Death Valley looked like this.

And it looked like this.

My writing station. Yes, that’s a fire extinguisher in the corner. We took a 1987 water-cooled Vanagon to Death Valley; you think we wouldn’t bring a fire extinguisher?

Anyway, for the two mornings we were there, my husband and I split off for Writing time. Or Riding time, depending which one of us you are asking. David would get on his bike at about 7:30 and head out to the gravel road he wanted to explore (and, on Day 2, explore a little further.) And I would get set up at my luxurious writing spa and, as I’m focusing on these days, “do the work.” Day 1 was spent figuring out more about Draft 3 of my MG novel, but Day 2 was for picture books.

Picture books without art notes. I had promised myself I would read each of my PBs out loud, without art notes, to see what…oh, just what came about. And it was good, if you call realizing that what you thought was “done” is so not “done,” but at least the realization comes with ideas and revision possibilities.

Except for on one of the PBs. This one, without the art notes, was kind of a big blank. Not like the other one that needs a strong trip back to the drawing board. At least I don’t think so. This one, I THINK, is asking to be an art-told story, with the pictures carrying the melody and the words bringing in the harmony. (And if that is a TOTALLY failed music metaphor, I really don’t want to know, okay?)

And, of course, I can’t draw.

No, I’m not fantasizing about suddenly becoming a great artist and turning myself into an author-illustrator. Yes, okay, never say never, but that’s about the same odds as never, so it is not the plan. But I started thinking–IF I could at least make myself happy enough with my own drawing ability to at least sketch the art story out on the page, then MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE, I could come at what the words need to be doing from a slightly different/new/more productive angle. MAYBE.

So I went to the office supply store to look at sketch books and pencils. Note, I do not say I went to the office supply store to BUY a sketch book and pencil. Because, even as I pulled into the parking lot, even as I stepped through the doors and wove my way through the aisles, I was not ready for that level of commitment.

If I hadn’t just read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, I might have stayed in the car, or backed out of the entrance, or decided not to purchase.

(Side note: Elizabeth’s sister, Catherine Gilbert Murdock is one of my favorite YA writers. Have you read her Dairy Queen books? Maybe the two of them don’t even get along, but I can’t help imagining these late night sessions between the two of them, after everyone else has gone to bed, where they’re like: I don’t know, maybe THIS word is better. I think they’d laugh more if you said THIS. Oh, yeah, that’s PERFECT.)

Okay, okay, back to the office supply store. There I am, acting all cool, looking at the art supplies, pretending that nasty little voice isn’t saying ot me, “You can’t draw. What difference does it make if you like the feel of that paper better than the other. You’ll NEVER fill an entire sketchpad. YOU’RE GOING TO SPEND $10.00 ON ART SUPPLIES?!”

Luckily, thanks to Gilbert of the Big Magic ideas, I am very much in anti-nasty-voice mode. Yes, Gilbert says I should be respectful and kind to the voice, greet it as part of myself and ask it to sit quietly in a corner until it can make an actual positive contribution, but maybe I’m not quite there yet. I’m kind of at the F.U. stage with it. Also, I am remembering that I don’t actually have to judge myself if I buy the tools and don’t use them. I don’t have to judge myself for how WELL I use them. I only had to bring them home and see if I DID use them.

Today, I used them. And I enjoyed them. And I drew something. I drew, and I erased, and I drew, and I erased, and I drew. And it was recognizable. Well, not as a character in the story, even though it started out that way, but as a something. Which felt good.

And THAT, my friends, is the Magic.

I’m a plotter, never a pantser. Would I love to be (more of) a pantser. Oh, heck, yes. In writing and in life. In life, I’m a planner, although I will stake a claim to have loosened up at least somewhat in the last decade or so. But I love and use lists and calendars, and if they’re not crutches, they are definitely tools.

Still, I’m learning to welcome surprises, even when they sneak up on me without too much warning. As I headed into Asilomar two Fridays away, I knew that I hadn’t really identified what I wanted to get out of the conference. I had hopes and dreams, as we always do, but I hadn’t done much visualization or intentionalizing–probably fear of failing at those dreams was getting in my way. It turned out well, though, because the big surprise (for me) was how resoundingly I responded to all the motivational and dream-based talks I hears. Typically, I am looking and hoping for craft support–specific writing tools and how-to’s. I surprised myself with some of my workshop choices, and I surprised myself by how well I came back from down moments and by how deep into my heart I felt the happiness of the weekend.

When I look at where I am on my writing path, there are surprises there. Oh, sure, there are some that feel more like disappointment than happiness, but there are some pretty good ones, too. If you’d told me ten years ago, even five, that I’d have switched my agent search from agents who represent Middle Grade and Young Adult to those who rep MG and picture books? I’d probably have laughed, you know, in a nice way. Picture books? Seriously?

Well, yeah. I started that part of my journey while I was writing The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, with an idea that I wanted to follow through outside the book. And now I have four picture books that, well, while they’re not as ready as I thought they were before last weekend, they’re pretty darned good and I am definitely in love with them. With the characters, the stories, and–oh, yeah–the writing process of bringing them together. Young adult? Doesn’t feel like anything I want or need to be writing. Twists and turns, and surprises.

Who knew? When I started this blog, I knew logically that the writing path I was going to talk about would be one of curves and hills, fallen trees and patches of quicksand. But as I move along it, continuing the climb, I understand the challenges of the route at a deeper level. And I know, too, that there’s always the possibility I’ll come around a corner and catch a glimpse of a rainbow, maybe even the shimmer of that pot of gold.

Because there are always surprises.

I’ve been watching this conference for a decade. I have heard wonderful things about it, but–since it’s not cheap (well, staying at Asilomar isn’t cheap; the conference itself is more than reasonably priced), I felt like I needed to have some work to show before I went. So this year is it. It was a wonderful, wonderful weekend. And, although so many things are still circling around in my head, in no particular order yet, I wanted to get a few randomy thoughts done before I forget them.

• I wasn’t sure what I needed this weekend to be. Turns out I needed it to be about rejuvenation, recharging, and–most of all–recommitment. And it was. Obviously, I need to sustain this feeling and act on it, but I came away feeling that, yes, my writing is going to land at the top of my priorities list once again. Everybody I met and listened to contributed a lot to this feeling, but Deborah Underwood‘s talk about getting rid of obstacles to our creativity really hit a home run for me.
• You think you’re ready, and you’re not always ready. That includes the state of your manuscripts, your receptivity to hearing critiques about them, and your understanding of what they need to improve. But if you smile and breathe and give things a few hours to sink in, they usually do, and you find yourself thinking the critiquer much more sincerely later in the day, because you now do have some next steps to follow. AND you can see why they’re necessary and important.
• Clare Vanderpool is not only a wonderful writer and a speaker with a lot of important things to say, she is very possibly the funniest person on the planet. If you are a conference organizer, invite her. If you have a chance to attend a conference where she’s on faculty, go. And be ready to nod and nod and then LAUGH AND LAUGH.
• I’m pretty sure I’ve never been to a conference where tears were shed during so many talks. It may have been the theme: Live Your Story, but people shared so openly and honestly, the keynotes and workshops stopped being just about my work and your work and became about our work and our worlds and our lives.
•  Rhyming picture books DO get me. Who knew? Go get Deborah Underwood’s  and Meg Hunt‘s Interstellar Cinderella and Corey Rosen Schwartz‘ and Rebecca J. Gomez‘ and Keika Yamaguchi‘s What about Moose?, and you’ll see what I mean.
• We had power outages that faculty laughed and spoke through, even though, literally, the power was going off, on, off, on, off, on, like a badly out of sync strobe light, and must have been driving them crazy.
• I remembered that calendars have power. Every weekend, I will be calendaring my weekday writing into its after-work time slots. And I will be printing a monthly calendar to check off all the days during which I put in writing time. I have promised myself I get to go back to Asilomar in 2017, IF I DO THE WORK. Guess what? I’M GOING TO DO THE WORK.
• The deer at Asilomar barely look up when you walk near them. Okay, they look up, but they keep chewing away and just let you ooh and ah at them. Because we are no threat. Now we all just need to work on expanding that safety and peace beyond our relationship with deer and beyond the gates of Asilomar.
• There was a quilting conference going at the same time as ours. I never did get a chance to sneak past their classrooms and see all their work, but I chatted with some while we were in line for meals, including the cousin on one of my absolutely favorite picture book authors. Yes, I asked her to tell her cousin how much I loved her book. Random and special.
• I have some work to do with my art notes. Or maybe I should say without my art notes.
• Some of us had to take off after the last sessions, but some of us lingered, joining each other for one last long talk around the lunch table in the dining room. As the last of us pushed away our chairs and started to head toward our cards, one of us said that it felt like leaving summer camp–making sure you gave and got hugs, exchanged emails, shared good and powerful wishes for the next year. I understood what she met, but it felt different for me. I never wanted to go back to summer camp. I DO want to go back to Asilomar.

