48 days, day 37-38: the beating heart

{{ 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!}}

The Year of Exploration is here.
On Being a Late Bloomer is here.
My speech at Vermont College (moments, memories, meaning) is here.

Taken at Tallulah Gorge in the North Georgia mountains a few years ago... writing is kind of like this... looking for the best view to tackle the story.. or our writing lives.

Well, it rained again, and I slept again, and I got to work again, and I ate a PopTart. All good.

I'm back to Rachel Carson and also back to another picture book I've worked on, off and on, for about five years (maybe more). There's nothing to say I can't work on this new/old idea, too, is there? No, and honestly, it feels easier to me right now.

Easier meaning... doable. Totally made up out of whole cloth. The sky's the limit! This is an idea that came to me that I fiddled with, got some words down on paper, fiddled some more, left to simmer, came back to add a little, left to stew while I wrote other things, traveled, looked at it from time to time and felt that tingle... yes, I love this idea... keep it. With an idea that has no tie to a real person, place, or event, there are no borders, no boundaries, no stops. I miss that.

I have spent several years writing historical fiction, which has taught me so very much and has stretched me as a writer. I'm grateful for it. It occurs to me now, as I am able to be home and pay attention to my days, that I miss the relative ease of realistic fiction, of fantasy, poetry, essay, memoir, myth.

It's all hard, but there is an element of who cares what the history says, write whatever you want! in these mysterious genres, and whenever I'm working on this new/old book I feel the little thrill of discovery, the zing! of contentment, the lightening of the load, the giddyness of aiieeeeee! this is fun! I can go anywhere I want! It's like bumper cars! Bang! Oops! Back up! Bang! hahahaha!

Of course I can't go anywhere I want in the end, but in the mess-making phase, I certainly can. Oh how I have missed it!  ONE WIDE SKY is a book I wrote in rhymed couplets, 88 words, about the joys of the natural world, a counting book: one through ten and back again, morning-noon-night. My research was just outside my door. The Aurora County books were cut from the whole cloth of my childhood summers in Mississippi.

Maybe the "burden" of history/research (for Rachel has plenty of that and of course Book3 I'm avoiding for this very reason) was part of my malaise... it can feel burdensome to be tied to a timeline of years or events or facts or figures... or all four at once, and for such a long time. (There is also a very useful and helpful structure offered up when tied to those things -- another story for another time.) So I am working on Rachel, but I am largely letting her go when I stumble on research holes, and that's when I unburden myself, and give myself to this new/old manuscript where anything goes. Anything!

I love making this mess. I remind myself that this 48 days is for experimenting and discovery, so experiment all you want right now, Debbie -- you'll have to settle in soon enough, make a firm decision when you're back from California, and begin to plow forward. And it will be okay. You will have had your breathing space, I say. Right now: B-I-C. Butt In Chair. Put in some hours. Make a mess. GO.

That's where I've been for the past two days. It feels good. The rain has helped with the watering. I want to talk at some point about the ordering of energies and time and how much we have in a day to give to any one task in front of us. Another day, though. I'm going back to the page.

Let's call the new/old picture book "the Merton book." There is this line by Merton I have long loved and am working with: "There is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun."

Right there lies the beating heart of everything I write.

48 days, day 32-33, fried okra focus

{{ 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! }}

Well, the new project won out. Doesn't it always? It's actually an old project that I have been batting around with my agent for at least a year and a half, saying I'm going to propose, and that I have shied away from tackling because it will take dedicated time and focus.

But it's new in that this proposal must be written from the ground up, a structure figured out for it, and a persuasive argument made for it, cogently and smartly. It's a professional document that must include all pertinent facts, history, goals, sales information, curriculum connections, and arguments for.

And it was doable yesterday because I understand what it entails, and because it's finite. Sometimes, when you are stuck, trying to create art out of whole cloth, it helps to tackle something concrete.

Writing the proposal required me to make decisions after all the "what-if" I chewed on for so long with my agent and with trusted friends. It's a relief to make decisions and close doors, even for this eternal processor. Putting words to paper and understanding my motivations better helped me clarify just what it is I want to do with this project, and what it is I want to offer, and what it is I want to write.

I spent many hours intensely focused on this yesterday, and frustrated, too, because I am so disorganized that it's hard to find the photos I want, the statistics I want, the comparisons and the sources I need. But I got it half-done, maybe 3/4, and I could see the shape of the proposal and how it could be effective, before I knocked off for supper with friends.

I had to MAKE MYSELF GO TO SUPPER, which is a clear sign for me that I'm on to something. Whether somebody else thinks so or not, well, we'll see. I was excited to get back to it this morning, and I've been working all day on finishing. I took a break for okra fried by Jim (I loooooove fried okra), and will spend the rest of the afternoon on this proposal, then go swimming (a story for later).

My goal is to have this proposal off my plate and onto my agent's by the end of the week. Which is tomorrow. I can do it. I am almost there. By the end of the day I will have it in shape enough to go swim on it, work in the garden and then sleep on it, and then -- VOILA -- I will be able to say I have FINISHED something. Halleluia, Mississippi! (That is a hint!)

It's mostly spinach. But some days you just really need some fried okra.

