the haphazard reader

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

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books my grandma got at estate sales and auctions--dusty hardbacks from old people's basements (I also read all these outdated school "readers"--full of strange short stories and poetry and prayers and little morals, on stained yellow paper).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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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









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

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

I'm teasing...

...but I won't make a regular thing of it, I swear. 


So I'm a teacher.  My students are on the young end of the YA age bracket, but I admit that they, along with  my own memories of being a teenager, influence my writing quite a bit when I'm writing for teens.  So it's kind of weird to realize that in the three finished YA manuscripts I have, there are barely any scenes in a school.  Sure, the history teacher (and her badass metal sculptor girlfriend) are big characters in Just Think, and okay, so there used to be a couple of high school scenes in the long prelude to the real beginning of The Dharma Bum Business, back before I cut off that first 15,000 words or whatever.  (There was even a slightly...er...eccentric media center specialist who may possibly have seemed a teensy bit familiar to those who have some shared schooling experiences with me, but of course, all characters are a work of fiction.  And stuff.)


But for a person who spends so much of her life in school, writing about other people who spend so much of their lives in school, there has been remarkably little school in my books so far.  But not this one.  My current WIP actually takes place mostly at school, and it's so weird.  I have to write about teachers.  A lot of YA features terrifyingly awful teachers, or completely clueless teachers, or teachers who aren't really sure about the boundaries of professionalism.  This bothers me, as a teacher reading the book--after all, the teachers I know and love are astoundingly full of awesome at all times--but it serves a purpose, of course, which is to create conflict and personal growth for the teens who are experiencing the story.


I have decided that the only real teacher with lines and face time in my current book can't be evil.  He can't be completely clueless, either.  And he most definitely cannot be creepy.  So instead, I believe I have settled on dorky.  Which of course is true of all adults.


Anyway, I'm posting one excerpt from my work-in-progress, and it's a rough draft, but this bit makes me smile a little and wish that my main character would let the dorky teacher help her out a little bit.  Cassandra has to write a "Song of Myself" based on Whitman's poem, and she feels like there is nothing about herself to celebrate. 

Mr. Dawkins taps the edge of my desk.  "So did you make something up?" His voice is gentle, but the set of his mouth means business.
 

"I'm still working on it."  I work on shrinking down to a size so insignificant he will forget that I exist and pass on to the next slacker, but he doesn't budge.

"Let's see what you have so far."  His persistence is admirable for a veteran teacher.  Most of the faculty at Gordon have already settled into the pre-retirement mode of half-hearted, long-memorized lectures and prolonged sessions of busywork.  Mr. D. insists on being one of the ones who still pushes, relentlessly, against the tide of student apathy.
 

"It's too rough," I say.  "I'll show you when I get it polished."

"Show me, and I can help give some revision ideas."
 

Panic.  I can't show him what I have; he'll be harder on me than Darin was.  "It's on my computer at home."  The old stand-by excuse.
 

"Recreate it here," he says, and he officially becomes the second person to pick up my notebook without my permission and open it up to a blank sheet of paper.  "Now.  I'll be back to check it out in ten minutes."
 

"Now you're screwed," says Darin out of the side of his mouth.

"Sure."  I draw geometric shapes in the top margin of my paper.  "I celebrate myself and sing myself, for I am screwed."

"Write it," says Darin.

"Write that?"

"Write your song.  Write Cassandra."  He's doodling, too, like he always is, except is that me he's drawing?  A spiky-haired girl with manga-eyes glares up from the faint blue lines.  In her hand she wields a crystal ball.

 "I'm not…"  I don't finish it.  Somehow I don't mind his vision of me.

 Ten minutes later, my paper is still empty, and Mr. D. keeps me after class to discuss my midterm grade, which will be an F unless I turn in my poem on Monday.

 "I will, Mr. D.  I'll finish it this weekend, I promise."

 "Cass?"  He looks as if  he might try to pat  my shoulder.  I take a step back.

 "Have a good weekend!"  I force a smile and start toward the door of the nearly empty classroom.

 "Is everything okay?"
 