And I will.

Quick note, in case you missed it, the title is not about why I’m voting for Hilary. A week or so ago, Kurtis Scaletta wrote an excellent post about his reasons for voting for Clinton, but that’s not where I am. Yet. Or not yet.

I still haven’t decided. Luckily, or unluckily, out here in California, I still have time. I’m going to watch some more debates, I’m going to read more posts and articles like Kurtis’–both about Clinton and Sanders, and I’m going to think. A lot. (I’m also going to give myself breaks from thinking about this, because frankly I need them.) And I can tell you one thing: I WILL VOTE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR WHICHEVER ONE OF THEM WINS THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION, BECAUSE COME ON, PEOPLE, HAVE YOU LOOKED AT THE OTHER CHOICES?

Anyway, this post is about the fact that, given all my reasons for voting for one or the other of the two Democratic/Socialist candidates, there is a massively huge part of me that really wants Hilary Clinton to win.

Yes, because she’s a woman. And because, while I may not agree 100% with the preferences Courtney Enlow expressed in her ALL-CAPS EXPLOSION, I do agree with her anger and disgust and frustration at all the crap that’s being thrown at Clinton, yes, because she’s a woman, and at the fact that some people are still accepting that crap as okay. (And, yes, I’m looking very closely at my own vacillation to see if there’s any crap at its roots.) I am in complete sympathy with Enlow’s CAPS and her swearing, because, holy moly, people, it’s 2016, and it is BEYOND TIME that we have a woman president. It is BEYOND TIME that we are capable of electing a woman, of not giving her a hard time for needing to use the restroom during a debate, of recognizing that part of the reason she is the way she is is that SHE HAS HAD TO BE to get where she is.

I want us to be there so badly it hurts. Not just for me, but for older women in my  life who have waited even longer for us to get there, who see us on the cusp–FINALLY!!!–of something so important, and get to watch us being all, whoa….wait a minute…whoops…not yet! What Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright said about and to younger women was wrong, wrong, wrong. It was dismissive and petty and, I think, pretty immature, and I would  like to think that SOMEDAY we will understand that feminism is supposed to give women equal CHOICE as one of our equal RIGHTS. I make no excuses for either of them, but…do you know how long they have been fighting for this? DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG? Is it any wonder they slipped?

So why am I not sure about my vote? Lots of reasons, and I think (and hope) that my reasons are about the individuals, not the gender. I may end up voting for Hilary Clinton because she is experienced, competent, whip-smart, and will, I know, hold the line for me on most of my biggest issues, even if I don’t think she will push other (also important) issues as far as I want her to. I may end up voting for Bernie Sanders because he shares more of my ideals and because this country does need a revolution, and because, hey, I would be almost as happy to see the first Jewish atheist in the white house as I would be to see the first woman there. I may vote for Sanders even if I don’t think he has enough of a plan to make much of his stuff happen.

Like I said, I don’t know. I don’t know yet how I’m going to vote. What I’m coming to realize, though, is that even if I do end up voting for Bernie, and even if he wins, I’m not going to be completely happy. I will be amazed, stunned, celebratory, probably even jubilant. But I will also be disappointed, angry, frustrated beyond belief, and most likely in miserable tears.

And ain’t that just rainbows and unicorns?

We all know it. We know “writing” is about so many more tasks than sitting at your computer, or with a notebook, and writing actual words and sentences and paragraphs and pages of that 1st or 2nd or nth draft.

We know it logically.

Still, there’s something in many, if not all of us, that places judgment on those other tasks. It’s not even so much that we get caught up in word-count tallies, I don’t think. I think it’s that we (rightly) associate writing with creativity, and we associate creativity with the new and fresh things that come when our story and prose are on a roll. We don’t always remember that creativity is stepping back and taking a new look at the colors in your painting, the ones you put down on the canvas last week. We don’t always remember that creativity is tasting the soup or the cake batter and thinking about what spice is still missing.

And even when we remember, we sometimes let doubt override the knowledge.

We “should” at ourselves. You should be getting more pages done. You should be getting started on the next draft. You should be in the zone.

Yeah, well, really I should be getting the things done that need to be done. I should be acknowledging that writing, drafting, revisng—it’s is not just typing–it’s organizing, it’s reviewing, it’s questioning, it’s brainstorming, it’s shifting puzzle pieces around and seeing how the fit here…and here…and there. It’s getting back in touch with our story any way we can.

So here’s what I’m counting as “writing” for a while.

• Getting all the chapters I’ve written into a binder.
• Organizing and then reading through my critique groups feedback on all these chapters.
• Adding as many bullets as I want to my Ginormous List of Things That Still Need to Go into This Story.
• Reading posts like this one by Jennifer R. Hubbard and reminding myself that, if I’m sitting at the computer (or typewriter) with my hands on the keyboard, my brain is expecting me–even telling me–to write, to produce fresh words.
• Going through my Ginormous List of…with the full manuscript in front of me and using colored pens and sticky notes to scribble things like “Stick brother in here!” and “Ooh! Good place for the big question!”
• Experimenting with plotting and organizing tools–will it be Scrivener’s scene cards again, or do I want a timeline spreadsheet. Or both.

Yet again, I realize that the book I affectionately refer to as “the one that almost killed me” put a big dent in this understanding for me, an understanding I think I had before the almost killed part. So I need to renew my lessons, rebuild habits I lost somewhere for a while. And that renewal, I think, means reaquainting myself with all the non-writing writing acts.

And perhaps bringing flowers and chocolate to keep that silly “should” voice busy and quiet.

There were a couple of really fun conversations going on over at Facebook today. Erin Dionne shared a question from a class discussion she was having: Whose story is Charlotte’s Web? There were several opinions!

Then Melissa Wyatt (and several other people) posted a link to a Bustle article about people’s first literary crushes, and that got a few of us talking about who was not on the list.

Anyway, I jumped in with my two cents (Wilbur’s! Calvin O’Keefe!) a few times, then got back to work.

But the fun has stuck with me. So tonight, right here, I’m putting up a Tiny Virtual Book Club post. I say “tiny,” because for all I know, it’ll just be me. And maybe you. But probably we won’t break any fire codes with the crowds. And whether I do this again, with another book. Who knows, we’ll see, making no commitments and supplying no pressure.

Tonight, we’re going to talk about one of my favorites, a book I consider perfect for what it sets out to do and what it accomplishes. We’re going to talk about Ruth Stiles Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon, illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett.

You haven’t read it yet? Well, that’s okay. Go pick yourself up a copy. We’ll wait…

Now, this is not a book review, and lucky for you, because it would be such a gushy one, you’d need a heap of tissues just to mop up after me. I should mention that I have never succeeded in participating in a non-virtual book club, so this may not become a book discussion either. But you never know, so here we go: Questions for discussion. Place your thoughts in the comments. And if there are more than one of you, take a look at the other comment(s) and drop in a reply.

• Why do you think Ruth Stiles Gannett used Elmer Elevator’s son as a first-person frame narrator?
• What story elements does Stiles Gannett to keep the young reader engaged until we get to the island?
• Once we get to the island, the chapters become more episodic. Why do you think Stiles Gannett chose that structure? What effect do you think the structure might have had on the young reader?
• Can you think of any books published in the past 5-10 years that you would liken to My Father’s Dragon? Think about the structure and the length and the balance of language level with story complexity. Or do you think Stiles Gannett’s book is a “genre” of the past only?
• What happened to the cat? (You may have to use your imagination on this one!

There you go. Don’t be shy–jump on in. Not sure yet if I’ll simply comment with my own take on these questions (yes, obviously I have a take on the questions!), or whether I’ll wait and respond as comments (possibly) come along from others. But you’ll hear from me one way or the other.

Enjoy!

Over the holiday break, I decided to jump a head a bit and start plotting the next draft of my middle-grade magical realism novel. Usually, I really want to write to the end, but I had realized that the ending chapters from my first draft were really as complete as I could make them, at this point. And I had lots of ideas about what to change/add in the beginning and middle that I wanted to start getting down on paper.

So I sent the final chapters to my critique group, and I started work in a plotting spreadsheet. Mostly, right then, I was just trying to get the important scenes down with some general notes & thoughts. And I wanted to hear what my critique group said about the ending.

The good news: They liked it. They had lots of thoughts & suggestions (because they’re Super Critiquers), but they were totally on board with the main direction. So, yay!

And the not-so-good news isn’t really not-so-good. It’s just my internal doubt machine saying, sure, yeah, the ending works, but do you really know how to get there yet? Do I have ideas? Oh, I have ideas! I have ideas out the wazoo! Some of them are on sticky notes attached to the previous draft. Some of them are in the spreadsheet I started. A couple of the really important ones are on even bigger sticky notes stuck to my monitor. And some of them–a whole lot of them–are bopping around in my brain. I can tell you about the themes. I can tell you about each character’s big problem, including all the secondary characters. I can tell you ways those problems will interact with my hero’s big problem. I can even, finally, tell you about a few of the bad things I’ve come up with for my hero to do.

