Halloween isn't so bad ...

So, it turns out that Clementine is a fan of Halloween. Shocker! Man, we had so much fun yesterday! It's been a long time since I trick-or-treated, obviously, and I think it isn't what it used to be. So many houses did not participate! It seems like when I was a kid, every single house had a pumpkin on the porch and was open for business. Not so these days, but still, we had a wonderful time, and Clementine caught on quick! Here she is at her very first porch, getting her first treat ever, and from Ginny Weasely no less!

Yes, she was Superman.


We figure next year the years of fairy princesses will begin, so why not? Plus which, we needed a simple costume involving no head pieces to be yanked off. She was not the only Superman in town. Yesterday morning, Portland Children's Museum was the safest place in the Universe:

Clementine has not had a lot of chocolate in her life, but the few times she has tasted it, her little hands started frantically making the sign language for "MORE! MORE!" She is a fan. Yesterday, while trick-or-treating, she had a wrapped Kit Kat in her hands, and we didn't notice she had gnawed through the wrapper and was happily devouring herself some Kit Kat! And maybe a little wrapper too. When I tried to take it away to roll the wrapper down so she could actually have it, her one Halloween treat (no, not a whole Kit Kat!), she made feral animal sounds and bit my hand off at the wrist. Hee hee. Here, Kit Kat evidence in hand:

Sigh. So fun :-)



Meanwhile, making plans for Clementine's first international travel, upcoming, which just might involve a camel ride ... And maybe, if we're verrrrry lucky, a magic carpet or two!

Finished, oh so finished!

Guess what. THE BOOK IS FINISHED! Final draft sent off at midnight! Yippeeeee! During my final read-through/futz, I did a random word-count and discovered that at that moment, the manuscript was exactly 100,000 words, which is kind of like looking at the clock exactly at 2:22 or something. It seems kind of cool, but is totally random and meaningless. So after that I kept checking, for no reason, as the book swung just below and just above the 100K mark, with the final coming in at 100,021. There's a perverse part of me that wants to cut 21 words in copyediting, ha ha!

But the important point is: it is finished!!! I am so so happy! It has been delightful working with Alvina Ling and her assistant Bethany, and that work is not over, of course, there are many phases yet ahead, but the meat of the edit is now ... hm, you start a meat metaphor, and then what? Do you just go with it? The meat of the edit is now chewed. Lovely. I should be a writer, snork snork.

So you know what I did to celebrate? I cleaned the kitchen! Am I wild or what? I cannot be controlled! Don't even try! Ha ha. But seriously. There are things that don't get high priority during deadline times, and I do so love a clean house. *happy sigh*

Obviously the blog is something else that has not gotten high priority! It's been a while since I posted any pictures of the Clementine, so here are some recents:




She's walking like a maniac now, not running yet, not fast, but I am sure that is only a matter of days. Climbs everything. Fascinated by dirt -- future gardener? Knows all her body parts and can say most of the words for them, the cutest being "elbow" which sounds kind of like "bolbow!" and is said with more glee than any elbow really merits :-) She helps us put groceries away and make the bed, handing us each item one by one, very serious about the whole procedure. Loves music like crazy. First thing in the morning, she toddles herself over the Jim's computer to wait for itunes to come up and someone to dance with her. That's the Clementine update, at 14.5 months of awesomeness.

The other day at Kinko's, while we waited for something, we were chatting with a woman, probably in her 60s? Here is a snippet of the exchange:

Her: Is she your first?

Jim: Yes.

Her: Probably your last, too, I guess.

.

.

.

.

What??? What does THAT mean? Do we look SO old? What is WRONG with people? Or did she have some extrasensory ovary perception and know something that we don't? Jeez, man. So rude. A friend of mine, once, was getting a wax or something, and when the person ... waxer? Waxist? asked her age, and she replied "35," the woman said, with some surprise, "You're only 35?" Can you believe that? I mean, someone in the beauty/cosmetic industry, who is supposed to default to making clients feel GOOD about themselves. Man, age sucks, and people are stupid. That's the lesson for today. I was also asked by an old man once at a restaurant if Clementine was my granddaughter!!! This one was a jaw-dropper. Yes, I technically could have a grandchild, but ... really???

Okay, little fingers are after the keyboard now, so I'm off. Great day, all!

SPEAK UP

Have you heard about the horrifyingly stupid op-ed piece by a university professor attempting to set in motion a ban Laurie Halse Anderson's book Speak? Lots of bloggers have been writing about this, and since I need to be revising right now, I will refer you to Stephanie's post about it. I hope you will check it out. Book banning is always a horror, and in this case, it is just so . . . so . . . evil, so evil-stupid, and such a perfect encapsulation of the horrors of censorship. I mean, the book is about finding one's voice to speak up about rape, and this idiot masquerading as an educator (shudder shudder) is trying to silence it and keep it out of the hands of the very victims who might be helped by it. AUGGGHHHHH!!!

Shannon Hale also blogged about it here, which is where I first heard about the controversy. There's an excerpt in her post from a reader about a library copy of Speak and its poignant last page that really testifies to the importance of this book.

