Falling Off

Don’t worry, I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, just off of the blogging wagon. Christmas Eve (the last time I blogged) seems so far away. Almost as if it happened last year…

The holiday season was pretty magical. Christmas was a lot of fun and my boyfriend and I got engaged on New Year’s Day! This is actually the main reason why I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been wedding planning instead. Wedding planning actually involves a lot of writing, it’s just not the type of writing that I’d like to be doing. It’s all making lists and writing emails. But I’m determined to be more disciplined with my writing now that I’ve got a venue and catering nailed down.

What you can’t see is that after writing that last sentence, I just zoned out on the couch for several minutes staring at smoke. My fiancé just bought a meat smoker and it’s sitting on the balcony in a direct line of sight from the couch where I’m writing. Smoke is so pretty! And so distracting.

While I haven’t been writing lately, I have not been completely uninvolved in the writing process and the furthering of my writing career. My primary critique group met this week and we had a really great session. We have a new home at a meeting room in the Lafayette library and we also have a new member. Our critique session was so rousing that at one point a librarian came to shush us. We were brainstorming ideas for someone’s story and I came up with a good one and everyone was practically cheering. It’s so much fun working with people who get excited about writing and about helping each other. The story I brought this week has a lot of flaws and I was eager to get some insight about fixing them. My partners came up with some really good ideas, so now I just need to buckle down and try some of them out.

For my birthday last year, my fiancé gave me the gift of going to the SCBWI winter conference in New York. After some thought, I decided that instead of this conference I wanted to go to a writing workshop. The workshop is held at the Big Sur Lodge and it’s organized by the Andrea Brown Literary Agency and the Henry Miller Library. Over the course of a three-day weekend, you have your story read and critiqued by agents, writing coaches, and peers. I’m super-duper excited and can’t wait for March.

Climbing has been going really well and I’ve actually had luck climbing with some nice girls. Because it’s been so long since I bouldered outdoors, I’m having trouble deciding how hard the gym grades really are (they’re usually a grade or two below what outdoor grades are, so a gym V5 might only be like a V3 outdoors). I’m now climbing V4s and V5s in the gym so I’m pretty excited and I can’t wait to climb outdoors again.

What I’m reading: I finished Call the Midwife. Overall, it was decent, but I’m not sure I’d recommend reading it. I’m still reading Confederates in the Attic, which is quite good. It’s written by a journalist who’s moderately obsessed with the Civil War. The book charts his travels through the South visiting battlefields, joining reenactors, and talking to other people who are seriously obsessed with the Civil War. I read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It was interesting and very well written, but I didn’t actually enjoy it that much. I also started reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (ok so far, but I’m not in love with it) and The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (a “biography”/history of cancer).

Social Anxiety

If you know me, you’re probably aware that I’m a little shy around people I don’t know. I try to avoid situations that involve large groups of unknown people. In fact, joining in a group conversation with people I know is even daunting for me. Yet somehow I just picked a new career that seems to require numerous interactions with groups of people I’ve never met.

At the beginning of the month I attended an SCBWI holiday party. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that I was putting myself into another of these group situations that I dislike until I was walking into the party. Then I had this thought of, “Oh crap! What am I doing here?” So I calmly advised myself to get a drink. Then at least I’d have something to hold on to.

As I was turning away from the refreshment table, I glanced at the nametag of the woman standing next to me. I realized that she’s part of the second critique group that I joined but hadn’t met with yet. I very awkwardly said something like, “I think I know you. I mean, I think you’re in my critique group. Or rather, I’m in your critique group.” Wow. I must have really impressed her with my smooth conversational style. Thankfully she is very nice and spent some time talking to me.

I was somewhat comforted to discover that I was not the most awkward person in the room. People always talk about how socially inept engineers are, but it turns out that some writers rival them. I suppose part of it may be the nature of the situations where writers meet: large conferences/meetings/parties/workshops where most of the people have never met before.

Most conversations begin with something like, “Are you a writer, illustrator, or both?” or “What do you write?” Then these questions are followed up with, “Do you have an agent?” or “Are you published?” Sometimes conversation flows smoothly, but not always. At the holiday party I was asked, “What do you like best about writing picture books?” For some reason this completely tongue-tied me. I think part of it was that the guy asking was not able to maintain a normal level of eye contact (i.e. no blinking, intent staring). I also talked to a woman who asked me if I had children. So of course I asked her if she had children. She was like, “NO! Are you kidding me I can’t STAND children.” Hmmm…interesting that she writes children’s books. I guess no matter how awkward and uncomfortable I am, there is probably someone in the room who is in worse shape than me.

