An Update About My Day

I did end up writing character sketches, so my writing time wasn't a complete waste.

Just wanted to quickly write about where I'm headed tomorrow. I'm going on my own writer's retreat with a critique buddy to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in the historic Nye Beach section of Newport, Oregon. It's a book-lover's paradise since the bed and breakfast is dedicated to books and famous authors. Each room is even named after an author and decorated in their "style." In July, I stayed for two nights in the Jane Austen room. Copies of each of her novels lined the antique bureau. An afghan-covered reading chair sat in the corner. Crashing waves and a view of the ocean greeted me each morning.

Total bliss.

Check out their website at www.sylviabeachhotel.com.

Lord, please let my fingers fly over the keys!

Just Rambling...

(written today at 10:00am)

Today I am finding it quite impossible to work on my novel. I am at Ken’s Artisan Bakery in NW Portland for a change of pace (and croissants) but to my amazement I can’t find any plugs for my laptop. Of course, my battery is dead, so I am stuck with doing the old-fashioned way of writing-- pen and paper. My notebooks are even all at home, so the only paper I have to use is the back of manuscript drafts. Oh well. It’s recycling, right? Better than not having any paper or a pen, for that matter. And the mini chocolate croissants are so good here! I like the hot chocolate, too, if only they could make it a bit hotter. (Tried twice)

I think I’ll try to write some character sketches using the Flemish art books that I’ve brought.

Hey, a corner seat has just opened up! I’m off to snatch it…

Aaah, much better. I hate floating in the center of a café. Must-have-wall-next-to-me-or-nearby.

No more procrastinating! I have to get something done today!

Confessions of a Bibliophile Mama (and Other Thoughts on my Mind)

(Written on November 8th in coffee shop at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland, 11:40am)

I spend too much money on books. But I can’t help it. I LOVE books more than mint chocolate chip ice cream and a trip to Paris combined!

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I really do love them. My dream is to have a library in my house. When my husband’s office is done and I can move into his little cubby hole of a room, I’m going to make it a library. Of course, I am going to share the space with our new baby boy and his basinnet (the room has a convenient door attached to our bedroom) for quite a while so he and his older brother can get some sleep. Eventually, Baby Scribe will share a room with Little Scribe, but for the time being he’ll be sleeping in “the library.” I wonder if he’ll end up loving books as much as Little Scribe does, and Little Scribe never slept in a library! (Okay, maybe when I dragged him to public libraries for my research when he was still in his infant car seat. And there were all those bookstores we went to, and still do go to…)

Didn’t get any writing done today, only a lot of VERY satisfying book browsing and purchasing. The purchases definitely have to do with my historical fiction novel-in-progress, at least, so that’s good. Three art books and two travel guides. Not bad. These books have helped me to get excited about working on the novel again, which is good because it’s been more than six months (I was revising my fantasy middle grade to resubmit). I’ve been really feeling far, far away from the story, and all of my notes and research that I gathered in the past, though important and helpful, didn’t seem to be inspiring me to write. These new books have given me the boost I need.

Art books from the period you are writing about are really a great tool to use when fleshing out stories. I feel more like a detective than a writer when I am looking through them, as if I were peeping in on history. I am constantly searching for my characters’ faces and clothing as well as for landscapes and all sorts of historic details that come to life in a drawing or painting. I need that visual stimulus to really feel immersed in the period. I’ve checked out quite a few books from the library, but Powell’s had different ones at good prices that really made my fingers itch to write.

I know, I know… I just need to keep my bum in the chair…to lock myself in a room with my computer, notes, books, and drafts and finish the goose-livered draft. December is the deadline I've created for myself (Last December was, too. Hmm…) If I don’t finish the draft then I think I’ll go crazy with all of the other story ideas that I have racing around in my brain. Mostly they are two to one—two fantasies for every one historical fiction idea, which is funny because I never think of myself as a “fantasy writer.” I don’t only read fantasies. I love and read most genres-- historical fiction, chic lit., realistic fiction, mysteries, and fantasies. But three fairy tale retellings are scouring my brain right now along with one magical realism tale and two historical fiction ideas.

Time is ticking away. I should get a plastic flip-top crate for my novel information/ research and lug it around with me like a ball and chain. Of course, that’s kind of impossible for a woman whose been told by her OBGYN to stay off her feet as much as possible. Maybe my husband can lug it around for me. I couldn’t even carry my computer bag around Powell’s and had to leave it in the car, plus make one trip to the car to unload a bag of books (out of my two bags of purchases).