Also, I saw in Stephanie's post that a school district has banned Sherman Alexi's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and I am reeling over that. National Book Award winner! Brilliant! Brilliant! On what grounds was it banned? It's not sexually explicit, and that's the usual culprit? Is it because of the alcoholism? Because oh sure, we shouldn't let young people read about the devastation of alcoholism.

Why, America? WHY?


On a much happier note, Clementine took her first steps yesterday, which was cute beyond cute. I could TELL she was ready, the way she was just standing there all steady. I KNEW if I coaxed her, she would walk, so I actually had to hold her off for a few minutes until Jim could get there, and then . . . she did it! Back and forth between us, four or five steps at a time, and then she would fling herself into our arms. So, she has to work on her landings :-) It's all geared toward the rushing leap right now, which is just fine. What's better than a baby hurling herself laughing into your arms?

Acceptable Destruction, or: the Calculus of Mess

Wow. I think I've forgotten how to blog. And I miss it! I've been trying to write a catch-up post for the past week. There are several saved versions in my blogger archive that I poked away at but that never coalesced -- in my deadline addled brain -- into any kind of sense. So. No guarantees here, either.

The monumentalness (monumentality, if you want to be strict about it) of having finished the book has given way to a feeling of weightlessness. Floating. The book is not in my head any more. It is not even just in my computer any more. It is on paper, fatly bound at Kinko's into proto-bookness, and it has also zipped through the ether to various large cities -- New York, London, Los Angeles. Weaverville, North Carolina, ha ha. It exists in the world in its unpolished state. Up next: polishing. Which is a job that I relish. I have a polisher's heart. I love to tinker. Bring on the tinkering! And if there are changes and fixes too big to be called tinkering, that's okay too. I love all of revision. (But ask me about it in late October and we'll see how I feel then.)

(To Katie, who enquired if this was yet another book after Daughter of Smoke and Bone: no. This was that book. Next up = the sequel! Actually, next up, today, is polishing a script to an illustrated project for younger readers that Jim and I have in the works. I wrote it last fall with a sleeping newborn in my lap and it has had a fairly interesting life so far, taken a number of journeys, lived temporarily in a number of houses, and now it is home like a college kid with a duffel bag full of laundry, soon to be sent on its way again :-)

So. Today I am auditioning a new writing cafe. Because of this tragedy:
Boo hoo hoo! My cafe closed. Three days after I finished the book! Isn't that eerie? I have this crazy idea that it is a drifting cafe of the mind (like the Treehouse of the Mind in Horns) that is there when you most need it. Right now, it is opening its doors in some little corner of Cincinnati or Boise or Sassafras (come on, there is probably a town in the US called Sassafras) where someone is in need of a quiet place to write.

To that person, I say: Give it back. It's mine.

Boo hoo hoo!

This new cafe is bigger and shinier, and not too busy or noisy, but a) the service wasn't friendly, and b) it's a 17-minute walk from my house, versus three. Which will be exceedingly unpleasant in the coming rains. I actually liked my three-minute umbrella walks to my old cafe, but I think the fun would wear off somewhere around minute five or six. I could (and probably will) get a bike, but then there's the whole glasses-in-the-rain thing. I never wear my contacts for staring at words. Ouchy.

There is another cafe closer to home, maybe ten minutes walk, but it is really busy and noisy and also so full of delicious baked goodness that I would ... increase ... if I went there every day. It's possible that I would prove powerless against coffee cake. Like, yesterday: I woke up from an afternoon nap filled with the pure conviction that if I didn't have cake immediately, I would die. Luckily, there was cake at hand, and so I live on.

Oh sigh. I may have to revert to my writing room for winter, and just barricade the door against cuteness and plug in my earbuds and pretend I'm in a cafe. It'll be cheaper. Plus, my writing room is awesome! I miss it! I am reminded of its awesomeness after having finally, totally belatedly, cleaned it to photograph it for inclusion in an upcoming studios issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine (love love love that magazine). Ah, cleaning with a one-year-old is so. Much. Fun. You know it is. Ever since Clementine became mobile, we have been learning what I'm sure all parents everywhere know, and it is this thing I'll call "acceptable destruction." I'll give you an example:

If Clementine is kept occupied for two full minutes by shredding a roll of toilet paper, and I am able in that time to brush my teeth and put my contacts in and maybe even apply mascara, is the resulting destruction acceptable or does it cross the line into being more hassle than those two minutes were worth? It's a careful and constantly evolving calculus of mess. It is amazing what comes to seem "acceptable." Such as: "Hm, it looks like letting Clementine destroy my brand-new crocheted flower paper clips from Anthropologie is going to buy me three minutes. Well. They were only $10." (And yes, I was watching to make sure she did not ingest any paper clips! I admit, though, she finds things. Like the other day, she was innocuously playing with a stuffed animal she had pulled off the shelf, and I looked up to find she had undone the pin it was wearing and had stretched back the needle-sharp pokey part like a ... hideous stabbing instrument ... and was looking at me kind of like, "Dude, you're letting me play with this?" )

Yikes.

