practice makes...well, persistence, for one thing. and probably improvement.

my second loaf of homemade bread, better than the first

I used to be a sandwich artist.  Back when the bread had a u-shaped notch in it and there were no cucumbers or spinach or avocados or even a choice of cheeses.  So when I first started, everything was a mystery--slicing tomatoes was clumsy and a bit dangerous, cutting a pan of bread took me an hour (and six bandages).  But as with most learned skills, practice made perfect--or at least, practice made pretty good and pretty efficient and pretty predictable. 

Writing is...a little different.  My hands could learn the best way to pick up the precise amount of lettuce to spread on a footlong sub for a perfect sandwich, but there isn't a formula for writing a novel, or even for getting a first draft written.  Writers talk about being "plotters or pantsers", they talk about outlining, they talk about fast-drafting and taking it slow.  They write out of order or they write only after six years of intensive research and planning.  They write on napkins, or post-its, or in longhand with a sparkly gel pen.  They write a first draft that sounds like the author talking to himself about what the book will eventually be.  They write crappy first drafts, comforting themselves that they can fix all in revisions, or they write with great care, hoping to not waste their time writing unnecessary words in their first drafts that will later be cut.

And however they do it, a writer gets a novel written.  It might be brilliant.  And the next time they do it--same process, same everything--it might not work at all.  In fact, the only thing that might work for that next book is to do things in a completely opposite way.  It's anything but predictable.

From here on I have to get personal.  I can't pretend that I can tell anyone how to write a book or what the best writer's process is because the truth is?  I don't even know what my own process is.  It changes with every book I write.  And while it can sometimes be scary and frustrating because...um...aren't I getting any better at this by now????...it can also be exciting and gratifying because...um...I get so bored with jobs that are the same all the time!  That pan of bread that took me a an hour and six bandages to cut later took me five minutes with my eyes closed.  But it also took all the joy and beauty out of my life forever.  (Okay, hyperbole aside, that's not even true.  I love the smell of fresh bread and I also like knives...but my point is repetitive jobs kill my soul.)

So.  Let me tell you about my processes for some of the books I've written.  My first novel took me six years to write.  (Actually, I'm really fuzzy about dates because I gave birth to two children in that period of my life and probably didn't sleep for more than three consecutive hours at any point, but yeah, it was like six years from start to finish.  Ish.)  The novel was a book for adults about a woman who is learning to paint but finds herself only able to paint pictures of public restrooms.  Stop judging.  I only pitched it like that once or twice.

Anyway, for that book, I knew my character.  I spent, oh, fifty-some pages getting to know her.  I had an idea of what might happen in the book, but I'd get to that later.  Every day, I revised everything I had written up until that part, and then I'd go on and write another page or two.  It was sort of like I was writing by the seat of my pants, and that was exciting, but the whole time I knew exactly where it was leading.  I knew the climax of the book, and I knew how it would end.  I can't actually remember how much it changed from that original vision, and I can't bring myself to read it to find out, but really, it doesn't matter.  Having the ending in mind was what allowed me to pull through the book to the end.  And finishing that draft was the miracle moment--the accomplishment that assured me that I could write an actual book, the accomplishment that still reassures me every time I sit down to write--I can end this!  Except.  It was messy and unwieldy.  Was there a plot? Maybe, if you squint.

My second book, about a boy who steals his history teacher's car, was like...I planned that book out within an inch of its life.  I had a notebook filled with plot diagrams, and I knew every scene and how it would lead to the climax and then what would happen afterward.  I wrote the first draft in less than a month, and the pace was like a race car flying along.  Writing a book has never felt easier. So I was like, OH OKAY! From now on when I write a book I need to know everything that happens, and it will be so much easier and better!  Except.  Later I realized that the book was so thin...it felt like I could still see the little plot diagram there beneath the surface.  Also I hated the simplicity of its themes and how...direct it was.  Back to the drawing board, process-wise.

I wrote another book.  This one, at that time called The Dharma Bum Business, but now known as KISS THE MORNING STAR!  Yay, happy little book!  I took about nine months to first draft this, and it was a wonderful and frustrating experience.  I knew I wanted a strong plot structure, but I also knew I wanted layers and depth and emotional connections and complex themes and gray areas and also there was this little problem with my characters who absolutely wouldn't do anything I intended them to do and did absolutely everything they could to surprise me on the page so that I scrambled to align the ending I envisioned to their journey.  I ended up writing three very different endings for the book--vastly different from each other--so different I can't even imagine how I got from one ending to the other without hopelessly unraveling the whole story.  And then I changed the point of view.  I've cut so many scenes and added so many others from the first draft...I've changed the geographical path of Anna and Kat's road trip by about a thousand miles.  It wasn't easy, but it was totally worth it...and it taught me a million lessons about writing that I hope I'll be able to remember for every other book I write.

