Writing rewards

My son came home from first grade today with a "Certificate of Excellence" for "outstanding performance in WRITING." Under that it says "Awesome Author Award," and he also got a sparkly blue dogtag necklace with "AWESOME AUTHOR AWARD" screen-printed on it. I asked if he got it for writing a story, and he said, "I got it for a writing a good story." I haven't gotten to see the story yet, but it's apparently about a "shiny shell thief." I asked if everyone in his class got a certificate, and he said only one other kid got one besides him. So, I thought that was pretty cool! He has also written a couple of stories about Neopets lately (fanfic, if you will) that I thought were rather well done for his age. He's really going to give me a run for my money when he gets older, since I just write, and he can write and do amazing things with math & science!

As for me, I found a check in the mail today for my pieces in the upcoming Summer Shorts anthology from Blooming Tree Press. Hooray! Even though I sold the pieces about a year ago, this was the first money I've gotten from my writing since 2004, so getting that check made me feel validated as a writer again! I can't wait to see the anthology when it comes out.

An update that wasn't worth the wait

So I apparently said I'd post an update soon...guess I missed the "soon" part! And I'm still way busy. Right now we're trying to get ready for my mom to visit from Texas in a few days, and our house is so not going to be ready. We never really unpacked everything, & now we just seem to be shifting stuff around & I still don't know where to put anything. There aren't enough places and our things aren't organized well to start with. We also have to put together a futon for her to sleep on, and I don't know if it's going to get done. I'm a bit panicked. Then there's stuff going on with the kids' schools and the end of the school year coming up, and we have no plans at all for summer, except going to at least one wedding out of state. Everything feels very haphazard right now, and I'm not writing, either. I hope things will look pretty different in a few weeks.

Not down the rabbit hole

Just so you know, I am alive. Horribly busy. Planning to update soon, but between egg hunts & last-minute taxes, I doubt I can manage more than this today. So if you don't hear from me again, Happy Easter weekend!

Destined to be a Pepper

Check out this new Dr Pepper can design from my latest 12-pack:



It's hard to read, but it has a big 23, surrounded by the words "AUTHENTIC BLEND OF 23 FLAVORS."

23 has been my favorite number since I was a kid. And I live on Dr Pepper. That just seems...cosmically cool somehow.

And while I'm on the subject, I just found out that the Dr Pepper commercial with Meat Loaf singing "I'd Do Anything for Love" is online here. That's my favorite commercial in years! (All my favorite commercials seem to be drink commercials...my other all-time favorites are the first "Got Milk?" commercial, the one that was set at the Aaron Burr museum, and the Sprite commercial with the little animated sun that jumped off the orange drink bottle, causing the mom & kids to run for their lives.)

Detective Day (and a dreadful dream)

This morning, I woke up from one of those wretched dreams where it's almost the end of the semester and I haven't been to class. The math is always impossible to make up, and in this one I also had to write a very long, detailed paper analyzing Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which I hadn't read. Those are some of the few mornings when I'm glad to wake up!

Then I took the kids to a library event for beginning readers. It was advertised as a dectective book party for ages 6-8, focusing mainly on Nate the Great and Young Cam Jansen. My 7-year-old, Ryan, loves Nate the Great & Cam Jansen, and my 5-year-old, Kyle, is an early reader himself, so I took them both. I was surprised that out of 18 kids in attendance, all of whose parents chose to bring them to a detective-themed reading event, Ryan was one of only 2 kids who was familiar with Nate the Great, & one of only two kids familiar with Cam Jansen. These are fun books, people--check them out! Anyway, the Cam Jansen girl knew all about Cam Jansen, but the other Nate the Great boy had only read one book about him for school. So Ryan ended up answering more than half of the questions about detectives and the characters, even though he's normally shy enough he couldn't bring himself to share his favorite food at the beginning of the meeting. Kyle also answered a few! Then, they had a secret code to solve and said the first to solve it would get a prize. Ryan was first, except for one girl who had done it before the kids were told to, so he got the prize, though they later gave prizes to everyone who figured it out. (Once I showed Kyle how to get started, he eventually got it, too.) They did some reading & singing (the singing could have gone over better than it did...), & talked about mind-mapping for ideas. At the end, the librarians made pancakes for the kids from the pancake recipe in a Nate the Great book. My kids love pancakes & got to help stir the batter, so it was a really nice event for them! Kyle even behaved until it was time to go. (Then, he very much didn't.)

Blog Entry Update: I'm sitting on my bed with the laptop, and Ryan just brought me a tiny, intricately folded piece of paper, that is "To: Mom" and "From: R and K," addressed to me at "Mom's bed, Last house, (Our) Road." I unfolded it to find this message: "Need help building time portal." Under that are a picture of an envelope in a circle, and the words "mini envelopes inc." He told me that last part was the name and logo of the company that made the message. This is a glimpse of life in my house! (But sadly, I have no idea how to build a time portal! No worries--he and his brother will surely figure it out.)

Since I last blogged...

• We took our kids to the County Fair. It was pretty fun, though wildly expensive. A highlight was the racing pigs (see them on video!). So now I've seen racing pigs and swimming pigs (back in the day...).


• In the evening, when we had babysitting, my husband & I returned to the fair sans kids and rode some big rides. The best was, I think, called the Spin-Out. Was it worth $5 a pop? I'm not sure, but I think everyone should occasionally have that experience of being whipped through the air at crazy speeds, seeing bright lights and hearing carnival sounds all around, not knowing if you're right side up or upside down, and not having a care in the world. (The other ride we rode, though, gave me plenty of cares, as I would have sworn I was about to be hurled at great speed into a Winnebago. Or at least, that something would get hurled... It just wasn't fun!) Despite my belief that rickety carnival rides are disasters waiting to happen, there were some truly magical moments there. (I also had a new appreciation for the dunk tank guy after reading David Lubar's novel Dunk!)


• I saw two magic shows. The first was at the fair with my husband. My favorite trick was when he set the inside of a pan on fire, closed the lid, then removed the lid and a (non-burnt) ferret came out. The second magic show was one for kids this morning at the library. Note that the two magicians used at least 4 or 5 of the same jokes! Magicians of the world, please learn some new jokes. Naturally, out of 60 or 70 kids in the audience, my 5-yr-old monster was the only child acting up. I had to wrangle him twice & hold him on my lap as he struggled to escape. Fun.


• I read the latest Newbery winner, Criss Cross. I wrote up a lot of thoughts on it for an online book discussion earlier, and made a copy of those thoughts here.


• I read about 2/3 of the friendship book, which is very insightful, and all of the photo book by teenagers with cameras. What surprised me most about that was how little the teenagers seemed to be learning or doing in school--the classes seemed to be mostly busywork or note-taking with little interaction, so they were falling asleep in class instead of having lively discussions. Sad! I was also surprised so many of them were talking on cell phones, using iPods, etc., even during school.


• My family tried to watch the first Harry Potter movie last night, which was my kids' first direct exposure to the HP stories (but my oldest has often been told he looks like Harry so we figured he should at least know who that was). However, the DVD of it we got from the library was in such horrible shape, we could not get it to play certain parts even after stopping to clean it and trying all kinds of fast-forwarding, backing up, etc. The sound kept going out, too. We had to skip a few short parts and rely on my poor memory to let the kids know what had happened. Finally, when Harry was supposed to get his invisibility cloak but we absolutely could not get the scene to play, we gave up. That's too good of a part to miss! We'll have to try a video store tonight.


• I gave up on trying to revise my novel by today to submit it to Carolrhoda Books (today was the deadline in their call for submissions). But I'm still glad they called for submissions, because it got me over a hurdle with the manuscript and I'm getting stuff done!


• My kids started Spring Break. Somebody save me from Spring Break! I doubt I'll get much writing done this week.

Friends and the library

Hello, my name is Alison and I blog too much. I’ve long said that writing begets writing, and now I see that blogging begets blogging. The more I blog, the more aware I become of more things to blog about. And you’re stuck with the result.

Anyway, I went to the library tonight, with my laptop. I freaked out a little because the YA section of this library says, "This section is for teens only after school & on weekends." Uhh...does that mean no aspiring YA writer with a regular day job can check out a YA book?!!? I don’t have a day job, so I can work around this, but it doesn't seem fair. And will they bar me in the summer? I snuck in anyway, furtively, and grabbed a copy of the Newbery winner, Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins. I thought Newberys were nearly always midgrade. Odd.

I rarely get books from the adult section, but today I got 3, all with sub-titles:

• My So-Called Digital Life: 2,000 Teenagers, 300 Cameras, and 30 Days to Document Their World (obviously for my YA research!)


• Sudden Fiction (Continued): 60 New Short-Short Stories (I have the first Sudden Fiction anthology & thought these would be quick reads & expand my fiction horizons a little)


• Connecting: The Enduring Power of Female Friendships

That last choice is an odd one for me, especially since I don’t particularly have any close female friendships at the moment, but I’m just curious about the nature of friendship (female or otherwise), and wanted to research it for my YA. It seems to me that friendship--in particular, how we choose our friends and whom we develop rapport with--involves a kind of chemistry not completely unlike that in romantic relationships. I mean, people don’t usually become friends with just anyone, and I don’t think life stage alone is enough to base a relationship on. People often expect that moms with kids in preschool will make friends with other moms from the same preschool, but just being at the same place in life isn’t enough, really. If it were, everyone in a high school class might be friends with each other, and that’s not how it is. Nor is it just about hobbies or shared interests... even though we may have a natural affinity for others with the same interests or goals (like my general affinity for other writers), we still became closer to some people than others, even if we like them all. One would also think it had to do with outlook on life, and there’s definitely something to that, but it’s not as simple as sharing the same views. What particularly interests me is that some of the people I’ve hit it off with the best are people who, on the surface, are nothing like me. I may disagree with them vehemently on some core issues, and still feel some sort of bond with them that I don’t feel with everyone else in the same group. My theory is that it has something to do with personality type, but surprisingly, I can find very little written on the subject of how and why people become friends.