But can I see how it all goes together, seamlessly, beautifully, into that novel I want to write, that novel I want kids to read?

Not yet.

When I expressed this at my critique group, one of my friends told me this means I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Where I feel like I know too much, even if that feeling comes with not knowing what to do with it all. I think she’s probably right. I think I’d be saying the same thing to her if she was at this stage. For all I know, I have said it!

I’m totally excited about the Middle Grade Intensive I’m attending this weekend, in Oakland. I’m really happy it’s a one-day event, on a Saturday, because I plan to drink lots of coffee on Sunday and get myself to my desk and absorb what I’ve learned. And then…all those ideas pin-balling inside my mind?

I’ll see what I can do with them.

This Xmas, I asked for and got three pictures books–three of my favorites that I’d read in the past year. (Thanks, Kathy!) Typically, I get picture books at the library–I go grab a stack, bring them home, read them, and see if there’s anything I can learn from the ones I like. Then, back they go.

And, of course, when I buy one as a gift, I carefully and delicately read it first.

But my actual at-home collection isn’t huge. It is made up of those I love, just because I love them, and those I love that also have some craft element done so beautifully I want them in my study-to-learn pile.

So this year, I decided it was time to add to that pile. And to share a little bit about each one with you.

Sophie’s Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller, illustrated by Anne Wildorf

I’ve bought Sophie’s Squash for several young friends, because I just love this book. Sophie is, if not my all-time favorite picture-book hero, definitely in the top 10. She is stubborn, but not in a nose-in-the-air, la-la-la, I’m-not-listening kind of way. She simply knows what is going on with Bernice (her squash), knows what she wants for Bernice, and knows what she should do to get it. And she does, calmly and peacefully and happily. Even the one time she asks for help from someone other than herself, she responds positively because their suggestion resonates with things already deeply within her own self, not because the idea rings totally new and revolutionary.  And, wonderfully, Zietlow Miller has given Sophie parents who trust and respect Sophie’s sense of self, her personal strength. They are not enemies, not even obstacles. They are grown-ups with some different views than Sophie, as well as some extra experience and knowledge, but they nudge a bit and then stand back and let Sophie find her course. I love them all. The art is also fantastic. It’s obvious Anne Wildorf “got” Sophie, because the pigtails? They are SO Sophie!

Those are my reader responses. As a writer, I’ll be going back to Sophie’s Squash for lots of learning. Zietlow Miller’s dialogue is brilliant–she does so much, with so few words. I love this interchange between Sophie and her mother, after Sophie has lost her temper, just a little bit, with a boy at the library who calls  Bernice a “spotty thing.”

“‘Maybe Bernice should stay home next time,’ Sophie’s mom
suggested.

‘Why?’ Sophie asked. ‘She wasn’t the one being rude.'”

Perfect.

Sparky! by Jenny Offill, illustrated by Chris Appelhans

My one-word review for this book would simply be: <3

Okay, I’ll give you a little bit more. The sweetness of this story is beyond belief. The hero of the story, an unusual and wonderfully done first-person “I,” researches the only kind of pet her mother will let her have: one that “doesn’t need to be walked or bathed or fed.” And so, of course, she gets Sparky. A sloth.

First, let me say that I think Chris Appelhans must live with a sloth. Or several. Or have spent weeks and weeks studying them at a zoo. Because his art is not only absolutely beautiful but completley and gorgeously catches Sparky’s slothdom in all its not-moving-ness.

When I read this book again, just after Xmas, I was struck by something. And that is, as far as I can tell, the hero doesn’t actually win any of her battles. She seems extremely content with Sparky as her own pet, but there is judgment from outside, and that judgment is much more critical than, say, Sophie’s parents in Sophie’s Squash. And the hero does step out of her own, everything-is-okay-in-here space, to try and prove to the hater (one Mary Potts, who pretty much succeeds at everything and brags about it) that she is wrong. And, despite our hero’s attempts, Mary goes away unconvinced that Sparky succeeds at anything.

And I don’t see any huge moment of revelation for the hero at the end of the story. Any learning she does, over the course of her journey, isn’t obvious and certainly isn’t loud. I think what we end up (no spoilers) with is a very quiet, almost still, return to just our  hero and Sparky and what they have together. And I think that’s enough. Both for them and for the reader.

I want to go back to this book again (and probably again and again) and take a closer look at the storyline and the characters and see if I’m write about what the author, and very much the illustrator, have done here. And I want to go back again and again just to immerse myself in the love that is at the heart of the whole book.

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers

This book was the first one I discovered by Oliver Jeffers, and–as usual–I was filled with awe (and, yes, a little jealousy) at the ability of anyone to write and illustrate this wonderfully. I bought this for the son of a friend, because I could just hear the little boy laughing and laughing at the story. It’s still my favorite of Jeffers’ books that I’ve read, and I still keep buying it for kids whenever I can find it.

And I finally have my own copy!

This book is simply silly. In the best, best way. The basic plot is that Floyd gets his kite stuck in a tree and then tried, for page after page after page, to get the kite out of the tree. By throwing things at it. Ridiculous things, none of which I’m going to mention, because any item would be a spoiler. The fun and goofiness of the story comes in watching what Floyd runs for next and of seeing it land in the tree and get….yes, stuck.

Plot? I’m not sure there is much of it, but it’s one thing I’m going to go back and study. Yes, there’s one action that creates a resolution, and there are a few adorable and even sillier twists along the way. And Floyd’s facial expressions–watch for when Jeffers adds that one extra line that shows the tiniest bit of extra surprise or frustration. At the Charles M. Schulz museum (a don’t-miss if you’re ever in or near Santa Rosa, California), you can look into the recreated studio and watch a video of Schulz’ hand drawing a character (Charlie Brown, I think). His pen flicks a line here and a line there and one more there, and all of a sudden you see not only the character, but a clear and complete emotion as well. I think Jeffers must have drawn Floyd like this–two or three lines and there he is, fully manifested on the page. Again…awe.

So I’m not sure yet what I’ll learn from this book, when I go back to it. I think, for now, it may be an example of when (and how) to break some rules. To step out of the pattern of threes, to not worry too much about bringing in different obstacles, to let humor override the need for increasing tension. We’ll see. One thing I’m sure of, I’m not going to tire of reading this book to myself, or of bringing it out to share with any visiting young readers.

I’m actually pretty excited about 2016. Why? I don’t know! And, possibly for the first time in my life, I’m looking forward to that…to not knowing.

Yeah, weird.

Of course, I have some plans for the regular, day-to-day stuff. Still loving my job, and still loving the WIPs I’m working on. I’ll keep heading into work and writing my grant proposals and crossing my fingers until we hear about them. I’ll keep making progress on the MG magical realism story–I’m getting started on the 3rd draft plotting already this week. And I’ll revise picture books and most likely write some new ones. Beyond that? I think it’s going to be a surprise.

In November, I read Suzanne Braun Levine’s Inventing the Rest of our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood. If you were following my posts on Facebook, you know the book struck some major chords with me. Levine (no relation, as far as I know, but there are a lot of us!) tells the stories of woman after woman who felt/feels the way I’ve been feeling this year, which pretty much comes down to one question: What next?

Quick caveat: I know that it’s not just women who go through this. My husband and I have had and are having many conversations in which we both wonder about that question and not just about my life. But Levine concentrated on women in her book and, to quote Ms. Reddy, I am Woman, so that’s the persepective I’m going with for now.

For the past year, I’ve been feeling as though my antennae are out, doing an Uncle-Martin (Ray Walston, not Christopher Lloyd) scan for the next big thing on my Life’s To Do list. I’ve been incredibly lucky in the last many years–I found the partner I wanted, we found our house together, and we raised a son we love who is moving forward with health and happiness.

Believe me, I am very aware that the same Life for which I have a list could strike my luck with a big, old lightening bolt at any second. But for now, the good place is where I am, and if I have learned anything in the past decade, it’s to (try to) live in that place, not in the possible lightening-bolts place.

Anyway, I have checked off all the items that I placed on my list, lo those many years ago. And now, where the next item(s) can go, there’s a big old blank spot.

Oh, don’t think I didn’t spend a few months trying to “grasp” at something new, feeling like I should turn on my laser-pointer and ZING!…identify and target the new goal. Whatever that was supposed to be. I’m not that good yet.

Luckily, the mindfulness I’ve been working on has a pretty hefty kick to it, and in some moment when I must have been actually listening, I heard: STOP IT! And I realized I was looking at some of this backward. Sure, this is the first moment in many, many years, when I haven’t had a specific goal, something I needed to make sure happened and happened successfully. But it’s also, O.M.G, the first time in many, many years WHEN I HAVEN’T HAD A SPECIFIC GOAL, SOMETHING I NEEDED TO MAKE SURE HAPPENED AND HAPPENED SUCCESSFULLY. Maybe I should sit back and enjoy that for a while. You think?

