Obsession

Some random thoughts today:

I updated the look of my blog last week and just now got around to announcing it. There is some more information about my writing projects and my work in children's media, which I've been meaning to put on this blog. It's also just a little easier to navigate. I don't really like the sorry picture of the flower blowing in the wind right now (I mean, it's pretty obviously a template) but I'll get around to making that more 'me' sometime soon. So if you're reading this blog through a reader, click on through and let me know what you think!

I've found myself completely obsessed with 3 things in the past week.

1. Tom and Lorenzo. Their blog has me laughing out loud. It's clever and fun, without being mean, which is unique for a pop culture blog. They also happen to review and comment on three television shows that I love: Project Runway, Mad Men and Glee. Their Mad Style commentary is incredible. I have been known to drool over the gorgeous style in that show and I love their smart observations.

2. The discovery that Family Ties has come to the Hub Network. I discovered this at about midnight on Saturday night. Sunday morning, I immediately got a Season Pass on my Tivo and was devastated to learn that the show would not be taping until 2am. So I went to Hulu and watched back to back episodes of the show. I watched an episode in which Alex becomes obsessed with Donna, an unwed expectant mother, and convinces himself he is going to be the father of her unborn child. And an episode in which Jennifer and Steven Keaton grow apart when Jennifer begins to flourish into womanhood. MY GOD, this is the stuff of GENIUS people. GENIUS. I'm not sure what's going to happen to me now that I know this show is airing in reruns. And did anyone realize what a remarkable actress Justine Bateman is? I haven't seen the show since I was about 13 and it never occurred to me how wonderful she is, perhaps because of the big personalities on that show like Michael J. Fox and Meredith Baxter Birney. (Yes, these are the things that keep me up at night. Why was Mallory overshadowed?!)

3. PBS' Great Performances: Sondheim! The Birthday Concert My love of Sondheim runs deep. Since Tivo-ing it, I have watched select performances repeatedly. Especially Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters rendition of Move On. I watched it SIX times in a row and the only reason I stopped watching it was so that I could watch Elaine Stritch's 'I'm Still Here' SEVEN more times . I know...I know... it's sick. I also came to the conclusion that if you want to be a great singer you have to have a really gigantic mouth. People, I can not tell you how much I love Marin Mazzie and Patti Lupone but their mouths are insane. It's like they have been taken possession by a crazy alien. These photos don't even really do it justice.

What are you obsessed with lately? Or am I the only one who gets caught up in things like this?

As It Turns Out: Somebody Likes This Blog

Thank you to the lovely, talented Lisa Galek for honoring me with my first ever blogging award: The Honest Scrap Blogger Award. Apparently, I'm honest. Which is quite ironic given the fact that I'm a fiction writer. Mwahahahaha! I write lies! All lies!

I have to share ten things about myself and share this award with other honest bloggers. So here goes...

1. For quite a long time I have had the story of a 16 year old girl in my head but had never written for a young adult audience. So, I was pretty scared to write it. This week, I officially decided to take the plunge. I hope all of you YA writers will welcome me with open arms and loving hearts and help me not be so scared.

2. I wrote a novel when I was 11 years old called "Ten Is Enough." In the coming weeks I plan to subject all of you to a few excerpts. Get excited!

3. I love to cook and I love to eat. I am obssessed with the farm to table craze and I belong to a CSA which forces me to figure out how to cook with things like 12 pounds of Kale.

4. I have lived in New York state for 27.5 of 30 years. 2 years were spent in Boston. .5 in the UK.

5. Of the 27.5 years in New York, 1.5 of them were spent in Astoria, Queens. 17 of them were spent in a town called Hicksville which is on the semi-north shore of Long Island. (Yes, it's called Hicksville.) 3.5 of them were spent in Ithaca. 4 of them were spent on the island of Manhattan. 1.5 of them were spent in Brooklyn.

6. I currently live in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood technically called the Columbia Waterfront District. Some people call it Red Hook. Others call it Carroll Gardens. I call it no-man's land because it is a 10 minute walk from the subway. I live with my boyfriend, Tyler.

7. I am an only child but I like to think I play well with others. Unless you want to borrow my bike, in which case, I'll cry.

8. I work at a toy company as a writer and producer. In other words, if you push a button on a toy, I wrote, recorded, edited, and produced all the music and speech you hear. Every time I tell people what I do, they ask me if working at a toy company is like the movie Big. I am here to tell you, it is nothing like the movie Big.

9. I loooooove dresses and skirts. From May to September, I do not wear pants. In the winter, I wear the same clothes but I put turtlenecks and wool tights underneath them.

10. I really love to blog and read your blogs. This whole 'I write, you read' then 'you write, I read' thing makes me really happy.

I would like to extend this award to the following bloggers:

Sharon Mayhew at Random Thoughts, who was my first blogging friend. She is as sweet as cake and writes about cake. I plan to to buy all of her children's books when they are published and give them to my kids.

