Welcome to the 2009 Winter Blog Blast Tour! (You may ask yourself, "What's a WBBT?" Click here for the answer.) I'm happy to help kick off this year's events with this interview, in which Courtney Sheinmel considers character names, middle school memories, and cheese, as well as more serious matters, such as AIDS awareness and the effect of divorce on children.

I started things off by talking about her newest book, the positively wonderful novel Positively, which I highly recommend.

Your second novel, Positively, is about a young girl who is HIV-positive, having acquired it from her mother during the pregnancy. The story was inspired, in part, by your involvement with The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which we talked about in our previous interview. When writing Positively, you were no doubt drawing on past experiences and people you've known, some of whom have lost their battles... It must have been a difficult story to write.

Oh yes, writing POSITIVELY was extremely difficult. The narrator, Emmy, has to face life as an HIV-positive teen, and as a motherless daughter. I had some very emotional conversations with kids I know, who have experienced both of those things.

But more than that, sometimes I felt like I didn't have a right to tell the story. After all, my mom is alive and well; I can see her and speak to her whenever I want. And I'm HIV-negative, and don't have to take pills several times a day. I wanted to do right by Emmy, and I didn't want to offend anyone who was living with HIV. One night I had dinner with Elizabeth Glaser's son, Jake. He has been HIV-positive since birth, and when he was ten years old, he lost his mom to AIDS. I told him that I was really scared and that I felt like a fraud. He encouraged me to keep going. He said he believed in me, and believed I could tell the right story. I will always be grateful to him for that.

How did you select the name for your lead character, Emerson, better known as Emmy?

Sometimes I name characters after people I know, but in real life, I don't know anyone named Emerson. It was important to me to give her a name that wasn't attached to any of my friends or family members. I love androgynous names for girls, so I was thinking about Dylan or Blake. My agent suggested I give her a more feminine name, and I was quite pleased with myself when I thought of Emerson, because of the nickname "Emmy." I gave her the middle name Louise, so her dad could call her "Emmy Lou."

I wish I had a meaningful, poetic answer to why her name is Emerson – like it was inspired by a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote. The truth is that I just really love the name, and I think it suits her: it is beautiful, complicated, and unique, and to me Emerson is all of those things.

( Read more... )

Drop by Courtney's website and blog.

Related posts at Bildungsroman:
Interview: Courtney Sheinmel (2008)
Book Review: My So-Called Family by Courtney Sheinmel
Book Review: Positively by Courtney Sheinmel

Visit all of today's tour stops:
Jim Ottaviani at Chasing Ray
Courtney Sheinmel at Bildungsroman
Derek Landy at Finding Wonderland
Mary E. Pearson at Miss Erin
Megan Whalen Turner at HipWriterMama
Frances Hardinge at Fuse #8

Here's the Bildungsroman schedule for WBBT 2009:
Monday, November 16th: Courtney Sheinmel
Tuesday, November 17th: Laurie Faria Stolarz
Wednesday, November 18th: Jacqui Robbins
Thursday, November 19th: Thomas Randall
Friday, November 20th: Joan Holub

View the full schedule for WBBT 2009.

Sometimes characterization is easy; the characters come to you in a flash, or grow on you as you write the book, and you know and love them as if you’ve known them your entire life. Sometimes it’s the most frustrating part of writing; your characters are cardboard, or unlikeable, or not believable, and you’re struggling to figure out why.

But characterization is always important; can you think of any book you’ve loved where the character didn’t feel like a real person to you (even if he/she/it wasn’t actually a person)?

Here are some Inkies’ strategies for how to whip your characters into shape (or make them real enough to whip you into shape!)

( Read more... )

… and those are, of course, just a few of the methods writers use to create real, three-dimensional characters who move the story forward. What are your favorite methods? And what do you think are some examples of impressively well-created characters?