What I’m reading: I finished reading Lost in Shangri-la and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Unusual Children. I enjoyed both of them. I also read Divergent by Veronica Roth. It was pretty entertaining, but there were some things that bothered me about the story (perhaps they’ll be explained in the later books). I am almost finished with Call the Midwife. And now I’m reading Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. I found this book in a box of free books on the sidewalk. Who can pass up free books? Not me!

I've Got Fans!

They might all be friends and family, but I’ve got blog fans! It’s so nice to have an *adoring* audience, even if it’s small. Everyone starts somewhere, right? Check out this amazing birthday present I got from an awesome friend!

Yes! My blog is immortalized on a shirt!

My critique group met again this week and I was excited to learn that they all thought I’d done a good job with my revisions. I think the consensus is that my story is getting pretty close to submission ready. Now I just have to learn to write an amazing query letter to go with it.

I’ve been reading up on writing effective query letters and it turns out they’re a little different than I was imagining. The first part of the letter really reads like a book jacket—it makes you want to read the book. I spent hours yesterday reading a blog called Query Shark. The author of the blog is an agent who accepts submissions of query letters for critique. As a reader, you get to see her suggestions for improvements as well as how the suggestions were incorporated (or not) into revisions. She’s super-direct and often pretty funny in her commentary.

I’m still having some trouble figuring out how to deal with writing a query for a picture book. Most of the information I’ve come across deals with novels. So a query for a novel might include three paragraphs about the story. This of course doesn’t make sense for a picture book since it’s so much shorter. It seems like it’s going to be really hard to tell enough, but not too much. I definitely have my work cut out for me.I finally subbed at the school down the street for me. The people at this school are so nice! The secretary actually walked me to the classroom and then introduced me to a few teachers. Then the principal stopped by the classroom to introduce herself and welcome me. The kids were really nice too and a lot of them came to me at the end of the day to thank me for being their sub. It was very sweet.

What I’m Reading: Call the Midwife is getting better. I think, but I’m not sure, that the author’s writing has improved since the beginning of the book. Lost in Shangri-la is pretty interesting. The author chose to include a lot of information about WWII that doesn’t relate directly to the story he’s telling, but I think it really adds to the book. I started reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a young adult novel by Ransom Riggs, based on a recommendation from a friend. It is quite an unusual book both in story and format. It has all these photos that go along with the story (Yes! A picture book for teens!). Anyway, I’m really enjoying it so far.

Writing Is Hard

Today is a “writing is hard” day. Some days are “writing is easy” days. I learned this concept from an insightful friend regarding running, but I find that it applies to many things. A “writing is hard day” usually involves staring blankly at the computer screen. It can involve skimming through manuscripts and assuring yourself there’s nothing you can do to make them better. It often involves getting up to walk around and then sitting back down with determination. Or it could involve online shopping for Christmas presents. And blogging, ironically, frequently occurs on “writing is hard” days. Between having some “writing is hard” days and being sick, I haven’t written a lot in the last few weeks.

I do not recommend getting up at 5 a.m. and driving from Oakland to Long Beach on Thanksgiving Day while sick. It sucks. Especially when the weather goes from lovely Bay Area fall temperatures in the 60s to 90 degrees during the course of the drive. I actually had to change into shorts in the car. So gross. But the excellent food and company did kind of make up for it. By the way, if you’ve never had turkey AND beef for Thanksgiving, I highly encourage you to try it. This meat combo caused me to sing that Meghan Trainor song with some substitutions: “Because you know I’m all about that beef, ‘bout that beef, no turkey”. The humor was lost on my boyfriend, who had never heard the song before. No one appreciates me around here.

After living in Pasadena last year when it just didn’t rain, I’ve been delighted with the amount of precipitation in Oakland. I’ve been putting my rain boots and umbrella to good use and thinking that rain is glorious. However, while it was dumping rain yesterday morning, I happened to look out at our balcony. It looked like a swimming pool. The water level kept rising until it was almost level with the sliding glass door. I realized that the balcony must have a drain and I wondered if it was clogged. So I put on my rain boots and stepped into the pool. The water was almost ankle deep. And I discovered that the drain was indeed clogged with leaves. I cleared the leaves with my hands and watched the pool get sucked down the drain, gurgling as it went. I felt super-heroic. It’s a good thing I didn’t sub yesterday or our apartment would have flooded.

