For apple pie, but mostly because my mom is here to make it.
For family and turkey and after-dinner plans — a traditional Thanksgiving basketball game with the neighbors and then this…
I hope your Thanksgiving is warm and wonderful, too!
Learning to Love November
Being a writer means learning how to wait. There have been some wonderfully honest and thoughtful LJ posts lately about the real story of what happens after a first book deal, and the truth is, there’s a lot of waiting around. But really? There’s waiting before that, too — waiting for critiques, waiting to hear about query letters, waiting for contracts. There’s waiting after that first book deal…and after the second…and the third. Being a writer means having a lot of in-between times.
At the moment, while I wait for THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z to be released next fall, I’m also waiting to see the cover of that book, waiting to find out who will illustrate OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW and MARTY MCGUIRE, FROG PRINCESS, and waiting for word on two picture book submissions. I am excited about all of these things; I am feeling zen-like and patient about none of them.
The very best thing for me to do when I’m tempted to check my email for the fourth time in an hour is to go outside. Why? Because nature can handles "in-between" with more beauty and grace than I can ever muster on my own.
November has never been my favorite month. Where I live, it’s overshadowed by the brilliant leaves of October and the snowy magic of December. But you don’t hear the trees whining about that. They reminded me today to take a break from the waiting and appreciate the "right now."
Welcome, baby worms!
So I was just poking around the bin of red worms we keep in the basement to eat kitchen scraps, and this scene is way too tiny to photograph, but…
Imagine an apple peel, about an inch wide and two inches long and curling at the edges. If you look very, very carefully at the flesh that remains, you can see tiny white squiggles, maybe 1/16th of an inch long and so thin they’re almost transparent. They are wiggling, and every every once in a while, one stands up and waves its tail. Or maybe its head. It’s difficult to tell.
Red worms actually reproduce fairly quickly, so this isn’t the first time my little guys/girls (they’re hermaphrodites) have had babies. But it’s the first time I’ve seen them so soon after they’ve emerged from a cocoon, and they were just so new and tiny…oh heck, I’ll admit it….I almost teared up a little.
(Note to blog readers who are just thinking "Ew!" right now. I still love you, just as I still love my husband, who looked somewhat horrified when I ran upstairs to show him my wormy apple peel while he was having his coffee.)
Congratulations, NBA Winners!
Judy Blundell just won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for What I Saw and How I Lied!
Huge congratulations to Judy and Scholastic editor David Levithan, as well as amazing NBA finalists Laurie Halse Anderson (I’m reading CHAINS with my 7th graders right after Thanksgiving!), Kathi Appelt (THE UNDERNEATH), E. Lockhart (THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU BANKS) and Tim Tharp (THE SPECTACULAR NOW). Huzzah!!
Writers at the Post Office
Is it just me, or is there something very final about handing over a package to the person behind the counter at the Post Office? I’d forgotten how nerve-wracking it can be…how I have to fight the urge to snatch back any package that’s full of my words. The last time I was mailing manuscripts was more than a year ago, during my agent search. Since then, everything from submissions to revisions to line edits have been emailed as attachments. And somehow, pressing "send" is easier for me than handing over a big pile of papers and leaving a building empty-handed. But copy edits happen on paper. Mine looked like this…
There were, if I recall, four or five pages without any marks. Yay, me!
You learn a lot about yourself during the copy edit stage. I have an uncanny ability to mess up words like shoe box and crab apple, both of which I’ve written correctly in this blog. The manuscript was another story. Sometimes, in my brilliance, I’d write the word two different ways on the same page, to be sure of getting it right once.
This one puzzled me. Somewhere, I missed the memo that there’s no longer a comma before the word "too" when it’s used at the end of a short sentence. For example: I’m befuddled too. No comma.
Anyway…in case the lady at the Post Office happens to read this, I’m sorry I kept trying to tug that package back out of your hands. I let it go eventually. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to say goodbye.
A Visit with Cynthia Lord
Students at my middle school spent an amazing Thursday with Cynthia Lord, the author of the Newbery Honor Book RULES. I met Cindy at the New England SCBWI Conference a couple years ago and had so hoped that I’d be able to have her visit with my kids someday. She gave three presentations, sharing with kids the time line for the publication of RULES as well as the inspirations for some of the characters and settings.