I've written two more complete first drafts and two more partial works-in-progress since then, and I have to say, my process has changed--I still spend some time plotting and scribbling notes and noodling about with character voices and researching before beginning a draft, but I have less of a focus on what exactly happens and more of a focus on the emotional journey of my characters, the stakes and the conflicts they face, and what parts of their struggles are universal and will resonate with readers.  I've started writing a pitch before I get too far in, to sort of sell the idea to myself, and to focus on the concept--what I'm trying to say.  I write some parts fast and some parts agonizingly slow.  I write a lot of so-called "unnecessary" words--words and scenes and whole chapters I will hack from the manuscript at a later date--and while it may seem inefficient (and I hope to get better at figuring out where my story really begins, for example), for me, I think writing those words really is important, even if it's not necessary for anyone to ever read them.  I'm getting a tiny bit better at figuring out which of the words in my book are those words, too.  A tiny bit. 

I can't predict the exact process that will help me arrive at a perfect sandwich first draft, but I'm getting better at figuring out the things I need to know before I start and the things I'll figure out as I go...the questions I should ask before I begin and the questions that will keep me moving on to the next scene...the times I should write fast and sloppy, trusting revision to fix it later, and the times I should go back and fine-tune some of what I've already written in order to make it feel worth it to go on...the times when I should follow my characters into unexpected places and the times I need to wrestle them back onto the plot diagram.

And I hope that, even though I can't write a first draft with my eyes closed yet (or indeed, without needing multiple bandages, but that's just because I'm a klutz), I am improving.

How about you?  Do you first draft with the same process, or is it messy and evolving, too?  Do you plot or go by the seat of the pants?  Do you need to know the ending or do you let the events unfold?  What questions do you need to know the answer to before you begin? 

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. 

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.   :)

I dropped a stitch! the terror of the ginormous revision...

I want to write about revision.  No, wait.  Maybe I just want to hide from revision?  Yeah, same thing.

So anyway, I've spent the past year revising--I'm pretty sure, when you break it all down, (*breaks it down*), I have spent more time this past year revising than sleeping.  And a lot of the time, even when I'm sleeping, the better part of my brain (AKA the part not otherwise engaged in drooling over pretty pictures and unlikely scenarios (not like, literally drooling, of course, ew! *flips pillow*)) keeps right on revising.

I struggle sometimes with blogging about writing.  I enjoy reading and commenting on other writers' blogs, but I don't really feel like I can write about "the craft" with any kind of authority.  What do I even know about writing except how much I don't know?  Still, I keep thinking about the revision process, and I keep coming to one big conclusion.  Ready?  Okay.  Revision is...hard.

Yeah.

Brilliant.  So as a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time trying to teach people how to make their writing better.  We do things like peer critiques, where readers ask each other questions about things they want to know more about, or identify language they really think "works"...that kind of thing.  And we do the kind of revision that is more about refining language--identify your lazy words and get more specific.  Read it out loud and find the sentence breaks.  Check your outline and make sure your paragraphs are organized with transitions and a strong thesis...that kind of thing.

Nobody can ever really teach you how to REVISE, you know?  Like, even when a reader (critique partner, agent, editor, your mom--whatever) tells you what's wrong with your novel--that the voice is awesome but everything that happens in it is slightly wrong, or that the whole thing really needs to begin 20,000 words in, or that the stakes aren't high enough or that your central focus seems to want to shift over about three inches to one side and maybe happen in a different state--even then, they can't tell you what to DO about it.

So far I've revised all of those problems and then some, and I still can't sit here on this blog and tell you what to do when you take apart a key scene about three-quarters of the way through and realize that it's like you've just gone to dig out a dropped stitch and suddenly there are all these loops and strings and holes and you're scared to move and your needles are shaking and more loops are sliding off of them every second and you've spent an entire year on getting this far so the thought of ripping it all out and starting over is paralyzing, and...

...well, I'm not sure how else to put it.  It's terrifying.  But you can't sit there all day holding perfectly still with your needles in the air. So...you start tugging at strings.  You pull a few loops.  Sometimes it works to cover the wall up above your desk with post-it notes, and sometimes it helps to make color-coded notes on dot matrix paper and spread it all over the floor, and sometimes it helps to cry and sometimes it helps to paint a deck with music stuffed in your ears and sometimes it helps to take a walk and sometimes it helps to take a bath and sometimes you have to write what's supposed to happen next ALL IN CAPS with things like "OMG THEY ARE FREAKED OUT" and "WHAT WE THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST A LITTLE MESSED UP BUT YOU ARE REALLY MESSED UP" and even "AND THEN HER PARENTS’ HEADS EXPLODE!" (All of these are either my own actual methods of revision or my own actual excerpts from my current document--I left out the somewhat controversial methods of snarling at my family and going on crazed cleaning rampages...)

Anyway, no matter how you cope with it, revising is freakin' HARD.  And what works for one person may not work for another.  What works for me today may not work tomorrow (assuming I eventually post this and get back to work), but the process of making serious, deep changes to a manuscript time and time again (I'm a slow learner) is daunting and difficult.

But.  Here's the good part.  As difficult as it is, and as many times as I feel like a big failure when I have to go back YET AGAIN and rework something I thought was as good as I could ever do in a million years, and as much as I despair with my huge pile of post-its and my fourteen open documents...every single time, something crazy happens.

The book gets better.

