Starting Block

I climbed in the car and switched on the engine. I'm always a few minutes late picking up my son from school because I inevitably have to wake Sophie up from her nap in order to leave.

I hate waking babies up from naps.

But I digress.

The radio was on. As usual.

And these were (something like) the first words I heard as I reversed and pulled out of the driveway:

Guy A: So, that must be the hardest part of being an actor -- the rejection.

Guy B: No, no, it really isn't. See, I've come to think of rejection as my block -- you know, like what runners use at the beginning of a race? Rejection is the starting block that propels me forward.

I was late, so I couldn't grab a pen and notebook at that moment, but I repeated that line in my head all the way down the hill to my son's school.

I found out later in the interview that it was Corbin Bernsen talking, formerly of 1980's hit show LA Law.

But, whoa, what a quote!

Rejection is the starting block that propels me forward.

Have you ever thought of rejection that way? Pushing you to new heights, new speeds you never would have reached if acceptance had been easy?

WiP Wednesday: Still Writing

This week has been kicking my rear end (to put it nicely). By the time the Dashingly Handsome Sidekick gets home in the evening, I'm ready to keel over.

But I've still been writing, mainly because writing relaxes me.

Not Stories-A-Week like I should be writing, but my WiP. I'm addicted to it. Even if I have fifteen minutes free, I grab my laptop and try to edit a few lines.

Laptops are wonderful for this.

But the blog suffers.

And the Stories-A-Week are neglected.

The good news is, I think I'm almost finished with my first big edit of my rewrite.

I split up a few chapters (this WiP has very short chapters), and since it's a mixture of prose and verse, I have a few more free verse poems to write to fill in gaps. I have one more plot point I need to introduce a bit earlier.

But I can feel that I'm almost there. I'm close.

Meanwhile, Blogger has also been booting me in the rear end, too. I just wrote a very elaborate comment on Krista V's post (very cool post!) about all the BIG places I've been in the world and all the BIG places I still want to go. But then I tried to post it and got an error message. Blagggh.

I read a very informative post on dialogue on Kelly's blog. I tried to comment there, too, but had the same problem. Thanks, Kelly, for the post, though. If you read this, your point about editing dialogue at least 20 times helped me to push through to make my dialogue better these last couple days. Sometimes I feel like I've worked on a stretch of dialogue enough. What I need to remember is that it's never enough until it feels perfect. Until it's seamless. The number 20 helped me realize just how long that might take! Rewriting something five times might seem like a lot, but it still may not be enough.

My mom also shared a fun tidbit with me through email this week. She read an article about author Richard Peck who wrote one of my favorite books of all time, A Year Down Yonder. He has a lot of quirky writing habits. I won't share them all here, but this one struck me:

After he finishes a manuscript (he rewrites every page six times, by the way, all on electric typewriter) he'll "take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise."

Hmm. What do you think of that? I think it's a great practice to rewrite a first chapter after you've finished a book. But what do you think about that quote -- "the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise?"

That little tidbit, however, motivated me to rewrite my first chapter AGAIN. I don't know how many times I've rewritten it now. A lot. First chapters are so important, though, I know nailing it is crucial. I don't think I'm quite there with this one, though. Getting closer, but still not there.

How about you? Anything strike you as interesting this week? Epiphany moments? (They don't have to be about writing, either.)

Have a golden rest of your week!

Oranges

Today I took Olivia out for ice cream after her orthodontist appointment.

A Korean woman owns the ice cream parlor.

She gave me two oranges, picked off the tree in California two days ago, flown up yesterday.

She gave them to me for no reason. Just to be nice.

I brought them home and after dinner I cut up one. Only one.

It was hard not to eat the entire orange myself. (I let the Dashingly Handsome Sidekick eat two slices.)

I'll save the other orange for tomorrow.

Reminds me how much I love simple pleasures and tender mercies, tossed in my lap when I least expect them, even by strangers.

And I am so grateful for generous people, who share even when they don't have to.

I want to be -- need to be -- more like that.

(Maybe I need to start with saving more orange slices for my husband.)

