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Hi, folks! I'm continuing my series for the month of March. In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, I'm calling this series: Lucky Serendipity. I have tripped across many moments in life that really direct the whole of my writing future. I call these moments: lucky serendipity. So here is the story of one of those moments.

Some years ago I had cancer. I went from a furiously busy life with four kids to run after, a huge volunteer gig, and a busy writing life, to a life that came to an absolute standstill. Into the hospital I went, weeks of bed rest to follow, and then a much slower life after that. I felt like a miserable fly caught in a spider's webbing.

Each day while recovering, I cheered myself up by doing something I hadn't had the chance to do when I was so busy. Some things were simple like enjoying the sunrise or doodling for several hours straight. One of those things was to apply for a scholarship to the Chautauqua Writers' Workshop put on by the Highlights Foundation.

I received the scholarship! A few months later I was heading to Chautauqua to meet my mentor of the week, Patricia Lee Gauch. (She still offers workshops, but they are often hard to get in.)

Those few hours chatting  and then a flurry  of emails with Patti transformed me as a writer. They taught me to trust my writerly bones, to trust what they are telling me, to trust my energy and passion.  A book is a terrifying leap. For me not every book I've attempted has worked out.  You may simply fall, dust yourself off, and leap again.

Patti validated my writing faith -- that if I keep showing up at the page somehow a viable book will appear. Patti's mentoring sent me on a journey of paring down what my character really wants and sticking like glue to as many pages as I need to tell the story. 

I've covered the some in my blog before. Here is the link back to my travels back in 2005.  Here is a link to a class I took later from Patti Gauch when she visited Western Washington.

I hope that you consider liking my upcoming book on Goodreads, PLUMB CRAZY from Swoon Romance.  My pretty cover is in the sidebar.  I'll be back next week with the last of this Luck Serendipity series.


The doodle. Look, you found a four leaf clover! How lucky!

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Let’s talk for a moment about why I misfiled my tax extension. Melty Jello brain aside, bad software design almost cost my little family $2,500.

Background:

When I’m not wrestling a one-year-old into tiny shoes, I’m a User Experience Designer. This means I work with software companies to create easy-to-understand interfaces.

It also means that when I screw up my tax extension, I look very carefully at the software path that got me there.

Dramatic Reenactment:

It was April. I needed to file an extension. Like most Bay Area tech nerds, I hate mail. I consider it a personal affront if I have to print out a form, write an address, locate stamps, and put a letter in the whatsit…mailbox…thing. Naturally, my first step was to search irs.gov for “file extension online“.

Problem one: Too many results

The IRS site is too damned helpful. There were 948 results for my search. Many results were press release or blog type articles hinting at the existence of online extension filing, but containing no direct links. I wanted to find one or two good matches. Instead, I found a sea of irrelevance.

Problem two: Too many names

I hopped down a bunny trail for about ten minutes, searching for a feature alternately referred to as “E-file an extension”, “Free file”, “Freefile”, “Free Fillable Forms”, “Free File Fillable Forms”, “Free Federal Extension”, “Form 4868″, “Traditional Free File”, and “IRS e-file”.

Problem three: Inconsistent design

I eventually landed on a modern-looking site that seemed likely. I clicked “Get Started” and wandered through four increasingly less-well-designed pages which jumped from site to site, forcing me to read and parse options despite having already told the system what I wanted.

Problem three: Asshole account requirement

The eventual winner was a page called “Free File Fillable Forms” which required me to create an account and update my Flash plugin. I was already logged in to irs.gov, but that didn’t count. I created “a password that is different than my User ID, between 8 and 32 characters, and contains at least 1 number and 1 symbol”. All the eye-rolling gave me a headache.

Problem four: Misleading email

I received a spammy looking ALL CAPS email telling me my account had been created. I filled out the IRS extension form, which was the easiest part of the process. I submitted, and received another spammy ALL CAPS email saying “Your federal return was successfully transmitted”.

At this point, I fell on the bed and whined to my husband for several minutes about information architecture. Then I fell asleep, secure in the certainty that I had filed an automatic extension. Taxes wouldn’t be bothering us for a few more months, by which time we would certainly be getting more sleep.

