1. I love writing poetry and books for kids, my dog, my native plant garden, Santa Cruz, and chocolate.
2. A little over a year ago I was laid off from my day job and have spent the last year adjusting and enjoying being a full-time writer.
3. I'm filled with all kinds of doubts and insecurities about who I am, what kind of a writer I'm supposed to be, and if I am ever good enough whatever task is waiting right in front of me. (In other words, I worry a lot about things I should quit worrying about.)
But probably the single thing that tells you the most about me is that I have never known my father. His name, yes, but that's all. I've never met him or anyone in his family. The only pictures I've ever seen were of him as a gawky young man in a white suit at their wedding. He was gone before I was born.
As I kid I used to bug my mom all the time for information about him but she never really said much. No one in the family talked about him and when they did, they never painted the prettiest picture. But here's the thing, I didn't want them to tell me whether the picture was any good or not. I wanted to see for myself. Still families do what they can to protect what they feel needs protecting and by the time I was in the 4th grade and someone asked me if I was Tommy Webb's daughter I said no, without hesitation. I had been trained well.
When you have a hole like that in your life it's like a scab you can't let heal. And people who don't have the same kind of hole often find it difficult to understand why just can't leave it all alone and move on. I can't explain the why. I can only claim the hole. It's grown smaller over the years but it's still there.
Last week I wrote about the distance we need between real life and our stories before we can write about them. In the past I've written about feeling safe enough to write the truth of your story. I believe we should always strive to write with emotional honesty, even when (or especially when) that seems like an impossible task.
That's where Flyboy comes in. Every question I've ever had about my father, about my worth as a person, about how I felt something missing when there was no reason to feel that way because my life was just fine the way it was....all of that has been pouring into Flyboy for, well, over 25 years now.
Characters and plot, I've got them. But to take that emotional plunge into the ice water of my past...I just couldn't make myself do it. I give myself a lot of sleep suggestions about my books, hoping my subconscious will take me where I need to go.
Four years ago I had a dream about my father. In my dream I went to answer the front door and there was a man there, kind of old, his short beard was gray but he had some black hair on his head. He wore a bit a suit that had seen better days. He handed me a box, a white box, like one you might get clothes in or a little bigger. It was tied with string, not a ribbon. I asked him what was in the box. He shook his head. I asked him again to please tell me what was in the box. Nothing. I don't know why I didn't just open it myself but I didn't. Then he walked away. I asked him to wait. He kept walking. Then I asked him who he was. He turned around and said, "I am your father." And then I woke up without opening the box.
Last week for some random reason I decided to check for my father on Classmates.com. I knew where he had gone to high school so I kept hoping that he might show up there. It was a far-fetched hope since people in his generation aren't as into the Internet as I am. Once I had gone there and found nothing I went through my normal little routine, putting in his name, the town he went to school in and the state where he was born. I'd never gotten anything back with that combo before but it was a familiar search I had done many, many times.
This time was different. This time an obituary popped up. I read it and burst into tears then almost as quickly I chastised myself for crying over someone who had never wanted me.
I've pieced together a story from my mom over the years. My father Tommy Webb was born in Arkansas and went to high school in Vallejo, California. His family eventually moved to Concord, to Bonifacio Street, into the little duplex across the street from where my mom lived. He worked at a service station in Walnut Creek, back when they had guys who pumped the gas for you. My grandmother's name was Tina. She was pregnant with my uncle Robert at the same time my mom was pregnant with me. I had an aunt Kitty who was two years older than I am. There was another aunt Janette. That's about it. Except for the not so pretty stories that I'll keep to myself because, as my mom told me today. He could have changed. Turned his life around. People do it all the time.
My father died in Missouri. In January. This year.
In January I was still recovering from being laid off, trying to piece my new life together, trying to figure out how to create a life that nourished my creative soul. I was whole but with rough edges that still needed smoothing. I think if I had found him then it would have been too much. Much too much. Sometimes distance is a good thing. Even if it means we never get the chance to say goodbye.
