Month: August 2007

Bloghopping

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August 22, 2007

4:44 pm

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On Writing, Random Notes and Errata

Leaving on a slow train: in eight days. At least I hope it’s slow. I’m in dire need of a nap once we start rolling. Still searching for those plaid shoes, too…

I am ridiculously delighted to have discovered BRAW: Books, Reading and Writing, which is the site of the Network for the Scottish Children’s Book. Though the authors names are not familiar to me (and largely the books listed are MG, which might be why), it’s nice to see that there are the usual book fests, kidslit-conferences, awesome publishers, really funny YA writers who blog (thanks, Sara!), and the like where I am going. Children’s lit is still not quite the industry elsewhere that it seems to be in the U.S., but the YA bookishness, it is here to be discovered… more on that as I find it!

Many, MANY people want to be writers, so many, many people pursue this dream with an admirable single-mindedness, and will do anything to get someone to read their work, anything, like even participating in an open competition. The American-Idol style competition thing at Touchstone, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, looks like it went …okay, since they’re planning another for romance writers next time. I still cannot honestly say that I am a fan of competitive publishing, because… well, some of the ‘red in tooth and claw’ agony of revision, workshops, and the like seem better suited to people who know you, or that you can at least trust to be civil and have constructive criticism. I cannot imagine just tossing my manuscripts into a ring of strangers armed with razors like that. I’ve never watched American Idol, but everyone by now has heard of Simon Cowell… and it only takes one like him, really. Only one.

More doom and gloom in the ‘internet will take over the world, and all the libraries will close, woe is me’ box: the Guardian, quoting an AP-Ipsos poll, reports that a quarter of American adults read no books last year. One quarter, or one in four. I’m going to try and find the original poll, but feel a bit of annoyance that children’s books aren’t listed at all. People seem to want to constantly harp on the fact that the publishing industry is dying, despite a 3% global increase last year over the previous year…to say nothing of what children’s literature worldwide is doing. (Maybe they ought to stop just counting Americans?)

Ouch! GalleyCat pulls no punches: some of us really WILL read that OJ book… riiight after we finish The Secret… And, I adore Ferdinand the Bull. Does Bottom Shelf Books think I’m morbid??

And a little squeal for Ying Compestine’s new book Revolution is Not a Dinner Party, which is a YA novel being cross-marketed to adults. Go! Read! Enjoy! Yay, Ying!

All content (unless otherwise attributed) is © Copyright Tanita S. Davis and may not be reproduced in any form.

Sharks and Dinosaurs

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August 21, 2007

4:06 pm

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On Writing, Random Notes and Errata

So, say you don’t like someone’s book. You review it on your blog – negatively. You’re gobsmacked by just how bad it is. You talk about its offensiveness once or twice, and then you move on. And then you get served.

GalleyCat carried this story, which reminded me of the “shield law,” which serves to protect journalists and others who write for pay, and which is a hot topic in our state. I am of the opinion that the blogger in question is only being sued because they blog for a firm which has a goodly amount of cash. What about people who don’t have the resources to be sued for $15 million in damages? Does this affect your thinking about how you review books at all?

Guardian UK arts blogger Peter Bradshaw longs for the days of gimlet eyed, bloody dinosaurs, while the Telegraph laments what could be the end of a great literary tradition — because, of course, the smoke ban.

Lots to see and read but Blogger is behaving stupidly today, so I’m off for a bit…

All content (unless otherwise attributed) is © Copyright Tanita S. Davis and may not be reproduced in any form.

Booklists Strike Again.

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August 20, 2007

4:55 pm

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On Writing, Random Notes and Errata

Conversations with my eleven-year-old sister:

“Don’t you have a book on Scotland?”

“Um…. I might. Why?”

“I need one. Four hundred pages.”

“Four hundred– that long? Why?”

“We have to read four hundred pages on travel and culture by September 28th.”

“Four hundred pages!?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you maybe read four books one hundred pages long? Because four hundred pages seems a little long for sixth grade.” (I know Mrs. Wallace was hardcore when I had her for third and fourth grade, but four hundred?!)

