Today is not turning out to be a good day in all kinds of ways. Feeling down for assorted reasons, and also just have too much to do this week, and certain things are taking WAY MORE TIME than they should, which just means all the other things I need to do are still sitting there, waiting. Impatiently. Looking at me.
STOP LOOKING AT ME!!!
Blogging while blue and frustrated and stressed out is probably not the best idea. So I won't go on and on. Just felt like sending out a small wail of angst to my internet friends.
Some good news to even things out:
So happy for VCFA faculty types Kathi Appelt and Tobin Anderson for their well-deserved honors yesterday!
Also was really glad to see some wonderful children's author friends last night at Betsy Bird's Kidlit Drinks Night at Gstaad.
And forgot to mention happy news from school in my last post, which is that my advisor this semester is none other than the fabulous Cynthia Leitich Smith, and I am very excited to be working with her.
See, good things are going on, too. Just need to try and focus more on those and less on the other things. And to just keep my head down and work, work, work. But also to get outside for a few minutes to clear my head at some point. Maybe right now.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Reentry
Vermont College of Fine Arts students often mention the difficult transition back to the regular world at the end of each residency. And it's true—it's like a piece of the Hero's Journey, all of us crossing the threshold back into the Ordinary World, but carrying with us some magic treasure from the Special World we were temporarily and gloriously a part of for ten timeless days. Not that we don't love the Ordinary World, too, with its beloved family members and friends and boyfriends and cats, but there is definitely a period of adjustment as we struggle to realign with the normal rules of the universe.
I got home on Thursday, and have been trying to take this weekend to relax and recover before plunging back into work and packets and cleaning and bills and general craziness of regular life. The craziness is looming though, and it's hard to relax in its everpresent shadow. Only two and a half weeks until my first packet is due, and there is freelance work to edit and a book proposal to write and a picture book manuscript to revise and a website redesign to complete and lots of mail to go through and packages to send and birthday parties to plan and two-month old babies to visit and gym schedules to get back on track with and other things but I'm already stressing myself out with this list so I will stop listing. One of my unofficial new year's resolutions this year was to learn to relax, but I'm finding it a difficult skill to acquire.
Anyway. Missing all my VCFA friends already and wishing you great starts to the semester! And will be missing all my Kindling Words friends next weekend, but I was right in thinking I would not be ready for another bunch of days away so soon after getting back from school. Hoping I might be able to swing it next year, though!
I got home on Thursday, and have been trying to take this weekend to relax and recover before plunging back into work and packets and cleaning and bills and general craziness of regular life. The craziness is looming though, and it's hard to relax in its everpresent shadow. Only two and a half weeks until my first packet is due, and there is freelance work to edit and a book proposal to write and a picture book manuscript to revise and a website redesign to complete and lots of mail to go through and packages to send and birthday parties to plan and two-month old babies to visit and gym schedules to get back on track with and other things but I'm already stressing myself out with this list so I will stop listing. One of my unofficial new year's resolutions this year was to learn to relax, but I'm finding it a difficult skill to acquire.
Anyway. Missing all my VCFA friends already and wishing you great starts to the semester! And will be missing all my Kindling Words friends next weekend, but I was right in thinking I would not be ready for another bunch of days away so soon after getting back from school. Hoping I might be able to swing it next year, though!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
December 2008 Wrap-Up
Fellow VCFA'ers Rachel and David and Gwenda inspired me to also try the first-line-of-the-first-post-of-each-month-of-the-past-year thing. Which produced the following, which mostly just makes me realize that some of my first sentences are very long and that I should probably strive for punchier first lines in 2009. And maybe try to be a better blogger overall, so I can spend less time explaining/apologizing for not posting. No first sentence for August, and December's is the first line of this post. Which is either cool and full-circle-y or kind of lame...can't decide. Anyway:
Here's hoping the new year brings good things to everyone, all around. I was settling down to begin work on writing (well, reading and prewriting for) my first critical essay in 12+ years (part of an MFA application, due March 1) and I had a sudden urge to check that I'd locked the front door and there was a large spider climbing the wall in the front hallway. I seem to be continuing my trend of not blogging very regularly. I was honored to be interviewed by First Book as part of their celebration of National Library Week! All right. Found out last night that an appointment today was being canceled, so I find myself with the gift of a suddenly free morning. So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Okay, so I kind of skipped August. I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at the NYPL Library Shop at 2pm this Saturday, October 18 - please come by if you're in the area, and bring your kids! Got back today from Rochester, NY, where I attended the 12th annual Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday. Fellow VCFA'ers Rachel and David and Gwenda inspired me to also try the first-line-of-the-first-post-of-each-month-of-the-past-year thing.
