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Literary crushes and book boyfriends--they're a thing. I was kind of stunned when I first heard about them a few years ago. Various bloggers would carry on about their book boyfriends, a popular one being Mr. Darcy, that narrow-minded stick-in-the-mud, from Pride and Prejudice. Crushes, I always thought, were sort of shallow, not something anyone would admit to. Especially crushes on imaginary people. Especially if you were an adult.

But book people do enjoy them and do like to talk about them, and writers can talk about theirs in Special Features that will get shared on social media and everyone will love reading it. And I will never be able to be part of that because I don't do crushes particularly on imaginary people.

And when I like a really terrific character I don't crush on them, I want to be them. But not Mr. Darcy. And not Elizabeth Bennet, either. Jane Eyre, okay. Jo Bhaer in Little Men, not Jo March in Little Women. I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid. Not so much now.

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This year Gauthier Christmas involved a poetry slam, the results of which determined who got the three best spots in a Yankee Gift Swap. I finished my poem this fall. I thought nothing more about it until a week or two ago, when I start hearing that other people are writing limericks and song parodies. I thought my eight-line work was going to be a stinking masterpiece. It was a little angst-ridden, with a theme about yearning for experience.

Christmas Presents

An hour with my child
Two hours on a hike
Three hours in a movie theater
Four hours on a bike.

A rainy day to read
A weekend in the snow
Three weeks for travel
Does Santa know?

You were supposed to get extra points for presentation, so I prepared the same kind of opening I would use for a public reading. I was feeling pretty confident that I could hammer my relatives into the ground.

Then the first poet gets up and reads his poem. It's this incredibly moving piece involving every member of the family. He referred to his cousins, my sons, as his brothers. His mother was nearly in tears. Then he ended it with a funny kicker. Another poet got up and did a moving poem about family that he had memorized. He choked and sat down part way through. Then he got up a bit later, started again, and nailed it. It was a stinking Olympic moment. Followed by his fiancee, a middle school librarian who had prepared a little artificial poetree with Christmas lights and haiku ornaments. The civil engineer in the family did four haiku, also, one for each season.

I did not win, place, nor show. But I did come home with a gift card to a decent restaurant, anyway.

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No, I'm not incredibly slow. Nor am I bored to death with Cress.  Au contraire. It's just that I do do other things.

Coming up soon on my reading radar: Cybils nominees.

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I was hit with a warning a couple of days ago from my library letting me know that the copy of Cress by Marissa Meyer that I'm reading was almost due. I finally got around this morning to renewing it on-line, but no luck. There's a hold on it. I'm at least two-thirds of the way through, so I'm going to bite the bullet, get hustling with my reading, and pay whatever fine I need to pay.

Why am I telling you this instead of writing what some might consider a real blog post? Well, I think it's very significant that someone wants this book. We don't have anyone beating a path to the YA section's door at our library. Until recently, we were still using one of those stamp-the-book systems for letting people know due dates. What that meant was that anyone could check the popularity of a book. I would take out new YA books, read them, see them back on the new books shelf, and there they'd stay. So I'd take a look at the date stamps. There wouldn't be any other than mine. Time would pass, and I'd look again. There'd be one. Maybe, but sometimes not.

So, yes, I think it's very significant that someone wants to read Cress badly enough to take it from me, when so many other books I've read were of no interest.

And now I must go get that book and get cracking with my reading. Time is money. Seriously.

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We're having serious Internet problems Chez Gauthier. In fact, I'm posting this quickly right now while we have access. (Sometimes we can get to some sites but not others, sometimes we can do nothing.) Posting may be spotty for a while until the new modem arrives and, presumably, works. If it doesn't, this could go on longer.

And, yes, I have a computer guy. How do people who don't have one manage?

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Yes, I'm still talking about my vacation. Have I mentioned that I had a great time?

While planning this thing, I decided that I wanted to visit an author's home. Pretty much any author. Seriously. I googled Ohio and authors.

