The (Invisible) Liebster Award

Thank you to Julie Whelan at The Paper Wait for giving me the Liebster Award! I'd post the picture, but it's being shy about showing up for me. This award is simply a fun shout-out from one blog to another, and like most such awards, has a list of questions to go with it! As I tend to enjoy interviews of all types, I'll gladly play. Here are the (possibly edited) questions Julie posed:

1. Where is your favorite place to write? In my basement dungeon garret bunker office, no question. If I tried to spend that many hours not in my proper chair not using my desktop (which I consider my real) computer, my chiropractor would really have his work cut out for him. Also, it's cozy and not distracting down here. If I had people around me or a window to look out of, that wouldn't be good.

2. What's the worst advice you've ever received? I read this in The Writer eleventy-fourteen years ago when I started writing: Writers should not have a day job, because they won't really pour themselves into their writing if they have a job to fall back on. Whew. Follow that at your own risk.

3. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? A writer. Yes, at times I gave other answers to this question, but that was only to look good/normal. The only career desire I ever had that was not a passing fancy was to be a writer. Ha, which means that advice up in #2 looked pretty good to me. The answer other than writing that I probably should have given is "Librarian." But it took me decades to figure that out, and, really, everything has turned out fine.

4. What's your favorite book(s)? Oh, my goodness, the great unanswerable. Let me give you the most recent: Splendors and Glooms, Wonder, Masterpiece, The Penderwicks (all), anything by Gary Schmidt, Richard Peck, Kate DiCamillo, or Ruta Sepetys, When You Reach Me, Marcelo in the Real World, The One and Only Ivan, and that which must be marathon-reread on an annual basis, Harry Potter.

5. What's in your TBR pile? Story Physics, by Larry Brooks. A Dog Called Homeless, The Real Boy, W is for Wasted, The Cuckoo's Calling. That is a very short list for me, and it'll get a lot longer before it gets shorter.

6. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? (a) right here in Wisconsin's Fox River Valley, (b) I could be happy along the Milwaukee-Madison corridor too, especially near water, (c) wherever my family is.

7. What distracts you most from writing? The internet.

8. What is your biggest source of inspiration? An amalgamation of remembered childhood emotions, family stories, and prayer/scripture.

9. Why do you blog? Because I enjoy it, it's an outlet for writing other than my fiction, and it's a way to make friends with like-minded folk. And I get to think in public. :)

10. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? England. Castles, cottages, and villages with gardens. Also Israel. But in my heart of hearts, I'm a homebody.

I know that a lot of people have gotten this award already. I, for one, love to read these little insights into people, so anyone who feels so inclined, please consider yourselves tagged. :)

In Which I Go Outside

Last week, a friend and I took a day and visited some points on the Niagara Escarpment, which runs through portions of Wisconsin. These photos were taken in the general area of Green Bay, which is half an hour north of us. (Yes, we have more than football and cheese!) They are her photos, since my camera mysteriously stopped working after about three shots but then was fine after I got home. She's by far the better photographer, so I could joke that I just wanted *her* pictures -- except my camera really did get wonky, and she'd've sent me the photos anyway. The fall colors are really just beginning, and the waterfall wasn't more than a trickle, but there was enough rain this year that it wasn't dry, and we could still hear it. The cliffs and rock layers are something to marvel at.

Have you been able to get outside this fall?

Sweet Talk

My wonderful, sweet (despite what she says) friend Vijaya gave me a "sweet award," and as I'm somewhat drawn to questionnaires and interviews and such (ha, probably for the same reason teen girls like quizzes), I'll play. And the rules are easy! Answer the following five questions having to do with sweets and then nominate five more bloggers. Okay, well, I usually have a problem finding people who haven't already played these things, so we'll just see how I fare with the second requirement. Anyway:


1. Cookies or Cake? No, no, no. The question is pie or ice cream, to which the answer is:

What? Instructions? I should follow? Okay. Cookies. I love a good chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, Oreos, graham crackers with frosting on them, and I'd say probably the best basic all-around ice cream flavor is cookies and cream, closely followed by cookie dough.

2. Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate. Dark. But pure vanilla is also wonderful. And caramel. Good caramel is heavenly.

 

3. Favorite Sweet Treat? What? I have to draw you a picture?

4. When do you crave sweet things the most? Probably anytime from lunch onward is fair game.

5. Sweet Nickname? When I was a child, my best friend's dad called me Marshmallow.

 

Five bloggers to pass the sweets to. Okay, I'm gonna give this my best shot. Of course, feel free to play or not, as you choose.

 

Barbara Ann Watson

Leandra Wallace

Mirka Breen

Medeia Sharif

Ruth Schiffmann

 

And now, if you'll all excuse me, there's something in the freezer calling my name...





What Things are Like Around Here

At least, when they're not sprawled across the keyboard.

Happy July 4th!

To all of my friends in the US, happy Independence Day!

Do You Have Favorite Letters (of the alphabet)?

I blogged recently, here, about favorite words. That led me to some thoughts about the elements that make up words: letters. Do you have favorite letters? I do. They are: G, J, K, L, Q, W, X, and Z.

Why? Well, I guess I just like how they look and sound. They're, I dunno, cool.

And as I thought about it, I realized that for me certain letters have certain characteristics. C is feminine and pretty. H throws his weight around. M and N are boring. P is a tad highbrow, mostly self-proclaimed. And A is always red. Later, I learned that viewing letters as having personality is one possible aspect of synesthesia. Seeing them in color, each letter always having its particular color, definitely is. Some, not all, of the letters have color for me, but I find it highly interesting that, while all the other letters vary in color from one person to another, most all synesthetes who see letters in color see A as red.

How about you? Do you have favorite letters? Why are they favorites?

Crit Group Celebrations, and a Talk by Editor Wendy McClure

Our critique group met the other day, at Mary's house, and Mary had a birthday. So we had to celebrate. Left to right, we are Susan, Marcia, Mary, and Connie.

Then, Susan had a book out! Route 2, Box 12 is the third collection of her weekly "life on Sunnybook Farm" columns that have appeared in several regional newspapers since the early 1980s. So we had to celebrate again. This time, we are Mary, Marcia, Susan, and Connie.

And yes, we did actually do some critiquing after all this. :)

This past Saturday, April 20, Wendy McClure, Senior Editor at Albert Whitman, spoke at the SCBWI-WI Spring Luncheon. She gave an entertaining program on her favorite MG childhood series, the Little House books. The most interesting part of the program for me was the excerpts from Laura Ingalls Wilder's early drafts; the long, single-spaced editorial letters sent to her by her own daughter, Rose Wilder Lane; and rejection/acceptance letters, the former from RWL's own literary agent and the latter from Knopf; which we got to see onscreen through Power Point.

I was really struck by this: Laura's early attempts were (1) all telling, and (2) from a distant observer's POV. Rose told her she had to be inside Laura, and Rose was right on. While listening, I thought about the need to allow first drafts to be poor if that's the only way they will come out, about how we sometimes can't put the emotional content into our stories until we can first bring ourselves to record them at all, about how steep and difficult the climb to publishable-prose level is for all of us, and how the newbiest of writers can go on to produce something special, even timeless.

And I thought of the kinks, rocks, and boulders in the road to publication even after you succeed. Because it wasn't Knopf who published Little House in the Big Woods, even though they accepted it. The year was 1931, and Knopf closed their children's book imprint because of the Depression. The book had to go back on the market and sell again, this time to Harper, who did publish it.

All of the biggest successes we can think of were achieved by people who, when they first set out, couldn't be sure they'd accomplish a thing. And this is why I believe, on every level, that life is a faith walk.

Happy Valentine's Day

We had a visit from three little valentines recently. Here they are one evening, all cozy. But do we detect a certain disinterest in having their picture taken...

Okay, let's try again. This is a nice moment...well, for two out of three, anyway.

Need to get more smiles out of the two-year-old? Singing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" to her is a sure way.

Well, we never did get the perfect shot. Perfect, no. Lovely, yes. Happy Valentine's Day to you and all those you love.

