The Value of a Writers Group--& Fueling Her Mind With Sugar

            I just got back from a fantastic ANWA writers retreat. We stayed in a cabin (with electricity and Internet service!) for three days and ate and laughed and had workshops and wrote. One of the women there completed the first draft of her novel. I got a phenomenal amount of work done on what I’m writing right now, and I really appreciate the women who worked so hard to organize the event. It was, simply, great.

            I’m finding there’s real value in belonging to a writers group. When I began writing novels, I didn’t have anyone to bounce ideas off (besides my dear husband), or to read sections I’d labored over, or to ask questions about the business. It was like going through a tunnel with nothing but the LED of a cell phone to light a few steps.

            Then my publisher recommended I join this group. I’d heard of it, even been invited once before, but I didn’t think I had time. My children were small, and they were demanding. I wanted all my hobby time to be devoted to actual writing, not a meeting—but when he told me I should, I did.

            And it’s been super.

            Now, when I get stuck, I have a sisterhood to turn to. (We’re all LDS women.) I don’t have to corral strangers into listening to passages of my work. I remember one afternoon I bugged my across the street neighbor and asked her to come over and listen to my novel for two or three hours. Bless her heart, she did. Thank goodness, after joining ANWA, I can stop that madness. And keep some of my friends!

           Instead, I have like-minded people who are willing to share that burden. In return I’m happy to help critique others’ writing. It’s been very instructive to see others’ writing process, and I’ve been able to glean much insight from their beautiful words—and their friendship. I'm not muddling through in the dark anymore. Other with more experience hold up their lights for me and help me move forward. Now it's like about TWO HUNDRED and FIFTY little cell phone LED lights going through that same tunnel all at once!

 

            The retreat was divine. Besides camaraderie, we also shared FOOD—I’m talking, snack table from heaven. There were homemade chocolate chip cookies, cream-filled black licorice, M&Ms, chocolate covered popcorn (my addition), Red Vines, peanuts, some amazing Gorgonzola cheese crackers, lemon cookies drizzled with chocolate, candy bars, more candy bars, and more candy bars.

            I think candy fuels the writer’s mind. Am I wrong?

Characterization (and 600 Otter Pops and counting)

I've been studying up on how to improve characterization in novels. In a book by Dwight Swain (a much loved writing teacher), I found a really great tip.

He said that if you want your character to come to life you need to imbue him/her with emotion, emotion strong enough to be felt by the reader. I'm not great at this--I tend to keep things in the character's head, rather than letting feelings get visceral--so I got excited when he suggested a way to do this. Here's what he said:

Mine your memory banks to a time when you felt an emotion similar to the one your character is feeling. It doesn't have to be the same circumstance, of course, just the same emotion: lust, greed, hatred, fear, humiliation, joy.

Just remember a time when you felt that emotion. Get down into it, relive it in your mind. His example was to think of a time when you were mad enough at someone you wanted to kill them. Once you're back there mentally, pull out your pen and write down all the feelings you have--the gut feelings, the setting of the jaw, the sweating of the palms, the qivering of the knee, the twitching of the eye, raised pulse, rapid breathing throught the nose--all of it. Get it down on paper.

Then you can use the description of that emotion and apply it to the character and situation you're writing about.

I took what he said and made a list of emotional powerhouse moments in my life, and then examined what categories of emotion they fell under (geez, there were quite a larrrrrrge number of moments that fit under the heading "embarrassment." I wonder why.) Then I started writing them out, putting those moments onto paper. It was interesting (and a little awful) to relive them, but now I've got this great database to turn to for future reference.

I'm hoping it will improve my writing, and help the reader to connect better with the characters I'm trying to express in my work.

Meanwhile, the main feeling I have this week is HEAT. It was 121 degrees in my car when I got into it this afternoon, after I burned my little fingers on the door handle. This is why we just finished our SIXTH box of (100 count) Otter Pops of the summer. Mind you, we're only four weeks in. I can see another 10-12 boxes in our future if we're going to survive.

But come on, how bad can an Otter Pop be? They're only 25 calories. They're fruity (and the ones from Costco even have real fruit juice in them) and they refresh, and they're most of all COLD. In this heat, we need it. The whole state is on fire, why not have an Otter Pop to fight back?

I left on an errand the other day and the kids asked, "How many Otter Pops can we have?" I actually heard myself answer, "Only ten."

Little Orphan Orange, Alexander the Grape, Louie Blue Raspberry, Sir Isaac Lime, Strawberry Short Kook, Poncho Punch.

Ahhhhh. I'll have five of each.

