Sorry for the week-long hiatus. Life creeps up on you sometimes and all you can do is try to deal with what it brings. Happily, there are many great things on the horizon!
On Monday, my writing group met for the first time. I presented "The Goblin Prince" and "Across the Ocean" and received fantastic feedback. For example, in "The Goblin Prince," there is little background on the goblins. Other aspects of the back-story and world are similarly unexplained due to the word constraints of the standard 32 page picture book. However, without these explanations, the entire story falls a bit flat. So it is changing to an older age bracket, loosening word constraints so Hetsi, Agorot, and friends get their due.
I also met with Steph Becker, the illustrator for "The Fox and the Shadow." We are on track to finish in early August and the new illustrations are wonderful! They capture the Fox's journey into narcissism and isolation through color and form while still forming a coherent whole. It is a privilege to work with such a talented artist. Plus, we came up with an idea for another project, tentatively titled "Rabbits and Robots." Exciting stuff!
Although it can be difficult to find time for new writing given the demands of editing existing work, rough manuscripts of three new works are nearing completion. To whet your appetite, here are the titles and short descriptions:
"Across the Ocean": A family in a coastal village face a wrenching decision when there are no longer enough fish to catch. Two brothers set out on a journey across the ocean to find a better life in a new land.
"Sarah and the Sunken Ship": Sarah, a mermaid, lives happily underwater in a sunken ship. When she rescues a handsome sailor from a shipwreck, they fall in love. But when he decides to return to land, she has to decide: Will she follow? Or is there another solution? A feminist take on a familiar story.
"Shira and the Tree of Stars": Shira's life is great; she spends her days wandering the forest with her grandparents and her nights learning from her parents. But one day, her grandmother comes down with a mysterious illness. Shira learns about the interconnectedness of life and death, and discovers how even those who die live on in our memories and hearts.
So stay tuned! There is plenty to come!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sorry but...
my lovely girlfriend, Sharon, is returning from Italy today. So the update will wait until tomorrow.
In the meantime, here is a wonderful meditation from Jed Perl of The New Republic on Charles Burchfield, fireworks, and the 4th of July.
In the meantime, here is a wonderful meditation from Jed Perl of The New Republic on Charles Burchfield, fireworks, and the 4th of July.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Searching, Searching, Finding?
I became a writer, in part, because business bores me. To be more specific, making things is more interesting than selling things in my world. Thus, having an agent, someone to take care of the business end of creation, is essential.
But it is impossible to find an agent without doing business-y things. I have a spreadsheet packed with critical details: name of agency, name of agent, submission details, date of submission, manuscript submitted, and the like. It is eerily similar to the spreadsheets I made during my stint in custom publishing. I am sending missives off into the void with little hope of hearing an echo in reply.
It is grim work. I didn't write or edit my projects for a few days. My typing consisted of Google searches and information copy-pasted into the hated spreadsheet. I spent hours alone as goblins and vikings fled before the all-important Search.
Today, I stumbled across a few forums of fellow writers. They too had been firing off queries and manuscripts into the electronic desert, their hopes attached to digital wings. "How long should I wait without a reply?" one anguished author asked. Responses poured in. "Two months!" "Six weeks!" "Six months!" "I waited a year before getting a form rejection."
At first, I thought, how pathetic they are, like a bunch of broken gamblers recounting bad beat stories over cigarettes. I'll never be like them!
But as I kept reading, my disgust disappeared. Some of the posters had been around for years, collecting enough rejections to construct a fortress of platitudes. Yet they kept writing, kept submitting, kept marching forward. I am only now sending work into the wild, and am already haunted by the specter of future rejection.
They have been rejected only minutes after sending out a query. They have had agents ask for full manuscripts only to say no after months of silence. They have had their hearts lifted and broken countless times. They have gotten drunk in celebration after an agent scheduled a phone call, and gotten drunk after the agent never actually called.
They are not pitiable figures, these erstwhile writers struggling and failing to realize their dreams. They are heroes, at least in my book. How many are too afraid of failure to even try? How many die thinking "I should have told her I love her" or "I should have left my job" or "I should have written that book about nuclear-powered midget robots"?
These writers will die without regrets. They have felt more than almost anyone else, even if what they have felt is mostly pain.
It is the pain of childbirth. Of watching your child learn what it means to have a broken heart. It is the special pain reserved for those who dare to fight for their dreams.
I will write; I will know rejection. I will probably fail. But like those courageous idiots on the writer's forums, I will write until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands.
But it is impossible to find an agent without doing business-y things. I have a spreadsheet packed with critical details: name of agency, name of agent, submission details, date of submission, manuscript submitted, and the like. It is eerily similar to the spreadsheets I made during my stint in custom publishing. I am sending missives off into the void with little hope of hearing an echo in reply.
