TheArtofNotGettingPublished

Just One More Thing...

2012-02-29T17:48:00.000-08:00

and then I'm done ranting about politics for a while. I just feel compelled to point out that, contrary to what he may have said before his recent LOSSES, Rick Santorum is obviously not opposed to education. Because at some point, every kid asks his or her parents what "antidisestablishmentarianism" means, but how many parents take the time and trouble to provide a concrete example of it? Not many, is my guess. So let's give credit where it's due. And why not be magnanimous toward the guy after his LOSSES??? In fact, I've given him a new name. Sanctum Santorum. And now I'm done.

Can I Count on Your Support?

2012-02-28T04:39:00.000-08:00

I don't usually post at 7 a.m., but today, I feel I must. I've made a decision. If the GOP primary race hasn't been wrapped up after the vote count tonight, I'm throwing my hat into the ring. How do I stand out from the rest of the field, you ask? It's fairly simple. They are wimps and asswipes; I am a bold visionary. As president, I will not merely do away with the separation between church and state. Oh, no, no no. The entire so-called "Bill of Rights:" gone with one stroke of the pen. Only two provisions will survive: freedom of religion (Christians only), and the right to bear arms (ditto). Are you with me? Because if you're not with me 100%, then you're against me, and make no mistake: I will know exactly who you are. Off the record: I also plan to bring back witch-hunts and burning heretics at the stake, but I know, I know... not mainstream enough for right now, my campaign advisors tell me. And I'm not allowed to even mention the plans to clone Senator McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, although my team has samples of their DNA ready and waiting. None of these missions can be presented as planks of my actual campaign platform; they must remain long-term goals. Fine. I understand the political game. America isn't quite ready for the full breadth of my vision. YET.

Mood: Indigo

2012-02-26T17:55:00.000-08:00

Not the best week I've ever had, on a personal level. Last Sunday my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital, and he wasn't discharged until today. On Tuesday I found out that my friend Michele's mother passed away. Yesterday my mother fell in her apartment and wasn't able to get up by herself. Life is short, my friends. Art is long.
     Oh, and - totally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, of course - on Thursday I found out that my submission to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards contest didn't even make the first cut. I had a feeling that they were looking for edgy, which I'm not, but... wow. Not even the first cut. Why am I getting the feeling that time is not on my side?
     My daughter is watching the Oscars now, and wants me to poke my head into the living room from time to time, but do I really want to see how old Billy Crystal has gotten? I suspect it won't cheer me up. At what point will the man acknowledge reality and start calling himself Bill? I thought one of the few perks of the aging process is that it's supposed to lend you a bit of dignity.
     Maybe I will poke my head in for a few minutes, though. The Oscars have become a public spectacle on the verge of crossing over into a religious obligation. And for that, I'd like to thank the Academy.

Two Months and Counting!

2012-02-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my two-month blogiversary. The number of people reading my posts is creeping up, and I've acquired a follower (okay, it's my son, but I'm totally counting it). So in order to celebrate, I'm going to do something it seems I haven't done for a while, which is to write about young-adult books. Some months ago my daughter (age almost 16) asked me to order her some John Green novels, saying that her friends had been talking about this author. I'd never heard of him, so I googled him and liked what I read. I ordered "Looking for Alaska" and "Paper Towns," and then I read "Paper Towns" while she was still working her way through "Alaska," and then over the next month or so, while she was watching TV or playing video games, I read "Alaska" too. Then when "The Fault in Our Stars" came out last month and got fabulous reviews, I ordered it too, and since my daughter is still reading "Paper Towns," I read "Stars," and finished it yesterday. So here's my take on John Green. He's a very gifted writer with an uncanny ear for dialogue and a killer instinct for the descriptive phrase. But I think there are two John Greens locked inside the same body and brain, and they're constantly engaged in a pitched battle with each other. There's the John Green who wants to be writing novels, and there's the one who wants to be creating roleplaying video games. I think that conflict between the two is probably part of what draws teenagers to him, but for an old fart like me, it creates a whiff of disconnection. In the world of John Green novels, events which are presented as reality could not in fact occur in reality, at least not in any reality I have ever experienced, and I have to say that in my years on Earth I've experienced a wide range of them. Also, in his novels, randomly encountered nurses and stewardesses and cabdrivers are often only one or two levels less witty and insightful than the main characters, and sadly, that has not been part of my life experience either. I sometimes get the sense, reading his novels, that the people in them are fully interactive, in the way that characters in a really brilliantly-designed video game can be interactive, but that they're not actually interacting, in the way that flesh-and-blood human beings do. And I believe that might be because both John Greens are about 35 years old and, while they are extraordinarily high-functioning (if attention-impaired) 35-year-olds, they still have a lot to learn about life, and they also need to finish working through their issues about falling helplessly in love with a larger-than-life person who, voluntarily or involuntarily, ends up leaving. Both of which I have no doubt the John Greens will do, and move on to explore other equally life-altering kinds of experiences, and then they will be truly awesome in every way.
Happy Presidents' Day. Washington was an exceptionally skilled CEO, but Lincoln was The Man. And here is my blogiversary present to you. Follow this link and you won't be sorry: www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html. Enjoy!

