May 2-6, 2008:
Needed new brake pads, nothing more ominous. A short story rejected, a picture book inching closer, starting on a new picture book that I think has little promise but am not sure yet. Contract for HUSH, LITLE HORSIE from Random House. Great (first) review for SEA QUEENS from the blogger “Miss Rumphius Effect” at http://missrumphiuseffect.blogspot.com/2008/05/nonfiction-monday-sea-queens.html
She says among other nice things: “thoroughly engrossing book” and ends this way: “If it's any indication of how much I enjoyed this book, you should know that day it arrived I sat on the couch in my office (okay, reclined!) and read it from cover to cover. It is a fascinating, well-written text that is thoroughly engaging. This may actually be one of my favorite nonfiction reads of the year to date. I highly recommend it.” Can’t get much better than that!
The rest:
Friday--Grandparents Day at Maddison’s School. I got to sit in on an Intro Cum Fund Raiser for Williston (sorry, all my money has gone to paying the school fees!), a geography class, English class, and gym class. It was exhausting and only half of Maddison's ordinary day! I wouldn’t be back in junior high for a gazillion dollars.
Saturday: Flew to Philly where the Philadelphia Ballet School and Company performed a ballet based on THE EMPEROR & THE KITE (published in 1967 and still in print!) I read the book to the audience before the performance. The young ballerinas and the even younger various corps were brilliant. Joy Cappponi who runs the school, the company, and choreographed (and designed the costumes) is simply a genius. Tough but loving. Everyone adores her and now I do, too. In the intermission between the 2 o’clock and the 5 o’clock performances, I watched a demonstration by a local Chinese school’s dancers and got my name calligraphed in Chinese. Signed lots of books. So the week began with a symphonic performance of ENCOUNTER, and ended with the ballet of THE EMPEROR & THE KITE. Nice.
Oh—and while I waited for everything to be packed up and out (because I was going to a late dinner with Joy, husband Dominic, Traves who was the man who played the Emperor, and the Capponi’s nine year old daughter Anna) I got out my new Air computer and rewrote chapter 6 of EXCEPT THE QUEEN.
Stayed over night at a Day’s Inn and got home by 11 the next morning.
Sunday: Dealt with mail, and stuff, read back magazines, back newspapers, not much else.
Monday: Heidi and I took a trip up to Brattleboro to buy clothes for the twins’ birthday. It’s really the last time we can buy at the Carter’s Outlet Mall because they will be too big next year. Sigh.
Tuesday: In-between a little bit of writing, some cleaning, some family stuff, I signed books for a friend. Nothing much to report.
In fact, I am doing a LOT of waiting to hear from editors who have promised a decision and haven’t made any yet. Some has to do with committees, some to do with indecision, some to do with the IRA in Atlanta. (No, not THAT IRA—International Reading Association, silly.) But I won’t turn this into a rant. You have all heard my rants about waiting far too often.
Interstitial Moment:
It has been some time since I received any questions from my Dear Readers. So I thought I’d put this up on my own.
As part of a speech at Whidby Island in 2007, I was asked to give a talk on writing rules. and I said:
“I HATE writing rules. I HATE imposing them on others. Mine work for me. If they work for you, fine. If not, feel free to ignore them. They are very simple. There are 20 of them.”
Now, I'm not going to impose all 20 on you, but here are five of them.
1. Eschew the exclamation point! If your prose is not exciting all on its own, a screamer (as it has been called in some circles, though not mine) is hardly going to help.
3. Don't let your characters float on the page. Unless, of course, they are birds, fairies, superheroes, or jet pilots. By that I mean anchor them with some action. Don't let them just talk and talk and talk. In theater, actors always have some bit of "business" that keeps their characters rooted in the real world. Even the birds, fairies, superheroes, or jet pilots.
8. Make your reader fall through the words into the story. As a wordophile, I love words like “furbelow” and “Taradiddles.” My favorite is the Scottish “Traghairm” which means to prophecy while wrapped in a bullock’s skin behind a waterfall.” But using a word that is unparsable at best and a bloody big STOP sign at worst is simply bad writing.
14. What about an editor? What do we want? What do we need? They are not necessarily the same thing. Well, this is what I want: truth, attention to detail AND the big picture, getting back to me on time, hard questions, and a love letter each bloody time we correspond. I want the editor to love the manuscript as it is, even though we both know it needs to be better. I want the editor to make the revision journey with me, sometimes leading me, sometimes a hand on my butt pushing me up the steep hill. I want the editor to be my voice in the publishing company, my cheerleading section, my advocate, and my sherpa. She (or he) does NOT have to be my best friend. In fact, sometimes having an editor as a best friend gets in the way of a good publishing relationship.
18. Dealing with the dreaded BLOCK. Here’s what I do if a project or piece of writing is being balky, threatening to stop up, or otherwise shut itself down. I stand up, walk about, eat a chocolate chip cookie (check this waistline if you want to know how I have been faring!). I have a cup of tea; watch a rerun of TOP CHEF or AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL; check email; read blogs like Fuse # 8 or BlueJo or Making Light; peruse magazines like Newsweek or Style 1900 or Smithsonian. (You now know more about me than is good for you!) What one is trying to do is to sucker in the hind brain, the lizard brain, getting it to work while it thinks no one is paying attention. If none of these distractions help, I turn to a different writing project. Since there are always plenty of them around, I never have to worry. Notice, I never settle into reading someone else’s finely-wrought novel during work on my own. If I do, it will be many hours or days before I resurface, my own projects forgot, and the beat of the novelist’s language in my head instead of my own novel’s voice.
It occurs to me that I may have posted some or all of these before, but it never hurts to re-emphasize. Employ as you will.
May 1, 2008:
Writing: on my journal, fiddling with stuff to take to Scotland, checking on my speech for KeyCon, and all those etceteras. I know that in Scotland I will be working on two novels, and maybe two new speeches. Reading a lot. Walking a lot (to the tunes on my new I-pod if granddaughter Maddison can teach me in time!)
Oh dear—major problems with NAMING LIBERTY which should have been published anyday now, but when the final proofs came back, because of a series of small and insignificant mistakes along the way production-wise, a page was repeated. Luckily, this mistake was found by my sharp-eyed publicist Susan Raab. BIG huzzahs for her! So Philomel/Penguin/Putnam has to find a way to fix it, which delays the publication a month, till July 3 when I won’t be here in the States. So at least one planned signing with illustrator Jim Burke has had to be scrapped.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has chosen OWL MOON to be one of the books this year. (The group gives away hundreds of books in 750 communities in 45 states, 6 provinces, and 2 territories. A big hand for the little lady!
I seemed to have gotten a box of HOW DO DINOSAURS EAT THEIR FOOD in a Korean translation. I will keep one, give one to the cleaners who are Korean and who donate the books to their church. Always odd to see one’s (unreadable) name on a book.
Took the car to the garage to find out what’s wrong. News at 11. (Or tomorrow.)
April 30, 2008
My wonderful and talented middle child, Adam, is 40 years old today and that hardly seems possible. I remember his birth vividly. We were living in Conway, Mass. My water broke seventeen hours before the first actual pain. At which point—every towel in the house soaked and washed and soaked again—we got into the car, drove the 25 minutes to the hospital, and less than three hours later I had this big (close to nine pounds) baby boy. He had white blonde hair, blue eyes, and was early talking, reading at 2 ½, a delight. (Until adolescence, but that’s another story altogether.) So happy birthday, darling boy.
On the bad side—my car is in the process of dying and I need to sell another book fast in order to pay for a new/used one (as well as pay my June quarterly taxes.) What I really want is the car to limp along until the fall, since I will be in Scotland June7-September 7 and won’t need it. I have many book manuscripts out there, but have you noticed that the word FAST is not in the vocabulary of editors?
Otherwise, I went to my last Lindy Hop lesson of the season, and afterwards, sweaty and pongy, went next door to the Forbes Library reading by Northampton’s Poet Laureate, my friend, Leslea Newman. She is absolutely adorable in front of an audience, and she led us through four decades of a poet’s life, from her first poems at 14—predictably angsty--to her strongly moving STILL LIFE WITH BUDDY poems, and beyond. The new work is even more powerful. Many of the poems I had already read, some I had heard in our writing group. Fun to see a friend perform, and perform so wonderfully.
April 26-29, 2008:
Saturday, Lovely reception for writer Erzi Deak at illustrator Diane deGroat’s house. Filled with children’s books authors and illustrators talking business, being alternately cranky and loving.
Worked on the final (maybe) go-round of WEE POEMS with input from the editor.
Heard that Dozois and Dann are going to take "The Tsar's Dragons" (note title change per Dozois' suggestion) though because it is so long--nearly 15,000 words--they will not be taking the shorter story, "The Mesopotamian Dragon" so we now have another story to shop around.
This is what I have been doing otherwise.
From the Springfield Symphony Orchestra website:
Youth concerts: Our Educational Outreach project for this season began with the commissioning of "Encounter," an original symphonic work for orchestra and narrator by composer and music critic Clifton J. Noble Jr. It was inspired by the book of the same name written by the renowned children's book author Jane Yolen. The book tells the story of the historic first meeting between Christopher Columbus and the Taino tribe, as seen through the eyes of a young boy of the tribe.
On the mornings of April 28 and 29, the SSO will perform two 50-minute performances of this work - Yolen will be the narrator for all four performances - at Symphony Hall for more than 6,000 elementary school students, including all fourth graders of the Springfield Public School system. Maestro Rhodes will demonstrate how music, as a universal language, can illuminate man's emotions and actions.
The first segment of this project includes in-class performances by the SSO's Woodwind Quintet and Clifton J. Noble Jr.. We thank the generous support of Hasbro, Verizon, the Davis Foundation, the Morgan Stanley Foundation, the Big E West Springfield Trust, the Westfield Academy, Big Y World Class Markets, Hamilton Sundstrand, the Springfield Partnership for Education, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Springfield Cultural Council and other area LCC's.
And what it meant for me was that for three short days I was an instrumentalist in the orchestra, that instrument being my storytelling voice. I had my own score and had to keep my eyes glued simultaneously to the page and to the maestro beside (and above) me. Not an easy task with only two eyes, one of which tried to also look at the audience! Maestro Rhodes cued me in throughout the piece. We had one rehearsal (Sunday) and two performances on both Monday and Tuesday. The audience of schoolchildren, teachers, and other adults was completely riveted.
Jerry’s music is both melodic and Mahleresque at times. It is rich, full-bodied, moving. I thought it brilliant and evidently the musicians did, too. Several of them asked if he would write commissioned pieces for them (he will) and we also had some interest about doing the piece (with narration) elsewhere.
I had a blast. Hearing someone else’s interpretation in a different media of a piece of writing I’d slaved over is just astonishingly good fun as well as invigorating.
Thanks to everyone who made this astonishing moment of my life happen: everyone at the Symphony, but especially Mike Jonnes who never wavered in his enthusiasm for the performance, Maestro Kevin Rhodes who IS enthusiasm writ large, and Jerry Noble whose work I love so much we are planning to try something else ASAP.
Interstitial Moment:
This is a plug, and given wholeheartedly: Vermont College still has a few spaces left in its upcoming Picture Book Semester. They only accept five writers each semester. It's an intense, one-semester graduate certificate program. The faculty advisor will be Julie Larios who won the Boston Globe Horn Book award. Besides being a lovely poet and picture book writer, she’s a brilliant teacher. I got to listen to her lecture last winter and learned some new things. Plus this summer the visiting authors/illustrator will be the Stevens sisters--Janet and Susan, as well as Harcourt editor Jeanette Larson.
Anyone interested can contact Katie Gustafson at: katie.gustafson@tui.edu. or Kathy Appelt (speaking of brilliance!) at kcappelt@verizon.net.
