on rating ya books for mature content

Now that Carson's 13, I can officially claim to be raising my second batch of teenager(s), and, consequently, I'm feeling a little cocky and veteran-like. On the soccer sidelines, when moms going through it the first time wring their hands about homework and curfew and first-person-shooter games, I'm the old hag, er, sage, wistfully gazing off in the middle distance before spouting off my advice.

And now that I seem to be writing for teenagers as well as raising them, my opinions are not merely confined to the sidelines. Especially when it comes to articles like this one, in US News, regarding rating YA books for mature content.

Yep, a rant is coming.

We love numbers in this country. Love them. Scales, rankings, acronyms, all these shortcuts that are supposed to seamlessly quantify our potential experience. Whether it's the level of spice in our salsa or the amount of lycra in our Spandex, we want to have some third party to translate our expectations before we fork over the dough.

But here's the thing. Saucy, juicy edgy young adult books are largely passed from kid to kid via word of mouth. It's always been that way. When I was in 7th grade, Judy Blume's Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret was the cutting edge adult subject matter book that made the underground circuit. And, it was at the center of controversy -- yanked off shelves and banned from schools. But still, all the twelve and thirteen-year-old girls I knew found a way to read it. Putting a number that connotes "mature content" on a young adult book will be like locking a hungry bear in a room with a platter of salmon. So, there's that.

The other thing, the more egregious piece of this cloaked move towards censorship, is that it's one more feather in the cap of the freaked out helicopter parent brigade who believe that the secret to keeping their children pure and sweet is to erect barriers to their curiosity rather than meeting it.

I'm not advocating taking your grade-schooler to a sexy, violent R-rated film, but I am all for encouraging conversation surrounding adult themes when it's clear that your child's radar is tuned to them. If I thought slapping a number on a young adult book would encourage a proactive approach to those parent-child conversations, I would be for it. Clearly, though, this is about categorizing books in terms of the number of "fucks" or "blowjobs" that appear on the page, and will amount to the usual parental avoidance regarding uncomfortable subject matter--and, worse yet, will be one more invitation to publishers to make editorial suggestions based upon abstract marketing decisions.

Any thoughts?

cheering by the numbers

RAISING CHEER, draft one. Check.

Here it is, folks. The quantitative breakdown of the past two months.

NUMBER OF DAYS PUSHING THIS BABY THROUGH        70

NUMBER OF WORDS IN THIS DRAFT                     58,022

NUMBER OF PAGES IN THIS DRAFT                           236

POUNDS OF CHOCOLATE CONSUMED                         10

GALLONS OF COFFEE DRUNK                                    20

MILES OF HILLS WALKED WHILE RUMINATING              56

DOLLARS OF COPYWRITING WORK FORGONE         2,000

HOURS OF WRITING/RESEARCH/THINKING/DELETING 350

And, because I'm such a hopeless nerd, I had to "Wordle" my manuscript!

step it up

Alright you guys. I'm on the home stretch. The plot-board driven YA experiment with the working title RAISING CHEER is about 30 pages from finished. Draft one, anyway. How do I know this? Because of the plot board! It's all mathematical and exact, like a science lab. I have five small scenes and a grand finale to left to write. I can see that yellow tape and I'm gonna throw my hands up and break it with my belly when I barge through.

What's with the exercise metaphor? Well, I'll tell you. As a nice Mother's Day gift, my husband dragged me to an 8:30 aerobics class at the gym today. Something called Sweat Like a Pig Plus Abs. Or maybe it was Simulate Labor and Delivery Plus Abs. Anyway, the Mother's Day correlative was apt--the lunges and the quad stuff in particular resembled that 8-centimeters dilated portion of labor. Transition, I think it's called. When you call your husband a lot of really mean names and he disappears out of the labor room under the pretense of having to go to the bathroom? Girls, you know what I'm talking about, right?

I guess I'm sort of at the transition stage of RAISING CHEER, too. Rising action, shit hitting the fan, and one last BIG EVENT before all is mostly well, and my beloved characters are out of danger. The proverbial infant safely delivered and suckling at the breast.

And speaking of breasts, got any good sports bra recommendations?

breaking bad(ish)

There's this speed trap nearby. One of those places where, on a four-lane road with the suffix "Highway,"  the posted speed abruptly changes from 40 to 30. Over the past six months the photo radar folk have sporadically set up shop, and issued, what I think of as, "pussy tickets" -- because they arrive by mail a week or so later. An envelope with a low-rez picture of the driver looking very deer-in-the-headlights as the flash of the camera catches them in a sort of Cops rendition of their malfeasance.

How do I know this?

Don't be coy. You know I got one of these fuckers. $168 for going 41 mph in a 30.