It is grim work. I didn't write or edit my projects for a few days. My typing consisted of Google searches and information copy-pasted into the hated spreadsheet. I spent hours alone as goblins and vikings fled before the all-important Search.
Today, I stumbled across a few forums of fellow writers. They too had been firing off queries and manuscripts into the electronic desert, their hopes attached to digital wings. "How long should I wait without a reply?" one anguished author asked. Responses poured in. "Two months!" "Six weeks!" "Six months!" "I waited a year before getting a form rejection."
At first, I thought, how pathetic they are, like a bunch of broken gamblers recounting bad beat stories over cigarettes. I'll never be like them!
But as I kept reading, my disgust disappeared. Some of the posters had been around for years, collecting enough rejections to construct a fortress of platitudes. Yet they kept writing, kept submitting, kept marching forward. I am only now sending work into the wild, and am already haunted by the specter of future rejection.
They have been rejected only minutes after sending out a query. They have had agents ask for full manuscripts only to say no after months of silence. They have had their hearts lifted and broken countless times. They have gotten drunk in celebration after an agent scheduled a phone call, and gotten drunk after the agent never actually called.
They are not pitiable figures, these erstwhile writers struggling and failing to realize their dreams. They are heroes, at least in my book. How many are too afraid of failure to even try? How many die thinking "I should have told her I love her" or "I should have left my job" or "I should have written that book about nuclear-powered midget robots"?
These writers will die without regrets. They have felt more than almost anyone else, even if what they have felt is mostly pain.
It is the pain of childbirth. Of watching your child learn what it means to have a broken heart. It is the special pain reserved for those who dare to fight for their dreams.
I will write; I will know rejection. I will probably fail. But like those courageous idiots on the writer's forums, I will write until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Random Thoughts, July 2, 2010
I'm all over the place today, so today's post is going to be a grab bag.
1) Today's Ghana vs. Uruguay game was heartbreaking. For those who didn't watch, Ghana and Uruguay were tied 1-1 going into the last minute of stoppage time during the second and final overtime period. Ghana took a free kick on the right side of the start of the offensive third, and played it into the box. The ball eluded the goalie, was cleared off the goal line by a Uruguayan player, and fell onto the head of a Ghanian player, who then headed it on net. The two Uruguayan players on the goal line could not clear it with their heads, feet, or torsos, so they decided to play volleyball; Diego Suarez threw the ball away with his hands.
He got a red card, of course, but Ghana did not receive a goal. Instead, they received a penalty shot that Gyan promptly missed. The game went to penalties and Uruguay won, 4-2.
As I said: heartbreaking. Still, it was great to see the Black Stars show such heart, grit, and determination even in defeat. Here's hoping that they'll learn from this experience and come back even stronger in four years.
2) It's always surprising to learn the details of people's lives. Someone I never pegged as an athlete turns out to have played soccer quite a bit when she was younger. This makes sense now that I know, but I never would have guessed before. Another friend is taking up piano lessons as an adult. Since he's an artist with good taste in music, I always assumed he played at least one instrument. Silly me.
3) Last thought of the day, due to emotional exhaustion from today's games: I need to restring my guitar. Only one string is broken (the high E) but now nothing sounds right.
Oh, details.
1) Today's Ghana vs. Uruguay game was heartbreaking. For those who didn't watch, Ghana and Uruguay were tied 1-1 going into the last minute of stoppage time during the second and final overtime period. Ghana took a free kick on the right side of the start of the offensive third, and played it into the box. The ball eluded the goalie, was cleared off the goal line by a Uruguayan player, and fell onto the head of a Ghanian player, who then headed it on net. The two Uruguayan players on the goal line could not clear it with their heads, feet, or torsos, so they decided to play volleyball; Diego Suarez threw the ball away with his hands.
He got a red card, of course, but Ghana did not receive a goal. Instead, they received a penalty shot that Gyan promptly missed. The game went to penalties and Uruguay won, 4-2.
As I said: heartbreaking. Still, it was great to see the Black Stars show such heart, grit, and determination even in defeat. Here's hoping that they'll learn from this experience and come back even stronger in four years.
2) It's always surprising to learn the details of people's lives. Someone I never pegged as an athlete turns out to have played soccer quite a bit when she was younger. This makes sense now that I know, but I never would have guessed before. Another friend is taking up piano lessons as an adult. Since he's an artist with good taste in music, I always assumed he played at least one instrument. Silly me.