Verse Novel Challenge: Hugging the Rock

This is the fourth verse novel I've read this year. One more to go before I reach my goal for author Caroline Starr Rose's Verse Novel Challenge.

Here's the jacket copy:

What do you do when your mom runs away from home?

Rachel retreats into herself -- away from the father who has always kept his distance, away from school, and away from her best friend. Rachel's mom says that her dad is a rock, the good kind you can always count on. But Rachel doesn't even know if he really loves her. And she doesn't know the secrets he's kept since before she was born. Slowly, over time, Rachel grows close to the parent who stayed and comes to understand the truth of why her mom left.

I enjoyed this book. It was a super-quick read. That's one thing I love about verse novels. They're instant gratification. You can read them in a few hours, but there's plenty of time to go back and savor the language.

Hugging the Rock was an emotional read for me. Main character Rachel's mother is bi-polar. Author Susan Taylor Brown did a wonderful job of describing this disorder by weaving Rachel's flashbacks about her mother into the story. This part, to me, was so believable and was a tremendous hook to keep reading. I came to the end of the book understanding the mother's plight, and even though the things she did were sometimes terrible, I found I could relate to her. Maybe it was pity, but I didn't dislike her (like I would be tempted to dislike any mother who could walk away from her children for no good reason).

The real drive of this story, though, is the relationship between Rachel and her father. They don't have a bond at the beginning of the book, but since they have been abandoned together, they have to forge one. Rachel's epiphany moment is when she realizes the depth of her father's love..

Overall, this was an incredibly simple middle-grade novel, but it's beautiful because of its simplicity. It's an easy read. I'd definitely recommend it.

And in related news: Caroline Starr Rose will be giving tips about writing verse novels on her blog this week. I'm so excited about this. I don't know if I told you all, but my WiP is written both in prose and verse. I actually asked Caroline if she would share some tips on her blog because I'm feeling incredibly inept as I try to wade through my edits. And she has kindly agreed to comply! So, if you are interested in verse novel writing, or are already writing one, make sure to follow Caroline's amazing blog.

Now, dear readers, a question: Do you enjoy verse novels? Ever thought about writing one?

Share the Love

I love receiving blog awards, but I love to pass them on even more. (It's just a matter of getting around to it, I'm afraid!)

First, thank you to Sharon, who waited a long time for me to thank her publicly for this award (so cute):

Thank you to Krista Lynne Jensen  who passed on these two lovely awards:

And a big thank you to Shallee who gave me this award:

Thank you to all three of you for thinking I'm sweet and lovely and versatile and creative (or at least for thinking my blog is one of those things). My love-cup is running over.

And now for the good part -- passing them on to some new blogging friends! So, if you are named to receive a reward, accept one that you don't already have and enjoy!

Mimi in Dublin who likes chocolate (and food) as much as I do.

Molly over atWriter Mama Dreamer who is my friend and dancing buddy from the LA SCBWI conference (and fellow Washingtonian).

Jackee over at Winded Words who is such a sweet blogging friend.

Dawn over at Plotting and Scheming, my other friend and dancing buddy from the LA conference (and fellow Washingtonian, too) ... By the way, she and Molly do have separate identities and they both have awesome blogs, so check them both out. I know I'm making them sound like clones, but they're not. Promise.

Janet Sumner Johnson who is a very cool blogging buddy.

Julie Musil who is awesome (but who happens to have a very scary picture posted on her blog today. Not of her. Of an antagonist. But still.)

Elise over at Once, Oh Marvelous Once (fantastic blog name, right?) who blogs about all sorts of cool stuff all the time.

Becky, who has a really cool history with my husband's family. She used to live in our town as a child and we randomly met through Rachelle Gardner's blog. Small (blogging) world!

And I'd like to give one of these awards back to Sharon (even though she's not a *new* blog friend), Krista Lynne Jensen (who I have a ton in common with, btw), and Shallee (who is having a contest!).

Now, I think the rules say I have to say some interesting/random things about myself. I know I already did this once long ago, but my archives are not being helpful. Sorry for any repeats. I only have a limited number of interesting things about myself.

So, here we go, in no particular order.