Oh yes—very important: You do not have to have an MFA or graduate degree to apply.
April 25-25, 2008:
Playing with my new thin Mac laptop. Some things I like a lot, but as always with new and upgraded computers, you lose some of the things you relied on in the old one. For example, moving stuff over to it, while it’s easier with my flash attachment than putting a CD in, the stuff doesn’t seem to want to go on the desktop the way I expect it to. Lots of putzing about trying to find my folders.
There’s a new interview with me (and she asked some interesting questions) at: http://www.kimantieau.com/ Thanks, Kim.
I had one poetry book rejection, one new contract on its way (two different books, obviously), and had to do a substitute poem in the MIRROR FOR NATURE book because Jason’s picture of the bobcat walking by the river side and reflecting in it was not sharp enough to use in the book. We substituted a frog picture and I wrote a new poem for it. Verse really. Took about three solid drafts. After I hear from the editor, I am sure it will need more. (And not written in the 45 minutes Mrs. Bush and daughter Jenna spoke of in a tv interview about their writing a children's book. Arrrrgh. Even this small poem took half of one day, half of another.) The editor promises to get back to me next week about all the poems in the book. And the editor of the WEE POEMS project also promises the same. So I expect next week and the week after will be very busy. Especially since the first three days--Sunday-Tuesday--I will be in Springfield with the Symphony first rehearsing and then performing ENCOUNTER.
Sent off the “The Last Tsar’s Dragon.” As it is pushing 15,000 words, it may simply be too big for the Dozois-Dann dragon anthology. So we may have to figure somewhere else to send the bloody thing.
My copies of the 3 HIPPO board books finally arrived and boy! are they adorable. With enormous thanks to editor Linda Preussen at Key-Porter as well as the wonderful illustrator, Vlasta Van Kampen whom I’ve never met. And my copies of the pirate book arrived, too. And extra copies of TROLL BRIDGE and other stuff. Heidi and Glen were hauling books up the stairs for hours, it seemed.
Otherwise, not much in the way of writing or book stuff. Mostly letters, cleaning up desk top, reading back issues of some magazines and newspapers, a lot of crossword puzzles, and two dinners. Thursday at friend Andrea’s in Deeerfield with Heidi and Maddison, and a lot of computer department catching up because Andrea’s husband Jack was a colleague and good friend of David’s. And then Friday at my friendly drug dealer. . .er book dealers down the block in Hatfield, where we discussed politics, growing up, and laughed a good deal.
April 21-23, 2008:
Head down trying to finish up (rewrite) a lot of things.
*Heidi and I are still wrestling with revisions (“Make it more active,” said the editor) on NOT ALL PRINCESSES LIKE PINK. We have gone back and forth about ten more times. Working mostly on scansion and activities.
*Adam and I are wrestling with final touches on “The Last Tsar’s Dragons,” which includes some tidying of language, checking to see that dragon colors are consistent, and making the death of Rasputin by dragon even more pointed.
*Reworking ELSIE’S BIRD, a picture book about a Boston girl who marries a Nebraska farmer and moves west in the late 19th, early 20th century. This started with a piece in the Smithsonian magazine that I read at a doctor’s office (and tore out, with permission) years ago. Now I get the magazine myself. It was an article about how women carried canaries out to their sod houses which kept them company (and kept them alive). Editor said it had a grand opening and a great finish, but the middle. . .well, you all know what I think about middles! So hard at work on that.
Tuesday from noon on I was at Smith College for a big gala of and for and by Alumnae poets. We had a q-and-a (I a’d rather more than my share of q’s, for which I apologize) and then a fine dinner at the president’s house (stuffed & baked trout, delicious young asparagus, etc.). We finished with a marathon poetry reading in front of a packed house at Wright (now Weinstein) Hall, one poem per poet. I read one of the David poems. My favorite part of the event was getting to meet Celia Gilbert who was at Smith about five years before me. She is I. F. Stone’s daughter. We talked of our fathers, of politics, of the rather strange and lingering misogyny in the presidential race, about being Jewish at Smith in the 50s, etc. I always feel as if on occasion the Universe surprises me by offering me a new friend--unasked for and probably undeserved on my part. But when it happens, I hold on with both hands.
Wednesday night I was the only one at the Lindy Hop beginner class, so I got an individual lesson. Of course this was wonderful for learning, but meant I was dancing twice as much as usual, so was hugely sweaty and pongy by the end. Plus my knees began to give out. Chatted a bit with the two teachers before going home. Found out she was a Smith grad from the 1990s, day job environmental lawyer, and was trying to write a YA novel. Isn’t everybody! Next week I will grill him (if I am still the only student.)
A bit of garden news: planted (finally) the willow tree that was to have been my Roots Award. Probably too late to get the Roots folks to give me any money for it, two years later. And at the same time we planted two apple trees on the section of land between Heidi’s house and mine. The daffodils are blooming all over the garden, the dogwood is gorgeously in bloom. I am a bit worried about the ornamental apple tree which seems to have lost a lot of its branches. Last night we had a burst of fireworks aka lightning, and a skunk smell so bad I thought I had an electrical fire brewing in the house. Spent about half an hour going from attic to cellar trying to find what smelled so. After the downpour, the smell abated. (And maybe the skunk did, too.)
April 18-20, 2008:
And off I went to be the Official Children’s Ambassador at Winterthur Museum, the old duPont estate in Delaware. I flew in, horrible landing, but otherwise easy, and was picked up by Vicki Saltzman whose official title is Senior Communications Manager, but for us was the Angel of Winterthur and the Barney Oldfield of Golf Carts. Us= Heidi and the girls, who drove in, trying out the new GPS on a real trip. It was. . .an adventure.
We were put up in the estate’s “Golf Cottage”, a "tiny" place with eight bedrooms and gorgeous views, and—it turns out—a resident ghost.
By the way, the place is pronounced Winter-tur and the joke was we had the Vicki tour at Winterthur.
For the past nine months, Winterthur had mounted an exhibition called “K is for Kids” which was an alphabet of stuff chosen from their vast collection of decorative Americana items in the museum to tie into the children's book theme, items from hornbooks, puzzles, quilling, etc., and chosen with exquisite care and with a new-minted rhyme for each letter written by the young curator of the exhibit, Lois, who did this as her Master’s thesis. I was there for the weekend culmination, to speak to teachers, urge them to visit the exhibit, do a family hour of storytelling and reading, attend a children’s choir singing some of the songs from my various music books, etc.
My final task of Saturday was to read CHILD OF FAERIE—the brand new Winterthur edition in hard cover!!!--to children in the estate’s “Enchanted Woods.” The EW contains a troll bridge, a thatched faerie house, standing stones, a tree house INSIDE a tree, a maze, a fountain with magic misting mushrooms and much more.
On Sunday, there was a brunch with recipes from FAIRY TALE FEASTS (the chefs liked Heidi's chocolate mousse recipe so much, it's going into their regular menu) and then I gave out prizes in four age groups to children who had entered the ABC book contest. (I was the judge.) In-between, Heidi and I signed lots of books, Maddison and Glen got to play in the vast gardens, ride the golf cart, enjoy our 8 bedroom cottage!!! And we spent quite a bit of time in the actual museum as well. Henry duPont was quite the collector!
Friday evening we had dinner with the director and her husband and daughter, and several Winterthur people. A gorgeous colonial house with period furniture. Saturday Vicki had, in her spare time (hah!) created a huge seder. She, her husband and youngest daughter (the oldest was at her high school prom), and three other young people two of whom worked at Winterthur, plus the four of us. More food than could humanly be eaten. Too much wine. Elijah drinking the wine scared Maddison and Vicki’s daughter, Caroline into fits of giggles.
On Sunday, the girls (including Caroline) were frightened from the cottage by a ghost—footsteps, doors opening and closing, creaking stairs etc. When we got back from signing, they were sitting outside (Maddison on top of the van) scared out of their wits! If nothing else a great story!
The museum itself, the houses, and the gardens—well, the atmosphere was magical. And that’s without counting the variety of birds we saw, the massive fox, the four woodchucks, hundreds of squirrels, an enormous bullfrog in a pond, carp the size of salmon.
And then—which brought us all to tears—they dedicated a newly constructed owl nesting box to David, with a bronze plaque bearing his name.
Heidi has taken massive amounts of photos and some might actually get to my WHAT’S NEW page in the next millennium.
The ride home was a bit of a nightmare. I went with them because--even taking more than an hour longer than usual due to the Pope traffic in both New Jersey and Connecticut--I still got back before the late plane home. We had fights with the GPS, which is as bossy as an Icelandic stewardess. There was a scare about Glen’s wallet which she thought for a horrifying ten minutes had been left about thirty miles back at a rest area (but hadn’t.) Then home again, home again, falling into bed, and it was all quite wonderful.
April 17, 2008:
Dentist, haircut, bank, etc., all the little stuff that gets in the way of writing. Then packing, bath.
Yeah, I managed some work. Well, business stuff anyway. I answered a lot of email which included close reading of the last ten pages of Mike Cavallero’s wonderful drawings for FOILED; responding to Linda Prussen, editor at Key-Porter, about our search for the perfect illustrator for PUMPKIN BABY; enjoying editor Yolanda LeRoy’s enjoyment of Heidi’s and my comics at each chapter end of BAD GIRLS; reading illustrator Jeff Mack’s letter to S&S about why he wants to illustrate my WAKING DRAGONS; corresponding with my co-writer on the GRUMBLES FROM THE FOREST fairy tale poems, Rebecca Kai Dotlich; responding to editor Heidi Kilgras at Random House about some of the suggested revisions on HUSH, LITTLE HORSIE.
But really, it’s the writing I love best. And there was none of that today. Call it a transitional day, where I transition between being a writer and a business woman, between being an author and a lecturer, between sitting at home with my computer and sitting on the plane. . .with my computer.
Oh, I invented a word for people who dive into ComicCon (which is this weekend in New York City, though I will be in Delaware.) I call them ComicKhazis. And both Mike Cavallaro and Betsy Bird want to immediately adopt the word. With my blessings, kids.
Interstitial Moment:
Some website interviews with me you may have missed:
http://glamhub.com/2008/04/jane_yolen/
http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com/2006/12/one-writers-process-jane-yolen.html
www.writerswrite.com/journal/jun02/yolen.htm
http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/08/Yolen.html
www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1790000379/post/1190016919.html
www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1790000379/post/1250016925.html
April 11-16, 2008:
Fiddling away grasshopper style still, I finished my take on “Tsar’s Dragon” and sent it off to Adam; finished my go-round of the first three chapters of GHOUL SCHOOL and sent it to Heidi; picked up the first chapter of ARCH OF BONE and massaged it quite a bit; started a rewrite on AMELIA EARHART to see if Heidi and I could salvage anything from the dropped Unsolved Mystery from History manuscript; wrote a few more verses for WEE POEMS and sent the whole thing off; ditto for THE EGRET’S DAY and sent it off. Then I played the CD of the music for ENCOUNTER that the Springfield Symphony is performing next week and tried to fit my narration in. I didn't do a good job (though I'd done just fine when it was just the piano music) and will have to go over it a whole bunch more.
How does it feel to hop about that way? It keeps me alive. It keeps me fresh. It reminds me of why I have had a 45-year career in children’s books. And how much stuff I have learned along the way. I am one of those writers who believes that one should not necessarily write what you know, but what you want to know.
Still--it does make some folks dizzy!
Heidi and Maddison and I went to a memorial pottery show for dear Jim Salem, whose loss to the Valley and to his wife, children, and friends is incalculable. It was held at Deerfield Academy where he worked.
