Author of award-winning, adventurous realistic and historical fiction

Little Free Libraries!

Aug 8, 2011 | , , , ,

I’m in love with Little Free Libraries–a grassroots effort to promote literacy and community. I’m also proud that it’s from my home state (and that my hometown is the one place where you can pop in a shop and buy a prefab Little Free Library).

Little Free Library #1 (Source)

The Little Free Library mission:

To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide.
To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations.
To build more than 2,510 libraries around the world–more than Andrew Carnegie!

Little Free Library next to my
 favorite Madison coffeeshop! (Source)

For more info, or to become a Little Free Librarian, check our their website: Little Free Library

Bossypants (and its therapeutic effects)

Jul 11, 2011 | , , , ,

You might know that I am a fearful flier; in fact, you probably know it because one of the ways I “deal” with my fear is by blabbing to everyone I come into contact with about how freaked out I get about planes. Before a flight, I might talk about my phobia to: my super, my cubemates, my parents, my grandma, my fiance, the checkout lady at Duane Reade, all cab drivers I come into contact with, strangers on the Interwebs, the barista, strangers on the Air Train, my seatmate, etc. Most people are nice and try to reassure me by saying one of these three things:
–I fly all the time! And nothing has ever happened to me. (There is a first time for everything, buddy.)
–Air travel is the safest mode of transportation. (I bet they said that about the Hindenburg. And the Titanic.)
–You have a better chance of getting killed in a car accident on the way to/from the airport than on the plane. (This one makes no sense to me. I mean, we just established that I am a worrier. Are you trying to give me more fears? In NYC, people often like to tell me that I have better odds of getting smushed to death by a falling window-unit air conditioner. Well, congratulations: I’m now afraid of air conditioners, too.)

Despite all that reassurance, I still white-knuckle my way through a hell of a lot of flights. No what matter shiny object you put in front of my face, I can’t stop thinking OMG I AM WAY UP IN THE AIR IN A METAL TUBE WHAT’S THAT NOISE I HOPE NOBODY LOOKS AT MY GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY AFTER I DIE.

Correction, there is one shiny object that will actually distract me and make me relax. It is this:

Yes, I read Bossypants on my flight and it was so awesome that I actually enjoyed myself. Instead of crying annoyingly next to my businessman seatmate, I was laughing annoyingly. Hysterically, the whole time. I even bonded with the flight attendant about it. We giggled together.
Tina Fey is my hero. She nailed every single word in Bossypants, the most consistently hilarious book of essays I’ve read (other than a Sedaris book). There’s even an essay that deals with a fear of flying (not hers), which I read at 36,000 feet. It was meta.
Writing this post, I kept rereading parts of the book and wanting to transcribe bits to show you how amazing and super-funny it is. But then I realized that I would end up posting the entire freaking thing, because it’s all so good, and that would probably violate copyright law. So I will say: judge this book by its cover. Which is awesome. Like the contents.

Pinterest for Writers

Jun 6, 2011 | , , , , ,

I stumbled into joining Pinterest lately–my friend invited me and I signed up, but had no idea what I was making an account for. Then other friends started “following” me on Pinterest and I still didn’t have a clue what it was, but figured it was time to figure it out. So, being a lazy person in the 21st century, I posted a status on Facebook: Hey guys, what is this Pinterest thing and why should I be using it?
Turns out Pinterest is a collection of virtual pin boards, social-networked. The official explanation:

What is Pinterest?
Think of Pinterest as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can create collections of things you love and “follow” collections created by people with great taste.
People use Pinterest to collect and share all sorts of things — wedding inspiration, favorite T-shirts, DJ equipment. You name it, people are pinning it.
We know you have great taste in something. Our mission is to make Pinterest the best place for you to share your taste with the world.
It feels kind of like fantasy football but for stuff. Sure, it’s inspiring, but looking at other people’s boards starts to make me feel a little tight-chested, like I am never going to have enough disposable income/time to make my home/wardrobe/travel plans/food look even 1/8 as good as the stuff on Pinterest. I turn away from the screen and see my haphazard, design-aesthetic-lacking furniture and the jar of Old El Paso in my fridge and stretched-out cardigans from Old Navy and feel like a wee bit of a failure at life.
But–I’ve found one awesome way to use Pinterest for my writing. I’ve always tried to make character collages to get a sense of the gestalt of my characters. Handmade, IRL collages are not the easiest to put together; you need a lot of magazines, glue sticks, and time. It’s also easier said than done to find the right images for your characters/settings/whatever you’re making the collage for. Not so with a virtual pin board. I can create a new board for a character or scene, then run all over the Internet snagging related images. Maybe I find a house that looks like the spooky one a character is renting. Then maybe I find an image of the food she’s cooking, the dress she’s wearing, the musician whose album she’s playing when the ghost first appears. When I sit down to write the scene later, all my inspiration is right there on Pinterest if I need it.
I’m not sure yet how much I’ll use Pinterest as a writing tool–for one thing, pin boards are public and I like to write with the door closed. It’s a cool option to have, though.

Chunk It.

Mar 3, 2011 | , , , , ,

I adopted a nifty, new (to me) process while revising my WIP: chunking.

chunking • \chung’ king\ v. 1 the processing of splitting an overwhelming MS into “chunks,” or parts, in order to revise the whole by parts.

I didn’t set out to chunk my MS on purpose, but it was already split into distinct parts because it has two POVs. I wrote the two POVs separately, mainly because I don’t like switching back and forth while writing and also I wanted each narrative to stand on its own. I am about to finally stitch the two together, once I go through POV #1 one more time with my little red pencil. 
Because the story alternates between those two POVs, each narrative already has distinct breaks. This meant that when I started revising I had 2 narratives, one with 4 parts and one with 5. 
(All these numbers are confusing me already. TOO MUCH MATH FOR WRITING! And I even like math.)
Anyway, I’ve been revising each part on its own, in preparation for revising the story as a whole. And you know what? Chunking was super-helpful! Focusing on sections of the story on a micro-level was so manageable. I had none of those, OMG, what am I going to do with the end of this book?!? moments because I was just focusing on the chunk at hand.
Of course, chunking can only be part of the revision process, otherwise the larger story arc will likely not work. That’s what I’m about to start working on, smoothing over the story on the macro level [bites nails]. Knowing that my chunks are pretty solid [that phrase . . . makes me think of barf. Sorry.] makes me feel refreshingly confident going in, though.

Archives