Friends

Okay, so I've given up on the idea of writing in public. That doesn't mean that being a writer in public isn't still fraught with problems.

Writers are observers by nature. We watch. We see things. We take note. We eavesdrop, often without even being aware we are doing it. We simply take things in. We mean no harm.

But try to explain that to the fascinating elderly couple sitting next to you in the optometrist's waiting room.

I was sitting there waiting for Ned and reading Possession (it is deliberately taking me forever to read this book because I am doling it out to myself in little tidbits because I love it so much) when they came in.

I glanced up quickly because you're allowed to do that when people come into a waiting room. Enough to get an impression of a large-boned snowy-haired woman in a tropical capri set and a neat gray haired man in short sleeves. The woman seemed to be in mild distress, uttering a hoarse, unwilling sigh with each step. The man encouraged her across the room and into a chair.

They discussed the plan for making it through the appointment and the rest of the day, how she would rest when she could. He was on top of things. She was reluctant, trying not to be unhappy.

She said "My body feels like it's flinging itself repeatedly against the fence."

He said "Look out the window."

"Oh, it's raining."

"Think about how happy everything seems when it stops. It will stop."

I wanted so much to stare at them, to see what they really looked like, to see their expressions when they talked to each other. Their words were personal, poignant and intense. I had no right to hear them, let alone want more. But I did. I do. It doesn't feel like rudeness or nosiness. And yet, it crosses a firm boundary.

But I sometimes think that being a writer demands a kind of callousness, like a student surgeon who has to not feel for the cadaver he is dissecting.

I was answering someone's post the other day (can't remember who) about WHY do you write YA?

A lot of people end up saying it's because they still feel 17 in their mind or something. But I'm afraid that isn't my reason. I definitely feel 26 and I *like* 26! (It's a hip 26, I hope, but hip is timeless. You can be hip at 12 or at 60 if you've got it.)

Sometimes I feel like my reasons are poser-y. Like:
--I write YA because it's what the friend who encouraged me to submit was writing.
--I write YA because I love the books and the market seems really creative and not divided on genre lines as much as adult work.
--I write YA because the children's writing community is just awesome! And I'm not sure where most of the adult writers are even hanging out.

But today I was playing the remade Final Fantasy IV. It's SO fun, so far. I love the updates, but it also takes me back to how much I loved this game the first time I ever played it, when I was 11 or so. I loved FF IV so much, I made comics, fan fiction, plans for my own games, board games, a recipe book with invented ingredients AND a Final Fantasy newspaper. Yes, I was obsessed.

Everything was like that in the magical time period of youth, up through the teen years. Whether it was Final Fantasy IV, Elfquest comics, X-Men, The Mists of Avalon, Xanth, The Nightmare Before Christmas, anime... Everything I loved was read and re-read, watched and re-watched, played and re-played, ripped off and absorbed into my own worlds, and generally subject to a level of adoration and obsession like nothing in adulthood has ever quite compelled.

I know I'm not the only one! You can see that adoration shining in the eyes of Harry Potter and Twilight fans and hear it in the fan letters some of you have posted.

Yes, I realized, that is why I write YA. Not because I feel 17, thank goodness, because 17 is kind of stressful, but because I'm not sure art ever meant so much to me as during those years, and I yearn to stay a part of that connection.

I just got something that wasn't a query at all. It was someone wanting to know if I would read their book and review it on my blog. How unexpected (to me anyway -- maybe I shouldn't be so surprised?). And somehow surreal. So, I had to write them back and tell them that I didn't really review books on my blog and the books I tended to promote were by my clients.

Meanwhile, blogging is likely to be a bit light over the next few weeks. Between conferences, I find myself juggling to a great degree, and it appears that blogging falls low on the triage list. And substantive blogging even lower (or perhaps that's a function of being too busy to hear myself think). I will try to keep up with at least the query wars. And I'll plan another Agent Manners session once things get a bit calmer. Thanks everyone for reading and hanging out here. I particularly appreciated all the comments on the right agent, the right author entry.

Feel free to let me know if there are other topics or features you want to see addressed when I have the opportunity to post entries with more depth.

On Sunday, docstymie brought home a box of these:



Yesterday they were ripe enough. So I did this:









It is scrumbellyumptious. And half gone now.

Last night we drove over to the amphitheater to meet friends where we saw Demi Lovato. (Because that's what you do when you ask your kids to sit through concerts they don't like. It's a trade-off. Besides, it's fun to go somewhere where your ears are pierced for 4 hours straight with pre-pubescent estrogen-filled screeching. Isn't it? And besides, it's good research. For reals.)



And AVRIL!!!! ACK--it's insane how pretty and talented and sassy she is. I was very sad to see that Avril Lavigne was the **opening act** for The Jonas Bros. though. How does that even happen? She's like... so much huge-er than that. Isn't she? No? Sigh...



But they were fine, too.