I feel a little bad about blowing him off like this.  He's a genuinely nice guy, and it's not really his fault he's a teacher.  I mean, how many jobs can there possibly be for guys who wear corduroy blazers and get all jittery over the words of some dead guy's poetry?  "Everything's great, Mr. D.  See you Monday!"  And I am out, merging into the slipstream of hallway traffic before he can say anything else, anything that would change even the slightest fiber of my existence.

###


Well, Mr. D. might be a dork, but he's no match for me...

ringing my own bell...

I was six, maybe seven, and I had a red banana-seat bicycle with a bell.  I was an only child, and I spent most of my days quietly rambling around the little peninsula of my home--digging in the sand, climbing in the cedars, "discovering" secret pockets of lilies-of-the-valley, making up stories inside my head.  I talked to myself, constantly.

But every so often, I'd get a hankering to talk to someone new, so I'd ride up the dead-end road to the top of the hill--the limit of my solo territory. There, in a house I've forgotten and would probably drive past without recognizing now, lived a toddler boy that I  liked to play with. 


I think I was too shy to knock on their door, or probably my mother had told me not to because knocking on someone's door was being a pest, but instead of approaching their house like a normal visitor, I would instead ride my bike in little circles on the road, thumbing my bell.

Ring-ring.  Ring-ring.  I'd wait, and then try again, a little more quietly.  I knew that it was possible the baby could be taking a nap, and I didn't want to wake him.  But if he was awake, he would hear me out on the road and run to the door, shouting to his mother, "Lissa ring her bell!  Lissa ring her bell!" until she would take him outside to visit with me.

Thinking about this as an adult, I have to sort of cringe at myself, intruding like that on this woman's life.  I remember her being very kind to me, and maybe it was a nice break for her to have a visitor to occupy the little one, but maybe she was actually annoyed with having to watch two children instead of one.

This is leading somewhere, I think.

So I was thinking about this...about how difficult it can be sometimes for me to "intrude" in people's lives.  I hate the telephone, but it's not necessarily talking on it that I hate--I hate calling people because I feel like I have no idea what I'm interrupting in their lives at that moment.  There's a quality of self-assurance that I maybe lack, the assurance that no matter what they were in the middle of, of course they'll be happy to stop and talk to me.  I know this is ridiculous; if they're busy, they can just say so.

I was reading something recently (and if I were a good little blogger there would be a fancy link here or something, but I'm just a lazy writer girl, so sorry, you'll have to take my word for it) about how writers need publicists because they are, in general, a modest lot.  It's hard for us to go around tooting our own horns.  Instead (*tries desperately to make this post somewhat cohesive*), we'd rather ring our bell, quietly, while we make wobbly circles on the asphalt with our heads down, watching the ribbons woven into our own spokes.  We hope that the public will come running with a toddler's enthusiasm, but even that can feel like too much, can make me worry that I'm being intrusive.  I mean, I don't even like to friend people on facebook, as a rule, because I feel bad that I'm making someone else make the decision of whether to accept or ignore.  I worry that maybe they will have forgotten me in the stream of time or more important people and will wonder why they would ever want to read about the minutiae of my daily life.

I was thinking today about joining a local writing group.  This would require me to go to a meeting--to walk into a coffee shop and approach a group of people and intrude--to say, "Hey, can I join you?"  A difficult thing for me to do, in general.  But there have been several times in my life where I've pushed myself to take that kind of risk, to go beyond the quiet thumbing of my bell and the hope that someone will notice and instead have stepped forward bravely and introduced myself to a situation.  These situations usually involve some awkward moments (like when I went alone to audition for the Shakespeare play and nobody really talked to me), but they have usually resulted in really amazing things (like when the stage manager asked me for a ride home and promptly became one of my best friends who is still a part of my life).

Anyway, I'm failing at eloquence, but this tricycle my husband shot a picture of in our backyard reminds me of my seven-year-old self on my red bicycle, and it makes me think I should probably give that writing group a chance.  It was a bit of a stretch to go from there to facebook to phone calls to writing, and I never did manage to tell you the story of how Monkey recently invited himself and David right inside an acquaintance's house and how if it had been me there instead of David, I would never have gone back to the door and he would have cried and everyone would have missed out on a lovely little accidental visit, all because I would be worried about being intrusive.

is this real life?

