I Love Your Blog awards

Here's a big thanks to fellow Oregonian writer, Lisa Schroeder, for awarding me an "I love your blog" award over at her group author blog, author 2 author. Thank you! I've been wanting to make special mention of some favorite blogs, so here's a great opportunity!


Here's how this works:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog.

2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you (as shown above).

3) Nominate at least seven other blogs.

4) Add links to those blogs on your blog.

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

So, I get to pass on the love to some of my favorite blogs. In no particular order, here are some that I read the most, along with a few new discoveries.

Category I -- Glimpse of the World
Maryam in Marrakesh -- an American living in Morocco and building a dreamhouse and guesthouse with her architect husband -- and it is so fabulous. She also travels all over Africa and the Middle East and even Central Asia for work, so you get glimpses into amazing exotic places. Oh yes, and she has a book in the works, to be filled with her gorgeous photos.[photo by Maryam]

Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping -- the amazing "Frida" has begun a new blog, in which she is posting stories from her two years spent as a human rights worker in Afghanistan. She is home now in New Zealand, and these stories are her way of easing into writing a book about her experiences. It's still new, so you can just scroll down and start reading from the bottom up. [photo by Frida]

Granny Smith -- I discovered Granny Smith's blog because she is a regular contributor to Sunday Scribblings, and whenever I see her name listed, it's the first one I click. You just never know what fabulous life experience she is going to reveal next -- the most recent one was that she and her husband owned a coffee farm in Paraguay in the 1950s! As I recall, among many other things, she also helped run a crisis line in Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, helping young people who'd come to San Francisco. Oh yeah, and she plays the guitar, and her father explored the Amazon in the 1910's!

Category II -- Authors
There are just too many to list, but here are a few:

Shannon Hale -- brilliant writer and very cool person, her blog Squeetus is a great peek into her writing life, her growing success, and her thoughts on all manner of things, mostly writing/reading related.

Sarah Rees Brennan -- an Irish author whose first book is coming next year; you may have heard of her as the Harry Potter fanfic author who landed a cauldron o' gold type deal for her first YA series. Hey, she's got a big following, and though I haven't read her fanfic, her blog is both really really funny and a great insight into the publishing process of a first-time author.

Two author blogs I've just recently discovered that have been highly entertaining belong to:

Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, a big fat fantasy tome that is perched upon my nightstand.

Carrie Harris, whose first novel is in the process of being sold or shopped by her fabulous agent Kate Schafer, aka Daphne Unfeasible. A recent debate on Carrie's blog went beyond the usual vampire/werewolf-lover question to ask something much more important: Are you a Legolas person, or an Aragorn person? (The secret is that Aragorn people -- like me -- tend to fall in the werewolf camp, while Legolas lovers are more likely to be vampire groupies. Funny, noh?) Let's just take a moment here. . .



Okay, enough of that. Where were we?

Oh yes, two author blogs I always check up on are:

the Disco Mermaids, home to Jay, Robin, and Eve, whose tight-knit critique group and close friendship I envy (not to mention their costumes!)

Justine Larbalestier, author of the 'Magic or Madness' trilogy. With the recent discovery that Justine despises not only coffee but also chocolate, I shall have to reconsider the regularity of my visits there. Just kidding. Sort of.

And lastly among author blogs are two writers at work at novels I cannot wait to read:

Steph, who has a habit of illustrating her posts with photos of "hot British men" (though she is apparently right now copying me and using cute baby animals instead).

Tone at Lille Fnugg -- I don't know what that means but I like the way it sounds; she's in Norway, but writes in English, and her posts are full of such magic, and her teasing mentions of her books sound so sparkly and delightful, I can't wait to read it! But alas, I fear that the novel is in Norwegian. Blast.

cute baby weasels, not convulsing

Look how cute -- a baby weasel! It doesn't look so savage, really, as the weasels in that illustration I posted a few days ago. I randomly came across these on some blog that I have already forgotten, and I had to swipe them, for the weasel coincidence of it all.

As for "weasel convulsions," I haven't been experiencing any for this reason: I have been writing by hand in a notebook because a) my computer made it too easy to "check" political headlines and get involved in blog discussions. Oy! And b) my mad perfectionist-brain got me in some kind of strait jacket and I was being way too persnickity with young "newt," who is at a stage in life that he really needs to, umm, you know, play with the weasels. {What??}

So: notebook. Scribble scribble scribble. Oh, and let me be clear this is NOT happening in my lovely collaged journal from the last post. My Clairefontaine notebooks are just for ideas and notes and weird and obscure nature and history and folklore facts, like this:

Inanna, ancient Sumerian goddess of sex and warfare; could be found swaggering around streets and dragging young men out of taverns to. . . well, you know.

Why did I write that one down? I don't know. I see that in this notebook I also noted the interesting fact that a child had just walked past my window wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. Don't you think that is interesting? Anyway, so the messy scrivvle-scravvlings are not happening in the pretty notebook, but in this polka-dotted spiral jobby from Borders. They have good spiral notebooks at Borders, fyi, with lots of pretty covers, plastic-reinforced, and with thick-enough paper, not like the crud back-to-school type notebooks. I know I'm a bit of a nutcase about notebooks, but it is what it is. I will also only write with one kind of pen: a Pilot Precise rolling ball, V5 extra fine. Any color, preferably many colors.

Sooo, last night on the treadmill, as so often happens on the treadmill, I was thinking about "newt" and I got a gazillion ideas, gazillion, and I had to hold them all in my head until I got home and furiously wrote them all down. So exciting. I love ideas, and I love it when they snick, and I love dreaming up situations that make me go, "Ooh, cool." Why doesn't everybody write? I'm not saying they should. God, no. There are enough of us already.

Oh, and look at the baby otter:
So cute!!! Steph illustrates her posts with hot British men, and I use baby animals. What does that say about us, I wonder. (She has some more good -- and slightly unusual -- revision advice posted, by the way.)

Dessert with LK Madigan; Powells attacks me with beautiful books, and a new journal cover is collaged

Yesterday afternoon I had the treat of meeting a local YA writer who I first met over the blogs: LK Madigan (cool name for an author, noh?), whose first novel, Flash Burnout, is coming out next fall. I love meeting bloggers in person, and I love talking to other writers, and best of all, I love meeting writer-bloggers in dessert restaurants for chai latte and plum tart! {In defense of my diet, I had a small bowl of '0 point vegetable soup' for dinner, and did a very sweaty hour of cardio late last night!} It was really fun talking to Lisa about our respective writing journeys, where we're at with our current books, and stuff like that. And when I got there, one of the first things I noticed was an ARC of this book, which I just preordered the other day, sitting on the table. I guess Lisa and Sarah are in a group of Debut 2009 authors together, and read each other's ARCs and write notes to each other in them. How fun!