Levine (the other one) talks about this stage as a “fertile void,” with all the possibilities and all the fear that implies. She spoke with woman after woman who, when they reached this age or this place, for reasons good and bad, thought they would just “go back” to the woman they were in their first adulthood. They thought they would pick up the things that, for another whole set of reasons, they’d dropped back there.

Guess what they found out? They didn’t want to. If Levine has a mantra in the book, it is her assertion that we are not simply who we were before, only older. Yes, that statement takes some parsing, but once you get there, you’ll see that it is perfectly worded. Because why would we be? And, me, personally, I say: Thank goodness I’m not.

Besides, honestly, I can’t even remember what things I was doing in my first adulthood. Yes, of course, one was my writing. And I have kept that going, and I will always keep that going, and it has its own stages and styles and discoveries. But, for me, it’s not new. Because it has always been here for me (since I was at least 12), it doesn’t answer the question: What next?

Right now, I still have only one answer to that question: I don’t know. How can I know, when I’m still figuring out who I, in this second adulthood, am? Or who I’m becoming? And I’m holding onto Levine’s idea that this void will actually be fertile. I’m looking forward to the magical surprises that are coming my way.

Many authors pick a word for their year. In 2016, as I try to stay mindful to what is going on around me, I’ll be paying attention to my reactions and responses. I want to know what attracts me and what I’d rather push away. I don’t want to make any choices yet. My word for 2016 will be Listen. I’ll be listening to, and for, myself.

Happy New Year, and may the best of all possibilities come your way!

“Petulant.”

That’s the word that has been coming out of the mouths of my critique partners lately. No, not about me, although I’m sure there are times they’ve been tempted. But it’s Charlie, my hero, about whom they’ve been using it. The hero of my MG novel. Charlie’s “petulant.” He pouts. He kind of makes it all about him.

This is so not what you want to hear about your hero.

Except, you know, it is, because if you don’t hear it, you can’t do anything about it. The writer’s critique mantra, right?

So I heard it, and I listened, and I’ve been thinking. And, mostly, honestly, what I’ve been thinking is, “stupid voice.” As a reader, I love voice. Voice puts the magic into a book for me–you can give me a great plot, you can give me funny dialogue, you can give me characters I care about who have something to lose. And I’ll love you for all of them. But voice…you will woo me and never lose me with a strong, distinct, gorgeous voice.

As a writer, I struggle with it. Over and over and over. Not so much on my picture books, or maybe I just haven’t recognized that struggle yet, but in my novels, oh, yeah. When I get it to work (when other people say, “I love the voice,”), I couldn’t tell you what I’ve done to get there. Which is only the littlest bit frustrating.

But I keep trying. So I heard “petulant.” And I tried to get myself to think beyond “stupid voice.” I thought about the MG books I love that do have great voices, and I thought about how those authors succeed at pulling me into their heroes’ thoughts and feelings without letting those heroes whine. I got close to sitting down again with The Wednesay Wars and Okay for Now (never a chore!) and seeing if I could figure out how Gary D. Schmidt does it.

And then I realized that the plan I was contemplating was actually to sit down and plot a few scenes of Schmidt’s. Plot? But I was struggling with voice. Why was I thinking about plot? I’m still not sure when/why my brain made that leap, and I’m still not sure it was the leap I needed it to make. But I realized I was thinking about all the things Schmidt packs into one scne, all the actions that provoke and evoke his hero’s thoughts and emotions. And I was thinking about how many more things Schmidt put into any one scene than I’ve been doing.

Am I just spending too much time in Charlie’s mind? Am I giving him so much time that his voice is getting taken over by the “me, me, me” of his problems? I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure. But I was and am sure that I haven’t been making enough happen. I haven’t been getting Charlie to do enough.

So today I sat down to write a scene where Charlie doesn’t think. Or at least not much. I told myself to back way from the voice I’d been trying to get to–what I envision as a quiet voice, the voice of a thinker. I told myself that, if I saw Charlie heading too far down the thinking path (and today’s definition of “too far” was one step), that I had to give him something to do. I told myself to make things happen, to make Charlie act and react, and to see where the voice fell.

I think I got further away from petulant. I don’t think Charlie pouted much. Maybe. I know I got to a moment when I didn’t have enough that was going to happen, and I made something more happen. And I didn’t give Charlie time to do much thinking. I’ll see what my critique group thinks.

Did I hit a better voice? Did I hit any voice at all? If I knew that, I could give you the answer to life, the universe, and everything. (Yes, I know: 42!)

The story in my family goes like this: When my big sister was learning to read, she would come home in the afternoon, and she would play school with me. So at the same time as she was learning to read, she was teaching me. I’m sure that story, like most family stories, has some truth and some myth to it. All I know for sure is that I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. Or when I wasn’t reading.

I complained in second grade about not liking school, and I told my mom I didn’t like the reading time. Since that made absolutely no sense, my mom talked to the teacher and found out the class was doing out-loud reading together, and we weren’t supposed to read ahead. The teacher was a good one, and guess what–I got to read ahead. I kept reading. I became an English major in college, because there wasn’t anything I was going to do for four years straight except read novels. I had a bit of a scare in grad school when I hit burn out on Victorian novels, but I switched to mysteries and just kept adding to the piles of books on my shelves and the piles of words and sentences and paragraphs and plots in my brain. And throughout the years, I kept reading my old children’s books and eventually added the stories I found while my son was growing up. My entire family reads gobs, but there’s a reason why, some years ago, my sister gave me a copy of Sarah Stewart and David Small’s The Library, and it’s not just because Elizabeth Brown and I both have frizzy hair and glasses.

Do I have a point? Yes. I’m pretty sure it’s all those years of reading and reading and reading that have helped me be a good editor and critiquer.  I think you could talk to most editors and agents and librarians and booksellers (and, yes, writers, but I’m getting to that part of the connection in a minute), and they would agree. Words have patterns, books have patterns, and all those patterns carve little grooves of understanding and recognition in our brains. So when I am critiquing, and the pattern isn’t there or it’s flawed or off-center, I can see that. Or feel it, maybe. A little alarm goes off. And I make my note in the margin, and I write a deeper, more full explanation in the overall critique, and I keep reading and watching for how the patterns are doing. It’s nice, it’s why I like doing this kind of work, and it’s a happy feeling to be good at something, right?

Cue fingernails-on-the-chalkboard screech as I shift jarringly away from talking about reading skills to talking about writing skills. When just understanding and seeing the patterns aren’t enough. I’ve been working on a picture book for a while now, one that was pretty good to start, but not good enough, and on which I’ve slowly been inching closer and closer to getting it right. I got an agent critique on it at a conference, and my critique group has seen it several times, and I’ve had a couple of other strong readers share their thoughts. And everybody is saying the same thing–the balance between scenes is off, and the stakes aren’t high enough. Okay–that all meshes with my own feelings, the ones that come from those reader grooves in my brain. But I still hadn’t figured what to fix or how.

Because that’s the writing part. Now I’ve also written for a long time–I’ve mentioned before that when I about twelve, I fell in love with Phyllis A Whitney’s teen mysteries, and that’s when I decided I wanted to do what she did. And I’ve been writing since. Now, as I get older, the gap between four years old and twelve years old gets proportionally much smaller. But the hours I’ve put into writing still don’t come close to the hours I’ve put into reading. Thought, yes; learning, yes; I’ve taken it seriously and I’ve worked hard at it, but there is just no way that the writing grooves are as deep as the reading ones. (Cue sci-fi movie idea where we can order the grooves we want from a shopping site and have them instantly implanted in our brains!) So while I can, even with my own stories, get that recognition of the flawed pattern, it’s another, very different thing to know how to fix the flaw. Which is why, yes, it’s called work!

Yesterday, puttering around the house, I barely realized I was thinking about the picture book, and suddenly–there it was, the fix for the flaw. Not an alarm, this time, but a lovely little inner chime. I knew exactly what the stakes were, and I knew they were high enough, and I knew they fit perfectly with the story. I also saw what I needed to do to shift the balance so that it was right and solid. I could have written my own critique and explained it clearly and concisely to myself, and then I could have put my pen down and gone away.

Except it’s my story. Which means I have to do more than point out a solution; I have to write it. In actual words and sentences. I have to create the actions and the tools, and I have to find a way to insert them smoothly into pages that, while not finished, do already have a certain flow and pacing going for them. Am I nervous about whether I can do this? Am I worried that I’ll chop something decent into something worse? Well, sure. But the ideas have been coming–I emailed myself notes at about 3:00 this morning, and I sent some more before I got on the treadmill for some exercise. And, after I put up this blog post, I’m going to stay put at the computer and do just enough research to get a few more ideas. And then I’m going to start placing the pieces. And with every hour I spend on this, I’ll know I’m digging the writing grooves deeper and deeper.