While countless books, magazine articles, and websites dissect and theorize about what attracts people to one another romantically, the "chemistry of friendship" seems almost completely overlooked. But I think it’s important, and interesting, and it’s something I’d like to understand more for my YA. Why does my character feel so little ability to fit in with those around her, and what is it that draws her to the people she is drawn to? Can she learn to change how she feels about the people around her? This was something I struggled with in my late teens, and I wasn’t sure where or how to find like-minded people, or what a like-minded person might look like. Like minds don’t always look alike to other people. So, if anyone has any books or other resources to recommend on this subject, let me know! I’ve already scouted out everything the local libraries and Amazon have to offer, and so far I’m coming up pretty short. (I did order one out-of-print book that seems to address this subject, but that’s about it.)

Now, drumroll, please. Rat-a-tat-rat-a-tat-tat: Ta-da! While at the library, I made some changes to the actual text of my novel! I only got to write about a paragraph before the library closed, but I started this revision! And started making notes about the current structure, scene by scene, and realized that one minor character might be more important to the story than I'd thought. I was really moving along and then the library had to close. But I may go back in the morning while the kids are in school. It's easier to concentrate there. (Too bad next week is Spring Break & I won't have any time to myself then!)

Moving forward

I still haven’t changed a word of my YA novel this year. (Well, okay, I did fix one typo.) But…I am still making progress for the first time in ages!

Yesterday I sat down with the manuscript file and stared at the first few pages in confusion for a while. As usual, I had no idea what to do with it or where to start. I decided I needed to understand the point of the book once & for all. I needed to make it really, really clear in my own mind what my character, Lydia, wants, and why. I opened a new document & started making notes.

The more notes I made, the more I understood Lydia. The more I understood that she does have a story, a real story that is actually worth writing. I understood more clearly why the events in the book are a big deal to her, and why she reacts as she does. I finally figured out at least a little more about her relationship with her mother, which isn’t explored much in the current draft. And I understood how people could care about her even when she seems not to care much about anything. I realized to my amazement that this tiny spark of an idea I had, initially just something vague about a girl not liking her neighbor, could grow into something complex that delves into childhood hurts, family relationships, and fragile emotions, and makes statements about life and friendship. Something that has three-dimensional characters I can see and hear and care about. Something I might even be able to be proud of writing! I am excited by all the things I discovered in my story, many of which I didn’t even put there on purpose! It mostly came out of my subconscious, and even after I wrote it, and even after my first critiques, I still didn’t see it all. I still didn’t see where it was going or why it mattered, or if it could matter or not make everyone yawn. And now, after a critique that opened my eyes, I see so much more to it. Stuff I’ve still got to chip away at or build up to show to the reader--but stuff that I now know is waiting to come out!

One good thing is that I realized most of my trouble with this manuscript is chronological. Changing the order in which I tell things, or even the order in which things happen, may fix quite a few of the problems it has now. I'm also mulling over how to make something seem less coincidental. At any rate, I'm thrilled with my new insights into the story. And when I ever get a chunk of time to myself again, I'll see what I can do with it!

So Much to Say

S is the Sound of the Day
After typing the rest of this post, I realized all my headings, including the title, started with S. Which is appropriate, because S is the letter of the week at my son's preschool, & he had to bring snacks with an S theme today. (We took cinnamon sticks & string cheese--they just called them sticks & strings.)

Sons & School
On the bright side, my older son got his first report card from his new school today. It's quite complicated as report cards go--lots of codes and legends to decipher, etc. Anyway, he got all A's in the subjects that have letter grades, and satisfactory or outstanding in everything else. He also got a report about some testing he did on a computer that put his math level as 4th grade & his reading level as the end of 4th grade, so that's pretty good considering he's in 1st grade! On the not-so-bright side, I found out my younger son is having social trouble at preschool. His friends aren't playing with him much anymore, and I think that's part of why he's been in such a rotten mood lately, though I'm not sure what to do about it.

Scrubbing Bubbles
A month or so ago, on a whim, I sent a photo of our shower into an online cleanest & dirtiest shower contest from Scrubbing Bubbles (in the cleanest category, thank you very much!). The showers rated cleanest & dirtiest each day by web site visitors would win automatic shower cleaners. I forgot about it after that, but I must have been rated cleanest one day because I found a huge box on my porch today containing an automatic shower cleaner! It's some kind of thing where you push a button & it sprays bubbles everywhere to clean the shower without your doing anything. It's supposed to be worth $40, so that's pretty cool. I've always loved the Scrubbing Bubbles anyway--I even have a toy one!

Switzerland
My "baby" brother is currently in flight on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Zurich, Switzerland! Wow, wish it were me! He apparently has a travel agent friend who finds these last-minute deals every now & then, so a few of them decided to go.... I hope he at least sends me cheese. (Also wishful thinking. But chocolate would melt in my mailbox!)

Snakes!
We have a creek near our house, & I just saw what I think is a water moccasin in it! Although it moves fast, which this site says is more common in a nonvenomous water snake, it definitely swims on top of the water with its head up, like a water moccasin. Scary. I really hope my kids don't fall in the creek. In general, the area around our house has so many wildlife noises it makes me nervous. Most of it seems to be lizards (they are noisy when scurrying in bushes) & squirrels, but something larger (I hope just raccoons) keeps knocking over our trashcan, & now I'm worried about snakes. I was reading that water moccasins may even zoom out of the water to attack someone on the bank!

Superman
A few days ago I downloaded the old Donovan song "Sunshine Superman" from iTunes. I'd been wanting it for a while, but wasn't sure which version to pick since they had a bunch and they were all very different lengths. I finally just picked one from a 60s hits compilation. Today I got around to playing it, only to find out it wasn't the original version! I mean, it wasn't even Donovan!! Even though he was listed as the artist! Can they do that?! I went to iTunes & found several user reviews complaining that the compilation did not use the original artists. Bizarre. That reminds me of when I ordered a double-album set of disco hits from TV as a kid, only to find out that even though the original artists were named in the commercial, the songs on the records were actually performed by "The Homestead Singers." Eek! (Though I kind of wish I still had that album now...!) Anyway, I paid another 99 cents to download an actual Donovan version of the song. Then after I played "Sunshine Superman," the next song my iTunes picked to play, in random shuffle mode, was "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down! Spooky... (Which reminds me, I was just listening to Sufjan Stevens' song "Casimir Pulaski Day," but now I guess I should switch to his song, "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts.")

Remedial revision

Yesterday I read over the last critique I got on my YA novel. It is truly an excellent critique (2½ single-spaced pages), and cuts right to the heart of things. When I first got it, I felt like I finally had something to work with--somewhere clear to start in rewriting. But then I still didn't manage to do it.

Reading the critique again, I was amazed by all the positive comments in it. For instance: "interesting characters," "I'm rooting for her," "very touching," "readable and engaging," and the wonderful "well worth writing and well worth reading." It still needs an overhaul, especially in structure and depth, but after reading all that I realized I really do owe it to myself, and this manuscript, to stick with it and not give up now as I've halfway done.

But...taking the critique yesterday morning and sitting down with my manuscript, I still had no idea what to do. I feel like I need a remedial course in revising. I want someone experienced to sit with me and show me, practically and physically, where they would put the cursor in my document (or even in a new, blank document) and what they would do from there! I have substantially revised a bunch of short stories & feel I've got a decent idea how to do that, but novels seem like a different creature. Even if I break it into smaller chunks like another wrier suggested, taking out one peg seems to knock down the whole structure, & I don't know how to rebuild it without cramming some pegs back in where they don't belong.

I know I just need to experiment with it and be open to where that may lead, but I feel like I'm trying to perform a play when I don't know my lines, or where to go on the stage. Of course the entire novel is just improvised in the first place, so the answer is to improvise, but now I feel like there's something there to screw up! So, I wish I had a hands-on course in Revision 101, but in any case, I have renewed enthusiasm now for trying to salvage the thing.

Nothing in moderation

Well, almost nothing in moderation, I'm afraid. I do eat & drink in moderation, except for Dr Pepper, which I have an unseemly addiction to. But in general, I am SUCH an all-or-nothing, feast-or-famine type of person. Much of the problem is I'm terrible at transitions. It's hard for me to start anything, & it's hard for me to stop anything. I write nothing for long stretches, or I write a 60,000-word novel in 17 days, while simultaneously writing an article and 12,000 words on another novel. I don't blog for a week or two, or I post 4 times in one day. When I read a book, I nearly always read it straight through in one sitting, which is probably one reason I prefer children's & YA novels to adult ones! (If I have to leave a book sitting for a while, chances are good I will never get back to it.) Even when I'm reading to my kids for bedtime, I have a hard time stopping until I've read the whole book aloud...even if it's an 80-page chapter book and it's nearly 10:00 at night! And my ideal vision for my house is something so perfect & so organized that even the toilet paper roll would be perfectly centered on the dispenser, with no rips or uneven edges on the first piece. Not being able to manage that regularly, I tend to give up & just block out the clutter piling up around me or the dishes in the sink, and step over stuff on the floor without really noticing it.