What I’m reading: I finished How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. It was OK, but kind of frustrating mostly because it ended suddenly. I read Bossy Pants by Tina Fey. It was interesting and entertaining, but I was disappointed that it wasn’t funnier. I started reading non-fiction book called Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. It’s about a US military plane that crashes in New Guinea during WWII. It’s pretty good so far. And I’m still reading Call the Midwife.

The Critique Group

After what felt like years of waiting, my writing critique group finally met for the first time. Between introductions, critiquing, and moving cars out of two-hour parking spots, our meeting lasted for over four hours! There are six of us and we are all working on picture book manuscripts, although some of the writers also write for other age groups. Each of us submitted one manuscript to the group prior to the meeting. So when we arrived, we each received five copies of our own manuscript with comments from every member.

We each had a turn in which someone else read our manuscript out loud. Then each member got a few minutes to elaborate on their commentary of the story. It was so interesting to hear everyone’s reactions and to notice similarities as well as contradictory advice. The difficult part is that you can’t take everyone’s advice. You have to figure out what resonates with you and then go with that. When you look at people’s suggestions, it makes you realize which story elements you’re attached to and which ones you aren’t. I feel like the story I’ve been working on the most is getting better and shorter (which is good) with each revision. I hope I have the clarity to know when it’s at its finest and be able to stop revising there. Or at least stop until an agent or editor requests further revisions…

I started working again on one of the first stories I ever wrote. It’s a non-fiction story and I decided to add a rhyming element to it. So each page will have a rhyming quatrain and then a paragraph in prose. I’ve never tried to write in rhyme before (other than in high school where I was forced to write some really terrible rhyming poetry. I mean, I wasn’t forced to write terrible poetry, I just happened to write terrible poetry). I was surprised by how much fun I had with creating rhymes. It feels to me like solving a puzzle that has more than one solution. I definitely need some more practice if I want to try to sell this story. It’s really difficult to get rhyming books published unless they are high quality.

My birthday was yesterday and it was pretty fun. In addition to completing my Birthday Challenge (read all about it here), I went out to dinner with my boyfriend and my brother. We got some really excellent Peruvian food. I’d never eater Peruvian food before, but I will definitely be going back for more. We had some incredible tuna and halibut ceviche, a potato croquette filled with seafood, a chicken stew with potatoes and rice (potatoes and rice are married in my food fantasy world), and beef with tomatoes and onions. Yum! I also got to have a pre-birthday dinner last weekend with my boyfriend’s mom and I’ll be having some post-birthday feasting this weekend with a few friends. It’s amazing I still have my girlish figure…

My new and improved "I-don't-stick-out-my-tongue-now-I-suck-in-my-lips" climbing face

What I’ve been reading: I’m still reading Call the Midwife. It’s OK, but it’s disappointing compared to the show (I can hardly believe I’m saying that since it’s usually the other way around). I understand that Jennifer Worth wrote the book because there are so few midwives in literature. The documentation of her career is certainly interesting. But I think her goal in writing the book was quite different from the goal of the show. Part of this is that the show does a really good job of bringing the characters to life and expressing the drama of the various situations. Every single episode of the show made me cry. The book does not make me want to cry. I’m only about 2/3 of the way through, so I’m not sure yet if I’d recommend reading it. I got a few free books on my iBooks app. The first book was a mistake. Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard was just awful (although I couldn’t stop reading it). It ended with me shouting aloud, “Are you joking?!?” I will not be reading the other books in this series. One of the other books I got is How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. It’s pretty good so far and I’m about halfway through it. I have stopped reading Ivanhoe.

@SerenaGingold

Where does the time go? I mean seriously. It was just October and suddenly we’re in the second week of November…

My boyfriend and I dressed up for Halloween as famous artists and went to the Oakland Museum of California for their weekly Friday night shindig. They have half price admission and food trucks that gather outside. It was pretty deserted, probably due to the fact that it had rained for most of the day, but we still had fun.

Vincent and Frida together at last

 I subbed two days in fifth grade classes at different schools. The take-away is that subbing in upper grades in usually pretty easy (kind of like babysitting because the kids are pretty good at independent work) but damn, fifth graders can smell bad!