And that can only be a good thing.

So if you’ve been reading any of my Facebook posts, you’ll know that I’ve veered off fiction lately and have been reading Amanda Gefter’s Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, The Meaning of NOTHING and the Beginning of Everything.

I was going to start this post with some punny/funny title that tied together fiction & physics, and you’ll see (if this post goes as planned) that I am ultimately connecting modern physics with my writing. But every title I came up with might have been right (physics-wise), or it might have been wrong, leaving me open to much criticism that I don’t understand what I’ve been reading.

Duh.

Mostly, I’m happy with keeping my reading at  ~98.999873% fiction. Occasionally, though I like to dig into a few types of nonfiction. Good memoir, I love. And I crave really WELL-WRITTEN history that gets at the people and the puzzles of whatever time I’m reading about–rather than just the leaders and politics and wars and whatever else you want to throw in to make me yawn. (Two examples of the kind of history I love to read–Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red and Laurence Bergreen’s Over the Edge of the World.) And then I love science. But…and here’s the rub, folks, the science has to be REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WELL-WRITTEN. Because, even then, I’m not going to understand all of it, and when you get into quantum physics, the percentage I’ll comprehend drops even lower.

Amanda Gefter writes REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WELL.

Gefter gets as excited about physics as I do about, well…fiction. She gets as tangled up in a conversation about relativity and event horizons and the nature of reality as I do about plot points and rising tension and character consistency. I give you, as evidence, her description of what happened when she went to pick up her nametag (and her father’s) at the first physics conference she basically snuck/faked her way into.

As I leaned over to grab them [the nametags], I accidentally bumped shoulders with the man next to me. “Sorry,” I said, glancing up. I blushed and sprinted giddily back to my father. “Oh, my God!” I squealed. “I just touched Brian Greene!”

Pretty much exactly my reaction when I met Bruce Coville (okay, yes, “met” meaning I made it to the front of his book-signing line) and got to tell him how much I wished his Sixth Grade Alien books were still in print.

So, yes, the book is clever and funny and will make you laugh many times over. If there’s anyone in your family who will get any of the physics references, you’ll be reading sections out loud to them to share the laugh and/or the awe. But, more important than that, I think Gefter makes this stuff about as understandable (for me, anyway) as anybody could. How do I know? Well, first, because I’m still reading. But also because every now and then I take a break and summarize what I’ve got to my husband, who has read a LOT more about this stuff than I have, and he doesn’t say, “That fits absolutely nowhere into what I know about physics.” He nods and says, “Okay,” and I go back to the book and keep going.

When i started this book, I hoped I was going to get a better understanding of what we (“we” being the mathematical set that includes all these physicists, not the mathematical set that includes me) know about the universe. I was, I’ll admit it, looking for some facts, facts I could use as building blocks to give me a base from which I could grow my own knowledge. And what Gefter has shown me so well is that I don’t actually have to get those facts. In fact (see what I did there?), there aren’t actually that many facts to learn!

Okay, this is where I may be getting in over my head and where, to anybody who actually does understand this stuff, I may be making that obvious. But here are my takeaways.

We don’t know all that much!

We have theories. Oh, man, we have theories out the wazoo. And we do have a decent amount of mathematical proof for some of those theories–if not in their entirety, for some big chunks of each. And while I can’t do the math, I’m willing to accept that if/when the math works out, this means something.

We also have a whole lot of questions. It seems to me that these physicists are using the scientific method to the max. They are asking questions left and right and then they are creating hypotheses (which often sound a lot like science fiction premises), and then they are testing them. They’re testing with both math and evidence, when and if they can get any evidence. And someone comes up with one answer and someone else comes up with another answer and then they argue for a while until someone else does some more math or finds some other evidence and–occassionally–they prove something. But whatever happens, they keep asking. Boy, do they keep asking. And it’s these questions that are actually what Gefter is helping me understand. No, I’m not going to list them–I told you, I’ll get them wrong, and someone will tell me I don’t understand, and we’ll be back at that Duh. But I promise you; I’m getting them while I read them.

It is amazing. I can’t even really imagine the brains behind these ideas, the brains that go back and forth with each other in almost entirely theoretical conversations and that keep track of everything they’ve read and heard, everything they believe, and everything they’re thinking up as a new possibility right in that minute. Okay, yes, I can do that with the Harry Potter world, and I can give you any number of reasons why Mary Lennox does not (no matter what the movie says) grow up to marry her cousin Colin. But these aren’t black holes and universes that are one-sided coins and the place at which Einstein and Newton’s theories no longer conflict. Just saying.

All right, I promised you a connection between physics and writing. You ready? If these guys can throw out these totally bizarre ideas that stretch imagination to the breaking point, and then they can test them and find the pieces that work and the pieces that don’t, and then they can keep going…I can throw any words and sentences on the page I want and then revise them.

Oh, yes, I can.

But really this post is not about me or my writing (another duh!). It’s about a really fantastic book that, if you can push all those novels to the side for a week or two, you should pick up and read. I’m at 57%, and the last sentence I just read is, “Particles, strings–they were just two ways of looking at the same thing.” Oh, yeah, you can bet I’m going to keep reading to the end.

What a week it has been.

The Supreme Court upholds Obamacare subsidies.

Funerals are held for the people who were killed at AME in Charleston.

The Supreme Court makes marriage equality the law.

Governor Haley of South Carolina calls for the confederate flag to come down.

President Obama gives Reverend Pinkney’s eulogy.

Bree Newsome takes down the confederate flag and is arrested.

Arsonists are still burning black churches.

I don’t even know if I have all this in the right chronological order, but it isn’t in any neat order in my mind. I’m feeling like the country is being hit by good and bad, from right and left, and there is no logic pattern to it. Part of me feels like we are making progress.  Yes, it’s taken way, way, way too long for marriage equality to be the law, but it is finally here. At the same time, government officials whose names I won’t give space on my blog are saying they aren’t going to follow that law. And Supreme Court justices are proving to me that you can be narrow and hateful and still sit on that bench. Obama’s eulogy is pretty amazing, but I look at his face as he talks, at the grimness there, and I know how much better it would have been if he had never had the need to say these things. A governor is finally calling for that flag to come down, yet a brave, strong woman is arrested for taking the action to bring it down.

So, yes, I guess progress. And yet…

It’s such a big yet.

Meaning? I guess that we do, very much, still have a long, long way to go. And that, as Obama says, we can’t just slip back into silence or complacency. And that, thank goodness, there are good people out there as well as the bad, and we have to remember that and use their courage and persistence as reminders of what we ourselves need to be doing.

Today, my husband is taking advantage of the long hours of daylight to do some work outside, with rocks. Rolling them slowly, shifting them slowly, placing them slowly. He says, “You can only think about the one rock. If you think about all the rocks, you’ll never get out there and move one.”

And then, Tim Federle, author of the wonderful Better Nate than Ever and Five, Six, Seven, Nate, posted this on his Facebook page: “Kid walking down the street at roughly 1 MPH while reading a Roald Dahl book is giving me the courage to face the blank page again.”

Oh, yeah. Thanks, guys.

I’d already made plans to keep this day clear, to step back into the writing which–for many reasons, no excuses–has been on hold for too long of a bit. But these reminders have helped push aside some of the trepidation, have told me that thing I can never hear too often–to tuck away the vision of the whole thing that has to get done and to just sit down, open things up, and see what you can start with. It does take courage, but it takes less when you remember that other people are in the same spot–whether they’re working on a picture book revision, like I plan to today, or are facing a blank page or are moving big rocks.

Because this is how it goes. And today, thanks to the season and the sunshine, I have plenty of time to see how it goes for me.

I just reached the halfway point in Amber Lough’s The Fire Wish (and, yes, things did get much worse). I’ve got an image in my mind. On one side of a desk is a stack of notebooks, filled with lists and tables and scattered notes. Pages and pages and pages on top of each other, the pile so high that it looks precarious, as if it may topple at any moment. On the other side of the desk is a clean piece of paper. Blank. Waiting. And as we watch, the author’s hand comes into view, holding the finest of paintbrush. She dips the tip of the paint brush into the stack of notes, lightly, barely touching. She moves the paintbrush to the blank page and, with a feathered touch, writes the first words of the story, transformed from the mounds of thoughts into a delicate line of ink that evokes just what the reader needs.

This is how good the worldbuilding is in The Fire Wish. This is how good the best of all worldbuilding is, right? I know we all build worlds. I know all genres require some of this skill. But in fantasy…oh, when it’s done right in fantasy! It’s just (excuse the pun) epic. And the reading experience is one of joy because that delicate line carries all the knowledge and understanding, detailed and layered, of the author’s time with the notebooks.

Or maybe Lough is just so good, she skipped the notebooks and the words flowed perfectly onto the page by themselves. But I’m guessing not.