48 days, day 11: standstill

{{ 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 am stilled by the events in Charleston. Stilled. All the violent events of this past year -- years -- leading up to Charleston. All the hatred and violence. I thought I would say nothing publicly at first. Who am I to say anything? I write fiction about my deepest beliefs; that is enough.

But I couldn't stay silent, so I posted -- on my Facebook author page as well as my Facebook personal page --  links to other people's words about Charleston. Then I needed to include them in a blog post last week.

I also asked the folks assembling the Charleston Syllabus to include REVOLUTION, FREEDOM SUMMER, and THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, all books of mine with a civil rights theme running through them, along with my deepest beliefs, including that every human being is worthy of dignity and respect.

Now, I thought, now I shall get back to the work at hand. But what is the work at hand?

For now, since I am stilled, and quiet, and contemplating, I will link to Claudia Rankine's piece in the NYTimes: The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning. I met Claudia Rankine last November in NYC at the National Book Award events. She was also a finalist. She is beyond impressive, as is her work, and this piece in the Times leaves me absolutely breathless. It asks me for something. It will not leave me.

So I will leave you here today, with some words from Claudia Rankine that describe what I try to do when I am writing as well:

"There are billions of souls in the world and some of us are almost to be touching the depths of how it is and what it is to be human. On the surface we we exist but just beyond is existence. I write to articulate that felt experience... There are some of us who are constantly mending our hearts, I write into that mending, my writing is that mending...."

Peace.

xoxo Debbie

48 days, day 8: step out, step back, regroup

 {{ 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! }}

With Lisa Wise at Dancing Goats Coffee in Decatur, Georgia yesterday.

I didn't finish Rachel, and yet I did make progress. I'm okay with that.

Yesterday I was flattened. I watched Jon Stewart's response to the violence in Charleston. I read those nine names. Say their names. I thought about how I wrote FREEDOM SUMMER and REVOLUTION about a time fifty years in the past that we are still living through today and that we have to face and feel something about and do something about if we want it to change.

I don't know enough to orate, pontificate, opinion-toss, or wring my hands and heart in public on social media channels. But I have a voice and I will continue to use it in the best way I know how. I want to offer readers young and old a path to peace and social justice.

That's my work. Community, kindness, family, peace, kinship, connection. Friendship, heart, safety, belonging, stories. For young and old. Especially for children. I don't care how schmaltzy it sounds in print. These unglamorous work-horse words are the fundamentals of health and happiness and form the bedrock of what it means to be human and to care for one another.

Yesterday I met with Lisa Wise who is the executive director of the Initiative for Affordable Housing here in Atlanta. We talked shop and storytelling possibilities surrounding the Initiative's re:loom project. It felt good to talk about those work-horse words with Lisa, who is steeped in them every day. It's important to find fellow travelers on this unglamorous road. Do you know what I mean?

It rained late Thursday, a crashing, booming thunderclap of rain that washed away the side yard slope of newly planted grass. It wants to be a riverbed over there.

The over-eager thunderstorm chewing up my landscape combined with the recalcitrant bits of Rachel that refused to come together as I listened to the news coming out of Charleston... I gave up for the day and took a nap, and then I went to bed early. Friday I worked but felt like I was slogging through mud, then went to meet Lisa, which lifted my spirits.

I don't know. Sometimes you step out, or step back, and regroup.

That was Thursday (day 7)/Friday (day 8).

How are y'all doing? Can we talk about it?

48 days, day 7: a bit of inspiration and validation

 {{ 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! }} 

My foot waving hello at 6am

 It's 11am and I am about to plunge into my Rachel revision and finish it. So say I. SO SAY I.

No backing down, now... just do it, Debbie. You've got enough, you've got what you need, and you can finish this revision. Today.

If I am really brave, I will send it to my agent by the end of business today. That is my goal. THAT IS MY GOAL. He lives in California. That gives me a few extra hours. hahahahahaha.

I am a watering fool right now, trying to keep new grass alive, as we near the end of this almost-year of a water management project which evolved into an edible yard and garden project along the way, and Other Stuff.

I can see, I'm falling into a routine, 7 days into this 48. Up early and either write or do correspondence while it's dark... read some, too. Once the sun is up, go outside while it's still bearable and water. This takes two hours. I have to visit everything, plump pillows, tell stories, check on the patients. Something ate my hosta last night. Who does that? Deer? I don't want to talk about it. Big, fat, beautiful hosta leaves, gone.

"The dingo ate your hosta."

What I read this morning provided me with great inspiration to get to the desk and write, which is what happens after the watering, and where I'm about to go right now. Here's what I read:

First, a piece by photographer Sally Mann in the New York Times Magazine. You must read it. It's so strong, so good, so true. Every time I read good writing, it teaches me something. This piece also taught me a little more about being human. I loved it. I have long admired Mann's work, and it was a pleasure to "hear" her talk about it in-depth; the highs, the lows, the scary bits and the calling-us-to-account bits. I read this in the 5am dark this morning. I thought, "I want to write like this." Inspiration.

Then there is this piece that I read as I came in from watering, the writer James Salter interviewed by the Paris Review -- must have been in the '90s -- about writing fiction. Here is the nugget that is sending me back to the page energized:

I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it’s disheartening, you don’t want to go on. That’s what I think is hard—the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done. This is all you could manage?