And that feels almost good enough to remember it all the way through until the next revision.  Almost.

*opens fifteenth document*

*sighs*

(for the record, because I'm afraid this post might be too short and might not contain enough parentheses, I can only knit in a straight line, like a never-ending scarf, and my options for dropped stitches are three: tear it all out and begin from the beginning (after I get someone to cast on for me because I always seem to forget how), live with a hole in the middle of my scarf, or bring it over to my mom's house and make her fix it...but so far, I have not yet made my mom do my revisions.)

wrapping it up--2010

Christmas Fireworks

One year ago today, I wrote a post outlining my writing goals for 2010.  I...could not even have imagined, 365 days ago, the thrilling successes I would experience--finding my dream agent, selling my YA debut, working with a brilliant editor, finishing a draft of another YA manuscript, meeting so many amazing writers (and having them come here, to my blog, to say hi and offer their support! WOW!)...and so much more.

I do think it's funny how cyclical writing is, though.  Case in point, my first goal last year:

I'd like to remain thoughtful, objective, gracious, and rational about anything that happens with this book.

This book?  At the time, it was known as The Dharma Bum Business, and shortly after I wrote that, Sarah Davies offered representation, and we started working hard to make the book the best it could be before putting it out on sub to editors.   The letter arrived--pages of questions, suggestions, cautions--pushing me to take my book to the next step.  I kept those words from my goal in mind (I'm not going to say I always succeeded, but I tried!), and they helped me as I revised the book now known as Kiss the Morning Star.

Thoughtful, objective, gracious, and rational.  Well, a year later, and I'm still pushing this book--still working to make it the best it can be, this time working with the feedback of my editor, Melanie Kroupa.  A year ago, I was close to putting this book away, "trunking" it.  I had gone through many revisions, many rounds of querying agents, and I thought I had pretty much done everything I could for it.

I have a long and unfinished post saved to my drafts folder about the process of this book becoming what it is, and someday, when the process is actually over, I may post it, but the moral of the story is...time and again, I have believed that the book is as good as I can make it, and time and again, I have been proven wrong.  And every time, the bar is higher, and the process is harder.  And I say those words like a mantra--thoughtful, objective, gracious, and rational.  And now, as I project this manuscript into a future where it will have a shiny cover and real pages and--OMG!--readers, who will be more than willing to give their feedback, I will cling to those words for support.

So I think that needs to be a permanent goal.

My other goals from last year were all accomplished:

Next goal is about the next book, and that is to finish editing it and send it out there spinning into the world as well.

 Done!  And though I still love this ms., it is sitting to the side for now until it fits better into the plan (it's a fantasy story.)

Third writing goal is to decide on the next project.... I'd like to get one more novel rough drafted by the end of this year.

 Done! My Cassandra WIP needs another go-around of serious revision, but I finished a draft, showed it to Sarah, and I hope I will be able to wrestle it into a shape worthy of submitting during 2011!

And last is for me to keep working on the one story, you know the one.

 Done! Not much done, but this book is making baby steps in and among the other projects, and it still excites me.  In addition, I wrote half of my very first attempt at middle grade with my summer-camp ghost story WIP, In the Hanging Shack.  So overall, my 2010 was a year of writing.  Tomorrow I'll share my goals for 2011, since this post has rambled on long enough, but I think a few more of them will focus on the personal life outside of the writing life.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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!

*peeks out of cave*

This lovely image of Lily, the black bear star of the den cam at the North American Bear Center last fall is the perfect image to represent me tucked up in my editing cave--bleary-eyed, confused, hungry, and rather annoyed with anyone who dares to desire my attention.  (I'm sorry, family!)

So last night I sent another draft back to Melanie, my lovely editor at Marshall Cavendish, and I'm hoping that as she reads it she will find things that she thinks are improvements.

I'm now in the middle of the third week of school, and I'm working on my sixth graders, trying to get them all shaped up into middle school students.  They're a lively, spirited bunch, and my "homebase" group makes me laugh constantly, even when their exuberance gets a little frustrating.

So, reeling a little from a Friday afternoon session of craziness and everyone-talks-at-once and everyone-blurts-every-thought-without-filtering, I decided to put together a little list of talking points for Monday morning.  I called it How to Be a Human and a Sixth Grader Instead of a Little Monster in a Sixth Grader Uniform.  I don't really think my sixth graders are little monsters, but...we all have our moments, right?  rawwwrrrr.

I organized my points into "R" words.  Sort of.  They listened, and I think they thought I was moderately funny.  In any case, I feel like maybe we may have a future that doesn't involve growling at each other.  I'm pretty sure it still will involve lots and lots of shouting and jumping around, but they're getting used to my quirks, I hope.

1. REALLY. We are here to help you, not torture you. Give us a chance to do our jobs as teachers.
2. REMINDERS and REDIRECTIONS don't mean you're in trouble. RELAX and just do what we're asking you to do.
3. RESPOND with a simple, "OK". We're not interested in what you didn't do or why you were doing it or who did it first.
4. RESPONSIBILITY: take some. for your actions and your words.
5. RESPECT: we all have to earn it.
6. RETALIATE, and you will get caught. No, we won't see the person who struck first. That person's actions alerted our spidey-senses that something was off-kilter, and now we see YOU.

