Booknapped

From: What My Mother Doesn't Know

2011-09-20T12:07:00.004-04:00

Mom's The Word

My mother has never talked to me
about birth control or safe sex or about
whether I should wait till I'm married.

But whenever I'm getting ready
to go out with Dylan,
she hovers in the hall

and keeps wringing her hands,
like she's scared that
I'm going to get pregnant or something.

And if I ever did,
which of course I won't,
it would serve her right....

Sonya Sones

From: "Can't Get You Off My Mind"

2011-06-28T10:35:00.003-04:00

"I'm old enough to see behind me,
but young enough to feel my soul."

"Can't Get You Off My Mind"
Lenny Kravitz

I am SO excited to see Lenny Kravitz as Cinna in The Hunger Games. Dude.

From: A Room With a View

2011-04-30T18:50:00.003-04:00

"Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them."

E.M. Forster

"Be Nobody's Darling"

2011-02-16T07:17:00.004-05:00

Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.

Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
or line the crowded
river beds
with other impetuous
Fools.

Make a merry gathering
O the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.

Alice Walker

From: "No Surrender"

2011-01-28T11:57:00.002-05:00

"We learned more from a 3-minute record, baby, than we could ever learn in school."

Bruce Springsteen

Making a Fist

2011-01-25T16:47:00.004-05:00

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching the palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Found: Motivation

2011-01-19T06:57:00.002-05:00

Saw this in a headline the other day and thought of writing:

Hard Work Trumps Talent

Remember that. I'll try to remember it, too.

The article's pretty interesting if you have time to read a few words about a best-selling author who failed high school English.

Found: Nothing Worth Earning Comes Easy

2011-01-12T14:36:00.004-05:00

"I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them."

Boris Pasternak

Thanks for the lead, DailyLiteraryQuote.com.

From: "Fellow Citizens"

2011-01-11T08:14:00.002-05:00

...Down in Gilpin Place, near Hull House, was a man with his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache...

He is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only makes them from start to finish, but plays them after he makes them.

And he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut bottom he offered for seven dollars and a half if I wanted it,

And another just like it, only smaller, for six dollars, though he never mentioned the price until I asked him,

And he stated the price in a sorry way, as though the music and the make of an instrument count for a million times more than the price in money.

I thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about God.

There was light in his eyes of one who has conquered sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or worth conquering.

Anyway he is the only Chicago citizen I was jealous of that day.

He played a dance they play in some parts of Italy when the harvest of grapes is over and the wine presses are ready for work.

Carl Sandburg

Baby Steps

2010-11-16T06:25:00.001-05:00

"What has been spoiled through man's fault can be made good again through man's work."

I Ching

Few Things Get Me to Stand Up These Days

2010-08-24T06:10:00.004-04:00

Do I break my moratorium on buying new books to get Mockingjay? I can't decide. But I could use a good Hunger Games reading-coma.

I'm not dead, by the way, just very, very pregnant.

It's available on Kindle, which may make all the difference.

I need a sign. Today, I'm looking for a boy named Gale, a bird singing a familiar tune, or a muttation.

From: To Kill a Mockingbird

2010-07-08T06:23:00.002-04:00

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

Harper Lee

*Keep on fightin' the good fight, bloggees. I'm a bit overwhelmed by injustice these days, but I'll be back soon with regular updates.

Reunited: It should feel good.

2010-06-14T07:23:00.001-04:00

"Don't edit your soul according to fashion."

Franz Kafka

I recently taught one of my friends a secret trick I learned a long time ago from a magazine. When you feel like a giant failure (my friend is particularly vulnerable to people who make her feel this way), imagine yourself when you were 10 years old. Envision 10-year-old you meeting now-you. What does she think of you? Would she want to grow up to be like you?

That's how you measure success.

Why Being Told You Suck is a Good Thing

2010-06-10T06:14:00.004-04:00

Let me tell you something true about me:

I HATE disappointing people. Yet, sometimes at work, I screw up. People come down hard on me, but no one comes down on me harder than I do. Because I hate to hear people point out things I did wrong--especially when they are choices I stopped and questioned, and then did anyway.

Maybe that's why this section of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch is loitering in my mind:

"Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn't he?" he said.

I could barely muster a "yeah."

"That's a good thing," the assistant told me.

"When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

...

You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you and want to make you better.

Remember, bloggees. People tell you your writing sucks because they believe you have the potential to do better. Prove 'em right.

Your Freudian Slip is Showing

2010-06-09T06:11:00.002-04:00

I keep typing "write" when I mean "right." I imagine this is my creative brain giving me subtle hints. It reminds me of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, a lovely writing book that talks about a Zen approach to writing. One thing the author, Natalie Goldberg, suggests is being aware of your typos--don't just fix them; let them teach you first.

She's full of all kinds of good advice:

"Continue under all circumstances. Don't be rigid, though. If one day you have to take your kid to the dentist when it is your time to write, write in the dentist's office or don't write. Just stay in touch underneath with your commitment to this wild, silly, and wonderful writing practice. Always stay friendly toward it. It's easier to come back to a good friend than an enemy."

Are you fighting with writing? Make up. Try to remember why you two hooked up in the first place.

From: The Secret Year

2010-06-04T08:43:00.007-04:00

"I want to call you. I just looked up your family's number. I'm pretty sure it's yours because the address is on the flats, near the Higgins Farm Bridge. Would you want me to call you? I feel so cut off from you. It seems crazy that I don't even know how you are. Sometimes I love the fact that nobody knows about us. We have this secret, so juicy I can feel my mouth dripping. Other times, like now, it seems stupid to hide this way.

It's later. I just talked to you. You didn't sound mad. Your voice felt good in my ear."

Jennifer R. Hubbard

"There will be time, there will be time"

2010-05-27T06:28:00.005-04:00

"To lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."

John Lubbock

And Now You May Commence

2010-05-21T07:23:00.000-04:00

"Pinocchio went out into the world filled with good intentions, with vision, he went ready to do all the things he dreamed, but Pinocchio was pulled this way and that, he was distracted, he faltered, he made mistakes, but he kept on.... Pinocchio, in the end, became himself, because the little flame inside him, no matter what crap he went through, would not be extinguished."

Patti Smith by way of UnBeige

Found on the Local Weatherperson's Blog

2010-05-20T06:32:00.001-04:00

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression in unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost."

Martha Graham

iBooknapped

2010-05-18T07:19:00.001-04:00

Somebody knows how to market their blog!

Someone was linking to these 10 Golden Lessons from Steve Jobs all over Linked In yesterday, so of course I had to stop in and check them out. My fave:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Think about WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOURSELF today.

From: Letters to a Young Artist

2010-05-13T06:08:00.004-04:00

"As an artist you are a student of the human condition. There is no syllabus. You can go to school and seek some structures, some techniques, some advice. Ultimately you must make your own course description, you must discover your own book list, you must make your own regimen, your own discipline. You can work as hard as you like. Or not. You can use the time or not. You can use the world--as much or as little as you like."

Anna Deavere Smith

A Favorite of Mine

2010-05-11T07:37:00.000-04:00

"I hate writing. I love having written."

