This week I’ve been thinking about illness and health. 

I guess there’s something about my age that makes my awareness of it keener than its been before. 

Maybe because I’ve got my own higglety-pigglety little cricks and creaks these days. 
Maybe because my parents are older and my grandparents are gone. 
Maybe because my children are vigorous, tall, rosy and robust — and I cannot fathom what life would be like if it were otherwise. 

Health is one of those things that I used to take for granted and now I’m busy taking tinctures and doling out vitamins and knocking on wood every chance I get.

So this morning I found myself with Jane Kenyon, a poet I go to for beauty and comfort and emotional resonance over and over and over again. Every so often I post about Books I Wish I’d Written, and I mean it as a form of flattery rather than greed or jealousy. There is a lot of poetry I wish I’d written, but Jane Kenyon’s is pretty high up on the stack. 

There is a poignancy to nearly every word she ever wrote — 
whether describing love or long grass, shopping or melancholy. 
There is a specificity that’s exquisite and yet, a simplicity that’s intimate and almost relaxed. 
There is an honesty that is both brutal and tender.

The surface story of Kenyon’s life looked charmed. 
She lived as a poet on a farm in New Hampshire with the love of her life, another poet.
Is that the writer’s dream, or what?
But illness haunted Kenyon like a needy dog. 
She saw her husband through numerous rounds in the ring with cancer.
She suffered an often crippling depression.
And in the end, she died in her 40’s of leukemia.

I remember when she did. I’d plucked my copy of The New Yorker out of the mailbox and begun to read, from back to front, and kept encountering poems by Kenyon. I was delighted. Until I got to the very first one that included a note of her passing. That my reading had been elegiac I had no idea…

Kenyon wrote about all of this — about being a worried wife, about depression, about dying. 
She is how I’m thinking about illness and health and happiness today. 

Happiness
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

Read the rest of the poem here…

This morning I met with a writer pal of mine. 
We try to get together once a month — sometimes to critique each other’s work, sometimes to celebrate, sometimes to brainstorm, sometimes to cry. 

Today I showed up with the nightmare previously known as my filing system. 
Not my whoooole filing system. Oh, no. 
I left the taxes and report cards and committee minutes and freelance folders at home to molder. 

Today I targeted my revision and submission folders, and if you’re rolling your eyes thinking, “Why doesn’t that nutbar get a clean, efficient Excel spreadsheet like the rest of us” can you kindly hold that thought for now? It’d make me feel better.

I don’t know how I let things accumulate like this, but let me tell you that it was a pile to behold. Notes and revisions from various manuscripts, assorted editorial rejections — opened but still in envelopes, my most recent book contract, three different submission logs (not one of them up-to-date), emails from friends about their agents. You get the idea. I think there was probably a gum wrapper or two in there, too.

So if you can believe it, I plowed through most of the stuff right then and there. All that’s left to do is integrate and update the logs so that I can feel good about putting my work out there in the world again. When you don’t know what’s where it’s hard to know what’s next. Y’know?

I have a feeling that the ‘assorted editorial rejections’ were why I’d neglected this teeming mass for as long as I did. Like if I didn’t record and file them, they hadn’t really happened? When did I stop looking at rejections as an opportunity for revision or a nudge to submit to someone else? Did a rock actually roll onto my head or did I crawl under it of my own volition? 

Sigh.

Here’s the thing. In each manuscript’s folder are numerous rejections, which for sure means I’ve been productive in the sending ’em out department. So there’s that. And many of those rejections include invitations to submit more work. I used to just jump on that sort of response but I’ve apparently gotten a little lazy, so I’m back on task there. Plus, a few stories need to be revised unless they want their share of rejections to grow, so I’ve added revisions to the to-do list, too. 

And then there are the folders for the books that’ve sold. Two out of three of them have their own little pile of no-thankyou notes.  That’s what spurs me on, really. Knowing that we don’t usually make the bell at our first rodeo. Still, there’s always another bull and I’m polishing up my boots. After I put these damn logs into Excel…. 

The other night, my husband and I (and my mom, when she could get a word in edgewise) had a rather heated discussion about kids and sports. (Actually, we mostly referenced a particular kid and a particular sport, but I think our finely-wrought arguments could be extrapolated out and applied to the larger questions at hand.)

So, in very compressed little nutshells, here’s where we fell:

One of us thinks that pretty much all kids can get better (maybe even get good at) any chosen sport with some amount of focus and effort. And if a kid is stuggling, falling behind or sitting on the bench, a little elbow grease oughta fix that. (By the way, this line of reasoning didn’t come with the contention that kids shouldn’t quit sports they hated, just that they may grow to like something more as they improved.)