How many times have I felt like this! Also, on heroes:

There is everyday heroism. I think of Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path,” about a black woman walking miles to town on the railroad track to get some medicine for her grandchild. I think real devotion is heroic.

That's a thought I can use as I write about Rachel Carson, but I will also use it for book 3 of the '60s trilogy. I would also attribute it to Sunny in REVOLUTION, and to most of my characters in my books. I write about everyday struggle and everyday acts of heroism. Uncle Otts in COUNTDOWN. Joe and John Henry in FREEDOM SUMMER. Comfort letting her dog go in order to save her cousin in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. House reading to Mr. Norwood Boyd in ALL-STARS. Even Ruby saving Melba Jane on stage in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER.

So those words inspire me by validating my writing experience. Which makes me feel like a real writer. Validation and inspiration send me back to the page when I think, as I do almost every writing day: this is all you could manage?

I'm going to manage to finish my revision today. What are you up to, one week, 7 days in?

48 days, day 6: the proposal method -- what's enough?

{{ 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! }}}

Mourning dove, through the screen door. I tried to get closer, to capture it without the screen between us, and to get the hummingbird and wasps, but they were not having it.

I wish you could have seen the party at the birdbath in my garden this morning: one mourning dove (very big), one hummingbird (very small), and three red wasps (tiny!), all vying for turns at fresh water. I tried to take a photo, but of course they wouldn't sit still for me to do that. Yesterday when I filled the bath, five red wasps were right there, waiting for me to finish, as well as a bee. (Yay, bee! Bring your friends!)

It makes me so happy to see the life in the garden, even when it's the birds that I have to shoo away from the blackberries each morning. I have planted enough berries for them and enough for me.

Enough for them and enough for me. That's what I'm thinking about today as I write. How much of a draft/revision is enough for those who will read it, and how much is enough for the one who writes it? And then there are the gatekeepers who make some of those final decisions, once we get a final draft and the book goes into production... editors, publishers, marketing people, book sellers, teachers, librarians, parents, but more about them another day. It's a miracle a book makes it into a young reader's hands at all!

I'm working on Rachel today, more focused than yesterday. A comment on yesterday's post really helped me with my feelings of not getting enough done: "I think summer just calls us away from our tasks... Gardening and just soaking up the long days are just part of summer. It isn't writing for me, but just the things I need to take care of around the house."

That's part of it, I'm sure. Thanks, Sandy. I want to remember glorious summer... something I write about quite a bit, actually... RUBY, ALL-STARS, FREEDOM SUMMER, REVOLUTION... the joys of summer.

I've been at it since early morning. It's coming along. Some days the tide sweeps you out to sea, and some days you're able to stay put against the undertow. Today seems to be a stay-put day. I'm working on what's good-enough to submit for a draft.

A good friend (who espouses writing every single day, even in summer, all day if possible (with breaks for exercise!) and who produces quite a bit more writing than I ever will) says to think of a picture book like a proposal. It can be revised and re-thought, and even re-worked completely, if you can get the attention of an editor who is intrigued enough to ask for a revision.

This goes counter to the "get it as perfect as possible" method writers cut our teeth on, eh? If we look at picture books as proposals -- offers? -- to write the entire book beautifully and sellably (:>), then what is it that will intrigue that editor and get him/her to ask for a revision?

I think it's a fresh approach, a new idea, a different structure, and above all -- voice. That elusive thing no one can seem to define.

More about voice in another post. This morning I'm working. Hope you are, too. I'm lucky to have these 48 days off, and I want to use them up, wear them out, make them count, all while enjoying these summer days that call me away from my tasks. A tall order. A cool drink is what's required now. Even the creatures at the birdbath know that.

Write on!

48 days, day 5: avoiding the draft

{{ 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! }}

Day 5: Avoiding the Draft.

Not THAT draft. Although I'm avoiding book three of the sixties project right now, probably because I'm a little in shock that I would actually think to move the book from 1968 to 1969, after all the reading and research I've done on 1968. More on that later.

The draft I'm avoiding is the Rachel draft I finished yesterday that needs So Much Work. I have found eleven-hundred other things to do today that have kept me from sitting down to this draft until an hour ago when I knew I was going to have to be accountable here for my writing day. (See how this works? huh.)

I bought cat food.

I consulted four times outside in the 95-degree heat with Roger, who is truly finishing up this long, long project with our yard, helping us manage water flow and create an edible landscape.

I read. Now, reading is essential. I want to fit it into every day I live. When I'm on a tight deadline, the only reading I'm doing is the manuscript or research. When I'm not, like now, reading for pleasure and reading for work are necessary. Maybe two hours in the middle of the day isn't necessary, when I've got these precious 48 days in which to write like mad. Maybe I'm still finding my rhythm. I want to cut myself a break.

I did get up early and get right to it, sitting down with the manuscript. There is nothing stopping me from revising today except me. Am I afraid of the story? No. Am I afraid to be messy? Heavens no, I've been nothing BUT messy with this draft for 16 years. Am I avoiding work? Well... yes.

Writing. Is. Hard. Work. At least it is for me. It requires so much attention, energy, focus, stamina, structure, skills, and strength -- strength of mind and heart. Maybe I just didn't have all that today. Am I making excuses? Maybe. Am I for-real? Yeah. We never know what private stuff someone may be wrestling, and it turns out some news from a friend yesterday has me slightly off-balance today.