There’s more to the book than the worldbuilding. It’s a great premise, with two young women–one human and one jinn–having to swap places on and inside the earth. And it’s a great premise, even further, because each of these young women holds responsibility for the actions that caused the swap, and they both have to step up, take responsibility, and figure out a way to correct their situation. Lough does a beautiful job of switching between points of view, and while the young women look pretty much identical, they have distinct differences in their personalities and experiences, so we have no problem following who’s talking when. Plus, they each have strong tensions pulling them in two directions. The humans and jinns have been at war for a while–if either young woman is discovered, she will be imprisoned, possibly killed. Plus Narwa, the jinni, has information her people need to defend themselves in the war, while Zayele, the human, wants to get home to protect her younger brother, who has been recently blinded. And then…each of them kinda sorta wants to stay where they are, because, well…romance. Okay, yes, some extra freedom, but also…romance.

Like I said, I haven’t finished this book, so I can’t really judge whether the ending will be fitting, tight. But I’m also not caring, right now, which–along with that worldbuilding–is another sign of how excellent The Fire Wish is. The pacing is just right, the balance of liking the two main characters and recognizing the flaws that got them to this place–also just right. And did I mention the secretive government departments, the harem dynamics, and the suspicion I have that somebody has been telling lies about why this war is “necessary?”

All around excellence. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the second half of the book.

About a book inside the book.

Okay, maybe not a book, but a journal. And the book isn’t really about the journal, but it’s the construct that explains why we, the reader, get to step inside the reader’s story. From close up in his head. Because he has been given an assignment to record his days, his actions, his thoughts in this journal.

I’m going to cheat and not share the book title, because it’s one I’m not enjoying as word-of-mouth would have predicted, and I just don’t feel like getting into all the whys and why nots today. Besides which, I haven’t finished the book, and maybe it’ll surprise me. Maybe one of the surprises will be a true story reason for the journal.

Right. The journal. It bugs me. Traffic alert: Whining ahead. The book is a YA and the journal “allows” us to get in very, very close to the hero’s perception and thoughts. Except…don’t a lot of YA books do that without a journal? Isn’t that…and, yes, I’m making a big generalization here…something that’s relatively common to YA? Could we have foregone the journal in this case and just stepped into the story? First person, third person–couldn’t the author have even slipped in the few instances of second person that he uses–with the “you” being the reader, instead of the person who assigned the journal? Why, yes, I believe we could, he could. It all would have worked.

I get irritated when something is added to a story without a reason.

Of course, the journal/diary construct was something I adored when I was a kid. I’d have to go back and reread most of my childhood books to be sure (not a horrible chore by any means), but maybe we just didn’t get first person as often as today’s young readers. Maybe the diary was, in those days (hand me my cane, will you?), a construct that gave us access to a voice we didn’t get as often, a close up and really personal voice. I suspect, though, that I loved it because the kid hero who kept a diary was a hero I aspired to be. Aspired to and failed. I have never once, not as a kid, a teen, a young woman, or a…less-young woman succeeded in making more than a few entries in any journal. And as a child, I so wanted to. Every time I read a book with the diary-inside-the-story format, I tried again. After I read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, I tried to find my own version of “Dear Kitty.” Nope. Nothing. And I kept reading about and loving those heroes who  managed to put their thoughts on paper, day after day, week after week.

I keep reminding myself that there are a whole world of young readers out there to whom the journal format isn’t old hat, kids who may still identify with or aspire to be a diary keeper. I keep telling myself that they haven’t over-eaten in the genre, so that yet one more serving results in a bout of piggy burps. But all the time, as I tell myself these things, I’m still thinking…he didn’t need it!

What do you think? Do you like/still like the diary format? Did you like it as a kid, and has your affection hung around or faded with the years? Do you think the need for a journal device has shifted as story voices have become more immediate, more intimate all on their own? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I hope I’m not taking too big a risk with this post. I’m going to put a few things out on the politics plate, and I’m going to ask for some information and opinions. I have faith that most of you who read my blog will keep it all respectful and polite and that we can share thoughts with honesty and care.

Just as an FYI, I will delete any comments that don’t fit with that goal. Also, while I can’t imagine this actually happening, I will delete any blatant campaigning/political-only comments for or against any candidate.

So here we go.

I had a voting plan for the next presidential election. I looked at the expected field, and I thought, okay…it’s time to vote for Hilary Clinton. She is not my favorite prospect and never has been, but I do have some basic respect for her goals, and–while I try to stay open to candidates from both parties–she was the only person coming along from either Democrats or Republicans that I thought would represent any of my priorities and beliefs. So I thought, okay, cross your fingers that she’ll surprise your expectations, and give her your vote.

And then Bernie Sanders declared.

As far as I can tell, I like Bernie Sanders a lot. I am pretty sure that he is much more aligned with my ideals than is Hilary Clinton, and I think he will always fight more strongly for the things I believe in than she will. And, even if–as the first discussions were saying–he can’t win, I appreciate his stepping into the race. I agree with him that the overall conversation needs to lean Left, and I think that it will benefit Hilary Clinton (if she stays the defacto Democratic nominee) to have someone to debate with, to get some energy going in her campaign, to have some momentum going when she takes on the Republicans. Plus, I really respect that Sanders is running through the Democratic party, rather than as an independent. Not because I am a huge two-party fan, but because I think–the way things are–he’s right not to take Ralph Nader’s path.

In an ideal world, I am pretty sure Bernie Sanders would have my vote.

But…that’s not the world we live in. We live in a world where the word Socialist still scares people. We live in a world where people think about it’s being someone’s “turn” for a presidential run. And we definitely live in a world where politics runs on a few things other than idealism–on the bad side: corruption, bribery, egos; on the not-so-bad side: negotiations, partnerships, experience, and practicality.

So, those of you who know Bernie Sanders better than I do—those who enjoy following politics and understanding who is doing what, those who live in or near Vermont and have been listening to and watching Sanders more closely, those who understand more about him than the memes and quotes and videos that pop up all over the internet, can you give me your reasons why I should (or, okay, shouldn’t) vote for him? I have some particular questions–feel free to answer those if you can, but also feel free to go off on a tangent and just share your beliefs about him with me. Again, given that we’re all staying respectful, I really want to hear.

• Do you think Bernie Sanders has a chance of actually winning the Democratic nomination? Why/Why not? (I feel that I may need to choose based on who can get this nomination, because they may need the power of momentum to take on the Republican nominee.)
• Do you think Bernie Sanders has a chance of actually winning the presidency. Why/Why not? (Similar to above, I am pretty darned scared by the Republican slate, and I feel a strong pull to put my vote behind the candidate who can beat their nominee.)
• Does Bernie Sanders have practical, real plans to execute some/most of the ideals he’s espousing. Have you seen him execute these plans while representing Vermont in the House and/or Senate? What? When? How?

And, of course, anything else you feel is important for me to know.

Thank you in advance for sharing!

It rained today. For two hours, it came down outside the building where I work. We had lightening, we had thunder, and–by the end, we had nice big puddles.

In the middle of a long drought, this is obviously lovely. But it’s also weird. Because, really, we don’t get rain in NorCal in May. We get rain in February and March. Except, you know, when we don’t. Except I’ve now made those statements so many times this May that they are becoming inaccurate, if not laughable.

But here’s the thing. Those statements have been true over the course of my life, the years of which now add up easily to the phrase, “many decades.” And while I totally accept climate change (and think irritated thoughts at those who don’t), still…there are the past few years of weather weirdosity against all those years when I actually knew the weather.

My son came home from his first year of college Tuesday. Which again, is lovely, and the fact that he surprised us made it even more lovely. We had celebratory ice cream. We sat and heard about his past couple of weeks, everything he did, everything that’s coming for him this summer and next year; we looked at his face and listened to his voice and knew that he is happy and–wow, I can’t tell you how happy that makes us.

I feel ready for this stage, with him building his own world and coming to visit, and my husband and I–oh, let’s say we’re retrofitting our world. But here’s another thing. While I’ve known him now for almost 20 years, I don’t feel 20 years older than I did before we met. I can close my eyes and almost be the woman I was when he was an infant, when I was amazed and awed but also–on tired days–wondering how I would stay myself for the next 20 years. I can be at his preschool drop-off; I can see him doing middle-school math homework; I can drop into any one of his highschool concerts. And yet, here we are. At this point. It is enough to make you not only believe in, but understand, science and science fiction ideas about multiple universes, about tesseracts.

I have multiple writing projects that are going well–a MG novel and several picture books. I am very much aware that I am doing some of the strongest (and happiest) writing of my life, and that all of these projects are stepping stones forward on my path. I know I have learned from every bit of writing I’ve done in the past, and I can walk backward and feel how long that past is–I’m up to many decades here, too.

But here’s one more thing. I remember lying on my bed as a tween, writing a short story about how George Washington really did tell a lie. I remember filling notebook pages with a set of horribly derivative and drivly chapters about an elf and a wizard, after reading a very tall pile of Shannara novels. I remember asking for and getting Phyllis A. Whitney’s writing books and feeling like This. Was. It. I was a writer.

