Hunger Games-1, To Do List-0

Yesterday I had goals and a to do list a mile long. I was going to work out. I was going to an appointment in the suburbs. I was going to go grocery shopping. I was going to clean my house and I was going to write.

I did some of these things but I have to admit I did not have my heart in my to do list yesterday.

Normally I'm pretty focused on the Monday To Do list because it sets the tone for the entire week. With a matinee this Wednesday I would usually be super focused.

Instead I was reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

It is the book club selection at League of Extraordinary Writers and the third book in the series comes out this month so I figured it was a good time to see what it was all about.

I have to admit that it took until the end of part one for the book to really grab me in such a way that I would forsake my to do list but when I got into it I really couldn't put it down.

Seriously I had trouble falling asleep on Sunday night because I was thinking about the book and wondering what was going to happen next but I had to stop reading because I was too tired to remember to turn the page and keep my eyes open.

I submitted my manuscript to be considered for the class Advanced Picture Book Workshop and now I just have to wait until September 3 to hear anything. I'm nervous I won't get in but I guess if I don't get in I will know that my story isn't really ready yet.

Thursday was writing group day which means it is time to revise.

I have this picture book manuscript that I've been working on for a while and I'm thinking of taking a class at the Loft called Advanced Picture Book Workshop. But I'm a little nervous about it. I have to submit my story before the class to even get into the class. It is a little nerve racking because what if I don't get in to the class?

Plus the class is called Advanced Picture Book Workshop. The emphasis seems to be on the workshop part. I'm just not really sure if I can handle so much workshopping but I guess it will make me a better writer and will hopefully make my story the best it can be before I submit it.

In other news I'm reading The Hunger Games right now. I was reading about the training and I felt a little like I was training for something yesterday at my Gladiator class at the gym. Fortunately when I go to Gladiator class I don't have to fight to the death but it is still a fun class. We also do not have to wear the costumes. I did put a lot of people in the Gladiator costume for Halloween last year.

I've been talking with some friends about my childhood unicorn story. Mostly in that "OMG you wrote a story about unicorns too" sort of way.

We have even discussed having Unicorn Story Hour in which we all sit around and read our unicorn stories but then it turns out Steph got rid of her unicorn story during college when her mom took her to the attic and showed her a box of stuff she had been saving and asked her to take what she wanted.

I have been critiquing eight-year-old-Carrie's story. After reading through the story a couple times I discovered a major flaw in the piece. The big question I have for my eight year old self is if the unicorn is so powerful (she travels to a new planet and defeats a troll army) why doesn't she just stop her forest from being cut down in the first place?

In other news I'm going to be an Aunt again. I had this idea that I should make a quilt for the baby but then realized that while I can sew I don't want to apply that skill to quilting because I do not need another way to have unfinished projects. A trip to the art fair by my house has made me the proud temporary owner of baby quilt made by my friend Amy. It is so super cute and I hope the baby loves it as much as my sister and I loved our quilts.

Summer reading

I recently bought a book at Half Price Books.

I bought it despite knowing that I have a good stack of books to read and the I didn't need to add any more books to the "To be Read Pile".

The book was Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell. It is a collection of essays by YA and Chic Lit authors about their experiences with Judy Blume books.

Since my childhood summers were all about reading Judy Blume books a book about Judy Blume books seemed like the perfect summer read.

I have to recommend this book to any Judy Blume fan. Readers who grew up reading her books can relate to the essays in the book. The lessons learned from characters are sort of universal and touched a lot of kids lives. The book included essays written by Meg Cabot and Megan McCafferty.

There are a couple essays about the book Forever by Judy Blume. When I was reading them I was stuck with how people reacted to this book. They often kept it hidden or it was passed around groups of friends in secret.

I think I read every Judy Blume book I could get my hands on from the time I was in third grade through high school. I read Forever sometime in my middle school years but I don't remember being worried my mom would discover me reading it. I didn't leave it at school or hide it under my mattress. I remember reading it out in the open like I would have any book. Although I probably did blush at the sex parts I don't remember thinking I shouldn't be reading that book.

My mom became more conservative when she got remarried but she still didn't freak out about what I read except the time I tried to get a subscription to Cosmo. She even defended me when her friends from church thought I was being rebellious by dying my hair. She said it was just hair. She didn't censor my music either.

She figured if a book came from the YA section of the library that it was OK for me to read. I think she thought if I was reading there were a lot of other things I wasn't doing. Maybe she knew that books had a lot of the answers I needed when I was growing up.

I remember when I wanted to read some of her Danielle Steele books she helped me pick the ones she thought I would like the best.

A few years ago my sister who is uber religious was talking about a certain book and how she didn't think that parents at her church should let kids read the book. My sister claimed the book would teach kids witchcraft. My mom jumped to the defense of the book, not that she had ever read it. She said it was more important for kids to read and if the book could get that many kids excited about reading she didn't think it was bad for them.

Whenever I think about growing up one of the things I feel lucky about is that my mom never censored my reading or music. I probably didn't think I had a cool mom growing up but now that I'm a grown up I'm glad I had a mom who was cool enough to let me read what I wanted to read.

Space Traveling Unicorns

I've done NaNoWriMo a couple times and written a novel at a slower pace. I don't like to tell people what my story is about right away because I want to protect the story. When you say you're writing a novel the next question is "What's it about?" My answer "Unicorns." (Note- my stories aren't really about unicorns I just say it to let people know that I'm really not talking about my project yet). If I need a little variety I'll say Vampire Unicorns or Zombie Unicorns.

This weekend I went home and picked up a "book" I wrote and illustrated in second grade. The cover was pink floral wall paper and the story was printed on construction paper written in my second grade printing font. My mom found it when she was moving and has been telling me about it ever since. She has been talking about how I was a writer even back then.

I remember making books in Miss Johnson's second grade class. Miss Johnson read to us every day and introduced us to the world of chapter books. She assigned me to read Dear Mr. Henshaw and I will be forever grateful for that because the book helped feel not so alone during my parents divorce. But she also had us make some books. I was really proud of the illustrations in my book about Easter but I couldn't find that book.

When I opened the wall paper cover and read the story I laughed so hard I cried. It was about a unicorn. But not just any unicorn. A space traveling, environmentalist unicorn with magic powers.

Like camp for writers

Today was day two of my writing class.

I'm trying to change things up and try something different so I took a week long class at The Loft on Writing the Short Personal Essay.

Here are things I learned so far.

1. The Short Personal Essay is not what I thought it was. I thought it was the entry I'm working on for the Real Simple Essay contest. Turns out it is more "literary" than that. We are reading essays from a book and using them as examples. They are reflective, lyrical and sometimes poetic. We talk about form and structure.

2. To be observant. Yesterday we went out on our own and observed a person we saw and wrote about them. Today we walked around the neighborhood on our own and observed a sound, a found object and a symbol of the past/future.