On Sunday I went to the Eric Carle Museum to hear illustrator Marla Frazee with her editor (and my friend) Allyn Johnston speak. Also Rubin Pfeffer of S&S was there as well and we got to chat quite a bit. I adore Rubin. He’s one of the Good Guy publishers. Other friends came-- among them illustrators Jeff Mack and Jane Dyer, authorsTobin Anderson and Peg Davol, some great librarians I know well, others. It was a lovely day.
Tuesday I bought a new laptop, one of those thin thin thin Macs. It should arrive next week. Went to my writers' group and afterwards to Zanna’s for some spring clothes. And then I bought a wonderful pair of metal ice cream parlor chairs and a matching small round metal table to go outside on the front patio. It was warm enough Wednesday afternoon to sit outside, do a crossword puzzle, drink a cup of tea, and talk on the phone. The life of the sybaritic Ms. Yolen who finished up everything she was worried about. Now I only have to worry about what I forgot I had to finish. A worry wart’s job is never done.
April 4-10, 2008:
My grasshopper writing life continues. Wrote a huge chunk of the ending of “Last Tsar’s Dragons.” Finished revising stuff for the comics section of BAD GIRLS. Wrote four poems for THE EGRET’S DAY and a half dozen new young verses for WEE POEMS. Spent a lot of time trying to find an illustrator with twins connections (a twin, a mother or father of twins, a brother or sister of twins, etc.) to pass on to the Candlewick crew for the twins poems book. Worked some on the novel EXCEPT THE QUEEN.
And in-between all the writing, my friend Gary K. Wolfe came for the weekend. Gary is a Dean at Roosevelt University in Chicago and a reviewer for (among other places) Locus magazine and knows more than almost anyone I know about science fiction and fantasy. Oh, and Holocaust novels. We went to dinner Friday night with some of the sf/fantasy writers in the area, including John Crowley, Allen Steele and his wife, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant and their two interns. Saturday was a three-museum day: we saw the outside of the Yiddish Book Center (it was the Sabbath so of course it was closed) and went into the Eric Carle Museum to see the Arnold Lobel show. We ended up at the Emily Dickinson house and because I know everyone there, had a private tour of both the Homestead (where Emily, her parents, and sister Lavinia lived) and the Evergreens (where brother Austen and family lived.) In the evening, Gary was my guest at the University of Massachusetts Friends of the Library dinner where I was one of the three speakers.
When Gary left for home on Sunday, Heidi and I dropped Maddison at a friend’s house and drove off in a New Hampshire snowstorm to speak Monday morning at a teacher’s conference. Though we were well-prepared, with both the keynote speech and two power point breakout sessions, we both felt it was all a wee bit flat, even though we gave it our all. Sometimes these things happen, and I always feel that as long as I have given unstintingly, both in preparation and on the day, that's all I can do so there's no reason to let it nag at me.
I had no writer’s meeting or poetry meeting this week, and so got a lot of stuff done, grasshopper style, until Wednesday when Ruth Sanderson came over and we discussed how to do the revisions (read cuts) of HUSH LITTLE HORSIE, the picture book just acquired by Random House.
That afternoon I did a one hour quick walk with friend Jan. Later that evening I had a Lindy lesson. And boy did my legs hurt the next day. But the good kind of hurt.
The bad kind of hurt—Maddison was standing with a bunch of friends and one of the boys gesturing rather largely (he’s 5’11) connected with her nose, resulting in a hairline fracture and two swollen eyes. Poor baby.
And from Thursday for two days, with Heidi off on a mini-vacation, I got to play Mama. A bit of the homework cop, though she really needs no urging. In-between, while Maddison was at ballet (sitting out her lesson because her nose hurt too much to dance) I raced over to visit with the DiTerlizzi's and to play Nana to their baby who is now 10 months and just about walking and talking a bit. What a cutie!
Interstitial Moment:
Bedtime is where most of us heard stories first, collaborating with our mothers or fathers in the stories that would become the most important part of our lives.
I was a reader-under-the-cover-with-a-flashlight, and there was a wonderful covertness about it. Only years later did I realize my parents had known all along. After all, who had given me the books and the flashlight? My parents, of course.
It is the partnership of parent and child and book that lead me not just to reading but into writing. I was a child of writers, of readers. They modeled both for me. There was not a book in the house off limits to me. So at age eight I struggled through Thomas Mann’s JOSEPH IN EGYPT, and read the fully illustrated copy of THE RUBIYAT OF OMAR KHHYAM. And those words, those glorious words just rolled into and around in my head, whether Iunderstood the concepts or not.
April 1-3, 2008:
I am well into the P word these days. Prolific. Or is that Profligate? My writing is all over the place. I am working on revising Heidi’s revision of our GHOUL SCHOOL chapters. Revising Heidi’s attempt at the comics section of BAD GIRLS. Writing more poems for the WEE POEMS collection. Trying to add (as yet unsuccessfully) to the POPSICLE GRINS picture book. Did three online interviews. Worked with Heidi on our speech for Monday in New Hampshire. Dove in and out of the novella “The Last Tsar’s Dragons.” And did some research on questions asked by the illustrator of LOST BOY: The Story of J. M. Barrie picture book.
A busy three days.
I also had dinner with friend Ann Wheelock, took a Lindy Hop lesson, went to the Broadside Bookshop to listen to a poetry reading by local poet Ellen Watson, whose work I love. Along with, of course, all the daily duties—cleaning house a bit, laundry, bank, bills, cleaners, grocery shopping, etc.
Clearly I need a wife.
March 19-31, 2008:
Oh, my, the time flew by. And I flew by, too. Been to Minneapolis and Kansas City since I last posted. People have died, four books have been rejected, and two have been accepted. I have done a bunch of revisions. Wrote two speeches. Gotten the first copy of SEA QUEENS which is gorgeous. Car problems. Two granddaughters had birthdays. Gave speeches, been in panels, signed lots of books. Been rained on, hailed on, snowed on—and played in the sunshine. Oh yes, I have been busy.
I bet you have been busy, too.
Oh—the two books sold? HUSH LITTLE HORSIE with Ruth Sanderson to Random House. THE LAST DRAGON graphic novel to Dark Horse. A bunch of other stuff pending.
Reading: Jo Walton’s HA’PENNIES is brilliant. Adam Stemple's (remember that name) new STEWARD OF SONG is riveting and—as PW says—“shimmering.” Graphic novel LAIKA moved me to tears, as did GN called THREE SHADOWS.
And to everyone commenting on the new design for the website—yes, we are going to fix the size of the type. One of my busy working lunches was with Theo WebMeister about that. There will soon be a button to push that will bring you to the large type. (Some of us can no longer read or sweat the small stuff!)
March 10-18, 2008:
Sorry for the delay, but we have had incredible amounts of ups and downs.
To start with the downs, here during the anniversary week of David’s death, two more deaths in the family. Glendon’s birth grandmother died, as did Adam’s mother-in-law, Myrna Darr. Neither were unexpected, but hard nonetheless. I didn’t know Glendon’s grandmother, except for a few stories about her from Glen. But Myrna I had known for about twenty years, and she was a wonderful grandparent to Ali and wee David, regularly sitting for them. She was able (unlike me) to play at their level.
Adam and the kids have the flu, which means I won't be staying at their house Wednesday-Friday before Minicon, but will be going early to the hotel. Better bring my laptop then and get some writing done.
Also, Monday my friend Jackie deBoer Salem came over and it’s the first time we have had a face-to-face since her husband (and my dear friend) Jim Salem died suddenly, about eight months ago. We’d spoken a number of times on the phone, I wrote to her from Scotland. But we sat there, alternately laughing and crying, she saying what a great man David was, and me saying the same about Jim. I wrote this about him:
Jim was the first craftsman to come to us. He built an outdoor kiln on an extant cement loading platform (the barn was too much of a fire risk to build the kiln inside) and rebuilt the bathroom. He figured out which part of the barn he wanted to work in, and set up walls to keep his shop distinct from anyone else’s.
Very shortly thereafter, he moved in his wheel, his tools, his clay, built shelves, and began. One of his cousins (and of those there were dozens!) came to help him out with grunt work. Then Jim began to make his pots in earnest.
Well, he was earnest, but his luck was lousy. Those first few weeks, it was one disaster after another. The cousin dropped several shelves of bisque ware. One entire row inside the kiln fell down, destroying the entire firing. Another full week’s worth of pots froze in the barn because Jim had turned off the heat overnight to save on his gas bill on the single night a freak dip in temperature turned the valley into ice.
Now because you all knew Jim so well, it will not surprise you that his disposition remained sunny, interspersed with spots of sheer desperation. But it was at the tail end of all those disasters that I made one of my casual forays into the barn to talk with Jim. He was sitting working at his wheel, the wet clay growing into an interesting shape between his hands. His eyes were closed and he was wearing a positively beatific smile.
I cleared my throat. He heard it over the sound of the wheel. Without losing the clay, without losing his smile, he opened his eyes.
“You look. . .” I began, not needing to reference all the disasters, “you look. . .happy.”
The smile turned into a grin. He gestured with his chin towards the large serving bowl that was clearly appearing between his hands.
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes the magic works.”
I have adopted that as my mantra for the past thirty-five plus years.
Otherwise the week itself began rather splendidly. Heidi, Maddison, and I went into New York City for three days, me to do business and win an award, the others to shop. Well, a girl has to do what a girl has to do. Maddison's 13th birthday was almost upon us, and this is her spring break, so it made sense to celebrate a bit early.
We made the last minute, slightly rash decision to goin a half day early and stay with cousins Malerie and husband Jeff Cohen and son Jacob in their big, beautiful (and welcoming) Stamford home, arriving just at dinner time. (Don’t you love relatives who can accommodate on little notice and with a smile and lots of family gossip as well!) Malerie is a magazine writer under the name Malerie Yolen and I am so proud of her success. We left early Wednesday, after breakfast and drove on into the city.
Half our stay was being paid for by Candlewick who published HERE’S A LITTLE POEM which was one of five books winning Bank Street Awards on Thursday. So we sucked up the extra day onto the business card.
And what a great little hotel—On the Avenue, up on 77th street and slightly off Broadway. Our room was large enough to accommodate two queen size beds and a sofa with coffee table, desk and chair. The bathroom was large and the shower more like a bowling alley lane than the usual cramped quarters of NYC hotel rooms. We were quite happy. And most important, they had the room ready when we arrived at 8:15 am.
Off we went for a 9 am muffin/Danish break with our family agent, Elizabeth We gabbed, I signed contracts for three books, found out about mss. that were sent back, etc. Met with the movie agent and the foreign agent and the British agent as well. Did some strategizing. The usual. I don’t know how people go it alone without an agent. She holds my back. She knows things I don’t know (and don’t want to take the time to learn.) She is MUCH more organized than I am. And she—and her assistant Anna (who I alternately call the Little Shark and The Goddess) hold publishers toes to the flames even when I am ready to douse the fire. So, not only does she hold my back, she is my backbone as well.
From there, Heidi, Maddison and I went for a meeting with Dianne Hess, an editor at Scholastic. Though first we stopped in the Scholastic store and took pictures of me with the GI-normus reading dinosaur based on the HOW DO DINOS books. I hope soon to get some photos up in the “What’s New” section of the website. But it may take a couple of weeks so don’t you all rush there right now.
Then H&M went off for their first shopping extravaganza and I had tea with the HandPrint editor, Ann Tobias. She had the f&gs of my first book with them, MAMA’S KISS. It is absolutely delicious, and the illustrator got both the charm and the deeper meaning of the little rhymed story, which pleases me enormously. And Ann, whom I’d met several years earlier at a Whidby Island conference, and I got along famously. We talked and talked until I had to run.