The other day I got some software that's supposed to help you learn to sing (yeah, the one they advertise on TV, that has the microphone & lets you track your pitch in real time...I'm a sucker, although I bought it from Amazon, not TV). It starts with a series of 20 lessons, and then you can do freeform exercises or singing practice. I thought I'd spend a few minutes setting it up & then get back to it later, but after I set it up, I sat there singing for hours until I'd finished all 20 lessons! (The singing itself was both encouraging and frustrating. I was shocked I didn't completely bomb all the sections, and in fact aced most of them quickly. Then I moved to the freeform part and it all fell apart. But the fact I could hit any notes accurately at all was a happy shock after years of singing shame!) And then there's Tetris, which grabbed me back for a while last week after a several-year hiatus...thank goodness I'm back out of Tetris obsession mode right now.

So, writing ideas are no exception. I'm bursting with ideas. More than I've managed to even write down or remember. But it's hard to stop the flow of new ideas long enough to choose one of them and block the others out. I've got a list of 9 novels I feel pretty committed to writing (including the 1 that I already have a whole draft of). Then I have an idea for a midgrade series, and 5 other vague novel idea possibilities. Now, I have come up with yet another idea! When I come up with an idea I like, I go through the novels I already have listed to see if I can plug my idea into an existing project idea. This time, it might work. Except, I have at least two ideas on my list that this idea might fit into! And those ideas are completely different, so I'm not sure where I'd want to use it. It might also work for my series idea. Meanwhile, I can see Lydia from my main YA novel rolling her eyes & wishing I'd just get back to her story so it can be over & done with. Then I might actually be able to justify thinking about another idea! Hang on, Lydia, I'm getting there!

Books, books, books

Last night I read Fly on the Wall, the new YA book by E. Lockhart about a girl who turns into a fly to spy on the boys. As with The Boyfriend List, I thought the author did a great job conveying the main character's humorous thought processes. I also took her "What's Your Fly Style?" quiz online, which said I'm a nosy fly. Well, sure, I'm a writer, I have to be a bit nosy about how other people live and think...but I'm really not a gossip! (Plus, if I change one answer to another I almost picked, I come out as a do-gooder fly.) Minor spoiler alert: I found it interesting that the book never explains the mechanism by which the girl becomes a fly. She wishes to be a fly on the wall, and she is. I once wrote a story about a girl who turned into a pig just by wishing it, and got taken to task for not explaining why/how her wish was granted. Apparently, Delacorte Press does not find this sort of explanation necessary. So there.

In other booky news, I finally got my voter registration certificate on Thursday, so I could finally get a library card here! (I needed some kind of ID showing I was a permanent resident, and there have been some hang-ups trying to get our cars registered or get driver's licenses...) I ran out immediately that day to get a card and check out a bunch of stuff. The library here has a rather odd automated check-out system, but I'm amazed you can check most items out for 3 weeks (we're used to 2), and that you check out up to 5 of each type of audio-visual item! Our old library had a limit of 2 total audio-visual items at a time, but this library has a much larger collection of them. I'm still getting used to the fact that Florida does nearly everything on a county basis, but I think that works well for libraries. We once had an Austin address but lived outside of the city limits, so we had no library available to us for free, and had to pay $54 per year for an Austin library card! Here, the library systems encompass whole counties so it doesn't matter if you're in the city limits or not. I think our closest library here is a pretty nice one, too. I'm not sure I like the children's section quite as well as at my old one, but the YA section seems much larger.

Then there's my own book. Or, there's not my own book. I haven't done a thing about my revision, except for printing out the critique I want to refer to. So, it's unlikely I'll have it revised in 8 days, but I may do something on it today. We'll see. I'm not quite ready to commit to it! (Also, I'm petrified to tackle it.)

Return to Sendak

Today we went to the Tampa Museum of Art to see an exhibit called WILD THINGS: The Art of Maurice Sendak. I thought it was really fascinating. Unfortunately, my own 5-year-old wild thing made all kinds of mischief, so our time there was tense and we had to cut it short. He stomped around, threw himself to the floor, and kept demanding to leave. (If only I could have sent him across the sea to hang with the real Wild Things for a while!) I could have easily stayed another hour, but had to rush through it all in 15 or 20 minutes & didn't get to read most of the information. The exhibit included original sketches, artwork, & even some early manuscript drafts from many of Sendak's books, as well as a few large 3-D reproductions of his work, like a giant Wild Thing. There was a "Max's reading room" section where kids could relax to read Sendak's books, but my son would have nothing to do with it, despite being familiar with many of the stories and liking them. There was some video of his Really Rosie animated movie (I've mentioned before that we love the Carole King songs from this...many are available on the Where the Wild Things Are animated DVD), video of a Where the Wild Things Are stage musical, and some dioramas & soft sculptures of his Brundibar book & opera. All of this was accompanied by placards explaining Sendak's background and influences, and giving some insights into how his various projects developed. It was all very interesting and I wish I lived closer so I could return & see more! I did get a poster from In the Night Kitchen, which was one of my favorite books when I was little.

On the way out, we made an overly quick tour through the Classical World exhibit, with more than 400 objects from ancient Greece & Rome on display. I could have stayed there an hour, too, and that was my 7-year-old's favorite part of the museum. Unfortunately, my husband had to take our wild thing outside before he started a wild rumpus and/or knocked over an ancient statue, so my 7-year-old and I had to rush through that in just a few minutes. Argh. After the museum, we were happy to have a chance to eat at Jason's Deli. I met my husband at a Jason's Deli (we were dining with mutual friends), and our kids could eat gallons of their broccoli cheese soup. Unfortunately, there isn't one where we live now, but this one was maybe an hour away. So, at least we can go there for our 17th anniversary of meeting in June! Anyway, the 5-year-old decided to behave better at this point because he thought good behavior would make a fortune-telling fish we had work better for him...um, whatever works.

Leapin' Leprechauns!

Top o' the mornin' to you! Or top o' the afternoon or evening or whatever it is for you.

My sons decided to make a leprechaun trap last night! It was the 7-year-old's idea, but the 5-year-old was all for it. First, they left a note at the bottom of the door: "To an important leprechaun: GOLD INSIDE!" Then they left a message on the wall inside directing the leprechaun to the bathtub. (And just in case the greedy leprechaun decided to raid the silverware drawer looking for silver, they put a copy of the same note inside the silverware drawer!) On the bathtub, they left a note directing him to the TV. This note, as written by my 7-year-old and printed out in green, says: "Now on from the bathtub and on to the TV, a place you watch shows till you're crazy like me." (Isn't that cute?! He even added a clipart pot of gold.) And in front of the TV, they left an upside-down shoebox labeled with a sign saying Gold. Inside of that they left an imitation gold coin from our recent pirate cruise as bait (my older son wouldn't use chocolate coins, saying "Everybody knows they're fake!"). The shoebox had a door & 2 tiny windows cut out in front (windows just big enough for the leprechaun to see the bait), but the door only opened from the top, and then would close, and was covered at the bottom in front so it couldn't be pushed back open. This was intended to keep the leprechaun trapped inside.

What they actually found when they opened the box in the morning was a note saying: "I was here but now I'm gone. You just can't catch a leprechaun!" There were also gold and silver-wrapped chocolate coins, some St. Patrick's Day magnets, & 2 green lollipops. The leprechaun left messages like "Sorry lads, you can't trick a leprechaun!" or "Ha! Ha! Can't catch me!" on the notes they had left, and left a few gold-wrapped chocolate coins by the notes in the silverware drawer & on the bathtub. Despite all the goodies, my older son was somewhat crestfallen not to have an actual leprechaun in his trap. (?! I can't figure out if he really expected a leprechaun to be in there or not!) He finally took some comfort in the chocolate.

This afternoon I have to bring snacks to his first grade class, so I'm taking shamrock cookies, more gold-wrapped chocolate coins (a different variety), & probably some green Kool-Aid. In the evening, we'll have our annual green dinner. This year, similar to most years, it's going to be spinach fettucine with pesto sauce and/or green-dyed Alfredo sauce, broccoli cheese casserole, and some green-dyed applesauce, with green-dyed Sprite to drink & lime popsicles for dessert. We thought we might try Key Lime Pie this year, having moved to Florida, but all the Key Lime Pie we could find was off-white, not green!

Anyway, I wish you all a lucky day!

Revisions revisited

So there's a call for YA submissions right now at Carolrhoda Books, but they have to be postmarked by March 27. Which is, um...11 days from now. I'm trying to decide if I should try to revise my YA novel by then and submit it. It seems crazy, since it needs a major overhaul & I've theoretically been trying to revise it for three years, but then, I wrote the first draft in 17 days, so it should be technically possible. And I have fantastic critique notes to guide me this time, so I have more idea what I want to do with it now than I have since I wrote it. What it would take is the mindset, and I'm not sure if I'm up for that or not. When I wrote it, it became the only thing on my mind for those 17 days, and most other responsibilities went by the wayside. I don't know if I can do that now--it's not like I have a lot on my plate, but I have a lot to do today & tomorrow, so that already throws me off. But part of me thinks it would be a really good exercise, even if I don't finish in time for this round of submissions, just to make me finally buckle down & work on it in earnest! I don't think I've touched it in a year.