3. I have a hard time sitting still for long periods of time.

4. I am finding it easy to share my work in class. I'm normally pretty shy so maybe the last couple years of sharing work in class and critique groups has made me more comfortable sharing my work in class.

I have to admit that I felt a little like Harriet the Spy yesterday when we went out to observe people we saw walking on the street. It was fun and I think even if I never write a personal essay that I may use some of these exercises next time I'm facing writers block.

The form is short. The book we are using sets the limit at 2000 word. In picture books the limit on word count means every word is important and has to really mean something. I feel like that is true in the Short Personal Essay so maybe there is more in common between the two than I think.

More Vacation Adventures

Tomorrow I start a week long writing class at The Loft. Since usually there is a matinee or tech week that gets in the way of me taking a week long class I decided to take this class during my two weeks off.

OK really I wanted to take a class at Madeline Island School of the Arts but there weren't enough participants. I did go to Madeline Island last week to visit a friend who is working there this summer and to check out the school so I can make plans to go there next year. I biked, swam in Lake Superior, used a paddle board and swam some more and spent some time with my friends and making new friends at Tom's Burned Down.

I didn't get much writing done. A little in my journal remembering family vacations. My mom and stepdad would always take us for a week at a resort in Wisconsin. We would leave our house early in the morning and drive forever. Towards the end of the drive we would be passing resort after resort and I wondered why my parents had picked the resort that was farthest from our house. Couldn't they have picked something closer?

I have been to Madeline Island before. During these family vacations to Wisconsin we usually went on a trip to Bayfield or Madeline Island. Once we even went to Thunder Bay. I don't actually remember anything involving a big boat trip because my mom gave me medicine to prevent motion sickness. Being in a car on a ferry boat was like a double whammy. So when I visit places I visited as a child it is like seeing it for the first time.

I stayed with my friends who run boat tours of the islands at Adventure Vacations. The wind was too strong and the tours that did go out were to full for an extra person. I did consider walking to the marina and taking a sailboat tour but the waves were too much for me so I stuck to land and calmer waters in Big Bay.

My friend Jen says that despite how much there is to do on the island she still hears people saying they are bored. After spending a couple days on the island I would recommend coming to the island prepared. Bring a swim suit for sure. Maybe bring a bike over or rent a bike or moped from Motion to Go. My friend's store sells boogie boards, swim suits and pool floats. They also rent paddle boards which is a fun way to get out on the water if it isn't too wavy. I spent more time falling off the board until I gave up on the whole standing thing and decided to kneel on the board.

Vacation adventures

I have been in full on vacation mode.

My mom came to visit for the first two days of my vacation.

On Sunday we used the new Minneapolis bike share program, NiceRide. I've been wanting to rent a lime green bike since they showed up around the city a month ago. We biked to the Lyndale Farmers Market and ate at The Magic Bus Cafe because The Grateful Dog is my favorite summer food. My mother is shocked at my meat eating habits. After all I bike a lot and I eat vegetables, how can I possibly want to eat meat. I didn't really point out to her that this meat consumption is like a once a week thing but whatevs.

On Monday we rented pedal boats at Lake Calhoun. Wow. Pedal boats are much harder than I remember from the last time I was on a pedal boat when I was a kid. While we were struggling to move our cumbersome water craft through the lake we decided we wanted to get a closer look at some lily pads. There were a pair of ducks by the lily pads and one was stuck and the other one kept quacking and trying to help her duck friend. While my Mom and I were trying to pedal over to save the duck (an idea that would have taken at least five minutes and might have gotten us stuck in the lily pads) a guy in a kayak swooped in and saved the duck. Which made my mom want to rent kayaks today. We ate lunch at The Tin Fish.

So today back to Lake Calhoun to rent kayaks. After renting the kayaks I'm never renting pedal boats again. Also at $11 an hour what a great way to use use a kayak without actually owning a kayak. Not that it wouldn't be fun to own a kayak but I live in a condo and don't have the storage space for a kayak and at $150 for the season renting a storage spot by the lake makes the $11/hour to rent a kayak pretty reasonable. Being on the lake, out in the water was great and I think I need to spend more time doing this.

Vacation adventures continue tomorrow. I'm bringing some notebooks and pens and maybe I'll write. Or maybe I'll just swim, bike, kayak and whatever.

Next week I'm taking a writing class at The Loft. All week. All day long. Some people might not think of this as vacation but since many of my childhood and teen summers included a week long creative writing class at College for Kids I think this is like my grown up version of that.

I love my new bookcase

I have been resisting the urge to buy a new bookshelf for quite a while. I believed that since I read mostly books from the library that I wasn't acquiring new books but that is wrong. It turns out I have been buying new books- like the two bargain book shopping adventures.

This weekend the call of the Ikea summer sale was strong. I found myself getting in my car and driving to that wonderful temple of organization. I zipped through the showroom like a pro who has been to Ikea numerous times.

I love Ikea. Everything is organized and just being in Ikea makes me feel like I can be organized. Somehow no matter how many Ikea items I buy it still seems like my house doesn't look like the showrooms.

I found the bookcase section and decided on the BILLY

bookcase.

I brought Billy home and was able to assemble the bookshelf in about thirty minutes. Yay. The desk I bought a couple years ago came with an eighty page instruction manual and took three days to assemble.

Billy is amazing. The books which were previously on my childhood bookshelf easily fit on one shelf. All the books I had stacked in front of the books on my other bookcase and on makeshift "bookcases" a.k.a nightstands, end tables, and under the bed fit on the second shelf.

OMG there is still a third shelf. I love Billy. Clearly I was just fooling myself to think that I didn't need more bookcases. I'm also glad my bookcase came with a name name. It makes it easier to talk about how much I love my bookcase.

I haven't figured out what to do with my childhood bookcase which is now sitting empty and sad. I called my mom to make sure there was no family heirloom type importance but this bookcase has housed my books since I was reading The Monster at the End of This Book. There is a ring on the top shelf in the shape of a Sea Breeze bottle from my teen years. I might have a hard time letting go even though I love Billy.

I'm Back

I'm back from my little facebook/blogging vacation.

At first I thought that not checking my facebook a couple(OK more like five) times a day was going to be hard but it turns out it wasn't that bad. It was actually freeing. My house is a little cleaner but that could be from my new dish want and my revision is a little farther along.

The biggest thing I noticed was that I wrote(or cleaned) at times I would normally be on facebook. I wrote in the morning, when I had a spare half hour, before shows, between shows. Now normally I would think nothing of checking my facebook between shows and catching up on status updates but the idea of sitting and writing would feel somehow wrong. But it wasn't so wrong. Turned out I had to keep an eye on the clock but it was good.

I have gotten to the place in my facebook life where I don't update my status often. But the first day of my week off all I could think of was status updates. But without the status updates I put all those witty little thoughts in my journal.