I'm no anarchist. Yes, I was traveling at the upper end of the continuum for "appropriate" - Yes, I disobeyed the law. Guilty. And pissed off--more because I was "called out" than for the actual penalty. I scribbled off a "but...but..." sort of letter, shoved my check in an envelope, and, as they are wont to do when a driver pleads for mercy, the ODOT folk reduced my fine and sent half my money back to me.

Where am I going with this? Yep, this is a correlative for the plot board post, and my personal relationship with rules. Particularly rules I set up for myself. So. Update. I'm about two-thirds through the first draft of my excellent new adventure, and the sticky notes, try as they might, are getting dissed left and right. I'm peeling them off like scabs, and slapping new ones down in their place. I'll write up to a plot point, all good intentions (seatbelt fastened, not on my cell phone), and then the character will say something that's not on the map. And, I have to say, my reaction to this is, well, nothing short of joy.

Of course, this makes things complicated.

There's a bit of undo-undo-undo that ensues. And some replotting moving forward. Which leads to further replotting. All because my antagonist decides to give the middle finger to God. And by God, I mean me.

That old saw about the headlights and driving only as far as they illuminate the path ahead, but making the whole trip that way? All my fancy GPS equipment is recalculating. It's terrifying, really, but so much fun. Foot on the pedal and all that.

What rules do you like breaking most?

a pantser turns plotter?

Preamble: First, I'm posting this while watching Austin Powers with the family (remember that flick? still uncomfortably funny after all these years), so imagine the title of this post posed in a Dr. Evil voice.

Second, yeah, playing around with the new Blogger templates again. Like? Hate? Feedback appreciated.

Okay, so the science fair-looking set up to your left is my very first ever plot board for a new WIP. Understand, I have never been a fan of the outline. As I explained to a writer friend the other day, the 3-Act structure feels very contrived to me. The literary equivalent of a Spanx garment--you know, squeezing the goodies into a shape deemed commercially viable? And, you know, having spent the last 22 years in Portland, I'm a free-flowing type. A wither-thou-goest with the goodies.

Well, friends, I'm trying something new. I'm taking my high concept YA idea and plotting the fuck out of it. Every chapter, every scene, in service to rising action and carefully constructed reveal. Those hearts, the pink ones? That would be some sort of crucial interaction between the two main characters. The white hearts are crucial interaction between secondary characters. The stars? Reveals. The main plot point of the chapter. And the sticky notes indicate chapter synopses.

So I'm 100 pages in, which translates to the end of that left-most column under ACT II, and I have to say, I'm not hating it. In fact, I'm sort of like a newly reformed meat-eater with my "I've seen the light and I'm never going back to eating flesh" sort of sanctimonious superiority. Why? Well, to start, there are infinitely less choices, and so the writing goes faster. I'm moving toward something as I tap tap tap my sentences, one following the other in service of the next big thing. As opposed to my usual discovery process, where I wander down the dark hallways of my mind, a blind girl being led by the hand to ... what? A vampire? A witch? An evil stepmother?

It's like having GPS, you know? Those little stars and hearts (I had, in my hand at the store, pony-head post-its, but I put them back. I mean, I had to draw the line somewhere). There's less going on in my head: less chaos, less confusion. Which leads, I hope, to deeper focus in the scene itself.

But I admit, my loving this plot board method could be totally premature. Tap me on the shoulder a month from now, when I'm rereading these crafty passages. I might very well be in self-loathingville. I admit to often being prematurely zealous about this and that. But meanwhile, I've got the Nikes on. I'm just doing it. Fake 'til I make it. Running up that hill. You? Plotters? Pantsers? What say ye? (If you can figure out the comment functionality on this new Blogger template).

P.S. Austin Powers is over, and now it's Hangover on the TV. Disturbingly, my 13-yr-old knows it by heart because he's watched it eight times.

the metrics

My piles of tax detritus are spread out on the carpet downstairs. Our kitchen is in that temporary state while we work out post-disaster-possible-remodeling scenarios. Soccer tryouts loom, and that's always fun for a soccer mom. And by fun, I mean, bring on the Xanax.

And then there's the writing. I really should banish any activity until I work through this first draft of my new project. The momentum and enthusiasm is there. I'm officially in love with my narrator. I have an outline. I know where I'm going. Plot points, rising action, compelling romance with twists. But I need to figure out a pacing strategy. Not the pacing on the page, but the pacing on my ass. I'm good for 45 minutes at a crack. Just about enough time to render a scene. Then, I have to skedaddle. Get up and throw a load of laundry in the wash. Return emails. Go for a walk. Collect the eggs. Take out the trash. Go to a Pilates class. Re-microwave my mug of coffee. Oh yeah, and, then there's the paid work I need to do each day.

Do I sound like I'm whining? I am. But this is my blog, after all.

I'd like to figure out how to write 3,000 words a day. That's four or five hours of concentrated writing time. How best to break that up? I really want help here, guys... Any strategies, time-management techniques, ideas? Let's discuss.

spring cleaning

My kitchen on life support.    