Raced over to Dutton (walking halfway there because, alas, the taxi situation in the heart of Greenwich Village is dire.) Met with Steven Meltzer, my editor of both the Hans Christian Andersen book, THE PERFECT WIZARD and the J. M. Barrie book, LOST BOY (Steven showed me the sketches which catch Barrie’s spirit.) Steven is also the editor of BUG, the klezmer rock-and-roll fantasy novel that Adam and I are working on.
Then I raced back to the hotel via cab, met the girls, and off we went to dinner three blocks from the hotel with Dan Farley, once the head of Harcourt Trade and now the head of Holt. Heidi and I had often sat with Dan at Harcourt functions at IRA and NCTE, so it was good to see him again.
Thursday we were picked up in a cab by Sharon, Library and School Marketing Director for Candlewick and went up to Bank Street College where the award ceremony was taking place. A lot of grand book talk. Three of the six winners (including me, speaking for myself and co-author Andrew Fusek Peters) were there to accept in person. Here is a bit of what I had to say:
“I literally fell into children’s books. The biggest serendipity I ever had outside of meeting my husband. It changed the course of my writing, my reading, and my life.
Since that time, I have done two collections of adult poems, plus 4 adult story collections with interstitial poems, and 3 adult story anthologies with poems. But in children’s books I have written 26 poetry collections, dozens of picture books as both rhymed and unrhymed poems from OWL MOON to HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT, and 10 poetry anthologies, the latest to be published being HERE’S A LITTLE POEM which you are honoring today. Despite this, Lee Bennett Hopkins wrote to tell me that he was just at a meeting for NCTE’s Poetry Award and brought up my name. “Oh,” said a newly minted librarian, “she doesn’t write poetry.”
It’s nice to feel that Bank Street knows better.
Speaking of serendipity, this book began because I had several years earlier started an email correspondence with a young British poet named Andrew Fusek Peters with the charmingly accurate email address of VeryTallPoet. He invited me to send some poems to him for several anthologies, and we became long-distance friends. He wondered in one email if I would ever EVER think about doing a book with him, because Walker (the British sister of Candlewick) was wanting him to do a child’s first book of poetry. And, because I love poetry and because I was already working with Candlewick and because I wanted to have a British presence since I live part time in Scotland. . .I answered a hearty YES before he stuttered any more. I was to seek out American poets, he British. We spent the better part of a year reading both old and brand new poems all to do with a young child’s day.
That kind of research is what I call book aspirin because it’s so good for the heart.”
Oh there was more of course, both in front and behind. But just to give you some of the flavor.
After the ceremony and a luncheon and a lot more book gossip, Heidi and I did a small talk with the 7 and 8 year olds at Bank Street. When I read the Robert Louis Stevenson poem about swinging up high, one little boy raised his hand to ask us if we knew what else Stevenson had written. Before I could answer, he said, “Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped, and I read both of them.” Thank goodness he didn’t mention “Jekyll and Hyde” or I would have been appalled.
Afterwards, Heidi and Maddison and I parted. They to shopping, me to visit with Mark Siegel at First/Second where I got to meet Mike Cavallaro who is the artist doing the graphic novel FOILED. He showed us some of the latest work, which was terrific, full of pizzazz and strong characterizations. He was quiet, a bit shy perhaps, but very knowledgeable about the comics business.
I met Heidi, Maddison, and Irene (Heidi’s boyfriend’s college daughter who is at NYU) and we went to dinner at a terrific restaurant named Whyms. Afterwards, we raced down to the theater to see “Chicago.” Heidi and I had been before in better seats. But it was Maddison’s birthday and Maddison’s choice of show. We did a lot of “jazz hands” on the way back to the hotel. I truly think that “Cellblock Tango” is one of the finest written and directed numbers of all the musicals I have seen.
Friday morning, I began with an early morning wrangle with bad traffic because President Bush was in town in the midst of the Governor Eliot Spitzer drama. Cops everywhere. Bush was speaking in midtown just mere blocks away from where I was going. My goal was the Harvard Club for breakfast with editor Elizabeth Law. I’d been to the Yale Club for Trina Hyman’s memorial, but the Harvard Club really puts that into shadow. Wood paneling, sweeping staircase, old leather chairs, minstrel gallery, stuffed animal heads (the elephant head is appallingly sensational), servers in uniform. The food was excellent if a bit predictable. Very quiet. One could actually hold a conversation without shouting. And converse Liz and I did. She’s starting the American children’s publishing arm of the British publisher Edgmont.
From there, it was a mere three blocks to Simon and Schuster where I was to spend 12-3:30, seeing four different editors, having lunch, working on a revision with one editor, and a huge reworking of the idea of the first of two books with Jane Dyer on a conference call with editor Paula Wiseman, publisher Rubin Pfeffer, and me.
After that I raced back downtown to Elizabeth to give her the round-up of the three days. (A much more detailed account than here, of course.) And with me traveled the news that editor-in-chief of Harcourt’s children’s books, the astonishingly good Allyn Johnston, has been let go by the new Houghton overlords. Basically that wonderful department has now been officially and awfully dismantled. I am in mourning.
I am in mourning, too, not only because it has been a two-dead- grandmother week. But Anthony Mingella has died as well—one of the few Hollywood insiders I would have loved to meet—because of his “Truly, Madly, Deeply” and the writing he did for the Jim Henson “Storyteller” series. Dead, too, is the ineffable Sir Arthur Clarke. Minghella much too soon—he was in his 50s and still had much to do in the world of theater, opera, movies. And though Clarke had lived a good long life, much of the latter part of it he’d been in pain. (And still managed to write, thus an inspiration to us all.)
And I still have to get through Saturday. The Anniversary of David's death.
Of course I am leaving out the weekend—lots of writing speeches (for Minicon this weekend, for a Quabbin presentation on landscape next week, for the Reading Reptile conference in KC next weekend. Heidi and I worked on a new picture book NOT ALL PRINCESSES DRESS IN PINK. Oh yes, it’s been a writing time as well. And I filed and filed until the pile had become a mere lump instead of a towering mountain of paper.
Got to the movies twice, 10,000 BC which I went to with Glendon. It was actually better than it had any right to be, though pretty silly as a whole. And PERSEPOLIS which was very moving, delineating a particular mindset with great dignity, humor, and pathos.
Reading a lot, too, which I will round-up on later. If I remember. And after I get back.
Interstitial Moment:
I don’t know if any of you are interested in trying some sort of writing prompt, but I have devised three of them. I will give you the opening of a book that no one has yet written. Not even me! It is up to you to think of the arc of the book and write an ending paragraph and or dynamite last line to go with it. There are no prizes for doing this, but I might (with your permission) print a few in the journal.
1. Fantasy middle grade
That day when Janey woke up, she was a doll. Lying next to her in the bed was a gigantic figure. A gigantic human figure. “Oufff,” said the human, turning over in the bed, her arm hitting Janey’s midsection. Janey didn’t understand it, but cried out, “Ma…ma!” anyway, in that high automatic wheeze that her own doll always used.
2. Historical novel middle or YA
Ben Franklin was not amused. There were papers everywhere in the print shop, mostly on the floor. Someone had obviously been earlier to rise than he, and overturned the press, scattering the newly-printed broadsides. Though not—Ben was happy to see—the ones encouraging insurrection. Those were still carefully hidden in a chest under his bed. No, he wasn’t in the least amused.
3. Modern school novel, YA
If I had been a. smarter b. thinner c. richer --you choose one—I would not have been in this situation. Okay, I would have still been in this situation, but probably a lot closer to a solution than I am at this moment. Instead, I am sitting on the floor, my hands bound behind me, a lampshade on my head which effectively keeps me blind, while some yahoos from school are making plans around me, none of which I can figure out as they are speaking in a. Double Dutch b. Pig Latin or c. a kind of oral text messaging, which are not any of the five real human languages I know.
March 7-9, 2008:
All ballet, all the time. Well, at least it felt that way. This was the weekend of the Amherst Ballet production. So Maddison was in rehearsals every free moment. And as Heidi was head of the costumes, she was frantically sewing stuff up until the last minute. Which meant that while I did my own filing, her filing has piled up so much that if we have even a moderate earthquake, piles will paper/litter the floor up to our waists.
On Friday, I did some reworking on the first two chapters of GHOUL SCHOOL and sent them to Heidi. I did a massive rewrite of what we have so far for “The Tsar’s Dragon” and sent it to Adam. I did file re-arranging, and sat down to read all the piles of papers and magazines I was behind on.
Saturday late afternoon, our friend Susannah—a children’s lit teacher from Storrs, Ct.--arrived. Off we went for an early dinner, joined by Glendon. Then the three of us went to the ballet, watching Maddison in the salsa, and in two very different sections of “Sleeping Beauty:” ballet, one on toe. The costumes were glorious and Maddison danced beautifully, as did all the students. She managed to injure her ankle and spent the night with an ice pack around it.
But trooper that she was, Maddison was back en pointe the next day, at 2.
I had gone to the Eric Carle Museum first, to sign some stock because Melissa Sweet was coming to speak. Then I had a whirl around the main show (called something like “Children should be seen. . .”) which I hadn’t hadn't managed to get to before. Alas, Melissa was late, so after lunch with Susannah and old friend Rusty Browder (who had started the great children’s bookstore in Brookline but had sold it some 11-12 years ago) I went on to watch the ballets all over again without having a moment to give Melissa a hug.
Tried to see a movie after, there were at least three that sounded interesting, but it would have meant waiting in the mall for 1 ½ hours, so I declined, and went home. Actually went to bed early, reading a few more magazines.
Interstitial Moment:
When asked--by teachers, by doctor's offices, by the IRS, by Customs Officials what I do for a living, I never say Author. I call myself a storyteller. Or a writer. To me, an author is someone long dead and canonized. I see myself as a master writer, a storyteller who works hard at her craft. As John Ciardi wrote to me close to fifty years ago when he turned down some of my poems for the Saturday Review (I was just out of college) "Of a comparable piano performance, I'd say 'very accomplished' But not concert rank yet." It seems to me an Author must be concert rank. I am still working to get there.
March 6, 2008:
Spent hours writing checks now that I finally have started getting paid again. When I had David's money as the ground bass for the song of our life, my money was simply for extras. The first year after he died, I still had monies from various accounts that got distributed in many different ways. But this year I am entirely on my own. Reminder to self: be smarter about money so as not to get in this bind again.
A freelance writer's money comes in four ways. 1. Payment for work done, as in Introductions, reviews, articles, short fiction. You know what you have handed in, and usually get paid reasonably on time. 2. Payment in advance of work done, as in book advances. Once you have signed the contract, you know when you will be paid. Though usually a final payment is sent when the finished manuscript is in, or in some cases when the book is (finally) published. 3. Reprints and foreign rights. Comes in. . . whenever. And can't be counted on. 4. Royalties. Reported twice a year by individual publishers. I have enough publishers to have royalty reports March-June, and September-December. But that leaves January-February and July-August royalty-less. (And of course no one counts on royalties, because most books simply don't earn out, or earn out only for a few years and then drop dead.) Really, this is not the way to earn a living unless you are Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, and even they have the dreaded twice-a-year royalty accounting to worry about.
More than any of you really wanted to know, I'm sure.
Heard that editor Bonnie LOVES the big dino LOVE book. Whew!
Wrote (rewrote) the first bit of the comix section of BAD GIRLS for Heidi to judge.
Bought a bunch of research books at Joslin Hall, my neighbors down the road, mostly for the whaling/Nantucket book. But several others as well.
Cleaned off more of my desk.
And have given a lot of thought to the following. The sharp awful pain of the first two years after David’s death is down to one those long, dull aches, rather like a migraine one lives with because—well, because one has to. I write (which helps) and see friends (which sometimes helps) and keep in good contact with the children and grandchildren. Watch a lot of tv and read. And wait for spring. Once spring comes, I will start walking again. The ice has been treacherous this year and for someone who is more likely to stay housebound by choice, it simply underlines that choice. But it was David who dragged me away from the typewriter/computer, who forced an active life on me because it was how he lived, and how he knew my work would grow in response. Right on both counts. It's just that without him by my side, I--like many writers--tend toward sloth, couch potato-ness, and the indoor and in-one's-head life.