One unexpected side effect of not facebooking was the amount I read. Now I'm not saying the books that I was reading were really hard but I read three books in the last week. Trixie Belden and the Mystery in Arizona, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Prom Dates from Hell. I'm a reader so I usually read about a book a week but I was excited to find that not reading status updates freed me up to read more books.

technology fast

I was going to write a post about my experiences teaching a craft at a theater camp but I'm going to save that for next week.

Instead due to the state of my house (it's a mess) and the state of my revision (not done) I am writing about the fact that I'm going to take a tech fast. See If I write about it on my blog I'll actually do it.

So starting tomorrow (cause I've already checked my facebook page today) I'm only going to check my email for a week. No facebook, no blogging for a week.

Hopefully I will use the time I usually spend on facebook to do things like revise my novel and clean my house.

I can already feel my productivity rising and my house is beginning to look cleaner. I'm planning to use my time between shows today for writing. I'll keep a list of all the things I accomplish during my week off from facebook/blogging.

Have a good week.

writing practice

I bought myself a writing book a couple weeks ago and I have a feeling that it is going to become my new go to book when I need a little jump start on my writing.

The book is An Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg.

This book has writing prompts and exercises to help you think about memory and writing.

Normally I write children's stories but I'm trying to stretch myself in other areas.

I love reading memoirs but whenever I think of writing my own memoir I immediately brush aside the idea because 1) I've never written for Spin or been a contributor on NPR. 2) I am not famous and I'm not connected with anyone famous.

I occasionally title my memoirs.

I wrote a story for Chicken Soup for the Runner's Soul that is being released this summer. When I read magazines with personal essays in them it occurs to me that I could do that. So I use my journal for this practice of memoir type writing.

This book has helped my writing practice. I look forward to working on the writing exercises. Writing about a memory of swimming or the end of something. The exercises usually say to write for ten minutes but I seem to lose track of time and I realize I've written for twenty minutes.

I've even been finding time to write on the weekends. I usually consider myself too busy to write on the weekends and I don't even try it but maybe it is because the book gives me permission to write for ten minutes. It doesn't ask for a word or page count. Just ten minutes. Surely I can devote ten minutes on a Saturday to writing about my beloved childhood pet.

If this book isn't on your writer bookshelf I recommend it.

Writing on Madeline Island

A few years ago the term was the Quarter life crisis was coined. It was something that people in their 20's experienced as they transitioned out of college and into the real world.

I have decided that I need to coin the phrase Three Quarter Life crisis for the phase my father is in his life. I miss the midlife crisis days when I came home one day to find he had purchased a BMW convertible and then a week later he bought a 45 foot sail boat. I really miss the boat.

Recently my father went to Mexico where he married a 27 year old he met in Cabo. *My parents have been divorced forever so this is OK*

This would be OK if it meant that my vacation to Alaska with my Dad didn't get cancelled. Bummer.

But rather than be bummed and feel out of control of my own summer plans I decided that this would be the perfect chance for me to take a writing retreat. My mom thinks it would be the perfect time for me to take an adventure vacation, but I don't think "hotel in the woods" is what the adventure website means when they say "camping".

So I've been researching writing retreats for the last week. I live in MN so Split Rock was where I started looking but alas the weeks I have off they are full. I looked elsewhere. I even thought about the Iowa Summer Writers Festival but that is in Iowa and I'm from Iowa so Iowa City is not a vacation.

Finally I discovered Madeline Island School of the Arts and this is where I want to go. The website didn't answer enough of my questions so I called today and found out, much to my sadness that the classes I want to take are probably going to be cancelled due to lack of enrollment.

It is the first year the classes have run and they aren't really listed in a lot of places that writers would see. I'm super bummed because this sounds way cooler than spending a week in Iowa City, even though I have happy memories of Iowa City. I'm not really sure how I found them. Maybe I saw an ad or something. They did not pop up on the multiple Google searches I did looking for a summer writing retreat.

The man who answered the phone was so nice about answering my questions and taking my name and number in case the class does run. He encouraged me to tell my friends about the class and I said I would facebook, blog, email and tell everyone I could. He told me he finds the telephone useful for getting the word out.

Re Vision

Yesterday was critique group day. I belong to two critique groups. One contains people who are writing middle grade or YA novels. The other group is mostly picture books. I attend both of them because it keeps me motivated. It isn’t that I don’t think my novel group could give feedback on my picture book manuscript or that my picture book group couldn’t say what they think of a chapter in my novel. But each group seems best at what it does.

The picture book group is sort of fluid and as people keep taking classes more people get invited to the group but the group manages to stay to about 4-6 people each week. So every time I go it seems like there is at least one new person there.

Usually it is a person who I haven’t taken a class with so we don’t have an established trust factor going on with regards to critiquing stories.

This week I brought a rewrite of a picture book that I’ve been working on. As I’ve mentioned before I’m trying to tell the story from the dog’s point of view in this story. The revision felt like a stretch creatively and I tried to tell more of the dog’s story. The version I brought was very rough and I know it needs more dialog, more show, less tell.

After my last critique group I was ready to do one of two things.

1) Give up on the story and hide it in a folder with my inexperienced stories from when I first started writing.

2) Submit the story to a kids magazine just to see if it could get published and not have to keep revising it.

But I didn’t. See I have a dream of this story being a picture book. Last time we met the ladies in my group had rewritten their stories so that some were unrecognizable from what they were before. They stretched themselves creatively by trying different forms. If they could do that surely I could look at my story with new eyes.

What do you do after critique groups? Do you go home and revise like crazy? Do you let the manuscript sit for a day and think about what it has done before diving in to revisions?

Rainy Days are productive days

Since Minnesota looks like this in the winter.

It means that summer must be enjoyed to its fullest extent. Which means on days when it looks like this I have a hard time sitting inside working away on my novel.

There are two solutions. Write at the coffee shop at one of the nice outside tables or use walks and such for sunshine fix/writing breaks.

This is a much better solution than my previous summers where I have dedicated my days to long bike rides and runs and then when it is time to sit down and write I am ready for my nap.

But yesterday was perfect. It was raining. Not one of those June just passing through thunderstorms. This was perfect all day rain. Which meant I could stay inside and work away without feeling guilt that I was squandering one of the perfect 100 days of summer.

When I came home from the gym I started working. I wrote in my journal. I worked for a while. I got laundry done. I got dishes done. I went to the bank. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought a book about writing. I revised some more. I wrote in my journal again because my life has been really journal worthy lately.

I had no idea there were so many hours in a day and how much I could accomplish when the sun was not calling me to play outside.

the end of a productive week

Today turned out to be a totally surprising day.

I was ready to spring into action as super nanny at the last minute for a coworker even though it meant not working on any of my writing projects today.

As I was putting on my back pack to go out the door to babysit I got a phone call saying the meeting was cancelled. Woo hoo.

