Collecting Some More Material On Pinterest--The Bread Loaf Board

This year's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference starts today. Don't worry. I'm not going to bore you with another story about the great time I had working in the Bread Loaf kitchen back in the day. No, I'm going to link you to a Pinterest board collection of all my stories about the great time I had working in the Bread Loaf kitchen back in the day, as well as some never before published pictures.

You're not going to see photos like these anywhere else. Anywhere.

Time Management Tuesday: A Little Schadenfreude And A Little App

I went to writers' group last night. It was a particularly good session pour moi, but it took place during my blog-writing time. Since I haven't worked out how to be in too places at once, and, what's more, do two tasks at once, I don't have much of a TMT post this week.

What I can tell you is:

• Writers' groups are good for schadenfreude, that distastefully satisfying feeling you get when you hear that every writer you know is suffering from monkey mind this summer. 
• I am experimenting with a time tracking app! Yeah, man. Bet you've been wondering why I've never gotten around to discussing those. Well, you can look forward to hearing about one soon.

My Latest Faith Erin Hicks Read

I am a fan of Faith Erin Hicks' graphic novels. I love her distinctive artwork. Whether she's working by herself or with others, I'm attracted to her work.

The Nameless City is her latest book, and my favorite to date. It's a historical fantasy about two young people, one a child of the conquerors and the other of the conquered. I love the powerful women in this story. I love that the name of the city--"The Nameless City"--is an attempt to give some power to the subjugated.

I read this book over a month ago, and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to write about it sooner. I would have had much more to say. I can tell you that this first volume of a trilogy reads well as a stand alone, but definitely leaves me glad there will be more.

Where Has Gail Been All These Years?

Last year, someone suggested I do something with images from my work appearances. As it turns out, I do have some. But, unfortunately, not for everything.

So what did I do with the images I did have? I made a Pinterest board, of course.

CCLC Update--Karlin Gray At Stepping Stones

Mon., Aug. 8, Karlin Gray, Stepping Stones Museum for Children, Norwalk 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM.

What Did You Do This Week, Gail? August 1 Edition

Goal 1. Adhere to Goals and Objectives. Well...as much as I can when you consider I'm suffering from monkey mind.  Additionally, I finally figured out how to use the time tracking app I got a month or so ago. Will it help the monkey mind problem and encourage adhering to goals and objectives? You know I'll be telling you about that at some point.

Goal 2. Prepare Mummy Hunters for Submission. This was going to be the just one thing I was going to work on this week. I believe I worked on it once.

Goal 3. Generate New Short Work/Programs. I had a nice little nearly finished flash essay on my hard drive that I just needed an ending for so I could submit it to a contest. That became the just one thing I worked on this week. It's been written over and over. Still no ending.

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

5 blog posts since Sunday with promotion
Goodreads blog post
5 Goodreads reviews

 Goal 6. Generate New Work: Submitted the picture book to another editor. Began working on my story/essay idea a day project again.

A Few Picture Books From Last Winter's Reading

I read these three titles before I started my humorous picture book research. What I had in mind while I was reading these was the 3-year-old family member I often read picture books with. My experience reading with him twists my perception of these kinds of stories now. I'm always thinking in terms of what would he like, what would he be able to take in and appreciate?

The Red Hat by David Teague with illustrations by Antoinette Portis. This has striking illustrations in red, white, black, and lots of blue. The story has a little magical realism thing going. The wind keeps two children apart, making one of them work so they can meet. It's a good story, but is it a really young children's story?

Check out Elizabeth Bird on spot gloss, something I'd never heard of, and its use in this book. Now that I know about the spot gloss in these illustrations, that might be the catch for my young reader, if we were reading this together. I don't know if the story of two kids struggling to meet would grab him on its own.

Troto and the Trucks by Uri Shulevitz would be a hit with my picture book reader, simply because of the trucks. And while the story doesn't make a lot of sense to me, the little car overcoming all those trucks might work very well with him.

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena with illustrations by Christian Robinson. This one I picked up because I read an article about de la Pena that interested me. This is a story about a boy going somewhere with his grandmother after church and not feeling very enthusiastic about it. The elegance of the writing may be over my little reader's head. Though I have read that this book is for grade school age children, not three-year-olds. It's not meant for my guy, who likes looking at pictures of trucks. Though he prefers trains, to be honest.

Picture books cover such an array of age groups. Someone must be writing about that, right?

Last Stop on Market Street was this year's Newbery winner, by the way. I told you it was elegant.

Also, Market Street's illustrator, Christian Robinson, also illustrated Gaston and Josephine.