Front Page Article! And Candy I Don't Like

Sooooo. I write a column, book reviews, from time to time for our local paper. It's fun, and the editor is a good friend, and there's no pressure. She just lets me write whatever, whenever. About four or five columns a year, mostly YA books. That kind of thing.

Well, I submitted my article and review of Wes Hargis's interview for the Yankovic illustration job, and she liked it. A lot. Enough to slap it on the front page of the Sunday paper.



I know, I know. It's a small time paper, but it's the only one for miles around, and hey. I'm glad for Wes. I hope it makes a hundred people go pick up copies of his book.

Just kind of a cool thing. I mean, how often does a book review columnist get a front page slot? Feeling groovy. This calls for another handful of Wheat Thins. (Boo. I miss candy.) My cousin Lisa posted on Facebook the following: "I bought the kind of 'candy I don't like' to fill up my candy dishes around the house so I wouldn't eat them. Then I found out there was no such thing." Amen, sister.

The Vicious Cycle of Shopping and Editing

            I’ve been substituting one compulsive behavior for another. Now, instead of candy I’m shopping online. Not buying, unfortunately, because that much shopping is just NOT in the budget, but browsing. And browsing online is fun. Very fun.

            The world is at my fingertips. I can shop for expensive chandeliers and cheap vinyl toilet seat covers and bounce house castles and rocket fuel (been there, done that) all from the convenience of my lounge chair.

            Last week it was swimsuits. It’s so much less demoralizing to shop for swimwear when they’re only visible on strangers who have flawless, retouched skin and bodies. In fact, it makes swim shopping fun. And I found a place that has a guarantee even if I wear the thing and decide it makes my arms look wonky. Yes! It’s painless.

            Of course online shopping does tend to make me want to buy things. When I was loading up my pretend shopping cart full of Target merchandise I probably won’t buy (leaving my hopes up high), it dawned on me: the reason I was shopping was to avoid editing. BUT, the reason I was editing was so I could eventually have a little more spare change so I CAN shop. Ultimately, I guess I want to sell my latest piece of novelized cotton candy, and if I do, it would help me get from filling the shopping cart to actually getting to the checkout.

            Duh. Well, at least that motivated me to get back to work. With that realization I moved forward and rewrote a whole problem chapter and got a new chapter-to-fix-a-plot-hole started.

            Whatever it takes.

            My sister in law is making an English trifle tonight for our multi-family culture night. It will have orange and raspberries. Dang. I think I’ll eat just one bite. Maybe two. I do love a good trifle. She had a deep insight: lots of English food seems to be soft and squishy and mushed together. Trifles, puddings, etc. They do eat an awful lot of puddings. Fine by me. I love a good bread pudding. Mm. With vanilla cream sauce. Squish that!

And the Winner Is...

A hearty congratulations to Crystal Dotson of West Virginia!

She has won a copy of my book Delicious Conversation for her correct answer in the 3rd Annual Summer Treasure Hunt--Dig for Clues and Win contest.

The book has been mailed and is on its way to her house as we speak.

There are lots more prizes throughout the rest of the month, so be sure to check out the link above and enter and win!

Weird Al Yankovic Illustrator, Wes Hargis Interview (Yes Way)

I suddenly feel super duper cool by association. Why? Because this week I lucked out and got to interview a local cartoonist, Wes Hargis, who happens to be the illustrator of "Weird" Al Yankovic's first book for children.

Yes, that Weird Al. Seriously! The Saga Begins! I'm Fat! All the great songs! And now a children's book. I picked it up at the local copy shop where Hargis had copies for sale. Cool, I thought. I like Weird Al, and what a lark that a guy from my po-dunk (nobody get hurt feelings. You have to admit anywhere that's more than 2 hours from the nearest airport is po-dunk.) town has brushed greatness.

He's done more than brush it. He's illustrated it. Probably with colored pencil is what it looks like. And it's great stuff!



So, I asked Wes (can I call you Wes?) to tell me about the book (though I've read it to my kids more than a dozen times. They love it.)

JG: Tell me about the book.

WH: "It's basically about Billy, a highly enthusiastic kid who can't wait for show and tell so he can tell the class about all the things he's been thinking about for his future career. He high-jacks the class. He's going to get everything off his chest that he wants to say, regardless of how much it annoys his teacher, Mrs. Krupp, the other main character."

JG: What was the process like?

WH: There was a long process to get the relationship right between Billy and Mrs. Krupp. There were a lot of different incarnations of Mrs. Krupp. It took a while to get where we finally landed, which was modeling her after Aunt Bea from "The Andy Griffith Show." It took several months to figure out how Billy was going to look. Initially he was a bit goofier, with big eyes and goofy teeth. He had to be crazy but not too crazy. Mrs. Krupp had to be warm, but still show a little bit of frustration.

