January Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar

January is going to be a quieter month for children's authors in Connecticut.

Saturday, Jan. 12, Barbara Mariconda, Educator Reception, Barnes & Noble, Westport, 11:00 AM

Sunday, Jan. 13, Janet Lawler, Granby Public Library, Granby, 1:30 PM

Saturday, Jan. 19, Peter Goodman, Barnes & Noble, West Hartford, 11:00 AM

Saturday, Jan. 26, Dan Yaccarino, R. J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, 4:00 PM

Another Author's Recapitulation Post

Jo Knowles has done an excellent recapitulation post, Goals, Dreams, And Themes, at her blog, Jo Knowles. She didn't call it a recapitulation post, but we know one when we see one, right?  Twenty-seven goals was rather ambitious, at least by my standards, and I don't dream, myself. I think in terms of goals and objectives, as you'll see in tomorrow's post. But this was great reading for a writer, and Jo's Goal 23 is going to figure in my thinking for my goals and objectives post for Time Management Tuesday. (That's tomorrow, folks.)

Know of other author recapitulation posts? Let me know in the comments.

That Recapitulation Post I Was Talking About

Yes, I was talking about unit end recapitulation last Tuesday. Not to worry. I'm not talking about recapitulation in the sense of "recalling a charged event" and "feeling remorse if appropriate." I'm talking about what I did and how successful I feel I was with it. Because that will be a factor in my planning for next year.

Time Management Tuesday

I managed a Time Management Tuesday post, every single Tuesday. Even during Retreat Week. Even on Christmas Day. In terms of managing time and perseverance, terrific. But did it do me any good in terms of work?

First off, my time management research last year led me to submit a workshop proposal to the New England SCBWI for its spring conference. It was accepted, and I will be teaching a Situational Time Management workshop that weekend. I have spoken at professional conferences before, even at a writers' retreat. This is the first regional conference.

Secondly, I have been using the unit system (which has evolved a lot since I first wrote about it back in February), transitional time, and constant planning to manage my time.

Which leads us to...

The Saving the Planet E-book Edition

Preparing this e-book has been hugely time consuming for both my computer guy and myself. I will go into his work at some other time. I spent huge amounts of time seeking out and planning ways to publicize the book. The unit system and constant planning (see above) were significant here, because for many months I was working part-time. Planning units for the various research helped to make good use of the time I did have. Given that I often had only two days a week and that they were frequently Mondays and Fridays, trying to get into a big writing project might have been extremely difficult. So this was a good use of the time I had. But the fact that it took up so much time will definitely influence what I do next year.

Submission Binge

I did a binge of submitting short stories and essays early in the year, which resulted in a short story being accepted for publication at Alimentum. Again, that will have an impact on my plans for next year.

The NESCBWI Blog Tour 

This is a little project I assigned myself last year and finished this year. This was worthwhile for a couple of reasons. It provided content for Original Content, of course, but was also a community building effort before I even got into building community. (See below.) I friended some of the bloggers on Facebook and made connections of one kind or another. And it could have an impact on my planning for next year.

May Days

Last year I took part in a Facebook event called May Days, which was sort of like binge writing for a specific unit of time. I wasn't prepared for the project, so I just wrote two pages of anything every day. At least one piece I worked on was reworked this fall into a press release for Saving the Planet & Stuff. Again, this will be coming up again during my planning for next year.

Community Building

When you consider how late in the year I became interested in community building, I managed to do quite a bit with it--at least, by my standards. The Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar, the weekend reading roundups, and the Next Big Thing Author Meme, which I expect to be posting next weekend, all involve community building. I've also been more conscientious about taking part in the Carnival of Children's Books this past year and have taken part in the Carnival of Creativity a couple of times. How will community building figure in to my plans for next year?

Not only are these the bigger projects I've been involved with this past year, they're the projects I've written about here at Original Content. I'll use them as examples for next week's Time Management Tuesday post.

It Appears That I Remember Almost Nothing About "The Giver"

Jeff Bridges Making "The Giver" Movie.

Hmmm. Hmmm. The name "Jonas" sounds familiar. And...and...was there a sled at the end?

Connecticut Winter Workshop For Writers And Illustrators

The Shoreline Arts Alliance, home to the Tassy Walden Awards, is sponsoring a one-day workshop for writers and illustrators on January 12th. That's only a little over two weeks away. Note that the deadline for registration is next Wednesday, January 2nd. There will be two morning workshops and a networking luncheon as well, as an optional afternoon prep workshop for people interested in preparing manuscripts or portfolios to submit for the Tassy Walden Award.