1. My parents live in Hong Kong. So does my younger sister. I lived there for 13 years, from age 5 to 18. I would really like to visit this summer if we can scrape together money for seven plane tickets.
2. I played bass clarinet in high school.
3. One of my favorite movies is Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter, about the historic figure Jane Grey who was Queen of England for nine days. Such a romantic movie and it makes me cry every time.
4. I am almost ten years older than my little brother.
5. I am expecting baby number five in January. Still feeling slightly overwhelmed by that prospect. All my other children were born in China. This will be my first USA-born baby.
6. When we lived in China, I had a household helper who came twice a week to help me clean and cook and do shopping. Therefore, I am very spoiled and it's hard to adjust to life in America doing all my own housework. Which is why I obsess about it on my blog. But there are some things that make American life much easier: our car, our dishwasher, our clothes dryer, and American grocery stores with American groceries.
7. I really hate canned tuna. I'm not a tuna casserole type of girl. Or a tuna sandwich type of girl.

That's all for today, my friends. Make it a great day!



Why I'm Gone

I'm heading out for a few days. Some good friends of ours from China are in our state for a couple weeks, so we're driving over to visit them (and getting in a nice family visit with my aunt and uncle, too). Yippee!

That's why the blog will be silent.

But when I return, get ready for more Story-A-Weeks (because I'm still catching up), and I also need to accept and pass on some awards. I think Sharon gave me one about six months ago that I never accepted. I think about it every now and then and feel guilty. Terrible that guilt is so often my main motivator, but there you have it.

I'll leave you with a few snapshots of our recent life to enjoy in my absence. This weekend, for instance, is our town's annual Balloon Rally. Yesterday and today the early morning sky was filled with hot air balloons. I'm not a very good photographer, nor do I have a very good camera, but I tried my best. I know they look like little dots because I took these pictures from our deck. So you'll have to take my word for it: they were really very beautiful "live."

One balloon was decorated with stars and stripes, and my daughter Olivia started all the kids on a frenzy of "I pledge allegiance to the balloon of the United States of America...." Ai-ya-ya!

Balloons!

More balloons!

The planters by our front door. Aren't they doing well? They make me happy every time I come home. I'll miss them this winter.

The sunset, taken from our driveway.

Son and cat. Gabe and Midnight seem to take good pictures together. Maybe it's the male camaraderie.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Are you doing anything special?

A Story A Week: A Visit From My Father

My father, Marshall Taylor, does not like me to be so punctilious.

He lies across the davenport as a walrus might recline across a rock.

I bend down to adjust the tassels of the Persian rug. Thank goodness for my rule about slippers within the boundaries of the house. At least my father abides by it. His muddy boots are upended outside the front door, to air. I will not have them within my home and my father knows this.

He also knows I do not like him sprawling across my davenport. However, after a quick intake of breath to calm my nerves, I remind myself that this is one point he may well have forgotten.

My father has not been within my house for two years and one-hundred-and-fifty-seven days. Within this time span I have received only one phone call from him, but it was quickly ended – by him – after he claimed a headache and hung up. I trust that this particular interview will be similarly brief. I have already planned what to do upon his departure. I will vacuum the davenport extensively and utilize copious amounts of Lysol spray.

“Got anything to eat around here?” my father asks.

“Of course,” I reply. “But perhaps we could remove ourselves to the dining room to partake. I never eat in this room.”

My father makes a snorting noise through his nostrils. “Of course you don’t.”

He sits up slowly, gripping the back of the davenport to aid his ascent. I notice there are dark lines of dirt under the beds of his nails. Perhaps the treatment of the davenport will require more than Lysol spray.

“Through here,” I say, directing him with a wave of my hand.

My father walks ahead of me, his shoulders hunched. “You don’t let a man even take the weight off his feet for a minute, do you?”

“I have prepared both spice cake and flan,” I say. “Which would you prefer?”

“Flaaan?” my father says. He stops walking, and turns to arch a bushy eyebrow at me. “You’ve got to be joking. What’d your mother torture you with all those years, anyhow, to make you turn out like this?”

