Friday Done List October 31

This week involved mornings lost to a doctor's appointment, buying and taking care of groceries (which I try to do only twice a month in my desperate attempt to save time), and a telephone call appointment, which, of course, involved preparing for the call and post-call activity. All this came out of work time. 

I mention my loss of work time to my fascinating personal life, because it points out, once again, the value of a Done List. I hustled this afternoon to make a submission and get an essay started so I could put both items on my Done List. My week would have been far less productive without having knocked those tasks off.

Sadly, the letters I wrote to friends and relatives to include with Halloween cards do not count toward writing. Wait. Unless I can use something in one of those letters in an upcoming piece. Gasp! Also, I've started keeping a nature journal! I wrote a little bit in that last night. Could that turn into something some day? 

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received two rejections. Huzzah! That means I'm working!
• Resubmitted one of the rejected pieces.
• Found a publication I can submit a short story to if it is rejected by the publication that is considering it now. That is not negative thinking. That is planning.
• Tried to save and start using the short-form marketing spreadsheet Computer Guy made for me. Yeah, we need to do some work on that.
• Started an essay revision of my two ADHD adult character blog posts. By which I mean I have copied the blog posts into a Word document. Important first step before the cutting begins.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Wrote two blog posts on ADHD adult characters for ADHD Awareness Month. This took quite a bit of my available writing time this week, but I was very interested in the subject so there you go.
• Promoted both posts on Facebook and BlueSky. ADHD Awareness Month doesn't seem to have received much attention at either place.
• Spent a little time looking for short story writers on BlueSky.
• Did a Facebook post promoting some local book events coming up next month. That got more attention than ADHD Awareness Month.

ADHD Awareness Month: Still Looking for Adult ADHD Characters in Adult Books

With adult fiction dealing with ADHD characters there are two issues to consider: 1. Characters who are not intentionally created as being ADHD, readers see it in them. 2. Characters who are intentionally created as being ADHD. In my limited experience, there may be more of the first than the second.

Unintentional ADHD Characters

This is a matter of readers perceiving a character as ADHD whether or not the character is clearly identified as ADHD or whether or not the author intended to be writing an ADHD character. 

This Book Riot article, for instance, argues that Jane in Dread Nation and Ayoola in My Sister, the Serial Killer both have ADHD characteristics. I've read both books but before I became what I might call ADHD sensitive. Thus, I can neither support nor refute their characters' ADHDness. Certainly, these books were written in a time period when ADHD is recognized as ADHD and authors could be interested in creating ADHD-like characters, even if it wasn't discussed as such in the story.

But I've also found articles about characters in books from periods when the disorder must have existed and was even recognized within the medical world. But how much the general public and reading public knew about it is another thing. Were the authors modeling characters on people they knew with what we'd now recognize as ADHD characteristics? Were they intentionally creating ADHD characters, though they wouldn't have known that designation? 

Characters from older books who are sometimes believed to be ADHD-like include Sherlock Holmes and Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. But the character from an older book that I frequently saw listed as having ADHD qualities is Emma from Jane Austen's Emma. 

Unlike the Sherlock Holmes stories and Anne of Green Gables, I don't believe I've ever read Emma. I made an attempt this past month, but the characters in that thing talk a lot. They talk about the neighbors, primarily. I used to have to finish reading a book once I'd started it, but not anymore.  

However, I did get through, I believe, 18 chapters and found some of the material sited by readers who find Emma to be an ADHD character. 

• She has been meaning to read more since she was 12, has made lists, but another character says he has given up expecting her to do any reading. 
• When her mother died, a character says, Emma lost the only person who could cope with her.
• Emma describes having been interested in painting portraits a few years before but had given it up in disgust and not one painting had been completed.
• At one point, Emma herself describes how little she's able to maintain attention.

I find Emma to be incredibly elitist and overall unpleasant, which has nothing to do with these ADHD type characteristics. I'm not at all sure what Austen was going for here.

Authors With ADHD: More Unintentional ADHD Characters?

Adult authors with ADHD include Rebecca Makkai and Mary Robinette Kowal, both of whom were diagnosed as adults, after they were established in their careers. Kowal has a marvelous short video on ADHD and writing.  In a conversation with Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species) Kowal says "I think I'm writing all of my characters as ADHD characters, but if I were trying to write a character who is explicitly ADHD, I wouldn't actually know how, because that's just the way my brain works all the time."

Now I had read the first of Kowal's Lady Astronaut books a few years ago, before ADHD was something I was what you might say sensitive to. I have no recollection of seeing anything ADHD-like in it. But for this ADHD Awareness Month project I read her book Ghost Talkers.