[Reminder: Kidlit Blogger's Conference: Sept 27, just around the corner. If you haven't signed up yet, do now. Come, come. Jone and I worked out the schedule the other day and I think it's going to be awesome. Debates are in progress where next year's will be. Definitely East Coast, possibly D.C.]

On the way to our meeting at Sweet Masterpiece**, I had to walk by Powell's, and a powerful whirlwind (it may have been a djinn, come to think of it) swept me into the store where I found myself, to my utter bewilderment, buying a travel guidebook to Morocco, and a lovely and expensive bestiary called Fabulous Beasts and Demons. (I am a sucker for books about beasts and demons, especially fabulous ones. No, really. You should see my bookshelf.) Both these books are research for the new, weird thing, which shall henceforth be called NWT, or ooh, how about "Newt." It has nothing to do with newts (yet, anyway; you never know), but this will be our secret codeword.

So, the other night, I didn't feel like writing anymore, so I ambled upstairs to my sadly underused art space in the studio Jim and I share (and in which he is mostly alone these days, as I mutter in my writing room, downstairs), and I occupied myself with collaging the cover of my "Newt" notebook. You know about me and my Clairfontaine journals? Well, I'd been writing in this one for a whole week with its plain boring cover, and I was just about fed up with all the plainness and boringness. So, propped up by my most recent Powell's purchases:
(There was a title on it too, which is not Newt, but I sneakily obscured it, so nobody who is a faster writer than me can steal it.) Oh, and this collage came semi-pre-collaged. I cut out the lady face and body from an old collage zine called "Play," and I painted on her a little and put a butterfly on her head. I think she's real purdy.

**looking up the link to Sweet Masterpiece, I see one of the reviewers tried a dessert there that was a hazelnut dark chocolate fondue with a side of bacon that was so good it made them want to cry. It does sound good, too, doesn't it? In a super decadent way?

Weasel convulsions

"Weasel" is a pretty good word, noh? Say "weasel convulsions." It's fun. But what on earth am I talking about? Sigh. More writing malarkey. See, when I admitted, via email, to a friend, that I had written 5000 words yesterday, she accused me of being a robot. So, I had to explain NOH NOH NOH, not at all, you see, because they were quite possibly the worst 5000 words in the history of human language. That, if weasels had been convulsing on my keyboard, the results would surely have been more coherent. So, suddenly, weasel convulsions is my new term for that kind of carefree, lovely writing forward into the unknown. Because, it was lovely, no matter what the result. It was like my fingers had gotten out of prison and were tapdancing happily around the keyboard. Whatever the result was, it was fun. And really, I exaggerate. The result wasn't that bad. Just, not one of the tight little straight-jackety things I sometimes produce, that are sort of like the rich children you feel sorry for, because they are so tidy and shiny and afraid to move? You know? This is my rolling-in-the-mud child. You wouldn't take him into a nice restaurant, you know, but he's got spirit.

Blab blab blab.

What kind of writer are you? Do weasels convulse on your keyboard? I'm trying to become a little bit freer, for the fun -- at least in first drafts. Exploratory drafts.

There's a term I love, that Jane Yolen used in the book The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Fantasy Writers, in which she describes that kind of delicious writing forth into the unknown as "flying into the mist." Very lovely, something I have a hard time doing. I keep wanting to fan the mist away and see the whole landscape. Some writers like to discover the story as they go; some like to know it all in advance, some fall somewhere in between. How about you?
Oh yeah, did I mention? Weasels are scary and deadly. Get your rabies shots. And do not take baths with them when they are angry.

New weird thing, and miscellany

The writing of the weird new thing progresses newly and weirdly. Still fabulous fun. Strange things are happening involving marionettes, chinese swords, rosary beads, and a beautiful boy who is half-Maasai. In Venice.

A writing friend entrusted me with the first chunk of her book, and I gobbled it up and loved it, much to my delight. Recently another writing friend let me read her manuscript, and it too was wonderful, and I hope both of these books will be published without further ado. They couldn't be more different. One has kissing (well, not so far, but I have faith), the other cannibalism. Both rock.

Now. I swear this blog isn't going to be all politics. But Maureen Johnson has an awesome post up about Bristol Palin and teen pregnancy. Check it out. (Grrr. I left a long comment and Firefox ate it.)

And this is just too funny: my mom got pulled over yesterday by a cop (some right-turn issue) and right away he belittled her for the Obama sticker on her car! My mom is not one to keep quiet, even in situations like this, and she argued politics with the cop for 20 minutes right there -- ha ha! -- and he still did not give her a ticket. As it happened, she was right at that moment on her way to Obama campaign HQ to bring the volunteers cookies and milk. Awww. Isn't that awesome? I mean, she is a volunteer too, not just a maker of cookies for the volunteers, but it so momly for her to bring them cookies.

Grrr.

Remember that really wonderful writing day I had? How butterflies were circling my head like a crown? Well, it was followed by two interruption-filled days of half-hearted futzing, and I have barely made any more headway with it. Because that's just how I roll. ARG! I hate having to go anywhere in the morning. It rilly rilly screws up my day. I want to start with a bowl of cereal (Organic Morning Light) and a bunch of blueberries, read a chapter of something while I eat, maybe a story from the new Realms of Fantasy, and then move to the writing room with a cup of coffee as big as my head, and get started.

But yesterday I went to meet Alexandra at a meeting (to which she did not show up), and after that I had to go to the a) bank, b) drug store, c) grocery store, d) library. And then, today got started with a trip to the dermatologist, where the doctor acted very Republican about my hair ("Whoa! Did you do that on purpose? Or was it a mess-up?"), and then cut me with sharp instruments. Wheeee! And all this Sarah Palin malarkey has been throwing me off, all my frustration makes it hard to concentrate. So, the up and down rollercoaster of writing days has dipped into a trough, but I'm hoping to pull it out tomorrow, because I don't have to be anywhere in the morning! Or afternoon! Or evening! Wheeeeeeee!!!

(By the way, have the days been shortened? I could swear there have been about six hours in a day lately.)

You may not be following the politics, and you may be sick of me already, so I'm just putting this at the end, but if you're here, you just might like books, so you should know that Sarah Palin is a book-banner. One of those people who's all Second Amendment, no First Amendment. One of her first acts on becoming of mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was to fire the City Librarian. As far as I've heard, this was a preemptive strike, because she didn't believe the librarian was "behind her." Now. . . what reason could a mayor of a small town have to need the librarian to be "behind her"? Uh, yeah. She tried to get books banned, and threatened at least one other librarian with firing.

