anthem's debut at the american library association

One more interruption to Summer Reading posts, to share my remarks about the forthcoming ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, that I gave at the Scholastic Literary Luncheon at ALA in Washington, D.C. last weekend, June 23, 2019.

There were five of us reading: Amy Sarig King, Sharon Robinson, Da Chen, Raina Telgemeier, and me, each of us with a new novel about to be published. (You can find out more about them and their new books at the links.) 

 
It was a fabulous afternoon spent with lovely school librarians who took galleys from each of the five books with them. I felt so lucky to spend time with my four colleagues and my Scholastic family, as well as our moderator, Paige Battle.

Along with my remarks I showed some stills from ANTHEM. Here they are, in the order I presented them, remarks interspersed. I can't wait for y'all to hold the actual book in your hands! As teachers said in our signing line, over and over, "We've been waiting forever for this book!" Me, too. I hope you love it. xoxo Debbie
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The year I was 17

I “had a moment” with Socrates,

thanks to a philosophically-minded English teacher.

A bestie of mine – also 17 – gave me a Bible that year,

to remember her by.

She inscribed her name in the front of it: “from Jan.”

I still have that Bible.

We lived in the Philippines,

at Clark Air Force Base.

My dad flew C-141 Starlifters into Vietnam with supplies,

and out of Vietnam with bodies,

and although I was just as caught up in the feelings 

of teenage spiritual fervor as my friend was,

I also felt something else vital and important stirring in me,

courtesy of my new friend, Socrates.

So I opened that Bible and wrote on the inside cover:

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

And then I went off to examine life.

I rode on this bus. 

And I’m told I had a really good time. ha!

And now there is Anthem,

a story about those late-sixties years,

and what I didn’t know then – so much I didn’t know –

and what I came to understand

in my quest and pursuit of wisdom,

through Socrates’ methods of

questioning and logical argument,

by examining and by thinking –

A life-long quest,

often derailed,

often stumbling,

and very much still underway.

In Anthem, teenaged cousins Molly and Norman

are on this quest as well, whether they know it or not,

as they travel across the country

from Charleston, South Carolina

to San Francisco, California,

in an old school bus,

on their way to find Molly’s brother – Norman’s cousin –

who left home under dire circumstances the year before and now has been drafted.

Molly – who is 14 and opinionated –

and Norman -- who is 17 and long-suffering –

spend tons of time on their trip arguing with each other – furiously defending their points of view, frustrated, exhilarated, exhausted, lost, found, and totally missing the point, in what my ardently enthusiastic husband

(who has just read the novel for the first time)

calls "a buddy novel, a quest novel, a coming-of-age novel, and a road novel –

ALL IN ONE! “

Socrates, I thought, as I wrote it this book,

would be proud.

And appalled. hahaha!

BUT!

Along the way, Molly and Norman,

and those they pick up and drop off,

discover America.

They shift their points of view.

They come into new understandings.

They learn and grow and become bigger than they were:

 

 

And -- there is a lot of rock and roll.

Molly – the emotion machine -- loves the Association. 

 

Norman – who longs to be a rock-and-roll drummer and

get out of high school marching band –

loves Iron Butterfly.

 

Anthem is a love letter to America in 1969,

and a challenge to young people today.

It is BOOK 3 of the Sixties trilogy,

written in the same documentary format as

Countdown and Revolution, asking

the same question as those books do –

and perhaps,

the same question Socrates posited,

in his own wise way,

so many years ago:

Are you on the bus, or off the bus?

research: choosing scrapbook anchor songs, book three sixties trilogy

Each scrapbook in COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION is anchored by a song from that period that helps the reader "hear" that particular time-and-place, and sink deeper into the story. Book 3 will be the same.

I don't have scrapbooks done yet, but I'm keeping a hold file of possible photos on Pinterest, as well as a board with song possibilities (well.. two... maybe three.. I need to consolidate, now that I better understand what I'm doing).