The other one of us counters that not all sports are for all kids, and that part of what kids do in trying out different extra-curriculars is discover which things they love and are good at (working with the presumption that we tend to love that which we’re good at) and which things aren’t a proper match. And that, not unlike dumping a sketchy boyfriend, it’s a good idea for kids to move beyond certain ill-suited sports (or activities) so that they don’t end up feeling like inadequate klutzes themselves.

(One of us may dispute the other one’s account of this discussion, but since I’ve currently got the pen in hand, let’s go with this …)

Both of us, by the way, love physical activity for a variety of reasons, including health, fresh air and fun, for us and for our little ones. We do, though, tend to choose rather different activities ourselves – one of us being more team oriented and competitive than the other. Maybe we bring our own leanings or baggage to this little chat, maybe not. 
(Well, okay, we do. Duh.)

So, where do y’all stand on this? As parents (or teachers or coaches), what’s our job? To say ‘stick it out’ or to say ‘why not move on’? To say ‘you’ll get better’ or to say ‘there are others who are better’? To say ‘I love this sport – try it with me’ or to ask ‘what sport do you love’? To say anything or just to ask and receive?

And also, doesn’t this really transcend the track, field and stadium and address questions of what we choose to apply ourselves to in general? Are we always the best judges of what we’re good at? (I mean, all the writers I know judge their work with utter arsenic, so where’s the objectivity there? And yet, if nobody’s passing you the ball and you don’t know why, maybe there’s not arsenic enough.) Do we grow in strength and character working at what we’re not good at or do we grow in strength and character recognizing what we’re not good at? Do we tend to be good at what we love and love what we’re good at, or is that myth? What do we believe about any of this, and what do we teach our kids – about interests, passions, effort and esteem? 

And sorry for the cloak and dagger phrasing here but I can be rather, um, convincing. So… I thought I should step out of the way and let you speak for yourselves. No doubt I won’t hold my tongue for long 🙂

Welcome to another week of eye candy. Or eye snow as the case may be. I’m pretty sure ya’ll know by now that Robert’s Snow is an online art auction benefitting the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. You can view all of the 2007 snowflakes here but if you want more than that, check out the very fine profiles of the artists and their work at a blog near you! (With thanks, of course, to Jules and Eisha at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast).

Now without further ado, here’s the schedule for Week 4, which starts today. This links to participating blogs instead of to individual posts. You can find links to the posts themselves, and any last-minute updates, each morning at 7-Imp.

Monday, November 5

• Ana Alter at The Longstockings
• Laura Huliska Beith at Just One More Book!!
• Cece Bell at Jo’s Journal
• Denise Ortakales at cynthialord’s Journal

Tuesday, November 6

• Carol Heyer at The Shady Glade
• Joe Kulka at ChatRabbit
• Steven James Petruccio at Blog From the Windowsill
• Carol Schwartz at Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup

Wednesday, November 7

• Jeff Ebbeler at Sam Riddleburger’s blog
• Scott Magoon at Just One More Book!!
• Connie McLennan at The Shady Glade
• Julie Paschkis at the excelsior file

Thursday, November 8

• Genevieve Cote at a wrung sponge
• Linda Graves at Your Neighborhood Librarian
• James Gurney at Charlotte’s Library
• Matt Tavares at Please Come Flying

Friday, November 9

• Susan Kathleen Hartung at Wild Rose Reader
• Mary Peterson at Brooklyn Arden
• Annette Simon at Check It Out and Deo Writer
• Melanie Watt at Whimsy Books

Saturday, November 10

• R.W. Alley at at Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup
• Jeannie Brett at cynthialord’s Journal
• Daniel Mahoney at Paradise Found and Great Solutions to Team Challenges
• Amy Young at Kate’s Book Blog

Sunday, November 11

• Tim Coffey at The Silver Lining
• Elizabeth Dulemba at sruble’s world
• Chris Gall at Through the Studio Door
• Amy Schimler > at Please Come Flying

Thanks this week to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for her html wizardry. And also, don’t you LOVE the name of her blog??? Now go on, go check out this weeks’s featured flakes and get ready to bid! It’s a good way to plant some seeds of your own.

I’ve got this little song stuck in my head. 

I heard it on a very fine Elizabeth Mitchell CD (and can I just get a big hoo-rah for people like her who truly understand that kids do not want or need insipid schlock in place of music?).

So, this song I want to learn on my dulcimer.
Which I haven’t exactly mastered. But I might, for this little ditty.

