In Which I Get a Little Rambly

Yesterday, I sent off a first draft of my current WIP to agent extraordinaire. Today I went wandering to reward myself.

I used to love walking around with nowhere to go, exploring and noticing and observing. I live a totally different life now, full of responsibilities and constant action (make lunches, walk the kids to school, go to the post office, grade papers...), so I often forget what it's like to move without purpose. The most delightful things come across one's path when there are no expectations.

So...I found myself in the next town over, walking block after block, when I spotted a shop I'd rushed past hundreds of times, always grumbling to myself that I should go in when I have a spare minute. This time I went in. On the surface the place was typical for a neighborhood filled with Victorian homes and people with money--candles, natural skin products, cutesy wall plaques with inspirational quotes. Then I looked a little closer. Some books on Native American spiritualism lined one wall. Palmistry and fortune telling the other. Okaaay, I thought. Then I spotted the Buddhas. Tarot cards. Incense. Bundled dried sage.

Then I saw the sign. "Shamanistic Readings by Appointment Only."

Holy freaking crap! What was a Shamanistic reading? I had to know. I approached the counter. The woman behind it was about the same age as my mother, with a blond suburban bob and a green sweater set right out of the Land's End catalogue.

"Who's gives the readings?" I asked. I don't know who I was expecting. A straight-backed elderly gentleman from the Cherokee nation? Jim Morrison? An ex-Deadhead who would also try to sell me some peyote?

She smiled at me. "I do."

This was my Shaman.

Turns out Shamanistic readings are kind of a guided, spiritual look inside the psyche. The focus is on answering a question, as in some Tarot readings, but all kinds of stuff comes out because the Shaman is gently coaxing spiritual energies. At least that's how I understood it. Anyway, this woman and I ended up having a great conversation about creativity, aromatherapy, life in general.

I didn't get a reading (Um, Shamans are expensive--even ones that look like they crochet instead of hang out in sweat lodges.) but I learned some things I can file away for that witch book I'm working on AND I scored some medicinal grade peppermint essential oil (great for focus and concentration.) All in all, a success.

There's a part of me that sees these excursions as a waste of time (You could be writing, Miss Flaky-pants, the little voice tells me.) But today I'm going to see them like a Shaman would: opening one's soul to the world.

And what's wrong with that?

A Kick to the Right Side of my Brain

Happy 2011, everyone!

I am so excited for what this year will bring, and I'm eager to get started on a major project I've been planning for quite some time. BUT I still have to finish up the one I'm working on. Exhaustion is common as one enters the last phases of a book, particularly during the busy holiday season, but I was lucky enough to come across some incredibly inspiring art to keep my mind whirring. Here's a taste...

1. JUST KIDS by Patti Smith. I realize I'm a little late to the party with this one, but--wow--if you were one of those "creative" girls in your late teens/early twenties, with no idea what to do with your creative impulses, this is for you. I loved reading how Patti came into her own and figured out what to do with all the ideas exploding in her head.

2. Bonobo is a pseudonym for the Brit DJ Simon Green. I usually can't write to music, but his hypnotic album, Black Sands, calls forth the words like a snake charmer. I'm obsessed!

3. Expanding my Beta circle. I love my long-term betas, but it's always good to search out new, critical readers. I've been lucky enough to meet some pretty sharp, fantastic people and my writing has truly benefited.

4. Black Swan--It's a Hitchcock/Twilight Zone/YA novel mash-up. LOVED it. I mean, I was totally creeped out, but it's been a while since a movie made me feel anything deeply. So...cool.

5. Comic books. My younger son has been writing his own comics. Watching how his 8 year old brain maps out a story has been a lesson in the art of simplicity.

What's been jumpstarting your creativity? Movies? Art? Music? Tell me!

