two quick lovely things...

I just wrote an actual real post about writing, but I'm scheduling it for Tuesday because I want to let it simmer in my head a little while longer and because Tuesday is sort of the day I typically post when I actually typically post, which I know, I know, I'm not stellar about being typical or scheduled or anything of the sort.

But.  Real post about writing--the process of creating a first draft--coming Tuesday.  And in the meantime, I wanted to shout from the rooftops how excited I am about two cool things.

One, this book:

A Need So Beautiful, by Suzanne Young

Um. never mind the weird face I'm making, okay?  I'd take a better photo but that would involve me taking a shower, and then I'd probably never get any writing done during these few brief hours that I have the house to myself.  I love Suz, and I loved this book.  It had a great pace, a sexy and refreshing love story, a unique concept, and more than anything else, I connected with Charlotte--I put myself in her place and wanted to know what I would do in her situation; I could feel her pain and her temptation and her indecision and her sadness...and I cannot wait for the sequel.  Especially after the very last chapter, aaackkk!

The second really cool thing was that yesterday I had the exciting chance to go down to Hamline in St. Paul and hear my agent, Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary give a talk about taking a story from ordinary to extraordinary, a concept that anyone who reads the stories she writes on her blog knows she has a good handle on.  And then I got to meet her for the first time (she didn't recognize me right away--I am much taller in writing!), and I left all inspired and impressed and informed...couldn't stop smiling all evening.  :)  Here we are on the Hamline campus, shortly before D. and I sprang her from campus for a tiny jaunt to a Dunn Brothers Coffee shop and some nice conversation.

Thanks, Sarah, and I hope next time you make it to Minnesota, you can see a little bit more of our awesome state!

The road ahead...

My family has been a bit obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder lately.  That's not the point of this post.  But seriously, we seem to be experiencing some Laura-immersion lately, as we read aloud from The Long Winter, look at our photos from the museum in Walnut Grove, and now, we've begun watching the first season of the Little House TV show.  The boys are transfixed.

In the episode we just watched, Pa had to walk a hundred miles to find work, along with many other farmers in the area, after a catastrophic hail storm ruined the wheat crop. On his way, he meets up with another farmer--a man we have just seen in an emotional parting shot with his wife and his son.  The wife begged him not to go; she says he's going to get himself killed.  The parting with the young son is poignant, with the whole, You're the man while I'm gone, so take care of the farm and take care of your mother thing going on.  He's a "powder monkey", we later find out, the guy who sets off the dynamite inside the holes that Pa and another farmer are going to drill in the rocks of the quarry.

I'm sorry to spoil the episode for you, but the thing is, from the moment we see this goofy tough guy with the heart of gold dancing around in mock fisticuffs with his little guy, who declares his father the best powder monkey in the whole country...the moment you see the love in his wife's eyes--her desperation nearly hidden by her playful teasing--you know the dude is going to blow himself up.

Or anyway, you know once you've seen this strategy used a few times.  Just like Keek says in the book I'm currently devouring reading, And Then Things Fall Apart, by Arlaina Tibensky (this quote is from the ARC, so it may differ from the final book), "In movies when there is a dog, I always kind of brace myself for the moment when the dog will eat poison, get shot, get run over, drown, etc.  And then when the dog dies (they always do; that is their function in the film, to die), I weep...."

We start to recognize the signs of impending narrative tragedy: a dog, a cute kid told he has to take care of his mother, a stoic but heartbroken wife, a warning gone unheeded.  We prepare ourselves, emotionally.  And then, even though we know it's coming, still we weep.  We feel sadness, but we aren't completely shocked and horrified by the awful event.  It doesn't actually traumatize us because we knew it was coming.

Laura's writing desk, Walnut Grove, MN

Unless you're a little kid, still learning how to recognize these cues, like Monkey, who was paying attention to the television the way he pays attention to everything--by seeming like he is completely ignoring it.  Suddenly, he's on my lap, weeping, his little bottom lip all stuck out and his eyes gigantic and terrified, watching the smoke from the deadly explosion rise up into the blue television sky.  It's my job, then, to keep him from being traumatized, to hold him and explain about how it's not real life and help him see how brave the little boy is in the end and how Pa promises to check on him and his mother in the future.

This is a confession, though not a secret:  when a book really has me hooked, when I am completely wrapped up in the characters and their lives and their conflicts, when I truly believe in them...when the foreshadowing is subtle but deep, and the suspense builds in the book so that I can't stop turning pages even though I fear to turn another page...

...usually at about the halfway point, when it becomes too much to bear, and I feel myself on the edge of being traumatized, I'll flip quickly to the end of the book and glance at the pages--not to read, but just to sort of reassure myself that life goes on, in the end.  And after that moment, when I get my little reminder that yes, the story will go on, and probably it will be resolved (I don't need a happy ending, but I guess I'm looking to make sure that the rest of the pages aren't empty and blood-stained or something?), then I can keep reading.  And weeping.

And those books stick with me, much more than the ones that I can continue straight through without ever needing to flip ahead to check and make sure my heart won't explode in a few pages.  So...how do I write a book like this, that makes a reader so incredibly invested that they think they might be traumatized if something catastrophic happens in the next fifty pages?

One way, of course, is to write characters that are so three-dimensional and real that I actually can't bear to see their hopes and dreams crushed.  I have to care about them deeply in order for any of this to matter.  But it shouldn't be easy to see what will happen (for example, the "powder monkey" saying good-bye to his wife and child, recklessly he's stuffing those dynamite sticks into his pockets, that moment when everyone seems truly happy and like it all is going to turn out fine...that's too easy.  But that's also a short television show from many years ago and a minor character!).

I can compare it to something else that makes me anxious--driving.  When we were on our trip last week, we climbed up into the Black Hills, to a campground near Deerfield Lake.  The roads there were all steep and winding, breath-takingly beautiful and horribly dangerous.  Snaking around the curves, headed into the setting sun, both David and I leaned forward, squinting through the bug-splattered windshield, trying to figure out which way the road was going to veer next--and sometimes completely surprised at the direction it takes!