Mon

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Yes, yes I can never resist a good pun. This weekend ... NV SCBWI mentor programme and conference in Virgina City. I have been looking forward to getting here, and it is so much more than I hoped for. First ... the location. Never dreamed I would be out in the Wild West. And Virginia City has more than enough charm and authenticity left. It's a little rough a round the edges, but so much the better. It was worth the 3 plane hop to get here. It was even worth the anti-English abuse from a lady of the 'Southern' persuasion, who informed me on the plane in Los Angeles that 'You will find in THIS country we do things a little differently', (This because I was already in the aisle of the plane disembarking, and hadn't immediately thrown a cloak in front of me so she could join the queue. Not at all sure why she chose to berate me in particular when about 1,000 Americans had already walked past her. Perhaps a grudge from the revolutionary war?)

This is a special weekend, and one I will remember for a long time during the cold winter months to come in Maine. On Friday the group of 30 mentees gathered in an historic old hospital, (now an arts center) and met with our mentors. Great energy ... laughter, sharing, it is totally like coming home. The faculty is wonderful - Harold Underdown, Priscilla Burris, Emma Dryden, Terri Sloat, Emma Hopkins, amongst others.

Such fun to just sit at the big old kitchen table and chat with aspiring and published authors and those with such a knowledge of children's books. For me this feels like a home coming. I have been to several conferences this year, and all have been inspiring. But this is truely like being with family and I know that there will be friendships forged here that will last for a lifetime.

The city wraps you up in it's old charm, and good humor prevails. In between meetings and lectures we have wandered up and down the wooden-sidewalked streets, giggled at the shop window displays, popped into bars that have seen gunfughts and bawdy dancing (but none of that this weekend right!) ambled around the tombstones in the cemetry on the top of a hill, gazed over the ranges of sienna frosted mountains into the aquamarine distance. We have considered our dreams and desires for the future. In the morning the sun shoots up surprised and blazing and pierces the soul. It feels good to be alive and part of something that takes no account of money or position.

Today the conference begins proper with workshops and so forth. Portfolio showcase this afternoon, and tonight an evening of reading and music. After the last few weeks with nose to the grindstone it's nice to relax, be away from the computer and have a real good laugh!

Yesterday I had my first mentor session with Priscilla Burris. Really helpful. She is very intuitive and I feel she really understands were I am at right now. It is so amazing to have someone to talk to about all the niggly questions and fears.  My main question at the moment was whether it is timely for me to seek an agent. With everything that I have going on right now, and after discussion, that's going to be my main coal when I get back to real life. Exciting!!

Also an informative and validating portfolio review with Terri Sloat. I put the pieces I most like in my portfolio and I think it showed. So I felt really validated with her critique and ready to stop worrying about my style amd have more confidence. I am going in the right direction. Just what I needed. Sometimes you just need to hear it from the mouths of others! Also great advice was to give myself a 'retreat' occasionally and create art just for me with no purpose other than exploration and to feed my soul. Thanks to both Priscilla and Terri.

So there we are, it's all about feeding the soul. Otherwise we all whither inside.

Did I tell you my good news? Email last week with the offer of a book to illustrate for a Boston publisher. Whee!! I am excited ab

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This post originally appeared on my main writing blog, The Rafters Scriptorium. Now that Refreshment of Spirit is no longer on hiatus, I'm moving this post here, which is the right place for it.



The Refreshment of Spirit blog is about spiritually refreshing stories—the kind that Lucy read in the Magician’s Book in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, after she had been on some rather harrowing adventures, including reading another of the spells in the book that was not so refreshing.

I am not a Pollyanna by any means. But a while back I began to grow weary of the constant negativity and incivility and downright injustice I seemed to be seeing, not just on the evening news but everywhere I went. I don’t think we need to pretend such things don’t exist—quite the opposite. We need to point them out, refuse to let them be swept under the rug, and do what we can about them. Thus was born the Refreshment of Spirit blog, so I could write about the thing I love best in all the world—stories that bring us a little closer to the Author and Redeemer of all.