Silly retro musing of the day: Yesterday I heard the Tears for Fears song "Pale Shelter," and I heard a synthesizer noise that I thought sounded just like the one in No Doubt's cover of "It's My Life" by Talk Talk. I played the Talk Talk song to see if it was the same noise, and lo & behold, that noise isn't in it. So, did No Doubt take that noise from the Tears for Fears song? Or am I completely wrong about it being the same sound? I don't have the No Doubt version to check with. Ah well.

Stuff for a Sunday

And now for your reading tedium pleasure, I got these from a random blog I happened upon, and liked them enough to answer them.

1. If you could trade places with one person in your family for a week, who would you choose? And would you want to trade as they are now, or sometime in the past (or future)? I'd probably want to trade with my husband, to see what's going on in his brain! I wouldn't want to be him this week because he's been having a crazily busy week at work. It might be cool to trade with him for a week back when we were dating, or even for a week of his childhood so I could see what that was like. I wouldn't mind trading with one of my kids, either, though that might be scary!

2. What were you doing 1 year ago this month, and are you more or less satisfied with your life today? 1 year ago this month, I went to a picture book workshop with Lisa Wheeler and a talk by A.M. Jenkins, both of which were fantastic. I also got a lot of writing done that month & hung out with writer friends, and 1 year ago today, I found myself in a fascinating 3-hour online chat with author & NPR commentator Daniel Pinkwater (it was just him, me, & one other writer I know). I was living in Texas instead of Florida. Honestly, it was a great month I was a lot more satisfied with my life that month than this one (so far), but considering that my husband was out of work then, and would be for the next 8 months, some things are better now!

3. Do you prefer watching television over surfing the internet? This is such a humongous NO for me! I'm a complete Internet junkie & feel lost without it. I rarely watch TV, & could easily go a long time without it (preferably when Survivor is over for the season...Survivor & The Office are the only things I go out of my way to watch right now, & I record those on the DVR).

4. Outside of the U.S., where would you live and why? I'm not sure! When I was 11 my family lived in Paris for a few months, & that was cool, but I feel too old to start over now in a place where I don't speak the language. I'd probably pick somewhere in the UK just because it's more familiar to me, or Canada because it's closer to home. If I went with the UK I'd probably pick London because I'm a city girl (I went a little nuts when I spent some time in Oxford & everything besides pubs closed up at 6 pm), but my heritage is Scottish & I really love Wales, so I might chance one of those places.

5. When you leave your home, do you ever feel paranoid that you've left something behind? Yes, and I often have! In fact, I somehow managed to fly from Texas to Florida and back without any identification or credit cards just a few months ago, which you can imagine was quite a security hassle at the airports! (And the trip before that, I forgot my cell phone & dress shoes.) I also drove across town this week just to use a coupon, only to find out I'd left the coupon at home.

6. What song or songs would you want played at your own funeral and why? This is just not something I think about! My husband has his funeral music picked out (Fauvre's Requiem, which I believe he describes as a sort of joyful requiem), but I don't so much care what they play after I'm gone. There's a musical version of the 23rd Psalm that I'm partial to...ideally my friend Jeff would attend and play that or one of the minor key, early American hymns he plays so well on the guitar. Otherwise I'd probably choose the song "My Deliverer" by Rich Mullins, which I think is one of the most powerful songs ever written (eerily, written shortly before his untimely death & recorded by other musicians afterwards), though I'm not sure it would make sense to sing that my deliverer "is coming" if I'd already been delivered from this life! ;-) (Leave it to me to be picky about grammar & verb tense after death.)

Never underestimate the power of a Slurpee

Two bits of joy:

• After an ill-advised flirtation with Pepsi Slurpees, the 7-11s around here have brought back Coke Slurpees! Hallelujah, I can slurp again!



• Today I found a working Windows version of the old Tetris Max video game (Tetris knock-off) that I was extremely addicted to on our Mac in the mid-90s. The game looks tiny on a new XP machine, but playing it again was like visiting an old friend, & more importantly, it has the right music! I'm a little leery about having the game on my computer again (let's hope I don't find myself dreaming about Tetris pieces & subconsciously assigning them personalities again...), but I'm thrilled to have the music! The last Windows version we tried of it didn't have the music, which is haunting & fueled my addiction to the game. I thought I'd never hear it again, so it's giving me the same happy nostalgia thrill as that yummy Coke Slurpee I had last night.

The past lives on at Amazon

Wow, Amazon has a long memory! I got an e-mail today saying that people who bought books from a particular author (DB) whose book I had bought often buy books from another author (SG). So, they thought I might be interested to know SG has a new book coming out. I remembered DB's name, but I knew it had been a very long time since I bought that book. So I looked up my complete order history & found the only time I bought a book from that author... it was my first-ever Amazon purchase, on October 29, 1996! How many order suggestions must they send out if they are combing through data from nearly-10-year-old purchases?!

And speaking of Amazon & things from my past, one of my most recent Amazon purchases was The Best of the Electric Company on DVD. I've been waiting to see this again for a long time (um...about 3 decades!), and it's just as fun as I remembered--or actually, slightly more so, since it hasn't aged as badly as I feared. My 5-year-old is loving it. (He even had to get up & dance about punctuation.) And I've kept laughing out loud myself. I was shocked to find out that over 6 seasons, they made 780 episodes! This DVD set includes 20. Check it out!

Ahoy, mateys!

For my husband's birthday yesterday, we finally had that Texas cake I meant to make a few days earlier. It was good enough that I'm about to sneak another piece right now.

In the evening, we celebrated with a sunset pirate cruise. It was a lot of fun, & the kids loved it! The pirates also chose my husband to play the role of "Peg Leg," a mean pirate who came to steal the treasure & ended up getting drenched by kids with water guns. But...do real pirates do the Macarena?

Thursday thoughts

1. Thanks to my husband for letting me sleep in this morning. That is no small thing!



2. I'm feeling very self-conscious wearing my Chuy's "Texas Proud" t-shirt in Florida, even though I'm home with no one but my son to see me. I put it on because it was the first clean short-sleeved shirt I could find (it's 76 degrees at the moment), and it's Texas Independence Day.



3. I may change shirts before I go out (maybe into a University of Texas one...), but I dug out a Texas-shaped cake pan I bought before moving, and will probably make a Texas cake for the holiday. Amusingly, I've heard a lot about Texas Independence Day, which celebrates Texas' independence from Mexico in 1836, but I've never heard a word about its statehood day & have no idea when that is!



4. Speaking of holidays, my husband's company gives employees the day off on March 4th, so they can "march forth" with whatever they'd like to pursue in their personal lives that day. I think it's way cool to have a holiday just because of a play on words. Since March 4th is a Saturday this year, he's off tomorrow instead. Cool! (And Sunday is his birthday.)



5. I need to work on becoming a better storyteller. I usually like my writing, paragraph by paragaph or page by page, but I'm not sure I have enough stories to tell. Not the kind that rivet you so you have to find out what happens. As a reader, I don't mind stories that are light on plot, when they're interesting as character studies and vignettes, or just have amusing writing, but that's not what's selling. A while back, I read an interview with Jeanne DuPrau, who mentioned studying the Harry Potter books and noticing the characters were always active. She rewrote The City of Ember to make the characters more active, and had a much easier time selling it. I'm trying to take that to heart, though it's not my natural bent!



6. It really bugs me that putting an ordered list in this blog automatically adds extra blank lines above & below the list, so it doesn't match the formatting of my other blog entries. I've decided to just register my dissatisfaction here instead of spending another hour trying to tweak the formatting like I normally would!

Unexpected side effects of writing

My husband & I were just discussing why our kids think our house is a playground. At the same moment, I had to tell one son to stop doing flips over the couch and smashing the cushions, and the other son to stop jumping on a wooden chair. "Why do you always want to do that in here?" I asked them. "If you want to climb, go to the tree fort outside!" I figured out where to place blame. "I know--it's because restaurants started putting playscapes inside, and now kids think that indoors is a good place to climb!" The couch-flipping son soon proved it wasn't just climbing, when he put on a pair of roller skates & tried to skate around the living room. "Guys!" I said. "You can play like that outside, not inside! The inside isn't the same as the outside!"

"It is in that poem you wrote," said the chair-jumping son matter-of-factly, "about the inside out house."

Ack. He's right. I brought it on myself! And here I thought he didn't listen to a word I said.

I may have also unwittingly influenced Guideposts for Kids, because they're currently having a contest for their members to win carpet skates! (Though my kids might ask, who needs carpet skates when you can use the regular kind?!)

To write or what to write, that is the question

How do you decide what to blog about? Sometimes it's obvious, but usually it's not. Throughout the day I come up with lots of blog ideas, & then I think better of most of them. Today, it's all random: 

• After saying I was seeking environments that are creative physically as well as mentally, I should have been excited about Mommy & Me dance morning at my son's arts preschool, instead of dreading it for a week. Instead, I did dread it for a week, & then it turned out to be rather short, without much to it. (Under 45 minutes, half of which was just talking.)