The day starts at 8:30 AM, costs $65, and will be held at the Guest House Retreat & Conference Center in Chester, Connecticut.

Among the workshop presenters are Lynda Mullaly Hunt and A.C.E. Bauer. I actually know Lynda and have met Alice. In fact, I may have met other writer/presenters for that workshop and apologize, if I've forgotten.

If this isn't the first Connecticut writers' conference of the year, it's very close.

So How Did We Do With Holiday Book Giving? And Getting, Of Course?

Okay, so let's talk about the important stuff we got and gave for Christmas. Books.

I received a subscription to Bookmarks Magazine, which I'm very excited about. Also a Barnes & Noble gift card and an Amazon gift card, with which I hope to buy masses of things for my Kindle. And 500 Pizzas & Flatbreads, which was unexpected but very me.

I gave:

Fairest  Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. The family member who received this and I were making our way through the Discworld books back in 2011 and got sidetracked. I'm hoping to get this as a loaner from him later this year.

When Rain Falls by Melissa Stewart

You Are A Lion and Other Fun Yoga Poses by Taeeun Yoo

Bomb: The Race to Build--And Steal--The World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin  This was a gift to the extended family because family lore has it that my husband's grandfather was surprised to receive a citation after WWII thanking him for his contribution to the making of the atomic bomb. Another family member definitely worked on a project in the 50s studying structures that could survive an atomic blast. His group's conclusion? There were none. Bomb is supposed to be passed around among us.

The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery by Nancy Springer

Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days by Derek Landy. I'm hoping to borrow this one, too.

Sew What You Love by Tanya Whelan

Growing Up Sew Liberated by Meg McElwee

Last, but not least, for the first time I gave e-books, sending them to family members who own Kindle Fires:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 

Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity  by Joel Stein

Giving e-books, for Kindles, at least, is unbelievably easy. You can order them and have them delivered on specific days, such as Christmas. The books are sent between midnight and 3:00 AM, so the receivers found them ready to download Christmas morning before everyone else was up.

Time Management Tuesday: The End Of Time And Recapitulation

Earlier this year, I wrote about the significance of the beginnings and endings of units of time. I was interested then in how easy it is to waste time when a unit is coming to an end. A year is one massive unit of time, and today, Christmas Day (I did notice), is  very close to the end of this one. When you're talking about a year, it's very difficult to maintain a work schedule, anyway, because the end of that unit of time is heavy with holidays in Judeo-Christian cultures. Then you've got the ending issue coming on top of that.  "Doing absolutely anything work-related during those lost hours at the end of a unit of time would be better than just blowing them off," I suggested back in the summer, long before I was giving any thought to merry making.

One work-related "anything" we can be doing at the end of any unit of time is assessing what we did. Kind of late in the day to be doing that, you say? But the end of a unit of time means another one should be starting soon. Assessing how did with your old work time should help determine what you're going to do with the next one.

The December issue of Yoga Journal included an article called Out With the Old by Sally Kempton. This being Yoga Journal, the article is a little long on things like "vibrant energy." The ritual of "recapitulation" that the article describes as "a process of recalling a charged event, bringing it to consciousness, feeling remorse if appropriate, and then letting it go" probably requires more intensity than most of us need when thinking back over how well we did with carrying out our work plans. I also don't think we necessarily need to be creating a list of negative thoughts so we can tear it up. However, Kempton  talks about recalling "things we'd accomplished," "changes," and "conflict," all of which could be very useful to consider when working out the plan for the next unit of time.

What worked? What didn't work? How can we use what we did in the last unit of time in an upcoming unit? Next week begins a new year. Traditionally, people get very excited about the beginning of new years, making resolutions relating to what they're going to do over the next twelve months. They might do much better to make an actual plan. And an actual plan will come together better if you assess what you've done so you're building on the good and not repeating the bad.

Before next Tuesday, I'll try to do some sort of recapitulation on this past year, with a lot of focus on my time management study.

Sharing Kindle Deals On Facebook

You may have picked up on the fact that I'm lukewarm on Facebook in terms of its usefulness for building community or marketing. And let's face it, marketing is what drives many writers over there.

But you know what Facebook has been great for? Finding Kindle deals. I happen to be friends with a large number of writers and bloggers. Many writers will let their Facebook friends know when the Kindle editions of their books go on sale. Many bloggers will let everyone know when books they particularly like are part of a Kindle promotional deal.