(And as for the paper clips, I was going to take the flowers off anyway and sew them onto barrettes because really: who needs crocheted flowers on their paper clips?)

So. I don't have any photos of the real mess-making, but here is Clementine in various ways helping put the finishing touches on the room:
These books are for me, right? I mean, why else would you stack them under the bench? (Doy.)

Hey look, this stuffed animal is wearing a giant stabby pin too! (Hazards abound!)

Did you know there are a ton more books back here? Score!

Oh, I'm sure this post-it isn't marking anything important here. I'll just have this, thanks ...

What? I'm helping.

My work here is done. I'm off to climb the stairs now! Bye!

And of course, I can't neglect to show you this:
First, look at that keyboard! I have worn that thing out, which makes me weirdly proud. But the missing "m" is not my doing. How easily it disengaged, with the littlest "snick" sound. She reached right for it, like she wanted that one.

Okay. The secret truth is: this is all really really fun. Clementine is getting more fun every day -- that's what everyone says, and it's true. At this rate, when does your head just explode from overload? Or do we just have an infinite capacity for cuteness tolerance? I don't know.
Hey, I'm taller than you now, devil girl!

Where can I get some horns like that?

Uh, mommy, why's this door closed ... ?

I'm going to try to be an actual blogger again, because I really miss it! Don't give up on me! I'm still heeeeeeeeeere ...

Berry Face + Writing in the Spirit of Discovery

A lovely weekend. More berries were picked, and more importantly, more berries were eaten:
hee hee hee. I was carrying Clementine on my back, and I couldn't see her face, just her little hand reaching forward to take the berries I was passing back to her, and at the end, this is what we found. You can imagine the back of my shirt looked much the same! Luckily I was wearing burgundy, ha ha.

It was also another amazing weekend in secret news, soon to be shared, and I got some writing in too, of course. My tiny writing cafe is ultra dead on Sundays. Yesterday I was here for four or five hours and maybe four or five people came in in all that time. The barrista sat in an armchair reading The Road!

But speaking of writing, a few posts back I think I mentioned an intention to write about "writing scenes in the spirit of discovery" and I haven't done that yet, but I think I'll take a [brief] stab at it. (Isn't that an odd and kind of awesome expression, to "take a stab" at something? Where does that come from? Is it, like, the vampire-slayer equivalent of "the old college try"?)

Writing scenes in the spirit of discovery.

Early in my blogging days, I recall that I came across a post on writing where the [now forgotten by me] writer said, "You write to find the story." And I don't know if I really knew that at the time, at least not on a conscious level. I thought you wrote to tell the story. And you do, of course, but you are also finding it. As I say in Not For Robots, it's not like picking up somebody's grocery list off the sidewalk. It's an entirely new creation of your brain, and for most of us, we're not downloading it directly from the ether, or whatever. It's a process of discovery.

Early in my own process of learning to write a novel, I came to a point (in Blackbringer, the first scene in Never Nigh when the crows are performing) where I was trying to make characters interact and bring a new place to life, and it was really really hard . . . and I gradually realized that it was really really hard because I didn't know the characters OR the place yet, and so I couldn't expect some perfect scene to just roll of my fingertips that did everything I wanted it to do. I had to get in there and kind of mess around. Like, I don't know, you know how photographers and documentary makers say that if you stick around a place long enough with your camera the subjects will start acting natural and kind of forget you're there? That's sort of what happened once I just stared playing around in Never Nigh, telling myself it didn't matter if these scenes ended up in the book or not. And many didn't! But I did start getting to know my characters, and that led to the actual scene. Ta da!

This has happened many times since then, and you'd think I'd just learn to be free and always write in "the spirit of discovery" like it's my default setting, but I don't know if you can change your default. It's like changing your height or something. You could do it, but it would involve chopping off your legs! I can't change my writing brain. I am a perfectionist, I want each scene in my books to be its own multi-faceted, highly polished jewel. And at the end of the day, I'm glad my brain works the way it does, because I really really like my writing! But I have to constantly remind myself to have a spirit of discovery. I have to force myself, every time.

And sometimes it's not intentional. I might think I am writing The Scene, you know? But after the fact, I realize it's not right, and I have to be willing to set it aside and keep trying. That's part of the process of discovery: realizing when you're not there yet. The story veers in a direction that, while cool, minimizes the overall narrative momentum, or any one of a million other reasons why it's not the right scene at the right time. Where I'm at right now in my current novel, I've laid aside a succession of chapters, each of which I thought was "the one" until a day or so after I finished it. But each time I set one aside, I understand the story better. The jewel becomes more complex and sparkly, if you will.

Not every scene you write, not even every really beautiful, cool scene, needs to be in the book. They might be stage hands instead of actors, you know, and do their important work behind the scenes. In fact, the important work performed by some scenes is in the very revelation of their wrongness! Sometimes you won't find the perfect way to move forward until you've found a few wrong ways and learned their lessons. This gives you depth. It's nothing to be down about. I think it was Thomas Edison who said, "I have not failed. I have only found 10,000 ways that won't work."