If you're interested (BE INTERESTED!. This is the world. This is important.), CBS News has posted a breakdown of lies in Palin's speech. It's very enlightening. For example, she claimed that "families of special needs children. . . will have a friend in the White House" -- but the truth? As governor of Alaska, Palin slashed budgets for schools for special needs kids by 62%. [!!!!!] They lie to your face. To your face. HERE is the Obama campaign rebuttal, with a very thorough breakdown of the many, many lies.

And lastly, for the day, a really awesome piece from the Daily Show. Enjoy!

when writing is the best thing in the world, even better than chocolate and trips to Italy

I had the most beautiful, brilliant, joyous writing day yesterday! Every word was sheer fun. The air crackled with ideas so that my hair got static and stood on end. A shimmering window opened in the air and butterflies flew in. A polite goblin brought me a key on a golden pillow. I don't know what it opens yet, but I'm sure it's something awesome.

(Funny, when I began that sentence, I didn't know what the goblin would be doing, but the key thing came out of nowhere, and it really expresses how I feel about what I wrote yesterday: I don't know what it "opens" but I'm sure it's going to be awesome.)

As I mentioned yesterday, I was planning to write just for fun. Not on the project I've been trying to jumpstart, but something random that had just sprung glimmering into my head. I had been a little down about lack of inspiration on the other project, and just wanted to write in the spirit of the Sunday Scribblings I have done that began as tiny random seeds and grew into strange and wonderful vines. All the Lips Touch stories, and others: the one about the mischievous ghost girl, or the girl who learns things from ghosts; the one about the witch-child who put her soul in the collection plate and then turned indian-giver and snatched it back. The one about gentlemen sending their phantoms to the homes of the girls they love, and girls who dance with overwintering angels at the beach. And the earliest one of all, from way back when: about the eleventh god, and bats, and chocolate.

Weird little ideas that I love every second of. Well, that's what I needed yesterday, and that's what I got. Oh joy, joy, joy. Skip, skip, skip. I love what I wrote yesterday. LOVE IT. So, of course, I'm going to keep on with it.

I have ideas, but they're not strict. There's such a joy in letting serendipities occur, and when I'm really following a plan, that's less likely to happen. Usually, that's just how I have to write, though. The Dreamdark books require a certain level of organization that sometimes wars against serendipity. Finding a balance is a challenge. I haven't figured out how to write a novel in the spirit of a Sunday Scribbling. I don't know if this new story wants to be a story, a novella, a novel, what. I don't know. For now, I'm just going to play. I know if it keeps growing, it will get harder. But that's a worry for another day.

This reminds me about the need for PLAY in creativity. There's much WORK in creativity too, but sometimes I let the work smoosh out the play, and I need to get it back. You know, call it like a kitty. "Here, kittykittykittykittykitty!" Bribe it with morsels.

Oh! Speaking of morsels, this morning I was running some errands and right out in front of the drug store, when I went to my car, a scene of life and death was playing itself out right at my rear bumper: a hawk, a big, gorgeous hook-beaked hawk was in the act of murdering a pigeon, and when I surprised it, it dropped its and flew up into a tree. Pigeon, poor little lunchmeat, twitched a bit then died, and the hawk watched hawkishly and waited for me to leave.

I also saw a gorgeous Rhodesian Ridgeback without a ridge. I didn't know that happened! Her owner said she was the only one in the litter without one. Mutant.

Scavenging for wonderful

Well, I didn't get much writing done yesterday, because of my political rant and the need I felt to keep leaving myself post-length comments all day. Whew. Now for something completely different.

I was inspired by Tone's post to think of three wonderful things to start off the day. Not being in Oslo where apparently weather vanes run away to have adventures, and one can just look out the window and see dragons passing like great shadows beneath the surfaces of lakes, I will probably have to just make up wonderful things this morning. Let's see.

1. sitting down with a big cup of coffee and a really fun idea that has got my fingers twitching to start writing something unexpected. Just for fun, just for today. (Maybe. Then again. . .) There are wishes in it, and strings of teeth, and a scar from a bullet wound, and blue hair in pigtails, and mean widows who would probably taste like wild boar sausage if you were to eat them. Which of course you wouldn't. Gross.

2. discovering a nice new snack! It is very bright green, and translucent, and is served in dainty dishes and eaten with a spoon. The recipe was brought by aliens back in the 1950s, and was intended as a weapon against humanity -- they had already used it to depopulate six other planets and take over, but to their dismay, humans were not only immune to its toxicity, but they liked it. Especially the children. Because it jiggled.

3. geese who fly really, really high. I think there must be a reason they go so high. Perhaps they are ferrying souls to the cloud cities. They are the only means of passage. Goose taxis to heaven.

Thanks, Tone. (If you haven't visited her blog, you're in for a treat. I think her imagination is in my top-five favorite imaginations of all time!)

Do you want to share some wonderfulness too? Tag, you're it!

[Update] WAIT. HOLD THE WONDERFUL.
I wanted to move on to wonderful, but it's not possible, not with what's happening in the Twin Cities right now at the Republican convention. Protesters are being savagely beaten and arrested -- illegally, brutally. This should not be happening in America, people. Please, sit up and pay attention to this and care. We have a legal right as American citizens to protest. We have a right to organize! Peaceful left-wing political groups and student houses were being preemptively stormed by SWAT teams even days ago. Houses. Offices. Groups like Food Not Bombs. Now, students are being bludgeoned on the streets. There's tear gas and rubber bullets. F***.

This very unsettling video is of the arrest of Democracy Now producer Nicole Salazar, an accredited reporter with every legal right to be there, with a prominent press pass that should have made the police leave her alone. You can hear her screaming "Press! Press!"

Here's video of the arrest of her boss, Amy Goodman, when she went to try to find out why her producers had been violently arrested. If you don't know who she is, click her name. The point here is that both she and her producers were accredited journalists with all the appropriate press passes, fully sanctioned by the RNC (not to mention the Constitution) to be there. At the time of her arrest here, Amy Goodman was even wearing her security badge from the floor of the convention; police took it away to shut her up (without issuing a receipt for it, which is illegal) and did not return it later. For this incident, she has been charged with a misdemeanor. Her producers, for filming the protests, were bloodied, man-handled, arrested, had their camera batteries taken away, and have been charged with felony riot counts. Yes. In America.

Talking about the arrest:

In other video, police at press conferences are denying that credentialed journalists are being arrested. They lie to your face, people. When dissent is not allowed, when media is repressed, this is dictatorship. The Bush Administration has been squelching protest for years, and so many Americans don't seem to care. There is so much hatred on the Right toward "hippie peaceniks" -- and a vicious kind of Roman Coliseum delight in the repression of dissent. A wonderful local broadcaster, Thom Hartmann, reported from the Twin Cities today that he saw Republican conventioneers applauding as a student had his head stomped into the ground by riot police. With minor exceptions, these have been peaceful protests turned into chaos by police brutality and tear gas.