Since I had already worked out and gone for a walk to enjoy the sunshine I took the freeing up of my afternoon to get some writing done. So I feel like this week has been productive.

So when I was reading my Nancy Drew books my boss noticed decided to lend me her entire Trixie Belden collection. So I decided to read these and I have to say that so far they are a lot of fun.

I am currently reading Trixie Belden and the Mysterious Visitor .

The thing that is great about these books, and Nancy Drew too, is that the characters are always looking for and finding mysteries which lead them into all sorts of adventures. The chapters always seem to end with suspense. I mean how can a reader possibly put the book down when Trixie is hiding in the hay loft of an old barn and has just been discovered by trailer thieves.

Reading through these books has been good for my writing as well. Even though my MC is not solving any mysteries I have been trying to revise my novel and am really trying to end my chapters with an exciting or mysterious finish that make people want to read the next chapter.

Holiday fun

I admit that I had fun on Memorial Day. Maybe even too much fun. The best thing about holiday Mondays is that everyone else has the day off too so it is more fun than my regular Mondays off. I threw out my Monday To Do List and decided to celebrate that this was the first paid holiday I've had in nearly 10 years.

I rode my bike to meet up with some friends at Fort Snelling State Park. So seriously if you live in the Twin Cities and you haven't been there you should totally go. It is so beautiful and not nearly as busy on Picnic Island as its neighbor Minnehaha Park.

There is a little lake to swim in and the Minnesota River to fish in.

I biked there and it was a lovely bike ride there. While there I played bocce ball, kickball, ate cook out food, played more kickball and swam.

I saw some wildlife.

Then I had to bike home. Back up the giant hill that leads down to picnic island. I was so tired at the end of my day that I struggled to stay awake until 9 pm. I did a little writing yesterday and am feeling back in the swing of writing today.

I did get a little surprise yesterday. Earlier this spring during the great show shuffle of 2010 I thought I was going to have 3 months off work so I applied for a part time position working with childhood literacy. I interviewed a month ago and really didn't think anything would come of it because they didn't have any part time positions left and because they didn't have any positions left in the city. So I was surprised to get called for an interview.

This part time job sounds like a ton of work but at the same time I am hoping that working to help kids read will help me be a better writer.

The Carrie Diaries

I have a confession to make. Somehow with all the commercials and hype about SATC2 I found out about The Carrie Diaries and when I saw it cheap at Target I couldn't resist putting it in my little red shopping cart.

What can I say. I grew up with the name Carrie in a world full of Jennifers and Lisas. It wasn't until I was in 6th grade that I really encountered someone with my same name. Also there are a gazillion versions of the name so while I knew Kerrys and Karis and Careys I didn't know a lot of Carries growing up. So naturally watching Carrie Bradshaw and her friends and their adventures in NYC was fun for me.

The Carrie Diaries tells the story of Carrie Bradshaw's life before moving to NYC. It is a look at her senior year of high school. During the book we meet Carrie's family and high school friends. We see her first steps into dating. She is dating someone who seems to be spending a lot of time with her best friend while on the other hand there is the nice guy from Brown who is interested in her but whose affections she can't seem to return.

I have to admit that this was not the best $13.50 I've ever spent. The problem with the prequel to Carrie's life is that I feel like I already know how it is going to turn out. This is probably why I made it through half of a Gossip Girl book as well. About halfway through the book I wasn't sure I actually had the motivation to keep turning the pages.

The other thing I didn't like about the book was that it seemed like Carrie and her high school friends smoke a lot. OK so I know this is realistic and that teenagers smoke and that teenagers in the 80's were probably more likely to smoke because of things like Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man. For some reason I have no problem with drinking in books but smoking in books bugs me.

I thought the portrayal of High School Carrie was good. There were things in the book that were universal to high school like dealing with the Queen Bee and figuring out where you want to go in life. Carrie doesn't have that nostalgic best-time-of-her-life view of high school. She has a dream of bigger and better things for herself.

I don't work in a book store so I don't know but I think this book is probably being purchased by fans of Sex and the City. But maybe the book will give Carrie a new generation of fans who follow her through high school and her adventures in NYC.

If you are a fan of the show/book my recommendation is to round up the Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte in your life and split the cost of this book. Then you will have a light summer read to share without the guilty feeling that you wasted your money on it.

back to work and reading

I'm back to work full time this week which means I haven't done as much writing this week.

I have done a lot of reading.

I started out reading a collection of speeches and writings by my mom's cousin that was published for her retirement. It was fun to read what she wrote. There were childhood memories and advice on sending kids off to school. I think one of the best things about reading this collection was the feeling that I maybe I wasn't switched at birth. The fact that there is another writer in my family tree gives me a little confidence in my own writing.

One of the speeches in the collection was about Nancy Drew which led me to pick up Nancy's Mysterious Letter this week. Reading Nancy Drew was entertaining. I love how the chapter's end with cliffhangers. I love some of the cheesy things in the books. There is one point where someone tells Nancy she's the best girl detective ever and she modestly says that lots of girls could be good detectives.

I also worked on the stack of books from the last Half Price Books shopping trip.

I decided to read the book Tennyson by Lesley M. M. Blume.

Tennyson and her sister Hattie live a carefree life until their mother leaves and their father goes to find her. Then they are sent to the family's decaying plantation, Agridoux.

The plantation was once grand but in the 1930's it is crumbling.

Aunt Henrietta is sure that the girls will save Agridoux by finding rich suitors and she begins training them in how to act like ladies.

Tennyson begins to learn the secret past of Agridoux and learns why her parents chose not to live there.

I thought the writing in this book was beautiful. The descriptions were amazing.

Writers will relate to Tennyson when she "fixes" one of her mom's stories but ends up upsetting her mom. From that point Tennyson feels like writing is her Mom's dream.

When she gets to Agridoux Tennyson begins writing again.

I highly recommend this book for the beautiful writing and for the glimpse into the history of the South after the Civil War.

Voice

After going to my picture book critique group last week I was inspired by all the revisions of the other people. Seriously those ladies put the re back in revision last week.

I brought a story about a service dogthat I brought last time and didn't get a lot of critique on other than "We love it, it's perfect." Since it was a first draft I didn't believe that because well, yeah. This time I came away with more suggestions which has caused me to look at the story in a whole new light. Plus it has made me have higher hopes for the story which makes me want it to be awesome and perfect.

I decided to rewrite the story from a different perspective. The dog's perspective. So here is where I encounter my problem. When I get finished writing and read what is there I realize that my Yellow Labrador Retriever sounds more like a Shi Tzu. So now my challenge is to make the voice of my story sound more like a service dog and less like a lap dog.

The other day one of my FB friends posted in her status update about seeing a 70 year old woman reading a Babysitter Club Book on the bus.

Her status update got a lot of response from friends who had grown up reading these books. I had to remind myself to keep my comment short. i.e. I loved those books. Not: OMG those were the best, my friends and I started our own babysitters club blah blah blah. That is what my blog is for.