We just hope it's not 10,000!

So there's that. I don't know if it helps anyone to know this, but almost every single scene in my current novel is a not-first-effort. As much as I have bemoaned perfectionism, I truly believe there is a huge benefit to having this kind of brain. It may not be joyous in the moment, but it gives us the focus and will to keep working toward the best possible resolution to our stories, and the very best configuarions of language to convey it as directly as possible to our readers' brains.

I'm not going to edit this post because I need to get back to work instead. And THAT is a difficult thing for a perfectionist brain to do!

Clementine at Nine Months + My First Mother's Day!

Somehow it's been nine months already. Astonishing. And yet, in a way it feels like it's been longer than that. Memories of Clementine's newborn tininess are fading. Today I was holding her sideways across my body and I caught sight of us in the mirror and she seemed gigantic. She's grown so much, and every day now brings new developments. The motorcycle mouth sound (brrrrrffffffvvvvvvvv), like little boys make playing cars; the squiggling becomes a commando-crawl; maniac sleep rolling, so she covers the surface of the bed; feeding me tastes of her dinner; fake-coughing, and then laughing at herself; total resistance to the changing table, for some reason . . . and so many little things, minute by minute.

It scares me that my memories of the past nine months are not crisp and in order, like the pages of an album. I want to remember everything, but what I'm finding is that new memories are overwriting old ones. Details blur. Photos help, and I started belatedly keeping a little journal of landmarks -- wish I'd done that from the beginning. I feel this mania to record it all, like it's the most important thing in the universe, but I just can't get my act together. Sometimes there's not enough time to both live the days and record them, alas, in which case one must choose to live them, and hope to remember.

Speaking of recording things, my blog has hit a slow patch. You may have noticed that I haven't updated much, and that when I have it's either WRITING or CLEMENTINE. Well, yeah. Pretty much. Add Jim in there, with some friends, some walks, and a smattering of cake, and that's life these days. (Mm. Cake.) I cruise around (occasionally) to blogs and I feel this thing I've felt ever since I started blogging (and before, but more clearly since blogging), and that is a frantic desire to DO EVERYTHING. To fit six or seven lives into my one life, not end to end, but side by side. I want to have the hiking/outdoors life, the arts and crafts life, the beautiful lifestyle/decorating life, the garden life, the thoughtful book reviewer life, etc etc. I envision my blog a certain dreamy way that I don't have time for, and that means I guess that I envision my life a certain dreamy way that I don't have time for.

Choices, dagnabbit. I could take a sewing class and make adorable baby dresses, or I could work on my book. I could go garden-crazy and make a great play/lounge space for summer (and I reallyreally want to!!!) or I could work on my book. It goes on like that. Life has gone fairly narrow right now, which doesn't mean it isn't incredibly rich. The more the river narrows, the more powerful the current. True of rivers, and maybe-sometimes true of life? Can't let it narrow too much though.

One of the great things about having a child is that it makes me see each moment and day as precious for Clementine's sake. If it were only Jim and me, we would go on in our routine of working all day and evening, and not getting out and moving in the world. We would put off that whole "living" thing in favor of working, like life is going to start at some later date, once we're "ready". But for Clementine, we want to build a beautiful childhood with hikes and geese and playmates and toes in the grass and all the wonders that are out there, so we do stuff. Stuff!

On Mother's Day we got out for a little bit and discovered a fun new place to eat, and we walked in the sun and bought gigantic flowers, and we shared a pineapple float that was ridiculously good!

In Portland, food carts are kind of a big deal. We don't go to them much, because we never think of it, but the other day we drove past a cute-looking court of food carts on upper Mississippi Ave, and we needed a snack on Mother's Day to tide us over until dinner with my parents, so we went there. And oh my. So. Good. We chose this one nondescript silver trailer (Garden State) because of a good-sounding sandwich (chicken and cured lemons with goat cheese and asparagus! Cured lemons were the kicker. So good!), and it was DELICIOUS, and we found out after that this cart had won the Willamette Week's "Carty Award" last month for overall tastiness. If you're a Portlander, go by and try this sandwich, though they're more famous for the chickpea-cake sandwich, which looked awesome too. After that we had a pineapple float from the "Sugar Cube" cart = pineapple ice cream + house-made ginger syrup + ginger ale. It was perfect on a warm day. I will go back just for that. Seriously.

And to make this an even more perfect lunch spot: it backs up to the sunny beer garden of the German restaurant Prost, who invite you to bring in your food, so long as you buy their drinks. Done and done.

Here's me with my girl on my first Mother's Day:
The three of us strolled around, bought giant peonies, got coffee, loved our city, loved each other, and then stopped at the Pastaworks deli to buy an assortment of salamis to bring along with fig & anise rolls to my parents' house. It was kind of silly: we made the girl shave us off a couple of meager slices of a bunch of different salamis. (There are a lot of kinds of salami.) She endured good-naturedly.

