road trip (and road kill) reflections...

I finished another round of revisions (maybe close the last one?) on Kiss the Morning Star this week, so I'd like to celebrate by sharing a little bit about the road trip that partially inspired the book, a trip D. and I took about ten years ago and which follows much of the same course as Anna and Kat follow on their "rucksack revolution".  We, too, carried some Kerouac in our backpacks, and like Anna, I carried a notebook in which I tried to capture both our actual experiences on the road and also my thoughts about life and love and truth and beauty and all that stuff that seems sometimes easier to think about while I'm speeding along a back road without an itinerary.

Some of the little details from my old notebook triggered scenes in KtMS, but most of the time, if I tried to put something that actually happened to D. and me on our trip into the book, it ended up not being believable as fiction.  One thing that we have in common with Anna and Kat, though, is the Roadkill Count--a gory list on the back cover of the notebook that documents the dead.  We tried to categorize the animals ("Coon", "Former Flyers", "Brown Furries", "Possibly a Beaver", and sadly, "Collared Critters").  You might be able to see this in the photo (that's my marked-up edit letter and manuscript underneath my notebook, by the way!), but we also wrote a few annotations ("Hit a few times!" "Big one!"), and on this trip we actually added a less morbid "Live Encounters Driving" section which tallies up to almost as many live creatures as dead ones (except one of them says, "Oops, hit this one!").

Several pages of our notebook keep track of the little details of our journey, such as where we spent each of the 77 nights we were on the road, and how much we paid for our accommodations.  We also kept track of every tank of gas we purchased, the price per gallon, and the mileage we got in my heavily loaded 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis, Berta.  The mileage wasn't great, but it is pretty amusing to remember how scandalized we were by the price of gas in certain cities--"It's OVER $1.75 a gallon, what the hell???" 

We also dedicated a couple of pages to silly signs or amusing quotes that we either said or overheard while on the road.  (One of my favorites, written in iridescent pink pen, goes like this:  Elissa:  Oh, it's okay.  I'm just checking to see if I have a live hornet in my pants.  David:  Um.  Maybe you should pull over while you do that?)

Interestingly (to me, haha!), as I flipped through my road trip notebook, I also found--in a completely unrelated part of the notebook that was from before we left--the little character sketch that inspired me to write Kiss the Morning Star in the first place.  The main character of this story was a girl named Harriet, daughter of a minister with a "golden voice."  The story began, "When she was fifteen, Harriet read three books on Buddhism for a research paper in English class.  She learned that life was suffering.  Harriet stood in the shadows between the stacks at the public library, a heavy book in her hands, and thought of her mother, who hated her."

I like being able to trace the origin of this story, and how it has changed and what it has kept--a little bit of Kerouac, a little about her minister father's voice, a little about the tragedy that shapes Anna's journey.  And I like being able to also trace the path of my own journey, so long ago, and to see how it has shaped my writing.  Most of all, I like to think about the experiences of the present, and where they might lead, about ten years from now.   :)

Contract!

Took a short break from my editing (by the way:  AAAAAACKKKKK!!!) to sign my contract!  Hooray!

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!

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.

perfect timing?

One of my goals for the year has to do with how I react to getting feedback on my book.  In fact, the actual words I  used were, "I'd like to remain thoughtful, objective, gracious, and rational about anything that happens with this book."

It's a lot to ask of myself, really, and I was completely nervous about a month ago as I discussed revisions with Sarah.  Anything that happens.  I asked myself, "Can I remain objective and rational and even GRACIOUS if she tells me something that sounds impossible?"  I was so nervous about getting her notes that I didn't even know if I wanted to get notes at all.  Maybe we could just stop here?  I could be like, YAY my book is pretty and unique and someone believes in it, the end.  Every step forward has so many possibilities, about half of them stinking suspiciously like failure.

But of course I'm not going to let a little panic (I mean apprehension, obviously) get in the way of moving forward as a writer, right?  So I read through my manuscript again during the time I knew Sarah was reading it, trying to see it from her perspective, trying to imagine what she was seeing.