Leah Cypess
www.leahcypess.com

Went to see this movie this evening with my teens. Yes, it's rated R (or "Arrrrr", if you prefer), due to excessive use of the F-bomb, and for references to sex and drugs. Because it is a movie about off-shore rock-and-roll stations, and nothing goes better with rock 'n' roll than sex and drugs. At least when the movie is set in 1966. Truly, it was nothing my kids couldn't see, but I leave you to make that call for your own kids. In the U.S., it's called PIRATE RADIO; in the U.K., it's THE BOAT THAT ROCKED. And hey, it's got other titles in France and Germany as well. Anarchy, I tell you.

So many cast members to love: Kenneth Branagh as a conservative British minister ably assisted by Commodore Norrington Jack Davenport (yes, please!) as an aspiring ministerial sort named Twatt. Yes, really, although it is pronounced with a flattened sort of "a" sound, so that it doesn't sound precisely like what you might think; Philip Seymour Hoffman as an imported American DJ called "the Count" who, as you might guess, was amazing; Bill Nighy as rogue radio boss Quentin in a role that incorporates some of the dance moves and costume choices of his rock-star character in Love, Actually, but with a different personality. I do love me some Bill Nighy, folks. Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) as a highly sexed DJ, and a lovely turn by newcomer Tom Sturridge, who is sent to live on the boat after failing out of school, in what Quentin calls a "spectacular mistake". Nice cameos by Emma Thompson and January Jones; good turns by men names "Rhys" - the always funny (imo) Rhys Ifans and Flight of the Concords "manager", Rhys Darby, as well.

Not about rock & roll, although there's quite a lot of it in there and the final credits include quite a number of album covers, but I quite liked it.

PRECIOUS is receiving accolades from every corner, so I'll just add my little amen.

Yes, the story plunges you into the darkest corners of the human condition, and the previews alone may dissuade those who don't want to pay $9.50 for a "depressing" movie. But my advice? Lay that money down. Your heart will feel at times as if it's being shredded into a million tiny pieces, like the wad of Kleenex you brought with you, "just in case." But this is ultimately an uplifting story, in which the main character casts a very bright light among those shadows.

Some critics have suggested that only a small segment of the population will relate to Precious, the main character, much less her traumatic experiences at the margins of society. I dispute that notion entirely. Some of us have endured--hopefully, transcended--similarly painful childhoods. It isn't for naught that the movie is dedicated to "Precious girls everywhere." And most of us gravitate toward movies that demonstrate the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, as it is with PRECIOUS. Our own stories may be different, but that quest is universal.

I was deeply moved at many points in the movie, but I keep coming back to one scene in particular. Precious is offered a spot in the Each One Teach One program, and on the first day of class, the teacher asks everyone to state their name, favorite color, and an accomplishment they're proud of. Precious refuses to participate, but after some gentle prodding by the teacher, she states her full name, says she likes yellow, and admits that she can cook.

Her eyes fly open, as if she's surprised at the sound of her own voice. "I ain't never talked in class before," she says.

"How does it make you feel?" the teacher asks.

"Here," Precious says. "I feel here."

I hear you, Precious, I hear you.

I eased myself down inside the dumpster, doing my best to not think about all the stickiness I was touching. #favwiplines

...until THIS:



*flails*

Only two more hours, and then I will be watching. I can't wait!! :)

Anyone else?

Happy Sunday!

I cannot believe it is already November 15th. There’s, like, only a little over a month left until Christmas.

Yesterday when The Boy and I went to Borders, they were selling sparkly pink Christmas trees (fake, of course.) They looked like this:





The Boy looked at me and said, “Do you want to get it?” That is why I love him. What other guy would actually SUGGEST getting a sparkly pink tree just because he knows you love all things pink and sparkly? But that tree was a little too much even for me. Trees might be the only things that are better off green than pink, IMO.

So we left it. I think they also had purple and yellow and other colors, too, but they were all in boxes. The pink was the only one on display.