Somebody slept through the whole thing:

Later, lolling and opening presents (so many presents! Like a birthday. I was seriously spoiled!) and playing with the cats at my parents' house. Here is Clementine offering coconut marshmallows to Bea:
And meeting my mom's tortoise, who is the most *loving* tortoise you will ever meet:
And, my sweeties in mom's garden:

And a couple of recent shots, marking time:


Clementine at nine months, you are our delight. Beautiful and hilarious, determined, sunny, silk-soft, sweet-smelling, and endlessly fascinating, I have not experienced a moment's frustration with you in nine entire months. Even when you're crabby, which is rare, I feel only tenderness and a desire to make you un-crabby again, to which end I will do preposterous dances, invent silly songs, nibble your toes, run for the Cheerios, or just show you yourself in the mirror. Even you can't look at your adorableness and stay crabby!

Welcome, last week, to tooth #3, and to the first hints of sleep-resistance (joy!). You are revving up to crawl in earnest. You aren't quite doing it yet, but you are locomoting in your own squirmy, determined way. The best bait to lure you to crawl? Library books, new ones with crisp crinkly wrappers. Ah, the crinkle! Favorite foods? Steamed carrots, hummus, pear, guacamole. And you were a fan of the pineapple ice cream float!

This next month will bring even more and faster changes, I think. Whatever they are, I'm sure they will be even more fun that what came before them. I love you.

Mission for March & the Baby Food Theory of Process

As of yesterday I laid a new plan of attack, and I'm speaking it *aloud* here to make it real. (If you don't blog about it, did it really happen?) It is my resolution to write to an ending of a draft of the current novel by the end of March. Yikes.

This will involve using every trick in my writerly tool box, as well as gritting my teeth plenty to endure the suck. It's not my usual M.O., and I've written before how the enforced fast draft doesn't work for me, worse, how it killed my book (a different book, the one I wrote before this one, which has never been read by a living soul, including myself, and which is festering away in a top-secret file). But. This book isn't that book, and I am hereby promulgating a new theory, which I dub:

THE BABY FOOD THEORY OF PROCESS
Having recently started feeding Clementine solids, I have learned that one is advised to try a baby on a particular food multiple times before deciding that they don't like it, because their taste buds change. Well, that's what I'm saying about process too. Maybe process taste buds change! Just because the fast draft of that last book murdered it, doesn't mean the same thing will happen for this book. I'm way too invested in this book for that to happen. (A few people have asked what I'm working on, and I'll just say for now that it is YA, in the vein of Lips Touch, but unrelated, and a long novel, not stories.) But I need major momentum now, helter-skelter dangerous momentum, like pushing a boulder down a hill and then standing back and watching Bambis and bunnies scatter and flee.

Once I read that a writer (I think it might have been Cynthia Leitich Smith, but I could be totally wrong about that) would write a fast first draft and then delete it. GASP! HORROR! And I didn't get that AT ALL. But I can see it now. Because when I write a fast draft of a chapter, I often don't even read it, I just take what I learned in the writing of it, the way the story went, and use that to write a nicer draft, with more attention to craft and pacing. So that's kind of what I'm thinking now for my March mission, only instead of chapter by chapter, I'll barrel through the whole thing, and I will not actually delete the resulting mess (I never ever delete anything, ever), but I may not force myself to reread it.

I am going to get a draft written, by hook or by crook, by the end of the month. I AM. (Asks, in a small voice, "Does anyone want to join me?" Tiny secret March NaNo club?)

* * *

Meanwhile, Jes asked in comments to the last post how I am getting writing done with a widget in my life. Good question! Ever since my pregnancy I've been meaning to do a series of interviews of working-mama-authors and ask them the same thing. I'll start with my own answer, which is: it's largely luck, that Jim and I both work at home and we're able to construct a schedule whereby we each have work time when we're at our best creatively. My best time is the morning (which is why I'm blogging now, snort snort), so I work from around 8:30/9 am to around 1, and then again after Clementine goes to bed (NOT my more productive time, but I'm working on it, because boo hoo hoo for me, you've got to use the time you have!); I have Clementine in the afternoon, from lunchtime to dinner, while Jim works. So that's how we do it.

And can I say how glad I am we can arrange things this way? Neither of us is on baby-duty for so many hours in a row that we get frazzled. It's more like when our turn comes around, we're delighted to see the little bunny and we're totally ready for a work break to take a walk or a nap or play. It's pretty awesome. Of course, we waited until we were old to have a baby, so it's not totally luck. We built our life to be like this, and worked on our careers first so we would be working at home full time.

One of the writers in that Guardian list had as a rule for writers: Don't have children. Well, I don't think one must go that far, but children do make it trickier to work out a writing schedule, that's for sure. They also make life deeply, deeply rich, add whole dimensions to it and to you, and any level of trickiness is worth it. But if you're a young aspiring writer, I would suggest that getting your first few books written (and if possible, published) before starting your family is not a bad idea -- but your life is your life, and you build it yourself day by day, and there are plenty of writers out there who didn't start writing/publishing until after they had children. Do whatever works for you! Find a way.

MAKE a way!


Have a great day!

Mama has a new desktop photo

Oh my gooooooodnesssss! Clementine had a particularly good hair day yesterday, which called for many photos:
It's like a rooster comb :-)
Swoon, swoon.