LUPERCAL, PART II

2012-02-16T15:30:00.000-08:00

     I wonder whether you noticed the ROMAN numerals in the title, because Lupercalia was a ROMAN holiday? Sometimes my cleverness is just too much to bear. So anyway, last night I told my son about Lupercal, including some new, choice details I had just learned yesterday through further research, like that the celebrants didn't just stroll through town thwacking people with the bloody goat hides, they RAN full tilt, and that while doing so they were either naked or clad only in goatskins, and that being swatted with the thongs ensured not only marriage, but fertility too, which is why at the beginning of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar tells Antony to make sure and peg Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, on his run, so that she can then conceive and bear him lots of Little Caesars. And who can forget Antony's all-too-soon funeral oration: "You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice [III] did offer him the kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse?" Yeah, THAT Lupercal. Who knew about the goats? All well and good, but then I had to break the sad news to my son that this excellent annual thong-thwacking frolic had come to an end by the fifth century A.D., thanks to some stupid antipagan killjoys. At which point, Nathan got a very determined look on his face, and said, "That's it. We have to bring it back." I was all for the idea, of course, but I suggested we start small, by limiting our new venture at first just to the United States, and when he asked why, I had to gently tell him that it was just the two of us, after all, on this quest, and that America is a big place. To which he replied with dismay, "Oh. Didn't know that. That changes everything." And all the spirit just kind of went out of him, right then and there.
     It wouldn't be the first Mommy&Nathie enterprise we'd planned, but I have to admit that most of them seem to encounter serious obstacles fairly soon, and never quite make it off the ground. Take, for example, Mommy&Nathie Practice Brain Surgery In The Garage. Brilliant, right? What better way to earn a little pocket money without even leaving home? But then, pretty quickly, reality set in. We realized that it would require quite a bit of capital outlay right up front. Tools, for instance. Oh, we have the hammers, the pliers, the what-have-you, but it started looking like we would actually need some more specialized equipment, and that's where you get into the big bucks. Not to mention, of course, that we would have to invest in some serious training before we could even begin experimenting on friends and family. And let me tell you, high-quality training manuals, with LOTS of illustrations, do not come cheap. So that vision of ours, unfortunately, became a nonstarter.
     Perhaps our most promising plan was the one I like to call Mommy&Nathie Parachute-Drop Into Belize [a country which, as everyone knows or should know, has no standing army], Spend a Couple of Days Snorkeling, and Then Take Over the Country. Such a great idea in so many ways, but then, sure enough - problems. Like, where would we find a third partner who not only knew how to fly a helicopter (or, at least, would be willing to try), but could be completely trusted to not shoot off his/her mouth during the planning stages? Because there was no way around it - our success did seem to hinge, at least in part, on the element of surprise. But as soon as our plans had to start expanding beyond the tight-knit Mommy&Nathie circle of leadership, we knew that danger lurked.
     Bottom line: I can't make any promises at this juncture about restoring Lupercal to its rightful place in the calendar. The jury remains out. But I will absolutely keep you posted on future developments.
     And, by the way - my son and fellow idiot, Nathan, just got his first law school letter today, from a school he really likes, and it was an acceptance! So, please don't tell anyone I'm doing this (I can trust you, right?), but - WOOOO HOOOO!!!!!

Bits and Pieces

2012-02-14T18:06:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention last week that I submitted Chapter 1 of my book (#3 of course) to a new agent. I can't wait around forever for the formerly besotted agent to read my revisions (which I sent to her in November) and get back to me. Besides, she actively encouraged me to offer it around, and suggested no timeframe in which I might expect to hear from her, so it was starting to feel kind of foolish for me to keep that candle burning in the window. In case you read my blog every so often, but are starting to get a little tired of so much me, me, me - and Lord knows, I'm starting to get tired of it - I decided to start interviewing fellow unpublished, or published but unfamous, writers. For one thing, I don't know any famous writers to interview, and for another thing, if you like reading my blog, then you must be at least a little interested in what it's like to be a struggling author. So, keep watching for the interviews to start trickling in.
And one other thing. Valentine's Day. Today at work I posited the theory that it's a holiday invented from whole cloth by Hallmark, but my friend then sent me a link to prove me wrong. So, in case you were wondering: there may or may not have ever been a St. Valentine - there are at least three mutually exclusive legends about such a person - but if he did exist, boy was he a romantic. But even more interesting, to my warped mind, is the fact that, going back to Roman times, the middle of February marked the Lupercal. This lovely festival was celebrated by priests called Luperci slaughtering a goat, cutting its hide into strips, dipping the strips into its blood, and then going around town carrying these bloody strips and playfully whacking young, nubile maidens with them. So, you are probably wondering, did the maidens go into hiding as Lupercal approached and the festivities began? Au contraire, my friend. Evidently, they just couldn't get enough of being whacked with bloody goat hide, because, you see, being the lucky recipient meant that you were going to get married within the coming year. Oh, those crazy, crazy Romans! What a party crowd, huh? I am not making up one single word of this. If you don't believe me, look it up. And then, focus on the bright side: no matter how lousy your Valentine's Day might be, at least (I sincerely hope) no one is doing you a favor by assaulting you with the insides of a dead goat. See? Didn't that brighten your day? XXXXOOXOXOX