Dorothy Parker

From: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

2010-05-06T06:27:00.002-04:00

"I had once seen Ajax, Father's best dog, get into a fight with a hummingbird and lose. The hummingbird had dived at him and spooked him until he'd trotted back to the front porch, looking very embarrassed. (It is possible for a dog to look embarrassed, you know. He'd whipped around and started licking his nether parts, a sure sign a dog is trying to hide his true feelings.)

Jacqueline Kelly

From: "The Guitar Man"

2010-05-04T07:26:00.000-04:00

"Night after night, who treats you right?
Baby, it's the guitar man....

Then you listen to the music, and you like to sing along.
You want to get the meaning out of each and every song.
Then you find yourself a message
and some words to call your own,
and take 'em home."

Bread & Cake

From: "Hard to Make a Stand"

2010-04-30T06:56:00.002-04:00

"We've got loud guitars and big suspicions,
great big guns and small ambitions,
and we still argue over who is God."

Sheryl Crow

Booknapping Ain't Easy

2010-04-29T05:55:00.005-04:00

I've been wondering how I'm going to do this.

Um, let's see. I've been working on this brand new project, and it takes A LOT of time.

It's not like my usual stuff. For one thing, if this project gets published, it won't be for 20 or so years. But I love it anyway, more than anything else I've ever attempted.

It zaps my energy, though, and leaves me capable of not much else.

Here's a picture of how far I've gotten:

So there you go.

Lately, I've been in that proverbial room where artists go to be flogged by their muse, where they can be alone with their project to create.

I've missed you bloggees, so I'm getting back on my blogging wagon. I've seen so many words that I've wanted to share. Like these ones:

"No man is ever rich enough to buy back his past."
Oscar Wilde

(Thanks for that, Liz. I never responded but it obviously meant a lot to me.)

Have you been sidetracked by Life lately? It happens. You're forgiven. Now write.

From: "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"

2010-04-12T07:37:00.002-04:00

image by Gordon Parks

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

Langston Hughes

From: Graceling

2010-04-08T05:59:00.003-04:00

"It gave her some pleasure to knock him on the head with the hilt of her knife. She grabbed his hair, dragged him onto his back, and dropped a pill onto his tongue. They would all say, when they woke to headaches and their shame, that the culprit had been a Graceling boy, Graced with fighting, acting alone. They would assume she was a boy, because in her plain trousers and hood she looked like one, and because when people were attacked it never occurred to anyone that it might have been a girl."

Kristin Cashore

From: "Thumbing My Way"

2010-04-03T12:50:00.003-04:00

"No matter how cold the winter,
there's a springtime ahead."

Pearl Jam

Dueling Ideas

2010-03-31T05:52:00.003-04:00

Somebody, I don't remember who (booknapper's hazard), once said, "I never run out of ideas, just time to write."

Currently, I'm knee-deep in writing a YA novel. Yesterday morning, a random image got me thinking about something that happened when I was 13. It doesn't matter what it was. What matters is that I started thinking, "I wonder if kids still do that these days?" Then I started thinking...yadda, yadda, yadda...MG fiction idea--the kind that won't quit flicking little ideas across the brain. You know the kind of ideas: This could happen. Then this could happen. The whole story would show young readers that...

The details don't matter. What matters is that I am knee-deep in a YA novel. And when you're knee-deep, that's when it's hardest to keep going. I am not waist-deep, which would imply half-way. I am further from the end than from the beginning, and when I glance back at the shore where I started, what do I see?

This shiny, new idea that requires half the word count of a YA novel. Possibilities reflecting off of it in every direction. But is it a mirage (aka, procrastination)?

Bloggees, I can't be the only novelist with a short attention span. What do you do when your ideas duel? Do you take time off of your current project and give the other a chance? Or is the only way to finish to ignore those shiny, new ideas and stay faithful to one project at a time? Help a blogger out.

A Thought for Friday

2010-03-26T08:51:00.004-04:00

"I really would like to stop working forever--never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now--and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure.... Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence."

-Allen Ginsberg

(Thanks, yet again, Mode Room Press for today's Daily Literary Quote.)

From: "Her Majesty Loses Her Touch"

2010-03-23T07:23:00.000-04:00

"Back in the days
when I was called Queen of Cherries
I used to write.
Not like this.
I'd lie in bed at night
composing bawdy lyrics,
a regal drifter through my private orchard
of no regrets.
Cherries simply rained
down on my head."

from A Working Girl Can't Win
by Deborah Garrison

A Booknapping from the Depths of Despair

2010-03-16T05:58:00.003-04:00

Hey bloggees, I didn't die, but I thought I might. I've been really sick--sicker than I've been in a long time. I thought I might never write again. Have you ever been so busy, so sick, so something, that you started to become blind to the light at the end of the tunnel? (I just typoed "The Light at the End of the Title." Children's book idea!)

I know I'm dramatic, but that's how my mind works, peeps. For a few days, I could not foresee a time in my life when I would ever have the strength or time to work, write, have a social life, or blog. I felt like I was so behind, I would never catch up. Then, I bit the bullet and called the doctor.

Long story short: I'm feeling better, more than better. Feeling like you may never write again does wonders for your motivation. I have washed the accumulated dirty laundry, both literal and figurative, and my betas have nudged me with a gentle but firm request for new pages. I am truly blessed, yo.

While I was gone, I hardly even read. That's how sick I was! But I did manage to catch a lovely turn of phrase here and there, and one in particular kept me going:

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

Victor Hugo

I am back bloggees, with a vengeance, and I feel the need to look back on my time in the trenches and offer a hand to the peeps who might be there right now, wondering if they will ever write again. So help a bloggee out, peeps. Have you been there? How did you escape the doldrums of your life and get back to being a doer?

From: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

2010-03-04T07:54:00.004-05:00

So, Howard Zinn died a few weeks ago, and I realized I never gave him a proper booknapping. Today, I am making amends. Howard Zinn was an incredible teacher, writer, and historian. If you haven't read his seminal book People's History of the United States, you might be a little under-informed.

Here is a booknapping from his autobiography:

"The events of my life, growing up poor, working in a shipyard, being in a war, had nurtured an indignation against the bullies of the world, those who used wealth or military might or social status to keep others down. And now I was in the midst of a situation where human beings, by accident of birth, because of their skin color, were being treated as inferior beings. I knew it was wrong for me, a white teacher, to lead the way. But I was open to anything my students wanted to do, refusing to accept the idea that a teacher should confine his teaching to the classroom when so much was at stake outside it."

People who stand up or speak up for the little guys and girls are my my favorite kind of people. What qualities do you look for in a hero?

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

2010-03-02T06:34:00.000-05:00

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Dr. Seuss

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes! It's magnetted to my fridge. What's your favorite Dr. Seuss line or book?

A Rare Saturday Post

2010-02-27T10:16:00.003-05:00

I loved the Daily Literary Quote so much, I had to immediately Web-nap it:

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Mary Oliver

Enjoy your weekends, bloggees!

From: Real Life

2010-02-25T08:47:00.003-05:00

"Winners forget they're in a race, they just love to run."

This was in my fortune cookie last night. I think this sentiment applies to writing too. What's the best fortune you ever got?

From: "Sugar, We're Going Down"

2010-02-24T06:10:00.000-05:00

"I'm just a notch in your bedpost,
but you're just a line in a song."

