Writing

Bliss Boulevard

/ still a dreamer

As I was returning from an early morning errand today, I passed a street sign that I had never noticed before … Bliss Blvd.  I looked at it with a kind of longing. That’s where I want to live. Wouldn’t you?

It’s a small side street and easy to miss as it comes up immediately after one turns left onto a well-travelled route, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant, that after all these years of passing it, I just noticed it today. I do always take these kinds of things as signs, and not the literal ones. So why did I just see this today?

From numerous nights of poor and/or interrupted sleep, I’m on edge. Things of minor importance become of disproportionate significance; routine but unexpected noises make me jump. And things that may normally cause me some worry cast an even greater shadow. I know sleep will help. But what I also know I need to do in these times is to just let go.

Letting go of worries often means letting go of the illusion of control. The only thing we truly have control over is our own thoughts. The rest – people,  animals, events – on both personal and global scales – is nothing we can control. Sometimes we can only stand by and watch things unfold. Sometimes we can influence things in a positive, (or negative), way. However, others are on their own path, and we don’t ever really know,  though we may glimpse it, what that path is for them – the joy, the pain, the confusion, the triumphs – but it is their path.  Ideally, we can bring to others the best of ourselves and then let the rest go.

So, I thought today, in this sleep-fractured state, that I would pack up a little black bag of worries, control, fear and all that negative crap, and surrender it on my way to a more blissful destination. I’m sure there’s a better night’s sleep to be had there and an easier time of it. And I have children’s books to write and illustrate. I’m headed for Bliss Blvd. Isn’t that where you’d like to be, too?

Frozen in Space – Post NJ SCBWI Conference

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

It’s hard to believe that just one week ago today life as we knew it had totally changed for a period of 48 magical hours. Stressful – but magical hours. Friday, June 4th and Saturday, June 5th was the NJ SCBWI Annual Conference, held this year at the Princeton Regency Hyatt.

The Hyatt atrium, empty above, was abuzz with NJ SCBWI Conference participants – editors, agents, speakers, attendees, organizers, volunteers and a very helpful Hyatt staff. That area with tables of four at the forefront was our registration area with an endless stream of people coming in to be greeted and given their materials. The fairy-lighted area to the rear left and below was our open buffet dinner area Friday night, and the step-up areas with small tables at rear right were filled with agents and editors giving critiques. On the lower level, workshops, first page sessions and intensives were going on, all opening to a wide center aisle where illustrators had displayed their work in a juried art show. Upstairs, outside of the dining areas, a portfolio display, book signing and auction took turns  over the two days.

It was a jam-packed, enlightening two days, preceded by days and weeks of stressful preparations and anticipation. NJ SCBWI‘s first year in the Hyatt was a great success, thanks to RA, Kathy Temean and Assistant RA, Laurie Wallmark, bolstered by volunteers at every turn.

So how come it’s taken one full week to blog about this inspiring event? Initially, exhaustion. I know I’m not the only one who simply crashed on Sunday. I barely had the energy, though I did it anyway, to start preparation of an MS with a couple illustrations to send to the agent who critiqued me. Tired as I was on Sunday, I elected to wait until Monday with some more rest behind me to make sure I sounded literate. And sent that off. Then starting the work of revising another MS which was critiqued by that agent and also the editors in a First Page Session for a submission.

What made it more difficult for me … and I suspect for others in my shoes … is that Monday morning I have to fold up my dream and tuck it away neatly while I go back to work. Problem was that this time, that dream was not about to stay folded away neatly, nor was it going to wait ’til the end of the day when I could give it some attention. Nope. It kept teasing and wheedling and enticing and trying its best to make me stop working and pay it some serious attention. “Look at me!” said my dream. “You know you want to!”

I was still tired for a good part of the week, but worse off, I was frozen in space.

Both needing and wanting to work, I was feeling a pull stronger than ever to turn around and work on my manuscript and a new very rough dummy.  (I do love my work, but as I’m self-employed, if I don’t do it, no one else does and I don’t make any money!) Half the time I felt like the rope in a tug of war. Of course, I ultimately and ever-so-responsibly settled down and attended to my graphics work, and came up with some pretty cool stuff, and started my children’s book work after dinner.

However, I notice that dream has developed quite a mouth on it.

Okay, it’s Friday. You talkin’ to me? Let’s do it!

Writing from the Heart

/ still a dreamer / 1 Comment

I was having a conversation with one of my writer friends the other evening, both of us commiserating about our pre-Conference stress. The conversation moved on to her most recent accomplishment, finishing her YA novel for an editor who had requested it and the resulting feelings. She mentioned that she thought why it was so difficult for writers to complete their novels was that they were grappling with some kind of personal issues which were playing out through the novel and its characters.

That rang true, and I reflected back on an experience of my own. I was reading one of my recent picture book manuscripts to a dear friend of mine over the phone. She loved it and started to laugh. “What’s so funny?” I asked. “Gee, could it be any more autobiographical?” she answered. This hadn’t occurred to me, perhaps because the MC was an animal or perhaps because I was just too close to it. But then I started laughing, too! She was right!

