Mini-Break

I'm off to Blacksburg, Virginia this weekend! I've never been there before - I'm expecting a quiet town, quaint shops, and farmers' markets. Am I destined for disappointment? Maybe it's too close to the end of the school year and I'm going to get a college town with rivers of jungle juice flowing?

I'll be visiting the Soul Twin. You remember our trip to Florida, right?


But I'm a working girl so, naturally, I'm bringing a half-ton of books with me. Here's the stack:


The Bright Young Things you see is a sampler of Anna Godbersen's new series* (my love of The Luxe is well-documented here, here, and here). Naturally, this isn't for me (I read it already) - I'm bringing this one for the Soul Twin. I got her hooked on Anna Godbersen's stuff ages ago and now I'm her pusher.

All the other kids' books? That's my reading for work. When you all stop by our booth at ALA Annual and ask me what's good I need to have read the books, right? So this is all for you.

I bought A Time for Gifts after reading "Frugal Europe, on Foot" in the New York Times. I'm about halfway through and I just adore it. The writing is lyrical but not overwrought - he doesn't try too hard. It also has that wonderful aspect where Fermor clearly wrote the book post-trip, bringing all those memories back to the surface, so that the characters and details are a little fuzzy. He may not remember their names or faces but, ah, he remembers how he felt when he was with them.

Naturally, it has lots of food in it. And there's a huge focus on the idea of food as community - it brings Fermor and strangers together as only communal dining can. I loved this:

Beer, carraway seed, beeswax, coffee, pine-logs and melting snow combined with the smoke of thick, short cigars in a benign aroma across which ever so often the ghost of sauerkraut would float.

I know, I know. You're probably thinking, "'The ghost of sauerkraut'? What the hell?" But just stop and think about it...isn't that a gorgeous way to describe the acidic tang that interrupts all those warm, smoky scents? I just thought it was a beautiful passage.

Off I go! See you next week!

Eat, drink, and savor great writing.


* Read The Compulsive Reader's discussion on the cover.

Some thoughts on writing

Remember awhile back I mentioned that I was finally writing? Not blog writing (because, irrationally, I haven't considered my blog real writing) but novel writing.

Well, it has been slow-going since then. As in, like...I've written only six pages since then. In five months. Six pages.

This has nagged and nagged at me, and I have felt like nothing short of a failure. Naturally, I talk myself out of it by reminding myself that I have a family, that I have work, that I blog, that just because I'm not writing now doesn't mean I never will. Which is all true. But still...I haven't written anything!

But recently I had dinner with an award-winning author - she's wicked smaht and very generous with her advice and personal writing experiences. And in the course of the evening, she made the casual comment that she doesn't need to write everyday. Fascinating, I thought. I just got the impression that full-time writers really do nothing but write. Every day. For hours. Right? This author went on to tell me that, when she does school visits, she tells the kids something along this line: you don't have to write reams and reams of paper to be a writer. You can write a page a day, you can write a paragraph a week. Writing is writing, and it's not defined by frequency. And this doesn't make you any less committed to the craft and the passion for writing. (I'm elaborating here - this isn't verbatim from the author.)

What an important lesson not only for children who love writing, but also for grown-ups like me who love it too. Likewise, what is writing? Is it writing a novel? Aren't I writing here on my blog? When I blog, don't I need some tea or a glass of wine to put me in the mindset? Don't I need just the right playlist to set the mood? Don't I put words to electronic paper? Yes, yes, yes. It may not be great, I may not have a large audience, and I may not do it as regularly as I'd like. But it is writing.

So I may not be working on that novel but I'm still writing. And while I sit here writing, Bug is right next to me, filling in blanks in her Diary of a Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book, and that is also a kind of writing. And I love that we're writing together.

Eat, drink, and put words to paper. Any words.


Photo credit

Inspiration

Still working on the story and, being set in Paris and Brittany, I found these slideshows the perfect motivation to keep writing!

Paris

Brittany

Eat, drink, and find your inspiration!

I found a little motivation in my back pocket

* she looks up from typing furiously on her laptop*

Oh, hello there! It's you!

Don't mind me - I'm just writing. See, my whole life - particularly my young life - I have loved writing. I have dozens of journals, hundreds of letters, dozens of old stories...and now my blog. Whenever I wanted to argue my case to stay out past curfew as a teenager, I would write my parents a letter. Verbally, I fumble. Or I get emotional and cry. Or later I wish I had expressed myself differently and feel full of regret. But writing. Writing is my medium.

So why haven't I written a single story - nay, even started one, let alone finished one - since about 1992? I can't say. Nevertheless, here I am, working on one. I've been brainstorming and outlining and mulling for months now, and I finally starting really writing a couple days ago. Which has burned up my blogging time. Nevertheless, I'm thrilled. I was riding the subway this morning, and a conversation between two characters spontaneously popped into my head. What I would have given for a pen and paper at that moment! Dammit! Even now, I haven't had a chance to write it down. Instead, I've been holding it tight in my head, changing its tone, switching some of the words, tweaking moments. I can't wait to get it all written down!

So stay tuned. Mind you, I won't share much else here. Heaven knows that I have enough to handle between the books and the food. But I did want all of you to know that I've got a project I'm working on.

* begins typing furiously again, curls falling forward and obscuring her face *

Be meticulous...even in children's books

Publishers Weekly interviewed Adam Schell, a former chef who wrote the soon-to-be-released adult fiction title Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Lust, Love, and Forbidden Fruit (Delacorte, July 2009).Schell has described his book as a "playful absurdist romp" so PW asked him why he was so meticulous in his research for the book. I loved his answer:

I wanted to be meticulous. When you’re a chef and you read a book about food, you know when the author doesn’t have mastery of that subject. Sometimes it’s glaringly apparent. You know they haven’t done their homework. I wanted to make the [food parts] tactile, and place it so well in the 16th century, because with the story’s more farcical aspects, there’s that bit of uncertainty.

You know what's coming, right? I'm going to point out that this same thought can be applied to foodie books for kids, which is what I was trying to get at here. You can't just plug food into a story and call it a foodie book for kids. An author still needs to be meticulous, still needs to be aware of food's tactile and sensual nature. Even one writing for children and teens.

Miss Erin's Novel Challenge June 2008

I’ve been enjoying Miss Erin’s blog for a couple months now – her voice is fresh and friendly, and her posts have a lot of variety. So am I the only one who realized, when she posted about herself and her family, that she’s so darling…and so friggin young?! Wow. Puts my own life in perspective when I see a teenager with so much eloquence and with a successful blog to boot. On the upside, it helps restore my faith in America’s youth. I don’t know what her future plans entail, but I certainly hope an education and career in NYC are included in them...we need her!

To top it all off, she’s posted a Novel Challenge June 2008.

Aspiring writer? Then go check it out. I’m half-tempted to accept the challenge myself… As Miss Erin says, “We all have a novel somewhere inside of us.” Indeed, I do. But who has the time to actually write it???

Color me way impressed with Miss Erin.