Fall Out Boy

Houston, I Have a Problem.

2010-02-23T06:23:00.001-05:00

So, I don't know if you pay attention to the Just Reading list over there, but I've been reading Jellicoe Road since 2009. I am in a reading slump, y'all. It's not Jellicoe Road's fault. The book is great, but it got lost in the Christmas shuffle and never managed to regain my attention. I keep meaning to finish it, but now every time I see the orange spine on my coffee table, it feels like work. I'm so sorry Melina Marchetta. It's not you. It's me.

Something won't let me give up on Jellicoe Road. There's a mystery that I'd still like to solve.

Bloggees, do you get into reading slumps? How do you handle them? Start something new? Read an old favorite? Got any recommendations of titles that will get my finger hovering above the next page button?

From: "Closer to the Heart"

2010-02-22T06:08:00.001-05:00

"The men who hold high places
must be the ones who start
to mold a new reality
closer to the heart."

Rush

My husband ruled the radio all weekend, so my head's spinning through classic rock lyrics this morning. Sometimes I get so used to the words, I don't hear them anymore. This one struck me as so apt for the times, I stopped in my tracks and jotted.

From: Music for Chameleons

2010-02-18T07:06:00.000-05:00

"I started writing when I was eight... not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."

Truman Capote

Me loves this.

2010-02-17T09:24:00.004-05:00

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson

From: The Paper

2010-02-15T06:48:00.001-05:00

A motivational article by Dani Shapiro appeared in the LA Times a week or so ago. In the article, Shapiro ponders what makes great writers. My favorite quote of the article:

"Every single piece of writing I have ever completed -- whether a novel, a memoir, an essay, short story or review -- has begun as a wrestling match between hopelessness and something else, some other quality that all writers, if they are to keep going, must possess.

Call it stubbornness, stamina, a take-no-prisoners determination, but a writer at work reminds me of nothing so much as a terrier with a bone: gnawing, biting, chewing, until finally there is nothing left to do but fall away."

I also love that she calls the publishing industry "the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media."

Read this article if you've ever wondered if your continuing to write in the face of all the doom and gloom of the industry is yet another manifestation of your subconscious need to harm yourself.

Short on time? It's nothing new.

2010-02-08T07:18:00.001-05:00

"But when shall I paint my starry sky, that picture which preoccupies me continuously?"

Vincent van Gogh

Now Showing: My Indecisive Side

2010-02-04T06:13:00.002-05:00

I poster-napped this one from a library supply company. Sometimes I contemplate going back to school for an MLS so I can live the crazy life of a librarian. I've also considered enrolling in med school (after I finished editing a book on Emergency Medical Services), or just being boring and getting a PhD in literature. Just wondering--if money and time were no issue, what crazy direction would you take your life in?

"I've survived a lot of things, and I'll probably survive this."

2010-02-03T06:30:00.005-05:00

J.D. Salinger's passing bums me out, but this article about Salinger by Lillian Ross got me thinking about his utter awesome-ness.

I've probably read Catcher in the Rye more than 20 times, and loved it more each time, but I don't think it'd be half as wonderful without J.D. Salinger being a total punk in real life. He saw the connection between being a writer and being narcissistic, and he avoided ruin by isolating himself from people who wanted to lavish him with praise--something he considered damaging.

In the New Yorker article, Lillian Ross says:

"The older and crankier he got, the more convinced he was that in the end all writers get pretty much what’s coming to them: the destructive praise and flattery, the killing attention and appreciation. ...He talked about how easily writers could become vain, complaining that they got puffed up by the same 'authorities' who approved putting monosodium glutamate in baby food."

Have you read The Catcher in the Rye? Should we have a group reading of the original YA novel? I'll lead the discussion. Let me know if you're in, or if you're just a crummy phony.

From: "What Do Women Want?"

2010-02-02T07:43:00.002-05:00

"I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath..."

You can hear Kim Addonizio read this poem aloud by visiting the Academy of American Poets Web site.

Loves her. Don't want to infringe on copyright though, so go read the whole thing. Read more from her book Tell Me at her author's Web site.

You Say It's My Birthday?

2010-02-01T07:37:00.005-05:00

Over the weekend, Booknapped turned 1 year old!

I reminisced by looking over my first few posts. It's sort of like scanning a first draft when you're a few hundred pages into your manuscript. I had an idea of what I wanted to do here at Booknapped, but I really wasn't sure. You can sense that I'm blogging blindly, screaming into a megaphone and hoping somebody hears, and more importantly, listens.

So reader peeps, thanks so, so much for listening. I hope you find a book, a poem, a song you never heard before and that you LOVE. I hope it latches onto your brain like an ear worm and hypnotizes you until you forge to your independent book store for an inspired purchase.

Also, if you've been thinking about blogging, but telling yourself you don't have time, creativity, or a host of other qualities you think you need, stop bitching and start a revolution.

This only seems like a digression. Really it's about writing.

2010-01-26T06:49:00.009-05:00

Quit complaining. It used to be way harder.

According to research, interval training helps you burn three times the calories you burn during regular workouts. Those of us who are time-challenged and a tad bit rotund know interval training is the shiznit.

Interval training is short bursts of manic working out (speeding up the heart rate) combined with longer periods of regular working out (bringing the heart rate back to normal). Apparently we burn a lot of calories getting our heart rates back to normal. We burn tons getting our rate back to normal a bunch of times instead of just once.

Another reason interval training works: When you only have to give your all for short bursts of time (think 15 seconds!), you actually give your all for the whole 15 seconds.

You know what I mean. I've done some long stretches on the old treadmill--and honestly much of it is just going through the motions--not trying as much as being carried along on the relentless drone of the conveyor belt. If I can burn just as many calories through 20 minutes on the elliptical (with 15 15-second bursts that get my heart going like a Grateful Dead drum solo), I'm all for it.

In my quest for more time, I'm considering if interval writing might produce three times as much good writing. I tend to aim for large blocks of writing time. Here's what happens in large blocks of time: I think I have so much time that an email check here and there doesn't matter. I read a blog for inspiration, which links to another blog, and perhaps a stop at Go Fug Yourself and next thing I know, I've read the entire cache of Cheezburger sites and written under a page.

Large blocks of time are harder to find the older I get, but I can usually create a half hour out of thin air. With interval writing, I get in a couple 30-minute blocks of nose-to-the-grindstone writing per day interspersed throughout so I can get my writing heart rate back to normal in between. Absolutely no breaks during the interval writing block! A single break can take over the entire block if you're not careful.

If you're having a hard time getting anything written lately, try interval writing. You gotta have 30 minutes lying around somewhere--while the chops are in the oven, while you're waiting for Idol to start, while you're supposed to be paying attention in class. Write at a pace that raises your creative heart rate--no editing, no reading through, no emailing your writing group about whether your main character should be 17 or 18. Commit to straight-up cardiovascular writing. Let me know how it goes.

From: "Passer Mortuus Est"

2010-01-25T07:22:00.000-05:00

"Death devours all lovely things...

After all my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished;
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?"

from "Passer Mortuus Est"
Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's Friday: Why not laugh so hard you cry ?