Read HERE for a good play-by-play of what's been going on with the protests.

This pulled from dailycos. READ THIS:
"As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice [see update below], seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry."

People, if the major national media is choosing not to show you this, look for it elsewhere. In the age of the internet, the news is there to be found, even if the corporate media chooses not to show it.

A little slice of rant. . .

Well, I know I said I felt a political rant coming on, but I think it is still ripening. I'll just say for now that the Democratic convention was wonderfully inspiring -- not just Obama, but so many of the speeches, including John Kerry's, which the networks didn't even broadcast, and Bill Clinton's-- and Hillary's, of course -- and Teddy Kennedy's, and many more. I was moved to see Obama's uncle, a WWII vet who was one of the soldiers who liberated Buchenwald; I loved seeing the two adorable Obama girls sitting beside their lovely, intelligent mother; the crowd was awesome, the viewership was astounding (more viewers than an American Idol finale -- Halleluja! There's hope for America!) HOPE. The message was hope. I will watch as much of the Republican convention as I can stand, and I'll bet you this: if the Democratic convention was about hope, the Republican convention will be about fear. And mockery. I wonder what they'll make fun of this year. Do you remember how in 2004 they wore cutesy "purple heart band-aids" to mock John Kerry's military service? That still blows my mind. The way they turned Kerry's service to his country into a joke -- and not just his, but that of every other American soldier ever wounded in combat. How did they get away with that?

Here's one gleeful conventioneer four years ago, sporting the cute accessory. Nice. If Democrats mocked the purple heart, Republicans would savage them. They still get riled up about Jane Fonda, for god's sake, and yet they think it's fine and dandy to mock a Vietnam vet's service as long as he's a Dem? And how about this: if it was Democrats who'd outed Valerie Plame, Republicans would have crucified them. Can you even imagine how that would have gone? And yet. . . where was the outrage? What would a Republican have to do to outrage the rank & file?

[Hey look! I found my rant!]

I just got my new Sierra Club Magazine** in the mail today, and there's an article in it called "Profiles in Courage" about the hundreds of dedicated career employees of agencies such as the EPA, NOAA, BLM, National Forest Service, Toxic Substance & Disease Registry and more, who were forced out of their jobs by the Bush Administration because they were, well, doing their jobs. You've heard stories about petroleum lobbyists hired by the Bush Administration to change the language in scientists' reports on climate change? Well, there's been so, so much of that going on, and so much more. So much. The cases listed in the article are just a fraction. Why don't people care more?

And why aren't people talking about the "suicide epidemic" among returning Iraq War vets? Did you know that the VA's head of mental health has revealed statistics that some THOUSAND vets are attempting suicide every MONTH? And did you know that John McCain voted against increasing health care funding for soldiers in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007? You can see a detailed listing of his votes on veterans' healthcare funding HERE. (Note: voted against funding counseling for veterans with mental disorders.)

Did you know that "Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America" give John McCain a "D" rating (and that does not stand for "dynamite") -- Obama gets a "B." Other organizations: "Vietnam Veterans of America" and "Disabled American Veterans" also give Obama their support by an overwhelming margin.

Any American who is considering voting for McCain because "he supports the troops" -- it is a lie, plain and simple. Few senators support them less than he does. This year he even voted against giving adequate rest time between 15-month deployments!

Back to the Republican convention: there has been speculation that Bush and Cheney will not speak at it -- and perhaps not even McCain -- because they are so busy defending Louisiana from hurricanes. Alexandra has asked me to remind you what President Bush and John McCain were doing on August 29, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans:
They were celebrating McCain's birthday. Of course. What else would the president be doing on a day like that? Reading "The Pet Goat"?

Here, just for fun, is Bush the next day, August 30, 2005, when it was abundantly clear to the nation and the world that the United States was in the midst of the worst natural disaster in its history, that a major American city was drowning:


And here, in this video, witness McCain's glibness about Bush's absurd appointment of Michael Brown -- the commisioner of the International Arabian Horse Association -- as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and how that all panned out for the residents of New Orleans:
Soooo funny, John! No Arabian horses, maybe, but 1,836 people died, not including the 705 missing. Hyuck hyuck.
[By the way, one of the whistle-blowers mentioned in the Sierra Club article was Christopher de Rosa, toxicology director for the Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, who was removed from his position after filing a report on formaldehyde contamination in the FEMA trailers in which Katrina evacuees were housed.]

Let me just segue from there to a few of my favorite things about Sarah Palin.

1) She is not merely pro-life. She is opposed to abortion in any situation, including rape or incest. Which means that if it were up to her, women would be forced to carry their rapists' babies to term. Nice. You know, even Romanian courts recently decided to let a 11-year-old victim of incest/rape get an abortion.

2) Governor Palin instigated an illegal "wolf bounty" program, whereby hunters would be paid $150 per wolf slaughtered (much of the slaugher done from helicopters); they tried to get around the illegality of bounties by claiming the cash was to offset the cost of fuel for the copters! Oh, and hunters were paid for bringing in the wolves' left forelegs.

Who wouldn't want to kill these:

Those are just a few of my favorite things about her. And did I mention she's a global warming disbeliever? just what the world needs right now.

It's late. I have much more rant in me, but for some reason my computer is getting all slow, so I'll suspend rant for now. It's just so hard once you get started. One terrible abuse of power leads to another instance of gross negligence or corportate cronyism, leads to another, to another. One's head could explode.

If you didn't get a chance to watch Obama's speech, here it is. It's 45 minutes long, but it ought to be seen by all Americans. Really!

**[I highly recommend Sierra Club membership; the magazine is a great way to stay informed about current issues, plus your membership will go towards things like saving Sequoia National Monument from logging -- a recent victory.]]

smart people on fantasy

Some interesting reads on the subject of fantasy and genre fiction:

-- First, an interview in the LA Times with Michael Chabon, on the "ghetto-ization" of genre fiction. Yeah, what he said.

-- Second, a post at the Tor blog by Jo Walton, about how she hates fantasy though she loves fantasy. I'm on board with that too. Too many of the books I pick up, I wish were better. The comments to this post, by the way, have great book recommendations (a certain sweet husband even recommendation this faerie book you may have heard of. . .)

If you missed it yesterday, please scroll down to my interview with Laurel Snyder, who is having a glorious year with TWO books coming out into the world. Hurray for Laurel!