Jabber and I spent last Saturday afternoon "rambling"--the code word around here for "please take one or both of the kids out of here before they wreck the place and send us all into a terrible spiral of craziness".  Technically, our job was to get groceries, but our real job was to occupy ourselves long enough that David and the Monkey could get in a good, long nap.

So we rambled.  We spent some time hanging out on the banks of a fast-moving city creek, had pancakes and coffee at a local coffee shop (where Jabber did write his note to Ms. C. and I did some writing of my own, both of us scribbling companionably in longhand in our journals), and eventually made our way through the aisles of the grocery store.  We did all of this mostly without driving each other crazy.

I enjoy being with my kids, especially like this--low pressure, low expectations.  I do best with only one at a time, and without much of a plan. 

On Sunday, after a short family walk around the neighborhood (which included a playground visit, a Laffy Taffy stop, and a rousing game of I-Spy, culminating with a bike ride along the sidewalk out front), Jabber sat on the front porch steps between David and I and sighed hugely. 

"Mom?" he said.  "Is this real life?"

I hesitated.  I mean, wouldn't you?  What exactly is he asking?  What kind of answer can I possibly give him?

"Well, is it?"

I took the Socratic approach, or maybe I was stalling.  "As opposed to what?" I asked.

"Well, it could be a dream."  He took a swig of water from his canteen, gazing out across the street in his little cosmic contemplation.  "It could all be a dream."

Maybe it takes a weekend of spring rambling to get a person back in touch with real life, but it was sort of like the sun got warmer, the air fresher, the Laffy Taffy stickier, at that moment.  I spend so much of my time immersed in fiction--the opposite of real life.  At times, don't we all live our life in a dream, thinking about what we'd like it to be, what we hope it will become?

"How can we tell that this is real life and not a dream?" I asked.  He couldn't see me smiling, but I'm sure he heard it in my voice because he laughed, then, and leaned back against my legs.

"Well, because there aren't any monsters or weird animals," he said.  "Everything just makes sense.  Duh!"

little white lies

Yesterday Jabber came home from kindergarten with terrible news.  His clip--that mythical clothespin with his name on it that hangs from the stoplight near the kindergarten door--had been moved from green to yellow.  Yellow as in caution, danger, slow down, watch out!  I asked him why his clip was moved and listened skeptically through the rash of protests--"It wasn't my fault" and "I didn't know..." -- to find the real story.  Well, the germ of truth that may be the real story.  The rest is conjecture, I suppose, but I know my son, and I know classrooms, and I can only guess that what actually happened probably involved a lack of listening and a surplus of silliness.

Anyway, I told him that this morning when we got to my classroom he could write a note to his teacher explaining the correct way to behave in the classroom.  However, this morning was a rush of getting ready for a billion other things that were going on at school, so we ran out of time for Jabber to write his note.

This evening I asked him if his clip stayed on green.  He claimed that it was going to stay on yellow until Monday but that he stayed off red.  Not sure if it's normal for it to stay on yellow or if he was having issues with his behavior today, too, and I know I wouldn't get a straight answer out of him even if he tried to tell me, so I let it go.  I didn't say anything about the note, but he remembered it and said, "We don't have to worry about writing that note to Ms. C. because I found some time today in class and wrote one to her already."

At this point, if he had left it at that, I may have actually believed him.  He's a pretty nice kid overall, and I don't think he gets a charge out of misbehaving, really.   Also, he is super, duper fond of Ms. C. and would be devastated if he thought she was upset with him for any amount of time.  So it's conceivable that he would have written a little note.

But he kept on talking.

"Yeah, I wrote, 'Dear Ms. C., I'm very sorry for talking with my friend T. when I should have been writing my name on my paper instead.  I will listen very carefully from now on.  So I will be a good listener during reading class and all the time.  From Jabber.'  and then I gave it to her."  He paused, and at this point I was getting a little suspicious.  My kindergartener is getting better and better at composing his own writing, but that seemed a little wordy even so.  Still, he talked on.

"Yeah, so I gave her that note already, so we don't really have to write another one this weekend.  She saw the note and stuff, and I'm pretty sure my clip will go back to green on Monday, and I had a chance to write that note because we had some time.  During class."  He paused.  "When we had some free time.  That's when I wrote it.  My note.  That she already saw."