2010-01-22T11:25:00.003-05:00

I don't know if you watch the world news or if you watched it last night, but this is my new favorite humor blog.

From: "Thirty-three"

2010-01-22T06:26:00.005-05:00

Deep in thought, I forgive everyone
as the cluttered streets greet me once again...
Tomorrow's just an excuse away,
so I pull my collar up and face the cold
on my own.

...

For a moment, I lose myself
wrapped up in the pleasures of the world.
I've journeyed here and there and back again
but in the same old haunts I still find my friends.

Mysteries not ready to reveal,
sympathies I'm ready to return:

I'll make the effort.
Love can last forever...

"Thirty-three"
Smashing Pumpkins

From: Jesus' Son

2010-01-21T07:08:00.001-05:00

"There were many moments in the Vine like that one--where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons."

Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson

If you haven't read Jesus' Son, you're missing the best novel/collection of short stories of all time (in my humble opinion). It's dark and makes you wonder. It also illustrates a definition of "desperation." Oh yeah, and it's my favorite book. What's yours?

Looking for: Time

2010-01-20T06:49:00.005-05:00

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears... and your time-management secrets.

Is it just me, or is 2010 moving in fast forward? Hopefully, it's just January. Although, I have been contemplating the possibility that the speed of life moves in direct correlation with one's age, so that every year the speed of time increases. At the end it just seems like your life is flashing by. In reality, you've reached your personal mach 4.

Anyway...

Got any nifty time-management tips to share? I've already given up sleep, but in my real-time life, someone suggested more sleep would boost productivity in my waking hours. I can't wait to test this theory tonight. So seriously, be creative. How do you fit it all in?

From: "A Mood"

2010-01-19T07:03:00.000-05:00

"A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness..."

T.B. Aldrich

Found: A Reminder

2010-01-15T07:18:00.000-05:00

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

Maureen Dowd
Thanks yet again, Writer's Almanac

Access Denied, Stressballs

2010-01-13T06:43:00.003-05:00

"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let's Confer.

2010-01-12T08:01:00.006-05:00

I went to an SCBWI conference last year, which resulted in the following:

I made a writer friend
I made a few more writer friends
I decided to never pay for a 15-minute critique again
I rewrote my first chapter based on a 15-minute critique
I embarrassed myself in front of an entire table of children's book editors and agents
I decided I probably wouldn't be going to any more writers' conferences.

So anyway, I'm going to the SCBWI conference in NYC this month. For the first time in the history of ever, I'll be meeting my beta girls in person. If I stop posting around the end of January, you can assume that one of them has been lying about her identity for more than a year and that she has killed me and stolen my writings.

Anyone else going to the SCBWI Conference in NYC? Got any conference plans this year? Experienced attendees, tell me which is better: the down home SCBWI conference in Middle-of-Nowhere, PA, or the big fancy SCWBI conference in NYC?

How to Read 20 Books for Free

2010-01-11T06:05:00.004-05:00

I hope you've been surfing through January, keeping those resolutions in check, reading some books, writing some words.

January is a busy time for the booknapper. It's when she puts her haus in order--not her actual house, which seems orderless, but actually runs on an irregular routine that only she understands. I am paying bills (and organizing the post-Christmas evidence of a pre-Christmas spending spree). I'm revising my goals, my budget, and all of my ideas regarding the universe.

Next: that dastardly TBR pile--my, how we've grown in 2009.

My 2010 goals are based on the work/life blend principle, or "worlindiple" (wer-lyn-dipple), my made-up philosophy in which I attempt to feed two birds with one worm.

Goal #1: No buying books, movies, or CDs until I demolish the TBR pile.

I know. I know. It's going to be tough, but it's also going to be cheap and rewarding. You know what helps when you're doing something tough?

Having someone do it with you.

So who's in? Anyone else want to put a moratorium on pop culture spending until his or her TBR pile is no more? Make it public in the comments.

From: "The Dead"

2010-01-06T08:45:00.008-05:00

"She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her...

Like the tender fire of stars, moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls' tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: "Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"

Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When the others had gone away, when he and she were in the room in the hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:

"Gretta!"

Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at him...."

from "The Dead", a story in Dubliners, a short-fiction collection by James Joyce who said "One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature."

From: "The Final Cut"

2010-01-05T06:22:00.004-05:00

"...If I show you my dark side,
will you still hold me tonight?
And if I open my heart to you
and show you my weak side,
what would you do?

Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone?
Would you take the children away and leave me alone?
And smile in reassurance as you whisper down the phone--

Would you send me packing?
Or would you take me home?"

"The Final Cut"
Roger Waters

(And now for a Wikipedia-napping within a Booknapping: "Q Magazine once compiled a top ten list of depressing records, and this [The Final Cut] was on it. Enough said, I think.")

Found: A Cup 'o Kindness

2009-12-29T06:02:00.007-05:00

My commenters say we all want to write and revise more in 2010, so I'm going to make a real effort to inspire and help you in the next couple of weeks. First, I offer a simple trick for making better writing resolutions blognapped from the newbie publishing blog of Joe Konrath, a writer who's wrapped his mind around e-publishing better than anyone else.

As you whisper sweet literary promises to yourself for the new year, keep in mind this awesomely simple advice from Konrath:

Goals should be within your power. In other words, anything that involves a yes or no from another human being isn't a goal, it's a dream.

... "I want to be a bestseller" isn't a goal. "I want to attend three writing conferences this year, polish my novel, and send queries to ten agents by November" is a goal.

This year, let's be realistic and specific about our goals.

Here's mine:

In 2010, I am going to produce writing every week and query widely.

Now bloggees, be realistic and specific: Set an achievable writing goal for 2010 and make it public in the comments.

Lines from Our Old Comrade, Shakespeare

2009-12-28T06:16:00.003-05:00

Wake, Bloggees!

Wipe the sugar plum dust out of your eyes and let's get back to producing stuff.

I'm talking to myself, you know. I've spent these holidays contemplating and plotting, strategic planning, and now I'm putting all the whosits and whatsits into place. 2010 is going to blow our minds.

"When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown:
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well."

So said Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream

I am feeling optimistic. Tell me, what is your great big goal for 2010?

From: "Alive"

2009-12-23T06:13:00.003-05:00

"Is something wrong?" she said.

"Well, of course there is."

"You're still alive," she said.

"Oh, and do I deserve to be?
And is that the question?
And if so, if so,
who answers?"

Eddie Vedder

From: Jellicoe Road

2009-12-21T08:00:00.002-05:00

"On the other side of the cell Jonah Griggs and Santangelo are too busy sizing each other up like two demented pit bulls who have to prove who's got the biggest...attitude.

I lean against the bars that separate us from the others. 'So let me get this right,' I say to one of the Townie girls. 'All it takes is to insult someone's mother?'

'No,' she explains. 'That's the beauty of it. They don't actually have to insult. The words Your mother are enough.'

'So if I said to you, "Your mother is a...?"' I shrug.

'Just "Your mother." But it doesn't work if girls say it to each other,' she continues. 'You have to have a penis for it to affect you in such a way.'

'Oh funny, funny,' Santangelo says.

Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta

From: Shiver

2009-12-16T06:32:00.003-05:00

"What was I without my wolf's skin? A boy stuffed so full of words that they spilled out of me."