Then we spent our afternoon playing a team-building game that involved possibly excessive amounts of volume but also excessive amounts of smiling and cooperation, so that was cool.

/boring teacher post*


_____
* it's okay, though.  I was thisclose to boring you all to tears with a Teaser Tuesday, so you can thank me in the comments.  :)

do you ever?

Do you ever look around you and realize that you haven't stopped to take a breath in like two weeks?

This is my deck, which I finally finished painting on Labor Day--also the day I started my second pass of my KtMS manuscript so I can see if the edits I finished two weeks ago actually make sense. 

Today began the second week of school, and I realized around 3:00 that I hadn't stopped to use the restroom all day.  And, since at that time I was besieged by sixth graders (who all wanted to escape Language Arts class to use the restroom, by the way), the realization was once again pushed aside until 4:15, when my own son got off the bus and made his way to my classroom, freeing me to finally leave.

Except by then I was in the middle of previewing an online training module, which I have to present to the staff meeting tomorrow morning at 7:30.  And since I'll be in the meeting tomorrow morning before class starts, and since my sixth grade homeroom needs way more attention and assistance in the morning than my eighth grade homeroom did last year, I decided I'd better get my chalkboards set up for tomorrow as well.  I had two documents open on my computer, and I was pecking away at a lesson plan outline for my boss and a compilation of book blog addresses for my teen book blogging elective, at the same time as I was fixing a snack for Jabber and scheduling a complicated classroom swap with two colleagues. 

Still had not peed.

At last, I realized that I was way too busy to keep poor Jabber at school with me until I was done, so I called D. and asked him to come pick the boy up...annoying to D. as he was in the middle of making an experimental dinner recipe (which turned out to be delicious, when I consumed it out of the microwave an hour or so later!), but I was busy planning and photocopying and distributing files full of links into shared folders while I filed IEP notices, answered emails to parents, and double-checked two of my sixth graders' schedule changes.

I did finally make a trip to the bathroom--at home--and during this activity I was visited by a small child who needed help with putting on his socks.  Also several arguments/wrestling matches broke out at this time, which I broke up.  I heated up my coffee and my dinner while loading the dishwasher and then listened to Jabber read while eating and making out a check for his school photos.

Fixed bedtime snacks.  Signed reading minutes.  Cleaned up snacks.  Wrangled kids a bit.  Cleaned kitchen.  Went to gym and worked out (while reading the book I am going to start teaching on Thursday, which I've only taught once before, years ago), showered, made lunches, and sat down to revisit those edits.

Except, oh crud, I still haven't blogged.

*Breathes*

And now it's bedtime.

sucked into a black hole of work? check.

The first full week of work is now behind me (no students until next week!), and I know...I haven't checked in.  This is how my  life works around this time of year:  back-to-school.

• gazing in a stupor at the four walls of my classroom as though I cannot picture them containing any sort of knowledge?  check.
• back-to-back twelve hour workdays during which my children forget what I look like? check.
• never-ending to-do list? check check check...(oh! that wasn't on my list, but I did it so I'm going to write it on my list so I can check it off! check!)

Summer vacation used to be this long stretch of lazy days and reading books and babysitting my little brother and slowly growing so bored that I actually looked forward to climbing on that yellow school bus with its bad shocks and its freckle-faced bullies and its inevitable arrival at school.

I liked wearing my new outfits and arranging my new school supplies.  I liked seeing who got their braces off and who got a bad permanent (um, me...) and who had grown six inches (um, not me...) and who had emerged from the cocoon of summer looking all sexy (um, no comment.)  After that, it was pretty much downhill in my eyes, but at least I was good at sneak-reading and had the ability to do my own thing while absorbing what I needed from the lesson with my spidey-senses.  (I know. I was rude and insolent and snarky and lazy.  I know it was obnoxious of me to still get straight A's.  Believe me, I pay penance for my middle school self every day.)

As an adult, though, summer seems to shrink every year.  I have big dreams that second week of June--all the wonderful things our family is going to do, all that lovely together-time.  We'll go camping; we'll go on amazing road trips.  We'll have fires on the beach and hang out with friends and read giant stacks of delicious books.  I'll paint a masterpiece to hang on my living room wall.  Hell, I'll paint my back deck before it rots right out from under me.  And then, about halfway through July, I realize that I'm only going to accomplish a tiny fraction of those dreams.  The camping/road trip money is spent replacing a dead clothes dryer, and then on replacing the washer, which dies shortly afterwards of a broken heart.  The husband has to go to work in the middle of the night and can't really stay awake for a bonfire or many nights out with friends.  The kids fight each other with tree limbs in the backyard while I wonder if the stain will even stick to the deck in 96% humidity.

So this year summer was simply not quite long enough for me to paint my masterpiece.  (Um, or even finish painting the deck...but before you judge, it's a HUGE deck, with all this underneath stuff and skinny rails that needed three coats and walls of lattice...and I've still got time before the snow flies!)

It was just exactly long enough for me to finish a first draft of my newest novel.