Kowal writes alternative history, and Ghost Talkers involves an alternative World War I-era world in which the British government employes mediums to work with recently deceased soldiers who are trained to report back to them immediately after being killed in order to pass on information about what is actually happening during battles. On the very first page the main character describes having to try to struggle to maintain control during a work session.  "She tried to hold the awareness at bay, along with the dozens of other spirit circles working for the British Army." "...if she weren't careful that would pull her back into her body." There are references throughout the book to her being in danger of coming unmoored, in danger of losing her grip, and dealing with thousands of memories at once. At another point, one of the ghosts has to struggle to focus.

Was Kowal using ADHD characteristics to create characters and even plot? Is this something other ADHD authors may do? Or is this just a reader finding what she's looking for in a text? 

Intentional ADHD Characters in Romance

I've read, more than once, that romance writers have embraced ADHD characters. In fact, you can find ADHD romance lists. I found Portrait of a Scotsman, a historical romance by Evie Dunmore, on a couple of ADHD romance lists. 

Right away in the first chapter the main (wealthy, of course) character is concerned that she has gone to the wrong address. "Or perhaps she had done it again...She squinted at the address, then back at the house number with full attention." She struggles with impulse control in a gallery. "...she shouldn't touch it. She really should not." When caught touching something she shouldn't have, she says, "I had not meant to touch it." She later describes how she had failed to get her mail that morning and thus didn't know about a cancellation. In a discussion with the male lead, she says, "...there's the matter of my attention...It is either scattered or directed with an unnatural focus. I lose track of time when I paint, for example."

She, and her family, are aware of her ADHD, even if they don't have a word for it.

She is also clearly dyslexic, however. The two conditions do sometimes occur together. Having seen  doctors about her inability to write without spelling errors or keep numbers in the correct order, her family is finally told that it's not her eyes causing the problem, but a sort of "word blindness." This leads her father to fear there is something wrong with her brain. Her brain is considered odd within the family, though the male lead in the story recognizes early on her superior visual memory.

We don't see a great deal about her conditions over the course of the story, but I think what we do see is mainly related to dyslexia. Dyslexia is like the autism I wrote about earlier. Neurotypical readers feel they know what it is and can recognize it. That would make it easier to show in fiction than ADHD.

My short study of ADHD adult fiction has been as interesting as it's been disappointing. I'll definitely be looking for ADHD in my adult fiction reading in the future.

ADHD Awareness Month: Where Are the ADHD Characters in Adult Fiction?

I have reached the end of my reading for the Heritage Months that were recognized by the U.S. government prior to 2025.  The State Department only recognizes Black History month now. The former history months can be found at an archived web page.  

That left me free this month to read for ADHD Awareness Month. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting how the brain works. People with the condition sometimes identify as neurodivergent, because they think differently than what is considered typical or neurotypical. (Remember that. I'm going to use the terms  later and needed to squeeze them in early, sort of like foreshadowing but different.) ADHD has become an interest for me, because we have a family member with the condition. Thus, I have a dog in this race, so to speak.

These days, adult books are also an interest for me. This month I was interested in finding adult fiction relating to ADHD. I came up really short on that. 

In children's fiction, there have been ADHD characters for years. Since back in the day when it was called just ADD, in fact, if not earlier. Why can't I find much in the way of adult fiction dealing with them?

You've probably guessed I have a theory.

Theory Part 1. Children's Gatekeepers Love a Fictional Problem

Problem books are a definite thing in children's fiction. This may be connected to the belief that children's books should be instructive, something that goes back to the nineteenth century, anyway. If a problem is addressed in a book, child readers can learn about it. Huzzah!

I also used to see a theory that problem books are easier to teach than, say, anything else, meaning problem books would have a good chance in the educational market. And then the school library market. And the parent and grandparent market. All the markets that buy children's books so kids can learn something.

Now there are excellent reasons for including ADHD characters in children's books, whether or not the book is specifically a problem book. Representation for ADHD readers is one of them. Opportunities for readers without ADHD to gain more understanding of the condition is another. I am going to argue that ADHD characters can also have something unique and interesting to add to a work of fiction, something new I haven't seen over and over again because I've been reading so very, very long.

But those reasons for including ADHD characters also exist for adult fiction. So why have I found it so difficult to find ADHD characters in adult works of fiction?

Theory Part 2. Adults Are Our Own Gatekeepers 

We adults have a great deal more flexibility in choosing our own free reading than children do. No one is assigning us meaningful books to read or insisting we read from an approved list of improving titles. Fiction around conditions as conditions doesn't appeal to us that much. If we have a condition or disorder we want to learn more about, our first thought isn't a novel, but nonfiction written by a professional of some sort. 

There is a great deal of ADHD nonfiction for adults.  A great deal. So many nonfiction lists.

But the lack of representation in fiction is fascinating. Perhaps if adult readers wanted to see ADHD characters, they would appear?  A market would be born! But my guess is that after having spent their youths seeing treatment of ADHD in children's literature as a problem to cope with, neither those with ADHD or those without it are wildly enthusiastic about having to read more.  

