Today is my birthday and I'm 35 years old. (I kinda swiped this intro from

tracyworld because I liked it).

This is what my family gave me for my birthday:

Yes folks, I am now part of the 21st century.
It's my first ipod. I'm learning about things like click wheels and playlists.

So far, all I have on my ipod is I'm Coming Out by Diana Ross, which if you've heard, you'll know that it's very 70s, very disco, and very happy. So when I listen to it, I'm picturing myself in a blue sequined halter top dancing under a strobe ball. 

Any other suggestions?
Have a wonderful day, everyone!

 

Today is one of those days when I'm so ready for school to start. We're winding down to the last few days of summer vacation here and each day is painfully long. I'm missing my writing life.

I was thinking that maybe in the spirt of Thankful Thursday, we could have something like the Wednesday Whine -- maybe like a list of 5 things that really burns your butt.

I would have only one: When does school start?!

Okay...so just kinda sorta ignore this post.
Unless you feel my pain.

*yawn*

*looks at clock*

Do I have to write this morning?

**ETA:  Two hours later and 567 words!

Only now I have the image of fried cockroaches in my head. Far worse than a blended happy meal, I must say.

I finished HATTIE BIG SKY last night. The book struck me as the classic MG novel, in terms of its plot, its development, the consequences the main character faced, etc.. It was an easy book for me to read because it resembled all the "good books" I read as a child. 

I think the book has an excellent sense of time and place (rural Montana during World War I). If I were a child, I would feel like I had stepped back into history and taken something of it with me when I was over -- a kind of expertise/knowledge about a certain way of life. I remember feeling this way when I read about Sacajawea in sixth grade and felt I had become an authority on her because I had spent so much time w/her in a fictionalized world. And it wasn't just that I felt like an authority -- I felt like I knew and loved her like a real person in my life.

In writing news, after about ten days of not any writing, I cranked out about 400 words this morning. It wasn't much but I did finish Chapter 11. 

I am in the heart of the middle of my YA. One of my problems with the middle is that I tend to see it flat like a plateau in terms of action and conflict. But maybe this is wrong...maybe the middle is also climbing in smaller spikes. I also try to remind myself that the middle is smaller than I think. It isn't the long, neverending desert I imagine it to be.

In our garden, we have an ugly flowering plant. It might be a cone flower. It's a transplant from my brother's neighbor's garden. I couldn't resist a free plant so in the ground it went last summer. And this summer, the plant is in bloom -- tall, purple-petaled flowers with a fuzzy center (think of a badminton birdie).

As ugly as this flower is, it has been attracting butterflies. All kinds of butterflies. Namely one that looks like this:


(photo courtesy of www.smugmugs.com)

My daughter was the first to spot it. I was cleaning up in the kitchen when she kept calling me to the
window, insisting that I see this beautiful butterfly that was sitting on top of the cone flower. I didn't
think it could be all that special until I came for a look and...

For those of you that remember, I've undertaken  the two summer goals of walking and writing every day. It's been patchy here and there, especially the walking part, but I am still more or less at it, and I'm getting better. I walk the same route every evening and now it takes me 20 minutes to do it when it used to take me 30 minutes when I first started.

On the writing front, today I saw that I have 19,000 words written in my YA. Imagine that! I didn't even notice my word count creeping up. I finished Chapter 10 yesterday and wrote the first sentence of Chapter 11 this morning (and not much else, but usually the beginning of a chapter is slow for me). My goal for the summer is to finish a first draft. This may be too ambitious, but I'm hoping to be at least done with the middle which I think is the hardest part for me to write.

The best part is that my daughter understands and respects my schedule. I would never have believed it before it happened. She's an early riser and won't go back to sleep unless I sleep next to her. But nowadays if she's up before 8, she knows that she can't disturb me. If she wants, she can sleep next to me in my bed, but she can't 
talk to me until 8. And she doesn't. She lets me work.

The morning hours are hard. You have to be ready to write as soon as you get up or the time can very well evaporate away. But what I like about them is that after I write and I know I've been productive, I can carry that with me all day like a bright, sparkling jewel in my knapsack.

Yesterday the fireworks got rained out. They've been postponed to Saturday.
K asked me if it has ever rained on the fourth of the July before. 
Sure, I said. Lots of times. Though come to think of it, I only remember it
doing that once.
It was senior year of college, when my friends and I had all graduated and
dispersed to various places, some out of the country.
It was a bad time.
Some fights.
A few broken hearts.
Weird couplings.
Starting a new job and feeling "old" (at the age of 22).

