Due to my Lexophile friends discussion this week (we have a Latin name AND a wordnerd queen – salve, regina!) I got into a William Stafford frame of mind. It’s been awhile, so I decided to trot out my all-time, hands-down, no-kidding favorite poem of his – on writing, anyway. There are so many favorites on everything else…

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off—they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. “I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.

Tomorrow, perhaps, we’ll be back with the OFFICIAL poem of the week, but at the moment, the need to type out this one just bubbled up inside of me.

This is my camp.

It is nine-hundred-and-sixty acres of beauty and peace. It is a lupine-filled meadow, a creek, a pond, and the belled-cattle on the rugged hills. It is a narrow-gauge train, built by grandpa-hobbyists that crosses the meadow, it is the footbridge that spans the creek bed, it is the stage coaches and the 19th century museum-house, the horse trough, the barn, the hitching tree, the Nature Center, the Lodge, the Craft Center, and all that lies in between. It is twenty cabins and sixteen Conestoga wagons and ten hide-stretched tipis (plus the massive one that took us a week to get up every summer) of loveliness. It is go-kart tracks and BMX trails and horse-riding, candle-making and kite-flying. It is sing-alongs and rodeos, and marshmallows, and all-out midnight Capture-the Flag attacks that turn to war after campfire. Camp is where we turned back our watches, and learned about something called “Camp Time.” It was Otherworld, out of step with the busy places we called home. It is where I was a tantrum-throwing, sulking, pouting child (oy, my poor counselors), it is where I grew up, and to where I came back when I was a “grown-up” of sixteen, and worked for six dusty, muddy, campfire gaming, afternoon-thunderstorming, letter-writing, weekly face-painting, Christmas-in-July celebrating, amazing years.

Camp is where I learned to work. I learned not to puke just because someone else was puking. I learned how to air out wet sleeping bags, to do laundry wearing rubber gloves, and to talk a homesick kid into feeling better. It is where I learned to drive a manual-drive, 1950’s Ford truck, use a post-hole digger, run a chipper, ride a horse, and scrape bee-stingers out with a library card. It is where I learned to be a stickler for clean windowsills. It is where I learned to run from people throwing me into water troughs.

I learned at camp to love fifth graders and fourteen-year-olds equally. I learned to put up with glitter glue, amateur manicures, and endless bickering. At camp, I wandered alone at night under fifty billion stars. It is where I dragged poor Tech Boy and my niece and little brother and sister to be eaten by mosquitos. It is where my Uncle Phil and I ate ice cream. It is A Safe Place.

CAMP SHOULD BE A SAFE PLACE. This goes without saying. Or, it did.

Dear Oslo: Those of us who love our camps are heartbroken with you.

And in defiance of the dark, may every child who goes to camp this summer have a glorious, carefree, muddy, sweaty, frog-catching, lizard-loving, raccoon-spotting, gold-panning, new-thing-trying, safe-from-the-mad-bad-world time. As I did.

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Please excuse the quality of the photographs; in all of my years of having fun, I never took pictures until somewhere in the late 90′s, and these are just bad snapshots I took from the train.

I would bristle, when people said I “lived” in Scotland. I didn’t want to live in Scotland, and being here while Tech Boy was in school, it felt wrong to claim that decidedly exotic address. (Decidedly exotic for me – my first trip to the UK was to move here! I don’t get out much.) I didn’t want the envious looks or the critically raised brows, when people discovered how far from my family I had gone. I didn’t want anyone straining their ears to hear an accent when I spoke (and you do have to strain – for blending-in purposes, I’ve picked up word usage in four years, sure. But not a brogue. That’s just not going to happen; I think you must be born into it). I don’t live here – I’m just … visiting. A student. On a visa.

We never intended to stay here. The UK – US – and most world governments are increasingly hostile toward “furriners” who wash up on their shores. We knew we weren’t particularly wanted – especially as Visa rules grew more strict and university rates zoomed up – but it didn’t matter. We weren’t staying anyway.

Except, we’ve been asked to, for awhile longer.

It works out, since Tech Boy is required to do oral exams sometime in September (oh, hideous and scary British tradition), and a presentation for the department before his degree is conferred. He’s turned in the Paper of Hugely Monstrous Length, aka, the British thesis or the American dissertation (why couldn’t they settle on one name?!), and has found work with lovely people starting a company, which will keep us housed and fed between the present Now and the eventual Then when we will leave this place. So, as of September… and for however long after we will stay here, we will live in Scotland.

Yeah.

It’s a great spot for an American children’s lit writer to be, isn’t it? All the way over here.