Also, if you are looking for a fab Christmas gift, I recommend this:



Okay, so .. confession time. I never really GOT the whole Twilight thing. I read the first one, and I liked it, and then I started the second and ..well, I’ll finish it someday. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the books, I just didn’t know why everyone was all, OMG, EDWARD, OMG, I’M GOING TO DIE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH OMG.

But Hush, Hush. OMG, PATCH, OMG, I’M GOING TO DIE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH OMG. I mean, not really, of course. Because, haha, people my age don’t talk that way. They also don’t buy pink sparkly trees. (But seriously, Patch, OMG.)

You MUST buy this book. It is suspenseful. It is sexy. It has one of the best teen romances I’ve read…well, ever. It is dark and chilling and carefully plotted with amazing pacing and the chemistry between Patch and Nora is just… yeah. The thing is, there is no sex anywhere in the book. And yet it is VERY HOT somehow. Becca Fitzpatrick, how did you do this?

Anyway, I loved it. You should all read it. And buy it as a Christmas gift for someone.

You should do it now, because I just looked it up and there are only 40 days, 12 hours, 31 minutes, and 8 seconds left to do Christmas shopping. Yikes! That doesn’t seem long at all.

More later,
xx

Today, a return of my once-established Sunday tradition: a quoteskimming post. As it appears I sort of lost the habit back in July of this year, I shall explain what the word means. It's a term I coined in September 2007 - I shall be pulling some writing-related quotes from here and there and sharing them with you.

The quote in today's icon is from Lemony Snicket (who will be writing a new series at Little, Brown, having followed his editor when she moved, so it seemed fitting to use one of his quotes). It's from his book, Horseradish, and reads "If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[pasdlgkhasdfasdf."

On the need for solitude

First up, a bit of Jane Austen (since I'm working on one of my Jane poems at present). This is an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her sister, Cassandra, who had gone away for a while, leaving Jane in charge of running the household in her absence. (They lived with their mother and a friend, Martha Lloyd, with frequent visits from family and friends - both of the short social and long house-stay kinds.)

Jane's comments might be understood as being in favor of writing retreats, such as Angela and I are now on, in that she said she wished for:

. . . a few days quiet, & exemption from the Thought & contrivances which any sort of company gives.--I often wonder how you can find time for what you do, in addition to the care of the House
. . . Composition seems to me Impossible, with a head full of Joints of Mutton & doses of rhubarb.

On Writing Picture Books

I've started reading Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in LA in 2007. Ann really knows her stuff. As many of you long-time readers are already aware, I have a particular fondness for form meeting function (as in E.B. White's #17 in "Elementary Principles of Composition" from Strunk & White: "Omit Needless Words."), and so I give you this tidbit from Chapter One of Ann's book, from the section entitled "Make Books Easy to Read Out Loud":

Besides avoiding words adults have difficulty pronouncing, don't write humongous sentences like this one that will make your poor unsuspecting reader gasp for breath way before reaching the desperately-needed punctuation mark that finally at long last signifies the end.

On Characters

I'm still enjoying John Mullan's How Novels Work, which I've mentioned here before. I intend to go back and re-read it, in fact, since much of what I read while in the hospital failed to stick. Yes, I shall be re-reading a book that is essentially about re-reading. Oh the irony.

Here's a bit from the opening of Chapter 3, "People", in which he introduces the idea of characterization, and discusses how it is a topic often left out of critical narratives - and/or viewed by academic critics with suspicion:

Nothing is stranger or more important in our reading of novels than the sense that we are encountering real people in them. Academic critics tend to steer away from the business of characterization, even though it is invariably the ordinary measure of a novelist's achievement. It is as if succumbing to the illusion that a 'character' in a book is a person implies losing your critical faculties. Long ago, in a famous essay called 'How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?', the critic L.C. Knights made it clear that the discerning reader should resist this weakness. How can we maintain 'the necessary aloofness from a work of art,' he asked irritably, if we 'treat a character as a human being'? Literary theory, while speaking in different terms, has preserved this aloofness. Sometimes its determination to avoid all talk of characterization is inadvertently comical. Here is Mieke Bal, a renowned narrative theorist, solemnly perplexed in her 1985 book Narratology when faced by the troubling illusion of a human presence in texts. "That no one has yet succeeded in constructing a complete and coherent theory of character is probably precisely because of this human aspect. The character is not a human being, but it resembles one." Just so.