I was thinking about how much I loved the Babysitters Club books in my preteen years. I read them like they were candy and could usually not wait for the next one to come out.

The books inspired my friends and I to try to start our own babysitting club where we had meetings but since we were twelve we didn't have a lot of clients so the whole sit around and talk about babysitting schedules, challenges and what was going on with the kids we were babysitting for didn't really happen. I do remember that we had a rival gang of babysitters at our school so we had to be careful not to advertise on their turf.

Our babysitting club broke up when a couple of my friends moved but I continued to babysit. I still babysit now. As I was thinking about the Babysitters Club it made me wonder what my life would have been like if I had read more Nancy Drew books. Would I have wanted to start my own detective agency?

Carrie's Secret Drawer

When I was in middle school I convinced my mom that what I really needed was to have the family's secretary desk live in my room. I was sure that with all the little cubby holes for letters and things that the desk would be the organizational kick I needed to go from being a good student to being a great student. I imagined I would go from being a person who kept piles of paper to a person who kept things neatly tucked away in cubby holes.

I also really liked that I could fold up the desk part when I wasn't using it. In my mind the secretary desk was like the mullet of desks. When I wanted to dance around my room to my CDs the desk part would be out of the way. My current desk has this fold up feature as well. Since I still organize in piles of paper instead of cubby holes the table part has never been folded up.

my current desk

My mom loves to vacuum and hates my organizational system so maybe she thought the cubby holes would help. My mom put the secretary desk in my room and I was in heaven. I never met my mom's dad who was the original owner of the desk but when I was a kid I used to imagine him doing all sorts of cool, official things at his desk. I even found some old envelopes tucked between the cubby holes and the top of the desk. I was sure they belonged to my grandfather and that made them cool. It didn't take long before I discovered a secret drawer in the desk where I decided to keep notes from my friends and things I didn't want my parents to find.

The secret drawer

Apparently my secret drawer is no longer all that secret because my brother found it and likes to look in the drawer when he goes to visit Mom. Fortunately all the $100 bills that I used to keep there are long gone. A lot of my friends from middle school and high school know about the secret drawer. My mom calls it Carrie's secret drawer which makes me feel like even though everyone knows about it that it is still mine.

My stepdad forgets about the secret drawer and so when he cleans the desk and finds it there is always the thrill of discovery.

Since everyone knows about the secret drawer I started leaving notes in the secret drawer for my family.

When I was at the conference a couple weeks ago one of the presenter at the fantasy session I went to talked about secrets and how it is important for characters to have secrets. Naturally I thought of the secret drawer and how I thought it was the coolest thing when I was a kid. It was this place where I could keep things I wanted kept secret.

Conference recap

I had a wonderful time at the conference. It was great to reconnect with friends and to learn new things to put into practice.

I went to breakout sessions about Magic and Fantasy and Writing Suspense for Kids. I choose these because even though I'm not currently writing a a story with fantasy or magic I think that fantasy/magic appeals to kids. I went to Writing Suspense for Kids because I love when a book has me not wanting to put it down because I can't possibly wait until the next day to find out if the character gets out of whatever danger they are in. I think that kind of suspense can work in books for kids so I wanted some of those tools in my tool box.

I also went to a session on revision. At the revision session the presenter talked about how she likes revising. I'm trying to like revising. I've been working on revising my novel and this week I have had a hard time working on revising existing scenes and instead have spent more energy on writing some new scenes. The thing is I really like the new scenes so I want to work on those more than the old scenes.

connecting at conferences

This weekend I'm going to the Children's and Young Adult Literature Conference at the Loft Literary Center and I'm very excited.

When I attended a couple years ago I was just admitting to myself that writing was something I really wanted to do.

I had tried my hand at writing before and took some classes at the Loft and got a couple rejection letters and retreated back to my journals. Then I found running and something shifted in my self-esteem and ability to handle rejection. So it was back to the Loft.

I was remembering my conference experience from a couple years ago. I went to a break out session about revision. During the session we split up into small groups based on where we were sitting. This is how I ended up in a group with a woman who didn't like the subject of my manuscript. I ended up asking her to please give me feedback based on the story not the subject. At the end of the session I felt awful. I had to remind myself that no everyone will like my story.

At the time I didn't really know a lot of people in the writing community because I hadn't taken classes in a while. But at the end of the conference something wonderful happened. I ran into one of the ladies from the Book Club Cycle class who also happens to live one block away. I was so happy to find a familiar face. That familiar face led me to my picture book critique group and to my first published story.

I know a lot of people go to conferences to connect and network. I am always amazed that someone who I already knew, who I saw once a week, whose house I can get to via backyards ended up being the person who led me to a published story.

I always had a lot of respect for my friends who are parents but after this week of being super nanny for one of my coworker's 3 kids all I can say is whoa.

Yesterday I showed up for a short little 2 hour shift and I said "If this is how I tired I feel after 2 weeks of babysitting I can't imagine how parents feel."

I felt like I could probably sleep until Wednesday. I didn't, but I did sleep for 10 hours last night.

When offered the Date Night shift on Monday I said I needed a recovery day (or maybe week). Also Date Night happens to be the same day as my writing group meeting but I was too tired to remember that until a couple hours later.

Now what am I going to do with all my babysitting money? Probably spend it during the used book shopping adventure today.

TGIF

I've spent the entire week babysitting.

I admit I'm a little drained from it.

I admit that I ate ice cream with the kids last night and I didn't think about my fitness competition at the Y. I think chasing kids on bikes made me feel like I earned a little ice cream.

The thing I'm good at is bedtime. My motivation is the fact that once kids go to bed I get to write for a while. So really all the little tricks don't usually work on me. Although one of the kids did sneak a gameboy to bed.

Here is one of the conversations from yesterday.

S: One of my slippers is lost. I need to go downstairs and find it.

Me: That slipper has been missing for a week. I think it will wait another day.

One more night of babysitting this week and it is movie night. Movie night is way more fun than a school night.

Today I was listening to MPR and they were talking about boys and reading. Listen here.

It was a really good discussion and I thought their advice for writers for young people was really good.

I'm happy to say I have been keeping up with my goals for my writing. I have been writing every day and have gone back and done some work on some stories I have in progress. The Loft Children's writing festival is next week end and I'm really looking forward to it.

I love the new ballpark

On the list of things I love baseball ranks pretty high up there. I spent my childhood playing softball and one of the highlights of my summers was always going to my grandparent’s house where I would watch baseball with my grandpa for two weeks.

Growing up in Iowa meant that I didn’t grow up supporting a Major League team. Some of my friends liked the Cubs, some liked the Cardinals, my mom and her family like the Yankees. When I moved to Minnesota I went to my first Twins game and I was hooked.

