Reading and Writing--the Staples of Life

My latest reading list has been made up exclusively of Rick Riordan's Olympians series. I have read 1 through 5 straight through, though I'm not done with #5 yet. I believe The Last Olympian is the conclusion of the series, though I read Riordan is working on a new Camp Halfblood series. These books have been great fun to read. I have really, really enjoyed them, and have added Riordan to my Twitter list. My son is a huge fan of these books too, so if Riodan is ever at a book signing within a reasonable driving distance, we'd love to hop in the car and go meet him.

On the writing side, I am waiting for the last of the critiques for The Doorway short story from my online group. Next week I hope to edit the story and get it ready to send out!

I have been staying busy writing online articles to supplement my regular and paltry writing income. These are no masterpieces, and I don't receive writing credits, but they do pay...and that's pretty important too!

Yesterday I submitted my latest article for the Westside Courier. This one was on teenager Kortney Fuller, who has had a pacemaker since she was six months old! She and her family were very nice to interview.

I have also been getting ready for this weekend's Evansville SCBWI event with Margaret McMullan. I anticipate that Margaret will be a great speaker. Kristi Valiant, Elsa Marston, and Marlis day will also be there to sign and sell their own books!

Pancit and Popcorn!!

Kristi Valiant had a wonderful turnout on Saturday, July 25th during her book signing for Cora Cooks Pancit, the beautiful picture book she illustrated for Shen's Books. The crowd at Barnes and Noble in Evansville, Indiana got to sample homemade pancit, which Kristi's husband made using the recipe from the book. It was an exciting first signing; no doubt Kristi will have many more!

As for my own publishing update, I received slightly less exciting but still fun news! After entering a poetry contest a few weeks ago at the Stories for Children Magazine blog, I received an email Friday from a friend who saw the results. I won 3rd place and some free popcorn!

Please visit http://familiesmatter2us.blogspot.com/2009/07/its-finally-here-popcorn-poetry-contest.html to read the poem. The editors also had some very kind editorial words. "As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of humankind on the moon, your idea of aliens coming to earth and smelling popcorn and wanting it so badly, combined with your awesome title, made your poem very funny and a kid-pleaser, Christi. WOHOOOOO FOR YOU, CHRISTI!"

Everyone Should Be Reading Caroline B. Cooney

As of two weeks ago, I had never read a book by Caroline B. Cooney, which is amazing considering she has 45 or more! Since she is a featured speaker at the SCBWI Midsouth Fall Conference, I thought I should read a couple so that I could speak intelligently about them and her writing.

Wow! It's hard to say more than that, but I'm sure I'll manage.

I started with Enter Three Witches, based on MacBeth. As I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan, I was skeptical, but the title drew me in. It was great! Really, super interesting. I almost want to read Macbeth. Almost.

Okay, so one book down, and it was really good, so no problem reading more. Next, I chose A Friend at Midnight. It's hard to say why because I don't read the back of books; sometimes they give things away! Anyway, it turned out to be a GREAT pick. This book is stunning! There were so, so many instances where I thought, oh, I wish I'd written that; I wish I could write like this; I wish my characters were so full and wonderful. I can not do the writing justice by my descriptions, but this is a must-read for YA authors--or anyone. The book is poignant, funny, heart-breaking, and hopeful. I sobbed through at least the last ten pages, but it was a good kind of crying, not the horrible crying of a kidnapped, murdered child or a canine best friend getting killed after saving the main character from a dire fate. No, this was the kind of crying I love to do when reading a wonderful book. You know the kind--tears flowing with each new sentence from every character. Thank goodness I was at home instead of my usual Starbucks because I wouldn't have been able to prevent those tears. I would have been bawling like a baby, and I'm sure the baristas and my fellow customers would have felt compelled to check on me. And that would have only irritated me--because it would have interrupted those crucial ending pages and the flow of my emotions!

After that, I'm happily onto my next Cooney book, Goddess of Yesterday, and I anticipate many, many more before the conference. I went from thinking I should read of couple to becoming a die-hard fan. It will be such a pleasure to meet Ms. Cooney and such a thrill to have her sign books for me. Until then, I have lots of happy reading ahead!

When Procrastination Sets In...