I’ve got peace like a river in my soul (repeat, in all sorts of lovely melodic riffs)
I’ve got love like an ocean in my soul (again with the lovliness)
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul (and so on)…

Isn’t that just enough to make you want to throw up your arms and suck in the blue sky with vigor?

We’ve had a blue-sky-with-vigor kind of weekend here. 
My mom’s visiting and is currently cutting out a pattern with elder daughter, who’s quite the seamstress. 
Afterwhich she’s going to make a special dessert with younger daughter, who’s quite the chef. 
Already this weekend we’ve been to the Texas Book Festival, with all its usual wit and wisdom, and to the Westcave Preserve, home to an ecosystem so precious and fragile that you have to hike with a guide to ensure you don’t disturb things. And we’ve eaten take-out Chinese and frozen custard and drunk a few bottles of nice white wine. And we’ve walked the dog and played numerous card and board games and hung out at a couple of parks and just generally loved life. In a peaceful, non-rushy-around kind of way. The gods of the clock even granted us an extra hour of goodness today.

Tomorrow, though, is a Monday. 
Mom leaves on a crack-of-dawn flight. 
The girls will come home with homework in their backpacks. 
And the calendar is populated with, well, obligations. 

So my thought is to keep some peace like a river and maybe a dash of joy like a fountain and most certainly love like an ocean in my soul. This week. And next week. And through this next stretch of time (sometimes referred as holiday hell). Right? Suck it in, friends. With vigor….

My daughters’ GranPam (aka my mom) arrived last night, to much fanfare. 

She’s signed up to read in both girls’ classes today, 
and tomorrow are the final soccer games of the season.

In the meantime, she and I are headed to the lake to walk. 
It is beautiful here — my favorite time of year — crisp and blue.

I’ll leave you with this appropriate poem by Denise Levertov. I love this one…

Looking, Walking, Being
by Denise Levertov

I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

(Read the rest of the poem here…)

  

This morning I’m just sitting at my dining room table, minding my own business, eating my hard-boiled-egg-with-salt-and-pepper in an attempt to neutralize the caramel coating in my stomach left over from Halloween, when Mr. City Road Guy knocks on the door.

Ma’am, he says, if you plan on getting out today, you’ll need to move your car. We’re working in front of your house today.

And I say, after giving him a tired and quizzical look, Today? Haven’t you been working in front of our house for months? (You’ll remember awhile ago when the little back-up beeps on the heavy equipment were kind of on my nerves.)

And he says, I mean right in front of your house.

And he doesn’t seem that amused by me or my questions or the yolk that’s sort of crumbling down the front of my shirt.

And I say, I don’t know why – you would think I would just nod and say thank you and get my keys but I say, Is it going to be extra-special loud?

And Mr. City Road Guy looks like he’s already had a long day. Thanks to me, I think.

He sighs and he starts to answer but I can’t really hear what he says because just then begins a symphony of beep beep beep beeps…

So at this point I do as I’m told.

Because I plan on, um, getting out today.

So what do a bunch of writers do for fun? 
This isn’t a walked into a bar or screw in a lightbulb joke. I’m serious. 
The answer revolves, usually, around fine food, coffee or wine, complemented by some gallows humour about the industry.

A week or so ago, I met a bunch of local authors for lunch (there’s the food part) and, although we very methodically went around the table updating each other on our current projects and crossed fingers, the conversation inevitably descended (or was it ascended?) into industry ha-ha.

And here’s what we came up with. 
Editors oughta do house calls. 

I mean, let’s get real. Writers are introverts by nature and mostly have slippers and sweatshirts in our closets and the idea that we are supposed to go to the post office — not to mention New York — for work is just preposterous. Right? Plus, we are a’feared something fierce of approaching the mighty fire-breathing folks in the big publishing palace in the sky.

So, it’s simple. 
Editors and, heck, why not agents while we’re at it, will just stop by occasionally. 

Knock, knock. You in there?
I haven’t heard from you in awhile and I just wanted to check in. 
Do you have anything you want to share with me? 
Can I help with anything — an idea, a revision, a good cry?
Can I heat up your tea?
Let’s look through your stuff and see what grabs me. 
Ah ha. This is brilliant! You were holding out on me!
How’s your calendar? When would you like to get me the finished product?
And do you need some chocolate to help with that?

Oh, and here’s the best part. You can’t tidy up first because if your house is too clean, said editors and agents won’t think you’re hard at work and will fail to take you seriously and, god forbid, may drop you from their rounds. Win win.

So — settle in. Fill that hot water bottle and write. 
Someone’ll be by to look in on you soon.

