Readin' and Writin'

One thing about summer that I love is the time to catch up on reading. During the school year, most of the reading I’m doing is either keeping up with (or ahead of) my students, which often crowds out any meaningful time to read what I want to read. As a result, I’m usually woefully behind on the new hot books. It takes me forever to get to the old hot books—for instance, I just finally read Water for Elephants. I waited until Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before I took myself to Hogwarts the first time. I’m like the person in the world to read The Help. And don’t even get me started on the books I’m allegedly supposed to read, the award winners and lauded tomes like Freedom and The Pale Kingand the international sensations like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Don’t know the girl with the dragon tattoo except what I’ve read in newspapers and such, but I’ll get around to her sometime. But not this week. I have a stack of YA I picked up at RWA National that’s going to migrate to my classroom, and I’d like to be able to talk them up when they get there.

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Downsizing

Four pounds doesn't seem like much when you're hefting it in the grocery store. Heft that thing in a travel bag through a bunch of airports (Atlanta's being a standout problem), up and down elevators and across pedestrian bridges in hotels, it gains mass the way most of us do during Christmas cookie time. Four pounds of laptop over your shoulder starts carving a groove in said shoulder, let me just say.

A month away from home can teach you a lot of things, like how to find laundromats in strange cities, how expensive it is to buy Dr Peppers from a hotel snack bar, and how—no matter how nicely they make it up or turn it down at night—that pretty hotel bed just isn’t as nice as your own. But the one thing all that traveling really teaches you is how heavy that laptop of yours really is.

All that traveling wasn’t for naught, however. I did get paid. And one thing I did with my check was give my back and shoulders a bit of a break. My new MacBook Air just arrived this morning. Two pounds and a teeny bit of change. The screen’s smaller—it’s the eleven-inch model—but I think the weight loss will compensate for it. Especially in the Atlanta airport, which all folks from the South are doomed to roam whether they want to or not.

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Just a Few Notes...

Revision time! My notes arrived from Dream Agent (Longest. Email. Ever.), so now I need to revise. Which is fine. I like revising. Really! The notes themselves aren’t that awful. Fixes here and there that several sets of sharp eyes managed to catch. Validation of nagging worries that I tried to ignore, but which kept creeping in. A roadmap for some progress. Little things. Really! Not at all like dynamiting and starting over. Even if it feels like it.

Okay. Enough whining. Back to work, since nothing else will do the trick.

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Knotwork

Sixteen years ago today, I stood in a custom-fitted raw silk dress (thanks, Mama), hand lightly resting in the crook of my Daddy’s arm, smiling at Mr. Man, handsome in his morning coat and striped trousers. Within a few moments--a few breaths, really--we were slipping Celtic knotwork bands on each other’s hands, promising to be true and steadfast, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The choice of vow wasn’t lightly made. Celtic knots are formed with one solid strand, woven in and around itself, with no beginning and no end. I’ve seen plenty of badly-done, broken knots (usually on cheaply made pretty things) to know the real thing when I see it. When I was a teenager, my mother gave my sister and me Celtic heart pendants. The Celtic heart is the single stranded-knot formed at the intersection of three circles--one strand, eternal; three circles, Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Mr. Man and I thought it fitting symbolism, both in the bands and in the vow.

The ring he placed on my finger that day fits more tightly than it did then, but the knots are true. One strand, woven closely with memories and promises, with no breaks despite sixteen years of wear and the inevitable conflicts of two people forming one life together. The strand of a life, woven in love, sealed in the Spirit.

I know the real thing when I see it.

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New York State of Mind

I’m writing this from my new apartment in El Barrio. It’s nice: One decent-size bedroom, a living area, a full kitchen, and a shoehorned bathroom, parquet floors, natural light. You know, something that would rent for more than I pay for my 4 bedroom, 2 bath house on a quarter acre in the ’burbs because even though I’m in Spanish Harlem, this is MANHATTAN, baby!

It’s worth the outrageous money we’re paying to stay here this week because Frick and Frack have never been to New York. We did the tourist thing in Times Square yesterday and have had enough of that, thank you very much. Today we have tickets to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, starring Harry Potter himself and Dan Fielding from Night Court. We’ll eat amazing food on Restaurant Row tonight and begin the austerity plan tomorrow (spaghetti cooked “at home” instead of one more restaurant meal with ridiculous taxes added on). We’ll do plenty of walking and gawking and photographing and even squeeze in to watch the big fireworks display tomorrow night.

My kids are already in love with The Big City. I appreciate it again--the variety of people, the arts on your doorstep, the vitality of neighborhoods and round-the-clock activity. But after nearly a month of travel, mimi has to admit that flying home to her swamp and staying for a while is sounding mighty tempting. Her Empire State of Mind has an expiration date.

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RWA National: Homework

Met with Dream Agent yesterday for our one-on-one. Thursday’s agency get-together in the Film Center Café was interesting and instructive (how often do you get to talk with agency folk and authors about agent-author relationships, etc.?), but this meeting was the meat of my week at RWA National.

I sit down at our teeny table at the bar, and Dream Agent pulls out the longest email I have ever seen. It’s her notes on the two proposals I sent her. We went over them in detail--and I mean detail. I’ve got plenty to work on ...and that’s not even considering her feedback on the other ideas I sent her, which are in a separate giant email, both of which she’s sending me when she gets back into the office on Tuesday.

We also determined that since I have no problems meeting a deadline from an editor, while self-imposed deadlines get slipperier and more evasive than Frank Abagnale, Dream Agent needs to be a bit of a taskmistress. Don the metaphorical thigh-high boots and pick up the whip, so to speak. I think she enjoyed that a bit, since she gave me a deadline of the third week of July to basically rewrite two synopses and clean up about five chapters’ worth of writing. And I’m spending next week in New York on vacation with the denizens of Chez mimi. So, two weeks, then.

Methinks mimi will be a busy--but happy--girl. She’s always liked school. Even the homework.

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RWA National: The Contemporary Romance Market

Authors Susan Andersen, Robyn Carr, and Kristan Higgins, joined by agent Maria Carvainis and ably moderated by Jill Shalvis, conducted this panel discussion on the state of the contemporary romance market. Here are some highlights from their talk:

1. •Readers are engaged by the intimate worlds that have been created by the author, to the extent that the locale itself is practically a character.
   

2. •Writers distinguish themselves from others through their voice and tone--that’s what differentiates the books.
   

3. •Fewer accounts are buying books in all markets, likely as a result of the recession and changed buying habits, not because of e-books.
   

4. •Weathering the market takes stamina (keep writing!) and a strong belief in self.
   

5. •Each author knew clearly what she offered readers in terms of their individual voices and the tone of their books.
   

6. •Author branding is a good thing if you can express it clearly in a few words, but you can’t identify your brand until you’ve written a few books. Brand emerges from the writing, not the other way around.
   

7. •It’s smart to read extensively in your chosen market to see what readers are buying, however...
   

8. •Modeling your books on what successful authors are writing is bad advice.
   

9. •Find a support group who will be truthful with you. In the case of an agent, seek one who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

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