JG: What was it like to work with Al Yankovic? Or did you actually get to work with him. I hear sometimes there is very little interaction between the author and the illustrator.

WH: Right. Usually once the author's work is handed off and fine-tuned, it's up to the editors and the illustrator at that point. I had the option to work with the author, but I didn't. I had the benefit of looking at the text before knowing who the author was. I, like a lot of people in my age group, love this guy. They wanted me to take a look at it from my perspective. I just loved it. You can't look at this text without thinking as an illustrator how you'd juggle it. Things like Twinkies Au Gratin and Toast on a Stick, I tried to include them all. There was so much funny stuff in there, I couldn't get them all.

JG: Did you meet him? Publicity tours, etc.?

WH: Just once. We exchanged a few emails, but he's so down to earth. He has a daughter. The emails were all just family chit chat.  That's one thing the people at Harper Collins were amazed about. He was so down to earth and mellow. Not at all what you'd expect from a world phenomenon.

A lot of people ask me what it's like to work on a celebrity book, but this isn't your average celebrity book. Al is first and foremost a writer. His parody song lyrics are so tight. This is a book by a talented writer who happens to be doing his first children's book.

He did a concert in Phoenix, where we met him for the first time. It's said you can take someone of any age to one of his concerts. He has the most amazing fans they're so devoted to him. There's this story about him I heard a long time ago. He was offered a lot of money many years ago to do a beer commercial. He turned it down because he worried about how that might effect some of his younger fans.

He lets people feel comfortable with that nerdy part of yourself. Now our culture has moved in a direction where nerds are cool. Al is the world's most renowned nerd. Someone like me who was a little nerdy from the get-go can feel good about it.

JG: What was tough about the project?

WH: It was my first time drawing children. Primarily I'm a cartoonist for Wick newspapers. This was new, drawing Billy, plus a whole cafeteria full of children's faces, and keeping track of them all. That was a challenge.

JG: Are there any "real" people in your illustrations?
WH: My two boys pop in and out of some of the characters, especially Billy. Oh, and my brother is the basketball player with the stinky armpit. His number was 34, just like the illustration. He was, and still is, a great ball player.

JG: Is this your first children's book?

WH: I did a book called Jackson and Bud's Bumpy Ride. It was a really good experience for me. It's a story about a guy, Horatio Jackson, who took a car across the U.S. in the early 1900s on a $50 bet. There was a PBS special on it. It's a cool story. I'm not a particularly accurate illustrator, so they took a risk choosing me, someone more of a cartoony artist. It was a great way to learn and get ready for some other projects.

JG: What do you think it is that makes this book click?

WH: Al's magic. There's this really sweet moment where Billy starts telling Mrs. Krupp about his grandfather. Then there's a page where Billy is sitting on his grandfather's lap, and he becomes more than just this funny kid, and turns into a kid we can really sympathize with. It's a sweet moment when Billy gives Mrs. Krupp a picture. Al accomplishes this transition so gracefully. It's the magic.

JG: What's up next?

WH: I have a project in the works for another children's book. I'll still keep my cartooning job to pay the light bill between illustrating projects. I draw for papers in Las Vegas and Tucson. I love doing that.

JG: Thanks a bunch for talking with me! I've never actually visited with an illustrator before. It's the great unknown to me.

Seriously, folks. I ask you. How cool is that? Now run out and get yourself a copy of this fun book! Your kids will really enjoy it!

And to finish with candy, I must say, there's a cherry pie sitting in my kitchen waiting to be eaten. Or et, as the book I just finished reading would say (a Zane Grey.) I can't stop thinking about what Twinkies au gratin must taste like. How fantastic could that be? Cheese and sugar go surprisingly well together. Cannolis, anyone?

Summer Treasure Hunt--Giveaway!

Hey! I'm so excited to be a part of the 3rd Annual Summer Treasure Hunt: Dig for Clues and Win! There is a prize to WIN every single day in the month of June. My day is TOMORROW, and a lucky reader/player can win a copy of my most recent book, Delicious Conversation, mailed directly to his or her mailbox (within the U.S.). Cool, right? Plus there are a lot of other neato prizes, books, iPod covers, cool stuff. The authoress organizing the event is a friend of mine, Joyce DiPastena, a fine writer and a lovely person.

http://jdp-news.blogspot.com/2011/05/3rd-annual-summer-treasure-hunt-dig-for.html



Here's a link to her blog with all the rules and stuff. I hope everyone will play and blog hop and WIN. And any of you newbies to my blog, please feel free to follow and to comment and stuff. I always feel validated and special and stuff when I get new followers and nice comments. Mean comments, well, I probably don't need a lot of those.

