Thursday, November 29, 2007

Happy Holidays

Lately all I've been doing is revising. Since last January, I really haven't written anything new - except that my revisions are getting more and more complete. By this I mean, I fiind that I'm less devoted to my earlier versions than I used to be and I'm more willing to start over.

This is the hardest part of writing. Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck and getting nowhere. It was so energizing to have Alyssa tell me last June that my novel was ready to go out. Now we are working on the next novel and it's revision, revision.

Having ideas is such fun, isn't it? Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have the greatest ideas. I keep them all - but they are waiting, stacked up like planes over O'Hare. I never have enough time to follow up, not enough time to do everything I want. Including this blog!

So what have you read lately? I just finished a very sweet short collection called "Toys Go Out". Small and quiet, I wouldn't have found the book except that Alyssa recommended it for its internal dialogue. She was right. I read it in about 2 hours, and if you haven't, go find it.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Long time, no blog!

If you're reading this, you probably have fast internet, which I do not. Which explains, at least in part, why this blog has been dead quiet for far too long. In the past months since I last wrote anything here I've quit my teaching job and begun to write full time. This change has been dramatic - although I thought I would have all sorts of time on my hands, it's remarkable how fast time goes and how work expands to fill the available space. I'm calling this the gas law of the writer's life.

My agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin, has been remarkable. I feel like the luckiest person to have her in my writing life. In June she decided that the revisions I'd completed on Faithful had made it ready for submission, and as of this writing, we're waiting for word as to whether the book has sold (no fair peeking!) Now I'm working on a middle grade book for boys, which is proving to be challenging and rewarding and emotional (since I have a teenage son). I keep remembering things from my own tween years, which were painful at best.

If you're a teen girl who feels like you have no friends, and are the most awkward person on the planet, you know what my teen years were like. I buried myself in school work because I had nothing else. Teachers liked me, but that was about it. Glasses, braces, the whole bit. Just remember: you will grow out of this terrible time in your life! You will!

Ok, more later, promise.