Now I was really suspicious, but I didn't show it.  "Oh, good," I said.  "When I send her an email on Monday, I'll tell her that we talked about the apology letter you wrote for her, and that you're sure you can do like you promised."  I didn't look up from my dinner plate.

A small pause.

"You can just say my apology," he said.  "Not my apology letter."  He pushed the cereal around in his bowl with the tip of his spoon.  "She'll know what you  mean."

"Oh, well, I think I'll say 'apology letter', actually.  I like being specific."

A longer pause.  More cereal pushing.

"Mom?"  Tiny voice.

I looked up.

"Did you ever think something in your brain, but then your mouth got it wrong?  I got it confused in my head.  See, I meant to say that I was going to write the letter this weekend--here, at home.  And then I accidentally found my mouth saying that it happened already at school.  I got mixed up.  I mean, sometimes you think one thing, but you say another."  He tried for a super innocent facial expression.  "Does that ever happen to you, Mom?"

And like, I think I made my point, really, which was...well, I guess my point was that he should know I'm always going to get to the bottom of things and he can't get away with telling me lies.  But here's the thing.  I'm not always going to have that inside scoop that comes with knowing his teacher.  I'm not always going to catch on that he's not telling the truth--especially when he figures out the trick of not over-sharing.  He's going to lie to me; I'm not going to catch every one.

And he'll get better at lying in order to get better at not getting caught.  Because it's embarrassing to be caught in a lie.

So I didn't really know what to say right then.  I can hear my own mom saying the old stand-by: I'm not upset about what you did as much as I'm upset that you lied about it.  But let's face it:  I'm upset that he got in trouble at school AND I'm upset that he lied to get out of part of the consequence of it.  So I just said, "Yeah, sometimes my brain says one thing and my mouth says another.  And sometimes my brain tries to figure out a way to avoid something uncomfortable, so it tells my mouth to say things that aren't exactly true, just to make it easier on me."

He nodded.  "Yeah, I guess that's what my brain did."

"Yeah.  And that works for a little while, but it's not really respectful of the other person, who deserves to get the truth from you.  And if they find out about the truth, then it gets really complicated trying to get yourself out of what you just said."

He sighed, and his eyes had tears in them.  "Yeah.  It gets really complicated."

I went back to eating.  "Lots more complicated than telling the truth."

He ate a scoop of his cereal, the tears receding.  "I'll write that letter tomorrow, Mom."

I smiled.  "That sounds great, Jabber." And he smiled, too.

"Look at all that water!"

I've spent the better part of the last fifteen years within sight of Lake Superior, and still it never fails to fill me with awe. In college, I had a second story apartment on the Hillside of Duluth, in an old house with three giant windows facing the Lake, ancient glass settling heavily on the sills in a dreamy, wavy pattern, and there wasn't a single day in a single season that I didn't spend time cuddled up in the chair behind the fireplace, gazing out at all that water. In those days, the sound of the old foghorn made me smile in my sleep, and the sight of the Wednesday sailboat races would make me trot down the hill to the Lakewalk to find a sunny perch for writing or textbook reading or just daydreaming.

When David and I returned from our trip out to Oregon, we rented an apartment about a block away from the water, and we placed our bed in the middle of the room next to the window simply to be sure that the first thing we would see each morning would be the sun rising over the Lake in gorgeous displays of color and drama. That summer, pregnant with Jabber, I adopted David's early morning work schedule and rose before the sunrise, hiking down to the shore in the pre-dawn quiet. Each day I took a brisk walk east along the bicycle path to a little sheltered cove and my favorite rock, my sunrise-watching post. I placed myself there with my journal and a little tupperware of cereal and fruit--munching on my breakfast as the sun slowly unveiled himself to the world. I spent an hour writing: my thoughts and hopes, my attempts at poetry, my worries and anxieties about the future. And then, once the warmth of day heated up my stone seat and made me shed a layer or two into my backpack, I'd rise and walk the Lakewalk down to Canal Park and back to my apartment for a nice nap and some time on the computer, working on my first novel. Our apartment was small, the garage precarious, the street out front loud and busy, the heat patchy and unreliable--and yet it remains one of my favorite places in memory.