Many of the songs I'm gathering will be mentioned in the narrative, but seven (or so) will be anchors for the scrapbooks of photos, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera that will help tell the story of 1969, and indeed the late sixties, as we're going to have to skip from 1964's REVOLUTION to 1969.

We'll need to secure permission and pay for the right to use these songs in their entirety if we so choose. I've only used one or two entirely -- "Dancing in the Street" and "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" (public domain) in REVOLUTION, but we want to use as much as we want of these anchor songs, as we design scrapbooks, and not worry about fair use -- we'll have permission.

I'll cover much of the five-year gap between REVOLUTION and BOOK THREE in scrapbooks. So the songs are important -- they have to carry us through. Often I use a song that denotes the opposite of what you see in the scrapbooks so I can give you that Unity of Opposites, so you can think about what you're seeing, and about that particular piece of the story. I juxtapose Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" over the early days of the Vietnam War (before there was much protest) in the final scrapbook in REVOLUTION, for instance.

The scrapbooks are a visual storytelling device and serve as a look at what's going on in the "outside" world while the story I write gives us the "inside" story, or the narrative arc of the book, of these characters and their hopes and dreams and very human failings.

Since I don't know them very well yet, I'm working on the scrapbooks. This usually goes back and forth as the book takes shape -- some scrapbook, some narrative. But right now, I'm just empty on the narrative, so the scrapbooks are getting heavy attention.

Here are some possibilities for starting Book 3. Let's see if one of these actually makes the cut. It will have to work against photos and ephemera that span 1965-1968, which includes death (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Vietnam), the birth of the counter-culture, war protests, and the rise of some amazing rock-and-roll.

1.  Richie Havens at Woodstock singing "Freedom/Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"..."a long way from home." I can see this as a way to begin Book 3. But it may be too close to REVOLUTION'S beginning. Just gathering right now.

2. Jefferson Airplane, "Don't You Want Somebody to Love" from Woodstock. "When the truth is found/ To be lies/ And all the joy/ Within you dies/ Don't you want somebody to love?/ Don't you need somebody to love?/ Wouldn't you love somebody to love?/ You better find somebody to love."

I love this. I really wanted to use "White Rabbit" as a possibility, but the lyrics are too tightly focused on that hookah smoking caterpillar, and might be confusing instead of enhancing.

3. Randy Newman, 1968: "Broken windows and empty hallways/ A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray/ Human kindness is overflowing/ And I think it's going to rain today.... / Lonely, lonely/ Tin can at my feet/ Think I'll kick it down the street/ That's the way to treat a friend."

This is hands-down my favorite. It holds so much possibility. The song meant a lot to me in the mid-'70s when I was alone with two kids and hoping for some human kindness. Joe Cocker's version is the one I heard in the '70s. I sat in a parking lot and cried. So I worry that I'm attached to it for reasons that won't serve the story.

Those are my top picks to begin Book 3. I loved and discarded for various reasons (although they could show up as anchors for different scrapbooks) Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild," The Rascals' "Get Together," The Isley Brothers' "It's Your Thing," The Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," and Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth."

I'm open to suggestions.... ?

I want funk and R&B and rock-and-roll and more, but I'll stop here today. Not bad for a day's work. Along with the epiphany I had while listening to Mark Rylance read a page of the new novel THE WAKE -- which as I wrote earlier, has given me energy to begin the narrative again with a different character -- I think I can go find some supper (Jim is gigging) and welcome the weekend.

Hope you are still awake!

finding ways in

The way into a story often comes in unexpected ways, as bit of kismet or synchronicity at work, I am convinced.

This morning I read on NPR ("An Unlikely Hit in an Imaginary Language") about Paul Kingsnorth's new novel, THE WAKE, about 11th century England after the Norman conquest. I was intrigued because the review talked about a made-up language. So I followed a few links to the Guardian, and one to Mark Rylance (who was Cromwell in PBS's WOLF HALL production) reading from THE WAKE.

