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Last night I dreamed that I wrote an essay comparing...something, I don't know what, though I think it was related to writing...to the I Ching. I didn't know what the I Ching was in the dream, which makes sense, because I don't know what it is when I'm awake. In the dream, I just read a few screens worth of information about it, maybe the equivalent of a Slate article with a short film. Really short. Then I wrote the essay. I didn't get to the point in the dream where I was submitting the completed piece of writing. That's too bad, because I'd really like to know if there's a publication that would even consider such a thing.

Well, it appears that only in a dream would you find a short piece on the I Ching that would make it possible for you to write anything intelligent about it. (Though I'm trying right now.) Even the I Ching Wikipedia entry made my eyes glaze over two-thirds of the way through the second sentence. 

The best I can work out, the I Ching, known as The Book of Changes in English, is an ancient Chinese text used to tell the future. This makes it different from the zenny stuff I'm usually interested in reading, which deals with staying in the moment so you are not anxious about the future or regretful about the past.

As a general rule, you don't have to have completed psych 1 to analyze my dreams. But I'm at a loss as to where this I Ching business came from. Yes, I attend a tai chi/kung fu school, and those are both Chinese martial arts. And, yes, next Saturday is World Tai Chi Day, and I'm not taking part with my school because I'm going to a conference. And I did get a couple of e-mails about it.

But nobody mentioned the I Ching.

So, today I've been thinking about this and wondering what I could have written that essay on, even though, of course, I didn't really write an essay, I only dreamed I did. In dream world it happened. Here is what I came up with: If the I Ching is about telling the future, maybe I connected it to plotting a piece of fiction. Maybe I came up with a way to use it to work out the future, the plot, of a story.

How easy my life would be if I could find an ancient Chinese text that would do that. 

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I am sure you all recall that yesterday I said I couldn't get sick this weekend because I was running a family thing. Well, I gave a birthday luncheon today. Not a party. I don't do parties. This was a luncheon for thirteen women.

You know how this past week your Facebook page was covered with your friends' pictures of their siblings for something called...ah...Sibling Day? Seriously. Where did that come from? Has anyone heard of it? All of a sudden it's here and people were carrying on as if it's Christmas. Well, my sibling didn't get her picture as a little nipper put up on Facebook. She got a birthday luncheon.

My sister has been a member of a book group for around fifteen years. (I think that's about when my own book group fell apart.) I learned today that she's the one who prepares questions for every single meeting. She's also very taken with her Kindle Paperwhite. Thus, while planning this luncheon I used a reading theme.

A luncheon without a theme is like a book without a theme. What is it really about?

I began, of course, with an invitation. No, actually, I began with finding a place to hold this thing. Then I went on to the invitation. Mine looked like the first page of the first chapter of a book. I used the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice as my inspiration.

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of intellect, humour, and sense must be in want of a surprise birthday luncheon. However little known the feelings or views of such a woman may be on the subject, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of her friends, that the mere knowledge of her approaching birthdate is invitation enough to gather.

Of course, others may take their inspiration elsewhere. You just have to remember to work in the details about where this function will be and when.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a rat's patootie about table decorations, but my sister gave me a birthday luncheon a while back and she had table decorations, so what are you going to do? What I did was collect a quotation from authors who had birthdays in April. Because this is April, get it? My sister's birthday is in April? One for each day of the month. I used authors and quotes from Library Booklists. I used the same font I used for the "An Invitation" invitation title. I cut the quotations and author names and birth dates out and glued them to some colored index cards that I found in the office, to be honest. Then I spread them around the table at the restaurant. (Actually, I got someone else to do it.)

I thought the quote decoration wasn't going to go over all that well. It was the kind of thing I could easily have forgotten to put out, remembering the cards half way through the meal. Or they could have dropped like a brick, even though there were members of my sister's book group there. However, my sister liked the idea, made sure everyone had a card, and had them take turns reading them aloud. (She does do parties.) So this went well.

Then for favors for the guests I had reading journals and Pental pens. Let me tell you, people loooove Pental pens. I got 18 of them for $4 on sale at Staples. I mention that because I'm one of those people who has to tell everyone when she gets a deal. Notice that the labels for the journals match the invitations, match the font on the author quotes. Yes, Computer Guy did some of that.


Yesterday I realized I should have tried to get the bakery to make a cake in the shape of an open book. Or I could have tried to do it myself. But that would have been kind of gilding the lily, don't you think?

Now maybe a reading theme won't go over as well for a kid gathering because, you know, no wine. But this worked for my adult group today.