Meanwhile, I'm still not eating sugar, but I am chewing gum. A LOT of gum. I bought a zillion pieces of sugar free Extra Dessert Delights Key Lime Pie. It's so much like candy I hardly notice I'm off sugar.

Guilty admission: cold cereal is getting too much of a free pass in this time of Lentish denial. I think I ate half a bag of Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Frosted Mini-Spooners (the knock-off of Mini-Wheats) yesterday. That's a lot of spun wheat, I tell you. But that blueberry flavored frosting on top of each wheaty bite was so yummy. I had to force myself to resist today. Maybe the kids will eat the rest of the bag at breakfast tomorrow and my temptation will have passed.



Now, where's my green gum?

Other Sweet Things

Since I'm off candy (with the exception of a few handfuls of cold cereal now and then, which, as you well know by now, IS candy), I have to look for other sweet things to fill my life.

One is listening to my kids play the piano. When I was growing up I always suspected my practicing was a grating irritation to all listeners, as I'm certain it probably was. When I signed my oldest up for piano lessons, I heard that old favorite "Here we go, up a row, to a birthday party," about a kabillion times--almost as many as I heard "From a Wigwam."

Strawberry Shortcake Flavored Mezzo Piano Candy, totally Japanese

Then my mother in law told me something in passing. She came by and asked the Wigwammer to please practice and she'd like to listen. She said to me, "Piano practice by children is one of the sweetest sounds I can ever hear."

That struck me. While I couldn't necessarily agree initially, it seemed I could probably change my attitude. So I did. And now, with three kids in lessons and one more ready and begging to start, I have to say I absolutely LOVE to hear them play. It's hard the first days after a lesson to hear them struggle, and to sense their frustration, to see them draped over the bench and hear the moaning of despair at a new song. (This week's despair was induced by "The Streets of Laredo.") But it improves! And it's great! And the oldest did his first solo in sacrament meeting at church on Sunday and I realized it was all worth it.

Mozart Piano Candy Bar. Who KNEW?

I think writing must be like that, too. At first the product is a mess. It's frustrating. It doesn't seem like it will ever come together. Some projects make me moan and drape myself over my desk and wish I didn't have to do it. But when I power through and keep working at it, sometimes the result gives me a twinge of joy and it's all worth it.

And there's another application, that whole "change your mind to change your situation" thing. I guess that could apply to many areas of life beyond piano noise, including editing. So, hey! I LOVE editing. It makes the whole project shine! It's fun because you get to dig right in and make things better, things that just need a little polish. Or a lot. Doesn't matter. Editing is worth it. It's a great time!

There. Now I should get back to editing. Sweeeet.

Seeds Grow in Dirt (My Mother's Day essay, oft told)

It was a rotten year and a half for housework.


My New Year’s resolution was to keep my house utterly clean. I washed walls, I organized closets, I dreamed of shininess.

Then, my oldest son had a problem with school. And pregnancy happened—never my finest hours. Within a short time I was a pregnant, home-schooling mom of four kids under ten with a perpetual headache. A major accomplishment for the day was setting out the cold cereal at mealtime.

The year went on. Home-school continued, and the baby arrived, and everyone knows how productive those first few months aren’t with a newborn. If her little white nightgowns were clean, I felt like queen of all housework.

Meanwhile, grime pockets formed behind doors, dust bunnies grew and had bunny families—several generations of them. The top of our old piano started to collect so many items it could open an antique store of its own. At a low point, there was a two-week period where someone broke a different item made of glass every single day. For some reason I got called to the Relief Society presidency, just to add to the chaos.

Months passed. Baby learned to crawl. My year teaching a bright, much happier, 4th grader wound down. The two preschoolers started to be a little less prone to break glass. But the house languished, nay, wallowed in its filth, especially the formerly light blue carpet. In fact, one spring afternoon after Little League, I had an argument with Zane, who insisted our carpet is grey. “Light blue,” I claimed half-heartedly, barely remembering the true color myself.

Summer came. All five kids tracked in roughly 75 pounds of dirt from their treasure pit in the sand pile and about a million squished leaves from their fort under the nectarine tree. My girls had birthday parties for their teddy bears that for some reason involved crumbling blueberry muffins into oblivion on the grey carpet, possibly in an attempt to turn it blue again. I got drafted to be the interim Webelos leader and actually sanctioned large messes in the house. Cousins came over and incited a game as destructive as it sounds: Toy War. We went through our twelfth 100-count box of Otter Pops and our second vacuum cleaner motor (due to renegade thread while the oldest three kids learned embroidery.)