I’ve been feeling a bit crampy on the left side. Should sit down when I get home. Little Scribe and I might be visiting Burgerville on the way home from The Play Boutique today. When am I ever going to go grocery shopping? Need to make that list, and then maybe Daddy Scribe will go. That would be a real life-saver.

Tried the hot chocolate trick to see if I could feel Baby Scribe kick. I do a little bit, about the same as I did earlier today. I hope he’s okay in there. I’m obsessed with worry about whether or not he’s moving enough everyday.

Which week am I, anyway? 25 or 26? I’ve forgotten now. I don’t remember if I’m going to turn 26 or 27 weeks on Friday. I think I’m turning 26 weeks. Should I look up how much movement I should be feeling?

I hope everything with the baby turns out okay. I feel like Baby Scribe is more of a miracle than Little Scribe because of all the worrying I’ve been doing before he’s even born that I didn’t have with Little Scribe.

Oooh, just felt a good little kick there. Are you in there, Baby Scribe? Are you comfortable? Need anything? More hot cocoa? How about Shannon Hale's newest novel?

Both of my children are definitely miracles, but I have to admit that it was nice to be in ignorant bliss before Little Scribe surprised us with his early arrival.

Losing steam on my journal writing. Off to pick up Little Scribe…

My Mind is Rice Pudding

I would say that my mind is like jello right now, but since I don't like jello and that saying is a bit of a cliche, I have to say that it is more like rice pudding. I'm tired, but I have a lot to do and don't feel like doing any of it. This is of course what I get for talking on the phone to a good friend for over two hours late last night and then being too wired to go to sleep. I did take a nap with Little Scribe today for two hours, which definitely helped. But after I put him to bed tonight I just crashed on the couch.

Of course, now it's hard to relax because someone's car alarm is blaring outside. (I checked, and it isn't mine.) Oh good. It just turned off. Phew!

More reasons why my mind is kind of floating around in creamy lumps of rice and custard-- I just received an email yesterday from another editor who is interested in seeing the rewrite of my middle grade fantasy novel. Yippee! It put me in a Cloud Nine state of happiness for a while. But did Little Scribe and I get to the post office today to send the manuscript out priority mail? Of course not. It is definitely number one on the agenda for tomorrow, though. (Besides picking up Little Scribe's dinosaur Halloween costume that is on hold at The Children's Place in downtown Portland.) Now the novel is being seriously considered by two publishers, which is exciting. But the wait will be excrutiating, considering that these same two publishers had the original, unrevised manuscript for a YEAR before each asked for a rewrite. Ugh!

Okay, I have to print out a new cover letter, do the dishes, wash and fold the laundry, take pictures of our new house addition for my husband (who is out of town in Florida on business), take a shower, and then I can sit and read underneath my cozy down comforter in bed.

Why do I feel like reading my book is sooo far away from being possible right now, especially when it is the number one thing I want to do?

What book am I reading, do you ask? It's called THE SINGER OF ALL SONGS by Kate Constable. I am only on the second chapter, but I have already fallen into the story. I'm intrigued by the main character, Calwyn, and her life behind a high ice wall that guards the sisters of Antaris from the world of Tremaris. It sounds "convent"-like in nature and reminds me of the beguinage that I visited in Bruges, Belgium. I don't know why that kind of life fascinates me, but it does. Maybe it's because a little time by myself right now really sounds tempting!

I really have to get my bum moving. (No matter how achy it is from the progesterone shots I have to take weekly now for Baby Scribe, who is kicking away in my belly as I type.)

You know, what I'd really like to do right now is EAT a bowl of rice pudding with a dollop of whipped cream and a flurry of cinammon on top. Or is that Baby Scribe talking? :-)

P.S. I've also just noticed that this time for the post is incorrect. It was really posted at 10:45pm on Thursday, October 11th. I just had my blog open for that long to remind me to write in it since the date and time posted here. Just in case you were wondering why I am acting like it is late. It's because it is late! (And two days later to boot.)

Burning the Midnight Oil (or More Like Yankee Candle)

Toys lie scattered every which way on the living room rug-- from train sets and circus sets to piles of picture books and bright bouncing yellow balls-- from wooden kitchen fruit and mini pots and pans to stuffed sea otters and teddy bears. We have it all here in what was once the living room. And do you know what's funny? This is actually pretty clean!

Then there are the two loads of laundry sitting unfolded right next to me on the couch and the dishes stacked in the kitchen sink, plus the piles of newspapers and magazines on the dining room table and boxes of Halloween decorations not yet unpacked in the hallway.

