What I Did While I Waited

One of my debut buddies recently noticed my photo on the Milk Carton of Bloggers. I've "gone off my blog" as my mom calls it. That makes me laugh---it sounds like "she's gone off the beam" or "she's gone off her nut." I think it should be an expression we all use, so get started on that, would you? Start using it today.

Reminds me of my oldest friend D declaring that everyone should start using his expression "Put that on the menu!" Everything comes from somewhere and somebody had to say "Awesomesauce" and "Craptastic" for the first time. Why shouldn't you be able to announce an addition to the lexicon? It reminds me, though, of back in high school when D scheduled a Renaissance. Still makes me laugh. I just don't know if it's possible to make people participate.

I recently thought of a variation that could be really useful. It would be used when you're taking what you want from life or a situation and leaving the unwanted parts behind. "I'm ordering off the menu." My friend will be really ticked if this takes off. But we'll also laugh for years. Please leave a note in the comments when you use this line and tell me the circumstances.

Anyway, so, yeah...blogging. It's been a while. You might think I've been knitting (no), planting a butterfly garden (yes) or taking up hot yoga (yes). But the big question is what about writing? And yes, I'm working on a new project. Something different. Very different for me. Different can be exciting. And I'm eager to see what happens with it. This is where the waiting part comes in...

When I was waiting to hear back about 3RR, I helped the time pass by listing what I did each day of the wait. What does waiting look like? What does waiting feel like? If you're a writer, you know waiting is a big unavoidable piece of what we do. Waiting for news. Waiting for contracts. Waiting for checks. When I looked back at those pages much later, they struck me as found art in a way. There's a simple beauty to the ordinary tasks we do each day. And when you read them in context of the knowing the ending, knowing that a published book comes out of them ultimately, a book I'm proud of...it gives it all a feeling of mounting anticipation.

And if you're not a writer or in publishing, perhaps it would be interesting to get a sense of the time passing, like feeling the road beneath your wheels when you drive across the U.S. Waiting takes the shape of it's container, you see. If we could pick our container, I would choose I Dream of Jeannie's bottle. How I'd love to do my waiting on that plush round couch filled with velvety pink pillows and tassels. Unfortunately, it's the waiting that chooses the size and shape of the container.

So, you've probably guessed I'll be having reason to wait soon, to wait for news. And I'd like to chronicle it here this time. Leave a comment and tell me what you did while you waited...for news of your book, for a loved one in surgery, whatever. What did your waiting look like?

And remember to pick and choose and "order off the menu."

Thoughts on Birthdays

It was about this time of year Three Rivers Rising sold to Knopf.

It was about this time of year Three Rivers Rising launched.

It was about this time of year another project launched. A scowling baby was born. My own Little My, the mystical magical subversive who fits in a thimble. She pontificates. She delegates. She points out all your shortcomings from the top of an armoir.

Or, in the case of my own Little My, she says hilarious "isms."

More Meditations on Tove

Tove Jansson wrote The Summer Book shortly after the death of her beloved mother, and it is, not surprisingly, a book haunted by a recently deceased mother. The loss is only mentioned directly once, but then every story is thematically about the child, Sophia, and her grandmother coping, grieving, raging, moving on or not moving on. For that reason, I sense Jansson is both characters---the small girl and the old woman at the same time, trying to comfort each other, thus trying to comfort herself.

Sophia confronts all the childhood terrors such as a robe in the attic that appears to move on its own, while Grandmother struggles with fears of her own mortality, firmly believing she did something to leave her mark on the world but can't quite remember what it is. They go snooping on a new neighbor's island and even break into his new home (Grandmothers Behaving Badly!), until they hear the motor of his boat and run to hide under the boughs of a tree. Of course, being a gentleman, the neighbor runs after them and extends an invitation for cognac. Imagine crawling out from under a tree, dusting yourself off and taking his arm for a leisurely stroll back to the house, as if nothing had happened!