Merry Christmas

Wishing you all the joys of the season. Times of rest, worship, gatherings, meals, festive lights, quiet evenings, good cheer -- and for those who may be bearing loss or uncertainty at this time, the comforting presence of God, loved ones, and friends. May the true meaning of Christmas be born in every heart.

This will be my final post of 2012. Enjoy your winter holidays to the full, stay healthy and safe, and I'll see you on January 3, 2013!

What Are Your Favorite Words?

Do you have a list of favorite words? Words that you love just because of their sound or they way they look on the page? Here's my list, compiled over the years:

Floor
Split
Splendid
Parallelogram
Queue
Sluice
Quintessential

Yes, only seven words have made THE list so far. Maybe you can help me expand it? Please share your favorite words with me in the comments. I can't wait to hear them!

Happy Thanksgiving!

May God's blessings fill your home, your family, your loved ones, and your life on this very special day of thanks.

And for all that we've received, and all that He is, may our hearts overflow with gratitude to Him.


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :)

You Gotta Love the Equation Bookshelf

For the math-loving bookworm or book-loving math geek in your life, this bookshelf is a hoot. The important stuff (i.e., the operations you do first) go inside the parentheses, the next most important inside the brackets, and finally you take care of everything within the braces. You could totally make a statement at any given time about which books you'll read first, next, and last, or what items on the shelf are your favorites. I trust those parentheses, brackets, and braces move, because that would be the coolest, and just imagine the equations you could arrange (with books or other items as Roman numerals, equal signs -- use your imagination!). You could send coded math messages to your fellow math person; you might not have a fellow math person in real life, but you would in a book. And yes, I do sense a book idea coming on...

When Introversion and Math Collide

When I was a university math major, in one of the later courses, I was sitting in class with a girl named Susa, listening to a lecture. We'd been exposed to a countless number of theorems over the many semesters, and that day the prof presented yet another heretofore-unheard-of mathematician and his theorem. "Someday," murmured my seatmate, without taking her eyes off the board, "there's going to be a Susa theorem."

My thoughts exactly. And, talking with a friend recently about how introverts need to refuel after an exhausting period of extroversion, I realized the time has come. So, I give you:

Hoehne's First Law

The approximate number of Introversion Hours (IH, or I-Hours) required to refuel an introvert after a given amount of extroverted energy release can be expressed as

3(XH) + s + .02(dB) = IH



Where XH is the number of Extroversion Hours,

s is any portion of the XH during which the introvert felt unwell,

dB is the decibel level of noise the introvert was exposed to during the XH.

As a simple example, let's say the introvert attended a three-hour party where loud music was played and had a headache the entire time. The approximate number of I-Hours the person will require to recuperate is calculated as follows:

3(3) + 3 + .02(115) =

9 + 3 + 2.3 = 14.3

So we see that, if we include the hours spent sleeping, this poor soul needs virtually an entire day to refuel.

If, however, the introvert felt well during the party, and the loudest sound was normal conversation, we have

3(3) + 0 + .02(60) = 10.2

In this case, we can expect the introvert to be able to handle about 6 hours of non-isolation during the following 24-hour period.

Caution: Empirical data only. No writing was slacked off upon in order to pursue rigorous scholarship in the writing of this theorem. :)

Now, if this fiction-writing thing doesn't pan out, maybe I can write a textbook?





Eleven Questions

Annie McMahon tagged me recently with this "11 questions" meme. It looks like fun, a good way to do some introspection (something I hardly ever do -- yeah, right:)), and a good way to get some glimpses into other people, so here's the deal:

• Write 11 random things about yourself.
• Answer the 11 questions given.
• Write 11 new questions.
• Tag someone else. Maybe 11 someone elses, if you can.

