jabberish interlude...

Jabber:  Yeah, I don't really like grapefruit.  But I like grapefruit juice.

Me:  Grapefruit is basically grapefruit juice.  If you like the flavor of the juice, you like grapefruit.

Jabber:  I like the flavor of the juice, but...it's just not the kind of flavor I like to use my teeth with.

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.)

that's what he said...

Jabber is playing on the living room floor, while D. and I eat our dinner at the table.

J (muttering to himself): YES! My Lego pilot is sitting in his Calkpit. COCKpit. COCK. PIT. (to me) MOM! Isn't this word really hard to pronounce? COCK. PIT. COCKPIT.

me (eyes locked on D's, dying a little): Yes, honey.

J: COCK. PIT. COCK. PIT.

me (dies some more)

J: Hey! That's a compound word, isn't it? PIT, like my armpit. and COCK. Whatever that is. COCK. What's a COCK, Mom? COCKCOCKCOCK.

me (ded)

sick day homeschool

So all three of us were out sick today with a creepy, fever-cough flu-thing, so I was lying in my bed drifting in and out of consciousness while the boys were supposed to be "resting" in their bedroom.

Before long, I heard some rather organized imagination play going on.  From the sounds of it, Jabber and Monkey were playing school.

For a while, things went well.  Jabber got out some paper and pencils and labored to teach his brother the art of  proper letter formation.

Jabber:  Oh!  That's a very nice E!  Normally, we only use three lines going across, but you got it facing the right way and everything.

Monkey: *makes siren noise*

Jabber:  Monkey! It's time to do the R!  Come on.  Start with one line down, like this.

Monkey:  WhoooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo!

Jabber:  Are you even listening to me?  Monkey!  Monkey.  Come on.  This is serious.  See my R?  See if you can do it just like that.

Monkey:  *jumps up and down*

Jabber: You can't make your R look right while you're jumping.  Please sit down.  PLEASE SIT DOWN!

Monkey:  I did it already!  I'm done!  I'm done! *jump jump jump*

Jabber: (exasperated)  MONKEY.  Where is your paper??

Monkey:  (completely unconcerned comment tossed out in between his enthusiastic gun-shooting sound effects)  Oh, that paper?  I dunno.  I threw it on the floor over there somewhere.

Jabber:  What?  We don't throw our papers on the floor, Monkey.  You have to turn them in to your teacher.

Monkey:  *cackles loudly, interspersed with more gun sound effects*  Well, go pick it up then.  I don't care.  SCHOOL IS BORRRRRRING!

***

Oh, dear.  That is all.

because someday soon he won't let me post these stories...

Monkey is upstairs on the potty.

Me: How you doin' up there, Monkey?

Monkey: DON'T SAY THAT.

Me: What should I say?

Monkey: SAY, 'HOW ARE YOU DOING UP THERE?'

Me: How are you doing up there?

Monkey: DON'T SAY THAT!

Me: What should I say?

Monkey: SAY, 'HOW ARE YOU DOOOOOING UP THERE?'

Me: How are you doooooing up there?

Monkey: DON'T SAY THAT!

Me: Well, what should I say???

Monkey: SAY, 'HOW ARE YOU DOOOOOING UP THERE, BUTTHEAD?'

Me: I'm not going to call you a butthead.

Monkey: FINE. THEN JUST GET UP HERE AND WIPE MY BUTT INSTEAD.

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.)

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.

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. 

sometimes...

...things are not *quite* what you expected.

and other times...

everything is just the way you like it.

so many books...

So I bought a bunch of books, and it ended up depressing me. How does that work? Well, unlike the adult fiction at the sale, which are mostly donations, a lot of the YA books there were books that have been withdrawn from the library--maybe because the library has extra copies, maybe because they didn't circulate, maybe because they're old...for whatever reason, looking at all those discarded books made me sad. (Even though it means the library is replacing them with new books!)

(I searched and searched my brain just now for the word "discarded", and it simply wasn't there. Eventually I had to ask David, who promptly supplied the word and then said, "How's that for a son of a librarian?" /random aside)

So anyway, back to my woeful depression.