Hmm.
So what's been going on in the last month or so? First there was the Savannah Children's Book Festival, which was great fun and only got rained out at the very end, which wasn't so bad considering what the weather reports had been suggesting. I had a wonderful time with old and new writer friends, including Katie Davis, Elizabeth O. Delumba, and Charles and Debra Ghigna. I also got to meet the amazing Mo Willems, which was very cool. And I bought way too many pralines at the candy shop across from the restaurant where a bunch of us had dinner after the festival.
While I was in Savannah I also spent a few days visiting my mom and Bob in Richmond Hill. We had a great time even though I had to work a lot while I was there and didn't get a chance to play Boggle even once. I did, however, manage to get a delicious Chic-fil-a sandwich on the way to the airport. Thanks, mom! :)
I had a lovely Thanksgiving with dear friends (Ginny, Len, Bridey, Joe, Ryan, and Evie) in Maryland. I made the cranberry sauce for the first time, and was very excited about this as evidenced by the many, many photos I took of the cranberry sauce in progress. A sampling:
There were, of course, all the other delicious Thanskgiving items, like stuffing, which is the very best part of all, and turkey and sweet potatoes and everything else. Here is what my plate looked like just before I began the traditional eating of way too much:
Earlier in the day there was also the new tradition (for me, anyway) of the lasagna lunch, and Joe actually made a special mini cheeseless version just for me:
Okay, okay, enough pictures of food. Everything was so good, and best of all was getting to spend quality time with people I love.
After Thanksgiving, unfortunately, I came down with a terrible cold which became a terrible sinus infection and kind of knocked me out of the world for a couple of weeks. Took FOREVER to get really better, and I ended up needing to ask for an extension on my final packet for school. But eventually I finished Packet 5 and then plowed through the surprisingly time-consuming end-of-semester paperwork and now I am officially done with my first semester! Can't wait for the next residency in January, when I will get to see all my school friends and find out who my next advisor will be.
I also finished final changes on The Dragon of Trelian, and then the final final changes, and then the last couple of really final last-minute changes. And now it's done! Or at least, I am not allowed to make any more changes. :) The ARCs have been produced and look great (although they were printed with the pre-final changes, so the last rounds of fixes are not reflected therein). I am also now allowed to share the cover art, which looks like this:
Yay! The cover artist is the fabulous Antonio Caparo.
The official release date for the novel is April 14, 2009. Why not go ahead and preorder your copy today? :D
In between all of the above I have been doing the usual watching of Netflix, playing too much online Scrabble, and having fun with some of my favorite Brooklyn people. One particular favorite Brooklyn person whisked me off to Vermont for a much-needed wonderful weekend getaway and later to Connecticut where I had a lovely Christmas with his family and met some very nice new people and learned how to make gravy and play Rummikub, among other things.
I've still got a bunch of things to take care of for school before the January residency, most significantly trying to revise as much of my novel-in-progress as I can before handing it off to my next advisor. We also received our workshop books, and I'm looking forward to reading everyone's pieces and getting ready to discuss them at the rez.