But what a satisfying thing, to finally pull into that campsite in one piece...to smile at each other and say, wow, that was a beautiful ride, and we made it to the end!  And how thankful we are that we get to drive back down with the sun at our backs. :)

So how do you build suspense in your writing? What suspense methods do you think work really well?  What authors do it best? What books make you want to flip ahead and make sure the world doesn't end?

yum! my first paycheck...

At the midpoint of my spring break, which I've also designated a writing-free break, I took the family out to our favorite brew pub for dinner to celebrate depositing my very first advance check into our (previously nonexistant) savings account.  Monkey was simply thrilled to have his "vewy own KNIFE!"







Strangely, my wild rice burger had a sad face made up of chipotle sauce.  Maybe because I ordered it without the pile of fried onions?  The sadface was a bit counter to our purpose there, but we said a toast and clanked glasses of "Daddy Pop" (and draft orange cream soda--yum!) and celebrated being a "real" writer.

I said, "Thank you, family, for being flexible with me so that I had a chance to write this book," and Jabber looked up from his new copy of the second Diary of a Wimpy Kid to say, "Whaaaat?  You wrote a book???"  I guess he thought I was just playing tetris all this time at the computer?

Monkey gleefully requested the slice of lemon that balanced on the rim of Jabber's glass, and then he took huge bites of the sour fruit like he has since he was just a tiny baby, pausing in between each bite to shudder comically, his little mouth twisting up into a pucker.

We made a stop at our favorite bookstore (The Bookstore at Fitger's) for some new picture books (and to feed Jabber's Wimpy Kid addiction), and we read the wonderfully onomatopoetic and alliterative Utterly Otterly Day, by Mary Casanova, while we waited for our food to arrive. 

(Yes. I am making a very strange face there.  Not to spoil the book, but there is a rather frightening scene involving a cougar!)

Now I'm going to go back to reading (Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon and Invincible Summer, by Hannah Moskowitz), playing guitar (mainly two Brandi Carlile songs about seven times slower than she plays them), and watching old movies I've somehow never seen (last night was Poltergeist--great fun!)

I'll start on the schoolwork on Sunday night, as usual, and next week will be back to business in the home stretch to summer. 

readaloud ruminations

I love to read aloud.  In fact, most of the people who have spent any time with me have probably heard me read to them--"Listen to this," I'll say, and read a bit from whatever I'm in the middle of.  I read to my students; I read to my children every night: Sharon Creech's Ruby Holler, Beverly Cleary's Ramona series, Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, and all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.

On many occasions I've read aloud to D. as well, like when we read all of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series or when we finished Neil Gaiman's Stardust on the edge of Lake Isabel in Glacier National Park, pausing in between paragraphs to bang our sticks together to keep the bears on the other side of the lake from wandering over to sample our peanut butter tortillas.

I read on road trips--the hour between home and the grandparents' place is  frequently filled with the sounds of Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord and Inkspell or Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  I even read aloud when I'm all by myself--either from my own works in progress or from published authors, especially poetry.  All poetry gets read aloud.

I read to my students--delivering Old Major's dream speech from Orwell's Animal Farm and Jacques' "All the world's a stage" speech from Shakespeare's As You Like It.  Some of my favorite moments in homeroom are the times I have read to them: for my sixth graders the light and whimsical prose of Katherine Hannigan's Ida B. and the endearingly earnest voice of Addie from Leslie Connor's Waiting for Normal, and my eighth graders enjoyed the heavier themes of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.

Maybe I just like the sound of my own voice--it's certainly possible.  But what I love about reading the words of a wonderful author aloud is the music of it, the way the words fall into a beautiful rhythm.  I love to capture that music, or at least to try, to embrace the beauty of dialogue, of a well-placed pause.  And, okay.  I like to have an audience. It's the drama geek in me.

In college, I studied Spanish, and I read almost all of the assigned readings aloud, practicing my accent, enjoying the musicalidad of the words, the way the phrases would almost dance with each other on my tongue.  I think reading aloud not only improved my Spanish-speaking skills, but also my "ear" for the language, and the same can be said for reading aloud in English.

Reading the words of great writers influences my own writing, and hearing them spoken--paying attention to the sound of the words as well as their meanings--inspires me to work toward that same sense of rhythm and...even pitch, it seems, that my favorite authors achieve.


Another thing I love about reading aloud, especially with my kids, is that sense of being able to share what I'm reading with someone else, to hear and see and share their reactions.  When Jabber and I read Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie, we read the last four chapters with our arms wrapped tightly around each other, squeezing tight so we could feel the story together.  I love encountering new words, learning about different times, and places, and the great discussions we get into (even when they're silly, like my sons' fits of giggles that resulted from reading about how Margi Preus' protagonist has to try to drink his own urine to survive on Bird Island, in her Newbery Honor book, Heart of the Samurai, which we're in the middle of reading right now.)

What about you?  Do you have favorite readaloud books, or memories of reading aloud from childhood (yours, or a child you have read to)?  Do you read your own writing aloud to hear the rhythm of the prose, and if so, do you think it helps?

Second Annual Ask a Classic Author Event!

Edith Wharton

Last year, my fellow teacher and Jane Austen fan Mary and I organized an event at our school where all of our 7th and 8th graders read a classic book during the third quarter, research the life of the author, and then dress up like their author.  On the day of the event, they assemble some visual representations of their author's life and workspace, and they sit at their "writing desk" and answer questions from other students, staff, and community members about their life and works.  I wish I could post photos of the wonderful costumes that my students came up with last year--there were some students who were absolutely amazing!

I love the fun spin on the classics, and I love that, with the help of abridged classic books and reader's theater adaptations, all of our students can participate at their reading level, and answering the questions orally helps a lot of students who struggle with taking the information from their research and putting it into their own words for a writing project.