Not that I can't write through it. I can and I have in the past. Today I gave myself the luxury (or the punishment -- I guess it depends on how you look at it) of a partial day off. I'm going to work for an hour now. I promise. Then I'm going to work outside -- we've got so much going on out there, it's a sort of constant distraction, but I won't use that as an excuse... this outside work gives me a good chance to move and stretch and sweat -- it's so hot and sunny and humid it hurts. ATL in June.

So let's say I'm going to work from 4 to 5pm -- 5:30. And then work in the yard for an hour. And then get a shower and make a salad (if Jim doesn't beat me to it) to take it to pot luck with friends tonight. By the time I get home, my overly-full head will drift onto the pillow in sleep. Tomorrow will be better.

How about you? Did you work/write today? Will you?

48 days, day 4: a crummy draft

{{ 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! }}}

96 degrees in the shade at 5pm today. Gus is hanging out under the ferns.

How did I get so much done today? Remember this, sister, when you wail about the days when nothing seems to get done. Nothing is wasted. Remember that, too.

I have a really crummy, really awful, really unsellable draft of a story about Rachel Carson. I've been writing this book since 1999. I've had probably 20 drafts over the years, and maybe a dozen of them survive. Okay, a half-dozen.

If I truly believe that I'm writing even when everything is percolating, then I've been trying to get at this latest draft for about 16 years. I do believe that. Sometimes it takes TIME. And things change. You change. How you see the story changes. How picture books are written and sold changes. Editors move or age up or down or out or in -- whatever. There are so many variables. Yes?

Whatever the case, this morning I sat down and wrote from beginning to end, all of it, all over again. The story is so much a part of me by now, I knew my direction. And, after spending so much time with 4-year-old Abigail, reading so many books, and getting to know her sensibilities so very well, the way I approach a picture book reader/listener is different.

So my rhythm and tone and plot and language -- everything is different about this very same story.

At lunchtime, I read what I had to Jim, and I heard how clunky and awful it is. How many holes there are. (I actually write "DETAIL HERE" or "BLAH BLAH BLAH.") But I am just ebullient! I have a draft! A draft! I can do something with that. (Or not... I have a bunch more of these where that one came from... ha.)

I prefaced my reading by telling Jim about Rachel Carson -- setting up this particular scene/story. I felt my heart swell with such deep admiration for her, as I spoke... a sure sign that I am in the right place... you know? Write what you are passionate about, that's what I say. That's the only thing that works for me. And so... we will see.

I ordered my office a little. It's a warehouse right now. It's chock-full of all the traveling I've done since January, and that's a lot of travel. It's home to all the detritus of living out of my suitcase for six months, plus library hauls and bills to be paid and kid stuff and a dehydrator and honestly, I don't know how I do it. I plan to tackle it, a half-hour at a time this summer. It will take a while.

The rest of the day was full of watering and weed pulling and consulting with our water-management-yard-putter-back-togetherer Roger, ordering and taking possession of 13 cu. yds of hardwood mulch for the beds that are ready for it. It's so hot.

I got a shower outside. Now I'm sitting in the pink chair with my hair in a towel, drinking the last of the sweet tea (Ruby Lavender would be proud of me), and reading LEROY NINKER SADDLES UP by Kate DiCamillo. Abby and I loved MERCY WATSON so much, and this is where Mercy led me.

Dinner out with friends. Thank goodness. I'm letting that draft cool. It needs so much work. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

YOU?

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?

a flour sack quilt, and what january was for

January was for putting systems into place. I organized and tossed, in my pantry and fridge. I bought fresh and organic. I scoured vegetarian and vegan cookbooks. I tried so many new recipes I got cross-eyed, but found some keepers. Still want to write a book with lots of food in it. Made notes.

Routine has been my friend in January. Oh, how I have missed it. I decided very quickly that I still hate schedules, but I could embrace a routine. Just establishing these routines has taken most of my energy, it seems. But now I've got it down.

 I rise every weekday and head for the page while I'm fresh. I break at some point to begin(or join in making) the midday meal. I cook slowly and mindfully. We eat together. I go back to work. We walk the park. Evenings are for reading and knitting and being with friends and family. Who knew how soothing this could be?

I did. I've always known it. Lived it for a long time, then didn't for a long time, and now I have that chance again.

I've been thinking about how to measure success, or what that even means, when we look at our days and our work. How do YOU measure success? I would like to know.

I didn't make much headway on book two, if you measure success by numbers of new words or chapters or breakthroughs. If I measure by the yardstick of creating a safe, comfortable place to write, researching, going down blind alleys with a new chapter, and sticking with it no matter what... well, that's a big success. I think. My undermind is at work. I can't push the river. I can show up. Something like that.

Nevertheless, I feel vaguely like a failure. Maybe that's why I bought this old flour sack quilt from Kudzu this week. It has been my only indulgence this year, although the year is young. How lucky is it that Kudzu is practically next door to Your DeKalb Farmer's Market?

I found this quilt at the back of a booth at Kudzu, and I spent some time extracting it from its half-hidden corner. As soon as I touched it, I knew I had to have it. Its softness, suppleness, colors and patterns (do you see the cowboy fabric?), its hand-stitching. It was waiting there for me. So I took it home.