Reading Recap

I read like my boys eat--I gulp down so much, so fast, it's impossible to keep track of how much I've consumed. I have no idea how many books I read during 2010. A safe guesstimate would be fifty-two (one a week). Some I liked, some I didn't, but some absolutely stunned me. Here are the titles from that list:

My Best of 2010:

YA

1. THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson
2. DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth (OK, this doesn't come out until May `11, but this one...omg, this one...It will be on your list next year.)
3. THE DUFF by Kody Keplinger
4. GIRL, STOLEN by April Henry
5. THE CLOCKWORK ANGEL by Cassandra Clare
6. THE BODY FINDER by Kimberly Derting
7. FORGET YOU by Jennifer Echols
8. THE DEMON'S COVENANT by Sarah Rees Brennan
9. NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL by Siobhan Vivian
10. CRESCENDO by Becca Fitzpatrick

Adult

1. A RELIABLE WIFE by Robert Goolrick
2. ONE DAY by David Nicholls

Non-Fiction

1. THE CYNICAL IDEALIST: A SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN LENNON by Gary Tillery
2. AT HOME: A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE by Bill Bryson


I'm currently reading two books I'm certain would have made the list if I'd finished before typing this: JUST KIDS by Patti Smith and ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS by Stephanie Perkins.

Got any titles to add? Disagree with my choices? Tell me!

(I'll be busy finishing up a project over the next two weeks, so this is my last blog post of the year. Happy Holidays to everyone!! Thanks for reading!!)

It's a Wham Christmas!

Okay, I just have to link to this. I know it was featured on the Glee Christmas episode, but this time Rachel and Finn just don't do it for me.

And come on, don't tell me I'm the only person who sincerely thought she had a chance with George Michael...

A Christmas Story

In early December 1993, I was living in Astoria, a working class neighborhood at the end of the N subway line in Queens, NY. I took that train home every day from my job writing for a trade magazine, a position I loved, even though it paid next to nothing. Like many other people my age, I lived paycheck to paycheck.

The first Friday of that month I came home from work and wrote out all of my bills. On Saturday morning I confidently tossed them in the mailbox. On Sunday morning, I got around to balancing my checkbook. I'd been careless. Unless I wanted to bounce a check, I had $8 left in my account. I had less than five in my wallet. I'd done some Christmas shopping for my family, and, it embarrasses me to write, my credit card was at its pathetic limit.

At first I didn't panic. I caught a ride with a friend most mornings, and I had a subway pass for evenings. I could eat what was in my pantry. Two weeks wasn't all that long. I'd be fine until payday.

Then I took some inventory. The only edible items in my apartment were a half empty box of Cheerios, a bit of milk, some butter, and a stack of Saltine crackers. I didn't keep much in the house because I was used to eating out. What can I say? I was young.

I ate cereal for dinner that night, and for breakfast the following morning. I bought a slice of pizza for lunch. I had a few dollars left.

If I spent my remaining money on a slice the next day, I'd have nothing. I panicked. I ate Saltines smeared with butter for lunch on Tuesday. I had the same for dinner. I went to bed with a growling stomach, my brain running too hard for sleep.

I could have called my parents. They would have wired some money immediately. But that would have been admitting failure. The worst kind. Do you know how many people said, "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere" when I moved to NYC? Too many. They would know I didn't make it. That I didn't have the stuff. Starvation was preferable.

I knew I could hang out at my cousins' over the weekend, and they would feed me. That was something to look forward to. I remember that Thursday we held a staff meeting where bagels and cream cheese were served. I think I ate two and snuck one in my purse. On Friday I endured a long lunch with our ad exec, Charlie, because I knew he would pay. A loud, sexist holdover from those Mad Men years, Charlie believed in drinking his lunch and pinching the waitress's bottom. We went for Indian. I was so grateful I didn't care that the entire restaurant could hear him tell me dirty jokes.

For whatever reason, I couldn't go over to my cousins' on Saturday. I was crazy hungry. I had two dollars.

I went to a Chinese restaurant near my apartment, figuring my credit card check went through and I'd have some room on it for a meal. I ate. The bill came, and I murmured a prayer as I handed over my Visa. When the waitress returned with my card, I knew by her pinched look it had been declined. I promised to return the following Friday to pay my bill. She said that would be fine, as long as I left my driver's license as collateral.

Humiliated, I ran home, tearful and angry. I knew what I had to do. I unplugged my VCR, stuffed the cord in my purse, and hopped on the subway headed for the city. I got out at 42nd Street, found a pawn shop in Times Square (it wasn't the family fun Disneyland it is today), and walked out with 25 dollars.

I went back to the Chinese restaurant and paid my bill. It felt good to slide my license back into my wallet. I went to the grocery store and bought peanut butter, a loaf of bread, some cans of soup.