I have to admit I didn't really get the appeal of the Jonas Brothers until I saw them live. They're high energy and for a boy band they sound okay, and well... remembering what it's like to be a tween girl, I must say Hellooooo Joe. I did not know you before, but I think I want to know you now. Your music, I mean. I like your voice. No, not voice. Your guitar. Really. Okay, your hair. It's your hair I like. Your bangs. I like your bangs.



And your brothers are swell too.

I guess.






I must admit it was fun to re inhabit the world of the tween. My new business partner (can I call her that? Because talking about my "agent" makes me feel kindof pretentious) thinks I have a middle grade novel in me. Says I'm like a 12 year old girl stuck in a woman body. Hmmmmm.

I think my old lady self needs a piece of pie. And a nap.

Happy Wednesday, all.


(And if you haven't seen it, De posted a lovely photo essay yesterday. Ahhh....)

 My next book, DEAD GIRL WALKING, should start showing up in stores in a month. And here's a review I just found out about!

http://bookluver-carol.blogspot.com/2008/07/dead-girl-walking.html

jenlibrarian is gathering a bouquet of virtual flowers for her birthday, and asked us to report on some of our favorite flowers. There are all manner of lovely desert flowers here, but when she asked this, my thoughts leapt quickly to a non-desert favorite instead:



I loved dandelions all through my east coast childhood. I watched them grow, from tight bound buds, to half-open blooms with a core of still-tight yellow florets in the center, to bright open flowers, to dandelion clocks that I'd blow and make wishes on. I welcomed the return of the dandelions in the spring and summer, and gathered bouquets of them to bring home.

It was a source of great indignation to me that the adult world considered these flowers weeds, and a source of real sorrow when a lawn filled with beautiful yellow flowers would get mowed down to green blandness.

It turns out there are very few real dandelions in the Sonoran desert, though we do have false dandelions here. Those I've never come to love. Perhaps it's because I met them as an adult, when I had to weed them from the ground myself. But I rather think it's more because they have thorns, and unlike my childhood dandelions, can be pretty painful to pick without protective gloves. I wouldn't put a false dandelion in jenlibrarian's bouquet.

Though I was so struck by the idea of dandelions having thorns that I stole it for Bones of Faerie, where I decided that after the war with Faerie, the changed plants in our world would include eastern dandelions that had thorns, too. Because after meeting thorny false dandelions I no longer quite trusted any dandelions the way I once had, and also because with all that lawn-mowing, it was about time my childhood dandelions got some defenses of their own.

I may have finished the Second Thoughts manuscript. I'm not sure, though, because my mood is not stable and right now I detest everything in the book except for the most masochistic pieces.

Since I could not go to Readercon (sounds like friends had a wonderful time, but then I knew they would), I attended several of the films of the Philly Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. As usual, there was a 50-50 split between good movies and awful ones. But the real problem with attending the festival is the feelings of loneliness it instills in me. I'm sitting in a theater surrounded by gay men and women and I'm more alone than ever. It's a heartbreaking ritual: leave a quiet apartment for the train, wait for the train, sit on the train and see the couples (mostly straight of course) and envy them, walk to the theater and be among so many guys and yet feel so distant, so apart, from any of them, movie shows and it briefly elevates my spirit or infuriates my sensibilities, then the walk back to the train station, the quiet return. By the time I put my keys in the door I'm broken.

Yes, I occasionally had the company of a few acquaintances to sit next to, but that seemed more of a reminder at being without friends. And I wanted to talk about the movies, analyze them, discuss them, dissect and review and cheer and bemoan and often I couldn't. Or, when I did, I was looked at as something weird. Again, I'm too different for my own good.

And last night, the worst blow. I saw a movie that was so beautiful that it made me feel terrible. I couldn't sleep last night. Were the World Mine never left my thoughts. The film treated a notion better than I ever could in ways I never imagined.



Too wondrous. I'm left reminded how bad of a writer I am. Deficient. And the film reached the audience I wanted in ways I'll never earn. I feel that I'm superfluous now, finished, what stories should I even bother to try? There are others accomplishing what I once dreamt of... so many others.

And the finances have gotten worse as Lethe sells better. No money to eat today. At least I make sure Dault has food.

Oh, and for those that are wondering, Father goes in for surgery at the end of the month. We're all anxious about this.

Yesterday, my husband had his six week checkup, post-surgery. Everything looks really good, they told him, so good that....he can start beginning to ride a bike again. To which I said: WHAT? I mean, I'm all for him getting back to normal, but if it was up to me, he'd at least wait, I don't know, another few months. If not forever. So many people have said to me (edit: so many of my girlfriends) "You need to tell him no more bike riding! It's over!" But what they don't realize is that isn't even an option. It would be like him telling me I can't read anymore, or watch TV, or waste time on Twitter, all things that I love. Admittedly, these are less dangerous pursuits. You are unlikely to break a sternum while watching Tori And Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood. Still, it could happen. Life is dangerous. This is something I never wanted to admit, even before I had up close and personal proof. So I will grit my teeth, and hope he waits a little while, and try NOT to think of all we've been through this summer with the surgery the first time he pedals off. Because this is a marriage, not a dictatorship. Although sometimes, like now, I see why a dictatorship might be kind of nice.