Really, that’s what freaked me out. I sometimes worry – especially when I have a book coming out – and maybe moreso, when I don’t? – that my agent and my editor are going to KILL ME if I don’t go home. That I’ll turn out to be invisible, that my nephews will forget me, and no one will recognize my name, or know my work, if I’m not somehow smack-dab in the Midwest or living with all the other cool kids in New York. These are the 3 a.m. sorts of thoughts which don’t make any real sense. Technology has made possible what would have been difficult and uncomfortable years ago. I can easily show up at a couple of big conferences a year – my introverted soul wouldn’t have borne any more than that even if I WERE in the States. Obviously, I didn’t live in New York — or in the Midwest, or in Austin, or in Vermont, or in whatever other children’s lit enclave has sprung up — to begin with. I didn’t live in my sister’s womb with my nephews. I lived in my little corner of the world, and had to write from there.

Which I will continue to do. Until such time as I get on a plane and come and see what you people are doing in your little corner of the world.

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Meanwhile, an update on my writing life! (Aka: how randomly this writer’s mind works.)

It occurred to me the other day that I have been working, non-stop, on some project or another for a long while, and that at the conclusion of my last project – off to my freelance editor, the famous Sheila Ruth, Empress of YA Fantasy and Science Fiction (No, seriously. Empress. Bow. Thank you.) – I needed to stop and assess. My agent used to put out quarterly assessment notes about what was going on in the children’s lit field – what had sold here or there, and what the trends were, etc. etc. – so I thought I should call.

We had a good little chat where we whinged about the heat (him) and the thunderstorms (me) and then I got down to the business of pitching ideas. After we dismissed the idea of me ever writing dystopia or angel fiction, and said, “Eeek!” with appropriate distaste (I love dystopia, but the angel thing bugs the heck out of me. A parochial education will do that for you), I started thinking of doing a folk tale retooling – which within minutes seemed like way too much work. Fables and folk tales just never make sense to me, regardless of what culture they’re from. Making them make sense PLUS dragging them into the twenty-first century: no. And then I started thinking about the fairytale I started an age ago, and set down…

“Oh, those are still selling,” my agent told me, and I am glad. I thought quickly about the retellings I could come up with from the top of my head — Sarah Beth Durst’s ICE from three years ago a – “West of the Sun, East of the Moon” retelling, SISTERS RED by Jackson Pearce, which is “Little Red Riding Hood” does werewolf hunting; ASH, by Malinda Lo, of course, and Melissa Meyers’ four book series The Lunar Chronicles, the first of which is out this fall, is inspired by four popular fairy tales: Cinderella (CINDER, releases January 2012), Little Red Riding Hood (SCARLET), Rapunzel (CRESS), and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (WINTER) — those were all well received. I even just ran across a fairytale retelling from BC publishers McKellar & Martin called FRACTURED, by Joanna Karaplis, which is four fairytales in one. Fairytales! They’re hot!

Unfortunately, Disney likes them, too.

I couldn’t think of a fairytale to retell that hasn’t been done to death, but I pondered what I love about them – how they’re wonderfully full of setting details that are outside of our everyday lives, how they’re the Hero/ine’s Journey all over again, how there are tropes and themes and warnings within them each, for girls (and occasionally boys) to be chaste and brave and wise and quiet and obedient. The good were rewarded with rings and promised happily ever afters, and the bad came away with no prince, no kingdom, and sometimes the odd mutilation or, um, death. These were tales told by fearful parents, sending a message…

There are a lot of different things to fear now. And a lot of different warnings to give. Childhood lasts both a shorter time, and much longer, and our rewards are not limited to being shackled to a prince/ss in a sugar-frosted forever. What would a fairytale written in the now – not retold – but created this minute – what would that look like? The things I love about old fairytales – the long-ago type setting (but wrenching it away from the Eurocentric countryside – enough with that), the details and danger, the mystery and romance, — I want to keep all of that, and still figure out how to get to Happily Ever After. I want to write a fairytale I would want to read…

So, I dared myself to try…

I love me some boys, truly, but I have heard SO MANY TIMES that girls are being left behind in the maths/science/technology field, because of American cultural bias and the way those subjects are taught. Imagine my glee to discover that the global science fair winners from the Google Science Fair were all three GIRLS.

My ridiculous happy dance is not a fist-bump for Grrrl Power, but for PROGRESS. Cheers, ladies.

Greetings. A quiet month so far, but I am AT LAST finished with the editing with respect to HAPPY FAMILIES, and can go back to my revision – the last chapter of which will be done today. (OR ELSE.)

Meanwhile, the whole “YA is dark and disturbing” trend seems to be continuing, based on the month-old now article which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal, about how YA authors and publishing is apparently out to convert kids to the dark side, and to rob them of light and hope. While that has been disputed by the author, I fear her defense was disingenuous, and ignored the point — but I won’t rehash that. I’ve held my peace on the whole thing, for the most part, but I’ve had rather loud thoughts about it. The invective comes from both sides, and the misunderstanding – because that’s in a large part what this is – grows and grows. Parents like mine who want to protect their children from everything, and feel parenting involves giving a child or teen no choices are squaring off with parents who weren’t raised that way, and feel it’s a bad idea not to allow a child to choose their own reading — all parents want to make sure they have the very best kids, and basically, people can’t ever agree on what “best” really means. It’s… all…really… tiring. There are, however, glimmers of light.