Our next home was without a view, but in our backyard rose a ridge that, if we dared to climb it (and at eight months pregnant, it was quite a feat!), offered a vista I could spend hours just sitting there admiring. In all the time we lived there, I think of that ridge and the view of the Lake below it as my sanctuary. Little Jabber learned to say "superior" before he was able to walk.

Life with two kids and a full-time job and novel-writing and bill-paying and whatever else is busy. Our cute little house now is close to the Lake but in a flat area, without a view. Still, every day on our drive to work, we climb up a hill and are greeted with the sight of Superior stretching off to the horizon, sometimes frozen and cold, sometimes impossibly blue and inviting, sometimes covered with the white capped waves that remind me of its power. On days like today, when I feel slightly overwhelmed by the world and the looming pressure of Sunday evening, I like to take the kids down to the shore for a few minutes to throw rocks in or play on the ice, and it never fails to make me feel more complete, more at ease.

I remember a hike long ago, when David and I stretched out on our backs in full winter gear on top of a sheet of ice. The sun beat down on us pleasantly, and I could feel his gloved hand squeeze mine through my choppers. Beneath us, we could hear the tiny trickle of water making its way back to the Lake as the ice melted. "Ah, this is how I love to feel," said David. "Slower than a land-locked wave in February."

So this is how we spent the final evening this February, watching the waves roll in.

time is but the stream...

At some point in the last month, Monkey stopped being a baby and started being, in his words, "a real grown-up". This as he handed over his "binkie" to us for the last time, handed it over "for all the babies to have."

Now he's learning to use the potty. This morning he woke up, used the bathroom, brushed his own teeth, got dressed and went downstairs--all without any help. (Well, all right, I helped him pull the turtleneck over his head, and I helped him turn his underwear around so they were no longer backwards.)

As we move from one season to another here (and maybe that's wishful thinking, too, but spring is coming soon), I keep thinking about the passing of time, how hard it is to remember sometimes even how old I am. I do a lot of, "Wait, was that the summer of 2006, or was it the summer after that? Where did we live when you last visited?" Things like that.

And I realized that so much of the last seven years is measured in child events. That was the winter that David worked part time and I spent the whole evening every evening sitting on the couch nursing Jabber. That was the Christmas right after Monkey was born. And the refrain from everyone was always this: "Enjoy it because it goes so fast."

So fast.

One day you have a baby. The next day it seems he's running away in a pair of snowshoes.

picture-perfect winter day

I love winter. In theory. I've lived all but three years of my life here in Minnesota, which amounts to a fair number of winter memories (I'll leave the actual numbers a little hazy, I think!) Memories of winter are either romantic and infused with large doses of happiness and hot cocoa, or they are ridiculous and awful and infused with large doses of "it's funny now, but at the time..." (an entire winter during my sophomore year of college comes to mind, complete with images of crowds of people running outside to help push my car up the hill to my apartment building every day as I fish-tailed past their buildings...)

The good memories involve sunny days spent building snow forts with the kids (or snowmen, even when my husband then shoots our snowman with a shotgun...yes, it did look pretty cool, even as Monkey's face twisted up with dismay--"What happened to Fwosty?") or nights spent playing hockey with my little brother on the ice rink in our backyard.

The Valentines Day hike up on the Superior Hiking Trail with a bottle of wine chilled in a snowbank.

The backyard fire pit party the night before our Minnesota wedding.

Afternoons curled up on the cat-lap chair behind the fireplace, writing poetry in my journal as I watched the world fall still under the weight of those crystalline drifts.

And yesterday. After a long spell of cold interspersed with several episodes of icy, dangerous driving conditions and more dark, cold, cabin-feverish days, we had one gloriously perfect winter day, complete with a sunny snowshoe hike on the frozen river, snowshoe races with the kids, snow tunnels, cats flying into snowbanks, a nice backyard bonfire (David and I cooked hot dogs on sticks we collected on our hike), and ending with everyone tuckered out and cozied up in front of the Winter Olympics. Overall, exactly what I needed to remember what I actually do love about winter, which isn't the gray cold days stuck inside with two crazy children bouncing off the walls.