Theory Part 2, Subsection A. Writers Don't Know How to Write ADHD.

But why aren't there characters with ADHD in books that are not specifically about ADHD? After all, other neurodivergent characters, and I'm thinking autistic ones here, appear in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and The Maid. (Both mysteries for what that's worth.) I've recently finished watching the wonderful French TV series Astrid et Raphaelle, a clever, even witty, buddy cop story in which one of the cops is autistic. So neurodivergent characters can be successful in fictional worlds.

I'm going to do some speculating here and throw out a guess that neurotypical audiences and gatekeepers believe they know the common characteristics of some types of autism--lack of eye contact and stimming, for instance, and sensitivity to sound. These happen to be characteristics that are relatively easy to show. 

Though knowledge of ADHD behaviors goes back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century, it became far more known among the neurotypical public around the 1980s. At that time, it was generally thought of as involving struggles to pay attention in school and impulsive behavior. Those general issues are harder to quickly use in a piece of fiction for adults than the issues general readers and writers associate with autism. In an adult book the results of having had trouble in school, something that happened in the past, or the results of being impulsive would probably be easier to work into a story than the real time school problems and impulsive behavior.

ADHD was also associated with children at that point in the late twentieth century. It appears to have taken the literary world a while to recognize that ADHD children grow up to become ADHD adults.

Or that ADHD can go undiagnosed until adulthood.

Perception of ADHD in the Twenty-first Century

These days a great deal more is known about what ADHD involves, things we so called neurotypicals had never heard of a few decades ago. In addition to the famous difficulty focusing attention and impulsive behavior we now know about:

• Hyperfocus--The ability to stay fixated on a subject or project for lengthy periods of time, which, yes, seems unexpected since superficially ADHD is seen as the inability to maintain attention. I've witnessed this.
• Sensory processing issues--This can involve any of the senses, including taste and smell. Connected to the eating problems in some people with ADHD? I've witnessed this, too. Though there are other reasons ADHD can be accompanied by eating problems.  
• ADHD paralysis--Sensory overload or overload from having too many options or tasks to complete, so the individual just shuts down. Maybe collapses on the couch. Yes, I've witnessed this.
• Anxiety--Anxiety is common in people with ADHD. I have witnessed this, too.
• Hypersensitivity to rejection/criticism--Or maybe even perceived rejection/criticism? Yes, yes, you've guessed it. I've witnessed this.

Those are just aspects of ADHD that my shallow knowledge of the subject has turned up. They could definitely be used to create unique, well-rounded characters.

In another post I'll cover some books I read in my attempt to find ADHD adult fiction, including older books ADHD readers look to to find themselves, a genre that is supposed to be taking the lead in including ADHD characters, and a little bit about some ADHD writers.  

Friday Done List October 23

I missed two days of work today to attend a family event--a pleasant one, not a funeral. I still have some cleaning up for that, because I don't travel lightly. And I have a lot of life things to do that I didn't do while I wasn't here.

What I'm getting at is that this is the kind of week when a Done List is really important. You can reassure yourself that you did something, no matter how small. Also, as the day for the Done List draws closer, you'll find yourself hustling to get a few more things done to add to it. An example? For goal one I resubmitted a story I might have wait until next week for but I wanted to look good on my Done List.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Submitted the humor piece I talked about for three weeks. Now four, because I'm talking about it now.
• Received rejection on that humor piece.
• Resubmitted that rejected humor piece to another site, one that I have never submitted to before.
• Believe I worked a bit on the book chapter being revised into a short story.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did some promotion for an essay published the end of last week.
• Did quite a bit of work on a blog post I hope to publish soon.
• Came up with another blog post idea! One that can become an essay to submit!
• Came up with still another blog post idea!

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Am considering a new agent to submit one of my books to. This came about within hours of me telling my cousin I wasn't doing that anymore, unless a name dropped into my lap. And that's sort of what happened.

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Title, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

• Made some notes on this. 

Friday Done List October October 17

Not my best week, but a Done List certainly makes clear that it could have been a lot worse. As it probably will be next week when I'm going away for an overnight.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Worked some more on revising a book chapter into a short story. You remember...I mentioned it last week?
• Also last week I told you that I'd nearly finished a second draft of a humor piece that I'd mentioned the week before. Three weeks. I think it's ready to submit, but I need to go make some bread, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow, because I don't like to rush these things. Three weeks!
• Finished the essay revision of two blog posts about Hispanic American literature.
• Submitted the above essay to Books Are Our Superpower.
• Oh, and look! It has been accepted. Well, that's gratifying.
• Did research for the short-form market project. One publication. I looked at one publication. It accepts flash shorter than I write now. But maybe I'll submit something in the future, because I did like what I had time to read there.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Wrote and posted a humor study blog post.
• Promoted the humor study blog post on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads
• Found an article on building up a BlueSky following. For what that's worth.
• Have just barely begun a new blog post.

