'Tis the Season ... to be Tired

I've been so tired and lazy-feeling since Christmas.

Can anyone else relate?

We had a lovely Christmas with the Dashingly Handsome Sidekick's family here in town.

Then on Boxing Day we drove over to the populated side of the state to visit my aunt and uncle and their boys. My California aunt and uncle were in the area, so we got together with them, too, as well as my cousin and his adorable family.

So the season was filled with love and laughter and eating and joy and eating and driving and eating and....

I'm exhausted!

I did get some writing done the first week of winter vacation. I actually finished my second draft of my China novel. Now it's resting. I am determined to dive back into it tomorrow, but I've been saying that for the past two days: "I'll dive back into it tomorrow." We'll see....

Last night I wrote a picture book draft. Today I edited it. I know it's not ready for anything, but I'm already feeling paralyzed. Picture books terrify me more than novels because I don't know what to DO with them. The task of looking into publication seems so much more daunting. Is it only me?

As I collect my thoughts and prepare for the New Year--and a more serious post where I stop rambling and use my brain-- I'd like to hear from you. How was your holiday? What was your favorite part about it?

Mine was spending time with these cute people (and the grown-up ones, too):

The stair steps: my kids with their second cousins.

My crazy bunch on Christmas morning

Santa's littlest helper

Don't forget to tell me about your holiday in the comments!

WQI: Cath Crowley's GRAFFITI MOON

photo by Darren James

I'm honored to have Cath Crowley here for a World's Quickest Interview (WQI).  I read her book, A LITTLE WANTING SONG, and raved about it >>here<<. Cath has a beautiful, amazing voice and her characters are unforgettable. A LITTLE WANTING SONG reminded me why I love reading (and writing) contemporary YA.

GRAFFITI MOON is Cath's newest book and will be available in the US on Feb 14 (Valentine's Day release date - how awesome is that!), but it's already out in Australia where it's picking up awards right and left.

Australian cover.

Describe GRAFFITI MOON in one sentence.  



Light-scattered dream.

How long have you been writing? 



About ten years.

Who or what inspired GRAFFITI MOON?* 

Graffiti Moon is a story about a group of teenagers who are outsiders. They spend one night together, out in the city, and it changes things for them. They don’t work out who they are – that would be hard in one night – but they work out that it’s okay to be different.

Shadow and Lucy, the main characters, connect through art. So the conversations they have are inspired by the artists I love - Mark Rothko, Sam Leach, Rosemary Laing, Jeffrey Smart, Pablo Picasso, Johannes Vermeer, Michael Zavros, Rosalie Gascoigne, Bethany Wheeler, Ghostpatrol and Miso. I wanted to write about two people who speak through images as well as words.

Poet is my favourite character. He mostly comes from my imagination, but he’s partly inspired by all the teenagers I’ve worked with who say they can’t write and then they produce these amazing lines.

The inspiration for Shadow and Lucy’s love story was the painting The Lovers by Magritte; it’s of two people kissing through sheets. I thought that first dates might be easier if people couldn’t see each other.

How long did it take you to write it? 

About two years.

US cover.

Besides writing, what do you like to do most?  

Reading.

Grilled chicken, fried chicken or no chicken?



Grilled chicken.

What's your favorite holiday and why? 

A mix of lazing around reading and going out and seeing things that inspire me to write.

Watch sports or play sports?  

Not really. I like Pilates and walking.

One wish. What is it?

More empathy in the world. And that there would be another series written by Aaron Sorkin. Oops. That’s two. But one wish is never enough.

Any advice for aspiring writers? 

Read. Study great writers. Write every day to find your own style. Be curious about the world. Write about thing things that matter to you. 

Thank you, Cath! In our back-and-forth email exchanges, Cath has been a huge encouragement to me. I'm so thrilled she could be here to share a little bit of her wisdom. I hope you're all salivating over GRAFFITI MOON like I am! And if you haven't read A LITTLE WANTING SONG yet, add it to your TBR list. 

If you get a chance amid holiday festivities, leave a comment and let Cath know how awesome she is!

*I decided not to hold Cath to the Twitter-length answer for this question. For one thing, I forgot to mention the short-answer thing when I asked Cath to do the interview (this is when I pull the I'm-a-mom-with-tons-of-little-kids card and claim scatter-brainedness). Then, after I read the answer, I thought it was so cool, I didn't want to cut it down at all. Nobody minds, right? :)

The ACTUAL Deja Vu Blogfest: Creation

Today I'm participating in the DL Hammons Deja Vu Blogfest, co-hosted by Creepy Query Girl, Nicole Decleroir, and Lydia Kang.