11 Random Things About Myself

1. I don't watch TV.  Don't ask me if I've seen such-and-such commercial or show; of these I am totally ignorant. I'd much rather read, or, if it's screen time, be online. 
2. Exception to the above: I never miss Green Bay Packers football.
3. I am a homebody to the core...
4. ...but if I ever went abroad, I'd go to England. I'll take castles, villages, gardens, and a dose of London, please.
5. I am quiet. Sometimes too quiet. Yet, when I was in first grade, my teacher wrote on my report card, "Too noisy in the hall." I had no idea I'd been noisy, but after that I learned to tamp down any exuberance. In the short run, good; in the long run, a loss, no?
6. I cannot drink regular coffee. I get so jittery that all I can do is sit in a chair and quiver.
7. People used to tell me fairly often that I look like Meryl Streep. I mean, there was a period when I was getting this all the time. 
8. I'm a born-again Christian.
9. The only foreign country I've ever been to is Canada.
10. I was a TALL child, but I'm only a medium-sized adult. Guess I just did my growing early.
11. At the risk of sounding weird, I rarely listen to music.

11 Questions, Answered

1. How did you get your idea for your most recent book? From a newspaper article, but I don't want to say what it was about. :)
2. What makes your books different from others in your genre?  I write commercial middle grade with a literary bent. Or is it literary with a commercial bent?
3. What is your biggest challenge as a writer?  Getting through the first draft. I like revision.
4. What other hobbies or occupations do you have besides writing? I teach two courses for The Institute of Children's Literature. I sometimes struggle with the fact that I don't really have any proper hobbies. Well, I read a lot. :) I sing on my church's worship team. I'm good at and creative with counted cross stitch, but it really doesn't fit into my (or my cats') life anymore.
5. What's your favorite book in the genre that you write? I think I'm going to have to go with Anne of Green Gables.
6. What's your favorite quote or expression? It's hard to name just one, but here's a favorite scripture from Jeremiah 42:10 that I have in counted cross on my office wall: "If you are willing to go on living in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not pull you up."
7. Are you a listener or a talker? Listener!
8. Name one thing you couldn't live without. Jesus. Truly.
9. What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten? When I was a kid, my mom froze this horrible slushie-like stuff -- homemade from mysterious juices from the fridge -- by way of making us a summer treat AND trying not to throw something away. It was this brown, frozen goop in a pan. She made us eat it. Because, you know, she couldn't throw anything away.
10. If you were an animal, what would it be? A cat -- provided I could be an indoor cat with a loving family and lie by the hearth. If not that -- maybe a dolphin? But I really don't want to be wet all the time.
11. Name three adjectives that best describe you. Romantic, diplomatic, instrospective.

11 New Questions For 11 New Folks!

1. Your house is on fire and you can run out with one thing. (Your family and pets are safe, and you are guaranteed to get out.) What do you grab?
2. Health nut or junk foodie?
3. What's your favorite form of exercise?
4. What's the worst job you can imagine having?
5. Have you ever broken a bone? How?
6. If you could go back to college now, would you change your major? From what to what?
7. Green thumb? Black thumb? Somewhere in between?
8. What's the best book you've read in the last two months, on any topic?
9. What's the hugest, gooiest, most fabulous dessert you can remember eating?
10. What's your favorite writing tip?
11. What's the stupidest writing tip you've ever heard?

Okay, now to tag some folks. Some of you may have done this already, so pardon my duplication. :)

• Jaye Robin Brown
• Andrea Mack
• Jennifer Rumberger
• Mirka Breen
• Vijaya Bodach
• Sharon Mayhew
• Faith Hough
• Joyce Moyer Hostetter
• Susan Fields
• Ruth Schiffman
• Sara Hill

My, this makes for a long post. :) Have fun!

Fun With Kids Day

I should be doing a book pick post (hmmm, there's an interesting phrase) about now, but I've not had a lot of reading time lately, and this picture tells the story. However, I am reading (slowly) a MG novel that I'm really liking, and I'll post on it probably in early September. Meanwhile, life has been blessed with days like this. Longer post next week! :)

Beautiful Blogger Award

I will be offline for a week or thereabouts, so will be around to do some blog visiting as soon as I can after that. See you all soon! And now for our regularly scheduled post. :)

The lovely Ruth Schiffmann of Out on a Limb has tagged me for this award. I'm supposed to list seven things about myself. Okay, here goes.