In other news, I'm taking a vacation. A REAL one, which means(gulp!) no blogging or Facebook or Twitter until August. I know! But it is LONG overdue. We haven't been out of town for over a year and there is family to see, and plane rides to take. I wish I was going to a place like Sara Zarr's blog, complete with cucumber slices on my eyes and spa treatments, but you can't have everything. Hopefully by the time I return I'll have LOTS of stories to tell, none of them involving broken bones or hospitals. We have had just about enough of that, and there is still, thankfully some summer left. I'm ready to take it.

I hope you all have a GREAT rest of July. See you next month!

There is a great story in many history books in which John Adams calls the year 1777 "the year of the hangman" because all those sevens lined up together looked like gallows. The implication was that if the British defeated the Patriots in the American Revolution, the Patriot leaders (like Adams) would all hang.

It's a great quote; vivid, layered, and short.

I wanted to use it in the book I'm working on right now, so I started hunting for a primary source so I could verify the wording. Couldn't find one. I found many people saying Adams said this, but no one pointed to the evidence that actually proved it. I could not find it in a searchable database of his writing, nor several other collections of his writings.

I turned to an 18th-century expert who writes a terrific blog about the time period: J.L. Bell of Boston 1775. He did his own investigating and came up with some surprises for me. And now I have to find a different quote. Darn.


WFMAD 23

We're having a minor family emergency here, so this will be short today.

Today's goal: Write 15 minutes, no matter what else is happening around you.

Today's mindset: family comes first, but writing is a close second.

Today's prompt: this is a free association drill. I'd like you to scroll down, down, down, until you get to the magic word of the day. When you do, write about all the images this word conjures in your head. Be specific and detailed in your descriptions. If you get stuck, repeat the word over and over out loud, no matter how silly you feel, and write whatever is flashing through your mind. If you stumble across a particularly vivid image, or one that for whatever reason hits you emotionally, stay with that one and write to your heart's content.




Scroll down for the magic word...





Keep scrolling...





Almost there.....






Magic word = Spam (the kind you eat, not the kind that clogs your email inbox)


Scribblescribble...

Yesterday, E got together with his two Harry Potter pals, M and B. M and B are both girls. According to E (and, I admit, my own observations), M and B do not get along all that well. They sort of both like to be in charge. Anyway, they do like to get together sometimes and play Harry Potter stuff.

On the drive over, I told E that if M & B started to fight argue, he should try not to take sides.

He said, "Don't worry, Mom. I'm not that kind of person."

He was quiet for a minute.

Then he said, "You know what? Sometimes it's lonely being neutral."

I know just what he means.

Today the almost-9-year-old and I are driving to NH to spend a few days with his cousins. I wish the sun would come out.

In book news, I finally finished reading Octavian Nothing: Volume IIand I thought it was incredible. I also thought the author's note at the end was one of the most moving notes I've ever read.

I've also started reading THE YEAR WE DISAPPEARED: A FATHER-DAUGHTER MEMOIR by Cylin Busby and her father John Busby. It is AMAZING. RIVETING. I wish I had a day to just sit and read. HIGHLY recommended. I'll say more when I finish. :-)

In Netflix news, E and I are addicted to AVATAR. Any other fans out there? We've just started season 3.


Have a great weekend, everyone!

~*~*~*~*~*~

halseanderson Daily 15 Keeping Myself Honest Check-In:
Yesterday: 290 words
Today: 515 words

Final Readercon thoughts:

The Marriott hotel room thermostat went down to 40° F. This is a blessing for those of us with unusual illnesses that require a constant supply of cool air.

The instructions that Readercon gave to panel leaders included the admonition to defenestrate anyone who let his cell phone ring audibly. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Several phones went off in the middle of panel discussions, and to my extreme disappointment, no one was actually defenestrated.

The sound arrangements for the panels were suboptimal. The speakers were set in the back, or on the side, with weird effect of seeing a panelist's mouth move, while their words came from behind you. Disorienting.

I should learn to hang out in the hotel bar. I think I'd meet more people. I bar badly, though.

Genius is 90% Higher Standards: The "Unecessary" Rewrite. Suzy McKee Charnas, Daryl Gregory, Marty Halpern, James Patrick Kelly, Kit Reed, Michael Swanwick.