I accidentally posted this yesterday, realized my mistake after posting, deleted the post, but could not figure out how to delete it from Google Reader, so if this is a DOUBLE deja vu moment for you, all the better! (Did you like my positive spin on that one?)

I chose a blog post from almost exactly two years ago when my blog was getting an average of zero comments per post. Those were the days when I was still following mostly agent blogs, when I was blogging just for the fun of it, before I had tapped in to the wonders of the online writing community.

Visit >>DL's blog<< to find links to the other entries.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Creation

Your writing is your creation. Your characters' worlds might be based on reality, but they're places and names and surroundings you've made up in your head. The words you choose to describe these places are all ones you've chosen specifically. They have your brand on them, your own unique flavor.

So, why is it that an agent can look at a person's work and say, "Cliche ... There's too much of that around already ... I've heard that story so many times before, I can tell you right now what the ending will be."

Weird, huh? We think we're slicing off a part of our unique soul when we write. Then it turns out a thousand other people have thought the same thought and have written it all down already. And we were so sure it was original.

That's why I'm so amazed when I look at my children. Even other people's children. People in general.

Because we're all so unique. Nobody looks at a newborn baby and calls him or her a cliche: "Looks too much like the parents. I've seen this one so many times before, I'm bored of it."

No. We marvel, because each creation is so individual, so remarkable, filled with so much potential.

I'm glad that even though my genes may have been involved in making my children, I really didn't have any choice in how they turned out. I'm glad my children's creations were out of my hands, so I could enjoy the originality of their design and the uniqueness of their temperaments without imposing my cliched, cookie-cutter ideas, my boxed-in thinking, my limited insight, on them.

And I keep writing. To find myself. To find my unique voice and the story that's all mine, inspired by the originality of reality.

One of the little creations I had everything-and-nothing to do with "creating."

Your thoughts? 

Truth Tuesday: Spiders

You already know the state of my bathtub from my blog title, but today I have a true (gross) confession to make.

Our house seems to attract spiders, especially in the winter. They're big, brown, harmless things.

Spiderman and Captain America take on a tub-dwelling spider.

My girls were getting ready for a bath the other afternoon and we did our usual spider check. We were rewarded with one spider behind a Rescue Hero toy. I captured him alive and flushed him down the toilet (sorry, spider!).

The girls got in and we filled the bath with water, when Sophie started complaining. "There's something in the water! There's something in the water!"

She started pulling at long strands, which at first I thought were long hairs. But then I realized nobody in our house had hair THAT long.

And the color was strange. At some angles the strands looked black, at other angles, silver. And they were sticky.

Spider webs.

And then, horror of horrors, another spider came bobbing to the surface of the water. Already drowned, poor thing, but that saved me having to kill him.

I fished out more spider webs from the front of the tub.

They were tricky to remove because they were invisible until you removed them from the water.

Now we have to do a spider check AND a spider web check before we get in the tub.

And maybe I should clean my bathtub more often....

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Just a few pictures to help you feel warm and cozy this Christmas season...

It's too cold to snow. Instead, we get hoar frost...

Which is so beautiful...

I don't mind the absence of snow.

Especially when I can come home to a lighted tree covered in homemade decorations...

And stockings over the fireplace... *

And a Hero Factory robot attacking the Wise Men. Life doesn't get much better than this!

Stay warm and cozy, everyone

&

enjoy the Season!

*You may notice that one of these things is not like the others. This is what happens when you move to America from China and then have a surprise baby -- you end up with one too few silk stockings! (Thankfully I had the stocking from when I was a kid to fill in the gap!)

Picture Book Writer Jesalyn Cole & MeeGenius! Contest

Today I'm excited to welcome my dear friend, Jesalyn Cole. We live in the same town and met when our daughters were in tumbling class together. Jesalyn is one of the first friends I made after moving back from China. 

Well, Jesalyn discovered my secret (that I write novels) and then told me her secret (that she writes picture books) and that gave us just one more reason to like each other.

Jesalyn has two stories in the MeeGenius! picture book contest. I invited her to come on the blog for a quick interview to tell us more about this endeavor. 

How long have you been writing?

I actually started writing stories for fun while in 3rd or 4th grade and was selected by teachers to attend a few creative writing workshops. I started writing children's stories and picture books about 4 years ago, but only this year have started telling people about them and calling myself an author.

 

Why did you decide to write picture books?