Here's Jabber about to take the plunge on his snowshoes. Granny commented, "My, you have great balance on those shoes, Jabber!" to which he responded, "No, it's not about balancing with me. It's about pure skill."


Here's Monkey hauling wood on his sled for our fire. He's such a hard worker!

Niece K. challenged David to a snowshoe race around the backyard. If you look closely at the background, you can see D. dusting himself off after his exuberant sprinting resulted in a pretty spectacular fall. K. fell, too, but she still managed to snag the finish line with her gloved hand before losing her boots in the snow!

Monkey enjoyed making fun shadow shapes and tracking animals in the snow on our hike around the yard. Here he is growling at his shadowmonster.

and some are much better.

cop out, but Monkey was distressed at the thought of himself being snarly on my blog, so he said, "Picture me tellin' dem I havin' a good day, okay?" Also, excuse the fact that I sound like I'm three, too. I don't usually baby talk to my kids, I swear.

Some Days Are Like That...

"I am NOT contrary!" by Monkey

Check it Out!

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

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

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

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

don't look now! it's bad poetry!

No, really. Don't look.

My students are doing this thing I do every year where we read a bunch of American Literature, and then I give them a thousand (or, yanno, twelve...) different creative writing prompts to spark their imaginations. Some of the prompts are for fiction, some for poetry, and some for personal essay. They can try all of the prompts or stick with just a few, but in the end, they have to hand in (or in our case, post to the class wiki) their best from each genre.

They always struggle with the poetry, and I mean, I don't blame them. It's not easy to write poetry, and it's really not easy to teach people to write poetry. Sure, you can give them strict forms to try (oh look! Another haiku! A limerick! A cinquain!), but for this assignment I've tried to encourage them to try their hand at other kinds of poetry, including free verse. We've studied all the poetic devices, read Whitman and Dickinson and Emerson and Poe--the whole unit is based on the Romantic Period, by the way--and then I turn them loose. Every year, I'm amazed at the fact that kids can actually produce some pretty awesome poetry when all I give them is advice like, "Don't worry. Break rules. Think about the sounds. Make us feel it. Give it a try. Start with a metaphor, maybe?"

This year's class is by far the most stressed out by all this, and in addition, my new student teacher needed an extra day to prepare his very first lesson, so this morning I had fifteen extra minutes and decided to break down and give them more guidance for a poetry prompt. We've been reading excerpts from Thoreau, both from Walden and Civil Disobedience, so I decided to ask them to do a sort of acrostic poem using the word "SIMPLIFY."

And then I sat down and wrote an example, and I like it. So despite the fact that I don't write poetry anymore (it's true; prose is all that flows now), I thought, "Hey, I'm asking them to do the impossible (they think) and write poetry. The least I can do is try, too."

But then I said to one kid, "You can do it. Look. I wrote one, right there on the board."

And he said, "Yeah, but you don't have to put it on the wiki for everyone to see."

And I said, "Yeah, but I put it right there for all of you to see. You don't think that's hard?"

And he said, "Well, maybe a little. But it's harder when the people reading it are, like, your friends and peers and stuff."

Okay, so. Point taken. So, gulp. Here's my poem, friends and peers and stuff.

...A tSunami of stuff...
.......Impressions of who I was and what I needed to buy--
.......More! More! More!
....disPosable
.........Life in excess--
.........I gather it into one great pile.
.The Fire takes a while to catch, but
.........Years later, I still feel the warmth.

boxes of treasure and a shout-out to re-ewes gear...

Every so often in my life a box arrives from my Aunt M. From these boxes, amazing treasures are revealed, one by one, adorned with unique ribbons and beautifully penned notes. There is something mysterious and delightful about each item--my family gathers around in wonder as we remove and examine these surprises.

There were boxes in my childhood, but the one I remember most clearly from my adulthood showed up on Christmas Eve, the very first Christmas that David and I were parents. We had journeyed north to visit the family with our tiny, ten-day-old son cradled in his precious car seat, and the trip home through the snow in the dark was especially nerve-wracking for us because we were still quite new to the concept of transporting something so valuable. Also, I'm pretty sure he cried the whole way home.

When we arrived at our little crumbling cottage of a rental home, we found a gigantic box sitting on the back porch--a fine dusting of snow on top giving us an idea of the time of its delivery. A package, arriving late on Christmas Eve? It had to be...Santa Claus, right?

