I've been told by my critique group friends that my novel drafts read more like screenplays. I tend to leave out descriptive detail. Scenery. Observations about the color of the sky and what-not. I guess I do this because when I'm reading a book, I tend to rush through these descriptions. I like to visualize the scene in my own way. (Ok, I'm just impatient and want to know what the heck is going to happen next, paragraph describing the vanilla-scented, tiger-striped sunset be damned.) 
But, with this in mind, I decided to turn my morning run into a mental exercise. I tried to take in my surroundings and memorize the details so that I could spin them into a blogarific descriptive (um, ahem) masterpiece:

The air hung damp, the morning's rain unable to cleanse the scent of dog droppings from the heavily traversed pathway. Rotting pine cones littered the path like bodies strewn from a blast; I dodged the carnage and the puddles, danced around the muddy smuck. Warning: Reclaimed Water signs hinted to passers-by that the puddles were not for playing in. Avoiding a gift from a dog that lay cementing on the sidewalk (who lets their dog crap on the sidewalk anyway?) I ran up into the grass, nearly stepping on a fried squirrel, its body shocked into the position of an electrocuted cartoon animal.
I ran past an assisted living facility where most days there was an ambulance parked in front.  Today there were two bounce houses set up instead. I hoped the ambulance was nearby.
Crap, now I'm laughing. That's all I've got. BUT! On another note...the sun is out, the sun is out, THE SUN IS OUT! That's all the description I need to wipe the snark right out of my head. I'm all sunshine and rainbows now.
Speaking of sunshine and rainbows, I was going through my files last week and found two poems I'd written specifically to submit to Babybug magazine after they'd published something else of mine. They were ultimately rejected *sniffle, sniffle, weep* but they're fun and timely (and contain no references to electrocuted squirrels or dog crap)  so I'll just publish them myself right here.

Blue sky sprinkles
Green grass crinkles
Birds stop to take a drink
Flowers bloom in red and pink
Bees buzzing in my ear
Whispering Spring is finally here

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sandy knees, sandy toes
Sandy hair, sandy nose
Bucket of water-
Watch me pour
I'm not sandy anymore!

One of my favorite panels at the national SCBWI conference in 2008 included Sid Fleischman and Lisa Yee. It was a session on humor writing, and I can't even begin to tell you how funny children's writers are. Mr. Fleischman signed a copy of The Whipping Boy for me later that day, which was promptly devoured by my then 9-year-old son as soon as I arrived back in Tampa. Nearly two years later, The Whipping Boy was at the center of an epic battle (which involved chocolate, Silly Bandz, and unabashed bribery)  between my son and I just last weekend when we both decided to re-read it at the same time.
Today I ran across Lisa Yee's blog post tribute to Sid, who died at the age of 90 on March 17th. His death marks an enormous loss to the children's publishing world, while at the same time marking an amazing lifetime of contributions, bot as a writer and as a mentor to others. Eternal peace and many thanks to you, Mr. Fleischman. For the books and the magic that they've granted to those who've read them.
http://lisayee.livejournal.com/130654.html
http://www.sidfleischman.com/biography.html

I used to be a spelling champ, I swear. Lately I'm spelling everything wrong, though, and it's kind of making me crazy. As in, wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking, oh crap, I spelled that wrong. I don't know why it bothers me except for the fact that I'm one of those people who still likes to gloat about my consecutive wins in the 5th and 6th grade spelling bees. (This makes me very popular in social settings.) I guess all these years of having Word underline my little slips so that I could take care of them before anyone else noticed has dimmed my brain. My web platform does not have spellcheck, and every time I find a misspelling in one of my posts I cringe.  No one cares! I know. But still, it would be nice if Weebly would add a spell check so that the OMG I spelled that wrong!  moments would cease.  Oh, and punctuation... I temped as a copy editor recently and before that, I used commas with confidence. Now I have comma-itis; I'm picking them up, moving them, deleting them, putting them back, completely uncertain as,to,where,precisely,they,should,go.  And, by the way, is spellcheck one word or two? Crap.
There's probably a name for my condition. And it probably involves meds and padded walls.

I absolutely love the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators).  I've been a member for around 10 years, since my first attempts at writing for children were accepted for publication by Babybug and Ladybug magazines. But it was only in the last few years that I learned what a treasure it is as an organization.