Suzy Charnas: sometimes she realizes during editing that the story is actually about something different than what she thought it was about, and needs an entire rewrite.
Kit Reed: early on she tried to 'get away' with stuff she realized wasn't quite right -- and it wouldn't sell. Learn to trust your inner critic when she says, "Don't do that." [I've read this before: if you think it might be lousy: it's lousy.]
James Patrick Kelly: We've all heard about the writer's Creator vs. the writer's Critic. Let the Creator do his thing before you let the Critic start hacking at things. Sometimes the Critic can be too critical, and kill good stuff. [Note that this contradicts the advice directly above. Incidentally, Kelly said elsewhere that he is an 'organic' writer, so maybe this advice is appropriate for organics, but not for, um, inorganic writers. Those of us made of rebar, Helium-3, and buckyfibre.]
Michael Swanwick: Sometimes the story is too perfect, and needs some dirt rubbed in.
Marty Halpern: Tied in Swanwick's remark to Vandermeer's 'Triumph of Competence' critique [which had its own panel elsewhere, which I didn't attend].
Swanwick: When I wrote my first novel, I was trying to write a novel. When William Gibson wrote his first novel, he was trying to remake the vocabulary of SF. I succeeded. He failed. I won't make that mistake again. [audience laughter] [I've run across that line from Swanwick before, but I can't find it on the net right now.]
Charnas: Sometimes you can get so far outside the formula of reader expectations that the reader won't accept the result. [Her example had to do with the nature of the vampire story.]
Swanwick: co-authored a story for Penthouse [can't remember the title, sorry: he's published there twice] that the editors accepted, but only if it could be cut to 6,000 words. The story was 12,000 words. He started cutting scenes, then paragraphs, then phrases, then modifiers, then changed every possible word combination to a contraction that could be changed. He wound up with 6100 words. He says the process made him a better writer.
Halpern: M. Rickert's "Map of Dreams" was cut from 43,000 words to just under 40,000 for commercial purposes, so it could be published as a novella. However, Rickert decided to cut out one scene, and in retrospect, she and Halpern both realized that that cut improved the story significantly. The story was nominated for World Fantasy.

Question: what existing stories do you think need editing?
Swanwick: C.L. Moore's "Shambleau." This was Moore's first story. Great ideas, but the story is not well written. The climax, in particular, is too long.
James Patrick Kelly: Wall-E. Ending needs to be darker.
Charnas: "How Love Came to Professor Guildea." However, she never said how she would edit it, because no one else there had read it.
Swanwick: Never write about guns or horses, unless you have actually shot a horse yourself. [After Kelly told an anecdote about making an error about revolvers in a story, and never hearing the end of it from gun enthusiasts]

Question: When do you stop editing?
Charnas: When you're sick of the story.
Swanwick: When the story 'hardens'.
[Someone else]: When you find yourself changing stuff back to the way it was the first time.

The Year in Novels: Charles Brown, Paul Di Filippo, Graham Sleight, Gary K. Wolfe

This is Charles Brown's "Locus Preliminary Recommended Reading List 2008".

Note that a number of them haven't even been published yet, and are apparently known only to those who have read the ARCs. (This list was OCRed from the list distributed a the panel, and although I proofread it lightly, it almost certainly contains errors. My OCR program wanted to read 'Gollancz' as 'Gollum'. Really.)

Science Fiction Novels:

Matter, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Flood, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz, Ace ’09)
Weaver, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz, Ace)
Dust, Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)
City at the End of Time, Greg Bear (Gollancz, Del Rey)
Sly Mongoose, Tobias Buckell (Tor 8/08)
Incandescence, Greg Egan (Gollancz, Night Shade 7/08)
The January Dancer, Michael Flynn (Tor 10/08)
Marsbound, Joe Haldeman (Ace 8/08)
Daughters of the North, Sarah Hall (HarperPerennial)
AKA The Carhullan Army, Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber 2007)
Spirit, Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz 12/08)
Mind Over Ship, David Marusek (Tor 1/09)
The Quiet War, Paul McAuley (Gollancz 10/08)
Song of Time, Ian R. McLeod (PS 7/08)
The Night Sessions, Ken McLeod (Orbit 8/08)
House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, Ace)
The Dragon’s Nine Sons, Chris Roberson (Solaris)
Pirate Sun, Karl Schroeder (Tor 8/08)
Galaxy Blues, Allen Steele (Ace)
The Caryatids, Bruce Sterling (Del Rey 1/09)
Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross (Ace)
Anathem, Neal Stephenson (Morrow 9/08, Atlantic UK)
Rolling Thunder, John Varley (Ace)
Half a Crown, Jo Walton (Tor 10/08)
Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams (Night Shade)
The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson (Harcourt, Hamish Hamilton 2007)

Fantasy Novels:

An Autumn War, Daniel Abraham (Tor)
The Love We Share Without Knowing, Christopher Barzak (Bantam 12/08)
Midnight Never Comes, Marie Brennan (Orbit)
The Knight ol the Cornerstone, James Blaylock (Ace 12/08)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
Shadowbridge/Lord Tophet, Gregory Frost (Del Rey)
Varanger, Cecelia Holland (Forge)
How to Make Friends with Demons, Graham Joyce (Night Shade 11/08)
AKA Memoirs of a Master Forger, William Heaney (Gollancz 10/08)
Escapement, Jay Lake (Tor 6/08)
Lavinia, Ursula K. LeGuin (Harcourt)
A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin (Bantam 10/08)
The Hidden World, Paul Park (Tor)
Poison Sleep, T. A. Pratt (Bantam Spectra)
The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia (Prime 7/08)
The Dragons of Babel, Michael Swanwick (Tor)
An Evil Guest, Gene Wolfe (Tor 9/08)

First Novels:

The Ninth Circle, Alex Bell (Gollancz)
Thunderer, Felix Gilman (Bantam Spectra)
Black Ships, Jo Graham (Orbit)
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey 9/08)
Singularity’s Ring, Paul Melko (Tor)
The Red Wolf Conspiracy, Robert V S. Redick (Gollancz)
Immortal, Traci L. Slatton (Delta)
The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams (Bantam Spectra)

Young Adult Novels:

City of Ashes, Cassandra Clare (McElderry)
Lamplighter, D.M. Cornish (Putnam)
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Knopf)
How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalesner (Bloomsbury)
Ink Exchange, Melissa Marr (HamerTeen)
Chalice, Robin McKinley (Putnam)
Nation, Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins)
Flora’s Dare, Ysabeau S. Wilce (Harcourt)

Comments by the panel:

Gary K. Wolfe (when asked to name his five favorite novels): Neal Stephenson's Anathem IS five novels.
Charles Brown loved Memoirs of a Master Forger.
Several panelists recommended Ursula LeGuin's Lavinia.

Graham Sleight said that Cory Doctorow's Little Brother was a 'strong contender' for one of the five best.
Sleight liked Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains (not listed above). He thought it explored the nature of masculinity.
Sleight thought that Tom Disch's forthcoming novel, The Word of God was notable.
Wolfe liked Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels.

Trends:

1. Heinlein-type novels. American pioneers in spaaaaace.
2. Merging of SF and fantasy.
3. Lots of concerns that too many sf in-jokes and easter eggs will put off new readers who aren't familiar with the genre. [Yes, we've heard this concern before. Why don't we just stop doing it? Maybe the problem is that editors don't edit any more, which is another trend we've heard before.]
4. You can no longer distinguish YA from the rest of sff, and you need to read it if you want to understand what is going on in contemporary sff. This is due in part to Viking editor sdn going after Big Name Authors and getting them to write YA.

Deluge
New words: 314
Total wordcount: 10,422

Flute practice: Hands did not belong to me today. I don't know whose hands I was using to try practicing with, but certainly mine don't make so many icky mistakes. And they know their scales, if nothing else. If any of you are missing your clumsy hands (and they've been replaced with clever and talented hands), please let me know. I'd like mine back.

Also, I appear to have picked the hardest song in the book to learn. I'm going to have to count how many lines some of these notes are above the staff...so I can figure out what notes they are. *weeps*

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S and her family, J and her family, B, and R.

Ferret adventures: Austin in a box!


Got another couple new hammocks today so I could toss yet another dead one. I left the dead one on the floor while I put the new one in, and found Stewie lying on it so maybe I wouldn't throw it away. Poor guy. (Also, I love Simon's first reaction to new hammock: destroy! Okay, flop, but only after deciding it can stand up to some good scratching.)

Kippy Adventures: Kippy helps me reject queries. Mostly she uses the spacebar.

--

Trying to send a query while choking on juice = ungood. Hack hack. Burp.

What else? I thought I was going to have time to write more tonight, but there was choking and stuff. And we had a storm! But I'm a rebel and left my computer on (I have a backup battery, no worries) so I got to work and listen to thunder at the same time. Crazy wind tonight.

I'm still thinking about the structure of this book. I've gotten a good bit of the second scene, and while I know that's what comes next chronologically, I'm kind of wondering if I should insert the first flashback there.

Before anyone kills me, I think this book is going to have two timelines -- present (are you sure about that, book? That's okay if you are, but please be sure this time!) and the past, which the MC will be talking about at points throughout the book as she recovers from her trauma. So, not quite a parallel timeline, but maybe close enough.

I THINK. I hope it will work. At the rate this book is going, it probably won't. I'll be trying to get the front of this book right forever.

But I guess it's something to think about. The structure, I mean. Not how I'll be writing this book for the rest of my life. (Well...)

It was not a coincidence that today's memory challenge was about animals. I have been trying to get up the courage to write this post. I still don't think I have the courage but I need to write it now.

Monday, my 50th birthday, was not spent with cake and ice cream. There was no quiet dinner out at a favorite restaurant. Instead I came home from work early to spend a few last hours with my best four-legged friend Chelsie. Her time had come. And as always is the case, it is too soon for those of us left behind.

