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!

whiny and growly

If there's a fly in my apartment, doesn't my cat have a responsibility, an obligation, to chase that thing down and catch it? She should be running after it with her eyes all wide and crazy and her mouth making little unconscious chewing motions. Instead she just lies there on the floor, kind of glancing up with annoyed disinterest whenever it buzzes by. I have tried urging her on with both supportive words and general mockery, but to no avail. Some predator. Lazy thing.

Of course, I can't really throw stones in the laziness department, since I have done pretty much nothing but lie on my couch for the past couple of days, nursing this horrible cold. It may actually be a sinus infection at this point; it's starting to look that way, anyway. I got sick on my last day in Oregon, where I was visiting my dad, and have been feeling pretty awful ever since. And the timing is not very good, because I have tons of writing work to do. I have enough resistance to writing when I'm healthy; when I'm sick like this, the thought of actually trying to be creative is almost painful to contemplate. Pretty much everything becomes almost painful to contemplate. I turn into a big baby. To be fair, it's a really bad cold/sinus thing... we're not talking a little bout of the sniffles here. I actually threw my back out coughing yesterday morning. And my head is all heavy and yucky and I'm generally just feeling weak and gross and unable to muster much energy for anything other than pressing the buttons on the DVD remote.

Waaah. See? Big whiny baby. And I'm missing out on all kinds of fun social things this week, including some live music tomorrow night with someone I'd been looking forward to seeing. I suppose it's possible I'll wake up feeling 100% improved tomorrow morning, but somehow I doubt it. (In addition to whiny, being sick makes me grumpy and pessimistic. Grrr.)

Anyway. Oregon was great, and it was good to see my dad and some old and new friends while I was out there.

I haven't posted any photos on here in a while... here's one of my dad and me at the International Rose Test Garden in Portland:



Back to whining: there is some sort of pep rally or something going on at the school a few blocks from my house, and there is lots of VERY LOUD drumming and shouting going on. I am all for school spirit, but it's been going on for hours and it's one more obstacle to actually being able to concentrate on reading or writing or anything else productive that I should be trying to do. GRRRR!

My next due date for school (Packet 3!) is October 7, and I've got 30-40 pages to write on my novel, plus tons of reading, one new essay to write, and one old essay to revise. I have not yet started any of these things, except a tiny portion of the reading. And I don't really know where the novel is going, which complicates the whole "write 30-40 pages" thing. But my advisor gave me some very helpful comments, and permission to jump around in the timeline, which makes me feel a little less anxious. It also means having to trust that eventually all the jumping around will work out and I'll be able to work everything into one coherent narrative... but that's the part of writing that I always have trouble with, the trust and the acceptance that there will be lots of revising, and no matter how clean and right I try to make the first draft, revising is PART OF THE PROCESS, and not punishment for not getting it right the first time or in any other way something to try to avoid. Revision is where the real book comes together. I know this, intellectually; I just need to keep working toward truly accepting and believing it.

As my VCFA friend David has said: Hail the process!

I am trying.

And now all I can hear is Yoda's voice in my head: No. Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.

[And after Yoda frees the X-wing from the bog...]

Luke: I dont- I don't believe it.

Yoda: That is why you fail.

Sigh.