An Offer You Can, But Shouldn't, Refuse

2012-02-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

Why don't you and I make a deal. Your part: you read my blog, which clearly you are already doing, and if you're feeling generous, you also tell your friends to read my blog. This gives me hits, and getting hits makes me happy. My part: I share some of my research with you, because I think it's really interesting, and you wouldn't be reading my blog if you weren't interested in at least some of the things I find interesting. That's the whole deal. Frankly, I think your part is a lot easier than mine - how much work is it to read a blog post, for God's sake? Okay. So here we go.
     About two years ago my family spent a few days in Boston, and we drove to Salem one day and spent some time in the witch museums. (If you're not from the U.S. and don't know why they have witch museums in Salem, google "Salem witch trials.") In those museums, I learned that the early American concept of witches and witchcraft derived from the ancient Irish tradition of the "wise woman," who was an herbalist, midwife and healer. A friend to all.
     This did not entirely make sense to me: how could a tradition involving a purely beneficent construct have somehow turned into the construct of an evil creature who must be burned to death? Remember the three weird sisters in Macbeth (see my post, "Vive le Roi")? They were products of an old European tradition, obviously, and you wouldn't want to run into them in a dark alley, would you?
     Here's what I found out recently about the old, pagan, pre-Christian, pre-Saint Patrick Irish legend of the bean feasa - literally, wise woman. The legend has been passed down through countless preliterate generations in the form of folklore, tales told and retold ad infinitum. What distinguishes this woman from her neighbors is that she has a direct connection with the spirit world, and can serve as a liaison between that world and the human one. Then there is the other, parallel tradition of the cailleach, a word which is sometimes used interchangeably with the term bean feasa. But here's where it gets interesting. If you look in an Irish-English dictionary, and I just happen to have one handy (see my post, "Research = Heaven"), there are two definitions for the word cailleach. One is "wise woman;" the other is "hag." In fact, one of the books I'm reading refers to her as "the pre-eminent Celtic Hag Goddess." Wow, right?
     "Hag Goddess." It's like the old madonna/whore split view of women, but with spiritual overtones. In some of the tales, the cailleach is a woman much like her neighbors, but possessed of special powers and knowledge, which she uses to help those around her by mediating on their behalf with the spirit world. Often in these tales, it is the village priest, decrier of paganism, who is taught a lesson about the enduring power of unChristian forces and the need to find a way to appease them. In the other line of tales, though, the cailleach is every bit as cruel and capricious as Nature itself; the only good cailleach is a dead cailleach. But because she is as old as the world and has superhuman powers, in order to kill her, the hero (always a man) first has to find a way to trick her. Fortunately, sometimes with the help of magical animals, he always succeeds. Shrieking like the Wicked Witch of the West doused with water, another cailleach bites the dust.
     So there you have it. The Puritans did not completely subvert the traditional European witchcraft legends; they just chose the second strand and rejected the first. Because they could not tolerate a pagan tradition alongside their rigid form of Christianity, for them, witches could not be goddesses; they could only be dangerous, evil hags. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one of the "witches" executed in Salem was the Carribean-born nursemaid of one of the Puritan girls, who had allegedly taught her charge pagan rituals.
     If you've read thus far, you must have found all this interesting, perhaps in a horrifying kind of way. But it's important to understand these things. I've discovered that this research has cleared up a lot of mysteries for me. So now I've fulfilled my part of the bargain I made with you. Your turn!

Susan Komen Foundation

2012-02-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

This really doesn't even qualify as a post, but I just wanted to say how glad I am that for the last 9 years and counting, I have participated in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Except for an excess of people yelling "woo-hoo," which, after walking 26 miles in a day, can really get on a person's nerves, the Avon Walk has never embarrassed me.

Mistress of the Art of Writing

2012-02-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

Three or four years ago, when my family was away on vacation, my husband, who loves to troll our library's discarded-books shelf for treasures, reached into his suitcase and handed me a book he thought I'd like. It was called "Mistress of the Art of Death: a Novel," by someone named Ariana Franklin, and the cover illustration was of a woman's clasped hands resting comfortably on a skull. I don't often read mysteries, but I figured I'd give this one a try. WHOOMPH!! It wasn't a book, it was a time machine! Before I knew what had hit me, I was sucked into 12th-century England, when King Henry II, a man centuries ahead of his time, decided that he needed to borrow the finest scientific/medical mind in Europe to solve a desperate puzzle. Alas, that mind turned out to belong to a woman, Adelia Aguilar, a young graduate of the University of Salerno, the only school in the civilized world that would have admitted her. Adelia was a mistress of the art of death - or, as one would call someone like her today, a pathologist. She couldn't have existed in the midst of the Dark Ages, not even with a devoted Arab eunuch manservant to shadow her and converse with her in Arabic and perpetuate the ruse that he was the real doctor, and she merely his assistant. But, here on the pages I couldn't stop turning, she was as real as anyone I'd ever met, and so were most of the other people in her utterly credible world. The murder mystery itself was, to me, the least interesting part of the book. I couldn't get enough of Adelia, a cranky, brilliant, rude, impossible 21st-century woman born 900 years too soon, or of the uncanny feeling of having been bodily transported to her setting. It didn't hurt, either, that somewhere during the course of the book Adelia angrily discovered that she and the dashing Rowland Picot were falling madly in love.
     I didn't have a laptop with me on vacation, but when I got home I googled Ariana Franklin and discovered that she didn't exist either. It was a pen name for Diana Norman, a Brit who had dropped out of school at 15, become a reporter for a local paper at 17, and then, at 20, the youngest reporter on Fleet Street. She married Barry Norman, a fellow journalist turned film critic, and stayed in the biz until after their two daughters were born, after which she produced 11 historical novels and three nonfiction books under her own name. Then, in 2006, at the age of 70 or so, she switched gears. She began to write historical mysteries, and she became Ariana Franklin for that purpose.
     I learned, to my joy, that there was a sequel: "The Serpent's Tale," which of course I immediately ordered. Now Adelia was a single mother, and things with Rowland had gotten very complicated (not least by the fact that the king had appointed him a bishop), but of course there was a new serial killer for Adelia to track down by, as the villagers would say, speaking with the dead. Having become a fullblown Adelia addict, I had to wait impatiently for the third book, "Grave Goods," to come out, and then I had to preorder and wait for "A Murderous Procession." But the wait was bearable, almost pleasurable in a way, because I knew that Ariana Franklin seemed to manage to produce one book in the series each year. So even though this fourth book left Adelia and Rowland in perhaps their direst straits yet, I knew that they would find their way out, only to wind up back in some other delightfully scary kind of trouble.
     I kept checking Amazon.com periodically for the next installment, and that was how I found out that on January 27, 2011, Diana Norman and Ariana Franklin had both died. I felt shock, grief, rage. How could she (they) have just left Adelia hanging like this? How could I deal with never knowing what would become of her? For about eight seconds, I had the insane idea that I would take over where Ariana had left off, continue the series for her, bring Adelia and Rowland and the rest of the crew back to vivid, turbulent life. But of course, then I realized that I couldn't. I'm not a genius. I'm not Ariana Franklin. Now, no one is. All I can do is try to honor her, on this slightly belated yahrzeit, and hope that by writing about her, I can create a few more Adelia addicts in the world. Maybe they'll have it easier than I did, knowing from the start that there will never be a fifth book. I love you, Ariana Franklin.