Anyway, my friends and I drove in my then zippy Mazda up to SF to see
the fireworks. It was drizzly and foggy. I don't remember where we went.
Fisherman's wharf?
It was so foggy that all we saw were foggy patches of different colors.
One patch of fog would light up orange, then another green, then another blue.
In other words, we saw nothing.
We came back feeling stupid about the fourth.
After that, I hated the fourth of July for a long time.
It reminded of that day and all those awful feelings I associated
with the last days of college.

But fireworks with K is a new thing. It's something to look forward to,
something bright and even slightly dangerous-sounding.
The past few years, the fireworks are literally down the street,
a five minute walk to a big soccer field where the rest of the
town gathers.

When K asked about past rained out Fourths, I told her about the
foggy SF one. I told her about the foggy patches of colors.
She giggled. That's silly, she said.
And I giggled. Because it suddenly did seem silly now
after all these years.

I wanted to add something to what dotificus wrote this morning. And I'm adding it on my LJ instead of hers. Heh.
(actually, no reason other than I'm lazy and have about a 3 minutes).

Something Kelly Going said at the last conference attended really resonated with me. She was on a panel with other authors and illustrators and each person was asked if there was something they would differently if they could go back. Laurie Halse Anderson said nothing. I don't remember what the others said. But Kelly said that she wished she had taken time to really savor and dedicate her time to her first book (which I'm sure she did anyhow). She said that you only have that time before your first book is published once. After that, there are more pressures to write, to keep producing, and that your time is finite. But before the first book, you have all the time in the world, you have time to really lavish care and attention. Now if you know anything about Kelly Going, you'll know that her output is roughly about a book a year. She is amazingly prolific. Even so, (for non-prolific me), I think her point was insightful.

I guess Dot made a list. So this is #6 - Savor the time before your first book gets published (and it will get published some day).

I think it's Day 17 of my new plan of daily writing and exercise, but I'm not sure because I've lost track. 
At any rate, I've been walking nearly every day and I just got another chapter done this morning.

Yesterday was a hot and boring day. No place to go, nothing to do. I went with my mom to True Value hardware where I bought two garden bunny figurines for my patio. Me? Garden bunnies? What will it be next? Garden gnomes? I couldn't resist -- they were cute. I'm getting sappy as I get older. 

I've been reading about ALA and feeling that wish-I-could-be-there-doing-that twinge. It's about as glamorous as children's books gets.

Meanwhile I am inhaling books right and left. I'm in the middle of inhaling Matilda by Roald Dahl. It is funny!!

I've entered the Middle Ages. Also known as the Dark Ages.

Writing the middle of a book is always so hard. This is where the doubting starts. 
This is where I can't see where I'm going 
and I wonder if I'm about to hit a wall in the dark. 

I changed the font of my manuscript to Garamond, changed the margins to 1 1/2 and made everything single space. 
This is a trick I read somewhere to help me see the writing on the page like a real book. 

It helped a little. I trimmed out some fat.
But I think the next few chapters will still be a struggle.
Because trimming and font-changing is not writing.

The past few days I've been visiting my parents and brother's family who both live outside Boston.
It's fun being around my niece and nephew. My niece reads like mad. 
She read everything I brought for myself and my daughter in just a few days. 
She gave me NUMBER THE STARS by Lois Lowry to read which I finished in about a day.
I am now in the middle STARGIRL by Jerry Spinelli, also a book of hers.

I like when we both go to the bookstore, we are looking for books in the same section.
I like that solidarity.

My mother's garden is in bloom and gorgeous. 
People on the road stop to stare, even a little girl in a stroller. 
No one else on the street grows so many flowers. 
No one in the whole neighborhood has so many roses.
I know because I look at the flowers on my daily walks. 
And while most people can't surpass the sheer abundance of my mother's garden, 
I still see beautiful flowers, all signs of a single person or family 
committing themselves to the act of growing.
In my neighborhood back home, you don't see such a display of flowers. 
Everything is manicured and deliberate,
and the show of color is limited to a few tightly controlled patches, 
the rest landscaped with mulch and rocks and shrubs.
(Well, except for my house, which is pretty much a mess in the front).
You don't see spikes of lavender and sweet williams 
growing wild across a whole front lawn, 
or rows of petunias alternating white and red around
a statue of the Virgin Mary on one side and 
left-over Halloween ornaments on the other side of the same house.
You don't see daylillies spilling over the sidewalk 
or the grass not being mowed 
or weird garden gnomes that someone thinks makes their lawn look more beautiful.
I love seeing all of these things. 
It makes me feel like I am in a place where other
gardeners live. Even if only for a couple of days.