And because I re-read The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber this weekend, I give you this bit from Neil Gaiman's introduction to the reprinted version, which you can still order from the New York Review of Books Children's Collection:

I was fairly certain it was the best book I had ever read. It was funny in strange ways. It was filled with words. And while all books are filled with words, this one was different: it was filled with magical, wonderful, tasty words. It slipped into poetry and out of it again in way that made you want to read it aloud, just to see how it sounded. I read it to my little sister. When I was old enough, I read it to my children.

The 13 Clocks isn't really a fairy tale, just as it isn't really a ghost story. But it feels like a fairy tale, and it takes place in a fairy-tale world. It is short -- not too short, just perfectly short. Short enough. When I was a young writer, I liked to imaging that I was paying someone for every word I wrote, rather than being paid for it; it was a fine way to discipline myself only to use those words I needed. I watch Thurber wrap his story tightly in words, while at the same time juggling fabulous words that glitter and gleam, tossing them out like a happy madman, all the time explaining and revealing and baffling with words. It is a miracle. I think you could learn everything you need to know about telling stories from this book.

And now, I am off to enjoy the final few hours of my time here at our retreat in Brigantine, where I hope to finish that in-progress Jane poem to add to my pile of "what I've accomplished while here", which is, for the record: two sets of interview questions for the Winter Blog Blast Tour, which commences tomorrow - more on that later today, a manuscript critique for one of my dearest friends, the first draft of a lengthy non-Jane poem about which I am positively tickled just now, several ideas for Picture Book Idea Month, and the complete reading of two books (that includes the re-reading of The 13 Clocks), as well as blog posts and whatnot. Still, it's getting back into the swing of the Jane project that I most wish to accomplish, and so I shall take my own advice from yesterday and persist.

As an addendum to my previous post, I was thinking more on public vs. private school. Now I like my son's public school, we're pretty small, and the teachers are fabulous. Boy has 17 students in his class, and there are three first grade classes. If I could, would I send him to private school? Probably. Not now, but for High School. Our local HS is jammed with students, much bigger than it was when I went.

I'm not ragging on public school teachers or private schools, but there is a reason people like private school. Private schools don't necessarily have better teachers, but most of them are probably pretty good. Private school teachers don't have to be certified, they don't have to gather professional credits to keep their licenses. They don't HAVE licenses. That doesn't make them poor teachers; it just means the school is solely responsible for choosing people they think can do the job. It's not a big deal to me, just pointing out the difference. There are some private school teachers who are certified by the state too, I'm sure. It's just not required to work there.

Private schools, in general, do better academically, but let's think about why that might be. Private schools (the college prep kind, or Friends for example) get to pick and choose their students, first of all. They can take the best and brightest, and don't have to take children with autism, or learning disabilities like dyslexia, or children who just moved to the US and speak no English (I've had students with each of these). If they do take a student with a particular need, they can address it practically one-on-one, while the public school has many more to deal with. While the private school teacher must come up with new ways to challenge their students (no easy feat), they don't have to be in a classroom with 25 or even 30 other students, all learning at a different pace, all vying for the teacher's attention.

Public schools HAVE to take everyone. It's the law. There was a boy in our district who is blind. The district wanted to send him to a school for the blind, on their nickel. The parents fought it in court - they wanted him mainstreamed - and won. So the district HAD to come up with aides, and get books in Braille, and a Braille typewriter and his teachers have to learn how to use it, AND type all his worksheets out in Braille.

