The Betting Window Is Closed

I made one thousand words by noon and eighteen hundred for the day.

I've been hitting the thousand word mark a lot lately, in spite of continuing to surf and play spider solitaire. I'm not at all sure what's working for me, though I have a theory. Too soon to expound on it.

Will Gail Meet Her Goal Today?

Okay, today I have my two guys upstairs working on my ceilings, another guy doing something to my driveway, and a family member out mowing the lawn. Perhaps all this activity won't distract me. Perhaps all this hard work going on around me will inspire me to greater than normal efforts.

It could happen.

Place your bets now.

Cannot Be Folded, Stapled, However It Goes

I tried to find out my blog's film rating, the way all my blogger friends are doing, and got this message: "We were unable to fetch and rate the URL you entered."

I take this as meaning that I am beyond rating. I cannot be categorized. I am a totally loose cannon. The rating system has never seen anything like me.

Last night I also had a dream that I was going to some kind of school reunion. I arrived late, knew no one, and couldn't find my room.

I take this as meaning...ah...um... ... Wait!...It means I go my own way! Yeah! That's it! I was the totally cool loner!

What a relief. I was afraid I was at the wrong place.

Staying On Task

I fell only four words short of my goal today, which is really quite remarkable when you consider that there are two strange men upstairs doing all kinds of noisy things to my ceilings. That's not the kind of environment that I usually find at all productive.

Unfortunately, some of those thousand words were revisions of earlier work, so I can't say I've moved forward a great deal.

I realized today that I had done something that editors have picked up on in my work before. I sometimes wander. I sometimes will do these lovely scenes and bits that really are not at all related to the subject at hand.

For instance, if you want the family's summer camp to be this beautiful, meaningful spot, you really shouldn't veer off to talking about swimming lessons at the state park.

On The Other Hand

Just yesterday I said, "I find that if you can get deeply emerged in a writing project, material comes to you. It's all very mystical and mysterious."

Well, if you're not deeply immersed in a writing project the material won't come. You might as well go iron clothes or paint your living room. At least you'll see something for your time and effort.

On Monday I finished Chapter Five of The Durand Cousins. It was probably the fifth work day in which I broke a thousand words, which I've probably mentioned here before is about as good as it gets for me. (One day I did 1800 words.) Then yesterday I didn't work at all because I needed to take care of some life maintenance. Then this morning I had to go hiking for three hours, which left me quite drained, if not actually staggering, because it was 90 degrees out here. And not a dry, pleasant 90 degrees, either.

So I finally get back to the computer this afternoon and spend vast quantities of time avoiding work by checking my e-mail a dozen times, checking out the news services, etc. When I finally force myself to attend to the task at hand, not only am I not deeply emerged and receiving material in some mystical and mysterious way, I realize that the end of Chapter Five won't work. It doesn't fit technically and it's probably sappy, too.

The chances of my becoming emerged before next week are not great.

Waily! Waily! Waily!*

*The Wee Free Men

Recycling

Last November, I planned to take part in National Novel Writing Month and go to town on the new book that has since become The Durand Cousins. I got a little sidetracked by The Cybils, but the two things--my work as a sci-fi committee panelist and my work on the new book--came together.

I was reading all this fantasy/scifi and thinking about it and thinking about an initial and very fundamental problem I was having with the new book, which has some scifi elements. Then one day I was driving along, doing nothin', and I had one of those breakout experiences I'm always talking about.

I realized I could use the set-up from a book I'd started back after I got out of college and never finished.

So I'm still working on the same manuscript, though things are going much better now. (Except for this week. This week is going to be a bust.) I was out for a walk a couple of days ago, in the morning, I think, when I realized right out of the blue that with the direction I was going in now (with the manuscript, not the walk), I could use some material from a short story for adults that I'd written a number of years ago and never published. Or, at least, I could use the setting. The sensibility, if you follow that.

My point being, people, nothing is ever wasted.

More seriously, though, I find that if you can get deeply immersed in a writing project, material comes to you. It's all very mystical and mysterious.

That Was A Close Call

Today I received an e-mail from an editor apologizing for not getting back to me for so long and saying that they'd just discussed my query recently. They thought they might be interested in the article in the future and were keeping me in mind but if I had a chance to publish it elsewhere, go for it.

I sat there in front of my computer monitor and thought, Hmmm. What do you suppose that's about?

Well, as it turned out, I'd queried these folks back in February regarding an article I was interested in doing on humor for kids. I had given a talk on that very subject but I had not yet written the article I was offering them. Editors don't exactly fall all over themselves to publish my nonfiction, and I thought it would be very foolhardy of me to use good time I could spend writing other things that wouldn't sell if I couldn't find someone who was at least interested before I got the ball rolling.

When I never heard from these people, I just took it as rejection. Rejection rolls off from me like water off a duck. I can barely tell anything's happened. In fact, when I never heard from these people the only thing I can recall thinking was, Well, Gaily, you called that one correctly. Good for you.

So when I saw who this e-mail was from, I had sort of an odd reaction. 1. You don't suppose they actually want this article, do you? 2. Crivens!* Now, I might have to write the thing!

