Parent Jitters

I wish I could blog about how thrilled I am to have completed my first semester at Vermont College, what a ride it's been, how much I've learned, how much better my writing has gotten, all of that good stuff, but today, this week's professional accomplishment has been entirely overshadowed by something so much bigger.

My oldest goes in for minor surgery tomorrow.  She's having her adenoids removed and turbinades shrunken. She's a mouth breather, is going through the joys of orthodontic work, and needs more breathing room.

It's minor surgery. Twenty minutes tops.


But it's a full anesthesia. Granted, that's what my husband does. Not that he's doing hers. Not a good idea to work on your own loved ones. He'll be in the OR, though, which is great. Still, I'm worried. This is my baby. My little girl. My responsibility.
Will everything go all right? How will her recovery be? Is the pain manageable?

I don't even want to go to that one question that circles around on the perimeter of all the other worried parent questions. It's like, if I give voice to that question, I'm inviting disaster.

I'm not the only one who worries like this, am I? Am I overdoing it? Okay, maybe. I keep telling myself it could be a lot worse. There are greater things to overcome. But denying my feelings isn't working all that well today.

So, I guess I'm going to bury myself in my writing. And when my baby gets home after school, hug and hug and hug her.

Somewhere, in all that, I hope to find my courage.

Honey, I'm Home...

They say role reversal can pep up your marriage.  My husband is home this week chilling on the couch. I'm at work.

Okay, okay, I don't normally spend my days when he's not home on the couch in front of a roaring fire popping bon bons, but, you know, I sometimes get the feeling my husband thinks I do. I'm a writer. What else can I be doing for long stretches of time while he's off working?

Other writers know what goes on in the daily life of a lonesome wordsmith - a lot of quiet time, a lot of typing, lively conversations with imaginary friends, and sometimes, when the typing isn't happening, small sacrifices to the muse.

But husbands? Spouses? Significant others?

It's a big black box, surrounded by bon bons and free time.

Which is why it has been so cool having my husband home this week. For the first time, he's gotten a chance to see what I really do all day.

Granted, my monosyllabic responses--"write"--to this question over the years haven't been helpful. I guess I needed to show, not tell.

This week I've shown.

And he's watched.

Even listened when I ask him if I can read something out loud.

It's been fun. So much fun that I'm really going to miss him next week. It's neat having a pair of eager ears. And a lunch buddy. A friend. My best friend. 

It may not have been role reversal this week, but it has definitely added spark to our relationship. My husband "gets" what I do.

Priceless.

The Book Review Club - Bull Rider

Bull Rider
by Suzanne Morgan Williams

upper middle grade/ya

Drugs, sex, teenage pregnancy, you name it, children's authors write about it. Suzanne Morgan Williams is no different. She has taken on perhaps the mother of all controversial issues for this country, the war on terrorism. Bull Rider's story is current, it's controversial, but far more importantly, it's really really well-written. Any book can take on controversy, but take it on without becoming preachy, now that's good writing.

Cam O'Mara's older brother is a marine. He goes off to fight in the Middle East, is injured, and comes back home a very different person. Cam's family struggles with the effects of war on their own world, the world at large, and the way people see them. Cam, a skateboarder by passion, turns to bull-riding, a time-honored family profession, because it is the only way he can escape the discomfort and uncertainty of his life. In the end, he chooses bull-riding to help his brother realize that if Cam can face his fears and straddle a thousand pounds of bull, then his brother can face his, learning to walk again.

This isn't a light read. It isn't a comfortable one. But it is unforgettable. Williams isn't preachy. There are no easy answers to war, not for those opposing, those waging it, and especially not for those fighting it. Her characters are well-shaped, offering all sides to the debate but no judgments. Family, love, hanging in there for each other, these are the driving force of her story.

Read it. It'll make you think.

And for other great reads this crazy December month, hop over to Barrie Summy's blog.

The Book Review Club - Butt Wars

Butt Wars
By Andy Griffiths
Age Range: ? ? ?

My seven year-old brought this book home. It was the party favor at a birthday party.