It was long enough (plus one day) to finish my first pass of edits on KISS THE MORNING STAR.  (YAY!)

It was nearly long enough for me to forget all my passwords at work.

It was enough time for me to read somewhere between 25 and 30 books (several of which were chapter books I read out loud to the boys--Oh, how we love Ramona and Beezus, Laura and Mary, Peter and Fudgie!)

And it was just about exactly enough time for me to be able to look out at a crowd of middle schoolers (which I would possibly have referred to as a horde of hoodlums mere weeks earlier!) and think, "Awwwww, look at how cute and shiny they all are!"

So happy back to school season, and I will try to squeeze a little blog post here in between the book reports. 

making a difference

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.  --Elie Wiesel

I'm fifty pages from the end of my first pass of edits for KISS THE MORNING STAR (and six days away from my personal deadline for finishing said first pass), and I thought I'd give you a glimpse into why I haven't been posting very coherent blog posts lately.  I looked up at my screen, and that's really what it looked like:  four documents all competing for my attention on my little monitor, a sixteen-foot-long banner of colorful notes taking over my keyboard, plus the eight tabs of firefox, my itunes, and three more documents minimized at the bottom.  (Document titles:  KTMS August 2010, July 14 melanie thoughts, answering melanie3, Hoole more revision notes, Editing KtMS3, scraps, kerouac quotes and sources.  Tabs open on firefox:  not telling.  :P)

This is exciting.  The yellow-highlighted notes on the document on the left of the side-by-side view (Editing KtMS3) are notes about scenes I've rewritten, progress I've made, additions, subtractions, successes, haphazard attempts, experiments, and in other words (as if that weren't enough words), STUFF I DID TO CHANGE THIS BOOK and, I hope, STUFF THAT MAKES IT BETTER. 

This next fifty pages, I'll admit, need the most work.  The world won't really end if I don't finish before school starts, but I know it would make me feel better overall.  I also know this is only the first pass--the first round of changes I've made for a real, live (and brilliant!) editor.  I know some of what I'm writing will never see the light of day, and in fact, some of it will never even make it through my next pass before going to Melanie. 

I've been approaching these edits with a very open mind, thinking of the whole book more from a "What if this would work?" or maybe a "Hey, maybe I should try that?" or possibly even a "Wouldn't it be sort of crazy if I went in this direction?" kind of mindset, knowing that if this doesn't work, or I really shouldn't have tried that, or yeah, this direction is really crazy and not in a good way...I can always go back a draft or two.  I have at least twenty to choose from, after all!

And now.  Yeah, you know it.  Back to work.

don't get a big head

Monkey: (grins) I'm growing!

Me: Yes, yes, you are.

Monkey:  (grins even wider) I'm going to be big as Daddy soon!

Me:  (grasps at good parenting opportunity)  Yes, someday...that is...if you go to bed nicely every night.

Monkey:  (grin fading)  But MOM.  Is my head going to grow, too?

Me:  Well, yes.  All of you will grow.  You'll be in proportion, don't worry.

Monkey:  (horrified look)  BUT I DON'T WANT MY HEAD TO GET BIGGER!

Me:  (pointing at David)  Look at Daddy, though.  Wouldn't he look silly if his head were little but the rest of him were big?

David:  It happens to some people, you know.

Me:  It won't happen to you, Monkey, don't worry.

Monkey: (wailing and pressing his hands to both sides of his head)  I DON'T WANT TO GET A BIG HEAD LIKE DADDY!  I DON'T WANT TO LOOK FUNNY.

(yes, this is a cheater post.  no, it has no point.  yes, I'm editing like crazy.  no, I'm not getting a whole lot done with these charming and hilarious children around.)

things you shouldn't really do in a skirt

I'm terrified of heights.  When my body is a certain distance above the ground, my blood pressure (non-scientific description) forces every molecule of blood into my hands and feet, making them feel simultaneously numb and somehow inflated, like all four of my limbs culminate in blown-up latex gloves.

This makes me clumsy on ladders, coupled with the fact that all that blood has also vacated my brain, leaving me a little lightheaded.

(Have I mentioned this also happens when I watch movies of people who climb mountains, drop out of  helicopters, scale the sides of skyscrapers or basically anything else David would like to watch?)

Despite this aversion to heights, I sometimes tend to seek them out, finding ways to face my fear.  Maybe I hope it will disappear altogether?  That its power will be diminished?  In any case, I've made it a point to go on roller coasters and ride chair lifts and even a little bit of mountain climbing.

And today I climbed a ladder to the very peak of my house, my inflatable hand struggling to clutch my camera, in order to face my fear and take a picture of D. working on the chimney.  (While D's brother and father joked about the awkwardness caused by me wearing a skirt...)  And I did it!  Up above you can see a picture of my house--the ladder was standing up on that deck, which is already one story up, and stretching up to the peak, which is outside the top frame of the photo (and you can also see a bit of my deck-painting project, though I'm farther than that right now!)  And you can see the photo I snapped with my hand all shaky and tingling--D.'s surprised smile when he realized it was me peering over the edge of the roof.