Getting Serious About Humor: More Humor With Mystery

Timmossholder on Unsplash

I picked up The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer while browsing at a library, and I'm blogging about it now because I really need to get it back there. One of the book's blurbs described it as "riotously funny," and while I wouldn't go that far, main character Agatha Dorn is extremely drole in a bitter way that I enjoyed very much. 

In my inept study of humor writing I have found very few truly funny works of fiction. They tend to involve wry point-of-view characters and how they perceive what is happening in the story. Perhaps what I should learn from this is that humor in fiction is usually about character, not situation or plot.

Of another humorous mystery, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, I said, among other things, that the narrator's inner life contributed to the humor. The same is true of the main character in The Mystery of the Crooked Man. Agatha might argue that she doesn't have much of an inner life or much of a life at all, which ends up being far funnier than you'd think it should be.

Of course, any readers of mysteries, or at least any readers of a certain age who have been reading mysteries for a long time, are going to raise their brows at a main character named Agatha in a mystery novel. Agatha Christie has become as famous for being Agatha Christie, Mystery Author, as she is for being Agatha Christie the author of mysteries, if you follow my thought there. She's sort of transcended her work. 

Now that I think of it, you probably don't need to be a reader of mysteries to know who Agatha Christie is and to note the use of that unusual first name in a book. 

Here is an interesting bit from the The Mystery of the Crooked Man that casual readers may not get and is not a spoiler: Agatha Dorn is a museum archivist who is a specialist on an author from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction named Gladden Green. Gladden Green had a real mystery in her life, because she disappeared for a few days while at the height of her career and later turned up in a hotel. This all right out of the real life of Agatha Christie. In case I haven't been clear, Agatha Dorn is a specialist on a character modeled on Agatha Christie. And get this...Gladden Green's husband's name is Archie. Agatha Christie's husband at the time she disappeared was also named Archie. She got another one later.

Now, of course, none of this is particularly funny, but it is fun. Also, is it metafiction? I've never been one hundred percent clear on what that is. 

I'm obsessing.

I must say that I felt this book dragged a little in the middle in terms of plot and mystery. But then it came roaring back with one of the best mystery endings I can recall. I didn't see it coming, but it made perfect sense.

I don't know how Agatha Dorn can come back for another mystery, but I'm definitely onboard if she does.

 

Friday Done List October 10

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• A revision of my post on children's book blogging was published last Friday at Books Are Our Superpowers.
• Began a revision of a book chapter into a short story. I was going to do this, anyway, but am now revising it for a themed submission that I read about while doing some reading for the Market Research Project.
• Speaking of the Market Research Project, as part of that I did some reading on a publication and submitted a piece of flash fiction to it.
• I've been keeping track of the Market Research Project on a rough chart I made in Word. My Computer Guy made me a spreadsheet, which I now need to learn how to use.
• Did almost a complete second draft of a humor piece I mentioned last week.
• Did a little bit more on the Hispanic American Book essay I'm working on.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• 
  Did a post here on the children's book blogging essay.
• Promoted that blog post as well as the original essay.
• Joined a new (for me) women writers Facebook group, because you can't belong to too many Facebook writing groups.
• A friend found a copy of My Life Among the Aliens on display in a New Hampshire school library. Yeah, I've been sharing that, both on Facebook and BlueSky.

A Story Behind the Story with Childlit Blogging. Also, How Are Things Going at Medium?

Robyn Budlender on Unsplash

Last week I revised Still Another Childlit Blog Gone into pretty much another essay, A Passion for Children's Books, which was accepted by and published at Books Are Our Superpower on Medium. 

I may be wrong, but I believe I've mentioned here before that using the same material in different ways for publication in different places is a classic freelance writer method of generating work. Also, Medium is open to its writers republishing their own work, so I could republish my Original Content work there, anyway. I think there are people who republish their Substack work at Medium and vice versa.

I do this kind of thing primarily with my Heritage Month posts. It gives me an opportunity to expose the books and writers I'm writing about, and yes, me, further than I could do just with the blog. It gives me an opportunity to promote all of us again on BlueSky and perhaps Facebook and my Goodreads blog. 

I also end up doing more thinking about my subject. When I first started doing this, I just did a little tinkering before submitting to Medium publications. My rewrites have become more and more involved, especially if I was combining and compressing more than one Original Content post. I'm embarrassed to say that it's almost as if the Original Content material is the first draft. 

And How Is Doing This Working Out for You, Gail?