It’s all jumbled together, you know? I can see the line of travel through all these stages–weather watching, parenting, writing. And I can erase the line in a blink, a thought, a Jedi wave of the hand. And yet, somehow, even with the muddle, every moment is a building brick to now. With the future mingled in there as well.

So, you know…pretty darned cool.

I have just reached (maybe) the halfway point in the second draft of my MG, but since I’m writing it 99.9% from scratch (that first draft was really just an idea dump), there isn’t much of what I’d consider revision going on.

And yet I’ve been thinking about it.

Why? It started with the SCBWI Spring Spirit conference last weekend, where I sat in on an excellent revision workshop by Kirby Larson. As Kirby said, we practiced only some of the smaller, more specific revision tasks–it’s hard to do big, global changes in a workshop setting. But a lot of her talk and the general conversation was about revision–how to approach it and how it feels. And I started remembering that I LOVE how it feels. That I love having a (relatively) full understanding of your story in your head and being able to sort and process changes in the context of that understanding. Of being able to think about moving something from here to there and knowing it will fit better. Of realizing that this piece doesn’t add a single thing and knowing you can let it go. Of figuring out what all the placeholders for that one character are for and giving her the actions she needs, in what used to feel like a lot of big, gaping holes of nothingness.

The second thing that happened, also tied to the conference, was that I got a really lovely critique from an agent on one of my picture books. Lovely in two ways: 1) very nice, with compliments as well as suggestions and 2) with feedback that I could really use. That started the revision ideas churning in my head. I’ve already run the feedback and my ideas through my critique group, getting MORE ideas, of course, and this revision will start very soon. And, again, I’m remembering why revision is one of my favorite writing stages–it’s a (very little) bit like Tetris. Your job is to see the shape that’s coming–from a critique or your own figuring-out–and find the right place to lower that shape into. And then, yes, unlike Tetris, you do some shaving and some padding and…SNIK! It fits. Yes, yes, that’s an understatement and probably not at all the right metaphor, but you know what I’m getting at. You have something to work with as you make the changes, and you can see how the changes are going to make that something more complete.

And the SNIK! part is absolutely the best.

I’m not going to get this right, so consider it a total paraphrase, but Kirby said that she has always believed everything you need is in your first draft. She says this, I think, in the context of the times we all look at our early drafts and decide that there are things missing and that we have to add a lot of new stuff. Instead, she suggests, try working with what is actually there. You may need to move an action, a character trait, a need from one character to another. You may need to shift a plot point to earlier or later in the story. You may need to deepen and layer a moment that you previously spent only one sentence on. But things are there. Don’t start your revision by assuming they aren’t.

And that, my friends, is something I’ll be thinking about a lot when I do head back into revision.

I am so happy when I’m browsing shelves–physical or electronic–and I take a chance on a book and then fall in love. That’s how it was with Emily Horner’s A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend. I was out of books that were grabbing me, so I checked the Books Available Now (or whatever it’s called) option in my library’s e-book browser and started searching. And while the premise sounded good, I’ll admit it was the cover that pulled me in.

And then it was the words.

Julia, Cass’ best friend and perhaps the first and only person she has ever been in love with, is dead (car accident) before the book opens. Her death is literally a turning-life-upside-down moment for Cass and for the drama kids who were Julia’s friends, and maybe Cass’ friends as well. The question of whether they are or not is one of the big threads of the book, and Cass’ doubts and anxieties about that have a very real, solid truth to them.

The story is, essentially, a beautifully subtle, layered exploration of all the ripples that spread out from Julia’s death, primarily for Cass, but also for the other teens. The kids decide to put on the play that Julia was writing when she died–a musical called Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad. Julia is in every word of the play, she is there in the set building, in the costume design and creation, in the rehearsals, and in all the back-scene dynamics of the theater. And what we get to see is how the characters deal simultaneously with that presence and with her absence.

We also get to see Cass dealing with her own, personal loss of a best friend, Julia’s boyfriend’s accusation that Cass wanted Julia to be something other than a friend, and Cass’ own uncertainty about whether or not that was true. And we get to see Cass do this from the seat of her bicycle–as she takes the summer road trip that Julia had planned for the two of them into a solitary bike ride across the country. Just Cass, her bike, a tent, and an emergency credit card–and, oh, yes, Julia’s ashes.

This book has so many layers, and they are all interwoven beautifully into one integrated story. The chapters are divided into Now and Then titles–Now being the last few days of summer and the preparation to put on Julia’s play, Then being Cass escape on her bike, earlier in the summer. I am not a big fan, typically, of this kind of structure–I find myself getting confused and often don’t want to step from one storyline into the other. Absolutely not a problem here. Horner does a beautiful job of making the transitions smooth and quickly pulling us back into the tension thread of the “new” plot thread. Plus, somehow, she manages to make the reader feel that both storylines are leading to the same ending, the resolution that we are hoping for, but that we don’t dare assume or expect will happen. One of the big themes of the story is that, when someone dies suddenly–especially at a young age–any certainty you had about life having a safety net pretty much vanishes, and that translates into not trusting that these characters will win a happy ending. Which, even as you see relationships strengthen and friendships deepens, maintains a wonderful page-turning tension. Just beautiful.

The other thing I love about this book is that there are so many drops of things that Horner could have turned into an issue, could have focused the entire story on, but…didn’t. Cass and her family are Quakers–their belief in following one’s need is one reason behind Cass’ parents acceptance that she needs to take this bike trip, alone. It also becomes a piece of Cass’ wondering about the play itself–as her mother says, it’s not like you expect a play called Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad to be without violence. But this book is about someone who happens to be Quaker, not about a Quaker girl, if that makes sense. Cass’ thoughts about her own identify, whether or not she is gay, are not the point of the story–the point is that Julia’s abrupt exit from her life is making Cass look at everything in a new way–her sexual preference, her religion, her friendships, her future. Everything.

Because that’s what loss does.

I absolutely love Cass’ character. She is a wonderful mix of thoughful and impulsive, someone who mostly thinks before she acts, often too much and for too long, but who every now and then just….wow! Acts. And Horner’s choice to put half this story on the bicycle is brilliant, because it allows Cass to be both active and introspective, to be thinking and doing–all at the same time. The pacing and plot of the story rolls beautifully, with several Oh, no! moments that I never saw coming. And quite a few Oh, yeah! moments that were equally as surprising, but always, always right.

Definitely a recommendation for your to-read list.

Last week, I mentioned that I’m remembering something all over again–sometimes, the writing process is whatever is working. Today, I want to talk a little more about that.

First, a picture of my writing space this morning, just because it makes me happy.

Cozy, yes?

So…process. When I was freelancing from home and working part-time, I tried to fit writing time into most, if not all, my days. Frankly, as I shifted from working in my own office to showing up at someone else’s work space, that got harder to do. Remember the kids who the preschool/elementary teachers used to describe as maybe not so good at transition? Yeah. That would be me. It’s not that I don’t like transition; it’s that I like/need/want to take a lot of time over it. I don’t zoom well from one thing to another, which means I never zoomed well from the part-time work out and about to the writing work tucked in back at home. I would need a snack, a bit of reading time, some cuddling with the cat. Which all added up to minutes not writing, and all of a sudden the clock would have jumped forward to some other piece of life that needed to get done.

Nevertheless, I did write, i did make progress, I did get those picture books written and many-times revised. And I got started on this latest MG idea. So when I went back to work full-time, something I really wanted to do and felt ready to do–I was a bit worried/stressed about keeping the writing going. I started putting more pressure than I was happy with on getting to the computer in the evening after work–after a grocery store run, after a yoga class, after a catch-up with a friend.

You think I don’t do well with transition? Try me with self-pressure!

A while back, I read this post by Nathan Bransford, in which he says he doesn’t write every day, and I (okay, “you”) don’t have to either. I remember thinking at the time that, yes, that’s good, that’s nice to hear, but, really….I still need to TRY. And then, more recently, I was at a critique-group meeting, where my crit partners had just read the second set of two or three scenes I’d sent them, and one crit partner said, “I want you to be thinking about what your process is. Because whatever you’re doing is obviously working.”

Um…I was pretty much writing on weekends.

From Nathan’s post: “I’m not a morning person, so I can’t wake up early to write in the mornings. And after a long day’s work, I’m usually too mentally exhausted to write. So I get my writing done on weekends.”

Now I will admit that I am still not QUITE comfortable with the fact that I’m not touching my story every day. I still hear that little “should” voice every now and then telling me how much more I’ll be connected to the characters, to their problems, even if I only sit down for 30 minutes every night. I come to most weekends knowing that this is the writing time, this is when I’m going to/supposed to get those pages done, and that is its own version of self-pressure, right?