And guess who was born in Ohio and whose early home is open to the public. Yes! Jimmy T! Well, we have more of a Mr. Thurber and Who? kind of relationship.

James Thurber was still a very big deal in my school days. I was quite excited about hitting Columbus and visiting his house. I own three Thurber books and reread what some call his autobiography (I think it's more a collection of memoirish essays, myself), My Life and Hard Times,
in the car last month. No, My World and Welcome To It was a television show.

This is me standing in front of the home Thurber and his family lived in during the My Life and Hard Times period. Sigh. I am wearing the sweater I lost on the road. Hard times, hard times.

Thurber House is a terrific spot. The Thurber House organization both preserves the past and maintains an active present with all kinds of literary and educational programs.

Each room has only one modest sign giving information. But it was terrific information about living in the house. For instance, this is a Victorian era building, but the Thurbers were living in it post 1900. Victorian front parlors were changing by that time, I read. People were using them for more than company. Kitchens and dining rooms were the spots in a home that were most impacted by style changes. And in James' room there was a sign describing how the women's magazines of the era advised mothers to decorate their sons' rooms.

Do you know any of those families that likes to go through museums pointing at things and saying, "We've got one of those at home...And one of those...And look! I've got that thing. But better?" Yeah, I come from one of those. And I married into another.

This sewing cabinet to the left that I saw at Thurber House? I've got one just like it in my office. It came from my mother-in-law who had two of them. Came from some other family member, I'm sure. At the Thurber House, they have a sewing machine on top of it. I use mine for holding stationery. I call it the stationery cabinet. The younger members of my family don't even know what the thing really is.

Then this table to the right, which the Thurber House people have a typewriter on? Interesting story. These things are known as library tables, by the way. I don't know why. Anyway, ours was in my mother's house when I was growing up, but one of my sisters doesn't remember it. Then my understanding was that the table came from my grandmother Gauthier's house. But no one else in the family has any memory of that. Which is why it is appropriate that I should be the one to have the table. No one else.           .

We're using it for a changing table now.

So, anyway, the Thurber House is great. And those educational programs I mentioned? I learned that James Thurber and I had relatives with similar taste in furniture.

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I'm on vacation most of the rest of the month. I'm hoping to do a couple of Time Management Tuesday posts so I can finishing blogging the overwhelm. Otherwise, OC is resting.

I'm hoping to read a lot of the on-line material I've bookmarked these last few months or more. I'll be tweeting about that and posting responses to my reading at my professional Facebook page. Every few days, I'll be posting about our stops for biking at my personal Facebook page. You're welcome to follow me at any of those places.

That is, of course, assuming I can get on-line wherever we are. In my experience, that doesn't always happen the way it's supposed to.

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Updates have been spotty at OC this past week because we're experiencing laptop woes here at Chez Gauthier. My laptop didn't actually start smoking earlier in the week, but the noise it was making and the message that appeared on the screen suggested that it could happen. It has gone off to my computer guy's computer guy. This is one of these deals where Computer Guy #2 must be contacted in some mysterious way and then have the laptop passed on to him by Computer Guy #1 with great amounts of e-mailing and computer talk following.

I've always tried to blog after my workday was over to avoid using creative day time for blogging/marketing. (This is like a Time Management Tuesday post, but different.) Since I've had my laptop, I've fallen into blogging in the evenings while sitting in front of the TV. So last night I tried to work with another family member's laptop. I spent half an hour or so just trying to get on-line and to Blogger. I wonder if Computer Guy #2 gives discounts?

While I am a TV viewer and don't care who knows it, I rarely just watch TV. What, you may wonder, is Gail going to do if she can't find a laptop to use in the living room to blog and read blogs and articles? Well, last night I hemmed pants for one of the elders.

What am I working on now? We have a number of desktops in various stages of life. I don't believe we have any dead ones, anymore.