On the writing front, I went to an SCBWI county meeting and heard three authors speak about their road to getting published. Their stories were interesting and so different from each other. I also had the chance to have a long-distance phone critique with the mom of two of my former students (she’s a children’s writer and an actor, not to mention being the mom of two amazing kids). She gave me some really amazing feedback for the story I’m getting ready for submission. She also told me that she just sold two early readers that she wrote! I’m so excited for her. Since the conversation I’ve been working on revising my story and I think it’s really improved. And next week is the first meeting of the new critique group that I joined. There are six members so far and we’ve exchanged stories for critique via email. It’s so interesting to read other people’s work. I can’t wait to meet the writers in person and see what they think about my story.

Oh, and one last thing. I set up a Twitter account! Now you can follow me wherever I go: @SerenaGingold. So far I have one follower (thanks Bekah! @InkNpaperz). 

What I’ve been reading: I finished The Magician’s Assistant and I was not impressed. The story line just wasn’t for me. I finally started reading Call the Midwife: a Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth. It’s written in what I consider to be an unusual style. It’s hard to tell, but I don’t know that I’d really be enjoying it if I hadn’t already watched the show. I also read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher in one day. It was hard to put down. If you like YA, you should read it. I thought it was terrific. I picked up Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, but I’m not entirely sure I can deal with reading it. I haven’t gotten far, but it’s incredibly boring and seriously long-winded.

No Is Not a Four-Letter Word

I really need to keep reminding myself that no is not a four-letter word and that it’s OK to use it when people ask me to take multi-day subbing assignments. The four days I spent in first grade last week were a good reminder of why I only like single-day assignments.

Monday was absolutely chaotic the whole day and I was utterly exhausted by the end of it. The class I was in had had two or three different subs the week before and the kids were already out of control the minute school started. I discovered that the subs from the week before basically hadn’t taught anything. This was problematic because I was supposed to assess the kids on math that they hadn’t yet learned. So I scrambled for the first two days to teach all of the missing lessons.

I assessed the little darlings in math and writing, conducted a science experiment, settled “I’m not your friend anymore” disputes, etc. It was just like having my own class again. So in other words it was a total nightmare. Just when I was about to begin suffering symptoms of PTSD, the four days were up.

Now the teacher I subbed for loves me. The room mom gave me a thank you card and chocolates. The principal loves me. And the secretary told me she was going to put me on speed dial. You’d think I’d be elated. Instead I want to run for the hills. I actually just want to slide under the radar and not be noticed. Because then it’s easier to use my favorite not-four-letter word.

The whole point of subbing was to have time to write and to not be burdened by the stress of teaching. But once I’m in the same classroom for several days, school is all I can think about. I have issues. I know.

At the end of the week of subbing, I had to go to the orientation for the other district I’ll be working for. You’d think an orientation would involve learning about the job and/or the district. Instead I learned that the presenter is a menopausal single mom. I learned about every job she’s held in the district for the past 25 years. I learned that her daughter is in grad school and her son didn’t go to college. Oh, and I learned that you should show up for your job on time and that you shouldn’t bring anything valuable to school that isn’t attached to your body. And of course, I had to go get fingerprinted again. Someday soon, they might even inform me that they’ve hired me.

Needless to say, my writing career has been suffering that last few weeks. I’ve resolved to only sub two days a week. I figure this will give my life some structure and responsibility. And it will make my “free” time seem more precious.

Climbing has been going pretty well. Last week I actually made it to the gym three times. It’s been a long time since I climbed that much. I’m trying to build my strength and stamina for my birthday challenge this year. I’m still trying to work out the details, but I think it might involve going to three different gyms and climbing either 36 boulder problems at each of them or problems worth 36 points at each of them (so a VO would be worth 1 point, a V1 worth 2 points, etc.).

Before

After

What I’ve been reading: I finished reading East of Eden. It was terrific. Not only is it well written but it’s a tremendous story. I also finished An Abundance of Katherines, which I thought was pretty funny and entertaining. It’s probably the only fiction book I've ever read that contains footnotes. And because I’d read John Green’s other three novels, I decided to devour Paper Towns too. It was also quite good, in classic John Green style. Now I’m reading The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett. I’m not quite sure where this book is headed yet, but it’s pretty good so far.