And it was a wake-up call. OMG, I get it. My language is ALL WRONG with book three. Not that standard English isn't the way to go, not that I haven't planned to sprinkle in "groovys" and "far outs" and other counter-culture phrases... but I have been pursuing the wrong character altogether, which is why book three isn't working. Maybe.

I'm going to try a new beginning today, a new way in. Here is Mark Rylance reading from THE WAKE:

research: book 3 sixties trilogy

I'm gonna do occasional posts on research as I move deeper into Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. I house research links on my Pinterest boards, but I also want to document my process, thinking, and resources here. I'll label all research posts as such.

===========

Full disclosure: I am stuck with book three. I don't know my story. I'm frustrated. So I'm contenting myself with research, which I've been doing intensely (ebb and flow) for about a year now, which has been mostly reading, and with no real focused objective but to understand the late sixties.

I did this with REVOLUTION and COUNTDOWN as well -- I read for about a year. You can find my bibliographies on Pinterest -- they are incomplete but will be added to as I can get to it.

So I'm working on scrapbooks today -- the non-fiction pieces of the documentary novels. I need about seven songs, one to anchor each scrapbook. They will change as the story is known and changes, but I need something to get me started, and I'm wondering if listening to the songs of the late sixties might also help me with finding my way into the story itself.

I spent most of my research day listening to the Billboard hits of 1967, 1968, and 1969. I dipped into 1970 as well. I want book 3 to be (in part) about ROCK-AND-ROLL. We've not had the chance to really do rock-and-roll with COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION, so here is the chance to Go Big Or Go Home, and I want to revel in the music. Maybe I have a character who does the same (that's what I've been playing with, anyway).

This is the kind of day where I have 24 windows open online at once and jump back and forth between YouTube and Wikipedia for lyrics and cursory information about The Rascals, Chicago (can only use their first album), Buffalo Springfield ("For What It's Worth" is perfect, about the Sunset Strip riots in 1967 -- I can use it for larger meaning), Jefferson Airplane (which leads to a lengthy side-trip down the "San Francisco Sound" tunnel), The Fifth Dimension, The Isley Brothers, Steppenwolf -- yes, I can use "Born to be Wild," now that I have moved book 3 from 1968 to 1969.

Last year, anticipating the long flights to Hong Kong and back, I invested in Bose noise-cancelling headphones, and they are perfect for this task. I'm listening a lot right now, trying to find a way in, and pulling out a line here, a line there, of select songs (not scrapbook anchors) for inclusion somehow -- don't know how yet. I'm going on faith here that I'll figure out a way to do this, and if I don't, it's not time wasted.

Delicious lines like "It appears to be such a long long long long time before the dawn." Know it? "And the beat goes on." "The past is just a goodbye." "All the world over it's easy to see, people everywhere just got to be free." And many more.

I've been wondering if I can put more of myself into this book, like I did with REVOLUTION and COUNTDOWN. I've said I'm going to the Bay Area for book 3, but I lived in Charleston, South Carolina in 1969, my dad flew into and out of Vietnam, our high school was integrated - in spite of Strom Thurmond's defiance - by the National Guard, boys picketed to grow their hair long, girls picketed to shorten their skirts, and I loved Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Beatles and many more... the music was fresh, new, energizing, and amazing.

I was 16 years old and wanted to see the film Easy Rider. I didn't have the $3 it cost for a movie ticket. My dad said, "I will not give you three dollars to support Peter Fonda's drug habit." He forbid me to see Easy Rider. So I told my parents I was off to somewhere or other on a date with Jim (that took care of the $3, and besides, it was JIM), and instead went into downtown Charleston, South Carolina to see Easy Rider.