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First off, let me set the stage for you. I've been working in bed, and now on the couch, today because I'm fighting off a cold that I just can't succumb to because I'm running a family thing this weekend that I will probably tell you all about because it totally relates. So while I was soaking in the tub, trying to sweat out whatever is bothering me, I was reading a book review in a popular magazine. The YA book being reviewed sounded pretty ho-hum to me, and the one-line quote? I looked at it and thought, This is mindless B.S. What does it even mean?  What @#!! thought this was something that should be pulled out for promotion? Who the #&** are they promoting to? 

Then I realized I was channeling Veep. I've been binge watching it this week during a TV Watchathon. In fact, I'm binge watching season two right now because of that business of trying to convince my body not to get sick.

What I'm thinking now is Selina Meyer running her own book imprint. The entire V.P.'s staff could be her editorial staff. Instead of Selina always asking Sue if the President has called, she will ask if the publisher has called. The staff can fight with marketing. Selina can fight with other editors over authors. She can try dumping authors she thinks won't earn back their advances onto other editors.

And, get this:  Julia Louis-Dreyfus used to play an editor!

This could work.  

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

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

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

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Many people who have not written a book may wonder what it would be like to just knock one off. I think if you took a  journey up a mountain on snowshoes, you'd get a pretty good idea of what it feels like to write a book.

Okay, say you're going to head up a trail, and just to make this piece of writing specific, let's say it's the trail to the Slayton Pasture Cabin in Stowe, Vermont. You've been up to the cabin a few times before, and you know it's one of the tougher outdoor activities you take part in. You feel some anxiety about this whole thing. But then you figure, What the Hell? I've done this before.

So you start out and things are pretty easy at first, and you're thinking, What was I worried about? Yes. I have done this before. I've done it successfully. People have liked what I've done in the past. Of course, I can do this.

Then you hit that Hellacious, straight up climb, the part of the job you'd really feared. It is horrendous. You think it will never end. You'll never get through it. You think, I cannot do this again. This has got to be the last time. Is that my heart I feel thumping away in my chest? Have I ever felt that before? Is it going to explode? Is there any cellphone service here?

Then you take that turn and things get better. Since you've done this before, you know some landmarks. You know that nothing will be as bad as that part of the job you just did. You know that the snowshoe trail crosses a ski trail at the X minute point, so you can think of this job as a series of short tasks instead of Oh my God I'm, going to be on this trail for two hours. And that's just one way!

You actually experience one of those break through the wall things that you've heard about with marathoners. You might actually be okay.

And, then...And then, you see the cabin. A chorus of angels begins to sing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. They all sound just like K.D. Lang. You're going to make it!

Except...you still have to get through the pasture. Sure, this part is easy. But you're exhausted. You still have a ways to go. There's a fire in the cabin. There's food. Can you do it?  "Maybe there is a God," as Lenny Cohen says, because you can!!! You stagger up onto the cabin porch.

And that is what it's like to write a book.

But what about when you're in the cabin? Well, once you're in the cabin, you find that all the other writers, I mean, showshoers aren't wearing old thermal undershirts that are kind of too big for the shirt they're wearing over them. Nor do they wear hats their sons refused to wear. And they're talking about all the great places they've snowshoed and how long it took them to get to the cabin and how awesome it was, and it's always less time than it took you, and it's always far, far more awesome.

And that is what it's like to have published a book.

You come down off the mountain and feel pretty damn fine because it's always way better to have snowshoed than it is to snowshoe.

Just as it is always better to have written a book than it is to write it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're using it for a changing table now.

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

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On Wednesday, I visited a lovely new independent bookstore. A big store, connected with a state university that's home to a children's literature collection and a good-sized annual children's bookfair. I noticed that the store had a "Teen" section. Then I noticed that it also had a "YA" section. The YA section was large, larger than the Teen section. And I saw what I thought were children's books shelved there.

Well, I was intrigued. No, I was confused. So, since there was no one else there, I asked the woman behind the counter why they had both a Teen and YA section. The Teen section, I was told, was for books that had more sex and violence. The YA section would have less. I said I'd noticed what I'd consider children's books in the YA section. She said, yes, YA begins at third grade. Teen, I believe she said, begins at ninth, though I'm not sure I'm recalling that correctly.

I asked where these designations were coming from. She said, "The publishers."

Now, I'm not a publishing insider by a long shot. But there's been a lot of turmoil regarding YA recently, particularly regarding adults reading YA.  Horn Book editor Roger Sutton did a post on Why Do We Even Call It YA Anymore? because of the number of adults reading it. But that salesperson's explanation was the first I'd heard of YA as a classification for children's books or that publishers were suggesting that it should be.