And look at the amazing hat my dear friend Chary crocheted for Clementine for Christmas:
It makes my heart hurt a little. In a good way.

Meanwhile, had a great library event last night at the Beaverton City Library with some of my favorite local writers:
Left to right that's: Lisa Schroeder, who writes beautiful YA books in verse, with a lovely romantic/creepy element of ghostliness, very deeply moving; LK Madigan, whose debut book Flash Burnout just won the Morris Award (yay!); April Henry, who writes both YA and adult mysteries (the adult ones being on the NYT bestseller list!!), and Christine Fletcher, author of one of my favorite books last year, Ten Cents a Dance. I'd do links, but Clementine is hungry, so I'll leave you to google any of those authors/books you might be interested in. (Hope you will!) It was really delightful being on a panel with these ladies -- thank you to those of you who came last night. It was great to meet some Facebook friends in person (hi, Mary!), and some readers (hi, Heather!) who can do Magpie's accent, which I most definitely cannot!

:-)

baby toes, book awards, and blue people

Miss Clementine is no longer content to take our word for it that her toes are delicious. She wants to see for herself.
I think she likes 'em :-) If you listen you may be able to hear a nice slurping sound!

In other news, big congrats to all the winners of the ALA (American Library Association) awards today! If you don't follow children's literature closely, these are kind of the Academy Awards for us. I'm most excited that my friend and local Portland author LK Madigan won the Morris Award for a debut YA novel for her terrific book Flash Burnout which I have been intending to review here for weeks (and will, soon, but you don't have to wait for my review. Read it!). Yay, Lisa!

Oh, and guess what. Today, for the first time in over four months, Jim and I went to the movies! (We did bring Clementine with us to the theater once when she was a teeny-tiny sleep-lump.) Today my parents babysat so we could go see Avatar in the theaters -- it really is a theater movie, not a Netflix movie. Ohmygosh it was so awesome! Love-love-loved it. I was so ridiculously excited to be en route to the movies this afternoon. I LOVE the movies, the dark theater, the previews, the opening moments. Magic. I've missed it, and there are a lot of movies I want to see! But, giant bummer: the show sold out while we were standing in line. ARRRRRG! We considered going to see a different movie, but I had my heart set on a big fat sci-fi/fantasy epic, so we picked up lunch for my parents, went home to eat and tank the baby up again, then went to a later showing at another theater. Thank you, mom and pop!

You will go in the direction you are looking.

Though January is already half gone (huh? whuuuh?), I've only just been able to think over the coming year and my hopes for it. I'm not calling my thoughts "resolutions," not that I think there is anything wrong with resolutions. They get a bad rap. So many people make fun of New Year's resolutions as pointless and made to be broken, but I say it's not so. It's good to be mindful about your life. Your life can be something that happens to you, or it can be something you build, consciously and conscientiously. There's a great piece of advice -- can't remember where I heard it, but it originated with someone's German ski instructor, Horst. It was this:

"You will go in the direction you are looking."

Isn't that fabulous? So simple and true -- not just of skiing, but of life. That's what New Year's *mindfulness* is all about. To get yourself looking in the direction you want to go, so your body can follow.

So, me. It's pretty much the basics, really.

-- Health and well-being and baby weight and feeling good in my skin.

-- Writing every day and finishing, in a timely manner, my novel in progress.

Those are the two things that are ALWAYS my "resolutions" every year. One year, one magical year, after not doing them and not doing them, I finally did them. Both. I finished my first novel AND lost the weight I wanted to lose (healthily) in one terrific year. Let 2010 be another such year!

In addition to the old stand-byes, there's this:

Live a beautiful and memorable life with my family. Do things. Make things. Go places. Have fun. Take pictures. Keep a journal.

My new mission statement:


Love family.

Write books.

Make art.

Enjoy the world.

Have a beautiful life.

There are some specifics attached to those, like: go camping; have a warm beach holiday (maybe Mexico?); cook more new things; get back to journaling!!!!

JOURNALING! I haven't been a consistent journal-keeper in years. Years. And I'm kicking myself now for not starting again when Clementine was born. What was I thinking? You think you'll remember everything, how you felt putting a tiny little onesie on your tiny little newborn for the first time, and what nights were like those first few weeks, and the little lamb-like newborn cry, and the first real smile, and all the marvels, day by day. I've taken lots and lots of pictures, and that's good, but the words. The thoughts. Missing. And never to come again.

It's the same with my relationship with Jim. I met him at the start of art school, and various things in my life conspired against journaling then, which I had done consistently up until that point and I STOPPED. So I don't have a record of our first months and years (now 11 years!!) and I wish I did. I wish I could go back in time and put a pen in that younger self's hand and say, "Listen, you. Write."

Thinking about these lost times -- remembered, but not as fully as they could be, it really brings home the "once-ness" of life. Life is once, and it is irretrievable. Living it fully is the first and most important thing, and if there's only time for that, and no time for recording it, so be it, but if you can do BOTH, both live it, and record it, you should. Words and pictures and movies and art and even music, all the ways of capturing life as it flies by, capturing the imprint of it on the page -- like capturing the shadow of a bird in flight, the way Magpie does in Blackbringer.

