Echo Arna

Lemony Snicket Reads Newspapers

2010-11-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

How to describe the lecture at Seattle Arts and Lectures last night?

I was laughing so hard I had to pull out the kleenex.

Daniel Handler, pictured on the left, aka Lemony Snicket, was introduced by Sherman Alexie. The talk was entitled, "Why does Lemony Snicket Keep Following Me?" From the description alone, it promised to be outstanding.

An added and unexpected bonus was pre-introduction by a young writer, age 10?, who read his poem about his loathing for tomato soup. And Mr. Alexie's introduction was brilliant in his usual fashion; I don't want to trade Mr. Alexie with anyone in San Francisco, please. Keep him here. I go to as many of his reading and talks as I can, and I prefer to walk or take the bus, not fly.

The perfect tone of expectation had been set. But Mr. Handler had a deceptively disjointed beginning. Left you thinking, "Where is he going with this?" It soon became clear that he knew exactly where he was going and knew how to entertain, delight, and terrify. From many possibilities of the moral of not carrying your baby down a flight of 14 stairs while talking on a cell phone (the baby was ok, but mom ended up black and blue) to how he described the strange combination of Things That Happen when you read local newspapers, this was a lecture that ranks as one of my all time favorites. EVER.

In case you do not know: Lemony Snicket is author the books A Series of Unfortunate Events, where three orphans have to deal with disasters, also known to the rest of us as life. 53 million copies sold proves that many children and adults, like Mr. Handler, have a need to read stories that do not involve "plucky heroes who have happy endings and where at the happy ending everyone sits now to eat a nice hot meal." As Mr. Handler said, you should have a hot meal a lot of the time. Not just after adventures. Throw that plucky hero across the room. Join reality. Get a sense of humor. Invent a pen name when you are talking to a right-wing conservative organization after you have written them a letter of complaint which starts out, "How dare you!" Mr. Handler did say that this was where the name Lemony Snicket came from, but he had no idea how to spell it, so he asked the woman on the phone to do it for him.

I have long liked his books but now I know I love the author.

P.S.
Mr. Alexie, I love you too. Please read again at the Ballard Public library in the fishbowl room.

2010-11-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

6,000+ word day. First day I have had the chance to write.

And the CD of choice is by an Indie Rock Band called Sigur Ros. The album is called Takk. This is the 5th year I've tried NaNoWriMo and it seems each time I latch onto one CD and I don't let go, until after November is over.

Listening to the same CD is the best and most reliable way to get into the world. And no surprise, I suppose, this year when listening to Sigur Ros, started writing about an ice world, ended up with the idea of a dystopia (from the history class this quarter). Now, 1 day in I find myself I am writing about a girl who steals a person's will to live at the moment of his death. And a creature I am calling the Antuk.

Next week, I'll read This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. But only after I write another 10,000 words.

The Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

2010-08-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

Suzanne Collins hit the ball out of the field. In fact, she knocked the ball out of the stadium, and it traveled with such velocity that it created a sonic boom. Her Young Adult trilogy started with The Hunger Games.

I tore through The Hunger Games with the utmost gratitude to the author: I was on a plane and needed an alternate reality. I chomped pages on the edge of my airline seat: the choices the main character has to make are horrifying. But you can't stop reading. Rarely has any author used first person, present tense with such punch.

Then came the second book, Catching Fire. It was BETTER. Who says this about a sequel? Almost no one. The best example of how good Catching Fire was comes from a friend's daughter--now a teenager--who called her mother at work to say, "I have book emergency. I have to read or at least have--in my hand--a copy of the second book in the trilogy. Help me find a copy." The girl had finished the first book not ten minute before this declaration.

So now adult nerds like me who love, love, love gripping and great sci/fi fantasy YA are waiting for Tuesday, 8/24/10, when the third and final book in the trilogy, The Mockingjay, will be released.

My expectations are impossibly high. I have been hanging onto a gift card to the University Bookstore ready since June. I'm waiting; two more days. And you?

2010-04-18T13:22:00.000-07:00

The Field's End Conference was excellent. To read the official summary, please see http://www.fieldsend.org/Conference.html.