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The new year is getting off to a rough start for Original Content. I didn't blog during my retreat week, and I have another week away coming up due to some family work. I might be back mid-week next week or later.

When I come back, I'll have posts on my retreat reading.

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I am officially on Retreat Week starting today. This is not a writing retreat, but a kick back and unwind retreat. I may do a little writing, particularly journal work, because I've been sick for over two weeks and not functioning at peak capacity. My main interest, this week, is to do some marketing research, meaning dipping into some journal pieces. And reading them.

Retreat week is about reading, not blogging. If I find anything juicy in my reading, I will probably link to it at my professional Facebook page and tweet it. Expect to see me there more than here.

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I haven't been able to finish posting about Wednesday night's UConn event Gendered Publishing, and I've already been over-stimulated by another terrific program, the NESCBWI's New Media Day: Making Sense of the Evolving Digital Landscape. And I'm not just saying that because I was on the afternoon's panel with Mary Jane Begin and Emilie Boon.

This was another of the NESCBWI programs run by children's science writer Melissa Stewart for the Published and Listed Program. The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators has a large membership of prepublished writers that it serves very well. In recent years it's been making an effort to provide programs for members who have been traditionally published. Melissa has been in charge of the New England divisions PAL programs and has creating creative short-term experiences like today's.

When I've had a chance to finish my account of last week's UConn panel, rest assured that I will give you a rundown on everything that happened today. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of my panel mates and our moderator having lunch. Hey, folks, this is the kind of insider, backroom information you don't get at just any blog.

And, yes, it's proof that I was in the insider backroom.

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My laptop arrived today. This is very exciting, because I've never had one of my own. I've shared one with a family member when I wanted to be mobile, but otherwise I've been chained to a desktop, where I am now. Computer Guy is in the next room tinkering on my new treasure, but after having looked over his shoulder at Word, I can tell I'll need to tinker, too.

My plan is to build my work life around this laptop, as well as my personal life, to the extent that my personal life requires techie stuff. I'm looking forward to a rosie future.

Right now, though, I feel as if I'm getting ready to pack up and move.

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I actually know one of the authors on the New York Public Library's Top 100 Books List, Mitali Perkins. Four or five years ago, I had dinner at a table next to the table at which another of these author's was seated, Lois Lowry. And Tomi dePaulo, who made the list twice, once walked by me at a conference and was so close, I could have reached out and shoved him.

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For years I've been thinking about writing a memoirish book of essays about my experience as a maritial arts student. I even had a working title, Black Belt Essays. I even wrote and published two said essays. But that's as far as I've gotten with this project because of the time issues I keep writing about on Tuesdays and poor discipline and whine, whine, whine.

Just moments ago, I learned that someone else has written my book. Susan Schorn has written Smile At Strangers and Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly, which will be published next month.  #@!!  This is all because I am slow and inept!

Of course, my weak grasp of zennyness tells me that wanting, as in wanting to have written that book, as in wanting someone else not to have written it first, leads to unhappiness. Damn straight about that. But soon this moment of wanting and unhappiness will be in the past and over, and I will be on to another moment in which I will be slow and inept about other things. Yeah. I'm sitting here waiting for that. And waiting.

Oh. Here's a cheery thought. Schorn's book is about karate, and mine would have been about taekwondo. Plus, she teaches karate, while I can barely manage to maintain my own taekwondo skills, let alone teach anyone else. (I've already written one essay on that subject and am sure I can probably wring two or three more on it.) So if we both end up writing martial arts memoirs, they wouldn't be anything alike.

Now, that's a relief. I'm into that better feeling moment already.

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Today was the first day of a new unit of time, one that I'm calling March Madness Submission Binge. The beginning of new unit of time is exciting. You're feeling productive. I'd been looking forward to doing some marketing research right away. In fact, I'd even started a little earlier this week. My short story files are all tidy and ready to go. Today was the beginning of hitting another one of this year's goals.

And I spent it working on promotion for Saving the Planet & Stuff.

