Blog Tour: The Writing Process

My friend Paula Freedman, author of the wonderful MG novel My Basmati Bat Mitzvah, invited me to participate in this blog tour about the writing process. Every author on the tour answers some questions about his or her own writing process, and then tags two other authors to answer next. I'm excited to be part of it, both because it's making me post something after way too long away from this blog, and also because I'm always fascinated by other writers' processes. You can read Paula's responses here; mine are below!

What am I currently working on?

I am almost always in the midst of multiple projects at once. I just finished final-final-final changes on my young adult novel EVIL LIBRARIAN (coming 9-9-14!), but I'm also waiting for my editor's notes on the first draft of the third book in my middle grade fantasy trilogy, working on a revision of a new picture book, and planning out the synopsis for a follow-up to EVIL LIBRARIAN. My next picture book, MARILYN'S MONSTER, comes out next spring, and my part of the work is mostly done on that one—it is being illustrated (as we speak!) by the super amazing Matt Phelan.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

This is a hard question. I know some of my picture books are different because they're longer than a lot of picture books out there ... but I hope that's not the only thing that makes them different! Obviously every author's work is going to be unique because of his or her individual voice, and I think that applies to my work as well. I also seem to come back to some of the same themes over and over in my books. I write a lot about friendship in various forms, and love in various forms, and also creatures (lions, dragons, demons) showing up in unexpected places. 

Why do I write what I write?

I guess I write the kinds of stories that I'd want to read. Fantasy novels were the stories that first really grabbed me as a young reader and turned me into one of those kids who carried a book around with her everywhere. Picture books appeal to me for some of the same reasons—they're stories in which anything can happen, where the rules of everyday regular life don't necessarily have to apply. In all of my books, I'm always interested in the relationships among the characters ... who they are, why they do what they do, how they feel about one another, etc. I remember growing up and wishing I could know the characters from my favorite books in real life. I try to write those kinds of characters in my own books—if I care about them and want to spend time with them, hopefully my readers will, too!

How does my individual writing process work?

My process can vary a lot from book to book. For picture books, a story usually starts with one image or idea or feeling. I might carry that image/idea/feeling around in my head for a while before I know anything more about the story ... I'll check in on it every so often, take it out, look at it, and think about it, but sometimes I have to wait a long time before the rest of the story starts to take shape around it. Once I feel like I have enough of a sense of where the story is going (not all of it, just enough to start) I'll begin writing it down and see what happens. Often I'll make little notes in my notebook (or on whatever paper is handy at the time) as more pieces of the story start to take shape, so I won't forget.

For novels, the process could begin the same way, with an image or a feeling. For The Dragon of Trelian, I saw an image in my mind of two characters at a window in a castle. I knew they were looking out at something exciting, and that they probably weren't supposed to be there, but not much else. I started asking myself questions about them—who they were, why they were at the window, etc. The story started to take shape from there.

EVIL LIBRARIAN started with the voice of the main character. I was working on a different novel at the time, a darker, more serious fantasy (which I'm still working on, but it's been temporarily put on the back burner while I'm focusing on the other books) and Cyn's voice was funny and smart and engaging and made me want to hear more of what she had to say. I wrote the first page and a half (which mostly stayed put as the opening of the final version) and then kept coming back to it as often as I could. When I had about 70 or 80 pages, I realized I had to stop and figure out what the heck was going to happen in the rest of the book. I wrote a synopsis, and then expanded that into a longer synopsis, and eventually created a chapter-by-chapter outline of the rest of the story. That was really the first time I've ever written with an outline, and I have to say it made writing the rest of the book a lot easier! But I don't think I could start with the outline right at the beginning. I need to write a big enough piece to know the characters and the feel of the book before I can think more analytically about the structure and pacing and all the rest.

