Kristen Lippert-Martin

'Catch & Release' Giveaway Winner!

2012-02-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

I know there’s going to be some embittered muttering at the back of the room when I announce the winner of the book giveaway contest. One of you will win Blythe Woolston’s Catch & Release, and the rest of you will just have to console yourselves at the bar with your conspiracy theories about how the whole thing was rigged from the get-go.

But, alas, there can be only one.

No, not the Highlander. (I wonder what Adrian Paul is up these days…)

OK, so without further ado.

The winner, as selected by the Random Number Generator, is:

ElyssaJK !!!!

Elyssa, I shall send you the book just as soon as you send your mailing address to kalmdown (at) Verizon dot net.

Now everyone else make nice and congratulate her. And don't put your hand out to shake like you're going to be a good sport and then at the last minute pull your hand back and say "Psych!"

Just say, "good game," and move along. Then go out and buy Blythe's book to carry around with you so everyone knows you have good taste.

Catch & Release Release Giveaway!

2012-02-01T06:00:00.038-05:00

No, that isn’t a typo even if spellchecker thinks it is. Sometimes you gotta just tell spellchecker to take its know-it-all algorithms and bugger off.

So here it is, February 1, 2012, and that can only mean two things: the usual, raucous Groundhog’s Day Eve parties AND the release of Blythe Woolston’s latest book, Catch & Release!

Blythe is a super talented, Morris Award-winning, smarty pants YA writer, who, as we’ve learned on previous occasions at this very blog, does not live in a missile silo, does not write her books with her feet, and does not like bears. (Dear God, there are so many inside jokes in that sentence, even I don’t know what I’m talking about.)

Let’s have a taste of the yummy chocolate coating on this new novel (aka the jacket flap copy):

Polly Furnas had The Plan for the future. Get married to Bridger Morgan, for one. College, career, babies. Etc. All the important choices were made. It was all happily-ever-after as a diamond-ring commercial.

But The Plan did not include a lethal drug-resistant infection. It did not include 'some more reconstruction and scar revision in the future.' And it certainly did not include Odd Estes, a trip to Portland in an ancient Cadillac to 'tear Bridger a new one,' fly fishing, marshmallows, Crisco, or a loaded gun.

I know, I know. That sounds awesome, and you totally and utterly want it. *shakes grasping reader off pant leg*

So let’s get to this book giveaway then.

"A coelacanth?! You shouldn't have!"

Leave a comment below for your chance to win. Simply write the name of your favorite fish, either to eat or watch swim around. (Mine? The coelacanth.) Or you can simply state your desire for Blythe’s new book in any effective, slavish way you wish: “WANT BOOK GIVE NOW” would work perfectly well, for example.

Make sure you leave some kind of contact info, either your blog address or your email. I’ll pick a winner at random and announce it in a few days.

Just think, if you win, years from now when you’re sitting in your room at the cut-rate nursing home--because you’re probably a writer and God knows you don’t have a decent pension or any pension at all, really--and some relatives come to visit you on your birthday, because, you know, they felt they had to, purely out of a begrudging sense of guilt, and they dragged one of their teenagers along who is so, so beyond not into being there, but that teenager gets bored and starts pawing through your belongings so as to avoid having to talk to you, and then exclaims, “Why, Aunt Fezziwig, I never knew you had a first-edition copy of Blythe Woolston’s Catch & Release! That’s a classic! And do you know how much that thing is worth? Yay! The hydroponic farm is saved!”--why, you're going to be the hero of the day.

Don’t you owe it to your future self, friends, and family to enter? I think you do.

Remember to click on the post title to get the comment box to come up. Commence contest entry in 3-2-1….GO!

A Dull But Happy Girl

2012-01-26T16:49:00.000-05:00

All work. No play.

That's me. That's been my January.

I swear, I feel like a freshly reamed orange.

I noticed how squeezed out I've been feeling when I went onto Twitter this morning. Normally I like to play on the Twitters before I get down to work each day, but the last few weeks, I got hardly nothing to say. I mean, I used to be good for the occasional witticism or trenchant observation on today’s most pressing issues, but lately my tweet stream is, like, a double helping of duh.

I hope this is actually a good sign. Annie Dillard says in The Writing Life that writers have this tendency to come up with ideas and want to save them for later. We think we can imagine something--a character, a turn of phrase, whatever it might be--and put it in the literary larder for future use. But, no, she says we should use it up now. Today. Don’t save it. Put it down on the page. Use yourself and all your ideas up and then make some more.

So I hope that’s what I’ve been doing. Using my ideas up and anything that could conceivably be considered a leftover. I'm well aware that Twitter has and will continue to carry on perfectly well without me.

Can I just say that I love times like these?

And you? How’s your winter hibernation proceeding?

Artist Unknown

2012-01-10T11:45:00.000-05:00

I’ve mentioned my crazy, ramshackle house before, specifically the abundance of awful wallpaper and the monumental,embittering efforts it took to remove all of it.

Because APPARENTLY people applied wallpaper with rubber cement back inthe day, thereby sentencing future generations of homeowners to eighth-circle-of-hell type labors that take up years of weekends. YEARS. Scraping and scraping and scraping like soulless dogs doing penance for crimes unknown.

(Obviously I've let my anger go.)

The family who owned this place for sixty-odd years beforewe bought it had four children and at some point--the early 1960s would be a good guess--theyinstalled an elaborate system of intercoms. Every room has an intercom (none of which still work). I’m sure it must have been cutting-edge at the time.

They also had a live-in maid. Or rather, as the story goes, a series of young,African-American maids trucked in from the Deep South, none of whom wereprobably older than twenty.

I assume the intercoms were to call the maid? Maybe? I’venever had a live-in maid (well, I mean, other than myself) so I’m just guessingthat’s how it worked. Having lived here now for more than five years, I'm not convinced that the intercoms were even remotely necessary. It’s not like the house is so huge that calling out, “Hey, Mary, bring me a sandwich!” wouldn’t have workedperfectly well. This is why I assume the former owners must have been very formal people who mostly stayed in their rooms, operating intercoms as the need arose andotherwise not speaking.

The "bedroom" where the maid slept was in the basement, and I use quotes because calling this “bedroom” a bedroom is a stretch. It’s five-and-half feet by about six-and-a-half feet and has a very low ceiling. It’s acloset, really. It can’t have held anything more than a single bed and maybe a smalldresser. We use it to store the Christmastree stand and decorations and all that.

I’ve joked many times that my dream office would be in abunker, with walls so thick, Saddam Hussein would have envied them. See, my children,they find me, especially when I work. Normally I don't write on the weekends, but I’ve been trying to geta first draft done, and so I’ve been taking my laptop and slinking off, hiding here and there throughout the house, grufflyrebuffing whoever comes to the door. But they always find me. I'm like a writing fugitive. I never know when my time will be up.

Well, duh, it finally occurred to me that if I shifted some stuff around and setup a table and chair down there in the maid’s room … voila! Instant writingbunker! The kids don’t like to go down there because the maid’s room is in the dark, spidery part of the basement. Its gloominess is probably why, at some point, one of the maids who was lodged there drew a reproductionof the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on the walls.

For serious. At one point, all four walls were filledwith pencil drawings, and I guess the former owners of our house weren’t toothrilled about it so they painted over her mural with the exception of the wall pictured above.

Some days I feel like moping about the long journey topublication. Please. What about her? I don’t know her name or what became of her,but when I imagine her sitting in that basement room, alone, drawing and sketching after answering intercoms all day...yikes.

She filled a basement room with pencilsketches of religious paintings. Talk about yearning. I got nothing on her.

Mine!

2012-01-03T10:21:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, my lovelies!

I know one is supposed to make resolutions to improve one's self to mark the new year, but pffft to that. I’m going a different way in 2012—with a resolution of selfishness. And here it is: No one but no one will lay a finger on my new pens.

You see them over there? They are My Preciouses. Each one special and unique and not to be used by anyone but ME without permission, and I can assure you that that permission will never, ever be given.

See, a couple years ago I went to this event where they did a gift exchange thing, and I ended up getting this stack of fancy lady note paper and a fancy lady pen. At first I dismissed this fancy lady gift as fanciful, thinking, what am I going to do with this? Write notes to myself?