Highlights for me:

Gloria Burgess' key note opening speech on the influences of her life. I was particularly struck by Ms. Burgess' generosity, for herself, for her fellow writers, and most of all for her proud father who developed a friendship with William Faulkner.
Bruce Barcott's lunch time key note speech on the 10 things a writer can and should remember when you feel like you cannot go on. My favorite: "Embrace the Zen of the crappy 200 word work day because it leads to something else."
Seeing other writers I know from classes and conferences that I would never otherwise see.
Sample break out sessions were: On the Many Endings of a Novel (Wayne Ude): Knowing When to Stop Revising (Anjali Banerjee); and What If? What then? (David Patneaude).
Especially useful to me was the Wayne Ude's talk for his analysis and his diagram all of the subplots in Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. My favorite tidbits were: "You are allowed one whopping coincidence per book" and "Bring your (story) to the 'inner most core' which is the place where it is as bad as it can get" and "The main plot can simmer as long as this is the time when things are revealed to the main character as subplots move along."

Plus you get eat salmon lunch in a beautiful setting, surrounded by fellow writers of all ages and backgrounds, with pertinent breakout sessions. I recommend the Field’s End annual conference.

2010-03-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

Field's End, "...serves the writers’ community and nurtures the written word through lectures, workshops and instruction in the art, craft, and profession of writing." Their website is at http://www.fieldsend.org/index.html.

They offer writing classes, an annual conference, and fall events. They also have a monthly round-table series, which features local Pacific Northwest authors. Field's End is affiliated with the Bainbridge Public Library. Their events are--for the Seattlite like me--a beautiful ferry boat commute away.

This year, because of a family birthday, I cannot attend the SCBWI conference on April 10th, 2010. So I am planning to go to the April 17th all day Field's End conference at Kiana Lodge near Agate Pass. I'll post my own summary, post conference.

2010-02-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

Recently, I signed up for an art class. And learned how little I know about drawing.

I draw landscapes with reasonable accuracy because it is a way to quiet my brain. The writer in me stops, shuts up, takes a nap. Thoughts become non-verbal, which is another way of thinking, seeing, feeling, breathing. It is a good way to be.

So I thought that I would learn how to draw faces, but it's incredibly hard to portray human beings. To capture their look. Not as easy as taking a photograph. Recognition is all in the lines of forehead, nose, the space between the nose and the mouth. Cognition is just a different kind of art.

31,765 Words

2009-12-02T21:25:00.000-08:00

Here are my 2009 National Novel Writing Month statistics:

50,000 word goal - 31,765 words written = 18,235 short.
18,235 divided by 1,667 average words per day = 10.93881224 more days of writing.
OR = two ridiculously long writing days of 9,000 some word per day.

What I really achieved:

Some 32,000 words closer to the ending of my big project.
Two major insights.
Three days--over the Thanksgiving holiday--of reading the entire trilogy, from start to the "finish."

The exercise of writing is more important than the word count. National Novel Writing Month 2009 was an exercise for me; it is highly likely that all those words will never be read at all. But November 2009 counts because those 32,000 words will bring me closer to the grand finale. In a trilogy where each draft book is easily 100,000 words, this means that less is more.

National Novel Writing Month

2009-10-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

Can you write 50,000 words in 30 days?

You can find out if you try National Novel Writing Month.

Call it nanowrimo for short. The folks who started the crazy enterprise say it is, "A fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

I've tried nanowrimo three years and succeeded twice. This year, I'm going for it again.

Two keys things equal a high word count.

1) Get rid of the internal editor. You know the one who lives in your head and tells you can't, shouldn't, couldn't, nope, not good enough, make it better, better than better, sorry it's not perfect. If you don't have one of these lovelies, you are a lucky, lucky writer.

My internal editor is a sharp lady, about a 105, with ruthless taste. She is sometimes mean and nasty. I imagine she only has two bad teeth. The other 30 teeth are long gone, lost in multiple verbal brawls. She loves red ink. She can paralyze me at times, but I've become good at converting her into a force for the good because who would want to read raw, clunky, and baaaaaaaaaad writing? However, even internal editors need vacations. So for the month of November, I gear up and hunker down. I've got to get 2,000 words a day which can take anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours. No time for my internal editor, which brings me to the second key point.