Once I have the first draft, it goes to my agent and editor. For picture books this might be the first time they see or hear of it; for novels, they've almost certainly seen some pieces of the story already. I take a breather (which sometimes just means switching over to the next project, but I do try to take at least a little bit of a break when I can!) and wait for notes from my editor. Then I start the revision process, based on her feedback and my own thoughts/notes of what I think needs reshaping (or rewriting or expanding or deleting). When the second draft is done, I might share it with one or two trusted readers, who also give me their thoughts. I usually end up doing at least three full drafts with novels. Sometimes four. And then I'm always still tweaking the text during copyediting and galleys, until my publisher makes me stop. :) Some picture books only take a couple of drafts, not including additional edits after we lay the book out into pages and I see how it starts to work together with the artwork, which often calls for at least some small changes to be made to the text. Others I end up revising over and over, twenty times, maybe more, before they really come together. And sometimes they never do, but I still have some that I haven't given up on, despite many years and drafts since I first started them. Sometimes I think it's just not the right time for a particular story, but if it's one that really speaks to me, I have to trust that I'll find the right time/approach/idea to make it work eventually!

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Next up on the blog tour:

I met Rachel Wilson at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we were both getting our MFAs in writing for children and young adults. Her debut novel, DON'T TOUCH, comes out from HarperTeen this September. When she's not writing, she makes theater in Chicago, so it's not surprising that DON'T TOUCH is full of theater (although, she says, she's not a "serious actress" like her main character). She also has a horror novelette, "The Game of Boys and Monsters," coming out as an ebook for HarperImpulse in October.

FA Michaels writes about real-world teens in not-so-real-world situations. Coming soon is a time travel tale that's part sci-fi, part mystery and part star-crossed-lovers romance. Follow Mic on Twitter @FAMichaels and read more at FAMichaels.com.

Look for their responses on their own blogs on Monday, April 21!

The Dragon of Trelian paperback! And stuff.

The Dragon of Trelian comes out in paperback on January 11, 2011. It will have an awesome new cover, which looks like this:

In other news, here are some updates about various things:

1. This July I graduated from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Yay! But also :( because I will miss it very much. But mostly :) because it was two years of hard work and it feels really good to have earned my degree. And I have a whole bunch of wonderful writing friends/classmates/kindred spirits who will continue to be very important to me, even if I won't get to see them quite as regularly now.

2. I am experimenting with new designs for the blog. You are looking at this experiment right now. Like it? Don't like it? Let me know what you think.

3. ARGUS comes out on February 22, 2011. February 22 happens to be my birthday. There will quite possibly be a birthday-book launch party in the works very soon. I can't wait to show you guys the cover—Andréa Wesson's artwork is perfect! But, um, I have to wait, at least a little while longer. But as soon as I'm allowed I will post the cover here.

4. Still working hard on Dragon of Trelian sequel revisions. I'm in the third draft now. Stuff is happening, there is danger and magic and intrigue and there are new characters and old characters and someone may die. That is all I am going to say at this time. The pub date will be sometime in Spring 2012.

5. I am in another Gilbert and Sullivan operetta with The Village Light Opera Group! The show is Iolanthe and we just started rehearsals and performances will be the weekend before Thanksgiving and you should all come to see it. Don't worry, I will remind you as it gets closer.

6. I have joined the crew of Through the Tollbooth, which is a fabulous group blog run by VCFA graduates. There are new posts several times a week on writing-related topics, and you should definitely stop in there and take a look!

I think that's all for now. The summer has been a little crazy, but I'm hoping the fall will prove a little less so, and will include a little more time for posting, among other things. Yeah, I know I say things like that a lot, about how I'm hoping to post more often. I know it doesn't always happen, but I remain ever optimistic about these things.  :)

I FOOLED YOU release day!

Hooray! I Fooled You is out in the world today! It's a middle grade anthology from Candlewick Press and contains my very first published short story ever, "The Bridge to Highlandsville." Stop by your favorite real-world store or order a copy through Indiebound.org!

You can see more info about the book in my 2/26 blog post.

Also out in the world today is the YA novel Saving Maddie, by my friend and fellow VCFA'er Varian Johnson! Visit his blog to follow along with the Saving Maddie blog tour and find out more about the book and the author.

Edited to add: just realized today is ALSO the release day for The Sky Is Everywhere, the debut novel from Jandy Nelson, also a VCFA'er! Yay!