It. Was. Thrilling. Imagine sitting in the theater, a sheltered child of strict Southern, military parents who didn't even want rock-and-roll in the house -- I'd had to "audition" rock-and-roll in order to be allowed to play it -- I chose my 45rpm of "We Can Work It Out" by the Beatles and got a reluctant okay.

Imagine this kid sitting in the theater and watching Easy Rider unfold. Born to be Wild indeed. Here is the beginning of the movie with Steppenwolf's signature anthem for the late sixties:

That's it for today. I've listened until my ears hurt. And I've got to get myself back to the garden....

48 days, day 17: multi-tasking, or not

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

"Now, you're either on the bus, or off the bus." -- Ken Kesey (photo by Joe Mabel at Wikipedia)

It's a short hop, in my imagination, from yesterday's Neil Diamond to today's Magic Bus. That traveling salvation show led me to think about Ken Kesey's bus, Further, the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the many other trips Further made across the U.S., which led me to research The Merry Pranksters and the Hog Farm and the other busses of the sixties... and I thought: get yourself a school bus, paint it in psychedelic colors, fill it with hippies and returning Vietnam veterans, women who want a voice, a writer and a musician and... and maybe a 14-year-old, and you're set for the journey of a lifetime.

Wavy Gravy had a bus: Road Hog. Lisa and Tom Law had a bus: Silver. Lisa still has her bus, on her property in Santa Fe. She also has thousands of negatives she shot while living through some of the most amazing moments of the sixties. I read about Lisa and whispered to Jim: road trip.

The research of the past few days has led me to finding out more about Woodstock than I wanted to know, more about Vietnam than I can take in, more about the Haight and communes and Laurel Canyon and the Sunset Strip riots and the Kent State shootings than is good for anyone to know in three days' time.

I still have trouble appreciating "The Glorious Inconsistency of The Grateful Dead." Don't hate me.

My mind is wrinkled. Maybe Rachel has sat still long enough. Maybe I can switch gears and look at my picture book draft and complete a revision. Maybe not.

I have never been able to work on more than one writing project at a time. The Sixties Project has consumed me since 2008... well, the Sixties Project and the traveling I've done for work, for research, for family, for promotion of each book as it has arrived in the world. All good work. I've been grateful for every scrap of it.

I'm wondering if I can finish Rachel and maybe one other picture book I want to revise before I start writing Book 3 in earnest. I know it will swallow me once I start, just as COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION did. Or maybe it won't, as I've committed to more time at home this year, in The Year of Exploration. Part of that year is being taken up (happily) with the water management project and the edible yard & garden project I'm documenting over at Instagram.

I dunno. I'm mulling how to manage my time, now that I actually HAVE SOME. My late-blooming heart says, hurry up! don't dawdle! you don't know what time you have left!

I worry, like I always do, that on a day - days -- weeks -- when I have read and researched so deeply, so widely, I'm not getting any writing done. I trust that I am, but I worry that I'm not. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. (Thank you, Walt. And The Aurora County All-Stars.)

In possibly-related news, I am eating multitudes of frozen strawberry fruit bars these days (thank you, 4-year-old Abigail) in an effort to stave off melting completely in this heat wave.

Do you work on more than one project at a time? How do you do it? Do you recommend it? Do you eat multitudes of strawberry fruit bars to sustain yourself?

Thank you for all your mail. I so appreciate it. I'm sitting on the fender, below. xo Debbie

"Road Hog" photo by Lisa Law

48 days, day 15-16: issuing invitations

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

After some family time yesterday, I came home and kept my head down in 1969. Reading, listening, making notes, inviting my story to find me. Inviting. That's a huge part of what I do as a writer. I invite story in. My son Zach, former D.J., says, "Everything is a remix," and I know he's right. A little from here, a little from there, and voila, you've got a story. It's impossible to explain how it works.

This morning I woke up at 5am with this song in my head:

By the time I'd scrambled out of bed and made the coffee, I had seventeen different directions I could go with this 1969 song. Thanks for answering the invitation, Neil.