2) Ignore everything and anything which would take you away from getting your writing done. This may include but is not limited to: dishes, laundry, the really good book your friend told you to read, TV shows you like or don't, phone calls, online forums (they are a dangerous black hole sucking up anything coming near them!), and people in general. My personal favorite thing to ignore is sleeping, but this creates some interesting problems during the daytime.

Everyone may have their own best advice. Certainly the folks putting on the show, who maintain the National Novel Writing Month website do a great job of keeping you going. But really, the long and the short of writing a novel is you have to spend the time writing and writing and writing and writing the novel.

Nanowrimo is a just the hyperdrive way to do it.

Any takers?

Found jump drive -- Lessons Learned

2009-10-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

Efforts to find jump drive: On Monday, leave work early; go to scene of the incident (cafe and market); ask staff about jump drive; look around; be annoying to other customers; put up flyers on bulletin boards, flyers include picture of lost jump drive, owner's first name, cell phone number, and email; walk home retracing steps of Sunday afternoon.

Ways to make peace with the loss: Eat veggie chips and ice cream for dinner, and spend evening reading a page-turner thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson.

Random check/still obsessing: This morning look in all pockets of Patagonia fleece jacket, not the jacket worn on Sunday.

Discovery: Find jump drive in pocket!

Unresolved mystery: why oh why did I move the jump drive from its regular location (small pouch in purse) to a pocket of a jacket that I wasn't wearing that day? What was I thinking? (Obviously was not thinking at all.)

Lessons learned:

a) Label jump drives.

b) Do not put so much work on one jump drive.

c) Sign up for 2 GB free storage with mozy.org.

d) Buy external hard drive or new computer this weekend.

e) Password protect everything.

Lost Jump Drive

2009-10-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

They go by lots of names: jump, flash, or thumb drives. They are easy to use, store a ton of writing, or whatever else you need them to, and they are tiny enough to carry around wherever you go. In your purse.

Tiny enough to lose. Like I did tonight.

I have a ton of writing on my little gizmo. All of my current projects and drafts. Yes, I also back up all my writing on the hard drive of my computers and email myself current drafts to two personal email accounts as an added precaution. I have the projects I'm working on, and even ones that are on the metaphorical shelf, saved. So what then is the problem?

Well, on that jump drive I kept about 10 years worth of work, and not all of it was password protected. Lost. Out there on the cement somewhere, about to be run over by a bus, tucked in a corner forgotten, or even worse...somebody is reading my stuff right now this very minute before it's submission ready. Raw writing. Crappy drafts. Hundreds of them. God help me, but it's a feeling that will make you sick to your stomach. (The journals were password protected; at least I had enough sense to do that, hallelujah!)

I've called both Cafe Zoka's and the little grocery story where I bought some soup to see if anyone turned in my thumb drive. Tomorrow I will visit the cafe, the grocery, and walk the same way home to see if somehow my personal jump drive jumped out of my purse or my pocket along the way.

Learn from my mistake: if you store your writing on jump drive, please do the following:

Password protect all the files that you don't want some stranger, rightly curious maybe or bored silly, to read.
Email yourself copies of your work and save in multiple locations.
Label your drive with your name and cell phone number.

P.S.
And if you see my jump drive (pictured above) somewhere in Seattle, can let me know?

Thoughts on revisions

2009-10-03T20:53:00.001-07:00

Nearing 9:00 p.m. and time to write. Another trick is to plug into loud music and spent some time spewing words into the pages of a computer journal. Then once you have a flow going, switch over to the project at hand.

in reference to: Echo Arna (view on Google Sidewiki)

Novel Revisions

2009-10-03T10:39:00.001-07:00

Do you have a novel stuffed in a drawer? Gathering dust on a shelf?

Novels do not write themselves. And unfortunately novels do not re-write themselves into polished, readable, and marketable manuscripts. I have at least six draft novels in house, all neatly arranged on the Writing Bookcase, a bookcase which is almost as high as the ceiling. And I promised myself after a summer of watching Battlestar Galatica and Firefly come September I would begin to work.