The kids loved seeing the Chinese, Korean, and Braille versions of RULES, but they were especially excited to see her Newbery Honor Plaque. One of my very favorite things from the presentation (and there were many) was what Cindy said about how plaque reminds her of "the powerful combination of wishing and work." What a powerful message for our kids, too!
Cindy passed her Newbery Plaque right around the auditorium and invited students to put their hand over the Newbery seal and make a wish for their own dreams to come true. You might think 7th and 8th graders would consider themselves too cool for something like that, but they weren’t.
I watched as just about every student held his or her hand over the seal before handing the plaque to the next person. I smiled even wider when the math teachers in the audience got a turn to see the plaque — they all held their hands over the seal for a moment, too, before passing it on.
After school, Cindy signed books for students in the library.
There’s an author at the end of that long line of RULES fans!
Thanks so much, cynthialord , for a day our students will never forget. Cindy also took some great photos Thursday, so please stop by her LiveJournal to see them if you’d like!
Thankful Thursday
I’m waking up extra thankful this Thursday because…
- I spent last evening with a wonderful, friendly group of book club women who chose my book SPITFIRE as their selection for this month. It was terrific to hear the variety of books they’d read together, including LOVING FRANK by Nancy Horan and LETTERS IN THE ATTIC by Bonnie Shimko. They were all smart and funny and delightful, and just as excited to see my copy edited pages of THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z as I was. It was wonderful to spend an evening with people who are so excited about books and open to reading such a variety of genres.
- When I got home, I managed to squeak out another thousand words on my work-in-progress, SUGAR ON SNOW – and hit the 22,000 mark last night!
- I got THE HUNGER GAMES back from my son, who stole it two days ago and wouldn’t give it back. He’s done now, so I finally get to read the rest.
- And…(ready for the best thing this Thursday?) cynthialord is coming to my middle school today!! We read RULES earlier this fall and are all so, so excited to hear her speak. So I’d better sign off….
Rule #1 for Author Visits: When there’s a fabulous, famous author coming to your school, you’d better get there on time!
November Woods
As much as I love the bright leaves on the trees in October, there is also something to be said for the thick carpets of them that cover the forest floor now. Temperatures never got out of the 30s in Northern NY today. We spent the better part of this chilly afternoon in the woods at a favorite state park, getting a little exercise and talking about the important things in life.
"How come you’re scuffing your feet like that?" my son asked.
"Because I like the sound…"
We climbed down to the beach to watch oak leaves drift into Lake Champlain and then stopped for soup at a favorite organic deli on the way home. When we pulled into the driveway, I saw right away that the UPS guy had been here — my copy edits for THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z were leaning against the front door. I’ll be at my desk tonight with my red pencil and a cup of green tea.
The Bookivore’s Dilemma
I am supposed to go to a dinner party tonight. I am making this soup, and it is already bubbling happily away on the stove.
But the library just called, and the book I requested is waiting for me at the desk. This one.
Do you suppose anyone would notice if I sent Husband to the party with the soup and stayed home to read by the fire?
The World Was Watching – Today’s Newspapers
Tuesday night, after most of my 7th grade students had gone to bed, history happened.
Whether you supported Barack Obama for President or not, it is difficult to dispute that his election speaks volumes about how far we have come as a nation in terms of Civil Rights. In my classroom, we looked at how newspapers around the world covered our election here in America. Click here to see some front pages that showed up on news stands all over the world Wednesday morning. Be patient; this is a cool site, and a lot of people are visiting it today, so you may need to keep trying to access it.
(Note to other teachers & parents: I downloaded the images I wanted from this site and used them, with credit, in a SmartBoard presentation. Because newspaper content varies a lot from country to country, there are sometimes images on this site you wouldn’t want to share live with your classes. )
My Spanish speakers helped translate the articles about the first African American in "la Casa Blanca." We talked about the Paris newspaper that ran an editorial on its front page with the interesting headline "America has Returned." You don’t need to speak another language to understand the one-word headline, "Historico!" The students commented on that one over and over again.
But my favorite classroom conversation started when the kids checked out a newspaper from Barcelona. On the front page was an image of an African American man, but it wasn’t Barack Obama. It was Martin Luther King, Jr. We talked about the Civil Rights Movement as a long, long road and noted that even MLK might not have imagined the scene in Chicago’s Grant Park. One of the girls at the front table nodded, looking up at the image of King on the screen and said quietly, "It was like he was there last night, too."