Keeping On Keeping On

2012-02-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

So, at this conference last weekend, as at every children's writing conference I've gone to recently, the message - when it's not about writing "high-concept" novels that are "edgy" and have provocative "hooks" and fit snugly within some marketplace niche - is about having a social media presence. Makes sense, I guess. I'm sure my daughter and her friends can barely remember a time before Facebook and instant messaging. But it does lead me to wonder how some very private writers would have fared if modern social media demands had been placed on them.

Emily Dickinson's blog:

I sewed a button - on my glove.
I made a pot - of tea,
Then locked myself up - in my room -
This day - exhausted me -

Edgy, right? (Oh, lighten up, Emily. It was funny.) But what about those of us who truly want to write for kids but don't think in high-concept terms? For whom creating a blog, much like this one, marks a thrilling leap forward into the worlds of technology & social interaction? Why am I asking this question when I already know the answer? We are destined to either not get published at all, or, if we're lucky, to join the ranks of midlist authors marching off into genteel obscurity.
Sorry. I don't mean to be all gloom-and-doom. But maybe I'm just being realistic. Maybe the generational divide between writers like me and readers like my daughter is just too wide and deep to cross. But thinking that way gets me nowhere. I have to keep on taking that same leap of faith that I took when I started this blog. There's a chance that what I write will get read, and I can never let go of that chance. And neither can you.

Woman vs. Room

2012-01-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

Well. I said I'd report back about the conference, and that's what I'm doing. But first I have a question: is it weird to be intimidated by one's own hotel room? Because mine did things that no hotel room has a right to do, like turn on the lights by itself when I walked in. Is it so hard for a human to flick on a light switch when entering a room? What exactly was my room trying to prove? It was what I think of as a "smart" room, but in my opinion, it wasn't nearly as smart as it thought it was. Because every time I walked in, it not only turned on all of the lights, most of which I didn't want but which could not be manually turned off; it also took it into its cyberhead to open the blinds. But that was where the room and I parted ways, because I, personally, did not want the blinds open, since the view from the windows was the interior of the apartments across the way, and I had no desire to either be the peeper or the peepee (teehee), so as a result, I spent what I considered an inordinate amount of time closing the blinds (electronically, of course) when I hadn't wanted them opened in the first place. But it didn't do things a respectable hotel room, to my mind, should be expected to do, like have a functional clock. Eventually I figured that the featureless white rectangle on the bedstand with the flashing "12:00" in ghostly figures on its face was supposed to be a clock, but, except for some weird flap on the top that opened and closed but seemed to do nothing else, all its surfaces were smooth. Pristine. There was no way that I could discern to set the clock, and I ask you: what good is an unsettable clock supposed to do me?   I was left with the very unsettling feeling that my room, far from having my best interests at heart, was merely interested in showing off. Otherwise, if it was so smart, wouldn't it have figured out a way to ask me what I wanted, instead of making unsupported presumptions about my predilictions? I just find it hard to imagine that I'm the only non-voyeur to ever occupy that room, for instance. That the hotel had been deluged by complaints from guests who said: dammit, I don't want to be bothered walking over to the windows and manually opening the blinds every time I want to check out what the neighbors across the way are doing in the privacy of their homes! I DEMAND AUTOMATICALLY OPENING BLINDS!!!
     Perhaps I digress a bit. Perhaps all of that was not, technically, about the conference. Fine. Well, what should I say about the conference? It was very, very big; some 1,200 attendees from all over the country and from a number of foreign countries too. I got to see a surprise speaker, Henry Winkler, who found hilarious ways to describe what it's like for someone who was called "dumhundt" by his German parents, in sensitive recognition of his learning disabilities, to grow up to be the co-author of 17 books for kids. I got to hear Chris Crutcher describe the many ingenious ways his older brother found to torture him throughout their childhoods.   I got to hear Kathryn Erskine give an inspiring pep talk to those of us still toiling in the dark of unpublication. And I got to go out to dinner with some really nice people from the New Jersey chapter of SCBWI. And then to go back to my (mwoohahahahaha!!!!) room.
     I did meet Sarah Davies. I left one of my breakout sessions ten minutes early to go lurk outside the room where she was conducting her breakout session. When she was done, I came in and got on line to talk to her. I will make this mercifully short by saying that she was about as underwhelmed to meet me as I was excited to meet her.  Period. The end. Lesson learned. There are a lot of demands from writers for the attention of literary agents, and they (the agents) need to adopt strategies to allocate their energies and continue to do their jobs. It's a business, not a party. I get it now.
     Overall, I'm glad I went to the conference.  I learned some things about the publishing market, I got to hear some very talented and admirable people speak, and I realized that an event like this is just too big and crowded for an introvert like me, so I won't need to go again next year. And I learned that I like the rooms I stay in to be very, very stupid.