And what am I doing now that it is almost midnight with all of this surrounding me? What any good mother/writer would do... Light my "Harvest" Yankee Candle (my favorite scent of theirs, and I am not a candle person by any means), eat biscotti, and write in my blog.

Thus is the life of a true mother of a toddler/writer. I must burn the midnight oil every night in order to pursue my other life, that of a full-time children's writer. Household chores must go undone from time to time (more times than not, to be really honest) and things fall by the waste side. I am horrible at responding to email and sometimes phone messages (though the phone not as much) unless it is an absolute emergency, impossible at keeping the kitchen clean for more than two days a week (once when our housekeeper comes, the other because miracles do happen), and sporadic at best at folding laundry (Thank God for my husband!) My hair is always messy and needs a haircut badly, I never get my nails done because the polish chips the exact same day which drives me bonkers, and my clothes match only on a good day.

I am NOT a multitasker. Now that I have a two and a half-year-old son and another on the way, I can only concentrate on three things-- taking care of my son, spending time with my husband, and my writing. Pretty much everything else falls away for certain periods of time if I am writing a lot. When I'm really lucky, I get a little time for "myself" that has nothing to do with any of these things (like getting a pedicure, since the polish lasts longer, or going to a bookstore, or taking my French conversation class once a week.)

Close friends should know that the truest way to know if I am not writing a lot is if you hear from me a lot. If I am up to date on phone calls and emails, then I am PROCRASTINATING and not writing or working on writing-related items during the precious little time that I have (revisions, critiquing other manuscripts for writing buddies, writing cover letters, reading PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY or THE HORN BOOK, updating the blog, etc). That's not good.

I love emailing and keeping in touch with my friends, but my mind can only remember so much. This time right now is what I get to either write novels set in other times or other worlds (which takes over your brain, too, and is hard to turn off sometimes) and basically do my "work" that others get to do during the day. My daytime is devoted to my son, and I give my entire self to him (except for the Tues./Thurs. preschool hours from 9-12:45pm, which are now devoted to lots and lots of doctor visits for the new baby).

I think full-time working mothers understand this dilemma. They work all day, then come home and spend time with their children and family, and it's hard to do other things besides that. My day is swapped with spending all day with my son and then getting to spend time with my husband and then getting to do my work. And it is work. It may be a passion, but it is NOT a hobby. I don't even consider it my own personal time. It is my writing time, my work time. Something that I must do or else I don't feel complete.

It's so hard for others to understand, I think. Writing and motherhood do not blend together well. They're definitely more like oil and vinegar than Nestle's chocolate milk. With chocolate milk, the Nestle powder gets mixed into the milk when you stir it with a spoon, producing a brand new, creamy concoction that is completely blended together. With oil and vinegar, once they are shaken together, a nice, fragrant vinagrette forms, but the two ingredients never stay blended together for long. It takes constant shaking, constant work, to keep the vinagrette from separating.

That's how I feel about writing and motherhood. It takes constant work to keep everything together, but no matter what happens, the separation still occurs.

Piles of photographs without homes sit inside boxes in my living room (not yet completely unpacked since our move here last summer). Baby books and journals lean against one another on a bookshelf, half-written in. And even more books sit not exactly even on my son's bookshelf in his room. Yes, I have chosen to finish writing chapters over putting together elaborate scrapbooks, filling in what my son ate when he was one year and three months old or how potty training is going, and keeping his bookshelf perfectly straight, but I make sure to sing and dance with him everyday, go apple picking and bake apple cake with him, and play trains on the floor with him until my knees are raw. We read, read, and read some more, admire the changing leaves, and find pictures in the clouds. I hope that when he is an adult he will forgive me for not having elaborate scrapbooks about him or for not writing down what his favorite food was when he was two.

Sometimes I visit other famous children's writers' blogs and read that they have two kids under five or something similar and I wonder, "How do they do it?" They are prolific and successful and their hair is combed and their clothes match! But then I hear the words of Donna Jo Napoli, an extremely successful children's writer and a professor of linguistics to boot. She has four or five children (I don't remember exactly), grown now, and has spoken at numerous conferences about her life as a writer. When asked how she wrote when the kids were younger, she replied that she did manage to write and raise a family, but she did it BADLY! She said that the family could "literally" eat off the kitchen floor (if you know what I mean) and that she had every person in the household be responsible for dinner one night a week, even the youngest four-year-old, who made everyone eat a bowl of fruit and cereal.

Her talk makes me feel like I really can pull this writing and motherhood thing off, even if I am doing it BADLY. I can hardly wait until my son is four-years-old and can cook me a bowl of fruit and cereal for dinner!