Shiver
by Maggie Stiefvater

Found: A Very Good Simile

2009-12-15T06:55:00.004-05:00

"The process of writing books is somewhat akin to a very long police interrogation in which the detective leans over the table littered with the butt ends of cigarettes and cold coffee in Styrofoam cups and says for the 87th time, 'Now let's go over this again.'"

Ann Patchett
from a great article on writing resolutions at The Washington Post

Found: The Gist

2009-12-11T06:19:00.003-05:00

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."

The Shawshank Redemption
said by Andy Dufresne in the movie version
said by Red in the text version (titled "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and written by Stephen King)

Don't dream it, be it.

2009-12-09T07:58:00.003-05:00

"...Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol

Oh, what fun! Audible is giving A Christmas Carol read by Tim Curry (!) to all of its members for free, and I'm loving it. If you don't dig audiobooks, you can still read it for free at Gutenberg. But seriously, you should try the audio version. Tim Curry totally brings the sexy back to Dickens.

Napped From the Vault: The Offspring

2009-12-08T07:03:00.007-05:00

Sorry about the sporadic posting. I seem to be entering one of those melancholy phases where nothing is as interesting as it once was.

You get that?

I've also been time-traveling via a collection of mix CDs I unearthed in my basement. Perhaps this audio meditation is fueling my dejection?

What evs. It'll pass. Always does. In the meantime, I offer you a songnapping from the nineties. Damn, I love(d) these guys:

"Late at night she knocks on my door.
She's drunk again and looking to score.
Oh, I know I should say no, but
it's kind of hard when she's ready to go.
I may be dumb, but I'm not a dweeb.
I'm just a sucker with no self esteem."

The Offspring

Narrator, will you please read to me?

2009-12-03T06:15:00.012-05:00

I love audiobooks. I am a username-carrying member of Audible.com. I have two mp3 players, peeps: one's just for books.

I don't agree with the assertion that audiobooks are not real books. The knowledge or story represented by the words is in my brain when I'm finished. How is that not reading a book?

5 Great Things about Audiobooks:

Pronunciation of difficult names: not a problem.
I clean when I listen/read. I can tell how good a book is by how clean my house is.
My dog's walks are longer when I'm listening to a good audiobook.
I read WAY more books per year since I embraced audiobooks.
I get read to sleep every night.

Of course, they're not perfect.

3 Sucky Things about Audiobooks:

Sometimes I want to press stop on an audiobook and open a text version--like when the house is clean, the dog is walked, and my finger is poised over the pause button, waiting for a good break.
I rarely booknap from audiobooks because I forget to bookmark good parts, and I can't flip through an audiobook to find what I want.
Sometimes when I listen/read, I wish I could see how something looks on a page--like when the narrator in Juliet, Naked reads Wikipedia pages, I want to know how they look.

And then there's my Kindle.

Best thing about the Kindle? It's easy to read while eating. I put a piece of tape over the page-turn button so I don't even get it dirty. Kindles have the option (on most books) to turn text to speech--this was a selling point for me--but I hate robot voices that have no inflection, so I hardly ever use that option.

Some books are so good I have them in audio and print form. I've read a Kindle book and then bought the hard copy too--just because seeing certain titles on my bookshelf makes me happy.

And now I introduce my point.

Want to know why I'm always reading more than one book? Because I keep a traditional book, an audiobook, and a Kindle book going simultaneously. It's not a perfect method, but it's a way for me be able to read in the easiest way whenever I get a chance. Publishing industry peeps who are looking for ways to increase profits, take note: I would pay extra to get a Kindle, text, and audio version of a book in a bundle--not every book, mind you--but just like I shell out extra cash for a hardcover on occasion, I'd have no problem paying extra to get some books in all three forms, and if they were available as a package price instead of $25 for audio, $15 for print, and $10 for kindle, I'd feel like I was getting a deal.

What's your take on audiobooks? Like 'em? Hate 'em? Don't consider 'em real books? Never tried 'em? Got any recommendations? Want mine? Lolitaread by Jeremy Irons rocked my world.

From: The Seven Storey Mountain

2009-12-02T07:37:00.001-05:00

"The integrity of an artist lifts a man [or woman] above the level of the world without delivering him [or her] from it."

Thomas Merton

[equality added by me]

From: "Black Boys on Mopeds"

2009-12-01T06:37:00.007-05:00

"These are dangerous days--
To say how you feel is to dig your own grave."

Sinead O'Connor

You Must Be This Tall to Understand the Ending

2009-11-30T05:58:00.004-05:00

So I've wanted to be a writer since ever, but I haven't always wanted to be a writer of young adult fiction. Not until I started heavily reading YA books as an adult did I experience the attraction one feels when she meets her soulmate--in art form.

These days most of the books I read are YA fiction, but occasionally grown-up fiction (Adult fiction sounds creepy.) slips into my reading list. Reading an adult book always makes me meditate on the difference between adult and YA fiction. Last night I pondered endings.

See, YA novels sort of have to end positively. It's kind of a rule. In her Wall Street Journal article on YA fiction, Katie Roiphe explained that writers of the dreariest YA fiction "are careful to infuse the final scenes of these bleak explorations with an element of hope."

I love that hope. I wondered how Ellen Hopkins would create it in Tricks, if Laurie Halse Anderson would be able to do it in Wintergirls. They did, and with a style that seemed to my outside eyes effortless (which means it took TONS of effort).

After I read most novels intended for adults, I dwell on the endings for days. I ask myself: What really happened? Anything? The character changed, so I suppose that's something, but I just can't say exactly...

So, are endings of adult books supposed to be more complex than endings of YA books? Not so easily understood? More thought-provoking for our gigantic, well-aged brains?

Sometimes I read an ending a second time and I still don't get it. Sometimes I think a book is remarkable despite its ending. And it's not because adult fiction depresses whereas YA fiction brightens. Endings in most YA novels are just clearer in my opinion.

Let me be unmistakable about what I love about most YA fiction endings: The main character's catharsis happens in such a way that I can explain it to someone else without sounding like a dumbass. I believe there is something in the average YA reader that will not accept ambiguous finales, and that YA fiction writers respect that.

Here's one of my all-time favorite quotes about YA fiction:

"Teen books are like adult books, without all the bullshit."

New York City librarian Jack Martin said that during a panel that explored where exactly YA belongs in my mind, in bookstores, on library shelves, etc. But are cloudy endings bullshit? Or something beyond my ability to comprehend? Or just not my taste?

My meditation on endings breeds new questions:

Do YA novels need to end hopefully, positively? What are the requisites for endings in general?

I'd love to hear how the rest of you approach your endings, be they YA or adult or anything else. And am I the only one who doesn't "get" some endings?

What makes a great ending?

Yep, I'm Going There.

2009-11-25T06:28:00.006-05:00

I don't usually talk about that famous vampire saga because mentioning an opinion on it seems to polarize people. There's the raging beast made up of shrieking girls and this annoyed mob made up of critics and jealous guys, and in the middle are people like me. I loves it, but I'm not in love with it, you know?