So, I'm getting back to journaling. Clementine is 5 months and I want to remember it all, as well as possible, so I'm going to start a new journal. I've been thinking this for a few days, and being me, I of course envision an ELABORATE arty journal full of collage and color and stuff (if there's one thing I do consistently in all areas of my creative life, it's: make things more complicated than they need to be), but the elaborateness of the vision is intimidating. Who ever has time to begin something like that? Never. So instead of starting something you CAN get your hands around, at midnight perhaps, after everything else is done, you just never do it. Ugh. So this morning I grabbed one of my many cute waiting-for-content blank journals from the shelf and started writing in it. So simple.

Also ... unsatisfying. I still want that color and collage and pictures pasted in and little drawings and paper doll people and scraps and string and magic ... So. I'm going to the art store later and see if I can't make that happen. But the humble journal will be sitting by, just in case.

So there's that. Do you journal?

Oh, and by the way. Clementine made the shift from bassinet to crib last night, sniff sniff. She's outgrown the bassinet. She looked so teeny in the crib by comparison, instead of filling up the bassinet. So now she's about 10 feet away at night instead of 2, which is still very near! Her little nursery is adjacent to our bedroom through an open archway, so it's not even really like she's in another room (I don't think I could take that), but still. It was weird having her even in that other space. I lit the nursery with her ladybug star-projecting nightlight (cool) and her weird and awesome glowing dinosaur light that turns rainbow colors, so it was kind of disco in there. She slept soundly until about 2:30 and then I could finally bring her in our bed to nurse. I missed her :-)

And then, this morning, as if to prove she's truly outgrown the bassinet, when I set her in it to make the bed, she was grabbing the cover off the shade and yanking it down. Yeah, she shouldn't be able to reach that. Bassinet, finis. Until the next time :-) (That's another plan for the coming year -- to *start* another baby. If it's in the cards.)

And while I'm rambling about Clementine, can I just say that 5 months is awesome? She's sitting up, eating little nibbles of rice porridge, babbling like a brook (she says mama! But it's just a coincidence. It's just the sound she makes: mah-mah-mah, etc), rolling around, grabbing everything, laughing, trying to drink out of my coffee cup, playing peekaboo, and all kinds of other stuff. Wow. It's the coolest.

Okay. That's it. New Year's mindfulness and journaling and Clementine at 5 months. More later (hopefully) on the progress of fun, colorful journaling and more art-making!!!

Must. Become. Nocturnal.

Nooo! Not a vampire! Not that kind of nocturnal. I must become a night-writer. Doesn't that sound funky and mysterious? NIGHT-WRITER. Writer of the Night. Ha ha ha. What am I babbling about? Oh, nothing. Just my early morning writing schedule is turning out to be a joke. Here was the plan: get up at 5, write until lunch while Jim takes care of Clementine, with a few breaks in there for nursing. Sounds fine, right? A person could get a lot of writing done! So what's the problem?

Waking up early is not the problem. It's easy. It's how I wrote Blackbringer, getting up in the dark and dragging myself downstairs to the kitchen (I did not yet have a writing room). In the winter when it was freezing I opened the oven to take the chill off the kitchen. I made coffee and wrote. I remember hearing author Donna Jo Napoli speak at SCBWI and she said she gets up at 4:30 to write before going to her full-time university job. It sounded painful to me, but you know, if you really want to write, you make the time. There was a morning last week when I meant to get up at 5 and didn't, and I was kicking myself all day, because, and here's the thing . . .

Clementine isn't sleeping so much during the day anymore.

She's getting to be a real little person. See:
(Ohmygod, so cute!!!)

Anyway, she no longer sleeps 16 hours a day. She still sleeps really well at night, praise be, but during the day, she requires, you know, constant entertainment. Which is awesome! She's so much fun. But I have a book to write, and writing it in the morning is not panning out so well. If I get up at 5, see, Clementine wakes up at 5:30, wanting what babies want. If I sleep in, of course, so does she. She knows. So basically I'm not getting those empty dark dawn hours like I hoped. They're all chopped up with feedings and such. The late night hours, however, are there, mocking me in my fatigue, saying, "Work NOW. It's so quiet. Clementine is so asleep. NOW is your time!"

But at night I just want to read and loll! I can have the best of intentions all day, but when nighttime comes ... so does laziness.

Must. Conquer. Laziness. Big pot of coffee at 10 pm, maybe? I think I'll be giving it a try tonight. Wish me luck!

Update: So, I was up last night -- decided to forego the coffee, since I was pretty awake, but was considering tea when . . . at around midnight, who should wake up? What? Usually, once she's in her bassinet she doesn't wake up until the wee hours, like, once to nurse. She must have heard about my new *schedule* and been having herself a laugh. So, I got in bed to nurse her and of course that was it for me for the night. Oh well!