Writers are no different than any other type of worker. We all have to market our wares/services. But, still, when I'm through with a book, I want to be through with a book. I want to be on to other things.

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One of J.K. Rowling's teachers is supposed to have described her as "bright but “not exceptional”" in a New Yorker article, which I will try to read but it is 10 pages! Wait. That's not the point I wanted to make. The point I wanted to make was that I'd be flattered if any of my teachers recalled me as being "bright but not exceptional." That's probably as good as it's going to get for most of us. Hell, a lot of us won't be recalled as even being bright.

I'd settle for "Glad to hear she found work."

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I am really, really enjoying my Kindle, which I haven't had for quite a month. I am not speaking ironically here. I am not being sarcastic. I sincerely love my Kindle.

Here is just the best, most wonderful thing about it: If you are a person (and I'm not saying I am) who gets hooked on  historical mystery series, you can often get various titles on e-book for dirt cheap. Okay, sometimes around $4, recently I paid $9.99 for one, I've got my eye on one that's around $6 something. Now, that's more expensive than getting the books from the library, but you don't have to go anywhere to get them. You don't have to wait for them to come in through interlibrary loan, if your local library doesn't have them. You don't have to worry about the librarians getting all judgmental on you for reading this stuff.

You don't have to go to the store. If you're careful, you can get the books for less than paperbacks. You don't have to pay shipping. You don't have to get out of your chair. Hell! Ya don't have to get outta bed! It's incredible! These things are on your e-reader and ready to read in minutes. And, then, for all the people around you know, you're reading Siddhartha, which you got for free, and not something that is so definitely not improving, which you paid for.

And, seriously, you didn't read Siddhartha back when you were in college when everyone else was reading it. What are the chances that you're going to read it now? But who knows that?

I have probably spent only between $20 and $25 on e-books so far, and I can stop whenever I want. But I can imagine this becoming a real problem for someone who isn't on some kind of vision quest to achieve self-discipline the way I am.

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I read somewhere recently that Suzanne Collins is somewhat reclusive. That made me recall that I've actually met her. Suzanne Collins doesn't do a lot of media events, but I've met her!And I don't mean that I just sat in the audience while she was speaking at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair back in 2005 about her first series, about Gregor the Overlander. I bought a book, and she signed it for me, and we talked about my favorite character, which is, of course, the anti-hero, Ripred.At that time, Collins had little rubber stamps for some of her animal characters. This was a very nice marketing touch. One she sure doesn't have to worry about now.

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Many, many times over the years I've written at Original Content about my reading. I don't do true reviews here, in part because I don't know what a real review should entail, and in part because I want to stay away from the whole "negative" vs. "positive" review problem that pokes its head up on the blogosphere from time to time. (Or used to, anyway.) So what I do here are reader responses. Here is one of them.

January 8, 2004 Keeping Company With the Captain

I was at Readerville quite some time ago, and one of the other posters was expressing some concern about The Captain Underpants series. She seemed to think there was a lot of damaging stuff in it.

Well, of course that was all I needed. I had already read the first book so I ran out to the library and got Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies From Outer Space. I liked it. I thought it was clever, I thought it was kid-centered, and I thought the humor was unpredictable. Which I think is a good thing.

On top of that, Dav Pilkey, the Captain's fearless author, doesn't talk down to kids. He uses pop culture references (something I like) and definitely doesn't limit himself to an approved kid vocabulary. By that I don't mean he uses vulgar, adult language (though you're going to see some toilet humor in this guy's work). I mean this book written for third graders is peppered with words like "improbabilities," "jubilant proclamations," "assault," and "triumphantly."

Of course, third grade may not be what it used to be, but I still think the vocabulary in this book is a little challenging. I also think that, like pop culture references and unpredictable humor, is a good thing. Will kids understand every word? Probably not. Will they figure out a lot of meaning from context? I think so. And they'll be figuring it out from a fun context, too.