This is my, "I write serious, inscrutable literature" face.

I had such fun at the event last year, and I'm so excited we're doing it again this year, even though I was a little stressed about putting together my own costume.  Last year I went as James Joyce (and I read Dubliners,  though I admit I've never been able to manage more than about fifteen pages of his novels before I have to go back and start over...)  In any case, dressing as Joyce wasn't perfect, but I at least managed to don a dress shirt, a tie, and a hat.  I also attempted to imitate his thick black spectacles, but the best part was actually the wispy eyeliner mustache that I do not have a photograph of and which startled me a little to see how masculine it made me look.

Edith at age 19

This year I read Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and I've greatly enjoyed learning about her life and writing, but the entire time I was reading, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, but how am I going to dress up like her???  I mean, look at her clothes.  The painting at left is explained here, at this fascinating site that explores paintings of the people and places of Wharton's life.

"In 1881, when Edith was nineteen, she was painted in London by Edward Harrison May. He captured her keen intelligence, and at the same time her fashionable dress, with its narrow waist, puffed sleeves, and bustle--showing her at once the debutante and also the keen observer who would later become the brilliant writer."

So.  Kind of a daunting task, to dress like her.  I scoured our drama closet for some kind of dress options.  My main hope was for something with maybe some lace at the throat and possibly a poofy skirt that I could pretend was bustle. I layered several dresses on top of each other (all of which were, strangely enough, sized to fit a middle school girl, haha!) and sort of sewed in some pieces of fabric to make up for the fact that none of the clothes actually fit me (I am wearing two full dresses plus another skirt/petticoat thing underneath it all), and voila!  I have a costume!

I look, maybe not like Edith Wharton, but maybe like a slightly unfashionable guest at a social event that Wharton may have also attended?  A guest who is a sloppy seamstress and has lost her corset?  Maybe.     

Now.  I just need to find a good hat.

Books!

I kept a little list of all the books I read last year.  Seventy-nine books total, which is more than my goal of fifty.  It has been my aim for the last few years to start reading more intentionally--to actually seek out the books for a purpose instead of randomly reading the books that fall into my lap from the universe, and I'm happy as I look down my list to see only a small handful that feel like a waste of time.  Quite a few of them were chosen specifically because I thought I could learn from them as a writer and as a human, and quite a few of the others were chosen because they were enjoyed by people whose taste in reading I trust.

It really does seem like a lot of books, even if it makes me a bit sad that quite a few of them have already gone missing off my bookshelves at school (Saint Iggy, So Many Boys, Linger, Notes from the Teenage Underground, Full Tilt, Two Way Street, and Jellicoe Road, off the top of my head...I'm sure some will resurface as the year goes on, but it always is a little heartbreaking to see how many of my books never make it past the first reader.)

There are some really good books on this list, books that have stayed with me, books I've recommended and booktalked and pushed into people's hands.  Books that have forged connections between me and other authors.  Some of these books are printed and on the shelf, and some still only exist in document form.  Some have created happy moments of discovery for my children (*snuggles Ramona*), and some have caused a few raised eyebrows (like when I was reading Naked Lunch while getting my hair colored...)  Some have kept me up at night reading feverishly (um, Diary, Full Tilt), and quite a few have made me cry (The Sky is Everywhere, The Flying Troutmans, Everything Beautiful, Jellicoe Road, Waiting for Normal) or laugh (Youth in Revolt, Then We Came to the End, Be More Chill).  Many of them have created fascinating and well-crafted worlds that continue to linger in my mind (The Unidentified, The Shadow Thieves, A Clockwork Orange, The Replacement). 

All of them make me happy to be a reader.  :)

1. A Certain Slant of Light, by Laura Whitcomb
2. Saint Iggy, by K.L. Going
3. Youth in Revolt, by C.D. Payne
4. Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
5. The Naughty List, by Suzanne Young
6. The Realm of Possibility, by David Levithan
7. Shiver, by Maggie Stiefvater
8. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
9. The God Box, by Alex Sanchez
10. Some Girls Are, by Courtney Summers
11. Put Out More Flags, by Evelyn Waugh
12. The Lottery, by Beth Goobie
13. World War Z, by Max Brooks
14. How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby
15. The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Italo Calvino
16. Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt (reread)
17. An Acceptable Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
18. Everything Beautiful, by Simmone Howell
19. The Giver, by Lois Lowry (reread)
20. On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (read aloud to kids)
21. Be More Chill, by Ned Vizzini
22. Impossible, by Nancy Werlin
23. Full Tilt, by Neal Shusterman
24. Spanking Shakespeare, by Jake Wizner
25. waiting for normal, by Leslie Connor
26. Schooled, by Gordon Korman
27. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson (reread, readaloud to class)
28. Two Way Street, by Lauren Barnholdt
29. The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland
30. Heist Society, by Ally Carter
31. Mothers and Other Liars, by Amy Bourret
32. Posing Strange, by Amy Danziger Ross (rereread, beta)
33. Fishboy, by Hannah Moskowitz (beta)
34. Ramona the Brave, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
35. Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
36. Everything Beautiful, by Simmone Howell (reread)
37. Notes from the Teenage Underground, by Simmone Howell
38. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume (read aloud to kids)
39. Fool, by Christopher Moore
40. Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta
41. Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland
42. So Many Boys, by Suzanne Young
43. Beezus and Ramona, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
44. Peeled, by Joan Bauer
45. Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk
46. The Rules of Survival, by Nancy Werlin
47. hush, hush, by Becca Fitzpatrick
48. A Good Boy is Hard to Find, by Suzanne Young
49. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
50. The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
51. Superfudge, by Judy Blume (read aloud to kids)
52. Polaroids from the Dead, by Douglas Coupland
53. The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews
54. The Summer I Turned Pretty, by Jenny Han
55. The River, by Gary Paulsen
56. Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater
57. Fudge-A-Mania, by Judy Blume (read aloud to kids)
58. Owls in the Family, by Farley Mowat (read aloud to kids, as prep for teaching it)
59. Death Benefits, by Sarah N. Harvey
60. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
61. The Replacement, by Brenna Yovanoff
62. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
63. Ramona and her Father, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
64. The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades, by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser
65. The Shadow Thieves, by Anne Ursu
66. The Unidentified, by Rae Mariz
67. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher
68. City of Ashes, By Cassandra Clare
69. Septimus Heap #2: Flyte, by Angie Sage
70. You Were Wrong, by Matthew Sharpe
71. Ramona and Her Mother, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
72. Somewhere in the Darkness, by Walter Dean Myers (reread, teaching to 8th graders)
73. Guys Read: Funny Business, edited by Jon Scieszka
74. City of Glass, by Cassandra Clare
75. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
76. Point Counterpoint, by Aldous Huxley
77. Forged by Fire, by Sharon M. Draper
78. Slam, by Walter Dean Myers
79. Small Steps, by Louis Sachar