I'm kind of a baseball nerd. I keep a baseball reading list and I like to go to as many games as I can in a season. Sometimes I don't talk about my love of baseball because since my family still bleeds pinstripes it can be hard to hear them trash talk my beloved team with the kind of confidence that people who root for a dynasty can.

I was super excited about my first outdoor game at Target Field, the Twins new outdoor ballpark. I have been babysitting all week so today was the first day I could go. I decided that this would be the perfect way to end a week of babysitting and take advantage of my free Saturday.

I didn’t get to go opening day because the stars were aligned against me and even though I had friends who won the ticket lottery for opening day, buying tickets for opening day did not happen.

I love the new ballpark so much.

When I got there I parked my bike at the bike parking area,which had Twins logos on the bike racks. Yay go Twins.

I got there early so I could check out the place and walk around for a while. It is perfect for that because you can see the field and watch batting practice while you are walking around

I rarely think that people have cooler jobs than mine but today as I saw how excited everyone working at Target Field was I have to admit I was a little jealous.

Watching baseball outside was a treat for the senses in a way that the Dome never was. It was bright and sunny. I know it sounds cheesy but there was not a cloud in the sky and the field looked like the most beautiful shade of real green grass green instead of fake astroturf never seen sun, washed out green.

My seat was near one of the places that sells Murray’s Steak Sandwiches, one of the new foods in the ballpark so every so often the wind would blow right and you would smell grilled steak and think about how awesome being outside really is.

Today Twins catcher Joe Mauer was given the silver bat for being the most awesome hitter of 2009 and also his 2009 AL MVP plaque. His dad threw out one of the ceremonial first pitches.

There was a homer by Thome earlier in the game so I got to see the home run fireworks in action. (There were no home run fireworks at the Dome). We won a close game against the Royals thanks to a homer by Orlando Hudson to put us in the lead.

Of course now that I’ve been I want to go back as often as possible. Maybe I should have bought season tickets.

About eight years ago I bought a pair of roller skates. Not roller blades but actual roller skates with four wheels that sit more side by side. They were the Sketchers 4 wheelers and while I loved the idea of them I found their lack of ankle support something I couldn't make work for me.

So I sold them on ebay about five years ago.

Yesterday I regretted this decision.

One of the kids I'm babysitting this week finally got the hang of the whole how to ride a bike thing so yesterday she and her brother tried to ride their bikes to Canada. OK maybe not Canada but they still rode pretty far while I tried to keep up on foot. Which made me wish I still had those 4 wheelers.

Plus what would be cooler than a roller skating babysitter?

Goals

Starting Monday I have a 5 week break from work.

For people who work 9-5, 50 weeks a year this would probably be cause for a little freak out but it is pretty common in my line of work to have some time off between shows.

I am going to spend some of my time off babysitting and probably visiting my family but my big goal is to try to set a more reliable writing schedule.

I admit that my writing schedule has been a bit erratic lately. I blame this on the sewing project I took on which ended up being more hours in a shorter amount of time than expected.

So here are my goals.

1. Write everyday. (Um yeah. Not sure how I stopped writing everyday but there it is)

2. Bring a revised story to my critique group.

3. Work on novel revision. (I'm going to try to revise at least 3-5 pages a day.)

4. Work on finding a home for one of my finished stories. (Submit at least one story during my break.)

5. Set a writing schedule that I can stick to when I go back to work. (This means that I need to not put off my writing until 4 p.m when I'm usually getting ready for work.)

So there they are. My writing goals for the next 5 weeks. I will still be babysitting so the fact that I will be have to leave my house at a certain time everyday will hopefully motivate me to get my writing done early in the day.

I have other personal fun goals like going to a Twins game and I'm working on fitness goals for a fitness competition at my gym.

What I'm reading- Impossible

There is a box of books in the wardrobe room full of books. When people finish a good book sometimes they add to it. They add not so great books too. Sometimes actors will leave books in the wardrobe library when they finish a show. The wardrobe library used to be a small little thing with maybe five books and one of them was a Nicholas Sparks book but now it is an overflowing box plus a grocery bag full of books. This is how I came across Impossible by Nancy Werlin.

This book was published in 2008. I picked it up and looked at it when it first showed up in the wardrobe library but it wasn’t until I saw it in the YA section at the real library that it caught my attention.

This book is inspired by the Simon and Garfunkel song “Scarborough Fair” and it mixes fantasy and ancient curses in a contemporary setting.

In the book Lucy Scarborough is haunted by her birth mother who randomly shows up in her life usually singing the song Scarborough Fair. Her mother, Miranda, suffers from mental illness and spends most of her life living in shelters and disappearing for long periods of time.

Lucy is practical and down to earth but finding Miranda’s diary leads her to believe that she may be part of an ancient curse. When Lucy becomes pregnant she worries she will end up like her mom.

But Lucy has things her mom didn’t have. She has loving foster parents and friends who support her. Together they work on how to solve the riddles in the curse (magical seamless shirt, plowing an acre of land with a goat’s horn) before Lucy has her baby.

The suspense of wondering if they will solve the puzzle and break the curse is what kept the pages turning in this book for me. I have been staying up late and reading any chance I had just to find out what was going to happen.

This book has an element of fantasy with the Scarborough Fair song and a version of the song called the Elfin Knight. The characters are so practical as they try to solve these riddles, using the internet to research the origins of the song and ebay to purchase a goat horn. I think the practicality of the characters makes the magical elements work for this book. I really recommend this book and will be returning it to the wardrobe room for someone else to read.

A bittersweet Peep Day

The winners for the Pioneer Press Peep Diorama contest were announced today and I have to say I was highly disappointed. Not only did MacPeep not win anything it didn't even get mentioned in the article about the contest.
When I first saw the winner, The Peepling Brother's Circus I knew there was no crystal peep in my future but I held out hope for a tote bag or at least some prize peeps, because nothing tastes better than Peeps you won by hot gluing other Peeps to cardboard.
In seeing some of the second and thrid place winners and honorable mentions I am somewhat disappointed by the loss. Don't these people know how hard we worked on our diorama? We didn't just go out and stick a toy car and some Peeps in a pothole. No, we made a cardboard version of the Guthrie Theater and recreated scenes from a Shakespeare play.
At least 8 hours of work went into this project plus 2 hours of giggling and not to mention the campaigning to get people to vote for the diorama.
To ease my sorrow at the loss I ate Peeps, not Peeps I won but Peeps given to me by my sister after hearing about my disappointing loss.
To make myself feel better about losing to a diorama about Tiger Woods I checked out the Washington Post's Peep Show and tried to gain inspiration for next year's contest while explaining to my brother how much cooler people in DC were and also trying to explain all the pop culture references that he didn't understand like the diorama for the JK Wedding Dance.
But now I have a whole year to plan for next year. I may even purchase Peeps from other holidays even though that goes against my belief that Peeps should just stay with their own holiday and not try to get in on the other holidays.