Will kids learn to behave disrespectfully toward their principals because Captain Underpants is a nasty principal who occasionally turns into a lame superhero who runs around in his tightie whities? I don't think so. Humor comes from incongruity. What's funny about these books is the idea of the all-important school principal running around in his underwear and needing grade schoolers to keep him out of trouble. That's funny because in real life it doesn't happen. Hardly ever, anyway. I think kids get that.

And as far as making jokes about lunch ladies is concerned, come on! People have been doing that for a couple of generations now. That's not news.

Not too long ago I was ego surfing on a Saturday night (pathetic way to spend the evening, I know) when I came upon a library website that include a page called If You Liked Captain Underpants. It was a list of recommended books for readers who liked the Captain Underpants series. What do I see there but my own My Life Among the Aliens.

I am definitely happy to be keeping company with the Captain.

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Two thousand and two was a big year for me. In addition to beginning Original Content in March, I began training in taekwondo in July, and I took a graduate course in September. As God is my witness, I aced the class. Why was it the end of my graduate school experience? Man, is graduate school ever a time suck. It truly took up all my writing time that semester.

I did go on to publish some essays, though.

August 29th, 2002 This is a Fine Mess I've Gotten Myself Into

The school year has started, which means I should soon have more to write about--school presentations, conferences, etc. However, the question of how I'll find time to write about these things has come up. You see, I've been thinking about going to graduate school for, oh, say, twenty-five years and last night I actually started taking a graduate class. Not that that means I'm actually in graduate school. I'm a non-degree student, which helps to explain why it took all summer for me to get permission to attend this thing.

But whether I'm in graduate school or not, I'm taking this graduate class about essays. And today I started reading essays by a fellow named Montaigne who lived in the Sixteenth Century. In France. He is the father of the modern essay as we know it. (Did I ever hear Regis ask that question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) By the time I got to the end of the first page I was falling asleep, and after twenty minutes I was out cold. That was at ten to eleven this morning. I still have twenty pages left to read. Then I get to go on to the works of two Eighteenth Century British writers and finally an entire book by a contemporary writer. That's for next week.

I'm not worried about the reading keeping me from writing but the napping may cut into my work time significantly.

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I created Original Content ten years ago today. The thing existed for six years before it occurred to me to mark an anniversary. Observations of the day were hit and miss after that.

We're going to observe this particular anniversay in a bigger way. For the next 10 days, I'll be republishing a post from each year of OC's existence. I'm choosing posts that I think relate in some way to what's been going on here on the Internet or in publishing or that are representative of one of my many obsessions. I'll be starting those today. The Time Management Tuesday post will come from the archive.

But, first, a quick overall impression of how blogging has changed in the decade I've been doing it:

1. I've said this before, I know. When I began blogging, there were only a handful of children's literature blogs. Around 2005/06, we went through a big growth spurt that I like to think of as the frontier period. There were no organizations, no tours, there was just blogging and informal communities of bloggers grew up around the act. That was my favorite time. The explosion kept moving on and on, though, and the number of blogs has become much larger than many of us can keep up with. The audience for any particular type of blog is probably finite and with so many bloggers competing for it, not many will be successful in achieving much of a readership. It's not a great time to be a new blogger, IMHO.

2. Another thing I've noticed is that the structure/format of blogs has changed. Back in the day, it was a specific short form. (I often refer to what I do here as "flash nonfiction.") A blog post was supposed to be short, with links to other material that bloggers were commenting upon or using for support for what they had to say. Blog of a Bookslut is a good example. Nowadays you often see more traditional long-form writing published as blog posts, lengthy book reviews, for instance, and essays that years ago might have appeared as part of a newspaper column. The "read more" hyper link on many blogs is an attempt to maintain the appearance of the short form by hiding a lot of the text.