September is over and I have been working steadily on re-writing one of those novels to get it to the point where I am willing to shop or hunt for an agent. I want to fix the flaws before I send my manuscript off into the world. Here are some tips, tricks, and things I have learned along the way:

Carve out a dedicated period of time to write every day; make that dedicated time realistic for your life and schedule. My writing time is now between the hours of 900 p.m. and midnight. I work more than 40 hours a week, need to eat after work, I am not a morning person, and likely never will be, so nighttime is it.
Be consistent. Yes, I like to organize my sock drawer, read books, play with the cat, call a friend, and sleep. NO, I cannot do these things between 900 p.m. and midnight.
Be generous with yourself. Even an hour a day is a good day's work. A half hour a day is ok. All those half hours and hours will add up in the end.
Set a daily goal for revisions. Initially, I decided a chapter a night would be my goal, which was unrealistic. So it became half of a chapter every night.
Get feedback on your manuscript before you start revising, but be specific about soliciting feedback. I am lucky because I have family and friends who are readers, writers, and editors. I have 2 first readers at the moment, providing line by line edits on my draft manuscript. One is a friend who is professional editor, and the other is a familymember. Both are generous and kind; both love to read and write; my friend the editor loves YA fantasy so it is a good match; my family member is also a writer but of poetry; she is exacting in her reading tastes and has been systematic in her edits, ruthlessly eliminating the word that, which apparently I love so much I use the word least 2 or 3 times on every page.
Be generous with anyone willing to read your manuscript. Give your first readers a printed copy of your manuscript and buy them postage stamps so they can mail their edits back to you; buy them Indian food dinners and lattes. Wait patiently. They are doing you a HUGE favor. Never criticize their feedback. After all you can decide to accept or reject their edits.
Line by line edits from first readers make a great road map, but not the only one. If you do not have family and friends who would be willing to read your draft and provide feedback, then share manuscript with a critique group, and if you do not yet have such a group, get one. A critique group can offer you opinions on thorny problems (e.g., should I use a prologue or not?)
Have a notebook of problems and issues in your manuscript. I call my notebooks blue books and I jot everything down which needs some fixing. I write by hand in my blue books. Examples: Chapt. 14, page xxx, how many villagers total? Also, write about Z's experience. Or, Chapt. 14, page xxx, D versus d. Dreamworld ok, but Dreamer, Dream, Dreaming? These notes are cryptic, but that is my point. You know what the problems are in your manuscript, but having a log or record of them-page by page-is an invaluable tool. I also use my blue books as a brain dump, where I throw thoughts and musings about the manuscript down on paper, so I do not mess with the manuscript as I am revising it.
Keep your back stories in a separate location and use them only sparingly in your manuscript. I am going to start revising the second manuscript this month; the first fifty pages of manuscript #2 are back story on a character I like a lot. But the back story has got to go: I am going to cut those pages, save them elsewhere, and move on with the revisions.
Make decisions. This is the final and most important point. Maybe you know exactly what you want to say and how you want to say. Maybe your manuscript is perfect. If so, then congratulations! You do not need to read this article. I, however, have to decide whether or not to use the prologue, whether I should capitalize the letter d every time I use it in the words dreamer, dreaming, and dream. I need to decide if my main character Z should be active in the scene in Chapter 14. (The answer is Yes, he should.) Re-writing is decision making in action.

Remember, this is work but can be thrilling. Writing a novel is like sailing solo across the ocean. Revising a novel is like sailing solo across the ocean a second time: you know what to do, but you would foolish not take charts, GPS, radio, food, water, sailing lessons, life vest, repair gear, etc. And of course, there are as many ways to revise a novel as there to write one. Good luck!

SCBWI Conference Reflections - Correction

2009-05-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Quick update on the "SCBWI Reflections" I posted on Sunday 5/17: my writer friend, Amanda, recently got a comment on her blog, literallyhumann.blogspot.com from literary agent Michael Stearns, who said he wanted to "squash the rumor before it gained any traction."