And then I got her notes in my inbox (incredibly detailed, amazing notes, btw!).  And then my computer died.  On the same day.  Perfect timing.

At first I thought this was a catastrophe.  I mean, I printed out her notes from my work computer and took them home overnight--I hoped at this  point that my computer might have a little update issue that might take twenty or thirty minutes to fix.  I read through the notes, getting more and more inspired and anxious to dig in.  But it turned out my hard drive had failed, and although I had everything backed up (on paper and electronically), I didn't have my computer for the next three weeks. 

Objective and rational and gracious.  Right.  I was freaking out.

Something about me--even though I had been perfectly patient about doing these revisions earlier, and in fact had been fantasizing about never doing them at all, once I had my notes and my ideas and had spent some time on the phone with Sarah...I was ready.  And when I'm ready to do something, let me tell you, it gets done.  I wanted to work straight through the next week, nailing each change.  But the little table where my laptop sits was empty and forlorn.  Instead I had a monster binder, stacks of paper, two colors of sticky notes, and a birthday journal, mostly neglected in favor of the keyboard, which translates my thoughts into words so much faster, so much more freely...

Thoughtful.  Objective.  Rational.  Gracious.

I took the cap off my pen.  I started making notes.  Two weeks later, my mom lent me her laptop so I could translate all my scribblings into the actual manuscript, and now today I'm reading through again.  And again.

Someday soon I'll send it back, my fingers crossed, my goal in mind.  Maybe it will come back with a new set of notes.  Maybe it will go on to the next stage.  This timing wasn't what I had hoped for, but revising slowly, gnawing my pen cap between my teeth like the days before I had a computer (yes, I do that)--maybe it was better for me after all.  Maybe it really was perfect timing.

Just a little update.  I hope to be done for real sometime this week.  And then...who knows?  My lappy is back with its shiny new hard drive, and I know that once I hit send I'm going to be back to focusing on that goal of mine.  And back to first drafting the next one!  :)

um...

I won a contest...

It's rather exciting.

*bounce bounce bounce*

No time to blog at length tonight, for I must finish reading Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne tonight so that I can see the movie this weekend. I can't remember the last time I went to a movie, to be honest. Sadness.

Tomorrow's my birthday. One year ago tomorrow, I smashed up our car, Zoom-Zip, hitting a deer. David says I probably shouldn't drive anywhere. With that in mind, he is going to bring the kids to the grandparents' house for the weekend. It's too bad about this blizzard that is supposed to come through after we have them up there...I wonder if we'll be able to get them back. Maybe they'll have to stay until spring thaw? :)

milestones

There are so many reasons not to write.

Sleep, for one. Last night I fell asleep at 7:30 and slept mostly straight through until 8:00 this morning. This, after a week or two or ten of getting no more than six hours of sleep each night and sometimes far less.

Cleaning, for another. My house...it drives me crazy. My floors go unswept, my mail unopened, my dishes unwashed in the sink or piled up on the counters. My laundry. Oh god, my laundry.

Rejection. I've gotten plenty of that, enough to--repeatedly--question my sanity. A lot of people think they can write. I think some of them are delusional. Obviously they are unaware that they are delusional. Well, I'm a rational person. I can connect these dots.

Still, I keep at it, delusional or not, and as a good friend and encourager and fellow-writer has (repeatedly, since I'm a slow learner) pointed out, I've made progress. I blogged earlier about becoming a writer, and since that time I've written four novels, quite a few stories, notebooks full of really annoying poetry, a whole secret deluge of angsty journal entries, and some sadly sporadic blog posts.

Each time I was ready to give up, to admit defeat, I've been given a little tiny step of forward progress that has kept me going. Slews of form rejections for my first novel are made less bitter by one precious phrase of personalized encouragement from an agent: "You have a lively writing voice." I keep writing.

Novel two and three get some personalized rejections. A request or two. And then...two agents express excitement and a desire to see revisions! Requests on the revised manuscript. Positive rejections! And finally...OFFERS.