I have been making notes and gathering resources all morning. I have some direction -- some remixed direction -- for Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. Let's see if it sticks (that's another discussion for another day). Jim gigs this morning -- a Sunday brunch -- and I'm going to hunker down with these 17 directions and see if I can't get an opening -- another beginning for Book 3.

Plus, we got some rain yesterday. Halleluia, Mississippi.

I woke up with all kinds of ideas this morning. One was to write something about the Supreme Court, not just because of their landmark rulings this week, but because I've been reading about the justices and they fascinate me. I started at Wikipedia and read about Justice Scalia, then Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, Justice Ginsberg, and then started going back, started reading about the political intrigue of appointments and the history of the court -- part of this was Book 3 research (everything is a remix).

I've been reading and asking questions, curious, wanting answers -- who is this Scalia, who wrote such a scathing dissent? Who is this Kennedy, who wrote such an eloquent decision? What is Thomas up to these days? Whatever happened to Anita Hill? Is Ginsburg still a bad-ass? How many women are on the Court now? I should know these things... let me see... 

The Court is sexy again, suddenly, and I thought, Debbie, you should write a book about the Supreme Court justices and call it THE SUPREMES. hahahaha.

This is also an answered invitation, do you see? So I looked up that title and found a BBC article published June 26: "Meet the Supremes: Who are the U.S. Supreme Court Justices?" ha! Scooped! It's a great look at the current justices, though. I'd add the Wikipedia jumping-off places, too, for more.
Stories, stories, stories. I'm wrestling and remixing today. And inviting. Come on in, Book 3. Come on in... what else? What else? Who's out there? Let me go find you... or you find me. I'm right here, working away -- my door is open.

 Brother Love's Travelin' Salvation Show by Neil Diamond

Brothers, you got yourself two good hands, ain't it right?
And when your brother is travelin', he ain't got what to eat
When he's tired and he ain't got where to sleep
When his heart is filled with an ache and a pain and he ain't got who to cry along with him,
I want you to take your hand and put it out to him -- that's what it's there for

Hot August night
And the leaves hanging down
And the grass on the ground smellin' sweet
Move up the road to the outside of town
And the sound of that good gospel beat
Sits a ragged tent
Where there ain't no trees
And that gospel group tellin' you and me
It's Love, Brother Love, say
Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies
And ev'ryone goes, 'cause everyone knows
Brother Love's show

48 days, day 14: stray thoughts collected

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

 Stray thoughts:

1. 1969 it is. I spent the day there yesterday, and I made some decisions about construction of Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. I'm going to try third person vignettes next week for several characters I have in mind.

2. Quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "I don't worry about periods of not doing anything; I know my subconscious is busy." Exactly. I had enough energy yesterday to update my manifesto for the Year of Exploration. I am three months in. I've done a lot more than it looks like from the outside. What COUNTS, when you are measuring your progress? That is one of my eternal questions.

3. This piece, "The Middle of Things:Advice for Young Writers" by Andrew Solomon in the NYer, is great. Good writing, which I am always looking for. I am tempted to quote great swaths of it but will content myself with one of the many lines that resonated: "Your work is not opposed to your life; you do not have to choose between them. It is only by living in the world that you acquire the ability to represent it." Do read it if you are struggling in the middle... of anything, including your writing.

4. I'm thinking about Leo Buscaglia these days and Love 1A. I can't find my old copy of LIVING, LOVING, AND LEARNING, so I ordered one from abebooks. And I see there is a whole lot of Leo on YouTube. I might give him a new listen and see what I think, with, oh, 20 years of experience living in the world since I last listened to dear Leo.