January 2010 Reentry

Got back Wednesday from the winter residency at VCFA, and it was as expected—awesome and inspiring and exhausting and happy and sad and wonderful. Ten days of lectures, workshops, readings, and events, with dear old friends and many new friends and brilliant writers and teachers. There was a moving memorial for Norma Fox Mazer, which I was honored to have the chance to attend. There were fabulous conversations over meals and hilarious late-night games of Exquisite Corpse (or Picture Telephone, as most of us called it) and also a kick-ass party thrown by my class (the Thunder Badgers) for the graduating class (the Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines) which involved a Wild West theme and much dancing and fun and cowboy hats.

My cowgirl attire (note the awesome belt, borrowed from Nice Boyfriend):

There were also fun cowboy-themed items:

And cowboy-themed foods:

Also there was dancing and game-playing and a piñata shaped like a boot. Much fun was had by all!

During the rez we were also assigned our advisors for the next semester, and I am SO EXCITED to be working with the fabulous Margaret Bechard. This will be my final semester, which makes me more than a little sad, although at the end I will have an MFA, which will (I hope) help alleviate some of the pain of VCFA withdrawal. And of course, the VCFA community embraces alumni and keeps them involved, and so I know I won't really be saying good-bye to VCFA, just moving on to a new relationship with it. But still, I will miss being a student and going to residencies and all the rest. But it's too early for all that, really! Fourth semester is only just starting, and I have another six months before I have to think about graduating. So I will not think about that just now at all.

Another fun thing happened at rez, which is that I finished my first knitting project! It was a scarf. I am very proud. Many thanks to Madeleine, who got me started over New Year's and donated yarn and knitting needles and taught me how to knit and purl, and to the nice knitter/writers (like Sarah and Linden) at VCFA who helped me when I got stuck, and to knitter/writer/awesome VCFA faculty member Rita Williams-Garcia, who showed me how to cast off at the airport while we were waiting for our flight back to NYC. I am excited to start a new project, although I will have to figure out how to knit in the presence of my cat, who will no doubt want to involve herself with the yarn in highly disruptive ways.

And that is all for now. I have ridiculous amounts of things to do, writing and otherwise, and should get to work. Wednesday was all about getting home and seeing my boyfriend and my cat, and yesterday was all about cleaning up my apartment and trying to get oriented, and now I need to be all about the writing for a while. And then hopefully maybe soon I can think about some other things, like my apartment-fixing-up plans. I was briefly daydreaming today about hiring an interior designer to help me make the most of the space I've got and give me painting and decorating advice. This will probably not happen, as I imagine interior designers are expensive and so are new furnishings and as you may remember I was hoping to NOT spend money like a crazy person this year. But it's fun to think about anyway.

OH! Almost forgot to say I am SO HAPPY for my friend Rebecca Stead who WON THE NEWBERY!!!! Congratulations to her and to all the other award winners. YAY! :)

2010 is going to be OK

Just finished my second cup of coffee, which means it is time to get up from the computer and go do things. Mostly today's things will be about packing and getting ready for rez and getting my cat ready to spend ten days at my boyfriend's apartment while I am gone. There are things I wanted to get done before I go that will not get done, and I am deciding to be ok about this.

I think I want to make Deciding to Be Ok about Things my goal for 2010. I spend way too much time worrying about everything (and I mean seriously, EVERYTHING), and while there are some small number of things actually worth worrying about (e.g., health and well-being of friends and family), many of the things I worry about are just not worth it. Some things can just be ok. For example, it is ok that I didn't get all the reading done that I would have liked to do for the residency. It is ok that my apartment is a mess, and that my friend Kristin will see it this way when she comes over to water my plants next week. It is ok that I do not have my whole life figured out, and that I have big questions about lots of significant life things, and that I do not have a five-year plan or a fully updated checkbook register or a functional exercise regimen.

Which is not to say I'm not going to set goals for the coming year or anything like that. Actually the whole point is to direct my energy toward what matters, instead of wasting it on things that don't. I'm going to finish my Trelian sequel by March 1, which is my new deadline and which CANNOT be missed if I want the book to come out when it's supposed to. I'm going to finish the first draft of another novel that I'm working on, hopefully by July. I'm going to fix up my apartment, and paint and get curtains, and I'm going to cook more and try not to spend money like a crazy person. I'm going to exercise more, but it's going to be ok if that takes the form of long walks listening to audiobooks instead of my former ideal of going for runs and rejoining the gym.