Though some conversations – especially in the online responses – have really ground down to nonsense, I believe that Lauren Myracle is a class act for her apology on NPR the other day, for calling Meghan Cox Gurdon’s thought process in regard to YA lit “idiotic.” I appreciate the need for civil discourse, even in the face of disingenuous and apparently innocent statements. It’s a difficult line to walk, getting your point across, vs. giving in to the urge to lash out and force another person to listen, by silencing them. Lauren’s making the point that she reacted instead of responded makes me respect her all the more, and I see that respectful-of-people thread in her writing.

Other glimmers are that people have simply — dropped the conversations that are not real dialogues. In many ways, “annoy the YA people” seems to be a project to raise site visitors; many people have vowed to cease responding, which is good.

I am still feeling my skin crawl, though, with regard to Gurdon’s response on WHYY, to Cheryl Rainfield, author of the novel SCARS,. She used the word “pity,” as in “I pity you.” As Cheryl later commented on her blog, “pity feels… far away from compassion…” Indeed.

I am a strong supporter of the books Cheryl Rainfield writes, because I’ve had to write a Reasons Why Not list for a person I love, and I understand a little what it’s like to forget those reasons, and need to cling to a piece of paper that reminds you why this is not what you need. I know those people, that state of being, and I don’t think pity should be a part of it. Ever. And neither should those books not see the light of day. As always, parents should read with their kids, talk with their kids, and know them. With that knowledge in hand, one need never fear YA lit or the fear-mongering that goes along with the latest, “Is this hurting your kids!?!!?” talk.

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I’ve become a person quiet enough to listen to podcasts lately! It’s usually not something I can do, because I MUST multitask, however, I’ve somehow managed lately. One I can recommend is this one from BBC 3 –. It’s Diana Wynne Jones’ son talking about his mother and her work. Speaking of BBC, oh, HOW I wish I could figure out a way for you to see our performance of The Pirates of Penzances online right now! Tech Boy, as one of the pirates, got a LOT of screen time! But, alas, you can only see it if you’re in the UK. ::sigh:: If we do something like that again, maybe I’ll sneakily record us, somehow…

So, the One Shot World Tour is long over, but I still like my logo, and I want to wish Canada a happy birthday weekend – and to say thank you to the writers Canada produces, especially my bud, C.K. Kelly Martin, who is probably happily still in Dublin, the lucky gel.

Happy Weekend! It’s been a busy and profitable week, and I hope that you were successful in all that you did. The revision of my science fiction novel is literally almost done; I expect to rewrite the last chapter and tie up what loose ends I’m going to tie on Monday – and then do that synopsis thing and outline the sequel or another piece in the series. I’m still not sure what I’m doing, but what the heck, I’m doing it. We’ll see how the chips fall. And yes, I am working on America’s birthday. We’ll definitely have a celebration here in just a few days, but Monday is a work day for us. Tech Boy turns in his doctoral dissertation in just SEVEN DAYS!!!!! (Cue screaming.)

As always, it is weird being away from home during a holiday weekend, but I have seen two parades already today – nothing remotely to do with America or Canada, but hey! A parade, just like I saw last year in Virginia! And now, I shall sing a patriotic song and have a tofu dog, and think about home. Which is pretty much what one does on the Fourth anyway, when one is home or away. The only thing I’m missing is fireworks, but I have glowsticks in the freezer. Happy Birthday, homeland!

I also want to wish a happy birthday to my gran, who on this very day turns eighty-four, and to Mom, who on Sunday turns…

…turns…

*crickets*

*Cough*

It’s amazing, how she can shut me up from five thousand miles away, isn’t it? Right. Mom’s birthday. It’s not a very big number, since she was fifty about five minutes ago, and she looks twenty years younger than her age – she’s been annoyed about that for most of her life, but now it’s working for her! So, anyway, Happy Birthday, Mama! This weekend, parties and celebrations abound, and I’m happy to be a part, even long distance.

It was actually well into the 70’s this morning, and the sun shone long enough for me to take a good ramble through the park, photograph industrious bees and lazy flowers (three hundred pictures in just two hours!), have toast and tea at a coffee house, and see the kitty wandering the park, daring someone to pick it up. (Not me – it was a longhaired tortoiseshell, and I have an aversion to wheezing. Pretty cat, though.) Now it’s time for me to find a stack of pillows, and read through this warm, rainy afternoon. I hope you have a marvelously relaxed weekend.