Still in the green room with my manuscript (THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES) patiently waiting on editor response, and sinking my teeth into my next project because, that's what you have to do, right? And because I truly want to approach the Empress freshly when next I pop in (hopefully after an editor has fallen in love enough to bite, and sends me editorial notes OR, less hopefully, if the editors pass and I go back in for major overhaul), this new project is quite different than the fantastical historical retelling I've been writing over the past year-and-a-half. I shall leave it at that, for the moment, but suffice it to say, I'm quite engaged with a couple of new characters and am venturing into the world of, dare I say it, High Concept.

A novel that can be boiled down to a compelling sentence. A potboiler, if you will.

In concert with my new project enthusiasm is emergency kitchen surgery. We had a slowly leaking dishwasher which quietly squirted water under the floor which, over time, resulted in a swollen mess. My kitchen has spent the last two days in ICU, and this morning was prepped for asbestos abatement. The floor is being wrenched from the house as I type, and placed in a tube, piece by piece, by a brave crew bedecked in Hazmat couture.

The patient is ready...

If you feel a metaphor coming, you're ding, ding, ding, right! Like my kitchen, I'm aesthetically between one state and another. Ridding myself of vintage bits, in preparation for the latest in market appeal. Think of my next project in terms of sustainable. LEED-cert, even. Travertine tile, bamboo cabinets. Energy wise appliances. New and spare and exciting.

But, unlike my kitchen, I'm not tossing my last project into a toxic waste dumpster. Far from it. No, if anything, when next I return to the Empress, she will be upcycled and glorious. Destined for new life. And I'll be re-engaging with her sitting at a granite counter top, gazing out at the late spring flowers, through tempered accordion glass.

kirk and suzy's excellent adventure continues

Welcome to Schweitzer

One thing I'm really working on with my writing is the whole upping the tension thing. You know what I'm talking about, right? Where you keep flinging your hero into ever-escalating mayhem? I prefer, however, to keep that paradigm on the page. In real life, I'm not a fan of snake pits and the edges of cliffs.

That's why I was thrilled when our windshield wiper debacle concluded this morning thanks to my husband's mad auto mechanic skills. Ye olde auto parts store and a ten buck relay was all it took, and we were back in business ready for a day on the hill above Sandpoint.

That thing on Kirk's head? Worth every penny.

Our own hill tends towards ice, rain and slime this time of year, so the powder that greeted us on Schweitzer was worthy of five star smiles all around. Exploring new pistes and taking in spectacular vistas -- all good. Right before lunch, we decided to pop up the Lakeview Triple lift. That's where our hero, Kirk Soule, fixer of all minor car malfunctions, mistimed his leap from the lift and sent his dear wife ass over teakettle before getting slammed in the noggin by the next chair bar. It was poiseless and embarrassing, but, thank God, not fatal -- though it took longer than it should for the stoner lift attendent to stop the presses so Kirk could get untangled from the lift stile.

Take away of the day? Helmets. Always. No exception.

Tune in tomorrow when Kirk, Carson and Suzy return for day two of their excellent Idaho adventure.

road trip

 It's spring break and here we are in Sandpoint, Idaho visiting my husband's brother Michael and getting ready to ski. Hopefully. So far it's been a little bit Chevy Chase-ish. Halfway through our road trip we took a wrong turn and ended up meandering through the Palouse amid the hundreds of ghostly wind turbines and their sleek arms churning the air to pieces.

At one point, caught behind an bulldozer-carting oversized truck and its "long load" bodyguards, we peeled off the road to touch one of these beasts behind its barbed wire enclosure.  If we were in a movie, this is where some alien or posse of meth dealers or flock of mad scientists would seize our trespassing selves and take us down to a secret tunnel under the dry land wheat fields and waterboard us.

That didn't happen, and we were free to make our way north and east to our destination.

Then, the rain started. A cold, wet downpour pelted our minivan windshield as we wound up the highway toward our destination, and, all of the sudden, our wipers froze.

By this time it was night, and we were still 20 or so miles shy of target. We had that long bridge into Sandpoint still to cross. I don't care what anyone says, driving post a couple of martinis would have been far easier. It was like seeing the world from inside a van Gogh, this mottled version of the landscape. The rain continued to fall on my head, which was hanging out the passenger window guiding my husband's journey with such specific instructions as, "You're veering a wee bit too close to the guardrail." And, "Okay, looks like we're about to lose our lane."

Somehow we made it, and met Michael in town, then followed his lead car to his house in the hills. Now I know what it's like to be the driver of an oversized vehicle everyone curses when they get stuck behind.

We slept. We got up, and Kirk's now out in Sandpoint looking for a mechanic who might fix the wiper debacle, but we're told the sun will be out all morning. So that's good.  I'm thinking we should harness the power of one of those massive turbines -- maybe even invent a tiny wind-generated set of windshield wipers -- for the trip home later this week? It's always sobering to realize how at the mercy of civilization's milestones we really are.