I read David Small's Stitches last night (some of the reading for rez that I *did* finish) and by the end I was feeling pretty silly about some of the things in my life that upset me. Seriously, my life is pretty ok, more than ok, and some people have Real Problems and sometimes it helps to remember that and try to put things in perspective. Not that my life is all candy and roses by any means, and of course some things are going to get me down, but there are also many things in my life that I need to remember to be grateful for on a regular basis.

Anyway. I should get up and go do things now, for real. Need to pick up a package at the post office and stop at the bank for laundry and vending machine quarters for school, and pack and pack and transfer files to my laptop and update my iPod and everything else. I doubt I will post anything while I'm away, but if you're interested in getting a glimpse of the goings-on at the residency, VCFA alum Tami Brown will be posting at Through the Tollbooth, and Cynthia Leitich Smith will be tweeting VCFA faculty quotes on her Twitter page.

Bloggety Blog

There probably ARE people who blog less often than I do out there, right? I mean, even excepting all those people who do not actually have blogs. Once again, I am here to promise to do better. And now I will tell you all about how busy I have been and will continue to be and thereby lay the foundation for future infrequent blog posting.

I don't even remember where I left off. I will go check. *Consults previous post* Oh, right. Baltimore Book Festival! It was great. Had a lovely time reading Library Lion and an excerpt from The Dragon of Trelian, and signed some books and chatted with lovely authors and illustrators and bookstore people. And I bought a shirt from these nice folks. Then I spent a couple of days with my nice friends Bridey and Joe and little Evie, and went to Evie's third birthday party at a FARM with a PETTING ZOO and there were CHICKENS and BABY GOATS and OTHER FUN ANIMALS. I gave Evie books for her birthday, of course.

Last weekend I went back to Baltimore for the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association conference, which was awesome. I went two years ago when Library Lion received the 2007 NAIBA Children's Picture Book Award and once again I had a great time. Booksellers are really nice, fun people. And they love books. And there were other nice publishing types and authors and illustrators there as well, and I got to talk to people about the novel and hear about other authors' books and generally just had a wonderful time. Plus I scored so many free books that I had to send a box home from the hotel. Yay!

In other news, I am continuing to work on the sequel to The Dragon of Trelian, the first draft of which will be finished by the end of the year. And I'm still working on my critical thesis for my MFA, which will also be finished by the end of the year, but hopefully sooner—say, by my next packet deadline, which is November 10. ALSO working on a new YA novel for school, which started out great and fun and exciting but has been less great lately...still trying to figure out what the deal is with this story.

What else...on October 17 I will be at the Mandell School Book Fair, and on October 24 I will be reading Library Lion to help celebrate the opening of Brooklyn's new Greenlight Bookstore, and on October 31 I will be reading from The Dragon of Trelian while dressed as a princess at the New York Public Library Shop at the NYPL main branch. And on November 7, I will be at the FABULOUS Rochester Children's Book Festival in Rochester, NY, which is my favorite event to go to every year. This time I'll be doing a joint presentation with Rebecca Stead in addition to signing books and talking with kids and parents and teachers and other authors and anyone else who comes out that day! If you are in the area you should definitely come. This is the 13th year of the festival, and it just keeps getting better and better.

And then on December 12, I'll be reading and signing books at the Elmira Barnes & Noble in Elmira, NY.

And because I apparently did not already have enough on my plate, I am in the ensemble of the Village Light Opera Group's fall production of Starship Pinafore. You should all come see it, because it will be AWESOME and a lot of fun. If you know me personally, you can email me directly for tickets. Otherwise, you can get them online here. Performance dates are:

Friday, November 13 at 8pm
Saturday, November 14 at 8pm
Friday, November 20 at 8pm
Saturday, November 21 at 2pm
Sunday, November 22 at 2pm

And, as always, I have been playing lots of Facebook Scrabble and reading lots of books. (If you are curious about what I'm reading, you can always check out my reading list on Goodreads.)

And I suppose that is enough for this update. I should get back to work!

Hello and pelicans and interview and things

Yikes - more than a month since my last post. Busy, busy, as usual.