So public school teachers, who take many classes on education theory and building curriculae, and instructional methodology, are put into crowded classrooms, where they have the monumental task of making sure every last student learns. With that NCLB act, they must make sure everyone learns at a certain level, no matter what. It's challenging to say the least.

Maybe the problem with education isn't the system, it's that we don't have enough teachers to go around. I'd love for my son to be in a class with ten students instead of nearly twenty. As he gets older, it's only going to get worse, the classes are only going to get bigger.

As I said before, in a perfect world, every school would be like private school. No matter what kind of school, being a teacher is HARD. So hug a teacher, okay?

Only two more months of Debsness left! Click on the image below to enter to win a bunch of fun items from the 2009 Debs:

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

I recently had a conversation with someone about the above topic, and it got me thinking. I know some people are very anti-union, and some people are pro. In general I'm pro, but I realize that there are inherent problems with the system. When unions started, they were to prevent abuses in the workplace. Like the fruitpackers union, these were abuses that would probably be considered human rights violations.

On the one hand, unions negotiate labor contracts. My husband's union negotiates the contract for his work. Lots of non-union jobs have contracts; the difference is this is one contract for a large group of people. Everyone in the group gets exactly the same contract, no exceptions. So no one individual can negotiate for more money or better perks or whatever. One size fits all. I guess it's supposed to save time and make things fair.

Contracts for teachers contain much more than just salary guides and benefits. It spells out hours of work (most that I know stay later than they have to, but they can't be forced to stay late) that they are entitled to things like a duty-free prep period (again, most that I know take work home with them, but it's not required), and how many personal and professional days a year they get as well as the holiday schedule. Some might think that's not fair, that not having a contract that spells things out is real life. On the other hand, to me it seems to take the pressure off of both sides, since both agreed to the contract, there's no room for argument in there on either side. A teacher can't ask for another holiday off, and the administration can't give one teacher more days than another. Fair across the board, no muss, no fuss. At a job like my husband's, this really does make a difference. The boss can't make them do things like work Christmas. Again, some might say "that's life", but these people would have them working Christmas without holiday pay. People need to be compensated for the work they do, right?

I know that it's a sore spot for some, and I really do see their point. But maybe if more people had labor contracts, fewer people would have problems at work. I mean, I have publishing contracts, and both myself and the publisher have things we must do - it's a legally binding document. If I were to do something outside what's spelled out in the contract, I'd be in big trouble. Spelling things out up front, and both sides agreeing to it, make things easier IMO.

AND on the other hand, I know there are abuses in the labor union system. It could stand some huge improvements. I don't feel that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. The idea of unions is still a good one, but they really need some restructuring. Honestly I do know there's plenty of corruption, but you get that everywhere.

The other issue was tenure. Again, I get both sides. On the one hand, some tenured teachers might slack off once they realize they have a job until they retire. On the other, I don't think the majority do. I think there's potential for abuse on both sides in this one. If you got rid of tenure, what's to stop a school district from getting rid of teachers who make too much, no matter how good they are, and hiring new, just out of the box teachers for a cheaper salary? The person I was having the discussion with says "that's life, they can go to another school district". But what if ALL the districts were doing it? What would all those good, experienced teachers DO?? When you have a degree in, say, Business Administration, there are any number of KINDS of business you can work in. If you're a Computer person, you not only have an array of fields, but of jobs within those fields. A teacher is trained to be a teacher, right? Upper level teachers might be English majors and teachers. What else can an English major do?? (I'm really looking for suggestions and opinions.) Elementary educators have a general education and lots of teaching classes. What else are they good for (again, someone suggest something to me, because I'm not coming up with anything)?

So, if the tenure system were to be gotten rid of, would the "market" right itself? Would schools be able to compete for good teachers and pay them enough? Would they keep them, evaluate them (which they do now, at least everywhere I've worked. If there are problems, the teacher is reprimanded - they just can't fire them. I DO see a problem there.) Or would schools start ditching pricy, experienced older models in favor of the bottom line? And would you want your child to go to a school where that was the norm, and teacher turnover was high?