I blink, only once, then puncture him with my gaze (a technique quite effective in the workplace when employees fail to file the proper paperwork on time). “I beg your pardon, but anyone who has the gall to find fault with a woman who was deserted by her spouse, and left to raise two children entirely by the sweat of her own brow, why, if any person dares to find fault with such a woman, especially when she is his own erstwhile wife, whom he abandoned solely because of his own selfish whims and desires, then that person should be ashamed, and that person will not be permitted within this house, or even within the boundaries of this property, so help me God!”

My father’s expression has not changed, except that perhaps his eyebrow arches even higher. “Good God,” he murmurs. “It’s a nuthouse around here.”

“Spice cake or flan?” I repeat.

“I’ll take the cake,” my father says. “Don’t even got a clue what flaaan stuff is, anyhow.”


Thanks to Marty (full name Marshall) who gave me the three inspirational words erstwhile, punctilious and flan. These might have been the most challenging words to date because I had to look up ALL THREE OF THEM, but, knowing Marty, his intent was to stump me. He is my pastor, after all. It's part of his job to challenge me. However, what Marty meant for evil (just kidding, Marty), turned out to be the best part. The word erstwhile actually helped me discover this female character. I wondered to myself, "What kind of person would use the word erstwhile?" ... and this lovely, OCD character was born. And, in the beautifully Christian spirit of REVENGE, I named the other character after Marty.

And I made a mistake. Yesterday was story #30. Today's is story #31. See? Serious math issues.

A Story A Week: Wild Man

He wears no shirt, tight jean cut-offs, Teva sandals with the straps frayed. His hair is a mop of dreads. I see him balanced on a one of the thick lower branches of the oak trees when I walk through the park, crouched on his haunches.

He shouts, but the people going past don’t look. Sure, you can tell they’re dying to let their eyes bulge out of their sockets at him, but only if they can do it secretly, without him seeing. Because they’re scared of him, just like I’m scared of him. I bet they have that tingle of apprehension, just like I have, that he’ll spring at them suddenly from his perch, because he’s an agile, drug-induced monkey man with dirty nails and fangs for teeth.

I walk past the oak. Now he can dig his gaze into me, but I try not to think about that. I look up at the clouds in the sky: white puffs. I know that’s what clouds mostly look like, but not always. Yesterday they were wispy threads drawn out like furrows in a field.

“And there she goes, that long-haired girl with the blue heels. She prances by. She makes no sound. Just the click of her shoes lets you know she’s a whore. Looking all nice and pretty on the outside – she might! – But underneath she weaves deception. She brings men in. One date and they’re hooked. She doesn’t care anymore who they are or where they’re from. She’ll take anyone. They come willingly enough—”

“Creepy guy, huh?” Jesalyn, my cube mate at work, jogs up next to me, ponytail swinging. Her ballet flats on the concrete path don’t make a sound.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I say. “Nice to have someone to walk with. Thanks for catching up.”

“I wish they’d put people like that away,” she whispers. “They’re so….”

His voice never stops. It’s a sacred voice, the kind you hear in church, deeper than you’d expect from anyone so skinny. “Men, you look the other way. Don’t let her taunt you with her eyes, lure you with her soft olive skin, weave a web of desire around you. Ignore the pounding in your chest, because it’ll lead you to hell, my friends. Lead you to hell…!”

I brush off the sleeves of my velvet jacket. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m afraid some of his words are stuck to me, hanging off like trails of toilet paper when you come out of a bathroom. Dead giveaways of where you’ve been and what you’ve done.

I glance at Jesalyn, but she’s talking about Friday’s office party. Could I bring a six-pack of beer, maybe a package of cookies?

“Sure,” I say. “No problem.”

My powder blue heels with the peek-a-boo toes click on the cement. Soon, I can’t hear his voice at all anymore, just the roar of the public buses on the street ahead. Our office building looms directly across the road, sunshine glancing off glass windows.

But in my chest, a dark hand burrows, clawing through the muck that used to be my conscience. And a voice rings repeatedly in my head like a broken doorbell: How did he know?


