From: "A Mood"

"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

"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

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let's Confer.

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

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"

"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"

"...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.")