An agent is one of those things you’re supposed to really want when you’re a writer.

Sort of like good ideas and chocolate.

An agent is supposed to turn pumpkins into stagecoaches and matchmake all sorts of happily ever afters.

Right?

I was never quite sure.

I worked with an agent briefly for my first book, but I’ve mostly been on my own these last number of years and it’s worked out okay. I’ve somehow wrangled myself into my chair (thanks to some good ideas and chocolate) and I have a pretty substantial little stack of manuscripts to show for it.

(Well, I mean, they’re picture books so I use the word "substantial" rather loosely. It’s not a tower or anything like that. More like a short, squat butte.)

Along the way, I pulled a few bits of the butte loose and, lucky for me, a delightful and insightful editor was there to receive them. I had to do my own dealmaking, which is about as appealing as a bad case of the flu, but I survived.

In the meantime, the rest of the pile on my desk had become rather, um, inert.
And the thing about inert rock, er, paper formations is they tend to stay that way for millions of years.
Which I more time than I’ve got.

Which is why I’m very, very happy and relieved and excited and ready to share the fact that I have signed with the amazingly warm, smart, productive and funny Erin Murphy.

Apparently, Erin does not get flu-like symptoms when she dealmakes!

Apparently, Erin does not get daunted by short, squat buttes of the inert variety!

Apparently, Erin is a fairy godmother!
Well, okay, maybe she doesn’t turn pumpkins into stagecoaches.

But she did say this in an interview I read:

I only sign someone new if it makes my stomach hurt to think of them working with someone else. Their work has to be so wonderful and so unlike anything else I’ve ever read that I just can’t pass it up.

Which does make me feel a little like a princess.
Thanks, Erin!

(And now I have to get back to the part of the work that is still, and always will be, mine…)
 

OK, friends.
I hate to beat a dead horse here but it is time to register to vote if you haven’t.

In Texas, this Monday is the last possible date to register.
If you have moved… if your name has changed… if you’ve never voted before…
you have to register in order to vote!

There are number of ways to check your voting status online.
Here’s one — via Google Maps — and here’s another — via Barack Obama’s web site.
(I should note, though, that registering to vote is a purely nonpartisan activity!)

People all over the world fight and cry to win the vote, line up for days and compromise time, work and safety to vote.
We are, um, slightly more complacent than that.
But I don’t think we ought to be.

Voting is an honor, a privelege and a responsibility.
Let’s exercise and fulfill it in record numbers on November 4th.

Hope is waiting for you in the voting booth.
Really.

It’s a big book round-up, folks:

First, this week is Banned Books Week, and I recommend picking up a copy of The Chocoloate War or Olive’s Ocean or Huck Finn — preferably from your local library — and reading to your heart’s content. Censorship is driven by fear, and operating by fear is not the way to grow either smarts or spirit. Both of which we need an abundance of in these challenging times.

Next, CYBILS nominations opened yesterday! The Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) folks are accepting nominations for your favorite book of the year in numerous categories, including Fiction and Non-fiction Picture Books, Graphic Novels and Poetry. (I’m particularly inclined toward the latter since I’m a judge for that category this year!) Please scurry, tout de suite, to leave your nominations in the comments section of the appropriate category.

I was one of the many jealous bloggers last weekend, leaning longingly toward Portland, Oregon, where a big ol’ group of writers and readers gathered for the Second Annual Kidlit Blogging Conference. For a little vicarious living though, you can go read the posts! Pour yourself a hot cup of coffee first — there are a lot of them.

Finally, I’ll be among fine friends next week at The Hill Country Book Festival in Georgetown, Texas. The festival is on Saturday, October 11th at the Georgetown Public Library, and it’s open to the public, so come by and say hi. I’ll be there with Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, Don Tate, PJ Hoover and Deborah Frontiera — and that’s just in the kids area!

In the mornings, it feels fallish here now.
Almost chilly.

By afternoon it’s 90 degrees out, and any illusion of seasonal shift has burned off.

So when October arrived today, it felt a little … sudden.

We’re still swimming every weekend and school just started.
Didn’t it?
But apparently not, since the first round of parent-teacher conferences is in ten days.
And any sense of summer loll-around laziness is long gone.
The piles on my desk teeter.

But I’m taking time into my own hands this morning.
Heading off on a slow walk with my good old dog, who’s wearing one of those crazy-cone Elizabethan collars after a minor surgery yesterday. She needs a good, slow walk and so do I.

No iPod.
No cell phone.
No pedometer.

It’s amazing how productive peace can feel….

I’ve often heard novelists utter angst over their acknowledgement pages.

Who to name, and in what way?

What language to use, what details to include, who to thank?

And, god forbid, what if someone gets forgotten?

Usually, there’s no acknowledgement page in a picture book.
But there is a dedication page and it can cause similar stress.

I dedicated my first book to my daughters.
It was a no-brainer.
It was being a mother that inspired me to try writing for children.
They were my little muses, and the book, quite literally, was written for them.
Ditto, actually, my others, even though the girls spend a lot less time with picture books than they used to.