It's funny actually, looking back on the way that I got started; I've always loved children's literature ( BTW, Shel Silverstein,Dr. Suess, and Madeline L'Engle...thank you.), I'd just graduated with a BA in English, and I was the mother of a newborn. My sleeping habits were completely off-kilter anyway, and one night I woke up with a bunch words in my head. And (yay!) they all went together quite nicely. So I got up and wrote three short poems. The next next day I consulted the Children's Writer's Market, found an article written by Paula Morrow, who was an editor at Carus Publishing at the time, and dashed off a letter, enclosing the three poems. A few months later, two of the poems were accepted for publication. Wow, this is so easy, I thought. I'm going to be the next Judy Blume!
Well, it took nearly two years for those poems to make it to print, and in the meantime I kept writing and stuffing (what I now realize were half-baked, poorly written) manuscripts into the mailboxes of editors. 

Rejection. Rejection. Rejection.
I was frustrated. And I was now a mother of two toddlers, with another on the way. So I was pretty tired, too. 

Thus I gave it up for awhile.  A long while, actually. When I decided that it was time to start writing again (my kids were older and we were all enamored with Junie B. Jones and Pirates Don't Change Diapers), I turned to the SCBWI for guidance. I attended a one day workshop in Orlando... and that day I Got It.  I realized everything I'd done wrong, and everything I'd need to do if I was going to do it right.
And I realized that it was a commitment. And a gamble.

But it was a commitment I was willing to make, and a gamble that I was willing to take. And the reason I feel so strongly about the SCBWI? Because of the people who make up the organization. It was the other writers, all of whom were in the same boat (at varying depths of the slush pile). They collectively stole my heart. The kindness, the willingness to help, to share, to open themselves up to critique, and their charm... I loved everything about the people at that workshop. The editors and agents who were there were fantastic, too. I learned so much from them. But it was the others like me who made me feel that SCBWI is such a treasure.

And then I went to the national conference in LA (2008). There my appreciation multiplied ten-fold, because my initial impression from the Orlando conference had been correct. Writers are fabulous... and children's writers are even more so. I had found "my people." (I'm not the only charmingly immature grown-up in the world? What a relief!)

So now I'm committed to 1. Finishing the manuscript I've been revising for the last year and a half, and 2. volunteering my time to the SCBWI, because if even one person is helped in their own quest for publication by the strength of the community of writers that make up the membership of the SCBWI, then I will have given back to the organization that has given that to me.

A recent car-versation:
Riley: Is Mother Nature's hair green?
Elliot: No, it's brownish-black. She was on Wizards of Waverly place one time, remember?

I didn't tell them this, but their backseat conversation got me thinking, and I'm afraid that Mother Nature has most likely been kidnapped. (Her hair may have been changed to fool would-be rescuers who saw her appearance on the Disney Channel show.)  A kidnapping would explain why it has been continuously, miserably arctic cold in Florida for entirely too long.  See, I also heard recently (don't ask me where) that Voldemort published an e-book called Putting the Pieces Back Together, and now he's now on the self-help conference curcuit, providing villains with the motivation they need to return from a puddle on the floor to their previous state of wicked wackiness. 

So my guess is that it was the White Witch (lover of all things chill), in the parlor, with  a wand. Her accomplice was most likely the Wicked Witch of the West, because one of her monkeys has been spotted all over Tampa recently. He continues to elude authorities, and is now listed as The Most Wanted Primate. However, police are apprently not jive to the fact that this monkey is the winged minion of the WWW, and therefore "nigh uncatchable", much like The Black Pearl. In fact, the wicked duo may be holding Mother Nature on a ship somewhere, so you should probably keep an eye out for anything fishy if you're at the beach. 

It would be really nice to go to the beach actually, but it's Too. Darn. Cold. So if authorities could just hurry up and capture the mad monkey, maybe they'll find Big Mamma N and return her to her rightful place, wherever that may be. I'm thinking it's some tropical island,with cute cabana boys. At least that's where I'd be headquartered, if I ran the planet.

I met my new hero today. Her name is Jennifer, and she's the founder of Bess the Book bus, a mobile literacy outreach program.
Read more about her here: http://www.bessthebookbus.org/buzz.php

Also, the program is in the running for $50,000 in funding from the Pepsi Refresh Project. Please take a second to vote here: http://pep.si/a4BHH4

If you are an author, agent, editor, store owner, or someone who has books that you'd like to get into the hands of deserving children, please contact her.  Jennifer loves to give out great reads by first-time or lesser known authors so that she can introduce new works to readers.  