“Okay, yeah, we can do it that way.”

Oh. Good.
I’m pretty sure Mrs. Wallace said they were to do it ‘that way’ to begin with, but already Some Of Us weren’t listening… and the school year is young.

So, the call goes out to the blogosphere: A reluctant reader (Oh, how I loathe that phrase. Shall we say enthused but struggling? Let’s try again:)

WANTED: Young Scholar, Struggling But Enthused Seeks Books on Culture and Travel, both nonfiction and fictional acceptable. Prefers Scotland, but open to Cambodia, Thailand and Other Countries.

Big sister thanks you.

P.S. – If you’re a rabid movie fan of and love reading about screenwriting, one of my former students is now writing for Creative Screenwriting and hopes you’ll check it out!

All content (unless otherwise attributed) is © Copyright Tanita S. Davis and may not be reproduced in any form.

Staggering in With One Last Thought

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August 20, 2007

3:14 am

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On Writing, Random Notes and Errata

Post waking-at-five-fifteen-a.m.-suffering-through-baking-hot-Sunday-flea-market, I have few thoughts, much less ORIGINAL thoughts, but I did want to point out the books-into-movies thread on Jen’s blog, and the question posed on BookMoot: would YOU use the movie version of The Dark is Rising as part of a ‘books-into-movies’ series at your school? Would you read the book and suggest kids go see ‘Will’s Excellent Adventure,‘ (which is Camille’s amusing and all too apt title)? Go, go, talk amongst yourselves.

I MUST find a bath and a bed.

More anon…

All content (unless otherwise attributed) is © Copyright Tanita S. Davis and may not be reproduced in any form.

Ficktion Friday: Big Ma’s Girls

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August 19, 2007

12:39 am

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Ficktion Fridays

My head aches, and the bed is vibrating.

No.

It’s not a bed.

The sour, throat-burning stench of diesel smoke accompanies the rumbling, and my face is pressed against a rough synthetic rug. With a gut-tightening sensation of fear, I know where I am.

Pops has done it again. All these years he’s threatened Big Ma that he was going to come and take his kids back, and he’s done it. I am in Pops’ rig, lying on the floor.

We’re not moving, and I’m glad, because he tossed me back here like a rag doll. Last night I went to bed at about ten thirty, finished reading my chapters in Fat Kid Rules the World for English, and then shut off the light before Big Ma could yell at me. I remember hearing the phone ring, then a voice – voices. And then, nothing.

Last time, Pops took Looley and me to ice cream. Big Ma let him, ‘cause she thought it would be good for us to know him; after all, Looley was six, and I was ten, and Looley hadn’t never seen him, and I barely remembered him. Ma never did believe what our mother, Lily, said about Pops, and so Big Ma thought she knew what was best. Pops took us to ice cream, all right. In Nevada, two states away.

“You girls gonna stay with me, now,” Pop informed us over butter-brickle cones at the Thrifty ice-cream counter. Looley just looked at him with her mouth open, but I chundered ice cream all down the front of the counter. Pops hustled us out of there right quick.

I thought Big Ma had finally gotten tired of us, had decided that we weren’t worth the effort of putting up with me and my mutant reading habits and Looley’s habit of wetting the bed and crying every night. But six months later, when social services and the detective Big Ma’d hired finally tracked us down, she’d been crying too hard to talk when she’d taken us into her soft, bony arms. Yeah, bony. Big Ma wasn’t big anymore. She wore off all her fat worrying about us.

Pops went to jail for about six months, and was on probation for two years.

He got off probation yesterday. And here I am today.

“Looley?” My voice is hoarse. It is pitch black in here.

I expect to hear something: a groan, a whisper, but there’s nothing. I reach out my arm, and feel along the floor, hunting for a shoe, a bit of her leg. I reach out my other arm, stretch out my legs until they bump the cabinets that are behind the driver’s seat.