We hauled the package in, and, while Jabber nestled hungrily into my arms and I sank into the permanent divot on the couch (formed by the endless hours of nursing him there and of holding him while he slept and simply staring at him in wonder and amazement), David unpacked it and placed each beautiful box under our pathetic little Christmas tree. It was the most magical box in the universe. It was from Aunt M.

Recently we found another such box (thank you so!), and in it the usual supply of eclectic awesome. Included was a note, in which she expressed her mission to "redirect the society's excesses and rejects: recycling!"

Yay!

And this brings me to my friend Ellie and the business she's been growing--the business that is all about recycling those excesses and rejects...recycling them into the softest, snuggliest, and most amazingly beautiful mittens! Her newish business is called Re-ewes gear, and it makes me so happy to hear about her successes. If I reach for something made of styrofoam, it's Ellie's voice in my head that stays my hand. (I still smile thinking of the day she brought a tub of real dishes, silverware, and cloth napkins to the staff training to protest the use of those throwaway lunch trays and soup bowls!)

Check out her new website to read about her mission, or go to her facebook fan page to look at her inventory...all lovingly made from recycled wool and fleece.

I got my mom and another aunt mittens for Christmas, and I got my Lovely Daycare Provider one of her fantastic oven mitts...though LDP says it's too pretty to use! (I insisted she use it anyway...)


So here's my mom, thrilled with her recycled treasure!

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? :)

hiding out

Everybody feels the need to hide once in a while, even if we aren't quite flexible enough anymore to close ourselves into a suitcase...

Today while I was eating my lunch, a co-worker asked me to speculate what kind of life I would choose if I were to become "a big deal writer like that Stephenie Meyer"--this is a very common question when people find out I'm writing books and hoping to publish them.

"Are you going to want to be a recluse and hide out somewhere?" he asked.

It's kind of a quaint, romantic stereotype--the reclusive writer tapping away at a typewriter, refusing interviews. J. D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon. I can't imagine that would be possible today, where success is dependent on establishing a presence, reaching people on a personal level: where books spread best by word of mouth.

I laughed and told him the same thing I tell my students when they ask this question. No, I'm not going to be Stephenie Meyer (this co-worker's first question was actually, "Does your book have vampires?"), and no, I'm not going to quit teaching.

But the question of hiding has another part to it, and this question was also asked of me today, this time by my father-in-law. If I were to sell a book, would I put my real name on it? This is a more difficult question for me to answer. I don't really make my identity a secret: I use my real name both here and elsewhere on the web. I've thought about using my maiden name or just my first and middle name, but I'm just not sure. In some ways, I think it would be the nicest thing to do for my school, a way to separate the teacher me from the writer me. Especially since I write for young adults, but...not really as young as the young adults I teach. I wouldn't want to make conflict for my job with the content of the books I write. But I can't imagine actually trying to keep it a big secret...so does the name really matter?

I'm not sure. And, well...I've got some time to ponder all of this. Right now I'm busy trying to extract a toddler from this old suitcase. (It's too bad he didn't let me wash the pizza sauce off his face before climbing in, though. Have I mentioned before that kids are disgusting?)

stalkerisms

Jabber keeps giving me these drawings of all the rooms of our house and telling me they are printouts from his spy camera.

He just gave me a picture of "Mama sitting on the potty."

And when I said, "But I haven't even been on the potty in the last hour!" he said, "That's not what my evidence says."

!!!

(this is not, btw, the picture in question. this is a picture of "Mama at the desk, working on her computer. That's not her sad face, though. She's surprised.")

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! :)

lunchable

Sometimes, if I can just successfully provide a somewhat healthy lunch for my children, I feel like the embodiment of Good Mothering. I know, my standards are low, but that's the only way I can avoid feeling like a failure all the time.

So...there's an awful lot going on in my writing world right now--I hope to be able to share good news quite soonish and last night started fiddling with a new idea that if all goes well will be my next novel--and so once again I find myself a bit too busy to blog.

*fends off menacing tower of book reports by making stabbing motions with a red pen*

So today I'm just going to share one little lunch story and then get back to that grindstone.