Rocking the Elliptical

It's been raining here a lot lately. Okay, it's the Pacific Northwest, and it's March, so, duh! But I'm not talking the gentle, constant mist punctuated with the occasional showery downpour. No. it's been gale-force knocking-power-out winds, sheets of deluge, cold to the point of ice pellets. It's so soggy outside my chickens are screaming for little umbrellas. The cat has given me the middle claw repeatedly when I've suggested she pop outside and kill a sparrow or two, just to get her out of her funk.

And, as you all know, I'm a soccer mom, so that means hypothermic toes and fingers on the sidelines.

It also means that my quest for balance, healthy exercise, the eating of salads and so forth? In the toilet. Except for that heart rate-boosting 45 minutes a day at the gym where I don my ridiculously over sized purple Plattan headphones, and take my Spotify-fueled iPhone to the Elliptical. (Okay, I just realized that there are four words in that last sentence that didn't exist 10 years ago. Scary.)

Here's the problem though. I listen to the same damn music all the time and I'm getting really bored. I'm reaching out, guys. I need a new playlist! Can y'all give me your top workout songs? Extra credit if you have like max heart rate ones AND mellow cool down ones. I know, I'm asking a lot...

AWP Redux

My last visit to the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference was in 2007. Nobody was talking about YA. Blogs were an outlier. Facebook was for college kids. Twitter didn't exist. Don't even get me started on the absence of the "word" ebook. Amazon? Nobody was threatened by them then; Barnes & Noble were still referred to as Big & Nasty by the Indies.

Seems a fantastic futuristic pitch back then would have been a Sci/Fi set in 2012.

Of course, some of the same old, same old seminars were prevalent. Truth in memoir, POV, building a strong writing program, the connection between creative nonfiction and poetry, etcetera. The book fair was a vast and curious place that had to be experienced in increments lest participants (particularly middle aged female participants) fell prey to lethal hot flashes.

Chicago was its windy, flat early March self, ranging from 50 degree tolerable to flurries and bone chill. The Palmer House's Sistine Chapelesque lobby turned out to be my favorite place to hang out and visit with writing chums.

I finally met a group of women I've been buddies with online this last year--which was, I think, worth the price of admission. I also ran into old friends from grad school, and a woman I met back in 19fucking95 at the Prague Summer Writers' Workshop. Which really brought home the sense that the conference was replete with teenagers. Smart teenagers, but teenagers never-the-less.

The thing about this huge event that I both love and loathe, is the finding the gem in the chaos of an untended treasure chest syndrome. Seriously, my jewelry dish, with its knot of baubles, is an apt metaphor for my particular experience. Where are my favorite earrings? What ever happened to my strand of pearls? It was as though I were moving through my bling with fingerless hands--I felt slow, behind, quick-sanded. I felt anxious after settling onto a patch of floor behind a pillar once I finally decided on a particular seminar--wondering what I was missing in the Hilton down the street. Ill-prepared note-taking-wise, I ended up scribbling upon scraps of paper I'd found in my room, and on the backs of handouts from the yoga teacher in the hotel gym. It didn't help, I guess, that I sort of had this virusy, fluish thing going on the whole time.

Overall, it was like my trip last year to Disneyworld. I had four days and too many options. I was torn between trying to fill every minute with adventure and experience, and selecting a few peak options, and percolating my way through them. In the end, I did it both ways.

How about you folks? Do you like big, ambitious metropolitan conferences, or are you more of a cabin-in-the-woods with a book type?

Likeability and the Downton Daughters

Okay Downton Abbey fans, which daughter are you? Or, writers, which Grantham daughter are you most likely to build a narrative upon?

Sure, we all wish to have a little "icily beautiful" Mary running through our veins--the quintessential eldest child: giving off a cocky self-assurance -- but, what a price to pay with all of that moral turbulence and disappointment festering beneath the surface.

And, wouldn't we all love to be Lady Sybil, the young upstart who marches to her own beat with courage and tenacity? Ah--the blessings for the family baby. So much easier to sneak about when one's parents are utterly burned out with exhaustion.

But, alas, there is a bit of Edith in all of us, is there not? The passed-over middle child. The wallflower. The simpering, late bloomer.

If you have not yet seen this Downton Abbey likeability scale, get in step posthaste! It changes from week to week, though many characters seem to retain their degree of likeability across the board.

Likeability is one of those Achilles heels for yours truly. I tend to hear the voices of characters who tug on my heart strings. Like the unfortunate Edith, my narrators are often the unattractive underdog. They're my shadow figures, I suppose. Characters with cautionary tales and circumstances. They are quiet and fly-on-the-wallish rather than dynamic and vivacious.