I made it. The following Friday I stopped at the pawn shop after work and bought back my VCR. I took myself out to dinner. I went to the movies. I fell into a deeply restful sleep.

But I haven't ever forgotten how badly my stomach hurt when there was nothing in it for far too long. I remember the panic, the desperation, the anger, the embarrassment. I remember how much time and energy I had to put into figuring out a way to eat.

I didn't have children then, so I can only imagine what this feels like when you are responsible for people other than yourself. I can barely stand to think about the amount of families going hungry during these horrible economic times.

I doubt many of us are wealthy, but if you have a little extra, please pick up some non perishables next time you're at the supermarket, and drop them off at your local food pantry. If you have no idea where your local facility is, google it. You'd be surprised. Even upscale neighborhoods have them. Or, if your search doesn't bring anything up, shoot me an email and I'll find one for you. Seriously.

Being hungry sucks, but being hungry during the holiday season is its own kind of hell, you know?

Freaky Friday

Something a little different this week: How not to shop at a major cosmetics retailer (rhymes with Bora-Bora):

1. Don't assume that because your pajamas kind of look like pants no one will notice you're wearing them. The women who work there are capable of noticing a stray brow hair. They will take note. And then they will follow you around asking "Are you sure I can't help you?" until you want to run out of the store. Which is probably their goal.

2. Don't try on the Nars lipstick even though the store is out of alcohol swabs or anything remotely usable for disinfecting makeup. You will spend the next three hours OCD-ing about the Herpes/HIV/Hepatitis/Smallpox/Typhoid you probably caught. And the color will probably suck anyway.

3. Don't, in a fit of nostalgia, spray yourself effusively with Chanel no. 5. It won't smell the same as it did when you were fifteen. Somehow, in the twenty-five years since then, it went from being sexy and sophisticated to smelling like an old lady's closet.

4. Don't allow the Benefit representative to "fill-in" your eyebrows. You will resemble the Russian chick in that Dodgeball movie.

5. You are too old for sparkly eye shadow. Sorry, but it's true.

Um, yeah, I should not be allowed out of the house...

Thankful for Inspiration

In my literature class, we've been talking about allusions, particularly with poets making reference to artists who came before and paved the way. In part, an allusion allows the writer to acknowledge her influences, to thank a mentor, to show literary genealogy.

I am so proud to write stories for young adults. I wouldn't be doing it, though, if not for these artists, whose influence is lasting and ongoing:

1. Judy Blume: During my middle school years, we spent part of every summer at my grandparents' house, 20 miles from my friends. I always brought a JB book with me--DEENIE and TIGER EYES were my favorites. I fell so completely in love with the stories I didn't notice the loneliness so much.

2. S.E. Hinton: I remember being completely blown away the first time I read THE OUTSIDERS, but TEX is my all time fave. It just felt so real. Reading Hinton was my first lesson in characterization (Paul Zindel, too. PARDON ME, YOU'RE STEPPING ON MY EYEBALL! is a good one).

3. John Irving/William Goldman: OK, technically not YA authors, but these guys taught me about plot, narrative structure, and how to manage reader expectations. In their books, you grow to know the characters so well, but what happens to those characters is constantly a surprise.

4. Sarah Dessen: I picked up a copy of DREAMLAND while I was writing my first YA novel. Dessen tells such a good story you don't notice the impact of the emotional journey until everything comes together in the final pages, and you realize how skillfully she's led you to that point. Her books are always so well structured, allowing the reader to become fully immersed in her heroine's world. (I'd put Meg McCafferty in this category as well--her book SLOPPY FIRSTS is just about perfect.)

5. Susan Isaacs: If you haven't read the book SHINING THROUGH (watching the craptastic movie version doesn't count) then grab your Borders coupon (50% off today!) and buy it! I've read ST four or five times over the past twenty years and I still don't want to put it down while reading. Why? A complex heroine you desperately want to succeed. A love interest that is quite her match. A familiar setting (WWII New York) that turns unfamiliar (Germany in the grip of the Nazis). All of Isaacs books taught me about how to engage a reader on multiple levels, and how to make it all work.

(I'd also like to add a few other YA authors whose artistry continues to inspire: Jandy Nelson, K.L. Going, Simone Elkeles, Jennifer Echols, Kody Keplinger, and Maureen Johnson. Thanks!)

So...how about you guys? Which authors do you give thanks to?