I know that I get a little obsessive about definitions. However, declaring that the Young Adult category is for children's books, at a time when adults are supposed to be reading them for their adult pleasure, seems to be making this whole situation so confusing that the name Young Adult is going to become meaningless. I certainly don't know what it means now.

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When I see John Green do a vloggie for his brother, I realize that there is a reason he is a giant, and I am not. It's not because he's more talented, wittier, or smoother on camera than I am. All those things may be true, though I'm not saying they are. But they're not what makes the world embrace him while the world isn't sure where I am.

No. What makes John Green JOHN GREEN while I am gail gauthier, is that he is nice. Did you see him talk in that vlog about how traveling means he has to be away from his family, as if that's a big drawback? Yeah, well, with Gauthiers that's the number one reason to go on the road. Not so nice, eh?

If my sister and I were exchanging video thingies, we would be bitching...on camera...the entire time. We would be bitching about our other relatives, primarily, but we are fairly sophisticated women and can branch out to the Royal Family, cable providers,  Nurse Jackie (I'm sure you can guess that I love her. My sister does not.), and chain restaurants. A three-minute vlog would not begin to give us enough scope for our opinions, most of which are not warm and fuzzy and John Greenish.

The question of needing a bigger canvas for our complaints is secondary to the one of whether or not anyone would want to sit and listen to two people express them. It would depend on what we were complaining about, I suppose. People listen to Mika complain about Joe on Morning Joe every day. That's pretty much her function on the show. That suggests there is a market for this kind of thing. You just have to know how to tap it.

So maybe my sister and I could put together a bitchlog. I do have a YouTube channel now.

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

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

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

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Oh, I love work events. Seeing friends. Meeting people. The whole being part of a community thing.

Yes, I know that is unlike me, but I mention the "community thing" because it was my big takeaway from Crafting a Public Identity: A Workshop for Creative Artists, Writers and Performers on Navigating the Arts Business Maze at the Thomas Dodd Research Center. The Thomas Dodd Research Center is one of my favorite places for work events. Mainly because it's so close to me, but it's also a beautiful place. It's the home of the Northeast Children's Literature Collection, by the way.

This particular work event, moderated by Susan Raab, was developed around the idea that all people working in the arts promote and market themselves and can learn from one another. There was a lot of talk about social media, of course, but, as I said, the sticky idea for me was community, something "social" media is supposed to build on-line so you can be part of a community that isn't in your local geographic area. Artist Sharon Butler was particularly good at explaining how social media helped her meet her goal of being part of a creative community and having a voice within it. Coincidentally, it aided her career as an artist, too.

My experience with being part of a community has been great, though I find that communities are always changing. Certainly the children's lit blogger community isn't as cozy as it used to be simply because it's grown so large. Think of any community you've ever been part of--in school, at work, in a volunteer group. People are always coming in and out of communities, which changes the dynamic. Your needs evolve. The community that was terrific once doesn't seem the same any longer. Another community calls to you.

This is not to say that I'm down on the whole community thing. Not at all. After half a decade of having to cut back on all kinds of community, I'm a bit pumped over the idea of getting more involved again. I do, however, recognize that any community I'm part of is not a static thing that will serve me and that I can serve in the same way forever. I will need to always be adapting.

I had another interesting (to me) thought about Crafting A Public Identity, which I hope to discuss tomorrow.

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Are you? Househunting? If so, you might be interested to hear that the Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum is for sale.  Yes, that is Lucy Maud Montgomery as in the author of Anne of Green Gables. And guess who has been there?Yes, that's right. Me. It turns out that I can't give you a lot of inside scoop on this prime piece of real estate, the asking price for which is supposed to be $349,000. I can only give you a little bit of information on the surroundings.

It appears that I only took one interior picture when I was at the museum, and, sorry to say, it was not of the kitchen. And, you know, kitchens sell houses. I have no recollection of the kitchen at all, which is most unusual because I love looking at old kitchens.

This is a bedroom that I believe was done up to look as if it could have belonged to one of the characters in the book. A female character, I'm guessing from that dressie looking thing hanging on the wall.

I don't know how much property comes with the house. At the time I was there, the grounds included the Haunted Woods Trail, which my walking journal indicates is .8 miles. The notes in my journal also say that the trail was the inspiration for the Haunted Woods in Anne of Green Gables. No idea where I got that info. I don't even remember the Haunted Woods in Anne of Green Gables.

Prince Edward Island, the province in which the museum is located, is, indeed, an island. It is accessed by one serious bridge. I mean, a whopper. At Chez Gauthier, we are fond of big bridges. The bigger the better. Tolls do not deter us. In fact, knowing that we were going to have to go over the Confederation Bridge to get to P.E.I. was a real draw, as far as we were concerned. And we got to go over it a second time on our way home! I guarantee you, we have more bridge pictures than we do Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum pictures.