This is a totally unexpected benefit to being on Facebook for me, particularly since I didn't get my Kindle until this past year. But right now hearing about sales is probably my favorite Facebook perk.

Maybe I Should Treat My Filing Cabinet As If It Were A Closet

I have a family member who subscribes to More Magazine. A few times a year, she sends me a stack of back issues. That means I'm seeing an awful lot of articles and advertising relating to wrinkled and sagging skin all at once. However, you find some gems (like the mag's book coverage) in these things, too.

A case in point, Lose the Clutter, Find Your Style in the October issue. Most clean-your-closet articles (which is what this was) focus on the same thing--If you haven't worn something in some specific length of time, out it goes. This article, by Jennifer Braunschweiger, takes a different approach. Braunschweiger suggests actually wearing those items for a day because many people keep things they still aren't going to make much use of. She made a vow to wear every item in her close. A day at work with all this stuff gave her a better idea of what no longer fit comfortably, what made her feel dowdy, what made her feel that she was presenting herself the way she now wants to present herself.

Where am I going with this?

Well, I've recently been working on overhauling my filing cabinets. (You can look forward to a Time Management Tuesday post on that, once I'm done.) I have files going back...ah, well, I have files going back a long time. I probably have more writing projects I've begun than I have items of clothing. I have bits and pieces of stories I started and never finished. I have things I finished that are dated. I have lots of things that need work. For a fleeting moment a week or so ago, I wondered if I should keep all  these things. Then I refiled it all with my new system.

After reading Braunschweiger's article, I'm wondering if I should "wear" those story attempts for a day or two. Meaning maybe I should try rewriting them soon. The projects that feel comfortable, that make me feel that this is what I want to be writing now, I would keep, even if I didn't finish any of them. The projects that makes me feel dowdy and uncomfortable could go.

It's not actually a plan yet. Just something I'm thinking about.

"Scarlet" Took Me Back--Way Back

Reading Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen was a fascinating experience. The book is the Robin Hood story from the point of view of Will Scarlet, one of Robin's band of so-called merry men. Except in this rendition, he's a cross-dressing young woman.

First, I was caught by the voice. Voice can be tricky in historical novels. Characters from the past shouldn't sound twenty-first century, but at the same time, making them sound nontwenty-first centuryish can also mean making them sound contrived or stilted. And while we know how people--particularly educated people--wrote in days of old, we can never really know how they sounded. The key to Scarlet's voice is that she's very ungrammatical. She appears to be unaware of the third person singular of the verb "to be," throwing "were" in everywhere. "That were Rob's version of a greeting." "'First, Freddy Cooper were arrested,'" I said, looking around. It weren't good news." Also, she uses the word "lads" for the other band members. I like the word "lad."

So I liked Scarlet's voice right away. What I didn't like was when she said things like, "Rob looked at me, and as were fair usual, I felt my heart jump." I thought, Oh, no. A romance. Why must there always be a romance? I don't know if I'm going to be able to take this for long.

I switched between reading Scarlet and another YA historical novel, figuring I'd stay with the one that hooked me first. As it turned out, it was Scarlet.

Why?

Because I realized I would have loved Scarlet when I was a teenager. I...mean...loved it.

The girl who dresses up like a boy so she can escape the restrictions of her society and be tough and strong and do exciting things? Teenage Gail loved those characters.

The girl-who-is-torn-between-two-lovers scenario, as Scarlet is with Rob and someone who will remain nameless? As an adult, I find that a tedious cliche. As a teenager? Loved it.

The star-crossed lovers who are always misunderstanding cues and take forever to get together? As an adult, I want to slap those characters and tell them to get on with it. But teenage Gail couldn't get enough  of that Elizabeth Bennett/Mr. Darcy vibe.

As I was reading this book, I felt as if I was being transported back in time. Not back into the time of the story, but back into my past. I don't think I have ever read a book that took me back to my teenage reading experience the way Scarlet did.

Also, there is a great reveal in Scarlet that I never saw coming but realized immediately made sense.

Plot Project: The whole Robin Hood mythology is one of those cultural things everyone seems to know about even if we can't remember why. (Maybe even more so than King Arthur, probably because Robin Hood is a much more democratic and contemporary sounding figure. He's all about redistribution of wealth, after all.) I suspect that Gaughen tweaks much of the basic Robin Hood narrative for her plot. Good story, but what is even more impressive is the situation/world she came up with to put the storyline within. There's more going on here than just making Will Scarlet a female.

Scarlet is a Cybils nominee in the YA category.