• One nice change in my life: I can now sit on my front porch, rocking in my porch swing while being online with my laptop (as, in fact, I am doing now). My old house didn't have a front porch you could sit on, and my old laptop wouldn't work for more than 10 minutes without being plugged in.


• Oh yeah, and we have a DVR (digital video recorder) here! I'm not a big TV watcher...but how did I ever live without this?! Survivor or the Olympics? No problem, Survivor and the Olympics! Even if I'm not home when they come on.


• Some of my former co-workers are blogging about turning points in their lives. I think it's a neat idea, & leads to some interesting posts, but I'm not sure I'm up for it. It's so personal! But if anyone else wants to share, I'd love to hear it. ;-)

As for writing...assuming I should start writing again in earnest one of these days, and realizing that if I wait for an organized living space it may never happen, I compiled a list today of manuscripts I could work on. Which one to work on should be obvious, too, but it's not. Here's what I can choose from:

• YA novel #1: Thoroughly revise existing draft with last critiquer's suggestions in mind. This is probably the wisest choice, but it needs such a major overhaul that it's really daunting, so I wonder if I should start with something easier.


• YA novel #2: Finish a draft of the stupid thing. I've been stuck 8 or 9 chapters in for years despite having a full synopsis. But somehow I can't get the voice right anymore, & I'm having second thoughts about a lot of what I've already written.


• MG novel: Decide whether to plow on through to the end (I'm maybe 2/3 along), or rewrite from the beginning with a different tone & faster pace. Then do it. I've lost interest in this one after a great start, because it got so weighted down as I went, & stopped being fun to read or write. Sometimes I think I should just get to the end & then go back; other times I think that I'd be getting to the end of the wrong story & need to start over now so I'll even know where to go with it.


• Chapter book: Pursue currently vague idea for a chapter book series, possibly mysteries. They would be light & pretty short, & might be a fun way to get writing again, if I could think of a plot for one, and if I could decide if the characters should even be people or animals! (I do have several titles and characters for them, but that's almost as far as it goes.)


• Children's play: Draft a play with the idea I currently have. It's a fractured fairy tale, which is probably completely out right now with theatres, but it's the idea I have & I like it.


• Picture book: Figure out plot and/or new characters for my zoo book! I have this rhyming PB manuscript about a zoo. All the critiques have been favorable, except that it has no plot arc, and that's a doozy. When it's in tight rhyme, changing the story is almost like starting over. And I will almost start over, except all my brainstorming has still not given me a single idea I find worthy of pursuing.

I also have several other PB manuscripts that are theoretically finished but seem completely unmarketable, an idea for a dark, difficult YA short story I don't even want to touch right now, and a whole bunch of other midgrade, YA novel, & picture book ideas that haven't moved past the idea stage, or maybe a few pages of text. My list of novel ideas currently has 15 ideas on it, including 1 idea for a midgrade series but not including the chapter book series mentioned above. Again, I'm thinking of Linus saying the greatest burden is great potential! (Or, according to one source, "unfulfilled potential.") I'd sure hate to die with all this stuff unwritten, when so much of it is already real to me.

Potential

The first week of my senior year in high school, everything seemed wrong. I didn't have the same lunch period as the friends I normally ate lunch with, I didn't have friends in most of my classes, & I didn't even seem to see them in the hallways. I wasn't impressed with my classes, and even my after-school drama program had moved to a new location that seemed wrong. A week into school, I was despairing, sure that it was going to be a horrible year. In fact, it turned out to be my best school year. I loved my senior year. And in some ways, it probably changed the course of my life for the best. So, I'm going to assume that just because Florida hasn't grown on me after 3 weeks, and just because everything still seems wrong now, that doesn't mean it won't be amazing.

I did join the Florida Writers Association yesterday, just to feel somewhat connected here, but it may not have much to offer for children's writing.

Of course I watched Olympic figure skating last night, and two quotes particularly stuck out to me. One was from Sasha Cohen: "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." Aaahh...that explains a lot. Eek. Another was something Dick Button said about Sasha Cohen, which I later found out was a line from Linus in a Peanuts comic: "There's no greater burden than great potential." In any case, I felt like it was the story of my life! I've heard about my potential, or the potential of my manuscripts, many, many times without ever crossing over from the purgatory of the potential. So there's where I am right now, trying to figure out how to stop doing what I've always done, being stuck in that position of having "potential," and transform the potential into reality, or into accomplishment.

Meanwhile, I'd say that Florida has potential.

Play. Write. Create.

We went to the kids' playwriting workshop today, under the big top. I decided to stick around and watch, considering my interests in writing & acting. There were only 14 kids there, and I think most were circus kids (that is, kids of the circus performers--I definitely saw a couple I recognized as the circus clowns bringing their young son in!). A group from a local theatre presented a playwriting workshop. First they performed 3 short plays (more like skits) written by winners of their young playwrights festival, then they led the kids in coming up with two more skits that they acted out on the spot as the instructions were given. Last, they led the kids through coming up with one more skit which they actually wrote down, explaining how to write down & format dialogue, stage directions, etc. My kids got antsy by the last part, but enjoyed the first part, and my first grader got to play the role of the baby dolphin in one skit--one of only 4 kids to be an "actor." (He was also curious how to write down stage directions, & is considering entering the playwriting contest.)

Sitting there on the bleachers, in the tent, watching the actors perform and just soaking up the whole creative environment, was invigorating & frustrating at the same time. I realized that I spent much of my life, especially my young life, in creative environments--a nurturing private school that valued imagination, occasional dance classes, several theatre groups, TV production classes, and finally SCBWI (conferences & retreats in particular)--and I need that. Even my last workplace was a more creative environment than others I'd worked in. I thrive on that sort of thing, and I miss it a lot right now. It's been years since I've felt like a creative environment was part of my day-to-day life. I really need to figure out how to turn my home into a creative environment, and I need to find some other creative environment to be, play, grow, & create in, preferably with other people. As introverted as I am, I love hanging out with other creative people when I get a chance. And even though I'm so cerebral I sometimes find my body unnecessary or even bothersome, I would ideally like to find an environment that is creative physically as well as mentally. I liked acting partly because it involved all of me, not just some of me. (You think maybe I should join the circus? Ha ha ha ha ha. I'm so out of shape that at the science museum yesterday, I found out my hand strength is less than HALF of what it should be for a woman my age! Ack!)

For other creative types out there, how do you find creativity in your lives, other than just sitting alone writing? How do you create an environment where your imagination can thrive? Where in your 3-D, offline life do you find other like-minded people...or do you?

My little writers

I'm pumped right now because the circus kids' club I signed my kids up for has already invited my kids to a free playwriting workshop this coming week! Which will give me an hour or more of babysitting, while getting my kids involved with two of my all-time favorite things, theatre & writing. I'm not sure what playwriting has to do with the circus, except that there's a former ringmaster associated with a theatre here that has a big playwriting program. So they're running a workshop for the kids. I am so glad we got involved with this club! They will also get to learn some magic & juggling later this year, which will be wonderful for my older son, to help replace in some small way the magic camp he had to leave behind in Austin.

But I'd better watch out so they both don't end up surpassing me in writing! My 7-year-old was actually published at the age of 3, with a story called "I Want to Buy Groceries" in the Austin SCBWI newsletter. And today, for the fables unit at his school, he's taking in a spiral-bound fable he wrote & illustrated at his old school. That's one of several stories he's already written & illustrated. And he doesn't even want to be a writer, he wants to be a scientist & inventor. He'll probably be one of those people who can do everything, like invent a transporter (his goal in life) while also writing a few sci-fi movies on the side. My 5-year-old, on the other hand, is in arts preschool now & seems like he might be a born performer. But he's already written a story or two himself, not to be outdone by his brother, so he may well end up writing, too, or at least doing a lot of improvisation! I am itching to get back into theatre myself, but all the theatres here seem to be professional rather than amateur, and I'm certainly not ready for prime-time. Maybe I'll take a class next time I can find one...or maybe find a church with a drama group.

I also have an idea for a children's play, and I'm thinking that might be the best thing for me to work on right now. I can't wrap my head around my novels right now, but a silly play could be a fun change of pace, and who knows, my kids might even be able to give me some pointers after their playwriting class!

Renewal

On Valentine's Day, 14 years & 5 months after our wedding, we renewed our vows on the beach, along with about 230 other couples:



It was actually COLD here yesterday for Florida (30s & frosty in the early morning!), but I only had a short-sleeved dress to wear, & it warmed up enough I could wear it for a few minutes there without a jacket (about 50 degrees). Our kids were awful, awful, awful during the ceremony, & made it impossible for me to even say all the vows because I was busy trying to wrangle them, so I would advise anyone to find a babysitter for the kids before doing something like this! But it was still nice, & I think it was a good way to kick off our "new lives" here in a new state.