Was it only May that I wrote this post about her? I knew then that my time with her was coming to an end. Later in May I posted the sunflower episode. After that she slowed down even more, rarely wanting to move from one of her two favorite spots in the library, one of two corners, each with the safety of a chair for her to hide behind. She was less interested in saying hello in the morning or when I came home from work. She would skip meals for several days. After that it came fast.

Monday afternoon I sat with her for the last time.

I spoke softly and recalled every step of the journey we had taken together over the last 14 years. She came into my life at my absolutely lowest point, when I was living in New Orleans. She would jump up like a kangaroo to greet me each day. As I spoke, I reminded her of the great escape I gave her from the pound. It was a horrible place, filthy and she was covered with so many bugs. She was skin and bones but even then, not interested in food. I talked of the agility classes we had taken together and how much she used to love the tunnel and the poles. I laughed again at how she never met a puddle she didn't want to roll in and how, in her younger years, she believed children and ducks at the park were meant for herding. She and my big orange cat Benjamin were the best of friends. I don't know if she thought she was a cat or if she thought the cat was a dog but the two of them did everything together, including getting into cabinets for their favorite treat, bread. She wasn't food motivated but she did love the scraps of plain tortillas and a spoonful of vanilla ice cream.

In New Orleans life was rough and many a day I didn't want to get out of bed, not even to go to work. But I got out of bed for her. And while I lived in a very scary place and she really wasn't that big of a dog, I felt a little safer with her by my side.

On the trip moving from New Orleans back home to California Chelsie was supposed to ride shot-gun but instead she scooted over as close as she could get, her nose always under the steering wheel. And when I got pulled over for speeding I think it was her goofy clown face that saved me from getting that much-deserved ticket.

She was terrified of most men but once we were in California and she met me soon-to-be husband, she didn't hesitate to give him all the love she had reserved for me. She was content to sleep on the floor on the side of the bed until someone got up in the middle of the night and then she would quickly jump up and claim as much of it as she could. She and Benjamin would sit on the chest in front of the window to watch for me to come home. When she injured her back and had major surgery I had to move the chest and not let her jump anymore. I think she began to die a little bit back then, so much did that girl love to jump.

When Benjamin died she mourned him for months and some of the light went out of her eyes. She would lay in the garage staring at the last place she saw him and my heart hurt for her hurting, missing her buddy.

Monday I knew it was time. I told her to go find Benjamin. That it was okay to leave me now.

A wonderful vet, Dr. Apple, came to our home so we didn't have to subject her to the vet's office. (In recent years she had become so fearful of the vet that she had to be sedated for basic exams.) I worried that she would give me a look of betrayal at the end but instead I saw her finally relax and look more peaceful than I have seen in longer than I want to remember.

This morning when I came downstairs there was no black and white clown face to greet me. When the doorbell rang there was no answering bark to make sure I heard it. My husband went out to get the paper alone. The house is emptier than I could have imagined it would be.

Chelsie was not my first dog nor will she be my last. But she was the dog I needed most for one of the toughest struggles in my life. I was so proud to call her friend.

Goodbye, my friend. Run wild. Run free.

http://maureenjohnson.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-go-to-school.html

Friends, I am getting very bored of saying, “I told you so.” First ABBA, now this.

Today, four newspapers reported that many people were stung by jellyfish during the New York City Triathlon. Specifically, Lion’s Mane jellyfish, which can be up to eight feet in the body, and have been known to have tentacles 120 feet long.

Hold on. Let me look at my list of “last things I want to hear” and see where that is . . .

6. The Cloverfield monster is here to see you. And he’s brought flowers! Oh wait, those aren’t flowers. That’s a fistful of screaming, half-dead people. Nevermind.

5. I bought you a Vespa, but then I got hungry and I ate it.

4. Sir Ian McKellen has been cast as the lead in High School Musical 4 as Troy’s long-lost twin brother, Felix.*

Oh, here we go.

3. New York, your small island home, is surrounded by eight-foot-wide jellyfish.

I guess it’s not that much of a problem now because it’s not like I swim the East River very often, and by often, I mean ever in my life. But the jellyfish are getting closer. I think it is only a matter of time before they get Metrocards and start showing up on the subway, cleverly hidden behind copies of The New York Post or Twilight.

So, rather than dwell on that . . . let’s talk about going to school for writing. This came into my mind because I just looked higher up on this list and noticed this:

37. I am majoring in creative writing as my undergraduate degree!

I get a lot of notes asking me what I think of this, and I am happy to tell you.

I think it’s a bad idea.

Meg Cabot has been saying this for years, and just today, Justine Larbalestier wrote a great blog about this very subject, which says almost everything I am thinking. She talks about the importance of having a broad background with skills in several subjects, about the fact that most writers have some other job aside from writing, about the fact that many great writers never studied writing as a major. Let me EXPAND on this a bit, because I have A LOT of thoughts on this matter and it will keep me from thinking about THE COMING JELLYFISH INVASION.