“Dearest Kristen: Smashing job today revising chapter eleven for the sixty-eighth time, darling! I think you really got it this time! Brilliant!"

Well, let me tell you, I soon fell madly and hopelessly in love with the fancy lady pen I received, and I forbade any sticky-fingered, Cheerio-eating, ne’er-do-wells from using it, which turned out to be an edict frequently and wantonly broken. Despite practically foaming at the mouth about my pen and no one being allowed to touch it, my beloved pen would still, inexplicably, migrate to locations around the house without my knowledge or consent, and over time, it even acquired a few bite marks that were not my own. Let me tell you, I want other people’s bite marks on my pen about as much as I want other people’s bite marks on my arm. I almost tied my pen to my desk with a string to prevent future thievery, but then I came to my senses and recognized that adopting a practice commonly used at most DMVs was the wrong way to go. No, instead I knew I should just keep up with the constant threats of bodily harm. Also, I may have intimated to one or two of my kids that I was going to change her name to Eunice. ("I can do it, you know. Just a quick trip to the county courthouse, a little bit of paperwork, and boom, you're Eunice Hildegarde for the rest of your natural life!")

Well, can you believe that for Christmas I got three of these fancy lady pens from Santa? Yeeeessss. So shiny, so lovely, so utterly and unequivocally MINE.

And NO ONE IS TOUCHING THEM.

Or else, or else, or else I swear I’ll … I’ll—oh, I don’t know. I’ll do something. I’m running out of legitimate things to threaten people in my household with, which is why I’ve graduated to more and more ridiculous fear-mongering techniques, like walking around with a pillowcase full of doorknobs at all times.

What’s your favorite thing on your desk that no one is allowed to touch?

*Update: I'm feeling much better about all this business. Thank you all for your wonderful comments on my last post. They really cheered me up a lot. You are extremely awesome. Yes, I'm talking about you there, at your keyboard, in your leopard-print Forever Lazy.*

Just Another Long, Fly Ball

2011-12-13T09:41:00.000-05:00

I know you’re not supposed to talk about these things online, but I’m going to.

I’ve just had a big disappointment.

Big.

To speak plainly, I had a book on submission for almost a year, and now it’s no longer on submission.

Some of you know me and know more about what’s been going on behind the scenes. Let me just say thank you to all you awesome writer-buddies for your support and camaraderie. I know you know what this feels like. And to everybody who’s visited the blog and left comments this year, I thank you as well and apologize for not replying to comments as much as I should have. My energy, especially this past month, has been at an all-time low.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I withdraw from The Internets for a while and lick my literary wounds. The timing is right anyway since the holidays are almost here, and I’m sure, like me, you’ll soon decamp to your bucolic winter cabins in the Catskills to make mulled wine and popcorn strings with cherished family members, all of whom are wearing matching sweaters. (Oh, no, wait. That's the L.L. Bean catalog. I get that confused with my own life sometimes....)

For sure there are bigger tragedies in the world than not selling your book. But, still, it’s hard to see the ball go sailing for the fence and think you’ve hit a home run, only to hear the sound of it hitting the center fielder’s mitt at the warning track. Yep, it was just another long, fly ball.

I’m all right. I may be standing atop the smoking ruins of my hopes, but I’m still standing. And can I say that I’m actually kind of proud of myself? Weird, huh? Just two short years ago, I started this blog, barely able to publicly admit that I was a writer. I used to get physically ill when I so much as thought about writing a query letter. Why? Because I feared what would happen if I failed. What if I worked my heart out on something and it went down in flames?

Well, that’s where I am.

And you know what? It’s really not as bad as I thought it would be. So if you’re reading this and you’re in the same boat, seriously, it’s OK. Failure is just a step in the process. The Monday after I heard the final nail being banged into the coffin for my manuscript, I sat down at my desk and worked just like any other day. I'm writing something new that I’m excited about, and I’ll keep at it. What else can you do?

So there we have it. 2011 has left me older, wiser, and frankly, somewhat appalled, but I’m still feeling feisty.

Just wait 'til next year.

Mistaken Wisdom

2011-12-07T09:50:00.002-05:00

This is a wee bit embarrassing, but such is the stuff of blog posts, right?

So here’s the story.

At my kids’ school they’ve started this program to increase good citizenship and civic awareness. They’re encouraging kids to be more respectful and mindful of their behavior. You know, basically to have good manners and be polite to their fellow students and teachers. I have to say, it’s worked to some extent because I’ve noticed, for example, some kids actually holding the door for the kids behind them as they enter the school in the morning. This is something my kids could use help with because I tell you, I could be climbing the steps of Mt. Doom with Frodo Baggins on my back, trying to save the dang world from the forces of ultimate evil, and my kids would still walk ahead of me and let the door slam in my face as we went inside.

"Uh, kids, could you hold the door for me, please?"

So a couple weeks back, as part of this civic awareness program, they put up a motivational poster or two in the school lobby. The one that caught my eye said this:

Your attitude determines your attitude.

The first time I read it, I was like, whuh? Your attitude determines your attitude? And then I thought about it, and I thought, hey, yeah, that’s kind of true, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t have control over our circumstances all the time, but we do have control over how we approach things. People often think their attitudes fall into that category of “things I can’t help,” but they don’t. Attitudes are absolutely adjustable. I mean, your attitude may be the only thing that you do have a choice about.

Huh. That’s kind of a cool idea. And definitely a good message for kids, right? To let them know, hey, you have more power than you think you do.

The past month I’ve been thinking about this a lot because, for reasons I can’t go into, I’ve pretty much needed to recharge my positive attitude on an hourly basis. I swear, if I thought it might have helped, I’d have hooked myself up to the car battery with jumper cables by now. But tough as it’s been, I’ve muddled through, occasionally thinking about that banner.

My attitude will determine my attitude, I told myself. Yes, indeedy.

OK, so here’s where this delightful, inspirational tale would end except that this past Monday evening, I looked at the banner again for the umpteenth time, and I realized that what it actually says is, “Your attitude determines your aLtitude.”

Ooooohhhh!

ALTITUDE. Not attitude.

I wondered why there was a picture of a hot air balloon on there. I guess that banner is saying that your attitude will determine how far you go in life. Something like that?

OK, well, duh. Guess I got that wrong, but whatever. I think I like my erroneous interpretation better. It helped me get through the past few weeks even if I was mistaken about the message.

Additionally and obviously, it may be time for me to investigate the getting of glasses.

How’s your attitude this week?

Bail Out or Keep Going?

2011-11-30T14:33:00.000-05:00

If you’ve done any kind of endurance event—running, cycling, walking—you may be familiar with the concept of the SAG wagon.

It’s a car, sometimes a bus, also called the Sweeper. It rides along at the back of the race and picks up anyone who’s had to drop out due to fatigue, injury, or a shameful lack of intestinal fortitude.

Oh, and you can also get picked up if you’re still chugging along, but at the rate you’re going, you’ll finish long after sundown and even your mother has given up on you and wants to go home.

In the Tour de France, when you quit the race, they strip your number off almost as soon as you dismount your bike. You then climb into your team car, and that’s it. You’re done. On your team roster, next to your name, is written a single word: “Abandoned.”

Ugh.

ABANDONED.

What a horrible word.

I think there’s a point in writing every novel when you wonder if you should keep going or abandon. Maybe you’re tired of the story or you’ve got doubts about whether you’ll be able to finish it before the leap year after next. Whatever. There are lots of reasons to quit, and you can probably think of them all when you're staring uphill, panting and sweating.

Of course in writing, for better or worse, there is no SAG wagon gonna pick your sorry butt up if you bail out. And it’s probably fortunate that you can’t be DQ’d for going too slow because we’d probably all be sitting in the SAG wagon singing “99 bottles of beaujolais on the wall” right about now.

When I get that “I’m not gonna make it” feeling, though, there’s something lurking along the literary roadway, something that goads me on when I’m having a bad patch. I wish I could say it was inspiration, artistic drive, a passion for truth and beauty. But it's not.

What keeps me out of the SAG wagon is this: I simply hate not finishing something. HATE. IT.

And I’d feel like an especially big loser for quitting when I was more than halfway done. So unless I’ve got three broken clavicles that keep me from typing or a raging case of flesh-eating bacteria, I’m going to finish if it kills me.