Boyfriends, Truth, & Progress

I finished reading E. Lockhart's YA novel The Boyfriend List today. It immediately won me over with its fun use of footnotes. Being a rather parenthetical thinker myself, I tend to love footnotes in fiction. Two of my favorite recent books, Susanna Clarke's adult novel Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norrell, and M.T. Anderson's midgrade novel Whales on Stilts, have almost nothing in common, except that both make generous use of footnotes. I especially loved the way multiple footnotes tracked Ruby's thought process in The Boyfriend List. I thought Ruby's parents bordered on being caricatures, but that probably is how she would see & describe them, & I loved how different they were than the parents in most novels (for those who haven't read it, her mom is an angry performance artist, her dad constantly talks in touchy-feely psychological mumbo jumbo, and they live on a houseboat). As for the rest of the book, there were a few places where I began to think E. Lockhart had been spying on my teen years.... It especially amazed me when Ruby thought the same wacky thing I would have thought, with the same goofy reasoning, when I didn't realize anyone else thought about things that way!

This brings me to the best writing advice I've picked up recently. When we were driving through Louisiana, I went into two decent-sized convenience stores looking for a magazine to read, & couldn't find any, but I did find a free regional paper so I picked that up. I read an article about Cajun musician D.L. Menard, who had once met his hero, Hank Williams (Sr.). Hank Williams told him that everyone does things every day that they never stop to think about, and if you write about those things, your audience will love it. I realized it was true for books as well as for songs. Books (and movies, and plays, and comedy acts...) capture our attention when they ring true, and especially when they tell us something about ourselves that's been true all along but we've never noticed! I love it when I read something new or unusual that I've never thought about before, but I'm also blown away when I recognize myself on the page, and realize I am not alone in some thought, feeling, or experience. So, I aim to work harder than ever to make sure I put truth into my writing--true moments, and especially particular, small incidents and thoughts and feelings that may cause a reader to think, "Yes! That's just how it is!" Which may mean putting more of myself into my writing, which is scary, but I realized last night that if I don't take a chance on sharing what's real, my writing may not resonate with anyone.

The second piece of advice Menard got from Hank Williams was not to worry about naysayers, especially those further along than you who point out how far you have to go, because tomorrow you may be better than them. Menard realized he wasn't getting better, & set out to correct that. It's a daunting question to ask oneself: Am I better today than I was yesterday? I need to ask myself, and keep asking myself, that question in regard to my writing (I flinched big time the first time I asked myself that), as well as in other areas of my life--relational, spiritual, even organizational! Eek. That's about all I can handle for today.

Groundhog Day!

I've always loved Groundhog Day--in fact, I once threw a "Great & Groovy Groundhog Day Eve Party," and I have a stuffed toy groundhog somewhere. This year, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which is supposed to mean 6 more weeks of winter, but here in Florida I'm not too worried. It's 68 degrees F right now & supposed to get to 78 this afternoon. It's also supposed to be 78 in the Texas town we just moved from, though the morning low there was much lower (40s instead of 60s).

My kids started their Florida schools yesterday. I was hyperventilating a bit about the change, but both kids did great. I'm still a little stressed because their schools are 8 miles apart & start at the same time, & this 1st grade class has more homework than the one we left, but it's working out all right so far. My 5-year-old is acting absolutely crazy here, including running away in public constantly, so I am on edge trying to deal with him, but I'm hoping this phase will pass as we get more settled in...if he survives that long!

I can't begin to think about writing with a house full of boxes, & I have nowhere to put all this stuff in a smaller house with less storage. There's not even room for a lot of the furniture. Thankfully, my laptop seems to be intact except for the monitor, so I'm using it now with our desktop computer monitor, but the desktop PC has yet to be unpacked, & my spacebar is sticking so it's very slow to type! The only writing-related thing I've done is to contact the Florida chapter of SCBWI to get on their mailing lists. I also checked out the public library yesterday, & was pleased to see all the author events on their schedule, not to mention a very nice children's book section.

The lack of Dr Pepper is getting to me. Of course stores carry it, but they don't carry the decaf version I can get in Austin, and most restaurants don't have it. I live on it, so I'm flummoxed. And the Taco Bell here doesn't have tostadas, & I've seen both Slurpees and Icees here in Pepsi flavor but not Coke flavor, so I'm seeking out small comforts where I can find them. I plan to seek Sarasota-style comfort soon in the form of pies from the much-ballyhooed Amish restaurants!

Sweet Home Sarasota

We're here! We made it to Florida in the late afternoon yesterday. Nearly our whole 3-day drive was rainy. It was even pouring as we drove through St. Petersburg, which was named the sunniest city in America. The whole Sunshine State thing wasn't resonating with me... But amazingly, just as we drove over the Sunshine Skyway bridge heading from St. Petersburg to the Sarasota area, we drove into the sunshine and it has stayed with us since. Our moving truck won't arrive until at least tomorrow, so we have a very small subset of our stuff. Unfortunately, we brought my laptop computer ourselves, and it was a casualty of the move! Right now I'm using my husband's laptop from work. My laptop monitor was destroyed, but I am very much hoping the data is salvageable. My writing was backed up, but our digital photos from the last few months only existed on that hard drive, and I'd also lose several years worth of e-mail, etc., not to mention that I can't currently remember any of my passwords for checking my e-mail from another computer! Whoops. Anyway, except for that, so far so good. We need to try to get a hasty physical for my younger son today so he can start preschool here (he just had one in November but they want it from a Florida dr!), & we want to take my older son by his new elementary school. We also need to get the younger one's glasses fixed, as a screw fell out for the billionth time and they're being held together by a safety pin--which the dr may not take as a sign we're taking good care of him! ;-)

Last night in Texas

It's our last night in Texas! Which ought to seem momentous after I've spent my whole life here, but the move has been so long in coming (3+ months since we found out about it) that I'm just ready to get it over with. The movers finished packing & loading today, & left with our stuff by 4:30 pm. My husband ended up giving some of our large unwanted stuff (sleeper sofa, loveseat, broken dryer, and dining table) to one of the movers, so our oversized giveaway items are gone. The kids and I spent the day at the house of Kyle's best friend, which was pleasant. In the evening, we had a last Texas dinner at Pok-E-Jo's barbecue, bought a portable DVD player for the long drive (I had really resisted ever getting a DVD player for the car, but 20 hours with 2 small kids in a confined space...sheesh!), and bought sleeping bags for my husband and me so we'd have somewhere to sleep tonight! We wanted some anyway. We're having kind of a family slumber party tonight in Kyle's room. We still have to get rid of the last food in the fridge, pack our van better, & get a few more small items out of the house, but we hope to hit the road in the morning. Even with all of the stuff out of it, I still don't like our house, so except for the fact that this is the house I brought both my babies home to, I won't be too sad to say good-bye to it!

Boxing Day

My house is full of boxes. However, it's not all packed up yet...apparently, we have so much junk that one day wasn't enough. I suspect it must be at least 2/3 done. I think all that's left is one child's room, several kitchen cabinets, the audio/visual stuff, the laundry room, and the garage (er...there's a lot in there, though it's at least been started!). My van is also overflowing with stuff we wanted to take ourselves, so I have to get that organized before we embark on our 20-hour drive! Unfortunately, we still have a lot to get rid of, & I don't know how/when we're going to do that. Normally we'd do it tonight, but our friends are having a send-off for us tonight! Anyway, the kids have both been withdrawn from their schools here, & we will probably leave town Saturday morning, or Saturday afternoon at the latest. So weird!

Ready or not...

...here they don't come! We were so not ready for the movers, we managed to put it off another day. So now they're coming tomorrow instead! Which is mostly a relief, though I'm a tad disappointed this won't all be over today. I just hope we'll be able to get the rest done today considering how exhausted we are now. I got NO sleep last night, and my husband got maybe 2 hours. He is sleeping again now, but I'm terrible at napping. But I know I'll need renewed energy to be ready for tomorrow. Too bad a construction crew is currently using an excavator to dig a huge hole in the street right outside of my house, about 30 feet from my bedroom window (I have no idea why)...so it's awfully loud for trying to rest. They've also completely blocked off my driveway and a large area around it, so I hope a moving truck can ever get near!

Can someone freeze time?

It is almost 3 am. The movers are coming in 5 or 6 hours. To say we are not quite ready is like saying an ice cube is not quite as big as an iceberg. Gulp!

A novel approach to my novels

An idea stolen from another writer friend...

10 ways you can tell you're reading a novel by me:

1. It has bizarre touches such as beet restaurants, gum-crazed towns, or cat romance novels.


2. The characters think too much and don't do enough (I'm working on that...).


3. Characters may have odd names and/or talk about their names or nicknames.


4. It's a bit wordy.


5. The characters eat constantly, often fast food or something weird.


6. No one seems to say anything harsher than "crap."


7. Beets are mentioned somewhere in the novel (seriously, I mention beets in all of them!).


8. It's not that heavy on setting.


9. It's a little angsty, even if it's humor, and a little humorous, even if it's angsty.


10. You know it's going to be laughed off the shelves the next big thing!

Only in my dreams

After several bad dreams that woke me up last night, I went back to sleep and dreamed I already had a book published & hadn't realized it! In the dream, I hadn't really counted it because it was written under assignment from an editor, instead of being my original idea. Yet it was an attractive hardback novel with my name on the cover (actually it looked a lot like Cynthia Lord's book Rules...), so I decided I might as well count it as my own book!

In reality, I'm frustrated because my move has put all my writing projects on hold since October, when we found out we were moving. I thought that once we got there, I could finally throw myself back into writing, but we're moving in such a disorganized fashion that it now looks like I'll be trying to sort out all the junk from my move for months! Even worse, we're just moving into a rental home that we don't see as a long-term solution, so we'll probably have to do it all again within the year. I'm still determined to carve out time for writing in the new place even if I'm surrounded by boxes and chaos at the time, but it may be hard to clear my mind for it.