Tech fast

I am on a sort of forced technology fast right now due to the fact that my internet is being lame. Apparently my signal strength is really weak s someone from the ISP will be coming out next week to hopefully fix it. Until that time I am connecting at home when I can or going to my friendly neighborhood coffee shop. Before my internet decided to be stupid I spent the weekend in Alabama where my sister lives/works and where there is no WiFi.

The biggest change for me has been the fact that I have only checked my facebook once a day for the last week. When my internet gets back up I think I should make a habit of the once a day FB check instead of the whenever I'm bored or hit a block in my writing FB check.

The funny thing is that in the past I have come to the coffee shop as a way to stay off the internet. Since I live alone and don't have kids silence is something I have an abundance of so sometimes I go to the coffee shop for the chaos. The fact that all the people in the coffee shop could look over my shoulder and see the fact that I was on FB motivated me to actually spend the time writing.

revising

I have been revising my first draft. In my critique group we have been working through the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. I have to admit that I'm not very excited about this month's assignment which is chapter 22 from the book.

The chapter says to go through your manuscript and find scenes that happen in the kitchen, car or shower. Then it says to get rid of them. If you can't get rid of them you have to add tension to the scene.

I'm still thinking about this assignment. Mostly I'm thinking about if I want to do the assignment (I don't.) I have to say I felt like this assignment was calling me out in a way. Of course there scenes that take place in kitchens and scenes that take place in cars in my story and part of me doesn't want to let them go. But it is possible that my inexperienced self has gotten it wrong. Maybe I just think the scene where my character confronts her Dad in the car when he comes to pick her up about why her stepbrother called her dad his dad is full of tension and reveals something about the way my character.

In reading this book there are all these examples from other books so as I read these little examples from other books I end up wanting to just read more books. So my stack of books to read is getting bigger.

How to make an award winning diorama

This week I have focused most of my energy on sewing costumes for a play and making a Peep diorama the Pioneer Press Peep Diorama contest.

I teamed up with my friend Sara who has a blog and is committed to diorama greatness.

So this week I thought I'd write about how to make an awesome diorama.

Step 1: Pick a dramatic subject. We picked MacBeth since that is what is running on the stage next door and there is fake blood.

MacPeep

Step 2: Gather materials. We used a box, fabric, a small box from the recycling bin, model magic, doll hair and parts, gum wrappers, foil paper, a paper clip container, stage blood, hot glue and of course Peeps.

Step 3: Prepare the diorama. This includes marking where your big set pieces will go as well as any painting you may want to do to the interior or exterior of the diorama.

Step 4: Build set and costumes.

The set

The costumes

Step 5: Add Peeps and Props starting from the back of the diorama and working forward.

The Wyrd Sisters

Lady MacPeep

Bloody Banquo

Step 6: Do not neglect the outside of the diorama. Cause really if you've spent all this time on the inside don't you want the outside to be just as great?

Step 7: Professionally light the finished product and take photos.

Donuts!!

Last week I got an email from the instructor from the writing class I took last fall inviting me to a reading. The series is called Second Story Readings and they take place at The Loft. The series pairs two middle grade or YA authors for a reading. They pair authors that might be enjoyed by a similar audience. Today I went to see Lynne Jonell who wrote Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat and The Secret of Zoom and Stephanie Watson who wrote Elvis and Olive.

There was a nice mix of people there including lots of kids. Stephanie Watson read from her first book Elvis and Olive and then she read from her book that will be out this summer Elvis and Olive, Super Detectives

I am super excited cause I won a door prize.

At the end of the reading there were all sort of goodies like posters, postcards and books for available for purchase. There were also donuts. When this was announced one little girl in the front row cheered "donuts". As I made my way past the line of kids buying books I heard girls in line talking about how when their brothers found out there were going to be donuts that they wanted to come to the reading too. (There weren't a lot of brothers there though) It made me think that maybe donuts are the key to getting kids into reading.

Frozen Falls

Last weekend one of my actors asked me if I had ever been to Minnehaha Falls.

Yes I replied I ride my bike there all the time in the summer. So then they asked if I had ever been there in the winter. Which is when I realized that I had never seen The Falls when they are frozen.

My reason for not doing this is that it is cold. So this week I made it my mission to fix this problem and I went to Minnehaha Falls to see what they look like when they are frozen.

I haven't been here in the winter so I missed the buzz of rental bikes, Sea Salt and the sound of the Falls. Everything was still covered in white so I had to be careful where I stepped and not actually walk out onto the ice because even though it is cold it has actually been getting warmer.

Since I was on foot I walked on a little bridge that goes over the falls and walked around the park on the other side of the Falls. I don't normally see some of the site of this park because I am usually on two wheels and therefor don't get to go down all the pedestrian paths.

Whenever I go to the falls in the summer I stop and look at the statue of Hiawatha and Minnehaha and I listen to the creek bubble on one side while hearing the gentle roar of the falls on the other side. In the spring the water can get high and this little pool forms kind of across from the statue but by the end of the summer the pool is usually gone.

What I read this week

This week I read Captivate by Carrie Jones. I read Need last year and this is the sequel to that book. I really liked Need when I read it because I thought it was nice for readers who like fantasy but might be getting bored of the whole Twilight thing. Plus I read it at about the time a lot of my friends were reading the Twilight books so I had that whole "Oh yeah, I read those like forever ago. I'm reading this now."
I don’t keep up on what book is coming out when because I usually get my books from the library, which means that if it is a book that has a lot of buzz I could wait forever. Seriously I just got Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride in January even though it came out in the summer. I saw this book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and I went home and reserved it at the library.

In this book Zara and her friends have the evil pixies are all safely locked up only to find that there are more pixies on the way. New pixies show up, who are hoping to take over the territory of the old pixies who are weak and locked up.
One of the pixies claims Zara is meant to be his queen and Zara must decide if this is true. The new pixie says a lot of things, which Zara has to decide if she can trust or not.
The book basically seems to set up a bigger war going on between good and evil and the end seems to be setting up for another book.
There were a couple references to Buffy in this book which always makes me happy.
The kids in this book have little phrases they say such as “made of awesome” and I swear by the end of the book I found myself talking like that.

Inspiration

Last week was the first week of a fitness competition I signed up for called The Meltdown. Basically you sign up with a partner and you get points for exercise, keeping a food log and attending clinics. You also earn bonus points if you do things like attend a group fitness class or attend a yoga class.
You sign up in teams of two and my partner also happens to be my coworker so that is kind of cool.
The good thing about this competition is that it has me in the gym for an hour every day. Some sort of magical brain thing happens for me in between minute 30 and minute 60 on the cardio machines and that seems to be when my brain wakes up. I have had a few good story ideas while working out at the gym. Of course then I have to go home and scribble them down before I forget them.
On Saturday my teammate got to the gym only to find out that she had forgotten her sneakers.
OK considering 30 minutes of exercise= 1 point and you can earn up to 12 points a week you basically have to get two points a day six days a week. A week goes from Monday thru Sunday so she really needed her two points for that day.
Not to be discouraged she stopped by the lost and found bins where she found a pair of shoes that were 1/2 size smaller than hers so she "borrowed" them for an hour and did the work out she was originally planning before she forgot her shoes. At the end of her workout she returned the shoes.
It made me think about excuses and sometimes it is easy to make excuses for things. "I can't work out today because I forgot my shoes" instead my teammate found a way to make fitness happen for her that day. I'm good at making fitness a part of my life but I know there are other things I can approach with a no excuses attitude so that is my goal for the week.