She was disappointed. Butt Wars? It sounded so boy boy boy.

I was puzzled. Butt in the title...of a middle grade?


I had to read it. Right after I convinced her she should at least try it. It was outside her comfort range because of the boyishness. And seeing as I wasn't opposed to the butts, or the crapalanches, or the aresteroids, or the flying brown blobs (I read a lot of German kidlit, and kids curse a lot more in middle grade German kidlit. Even in British kidlit, for that matter), I wanted her to try something different. Granted, this is a little out there, but nonetheless.

She loved it. LOVED IT. It's the longest book she's ever read.

Then I read it.

Butt Wars, The Final Conflict is the the third and last in the Butt War trilogy in which Zack, together with his butt, has to save the world from the Great White Butt. In this story, he travels back 65 million years to battle his arch enemy, and the double (or triple, I kind of lost count) agent, Mutant Barf Lord. I have to admit, I got a little tired of the butt talk. Buttasaurs, stink butts, cocobutt trees...if you can stick a butt in it, Andy Griffiths did. But (no pun intended) I think it's exactly that irreverent, crude potty talk that makes this book so endearing to a young audience (it was originally marketed in Australia as a YA). And I have to say, there is plot. Poopy plot, but plot.

What, however, does the infiltration of crude language into middle grade mean for writers? Profanity is definitely still a rarity, especially gratuitous profanity (for the exception to the rule, read or listen to Orson Scott Card's scifi middle grade, Space Boy), but crudeness?

Until Butt Wars, I hadn't seen it in this magnitude. Even more interesting, Butt Wars is an Australian creation brought to the U.S. market by Scholastic. We imported crudeness, which may have been easier than letting one of our own break down that wall.

But what does it mean? Before, crudeness-like profanity still is for this genre-was a sonic boom that could be used to catch the reader's attention. Now, it is fast becoming the norm. That makes the palette of language possibilities a little more colorful (yeay!), but our jobs a little harder. We need a new sonic boom.

Will it be profanity?

Or will it be something entirely new?

Curioser and curioser...

If Butt Wars just isn't your thing (or even if it is), check out Barrie Summy's blog for a whole host of books that'll have you talking and reading well into December!

Sustainability

I know. I know. Sustainability is actually one of the big millennia buzz words, usually referring to important things like, saving our planet. Recycle. Reduce. Reuse. I get it.

But right now I'm really worried about sustaining my hair. It's all because of the gray. Gray changes everything. It makes your hair wiry. And changes the whole styling thing. It pretty much makes you reassess your haircut and ask if there isn't something that can be done because, basically, you don't want to look like your kids grandmother just yet (okay, ever!).

I've thought about dealing with the gray by going short (I have long hair).

But I had a bad experience with short. A few years ago, after I had my second child, I let my hairdresser convince me to get a bob. It would be easier than having long hair, he said. I gave in.

He did a great job. It really looked good. Amazing. Effortless.

Until I washed it.

And then all of those layers went every which way but down. Horror. What was I doing wrong? I suddenly remembered with a sinking feeling how my hairdresser had started to sweat as he dried my hair. How he'd labored at those layers. They weren't effortless at all.

Ack! How was I supposed to manage this?

I let it grow out.

Which was great until the grey started to appear. I mean, it's not exactly like it's going to go away now (despite my complaint with the gene pool. They so are not returning my phone calls).

So, color, right?

But there was that one study they did that one time that showed a correlation between coloring and bladder cancer.

I don't want vanity to give me bladder cancer.

Okay, green freak, go all gray. Easy enough. Yeesh.

But I don't want to look like Barbara Bush.

Then cut it all off!

But...um...isn't that one of those options that sounds a lot better than it looks?



Why don't men have these problems???

Maunscript Diet

Have you ever had a manuscript gain an unsightly number of pages, so much so that you cringe at the cost of printing it out?

I am usually a short writer. When I started college, I trembled at the thought of ten page papers. Ten pages? Who am I, Charles Dickens?