What’s the one piece of advice we consistently hear from editors/agents? Write from your heart, write what you know. And no matter how clever the disguise, how can we possibly leave ourselves out of the equation? Now it may be more obvious in some MS than others, but in looking at our own writing, there are certainly themes, unresolved issues, challenges, dreams … our heart. If we allow ourselves to write from our truest self, we write from our heart.

And that’s the very best thing we can bring to the table.

Ahhh, To Be Published!

/ still a dreamer

As the big annual NJ SCBWI June Conference approaches, I am one among many who is beginning to stress out. I’ve had discussions with several friends, not all fellow writers and illustrators, trying to determine what exactly it is that gets us all so wound beforehand. Editors and agents have been wonderful and helpful at the various conferences and mentoring workshops we’ve attended; there is a convivial and supportive attitude among all participants; it’s a vast learning opportunity. So why so stressed, kiddo?

One of my friends felt it was performance anxiety which tends to hit creatives especially hard. I can buy that. I was thinking perhaps it’s because we all go with such high hopes. Pick me! Publish my story, and yes, thank you for accepting me as its illustrator, too. Who doesn’t bring her dreams wrapped carefully in an elegant velvet scarf or tucked jauntily into her portfolio, waiting for the moment to reveal what some unsuspecting editor or agent has been just waiting to be wowed by – the best story and illustrations ever!

I was following a few links to blogs about children’s books before I wrote this – what some editors and agents say they’re looking for, great hooks in your stories, and then on to the blog of Jay Asher, who wrote Thirteen Reasons Why. I haven’t read the book, but I believe a friend of mine has. What struck me in visiting Jay Asher online was that first, he had his own blog … which detailed his book signings, event participation and school visits. Then I see his book has its own blog AND his MC has her own blog. Holy Moly!

I was both daunted and excited. Could this happen to me? Of course, it could! And the joy and wealth of experiences it will bring to my life when I get there are just glittering on the horizon.

Breathe in. And exhale. And again. Ahhh, to be published!

Reservation Blues – Sherman Alexie

/ still a dreamer

There’s plenty written about Reservation Blues, including that written by Alexie himself, so I’m not going to write any summaries or anything like that other than what appealed to me, personally. And that’s a lot. First, I realized I’m going to have to buy the book to have my own copy, as what I read belongs to my local library. That’s so I can go back in and visit from time to time.

I am moved by Alexie’s writing style – in some ways, almost a stream of consciousness, but we all know one doesn’t get published by going with only that. It’s HOW he writes that I’m drawn to – the fluidity, the interjections of things that may seem unrelated or perhaps we just never connected before. Like Big Mom and her relationship to the slaughtered horses … how they brought their songs back to her in the forms of others – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Marvin Gaye, (the latter two whom I was very fortunate to have seen in concert), and then they returned to earth. Is it so surprising that Robert Johnson, who bartered away his freedom, should come to Big Mom? Or that Thomas Builds-the-Fire should let Johnson’s guitar pass through his hands and Victor to become ensnared by it?

I read Reservation Blues and wished I knew Big Mom. Everyone needs Big Mom – loving, giving, spiritual, a healer, and yet objective, claiming to no particular situational outcome for anyone. I wish I couldn’t hear the horses scream … a too-piercing song. But Big Mom’s there to mourn for them and to keep their songs alive. And I am thankful. Woven into the story, the violent massacre tells part of the tribe’s history.

I am drawn in by Alexie’s subtleties,  such as the harmonica that Big Mom made for Robert Johnson and tossed to him. “He could feel a movement inside the wood, something familiar.” Was it his music, or was even Big Mom not powerful enough to out The Gentleman? Is it why Johnson decided to stay in Wellpinit? It was only one line that may have gone unnoticed but Reservation Blues seems packed with such subtleties, such fluid turns of the wrist. It’s a style I like, kind of filled with asides that maybe you get, maybe you don’t.

Reservation Blues follows a core group of characters that have strengths and weaknesses, their acceptance of life and their desires to escape or rail against it. Some of them survive the adversities, some don’t. And those who do, some better, some not so well. And if it’s hard to like Victor? a note from Junior to Big Mom tells us why he’s not as bad as he seems. But Victor’s weak and Johnson’s guitar has him in thrall. Again, maybe smaller points in the novel … maybe ones that encompass the whole story in one vignette.

And there’s magic – things that couldn’t be real, such as Junior’s appearance to Victor in the car, the guitar talking, the strings catching fire – or could they? Woven into the story, they become so believable they cannot be extricated. For me anyway. I surrender and I believe. And I follow the band Coyote Springs and its evolution, how it helps me get to know who’s in it, who they meet, where real hell is, where it’s not.

Does Reservation Blues depict life on the reservation today? I have no doubt. It doesn’t give the reader any kind of romantic view of the American Indian such as Alexie says seems common to some white people, New Agers, etc. The view is sometimes painful, sometimes simply life, sometimes just of people like the rest of us dealing with what every day brings. But it’s a different life than that of the rest of us – one with a different history, a different set of memories and tradition, and different challenges – not ours. And I like Alexie’s telling of it. He connects me. And I like how he does it.