So there. I guess shame is a pretty strong motivator for me. Or pride. However you want to look at it.

What about you? What gets you across the finish line when you feel like getting into the team car, going back home to your villa in Spain, and making excuses to the press all winter?

Meanwhile, In Other Dimensional Realms…

2011-11-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

This week I’ve been struggling against all manner of enemies, both foreign and domestic--OK, mostly domestic--in my attempt to get the words down.

Hey, that's the way it goes. Sometimes you can’t get the numbers on ye olde manuscript odometer to roll over, not for love nor money. Things get in the way.

But, you know, that doesn’t get me down too much. Because distractions and obstacles are part of life, and you need to plug away regardless.

Here. This about sums up the attitude I try to adopt every morning when I get to work:

CHARGE!!!!

The reason these small, everyday frustrations don’t bother me too much is that I know they’re nothing compared to the much greater obstacle I faced in the past, namely my own attitude toward writing and my lack of courage to just do it.

I can’t tell you how much time and energy I devoted to the subject of Should I Be Writing when I was in my 20s. Gah. So many, many journals filled with tremulous maundering on the question, “But what if I waste my entire adult life pursuing something I have no real aptitude for when I could have put those years to more productive use?”

Yup. That’s about the size of it. Thems the chances you take.

And then one day I decided to proceed even though, all things considered, yeah, it probably would be best if I didn’t. Because writing was what I wanted to do, and all the shoulds in the world weren’t going to change that.

Occasionally I think about what Alternative Reality Kristen is doing right now, in some other dimensional realm. That girl who overpowered her silly desire to write and got a law degree or some such thing. Maybe she’s got a closet full of power suits and terrorizes her assistant for failing to put the correct ratio of sugar to milk in her macchiato. Who knows?

Mostly, I feel sorry for her.

For this I have learned: you can live quite happily without your dreams ever coming true, but you can’t live happily without pursuing your dream at all. And if you’re going to fail, fine, but make the world say no to you, don’t say it to yourself.

You've got to be committed.

Exactly.

Like a crazy person.

What do you reckon your Alternative Reality/Non-Writer You is doing right now?

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Likeability

2011-11-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

Twice in the last month I’ve had occasion to be sitting in an audience, listening to a keynote address. Once at the SCBWI regional meeting a few weeks back. And again this past weekend when I attended a foodie event in D.C. featuring some Food Network celebrity chefs.

And lest you think, wow, that Kristen is livin’ large with all her conference/special event attending, I’ll just tell you that these two events were the only times in the last year that I was out for more than, like, 90 minutes. Seriously. The Junior Mint and his older sisters don’t often let me up for air. And to be honest, the only reason I went to either event was that my husband forced me to get out of the house and not come back for several hours or else he’d give me a whack with a pair of nunchuks.

So here’s the lesson I learned while at these two events: likeability -- you either gots it or you’re sunk. And if you don’t gots it, you better pray that I’m not in the audience with a laser pointer.

We’ll start with the keynote speaker at the SCBWI event, Han Nolan. She was fabulous.

Why?

Well, for one thing, she knew her audience. You know how we writers are. We’re a wretchedly envious lot, and here we’ve got this National Book Award winner, talking to us about perseverance. It would be very easy to alienate people in this situation because you’re basically going to tell them: “Here’s why I am so successful, and you may never be.”

But she was so human and likeable, and her stories were so relatable for any aspiring writer that she had the whole room groaning along with her as she told us about her early trials and tribulations. The one story I most remember was how she got a review for her debut that was so bad, she was certain her publisher was going to cancel the print run for her book as a result. Within five minutes, she had us all rooting for her. The hour flew by. She left me feeling inspired.

Now to my other example--the foodie event.

There I was, beaten-down mother of four who gets to go out about once every ten weeks, sitting in the D.C. Convention Center, anxiously awaiting a Certain Food Network Celebrity Chef, and the emcee says, “Before we bring out the person you’ve actually paid to see, I’d like to introduce a woman who’s going to talk about stuff you’re not interested in!”

Well, that’s what the emcee should have said because that’s what we got. This woman was basically the human equivalent of a pop-up ad.

Who was this person?

I’ll tell you who she was. She was trying too hard. She was rambling on and on about … what? Something about her website? No idea. I know she told some self-congratulatory story about having Martha Stewart over to her house for dinner and how it went so well despite how nervous she was. (I mean, who hasn’t been there, right?) After about 30 seconds, I began tuning her out, and the more she talked, the more I wished I’d brought a laser pointer so that I could shine it in her face.

Not that I would do that or advocate doing that because it’s childish and also illegal.

(OK, maybe I’d do it, like, once. But then I’d put the laser pointer away and pretend I didn’t know what security was talking about if they asked me, “Ma’am, did you just shine a laser pointer into that woman’s face?"

And I’d be all, “What! How dare you insinuate that I look like the kind of woman who would shine a laser pointer in someone’s face? I mean really. I’m the mother of four kids, for heaven’s sake.”)

Yeah, needless to say, this speaker had ZERO likeability. Not for a moment did I think she understood what her audience wanted nor did I believe she really cared. We were there for her, not the other way around, and she left me feeling like my time had been wasted. And that, my friends, makes me very, very cranky.

So an interesting comparison and yet another important reminder for when you’re writing: you need to create empathy, be sincere, and above all, know your audience if you really want to get your story across effectively.

AND.

I should be patted down at every conference I attend to make sure I’m not packing a laser pointer.

AND.

I really do need to get out more.

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Paranoia Pays Off

2011-10-27T13:45:00.000-04:00

There's nothing a paranoid person loves so well as when something bad actually does happen, just so he can say, "Yes! I knew these last few years of tin foil hat-wearing would pay off big someday!"

What am I talking about?

Total computer meltdown. Virusy mayhem. The sad, sorry badness visited upon my otherwise lily-white hard drive by casual, cyber-social intercourse.

You hear it all the time: back up your work. Without fail. And, you know, I heeded that advice so I have been spared Greek tragedy-level misery this week.

Of course, I backed up my stuff less because of a concern about a virus wreaking havoc and more because I've always feared my laptop being stolen, because, you know, I live in such a high-crime area. But still, one paranoid fear is as good as another.

But, seriously, I am ever so glad that I make a separate copy of all my work every day and keep it on a removeable drive because if I hadn't done that, I'd be cryin' in my pie* right about now.

(Actually, let's be real. It's not that I'm so good about following basic, common sense advice and more that I'm motivated by the fear of doing something painfully obvious that might have prevented a disastrous outcome. If I hadn't made a back-up and then whined about a virus laying my hard drive low, you know somebody would have said, "Well, did you back up your work?" And then I'd have to admit, no, I hadn't. Because I'm a blithe moron who deserves what I get.)

So just a friendly reminder to all of you out there. Make a back-up. Keep it separate from your computer. Do it every day. Wear your tin foil hat. Paranoia pays.

Oh, and let me just add that while it's incumbent upon all of us to take responsibility for protecting our precious files, I do hope whoever these people are who create these viruses someday enjoy a swim in the deep fat fryer of hell. They deserve it. Them and the people who don't pick up after their dogs and those ladies who tinkle on toilet seats in public restrooms and then look you in the eye as they exit the stall. You guys should all be turned into Satan's hushpuppies.

*Bogus Scottish expression. Feel free to use it.

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Obviosity

2011-10-18T10:53:00.000-04:00

I know at this point in my blogging career, readers have probably lost count of the number of things I’ve listed as literary pet peeves, but let me add this one: excessively quirky characters.

You know what I’m talking about:

Her name is Calliope and she’s a welder by day, an assassin by night. Her assassin’s weapon of choice? A spear gun! The darts of which have been dipped in radioactive curare! (Can curare be radioactive? I’ve never heard of that.) She loves mah-jongg, cranberry gelato, and dyes her hair a different color each day (Really? How does she have time to do that with all the assassinating and welding she’s doing?) She's on a mission to unearth the truth about her missing parents, both of whom were circus freaks/CPAs. (So they can, like, do my taxes while swallowing flaming swords or something? I'd actually pay extra for that, assuming they could get me a decent refund.)

Come on.