Happy Birthday, Jabber!

When he was nearly three, Jabber patted my gigantic belly and said he would share his toys, he would share his bedroom, but he absolutely would NOT share his birthday with his little brother. So how did that work out for him?  Well, I have to admit that he only readily shares the toys he doesn't much care for.  And the two brothers only peacefully share their bedroom for about sixty seconds a day.  But when Monkey was born the day before Jabber's birthday--an act merely the beginning of a long series of "ME FIRST" moments--Jabber handled the situation with a graceful sort of resignation.  He is...to the best of his abilities, a kind and patient and generous big brother. 

One thing Jabber savors is stories.  Over the last couple of nights, we've been telling stories of the kids as babies, and Jabber hangs on every word.  He loves to listen to a book read out loud, especially books about heroes just a teensy bit more adventurous than he.  He feels deeply, right along the characters, his whole body twisting with anxiety when the action gets tense.  For a while he hated reading--cried and freaked out every time he was asked to do it. He could read.  He could sound out the words.  But it was so much effort--how can you enjoy a story when you have to sound it out letter by letter?  I fought him to get the homework done, and I simply hated the fact that our favorite activity, story time, was turning into a stressful battle. 

Finally I managed to get to the bottom of this issue and I talked with him about how, once you get a lot of practice at reading, you can identify whole words or phrases in one glance.  We used the word automaticity, and he giggled as he said it.  We started reading each page in a book in unison, twice, and then he would read it on his own in his "automatic reading voice."  Which meant fast.  Instantly, all our fights about reading disappeared.  Jabber wanted to practice reading so that he could get automatic: he just wanted to move beyond the letter-by-letter decoding stage and back into the enjoying stories stage.

I can't believe how far he has come in the last year, between age six and age seven.  I look at him sometimes, or overhear some tidbit of wisdom he is either mumbling aloud or trying out on me, and I can't even believe he's for real.  He's such a thinker.

This morning we were, as we often are, running late for work.  It was his birthday, and I was trying to go easy on him, to let him enjoy the feeling of waking up with the whole day belonging to him. But the clock keeps ticking, and the van needs scraping, and the younger brother--tired out from his own ME FIRST birthday--is grumpy, and...well.

"Jabber," I said, as he stood in the bathroom with his toothbrush in his hand, in exactly the same position I'd left him five minutes earlier.  "Why aren't you doing anything? Come ON."

"But I was doing something," he said, slowly lifting his toothbrush up to his mouth.

"You were not doing anything," I argued.  "You were just standing there, holding your brush."

"I was thinking," he said.  And of course he was.

(It's a Pikachu cake)

Happy Birthday, my Daydreamer!

one for the list. the awesome list.

Happy book release day!!
to my friend and hardcore beta reader, Rae Mariz, on her debut YA novel,  

THE UNIDENTIFIED!  

Go listen to Rae talk about the book on this podcast, read about The Unidentified  story, and you will not be able to stop yourself from wanting this book NOW!

Congratulations!!!

confessions of a children's book lover

Illustrations by Sharon Wagner

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators--SCBWI--Minnesota Annual Conference in St. Paul, MN  October 2, 2010

My first writing conference was...well, it was so nice that I fear I will overuse the words "great!" "wonderful!" and "amazing!"  I will try to rein in the exclamation points, but the conference was a fantastic experience, and I came home excited about writing.  Which is always a good thing.

The day before the conference, I did a search on twitter and found a few people who had tweeted about the conference, and then I took a look at Anne Greenwood Brown's website, and read about her Lake Superior mermaid WIP.  I also have a Lake Superior mermaid manuscript, in a way, so I sent her a message.  We sat together, and she is a delightful person.  I have my fingers crossed for excellent publishing news in her future, and I'm so glad I got a chance to meet her!

Jay Asher, author of Thirteen Reasons Why, gave the keynote speech  about how to sell a book in twelve years or less; he very humorously related his entertaining path of a dozen years, from his very first picture book submission in 1994 to the publication of his first YA novel in 2007.  As I listened, I started thinking back to my own first attempt at publication and realized that I, too, have been submitting writing for twelve years. I, too, have tried to submit picture book manuscripts in that time, and yes...I, too, have vowed to quit writing, have found myself with an idea I was not yet ready--for a multitude of reasons, in my writing and in my life--to write.  At the book signing, I talked with him about my book blogging students having an opportunity to interview him about the process of becoming a writer, as many of them are very interested in writing books.  So exciting!

In a later session, Jay also gave us useful advice about injecting suspense in every book, every story.  What he said was clear, helpful, and again--funny as hell.  The guy is  a PowerPoint Performer.  The notes made me excited to take a look at my Cassandra WIP with a new eye for the role of story structure in the creation of suspense.