5. I'm thinking a whole lot about love lately... period.

6. And time. My essay "On Being a Late Bloomer" is here.

Happy Weekend, friends. Live in the world. Love one another. Bloom, bloom, bloom. xo Debbie

48 days, day 12-13 making meaning

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

Yesterday (day 12) was such a low day that I didn't even try to look at Rachel or book 3 or anything else I have on my writing plate -- platter. I worked outside in the yard in 95-degree heat, I went to the dentist, I hung out with folks on social media and email, joining in the conversations or seeing what my peeps were up to in the world.

I hung out with the wonderful Penny Kittle for close to an hour, as we Skyped about REVOLUTION and the Sixties Trilogy and my writing process, as well as the way we write with young people. Thank you, Penny.

 It helped to connect, it always does. I decided to feel whatever I felt and see where that took me, instead of pushing away the low feelings.


As a writer who writes often about social justice issues, there is no way that what's happening in America today won't find its way into a book about America in the late sixties. After a couple of days at a standstill with writing work, I woke up at 6am with three songs in my head, one after the other -- boom-boom-boom.

I scrambled out of bed to write them down, to listen to them on YouTube, to research them, to read the lyrics (instead of rattling them off in my head) and see when they were released. YES. I can use these. I've put them on my Pinterest board of song possibilities for Book 3.

Human beings are meaning making machines. We are the only species to take what happens to us and try to form a narrative around it, try to make sense of it, try to understand how it informs our lives, try to make change.

So I'm going to take the confusion of my own personal stuff (once again; it seems this is what I'm always doing in my fiction) and the inconceivable horror of how we visit violence on one another in this country and can't seem to change it -- as well as the hope that we one day might -- and weave them into what I'm writing.

Book 3 of the Sixties Project asks for attention today, so that's where I'm going. Here are the songs I woke up with, in the order they appeared.

I consider them a gift to get me going again. Maybe today will be a scrapbook day, building some of the infrastructure for Book 3. I need seven scrapbooks to help me tell the story of 1968/9... to help me draw parallels to today.

Abraham, Martin, and John:

What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love:

For What It's Worth:

I'll be working with these songs this morning, seeing how they play with the stills I'm collecting for various scrapbooks. I'll be making meaning, as much as I can. Hoping to make change.

48 days, days 2 and 3: grape-vining

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}
 
Weekend.

Saturday felt like Friday, maybe because Roger, our genius water-land management guru, was here working, and so I worked all day. I made starts and stops on a picture book -- frustrating, trying to find the way in. So I left it to simmer.

I pretended I was writing a story set in 1969 for book three of the sixties trilogy, just to see if this is really going to grab my attention. I tried an alternate beginning, and liked it. It's very hippie-heavy. I slept on it Saturday night, and woke up Sunday morning (this morning) feeling like it was way to "old" for middle grade readers. Second thoughts.

Still, I researched 1969 Rock-and-Roll and R&B and Soul and listened to many of those songs on YouTube, trying to find an anchor song for 1969, should I go that direction. I listened to "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (1968) by Marvin Gaye and got sad looking at pictures of Marvin and remembering about Marvin's tremendous talent and violent death, the death of the sixties, all the deaths... which is a hazard of writing about the sixties, or any time period you've lived through.

A song like "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" leads me to read about Marvin Gaye (The Prince of Soul) and Motown and Barry Gordy and get interested in telling that story. When I can pull myself away from that memory lane, I listen to Gladys Knight and the Pips singing "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (1967). But I know the version I listened to most: "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by CCR -- Creedance Clearwater Revival. I have to look it up. 1970.

I have to look up the song itself now, and I get lost in all the versions and the writers and the productions... an hour is gone. Back to my Billboard list. "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" by The Fifth Dimension.

         When the moon is in the 7th house
         And Jupiter aligns with Mars
         Then peace will guide the planets
         And love will steer the stars.

Is that a good anchor for 1969? Maybe. Especially if I'm going counter-culture heavy. I can imagine this song juxtaposed with Vietnam War stills.