His obituary mentions my aunts and my uncle. Where they live. It also says he has two sons and a daughter. My half-siblings. And lots of grandchildren. Aunts and Uncles. Bothers and Sisters. Nieces and Nephews. Family or not. It all depends on your point of view. The kind of picture you want to paint.
The obituary does not, of course, mention me.
I keep thinking about that dream I had. How odd to think that my father, who never paid a dime of child support, might give me a gift I've always wanted. Answers to questions that have haunted me for years.
The Internet makes things easy sometimes. Really it took no more than a few hours of searching to locate most of the family. They're not active online. No websites or blogs or Facebook profiles. But mailing addresses. Phone numbers. I have some of them now.
It's a chance. A chance to see at least part of the picture for myself.
- 10:40 Fantastic review of The Splendor Falls. bit.ly/3uKkFL Squee! Hard to be unhappy with "rocked my world." Thanks Jacksonville.com! #
- 10:53 @booksrock Aw! I was just thinking about your students, since my visit was about a year ago. They were so welcoming! Tell them 'hi' from me! #
- 10:54 @JasonAMyersTX You rock! :-D #
- 10:55 @JasonAMyersTX @jamieharrington Okay, you BOTH rock. :-D #
- 10:58 @jamieharrington My brother made up a name for lunch-dinner. I still eat lunner all the time. #
- 11:03 @booksrock Awesome! LOL! (I think chupacabras should be the new vampire, but suppose they are not sexy enough.) #
- 11:54 @booksrock LOL! I have references to La Llorona in the book I'm writing now. My heroine when looking for her at Goliad when she was a kid. #
- 14:23 Taking break to watch GI Joe. Such a fun movie. Explosions. Gadgets. Beefcake. I'm so easy to please. #
- 16:21 Author Jennifer Ziegler #texasbookfest report @guysread @rclementmoore @Victoria_Laurie #yalit bit.ly/2EkbYZ (via @CynLeitichSmith) #
- 17:29 @jmSapereAude Hey, do you have an Xbox or a PS3 for playing Rock Band? #
- 17:41 @jmSapereAude All my RB/GH is for PS2 (no downloading extra songs=lame!), but I want to upgrade for the new games. Debating systems. #
- 17:42 @jmSapereAude I need to get in practice before Rocksgiving. #
- 18:00 @jmSapereAude SWEET! Now I want it even more. #
- 18:18 @CandaceHavens I had fish and chips for lunch! We are surfing the same brain wave. #
- 18:20 @simplyali Be prepared. Last scene of Act I is rather loud and scary. Little kids screamed a lot when we saw it. Just so you know. :) #
- 20:34 @FredCamposJr Oh! Happy birthday to her. It's my mom's birthday, too. #
- 20:55 @briaquinlan Did I see that you're headed back to Texas? Or did I make that up? #
- 21:20 @briaquinlan Very cool! That's some beautiful country there. #
We’re lying side by side, reading. A book for him, a screen for me.
Me: I want a cupcake.
Him: What? Where’d that come from?
Me: This post I’m reading. See?
I point at the word. CUPCAKE. It looks somehow magical, evocative, as if it were spelled out in actual cupcakes instead of plain old letters of the alphabet.
Me: I think cupcake is one of my ten favorite words.
Him: Hmm. You know, I don’t really like cupcakes.
Pause.
Me: That’s all right, I’ll have yours.
Two free hours ALL TO MYSELF!!!
I'm packing up the laptop and heading down to the coffee shop. I'm this close to finishing BIRD and I think a couple of hours in a new environment might motivate the muse. Or at least I'm hoping. This is by far the longest book I've ever written. It's currently at 59,400 words. I was shooting for 45,000. I'm not sure what happened. It still needs a ton of work, because several things changed, but at least I'll have the bones down. I think I'd like to be able to start submitting in the new year.