Next Heather Alexander, editorial assistant with Dial Books for Young Readers, gave a presentation about the tools editors use to convince their editorial board about a book, and the way the same tools are revised to sell an author's book to bookstores.  She read us a story and allowed us a chance to practice using the tool on a picture book.  It was interesting, and I gained a better perspective on some of the discussions that my editor, Melanie Kroupa, and I have had--especially the conversation we had before she offered on the book, before she presented KISS THE MORNING STAR to her board.

Poet Susan Marie Swanson gave an amazing talk about creating metaphors for our writing, about the value of literature and the joy of children's poetry.  She was full of glowing recommendations for amazing children's poetry and beautiful readings of all her favorites.  I spoke with her about my students and bought the book This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort an anthology of poems created for New York City schoolchildren after 9/11 (hers is titled "Trouble, Fly").  I came away with ideas not only for my teaching, but also for my writing.  Almost everything I've written has poetry in it in some measure, and I'm struggling a little with the poetry in my Cassandra WIP, so I was inspired on a lot of levels. 

The next session was pretty fascinating...Anne Ursu, author of The Cronus Chronicles, a middle grade fantasy series that looks terrific (my blogger students are going to freak out to read The Shadow Thieves) and also a teacher at the MFA in Writing for Children program at Hamline University, spoke with her editor, Jordan Brown, who edits with Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins. 

The two of them talked about the whole process...the way they work together, how they first started, the steps they've taken at each stage, their thoughts along the way.  The presentation was entertaining and very enlightening--I thought they did a  terrific job making the panel move seamlessly forward.  I really liked what they said about how readers can only read what's actually on the page, and how difficult it can be, as an author, to understand that we really didn't transfer the story of our head as neatly onto the page as it might seem to us.  I could relate to that.  :)

Also helpful was the First Pages critiques, where Jordan Brown and Heather Alexander gave critiques to a number of first pages that were sent in by conference attendees.  I imagine this is a tough job--to articulate their thoughts on a single page, on the spot and in front of a crowd, one of whom is the author of the page.  The two of them did a fantastic job giving helpful and specific criticisms to the writing we heard.  I didn't put any pages in because the Cassandra WIP isn't ready for that level of scrutiny just yet.  I sort of forgot about A TANGLED WEB because writing a fantasy book isn't my focus right now, but it was interesting anyway to hear their thoughts on the other people's first pages.

Overall, an amazing day for writer elissa!

comfort zone

So tomorrow I'm going to the Minnesota conference for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in St. Paul...my first ever conference for writing, and I'm nervous!

I'm excited about listening to the speakers and learning about writing craft and the publishing process, and I'm very excited to meet more writers from Minnesota who are on the same path as I am.

But I'm nervous, too--mostly I think because this will be the first time I'm officially going somewhere as a writer.  Like, if I introduce myself to someone, I will be telling them that I write books for young adults--this is what I do.  This is real.  And that's kind of a step outside my comfort zone, to be honest.

Being an aspiring writer is walking a very fine line between being hopeful and being delusional, it seems to me.  So although I may talk about my writing with people who know me and know I write, there's always that measure of uncertainty when talking to new acquaintances.  What does it mean when you tell someone you're a writer?  What are they thinking when they nod and smile?  Is that bemusement in their eyes?  How long will you get into the conversation before they ask what books you've written, where they can buy them, how their uncle wrote a book and self-published and have you thought about going that route instead, since it seems like you've been working at the traditional publication route an awfully long time...

Even after getting an agent, even after selling my book, it still seems like a dream that might disappear if I breathe on it too hard, if I look at it directly.  My friends, my mother maybe, might bring it up to someone they're introducing me to--"Did you know Elissa's a writer?  Did you know she has a book coming out?"--and it still makes me feel shy and uncertain.  What questions will they ask?  How much do they want to hear?  Being a writer, talking about being a writer, is still this sort of half-secret mumble-mumble-blush-smile yeah, wow, it's REAL! kind of moment for me. 

So I'm excited, and I'm nervous.  I hope I'll learn some great things that I can come back here and talk about, and I hope I'll step outside that comfort zone and meet some terrific people, too.  (And also, I'm hoping to buy some good books from awesome Minnesota writers!) 

:)

in the middle

So my computer has been sick (I think it still is, tbh, but since my computer doctor is also sick, I'll wait and see for a few days while religiously backing up everything I do), and middle school has been overwhelming, and the weather has been amazing...all of which leads to one full week without a blog entry.  Again.

I know, that's boring.

Starting over.  So my middle school students are starting a book blog.  And at first, I didn't really think we'd make our own blog.  I thought it would be enough to simply read blogs, comment on them, maybe look at the qualities that make up a good review.  Possibly we would talk about the difficulties of writing a review of a book that isn't the greatest--how do you maintain honesty without being a jerk?  This is a concept that many middle school students (and a fair number of non-middle school students) struggle to wrap their heads around.

But.  On the first day, it became apparent that these students...they are WILD about books.  They are full of awesome ideas and an amazing amount of energy that, if we can focus and harness (and proofread!) it, will result in a terrific chance for them to interact with authors and bloggers and readers not only at our school, but all over the world.  And even though I am in the middle of editing one book and second-drafting another and assistant-directing a play (soon) and playing tooth fairy (Jabber lost another tooth today!) and mentoring a student teacher and checking the dilation of Monkey's pupils (fell off a step stool and cracked his head on the cast iron tub)...I find myself in the middle of another project.  A middle grade/young adult book blog, written and developed by my students!

Aptly, the name of the blog is "In the Middle (of a good book)" and the identity we created for the blog is "inthemiddlereading"--middle schoolers reading.  Our first post went live today, so please come by and share your favorite book with us! 

Middle school is a strange time for reading.  While a sixth grader may still be startled or even outright shocked at the appearance of a minor cuss word, an eighth grader may be devouring very mature books written for adults.  Another sixth grader may read nothing but unabridged classics, while another eighth grader may be just beginning to move from chapter books to middle grade novels. 