About halfway up the second story of the house (I looked down to roll my eyes at some comment of my father-in-law about my skirt and got a little dizzy...), I almost gave up, but then what would have been the point?  And it's sort of stupid--a lot of people climb ladders--but it made me feel so awesome to climb up there despite my fear.

And now...to battle my fearful (but similarly exhilarating) edits!  *straps on parachute*

how I'm spending my summer vacation...

My summer feels a little bit like a swirling vortex of unfinished projects.  And it's okay...I think.  Summer is still in full swing, and I have to remember that it's not like my world will come crashing to a complete halt and snow will start falling the day school starts.  I mean, the snow thing is unlikely.  (Because undoubtedly, I will have to endure two or three weeks of sweltering heat in my classroom full of stagnant, sweat-laden air and floor-to-ceiling windows full of sun...)

BUT REALLY.  I'm editing a book.  This in itself is a vast, uncertain project that sometimes feels like going backwards.  So far this summer, I have spent at least five or six straight weeks reading my book, thinking about my book, talking about my book, ignoring my book, making color-coded plot and character notes on endless streams of dot-matrix paper for my book, writing TWELVE THOUSAND words of notes (so far) about my book, and...I have yet to change a word of the actual book.  The best part of all of this is that even though the process is overwhelming and...well, overwhelming is probably the best word I can use, actually...right now, at this moment, I actually feel eager to dive in and make this book better.  And possibly more importantly, I feel confident, like I might have the ability to do so!

I'm also painting my back deck.  This project is surprisingly similar to the editing project.  Both of them are bigger than they first appeared.  Both of them involve broad strokes that require courage and vision and tiny, fiddly little details that require patience and sustained attention.  Both projects are taking a lot longer than I anticipated and include hidden work that nobody will ever see but without which the end result will be less likely to stand the test of time.  Both projects have been delayed by rain, so to speak.  Both projects mix poorly with rambunctious children.  Both are about making steady improvements.

The nice part about the two projects is that they play well together.  I do some of my best editing while wielding a paintbrush.  Many times I have reached a mental obstacle in my editing process--or probably more accurately, I have found myself unable to focus my attention on editing (i.e. I fall asleep or find myself on the internet in the middle of a sentence), and I have left the desk and headed for the deck, only to return later with some of that obstacle chipped away by the brain I thought was fully occupied by brushing and belting out songs playing on my ipod.  Somewhat sadly, this doesn't seem to work in the other direction--my subconscious has so far not managed to paint anything while I'm on the computer.  (But psssst! Brain! If you should manage to start doing that, I encourage you to focus your attention on that damned lattice!)

In all likelihood, the deck will be finished well before the edits.  Luckily, I live in an old house, and there's always another project.  Likewise with writing.

In the meantime, we're off to play in the sandbox!

insert post here

Jabber: Mooo-oooom!  Monkey keeps saying our spaceship is a doghouse!

Monkey: It IS a doghouse!

Jabber: It's a spaceship!

Monkey: It's a space-doghouse!

Jabber:  (stomps feet, raises voice)  It is NOT a space-doghouse.  It has WINGS.  It's a spaceship!

Monkey: (draws on wing) I'm coloring this wing purple.

Jabber:  AHHHH!  (tears purple marker away from Monkey)  NOT LIKE THAT.  IT HAS TO MATCH.

Monkey:  No!  (grabs marker back, screeches shrilly)

Jabber: MOMMMMMM!  MONKEY KEEPS WRECKING THE SPACESHIP!

Elissa (through the window, staring at editing notes with hopelessness):  Siiiiigh.  How about if you draw on the left wing, and Monkey draws on the right wing?  That seems fair.

Jabber (in a voice that can be heard several blocks away):  MOM!  WHAT GOOD IS A SPACESHIP IF IT'S NOT SYMMETRICAL?

I know, I know.  This happened like a week ago.  And yes, shortly after this I sent the kids away to their grandparents' houses for the weekend.  A weekend which unexpectedly stretched out into four days.  Yes, I missed them.  No, I didn't blog.  Yes, I've been ensconced in editing thoughts.  No, I haven't blogged.  Yes, I have read like five books in the last week.  No, I haven't blogged.  Yes, I began the tedious project of painting my back deck in the hot sun.  No, I did not get a tan on my legs. (Yes, I did get a smattering of freckles on my nose.) 

Yes, my editing has brought me to tears.  To driving my husband to yard work.  To throwing things.  To giving up.  To starting over.  To getting excited.  To tears again.  To inspiration.  To throwing things again.  To emailing my agent with my crazy showing.  To meeting an amazingly sweet and kind writer who shares my wonderful editor.  To appreciating all the wonderfully supportive people who make it possible for me to even contemplate doing any of this.  To tears again, these of a different sort.  And now to work.

(And no, I didn't blog.)

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.

It's a book deal!

Look!  My book!  From Publisher's Marketplace!