In other dream news, a few nights ago my son Kyle (the one who just turned 5) crashed in my bed at 5 am after a bad dream of his own (bizarrely, he has recurrent bad dreams about Richard Scarry's Busytown!). Around 7 am, I was up getting ready in semi-darkness while he was still asleep on the bed. No one was around him or touching him, and his brother Ryan was still asleep in his own bed, but Kyle suddenly said, loudly, "Ryan MADE me push him!" He was fast asleep at the time. I'd say that was a very telling dream!

My husband and I would like to call for a moratorium on joking statements that "men won't ask for directions" and "women love shoes (or shopping)," especially when said as if it's a new and particularly humorous insight, and most especially when said by comedians and/or pastors. In cases where the moratorium is violated, please refrain from chuckling & nudging your partner as if you'd never heard it before, as that will only encourage further violations. Thank you.

My "baby" turned 5 this weekend...hard to believe! The camoflauge, warpaint, or whatever it is on his face is left over from a dinosaur hunt:


Okay, theoretically babies can't read, tie shoes, drive bumper cars, or do one-handed cartwheels, all of which he can, but if my husband can still be the "baby" of his family, this little guy can be ours!

Even though we're moving out of state any day, I bought a special State of the Arts Texas license plate when I renewed my plate a few months ago. I love it! With the new screen-printing and font, it looks even better than the one in that picture. I'm so glad I got it, even at the last minute. I'll hate to remove it for one of the Florida ones, none of which I'm thrilled with (not even their arts one...), though I expect it'll go on my office wall. If you live in Texas, buy one of these plates and support the arts! (There are also several literacy ones available.)

Things I will be glad to leave when we move: ROAD CONSTRUCTION, ROAD CONSTRUCTION, & MORE ROAD CONSTRUCTION! Saturday I had a nightmare morning with 2 major roads I needed to turn across completely closed off. I was diverted miles out of my way in each case, & started thinking even 2 weeks is too long to live with this! I'll also be glad to leave my horrible, inconsistent "broadband" Internet connnection that knocks me offline constantly and seems to get slower speeds than my old dial-up! Supposedly our new Florida connection is much better (though the cable TV doesn't have a big menu of movies to rent at any time like ours does here...huh?!).

Here's a fun time waster for writers: Enter the title of your novel, & the Lulu Titlescorer will predict its chances of becoming a bestseller. My YA novel Chasing Monday scored a whopping 79.6%, while my midgrade Purple Panic came out at 41.4%. The 3 picture book titles I tried came out much lower, but the formula is based on bestselling novels for adults, so I don't think it would be particularly accurate with books for young children. (After all, I doubt a novel called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie would have topped the bestseller list like the picture book did!) It also doesn't seem to account well for plays on words, & they readily acknowledge that it may be way off with some titles, but they claim it was accurate for nearly 70% of titles tested. Take it with a hearty helping of salt!

I heard about a new book called This Day in the Life: Diaries from Women Across America, which features 34 women's diaries from a single day, June 29, 2004. I checked my blog & found an entry for that day. I guess it was a pretty productive day, because the midgrade story I mentioned revising is now slated for publication in an anthology from Blooming Tree Press, and the YA story I was entering in a contest received an honorable mention in the contest, & I later got notice it's being considered for a different Blooming Tree Press anthology. To complete my "diary" of the day, here are excerpts from the e-mails I sent that day.

Now stop me before I blog again! A few months ago I was averaging one post a week, if that, and so far this year I've made 9 posts in 10 days. I actually drafted another yesterday & decided not to post it after all. I guess blogging helps me avoid what I really need to be doing! But I hate to keep shoving my previous brilliant posts out of the way before people even get to read them. ;-)

My husband's on a plane back to Florida right now--bah humbug. And I have so much to do before our move, I can't stand to think about it. Anyway, we had a pretty Austiny night last night. We had dinner at the original Kerbey Lane Cafe, then went to the university area to see the UT tower all lit up for the national football championship, as shown in my post from January 5. The campus area was swarming with people, hundreds of them, most wearing burnt orange and most taking pictures of the tower. We didn't get out of the car (nowhere to park!), but had our windows down & it seemed like a fun, friendly atmosphere, so I'm glad we took the kids to see it before they forget they were ever Texans! We capped off the evening with ice cream from Amy's Ice Cream, complete with pictures from the photo booth:

Cool, cool, cool. My in-laws gave me a $20 Borders gift card for Christmas, and it's good at Borders.com, which also happens to be Amazon. So I was able to order the latest 2 items on my Amazon wish list for just over $5, including shipping: Beating Heart: A Ghost Story, by A.M. Jenkins (whom I heard speak last year--she mentioned the forthcoming book and it caught my interest); & the Here Come the ABCs CD/DVD from They Might Be Giants. Seems odd to order a hardcover book in Texas just before I move, but I figured the book (and CD) would be good to have on the 20-hour drive! I hope it arrives before the move.... I also just pre-ordered a bunch of the great new picture book art stamps.

Today I went to my last meeting of the Austin chapter of SCBWI. Our regional advisor, Julie Lake, spoke on revision, a topic I always need to learn more about (and need to do more of!). I got a little sad drving there down Loop 360, a gorgeous route through the hills, with a steel arch bridge over Lake Austin and a beautiful view. I realized, for the second time this week, that I'm really going to miss driving through the hills when I move to flat Florida! I'll also miss this SCBWI group. I've been involved with the group since 1997, when the founder of the chapter was still the regional advisor--there have been 4 more since her, and I've been around the whole time. Florida only has one SCBWI chapter for the whole state, and it won't be doing anything near me. I'll probably travel for some Florida conferences, but I hope I can also come back for occasional Austin conferences, because Austin throws some of the best ones!

I finally saw the Narnia movie last night. I really enjoyed it. I can't think of anything I would have changed about it, although the book isn't fresh in my mind, so there could be something. I've really only read the book once, back when I was 11 years old, but I fantasized about going to Narnia for years after that, and last year my husband and I read it aloud to our older son at bedtime. However, we took turns reading on alternate nights, so I only read every other chapter and didn't get a sense of the whole book! I need to read the whole set again. The kids also liked the movie, though I had worried it might be too scary for them. Kyle, who is 4 (turning 5 in a week!), even said he liked the battle scene best, though Ryan, 7, kept his head to the side and his eyes averted for most of that scene. Oh, and speaking of Narnia and our local SCBWI chapter, the founder of the chapter has a Narnia room in her house! It's kind of like a closet, but the only entrance is through a wardrobe, and it has murals of Narnia painted on the walls...one of the coolest rooms ever!

On the subject of rooms, the moving company walked through our house yesterday to get an idea how much stuff we have (still way too much!). We hope to move in just over 2 weeks, though the guy said it might take 2 days to pack & 1 day to load the moving van! I hope not, because that doesn't work with my intended timeframe for the kids starting school in Florida, and I still hope to purge more stuff before the move date, but at least it's starting to seem real that we may actually move.

Happy Epiphany! (Also known as Three Kings Day.) It's the 12th Day of Christmas, and I'm expecting loads of birds and other strange gifts from my true love...no, wait, anyone who loved me would know better than to give me all that! Actually, it's the day we need to finally take down our Christmas tree.

And now for something completely different (insert strange sounds & animation here).

If you're old like me--that is, if you didn't have the Internet in high school or college--have you thought about how your life would have been different if you did? I'm not thinking so much about the easy access to information (which is hard to remember how I lived without!), but more about the Internet as a social medium. I have to think about this stuff a lot in writing for young adults, because there's been a profound shift in the way teens communicate from the way they did when I was one, and I can't afford to ignore that when I'm writing. I think my own life might have ended up very, very different, and probably not for the best. I'm pretty sure that if everyone I knew had e-mail and instant messaging when I was a teenager (not to mention if I was meeting people online back then), I would not be where I am today. Of course, today I'd love to be anywhere else, since this move thing is driving me crazy, but in general, I'm glad I ended up where I am in life!

I'm sure high school would have been unbelievably different, but for me, college might have been even more different. I went to college three hours from home, which in my case meant a lot of snail mail letters. I probably got more than 200 letters during my first two years of college, not to mention running up shocking phone bills in those days without cell phones or flat rate long distance! But if I'd had an easy, free way to communicate with my friends back home...would we have said more, because it was easier? Would we have said less, because it seemed too immediate? Would our perception of the distance have seemed different, knowing how easy it would be for a long-distance friend to respond? Would I have kept further away from the people around me at school, or gotten to know them even better because we could send instant messages so easily? (Or read & comment on each other's blogs, or whatever!)