These final drafts of my novels, if I had to isolate one big change, it was to turn my Ediths into Marys and Sybils. The process was a bit like being sober at a cocktail party full of drunks. Audacity and outrageousness are not second nature to my writing sensibilities, but, as witnessed by the Downton Abbey character scale, nobody wants to spend time with a sad sac. A breathtakingly gorgeous drama queen, yes. A Violet-type Dowager, absolutely! And look at the popularity of Anna the housemaid! The willful-yet-virtuous head maid has all but stolen the main storyline.

I won't say that I've completely succeeded in creating the ultimate likeable, memorable character, but I've learned how to push my Edith out into the crowd, force her to peel a canape off a tray without soiling her gown, and even capture the eye of leading man or two.

So, Dear Readers, where are you in the Grantham-Crawley character sphere? And writers, any of you willing to share your own trials, tribulations and character travails in pursuit of fiction worthy of dinner at the Grantham table?

on intimacy

My work-in-progress has this necessary, troublesome scene. A scene that Tom Spanbauer once taught me to see as the "horizontal" aspect of narrative. In my particular case, there are a bunch of characters having a formal dinner. Aside from marching the reader through a cumbersome occasion, the scene needs to convey multiple character interactions, introduce an important setting (the dining room) that will be revisited several times during the novel, and develop a few key relationships. There's also a chunk of backstory--which, as we all know, is like clamping a ball-and-chain to forward momentum.

My first pass at this scene left a residue of self-loathing so thick, it made me wish for a special sort of soap for writers. One that would cleanse the disgust from their self-concepts after they reread their shitty first draft pages. Lye would be a main component of the soap--and some sort of anti-fungus ingredient.

I'm always preaching to students and clients about cozying up to their characters, unpacking small moments. That old saw about God and the details. It always takes a while for me to follow my own advice.Typically, when I'm first looking at a scene where a lot of things are happening, I become a brain-on-the-wall. I think the scene through, filtering observation through intellect and distance. I am an anthropologist, observing and noting generalities in my moleskin. And then I become a psychotherapist, analyzing the reasons for behavior. Ergo, pages of expository blather.

I submit exhibit A (though, believe me, this is painful):

We had to earn a place at the dining table.  That came with age, decorum, and a willingness to be utterly silent, unless called upon.  I know that’s the cliché, the being-seen-and-not-heard part, but in our family, it was a game. 

Aunt Beatrice was the “server” on this occasion—the chore was split between the daughters, as the cook was busy with the children.  Ursula and I stood behind our chairs, as we’d been taught, waiting for Grandmother, my mother and Ursula’s mother, Candace, to sit down.  Aunt Beatrice placed the platters on the table, poured the wine, and then nodded for us to take our seats.

 That's the very opening of the chapter in an early draft. Starts out with an explanatory thesis sentence, and then goes on to explain who does what. There is reference to at least seven characters in these two paragraphs. The whole fucking thing reads like stage direction (get me that soap!). If you were my student and you gave me this paragraph, I'd be tracking "unpack" and "get closer to a particular action" all over it.

I've drafted this novel several times, and I'm pleased with many of its chapters, but this particular chapter continues to plague me with its formal language and circumstance. But. I'm getting closer. Now when I read the chapter, I am urged to reach only for the ginger-infused phosphate-free dish soap. Here's exhibit B:

The back of the dining chair cut into my sternum, but this was on purpose. I couldn’t shake the image of the Victorian anatomy model Grandmother had on display in the curio cabinet in the parlor. It had been a gift given to her father, and this summer Grandmother had decided the life-sized wax model with the bisected abdomen and long, braided hair should be visible to all as they sipped their toddies. The waxy woman was propped freakishly up by a rod in her back, her neck bent backwards, her eyes simulating recent death, and a section of her organs exposed. I pushed the rounded wood of the top of the chair back into me, imagining my own liver. Visualizing my very own dogcrap-brown organ, its rich, veiny lobes pulsing blood around, filtering out poisons. Meanwhile, Auntie Bea placed the platters on the table, poured the wine, and then nodded for us to take our seats, which we did, through the steam of the platters.

What I mean by "unpack" and "go smaller" is to find an action that illustrates a particular and unique aspect of the character. In this case, my main character--the one telling the story--is going inward while navigating the reader through the set up of the scene.Sure, it's a little shocking and grotesque (we are sitting down to dinner, after all!), but in evoking the Victorian anatomy model and the main character's liver, I hope to, literally and figuratively, expose her to the reader, and set up an intimacy with the reader that the other characters in the scene are not privy to. (That she's thinking about her liver is a secret between character and reader--nobody at the table knows this---yet.)

This intimacy is what Tom Spanbauer calls "the vertical" of the story. It's a plunge down and in, where the magic of the writer:reader relationship happens.We need a balance of horizontal and vertical to move through a book. The choreography is like dancing along a tightrope holding one of those ten foot poles. You want the audience to be holding its breath, not looking away, scared for you and for themselves. Disgusted and mesmerized and compelled to turn the page, but wanting to savor a passage. That's the ideal.