In this small space, there is nobody here but me.

The rig isn’t stopped, it is idling. We are at a weigh station somewhere, maybe halfway across the country, maybe only fifty miles from home. If I wasn’t so thirsty, I might scream, see if anybody can hear me, but the noise from this stupid rig is so loud I can’t hear myself think. Pops wouldn’t let me go to school last time. He cut Looley and my hair, dyed Looley’s with shoeblack, and wouldn’t let us outside.

Why does he want us?

“My girls! My girls!” Big Ma had said over and over again, holding us and rocking us every time we woke up that first week back. “My girls.” Like we weren’t anybody else’s.

I am twelve now. I know a few things. I know my mother didn’t leave us with Big Ma because she didn’t love us. I know I might not ever see her again. What Pops thinks is his, he wants to keep.

I need to go.

My arms feel rubbery. I bend my legs ‘til my heels are solid on the floor. I roll over to my side, then up, careful not to touch anything, not to make a sound. On hands and knees I creep forward, expecting any moment to run into something that will clatter and fall and sound an alarm.

I move forward, sweeping my arms out in front of me, still looking for Looley. In a few moments, my fingers brush the enameled metal of the cupboards.

There is a space at the base of one of the cupboards, to allow air to circulate between the cab and the truck’s living space. I feel along the cabinets until my fingers feel the breeze. Lying on my back, I scooch forward, hoping to see something, but all I can see is the word ‘hell’ in red letters, staring down at me.

I blink, bewildered, until the ‘he’ suddenly turns into an ‘s,’ and I realize it is the digital clock on the console. It is only 11:35. Only an hour has passed since I’ve been gone… an hour or a day. I roll onto my stomach, and fumble with shaking hands for the latch that opens the way between the living space and the rig. Pops isn’t in the cab.

It’s my only chance.

This story brought to you by this picture, by Flickr user Fragilocyte. I’d say you could find more with the usual suspects at Ficktion.ning.com, but mostly they’re on vacation. Hurry on September.

Poetry Friday: Unexpected Sweetness

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August 17, 2007

3:45 pm

6 Comments on Poetry Friday: Unexpected Sweetness

On Writing, Poetry Friday

This is a reminder to myself… and maybe to you: not all things can be planned.

Unharvested

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree

That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

“Unharvested” by Robert Frost from The Poetry of Robert Frost © Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reprinted with permission.

Poetry Friday round-up is over at Writing & Ruminating. Bon Weekend.

All content (unless otherwise attributed) is © Copyright Tanita S. Davis and may not be reproduced in any form.

Tribute

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August 17, 2007

1:23 am

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Musings on Extemporanea

We met… about 2 and a half years ago. You came to talk to the short story writing class I was in and then you helped me get an internship. We havn’t [sic] communicated in ages but I was thinking about you yesterday after I dropped off my first ever writer’s contract with a magazine. I am now a working freelance writer who gets paid. And I was just thinking about how everything had worked out and I realized what a big part of that you were. Just having you talk in class was really helpful but then you actually helped me find internships to apply for and it is from that first internship, the one you helped me get, from the contacts I made there and the experience that I’ve got this job. It’s a little job. I do movie reveiws [sic] for ________weekly newsletter and get paid very little, but I used to do it for free. They have a readership of 80,000 so it’s pretty good. The summer that I interned there I worried that I had wasted my time working for free but as I’m learning any contact is a good contact and every experience is helpful. So I just wanted to say a very sincere thank you for the help you gave me a few years ago. You helped me find internships to apply for and just showed me a couple things I could do to really start thinking about a writing career as a goal and possibility instead of a pipe dream. Plus you introduced me to craigslist which has been both helpful and entertaining ( I love thier [sic] best of section). The internship I have now I also got from there. I’m interning at ______, a small independent liteary [sic] press here in _______. So basically life is good and you helped make it so. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the help you’ve given me. Really you changed my life.

I don’t really know how to end an email like this, it seems silly to just wish you well but I do. I hope everything is going well in your life and that you’re still writing, which I’m sure you are. Thanks again for everything.