And now, on mornings when I rise before Jim, when the house is still cold and I have just turned on the heat, I crawl beneath this quilt with my tea or coffee and my story, which also waits for me so patiently.

I don't know just how to coax it along these days. Or maybe it's me that I need to cajole. Maybe I need to convince myself that I have all the systems I need in place right now, that I can let go of the need to organize everything else and turn my attentions to the task at hand: finishing book two.

I hope February is a month of pushing forward... whatever that means.

::grateful for::

:: walls to paint.

Remember that wall I painted orange for my birthday a year and a half ago?

It's not orange anymore. I covered it with chalkboard paint and it became an integral part of Thanksgiving dinner this year. I envision it holding all kinds of messages and lists and sayings over the years. I think I've got it just right now.

:: family.

Look closely and you'll find a gratitude list in photographs and even in words, high above the window... love that addition. Thank you, Jim.

:: those who pitch in.

Those who eat. Those who clean up. Those who appreciate. Thank you, my baker.

::good work to do.

I know it's almost December and we'll be racing headfirst into the holidays, I know I have one more trip this year, to two elementary schools in East Tennessee next week, but I am still going to try to write every day in December. Okay, maybe not Christmas Day, we'll see how it goes.

For the first time in ten years, I plan to be home more than away next year -- home almost all year long. I've been planning and scheming for this year, and I think finally I can swing it.

I'm grateful for this coming year of writing -- a writing intensive. I want to get a head start on that year in December. So on December 1, I will tiptoe back into my novel. I'll write about that process, here.

I'm also going to use December to set up next year's writing year. I'll chronicle that here, too. I don't exactly know how it will work, but I have ideas. I may never have another year like this one to write and write and write in, and I want to use it wisely. I have lots and lots... and lots... of ideas, and stories I want to write.

I also have lots of living I want to do. Lots of learning to love Atlanta. Lots of exploring with my sweetheart, lots of staying put and venturing forth. Lots of family time. Lots of memories to make. Lots of becoming. Lots of letting go.

I feel rawther pregnant with possibility. ha!

So I'm nesting now. Getting ready. And very grateful. For everything. In advance. Yep, everything. All the messy glory. Come on in, I say... let the year of possibility begin.

outward bound

Hey, y'all. I'm heading into a time of being away more than home, and trying to write a novel at the same time. Hmmmm.....

I fly this morning to D.C., to work at The Langley School for three days. Personal narrative writing with grades 3 through 8. Can't wait. My bags are packed... etc.

I fly home on Wed. night and fly out again on Thursday to Daytona Beach, where I'll speak and sign at SIBA -- Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. I love SIBA, and am so looking forward to seeing my bookselling friends again.

 Home and then out again to Birmingham and Scottsboro, Alabama, for some work with my southern region Scholastic Book Fairs friends.

Then it's October. And October is more packed than September. That's saying something.

Countdown will be front-and-center this fall with SBFs, and I'm proud to be essentially on tour with Fairs this fall. I'm looking forward to the good work and good friends along the way.

It has been a packed summer. Hard to find writing time. I've given in to the need for rest between travels and events and have slept in most early-mornings, mornings that used to be set-aside for writing. Maybe I can get that rhythm going again this fall as I travel. Maybe not. In any case, book two is coming with me today, and throughout the fall. Here's to getting a messy draft to Scholastic by the end of the year. More about that soon.

Thanks for coming with me this summer, and for keeping me company on the road this fall. It's good to travel with friends.

progress report

So I haven't told you about our Mad Men dinner last Sunday (photos, too!), or the trip to Orlando for Scholastic Book Fairs (fabulous! and more photos!), and here I am, ten days later, bumping up against a trip to Norfolk, Virginia tomorrow, to work with teachers, so I don't know when I'll catch you up. But you'll be proud of me. I've spent the entire week in this pink chair (covered with an old quilt for summer comfort), next to the cold fireplace, STEEPED, I tell you, STEEPED in 1964 Freedom Summer and Book Two of the Sixties Trilogy.

I have barely come up for air. These are the days when I must remember to eat, bathe, converse, those days of long, long hours with a story, trying to keep it together, of-a-piece, when it seems so unwieldy, and when so much is unknown.

Let me say that again: so much is unknown. oy vey.

And, as much as this place is frustrating, it is also thrilling -- thrilling. I'm making connections left and right, up and down, over and under. I'm scrambling to keep up with them, I'm shouting A-HA! and grinning with delight. I'm groaning and tearing my hair out. I'm moving forward, back, stalled, forward again.  I go to bed thinking about the story, and I wake up with inklings, phrases, full sentences waiting for me. I leap out of bed to capture them.

This morning's sentence: "I am in love with Thor Heyedahl and I want to set sail on Kon-Tiki."


What?

BUT. I have learned to be ever-faithful to these gifts that float up from the subconscious. I wrote that sentence down. Let's see what happens.

In the meantime, I suit up and show up. Here I am, at the page. I am beginning to understand my story. I take notes and put them right into the manuscript, at this stage. It's similar to how I work with notebooks and is perhaps the evolution or next stage of that.

Perhaps I'll be brave enough to share that process with you soon. I want you to meet Sunny. She's twelve, and she's nothing short of amazing. I'm not sure she's in love with Thor Heyerdahl (I was), but she makes me laugh, and that counts for a lot.