Someone said to me that private schools have better teachers, because if they aren't better they're fired. I don't necessarily believe that completely. While I do think it IS a factor, I think the smaller class sizes, smaller student bodies in general have much more to do with it. I think that if we had more schools and smaller classes, most teachers would be more effective and we'd see an improvement in education. Fewer public school teachers would burn out. I interviewed at a private school, and overall the job seemed like it would be easier than public school purely because there were fewer students. From an instructional standpoint it would be about the same. Plus I didn't have to be certified, so no state red tape. That's a perk right there. I think private schools DO do a lot of things right, but they're sort of insulated from everything else. In a perfect world, all schools would be like private schools.

So what's the answer? I don't know. I think that if you get rid of the system we have, which is by no means perfect, you will have a whole new host of problems, which could be worse.

Teachers work hard, and they have a big job. Nobody I know went into teaching for the money, and none went into it for the summers off (especially those I know on the West Coast, where they have trimesters and go most of the year). They do it because they love it, but they still need to make a living. Part of the biggest problem, I think, is that we're using a system meant for far fewer students than we have, and the teachers have to teach more students, all of them different, and get them all learning at the same level. There's just no time for the one-on-one instruction or feedback that smaller classes would afford.

I really don't know what the answer is. Is education different than other industries? Is it different because it involves children, and shouldn't be just another corporate machine? Public school teachers are public employees, but it's not like working at the post office or in a state office.

I'd like opinions, but if this turns into a flamewar, I will shut down the thread. I'm asking for intelligent discussion.

ETA: For those of you who don't know, NJ is an at-will employment state. Maybe the answer is to change that? Then we wouldn't need the protection of tenure; you could be fired but it would have to be for cause. That sounds like a good compromise to me.

First, a quick update. I'm proud to announce that I finished the first draft of MUTED on Sept. 27th. A birthday gift to myself. I then spent a month catching up on reading, telling myself I was just letting the manuscript rest before I tackled it again. Truth? I was scared to death of it. It's huge. Monstrous! Where to start in the mountain of revisions?

So, about the time everyone was gearing up for NaNoWriMo, I began gearing up for my revisions. I even printed it out. Two pages per page. Yet it was still nearly two inches thick. Much cutting ahead I fear. I carried it around for over a week. Probably two. I kept making excuses. "Not enough time to start it." "If I start working on it here, someone will want to talk to me." "It's too late. If I start it now, I'll oversleep in the morning." Yada, yada, yada.

Finally, I took my manuscript with me to the public library. The plan? Force myself to work on it till it was time to pick up my daughter at play practice. It worked! There was only one thing keeping me from working on my revisions. Me. I'm now about fifteen chapters in, and have cut an entire chapter. It seems the more I fix, the more questions I jot down. But I can feel it getting tighter. Better. But I have a long way to go. I want this ready to go out the door by the end of Christmas break. That gives me weekends, the week of Thanksgiving, and two weeks at Christmas.

Meanwhile, I will continue to be absent from LJ. I do loiter on FB, so you can look me up there. But for now, I will focus on the book.

So, here I am, still in Brigantine, NJ, where for two days we have stayed through the worst nor'easter in recent memory - one that involved a declared state of emergency and evacuations in some areas (although thankfully, not here). We lost power for a grand total of, what, 8-1/2 minutes yesterday - just long enough to find and light some candles, then blow them out.