My next dedication is due… um… yesterday or so.
But instead of getting it down just right, I found all these fascinating bits online to entertain and distract me:

McSweeney’s take on book dedications

An accounting of the factors that go into the decision-making around book dedications

What happens when book dedications outlast marriages

And revelations of the dedications in the Harry Potter books

You have to admit that I’m truly talented when it comes to diverting myself from the task at hand…

Today kicks off the annual Austin City Limits Music Festival — a three-day, eight-stage go-and-groove extravaganza.

Think: Patty Griffin… The Swell Season… Foo Fighters.
Think: Neko Case…  Blues Traveler… Erykah Badu.
Think: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

Think: right down the hill from our house.
We could listen from here.
But why, when the sun’s out and the lemonade is cold?

We’re picking up the kids afterschool and riding our bikes down to enjoy the fact that we live in the midst of all this music.

An uplift.

As is this:

To Music: A Song
By Robert Herrick

Music, thou queen of heaven, care-charming spell,
That strik’st a stillness into hell;
Thou that tam’st tigers, and fierce storms, that rise,
With thy soul-melting lullabies;
Fall down, down, down, from those thy chiming spheres
To charm our souls, as thou enchant’st our ears.

I’m five weeks into teaching this semester, which means next week’s the half-way point already.

That sort of makes me sad.

Time flies.

These first  6 weeks are always a little dry.
We deconstruct and discuss the elements of fiction (conflict, characterization, point of view, setting, etc.).
Sexy, hunh?
So I try to humanize it a bit by reading from Art & Fear, sharing stacks of library books, and offering up writing prompts.

Here are the prompts so far this semester.
Help yourselves…

My greatest fear is…

I wish…

When I sold the texts of my next two picture books– first Wind, then World — I presumed they’d come out in that order. But instead, it was decided that World would leapfrog Wind.

It was the right decision for a zillion and two reasons, but I have to admit to feeling just the teensiest bit worried about Wind. I didn’t want it to get lost or forgotten or shown up by its younger sibling.

Well.
Never fear.
I’m resting easy over here.

Now that All the World (its real, full, honest-to-goodness name) has been wrapped up and put to bed (for a long winter’s nap before springing to its feet next summer), my beloved illustrator has started work on Wind, and I suddenly have utter faith that it’ll become its own beautiful book.

But the only way that’s gonna happen is if I go back to work on it, too.
We hadn’t finished revisions of this text when our focus shifted to All the World almost exactly a year ago.
So, poor Wind was left sort of one-legged and limping in mid-draft limbo all these many months.
Now that’s changed.

About a week ago I started re-reading old versions (and you’d be horrified to know how many were available to me to read).
I highlighted old phrases I liked and I highlighted new phrases I didn’t like.
I re-read again.

Then, yesterday, I went at it in earnest.

I replaced every article and preposition with other articles and prepositions…
I hand-counted the words in two other picture books…
I added a bunch of stuff…
I cut a bunch of stuff — different stuff than I’d added…
I read it aloud again and again…

In the middle of it all, I took a 1/2 hour nap out of either exhaustion or despair or exhilaration —
it’s rather surreal how similarly those emotions play out in your body.

And in the end, what had been a picture book of 309 words was a picture book of 308 words.

You guys — seriously.

One freakin’ word.

Again with the exhaustion/despair/exhilaration.

I was almost afraid to look at it this morning, but now I have.
And I think it really is a different beast in the same size sweater.
I really do.
The hours were not wasted, I’m pretty sure.

I won’t go so far as to call it "done", though.
I revised the 194 words of All the World for three months.
Can you believe that? I’m sure there are men in white coats who’d come to get me if that got out, so don’t repeat it.

But, in keeping true to myself, I think I’d better admit that Wind will be whipped around a bit more before it’s quite right.
In the meantime, though, at least it’s moving.
Which is, dare I say it, exhilarating.

Last week I posted about this stormy season and Norman Dubie’s poem Of Politics & Art.

And when I said stormy I meant hurricanes.
And Wall Street.
And the war.
And the upcoming election.

The whole shootin’ match.

I’ve been talking with my husband and my sister and my chums lately about how to be engaged in the world but not caught up in the storm. How to feel positive and proactive instead of angry and inert. How to hold hope instead of doubt.

I think helping to register voters fits the bill.
So does making Hope Flags.

On Sunday, both of these things happened at a big ol’ Austin-style family picnic.

Live music & politics.
Kids & candidates.

And did I mention Hope Flags?

My best gals Kathie and Bernadette  (of Future Craft Collective) set up a table with flag materials, writing prompts and plenty of space for free-wheelin’ inspiration. Eighty-some artists later, we had a string of flags that even the Tibetans would have been impressed by.

"Prayer flags are simple devices that, coupled with the natural energy of the wind, quietly harmonize the environment, impartially increasing happiness and good fortune among all living beings…" — The Prayer Flag Tradition, Timothy Clark

Makes a gal think things aren’t so bad afterall…

I’ve got a lot on my plate this morning, so I thought I’d just kick off the week with a quote from The Book of Qualities. Hope it speaks to you…

Inspiration

— J. Ruth Gendler, The Book of Qualities