Anyway, I am in love with the New Moon Soundtrack

Here's how we met: I heard the first notes of "Hearing Damage" when I went to see New Moon, and my audio-self couldn't turn away. I knew I must own the soundtrack as soon as possible.

At home I searched for the track list and saw "Thom Yorke," and I was all, Like Radiohead Thom Yorke?

I received a burned copy yesterday and have been ingesting almost every track ever since.

I've already added Lykke Li's CD Youth Novels (The title alone tells me I'll love it.) to my Christmas list. I love how "Possibility" sounds like what it means. I suppose all songs try to do that, but this one actually succeeds. She perfectly captures the feeling of the realization:

"There’s a possibility--
All that I had was all I'm going to get"

So there it is. My stance on the entire Twilight Saga and all that comprises it: decidedly positive. What say you about this massive international franchise?

Found: Insight

2009-11-24T07:17:00.005-05:00

I could blog or I could write.

Really, how many words can I write in the 40 minutes I have before I must leave for work? Wouldn't this time be better spent, I don't know, doing something? I'll write when I have copious amounts of silent, unhindered time.

Then I open my quote journal, and find this:

"You will turn over a many a futile new leaf 'til you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages."

Mignon McLaughlin

So I'm writing and wishing you happy travels down your own imperfect road.

From: "Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan"

2009-11-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

"Got a blank space where my mind should be."

Phish

From: "Father and Son"

2009-11-19T07:49:00.000-05:00

"From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen."

Cat Stevens

Writer in the Front; Biz Dev in the Back

2009-11-18T06:55:00.007-05:00

Occasionally, I get burnt out. I lose interest in reading, writing, and talking about reading and writing. This used to scare me, as I thought I'd lost "it" (it being my muse, my talent, my ambition), but it doesn't anymore. I know "it" will return, so I focus on something tangentially related to writing so I get a break while not actually taking a break.

Lately, I've been attending free online business classes. I am working on a writing career, not a writing hobby, so I have to train the marketing department of Marie, Inc.

Right now I'm learning about strategic planning and execution--or envisioning my ideal future writing career and building a plan that will lead to realizing that vision. I even found a quote worth online course-napping:

"You are either writing the story of the future or you are living inside the story of another. There can be no other possibilities."

Apt for us writers, no?

If you're feeling the burn or fretting the loss of your "it," I recommend visiting SmallBizU, which I found by searching the University of Scranton Small Business Development Center site. As someone who's considered pursuing an MBA, I can say that the classes I found there saved me a few tens of thousands of dollars.

Are you writing the story of your future? Do you train your inner marketing dept.? How? Where? Why?

"Time to murder and create"

2009-11-17T07:04:00.005-05:00

The voice in my head chides me regularly:

Why did you trust her? You should’ve known better.
Hey dummy, why don't you keep that thought to yourself.
Is this a game of how many was-es and thats you can fit on a page?

The voice is smart, snarky, and quick. When it goes off on me, which is often, I get a taste of all the hurt I’ve laid on others over the years in the name of being funny. I can be a real bitch, but I’m working on it.

In my lifelong quest for inner peace, I’ve been reading a lot of hippie new-age stuff--I read everything--and this one hippie in particular recommends talking to your anger, finding out why it’s so, well, angry.

My anger rolls her eyes when I approach. She taps her foot impatiently and asks, “What now?”

But I walk right up to her and ask, "Whats your damage, Heather?"

The rest is personal, so I won’t go into it. I mean, it’s embarrassing, and even though my anger is kind of a bitch, I don’t want to sell her out. I’m trying to teach her about trusting people and being nicer, especially to me—so I lead by example.

Here she comes again, yapping about my low nano word count.

“There will be time, there will be time…” I tell her, and get this—she smiles. She remembers college when we used to skip class to sit around our dorm smoking cigarettes and reading poetry out loud with passionate inflection. She remembers writing 600 poems in the style of "Prufrock" because we couldn’t get that haunting voice out of our head--and how all that useless, horrible writing made us the wordsmith we are today.

These days, me and my anger are tight, yo. Still, she leaned in close this morning and said, “Staring into the distance is cool, but it’s November 17, and I really want to know what you-know-who is going to do about you-know-what. If you don’t start writing that scene, we’ll never know.”

And my anger is totally right, although I’m glad she’s found a nicer way to express herself.

Describe your inner voice. Give it an adjective, and tell me about it in the comments. If it’s a negative adjective, have a conversation with your inner voice. The world has enough mean people. Be nice to yourself.

From: A Certain Slant of Light

2009-11-16T06:18:00.011-05:00

"I thought if I could read you what I wrote, you could give me some advice."

He was struck silent, rarely having heard these words from a student's lips. "Of course." He motioned me to sit in the front row. "Is it a poem?" he asked.

"No," I said, letting my bag clunk onto the floor beside the chair as I sat. I cherished his attention so much, but now it was difficult to bear. I kept my gaze on the paper in my hands. "Not exactly."

"A short story?"

"Well, it's short."

Be bold, I told myself. "A Letter from a Muse to Her Poet," I read. He leaned back in his chair. "Dear sir, I was called away and couldn't bring you, but now I feel haunted." He was staring at me, which made my cheeks prickle. "I know that sometimes you felt I was a part of you and that losing me would leave a hole in your heart, but that's not true." I looked up now, knowing the rest by heart. "I liked to pretend I was the core of your talent, but it wasn't me. Everything you do, the ideas you weave, the lines you write, the words you choose, it was always only you." He was still as a statue. "Please forgive me," I said. "I'm sorry that I didn't say goodbye."

A Certain Slant of Light
Laura Whitcomb

P.S., A friend of mine is reading a certain vampire book and of course she loves it, but her main qualm is an interesting one. She gets perturbed when the vampire speaks with incorrect grammar. The other characters' bad grammar doesn't bother her, but as she put it "THAT IS NOT HOW HE SPEAKS! HE WOULD NEVER SAY THAT!"

Secret: long ago, when I only dreamed of being a writer, I convinced myself I did not need to pay attention to all that grammar stuff because "my peeps talked real." I was really limiting myself, I later realized, by not even learning the tools required to write intelligent characters.

Why am I telling you this? Because bibliophiles and grammarphiles will love A Certain Slant of Light because the main characters speak so well. It's their very nature. Plus, OMG, IT'S SO GOOD!

From: A Room With A View

2009-11-12T08:11:00.001-05:00

"Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die. It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal."

A Room With A View
E. M. Forster

Answer Key

2009-11-12T06:04:00.003-05:00

Did you see what I did there?

I surrounded my post about not having time to do anything with parentheses of days with no posts. I thought it was very meta.

This has been a lesson in post-modernism.

Metaphor Salad: What is this "satisfaction" thing I hear so much about? I can't get none.

2009-11-10T07:21:00.000-05:00

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com

In college, my friends and I developed a theory about the three main aspects of university life:

partying
sports
classes

Our theory held that every student must choose two of these aspects. Attempting to balance all three led to certain failure. You'd no doubt eventually wake up on a Sunday with a hangover, a morning game, and a test the next day. You'd theoretically go crazy, drop out, and--I don't know--die on Skid Row, or something.