The rumor is that Mr. Stearns "likes" lists. Not true. Mr. Stearns can appreciate a good list, but he is not actively looking for them.

And so I wanted to correct my own 5/17 post on echoarna.blogspot.com. Why does this matter? Agents are inundated with queries from writers, so it's better to be clear about what they want AND they don't want. We writers can run with an offhand comment made at a conference and end up in Bhutan, apparently. (Someday I'll get to Bhutan, but not via misunderstanding an agent's preferences for submissions.)

To read Mr. Stearns own blog, see http://astheworldstearns.wordpress.com/.

American Idol - And the Winner Is...

2009-05-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

...No, I'm not kidding, but let me explain. The winner is Kris Allen, the "dark horse" contestant, who looks and sings like a skinny teddy bear. He is skinny, with bigish ears, and his voice is kind of fuzzy too, not in a bad way but it has a bit of raspy burr in it.

Yes, I started out this year by following American Idol. It sounds like a confession because Dumb TV is like buying a "People" magazine, something that generates a little bit of shame in me. Writers are supposed to write from 8 or 9 until midnight on weeknights, even after a Very Busy Day at work. But there I was curled up watching a snowy screen, after dinner, angling the antenna just so. Does everyone have the same kind of interest in witnessing a dream come true? Is this that why the show is so popular?

Here is my secret: when it gets boring I imagine the contestants as animals.

Guess what animal Adam Lambert is in my writer brain? Yep, an Orca Whale, one who is capable of flying leaps, dines on seals, and has accentuated eyes. Had I been of the voting kind, I would have gone with the Orca, in spite of the theatrical overblown style he had at times. I always liked listening and watching him perform because he had no fear of the stage, made me expect the unexpected from him, and god, what a voice.

But 100,000 million voted (100,000 million people!) and the preference was for a teddy bear. It doesn't matter in the end. They will both have careers to watch out for. And for those of us who sing only on the freeway when driving alone and even then it sounds scary, there is something inspiring by watching a person get up and sing his heart out in front of millions in a competition with an uncertain outcome, and still sound like a pro, stuffed animal or killer whale aside. Kudos to them both.

Post SCBWI Conference Reflections

2009-05-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

This'll be a list, because I think all conference attendees are still digesting two full days of information. My brain is busy with ideas and goals, but here are the first little snippets and impressions:

The agent who spent years being an editor likes lists = Michael Stearns.
The editor who announced that she like books about dead animals later told everyone she's acquired a book about a talking pig = Connie Hsu.
I discovered Ellen Hopkin's prose verse books = Where the hell have I been?
Many business cards from the people that I was delighted to meet and greet = I've updated links to "Network of Writers" with new blogs and websites. Note: I expect this list to grow, so I am only listing you in this category if you define yourself as a writer or editor; I'm also adding the author of the book that most recently kept me up past midnight (E. Hopkins).
There's a new Six Degrees of Separation experiment for those of us children's writers who live in the Pacific Northwest = instead of Kevin Bacon, switch that to Peggy King Anderson.
Please no books about merfolk = mermaids and mermen are not the new vampires.
BTW: vampires are over, which means that none of us will become the new Stephanie Meyer = That said, expect parodies on vampires in print soon.
Writers who really take their time to research the agent or editor before submitting = success.
Success comes in all shapes and sizes = it is about your readers and the impact that you have on them.
Write from the ...even if you are science geek like me.

All in all, a great learning experience, as always. More details to follow in the coming week.

Count down to SCBWI Conference

2009-05-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

SCBWI stands for the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators. Say that name twenty times fast. And it's not about monsters, either. If you are interested in writing books for very young children, middle grade readers, young adults, or adult nerds (like me), SCBWI is an international organization that welcomes the novice and nutures the pro.

I am somewhere on the long road, traveling from the complete beginner to the published author. Three years ago, I joined SCBWI Western Washington. (Website is http://scbwi-washington.org/.) I got into my first conference from the wait-list, read through the materials at the last minute, took a big pad of paper and pen, swallowed my fear of strangers and went, wide-eyed and overwhelmed.