BUT, despite being almost finished with BIRD, I am feeling a little self-conscious when it comes to writing in general. Lately, I've been wondering if writing is what I'm meant to do. Like what if I was put on this planet to do something else? And I'm just wasting my time? Spinning my wheels? Sometimes, I picture myself under deadline and hating it. And then having revisions and feeling like I just want to curl up in bed with a book and forget the manuscript ever happened. Like, if I hate half the process, then why am I even writing? I really don't know. It hasn't been fun for a while, not since I found out I was pregnant. Possession is the last book I really remember loving.
But if I don't have writing, then what do I have? I don't want to work in a bank for the rest of my life.
*sigh* Why does life have to be so confusing?
Ahem.
What this means is that now I have lots of pictures of events taking place since I got my new camera three weeks ago, including, but not limited to: my trip with my parents to NYC (featuring The Rock), a slumber party with Sarah Cross, and (drum roll please)... HALLOWEEN. As I am a huge Halloween person, this makes me very happy. And if any of you are Halloween people, I hope that it will make you happy, too. For Halloween proper, I was a dark faery and spent the evening hanging out with a pirate, Rainbow Brite, and a (male) Care Bear. But on Halloween Eve (night before Halloween, obvi), I was an 80's aerobics instructor who had the bad luck to be attacked by zombies and subsequently zombified while wearing her neon yellow aerobics gear. Which would sound completely random, were it not for the fact that I spent the night at ZOMBIE PROM.
Pause for a moment to take in the awesomeness of that, my friends. Zombie. Prom. And, yes, there is a slight chance that the whole aerobics instructor bit is still random (compared to the zombies who just came in prom gear), but the lovely Professor Zombie who was throwing aforementioned Zombie Prom specially requested that I put together an aerobics instructor outfit, and as she just got Zombie Tenure (also: real tenure), who was I to deny her such a small thing?
What follows is an endeavor of high photojournalistic quality- and given that this is ZOMBIE prom, it is not for the faint of heart.
( Read more... )
She lurched.
She growled.
She caused mayhem of all kinds.
But underneath the fangs and fur,
Bernadette had a deep...dark...secret.
All will be revealed August 31, 2010!!!!!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Mostly-Monste
Three questions for Jon Skovron:
What was the title of your manuscript when you sold it? Did you have any input on the new title?
The original title was GROPE 4 LUNA, a reference to a Pixies song called Subbacultcha, but no one else liked that title. I guess if you don't know the song, it might read a little weird. My editor asked me for some other ideas and I gave her a list. She also came up with some. Then we showed the list to the marketing guy and he picked the one he thought was the most striking to someone who hadn't read the story yet. It ended up being, STRUTS & FRETS, one that my editor came up with. It's a pretty clever title. She's a pretty clever lady.
What place have you visited that you most want to return to?
Scotland. I was backpacking through the UK, and when I got to Scotland, I just suddenly felt at home. Like I had found my "people" or something.
Who is your favorite book character?
Just one? That's cruel! Okay, well, honest answer, it's always the main character of the book I'm currently writing :P
Congratulations, Jon!
Visit Jon at jonnyskov.com/
I once again confronted the lonnnnnng list of poems over on the right of the blog. For now, as before, they're chronological, but I keep thinking there must be a better way to organize them. I do use labels (for most - some are still unlabeled, I fear), but don't really see a better way to categorize them since the bulk are not linked to other poems by topic or form.
As always, I'm open to hearing ideas on ways I could make that list more helpful, useful, or... well... better! I don't see patterns in the stats and such that give me much help, but maybe one of y'all will know....
It's been a fairly quiet weekend on the kidlit blogs, for whatever reason. However, I have run across a few things of potential interest for you.
At Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, Terry Doherty shares a monthly roundup of new literacy and reading-related resources. The new resources section was something that we spun out of our weekly children's literacy roundups, in the event of streamlining those, and Terry's been collecting ideas for this monthly column. I hope you'll check it out. She's got lots of useful tidbits.
The NCBLA blog reports that the fourth episode of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is now available. This installment was written by Susan Cooper. The post adds: "And if you need further incentive to share the Library of Congress and the NCBLA's reading outreach project with the young people in your life, take a look at Timothy Basil Ering's electric new illustration for Episode Four!"