When mid-August rolled around, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Stephen went back to fifth grade, and he found a niche in learning there. Zane opted out of soccer, so we now only had one uniform to find on Saturday mornings. Rachel started kindergarten, and Catherine dropped out of preschool after a month to stay home to paint and do coloring books with mom. Baby Zuzu could now walk around by herself, looking for stray popcorn kernels to gnaw on with her two teeth.

Things got quieter around home.

With a sense of newfound power, I conducted a yard sale, which made it so we could park inside our garage again. Miracle. Next I looked to tackle the house.

That first morning, however, I caught a glimpse of our kitchen sink, the drainer side. Whoa. How long had it been? A while, for sure. Gingerly I lifted the drainer.

Oh. My. Goodness. What was that green thing?

I pulled out the clean, drying measuring cups and lifted the rack from the sink. Yep, something was definitely growing there: a two-pronged leaf sprout, about four inches tall.

With a squeal of horror I plucked out the sink stopper and found the little white root ball and what looked like the yellow-brown transparent hull of a popcorn kernel around its base. Or maybe it was one of Gary’s gardening projects. Or an escaped food-storage black eyed pea?

No! How could I have let the sink cleaning lapse long enough for a seed to germinate and sprout—plus grow four inches? I wanted to cry. What a terrible housekeeper. My kids could probably get some kind of disease from filth this rampant! My word! A seed grew in my sink!

Then a thought stopped my self-berating rant.

Hey. Seeds grow in dirt.

In the past couple of years my most precious seeds, all five of them, had grown an awful lot in this dirt.

Now, I certainly hadn’t been a perfect mother by anyone’s definition. I hadn’t kept a cheery temperament every single day. I hadn’t nurtured my children in every way possible. Without question, I had not created an “antiseptic environment” for my little ones to play and learn in.

But they grew.

I know they say cleanliness is next to godliness. Whoever “they” are, they’re mean. That’s too much pressure. Seriously. Instead I find myself thinking maybe other things wedge their way into the lineup beside godliness. Maybe doing-the-best-you-can-motherhood is one of them. After all, God helps all things to grow. Maybe that’s what motherhood is all about.

Now, it’s not that I will henceforth refuse to scrub my tub or decide never to replace that ailing vacuum. But God formed Man out of the dust of the Earth. Perhaps I ought to be aiming to do that, too—to form men and women out of these sweet little seeds they are now, and remember that most seeds require all kinds of light, and water (that’d be Saturday night baths), and at least a little dirt. Because seeds grow in dirt.

Creative Happiness (without sugar)

I know, it's absolutely unrealistic to be doing this, but I stopped eating sugar.

Me.

After years of refined sugar as a staple food in my diet, I've spent two weeks without it. Including Easter candy. Really.

Today I could really use one of the leftover Bit O' Honeys or Milk Maid caramels, though. The best would be Brach's Royals. Those caramels with the little flavor-fillings? I *love* them. LOVE them. Raspberry or butter rum or vanilla. If it weren't for this ridiculous resolve, I'd probably eat a whole pound of them as I type this. Brach's Royals can be ingested almost like breathing.

Instead, I'm getting started on a new writing project. Editing of the old ball and chain (that's how I always feel about the novel that's finished and still needs polishing, polishing I rarely complete) remains, but I'm ready to get that fun energy of writing something brand new.

There's a certain buzz that comes from creative pursuit. A verve that gets added to my life. I get it when I cook something delicious, or if I figure out how to arrange flowers, or paint something (furniture, I mean. I'm not ready for actual painting yet. My kids are too small for me to have a painting hobby just yet.) Anything that brightens or brings something into being that wasn't there before gives me that lift, that rush.

Here's an excerpt from a talk given in 2008 by Dieter F. Uchtdorf along those lines. It fits how I feel about writing, even if I'm not writing something that will change the world. It changes and brightens my own, and hopefully brings a sweetness (if only brief to someone else.) I find this talk so inspiring.

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.


Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty—and I am not talking about the process of cleaning the rooms of your teenage children.

You might say, “I’m not the creative type. When I sing, I’m always half a tone above or below the note. I cannot draw a line without a ruler. And the only practical use for my homemade bread is as a paperweight or as a doorstop.”

If that is how you feel, think again, and remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe. Isn’t it remarkable to think that your very spirits are fashioned by an endlessly creative and eternally compassionate God? Think about it—your spirit body is a masterpiece, created with a beauty, function, and capacity beyond imagination.

But to what end were we created? We were created with the express purpose and potential of experiencing a fulness of joy.4 Our birthright—and the purpose of our great voyage on this earth—is to seek and experience eternal happiness. One of the ways we find this is by creating things.

If you are a mother, you participate with God in His work of creation—not only by providing physical bodies for your children but also by teaching and nurturing them. If you are not a mother now, the creative talents you develop will prepare you for that day, in this life or the next.