But you know, I've been thinking that maybe it's not such a bad thing that I don't post more often. Whenever I fall behind on reading other people's blogs, I am always a little distressed to see 12 or 34 or 119 new posts waiting to be read on each blog I follow. Sometimes it's nice to see that only one or two posts have gone up while I've been too busy to read regularly. So maybe it's nice for anyone out there reading this blog to know that if you don't check in every day, you're not going to miss tons and tons of posts. I am the intermittent blog reader's blogger!

Anyway. Now that I'm here, quick update.

Just got back last night from a lovely vacation in sunny, sunny Florida with my nice boyfriend. We visited his friend Erin there, and had a great time. Here is a picture of me, in Florida:



There are lots of pelicans in Florida. They are cool, but also kind of creepy up close. They often look as though they are sizing you up for possible ingestion.


While I was in Florida, I stopped in at Haslam's Book Store, which is huge and wonderful and if you are in the area, you should go there. I happen to know there is a signed first edition of Library Lion waiting for you! Or at least there was, as of several days ago, when I signed it. They sell both new and used books. I bought a choose-your-own-adventure-type Dungeons & Dragons book from 1983 called Dragon of Doom. I am very excited to read it. I used to love those choose-your-own adventure stories. And with a dragon theme...well, it seems just up my alley. :)

I am now getting ready to head out again on Saturday for my next residency at The Vermont College of Fine Arts. I'll be kicking off my third semester in the program, and am very excited to see my VCFA friends and find out who my next advisor will be!

While I was away, Amy Kraft of Media Macaroni posted her recent interview with me. You can see it here, and there are some additional questions and answers on the Hooked on Phonics blog. There's a photo of me in the Media Macaroni interview that shows my dragon tattoo. (Nope, it's not Jakl - a lot of people ask me that!)

Amy and I actually sat down and talked in PERSON. It's the first interview I've done in a long time that wasn't conducted over email. It's harder to make your answers sound smart when you have to just, you know, SAY them, on the spot. But Amy asked such great questions and it was very fun to chat with her. Also, there was iced coffee.

OK - I am supposed to be doing a million things to get ready for school. But I wanted to check in because it had been so long, and also to let people know about the interview!

I hope you're all having a great summer so far. I probably won't post again until late July. So don't worry if you are going on vacation and will be away from your blog reader for a while. I won't get too far ahead of you, I promise. :)

Excuses

Real life continues to interfere with my efforts to post things here with any kind of regularity. What are my excuses this time? Here you go:

1. My poor cat has been in and out of the hospital over the past two weeks, first because she ate an enormous piece of string for some reason (like, the biggest piece of string EVER) and had to have surgery to get it out of her intestines, and then because she became super-sensitive to her insulin during her recovery and went into insulin shock and nearly died. Oh and also her incision is infected. BUT the good news is that she gets to come home this evening, and I will hang out here with her as I deal with my second-most stressful blog-interfering item, which is:

2. My final packet deadline of the semester. The cat drama really set me back, and so now I am racing to get everything finished. My revisions are done, but I'm still working on my new pages and my essay. I'm a little sad that the semester is almost over; it has been so awesome working with Cynthia and I will miss having her thoughtful eye on my work and receiving her encouraging comments. I feel really good about the progress I've made this semester, though, and I'm actually almost sort of looking forward to working on my critical thesis starting in July. (I'm sure I'll feel differently once I'm actually in the thick of it, though. CT definitely = kind of scary.)

3. I also got called for jury duty, but luckily only spent the one day (Thursday) and was then dismissed. If the timing had been better I think I would have liked to serve on a jury. The selection process was really interesting, and I'm sure the trial would have been even more so. Oh, well. I'll get another chance in 8+ years.

4. Oh and BEA was here in the mix, too.

5. Plus there's all the rest of the regular life stuff, like cleaning my apartment and finding things to eat for dinner and trying to get outside for walks once in a while and occasionally getting to see my friends. But that stuff is always there, of course.

OK. I suppose I should try to get back to work, assuming I can manage to block out the ridiculously loud music pumping in through my closed windows. I like my neighborhood, but nice days on the weekend = very loud outdoor BBQs and I suppose I really am going to have to get myself a pair of noise-canceling headphones if I'm going to get anything done this summer.