March 5, 2006:
HERE’S A LITTLE POEM is on the list for this award, picture book list: “The E.B. White Read Aloud Award, established in 2004, honors a book that reflects the universal read aloud standards that were created by the work of the author E.B White in his classic books for children: Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. In 2006, in recognition of the fact that reading aloud is a pleasure at any age, the award was expanded into two categories: The E. B. White Read Aloud Award for Picture Books, and The E. B. White Read Aloud Award for Older Readers. Titles are nominated for the award by ABC booksellers, and then the final award is made by committee. ABC members chose books for distinction based on their universal appeal as a "terrific" books to read aloud.”
The garage has a drain that is iced over and so right now there’s about foot of water on top of the ice—treacherous. Won’t be parking in there till spring. In fact there’s so much water, Heidi’s basement sump pump is working overtime. Normally she says it sounds as if trolls are laboring down there. Now she says, the orcs have killed the trolls and are dragging their bodies around. And this from a not-fantasy person.
Small errands today—post office, grocery store, and bringing the taxes in.
And then I got to watch the new Cate Blachett “Elizabeth” movie. Reviews have called it slow, but I thought it elegant. However, Mary Queen of Scots had a Scottish accent, which made me giggle. She had lived in France till she was 18 and when she moved to Scotland, spoke English to the Scots lords with a heavy French accent. Obviously no one told the actress who sounded like a Glaswegian on a good day.
Doing some tsarist research for the dragon story. Sent off my MOON picture book to my agent, worked a bit more on the NY trip. Not much writing except for a full page (300+ words) ending the chapter I wrote a couple of weeks ago on EXCEPT THE QUEEN. Got word that the editor loves the new DINO book. Did some copyediting decisions on SCARECROW'S DANCE (mostly I agreed, added a few more commas.) That kind of fragmented writing day.
March 3-4, 2008:
*Polished the speech for UMass Library.
*Wrote my thank you speech for the Claudia Lewis/Bank Street Poetry Award.
*Rewrote (twice) A KITE FOR MOON.
*Reworked and tidied up, and put on discs finished mss. for A MIRROR TO NATURE, the book Jason and I are doing for Boyds Mills.
*Looked over the delicious cover for Fall ’08 picture book MAMA’S KISS, sent my comments to the editor.
*Wrote a couple of bits of bio and flap copy for various projects.
*Long talk with editor Judy O’Malley about possible books.
*Setting up New York trip.
*Setting up Minneapolis/Minicon trip.
So a good combination of business stuff and writing the last couple of days. I can deal with business stuff if it doesn’t completely overwhelm the writing. Let’s face it, when I am writing, I am happiest. I feel strong, original, even important. Dealing with business matters makes me feel overwhelmed, useless, un-prepared or under-prepared. If I can continue to work on that balance, even tipping it towards the writing end of the scale, life is manageable. Even (she whispered) enjoyable.
And happy birthday, Patty MacLachlan.
March 1-2, 2008:
Saturday morning I sat down with Yolanda and Susan and did what I do best--talked about possible books. I love that part of the business, when creative minds get together and we get excited about stories, poetry, art, and books. Especially with editors and art directors who are as passionate as I am about what we do.
I had printed out a bunch of stuff to give them, showed them Jason's photos, even told them about two of Heidi and Jason's half-done books. Maybe in another life I'd be an agent, but I hate the business stuff, so probably not. They took away all but two manuscripts with them for further consideration. Reminder to self and anyone reading this: it doesn't mean that they will necessarily buy anything. But at least they will think deeply about what they have and--in the end-- that's what I want.
What did they go off with? One folk tale retelling, one book of tall tales already finished, two of Jason's and my book ideas half done, a proposal for another longer book with Barbara Goldin, a book of poems Heidi and I have been working on, and I am to work on another Jason proposal for them. Check back in a month or so.
Then close to noon, off they went, though I was worried whether they could get out of the driveway as the snow had not yet been plowed. But as Susan pointed out, they were both New Englanders! They were going to see two illustrators and continue talking about books. I envied them.
I cleaned the house, and started the long-needed filing of stuff that had been piling up for weeks. Worked on seven crossword puzzles, watched some tv, read back issues of magazines I'd been meaning to look at, from Nature to Newsweek to PW and Horn Book. And went to bed early, sleeping for ten hours.
Sunday was a full work day I printed up the tax stuff which is now ready for the CPA. Then I did more filing. Got several weeks worth put away.
In one of the piles I found an envelope on which I'd scribbled the first few lines of a picture book, probably on an airplane though I hardly remembered doing it. Typed it into a new folder, and then ended up writing an entire first draft. It's called A KITE FOR MOON, about a boy who becomes an astronaut, and the moon. Probably unsaleable because it's quiet, metaphoric, poetic. My usual!
I did some tidying up of THE EMILY POEMS aka THE EMILY SONNETS. This is something I head back to every few months. A lifetime project I suppose.
I got my airplane and hotel accounted for Minicon, in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks.
And because it is March, two years after David's death, I packed away some more of his shoes and clothes to take to the Sally.
My office is now reasonably in shape. My taxes are done. I’ve started a new picture book and am about to tackle an asked-for proposal. Adam and I are moving along on the gonzo dragon story. Two of the three novels are started, waiting for my co-author's turn. And I also have an idea for rewriting one of my history picture books that has yet to find a home.
Now if I could get my back in shape (which means losing about twenty pounds and returning to my swimming routine) things could be almost pleasant around here.
Interstitial Moment:
Every time I am in the company of artists, I am jealous. Oh, not just jealous of their ability to create pictures, but also jealous of their toys.
I mean what toys does a writer have--pen, pencil, scribblepaper, a computer and printer? But go into an art store and look at what is on offer there. Hundreds of pens, dozens upon dozens of papers in different weight and tooth, colors varying. Water color paper about which artists argue passionately. Watercolors vs. oils vs collage vs. various print techniques, each with tools/toys attached. Brushes some as thick as your hand, others several hairs worth only. Cutters, from scissors to fine edges that would make a surgeon green-up with envy. Easels, portfolio bags. And more, so much more.
Every time I go into an art store, I want to walk out with beautifully bound sketch books and hands-ful of printed papers, with prismacolor pastel sticks and Strathmore drawing pads. I reach for my credit card, as I mentally gather up a variety of Winsor and Newton tubes of oils, acrylics, watercolors, with names like Scarlet Lake, Permanent Rose, Rose Madder, Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue, Viridian, Burnt Sienna, and Lamp Black. (Yes, W&N is a British company that started back in 1832.)
And then I remember--I can't draw.
Barry Moser once told me he could teach me to draw. "Can you teach me to draw like Barry Moser?" I asked. "Like Jane Dyer and Mordicai Gerstein? Like Maurice Sendak and Trina Schart Hyman?" He shook his head. "I can teach you to draw like Jane Yolen," he said.
That wasn't what I wanted.
Oh, I go into art stores still. I buy presents for friends, for grandchildren who have not yet learned how to fail at art. I go in because I desire all those wonderful art toys. Artists may call them supplies but I know better. They are the best damn toys in the known world.
February 29, 2008:
This day was all about the Western Mass Illustrators Guild, a group I helped start about twenty years ago and am still the only regular non-illustrator member. Over the years, I have managed to help get a number of them publishers, which delights me. And this evening I was hosting a potluck dinner with the Charlesbridge editor in chief, Yolanda LeRoy and art director Susan Sherman who had agreed to look at portfolios.
So I bounced out of bed, and after a shower and breakfast, began to do my part of the cooking. Heidi was making meatballs and a huge mac and cheese. My part was a chicken and vegetable stew, a dozen and a half deviled eggs, garlic bread, wine, and sparkling water. While stuff was cooking, I did a bit of tidying up the rest of the kitchen and living room.
Then I printed out some mss. because Heidi and I were meeting Yolanda and Susan for lunch, before coming home and finishing the prep work.
Rebecca Guay arrived an hour early to meet with Yolanda and Susan because they wanted to discuss Heidi’s and my BAD GIRLS manuscript with her. She sounded very excited, so we hope it will work out. Yolanda did a buoyant out-loud reading of the introduction. Heidi and I decided we need her to go on the road with us!
Then the illustrators started to arrive and it was clear we had much too much food—and a snowstorm approaching. So we got down to business. Though about twenty members came, only 8 or 9 brought portfolios. I listened in on a few of the comments. Yolanda and Susan did yeoman work and we got the folks who had come from the Berkshires and far afield done early so they could leave ASAP. One illustrator got a desperate call from his wife—the furnace had gone out and she wanted him home to deal with it. As he had been the very first portfolio critique, he was able to leave right away. During the rest of the time, we held a regular meeting, and I orchestrated who was the next illustrator to bring in their portfolios.
After the last, we partied some with the more local illustrators, though only Susan and Yo—who were staying overnight—took me up on the single malt. But by 9:30, when snow was coming down fast and furious, we sent everyone home.
All in all, a successful time.
February 27-28, 2008:
Okay, I finished the taxes except for printing stuff out. (I will do that Sunday.) One whine dealt with.
Cleaned house and picked things up. Another whine dealt with.
I seem to be getting over the last lingering flu symptoms. A third whine gone.
And Saturday is March, so I can’t whine about February for very much longer.
Not much I can do about the bouncing manuscripts, except to work on new ones, or revise old ones.
So—I reworked ELSIE’S BIRD, an historical picture book about a young Boston woman in the nineteenth century who marries a Nebraska farmer and almost dies of the silence on the Great Plains, except for her caged canary who sings her alive until she’s ready to hear that landscape’s particular sounds. My Philomel editor Patti Gauch---who has bought the book--and I had a long phone conversation about what the book still needed. She is so sharp! She pointed out that it was missing its moment of epiphany, and once she pointed that out, I knew exactly what to do. She didn't have to tell me what to write, just mentioned what was missing. Of course! And how I love epiphanies. Coming to that moment is a particular kind of magic. I spent about three hours on the rewrite, and Sunday will probably spend that much time again going over it. But I know it's already mostly there.
God--I love to write!
A bit of money finally came in, a poem sold to a textbook for a lot of money. So I got to pay off bills. Ah, the life of a freelancer!
Borrowed NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA from the local library to reread for texture to put in the tsar's dragon story. My own copy of the book has gone missing. I believe Adam and I are in the last quarter of the story. Maybe two more weeks work?
And finally, I heard on Thursday from a Pit Dragon fan that he and his wife have named their daughter-about-to-be-born Akki, after the girl in those books. I hope she grows up to love her name. Better than the last time I heard from someone naming a child after one of my books—“Greyling.”
February 26, 2008:
Okay, I am going to have to stop whining because everyone is sending me worried letters and emails and even chocolates. Just chalk it up to February blues, folks. And another two picture books turned down.
I did get some wonderful sketches for the next section of the graphic novel, FOILED. And a lovely letter from the editor of SLEEPING MONSTERS who loves it as is. I worked a bit on the final two poems for the first of the two books with Jason: A MIRROR TO NATURE, which are poems about animals and birds and fish etc. reflecting in water.
I have been (with Heidi and Maddison's help) slowly decluttering the house. So another reason for grumpiness.
And I worked on taxes. Now taxes are guaranteed to make anyone grumpy. I am up to 4 days on the taxes and counting. You cannot make me like doing this. And once we put through the Family Trust, it will only get more complicated, not less.