I think the reason for these sorts of over-the-top characterizations is that we authors are trying to avoid making obvious choices about what characters should be or act like.

I’m sympathetic. I am. Nobody likes to feel like they’re trotting out clichés at every turn. There have been many times I’ve taken out references or changed direction plot-wise because I decided I was being too obvious (read: lazy) in my narrative choices.

So, yeah, obviously one should avoid being too obvious. But let’s not swing too far in the opposite direction either. I’m sure we can all count on one finger the number of people we know who are internationally-sought-after computer hackers and also accomplished flamenco dancers.

Have you ever created something—a plot twist, a relationship, a setting—and thought, “Hmm. No, that’s far too obvious.” What did you do about it?

And since no one says the word, “Obviously,” like Alan Rickman, I leave you with this:

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Winner No. 2 of the BWB Blog Contest!

2011-10-05T12:00:00.007-04:00

Here we go again! Another video for you to watch.

Keen observers will note that there's an uninstalled toilet in the corner of the room where this video was shot ... long story there ... one that involves a plumbing upgrade that's still in progress. But anyway, let's just get to that video, shall we?

There we have it! Thanks once again to everyone who entered. A big thank you to Molly Jaffa and Katie Grimm for doing the critiques. And, of course, it was a pleasure, as always, to work with my very own best writer-buddies, Renee Collins and Angelina Hansen!

Oh, and speaking of Angelina, she'll have the last contest winner on Friday, 10/7. Don't forget to visit her blog to see if you won!

We've Got Our First BWB Contest Winner!

2011-10-03T12:00:00.001-04:00

Here we go, folks! The first winner of the Best Writer-Buddy Blog Contest!

Go ahead and press play (this is the first video I've ever made for the blog so I hope it comes out OK):

Yay! Thank you to everyone who entered. What awesome stories you shared.

Don't forget, the second winner will be chosen (by video drawing again -- yes, I'm mad with power) on Wednesday., October 5! Then the final winner will be posted at Angelina's blog on Friday, October 7!

I’m Stuck

2011-09-28T06:00:00.046-04:00

Yes, stuck.

Stuck like a rear-wheel drive car in a ditch next to the Erie Canal (I speak from experience on that).

No, it’s not writer’s block. I don’t really get writer’s block. I’m sure there are members of this family who WISH I did get writer’s block and then maybe I’d stop tapping away on the keyboard and throw the darn tennis ball to her a little more often.

But let’s face it, the dog has never been terribly supportive of my writing so there’s no surprise she’d be all bitter like that.

No, the reason I’m stuck is because I can’t blog about what I really want to blog about.

Trying to do a work-around post by merely alluding to things doesn't help much either. A couple of times I’ve started roundabout posts about what’s going on in my publishing quest so that I don’t break the rule about not discussing these things online, but inevitably the posts became so oblique that even I didn’t know what I was talking about. I’d start out with some metaphor for my current situation, and then next thing I know, I’m writing about fracking rights in Pennsylvania.

No, the fact is, I’m stuck, and I’m going to stay stuck a little while longer. But not forever. And I realize I’ve now been frustratingly elusive, so apologies for that, but I do feel better for talking about the things I can’t talk about.

Please, if you’re going to chuck something at my head for being so annoying, be a pal and do pick something soft that won’t leave a mark.

Thank you for your understanding.

OH! And don’t forget, you’ve only got a few more days left to enter the BWB Blog Contest.! Click here to find out more and to enter. The prizes are, like, beyond awesome. Remember that Oprah episode where she was telling everyone in the studio audience, “You get a car! And you get a car! And you and you and you! Everyone gets a car!”

Yeah, it’s not that good. But almost.

I'm going to announce the first winner on Monday, 10/3! Will it be you? I'll bet it will.

Total Eclipse of the Art

2011-09-21T15:31:00.000-04:00

Why do people think Total Eclipse of the Heart is a good song?

It’s not even an OK song.

It’s a truly, empirically-proven awful song.

Seriously. Researchers in Zurich tested this song at the molecular level and determined, “Zis song, eet sucks beeg time.”

Despite this, I see it pop up all over the place as if it’s an American standard. Most frequently on those shows like American Idol, America’s Got Talent, The X Factor, The Voice, Mega Karaoke Space Bus. All those shows where singers try to pick the biggest, balladiest tunes to showcase their pipes.

WHY???!!!!

I’m telling you, if you tried to torture me into believing Total Eclipse of the Heart was a good song, my last utterance before perishing from disembowelment would be, “I still think it suuuuucks.”

But OK, I know some people—a lot of people—like it. That's fine. I’m happy to be in the minority of people who know what good actually is. I'm also someone who hates pandas, so perhaps I'm just woefully out of step with popular taste.

I do think everybody’s got an example of this sort of thing. When you feel genuinely bewildered about what’s trending or can’t understand why people like something you don’t. Or more to the point, don’t like something that you love.

But what can you do? Your compass of taste and passion points where it points and you gotta follow. If you try to recalibrate your tastes, you're doomed to fail. And then you become a Taste Zombie, just following the herd, hoping for your next meal of brains, singing along with the rest of the zombie chorus, "Once upon at time there was light in my life, now there's only love in the dark...."

You don't want that to happen, do you?

Hard as it is to accept, if you keep writing long enough, you will have at least one project get crushed under the millstone of Popular Taste. I know I’ve got one, and I’m still not sure what to do with it. I guess I’ll wait and see if things change. Which is all I can do.

How about you? Have you ever set an oddball project aside or hoped the trend winds would change direction in your favor?

** Don't forget to click the post title to get the comment box to come up,

although keep in mind, you're only allowed to leave a comment

if that comment is "ZOMG, I hate that song too!" **

The BWB Blog Contest!

2011-09-14T06:00:00.014-04:00

How I wish I had a pair of those giant scissors they use at ribbon cutting ceremonies right about now!

And a giant ribbon, of course.

Because this blog contest deserves the kind of fanfare that only giant desk accessories can provide.

We all know how hard it is in this biz. To keep writing when you’re discouraged, dejected, demoralized, and all those other d-words that seem inevitable as you make your way along the dusty trail toward publication.

But when you’re feeling down or, worse, when you feel like giving up, here's your saving grace: your BWB.

That’s right, your best writer-buddy.

Your BWB is there to offer you a swig from her canteen at high noon. And suck the rattlesnake venom out of your leg. And not turn you over to a posse of vigilantes just to collect the reward money. In other words, your BWB has got your back, and you’re going to thank your BWB someday when you write your Acknowledgements page because you have pep talks that go something like this:

You: *sigh* I suck.

BWB: You do not suck.

You: No, it’s true. I suck greatly.

BWB: You stop that talk this instant. And don’t use adverbs. They’re bad for you. *whip crack* Now get back to work!

If it wasn’t for your BWB talking you down every once in a while, who knows where you’d be?

Well, to celebrate BWB’s everywhere, a couple of my comrades—the lovely Renee Collins and equally lovely Angelina Hansen—and I have put together this awesome blog contest for writers of YA and MG fiction.

How to Enter: In the comment section, tell us briefly (in 100 words or less) about your best writer-buddy and how she/he inspires and encourages you. If applicable, include a link to your blog as well as your BWB’s blog. Again, this is for YA/MG fiction writers only, but you can write in any genre: Contemporary, Historical, Paranormal, Not-paranormal, Somewhat Paranormal – anything. **To leave a comment/entry, click on the post title and the comment box will appear below.**

To Qualify to Win: Be a blog follower of mine, Angelina’s or Renee's, simple as that. You probably already are a follower anyway. ‘Cause you’re cool like that.

Winners: Each of us will choose a winner at random from the entries at our blogs. And, yes, that means that you have not one but three chances to win. Because you can go over to Renee’s blog and follow her (if you don’t already) and then to Angelina’s blog (and follow her as well) and leave comments/entries there.

Wear it with pride!

Prizes: Winners at my and Renee’s blog will each receive a query critique from our fabulous agent, Molly Jaffa of Folio Literary Management. The winner at Angelina’s blog will win a query critique from her agent, Katie Grimm with Don Congdon Associates. And here’s the good part, not only will winners receive a query critique, your writer-buddy will receive a copy of Cheryl Klein’s new book Second Sight AND both the winner and her writer-buddy will get one of these super cheesy, BFF half-a-heart pendants. Awwww!