Except for a few humor pieces, most of my submissions to Medium publications this year have been revisions of this type. I'm avoiding going to the work of creating brand new pieces for submission there, because readership is so low. The only time I do well there is if an accepted essay is nominated by the publication's editor and selected by the mysterious upper beings for what is called the Boost Program. This happened a couple of times this year, most recently with When the French Canadians Came to Town. In that situation, Medium gives articles more promotion, and there is the potential for many more readers, which can mean making more than a dollar and change for your writing. But you can't expect this to happen. I've had 14 articles or humor pieces published at Medium publications this year with 3 boosted. Of the other 11, six had so few readers that I made less than a dollar each on them. I did better than that a few years back. Now breaking a dollar is good news.

Therefore, this year I'm trying to spend more time submitting to literary journals, which so far has resulted in a piece of flash fiction, What We Do, being published in Stonecoast Review. Literary journals often don't have broad readership, either, and they often don't pay, so that doesn't seem a big gain over Medium. However, publication in literary journals may be better than Medium in terms of status, since they have more rigorous gatekeepers monitoring acceptance and are likely to have more professional editing. That means they could be better for building/maintaining a career. 

So while I'm not through with Medium by any means, my five-year Medium experience suggests it's not a place where I should be submitting all my work.

Friday Done List October 3

Got a bit of a bounce back this week, in part because of found time due to a family cancellation. Good thing, because a number of personal things are coming up next week. 

 Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received a cancellation, on my birthday no less. But it was the end of the day.
• Watched a video of a Zoom writing workshop I hadn't been able to attend live. It was disappointing.
• Finished a draft of a piece of flash fiction. Will sit on it for a while, because everything improves after being sat upon.
• Did a little on the Market Research Project, which led to...
• ...Submitting a piece of flash nonfiction.
• Finished a draft of a humor piece. It needs some tinkering.
• Started an essay combining my two Hispanic American Heritage Month posts.
• Revised the post I did on Jen Robinson's Book Page and submitted it to a Medium publication.
• Did a little more on the Market Research Project. This was for a publication I didn't care for. The two stories I started to read were readable but depressing and dull. Updated my notes with that. 

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did a blog post on Jen Robinson's Book Page disappearing.
• Promoted the Jen Robinson post on Facebook and BlueSky.
• Worked on getting a few more followers on BlueSky, which meant following a few more. This is more than a pointless vanity project, because I'm developing a "literary bubble" at BlueSky in which I'm seeing links to articles and books that interest me. Almost more than I can read, in fact.

Still Another Childlit Blog Gone

Jen Robinson's Book Page, one of the more notable childlit blogs from the early 2000s, disappeared from the Internet on Tuesday, September 30. Typepad, the blog's host, has shut down and any blogs it supported are gone, too. 

When announcing this on Facebook a few days ago, Jen said she hadn't been posting regularly over the last few years, which is the case with many literary blogs, particularly those dealing with children's literature. Ms. Yingling has been blogging independently since 2006. Betsy Bird's A Fuse #8 Production began the same year, but has been part of School Library Journal for a long time now. There are a few others still out there, but many children's litblogs just disappeared with little fanfare. 

When Julie Danielson ended 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast in 2022, I addressed the incredible amount of time serious blogging takes. Jen Robinson was a serious blogger. In Julie Powell and the World of Blogging, I suggested other reasons litblogging, in general, is a shadow of its former self.

Jen's Facebook announcement of the disappearance of her blog brought 90 comments discussing the early days of children's litblogging. (In those early days of children's litblogging, we talked a lot among ourselves. All of that would have been in blog comments.) Substack came up, which is usually described as a newsletter site. I posted about Medium.

"Medium is often described as a blogging platform, I think because of the ease of use and because people are encouraged to post a lot there. But a lot of publications are created there, and the material published in those seems more like articles than blog posts, possibly because there is usually a gatekeeper. Plus, the platform is just so overwhelmed with tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of writers, many setting themselves up as authorities in all kinds of things. There definitely is not the feeling of the early blog era--the salon-type feeling, the exploration."

A Greek philosopher (Heraclitis--I just looked it up) said something about not being able to enter the same river twice, because the water in the river has passed on, you're entering new water. Meaning life, like rivers, never stays the same. I'm glad I was there for childlit blogging's wild west period, but I also recognize when it's time to move on. 

I will pause in my moving on, though, to direct you to this pdf we created of a blog tour stop I made at Jen Robinson's Book Page in 2008 in support of what may end up being my last children's book, A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers. Why, yes, that does make this all about me, doesn't it? What did you expect? This is an author's blog that exists to support my work, making it different from Jen Robinson's Book Page, a children's literature blog that existed to support that genre and its readers.

If you take a look at that blog post, you'll see that she didn't set that thing up as a traditional author interview with brief questions that I would go on and on about. This was a conversation, and Jen's contribution was at least as important as mine. Her side of the discussion shows her breadth of knowledge of the genre we were talking about. It also suggests that she assumed her readers would either know what she was talking about or want to know it.

