Recap at 5 in the mawnin.

I skipped a day again. This five per week thing is harder than I thought it'd be. Still, the idea behind it--the spirit of the resolution, if not the letter--was to ensure I kept my blog well up to date, which I think I have been.

Anyway, this post, though dated for Friday, should totally count as Thursday, because it's like 5 in the morning and no one in their right mind is awake and thinking "Hey it's Friday." No. Those in their right minds are asleep, smiling happily and knowing "Ahh it's Thursday night."

Well, I have a lot on my mind, much of which I am not going to say a single thing about.

I will sum up Thursday as best I could, and that's all:

The living room of our cozy bungalow is now mostly baby friendly, and it's become Sam's new playroom, such as it is. (My new favorite overused phrase is "such as it is." Watch for it!) Yesterday, in fact, Sam entertained himself for hours on end, simply rolling around and tugging at things hanging down from the arch of his activity mat. Then, when it was nap time, he started dozing off right there, so I just had to move him to his crib! I guess I didn't really even have to do that, but we're working on getting him accustomed to sleeping in his own room, so I did.

Yesterday, I got confirmation that I will be continuing on as one of the Jake Maddoxes, too, as well as continuing with a couple of other SAB projects I really enjoy. Some new stuff, too, is in the works, for one of my names to do, and I'm excited about those too. But most exciting is that I'll be re-signing my yearlong contract and can let out a sigh, knowing we don't need to make any desperate adjustments to our current financials.

Last night was also my meeting with Aforementioned Editor. It went well. More on that soon, but I will say that the supersecret epilogue is becoming the supersecret prologue, which just hit us both like a wet sock, and is clearly a huge solution, especially since it makes room for the new supersecret epilogue, which is shaping up to be way better.

And now it's Friday. With any luck, the FIL will be feeling better soon, for his own sake, natch, but also for ours: I really want the in-laws to babysit on Sunday so we can go see Coraline in 3D before the Jonas Brothers come along and gross up the 3D screens!

Updates

Well, I skipped the weekend, which means I'll have to pick it up to maintain 5/week in here. Shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, an update on YA MS the first. Last night I slammed down about 3000 words for Lily (mostly a party scene; I think the drunkenness comes across). With any luck she'll be finished up on Wednesday, when the in-laws will be here to babysit at noon, and I'll be in downtown Minneapolis for about five hours with nothing but writing time on my hands before my first class of the semester. (Have I mentioned my slowly ongoing teacher's license in this blog yet? I'm not sure. Anyway, it'll be a few years, at this rate, which is fine. If I have my license done by the time Sam can hit kindergarten, I'll be happy.) So, that five-hour block will probably cinch up Lily, and then I can reapproach Noah, who I think just needs a few tweaks.

Simon, too, is waiting for tweaks, but that will be essentially a couple of hours and a strong cup of coffee. I'm starting to feel more confident about getting this done before the trip to NYC. (Especially with ongoing help from the in-laws.)

This morning, I was hoping to get some work done. Sam, however, had other plans. To think I once I had a knack for getting Sam down for naps. Lately, whatever skill I had seems to be gone completely. Today, when he showed tired signs just before 11, all hell broke loose somehow. It took an hour of shrieking and screaming before he fell asleep, and here, ten minutes later, he's already waking up again. I think maybe he'll go into the swing now.

First you get the power . . .

Yesterday was not the productive extravaganza of writing I intended it to be. First and foremost, I am a curmudgeon, and as such had a hard time finding someplace to work that satisfied me on all levels. The levels in question are:

Free wifi, reliably. Wifi is nice, but not if you want me to buy credits and pay for it, tyvm BN cafe. Wifi that is free and spotty is worse than pay-per-hour. It can spell disaster.

Good food. If your establishment has free wifi, that's great. But if your burgers are dry, overcooked, without lettuce, tomato, or onion, and on a tasteless white bun, next to obviously-from-the-freezer fries, you fail.

OUTLETS EVERYWHERE. Seriously. This is the big one. If I'm going to set up camp and buy coffees, teas, snacks, and sandwiches for five hours straight, I want to plug in. My battery is good, but it's not that good, and one outlet for every twenty customers just ain't gonna cut it. Especially when that weird lady who had been standing on the corner singing to a photograph is at one of the tables blessed with power. She had a scone, by the way, and whatever she was drinking out of the blue plastic jumbo take-out cup she came in with. She did not use the outlet. Many glared in her general direction. I chose to seek outlets elsewhere.

So I finally settled, much too late, at Brewberry's, mainly because I was cranky and wanted ice cream. NOTE: Brewberry's is not selling ice cream until the spring. Super.