C is for...Cookie?

Julie Larios, VCFA faculty member and poet and goddess of the inspiring challenge, recently posted about a blog-challenge going around in which you are assigned a letter of the alphabet and then must post a list of 10 things you love that begin with that letter. She volunteered to assign letters to anyone else who wanted to play, and I was given the letter C. Now that my second packet for school has been sent off and I actually have a few minutes to post something, please allow me to present my C-list:


1. Cats. My cat (Cleo, another C!) in particular and also cats in general. My family always had cats growing up, and while I like dogs too, I am definitely a "cat person." They are cuddly and cute and sure, they can drive you crazy, but don't the ones we love always make us a little nuts? Even when Cleo is contrary to the point where she makes me want to cry, all it takes is a few minutes of her curled up with me on the couch, and all is forgiven.


2. Coffee. A delicious over-sweetened cup while I'm sitting at the computer in the morning: complete contentment.

3. Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Surely this needs no explanation.


4. Creatures, especially of the mythological kind. Dragons, centaurs, unicorns, manticores, hippogriffs, what-have-you.


5. Children. The ones I write for; the ones that belong to nice friends, old and new; and the ones I am lucky enough to be honorary "Aunt Mikki" to (Hi Maddie, Sophie, Emily, Alex, and Evie!).

6. Computer games. Even though I'm on temporary hiatus (trying not to cave and get a new, supercharged video card until after I'm done with my MFA), I have very fond memories of hours and hours and hours spent at my computer playing role-playing fantasy adventure games like Fallout and Neverwinter Nights. I hear I am totally missing out by not playing Fallout 3 right now. I believe it. It is very hard to resist. When I play the D&D-style games, I am usually some sort of combo character, so I can fight and use magic—I can never choose just one specialty, which means I never fully realize any particular set of skills...but choosing just one is hard, when there are so many cool options available.

7. Cereal. I used to have a real problem with cereal—like, I would eat three bowls at a time—but I've got it more under control these days. Still love it, though. I try to eat relatively healthy cereals for breakfast, but I almost always have some Frosted Flakes on hand for emergencies. When absolutely required, I will go to the corner store and get some Lucky Charms. And I have a deep nostalgic love for Smurfberry Crunch.


8. Chinese food. My go-to take-out option and one of my top two comfort foods of choice (the other is Italian food, which is probably my top favorite, but that doesn't begin with C). I especially like chicken chow fun (usually with snow peas but no other vegetables) and fried rice and egg rolls. You know, the classics.

9. Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt, from my good pals Ben & Jerry. Okay, I guess this is really my top comfort food option. I have to make myself stop buying it. I crave it pretty much all the time, though, and get a little thrill every time I see that green-rimmed little container in the freezer section at the store. My favorite way to eat it is with chocolate syrup and chopped walnuts. (Actually, my VERY favorite way to eat it is with oreo cookies smushed up in it, but that way lies madness, and I never go there except when suffering serious illness or broken heart.)


10. And finally...yes, cookies. Oreos are my favorite packaged variety. My favorite bakery variety are the chocolate chip walnut cookies they used to have at the Ithaca Bakery, until one day they told me they were no longer making them. I hope they have since come to their senses. I will check the next time I'm up in Ithaca, which will hopefully be this spring. If I bake cookies, which does not happen very often, my favorite kind to make is cranberry oatmeal. Although you can never go wrong with good old-fashioned Nestle Tollhouse, either.


11. Can't believe I almost forgot one of my favorite C animals - chickens! Plump, cluck-a-licious bundles of white fluffy goodness. Okay, yes, I know not all chickens are the fat white blobs that I love so much, but some of them are, like my favorite children's book chicken, Minerva Louise. Also when I lived in Lansing, NY, there was a house I used to pass sometimes that had bunches of those perfect fat white chickens running around on the lawn. They made me very happy. :)


If anyone out there would like to play, let me know and I'll assign you a letter!

as usual

Behind on blogging, writing, and everything else. Today I had a four-item list of things I wanted to do. Most were biggish things—making a plan of attack for the rest of packet 2, finishing getting my tax stuff assembled for my rescheduled tax appointment, dealing with some of my email backlog—but still, only four. So far, at 7:26pm, I have only crossed out the one small item on the list, which involved making a quick phone call. Sigh.