You may think you don’t have talents, but that is a false assumption, for we all have talents and gifts, every one of us.5 The bounds of creativity extend far beyond the limits of a canvas or a sheet of paper and do not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano. Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before—colorful gardens, harmonious homes, family memories, flowing laughter.

What you create doesn’t have to be perfect. So what if the eggs are greasy or the toast is burned? Don’t let fear of failure discourage you. Don’t let the voice of critics paralyze you—whether that voice comes from the outside or the inside.


If you still feel incapable of creating, start small. Try to see how many smiles you can create, write a letter of appreciation, learn a new skill, identify a space and beautify it.

Nearly a century and a half ago, President Brigham Young spoke to the Saints of his day. “There is a great work for the Saints to do,” he said. “Progress, and improve upon and make beautiful everything around you. Cultivate the earth, and cultivate your minds. Build cities, adorn your habitations, make gardens, orchards, and vineyards, and render the earth so pleasant that when you look upon your labors you may do so with pleasure, and that angels may delight to come and visit your beautiful locations. In the mean time continually seek to adorn your minds with all the graces of the Spirit of Christ.”

The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come. Sisters, trust and rely on the Spirit. As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the world within you.

Pondering Attending a Writing Conference? Sweet Reasons to Go

Pondering the value of attending a writing conference?

Here are some reasons to bother going:

1) Network with other writers. Talk to people who "get" you. You don't have to assume you're the only one who hears voices and entire pages of dialoge running through your head anymore. Suddenly *you're* not the weird one. It's like when the ugly duckling showed up in swan-land. Ta-da!

2) Learn more about the craft. Conference organizers work like maniacs to assemble charismatic faculty with presentations on a wide variety of topics. Check the workshop and class lineup when you're registering! The conference I attended this weekend had classes like writing by gleaning stories from genealogy, songwriting (with a mind-opening step by step), how to write a query, how to write a pitch, how to make your writing pay, and many more.

3) Possibly meet agents and pitch your work. From what I've heard, and now that I've seen it in action, I believe wholeheartedly, an agent or editor is a bazillion times more likely to request pages from you if he or she has met you and heard you be enthusiastic about your work during a pitch. Otherwise, all you are is a query letter in the big, icky, disgust-inducing stack on the front desk of an agency. Wouldn't you rather be a smiling face and a witty remark in the memory of an agent who got wined and dined at a conference? Yes, you would. Even if it means the agonizing torment of preparing for the pitch session.

4) Get re-motivated to write. Going to conferences has pumped up my enthusiasm to write. The workshops always make me reexamine my work and improve what I've already written, and improve it. Conferences also always make me a little introspective; I always seem to spend a few hours musing on what exactly it is I want to do with my writing, how I actually picture my writing career going, where I want to go next, and more important, what I don't want to do.

If those are not enough, it's a chance (for me, at least) to be away from home and buy candy and not have to share it with any begging children. On my conference outing a few weeks ago I enjoyed a peanut brittle bar, a box of Good 'n Plenty, some Hot Tamales, a handful of mini-Mr. Goodbars, a few Hershey's Kisses, Starlight Mints, some Dr. Pepper (accidentally), and a bunch of mint flavored Three Musketeers. There were probably more. Sigh. So much candy, so little sharing of it. Well, I kept it in my purse and offered candy to the people next to me at the tables. Candy is a great icebreaker! I love my children. Don't get me wrong. And generally I share everything except Lindt truffles. And Dole Fruit Bars (coconut.) I'm just saying, a candy gluttony weekend is nice once a year or so.

Oooh. My friend shared a new candy with me--gum flavored like chocolate mint chip ice cream. Delicious enough I almost ate it outright. What a stroke of genius. Whoever came up with that, I thank you from the bottom of my tastebuds.

Genre:Does Cold Cereal belong in the Candy Phylum?

Lately deciding on how to label the genre of my novel has been taking up an unnatural amount of my brain's hard drive free space. I think I need to defrag or something now. Does it fall in mainstream fiction or commercial fiction? Ha ha I wish I could say it fell into literary fiction but it's too cottony and candy-y.

So since my protagonist is 24, it won't fit into YA (young adult) fiction, even though it is a kind of a coming of age story. I got that much. Parameters as far as I can gather from combing the Internet and agents' sites and know-it-all-experts' advice books require the main character of a YA novel to be no older than 17, and preferably 16.

So it's definitely not middle grade even though when I read the prologue to the 5th graders a few months ago they ate it up. Middle grade novels star kids age 11. Or else!