I guess that's everything for now. Probably won't post again before the year is out, so here's wishing everyone a wonderful final few days of 2008 and a happy, healthy start to 2009!
Here's hoping the new year brings good things to everyone, all around. I was settling down to begin work on writing (well, reading and prewriting for) my first critical essay in 12+ years (part of an MFA application, due March 1) and I had a sudden urge to check that I'd locked the front door and there was a large spider climbing the wall in the front hallway. I seem to be continuing my trend of not blogging very regularly. I was honored to be interviewed by First Book as part of their celebration of National Library Week! All right. Found out last night that an appointment today was being canceled, so I find myself with the gift of a suddenly free morning. So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Okay, so I kind of skipped August. I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at the NYPL Library Shop at 2pm this Saturday, October 18 - please come by if you're in the area, and bring your kids! Got back today from Rochester, NY, where I attended the 12th annual Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday. Fellow VCFA'ers Rachel and David and Gwenda inspired me to also try the first-line-of-the-first-post-of-each-month-of-the-past-year thing.
Hmm.
So what's been going on in the last month or so? First there was the Savannah Children's Book Festival, which was great fun and only got rained out at the very end, which wasn't so bad considering what the weather reports had been suggesting. I had a wonderful time with old and new writer friends, including Katie Davis, Elizabeth O. Delumba, and Charles and Debra Ghigna. I also got to meet the amazing Mo Willems, which was very cool. And I bought way too many pralines at the candy shop across from the restaurant where a bunch of us had dinner after the festival.
While I was in Savannah I also spent a few days visiting my mom and Bob in Richmond Hill. We had a great time even though I had to work a lot while I was there and didn't get a chance to play Boggle even once. I did, however, manage to get a delicious Chic-fil-a sandwich on the way to the airport. Thanks, mom! :)
I had a lovely Thanksgiving with dear friends (Ginny, Len, Bridey, Joe, Ryan, and Evie) in Maryland. I made the cranberry sauce for the first time, and was very excited about this as evidenced by the many, many photos I took of the cranberry sauce in progress. A sampling:
There were, of course, all the other delicious Thanskgiving items, like stuffing, which is the very best part of all, and turkey and sweet potatoes and everything else. Here is what my plate looked like just before I began the traditional eating of way too much:
Earlier in the day there was also the new tradition (for me, anyway) of the lasagna lunch, and Joe actually made a special mini cheeseless version just for me:
Okay, okay, enough pictures of food. Everything was so good, and best of all was getting to spend quality time with people I love.
After Thanksgiving, unfortunately, I came down with a terrible cold which became a terrible sinus infection and kind of knocked me out of the world for a couple of weeks. Took FOREVER to get really better, and I ended up needing to ask for an extension on my final packet for school. But eventually I finished Packet 5 and then plowed through the surprisingly time-consuming end-of-semester paperwork and now I am officially done with my first semester! Can't wait for the next residency in January, when I will get to see all my school friends and find out who my next advisor will be.
I also finished final changes on The Dragon of Trelian, and then the final final changes, and then the last couple of really final last-minute changes. And now it's done! Or at least, I am not allowed to make any more changes. :) The ARCs have been produced and look great (although they were printed with the pre-final changes, so the last rounds of fixes are not reflected therein). I am also now allowed to share the cover art, which looks like this:
Yay! The cover artist is the fabulous Antonio Caparo.
The official release date for the novel is April 14, 2009. Why not go ahead and preorder your copy today? :D
In between all of the above I have been doing the usual watching of Netflix, playing too much online Scrabble, and having fun with some of my favorite Brooklyn people. One particular favorite Brooklyn person whisked me off to Vermont for a much-needed wonderful weekend getaway and later to Connecticut where I had a lovely Christmas with his family and met some very nice new people and learned how to make gravy and play Rummikub, among other things.
I've still got a bunch of things to take care of for school before the January residency, most significantly trying to revise as much of my novel-in-progress as I can before handing it off to my next advisor. We also received our workshop books, and I'm looking forward to reading everyone's pieces and getting ready to discuss them at the rez.