(ahem) woo hoo.

2012-01-27T05:02:00.000-08:00

I am SO not a WOO HOOO!!!! kind of person, but you know what? The SCBWI winter conference is this weekend, and I am very (for me) excited. So I am giving a restrained, moderate, dignified shout-out that would never be heard in a crowd, but you and I know it's there, right? Decided at the last minute to stay over in the hotel on Sat. night, because a few days ago I learned via email from Kathy Temean, ,the indefagitable New Jersey regional advisor, that some people from the NJ chapter will be going out to dinner after the cocktail party, and I decided to join them, and once I did, the idea of Port Authority at 10 p.m. to catch a bus back home, only to catch another one back into the city at 7 the next morning, seemed less than appealing. I hate to spend the money for the hotel, but my husband urged me to do it, so I did. I am up for putting my public face on for a weekend, then coming home and collapsing on Sunday. The thing I'm actually most excited about is getting to finally meet Sarah Davies, founder of Greenhouse Literary Agency, who worked patiently with me on Novel #3 a couple of years ago until she ultimately decided to pass on it. I only know her through emails and one unexpected phone call from her, at the start of which I almost hung up on her because it was 6 p.m. and at that hour, I pick up the phone with the presumption that it's a telemarketer on the other end. Big oops. I still cringe. Anyway, she's a hero of mine, and I'll get to stalk - I mean meet her at the conference, which thrills me. So, I'm off! Well, technically I'm not "off" until I'm on the 6:57 bus tomorrow morning, but for all intents and purposes, I'm off. Wish me well, okay? I'll report back.

Vive le Roi!

2012-01-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

This post is going to be about kids' lit. Really. It is. But first, I just have to share my post-South Carolina homage to Mr. Gingrich:

At least he's not a Mormon.
At least he's not a Jew.
Third go-round, he's a Catholic;
Guess that will have to do.

Macbeth provides the precedent.
The old becomes the new:
Weird creatures drop the "'I' of Newt"
Into the witches' brew.

Get it? "I" of Newt, because he's such an incredible narcissist? Okay... Back on my meds now. No more politics. And when the new dance show "So You Think You Can Lead the Free World?" becomes the hottest thing on the Fox network, I won't even try to claim the credit.
But what I REALLY want to tell you about is the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards Contest, which opens tomorrow, and which has a Young Adult Novel category. Google it to get all the information. I'm entering. And if you, like me, have an unpub Y.A. novel just sitting there, you should enter too. Why the hell not? You don't have to be The Winner in order to benefit; if you make any of the cuts, you'll get at least a partial review out of the process. I apologize for the short notice. The contest runs until Feb. 5th, but I wouldn't advise waiting until then, because there's a cutoff after the 5,000th submission, and I suspect there may be a lot of us unpubs out there. So, read the rules, and DO IT! What have you got to lose? And, by the way, if I haven't said this before: Join SCBWI. Immediately. It's an international organization, so it doesn't matter what country you live in. Joining this group is a move you will never regret. Unlike voting for ... AAARRRGGGGHHHHH! They're coming to take me away now.... Enter the contest!!!

Absolutely Nothing To Do With Writing...

2012-01-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

but how can I NOT blog about the Republican-primary freakshow? My God, it's everywhere you turn. Who has the best chance of defeating Obama the Antichrist? Well, let's see whom we can crown Whitest Whiteboy in America, shall we? Why don't they just put an end to the interminable anguish of this process and decide the whole thing on the basis of a dance competition? Obviously, whoever is the clumsiest and most tonedeaf is the one least likely to be a henchman of Satan. Voila! Our candidate!! But who? Rick Sanctimonium? Ron Paul, founder of a crackpot dynasty and possessor of a voice possibly even more grating than George W's? Le Roi Newt, so in touch with his inner European Monarch that he can't understand why he couldn't consort with both his wife AND Callista the Whip Lady? And last but not least, Uncle Mitty, who looks okay, speaks comprehensibly (for a robot), and doesn't belong in a straitjacket, but, most horrible betrayal of all, he's - gasp! - NOT PRECISELY CHRISTIAN!!! Hey, good luck tomorrow, South Carolina. Can't wait to see which one of the Four Stooges gets your thumbs-up.
As for me, I'll be focused on getting ready for the national SCBWI winter conference in New York next weekend. Reading faculty bios, planning my public transportation route, and trying to become a charming person by 7:30 a.m. next Saturday. I might even be able to pull that one off, unless someone at the conference within my immediate radius mentions the primaries.

Happy Anniversary!

2012-01-17T18:44:00.000-08:00

Well, not quite. In two days it will be the one-month anniversary of the date I started this blog. But I thought I'd celebrate a little early by posting a tribute to a few of my alltime favorite young-adult authors and their books. To begin with, no one's body of work has inspired and moved me like Katherine Paterson's. Over thirty years ago, she courageously opened doors that so many authors have since walked through and pushed open even wider. She writes about the outsider, and does it from the inside - from the soul. To me, her most astonishing feat of heroism is "Jacob Have I Loved." Then, Laurie Halse Anderson's "Wintergirls" weaves a spell that seems to me must be witchcraft - but she is a white witch, and her goal is to erase some of the world's darkness, not add to it. And then there's Angela Johnson's "The First Part Last" - the exquisite story of a boy becoming a man by falling in love with his child. These authors are among my heroes, and the novels I've mentioned, with their unforgettable protagonists and language that cuts to the core, have widened and deepened my world. I hope that if you haven't yet read them, you will soon. Happy Anniversary, and, I hope, many more to come.