“But Maureen!” some of you will say (clearly the people who have read my bio). “Weren’t you a writing major?”

I was, so I feel I can talk about this subject as someone who knows. I did not one, but TWO degrees in writing, one undergraduate, and one graduate. Neither was in “Creative Writing.”

My undergraduate degree is in technical writing and rhetoric. Rhetoric is a tough, sensible, ancient approach to making words work for you and figuring out WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. There were also additional classes in research technique, editing, layout . . .

“Creative writing,” as a term, makes me quake inside. I don’t know what it means. It’s like getting a handful of jello. I guess it’s workshops in writing fiction . . . but who knows? It could mean ANYTHING. Maybe it trains you to play Wordwang:



I think my big objection is the word “creative” in the name. I feel like I have the same problem with this as I do with muses . . . that there’s this idea that writing is all about traipsing around and being weird and “inspired” all the time, and that somehow the best training involves making word clouds and collages and listing fifty adjectives that describe the inner you.

That’s fun and fine and I am ALL FOR BEING WEIRD, just not as a class. Or, maybe one class. But not as a major. No one can teach you how to be creative.

Maybe this is just me. I am the byproduct of a Marine/engineer and a nursing professor, and there is something in me that demands A SYSTEM! RESULTS! LOGIC!

I guess one of my big fears is that you will end up in a department run by writers. I mean, that’s great if your teacher is, say, Nabokov, and less great if your teacher is, say, me. I don’t want to be a part of any department that would have me as a professor . . . unless it’s the Department of Swedish Disco or Fear Studies or something.

Another problem . . . when I have to write all the time, the last thing I want to do is write. This is true of almost every writer I know. We all love writing, but when someone makes you do it, it kind of sucks. However, I did loads of writing in trigonometry! If I had been a math major, I would have written about twelve books by the time I graduated. In retrospect, I see this is a GENIUS IDEA and encourage you all to think about it!

The question of a graduate degree in writing is a bit different, but not a lot. I speak as someone with an MFA in writing. I went to an Ivy League school, had amazing professors and classmates, got great feedback, and generally have nothing but good things to say about the experience, and I’m STILL not sure if it’s something I’d recommend.

Let’s face it . . . at least in the United States, an MFA is a costly thing, and it takes two or three years to complete. Know what you’re getting into. Don’t do it with the expectation that the degree itself is worth it, that those three letters will open any doors. They won’t. The MFA is entirely non-functional for any practical purpose.

If you’re getting an MFA in writing, do it to pump the most out of the experience as you possibly can. Go to a place you feel strongly about—a place with writers in the faculty you want to know and learn from. Do it only with the expectation that you hope to get a bit better, that you’re going to focus, that you mean business. Speaking of business . . . go to every single workshop the program offers about the business of writing. (Writing programs in New York will often bring in editors, agents, and other publishing professionals to talk about real-life experience. Go to these events and take notes!)

If you’re uncertain, if you don’t really care that much, if you’re in any way just doing it to go to grad school . . . take your $50,000, or $80,000, or $100,000, get a lot of books, and go to the beach and write for a year. That’s presuming you have $50,000, or $80,000, or $100,000. Most people don’t, and end up borrowing it from one of the Loan Giants who own too many of us already.

Many people wonder, does the MFA improve your chance of getting a book deal? It improves your chances if it makes your writing stronger. Otherwise, it makes zero difference. Editors don’t read your resume, they read your writing. They normally don’t know or care about your education, unless your education has some bearing on what you’re doing. For example, if you submit a book called How To Do Plastic Surgery At Home Using Simple Household Items Such As Corkscrews And Staplers . . . an editor might care to know that you are a board-certified plastic surgeon with a medical degree. They might also want to know if you are certifiably insane.

I have yet to meet an editor who cared ONE IOTA if I had an MFA or not. In fact, I think it would have been of much more interest if I had a degree in almost ANYTHING ELSE, since my bio reads like this: “Maureen studied writing, and then she studied more writing, and now she is writing. She spends most of her time sitting down.”

It would be so much better if my bio said something like: “Maureen is a former professional trampolinist who released three techno albums in Belgium before doing advanced work in science, specifically with little squishy cells that do totally awesome stuff, like wobble in time to music. She is currently at work searching for a new kind of triangle. She lives on a penguin farm.”**

Now, THAT’S an interesting author! No MFA in sight!

We idiots with the writing degrees have to dredge our backgrounds to pad out these stupid bios we have to write. We have to write bios because teachers make you write book reports. (Also, they won’t let me put my recipe for taco soup on the back flap of my books, under my photo.) It’s a good thing I worked in theater for so long, because I have a few stories about working with tigers and smoke machines and putting out fires to fill a paragraph or two. My Ivy League MFA is a footnote.