Clementine in the Big Apple

Clementine was an amazing little trooper in New York. When we first found out about the award and knew we'd be traveling, I was anxious, because going to New York with a three-month-old is a bit different than going to New York without one. Especially when there are bookstore and library readings and ceremonies and a black tie dinner involved! Luckily, my mom was game to come with us and help out. Whew! Thank you, mom!
We went several days ahead to be tourists and give the little one some time to settle into a routine, and it's a good thing we did. The first two nights she was on West Coast time, which did not bode well for mama and papa sleep time. Oy. Once she got adjusted, though, I think she liked coming straight to bed with us, with no bassinet interlude, and she slept just fine. Here she is, quite the little queen in the hotel bed:
(Speaking of hotels, we stayed at the Thirty Thirty, which is a few blocks from the Empire State Building and is a great value for New York, if you're going and are looking for an affordable place to stay.)

Among the touristy things we did: the City Sights double-decker bus tour!
Each time Jim and I have been to NY we've been on very limited time, but the buses always look fun, and now we know they are. Great way to get an overview of the city, and we had unseasonably warm weather and very little rain. We got off to traipse around Greenwich Village and Soho and do some shopping. Because I'd been madly finishing Laini's Ladies before leaving, I didn't have the time to research stuff to do, so we mostly just winged it. What would you say are the best shopping streets in New York for fun, unusual shops -- not chain stores and not super-expensive clothing boutiques, that is. Soho has some good stores and street vendors, but mostly seems to be really pricey designer boutiques for $1000 jackets, etc, and that's not my thing. Bleeker St. in Greenwich Village was probably the best shopping we came across.

An apothecary's cat:
And an apothecary's doll (I'd have liked to buy her):
Cheese:
Robots!
This was a great vintage toy store where we got rocket ship pajamas from the 1950s that will fit Clementine in, like, 4 years (we couldn't resist them!), and also some great nursery wall art cut-outs of a choo-choo train that I can't show you until the box arrives (we had to mail ourselves all our shopping, being already way over the limit with packing). That's just an assortment of Village shopping. We also got some great stuff from sidewalk jewelry vendors in Soho. Oh, and the holiday vendors in Bryant Park were fun too. Suggestions for next time?

Check out 30 Rock, lost in the fog:

We had dim sum in Chinatown with my best friend from when I was five years old and her beautiful family . . .

(See how the kids are eating hot dogs? That's a testament to how much they loved the dim sum :-)

We walked partway across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Jim saw an old friend too, and here he is, signing his book on the bridge!
The beautiful Woolworth Building, downtown:

We meant to go up the Empire State Building at some point, but didn't find the time, but we did jump off the City Sights bus in the East Village for some Indian food in the weirdly lit and tiny Panna II, with the Bollywood music a'blaring.

Clementine helped us sign at the amazing Books of Wonder . . .
and she crashed a sales meeting at Scholastic . . .
There she is with Sheila Marie, publicist extraordinaire.

Overall, it was easy seeing the city with a baby. We had to take the subway (though it's legal to take young children in cabs without a car seat, we of course didn't feel safe doing so), but the subway is super, if loud.
We just popped her in the bjorn and carried a minimum of gear: a pared down diaper-changing kit that consisted only of a few extra diapers and a travel-size pack of wipes slipped into Jim's [manly] shoulder bag, plus an extra outfit just in case. In case of what, you ask? Well.

Changing tables being few and far between, we perfected the art of the "lap diaper change," which is fine except that it is really a two-parent operation, especially when, um, there is poop involved. And you are in a tiny bathroom in a nice restaurant. And the poop has, um, traveled . . . far from its place of origin . . . all the way up to the shoulder blades . . . and you run out of wipes . . . and discover you forgot the extra outfit . . . ha ha ha ha ha! Yes indeed, if that had been a solo diaper change, it would have been tragic, but with both of us maneuvering, it was just funny, like we kind of wish we had it on video :-) Lap diaper changes were also effected in the ice skate rental shop at Rockefeller Center and in the dingy Times Square dining room of a KFC (no, we didn't eat there!), among other spots. When I did actually come across a changing table, at the New York City Public Library, I was so shocked I left my purse behind, complete with wallet, new iphone, and even a touristy envelope o'cash. It made it to the lost 'n' found just how I left, thank you New York.

At the library, Clementine got to be a wild thing.
Which was perfect, considering the feral sounds she's taken to making lately.

We met the famous lions . . .
Not to mention the famous bear . . .
Yes, the original Winnie the Pooh animals reside at the library, along with the original Betsy Bird, librarian, blogger, writer, goddess o' books:
And there are awesome murals in the children's room. Obzoive:



I think it would be wonderful to have an annual tradition of going to New York in early December for the lights and window displays and holiday shopping. Maybe this will be a first annual trip, who knows? Only next year will tell. Of course, I don't expect to have quite such a reason for going to New York again in late November as I had this time. No, I have not forgotten about the National Book Awards! All those events will be in the next post. This one is long enough as it is. Whew!

Oh wait, one last thing. We revisited the Mark Teague dinosaur at the wonderful Scholastic store in Soho, with Clementine on the outside this time! Now:
Six months ago:
Cheers!