Tag: writing

Writer’s Craft Alphabet

If you’re anything like me, by the time you go to check in on your friend’s blogs you are so late that half of them are on the “Previous 20” page and you miss some news. Well for once, I’m checking early in the day and I got to see

[info]carriejones

 posting about her writing for Through the Tollbooth.

[info]thru_the_booth

  She has a hysterical alphabet that all writers should be familiar with in order to succeed in their craft. (Bwaa, not really but it will make you giggle.) Don’t miss it!

In other news, Sunday was very productive. I emptied five boxes in my office and there is a neat little space for a desk in there. I’ll be up and running in no time. I also made serious progress in the garage. Enough that I could sweep the floor! The birds have seed in their feeders now and the porch has basil, lavender, and geraniums. It’s coming along.

Work

You know what is great? When you find what you love to do. I love to write and manage and plan. I love calendars and events. You know what else is great? When someone pays you to do what you love. I recently got a job as a writer for the website http://www.helmetstohardhats.org . I’m getting to manage the editorial calendar, interview cool people in the field, do research and write articles. This is what I was doing for the last many years as a writer for children, but it was all on speculation and I must say, the paycheck piece is a welcomed change.

The biggest issue has been my own writing. I’ve been juggling my kiddos, my house, my move, and my husband’s new work and travel schedule but throw in my SCBWI work and my novel and you’ve got a recipe for mental breakdown. So, if you are interested in conference updates I must apologize and tell you that on August 19th my kiddos go back to school and I will make the conference a bigger part of my life. Until then, get your presentation proposals in. The info is at http://www.nescbwi.org/about/conferences/

If you are a first reader waiting for the first complete draft of Jacob Jones… I’m setting September 15th as my deadline. Schmoozers, I’m looking for a plane ticket.

Slow Day

Freelance writing and laundry. That’s all nothing more to report. The children are vegging in front of the tube and I’m only feeling slightly guilty. At least they’re helping with the laundry. The AC repair folks are coming today. They said they’d be here between noon and 8 pm. It’s good to have a schedule, yes?

Office Clean up

I apologize to those who read the blog regularly. Office clean-up seems to be a reoccurring theme for me. For those who don’t read, here is the cyclical process.

1. My office/studio is clean.
2. I’m all proud of my amazing organizational skills and reinvigorated.
3. I am very productive in this lovely clean space.
4. I make significant headway on a project trying very hard to put all my tools away and file papers as I go.
5. At this point some other project becomes necessary at the same time (going to a school visit, helping my children with a school project, directing a huge 500 person conference, giving my kiddo a birthday party, moving my entire married/mother life of 15 years OR ALL OF THESE THINGS!) and it becomes impossible to keep things organized.
6. The office is a huge disorganized mess.
7. I cannot work in my office. It makes me feel oogey, and all I can do is “friend”  people on Facebook, read blogs, and play scrabulous and word twist addictively.
8. I clean my office/studio. Sorting the keep and toss piles, reorganizing, sharpening pencils, spray cleaning the dust off my desk.
9. Go to #1

To those of you who are taking Laurie’s 15 minute a day challange, congrats. I’ll get to it as soon as I can see the floor again.

Feelings, wo-wo-wo, feelings

 Last night, hubby asked me how I was feeling about the move. “I really can’t complain,” I started, then I did.

Everyone in the community as been welcoming and friendly, the kids are making friends, the house is lovely, the school is great, so what could be wrong.

It is just a feeling. A feeling of being alone in the middle of a crowd. In Maine, when I was feeling alone it was because I was in the middle of field and forest without many neighbors. This is different. I’m sure that when we settle in and get our things I’ll feel more grounded. 

I think what I’m missing most is my work. I’ve been writing and drawing but not working on current projects. My characters and their conflicts are on hold in a file in a computer in Maine and I’m here.  But soon enough, they will be here too and I will be happy to have them.

So how am I feeling. Fine, just fine.

Places and People

This weekend I had places to go and people to see. On Saturday morning, I was to be in Holliston, Mass. as the NE-SCBWI conference co-director for a meeting to present all the exciting things we are planning for April 2009. At the same time, however, I wanted to be at Poland Spring Campground Schmoozing with my writing buddies.  I ended up driving down Friday evening so that I wouldn’t have to drive six hours in one day. I stayed over-night, presented at the meeting and saw the wonderful folks who volunteer to make NE-SCBWI work. Then I hopped in the car and drove four hours to the campground. I missed the critique time but got to connect with

[info]anom3

,

[info]cfaughnan

,

[info]jbknowles

,

[info]tamra_wight

, and Jeanne Bracken. They showed me online scrabble. They are so evil!  (Check out their blogs for pictures.) The weekend was very full and the most amazing thing was that the timing all worked. I said I’d be at the campground at 4 pm and I was. Thankfully, I was safe and sound despite the rain, and traffic.