This morning, a miracle: the rain was gone, the wind was down to something like 10 m.p.h., and, eventually, a bit of watery sunshine made its way through the clouds, burning off the lingering fog. After lunch, Angela and I headed outside for an actual walk. We went to the nearest beach access path to find that it was mostly underwater. We went to the next one up the beach, which we knew had an elevated wooden causeway. We got there and walked to the end of the elevated part, only to discover that the stairs led to a massive puddle nearly deep and wide enough to swim laps in. We decided to see if there might be another access point in the third development up the way and lo!, there was. And the path was mostly clear until we could see the ocean, at which point we began picking our way slowly through something that looked like (and undoubtedly was) sea-demolished bales of straw, no doubt set there in the path as a sort of levee. Those levees were unsettling to walk on, I can assure you, and by the end we were perilously close to walking in the forbidden dunes, but we persevered and made it to the beach.

There we were, on the sand, watching waves roll in (nowhere near as high as the past few days, although now that high tide is approaching, they are once again impressive - from a distance, no less!) and sandpipers skittering about at the water's edge, along with a few fat gulls standing watch or gliding low along the shallows. We walked a ways along the beach, south past where we were staying, since we knew those two accessways to be, well, inaccessible, to the fourth path, which was clear pretty much the whole way. There was evidence that it, too, had had strawbale levees smashed and carried inland (and out to sea) by the recent tempest, but it was drier still than the one on which we'd come.

In beach walking, as in writing or seeking publication, persistence pays off. Keeping going to find a way onto that beach or into the story can be challenging, and you may get muddy or acquire wet shoes or some burrs along the way (Angela sure did - maybe because she was wearing track pants instead of jeans?), but once you find your way there, it can be such a wonderful place. The trick is to keep going, to keep searching for that access you need, or the proper story opening, or the right word to make that poem sing, or that enthusiastic agent or editor who is willing to champion your work. The trick is also to pay attention and notice when the path you're on is going wrong - when the boardwalk is sinking into the mire (true story from today) and the water is bubbling up through the nailholes, it's time to turn back and try something new. There's a difference between carefully picking your way along a 40-foot stretch of destroyed wet straw bales (difficult, but not dangerous) and walking along planks that you know are going to sink you if you keep going ahead (possibly dangerous and definitely stupid).

So, stay alert, heed your gut instincts, but whatever you do, keep going. Because as I said before, when you get there, it's worth it.

See?

To those I was sooo looking forward to seeing at the Equine Affaire, I'm yet again under the weather and can't make it today. I'm so sorry and I hope you all enjoy the events.

I'm so thrilled that I was able to write 41,403 words on my humorous NaNoWriMo MG, Mom Wars, in fourteen days. I took some time off last weekend to spend with my family, and spent most of this past week battling a nasty computer virus (which kept rebooting my computer...until it refused to run Windows anymore). I lost at least a day and a half trying to get rid of the virus, then called in tech support--who came to take my computer on Thursday. The good news is that my files are safe, and I should hopefully have my computer back, virus-free, on Monday. The bad news is that I couldn't copy my NaNo novel onto my laptop, for fear of spreading the virus.

I admit, I broke into tears when I heard that he had to take my computer...but I quickly recovered, booted up my laptop, and started a brand new file. It was really hard at first. I had to try to remember where I left off the night before. There might be a small gap between where I ended the original file and began the new one, and it definitely slowed me down a bit. But I was so determined not to let this ruin NaNoWriMo. I've worked way too hard for that. Before I knew it, the words were flying again, and I ended up having my two largest word counts for NaNoWriMo 2009 on Thursday and Friday. I think it was a combination of determination, sitting back and letting the characters lead my story, and the fact that I couldn't really go online.

One thing that has helped me this year, was working in more descriptions. Dialogue comes naturally to me, but my first drafts usually lack setting and descriptions. I decided to use the fast-paced writing of NaNo to help me overcome that issue. I'm sure I'll have to cut down several of them, but so many wonderful descriptions popped up that I'm sure I'll be able to use (and they might not exist if I hadn't chosen this strategy). If you need to up your word count, especially for an MG that will probably be cut down to the 30,000 range during revisions, think about using NaNo to work on one of your writing weaknesses. It's the perfect time to play around!