I genuinely hate the phrase ‘pay it forward,’ not only because it inspired a movie which features Haley Joel Osment (I refused to watch — when I look at him, well… I see dead people — not that I watched that movie, either), but because I just … hate …phrases. This ‘pay it forward’ thing especially seems cheesy and contrived and I prefer to do things that don’t require me to whisper slogans to myself. (Even ‘Brighten the Corner Where You Are,’ a little song we sang at church when I was a kid, got on my nerves. At six.) (Which is obviously why I still can sing the whole thing. Sigh.) But this email I got today… and another one from a former student last week… sort of shocked me. I mean, no, I don’t take credit for this person’s success or that student’s understanding certain things better now, no – that’s maturity. But — wow. She sure feels like I had something to do with it, and that makes me think.

You know, I hate speaking to writing groups. Knowing we are moving to the UK, I feel I can breathe a sneaking sigh of relief, because I have, for a bit longer, the luxury of anonymity. No more old college professors asking if I’ll speak to their evening classes. And, once my book comes out, I’ll be – oh, so sorry! – unavailable for anything like book signings, which I never do feel sells more books anyway. But, after this, I’m having second thinks. Should I do more …civic minded type of stuff? Should I speak to classes, seek out young adults and …I don’t know, try and interact? Teach? Mentor? A friend I quite like has a blogger list called The Very Big Good Deed List. You can Google it – I won’t link to it with my horribly cynical self – but she’s called on all kinds of people in the blogosphere to do good things, and people are going out and doing things to lighten the world. It’s a great effort.

But for me? Honestly? I just can’t see it. For one thing, I’m too lazy to get dressed up enough to go out of the house and do these types of things (There’s apparently a rule somewhere that you can’t do it in oversized red velour sweats your S.O. calls your Santa Suit.). For another thing, I realized a long time ago that the time I take away from my inner life to exude an outer life… is time I don’t have. Translation: I am an introvert, getting weirder and more hermitlike daily. It’s a God-given blessing to stay home and bash away at novels. I could maybe even work in a cubicle – but I can’t DO people much anymore. Which makes me wonder about myself, in a country where I am a minority and won’t know a soul. I will have to make a conscious effort to avoid agoraphobia…

Anyway, I suppose interactions like this just …come along as they do, and you take them as they come. With no false humility, I am glad to have been the person to say the thing that this girl could hear to encourage her to do what she wanted to anyway. I suppose there will be other ways and other opportunities to do something …helpful for someone. And I hope I’m keyed in enough to take those opportunities. And really, that’s all anyone can do.

Just A Little News

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August 16, 2007

9:27 pm

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On Writing, Random Notes and Errata

You know, it’s REALLY HARD to write a book proposal, a feat every would-be novelist must accomplish before that all-important submission. Though it’s a synopsis of a story you know, it is somehow mind-sappingly difficult, and most people I know whinge and groan and fall apart about it. Even people I don’t know are whinging and whining and falling apart about it. Somehow, that makes me feel better…

Kim & Jason have ideas for things to do with cardboard boxes. Eisha, take note.

I got a good laugh one day out of author Gail Gauthier over at Original Content wondering if it would be weird if she just walked into a bookstore and started signing her own books. And now we know the answer. Um, no. Via GalleyCat.

Whew! The One Shot Book Tour was officially awesome! I learned so much and have added yet more to a staggeringly long To Be Read booklist. I’m sure you did too! Stay tuned for more from the busy kidlitosphere bloggers, led by the intrepid Colleen – those rockin’ Under Radar Reads will debut in just two weeks!

All content (unless otherwise attributed) is © Copyright Tanita S. Davis and may not be reproduced in any form.

Ficktion Friday: School Sucks, And Then It Rains

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August 16, 2007

6:03 am

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Ficktion Fridays

Raindrops like bullets
Shattering holes in my sanity
The yard grows wild.