Then there's women's fiction. Even though this could be termed a love story (the main character gets the girl at the end) and I would like to believe women will really find the hero of the story appealing, in spite of his flaws. But it's not technically a romance, even though the protagonist's main need is to overcome his loneliness. It doesn't fit the template of what's required for a romance. For one, the main character is male, not female. And since it doesn't star a 28+ single woman with a careeeeeer and eschewing marriage but secretly pining for love, it sure ain't chick lit.

So, do I try to market it as sports fiction? The whole story is about a fish-out-of-water, an unexpected foray into a new sport. It doesn't cover one of the big favorite sports of basketball or football, or even NASCAR, so maybe that won't work. Did you know there's a NASCAR sub-genre in Harlequin romance? I heard that last summer and I think my head is still trying to wrap itself around that fact.

Sometimes I think I should rework my story to fit neatly and squarely into one of these categories. But I wanted to tell the story of this particular character at this particular point of his life. To do that, I need to tell THIS story. I realize that the only reason I would need to alter it is if I decide to try to market it, which I guess I will, just to force myself to DO HARD THINGS. However, I am not going to weep failure tears if no publisher picks it up. I realize the story idea is a stretch. I know it doesn't fit neatly into a genre. I'm okay with that. I like the story, and I'm sticking to it.

For now.

And I WISH with all my HEART that I had a door on my hall closet. That it didn't gape open, with all those cereal boxes calling to me every single time I pass them, begging me to reach in, to get just a little handful of strawberry frosted mini-wheats or a few of those Raisin Bran Crunch flakes. Man, those are good. So good in fact, I kind of find myself thinking they (like the NASCAR Harlequin) should be a subgenre of candy. The mini-wheats and raisin brans could be the health-nut cousins of candy. Lucky Charms and Froot Loops could be more closely related. Apple Jacks have sugar listed as their first ingredient. Mmm. I love when those loopy rings have an obscured center, caked over with delicious dried, appley frosting.

Kingdom, phylum, class, family, whatever. All that sugar tastes really good when combined with wheat or oats or rice or corn flour. I'll take a big handful again when I pass by.

I think I might have blogged this opinion in an earlier post. Oh, well. My kids tell me all the time I'm repeating myself. So why not in cyberspace, too?

Now, pass the Berry Kix.

The Success and Failure of the Roadside Stand

Last week the 8-11 year old girls at church were doing a bake sale outside a grocery store to raise money for the hospital auxilliary. It was a-buzz here at home as we made a variation on Rice Krispies Treats (see below for RECIPE!) so much so that that afternoon, my 6 year old caught the fever and insisted on doing her own "roadside stand."

She begged, she pleaded. She even whined. (Imagine!) But I didn't have any packets of Kool Aid and didn't want to make another trip to the store, so I put her off. Mean, I know. But show me the mother who never does that.

Finally she said the magic words: "But Mom! I want to have my roadside stand be chocolate covered strawberries!"

Ah! "Why, sure. Let's whip those up." They chilled while she made her poster and dragged the TV tray out to the edge of the lawn, and were ready by the time she and the 3 year old had posted themselves on folding chairs.

It's not a traffic-filled neighborhood. At all. But within half an hour, little Miss Entrepreneur had sold out. At 25-cents apiece, she became a mini-millionaire, or at least acted like one with that jingling $3.75 in her quilted daisy purse of faux fur. "Can we go to the dollar store? Can we? Can we?"

I kinda put that one off, too. I mean, I had to go down and help man the service project bake sale, right?

All this brought to mind a memory of a roadside stand experience (why my kids call them that, I'm not sure. It's apt, but a little weird) from summer before last. The now-8-year-old had sat out front selling her crayon drawings for a buck apiece. I didn't actually know this was going on (Imagine!) until she appeared with $2 in a #10 can. Weird.

The success triggered entrepreneurial longings in my now-10-year-old son. He wanted something "really different." I shrugged. It all felt beyond my control. Sure, go ahead. Sell whatever you like. I don't think I can stop any of this. I'm just the mom here.

An hour later, he returned to the kitchen, head slumped down Charlie Brown style, shoulders low, his plate of goodies still full.

"What'cha got there, son?" I asked.

"Mom, I told him not to do it!" the oldest interjected. "They're just yucky. I said no one would want them."

I turned back to the sad kid. "What are they? What did you make?"

"Mom," the oldest insisted, "he never even tried them!"

"Fine," called the seller. "Fine!" and he popped one in his mouth. He instantly spit it out. At this point I walked over to investigate. "This is bad, Mom! Really bad! It's funny. I thought chocolate covered dill pickle slices rolled in sugar would be good! But they're not!"

The answer to  your question is no. I did not try one. >shrug< I try to be a good mom, but there are places even moms can't go.

