Looking Ahead

I am not much of a New Year's Resolution maker, because I am not much of a New Year's Resolution keeper. What I will do, as I enter 2009, is to remind myself of the important things to a writer.

Writers write.
Writers read.
Writers pay attention, listen,wonder, imagine.
Writers love, hurt, savor, live.

Writers face procrastination, laziness, discouragement, despair, doubt, confusion
with self-discipline, -direction, -motivation, -control, -encouragement
and forgiveness and grace.

Writers persevere.
Writers write.

Year in Review

Look Back To Move Forward!

According to the email in my inbox with the above heading, celebrating the past year is just as important as setting goals for the new year. The tone of the email is a bit too rah-rah for me, but the idea may be a good one.

Today, I'll recap the positive things that have happened in my writing life in 2008, and tomorrow, I'll return to share some thoughts for the new year.

These are some of the things I've done:

• started this blog with some vague notion about needing to have a web presence. It turned out to be a tool in forcing me to write frequently. As a bonus, I also met some wonderful fellow writers and readers.
• entered a couple of contests and placed 2nd in both.
• attended my first writers' conferences and a writing retreat.
• met fellow writers
  
• sent off queries and got requests for my manuscript (which have resulted, so far, only in rejections, but personalized ones.)
• started writing a new YA and outlining another
• revised my Middle Grade novel a few more times per suggestions of agents and editors who'd read earlier manuscripts.
• found online critique groups in which members write for children.
• Read, read, and read.
  
• wrote, re-wrote and re-wrote.

More lists!

So the manic gift-purchasing season is almost over, but lest you think lists are a thing of the past, the year-end is upon us, and we all know the end of a year is a time when list-making takes on epic proportions.

So for those who hunger for more suggestions on what juvenile books to read, here are two highly-respected book people who weigh in on the subjects:

Cynthia Letich Smith and her Cynsational Books of 2008 and Editorial Anonymous with her Enormous Can of Worms. This second list comes with a bonus of readers' comments, always entertaining.


(Can of worms by "No Matter" Project.)

Whose favorites?

Someone introduced me to Chris Crutcher recently. Only a few pages into the book, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, I already like it, a lot.

We got to talking about whether this is one of those books that adults like but maybe teens don't. That, of course, led me back to the debate on the Newberry selections. Not exactly the same debate, but at the foundation of it is the question of whether the intended audience--as opposed to adults, however well-intentioned they are, who are in the business of juvenile literature--like a book and would read it.

Do you have books that fit into this category, especially if you're a teen? (So, Chanelle?)

Christmas celebration

Christmas holds a special place in my heart. It's a time of joy and celebration, of connecting with people who matter, of building traditions and memories, and of reflection. Most of all, It is a time of hope.

For this Christmas, I'd like to share a few poems of hope.



First, a short poem by Raymond A. Foss:

A Kernel of Hope

Lives
Deep inside
Protected
Against the pain
The struggle

Grows
When tended
Memories ignite
Nurture
Reward

Fades
When tested
Hurt
Discarded
For graven choices

Echoes
In the dark
Against the shadows
In my heart

(You can read more about Raymond A. Foss.)

And two by Emily Dickinson

Had I Presumed to Hope

Had I presumed to hope --
The loss had been to Me
A Value -- for the Greatness' Sake --
As Giants -- gone away --

Had I presumed to gain
A Favor so remote --
The failure but confirm the Grace
In further Infinite --

'Tis failure -- not of Hope --
But Confident Despair --
Advancing on Celestial Lists --
With faint -- Terrestial power --

'Tis Honor -- though I die --
For That no Man obtain
Till He be justified by Death --
This -- is the Second Gain --

Hope is the thing with Feathers


Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

[Christmas Star (for wise men and others) by Nick Owen, The Christmas Robin by law_keven. Both found on Creative Commons.]

Bailout for Writers

I'm (obviously) not the only one who calls for a bailout of the publishing industry and writers. Two other writers, Paul Greenberg in the New York Times and Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker both presented their bailout plans.

Andy Borowitz presents a compelling case of how far reaching the consequences of him not given a handout: the whole economy can collapse! All these affected families!

Paul sees that:

the workspace for writers seems to get more crowded by the day as refugees from other professions take cover behind what they hope will be the respectability of the writing life.

From his perch on the writing stool, he contemplates what Graham Greene asked:

“Are you prepared for the years of effort, ‘the long defeat of doing nothing well’? As the years pass writing will not become any easier, the daily effort will grow harder to endure, those ‘powers of observation’ will become enfeebled."

Save the writers!

How fun is that?

What do 10 men singing "12 days of Christmas" a capella and teams of pastry chefs creating outlandish cakes in six hours have in common?

They are both delightful and awe-inspiring to watch. We marvel at the mastery and the apparent ease these artists have as they execute something most of us know we may never be able to do. We also experience an underlying nervousness: at these high level of difficulties, so many things can go wrong. We hope the singers stay in tune with one another and nobody will suddenly have a coughing fit. We sit at the edge of the seat as we watch each team lift their 150 lb cake from the working surface to the judging table, hoping the precarious and gravity-defying creation won't topple.

There is no doubt in anybody's mind that these are talented folks. But even the most talented person will not get anywhere without motivation, desire, proper training, practice, tenacity and perseverance. Today, I pay tribute to these qualities and remind myself that talent is not something I have any say about. Even passion and desire are not of my doing. Motivation, training, practice, persevere: these will have to be my focus if I want to achieve any level of excellence.

What can go wrong? I have the recipe.

Two foodie friends gave me a cookbook when they saw us at Thanksgiving, a cookbook from a bakery in Paris. They'd been there recently and knew I loved pastry.

Since this is Christmas time and all, the recipe for chestnut and chocolate tart leaped off the page and pleaded to be made. The directions didn't look too bad, the ingredient list not that long, and the taste of chestnut and dark chocolate in a buttery pastry case taunted me from the moment I saw the recipe.

The recipe calls for a standard pie pan or "some smaller tart pans" with no mention of the dimensions of these smaller pans. That alone should have alerted me to the possibility that this cookbook falls in the "cook till done' category, cookbooks that trust the cook to have enough experience and to have acquired helpful instincts so that details are not necessary.

Yet, I continued, trying to call up as much of my baking experiences as I could to decipher some of the instructions. I am more a cook than a baker; my instincts for cooking have been nurtured since I was nine while baking is something I came to much later. Till today, I am still not terribly confident if the dough I'm kneading is of the right consistency, or whether I have over/under worked it.




I set aside a couple of hours for the recipe, but the combination of my not-enough baking experiences and the fact that this is a new recipe made sure I took close to four. The tarts turned out well, I think, although the chocolate cream is too thin and I had to substitute almond paste for chestnut paste because I couldn't find chestnut paste anywhere in town.

How this applies to writing is easy to see. Just because we have a "recipe"--include the ingredients of strong characters, real conflicts and tangible setting, mix and heat using concrete nouns and active verbs--that has worked for other people hundreds of times doesn't mean I can make it work for me, at least not right away. And even when the results are decent, they're still far from excellent. My tarts tasted fine, but they look ed amateurish. Anyone can tell, at one glance, that they had been make by someone who was new to this.

I have to make many more tarts (like this gentleman here) before my tarts will even approach excellence.










I'm back to my keyboard to knead.

(Rose Bakery by roboppy, kneading brioche dough by yarnivore, Michael, Brick Street Bakery by fortinbras from Creative Commons.)