Now, if only I could teach him to respond to emails, too. Now that would be something.

Into the Wild Blogging World (Again)

I don’t know what it is about blogging—for some reason, I can stop doing it for a very long time, and then suddenly one day the feeling to blog overtakes me, like a pregnant woman who has to have a handful of candy corn right now and can’t think of anything else until she does. When the urge comes, I can’t stop thinking about posting until the task is done.

It’s very strange.

At least for me, I think this stems from my recent reading of other successful bloggers’ sites, especially those in the children’s literature realm. They have photos and video and lots of bells and whistles. Me? I have words. That’s it. And usually I don’t have the time to even write words, let alone do all the extras blogging needs nowadays.

I know I’ll need to very soon, if only to keep up with others and make my blog the best it can be, but for now I need only to be content with the fact that I actually wrote something today and posted on the blog after another long, long absence.

Eclairs Are Good for You (and Your Writing!)

I am jumping up and down and doing cartwheels over the newest café addition to the area where I live. (Not necessarily in my neighborhood, since this café is fifteen minutes away, but close enough) It will become my newest writing place, and even now I am sitting in my new little haven writing this blog entry on Word, savoring the smell of fresh rustic baguettes, almond croissants right out of the oven, rich pain au chocolat, custard-filled éclairs, and fluffy quiche lorraines. One name says it all…

St. Honore Boulangerie and Pattisserie.

If you don’t know the words, “boulangerie” and “patisserie,” those fluid, roll right off the tongue French words, you should. They mean “bakery” and “pastry shop” or more specifically, a place where bread and pastries are made and sold. They are everywhere in France with storefronts so cute that cheapie mass market art sold from street vendors have the bakeries plastered all over their paintings. (I know…I own one of them! So kitsch!) St. Honore is one of only two (the other being closer to downtown in a very trendy area of Portland.)

A man sitting next to me just finished speaking to the owner who, believe it or not, has a French accent. Another plus! It’s so nice to see the owner of another culture’s food establishment being from that culture. It’s a rare find these days, especially in the suburbs.

What does this have to do with writing? (Why am I always asking this about my blogs?)

Plenty for me, since I am basically a café writer. I have an area to write in my house, but it is adjacent to the kitchen and living room and more out in the open than I would like. Plus, Little Scribe goes to his nursery fifteen minutes away from the house, which would take up thirty minutes of my precious writing time if I drove back home again to write, only to have to drive back to pick him up again.

So, I have been writing across the street from The Play Boutique at Peet’s Coffee or down the street at Chuck’s Cookies and Coffee, dreaming of something better. I used to write at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf when I lived in California since it was across the street from my house, but those don’t exist in Oregon. (Good thing anyway, since the chain has just put in flat screen televisions in all of their establishments! Talk about ruining ambience!) Another favorite writing place of mine also fifteen minutes from my old California house was Champagne Bakery and Bistro, but up until today, all of the great Portland area French bakeries and cafes were about thirty minutes or more away.

Now I have achieved Zen.

Did I mention that St. Honore is across the street from the Play Boutique, too? There really couldn’t be a better location for me!

Okay, okay. I will probably not come here to write every time Little Scribe is away. He goes to The Play Boutique three times a week, so I will probably choose one day a week to come and write. I don’t want to get fat from all the goodies here. But I think this will soon become my place. (Did I also mention that there are plugs for my computer? Peet’s doesn’t have any plugs, so I always get stuck losing power. So annoying.)

No internet, but that’s probably good since I always waste my writing time writing or checking emails when I have internet access.

My point to this rambling blog/ ode to all things toasted golden brown and sprinkled with powdered sugar... If you are a Mama Scribe like me and can’t concentrate at home, try café writing. Think of yourself as Ernest Hemingway in Paris, sitting for all hours outside at a café with pen and paper in hand. There’s nothing like a cup of tea (lemon rose from Peet’s Coffee is my favorite, served in a teapot and real ceramic mug), a gooey chocolate chip cookie from Chuck’s, or a mini raspberry jam croissant from St. Honore (Did I mention that they have mini pastries, so you won’t have to ruin your diet?) to stimulate your fingers to write, write, write! No crying babies, no whining toddlers, no husbands asking you why you didn’t get all the cheddar off the cheese grater when you washed the dishes last night, no piles of laundry, no cats needing their litter box changed…just you and your words and the "joie de vivre" that is café writing.

If you’ve never tried café writing, get a babysitter for an hour and go find at the minimum a Starbucks. Even the ambience of Starbucks is enough to turn on your inner voice.

And hopefully, if you are lucky, your fingers will dance over the keys.