The problem with doing business, of being in business for oneself, is that you have to tend to—yes—business. When I was a young writer and it was only a side game, and I had a “real” job as an editor, and was hardly making any money at the writing at all, life was simple. Be careful what you wish for. The genii doesn’t tell the whole truth. Except. . .except I love what I do. The writing part, not the business part. And if being successful means I have to do more of the business part, well, I accept it. Not graciously. Or gracefully. But with a great deal of whining and whinging. Especially in February.
Now two books to look out for. Adam Stemple’s adult novel STEWARD OF SONGS (Tor), which PW has called “shimmering”, is out March 1. If you like dark and funny (a powerful combination), if you like urban, gritty fantasy, if you like police procedurals in your fantasy, if you like cosmic fantasy realms, and if you like. . .surprises, cinematic scenes, fine writing, and well, dark and funny, this book is for you. And the other book, which I finally finished in mss. last night, is Janni Simner’s BONES OF FAERIE, will be out later this year. It’s a brilliant, moving, post earth holocaust fairie novel after the battle between humans and feys has doomed almost everybody. Wonderfully written
February 25, 2008:
Still working on the taxes and grumbling. But I also did a bit of writing on EXCEPT THE QUEEN and the first attempts at two new egret poems for one of the two picture books sold last week to Boyds Mills. Very rough of course.
I am feeling slow, pasty, wan, worn out. Mostly a result of the after-effects of flu. Some of it from aging. Some from eating too much and doing too little exercize. A lot of it from sitting around and not doing the sort of things David and I used to do together. And thinking about that loss. I suppose that because I am in the last month running up to the two-year anniversary of his death, timing has a great deal to do with how I am thinking and what I am feeling. Part of me wonders if it will be like this always. Part of me knows he would have hated me thinking this way. But it is also a dreary, gray (not grey) February and I just had a big edge-of-the-abyss birthday which has to factor in, too.
The other thing is that I am not right now passionately involved in a book. Any book will do. I am in the beginning stages of a lot of different things waiting for the moment when I feel that electric spark, that power running through me. Waiting, possibly, for Adam’s next move on the tsar’s dragon story. We sat in his kitchen Sunday morning and face-face (always the best way) figured out how the three threads of the story were going to come together.
But February. Always a difficult month.
Robert Legault has suddenly died, a bookman and a good man and gone much too young. Editor Judy O’Malley is struggling with her health and winning against all the odds. Friend Bob MacLachlan has just had heart surgery today. Adam’s mother-in-law, Myrna, is in hospice care. Diane Roberts' baby granddaughter Raeleigh in Texas is living with oxygen and a trach tube and smiling. I am really blessed, and so should just shut up.
Tomorrow, as my old friend at Tara once remarked, is another day.
February 20-24, 2008
On Wednesday, our friend from the UMass computer science department, Steve Cook, came over in the very early morning and saved our bacon. Er, fixed the website. I hesitated to ask him. He has the whole UMass department to work for. He and David were dear friends. But I simply feel guilty asking for that kind of help. Yet here he was, working away, figuring out went wrong AND FIXING IT IN RECORD TIME. Note to self: don’t be afraid to ask. Folks can always say no.
After lunch at the Eric Carle Museum, I got to watch the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts School group do a performance of “Anne and Mary: The Pirate Queens,” based loosely on my book BALLAD OF THE PIRATE QUEENS and then I joined them on stage for a talk back. It’s always fun to watch both amateurs and professionals taking a book another step forward. There is a ballet company in Philly doing THE EMPEROR & THE KITE later this year. And the Springfield Symphony commissioned a piece of music based on ENCOUNTER. Storytellers write to me all the time for permission to tell my stories, which I always give with four rules:
1. Always give credit to the author/
2. If it is feasible, how the book.
3. Don’t change my endings.
4. If you wish to record, tape, or video your performance, or otherwise use the piece in a recordable way, you need to contact my agent and get official permission and possibly pay a fee.
Thursday, I worked on both a power point with Heidi and the speech Adam and I were giving over the weekend. Did a bunch of stuff on the taxes (guaranteed to make me CRANKY! So if anyone wrote or called me during that time, please understand, I am not normally so short with people.
Friday, I took a very early plane to Minneapolis. It may have been the only plane that actually got out before a heavy snow closed everything down.
Betsy met me at the airport and we had our yearly shipping spree at our favorite store in Minneapolis—Fawbushes. I bought a shirt and a high end raincoat. She got two pairs of pants and two wonderful shirts. We did our mother-daughter-in-law bonding. That evening I took the family out to Christos for Greek food. Called my nephew Greg and his wife to get them to come with us, but they never returned the call.
Saturday, Adam and I got up early. Hard on him—he’d been at a gig till 3 in the morning. Hard on me because I was sleeping in Alison’s bed and it’s simply not as comfortable as my own bed.
And off we went to the College of St Thomas Aquinas in St Paul where we were featured speakers, talking on “Writing with a Partner Without Actually Killing Him/Her”. People laughed, bought books for signing, seemed to enjoy it. After a nice lunch, we did two breakout sessions with our PowerPoint. Everyone seemed surprised at how funny we were and how much we enjoyed one another. If I had a dollar for everyone who said “I wish I got along with my mother. . .or my grown son,” I’d be a rich woman.
Then Adam had a gig in a bar to help raise money for a radio program that was being shut down, and I went with him. I told him later that I had rather too many teeth for that venue. It was a dark and. . um. . .a bit dingy. But I did get to see some old friends there, and seem to have made some new ones. Perhaps I am a chameleon. (Perhaps I have rather less teeth than I think.) The Tim Malloys—Adam’s band—played three of my favorites: “One Night in Boston” (written by Adam), Sixteen Tons (a wild and mammoth piece the way they do it), and a song whose name I am not sure of but it is about Christmas in the drunk tank, “and the boys in the NYPD choir were singing ‘Galway Bay. . .” And in my honor, with a wink, they plowed through “Oh, You Canna Throw Your Granny Off the Bus. . .” which made me laugh. In fact they played for almost two hours straight.
Afterwards, we went home, got into fete clothes, and off to the fund raiser for the kids’ school, Friends Academy of Minneapolis. One of the things auctioned off was a week in Wayside. Two wonderful swing dancers were offering lessons, so I danced a bit, though I must say I still have no energy.
Sunday, I came home, easy ride, early to bed. And a rejection email for one of my picture books. About par for February. Still whining, you see.
February 19, 2008:
We are still working on getting not only the journal but parts of the website that have fallen off (like WHAT'S NEW) up and running again. Slog, slog, whine, whine.
Meanwhile, my car died (clutch) which meant I had to rent a car while it is being fixed, during the lowest $$$ time of the year for me. More whining. S&S turned down NANA for good. (After a revision. Well, it was worth a shot.) I had the writer's group at the house. Spent the evening with the Shakespeare group--we read The Scottish Play. Blood, guts, witches, and whining.
I may rename February Whine Month. Seems about right.
All of February so far:
Having major website problems. The friend paid to help me has given up, suggesting I simply write a LiveJournal journal. Another friend is helping get my journal up where it used to be. We are working on it.
I have been writing: finished AGAIN a full; draft of a different Honus Wagner book, one which I think finally almost works. Heidi and I have done two chapters on GHOUL SCHOOL. Adam and I are forging ahead on our gonzo Dragon story. I am twiddling with my opening section of EXCEPT THE QUEEN. I re-tweaked WAKING MONSTERS into WAKING DRAGONS which Jeff Mack is interested in illustrating. Had a long talk with editor Bonnie Verberg about new HOW DO DINOS books. And 101 editors have promised me responses on various mss. which so far have not been forthcoming, except for Boyds Mills which is taking two new books with Jason's photos: THE EGRET'S DAY and A MIRROR TO NATURE, A Book of Reflections.
Health notes: Heidi and I have been wrestling big time with the flu. And we both had flu shots. Both left with awful lingering deep-chested coughs. Caroline (twin) and her mom Joanne both have had the flu. Adam’s mother-in-law is very ill with cancer.
Spoke at Smith College’s SF club, in New York at SCBWI (on “Endings”), went to the Spiderwick premiere in Hadley, and on a half dozen panels at Boskone in Boston.
In other words, life goes on.
Interstitial Moment:
We all hate and love those revision letters from editors. Hate them when they FINALLY arrive, love them when they agree with us. Hate them when they point out deficiencies in our writing, love them when they praise us in the right places. Hate them when the editor misses the point, and sometimes hate them even when she actually gets it.
But as a side note to any editors or would-be editors here--ALWAYS start a revision letter as if it’s a love letter. It’s too easy to read a Revision Letter as a Dear John letter. Authors wait for the great big ugly but in the middle. We read expecting to be jilted. Worse than any soldier on the front line, we assume the worst. And like a jilted lover cum stalker wearing adult diapers. we scan PW online obsessively to see if we can track the authors our editors are now romancing.
So please, remind us that we are still a couple, that our relationship is strong, that we have a long future together, and that there are readers eagerly waiting for this book. And, oh yes—that you love us. Start and end with that statement of love. It will make all the hard work still to come worthwhile.
How Could I Forget?
My beautiful granddaughter Caroline got a plastic tube in one ear because that ear had filled with fluid that wouldn’t drain and she was having hearing problems. According to her dad, she was a trooper, and her twin sister was grand, too. I sent them these poems:
Caroline:
A little birdie told me
That you had an operation
And were the very best of patients
In that situation.
You didn't fuss, you didn't cry
You smiled and went to sleep
And let the doctors do their work
Without a fuss or peep.
A great big cheer.
Who's so fine?
Caro-Caro-Caroline.
Amelia:
Another birdie told me
That you were the greatest sister.
And after CC had her op,
You hugged and hugged, and kissed her.
You took good care,
To play and share.
A great big cheer.
Wahoo-wahoo
For Amelia often known as Moo!xxxNana
My beautiful granddaughter Maddison got a frenectomy. For those who don’t know what this means: A frenum is a fold of tissue or muscle connecting the lips, cheek or tongue to the jawbone. A frenectomy is the removal of one of these folds of tissue. In her case—the piece between her two front teeth which creates the Stemple Gap.
I got a picture book turned down (WAKING MONSTERS.)
And I reread both THE BAT POET and ANIMAL FAMILY and sighed with the beauty and power and poetry of Randall Jarrell’s writing. Probably not the kind of book kids like today. No gossiping girls, no BAM! or POW! or talking dragons. Just sheer beauty.
January 24-31, 2008:
I spent Thursday-Sunday at the Kindling Words Retreat in Essex, Vt. (35 miles north of Montpelier.) It was touted as a retreat for published children’s book writers, illustrators, and editors, and it was all of that. There were 70 of us, including such worthies as Laurie Halse Andersen, Linda Sue Park, Leda Schubert, Janni Lee Simner, Vera Williams, Katie Davis, Robin Brickman, Ellen Wittlinger and others. Some with multiple books out, some with just one. Oh, and editors like Cecile Goyette (I know that’s not spelled right) of Knopf, Yolanda LeRoy of Charlesbridge, two delightful younger Candlewick editors, and about ten more.
Katie picked me up and we drove up together, stopping off for a lovely lunch in Brattleboro (the town that most recently voted to censure Bush). What a grand way to travel, talking non-stop to a friend.
Okay—the Inn at Essex is a lovely collection of three separate classic-looking New England inn buildings, two of which are connected by an underground walkway. (Guess which one I was in—right, the unconnected one. Luckily it wasn’t as cold as it might have been during the weekend.) I had been magically upgraded to a suite, which was super. It allowed me to make myself tea and have something to eat early, before breakfast, and take all my pills. (Everyone say together: “Getting older’s not for sissies!” There I knew you could do it.) Additionally, it’s the home of the Culinary Institute of New England so the food was uniformly good. Only problem, its Wifi was neither wide nor fine. It was spotty at best. To compensate, I had a gas fire and a spa tub (though I didn't dare use the latter since there was no bar to hold on to in order to get out!)