Lori H. Walker, who always has so many thoughtful, interesting things to say about writing and teaching on her blog.

Karen at The Oliva Reader who reads and reviews the kinds of books I like to read on her blog. We are encouraging one another in our month of writing and I'm very excited.

Kerri Arista because her songs and her words are beautiful and honest and I'm excited she is writing a book.

Christine at Inwardly Digesting because I've just discovered her blog and I like it very much.

Writer = Reader. Right?

After reading Lauren Miller's piece in Salon and an intelligent response at My Friend Amy's Book Blog, I began to think a lot about reading as writers. To sum up the issue, Lauren Miller wanted writers to think twice about participating in NaNoWriMo because she believes that putting quantity before quality is irresponsible. She also scolded writers, believing that we should really take the time to read more, not write more. My Friend Amy responded by applauding and encouraging writers who participated in the challenge this month and she brought up an interesting argument: Literacy is a much larger problem and writers are not the target.

Amen.

While I've never participated in NaNoWriMo, I am inspired by a month dedicated to novel writing. Maybe everyone does have a novel in them. And what's the harm in that? Maybe you don't need to go to the Iowa Writer's Workshop and sit in a dark room for ten years playing the role of tortured writer before birthing a novel.

Do I think that writers who participate need to realize that sitting down to write 50,000 words does not a novel make? Of course! Those who participate should take the time to revise and edit and hone their craft beyond the November frenzy. (Sorry for the public service announcement.)

Not only does it seem irresponsible to discourage a new generation of writers, but accusing an entire community of writers for not reading is offensive.  Because, as far as I can tell, writers are not only reading books, but devouring them whole, plugging them on their blogs, giving away dozens of copies, interviewing authors, participating in campaigns not to ban them, joining online challenges to read more of them, buying more bookshelves to house them, forcing unsuspecting family members to read them, and spending their entire paycheck to buy them. They have to-be-read piles in their homes that are toppling over and to-read lists that are virtually impossible to maintain given the life-span of an average human being.

There are a lot of reasons I love to write. But the biggest one is that I love to read. If I didn't, I'm not sure why I would want to enter the publishing industry, where salaries are embarrassingly low and new writers aren't exactly pulling in the kind of seven-figure advance they dream of. In my opinion, an aspiring writer wouldn't spend the days writing hundreds of thousands of words, spending ridiculous amounts of money on writing conferences, workshops, and fed-ex submissions, crying over hundreds of e-mail and snail mail rejections from magazines, editors, and agents, unless they had an absolute psychotic love of the written word. Because writing, in general, (never mind 50,000 words in 30 days) is INSANE, my friends. And there's no reason you would do it unless you love books, on certain days, more than your first-born.

But maybe I'm flat-out wrong. Maybe you've all never cracked the spine of a book in your life.

Tell me, writers, do you read?

Why Do You Blog?

Have I told you that I really enjoy Elana Johnson's blog? She tells it like it is and that is a quality I very much admire in people. Her post about understanding why we blog really made me think. She urged us to understand what our goals are and what we'd like to achieve with a blog. So I thought it might be nice to state these goals here.

1. First and foremost, I blog because most of my work sits in a drawer unread. I like to write and have people read what I have written. I don't know if that's a very popular writerly belief. Maybe I'm supposed to pretend I do all of this purely for the love of the written word? But this is about being honest and I'm telling the truth.

2. I didn't know this would happen when I started but, now, I blog because I've 'met' interesting people in the writing community through this blog and I want to keep these invaluable connections. They have helped me grow as a blogger and writer. Hopefully, I've helped them too.

3. I write this blog because I do feel it's necessary to have an online presence as a writer and, if I blog with honesty and integrity, I can't imagine it would hurt my writing career to have one.

Those are the main reasons I blog. Maybe a lot of them are selfish, but I hope not. I suppose a lot of these goals will change as my life changes. But that's to be expected. Sometimes I whine...very loudly I might add...Tyler has heard it...about not getting a lot of comments, visitors, or feedback on my blog, but, when I step back and think about why I'm blogging and what my goals are, that's not a reason, so I need to calm down about that. Originally, I thought I might like to make money from a blog or get free stuff, but, it turns out that's not the reason I do it either.

So, I'd love for you share the truth: Why do you blog?

Because of A Book

I'm blogging over at Write For A Reader today for Shelly's Because Of A Book feature. I love this series because I think sometimes we forget that books impact our lives in so many ways. Well, maybe we don't forget, but we don't always stop to articulate them. I found this to be such a great exercise for me- remembering my favorite books and how they changed my life. I hope you'll click the link below and check it out!

Because Of A Book

A Blog, A Book, and A Contest

I've been meaning to tell you all about a blog I really like and a contest that made my eyes bug out of my head.