(By the way, I can’t take total credit for the utter brilliance of this new business model, so when the world as we know it is replaced by a kinder and gentler one, here’s some of the folk you can thank:
Anne Bustard, Chris Barton, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Greg Leitich Smith, 
Julie Lake, Lindsey Lane, and Sean Petrie.)

This morning my husband leaves for the third week in a row on the road. He was home for little chunks of time in between trips, and I’m pretty sure this is it for awhile so I shouldn’t whine, but boy-oh-man does it get old.

I know some of you are single parents and that others of you have spouses who actually travel all the time every week, and I am bowing down in wonder and bewilderment. Are you extra resilient and organized and clear-headed, or do y’all just drink more wine and coffee than the rest of us?

For me, the tough bits are a little bit morning (we generally sort of swap off on getting the kids to school) and a lot evening (that stretch of time from about 5-8:30 when things like piano practice, dinner, double-checking homework, walking the dog, playing cards, reading aloud, bedtime snacks, cuddling, reminding girls to turn the lights off and reminding them again all has to happen. Right when we’re at our most wrung out. There’s a reason this is oft-referred to as the sour hour.) And then, to top it all off, we just miss ‘im, the three of us.

My sister, whose husband travels a heap more than mine does (and she’s living in the bush in Tanzania so add just a tad bit of isolation in), says the key is to do something different. 

Read aloud during dinner. 
Have friends over in the middle of the week. 
Rent a movie.

I think she’s right, and lucky for us it’s Halloween week (are any holidays confined to single days anymore??) so we’ve got cotton balls to glue onto lamb costumes and pumpkins to carve and, in a pinch, a black cat cookie cutter we could press into service. Plus it’s fall in Texas — crisp and lovely — so the dog walks can be longer and more vigorous than usual. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go decide what kind of pancakes to make for supper tonight…

Unless you have just stopped by the blogosphere for the very first time today (in which case, welcome!) you probably know by now that Robert’s Snow is an online auction of little snowy works of art, benefitting the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. (Take a look at this year’s extraordinary snowflakes here). In support of this effort, many children’s literature bloggers (writers, reviewers, teachers and librarians) are highlighting the illustrators behind the snowflakes at their sites — with the intent of driving more folks to the auction.

Here’s the schedule for Week 3, which starts Monday. This schedule links to participating blogs, instead of to individual posts. You can find post-specific links and last-minute updates at 7-Imp. Jules and Eisha, the fairy godmothers of this event, also set up a special page at 7-Imp containing a comprehensive list of links to the profiles posted so far.

Monday, October 29

• Dan Santat at Writing and Ruminating
• Joanne Friar at The Longstockings
• Alissa Imre Geis at Wild Rose Reader
• Diane Greenseid at Just One More Book!!
• Sean Qualls at Brooklyn Arden

Tuesday, October 30

• Ann Koffsky at Book Buds
• Bill Carman at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
• Gretel Parker at Finding Wonderland
• Matt Phelan at A Year of Reading
• Stephanie Roth at Writing with a broken tusk

Wednesday, October 31

• Shawna Tenney at Kate’s Book Blog
• Adam Rex at Booktopia and Welcome to my Tweendom
• Mo Willems at MotherReader
• Rolandas Kiaulevicius at a wrung sponge

Thursday, November 1

• Karen Lee at sruble’s world
• Diana Magnuson at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
• Melissa Iwai at Brooklyn Arden
• Victoria Jamieson at AmoXcalli and Cuentecitos
• Molly Idle at The Shady Glade
• Meghan McCarthy at A Fuse #8 Production

Friday, November 2

• Tracy McGuinness-Kelly at Sam Riddleburger’s blog
• Sarah Kahn at Kate’s Book Blog
• Sylvia Long at Whimsy Books
• Jeremy Tankard at the excelsior file
• Holli Conger at Please Come Flying

Saturday, November 3

• Susan Miller at Your Neighborhood Librarian
• Ellen Beier at What Adrienne Thinks About That
• Hideko Takahashi at The Silver Lining
• Judith Moffat at Jo’s Journal
• Wendell Minor at Wild Rose Reader

Sunday, November 4

• Joy Allen at Check It Out
• Robin Brickman at Greetings from Nowhere
• Lauren Stringer at laurasalas
• Nancy Wallace at In the Pages . . .

Please note that not all illustrators have been (or will be featured) on a blog so be sure to visit the auction site to see them all. Please note, too, that Jen Robinson is the mind behind this well-wrought html, without which I could tell you all about the auction but not link you to a thing…