Let Me Count the Nerdy Ways

How do authors chill out after they make their revision deadline? Let me count the nerdy ways:

1)  We find a too-good-to-be true deal on an all-in-one printer, order it in haste, and then worry obsessively when it's delivered while we're gone to the North Carolina mountains for Thanksgiving and it (temporarily) disappears from our front doorstep. We hug our neighbors when we find that they have rescued the box from the rain and have our purchase safely stored for our return. We superstitiously "christen" it by printing out a poem as the first "print job," and then play with the features on our dream machine (it can print graph paper! it can wirelessly connect with my laptop! it can download pictures from a Bluetooth camera--if I had one!) and wish we writers also came with a "Remove Red Eye" button for those late writing nights.

2) We write villanelles with our Poetry Sisters, agreeing that we must use the words "friends" and "thanksgiving." We don't have to use iambic pentameter, but we do. We don't have to fiddle with it lovingly, but we do. We know that other people would think this homework, but we consider it fun, right up there with paging through food catalogs that sell gourmet bacon and licorice from Australia.  We  count the days until this Poetry Friday when all seven Poetry Sister villanelles will be revealed at once...

3) We read lists. We love ones with titles like "Over 200 movies about the writing life" (compiled by author Susan Taylor Brown.)  And "Bookish Holiday Gifts: A Selection of Finds From Etsy."

4) Instead of cleaning our desks, we blog about silly things (in a list format, of course.) Then we go clean our desks. Really. We do.

Why I'm Grateful to Be Small Potatoes

Today, I had time to answer a letter from a young reader of Operation Yes. I choose a fun notecard with artwork by Brian Selznick (purchased as part of a set at the last SCBWI conference.) I hand wrote my thoughts inside, and added an Operation Yes postcard signed with a silver pen (which shows up on the shiny black surface.)

Then, I hand addressed the envelope, selected a Homer Simpson stamp and walked the letter to my mailbox. Joy!!!  I'm grateful, so grateful, to be small potatoes and have the time to do this.

I'll be on break for Thanksgiving week, but if you're feeling grateful because you're a small potato too,  please leave your reasons in the comment section. I'll have time to read each and every one. Yay!

Mary Oliver: In Blackwater Woods

My niece, Emily, would have been thirteen years old yesterday. Her family hosted a purple balloon release at her gravesite.  I couldn't be there, but this poem by Mary Oliver is the balloon I'm releasing today.


Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver


Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

the rest is here

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Julie Larios at The Drift Record

National Press Club Book Fair and Authors Night

A young reader

Signing with fellow authors Katherine Marsh (The Night Tourist)

and Judy Schachner (Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice)

Author Laura Krauss Melmed in the foreground, the always busy Judy Schachner beside her, me, and author Tami Lewis Brown (on the other side of the table, in red)

Skippyjon Jones!

Yes, Judy signed each book this elaborately...plus, she was gracious and funny. Also, she kept sending her long line of customers my way, telling them that OPERATION YES was great. (Thanks, Judy! Thanks, Skippyjon!)

Dueling stacks of Laura Melmed's book, My Love Will Always Be With You

and Judy Schachner's book Skippyjon Jones, Lost in Spice

YA authors Katherine Marsh (The Night Tourist)

and Maggie Steifvater (Shiver)

Oh, so nice, both of them. We practiced our "elevator pitches" on each other. Maggie signed a copy of Shiver to me with the inscription "Operation Wolf," which made me laugh. Plus, I learned that Katherine has written for Rolling Stone Magazine. (Go, Kate!)

Gwen Ifill, being interviewed

Massive crowds

What? You want more? I have revisions to finish!

Okay, one funny story: I saw someone I recognized, and my brain instantly categorized her face as: friend, good friend, she must be 'cause you see her a lot, you must know her, you .... oh. Wait. You only know her from TV. That's Leslie Sanchez, political analyst on CNN.

Good thing I didn't follow my first impulse, which was to beam at her and say hey! what are you doing here?

You can't trust a character who doesn't...

After the SCBWI Mid-Atlantic Conference this past Saturday, a group of us went to the Salvadorian restaurant, La Union, for dinner where we devoured delicious, inexpensive, and homestyle food and talked writing, revision, and life. At one point, I commented that during our Twitter chat,  I'd asked my editor, Cheryl Klein, if she would ever acquire a manuscript that didn't mention food. Hmmmm. We paused in our eating and talking. We all considered the question, and more or less came up with the same answer Cheryl gave:

 A picture book, yes; a novel, no. You can't trust a character who doesn't think about eating at least once.

Then we were off and running, talking about our favorite meals in children's literature:

 The cozy meal Mrs. Beaver offers the cold and lost Pevensie children in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: "There was a jug of creamy milk for the children (Mr. Beaver stuck to beer) and a great big lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table from which everyone took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes and all the children thought - and I agree with them - that there's nothing to beat good freshwater fish if you eat it when it has been alive half an hour ago and has come out of the pan half a minute ago."

The mysterious feast that appears in the attic in A Little Princess: "rich, hot, savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them"

The tasty letters of the alphabet in The Phantom Tollbooth: "crisp, crunchy C" "the I, which was icy and refreshing"

Practically ALL of Harry Potter...

Cornbread and molasses (except if Pa caught a rabbit) in the Little House series

So, what's your favorite meal in children's literature?

And how would you complete this sentence:  You can't trust a character who doesn't....