I love picture books and the beautiful illustrations that bring the words to life. I enjoy writing in rhymes and patterns. I have fun playing with words and trying to create the illustrations for readers with only the text.

Give us one sentence summaries of your stories.

Joey is an almost 7 year old who requests a giraffe for his birthday by way of a letter to his parents explaining what life with a giraffe will look like in their household.

 

Emma is having trouble going to sleep due to multiple distractions from all sorts of sources (real and imaginary) throughout the house, much to her mother's dismay and impatience.

 

Who or what inspired these stories?

My four year old daughter gives me lots of inspiration. One day we were driving home from preschool and she mentioned that she wanted a giraffe for a pet. So, I started asking her questions about where the giraffe would live, what it would eat, etc. She had some great ideas! I couldn't get home fast enough to start writing it all down! Emma's story was inspired by a friend's Facebook post about her own daughter not being able to sleep due to their dog being in her room, dancing on her bed and wearing a sombrero. I could see it SO vividly that I decided to try other scenarios and ended up with an entire picture book. 

 

Explain how the MeeGenius! contest works and how we can vote for you.

MeeGenius! Is a New York City based digital publisher and this competition is taking place nationwide. There are two ways to advance through the "Manuscript Voting Round": 1) The stories to get the most “Likes” from the Facebook community and 2) “Staff Favorites” will be picked by MeeGenius to enter the Finalists Round. You will need a Facebook account to vote and voters can only vote once per manuscript.  This round of voting concludes December 18. The stories selected will be professionally edited, illustrated and enhanced for e-readers before another, final round of voting will take place.  If one of my stories is selected, I will not only get $1,500 for the story but Keene Riverview Elementary (our local elementary school) will get a complete digital library for its students.   

 

Below are the links to the stories and voting:

Joey's Birthday Wish

Time for Bed Emma

Thank you, Jesalyn! Best of luck!

If you have time to check this out, it's a really cool contest. Jesalyn's stories are so cute. Has anyone else entered? Any picture book writers out there who may be interested in this next year? (Assuming MeeGenius! will do this again next year!) And if none of the above apply to you, leave Jesalyn an encouraging note in the comments. I know she'd appreciate it! 

Movie Monday: Tianjin Opera

My dear friend Marilyn filmed this short video on a street corner in Tianjin, China, the city in which we lived for eight years.

This is an aspect of life in China that I loved the most--
that at any moment I could run into something unexpected and wonderful. In a city like Tianjin there's never a "typical" day. Never really a quiet day, either!



One of my Works-in-Progress (WiP) is set in Tianjin. Watching this video helps me remember the sights, the sounds, the flavors of the city so I can bring them into the details of my novel.

Notice:

• The shops and the shop keepers busily working
• Car horns
• Brakes squealing
• Bikes
• Clothing
• Street signs
• Even the sidewalk tile!

It's all so unique to China and makes me acutely homesick. 

What does this video do to you? Do you find it weird, surprising, interesting? If you've been to China, was this video similar to your China experience? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Well I Never Blogfest!

Well I never....

thought I'd share embarrassing pictures from my past just to show you how much I appreciate my husband.

Here I am in middle school. 

NERD! with gigantic bushy hair.

And here I am at the beginning of high school with my completely adorable (non-nerdy) friends...

NERD! again.
I'm attempting to look sexy but attracting NO ONE. (Those are our summer uniforms, in case you're curious.)

And here is my fourth form (9th grade) class photo in which we model our winter uniforms.

Can you see me in there? Don't strain your eyes. I'm the NERD in the sweater vest in the front row, the only one who thought it was cool in the middle of winter not to wear socks. (Maybe I thought my bushy hair would keep me warm?)

Here I am, about to leave for COLLEGE and I'm still a nerd. Quite possibly nerdier than before. Yes, I'm the only girl who, when the photographer yelled, "CRAZY FACE!" actually made a crazy face.

NERD!

Then I head off to college.

And somehow, against all odds, I end up dating this:

A guy who probably should be a male model and is the complete opposite of a nerd. Funny how life turns out sometimes, isn't it?
 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my COOL, Dashingly Handsome Sidekick!

(Thank you for accepting the nerd in me!)

*Don't ask me why I think embarrassing myself on my blog will make my husband happy on his birthday. Don't tell anyone, but I think he kind of likes that I'm a nerd ... deep down.*

A big thank you to Vicki Rocho who hosted the Well I Never blogfest! You can find links to all the other Well I Never blogfest participants by clicking >>here<<.