In the context of a recent graphic novel kick, Gail Gauthier muses at Original Content on how many books are "rigidly" formulaic. She says: "Maybe reading the same formula/pattern/storyline over and over again assists them in some way I've just never heard about." In the comments, Becky Levine adds: "I wonder about this often--how many things we see as formulaic, "old" don't feel that way to a child reading them--since they don't have X number of decades of this kind of reading behind them." What do you all think?
At Books & Other Thoughts, Darla D. wonders whether it's a good idea for parents to "ink out all of the bad words" in books before giving them to their children. Darla says: "A discussion between this parent and child about unacceptable language and why the parent believes it is not a good idea for her daughter to use those words might be more productive than expurgating the text." There are a range of opinions in the comments - it's quite an interesting (and civil) discussion.
At Biblio File, Jennie Rothschild discusses Amazon's new capability to quickly share Associates links on Twitter, in the context of the new FTC disclosure regulations. She notes: "the way I understand it, you'd have to disclose ON YOUR TWEET that you'll make money off the link. But how does one fit a link, why you're linking to the product, and a disclosure all in 140 characters? That, I don't know." I don't know, either. The idea of being able to share a Tweet that says "I'm reading this" and then get a small commission if anyone should happen to click through and buy the book, well, that has some appeal. But I think that the disclosure would be very tricky to pull off in any meaningful way.
Lori Calabrese has started a new monthly meme (possibly to become a weekly meme, if there's sufficient interest) in which she'll link to book giveaways around the Kidlitosphere. Don't you love her cute logo for Fish for a Free Book? She says in the launch post: "If you are hosting a children’s- young adult book-related giveaway, sponsoring a giveaway, or just found a really awesome giveaway that you’d like to share with us, please leave it here! (Please make sure it’s children’s book related)".
Speaking of giveaways, I, like Betsy Bird, don't usually link to them in my roundups (there are just too many). However, Betsy recently talked at A Fuse #8 Production about one that I think is brilliant. From the press release: "The YA and MG authors of the 2009 Debutantes are giving away a 46-book set of their debut novels to ONE lucky library, anywhere in the world! In light of recent budget cuts to libraries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other communities, these debut authors would like to contribute their library to your library, offering up brand new novels for your patrons at no cost." Pretty cool!
Quick hits:
- Susan T. identifies a bunch of additional "best of" lists at Chicken Spaghetti. Really, it would be redundant for me to link to any of these. If you're interested, you can peruse Susan's 2009 list of best of lists.
- This week's Poetry Friday roundup is at Wild Rose Reader, hosted by Elaine Magliaro.
- 5 Minutes for Books has a lovely guest post by Fiona Ingram about her adopted daughter's "journey into the wonderful world of words."
- Daphne Lee explains the high cost of books, including children's books, at The Places You Will Go (books are particularly expensive in Malaysia, where Daphne lives). She also suggests alternatives for families having difficulty buying books on their own.
- Happy third blog birthday to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
- You can find more links at the Book Dads Weekend Wander and Katie B's Odds and Bookends column at First Book.
And that's it for today. Hope you're all having a lovely Sunday.
© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).
"In your text treat Africa as if it were one country."
"Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat."
"Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her."
If you haven't read the essay, run-don't-walk to the Granta web site to read the rest or to order that back issue.
Yes, I know, it's been four years already since he wrote that. Surely things have changed. Maybe not. Listen to Chimamanda Adichie speak of the danger of hearing only a single story about a place. Any place. Thank you, Julie Larios and Sarah Blake Johnson for sending me this link within days of each other.
All this got me thinking about characters in YA books set in countries other than the US or Europe and published within the last 20 years. A few commonalities struck me.
1. Characters who are a combination of the following (pick two or more): long-ago, faraway, poor, depressed, angry, privy to or oppressed by (or both) some ancient tradition or other.
2. If they're not long ago, they still speak and act as if they were. They often don't use contractions, for one thing, or they adopt a labored kind of dialogue, with phrases in their native languages which they immediately translate into English.