1. I'm having trouble with this list already. Truth is, I write, I teach, I read, I pray, I do family stuff, and there's not much else.
2. Truth is, I'm speaking in the voice of one of my characters right now.
3. Oh, yeah, and we might be doing some painting on the house right now. Not the whole thing. But changing up the color scheme of the trim a bit. Minor excitement. :)
4. I've always been interested in nutrition, but I'm redoubling my efforts to eat well and make sure I walk at least 30 minutes a day. I can't afford to turn into the blob here -- bodily or mentally.
5. Reasonable amounts (drat:)) of dark chocolate are part of good nutrition.
6. Good habits on a daily basis will forgive the occasional (drat:)) ice-cream indulgence.
7. I sleep 8 hours per night. No boasting here that I can get by on 5 or 6, or that I'm too important to afford sleep (being overbusy is a status symbol, don't you know). I need it, and so do most of us.

I hope anyone who's reading this will consider themselves tagged. I'd enjoy getting a glimpse into seven things about YOU. :)

It's Goof-Off Day!

Aim your arrow to shoot each colored ball at groups of at least two of that same color. Shoot all the balls before they reach the bottom! Click here.

Here Comes the Groom!

I must suspend the critique giveaway this month, as our family is, ahem, "otherwise engaged." Our son's June 25 wedding is almost here! He couldn't be marrying a sweeter girl. We're so proud of both of them.

It's Goof-Off Day!

Fellow writer Tabitha Olson gave me this award. Thanks, Tabitha! The idea seems to be to post with it a list of pet peeves, which strikes me funny in conjunction with a "beautiful blogger" award, and I really don't feel I'm one for pet peeves in general...except maybe in language usage. So here are some language bugaboos that bug me. May we all not commit them today. :)

1. "It's not that big OF a deal." I don't mean the sentiment, I mean that OF in there. I see this construction in print all the time now. I suppose requesting to lose the "of" is futile, but, well, it is "that big a deal" to me.
2. "Orientated," unless you're British or Canadian. We U.S. of A-ers should be saying "oriented."
3. "Jew-ler-y," same disclaimer (British/Canadian spelling is jewellery). It's JEW-el-ry.
4. "New-kew-ler" as a pronunciation for "nuclear." Please, say "new-KLEE-er."
5. "REE-lit-ter" as a pronunciation for "Realtor" (which is also, unless things have changed, supposed to be capitalized). Say "REE-ul-ter."
6. Should of, would of, could of. Nope, it's should have, would have, could have. Despite what the pronunciation of contractions such as should've and shoulda would lead us to believe.
7. "In so." Strictly a regionalism (I think), this phrase occurs in remarks such as "Great weather we're having, in so?" or "Please turn out the lights when you leave, in so?" It's an expression asking for agreement and I suspect it's a short form of "isn't that so?" During my childhood, my dad pointed it out to me as a local expression that wasn't standard English ("It's not for educated people," is what he meant, but he was very kind about getting this across) and I dropped it from my vocabulary like a hot potato. Thanks, Dad. :)

What did I miss? If you're longing for a chance to play "language police," go to it. :D

Blessings of the New Year

Book giveaways will resume the first Thursday of next month, February 3!

Until then, though, it gives me great pleasure to present:

Paige Olivia was born December 15, making four generations of women in our family. As if it weren't obvious, we are, left to right, me, my mom, my granddaughter, and my daughter. And here, a shot of the oldest and youngest at our Christmas Eve gathering.

While we're on women, here's a picture of my sister and me, with the reality of kitchen prep behind us (in one sense, at least):

Grandpa, though is a REAL multitasker:

Okay, I know everybody's kids/grandkids are cute, but you gotta love this:

And who has her arms wide open to the possibilities of 2011?

And my favorites among the wonderful pro shots, by a close and talented friend of my daughter --

And if I weren't humbled enough by my blessings -- these are the priceless little people for whom we write. The privilege, the responsibility...God entrusts it to us... Words fail.