And tomorrow, I think my political dam is going to burst and I will have to write about the Democratic convention, the swell of hope in my breast, and oh yeah, about McCain's female-vote-grubbing choice of the pro-life, Creation-spouting, wolf-killing, polar-bear-hating, grizzly-pelt-sporting, kill-everything-for-oil governor of Alaska for veep. Not that they're going to get elected. I mean, come on, country. Do not plunge me into despair, please please.

Please.

Special Guest: Laurel Snyder

Today I am pleased to welcome author Laurel Snyder, whose book Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains came out two days ago. She also has a picture book coming out in a few months, so this is a really good year!!

I asked Laurel a few questions:

-- You have two books coming out in the next few months -- congratulations!! Can you tell us about them?

I know! I'm about to die of excitement!

Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains is a kind of fairy-tale novel, about a snippity milkmaid named Lucy and a clumsy prince named Wynston who are best friends. When Wynston is forced to begin the process of Queening (looking for a bride) Lucy takes exception, and runs away, to look for her mom (she's one of those semi-orphans that fairy tales are full of). The book is a little bit about class (Lucy is too "common" to marry) and about honesty, but mostly it's a romp, full of silly little songs.

Inside the Slidy Diner is a picture book with the most sumptuous art (by Jaime Zollars) you've ever seen -- all collaged thrift-store ephemera (just your kinda thing!). It's about a lonely little girl named Edie, who lives in a very creepy diner, full of bugs and strange dishes like "lumps and dumplins." She lives there because once, long ago, she stole a lemon drop.

(I am very intrigued by both descriptions, and can't wait to see more of the Slidy Diner art! And the lemon drop thing -- love that!)

--What has your journey to publication been like? How did you start writing for children -- is that what you always wanted to do?

It is! Only I forgot for a little while and pretended to write just for grownups. I went off to grad school and learned to use big words to say simple things, and that was nice, but while I was there I started writing books for kids too. At last my mentor, Marvin Bell, convinced me to get serious about Scratchy Mountains and finish it, send it out.

My publication path has been crazy lucky. I basically had both of these books pulled from slush, but in the case of the novel they first rejected it, and then I sent a revision, and they asked me to revise on spec. And THEN I sold it.

And weirder-- in the case of the picture book, an editor lost it in her email, and then emailed me a year later when she stumbled on it cleaning out her inbox. I got this astounding email that basically just said, "I never really read this until now. Is it still available?"

Um. Yes!!!!!

-- You're a mom -- how have you made time for your writing? Do you have any advice for other moms of young children who want to write? Any secrets?

I *am* a mom! And it is wonderful and it is crazy and I never ever get to write any more. I'm very very lucky I didn't sell anything for so long, so I had a backlog of things to send out. That's been a surprisingly nice thing, because it keeps me feeling like I *am* working when really I'm covered in peanut butter and duplos and babies. Mose is two and a half, and Lewis is one, and I'm taking them on the road with me this fall, to some festivals and bookstores. That should be a laugh!

I guess the biggest piece of advice I have for other mom-writers is the same advice I give myself, which I have trouble taking. That you cannot judge the worth of the time you spend working in dollars. I tend NOT to make time for my writing because, in essence, it doesn't pay for itself. But for me, writing is something I really need to do. To feel productive, intelligent, adult. When I don't write I go a little crazy, because I feel like a schlub. This is NOT to say that being a mom is not a full time job. I have a friend who makes it into high art. But I'm not that mom. Loving my kids is the most important work I do, but writing is what makes me feel like me. So really -- we should all make time for it. At the very least, babysitters are (a little bit) cheaper than therapists. If only Blue Cross would cover them!


-- What's the process of writing a novel like for you? In the spirit of my "Not for Robots" site, is writing hard for you?

No. Is that awful? It's very easy to write. But I think that's because I have so little time for it now, it's become a luxury to sit down at the computer. I know that until I had kids it was hard to start. Hard to force myself to sit down.

(Oh no, Laurel! That makes you a robot, and I have this policy against robots. . . Ah, well, I'll make an exception this time!)

--Do you have any advice for other writers on how to finish their projects? Any words of inspiration?

This sounds awful, but IMHO the trick is to set the bar low and revise intensely. Once you have a draft, you'll come back to it, right? Because you've invested too much to quit. So the trick is to get a draft. That can happen with a low bar. It doesn't have to be great, it just has to be. And that can be accomplished by simply writing 100 words a day, or whatever you can do. 100 mediocre words a day will be a novel in two years. 1000 mediocre words a day will be a novel in a few months! You can take it from mediocre to good on the second pass, and from good to awesome of the third. Hopefully. For my next book, Any Which Wall, I had to trash over a hundred pages, just rip the second half clear off and start over!

-- You've got both a picture book and a novel coming out -- what's coming up next?

Oh! I was just talking about it! Any Which Wall is a kind of homage to Edward Eager, a book about four kids during summer vacation in Iowa. They find a magical wall in a cornfield and have all sorts of adventures, with pirates, and in Camelot, and the Wild West... LeUyen Pham is doing some really wonderful art for it!

-- What do you read? And, would you like to recommend any favorite middle-grade or YA novels that you think adults would enjoy?

My favorite books are all old books -- Lewis, Nesbit, Eager, Dahl, Susan Cooper, Ruth M Arthur, so I'm running to catch up now. I like Ellen Potter a ton, and my current favorite book of the year is The Girl Who Could Fly. It's amazing.

-- How long have you been blogging? Why do you do it?

I actually began blogging without a blogging template, using Dreamweaver. That was in 1999 I think. It was during a very bleak time, and I didn't understand how public the web was yet. So I wrote things I shouldn't have, specifically a chronicle of my exes. Thank god it's gone now. But I love it, blogging. It's so different from writing poems and stories. I blog without revising. I let go a bit. I dont worry about it, and for me that's a liberating thing, often a kind of pre-writing.

You can read Laurel's blog HERE, and visit her website HERE. Thank you, Laurel!

Go read these revising tips

Good morning! Check me out. I swore last night I would actually get up at 6 this morning and get back to my old ways and then, when the alarm went off. . . somehow I did. It's a miracle. And here I am, coffee in hand. I have noticed that if I get up at 6, I can get a whole day's worth of work done before lunch. It's amazing. So, here goes!

But first, if a) you're revising a novel, and/or b) you like James McAvoy, get you over to Stephanie's blog for some revising tips, starring. . . James McAvoy! (She's crafty, that one.) And, take note of this: Stephanie is revising her novel. She works full time, so what she does, is she comes home from work in the afternoon, takes a brief nap, then drags herself out of bed to work on her revisions until something like 4:30 in the morning! Her sweet husband pours caffeine down her throat and makes nice meals, and she has cut anything auxiliary out of her life right now. She's determined. (Leave her an encouraging comment. That would be nice.)