Happy Weekend, y'all. Stay cool. Don't know how it is where you are, but Hotlanta is earning its nickname this summer.

theme: what is it?

Hey, y'all. I'm off this morning to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I'll be speaking at Hamline University about THEME in literature. Have a great weekend, and play nice with one another! I leave you with this fabulous photograph of the shelves at Riley's Reads at Vineyard Haven in Martha's Vineyard. Thanks to my friend Marianne for snapping and sending this, and thanks to Riley's Reads for hand selling Countdown and displaying it so prominently. What fabulous company it's keeping! Whoo-hoo! And... doesn't that cover POP! Pick me up!

This speech on theme was hard for me to write. I've been at it for three weeks, and I'm not sure that what I've got is what will best serve my audience, MFA students who want to write for children and young adults. As I say in my speech opening... I learn so much when I sit down to write about what I know... I especially learn how much I don't know.

And it occured to me, as I sat down to write about theme, that I had barely given it a serious thought in years. Maybe I had even forgotten about theme, as I wrote and wrote and wrote. Oh no!

Let's pretend I haven't forgotten about theme... I've just internalized it, right? Then what would you say are the themes in my writing? What do I come back to, over and over again? What is important to me, as a writer? What is the theme of, say, Countdown? Is there more than one theme? Are there right answers to this question? Let me know, will you? And I'll share my speech with you, when I'm home.

Home Saturday, just in time to figure out what we're cooking on Sunday for the season four premiere of Mad Men! Remember last year's dinner, very heavily influenced by Julia Child? Don't know if we can top this. But we'll have fun.

march against fear

Thank you so much for the supportive, encouraging, you-can-do-it mail this past ten days regarding this post about starting over with book two of the Sixties Trilogy.

I have wrestled mightily this past ten days, over and up and under and out and down and through with this new story, and as I have, I have realized some truths about myself, the way I work, my resistance to killing my darlings, as well as a huge truth about the original novel for book two.

Long and short, I am going back to the original draft. But not entirely. I am going back to it in the way that I made lunch today, pictured (in part) below. Let me explain. 

I am still rewriting the entire original novel. So much so, that it may as well be brand new. I am using Sunny -- my new narrator -- as my main character. I am tossing so much about the original draft that I can hardly see it as the original story. But here's the thing:

I am using the spine of the original novel as my plot for the new novel, and we are staying in 1966. If you followed my twitter stream last week, you'll know that, at one point, I was convinced that we needed to move the entire novel to 1964 and create a new plot from the ground up.

I called my friend Diane Ross at the McCain Library Civil Rights Archive at the University of Southern Mississippi and told her I needed her to pull together every oral history she had from Freedom Summer volunteers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, so I could visit in the next few weeks and sit in the reading room with all those primary sources, in order to find my story.

I pulled off my bookshelves my dear-to-me books about Freedom Summer, about personalities I one day want to write about -- maybe I could include them in this novel! Yes! I was on the right track! Excited, I ordered Bob Zellner's book about his participation in the civil rights movement -- Zellner was the first white field secretary for SNCC, has a terrific story to tell about Freedom Summer, and is the subject of a new film by Spike Lee. Oh, was I ever on the right track.

In fact, my first published book was a picture book, Freedom Summer. That book is going into its 14th printing! Still going strong. I did so much research for that book, read so much, internalized so much, that I feel I could bring 1964 alive in a heartbeat. Yes, 1964. Freedom Summer. We'd be further away from the protests of the Vietnam War, and firmly entrenched in the civil rights movement. That was the way to go.

At the same time I was feverishly gathering my forces last week, my good writer friend Deborah Hopkinson sent me the new biography of Pearl Buck -- many of you wrote to me last week suggesting it as well, and I hadn't known about it; I had only known that my Sunny begins her story (as you read in that same previous blog post) by saying, "I am reading The Good Earth, and I am suffocating."

My sweet husband bought me a copy of The Good Earth. I read it for the first time in decades.  I saw immediately how this amazing novel of turn-of-the-century China fit with the modern civil rights movement -- my undermind, my subconscious was indeed at work, and I was listening to it, listening and obeying, making connections right and left.

But my story wasn't coming. I had two pages. I eeked out a chapter. I loved Sunny's voice, but the story went nowhere. It petered off in each of three different directions I took it. All my previous novels have built up and spilled out, thirty or forty pages, all these fabulous characters vying for center stage. In previous novels, including my original version of book two of the Sixties Trilogy, I sit back, spent, after those first, breathless thirty or forty pages and say, Whew. Now what?

But I see a shape. I see a path. I understand I have a novel, and that is exhilarating.

I am not exhilarated by what I've got so far for the new book two, but I am highly intrigued and very hopeful. And I'm beginning to use my practical mind, here. Be realistic, Deb. You love Sunny. And maybe, just maybe, Sunny belongs in the original book two. Maybe, just maybe, we really do belong in 1966 with book two. (The music is better, for one thing.)