I guess the lesson we discussed after the strawberry success (as we recalled the pickle failure) that night at dinner was the importance of providing a product your customers want. There's probably an application to that in writing. It's why I'll probably never write Misery Memoir. Anybody who reads my stuff expects cotton candy, not pickles, with or without chocolate and granulated sugar. (Although I personally LOVE dill pickles. The real ones, not the literary ones.)

So, now for the RECIPE!

KOKO KRISP

1/2 cup butter

1 pkg mini marshmallows

1 tsp vanilla

8-10 cups corn flakes

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Melt butter in large pot. Add marshmallows and stir over medium heat until melted. Remove from heat. Add vanilla. Add flakes. Stir well. Sprinkle on chips and fold in, trying not to over melt them. Press into greased 9x13 pan. Mmmm!

Spring Break. Time for Gingerbread.

What is it about burnt peanuts? What could make something sooooo good? I love them. I can't stop thinking about them. And they look so weird. Hmm. I don't get it. Maybe it's that crispy bumpy red outer layer that houses the sweet chewy inner layer that houses the yummy peanut?

I once wrote a children's book about peanuts. I wonder where that is...

But anyway, the burnt peanuts worked great on the gingerbread houses my kids made today. My six-year-old used one atop a dab of green frosting that looked like an ivy leaf. Holly and ivy--cool. Yeah, yeah, I know it's March. Spring break, in fact. And this is why we finally have time to get to this crafty project.

In the after-Christmas clearance I found this gem. It was not just a gingerbread house. It was a gingerbread village. That meant there were five tiny gingerbread houses, one for each of my kids. It came with frosting and (according to the outside of the box) "LOTS OF CANDY!"

Which I, naturally, didn't believe.

"Lots of candy" is in the eye of the beholder. Without even glancing inside I made a backup plan and bought the 50-cent bags of Sather's candies at the grocery store: licorice laces (love them!), burnt peanuts (crave them!), Good n Plenty (generic), gumdrops (don't love them but have to have them for gingerbread decorating purposes.) Thus armed, I felt ready for the challenge! (I view all craft projects as a challenge. Bless the hearts of those women who view them as relaxation. It will never be me.)

So we gathered everyone around, thanked them for doing their enormous list of jobs for which this activity served as a reward, and broke out the kit. Each kid picked their favorite little building--a toy store, a regular house, a gabled house, a bakery, something else--and got going.

It would have been fine. It might have even been fun, except I miscalculated. Instead of buying backup candy, I should have bought backup frosting. After several months on various shelves, that stuff had turned from malleable to crusty. Imagine~in March! Shouldn't frosting be more dependable than that?

Our houses didn't look nearly this good.

Yeah, I could have whipped out my powdered sugar and butter and made another batch, but instead I made them muddle through in crustiness, and the houses kept falling down every time they pressed a Spree onto the roof. There were some tears, and growls of frustration not a few.

Eventually I distracted them by taking them to the park.

I guess the lesson is that some things are better done sooner than later. I'm sure this applies to writing. For me it probably best applies to journal writing. Write while the emotion still tingles, while the details and feeling are still fresh. Journaling can be a great source of datamining for future writing. I don't necessarily have to write about my own experiences, but when I have a character who needs to feel a certain emotion, I can dig through the journals and find a time when I felt depressed or elated or incensed. Then I can more accurately infuse the character with the emotion.

Girls Day Out! Guess where.

My husband took my boys off to the mountain today, so the girls and I had a GIRLS DAY. I'll give you three guesses where we went.

RIGHT! CANDY STORE!

To her credit, my 3 year old requested it. In our little town there's an old Sonic drive in converted into a candy shop, and we passed it this morning and she went into palpitations. "Please, Mommy! Please can we go to the Lollipop Shop right now?"

It was 7:15 a.m.  Now, that's a girl after my own heart.

The trip (with her sisters) eventually happened right after lunch, and I let the girls pick any candy they chose, although I think I would've vetoed anything that cost over $2. The older two took it very seriously, poring over their options, and eventually ended up with King Candy Necklaces. Those would be the same as regular candy necklaces (the kind with smarties on an elastic string) -- only bigger.

The 3 year old was less methodical. We opened the door to the store. She raced directly for the candy lipsticks that were in a big glass fishbowl, and snatched out a pink one. Less than five seconds flat from door to counter. Very smooth. 26 cents. Cool.

Me, it took all my will power not to get a set of wax lips (or wax fangs). And the Uno bar--my favorite of all time! It's like fluffy chocolate-infused lard covered in chocolate and with flecks of delicious mystery texture in it. LOVE in a SILVER WRAPPER.

I didn't eat it. I think the Easter candy did me in last week.

And on writing? I'm still editing. Editing. Is. Pain.