Inspiring, no? I remember hearing once how William Faulkner worked long hours, then could be seen with the light on in his window into the wee hours of the night, writing. Because, if you want to write, you write. Today, I am going to try to be one of those people who really writes. This week I've been getting in sort of the minimum each day, but this new 6 am plan is underway! Better stop blogging away my headstart. . .

Adventure: Pickle

Before I get into all things pickle, the marvelous Jolie (of the Western Washington SCBWI) has finally started blogging (after much yapping and wheedling from the rest of us). Yay, Jolie! Today she has just posted a cute coffee-themed interview with moi. It is HERE. (Thanks Jolie!)
Okay, now: pickles!

My friend Chary (pronounced Carrie) and I made pickles last night! It was fun and easy -- but we won't know if they're any good for a few weeks. I'm not really kitchen-girl, but Chary does fancy-shmancy stuff all the time. She makes her own ketchup and mustard, for example, and all kinds of other stuff. Her pantry is a wonderful place of spices and seeds bought in bulk, and if you ever need a vanilla bean on short notice, or some rare salt mined in the kingdom of Faerie, or perhaps some pink food coloring, she's the go-to girl (okay, maybe not faerie salt, but she's got some weird salts). Here are our soon-to-be-pickles in the jar, along with garlic, dill, black pepper, red pepper, bay leaf, and grape leaves.
We sort of followed my grandmother's recipe, but my grandmother wrote it down very vaguely, for people who, you know, know how to make pickles. So we had to improvise a little.

(That reminds me of the mom in Better Off Dead. Remember her? "You like raisins.")

See that bottle in the picture? That's homemade limoncello. We had tiny thimble glasses of it, and it was yummy. Always reminds me of the Amalfi coast! My parents decided they want to make homemade limoncello this year for the holidays. I've thought about doing that in the past, but like I said, I'm not really kitchen-girl.

Despite not being kitchen-girl (and that doesn't mean I don't like to cook, I just am nothing out of the ordinary, and half the time don't think about meals enough in advance to do anything fancy) -- on Sunday I wanted to get a healthy start to the week, so I made a big pot of vegetable soup, and I chopped a boatload of veggies and put them in a tupperware for salads throughout the week -- now all we have to do is stick some lettuce in a bowl and top with this assortment of: celery, jicama, fennel, radish, carrot, tri-color peppers. Then there are sprouts, chickpeas, and corn in the fridge, and sliced turkey or whatever: instant giant lunch salad. Voila.

I've been being awfully lazy with my goals lately. There's this period after accomplishing a big goal (like writing Silksinger) where I naturally fall into a sort of "whew, that's finally done, I never have to work again" routine for a few days or weeks. But this goes much deeper than that -- during the trying months of Silksingering, I didn't go to the gym; during the difficult stuff I went through in the spring, I finished gaining back the weight that I had gleefully lost several years ago. Anyway, it was high time to get strict with myself. A long time ago, in the early days of my blog I went through a similar post-book laziness -- I wrote about it HERE, and I see it is what motivated Sunday Scribblings! (Well, Meg had her own motivation, but that is when we connected and said, "Let's do this.") And the Lips Touch stories, of course, all originated from the early days of Sunday Scribblings! So, you see, good can come of laziness -- or rather, good can come of the gathering oneself back together and getting back on track. There is solid comfort in making a plan; satisfaction in sticking to it, and joy in meeting short-term and then long-term goals.

So, here's to: (1) health, (2) getting a good start on the new book, and (3) being more on-the-ball with creative marketing this year, rather than hiding and watching through my fingers as my new books come out (which is kind of what I did with Blackbringer.)

Oh, and here is an eensy little portion of Chary's hat collection:


(Don't forget to welcome Jolie!!)

A mini slew of sci-fi: Richard K. Morgan, Nancy Farmer, Mary E. Pearson & M.T. Anderson

I've just been reading some sci-fi, and it has made me want to read more. There's really nothing like good sci-fi for sort of blowing the doors off your cozy, lazy little world view and making you think.

First off were a pair of YA titles recommended over at 7-Imp. I already mentioned The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson. At the time I said how you'd never know it was sci-fi to look at it. Well, it is. It's a small story that opens like a bud. You go from knowing nothing beyond what the first-person narrator knows -- that she has awakened from a coma -- to bit by bit piecing together the mysteries around her accident and recovery. Why, you may wonder, do her parents seem to be hiding her? Why is her beloved grandmother treating her like a stranger? Read and find out; to say more would spoil that careful unfurling.

If you're familiar with The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, it might tell you something about The Adoration of Jenna Fox to know that 7-Imp drew comparisons between them. Well, I (shockingly) had never read Nancy Farmer, and this particular book, especially, is hard to miss, since you can barely see the cover through the collection of awards seals it has accrued! It's the story of a boy named Matt growing up in the country of Opium -- the strip of land between the US and what used to be Mexico. You see, a collective of powerful opium farmers brokered a deal with the US government: basically, let us exist, and a) we will not sell our drugs in your country, and b) we will prevent illegal immigrants from crossing your border. So the US has happily turned a blind eye to what is happening inside the land of Opium, and it is not pretty. This is a world of cloning gone awry, and brain implants that can turn humans into a zombie labor force, and it's the story of a boy claiming his own life, in spite of what he is, or what he isn't.

I was especially struck by the depiction late in the book of the devastated Colorado River. Last month we took my niece to see the IMAX movie about the dying Colorado, which is now a mere trickle by the time it reaches Mexico, having been diverted to fill Las Vegas's fountains, among other things.

Feed, by M.T. Anderson makes some creepy understated references to our sick environmental future, too, but in the offhand first-person voice of a teenage boy who has never known anything else. In the world of Feed, you can go to the Moon for spring break, but you can't go to a mountaintop or a beach on Earth. There's nothing left worth seeing. At one point the characters go to visit a "farm" -- and this is no farm with living animals, but miles and miles of cloned meat -- a landscape of meat, like in those awful "Beef -- it's what's for dinner" magazine advertisements that abound right now.

Feed is a creepy book, and like all these others, it points to an exaggerated but not that hard to believe human future. In this case, it's a future in which 80% of Americans have their brains hard-wired as babies with a "feed" so they are on-line all the time. They can talk to their friends the old-fashioned way, or they can chat them, effortlessly sending brain-to-brain text messages. Since they have instant access to any information they might need, school has taken on a whole new meaning -- there's no point learning facts any more. Schools are privately run and geared toward churning out better consumers. In Anderson's vision of this future, the system is absolutely corporate, and advertising drives all. It's a consumer world gone mad, and it's all in your head, all the time. So what happens when one unique young woman decides to f*** with the system? Er, probably nothing good.