So, baby steps, yes? If you're so compelled, reach into your drafted work-in-progress, find an expository paragraph--one that begins with a topic sentence, and re-begin it. Use an action verb in the first sentence, rather than a concept or a declaration. See what happens.

This is fun, right?

wanna start something new?

I'm teaching a class over at LITReactor in a couple of weeks. It'll be a lot of fun. You should sign up!

the canary review

Just a quick "blowin' my own horn" sort of post today. I'm honored to be the featured piece in the latest issue of The Canary Review. Thanks to Melissa Reeser, too, who asked me the sort of smart questions that made me really come to grips with the impetus behind my book and the blog I started in concert with writing the book.

Nice way to start a Monday!

put a jar of Vicks on it

Regardless that Portland is the hippest thing since sliced tofu (even though Brooklyners beg to differ), when the end of January comes along it's always clear that I live in the valley of death. Oh, sure, there's a bit of Old Wives Tale in that adage about Willamette Valley's Native American translation, but if you look around at the pallid faces, the wadded Kleenex, the lines at the supermarket pharmacies--you'll have to concede that when it comes to prolonged post-nasal drip, the Pacific Northwest rules.

The stack of medicines in the photo? Currently, they are the regime of my husband, but we like to play "tag--you're it" with our winter crud, so next week, I'm sure it'll be me squeezing saline into my brain via clogged nasal passages. I'll be the one hacking up phlegm at 3 in the morning.

Ten years ago, I was writer-in-residence at Fishtrap. With two of my three kids, I ventured to the Wallowas for the winter to hole up in a riverside cabin to write and teach. Idyllic, yes? Well, sure, sort of. The writing, teaching and out-in-nature part was terrific. The not-so-terrific part was that my kids were sicker out there than they've ever been. Infections, febrile seizure-inducing fevers, trips to the emergency room via ambulance, cool compresses and hot toddies. There was this Little House on the Prairie feel, complete with aggressive deer that attacked us with their craven hoofs as we made our way to the minivan, my 2-yr-old swaddled in a quilt.

Thankfully, this neighborhood I live in now has a dearth of deer--aggressive or otherwise. (Though our local coyotes and raccoons take down the occasional backyard chicken.) What we do have is plenty of mucus. Less dramatic than toddlers and fevers, but annoying, gross, and tenacious. The plus side? More downtime (aka writing time). The silver-lining on winter blech is word count (but remember to wash your hands before touching your keyboard)!

hot girls don't write

Today I spent an hour with middle schoolers in a creative writing classroom. As the mom of a 7th-grader, I wasn't going in there cold. But still. Remember that line from Anne Lamott about why she never wanted to have a girl? Seventh and eighth grade, she said. Or something like that.

Being a 13-year-old girl--particularly a shy, bookish 13-year-old girl--is a special sort of hell.And it's a special sort of hell that continues to deliver once you've grown beyond the experiences of a 13-year-old girl and somehow, miraculously, find yourself a middle aged female writer. Ergo, the writing exercise I trotted in with and presented to Ms. Andronescu's class.

The prompt was: during lunch in a school cafeteria, there are three kids. A popular kid, a shy kid, and a best friend (of either the shy OR the popular kid). The shy kid has baked some cookies and wants to give them to the popular kid. The prompt was embedded in a lesson on POV, so I asked the students to write a paragraph using the third person, and then, write the same scene choosing one of the characters as the first person narrator.

I did not specify gender, but surprise, only one of the students chose to make the shy cookie-bearer a boy.  Most of the students eagerly read their accounts of bookish, shy girls tentatively approaching brazen popular boys with the carefully baked treats. They took care to describe wild heartbeats and skinny jeans and the plucky best friends who egged them on. And the boys in this particular class? One wrote that the shy girl had offered peanut butter cookies to the boy. He was allergic to peanuts and died before the end of the paragraph. Another boy wrote a sci-fi thriller in which a character was given an assignment to have a "crush." It was an amazingly detailed, voicey 3rd person piece, and the kid, I know, will have his potboilers lining bookstore shelves before he's thirty.

Last night, to prepare for my immersion in adolescent culture, over dinner I asked my son his opinion about the prompt. And, of course, I was fishing for information about the creative writing class itself (which, by the way, even if it were the only elective at the school, my son let me know, he would never, ever darken its door). I wondered if he knew any of the students, and what they were like. He didn't. And then he offered, "But I can guarantee you there are no hot girls in that class."

"Ex-cuse me?" I hammered back. "What makes you think that, Mr. Profiler?"

"Seriously, Mom, you have to trust me on this. Hot girls don't read and they don't write."