Now a “retreat” as I understood it means that I get time to write, think, read, drink hot cocoa or tea and think some more. Actually, though, I went into teacher mode almost at once. Harold Underdown told me at the end of the retreat that it took him two times at KW before he was able to work himself out of that kneejerk reaction. I even organized an hour and a half seminar on DO YOU NEED AN AGENT AND HOW TO GET ONE in my room on Saturday.
But I met wonderful colleagues, heard Laurie Andersen and Linda Sue Park do some masterful explanation of certain modes of writing (not mine, but fascinating). Sat in on remarkable conversations. Had the most fun at the evening campfire where we sang songs, toasted marshmallows, and laughed uproariously. I was one of (I think) 20 to win the reading lottery and so got to read some of my poems from the fairy tale collection which many people seemed to like.
We chatted at meals, in-between lecture sessions, in the hallways, in the ladies’ rooms, walking between buildings. Just spending so much time with colleagues was amazing. Normally at conferences, we don't talk to one another because we are there to be shown off to teachers and librarians and booksellers. I got to really claim Katie Davis, Ellen Wittlinger, and Leda Schubert as friends, not just interesting women I wanted to meet. By the end of the long weekend--when Katie and Ellen W and I drove home together--I had no voice, my tongue was sore at both edges from so much talking, and I felt I had learned some new stuff.
Then Monday, January 28, I worked on SHORTSTOP, about five hours worth. A bit on PRINCESS PIG with Heidi. And finished the first big revision on the “Endings” speech for SCBWI in two weeks. Then off I went for an early dinner with illustrator Bob Marstall, and on to the illustrators' meeting at Ruth Sanderson’s studio in Palmer. It’s a huge, lovely space in an old factory bulding that’s been turned over to a number of artists.
That night, Heidi was deathly ill with the flu, so Tuesday I did the Maddison drive routes. Got her to school, went to my writers’ meeting in Northampton, then picked her up and brought her to ballet.
Wednesday January 30, Heidi was better, but I was still on duty. As Maddison only had a half day, it wasn't too bad. I worked on the speech to be given Friday at Smith, weather permitting. And finishing up the last revision of “Endings.” Then printed both out. Heidi and I managed to get PRINCESS PIG in order, and I sent that out to our agent. Then off to dancing lessons: lindy hop from 6-7, East Coast swing from 7-8:30, home to bed with Ibuprofin and Tylenol.
Thursday, the bad news that Maddison’s and my book was turned down by S&S because the grandmother who dances seems too old or old-fashioned, not text-messaging her grandkids. We will try and do some revisions and see if they like it any better. Or maybe just send it out further.
The rest of the day, I did paperwork, then had friend Geri Sullivan over for tea.
January 23, 2008:
Work: An interview, my poetry group (workshopped two poems, “Goodbye to a Bookshop” and “Cemetery in the Snow”) and fiddled with my website a bit.
In the evening I went to dance class. Yes—you heard that right. I took 2 ½ hours of Lindy Hop and East Coast Swing dancing. Was exhausted by the time I left. My favorite partner was a very Butch lesbian. The men just had no rhythm and couldn’t seem to hear the music. However, I am sad to say I am not the dancer I like to remember that I was. Not quite two left feet, but fighting old memories throughout, trying to learn new steps, new ways. Body memory beats head memory every which way. Came home to a big spa bubble bath and ibuprofin laced with Tylenol. And yes I felt fine the next day.
Off to Kindling Words.
January 19-22, 2008:
I have reached a panic moment. Even a panic week. I am about to go off again—this time to Kindling Words, a children’s book author/illustrator/editor retreat, and I have so much writing left undone.
So I worked on a number of things (and watched way too much “America’s Next Top Model" re-runs!) and solved a major problem with a book.
What things did I work on? Two more poems for the MA GOOSE project and that’s the last I am going to do till I get some editorial feedback. I tidied up and worked some more on the poems for the proposal of the OPPOSITES book, and when Jason’s package with the first photos for the book arrived, burned the discs and packed them up to be sent out on Wednesday. Worked some more on the “Endings” speech for SCBWI in February. There’s at least another couple of days work on that which I will tackle next week. And Adam and I knocked out another two sections of “The Last Tsar’s Dragons.” He just gave me a dynamite surprise twist.
But I spent the most time on SHORTSTOP: A Story of Honus Wagner, and therein lies a tale. Literally. It is a precautionary tale because I did all the wrong things, working on this for months and months. I almost conceded defeat to this picture book. The problems were threefold:
*I got an idea for the story and stuck to it when it was clear the focus had gotten badly skewed.
*I didn’t do enough proper research, trying to yank the story in the direction I wanted it to go.
*I blamed everyone (the editor who hadn’t even seen it, the artist who talked me into the book, my other projects though I wasn’t paying attention to them, my awful schedule) everyone except the actual culprit. Me.
I scrapped what I had done and have begun over, putting the focus back on Honus Wagner, getting down to more research, letting the story find itself. I am much happier now—with the book if not with me.
Oh, I also had dinner at friend Jan's along with friend Zane and we watched "Once," and afterwards had great fun commenting on it. Went to Holly and Theo Black's house, ostensibly to work on his ideas for revamping my website. (He did the new opening with the owl. Have you heard it hoot?) But also to watch the Patriots win their 18th game on their GI-normous flat screen tv. I spoke at Williston Academy, Maddison's school, about DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC. (It was supposed to be to her class, ended up being the entire 7th and 8th grade. Smart kids, good questions. There were only a few I couldn't answer!) Maddison got to do the introduction. Had my hair cut and went to the first writers' group in almost a month. Holidays, snow days, travel days can screw around with that meeting. How I have missed my wonderful ladies and their sensational new work.
My apologies to Lee Bennett Hopkins for neglecting to mention his amazing new poetry anthology: AMERICA AT WAR. His best work ever. And yes, I have a poem in it and am proud that, after writing seven different poems for Lee he finally took one--on the Holocaust.
Sending love and prayers and spinning prayer wheels for Judy O's continuing recovery, for Diane Roberts' beautiful granddaughter Raeleigh Grace born with multiple problems, for my Aunt Ruth who seems to have come through some health scares with flags flying. A wish that this political season finally end. (I prefer the British way--only 6 weeks of politicking allowed.) And some peace in my soul as I come towards the second anniversary of my beloved David's death.
Letters--we get letters:
C. writes: "For someone who is used to writing long chapters of non-fiction, how long would you say is a typical novel chapter for middle grade vs. young adult novels? (Saying 'as long as it needs to be' and 'there are exceptions to every typical scenario' are already acknowledged--what I'm fishing for is what is typical?)" Should I just choose 5 novels of each at random and do an average count? I'm trying to determine when scenes should be split off into separate chapters. Thanks!"
Before Harry Potter, I would have said “Typical middle grade chapter is five typed pages, typical YA is ten.” All bets are off now. Just write the damn book!
(I know C well, and she won’t be offended, trust me. And she will do her homework no matter what I say.)
January 12-January 19, 2008:
I went off to teach at the Vermont College MFA program for four and a half days, and had more fun than I expected. The students were all terrific (I critiqued ten manuscripts) and one of them, Jendy Nelson (remember that name), wrote a YA novel with the best voice I had read since Laurie Andersen’s SPEAK.
Five of the faculty were ex-Centrum students of mine: Kathi Appelt, Laura Kvasnovsky, Julie Larios, Ellen Howard (who was, alas, not there because her husband was too ill) and Margaret Bechard. So there was an aura of old home week to my time there. Several others were old friends. And now they are all friends of mine.
While there, I also managed to write a bit on my upcoming speech for SCBWI and did a good revision on the first 2/3 of the Grimm’s introduction.
It was invigorating to walk through the halls and hear both students and faculty all talking passionately—and critically—about writing children’s books. I think if there had been an MFA program like this (low residence where most of the work is done in packets sent either by mail or online, and then two times a year a ten-day high-intensity campus program) when I was in my 40s or even early 50s, I might have taken it. What a blast I had there. I did an opening talk on revision, a Q&A session, took part in faculty readings, and did the ten critiques. Plus I ate almost every meal with the students and talked between bites. Hope they ask me back.
I left half a day early because of a threatened snow storm, and was right to have done so.
At home, I stayed in because of the snow on Friday and wrote a poem about not being able to get to David’s grave last week because the town hadn’t plowed the cemetery out. I also wrote a couple more poems for the MA GOOSE collection (the Jane Dyer book, though that’s only a “place holding” title, not the real one.) I also finished the final section of the Grimm’s intro and sent it off. Finally, I wrote a new section for "The Tsar's Dragons" where we get a much closer look at the beasts and emailed it to Adam.
Received copies of CLIMB INSIDE A POEM with two of my really young poems in it. And news that HERE’S A LITTLE POEM, the anthology I did with Andrew Fusek Peters, was on the ALA Notable list. Hurrah!
January 3-11, 2008:
Since I was away five days at Jason’s house, playing with the twins (“Whack-a-Mole” was my favorite) and doing work with Jason on a bunch of our projects, I didn’t get to do any update on the journal till now.
Books:
What a week. Harcourt is being decimated by Houghton Mifflin which just bought it. Lori Benton and Dan Farley out. The San Diego office closing by the end of June. I have no idea what this will mean for all their lives though I read in PW that the San Diogo editors will be offered jobs in New York or Boston. Frankly I can’t see them moving, uprooting families for East Coast weather and style. Though maybe after the past year of floods and fires. . . . Any way you look at it, it's a mess. As for me, I still have two books at Harcourt waiting to be published— YOU NEST HERE WITH ME written with Heidi, and DRAGON’S HEART. Yes, THAT book. All 92,000 words of it. My problem is miniscule compared to what the editors are all going through. But it’s my own.
While I was in Charleston, with Jason and Joanne and the twins, I wrote a bunch of poems (early drafts) for a book on OPPOSITES and reworked some of the poems in AN EGRET’S DAY. Looked over Jason’s latest pictures, and watched him photoshop some stuff for an ad campaign which was fascinating. He was revising! It reminded me of the days long ago when I would watch David work in the darkroom, back when he studied with Lisette Model and was doing these fascinating black-and-white photographs of life in New York, landscape studies on Montauk, and later on chronicling a month we had in Greece.
Jane Dyer liked the new format and poems for NEW MOTHER GOOSE or whatever we will be calling it. Now to hope the editor likes it, too.
Came home to discover that the Canadian publisher, Raincoast, whose editor had wanted DISAS-TOUR: TITANIC as the first of a four book series, has shut its doors. So another project down the drain.
The editor we sent WHEN MAMA DANCES WITH ME loves it, but it has to go through the pub committee and we all know what can happen there, so no happy dances yet.
Joan Hyman at Boyds Mills likes two books, however we still we need to hear from her definitely. No pub committee involved but the head of books needs to sign off on any projects.
Heidi and I worked on a revision of BABY’S BUSY DAY for the editor, one last freebie. Hoping to get a contract for it if she likes what we have done. It’s now called ALL BY MYSELF and we sent it back to our agent.
I worked on the rest of the Vermont College MFA manuscripts.
And I did several revisions of 2/3 of the Grimm’s introduction.
Now the long weekend is here as all the editors take off for ALA Midwinter where the Newbery and Caldecott announcements will happen on Monday. I have never actually been to Midwinter. This year I do not have a dog in the hunt, so can relax and not worry over whether or not I have a book up for any awards. Though I do have a shot with HERE’S A LITTLE POEM for a Notable We will see.
Life Besides visiting grandbabies:
Hairdressers, airplanes, dinner with Heidi and Maddison. I made a killer chicken soup. Dinner out with my friend, Anne Wheelock. The same old same old.