Thanks to Jesalyn for her three inspirational words: agile, deceptive and sacred. And for the record, if I counted correctly (no guarantee), this is my 29th Story-A-Week story. Only twenty-three more to go to reach my goal. Since I'm playing catch-up, I'll post another one tomorrow, so please come back to read story number thirty!

Two-Post Thursday

I have to play catch up because there's so much to blog about, but not enough days in the week.

So, today I'll be posting two posts. Can you handle it? This one and also a Story-A-Week. I wrote two stories for Story-A-Week yesterday (yay!). I think you'll like them. I'll post one later today and one tomorrow. Sound good?

And I will not post any more about being sick or about people in my house being sick because I'm sick of blogging about sickness. So there. (But thank you for all your words of encouragement! They were very nice.)

I have been reading books. I read Baby by Joseph Monninger a few weeks ago. You can read my review here. (Another great book. I love having the convenience of a book-list!)

I have also been wandering around my google reader trying to catch up on all the posts I missed when I had the thing-I-won't-talk-about. That's how I stumbled across references to a very cool competition going on over at Angela Ackerman's blog, The Bookshelf Muse. Click here to find out how you can enter to win a three-month mentorship with Angela. You can also enter a simpler contest to win critiques of smaller portions of your manuscript. So, either way, check it out.

Agent Kathleen Ortiz is having a celebration because she reached 2,000 followers on Twitter. She's giving away book packs on her blog, so check it out here.

Phew, that's all I have energy for today. Have to go downstairs and check on the puke-- er, I mean, check on the children.

Stay tuned for my Story-A-Week later today, courtesy of Jesalyn's three incredible words.

Nugget: The Virtues of Sleep

We discussed this at the Inland Empire SCBWI conference in Spokane on Saturday. It's a very small golden nugget of writing wisdom, but highly valuable.

Once you finish the first draft of your manuscript, let it sleep.

(This was from author Claire Rudolf Murphy's very awesome Do's and One Don't List. I'll share the whole list later. Promise.)

So I raised my hand (it's a small conference, so it was totally acceptable in this session to raise one's hand.)

"How long do you leave your manuscript alone?"

One woman near the front tossed up Stephen King's advice: letting your manuscript rest for six months.

SIX MONTHS?!

But Ms. Murphy chimed in with a much more (in my opinion) judicious "at least three weeks."

So, there you have it. We all knew we needed to let that manuscript sleep, but we were all wondering how long.

The point of letting your WiP sleep or brew or bake (or whatever it's doing when you walk away and leave it alone) is to give you emotional distance from the work. While it's in your face all the live-long day, it's too easy to go cross-eyed, ignore small flaws, speed read, and so on.

Time gives distance.

And this was the most interesting part to me:

Once you go back and re-read your first draft manuscript, read it twice.

And then decide: is this something in which I want to invest my time?

Am I going to go the distance with this story?

Am I going to polish this thing to death and eventually query it?

Or am I going to pick out some good parts and start with something different?

You know, I'd never thought about abandoning a project after letting it sleep.

By the end of the first draft, it seems created already.

I already feel committed.

But wow - what a great tip:

The freedom to abort mission, before you give any more of your life to something that won't go anywhere.

Give yourself the freedom to let it go, to start something new and fresh, OR to even take the excellent parts of the original idea and spin it into something different.

That's good stuff. Definitely a hunk of pure gold.

What do you think? Have you thought about this aspect of resting your manuscript before?

Two Days in Incomplete Sentences

*A post composed completely of incomplete sentences.*

Wonderful time at writing conference in Spokane. Love the Inland Empire.

Long drive home in the dark. Swerved around the freeway in the rain. Probably thought I was drunk. But no. Instead, attempting to swat large moth out the window of my car.

Back home. @3a.m. woke up with stomach cramps.

Yeah, you guessed it.

Stomach flu.

All day yesterday.

Which was my daughter's 2nd birthday.

Managed to make cookie dough cupcakes, but that's about all I accomplished.

Oh, yeah. Also wrote a card for her.

Trying to get caught up here, but might take a few days.

Your patience appreciated.

Now, stay well everyone!