O, Exercise Bike...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. Thou art more lovely than other exercise bikes, having -- like me -- a nice, wide seat.
2. Thou art so quiet, allowing me to hear my netlix movies.
3. Thou art stationary, and stationed right in front of our big, American, example-of-conspicuous-consumption (--like me) TV set.

Shall we live together, you and I?

Just Do It (Apologies to Bruce Coville, Who Reminded Us to Avoid Cliche)

If you write kidlit, or are thinking about writing kidlit (just do it), you must join SCBWI. And then find out when your regional chapter is having its annual conference (because lovely as LA and NY are, we can't all get there every year...sigh). And then sign up, and GO. The end.

Because (it's never the end) it was fabulous. Friday night we were all put into genre areas to forge new starter critique groups (or, presumably for those who were already in several, to extol the virtues of same). As I'm already in a picture book crit group, I met with three wonderful people who are all interested in chapter book writing, and we plan to try critiquing via Skype (or other conference software). We met Bruce Coville, writer and incredible public speaker (and I like to think I'm a tough audience...probably untrue), who spent an hour or so talking about "voice." And then we met the two editors who had made it in from NY: Eve Adler and Ruta Rimas. Both were great sports for the duration, and very generous with their energy.

Saturday was an all-day affair: longer presentations from each editor on their houses and on their lists, likes and dislikes. A presentation from agent Ted Malawer, of Upstart Crow (formerly of Firebrand Literary). Door prizes. The conference was well-themed the Wild, Wild, West, and guess what playing card I drew for door prizes? The ACE OF SPADES. I got to answer (guess) the second question, and won a gift card from the conference bookstore... how wonderful is that? After lunch there were breakout sessions, and I spent an hour with Dian Curtis Regan on picture books (and am scoping out her seminar at Texas A&M for next summer), then another hour with the incomparable Bruce Coville on plot and character (really, his performance energy is astonishingly generous), and then an hour in a group critique with Eve Adler. And then, ANOTHER presentation by Bruce, on writing in general (just do it). And networking, networking, networking. Handing out business cards, and making new contacts. A lot of people I recognized from the July workshop, so it's a small-ish community you can meet quite easily.

Oh, and my crit partner told me on Saturday that "she liked my piece." As I wasn't packing, despite the conference theme, she filled me in: a piece I wrote called "The Inside Joke" (advice for picture book writers) was published in In the Wind, the regional SCBWI newsletter. I only just subscribed (oops), so had missed it... much mutual hilarity with Jenn Bailey for same. Kudos to Sue Ford and the fleet of volunteers!

I can't wait for the next one. Oh, and if you volunteer, which I didn't yet, you usually get a reduced conference fee. Come on! What are you waiting for?!

Shoe Brand Slogan

I did creative writing as an elementary school student. I remember being sent, terrified, to the headmaster's office, only to be told to read my story aloud to him (thanks for the heads up, teach!). I did creative writing in high school, as our English teacher lobbed writing prompts at us for an hour when she just couldn't bear to teach Macbeth another day. I published some "pomes" as a graduate student, all but one of them in college mags. But at some point, I got excruciatingly self conscious, and stopped. At least, that's what I thought had happened. But the other day I pulled out of obscurity a binder full of scraps of writing. All pretty awful, but still. There they were!

Now, academic books are not much in the way of creative writing, true. And the first one reads like you'd expect a dissertation to read. An award winning dissertation, but still. If there was an award for the most polysyllabic diction, it'd be mine. The past five years (plus one for the publisher to actually make the book) have been near daily writing, but I didn't think of it in very creative terms. I did aim for a truly readable, enjoyable as well as informative book, so audience and purpose were firmly in place. But I was chomping at the bit to write fiction. Not academic prose, and not poetry.

And finally, this is the life, just as (sorry, Hallmark moment:) I'd hoped for in high school and earlier. (I do actually have one piece that survived elementary school, and typing that sentence I just remembered my earliest story, about a group of nomadic aborigines in the Australian desert...which is amazing for the similarity in concept to one of my chapter books). And the writing muscles are well pumped, thanks to years of academic writing, and (being an English teacher) professional reading. So there are two things that are different now: 1) I've lost the self consciousness, thanks to 2) having children and rediscovering over the past seven years the fun of children's lit.

Moral of the story: look at how much fun this is, and how great it can be, as well as how much slog, and if you're hemming and hawing about writing, don't put it off until "one day when...".

Now, in case all the hand inscriptions add up to something, what's on daughter's hand in ink today: "crickets" (for the toad, Rufus), and on the other hand: "Thumbelina" (the movie, for daughter to rent).