I think Jen Robinson's Book Page represented the high end thought and writing that went into the best of children's book blogging back when children's book blogging was new.

Friday Done List September 25

This was a week in which I felt I was struggling with work. My Done List makes me feel a little
better.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

Watched the video of a workshop I couldn't attend last week, because I've stupidly signed up for a tai chi class held when it was live on Zoom. 

Signed up for the next workshop in the series. Will have to watch it later, because, again, I'll be at tai chi. 

Checked out two publications for the 2025 Market Research Project. Liked Ninth Letter's web content.

Started an essay reworking two blog posts.

Started a new humor piece.

Have a short story in mind for revising for a themed submission.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

Wrote and published a post for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Reposted the Hispanic Heritage Month material to my Goodread's blog.

Promoted the Hispanic Heritage Month post at Facebook at BlueSky.

Have two new blog posts in mind for next week, one of which I've actually started.

The Heritage Month Project: "Night at the Fiestas: Stories" by Kirstin Valdez Quade

Last week I discussed Junot Diaz's The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao as part of my Hispanic Heritage Month observance. I feel I should point out that I am aware that seven years ago he was the focus of claims regarding inappropriate behavior toward several women writers. As a result of that issue at that time, writer and critic Monica Castillo tweeted "Because I need/want to deal with this Junot Diaz news in another way, can we signal boost some Latina authors out there?" And that led PBS to run the article Sexual misconduct claims against Junot Diaz have sparked support for Latina writers. Here’s who you should be reading now. 

That is how I came to find Night at the Fiestas: Stories by Kirstin Valdez Quade, a book of very fine short stories. They are all set in the southwest, many around Santa Fe, with Hispanic families/culture often part of that setting. This raises a question for a lifelong New Englander: Am I being exposed to a world I know nothing about? Or do I know so little I can't recognize whether or not I'm being exposed to a world I know nothing about?

But I obsess.

I will admit that though I found these stories highly readable, I often wasn't clear about the endings. Now this is an issue for me when reading short stories, anyway. Endings are a factor for me when writing short stories, too. Could my lack of ending knowledge be keeping me from finding publication homes for more of my short stories?

I continue to obsess.

Let's Talk About Some of These Stories

When I looked over these stories a second time in preparation for writing this post, I noticed a couple  things that I wasn't aware of during the first read.

• Religion plays a part in a number of them. In Nemecia, the main character has an opportunity to lead the procession at the annual Corpus Christi festival, an opportunity her creepy cousin Nemecia snatches from her. In The Five Wounds a pretty poor excuse for a father is playing Christ in a local Passion Play. In Family Reunion, an atheist child wants to convert to the Mormon faith. In Ordinary Sins, a young, single woman pregnant with twins works at a local Catholic church office.
• Family trauma turns up in many of them. In Nemecia, Nemecia is living with the main character's family because of something that happened in Nemecia's past, something the narrator only knows about through what creepy Nemecia tells her. In that one, childhood trauma spreads. In The Five Wounds the poor excuse for a father is seeking redemption for forsaking his child, realizing that the child his daughter is carrying is going to suffer pain from that, too. The Guesthouse is your classic family trauma instigated by a death. And in Family Reunion that atheist child I mentioned is the daughter of an alcoholic father and thus recognizes that something is wrong with the Mormon family she has become attached to.

Family trauma isn't something I'm usually a fan of in my reading, but, as I said, I did like these stories.

Other Favorites

• Mojave Rats. A woman is trapped in trailer park with her children while the furnace is broken. She insists to herself that they aren't like the other people there. They will be leaving. Readers may have their doubts.
• Night at the Fiestas. This story is clearly set in the fifties or sixties, which I found novel. I also liked it because I found the main character unlikable. Writing workshops/how-tos often insist that main characters must be likable, because readers won't relate to them otherwise. I've never agreed with that, and I found this story particularly memorable because of this main character who wants to escape her world and doesn't mind a little theft to help her do it.
• Jubilee. The daughter of a Hispanic man wants to hate his Anglo employers, the Lowells, which is an old New England upper class family name, in case I am the only person who noticed.  Do they deserve it? Another main character who's not all that likable. 
• Canute Commands the Tides. A New England artist moves to Santa Fe, with little understanding of what's there or what she's doing there. Her move has a bad impact on the painting she's working on "Canute Commands the Tides." Should we stay in the culture that made us? I particularly liked this story because the artist moving west is from my part of the world. I can see this woman. Also, I was familiar with the Canute Commands the Tides story, though with a different spin than the narrator of the story gives it. Canute was not a foolish old man. He was making a point to his followers who had been sucking up to him. No, he could not command the tides. If I had all the time in the world, I would read this story again to work out Canute's place in it. Also, there are two women here with adult children, something I should probably think about more. 