The day we visited the museum we picked up a biking trail somewhere nearby. Again, quoting from the walking journal (which also doubles as a biking/skiing/canoeing journal): "5.9 miles. Maybe the best bike ride we've ever been on. A great mix of meadow, woods, beach, ocean views. It was fantastic and not difficult, either."

Not difficult is always a big plus for me. If you're going to go look at the house, bring a bike.

So there you are, a little information on the Land of Anne, where the Montgomery home is located. 

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My very delicately balanced schedule included me doing e-book research on Thursdays, since Computer Guy and I are hoping to republish one of my out-of-print books as an e-book later this year. However, a thread on Facebook and an announcement on my author Facebook page has thrown me off.

It appears that I need to do some major research on this Timeline thing. You know, if I wanted my life story told, I would write it up myself and sell it. My personal wall is filled with angst-ridden posts on the switch, a number of them from writers.

In the immortal words of the Wee Free Men, "Waily, waily, waily."

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For years I have believed that if I could just find the perfect schedule, I would be able to crank out work in a Yolen-like manner, live in an orderly home, and reach some kind of spiritual and physical state of satisfaction, if not bliss. Work, creating order, and training all take time. The hours in a day remain the same, so determining how to use them becomes crucial.

I have yet to find that perfect schedule, which means that my schedule is always changing while I look forward it.

This past year my taekwondo training schedule has been changing because of changes at my school. I was on what I'll call the "winter schedule" in the spring, which involved training one evening a week with an occasional second evening class added when I could. Then in mid-June I went on the "summer schedule" when one morning class was added at the school to accomodate the kids who were out of traditional school. Then I could go to the one evening class that I could tolerate, but the morning class as well. I did two morning classes a week for something like eight years, so getting back to two classes--very, very good. Next week I go back to the winter schedule.

On the one hand, I need to train more than once a week to maintain my skills, but a lot of evening classes involving heavy sweating are hard to get into when you are more than eighteen years old, which I am. This means, by the way, that I have to try to find some time at home to add taekwondo to my personal workout/training mix. On the other hand, without the morning classes that I took for around eight years, I can now do a little writing before visiting the elders, which was added to my schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays about a year and a half ago. So we're definitely talking a glass half full situation.

I'm also thinking, as I write this, that perhaps I should think about creating seasonal schedules, with goals for the season.

Hmmm. Hmmm.

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My computer guy reads The Globe and Mail regularly, because the Canuckistanis are our neighbors to the north, and he believes that someone really ought to be keeping track of what they're doing. So he referred me to Literary awards are abundant in Canada, but some see a downside.

I nearly forgot about it, but I'm behind in my Bookslut reading, and while I was there catching up, I noticed posts about this prize and that prize, and this other one and oh, my goodness, another. Whoops. I missed one. It appears that literary awards are abundant all over the place.

Evidently you can make some serious bucks in Canada winning literary prizes. Maybe similar to that woman who supported her family with prize winnings. Supposedly a literary prize for poetry has made poetry cool in the great icy north, and I certainly have to respect that.

But, The Globe and Mail article says, literary awards also "have become as essential to the business of marketing books today as retail stores once were..." Jean Baird, an independent scholar, is writing a book on award culture and disputes just how effective this marketing is. Except for the Giller Prize, she says awards don't seem to raise sales. "Even the Booker doesn’t really sell books – unless you win," she claims. Nonetheless, she says there is a sense that if your book hasn't won an award, it has lost them.

I am not the type of person who has any great expectations or worries about winning awards, whether they are literary, academic, or service. I've even gotten over not being in the running for World's Greatest Mom. But I would like to see my books read, which means a little spreading the good word of their existence. That's my objection to award obsession, which occurs here in America, too. When children's literature listservs are hosting discussions in March about what books have already been published that year that could be considered for the Newbery, that encourages its members to read those books and may even create a self-fulling prophecy. The same is true of keeping some kind of spreadsheet on starred books and dishing about it regularly. Award and starred book discussions encourage readers to focus on those limited titles. Thousands of children's books are published each year, and while I will instantly agree with anyone who claims that a certain percentage of them are dreck, I also believe that more than the handful that are perceived as award books and garner stars are worth reading. But people have to learn about them, which is difficult to do if the literary discussion is limited to what are perceived as award contenders.

And I'm not even getting into the perception question: What is perceived as a potential award winner and who came up with that? Someone could also ask if it's possible to write to the award. I'm just saying the pack mentality that chases award winners (hmmm...the literary equivalent of the popular kid?) actually hurts reading in general, to say nothing of sales.