But it seems like, when I have that space and time, when I can relax into my morning, get a few things done, then open up the computer, check out where I was at the last session and where I think I am going next…the words come. And if the feedback from my critique partners, some of whom have been reading my writing for going on 18+ years, is any indication, they’re coming pretty well.

So, is this my process? For the past months, yes. For today, yes. Beyond that, I have pretty much given up trying to decide.

What’s working for you right now? Is it the same process you’ve always used, or have you (or life) changed things up recently? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Okay, so…

I’ve been working full-time for about a year now. Loving the job, loving the busy-ness, loving the people I work with and the challenges (yes, I landed in a fantastic place!). But…one thing that I have obviously and totally let go is this blog.

Not what I wanted to do.

So I’m going to try getting back into this with a baby step. Once a week. That’s all I’m asking from myself, and it’s a tester to see if I get enjoyment and fun from posting or if I just put stress pressure on myself. Hoping for the former! The posts may be shorter than they used to be (oh, stop that cheering!), and I’m sure they’ll be a mix between writing stuff and life stuff. I’d like to get some links up for you, too, to posts I find interesting or useful or to books I’ve read and loved.

Like this one about writing with a new baby from Jen McConnel. Oh, yes, it’s been years, but I remember. And, no, going back to work full-time and still writing is NOT (for me at least) as challenging as having a newborn and still writing, However, it is another phase in my life where I’m having to figure it out. (See below). Go, Jen!

For today, a quick catch-up:

• This is where I work. RAFT is an educational nonprofit that provides educators with professional development, educational products, and totally cool/fun repurposed materials–all focused on the idea that hands-on learning, where you actually touch and build and explore is the way to go. I’m the Grants Manager, helping raise funds to support our mission and programs. After years of looking for a job I might actually like, I found one I love.
• I am empty-nesting. Since our son is an only child, we did the first college/empty house thing all in one fell swoop. First, may I say, thank goodness for the full-time work; otherwise, I do think I could have driven myself crazy. But…right now, he is really happy with what he’s doing, I am really happy with what I’m doing, and–yes–I’m getting to know my husband again and finding out that we are still more than good together. So, yay.
• I am writing. My middle grade magical-realism story is making me love writing again. And I am coming to terms, once again, with the fact that maybe having a process just means doing whatever gets the writing done. My biggest challenge with the full-time work thing is trying to use my weekday evenings for other-than-life stuff: i.e., writing. I. Am. Not. Good. At. This. But…I have realized that, being the total introvert, please-give-me-the-whole-weekend-at-home-to-recharge person that I am, well…I have lots of hours for writing during those weekends. And I am turning out more pages than I was before I went back to work. By a long shot. So, yes, I lose that touch-your-story every day feeling, which I still believe in, but I’m writing and I’m loving it and I’m feeding my critique group several scenes on a regular basis. So–process!
• I am querying several picture books at the “ready” stage, so I’m back in the query process, which–I have to say–feels surreally different from the last time I was at this stage. Back then, I was freelancing at home with a son in elementary school, and while I was doing many things, I had a less packed-full life, which meant TONS of time to obsess and worry and recheck email for query responses. Now I get mine out there, I check to see if the not-heards have been long enough to mean a “no,” and I get some more out there. I am still hoping and dreaming, but I am also fretting less. Good? Not good? No judging here, just noting.

I know, I said, shorter. Maybe I just don’t have it in me. In the one statement that I probably could have left it all at: I am balancing. Pretty well and very happily. And now I’d like to weave this blog back into this balance. So….see you back here on a more regular basis, I hope!

For Valentine’s Day, I’m sharing a few of my favorite “romantic” scenes from books. Feel free to toss your favorites into the comments.

• When Anne breaks a slate over Gilbert’s head.
• When Professor Bhaer shows up in Jo’s home town.
• When Calvin kisses Meg.
• When Mary and Dickon first meet.
• When Hermoine tells Ron he has “the emotional range of a teaspoon.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I didn’t make it a resolution. I didn’t even talk about it in my post about my 2015 Word. I’m not sure, when I wrote that, if I had even thought about this goal.

Yet, here I am on February 1st, and I achieved it. I meditated every day in January.

10 minutes. I have a timer on my phone, and I set it for 10 minutes. I’m sure there are people out there who can manage without the timer, but for me, it’s a little tool that helps me pull my brain back from wondering how long I’ve actually been mediating. And wondering if it’s time to stop yet. And feeling like I need to know.

Pretty obvious why I need meditation, right?

I got another tool. I downloaded HabitBull onto my phone. I thought, well, I won’t push myself to do this every day, and if I don’t make it every day, that’s fine, but maybe it would be nice at the end of the month to see what I did manage. (And, yes, it was nice to see that I managed the whole thing!) It’s a very simple app, but it does what I need–most of which, it turns out, is just sitting there on the top menu on my phone, reminding me about its presence and my goal. And there were many days the first few weeks on which that reminder was the thing that got me sitting.

So 30 days. Pretty consistently for 10 minutes every day, although there were definitely a few days where I didn’t make the whole 10 minutes. Still…every day, I sat. I closed my eyes, and I breathed.

And when HabitBull asked me if I wanted to keep going, I said Yes.

Here’s the thing I’m thinking about today, as I start in on February. I know I need to meditate. I doubt you’ll find anyone on the planet (okay, you COULD, but why bother!) who would say meditating isn’t a good thing. I know that my brain is a brain that needs not only that 10 minutes of relative calm every day, but one that needs practice in exactly what meditation is for–pulling back out of the world, out of the rush that my brain often makes it–and just breathing. It’s a brain that needs training (yes, still, at my age) in responding rather than reacting, in learning to see the reaction rise and catch it, gently, to observe and think and make a decision around.

But…not seeing it yet. No, sure I’m getting better. I’ve been meditating on and off for a few years now and working on the whole mindfulness thing, and I do see a difference. And believe me, if I can, I’ll keep doing this–through February and into March and so on. Heck, I’d love to keep doing this To Infinity and Beyond! What I’m being curious and observant about is this habit thing. The stages of needing an app to remind oneself, to thinking about it during the day on your own, to having it become almost autopilot–not the meditating itself, but the remembering. I am really, really, really not good at the I Will Do X or Y Every Day. Every Day is one of the things that sends my brain into reaction–and not a good one.

I say, again, pretty obvious why I need meditation!

So for now I’m doing the meditation, and I’m doing the observing. I’m watching my breath and I’m watching my habit form. And I’m watching to see what will feel different about the sitting and when it will start. And how it will move forward. And what will change and what will stay the same.

Which is, I guess, what progress looks like.

Every time I hit the library, I try to bring home a stack of picture books. I have probably reached my 10,000 hours of reading kids’ novels, but I don’t think I’m there yet on the picture book. Plus, hey, I love them.

Yesterday, in my stack was a copy of Ben Hatke’s Julia’s House for Lost Creatures.

Let’s put aside my awe (and jealousy) of people who can both write and draw, and let me just tell you one of my favorite things that this book does. Or, rather, that it doesn’t.

It doesn’t explain.

Here’s the first sentence: “Julia’s house came to town and settled by the sea.”

What? Huh? A house that actively comes on its own? How? And why the sea?

Here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter.

Granted, the art adds to the words. We do see the actual arrival of the house (Note: Don’t skip the inside title page, or you’ll miss a lovely piece of the story.) But even the art will, if you let it, just open up more questions. Why is the house transported the way it is? Why did the house (or Julia) pick the sea? Why does Julia have to plant her mailbox?

Again…doesn’t matter.

Because all these whys and wheres, and the hows and whos and whats in the rest of the book, are part of the story world. The house transports the way it does (no, I’m not telling you!), because in this world it can. Julia has to plant the mailbox, because houses have mailboxes, and–duh–you can’t plant your mailbox until your house arrives and settled.

Within the context of the world, the details make sense, and–flip the coin–the details create a world that makes its own sense.

I know there are readers who will certainly ask these kinds of questions. They’ll ask why Julia’s house has a workshop. They’ll ask why Patched Up Kitty is actually made of patchwork cloth. They’ll ask why, if Julia is lonely, she makes a sign advertising for lost creatures.

But I would take just about any wager that the readers who ask these questions won’t be kids. Because kids work within the world they’re reading. And even if they have a question, they’ll feel in their own answers–they’ll add their own layers to the words they’re hearing and the pictures they’re seeing.

They’ll use their imaginations.

I think I have possibly gotten a little preachy here. (Who, me?!) But this is one of my favorite things about good picture books–that they create an entire world in so few words, so many pages of art. (If you want to see one that does a lovely job with pictures only, I also brought home a copy of Mark Pett’s The Girl and the Bicycle--gorgeous and sweet.) And that world may have its own rules, it may have elements that would–in our world–make no sense. But how many things in our world actually make total sense when we’re young. Plus there are other “worlds” out there, other worlds that we’ll grow up to learn about and that are outside our daily experience, and they are open to exploration and experimentation and adventuring.

Possibly books like this help kids get ready for worlds like that.