Elissa Hoole's KISS THE MORNING STAR, after her mother's tragic death, a girl sets out with her best friend on an epic road trip across the USA in the spirit of Kerouac's Dharma Bums - a journey of discovery both inward and outward, encompassing loss and lust, God and pot, and the tangled search for love and identity, to Melanie Kroupa at Marshall Cavendish, for publication in Spring 2012, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

Foreign: info@rightspeople.com

Here's a webcam picture of our toast yesterday evening when I got the call from Sarah that the deal was official...yes, we are crouching in the shelter of a work bench, what of it? 

Just as D. left to buy some champagne, a tornado warning came over the radio we were listening to, and Jabber, having just learned all of the proper procedures for such warnings in kindergarten, was a champ and got us all down in the basement for safety.


I started to outline here the entire history of what this book has gone through since I started it in Sept. 2008, but that's a whole post in and of itself.  Suffice it to say that I am thankful and wide-eyed and excited.

And now I'm going to put on my KtMS soundtrack--which is the Jack Kerouac tribute CD, Kicks Joy Darkness--and dance around the house some more.  :)

couldn't do this without you...

About two and a half weeks ago, I spent a weekend grading papers--book reports mostly--on my dining room table.  For like eight hours each day, I sat at that table and graded, wrote comments on papers, punched numbers into the calculator, and entered grades on my laptop, which was sitting off to one side.

At the same time at school, I was putting together a slideshow for our eighth grade graduation, sorting and sizing hundreds of photos and placing them in the slide show.

My wrist started to ache.  Then my elbow, my entire shoulder.  I wore a brace on my wrist for several nights, then full time as it didn't improve.  I tried an elbow brace, and still it ached.  Finally, I got into the doctor and went to physical therapy, where she stretched my neck out and POOF! pain was gone.  For two weeks, I had been thinking I had a sore arm, and I actually had a pain in the neck. 

While I was in too much pain to write, I did some beta reading and also read through the first 40k of my Cassandra WIP, which I haven't been working on since I put it aside to begin agent edits on KtMS.  And I found it actually helpful, if frustrating, to be injured while reading--to have actual physical pain every time I reached to correct something, to make an edit.  Editing at the sentence level, at the paragraph level, is an important step in the manuscript's development, but sometimes you can get caught up in the little fixes that you miss the actual source of the problem, which is that whole scene should probably either disappear or be completely rewritten, and this other character's motivations are all stemming from the previous scene, and now this one is inconsistent and really, the whole story should begin about thirty pages in anyway...

Anyway, this post is to say thanks to everyone who helped me out in the last couple of weeks--entering grades for me, finishing the slideshow, cleaning my classroom, taking down chairs so I could have conferences...

...and on the metaphorical side of the post, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who has helped with my book that is currently on sub with editors.  You know who you are, and you are so many, wonderful people.  Thanks for helping me find the source of the weaknesses and thanks for encouraging me when I didn't really see the point of continuing.  My dharma girls have come a long way from their beginnings, and who knows what's next?

And now I should probably go back to drafting Cassandra!  Can I get to 44k today?

photo credit David Hoole Photography, 2010 

eyes on the prize (and off the canoe rack)

Jabber is learning to ride a bike.  A real bike.

"With no training wheels," he says.

So the boys get out the toolbox and dismantle the second-hand bike we got him last summer, and soon he's wobbling across the back yard, back and forth, more feet on the ground than are strictly allowable for actual bike riding but with a lot of bravery.

I take a video or two, and at the beginning of each "take", Jabber solemnly speaks to the camera.  "Riding a two-wheeler is easy, once you get into it," he says, and then staggers off across the bumpy green expanse, grinning a big boy grin.

I learned to ride a bike when I was six--a red, banana-seat bicycle with a white plastic basket and a little silver bell with an American flag on it (which I've mentioned before).  My stepdad figured it would be easier for me to learn with a little hill to get me started, so he took me to the spot where the driveway rambled down the peninsula toward the lake, the gravel turning into grassy ruts.  "Just keep your head up and pedal," he said, giving me a little push.

At the bottom of the hill, near the beach on the left-hand side of the path, there was a giant wooden canoe rack.  I think there was a canoe or two or three hanging on it...that part is fuzzy.  All I remember is that I was terrified of crashing into it.  It loomed in front of me, and I couldn't take my eyes off it.

So of course, I crashed into it.  Hard.  Picking me up from the dust, checking me for more serious maladies than the ever-present skinned knees and assorted bruises, my dad told me it was time to try again.

"But I'll hit the canoe rack," I cried.

"No, you won't.  Just steer away from it."

But every time I went down the hill, I found myself transfixed by the canoe rack, inexorably drawn to it until I was painfully tangled up in it.

My dad was frustrated, but he didn't know what to do except to tell me to steer.  How could I steer, when that gigantic, painful obstacle stood right in my way?  (except, it wasn't in my way at all; it was way off to one side of the harmless grassy path my bicycle was supposed to take...)

Finally, crying and ready to give up, I explained how my bike just gravitated toward the canoe rack, and Randy taught me the trick of bike-riding:  you will always go where you look.  "Look away," he said. "Keep your eyes on the path."

Magic.  I sailed down the road (okay, okay, I still crashed, but not into the canoe rack; that's the important part.)

I've said it before, about writing...there are so many ways to fail, so many reasons to give up, to keep your eyes locked on that scary canoe rack.  To crash.  To get hurt.

