had more information about it than they did, as they only saw 3 pages. But now I'm re-thinking the idea altogether and have so many ways I want to go with it I'm not really sure what to do. I have so many other ideas, too, that I'm not sure what to focus on right now...and not at all sure what to take to the next meeting. But it will almost assuredly be a different project.