There are a lot of books in the two big grocery bags I came home with. A lot of books that I haven't ever heard of. Books that, quite honestly, don't look very good. And that could be depressing from a *whine whine* "But how come my books aren't published when there are so many dumb ones that get published?" *whine* kind of way, but I have been paying close attention to publishing for long enough to understand that those comparisons are pretty meaningless, really.

Instead, I'm depressed to see so many books that are so...forgettable. They have been discarded. They were published (hurray! the big pie in the sky goal!), they made it to the library (and maybe even the bookstore!), but for whatever reason, teens didn't read them.* They were not big hits. I have not heard of them. I haven't heard of their authors--those people who slaved away just as I have slaved away over an idea so nebulous and maddening, over characters and dialogue and conflict and query letters and revisions and marketing. Only to have their book, still shiny and new, tossed into a huge bag by a middle school English teacher who looks at it, raises her eyebrows dubiously, and says, "Well, you never know. Someone might like this one."

In a way, it makes me grateful that my first novel did not sell, since at the time I finished it I knew only enough to be mildly dangerous. In the last three years or so, I've learned SO MUCH about every part of the writing process, including the part that comes after the book sale, as more and more of my writing friends have books published before my very eyes!

(Check out Bethany Griffin's Handcuffs, Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia, Hannah Moskowitz's Break, and Suzanne Young's The Naughty List, by the way!)

Obviously I'm still terribly ignorant, but I'm learning more and more every day.

I'm rambling rather idiotically, but I guess what I'm feeling is a combination of my usual Barnes and Noble Syndrome: "Oh my god look, there are a lot of books in this world. How is there even room for one more? Why would anyone possibly need mine?" and the sadness of seeing so many books discarded and unwanted, left languishing for the three dollars a bag crowd. "I used to be somebody's baby, but now no one will even pay fifty cents for me," they whisper. Even if they are bad books, I feel sorry for them. But I'm a weirdo, I know.

I'll get over it. I'll keep writing. I'll keep hoping. And I'll keep trying to learn more about how to keep my own babies out of that discard pile, should they ever get to the point of being books outside of my own imagination!

Speaking of babies. Enough of this writing chatter. This morning I was getting ready to go to the library, and the kids were fighting about something or other. I asked them to stop, and Jabber replied with his usual anger word, a fiercely hissed, "STINKIN'!"

Monkey looked shocked (as though he has never yelled the same thing at me). "Mama's not stinkin'!" he said, patting my face with his sweet little hands. "Mama is Beeeeyooootiful!" Hard to feel too depressed for too long with that kind of lovin' in the house.



*I do realize that books are discarded for a variety of reasons, not always because they're miserable failures. I've found some really spectacular and successful books in the discard pile. But the general feeling I got from the books I picked up today was a sort of air of dejection--books that never really found their following. It may be that the authors went on to be perfectly successful; after all, there are a million brilliant authors I've never heard of. It's also highly possible that I just happened to pick up a particularly dreadful pile of books.

a tangential slalom course of a post

I go through these jags where I listen almost exclusively to Minnesota Public Radio when I'm driving my car, and I'm in one right now. If you were to see me driving somewhere, you'd probably be able to tell. I might be chuckling. I might be nodding thoughtfully. Most likely, though, my car will be parked and inexplicably idling at my destination--the children straining at their seatbelts while I shush them.

So yesterday I hopped into the car (I keep calling it that, but it's really a mini-van, sighhhh) to pick up the boys from a morning at daycare while I was writing, and this Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, was speaking about happiness, or more specifically, why people mess up so much when trying to predict what will make them happy. A long time ago, I remembered watching this video of a shorter talk he did at some other...ideas thingy...because I remembered the interesting experiments he did with a photography course.

Short story is that he had college students take a bunch of meaningful pictures and create two beautiful prints, and then they had to choose one to keep and one to leave with the instructor. Half the students were told that they could change their minds in four days and switch pictures, and the other half were told that they had to choose and it was a final decision. In the end, the people who had an opportunity to change their minds were less happy with the pictures than the people without that chance. Like, a lot less happy.