It was fabulous and grueling all at once. Two full days of information overload. Who knew that there were that many children's writers and illustrators in the Seattle area? The conference room was filled with 300 to 400 people; acronyms flew through the air like bits of binary data on wireless super-highways. Attending the conference was like learning a new language. Bruce Coville's keynote speech made me cry because he was so generous anyone willing to call herself a writer. He is the kind of human being I want to be when I grow up. See his website at http://www.brucecoville.com/ for more information on his amazing career.

And oh I was envious of the People Who Knew Other People, those writers who greeted each other like the long lost friends or at least people who liked each other a lot and had not seen each other in months.

Fast forward to this year: I have a writing buddy that I met at that first conference. Since then we've become great friends, starting our own critique group that is currently meeting monthly. We're also both exploring-- separately from each other--other critique groups because feedback is now essential to the process of making work publishable. I'm thinking about joining the Pacific Northwest Writers Association because I also write in adult genres. See their website at http://www.pnwa.org/.

Now my worries are specific and concrete: should I use the business cards I made last year, or do I have enough time to revamp them to include my blog address? Will the editor who is consulting on the first five pages of my manuscript have tangible advice, suggestions which I can use to make The Odyssey of Zomas better? And then there are all my self-imposed deadlines of the breed, "I am going finish the latest re-write of Zomas by conference time," that will expire. For example, I am still working on the short story The Stone Fields, weaving in feedback from about a dozen people. Everyone says it's a novel. Call it denial but I want to achieve a sellable piece of less than 5,000 words. So I am slugging away, like I'm cutting and triming an overgrown garden with a pair of fingernail clippers. (Next post: Ruyard Kiplings' advice, "Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh how beautiful' and sitting in the shade.")

I will be in good company at the conference: there are hundreds of us out there with the same affiliction, each person writing because she has something to say. Becoming one with one's computer in a cafe is an activity I love beyond measure. Being alone is not. And so after three years going to the SCBWI conferences I now have a writing best friend, a critique group, the ability to bump into other writers on elevators and start conversations, and as always, my writing time, with pizza...or is that a pancake?

Post Script:

The picture to the right is taken from another blogger''s post. The blogger is Devon DeLapp, in Los Angeles, and the entry is entitled, "Writing at the Insomnia Cafe," found at http://www.devondelapp.com/weblog/?entry=254004.

The Short Story - Why and Where Ideas Come From...

2009-04-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

There are many books that have left a permanent mark on me, but I want to write about two of them specifically: both have lasting power and I have been struggling with the thematic lines of their intersection. That struggle has resulted in a short story that I am tentatively calling, "The Stone Fields" or alternately, "The Lumen."

Can one borrow a title? I am not sure, and I have asked everyone I know, my father, my mother, my friends, co-workers, writing partner, critique group members, writing teacher; the answer seems to be yes. But still I have lingering doubt.

The Stone Fields is actually a published book, a non-fiction work, by Courtney Angela Brkic, a first generation Croatian American like me. There the similarity ends: she went—at the tender of age of 23—to Bosnia in 1996 to work as a forensic archeologist for the United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague and Physicians for Human Rights. She dug in dirt, arranged personal effect for photographing from the graves of people massacred during the war. The most telling thing for me in her book was the realization of fear. She felt threatened because she was a Croat, and at one point she wondered if the workers who were helping the team were the same men who may have assisted in the massacre in the first place.

If you would like a summary of the war and The Stone Fields read the 2004 Washington Post article by Jonathan Yardley at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44089-2004Aug5.html.

Another resource is an interview with Ms. Brkic found at http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum159.php, a regularly published online literary magazine. (Main page is at http://www.identitytheory.com/ )

I love my Croatian heritage, but I hate it too. I have not made peace with my piece-meal language skills. I lived there, in Split, a big city along the Adriatic Coast, before the war. That is now at least twenty five years ago. Some of my earlier memories from when I was six and thirteen are golden: they have that quality of a fable. The time that my cousin threw our metal silverware and dishes into the sea to wash them, we went snorkeling to retrieve things for our next meal; the dust of the late afternoon and the sound of pigeons; the pale pink of dawn….