[By the way, I don't know if Anderson has ever said so, but I read Violet as an homage to Clarisse in Fahrenheit 451 -- bright young girl born into the wrong times; a sort of symbol of what has been lost. And speaking of Fahrenheit 451, if you haven't reread it in the past decade, do. It was written in 1953, for God's sake, and it's scary-prescient. Get this quote from Bradbury about the message of the book: "I wasn't worried about censorship -- I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV." HA! Like that could ever happen. . .]

In any case, I found Feed deeply sad and affecting, and there were so many, many times when I felt the *snick* of ugly truth about our species and the direction we are headed.

Those are all YA titles above, but this one is for grown-ups. I've never read Richard K. Morgan before, but Jim is a fan of the Altered Carbon books, and when Thirteen (a stand-alone title) arrived in the mail, I idly picked it up and started reading. Well. The short opening chapter is like a hand that reaches out and grabs you by the collar. Just try not to continue reading! Not only is it smart, scary, gross, suspenseful, a little sexy, and filled with truth, it is also really really well written.

So, Richard Morgan is one of those writers who's, you know, smarter than you. (I don't mean you personally, but well, most people, including myself.) You know you're in the clutches of a superior intellect, and that superior intellect isn't going to hold your hand and tell you any backstory to ease you into things. You're just dropped into this world, and you have to fend for yourself. It's not that it's a difficult read. But it's not a quick beach-variety read either. You need your brain cells. It's also a fantastic story -- a 22nd-century noir bounty-hunter thriller, if you want to know! Imagine the US has been ripped apart by the Secession of "the Republic" (aka "Jesusland"), and the remaining bits of the country have formed new allegiances. One of the world's great powers is a corporation that controls settlement on Mars, and genetic modification has run rampant, creating new variants of human beings, including the titular "thirteens."

What happens when one highly dangerous "thirteen" returns unexpectedly from internment on Mars to go on a murder spree, and another thirteen, the main character, is hired to hunt him down? I'll tell you what happens: it gets really complex.

{Fans of The Master & Margarita will get a little thrill from the name of a floating city in the book: Bulgakov's Cat. Got to love a writer who references Bulgakov's cat! Makes me want a character with one protruding fang, too.}

I've just learned that Morgan has a fantasy novel coming out in January (it's already out in Britain), and I'm eager to read it. Apparently, these are not going to be Tolkien-variety elves!

I'm happy to get more sci-fi recommendations, if you've got any to give.

Oh, and HERE is an interesting little peek into the sleepaway camp of the literati, at which, if you are a lucky aspiring writer, you may be permitted to schlep pasta for a Great Writer. (Thanks, but no thanks. Give me SCBWI any day!)

Radiohead, Wizards, and writer friends

One of the best parts of being a writer has very little to do with the actual writing: it's meeting other writers! Yesterday, since Jim and I were going to be up in Washington for the Radiohead concert (which was Jim's anniversary present this year), we decided to make a day of it and have lunch with some of our favorite writers & illustrators: the Western Washington SCBWI gang. Here we all are in the atrium of the Grand Central Baking Company. Hi gang!

We first met these folks when we attended their amazing conference two years ago in Seattle, and have since seen them from conference to conference, in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. They are all such kindred spirits I wish they lived right here in Portland so we could get together all the time! Well, this was a good excuse, and it was just the beginning of an awesome day.

After lunch, Jim and I drove over to Renton to visit Nina Hess at the Wizards of the Coast office. Wizards of the Coast, if you don't know, is where Dungeons & Dragons comes from, among many other books and games and properties. Nina is an editor there, and she too is someone we've been lucky to meet through book conferences. Well, she gave us a tour of the office, and we are now convinced she has the funnest office job in the world. Today, for example, the company sponsored a cupcake-decorating competition among its employees. Winning cupcakes were to be professionally photographed and put together into a cupcake calendar. Seriously! (I need one of those!) They have also decorated My Pretty Ponies for fun, and in the designers' nook -- alongside their running game of Project Runway bingo -- they have a full Fashion Plates set from the 70s, and they play with it! The meeting spaces are all named things like "Bat Cave" and "Rivendell," and across the three floors of office space, there are life-size models of stormtroopers and goblins and creepy harlequin clowns and even a giant dragon in the entry way, its wings fanned out. And people are playing D&D at gleaming conference tables. There are books and toys everywhere, and art, art, as far as the eye can see. Art + dragons + creative people. Awesome!

(How cool is it that in the past few weeks we've gotten tours of both Laika and Wizards? It seems like we know a lot of creative people!)

And after that. . . Radiohead!
Now, I like Radiohead, I do. But Jim loves Radiohead, and Jim loves concerts. Don't judge me too harshly, but I'm not really a concert-lover. I, umm, I tend to get a little bored and want to whip out a book and a flashlight (no, Steph, I didn't!). So, getting Jim pit tickets for Radiohead was an act of wifely love. And it was really fun. I haven't been in a "mosh pit" for a long time, but it was certainly nothing like some pits I'd been in in my youth when I did go to concerts a little more regularly (no crazy metal or anything like that, but I did get trod upon by proto-emo's in the Depeche Mode mosh pit as a 14-year-old). This was a very civilized, grown-up concert. Radiohead went on at nine o'clock and ended before midnight. It wasn't insanely loud, my head wasn't ringing afterward, and there was no shoving! How much of an old lady am I that I am talking about volume and etiquette instead of the performance? I know. I am an old lady when it comes to concerts. But I really did enjoy the show -- I've told Jim in the past I don't understand music well enough to get quite what it is everybody raves about when they talk about Radiohead's creativity, etc, not that I didn't like them, I just don't understand music. I am a musical ignoramus. But I feel like I made more of a connection seeing them live. Being so close was cool. They sounded amazing, and they had really cool lights and an arty video backdrop, and their roadies were kept super busy with constant guitar changes and wheeling pianos and stuff out on stage. Thom Yorke wore tight tiny red pants and danced with abandon, and Jonny Greenwood had the greatest floppiest hair in his face, kind of like this (not taken last night):
I don't know how he could see! At one point he played his guitar with a violin bow, at another, he and the other guitarist (not his brother, the other one) drummed along with the drummer and kind of reminded me of taiko drummers, really getting their bodies into it, all synchronized.

So, it was a spectacle. And then came the attempted exodus from White River Amphitheater. Take my advice if you ever go to a show there: go out to your car and cuddle up and fall asleep for two hours. Because you're not getting out of the parking lot before then. Oh my god. This place is out in the country, and only a few sleepy country roads lead to it, so when a concert of 20,000 people lets out. . . there is nowhere for them to go but slowly single-file down the country road. We didn't get out of the parking lot until after 2 am, and Jim wanted to drive home to Portland instead of go to a hotel, so we did. I slept, as I am so good at doing in cars at any hour of the day or night, and Jim drove. But a half-hour shy of Portland he had to sleep, so we pulled over into a rest stop and snoozed for an hour and a half, and finally made it home at 6 am. Oy. That was a long, full day! Today, my energy level was sufficient to watch a movie for research for the new book, which felt deeply decadent!