I keep looking, lost in 1969. I find The Rooftop Concert by The Beatles, singing "Get Back." I love this! Love the lyrics for this project. And yet... I'm writing about the American 1960s. And I'll bet we can't afford Beatles lyrics. At. All. S'okay. Still, I pin the concert to my growing Pinterest board of pins about 1969.

Some of this is necessary work. It's how I will find the seven anchor songs for the seven scrapbook sections of book 3. Some of this is feeding my nostalgia. Some of this is what we used to call "pea-vining" in the South... taking one's time to meander along. I'll call it grape-vining and be done with it for today. I call this writing, even though the narrative isn't moving forward. Do you? Everything is percolating.

The Billboard Top 100 list of number one songs for 1969, in chronological order for the year, is here.

Here's another Billboard list, longer, and actually 100 songs, at Wikipedia. I don't know if they are ranked by sales, or what, but the order is different. This is indicative of the trouble I run into with research (and, sometimes, with Wikipedia). I consider Wikipedia a good jumping-off place, though, and use it extensively to figure out where I want to go next. Everything must be verified, and that includes sources outside of Wikipedia as well.

Sunday is a day off. I'm playing with playlists. I'm going to read over everything I did last week as a way to prime my pump for a long work day on Monday. I need to pay my second quarter taxes. I need to water the garden -- it's 95 degrees here today and brilliantly, relentlessly sunny. Jim and I are going on a driving-around-ATL date, something we do from time to time -- get lost in this big city and see what we can see. I need to make plane reservations for my Los Angeles trip. I need to do some administrivia.

I need to take a nap.

Too hot to sit here today. 95 degrees. Grapevining at my desk instead.

48 days, day 1

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

I have 48 days until I step on a plane to attend the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles, where I will gratefully accept the Golden Kite Award for REVOLUTION! So stoked about that. I'm also teaching a workshop (here is the whole conference schedule): "Structuring Your Novel: Providing a Scaffold For Your Plot." Y'all come!

In the meantime, in this Year of Exploration, I have 48 days to write and I'm going to use them. I want to catalog them here, so I can see, as I step onto that plane on July 31, just what I have accomplished. Last year (and right up to June 1 this year) was so jam-packed with REVOLUTION travel as well as work in schools and at conferences and with family and more... so much travel. All good. But not much time to write.

And, as you may have surmised through the recent Picture Book Intensive I participated in, I want to write picture books. And, as you may know if you're a reader here or have read COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION, I have a third book in the sixties trilogy to deliver. I have given myself a year to get the draft of book three to David at Scholastic. I had better get hopping.

So let me chronicle the next 48 days (day 1, yesterday, is below), and let's see if I can jump-start my fall writing (I'm home more this fall than I have been in years), by declaring a writing retreat of sorts, at home, with the great wash of family and friends and garden and summer that flows through days at home, loving that and yet finding a way -- I hope -- to work well here, and see what happens.

One thing to note: After the PB Intensive, I finished a draft of the Robert Kennedy book I have sold to Scholastic. They kept it a while (um... years) and made some suggestions for revision which didn't resonate for me. I kept it a while (um... years), trying to figure out another way in that would satisfy us both. The power of writers reading their work to one another is what broke open my thinking and got me past seventeen drafts that Did Not Work. Thank you, Laurel Snyder, for the suggestion you made during the PB Intensive that broke the revision dam for me and got me back to the page.

Handing in a revision is so exciting! Let's see what Scholastic says about it. I hope to hear soon.

Day 1: Friday, June 12, 2015

My childrens' dad died on May 11. The funeral was postponed so we could all go to Colorado for son Zach's graduation from the University of Colorado at Denver. We were there from May 15-19, living together in the same rented house, where we started the process of healing from that wound... a process I'll document at some point. We are doing well, I think, and are pointed forward now. Zach flew home on Monday, June 8, and Abby came for annual summer camp at Grandma and Grandpa's on Tuesday, June 9.