However, despite these differences, what has become very clear to me in the last nine years teaching middle school, is that when tweens and teens find a book they enjoy, it can change their whole lives. You can see them become a reader.  They argue passionately about books; they feel personally offended by disappointing movie adaptations.  They love their favorite characters so fiercely that they never want a series to end.  They get so excited about books at times that they will jump about in their chairs, barely able to wait their turn to share their thoughts about books.

And I hope that we'll be able to keep up with this blog, even after my little elective class is over, so that they can continue to have a real audience for their thoughts, and so they can continue to make connections with authors as real people--to read reviews by other bloggers and wait anxiously for new releases and become a part of the literary community in a real, interactive way. 

Thanks so incredibly much to Kari, who gave us links to her favorite blogs, ideas for the class, and a lot of support as I contemplated this idea in its infant stages.  Her book blog, and the others in our blogroll, are an inspiration to my students!

my first time

So this week we've been doing some shuffling around of furniture in order to get me a more ergonomically sound writing space (specifically, we've shuffled a much-loved but ugly-as-sin couch and chair to the dump and shuffled in a brand new set of chairs and side table...), a process which involved hauling an old desk downstairs to the living room.

The point?  Oh, yeah.  So the process of cleaning out my old writing desk has been a lovely trip down memory lane--I haven't actively used this desk for about ten years, and the drawers were chock full of nostalgia!

Among the treasures I found was this--evidence of my first time ever sending out a piece of my writing, in this case a tribute poem I wrote for the beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

You have NO IDEA how thrilled I was to receive this (and to find it again after all these years!)  The paper is a form letter from City Lights Books, and it says the usual kind of thing:  "Lawrence Ferlinghetti appreciates your asking for his comment on your work but he has found it impossible to keep up with such requests, and must decline.  Good luck with the publication of it," but I was thrilled beyond belief to see the signature of one of my idols along with the personal message, "Thank you for the tributes!"  He also signed the back of the postcard ("For Elissa"), and let me tell you, this made me fangirl almost as much yesterday as it did ten years ago!

I never expected a response from him at all.  I mean, the man is a legend.  At the time, I was as entranced by the beat writers as Anna and Kat in my novel, Kiss the Morning Star, and the thought of the man signing a note for me, no matter if he read the (bad) poems or not, was enough to make me weak in the knees.

Anyway, all of this has made me think about how far I've come in this journey of becoming a writer in the last ten years, and how deeply in debt I am to so many writers--those who have come before me and those who read my blog and talk to me on twitter and those who are in my middle school classes, wowing me with their amazing words at an age when I was still mucking around with angsty rhyming poetry.  It also reminded me again that even though it's a little embarrassing at times to think that I sent this awesome poet my little tribute, it's just possible that it actually made him smile, and in any case, the act of contacting him impacted me--and continues to today.

The poem I wrote, by the way, was a riff off (not a rip-off, haha) of Ferlinghetti's own poem, "I am Waiting" from his amazing book, A Coney Island of the Mind.  I'm not sharing much of it (it's looooonnnng.  and bad.), but I'll give you the opening stanzas.

A Renaissance of Wonder

I am waiting
     in fact I am quite impatient
     and there are weeks when I lose faith
     altogether
     and crumble off bits and pieces of my
     belief in the goodness of people.
I am waiting, and I tell you there are weeks,
     weeks where I can barely contain
     my optimism--
     my hope has no restraints.

I am waiting for these weeks to grow in number.

Road Trip Wednesday: in which Elissa starts to feel like a stalker...

Once again, I'm going to take a stab at the YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday theme (see, I can't comply with too much structure, so if something is supposed to happen weekly, you can pretty much guarantee I will do it once every few months...), which is BEST BOOK OF JUNE!

Well.  It just so happens that this totally coincides with a post I've been wanting to write, but I felt like it might make me seem like a crazy person.  No, not really a crazy person, but just that kind of fan who crosses the line between being...YAY I HAVE A FAN! to OMG THIS PERSON IS OBSESSED WITH ME.

And I'm  not.  Obsessed.  But I really admire the writing of Australian YA writer Simmone Howell, and this month I reread her second YA novel, Everything Beautiful and then read her debut, Notes from the Teenage Underground, and let me tell you, they are both so wonderful I wish I had written them myself.

So I gave my students an assignment for their fourth quarter book report, and one of the options was to send an email or letter to the author of the book they read and just, you know, tell them about what they thought.  Fan mail.  And then I thought I might as well do the same, and I wrote this gushing email all about how the book Everything Beautiful had, you know, changed my life.  And then I followed her blog.  And followed her on twitter.  And gushed a little more on Absolute Write.  And that doesn't even count all the students I passed the book to, or all the ones I plan to pass it to in the fall.  So yeah.  I'm not obsessed.  They're just really good books.  Here are my librarything.com reviews, and you should all read them both!

First, her debut (even though I read it second):

I read Howell's second book first, but this was still a great follow-up!  An original story, awesome pop culture references from art and film and feminism--exactly the type of book I would have loved as a teen!  On top of that, the dialogue is interesting, the characters quirky and yet layered, and the themes in the book are carefully and thoughtfully drawn.  I especially  like the exploration of the "three girl movie" structure, and Gem's reflections on the power struggles found in a triangle.  I can't wait to read Simmone Howell's next book!




And then her second book (the one that got me hooked):

This book is exactly the kind of book I aspire to write.  A memorable main character, a snappy voice, a quiet lyricism that makes me want to copy whole paragraphs out and share them with people, and a clear and captivating plot, too.  I like the way there is emotion but no sentimentality, and there is "edginess" without making it seem like edginess was the only goal in writing the book.  I would like to immediately go out and buy the debut from this author, except I may want to reread Everything Beautiful first.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

From the Greenhouse Literary Agency's facebook page...