It occurs to me as I try to squeeze in home-cleanliness, responsible pet ownership, career, writing, family (both extended and immediate), socialization, recycling, reading, bill-paying, car upkeep, health, pop-culture junkiness, and a host of other responsibilities--that I can't have it all. I didn’t even mention sleep. Starting Monday, I cut into sleep a little bit further each night, so that by Friday, sleep has grown into a giant beast that hates accomplishment. Sleep pushes away my laptop and doesn't care about my dirty dishes, my unfinished chapter, Project Runway.

I don't even remember sleep from college, but it must have been there. The sleep urge seems to get stronger with age, but even it is not invincible. Certain books challenge sleep, and occasionally I get so into writing that everything else cowers: the gym is a den for the self-obsessed, my house is an important observation site for dust growth, and I don't know what happens to the rest of that stuff. I guess it evaporates.

Anyway, I am noticing a pattern:

I come down with an inspiration-virus, which hits me with the mistaken notion that I can do everything. It's all a matter of following lists and not reading Perez Hilton.
I create a color-coded schedule of tasks: solve world hunger, dust curtain rods, write a poem.
The next few days I try valiantly to do it all, then settle for most. A battle ensues between the inspiration-virus and the growing strength of sleep beast. They fight. Sleep wins.
By Thursday, I am a petri dish of self-hatred. I've completed 50% of my plans; yet I feel like 100% failure. To coddle myself, I read all the Perez I've missed and grow angry as I count typos and realize that most of his posts are a whole lot of nothing described in sensationalistic language intended to make me think it’s important… AND I AM FALLING FOR IT!
I flog myself metaphorically, continue to tread the quickly rising water of my life, cultivate the inspiration-virus, and repeat.

How annoying! College offered less choices--sports, partying, classes--but I learned the mechanics of finite time. Still, I attempt to force 300 pounds of stuffing into a 10-pound bird.

I am Atlas, only I carry the world in a lumbar-supportive backpack. It doesn’t fit, but I squeeze the planets and shove them in, latch the bulging flaps, and reattempt my climb.

Oh wise blog-readers, this is a call to your collective knowledge. The sleep beast is a kitten compared to the unhappiness monster that will overtake me if I continue this pattern. But what stays, what goes? And how to battle the feeling of not doing enough despite doing all I can? Explain, please, how you achieve balance.

From: "The Black Art"

2009-11-05T08:11:00.001-05:00

"A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl."

Man, I love me some Anne Sexton.

The Truth about November

2009-11-04T06:21:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I am a stickler for the rules. Here are some examples:

when I make the rules
when the rule is "no butting in line"
when rich people (not just money-rich, any kind of rich) break rules at the expense of poor people (not just money-poor, any kind of poor)

NaNoWriMo is not about the rules. I hate the daily word count. Some days, even in November, I am just not feeling it. I hate seeing my short little bar next to the taller bar in the progress graph. I want to tell the graph to bite me.

The truth is that I write 50,000 words a month anyway--even if it isn't November. Between work, emailing, novel-writing, blogging, journaling, list-creating, I probably write more than 50,000 words a month. However, because of all those different outlets, I rarely write 50,000 words on a single project in a month--except at work. For me, NaNoWriMo is an exercise in focus.

Yesterday, someone told me she couldn't believe I was writing a novel in a month. But I am absolutely not doing that. That's ridiculous! I'm writing 50,000 words of a novel in a month--I know I won't have a complete novel on November 30. THE INTERN is revising a novel this month--as is Frankie Diane Mallis. Do you know about NaPiBoWriWe, picture book writers? How 'bout HANOWRIMO? The ways to make this month your own are unlimited.

YA writer Justine Larbalestier says: "Use the month of November to explore. Whatever you wind up with—on paper or in your head—you’ll know more about yourself as a writer."

Have you changed the rules of NaNoWriMo to fit your style or needs? How are you making NaNoWriMo work for you?

Welcome... but shouldn't you be writing?

2009-11-03T07:26:00.000-05:00

I'll keep it short so you can get back to meeting your word count.

One of my local region nano buddies directed me to a great article about removing Internet noise so we can actually write. I'm tempted to give up blogging this month, except that I think blogging helps my writing rather than hinders it--but so much else hinders it. Here's my favorite quote from the article:

"The hounds are out this month, guys, and they smell your fear and self-doubt. So, shovelbloggers will be offering you a tantalizing Vegas-style buffet of endless writing “help” that will range from the indispensable to the stupid to the unconscionably poisonous."

Now, here are various ridiculous reasons I've put off writing in the past:

I need a new laptop.
What’s the point of revising before my thesaurus arrives?
I will write when everyone is silent.
No one’s writing anything until this house is cleaned.
Has anyone seen my muse?

I am giving up excuses for the month of November. What are you giving up to make sure your writing gets done?

Um, What Month is It?

2009-11-02T05:56:00.005-05:00

My friend has a sign in her kitchen that says, I'll get my shit together tomorrow (we're a classy bunch). This motto sums up my preparation for NaNoWriMo. Despite the fact that E. Darker, a cool writer girl I met at the NaNoWriMo kickoff party, told me "the trick is to plan ahead," here it is November 2, and my word counter still says:

0/50,000

I planned to have a comprehensive scene list by yesterday, and I sort of do, but it's in my head, out of order, and still a little fuzzy. However, I checked the NaNoWriMo site this morning and saw that my betas are still at zero words too: Proof that betas are good for not only motivation, but also for making me feel better when I flake out.

I'll tell you what I do know. My main character has an awesome family. I have this picture of them, and I can't wait to see how they interact. Once I post this blog, I'm going to go write some scenes with the fam and make my pictures of them even clearer.

As you can see, I'm sort of a pantser in planner's clothing. I make big plans. I break big plans. I somehow emerge with a finished manuscript. I have no idea how it happens.

What about you? Do you plan ahead for your writing? Are you unaware how your magic manuscript gets completed? Got any tips to amp up my word production?

From: "Wishlist"

2009-10-30T07:12:00.000-04:00

"I wish I were a neutron bomb;
for once I could go off."

Pearl Jam

From: Love You Hate You Miss You

2009-10-28T06:28:00.004-04:00

"There's a couple of other kids who eat by themselves, but I'm in no mood for a very special episode moment, and even if I was it still wouldn't be enough to make me sit with the girl who needs to be told to bleach her mustache or the guy who always wears a suit and tie. I suppose he's making a real fashion statement, but this is high school. You're not supposed to be real. You're supposed to be enough like everyone else to get through and out into the waiting world."

Love You Hate You Miss You
Elizabeth Scott

How to Build Your Perfect Character

2009-10-27T05:51:00.011-04:00

This post is not about the top ten techniques for creating catchy characters. You can read that here, here, here, and at other sundry locales on the Interwebs. This post is about your perfect character.

First, a story.

A while back, I was watching Into the Wild and wondering why the hell my stories are not as beautiful as the ones I'm always falling in love with. (Yeah, I ended a sentence with a preposition. I'm feeling rebellious today.) I grabbed the closest notebook and began to list my favorite stories--not books, but stories: books, movies, tv shows, what have you. Here's what it looked like:

Jesus's Son
A Room With A View
LOST
A Moveable Feast
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Tao of Steve
The Catcher in the Rye
"Fat"
The Virgin Suicides
Atonement
Pump up the Volume

I stared at those titles for a long time searching for similarities. Here's what I found: They all focused on deeply flawed characters. More specifically, the characters were sensitive souls, outsiders by nature of their eccentricity, hurt big time by someone they should have been able to trust: a parent, a sibling, a lover, themselves. As a result, they've been driven to extreme loneliness, the kind that only thrives if one cultivates it. In these stories, desperate characters crawl through the muck of extreme loneliness to emerge in a better place, or not.