Maybe, just maybe, I need to trust my original instincts with book two, and with the trilogy, instincts that told me I needed to be in 1966 with book two. And if I do that, if I trust my gut and go with it, that means the thing I did not want to face when I met with my editor at ALA and we had the hard discussion about the original draft for book two:

I need to face the fact that Hang The Moon, as I have called this book for thirteen years, is dead. Oh, what a grief I feel over this! You, my reader friends, thought I canned it and started over? Not on your life. I saved it -- off to the side, like some jeweled thing to come back to one day, in all its Tennessee Williams glory -- and then I started a brand-new book two.

I'll show you, you editor you! Can the Tennessee Williams? This entire NOVEL is Tennessee Williams! You can't take my characters away from me! I'll hold on to them for dear life! I'll just tuck them over here, in this safe place, and I'll go off and create a whole new book for you!

But that won't work, friends. If it would, I would be well into a new book two, with its forty pages of exhilaration, calling to me. Instead, what I've got is a lot like my lunch elements, above, piecemeal, but waiting to be combined into something wonderful: I am going to cannabalize from the original book two, I'm going to lift its spine out of its body, right now, and put it into the new book two, which I will then make Sunny's story.

How will I do this? I don't know. I have hope, and the tools of my trade, including a great willingness and persistence, and my lovely subconscious, to help me make connections, to help me structure this plot, create characters who serve my story... or the story will serve them! -- and to finish book two, smack in 1966. Elvis. The Beatles. Rock and Roll. James Meredith's March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson, June 1966. My girls, caught in it, but a brand-new story within that framework.

My subconscious didn't steer me wrong about 1964. It's a stellar year, full of glorious stories. And I will revisit it. Just not for the Sixties Trilogy.

So my task is a total and complete rewrite of book two, letting go of the Tennessee Williams, simplifying (which is so hard), finding Sunny's voice and her path, unearthing her people, and allowing her story to unfold.

No small task. But no one said it would be easy. My editor wrote me an editorial letter when we met at ALA. It applies to every character in the new book two, and to me as well. I share it with you in its entirety, below. 

 I am ready to do this now. Please come with me. As Joe and John Henry discover in my very first book, Freedom Summer, it's important to walk through new doorways with a friend.

canning the tennessee williams

Truth-telling time. If I can tell you when the writing is going well, I can also tell you about times when it's all over the map, which is right now, with Book Two of the Sixties Trilogy.

I have a draft, I do. It's not a GOOD draft, but I knew that, even as I sent it to my editor to read before our meet-up at ALA.

But what I didn't know was just how far off the mark this draft was. As I looked into my editor's face last Monday (a week ago) and listened to him talk about the draft he had just read, I realized: it's got to go.

I didn't jump to conclusions. I just listened, offered my take, listened some more, and spent the rest of the day in a kind of dumbstruck cloud. I slept on it. I considered my options. I love this story. I love these particular characters. I don't want to let them go.

I've written a story about two girls, cousins, who intensely dislike one another -- they have just met, and are as different as night and day -- and who are forced to spend the summer together in Mississippi. They end up making a trip together from Mississippi to Memphis, to find Elvis Presley, whom one of them is convinced -- with reasonable proof -- is her father. They journey north into the James Meredith March Against Fear, which is journeying south from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. It has always been this way. I have been working on this story for... years.

I love its premise. And, for all the years I've worked on this novel, Birdie, our Mississippi girl, has stolen the show. Margaret, who comes into this family suddenly, has been unlikeable, and she is my heroine. So I worked hard on this draft to make Margaret a sympathetic character.

And, lo and behold, my editor thinks Margaret's voice is spot-on. Excellent! He thinks Birdie is unlikeable. And so is most of her chaotic southern family. They no longer serve the story, as it is now part of the Sixties Trilogy, and must do its work in that context.

I didn't see this at all, as I worked on this draft, but as I listened to my editor, I began to understand it, too. This story isn't what I need for the Sixties Trilogy. Yes, it takes place in 1966, but this loving, chaotic, amazing, nutty cast of characters aren't serving the story I need to tell right now. I have built a world for my girls to inhabit, but this is a long, languid story full of the atmosphere and craziness of the steamy sixties south, and of the kind of southern storytelling this story needs. I think it may be an adult novel, truth to tell, and this isn't the first time I've had that thought.

I need a story that grabs the reader and tosses her squarely into the middle of the 1960s and shouts GO!

Sorta like I did with Countdown. I need to remember that Countdown was re-written and revised so many times, in order to get it right, and that the beginning was crafted over and over, to lend it an immediacy and authenticity that it needed. But I didn't let go of my characters.

Still, at this moment, it feels right to let go of Margaret and Birdie, and come back to them another day. It feels right to "can the Tennessee Williams," and to begin again. I am not even scared to do this, and I know why: I am still numb. Numb from that conversation, and numb from the contemplating on where to go next.

So I started a new file called "1966." I pulled out my research materials -- and boy, do I have research materials!  I began to read and call to me my story. I did little else but sit in the pink chair and play midwife (so don't come visit right now; it ain't pretty). And I woke up a few days ago with a girl named Sunny whispering in my ear:

"I am reading The Good Earth, and I am suffocating."

I leaped from bed -- literally -- and ran for my notebook, where I began to capture all I could before it evaporated. I have a first chapter. I'm not sure where it's going. I'm using my notebook and I'm making my lists -- list after list -- by hand, so I can figure out what I'm trying to say and what is asking for expression --

I'm keeping the Meredith March, 1966, Stokely, and I'm adding some favorites that feel right and that I have researched to death over the years: Virginia Durr, Ruby Doris Smith, NOW, Bob Zellner, voter registration in the Delta, Greenwood, maybe Alabama, hmmm....