Research = Heaven

2012-01-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

So, since I'm writing a book set in Ireland, it stands to reason that one of these days I'm going to have to travel to Ireland to talk to people about their local history. And when I do that, I can't just be mispronouncing everything I'm asking them about, can I? Which is why it makes perfect sense for me to have bought myself an English-Irish dictionary, as well as a beginner's language course (coursebook plus audio disks). When I proudly showed my purchases to my husband, he raised his eyebrows a fraction, and reminded me to be careful about not getting carried away with my research. He's been through the writing of one historical novel (#1) with me already, and apparently remembers quite well how, after spending a year or so learning all I could about 16th-century Venice, I felt compelled to cram every single fact I'd uncovered into the text of my novel, with a crowbar if necessary. Ah, but I know better now. When I was prowling on Amazon.com a few nights ago, trying to figure out how I could learn to speak Gaelic, did I not prudently (but reluctantly) refrain from also buying a copy of the actual 1659 Irish census, which could have been mine for a mere $25.00? I exercised restraint, but I have no doubt it would have been worth every penny. Because, for me, research is pure joy. If you're not looking to find out a specific thing, then there's just no way to do it wrong, and everything you find out just opens new doors. As opposed to writing, in which the ways to do it wrong outnumber the waves in the ocean, and so many of the doors you open lead into blind alleys and hidden traps. Writing is work. Research is fun. And some, but not all, of it will even find its way into the book. So I'm going to keep delving, and I'm going to try to learn Irish, which my first foray into the coursebook suggests will prove to be one of the world's more impossible languages. And, my fellow seeker, I leave you with this: May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back; may the sun shine warm upon your face; and, until we meet again, may God (Dia) hold you (tu) in the palm of His hand.

I Am The Man?

2012-01-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Strange week. My promotion at work took effect on Tuesday, shifting me from worker bee to the lower rungs of management. For the first time in my life, I have become, as it were, The Man. As in, the one to whom it (unspecified) should be stuck, as opposed to the one doing the sticking. Fortunately, an office with a less authoritarian structure than mine would be hard to find. I'm still working with all the same colleagues, and we all still relate to each other in the same ways we did before, but still. Suddenly I find that some things I would have said before, without even thinking, are perhaps best left unsaid. I now have a stake, albeit a small one, in the preservation of the current management team. I want to make it work. But, I protest, I want to use my newfound power for good, and not for evil! I want to make the office a better place for everyone! So you see, I am not starting down this path as a ruthless dictator, even if that is how my journey ultimately ends. KIDDING!!! But it is kind of strange, all the same.
So what does all this have to do with writing? You know, it's funny you should ask. I've been wondering the very same thing. Here's one possibility: my new The-Manhood will be immediately apparent to all who see me, in any context. I will walk into a room full of agents and editors at a conference, and all conversations will cease. "Who IS that?," they will whisper frantically to each other. "What presence! What regal bearing! Is she signed with anyone yet? No, YOU get out of MY way! You've got Madonna!" Okay, fine, here's a second possibility. I'll do well in my new job, and it will increase my general sense of confidence, an improvement which I will then be able to intangibly project when I meet editors and agents, and they will want to read my book. Now, that one could actually happen, right? Just that little smidgen of magic that will bump me up to the next level? Isn't that one little bump all I really need? After all, I already write way better than Madonna.

Update- 2012

2012-01-03T17:28:00.000-08:00

Did it! Emailed back to the agent to whom I'd sent my revisions in November, asking whether she'd received them and whether she might be getting back to me within the next few weeks, since I plan to attend the SCBWI winter conference at the end of January and, if she's not interested in the book, I would like to be able to shop it around. Heard back from her a few hours later. Yes, she did receive my revisions, but it's been a very busy reading time for her and she hasn't gotten to them yet. But, by all means, go ahead and shop the book around at the conference - it will be good practice for me, and agents are used to getting multiple submissions. But if by chance I do get an offer from someone else before I hear from her, she wants the right of first acceptance; that's "customary." Hmmm. It's not a kick in the teeth, I guess, but it's a long way from "besotted!" Perhaps my friends' insistence on buying me a celebratory drink that night at the conference was a bit premature, wot? I'm feeling reasonably philosophical about this - I guess her month and a half of silence might have meant that reading my revisions had left her wordless with rapture, but it did seem a little unlikely. So... moving along. Researching Book #4. Trying to write a worthy pitch for Novel #3 to present to unsuspecting strangers at the conference. My husband informed me today of something known as an "elevator pitch," which evidently is exactly what it sounds like: a machine-gun-like barrage of facts about one's book, designed to be inflicted on the hapless industry professional who had the misfortune to get on an elevator with you. Excuse me, but isn't exhibiting that type of behavior the recipe for becoming a pariah, rather than a published author? If I were the industry professional in question, I suspect that either I, or the one delivering the pitch, would end up at the bottom of the elevator shaft. No, but I do have to prepare a normal, polite, dignified pitch, just in case someone is actually willing to hear it. Like, through the door of a bathroom stall.....