In any case, I’m not sure you should be taking academic advice from me. I wouldn’t. But those are my thoughts, if you wanted them. I guess the bottom line is that I think we just need more environmental scientists because this jellyfish thing is clearly getting out of hand. So please major in something like that because it is SERIOUSLY FREAKING ME OUT. (It doesn’t help that I am actually going away for a few days to a beach.)

Today’s random commenter Suite Scarlett winner is Haley!

In reading your comments, I saw many excellent questions and points, and I still have to talk to you about MAMMA MIA, which I have now seen. And yes, it was BEAUTIFUL. But clearly I needed to talk about this today . . . so if you could just let me know what I should discuss in my next post, that would be great. And, of course, there is another book to give away!




* actually, I think this is a misprint from my list of “things I totally want to hear”

**which I obviously am and have and did and am but let’s not get off the subject

I got an email back today -- in response to one of my rejections -- that said "way to prove my point." That's it. Didn't even bother to capitalize the first letter.

This was a query that, while it certainly grabbed my attention, didn't grab it in the right way. As in, the premise made me uncomfortable (when it was supposed to be lighthearted and funny), so I told the writer why it didn't work for me. It didn't take more than a couple lines. I guess that was his problem? He needed a dissertation instead? I got back, "way to prove my point." (About what? I don't know who he is anywhere other than my inbox, or what his point was.)

So, in the interest of telling writers when they do stupid stuff, I wrote back. I explained what he'd done was wrong, that the best thing for him to do was take the datapoint and move on.

Then I went to the grocery store and did mundane real life things. I came home, started reading more queries, got back to my inbox and noticed another email from this fellow. BCCed to me. It said there was a party last night and some of his "friends" got on the computer and started emailing agents he'd queried. It also mentioned the party was because he'd sold film rights for something, and that he'd never ever do anything like email back an agent and brag or boast.

Ahem.

I realize there's a slim possibility he's telling the truth. Slim. Possibility. But even in my two weeks as an assistant, I've gotten enough emails back to realize I should be able to see the type based on their query. (Scary, huh? When I worked at Wendy's (fast food), I could usually tell someone's type before I saw them in the drive through window, just based on what they wanted on their burger.) And even if what he said is true, don't let your, ah, friends near your computer. Two words: password protection.

Anyway. More from the files of how to get yourself blacklested... :P

--

Stats! (My favorite part.)

Queries read and replied to today: 15
Queries during this fit of madness: 212

Queries passed back to Jenny: 2, historical romance, and fantasy
Queries there was nothing wrong with but just didn't grab me enough: 4

Queries addressed to Lori Perkins, rather than Jenny: 1 (to be fair, they sent to both)
Queries for things Jenny doesn't represent: 2
People who wrote back/tried again: 1 (see above) And a nice thank you note.
People who wanted to tell me they've been writing since childhood: 1

More things not to mention in your queries: that you keep illegal wildlife as pets

I also got one of my replies returned today -- for the second time. I'm not trying again. But if you sent yours several days ago and haven't heard from Jenny for a request yet, or me for a reject, well...make sure you're able to receive email. Others may be having the same problem.


(Total)
Vampires: 10
Werewolves: 8
Elves: 6
Demons: 15
Fairies: 4
Starcrossed lovers: 4
Retellings of some sort: 5
Conspiracy theories: 2
Shapeshifters: 5
Witches: 6
Crazy people: 5
Superheroes: 3
Ghosts: 3
Animal main characters: 4


Genres people identify their stories as
Children's picture books: 1
Fantasy: 3
Literary: 1
Middle grade: 1
Movie script: 1
Romance: 1
Science fiction: 3
YA: 5

Two stories in a row that start with humans crashing into an alien ocean, and sea people rescuing them. In a row!

--

Today was the day of looooong synopses. I mean, some of them were good, but they were long and they took forever to read. How am I supposed to empty my inbox like this? So, yes, more queries still sitting in my inbox. Maybe I'll get it emptied by tomorrow. If not, definitely Thursday, and then I'm going back to being very boring. (That's your warning to run away while you still can, if you're afraid of boring. I won't blame you.)

Some days, I find myself wondering if I'm really expecting too much of the human race.

( Rant #1: )

( Rant #2: )

Despite all that, I actually got a lot of work done today, so we'll end on a non-ranty meme: ( In Three Words )

I think Portland likes me. It was showing off last night as I drove from my apartment on the west side to my friend K's apartment on the east side. Everything was gold-tinged, like magic, and I could see Mount Saint Helens.

I am almost at a resting spot. I have to head back "home" for a long weekend to finish up paperwork and complete the moving process, but I like my apartment and location. It's going to be hard living a bit more like a college student again when I am used to having my own washer and dryer and a lot more room in the kitchen. But it's a homey, restful sort of place, and I think I will be okay. Peace is good.