Abby left yesterday after spending three days here for summer camp. We went to the library. We read So Many Books (my discoveries, here). So today was for organizing for the next 48 days. I gathered manuscripts I want to work on -- picture books. Some of them I read to Janie when she was here for the PB Intensive Work-Along we did together last month. Some of them I tossed! I began working on a story about Rachel Carson. The other mss are dotting the floor around my chair. How many can I get to in 48 days? I have a draft of Rachel dated 1999. I have many other drafts, none of which work. I know the story I want to tell. Armed with what I learned in the Intensive, I'm going to move forward.

I've weeded some of the older mss in my stash, and I've kept some... the ones that I love, the ones that went to committee at different publishers years ago. Some have partial drafts and lots of research. Some are biographies. Some are just ideas.

I also researched Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. I have a draft started that I do not like (nothing new). I am being pulled to move the story from 1968 to 1969, which will open a can of worms for me, especially if I move it from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just cannot get excited about SF for some reason. I also am having trouble with 1968 because that year covers So Much Ground. Assassinations, riots, war, the breadth of rock-and-roll (finally)... not that I'm averse to all that, but I'm having trouble grounding the reader in one place. So there's that to wrestle as well.

I've been saying, "two pages a day on book three, and I'll have a draft in a year." I'm not sure I can be that prescriptive.

I made green smoothies. A homemade meal in the middle of the day. Spinach salad with blueberries, baked potatoes (white and sweet). Popcorn. Steamed broccoli. I watered the new yard we're putting in, took progress photos of the front and back yard coming together. Most photos of the days I keep are currently on Instagram.

So lots is swirling. I also caught up with social media. Stayed up late researching and reading.

Let's see how day 2 goes.

YOU?

the year of exploration

For some time I have been birthing -- in my head and on paper -- a new way of seeing, working, living, connecting, and being in the world. Why? Maybe it's turning 60, with the knowledge that there is less time before me than behind me for sure. Maybe it's recent disappointments and realizations. Maybe it's recent gifts and surprises. Maybe it's the on-going therapy, which is hard work. I'm sure it is.

Whatever it is, this shift in my thinking feels major, so I'm going to do something about it, and I will chronicle it here, March 20, 2015 to March 20, 2016 (start where you are, and I started with Saturday's post, "On Being a Late Bloomer").

I want to see where this new energy and commitment take me and my work. I'll also Instagram my explorations, using the hashtag #theyearofexploration.

I'll label it that way here, too. I used the blog to chronicle my 2012 year off the road to finish REVOLUTION and called it "the year of possibility." You can read about it by clicking on the label on the sidebar. (or here. :>)

I'll tag some of these exploration posts "the home economics project." I've had a project in mind for a long, long time, and I want to start making it visible.

I'll chronicle book three of the sixties trilogy as well. I've already starting documenting photographs and research at Pinterest. You'll find a "book three hold file" and a "book three playlist possibilities" board as well as the many boards for COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION... and I've started resource boards for my other books.. I'll get to them as I can.

I'm going back to the roots of what makes me happy. I'm going to write more. I'm going to use my hands more, which is something that grounds me and centers me and helps me understand my place in the great continuum.

To that end, I have purchased four cacti, three French lavender plants, and a mother fern. I'm going to take a class at Creativebug - line drawing with Lisa Congdon. Also, Lisa's sketchbook explorations work-along at Creativebug. I've got my supplies (which include these plants!) and I'm ready to go.

I have no expectations. I want to do what I ask students to do when I teach writing: pay attention, ask questions, make connections.

I'll be an explorer like Comfort Snowberger in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS: Explorer, Recipe Tester, and Funeral Reporter. Like Dove, the 9-year-old anthropologist-in-training in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER. I shall be an anthropologist of my life. I'll try to let go of anxiety about the future, and just stay in the day. I will work hard. I'll play hard, too! I'll try to uncover as well as discover. I hope to learn a lot. Wanna come with?