I know, right?

Have you ever heard of more amazing amazingness?

Deadline: Entries must be submitted by Friday, Sept. 30 at midnight. Then we will announce the three winners the following week: one on Monday, 10/3; one on Wednesday, 10/5, and the final winner on Friday, 10/7.

I look forward to hearing your inspirational tales. And, yes, before you email to ask, you can absolutely write your entries in iambic pentameter.

Don't forget to click the post title to get the comment box to come up!

Cut and Print!

2011-09-07T06:00:00.060-04:00

Ta-da! The new blog design is tres, tres loverly, innit?

(That's right. I mixed French and British English. I can do that sort of thing. Because this is America.)

You have no idea how many hours of foolish messing about it took me to come up with this fairly simple blog renovation. I actually hit upon this design early in the process of redesign, but of course, me being me, I had to then go and try out sixty-seven other possibilities before I decided, “Eh, think I’ll go back to that first one.”

In my defense, my aesthetic is not easy to nail down. I have an unfortunate addiction to plaid shorts, for example. Can’t expect Blogger to support my peculiar notion of what looks good with a “Kristen, Who Likes Plaid Shorts, Will Like This Template,” now can I?

Make sure you click around and check out the tabs. Ivan the Muse will be very sad if you don’t look at his new page.

Well, that’s that then. Moving right along…

Here’s what I really want to talk about: When you’ve reached the end of your first draft or whatever you regard as your “final” draft (hahahaha – I love that term…final draft… it’s, like, the funniest concept ever), do you print out a copy to read it/edit it?

I do this, not so much because it affords me some special ability to see mistakes because, believe me, it doesn’t. That's because mistakes are mischievous, living things. Oh, yes, and they’re not only alive, they have a well honed sense of irony and clearly they hate writers' ever-living guts. That's why they only jump out from hiding in plain sight once you’ve dispatched your “final” copy to a reader, agent, editor, etc. That’s how they get their kicks.

No, it’s not for proofreading's sake that I print stuff out. It’s because of my all-too-human need to see what I’ve been working on in some final-ish form. Because once they're printed, those words on the page have to stay where I darn well put them. Which makes it easier for me when I pound them with my tiny fists and shout, “For the love of God, stay still, you little [expletive deleted because this is supposedly the blog of someone who writes books for children]!!!”

But here’s the horrible thought that just occurred to me recently. With the advent of electronic publishing and the very real possibility that there will be books that will never come out in paper format, we are in a position of NEVER BEING DONE. Don’t you see? With a paper book, once it’s done, it’s done. Printed. The words are immutable -- or pretty close to it. Changing them is a difficult and expensive prospect. With e-books? Heck, you can always go back and change them.

En followed by a thousand o’s.

Don’t you understand what this means, people? You will not only be the author of a book, but its eternal steward. The temptation to rewrite will never leave you because rewriting will remain a realistic possibility for the book’s entire life.

I’m telling you, look not into that abyss. 'Tis the way of madness and oblivion.

One last thing…*sniff, sniff, sniff* Do you smell that? That strange, sugary smell? Doesn’t that smell like you’re standing downwind of a BLOG CONTEST??! Tune in next week to see what that’s all about. There’ll be prizes. Oh, yes. There will be prizes.

Oh, and I'm afraid, despite all my fiddling, I still cannot figure out how to fix Intense Debate to show comments on the main page. So if you want to leave me a comment--and I hope you do--you've got to click on the post title. Then the comment box should come up at the bottom of the page. 'Kay?

Girl, That Blog is Lookin' Tired

2011-08-17T10:59:00.000-04:00

It’s become abundantly clear–to me, anyway--that I need to do some sprucing up here at the blog.

No, no. You’re sweet to say that. I appreciate it, but, you know, I’ve kind of let things go.

And I know I need more than just a sassy gay friend to come over with an armful of Gerber daisies to brighten the place up. De-cluttering and new throw pillows can only get you so far. They can’t work miracles.

Up until a few months ago, I was pretty happy with my blog as my public face. I liked my rocks up there on the header and my approach to blog content, which probably leaned heavily toward “ranty,” and “no clear focus, verging on anarchic,” and “literary equivalent of your loser cousin’s garage band.”

Now, though…. jeez. Something’s just not working for me. I feel like my blog got a bad perm at some point, and I didn’t realize how bad it looked until I saw a photo of myself from the back.

Things change, I guess, and I need to evolve, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Now here’s a big question: if you had it to do over again, would you include the "Followers" widget on your blog? I’m really torn about this. I can’t help staring at that number, you know? Wanting it to go up, wondering why it doesn’t. When I lose a follower, I wonder about it. It doesn’t, like, haunt my every waking moment by any means, but I do worry about it.

FREEDOM!!!!

I’ve always seen my blog as the only thing I had complete creative control over, and I wanted to use it to skip about, la-di-da-ing my way along. I wanted to post without worrying about how it was necessarily received. In other words, I wanted total freedom.

On the other hand, the reality is I do have to worry about what people think. There’s no getting away from criticism, and that "Followers" button is a measuring stick, no doubt about it. Might as well accept it.

What are your thoughts? How do you feel about the "Followers" thingamajig? Do you obsess over it or have you made peace with it?

I’m signing off for the last few weeks of summer, but not because I’ll be goofing off. I’ll be busy working and writing and having new drapes installed here at the blog. I’m planning a grand re-opening on September 7 so I hope you’ll stop by!

Yoda Can Stick It

2011-08-10T13:51:00.000-04:00

Here I am, four months into life as a mom to four kids, and several people have asked me, "Darling, brave, Kristen, what’s the big difference between having four kids versus three?”

Well, here’s what I can tell ya: With three kids, not surprisingly, a lot of stuff falls through the cracks.

With four kids, the cracks fall through the cracks.

Let’s discuss the phone in my kitchen for illustrative purposes.

It’s an old phone – not cordless -- and it has an answering machine integrated into it. I prefer to use this answering machine to take messages as opposed to the craptacular Verizon voicemail service I could use because, Oh, I don’t know, I’m one of those nutters who likes to actually receive my messages in a timely manner. Rather than on a four to six hour delay, which is how Verizon seems to operate. I’m pretty sure the state-run phone bureau in North Korea provides better service than that, but whatever.

Well, somebody – I’m not sure who and so far, nobody’s coming forward and fingerprint analysis has been inconclusive – knocked the phone off the wall, and when the phone hit the deck, the tiny plastic doohickey that holds the hand-set in place so it won’t fall out of the cradle broke off as a result. Then, before the plastic doohickey could be retrieved off the floor and replaced, thereby quickly restoring the phone to operational status, the dog ate it. I’m assuming she thought it was a cannellini bean, and, in her defense, it did sorta resemble one.

OK, so that pretty well took the phone out of commission because you could no longer hang it up, but I didn’t want to lose the voicemail capacity (see aforementioned reference to suckiness of Verizon voicemail), so I took a piece of duct tape and taped the phone into the “off” position.

You know, I’m sure I’m not explaining this adequately. Let’s just have a look at the actual phone.

(Yes, that’s green duct tape, suitable for holiday gift-wrapping after the regular Scotch tape is gone because your kids used it all up to tape pencils to together to make a nine foot long pencil snake.)

In the old, just-three-kids days, I probably would have gone out and gotten a new phone within five business days after it was rendered useless. But now? Well, here’s the thing, I just haven’t gotten around to it. It’s going on a month since the stupid phone broke, and still I don’t foresee getting to a electronics purveyor anytime soon. Maybe I’ll get to it next weekend. Or how about this? I’ll *try* to get to it over this coming weekend.

See, that right there is the crucial difference between having three kids versus four kids. I’ve become someone who says, “Yes, I’ll *try* to do that” or “I’ll *try* to be there at 2 pm…” I now use the word "try" when I talk about doing anything, because frankly, I can’t guarantee that a series of ridiculously unpreventable events won’t occur that will keep me from doing what I intend to do.

Yoda says, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Yeah. Well, stick it, Yoda. In my world there’s a whole lotta trying.

What have you been *trying* to do lately?