3) Last thought of the day, due to emotional exhaustion from today's games: I need to restring my guitar. Only one string is broken (the high E) but now nothing sounds right.
Oh, details.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Pictures. Books.
My favorite coffee shop in Israel (sorry Ba'cafe) is The Coffee Mill in Jerusalem. It has decent food, a great selection of coffee, and a relaxed atmosphere. The right-hand wall is filled with bins of different coffee beans, imbuing the small building with a warm, earthy scent. The rest of the walls are covered with old New Yorker covers spanning at least a couple decades.
I spent many days there whiling away the hours with friends, glancing at the wonderful illustrations constantly. Each captures the mood of a moment in history, from Bill Clinton's mug during the Lewinsky scandal to the iconic New Yorker monocled man.
A recent cover summed up the unfathomable nature of the disaster in the Gulf. The reference to Escher is brilliant; like his work, the oil spilling into the ocean tricks our minds. We cannot comprehend it rationally. Despite my best efforts, I cannot imagine millions of gallons of oil worming their way through deep waters and onto shores hundreds of miles away. I cannot fully understand the true extent of the damage wrought on the ecosystem. All I do when I see pictures of birds covered in brown goo is say, "Wow, that sucks."
The cover is brilliant because it is not didactic; it doesn't leap off the page and smack you on the nose for being an oblivious dolt. Instead, it blends the timeless with the present to remind us of the limits of our mammalian brains. Our brains are fantastic pattern-recognition machines provided patterns conform to the scale of our humanity. But there are events in the world that defy our sensibilities, rendering our efforts to shape them mockeries of competence and comprehension.
In a strange way, the illustrations in "The Goblin Prince" and "The Fox and the Shadow" are wonderful because they work similarly and also at cross purposes as that New Yorker cover. They work similarly because they combine the classic with the contemporary in exciting ways. Hetsi and Agorot are green-skinned humanoids (like most mythological goblins) but have expressive ears and body language (Anne's idea, a unique feature). The Fox and his world start brightly colored and cheerful (classic fable material) but slowly darken as the story twists into something decidedly un-childlike.
However, their intention is to take ideas larger than any individual such as the duty of the parent to a child and the relationship of humanity to the natural world, and make them bite-sized. That is the great gift any great illustrator gives her writer. Even if you never read a word of either book, you can understand almost everything through the illustrations. You can know how much Agorot idolizes Hetsi and how Hetsi adores his son. You can understand the monstrosity of the Fox's actions toward his shadow. As "The Fox and the Shadow" moves toward completion, the interplay between the words and images invigorate me like a warm summer afternoon scented by freshly ground coffee.
I spent many days there whiling away the hours with friends, glancing at the wonderful illustrations constantly. Each captures the mood of a moment in history, from Bill Clinton's mug during the Lewinsky scandal to the iconic New Yorker monocled man.
A recent cover summed up the unfathomable nature of the disaster in the Gulf. The reference to Escher is brilliant; like his work, the oil spilling into the ocean tricks our minds. We cannot comprehend it rationally. Despite my best efforts, I cannot imagine millions of gallons of oil worming their way through deep waters and onto shores hundreds of miles away. I cannot fully understand the true extent of the damage wrought on the ecosystem. All I do when I see pictures of birds covered in brown goo is say, "Wow, that sucks."
The cover is brilliant because it is not didactic; it doesn't leap off the page and smack you on the nose for being an oblivious dolt. Instead, it blends the timeless with the present to remind us of the limits of our mammalian brains. Our brains are fantastic pattern-recognition machines provided patterns conform to the scale of our humanity. But there are events in the world that defy our sensibilities, rendering our efforts to shape them mockeries of competence and comprehension.
In a strange way, the illustrations in "The Goblin Prince" and "The Fox and the Shadow" are wonderful because they work similarly and also at cross purposes as that New Yorker cover. They work similarly because they combine the classic with the contemporary in exciting ways. Hetsi and Agorot are green-skinned humanoids (like most mythological goblins) but have expressive ears and body language (Anne's idea, a unique feature). The Fox and his world start brightly colored and cheerful (classic fable material) but slowly darken as the story twists into something decidedly un-childlike.
However, their intention is to take ideas larger than any individual such as the duty of the parent to a child and the relationship of humanity to the natural world, and make them bite-sized. That is the great gift any great illustrator gives her writer. Even if you never read a word of either book, you can understand almost everything through the illustrations. You can know how much Agorot idolizes Hetsi and how Hetsi adores his son. You can understand the monstrosity of the Fox's actions toward his shadow. As "The Fox and the Shadow" moves toward completion, the interplay between the words and images invigorate me like a warm summer afternoon scented by freshly ground coffee.
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