I'm not one who believes that positive thinking is a magic spell that will lead to my success, but there's something to be said about keeping my eyes on the prize and off the canoe rack, about setting goals and pedaling toward them.  When I have my gaze fixed on the things I fear, it can feel like I'm hurtling toward them, out of control.  A voice in my head tells me to steer, but how can I, transfixed by the giant failure in front of me (or maybe it's really off to one side, completely off my path)? 

My book is out in the world.  I'm trying to look in another direction, trying to fix my eyes on a grassy path.  Trying to wrap up the school year and plan for my summer and keep my house from smothering us all in its filth.  Trying to keep pedaling.

Last night Jabber braved the alley.  There's a little hill, a long straight stretch.  Rows of garbage cans.  He's brave, much braver than I was at six, and he took off without a push, without any directions from me.  Still, I shouted after him.  "Keep your eyes straight ahead, Jabber!  Keep looking forward!"

He rode straight down that alley, just like a pro.

Of course it's not you, Mom...

A writer may be observing you right now.

Ask writers what question people always ask them, and you're likely to hear queries such as, "Where do you get your ideas?" or "How do you come up with your stories?"  Readers who fall in love with fictional characters, who get lost in fantasy worlds, who enter a book so completely that they forget about time and reality--they have questions about the genesis of it all.  Where did this come from?

And naturally, the first place they want to find it is in the writer's real life.

My first novel's protagonist has a manipulative, enabling mother.  She's redeemed in the end, but would that fact matter to my own mom, if she were to read it?  Or would she read the mother character looking for herself, for the small details of reality I may have used as a writer for authenticity?  (And oh dear, what will she think of the dead mom in my current  novel?)

Does real life make its way into my fiction?

When I was maybe eleven years old, I got my swimsuit and hopped on my bike and pulled out of my driveway to head down to my friend's house.  Maybe I misjudged the speed of the car.  Maybe I didn't even look--who knows, I was eleven and probably making up stories in my head at the time.  But I looked up, deer in the headlights, and saw this car speeding toward me.  A kid on a country road, driving fast.

In my panic, I swerved back toward my own side of the road, wobbly on my bicycle, and headed for the near ditch.  Which was right where the car was heading, the driver panicked and the brakes locked up.  I remember the screech of tires. 

The car skidded to a stop--the front bumper gave me an abrasion on my shin about six inches long when it stopped just short of me, just short of crushing my leg against the frame of my bike.

My parents, who had just hugged me goodbye and were in the yard working on building the  house, heard the screeching tires and came running through the trees, just as I was reassuring the young driver that I was fine, and he was busy squealing off down the road again. 

I was angry at my parents because they wouldn't let me go swimming.

This instant of my life--which looks so different to me now, looking back at it, as a parent, as an adult, as a driver--has made its way in one form or another into several of my stories.  In one of my first completed short stories, it looks like this:

It was a strange moment when his rage swallowed his tears.  Some years later, he looked up at an oncoming car, misjudged its speed, and pedaled out in front of it.  The driver of the car panicked and slammed on his brakes, skidding across the pavement and stopping only after the front bumper grazed Gerry's shin.  The anger was like that--in the distance but deceptively fast--colliding with him accidentally, out of control.  He stood up, letting the desk top bang shut with a loud crack, and shouted, roared with red face and tight fists raised, "I hate you!  You...you...BITCH!"  He ran from the room, his eyes dry fire ripping across the faces of the kids who looked at him with something like fear.

In KISS THE MORNING STAR (that's third novel's new title!), there is a missionary trip to Mexico with a dilapidated bus and a crazy pastor.  In real life, I did once take a missionary trip to Mexico on a dilapidated bus.  But the group of teens and parents and fellow college student translators was amazing and beautiful and not at all creepy (and Pastor S. was a saint and a hero on that trip, of course!).  My memories of that journey form a little bit of who I am, and those details are what I use to tie my fictional words into the thick fabric of life, adding the layers that I hope will make them into something that captures moments, captures readers. 

But I won't say there isn't sometimes a nagging voice--an editor in my head--will they understand that it's not REALLY real life?  It's the voice that makes it difficult to write sometimes, the voice of: what will my students think if they read this?  What will my children think?  And Mom? If I ever publish a book, I feel like we'll have to have an agreement that she can read all she wants, but all I want to hear is, "I love it, honey." 

My friend and brave beta reader Amy Danziger Ross recently started a Microfiction Monday on her blog, saying she thought it would be a great way for her to keep in the practice of being on the lookout for stories all the time.  But then comes the hard part--publishing them.  What stories are truly ours to tell?

(P.S. if you're here from twitter and looking for the naked grizzly bear story, you'll just have wait to read KtMS.  :P)

photo credit David Hoole Photography, 2010

this is my excited face...

Well, revision is sent!  Mostly, I'm proud of it.  But of course, with writing, there's always the possibility that one is delusional, right?

So yay! My fingers are crossed, and I hope the reaction is not:

a) Nooooo!  I didn't want you to do THAT!

or

b) Wait.  Did you do anything?