Then he asked a new group of students which group they would rather be in, and over sixty percent of them chose to be in the group with the choice. They chose the class that would eventually make them unhappy with their photo.

This was interesting.

I started thinking about shopping, about the difference between the way I shop and the way D. shops. First, I make decisions and then I don't look back. Let's say I'm looking for a new pair of shoes to wear to work. I'll go to the shoe store, find my size, look around at all the options, try on a few pairs if I don't already have a tantrumming toddler, pick one, buy it, and I'm done. Those other shoes that I didn't buy? They aren't in my head anymore, unless I've made mental plans to come back for them after I've earned another pair of shoes or something.

David does pretty much the opposite. He will scour shoe stores for several weeks, repeatedly going in and trying on different pairs. He will research the finalists thoroughly on the internet. He'll read reviews of the shoes. He'll go back and try them on again. He'll pit the stores against each other to get a better price (seriously, he does this all the time, not necessarily with shoes, but I wouldn't put it past him). Finally, he'll make his selection, but much of the time it's a close decision, and he may waver a couple of times as he works through all the pros and cons of each.

The next thing is that I don't do returns. So let's just say I don't like shoes when I get home. They actually pinch a little. Wow, I didn't realize they made that weird little sighing sound every time I take a step. That will be awkward while I'm creeping around my classroom. I totally didn't notice that they made my feet look so boxy. Boxy doesn't really look good on my feet. I shrug and tuck them in my closet. Give them away to someone. Possibly I have slightly pinching, boxy, sighing feet for a while until I have a chance and the funds to try again. But it doesn't really occur to me to bring them back. I don't know why...I just feel like it's a lot of trouble. I made the choice, no big deal. I don't usually feel unhappy about the shoes. Shoes are great, but I'm not going to go crazy over a pair of shoes.

D. comes home from shopping and doesn't take the tags off of things until he's certain. Really certain. And then maybe he'll sleep on it. I guess I can't speak to his happiness with those final purchases, but from my point of view, it seems like if he realizes that there's a flaw in his purchase, he's more likely to wonder about that other option...maybe I should have bought that other one...I saw that one review about this on their website, but everyone else said it was fine...it seems a little like agonizing, to me.

Agonizing =/= Happiness.

So Gilbert talked about how choice--freedom--makes people less happy. Because you can wonder about whether you made the right choice? Because you also have the freedom of regretting the choices?

Oh, dear. This is not what this post was supposed to be about. Warning! Tangent! Where did it start? *traces back*

AHA!

Second paragraph. A likely place for a tangent to crop up.

What I meant to write about was the tiny snippet of the Aspen talk aired on MPR that was about CHILDREN. And how they make us less happy. I believe his three reasons that we still think of our children as sources of joy were Armani socks, Heroin, and Baseball. Maybe I'll blather on about that tomorrow. Or maybe there will be another tangent. What was I talking about?

up to our ears in hats...

We have a lot of hats.

Hats are awesome...they keep the sun off, they keep my ears warm, they keep the world from seeing that I still haven't washed my hair today. (Sadly, they cannot hide the fact that I'm not yet wearing actual pants...)

They also sort of drive me nuts, in that cluttery, never-to-be-found-in-the-same-place kind of way. Most mornings this school year, there's a distinct possibility of me actually getting to school on time, if only I had been able to locate all of the proper hats at the proper time. Our hat collection is impressive. Our organizational system for the hats is not.

In fact, it may be slightly telling to reveal that after that photo, I shoved the majority of those hats back on a shelf sandwiched in between a stray mukluk and a basket full of old batteries and pens that don't work.

I could have a hat storage area, maybe, like a hall closet or a mudroom. Except we don't have either of those, so the hats just sort of flutter down off of heads somewhere in the vicinity of the front door and then filter from there out into the home--landing on various hooks, chair backs, radiators, shelves, floors, and sometimes even toyboxes.

Truthfully, I'm sort of scared to store them too close to each other. What if they multiply?