I guess that's everything for now. Probably won't post again before the year is out, so here's wishing everyone a wonderful final few days of 2008 and a happy, healthy start to 2009!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Write or Die
Hats off to Dr. Wicked. I have been having a terrible time getting moving again on my novel-in-progress for school, and while clicking around the internet, procrastinating up a storm, I read about Dr. Wicked's Write or Die application on schoolmate Rachel Wilson's blog. As the evening wore on and I had accomplished little more than starting two or three new games of Scrabble on Facebook, I decided to give it a try. And wow.
Hooray for negative reinforcement! And enforced freedom to write without stopping. I set a goal of 1000 words, then started typing. Afterward, I pasted the result into my Word doc and spent a little more time going back over the text, changing all the straight quotes to smart ones and adding/editing a little bit as I went along. And now I feel like I'm moving again.
p.s. My final word count for the day after my post–write-or-die once-over was 1273. Yay! I've got a daily 1000-word goal for the novel (every day between now and December 6 except for Thanksgiving) as I try to push through to the end of the first draft. Don't get too excited—"first draft" is a very generous description here, considering there are huge gaps in the narrative and lots of skipping around and things that already need changing in the early chapters...but still. Getting the major events sort of worked out through the end would still be awesome, and should make revision next semester a little easier than it would be if I hadn't yet figured out where the story will end.
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Hooray for negative reinforcement! And enforced freedom to write without stopping. I set a goal of 1000 words, then started typing. Afterward, I pasted the result into my Word doc and spent a little more time going back over the text, changing all the straight quotes to smart ones and adding/editing a little bit as I went along. And now I feel like I'm moving again.
p.s. My final word count for the day after my post–write-or-die once-over was 1273. Yay! I've got a daily 1000-word goal for the novel (every day between now and December 6 except for Thanksgiving) as I try to push through to the end of the first draft. Don't get too excited—"first draft" is a very generous description here, considering there are huge gaps in the narrative and lots of skipping around and things that already need changing in the early chapters...but still. Getting the major events sort of worked out through the end would still be awesome, and should make revision next semester a little easier than it would be if I hadn't yet figured out where the story will end.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Rochester Children's Book Festival
Got back today from Rochester, NY, where I attended the 12th annual Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday. I've been going for about...five years? Six? And it just keeps getting better and better. There were more than 40 authors and illutrators this year, covering everything from board books to YA novels. Amazing numbers of kids and grown-ups came to get books signed and listen to readings and do fun activities. It's wonderful to get to meet and talk with so many book-loving people, and to see author friends I only get to hang out with once or twice a year at events like this one.
Here is the festival hall in the morning, before it was opened to the public. That's Bruce Coville right in the center, and Vivian Vande Velde with the camera to the left. You can also see some of the fabulous volunteers (in the yellow t-shirts) who make this event possible (not to mention awesome) year after year:
Here's the hall a bit later, after the doors were opened:
Packed does not begin to describe it. I don't even think this was the festival at its busiest point.
Later on, there was a celebratory dinner, where the authors and illustrators and organizers and volunteers got to kick back and relax after a great but exhausting day. I didn't take nearly enough pictures, but here are a few. I am in most of them, because I like to get my picture taken with fabulous people.
Me with author Mark Shulman, whom I also know from the Kindling Words retreat and who is a great person to talk to when you are stuck on a story idea and need advice:
Me with Newbery-award winning author Linda Sue Park:
Leander Watts and I with Spock-hands and blinding flash:
Me with author/illustrator Dan Mahoney, who was also nice enough to ferry some of us around in his car on festival-day:
Fearless leader Carol Johmann, being thanked on everyone's enthusiastic behalf by Volunteer Coordinator Barbara Underhill:
Festival attendees who stopped by my table got to see a special sneak peek of the cover The Dragon of Trelian. If you weren't there, you will just have to wait. :)
Can't wait to go back again next year! In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the fifth annual Savannah Children's Book Festival next weekend. If you're in the area, I hope you will come on by!