“Rain is like bullets?” Dennis threw a dry erase marker at Esther’s head from the back of the classroom. They were meant to be taking study hall, or rather Esther was; Dennis was in English detention because he was behind an assignment, but no one seemed to be keeping track of him.

“What kind of crap is that? If rain was a bullet, it’d blow your freakin’ head off. Rain isn’t like bullets.”

Esther blocked the marker with her forearm and crossed out a word. “It’s not literal. It’s a haiku.” It was only the first week of school, and already Esther
hated everything, including the smell of the dry erase markers, the
classroom, and Dennis’ shoes. She hated that her mother wanted her to stay after class and join a ‘club;’ she was stuck messing around in the homework lab because she couldn’t go home.

“Haiku!” Dennis let out a huge fake sneeze. “Haiku!”

“Oh, shut up,” sighed Esther under her breath. Dennis had been in her class since second grade, but she never had been able to take his intrusive, jokey manner. “It’s for Mrs. Russo.”

“That cow,” Dennis said dismissively. “She and her ‘make the magic of poetry’ talk, and then she keeps me after because I can’t write poems. What, are you going to do a little dance and sing ‘Rain, Rain, Go Away?’ next? You girls and your poetry.” He said the word as if it stung him.

Esther sighed.

Stupid male humans
Quite possibly throwbacks from the pool
No swimmers, please!

“Are you writing another one?” Dennis’ chair legs landed on the floor with a thump. “Didn’t she only say we needed one?”

“We need to have five by the end of the week,” Esther told him. “We’re supposed to use words to evoke strong emotion, and give five examples of atmosphere in our daily haikus.”

“Daily?” Dennis sounded outraged. I hate crap like this! Nobody else has to write poems, for the whole rest of their lives, except in school. This is so lame!”

Esther shrugged.

What will be will be
School work to life’s work, place exchanging
Resignation.

“Sometimes I don’t think I’m going to make it,” Dennis said gloomily. He looked out the rain spitting down on the sidewalk, at the gray sky and the drooping trees. “I mean, does it really matter if I can identify a haiku? No. Does it matter if I can write a sestina? No. And don’t get me started on all that literature junk. It’s a total waste. It’s the first week of school, and I can’t take anymore already.”

Esther, who preferred school to home, uncapped another dry erase marker.

“Are you writing another one?” Dennis asked incredulously.

Nothing wasted
Everything gained and nothing put back
Take in every drop.

“Dennis?” Mrs. Russo stood in the doorway. “Have you thought of a topic for your haiku? Oh, hello, Esther. Are you helping him?”

Esther hunched her shoulders. “I guess,” she muttered.

“We’re writing about rain,” Dennis said grimly. “And how it makes you want to shoot yourself.”

There was a pause. Mrs. Russo winced. “I see,” she said finally. “Well.”

“We’ve written almost five,” Dennis said hopefully, ignoring Esther’s shocked and furious hiss. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Oh, it’s more than enough,” Mrs. Russo said hastily. “You can both go now.”

Esther opened her mouth. “What? Bu –“

“Hey, want to go and get a hot chocolate at Copperfield’s? Since it’s raining and all.”

Mrs. Russo beamed as Esther glared at Dennis, fury making her eyes gleam and her lips narrow. “Yes. And I want a muffin, too. And maybe a sandwich. And maybe — “

“Sure, sure,” Dennis said placatingly. “A muffin and a sandwich too. Come on.”

Mrs. Russo smiled after the two of them as they left her classroom, thinking mistily about young love and poetry. It was another cold, wet afternoon, but at home, there was a bit of mulled cider and a fire waiting. She turned off the lights, and closed the door behind her.

This is in honor of all the little duffers starting classes this week already (and in apology to my readers for being the second sucky story week in a row. Ugh!). Based on this picture, taken by Flickr user Captured Light, I doubt there will be any more from the suspects at Ficktion.ning.com, but hey – you might check there anyway. We’re all über busy or in a rain funk, so maybe it’s a week to read a book. Or paint the bathroom.