Eat My Stats!

2011-12-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

Did you know that in Blogland, there are wizards behind the curtain? For example, when it came to designing this blog, I had no idea what to do, so I just picked the simplest setting, figuring that the background would be blank until I could someday have my 30-something techno-wiz friend Julie make a custom one for me. But after I had entered my first post and clicked on "view blog," lo and behold!! A wall of books had magically appeared as a background! So clearly, there must be some program out there that tracks the words in your blog posts and, if it sees words like "write" and "book" and publish," designs your background accordingly. Is this cool, or creepy? I'm not entirely sure, but here's something else that has been boggling my mind ever since I discovered it. So, on what I guess is my tech control panel of sorts, there is a link for "stats," and when you click it, it tells you exactly how many people have viewed your blog, today, this week, or since the dawn of time. So I now know that in the ten days since I've started this venture, I have had exactly 36 views! OH MY GOD!!! I'VE GONE VIRAL!!!! But wait; it gets better. When you're on the stats page, there's another link that's called "audience," and when you click on that, it shows you a map to illustrate the geographical location of your myriad viewers, and also lists them for you by country in case your map reading skills are subpar. And as a result, I know that someone in Germany has been reading my blog! And someone in Russia! And, I think, someone in Alaska! Well, it looks like Alaska to me, anyway. It's all sort of overwhelming, to be honest. But now that I know what a sizzling hot ticket I am, I have a favor to request. If you like my blog, would it kill you to leave a comment? What, are all your fingers broken? You don't know what a sad thing it is to obsessively check your new baby blog a couple of times a day for comments, only to meet the same dreary chain of zeroes. Please! Drop me a line! In your native tongue, if necessary! Don't make me beg. Don't you think it's bad enough that, at my age, I have to grovel before editors and agents whom I should more appropriately be dandling on my knee? Wait - you vast audience out there. You're not intimidated by me, are you? Is that even possible? If so, I will tell you a story to illustrate how unintimidating I truly am. A couple of nights ago, I suggested something I can't now remember to my daughter beginning with "why don't you...?," and she smiled at me and, maybe 30% joking, replied, "Why don't you just be quiet, like, forever?" And just as I opened my mouth to respond, she said, "It's not forever yet." Okay? Do I make myself clear? NO ONE is afraid of me, and I'm getting lonely here, people! Give me a reason to keep going! And, even if all your fingers do happen to be broken, have a fabulous New Year!

So It's War (Horse)

2011-12-27T14:48:00.000-08:00

My family and I spent Christmas Day as Jews ought: at the movies. My 22-year-old son was off visiting his dad, but my 15-year-old daughter actually deigned to be seen in public with her parents, on the condition that we go to a theater in a different town to minimize the risk of bumping into any of her peers. We saw "War Horse." I willingly suspended disbelief of all the utterly improbable plot twists, and sobbed pretty much from start to finish. I'm such a sucker for a horse story.
     But that's not why this event belongs in my blog. Here is why: I learned something from that film.   If you're writing a story that takes place during a time of war and upheaval, the plot can essentially write itself. All you need to do is know your protagonist deeply enough to be able to understand how s/he would react in any given situation, and then hold them up against symbolic historical events and let them go.
     My Novel #4 is set in Ireland in the middle of the 17th century, when Cromwell's army was methodically marching through the country and uprooting both the majority of the populace and their traditional way of life. Acts of brutality abounded on both sides of the conflict. I'd written the first few chapters, establishing who my protagonist is and setting him off on his journey, and that's where I came to a halt. It wasn't just that I was so focused on my revisions to Book #3. I think I was also waiting for a sign, waiting for my boy to tell me what would happen to him next. But seeing "War Horse" made me realize that I'm asking too much of him. My boy left home, such as it was, because he had no other choice, not because he had a plan. How can he possibly know where to go or what he'll find when he gets there? He needs me to guide him along the way to where I know, but he doesn't, that he'll end up. So, with that revelation, yesterday I sat down and started to plot my story. Not much actual writing got done, but a bridge has been crossed, and my boy and I are on our way. Thank you, Steven Speilberg.
     And this leads me to a tiny snippet of writing advice, just in case any would-be author actually ever reads this, and happens to be even less published than me.   Everyone tells you to write what you know. Well, in my opinion, it's much more important to write WHOM you know.  Once your characters have become so real to you that they show up in your dreams, then you can put them anywhere, in any situation, and they will remain themselves, even as they change.   Know them better than you know your siblings, no matter how long it takes you to get there. And then let them go.