I should add one more thing.
I started writing a new MG this past week. 
It's set in Cremona.  :)

I am definitely having more energy in the evenings after I started walking. By the time dinner was over and everything was put away, I'd usually be too tired to do anything else. 

But lately, I haven't been tired at all, except in the afternoons, when I get suddenly sleepy, but I think that might have more to do with getting up early than anything else. I think it will get better over time.

Also -- I'm so glad K is done with school for the summer. I like having our afternoons expansive and free without the rush of getting to school on time. And now that I've already finished my writing in the mornings, I don't feel guilty about squandering time. 

I wrote 624 words this morning. I'm getting stuck in some of the character development but I'm making myself push through. I'm chiselling into marble.

It's Day 8, the start of a new week and a new chapter.

This morning it was hard getting started. I always find it difficult after finishing a chapter.
Suddenly I have a blank page again, and all the action seems to come to a halt in my mind.

Also, I have to dig deeper in this chapter, give a sense of what the MC's life was leading up
to now. He feels so present-minded to me. I realize I haven't really considered his backstory
until now.

I guess I'm not one for drawing character sketches. I did one for my villain in my MG, because
he appeared in so little of the book, there was no room to develop him across the page. He had
to be as developed as possible in the few places he showed up. But generally, I like to think of
developing characters like chipping stone out of a rock. The statue is in there, you just have to
tap it out. 

I'm reading a book called THE ARTIST'S WAY, and the author, Julia Cameron notes that 
 "Michelangelo is said to have remarked that he released David fromt he marble block he found him in."

I like this image of finding the statue within a big block of marble. I think the same can be said
for characters.

I am almost done with Chapter 7. That's nine new pages of my WIP!
Sadly, my exercise regiment has sort of gone to the dogs.
But I'm going to the city again this week and that should more than make
up for it in terms of the walking I'll have to do.

This is because I'm having lunch with the lovely fabulousfrock and rusalkatrix! Yay!

Check me out!!!!  halseanderson

This is one of those posts where I don't have much to say but I just wanted to post anyway -- kind of like making sure my LJ muscle hasn't atrophied away.

Couple of things:
- I finished Carrie's Tips On Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend over the long weekend. Picture this: sitting on a grassy slope in Central Park, reading Carrie's book while family plays frisbee and roller bladers zoom by.  It doesn't get better than that.

-I loved her book. It taught me among other things, what a YA book is and can be. I liked the way she was able to handle all the elements of a relationship -- esp the physical ones -- in a way that was fully realized but never overdone. I liked that there were boundaries but that she could do so much within those boundaries.  I guess this is the nerdy writer type in me saying all of this. Also because I am grappling with these issues in my own YA. 

- Now, as a reader, I loved her book because it reminded me of my own small-town experiences, it took me back to my own group of friends in high school, though i think we were much less savvy or worldly than the high school kids of today. I liked that she could compress her book into a single week and make it interesting and compelling. 

-Incidentally I found a copy of her book in Borders (after I'd said I couldn't find it in Barnes and Noble).

Okay, other non-Carrie stuff:
-Flowers and vegetable plants planted.
-Ground deweeded.
-Some mulch thrown in

-Also, I never did make it to Holly Black's and Cassandra Clare's reading OR Meg Cabot. 
No instead, I went to an arts and crafts fair and blew $100 on a salad bowl.
Let's just say that we've been eating a lot of pasta and salad in my house lately.



Mine isn't in this picture -- I have red poppies in mine, but it sort of looks like these.
It's very gorgeous. And when you look at it, you are overcome by the urge to eat fresh greens.
(or maybe that's just the $100 talking).

I don't want to make a big hoopla about it because I've gone back to the drawing board so many times. Instead here is an image of what my writing agenda is like right now:



Although to be technically correct, there should be a tiny helping of YA on it. And if it was there, it would be like a great, satisfying desert, drizzled with chocolate! But who's being technical?

With the new 'do. You may not be able to tell but that's a new haircut there. Blow-dried straight.
After midnight, I turn back into a pumpkin. But it was a little pre-revision-completion treat to myself.
I guess you could call it my prevision haircut.

Some stats:
Third revision - done!
Final read-through - done!
Enter hard-copy edits: getting there. Tomorrow.