*applies moisturizer to nose*

Jabber: MOM! (feels bottom teeth) Am I missing any teeth anymore?

Me: Lemme see. (peers into mouth) Those permanent teeth are really coming in, aren't they?

Jabber: (looks in mirror--a feat which does require some rather precarious stacking of objects and balancing upon them, a fact I try to ignore as I heat up the turkey dogs and cut the sharp cheddar cheese into attractive little sticks that I hope will convince them to overlook the fact that it's actually sharp cheddar cheese and not kid-friendly mozzarella or American) MOM! They're almost all the way in!

My teeth are so excited for lunch! Because up until today they were so low down they never got to touch the food, and they were, like, really sad most of the time. And they kept on really wanting to get at that food, but today, Mom, I feel it! They're going to get to chew the food for real because they're so big and they're so proud! They're proud because they've become real teeth in my real mouth!

Me: (laugh as I trick Monkey into consuming broccoli by giving it to him slathered in hummus before giving him any other food so that he is basically starving and hey, broccoli is pretty okay when you're basically starving) That's awesome, Jabber!

later, same luncheon

Monkey: APPLESAUCE!

Me: You want some applesauce?

Monkey: YES PLEASE APPLESAUCE PUT IT RIGHT HERE PLEASE MY MOUTH WANTS IT!

Me: Sit down, please, and wipe that ketchup off on your...Oh, Monkey, that's not your napkin, honey. Sit down, and take another bite of your hot dog. I'll get you a...no, that's your brother's milk. Monkey, please. SIT DOWN.

Monkey: APPLESAUCE!

Jabber: (in an annoyingly pedantic tone) Monkey, you need to say Applesauce PLEASE. That's good manners. MOM? MONKEY DIDN'T SAY PLEASE.

Me: Will you both please go back to the table? Yes, I'll get you more milk. Yes, I'll get you another fork. Wait. What did you do with your other fork. MONKEY WE DO NOT THROW SILVERWARE. Jabber, please. SIT DOWN OKAY? WILL EVERYONE PLEASE JUST SIT DOWN?

Monkey: (sweetly) Mama, may I please have another napkin and a big fork? And some applesauce?

Me: SIT DOWN!!!

Jabber: Mom, he was being polite, and you yelled at him.

Me: If I give you guys this applesauce, you need to eat it NICELY. I don't want a mess all over. You need to sit down in your spots and eat with your face close to the bowl, okay?

Both Creatures: (nod seriously) WE WILL, MAMA!

Me: Okay. Here's your applesauce, extra fork, extra napkins, more milk, and seventeen other things you have asked me for. Now I'm going to sit down and take a bite of my...

SPLAT!

Monkey: (looking up from the bowl, which is now upside-down on the floor, with wide eyes) Mama, my applesauce jumped.

Happy New Year!

from the Lissnkids family...

goals an' stuff...

I made some writing goals, and I've shared them on my lj but not here. But I should share them here, on the public me. So the public (all four of you!) can gaze upon them and shake your heads disparagingly at me when I fail. Um, I mean encourage me when I'm faltering? No! Cheer me on when I'm kicking ass!

So hardest and most important goal for me is about receiving feedback on the ms. that's out there, spinning around in the world right now. I'd like to remain thoughtful, objective, gracious, and rational about anything that happens with this book. (dudes. get ready to shake your head disparagingly cheer!) I mean, I've done what I can to give it its best shot now, and there are a lot of factors at play here. I can keep my head and think of the journey. Yes.

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. It has come a long way in the last few days (nothing like a deadline to get elissa to spring into action, let me tell ya), but my vision for it goes beyond this round of prettifying. This feels okay.

Third writing goal is to decide on the next project. Got a lot of ideas bouncing around, a lot of different directions, and some of the decision depends on what happens with TDBB and ATW. In any case, I'd like to get one more novel rough drafted by the end of this year. Totally do-able.

And last is for me to keep working on the one story, you know the one. No? Well, I know the one. And it excites me, but I get the feeling it's a simmerer.

So now you know. My writing goals for the year. The rest of my life could probably use a little examination, too, you know, but I can do that later. (oh, wait, was "stop procrastinating" on my goals for this year, by any chance? impossible.)