3. They are torn between two worlds, two systems. That might be fine if those systems weren't defined as ancient and modern respectively as if a young person from contemporary Pakistan or Mexico or China were not quite of this century. Find me a teenaged character taking this overly philosophical psychohistorical view and I'll show you a well-intentioned writer driving the story to make a point.
4. They're either suffering from something oppressive in their cultures, or inflicting suffering on someone else for culturally grounded reasons.
Look at any of half a dozen YA novels set in South Asia and you might conclude that all the girls in the region are trying desperately to flee oppressive marriage or widowhood or sexual exploitation. You will feel pity for them and more, you will be grateful that you are not in their place. The thing is, you can't see people as fully human if all you can feel for them is pity. It's even more complicated when you are 8 or 10 or 14 years old and those "other" people instead of staying in their oppressive countries have somehow arrived in your neighborhood and your school.
And more complicated still if they were never in some other place at all, but have somehow, contrary to popular belief, managed to survive and are now suggesting that you share your century with them.
This is why we need more stories that don't define cultures as monolithic, impermeable and unchanging, that don't show the people within those cultures as trapped in unending cycles of victimhood. This is why there is a real danger that if the token single "multicultural" story is taken as representative of an entire place or its inhabitants or emigrants, it will leave no room for others to balance it out. This is why I'm pinning Wainaina's essay to my bulletin board. And drinking a cup of chai because, you know, that's what we South Asian types do when we stress out!
Allen Zadoff's FOOD, GIRLS, AND OTHER THINGS I CAN'T HAVE. Andy Zansky is a big guy who's learning to inhabit his bigness. He's a poetry-reading, model-UN geek whose life does a 180 when the star quarterback of the high school football team takes a sudden interest in him.
T-boy will like the jokes, but I liked the football plot.
Posted using TxtLJ
I have found that the best one page summaries are the ones that almost read like a micro-story with no scenes. Obviously it's impossible to retell a thirty thousand word novel in three hundred words and leave in things like scenes or descriptions. This is pretty much the only time you should be doing all telling and no showing. But that doesn't mean your writing skills should disappear. This is still a writing sample. After all if you can't entice the editor/agent with your synopsis, then you probably aren't going to be able to get them to read the entire work.
So that leads me to the writing pompt for this week. Take your finished novel and write a one page summary. And you might want to consider participating in the prompt this week. Over at Get Me Out of the Slushpile! you can post your summary and recieve feedback from me and other people. Please do not post your summary as an attachment. To make it easier for everyone, just paste it into the body of a post.
Then after everyone has had a week to receive comments and revise, I'm going to run a small one page summary contest. The top 5 I'll post and discuss in 2 weeks, and the top general one (chapter book, mid-grade, YA -- any genre/topic) and the top midgrade or YA -- SF, fantasy, mystery, or adventure novel will have their full manuscript requested (the general for Blooming Tree, the more specific genred one for CBAY). More details and rules will be posted next week. But just FYI, all entries will be due Tues. Nov. 17. But like I said, I'll post all the details next Sunday. This week is devoted to practice.
- Posted via iphone
Thanks to Sab for her wonderful picture and for helping out with my contest. Since I guessed her state correctly, a $20.00 gift card will be on its way to her soon!
Now it's time for me to once again guess where my little ARC will travel to next.
I'm going to guess the next stop on the Chase Around the USA is~
SOUTH CAROLINA!
Thanks to all who played, and I look forward to finding out where my little ARC goes to next!
Hey, friends! I'm wondering if you can help me out. I'm a tad hyper about a BIG IDEA I had last week. I'm doing a little research and could really use your help.
1) Is there a non-profit out there that you think is doing a FABULOUS job with their blog, website or Facebook page? I'm not exactly looking for ultra-creative. I'm looking for someone doing a great job of engaging their audience.
2) What about businesses? What business comes to mind as a business that really engages consumers via their marketing? (In the Kansas City area, we have Spin Pizza and the Hospital Hill Run who both have engaging content on their Facebook pages. I'm interested in finding more businesses or causes like these two who do it right!)
Thanks for any help or insight you can give me!
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