Here is the festival hall in the morning, before it was opened to the public. That's Bruce Coville right in the center, and Vivian Vande Velde with the camera to the left. You can also see some of the fabulous volunteers (in the yellow t-shirts) who make this event possible (not to mention awesome) year after year:
Here's the hall a bit later, after the doors were opened:
Packed does not begin to describe it. I don't even think this was the festival at its busiest point.
Later on, there was a celebratory dinner, where the authors and illustrators and organizers and volunteers got to kick back and relax after a great but exhausting day. I didn't take nearly enough pictures, but here are a few. I am in most of them, because I like to get my picture taken with fabulous people.
Me with author Mark Shulman, whom I also know from the Kindling Words retreat and who is a great person to talk to when you are stuck on a story idea and need advice:
Me with Newbery-award winning author Linda Sue Park:
Leander Watts and I with Spock-hands and blinding flash:
Me with author/illustrator Dan Mahoney, who was also nice enough to ferry some of us around in his car on festival-day:
Fearless leader Carol Johmann, being thanked on everyone's enthusiastic behalf by Volunteer Coordinator Barbara Underhill:
Festival attendees who stopped by my table got to see a special sneak peek of the cover The Dragon of Trelian. If you weren't there, you will just have to wait. :)
Can't wait to go back again next year! In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the fifth annual Savannah Children's Book Festival next weekend. If you're in the area, I hope you will come on by!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Three Weekends of Reading and Signing
This Saturday, November 1, at 1 p.m., I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at Best Bargain Books in Centereach, NY (WalMart Shopping Center, 217 Middle Country Road). Please come by and say hello!
The following weekend, I'll be reading and signing at the Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday, November 8. If you're in the area, this is a GREAT event with lots of authors (more than 40!) and fun activities and wonderful people. I've been going to this festival for about five years now, and it's one of my favorite annual events, both because of the author friends I get to see while I am there and because of all the great kids, parents, teachers, librarians, and other folks who come out for it every year.
The weekend after that, I'll be presenting and signing at the Savannah Children's Book Festival on Saturday, November 15. This is another fabulous event with multiple authors, including Marc Brown, Katie Davis, Charles Ghigna, and Mo Willems! Plus, it's in Savannah, where you can get delicious Chick-fil-A and pralines (yum!).
Somehow, in between all of these events I will be keeping up with my reading and writing for school, going over the pages of The Dragon of Trelian ("pages" are when the publisher sends the text all laid out in pages for the first time, in the same typeface and everything that will be in the book, and it's my last chance to make any significant changes), and finally really getting to work on a sequel to TDoT, which so far is just some vague ideas and a page or two of notes.
And sometime soon I will need to work on editorial revisions to my upcoming picture book ARGUS (no pub date yet, but we're looking at 2011 at the earliest, sigh) and hopefully one of the other picture book manuscripts I'm working on will come together into something my editor will want to publish. There are three or four I'm actively working on right now; I will give them some code names for further discussion, because that's fun and will let me avoid having to talk about their actual prospective titles or what they are about:
Picture Books Currently in the Running:
- Codename "Secret" (has been through multiple drafts, still trying to find the right approach)
- Codename "Baker" (first draft completed; will be included in my next packet for school so I can get some feedback from my MFA advisor)
- Codename "Two" (latest draft currently with my agent for her thoughts)
- Codename "Mike" (revised version currently with my editor)
- Codename "Frank" (first draft in progress)
Okay, the fifth one is currently only one sentence long and so obviously has quite a ways to go, but it's a good sentence, and I'm kind of excited about it, so I'm still going to consider it as being in the running.
But speaking of writing...I should get to work. Blogging doesn't really count, I guess.
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