When I wrote my dissertation and managed a whole 250 (including 25 pages of bibliography and tables), I was flabbergasted. I'd maxed out. That was for sure. Never would I write anything longer. Ever.

And I didn't.

Until...

I started my present WIP. It's about a boy and a dolphin set in late 19th century New Zealand, and I even got to go to New Zealand last November for on-sight research. At that point, the ms was still a manageable 285 pgs.

Over the last year, I think my WIP secretly gorged on adverbs, Anne of Green Gables poetical monologues, and New Zealand scenery because it grew to a whopping 420 pages. A real full figured dame.

Given another era, another economy, another stage of existence in the publishing industry, and it might have been fine. Dickensian (or Botticelli) full, but fine. But it's a hard sell in today's market.

After a lot of thought, and talking with other authors, and speaking with agents, and pretty much hashing until I had come to terms with the inevitable, I put my ms on a diet. A serious diet. No liposuction here. I mean serious, word-counting, shave-off-the-excess pagery reduction.

I started three weeks ago. Being the slightly obssessive compulsive neurotic writer that I am, I'm keeping a "diet" journal. At the end of each day of revisions, I weigh in. The rule is that the ms word count cannot be any higher than where it was at the beginning of the day. I strive to make it a lot less. So far, it's been working. I have successfully shaved 11,000 words off, and I'm only through the first 120 pages.

Oh sweet success. I can almost taste the adverbs.

No, No! Bad writer. Stay away from the adverbs!

See how hard ms reduction is?

Sigh.

Please keep your fingers crossed. Pray to any and all writing muses. Send me parsimonic vibes. My ideal ms weight: 70-75,000 words (285 ms pgs), and I want to reach that by Winter Break. Which means, no adverbs on the side. No waxing poetically about scenery. Cut. Cut. Cut. Snip. Snip. Snip.

And, every once in a while, celebrate the hard won successes.

GLEE!!!!!

Now back to counting words...

There is No Secret Handshake

The jig is up. There is no secret handshake. No magic formula. No deus ex machina for writers.

Aghast?

I was. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us there is no Santa Claus. Yeesh.

Leaving the big red guy out of it for a moment, I have to admit, when I started out writing, I was certain there was a secret formula. All I had to do was figure it out and the bestsellers would flow from my pen. I mean, honestly, it wasn't the craziest idea I've ever had (there have been crazier, like the time I decided I could prove girls are every bit as good as guys and jumped from a bridge into a river after a guy. Don't ask.) So what was it for writing? Writing for exactly two hours each day? Or writing nonstop, foregoing sleep, until I'd birthed my idea? Or if that wasn't working out, how about writing standing up, like Hemingway. Or drunk?

I will shamefacedly admit, I've tried all of these "formulas" out and then some. None of them worked. So finally, I resigned myself to the fact that I'm not clever enough to decode the secret handshake and will have to plug along writing as best I can.

It wasn't until I read Stephen King's On Writing a few weeks back (after four picture books and a middle grade novel, hundreds of school visits, and I don't know how many conference speeches) that I had my "Eureka!" moment. There is no secret formula to writing.

Not, at least, in the way I was thinking. I mean, the big secret is, to write. That's it. Everything else is fluff.

What King showed in his book was enlightening for me, or maybe I really had finally hit that "clever enough" to understand it point. His journey to authorhood, i.e. the early years of his life and what prompted him to want to write, couldn't be more different than mine, or thousands of other writers. It's eclectic, unique, what makes Stephen King, Stephen King and not Stacy Nyikos. His candid, tell all approach to describing his life as a writer made that clearer than anything I'd ever read before.

The thing that separated him from thousands of other writers is stubbornness. He plugged away at writing, day after day, year after year, rejection after rejection, until he had honed his skills - his, not Charles Dickens's or John Grisham's or anybody else's - to the point that he had mastered them.

And then he kept writing.

The best piece of advice he ever got in all those years of struggling and writing was a line scrawled at the bottom of a rejection letter from an unknown editor: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

Okay, so there is a formula.

But that's for revisions.