News as it happens . . .Congratulations to Elissa Hoole whose YA debut - KISS THE MORNING STAR - has just been sold to Melanie Kroupa at Marshall Cavendish. Look for more info on our website in the next few days - and here's to a great writing future, Elissa!

!!!!!!!

knock-knock

I admire writers who can be funny.  Bloggers, especially--a funny blog is the best.  But writing humor is difficult stuff.  My sense of humor is understated.  I'm the kind of person who makes quiet, wry comments to the person next to me in the back row.  I'm the kind of teacher who is rarely ever completely serious but also rarely ever completely joking.  Only the quick ones catch on which is which.

I value funny.  At almost every job I've worked, I've had a co-worker who regularly made it a point to tell me jokes or share funny comics with me or otherwise make me laugh.  But it's so easy for humor to fall flat on the page.  I can't always predict what humor I'll enjoy.  I've definitely enjoyed Douglas Adams several times over (even this sort of bizarre Apple IIe computer game that I recall playing somewhat a lot as a teenager), and David Sedaris is absolutely golden, especially because after listening to him on This American Life and such, I can never read one of his books without hearing him actually narrating the stories in my head.

Recently I read Douglas Coupland's novel, The Gum Thief, at the gym.  I'm not sure I'd say that the purpose of the book is to be humorous.  I mean, to be honest, please do not ask me any time soon what the purpose of this book is.  I loved it, and I have no idea what I think about it yet.  But anyway, this was a book that caused me to allow spontaneous explosions of surprised laughter to escape me while I was running in ellipticals with my ipod stuffed in my ears.  Who knows how loud I laughed? 

What are your favorite funny writers?  They don't have to be writing to be funny...my favorites are often the ones who just are funny. 

a teacher moment...

I love books.  I love reading them, I love talking about them with others.  The best feeling in the world comes from reading a book, coming to the end, and knowing--instantly--someone I'm certain will love it.  Knowing which student the book might interest, drawing them slowly into another story.  Knowing, maybe, which student the book could snare...trapping them into a lifetime of being a reader.

Books are powerful.  Books are dangerous.  Books are easy to lose.

This is my classroom on the first day of the school year.  Those are two of the six bookcases I have, all overflowing with amazing books.  Books that I want my students to devour.  Books my students seem to destroy.

The first few years my personal library books each had a card tucked inside them--a small, white index card with the title and the author written on it.  And a green-inked stamp of a group of elephants.  Their butts, really.  The Elephant Butt Cards, we called them, and we filed them in the Elephant Butt Card Box.  Students wrote their names on the back of the cards, and things were pretty orderly back then.  Until it got crazy.  Elephant Butt Cards raining all over the floor, none of them in the right book.  Names not crossed off the cards.  No pencil in the bin.  It's amazing how complicated a very simple system can be when in the hands of seventh graders. 

Now I have my checked out books in a spreadsheet on my computer, but I still make mistakes.  Books walk out the door, only to be left in the hall or on top of the lockers, or behind the vending machine.  You know, places it can kind of break your heart to imagine a book ending up. 

And this week is that time again, the time I try to track them all down and get them back.  I look at them, my books that were so shiny when they left my hands.  They are battered, torn--their slipcovers missing, perhaps.  But they have been read, and so many of them make their way back to my room eventually, after enjoying or enduring all kinds of adventures in the somewhat disorganized lives of middle schoolers.

I have a copy of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass that was missing for about six years.  I remember the girl who checked it out.  She lost it at the exact point in the quarter as to make it nearly impossible for her to complete her book report.  Then one day, years later, it randomly showed up in my mailbox.

But it's worth it.  Even though I know I may never see a book again when I lend it out, it's worth it to offer them this chance to experience another author, a different kind of book, a personalized recommendation...all I really want is to find every one of them the perfect book.  Just a little thing.

This year one of my classes signed up for librarything.com accounts.  I loved seeing their reviews and even just the lists of books that they were reading.  I read them my reviews as a part of my booktalk process, and a few of them got free ARCs from the Early Reviewers program and then read and reviewed the books.  It's great to hear their thoughts about YA fiction, for one.

Anyway, I was looking over my own librarything and saw so many truly amazing MG and YA I read and shared with my students this school year, including some terrific books by my friends Hannah and Suz!

(and thanks to Super Student Krissa, for your awesome contributions to my classroom library--and my own reading list!)

Heist Society, by Ally Carter
The Schwa Was Here, by Neal Shusterman
Schooled by Gordon Korman
Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor
Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt
Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner
Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini
Everything Beautiful by Simmone Howell
Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
World War Z by Max Brooks (not YA but 8th graders find it a good read)
The Lottery  by Beth Goobie
The God Box by Alex Sanchez
Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers
An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
The Naughty List by Suzanne Young
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Saint Iggy by K.L.Going
A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
House of Night series by P.C. Cast
Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter
Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Break by Hannah Moskowitz
Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
Wake by Lisa McMann
Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Deadline by Chris Crutcher
Luna by Julie Ann Peters

do the write thing

I'm pretty late to the game here, due to a sketchy loaner computer and some kind of nasty lung-plague that has had me laid up for days, now, but a Nashville writer friend of mine has been busy, busy, busy putting together an amazing auction to raise money for victims of the flooding in Nashville.

So if you haven't already been over to the site, stop by Do the Write Thing for Nashville and take a look at all the amazing stuff that these folks have wrangled up from the publishing world!  And don't just stop by once! 

EVERY DAY new items will be added to the auction, and let me tell you, there's some awesome stuff, for writers especially but also for anyone who loves a good book.

Signed books galore, story and excerpt critiques, scholarships to writing conferences, posters, coffee cups, phone calls with agents and editors...it's an extravaganza of goodies--and all for a great cause, with a tax deductible receipt with your easy PayPal contribution.