Throughout their day-to-day adventures, they share their excessive---though not unwarranted---worry about the man in their lives. Father. Something of a ghost himself, Father is almost always accounted for as "at his desk, working," burying himself in his work perhaps to deal with the loss of his wife. When he does venture out, taking the boat just as the weather turns, Sophia is beside herself with worry---the fear of losing another parent is there, but never expressly stated. In another story, Father gets the gardening bug and attempts to cultivate the island, only to be met with a drought. What lengths he goes to trying to keep something alive: it gives a sense perhaps of the mother's lingering illness (alluded to in other passages), the finality of the drought not unlike the inevitablility of death.

I love the relationship between Sophia and Grandmother, how they question each other, how they bristle and fight and return and remain bound to each other. I love how they create things with their hands and their imaginations, how they explore the island and discover treasures together.

The indelible image I expect to take away from this book, besides the island, is the miniature house they build together, then make up stories for the occupants. Sophia begs for Grandmother to tell of the Mother calling to her children, and listens as if she can truly hear the voice. When the little house is destroyed by waves and Grandmother secretly builds a new one, I held my breath to see if the fake would pass muster. Sophia leans in and listens....then announces, they're still there. I can hear them. The family is safe.

A Little Island of Summer

Something about too much snow made me wild to read The Summer Book by Tove Jansson.

Yes, I have been thinking about parts of the world where the sun doesn't shine for periods of time---often rocky, windswept and burnished by the sea, places where you lash your house to the rocks so it doesn't blow away, the image that will stay with me forever from The Shipping News---but all that was far from my thoughts back in November when I was at NCTE in sunny Orlando and I happened to grab some adorable swag of these funny creatures called Moomins. It tickled at the far reaches of my memory, but maybe only as a recollection someone else had shared, not my own memory at all. My daughter was smitten with Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden and Little My, as I knew she would be, and we've been learning quite a bit about their creator Tove Jansson ever since.

How romantic her life seems: She was an artist with a studio in a tower for winter, and an island dwelling for summer.

I've always loved islands---the quality of sunlight reflecting off all that sparkling salt water makes me wish I were a painter. Like Tove. You can see her cottage on Klovharu off the coast of Finland on the website linked above, or in this video below which my husband found.

I wonder if the person filming just jumped out of his boat and let himself in the way the characters mention in The Summer Book. Near the end, the grandmother prepares to close up and leave the island for the season, maybe forever, by leaving notes for passersby who will inevitably stop in to escape a storm.

In her later years, after the Moomins had their heyday, Jansson turned her artistic vision to writing fiction for adults. The more I dreamed of her little island cabin, the more I became anxious to read The Summer Book about an island very much like this one. And, photos and videos aside, that's how I really get to see it through her eyes. Every leaf, every rock, the boats, the storms...you can feel the danger at times, and the stillness at others. I had to read it slowly, in little bites, to savor the images and to mull over the emotions. It was like meditation in a way, being present with the author for a few moments at a time, seeing her island through her eyes...what a rare invitation that is.

Wintry Mix

There must be places not covered in snow, right? How lucky are the folks who live in those places.

Then again, I think of northerly places on our planet where the sun doesn't shine at all for extended periods of time.

How lucky I feel in comparison to those folks.


I'm not sorry to be a writer who works from home when the weather is like this, and the kids are on their 6th snow day...but, c'mon, the kids are on their 6th snow day!

Nanuet, NY Barnes & Noble Event and Writing Contest

What a great event! Teens submitted writing in advance, we picked the winners and gave a 15-minute critique before our panel, Q&A and signing. Such great entries and how satisfying to meet the young writers! Their enthusiasm is contagious.
Thanks to Shari Berger Maurer (Change of Heart, on right) for putting it all together!!! Great to meet Jen Nadol (The Mark, in white) and Margie Gelbwasser (Inconvenient, in red), and to see Shannon Delany (13 to Life, and Secrets and Shadows, in black) again.

A Panel Among the Holiday Shoppers

We spoke, we read, we answered questions, hopefully making a few holiday shoppers curious about what was going on and how they could ever survive without a place where stuff like that happens. A place where you can browse and hear piped-in music and smell coffee brewing and maybe run into a friend who is a little less holiday stressed and a little more eggnogged up than you are. Ahhh...

Thanks for having us Barnes & Noble of Westport!
Go Bricks and Mortar!
Photo courtesy of Roaring Brook's, Nan Mercado.