Reading "Poets & Writers" & "The Horn Book"

During Monkey Mind Summer, I am managing to keep up better with professional reading than I usually do. No, I don't know what that's about.

What to read in the July/August Poets & Writers

The four articles on literary agents. They make clear the value of agents and the array of things they can do. While I've known writers who didn't have these kinds of experiences with agents, this cover story describes the writer agent dream. Forget princes. "Some day my agent will come..."

How to Pitch Yourself to Bookstores: What Booksellers Want From An Author by Lynn Rosen. Oh, my gosh.

Superpowered Storytelling: What I've Learned From Writing Comics by Benjamin Percy. Favorite bits: Treating outlines like rehearsals  (Remember that, Gail) and "Every story is about the thing and the other thing."

Look What The July/August Horn Book Included!

On Sunday, a family member and I were talking about how there are a lot of childlit bullying books out there. It will be hard for a self-published bullying book, or even one from a small publisher, to get much attention.

"You know what I want to see?" I asked. "I want to see a bullying book from a bully's point of view. Do these people know they are bullies? Do they care?"

Well, the July/August Horn Book carries a review for Patrice Kindl's Don't You Trust Me? that doesn't make it sound like an actual bully book. But the reviewer does say it involves a protagonist who can "lie, cheat, and steal without sparing a thought for the impact on anyone else." The book is described as "a fast-moving tale of unapologetic self-interest." The word "amoral" is tossed in.

While Don't You Trust Me? may not be the bully book I was hoping for, it sounds absolutely refreshing.

Time Management Tuesday: Once Again...Sprint!

Monkey Summer Continues

We still have more birthdays, a family member's move, an out-of-state trip, and a surgery in the family coming up. And that's assuming nothing uninspected comes up.This kind of
thing always leads to a nice case of monkey mind for me.

Sprinting...working in a short spurt...has helped me in the past during high family times. So I've been working sprints recently. I plan to squeeze in twenty minutes here and there.

The beauty of sprinting is that it usually leads to a little bit of flow and the next thing you know, you've worked a half an hour, thirty minutes, or more. You've made a submission, found another new publication to follow, rewritten those first few pages...again.

Sprinting keeps me in the game when the rest of my life is in danger of overwhelming the game.

Yeah, I know. Enough with the game analogy. Go do a sprint, Gail.

Everything I Wanted To Know About Barbie

Let's get this out of the way. I am not a Barbie fan. I didn't have a Barbie when I was a child and don't remember caring. I don't even remember hearing about Barbie until my youngest sister got one. I do recall making her doll a red jumpsuit. That was back in the day when I sewed a lot of clothing, compared to now, anyway. But sewing for Barbie was a b-- ...ah... was difficult. Sewing those little tiny seams was hard! By the time I had children, I found Barbie kind of slutty. Yeah, I slut-shamed Barbie. When my younger son was invited to a little girl's birthday party, he instructed me to get her something for Barbie. "She likes Barbie." I walked up and down the aisle of the toy department in some store and kept saying to myself, "I can't buy any of this stuff." I finally got her some kind of a Barbie careers board game. That was the best I could do without feeling dirty.

So why did I read The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie by Tanya Lee Stone? Well, the book looked like a popular history of a pop culture...thing. I like a little history, and I definitely believe popular culture has significance. It deals with how we actually live. Additionally, Tanya Lee Stone is a pretty well-known New England children's writer whose work I hadn't read before. One, two, three reasons to read this book.

Fascinating Bookie Bits

 

• The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie begins with very interesting material about Ruth Handler, Barbie creator. Ruth comes up again at the end of the book. Nice bookending. Love when that happens.
• The Ruth Handler section is classic historical research. Then comes some original research. Stone reports on material she collected from former and sometimes present Barbie owners. I've no idea how, say, sociologists would feel about how this was done but it was very readable.
• My neighbor, Joan, did have a Barbie. Her big memory (fondest memory?) of playing Barbies with her friends is of...uh...well...in a word...dismembering...the dollies. According to Stone, that's a thing.

A Great Model For Student Writers

When my kids were in elementary school, I noticed that they rarely were assigned to read the kinds of things they were expected to write. They read novels, but they were expected to write short stories and, more importantly, nonfiction. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie would be a great model for student writers and student historians.

A Little Added Doll Attraction

This weekend while trying to find podcasts to listen to (I told you about that yesterday), I did find this nice little essay, You Play With Dolls, by Bess Winter at Black Warrior Review.  It seems appropriate to share it here.