I did accomplish some other stuff today, including a couple of things that had been hanging over my head for a while and were good to get done. But I keep putting off the two main things I need to address—packet and taxes—and I know that I just need to stop jumping around to other things and focus already. FOCUS, ALREADY! They're both just so big and overwhelming. Well, actually, I did the worst of the tax stuff already, I think, so that won't even be so bad to just finish up. But the packet stuff is so...much. Hard to get my head around all the stuff I need to do. Which is exactly why I need a plan of attack. Especially since I was totally sidelined for the past week with what I believe was the very first time I have ever had the flu. (It was extremely unpleasant. I do not wish to repeat the experience. Ever.)

While I wasn't doing the big things I needed to do today, I joined Twitter. Not sure yet how I feel about that, but it seemed to be time. Lots of VCFA types on there, and you can follow VCFAwriters as a group if you would like to hear about all the great things VCFA students, faculty, and alumni are up to.

Oh and also—last Sunday was my birthday. Had a lovely Italian dinner with good friends the night before, which turned out to be good timing since the flu took me down out of the blue on Sunday night.

OK. Update achieved, I guess. Still time to make progress on my list. Focus, focus, focus. Srsly!

bad day :(

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.

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!

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!

Um, August?

Okay, so I kind of skipped August. Here's what happened: I did some writing, I did some reading, I tried to win tickets online to see Hair with my friend Steph but we never won, I went to the gym, I made a difficult decision and later reversed it, I received loving care and attention from friends, I went out, I stayed in, I stressed about Packet 2 (that part is still ongoing), I saw Hellboy 2 (so good!), I bought new earrings, I got two MRIs (but apparently I'm fine), I visited the library several times, I cooked bluefish from the farmer's market in my grill pan and it was delicious, I ate too much frozen yogurt, I made good use of Netflix, and as the month wrapped up I had a wonderful weekend off the coast of Maine with some very lovely people.

So far September has been mostly about writing/reading stress and getting ready to visit my dad in Oregon next week. I've still got another essay and many more pages of my novel-in-progress to write before Monday morning. So clearly it was time to procrastinate by updating the old blog here.

I should probably get back to work, though. Just popping my head up to say hello.

July 2008 Update

So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Maybe I should be shooting for once a month. Ah, well. It's not like blogging is the only thing I'm not doing as much of as I would like. (Hello, writing, reading, exercising, cleaning my apartment, spending quality time with friends...)

I'm a little over a week into re-entry after my first residency at The Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was everything everyone said it would be, and more. Met some wonderful people (you can visit some of them online - see the list of VCFA peeps in the right-hand column); attended excellent lectures by faculty, visiting writers, and graduating students; received wise and helpful guidance from my awesome workshop group on two picture book stories I have been struggling with; enjoyed the (mostly) lovely Vermont weather; and was introduced to the addictive anagram game Snatch, which promises to haunt me for years to come. I was also assigned my advisor for the semester: Uma Krishnaswami! I am so looking forward to working with her for the next several months. Now I just have to actually stay on top of all that work... I've got 20 to 40 pages of creative work and two critical essays due August 12, not to mention tons and tons of reading.

I'm starting a new middle-grade novel for my semester project, and will be working on some new picture books as well. I'm also hoping to continue work on two other novels in my, uh, spare time (hahahahahahahahahaha)—a sequel to The Dragon of Trelian and a new, unrelated fantasy novel. Wish me luck. Wish me lots and lots and lots and lots of luck. Please.

In other news...Library Lion has been nominated for another state book award! It's the 2009 Nevada Young Readers' Award in the picture book category. Hooray!

And...I sold another picture book to Candlewick! It feels too early to share details, but I am very excited. I will post more about this when it feels appropriate.

So, with everything I've got on my plate, I have no idea how often I'll be able to post, but I'll try to pop my head up whenever I can. Hope everyone out there is having a good summer and doing fun things and enjoying life in general. :)