Now, when I speak Hrvatski, I sound like some deluded six-year old who has never really learned any sense of grammar. My father winces while I talk, so I don’t speak to him, except in English. And yet…I struggle with my history daily, the fact that I was born here, in America. I long to understand, to know…. but I suspect that I don’t want to know, not really. What. Happened. There. I am not as brave as Ms. Brkic.

Her book, a lyrical and harsh account of the reality of family history and genocide, gave me the idea of an apocalyptic graveyard, the stone fields that represent mass death, where a young girl, only thirteen years old goes to hunt souls, in the far and distance future.

This leads me to the second book, Beyond the Sky and the Earth, by Jamie Zeppa. This is a book that is on my “bible shelf,” a must read at least once every year. It is about coming to understand Bhutan, a small Buddhist country, where Ms. Zeppa went in 1988 to teach English. It is a story of her clash and acceptance of the culture, and all the empty space between; finally it is a story of two people, Jamie and Tshewang, who manage to bridge that gap—for a time at least.

One line, a simple sentence, still echoes in my brain, “He listens and then from inside his gho, he pulls out small presents: a feather, a picture of white Tara, a mango, definitions copied neatly onto pieces of paper: aleatory—depending on random choice, a lumen is a unit of flux of light; infrangible—unbreakable.” (Page 255)

Many people keep a list of words to learn a language. But I love this particular list. And the definition of a lumen, a flux of light, is what rivets me. A soul, I think, the answer to death, the thing that lives on; no matter the horror, or trauma or massacre.

Can one excavate souls, I wonder?

In the summer of 2008, after reading both The Stone Fields for the first time and re-reading Beyond the Sky and the Earth, I write a short story to find out.

And then the re-writing begins. It’s been almost a year now, and I'm told by friends near and dear, critique group members, or even fellow classmates, that I have "started a novel."

This distresses me; I don’t want another novel. I have five of them on my shelf already, waiting patiently for me at nine p.m. every night, and most nights I ignore them.

But now after a critique group meeting today, I realize what I have started cannot be undone. I must continue my work on the “short story” (regardless of its title). I need to know its end.

Snow Geese in Spring

2009-04-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1509319618?bctid=18428658001

This is what happens when you wake up at 4:30 in the morning, after only about 5 hours of sleep:

You actually do something that sort of resembles YOGA, although calling it that seems like shouting somehow, and shouting is not an option seeing as all the world is asleep, dreaming, and as you have a very nice downstairs neighbor.
You take a long shower.
Shave your legs (if you're a girl or a guy who likes smooth legs, I guess.)
You hit the switch of the coffee machine because you prepped it last night.
Then you eat leftover Sunday breakfast, omelette, bacon, and some toast.
Working your way methodically through 3 cups of coffee, and facing the blue glow of the computer screen, you start checking out video from the Seattle Times.

This leads you to Snow Geese. Massive bird migration and honking sound of hundreds. What combination is that racket: an A, a G, a C? Add a T and you get nucleobases, the stuff of DNA and RNA.

From my favorite Wikipedia: "Nucleobases (or nucleotide bases) are the parts of DNA and RNA that may be involved in pairing (see also base pairs). The main ones are cytosine, guanine, adenine (DNA and RNA), thymine (DNA) and uracil (RNA), abbreviated as C, G, A, T, and U, respectively. They are usually simply called bases in genetics. Because A, G, C, and T appear in the DNA, these molecules are called DNA-bases; A, G, C, and U are called RNA-bases."

Is it just genetics, a series of base pairs, a series of notes in all cells, that prompts those birds to take flight en mass? They are like schools of fishes in the air, a whirling dervish of wings, and a mess noise and bird poop (apparently green, don't you know.)

It's spring, perhaps why I'm awake way too early, but inexplicably thinking of winter, ice, firey nights, and Siberian Snow Geese.

American Idol - Dumb TV or a Real Dream?

2009-03-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

The winner has got to be Danny, Adam, Lil, or Allison. Allison is only 16 but when she gets on the stage, I heave a sigh of relief because I know that she can belt it out and sounds like she knows what she's doing. This is second time only in my life that I have followed the most popular show in the world--is that really true or a just marketing ploy?--for an entire season.