As it turns out, this was rather a nice response. They may want it in the future, but I don't actually have to do anything about it any time soon.

*I'm reading The Wee Free Men.

How About A Reading Retreat?

Jacqueline Davies, who is all over the place this summer, has an article in the May/June issue of the SCBWI Bulletin called When in Doubt: Retreat!

I've toyed with the idea of attending a writers' retreat, just as I've toyed with so many other things--attending a writers' conference or graduate school, for instance. But the problem with doing any of these things is that they might be too much work. And I might have to do things I don't want to do. Plus the business about too much work.

After reading Davies' article, I got to thinking about things I'd like to do on a retreat, and I realized that reading was high on my list. (I still haven't given up on finding a job reading that pays and provides benefits.) And then I thought, why not just set up my own retreat for reading?

This is actually more practical than it sounds. I am overwhelmed with stuff to read. I've got piles of it around here. A lot of it is what I consider professional reading--a book of essays because I'm interested in writing same, a couple of books on writing that a young relative brought home for me from college (They're virtually untouched--hmmm.), writing magazines I've started and never finished, things I've downloaded from the Internet.

This past winter I set up a system in which I set aside Thursdays for reading. I had a class in the morning and another late in the afternoon, so I just spent the intervening time working on this serious reading. That was okay for a few weeks, but what often happens to me is that I end up losing workdays for life maintenance (scavenging for food, shopping for family events, cleaning for guests) or for dealing with sick relatives, medical appointments, etc. And, uh, going hiking. Long weekends. Whatever. Then I really need those Thursday hours to write.

I also tried to do a little professional reading every morning before getting started work. That was lovely for about three days. Then I realized it was cutting into my Internet surfing and gave it up.

So now I'm thinking about going on a reading retreat every two or three months. I have a sunroom, after all, and even though its windows haven't been washed for two years, it would be a decent retreat space in good weather. I have a woodstove, which is a necessity for reading in the winter.

I'm serious about trying this, but I can already foresee a problem. If I schedule a reading retreat day and end up losing time from work that week because of any of the reasons given above, I'm not going to feel I can sacrifice more time for reading. But I will be positive and believe that everyone will remain healthy, no vehicles will break down, and my hard drive (which often sounds very odd) will continue to limp along.

And this new schedule will be just the thing I need to make me absolutely brilliant and productive.

Or You Could Wait For The Movie

Mark Peter Hughes has his Lemonade Mouth Across America blog up. Look what those maniacs did to their minivan. On Tuesday afternoon, NPR is going to be running another one of his commentaries on All Things Considered. I'm sure I'll miss it, so I'll try to catch it later at the NPR website.

Here is my book promotion plan for this summer. I'm going to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for one weekend next month to celebrate a family event. If I stumble upon any bookstores, I'll go in to see if they have any of my books. Then I'll offer to sign their copies.

Yeah, I'll let you know how that goes.

I Hate To Add Fuel To This Fire, But, Oh, Heck, I'm Going To

I had never even heard of Andrew Keen until the delightful Buns and Chou Chou introduced him to me a few short hours ago. So imagine my surprise when I took what I thought was going to be a quick trip to artsJournal and found a link to an article called Internet Smackdown: The Amateur Vs. The Professional from Wired that refers to him.

Tony Long, the author of this article, supports Keen's bemoaning "the rise of amateurism in all spheres of professional life, specifically as facilitated by the internet's long reach." He says that bloggers "the most conspicuous of amateurs -- are a focus of Keen's views on this subject."

This getting everybody all fired up?

The question that comes to my mind this evening after reading all this and thinking about the lambasting of litbloggers that's been going on over the last few months is "Just what is a professional in literature?" Sure, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. have to be licensed by the state so we're pretty clear on how they get their professional status. But who's giving tests for media reviewers, critics, or, for that matter, writers?

When I read reviews of children's books that have been published in professional journals, I often find they have been written by librarians. Many of the kidlitblogs I read are also written by librarians. Why is the librarian who writes for a blog an amateur and thus mediocre (see Long's first paragraph) and the librarian who writes for a print publication a professional and thus worthy of my consideration? In newspapers, many reviews are written by authors. In print, they are reviewing their peers. Very professional. Why is it so different if they do the same thing on a blog?

Long and Keen say that the "all-inclusive nature and easy access" of the Internet "trivializes scholarship and professional ability." I hate to sound like a Geico caveperson, but a lot of scholarship is written in such a way as to be inaccessible to the people who are foraging for information on the Internet. Anyone remember Stephen Jay Gould? He used to take heat from his professional colleagues because he'd write a science essay every now and then that I could understand. Making knowledge accessible, as many try to do on the Internet, has never been popular with the holders of such knowledge.

Let's bring this around to literature again. Insisting that only professional reviewers and critics (I've been wondering if they're the same thing. I suspect not.) can write about literature and do such writing in print publications means that they have all the control over passing judgment on literature. Why are the print people so frightened of the Internet? They're worried about losing their power.

I think that ship may have already sailed.