Peter's Cross Station

2009-11-02T20:41:42-06:00

I've been forcing myself to use Twitter (yes, Tweetdeck has helped a lot, thank you). I won't say I love it, but I'm coming to terms with it.

So follow me (lilysea). And tell me who you are so I can follow you, okay?

Darts in the Dark and Bullet Points and Completely Random Snippets of Prose

2009-11-02T12:59:30-06:00

I now have five outstanding agency queries.

I have about 150 pages of a sequel.

I have so completely revised the first section of the first book that it's practically unrecognizable (in a good way) from the earlier drafts.

I have contracted whatever the rest of the family has--but so far in a much milder form (knock wood!). Thank you, flu shot.

Finally, I just really, really need to share this paragraph with you, because I wrote it two weeks ago and it still plays over and over in my head because I am just so delighted with it:

Sophia Abington had always known she would never marry. She knew it in the same way she knew the birthmark on her left ankle would never wash off in the bath. It was neither a sad nor a happy thing. It was simply an indelible fact of Sophia.

See? Isn't that lovely?

That's Funny

2009-10-29T14:44:18-05:00

I still didn't say anything about process below, did I?

But that's the thing that's got me kind of intrigued with Book #2.

I wrote Book #1 according to an outline: Part One, Part Two Part Three. Beginning, Middle, End. But Book #2 hasn't been like that. I did write a beginning. Then I sort of mapped out the rest of it (not an outline, more a big, narrative mess, but in order of events).

But I found that the scenes that were popping up for me to write on any given day were not popping up in order. Its been happening in this rather random, weird way. I know the plot will go, ABCDEFG, but exactly what F looks like will appear in my head and persist until I've written it out, long before C has taken shape, for example.

This bothered me at first. I felt like I was cheating. Seriously. I thought I was breaking some rule. I would never write nonfiction this way, though I know some people do. On the other hand, it's exactly how I write nonfiction--thesis up front, right? Because in a traditionally plotted novel, (beginning at the beginning, middle in the middle, end at the end), the end is sort of the thesis.

What I've found is that I have to know where the people are going to end up and who they are going to become before I've written where they've been and who they began as. Which is what was wrong with the first part of Book #1. I had no idea who those people were. They were like stock characters in a melodrama until I wrote their stories out and got to know them and found out who they were under duress and how they acted when challenged, etc.

Now I've had to go back and rewrite them in the beginning to reflect who I found out they were, having written their fates.

And maybe that's why Book #2 is easier. Even though I'm writing it sort of backwards--or really, from the middle, spreading out in either direction--I feel that I already know much more about the central character at least, than I did about anybody in the beginning of Book #1. Because in Book #2, the central character is a grown child featured in Book #1. I kind of know her.

All the same, I've written more about where she ends up than about where she began at this point. Rather than separate the waters from the waters with a dome and fill the thing with light, I'm more setting little islands of sense in the dark, whirling waters of chaos, and slowly filling in the dark chaos until it all makes sense.

I wonder if Book #3 will be like this, or something entirely different that I learn from Book #2?

Some Writing about Writing

2009-10-29T11:53:58-05:00

Never thought I'd be one to write about writing.

I have written nonfiction for so long that I don't much think about it in terms of process anymore. I have a strong and opinionated internal editor that is fairly ruthless and confident. Whether I'm editing my own writing or someone else's I always just feel certain that I am making it right.

(Poor blog reader, you may not see evidence of this--especially since life got so busy here--I have been publishing a lot of stream-of-consciousness in recent months. Otherwise, the blog would just die away. I trust you prefer it not to, though maybe it's time to let it go. But I digress. As stream-of-consciousness allows.)

But the most fascinating thing happened when I started writing novel number one (fascinating to me, anyway). I had no idea whether I could write fiction. In fact, I suspect I thought, deep-down, that I couldn't. So I set my sights very low and shot from the hip through about the first third of the book. The goal was to get this story from my head to paper, send it off, unagented to some small, obscure lesbian press, dust myself off and move on with real life.

But somewhere in there my fiction muscle began to get sore and then get stronger and then I found my balance and started getting picky and now my nonfiction internal editor has a baby sibling of the fiction ilk.

In other words, I learned to write fiction in the process of writing the novel, and while I think the story is marvelous fun, the first third of the book needed major work, when I went back and read it in light of the last third. (Here I really MUST commend a new writing friend I made recently who has given me immensely helpful feedback on what's wrong with that first section of the first book and direction for making it better.)

So I've been doing a lot of work on that, and had put querying further agents on hold. But I think I'm going to get back to the querying next week.

Meanwhile, the second book is over 30,000 words--or about 100 pages according the words-per-page rules of thumb I've seen out there (none agree, so I'm averaging). And I feel it's about three times as good on the first drafting than was the first book's first third on the 10th drafting.