Om

When people first meet me for some reason they tend to think I practice yoga. I think they think that yoga is one of the things that single chicks that live in the city do. I ride my bike, I have a fun job in the arts, I try to be an enlightened person, and I care about the earth so I must do yoga. I don’t.
The idea of me bending and stretching into different poses couldn’t be farther from the truth. Over the last three years I have tried to embrace yoga and make it a practice in my life. But something always stops me. Sometimes it is that the class is too full and I end up with someone’s warty foot in my face while trying to hold one leg in the air behind me, balance on the other and not fall over. Sometimes it is the timing of the class.
Then there is the fact that I don’t always like to slow down. Seriously if I can’t blast at least 300 calories what is the point?
But the big reason is I have a hard time accepting my un-bendy self. Even as a child I failed the seated reach test on the Presidential Fitness test.
In other areas of fitness I totally accept where I am. Running for example is something that I like to do but I do slow. I know that I am not going to win any running awards but that doesn’t stop me from trying.
Right now because of my neck my running level is walk and I totally accept that.
I’m able to apply the things I learn while running to my writing life. For example I’ve never won any awards at running but just cause I didn’t win doesn’t mean I quit running. The same goes for writing. Sometimes I get rejected but that doesn’t mean I should quit writing.
I don’t approach yoga with the same mindset as other things. I’m bad at yoga. Unlike writing or running I can’t seem to get past this. But yoga won’t give up on me. It keeps showing up in my life as bonus points for fitness competitions or friends who teach yoga classes.
Recently yoga has shown up in my life again as one of the self care things I can do for my neck. I set up a routine on my wii fit plus and now I am finding relief and doing 15 minutes of yoga 3 times a week.
I am trying to be more accepting of my yoga shortcomings and figure out how yoga applies to my writing life.

Reconnecting with my writing groups

I've been reading my friend Wendy's blog and feeling like my blog could benefit from more photos or something.
I had meetings this week with two different critique groups this week. My novel group and my picture book group so I finally remembered my desire to take pictures and brought my camera only to fail to take pictures.
Monday's writing group meeting consisted of a check in about where we were, setting goals for the week and a reminder of our assignment to bring an example of inner conflict for the last meeting of the month. We also took a field trip to to check out the Writer's Studios at The Loft.
Now ever since I have been thinking about whether renting a writer's studio is a realistic thing for me to want to do. On one hand I feel like my life lacks some of the normal distractions that some people have. Of course I have my share of distractions like pets, laundry, dishes and Facebook. But because of my relative lack of distractions in my life I sometimes go to the coffee shop just to be around people and activity while I write. On the other side there is the whole idea of having a designated time and space where I will work on my writing, revision or whatever.
Today I went to my picture book writing group which I haven't been to in 3 months due to 10:30 matinees. I was excited to be back and so excited to see what everyone had worked on. It was wonderful to read everyone's work and get some feedback on a shorter piece that I just had to write even though I promised myself I would concentrate on my novel revision and not work on short pieces. I got the idea for the story from a mixture of things and the inspirational moment happened on the elliptical at the gym and I was afraid if I didn't write down something that I would lose it and not remember it later.
Now my goal for the rest of the week is to work on my assignment for Monday.

Bargain Book Shopping

Yesterday I tried to focus on writing and I was successful. I worked on three things for a little while each. The biggest thing I did yesterday was start my rewrite of my novel. And by start I mean I rewrote page one. But it was the third thing I worked on and I've never rewritten anything before so baby steps, right.
Today was Bargain Book Shopping with friends from my Cycle and Chat class also known as Cycle and Chat Book Club. We went to Magers and Quinn in Uptown because if I spent $10 there I could get a discount on registration for the Loft's Children's Literature Conference. Spending $10 was no problem and now I have a stack of books to read. We also went to Half Price Books where I picked up a $2 fantasy book.
Currently thanks to the Cycle and Chat book club I am reading the Sun and Moon books by Holly Lisle. So far there are two books in the trilogy, The Ruby Key and The Silver Door.
I have to say that I don't usually read fantasy books but I got hooked on these early in the first book. The book follows Genna and her brother, Danrith as they sneak out one night in hopes of collecting tanduu sap to save their mother. Instead they are brought before the Nightling King where they learn that saving their mother is going to take more than the tanduu sap. They must instead bargain with the Kai-Lord to save not only their mother but themselves and their entire village from the Uncle Banris who has made a deal to sacrifice all of them in exchange for immortality.
When I was reading this book I was annoyed with the fact that the character kept saying how she was too young to do all this and she was just a kid. I kept thinking "Isn't this the point of YA fiction, that kids sometimes get to do extraordinary things, especially in fantasy type books. At the end of the book the fact that she is humble and thinks of herself as just a kid is a really important trait and come into play at the end so then I felt OK with the set up.
Now I'm reading the second book, The Silver Door in which Genna is trying to learn about her destiny as the Sunrider and instead is taken with her friend to The Spire where she meets a boy who had been frozen in time. She must figure out how to save her village and fight her Uncle who is leading an army against the humans.

Yesterday my Mom came to visit. I always joke with her about the amount of my brother's childhood things she's save (a whole bedroom) vs the amount of my childhood stuff she saved. But she is moving out of her old house which means that even my brother's childhood toys are no longer safe.
When they came to visit at Christmas my stepdad kept talking about finding a bunch of stuff I wrote when I was in middle school and high school. I really had no idea what he was talking about. The idea that there were some copies of things I wrote somewhere in my parents house made me a little nervous especially since I didn't know what he was talking about.
Fortunately he was not talking about the soap opera scripts that I used to write when I was bored in middle school.
This week when my mom came to visit she proudly brought me a copy of The Growl and two "literary magazines" from middle school with collected short stories, poems and artwork.
"See. You've been a writer for a long time," she said as she gave me evidence that, yes indeed I've been writing since I was a kid.
I do remember my time as editor of the news section of my high school paper because back then my dreams were to work at Sassy magazine.
This week I also printed out my first draft of my novel and I am going through that and making notes on things that need work. I've written a couple "novels" for NaNoWriMo in the past but never anything that I decided to revise in hopes of making it better so this is a first for me but I'm excited to see how it goes.