The Inspirational Strangeness of Strangers

2011-07-28T06:00:00.119-04:00

Before I begin this tale, you need to understand how absolutely beastly hot Washington, D.C. is in the summer.

By mid-July, you swear that if you hear the words hazy, hot, and humid strung together by a weather forecaster one more time, you’re going to pull a grenade pin with your teeth, cross yourself, and wait for the sweet release of BOOM.

And, sure, lots of places are hot in the summer, but even the hottest, steamiest of places, places where men catch gators off the sides of canoes with chicken legs for bait, offer an advantage over D.C. because the folks who live in them typically enjoy the freedom of a casual, more shirtless lifestyle. In D.C, dressing down at the office is not an option. You’ve still got be in work attire no matter what the thermometer says. So pretty much, once you’re three steps out the door in your nicely pressed suit, you’re wilting over like an unwatered tulip -- your head lying on the pavement, your tongue hanging out, your hair frizzed out so you look like a clown that’s been electrocuted in the bathtub (that last part may pertain only to me).

I mention this hot beastliness because it’s important you know this when I tell you about the woman I used to see as I walked to the subway.

Oh, and OK, there’s one other thing you should know: I was one of those dorks who used to wear sneakers with my work clothes as I commuted. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s the height of unstylishness, but listen, I had to walk 10 blocks to the subway and then another 10 blocks from the subway to my office and no way was I going to make it in heels, but judge me if you must. I accept your scorn as a fair and just punishment.

Anyway, nearly every day I saw this woman – she was probably in her late-forties – and like me, she also wore the sneakers with the work clothes. She invariably had on a suit – often a wool skirt and blazer – with a silky blouse and earrings and pearl necklace. Her hair was always styled and she wore a face full of make-up -- lipstick, eyeshadow, the works. She also carried this huge, fargin’ backpack. The kind of overstuffed backpack you see people trying to ram into overhead bins so they don’t have to check their luggage even though they’re traveling to New Zealand for six months.

And now here’s the kicker: she jogged to the subway every morning. Yes, jogged. In her suit and silky blouse and pearl necklace. In the Washington, D.C. swelter. Carrying a backpack the size of a Neapolitan mastiff.

The first time I saw her I figured she was late and rushing somewhere. But then I saw her day after day and realized that she was doing this jogging with a backpack and pearls thing on purpose.

“What the hell” didn’t even begin to describe my reaction to this woman.

I found this behavior so inexplicably odd that here it is, more than 10 years later, and I STILL wonder about that lady. Why was she jogging? What was up with the backpack? What kind of sweaty mess did she become by the time she arrived at her office each day? I’m assuming this behavior was a misguided effort at multi-tasking. Or maybe she was performing some kind of religious purification ritual. Alas, I’ll never know the real story.

There is a truism in writing fiction that if you insert something real, something nonfiction, in your story, it will somehow ring false. This is why I’ll never be able to use the jogging, pearl-wearing lady in anything I write. (Except for in this blog post, of course.)

I wonder all the time why people do what they do, and if I can’t get at the real story, I can’t stop myself from making one up to fill the vacuum created by my unsatisfied curiosity. Some days I think writing is just another form of nosiness. Either that or I’m justifying my nosiness with this whole, “I’m a writer” thing. I’m not sure which is more accurate.

How about you? Has any strange(r) behavior ever inspired your creativity?

Breaking Rocks

2011-07-20T06:00:00.001-04:00

It’s been that kind of week here, folks. Yes, indeedy. Lots of hard, hard work.

But I keep thinking about this quote* and it’s given me some much-needed inspiration:

Look at the stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before. -- Jacob Riis

Every swing of the hammer is meaningful, even if it doesn’t feel that way sometimes.

Carry on with your work now. And don’t forget to stay hydrated.

*this is the epigraph for Peter Mathiessen’s Shadow Country. It’s awesome, is it not?

At Least We've Got That Going for Us

2011-07-11T06:00:00.003-04:00

Bon Jour, mes amis!

I’m still fully committed to my schedule of erratic blog posts this summer, but I did want to share one small thought with you.

As I may have mentioned -- many times, while your eyes glazed over – I love the sport of cycling, and in the world of cycling, July is all about the Tour de France. Someday I’m actually going to get over there and ring my cow bell along the roadside of the Alpe d’Huez with a million drunk Dutch fans who’ve painted their entire bodies orange and run alongside the cyclists wearing little more than a Speedo, but for now I must watch Le Tour on TV.

So I’m watching yesterday’s stage, and I realize something about being a writer than hadn’t occurred to me before, and here it is: Writing as a profession is emotionally punishing, mentally taxing, and really, really bloody hard and all that, but in terms of your physical safety? Like, the chance that you’ll get injured on the job? Writing couldn’t be better.

Take a look at this video. This is what a bad day at the office looks like for a professional cyclist. (The audio is in Flemish, but you’ll get the idea what he’s saying)

Say what you will about our struggle to create and the endless waiting we do and the pain of rejection – at the end of the day, the chances of getting hit by a TV crew covering you while you’re working is pretty much negative 100 percent.

So take heart in knowing that no matter what happens this week while you’re writing, you’re probably not going to get pitched into a barbed wire cow fence.

There. Doesn’t that make you feel much better?

Endless Summer

2011-06-24T06:00:00.079-04:00

It’s June 24.

Do you know what that means?

It’s the last day of school.

Don’t even get me going on “where has the time gone” or “I can’t believe it’s the end of June already!” The last ten months have flown by at 186,000 miles per second, and now we're suddenly teetering on the brink of summer vacation. This means massive schedule changes for everyone here in the household.

I’ve kept up my weekly blogging pretty religiously, even after the Junior Mint was born in April, but now, even I, Master Tactician of Time Management that I am, must concede that I'm out-matched.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to do – maybe figure out a way to invent a 25^th hour in the day – but with four kids at home 24/7, the plain fact is, things are going to be a bit dodgy here until school starts up again in September.

So.

I’ve decided that I’m going to let things descend into happy chaos for the next few weeks (possibly longer). Yes, the grass is going to get a little tall here at the blog. The posts are going to be shorter and more sporadic. I’ve got a new WiP underway and what little time I’ll have to write, I’m going to spend on that. It’s kind of like on Star Trek when the captain shouts, “Divert all power to main shields!”

Power diverting, in progress. Stand by...

Yes, that’s what I’ll be doing. Diverting all my power to the WiP. I know you guys understand, especially my comrades with young children at home. Sometimes you've got to power through and carry on and all that. But sometimes you’ve got to dial it back and run through the sprinkler shouting “Freedom!”

I’ll still be on Twitter semi-daily. Hopefully we can chat over there (I’m @KlipMart – come on by and join in the fun). I’ll also still be reading blogs so keep up the good work, everyone. I hope to be a far better commenter than I've been in recent months.

Wishing you sunshine and popsicles until summer’s end,

Kristen

Before You Dig, Drill, or Blast

2011-06-22T06:00:00.047-04:00

Is this a reference anyone else gets?

I used to see “Before You Dig, Drill or Blast…” on bumper stickers and billboards as a kid, and I was like, “Who is doing this blasting or drilling or digging and why?”

Well, of course it was an advertisement for a 1-800 line that you were supposed to call if you were going to do any kind of construction work that involved excavation. God knows what epidemic of stupidity prompted the creation of this 1-800 line. The 70s must have been a time of serial disasters, with people routinely digging through buried electrical cables and accidentally disinterring septic tanks.

Also, as a kid, I recall something about calling “Miss Utility,” before you dig, drill or blast, which I thought was like Miss America. So I pictured this woman in a crown, answering the phone and guys in hardhats on the other end, their hands poised above detonator plungers, awaiting permission to blow stuff up.

In the same grand tradition of avoiding potential problems at the get-go, I ask you: When you get a shiny new idea, before you jump into it, do you research to see what else is out there that might be similar? Or do you just plow ahead and assume that your idea will be different enough that it won’t matter?

I do this with titles certainly. Some (potentially cool) phrase will pop into my head, and I’ll run it through The Great and Powerful Google to see what results. This was the case for my blog’s name. A search yielded this odd Japanese punk band, Rock in My Pocket, but I used the title anyway because of that "A" in front of Rock in My Pocket, which makes all the difference in the world in distinguishing me from them, don’t you think?