I think people will say things in letters that they'd be less likely to say in e-mail, but they will also say things in e-mail, and especially in instant messaging or chat rooms, that they'd probably think better of if they had to sit down & write it in a letter. And while my online relationships as an adult have been fantastic, making it so much easier to connect with people, I imagine that as a teen, with relationships being so fraught with angst as it is, it could be both suffocating & frustrating to know that everyone you knew was only a few clicks away anytime...or could be if they wanted to...and that people might even be watching to see when you were on and offline. I don't think I would have lacked for correspondence--I'm sure I would have a lot more than 200 e-mails from friends in that same time period, most of them lost to old operating systems, old file formats, & hard drive crashes by now (I've lost tons of e-mails when old computers died, including many I'd love to have back about my kids as babies, etc., though I do have a bunch of e-mail messages printed out from my first few years working in Austin...say, 1993 to 1995, when e-mail was new to me and quite exciting!). On the other hand, I think they would have had a different impact, and taken me down different paths, and as a result I doubt I'd be exactly where I am today. Though now, I've been active online for 12 years (using text-based browsers & newsreaders until there was an alternative), so my Internet connection seems almost as essential as food and shelter! But I do think the medium can greatly affect the message, and I'm kind of glad in retrospect that I didn't have the Internet back then. (But then...if I'd had the Internet and NaNoWriMo and all the online writing groups and opportunities that are out there these days, maybe I would have had a book published years ago!)

I've been sorting through what I hope are the last of our old unsorted clothes (including some remaining baby clothes, costumes, bedding, etc.). I can't believe how many clothes we had! This is after giving away 8 or 9 garbage bags' worth already! I've also had a tendency to keep things for sentimental reasons, which I'm trying to get over. I'm still having trouble parting with a few remaining shirts from the 80's. It's not like I wear them anymore, but a couple of them just seem too dear to part with. (And I might always get invited to another 80's party--though the time I went to one before, I ended up buying my outfit at Goodwill anyway!) I suppose I shouldn't listen to 80's music while I'm sorting the old clothes, huh?!

Meanwhile, we went to one of those coin sorting machines with all the change we found around the house, including a few jars of coins we'd been adding to for years, and even after they took their cut, we ended up with over $127! I knew it was a lot of change, but I was still stunned. That's 4 or 5 times the amount I would have guessed.

Hook 'em Horns!!! National Champions! (in football and baseball, in fact)

Back to school for the kids! Supposedly we are also moving in 3 weeks, but our move preparation is not going as well as hoped...argh. In sorting our stuff for moving, I've come across a whole bunch of old datebooks & journals. Not surprisingly, there aren't many that I kept for a whole year, but also not surprisingly, most of them DO have a lot of entries in January. Just for kicks, I compiled a list of what I was doing on this day in the history of my life, on the 10 different years I've found info for so far. If you are bored enough, you can view the list.

Happy 2006!! We spent a lovely New Year's Eve with a group of old friends from my husband's grad school days, two of whom we hadn't seen in ages, and finally got to meet one of them's wife, 3+ years after the wedding! The evening featured a tasty roast beef dinner, wine, cheese, good conversation, a view of more stars than most of us had seen in years (our friends live on 20 acres), and a thought-provoking read-aloud session like we used to have. Meanwhile, the kids were completely entertained playing with our hosts' children, who are some of their favorite friends in the world. For our kids, we rang in the new year early--for ourselves, we threw serpentine at midnight. We stayed at our friends' home overnight and woke to a New Year's Day breakfast served on their screened-in porch on a beautiful, warm morning. After sharing a time of singing (with our friend Jeff's always-fabulous classical guitar playing) and a makeshift Sunday worship service while the kids enjoyed the freedom of exploring the property, we left our kids there for the rest of the day & night while we came home to do more preparation for our move. All in all, a great way to ring in what I hope will be a wonderful new year! 2005 had its good points, but unfortunately, for us they were few & far between. We are eager for a fresh start, and I so hope that this new year and our move to Florida will provide exactly that.

Random thoughts: Today was the day we originally planned to move. I can't imagine! At the moment I'm worried we won't make our revised move date, either.... I watched part of Planes, Trains, & Automobiles on TV tonight. I love that movie. I remember seeing it in York, England, and being surprised that the British audience sometimes laughed at different parts than we Americans did (sorry, I'm really too southern to call myself a "Yank"). Until I did an impulsive search on iTunes, I had no idea there were so many songs, other than Elvis Costello's, with Alison in the title. Many or most of them seem to have negative elements or even explicit lyrics, but there are a couple I can go for..."Alison's the Bomb" has a nice ring to it, for instance. ;-) Orange doesn't go well next to purple. Better at least make it the official University of Texas burnt orange (web color #CC5500) to be true to my alma mater. UT is playing USC for the national championship in the Rose Bowl next week. Hook 'Em Horns! Speaking of alma maters, I once sang that I'd be true to Arlington High all of my days and owe my fortune to it, but to my relief, the AHS staff hasn't been knocking down my door looking for a piece of my relatively mediocre fortune so far. Wow, it's hard to have thoughts stay random...those last two sure were linked. My dad used to challenge me to quickly say five or six words in a row without any logical connections between them, and it drove me nuts I couldn't manage to do it! Of course, part of that is because our brains can find connections between nearly anything. So let me go back to the topic of songs. This time of year, I often find myself listening to "A Long December" by Counting Crows. It usually seems applicable, and yes, I hope this (next) year will be better than the last! Also, if you haven't heard Sufjan Stevens' song "Casimir Pulaski Day," you can download a legal MP3 of it FREE. I think I must have been one of the last people to hear about Sufjan Stevens, but the first time I actually listened to the words of this song, it blew me away (also made me cry!). Don't miss it. What's that? Make the colors stop? OK, sorry. In case you couldn't tell, I'm in a strange mood!

News of the day:

• Our rabbit Pablo is 9 years old today. Happy Birthday, Pablo! (Or should that be Hoppy Birthday?! Groan!)


• We had a very nice Christmas. My favorite gifts were an iPod dock/charger, and a Texas-themed charm bracelet to remember Texas by (as if I'd forget). My favorite moments were sharing good food, singing, laughs, & conversation with my family, including my parents and grandparents.


• Although my YA story didn't place in the recent SmartWriters.com short story competition, I got notice that it's being considered for publication in the anthology of winning stories, so that's cool!


• I wish you all a joyful remainder of 2005 and a Happy New Year!

5 days until Christmas! Better yet, 2 days until my husband comes back to Texas for 2 weeks! Of course, they'll probably be the most grueling 2 weeks we've had in years, trying to get our stuff ready to move, but at least there's Christmas to kick it all off with, which I'm really looking forward to.

The past week has been crazy, with 3 kid birthday parties, 3 class Christmas parties, and 1 preschool Christmas program. Since then, my kids spent a couple of fun nights with friends outside of Austin, and have spent a day at winter break gymnastics camp. They are having a blast, at least. And I'm basically done with my Christmas shopping and got nearly all the presents wrapped this week, except for a couple that are going in bags (too kid-tempting to put under the tree now!), so I can face the holidays in a fairly relaxed manner. I'll just try not to think about the fact that Christmas may be the last time I see my parents for a year... :-/

It's bad enough for my husband to be 1,200 miles away, but it's worse when I'm sick. I have a bad cold & a raging headache, & I've almost completely lost my voice...not the easiest way to take care of 2 very active kids. I can't even call my husband to commiserate because I can't talk well enough! Oh well, at least it's Saturday, with nowhere we have to be. We did go to Walgreen's earlier, but that's about all I've been up for.

In January I made two resolutions: to get rid of 1,000 things, and to finish my novel Purple Panic. I'm afraid I made very little headway on the novel. It's been a crazy year. At least I made some progress on it, but let's hope for better in 2006. As for the other resolution, between charity, trash, and passing things on to friends, I'm sure I've now gotten rid of well over 1,000 things. Too bad it has barely made a dent! I hope to double that number before I move. Which I now think will be in late January...at least I hope it won't be later than that!

Quote of the day from my younger son: "I'm a pretty cool 4-year-old, aren't I?"

Customer Service Cheers & Jeers: My husband works in user experience design, which means he helps make web sites intuitive and user-friendly, and he's always had a customer service focus, even when he was working at the library reference desk. So I'm especially attuned to good or bad customer service when I see it, and to good or bad consumer web sites. Giving someone a good feeling about your company can be worth a lot more than advertising, and I see no excuse for poor customer service. Two companies have made impressions on me this past week...one positive and one not!:

Cheers to Paragon Gifts! When we didn't receive our order from them, a week past the time their online order status checker told us we should have received it, we e-mailed them about the problem, and they immediately sent a replacement order for no extra charge! Wow! Guess I'll be ordering from them again! (Edited later to add: Got it!)

Jeers to VistaPrint.com! After I placed my order, they offered me other products I could add to my order with no additional shipping. I selected one to get a better look at it, and to see if I could get it personalized with my name instead of my husband's, which was shown on the sample. Based on all my experience with that site as well as other sites like it, I assumed that if I clicked on it, I could edit the personalization, and if not I could at least decline to purchase it. But as soon as I clicked it, it said that it had already been added to my current order & already been charged to my account, & they allow NO changes to any orders that have been placed! I find that outrageous! My husband wouldn't want the product shown, so I decided to ask them to change the personalization anyway. They had an online customer service form, which I filled out at length & sent. I then got an automated e-mail reply from them, saying they only offer customer service by telephone!! Yet they had an online customer service form, and it's an online-only business! I decided to suck it up & call despite my phone phobia, only to find out they don't offer customer service at all on weekends. Funny, they somehow managed to send me an advertising e-mail on a weekend. This is not a company I want to do business with again.

Uh...sorry to be so commercial in this one. In other news I am going crazy trying to get ready for a move and Christmas at the same time. The move may get pushed back.