I've seen some amazing word counts. Go, go, go everyone! I can't wait to hear all about your new novels. :)

At last, I was able to talk to my advisor at Southern. Poor woman is just buried in deadlines, and I'm grateful she was able to make time to call me on the phone. We've worked everything out and I WILL be able to get my Field Experience and take it as a Field Project for the University. They've done it before for a student in NY. Since NJ doesn't certify their School Media Specialists as teachers (at least they don't require formal student teaching), I'm good. So she's got my planned program all worked out and hopefully I'll soon be official over there.

Because Rutgers is pretty damn backwards. They've finally made a decision! I got in!!! As an ON-CAMPUS student. They "realize I applied for the online program" but don't have ROOM for me. But they do on campus. I'm sure they probably just looked and saw a NJ mailing address and figured it would be no problem for me to drop everything and come to campus. But they missed the part where I live on the OTHER END of the state, almost literally. New Brunswick is practically NY. I cannot live there, since I have, yanno, a child and a husband and a mortgage, and I cannot commute, since it's THE OTHER END OF THE STATE.

The really ridiculous thing is that if I took TWO COURSES on campus, I could then switch to the online program. How much sense does THAT MAKE???

Rutgers University, suck my toes. You make this way more complicated than it has to be. Southern Connecticut it is, really and truly, no more problems. I can register for my first two classes next week, as a non-matriculated student, just to get started until the Official Notice comes through.

Who knew Grad School was this difficult, just to GET IN????

Hey, we've got an entry! This is Gary and he took The Espressologist out for an eggnog latte at Cutters Point in Lacey, WA and note the Landon Pigg CD nearby featuring his song, "Falling In Love at a Coffee Shop". I love it!!



Thanks for entering Gary!!

There is still time for you to take the Espressologist out for coffee too! Just read the details of the contest here and mail me a pic by 11/27.

Its Award Season here in the Inkpot with the 2009 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards Nominees (phew, that's a mouthful - from here on out to known as the "Cybils" mkay?) announced. Inkies were represented hardcore:

THE RUNAWAY DRAGON by Kate Coombs
THE EMERALD TABLET by P.J. Hoover
THE NAVEL OF THE WORLD by P.J. Hoover
FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX by R.L. LaFevers
THEODOSIA AND THE STAFF OF OSIRIS (also) by R.L. LaVers
FAERY REBELS: SPELL HUNTER by R.J. Anderson
FORTUNE'S FOLLY by Deva Fagan
BETRAYING SEASON by Marissa Doyle
WINNIE'S WAR by Jenny Moss
WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON by Grace Lin
ASH by Malinda Lo
GIVE UP THE GHOST by Megan Crewe
SILVER PHOENIX by Cindy Pon

More awards! The American Library Association announced its nominees for Best Books for Young Adults. And yep, you guessed it, Inkies were all over that as well!

ASH by Malinda Lo
SILVER PHOENIX by Cindy Pon
THE RUNAWAY DRAGON by Kate Coombs
THE UNNAMEABLES by Ellen Booraem

Oh, and one more nomination, please? R.J. Anderson's KNIFE (the UK edition of FAERY REBELS: SPELL HUNTER) has been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal!

Seriously, ladies. You're going to need a closet full of fancy gowns for all these award shows. Start shopping...now!

That's not all the news for Kate Coombs, who's seriously had a hell of a week! In addition to making both lists, Kate just signed with a new agent: Brenda Bowen of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Way to go, Kate!

Lastly, Cindy Pon has her new microsite up on the HarperCollins website - a must see!

Hey, Virginian types: if you are in the area, I have a signing today from 2:00-4:00 p.m. at the Midlothian Barnes & Noble: 4600 Commonwealth Center Pkwy, Midlothian, VA 23112.

Now I must manically go burn a playlist to listen to on the way down there, for my NaNo novel. Because there are not yet laws against brainstorming while driving.

Yet.