Hubby starts his job in Maryland this week and we will finish out the school year in Maine. Things to do this week.
1. Finish Roar send to agent. Check in on manuscript sales status. (ick)
2. Work on novel every day.
3. Sort through clothes toys and books. Weed out what you do not want to move.
Okay, that it way enough.

A Crooked Kind of Review

    I just spent the last half hour sitting in my van. I wasn’t alone. I sat in my van with my nine and seven year old boys listening to the end of Linda Urban’s, Crooked Kind of Perfect. We couldn’t stop listening (or laughing) because the voice of the main character Zoe Elias, read by Tai Alexandra Ricci, keeps you wanting to know the outcome of this lovely story of imperfections.

    Urban’s masterful use of voice, dialogue and humor keeps the conflicts light yet we know they would fill a firkin for Zoe. Zoe dreams of playing a baby grand piano at Carnegie hall but has to settle for a wheeze-bag organ.  Her loving father has to overcome a fear of people, Anthropophobia, and his fear of leaving home, Agoraphobia. These fears are never spelled out as such, but developed in such a subtle and masterful way that the listener understands that this is just the way Zoe’s father IS without it being weird or bad. Zoe’s mother, a perfectionist in her work, learns to temper her expectations and find time for her daughter.

    As in so many wonderful children’s novels, it is the careful use of detail, the sprinkling of realism, that places the listener in Zoe’s world. From the goings on at the Performorama! (Exclamation point!), to the endless list of cookies her father bakes, to the hysterical but sad flying lessons from Living Room University, Urban captures the surroundings of this working-class Michigan family beautifully.

    Because I was listening to the book, instead of reading it, I was unsure of the format of the book. At times, the short chapters and rhythmic prose sounded more like poetry and I wondered if it was formatted in that way. Ricci does a great job capturing the almost-elevenness of Zoe. While she does not use “voices” for the other characters (like those on Harry Potter) her inflection is true to each character and Urban’s dialogue makes it easy to follow the the story.

    My boys were hooked on the humor and the story. Because isn’t that what a good book is all about? Good story. Thank you Linda! and congrats! for making it on to the Maine Student Book Award List! for 2008-2009!!!

Chug, chug

More writing this morning. Went well. Today I’ll be subbing (that’s substitute teaching not submitting) and then tonight there is a family poetry reading at my kids’ school. Here is the one I plan to read from a larger collection of poems entitled DC for Me. It is a non-fiction poetry book about DC neighborhoods. Very difficult to get published as it is pretty narrow in scope but you’d think that I book on our nation’s capital would be of interest to all.


My Neighborhood
By Anna J. Boll

After school,
streetlights
spotlight
my neighborhood
Shepard Park.

Kickball games
four square and
double dutch

Tick-tick
Double ropes
slip,slap the black.
Feet dance, trip,
tangle,whip
over the ropes
just in time.
Out.

Next in line,
then dinner time.

Festival of the Book and an update

Dear Friends, if you find yourself in Portland, Maine this weekend you will want to take a look at the Festival of the Book celebration. The schedule for kids includes programs by the amazing Lynne Plourde (who did a wonderful presentation at our NESCBWI conference), our own live journal friends Carrie Jones & Robin Merrow MacCready, Rochelle Draper, Phillip Hoose, and Maria Padian. Lisa Bossi, Scott Nash and many more will be signing in the signing tent.

On the moving front: my husband is working vigorously on completing unfinished home repair projects in order to have our home ready to rent. This is good. He built our home and when we decided we needed health care more than trim on the doors he started a regular job that took him away from completing the last bits. We’ve lived comfortably in this home for the last three years. However, it is frustrating that the new screen porch, the master bed/bath, the attic playroom, and linen closets (and the trim), will be completed and we will not get to enjoy them. (This is a vast understatement of my disappointment and his but will have to suffice for now.)

The offer is signed, sealed and delivered. We will move to the PAX river area sometime this summer. I’ve told our current school that they do not have to place my kiddos in new classes. This makes me so sad. We have enjoyed a wonderful elementary experience. The school is truly a learning community based on respect, and cooperation between all stake holders. I am open to whatever the future holds but I realize that we have it really good here. My kiddos have revealed more emotion about the move in the last week. I’ve held them as they cried but I also know that kids are resilient and imagine that a few weeks at the local pool will bring new friendships before school starts.

Writing is going along. I feel a little like the “Little engine that could…” chug-chugging up the mountain looking forward to the zoom toward the end of draft one. (did the engine know that he’d have to circle around and do the whole route again?) Draft 2 is on the horizon. The dummy of Roar is in its millionth draft. (I exagerate.) I’d like to get it secret agent man by the end of May.