Twilight Hilarity & Wizard Rock

I can't even imagine how cool it would be as a writer to see your work take on a huge new life beyond your actual words: movies, fan fiction, how about wizard rock? It's amazing. I got crazy-excited when one young reader (hi Lexi!) created a super-cool faerie character who could live in my fictional world. Even to spawn spoofs would be amazing. I got this one from Fuse #8 and couldn't resist reposting it. The first one is the actual Twilight trailer. Watch that first. The second one is such a cute spoof. I love it. I don't know how they kept straight faces!

The real one:

Now the spoof:

Isn't that awesome?

Also, I just read HERE about other cool fan creativity -- the world of Wizard Rock! I knew there were Harry Potter-themed rock bands, but I didn't know there were over 400 of them!!! Steph's husband Jarrod actually got taped and interviewed for MTV for his contribution to the genre. How cool is that?

It is definitely a dream of mine to one day write something that spawns fan fiction. Some day.

Ahh, the muted roar of yokels. . .

Yes, neighborhood Fight Club is back. Just now I looked out the window and two big girls were bravely punching each other in the face and seeming as if they weren't so much enjoying it. I bet.

There are some 50 people in our neighbor's yard, gathered around a makeshift boxing ring. They're drinking and cheering each other on. The first time this happened, we were sort of amazed and appalled. Now, it doesn't seem like that big of a thing. They're not making that much noise, and above the whirring of two big box fans, it just sounds like kind of a muted yokel-roar with the occasional cheery whistle. All in good fun. [snort!]

The heat wave continues, though it isn't as bad today as the past several, and tonight it might even rain. (Please o please.) I have my laptop back with a pristine new keyboard. It is ready for a new book. I tried to download Scrivener, but it doesn't work with my operating system. [frown] Seems I shall be writing another book in Appleworks. That's fine.

Yesterday, with the full force of two fans pointed at me, I worked on the first few pages of my new book. I had already written this first few pages, by the way. Months ago, in a needed interlude from that other book. But. I am a notorious tinkerer with beginnings. Oh, how I labor beginnings! But today I moved forward to the next few pages. Into the scary unknown.

How exactly does one begin a book? It's so hard every time. I recall that the beginning of Silksinger was fraught. Terrifying. And I have been so excited about telling the story I am now setting out to tell, and I am excited, but when you stop daydreaming about something and begin it, well, for me, the terror kicks in. I've been building up this story in my head for months, and now I have to -- ulp! -- write it down?

How do you create a character?

How do you get to the meat of the story, hook a reader in, hopefully fascinate them?

How do you create a convincing world?

I don't know. You just write. You write a lot, and much of it will be bad, and some of it will be good. And you keep the good, and write a lot more. And so on. I wrote Not For Robots as a procrastination tool when I was still in the early stages of Silksinger, and it was very useful to remind myself of things that I know. Like: the story only happens once you start writing it. No matter how complete an outline or synopsis, you don't really know what's going to happen until you're in the story. There is a magic that happens in the act of writing, where it becomes a collaboration between You and Mystery. Story comes down from somewhere, ideas blossom from nowhere, you have help from an invisible, unknowable source. I'm not saying it's really a muse, but it feels like that. I think we get ourselves into a state where a new realm of our brain opens itself up and gets into the act. That's the real muse: an often untapped, mysterious region of our minds where creativity resides. Part of the challenge of writing for me is the seek that region. Some people find it more easily than others. Perfectionists like me have a hard time, because we're like entomologists: we're down on our hands and knees in the meadow of our story, peering at bugs through a magnifying glass. If we can get up and sort of. . . romp in the meadow, then something magical might happen.

That's what I think, anyway. I try to push myself toward that place, and often I fail. I've learned to keep trying, to insist on defeating my worst tendencies. If something doesn't come easily to you, don't take that as a sign that you're not meant to do it. I used to get so defeated by hearing writers gush about how "the characters took over, the story spilled out of me, etc" -- and sure there were times I thought that it is supposed to be like that, and if that wasn't happening to me, I wasn't really a writer. But sometimes now it does happen, because I show up and work for it.

Here's a quote from a dance memoir I just read for research:

"It is safe to live in one's own well-worn groove where one is comfortable with one's chosen limits, chosen measurements of success and failure. But today as I pirouetted straight through the limits, I knew I could do more and then more again. For one triumph leads to another, on to infinity. How far can I go? How far will I go?"
-- Winter Season, by Toni Bentley

I killed a keyboard

I've killed a second keyboard. I killed one with Blackbringer, and now again with Silksinger and Lips Touch. Well, actually, this one isn't dead, it's just shabby. The last one truly died and stopped spacing, etc. This one just looks like someone with claws has been typing on it. There's a weird satisfaction in offing a keyboard. It means I've been typing a lot. I used to get the same strange satisfaction from an empty tube of oil paint. It meant that I'd squoze out all that paint and done something with it! It's the same here -- I squoze out this keyboard's allotment of words, and I need a new one! Yay! (Especially 'yay' since it was under warranty -- that was never true of paint tubes, and oil paint is expensive!)

I hate being parted with my computer while it is in Mac surgery. Hate it. Even though I have this old computer I am on now. I actually killed this keyboard once too, but I didn't write it to death, I only spilled water on it. There's no glory in that!

So, I shall start my new book with a fresh keyboard. A new writing program too, I think. I'm going to try Scrivener. I keep hearing such good things about it, and I need all the help I can get. I've written the last three books on bare-bones Appleworks out of loathing for Word -- but I always have to translate the manuscripts into Word before sending them off to my editor. I hate Word. Can't understand why it is the program. Bleh.

Speaking of 'bleh,' we're having a heat wave. Yesterday it was 102 in Portland. Guh. Today will be the same, but worse -- because the night didn't cool off as much as usual so there wasn't a whole lot of fresh morning air to start with. Wish we could take off for the coast for a few days, but a certain husband has too many assignments. Pthwt. Blessings, at least, for our one air-conditioning unit -- it keeps the studio decent. It was a hand-me-down from a friend of ours who left Portland for Los Angeles to do movie CG stuff, and has since moved on to Croatia where he has fallen in love. Isn't that lovely? An appliance with a history. My writing room, however, does not have a hand-me-down air-conditioner, history or not. I hope it doesn't get too unbearable today. Sigh. Wish we were at the beach.