In the meantime, it's not like the rejection stops...it's not like my house cleans itself or my children don't need me or teaching takes up less time. I can still find a lot of reasons not to write. But the progress--these tiny steps forward--this makes me continue on.

I've been promising writing news now for a while, hinting at excitement...and it's true! I have super news! I'm signing with an agent--Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency!

I'm so thrilled, and I hope you'll go to her terrific site and look around. The moment she requested my manuscript, I went over to her site and found myself sucked into her amazing blog, which is fascinating in what she says about the publishing industry and her own business but which also shows so much of her as a person and a thinker and an appreciator of all things in the literary world.

I'm so happy to reach this next step in the process. I know there's still a long road ahead, and I know there will be more reasons to stop, but as I pass each milestone in this path, I gain some resolve and some courage to keep going! And I'm certainly filled with hope about the eventual places this path could lead!

And...I've said this before, but this blog was born between novel number one and two, in a long gap in my writing when I wasn't really sure if I had the strength to put words out into the world anymore. I know my professed purpose has always been to share stories of my kids and have this record of the moments that pass so quickly in life, but what I've found in this outlet is so much more than that in regard to my writing life. Thanks so much to the people who read and follow my (mis)adventures in parenting and writing and life in general.

So thanks for hanging out with me here on this exciting road, and I hope I'll have more milestones to celebrate along the way! :)

Road Trips and Renovations!

So this is Jabberwock at the beach, on our trip last week to see my friend M. You wouldn't necessarily think, from looking at this photo, that he was screaming hysterically like fifteen minutes earlier, would you?


So I know I've talked about Jabber's fears, his hesitancies. Dogs, heights, the sound of the coffee grinder, public singing and/or doing hand motions. Well, you can add swimming to that list. Before this picture was taken, he was clinging to me with all of his limbs, screaming at the top of his lungs as I carried him out into the water. No, I wasn't throwing him off the end of a dock, and I wasn't even carrying him out where he couldn't touch. No. I was ON MY KNEES in the water, holding him, with his legs wrapped around my neck and his little razor toes (did I mention he's also afraid of the toenail clippers?) clawing for a toehold to launch himself up onto my shoulders, even as I soothed him and whispered to him and eventually even yelled at him a bit.

"Relax, honey, you can put your feet right down on the ground, and the water is only going to come up to your tummy. I won't let you go, Jabber, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you..." Rinse and repeat. Still he screamed. Loudly.

Friend M. smiled and dove in, leaving us to our own devices, while a couple watching the sailboats sat on the bench and looked slightly worried. Jeez, this lady is forcing that poor child into the water when he is clearly terrified. It looks a little like she might be scarring him for life.

They weren't there last week, though, when we did the same song and dance, almost exactly, at the indoor waterpark pool. That was a little more embarrassing because there was a waayyy bigger audience, though. The thing is, it seems like no matter how many times I take him into the water, his first reaction is just pure panic. If I let him be, he will remain panicky, unable to relax for even one minute next to the water. If the water touches his shoes, he will be afraid that a wave is coming to sweep him off and carry him away. I don't know where this fear comes from, really; I just know that if I hold him long enough and soothe him and keep on trying to make a game out of it until he forgets to be afraid for a little while, eventually he gets comfortable enough to have a little fun!

Like this picture, where he and SuperGirl were making an inland sea or something like that. (Notice, E, there are no pictures of you in or almost out of your bikini top...)
Here is a moment of silliness with friend E and well, let's call him HeroBoy, because he is clearly Jabberwock's Hero!
M has this really awesome guest book that is really a slice of a tree trunk that you sign with a woodburner, and here are E and HeroBoy signing in. Even Jabber got to write his name on the book, although we did have him do it on the practice side, since he still writes it awfully HUGE!

And here's a cute one of SuperGirl, just looking so cute. I mean, I can totally see why Jabber clear forgot about his peanut allergy when this lovely one handed him a cookie. He was under her spell!