My son is at camp for the whole week. It’s 2:00 on Monday afternoon. I’ve been looking forward to all the writing that would occur this week. I mean, I’ll be by myself during the day. Hours and hours to do nothing but write. I have a short story that is only a couple of thousand words from complete. I have critique group stuff to critique. I have manuscripts to get ready to send in to for the SCBWI Mid-South Fall Conference. I need to send out emails for the August SCBWI Evansville event with Margaret McMullen.
Instead, I am checking out Twitter and Facebook and the camp website. (They post new pics every day, and my son might be in one of them!) I did write a new poem to post on Twitter—a Fib about not getting writing done.

Wait
Stall
Put off
They call it
Procrastination.
Like this Fib; instead of writing.

Does that count as “writing?” Hmmm…technically, yes.
Now I’m even updating my blog! Wow, I’m really grasping at straws to put off the writing, huh?
The question is, why? I love to write. The last several weeks, I have been thinking, I’ll miss my son, but I can’t wait to work on my story. I wonder how many thousand words I’ll get written? Well, one day is almost down and the grand total is 14—from the Fib!
Maybe it’s because the sun is shining right outside the library window. Or maybe I expected to get so much done, that I am afraid I won’t meet my expectations. Maybe it’s because I have a new (used) car, and it’s so much fun to drive that I really just want to keep zooming around town running errands (something I normally hate to do).
Well, in the immortal words of every procrastinator…maybe tomorrow…
In the meantime, I would love to hear from other writers out there. What causes you to put off writing—the very thing you supposedly love to do? More importantly, what do you do about it? Post your best tips and stories to help us all get to work!
Thanks…and get busy!

Writers' Retreat Weekend!

I returned home yesterday from Stanford, Kentucky, where my online Mid-South SCBWI critique group met for a weekend of writing. We had not seen each other since last year's Mid-South Conference in September, which is where most of us met for the first time!

Beth arranged for us to stay in the Bishop House, a lovely 3-story home, so there was plenty of room for the five attendees to get away for some quiet writing time. We were often gathered around the dining room table, all with our laptops whirring! I also did a fair bit of writing on the front porch, where I am pictured at the left with Grace. For myself, I started a story from scratch this weekend and wrote 6,500 words. That felt pretty productive. It is a short story that I hope to continue on into a book, and I'm very excited about it. We also had nightly critique sessions where we read each other's work out loud then discussed. What a talented group.

Thanks to Beth, we spent a fair amount of time eating delicious food and walking around the small town of Stanford. I look forward to seeing all (I hope) of the Original Seven at this year's Mid-South Conference.

Articles for the Westside and BorderLines

Whew! Just finished my latest article for the Westside this afternoon, and I feel drained. Maybe it's because I put it off too long and had to suddenly get it all finished in the last two days. But finish it I did, another deadline successfully met. This article, which is a cover story scheduled for June 12th, was an article I suggested. It is about Bob of Bob's Gym, an Evansville business that has turned into an Evansville icon. Since I am at the west side location pretty faithfully, it was really cool to learn how Bob and his parents started the business 18 years ago in a much smaller west side building. Bob and his dad were a lot of fun to talk to, and everyone was very helpful. Since I am at the gym almost every day, I sure hope Bob and everyone there likes it!

The article was finished and submitted early this afternoon, but then the pictures had to be sent, always a lengthy process. But assuming I get no questions from my editor, I'm all done for now!

I have also posted a link to my latest non-Westside article. This one is in BorderLines, the newsletter for Mid-South SCBWI. I was pleased with it and hope everyone will take a look. Maybe now that article-writing is done (for now), I can do a little creative writing over the next couple of weeks...

The Story That Has to be Told

I've been reading Alan Gratz's Twitter comments about how many chapters/words he's gotten done on recent days, and it made me yearn for those days! I miss that. It was so exciting when I was working on my novel, adding word count. What a sense of accomplishment when I'd had a good day or a good week. There's nothing more tangible than that word count building and that feeling of building a story towards a culmination.

Now, though I need to do a lot on that same story, I yearn for that feeling of working towards something like word count. I've had several different story ideas, but I can't decided which one to work on, or even if I want to work on one of them. When I had the Everett on Everest idea, there was no doubt. I knew that would be a story that I would follow through till the end. I long for another of those ideas. I have never felt such accomplishment as when I was working on that book. That makes me think it will be someday be a big success. I have never worked so hard on something that I have written. There's a lot of work still do, and I have to get into that 'editing' mode, but I think it will be a really good book someday. Meanwhile, I'll be on the lookout for another one of those stories, one of those you just can't say no to, one of those that just has to be told.