These are the characters I identify with, and the sort I want to write about. These are my people.

Here is where my story morphs into your perfect character. What are your favorite stories (not books)? Jot them down. Stare at them for a while until you identify their similarities--not just character similarities. My favorites stories are set in strikingly beautiful, colorful locales. Their love interests represent a break from the constant fakery of the world. When I stare at my list, I see a very clear representation of my aesthetic*, and that helps me create stories closer in beauty to the ones I love.

Have you jotted? Are you staring, contemplating? What similarities emerge among the stories you love? What have you learned about your aesthetic*? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

*Aesthetic is a word used a lot in grad school even though nobody knows what it means. I've been using the word for nine years now, and I just started understanding it (I think). Merriam-Webster defines aesthetic as "a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses." Those stories you love and write: they mean so much to you because they fit your aesthetic.

From: Tricks

2009-10-26T06:57:00.002-04:00

They Call Vegas

Sin City, like calling it what it is
somehow legitimizes the name.
Las Vegas is Sin City. Whole lot

of sinning going on, from fancy
high-rise casino rooms to sleazy
well-off-the-strip motel dives.

People come here specifically
to sin. But I wonder whether
it's really true that "what happens

in Vegas stays in Vegas."
People stain themselves here.
I bet, no matter how hard they

scrub themselves after sinning,
when they go home, a certain
amount of stain remains visible.

Then, I guess, it's up to the spouse
or significant other to recognize
the meaning of that dark splotch

ghosting beneath the bleach.
Most of 'em probably don't want
to look. Don't want to know.

Ellen Hopkins

Found: Hope

2009-10-23T07:55:00.000-04:00

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

Why I Love Losing Writing Contests

2009-10-22T06:25:00.005-04:00

If you find yourself staring at the wall, reciting your query letter verbatim, wondering if you should change the structure of sentence 3, why not enter a query letter contest? I'm going to enter the Kidlit query contest over at literary agent Mary Kole's site.

How do you feel about writing contests? As the books-as-babies metaphor goes, entering writing contests is a bit like entering your kids in pageants, no? Then again, some of these contests are just plain fun. For instance, I'm writing a short story for the Genre Wars over at the Literary Lab, and--dork alert--I'm enjoying it.

Every year I say I'm going to try to win the Flannery O'Conner Short Fiction Award, and on the eve of the deadline, I find myself shivering on the floor, blowing my nose in the discarded pages of my short stories, wondering why I try--but every year I also do a ton of revising to get those stories in fighting shape. To me, contests are just motivation to do SOMETHING.

Here is what I have accomplished by losing several contests this year:

I revised a pile of pages into a semi-finished novel that I later finished.
I wrote Chapter 1 and a synopsis of a second novel.
I wrote a short story from the point of view of a secondary character in my novel. In doing this I learned so much about him--why he wants to be a doctor, how he feels about his mother, that he learned to be compassionate when he was a scared little boy who had to be extraordinarily brave to save someone he loved.

There's more, but that's enough. The point is: I may have done these things anyway, but probably not. I didn't win a damn thing, but my contest-entering was not in vain.

Do you enter writing contests? Worth it, not worth it? What are the best writing contests? What makes a writing contest worth your effort?

From: "Becoming a Writer"

2009-10-21T07:50:00.000-04:00

"[A] writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

"Becoming a Writer"
Junot Díaz

This Conventional World of Unhip Undergraduates*

2009-10-20T06:43:00.010-04:00

I've read books about writing for as long as I can remember. The act of writing fascinates me. A lot of people, however, consider books about writing useless schlock.

Have you read the Alexander Chee article about learning to write with Annie Dillard?

It's beautifully written and boasts all sorts of valuable thoughts on ego and writing. One of the most memorable lines came not from Dillard or Chee, but from Chee's father:

"Whatever it is you want to do, find the person who does it best, and then see if they will teach you."

In the old days, they called this an apprenticeship. I'm a writing apprentice, willing to unquestioningly wax on and wax off for the right person. That's what I'm doing when I read Speak for the 50th time, when I read On Writing and Stein on Writing and A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, the blog that recently mentioned that Donald Maass's book The Career Novelist is available for free download. (go 'nap it!)

As far as I know, Laurie Halse Anderson (aka, the person who does it best) isn't accepting any mentees, but if her book-eating daughter tweets that she LOVES a certain writing essay, I'm going to read it with an open notebook and poised pen. Does that make me a neophyte? Do I care? In the new age of life coaches, blogs, and tweets, I'm still an old-school apprentice learning my craft.

*I searched high and low on the Interwebs to find a poem I love called "I the Graduate" by Ted Joans because I think it complements this post. It's not widely booknapped, so it's probably not well-known. That's a shame, 'cause it rules. Read the whole thing on the ultimate booknapping site. Here's a taste:

I graduated
From my mom's womb
From childhood and family
From neighbors
From villages/towns/and cities
From religions/creeds/nationalities
And stagnant allegiances
And fad conformity
I graduated
From it all

Do you read writers writing about writing? Why or why not? If you do, how 'bout some recommendations?

I ♥ Mondays. You should too.

2009-10-19T06:13:00.001-04:00

Did you read that title? Do you think I'm being sarcastic? 'Cause I'm not.

Lots 'o people associate Monday with the end of fun, but me being sort of manic about getting things done, to me Mondays are weekly opportunities for renewal:

I start something new. I try again. No matter what happened last week, Monday signifies a time to get over it. Stop looking in the rear-view. Get this life train back on track.

I was gloomy and doomy last week. While buried in a weekend pity-gorge of hot wings and pizza, I did some hardcore self-analysis, and I spotted the the reason for my emo-ness. With a certain book as they say completed, I'm clearly suffering from PND--post-novel depression. My characters are still in a way they've never been since I met them. I keep picturing them together in a hospital waiting room, checking their watches, eating vending machine snacks. They're depressing me.

So today I write:

Dear Characters,

I have done all I can for you (for now). I can't wait with you anymore. It is Monday, and I've a new week, a new story--and fine, it's true--new characters to write. It's not you, it's me.

I wish you all the best. You truly deserve it. When you meet a nice editor who makes you feel even more complete than I ever could, I'd love to have dinner with the both of you.

I am a better person for having known you.

Love,

Marie

Bloggies, it is Monday. I dare you to start something exciting. Make your fresh start more real by telling me about it in the comments. What new adventure are you about to begin?

Apropos

2009-10-16T07:32:00.004-04:00

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
at the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

James Wright

From: "Tickle Me Pink"

2009-10-15T07:22:00.001-04:00

"Pray for the people inside your head,
for they won't be there when you're dead."

Tickle Me Pink
Johnny Flynn

Found: Love

2009-10-14T18:16:00.003-04:00

It's all you need.