Okay, I admit, I'd had a glass of wine and my appropriate Mother-knows-best demeanor was a bit, ahem, askew. "For your information, lots of hot girls read. And my writer's group is filled with hot, um, women."

"Yeah, well, the hot girls I know aren't into that stuff."

"Okay, who would you rather spend time with, someone interesting and engaging and funny, or someone sort of boring, but really cute?"

"To spend time with, or kiss?"

"Huh?"

"Well, it makes a difference. If we're talking lip to lip contact, she has to be hot."

Now, my 12-year-old son is barely 85 pounds soaking wet. He's a little firecracker and, yes, he's garnered his share of freshly baked cookies (metaphorically speaking), but I still think of him as my baby--kissing? Where did that come from?

"I'll have you know that I would totally have been one of those girls signed up for Ms. Andronescu's creative writing class," I argued, while signaling the waiter for a second glass of wine. "I lived to read and write when I was your age."

He looked at me with his practiced smirk, beneath his ballcap, and he nodded. "No surprise there, Mom."

writers and branding: an interview with Julia Stoops

I am very pleased to introduce my colleague Julia Stoops, who not only designed the latest iteration of suzyvitello.com, but the first one as well. Julia and I have worked together on branding and web projects for a variety of artists and organizations over the years, and I’m thrilled that she agreed to talk about visual identity, and how writers can benefit from giving some thought to establishing a brand look and feel. Tonight she’ll join other writers for a reading at Portland’s Blackbird Wine Shop.

According to your tagline, you work with “changemakers” and “cultural innovators,” why do you like working with people and companies that fit that description?

I love working with people and organizations that are forward looking and inspired to do something innovative online. "Changemaker" and "cultural innovator" are pretty broad categories. They cover foundations and nonprofits that make direct, tangible contributions to social justice issues. They also cover creative professionals, such as writers, architects, musicians, and visual artists. Then there are the harder to define "special projects," such as ones I’ve done for research organizations. For instance, the site we made for antiquesamplers.org. In essence we created an online museum for a huge private collection of antique needlework samplers. It was exciting to come up with new ways in which these textiles, made by young girls hundreds of years ago, could be shared and analyzed online with a global audience.

How is your approach to web design informed by your career in visual art and your perspective as a writer?

I’m glad for the visual art background. Color theory, principles of composition, visual symbol, and art history all inform my aesthetic choices when I'm designing websites. And my time as a college teacher, designing and teaching new courses, gave me skills in creating systems of information communication where the parts can be independent but they also fit together to make a whole. And learning the craft of creative writing grounded me in the importance of the story, the big picture of the client's communication. I'm always thinking, how is this client’s story going to come across to others, particularly to the client's target audiences? And while I don’t do copywriting for clients, I have a facility for establishing the big picture of the brand and maintaining that vision through the months-long design/content/build process.

What do you see as the biggest mistake writers often make with their websites?

Many writers ignore the importance of establishing a visual brand, and their resulting websites look dull and uninteresting. They get done on the cheap, and the result is mediocre. Assuming a writer's work is wonderful, why promote it in a mediocre way?

Why should writers think about visually “branding” themselves? They’re writers, shouldn’t their words just speak for themselves?

The idea that writers' words should speak for themselves is, alas, not tenable in the 21st century. If it were true, books would still have the featureless covers they did a hundred years ago. Books remain a strong medium for entertainment and education, but getting your book noticed and bought means facing the reality that it is competing with film, television, podcasts, video games, and more. Information is cheap – it's attention that has become expensive. Well known writers with established fan bases can (unfortunately) afford to have mediocre websites, whereas lesser known writers have to work harder to stand out. The reassuring thing is that going for a strong visual brand does not detract from your writing. It's not like you have to change your work or make aesthetic compromises. A strong visual brand that is aligned with your vision can only enhance the perception of your work.

You just launched a website for your novel, Parts Per Million. Why did you choose to do a “novel” website instead of an “author” website?

Hmmm, good question! The honest answer is probably that I don't quite think of myself as an "author" yet. Sure, I write, but I'm not going to be comfortable with "author" until I'm published. Until then I'm an artist/designer who one day followed a crazy compulsion to write down a story that was stuck in her head, and after ten years of refinement, it’s ready to go out into the world.

Also, author websites make more sense when the author has more than one work. Or they teach writing or write book reviews or participate in some other tangible literary activity. And although I am working on a second novel, it's not ready to be talked about in detail. So at the moment I'm really just a one trick pony. It’s a big, complex trick, so it seemed better to make a website about the trick than about the pony.

And besides, there’s already a "portal" to my various other websites at juliastoops.com ;-)

Where is it all heading in the artistic website realm? More DIY? Less? Are you worried that you’ll be phased out as more and more laypeople have access to the tools of your trade?

DIY web technologies have revolutionized the ability for creative professionals with low budgets to achieve a web presence. It's become crucial to have a place of one's own on the web, to the point where even a mediocre website is far better than no website.