Jabber's mad photography skillz...apparently I am breaking up a pretty intense fight. Just for the record, when confronted with a situation in which punches are being thrown, I am not all that likely to be in the middle of it. Especially if the punchers/punchees are girls. Luckily, even in the middle school, I am not in this situation all that often.


OKAY. End of fun road trip pictures. However, NOT quite the end of this picture post extraordinaire! The next two shots are perhaps not quite as cute as kids frolicking at the beach and teachers throwing punches, but they make me just as happy. Probably happier.

See, about two years ago, actually a little more, my dad called from Topeka to ask me some questions about my fireplace, which at the time we had been using sporadically for the ambience. Nothing like sitting in front of a crackling fire in the middle of winter. Cozy stuff. Anyway, he was asking for things like measurements and I forget what else. A week or so later, he came to visit us and bought us this fireplace insert thing. Well, it was the middle of winter, and the roof was all covered in ice, and David didn't really know how to install the thing anyway, so we just set it on two 2x4's about five feet to the side of the fireplace.

And there it sat. There were a number of issues, one of them being the fact that we had a second child, and life got decidedly more full. Another was the fact that the insert itself didn't really FIT into the fireplace, without substantial alterations to the chimney or whatever. Everyone had their theories. Grind away at the inside of the firebox and take out such and such. No, just bend the sides of the stove in to match the dimensions. Well, and then there's the fact that the stovepipe thing was coming off at such a weird angle that the insert was going to have to stick out of the fireplace like ten or twelve inches. So then before we could do that, the hearth needed to be torn out and replaced. Did I mention we had another kid?

Okay. So basically we had this really heavy, really expensive, sharp-edged end table sitting about five feet to the right of our fireplace. Enough is enough. I almost put an ad in the paper last fall--"Come and get it and it's yours!" But life was too busy for me to even get around to that. And plus, it was a gift, a spendy gift, and I didn't want to hurt Dad's feelings, you know?

So, Father-in-law to the rescue! Here is David and his dad going over the plans for the project this afternoon.

And here, TA-DA!!! Is the fireplace insert ACTUALLY INSERTED! Hurray!!! Of course, it's still not connected to the chimney, but we've got a while before the roof is covered with ice. Maybe it will happen? I don't really care; I've got a little more room in my living room now!

(Room to dance with happiness, that is!)

Climax approaching!

No time to blog much, but I have an update on my WIP...I'm on the scene right before the climax, and I'm seriously on the edge of my seat for Max. I want to scream at him to turn back, to go back to Vanessa and stop this foolishness, but you know. Characters never listen. Which is probably a good thing, at least in this case, since that wouldn't be much of a story.

I wrote like six thousand words today. And if I didn't have to sleep, I'd finish the damn thing tonight. At least, if I didn't have kids who will wake up at 6:30 whether I've slept or not!

I'm finishing this chapter, and then the next one's the doozy!

A Little Giddy

I'm five hundred words or so away from hitting 40K words on my new novel manuscript, which is really, really close to my goal for the end--somewhere between 50 and 60K. I realized this morning that if I'm going to get the story wrapped up under 60 K, I'd better make a list of the scenes I have left to write, so this morning I mapped out the things that still have to happen. I also did a lot more research, on some things that made David's eyes bug out a little bit when he saw the Google history (drug stuff mainly...there's a lot of drug research done for this book!)

I also got to make up some silly band names, which was amusing. And I read forty-some reviews of a concert venue in Portland, which I hadn't ever gone to but thanks to the amazing internet I have at least a few details to help my characters fit into the scene.

As soon as I saw it all mapped out like this--although of course there will be surprises as my characters enjoy doing that to me--it filled me with such a bunch of giddiness I could barely contain myself. I'm so amazed to be so close to the finish, and to still be happy with what I'm working on. I've written 1,000-2,000 words or more every day now since I started this. Granted, it's all first draft level work, and I'm sure things will change a lot in the editing process. But the thought of actually finishing a novel (even a short YA novel) by the time school starts makes me...well...GIDDY!

Happy Dance!!!!!