But they do have great coffee, and I did finally get about 2000 words down, which I realized after writing it had been very "tell, not show," so I rewrote all of it this morning. And here we are.

Sam just fell asleep for a nap, a little ahead of schedule, so back at it. I've still got more than three weeks left of January, and probably about 20k words to write, and I still have hope that this YA MS the first will be done before I leave for SCBWI in NYC on January 28.

Satellite Office, DBC

I'm at the DBC on University Avenue right now, working hard and getting through YA MS, the first. I'm pretty happy with what's coming out so far. Probably helps that I've returned for the moment to the main protagonist. Or antagonist, if you know him. Ha!

Anyway, had to drop a quick update, just because my stupid resolution calls for five updates a week, and hell if I'm going to blow it on day two, know what I'm sayin'?

I also dropped ninety-nine cents just now to buy Superchunk's "Driveway to Driveway." The opening riff was used on NPR for some strange reason, uncredited BTW, and I had to hear the whole thing. The Russian site didn't have it. Shock.

Harry pooped in our bed this morning. That's twice in a week. I think he's jealous of Sam finally. I guess we knew this would happen, though I didn't know it would take such a smelly and gross form.

Back to work. I'm excited about finishing this thing.

The Morning After

Groan

Woke up late* on New Year's Day. I guess, if you stay up past your bedtime**, that'll happen. I staggered into the kitchen and sighed; who likes cleaning up after a wild New Year's Eve***? Nobody, that's who. Empty cans**** everywhere, food debris***** . . . all manner of mess to deal with.

But I push on, because it is a new year, and I am starting on a few of my resolutions right away, including number 3, with this entry, and number 1, for which I will later today head to DBC for a few hours of solid work time, if they are open. [ETA: They were not.]

I have not yet begun work on resolution number 9, and instead made crepes for breakfast at Beth's request. They came out really good, and we ate them standing in the kitchen over the counter like savages--savages with crepes and expensive-looking jellies!

*7:30 am
**9:15 pm
***Punch pizza and in bed by 10:30
****Specifically four empty diet caffeine-free sodas
*****The remainders of a nice mesclun and prosciutto salad with pine nuts. It was quite nice.

Resolute

I have never done this before, but what the hey.

RESOLUTIONS!

1. Finish both my YA manuscripts!

2. Finish at least one of the titles in my middle-grade trilogy.

3. Blog five times per week.

4. Cover the windows over the couch in plastic. Soon.

5. Teach Sam to talk, walk, and eat solid foods.

6. Eliminate caffeine entirely. That is, from my diet, not the world in general.

7. Get an agent!

8. Stop buying coffees everywhere. Even decafs.

9. Get that pesky old cholesterol down where it belongs.

And, if I can do all that stuff, one final resolution:

10. Get my druid to level 80. What?! Not, like, next week, but eventually. Jeez.

Happy New Year!

So this is what Mondays are like.

Well, today has been one crazy ride. Samster the Hamster was a whirlwind of fussing, grumping, and shrieking his little tonsils out, and, get this, all without any discernible cause! I know! How rude.

(I hear him stirring from his afternoon nap, but I really want him to hold out until Beth gets home in about 30 minutes. It might happen.)

So yeah. Rough Monday. So it's an especially good thing that I had a fairly rejuvenating weekend. I spent much of Sunday at Bruegger's, getting some freelance writing done, and working a bit on the ol' YA Ms. I think I might have finished a chapter of one of the new novellas. It's kind of . . . I don't know, lewd? But I think it's fairly appropriate to the character. Digressing.

Anyway, post Bruegger's, I was off to Menard's, which is one of the classiest places to buy plastic sheets to cover your windows for the winter. They have a live pianist between the moving sidewalks. Super, super swanky.

I also investigated that paint that turns any wall into a chalkboard. Did you know they can tint it any color you want?! We're going with black. We're that crazy. (For those wondering, this is for the tiny section of wall in the kitchen just as you enter. It will be a chalkboard, corkboard, to-do list, grocery list, coupon board, menu type of thing. I think in a few years, Sam will get a kick out of drawing on the wall, too -- in nice, eraseable chalk.)

Mmhm. He's waking up for reals. Wish me luck.

Home Alone 4: Pig in the City

Not much to report, as usual.

Today was the Fourth Day Alone with Sam. It went fairly well, I think. It was a long day, certainly, but I am getting better at picking up Sam's signals; I can identify hungry, tired, and post-evacuation pretty easily--almost always before the deafening high-pitched streaking begins. It doesn't usually last long, though, if it does start; my throat starts to hurt, you see.