And speaking of that definite article, I’ve often thought I should change the name of this blog to AAA Rock in my Pocket, because that way I’d always be listed first in everyone’s Google Reader. I’m like a plumber or a cab service that wants to be first in the phone directory.

Oh, and seeing as I opened this post with a question about whether anyone knew what I was referring to, I have another genius idea: The Reference-o-Meter. It could help you determine how widely known something is before you reference it in your writing. The Reference-o-Meter could help us all, especially as we get older. For example, if you plugged in something like, “Who doesn’t love a good piece of liverwurst and some calliope music?” you’d get a very low reference score, and this would tell you that no one under the age of 98 would fondly remember liverwurst and calliope music so you might as well strike that reference out.

So. What were we talking about again?

Oh, yes.

Do you call the 1-800 line before you start drilling away writing something new? If you've encountered a project similar to yours, what did you do about it?

(Some of you have mentioned having difficulty leaving comments. Right now you have to click on the post title to get the comment box to come up. I’ve reinstalled Intense Debate three times, which has more than exhausted my patience with it. If I can’t figure out a way to fix this, I may return to the regular old Blogger comment system. [Do you hear that, Intense Debate? Get with it or Ima slap you good.])

Gimme Some Sugar

2011-06-15T06:00:00.041-04:00

Amazing the things that inspire a blog post. This week it's energy food.

The hubs and I dragged the kids to a pro men’s cycling event this past Saturday because we’re like that. Just substitute “cycling” for the word “religious” before the word “zealot,” and you’ll have some idea of our devotion to the sport. I’m sure the kids hated it, but that’s life.

(“You will ring that cow bell for those men in spandex! Ring it, I say! Ring it for all your worth!”

“But mother, I don’t understand the point of cycling! They just keep going around in circles, I can’t even tell which guy’s ahead!”

“Blasphemer! Get thee from my sight!”)

They were handing out samples of these new energy bars to spectators, and if you’ve ever done any cycling, running, hiking, etc. you know the dilemma with these things. Let’s face it, a Slurpee and a handful of marshmallows would give you quick energy just fine, but really what you’re looking for is healthy, nutritious energy. You want the “Look at me being so robust! Exercising! Eating compressed soy products!” thing, and OK, you also want a bit of chocolate to get that sucker to slide down your throat without coming right back up.

So this is what you’re trying to balance: nutrition and yumminess. Fortification and frills. But how much of each thing are you looking for? Are you the kind of person who wants more chocolate or more wheat grass? These are the questions we must answer for ourselves, and to each his own, right?

So this free sample we got was clearly going the healthier-than-thou route. It was touted as preservative free, nut free, kosher, and vegan. I think it was literally mashed up fruit and grain stalks pressed into bar form. Perhaps there was some binding agent like honey or tub caulk or whatever the heck they use to make those things chewy.

So what did we do with this free sample? We ate it. Because people will eat anything if it’s a free sample. I’m telling you, if you put it on the end of a toothpick, cut into bite-size squares, dipped in carob, people would eat uncooked goat brains.

And what did I think of this fine specimen of healthy energy food? The word ACK comes to mind. I must still have some of it in my molars because I can’t get the taste out of my mouth, even days later. That binding agent? I’m pretty sure it might have been manure.

Obviously, I’m not such a fan of the pure nutrition route and you know what? I realized that’s probably true about my taste in literature as well.

Ah, yes, there was a time when I wouldn’t read anything that wasn’t a meditation on death. Or meaninglessness. Or meaningless death. And if a book had a happy ending, bah! How can anything with a happy ending be serious reading? If the main character didn’t die of advanced syphilis or malnutrition or alcoholism in an insane asylum then it hardly seemed worth my time. I call this my “black turtleneck phase.”

Now? Heck, man. Gimme some damn sugar. I even get annoyed at any book that doesn’t have some form of redemption at the end. I have no time for unmitigated sorrow. I get plenty of that reading the newspaper every day.

Have your tastes in reading changed over the years? If so, have they become more nutritious or less?

Goofus & Gallant Go Out on Submission

2011-06-08T06:00:00.096-04:00

I hope I’m not going to get sued by Highlights for Children for borrowing what is surely copyrighted, trademarked, legally-whatever-ified, material, but I’m using our old friends Goofus and Gallant in today’s post.

Many of us, I'm sure, wiled away the hours in doctors’ waiting rooms as kids, learning how to conduct ourselves in the world by reading about how Goofus and Gallant comported themselves in various social situations.

Anyhoo. Did you know that Goofus and Gallant both grew up to be writers? They sure did. Poor sods. And funnily enough, both Goofus and Gallant went out on submission at the same time! Let’s see what happened with them and how they handled it, shall we?

GALLANT

After a months-long process of thoughtful, careful revision, Gallant’s manuscript was ready to go out on sub. He thanked his agent for his hard work and then promptly forgot all about his book, choosing instead to pour his energies into other writing projects as well as the normal volunteer work he did. Helping others was its own reward, and if his dream to be a published author came true, that would be nothing more than icing on the cake. Not that Gallant liked icing. In fact, he never ate cake, even on his birthday. Heavens, no. Do you know how many calories there are in a tablespoon of buttercream frosting? That's why Gallant preferred to celebrate special occasions by eating baked (sustainable) fish with a refreshing squeeze of lemon.

After six weeks, Gallant finally got word that his book had sold in a modest deal. Wonderful news! Better still, he was thrilled to learn that he’d be a midlist author because anything more than that would seem too showy. He celebrated, as usual, with a delicious baked fish, and then called his mother. She’d always been very encouraging about his writing and to show his appreciation, he used his small advance to buy her some new nightgowns from Land’s End.

GOOFUS

The night Goofus went out on sub, he took out his platinum Amex card – that he’d gotten under false pretenses by plucking the pre-approved application out of his roommate’s trash can -- and threw it down on the counter at his local club, instructing the bartender to buy a round of drinks for the whole place because he was rich. Or about to be. He threw back his Fuzzy Navel* with a laugh, imagining the death match that was about to begin somewhere in New York City amongst editors who would be vying for rights to his book. It was going to be just like The Hunger Games! Except with editors!

For the next few days, he toggled between his cell phone and email like a hyperactive lab rat looking for a food pellet. Around day nine, he began peppering his agent with inquiries, but of course, his agent had no news for him. This was perplexing. It became even more perplexing as the days turned into weeks and then months. At some point, someone came and carted off his flat screen television and XBox. Something about repo. He didn’t bother getting all the details. He sucked at Halo 4 anyway, so who cared?

Meanwhile on Twitter, triumphant tweets from authors announcing their new book deals seem to scroll by like a cruel stock ticker. Each tweet was like an astringent-soaked toothpick in his eye. Or rather, his heart. OK, that didn’t make any sense. He’d never been that good at metaphors or similes or whatever. Maybe that was why his book hadn’t sold yet. Maybe… maybe his book … maybe it wasn’t really all that … probably should work on something new in case… NO! NO! He fought to maintain his composure. Hadn’t Michael Bay come to him in a fevered dream that night he woke up on the toilet, still clutching his cell phone because he hadn't wanted to miss any calls? Hadn’t this Michael vision whispered to him about franchise potential? That had to mean something! Didn’t it? Didn’t it?!

This momentary glimpse into the abyss of his craven soul, however, had no effect on his work habits. He wrote nothing new for the next seven months and sank into a torpor so deep it might have qualified as hibernation. Eventually he tried to check himself into the hospital for exhaustion, but medical staff could find nothing wrong with him other than abnormally high levels of bitterness in his bloodstream. He was treated and released and told by his parents that perhaps it was time he looked into temping.

Well, there it is. Hope you’ll be able to conduct yourself with aplomb when it's your turn to go out on submission.

*Can you believe anyone still drinks Fuzzy Navels? What a jerk!

Obituaries and You!

2011-06-01T06:00:00.027-04:00

Despite the subject matter at hand, I swear this will not be a morbid post. That’s why I put the exclamation point up there in the title. To make it seem more cheery.

See the difference there:

Obituary

(Admittedly, kind of gloomy.)

vs.

Obituary!

(Not so bad really. Might even be kind of fun! Let’s see what Kristen has to say about them!)