Another Interesting Work from Quade

The Five Wounds is Kirstin Valdez Quade's first novel and picks up on the characters and world she introduced in her short story The Five Wounds. I love when this kind of thing happens.

Friday Done List September 19

I was so overwhelmed with family events last Friday that I forgot to post this. Here it goes.

We have a family event this weekend--the bulk celebration of 9 birthdays--preparation for which cut into my work week. Yeah, I have trouble with priorities. What I did do was try to concentrate on small things that I could do here and there and that might put me into a good position to get back to work next week. It's been a struggle.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Reread that flash draft I finished recently. You know, if you spend time reading and studying flash, you start seeing all kinds of words and phrases that seem superfluous. In fact, they seem a burden.
• I made a chart to keep track of the short form market research I'm supposed to be doing. I discovered that I hadn't submitted a humor piece that I thought I had submitted. This could inspire another blog post.
• Submitted the humor piece I'd forgotten about. (See above.)
• Started reading another lit journal for the market research project.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Picked up on The Heritage Month Project again after a month and half when there were no Heritage Months formerly recognized by the U.S. We're talking a Hispanic American Heritage Month post.
• Brought my Goodreads reading challenge up to date. I've met my goal!
• Updated my Goodreads blog with a repost of my first Hispanic American Month post.
• Skeeted a link to the Hispanic American Month post.
• Just barely began two blog posts.

The Heritage Month Project: "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz

Hispanic Heritage Month, one of the heritage months recognized by the U.S. State Department prior to 2025, runs from September 15 to October 15. For those of us very focused on traditional classifications/designations of time, mid-month to mid-month seems...wrong. However, a number of Latin American countries observe their independence days on September 15 or soon thereafter, so think outside the box, Gail.

I must admit upfront that in the past I associated Hispanic American literature with my back-in-the-day book discussion group. The books by Hispanic authors I read for book group I found difficult. Deep. Maybe stylistically outside my experience. Very literary? The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos--There were only a couple of sentences in that book that registered with me, and they both dealt with Desi Arnez, who I had some previous knowledge of. Even the movie was lost on me. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez--that's pretty dramatic original material and all I could tell you about it is that everyone...... Well, that would be telling you the ending, so I won't. I think we read some magical realism, which is a big deal in Latin American literature and after that I avoided that genre. Even if you take the attitude that magical realism can exist in writing from nonLatin American writers, and I've heard that some people don't, I tend to avoid it now. Be magic...be real...be one or the other. 

In short, I wasn't looking forward to my Hispanic Heritage Month reading. But things have gone really well.

I Found Oscar

I cannot recall what led me to look into author Junot Diaz's work, other than I'd heard his name. I often say I can't recall why I read this or that, and it isn't because of some kind of mental lapse. Though would I recall it, if it were? No, it's because I juggle reading a great many things, as well as thinking about them. 

Pardon me for obsessing.

I became aware that Diaz has published in The New Yorker, and flash fiction, too! I could get a short sample, and I did with the lovely The Books of Losing You.

And so I went on to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I think I chose because it was available at a library I was in. Yes, I have crap reasons for reading the things I read. I shouldn't even mention them.

This is not one of the Hispanic-related books I was used to, even though it has markers of what some people would think of as a "literary" book. The story moves around a number of twentieth century periods, and a number of points of view. Much of the book has a narrator who remains unknown for a while. (He's Oscar's college roommate and his sister's sometime boyfriend.) There are footnotes. There's a lot of Spanish. There's what might be a curse.

On the other hand, though, there is Oscar, a sad, Dominican-American nerd who might be living under that family curse and who wants love so badly. His story is extremely engaging. Of course, everyone who has watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory thinks they know nerd culture. Oscar Wao reads as if author Junot Diaz really knew it back in 2007 when his book was published. Or I should say, knew it in the '90s, the period when Oscar was living. Who doesn't love a nerd, wherever he comes from?

A Little Bit of What We're Dealing With Here

A lot of footnotes. Footnotes were a thing in fiction for a while. I have a family member who intensely dislikes them used that way, but I enjoy them. I liked what Diaz did with them here. He uses them to explain the Dominican Republic world that earlier generations of Oscar's family lived in under the Trujillo regime there. I had actually heard of Trujillo, probably because I'd read In the Time of the Butterflies, which Diaz mentions. Meaning I got something out of that book. I realized he was bad news, but I couldn't have told you what country in which he was bad news. Meaning I didn't get very much out of that book. Diaz places the bulk of his Trujillo history in footnotes, but he handles that history with wit. Could readers skip the footnotes, which is probably what many readers of nonfiction do with footnotes there, and still get a story in Oscar Wao? Probably, but the footnotes are fantastic. It's hard not to compare our own times to the Trujillo era, which most readers probably weren't doing in 2007 when this book was published. As grim as things are now, they are not Trujillo grim.