I'll be alone with Sam again tomorrow, and Thursday. Beginning in two weeks, it will be every day when B starts her normal work-at-the-office-every-day schedule. Shame. Why aren't we more Canadianesque?

I haven't touched my YA MS since the meeting last Friday. I just don't know where to start fixing this thing. I mean, I can pad it; padding I know. But I don't feel like that's what it wants. A few ideas I've had include an opening passage that completely breaks the fourth wall and sets up the piece a little better; opening with a poem is fine, but the scene at the clothing store feels a little in-the-middle of things. B suggested adding another, shorter novella, connected but not, a la Franny and Zooey. I don't know what to do!

Also we went to BN last night and I picked up two books by John Green: Finding Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. I'll read them in my normal slow fashion and get back to you.

Debriefing

Well, I had my meeting (over Two-Hearted Ales, I'm happy to say) with the aforementioned editor last night. I wish I had something concrete to report, but I really don't. Not that I expected to walk out of there with a book deal, contract in hand, whistling my way home. But I guess I was hoping for something along the lines of an if-then statement.

Instead, I learned he definitely loved the book as it is, but thinks of it as not quite a novel . . . yet. He gave me some of his notes, and promises to follow up with a full editor letter next week. I'll look forward to that, and hopefully I'll have a better idea of where he'd like to see this book go. Generally, it was pretty cool to hear that a rising star YA editor liked my YA MS. That's the biggest thing I got out of the night.

He also recommended I send the MS off to another editor, who he is sure would also love it, so I'll most likely to do that on Monday morning. I'll probably also read the book again and see if anything comes to me.

Sam the man, bein' Sam, doin' things without a plan

Sam's been a little harder to please ever since he got his shots on Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon is noted in a previous entry. Yesterday, Sam was sort of on the verge of crying or crying pretty much all day. We didn't see many smiles from him.

This morning has been a little better, but the last hour, hour and a half has been on the rough side. I think he's feeling overtired. Hopefully I can get him to sleep.

Over all, though, I'm starting to think that getting any writing done when Beth isn't home might be a pipe dream.

Shots and hopes

First, some Sam news.

His two-month birthday was yesterday, which means two-month well visit. Sam had his at 10:30 this morning, and now he is one very unhappy little boy. Three shots in his two legs, and now the violent fits of crying come every 2 minutes or so and last about ten or twenty seconds each. Shrill, painful crying. Truly difficult to be around. My heart is breaking constantly. But the reaction is normal, unless it goes on for three hours in a row. So for now I'll just be glad that he hasn't had a severe reaction.

I can't wait for next month for some more shots!

The stats: 23 inches long (nearly two feet!) and 11 pounds.

In other news, one of the editors to whom I sent my YA MS yesterday has already read the whole thing. Apparently he just couldn't put it down. Naturally, I'm buggin'. We're meeting Friday to discuss the book. I might not sleep until then. Which will be fine, since Sam, it feels like right now, might be crying until then.

Done

I finished my first full-length (if you can call it that at under 35k words) young adult novel this morning. This is a project that began as a 7-page short story in my college Creative Writing for Children class. I was inspired to augment it years later, and finally feel like it's a finished book now, 14 years after first sitting down to bang out a final project. Even more ironic is how many books I've started and finished since then. What, like twenty, twenty-five?

Right, so, I've sent it off to two editors, one who enjoyed a draft a couple of years back, and one I met recently and who must have been impressed enough with my resume and a summary of the MS to ask for it.

Now I guess I'll wait six months and continue to toil away at my chapter books.

In Sam news, he's a regular smiler the last week or so, which is nice. Caring for an infant before he can give you any real reactions -- smiles, gurgly attempts at speech -- can be a little frustrating. Now that I can pretty much always get a smile if I try, it's still frustrating, but less so.

Good morning.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my first ever SCBWI conference; it was only about two miles away at the U of M St. Paul campus, so excuses were hard to come by. But it was definitely a good experience. I met some good people and was socially not too terribly uncomfortable.

And they served lunch! With cookies!

I mention this because it inspired me to finally post something on this cobweb-covered blog, which I opened who knows how long ago and, after creating a few images in the sidebar, never posted on.

Now I've done things like this before, and then never showed up again. You should see the journal I kept after college. And, with my still fairly new son at my side, it may be harder than I think to update this thing--while caring for the boy and keeping up with house work and my writing contracts. But I maintain hope.

The focus here will be writing, of course, and reading, but I tend to ramble and digress, so expect some personal beeswax, ranting about the state of the nation, and complaining that the best we can do is Al Franken.