WOW Factor:
Got this letter which tickled me enormously:
“The reason I'm writing is to tell you about the nickname <my son, S> and <daughter A> have for each other. When A was about 5 months old she made a sound that S thought sounded like "owl moon." He started yelling OWL MOON! OWL MOON! And then he started calling her Owl Moon. She finally started saying it. It was probably her third word since S gets up every morning and yells Owl Moon! at her crib. He even incorporates her middle name into it. He calls her Owl Moon Claire sometimes. And sometimes he will say Owl Moon! in a loud voice and in a soft voice "by Jane Yolen." And A calls him Owl Moon. Tonight I was trying to get her to say S and she would not. She kept saying Owl Moon. We've just moved them into the same room and as I write this they are yelling Owl Moon back and forth. Just wanted to let you know of two big fans of your book.”
January 2, 2008:
I had expected to hit the ground running once the holidays were done. Imagine my surprise when I spent most of the day reading and commenting on three more manuscripts for the Vermont College MFA, cleaning house, making lists, watching "America's Next Model", answering email.
Yes, I know that I write more in a month than most people do in a year. But I am always surprised when I am not writiing. Writing is my default mode, my happy mode. So it is a rare thing when I have a totally free day and I don’t do any of it.
There was an ad on tv that absolutely cracked me up, though when I called Heidi and reported it to her, she was not nearly as amused as I was. Or as my darling David would have been. It was a commercial featuring an actor dressed as Benjamin Franklin speaking about the people who had made America great and then inviting everyone (I am assuming only men) to join the Masons with a Masonic website listed at the bottom of the ad. Well, maybe you had to see it!
January 1, 2008:
And I wonder how long I will mis-type the year? I have already ruined two checks.
No work today except reading manuscripts for my stint at Vermont College’s MFA program. Got through three, carefully writing comments in the margins and then typing up an overview.
The new Helix magazine is up with another of my David poems in it: http://www.helixsf.com/index.htm
Made a killer carrot soup. Glendon and her new boyfriend had dinner with me.
And I indulged in a marathon of (yep, secret addiction) “America’s Next Top Model."
December 26-31, 2007:
Work:
Yes, I worked through Adam and crew’s visit. I get up before everyone else. Sometimes they were all off to shop or play and I didn’t go with them. My daughter-in-law jokes about my obsessive nature, and I know she’s right on one level. But honestly, I LOVE to write.
So what did I work on? Finished a draft (pretty rough still, and could probably end up adding a half dozen more poems) of the Jane Dyer book. Adam and I finished the dragon short story for a Dozois and Dann anthology, though I'm am pretty sure it’s too short and too slight for them, So I began a new one, a gonzo Tsarist Russian dragon tale where the Jews have invented anti-dragon early warning devices, and Rasputin is finally killed by a dragon, and Marx (a Jew) finds way to use the tsar’s dragons to kick-start his revolution. I think we can have a great deal of fun with it. I also wrote about half of the B&N introduction and a bit more on SHORT STOP.
And fun?
Of course. Adam and crew arrived around lunchtime on the 26th. We segued immediately into Christmas # 4, mostly with presents for wee David and lovely Alison. But still there was stuff for all of us. Afterwards, we had dinner at Heidi’s.
I made dinner one night at my house, took everyone out to dinner another night at the East Side Grill. One night Adam and Betsy met friends for dinner, the kids and I had pizza delivered in. And Glen sat for them. There were boggle games and Cranium, and Hangman. There were dancing performances (David and Alison take Irish step dancing and Maddison of course does ballet. Maddison and I did a bit of swing dancing together. Heidi ventured her imitation of a Swan Lake dance.) We took a family trip up to Shelburne Falls, did some family retail therapy, had lunch, went to look at the waterfall and potholes. There were giggles, laughter, and even some tears after Adam and Betsy visited big David’s gravestone for the first time. And when at brunch on Sunday at Wiggins Tavern in Northampton, before they left, and we toasted to absent friends, we all thought of darling Papa. And wee David said so matter-of-factly, “Papa’s dead and I miss him.” Ah, little one, so do we all. So do we all.
What Am I Reading?
Well, the most wonderful has been the graphic novel THE PRIDE OF BAGDAD, a talking animal fantasy based on the terrible story of the a pride of lions that escaped the Baghdad zoo when the Americans bombed the city. Starving, they were eventually shot. It is a passionate anti-war book, at times funny, at times terribly sad. I loved it.
Also been rereading Jack Zipes brilliant study of the Grimm Brothers, Thomas Dumm’s fascinating new book about loneliness due out from Harvard Press, Patricia MacLachlan’s stunning EDWARD’S EYES, and catching up on a lot of magazine reading as well.
And on to 2008:
When we woke on the morning of New Year’s Eve, there had been about four inches of fresh snowfall, heavy, beautiful, picture postcardy. Another storm is predicted for the evening. But as I walked home from the neighbor’s New Year’s party at 9:45 p.m., I didn’t see any snow at all and the sky was as full of stars as a debutante’s ball gown.
And here are my 5 New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Cut down on chocolate
2. Exercise
3. Go to movies even if by myself
4. Keep enjoying the writing process
5. Visit more friends
WOW Factor:
My short poem "Last Unicorn" received the most votes and is therefore winner of the 2007 Dwarfs Stars Award. Also, my poem "Troll Under Bridge" placed second.
And Bruce at http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com has named my journal as one of his Shameless Lion Award blogs.
Lovely way to end the year.
Letters—we get letters:
Chris asked: “As you wait for your graphic novels to be drawn and then debut, are there any other forms you'd like to work in? (I ask not knowing if you've ever working on, say, screenplays or something like them or if you, secretly publish a trice weekly political commentary for the New York Times.”
Well Chris, and for others who have asked me similarly down the ages: the only thing I haven’t written so far (besides a trice weekly political commentary for the New York Times) is hard science because. . .well. . .it ain’t gonna happen. I mean, I don’t know science well enough to use it without making a huge portion of my audience (children included) fall over themselves laughing. And even though my very first major article ever published in a national magazine was for Popular Mechanics, it was about kites, for goodness sake. (My father was International Kite Flying Champion—a very long and very funny story that needs telling in person.) I have done a lot of natural science, but nothing in the physics, astronomy, etc. I leave that to the Dr. Fred’s of the world, the Seymour Simons, and the Isaac Asimovs.
What I have done (count ‘em) is poetry both for children and adults, novelty books for little children, picture books for all ages, graphic novels, a couple of comics, middle grade novels and YA novels, and adult novels (we are talking in novels: Mysteries, SF, fantasy, historical, and a couple of plain realistic.) I have done novellas, story collections, anthologies, a cook book, a couple of books with sports as a theme, no westerns so far but a western themed picture book—RAINBOW RIDER—fairy tales of all types and descriptions, historical nonfiction, a number of fairy and folk tale collections, pedagogical essays, books about writing, and more books on pirates and on birds than even I can count. Lots of stray poems, essays, short stories not collected. Plus reviews, speechwriting for a local politico, plays, animated film scripts, a couple of musical plays performed locally and in Boston, and birthday poems for my friends and relatives.
What else do I want to do? Whatever pops up into or out of my always overworking imagination. Am currently under contract for three novels and two picture books not yet written, as well as two collections with illustrator Jane Dyer and an introduction for a Barnes & Nobel book. But making the rounds are a number of already-written picture books (two sold last week), and some more graphic novel or graphic story collections ideas. I love the format.
So I am not looking for more forms, but if they fall in my lap, I am not adverse to trying them. I believe that artists have to keep stretching. Except, of course, for hard science. That is beyond my grasp. And that pesky adult novel I want so desperately to write (I have a lot of it in my head) which alas needs A. S. Byatt to write it. Or Angela Carter. Or maybe Jo Walton.
December 24-25, 2007:
I have a huge purple and blue bruise on my left elbow from the fall on the ice. No broken bones, though, which is a good thing.
Worked more on the Jane Dyer book (2 ½ hours), went to dinner at Heidi’s boyfriend Tom’s house with the two intermingled families and had a wonderful time. Gift giving. Christmas # 2. Godiva truffles and a copy of the manuscript of Tom’s new book with an inscription: “What do you give to the woman who already has everything?” Which cracked me up.
Christmas day Glen and I went over to Heidi’s house. More gift giving. Christmas # 3. What did I get? A pair of earrings, a wonderful warm handmade laprobe for tv watching from Glen, a handmade wall hanging by Maddison, three cookie sheets (my old ones having rotted and/or disappeared), an oil and vinegar bottle set, The Pride of Baghdad graphic novel, and a few more items. Heidi and I went next door for drinks with the neighbors as her ex-husband and his partner entertained the kids. Then Heidi made dinner for the extended family. Friends and neighbors dropped over afterwards for drinks and dessert. One was the family of Maddison’s fencing buddy who is named in FOILED and she got to see some of the sketches which Heidi had on her computer. That was a highlight for me.
Weather willing, Adam and crew will be flying in from Minneapolis on Wednesday.
December 23, 2007:
Working on SHORTSTOP (2 hours) as well as the first Jane Dyer book (4+ hours), cleaning house, lighting the Luminarium candles despite the intermittent rain, dinner at a neighbor’s house. When does the Resting On Laurels time kick in?
What time it is: happy holidays to all, may the world suffer peace for a while instead of war, send me questions, and may all my writer and illustrator friends sell books in the new year. Early and often.
December 21-22, 2007:
No matter my name wasn't mentioned aloud, the tv push sent the book into overdrive. Amazon numbers went from a barely alright 7,891 to climbing their bestseller ladder. It was at 362 by 1 o’clock, then 205 by 5 pm. This is a 24 hour wonder, of course. No one expects the climb to last. By 5 a.m Saturday morning, it was slowly falling, to 208, and by 10:30 a.m. at 277, and by 2 pm. a tiny blip at 274. Still, that will have meant some good sales. So thanks, Today Show.
Some other things happened, some good, one bad, and some fun.
Bad first. I took a huge tumble, slipping on the tv room floor, going flat out, on my new knee, right arm flung out. The papers I was carrying scattered across the length of the floor. I took a moment to assess the damage. Lying there, did a body check. Clearly I’d broken nothing but might have done some serious bruising. Managed to scoot on my bottom to the coffee table where—luckily—I'd left the phone. Heidi came over within seconds of my call, so soon I didn’t have time to tell her I wasn’t seriously hurt. She helped me to the chair, got ice for my knee, and there I sat for an hour. Then I downed some ibuprofin. Interestingly, the next day there was no bruising on the knee, but I had trouble lifting my right arm, the one that I’d flung out as I went down. My own version of whiplash, I suppose.
Turning to the good, after I was feeling reasonably okay, I worked on the Introduction for the HellBoy bound issue #8. Rewrote it 5 times before sending it to the editor who was still at the office. (Or perhaps she works from home.) We had an hour’s long conversation back and forth in email. Her only request was to spell Kostchai the Deathless in the manner the comic did. She loved it, and we talked quite a bit about other possible projects for DarkHorse comics. Mike Mignola who writes and illustrates HellBoy also loved the Intro (and we are also having a conversation via email.) All in all, I am delighted.
Among other things I say in the essay:
“Would I lie?
Of course I would. Story is the best kind of lie-telling. It exaggerates the real, replaces it with something larger and more imaginative in order to illuminate our somewhat smaller lives.”
and later on:
“<HellBoy> is a deeply human story for all its monsters. Think Beowulf, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde. Think Captain Ahab battling Moby Dick. Think the Golem, think Dracula pursued relentlessly by von Helsing. Think the boy galumphing back with the Jabberwocky’s head. Okay—that last is a bit of a stretch. But he does bring it back to his waiting father. “Oh come to me, my beami