Tie one on

Remember when I visited this cool place while on my roadtrip down South?















Well, my friend (and awesome writer), Leslie Guccione, had this tie made from that photo! Isn't it cool?

Quote of the day

From Toni Morrison:

I type in one place, but I write all over the house.

Bird is ready to fly

Just got the cover copy for the paperback edition of Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia (due in Spring 2008).

Not much change from the hardcover except the back text - BUT, I love the addition of "Bird is ready to fly" to the front!

Partying with my peeps

Thursday night my critique group had our semi-annual potluck dinner.

It's always fun to finally be together and just shoot the breeze and yak it up. During our crit meetings (once a month), we only allow the first 30 minutes for chitchat and then it's down to business. (And, of course, I'm the one wielding the dreaded timer.)

So - lots of great food, great drink and great company - and LOTS of laughs, with my peeps:

Carolyn DeCristofano
Deanna Garland
Valerie Kerzner
Brian Lies
Kim Marcus
Wiesy MacMillan
Delia Weikart
Mary Wisbach
And...in absentia...Leslie Guccione

I love my peeps!

A Year of Reading

A Year of Reading has some nice things to say about How to Steal a Dog.

Thanks, Year of Reading!

Quote of the day

I had never heard of Angela Giles Klocke, but I saw the following quote, attributed to her, and I love it:

The title to a work of writing is like a house's front porch....It should invite you to come on in.

Picture this

I'm in awe of picture book writers. How do they do it....tell a story with so few words?

I guess I'm just a novelist by nature. I tried to write a picture book a few years ago.

It was called Four Fine Friends at the Sleepy Time Motel.

It was set in the Smoky Mountains (at a motel - duh).

One of the main characters was an old lady named Aggie and her dog Willy.

I failed.

My editor said it was "most promising."

Then came the BUT (you know how you're always waiting for that word - like the other shoe dropping).

"But there's something that keeps it from being completely satisfying...."

She gave me some specifics and some good questions to ponder and left me to figure it all out.

I couldn't.

I tried and tried but I just could NOT fix that picture book.

So here's what I did: I took that dog Willy and wrote the novel How to Steal a Dog - and I took the character of Aggie and put her in the Sleepy Time Motel in the Smoky Mountains and wrote the novel Greetings from Nowhere.

There! Fixed it!

(But, um, why is it so much easier for me to write MORE words.....?)

Progress report

Today I finished page FIFTY.

I still don't know how this thing is going to end - but at least it's moving along.

Play it again, Sam

I love this quote from Katherine Paterson:

Send your inner critic off on vacation and just write the way little children play. You can't be judge and creator at the same time...

Oh, Katherine, you are so wise and wonderful....

But I also love my inner critic. We've become such good friends.

Because of my anal compulsive obsessive detail-oriented personality, I often find myself judging more than I'm playing.

I write by hand. That's the time when I write freely, without my inner critic.

But by the time I've polished it and begin to type what I've written onto the computer, my friend, the inner critic is with me all the time.

Yesterday, I found myself subconsciously typing words or phrases that were not written on the paper - and I actually did it a few times before I realized I had done it. This probably sounds perfectly normal to perfectly normal writers, but for me, it was unusual.

Totally free writing.

The way little children play.

My inner critic was on vacation.

Yay!

Somebody up there is telling me something

I'm trying to write.

At this very moment.

But.....

There is MAJOR construction going on next door to me. Close your eyes and imagine the sound of jack hammers. Now imagine that excruciatingly annoying beep beep beep sound that equipment makes when it backs up.

Okay, so I can't work on the porch.

I come back inside.

I'm sitting in the kitchen.

A MOUSE is running back and forth across the floor.

He is a teeny tiny baby mouse but he is freaking me out.

I have two choices:
1. Go get my super duper mouse catching cat.
2. Throw a towel over the mouse and take it outside.

I am trying for option #2 but it is not working.

I'm wearing flip flops. I am terrified the teeny tiny mouse is going to run over my toes.

Maybe I'm getting cosmic signs to stop writing today.

Here, kitty kitty.....

What ever happened to the good ole days?

I never chew gum. Haven't chewed gum in years. Therefore, I haven't bought gum in years.

Remember those chewing gum wrapper chains you made as a kid? One scene of my work-in-progress involves a gum wrapper chain. So, to procrastinate, um, I mean, to enhance the authenticity of the writing, I decided to make one.

I can't find gum with wrappers! Not good ole Juicy Fruit. None! What the heck???

When did that happen?

I actually had to get some on eBay!

Quote of the day

My favorite writer to quote = Mark Twain:

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Procrastination

Isn't it great when you find some cool way to procrastinate and can justify it? You know, like research?

Today I needed to write a scene inside a motorhome - so I got to spend hours and hours cruising around on eBay motors looking at photos of the interiors of motorhomes.

Hey - I was working, okay?

Oh, to be young and dumb again

My son is a photography student at Parsons. Last night he got home from three weeks at a photo workshop in Maine, where he's gone for several years now. The workshop is attended primarily by adults and college students, but there is one designed specifically for high school students (which my son attended when he was in high school).

On the last night of each session, all the groups get together to view a slideshow of work by all the students. My son commented that the high school students had the best work, creatively.

Me: Really?

Him: Oh, yeah. That's the way it always is.

So that led to a discussion of why that was so. We both agreed that one reason that the high school students were creatively freer is because they didn't know enough to censor or judge themselves or to even think that much about how others will perceive their work. In addition, perhaps their lack of technical knowledge allowed them to be freer creatively - they didn't get all bogged down in the "rules" and the technical stuff.

That discussion made me think about my own creative work as a writer. While I know that I'm a more skilled writer now than when I first started, I also think that I haven't written as freely and "joyfully" as I did my first few books.

Back when I was new, I wasn't thinking about reviewers. I wasn't thinking about whether my books would be read in a classroom. I wasn't thinking about the "rules" of writing for children. I wasn't thinking so much about structure or pacing or worrying that much about whether the main character had grown enough, yada yada yada.

I just wrote.

I think those first books were the "purest" books I've ever written. And I know that they spilled out the quickest and the most freely.

Pure, un-self-conscious writing.

Interestingly, those earlier books required less revision than my later books.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying most writers don't get better with experience. I'm just wondering out loud, I guess, if sometimes the inexperience produces a purer form of creativity.

Does that make sense?

For example, to my naive surprise, I got some negative feedback about mild profanity in my first two books. That profanity came out without a thought - because, in my mind, it belonged there. It never occurred to me to not use it.

When I was working on my third book (Moonpie and Ivy), one of the characters (Ruby) has an argument with her sister. She says: Mind your own damn business.

That is exactly what that character would have said.

I stewed over that line. Should I leave the profanity in? Should I take it out?

Fortunately, I have a wise and wonderful editor. When I posed the question to her, she said to me, with a tinge of surprise in her voice: You're censoring yourself!

And she was right, of course. I was censoring myself.

Because I had more experience.

I was now thinking about how others were going to react to my work, rather than writing freely and purely and honestly. (By the way, I left that line in.)

There's a country western song by Toby Keith that goes:

I wish somehow I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

Amen, Toby.

Room with a view

I wrote for hours on my porch today (my summer office). All day, I watched the recent invasion of grackles we have at the feeder.

My husband hates them. He thinks they are loud and obnoxious and bullyish and messy.

I love them. I find them sassy and humorous. They tease the cat and taunt the dogs and rule the roost. All day, while I wrote, they argued and fought and totally pigged out. That green box on top of the fence has peanuts in it. The bluejays and squirrels come to get the peanuts and the grackles holler at them.

Not a bad view from the ole office window....