But I'm not worried about being phased out, for three reasons. Firstly, while everybody has access to DIY technologies such as WordPress, Carbonmade, and Other People's Pixels, what these technologies give you is templates. If you're fine with templates, then I say go for it. But if you want to customize your site, then you need to get past a steep learning curve to gain creative control over your site's structure, features, and design. I've known creative professionals who've made their own custom sites with a great deal of pulling out of hair and gnashing of teeth. If you have lots of time, and no money, then that is your path.

The second reason is that the DIY tools are just mechanical tools. They do nothing to help you bounce ideas around, identify priorities, clarify your mission, vision, goals, target audiences, long-term measurables, aesthetics, symbolism, fonts, color palette, and all the other details that do into brand development. There will always be a need for this kind of expertise.

The third reason I don't fear being phased out is that these days I do more brand development and design work with organizations than with individuals. With their multiple stakeholders, dependent deadlines, and complex goals, organizations don't want to soak up employee time learning DIY tools. They often also want a full service design agency, and they understand the value of having an outside perspective on what they do. Collaborating with an agency like Blue Mouse Monkey makes it easier for them to communicate their mission and value to the community.

Julia Stoops, a native of New Zealand, is a recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowships for Literature and Visual Art. She has experience in alternative radio news journalism and anti-war activism, as well as a background teaching media studies, art and philosophy.

Currently Julia runs the branding and web design company she founded, Blue Mouse Monkey. She is an alum of Portland's popular Pinewood Table writing critique group, and has just completed a novel, PARTS PER MILLION. 

in with the new

It really is a total coincidence that my new website launched as the ball dropped, but it works for me. Metaphorically, metaphysically and a whole bunch of other meta ways. I've been writing, oh, 42 years or so if you count my kindergarten scribblings, so if you go by the whole Deuteronomy thing, that's six big fat slate-clearing beginnings as a writer. My last website was conceived in 2005, so there you have it. I release thee. Done.

Last New Year's I had all this anxiety and do-or-die energy. I began the year with a pretty dramatic cleanse (no coffee or booze or sugar for a month!). Shortly thereafter, I wangled myself a terrific agent, I finished (or so I thought) my young adult book, I also finished another draft of my other novel. I taught classes, took on new work and clients, erased nearly 20K of debt, turned 50, and managed the usual family crises and hectic soccer mom schedule. I could not have accomplished any of those things without the help of my fantastic husband, my brilliant business partner, and, of course, my terrific, star-studded writing group.

2011was full of aggressive energy. We (Kirk, Carson and I) barely stopped moving the whole year. We capped it off with a rip-roaring party last night where we also managed to raise some money for the social service agency where my daughter works. Kirk and I were clearing up the beer bottles and plastic champagne flutes and piles of poker chips at 2:00 a.m., both feeling pretty self-satisfied. And exhausted.

So. 2012? I'm not going to move quite as fast. I'm gong to slow down and hunker in, and finish stuff. Make the things I've started as beautiful as I can. Fix what's broken. Nurture and nest and celebrate. Take lots of "next right steps." I hope. Today marks my transition from partner in a thriving communications business, back to independent contractor and sole proprietor of my little word-smithing enterprise.

Tomorrow my writing group will be over, and we'll do our annual spewing of intentions, which is something I personally cherish, but many of my colleagues do not. Show of hands: writing resolutions/intentions, good? Bad? Indifferent?

out with ye olde

So we're creeping up on the end of another jam-filled year and it's time to make some changes. Some years, I throw out all my underwear and buy new dainties to celebrate the turnover. Other years I fast. Once, I nearly burned down my house. But that wasn't on purpose.

In a few hours, I'll be saying good-bye to a little piece of myself. Nope, not getting a nose job. Or a divorce. I'm not euthanizing a pet. What I'm doing is, well, dumping my starter website for a new one. There, I admitted it. My hardworking, clever little flash pony of a website is going to that ephemeral corral in the sky, where it'll join other digital free agents (maybe there's a match.com for unattached websites? Think about it, an outerweb dating service?).

It really is dumb, what I'm doing, broadcasting this upcoming launch. It's worst practices to announce a website's birth before it's actually, um, born and has had its fingers and toes counted, but I'm thinking everyone's off on holiday, or watching basketball, or a movie, so, I'm doing it. Hard launching. Right here and now.

Poor Ira, my web developer, he's been laboring over this build--the new website is a bit of a princess (think, trophy wife), and she's given quite a headaches with all her frilly self-importance, but he's got her corset nearly laced, and sometime in the next 12 or 24 or 36 hours, the new suzyvitello will be unveiled. I hope.

So, farewell, little crab. I hope you meet someone really nice.

P.S. all you fans of the crab--the website's twin sister, wordsinahurry, is still going to be around, so you can get your flash fix.