A lot of Spanish. I've read that there are some objections to the amount of Spanish in this book. I don't feel you had to understand it to follow the story. What's more, this is a story about Spanish speaking people. Wouldn't a book about Spanish-speaking people with little or no Spanish be a book about Spanish-speaking people for nonSpanish people? What am I trying to say here? Would it be a book about Spanish-speaking people that English-speaking people would be comfortable with? I read a book about Spanish-speaking people but they weren't Spanish enough to speak Spanish? 

I have to admit, though, that I did wish the Spanish was French. Because I study French, de temp en temp, and I would have looked up what I didn't know, and my French would have improved so much! So I was patient with the Spanish. Someone's Spanish probably improved as a result of reading this book.

The curse. I am not a fan of curses, but this one provided a connection between characters. It was a sort of storyline. A recurring theme, perhaps.

In short, there is a great deal to like about this book.

Has Oscar Influenced Another Book?

Earlier this year, I read The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao brought it back to mind. The books' titles are similar, both in terms of how they're structured and in terms of them tipping readers off to the fates of the main characters. Both books deal with an ethnic group in America, Dominican Americans in one case, Franco-Americans in the other. Both make use of a language other than English in the text, Spanish for Oscar Wao and French for Babs Dionne. (There's far more Spanish in Oscar Wao than there is French in Babs Dionne. I'm going to make a wild guess here that Diaz is more fluent in Spanish than Currie is in French, but that may just be me overidentifying with another Franco-American author.) In Oscar Wao we have the nightmarish Trujillo back in the Dominican Republic. In Babs Dionne we have a pretty terrifying criminal back in Canada. Both books also have a touch of the supernatural. In Oscar Wao there is that curse. In Babs Dionne there is a character who suffers from hallucinations in which she communicates with the dead.

I should be writing an undergraduate paper, shouldn't I? 

Yes, my Hispanic Heritage Month reading is off to a good start.

Friday Done List September 12

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received a rejection for an essay, found another publication for it, and resubmitted. 
• Writers' Workshops Aren't Just For Those With Time and Money published at New Writers Welcome! This is another compilation and revision of material originally used here.
• Finished a draft of a short story. It's a second draft, actually. I did the first one maybe a year or two back.
• Worked on a second short story.
• Attended a flash writing workshop.
• Changed that draft as a result of the writing workshop.
• Just barely began some humor thoughts.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• A blog post last weekend.
• Worked on the next Heritage Month post
• Finished some reading for Hispanic American Heritage Month.
• Picked up some books from the library for other months coming up.
• Promoted new essay publication at Facebook and BlueSky.

Goal 3. Submit book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Went over a list of four agents I was thinking of submitting to. One had little web presence. A couple I didn't feel right about, and they were closed to submissions. I submitted nothing.
• Read To Go Big or Come Home by Tom McAllister about his experience publishing with traditional publishers and then trying to find an agent post publishing. It sounded very familiar to me. Confirms my feeling that I want to go short-form writing now. Though, like McAllister, I wouldn't walk away from a book offer.

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Name Now, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

• Made some notes

The Weekend Writer: Some Query Letter Critiques

I just stumbled upon author Mindy McGinniss' blog in which she critiques query letters. This is interesting stuff, at least as far as I've read.

McGinness is the author of The Female of the Species, which I liked. A lot.

Friday Done List September 5

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor  

• Worked on a flash fiction piece I started quite some time ago and began revising last week.
  
• Watched Creative Academy's interview with Mary Robinette Kowal about writing short stories, as part of my short story study. This was so good.
• Submitted a short story to a lit journal.
• Rewrote some blog material into a piece to submit to a Medium publication.
• Submitted to Medium publication.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

•  Weekend Writer post. Promoted on Facebook and BlueSky
• National Book Festival post. Promoted on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads.
• Watched Authors' Guild Foundation's How and Where to Find Your Readers with Andrea Guevera, who really did offer a different spin on branding/marketing, which is why I'm trying to get active on my Goodreads blog again.
• Continued reading for Heritage Month Project.

National Book Festival Is This Saturday, September 6

During the height of the pandemic, the National Book Festival was fully on-line, and I "attended" a few events. This was one of the pandemic activities that opened me up to the incredible possibilities for readers and writers on-line. Yes, I know I was just writing about this yesterday. It was life changing, okay?

This year's festival  is this Saturday, one day instead of three, as it was in 2020. During that one day you can still do some live streaming, and videos of all the speakers are supposed to be available after the festival is over. 

Oh, look! The videos from last year! If I had all the time in the world, I'd watch the one on the history of community cookbooks. Yes, seriously, I would.

Here is the list of authors' presenting. Children's writers are well represented. My favorite historian will be there. It appears that all authors have a resent book that is being featured, in case you see some favorite writers there and want to see what they're up to.