The show is all glitz and hype and about talent coming true. If making your dream real were so easy as this....Well, 'easy' is not the word that these contestants would use, I suspect. Must be kind grueling to wait and watch, sing a song, wait, be told you are going home or even staying. Practice, sing, sing, practice, TV, makeup, glam squad, more practice, nerves, in your face brights lights. (God, my idea of a nightmare!)

But this is precisely why the show holds me fascinated in the palm of its super-slick and glossy hand. Me and a good number of people in the rest of the country.

It's the process and the presence of rules. I like rules, don't you know. There's a clear and defined goal. Performances are judged, and then package of the person is presented to John and Jane Doe of USA Public, and John and Jane Doe vote. By the millions.

How democratic.

I have not ever voted for an idol contestant, not even the season when Carrie Underwood won, but that was because I had an ancient cell phone. The cell phone was a Nokia with an antenna and built like a brick but I couldn't text anything, and now, well, I have not yet decided why I'm not voting now. Is my not voting a-lack-of-willingness-to-admit-that-I-am-watching-this-show? Or is my not voting because the whole business is silly, and my 'participation' simply a quick, painless, and harmless way of forgetting about troubles of the day?

And then my question becomes: how is someone's dream, their cherished hope, silly?

No dream is silly to the Dreamer.

My dream was not a graduate degree. Disappointed with the rejection, but no crushed. This is not as odd as it sounds, especially for those of you who know me.

What I really want, more than anything, is to publish that young adult science fiction fantasy trilogy that I have been working on...oh, lo, these almost 10 years. Average rough draft manuscript length is about 120,000 words. Book I is under revision. Book II is a MONSTER. With drooly gaping teeth and horrible grammar like a mouthful of cavities. No one has ever read any snippet of Book II, not even my mother who loves me a lot. Book III is 50 pages away from done. (It feels like I should be almost reaching the ocean: I can smell and feel the ocean, aka the ending, but it's not yet in view and I have no idea what it will actually be like.)

This is my dream. Is it silly? Not at all. It's my favorite bedtime story of all time, better than Gerald Durrell's book on his childhood in Corfu, Greece. Far more compelling, although perhaps less eloquent than Madeleine L'Engle's works, and even more tried and true than Anne McCaffery's Dragonsinger series. The "When I get published" bedtime story is so good that it keeps me up at night, past midnight, when I know I'll suffer the next day. I have been telling myself this story since I was about 13 years old.

I'm not longer 13 and my dream is much closer to becoming reality than it used to be. I have revisions of Zomas well underway. Then there are the 3 very rough manuscripts absolutely unrelated to Zomas, all of which have the germ of possibility in them--like pluripotent cell line, they have the charming magic of still being unformulated and therefore capable of turning into anything. Two are about Croatians, that's my background and so runs deep, and one, well that one is a story that I need permission from a very old friend of mine to even talk about.

Then there's the new critique group that my writer friend and eerily-like-minded pal Mandy and I started. We hope it will be good. There's the Society of Children's Books Writer's and Illustrators (SCBWI). Try saying that 10 times fast. I've been a member for 3 years. The point of all these paragraphs is to illustrate my way around the complexity of a dream, and show the work work work that goes in to making it true.

I would bet money that my idol favorites have similiar tales of years of practice and work. Late night daydreams that kept them up, like hitting repeat of the sound track, or hell, just playing something over and over and over.

Dreams are never silly because of the work involved. And so I watch American Idol, and wonder: what is the real story of these singers? These immensely brave souls who are willing to get out there in front of John and Jane Doe of USA Public, only to be rejected by all the voters or non-voters like me, all of us Dreamers who tune on Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever they sing their last song? What kind of bedtime stories do they tell themselves, or what songs do they sing in the dark, when no one is listening?

I end with the last paragraph of one of my favorite poems:

The real writer is one

who really writes. Talent

is an invention like phlogiston

after the fact of fire.

Work is its own cure. You have to

like it better than being loved.

Post Script
If you recognize the author (not me, but I didn't write down who wrote this alas), please let me know. Thanks.