I have chronicled this decision on facebook, here (scroll down a bit; what affirming, supportive comments), and I may keep going there, for short updates, and on twitter, so you can follow along there if you like, although I will always come back to the blog to keep a record of my progress -- and process.

Yesterday, I opened up the old file again, the one that's not working. What can I use from it? Can I use more than I thought? Now that I have this new beginning... maybe. So I renamed it "1966  CAN THE TENNESSEE WILLIAMS." ha!

My husband surprised me with a copy of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. Already I see parallels between that story and the civil rights movement -- can I use this in some way? It's been decades since I read The Good Earth -- why did it come floating into my consciousness as I awoke? I trust that there is a message here. I will stay with it, and see what comes.


I'm trying hard not to get into the what was I THINKING? place of despair with this new story, and to just go with it. Maybe I will end up melding one draft with another. Maybe it's going to be much SIMPLER than I thought, in some ways. Maybe not. But I am in the very thicket of revision and rewriting now, and need to stay with it, stay with it, stay with it. I owe book two as soon as I'm able to release it back into my editor's hands for another go-round. We've agreed on Labor Day Weekend and again in November at NCTE. So I've got -- what? Seven weeks until Labor Day? And I'll need to send it soon. Let's say six weeks.

The pressure is coming from me. "Take the time you need to take," my editor says. I will. But I will also move forward steadily. I'm going to try something new (and old; each novel has its own trajectory, so I have tried some of everything, from time to time, it seems). I plan to suit up and show up EVERY DAY and -- like a professional writer -- direct this story to come to me.

Let's see what happens. Send me lifelines now and then. I'll need 'em.

i'm the pied piper

I owe a draft to my editor on Monday, so I've been sunk into the mire and amazement of 1966. I'll be tweeting, and on facebook, for brief updates. In the meantime -- here's how I start HANG THE MOON, book two of The Sixties Trilogy:



Oh, my!! Look at the SUIT! And look how composed he is, for a song that's so JOYFUL! Here are a couple more listens (love this one, that is so obviously overdubbed, but so FUN, even though Crispian seems to be at a loss just how to deal with all those screaming girls, not to mention a conga line!) that are a bit more animated, but still -- is it being a Brit, or is it just Crispian St. Peters? No matter, I LOVED this song. And I love being able to FINALLY write about the British Invasion, which had not happened yet in Countdown, in 1962.

Crispian, born Robert Peter Smith, died earlier this year after suffering a stroke. He was 71. In this song, he will always, always be a young, mop-headed Brit of 27 who was totally surprised by the fame that snuck up on him.

I listened to this song, as a 45rpm on my blue record player, over and over, as a 13-year-old kid. My kids in HANG THE MOON are 13. They are listening to not only this song in 1966, but also to The Rolling Stones singing "Satisfaction," and Barry Sadler singing "The Ballad of the Green Berets" -- number ONE in 1966.

WHOA. I have my work cut out for me -- wish me luck.

xoxo

georgia conference on teaching writing and reading

Hey, y'all. I'm here at the 7th annual Georgia Conference on Teaching Writing and Reading, organized by Dodge Learning Resources, at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry, Georgia. I'm talking with teachers, and learning from them, over the next couple of days.

Even in this difficult economy, more than 700 teachers have registered for this conference. 

I'm ready to dissect Freedom Summer and talk about how that book came to be, and share what I've learned about reading like a writer, through using Freedom Summer's text, and many other wonderful picture books.

And then, as always, I'll talk about accessing your story -- how do you do that? How do you help your students understand that their lives contain the magical stuff of story -- many stories, important stories -- right there under their noses? And how do you help students find those stories? How do you help them write about "one clear moment in time," and shape that moment into personal narrative?


I love this work. And I'm going to love love love learning from my fellow presenters. Just look at the company I'm keeping this week (opens in pdf). Stellar. I'm humbled, and I'm lucky.

More from the other side of this day. I hope you are writing, reading, reflecting, doing, and saying yes to summer.

quick countdown updates and back to work

Quickly from me: I'm writing away this week on book two of the Sixties Trilogy, before I head off on the weekend to Charleston, for Jim's mother's birthday, and Spoletto. Spoletto! I'm bringing my camera... I always have fun shooting in Charleston.

This just in: Countdown is IndieBound! and is part of the Summer 2010 Kid's IndieNext List -- Yahoo! Thank you, indie booksellers! Wish I could be at BEA right now, to thank you in person. What good company I am in -- what a thrill.

 Next, Countdown is reviewed at Bloomberg.com. It's a fabulous review, and look at me, sandwiched between John Grisham and Louis Sachar. Fun! Humbling. And wonderful.

Back to work this afternoon. I've got my girls runnin' for a train. They're about to meet Partheny, who is 101 years old in 1966, which means she was born a slave, just as the Civil War was ending in 1865.

It interests me that kids in the schools I visit almost never understand that there were 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the end of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Here is a character to span that time. She is wise. She is no-nonsense. And she is full of mystery. I love her.

Back to it.