I'm waiting for this one...

a librarian-made book trailer for Rae Mariz's upcoming book, THE UNIDENTIFIED!  I'm so excited about this book and Mariz's career--I could watch this trailer all day!



longer post upcoming, in which I will probably agonize at length about how awful it is to receive agent edits on the same day my computer dies...

the haphazard reader

Growing up, I couldn't get enough of reading.  People often describe themselves as voracious readers--and this was me exactly: ravenous, insatiable, even gluttonous.  Reading was my favorite thing to do, and I hated to stop.  If I had been allowed to do so, I would have read through meals, through social events, until the wee hours of the  morning. 

My parents bought me books.  Other family members bought me books.  I read them all, and when I was finished, I read them all again.  I read through boxes and boxes of old books my grandma got at estate sales and auctions--dusty hardbacks from old people's basements (I also read all these outdated school "readers"--full of strange short stories and poetry and prayers and little morals, on stained yellow paper).  I read encyclopedias and Reader's Digest Condensed Books.  Old science textbooks and Apple paperbacks from the school book orders that I begged my mom to order. 

Sometimes we went to the library, and I remember filling my blue plastic library bag so full of paperbacks that the drawstring cut into my hands.  Because I liked to reread my favorite books so many times (and my favorites were many--A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, all the Little House books, Nancy Drew, Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself, Harriet the Spy, and so many, many others...), I saved my library trips for the silly romance books or ghost stories or paperbacks I knew I'd read in one sitting, the books I knew I could bear to give back when I was done.

I never once felt like I had too many books, or not enough time to read.  It was the opposite; I was constantly scrounging.  Pilfering.  Scouring shelves. 

It wasn't until college, as an English major, that I started to have any kind of rhyme or reason to what I was reading, and that was only because I had so much assigned reading that it was all I could do to read that.  It was the first time I can remember having too much to read, the first time I felt the real scope of the literary world--the fact that I would actually not be able to read every book.  That I would have to make some decisions, to begin the process of figuring out what makes a book worth my time to read.  It was also nice to have a method to my madness, to focus my explorations of the "canon" and discover some of the brilliant works along the edges of it as well.

Since college, I've fallen back into being a haphazard reader.  I read what falls into my hands, basically.  Free boxes, school book orders (reading MG and YA books has been a constant since I started teaching, which eventually led me to try my hand at writing YA, which has led to a bunch of wonderful things, but that's another post entirely!), book club selections, classics from my school library, gifts from my librarian mother-in-law, paperbacks passed on by my mother, books that arrive in the mail because I somehow got enrolled in some book-of-the-month club.  Random reading.

This is so far from systematic.  I'm not good at being aware of contemporary fiction, reading reviews, making a to-read list, prioritizing.  I'm more likely to wander a bookstore looking for covers and first pages that snag me.  A  little over a year ago, I made a goal to be more intentional about  my reading.  I started a LibraryThing account so I could keep track of what I'm actually reading (I tend to forget), and I vowed to review everything I read, even though when I started I wrote about them in a friends-locked livejournal post marked "Not-A-Review" just to make sure everyone understands that I have no idea what I'm talking about.

I'm getting better.  I have the feed to the NYT Books section in my netvibes homepage, and I try to look at it a bit, even if I don't read everything.  I write down the names of authors I want to remember, and sometimes I even manage to read something by them.  I seek out recommendations from people who share my tastes.

Right now, my focus is on reading books that will somehow inspire or inform my writing.  With my current WIP in mind, I have recently read or am reading: (my thoughts on the books on librarything.com are linked; I try to be balanced and reasonable about what I write, but I'm not a professional reviewer, so take them as they were intended: notes to help me remember what I've read and to help me reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of books in order to be more intentional about my reading habits.  I know there are a lot of sticky places to step in when you're a writer and you talk honestly about books, especially books in the same genre you are writing in.)
 

The Lottery by Beth Goobie
at Sarah's suggestion, for the wonderful use of tone.

Some Girls Are, by Courtney Summers,  
because I've heard so many good things about it, and because my WIP shares some themes dealing with bullying.

The God Box, by Alex Sanchez, 
as character research and some insight into conservative Christian viewpoints of homosexuality.

 and The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Italo Calvino
because the Tarot is a big part of my WIP (not quite finished with this one). 









Right now I'm getting close to the point where I need to make a mental shift from first-drafting this new WIP to working on edits for TDBB, so I'm thinking about reading the copy of On the Road: The Original Scroll that I bought for David for his birthday (assuming he finishes first, that is).  I reread The Dharma Bums while I was working on the first draft, actually trying to read it at the same pace as Anna and Kat did and then flipping through it for the bibliomancy parts like they did as well.  I'm also reading Desolation Angels for the same sort of inspirational reasons, but I've tried to make it through this book before and failed. 

So how do you choose the books you read?  If you're a writer, do you read books that are somewhat similar to yours or avoid them?  Do you read more fiction or nonfiction?  Do you wear out your library card, or are you like me--longing to reread the books you love or even just to see their spines on your shelves?  Do you read one book at a time or three or four at a time, like I do?  Do you write reviews or ratings on a site like LibraryThing or Goodreads?   Do you read books your friends recommend?  Do you read reviews?

Check it Out!

My friend Suzanne Young's debut novel, The Naughty List (book one of three!) is coming to a store near you! I picked up my copies already, and you can win one with her signature here at gracetopia!

Suz is an amazing person and a terrific writer, and I could not be happier for anyone! She just had some fantastic breaking news on the book sale front as well!

Suzanne Young's A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL, in which a 17-year-old discovers that by performing the good deeds that her body compels her to, she will disappear into the Light and be forgotten, but by fighting "the Need," her fate could be even more dire, to Donna Bray at Balzer and Bray, in a two-book deal, in a pre-empt, by Jim McCarthy at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World English).

So freaking cool!!! Check out her blog and, again, don't forget to go enter to win a signed copy of The Naughty List! Or, you know...you could buy a couple of your own! :)