Agents and Holidays

2011-12-24T09:29:00.000-08:00

In early June, I attended the annual New Jersey SCBWI conference, and met an agent who had read the first chapter of my Novel #3, and declared herself "besotted" with it. She wanted to see the full manuscript ASAP. I got nervous, asked for two weeks to get it in top form, and at the end of those two weeks, sent it off to her. She very quickly, but very kindly and thoughtfully, rejected it, based on her objections to a plotline that she felt did not work. Since she wasn't the first person in the publishing biz who had felt that same way - in fact, she was the third, but I had refused to listen before - I decided that it was time for me to bite the bullet, and amputate. I asked her whether she would be willing to see a revised version after the bloodletting, and she said she'd be happy to, any time. From mid-June to mid-November, I excised 95% of the offending plotline, decided to keep the remaining 5%, and filled in the holes with an entirely new storyline. If that sounds easy, trust me. It wasn't. The agent was right. The book became much stronger and richer. On November 15th, with visions of the Newbery Award dancing in my head, I sent it back to her. She hasn't responded. After the holidays, I'm going to send her a gentle nudge, because if she doesn't want the book, I need to move on and try elsewhere.
Which brings me to the holidays. Not directly, of course, but since I now have this forum to write about whatever is roiling around in my mind, I'm going to take advantage of it. So. This past Thursday night, I sequentially gave identical Christmas gifts to two women of whom I think very highly. The gifts were painted glass ornaments, very beautiful, depicting a mother and baby. BOTH of the recipients, independently, patiently advised me, as if they were imparting some arcane bit of Christian lore, that the two people painted on the ornament were not just some generic mother and child, but in fact, the Madonna and the Baby Jesus. No way! Okay, I'm Jewish. I was born that way, and have so remained. But do they really think that the fact that I have never celebrated Christmas - including the years that I was married to a Christian - means that I have never noticed it?? That my acquaintance with the meaning of Christmas began and ended with Santa and his reindeer? That I thought that when George Harrison sang of Mother Mary coming to him, speaking words of wisdom, he was singing about his own Mum flying in from Liverpool? I'll admit that I was a little hazy about the details of the Annunciation, but last year I asked my friend Yvette about it, and she filled me in. I have not spend my 56 years under a rock (I was going to say, in a cave, but I actually know about the cave thing too, and I don't want to be disrespectful). Yes, Virginia, Christianity is the dominant culture in America, and I'd bet a lot of money that there are more Christians, proportionately speaking, that have never heard of the Maccabbees or of the razing of the Jerusalem Temple in Roman times, than there are Jews who never heard that there was no room at the inn and that the Star of Bethlehem led the three wise men to a stable were Jesus lay in a manger. I am, personally, very fond of the Christmas story. Do I believe in its literal truth? No. But neither do I believe that the world was created fifty-seven-hundred-and-something years ago, or that Moses climbed a mountain and was swept up from the top of it into Heaven to receive the Ten Commandments. I'm Jewish both by birth and by choice, but I'm not going to quarrel with anyone's sincere desire to improve the world, by whatever name they choose to call it. My 15-year-old daughter has asked me twice within the past year, both times out of the blue, whether I believe in God. Caught on short notice, both times I answered that I'm not sure. If I'd had more time to think, I might have said: I believe in charity, love, and redemption. If you want to call those concepts God, then yes, I do.
And that concludes my rant for today. Thanks for listening. And, if any celebrants happen to be reading this, I wish them a joyous - wait - it's on the tip of my tongue - I've got it! Christmas.

It's Not Really Funny

2011-12-21T16:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was offered a promotion at work, and one of my first thoughts was: would this cut into my writing time? Yep, I have an embryonic fourth novel, too, that I haven't touched in months because I've been too busy revising Novel #3. My novels, my novels ... They're burning a hole in my pocket. They're burning a hole in my heart. How do I explain to the characters to whom I've given birth that I am the only person they may ever meet? How can I justify having conjured them up if they never live to see the light of day? I think I'd really come to believe that this past year would be my year, and so this was a particularly bitter birthday for me. I went apeshit on my husband over the presents he got me, although usually I can manage some degree of basic civility. It wasn't the presents, it was the birthday. Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that I am so fortunate in so many ways, and the two-year-old inside me bursts out and screams: I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF MY OTHER TOYS! I WANT THAT TYRANNOSAURUS PUPPET, AND I WANT IT NOW!!!! Yeah, but here's the thing. Even if I hold my breath until I turn blue, I'll just be a remarkably colorful unpublished author.

An Art, Not a Science

2011-12-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

Because not getting your writing published is an art, not a science, I offer no assurances that my method is the only, or even the best, way to achieve this goal. I can only attest that it has consistently worked for me for many years, and so I thought it might be of some interest to the general public. Here goes:

1. Consider yourself a writer from childhood on. Write all kinds of things through the years: poetry, plays, short stories, song lyrics, journal entries. Read a lot, in many different genres. Slowly, painfully, via many trials and a seemingly bottomless pit of errors, improve your literary skills.

2. Develop a nonwriting career - say, the law. Get married, divorced, remarried. Have two kids. Raise them. Continue writing and reading throughout, though more episodically than steadily. Take writing classes when possible.

3. Eventually - say, by your mid-thirties - select a writing genre that seems most suited to your abilities and interests. Say - oh, I don't know - young adult literature.

4. Focus your efforts in that genre. Read a lot of young adult novels. Take classes. Join the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, a truly stellar professional organization. Attend conferences and workshops. Join a wonderful, supportive, intelligent critique group, and attend its meetings regularly. Stick with all of the above for - just throwing this number out here - fifteen years or so. Give or take.

5. Keep writing. Steal time at work. Finish a novel. Acquire, and lose, an agent. Write a second novel. Then a third. Amass critical praise over the years; come close to having a novel acquired by a couple of other agents; revise, revise, revise, until it seems that you could recite the full text of each of your novels from memory. Resubmit. Be told that it's just not quite ___ enough to sell (fill in the blank). Compare your writing to that of published authors; whether you come out better or worse, hate and envy said authors for having something (an unfair measure of either genius or undeserved good luck) that you don't have. Get depressed. Get angry. Keep writing anyway.

6. Get better at writing. In fact, get really good at writing. But, simultaneously, get older. And then even older. Until one day you wake up and turn - just a ballpark number - 56. Four days after that birthday, start a blog. Because, hey - who knows? Maybe someone out there in cyberland will read that!!

So that's it. As I said, I can only personally vouch for one way of not getting published. There must be countless other variations out there. Suggestions, anyone?