There's nothing wrong in blog posts becoming lengthier. I have trouble controlling my flash nonfiction, myself. What is interesting about this situation, though, is that in the past there were all kinds of concerns about the impact the Internet would have on traditional media. But in this particular case, I think the writing style of traditional media has moved right into blogs, thus impacting the Internet.

The picture above is from 2002. I am grayer now, and you won't see me holding my glasses in my hand these days. I still own that dress, though, and I can still get into it. I suspect that's a metaphor for this blog--superficially changed by time, fundamentally the same.

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Earlier this month, Tanita Davis did a post on using--or, rather, not using--ethnic and cultural stereotypes in writing at Finding Wonderland. Of course, I heartily agree with everything she says, not just because stereotypes of the kind she refers to are wrong, but in writing they are also predictable and boring.

But what really grabbed me first off in her post was this bit at the beginning "...when I pretend to my second career as a sociologist. Oh, don't laugh at me - I think most writers are amateur anthropologists and sociologists, not to mention psychologists..."

Oh, my gosh! In one of my fantasy future lives I am a cultural anthropologist! Seriously!

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What were the chances that I would ego surf today and find a brand new post on Anne of Green Gables at Archimedes Forgets that refers to me? I don't ego surf a lot, in large part because I don't find enough new stuff, so how's that good for my ego?

Hmmm. In that first sentence I think I used two prepositional phrases and a phrase beginning with that, all of which modify "brand new post." I think "brand new post" is an object of some sort. I don't know if I was supposed to do that.

Copy editor!

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While reading my alumni magazine yesterday, I learned that Leslea Newman and I were both at The University of Vermont at the same time for two years when we were undergraduates.

I've tried to remember anything I did that she might have done, some way that we might have been in the same room or bar or something. But I'm drawing a blank.

I did hear her speak at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair a couple of years ago. In fact, Holy Moses, we both spoke there in 2009.

Yet, still, we never met.

Seriously, this kind of thing happens to me all the time.

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I have a sad Laundromat story to tell. I made my usual Thursday afternoon excursion to my local Laundromat where I have been a regular, off and on, for years and am on a first-name basis with Linda, the day manager. We're on a Laundromat routine right now because we've had some water issues here at Chez Gauthier that we're too exhausted to deal with. It's far, far easier to just go to the Laundromat, especially if I can get my favorite parking space by the front door.

Okay, well, whenever I go to the Laundromat, I get maybe twenty minutes to read. I always bring a book. I got my washers loaded (I only needed three this week), and I can't find my book. I was ninety percent certain I'd placed it on one of the baskets of laundry. I went out to the car twice to see if it had fallen out... lifted up my coat that I'd left on one of the machines...Nothing.

Gail, I said to myself, you didn't put it in one of the washers, did you? Because if you did, you're toast. Once these things are loaded and locked, it's like liftoff time at the Cape. There's no going back.

I was hopeful that I'd just left the book at home, because I couldn't hear any thumping the way you do when you, say, put a cell phone through the wash. I know that sound all too well.

I spent my twenty minutes of reading time with a four-year-old copy of Bon Appetit (I subscribed to Bon Appetit many years ago--a lot more recipes back then) and a back issue of Vanity Fair that included a fashion layout in which all the models had their mouths open and were staring at something off to one side and up. It's hard to believe anyone thought that was attractive.

I unload my two dark loads, which was pretty uneventful. Then it comes time for the megawasher of whites. First off, I find the two knee supports I thought I'd lost because I couldn't find them in my gear bag this morning when I was in the locker room before my taekwondo class. They must have become tangled up in the dobak I wore Tuesday. Huzzah! But then I find this doughy rectangle that was, indeed, my book. Or, we should say, the remains of my book. Except it wasn't my book. It was a book a family member had loaned my a few years back that I was just getting around to reading.

I was worried the book might be out of print, and I'd be unable to replace it. But you will all be relieved to know that that's already taken care of.

The really interesting part of this story--in the event that you haven't been fascinated enough thus far--is that the cover of the book had totally disappeared. It appears to have dissolved.

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