First: Allison Winn Scotch's blog Ask Allison. It is a wealth of information about the publishing industry from a writer's point of view. She covers everything you could ever want to know. And I have learned a lot from her blog.

Second: this upcoming contest. A guaranteed query and 1st chapter read by her agent, Elisabeth Weed. No worries about getting lost in slush. No feelings of if only they would read that first chapter, I know they would want my book! If you write adult fiction, particularly women's fiction, and you have a completed manuscript and you're ready to query, you are positively loony if you don't run out and buy Allison's new book The One That I Want and become eligible to enter this contest. Good luck!

Blogs I Read: Day 6

That wraps up the week in: Blogs I Read.

Obviously, I read a lot of other blogs. Many of them are about the publishing industry and literature. A smaller portion are about children's media and food. I've learned SO much from SO many blogs about SO many things; particularly when it comes to the world of books and entering the 'business' of writing.

But I wanted to feature blogs that get to the heart of why we write and why we read. And I think I've captured a few of the things I look for when it comes to good story-telling: Craft, Character, Intrigue, and Place.

With all of us trying to absorb so much content on the internet day after day, I hope you find some inspiration in all the words you read.

Blogs I Read: Day 5

Ironically, it took moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn to realize what a rich history New York City has. The cozy neighborhood feel of the street I live on now is very different from my old cramped, studio, surrounded by a lot of nail salons and pizza places (but there is still a special place in my heart for that old, cramped studio with its leaky ceiling [sigh])

When I walk out of my apartment there are bakeries and butchers, churches, and restaurants that have been there for decades and I get a greater sense of that history. It's easier to see it tucked in my small neighborhood than in the center of crowded Manhattan.

Lost City honors a lot of 'lost' landmarks in this constantly evolving place. And, despite its often harsh stance against real estate development, it usually invokes a lot of curiousity in me. When I learn about a place that no longer exists or threatens to vanish, I wonder about the past, present, and future. For that reason, I find the blog and all the places it features very inspiring.

Are there blogs you enjoy that feature places that inspire you?

Blogs I Read: Day 4

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon The Sartorialist but I'm very glad that I did. I love this blog for the same reason that I love looking at portraits (The National Portrait Gallery in London is my favorite museum). People have incredible stories. And when a person is frozen in time, all the mystery and intrigue of their personal story is caputured at the very same moment.

Technically, The Sartorialist is about fashion and style. But it's more than that. It's also about the confidence and spirit that a person carries in the clothes they wear and the places they find themselves. I can't imagine how many stories are waiting to be written about each and every photograph that is featured on this blog.

Are there particular photography blogs that inspire you to tell a story?

Blogs I Read: Day 3

I discovered Writing As Jo(e) after she responded to a question I had on twitter regarding the Indianna Dunes. She was kind enough to e-mail me her impressions of this landmark. In order to better describe a fictional location in my novel, I was trying to better understand this area that I'd never been to. How kind she was to respond and how happy I am that it allowed me to discover her blog.

I enjoy her observations of the world. She often shares lovely simple stories about her family, friends, and neighbors. And I particularly like her connection to the natural world. I feel a bit like a voyeur as I peek into her life (I guess that's what blogs are about), but as the people and places in her world become more familiar to me, they are like characters in a story, and her blog feels like a friendly place to stop by and say hi.

What blogs do you read that have a cast of 'characters' you like to hear about?

Blogs I Read: Day 2

I recently came across Beth Kephart Books . The first blog post I stumbled upon included a video with a writing prompt for the group readergirlz. I immediately liked her voice and her style. She spoke a bit like a poem.

As I read her blog, I feel as if I am being let in on a little secret. Her prose is beautiful and thought provoking. I recently finished one of her books, Undercover, and I'm hooked. From her video, to her blog posts, to her fiction I feel that same quiet but powerful voice and I want to know more.

I feel I've discovered her blog and her books at just the right time. I am able to learn about her journey as it unfolds on her blog. And read her published work (which spans several genres including memoir, non-fiction and young adult) from the past 12 years. I've just learned that she has an adult novel in the works too. That type of diversity from a writer is very exciting.

Is there a blog you read for the beauty and depth of its prose?

Blogs I Read: Day 1

Confession: I read an embarassing amount of blogs. My google reader is overflowing with posts and I am completely anal about getting down to zero un-read items. I have them broken down into categories and my google-reading is down to an absolute science. I read almost every single blog in my google reader and I rarely 'mark all as read'.

So, I decided that every day this week I am going to feature a blog that I find particularly useful or entertaining. It will be a bit like my Tuesday Books for Writers posts (which I've been slacking off on as of late. I apologize!) and I hope you'll find it beneficial.

Check back this week for updates!

Since you're here now, I feel I must leave you with something. So I'll send you to a blog that has nothing to do with writing at all. It just fricken hilarious. If you're not already reading Cake Wrecks you should be!

What's the funniest blog you read?