All good things come from Him, and the stories I love are not always explicitly theological. Indeed, I even sometimes find refreshment in the stories of avowed atheists, because anything good in them comes from the source of all good. All creativity flows from the Creator. The end product may be warped, muddied and distorted, but the jewels that shine through the grime still get their sparkle from Heaven.

Lately there has been talk of the need for civility in human interactions. As I noted in another post, politeness, civility, good etiquette --whatever you choose to call it—while it falls a long way short of the self-sacrificing agape Christians are called to, does enable us to make a start. Decent social behaviour does not make a saint of a sinner any more than tithing can make a generous man of Scrooge; but both can help ease the damage done to other people surrounding the miser or the misanthrope.

As Deacon Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers points out, only God can ultimately ‘validate’ us. But this delightful short film which I found posted on his terrific publishing blog shows one of those ways in which every day life can be transfigured with a small change. T.J. Thyne of Bones stars in this fable as a parking lot attendant who transforms the lives of people who come to him to get ‘validated’. The film is 16 minutes long—I encourage you to take your coffee break to watch it and be refreshed!

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Yeah, I know that title doesn't belong to me, but it fits so I'm using it. I mean, wouldn't you rather be hugging Bruce Hale (Mr. Chet Gecko himself!) instead of doing laundry? But sadly, laundry is my reality.

After the collective high of being surrounded by so much creativity and energy and success, it's hard to come home to wash dishes and clean up dog barf. I'd rather be writing. But the kids want my attention, the house needs my attention and it might be a while before I get to hole up with my WIP and apply some of the wonderful thoughts that filled my brain for the last four days.

I'm grateful that Team Blog provided crib notes on some of the workshops I wanted to attend. There was so much great stuff to choose from, sometimes it was hard to decide where to go. And sometimes I just had to find a place to chill. Information overload can be harmful to your system (or maybe that was just an excuse to get away from the crowds and hang out with some of the great people I met!)

In the final speech of the conference, Kathleen Duey had these recommendations for preserving the best of SCBWI-LA at home (and of course these would apply to any type of writing event you're at):

Write down important conversations.

On the back of business cards, write down how you met the person. (I saw Rachel doing this days before Kathleen Duey's speech =)

Annotate notes (or blog about them!).

Contact everyone who gave you a business card.

Put the gems that people said on the wall.

Take a few days before you jump in to where you were and experiment with some of what you learned.

Try hard to hold on to the validation of your art.

Announce your renewed serious intent and explain it to family and friends.

That last one is hard, at least for me. Until I'm published, family and friends see this as a hobby. They don't understand why it's taking so long, why they can't buy my book at B&N yet or why I don't just self-publish. The looks on their faces mirror the doubt I sometimes feel. Am I good enough? Yeah, I think I am. And getting better, thanks to conferences like this, critiquing buddies and constant writing and revising.

So here I go, to put it into action. I guess it's not so much that reality bites. What bites is trying to have a real life when all you want to do is write about somebody else's life...without interruption. Here's to all of us working toward that dream =)

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Are you a name-a-holic? If so, oh, the fun you will have with Nymbler! I believe I've linked here before to Laura Wattenberg's formidable blog & name-search tool, NameVoyager. Now, there's Nymbler, which can help you find a stylistic match for names of siblings, or just help you while away some time idly contemplating your taste in names. Trust me: this is fun even if you are not actively contemplating procreation.

I was playing with it last night to find some names that would go well with the names of myself, my siblings, my husband, and his siblings, and was impressed with what Nymbler gave me. I didn't love every single name, but I liked at least a few of them enough to put them in my favorites section.

For example, this set of names: Sophie, Sarah, Charlotte, Marcus, Adam, Rebecca
Yielded the following suggested names: Elsa, Elizabeth, Madeleine, Joseph, Ivan, Matthew

(All the names it suggested as companions for Nell (for boys, at least) were way, way too informal for my liking, though.)

And if you don't like what's on page one, you can request more suggested names, and more, and more, and more. Many, many minutes may be spent poring over name lists and meanings, and on subtly adjusting your six inspiration names to glean results more to your liking.

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