BTW, she has signed copies of Mo Willems' books. Her cool factor multiplied exponentially when she told me that. And I already thought she was the coolest person I'd ever met for doing such an amazing thing.

UGGGHHHH.... I've been writing a research proposal for one of my grad school classes for what seems like the last 72 hours straight. I may just keel over from an overdose of monotony. Why can't scholarly types write with some personality? Every paragraph I've read and written feels like sandpaper against my brain.
 How about instead of this:

...Though a large amount of learning comes from within an individual’s own experiences and immediate community, vicarious abilities allow people to learn beyond their own experiences. “A vast amount of information about human values, styles of thinking, and behavior patterns is gained from the extensive modeling in the symbolic environment of the mass media” (Bandura, 2001, p. 271). Whereas learning by doing relies upon repeated experiences in which an individual’s actions are changed via trial and error, observational learning allows for the transmission of new ways of thinking and/or behaving to a multitude of people simultaneously.

We write this:

Guy: I think we should break up after we eat this cheese.
Girl: I knew you were going to say that.
Guy: How?
Girl: Because that's exactly what that one guy on that one show said to that one girl that I totally want to be like.
Guy: I've never seen that show, but when you talk like that it makes me want to claw my eyes out.
Girl: That's because you watch too much Animal Planet.
Guy: Here, take my cheese. I've gotta go. Um, now.

That's terrible dialogue, but it beats the bahoonies out of everything else I've read in the last three days. Dear sweet goddess of fiction, please rescue me. Stat.

Oh! Almost forgot. In my scholarly pursuits, I ran across this interesting site. It's been the one bright moment in my three days of drudgery. Very cool.
http://www.futureofthebook.org.uk/blake/book.html

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”  - John Lennon

Grawesome (great + awesome... my 5th grader taught me that) post from the MiG site breaking down the differences between middle grade and YA fiction with links to even more resources. 
http://ow.ly/wtNm

I received the following email a few days ago and I'm going to take them up on it. (I rarely do such things so this is blogworthy for that reason alone.) 

As we all wait with bated breath to see what the future holds for publishers - newspapers, books and mags, alike- we can do our part by taking advantage of the free things they tempt us to their sites with.  It's my civic duty to accept free things to read. 

Okaaaaay, not really, but I have a 10 page research proposal that I should be working on now and reading a free e-book is a perfectly acceptable way to put off starting that formidable task.

Yaaaay for free procrastination tools!

Oh, and they said to share so I'm sharing. I'm such a good listener. 

I normally trash any e-mail that includes the word free in it. And I often ignore any that mentions e-book, as I'm not up to date on that technology. But I concocted this experiment and egged on my friend Stephen Roxburgh, who is an early adopter of e-books and things high tech. I got used to seeing him in a rocking chair engrossed in his Kindle. Stephen has been a student of the book in whatever format most of his life and is articulate on the importance and magic of story, independent of platform.

Front Street, founded by Stephen and now part of Boyds Mills Press, has among its recent publications four great novels, which we selected for this experiment. They are characterized by the gentle hand of Stephen Roxburgh and the skills of colleagues he trained and inspired.

The novels are ACCORDING TO KIT by Eugenie Doyle (2ce4), CITY OF CANNIBALS by Ricki Thompson (d35f), THE DOG IN THE WOOD by Monika Schröder (3bd5), and WARRIORS IN THE CROSSFIRE by Nancy Bo Flood (2ac4).

To get your free electronic copies, go to www.namelos.com and locate the book by title or author by browsing or use the "search" option. When you get to the book page, enter the unique code provided for each book (shown in parentheses above) in the box in the lower-left corner of the page (under the list of prices) and click "submit." You will be asked to provide your name and e-mail address and to select the file format you want. You will receive an e-mail with a link that will download the file you selected to your hard drive, from where you can transfer it to your preferred reading device.

The code will allow you to download one file format per title. If you need a file format that is not provided, write directly to Stephen ([email protected]) and he'll provide it.

Frankly, it's an increasing challenge to get attention for novels, particularly first novels.

So, in cooperation with Stephen Roxburgh and his new venture, namelos llc, we are offering for a limited time downloads of the four novels. From now until April Fools' Day, you can put these on your e-reading device without charge. And since we are doing this to get the word out, we would be very happy if you shared the opportunity with your friends.

We want everyone to know about these books.

Boyds Mills Press has the hardback editions in stock, and they are available through all the places you buy books. Namelos llc will be selling the e-book versions of these titles in April and beyond. Almost all other Front Street novels are available now for purchase to download at Add a Comment