And I've told you this before, but I'll say it again. I just feel in my bones that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. No, Doing. It should be What I Do. I have not felt this way since I came out. It feels like I've become myself. Or rather, as I sometimes say, that I am getting closer to the person God had in mind when She decided to make me. It's epiphanic. Still. I still can't eat when I'm in the middle of a big chunk of work, because I'm giddy and in love with what I'm doing.

But that's enough florid nonsense for now. I'll save it for the fictional love letters between 20-something romantic friends in Book #2!

Identification and Identity

2009-10-20T10:50:41-05:00

When we were in our pre-adoption stage (pre-Nat), we had to take an extraordinarily silly--maybe even harmful--course via telephone conference that was supposed to teach white people about parenting children of color (it was mostly white parents/Black children, but there were a few other race mixes too).

but its silliness and possible harmfulness aside, I remember one of the women in the course telling us about something that was distressing her, that had prompted her to take the course voluntarily, as she was already raising two Black children. What she said had upset her was that her 4-year old daughter had told her she wished she had pale skin and straight hair--like her mommy.

I remember telling the woman that I thought it was pretty normal for a child of that age to identify with her primary caregiver (this woman was a single mom too--so very, very primary) and that what she had was a teachable moment to start expressing ideas about race and family and identification overtly to her children and create for them a comfort level in discussing those things. Freaking out might be her first impulse, but she ought to take a deep breath and start talking nonjudgmentally to the kids about their feelings about looking different from their mother.

The I made a mental note not to freak out, myself when the same thing inevitably happened to me.

Now, mind you, I am not suggesting that something like that never will happen to me, and I promise not to freak out (too much) when/if it does.

But I was one deeply pleased mama last week when Nat drew a spontaneous portrait of her family, featuring Mama Shannon with curly hair and something that looks to me like crosses, sticking out all over my head. When asked to describe this picture of me, Nat explained that the crosses were my braids.

Nat has never seen me wearing any braids at all in my hair, mind you. I have at various times in my life braided my hair (in one, single, pathetically thin braid) but not lately. But when I saw that Nat had fantasized me to look like her, rather than wishing she looked like me, I must admit it gave my heart a little thrill.

Here's the picture, for those of you who missed it on FaceBook:

Best Adoption Blog

2009-10-16T12:27:48-05:00

What if the first thing you found when you started thinking about adoption had been Dawn's blog? Pretty great place to get the low-down on the reality of adoption, hmm?

The Bump, most mainstream of all streams has a nomination for This Woman's Work to win Best Adoption Blog on their site. Please go vote for Dawn. Just think about the power being made available here, to shift the conventional wisdom about adoption.

So go, vote without delay! You can vote more than once, too.

Acorn Squash Soup

2009-10-15T12:37:41-05:00

Too good to forget how I made this one:

1 Acorn squash

2 yellow onions

6ish garlic cloves

2 cups of broth (chicken this time, but you can use veggie)

rosemary

salt and pepper

Cut the acorn squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Place it cut side down on a baking sheet and roast on about 400 (F) for about an hour

Quarter the onions and peel the garlic. Toss in olive oil and salt (I used coarse sea salt). Spread on a baking pan and roast on about 400 (F) for about 20 minutes.

Bring the broth plus an additional cup of water to boil. Scoop the roasted flesh from the acorn squash skin and toss it in the pot of broth. Toss in, likewise, the roasted onions and garlic. Add a branch of fresh rosemary and some salt and pepper.

Simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove the rosemary and puree the soup. (I used my trusty immersion blender.)

Yum!

New BlogHer Post

2009-10-08T18:49:18-05:00

Do you argue in front of the kids? We do and we think it's a good idea. You?

Housekeeping: Crockpot Edition

2009-10-08T12:39:45-05:00

I used to cook dinner from about 4 to roughly 4:30. Sometimes it was 4:15 or 4:30 to 4:45 or 5. But the upshot is, my family is hungry by 4:30 or 5 and I spend about half an hour cooking.

But now, Nat is in school from 1:30-4:30 and we don't get home until about 5. I spend her school hours near school, writing, while Selina is hanging with the babysitter. Or, on days I don't have a babysitter, I spend the time at home with Selina until 4ish, then put her in the car to go pick up Nat. Either way, though, cooking dinner doesn't fit into the new plan at all. Not the way it always has in the past.

So we've been eating a lot of crap lately. The kids will get frozen pizzas and mac and cheese from the babysitter and I will eat a plate of nachos after they're in bed. When Cole is home, we've been mostly eating out.

I've been trying to figure out how to solve the dilemma of dinner. One idea is to make a big soup or stew once a week. Now that it is soup weather again, this should help. I can make the soup before school and we can eat it later and it will not only be good but better than it would have been hot off the stove.

Still, we can't eat soup every day.

So here's my question for the crock pot people out there: Would that help me? Could I toss delicious dinner ingredients into a crock pot to be ready at 5 and the serve us all a tasty dinner the minute I get Nat home from school?

Can you make things in a crock pot besides the soups and stews I'm already making?

Advice, recipes, crockpot manufacturer preferences welcome--yea, encouraged!