So. Obituaries. I read them nearly every day because I’m curious about people’s lives generally, of course, but I’m also curious from a writerly perspective about what information gets included in them, either because the writer thought it was important or because the deceased person’s family did. Or maybe the deceased person him or herself would have wanted these facts to be generally known.

And OK, confession time, when I’m scanning the obits page trying to decide which ones to read, I’m mostly attracted to the obits with the really weird photos.

I assume – especially with the really bad pictures, where the person’s got one eye closed or they’re sitting on a bar stool with no shirt on, next to a three-legged dog -- that the person who is the subject of the obituary did not pick the picture that accompanied it. And we’ll give the person who did make the selection the benefit of the doubt that they meant well or perhaps cut them some slack because of their grief. They might have just stuck their hand in a photo-filled shoe box and said, “Here. Use this one. I simply don’t care!” Of course it’s always possible that no better picture of their deceased loved one existed. But whatever. There are some doozies in there on almost a daily basis and they always make me wonder if the deceased person would have been pleased that this photo was printed in the paper along with the summary of his or her life.

Like today. There was a woman my age who died of who knows what. Sometimes I think obits are the only remaining thing in society where we use euphemism to the point of obfuscation (OK, maybe obits, Pentagon press releases, and election materials), but whatever she died of is not the issue. I noticed her because, like I said, she’s my age -- 43, for those scoring at home -- and they used what looks like might have been her high school yearbook photo for her obit picture. Like, with the totally 80s hair – yeah, she had the big, flippy-fluffy-teased thing going on -- and those horrible feather earrings that were so popular back when Bon Jovi roamed free across the American plain like an apatosaurus in tight leather pants.

What can we, as writers, learn from this?

One, I’d like to go on the record now and say that I do not ever, ever, ever want my high school yearbook photo used in conjunction with my obituary in the event of my untimely death. You got that? I mean it.

Two, I realized that for storytelling purposes, so much interesting, useful information exists in that intersection between how characters see themselves and how they are ultimately seen by others. The question is how to include this in ways that are meaningful, but it’s a good starting point when you’re trying to introduce conflict and depth into a story.

Three, given the short, just-hit-the-highlights format of obituaries, they can be a useful tool for you when you’re planning, plotting, and sketching out a novel. For example, if you wrote an obit for one of your characters, what would you include? This seems like a great writing exercise and by golly, if I weren’t so lazy, I might try it next time I started a new project before jumping in and belatedly discovering my main character plays the spoons, likes kale, and once killed a man in a bar fight in Mexico City.

See? This hasn’t been a gloomy post at all, right? I hope I’ve turned your attitude around about obits. They can truly be helpful and useful.

I'd just like to conclude by reiterating the main take-away from today’s post and that is this: if I see one picture of myself with my 80s-era sausage curl hair appear next to my obit, I’m gonna seriously kick somebody’s ass.

BOOOOOOR-ing

2011-05-25T06:00:00.016-04:00

Did you hear that? That snide, obnoxious, sing-songy voice.

I just want to slap that guy.

Do you have an inner voice like this? Some jerky, insensitive dude who tells you that what you’re writing sucks to high heaven or worse, that it's so, so very boooooor-ing?

I don’t. Of course I don’t. My inner voice is kindly and encouraging, doting even. A cross between Mary Poppins and Oprah. It wants me to succeed and irons my pinafore and tells me which eye shadow is most flattering for my eye color and why I’m never gonna find lasting love down at the club.

Ha. I wish. Instead I get Snarky Guy, who thinks he knows everything about everything.

But that’s OK, that’s OK. He can put his feet up on my coffee table and spit sunflower seed shells around the room. Little does he know, he’s actually helping me.

I didn’t start out writing for young people. I started out writing for adults. So when I switched to writing for a younger audience, one of the hardest things for me to master was the accelerated pacing. I was still accustomed to the comparatively leisurely ramping up that you do in stories for adults. And the digressions. Gosh, they haven’t yet made a tangent that I wouldn’t go on. I always have my bag packed in case of unexpected tangents.

But now I’ve got this cool kid in the third row of my brain who lets me know when he’s bored because I'm not moving fast enough, and even if he can’t offer me any helpful suggestions about character development, he can at least act like a sort of canary in a coal mine. ‘Cause boredom is very much like a noxious gas. Sometimes you can’t smell it or see it but before you know it, an epidemic of pantlessness ensues -- 'cause you've bored them off everyone.

I picture narrative as a big pick-up truck bumping along the road, and I’m the driver. The back of the truck is filled with readers, and if I hit too many potholes, those readers are going to fall off right onto their heads. Splat! (“Lost another one on that last plot twist. Damn.”) And of course if I go too slow, those readers are going to jump off like it’s a lame-o hay ride. And you never want to arrive at your destination only to discover that it’s just you, your coonhound, and a bald spare tire in the back. No, you want to keep your riders happy and even be picking up hitchhikers along the way like a sociopathic loner who doesn’t know when to put a stop to an overworked metaphor.

This is why Jerky Bored Voice is helpful to me whether he realizes it or not. Whenever he pipes up, I just toss a grenade into the narrative. You know, something to mix it up and keep things interesting. Also, people – even imaginary ones – usually have the good sense to flee when there’s a grenade around. So those grenades definitely serve the purpose of moving the story along at a good clip.

Of course maybe you guys don’t have this problem like I do. But if you do, how do you respond when your inner Snark Meister tells you that your story is boring his ever-living pants off*?

One Hour a Day

2011-05-18T06:00:00.094-04:00

I have one hour to write this post. Possibly less. Let’s see how I do.

This new baby -- he likes full concierge service from his mother. What is up with that? It’s been darn near impossible to find time to write when I’ve been fetching warm towels, refilling his drink, and explaining why I can’t get him the chef’s table at Le Cirque on short notice.

I now understand how spoiled I’ve been for the past year. Six months ago I was able to write as much as 20 hours a week. I know, right? That’s an awesome amount of time.

But I’m trying to look at it this way: perhaps having all that time allowed me to become mentally flabby. Yes, and extremely inefficient.

Yeah. That’s it. Having more time to write is obviously a bad thing.

Now that I’m down to one single solitary hour a day (if that), I will have to concentrate my efforts and get all my words in order before sitting down to work, like some kind of writerly version of mise en place. But this is good, no?

Supposedly Virginia Woolf only wrote for one hour a day, and she managed to be incredibly prolific. OK, sure, she also kinda killed herself, but hey, nobody's perfect. She wrote loads of novels and essays only writing one hour a day long before she killed herself. So there. I’ll take heart in that – the one hour thing. Not the suicide thing. I’ll just try to put the suicide thing out of my mind. I really don’t think the two are at all related.

It’s not like I’ve never been pressed for writing time before. When I first got back into writing – this was back in 2008 – my kids’ schedule only allowed me to work early in the morning, so I started getting up at 4:45 am so I could squeeze it in. That’s right, O dark 4:45. That’s how gonzo I was about getting work done. It sucked, but I did it because I was hungry to write. Of course, by the end of the day, having gotten up at that obscene hour, I was so punchy that I should not have been operating heavy machinery. Or even light machinery, if there is such a thing, although if there is, no one seems too worried about people operating it in an impaired state. What is light machinery anyway? Blenders? Hair dryers?

(The point! Get back to it, woman!)

Right! Getting to point now...anyway, circumstances fortunately changed, and I could work longer, at a less insane hour. Which I was glad about because getting up that early, even if you're doing it so you can ride unicorns through Candyland while people throw hundred dollar bills at you, is a grim prospect. It was so bad, in fact, that I was worried about ever having to go back to that kind of crazy-intense writing life.

But now I'm once again looking at the possibility of having to do that if I want to get work done. Honestly, I’m not sure I’m up to it. But I’ve got to be. Somehow I’ve got to get back into that “Eye of the Tiger” mode. Gotta feel that writing hunger bad enough to drink raw eggs and punch haunches of beef until my knuckles bleed.

(Yeah, that's right. I referenced Rocky III, Survivor, and Virginia Woolf in the same blog post. What of it?)

How much time do y’all have to write each week? Is it consistent or does it vary wildly from week to week?

A gratuitous picture of Mr. T seemed appropriate here.